The walls were also receding from her, just as the ceiling had, layer upon layer of flickering lucidity subsumed. That roiling wall, alive with silver life, was tamed into a simple sea; that other, green and glistening, the crown of Kenavara. Here were the birds now: the kittiwakes, the cormorants, the hoodie-crow; while underfoot her eyes caught a glimpse of the lives that lay below her in the earth - the seeds, the worms - before that vision was also dimmed, and she was staring at the excremental mud that the rain was making from the sheddings of the House.
Remember how this is, she told herself, while she knelt in the mud. This presence of all things, seen and unseen; around and about; remember. There will be days in your life when you'll need to have this feeling again, to know that all that's gone from the world hasn't really gone at all; it's just not in sight.
There were more people than she'd expected sharing the cliff-top with her; all, she assumed, released from the maze of the Domus Mundi. There was an old man standing up in the downpour some twenty yards from her shouting hallelujahs at the sky; there was a woman a few years her senior who was already wandering back towards the body of the island, as if in fear that she would be claimed again if she didn't escape the cliff. There was a young couple, shamelessly hugging and kissing with a passion the icy rain could not chasten.
And there was Will. He hadn't gone wherever the creature who'd made the House had gone. He was here still; standing gazing out towards the sea, glassy-eyed. She got to her feet to go to him, glancing down at Rukenau as she did so. She was astonished at what she saw. His flesh, now that it was no longer rocked in the cradle of the House, had succumbed to the claim of his true age. His skin had split in a dozen places, and was being driven off his withered muscle by the pelting rain. His blood had already been sluiced from the corpse, so that it looked like something a child might have made from papier-mache and paint, and now, having grown bored with the game, abandoned in the mud. Even as she watched, its chest caved in, its contents gone to mush and jelly. She took her eyes off it, knowing when she looked again it would have been received into the sodden earth. There were worse ways to disappear, she thought, and went to Will.
He was not staring at the sea, as she'd initially thought. Though his eyes were wide open, and when she said his name he made a guttural sound that she took to be a response, his thoughts were not with her, but about some business that was claiming most of his attention.
'I think we should go,' she said to him.
This time he didn't even murmur a response; but when she took his arm, as now she did, he went with her, neither seeing nor blind, back over through the mud and rain towards the machair.
By the time they reached the car, the rainstorm had passed over the island and was headed for America. Night was on its way; there were lights in the cluster of houses at Barrapol, and stars coming between the ragged clouds. She got Will into the passenger seat without any problem (it was almost as though he were in a trance; capable of responding to simple instructions, but in every other way absent); then she backed the car up until she reached the road, and drove through the rapidly descending twilight to Scarinish. There'd be a ferry tomorrow; they'd be back on the mainland by evening, and - if she drove through the night - home by the following morning. That was as far as she was presently willing to project her thoughts: as far as the kitchen and the teapot and the comfort of her bed. Only when she was safely back in her own house would she think about what she'd seen and felt and suffered since the man at her side had come back into her life.
CHAPTER XVI
The following day went pretty much as she'd anticipated. They passed an uncomfortable night in the car, parked just outside Scarinish, and at noon or thereabouts boarded the ferry for the return journey to Oban. Her only problem on the drive south was her own exhaustion, which she kept at bay with copious amounts of coffee. But it still crept up on her, so that by the time she finally got home, at four in the morning, she was barely able to keep her thoughts in order. For his part, Will remained in the same trancelike condition that had possessed him since the destruction of the House. it was plain to her he knew she was there beside him, because he could answer questions as long as they were simple (do you want a sandwich, do you want a cup of coffee?); but he wasn't seeing the same world that she was seeing. He had to fumble to find the coffee-cup, and even when he did deposited half the contents over him as he drank from it. The food she plied him with was eaten mechanically, as though his body was going through the motion without the assistance of his conscious mind.
She knew where his thoughts resided. He was still enraptured by the House, or by his memories of it. She did her best not to resent him for his detachment, but it was hard when the problems of the here and now were so demanding. She felt abandoned; there was no other word for it. He was inviolate in his trance, while she was exhausted, confused and frightened. There would be questions to answer when people realized she was back from her travels; difficult questions. She wanted Will there to help her formulate some answers to them. But nothing she said to him roused him from his fugue. He stared on into middle distance, and dreamed his dreams of the Domus Mundi.
There was a worse betrayal to come. When she woke the following morning, having passed four grateful hours in her own bed, she discovered he'd vacated the couch where she'd put him to rest, and wandered out of the house, leaving the front door wide open. She was infuriated. Yes, he'd witnessed a great deal in the House; but so had she, and she hadn't gone wandering off in the middle of the night, damn it.
She called the police after breakfast, and made her presence known. They were at the house three quarters of an hour later, plying her with questions about all that had happened in the Donnelly house. Plainly they viewed her departure from the scene of Sherwood's demise as strange, perhaps even evidence of mental imbalance, but not an indication of guilt. They already had their suspects: the two itinerants who had been seen in the vicinity of the Donnelly house for two or three days prior to the murder. She was happy to name them, and to offer detailed descriptions; and yes, she was certain they were the same pair who had tormented Will, her brother and herself all those years ago. What, they wanted to know, was the connection between Sherwood and these two, that he'd been there in the Donnelly house in the first place? She told them she didn't know. She had followed her brother there, she said, intending to bring him home, and had discovered Steep in midassault. Then she'd given chase. Yes, it had been a stupid thing to do; of course, of course. But she'd been witless with shock and anger; surely they understood that. All that she had been able to think about was finding and confronting the man who'd murdered her brother.
How far had she tracked him, the detectives wanted to know. Here she told her direct lie. Only as far as the Lake District, she'd said; then she'd lost them.
Finally, the oldest of the detectives, a man by the name of Faraday, came to the question she'd been waiting to hear.
'How the hell does Will Rabjohns fit into the picture?'
'He came along with me,' she said simply.
'And why did he do that?' the man said, watching her intently. 'For old times' sake?'
She said she didn't know what he was talking about, to which the detective replied that unlike his two companions, he was very familiar with what had happened here all those years ago; he'd been the man who'd tried to get the truth out of Will. He'd failed, he admitted. But a good policeman - and he counted himself a good policeman - never closed a file while there were questions unanswered. And there were more unanswered questions in this file than any other on his shelves. So again, he said, what had been going on that she and Will had been together in this? She pretended innocence, sensing that Faraday, for all his doggedness, was no closer to understanding the mystery here than he'd been thirty years before. Perhaps he had some suspicions; but if they were anywhere close to the mark they were unlikely to be the kind he could have voiced in front of his colleagues. The truth lay very far from the usual realm of investigation, where a man like Faraday probably only ventured in his most private ruminations. Though he pressed his suit, she returned only the blandest answers, and he finally gave up on the business, defeated by his own reluctance to put the pieces in their true order. Of course he wanted to know where Will was now, to which Frannie truthfully answered that she didn't know. He'd disappeared from the house this morning, and could be anywhere.