Simon Clark - The Fall

And just for a second, the next scene of the pantomime flashed into his head.

Wicked Magician Albarzar laughs and stamps his foot twice and disappears in a cloud of smoke with the words: ‘I go to ground where no mortal can follow!’

Beneath Lee’s feet was the blessed trapdoor.

Quickly, he stamped twice as the Bluebeard strode forward, the axe raised.

A flash, a rush of white smoke, and Lee was falling so fast his heart felt as if it would bang into the back of his throat.

He blinked in the dim light beneath the stage.

Old Billy who worked the trap paused as he raised the bottle of gin to his lips. He scowled. ‘Hey, Harlequin… It’s not you supposed to be coming down the trap… ’s supposed to be the feckin’ wizard… Wass goin’ on up thar anyways? Sounds like feckin’ bedlam.’

‘Billy—’

‘Pissed as bleedin’ newts, I expect… Bleedin’ Christmas…’

‘Billy!’ Lee grabbed the old man by the front of his jacket and shook him.

‘Hey, leave me alone, yer bleedin’—’

‘Billy, listen to me! You’ve got to get out of here!’

‘What ya talking about? You drunk too, you—’

‘Billy, they’re killing everyone. You’ve got to hide.’

Loud reports sounded from somewhere above their heads.

‘Feck me. Those are guns. What’s happening, Harlequin?’

‘Find somewhere to hide. No… not here. Get away from here. Oh, God. Find somewhere to hide, Billy. Don’t let them catch you.’

‘Where ya going, Harlequin?’

‘I’ve got to get to the Gainsbroughs’. My wife’s there… I’ve got to see if she’s all right.’

But already a dark suspicion was taking shape in his mind.

‘Where are you two going?’ called the coach driver. ‘You’ve left your bags behind. Hey!’

Sam, with Jud at his side, didn’t reply. Their agreement was unspoken. As soon as they’d seen Casterton was on fire the truth had hit home. The invasion had begun. Both knew they had to get there as quickly as possible.

With the road deep in snow the coach could only move at a snail’s pace. They’d be faster on foot. That was, if the snow didn’t become too deep. Big feathery flakes streamed from the sky.

Sam realised running in this would be near-impossible. But at least they could take the direct route across the fields.

Ahead the town blazed brightly, casting flickering yellows and oranges across the snow.

At this distance it was still too far away to see what damage the Bluebeards had inflicted. But Sam’s imagination had already begun to supply pictures that were as vivid as they were terrible.

Lee knew he could have been killed a dozen times over. But by now killing had largely given way to plundering. The Bluebeards were looting houses, shops, even stripping their dead victims of shoes, clothes, jewellery. Everywhere those barbaric-looking men were walking purposefully through snow-covered streets, their arms full of clothes or food. He even saw a shaggy-haired man coming towards him with a whole side of beef over his shoulder. In the light of the fires springing up from houses he saw the man’s tattooed upper lip – that thick blue line that identified him as one of Bluebeards.

And he also saw something like hedgehog spines bristling from a lumpy growth beneath the man’s left eye.

Lee recalled Nicole Wagner. How she had met him in the forest. Now he not only remembered her stark warning about the Bluebeards, but the mouse legs growing from the side of her neck. Somehow she’d been fused with the creature during the last time-jump. And he remembered Sam Baker’s account of an encounter with a Bluebeard in 1944; the character with snakes coiling from his face. Was Nicole one of this murdering band now? Or was she hiding alone in the woods, leading a hermit’s life, ashamed to return to society because of the thing growing out of her neck?

Still dazed, Lee walked on down the street. He had no answers. All he wanted to do now was to reach the baker’s house, find Sue, then hold her tight in his arms.

He sidestepped a horse lying dead in the shafts of a cart, then walked on through the falling snow.

As if it came from far, far away he still heard the sound of screams, sobbing, laughter, shouting as the Bluebeard hordes consolidated their conquest.

Burning houses lit the snow in shades of flickering yellow and gold. At one point he saw his reflection in a window. He paused for a second to stare at it. It looked so bizarre and freakish against the backdrop of a burning town. There he was: a tall thin man, face powdered white, black diamonds painted over each eye, dressed in the tight-fitting Harlequin suit with its diamond pattern.

In the old harlequinade plays of hundreds of years before, the Harlequin character was supposedly invisible to the rest of the players on the stage; he’d move unobserved like a mischievous spirit.

Now he, Lee Burton, playing Harlequin in the little town that burned so fiercely it lit up the sky like an autumn sunset, felt he’d become invisible too.

The barbarian army took no notice of him now they were concentrating on gathering plunder. The surviving townspeople took no notice of him either as they ran screaming through the streets. Some had their faces disfigured by beatings or knife wounds. Some had been scalped.

No-one takes any notice of Harlequin , he said under his breath, his trance-like gaze fixed ahead of him as he walked.

No-one notices old Harlequin. He’s become invisible again. He skirted a Bluebeard busily pulling the boots from the feet of a headless priest who lay in the snow with a crimson glory all around him.

When he reached the home of Gainsbrough, the baker, he saw it was already burning.

Roof tiles popped like champagne corks in the heat. Timbers crackled; tongues of red and purple flame lapped the sky.

Just a couple of hours earlier he’d left Sue there with Ryan, Enid and the rest of the baker’s family. They were eating warm mince pies and drinking sherry while one of the Gainsbroughs played carols on the piano.

At the thought of Sue he stopped dead. Snowflakes settled on his face, melted. Water trickled down his face. Suddenly he was struck by a vision of her: she’d waved him goodbye from that very front door, standing there in her long violet dress.

With a crack, a roof joist gave way and a dozen tiles slipped out of the flames and into the snow where they hissed and steamed.

The upper storey was burning ferociously. But as yet the ground floor seemed untouched.

The image of his wife and the Gainsbroughs coughing on the smoke as they struggled to escape the burning house suddenly struck him. Snapping out of his shocked trance he ran to the door.

The moment he pushed it open a gust of searing air drove him back.

Eyes smarting, he crouched down before running inside.

In less than a minute he was outside again.

Even inside the smoke-filled house he’d soon found the bodies. The Gainsbroughs were all dead. Even Ryan’s wife hadn’t been spared.

Outside, he coughed, wiped his streaming eyes, then picked up a handful of snow and rubbed his face with it.

He was glad the fire would cremate the bodies. He’d hate anyone else seeing what the Bluebeards had done to them for fun.

He looked round the snow-covered garden. The bodies of the family dogs lay by the hedge.

But there was no sign of Ryan Keith. Nor of Sue. They could be lying in the blazing bedrooms.

But then again…

He ran round to the back of the house, calling Sue’s name.

There he found more blood in the snow – from small round drops the size of pennies to great bloody swathes that covered the ground like red blankets. And everything was lit with that cruel light from the infernos that roared and crackled all across the town.