Squashing down her fear, telling herself he was mad.
“My soul.”
Azrael gave the smallest of sighs. He limped to the window and leaned on the gleaming brass of the telescope. She could almost sense his pleasure.
“My father will die . . .” She took one step after him. “Unless he comes back.”
Azrael gazed out at the wintry sea. “Have I treated you well?” he asked softly.
Surprised, she said, “You know you have.”
“Then I won’t fail you now. But . . .” He held up his hand as she came forward. “There are conditions. These things have rules. You have to work for it. How long do you think it would take to make up for the oppression of centuries?”
She laughed, scornful. “Another hundred years might do it.”
He nodded. “You think I’m making fun of you. But a hundred years it is. You have the estate for that time. Use it well, Sarah. At the end of the time I will come for your soul.”
The room was utterly silent.
She stared at him, at his grave dark face with its neat beard, a cold unease like a thread of ice inside her. For a moment she knew with certainty that he was some vast, eternal power. And then she knew he was a madman, and felt utterly stupid. “You really believe that,” she whispered.
“Humor me.” He went to the desk, took a sheet of paper and a pen, and began to write, the swift, sloping writing she knew so well. As she watched, she rubbed sore eyes, bewildered.
“You’re tired,” he said, without looking up.
“I stayed up with Papa all night.”
“Scrab will bring us breakfast. And then you should sleep.” He came over. “After you’ve signed this.”
It was written in red ink with a seal. It said:
I, Sarah Trevelyan, the undersigned, hereby accept from the hand of the lord Azrael the freehold and properties of Darkwater Hall from this day forward for the period of one hundred years. In return I pledge to him the eternal possession of my immortal soul.
“This is stupid,” she said, terrified and confused. “I just want . . .”
“Sign it.” He put the pen in her hand. “Trust me, Sarah.” The room was chill. Snow clogged the sills. The door creaked as the cat slid in.
“I just want to bring my father home,” she muttered.
“I know that. Sign it.”
“The cottage is too cold for him! He wasn’t brought up to it.”
He took her hand and guided it to the paper. “There. Just your name.”
“And you’ll really go?”
“The Hall will be his. Legally. If you sign.”
She shook her head, unbearably weary, and laughed an exasperated laugh. “I don’t know what to make of you. I think we must both be mad.”
“If we are, it doesn’t matter,” Azrael said.
So she put the paper on the bench and signed it.
Sarah Trevelyan
thirteen
At once all the clocks had started ticking. Lying in bed now, shivering under the heavy covers, she remembered that, and it seemed to her as if the house had woken up at that precise moment, that the windows had begun to rattle and the boards creaked, as if far below the Darkwater raging through its underground caverns had roared with a strange fury. Even lying here now, barely awake, she could hear tiny movements that had not been in the house before, gusts and the bang of a door, the rapid scuttle of a beetle across some wainscot.
It took her a long time to fall asleep.
When she did, her dreams were a jumble. She found herself in a room full of clocks, their ticking so loud she put her hands to her ears, staring around. It was the laboratory. But Azrael’s experiments had dust all over them, the alembics cracked, the liquids and chemicals in every tube dried and crusted.
“Where are you?” she called.
There was someone standing by the mechanical model of the planets. A dark man, shadowed by the heavy curtains. As she watched he set the model moving, and the planets spun off their wires and went careering around the room, whizzing past her. She had to duck, feeling their fiery glow, the ends of her hair singed by Mercury’s sizzle.
“Stop it!” she hissed. “You’re breaking it!”
It wasn’t Azrael. It was the tramp. He stepped out of shadow and she saw how big he was, taller and broader than she remembered, his coat tied with string looking more like a belted robe, and a great sword in his hand.
“Tha’s done it now, ain’t thee!” he said angrily. “Tha’s made the pact with him!”
“I had to. I had no choice!”
“There’s always a choice!” he roared. “Thou’rt lost now, girl! Lost forever and all eternity!” And he swung with his sword, and the glass vessels crashed and tinkled, the top of the bench cleared with one terrible sweep, a thousand fragments bouncing and shattering on the floor.
“This too,” he raged, and she jumped aside as he shoved the telescope over and dragged everything off the mantelshelf, notes, papers, books, carvings, globes, and hurled them all into the fire.
The fire! She had never seen it so huge; it snarled and crackled and spat like something alive. She was almost sure she could see hands in it, tiny red hands that grasped and seared and curled the paper, a demonic delight in the roaring and heat. It had spilled out of the grate; now it rampaged through the laboratory, devouring benches and tables, and in the heart of the smoke the tramp was unlocking the wall safe with a great black key.
“Come on,” he yelled to her. “This way!”
There was a glass jar inside, and with another key he opened a tiny door in its side and grabbed her hands and pulled her in, the fire laughing hoarsely behind them.
The room was a strange one. There was a bed in it, and the odd lamp she had seen before, and a box-like contraption and small, cheap-looking furniture. All its colors were bright. On the walls huge colored pictures of men in ridiculously short trousers with numbers on their garish shirts shocked her. They were photographs. She was amazed at their color, at how real they looked.
The twins were there. One lay on the bed, the other sat by the window, looking out. He was talking. “I would have died if it hadn’t been for you,” he was saying.
Sarah was alone; the tramp had vanished. Now the twin on the bed sat slowly up. He was staring at her.
“Tom,” he said softly. “She’s back.”
Tom turned. They were identical, both about her age. “I can’t see anyone.”
“She’s here.” The other boy stood. There was something misty in his outline. He blurred as he reached out to touch her, and she twisted away with a hiss of fear as his hand became the paw of a black cat, soft on her fingers.
Then, a long time later, she was dreaming of the beach. It was gray and raining, and the gulls screamed over her head. Azrael sat on a rock elegantly, as if it were a throne. He wore his dark expensive coat, and behind him stood a huge grandfather clock—the one from the oak dining room—and it ticked, but its tick wasn’t mechanical, it was a human voice, infinitely weary, repeating the same words over and over. “Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.”
She stepped nearer. “Is that . . . ?”
Azrael smiled sadly. “Your grandfather, I’m afraid. Doomed to be trapped in eternal torment. Until, of course, your actions release him. Oh, and your father. Do you want to see him?”
“Yes,” she breathed.
The rain drifted apart. She saw him lying on the sofa in Darkwater Hall, wrapped warmly in cashmere and wool. A great fire blazed in the grate. He poured tea into a vast porcelain cup.
Azrael came over to her. “You’ll see. It will be worth it.” He put a small card into her hand. “But I will come for you, Sarah. Wherever you go, wherever you think you can run, there’ll be no escaping me. No one ever does. The experiment has to run to the end.”