PROLOGUE
Brighton, 1872
It was midnight, and Franklin Holt, exhausted and restless, lay blearily awake in his bed, terrified to go to sleep. Despite the soft amber light of the streetlamp that spilled from the edges of the curtains, he was engulfed in an almost palpable darkness, a malevolent gloom that had been conjured only for him.
On the other side of the bedroom, his younger brother, Matthew slept peacefully, a contented expression on his disarmingly cherubic face, rumpled hair painting the pillow bronze after a boisterous day of fun and mischief.
There was no such peace for Franklin and had not been for some time. What should have been an easy drift into restoring slumber was instead haunted with half-sleeping, half-waking horrors. There was a presence in the room. It was always there, powerful and overbearing, but invisible. He imagined it as a grim dark cloud, lurking in corners, hiding, hovering, waiting. One day it would manifest before his eyes, and then it would swoop down and gather him up, drawing him swiftly to an unknown but certainly horrible fate. Insanity, death, and eternal torment awaited him, and that brief glance would doom him forever.
How he wished that his nurse was still there. He might have dared then to cry out for help, and she would have come to his side and smoothed the bedsheets and smilingly laid her hand on his brow. She had always spoken to him sweetly and been very kind and patient — not like his Aunt Marion.
Aunt Marion was horrid — worse than any threatening spirit. She had stormed into the house one day and sent the nurse away and told his mother not to trouble herself, because she would do everything. She had promised to look after Franklin and make him well, but instead she was angry with him all the time. She took him to task for being such a trial to his poor widowed mother and ordered him to change his behaviour. She read him stories of disobedient children and the cruel fates they suffered as a result of their wickedness, none of which sounded as bad as the misery Franklin endured. He would have done anything to change his ways, but how could he when he didn’t know how, and his days were heavy eyed with weariness and his nights shrouded in fear?
When he finally lost the struggle and slept, he would sometimes wake to face still greater horrors. There were mornings when his body was cold and heavy as iron, his muscles rigid, and he could neither speak nor move his limbs. With tentatively opened eyelids he saw through gummed and gritty lashes the thing he had most dreaded; the creature standing at the foot of his bed. It was taller than any normal man, a solid shape consisting only of a head and enormous body, like a giant black bat enveloped in its own leathery wings. He would close his eyes, hoping that when he opened them again it would be gone. Sometimes when he dared to look again, it was no longer there, but there were also times when with a sick lurch in his chest he saw it still, and it had come closer, rising up to float in the air above him.
Although the apparition did not touch him, he could feel it as a heavy weight pressing down, so hard that he could scarcely breathe, and in those moments he really thought that his ribs would bend and crack and his lungs collapse and he would die. The creature stank of decay, like rotting seaweed that had dissolved into dark green slime. He might have cried out in despair, but his mouth and tongue were locked and immobile.
Aunt Marion had found him like that one morning when she came to wake him. She had shaken him and shouted at him and slapped his face, and then declared loudly that he was only pretending. When the sensation passed off, he had sobbed with fright and pain and relief, and she told him sneeringly that he was a bad, troublesome boy and had only got the punishment he deserved. Perhaps he did deserve it, but he could not understand why.
That night, at the stillest hour, he thought he was awake. Matthew slept on, his snores like the purr of a contented kitten, unaware of the grim horror engulfing his brother. But there were other, unearthly noises in the room, pattering footsteps circling Franklin’s bed, insistent tapping, the beat of sinewy wings, and muttering voices.
The creature was there again. It stood watching him, faceless and menacing. He tried to address it, but his voice stuck in his throat. ‘Who are you?’ he wanted to say. ‘Are you a ghost or a demon?’, and although the thing did not speak, its reply was in his head and he heard the apparition say in tones that seemed to echo like the rumble of thunder in a stormy sky, ‘I am your father!’
CHAPTER ONE
It had started quite innocently — a slight cold, a small but persistent cough. Mina Scarletti knew she had to guard her fragile health, especially from anything that might place a strain on her lungs, cramped as they were by the permanent snake twist in her spine, the result of scoliosis. Large gatherings of people were a particular danger, and to be avoided if possible, especially in the cooler months, when the atmosphere was almost visibly suffused with a cloud of myriad infections.
That March, the weather in Brighton had been marked by overcast skies, squally winds and chill mists that clawed at the throat. The barometer in the hallway wore a stern expression ordering Mina not to venture outdoors unless her visit was of vital importance. She had been unable, however, to resist spending an evening in the theatre to see her good friend, the actor Marcus Merridew, give his Hamlet.
When Mina and Mr Merridew had first become acquainted he was employed as a visitors’ guide to the Royal Pavilion, his youthful career in the drama having faded to near obscurity. Lately, however, he had enjoyed a spectacular rise in fortune due to his masterful performance in an entertainment devised by Mina’s brother Richard. In this creation, which had dazzled the Pavilion for just a single night, Mr Merridew, costumed as the Prince Regent, had defeated Richard’s Napoleon, in a probably belated attempt to defend the honour of Mrs Fitzherbert. He was now constantly in demand for dramatic readings before gatherings of tea-sipping matrons and had ascended to be the shining star in the admittedly small firmament of the Brighton Theatre Company. No matter that Hamlet was a man of thirty and Mr Merridew would not see fifty again. The years since his early triumphs had if anything mellowed and rounded the honeyed caress of his voice. On stage, his deportment was perfect, his energy unfailing, his every movement a study in elegance which drew sighs of admiration from the ladies who made up the greater part of his audience.
As the leading man he had availed himself of the opportunity to make some slight improvements to the Bard’s play. The theatre was nightly roused to a pitch of frenzied excitement at the final duel in which Hamlet defeated the invader Fortinbras. Tears of joy were shed when it was revealed that the rumours of Ophelia’s death were false, and she had regained her wits. The play ended in triumph with a glorious pageant, the wedding of Hamlet and Ophelia, jointly crowned King and Queen of Denmark.
Mina had cheered along with the enraptured throng, although she had been obliged at times to hold a herb-filled sachet to her face, breathing in its protective odour, since the man who sat beside her had wheezed noisily throughout the performance. On returning home, the Scarlettis’ general maid, Rose, had fussed over Mina as usual, setting her before a blazing fire in the parlour and bringing hot drinks unbidden.
Two days later Mina awoke with a sting in her nostrils and a throbbing rawness in her throat. Rose, her every expression saying, ‘I told you so,’ brought her mutton broth and medicine, and when the cough started and refused to allow Mina any rest, Rose all but ordered her back to bed, and called Dr Hamid.