Tom Knox - The Marks of Cain

He lifted the gun and held it, pointing the muzzle at the ceiling.

For a second the madness of it all gyred in David's mind: a year ago he was a lethargic media lawyer. Bored, safe, and incoherently sad. Commuting on the District Line tube, going home to a microwave chicken curry, maybe a pint with a friend. Maybe meaningless sex with someone he didn't love, if he was lucky. Now he was terrified, and angry, and hunted — and yet the paradox was there again: he felt more alive than ever.

He wanted to live now: he wanted to live so much. To find out the deeper reasons for his parents' murder, and to take revenge for their deaths. But the first thing was to escape.

'The back garden,' said Amy, her tears visibly repressed. She was being strong, she looked angry. 'Through the garden, the ravine? We can go that way?'

They hurried out of the door and along the hall; the damp old planks thudded and creaked as they took themselves downstairs, to the rear of the house — from there the garden and the gate led to the forests; but Amy pulled him back.

'Listen!'

He listened; she was right. Voices. Out there in the garden, maybe over the wall — in the woods.

'We can't risk it,' she hissed. 'The road?'

'Miguel's car.'

They sighed with frustration — and fear. David felt the rage inside. 'We're stuck. Dammit we're just stuck. He's got us trapped!'

'No. The cellar!' She grabbed his arm. 'I am sure there are passages down there. C'mon, we have to find them.'

She turned, and they ran down the musty hallway — and turned right. There was an old cellar door under the stairs. David reached for the handle.

The subtle growling of a car engine was distinct. Somewhere out there in the rain and the ruins the car was coming very close, prowling past the old cottages of the Cagots, taking the turning that led to the hideout. The voices outside, in the woods at the rear, were still audible. Closing in.

The door to the cellar opened on a dingy set of descending stairs, plunging into the dark dark underworld of the Cagot refuge.

They had no choice. David followed Amy down the steps, into the blackness. He turned and shut the door firmly behind them, immersing them in even deeper darkness. It felt like drowning at night.

'Amy — '

'Yes!'

'You're OK?

'Here's the floor…I think.'

David took out his phone and switched it on and used the light of the screen to see; the feeble glimmer illuminated the echoing black cellar. He surveyed the gloom.

'Wait.'

Amy had a finger to her lips. They stood still, and mute. Frightened. Male voices were discernible. Inside the house.

'The vaults!'

David squinted. Now that his eyes were adjusting, he could see the true size of the cellar. It was enormous — high ceilinged and enormous, stretching into the dark, a real medieval dungeon. Somewhere for storing a lot of food, maybe, when the Cagots had to hide out.

Giving off the main vaulted cellarspace was a series of massive wood-and-metal doors, leading, it seemed, to more dark, clammy chambers. Three of the doors were open, two closed.

'We need to search — the spaces — '

They peered into the first vault. It was so cold and sticky in this secondary cellar, their breath hung in the air, the spectres of words. David flashed the phone-light around. The goose's foot was carved on the lintel. The mark of Cain. David turned his light quickly this way and that, but the space was empty. A narrow stone bench ran along the side, empty. The smell was faintly rancid.

More noises scuffled upstairs. Then the thump of boots on stairs. The men were searching the upper floors of the house. They would find Jose and Fermina. That might delay them. David tried not to speculate on Miguel's reaction. He would come upon the grisly sight of his self-murdered parents: he would be more angered than ever before.

And then the terrorist would realize, he would descend. And find the cellar door.

Trying to quell his panic, David paced to the next vault. The second one was like the first, empty, long and obscurely pungent. His anxiety was like a drumbeat. Accelerating.

He stepped further inside, ensuring there was no concealed exit. There wasn't. The third vault was the same: it had no other doors. Now Miguel's dark voice could be heard — in the hallway above. Shouting. Soon he would see the cellar entrance.

They had come to the fourth and penultimate vault. It was sealed. The metal door was tall and mossed over with decay.

'Try it!' Amy whispered. 'We have to — '

'Hold the light — '

Amy took the phone and poised it — as he tugged, fiercely, at the cold metal handle. He tugged harder, and then again, even harder. The door began to slide, very slowly. It wheezed and complained, slowly yielding to his desperate struggles. The metal grated resentfully against the stone — and then it seemed to explode: it fell open and a swamping deluge of brown and rancid fluid came after, a wave of thick and malodorous soup that was so fierce it knocked them both to the cellar floor.

They were slipping now, slipping and gasping in the slimy water; and David could see, knocking and bobbing in the subsiding floods: yoghurty flaps of flesh, and grimacing human heads, and fibrous, amputated arms; the heads were half decayed, the hair on one face was like rusty brown wire; a protruding arm bone was sticking out of leathery strings of muscle -

'Amy?'

She was struggling to stand up, slipping in the juices of the corpses. He stared at her, suffused with horror. They were covered with brown-green, waxy slime. And then David succumbed to his gag reflex: he briefly puked into the pooling fluids, and puked again. Amy was coughing, violently, as she stood up; then she seemed to steel herself, and she closed her eyes, and she opened her eyes, and she pointed to the ceiling.

The voices above were sharper, nearer, angrier, the men were nearly done searching the house. She hissed:

'The last door — what choice — '

Skidding through the puddles, they approached the final door.

The insanity of the scene did not prevent the danger approaching. Together, they pulled at the door handle, the metal slipping in their greasy hands. The obvious fear was written on Amy's face — what if this was another flood, of fluids and bones? — but it wasn't. The door opened quite easily. It opened onto a dry and lofty space, and at the end of the vault gaped…a passageway. Clung with spiderwebs, long and dismal, and stretching into further blackness.

'The chemin!'

Amy was already inside, beckoning David to follow. He paused to shut the chamber door behind them. Quietly yet emphatically. It wouldn't stop anyone. It wouldn't stop the Wolf. It might delay their pursuers a few vital minutes.

'OK.'

The passageway was too low to walk properly: they had to crouch, and scuttle, desperately, like hapless large insects.

But they were escaping at last. The footfalls and voices grew faint. But when the men found the cellar door?

'Which way now?'

David switched the phone-light left and then right, the pitiful torchbeam revealed more passages branching off. The roof of the nearest passage was pierced by a worm, wriggling and pink. He could feel the clammy fluids on his jeans, he was covered with decaying human bodies, smeared with a scum of ancient human fat. The gag reflex tugged at his throat, once again.

'This one,' Amy said, her voice half-choked. 'Pointing left. It must — surely — it must — go to the woods — '

'Now!'

They made their way, in frightened silence, until a soft thunder halted their progress, joined by a tinkling: water was dripping through the soil above, dripping down the muddy walls.

'The Adour?' she said. 'We're going in a different direction.'