Blackbriar by William Sleator

that something like this can work its way into my head and just dominate all my thoughts. I just don’t know, I don’t know.”
    Well, Danny thought, now it’s going to be easy to persuade her to leave this uncomfortable place and go back to London. Briefly he pictured the London apartment, and the kind of life he had had there. And he realized, with a shock, that he really didn’t want to go back. “But haven’t you grown to like the house?” he asked. “In the few days we’ve been there I’ve really got used to it. I know we felt uncomfortable at first; but actually, that probably was that we just weren’t used to being isolated. Now that you’ve fixed it up and made it so cozy and nice, why, it almost seems to me that there’s something benevolent about the place.”
    Philippa glanced at him suspiciously. “But you’re the one who didn’t want to come here in the first place. What’s made you change your mind? Good God, there’s still so much we don’t know about the place! Why was that awful wooden figure there, for instance? No, I’m sure this isn’t the complete answer. I’m sure we’ve only tapped the surface. It would take more than this plague business to make everyone hate Blackbriar so much.”
    “But that’s another reason why I want to stay. I’ve got to find out the rest of the story.”
    Philippa flipped on the headlights, murmuring, “Now we’ll have to drive up there in the dark.” They drove on in silence until they reached the Black Swan. She pulled into the driveway. “I’m going in for a drink,” she said. “You can come in with me if you want.”

10
    It was dark inside the public house, and hot, and the air hung with smoke. There was the heavy pub smell of rich beer and cigars, and the hum of glasses and conversation. Behind the stained mahogany bar, bottles of every size and shape were arranged in pyramids against dark wooden columns and oval mirrors reflecting a darker, smokier room. The heavy beams on the ceiling were hardly discernible, and the fire blazing in the stone fireplace, which was big enough for a man to walk into, flickered over the groups of people huddled around the bar, standing in corners, seated on black leather window seats or at the round wooden tables scattered about the room.
    They made their way to the bar. Danny felt slightly uncomfortable, never having been in such a place before, but the bearded bartender hardly seemed to notice him at all. “What’ll it be, madam?” he asked Philippa, wiping off the counter with a white cloth.
    “Gin and French, please,” she said, “but only a drop of French.”
    “And for you, my lad? A ginger beer? A lemonade?”
    “Some lemonade, please.”
    Philippa paid for the drinks, and they made their way to a table in the corner near the fireplace, where no one would be able to hear them. The tabletop was comfortably scarred and stained, and there was a large black ashtray in the center. Philippa took a sip of her drink and lit a cigarette. “We can’t stay long,” she said. “I’ll just have this one drink. But I do need something to help me face that place now.” She took a nervous puff and stared into the fire.
    His elbows on his knees, his chin in his hands, Danny studied her face. In the firelight it looked soft and worn, the skin loose, her eyelids drooping in a way that was weary rather than just tired. He wondered if it was wise to have told her what he had learned about Blackbriar.
    She took another slow sip, and a long column of ash fell from her cigarette onto the floor. “If we leave here,” she said, “we’ll have nowhere else to go, nowhere.”
    Danny sat up so quickly he almost knocked over his chair. He hardly had time to be amazed at his own concern as he leaned toward her across the table and said in an intense whisper, “Leave here? But why? Just because it was a pesthouse once a million years ago? Just because some people died there? People die everyplace. People had the plague