The Prestige

2

There was one part of the house to which we children were never allowed to go. Access to it was by way of an unprepossessing brown-painted door, set into the triangular section of wall beneath the back staircase. This door was invariably locked, and until the day of Clive Borden's visit I never saw anyone in the household, family or servants, go through it.

Rosalie had told me there was a haunted place behind it. She made up horrifying images, some of them described, some of them left vague for me to visualize for myself. She told me of the mutilated victims imprisoned below, of tragic lost souls in search of peace, of clutching hands and claws that lay in wait for our arms and ankles in the darkness a few inches beyond the door, of shifting and rattling and scratching attempts to escape, of muttered plans for horrid vengeance on those of us who lived in the daylight above. Rosalie had three years’ advantage, and she knew what would scare me.

I was constantly frightened as a child. Our house is no place for the nervous. In winter, on still nights, its isolation sets a silence around the walls. You hear small, unexplained noises; animals, birds, frozen in their hidden places, moving suddenly for warmth; trees and leafless shrubs brushing against each other in the wind; noises on the far side of the valley are amplified and distorted by the funnel shape of the valley floor; people from the village walk along the road that runs by the edge of our grounds. At other times, the wind comes down the valley from the north, blustering after its passage across the moors, howling because of the rocks and broken pastures all over the valley floor, whistling through the ornate woodwork around the eaves and shingles of the house. And the whole place is old, filled with memories of other people's lives, scarred with the remains of their deaths. It is no place for an imaginative child.

Indoors, the gloomy corridors and stairwells, the hidden alcoves and recesses, the dark wall-hangings and sombre ancient portraits, all gave a sense of oppressive threat. The rooms in which we lived were brightly lit and filled with modern furniture, but much of our immediate domestic hinterland was a lowering reminder of dead forefathers, ancient tragedies, silent evenings. I learned to hurry through some parts of the house, fixing my stare dead ahead so as not to be distracted by anything from this macabre past that could harm me. The downstairs corridor beside the rear stairs, where the brown-painted door was found, was one such area of the house. Sometimes I would inadvertently see the door moving slightly to and fro in its frame, as if pressure were being applied from behind. It must have been caused by draughts, but if ever I saw that door in motion I invariably imagined some large and silent being, standing behind it, trying it quietly to see if it could at last be opened.

All through my childhood, both before and after the day that Clive Borden came to visit, I passed the door on the far side of the corridor, never looked at it unless I did so by mistake. I never paused to listen for movement behind it. I always hastened past, trying to ignore it out of my life.

The three of us, Rosalie, myself and the Borden boy Nicky, had been made to wait in the sitting room, next to the dining room where the adults still conducted their incomprehensible conflict. Both of these rooms led out into the corridor where the brown door was situated.

Voices were raised again. Someone passed the connecting door. I heard my mother's voice and she sounded upset.

Then Stimpson walked briskly across the sitting room and slipped through the connecting door into the dining room. He opened and closed it deftly, but we had a glimpse of the three adults beyond; they were still in their positions at the table, but were standing. I briefly saw my mother's face, and it seemed distorted by grief and anger. The door closed quickly before we could follow Stimpson into the room, and he must have taken up position on the other side, to prevent us pushing through.

We heard my father speaking, issuing an order. That tone of voice always meant trouble would follow. Clive Borden said something, and my father replied angrily, in a sufficiently loud voice for us to hear every word.

“You will, Mr Borden!” he said, and in his agitation his voice broke briefly into falsetto. “Now you will! You damned well will!”

We heard the dining-room door to the corridor being opened. Borden said something again, still indistinctly.

Then Rosalie whispered against my ear, “I think Daddy is going to open the brown door !”

We both sucked in our breath, and I clung to Rosalie in panic. Nicky, infected with our fear, let out a wail. I too started making a yowling noise so that I could not hear what the adults were doing.

Rosalie hissed at me, “ Hush !”

“I don't want the door opened!” I cried.

Then, tall and sudden, Clive Borden burst into the sitting room from the corridor and found the three of us cowering there. How our little scene must have seemed to him I cannot imagine, but somehow he too had become tainted with the terror that the door symbolized. He stepped forward and down, bracing himself on a bended knee, then scooped Nicky into his arms.

I heard him mutter something to the boy, but it was not a reassuring sound. I was too wrapped up in my own fears to pay attention. It could have been anything. Behind him, across the corridor, beneath the stairs, I saw the open rectangle where the brown door had been. A light was on in the area behind and I could see two steps leading down, then a half-turn with more steps below.

I watched Nicky as he was carried out of the room. His father was holding him high, so that he could wrap his arms around his father's neck, facing back. His father reached up and placed a protective hand on the boy's head as he ducked through the doorway and went down the steps.

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Rosalie and I had been left alone, and we were faced with a choice of terrors. One was to remain alone in the familiar surroundings of our living room, the other was to follow the adults down the steps. I was holding on to my older sister, both of my arms wrapped around her leg. There was no sign of Mrs Stimpson.

“Are you going with them?” Rosalie said.

“No! You go! You look and tell me what they're doing!”

“I'm going up to the nursery,” she said.

“Don't leave me!” I cried. “I don't want to be here on my own. Don't go!”

“You can come with me.”

“No. What are they going to do to Nicky?”

But Rosalie was extricating herself from me, slapping her hand roughly against my shoulder and pushing me away from her. Her face had gone white, and her eyes were half-closed. She was shaking.

“You can do what you like!” she said, and although I tried to grab hold of her again she eluded me and ran out of the room. She went along the dreaded corridor, past the open doorway, then turned on the stone flags at the bottom of the staircase and rushed upstairs. At the time I thought she was being contemptuous of my fear, but from an adult perspective I suspect she had frightened herself more than me.

Whatever the reason I found myself truly alone, but because Rosalie had forced it on me the next decision was easier. A sense of calm swept over me, paralysing my imagination. It was only another form of fear, but it enabled me to move. I knew I could not stay alone where I was, and I knew I did not have the strength to follow Rosalie up those distant stairs. There remained only one place to go. I crossed the short distance to the open brown door and looked down the steps.

There were two lightbulbs in the ceiling illuminating the way down, but at the bottom, where there was another doorway leading to the side, much brighter light was spilling across the steps. The staircase looked bare and ordinary, surprisingly clean, with no hint of any danger, supernatural or otherwise. I could hear voices rising up from below.

I went down the steps quietly, not wishing to be noticed, but when I reached the bottom and looked into the main cellar I realized there was no need to hide myself. The adults were preoccupied with what they were doing.

I was old enough to understand much of what was happening, but not to be able to recall now what the adults were saying. When I first reached the bottom of the steps my father and Clive Borden were arguing again, this time with Borden doing most of the talking. My mother stood to one side, as did the servant, Stimpson. Nicky was still being held to his father's chest.

The cellar was of a size, extent and cleanliness that came as a complete surprise to me. I had no idea that our part of the house had so much space beneath it. From my childish perspective the cellar seemed to have a high ceiling, stretching away on all sides to the white-painted walls, and that these walls were at the limits of my vision. (Although most adults can move around in the cellar without lowering their heads the ceiling is not nearly as high as in the main rooms upstairs, and of course the extent of the cellar is no greater than the area of the house itself.)

Much of the cellar was filled with stuff brought down from the main house for storage: a lot of the furniture moved out during the war was still there, draped with white dust-sheets. Along the length of one wall was a stack of framed canvases, their painted sides facing in so that they could not be seen. An area close to the steps, partitioned off by a brick wall, was made over as a wine cellar. On the far side of the main cellar, difficult to see from where I was standing, was another large stack of crates and chests, tidily arranged.

The overall impression of the cellar was spacious, cool, clean. It was a place that was in use but it was also kept tidy. However, none of this really impressed itself on me at the time. Everything that I've described so far is modified memory, based on what I know.

On the day, what grabbed my attention from the moment I reached the bottom of the steps was the apparatus built in the centre of the cellar.

My first thought was that it was a kind of shallow cage, because it was a circle of eight sturdy wooden slats. Next I realized that it had been built in a pit in the floor. To enter it one had to step down, so that it was in fact larger than it looked at first. My father, who had stepped into the centre of the circle, was only visible from about his waist up. There was also an arrangement of wiring overhead, and something whose shape I could not clearly make out rotating on a central axis, glittering and flashing in the cellar lights. My father was working hard, there was obviously some kind control arrangement below my line of sight, and he was bending over, pumping his arm at something.

My mother stood back, watching intently with Stimpson at her side. These two were silent.

Clive Borden stood close to one of the wooden bars, watching my father as he worked. His son Nicky was upright in his arms, and had turned around to look down too. Borden was saying something, and my father, while continuing to pump, answered loudly, and with a gesticulating arm. I knew my father was in a dangerous mood, the sort Rosalie and I suffered when we had enraged him to the point where he felt he had to prove something to us, no matter how ridiculous.

I realized Borden was provoking him into this kind of rage, perhaps deliberately. I stepped forward, not to any of the adults, but towards Nicky. This small boy was caught up in something he could not possibly understand, and my instinct was to rush across to him, take hold of his hand and perhaps lead him away from the dangerous adult game.

I had walked half the distance to the group, entirely unnoticed by any of them, when my father shouted, “Stand back, everyone!”

My mother and Stimpson, who presumably knew what was going to happen, immediately moved back a few paces. My mother said something in what was for her a loud voice, but her words were drowned by a rising din from the device. It hummed and fizzed, restlessly, dangerously. Clive Borden had not moved, and stood only a foot or two away from the edge of the pit. Still no one looked at me.

A series of loud bangs suddenly burst forth from the top of the device, and with each one appeared a long, snaking tendril of white electrical discharge. As each shot out it prowled like the reaching tentacle of some terrible deep-sea creature, groping for its prey. The noise was tremendous; every flash, every waving feeler of naked energy, was accompanied by a screeching, hissing sound, loud enough to hurt my ears. My father looked up towards Borden, and I could see a familiar expression of triumph on his face.

“Now you know!” he yelled at him.

“Turn it off, Victor!” my mother cried.

“But Mr Borden has insisted! Well, here it is, Mr Borden! Does this satisfy your insistence?”

Borden was still standing as if transfixed, just a short distance from the snaking electrical discharge. He was holding his little boy in his arms. I could see the expression on Nicky's face, and I knew he was as scared as I was.

“This proves nothing!” Borden shouted.

My father's response was to close a large metal handle attached to one of the pillars inside the contraption. The zigzagging beams of energy immediately doubled in size, and snaked with more agility than ever around the wooden bars of the cage. The noise was deafening.

“Get in, Borden,” my father shouted. “Get in and see for yourself!”

To my amazement my father then climbed out of the pit, stepping up to the main floor of the cellar between two of the wooden bars. Instantly, a number of the electrical rays flashed across to him, hissing horribly about his body. For a moment he was surrounded by them, consumed by fire. He seemed to fuse with the electricity, illuminated from within, a figure of gruesome menace. Then he took another step, and he was out of it.

“Not scared , are you, Borden?” he shouted harshly.

I was close enough to see that the hair on my father's head was standing up from his scalp, and the hairs that stuck out from his sleeves were on end. His clothes hung oddly on his body, as if ballooning away from him, and his skin seemed to my mortified eyes to be glowing permanently blue as a result of his few seconds bathed in the electricity.

“Damn you, damn you!” cried Borden.

He turned on my father, and thrust the horror-struck child at him. Nicky tried to hang on to his father, but, Borden forced him away. My father accepted the boy reluctantly, taking him in an awkward hold. Nicky was yelling with terror, and struggling to be released.

“Jump in now!” my father yelled at Borden. “It will go in the next few seconds!”

Borden took a step forward until he was at the edge of the zone of electricity. My father was beside him, while Nicky was reaching out with his arms, screaming and screaming for his daddy. Waving blue snakes of discharge moved crazily a fraction of an inch in front of Borden. His hair rose from his scalp, and I could see him clenching and unclenching his fists. His head drooped briefly forward, and as it did so one of the tendrils instantly found him, snaking down his neck, around his shoulders and back, splattering noisily on the floor between his shoes.

He leapt back in terror, and I felt sorry for him.

“I can't do it!” he gasped. "Turn the bloody thing off

“This is what you wanted, isn't it?”

My father was filled with madness. He stepped forward, away from Clive Borden, and into the deadly barrage of electricity. Half a dozen tentacles instantly wound themselves around him and the boy, imbuing them both with the lethal cyanic glow. All the hairs on his head were standing on end, making him more terrible than ever I had seen him.

He threw Nicky into the pit.

My father stepped back, away from the deadly barrage.

As Nicky fell, his arms and legs scrabbling wildly at the air, he screamed again, one despairing yell. It was a single sustained outbursting of sheer terror, loneliness and fear of abandonment.

Before he hit the ground the device exploded with light. Flames leapt from the overhead wires, and a crash rang out violently. The wooden struts seemed to swell outwards with the pressure from within, and as the tentacles of light withdrew into themselves they did so with a screech as of sharp steel sliding against steel.

Horribly, it had ended. Thick blue smoke hung heavily in the air, spreading torpidly outwards across the ceiling of the cellar. The device was at last silent, and doing nothing. Nicky lay motionless on the hard floor beneath the structure.

Somewhere in the distance, it seemed, I could hear his terrible scream echoing still.