He wanted to run. He wanted to scream.
But he was trapped as surely as had he been tied to one of those ancient trunks, and even as the jewelled horn began to glow with an otherworldly incandescence he knew that he was incapable of acting to save himself–this was the true and pitiful measure of his worth–for something unspeakable was about to happen and he should hide, pull the blankets over his head, or better still, his legs should give full measure to the shrieking in his mind and he should run, run, run!
* * * *
Kevin awoke feeling frayed at the edges and travel-weary. He wanted to vomit. The thick, putrid sweat of his nightmares had congealed on his brow and dampened his sheets. Disgusting. Frigging unicorns, what a childish thing to dream about! His eyes jumped between the sun-edged drapes and the bedroom door, which was slightly ajar, as if half expecting a legion of demons to be leering over his expected demise–but this was not so.
“A dream,” he reassured himself. “It’s only a dream, old sport! Don’t be more wretched than your weakness already demands.”
However, instead of ringing for his breakfast tray, which he always did upon first waking, he drew the covers aside and swung his feet down to feel for his slippers. These were positioned meticulously alongside the bed every night
after
brushing his teeth and
before
switching off the main light. For some reason this morning, his feet tingled with a mild form of pins-and-needles, and so he examined them carefully lest there be some recurrence of the problem with his circulation. All the doctors’ warnings had been noted. ‘You have poor circulation, Mr Jenkins, and a weak heart. Taken together, these may lead to some unfortunate consequences. You must be vigilant.’ But no, there was nothing amiss save a pink blush one ordinarily associated with an overly hot bath, and so he consigned his feet to the slippers’ lambskin comfort and padded over to the window. It was only when he reached the bay window and tugged aside the drapes that he realised how easily he had crossed the distance.
Balmy sunlight splashed virtually
unnoticed against the back of his head as he stared back at his bed. It was fifteen or so steps away. In his customary frailty, it normally took him almost a minute to cross the floor and rest weakly against the window ledge, gathering his strength for the simple task of opening the heavy drapes. “Not today,” he muttered darkly. “Oh, rather too easy.” Quite deliberately, he gave his arm a prolonged pinch.
It hurt.
It hurt like the blazes, because he was used to numb nerve-endings from all the medication and had therefore given himself a very firm pinch.
“By golly gosh!” he whispered, a phrase he had picked up from a book. A brief fumbling at the catch had the window open and he sucked in a great breath. “Fine morning, old
sprout. Fine and fresh.”
The way he was feeling, he reflected
with a thrill, he should be skipping about like a frisky lamb down there on the lawn–and that was not all. The asthmatic tightness in his chest that usually accompanied such a breath was strangely, wonderfully absent. He tried again, just to be sure. In through the nose and out through the mouth. Wonderful, clean country air flooded into the very roots of his lungs, with nary a rattle nor a wheeze. Elation! Goodness, what was this? An intoxicating bubbling of oxygen through his veins? There must be a catch, an imminent collapse, a just recompense for this shocking feeling of
health
. Kevin turned the unfamiliar word over in his mind. Years of infirmity had long since served to shrivel any such hope. Too many prognoses, too much medicine had rattled down his throat. No, doom had long since been carved on his gravestone by the insuperable march of bad genes–betrayed at every turn by his body, there could be no hope.
“What are you
doing?
”
The harsh question slashed across
Kevin’s thoughts, making him cringe against the box seat under the window.
“Out of bed, old
carrot-top?” No voice could possibly contain as much sarcasm as his brother’s. “Careful by that window. Father would be beside himself should anything
befall
you, brother dearest.”
Kevin
winced at the bad pun. “What do you want, Brian?”
“Now, is that any way to greet your
dear brother?” Sinking onto the box seat, the younger brother faced the older across the room. As the question was clearly rhetorical and Kevin was wise enough not to reply, not even so much as to grumble under his breath, Brian continued, “I was just coming to see you. One of the layabout servants thought he heard you cry out, so I reminded myself of my care and duty towards my only brother, and hastened here.”
“How very kind of you.”
Brian stared at Kevin, but there was no answering scorn in the low tones. To that end he had supplied many lessons in brutality and submission in years past. “I had not expected to find you out of bed.”
“I was just opening the curtains.”
“I thought you usually had the servants do that? Just like they change your nappies.”
Kevin
flushed at this untruth, but made no reply. That would just encourage Brian.
“I have come to inform you, brother,
” Brian added, “that I shall be undertaking an extended trip–as part of my degree course. You shall not see me for some time. I shall miss your company, naturally, as much as I should miss a suppurating pustule on a whore’s backside. But the great wide world is calling.”
“Where are you going?”
“Ah–New York.” He caught himself after the stumble and added, “Now, Father has made all arrangements for your care while I am away. He too has a business trip planned. We trust that you can entertain yourself in our absence?”
“Indeed.”
“I wish you’d speak up, you little weasel!”
“I said, ‘Indeed’.”
Brian’s expression suggested the study of a particularly loathsome species of fungus; Kevin dropped his gaze at once, hoping his brother would not notice that anything was different. He held his breath.
“Father and I depart on the three o’clock train,” Brian announced at last.
Kevin secretly wished it were a permanent departure, and that Father and Brian might by some stroke of luck leap hand in hand beneath the train, but said carefully, “I wish you both good trips.”
“I know what you’re thinking!” Brian belched a suffocating wave of
garlic. “Ah, good lunch!”
Kevin frowned. Now he could smell garlic? He thought his sense of smell had been ruined by his medication.
“Don’t think you can fool me,” said his brother. “Father will be back tomorrow–and you well know the virtues of obedience, don’t you, little brother?”
A mute nod constituted the only safe reply.
“I hope you have a
nice
time.” His tone was as warm as an invitation to the gallows. Kevin shivered at his brother’s departure, as if suddenly taken with an immedicable chill that centred on his frail heart. Brian used to be nasty. These days he was downright evil.
Funny, he thought, that business about New York.
He was no idiot. Brian was going nowhere near New York. Why the lie? That said–he tut-tutted under his breath–there were undoubtedly many Jenkins secrets he was not party to. And his day was now ruined. Kevin stumped over to the bed in a right old sulk. Best get on with it.
* * * *
Three days and half a night later, that feeling of haleness was the last thing on Kevin’s mind. He had not forgotten. But there were more pressing matters afoot.
Tonight was the night.
“Relax,” he instructed himself, as sternly as a headmaster castigating a recalcitrant student. “It’s nothing but a little stroll downstairs. I’ll mosey on down to the Blue Room …”
He froze as something creaked out in the hallway. Old houses like this were full of such noises.
Kevin might have retched, but there was nothing left to expel after a wretched hour earlier spent hanging over the toilet bowl. His attempted chuckle was more a dull wheeze–shockingly loud against midnight’s silence–and he clutched his pillow for comfort. His imagination turned the shadows beneath the drapes into the scaly paws of hidden ogres. Was the utter stillness out there comforting, or merely terrifying? Too many nights he had lain thus, awaiting the dreaded creak of Father’s tread in the hallway.
With a convulsive surge, he thrust the bedclothes aside, murmuring, “Trumpet sounds the charge
, Jenkins.”
Once he had forced himself into motion,
donning his slippers and belting his favourite bathrobe, of a dark colour he imagined was suitable for sneaking about at night, he found the fear easier to cope with. There was a kind of momentum. If you did not stop to think about it, you might find yourself at the head of the stairs. Then you might scurry on–losing several years to a creaky stair three quarters of the way down–and duck behind the armour exhibit on the landing. The apparel of several burly knights was on display there, behind which he easily concealed himself. Pant and wheeze for a minute. Before the fear of discovery spread like snake venom into the cardiovascular system, you might just lurch forward and try the handle to the smoking room, where the men used to gather for cigars and port after dinner. Round the overstuffed armchairs and a squat leather sofa, ease open the oak-carved double doors and stop to catch your breath before the patch of moonlight that illuminated the gigantic dining table and its many straight-backed chairs where, on the rare occasions he was invited, he had dined from silver platters. Such were Father’s pretensions.
In the luminous half-light, his momentum vanished.
Kevin curled in towards himself, hugging his thin body as the tremors started in his calves and rocketed into his gut with familiar, sickly glee. For several interminable minutes he stood swaying in his frayed old bathrobe, all his inner resources concentrated upon the awful, impending explosion brewing in his bowels. No, he must hold on, he must deny it. He broke into a cold sweat. He must dam up the evidence. There was no toilet nearby. Failure was unthinkable.
Just when the sensation had become unbearable, when he had already given up the battle and was about to succumb to the unclenching of vital muscles, something altogether unexpected
happened. For a fraction of a second, he thought he saw the Unicorn in the moonbeam–which was impossible, or the moonlight was playing tricks with his imagination–but certainly he thought … that jutting horn … Kevin rubbed his eyes and blinked a couple of times, startled and perturbed to discover that there was no sodden warmth spreading down his leg, that the tremors had stopped, and that his conviction–never firm to begin with–had returned in full flood. Before he knew it, he had passed through the light and into the shadows obscuring the far end of the room. The shutters were always closed here, for this was Father’s place and he detested direct sunlight when he was eating. A backward glance showed there was nothing in the moonbeam.
Kevin
scratched the pitiful stubble on his chin. His fear was as real as its abrupt departure. Why would he think of the Unicorn now? Why a Unicorn at all? It made no sense. Perhaps the Unicorn was a construct of his imagination, a powerful, capable alter ego? He recalled reading something about those who had a history of abuse developing alternate manifestations of their personality. Maybe he was a crackpot after all! A Unicorn? Ah, no, he might be more resourceful than he thought!
Congratulating himself upon the discovery of a hitherto unidentified strength of character,
Kevin moved to the wood-panelled back wall and examined it from close range.
He raised his hand.
What if he were wrong? What if that flash of inspiration had been …
tap, tap
… wide of the mark?
Tap
. What if the mildewed old plans were inaccurate by modern standards?
Tap, tap
. He had examined so many drawings and schematics of Pitterdown Manor, that the different floors and rooms had begun to blur in his mind. A secret tunnel was improbable …
tap, tock!
Kevin stared at the mahogany panel as though it had transmogrified into a viper. It was hollow–no mistaking that sound. Vindication!
The spring, when he finally found it, was ingeniously worked into a stylised leaf alongside the wood-carved panel. At a simple touch
, a section five feet tall and one wide slid silently aside to reveal a gloomy recess behind.
“Great,” he groaned, surveying the cobwebbed interior. “I hate spiders!”
Kevin was terrified of all insects and creeping creatures, and harboured a strong dislike for dark, enclosed spaces. As with all his weaknesses, he hated himself the more for admitting to them. Shame tinged the frustrated rebukes tripping off his tongue, surrounding him with mocking echoes as stepped up into the gap to clear the way with his hands. He wiped the cobwebs on his gown with a shudder. Ah, he could dimly make out a narrow staircase leading upwards into the wall. There might be rats, or worse, cockroaches! It had crossed his mind that he should bring a candle–Pitterdown Manor had no torches–but the light might be detected through a gap in the secret passageway. Keeping one hand against the wall and the other before him, he proceeded a-quiver up the stairs and turned the corner.