Dan Vyleta - Smoke

It is then he realises he has begun to cry.

“You must free me,” he shouts into his gag, “we have to run away,” and all that comes out is the sound of a man chewing his own tongue.

The girl by his side gives her screw another turn.

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She undoes the manacles. He is not sure how she has come by the decision, or what it is he might have done to sway her, but all of a sudden, without any announcement or change in her aspect, she bends down to his wrists and works open the restraints, her little hands moving with the dexterity of one familiar with the interaction of buckle and strap. When he is free and has ripped out the feeding tube, the first thing he does is hug her, draw her little body tight into his own, so that the brass wheel of her harness digs itself into his chest and bruises him. She is still smoking and crying, is limp in his arms, soundless, her lips clamped shut against her sin, the Smoke seeping straight from her skin now, from her throat and cheeks and eyeballs, dying her black.

The second thing Charlie does (holding on to the girl, her stockinged legs dangling freely at his waist) is reach for the water glass and drink. His stomach heaves when the water hits it, but he keeps it down, and a voice drifts through the floor, manic and kneedling, “Tell me, God damn you, tell me!” answered by a silence more chilling than a scream.

He must get her out of the house. This is all Charlie knows. He must get Eleanor out of the house and do so quickly, while Julius is distracted and his dog focussed on another task. The window opens easily enough in the room that was his prison, but beneath lies an eight-foot drop onto a ground bumpy with flower pots that he cannot risk, not with the girl clinging to him, fighting for breath against the grip of the harness and her fear. Snow enters the room before he can shut the window again, carried on a gust, along with the cold of the air.

He turns, walks quietly, his whole body stiff from lying still all day, out into the hallway and the room across. The light shining up from underneath is brighter here, and Charlie makes sure his feet do not stray from the dark squares of two rugs. Renfrew’s bedroom is spartan, holds a cot, a wardrobe, a washbasin, and little else. The living room is close under their feet. The sounds that issue from there have moved into a realm beyond speech. They mingle with the blood pounding in his ears. Charlie tiptoes and times his steps to his heartbeat; to the moans of a man in pain and the low growl of a dog. A snowflake has caught in Eleanor’s eyelash, melts as Charlie’s breath fans across her face.

The window is veiled in frost, disclosing nothing, but when he lifts it, carefully, quietly, it opens up over the flat roof of a shed cushioned with a foot of snow. He slides the child out first, dives after her. They swim to the edge of the roof, spilling snow. The cold is intense on his face, the roof’s edge draped in ice: it drops them onto a mound of snow at its back. From there they reach the back fence and a row of trees. Two steps bring them around the corner of the house, where a window stands brightly lit, the curtain open. Through the frost-thickened pane little can be seen other than a bit of wall across, the movement of a shadow at its utmost edge; the glow of the fire split into four tidy rectangles by the window’s wooden cross. Then it is as though someone has dumped ink into a water tank: the dark swirl of a viscous cloud takes possession of the room, drowning out the light and covering the pane until it appears to be dripping with darkness. The sound that accompanies the cloud serves to drown Eleanor’s shriek: a single protracted note so shrill it sounds as though it has been cut from Renfrew’s lungs.

Before Eleanor can shriek again, Charlie has picked her up and fights his way through trees.

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Perhaps he should go and find Trout. But Charlie’s wrists are sore from being tied, and his throat still raw from thirst. He won’t risk his freedom again, won’t trust another grown man’s judgement about what is right and wrong. And yet the little girl needs shelter, and her uncle needs help; the world a warning about a monster walking in its midst.

The porter’s lodge has a hut attached to it, too squalid to be called a cottage. It is tucked away at its back, out of view from student eyes, behind a thorn hedge four feet deep. Inside — his feet nearly in the fire, a kettle hanging from a chain by his side, his head tied into a rough scarf against the draft — sits Cruikshank, the porter. He has not drawn the curtain and sheltered as it is by the hedge, his hut’s window remains clear: one can see his dirty bed and the stacks of dishes by his sink; the crumbling dart board that hangs on one wall next to a shard of black slate that lets you mark the score. They draw close enough to touch the window and study the knotty little figure of the man, immersed in darning his socks. Charlie tries to put Eleanor down, but the girl is clinging to him awkwardly, her harness pressing into his face. Her breathing continues to be laboured. He has tugged at the contraption but has been unable to get it off.

“Go and knock on the door, Eleanor,” Charlie whispers to the little girl. “That there is Mr. Cruikshank. You must tell him who you are and that your uncle needs help. Tell him Spencer has gone mad. It’s very important that you remember. Julius Spencer. Tell him to tell the headmaster, and to fetch a club or a knife. Can you remember all that?”

But the girl won’t answer and just keeps clinging to him, each breath a struggle, her lips blue with cold and fear. He wrests her hands free, puts her down gently, walks with her to the door.

Again Charlie tries to tell her that she must knock and talk to Cruikshank, that he cannot go with her. Again she huddles back into his chest, buries her face there, shivers.

“Go on,” Charlie pleads with her. “Please. I beg you.”

She says something in response. To catch it, he has to put his ear to her lips, so close he can feel her breath against its skin.

“I’m bad,” she says. “I’m bad. That’s why the devil came to our house.”

Her hand reaches for the wheel on her chest. Charlie has to force it away.

“You are the best little girl I have ever met,” says Charlie.

Then he slips off his belt, loops it quickly through her harness and ties her to the door knob before knocking hard against its wood. The girl starts crying as he stumbles away through the bushes, but she does not shout. She may not have the breath to do it.

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Charlie lingers on the far side of the hedge for far too long, lying flat against its base, hiding in the dark. Julius might have left Renfrew’s cottage by now. He might have seen their tracks (how much has it snowed?) or gone upstairs and realised someone was staying there. His dog might have taken Charlie’s scent. It is madness to linger. He needs to run, lose himself in the snowstorm. Go to London to report to his friends.

What Charlie does do is lie flat on the ground, count the minutes. Crawl back through the bushes, back to the window. Raise his head above the window ledge and take a peek.

Eleanor is sitting on a chair, tears rolling down her cheeks, her skin glowing red from the cold. Other than the sobs that rack her frame, she is not moving at all. Her hands are wrapped around a mug of tea, demurely, in an attitude oddly like prayer. By her side, crouching and hence shorter than her by half a head, is Cruikshank, holding a big pair of scissors and moving them about her torso like a bird picking berries from a thorny shrub. Each sharp little snip cuts a leather belt on Eleanor’s harness. When one side gapes open like a bust valise, the knotty old porter moves around to the other side, facing the window. Charlie is not quick enough to duck and for a full second they stare at each other while the girl sits unmoving, warming her hands on the hot tea.