The Sin Eater(3)

But people did not live inside mirrors, not unless they were people in books. Might it be a dream? He took a tentative step closer to the mirror and he thought the man put out a hand to him. Benedict hesitated, wanting to put out his own hand, but fearful that he might feel the stranger’s cold fingers close around it.

Then from downstairs came Aunt Lyn’s voice, calling something about closing the bathroom window, and the man lifted a finger to his lips in a ‘hush’ gesture. Benedict glanced over his shoulder to the door, and when he looked back at the mirror, the man had vanished.

He did not know if he was relieved or upset, but he did not think he would tell anyone about the man. Aunt Lyn and Nina might think he was going mad – he might actually be going mad. In any case, it had probably not happened or, if it had, it was something to do with his beloved Alice from his book. He had never heard of people being able to call up the worlds that lived inside books, but that did not mean it could not be done. For all Benedict knew, it might be something people did quite often, but that nobody ever talked about. This was such a comforting thought that he felt better for the first time since the car crash.

Benedict had never been to a funeral before and he did not know what to expect. It was dreadful. His grandmother cried all through the service, and clung to his hand, and one of the aunts fainted halfway through and had to be taken outside and given brandy from somebody’s flask. The three coffins stood in front of everyone – Benedict managed not to look at them because he was afraid the lids would not be on and he would see his parents’ bodies all dead and mangled up from the crash.

The vicar read a piece from the Bible that said the dead did not die, only went to sleep. The thought of his parents sleeping inside a coffin deep in the ground was so terrifying Benedict was not sure if he could bear it. He bit his lip and stared at the ground and thought about all the worlds in books that he might escape to when this was over, and wondered if the man who had looked out of the mirror at him had been real or just part of the nightmare of his parents dying in a dreadful tangle of metal and glass on the Victoria Dock Road.

He thought he could go back to Aunt Lyn’s house after the service, but it seemed everyone was going to his grandfather’s old house, and Benedict had to go with them.

Aunt Lyn came with him in one of the big black cars. She was surprised he had never been to Holly Lodge. ‘It was your grandfather’s house,’ she said. ‘Are you sure your father never took you there?’

‘No, never.’ Benedict did not say his mother had suggested it once, but that his father had said, quickly, ‘Benedict mustn’t ever go to that house.’

‘Why not?’

‘You know why not.’

‘Oh Lord, you don’t think it’s still there, do you? Not after all this time?’

Benedict, listening, only just caught his father’s reply. ‘Yes, it’s still there,’ he said. ‘You’ve never really believed it, I know, but I promise you, it’s still there.’

As the big black car slid through the streets Benedict looked through the windows, waiting for the moment when he would see the house, which his father had never wanted him to enter. I’m very sorry, he said silently to his father’s memory. You didn’t want me to go inside this house, but I’ll have to.

Aunt Lyn was saying something about an inheritance. ‘When you’re twenty-one, Holly Lodge will be yours.’

It sounded as if she was promising him a huge treat, so Benedict said, ‘Yes, I see,’ even though he did not see at all. He was trying to pretend that the rain sliding down the car’s windows was actually a thin silver curtain that he could draw aside and see sunshine beyond and his parents still alive and everything ordinary again.

But it was real rain, of course – a ceaseless grey downpour. When the cars drew up outside Holly Lodge it dripped from the dark gloomy trees surrounding the house and lay in black puddles on the gravel drive.

Benedict had not known what to expect from this house, but his father had talked about something being in there that he, Benedict, must never meet. Clearly it was something really bad, so it would not be surprising to find Holly Lodge looked like the terrible castles in Jack the Giant Killer, although he supposed you did not get many castles in East London and you certainly did not get any giants, or, if you did, people kept very quiet about them.

When they got to it, he saw it was an ordinary house in an ordinary street. But as they went inside, he had the feeling it had never been a happy house; he thought quite bad things might have happened here, or – what was worse – might be waiting to happen in the future. It was quite a big house, though, which was good because a lot of people were here. Aunt Lyn had arranged for tea or coffee and sherry to be offered, and people wandered around sipping their drinks, eyeing the furniture and the pictures and ornaments. It appeared that hardly anyone had been to the house before; aunts murmured that it was all in better condition than they would have expected; uncles peered dubiously at paintings, and a bookish cousin, with whom Nina tried unsuccessfully to flirt, discovered a collection of works on Irish folklore, and was seated on a window sill reading about creatures with unpronounceable names and sinister traditions, who had apparently haunted Ireland’s west coast.

There were a few framed photographs on the walls which must be pretty old, because they were all black and white and some were even a kind of dusty brown like the faded bodies of dead flies on a hot window-sill. The older aunts inspected these photos with curiosity.