by Adam Nevill
‘What is it?’ asked Miles. ‘You have a very strange look in your eyes.’
‘I’m just wondering whether I have a crush on you.’
Miles swallowed and used his napkin to dab at his forehead. ‘Better ask the waiter for some smelling salts.’
‘Is there a Mrs Butler?’
‘Not any more. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be a father. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be a lot of things she wanted me to be.’
‘Girlfriend?’
‘Nothing serious.’
‘Lying bastard.’
Miles raised his hands. ‘It’s early days. That’s the truth of the matter. But if she knew we were having this conversation, she’d be furious. And hurt. And I’d feel like a shit. Which I’m not fond of. My head’s complicated enough.’
‘But I’m sure you could get over it.’
‘With you as an incentive, I’d say I could get over most things.’ Just for a moment, as he spoke, the smile slipped from his face and Apryl detected a brief look of longing. It stopped her breath. And she felt its impact between her legs.
So he did like her. And maybe more than she suspected. But why did everything have to be so complicated? That’s the way it was once you were approaching thirty and still a single girl. Particularly as the older, charismatic men like Miles were invariably married. She’d read about women who had affairs with them. These guys were always married to someone they underestimated and took for granted, but for whom they rediscovered an unbreakable attachment when it was time to make a big decision. Handle with care.
‘That’s sweet of you to say,’ she said, a little too bitterly for her own taste.
‘It’s the truth. You are lovely, Apryl. Why wouldn’t I be interested? You’re a beautiful young woman. A bright one too. And a little crazy in a nice way. Irresistible, in fact.’ The smiling eyes were back.
Her composure regained,Apryl detected a reticence in him about taking a chance with his emotions. Something else they had in common. If they never saw each other again, they’d think about each other.
‘It must be the wine. Or I’m a slut. But I came very close to asking if you wanted to come see my great-aunt’s apartment.’
‘Not exactly conducive to passion.’
‘You’re not wrong on that account. Unless it was something really kinky, like S and M.’
‘Get your coat. You’ve pulled.’
Apryl giggled, but couldn’t stop feeling churlish with disappointment. ‘Your girlfriend wouldn’t thank me for keeping you out late.’
‘Stop it. Now you’re misbehaving.’ But even being told off by him was not without its appeal. ‘Seriously, though, I’d love to see inside Barrington House. I wonder if it’s changed much since Hessen lived there.’
‘I don’t think so. It’s like totally retro. And Lillian’s apartment hasn’t had a lick of paint since the forties.’
‘This diary, too, I’d love to see it.’
‘Her journals? Sure, you can borrow them. The ones that are legible. The later ones are just unreadable. But you have to be careful with them – I want to take them back home with me. We’re not going to have much else of Lillian left when the place is sold. Just some photos and her journals.’
‘How many of them are there?’
‘There’s a stack of them. Twenty.’
‘Really?’
‘They’re all about your beloved Felix.’
He looked at her with such intensity, his face was almost stern. ‘All joking aside, are they really about Hessen?’
She nodded. ‘If you’d been listening earlier you’d have realized just how much. But you have to read them yourself. I couldn’t even begin to describe what they’re like. They’re frightening. And they’re the main reason I’m staying in a hotel from now on.’
‘Well, you weren’t exaggerating,’ Miles said, looking around the hallway. ‘This is incredible.’
‘Isn’t it? But you should have seen it before. I’ve cleared most of the junk away. Lillian never threw anything out. There were London telephone directories here from the fifties.’
‘Some of it could have been valuable.’
‘I’m not an idiot, Miles. The dealers bought anything of value.’
‘Ouch.’
‘And luckily for me, she also kept her clothes. This belonged to her.’ She twirled around to show off her suit, which she felt he hadn’t paid enough attention to.
‘I thought it had the look of authenticity about it,’ he said, studying the thin seams on the back of her calves.
‘And the smell too, unfortunately. I’ll have to mask them with perfume until I get them all dry-cleaned.’
‘It really suits you.’
‘Thanks.’
‘I mean, it really suits you.’
She pulled a Betty Boop pose and blew him a kiss. His eyes darkened. With desire, if she wasn’t mistaken. She turned and teetered deeper into the apartment, and Miles followed.
‘Your great-aunt had problems?’ he said, as if to clear the air of the erotic awkwardness that seemed to keep surfacing.
‘She wasn’t very well. But she was . . . haunted. By the past I think. I don’t think she ever got over her husband’s death. She didn’t have any friends. Just rattled around here on her own, planning to escape from the city. She thought Hessen had trapped her inside here.’ Apryl wanted to mention Lillian’s suggestions about ‘the burning’ of something – possibly Hessen’s work – and the torments Lillian imagined the artist had inflicted on her and Reginald, but she couldn’t bring herself to do so. She wanted Miles to like her and not think her flaky with any talk of evil spirits or ghosts or anything kooky like that. She’d let him read the journals and make up his own mind.
In the living room he looked through the packing crate filled with the photographs she had taken down from the wall. ‘Sad, isn’t it?’ he said quietly, while holding a picture of Lillian and Reginald standing in a sunny garden somewhere. And she knew exactly what he meant. For this to be the end of you; a box full of photographs in the hands of people who never even knew you.
Already the place was destroying her mood. Tonight with Miles was the best she’d felt since she’d arrived. ‘Come on, I’ll show you the rooms and then you can see me into a cab. I want to get out of here. I’ve spent way too much time here already. I want to have a bit of fun now before I go back to the States.’
Miles looked around the stained walls. ‘It’s no place for a wee young thing. So damn gloomy, but affecting in a way, too.’
‘You should try spending a night here.’
‘Is that an invitation?’
‘You’re welcome to on your own. I’m not sleeping here again before it’s sold. I told you, it gives me the creeps.’
‘But your great-aunt lived here. You’re wearing her clothes and you seem to think the world of her.’
‘I know. And I do. But it’s the place itself. The whole building, if I’m honest. It’s just not right.’
Miles frowned over a smile. ‘Really, what makes you say that? It’s just old. I thought you liked old.’
She shook her head. ‘No. It’s not even the age of the place or that the apartment’s never been looked after. It’s not that at all. It’s the actual place. The building. I know this sounds crazy, but it changed everything for Lillian. And I think it played a part in whatever happened to Reginald. The place is all wrong. It’s bad. You spend enough time here and you’d feel it too.’
Miles frowned at her.
‘You think I’m being silly. But read a few of the journals and you might see what I’m talking about. This place is all about madness and nightmares. It’s a sick building, Miles. Very sick, like Hessen.’
In the bedroom, while she rummaged in the dresser for the journals, Miles said, ‘Why is the mirror turned around? And is that a painting? May I see?’
‘Oh yes, that’s my great-aunt and uncle. I found it in the basement. I brought the mirror up so I could try on her clothes, but . . .�
��
‘What? It’s a beauty.’
‘It is. But I don’t know. It just made me feel a bit freaked out.’
Miles began to laugh but then stopped when he saw her face. ‘I’m sorry. I’m not making fun of you. This place is kind of creepy. It could do with some new lighting.’
‘This is as good as it gets. The walls and floor just seem to swallow it up.’ The room wasn’t at all cold, but she shivered as she spoke.
He wrapped an arm round her and looked down into her eyes. ‘You want to get out of here.’ She nodded. ‘Thank you for these.’ He held up one of the journals she had given him. ‘I can’t believe I’m about to read something on Hessen from someone who actually knew him after the war. This is quite a find.’
‘She was obsessed with him. And I warn you, they are really weird. Don’t read them before you go to bed.’
‘I promise. And maybe I can help you find out what was going on here.’
She nodded. ‘I’d like that.’ Impulsively, she raised herself to her tiptoes and kissed him. When she drew away he looked surprised. She was about to apologize, but Miles leant down and drew her into a longer and deeper kiss.
EIGHTEEN
At 3 a.m. Seth let himself into apartment sixteen. And until twenty past the hour, stood still.
The moment he flicked the lights on, shards of a recent nightmare fell out of his memory: the black and white marble tiles, the long reddish walls of the hallway, the ancient doors, the large rectangular paintings arranged in perfect symmetry, and all lit up by the dirty light struggling to escape from the discoloured glass of the shades. Yes, he had been here before. It was like a prolonged sense of déjà vu and it defied all the rules in life he’d taken for granted.
But one significant detail was different. In the dream, the paintings had been uncovered. Now, they were concealed by long sheets of aged cloth. Seth closed the front door behind him. Wincing, he dropped the steel key ring from his damaged hand into the pocket of his trousers.
Something had drawn his attention to this place. Something that moved within as he passed the front door. Something that had called out to him through the house phone and implanted visions in his sleeping mind. Something that had followed him home.
His troubles had intensified right after the first disturbance in this flat. What he had put down to depression and sleep deprivation and isolation could be attributed to this place. He felt it.
Impossible, but confirmed. Right here and right now.
And it was inevitable he would come in here. He had been summoned.
He shuddered. It felt like shock, seeing this. But the circling of his frantic thoughts ceased. For the first time in so long, his mind was clear of everything but a terror that escalated into awe. A feeling so acute he could barely draw breath.
Into the hallway he walked slowly, on unsteady feet, unable to postpone any longer this rendezvous with a place that had been empty for half a century.
All of the interior doors off the hallway were closed, and he recoiled at the thought of opening the middle door on the left-hand side, the door leading into the place where the definition of walls, floor and ceiling had been worn away by a freezing infinity of darkness, where things he had mistaken for paintings suddenly moved. At first around him, and then all over him. The sensation had come out of the dream with him, still clinging.
Pausing by the first painting in the hallway, Seth willed himself to lift the dusty muslin from the picture frame. It was the size of a large window. With trembling fingers he unhooked the fabric from the bottom corner of the heavy frame. He tried to raise it slowly. But as he disturbed the bottom of the sheet, so loosely wrapped about the frame, it dropped with a heavy sweep and landed on the floor with a whump.
Like a blow to the gut, the impact of the thing depicted in oil paint hit him immediately. This shock swiftly turned into nausea and disorientation, as if the contorted thing in the suit and tie was transmitting its torment directly into his own body.
Seth staggered backwards, unable to take his eyes from the painting, or to even blink. What was it? This thing torn apart, with a face wiped away by a sweep of whitish pain? And yet he instinctively understood the smouldering angst of its exposed entrails. At once he felt an involvement with the figure’s violent demise, its loss of itself, its disintegration.
It was not a depiction of anything human or animal. But it suggested both. There were elements in it he could distinguish – the open howling mouth; teeth covered in a film of blood; an oversized tongue flapping; the suggestion of a throat twisted in a choke; an eye, or something that resembled an eye, only positioned on the wrong part of the blurred head, wide open and so full of its own capacity for terror and torment that Seth could not meet it with his own stare. He wanted it covered again, that blood-filled eye, that scarlet pupil, engorged and ready to burst. It looked so real, despite its distortion in the swirl of a missing face.
Whoever the figure had once been was now destroyed. Remnants of its suit and tie were still in place, in some dreadful parody of formality, but the limbs had gone. Ragged stumps mingled with the ochre aura that seemed to sanctify its mutilation.
These were the throes of death. But suspended in this terrible black space for all eternity. Not life, but an animation of sorts. A motion after death, repeated to infinity. He understood the message immediately.
Seth turned his back on the tortured statement, the wet meat encased in fabric. But he experienced a kind of euphoria, an awe at the hand that had managed to capture the very height of terror and obliteration. He thought of his own sketches, littered about the crusted carpet of his room at the Green Man. Remembered the hooded figure in his dream, wandering through a landscape of dog-shit grass and pissed-on concrete, who whispered mad child logic about getting stuck in things, in places, after death. Trapped for a very long time. Until the darkness came. Was this the darkness?
The next painting, stretching six feet high and at least four wide, impacted against his excited mind in the same way that being drenched by a thrown pail of freezing water shatters comprehension and creates disorientation. It immobilized everything inside him except the electricity of terror. And that was its whole purpose: to be something only the insane would look upon and be able to bear.
And after he gathered his breath, his balance, his shaky sense of place and self, he noticed the background in which the figure was suspended. This performance of violence and fragmentation was nothing without the depths behind it. Baboon-snouted and eyeless, but horribly twisted in the vestment of a floral housecoat, bloodied and still moist, the figure hung upon complete darkness. A total absence that still managed to transmit the cold of deep space and the ungraspable length and breadth of forever. It was the most marvellous use of impasto, he thought, ridiculously, while wanting to laugh hysterically before the dripping blasphemy. A background surface that pushed its subject out as if it were about to drop at his feet, where it would howl and thrash its broken claws in an agony that had continued for so long it made a century seem barely a beginning.
Yes, he knew at once he was catching glimpses of things that had risen to the surface of an endless freezing darkness. An eternity where terrible things were deposited, but would flood upward towards a pinpoint of light whenever an aperture was made. As it had been in here. This place no one could live in. Where no one was supposed to be. But someone had been in here to depict these things.
Seth staggered drunkenly from frame to frame and hauled the coverings down. He let them slide off images that struck him so mute he couldn’t manage a scream. Nothing but an occasional babyish mewl in the face of things skipping on their animal bones, or blinded by stitched-up flaps, spitting like dying cats with black gums and needle teeth, kicking like the hanged in black-and-white newsreels, with limbs knotted around themselves and head shapes turned to roars, flayed like lambs, or as pink as the dead young of mice.
And all the deformity and distortion he glimpsed, he knew himself capable of recrea
ting. Depictions of the potential inside himself hung all about this reddish corridor, like gleaming cadavers in a butcher’s cold room. Yellow fat, spiky bone, slick red: the meat and grease of human horror.
He too had glimpsed the first signs of this bestial rage, this annihilation of reason and decency, in the most prosaic of places. On a bus. On windy London streets. Browsing in the bright aisles of a supermarket. This terrible contamination made up of ugliness, cruelty and self-destruction, of compulsive narcissism, greed and hate, of bright flaring madness, had begun to emerge and crowd about him in the city. He observed it in others now they were stripped of the inscrutable facade of skin. He’d learned to see through, and down, to where the Devil lived. Hell was a living place inside every membrane of flesh that temporarily passed itself off as human.
Seth slumped to his knees. Tears stung his eyes, a merciful briny respite from what was nailed to the walls in front of him, roaring and contorted.
Genius.
He wept before the genius. Wept with gratitude at what he had been shown. A master class to guide his own pathetic scratchings and daubing. He needed to start again. The moment he got home. Cover the haemorrhages of paint with soiled bandages before making new scars on the walls and ceiling of his room. And then he would come back in here, night after night, to fill himself with this terror and learn how to re-create what was truly walking in this city. His squalid room would become a temple to a new renaissance. He’d work until he fell. Capture this impact, this dissolution of identity and the sickening jolt that came when standing before it.
On his hands and knees he crept to the nearest door. Opened it. Saw illumined, in the vague reddish light from the hall, walls filled with further wonders under cover. He wanted to be sick, to ejaculate and piss himself at the same time. It was too much. He had to take this filthy medicine carefully, in staged amounts, or he would lose the last bit of his mind he needed to create his own vision in oil.
