She yearned to deny it as another bridge engulfed the carriage and was swept away by sunlight that emphasised the thickness of the muddy window. 'Say what you have to say, Glen,' she urged.
'How's your cousin?'
'Not conscious yet, the last we heard. We're on our way to see him.'
'Ellen's with you, right? The reason I'm calling is mainly for her. Maybe I should speak to her in person.'
As Charlotte held out the phone Ellen said 'Doesn't it work so we can both hear?'
'Do you want me to go away?' Hugh said, though he seemed to be pleading for the reverse.
'I meant you as well,' Ellen said without taking the mobile. 'You're involved too.'
Charlotte looked away from his colourful reaction and poked the hands-free button. 'Glen? Can you hear me?'
'Pretty well,' he said a little fuzzily but loud enough to be comprehensible above the muffled thunder of the wheels. 'Are we in a meeting?'
'Ellen would prefer it if you don't mind.'
'Whatever's best for our author. Good to speak to you at last, Ellen. Let's hope we'll have a reason to get together and celebrate soon.'
She seemed not to know where to put her hands – nowhere near her face and not in her lap. Splaying her fingers on the upholstery on either side of her, she leaned forwards. 'You weren't calling to say we have.'
'Working on it. How's the new book coming?'
'I'm a bit distracted at the moment,' Ellen said, and her lips worked as if searching for a shape.
'I figured you might be. That's why I thought I'd help. I had some spare time, so I looked into the place you came up with. Thurstaston.'
Ellen pressed her lips fat and then sucked them inwards, so that Charlotte might have felt compelled to speak if Hugh hadn't. 'What did you find?'
Glen's voice grew louder but less clear. 'Who's that?'
'Only Hugh,' Hugh said. 'Their cousin.'
'Hi, Hugh. Sorry, I thought I heard someone else. I guess they were up on the street. Couldn't have been down here.'
Charlotte didn't care to be reminded that his apartment was below street level. 'So you said you looked where again?'
'The net. That's my Saturday night, a man and his computer.' Was he listening for her reaction? He paused before adding 'I found a bunch of stuff about a guy who lived there that maybe you could work up somehow, Ellen. Thurstaston Mound, he lived at. Well, more than lived.'
The carriage shook. The train was braking for a station, but the shudder or Glen's last remark was enough to send Ellen's hands towards her face. Perhaps they were intended to suppress a question. Charlotte wasn't eager to ask it, however much their muteness felt like an unacknowledged presence. She could have imagined this was why Hugh blurted 'You mean Pendemon.'
Darkness engulfed the carriage. It was the shadow of the station, and the door alarm began to shrill. Nobody visible was boarding – nobody at all – but Glen said 'What did somebody set off?'
'It's just the doors,' Charlotte told him.
'You're getting out of what is it, a train?'
'Not getting out,' she had to say.
The beeping addressed her a second time, and then the train crept forwards. As sunlight and a ghost of mud coated the window afresh Glen said 'Sounds like you know about him.'
'I looked him up,' Ellen said. 'I didn't read it all.'
'What did you read?'
'Wouldn't it be easier to email her the link?' Charlotte said as Ellen failed to speak.
'I could do that, except when's it going to reach her?'
'Not till I get home. I don't know when that'll be.'
'I'm the same,' said Charlotte. 'I mean, I've got no access here.'
'Hey, don't sound so pleased about it. How about the guy who isn't speaking?'
Hugh's gaze darted about as if he wondered where the person referred to might be, and then he worked on producing a laugh. 'I haven't even got a computer.'
'You must like living in the past. Maybe I should read some of this in case you want to think about it, Ellen.'
'That couldn't have been his real name, could it?'
'Pendemon? I'd say not. The guy who runs this site has some fun with that, well, with the whole thing. Seems like he doesn't believe in any kind of magic.'
Charlotte sensed that Ellen had been seeking some kind of reassurance, but Hugh had a question for Glen. 'Do you?'
'If it pays you bet I do.'
'Is he Mumbo someone,' Ellen said, 'your man with no beliefs?'
'Jumbjoe, that's his byline. Maybe he's not the sceptic he wants us all to think or he wouldn't write so much about it. You're right, he figures Pendemon's a fake name. Nothing to do with penning demons either.'
Did Glen mean to lighten the mood? He seemed to have achieved the opposite. The air trapped by the unopenable windows felt heavy with resentment thick as earth, stale as old breath. 'I thought it was trying to sound like Pendragon,' Hugh said.
'Pen means head, doesn't it?' said Ellen.
'Head demon, huh? I don't think he got that job. Let's see what you don't know.'
Charlotte had a thought she was far from relishing. 'We'll be coming to a tunnel soon.'
'I'd better make this fast, then. Did you see he got into a fight with another magician, Ellen?'
'Something Grace, wasn't it?'
'Amazing,' Hugh said and looked painfully out of place.
'You got it, Ellen. Peter Grace. I don't believe in that name either.'
Charlotte thought the rush of the train had grown hollow ahead, but the tunnel didn't appear. Perhaps the sound suggestive of the gaping of a pit had been on the loudspeaker, although it didn't affect Glen's voice when he asked 'Did you see what your guy tried to send Grace?'
'I don't know. I didn't get that far.'
Ellen's hands began to writhe on either side of her face as if to ward the information off. Charlotte leaned across the phone on the seat to stroke her cousin's arm, but Ellen snatched it out of reach as Charlotte said 'Glen, I think you'd better –'
'He collected nightmares.'
Charlotte felt as if a pit were indeed yawning beneath her, even if it had yet to swallow Glen's voice. She straightened up hastily, only to fear that Ellen might think she'd recoiled from her. By this time Hugh seemed to feel nervously driven to ask 'How?'
'This isn't a site that'll give you his method. It does quote things he's meant to have said.'
'I saw some of those,' Ellen intervened.
Charlotte thought she might be trying to hush Glen, but he retorted 'At the core of all men is darkness and terror?'
'Something like that.'
'These are what he's supposed to have told his followers, not that he ever had too many of those. They all ran off when he tried to use them,' Glen said. 'The essence of each man is the infant he once was, at the mercy of the dark?'
'No,' Ellen said forcefully enough to be denying the idea.
'The hidden child shall serve the adept, and its terror shall become its weapon?'
'No.'
'The husk shall return to the world and carry on its mundane mummery, having yielded up its substance to the sorcerer?'
Ellen's lips were opening yet again, plumply audible before she spoke, when Hugh demanded 'What's all that meant to mean?'
