Sound

by Catherine Fearns

  ‘So it’s true,’ whispered Knut.

  ‘What?’ whispered Darren back to him, his own eyes wide with disbelief.

  ‘Yes, it is true,’ announced The Messiah, satisfied with their horror. ‘I removed my eyes, on stage. Sight is a barrier to true perception. And, ‘If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee.’’

  ‘The Gospel of Matthew,’ said Helen quietly. Again The Messiah moved his head towards her questioningly, apparently not appreciating the mention of the Bible, which he had himself quoted.

  ‘When sight is removed, the visual cortex is reallocated to other senses. I am attuned to music like no other. I am like the bat.’

  The drummer spoke. ‘We worship the bat.’ He paused for effect before continuing. ‘The bat pushes the mammalian body to its extreme. Bat calls reach a frequency of 200kHz, a volume of 120 decibels. This is the courage and power to which we must aspire. We rail against the hegemony of the visual.’

  Helen opened her mouth, seemingly to try and offer some acknowledgement, but she was forestalled by The Messiah, who said, ‘Now she will give you the shell.’ He motioned to the keyboardist, who obediently collected a large conch shell from a box, and gave it reverentially to Darren.

  ‘Hold it to your ear,’ instructed The Messiah. ‘Tell me what you hear.’

  Darren did as he was told, and held the shell up to his ear. It was heavy. He heard the ethereal yet familiar sound of the sea, a sound that was also filled with nostalgia, since it brought back memories of the first time he had heard this magical phenomenon as a child.

  ‘It sounds like the sea, doesn’t it?’ he said. There was no immediate response from The Messiah, so he continued, ‘Like waves, like the wind.’

  ‘You hear the sound of the sea. I hear the sound of the universe. I hear voices from beyond the grave. I hear voices from hell. And that is the music I play.’

  ‘Do you ever hear voices from heaven?’ asked Helen, a little facetiously. The Messiah declined to answer, and Mikko nudged her gently with his knee. After a long silence, Mikko spoke up. It was clear that this encounter was not going to last much longer.

  ‘So, Mr The Messiah… the reason we’re here is that we’re doing a show for Halloween. It’s in this ruined church in Liverpool, atmospheric as fuck. You’ve probably got Halloween all wrapped up, but I figured that if not… you might wanna play with us? Be, like, our mystery guests or whatever...’ Mikko’s voice trailed away as The Messiah was breathing deeply. Darren felt as if Mikko’s invitation had angered him in some way. There was a long silence, broken only by the Messiah’s heavy breathing. Beside Darren, Helen seemed restless, as though she was going to attempt to say something, anything. Then The Messiah spoke.

  ‘We would be honoured. To desecrate a church on All Hallow’s Eve shall be the greatest honour to our Lord Satan.’

  ‘That was easier than I thought.’

  On the Sounds from Beyond Hell

  After the lightning, the thunder. And so, after the fire, the sound.

  The time before the coming of Adramelech shall be a time of fire and flame. The Earth shall become heated, fires shall rage, man shall kill man. And the flames shall prophesise the coming of the sound; and the sound shall prophesise the coming of Adramelech.

  For when the time comes, after eight thousand years, for Adramelech to take up his kingdom on Earth, he shall reveal himself through Sound.

  Hark! Every ear shall be deafened by the thunder-tones of Adramelech; and these sounds shall be the echoes of his groans and shrieks during his agony in Hell and Beyond.

  The nightmarish hiss of his blood as it spurted from eight thousand wounds. The cosmic roar of the winds beyond Hell as they spun and whirled him endlessly. The evil choirs of lesser demons, his minions in the void. The howl of our Lord’s humiliation at the hands of his master Satan, and the snarl of his revenge.

  When thou shalt hear the sound of horrific discord, hark! It is the sound of Adramelech.

  12 Ars Adramelechum 17.1

  Sixteen

  The Lumina building was the jewel in the crown of Liverpool’s futuristic redevelopment. It was ostentatious in every way; looming above the cathedrals, the Radio City tower, the Liver Building. Even the glittering West Tower was tarnished by its brilliance. Huge reflective sheets of convex and concave glass had been seamlessly welded together to give the impression of one single, disorienting wave. In direct sunlight it made walking along Wapping Street impossible without shielding your eyes, and it had been blamed for a number of traffic accidents. At night it glowed, each giant panel streaming a different rainbow of colours to light up the darkness. The first twenty floors of the skyscraper were taken up by the Lumina Hotel, the most luxurious in Liverpool. The top twenty floors consisted of apartments, some duplex and magnificent. Several were owned by footballers. It was unclear how many of the others were occupied. Forrest’s original plan had been for Lumina to be a sister building to the Lumina II, across the road. The plans for Lumina II were even more extravagant and it had been designed in an infinity shape, its intricate bends complementing the curves of its elder sister. However, the midsummer night’s fire had put paid to that, and now all that remained of Lumina II was a flattened square of empty earth, fenced off and earmarked for a memorial garden.

  In the basement of the Lumina building itself was the Lumina nightclub. VIP membership was highly sought after, reserved only for those with impressive enough financial or celebrity credentials. Everybody else had to queue behind the velvet ropes, hoping they would reach the front and get their chance to pay the forty pounds entrance fee. Tonight Shawn Forrest stood on the balcony of the VIP area, his hands gripping the chrome rail. The vibrations from the sound system flowed up through his body in a series of mini shocks. Below him was a sea of writhing bodies, limbs, shards of people occasionally illuminated by a strobe, a searchlight in the dark.

  When the nightclub had first opened, the biggest DJ names would play on Friday and Saturday nights, but now there were no guest appearances. Only the house DJ performed – every night. Perhaps this was strange; or perhaps the club had now made its name and had no need to pay the huge fees commanded by London DJs in order to draw in the crowds. Liverpool was taking care of its own, and her name was Lacey Collins.

  A few metres away from Forrest, in her raised DJ booth, Lacey also surveyed the territory that she could hardly believe was hers. Laid out before her was a state-of-the-art mixing desk and CD decks, which she still touched with reverence, as if any minute she might be found out as a fraud. Only three months ago she had been working in Foxy Ladies’ dress shop five days a week, living in her best mate Justine’s shadow, a hanger-on, practicing on her decks at night with resentment and self-loathing building inside her. And now look at her – she was a celebrity in her own right, the one with a real job.

  But if this job was a dream come true, why did she not feel completely happy? Why did she have this strange sense of unease? Perhaps it was the exhaustion and the pressure of performing every night. She knew she was good – she had practiced for years, and was full of ideas and technical confidence. Her innovative dance mixes had already secured her an offer from a record label to produce an album. But at the end of the day, it was just DJing, and Liverpool was full of DJs. It shouldn’t really have happened for her this quickly.

  It was probably the fact that she was working for Shawn Forrest. Yes, that was it. She hated him, hated what Justine was doing with him, and it was unfortunate that he had been the one to give her this break. Perhaps she should have taken a moral stance. But then she would have been finished, because he controlled this town. And anyway, it was just a means to an end. She would use him, the way he used people.

  Then there was her boyfriend, Dave. A strobe momentarily flashed on his face in the crowd. Dave’s behaviour had been so weird recently. If she didn’t know him better, she would have said he was on drugs. It was sweet that he was so supportive, but it was so over-the-top that it didn
’t feel genuine. She knew her music was good, but was it really this good? He had been to the club every night for the past two weeks, staying until three in the morning. He would still get up for work the next day, and there was a strange look in his eyes that wasn’t just tiredness – it was a sort of desperation.

  Dave had been an enthusiastic dancer ever since she’d known him, but nothing like this – pounding his fists into the air, jumping, thrusting, jaw tense with determination, eyes closed. This was not the free-and-easy joker she knew. But then, everyone in the club was dancing like this. In Liverpool people loved their dance music, sure, but they didn’t take themselves this seriously, and not every night of the week. It was weird. Cocooned within her DJ headphones, positioned as she was behind the blast of the amplifiers, she tried to feel what the crowd was feeling, but she didn’t share the same euphoria that they seemed to feel. Perhaps she should have more confidence in her music. They treated her like a shaman, when she felt more like a librarian, selecting songs one after another, songs that she hadn’t written herself. That was it, it was imposter syndrome.

  When the moment came, she turned up the bass, as she had been instructed by the club’s sound engineer. Thank goodness for him, because she didn’t really understand how it all worked, beyond her own decks. Simultaneously, the giant flatscreen suspended from the club’s ceiling crackled into life. Lacey thought it was gimmicky to have a spectrogram, so Nineties, but Shawn insisted. He wanted the club’s logo to be as prominent as possible.

  Forrest looked up at the static on the screen, his hands gripping the rail tighter. The static morphed from a green flatline into a sine wave. And then the wave began to distort and contort into different shapes. It formed a single floating shape that constructed itself into a figure eight – an eight lying on its side, forming the symbol for infinity. There were whoops from the crowd; this appearance of the symbol had become the visual indicator for that moment of satisfaction when the bass dropped. The symbol became clearer and clearer until it was almost three dimensional, almost floating in front of the screen. It twisted and morphed. It was a sigil that they were internalising, all of them.

  Shawn Forrest stared at it, and the reflection of infinity danced on his irises.

  Seventeen

  Darren was late for work again, but mercifully he was not hungover this time, thanks to The Messiah’s alcohol ban. As he had predicted, it had taken hours to find their way out of the forest, and it had been almost dawn by the time the van dropped him back home. The whole evening had been cold and wet, pointless, and strangely unnerving. And his ears were still ringing. Ridiculous. There was a part of him that wished he didn’t have to share his new friend Helen with that heavy metal band.

  When he entered the office he saw Superintendent Canter perched on his desk, arms folded, talking to Colette. Surely she wasn’t going to reprimand him for being late, at his level? But then, to be fair, he was finishing at four o’clock every day; the least he could do was turn up on time in the morning. As he approached, though, he saw that Canter didn’t look angry or concerned, and Colette was smiling.

  ‘All right, DI Swift,’ said Canter, arms still folded. ‘Tell me about sonic weapons, then. DCI McGregor is still handling the Aigburth investigation, but I will allow you to assist.’

  Darren smiled with relief. He was back in the game. ‘What’s changed?’ he asked.

  ‘Well, for starters, Colette tells me you’ve been climbing the walls without an active case on. But there’s been a development as well.’

  ‘The autopsy results?’

  Colette nodded. ‘Exactly. Colvin performed the autopsy on Springer and, although he can’t quite explain the exploding head, he says that Springer suffered an extreme form of something called vibroacoustic syndrome.’

  ‘Isn’t that something industrial workers get, from operating pneumatic drills? That kind of thing?’

  ‘Yes, except in this case multiplied by a hundred or more,’ said Colette. ‘Colvin said he’s never seen anything like it. He said it was as if the body had been crushed by an invisible force. Anyway, he wants to do a second autopsy on Neilson now. He thinks that perhaps he was too quick to rule it a heart attack. We’ve requested one.’

  ‘So, Darren,’ said Canter. ‘Are you happy to assist on this investigation until the Shepherd trial starts?’

  ‘Yeah, nice one. Honestly, I really need to get back to work. Is the DCI ok with it?’ He motioned to McGregor, who was on the telephone, pacing around the glass-fronted incident room.

  ‘You know him. You two had better get in there for the meeting. And if I were you, Darren, I’d keep that sonic weapons theory to yourself for now. Straight down the line, is McGregor.’

  Standing in front of the incident board at the team meeting, DCI McGregor was in a foul mood. There was a shooter out there somewhere, and no leads so far on his identity, whereabouts or motive. McGregor introduced Darren, with as much grace as he could muster, as the newly-appointed assistant SIO on the case. Looking at the clock he said, ‘Right, we’ll keep the rest of this brief because I know you’ve got to go home early for your short hours, DI Swift.’

  Darren seethed quietly. McGregor never missed an opportunity to patronize him. McGregor was in his early fifties and his thirty-five year career at Merseyside Police had been a slow and lumbering rise towards Detective Chief Inspector. The fast-tracking of young hotshots like Darren deeply offended him. Darren also suspected that his own sexual ‘persuasion’, as McGregor called it, also offended him.

  ‘Now DCI Swift apparently has a new theory about the case – do you want to enlighten us?’

  Darren stepped forward.

  ‘I think there’s something going on at the University Acoustics Department. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that these two academics died within a week of each other. Especially in light of the pathologist’s ruling on the Springer autopsy. Now Neilson’s death looks as though it might be suspicious as well.’

  ‘So you think it was some sort of industrial accident? Something they were working on went wrong?’

  ‘No, more sinister than that. I think Neilson, through his research, discovered something that was supposed to be a secret. And someone wanted to keep him quiet.’

  ‘And Springer? How is he connected?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. But they were seen arguing the week before their deaths. And he did have a hundred grand stashed in his house – someone had been paying him.’

  Darren knew he was right. Something was going on. But what if there was something else beyond that? Something that was, perhaps, the stuff of fantasy. He couldn’t mention that to anyone. Apart from Helen, and maybe his new friends Total Depravity.

  McGregor said, ‘That’s all well and good, but let’s keep our focus on forensics and ballistics. We need to find out how a shooter got in and out of Springer’s house without leaving any trace. Darren, you and your lot can look into Springer’s background, talk to his wife, look at his financials.’

  Colette said ‘We’ve already spoken to the wife, poor woman. She doesn’t know anything, except that he’d been really stressed recently and had been working late on a big project at the university. She doesn’t know what it was, and so far nobody at the university knows either. According to the admin office, he had cut down his teaching hours, and hadn’t published a paper since last year. Dave’s looking through his bank statements now. We’ve already spotted that he was in serious debt. He had racked up credit card charges which his wife obviously doesn’t know about. No-one’s broken that to her yet.’

  ‘Great. When Dave’s done, get him back on CCTV and door-to-door liaison, see if we can try and pin down the shooter’s movements.’

  ‘Are you sure you’re up to this, boss?’ Colette asked as they walked back to their desks.

  ‘Yeah, I am, honestly. But I’m not sure Dave is, though. What’s going on with him?’

  They looked over to Dave’s desk, where he was working in a manner that was a far
cry from his usual laid-back style. Head nodding frantically to a non-existent beat, he pored over his screen, cross-referencing it with sheets of paper, muttering constantly to himself. There was a frenzy to him, as if he had been speeded up with a remote control.

  ‘I don’t know. I’m sure he’s not on drugs – he’s just not the type. I asked him about it again this morning. All I know is that he’s been going out every night to watch Lacey DJ-ing. My guess is that he’s so tired he’s been knocking back the caffeine, and he’s totally wired on it.’

  ‘Right, I’ll go and have a word.’

  Darren went over to Dave’s desk and pulled up a chair.

  ‘How are you doing with Ian Springer’s bank statements, Dave?’

  Dave began nodding furiously, rhythmically. ‘Yeah, sound, yeah. I mean, I’ve not found anything like, apart from the two credit card debts. I’ve been through all his financials going back six months. He just has this regular joint account with his wife. It all looks normal, to be honest.’

  But Dave was shuffling pieces of paper about haphazardly, and Darren didn’t trust his judgement in this state of mind. Leaning over his shoulder, Darren scanned the bank statements himself, running his finger down the columns. It did look pretty nondescript: standing orders, bills, groceries, online shopping.

  ‘What are these?’ He jabbed his finger at several entries that said Esso Mersey Road L9.

  ‘It’s just a petrol station, boss.’

  ‘Yes but it’s in Litherland. That’s nowhere near the university, and it’s the other side of the city from his house.’ He scanned the pages further. ‘Three visits over three weeks in August, during the working day, and only one of those amounts is significant enough to be a petrol purchase. He was in the area for some other reason.’