On his way from their room - where he left Jack and to his own devices, because it was obvious his friend was ... overwhelmed - Milton paused in front of a wall of portraits. He never took too long walking this stretch of hallway. There was a bad feeling just here. Before, he'd thought it to be an amalgamation of the angle of the walls, the unsettling effect of the huge, darkened mirror at one end, picking up the small movements of one's own body and reflecting them back in strange relief. The quick whiteness of a hand protruding from a sleeve, disembodied. How pale one's face looked, how it pulled the eyes back into shadowed hollows. The mirror turned all into ghosts.
This time, passing the mirror, quickening his step, Milton paused, arrested by a face.
"Oh..."
Milton exhaled the word, slowed, stopped. He turned full to face her.
The portrait of a beautiful young girl.
It wasn't her beauty that stopped him. Yes, her face was perfect, but it was her expression that drew him in. She stood, her body at a slight angle, facing front. A slim girl, no more than a teenager Milton guessed. The solemn bow of her mouth was unrouged. Her dark hair was drawn back from the pale oval of her face, and she wore no wig. Her white dress, virginal, dipped low on her chest. And her eyes...
Dark as marsh-pools they stared straight from the canvas, knowing and direct. There was something plaintive in them too. Looking at paintings like this, Milton often felt the press of time, could feel the years in the expressions of the subjects. In exactly this way, he always thought, they looked at the artist. Centuries ago they held themselves just like this for the painter, and he froze them and varnished them in place.
It was not so with this one.
There was something alarmingly present about this girl's expression. She's not looking at the portraitist, Milton thought. She's looking at me.
Milton moved his eyes away and lit upon another portrait just below. This one showed three girls, and looking closer Milton recognised the dark-eyed girl in the middle. Sisters, he thought. He leaned in, the tip of his nose almost touching the canvas.
"How many of you are still here?" he murmured.
"She's asking us to leave."
Milton almost jumped out of his skin at the voice behind him. He turned around.
Kim stood in front of the dark mirror at the end of the hallway.
Milton sighed, "Kim. Don't sneak up like that... That was almost the end of me."
"I'm sorry. It's the carpets." Kim moved closer, "Isla has asked me to leave. Says it's not safe for me."
"Why?"
Kim didn't answer. Instead she stared at the wall of portraits for a while, biting on her lower lip. He swore she mumbled something that sounded like Emily. When she finally faced him again, Milton saw her mouth turned down at the corners, lines of worry knotting her forehead.
"I have a terrible feeling that we won't leave this place," she said quietly. "Ever."
Milton returned to Jack's room to find the black belt looking listless and defeated. His hair was wet from the shower, but he hadn't bothered to clean up the mess on the bed. He toyed absently with the a piece of black cord.
"I'm worried about you," Milton said eventually.
Jack glanced sideways at him, "Don't. I'm fine."
"Thing is, I don't think you are." Milton sat down wearily on the edge of the bed. "I know how you deal when you think you failed, Jack. Not... very well."
"I haven't failed her!"
Milton bit back the response of 'I haven't said anything about her.' Jack dropped the black cord back onto the table and Milton thought it looked like one of his bracelets, only broken, and turned to face his friend.
He looked frightening.
You haven't slept properly in days, Milton thought, taking in Jack's pallor, the dark shadows beneath his eyes. You haven't eaten properly since I mentioned the possibility of drugs. And you are avoiding Kim. Why is that?
Milton's gaze dropped, "Your hands are shaking. It's ok to be- befuddled. And you don't always have to be the hero-"
Jack clenched his fists, "I am not befuddled. I am not so quick to fall to superstition. Yes, I have yet to find anything, but the operative here is yet. Yet. I will find out what is happening here, in this house, to all of us."
"Maybe we should consider-"
"Did you know that Angus is sniffing around Kim? Not just a friendly walkabout with a neighbor's guest either. He waited for her this morning and then was there to fish her out of the lake!"
Jack's face was even more frightening now. The usual self-assured and quick smile was gone. Instead he a harsh scowl on his face that shadowed his eyes into dark points and his jaw jutted from being clenched so hard. He was so angry...
"Jack... Angus is not-"
"Milton, I get that you are scared, but this is just- And she- and he was right there!"
He jumped form the bed and grabbed his sunglasses on the way out.
"Where you are going?"
"Out!"
"Jack!
Milton stood and walked to the window. A minute later he saw Jack's tall form stalking across the gravel and into the grounds. He hoped he planned on coming back.
For his part, Milton considered asking the Laird to cancel the gathering. He hoped they'd get tickets soon, but somehow felt Kim's earlier pessimism: he didn't think there'd be any tickets out...
A blessedly cool evening breeze swept over Jack as he left the House. Burying his hands deep in the pockets of his pants he walked blindly down the driveway and took a sharp right, the gravel changing to grass, he moved now with little sound. Pausing, he turned back to look at Turlann estate. The breeze moved the wet hair on his forehead and stung his eyes. Coldly he took it all in.
Jack was not a stranger to being moved by beauty. But he was not used to standing and appreciating it. He looked over the building before him, taking it different architectural detail, trying to see the small parts instead of the whole. The whole of the manor was... imposing... Strange... Oppressive...
He focused hard on the proper terms: portico, dormer windows in servants quarters, side-gabled roof, extension, Jacobethan, Tudor arches, high chimneys, characteristic balustrades... It helped that he read the brochure on this very place not long ago.
Even as the facts ran smoothly through his mind, he found himself focusing much, much harder than necessary, if only to drown out the only screaming thought based in no way on fact at all (and yet by far the loudest)-
It said, the House is Looking at you.
It said: Run.
Jack physically shook off the thought. Pulling at his hair harder, he continued deeper into the grounds. Head down, mind working over the maddeningly graphic dreams, he barely registered the small building that appeared in front of him, half hidden by trees.
The groundskeepers shed.
Kim curled up in an armchair in the vast drawing room where they had first met Lady McKrupnick and arranged Isla's books on the table beside her. She chose one and began to read.
It was an old book, perhaps not as old as the House, but close. The pages were delicate and musty, the print faded to sepia. Kim waded through the archaic language, some words stained into to oblivion. Old magic.
Spells to bring a lost love back. Spells to start fires.
Kim turned the pages, fascinated.
Impossible things, soil to gold, spells to birth a Chimera.
Kim came upon an illustration and paused. The lithograph showed a girl asleep in a four poster bed. Standing over her was a figure, its face was nothing, dark as a hood. Kim read: 'The dead who have not pafsed wifh to take a living body as their own.' An incantation followed, to be repeated three times before sleep to guard the mind from possession.
Kim shivered and turned the page. The next image was of two men, almost identical, standing side by side. Instead of a mouth, the figure on the left had only empty space. 'Mimicry', said the heading.
'The dead may take the form of the living. The doppelganger can not fpeak.'
The spell below, in Latin, promised to 'bring the foul creature to its true form'.
She was so absorbed in the book that when it dawned on Kim that she was being watched, she found that she couldn't recall how long the feeling had been there. Eyes in the room, somewhere, locked on her. Kim's skin prickled and her mouth went dry. Flashing into her brain, Kim saw the eyes of the girl in the portrait. She laid the book down carefully.
"Aimil?" she said.
The rusted hinges gave easily when Jack put his shoulder to the door. Pale light streamed into the shed. Jack waited for his eyes to adjust.
The shed was low ceilinged, a single room. One wall of tools over a workbench. A chair. A small portable television and a dartboard.
Jack raked the room impatiently for something of interest, and his eye caught a dusty shaft of light glinting off a bottle on the windowsill.
Ah. Not exactly what he had been looking for, but definitely something he could use.
Jack lifted the bottle and held it up to the light. Whiskey. Alcohol still was something forbidden. Not that he hadn't tried, but nothing this strong before. A few times he drank wine and beer, he didn't quite like the headaches ant tiredness afterwards. But he would have taken anything at that moment to quiet the incessant buzz of want and fear inside his head. Nothing had ever packed such a punch to his ego like these past days' events.
Jack unscrewed the lid and took a deep swallow straight from the bottle. He winced as the alcohol burned his throat, but it was soon replaced by a warming numbness in his chest and he raised the bottle to his lips again.
Just enough to dull this for a little while. Just enough to take the edge off the fear. Just enough to stop thinking of her like that...
After over an hour, during which he unsuccessfully argued with the Laird about cancellation, Milton accepted the fact that he would have to go after Jack. Cursing, he descended the main staircase with reluctant gait, then paused as he heard a voice.
The low murmur of conversation. It came from the drawing room. Straining to hear, Milton recognised one of the voices as Kim's. He walked over to the door and pushed it open. The voices stopped abruptly.
Kim looked up quickly as Milton entered, a look of guilt on her pale face. Milton recalled his young niece, at four, caught drawing on the wallpaper. The same look, when he walked in.
"Kim..."
She hadn't said anything. Watched him, as he stood awkwardly in the doorway.
"Who... Were you talking to someone?"
Kim shook her head slowly.
"Reading to myself," she explained, smiling wanly and holding up a book. "It's so awfully quiet here. It helps to break the silence."
"Where are Jerry and Rudy?"
"Still trying to find out if the monster is real," she shuddered. "I told them to avoid the pier, but I might have added to this enthusiasm with my unexpected morning swim." She shrugged at this and Milton felt her loneliness like it was a visible hall around her.
"Right," Milton hesitated. He thought to go and sit with her, but decided against it. Jack needed him more.
"I'm going to go outside. It's a bit stuffy in here."
Kim nodded and returned to her book. Milton backed out of the room.
He realised why he didn't want to sit with Kim with a wave of self disgust. Something in her eyes had frightened him. He wanted to get away from her.
Milton was sitting at the bottom of the stone steps to the main door watching the light draining from the sky when he heard a stirring in the forest. Footsteps. Milton stared into the treeline, immediately on guard.
"Jack?" he called hopefully.
He relaxed, relieved, as it was Jack who emerged from the forest and walked stiffly towards him. He stopped and stood beside Milton.
"Oh, hello," Milton, spooked by his interaction with Kim, tried hard not to let on how glad he was to see Jack.
"Mhgf..." said Jack. They both stayed quiet, watching the sky. When the last veins of light disappeared Milton got up to go back inside.
"Coming?"
Jack turned to face him, "Hmm?"
"I said, are you coming in?"
Jack blinked slowly, "Inside?"
Milton stared at him, catching the unmistakable scent of whiskey on his breath. He narrowed his eyes, "Jack... Are you drunk?"
"I have been drinking." Jack was fighting hard to retain his aloof demeanor through a fog of alcohol.
"My god. I haven't seen you drunk in the entire time I've known you," Milton looked half amused, half concerned. Was this how Jack chose to deal with stress? It was so hugely out of character for Jack to allow himself to lose control in this way. Milton wondered if he should call Rudy.
"Don't," even under the effects of the whiskey Jack could read him like a book. "No need to call Rudy. M'fine. 'Least... I will be."
Before Milton could respond, a look of panic crossed Jack's placid features, "Where's Kim? Is she alright?"
"Yes Jack. She's fine. She's in the drawing room reading."
"Right. Great. That's great. I'm glad she's fine. Milton-" Jack leaned in conspiratively. "I want to tell you something."
"Oh dear god," Milton was more than a little worried about what would come next.
"I've been feeling unusual."
"Of course you have, Jack. We all have."
"No. I mean, I've been having..." Jack looked disgusted, "...Feelings."
"And you're willing to discuss them? Well done. Whiskey, was it?"
Jack's eyes began to cloud over, "Yes. A... a lot. But Milton, listen. The dream. My dream, the first night. It was about... Kim."
Milton's eyebrows almost disappeared into his hairline, "About Kim? Our Kim? Black belt and a cheerleader?"
Jack nodded and regretted it. The movement made his head spin, "And it was... You know. That sort of dream. That people have."
Horny dreams... Jack had horny dreams about Kim. Which was... Milton's now resided somewhere around the back of his neck, "Are you sure?"
"Yes." Jack frowned. "I'm not enjoying this feeling. I'd like it to stop."
"Well, I mean," Milton grasped for the words to reassure his friend, "It's normal, right? I mean, we are all teens... And... We're all a bit shaken by what's been happening, and I suppose that being in such close quarters with somebody, feelings develop and all that, but I'm sure once we get back home it'll all-" He realised that he was babbling and stopped. Jack's eyes were entirely unfocused.
"No. Not th' Kim thing. The drunk thing. It was nice for a while but now it's gotten-"
It was nice for a while? Milton was redder than red. He so didn't want to know this about his friends...
Jack swallowed hard and stared pointedly into the middle distance, "I think I'm going to be sick."
He swayed and almost fell. Milton caught him around the waist as he leaned forward and retched.
"If you manage to actually throw up I'll be amazed," Milton said grimly, holding him steady. "I haven't seen you eat today at all."
Jack's body convulsed as he vomited pure whiskey onto Milton's shoes.
Milton looked down.
"Brilliant."
"There," said Jack, sounding much more like his usual self. "Are you amazed?"