The Hollowing by Robert Holdstock

Author:Robert Holdstock [Holdstock, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2005-05-01T06:00:00+00:00

White Castle

From images of the ancient plains of North America, Richard suddenly stepped into the early Middle Ages, approaching the castle through patchy woodland, impressed by the height of the walls, suddenly aware that the purity of colour was not due to paint but to the white berries of a spreading thorn, grown so completely across the stone that it had covered the castle entirely.

The drawbridge had long since rotted. Across the scum-covered moat, a stagnant pool filled with decaying wood, a felled tree had been placed to make an awkward bridge. Inside, sheltering in the watchgate, Lytton and McCarthy huddled round a fire, McCarthy fussing with food on wooden skewers, Lytton smoking his black pipe and scrawling in his notebook. He glanced up as they arrived, grinning broadly. His rich Scots tones rang out to greet them. “Glad to see you! Did y’have a good journey?”

“Wet!” said Helen irritably.

“Indeed! We saw the storm from a distance. Have you any food, Helen? As you can see, we’re down to our last two dormice—tasty enough, but I’d kill for rare roast beef with all the trimmings.”

“Can’t help you with beef, but I’m happy to go hunting.”

“God bless you,” Lytton said with a second yellow-toothed smile. “I’d sing a song of luck for you, but I’m so damned hungry I haven’t the energy. I saw wild pigs in the woods, across the way, there.”

As Helen prepared her bow, and spoke softly with McCarthy, Lytton glanced at Richard. “You look as dishevelled outside as I feel inside. I wish I could say that your son was here, but he isn’t. This place is deserted. He’s discarded it. And nature, as you see from the walls, is regaining it, stone by stone, passage by passage, chamber by chamber. Explore it by all means, but this is a ghost place. First, sit down and tell me how close you feel to Alex. We must be close. McCarthy here feels his shadow, but the boy is damned good at keeping hidden.”

Richard told Lytton of his experiences with the “presence” of Alex, and the Scot mused and pondered, and smoked his vile pipe. “There’s something not right,” he said. “Something I’m missing. I thought I had your son clearly in my sights, but something must have happened. If you can bear to indulge me, tell me again about his death, about the man Keeton. You saw him suddenly on a road, near his home, a year after he had vanished … and he was only days older … Tell me again…”

Richard recapped the events of that long-gone autumn night in as much detail as he could remember, from the songs in his son’s adaptation of Gawain, to the state of James Keeton as he had stumbled from the Otherworld, half-naked and very frightened.

Keeton had gone somewhere “out of time,” Lytton mused. It had probably not been a form of fairyland—if that had been the case, his return still young would have meant time catching up with him. He would have aged a year suddenly.

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