Darkwater by Catherine Fisher Page B

other sat by the window, looking out. He was talking. “I would have died if it hadn’t been for you,” he was saying.
    Sarah was alone; the tramp had vanished. Now the twin on the bed sat slowly up. He was staring at her.
    â€œTom,” he said softly. “She’s back.”
    Tom turned. They were identical, both about her age. “I can’t see anyone.”
    â€œShe’s here.” The other boy stood. There was something misty in his outline. He blurred as he reached out to touch her, and she twisted away with a hiss of fear as his hand became the paw of a black cat, soft on her fingers.
    Then, a long time later, she was dreaming of the beach. It was gray and raining, and the gulls screamed over her head. Azrael sat on a rock elegantly, as if it were a throne. He wore his dark expensive coat, and behind him stood a huge grandfather clock—the one from the oak dining room—and it ticked, but its tick wasn’t mechanical, it was a human voice, infinitely weary, repeating the same words over and over. “Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.”
    She stepped nearer. “Is that . . . ?”
    Azrael smiled sadly. “Your grandfather, I’m afraid. Doomed to be trapped in eternal torment. Until, of course, your actions release him. Oh, and your father. Do you want to see him?”
    â€œYes,” she breathed.
    The rain drifted apart. She saw him lying on the sofa
in Darkwater Hall, wrapped warmly in cashmere and wool. A great fire blazed in the grate. He poured tea into a vast porcelain cup.
    Azrael came over to her. “You’ll see. It will be worth it.” He put a small card into her hand. “But I will come for you, Sarah. Wherever you go, wherever you think you can run, there’ll be no escaping me. No one ever does. The experiment has to run to the end.”
    The mist closed around him. A small beetle ran into a hole in the sand.
    She turned. Mrs. Hubbard put the cane into her hand. “You’re a menial!” She took a huge pinch of snuff out of an open desk. “What are you?”
    Silent, Sarah watched the cane. It grew a tail, and back legs.
    â€œWhat are you?” Mrs. Hubbard snapped ominously.
    Front paws. A great head, its jaws wet and slobbering, growling, the red eyes opening, nostrils fuming with smoke, and as she turned, it sprang on her and she screamed, and yelled, “A menial!”

    Sarah opened her eyes.
    She was soaked with sweat. The fire was out, a gray gather of ashes, and through the curtains the dimness of a winter afternoon filtered.
    She sat up, dressed in a furious rush, and ran down the stairs.
    The servants’ hall was empty. Here too the fire was out. There was no sign of the cook and nothing to eat; she picked up some bread from the table, but it was stale, rock hard. Annoyed, she flung it at the ashes.
    â€œScrab!” she yelled.
    No one answered.
    The library was a mess. Somehow the wind had gotten in and whipped everything out of order; it would take days just to sort it out. Dumping armfuls of pamphlets on the desk she marched through to the laboratory, and flung the door open.
    The room was completely empty.
    She stared in disbelief. It was all gone: the benches, alembics, astrolabes, boxes, charts. The walls were bare. Even the telescope had gone. All she saw was a dusty space, with an old clock ticking on the mantelshelf and the curtains thick with cobwebs. As if none of it had ever been here at all.
    â€œAzrael?” she whispered.
    A cold fear moved inside her, a sickening emptiness in her stomach.
    She turned and ran out, into other rooms. Everywhere it was the same. The house was deserted. And more than that, it was transformed. Time had come back. Decay had resumed. It was a palace festooned with webs, the doors warped from long neglect, the Trevelyan portraits lost under grime. In the hall the black-and-white tiles were cracked, choked with leaf dust and melted snow that gusted