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Back Cardinal Black Save as PDF
Chapters (44)
  1. Title Page
  2. One: Into the Storm
  3. One
  4. Two
  5. Three
  6. Four
  7. Five
  8. Six
  9. Seven
  10. Two: London Calling
  11. Eight
  12. Nine
  13. Ten
  14. Eleven
  15. Twelve
  16. Thirteen
  17. Fourteen
  18. Fifteen
  19. Three: The Malignant Seven
  20. Sixteen
  21. Seventeen
  22. Eighteen
  23. Nineteen
  24. Twenty
  25. Twenty-One
  26. Twenty-Two
  27. Twenty-Three
  28. Four: Squirrels and Cats
  29. Twenty-Four
  30. Twenty-Five
  31. Twenty-Six
  32. Twenty-Seven
  33. Twenty-Eight
  34. Twenty-Nine
  35. Thirty
  36. Thirty-One
  37. Thirty-Two
  38. Five: Revelation
  39. Thirty-Three
  40. Thirty-Four
  41. Thirty-Five
  42. Thirty-Six
  43. Thirty-Seven
  44. About the Author

When the appointed time came, all gathered but Robson. Mum went up to knock at his door, and she returned with an ashen face. I danced for the group, and later Mum said Robson did not answer the knock, but that she could hear him as if he were two persons, talking to each other. One was cursing in a brutal voice, and the other was sobbing. From that moment, Mum wanted me to stay far away from the man and she wished him to leave but he’d already paid for the week and he had two more nights.

In the room I had, which was just off my Mum’s chambers, I could hear Robson walking at night in his room. Back and forth and back and forth … the thudding of heavy boots upon the boards. Then stopping. Silence for several minutes. Then again … back and forth, as if he were walking the distance to London. Mum took him his meals on that last day and was told to leave them at the door. They went untouched.

What is it, Matthew, that makes a man an animal? What is it that makes the hidden beast rear up and strike out at the world?

Who can answer such questions? Certainly not my Mum or myself. Little did we know.

On the last night.

He was to leave the next morning. The Carnahans had departed that evening. We were alone in the house with Robson. It was raining. Late October. Raining steadily. In my room I heard him walking again. The sound of it had wakened me.

Then I heard him cry out. It was a cry unlike any noise I had ever heard, and it terrified me to my very soul. It was the noise of the beast emerging. Or rather the cry, possibly, of a man trying to keep the beast from coming out, and commanding it back to its cage.

But on this night … the last night … it would not obey, and it had become the master.

My Mum came into my room in her nightclothes, carrying a lantern. She said for me not to be afraid. She had heard the cry as well—how could she not have?—and she was going to have to go upstairs to knock at his door. She told me to stay in my room, and she told me to latch my door after she had gone.

I was ten years old, Matthew. Can you imagine the moment? Mum left with the lantern, I latched the door, I stood in the corner where I felt safe, and I prayed to God as I heard Mum climbing the stairs.

I heard her knock at his door.

‘Mister Robson!’ I heard her call. ‘Mister Robson, would you come to the door?’