‘All right,’ said Rob. ‘We’ll see you tomorrow then. But if you need any help in the meantime, or if you change your mind about doing this, you’ve got my number.’
‘I won’t change my mind, Rob. I can’t. When I’m able to tell you what we’re up against – who we’re up against – you’ll understand why.’
‘You can’t even give us a clue?’
Francis shook his head. ‘If I gave you a clue, and you worked out what his name was, and spoke it out loud – even if you thought it – that would amount to my committing manslaughter. Worse than manslaughter – murder.’
Rob helped him into his raincoat and together he and Vicky showed him to the front door. They watched him walk slowly across the courtyard to the driveway, where he had parked his car. Halfway across the courtyard, next to the headless cherub, he turned around and looked back at Allhallows Hall like a general surveying a fortress that he would have to assault at dawn.
Behind the trees, a full moon was rising, bleak and pale.
‘We should try and have an early night tonight,’ said Rob. ‘From what Francis was saying, this spiritual decontamination is going to be like all hell let loose.’
‘You really think that any of us are going to be able to sleep?’
Rob closed the front door and the draught made the tufts of Francis’s white hair blow across the floor like dandelion puffs.
*
They didn’t go to bed early, but stayed up until midnight, talking. They agreed that with all of his knocking on the walls, Francis seemed to have provoked even more tension in the house, even tauter than the silent, suspenseful atmosphere that Father Salter had sensed in it.
‘I know it sounds insane, but I can’t help thinking that the house has started listening to us,’ said Grace. ‘I don’t just mean this force that Francis kept on talking about, whatever it is – this force that we’re not allowed to mention – but the whole house. The floors, the curtains, the walls, even the pictures on the walls, all of them listening to every word we say. Especially the pictures on the walls.
‘That portrait at the top of the stairs – I don’t know which Wilmington it is, but his eyes don’t just follow you across the landing, they feel as if they’re following you all the way down the corridor and then spying on you through your bedroom keyhole while you’re getting undressed.’
‘I agree with you, the house does feel alive,’ said Vicky. ‘But in a way that makes me feel a little more hopeful about Timmy. If it does have life in it, then wherever it’s keeping him hidden, perhaps he’s still alive – and Martin, too, and Ada.’
The clock in the hallway struck twelve, very slowly, because it needed winding, and they agreed that it was time to call it a night. Katharine went upstairs first, and when Grace and Portia had finished their drinks they followed her. Rob damped the fire down while Vicky cleared up their glasses and mugs.
‘His eyes are still following me!’ called Grace, from the landing.
‘Turn his face to the wall!’ Rob called back. ‘Or hang a towel over him!’
Vicky returned from the kitchen, and Rob wrapped his arms around her and kissed her. She felt cold, and so he held her close until she had warmed up a little. Even her flowery perfume smelled cold.
‘I can’t wait for tomorrow, Rob,’ she told him. ‘I can’t wait for it, but I can’t tell you how much I’m dreading it.’
32
‘It’s a full moon tonight, love,’ said Jaws, easing himself down on the floor close to Ada and whispering in her ear. ‘Not too many clouds, neither, so it’s nice and bright and shiny.’
Ada shifted herself away from him. ‘What does that mean?’
‘It’s the fulness, that’s what it means. The fulness. That’s what we call them three nights when the moon’s supposed to turn people into lunatics and werewolves. I don’t know about that, but that’s when all of its energy comes beaming down to us – you and me and all the other poor sods that are trapped with us here.’
‘So what does that do?’
Jaws reached out and playfully flicked the tip of Ada’s nose with his fingertip. She flinched, and shifted even further away from him.
‘I’ll tell you what the full moon can do, darling. It can give us a fucking break. While it’s up there high in the sky, it can set us free from the moment when we was trapped in here, like being let out of our cells for a bit of exercise. It’s only for one night a month, but for that one night it can fetch us forward from then into now. It can make us feel real again. Do you know what I mean? Hearts beating, lungs going in and out, like we’re living the way we used to.’
‘Only while it’s up there? Then what?’
‘Then it’s all over. Then we go back to being stuck in the second we was chanted, just like we are now. Don’t ask me why, or how, because I don’t have the first fucking idea. But all you have to do is go out and stand in front of that window with the devil and the dogs in it, with the moonlight shining through it. “Unlocking”, that’s what we call it. Well, you can understand why.’
‘Is that all you have to do? Stand in front of that window?’
‘That’s right. You stand there and you let the moonlight shine into your eyes, and you cast your mind back to what you was like the second before you got trapped. Before you can say holy forking shirtholes you’ll be as solid as you was at that very moment. I’m not kidding you. Even your watch will start working again.’
Ada narrowed her eyes and looked at him suspiciously.
‘You don’t believe me, do you?’ said Jaws.
‘I don’t know what to believe any more.’
‘Why
