‘The notion of such deities is not unknown in Hinduism either,’ muttered Kushal.
‘Indeed,’ conceded Richman. ‘Anyway, these spirits, according to the legends, did not welcome humans climbing their mountains, and always resisted those who first attempted it, dogging them with avalanches or bad weather. That’s why, the local folk said, it was always so difficult to be the first to successfully climb any given mountain. Or even to be the second or third to do so.
‘But here’s the kicker. Once a mountain has been climbed a few times—four times, five maybe—then eventually the spirit will despair of protecting the peak, and depart. And after that, according to the Buddhists, the mountain will become easier and easier to beat. And the funny thing is, that’s how it really works with mountains. Everest, for instance, was a hell of a struggle for Bourdillon and his team to climb that first time in the fifties, and for the next few expeditions too. But these days scores of people more or less walk up it every year.
‘So is it all true then? Are there really local gods up in the hills? Of course not! It’s mythical nonsense! Mountains get easier to climb purely because of improvements in mountaineering techniques and equipment—and because these days half the climbers in the world are really just tourists going up routes where someone else has already fixed ropes and ladders. You don’t need the death of some local god, or of a presence, to make sense of it.’
And with that, the billionaire sipped his drink as if the matter was now beyond dispute.
Kushal, however, shook his head slowly. ‘But by your own logic, Walter, if there was a presence, or even a local god, in the Wheel, then it would still be there. After all, the Wheel has only been summitted once. Not many times. Just once, and only with great effort, after many deaths. And since then, it has not at all become an easy mountain to climb.’
‘You’re right about the effort,’ said Richman. ‘Who knows it better than me?’
‘But that’s it exactly,’ pressed Kushal, more disturbed than ever. ‘You! Isn’t it another strange coincidence, too much of a coincidence, that you, the one man in all the world who has defeated the Wheel, are one of the six of us trapped here now, trapped because of the Wheel? That doesn’t sound like just bad luck to me. That sounds like revenge.’
Richman laughed outright. ‘What’s got into you tonight, Kushal? Revenge? What revenge? As I keep saying, we’re completely fine up here. I’m completely fine. So if some angry minor deity in the mountain was out to get me, then it’s failed, even after it’s done its worst. So what’s to worry about?’
Madelaine pursed her lips. ‘And yet, Walter, you are worried. You have been worried for some time, since construction began. You think something is not right. And so you brought Rita here, to see if she could tell you what is wrong—and you brought me and Kushal here so that we could listen to what she has to say, and then rebuild and redesign this place in whatever way might fix the problem.’
‘I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,’ said the billionaire, still smiling easily. ‘I invited Rita here purely for her father’s memory.’
‘Oh by god in heaven,’ declared Clara, slamming her drink down. ‘Walter, just tell Rita what the fuck it is you want already. What you’ve always wanted. Tell her you want a damn lustration.’
There was a beat of shocked silence in the Saloon, everyone staring at the major-domo. Rita had never heard Clara speak with anger in the whole time she had known her, let alone directed at her employer. Richman gave no response, however, only regarded his employee with a long gaze of chill indifference.
It was Kennedy who broke the impasse. ‘What in hell is a lustration, might I ask?’
The billionaire broke his gaze away from his major-domo to smile thinly at the security chief. ‘It’s a Latin word, and it means a ceremony to get rid of bad luck. You can read the damn book yourself, if you want to know more. But don’t worry, there isn’t going to be one performed here either way.’
‘Why not?’ complained Kushal, gesturing to Rita. ‘If she’s here, as you wanted, and she can really do what she claims in her book, then—’
‘I said no!’ For the first time frustration ruffled the billionaire. ‘I don’t need any damn magic tricks to make me feel safe in my own home.’
‘Then why bring her here at all,’ Madelaine insisted, ‘if not for that?’
‘I was curious, that was all. You were here with her father during the construction. You saw how Richard became convinced that the building was cursed or something, how he started talking about Rita and her book. He went on and on, insisting she had the answer. It was probably some kind of dementia, I think now. Still, the problems we had with this place were real enough. So sure, I got Rita here to check her and her theories out for myself. But now that it comes down to it, no, I don’t believe a word of it—and what’s more, she’s so mixed up about it all that she’d be useless anyway. Isn’t that true, Rita? You couldn’t do a lustration now if your life depended on it, could you.’
All gazes swung to Rita, Kushal’s in hope, Clara’s and Madelaine’s in surmise, Kennedy’s in outright contempt. She flushed. So that’s what it was all about, that’s why she had been brought here: because Walter Richman’s Observatory—at least according to her now dead father—needed a lustration.
God. Her father, suddenly a believer in presences—what an irony that was. And as for Richman, how dare he toy with her so long before finally making himself clear. But none of it mattered. There was only one answer she could give. She shook her head. ‘No. It’s been years. I don’t even … I wouldn’t know where to start anymore.’
‘There you go then,’ concluded Richman. ‘Can we have an end to all this now? Trust me, tomorrow, when this fog blows away and a helicopter comes, you’re going to wonder what the hell you were all getting so worked up about.’
And for a second night running, the billionaire called an end to the evening by stalking off towards the Library and his private domain.
And for a second night, Clara, after a pause, followed after him.
▲
But that wasn’t quite the end for Rita.
Back in her apartment, she had no interest in sleep. Opening another bottle of wine, she sat in the darkness of the living room, all the lights turned off, and as she drank she stared out into the night beyond her balcony. There was nothing to see out there but the fog swirling, illuminated to a dim orange by an unseen light somewhere above her flat, but she stared on all the same, heedless.
She was thinking about Richman and wondering why he was lying.
For he was lying. To her, to the others, probably even to himself. I don’t need magic tricks to make me feel safe inside my own home! he had said in an uncharacteristic flash of anger.
And in doing so had revealed himself.
For he was afraid in his own home, of that much Rita was sure. Why else would he have called her here? Out of mere curiosity, as he claimed? Or, as he also claimed, because her father had been concerned that something that was wrong here—because her father, after a lifetime of dismissing Rita and her book, had in his dying year changed his mind?
No. A man like Richman didn’t act on the basis of what other people believed; men like Richman implicitly trusted only their own opinions. So he too must be worried about his Observatory. He must know something is wrong here; he must even know, or suspect, why. It was just that, having now come to the necessity of admitting his own fear, of asking for help, his pride was baulking. Even after the avalanche, after the great wave and all its destruction, still he hoped that he could ride all this out without having to admit to his need; worse, to his vulnerability.
But who knew—maybe he was right about the last bit, maybe they would ride this out. Maybe a helicopter finally would appear tomorrow morning, and by tomorrow night they would all be safely back in Hobart, and the Wheel would be denied its prize, if Richman truly was the prize.
Yet Rita’s sense of foreboding had not abated. What if they were st
ill stuck here tomorrow night? Or even the night after that? And why did she feel so sure that the worst was yet to come? What could be worse than what had happened already?
Then again—she yawned a moment, took another sip of wine—all of this was beside the point. There was only one question she needed to answer, and that was the one Richman himself had asked her. Did she believe anymore? And if it really came down to it, could she do anything to help?
Could she perform a lustration?
Was it possible?
At length she went to the closet and pulled out the warm coat and fur hat she had been given two nights before. Donning them, she turned to the balcony airlock door. The weather panel showed the temperature at a bitter minus seventeen degrees Celsius, though there was still little wind, at least.
She passed through both doors and stepped out into the fog-laden night.
And Christ, it was cold. The air nipped at her exposed brow like a headache. Worse, the stone flags, though purposely rough for grip, were slippery underfoot. But she crept her way to the balcony edge, reassured at least by the solid stone wall that rose chest-height there, and by the fact that the darkness and fog hid the awful plunge downwards.
Steadying herself, she stared eastward. She could not see the Wheel, of course. Nothing was visible other than billows of fog rising before her, dim in the glow from the unseen light source above, driven by a movement of air that oozed up the face of the Mount and onwards over the peak.
But she did not need to see. Even without trying she could sense the vast gulf that opened before her, nearly three thousand metres down to the ocean, and ten kilometres across the middle airs to where, immense beyond imagining, the wall of stone and ice thrust up in brute strength.
So much anyone would sense, perhaps—it was a basic human awareness. But now Rita closed her eyes, and for the first time since she had arrived at the Observatory, for the first time anywhere in some twelve years, she tried to reach out deliberately with her other awareness, probing at the Wheel. Yes, on the Terrace, after the avalanche and the wave, she had been overwhelmed by the hostility that seemed to flow from the mountain, but that had been a passive act on her part, without volition, a reaction perhaps purely of shock after the disaster. Now, she was reaching out by her own will, by free choice.
And she could not help but wonder—am I really doing this? She felt like an alcoholic who, after many years on the wagon, leaps from the carriage on a whim and raises a drink to her lips …
Ah, and wasn’t alcohol a relevant point? She had drunk too much wine tonight. Even her old self, when she was still practised at this, would never have been able to detect anything in her current state, not with her special senses so deadened by drink.
And the Wheel was too far away. She had never interacted with a presence at such a distance before. Even if the entity in the mountain really was strong enough to influence events here in the Observatory (could that be?) it did not follow that she was strong enough to reach it in reverse.
Indeed, she could feel her mind dissipating helplessly in the great gulf of mist and air between her and the Wheel. No, this wasn’t going to work, she was too drunk, and it was too far, and there were a million other reasons, not least of which was her doubt that she even had special senses anymore. Not without drugs in her system, anyway, or maybe an adrenalin surge of shock and trauma. Which meant it was all delusional bullshit in either case.
And fuck, she was over-thinking all this; of course it wasn’t going to work. If it was possible at all, then it must be a natural process: it was not and never had been an intellectual exercise.
She strained a moment longer, trying to visualise in the way she once had, then puffed out a sigh—effort wasn’t the solution, she knew that—and with a shrug gave up the attempt.
And as she did so, in the instant that passed between having her eyes closed and opening them, there came a fleeting vision, a glimpse of something that was immediately gone, but the weight of which left her staggering back from the rail.
Jesus!
It was the same; it was same entity she had sensed after the earthquake, it was still there, suffused through the great mass of stone that was the Wheel, a presence vast beyond all her reckoning, faceless, nameless, but there. And still its enmity was bent unrelenting upon the Observatory and the humans within it. And holy Mary, its strength.
She shuddered, backed up to the airlock door and fumbled at the handle before fleeing inside to warmth and safety. And to more wine, a lot more wine, to block out any chance of even inadvertently opening her mind to so much malice again. What actual threat the vision portended, she did not know, the connection had been too brief to get any sense of the intention in the mountain’s hatred. Perhaps if she had held the connection longer, some answer might have come. But there was no way in all hell was she going to try to find out.
Commune with that thing out there? Or for that matter, attempt a lustration with it?
They had to be fucking kidding!
5
PRIESTESS
Extract from The Spawn of Disparity
by Rita Gausse, 1995
My own journey into an understanding of presences began a year after my mum’s death.
That year was an awful time for me. Not only because I’d lost my mother, devastating enough for any fifteen year old, but also because at the same time I was questioning my very sanity.
Others questioned it too.
My father, for one. It started straightaway, as soon as he arrived at the cliff house to find his wife dead and his daughter hysterical. I was raving at him about rocks falling on purpose, about how it was no accident, that the cave had executed Mum. He didn’t believe me, of course. He thought I was overwrought. When he got me to a hospital they gave me some kind of sedative, and before I knew it I was waking up in bed at home, as if it had all been a dream. Except it wasn’t a dream. Mum was still dead.
In the weeks following, Dad tried to convince me that it had really been just an accident, terribly bad luck that no one could have predicted. But I wasn’t buying it. I knew what I’d seen and felt that day, and nothing Dad said could convince me otherwise. We argued. I accused him of trying to brainwash me into denying the truth, he accused me of using Mum’s death for selfish, grandiose attention seeking.
The fights got pretty ugly. I mean, we were already in opposite camps anyway, a workaholic middle-aged father and a hot-tempered teenage daughter, who had never until then spent much time together. Bad enough, but now we could both add grief and blame and guilt to the bonfire.
In the end I was bundled off to board at school, and to endless sessions with a therapist, neither of which did any good at all, beyond making me more and more furious, and more and more hateful to Dad. It was no surprise that I began to rebel in other areas—smoking, drinking, sex, you name it.
Meanwhile, the house in which Mum had died was approaching completion. There had been a delay in construction of some months, while the coroner held an investigation. The finding was of accidental death. Even the structural engineers who had declared the cave stable were spared any blame. It seemed there had been a hidden flaw within the rock, impossible to detect by any standard measure. Afterwards, the owners of the house were allowed to resume building, with various design alterations, and reinforcement of the cliff face above. A year after my mother’s death, it was almost ready.
I learned of this one weekend when I was home from school, by overhearing a phone conversation between Dad and one of his colleagues. And immediately, I knew what I had to do. I had to go back to the house. I had to stand in that same spot again. I had to prove to myself that my memories, however bizarre and terrible, were not lies.
It took a series of huge rows with Dad for me to get my way. I was helped by the fact that my otherwise clueless therapist suggested to him that it might give me some closure. Looking back, I can see why Dad didn’t want to do it. The house must have had horrible memories for him too. No matter what the c
oroner said, he must have blamed himself and his design for his wife’s death. I blamed him, at least in part, for if he hadn’t built his stupid house in the cliff in the first place, then none of it would have happened. Still, he loved Mum, I can’t deny that, and no doubt he was as gutted by her loss as I was.
At last it was all organised and permission granted, and Dad and I drove up to the coast to the house. We had it to ourselves, the owners had agreed to steer clear for an hour or two; reluctantly, by report, but I had demanded that the house be empty when we arrived. It had been empty when Mum and I had been there, and somehow I knew that the emptiness was important.
And yet as soon as we walked in, nothing was really the same. An incomplete building, no matter how cluttered with tools and ladders and plaster dust, will always feel vacant, whereas a finished house filled with furniture and family photos will always feel occupied, even when no one is there. We were alone, yes, but I felt no sense of any presence lurking in the background as Dad and I walked about, there was only an air of comfort and wealth and beauty.
Oh yes, the house was unquestionably beautiful, even I had to admit that, no matter what it had cost me. My father had ceased work on the project after Mum’s death, handing it over to another architect, but that new architect had made only minor structural changes to the original design, so it was still very much my father’s vision, and I could tell that despite everything he was proud of it. Which, of course, only made me hate it all the more entirely.
But that was beside the point. All I really cared about, as we moved from floor to floor, was locating that forbidding presence I had felt on the day Mum was killed. And to my increasing alarm, I couldn’t. There was no sense of hostility or brooding threat this time. There was no sense of anything at all.
The Rich Man’s House Page 39
