The Dragon-Charmer. Jan Siegel
took Gaynor’s hand as she spoke: her grip felt insubstantial, light as a zephyr, but cold, so cold. The icy chill stabbed Gaynor to the bone.
She said: ‘Plug the television in, and switch it on.’
Gaynor tried to pull free of the cold ethereal grasp but her nerve withered and her strength turned to water. ‘You are too sensitive,’ murmured Alimond. ‘Too delicate to resist, too feeble to fight. You have neither the backbone nor the Gift to stand against me. Fernanda chooses her friends unwisely. Push the plug in …’
She’s right, Gaynor’s thought responded, taking control of mind and body. You’re betraying Fern, betraying yourself. You cannot help it …
She was on her knees by the wall; she heard the click of reconnection as the plug slid home. Alimond guided her hand towards the switch. Then the dream faded into sleep, and darkness enveloped her.
When she woke again, the room was shaking. The bed juddered, the floor vibrated; above her she could make out the old-fashioned fringed lampshade twitching like a restless animal. She struggled to sit up, and saw the television rattling and shuddering as if seized with an ague. Its fever seemed to have communicated itself to the rest of the furniture: even the heavy wardrobe creaked in response. As she watched the china bowl on top of the set danced sideways, trembled on the edge, and fell to the ground, rolling unbroken on the carpet. The towel followed suit, sidling inch by inch across the screen and then collapsing floorwards in a heap. In a sudden access of terror Gaynor reached for the remote and flung it with all her strength against the wall, but the impact must have jolted the power button, for even as it hit the television screen exploded into colour. The furniture was still again; the picture glowed in the darkness like an extra-terrestrial visitation. Gaynor sat bolt upright, clutching the bedclothes. It felt like a dream, dreadful and inexorable, but she knew she wasn’t dreaming now. The image was flat, two-dimensional, not the hole in the very fabric of existence through which she had seen the idol in the temple. But it had been from an apparently normal image that Dr Laye had turned and looked at her, and stretched out his hand …
She was watching a vintage horror film. Pseudo-Victorian costumes, men with sixties sideburns, a heroine with false eyelashes and heaving bosom. It was low camp, reassuringly familiar, unalarming. Improbable plastic bats circled a Gothic mansion which had loomed its way through a hundred such scenes.
Presently, one of the bats came too close to the screen, thrusting its wing-tip into the room …
Fern and Will woke to the sound of screaming.
* * *
The room was full of bats. They blundered into the passage when Will opened the door, ricocheted to and fro as he switched on the light. Gaynor was covered in them, her pyjamas hooked and tugged and clawed, her hair tangled with wildly threshing wings. She beat at them in a frenzy, irrational with terror, but her fear only served to madden them, and they swarmed round her like flies on a corpse. Their squashed-up snouts resembled wrinkled leaves, their blind eyes were puckered, their teeth needle-pointed … More flew out of the television at every moment, tearing themselves free of the screen with a sound like lips smacking. Miniature lightning ran up and down the flex.
‘Help her,’ Fern said to her brother, and raced back to her room, extricating the box from under her bed – the box she never looked at, never touched – catching the scent of the long-lost forest, fumbling inside for the gloves she had always refused to wear. Upstairs, Will was trying to reach the figure on the bed, arms flailing in a vain attempt to disperse the bat-cloud.
When Fern re-entered the gloves were already on her hands. The scales grew onto her flesh, chameleon-patterns mottled her fingers. She reached for the socket with lizard’s paws; the plug spat fire as she wrenched it out. There was no explosion, no noise, just the suddenness of silence. The screen reverted to blank; the bats vanished. Gaynor drew a long sobbing breath and then clung to Will, shaking spasmodically. Fern gazed down for a minute at the hands that were no longer hers, then very carefully, like a snake divesting itself of its skin, she peeled off the gloves.
They deposited the television outside by the dustbins after Will, at Fern’s insistence, had attacked it with a hammer. ‘What about the mirror?’ he said. ‘We can’t leave it there.’
‘Swap it with the one in the end room,’ Fern suggested. ‘It’s even dirtier, I’m afraid,’ she apologised to Gaynor, ‘but at least you know the nastiest thing you’ll ever see in it is Will, peering over your shoulder.’
Gaynor managed an unsteady laugh. They were sitting in the kitchen over mugs of strong, sweet cocoa, laced and chased with whisky. Mindful of the shuddering cold that so often follows on shock, Fern had pressed a hot-water bottle on her friend and wrapped her in a spare blanket. ‘If you want to leave,’ she said, ‘I’ll understand. Something, or someone, is trying to use you, victimise you … perhaps to get to me. I don’t know why. I wish I did.’
‘Ragginbone might know,’ Will offered.
‘Then again he might not.’ Fern opened a drawer and fished out a crumpled packet of cigarettes, left behind by a visitor months or even years ago. They were French, their acidic pungency only enhanced by the passage of time. She extracted one, remoulded its squashed contours into vaguely tubular shape, and lit it experimentally.
‘Why on earth are you doing that?’ Will demanded. ‘You never smoke.’
‘I feel like making a gesture.’ She drew on the cigarette cautiously, expelling the smoke without inhaling. ‘This is disgusting. It’s just what I need.’
‘It has to be Azmordis behind this business, doesn’t it?’ Will said after a pause.
‘Don’t name him,’ his sister admonished. ‘Not if he’s around. Ragginbone said he would be seriously weakened after Ixavo’s death, maybe for a long time – but how long is that? Twelve years? And what kind of time – real time or weretime, time here or elsewhere?’
‘Do you think what Gaynor saw was really Alison?’ Will pursued. ‘Alison returned from the dead?’
‘N-no. The dead don’t return. Ghosts are those who’ve never left, but Alison had nothing to stay for. I suppose he might use a phantom in her image, possibly to confuse us.’
‘I’m confused,’ Gaynor confirmed.
‘Will you be okay for the rest of the night?’ Fern asked. ‘We could change rooms if you like. I’ll drive you into York in the morning: there are trains for London every hour.’
‘I’m not leaving.’ Behind the dark curtains of her hair Gaynor achieved a twisty smile. ‘I’m frightened – of course I am. I don’t think I’ve ever been so frightened in my life. But you’re my friend –my friends – and, well, you’re supposed to stand by friends in trouble …’
‘Sentimentality,’ Fern interjected.
‘Hogwash,’ said Will.
‘Whatever. Anyway, I’m staying. You invited me; you can’t disinvite me. I know I wasn’t very brave just now but I can’t help it: I hate bats. I hate the way they flutter and their horrible ratty little faces. That’s what they are: rats with wings. I’ll be much braver as long as there are no more bats.’
‘We can’t absolutely guarantee it,’ Fern said.
‘Besides,’ Gaynor continued, ignoring her, ‘you’re getting married on Saturday. I’m not going to miss that.’
For an instant, Fern looked totally blank. ‘I’d forgotten,’ she said.
They went back to bed about half an hour later, warm with the twin comforts of chocolate and alcohol. Will dossed down in the room next to Gaynor’s, wrapped in the ubiquitous spare blanket. Worn out by events, reassured by his proximity, she fell asleep almost at once; but he lay with his eyes open, staring into the dark. Presently, he made out a hump of shadow at the foot of his bed which had not been there before.
He