There was a terrible pressure behind his eye.
Ryan could feel warmth across his hands, where his own nails had drawn blood.
“Yes, yes, now” the woman said on a sigh, raising herself so that he almost slipped out from her, then dropping down onto him like a stone.
Ryan came.
KRYSTY HAD BEEN BACK to her room, using the bathroom, admiring the blue-flowered porcelain of the bowl and the dark oak seat. On her way to rejoin J.B. and Mildred she had paused to look through the stained-glass window that dominated the front landing.
It was a complex pattern, showing a frosty landscape. A hare limped trembling across it, and a band of hunters, dressed like medieval peasants, were trudging through the snow, carrying muskets and long bows. In the background was a house that bore an uncanny resemblance to the Cornelius mansion.
The main trail to the house was visible through the distorting panes of the colored, leaded glass. Krysty saw movement and realized that the three figures had to be Doc, Dean and Jak, returning from Bramton.
She hurried down the stairs, stopping in the hall as she noticed the slim figure of Norman standing still in the shadows beyond a huge seat with the word Sapientia carved above it in Gothic letters.
“Where’s Ryan?” she asked.
Norman minced across to stand close to her. Krysty caught the musky scent of perfume.
“I think his treatment will soon be completed,” he said in his high fluting voice. She noticed that his hair was dyed an odd mixture of ginger and lilac.
“Will he come back down here?”
“More likely they’ll take him to the bedroom, Krysty,” he replied, favoring her with a brilliant smile that showed a set of rotting teeth.
“I’ll just see Doc and the others. Then I’ll go up and wait for him.”
“Of course. Whatever you wish. Liberty Hall here, my dear lady.”
RYAN CAME AROUND TO FIND his wrists and ankles were free, though they felt chafed and sore. His mouth was dry, and it seemed as if his genitals had been sandblasted and then boiled in molasses. It was a bizarre sensation, burning and painful and exceedingly sweet.
“Why?” he said.
He could almost see heads turning toward him, and a muttered conversation ceased immediately.
“Why not?” Mary asked gently.
“Why me?”
“Because you are a man of unusual strength and character,” a man’s voice replied, not sounding quite like either Thomas or Elric.
“We are not as others,” the woman stated.
“I figured that. What I don’t get is just who you are and where you come from.”
A hand brushed his cheeks, making him wince. The woman. “Don’t worry. We don’t mean to kill you. But we need you. Need you in ways you can’t begin to understand.”
The man spoke once more. “Within the day, you will know more. That I promise. Within the day.”
Chapter Thirty
Mildred had become bored with the latest puzzle when it became clear that there were several pieces missing, including the head and arm of the tinker who leaned on the wall in the foreground of the picture, surrounded by mournful cattle with extraordinarily long horns and shaggy coats. J.B. had also given up and found a tattered paperback.
Mildred left him deep in the book while she wandered out and across the hall, passing an elderly woman in a mobcap lethargically polishing an elm bench.
She climbed to the second floor, where most of the rooms were locked and bolted, giving the impression that they hadn’t been opened for a hundred years.
Mildred nearly passed a room without noticing it, as it was concealed by a long tapestry, so faded that it was impossible to tell what its subject had been. But it moved slightly as Mildred passed, giving the clue that it hid a doorway.
Glancing around to make sure that she wasn’t being observed, the woman slipped behind the dusty hanging and tested the brass door handle, which moved with a certain reluctance, as though it were resisting the stranger.
The open door revealed a musty chamber, lined with books, its shutters bolted shut. Mildred saw a number of oil lamps standing ready, each with a supply of self-lights at its side. She closed the door behind her and fumbled to strike a light and illuminate the room.
The oil-soaked wick caught, and Mildred slid the glass chimney over it, quickly trimming it down so that it gave off a steady, golden glow.
The books seemed to be in far better condition than most of those on the first floor. Mildred walked around, holding the lamp raised in her hand, examining the titles as she went. The collection seemed to be split into two distinct halves, both equally well thumbed.
The more modern books were textbooks, by publishers familiar to Mildred. Most of them seemed to deal with the subject of genetic engineering. Manipulation of DNA, Reversing the Helix and Molding the New were just three typical titles from the collection.
But it was the older books that Mildred found more fascinating. Many had full morocco bindings, or were beautifully calf-bound with superb marbled endpapers. They smelled of age, and a significant number were dated before 1800, with deckle-edged paper and f’s for s’s .
A Perfon of Night had a frightening frontispiece of a gibbering demon with scaly wings, tearing the living heart from a human baby. Almoft the Future seemed to be about reading tarot cards.
Virtually every book in the large section covered some aspect of mysticism, every classic title that Mildred had ever heard of, plus hundreds that were grotesquely arcane.
Of course there was a copy of the Necronomicon , by the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred, bound in human skin, bearing the imprimatur of the University of Miskatonic. Mildred opened it cautiously, breathing in the chill wind that blows between the worlds, the angular printing on the yellowed parchment seeming to blur and shift its nameless shape under her eyes.
There was the work of the renegade priest, Buebo of Ishmailia, some privately published and singularly vile poetry from H. P. Lovecraft, an unexpurgated copy of short tales by Monk Lewis and a long-banned novel from Cecilia Pewcell, a Victorian mystic who had been found dead in a locked room with her throat torn open by razor-sharp teeth.
Mildred shuddered, feeling cold, wiping her hands down her pants to try to remove the clinging damp stickiness. She picked up the lamp and walked back toward the door.
“There are some seriously sick people in this house, Millie,” she whispered to herself.
DOC, DEAN AND JAK had just found their way back to the room with the puzzles as Mildred reentered. Krysty was already there, sitting on the edge of one of the long sofas, hands clasped around her knees.
J.B. had finished skim-reading the paperback and was standing by the empty fireplace. He looked up immediately as Mildred came into the room, standing and walking to her side, taking her hand. “You all right? “he asked.
“Been better. Found this library of some, well, strange books. Science at an advanced level from the very end of the last century, just before the final war. And some ancient volumes on witchcraft and devil worship and all kinds of obscene black magic. Nasty stuff.”
He squeezed her hand tightly, then turned back toward Doc and the others. “Find anything down there in Bramton to prove your theory?”
Doc sat in a deep armchair, sighing. “Quite a hike, that trail from down by the river. I fear that I’m getting too old for all this tarry-hooting.”
Dean sat on the floor, leaning his back against the sofa by Krysty. “Some kids nearly shit themselves when they saw Jak. Thought he was a member of the Family out hunting soft meat.”
Doc nodded, his face grim. “Our young friend here may not know it, but I suspect that he might have put his finger on the heart of the matter.”
“It’s like what saw when down with Johannes,” Jak said. “Real fear. Nobody’d talk proper about Family.”
“And there is this strange zombielike slowness about them all.” Doc rubbed at the stubble whitening his cheeks. “So pallid, all of them.”
Mildred cleared her throat. “Everything points one way, doesn’t it, Doc?”
“Yes, it does, Dr. Wyeth. I noticed that everyone wore high collars and long sleeves.”
“What’s that mean, Doc?” Dean asked.
“It might mean that they’re trying to conceal something from us.”
“Like what?”
“Bite marks.”
Jak looked up, glancing at Dean. “Hey, remember when was sick?”
“Sure.”
Mildred looked at the albino. “What’re you talking about, Jak? I remember Dean being ill one morning. Real tired. I looked to see if anything had bitten him on the neck, but there was nothing there at all.”
“Not neck,” Jak said. “Elbow. Puncture mark there.”
Doc coughed. “Then I think that we are being forced to a bizarre explanation, are we not?”