Page 87 of The Fulbourn: Pitch & Sickle

He was not going to dare use the flame to clear a path, tempting as it was.

‘Just one moment,’ Silas said.

Pitch halted, realising he’d set far too rapid a pace. Silas was a ways back, half a dozen steps or so, but he was upright and seemingly in control of his faculties. He stood with both hands braced against the wall. Or, at least, Pitch supposed it was the wall, for the ankou’s hands were hidden beneath the swathe of greenery.

‘Do you need to rest?’ Pitch glanced up ahead, where there appeared to be a widening of the passageway at last.

‘No. I’m fine.’ His cauterised wounds were ugly swells of red, but there was no sign of fresh blood flow.

‘Then what are you doing?’ Pitch’s frustration seeped into his words.

The ankou shook his head. ‘I can hear something behind these walls. The whispers are real, I’m sure now. The despair…it’s…familiar.’

‘Despair?’

Silas nodded, standing straighter than he’d done yet since the Dullahan’s attack. ‘All of the lost souls have a trace of it, and with the teratisms it’s overwhelming.’

‘So there are teratisms behind that wall?’

‘No. But I believe there are lost souls…a large amount of them.’ He cocked his head. ‘I’m beginning to wonder if it might explain why it’s so bloody quiet upstairs. I think maybe the lost souls are all trapped down here.’

‘The dead from the asylum are down here in the Sanctuary?’

Silas had said he thought it strange such a place as the Fulbourn had no ghosts, something Pitch had to agree with. If death and despair did not exist there, then it should exist nowhere else.

‘Yes…well, perhaps.’ Silas adjusted the front of his shirt, which was mostly in one piece, though sweat and pink smears made it cling to his chest. ‘Shit, I really don’t know for sure. Normally I hear a melody. Maybe this is illusion too.’

‘Deception seems to be favoured by the sorceress.’ Pitch discarded the torch, the flame all but extinguished, but the ivy held a faint glow, a sickly green that did Silas’s unhealthy hue no favours. ‘She’s likely passing the time sending us on wild-goose chases while she waits for her charming family to arrive and do with us what they will.’

A screech tore through the castle, like that of a pig stepping on a trap.

‘Is that one of yours?’ Pitch shook his head, trying to dislodge the ringing in his ears.

‘I’m afraid so. They’ve come out of nowhere. I had no chance to tell you before they were on us. They’re close.’

Another cry, harsh as sheets of tin dragging against one another, ricocheted off the stonework.

‘You don’t say?’ Pitch yelled. ‘How many?’

Silas clutched at his temples. ‘It’s distorted… At least two I would guess.’

And likely two too many for a half-recovered ankou.

‘Come on, move, Silas.’

Pitch hurried him away from the sound, towards where a ragged archway marked the entrance to a grander space that was all too familiar. The cobbled courtyard with its central well held one notable difference from the last time they’d stepped foot in it. There was no prism of glass holding the spirit of the forest hostage. But otherwise, even the lighting was the same, the tint of silver upon everything as though the moon were actually overhead…as it had been that night.

The rasping cries of the teratisms crashed against one another, making the noise infinitely more terrible.

Silas ran panting into the courtyard just behind Pitch. Two other corridors offered escape. The one to the right had, in the true castle, led to where the giant drawbridge had been fastened tight to shield the main entrance. The left was where the archer had stood in the shadows to hurl arrows their way.

‘Head to the drawbridge!’ Pitch shouted.

‘Why?’ Silas shouted back, barely heard over the din. ‘They are hardly going to let us just walk out the front gate. I can face them.’

Pitch whirled on him. ‘You are barely stitched together after the Dullahan, and without the bandalore.’

‘What choice do I have?’