The Prestige

3

I eased myself backwards, not looking. As I reached the main aisle, and turned slowly around, Nicky's head brushed against the raised foot of the nearest corpse. A patent-leather shoe swung slowly to and fro. I ducked away from it, horrified.

I saw that at this end of the hall there was another chamber, just five or six feet away from where I was standing. It was from here that the sound of the generator's engine was emerging. I went towards it. The entrance to the cavity was slanting and low, and there had been no effort made to widen it or to make access to it easier.

The sound of the generator was now loud, and I could smell the petrol fumes being emitted from it. There were several more lights within the chamber, beyond the entrance. Their radiance spilled across the uneven floor of the main hall. I could not go through the gap without putting down Nicky's body, so I bent over to try to see what might be within.

I stared across the short stretch of the rocky floor I could see, then I straightened.

I wished to see no more. A chill ran through me.

I had seen nothing. Any sounds there might have been were drowned by the mechanical clattering of the generator. Nothing moved within.

I took a step back, then another, as quietly as possible.

There had been someone standing inside that chamber, silently, motionlessly, just beyond my line of sight, waiting for me either to enter or retreat.

I continued to step back down the shadowy narrow aisle between the racks, easing my body to and fro so as not to scrape Nicky's head or feet against the bodies on the shelves. Terror was draining strength from my body. My knees were juddering, and my arm muscles, already strained by Nicky's weight, were aching and twitching.

A male voice said, from within the chamber, reverberating around the hall, “You're a Borden, aren't you?”

I said nothing, paralysed by fear.

“I thought you'd come for him in the end.” The voice was thin, tired, not much more than a whisper, but the cavern gave it an echoing resonance. “He is you, Borden, and these are all me. Are you going to leave with him? Or are you going to stay?”

I saw a vestige of a shadow moving beyond that rough-hewn entrance, and then to my horror the sound of the generator faded quickly away.

The lightbulbs died down: yellow, amber, dull red, black.

I was in impenetrable darkness. The torch was in my pocket. I shifted the weight of the little boy, and managed to get a grip on the torch.

With my hand shaking, I switched it on. The beam angled crazily around as I tried to get a good grip on the torch and keep Nicky's body held tightly in my arms. I twisted around.

Shadows of raised legs whirled about me on the cavern walls.

With the crook of my arm clumsily shielding Nicky's exposed head I shoved my way along the rest of the aisle through the racks, my shoulders and arms colliding with the shelves, and dislodging several of the plastic labels.

I dared not look behind me. The man was following! My legs had no strength, I knew I could fall at any moment.

As I mounted the crooked steps out of the hail, my head collided with a spar of rock in the roof, and it hurt so much I almost dropped Nicky's body. I kept going, staggering and hunching, not even trying to keep the torch beam steady. It was all uphill, now, and Nicky's deadweight seemed heavier with every step. I turned my foot, fell against the tunnel wall, recovered, kept lurching on. Fear drove me.

The inner door appeared before me at last. Barely pausing, I pulled it open with my booted foot and forced my way through.

Behind me, on the stone-laid floor of the tunnel, I could hear the footsteps following, pacing steadily over the loose stones.

I ran up the stairs to the surface, but snow had blown in and was covering the top four or five steps. I slipped, fell forward, and the little boy rolled out of my arms! I lunged forward, pushed the door open with all my weight.

I saw: snow-covered ground, the black shape of the house, two windows lighted, an open doorway with a light beyond, snow hurtling from the sky!

My brother yelled in my mind!

I turned back, found him sprawled across the steps, and picked him up. I stumbled out into the snow.

I floundered and staggered through the thick snow, aiming for the doorway, turning my head constantly to look back over my shoulder at the black rectangle of the open vault, dreading to see the emergence of whatever it was that had been following me.

Suddenly, the intruder light mounted on the side of the house came on, half-blinding me. The blizzard thickened in the glare. Kate appeared at the open doorway, dressed in a quilted coat.

I tried to shout a warning to her, but I could not find the breath. I continued on, sliding and staggering in the snow, Nicky's body held before me. At last I reached the yard in front of the door, slithered on the snow-covered concrete and pushed past her into the brightly lit hallway beyond.

She stared wordlessly at the body of the little boy in my arms. Gasping for breath, I turned around and went back to the doorway, leant against the post, looked back across the snow-covered garden at the indistinct shape of the vault entrance. Kate was beside me.

“Watch the vault!” I said. It was the only sentence I could get out. “Watch!”

Nothing was moving, over there on the other side of the snow. I took a step back, put down Nicky's body on the stone-flagged floor.

I fumbled in my pocket and found the label that had been on Nicky's rack. I shoved it at Kate. I was still struggling for breath, and I felt as if I would never again breathe normally.

I gasped, “Look at this! The handwriting! Is it the same?”

She took it from me, held it up in the light, and gazed intently at it. Then she looked straight back at me. Her eyes were wide with fear.

“It is, isn't it?” I shouted.

She put her hands around the upper part of my arm, and held herself against me. I could feel her trembling.

The intruder light went out.

“Get it on again!” I shouted.

Kate reached behind her, found the switch. Then she held my arm again.

The snow whirled in the blaze of light. Through it, vaguely, we could see the entrance to the vault. We both saw the slight figure of a man emerging from the door of the vault. He was dressed in dark clothes, and was covered up against the weather. Long black hair straggled out from under the hood of his jacket. He raised a hand to protect his eyes from the glaring light. He showed no curiosity about us, or fear of us, even though he must have known we were there, watching him. Without looking at us, or anywhere in the direction of the house, he stepped out on to the flat ground, hunching his shoulders in the blizzard, then moved to the right, between the trees, down the hill, and out of our sight.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Christoper Priest established a reputation for himself in the 1970's as “a master of romantic science fiction” ( The Washington Post ) before moving to more literary fiction. His eight previous novels include The Affirmation (1981) and The Glamour (1984), which won the Kurd Lasswitz Award. He lives in England with his wife, novelist Leigh Kennedy, and their twin children, Elizabeth and Simon.

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