I got back from town late on bonfire night, having filed a postal request with the National Archives for the most recent architectural drawings of the convent. I’d claimed it was for a ‘school project’, because it never hurt to pretend to be twelve in these situations. Having endured a full day of lectures, seminars and hockey practice, I was so exhausted that I fell asleep reading.
The next thing I knew, I was being shaken awake by Alice.
Alice; wide-eyed, shaking, convulsing, spittle around the corners of her mouth, drenched in blue-ish shadow, hands outstretched to my neck, rasping, ‘I need your blood.’
I propped myself up on to my elbows, sure I’d misheard. ‘You . . .what?’
She sank to her knees, jaw cracking repeatedly as she gurned and shuddered like a dying spider. ‘I did . . . a ritual . . . my soul. It’s . . . split in two. Explain . . . later. Please, Lottie,ple-e-e-ease–’
Conflicting emotions rattled through me.
First, excitement. This was a lead. A big one.
Second, genuine concern for Alice; for the cartoon villain, for the girl who made me cry on my birthday. She looked so afraid, and it made me afraid for her. The pang of worry had an unusual texture to it, somehow deeper and grainier than it should have been.
Third, belief. She was in no state to explain to me why she needed the blood, what this soul-splitting ritual entailed, and yet I knew in the very roots of myself that it was true, and it was important – and it had something to do with what had been happening to me.
Even though I was awake, glimpses of another dream-life flitted through my mind: illuminated manuscripts, wooded glades, falling bodies. Stinging nettles, swarms of moths, vials of blood, red spatters on a white cornette.
The ruby in my throat burned hotter than a poker in a forge.
The pain rendered me momentarily useless. I fell to my knees beside Alice, breathless, the taste of blood in my mouth, as though the poker had pierced my neck, a melting blade I had fallen upon. It was so intense, so absolute, that I couldn’t even cry out.
I knew, without knowing how I knew, that the only way to stop it was to help Alice.
It was all connected, somehow.
It was all in the horrifying bones of Carvell. In its flesh and sinews, ancient and cruel.
I crawled to the small drawer in my writing desk, pulled out the eight-centimetre Damascus-steel pocketknife engraved with my family crest, tore it from its tan leather sheath, and pressed the very tip of the blade into the palm of my hand until it drew a few crimson beads.
Rasping and writhing, Alice handed me one of the vials I recognised from her briefcase. This one was filled with strange ingredients and smelled of elderflower cordial. I wordlessly added the blood and passed it back to her.
She drank it greedily, desperately, as though she’d been walking through the desert for a hundred years in search of this very tonic. For a moment her shaking stilled, her franticness eased, and all the tension seeped out of her body.
Then the screaming began.
It was like nothing I’d ever heard; like her bones were being passed through a meat grinder, like her skin was being flayed strip by strip, like she was watching everyone she’d ever loved die a slow and painful death.
Panic rose in my chest. Had I done it wrong? Had I given too much blood?
I tried to usher her away from the blunt corners of her desk, worried she’d slam her temples into it in her fit of agony, but the writhing was too intense. I couldn’t get a solid grip on her arms, and she whipped the back of her hand into my face with a sharp thwack. I struggled to bite back a cry, but my teeth jammed down on to my tongue and made it bleed.
After the longest minute of my life, she half slumped on the floor like a marionette doll whose strings had been cut. I eased towards her, holding out a tentative hand.
‘Alice?’
Slowly, too slowly, she tilted her head to one side until her blood-red eyes locked on to mine.
In a low, monstrous voice, she snarled, ‘I’m going to fuckingkill you.’
Heart lurching, I climbed to my feet and ran.
But the door was locked.
I jimmied the handle, remembered with a sharp drop of my stomach that as part of the sleepwalking solution, Alice had agreed to hide my key under her mattress.
Alice was slowly climbing to her feet, unfurling her limbs like a baby deer. I took a deep breath and sprinted towards her, knocking her to the ground with a thump of bodies. I scrambled to my feet, shoved my hand under her mattress, and my fingers closed around the key.