The woman came. Jack backed away slightly, but he would not let go of Lucy-Anne's hand. He watched as Rosemary laid her hands on the girl's wounds, and he remembered the way it had felt when she had been healing the knife wound in his leg. There had been an intrusion there, an invasion of his flesh, but then he had passed out. Now, it was his turn to watch.
Rosemary healed Lucy-Anne's wounds from the inside out. Her hand seemed to enter the girl's torn neck, neither aggravating nor enlarging the existing wounds. Her fingers went deep. Then she slowly withdrew them, the tendons on the back of her hand flexing and stretching constantly, the fingers moving like individual living things as they emerged. By the time Rosemary had removed her hand fully, Lucy-Anne had stopped groaning.
The woman kept her fingertips in contact with the torn skin until it was healed over, and as she sat back with a sigh Jack leaned forward with his torch, searching for where the ugly bite marks had been, seeking the torn flesh, but finding smooth skin marred only by a smear of drying blood.
The others were silent. They had all been watching.
“That hand?” Rosemary said, nodding at Sparky's tattered right hand and wrist. The boy came forward, and Rosemary went to work again.
They waited in that subterranean room for an hour or more. Rosemary healed Sparky's hand and Jack's hip, and then she went back to Lucy-Anne and touched her more minor wounds. There were cuts and scrapes, bruises and bumps, and Rosemary's hands fixed them all.
Jack sat with Emily for a while, hugging her and talking with her. She no longer seemed to be afraid. He was once again stunned at how resilient his young sister was, and he wished he could live in the moment like her. The dead dogs disturbed her somewhat, but only because of the bloody meat of their injuries. The amazement at what Rosemary was doing seemed to wipe fear from the slate of her mind, and she watched wide-eyed as the woman touched cut skin and healed it without leaving a scar.
“It's just amazing,” she said, over and over, and Jack could only agree. But he was still shaken by the attack. And however benevolent Rosemary's touch was now, he could not help wondering how much more she had decided to keep from them.
Jenna came and sat beside them, and she and Emily giggled over something Jack could not hear. The girls had always been close-Emily seemed to be the sister that Jenna had never had-and right now Jack was very grateful for that. He tried not to feel selfish, but sometimes he needed time. Sometimes, he needed to be on his own.
And other times, there were things he did not want Emily to hear.
“Alligators?” he said, kneeling beside Rosemary. The old woman had sat against one of the side walls, resting her head back against the stone and closing her eyes. She seemed tired. Jack did not care. “Snakes? A pride of lions? What more will we have to face before we get there?” He was speaking quietly, but he was aware of Sparky watching him from across the basement. They'd arranged two torches so that they gave much of the room a diffused, even light, and Sparky had taken it upon himself to collect the four dogs’ corpses into one pile.
“Hopefully no more,” the woman said. “Jack, listen to me. You're the leader of this little group, whether the others realise or acknowledge that, or not.”
“We have no leader,” he said.
“Not true. You know that. I think maybe it's because you have Emily, and you have to keep rooted. Have to stay strong.”
“I'm looking after her.”
“You are, son.” Rosemary leaned close to him, becoming more animated. “And you're doing a fine job.”
“I didn't come here for compliments,” he said. “I came to ask you: Is there anything else you haven't told us?”
“About the tunnels, and the route to London? No. The dogs attacked me, I escaped, and the rest of my journey was uneventful. But about London itself? Yes, there's plenty I haven't told you. Some amazing things, and some horrible.”
“Like the Nomad?” Jack asked, fishing for information. “We heard about that. A thing haunting London from before, untouchable and tortured. A legend, I suppose, but it sounded amazing and horrible.”
“A legend?” Rosemary said, shrugging and glancing aside. “Perhaps. London is full of them, now. There's so much you'll have to find out for yourself.”
Jack looked across to Emily and Jenna, then at Sparky dragging the last dog's corpse across the ground. Lucy-Anne sat against a stone pillar, looking at the knife Sparky had let her keep, its reflection travelling the room as she turned it slowly in her hand. He considered what Rosemary had said, and nodded.
“That'll do for now,” he said. “But you know the trust is damaged, don't you?”
“I know. And I wish I could do something to repair it.”
“Tell us the truth from now on,” Jack said, standing. “That'll do, for a start.” He walked away, but paused a few steps from Rosemary. He turned around and patted his hip where the dog had chewed into him. “Rosemary. Thanks for…”
The old woman nodded and smiled.
On their way into the tunnel from which the dogs had emerged, Rosemary pointed out the evidence that this basement had once been below a church. In the corner beside the tunnel mouth stood a font, its water bowl cracked and covered in moss. The little water that stood in there was so black that it could have been blood.
“I wonder if the church is still up there?” Jenna said, looking up at the ceiling. “And if it is, maybe someone's in there right now.”
“We're in a different place now,” Lucy-Anne said, her voice was low and quiet. She felt haunted. She wondered just how close she'd come to dying, and she thought about asking Rosemary the next time they had a quiet moment. But on the other hand, she wasn't sure she really wanted to know.
It wasn't exactly the same, she kept thinking. But dream memories are deceitful things, and the more she thought about it, the more reality and dream had begun to merge.
“This tunnel's another reason I think this was a church,” Rosemary said. “It's long, and there are a few places where it used to branch off. I think it might have been an escape tunnel between churches hundreds of years ago.”
“Escape from what?” Emily asked.
“Persecution,” Jenna said. “People of one religion not liking people of another. Hunting them. Sometimes killing them.”
Emily snorted. “That's just stupid.”
They left the basement room splashed with droplets of their own blood and the promise of rot. Sparky and Rosemary went first this time, Lucy-Anne walking on her own behind them, the others following her. Jack approached her a couple of times, but she gave him a distant smile and shook her head. Not yet, she thought. I need to get things square in my own mind first.
As she walked, she tried to remember the other strange dreams and nightmares she'd been having. But though she knew they were there, they kept themselves hidden well away.
Underground for a couple of hours, and already we've all nearly died, Jack thought. The tunnel was so narrow that in some places they had to go in single file. In these places Rosemary insisted on going first, perhaps some small penance for what they had been through.
Emily walked just ahead of him, filming again. He could see the viewing screen of her camera, and noticed that much of the time it was focussed on Lucy-Anne's back. Good, he thought. My little sis knows where the mystery is.
“So who do you think left the picture of your mother?” Jenna asked quietly. She was walking at their rear. Jack glanced back at her and shrugged.
“At first, I thought it was obvious. Her. Rosemary. But now I'm not so sure. She swore she didn't put the pictures there, and why would she lie if she did? We'd already committed to coming in with her. We'd have committed to it even if she told us about the dogs.”