On the night Jack Fallon fell asleep in his chair and drifted into the nightmare, William Simpson opened the side door between the manse and the church and came quickly down the narrow alley to the iron gate that leading to the boiler-house. The key took two turns to slot the bolt back and the gate swung back with a groan of protest. The cold wind was gusting up the narrow space, but William Simpson did not feel it.
Inside his head, thoughts were sparking and sputtering, hot thoughts that made him hurry down the dry stone stairs. The green door at the bottom opened easily and he let himself into the basement directly under the old church. His knuckle hit the switch and a cone of light flickered down from the single bulb under the green metal shade. He screwed his eyes up against the luminescence, shying away from the light. In the past few days, he'd spent most of his time in his study, keeping the blinds drawn, hardly speaking to any but the most determined parishioners. Inside his head, the whispering, grating thoughts had prodded him unceasingly, as they did now.
Over in the corner, the boiler rumbled and sighed to itself. The pipes pinged and close to the basement ceiling, where an air-lock always caught at the bend, there was a knocking sound, a witchety hammering in the cobwebbed shadow. Simpson ignored it. The bunch of keys jangled in his hands as he made his way forward. To his left, old pieces of the pipe organ, giant penny whistles, lay stacked against the wall, and beyond them, boxes of hymn books which hadn't been used in years were stacked one atop the other. Further back, a stout door, paint peeled and cracked, stood bracketed by the red sandstone wall. William Simpson unlocked this one, let himself in quickly and closed the door behind him before switching the low wattage bulb, letting its orange luminescence tussle with the shadows.
The old store-room was his secret place. He had changed the lock nineteen years ago, not long after he had come to take charge of the Castlebank Church in the east side of Levenford. There was one key, and that remained firmly on the ring that he kept in his pocket at all times.
The room was small and clean. Against the far wall there was a double sink on which lay several flat photographic trays. Close by, the circular drum of a drier, connected to a wall socket by a white cable. The light overhead shone dull casting a weak glow over everything. Simpson sat down in the chair next to the wooden desk and opened the bottom drawer. He drew out a box, hand shaking with anticipation. Inside his head, the thoughts were sparking away like an overloaded fusebox, behind them the ceaseless whispering voice goaded him on with incomprehensible promises. He felt hot and feverish.
The box had a small hasp. It opened easily on two brass hinges. The minister reached inside and drew out a small pink object which he placed on the rough surface of the desk. His trembling hand dived in again and brought a tiny pair of panties, yellowed with age. There was a rip just under the elastic at the top, and an old stain down at the crotch. Simpson felt the texture of the flimsy cloth between his fingers and felt the hot anticipation rise. His breath came quicker and a slick of sweat beaded his brow. Outside the wind howled. In the other room the boiler sighed and gurgled and the spectral knocking came intermittently from the pipes. Simpson noticed none of these things. His hot mind was lost in the memory, unreeling the scene that he had played back too many times in the early years. Eventually he had all the objects laid out before him. The tiny briefs, and beside them a little lace handkerchief with two initials embroidered in a corner. A pink pair of small spectacles, the left lens starred with cracks. Next to last, was a fine silver circlet with a simple clasp, and alongside that the pink plastic hand and podgy-smooth arm of a child's doll. Simpson ran his hands over these things, feeling them, recalling the first time he had seen them, the first time his hands had closed over them, and he felt as if his brain was on fire. It had been a long time since he'd unlocked the drawer and opened the box, a very long time. Yet tonight, the cajoling voice in his head had driven him to come and touch them again.
His breath came quicker now, here in his secret place. Over the years he'd made the storeroom into a darkroom where he would develop the family photographs, scenes of church picnics, the choir, the Sunday school. Some of the pictures he kept aside for himself, printing them out over and over again, waiting with trembling anticipation as the angelic face of a little girl would appear, faint at first on the blank sheet, watching it wax stronger until the lines were firmly caught on the page. His excitement would be like a pressure inside him as he watched the appearance, and then, his hand sneaking down past the waistband of his black trousers, he would watch while the photograph would overdevelop. The page would grow darker and darker until the child was swallowed by the blackness, overcome by oblivion.
He had told himself over many years that he was an evil man, and he knew that to be true. He'd thought of himself, at one time, as a man of God, but he knew he could not be that, despite the collar he wore and the sermons he preached. For inside him there was a need that he could no nothing but try to appease, though he had become cunning as the years went by. There were places in the church, under the choir-loft, for instance, where he could stare between the knees of the teenage sopranos as they sang in practise. At Sunday School, a minister was always free to hoist a little girl on his knee and hold her tightly, feeling the heat of the little body, the flutter-beat of a baby heart. They trusted him of course. At times he did not trust himself to hide the mounting pressure.
On this cold night, his wife was in the drawing room, with three of the women from the guild. He had heard their voices, each talking over the other, and the chink of fine china cups. His youngest daughter was upstairs, doing homework. He dared not go up. The two older ones had left as soon as they were able. They had never said anything, perhaps they did not remember anything from when they were so small, but they had left home with no love in their eyes. Betty, his wife tolerated him with cold politeness, Fiona with wary suspicion. Of course she knew nothing, but he sensed that she sensed something. Betty had used all her power to keep father and daughter apart. His was no longer a family of hugs and kisses. His was hardly a family.
But he had his darkroom, and she was content to let him potter around there, glad to have him out of sight. She went through the posture of the minister's wife. Smiling as the congregation left the church on a Sunday, taking meetings of the guild, organising coffee mornings. But she had never forgiven him for the loss of her two eldest daughters and lived in fear of losing the third.
These thoughts did not occur to him on this cold night. His mind was strangely alive, crowded with bustling thoughts, urgent thoughts. He felt the old hunger well up inside him, the hunger he'd tried to deny over the years after the first terrible time. Despite having kept the treasures - a mad risk, he knew - he had lived with the guilt of it all. The burden had built up over the years, adding shame on shame, and yet he had been unable to change himself. Every time he had slipped his hand under a small girl's buttocks, every time he had sneaked into his daughters rooms while they slept and slipped his hand under the bedclothes, he had been unable to deny the need. Yet afterwards, the guilt and shame had crowded in on him, dark shadows with long accusing fingers.
He had gone to the spiritualist because there was something he needed to know. He had long since lost his faith in a forgiving God. The god he had wanted to dedicate his life to had made him a twisted thing inside his own soul, and if he had been a good and just God he wouldn't have done that. He had needed something to believe in when he had first taken those steps up to Marta Herkik's rooms. He had wanted a sign from the other side, from the dark or from the light, just a sign that would tell him there was another side.
What he wanted with that knowledge, even he did not know. It was a forked stick, barbed on both prongs. If there was a life hereafter, he might be consigned to a hell of his own for the things that had been done. If there was none, he had consigned another to oblivion in a moment of fine madness. But that thought did not occur to him now. He only remembered opening the door of the old woman's house, shaking his coat out in the hall. There was no memory of what had happened after that. Since then, he had very little memory of anything.
The day before he had left the manse in the late afternoon. Some time later, when it was full dark, he had found himself on the old chandler-yard road close to the bridge over the river. How he had got there, or why he had come, he did not know. He had no recollection of what had happened after he had closed the garden gate behind him. All he was left with was a dull emptiness and a vague feeling of fear. And added to that was this new and strange sense of satisfaction, of unfathomable glee.
Now in the storeroom next to the old cellar, William Simpson's thoughts spangled and sparked. Old memories came rushing in at him, fresh desires welled up.
And again he heard the voice, scraping at first on the inside of his skull. It came as a dry, barely audible whisper, but it persisted, ever louder until he could finally make out the words from the gabble. It was telling him what to do.
After a while, the minister sat back slowly in the seat. The tremor of his hands had stilled. He closed his eyes and listened to the voice inside his head.
A quarter of a mile away, in the basement of the library on Strathleven Street, the girl was preparing to finish for the night. The words on the stock-list page were beginning to blur in front of her eyes and she yawned, stretching her hands up into the air, easing her cramped muscles. In the light from the overhead tube, her hair glowed the bright auburn of new chestnuts. She checked her watch, debated finishing the end of the list, then with a quick movement, snapped her folder shut.
From upstairs, in the main section of the library, she could hear muffled voices. here, the basement was her own haven, a narrow room lined with stacks holding thousands of books, a wealth of words. The place was new to her, but she already felt at home in the dry cosiness of the stack-room. She turned to lift her black bag from the floor by her ankle, when a sudden wave of dizziness washed over her. The shelves in front of her wavered and the light seemed to dim.
For a second she thought she would pass out.
Then from nowhere a picture came into her head and the stacks of books faded into the background, shimmered like a dusty veil and disappeared.
She saw the man climb on to the stool and watched as he tied something round his neck. His eyes were dead, though one of them had a strange blind sparkle.
There was an utter silence and then, behind her ears she heard the whispering, the abrasive rasp that she'd heard before, though she couldn't quite remember when.
As soon as she heard that, a vast and overwhelming sensation of badness swept through her.
Here was a bad man and he was being urged on by a bad thing.
In her mind she heard a chuckle of glee. The man turned to look at her and his eyes glowed yellow-orange, the colour of pus. She shook her head. He was doing something with his right hand, showing her what he was doing. She tried to look away and he took a step forward.
The scene winked out. The stacks came wavering back into her vision. Above her the white light blared. She was back again in the library basement. The girl drew in air in a swoop, as if she had been holding her breath a long time. A small spasm of dizziness rocked her against the back of the swivel chair and then was gone, leaving her feeling drained. It left her with a shuddery sense of incomprehensible foreboding.