‘I’ll leave the front door open for you,’ Rob told him. ‘Once you’re gone, though, I never want to see your face again.’
Esus didn’t answer him. He kept on coming, stiffly and painfully, but relentlessly, gritting his sharp crowded teeth with every step that he took. Rob mounted the steps and climbed up to the top, stepping out through the broken hole in the wall and back into the hallway.
Because the vibration had stopped, Vicky opened the drawing-room door and looked out.
‘Rob? Rob! You’re all right! Have you done it? Has it gone?’
‘Don’t come out yet, Vicks. He’s still down there.’
Rob went across to the front door and opened it wide. Although the courtyard outside was wet and puddly, it had stopped raining now. Please let it be wet enough to weaken him, even if it doesn’t do for him completely.
He stood at the foot of the staircase, holding up the pickaxe in both hands now, breathing hard, waiting for Esus to appear in the cellar doorway. He could hear Esus groaning and his boots scraping with every step that he took, but he couldn’t yet see him in the darkness.
He was still waiting when he heard whispering coming from upstairs. To begin with, only two or three whisperers, but then more. Soon it sounded as if the landing was crowded with whisperers, all speaking quickly and excitedly. He looked up, and saw five tough-looking men peering over the balustrade. Four of them were shaven-headed, but one had black hair greased up like a shark’s fin. These men were whispering to each other, too, with great intensity.
‘Hey – you!’ Rob called up to them. ‘Who are you?’
They carried on whispering to each other, but didn’t answer him. The one with the shark’s-fin hair turned away, though, and Rob saw him beckoning, and after a few moments a thin-faced priest appeared, wearing a dog collar. He made the sign of the cross, and said, ‘Is it you, my brother, who has released the malevolence that has been holding us here?’
‘Esus. Yes. He’s coming out of the cellar right now.’
‘We are whole again, may God bless you. All of us are whole again.’
‘Is my son there? Little Timmy?’
‘We dare not come down until the malevolence has quit this house completely.’
‘I said, is my son there? Timmy? He’s only five. Timmy! Are you up there? Timmy! It’s Daddy! Can you hear me? Martin – are you there?’
The priest turned away, and Rob started to climb the stairs. At that moment, though, Esus stepped out from the cellar doorway, so tall that he had to stoop down under the header, his white hair wild, dusty cobwebs flying from his shoulders. He saw Rob on the opposite side of the hallway and screamed, ‘Here! ’Tis thee I want with me now!’
He came hobbling across to the staircase, but Rob swung the pickaxe at him, right and left, and although he didn’t hit him, Esus took a staggering step back, and then another.
Rob ran for the open front door. If he could get Esus out of the house, maybe Timmy and all the rest of the whisperers would be free of his curse at last. He crossed the courtyard, splashing in the puddles. When he reached the gateway, he looked over his shoulder and saw that Esus was already out of the front door and coming after him – limping, as if one knee had seized up, but so long-legged that he was gaining on him fast.
He pushed his hand into his jacket pocket and pulled out his car keys. Running towards his Honda, he pressed the key fob and tugged open the driver’s door. He was about to climb in when he realised that Esus had almost caught up with him, so he turned around and slung the pickaxe at him as hard as he could. It hit Esus on his upraised arm, and he stumbled down onto the shingle on one knee, which gave Rob just enough time to scramble into the driver’s seat, jab the key into the ignition and start the engine. The door was still half open, though, and Esus picked himself up and made a grab for the handle.
‘Thou cans’t escape Esus!’ he screamed. ‘No man can’t never escape Esus!’
Rob jammed his foot on the accelerator pedal and the Honda’s rear wheels showered up shingle before it slewed along the driveway towards the road. Esus was still hanging on to the handle and his boots were dragging along the ground, so Rob opened the door wider and then slammed it.
He looked quickly in his mirror, expecting to see Esus lying on the ground behind him, but instead he heard a loud thumping and a scrambling sound on the Honda’s roof. Then he heard something scrabbling at his side window, and when he glanced to his right he saw that Esus’s curved fingernails were clawing at the glass. Somehow he had managed to climb on top of the car and was clinging on to the window frames.
Rob felt a sickening surge of helplessness. Esus had the body of a man, or a body that resembled a man, but he was a malevolent spirit, not a man, with powers that could only be guessed at. If he had been able to kill Francis and Father Salter so easily, he must be able to kill him, too – drag the skeleton out of his body like boning a turkey. He could only guess that he hadn’t killed him already because he wanted him to be his servant and to familiarise him with a world he hadn’t seen since the late seventeenth century.
Esus drummed his fist on the roof. ‘Stop!’ he roared. ‘Stop or I shall kill thee!’
Rob swerved the Honda from one side of the lane to the other, trying to shake Esus off. He could see the toes of his bucket boots in the top of the back window, so he must be spread-eagled
