On the Edge of Darkness. Barbara Erskine

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СКАЧАТЬ frivolity. After all, he’s going to win the war single-handed, aren’t you, old boy!’

      In the front seat Robbie smiled. He looked sideways at Jane and gave a modest shrug.

      On the sixteenth of October German bombers flew low over the Forth and 602 and 603 Squadrons were scrambled. Robbie’s war had begun.

      Brid had not expected it to be like this.

      Her journey to Edinburgh had been easy. Prompted by the sixth sense inside her head she had found Liza when she first arrived with comparative ease. Then, inexplicably, she had lost her again. Her mind grew dizzy and clouded. She wandered, lost, around the city, vacant-eyed, afraid, not knowing where to go or what to do. Sometimes, asleep in a doorway or hidden in some secret place she would make the leap inside her head which would take her home to the hillside where Gartnait’s cross marked the transition point into her world. But always Broichan was lurking near and, afraid, she would come back to the place where her poor cold body was huddled out of sight. There were many places in this great city where she roamed, where the veils of time were thin. Slipping into the ruins of the Abbey of the Holy Rood she had felt the coldness of the mist and known it was one of them. In the great cathedral up the High Street where she slept unnoticed in the shadows, she felt it too. Deep beneath the foundations of the church there was a sacred place, a place where the goddess would be waiting if she looked for her. But she had not been prepared for the pain and the dislocation which overwhelmed her. Time was a concept which in the silence of her dreams had not existed; she had been born to transcend it – a genetic imprint from her mother’s womb – and her first teachers had been good. Quick to spot her natural ability they had taught her without caution and without initiation. They had not seen that ability without years of study might be dangerous. They did not think that this woman’s mind might fly beyond the natural confines of the philosopher’s cave and seek the stars. They did not remember that the longing of young eager flesh might prove stronger than the yearning for the alchemists’ stone of all knowledge or the threat of retribution when the absolute laws were broken. By the time Broichan had seen the danger and recognised her power it was too late and Brid, not knowing that having broken the bounds of time there are long black distances of nothingness between the suns, was lost. She did not know that the air she breathed in the twentieth century was not the same air; she did not know that the body that carried her spirit was subject to strains and pains she had not dreamed of. Curling down into the agony of adjustment, in the comparative security of the enclosed garden of an Edinburgh square, she escaped at last into sleep.

      When she woke there was only one thought in her head, and that was to find Adam – and find him quickly. She would use her ancient arts again and locate him through the woman who she knew was in possession of the pendant.

      ‘No!’

      Liza lashed out in her sleep, fighting the clinging blankets. Overhead she could hear the drone of engines. Sometimes the Luftwaffe came to reconnoitre the Royal Navy units at Rosyth, sometimes the bombers were on their way to Glasgow again. They were having a lousy time. She took a deep breath and, as she groped with a shaking hand on her side table for her cigarettes and a box of matches, thanked God that so far Edinburgh had been spared. Only when she was sitting up in bed, the ashtray on her knees, did she pause to wonder what had awoken her.

      She rubbed her eyes and yawned deeply. There was something unpleasant there in the back of her mind and it had no connection with the throb of aircraft propellers and the thought of the deadly load the planes were about to drop into the blackness of the Scottish night. She lay back on her pillows, drawing the smoke deeply into her lungs.

      A-dam!

      The word in her head was spoken with a strange foreign accent. An accent she remembered vividly. Her eyes flew open and she stared into the dark shadows of the studio. With the blackouts drawn and no light save the small glow from her cigarette end the room was completely dark. The sound had been in her own mind, and yet, somehow it seemed to come from outside her. Hastily stubbing out the cigarette she swung her feet to the floor and sat still, listening. The drumming of the engines had faded into silence now. She could hear nothing but the soft murmur of the wind in the chimney of the stove.

      Every sense was alert.

      She could feel it more clearly now, probing in her mind like a finger inching its way over the surface of her cerebellum.

      A-dam?

      ‘No, you bitch!’ Sliding off the bed, she shook her head violently. She cannoned into a chair and swore loudly, rubbing her shin. ‘No, you’re not finding him through me. I’m wise to you, girl. What kind of a sneaky witch are you, anyway?’ She rubbed her palms against her temples as hard as she could.

      Switching on the lamp, she put a match to the gas and put on the kettle, taking comfort from the companionable hiss of the flame. The room was very cold. Pulling her scarlet shawl from the bed she wrapped it round her shoulders, shivering. It was there again, probing into her brain; she could almost feel the sharpness of the little iron-bladed knife digging the secrets of her life out of her head.

      ‘Why me? What do you want with me?’ She found she was backing across the studio, trying to move away from this horror in her mind. ‘You must know where he is? What do you want with me?’ It was the third time this had happened. And it was the worst. It was like hearing someone knocking, in the distance. At first it was not frightening – not even irritating. Then it would become more persistent and slowly her body’s responses would begin to work. The dry mouth, the cold tight stomach, the prickling at the back of her neck, the icy shiver gripping her lungs until she could hardly breathe as the weight of someone else’s mind slowly began to pull her down.

      Suddenly it was too much. The empty building was too quiet around her, the echoing studio too lonely. Tearing off the shawl and her dressing gown she groped for sweater and jacket and a pair of woollen slacks. In two minutes she had let herself out of the building and was running along the path, divided from the river by old twisted railings, heading up towards the town.

      Adam was woken by the hammering on his door. Fighting his way out of sleep he groped for his wrist watch, but he could see nothing. The blackout was still firmly drawn. He had no idea what time it was. Fumbling for the light switch he made his way to the door.

      ‘You’ve got to let me in. That bitch gypsy girlfriend of yours is after me! She’s using some kind of occult technique to get inside my head, Adam. You’ve got to do something about it.’ Liza pushed her way past him and sat down on his bed. She was shaking.

      He glanced behind her down the darkened stairwell and closing the door he turned the key. ‘What happened?’ In the light of the single bulb in the ceiling he had established that it was four-thirty in the morning. He ran his fingers over his scalp. He had been studying his physiology notes until one and his head felt like a pan of mashed potato. ‘How did you get here, Liza?’

      ‘I ran.’ Her teeth were chattering. ‘I know it was stupid. I didn’t want to bring her to you, but I was scared. She was in the studio. In my head. She’s mad, Adam. Completely mad.’

      He sat beside her and put his arm round her shoulders. ‘Tell me what happened. Slowly.’

      There wasn’t much to tell. How can you explain intuition? Knowing something deep inside you? Instinct – and the pain of the probing knife?

      ‘When did you last see her?’ Calmer now, Liza stood up. She pulled one of Adam’s blankets off the bed and wrapped it round her shoulders. She was still wearing her coat and gloves.

      He took the hint and went to light the small gas fire. ‘I haven’t. Not properly. СКАЧАТЬ