The Darkening

She slid on her bottom back down the stairs into the inky gloom. She had to find something to move the barrel bolt, but what? Such an idiot! If only she’d worn her sneakers instead of the slip-ons, she would have had shoelaces! She could picture slipping the lace over the bolt, pulling down hard on both ends, and gently rolling the bolt free. If wishes were horses, beggars would ride, Vee would say.

As soon as she moved away from the miserable glow admitted by the door cracks, the room was almost pitch black and she could only make out the vaguest forms. Her fingers probed the dark: hunting, feeling. Shelves were cut into the walls of the cellar like catacombs. Jars of all sizes. She pulled one out and shook it. A faint rattle. She unscrewed the lid, and tipped the contents into her hand, and guided her fingertips over it. The object became so instantly and horribly familiar that she let out a yelp. A tooth, long pronged roots still attached. She dropped it to the floor and went to the next jar, rattled it. A faint sloshing inside. The next felt empty, and when she opened it, a small piece of furry paper fell onto her palm. As she felt the patch, her stomach twisted. It was a piece of dried skin, short hairs still attached. Her heart raced faster, and she kept going through the jars. One after another, their contents were equally repulsive and useless to her. Useless, useless, useless!

She felt tears start to salt her eyes, and blinked hard. This was no time for crying. There had to be something. There were four walls, that was clear. One wall was hewn shelves full of jars. One had the stairs. The next was blank. The last was where she herself had hung, and where the mummified black boy still slumped in his cobweb cocoon. This wall was the last one to search.

Hannah put her arms out in front of her and gingerly stepped towards the last wall. Her fingers touched silky threads and jerked back involuntarily. Okay, she thought. That’s him. What’s beside him? Her fingers delicately slid past the wispy strands until they again touched the wall. Nothing, nothing. . cold earth and the mute heads of rocks. Then her fingers slipped into space. Another shelf?

She used both hands to map the hole.

Where the excavated shelves were perhaps twenty centimetres or so high, this was taller; so high that she couldn’t reach its top, and it was at least a metre wide. She put her hand into it, then pulled back sharply. What if there are spiders in there?

Vee’s voice came back at her, at once cheerful and serious: There’ll be spiders in here soon enough, girlie, so get a wriggle on.

Hannah stood on tiptoe and reached into the hole. .

Her fingers touched something hard and flat and cold. Steel. She probed, and her hand closed around a looped iron handle. It was a box.

Or a coffin.

‘Shush,’ she hissed at herself.

She gripped the handle and pulled. The box chuckled unhappily, steel scraping on rock. It was heavy, but it moved. Well, she thought, if it’s a coffin, it’s empty. She pulled more and the end of the box cleared the wall. It still rested flat in its hole. She pulled and took a step backward, then another. How long was this thing? And when should she put up her other hand to stop it overbalancing? But just as she asked herself, the far end of the chest cleared the wall and it fell fast and hard. One sharp metal corner pounded into her cheek, then the box slammed sharply on the damp ground with a booming clang. Hannah lost her grip on it completely and the metal box tottered forward and fell, scraping skin from her shin on its downward arc.

Tears sprang out of her eyes and she bit her lip to stop herself howling at the bright pain.

At least it’s down.

Hannah knelt. She seemed to be hurting everywhere, worst of all her hot-and-cold throbbing shin. She gritted her teeth and made her fingers feel the chest. It had fallen onto its lid. She gripped the cold corners of folded steel and lifted. The chest rolled slowly and, as it did, its lid opened: its catch must have broken loose. Stuff spilled out over her hands and forearms.

Papers. Lots and lots of papers. Small pieces of paper — thousands of small rectangles.

Oh, wow, she realised. This is. .

She picked up a handful and sloshed over to the dull grey light leaking in from the trapdoors. The golden yellow plastic of contemporary fifty-dollar notes. The red paper of old twenties. A grey-green note printed ‘?100’. Hannah blinked. There was a fortune.

But it won’t buy your way out of here, she thought acidly.

She felt her way back over to the chest and started sifting through the money. Please, please, please, she thought, please let there be something in here. Something. . She shovelled the notes aside, feeling, probing, digging. .

Then her fingers closed on a roll of larger sheets. She followed the dry cylinder along its length. The roll’s held together, but with what?

Then a smile appeared on her face.

The roll was tied with a leather thong.

40

Nicholas’s head ached sharply. He’d spat in Quill’s face, and she had slapped him — slapped him hard.

Then she had risen, passing the fire pit and muttering to herself. She bent to the dresser and he heard through the ringing in his ear the clinking of glass and the tick of tin and the shush of things unscrewing. Rain mumbled heavily all the while.

His hatred for her was now as solid as the boards he lay on, as the stones ringing the fire pit. But despite it, he hadn’t come up with anything approximating a half-baked plan, let alone anything that promised a whiff of success. He was her prisoner, and Hannah was shortly to die.

‘I’ll stay if you let Hannah go.’

She kept her back to him. Her silence was terrifying.

‘I said-’

‘You will stay,’ said Quill, cutting him short. ‘And the cuttie will surely go.’

She turned her body and Nicholas saw what she held. A jar. It was open and in its bottom ran a small amount of greyish, once-white fluid. In her other hand, she held a silver cone on a rod. It looked like a candle snuffer; God knows he’d found plenty of those over his years of scrounging. But this metal cone was larger and curved like a horn, writhing with symbols and darkly stained with soot. Quill reached for her belt and, with a motion as swift and practised as a torero with a banderilla, produced the small, wickedly sharp knife. She drew the blade over her thumb and a red ruby of blood sprouted there. She let a thimbleful of thick crimson liquid drop into the silver cone. Her wrinkled oyster of a mouth mumbled words Nicholas couldn’t make out. Then she closed the wound, licked it, and poured the semen from the jar into the crucible. Without hesitating, she set the empty jar aside and held the cone by its stained silver handle over the flames.

Nicholas felt his limbs instantly blaze with pain, as if she were holding not the silver horn but him over the flames. Then, just as suddenly, fall slack and dumb. His heart stopped beating. He felt his breath sigh out of his lungs.

Oh God, she’s killed me!

Then his chest began thumping again, a deliberate, slow-paced tattoo that was dislocated and inhuman. As the blood swept from his heart through his veins, he seemed able to feel its passage. It’s not mine, he thought. It doesn’t feel like my blood any more! It feels like. .

‘Stiff, now,’ said Quill.

Nicholas felt his throat tighten and his arms, legs, chest, harden, every muscle closing like a thousand fists, till his body was straight and rigid as wood. His eyes watered with the pain of exertion, yet his sight remained his. He rolled his eyes.

Quill was watching him from a face that was all shadow bar two bright orbs that shone orange and owlish in the firelight. And she was smiling.