Hugo's eyes widened in their prison as the colour began to fade from the replica, although not from the reflections. It carried on admiring itself even as its beautiful clothes unravelled thread by thread and fell away from its pale body. Hugo, unable to look away, began to mutter to himself that he was imagining this, that it was some sort of hallucination; but something was tugging at his memory, something he recognised. The scene became increasingly familiar as the grey skin began to bubble and melt around the obliviously smiling face. Hugo moaned loudly as he recognised his nightmare. The skin was now flowing like wax, smoothing over the features, falling in heavy droplets onto the floor. The details of the entire head were slowly erased. All that was left was a featureless outline of a man bearing the most superficial of smiles.
As the mirror-faced people turned slowly away, Hugo began to scream, his body shaking violently inside its transparent skin until the glass cracked, frosted and burst away from his body in a crystal shower, lacerating his clothes, leaving traceries of blood on his hands and face. His scream died into heaving sobs as the tableau before him faded quickly and the wall screen image was swamped once more by static.
He cast wildly around the room. He was alone; the artist was gone, her easel empty.
~
The artist passed among her admirers, handing out champagne and receiving complements in exchange. Some of her guests were still seated in front of the viewing window, looking through into the empty studio, apparently in contemplation of the piece, some were reviewing the video footage of the crucial moments, others were standing around engaged in earnest debate. In the course of her journey she overheard comments,
"...this one was much more invigorating, don't you think? The girl last time was far too passive..."
"...I don't agree. I found her acceptance much more satisfying than his denial..."
"...it's the frisson created by the confrontation between the subject and their subconscious that is so exciting..."
Maria approached and took a glass from Alison's tray. She held it aloft and tipped it towards the artist.
"One of your best, I think."
Alison looked abashed. "Well, I don't know. I was quite pleased with the way it turned out."
"Nonsense. It was genius. A very powerful piece." Maria squeezed her protégée's arm lightly in encouragement. "Really."
"He was a good subject. You found him for me."
"Yes I did, didn't I. Poor Hugo. I wonder what he'd say if he knew he was a work of art."
~
This was another of those early pieces that grew out of the central image. In this case, it was the amazing paintings. If I were writing the story now, I think I'd make their contents less blatant, but I still love the imagery.
Well Tempered
"January," Rosemary shouted, glancing at the kitchen clock. "I want you sitting at that piano when the instructor arrives."
Of course, the last place she looked was the music room. January was perched on the padded stool with her hands folded in her lap.
"Isn't he here yet?" she asked, sweetly.
Rosemary eyed her daughter with suspicion. She had that look on her face.
"He'll be here any minute," Rosemary said. "Sweetie, you will do as he asks, won't you?"
January was not a bad child. She could be naughty, of course—but what child wasn't mischievous occasionally? She was manipulative too when there was something she wanted. And if pressed, Rosemary would admit that whatever January wanted, she usually got. After all, keeping January happy was the important thing.
The current fad was MTV. January had decided that nine years old was the ideal age to become a pop star. She wanted a piano, because Pixie Harmon played piano on MTV, so her parents bought her a baby grand. It cost nearly two thousand pounds, and had to be winched in through the window.
At first things had looked promising. January had donned the little black leather-look top and shorts favoured by Pixie, struck a pose and brought her hands experimentally to the keys. Within an hour Rosemary recognised a stumbling rendition of Ooh Baby, It's Good. It was a very simple tune, but it was a tune.
January practised for a week, and each day the tune became a little more fluent, but then her progress halted. She didn't know any other tunes.
To forestall the piano's relegation into the ranks of mere furniture, they had hired a tutor. Having had a series of stern letters from the bank, they'd discovered an obdurate streak in themselves almost as big as their daughter's.
So far there had been five different tutors. For most of them one visit had been enough. Frustrated that natural talent was apparently insufficient, the child refused to be taught. January hid. She screamed and stamped. She played badly on purpose, and stuffed cushions inside the piano lid and pretended it was broken. She even clunked one lady on the head with the metronome.
Now she sat patiently, waiting for tutor number six. She was up to something, but before Rosemary could question her, the doorbell chimed. With one last warning glance, Rosemary went to answer it.
The man standing on her doorstep did not resemble a piano teacher. He was too well dressed. His suit was dark as night and immaculately tailored. His shirt, white as egrets' feathers and stiff as sailcloth under the wind, was bisected by a silk tie that had the exact subtle colouring of the tails of magpies. Rosemary was quite captivated for a moment, until she realised how these wonderful clothes disguised the odd proportions of his body. He had an elongated look, as if stretched like pale toffee. His head flopped on a goosy neck. His beard and moustache were clipped too neatly for his sagging features, as if he'd bought a set of facial hair one size too small for his face. Eyes like dull pennies regarded her blankly. His arms hung down like ropes.
"I'm Linke," he said, in an odd European accent. "I am instructor."
"Thank you for coming," she said, stunned by this apparition on her doorstep. "Please come in." Linke ducked into the hallway behind her.
Outside the music room, a familiar smell assaulted Rosemary's nostrils. A smell that, strangely, reminded her of October. Entering the room she recognised it. It was the smell of the log fire they set when autumn chilled the house.
January was holding the little kitchen blowtorch to the piano. The burnished wood was blackened and blistered, but thus far nothing had actually caught alight. "It won't burn properly," she huffed.
Rosemary was lost for words. But, as she stared at the flames licking the wood, the instructor intervened. Gently, he relieved January of the torch with one skinny hand, and closed her gaping mouth with the other. The child shrank out of the way as he reached over her and rippled an arpeggio on the keyboard.
"Something is wrong," Mr Linke said, and reached into his inside pocket, retrieving a long velvet bag. Inside was a foot-long tuning fork. He struck the fork on the piano to make it hum, a note so low Rosemary could barely hear it, then he handed it to January. The girl immediately dropped it with a squeal.
"The instrument is not well tempered," Linke said. "I shall tune it."
"We've only had the piano a few months," Rosemary protested.
Linke interrupted. "You must leave the room." He laid a fishwhite hand on January's head. "This will stay."
Rosemary disliked Linke's presumption, but she obeyed nevertheless. Reluctantly, she went into the kitchen and put the kettle on for tea, but as soon as that activity was performed she returned to the music room door. There was no sound from inside: no clinking tools, no twanging strings, no repeated striking of notes. No complaining of child.
Curious, Rosemary peeked through the crack between the door and the jamb. The view was frustratingly limited. January was out of sight, but she caught glimpses of Linke. She couldn't see what he was doing, but he never seemed to linger at the piano. Strangest of all, January remained totally silent.
Consumed by a curiosity that now bordered on concern, Rosemary tried to edge the door open an inch or so to gain a better view. The door was unceremoniously shut in her face. Her
level of concern rocketed, and she placed her hand firmly on the handle, determined to interrupt whatever the instructor was doing with her daughter. It was her own door, in her own house, and she had every right to witness the goings on behind that concerned her own child. What stopped her was the first notes of a plodding major scale. Rosemary let a breath out. She had over-reacted, like Richard was always telling her. Plainly, Linke was all right after all.
In the kitchen, the kettle rattled and spat to the boil. As she filled a tray with china, Rosemary heard a melancholy run of notes. Then an entire tune. It was a moody, oddly-intervalled piece. It didn't sound like one of Pixie's songs.
After Linke left, January stayed at the piano, hunched over the keys in concentration. She didn't stop for tea, not even for a chocolate biscuit. Sipping her calming camomile, Rosemary found herself disquieted by the threnodic music, but pleased that her daughter was at least playing the thing, she resisted the growing compulsion to ask January to stop.
Linke did not call again, but in the weeks and months that followed January applied herself to the piano like she never had to anything in her life before. Rosemary and her husband boasted to their friends about their daughter's growing proficiency at the instrument—they even talked about entering her in a regional competition—but privately both winced when their obedient, silent child came home from school and began to play.
It was some time before Rosemary looked up 'well tempered.' The dictionary didn't tell her much, only that it was a method of tuning keyboard instruments that involved unbalancing the tuning in the common keys by tiny amounts so that they can be tuned in every key.
Rosemary placed the book back into its slot on the shelf, and turned to watch her daughter, hands dancing lightly over the keys of the piano. There was something in that strange music, and in January's cold smile as she concentrated, that brought Rosemary close to weeping.
~
Another story that stemmed from a potential double meaning in a common phrase. I've always loved the notion that, to work in all keys, a piano cannot be perfectly tuned in any one key. And it was pretty obvious that if the same concept were applied to a child the results would be...unpleasant.
Harrowfield
When the lawyer left to attend to business in some other part of the building I stood in the doorway of the library at Harrowfield House and beheld a rare treat. It was the archetypal library, the kind immortalised in movies of the nineteen thirties and forties. It occupied two rooms which took up much of one side of the ground floor, high oak shelves stretching along the walls, stout with accumulated knowledge. Subtle lighting picked out the texture of leather, the glint of gold lettering against the sober spectrum presented by the rows of spines. There was a reading table in the centre of the first room, a broad map table in the other.
I breathed in the temple stillness, a hush that was one part anticipation and one part respect, and savoured the prospect of what would be my retreat and my work for the next two or three days.
Then a phone began to warble. It was my damned mobile. Communications technology is the curse of the modern age. That anyone thought it was desirable to be able to be contacted anywhere, any time, no matter how inopportune the moment is beyond me. However, Christine had worn me down with common sense, persuading me to buy one for keeping in touch when I was out—as she put it—on my travels. I could not deny that it made sense, in terms of our business at least, but I didn't have to like it.
I stabbed the answer key.
"Charlie-boy. Where are you?"
I hadn't heard the voice for two years, but it was as familiar to me as my old rugby injury.
Massimo Grieve.
My dreams of solitude evaporated.
Fifteen years earlier Grieve and I had shared university digs up in Glasgow. We hadn't got on, though we had managed to co-exist, the way flatmates must, with a minimum of interaction. Perversely, while contact with my friends withered over the years, Grieve had stayed with me. A recurring disruptive force in my life. Possibly he mellowed, or perhaps it was enforced habit that eventually made us friends. Friends of sorts anyway. Our last encounter had been fractious.
"I'm up in the Lakes," I said. "A place called Harrowfield. They asked me up to catalogue..."
"The Douglas Randall place? He's dead is he? Excellent. Listen, Charlie, I'm in Manchester right now so I can be with you after lunch sometime. See you about two? Good. We can catch up then."
The line went dead. Whatever the call had originally been about I would possibly never know, but the mention of Harrowfield had caught his interest. I felt a lump of anticipation settle in my stomach. My first thought had been that Grieve's call was nothing more than coincidence. But coincidences followed him like scavenging crows.
Three things always come to mind about Grieve from the student days: the kind of brain that guaranteed him his first class degree while allowing him to pursue a lifestyle of dope and daytime TV, an infantile fascination with 'True Crime' books and the pages of Fortean Times, and the fact that any encounter with him always left you with more questions than answers. Questions like: what was his interest in Douglas Randall; and how the hell did he get the number of my new phone?
~
I was eating a pre-packed sandwich in my car when Grieve arrived. A cold drizzle had begun to streak the windscreen as I chewed and watched the wind toss gulls about over the little lake and its bleak shores. Choppy waves lapped almost up to the walls of the house.
The morning had gone well. An initial inspection had revealed that the library contained a selection of biographies and fiction, small in number but sporting a few intriguing items. Reference books and histories took up the remainder of the shelf space in the first room, but it was the second room that interested me most. As I had expected, the Randall family had assembled one of the most extensive collections of maritime histories and nautical charts in the country. It would fetch a fair amount at auction.
Grieve had changed his car again. This time it was a sleek, Japanese affair, deep metallic blue. The top was down, allowing the rain in and, unfortunately, letting out the jaunty blare of what sounded like a Tijuana Brass rendition of Spanish Flea.
The car and music stopped and the roof rolled up smoothly. Grieve got out and stood appraising the house. A leather coat fluttered tent-like about his wide frame, the wind riffling through his springy thundercloud of dark hair. The sideburns if anything were even bushier than last time I'd seen him, and the sunglasses were his customary affectation. He carried a slim metallic case. Perhaps all this was what passed for acceptable dress in the computer consultancy business these days, or perhaps it was just Grieve being an insufferable poser as usual.
I got out to meet him, slightly conscious of the conservative cut of my own Slater Bros suit.
"Impressive, isn't it?" I said.
"I suppose so." Grieve fixed his attention on the house. It loomed—an impassive façade of grey sandstone and glass, peaked and turreted on the top like some combination of chalet and keep. "If by impressive you mean big," he muttered sarcastically.
This was another Grieve thing. Never one for bothering with hellos and goodbyes, he suddenly appeared in your life and carried on where he had left off. He'd been here no more than a few minutes and already my back was up.
"Grieve, why are you here?" I asked.
He looked surprised. I wasn't always so forthright. "Same reason as you, Charlie. Books." He laid a patronising hand on my arm. "You know the kind I mean," he went on. "It's been more or less common knowledge that Randall was a dabbler, and rumour has it that over the years he acquired some very rare volumes of an occult nature. It's that old classic pattern: bereavement to spiritualism to dabblings on the dark side."
Glib as it was, this matched pretty closely what the lawyer had told me. Randall had inherited the house and a worldwide shipping business on his father's death in 1948. He had come home to England in the autumn of that year, leaving his young American wife to follow, but s
he had died before she could join him. Perhaps not too surprisingly, grief-stricken, Randall had become a recluse, especially in the fifteen years since his retirement. Anything beyond those facts of course was total fantasy of the pulpiest kind, the stuff of those hammy seventies horror movies, and just the sort of thing Grieve would go for. The 'rumour' he spoke of could likely be traced to the kind of conjecture that was rife in those post-war years when spiritualism was at its peak.
So that was why he was here. Magick books. I was a little disappointed but not surprised. Grieve's fascination with the occult went back as long as I'd known him. He loved mystery. He aspired to it and he sought it out wherever he suspected two and two could spookily be added to make five. The last time he'd dropped in on me he had been looking for a book of reproductions of the sketches made by the hermit, William Rae. In the twenties Rae had been discovered living in isolation in Sutherland in Northern Scotland. His cabin had been littered with renditions of his, by all accounts very disturbing, dreams, and the pictures were supposed to have been collected into a volume, now much sought after. Of course my contacts had been unable to locate any trace of it and I doubted it had ever existed. In my experience that was how these things usually turned out.
"You know, Charlie," Grieve said, "there are people who would be very interested in preventing these books going to public auction."
"That would be a matter for the estate. Not me," I said, unhappy at the insinuated slur on my professional integrity. Whether these people meant himself or someone he was acting for I didn't care to know.
"I understand," he said, "but I'm confident an arrangement can be made."
"Whatever," I allowed myself a smirk at his confidence. "But I haven't seen anything remotely occult yet, I'm afraid."
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