The floor tiles confounded him. They were rippling and buckling, pitching and twisting, sucking at his feet, tripping him. His foot caught on the edge of a tile and he tumbled forwards, splinters of cracked marble embedding themselves in his palms as he stretched out his hands to break his fall. All around him the air was alive with whispers and cries, and gradually the visibility was diminishing.
He felt strong hands lifting him. ‘Come on, man,’ McKinley said. ‘We’re almost there.’
Carter looked back to the entrance of the bar, where the walls had gone and black flutters of what looked like burned paper floated in the air.
Kirby screamed. A pillar of mist was spinning towards them, thrusting forward along the walls as if for support. A gray swirling vortex coming at them with great speed, all the while hissing their names over and over again in a whispered chant. It was as if there were thousands of voices caught up in a swirling dance, shouting and calling out in every language on earth.
As the vortex drew nearer Carter could see that it was far more solid than he had imagined. The mist wasn’t spreading across the entrance hall, as he’d expected, but was confined to its center, with a definite purpose about its course, which was directly towards him. The mist had a raw shape, which Carter realized was the shape of a man, though the edges were indistinct, with flailing arms and the appearance of a roughly defined mouth.
What the hell is that?
McKinley spoke the words directly into his thoughts, but his mind was so concentrated he couldn’t reply.
Bayliss and Kirby were out of the house. They flopped down on the grass, panting like greyhounds after a race. McKinley was at the door, waiting for Carter, who was a few feet behind. He turned and knew that the mist had him trapped, pushing him along the wall, forcing him into it; he was terrified to touch it or to let it engulf him. He felt the wall at his back, and looked down in horror at the floor. It was beginning to dissolve. Behind him the wall was starting to give way, embracing him, welcoming him inside.
‘Take my hand,’ McKinley shouted at him, struggling to be heard above the noise.
Carter reached out, and stretched his fingers towards McKinley’s.
Long flailing arms extended out from the mist, cracking forwards, clawing through the air at Carter.
McKinley had one hand on the frame of the door, the other pulling out towards Carter. The long black fingers were accentuated against the pale gray mist. Carter aimed his hand at them and felt the rough tips of McKinley’s fingers.
It felt as if the wall was sucking him into it, while at his feet the floor was spinning out of control.
Carter’s fingers locked onto McKinley’s and with a fierce pulling motion McKinley peeled Carter away from the wall; he carried on pulling and the swirls of mist began to melt away. Carter forced his other arm onto McKinley’s and with a final effort both men were out of the house and lying on the grass with the others.
They all watched in silence as the house imploded. It fell in on itself with the roof wavering with indecision before collapsing inside the walls. Then the walls, already moving as if reeds blowing in the wind, fell forwards in a tired and slow fall from grace. Dust and debris heaved up into the air, mimicking the mist that had threatened Carter.
‘That’s that then,’ Bayliss said.
Carter shook his head. ‘Far from it. That’s just the beginning.’
‘But the Manse is the center of deMarco’s world. Now it’s gone,’ Bayliss said.
‘The house was the center but it’s not the entrance. That’s somewhere else.’
They sat on the grass as the dusk slowly surrounded them, shimmering with shadows.
Kirby plucked blades of grass and split them with her fingernails. She was thinking about Jane Talbot. What she had done, and where she might have gone. Would they see her again? Jane was the only person she had been able to talk to, really open up to about her feelings. The things she had shared with her about Malcolm and the baby had been locked inside her for so long that it had been a welcome release to let it all out.
Bayliss realized he had been terrified during most of the preceding hours. For all the research he had done, for all the knowledge he thought he possessed, nothing had prepared him for the reality once the horrors had begun. All the stories his grandfather had told him came flooding back, washing over him like exhaustion. The truth was that up until a few hours ago Kulsay had been something of a myth to him. A fairy story conjured in his imagination from old tales and whispered recollections. Now that reality had been tasted the sourness of what he’d seen was far worse than what he had learned.
Carter stood. ‘I know where the entrance is,’ he said. ‘Where we have to go to finish this.’
McKinley turned round on the grass so that he was facing him. ‘I’m ready. Where are we going?’
‘The abandoned church,’ Carter said. ‘It’s about fifteen minutes from here.’
CHAPTER FORTY
‘Hang on,’ Bayliss said. ‘Finish it? Who says we want to do anything other than get the hell out of here?’
Kirby was brushing the grass from her jeans. ‘We’re here to do a job, Nick, we need to find those people.’
Carter lit a cigarette, the flame from the lighter emphasizing how dark the evening had become. ‘Kirby’s right, but it’s more than that now, surely you must know that?’
There were some dull thumps as the final death throes of the Manse played out behind them. The grass beneath their feet felt cool and fresh after the heat from the house. A full moon gave some light but ahead of them the woods were black and filled with trees waving like masts of sailing boats at harbor.
Bayliss had a worried look on his face. ‘You talk about “an entrance.” An entrance to what?’
‘ To wherever deMarco is; to wherever he’s keeping Sian…and…God knows who else.’ Carter couldn’t bring himself to say her name, just in case Jane was lost to him forever.
‘I’ve lived and breathed deMarco for as long as I can remember,’ Bayliss said. ‘When my grandfather wasn’t filling my head with fanciful stories about Satanists and devil worship on Scottish islands, I was filling in the gaps from reading and surfing the Net. Remember those poor kids that got taken into care a few years ago because an overzealous social worker had found out a surefire way to check for sexual abuse? A whole community on the islands was forced to lose their children into care for years. Some of them still haven’t been returned even when the woman was shown to be wrong, so wrong.
‘I thought I was waiting for my chance to ride onto Kulsay on my white horse and save the day. Only it’s night, not day, I haven’t ridden a horse in over twenty years, and I’m scared to investigate anymore. I’m frightened of what I’m going to find.’
McKinley shifted his legs on the grass, where he was sprawled out as if at a leisurely picnic. ‘I used to be like you,’ he said.
‘What? White?’ Bayliss said.
A shadowy smile that touched his eyes showed McKinley took no offense. ‘No, scared. I thought too much. Before any investigation, any possible haunting, I used to wonder, what if it gets me this time? What if it wants me and I’m not strong enough to stop it? Then I realized what the it was.’
Bayliss looked at the night-black face and was impressed by the calmness contained in the features. Whether the control went further than skin deep he couldn’t tell but it was impressive to even appear relaxed under their circumstances. ‘Go on then; what was your it?’
McKinley grunted, a kind of resigned acceptance. ‘My own limitations. I was scared I wouldn’t be able to handle what ever was thrown at me. I was limiting my actions by imagining boundaries. Once you realize you can take on anything, if you react in the right way nothing should be able to restrict you.’