Siding Star

by Christopher Bryan

  Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!

  The box spoke! And at once the gate started to yield. Katie gave another yelp of triumph and thrust herself away from it. It swung back, creaking softly.

  She was free.

  Silent and powerful she loped between the enclosures, heading north-east toward the main gate.

  Once she paused and scented the wind, nostrils twitching.

  Then she trotted on, a dark shadow moving purposefully and quickly.

  ***

  siding stAr 151 Cecilia drew up in a vacant space between parked cars, two doors down from the Academy for Philosophical Studies, on the opposite side of the road. She pulled on the parking brake, and switched off the engine and GPS system.

  So far, so good!

  This was a perfect spot for surveillance: she had an excellent view without being particularly noticeable herself. The street was well lit, but the porch of the academy (clearly indicated by a shining brass plate that she could see even from the car) was brightly lit on its own. Good! She extracted from behind the passenger seat a case containing a camera and a windowmount tripod. She positioned them, set the Sony Digital 800 to “nightshot,” and zoomed in to focus on the porch.

  Then, taking care to keep herself as far as possible in shadow, she sat back and waited.

  thirty-Five

  The Academy for Philosophical Studies. The same evening.

  Reginald Hargrove had been here for only fifteen minutes, and already he was perspiring. He could feel his shirt sticking to his back. His collar was tight and damp around his neck. This was intolerable. He felt like a laborer.

  Couldn’t they have told him how hot it would be? At least he could have worn something cooler.

  In other circumstances he’d have left, but the chairman had said it would mean money—a lot of money—and he needed money.

  Even if it meant standing here with the Coleman woman.

  And presumably, whenever he arrived, that oaf Hutton.

  Standing here perspiring.

  Until the chairman came.

  Then it would happen.

  That was what the chairman said when he’d explained about needing the money.

  Where was Wheatley?

  If only it worked…

  He tried to think of something else.

  154

  ChristoPher BryAn They’d promised him new children. That was something to think about. They’d sent photographs. A little boy and a little girl. Innocent. Sweet. He could see them now. But he’d have to go to Tangiers. Europe or North America had become too dangerous, they said. Certainly for what he wanted. And it would cost… a fortune. He still owed for the last pair.

  How easy it had been in the old days. He’d seen his great great grandfather’s diary. For some reason the old buffer liked to write it down—like Leporello listing Don Giovanni’s conquests. There were always villagers happy to give up a child— they had too many anyway and the girls were especially useless. So there were a few extra guineas for the villager, a great deal of pleasure for the squire, and nobody any the worse … except perhaps the girl, and even she ended up in a better place. Wasn’t that what they said?

  But nowadays… it was all so difficult.

  He must have more money.

  If only it worked… this… whatever the hell it was.

  thirty-six

  Outside the academy.

  A

  mong arrivals, Cecilia already had pictures of a blonde woman she didn’t recognize and a large, overweight man who was (she rather thought) an M.P. she’d seen on the news. Ah! Here was another, mounting the steps: a man in his forties, she guessed. She focused again and let the camera run. As he arrived at the top, he swayed ever so slightly. Was he drunk? She thought she’d seen him on television too. A big union man, very much a left-winger, which went oddly with the M.P. because she was pretty sure he was right wing.

  Ten minutes or so passed.

  A Lexus LS pulled into the gap in front of the academy’s porch. She tensed. Surely it was the car in Wheatley’s drive when they visited him? Yes! And there was Wheatley himself, emerging from the drivers’ side. Now he was opening the rear door and helping out very old, very frail man that Cecilia couldn’t place.

  She ran the camera until they made it up the academy steps and inside.

  Then she sat back in the shadow again and waited.

  ***

  Inside the academy. As the chairman entered, with Wheatley beside him, Maria Coleman felt her heart sink. The truth was, she’d been hoping he wouldn’t come. Or be delayed, so they’d not be able to go through with it.

  Not that even yet she was clear just what “it” was. She only knew that “it” was the ceremony of power, the ceremony the chairman and Wheatley seemed to think was crucial.

  She’d been uncomfortable from the very moment she entered the place—the upper room they called “the temple.” Here, it seemed, was one of those “focuses of power” about which she’d got into the habit of speaking so easily.

  Here it was, and she didn’t like it.

  At first it was hard to know why. The circular chamber occu- pied virtually the entire upper story of the academy, but it was not elaborate. Indeed, it was plain. Bordering on austere.

  It was very nearly empty.

  Around its entire circumference, black brocades hung in voluminous folds from floor to ceiling. There were no win- dows, nor any other means of admitting outside light. The only illumination came from two great candle-stands that seemed at first classical in style, and gleamed dully in their own glow.

  The floor and ceiling were black, etched with the pentangle and other symbols.

  At the center was a pillar.

  A single black pillar.

  And on the pillar, a flame.

  At first impression, being in the temple was a little like being in the tiny village church when she was a little girl. Or in the cathedral where the sisters from the convent had once taken her.

  Like it—but not the same.

  No.

  siding stAr 157 The temple she was in now stood to those other places rather as a caricature. A parody. An intended resemblance wherein, nonetheless, something was deliberately different.

  She found herself staring at the intricate patterns woven into the black brocades, at the curves and arches of the candle stands, at the pillar itself—and there, gradually, she began to see the cause of her unease. There was, in fact, something wrong with them. All of them.

  The symmetry of patterns on the brocades was almost right, but off just enough to be disturbing. The same was true of the symbols on the floor and ceiling. The pentangle was very slightly lopsided, the circle not quite true. The great candlestands promised classical balance and elegance but instead delivered something that, when she stared at them, became quite other than balance.

  The pillar wasn’t quite straight. Nor was it quite in the center. Actually, as she now saw, even the room wasn’t quite circular. Such tiny flaws.

  And yet, as she looked at them, they seemed to press upon

  her.

  Insinuating.

  Demanding.

  Demanding what?

  That she accept them.

  So why not accept them? They were the reality, weren’t they?

  And she was a realist. So what of it? It would not do. Something else was here. The tiny irregularities and imbalances pressed upon her, each pointing beyond itself to… what?

  To something utterly irregular.

  To the denial of balance.

  The refusal of harmony.

  She gasped.

  She hadn’t known it would be like this.

  A wave of nausea swept over her.

  It passed.

  But then suddenly, irrationally, she tried to do what ten minutes earlier would have seemed unthinkable—and here of all places. Indeed, even now she did not think to do it: for it was not at all her mind that led her to the attempt but her body, making its own protest.

  S
he tried to do what she had not done for nearly a quarter of a century.

  She tried to make the sign of the cross.

  She could not do it.

  She started to cry out, to object—and could not do that either. Again something seemed to hold her. Something that came from the air itself, clasping her, caressing her, sliding into her nostrils and her mouth and the secret places of her body, arousing her like a lover. A lover she did not want but could not escape.

  And now the chairman had come.

  Tom Hutton was sweating like a pig.

  So this was the temple.

  He didn’t think much of it.

  The engineer in him hadn’t liked it from the moment he

  walked in. Even slightly drunk—and let’s face it he was more than slightly drunk—he could see there was something wrong with it. Whoever built it couldn’t use a bloody spirit level—that was obvious. The whole place was out of kilter.

  It made him uncomfortable just to be in it.

  And now the chairman was here, with the little creep Wheatley ponsing along beside him.

  And there was silence. Nothing.

  Wasn’t anyone going to do anything?

  He’d have spoken himself, if he’d dared.

  At last the chairman spoke.

  And spoke. And spoke.

  Siding Star 159 On and on, a dreary monologue in a foreign language, with something occasionally from Wheatley, who obviously understood it. Well, he would, wouldn’t he? He was a clever little creep.

  On and on.

  Someone had said something about Hebrew, so he supposed that’s what it was. But it depressed him more than the building, and that was bad enough.

  Now the chairman and Wheatley passed beyond what at least seemed to be words to what obviously weren’t.

  And it was worse.

  Muttering. Gibbering.

  Like a pair of chimps.

  Odd little clicks.

  Like little bats.

  Meaningless.

  Yet sort of… nasty.

  Their gibbering passed into nothing.

  Empty. Formless. A void.

  How long?

  He felt dizzy.

  The chairman was conscious of them all.

  Their thoughts.

  Their fears.

  Hutton’s revulsion.

  Coleman’s terror.

  Hargrove’s greed.

  Wheatley’s ambitions.

  It didn’t matter.

  None of them could do anything.

  Soon they would know good and evil as he knew them, as

  his master knew them. Even Wheatley would learn that he had been deceived. The mastery he sought would mean nothing. It was an illusion.

  And now it was time.

  Drearily, he blasphemed the NAME. And waited.

  thirty-seven

  Exeter.

  T

  he attack came suddenly. Neither Rosina nor Andrea was at any point entirely clear what was happening, though afterwards they could identify certain stages.

  The first was emotional.

  As Rosina sat at the dressing table, brushing her hair, she suddenly felt utterly depressed. Why was she brushing her hair? Why was she doing anything? What was the point? God knows, she and Andrea had tried, but they couldn’t even make their Cecilia happy. Where was it all going? She dropped her hairbrush, and couldn’t be bothered to pick it up. She could only bury her head in her hands.

  The second involved their senses.

  More precisely, their hearing.

  The roar of wind. There flashed into Andrea’s mind the fleet- ing memory of a plague of locusts, seen long ago on television. But this rose and fell in blasts of sound that pierced everything— the room, the furniture, his head—reducing him to chaos.

  Which blended into the next feature.

  His mind.

  Everything was muddled.

  He could focus on nothing. Dimly he was aware of the dogs barking. He tried to stand, perhaps with a notion of using the bedside telephone. With every bit of his remaining strength he struggled for control and must have managed to get to the bed, for he found himself kneeling beside it, fumbling at the instrument on the bedside table. For a moment he actually grasped the handset but then could not hold on to it. It fell from his hand and crashed to the floor.

  Finally, heat.

  Stifling heat that came with a stench of decay.

  The roaring mounted in intensity to a pitch of physical pain. For an instant Rosina could have sworn she saw huge mandibles and monstrous beating wings.

  Madre di Dio, prega per noi! Mother of God, pray for us!

  Then she fainted.

  thirty-eight

  The academy again.

  Immanuel Soames, part time lecturer at the Academy for Philosophical Studies, had finished with nineteenth-century idealism (there had been no questions) by 8:30 p.m. That he did not leave the academy until about a quarter to midnight was because he’d spent the ensuing three hours and fifteen minutes having “a drink” (each specimen of which had been declared with increasing solemnity to be the last) with the woman who served the bar, she all the while nattering on all about “that lot,” who were “up to something” at the top of the building. Of course it had only been polite to listen, even if it wasn’t clear what they were up to. And anyway it was interesting, he thought (he wasn’t quite sure).

  All good things come to an end. The woman withdrew to an inner sanctum. Soames crossed the hall, which was still well lit, and after some fumbling opened the main door to the street. Something large and gray and four-legged was waiting on the porch—something that promptly pushed past his legs and into the hall, causing him to stagger.

  “Tha’s a bloody great dog! Shouldn’t do that, doggie!” he called out, then added with some vague sense of public responsibility, “And don’t go peeing all over the bloody building!”

  Conscience thus assuaged, he turned back to the door and began to prepare himself for the difficult task of negotiating the street and finding a taxi.

  Cecilia swore softly. A small fleet of minibuses had passed by, blocking her view. Now there was a man in the doorway, looking back at something in the building. Had someone gone in past him? If so, she’d missed whoever it was. The man said something and shook his head vaguely in the direction of whoever it was. Then he shrugged and came on out, leaving the door open behind him.

  When he reached the head of the steps, Cecilia filmed him. She had plenty of opportunity, since he stood there for several minutes, swaying slightly. Clearly, he was inebriated. At last he came down the steps and set off somewhat uncertainly in the direction of the Bayswater Road. Cecilia, who followed him with the camera until he was out of sight, suspected he was looking for a taxi. At any rate, she was relieved that he hadn’t got behind the wheel of a car. If he had, she’d have felt obliged to do something about it.

  She turned her attention back to the porch. Ten flights of stairs Katie mounted in a whirlwind, and there heard once more the call from the court of Solomon, the word of power. She obeyed, finding in that cry her summons from the great keeper—her summons to joy and high adventure. Straining her heart to the utmost, she crashed against the upper door—once, twice, a third time: at which assault the spindly, civilized lock burst, and she entered the temple in an ecstasy.

  They had summoned the beast and to them the beast came. Light streamed behind her as she leapt to the center, suffus

  ing her in gold as she scattered them before her.

  siding stAr 165 The chairman knew instantly Whose servant had come, and for the briefest of moments was shaken from his equanimity.

  Mockery!

  They were mocking him!

  He had summoned the Beast, and they had sent a beast. A parody of what he had chosen.

  How dare they?

  He refused their mockery. He refused them.

  Deliberately, defiantly, he gave himself to rage. Not hot rage. Not fury. That would be too like gen
uine passion. Cold rage. Resentment. Dreary, endless, humorless. There he settled.

  Tom Hutton had thought he would faint when the door burst open. Then in a blinding moment of utter surprise he saw that the invader was beautiful.

  His head cleared.

  Beauty. His dad’s Alsatian bitch, Beauty. All those years ago. They’d loved that dog. Dad wept the day she died. Big, strong dad, who was dead himself a month later, drowned when the coal face flooded in the Lofthouse Colliery disaster. And all because the National Coal Board couldn’t be bothered to get off its damned backside and do a proper geological survey.

  But now it was as if Beauty had come back. Beauty triumphant! Perhaps Dad would come back too.

  His ears were filled with the sound of a rushing wind that came with the invader, billowing the hangings and shaking the building. As if watching slow motion he saw, transfixed, how Beauty Triumphant pawed at each of the great candle stands in turn, how they swayed and fell, catching the curtains and dragging them with them. The heavy material must have been highly flammable, for as soon as the candle flames touched it they crackled into fire.

  God knows what Dad would have said about this lot. Strict chapel was dad. Touch pitch, lad, and you’ll be defiled, he’d have said.

  Again he smiled. The flames were licking up. Such clever chaps, all of them—and they hadn’t even the gumption to get decent fire-proofing.

  So the joke was on them. And what a joke! Mining for dirt, they’d tried to drill a hole in God—and what broke out on them was Beauty!

  Beauty was spreading fire everywhere. He could feel it, hot on his cheeks. The fire would destroy them, of course, along with their temple. Their crooked little temple! Why shouldn’t Beauty destroy them, after the way they’d acted? Beauty would destroy them all—including Tom Hutton.