Sound

by Catherine Fearns

  ‘This agreement, this relocation. It’s a lifesaver for residents. Literally, given that at least one person has died already. Residents will be re-housed in, it says here, high-end apartments?’

  ‘That’s right, our anonymous benefactor has been extremely generous.’

  ‘More than generous, I would say. Surely the only person who could afford that would be someone with a lot of empty apartments?’

  ‘I’m afraid I’m not able to disclose the name of the benefactor. It was part of the agreement.’

  ‘But you do know who it is, though?’

  ‘As I said, I’m not at liberty to say.’

  ‘I understand. Whoever it is, this person is a lifesaver for the council as well, right? Because imagine the lawsuits, after all those hundreds of people got sick, and then lost their homes? And it says here...’ he read from the document again ‘tenants will agree to waive all rights to legal action against Liverpool Council.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Ok, well, that’s great, it seems everyone’s a winner.’ This time Darren began to get up, so Vanessa Scott followed suit – but then he sat down again. ‘Oh, just one more thing. What are the symptoms of methane poisoning?’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘The symptoms. You know – how does it make you sick?’

  ‘Well, I presume in lots of different ways. Because the people of Napier had all sort of complaints.’

  ‘You see, that’s just it. Because I looked up methane gas poisoning and it doesn’t exist. Of course methane is very dangerous because it’s an explosive gas, but it’s non-toxic. Doesn’t explain all the illnesses, does it?’

  ‘I can’t explain that, Detective. Maybe they are psychosomatic? Have you read in the local news about all the spooky noises people are hearing in the city centre? We’ve actually been getting prank calls about it here. People have very vivid imaginations at the moment. If you’re anxious about your living conditions, you could easily imagine yourself sick, even make yourself sick, with worry.’

  ‘Yeah, maybe. Anyway, what’s good about methane is that, at these levels, it will be cleared for commercial use within five years. That’s not too long for someone rich to have to keep the land vacant, right? Thanks very much for your time, Mrs. Scott. I’ll see myself out.’

  When he got up he noticed her handbag on the floor next to her desk. It was one of those ultra-expensive leather bags for which even celebrities would have to go on a waiting list for a year, and then hand over the best part of ten thousand pounds. In burnt orange hide, with a silver clasp, it had a patterned silk scarf wound fashionably around the handle. Perhaps it was a convincing fake.

  Twenty-Five

  Darren went straight home, sat at his kitchen table and took out the contamination report by the environmental health contractor Envirosafe. It all looked legitimate. Methane detection of category 3, 40,000-50,000 ppm (5% or greater of air) measured at ten different sites in postcode L30. There were maps, tables, graphs and photos. He opened his laptop to search for the Envirosafe website and, sure enough, there it was. The website had a welcome screen, a list of credentials, services offered, and stock photos of power plant chimneys, busy motorways and wind farms. There was a contact form too, but there was no address, no list of staff, and no list of clients or projects worked on. It was all vague pronouncements. Darren looked up Envirosafe at Companies House. It was listed, with an address near Bolton. He called the phone number provided, but there was only an answerphone message. He tried several times over the next few hours, always getting the recorded message. It was after close of business, he supposed. But there was something not quite right about this website. It was too neat. It smacked of someone covering their tracks, ticking boxes. Or maybe, Darren thought, it smacks of me getting ahead of meself and imagining things. Nowadays some small companies were foregoing websites altogether and just using social media. And yet he couldn’t find a Facebook page either.

  What was he missing? There must be something corrupt going on at the council offices. And this anonymous benefactor would have to come out of the woodwork sooner or later. But right now, he had no proof of anything. If Forrest or, he corrected his own thoughts, whoever it might be, had someone at the council in his pay, then there would be no rush to put in a planning application at this stage, since it would be a foregone conclusion. They would never have left such an obvious smoking gun.

  He looked at the clock; it was only six-thirty. The long evening and night lay ahead of him like a black hole. The ticking of that clock was the soundtrack to his life now, occasionally accompanied by the pigeons that landed on his roof and cooed down his chimney, or a flock of seagulls screeching overhead. He could never find solace in music the way that Mikko and Helen could, and watching television felt wrong; why should he permit himself entertainment, when Matt was in the ground? They had always watched TV together. As he grabbed his keys to head down to the beach, his phone buzzed with a text from Helen.

  Darren – guess what – Mikko has a lead on the book. All thanks to human skin, would you believe? We’re going on a little trip to try and get hold of it – I’ll keep you posted!

  At least someone has a decent lead, he thought.

  Twenty-Six

  Helen’s forehead was pressed against the window, her eyes darting rapidly from view to view as the English countryside rushed by. Eventually, tattooed fingers with chipped black nail polish reached across the table to enfold hers.

  ‘What are you looking at?’

  ‘Sorry Mikko, I was in a trance. I love train journeys, I never want them to end. I could look out of the window all day.’

  ‘I got a pretty nice view from here,’ he said, looking at her with his heavily-charcoaled eyes until she blushed. It was beginning to dawn on her that, for the first time in her life, she had a boyfriend. A ridiculous, terrifying, brilliant, androgynous boyfriend, and she basked in the glow of an exhilaration whose true name was just underneath the surface of her consciousness.

  ‘It’s so nice to spend some time alone with you. I mean, your band mates are lovely but… well, you know.’

  ‘I do. Me too.’

  ‘I still can’t believe we might have found the second original copy of this book. How lucky that Knut has access to all these occult websites.’

  ‘I know, right. I told you Satanism has its uses.’

  ‘But it was your idea to look into skinning fetishes. That was brilliant, Mikko. I would never have known that was even a thing.’

  ‘What, you’ve never fantasised about skinning someone alive and using them as a book cover? You haven’t even lived, dude. Next you’ll be telling me you’ve never had sex with a middle-aged nun.’

  ‘Oh, shut up.’ She blushed again. It was going to take some getting used to, this teasing. ‘Anyway, the point is, I thought there was a possibility we might find a copy of the English translation. I never dreamed we might find one of the two original seventeenth century versions. This is an academic’s dream come true, you know.’

  ‘I love it when you get excited about books.’

  The train pulled into Oxford station and they disembarked and headed in the direction of the city centre on foot. Helen had been to Oxford several times for academic conferences and research, so she led the way. Mikko reached surreptitiously to hold her hand and she felt that glow of exhilaration intensify. The day had started out as a crisp sunny autumn morning, but now it was an overcast afternoon and ominous grey clouds were rolling in. As they approached the centre, the concentration of colleges, churches and other historical buildings increased. They made their way down Turl Street, dodging bicycles that wobbled on the cobblestones, looking in the windows of bookshop after bookshop, passing coffee houses with steamed-up windows where students were huddled over laptops and piles of books. There were bicycles everywhere. On Broad Street they peered through the railings of Trinity College at the picturesque sandstone quadrangle inside, and saw two figures in full academic dress march across
the lawn – mortar boards and flowing gowns.

  ‘This is exactly how I imagined Oxford to be. Fuck.’

  ‘Actually, it makes perfect sense that the book is in Oxford. I mean, the Bodleian Library used to keep a copy of every book ever published.’

  ‘But they didn’t have this one?’

  ‘No. No record of it whatsoever. But perhaps they did have it at some point. This city has always had a concentration of connoisseurs of the occult; there are all sorts of people who might have wanted to borrow it. Come on, I’m going to take you on a little tour.’

  She led Mikko on a whistle-stop tour of the ancient city’s underground and occult. Gargoyles were everywhere; medieval doorways led to crypts and underground passages. They wandered through the Pitt Rivers Museum, taking in shrunken heads and voodoo, Japanese noh masks, Tahitian mourners’ costumes. In the Ashmolean they saw Egyptian mummies, pre-Biblical scrolls and early Islamic seals and talismans. They ate lunch in the Eagle and Child, the pub where JRR Tolkien and his literary society, the Inklings, debated their fantastical worlds.

  Afterwards they headed into the Jericho area, Helen following the map on her phone until they arrived at The Little Shop Of Oddities. After all the beauty of sandstone, gargoyles, cobbles and history, it was disappointing to find that this shop was part of a short modern strip of commercial units, just off Little Clarendon Street, flanked by a kebab shop and an off licence. The shop front was disappointingly ordinary too. It looked like yet another bookshop in a city of bookshops, although this one had found a unique selling point as a purveyor of the alternative and the occult. The sign, The Little Shop Of Oddities, was in purple gothic lettering, and the window display was a busy and somewhat cliched arrangement of books, crystals, cheap ethnic jewellery and Buddhist statues. There was a noticeboard on which local people advertised their services as shamanic healers, tantric yoga instructors, and hypno-dance leaders.

  They entered, and a bell rang. Again, it was a disappointingly everyday sound. They were instantly hit with the pungent odour of incense. Helen was underwhelmed. This was a typical student shop, where you could buy strategically scruffy clothes to cultivate your image as a knowing bohemian. And probably find out where to buy your weed and book your yoga class. But one half of the shop was filled with books, and she was always happy to browse shelves. There was a large section on magic, and her eyes skimmed titles on theosophy, Thelema, wiccans, alchemy, Satanism, folk healing. ‘Look Mikko, there’s a book about Chaos Magick here.’

  ‘I think I’ve read everything there is to know about Chaos Magick, dude.’

  There were also bookshelves on religion, anarchism, feminism, human rights; Helen felt guilty about her initial disappointment, because in fact they had an excellent choice of literature. The central floorspace of the shop was filled with rails of clothes made from hemp, and then on the other wall was a sort of extended cabinet of curiosities. There was a surprisingly large choice of crystal balls, and there were wands, cauldrons, and candles, incense and miniature figurines of all sorts. Mikko was gravitating towards a section entitled Tantra & Sacred Sexuality, when Helen steered him away towards the counter.

  The air at the back of the shop was thick with incense fumes so they had to peer to make out the woman sitting behind the counter. She had been completely unmoved by their entrance. She stroked the cat sitting on her lap, while three other cats lounged on a cat tree behind her. Her head was shaved, and covered in tattoos that were difficult to make out as they mingled with the dark stubble on her scalp. Her arms were bare, muscular, and also covered in tattoos so that there was hardly any skin showing. The outer edges of her ears were filled with rings from top to bottom, and one ear lobe was strangely misshapen. When they looked closely they saw that an ear gauge had been inserted and expanded so that the hole it had created was as large as a coffee cup. Her face was angular and beautiful, and pierced with tiny diamonds in several places. Mikko appeared heartened to see that she was wearing the t-shirt of a metal band he knew well and of which he approved.

  ‘Hi. Nice shirt – good band. So we called yesterday, about a book. It’s a demonology book, about Adramelech. A first edition.’

  The woman continued to stroke her cat, and looked at him expressionlessly. ‘We don’t have anything like that here.’

  ‘It was Knut who sent us.’

  The woman continued to stroke her cat.

  ‘He told me to say...’ Mikko cleared his throat and made an ironic gesture towards Helen, who had joined him at the counter, ‘“Salute, o Satana, O ribellione, O forza vindice, De la ragione!” Did I do that right?’

  The woman stood up, bowed her head slightly, and said ‘“Sacri a te salgano, Gl’incensi e i vóti! Hai vinto il Geova, De i sacerdoti.”’

  Coming out from behind the counter, she edged past them and went to lock the shop door, turning the sign to Closed. She then beckoned them to follow her through a black curtain which led into a dim corridor behind the shop. They passed a grubby kitchen and toilet, and then reached the door of what looked like a cellar. The door itself was in poor condition and in need of painting, but the sign on it was expensive-looking, in brushed steel with the word ‘STIGMA’ engraved in black, in a medieval-looking font. From a lanyard around her neck the woman took a large iron key and opened the door, shoving it so that it opened with a creak.

  They were immediately hit with a strange musty smell. It wasn’t damp, it was something they couldn’t quite place; strange and yet somehow familiar at the same time.

  ‘We have to keep it very dry in here,’ the woman said, turning on the light switch.

  Mikko and Helen both gasped audibly. The room was larger than they had expected; it was the size of a small church hall. The walls were painted a crumbling deep red, and were lined with shelves. The wall to their left was filled with books of different sizes. All were leather-bound. The wall on the right was lined with an array of strange items, far more disturbing than the curiosities that had been displayed in the main shop. Bones, worn leather face masks in glass jars, shards of amber containing strange preserved body parts; it was a peculiarly macabre sort of museum. The atmosphere had suddenly changed from slightly tacky to extremely sinister.

  Just above their heads was a human form suspended from the ceiling. Surely it had to be a mannequin? Mercifully it was facing upwards, so they could only catch a glimpse of the pained facial expression. The body was suspended by a series of hooks attached to the skin, which was stretched in an eternal agony. It was hard to tell from this angle whether it was a man or a woman, but the head had long brown hair, hanging down so that they had to avoid touching it. Behind the body, the far wall at the end of the room was almost completely covered by one large painting in a gilded frame. It looked very old and as if it had been lifted from a church. In an inversion of the standard stigmata image of Christ on the cross, this painting was an imagining of hell with scenes of mass torture, mainly via stabbing and piercing with pitchforks. Helen thought it looked like a Hieronymus Bosch, but it wasn’t a painting with which she was familiar.

  ‘What is this place?’ asked Helen.

  ‘This room is for our specialist clients only.’

  ‘Clients who specialise in being totally fucked up?’ Mikko moved to pick up a bone that was displayed on a pedestal, and the woman almost slapped his hand away. ‘Do not touch, please.’

  Helen was moving around the room, entranced. ‘Stigmatophilia’ she said to the woman, pointing up at the body hanging from the ceiling. ‘Sexual arousal as a result of modifications to the skin.’

  ‘Yes. Tattooing and piercing are common practices amongst our clients.’

  ‘Wait,’ said Mikko, holding up his hands in protest. ‘I am literally covered in tattoos and piercings, and not a single one of them has ever given me a boner, you can be sure of that.’

  But Helen wasn’t listening. ‘But it’s not just tattooing and piercing though, is it? Some people have taken it much further – further even than a f
etish. There are many serial killers who have skinned people alive, right?’

  ‘Correct,’ said the woman, enlivened now by Helen’s enthusiasm. ‘This piece belonged to Ed Gein, the Butcher of Plainfield.’ She showed them a flat, disembodied face on a stand. There was poignancy in the knowledge that it had once belonged to a human, but other than that it was ugly, shrivelled, with a comical expression. ‘He was a murderer and a bodysnatcher. He would exhume corpses and fashion trophies from their body parts. To pierce the skin is to pierce the soul. To reveal blood and flesh is to reveal the truth of a person. To remind us that we are but animals. We are but cells.’

  ‘And these books,’ said Helen, moving to the other set of shelves. ‘They are all bound in human skin, aren’t they?’

  The woman stepped forward, anxious. ‘Be careful not to touch. Some of them are sacred.’

  ‘Anthropodermic bibliopegy.’

  ‘Exactly. Less than fifty human skin-bound books have been officially identified worldwide.’

  ‘Including these? There are more than fifty here.’

  ‘No. The authorities do not know about these. If these were discovered they would be sent to the Bodleian immediately for study, and then eventually sold at auction. But this is our private collection. Most of these date from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. They are called execution books, in which the trial transcript of a murderer was bound with his skin and presented to his victim’s family. Let the punishment fit the crime. Human leather is a beautiful thing.’

  ‘Human leather,’ mused Mikko. ‘That is a fucking euphemism.’

  ‘Here – this is the book you are looking for.’

  With great reverence, the woman carefully slid out a large, heavy book encased in a greyed leathery material, with a rough, damaged surface. The words Ars Adramelechum were embossed in gold on the front and on the spine, with the date 1657 in Roman numerals. The woman took pleasure in watching Helen’s expression of wonder.