‘Oh God!’ Vicky gasped. ‘Oh God, Rob, what’s happening? It can’t be real! It can’t be!’
The hooded figure flapped both of his arms, and before Rob and Vicky could turn around, the five bristling black hounds that surrounded him sprang out of the window and landed on the wooden floor of the corridor with a scrabbling of claws. Their eyes, too, were shining, and their red tongues were flapping out over their teeth. They came running towards Rob and Vicky, all five of them panting hungrily.
Rob snatched at Vicky’s sleeve and pulled her back along the corridor to the landing. They had nearly reached the top of the stairs when Vicky stumbled and fell onto her knees. One of the hounds leaped on top of her and started ripping at her sweater, and when Rob swung his arm around and hit its head, another hound sprang on him and bit right through his jacket into his elbow.
They felt hairy and coarse, these hounds, and they were heavy, too, and smelled strongly of sulphur and wet grass and faeces. Rob punched and pushed and kicked at them, but he couldn’t stop them from snapping at his hands and tearing his jacket, and all the time their eyes were flickering and dazzling him like strobe lights.
He kicked one of them hard in the belly and then again in the ribs, so that it toppled back against the two behind it. That gave him a split second’s respite to thrust his hands under Vicky’s armpits and heave her up off the floor. One of the hounds jumped onto his back and tried to bite the back of his neck, but he lurched himself sharply to the left and it rolled off him. With his arm tightly around Vicky’s waist, he reached the top of the stairs, and together they started to stagger down them. After three or four steps, though, they both lost their footing and tumbled, all arms and legs, down the first flight of stairs and collided with the panelling.
Grace and Portia had come out into the hallway. ‘Rob! Vicky! What’s going on up there? What’s all that noise? Jesus, what’s happened?’
Rob had hit his head hard against the skirting board. He blinked, stunned, and looked up towards the landing. The five hounds had gathered at the top stair, and were staring down at him and Vicky with those piercing white eyes. Their tongues were still hanging out and they were still panting as if they would have given anything to come bounding downstairs and rip their lungs out. After a few seconds, though, the light in their eyes died out, and they turned away, and Rob could hear them trotting back down the corridor.
Grace and Portia came up the stairs and helped them onto their feet.
‘Your clothes are all torn! Rob – you’re bleeding! What on earth’s happened to you?’
Vicky was so upset that she could hardly speak. Portia put her arm around her and guided her gently down to the hallway. Rob was about to follow her, but then he climbed cautiously up the stairs to the landing again, and peered down the corridor to the stained-glass window. There was enough daylight gleaming through it now for him to see that it was unbroken, and exactly as it had been before Old Dewer had turned himself around and the hounds had come chasing after them.
Grace stood watching him. When he came back down, wordless, still frowning in disbelief, she said, ‘Rob?’
He shook his head, but said nothing.
‘Come on, Rob. Tell me what happened. After everything we’ve seen in the past two days, nothing’s going to surprise me.’
Rob followed her downstairs, glancing back just once to make sure that the hounds had stayed in the window, and weren’t coming after him.
When they reached the hallway, he said, ‘Francis was right, Gracey. There’s something in this house that really doesn’t want to be interfered with.’
29
Back in the kitchen, Grace cleaned and bandaged the bites on Rob’s elbow. There were five purple teeth-marks, in a semicircle, but his tweed jacket had been thick enough to prevent the hound from biting right down to the bone.
Portia was standing with her back to them, looking out at the overgrown garden. ‘This house… It’s a different kind of world altogether. It’s like none of the laws of nature apply here.’
‘You’re right,’ said Rob. He winced as Grace knotted a clean tea towel tightly around his arm. ‘I mean, how in the name of God can dogs jump out of a stained-glass window and attack us? If I hadn’t been bitten and Vicky’s sweater hadn’t been torn, I could have convinced myself that we were high on something.’
‘It was that Devil… that Old Dewer, or whatever they call him,’ said Vicky quietly. ‘It was him who set the dogs on us. And I thought that window was supposed to keep him away.’
‘With any luck, Francis has discovered what’s causing all this weirdness, and he’s found a way to get rid of it. “Spiritual decontamination”, that’s what he called it.’
Grace stood up. ‘I’d better go and check on Katharine. She’s been sleeping for ages now.’
She didn’t add ‘I hope she’s still there, and that she hasn’t disappeared’, but all of them thought it.
Rob stood up too. ‘I’ll come with you. Just in case those bloody dogs come jumping out again.’
They didn’t need to go up to Katharine’s bedroom. As they left the kitchen, she was coming downstairs, still looking a little unsteady but with her hair brushed, and wearing eye make-up, and blusher on her cheeks.
‘I’m starving,’ she said. ‘I feel as if I haven’t eaten in days.’
‘Come into the kitchen and Portia
