The Prestige

I am therefore busily preparing for what must follow, all in order to avert that which might otherwise follow. I say this with deliberate obscurity, because now that I have rehearsed In a Flash a couple of times, and I have learned its true working, I must be circumspect about its secret, even here.

"When the children are asleep, and Julia encourages me to attend to business, I have been concentrating on the affairs of the estate. I am determined to put right the neglect my brother allowed.

31st December 1900

I write these words as the nineteenth century draws to a close. In an hour from now I shall descend to our drawing room, where Julia and the children are waiting for me, and together we shall see in the New Year and the New Century. It is a night resonant with auguries for the future, also with unavoidable reminders from the past.

Because secrecy again has a hold on me, I must say that what Hutton and I did earlier this evening had to be done.

What I am about to write will be written with a hand that still trembles from the primaeval fears that were aroused in me. I have been thinking hard about what I can record of the experience, and have decided that a straightforward, even bald, description of what happened is the only way.

This evening, soon after nightfall, while the children were taking an early nap so that they could be awake later to see in the new century, I told Julia what I was about to do, and left her waiting in her sitting room.

I found Hutton, and we left the house and went together across the East Lawn towards the family vault. We transported the prestige materials on a handcart sometimes used by the gardeners.

Hutton and I had only storm lanterns to guide us, and unlocking the padlocked gate in near darkness took several minutes. The old lock had grown stiff with disuse.

As the wooden portal swung open, Hutton declared his unease. I felt terrific sympathy for him.

I said, "Hutton, I don't expect you to go through with this. You may wait for me here if you like. Or you could return to the house, and I'll continue alone."

"No, my Lord," he replied in his honest way. "I have agreed to this. To be frank I would not go in there alone, and neither, I dare say, would you. But apart from our imaginings there is nothing to fear."

Leaving the cart by the entrance, we ventured inside. We held the storm lanterns raised at arm's length. The beams ahead did not reveal much, but our large shadows fell on the walls beside us. My memory of the vault was vague, because the only other time I had been inside I was still just a boy. The shallow flight of roughly cut stone steps led down into the hillside, and at the bottom, where there was a second door, the cavern widened a little.

The inner door was unlocked, but it was stiff and heavy to move aside. We grated it open, then went through into the abysmally dark space beyond. We could sense rather than see the cavern spreading before us. Our lanterns barely penetrated the gloom.

There was an acrid smell in the air, so sharp that it was almost a taste in the mouth. I lowered my lantern and adjusted the wick, hoping to tease a little more light from it. Our irruption into the place had set free a million motes of dust, swirling around us.

Hutton spoke beside me, his voice muted in the stifling acoustics of the underground chamber.

"Sir, should I collect the prestige materials?"

I could just make out his features in the lantern's glow.

"Yes, I think so. Do you need me to help you?"

"If you would wait at the bottom of the steps, sir."

He walked quickly up the flight of steps, and I knew he wanted to be done as soon as possible. As his light receded I felt more keenly alone, vulnerable to childish fears of the dark, and of the dead.

Here in this place were most of my forebears, laid out ritually on shelves and slabs, rendered down to bones or fragments of bones, lying in boxes and shrouds, wreathed in dust and flaking garments. When I cast the lantern about I could make out dim shapes on some of the nearer slabs. Somewhere, down the vault, out of the range of my lamp, I heard the scuttling of a large rodent. I moved to the right, reaching out with my hand, and felt a stone slab at about the height of my waist and I groped across it. I felt small sharp objects, loose to the touch. The stink immediately intensified in my nose, and I felt myself beginning to gag. I recoiled away, glimpsing the horrid fragments of that old life as my beam swung around. All the rest were invisible to me, yet with no difficulty I could imagine the scene that lay before me just beyond the feeble reach of the lamp. In spite of this I held the lamp high, and swung it around, hoping for a sight of what was there. I knew the reality could hardly be as unpleasant as my imaginings! I sensed that these long-dead ancestors were being roused by my arrival, and were shifting from their positions, raising a grisly head or a skeletal hand, croaking out their own obscure terrors that my presence was arousing in them.