Ash

  This, he thought, was turning out to be an exciting night.

  95

  ‘Oh, Louis . . .’ Delphine almost moaned.

  Ash caught her arm before she could rush to the lonely figure waiting there, as if frozen in shock, afraid of what might happen if he moved.

  The investigator took the torch from Delphine and widened its beam so that it was softer. He turned it back onto the exiled prince.

  Spiders, large and small, covered the brown robe he wore, two of them on the side of his hood. Most of them were perfectly still, but some crawled across his slight body. In his right hand he still held the combat knife Ash had given him.

  Ash began to walk slowly towards him, keeping the light as steady as his suddenly dry voice. ‘Louis, it’s going to be okay. Just stay where you are and keep very, very still.’

  He could feel Delphine walking with him, just behind his left shoulder. The Maglite was held in his right hand.

  It was slightly awkward to reach him, the floor uneven and slippery. ‘Hold your nerve, Delphine,’ he whispered to the psychologist, who was as yet unsure she was free of the creatures herself. She was aware of tiny movements over – and under – her clothing. ‘If you make a dash for him, he’ll panic.’ Ash almost slipped but managed to steady himself as well as the light. ‘I don’t want to arouse those things.’ His voice was low, a murmur, no more than that.

  With horror, they watched as a large, hairy-legged spider, with two venomous-looking pincers, crawled around from behind Louis’ lower leg to come to a rest on his ankle.

  Ash was relieved when the young man did not react: it was as though he were in a trance, overcome with fear, afraid to move. A good thing in the circumstances, the investigator thought to himself as he slowly approached.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ murmured Delphine.

  Ash held up his free arm to stop her. ‘First, let’s see exactly how bad it is,’ he whispered back. She looked up at him, baffled.

  It wasn’t long before she understood though.

  They were very near to the motionless robed figure now, but Ash was making a wide berth of Louis while playing the light on him all the time. Still, the prince remained rooted. Delphine half expected Louis to lose composure at any moment, perhaps to swipe the creatures away, or perhaps to turn and run screaming down the dark, seemingly endless tunnel. She followed Ash round, wondering what his tactics were going to be.

  ‘Don’t get too close, Delphine, we don’t want to get them agitated,’ Ash whispered even more softly as she trailed him.

  ‘Oh, dear God!’

  They were now behind Louis, and while there had been several kinds of creatures fixed or creeping over his front, the back of his robe was glutted with spiders of all shapes and sizes, two of them extraordinary grey-white monsters with discernible blue veins beneath their thin-skinned, bloated abdomens.

  With Louis covering their rear as they’d pushed their way through the giant web, more spiders of different species had dropped on and clung to his exposed back. Incongruously, considering the circumstances, Ash had a flash of insight into their ecosystem: with very few insects flying into the web, these spiders ate each other, the larger ones obviously picking on the small. As if to give evidence of this, he watched a large spider ensnare a much smaller one, paralysing it, then proceeding to devour it at once rather than cocooning it in silk for a later feast.

  It turned his stomach, but not as much as the number of these hideous creatures crawling across Louis’ back.

  ‘God, David, what are we going to do?’ came Delphine’s urgent whisper again.

  Ash already had a plan, but had taken time to walk around Louis to assess the problem.

  ‘Louis,’ he spoke quietly. ‘Listen to me, but don’t move just yet. First, hand me the knife.’ The young man did so and Ash returned it to its sheath. ‘Now, I’m going to remove a spider on your ankle. Don’t worry; I’ll just flick it away. You won’t feel a thing.’

  Ash hoped.

  Returning carefully and slowly to Louis’ front once more, he knelt at the young man’s feet. Only fitting, he told himself with a certain grim acerbity, considering who the young man really was.

  Without hesitation, but with sure accuracy, he swiped the Maglite at the creature perched now on the prince’s instep and knocked it away before it had a chance to act. As it rolled awkwardly on its back, fat, hairy legs waggling in the air, Delphine deftly put the low heel of her boot through the struggling arachnid and pressed down hard. Taking her foot away from the gooey mess left on the tunnel’s damp floor, she wiped the sole of her boot against a small rocky projection. Ash was impressed by her calmness.

  He stood and peered closely at the hood. As he spoke, he tried to ignore a bristling spider on the material a few inches away from Louis’ exposed cheek.

  ‘Louis . . .’ he began as if in hushed confidence. ‘Louis, there’s no belt to your robe: is it buttoned from the inside?’

  Ash sensed the surprise and confusion going on inside the cowl’s shadowed interior.

  ‘I’m serious, Louis. Can you tell me quickly?’

  It was a curious Delphine who spoke for the young man. ‘It’s popper studs all the way down. That’s how Louis wanted it made – not too monk-like.’

  ‘Many?’

  ‘Poppers? No, just a few, ending near his knees. The hem was supposed to reach the floor, but again, Louis didn’t want it to restrict him too much.’

  ‘And is the robe loose? It looks like it.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good. That may add to our advantage. But I’m going to act soon. Those creatures on the material are confused, I think, but they’re beginning to get curious. Anything could set them off. We don’t want them getting inside.’

  Delphine shuddered as she realized what Ash was about to do.

  ‘Stand clear,’ he told her, giving her a quick glance. ‘Right, Louis, in a moment I want you to lean forward.’

  The hood tilted forward an inch.

  ‘Slowly,’ Ash continued. ‘Just bend over a little. It’s not going to be very dignified’ – he was struck by the notion he was talking to royalty – ‘but it’ll be the best way. Try to remain still once you’re leaning forward and leave the rest to me. I’m going to move very fast and lift the robe up from the hem and bring it right over your head, hopefully trapping the little buggers inside.’

  He’d deliberately used the word ‘little’.

  ‘Okay, ready?’

  The slim form, which seemed larger because of the loose, voluminous robe, bent forward slowly.

  ‘That’s fine, that’s enough,’ Ash told him, trying to sound confident as he warily moved around Louis, careful not to surprise the spiders, which he noticed were becoming restless.

  ‘I’ll count to three, Louis, then I’ll pull the robe over you. We can easily deal with any laggards.’

  Adjusting the Maglite to its most concentrated beam, so bright it was difficult to look at it directly, he stretched out his arm and gave it to Delphine.

  ‘Hold it so it shines at the floor, then the moment I say two, shine it full onto the robe – move it around a second or two and hopefully blind or dazzle the bloody things. Remember, they’re used to living in darkness.’

  She took it from him and nodded, her body trembling.

  ‘Keep it down!’ He hissed and pointed at the tunnel’s rough floor, for nervousness had made her forget what he’d told her. ‘Ready? Count of two for you, three for me.’

  Ash wiped his sweaty palms against his thighs. ‘Here we go. One-two-three!’

  He’d squatted to grip the hem of the robe, his arms wide apart, and in one swift movement he lifted the material and stood, pulling the garment over Louis’ head, hood and all. Keeping the bundle closed, he tossed the whole piece as hard and as far as he could back into the huge cobweb. The creatures that had dropped out scattered and Ash trod on any that came near.

  The dark bundle hung limply, but well within the web.
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  Delphine rushed forward to hold on to Louis – now naked apart from his white shorts and soft sneakers.

  ‘We’re not quite finished.’ He nodded at Louis’ transparent skin on which there were still a few black, scuttling things left. Delphine drew in a sharp breath, her hand up to her mouth. Ash grabbed the torch from her and backhanded the dazed spiders off the young prince’s flesh as gently as he could. It didn’t take long and the investigator was sorely relieved when it was over.

  Except it wasn’t quite over.

  Ash glanced down at Louis’ white boxer shorts and frowned. ‘I’m sorry, they’ll have to go too, Louis.’

  ‘But . . .’ His eyes looked appealingly into Delphine’s.

  ‘You can wrap my scarf around your waist,’ she said, sympathizing with her patient and friend’s shame and vulnerability.

  Ash shrugged off his thigh-length field jacket and helped Louis to put it on. He thanked the investigator and smiled gratefully, even though the material must have felt almost unbearably rough to him. Meanwhile, Delphine did something clever with her scarf, turning it into a sarong that covered Louis’ exposed legs. Ash retrieved the Maglite from Delphine and shone the beam down the slanting tunnel ahead.

  He tried to remember how far they still had to go but it was all a blur. It couldn’t be that far, surely? He didn’t think he’d climbed that far from the entrance cave when he’d been here before.

  Delphine’s arms were enfolding Louis, supporting him. The prince was exhausted and shivering – on this side of the web the breeze had become almost a gale, funnelled up through the tunnel from the large cave below. At least the air with its tang of the sea was refreshing.

  ‘We’ll take Louis between us,’ he said to Delphine. ‘You take his left arm, I’ll take his right, so I can show the way with the torch’s wide beam. Delphine, you can still use the small Maglite, maybe keep its light low to the ground so we can watch where we tread.’

  The chill made him shudder. Louis must be really freezing with only my battered jacket to keep off the worst of the cold, he thought.

  ‘Do we have much further to go, David?’ asked Delphine, more out of concern for Louis, although the deep chill ran through her as well.

  ‘I— uh . . . I don’t think so. Hard to remember.’

  ‘Any more nasty surprises?’

  He shook his head, then paused. Maybe, he thought.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘let’s just get out of here.’

  96

  Like every other guest at Comraich, Petra and Peter had been confined to quarters earlier that day. He’d sneaked along to her room, bringing with him the stash of drugs he’d bribed a guard to supply him with on a regular basis. If the nervous guard had ever been discovered in the transactions, the ex-military man had no illusions: he would have been summarily executed and his body thrown into the castle’s furnaces, so Peter had had to ensure the bribe was too big to ignore.

  In his sister’s suite, they spent the rest of the day and what was to be the rest of the night naked in her four-poster bed, making drug-fuelled love as never before following their long period of enforced celibacy. By the evening they were in a pleasant haze in which they’d talked, explored each other’s bodies again, garbled profound inanities and finished the last of the cocaine Petra had brought with her to Comraich in the modified asthma inhaler. During all this, they’d kept their parched throats moist with three bottles of Chablis that Petra had liberated from one of the empty drawing-room bars.

  At one stage they thought they’d heard the distant sound of running boots and someone giving the bedroom door a thump and shouting words neither of them understood. That made them laugh, anyway. Together, in each other’s arms, they dozed off to peaceful, then exciting, places, where dreams were reality and everything else was fiction. So senselessly stupefied were they by night-time, the muffled explosions meant little to them. Not even the great boom that shook her bedroom had any effect other than to disturb their faraway state of mind, causing Peter to turn over in bed and cover his ears with a pillow.

  It was the smoke drifting in under the door that started to rouse Petra. In her surreal waking dream, the black smoke became demons with huge black, slanting eyes and hairy snouts for noses and sharp claws for hands. They circled the bed, those angled eyes on her and her sleeping lover. They grinned slyly and drooled from their rough lips, giving her lascivious looks, swirling claws pointing at her naked breasts as if to touch them. Yet these grotesques were made only of smoke and could have no real impact on her bare flesh.

  Whatever sense she still had told her that, although the demons were imaginary, the smoke was real enough. For it raked her throat and reddened her eyes with its irritation.

  From somewhere in the castle she thought she heard a scream. And then another. And the heat in the room was becoming overwhelming.

  ‘Peter!’ she cried, pushing vigorously at his shoulder.

  He stirred but did not wake.

  ‘Peter!’ This time it was almost a scream and it half brought him to his senses. His survival instinct managed to cut through the murkiest of thoughts. Blearily he sat up, looking around at the drifting smoke. The bedroom was hot.

  ‘Oh, fuck,’ he croaked, ‘the castle’s on fire!’ He turned to his sister. ‘Why didn’t anyone come for us? Why aren’t there fire alarms?’

  ‘Maybe they’re not working,’ she said falteringly.

  He glanced over at the door where the smoke was now billowing through.

  ‘Oh God, oh God!’ His eyes went towards the window, and Petra’s gaze followed his.

  ‘Why are all the fucking windows barred?’ he shouted, as if it were her fault.

  ‘You told me yourself. It’s to stop anyone on this floor getting out.’

  ‘Or throwing themselves out!’ He realized the bars in this case were for her; she’d tried suicide twice before.

  He leapt from the bed, dragging the bedclothes with him, leaving his sister completely exposed. For a moment, his head whirled and he reached out for a bedpost to steady himself.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ wailed Petra, her knees drawn up, hands around her ankles.

  ‘I’m gonna see if we can get out!’ he hollered back, shuffling to the door, holding the dragging bedclothes to his waist.

  ‘No, Peter. Don’t! It’s too dangerous!’

  ‘Well, we can’t bloody well stay here, can we?’

  It was rare for him to shout at her so angrily. Petra recognized the panic in his voice. He was scared for them both. He put his hand on the brass doorknob and jerked it back instantly.

  ‘It’s hot!’ he cried, backing away a little. But there is no other way out, his fervid mind told him. He wrapped the blanket around his hand and reached for the doorknob once more.

  ‘No, Peter, no!’

  But it was too late. As he pulled the door open, the flames reached in like red-gold talons and grabbed hold of him, the bedclothes catching fire almost immediately. Then they swelled in, a rolling mass engulfing him completely.

  His hair on fire, his flesh blistering, roasting and spitting as the juices ran, he turned back to his wailing sister, naked on the four-poster bed. Bizarrely, and perhaps because she was still in a drug haze, she could see his pale blue eyes as the fire lapped around his body. They stared straight at her. His mouth was open, and before he swallowed flames, she was sure he called her name.

  His blazing arms, blackened in parts and red-raw in others, reached out to her, the one person he’d truly loved and who knew all his secrets, as he knew hers. He staggered to the bed and Petra realized what her beloved brother wanted.

  Peter craved her comfort, for she was all he had – had ever had.

  And she did not back away. Instead, she opened her arms as a mother would to console an injured child. Then, as a ball of fire with a blurred and blackened image of some creature within that might once have been a man, he fell upon his sister.

  And, screaming with the pain of it, Pe
tra wrapped her arms around her brother. And then her legs as she drew him in.

  97

  ‘I could cheerfully shoot the guy who wrote those bloody horror books about rats,’ said Ash mildly.

  ‘Why did you read them, then?’ Delphine kept up the false tone of cheerfulness that Ash had adopted for the benefit of Louis, as all three stopped on the brink of the large cave.

  ‘They looked interesting.’

  Louis was between Ash and Delphine and was visibly shaking as he took in what lay before them.

  ‘And were they?’

  Ash could just discern the psychologist’s own anxiety in her reply.

  ‘Well,’ he replied, ‘kind of. But a little bit too much information about what rats are capable of, especially when they’re excited.’

  The trio had left the giant cobweb behind, much to their relief, following the tunnel’s zig-zag turns without further mishap, finally finding themselves on the slippery stone steps that would take them to the sea cave. Delphine had wrinkled her nose at the foul acidic smell that came their way before they had reached the last step.

  ‘It’s only bat dung,’ Ash explained, ‘but the bats themselves won’t harm us. Anyway, they’re probably outside hunting. For insects, not humans,’ he added quickly. ‘No vampires here.’

  However, as the three of them stood on the last step, Ash surveyed the cavern with horror. For this was the place the rodents had chosen for their own sanctuary, instinctively aware that the tide was washing into the sea cave, the waves too powerful to swim through. The nasty surprise that Ash had anticipated had materialized: the vermin – and there were thousands of them – filled the space before them, waiting out the storm and blocking their path.

  Mostly, they appeared calm, but because of lack of space some snapped at those that tried to squirm over them. They made squealing noises like children at play, but soon the noise abated as the stiff-furred, grimy animals bedded down for the night. Soon, however, they would need to eat, and the only food available was of the two-legged variety.