The spotlight was blinding him now, burning into his eyes like a sun. The party scene in his head kept playing over and over like a film rewinding and fast-forwarding. A tingling in his fingers was starting, through his hands and up his arms. There was room at the party, a locked room.
A girl in a purple leotard brought him a drink and he swallowed it quickly. He was used to the blackouts over the years, thought he had controlled them but he had never had one on stage before. Quiet murmurs were rippling through the audience, they needed another gag but his mind was a blank, except for the vivid colours of the party.
“I expect a lot of you guys out there are married? Great isn’t it, marriage I mean, I used to be married, a long time ago, left her.” His mind was racing. He’d never used his failed marriage for material before; it was a taboo subject for him. “She was a great lady, good cook, a terrific home-maker, sensational in bed…so my friends told me.” The laughter rose quickly but fell even faster. The atmosphere had altered and the audience were becoming aware of it.
“Would someone dim the lights?” The spotlights faded and the houselights came on. His mind was swimming, the words were coming out but he had no control over them. He could see the audience now, see the puzzled expressions on their faces. The laughter had died away to a trickle. He could hear his voice but it seemed as if it was coming from the back of the theatre. The glass he was holding slipped from his fingers and smashed on the stage.
“He’ s drunk,” someone said. “High as a kite.”
The microphone was getting heavier, almost too heavy to lift up to his lips. The voices from the audience were amplified, and he could hear each person clearly.
“This guy’s a joke, not his act,” a large redheaded woman said loudly to her companions.
Fields, swayed to the front of the stage. “Lady, when was the last time you checked a mirror? The joke’ll be staring straight back at you.” He was so hot, the sweat pouring down his back.
“Are you going to let him speak to me like that?” the woman demanded of a man at her table, probably her husband.
The man shrugged. “He just did.”
Fields snorted into the microphone before it dropped from his grasp. “American manhood at it’s finest.”
The man stood up, red faced, picked up a half empty champagne bottle and threw it at the stage. The bottle flew soundlessly through the air, and Fields watched it coming. It was in slow motion. Spinning above the heads of people, spilling its contents onto the tables. People were standing, wiping their clothes, but the bottle was tumbling through the air towards the stage. Fields felt everything had slowed, the room had taken on a quality of being almost stationary, and he could see the bottle slowing as it approached him. Then it seemed to halt in mid-air, he blinked, and it smashed, broken glass and the remains of the wine falling like cruel rain onto people. The pretty blonde he had noticed earlier stood screaming, glass embedded in her low cut cleavage, blood staining the swell of her breasts.
The audience erupted, several angry faces turned to the stage, people shouted insults at Fields. “I remember my first drink,” he slurred at them.
Then a bright white light exploded in his eyes. He dropped to his knees as the pain invaded his head. He felt as if a steamroller was massaging the back of his neck moving steadily forwards to his forehead. ‘MORELAND.’ The word…name? Flashed into his head. The theatre melted away like ice, leaving him isolated on the stage, the rest only blackness. All the noise had faded, and he was left in a dark, silent void, a womblike softness in which he was trapped. The pain in his head was intense, and he cried out with the force of it as it spread through his body.
He was dimly aware of being lifted away, as purple clad dancers milled around him, a diversionary tactic while they hauled him off the stage.
Then he collapsed into the arms of smiling unconsciousness.
Whitney settled into his sumptuous office and ran through the schedule for the day. He’d taken a Valium at midnight, on the plane, and it had given him heartburn. The cognac he’d drunk two hours later reacted with the tablet to give him a pounding headache, which returning to the isolated centre would do nothing to dispel. He let out a long sigh. The meetings had been hard work, with the first being yet another justification for the continuance of around one hundred and twenty military and scientific personnel, and more importantly for the renewal of the major funding that was required. Whitney was a failed scientist who had drifted into administration and found that he was good at it; but he also hated it. This led his bitterness down fruitless tracks until it discovered a target worthy of his frustration. At present it was the new psychic subject, Frank Moreland.
The research centre had only been in existence, unofficially, for five years, and officially did not exist at all. This made the rounds of cash collecting from the various interested departments doubly difficult, but Whitney was proud that he’d succeeded again. It wasn’t easy explaining to practical minded generals that psychic phenomena could be a viable defensive strategy. ‘Mind games’ was one of the more polite but dismissive phrases they had used. Fortunately there were other, more covert, organisations that had access to the President’s attention, and through a system of wheeling, dealing and out and out hard bargaining, Whitney had gained another eighteen months stay of execution for the centre. To get that he had mentioned on several occasions that Frank Moreland might possess some phenomenal capabilities. Now the tests would have to show whether that was true or not.
Ray Norris sat at the control panel in the lab, listening to the tracers on the EEG machine, looking up at the TV screen above his head. He made some adjustments to his computer program. The TV screen was connected to a small closed circuit camera in Frank Moreland’s room, adjacent to the lab. Moreland was sleeping on a single divan bed, electrodes wired to his head to monitor his brainwaves via the electroencephalogram, and other parts of his body were wired up to a Vital Signs machine, so that every aspect of his sleep patterns could be recorded.
The tracers on the EEG jumped and Norris made a note of the data sheet on his computer. He checked the digital clock on the console. Six thirty a.m. Norris smiled, because so far Moreland’s sleep patterns were uniform and predictable. Norris stretched wearily; two more hours and the night shift would be over. Two more hours and he could go back to his rooms in the staff quarters, where his wife would be waiting for him, a hot foaming bath filled and ready. Nicole would wash him, massaging his body with her supple fingers, easing away the tensions. Maybe she would slip off her robe and join him in the water, where they might make love, gently but passionately, as they tended to do quite often, being married barely three months.
Ray was twenty-nine, black, still built like the football player he had been at college. Nicole was two years younger, kept her body in fine shape with daily aerobics classes and ate only health food.
It was quiet in the lab with just the low murmur of equipment or the buzz of a printout in the background. Ray’s partner on the shift, Bob Keating, came back in, delicately holding coffee and doughnuts.
“Place is like a maze.”
Keating hadn’t been at the centre long and still maintained a sceptical ‘seen it all before’ attitude that rankled the usually easy going Norris.
They ate and drank in silence before Norris said, “We have alpha and beta waking rhythms established. He’s awake.”
On the TV screen Moreland’s body wasn’t moving. “Looks like the monitors have got it wrong.” Keating said, and managed to make it sound as if this wouldn’t have happened in the east coast lab he used to work in.
Norris shook his head. “No, he’s awake, it’s just that he’s sent his mind freewheeling through the centre for some exercise before he joins us.”
Keating gave a ‘bullshit’ look but checked the computer readings before he said anything. He knew Moreland had come with some highly regarded ratings and if Norris was saying that Moreland had sent his mind roaming around, then Keating knew that was p
robably true.
Keating also knew, because he had sneaked a look at Moreland’s dossier that the new star on the block came with a lot of excess baggage.
The sleek black limousine swung into the drive of a huge old house on the fringes of the city. Rain fell in a fine mist, clouding the windshield, making the outside of the house shapeless, almost transparent.
Imogen sat in the back of the car, flanked by the flame haired woman and the blonde. The black haired one sat opposite, next to the one Imogen feared the most. She was perhaps the most beautiful, but certainly the cruellest. Her hair was brown, verging on auburn mixed with gold, and her eyes were of the very palest violet blue. It was she who had grabbed Imogen’s hand and bitten off her finger, spitting it from the window of the car.
Imogen avoided the women’s baleful eyes, and cradled her mutilated hand, staring down at her feet. The hand was throbbing, the raw, jagged pain making her want to cry out, but struggled with the impulse, keeping it at bay. The car stopped and the two women next to Imogen dragged her from the back seat. She was too weak to walk so they pulled her across the gravel drive to the open door of the house.
“Where are we?” she asked but the women ignored her. Her mind struggled to make sense of the images her eyes were giving her. The house maintained a vague shape, and in her blurred state of vision she imagined it as a beast, crouched, breathing, waiting for her to enter; or perhaps a black cloud rolling towards her, ready to swallow her whole. She had the impression of rain cascading over the high gabled roof, bouncing off cold glass window-eyes, and then she was pushed through the door. The women let go of her and she fell in a heap onto the marble floor of a grand entrance hall. She closed her eyes, feeling sleep coming rapidly to her despite the white-hot fire burning in her hand. But they weren’t going to let her sleep.
Savage fingers snaked into her hair and yanked her to her feet. The black haired woman held her at arms length and slapped her across the face. Then she hit her again.
“He is waiting for you.” It was the first time any of the women had spoken since they’d snatched her from the plaza. The voice was soft but guttural, accent less, and totally expressionless. There was little overt menace in the voice, but neither was there any trace of warmth. It was a voice devoid of humanity. A form of madness burned in the woman’s eyes as she tightened her grip on Imogen's hair and hauled her across the marble floor. To the right was a heavy ornate oak door its panels carved intricately. It was too dark in the house, no lights lit at all, but Imogen gained the impression of hundreds of faces staring at her from behind the door, hundreds of mouths open.
The door swung slowly open. Elsewhere she could hear muted music, a band playing, and people laughing; glasses clinking, and feet dancing, uncluttered enjoyment as a party reached full swing.
The woman pulled Imogen into the room, pushed her in the small of the back and sent her reeling to the far wall. The door shut behind them and darkness enveloped them, broken only by pale moonlight filtered in through glass panels in the ceiling.
The air in the room was foul, a fetid animal stink that made her want to retch. She stretched out her good hand and felt for the wall, following its smooth surface until she reached the corner. There she crouched, nursing her hand, feeling the uncarpeted floor beneath her, waiting.
From the far side of the room came a faint rustling, and the sound of something sharp scratching the floorboards. The air in the room was getting warmer, the smell made it almost unbearable. From across the room something moved, something large and heavy. Imogen heard the boards creaking under the strain. Then she felt hot breath on her cheek. She looked into the darkness and saw two pinpoints of blue light, blue fire. A scream rose to her throat and died there. In the black, foul-stenched room there came a roar, as if of triumph.
Then the slaughter commenced.
Robert Moreland and his wife Rebecca had headed west, away from the centre of the city, towards the fringes of Boston, where houses were large and infrequent. The road straightened, twisted, until Robert turned the Jaguar into a sweeping gravel drive with aged magnolia trees lining up either side, evenly spaced along the edge of neatly clipped lawns.
The house in front of them, as they parked the car next to dozens of others, was large, old colonial mansion style, commanding and clearly immaculately maintained. A Virginia creeper crept slyly up one side of the face of the house, a half unshaven beard partially obscuring the latticed windows.
Running to avoid the rain they reached the huge portico and rang the bell for entrance. Uniformed valets at the entrance led them into a marble floored entrance hall beyond which, through an ornately carved oak door, they could see a chandeliered ball room where seemingly hundreds of people were dancing to the music of a full orchestral band, drinking, eating, talking and generally having a good time.
“Pinch me,” Rebecca whispered to her husband.
“Was that pinch or punch?” He smiled. He was thinking the same as she, what were they doing here?
Sounds of laughter and glasses clinking in celebration. The room was vast as they entered, people smiling at them as they wound their way to the bars. A piano was playing solo now, the tune ‘Moonlight’, the band having a short break. Most people were sitting, sipping their drinks, or visiting the tables laden with food.
Robert took two glasses of champagne from the tray carried by a waitress and handed one to Rebecca.
A man walked past them and caught Rebecca’s arm with his sleeve. “Oh, I do beg your pardon,” he said graciously. Robert thought his fat, florid face looked like a bullfrog.
Rebecca dug him in the ribs. “I know what you’re thinking. Stop it.” She laughed. “Where’s the host? Do you see him?”
Robert shook his head. “I’ve only spoken to his aides on the telephone and corresponded by e-mail. I have no idea what he looks like.”
Rebecca gave him a look, one of which he was fondly familiar, even though it was her, ‘are you serious?’ look. The truth was they had been invited to a party at the home of a potential new client whom Robert, or his assistant Daniel Parker, had never actually met. The evening was the man’s suggestion, ‘no business talk, let’s just get to know one another in a cordial atmosphere’, and Robert was pleased to accept. He was annoyed at first when Daniel and Imogen couldn’t make it, but when Daniel confided the reason he wanted to be alone with her that evening Robert slapped him on the shoulder and wished him good luck.
The pianist had move into some light classics now, performing his best with some Brahms, Beethoven, and Grieg, but the overall mood in his performance was cocktail lounge rather than concert hall.
A thin gaunt woman with lilac dyed hair strolled past. “Nice party isn’t it?”
Robert and Rebecca slung back polite smiles. “Shall I get us some food?” Robert suggested.
“Don’t leave me on my own, for God’s sake,” she pleaded. “I’ll come with you.”
There was a throng of people around the food tables, but there was so much food, on so many tables that they managed easily despite the crush. Robert searched the sea of faces for someone who appeared to be the host but no one was obvious in the role. They began to play ‘spot the host’ as they ate the delicious food.
One hot summer’s night a young Robert Moreland had taken Abby Hall to the senior prom. They’d been dating all summer and he was convinced he was in love with her cornfield yellow hair and her blue lagoon eyes. He’d tried to impress her, and thought naming the tunes the band were going to play, in sequence, before they actually played them would be enough to convince her that he was the boy for her. She had been impressed at first, fascinated as he got the first two songs, He thought he was getting all the right responses from her, a kind of awe mingled with admiration, but as the evening wore on he failed to notice the subtle shift in her mood. She withdrew quietly into herself, like a hermit crab into its shell, shooting him the occasional curious look. When Tim Spalding came over to ask her to dance she was on her feet and i
n his arms before he’d even finished asking the question. She spent the rest of the evening with Spalding and went home with him. Robert never dated her again and the other students were quick to pass the word that Abby didn’t want to be seen with freak like Moreland. Robert was devastated, and the child in him died as he made his first adult decision. The gift, power, curse, whatever it was that he’d been born with, was something private and not a trick to be paraded for its own sake.
He was born one of triplets, his mother dying on the birthing table. Her mind, though they hardly knew it at the time, was one of immense psychic powers, allowing her at various times, depending on her state of health, and various external factors, to predict events, ‘see’ people miles away, move objects, and generally be sensitive to mood and surroundings. This gift she passed to each of her sons, though it had divided them since they became adults and chose to use those powers for different purposes.
Robert used his to run a successful company that dealt with recruitment and training, using his powers modestly for assessment of people and their characters. He didn’t often talk about his two brothers.
Rebecca was thinking about her sister. Like Robert she was secretly pleased that Daniel was finally going to ask Imogen to marry him, they’d been dating nearly two years now. Even so Rebecca couldn’t help but feel a stab of sadness that her little sister, whom she still considered her baby sister, was growing up. When they were small Imogen would always ask Rebecca’s opinion without actually coming out and making it obvious, a trait she had carried over into adulthood. Often, when their parents were out for an evening, Rebecca would be left with baby sitting duties, cuddling Imogen on her lap brushing her hair, and reassuring her that she was still ‘sugar and spice and all things nice’.
A Weaving of Ancient Evil Page 22
