Serpent's Gate Page 16

  “Thank you,” Stephen said, getting out next to one of the gigantic stone planters bordering the garden. The walkway lay partially underwater, forcing him to move from one raised brick to the other in a sort of skipping motion. He was so intent on not letting his feet submerge that he didn’t notice anyone following him until he heard the splash of heavy footsteps behind him.

  He stopped and turned. Leo stood staring at him with a shovel in his hands. Mud streaked his yellow slicker and saturated his boots and pant legs. His face barely showed under the hood, and his posture seemed vaguely threatening.

  “Oh, there you are, Leo.” Secretly unnerved, Stephen forced himself to sound cheerful. “We waited for you by the gate. Malcolm had to leave it open. Sorry about that.”

  Leo paused for a moment, as though turning the words over in his mind to make sense of them. Then he tapped the edge of his shovel on the bricks.

  “My mother was worried about the flowerbeds. Have to make sure they can drain right. I got too busy to go back to the gatehouse.”

  “Oh. Well, that makes sense. Too much water can’t be healthy for the roots.”

  “They’ll drown if I don’t keep an eye on them.” Leo’s dark, empty eyes bored into Stephen’s. “Did you have a good trip into town?”

  “Yes, fine. I was visiting my uncle in the hospital. Looks like he’ll recover, though he’ll be there a few more days.”

  Leo nodded slowly. “I’m sorry that had to happen to him.”

  The odd way he said it sent a slow chill creeping down Stephen’s back, along with a few icy raindrops. “Well, it didn’t have to happen. It was just one of those things. An accident.”

  “All the same, I’m glad you got to stay with us. How long will you be here?” One of his hands began to rub the shovel’s wooden handle. Up and down, slowly. Stephen fidgeted, longing to escape into the house, but he feared a sudden move would offend or even anger him.

  “I don’t know. Until my uncle is better, I guess.”

  “Right.” Leo’s thick lips parted in what Stephen interpreted as a smile. “Starting to rain harder.” He held out a dirt-smeared palm to catch the drops. “You’d better go in now.”

  “Yes…I think you’re right. Talk to you another time, Leo.”

  “I’m always here.” Leo went back to work, while Stephen ducked his head and hurried toward the house. This time, he made no effort to keep his feet out of the water, and by the time he got to the top of the stone steps, his shoes were sodden. The front door was unlocked, allowing him to slip in without knocking or ringing the bell. He saw no one in the foyer or on the stairs, so he went up to his room. On his way, he passed the usual assortment of closed doors and empty spaces. How many rooms did Fairbourne House have, anyway? Surely more than any single family would need.

  After he’d changed into dry clothes, he decided to see if Justin might be around. He wasn’t in his burned-out room, for obvious reasons, nor was there any sign of him in the guest room he’d occupied after the fire. Curious, Stephen continued on, past Roark’s closed door and a large linen closet that stood partially open, suggesting that Ivy or Mrs. Mulgrave had been by recently.

  At one end of the hall he encountered another door that, he noticed, led to a narrow set of plain wooden stairs that went both up and down, probably installed for servants’ use when the house was originally built. Their quarters might even be above the family bedrooms in an attic-like space. Servants in the old days, his uncle had told him, were meant to appear when needed and—in contrast to modern staff members like Ivy—to be silent and invisible at all other times. Olive and Lucas had likely trod those stairs many times. Did Ivy, Leo, and Mrs. Mulgrave use them, too? Or was that just an outdated tradition no one cared about anymore? Justin, he felt sure, would be more reasonable and democratic than Roark about that particular issue.

  Finding no one to talk to, Stephen returned to his room and placed his laptop on the bedstand. While he scrolled more or less aimlessly, in search of light entertainment or an online movie to watch, the steady patter of the rain outside began to lull him into sleepiness. The shadows bathing the room, and the soft mattress on the bed didn’t help, either. Soon the images on his touch screen blurred and contracted as though he were staring at a gigantic kaleidoscope.

  “Stephen?” a woman’s voice addressed him just as he began to fall asleep. Startled, he lifted his head to see that the image on the screen had changed. The gay-themed romantic comedy he’d been watching had ended, apparently, and the site had gone onto another video. He must have dreamed someone saying his name—either that or the main character in the next clip shared one with him. Despite the need for sleep dragging him steadily toward the abyss, he forced his eyes open to watch the first few minutes.

  This one was no typical Hollywood concoction. A tall woman in a hooded black robe filled the frame. Her clear green eyes held Stephen’s with an almost hypnotic clarity, and the hand she thrust forward seemed to burst right through the screen. Stephen noticed waves of thick reddish hair tumbling from the corners of the hood. Amazing what technology could do, he thought.

  “Stephen, can you hear me? I’ve been calling you for hours.”

  “Yes,” Stephen said, sitting up straight. A glance around the room revealed nothing out of the ordinary. No one had entered the room. There was only this new film droning on and the rain hammering the house. “I can hear you. I’m sorry—I guess I drifted off for a moment.”

  “Perfectly understandable.” The woman smiled. “This is just the sort of day that encourages one to relax and float along in a dreamlike state, don’t you think?” Her manner was so warm and maternal that Stephen felt no fear whatsoever. She spoke with a touch of an accent—English, perhaps. It gave her words a lilting, poetic sound.

  Unlike the woman’s voice, Stephen’s came out stiff and hesitant, almost robotic. “Yes. It is.”

  “Please don’t let us disturb you,” the woman said. “We only wanted to welcome you to the family.”

  She stepped back so the laptop screen showed her entire body, and then she waved her arm, encased in a loose black sleeve. The rest of her outfit resembled a hooded monk’s cowl, complete with a length of silvery chain tied around her narrow waist. In response to the gesture, a small group of people wearing the same dark robes drifted forward. Their hoods were pulled up, too, so Stephen couldn’t see their faces. The broad shoulders on one of them reminded him of Leo. Their waists were cinched with ordinary rope, fraying around the thick knots.

  “That’s very kind of you,” Stephen said, fidgeting on the bed. “But really, I don’t consider myself part of your family. I have my own, after all. I’m only staying here until my uncle gets better.”

  The woman shook her head and spoke slowly, gently, as if to a crying child. “You no longer need him or any of them, dear. Now you are a member of ours.”

  One of the figures from the circle moved to stand beside the woman. He tilted his head so Stephen could see into the hood, and he recognized Roark. How had he gotten into the video? Wasn’t he still in the house somewhere?

  “It’s true,” Roark said, stretching out both arms. Somehow, his hands came through the screen and reached across the room to enfold Stephen’s fingers tightly in his. “Soon you’ll be a part of me forever. What a wonderful life we have ahead of us. Filled with love, money…and power. Plenty of power.”

  Stephen tried to tug his hands away, but found that he could not. Roark’s taut grip rendered him paralyzed and helpless. At least he could still speak.

  “But I’m not interested in power!”

  “Nonsense. Everyone is interested in power. And I do mean everyone.” Flashing his white teeth, Roark turned to the red-haired woman. “We woke you up because we all want you to meet my mother. Mother, this is Stephen. Isn’t he everything I promised?”

  Roark’s mother nodded. “You will be good for my son,” he said. “I knew it the moment I heard about you. That is why I sent you the book.”

 
“The book? You mean the one with the weird pictures and the strange writing inside it? I couldn’t read a single page! And the pictures were ugly. None of it made any sense!”

  “You’ll be able to understand it in time,” Roark’s mother said. “It takes practice and dedication. My son assures me you’re prepared to offer us both of those things. Obviously you’re a very special young man. We’re so happy to have you here with us. Fairbourne House has waited a long time for someone like you to arrive. Istharios will be pleased with you, too. I know he’ll love you just as much as Roark and I do.”

  “No! Please—I don’t want to read that awful book! I don’t want to learn that language, or stay in this house with Roark! And I don’t want that ugly snake near me!” Again Stephen tried to pull his hands away, but Roark held onto them tighter than ever. “Please, just let me go!”

  “I can understand why you’d feel nervous.” Roark’s mother continued to speak in that smooth, comforting tone. This time, it made Stephen’s eardrums throb. “Anyone would in your position. Change is so difficult for most people. But you’re a strong, bright young man. Roark assures me you’ll adapt to your new life just fine. All you have to do is turn over the book to us. Together, we can decipher its message. Then Istharios will speak to us again, after more than a hundred years of silence.”

  “I’m sorry—I don’t have it anymore. Someone stole it from the library. I thought maybe it was Roark.”

  “It’s all right. You don’t have to pretend any longer. We’re all very grateful to you for keeping it safe for us.”

  The circle of robed figures closed in tighter. For the first time, Stephen saw the faces they had concealed beneath their hoods. He was only mildly surprised to realize that everyone except Roark and Mrs. Fairbourne had hideous reptilian features with slitted, beady eyes. Stephen also saw that what he had assumed to be a chain around Mrs. Fairbourne’s waist was actually not made of metal at all, but another serpent—smaller than the one on the outside gate, but otherwise its replica in every way. It hissed and writhed against the folds of her robe, lashing its tail in excitement as the group drew together.

  “You must come with us now,” Roark’s mother said, while Roark tugged on his hands. “Where wind and rain meet moonlight and sunshine. There you will find all the answers. Roark will guide you.”

  Slowly, without the slightest effort on his part, Stephen felt himself lift from the bed and float toward the screen. Roark’s silken voice smoothed the way.

  “Mother’s right. Don’t be afraid. Soon we’ll be together, and Fairbourne House will be ours. We’ll help one another be strong. Everything we need to know is in the book.”

  The screen loomed closer as Roark’s relentless pull eased Stephen steadily from his world into theirs. Colors, robes, and faces blurred as the flickering pixels opened to receive him. His hands, extended in front of him and encased in Roark’s rigid fingers, had almost touched the surface of the screen when something inside spurred him to fight back one last time.

  Somehow, he found himself able to move again as he kicked out with both feet, flung his hands widely apart, and arched his back against the bed. His intention was to hurl Roark off balance, which he did. Roark fell backward into the screen, his fingers sliding over Stephen’s with a dry, rasping sound. When Stephen looked down, he saw that Roark’s fingers were covered with golden-brown scales.

  A flailing movement dislodged Stephen from the bed and sent him sprawling on the carpet with such force that his back teeth rattled. He cried out as pain shot through his entire body. For a second he thought he’d been hit by lightning and burned to a cinder, like the floor in Justin’s room.

  But no. He was alive. Roark, wearing ordinary street clothes again, was kneeling beside him, reaching out to steady him.

  “I won’t go,” he shouted, prepared to fight Roark off with his fists and his feet and even his teeth if he had to. “I’m not joining your mother and I won’t turn over that book! I don’t even have it anymore!”

  Roark gaped at him, bewildered. “My mother? What book? What are you talking about?”

  Panicking, Stephen rolled away from his hands. Roark’s skin had turned human again, but the masquerade didn’t fool him. “Leave me alone!”

  Roark’s voice remained calm. “Stephen, you had a nightmare. Open your eyes and give it a minute. You’ll snap out of it.”

  A nightmare? Stephen struggled against Roark’s hands as they pinned him flat on the floor. No, no, he wanted to scream, it had been so much more than a nightmare. Somehow he couldn’t find the words…at least not right away.

  “There-there was a book,” he finally managed to stutter. “I should have told you before, but I didn’t. I found it in the library. It was written in this weird language that looked like symbols. There were pictures, too—pictures of Istharios. He’s real, and he’s waiting. Your mother was here. She spoke to me from my computer just now. You were there, Roark, so you know it’s true! You can tell us what it says.”

  He felt Roark lifting him from the floor and setting him back on the bed. He writhed around for a while, struggling either to get away or get his bearings, whichever came first. Finally, the room shifted back to its regular focus. The laptop was playing an innocuous cat video with a bouncy piano tune as a soundtrack. Embarrassment quickly replaced his fear.

  “Stephen, look at me.” Roark shook him gently.

  “I’m all right now. Really. You can stop hovering over me. You were right. It was just a nightmare. It seemed real at the time, but now…I’m okay, I promise.”

  “Easy for you to say. You freaked me out for a minute there, Stephen. You seemed…I don’t know…possessed.”

  “That’s kind of melodramatic, don’t you think?” Stephen asked, trying to sound more confident than he felt. “I think I dozed off and had what’s called a hypnopompic hallucination—a waking dream. I remember studying those in psychology class back in college. My subconscious was trying to assimilate various events that took place over the last few days. Nothing mysterious about that at all.”

  “That does sort of make sense,” Roark had to admit.

  Stephen nodded as the last wisps of fog cleared from his mind. Exhaustion could do strange things to a person, he knew, and obviously he was no exception. “When I think about it, every element of the dream relates to something I discussed with at least one person in this house.”

  “You mentioned both my mother and a strange book,” Roark pressed.

  “Did I?” Stephen decided to play naive about that. He reached up to massage the space between his eyebrows. His head was still thumping, though not as badly as it had during his dream, hallucination, or whatever it had been. “Well, Malcolm told me in the car that your mother moved to England, so it was fresh in my mind. And it makes sense the library would factor in somehow. It’s the whole reason I’m here. Plus my uncle got hurt in the library and I’ve just been to visit him.”

  “So you’re subconsciously inclined to think of it as a dangerous place,” Roark summarized. “I have to admit, that’s probably wise of you.”

  “Yeah. I’ll probably steer clear of ladders for a while, too.” Stephen tried to laugh it off, but Roark remained serious.

  “You mentioned a book written in an unusual language. You said you didn’t have it anymore. What did you mean?”

  “I’m not sure I know. Maybe I didn’t mean anything. It was a pretty crazy dream.” In the back of his mind, Stephen heard his uncle’s voice urging his to come clean. The book belonged to the Fairbournes, after all—maybe one of them had taken it for some legitimate purpose. If someone really had stolen it, they had a right to know that, too. He cleared his throat. “No, wait. I do remember talking about the book. It was in my dream, but it isn’t something I imagined. I really did find one like it in the library—and it really did disappear.”

  He had Roark’s attention now—no question about that. “Go on.”

  “It was a small book in a dark leather binding, tied
up with ribbons. It had pictures in it—drawings of strange beings wearing hoods and standing in a circle. The words were written in some kind of code. Symbols and weird marks, but not letters as we know them. I have no idea what it might have said.”

  “And you didn’t think you should show it to anyone?” Roark pressed, clearly annoyed. “Not even your uncle?”

  “I meant to,” Stephen retorted, annoyed at having to defend himself against his accusations. Who was Roark to interrogate him? He hadn’t even come to the library to check on their progress. At least Justin had done that much. “My uncle had a system. He told me to put aside anything I couldn’t immediately value or identify. We were going to take a second look at those after we’d finished the easier stuff. The idea was to work quickly and assess how big the job would turn out to be.”

  “So you set this unusual book aside? Do you mean you hid it?”

  “No. Well…not exactly. I put it down on the table and stacked a few other books on top of it.” Stephen recalled how, for some reason, the book and its odd artwork made him nervous. How he wanted to know more about it, but at the same time he didn’t want to look at it directly. How it made him deceitful.

  “So where is it now?” Roark’s body became tense, his tone clipped and impatient. “You said it was missing. Is that true?”

  “All I know is that I didn’t see it again after my uncle was hurt. I guess it might still be there—maybe it fell on the floor or one of the paramedics moved it during the confusion.”

  Roark clenched his fists and looked up at the ceiling as if he half-expected to see the volume dangling from the overhead light fixture. “You should have told someone sooner. It could be anywhere by now!”

  “I didn’t say anything because I thought maybe one of you took it, or even your cousin Malcolm. It’s your book, after all. Not mine. And I can’t imagine the paramedics stealing it. Even if they didn’t have professional ethics that would prevent that, they were busy attending to my Uncle Vernon.” He found himself growing annoyed at Roark’s huffy manner. “Besides, I was worried about my uncle. It slipped my mind. Under the circumstances, you can’t really blame me for being distracted.”