Christopher Priest - The Prestige

The three of us, Rosalie, myself and the Borden boy Nicky, had been made to wait in the sitting room, next to the dining room where the adults still conducted their incomprehensible conflict. Both of these rooms led out into the corridor where the brown door was situated.

Voices were raised again. Someone passed the connecting door. I heard my mother's voice and she sounded upset.

Then Stimpson walked briskly across the sitting room and slipped through the connecting door into the dining room. He opened and closed it deftly, but we had a glimpse of the three adults beyond; they were still in their positions at the table, but were standing. I briefly saw my mother's face, and it seemed distorted by grief and anger. The door closed quickly before we could follow Stimpson into the room, and he must have taken up position on the other side, to prevent us pushing through.

We heard my father speaking, issuing an order. That tone of voice always meant trouble would follow. Clive Borden said something, and my father replied angrily, in a sufficiently loud voice for us to hear every word.

"You will, Mr Borden!" he said, and in his agitation his voice broke briefly into falsetto. "Now you will! You damned well will!"

We heard the dining-room door to the corridor being opened. Borden said something again, still indistinctly.

Then Rosalie whispered against my ear, "I think Daddy is going to open the brown door !"

We both sucked in our breath, and I clung to Rosalie in panic. Nicky, infected with our fear, let out a wail. I too started making a yowling noise so that I could not hear what the adults were doing.

Rosalie hissed at me, " Hush !"

"I don't want the door opened!" I cried.

Then, tall and sudden, Clive Borden burst into the sitting room from the corridor and found the three of us cowering there. How our little scene must have seemed to him I cannot imagine, but somehow he too had become tainted with the terror that the door symbolized. He stepped forward and down, bracing himself on a bended knee, then scooped Nicky into his arms.

I heard him mutter something to the boy, but it was not a reassuring sound. I was too wrapped up in my own fears to pay attention. It could have been anything. Behind him, across the corridor, beneath the stairs, I saw the open rectangle where the brown door had been. A light was on in the area behind and I could see two steps leading down, then a half-turn with more steps below.

I watched Nicky as he was carried out of the room. His father was holding him high, so that he could wrap his arms around his father's neck, facing back. His father reached up and placed a protective hand on the boy's head as he ducked through the doorway and went down the steps.

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Rosalie and I had been left alone, and we were faced with a choice of terrors. One was to remain alone in the familiar surroundings of our living room, the other was to follow the adults down the steps. I was holding on to my older sister, both of my arms wrapped around her leg. There was no sign of Mrs Stimpson.

"Are you going with them?" Rosalie said.

"No! You go! You look and tell me what they're doing!"

"I'm going up to the nursery," she said.

"Don't leave me!" I cried. "I don't want to be here on my own. Don't go!"

"You can come with me."

"No. What are they going to do to Nicky?"

But Rosalie was extricating herself from me, slapping her hand roughly against my shoulder and pushing me away from her. Her face had gone white, and her eyes were half-closed. She was shaking.

"You can do what you like!" she said, and although I tried to grab hold of her again she eluded me and ran out of the room. She went along the dreaded corridor, past the open doorway, then turned on the stone flags at the bottom of the staircase and rushed upstairs. At the time I thought she was being contemptuous of my fear, but from an adult perspective I suspect she had frightened herself more than me.

Whatever the reason I found myself truly alone, but because Rosalie had forced it on me the next decision was easier. A sense of calm swept over me, paralysing my imagination. It was only another form of fear, but it enabled me to move. I knew I could not stay alone where I was, and I knew I did not have the strength to follow Rosalie up those distant stairs. There remained only one place to go. I crossed the short distance to the open brown door and looked down the steps.

There were two lightbulbs in the ceiling illuminating the way down, but at the bottom, where there was another doorway leading to the side, much brighter light was spilling across the steps. The staircase looked bare and ordinary, surprisingly clean, with no hint of any danger, supernatural or otherwise. I could hear voices rising up from below.

I went down the steps quietly, not wishing to be noticed, but when I reached the bottom and looked into the main cellar I realized there was no need to hide myself. The adults were preoccupied with what they were doing.

I was old enough to understand much of what was happening, but not to be able to recall now what the adults were saying. When I first reached the bottom of the steps my father and Clive Borden were arguing again, this time with Borden doing most of the talking. My mother stood to one side, as did the servant, Stimpson. Nicky was still being held to his father's chest.

The cellar was of a size, extent and cleanliness that came as a complete surprise to me. I had no idea that our part of the house had so much space beneath it. From my childish perspective the cellar seemed to have a high ceiling, stretching away on all sides to the white-painted walls, and that these walls were at the limits of my vision. (Although most adults can move around in the cellar without lowering their heads the ceiling is not nearly as high as in the main rooms upstairs, and of course the extent of the cellar is no greater than the area of the house itself.)

Much of the cellar was filled with stuff brought down from the main house for storage: a lot of the furniture moved out during the war was still there, draped with white dust-sheets. Along the length of one wall was a stack of framed canvases, their painted sides facing in so that they could not be seen. An area close to the steps, partitioned off by a brick wall, was made over as a wine cellar. On the far side of the main cellar, difficult to see from where I was standing, was another large stack of crates and chests, tidily arranged.

The overall impression of the cellar was spacious, cool, clean. It was a place that was in use but it was also kept tidy. However, none of this really impressed itself on me at the time. Everything that I've described so far is modified memory, based on what I know.

On the day, what grabbed my attention from the moment I reached the bottom of the steps was the apparatus built in the centre of the cellar.

My first thought was that it was a kind of shallow cage, because it was a circle of eight sturdy wooden slats. Next I realized that it had been built in a pit in the floor. To enter it one had to step down, so that it was in fact larger than it looked at first. My father, who had stepped into the centre of the circle, was only visible from about his waist up. There was also an arrangement of wiring overhead, and something whose shape I could not clearly make out rotating on a central axis, glittering and flashing in the cellar lights. My father was working hard, there was obviously some kind control arrangement below my line of sight, and he was bending over, pumping his arm at something.

My mother stood back, watching intently with Stimpson at her side. These two were silent.

Clive Borden stood close to one of the wooden bars, watching my father as he worked. His son Nicky was upright in his arms, and had turned around to look down too. Borden was saying something, and my father, while continuing to pump, answered loudly, and with a gesticulating arm. I knew my father was in a dangerous mood, the sort Rosalie and I suffered when we had enraged him to the point where he felt he had to prove something to us, no matter how ridiculous.