Simon Green: Hell To Pay

I finally lurched out of the jungle, exhausted and wringing with sweat, shaking in every limb and fighting for breath. I’m built for stamina, not speed. The daylight snapped off the moment I left the jungle and stepped into the courtyard, as though healthy natural light was not permitted in this place. I leaned against the open metal gates while I got my breath back and checked out the situation. I actually felt better without the light. Maintaining it for so long really had taken it out of me. I wiped the sweat from my face with my coat-sleeve and looked around me.

The first thing I noticed was that there weren’t any cars parked in the courtyard. All the guests had been sent home. Lights were burning in every window of Griffin Hall, but there was something…wrong about those lights. They were too bright, too fierce, and unnaturally piercing. And the whole place was deathly silent. Looking at Griffin Hall now felt like looking into an open grave. I took one final deep breath, to steady me, and headed straight for the front door. Nothing and no-one appeared to stop me. When I got to the door, it was locked. And when the Hall’s defences blocked Sister Josephine, they also kept out her Hand of Glory.

I shook the handle hard, just in case, but the door was very big and very heavy, and it hardly moved in its frame. I didn’t even bother trying my shoulder against it. I checked the lock; it was large and blocky and very solid-looking. I knew a few unofficial ways to open stubborn locks but nothing that would get past the Hall’s powerful defences. I suddenly remembered the golden key Paul had pressed on me as he was dying. He must have known it would come to this. I fished the key out of my coat-pocket and tried it in the door lock, but it didn’t fit. Not even close. I put the key away again and scowled at the closed door. I hadn’t come this far, got this close, to be stopped by a simple locked door. So when in doubt, think laterally.

I ran quickly through a mental list of what I had on me, searching for anything useful, then smiled suddenly and took out the aboriginal pointing bone. I stabbed the bone at the door, saying all the right Words, and the heavy wood of the door heaved and buckled as though trying to flinch away from the awful thing that was killing it. The wood cracked and blackened, rotting and decaying in moments, and great holes opened up in the spongy dead matter. I put the bone away and thrust both hands into the sagging holes, tearing at them until I finally had a gap big enough to force my way through.

I strode forward, expecting to be confronted by an army of heavily armed guards and even some shocked servants, but the great echoing lobby was empty. Deserted. And still the Hall was eerily silent, with not a sound or sign of life anywhere. I couldn’t allow myself to believe I’d arrived too late. There was still time. I could feel it. I raised my gift to find where the Griffin family was, and once again Something from outside forced my inner eye shut with brutal strength. I cried out from the horrid pain that filled my head. I staggered back and forth, forcing down the pain through sheer force of will. The effort left me panting and shaken. It felt like a bomb had just exploded inside my head.

And it seemed to me that not all that far away, I could hear Something laughing, taunting me.

I stood up straight, pulling the last of my strength around me like armour. I didn’t need my gift. I knew where the Griffin family was, where they had to be. In the one place forbidden to everyone but the Griffin himself—the old cellar underneath the Hall. I moved quickly through the ground floor, looking for a way down. And I discovered what had happened to all the guards and servants. They were dead, every one of them, mutilated and murdered like the nuns in the chapel. Torn apart, gutted, dismembered, and disfigured. But at least these bodies still had their heads. Every face was stretched and distorted with the agony and horror of their final moments. I would have liked to stop and close all the staring eyes, but there wasn’t time.

Because the bodies had been laid out in a single line…carefully arranged to lead me on, to the door that led down to the cellar. Servants in their old-fashioned uniforms, guards in their body armour; they’d all died just as easily and as horribly. Blood pooled everywhere, most of it still sticky to the touch, and long, crimson streaks trailed across the walls in arterial spatter. The air was thick with the stench of it, and when I breathed through my mouth I could still taste the copper. I finally reached the end of the line and stood before the door that had helpfully been left just a little ajar, inviting me to go on down to the cellar…I knew what was waiting for me down there, eager to show me what he’d done with the Griffin family, and Melissa.

I pushed the door all the way open with one hand. A long line of stone steps fell away into the earth, the way brightly lit with paper lanterns. And sitting slumped against the bare stone wall on every other step was a dead servant or guard, carefully propped up to stare down the steps with dead eyes. I prodded the nearest one with a cautious finger. The dead body rocked slightly but showed no signs of rising to attack me. I started down the steps, sticking carefully to the middle, and as I passed by the dead men, now and again one would slowly lift his head and look at me and whisper secrets in a lost, faraway voice.

“The fires burn so hot here. Even the birds burn here.”

“Something’s holding my hand and it won’t let go.”

“They drink our tears like wine.”

“We don’t like being dead. It’s not what they told us it would be like. You won’t like it either.”

I did my best not to listen to them. Hell’s business is despair, and it always lies. Except when the truth can hurt you more.

I finally came to the bottom of the steps. It took a long time. I had no idea how far down I’d come, but I had to be deep under the Hall by now, maybe right at the heart of the hill upon which Griffin Hall sat. ( They say he raised up the hill and the Hall in a single night… ) The door to the cellar was a perfectly ordinary-looking door, again standing slightly ajar, inviting me in. I kicked it open and strode into the stone chamber beyond as though I had an army at my back. And sure enough, there they all were—the Griffin family. Jeremiah and Mariah, William and Gloria, Eleanor and Marcel, all of them crucified, nailed to the cold stone walls. Blood still dripped from the cruel wounds at their pierced wrists and ankles. They looked at me silently, with wide, pleading eyes, afraid to say anything. Melissa Griffin sat alone in the middle of the stone floor, inside a pentacle whose lines had been laid out in her family’s blood. She was still wearing the tattered remains of her black-and-white novice’s habit, though the wimple had been torn away. Someone had beaten the crap out of her, probably just because they could. Blood had dried on her bruised and swollen face, but there was still a calm, stubborn grace in her eyes when she looked at me.

I nodded and smiled reassuringly, as much for me as for her. My first thought was how much she looked like Paul as Polly, but there was an inner light and peace in Melissa that Paul had never found. I walked carefully forward and knelt before Melissa, careful not to touch any of the lines of the pentacle.

“Hello, Melissa. I’m John Taylor. I’ve been looking for you. It’s good to meet you at last. Don’t worry. I’ll get you out of here.”

“And my family?” said Melissa.

“I’ll do what I can,” I said. “It might be too late for some of them, but I specialise in lost causes.”

“Of course you do, Mr. Taylor,” said a calm, hateful, familiar voice. “After all, you’re the greatest lost cause of all.”