Adam Nevill - House of Small Shadows

Once the human remains were found to be those of children intered over a century before the disappearances of Margaret Reid and Angela Prescott, the story died. With certainty, it was decided by archaeologists and the police, the discovered remains were those of infants laid in unmarked graves by the orphanage staff on the same site. No one dug any deeper.

Leonard found the sensation of reading all of the articles together, now they were much improved and enhanced by time, akin to being drunk after a funeral.

Finally he removed the pictures he always saved for last. On top of this prized collection was the only photograph he possessed of himself as a boy, a picture that was now faded to a brown smear. But he didn’t need to see much to remember himself in the picture as a thin pale lad in an old wheelchair; his withered legs slack, small black boots at rest upon the footplate. It was taken outside a little stone house in Magbar Wood, the place of his birth.

He remembered other pictures being taken of him at that age too, on a grass lawn so sweet and bright with sunlight that he was sure he had been in heaven when he first saw the garden, up at the great house of the Last Martyr. But those other pictures of him were kept in a place no one would ever see, unless invited.

The last four pictures in his portfolio featured another child. Three of these pictures were in colour. A pale sun-bleached picture of a little freckled girl in school uniform, whose pretty green eyes were telescoped behind the cumbersome spectacles she was once made to wear.

There was a picture of her as a baby, too, sat in her little pram covered in Union Jack flags on the blessed ground. A third picture featured her wearing a pink pinafore dress. She was looking at the camera, smiling. In her hand she held an ice-lolly shaped like a coloured rocket.

The final photograph of the girl in this part of the collection was in black and white, when she was much younger. And it featured the young mother of the girl in a room so dark and small and dismal, it could have been a room for another poor woman giving birth at home, a hundred years before. The woman held her new baby against her chest for those few precious minutes before the little girl was taken away.

Leonard shuddered from the emotion that came into his heart like an electric current. And he wept silently for a while, then wiped at his face. ‘You were given away.’

He blinked back tears. ‘You were despised because you were gifted. But you were not forgotten by those who cherished you.’ Leonard kissed the photograph of the little girl holding the ice lolly. ‘Time to come home, Kitten.’

Leonard turned in his chair and spoke out loud to the window, and the world beyond it, as if in accusation. His voice was broken by emotion, but carried by anger. ‘One must never forget the enchantment and the terror of childhood. For some it will always be acute. Their path is much closer to ours. What you discard, we will cherish.’

Leonard placed the pictures back inside the album. He closed his eyes and gathered himself, then shut the album and looked across to the open safe.

From the top drawer of his desk he removed a pair of white cotton gloves and slipped his thin fingers inside them. Then removed a blank cassette tape from the drawer. He pushed his wheelchair back from his desk to the wall and applied the brakes. Then placed his hands upon the armrests of the wheelchair and stood up. Stretched his back and raised his white hands to the ceiling. His stiff knees cracked.

Unsteady on his feet, he walked across to the little stereo system he kept in the office to listen to the weather reports after Catherine had left the office. She’d once tried to play a CD on it but found the CD player to be broken. She didn’t have any tapes.

Leonard opened the cassette deck and fitted the unmarked cassette inside the door. Closed the lid. A tremor passed along his index finger. He pressed PLAY.

From out of the static and wear on the tape the great voice of the Last Martyr, Mason, rose to begin the recitation.

Keep one kitten, destroy the rest…

Leonard half closed his eyes for a moment to savour the sound of the Martyr’s voice before moving to the corner of the large rug between the two desks. On his hands and knees he rolled the rug back to the far wall, until the faded white circle of the Ring o’ Roses was completely uncovered.

Drowning is the preferred method… up by the hind legs, a quick blow to the back of the head…

Upon the bare wooden floorboards he slipped off his shoes. Unbuckled his trousers, let them drop. Removed his pullover, tie, shirt, socks, and underwear. Folded his clothes and placed them upon his desk.

Once he was naked, he carefully removed his hairpiece. Against his scalp the adhesive tape issued a ripping sensation, but caused him no discomfort. He placed the mop of grey hair upon his clothes. Then removed his eyebrows with two sharp tugs and returned to the circle.

Relax a dried skin to reintroduce suppleness. Bathe with warm water, ammonia, sulphonated neatsfoot oil. Place the specimen in a moist box for one night, then scrape the skin… wash the skin…

In nothing more than the illumination from his desk lamp, Leonard moved his arms through the air and studied his scars. Stroked the furrows where great rents had been made in his flanks. Caressed the long ventral incision down to his hairless pelvis and shivered, rolled his eyes up. Gently pressing the thin, pale flesh of his abdomen, he closed his eyes to delight at the parcel of sawdust packed inside the cavity.

Once salted, fresh skins of large mammals can be washed with Ivory soap, rinsed three times, then degreased with petroleum…

Such was his excitement a little warm urine trickled down his inner thigh from the pink hole in his smooth groin.

Plug their openings with cotton, apply corn starch and wash the blood away…

The man some people called Leonard sucked in his breath. His legs trembled. Those parts of his hairless arms that were still capable of sensation were blessed with shivery bumps that had nothing to do with being naked.

He took his mind from the recording for a moment and focussed his eyes on the safe. It was too easy to go to the ground and give in to the golden rushing of things through himself.

Clean a skull with soap and water mixed with ammonia and sodium sulphate…

From the cavity in the wall he withdrew the wooden chest bequeathed to his care by the Last Martyr. He tried not to remember the time of his succession in detail because it still caused him great pain. A time so grey in his mind when his master could no longer bear the burden of the Great Art and what his troupe demanded of him. Mason, the man who had found him as a boy and shown him miracles. The man who had appointed him successor and servant of the great tradition.

Leonard carried the box across to Catherine’s desk, the altar she had sat behind for twelve months, bathed in his adoration. Leonard opened the chest.

The wax mould of the face should be applied to the mannequin at this stage… boomed the voice of the Last Martyr. And such was Leonard’s ecstasy at this point, he heard no more from the recording.

As Leonard raised the small golden effigy of a hand from its velvet compartment inside the wooden chest, tears burned his eyes and blurred his vision.

The blessed Hand of Henry Strader, the first of the known Martyrs; the hard polished fingers of the relic were relaxed above the palm as if the hand were acknowledging a crowd from atop a raised arm.

Leonard’s own gloved hands shook around the smooth, gleaming container, and his fingers became as insubstantial as feathers. He wept.

‘Saintly mentor,’ he said through his sobs, ‘extend thy reach through this vessel.’