One hand became lodged in a metal structure embedded in the wall. I hung from this one arm. Crying out in pain. Feet dangling over the steps. I fought hard to recover my footing. As I did so, my hand gave way and I sank backwards onto the small landing. Or rather, the metal had moved, suddenly releasing my wrist from its bondage.
There was a tremendous sound of grating masonry, like rotating quernstones in a mill. Rock dust flew into the enclosed space. I looked up, rubbing my eyes, feeling the dust choking my lungs. A slab of masonry above me had fallen down into a concealed slot. Now a window of light was cascading through the open gap.
I pulled myself upwards and crawled through the opening. I collapsed on the other side. I lay on my back, looking up into the sky, breathing hard.
I had come out through the altar in the ruined chapel!
I staggered to my feet, aghast at the state of my clothing. My blouse was torn. My jeans had a hole in the knee, and the right buttock where the beacon had burnt. My trainers wouldn’t see another wearing. My nails were all broken. My hair was filled with dust. I stood up as best I could and brushed myself down.
A head poked through the opening.
I collapsed to the ground once more. Overwrought.
‘That was really cool, Auntie Freya. Can we do it all again!’
I turned to see E-J’s grime-ridden smile framed in the altar.
She checked herself in response to my panic. ‘You OK?’
‘Yes. But you nearly gave me a heart attack!’ I rose to a sitting position again.
She threw me the torch. It was the one I’d left by the trapdoor. Then she clambered out and pulled me to my feet. She looked nearly as dishevelled as I did.
‘What’s your mum going to say about the state of your lovely dress?’
‘I’m more worried about going down there in the first place. She told me not to.’
‘Is she down there, too?’
‘No, she was too chicken.’
‘We better get you back to the Lodge pretty quick. She must be going spare!’ I took her by the hand.
‘Please don’t let Mummy spank me.’
‘I’ll do my best. But I can’t promise.’
I led her away quickly, knowing her inquisitive mind would be riveted by the interior decoration of the chapel. Once outside, she tried to discuss the “naughty monsters”, but I diverted her attention. It was clear she’d never been here before.
I was glad I knew the route back to the safety of the gardens. It would not have been at all clear which way to proceed if I’d come across this haunting place for the first time. E-J was too caught up in the adventure of it all, and what her mother’s reaction might be, to be scared about the surroundings.
It took us a good fifteen minutes to return to the Lodge. We found Janis in the library. She was pacing up and down, clawing at her face and hair, tears streaming down her face. She had worked herself into a frenzy of worry. She was so lost from reality that it took her a while to register her daughter had safely returned.
E-J ran over to her, clutching her waist. ‘It’s OK, Mummy. I’m all right!’
‘All right! All right!’ Janis screamed. ‘I was worried sick!’ She looked at me with hatred. ‘How could you leave that door open? She could’ve been hurt!’
‘I’m sorry. I had no idea you were coming. I wasn’t expecting you.’
But she’d turned her attention back to her daughter. She pulled her away. ‘Go and bend over the arm of that chair.’
Horror swept across E-J’s face. ‘Oh, please Mummy. Don’t hurt me.’
‘Do as I say.’
She complied, reluctantly, bending herself over the leather chair I’d spent so many happy hours reclining in. Her unkempt, dust-ridden hair cascaded over the cushion.
E-J’s pleading face looked in my direction, as her mother came up behind her.
‘Now, look, Janis. I’m to blame for this. Please don’t punish her.’
Janis pulled up E-J’s dress and folded it over her back. ‘You’re right. You are to blame,’ she said, pulling down her daughter’s knickers. ‘But I called and called. Didn’t I, E-J?’
E-J didn’t answer. Mounting dread passed across her face. She stared at me.
‘Didn’t I?’
‘Yes, Mummy.’
‘You should’ve listened.’
‘Yes, Mummy.’
Before I knew what was happening, Janis delivered a blow onto her daughter’s naked buttocks.
I flinched at the ferocious slap, as the sound reverberated around the room.
E-J carried on staring at me as she cried out in pain.
‘Please, Janis!’ I shouted.
‘No, she must learn!’ she shrieked, delivering a second blow. ‘Now go to the car, you naughty little girl!’
E-J ran out of the room in floods of tears, tugging her knickers back into position as she went.
‘That was completely uncalled for!’
Janis was sweating from her exertions. ‘Please don’t presume to tell me how to deal with my own daughter. If she’d come back when told, none of this would’ve happened.’
‘But….’
‘More to the point, if you hadn’t interfered, none of this would’ve happened.’
‘No, I’m sorry.’
She slouched into the chair. She began to rub her hands together. Her right palm was reddened by her actions.
Then she burst out crying herself. ‘He promised me he’d concreted the passage up. You must’ve come back through the old chapel in the woods. Right?’
‘Yes. Why didn’t you go after her yourself?’
Janis stared right through me. Her fingers clenched the arms of the chair. Her nails became embedded in the leather, such was her grip. She began to shudder uncontrollably.
I came up beside her and put an arm on her shoulder. She shrugged me off.
‘What d’you know about the cavern down there?’ I asked.
‘I can’t go there. I really can’t go there!’
‘OK.’
‘I only came over to see if you could look after E-J for the evening. My childminder’s let me down and I’ve got an important night exercise with corporate clients. I wasn’t expecting all this!’ She rose and karate-kicked the secret door shut in a fury.
Then she ran out of the Lodge and was soon driving off.
I sat down in the leather chair, in pensive mood. I felt ashamed about E-J. And the terror of my escapade down in the cavern, and what I’d discovered, had caught up with me again.
Some time later, suitably recovered, but still chastened, I went upstairs for a long soak in the bath.
- XXI -
OVER THE NEXT two days, Dylan showed no sign of knowing about my discovery of the cavern. Naturally, I made no mention of it and it didn’t seem Janis had disclosed to him, either. He had noticed the state of my fingernails and my knee, but had made no comment. He made few demands on me, in bed or around the house. I was left to my leisure, whilst he occupied his time with his writing. He’d give me broad reports of how many pages he’d completed at the end of the day, but gave no hint of the story line of his new work.
I lounged around, finishing the last of his novels. Taken as a whole, I was very impressed with his literary achievement to date. He was merely continuing in a long line of writers, from Wordsworth, Coleridge, Scott and Ruskin, through to Potter, Wainwright and Bragg, who had sought, and successfully found, their inspiration in the Lakeland landscape.
At midday on the third day, Dylan announced he was going down to the mill, to collect his Land Rover, which had now been repaired. Once Veronica had picked him up in a Vauxhall Cresta, I was left on my own at the Lodge for the first ever time during my stay.
I knew I had to take this opportunity to discover the secrets of the tower. I felt uncomfortable about invading my lover’s privacy. Yet my own unravelling of Dylan’s past – and the thought of what John would say if I failed to take this opportunity – gave me the impulse to find out
more.
The connecting door on the landing was always routinely locked. But I could now enter through the secret door in the library. I made my way through this door and up the unlit steps to the landing I’d discovered on my previous visit. I mounted the wider staircase, coming to a half landing and a large oak door. It was unlocked, so I opened it and crossed the threshold. It turned out to be a bedchamber. A chandelier hung down from an ornately plastered ceiling. Paintings decorated the walls.
All looked very ordered. But something was wrong. It was simply too tidy. Or rather, unlived in.
Closer examination brought clues to solve the mystery. A whole array of cosmetics bottles and hair brushes lay on the bedside dressing table. They were well-known brand products, yet the labels and packaging were a generation old. I found an array of silken lingerie in the drawers and Sixties’ teenage fashions hung inside the wardrobes.
Studying the pictures more closely, I recognized a certain style in the brushwork. Brooding landscapes of mountain, crag, tarn and forest.
Nothing here was Dylan’s.
Everything was Seraphina’s.
He had created a shrine to his dead wife.
It was as if she had never left. Or perhaps it was as if he was sure she’d return one day.
I sat down on the bed, swooning for a while, feeling a greater affinity for Seraphina, yet hemmed in by the room’s oppression. Suddenly I could feel her pain. And for Dylan to have created such a place to honour her memory only reinforced my understanding of the way her loss had affected him.
After about half an hour of quiet, yet increasingly claustrophobic introspection, I left the room as I’d found it and proceeded to the next storey. I was met by another similar door.
I didn’t know what to make of the room as I entered. Its dimensions were similar to those of the room below. The only piece of furniture was a square sofa in the centre of the room.
The walls were covered in photographs of women. All were in identical frames, which joined together in a mosaic of faces. All the walls had been covered with these pictures, and now the ceiling was in the process of being filled as well. Each photograph had the name of a woman, and a day, month and year below it in gilt lettering. I only understood this must correspond with the date of sexual conquest when I found my own face gazing down at me from above.
Each of the frames contained locks of the women’s hair as a form of trophy. I placed my hand on my head and felt the tuft of my own hair which Dylan had surreptitiously cut. Now I understood. I struggled to contain my anger.
I calculated there must have been in the region of five hundred pictures on display.
All the women I’d met in association with Dylan appeared to be represented. A number of other faces were clearly recognizable, household names mostly from the music and entertainment world. One was of Lady Jennifer, the woman Rupert was now pursuing; she had long, chestnut hair and a horsey face. I was struck by the wide variety of women: their differing hair colours, shapes and sizes and levels of attractiveness.
I was flabbergasted. Surely no one could get through that many lovers in only seventeen years!
I’d come here to allay my deepest fears. But now I had the proof: there was indeed something ultimately sick about Dylan, behind his sadness and promiscuity.
His obsession didn’t stop there, either. I had entered the chamber from the corner of the eastern wall. As I turned to face this wall, I discovered four built-in video screens, surrounded by more of the pictures. They were relaying and simultaneously recording all that went on in the bedrooms downstairs. It appeared Dylan had installed cameras behind all the mirrors.
Dylan was into voyeurism as well.
Cupboard doors behind the pictures revealed a photograph album and video library. I hunted through the albums. They contained pictures of his lovers in more revealing poses. I even discovered a file on me. I pulled it out and found a couple of shots of me, still asleep, in carefully posed naked display.
I shuddered.
I discarded the file and began a search through the lines of videos, all as neatly labelled and catalogued as the albums had been. Finally, I found one with a faded designation: Seraphina 1970.
I trembled as I placed it into one of the video recorders, then sat back on the sofa to watch it. It was an old film reel of deteriorating quality transferred onto the modern video format.
A cavern came onto the screen, after a flickering of blank frames had dissipated. It took me a while to realize it was the chamber under the Lodge. An altar, draped in a white, shroud-like sheet, was at one end of the dark chamber. A circle of naked women were dancing around it in a rabid frenzy. Their limbs cast shadows as they were hit by light emanating from flaming beacons on the walls. Discordant music was being played by several naked male musicians. All the figures were wearing bizarre masks.
A beautiful young girl lay naked on her back on top of the altar. Her open legs were draped over the sides; her long, raven hair fell over the end, almost to the floor.
A masked man stepped forward and began chanting in an indecipherable language. A long, black cape completely shrouded his body. His hands were clasped together in front of him to support an ancient book.
A young man stepped out of the shadows, wearing a goat headdress. Viewing his naked body told me he had to be a youth still in his teens. He strolled purposefully forward, his arms raised above his horns to herald the crowd of followers.
The music, the chanting and the dancing suddenly halted. The goat-man had ascended the steps beside the altar. He stood still. His head bowed to view the spread-eagled maiden from his high vantage. Then he descended on top of the young woman.
The young woman who must surely have been Seraphina!
Immediately, the frenzy of music and dancing recommenced, even more eerily than before. The cameraman focused in on the altar and appeared to be jostled by the dancers as the picture shuddered.
The young woman was crying out as the goat-man corrupted her. Finally, he collapsed onto her. The music ceased once again as the goat-man withdrew from her.
Two masked men came forward from either side of the altar. Each man carried a live chicken (one black and one white), gripped by the neck in their left hands, and a long, curved dagger in their right. I sat, incredulous, as I watched the men dismember the birds over the body of the defiled girl. The blood flowed, coating her breasts and stomach, gradually dripping over the side to soil the white cloth.
As these men departed, four others approached and lifted the girl over their heads. They marched off slowly down the sunken passageway, all the others following on behind.
The picture broke off, probably coming to the end of the original reel. There followed a few seconds of white fuzzy screen with a high-pitched hissing. Then new images materialized.
The crowd of worshippers had congregated inside the nave of the black chapel. Now its former magnificence could be seen. The interior was awash with colour, lit by flaming torches, which accentuated all the weird carvings. The windows, whilst beautifully designed, appeared to have such opaque glass that no reflexions were caught in any of them.
The cameraman framed a shot down the length of the nave. The young woman was now seated upon the black altar. The goat-man sat down next to her and the two of them embraced again. Then the old priest-like man stepped forward and began to dress the two of them in colourful robes and strange jewellery. The woman was given a medallion to wear – surely it had to be the same one I had found under the tree! – and a rod with a golden phallic tip.
She and the goat-man then walked hand-in-hand into the middle of the circle marked out on the floor tiles. Twelve women linked hands around the outer circle. Men hovered behind. I counted about eighteen people in total, plus the cameraman and the priest-like figure. The goat-man gave the young girl a five-fold kiss: on the knees, genitals and breasts.
The picture started to deteriorate again as the dancers descended to the floor and began an orgy of sexual couplin
g with each other. The cameraman took an obsessive fascination in these indiscriminate encounters, focusing in on each one in turn. There was certainly a highly charged sexual power which began to stir me. Enhanced, perhaps, by the anonymity of the worshippers, all still hidden behind masks of various primeval animals.
As my interest was deepening further, the picture was lost completely. There were a few more flickering blank frames before the hiss of the modern video tape took over.
So the rumours of devil worship had been correct all along, as I’d gradually come to suppose. Yet even I found it hard to digest that this had extended into Seraphina’s generation.
I was left there, staring at the screen, curling up into an upright ball, arms clutching bent knees, trying to take in the import of what I had seen.
I wondered what else could be in store when I ascended to the last storey. The top of the tower was Dylan’s retreat, where he came to write and reflect. He’d always told me this; now, at least in this regard, he’d been telling the truth. The room was like the lower bedroom: a perfect square, pure white in decoration. There was an arched window in the middle of all but one of the walls. A custom-made desk encircled the walls beneath these windows, breaking off only for the stairwell leading to the turreted battlements above. Office equipment covered the work surfaces.
My attention was swiftly drawn to the fireplace in the wall without a window. Above the mantelpiece there hung the painting of a beautiful woman. I was in no doubt it had to be the self-portrait Veronica had told me about. It had a maturity beyond the age of the artist.
It was the work of Seraphina, like the pictures downstairs.
Gazing up at the imposing face of the long-haired beauty, I could see why Dylan could have become so captivated by her. And how the memory of her could still haunt him as vividly as the image of this picture fascinated me.
Now I was convinced beyond all doubt that Seraphina had been the young woman in the film.
I paced around the room, noticing how her eyes followed me no matter where I stood. A technique not quite as perfected as in the later portrait of her father. Still, I found it very difficult to break its hypnotic allure.
Freya's Quest Page 18
