Thorn (53 page)

As they ran through the garden, they heard the frightened, pain-filled squealing of the giants as Thalia attacked them.

Nothing had ever felt as good as the cold sharp night air in their lungs, and the freezing rain stinging their faces.

As they ran towards the house, Imogen said breathlessly, ‘What are they? Those things?'

‘I haven't the remotest idea. Are you all right?'

‘Yes. Is the hunchback—'

‘Dead within seconds,' said Dan abruptly.

‘And the giant things?'

‘God knows. But we're not going back to find out, Imogen. We're going to beat it out of here and get you to safety. Can you get down to the road dressed like that?'

Imogen had forgotten that she was wearing only her nightgown and that her feet were bare. But she said, ‘I can walk as far as Land's End if it means getting out of here.'

‘All right,' said Dan. ‘But let's see if there's a coat somewhere. You're not escaping from that mad creature only to die of pneumonia straight afterwards. Come into the house with me.'

‘Well, I'm not staying out here on my own.'

He sent her a sudden grin. ‘Good girl. Stay with me, Imogen.'

They half fell through the rear door of October House, and Dan snatched an elderly duffel coat from what looked like an old garden room, and flung it round Imogen's shoulders. It was warm, and although there was a faint smell of paint and of what might be brick dust, it felt unexpectedly friendly. There were rubber boots as well; they were several sizes too big, but they would serve the purpose.

Dan went swiftly through the hall, switching on lights as he went. ‘We haven't much time,' he said. ‘We don't know what Thalia might do. But I think we have to risk phoning the police.' He glanced back at her. ‘And then we'll beat it out of here and go down the drive to the main road.'

‘All right.' Imogen followed Dan into the big sitting room at the front of the house and stood in the centre, wrapping her arms about her for warmth and comfort, listening for sounds from outside.

Dan had already dialled 999, and Imogen heard him say impatiently, ‘No, of course it isn't a hoax! Yes, I bloody am being serious! Just get out here with all the king's horses and all the king's men, will you! No, we daren't stay put! We'll get on to the main road as quickly as possible.'

He banged the phone down and crossed the room, grabbing Imogen's hand on the way. ‘We've got two options, Imogen. We can search for the keys to Thalia's car and drive to Blackmere, or we can just make a run for it.'

They looked at one another and as they did so, they heard a burst of sound from the garden. Somebody started screaming, and there was the banging of the studio door. Dan said, ‘No contest. Let's run for it.' Together they went out through the front door and down the dark drive.

They had got as far as the main road when they saw the arcs of car headlights slicing through the night and coming towards them.

Driving through the darkness to October House, Leo had been obeying instincts that had nothing to do with logic or rationale.

He
knew,
with his heart and his guts, that Thalia had taken Imogen and that she had got Quincy as well, and he knew with his blood and his bones that Imogen's life was balanced on a knife edge. He drove through the night at a frantic pace, the sense of urgency and desperation filling him to the exclusion of everything else. I might not be in time. Imogen might already be dead.

As he drove through Blackmere village, he slowed down, his eyes raking the darkness, trying to pick out October House, trying to see Oliver Tudor's car. It did not look as if Oliver was here yet.

Ahead of him, on his right, was a building with lights burning at the downstairs windows. October House? He changed gear and drove towards it, peering into the darkness, seeing the tiny dancing shapes of insects caught in the headlights' beams, seeing the spangling moisture from the December night mist everywhere.
Imogen, where are you?

And then she was there, as abruptly as if she had materialised out of that night mist, coming towards him from out of the spindrift veil, beads of moisture clinging to her hair. And at her side was a young man whom Leo had never seen before.

The night mist had graduated to a steady downpour, and even through the tightly-drawn curtains in the bay-windowed sitting room it was possible to hear the steady soft patter. Imogen tucked the potter's duffel coat more tightly round her, grateful for the warmth and the lights and the company of the others.

Two police cars were still parked outside, and they could hear the occasional buzz of the patrol radios and the voices of the policemen still going through the old coach house. It was a reassuring sound.

Imogen was curled into the deep, comfortable chair at the side of the fire, with Dan and Leo Sterne facing her, one on a matching chair, the other on a low stool. Oliver had arrived minutes behind Leo, and he was sitting on the deep sofa, facing the fire. He had not said much, but there had been a moment when he and Dan had embraced in a brusque, faintly embarrassed masculine fashion. He had said something about Dan looking like a fugitive, and Dan had said they were lucky he didn't look like a corpse. It was clear that they were very fond of one another. Oliver looked a lot like Dan – at least, how Dan would look with the disreputable beard removed and his hair cut, but he seemed gentler and more hesitant. Imogen thought he was rather nice.

It was somehow typical that Dr Sterne should take the armchair and sit upright in it in a more or less conventional fashion, and that Dan should sprawl untidily against the chimney breast. The chair gave Dr Sterne authority, and yet . . . Imogen sent a covert look towards Dan.
Stay with me, Imogen,
he had said.

They were all drinking the potter's whisky, which had been unearthed from a cupboard and which Dan had said they might as well plunder on the grounds that they could replace it tomorrow – ‘Or maybe it's already today.'

‘I don't suppose the police are taking an inventory,' said Leo as Dan splashed a good measure into four glasses and added soda.

Despite the low stool, Dan had retained a fair share of authority. When he said, ‘What were those creatures, Sterne? And how on earth did they get out here?' Imogen thought that by using Dr Sterne's surname Dan had somehow put himself on a level with the other man. She thought he had done it naturally and unthinkingly, but she thought that for some reason it had brushed a raw nerve in Leo Sterne. This was odd, because Oliver had used the same form of address and it had not called up the same reaction at all; in fact Dr Sterne seemed to be regarding Oliver as a collaborator and a friend.

Leo took a minute to reply to Dan's question. ‘They're sufferers from a fairly unusual condition called acromegaly,' he said at last. ‘I won't bore you with the technicalities, but it results in excessive growth of bones – especially the limbs and quite often the face.' He paused. ‘Thornacre had several acromegalic patients,' he said. ‘And tonight someone – Harris, from the sound of it – let them out.'

‘And he told them how to get here,' said Dan.

‘Why? How?' asked Imogen, leaning forward.

‘I don't suppose we'll ever know,' said Leo. ‘But it might be that he promised them some kind of reward. And it might very well be that he wanted to enlist their help on his own account.'

‘How? I mean,' said Oliver, ‘how would he get them here?'

‘Several ways,' said Dan.

‘Yes, and it wouldn't have been very far for them to walk,' put in Leo. ‘It's a straight route. It might have taken an hour, or even a bit less, but certainly no more.'

‘Would they have understood a map? Can they read?' asked Oliver.

‘They can't manage the complete works of Shakespeare, but they can read plain things. It's possible they could have understood a simple map.'

‘There you are then,' said Dan. ‘Harris could have drawn a map for them. Or he could have given them the house agent's details of the place – Thalia had a couple of copies here, I remember, so that's a good contender. Or Harris might have secretly brought one of them here last night. Or painted marks on the roadside with luminous paint – or given them a ball of twine to unwind as they went, like Ariadne going into the Minotaur's den—Any of those do you, professor?'

‘May heaven preserve me from the runaway imaginations of writers,' said Oliver, rather dryly. ‘Any one of those will do nicely. On balance, I'll go for Harris's map-drawing.'

Dan grinned and got up to pour himself another whisky and soda.

‘I wonder what Harris had in mind for them?' said Imogen thoughtfully. ‘Will they be all right, Dr Sterne?'

‘Yes, Imogen,' said Leo, gently. ‘Yes, they'll be all right. I shall take them back to Thornacre where they feel safe and where we understand them. And we'll keep trying to bring them a little bit more into the world.'

And then Imogen said, ‘Thalia's car's still here. And all her things are upstairs.' She looked at them in silence for a moment, and then said, ‘What's happened to Thalia?'

What indeed?

The three men had gone back to the studio with the Thornacre police inspector, leaving Imogen in the warm, well-lit sitting room. The dull glow of the furnace-kiln still illuminated the studio, and there was the same scent of hot iron and a whiff of something that might almost be sulphur. How appropriate, thought the detached part of Dan's mind. Brimstone and sulphur, and scuttling hunchbacked demons—He shut off the rest of the thought.

As the two police officers pushed wide the door the stench of heat belched outwards, and wrapped inside it was another stench: blood and sadness and fear. Leo said in a voice of the utmost horror, ‘Dear God, what went on here tonight?'

‘Something that would take a year to tell you,' said Dan.

The two of them stood for a moment in the doorway, and unwittingly shared a thought, nearly identical. Dan thought: cold and efficient evil did this. Leo thought: mad and efficient evil did this. Oliver, a little behind his brother, found himself remembering Milton's lost paradise, where the flames of the great furnace flamed round the iron-hued dungeon, discovering the sights of woe.

The acromegalics were seated in a circle in front of the kiln, like obedient children left by a nursery fire, their huge faces watching the flames with absorption. Two of them were lying against the wall, bruised and cut from where Thalia had attacked them and one had a scorch-mark, but Dan thought the injuries were not serious. He looked back at the silent figures ranged before the kiln, and ice began to close about his heart.

The door was propped open, and the flames burned up greedily. And the giants are watching them, thought Dan. They're concentrating on something deep inside the furnace. Something burning.

He looked frantically round the studio, half-expecting to see Thalia Caudle unconscious or dead in the shadows; certainly expecting to see the thing that had been Edmund lying on the ground where it had fallen. The icy horror hardened as he looked back at the yawning furnace door and at the intent faces of the acromegalics watching the leaping flames.

D
an leaned back against the bar and surveyed the crowded room with pleased detachment. When you looked like being a success – when pre-publication sales were already gladdening the heart of your bank manager and your agent, and your publishing house had set up an extravagant launch at a princely West End hotel – you could afford to feel pleased, although it was better not to show it too much.

He had been introduced to, and shaken the hands of, what felt like several dozen people, most of whose names he had not caught, none of whom he was likely ever to meet again. He had listened politely to several earnest young females who appeared to be seeing things in his plot which he had never seen for himself. After the fifth gin and tonic he told them there were no deep-seated, subtly-suggested analogies or parallels; all he had set out to do was write a story to entertain people and make some money – in that order. This was not very well received, and it was doubtful if it was believed.

Several people from writers' groups wanted a date for him to go along and talk to their members, which was probably something that would have to be done. Dan wondered what he would find to say, because you did not write books by talking about them.

‘And the inspiration?' said a solemn reviewer from a magazine whose name Dan had forgotten.

He said, warily, ‘What inspiration?'

‘Oh, but surely—' she pushed her glasses back on to the bridge of her nose, ‘you must have had some secret inspiration for your book.'

‘The inspiration was seen through the bottom of an emptying whisky bottle most of the time,' said Dan, blithely, and it was at this moment that the inspiration for the book – the real gut-clutching, heart-scalding inspiration – walked into the room.

Dan said, ‘Excuse me – could we discuss this later,' and went straight to Imogen.

It was over a year since he had seen her, well, all right it was thirteen months to be exact. The book had been finished exactly three weeks from that remarkable episode in Blackmere, and Dan's agent had liked it very much. He had got an almost immediate contract from a publishing house who liked it very much as well. Hence tonight. Hence the five gins and the sycophantic reviewers.

His feelings about her had been complicated. He held long arguments with himself as to whether it mightn't be wiser to keep her as part of that strange out-of-the-world experience they had both shared.

One of the aunts had taken her on a protracted cruise straight after the extraordinary episode in Blackmere – the Greek islands, apparently – and then there had been some kind of intensive cookery course in Paris.
Cordon bleu
level from the sound of it. I'm losing her, Dan had thought in panic, reading the letters Imogen wrote him. She's simply being polite because of what we shared. She'll dazzle them in Paris, and she'll be scooped up by some rich French businessman with a taste for good food and a beautiful female to cook it for him, and I'll never see her again. The letters will get shorter and more infrequent and eventually they'll dwindle to a Christmas card with a note saying ‘Hope all is well with you' and listing how many children she's got.