She wasn’t happy with the explanation about Susan’s sudden departure, but then there was a lot about this place she was not happy about. She was wishing now she had trusted her instincts and not come.
When the lectures were over for the day she slipped out of the room and headed towards the kitchen area. She wanted to talk to Spike. According to DeMarney and Delacourt, Spike had driven Susan to the station, and so would have been the last person to speak to her. Lisa didn’t believe them and she was anxious to hear Spike’s version of the story. Although she had only met him the day before, she felt that Spike was a little more down to earth than the rest of the staff here, and would probably be easier to talk to.
She entered the kitchen and was surprised to find it deserted. Pots were bubbling on the stove, and bowls of salad covered with cling film were arranged on one of the work surfaces. She lifted the lid of one of the pots and saw a shoulder of bacon simmering away, the salty smell whetting her appetite. Through the door of the industrial sized oven what looked to be a lasagne was browning slowly.
From the corridor she heard voices – Delacourt and DeMarney. She ran through the kitchen on tiptoe and slipped out through the back door.
Once out in the garden she made her way around to the side of the house and the garage. The large up and over door was open and the van sat inside, but of Spike there was no sign. The garage was a two-storey building, with living quarters above. She took a few steps back and looked up at the windows, but net curtains made an efficient screen from prying eyes.
She went inside, walked past the van to the back of the building and found the door that she assumed led up to the first floor. She tried the handle and found to her surprise that the door opened smoothly and silently. The door gave onto a flight of carpeted stairs. At the top of the stairs was another door. That one will definitely be locked, she thought as she started to climb.
She reached the door and closed her fingers around the handle, but before she twisted it she put her ear to the door and listened. She could hear the faint sound of music playing. Rock music, but old fashioned – something from the nineteen seventies. She turned the handle and the door opened.
She paused in the doorway, her heart thumping, sweat making her hands clammy. She felt absurdly nervous. She called out, ‘Spike!’ but her voice sounded small and insignificant. There was no reply. She called again.
She was in a small hallway, coats hung from a peg on the wall, beneath them two pairs of heavy work boots and an ancient pair of Reebok trainers. Ahead of her were three more doors. One of them had a large poster advertising a rock festival pinned to it. The date of the festival was August 1973. This guy lives in the past, she thought, but then was not really surprised. The ancient music on the stereo, and this poster, fitted perfectly with his appearance. He looked like a relic from an early seventies progressive rock band – the kind of band her father liked and still listened to today.
She opened this door and found herself in a small, cramped living room. The heavily patterned wallpaper and the garish carpet, along with more posters of the wall all added to the illusion that she was stepping back in time. Still there was no sign of Spike.
She moved to the next door, rapped on it with her knuckles to no response and went in. She had found the bathroom.
The final door must lead to the bedroom, she surmised and was nervous about just barging in there. She knocked and called out his name. The music was loud. Perhaps he hadn’t heard. She knocked and called again, expecting the door to be pulled back at any moment, ready with her excuses for invading the man’s private domain.
After waiting two or more minutes she turned the handle and pushed open the door.
She was right – it was a bedroom. The large double bed took up most of the floor-space, along with a large old-fashioned sound system – the type with speakers as large as suitcases. From these issued the soaring guitar-driven music of Pink Floyd. She recognised it now – Wish You Were Here – one of her father’s favourite albums, and one he played constantly, much to her mother’s annoyance and her own amusement.
Spike was lying on the bed, fully clothed, eyes shut, unmoving. A thought flashed through her mind and she dismissed it at once, but it crept back in, nagging at her.
He looks dead!
12
He looks dead, the thought persisted. He’s not breathing. His skin is pale, waxy. His eyes are not moving under his lids.
She stood in the doorway, not sure what to do next. The music was filling her mind, building in volume and intensity – soaring sweeps of music, deafening and threatening. Her entire body was trembling, and she felt she might cry. She wanted to reach out and touch him, to feel the cold, hard ivory flesh – to convince herself that he was actually dead. But she knew he was. Deep down she knew. He was as dead as her grandmother had been when her parents had taken her to the chapel of rest to say the final goodbye.
The music stopped.
It stopped so suddenly that Lisa could still hear the echo of it in her mind. The silence that swept in to take its place was just as threatening and in its own way just as deafening, but it was short-lived. With a suddenness that made her cry out, the alarm clock on the bedside table burst into life with a clanging peal that hurt her ears. And with an equal suddenness that made her turn on her heels and run from the room, Spike opened his eyes.
As she ran down the stairs she heard movement in the room behind her. A door slammed and footfalls seemed to be following her. She reached the bottom of the stairs, crept quietly around the side of the parked van, and then froze as she heard voices.
Roger DeMarney and Sarah Delacourt were walking across the gravel drive, heading towards the garage. Lisa shrank down behind the side of the van, praying that they wouldn’t discover her. The door to the upstairs opened and Spike emerged. From her hiding place Lisa watched him. He was moving jerkily, stiffly as if learning to walk for the first time. His blank, waxy face slowly relaxed, taking on some colour, and his eyes grew slowly more alive.
He walked from the garage without noticing her and met with the others outside. Lisa crept towards the door, straining her ears to try and hear their conversation, but apart from a few odd words she couldn’t decipher any of it. She reached the doorway, being careful to keep herself in shadow, and watched as the three of them walked back to the house.
When they had disappeared inside she went back to the door leading to the upstairs and tried the handle. This time it was locked. She swore softly and slipped from the garage.
Sean hauled his bag onto his shoulder and slipped out of the front door.
He had decided to leave halfway through the lectures. Tim’s reasoning about the whole thing being set up hadn’t convinced him, and there was no way he would ever put himself through anything like this again. What he had seen, first in the bathroom, and then in the garage, had frightened the life out of him and left him badly shaken. All he wanted to do now was to go home, back to the security of his own bedroom and the Internet world he had created for himself.
He was trying to leave unobserved because he had no desire to get into a discussion with the others about it – they would try to persuade him to stay on. And he certainly wasn’t going to mention it to the tutors or to DeMarney and the woman – he would give them a very wide berth.
There was nobody around as he jogged down the steps and across the drive. His plan was simple. He would make his way back through the woods to the main road and then hitch a ride to the station, or, if a long-distance lorry came along, then maybe all the way back to Birmingham.
He reached the trees and looked back. There was still nobody about. Three more paces and the wood swallowed him.
From his office window Roger DeMarney watched Sean’s furtive exit from the house. He watched as Sean crossed the drive, heading for the woods. With a slight smile playing on his lips he picked up the phone, dialled an internal number and spoke briefly. Then he replaced the handset and watched as Sean disappeared into t
he trees.
In her room, Cat sat quietly on her bed, reflecting on her earlier conversation with Steve. His observations about her had skewered her like a butterfly on a pin. She resented him for it, but she also resented the fact that she was so transparent. She liked to cloak herself in mystery. She enjoyed being enigmatic. Now she felt shallow and obvious. But then perhaps she was – and was it really Steve’s fault that he had been able to see through her pretence? The fact was she liked him, really liked being in his company. She hadn’t really clicked with anyone since… She glanced at the photograph on the bedside table and shivered. She didn’t want to go there again.
She decided to go to Steve’s room and apologise to him, but once out on the landing she saw Lisa about to knock on his door. Quietly she slipped back into her own room. Perhaps later, she thought.
Lisa knocked once on the door to Steve’s room and pushed it open.
Steve was lying on the bed reading a book. He put it down as she entered. ‘Come in,’ he said ironically, then noticed the look on Lisa’s face. ‘What’s wrong?’
Lisa sat on the bed and told him.
‘I’m not kidding, Steve, he looked dead.’
Steve sighed, ‘Well, obviously he wasn’t, or he wouldn’t be walking around, would he?’
Lisa glared at him. ‘You’re getting as bad as Tim – smug and so sure of yourself.’
‘I’m not being smug; I’m just trying to inject some commonsense into all this. First Susan, then Sean, and now you.’
‘And Susan’s disappeared.’
‘Oh, for Pete’s sake!’ Steve said tiredly and got to his feet. He wanted to find a rational explanation for all this, but his experience on the island undermined him. ‘Everyone seems to be jumping at shadows,’ he said. ‘And if we believe Tim, that’s just what the staff here wants us to be doing.’
‘I don’t believe Tim,’ Lisa said bluntly. ‘The idea’s preposterous.’
‘A little far fetched, perhaps… but is it any more far fetched than believing in dead men walking and smoke ghosts?’
Lisa ran her hands through her hair and shook her head. ‘I don’t know. Look, Steve, I think I’m pretty rational. I did well at school, passed all my exams and now I’m studying to get my grades for University. Even still, I’m finding it hard to get my head around some of the things that have been going on here, be they real, or manufactured. I’m wishing I hadn’t come.’
‘Then why did you?’
‘To be with you.’
It was out before she could stop herself, and she felt herself blushing furiously.
‘I… I didn’t mean…’
‘I know what you meant,’ Steve said.
‘You do?’
‘Of course.’ He sat down beside her on the bed and took her hand. ‘Look, Lis, for as long as I’ve known you you’ve always been my best friend, always there whenever I’ve needed you. When we decided all those years ago we wanted to be authors I think what egged me on the most was knowing that you wanted it as much as I did. And then when you started selling yours, no one could have been more pleased than me. But it upset the balance, and I don’t think you’ve quite known how to deal with it. You knew this weekend would mean a lot to me, and I think you knew that if you hadn’t come with me, well, I might not have come here at all. I appreciate that. But you’ve got to stop beating yourself up over the fact that, so far, you’re a more successful writer than me. I know my time will come. I will make that first sale. Believe me, it really helps to know you’re in my corner spurring me on.’ He squeezed her hand. ‘Thanks,’ he said.
Lisa smiled ruefully and shook her head slightly. How could he get it so wrong?
‘Listen,’ he said, suddenly changing tack. ‘I’m going back over to the island later. Do you want to come?’
It was then that she nearly slapped him. The only reason he had asked her was because he had fallen out with Cat.
He pulled her hand out of his grasp and stood. ‘No, Steve, I don’t,’ she said flatly and crossed to the door. She pulled it open. ‘In fact, I don’t want to go anywhere with you,’ she said and walked from the room, pulling the door closed behind her, resisting the urge to slam it. That would be childish.
After walking through the woodland for half an hour, Sean finally had to admit to himself he was lost. After entering the wood from the house it had taken him a while to find any kind of path, and this was a scrubby affair, just a trail of flattened bracken twisting and turning between the dense stands of elm and birch. There was no sign of the road they had driven down on their arrival.
He stopped walking and leaned against the trunk of a silver birch, trying to get his bearings. A squirrel broke from the dense undergrowth of ferns and bracken and scampered up a tree just yards away, crouching on a branch above the woodland floor, watching him with glittering eyes. Above it, a magpie hopped from branch to branch, cawing loudly, adding its voice to the hundreds of other small calls and cries that went to make up a vivid soundscape.
Suddenly, with a shrill cry the bird took flight and the squirrel ran to the end of the branch and leapt into space, landing on a nearby elm and scurrying up into the high branches, becoming lost from view. Almost immediately this was followed by an explosion of sound from the woodland as thousands of birds took noisily to the sky, forming a black, living canopy overhead, blocking out the sun. The undergrowth came alive as hundreds of small creatures stampeded through it, causing the ferns to ripple and wave as though caught in a gale.
And through the countless small sounds that lent themselves to the cacophony came another – a deep, reverberating growl that rose in volume to an ear-spitting roar.
Sean dropped his bag and covered his ears with his hands. When he took them away he heard the unmistakable sound of something huge crashing through the undergrowth towards him. Forgetting his bag he started to run, into the densest part of the wood, following the animals and birds, away from the terrifying sound.
He ran until his lungs threatened to burst but the noise kept pace with him. As he ran he kept glancing back but he couldn’t see anything solid, just an impression of movement and the sight of the undergrowth being flattened, as though huge feet were trampling it down.
His breath was coming in great heaving gasps and just as he felt he could run no further the noise behind him stopped as suddenly as it had started. He stopped running and bent almost double, struggling to fill his lungs with air. In front of him was a huge body of water. Thick weed covered its surface, and from beneath straggling plants broke through, reaching up to the sun with thin and reedy stems. Midges and mosquitoes hung over the lake in dense clouds, but apart from them there were no signs of life.
With a shock he realised he was looking at the same lake that he had seen from the house, but now he was around the other side of it. In the centre of the lake was the island, its banks lined with stunted, twisted trees and outgrowths of gunnera and rodgersia. He had never seen plants as large as the gunneras with their huge jagged leaves measuring at least a yard and a half across, supported on stems two inches in diameter. They looked prehistoric, almost alien.
When he had seen the island from the house he hadn’t realised how large it was, but from here, possibly because it was closer to the mainland, he could see it was hundreds of yards wide, and through the trees and dense planting he could make out the ill-defined shape of a building.
He shaded his eyes from the sun to try to get a better view of the place, but shadows were shifting on the island as branches of trees moved in an unfelt breeze, and he wasn’t able to get a clear view.
As he stood there staring out across the water he became aware of the uncomfortable feeling that he was being watched. He turned suddenly and looked back through the trees at the way he had come, but could see nothing. But after the chase every muscle and sinew was alert as the adrenaline still buzzed through his veins, and when a twig snapped not more than a dozen yards away, he was running again, around the edge of the lake.
As he ran he could hear something in the wood behind keeping pace with him, never gaining on him, never fading into the distance, just a steady echo of his own footfalls, crunching the plant life and small bodies that stood in its way.
When he realised that he couldn’t outpace whatever it was that was following him, Sean looked for another means of escape, but before he could do anything else the roaring sound he had heard earlier began again. This time louder, closer. He spun round in time to see a black formless shape barrelling through the trees towards him. He didn’t even have time to cry out as the thing crashed into him, lifting him off his feet.
He felt himself flying through the air and saw the weed covered water passing underneath him. And then he was falling, dropping like a stone from the sky. A huge gunnera plant broke his fall, the thick leaves, as large as elephants ears, folding and crumpling under him, the strong spiky stems ripping through the material of his shirt, scraping his skin, drawing blood.
For a moment he lay still, not sure if he had broken anything. All sounds had ceased and the air around him was silent. Gradually he moved, first his arms, then his legs. The cushion of foliage underneath him gave slightly and listed to the left, and he tumbled out of the plant, landing wetly on the boggy ground at the edge of the lake.
13
Steve searched the undergrowth. He was sure this was where he had found the boat yesterday, but then there was no guarantee they had put it back in the same place; if they had put it back at all. He walked along the lakeside a few yards, his eyes scouring the thick plantings of rhododendrons, broom and spurge, and finally saw a small splash of colour amongst the green.
Concealed in a large bush of stinging nettles was the boat he and Cat had used the day before to cross to the island.
He was wearing only a tee shirt and jeans and had no desire to plunge his arms into the nettles to retrieve the boat. Laying on the ground a few feet behind the nettle patch was a fallen branch from a nearby elder. It was long and had enough growth to allow him to hook the boat and drag it clear.
A Weaving of Ancient Evil Page 7