Adam Nevill - House of Small Shadows

He wanted to shriek out his prayer, but kept his voice down in case the accountant next door was working late, or someone should pass in the street outside. ‘Open this pathway to sublime knowledge that we may carry the true cross.’

Leonard sniffed and blinked away his hot tears.

So little was salvaged after the routing of Henry Strader’s broken remains by beggars, in that filthy street on the morning of 6 June 1649. The power of the revelation, that never dimmed with time, struck him hard: he actually held, in his own humble hands, one of the few surviving parts of the first of the known Martyrs. One of the actual fingers no less, returned to Strader’s birthplace after his murder. The very idea never failed to paralyse Leonard with astonishment.

‘Grant that such heavenly treasures will bless your keeper’s pilgrimage.’ Leonard kissed the side of the golden hand. ‘And that other wretches will be saved as I was saved.’

From the wrist portion of the reliquary of the Hand of Strader, Leonard unscrewed the golden cap and gently removed a small parcel from the hollow canister.

Carefully, he unfolded a fragment of protective material. The fabric was stiff and brown; a glorious shred from the shirt of the king who lost his head. From within the wrappings, Leonard removed the wizened third finger from Strader’s right hand. The relic was as black as liquorice and almost weightless.

When he cupped the finger in his palm his entire body convulsed, and he longed to slot something sharp beneath his meagre flesh.

Before he fainted from the touching and the blessing, he slipped the soiled linen upon the girl’s altar and placed the finger of the Martyr upon the cloth.

Leonard regained his breath and wiped the sweat off his forehead and nose with the back of one gloved hand. Gently, holding the aged chin of the leather face with his fingers, he then raised the Mandylion of The Smooth Field from the wooden chest. And with the Mandylion came the perfume of stale incense and old sweat.

Long curls of raven hair fell from the relic and tickled his knees. He could barely stand upright at the sight of the mottled ivory of Henry Strader’s skull fragment stitched within the discoloured fabric of the scalp. So glorious was the sensation of holding the head of the Martyr he became terrified he might urinate again.

Holding his breath, the lean tendons in his legs quivering like catgut strings, he placed the Mandylion of the Smooth Field upon his old hairless head. When the skull fragment rested upon his flesh, he collapsed to his hands and knees and began to whisper from behind the blank mask of leather, pressed so close and hot to his face.

‘Live through me, Lord. So that I may do thy bidding. Let thy will be resurrection. As thou did raise them, we too are saved.’

‘His religion didn’t understand it. His science couldn’t explain it. But my uncle found something. And it passed across a distance you cannot imagine. Unless guided. As you have been, my child.’

As soon as Catherine’s feet skittered across the polished floor of the hall, Edith’s sharp voice had come down at her from the vaulted airiness above, to cut short her breathless cries of ‘Mike! Mike!’

The mistress of the house had spoken from where she waited behind the first-floor balusters, sat in her chair, a carriage that appeared to have absorbed the frail body inside it. A body that now appeared as little more than a collection of bones wrapped in an evening gown of black silk. Edith’s small face was but a pale smudge, high up in the air, at the furthest reach of the red lights of the hall walls.

Mike had not been outside the Red House, that great spiky monolith with roofs and chimneys and finials she could no longer see, all rearing into a night that itself lacked definition and borders. Catherine had been calling, and then crying his name in the lane that tapered cold and lightless to the black front gate. There had been no answer.

The front entrance to the house was open in expectation and emitting the unwelcome red glow of the interior. Tonight, each of the arched front doors had been swept back to the reception walls, as if to provide access to a group of guests.

From the distance the amplified blare of ‘Greensleeves’ still drifted, as if broadcast from a nightmarish ice-cream van that collected children after midnight. The encroaching sound had finally propelled Catherine through the front entrance.

But was Mike even here? If he was, the idea now troubled Catherine more than she wanted to admit. And what was Edith talking about? The sudden sound of her voice from above had nearly stopped her heart. But as ever, the old woman’s meaning was obscure and disingenuous. ‘What do you mean?’ she cried out to the small figure above her. ‘What are you saying? I don’t want to be guided!’

Edith pretended not to hear her. The distant head of the woman was angled upwards at the skylight. ‘My uncle found the places where they rested. Buried with the remains of their murdered masters. In unmarked places they hid themselves, and waited. Eager to perform. You know of Henry Strader’s fate. And you now know of the fates of the other known Martyrs. Blessed Spettyl, blessed Pettigrew. They too heard the calling from hallowed ground.’

‘I don’t want anything to do with this! Where is my bloody car! You’ve no right!’

Edith ignored her pleas and continued to speak as if to an audience peering through the skylight. ‘My uncle spent years looking for what remained of them, for what had returned itself to our soil after the Last Martyr fell. But maybe my uncle was found. Chosen. Perhaps the other known Martyrs were too, in their own times. Who can really say in these matters?’

‘I do not want to know any more, or see any more. Nothing of what you are trying to show me.’

‘But what called out to the Martyrs was a life most precious and sacred. Not life many would recognize, or believe in, unless they were young. But this life came back to certain things when called upon, my dear, in the right places. Small things were repaired. There was resurrection, blessed resurrection, for them and for those who revered them.’

‘Enough of this! Mike. My friend, Mike. Is he here? My car has gone! My bag—’

‘Do be quiet! You are hysterical. I will not conduct a conversation about a stairwell. It is undignified.’

Edith’s chair rolled backwards out of the winey light. But how she had been moved, or by whom, Catherine didn’t understand. The regular squeak of wheels rotated along the first-floor landing in the direction of the drawing room. The wheelchair moved as it had done so during her first visit, a time that now seemed like an old and weird dream. And one she wished she had once taken better heed of.

Either she had gone mad here, or nothing but a total relocation back to a recognizable world would create a discontinuation of the house’s manipulation of her mind, her memory, her dreams and imagination. The very structure and its trapped chemical air were like a powerful psychotropic drug, one whose effects prevented the organization of clear thoughts.

Catherine climbed the stairs. Perspiration from her race back to the Red House cooled beneath the thin dress and made her shiver. Both of her feet bled.

Perhaps she’d never been this ill before, mentally ill. But if she had to seize Edith by that scrawny neck she would have answers. Edith had not invited her to the pageant so much as sent her there. Edith had not been present because Catherine would have seen her enter the wretched hall. But who had operated the marionettes? Maude?

Please let it have been Maude.

When Catherine stood in the doorway of the drawing room, a hundred glass eyes glittered in the dim light around Edith, who grinned behind a gauzy veil. Like an old exhibit returned to its place in a public display, her wheelchair was back in position beside the fireplace, with Horatio curled around the iron footplates.