The Reckoning of Noah Shaw Read online

  There’s a pause in the conversation, and Goose sucks in his lower lip. “You think so?”

  I was having a go at him, honestly, but now . . . I search his expression. “You really fancy him, don’t you?”

  “Wouldn’t you?”

  “I find him rather insufferable, actually.”

  “You don’t,” Goose says. “That’s just your dynamic.”

  “Fair point.”

  Goose scratches his ear. “So, did he ever mention me? Back in New York, or whatever?”

  I smile smugly. “He did, in fact.”

  “Why do you torture me so?”

  “He said he likes you. Likes likes you,” I mock.

  “Oh God,” he groans, hands in his blond hair.

  “What?”

  He looks up, through his forearms. “Think I’ll ever see him again?”

  That catches me, for obvious reasons. “Yes,” I say. “I’m sure you will.”

  Goose senses the conversational shift. “He’s Mara’s best friend, yes?”

  I nod slowly, shifting my gaze from Goose to something, anything else.

  “Think they’re together?” he asks.

  I pretend to take an interest in the patterned fabric of the drapes by one of the desks. “What, like right now, you mean?”

  “Yeah.”

  I let myself think about it, but only for a moment. “I hope so.”

  Sensing my melancholy, Goose takes my arm formally. “Come, friend. Let us away.”

  The gift shop is on the opposite end of the manor. Most of the lights are on, but the fire’s out in the great hall and, I assume, wherever else they keep the fires lit during the day, for the tourists. Rationally, I know the following:

  1. Ghosts do not exist.

  2. The security guards are on the premises all night.

  3. Ghosts do not exist.

  Nevertheless, we grow quieter the farther we walk into the manor, as our footsteps seem to grow louder with every step.

  “Can you imagine living here?” Goose asks, as I immediately say no.

  “I did think I’d feel more at home here, though,” I say after a moment, to help fill the silence.

  “What, not at the manor, surely?”

  “No. England.”

  “Do you?” he asks. “Feel at home at all?”

  I shake my head. “No,” I say quietly. “Further away.” I don’t think I can get back to home. That feeling I had in Brooklyn, like I belonged somewhere for the first time in my life? That wasn’t New York—it was Mara. I can’t remember feeling at home before her, or since.

  And I can’t imagine ever feeling at home, here. Can’t imagine anyone feeling that way about this place, ever; it’s more like a museum.

  A disturbing one, honestly. We pass all the portraits and busts and likenesses of my supposed relatives again, and I wonder what it must’ve been like to grow up here. To be the child of a lord and lady? Running through these corridors—was running even allowed? How did they amuse themselves? Imaginary friends?

  And Simon—did he grow up here? The manor’s been in our family long enough that he must have. Which room was his?

  These are the thoughts that circle and spin as we wander the unhallowed halls. They make my mind itch.

  “Goose,” I say, stopping abruptly. “Let’s just do it.”

  “What?” he asks, then narrows his eyes, which rest on my pocket. “Here?”

  We’re on the west side of the manor, a narrow corridor on the first floor hung with tapestries that smell faintly of chemicals and time.

  “Why not?”

  “Why not drop acid given to you by someone you hardly know in a likely haunted manor? You’re right, how silly of me,” he says in a flat voice.

  “You were the one who encouraged it.”

  “Hardly,” he says. “ ‘Let’s hear her out,’ I do believe I said. ‘Give her an hour. The afternoon.’ ”

  “So you were wrong, you’re saying. You regret it.”

  “Not at all,” he insists, holding up one finger. “It was quite fascinating, actually. And I’m all for you . . . opening your mind, or whatever.” He looks around. “Just, perhaps, not here?”

  I take the envelope from my pocket. “Might as well just get it over with.”

  “Mate, we’ve known each other since reception. You’ve never really dropped acid before, not in any way that counts, anyway. Trust me, better to be somewhere cozy, first. Comfortable.”

  “I don’t think this is going to be fun for either of us,” I say. “No matter where we are.”

  Goose raises his hands, shaking his head. “Not me, mate.”

  “You’re not partaking?”

  “Are you mad?”

  “What?”

  “Even if that LSD is average, and not some extremely potent toxic shit developed specifically to drive you out of your mind, I wouldn’t do it here.”

  “Because of the Grey Lady?”

  “Go on, mock me. See how you feel after your nightmare-fuelled trip. Besides,” he says. “You need a Virgil. Someone to guide you on your quest.”

  I slip open the envelope. “Or at least someone to make sure I don’t get lost and drown in the fountains.”

  “Or play nude cricket.”

  “Exactly.” I take one tab, holding it on the tip of my finger.

  “Cenaturi te salutant,” I say breezily, lifting my hand.

  Goose takes my wrist. “Mate, you sure? Do you trust her?”

  I don’t. But I care less about that, now, than I did.

  I look at the tiny M. “No,” I say out loud, and place the tab on my tongue.

  24

  THE WATERS BE TROUBLED

  GOOSE WATCHES ME WARILY. “I’M mildly alarmed.”

  “Only mildly?”

  “Well, if you go into cardiac arrest or something there are guards around here, somewhere. How does it taste? Bitter?”

  I shake my head. “Sweet, actually.”

  “Strange. Least it’s probably not cut with anything too appalling.”

  “It’s not as though it came from some street dealer,” I say as I walk ahead. “If she wanted to poison me, I’d be dead, I’m sure. Though then whatever memories she’s after would die with me. Anyway, when did you become such an expert?”

  “Well, whilst you were off adventuring in the New World,” Goose says, walking tall, “it was insufferably dull for those of us left behind. Come, we should settle you somewhere cozy.”

  I look up. The ceiling’s been moulded into geometric patterns with reliefs of the family heraldry and decorative medallions in each. “Where would that be?”

  “Probably back in the residence,” he says. “Less . . .”

  “Oppressive?”

  “That,” he says, facing a staircase, then turning round to face me. “Shall we go back, then?”

  My head does feel a bit fuzzy. “What floor are we on?”

  “Main, still, mate.”

  “Hmm,” I say, considering the stairs behind him. “Up or down?”

  “Neither,” he says sternly.

  I don’t know where Lord Simon’s room was, but all the most interesting stories tend to take place—

  “Below stairs.” I brush past Goose, then begin the descent.

  “What a terrible idea.”

  The walls and ceiling are old stone, polished and smooth. Different faces are carved into reliefs, in a row of niches on the opposite wall.

  “Who do you think they were?” I ask idly.

  “I’m sure there’s a guidebook in the gift shop. We could pop back up—”

  “No. This feels right,” I say.

  “Mmmhmm.”

  “Don’t be so judgemental.”

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “You were thinking things,” I say, forging ahead. Some of the doors are open to the rooms inside—I glimpse a few modernly furnished offices, and a tracery of wires by the wall of one of them, leading to a bell.

  “It�
�s like being locked in a museum after hours,” Goose observes.

  “It is exactly being locked in a museum after hours.”

  Goose rubs his arms. “It’s cold down here.”

  “Pussy,” I say, charging forward. “Look, there’s a staircase just there.” A small, narrow one, bisecting the corridor. “Let’s see where this leads, shall we?”

  “Right.”

  Wrong. The stairs lead to another corridor, walls bricked and dark.

  “What are we looking for, exactly?” Goose asks.

  I trail my fingers over the old brick. “Ghosts,” I say. I smile at him, flashing teeth.

  “You’re definitely feeling it,” Goose says. “Whatever it is.”

  “I think so,” I say, turning toward an old bedchamber. “I feel like touching everything.”

  “Maybe it was Molly.”

  “I should be so lucky.” I glance at the wall: a light switch. How very fortunate. I flick it, and sconces light up along the wall, along with a low iron chandelier that seems dangerously close to the bed’s canopy.

  The room’s made up in an older fashion than the bedrooms upstairs, and anchored by an elaborately carved bed featuring tiny people and animals twisting together on the four posts.

  “Too expensive for servants’ quarters,” I say, bending to examine one of them.

  “Probably extra furnishings, over the years. They probably rotate it all with whatever’s upstairs.”

  “Sounds right.” I run my hand over the sheets. There’s a crosshatched design embroidered into them, only showing at a certain angle. “Goose,” I say. “What . . .”

  “Branches,” he says dismissively.

  “No, look.” I unfold the coverlet, scattering dust. I hold the sheets up. “Is that—feathers?”

  He squints. “Maybe? Why?”

  “No reason,” I say, untruthfully. We’re looking for signs, after all, aren’t we?

  There’s an enormous dresser on the other side of the wall, with a few pewter platters displayed above it. “What do you think?” I ask him, looking at it.

  “About?”

  “What’s inside?”

  “Probably storage. More of this, perhaps,” he says, pointing at the serving dish. “Linens, that sort of thing.”

  I approach it, and gingerly tug on one of the iron drawer pulls. An assortment of stuff, just as Goose suggested.

  “Anything interesting?”

  I shake my head, even as I continue to look.

  “Shit!” Goose backs into me.

  “What?”

  “Did you see that?”

  I shoot him a flat look. “Really?”

  “No, mate, seriously. There.” He turns, pointing back at the doorway. “I saw something back there.”

  With a heavy sigh, I leave the drawer and walk back to the hall. On the opposite wall from the bedchamber is a freestanding mirror.

  I approach it, and notice there’s a tag in the corner, for some reason. LOOKING GLASS, 1806, TYNE & WEAR, the tag reads. “You saw our reflection in the corner of your eye. You’re the one who’s supposed to be guiding me through this trip, remember?”

  “I don’t remember it on our way in,” Goose says sceptically. “The mirror wasn’t there—”

  “It didn’t just appear—”

  The drawer slams shut. Neither of us is anywhere near it.

  I shake my head anyway. “This is cruel, even for you, Goose.”

  “It’s not me—”

  I’m shaking my head, backing out into the corridor. “It doesn’t work like this,” I say. “Everything that’s happened to us, even if it seems like it falls outside of the realms of logic, does have a logical explanation.”

  Something thuds back in the bedroom.

  “What was that?” I ask.

  “Who gives a fuck, seriously,” Goose says, so close I can feel his breath on my skin. “Let’s leave.”

  “I’m going to look.” My feet don’t move.

  Move, I order them silently.

  It works.

  “Can’t we just go? We can watch Coronation Street and get fucked up.”

  “That is nobody’s idea of fun,” I say, watchfully approaching the bed. There’s a creeping, nameless dread as I bend to look beneath it and—

  “No monsters,” I announce with embarrassing relief. But there is something down there—

  “It’s a book.” The cover has fallen open. I walk over to the opposite side of the bed and kneel. “A Bible.”

  “Hallelujah,” Goose says. “Let’s fucking go.”

  I squint at the woodcut illustration of a tree that stretches across the inside cover and realise there’s script—

  “It’s a tree!”

  “Goody.”

  “Look,” I say, holding it up like a prize. “A family tree.”

  “Yeah.” Goose’s face is ashen. “Everything’s fine now.”

  “All right,” I say, tucking the book—the Bible—under my arm. “We can go.”

  “You’re bringing that?”

  “It’ll be useful.”

  “More useful than the Internet? No.” He reaches out to my forehead, places a clammy palm on it before I swat him away.

  “How do you feel?”

  “Fine. Normal,” I say, walking ahead. I take the stairs even farther down.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Back the way we came,” I say over my shoulder.

  “This isn’t the way we came,” Goose says at almost the exact same time.

  “Fine, you lead the way.”

  He starts to, but when we’ve descended long enough for there to have been two floors, he says, panicked, “I’ve no idea where we’re going.”

  “I thought you didn’t take any drugs?”

  “I didn’t!”

  “Then how are we still descending?” I ask, just as the stairs come to an abrupt end, before a rough wooden door.

  “I don’t want to see what’s behind that.”

  “What if we go back up, but there’s no way out?” I tease him. He closes his eyes and the pulse in his throat jumps.

  “Shit, you’re really scared.”

  He opens his wide green eyes. “You’re not?”

  “Not really,” I say, and put my hand on the door. “Ready, steady—”

  “Go,” Goose says.

  The syllable hangs in the air for a beat, before I push the door open.

  25

  THE SILENCE BE BROKEN

  A FEW STEPS, AND THEN THE door hinges creak as it closes behind us, leaving us in the dark.

  “Thought you were holding it open,” Goose says. Our voices echo, as if the ceiling is improbably high.

  “Thought you were,” I say. “You were following me.”

  Goose flicks open his lighter. “Better,” he says, holding it before him.

  The glow is far too small to illuminate much except the damp stone wall nearest to us, but there’s an iron sconce with two half-melted candles in it.

  “Light that, would you?”

  He lifts his lighter to the two candles, catching the wick. A warm glow stretches far enough ahead to illuminate heavy ochre drapes along the wall, velvet furred with a layer of dust.

  “Where are we?” he asks.

  “Don’t know,” I say. “This should be a cellar, I’d expect—we’re far below ground, aren’t we?”

  “Don’t know. It’s not as though I studied the map,” Goose says, piqued. “Or inherited this place. What’s that smell?” he asks, nose wrinkling.

  “The candles,” I say. “Tallow. Animal fat.” The wicks smoke and the flames gutter.

  “Wretched.”

  I step toward the drapes and pull them to one side, revealing part of a wide window, arched. My finger touches the glass, which impossibly looks out onto elaborate gardens, hardly visible in the night. A gust of wind lashes raindrops against the diamond panes, startling me. The candles barely give off enough light to see, and the shadows they throw are worse.
I step backward into Goose.

  “How can this be,” I mutter. A window onto the grounds when we should be below ground? Maybe the drugs are taking hold. “Are you seeing this?” I ask Goose, to be sure.

  “Yes.” I almost wish he’d said no. At least then I’d know it is the drugs and not—whatever the fuck this is.

  I have that sense, again, as if there’s an audience in my head, as if we’re being watched. I agreed to this to open my mind, but it feels like I’m losing it.

  Mara’s voice echoes in my skull:

  I’m afraid I’m losing control. You can’t stop it. All you can do is watch.

  As I walk, it feels like she’s here, shadowing my steps in the darkness. If I were to strike a match I imagine I’d see her illuminated beside me, ghosting my smiles, mocking my words.

  “Not helpful,” I say to the voice.

  “What’s that?” Goose asks.

  Fuck. “Nothing.” I run my hand through my hair, tugging on it. The book I’ve carried with me from the bedchamber falls to the floor.

  I look down; the front cover is open to the woodcut illustration of the tree. The faint script that the Shaw family names has been written in grows bolder on the branches. I crouch down on the floor to look more closely.

  “Wait,” Goose says, but I ignore him, unable to look away as more names appear on the page—Richard Samuel Shaw, Catherine Anne Shaw, William John, Grace Augusta. The tree sprouts new branches beneath my fingers on the paper, and then the branches somehow, impossibly, spread onto the floor as new names appear, not in ink, but in the planks of the wood itself. They’re obscured by the mouldy, elaborate rugs beneath our feet.

  “Help me,” I say to Goose, and both of us grab the edge of the largest rug, embroidered with blooming flowers in dull, faded colours. The dust threatens to choke us when we sweep it aside and we cough, fists to our mouths, still crouching, though, because the names keep appearing in the wood: Oliver Elliot, Samuel Thomas, Charles, Eliza.

  Goose and I walk in opposite directions, lifting the rugs beneath our feet and dragging them aside as we follow the branches.

  “Mate, you’re here,” he says, staring at the floor. I look up, turn my head. “Your name, and your sister’s.”