Shall Not Sleep [bxb]

Chapter Nineteen

Wesley steered me down the hall he came from. The open doorways let light spill in, but for the most part we sailed through darkness. Wesley stopped suddenly and opened a door to our left. It creaked as he pushed it open.

On the other side was a room with a wide window and shelves full of books, not unlike the library downstairs. It smelled like furniture polish and age—that dusty, vaguely metallic kind of smell that told you you were standing in place that had remained unchanged for many years.

"Just wait here," Wesley said. "I'll be right back."

He closed the door, leaving me alone. The grandfather clock in the corner didn't tick. Something told me it hadn't been wound for a long time. The windowpanes were coated in dust. I sat in an armchair and waited. For what, I didn't know.

My eyes kept trailing over to the desk in the corner and the painting on the wall behind it. In it, a black horse stood stock-still, staring at me. The whites of its eyes showed. I shivered.

It felt like forever, but Wesley finally returned, followed by a man who looked exactly like him, if you added thirty more years.

"Max, this is my father, Lord Henry Dunham, Earl of Walsingham," Wesley said.

His father's eyes—those same deep eyes—wouldn't leave my face. He shook my hand.

"Hello," he said. "I understand your name is Max Callan."

I couldn't answer that. My mouth wouldn't form words. They kept staring at me and I could feel myself blushing. I must have looked like an idiot. I just nodded.

Wesley said, "Dad... should we...?"

Lord Walsingham continued to stare at me, not to scare me, but to search. I stared right back, not backing down. He softened.

"Max," he said. "I gather we both know why you're here."

"I'm here for Alastair," I whispered.

Wesley's eyes popped out of his head a little. Lord Walsingham nodded. "This house has known your name for many years."

"Do you know why?" I asked them.

Lord Walsingham shook his head. "We know only your name," he said. "Ever since the reading of my great-uncle's will, the name Maximilian Callan has been floating in the halls of this house."

"Dad," Wesley said, "He's obviously—how old are you?"

"Seventeen," I answered.

"Seventeen," Wesley repeated. "Great-Uncle Alastair died in 1981."

1981.

I cried out. My pathetic little noise bounced off the walls, disturbing the peace of this ancient room. I fell back into the chair I was sitting in.

1981. Sixty-five years after The Somme. He was eighty-five years old when he died. He didn't die on a godforsaken battlefield. He didn't die in the mud.

Thank God.

"What's the matter?" Wesley asked nervously. He sat down next to me. "Seriously, tell me what's going on here. Dad, how have we known his name since 1981 if he wasn't born until years later? How is that possible?"

Lord Walsingham's face was ghostly white. He sat down in another old armchair.

"All I know is that when the family was called to the reading of his last will and testament, aside from the usual bequeathals and inheritances, there was a—a warning, I suppose, only not quite so sinister. He wrote that someone named Maximilian Callan would one day come to this house, that we should all remember this name."