Resonance (35 page)

The Thing We've Found

‘V
ICENTE, WHAT DOES
this creature mean for us?'

Vincent barely registered Raquel's question. He could not take his eyes from the huge specimen jar Luke had set on the floor in the centre of the room, nor the creature that now rested within it.

The American boy and he had debated theories as they carried the creature up from the boating pond. Should they put it back into water? If Vincent's theory was correct, and it was some form of cosmic animal, crashed here from the stars, was water even an appropriate element for it? Perhaps it had been slowly drowning all this time. Perhaps it was this, and not poison from the so-called Contagion, that had killed its companions?

To and fro, to and fro the debate had gone between them, as they had pulled on dry trousers, tied laces, buttoned shirts, put on waistcoats. Talking, talking, talking. Raquel re-lit the candles, and their shadows flared high against the ceiling of the ballroom, their patience with each other fraying as excitement faded to exhaustion.

In the end, it had been Cornelius who made the decision.
He must have slipped away while they were arguing, and he'd silenced them both by returning with a well bucket, from which he filled the enormous jar. He had lifted the creature and, without a word, tipped it from its shirt swaddling into the water.

As if with relief, the creature had spread to fill the shivering element, its tentacles reaching and gently touching the borders of its confinement, its grotesque body curling and uncurling as it drifted within. Cornelius had slapped the bucket down and retreated to the door, where he'd leaned, his arms crossed, his frown riveted on Vincent.

‘There,' he'd said. ‘Now what?'

The American had abandoned the debate with an upflung hand and seated himself over on the sofa by the seer and the boy named Joe.

Vincent tore his eyes from the jar and looked up at them. The couple had already been sitting there, hand in hand and pale as china dolls, when he had burst in with the creature. There were track marks on the floor where they had dragged the sofa back against the wall, better prepared to face whoever came in the door, Vincent supposed.

The spirit board was at the seer's elbow, the candles throwing vast shadows on the wall behind her. She had her foot on the axle of the perambulator and was rocking it gently, as if to soothe its passenger. She had barely acknowledged the American boy when he sat down, her eyes fixed on the creature in its jar.

‘You all right, Harry?' Joe asked.

The boy nodded, but in truth he looked wretched. He couldn't seem to stop shivering, despite the warmth of the room. Vincent's head had begun to pain him. He noticed
the boy squinting in the candlelight and figured his must feel the same.

‘Vicente,' repeated Raquel softly, ‘what does this abomination mean for us?'

Such a simple question. How was he to answer it without toppling all the things in which she wanted to believe?

‘It is a beloved,' said the seer.

A beloved? What an odd choice of word
. ‘Explain.'

‘A beloved,' she insisted, lifting the hand she had joined with Joe's as if that clarified everything. ‘A
beloved
.'

‘It completes your angel,' said Joe.

‘We have seen its like before,' said Cornelius. ‘After we had the Angel dragged underground, we found that very same type of creature lying by the shore. The villagers thought it was the devil.'

‘Yes,' said Vincent absently. He squatted by the jar, traced the glass with his finger. ‘But that was dead – already beginning to dry out. This …'

‘Wolcroft lost his mind over it,' said Cornelius. ‘Thinking he'd harnessed the power of the devil – such a wicked man. Had I not disposed of him, he would have brought the wrath of England down on us.'

‘Yes, cully, yes, you did very well.'

‘So … you aren't Wolcroft?' asked Harry.

Vincent heard Cornelius huff, could well imagine the curl of his lip. ‘No, boy, I am not. Though I can arrange for you to meet the real article, if you so desire – what is left of him.
I
am just the man who talked our way into his employ.
I
am just the man who, when needed, threw the lunatic into the oubliette and took his place.
I
am just the man who has kept this estate untouched and free from trouble ever since.'

He swept his hand to his head, as if removing a hat, and effected a bitter little bow.

‘Quartermaster Cornelius Aloysius Mills: disinherited heir to Nevis' richest sugar plantation, erstwhile pirate, and from 1690 onwards, the man known to all delegates of King Billy, Queen Anne or any subsequent monarch, lacky, tax collector or inquiring soul as Sir Cornelius Wolcroft, the retiringly shy yet always obliging Lord of Fargeal Manor.'

‘Just how old
are
you people?'

Cornelius sneered. ‘Older than we look.'

Vincent tapped the glass of the jar, murmuring to the creature within, ‘And you, little monster? How old are you?
What
are you?'

‘All the dead angels had one,' said Harry. ‘You saw them. Wrapped about their necks.'

‘Dead angels?' exclaimed Raquel.

‘All the dead angels had one,' murmured Vincent. ‘But the Bright Man never did … unless …
Cornelius
, do you suppose the one we found by the pond was his? Do you suppose we caused its death somehow, during the chase or during the capture, and it came loose of him?'

‘But Vicente,' insisted Raquel, ‘how can angels be dead?' She turned to Cornelius, who looked just as startled by the idea as she. ‘Cornelius,' she cried. ‘How can angels die?'

‘Raquel,' groaned Vincent. ‘
Meu amor
. Hush now and let us talk sense.' Cornelius went to protest, and Vincent flung up his hand. ‘You too, cully. Let us agree to call these things what we will – creatures, angels, demons or others – but let us also decide to lay aside our preconceptions and discuss only that which we have before us. Only that which we know as fact. Are we agreed?'

Frowning, Cornelius wrapped his arms around himself and leaned back against the wall, watchful.

‘Does everyone here live forever?' asked the seer softly.

Luke startled her by answering from the hall. ‘We didn't used to. Not 'til the Captain and Himself came.' He stepped warily from the shadows and entered the room, his eyes on the jar.

‘Luke,' asked Raquel, ‘where are my children?'

‘Dunno, missus. I called for them in the woods but I didn't get no reply. Reckon they—'

Raquel dismissed this with a tut. ‘The
baby-carriage
, Luke. My
good
children?'

Luke's face went cold. ‘I'll bring that all up in a while,' he said. Then, as if his usual disapproval of Raquel's dolls had irritated the uncertainty from him, he strode to the jar and bent to look in at the creature. The water seemed to amplify the candlelight, and the creature threw sinuous reflections across his illuminated face. For some reason, this shifting light made Vincent feel ill. He glanced across to Harry.

‘Do you feel sick, boy?'

Harry nodded. ‘Very,' he admitted.

It's the ship
, thought Vincent.
It has poisoned us
.

Tina's quietly insistent question came again. ‘Does everyone live
forever
here?'

‘Folk always lived long healthy lives in the village,' said Luke. ‘Place were famous for it. Back in the old times, before Wolcroft and his Roundhead scum made life a nightmare, folks used to come from all over to be cured. Rabies, leprosy, consumption – you name it. Whatever ailed you, a stay in Fear Geal Woods would cure it. But no one used to live forever. Not 'til …'

He glanced at Vincent, and then to Cornelius, obviously reluctant to continue.

‘Not until we locked the Angel down,' said Cornelius. ‘Something changed when we put it underground.'

‘No one here has died since. No one's been born. No one's died. Things just … stood still.' Luke glanced again at Vincent. ‘But now things're winding down, ain't they, Captain? Slowly coming to a halt. Do you think this thing' – he tapped the glass – ‘can tell us why?'

Vincent squinted down into the light-reflecting water. ‘What did we change?' he mused. ‘What difference was there between the creature roaming the woods as it used to and being confined underground?'

‘Oh, you've been asking that question for decades,' groaned Cornelius. ‘Are you not sick of it yet?'

‘No,' snapped Vincent. ‘I am not sick of it yet.' He rose to his feet and began to pace. The breeze of his passage set the candle flames aflutter, filling the room with shifting, smoky shadows. ‘Let us retrace our steps …'

Cornelius threw his eyes to heaven. ‘Again,' he breathed.

Vincent continued unfazed. ‘One: we convinced Wolcroft to draw the Bright Man out with a spectacular.'

‘It were allus drawn to entertainments,' said Luke.

‘Two,' continued Vincent, ‘we chased it from the trees and down into what was then the cow pastures by the boating pond. Three: the men brought it down. Four: we confined it underground, that I might examine it—'

‘And voila,' cried Cornelius. ‘
Five
: we have ourselves a captive angel. And, asking nothing in return but the occasional song and dance, it has given us eternal life. And so we live in
peace
and
solitude,
needing
nothing from the 
world
.' He slammed his fist into the wall, his sudden rage making everyone but Vincent jump. ‘Can't you just accept the gift, Vincent? Can't you just be grateful, for once in your damned life, and not always want
more
?'

‘You were the one who wanted to know what the Bright Man needed! You were the one who brought this child here, that she might be forced to speak with it and let us understand what it wants.'

Vincent went and grabbed the spirit table, setting the light a-dance again as he plopped it down in the middle of the room. ‘Come on, then!' he cried. ‘Fulfil your plan! Let us
commune
with your angel!'

Cornelius shrank against the wall, and Vincent nodded his head bitterly. ‘Of course, you have changed your mind. You no longer want to know, now the answers may contradict your carefully constructed
truth
. Well, I am sorry, cully, but we cannot all live underground wrapped in dreams while life continues on without us. Your angel is dying. And I mean to find out why.'

Vincent turned purposely from his friend. ‘So … we put the Bright Man below ground; somehow we killed its symbiote. But something else also changed. Something in the way it fed. Luke, you told me it began to affect players in a way it never had before.'

Luke tore his eyes from Cornelius. ‘Aye. It was then it began to use entertainers up. Any spectacle after that …' He shuddered, glancing at the wizened remains in the
baby-carriage
. ‘It used them up.'

Vincent hunkered by the jar again and dabbled his fingers in the water. The creature lifted its tentacles and he withdrew his hand before their flesh could touch.

‘I had always thought these changes had to do with imprisoning the Bright Man,' he murmured. ‘That its powers were concentrated somehow by its confinement … but I now suspect that killing its symbiote is the key. We killed it, and somehow … somehow the Bright Man transferred the mutualism to us.'

He looked across at Tina. ‘We have become the Bright Man's symbiote, have we not, seer? It has been living through us ever since.'

She nodded. ‘And so you live forever …'

‘… by feeding off others,' finished Joe, his voice immeasurably stronger than that of the girl who held his hand.

‘Which presents the question,' murmured Vincent. ‘What becomes of us should I choose to hand this creature over to its host?'