by Simon Clark
‘You’re out of your mind, Fabian. This is serious.’
‘OK, wait till the police get here. Then Kym will flounce in and we’ll look like a bunch of idiots not – I repeat not – a group of professional musicians who’re literally trying to get their act together!’
‘Fuck you, Fabian.’
‘And fuck all of you! You’re a bunch of amateurs. When you’re forty you’ll still be playing in bars for beer.’
Fabian hurled the flashlight at the wall where it shattered. With that he marched down the corridor while his voice rose into something close to a scream: ‘And when the cops get here they can take away that bloody dog!’
Josanne realized she’d been sitting in the marooned vehicle for an hour. Could try driving out? What if the car’s balancing on a ledge? If it slips forward into deeper water?’
‘Then I’ll be sunk. Literally. I could wade. The water won’t come above my knees. Just make sure those eels don’t bite …’ She sighed. ‘But if I wade out of the lake where am I going to walk to? I’m miles from anywhere.’ Her eyes roved across her bleak surroundings. Although she’d switched off the lights to preserve what was left of the battery she could just make out her surroundings in the darkness. There wasn’t much to write home about. A few hundred square yards of cold, cold water. Above that, ghostly wraiths of mist drifted toward the car. She stared at them anxiously, half-expecting them to resolve themselves into demon faces. Mist, she told herself, only droplets of water floating in the air.
So what to do? Try starting the motor? Then reversing out? What if the car was balanced precariously on a ledge? In her mind’s eye she saw the car slithering into an underwater abyss. Josanne would drown where she sat in her seat.
Josanne grunted. ‘Don’t be stupid. You’re only twenty-four. Heaven isn’t ready for you yet.’
Her beloved automobile wouldn’t be swallowed by the lake in a twinkling of an eye, and that’s a fact. The downside was she’d have to wait until daybreak. With luck the fog would have lifted. Then she could get towed out of the water. And call the police.
With Fabian sulking in the kitchen Fisher decided to return to the ballroom. He’d had a bellyful of the lordly Fabian grouching about the band’s failure to rehearse. What did he expect? That everyone continue like nothing had happened? Kym had vanished. There were no houses for miles that she could decamp to. They might as well be stranded on a desert island, or even the dark side of the fucking moon. For a moment he paused outside the ballroom door. Tempting to return to the kitchen after all and knock Fabian on the jaw. It would serve the arrogant bastard right.
Instead, he took a deep breath, then pushed open the ballroom doors. Straightaway, he checked his guitar. The Rickenbacker stood where he’d left it on its purpose-built stand. He’d sweated blood to save to buy that bass. The music store described it as a ‘professional entry instrument’ – that meant its sound quality was sufficient for a working musician, but for Fisher the Rickenbacker was lightning in a bottle. This was the instrument great bassists lusted after. The guitar was an inspiration. With it he found he could play better than ever before. All he had to do was plug it in. Then it seemed to whisper to him, ‘Play me.’ Fisher decided to take it back to his room, then carefully stow it in its hard case. After that, it could stay locked away until he needed it again. Although whether that would be here was debatable. Already he saw signs that the fledgling band was disintegrating. Through the windows he glimpsed a pair of moving lights. Marko and Fisher – they were crossing the lawn to the house. Jak wove between them as he sniffed at scent trails in the grass. So they’d had no luck in finding Kym either. He glanced at his watch, 6.30. ‘Hurry back, Josanne,’ he murmured. ‘We’re going to need those cops.’ Standing there with the bass securely grasped in his hand, he glanced round the room. The drums appeared undisturbed; as did the keyboards. Of course, Fabian had locked away his briefcase full of songs. Fisher imagined the guy slept with them under his pillow. Hell, he probably even handcuffed himself to them. As Fisher shook his head at the mental image he headed back to the door. Then he remembered …
‘Camera.’ He crossed the room to the table. The tiny light on top of the camera had switched from green to red. It revealed the tape had run through to the end. Nothing in the ballroom appeared to have been touched. Even so, he decided to return to his room to check the tape. He’d be able to replay what the camera had recorded through his TV. With the bass in one hand, the camera in the other, he left the ballroom and headed along the corridor. As he opened his room door Fabian appeared behind him. The man stared.
Was this some kind of challenge? Would Fabian pick up the row where they’d left off? Shit, Fisher didn’t need this now.
Fabian announced, ‘Josanne’s not back yet.’
Fisher expected some sarcastic comment about the tardiness of his girlfriend. Yet to Fisher’s surprise he saw a glint of anxiety in Fabian’s eyes. The guy bit his lip as he added, ‘Shouldn’t she be back by now?’
Cantley watched the two men from The Tower. They walked through the woods at dusk with their dog. The thing’s a menace. Cantley wanted the black mutt dead. Although he’d been confident the pair wouldn’t see him their blasted dog had started barking in his direction. Oh yes, the beast had known a stranger had their eye on them. When the dog’s barking grew increasingly vicious the men had headed in the direction the dog had been staring. Damn them. Cantley had to retreat along his secret pathways. That mutt had become an obstacle to his plans. It had to go.
What was it now? Josanne’d promised she’d be back at The Tower within the hour. Now more than two hours had elapsed. And here she was. Still in the lake. Her car had become a little metal island with a sole inhabitant. Josanne had done what she could to make herself comfortable. She’d closed the door. Pulled on her coat. Then sat sideways with her knees drawn up so her feet rested on the passenger seat. Heaven knows what damage she’d wrought as she crashed through the hedge. Oh well, that’s a bridge to cross when I come to it. Briefly, her spirits soared when she realized her cell phone was in her pocket. She tried to call the police only there was no signal. The entire tract of water-logged land must be bereft of transmitters. Then there were no houses here; only fields with the rare intrusion of a road now and again. For a while she’d peered through the rear window in the direction of the road she’d so dramatically exited. Even with it being foggy she was sure she’d see the lights of passing traffic. None passed. Roads in Outer Mongolia would be busier than this hidden corner of Yorkshire. She hugged herself to try and stay warm. But the cold, damp air managed to slither its way into the car. To save the battery she’d switched off all the lights. At last, however, she conceded she needed company of sorts. She switched on the radio. The first channel she found played doom-laden organ music. Ominous sounding chords lumbered. A funeral march for dead gods. ‘Not on your life,’ Josanne muttered. ‘This is creepy enough.’ After working through more radio bands she settled on a station playing classic pop. As The Beach Boys launched into Wouldn’t it be nice … She muttered grimly to herself as she stared at the body of cold water, ‘Yeah, wouldn’t it be nice … huh.’ She clicked her tongue in disgust. ‘You’re telling me.’
Fisher ran the lead from the video camera to the aerial input at the back of the TV. Once he’d done that he returned to lie on his bed. It became habit now to glance at the ceiling. ‘Stay where you are. Ceiling. No tricks, OK?’ Back to the flippancy he told himself wearily. But clues had begun to stack up. The night he arrived here he’d experienced some kind of hallucination – hell, it had to be hallucination, hadn’t it? – OK, he’d had this nightmare – or hallucination – that the walls and ceiling of the room had rolled in to try and crush him. Later, Kym suffered an electric shock in the medieval structure called The Good Heart. In a nightmare she’d witnessed herself being stabbed through the chest by a spiked mechanism. Now Kym was gone. Earlier in the day Josanne had appeared at the ballroom in a state of glassy-eyed shock. S
he’d muttered something about being drowned in her room when it had filled with water. OK. Another bad dream. But why was everyone having bad dreams? Now Josanne should have been back an hour ago. Despite the trademark arrogance Fabian did appear concerned. The last Fisher saw of him was the guy walking down the driveway to wait at the gate for Josanne. Once more Fisher’s eyes rolled round the walls and the ceiling.
‘Perfidious room,’ he murmured to himself. The chimes from the hidden clock began to strike. This time the number of strikes matched the time on his wristwatch. Seven o’clock. Through the window pane he saw darkness had descended. Wisps of fog wandered through the light cast from his room. Fisher switched on the TV. Tuned to a dead channel it showed nothing but a blizzard effect of white dots; static hissed from the set. Fisher pressed the play button on the camera. More pixilated snowflakes. Of course, he’d have to rewind the tape. He wasn’t familiar with the controls, so it took a moment to check he was pressing the right buttons on the tiny control panel. He touched one marked with a backward pointing arrow. An image snapped up on screen. It revealed a figure walking backwards away from the camera. For a gloomy barn of a place light levels in the ballroom were better than he anticipated. He recognized the figure as himself. One John Fisher, aged 22, bass player with a yet unnamed band. The tape must have run out just before he’d picked up the camera. For a moment he watched his onscreen self move in reverse. First to hold the bass guitar. Then put it on the stand before walking backwards to the door. Fisher tapped the stop button, before touching the miniscule rewind button on the camera’s plastic shell. With a faint hum the tape respooled itself to the start.
A clicking from the ceiling make him glance up. His eyes scanned the smooth expanse of white. He was wary that at any second it would rush down at him again. A faint tapping started. It spread from one side of the room to the other. Then slowly faded. Someone’s running a hot water tap. That’s all. Even so he watched the ceiling with an unblinking fascination. Just in case … When the clicks subsided he pressed the play button, then shuffled back to the bed to watch what appeared onscreen.
A dark mass moved away from the lens to reveal a video image of himself. He’d just leant forward so he could switch the camera to record. The shot was a longish one of the amplifier stacks, the drum kit, Fabian’s keyboards with Fisher’s bass guitar standing upright in the centre of the shot. He could no longer see Fabian and Josanne: they’d be standing near the ballroom entrance. However, he could see himself giving the room one last look over.
‘You need to shave more,’ he murmured to his video image. The dark shadow on his jaw was plain to see.
Off camera he heard Fabian’s voice as he addressed the video image Fisher: ‘You’re not going to lock the Rickenbacker in your room?’
On TV he saw himself shake his head. ‘Bait.’
Fisher yawned. He dragged a pillow toward him then beat a hollow in it for his elbow. Once he’d made himself comfortable he turned back to the TV. No sounds came from the speaker. The screen revealed a crisp shot of the bass guitar resting vertically on its stand; its four strings gleamed with a silvery light. Behind the instrument were the drums, keyboards, plus a wall of oblong amplifiers. Snaking across the carpeted floor were glossy black cables that ran to a central power board, which contained circuit breakers. Fisher stared at the cables. For a moment their significance didn’t quite click. Then he sat upright on the bed to stare at the screen. A tingle ran up the back of his neck. The camera shot was static. The camera sat on the table. It filmed anything that happened to occupy a given space in front of its lens. Fisher had not noticed any movement. Yet the camera had moved. It must have. Because when he began reviewing the footage he couldn’t see the cables.
‘So, what the hell have you done?’ he murmured.
Instead of being around three feet from the floor, that was the height of the table the camera rested on, Fisher now figured it had ascended to around six feet. Its position had been subtly angled so the red bass guitar remained screen centre. Although now, of course, it revealed several square feet of ballroom carpet with black cables running across it. Then the camera began to move. A slow pan … very slow. The bass guitar slipped from screen centre. Fisher leaned forward to lock his concentration on the TV. The camera image rotated with such smoothness that surely it must have been mounted on a tripod. The amplifiers with the windows behind them slipped off screen to show the wall at the far end of the ballroom. Then faster. The camera turned to reveal the ballroom doors yawning wide open (but I closed them as I went out). With a burst of speed the camera darted forward. Effortlessly, it flew through the doorway then swung left. Its velocity was so great the walls of the corridor became a brown blur. The brightly illuminated area of the entrance hall expanded. The camera banked then hurtled through the doorway into The Promenade. Once there it stopped outside the ancient façade of the farmhouse that was enclosed within the mansion. The camera revealed crisp details of the grey wall, the deep-set windows with their latticework of lead strips that held antique glass panes in place. The camera slowly retreated from that strange building within a building. Like a wild animal back-stepping in a furtive way – as if to escape? Or to lie in wait for its prey?
From the blind clock the chimes started. Were they chimes recorded by the camera? Or had they started now? They shimmered on the still air; a phantom resonance that worked its way into his head. He hated the sound now. Their timbre irritated his ears. On screen the camera revealed a view of that stunted doorway. The chimes grew louder. Now he could make out a splash of light moving round behind the façade. The chimes quickened. An urgent pulsing sound. Metal against metal. A brassy heartbeat.
Then the camera lunged forward. It sped like he was looking through the eyes of a tiger bounding after its prey. The doorway expanded to swallow the camera into The Good Heart. Fine name for such a miserable conjunction of stones.
The light moved in the shadows. Suddenly, he was seeing himself, his video image, shining the flashlight round that low ceilinged room.
Bingo! He understood. ‘You bastards. You bloody, tormenting bastards.’
As he watched himself playing the flashlight over the fireplace he realized what had happened. Marko … hell, it had to be practical joker Marko … he’d sneaked back in to grab the video camera to play this trick. What stupid, irresponsible timing.
‘I’ll break your legs for this, Marko. I’ll rip you in …’
Fisher’s words petered out as the view of himself shifted. The camera must have been rising, maybe a full five feet above him. Yet all the time its unseen operator angled it downward so he, Fisher, was in the centre of the screen. But how could Marko do that? He must have stood on furniture to film from that high angle, so it revealed the video image Fisher from above. He saw the top of his own head. A truncated image of his face with the light catching his forehead. His shoulders hid the rest of his body from this angle. He only caught a glimpse of the pointed boots on his feet.
But why didn’t I notice Marko there with the camera? It must have been obvious there was someone else in the room. I can’t have been so dense as not to see the guy standing over me.
The sound of the chimes had receded. Now they returned. They came tumbling from out of the walls. An avalanche of notes. A frenzied clanging of a dead fist beating the door of the tomb. Their volume was nothing less than savage. In life the flesh and blood man on the bed grimaced as he clamped his hands to his ears. On screen the video image of himself did the same. With a surge of chimes that sounded like entire worlds exploding, the camera lunged down at the video-taped Fisher. Wounds broke open on his face as if invisible masonry had fallen from the tower above him. Blood filled his mouth. The skin above his eyebrows opened in a jagged crack. Depression wounds mottled his cheeks. An invisible force pushed the eyeballs back into his head so deeply his eye sockets became two vast craters. For a moment they yawned as hollow voids. Then blood rushed from internal haemorrhaging to fill the twin craters with
pools of liquid crimson. The mouth opened to scream. It remained locked wide open as the face stopped moving. There was absolute stillness on screen. Just that stark image of the corpse face in close up. No sound now.
On the bed, Fisher ran his hands over his eyes. Nausea jetted from his stomach into his throat. When he could at last bring himself to look at the screen again he saw the bass guitar in the centre of the TV. Behind it the amplifiers and drum kit. For a moment. There was no movement. The image was still. Outside a gentle breeze tugged at the hawthorn bush. Its branches tapped on the other side of the glass – the sound of someone trying to attract his attention. An individual with important news to share with the damned.
CHAPTER 22
Fresh air. That’s what I need. Fisher yanked aside the curtains so he could reach the window catch. For one vertiginous moment he’d been ready to seize the TV then hurl it through the glass. What did it mean that he’d seen himself being crushed by an invisible force on the video tape? He must have fallen asleep. A nightmare …
‘No,’ he panted, as he hoisted the sash window. ‘I was awake. I know I was.’ He thrust out his head. Instantly cold air washed over it. The shocking suddenness of it was as acute as being dowsed by iced water. He sucked in the air with a stuttering moan. Oxygen poured down his throat into his lungs. A tingling supernova of a sensation. Fisher breathed deeply. His heart beat with wanton fury against this ribs. If it had exploded from his chest there and then he wouldn’t have discounted it. Not after he’d witnessed his own death on TV. But could he make sense of it? He’d left the camera running early that evening as he searched the building for Kym. The camera had dutifully recorded a view of his bass guitar, the amps, drums, keyboards. Yet the camera had appeared to move. Who had picked it up? How had they run to The Good Heart to find him? An invisible avalanche had appeared to mangle his face. Jesus Christ. How can anyone fake that? He remembered the details so clearly. The shocked expression as the camera lunged into close-up. He’d even glimpsed the sharp pointed shoes he’d been wearing …
