by Simon Clark
This thought caught him like a stinging slap. Fisher turned from the window to look into the room. The pointed shoes in black leather sat against the far wall.
I wasn’t even wearing those shoes tonight, he told himself, as he looked down at his feet. I’m wearing sneakers!
The night was going to be a long one. The clock on the dash told Josanne it was coming up to 8.30. She gloomily regarded the world of mist and cold dark water. Great, she thought, just great. I’m going to have to sit this out until first light. To beat back that graveyard silence she nudged up the radio volume. Lou Reed intoned details of his perfect day.
For a moment Fisher didn’t even realize what he was doing. He wandered about the room in a daze. First going to the pointed leather shoes. He picked one up. Bent it in his hands. If I destroy the shoes … what I saw can’t happen to me.
Dear God. Insane thoughts. Rock and roll isn’t about the music, someone once wrote, it’s about the drugs. Hell, he’d not touched drugs in years. Drugs made bad guys rich. He refused to be part of that. So … he enjoyed a beer; occasionally wine … I’m rambling, he thought. He returned to the window for more of that cold, cold air. Even so, he gave the TV plenty of space between him and its dead screen. Right now it seemed perfectly logical for a pair of corpse arms to thrust out from the set, grab hold of him, then haul him into some TV never-never world that lies between the wavebands.
‘Oh, God. Give me air,’ he grunted. Once more he leaned forward, taking his weight on the sill, and pushing his head out into the night. The bushes whispered as a slight breeze stirred them. It pushed the fog away, too. Above him the silver disk of the moon showed fuzzily through strands of mist. Now he could see down the slope to where the water stretched away in a myriad glistening pools. The grey finger of concrete that was the runway stretched into the marsh.
Fisher tensed. That was the moment he saw the figure standing out there in the gloom.
‘Kym!’ Fisher ran out of the room. He shouted the words but didn’t know if anyone heard him. ‘It’s Kym.’ He ran to the kitchen. No one there. He grabbed one of the flashlights from where it had been left on the table. ‘Kym’s down on the old runway!’ Hell, was anyone else even in the building? No one answered his shouts. Never mind, he thought, I can bring her back myself. For some reason the figure had stood in the centre of that slab of concrete without moving while it had stared in the direction of the house.
‘Kym’s outside,’ he shouted down the corridor. ‘She must be hurt …’ Still no reply. Oh, blow them. He ran down the corridor to the entrance hall; from there he exited through the main doors. Outside, the moon revealed the gaunt forms of trees.
‘Fisher!’
He turned to see Fabian running up the drive. In one hand he held a flashlight that blazed into Fisher’s face. When he shielded his eyes against its glare he saw that for some reason Fabian carried a white electric guitar by the neck.
‘Hey, isn’t that Sterling’s guitar? What are you doing with it out here?’
The man panted as he thrust the guitar at Fisher. ‘Take this.’
‘What the hell for?’
‘I …’ He took a deep lungful of air to catch his breath. ‘I found it against a tree down there near the road.’
‘But what—?’
‘How the hell do I know how it got there? Take the bloody thing before I break it over your head!’
‘What the hell’s wrong with you?’
‘Josanne hasn’t come back yet.’ Fabian appeared agitated. He shot anxious glances along the driveway.
‘Fabian. No … wait. I’ve got to tell you something … that video camera I left running in the ballroom. It recorded … wait, Fabian! I’ve got tell you this!’
‘Tell me later. I’m waiting down at the road for Josanne!’
‘Fabian? Fabian! There’s another thing. It’s Kym. She’s on the old runway. Fabian! I’ve seen Kym. Aw, for Christ’sake …’ Fisher knew he was wasting his breath as Fabian ran along the driveway to the road. Fisher looked at the guitar. Its cream-coloured body glowed in the moonlight, a luminous glow as if the light seeped from its core. The chrome pickups gleamed. The steel strings were six parallel lines of silver radiance. Found against a tree? No one in their right mind would leave a musical instrument like this outside in the damp. Then did Fabian seem in his right mind? What had the guy seen to make him so jumpy?
Fisher cast his mind back twenty minutes to when he’d watched the video that appeared to show him being crushed to death. How his eyeballs had sunk into his head as if sucked inward by a vacuum. They’d left two craters. He’d watched in horror as the twin holes in his face filled with blood. He gritted his teeth. Had Fabian experienced a vision of himself? Or of Josanne? One which revealed a bloody death? He knew that Kym had witnessed herself in a nightmare being stabbed.
‘Kym?’ She might still be out there on the runway. What if she’s ill or injured? He glanced down at the guitar in his hand. It would take too long to return it to the house. If he met Sterling on the way it would mean trying to explain how his precious Gibson came to be outside in the first place. The thing would have to come with him. Kym was the number-one priority.
Keeping a grip on the guitar’s neck, Fisher ran to the house where the hawthorn clustered. He had to weave round the bushes while holding the flashlight high enough to see their slender branches that extended out across the path at head height. Each branch bristled thorns that were needle-sharp. He imagined the pain of such a thorn puncturing an eye. When he rounded the massive stone bulk of the house he saw the gentle slope running downward. A hundred yards away stood the old World War II bunker. A grim tomb of a place in the moonlight. Beyond it stretched the runway. A slab of flat concrete flanked by stagnant pools of water and mud, it ran away into the distance to dissolve eventually into invisibility in the mist. And there … he saw the figure just as he glimpsed it from his window. Kym stood as thin and as straight as a gate post in the centre of the runway. She was perhaps a hundred yards further away. More than once he thought about putting the guitar down. His arm ached carrying the instrument. Its body was carved from maple, the pickups, machine heads and bridge were all made of metal. Ten pounds of prime electric guitar. Leave it here, then pick it up on the way back. But who the hell would leave their friend’s guitar lying in wet grass? Damp would seep into the electrics. The neck might warp. That’s one sure way to destroy the thing. Fisher panted with exertion; his breath came in gusts that misted white in the cold air. In a moment he hooked the leather guitar strap over his shoulder. Now he carried it like a soldier carries a rifle across their back. That done he pushed himself to run faster. Ahead of him the runway stretched out; a ghostly pier of concrete that ran into the marsh. Within seconds, he had passed by the silent bunker. Down here the smell of stagnant water oozed into his nostrils. A flavour of the pond slime even left its mark on his tongue. Damp seeped through his clothes to touch his skin. Above him the moon burnt with a cold ghost light that imbued the shifting wraiths of fog with a weird half-life, as if the mist carried out manoevres governed by its own mysterious agenda. Humped forms shaped out of the luminous water vapour crept across the runway in front of him. They passed between himself and the figure standing just fifty yards ahead. The figure remained perfectly still. A watchful presence rather than a human being.
‘Kym!’ he called. ‘Kym? Are you all right?’ Fisher slowed his pace as the figure resolved itself from the murk. ‘Kym, I saw you from …’ His voice died in his throat. ‘Sorry … I thought you were someone I …’ Once more his words petered out.
No. It wasn’t Kym, the beautiful Czech girl. Instead, he saw a man. He was as tall and as thin as the woman Fisher had taken into his bed last night. Only this stranger was older. Forties probably. The man didn’t even appear to notice Fisher. From a thin face a pair of pale-blue eyes gazed up at the silhouette of The Tower in the moonlight. Not only did Fisher ask himself why the man chose to visit a remote quagmire at this time of
night, but why on earth was the guy dressed like that? He stood there in the cold air dressed in a cream-coloured sweatshirt, sweatpants and his feet were clad in sandals; the kind a business executive would wear on a vacation at the beach. Come to think of it, even in the light of the flashlight, the man’s thin face wore a tan.
The flashlight didn’t distract the guy. He stared up at the outline of The Tower. His eyes roved over what details he could make out in the gloom: the tombstone–shaped windows; the bushes clustering about its base. Then, at last, he did notice Fisher. The man raised his hand so the glare didn’t strike him in the eyes.
‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to dazzle you.’ Fisher lowered the light. Out in the swamp a frog croaked; the pools of liquid mud sucked away the amphibian’s voice to replace it with silence.
The man’s blue eyes focused on Fisher. His expression suggested someone slowly rousing themselves from a trance.
‘You’re carrying a guitar.’ The man didn’t ask a question. It was a statement; a grim statement at that. ‘It has a white body.’
The guitar’s slung across my back. How can he see what colour it is? Of all the subjects to start a conversation out here at night it seemed a weird one. But it’s more weird to stand on a disused runway in near-freezing temperatures dressed in clothes a vacationer might wear to lounge by a pool on a summer’s day.
‘You’ve come to see this?’ Fisher turned back to nod at The Tower. The man flinched when he fastened that unblinking stare onto the white electric guitar. Then the man tore his gaze away from the instrument to direct it at The Tower. To do so required will power on his part. The body language of a man forced to look at the worst thing in a morgue.
Fisher nodded toward the mansion as he repeated, ‘You’ve come to see this?’
‘I guess you could say it’s what I’m looking at now.’
Odd answer. Fisher glanced back at the cream-coloured lounging suit. Inside the sandals, the man’s toes had turned grey with cold.
‘I might have startled you,’ Fisher began. ‘But I thought you were someone I knew.’
‘Uh?’
‘Are you OK?’
The man ran his tongue over his lips. They must have seemed dust dry to him. His eyes gleamed with mutant mix of wonder and absolute fear.
‘No. I’m not OK … not now that I’ve seen you. Or that pile of bloody rock up there.’
‘Have you parked nearby?’
‘Parked?’ He laughed. It was as cold-blooded as the frog’s croak of just moments ago. ‘No, I’m not parked nearby.’ He glanced down at himself. ‘I’m not dressed for this night jaunt, am I?’ He shook his head. ‘I didn’t expect it.’
‘Do you want to come up to the house? It’ll be warmer.’
‘No … not on your life. I’m not going back there.’
Hell, what now? Fisher guessed the guy had wandered away from some kind of hospital. He clearly wasn’t firing on all pistons, not appearing like this in lightweight clothes in these temperatures. Then Fisher realized it must appear odd that he himself was jogging round the grounds with only an electric guitar for company.
‘My name’s Blaxton.’ The man spoke faster now, as if he had information to impart only time was running out. ‘And you are?’
‘John Fisher.’
‘Well, John Fisher. Do you live in that viper’s nest?’
‘The Tower? Just for the time being.’
‘Alone?’
Blaxton’s questions were suspiciously intrusive. ‘Who wants to know?’ Fisher asked, adopting a defensive tone.
‘You want to know, John Fisher. You want to know everything – if you know what’s good for you.’
‘Hey, is that a threat?’
‘I repeat, are you living there alone?’
‘No. With friends. Not that it’s any—’
‘Fifteen years ago I stayed there for a week. I was there with friends, too. I was the only one to come out alive.’
Fisher stared at him. Red splotches flamed in the man’s cheeks. He spoke with fervour. The cloud of confusion had lifted from him. Fisher’s urge to walk away from the guy was shunted out by the instinct to hear what he had to say.
Fisher tried not to – this he didn’t need to hear; not after the events of the last forty-eight hours – but he did it anyway; he found himself uttering the fatal words: ‘Why? What happened?’
CHAPTER 23
Out on the concrete runway that had launched B17 aircraft on bombing missions over Germany two men talked. Both were incongruous. In the moonlight, with mist drifting in from the marsh, Fisher stood with the white electric guitar slung over his back by its leather strap; while the man called Blaxton, clad in cream-coloured sweatshirt and pants blew into his cold hands.
The man’s words spoken seconds ago resonated in Fisher’s head: ‘Fifteen years ago I stayed for a week. I was there with friends, too. I was the only one to come out alive.’
Blaxton gazed at the house a if he was looking into the face of an oozing corpse. ‘There won’t be enough time to tell you everything. Huh, I don’t suppose you’ll believe me for a moment.’ He shrugged. ‘I can’t help that.’
‘You said you were the only one to come out alive?’
‘That’s right. The only one.’ Blaxton’s face was grim as he turned to Fisher. ‘Has it started on you yet? Have any of your friends been hurt? Anyone wished they’d never been born?’ His voice grew increasingly bitter.
‘Tell me what happened, then.’
‘You’re an impatient one, Mr Fisher, aren’t you? Or is it an instinct for self-preservation? Good God, let’s hope it’s the latter.’ He rubbed his arms as the cold sliced through the thin fabric of his sweatshirt. ‘Your guitar?’
Fisher shook his head. ‘A friend’s.’
To ask why Fisher had chosen to lug a guitar round the countryside would have been a natural question, but the man was in no mood to digress. ‘We arrived here fifteen years ago. It was early spring. I remember there was still snow on the ground. There were five of us. All under thirty. The house hadn’t been used in months. Before that it had been a conference centre which had gone bust. I’d formed a production company with people I’d worked with at the BBC. We didn’t have much money but pooled what we had. So we rolled up here in an old van with a camera, tape stock and more ambition than was healthy. We’d decided to make a programme that would generate the most publicity, which would then lead to a series commission. All clear cut. Well planned. Research done. Everything.’ He looked at me. ‘We were on a ghost hunt.’ He blew into his hands. Tendrils of white vapour bled out between his fingers. ‘And we’d got The Tower to ourselves. A huge haunted house. We had automatic cameras, tape machines to leave running in empty rooms …’
I left the video camera in the ballroom. I saw what happened to me … Already Fisher had decided to invite Blaxton to see what he’d recorded a couple of hours ago.
Blaxton talked faster. He sensed the clock ticking away the seconds. A countdown … but a countdown to what? ‘We set up the camera. I filmed talking head shots of our presenter. “Tonight ladies and gentlemen, we find ourselves in a mansion in a remote corner of Yorkshire. The Tower. The most haunted house in Britain …” You know the sort of thing, Mr Fisher. You’ll have seen plenty like it. Only this was turning out to be different from what we expected. Have you taken a look round inside the place?’
Fisher nodded.
Blaxton continued, ‘You’ve seen the walkway called The Promenade?’
‘And The Good Heart.’
‘Yeah, The Good Heart. An innocuous name for the most diabolical … evil … bit of stonework on this planet.’ He suddenly appeared uncomfortable at speaking the name. He glanced back as if he expected to see an eavesdropper. The mist had thickened again now. All Fisher could make out were a few square yards of concrete, flanked by pools of stagnant water. Again a frog croaked in the darkness.
‘Ugly place isn’t it, Fisher? You know, it’s all sinking into the mire.
Best place for it. Yeah, well … we set up a tape recorder in The Good Heart and left it running. Research told us that The Good Heart was a medieval farmhouse built in the thirteenth century. Originally it was called The God Heart, but later owners changed it, maybe they thought The God Heart was blasphemous. Of course, who ever built the ugly pile wouldn’t have been referring to the Christian God, anyway. It would have been the temple site of one of the pagan honchos. A historian we interviewed even speculated that this was the burial site of the heart of the pagan god. You’ve seen the carving over the door? That’s a carving from the original temple that stood here. It’ll have been incorporated into the newer stonework to act as a kind of talisman. Maybe owners of the farmhouse that would become known as The Good Heart hoped it would bring good luck.’ His eyes strayed back to The Tower. ‘It brought anything but good luck. Parish records show that when the county was hit by the plague lots of people from the area retreated to the house where they thought they’d be safe. A year later when the king sent his army back into these areas that had been decimated by disease they found all that was left in the house were dozens of skeletons. Vermin had picked them clean. So, you’ll be asking yourself why wasn’t The Good Heart ripped down when The Tower was built on the same site? People can be superstitious. In Britain nearly every church is built on the site of a pagan temple. Some even recycled stone carvings from the temples into the fabric of Christian churches. When the new priests had their churches built they believed that the old magic hadn’t vanished. That it was still humming away there in the ground – all primed and ready to go. And they could draw on the old supernatural powers. Maybe it was with the best of intentions. You know, that it would bring them luck, keep away the Devil, fill the churches with the faithful every Sunday. Same goes for the guy who built The Tower. Maybe he walked into the ruined old farmhouse before he brought the wreckers in and he thought, Whoa. Just feel this vibe. I want some of that. So, not only did he leave the façade standing, he enveloped it with his own house. He wanted to capture lightning in a bottle. What did he do when The Tower was finished? I don’t know. Maybe he sat naked on a huge throne in The Good Heart and crafted schemes of world conquest.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘That’s it for the history. We’re almost out of time.’