CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
The hole was perfectly symmetrical. Small at first; gradually it widened out, never deviating from its circular shape, never getting distorted. If the movement of it opening had been accompanied by music it would have been Mendelssohn’s Scottish Symphony, the lavish Fingal’s Cave.
McKinley placed an arm across Bayliss, indicating they should both move away from the lip of the hole. Carter took hold of Kirby’s arm and all four of them moved towards the door. The floor was all but gone now, and the hole opened almost as wide as the room. From within the hole they could see flames, though there was little heat; and there were screams.
‘It’s Dante’s Inferno,’ Bayliss said.
‘Only it’s deMarco, not Dante,’ Carter said, and as he spoke the outer wall of the room broke in two and pieces of the masonry fell into the opening. Great plumes of smoke and flame billowed up, eager tongues of fire.
‘The ceiling,’ McKinley shouted, and the whole of the ceiling began to collapse downwards.
They rushed out of the room and into the entrance hall. The staircase had fallen in on itself; the windows were shattered, great panes of glass hanging in cracked arrangements of irregular pattern. The marble floor tiles were popping up, one by one, as if pushed from beneath.
Carter turned to face the others. ‘We need to get out of here, and fast.’
‘What are we waiting for?’ Bayliss said and moved to run.
Carter held a hand to the man’s chest. ‘They’ll try to stop us.’
The front door crashed open, the force flinging the heavy oak hard against its hinges, pulling them from the wall.
Bayliss pointed. ‘That doesn’t look like we’re being prevented from leaving. That looks like an invitation to me.’ Then he heard a voice calling his name. ‘Did you hear that?’
Then his name again, ahead of him now, through the door, a faint hissing voice, terrifying in its malevolence.
‘Doesn’t sound like an invitation now, does it?’ Kirby said. The voice was angry and demanding.
Carter could see the trees and the garden to the front of the Manse, but it was in the distance, and the scene seemed blurred, out of focus, as if his eyes were covered in gauze.
Despite the dangers he knew they couldn’t stay in the house. At first he had thought the collapse was intended to kill them all. Now he realized it was merely designed to get them out into the open. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We’ll have to risk it. We can’t stay here.’
He clapped Bayliss on the back, and lightly took hold of Kirby’s hand.
He ran on, as the sudden silence of the house overwhelmed him. There was no sound in the place at all, no screams from the opened floor in the bar, no loud rumblings as the walls crumbled. He was conscious of a slapping sound as his feet hit the floor, but even that sound was sucked away until all he could hear was the blood rushing in his ears.
Progress was painfully slow. Although he was conscious of running with all the speed his body could muster, the front door never seemed to get any nearer, and gradually he became aware that the floor under his feet was becoming soft. He seemed to be sinking into the tiles with each step he took. Almost as if he was running through sand, and at the edge of the sand was water, deep water waiting to claim him.
Voices began to clamor in his head. Let yourself go, Robert. Let your body sink into the floor. We’re waiting for you.
He looked around at the others and it was as if they were running in slow motion, fierce effort burned into their faces, but they didn’t seem to be moving.
The voices whispered in his ear again, joined this time by other voices, each calling his name, cursing him, vilifying him. Too exhausted to reply to them he ran on, wanting only to reach the outside.
The floor tiles confounded him. They were rippling and buckling, pitching and twisting, sucking at his feet, tripping him. His foot caught on the edge of a tile and he tumbled forwards, splinters of cracked marble embedding themselves in his palms as he stretched out his hands to break his fall. All around him the air was alive with whispers and cries, and gradually the visibility was diminishing.
He felt strong hands lifting him. ‘Come on, man,’ McKinley said. ‘We’re almost there.’
Carter looked back to the entrance of the bar, where the walls had gone and black flutters of what looked like burned paper floated in the air.
Kirby screamed. A pillar of mist was spinning towards them, thrusting forward along the walls as if for support. A gray swirling vortex coming at them with great speed, all the while hissing their names over and over again in a whispered chant. It was as if there were thousands of voices caught up in a swirling dance, shouting and calling out in every language on earth.
As the vortex drew nearer Carter could see that it was far more solid than he had imagined. The mist wasn’t spreading across the entrance hall, as he’d expected, but was confined to its center, with a definite purpose about its course, which was directly towards him. The mist had a raw shape, which Carter realized was the shape of a man, though the edges were indistinct, with flailing arms and the appearance of a roughly defined mouth.
What the hell is that?
McKinley spoke the words directly into his thoughts, but his mind was so concentrated he couldn’t reply.
Bayliss and Kirby were out of the house. They flopped down on the grass, panting like greyhounds after a race. McKinley was at the door, waiting for Carter, who was a few feet behind. He turned and knew that the mist had him trapped, pushing him along the wall, forcing him into it; he was terrified to touch it or to let it engulf him. He felt the wall at his back, and looked down in horror at the floor. It was beginning to dissolve. Behind him the wall was starting to give way, embracing him, welcoming him inside.
‘Take my hand,’ McKinley shouted at him, struggling to be heard above the noise.
Carter reached out, and stretched his fingers towards McKinley’s.
Long flailing arms extended out from the mist, cracking forwards, clawing through the air at Carter.
McKinley had one hand on the frame of the door, the other pulling out towards Carter. The long black fingers were accentuated against the pale gray mist. Carter aimed his hand at them and felt the rough tips of McKinley’s fingers.
It felt as if the wall was sucking him into it, while at his feet the floor was spinning out of control.
Carter’s fingers locked onto McKinley’s and with a fierce pulling motion McKinley peeled Carter away from the wall; he carried on pulling and the swirls of mist began to melt away. Carter forced his other arm onto McKinley’s and with a final effort both men were out of the house and lying on the grass with the others.
They all watched in silence as the house imploded. It fell in on itself with the roof wavering with indecision before collapsing inside the walls. Then the walls, already moving as if reeds blowing in the wind, fell forwards in a tired and slow fall from grace. Dust and debris heaved up into the air, mimicking the mist that had threatened Carter.
‘That’s that then,’ Bayliss said.
Carter shook his head. ‘Far from it. That’s just the beginning.’
‘But the Manse is the center of deMarco’s world. Now it’s gone,’ Bayliss said.
‘The house was the center but it’s not the entrance. That’s somewhere else.’
They sat on the grass as the dusk slowly surrounded them, shimmering with shadows.
Kirby plucked blades of grass and split them with her fingernails. She was thinking about Jane Talbot. What she had done, and where she might have gone. Would they see her again? Jane was the only person she had been able to talk to, really open up to about her feelings. The things she had shared with her about Malcolm and the baby had been locked inside her for so long that it had been a welcome release to let it all out.
Bayliss realized he had been terrified during most of the preceding hours. For all the research he had done, for all the knowledge he thought he possessed, nothing had prepared him for the reality once the horrors had begun. All the stories his grandfather had told him came flooding back, washing over him like exhaustion. The truth was that up until a few hours ago Kulsay had been something of a myth to him. A fairy story conjured in his imagination from old tales and whispered recollections. Now that reality had been tasted the sourness of what he’d seen was far worse than what he had learned.
Carter stood. ‘I know where the entrance is,’ he said. ‘Where we have to go to finish this.’
McKinley turned round on the grass so that he was facing him. ‘I’m ready. Where are we going?’
‘The abandoned church,’ Carter said. ‘It’s about fifteen minutes from here.’