The Tower

by Simon Clark

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Use the lead that’s already in. You’ll need the adapter for the jack-plug. There’s one in the box with my guitar picks.’

  ‘Got it.’ Sterling went to work, plugging in the mini-tape player to the closet-sized amp. He flicked a power button. Speakers in the amp began to hum.

  Josanne shadowed Fabian. She looked more herself now, apart from a reluctance to stray too far from her lover. Noticing the activity, she asked, ‘What’s happening?’

  Fabian answered with a lordly wave of his hand, ‘Fisher’s putting on a show for us. Isn’t that right, Fisher, old boy?’

  ‘Wait and hear it for yourself.’

  ‘Adam will be back with battalions of police before you’ve done fiddling with those tapes.’

  Fisher merely grunted. Suddenly time seemed too valuable to waste it arguing with Fabian. Blaxton had methodically written details on the boxed tapes that had been used in the ghost hunt of fifteen years ago. There were locations within the house, dates, times, whether the tape machine had been left to record alone or with people present. For a moment Fisher turned over the tape cassettes as if he were sorting dominoes. OK, which one do I play first? The answer’s obvious. They’re all numbered.

  A moment later he turned up tape number one. ‘All right.’ He held it up. ‘Here goes.’

  Fabian assented with a nod. ‘I’ll give you five minutes, then I’m opening a bottle of wine.’

  Marko came in with a mug of coffee.

  Fisher glanced across at him. ‘Any sign of Adam and Belle?’

  ‘Not back yet.’ Accompanying Marko, the dog. He was sticking close to people, too. There was something about this place that didn’t encourage solitary wandering.

  Fisher handed Sterling the tape who clicked it into the deck. ‘Hit play whenever you’re ready, Sterling.’

  ‘Three, two, one. Go.’ Sterling thumbed the play button. The bass amp hummed. Clicks followed by a scraping noise came from the speakers. It could have been the amplified sound of someone positioning a microphone stand.

  Fisher nodded. ‘This was recorded here fifteen years ago.’ With rain tapping at the windows they listened to the whispered voice:

  ‘Did you hear that? Can you hear the noise? A kind of hiss … in and out, in and out … almost the sound of someone breathing. Only it’s different; like …

  No. It’s gone again. Yeah, but you’re like that, aren’t you, House? You big old ugly pile of rock. First it’s the sounds, you bang all the doors, and then it’s the clock chimes. You’re inventive with those, aren’t you? But I’m not letting you get the better of me. I’m staying. Did you hear that, House? I’m staying. So, go on! Do your worst!’

  You’re right. I should have kept my mouth shut. You should never goad anyone to do their worst. Not a drunk in a bar. Not a policeman. Not God. Not even this damned house. Because, the moment you make that challenge – go on, do your worst – that’s exactly what they do. And sometimes it can be far worse than you imagine. Rather than sitting here shouting futile threats at the walls, I should be explaining why I returned to the house and what happened to me over the last three days.

  OK, so I’ll take it from the top. My name is Chris Blaxton. I’m twenty-three years old. I’m sitting here alone in a house called The Tower. And here I am in what was once an elegant ballroom with windows looking out over a garden that’s now grown into this wild, wild jungle. Not that I can see much of it. It’s night-time. And, yeah, dear God, this is the worst part – when it grows dark. All dark and black and hidden, and the place is swamped by shadows that just ooze through the rooms like they’re alive.

  Enough. Once you begin brooding about how alone you are in this place and visualize what it’s like in all those empty rooms, your imagination starts to eat you alive. Right. I’m sitting at a table that’s big enough to seat twenty people. The tape deck is in front of me, the mic’s in my hand. I’m going to make this record of what I did just in case I never get chance to tell you in person. Three nights ago, I left video cameras running in the ballroom, with more in The Promenade and at the foot of the main stairs. What I saw on the tapes when I played them back was enough to … well … what I saw is going to be the starting point for this … document? Testament? Diary?

  Oh? And didn’t I tell you I’m now alone in the house? I did, didn’t I?

  I thought I was. But what you believe and what is true isn’t always necessarily one and the same thing. There! Listen! I don’t know if you heard that … I’m sure there’s someone walking along the corridor to the ballroom. So … what do you do at a time like this? Run like hell and not look back? Or open the door? See who it is?

  But this is The Tower. A house where its occupants don’t always wear a human face.

  CHAPTER 26

  Josanne listened to the recorded voice rumble through the amplifier. In the spaces between words the hiss of static sounded like bone ash being poured into an urn.

  And here we sit in a solitary house, she thought. The five of us listening to the tape. The Tower’s a lonely pile of black rock in the middle of nowhere. All around are clumps of miserable trees. Does the sun ever shine here? I can’t imagine for a moment it does. Rain, swamp, fields of mud. She shivered. The house had all the morbid ugliness of a skull picked clean of skin and hair. Even the concrete runway resembled the grey spine of some primeval beast. A sense of detachment sidled through her. This part of the world could have broken away to drift into some dark abyss. Morbid thoughts. Dear God, they were morbid thoughts. But just as some houses have walls that draw damp from the cold wet earth so morbid thoughts might seep through the stonework before migrating through the dank air to settle on her skin. She shivered again. Her eyes were drawn to her watch. The time was 10.45. In another fifteen minutes the chimes would sound again. They rang out as punctual as death …

  Josanne rubbed her cold arms. See what I mean by morbid thoughts?

  Now the grave voice of the stranger emerged from the speaker. There was no echo. The walls of the ballroom hungrily devoured every syllable. ‘Listen, House, you’re not going to make me crack. I can take it. Do you hear me? I can take anything you throw at me …’ The voice ended there but the tape continued. Josanne heard the respiration of the man. The pronounced rasp as his lungs drew the stale air of the house into his lungs then expelled it again. As if there was precious little oxygen in the atmosphere he appeared to breathe harder. The cycle of respiration grew quicker. In her mind’s eye, she saw Blaxton, then a young man of 23, sitting here in The Tower. He’d issued his challenge to the tomb of a building. He’d invited it to do its worst. Attack me or leave me alone, he seemed to be saying. Blaxton goaded it to put-up or shut-up. So this unseen thing that approached him as he sat in the ballroom? Did Blaxton wait for it to reveal itself? Or did his nerve break? Did he close his eyes and bury his face in his hands, and wait until it had gone? Josanne found her eyes drawn to the amplifier. The foot-wide round speaker in its centre gripped her attention. She had to wait here, listening to the sound of that amplified breathing recorded fifteen years ago. She braced herself. Any second now the man would shout out what he saw. Josanne clenched her fists. She bit down against her teeth so hard her jaw ached. An involuntary need to stare at the open mouth of the speaker kept her eyelids pulled back. In her reflection in the window she saw her frozen face. Her eyes stared in a horror of anticipation. The sound of respiration grew louder. Then: click! The recording ended. It left that drizzle sound, as if hard, dry particles pittered down on to an equally hard surface.

  Fisher nodded to Sterling who switched off the tape recorder. All that remained was the faint hum of the amp.

  ‘OK.’ Fabian nodded. ‘You have the tapes. You met a guy on the old runway.’

  ‘You believe me now?’

  ‘I can accept I’ve just listened to a tape made by someone called Blaxton. But what has all this got to do with us? We’re putting a band together here.’

  ‘It is important,
Fabian. Hell, that guy explained what happened to him and his friends when they came here to make a TV programme fifteen years ago.’

  Fabian reacted with a prickly defensiveness. ‘Fifteen years ago? Who the hell cares?’

  Sterling spoke calmly but he put some force into the words, ‘Fabian, listen to what Fisher has to say.’

  Marko added, ‘For crying out loud, man, you know something’s been happening here. I mean, where’s Kym for God’s sake?’

  ‘All right. Tell us everything, Fisher.’ Fabian sat back down with his arms folded. ‘Because in the next twenty-four hours we’ve got to decide whether to continue working here or cancel everything. And I mean everything. The rehearsal, the recording studio, because when we turn up there you lot won’t know the fucking songs.’

  Rain tapped at the window. For a moment Josanne anticipated that Fisher would simply walk out. Instead he took a deep breath. The guy was angry but he’d made up his mind to see this through.

  ‘OK, I’ll tell you what Blaxton told me. If you’ve got any questions wait until I’ve finished. Even then I won’t have answers. Blaxton ran out of time.’ He looked round at the others. Josanne managed a nod. She didn’t want to hear this, but she had to. God knew she had to. For a second she saw herself twisting in the maelstrom of flood water. Her mouth open to admit a rush of water into her lungs. Marko and Sterling nodded, too, their expressions serious. Jak went to Marko to rest his head on his knee. Fabian gave one of his OK, whatever shrugs.

  Fisher spoke matter-of-factly. From the disquiet burning in his eyes Josanne knew he told the truth. ‘When Blaxton arrived here fifteen years ago with the production team they were a lot like us. In their twenties, ambitious. They were alone here in the house. Like us. The bottom line is they experienced dreams … only they were more than dreams … to them it seemed like real experience. And to give it to you all straight: they experienced their own deaths. They were violent deaths. It happened like this: as they saw the vision of their own death they heard the chimes of the clock. We’ve all heard them. We know what they sound like. Blaxton’s friends heard the same. One saw himself falling from the roof of The Tower. A few hours later it happened. Blaxton witnessed it. A girl told him she’d dreamt she wrecked her car and was trapped in it when it caught fire. As it burned with her in it she could hear the chimes of the clock. The day after that she tried to drive away.’ He shrugged. ‘She never made it.’ Fisher looked into their faces. ‘Blaxton told me he dreamt he died out there in the marsh. The last I saw of him he was running into the mist. After that I heard him screaming.’ Fisher rubbed his face as if muscle tension had locked him up tight. ‘Nothing more to tell, guys. It happens as simply as that. Blaxton described the vision as a “Death Dream”. You have the dream; you hear the chimes. A few hours later you hear the chimes again. Then you die.’

  ‘Wait,’ Sterling said. ‘You said Blaxton made the recording fifteen years ago?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘But then he didn’t die within hours of having this death dream?’

  ‘Like I said, Sterling, I won’t have answers. I don’t know the mechanics of it.’

  Fabian stood up to run his hands through his hair. ‘You realize what you’re saying, Fisher? That people who come to this house suffer some kind of curse. Then once they’re hexed they die.’

  ‘OK. You want theory, Fabian? How about this? Ten thousand years ago a pagan temple stood here! The local inhabitants got pissed off with their god, somehow they trapped him and cut out his heart, then buried it right here. Then ten thousand years later some crazy son of a bitch built a house slap bang on top of it. You’re shaking your head, Fabian? Don’t you believe me? OK, how about the God-fearing people burned a witch to death here, and she curses the lord of the manor with her dying breath. No, not good enough for you?’

  ‘Fisher—’

  ‘How about this for a theory – Fabian, sit down and listen! You wanted fucking theories. Theory number three is that this was a burial site for plague victims. Uhm no? Is that too much a throw-away TV horror movie for you? Stay there, Fabian. I’ll spin you more theories. This house was a US Air Force base in World War Two. How about the Nazi secret weapon theory? This is a doozy. Hitler and Goebbels are Satanists. They’re into all this black magic shit. So they open up their Big Bad Book of Spells and put a hex on the place. Everyone who walks through the fucking door, gets a fucking curse on their head. One of the indelible kind. You can shower all fucking day in holy water and you’ll never scrub it off. Fabian … Fabian?’

  Fabian walked to the door. ‘I’m not listening to this, Fisher. You’re a jerk.’ He turned to jab his finger at him. ‘In fact, consider yourself sacked from the band.’

  Sterling spoke up. ‘Hey, calm it down, guys.’

  ‘Tell it to Fisher. You saw him; he was taking the bloody piss.’

  ‘I wasn’t.’ Fisher’s voice rose in frustration. ‘I’m trying to warn you. There aren’t any glib theories to explain it. There’s no old burial ground or voodoo curse. It’s what happens here.’

  ‘Josanne,’ Fabian spoke coldly, ‘are you coming back to the room with me?’

  ‘Ignore theory,’ Fisher demanded. ‘Stick to the facts. I dreamt, or hallucinated … whatever you want to call it … that the building collapsed on me. I believed it killed me. Last night, Kym came to my room – and you might as well know this, we fucked around – but afterwards she told me that when the electric shock knocked her out she saw herself being stabbed to death. She even described the guy who murdered her. He was weird and scruffy-looking with a scar here.’ He touched his forehead. ‘Now Kym’s missing, and the guy she described is the same as the guy in the woods … Cantley.’

  Marko and Sterling exchanged uneasy glances. Fabian stood perfectly still. A tic had started at the corner of his mouth.

  Fisher sounded exhausted now. ‘We’ve been through this before, Josanne, but tell Fabian what you dreamt when you were alone in your room.’

  Josanne stiffened. Memories of that violent inrush of water still possessed a savage presence in her consciousness. Even as she opened her mouth to speak her lungs felt suddenly stifled as if there wasn’t enough air in them to give voice to the recollection. Worse, there didn’t seem enough air in them to feed her body with oxygen. She looked at their faces as they waited. They expected her to speak. She glanced at Fabian. Whatever she said now would determine their future together.

  ‘God Almighty. You can forget leaving!’

  Everyone snapped their heads in the direction of the piercing voice. A hooded figure strode into the room. A hand gripped the hood to pull it back, while a free arm shook away drops of water. Belle’s haughty face appeared. It was unsmiling.

  ‘I’ve never seen rain like it,’ she thundered. ‘It’s bouncing so hard against the ground you can’t even see the road.’ She noticed the charged atmosphere of the room. ‘What’s wrong? Am I interrupting an orgy?’

  Sterling asked, ‘Did you find the phone?’

  ‘Did we find a phone?’ Adam breezed in. He’d grabbed a towel to dry his hair. ‘Did we find a phone? We couldn’t even find the damn road to the ferry. The blasted rain’s so heavy you can’t see twenty feet in front of you.’

  ‘Besides, the one road we did try had been flooded out. If the others are like that we need to paddle out of here in canoes. Dear heaven! Look at my shoes. My mother bought me these from Harvey Nicks. She’d go crackerjack if she saw the state of them, absolutely bloody crackerjack.’

  Josanne said in a flat voice, ‘We’re trapped.’

  Belle harrumphed. ‘Don’t bank on popping out for cocktails while this lot is teeming down.’

  Adam finished rubbing his hair. ‘This place is low-lying; just keep your fingers crossed it doesn’t flood.’ On the word ‘flood’ the hidden clock struck eleven. Its chimes shimmered out of secret channels buried in the walls that carried the sound from the Good Heart. The metallic resonance pressed down from the stale air. Their tolling
were promises of ominous intent. As the final chime clung to the void of the ballroom as if reluctant to decay and die as a chime should, Belle gave a visible shudder.

  ‘That reminds me,’ she said. ‘You know, we were in the car for so long I fell asleep. I had the most God awful dream.

  Adam clucked his tongue. ‘Tell me about it. She screamed so loud I nearly rammed the car up a tree.’

  Belle continued, ‘I dreamt that this evil-smelling man stabbed me. It was awful. I could really feel the blade being pushed through my skin.’ She gestured at the ceiling. ‘And as he killed me all I could hear were those damn chimes.’ Belle stared back at the people in the room. ‘Why is everyone looking at me like that? What have I said?’

  CHAPTER 27

  Eleven o’clock came and went. The chimes didn’t fail to remind them all that another hour had pushed them sixty minutes closer to the grave. Fisher repeated to Adam and Belle what he’d told Fabian and the others. All about Blaxton, about what the man had called the ‘Death Dream’. And the fact that when Blaxton heard the chimes he panicked. That he ran into the marsh. Fisher didn’t doubt that the man had heard those same doom-laden chimes thundering inside his head as he was sucked down into the mud to drown. Now there was a sense of freefall. As if they’d fallen from the top of a skyscraper. This was the uncanny in-between time, between parting company from the safety of the building and the shattering collision with the earth.

  So there’s seven of us left, he told himself. And until the rain eases we’re trapped here in The Tower.

  Outside, spring rain had turned to sleet. Even though it was dark, Fisher could make out lawns with a crusting of white. It wasn’t the pristine fresh whiteness of snow, but a greyish, dirty white. More like the off-white of mould growing on a decaying tree-trunk. For a while, Fisher and the rest shifted between kitchen and ballroom. The moment you arrived at the ballroom the kitchen seemed a better place to be. Only the instant you walked through the kitchen door the ballroom became a preferable destination. Fisher told himself: ‘it’s going to be a long, long night …