The Matrix

by Jonathan Aycliffe

  Duncan parked on the opposite side of the road. We stepped out of the car and he led me across the street. The tall doorway stood where it had always stood in my dreams, waiting silently for me to come. I had to force myself to continue walking towards it, it was a struggle not to turn and run, to keep on running until I was free of that terrible place forever. Except that I knew deep down that running while awake would be no more use than running while asleep, that I could never break free of my nightmare simply by turning my back on it and all that it contained.

  At first glance it seemed that the church was derelict, that it had not been in liturgical or other use for some time. The signs of neglect were visible everywhere, from boarded-up windows to broken or slipping masonry. Scaffolding had been erected at one side to carry out repairs, but it appeared that no one had worked there for years. A section of one wall was held in place by wooden buttresses.

  And yet, for all the neglect, the building had lost none of its power. It had been designed to communicate a sense of religious awe, and that remained in the sheer scale with which it towered over the passer-by. But it possessed something else, something I had felt the first time I saw it in my dream: a sense of brooding evil so overpowering that it took the breath away. There was a force in the very fabric of the building, a strength of purpose, as though the stones themselves had been imbued with a malign and ancient consciousness. Even without setting foot inside, I could feel that same presence of fear and loathing and brutality that I had sensed in the temple beneath d’Hervilly’s house in Tangier.

  ‘Is something wrong, Andrew?’ Duncan asked as we started to climb the short flight of steps that led to the main door.

  I was tempted to say, ‘no, of course not, everything’s fine,’ but I could no longer bring myself to do so. I was afraid, really afraid this time, and no pretence could wipe it away.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’ve been here before. In my sleep.’

  ‘Of course you have,’ said Duncan without hesitation. ‘You are neither the first nor the last. We have all dreamed of being here. This place is a focus, a beacon, a brightness.’

  ‘But they were terrible dreams, nightmares . . .’

  He nodded.

  ‘I expect they were. You can tell me about them later. I said this place is a focus. It acts as a prism for our emotions, it amplifies them, alters them. Some dream of what they most hope for, others of what they most fear. Don’t be alarmed by that. Now you are here, the dreams will change. You will learn how to overcome your fears, how to use them for your own benefit and the good of others.’

  He smiled and took my arm.

  ‘Come on, Andrew. Nothing awful will happen. You’re perfectly safe with me.’

  From the outside, not a fragment of light had been visible through the boarded-up windows. Entering, I saw that candles had been lit in tall sconces along the aisles and in the chancel. They flickered in long, evenly spaced rows, barely touching the thick shadows that lay on every side and high above. I felt my heart freeze over like the surface of a pool that an icy wind has crossed. This was, in every detail, though smaller in scale, the dark cathedral of my dreams, and all it lacked was the sound of voices chanting.

  Ahead of us, gathered at the chancel end, was a group of half a dozen figures wearing hoods. At any moment, I thought, they would break into that abominable singing, and when they turned, their faces would be pale and eyeless. But they did turn then, and when they pulled back their hoods, they looked just like anybody else.

  Duncan introduced us, one at a time. Colin Baines, a bank manager; Alan Nesbitt, a venture capitalist with offices in Charlotte Square; James Partridge, an executive with BBC Scotland; Trevor McEwan, the chairman of a pharmaceuticals company; Paul Askew, a consultant in public relations; Peter Lambert, one of Edinburgh’s leading insurance brokers.

  I saw at once that they had several things in common. They were all men, they were successful and fairly wealthy, and they belonged to the same class as Duncan. Not one of them had a Scottish accent. I remembered the people I had met in Tangier, and I asked myself again why Duncan took such an interest in me.

  ‘Andrew, this evening I’d like you just to sit and watch. Do you mind?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘It won’t be long before you’re ready to take part,’ he went on. ‘But I’d like you to settle in first.’

  There was a chair near the choir stalls. I sat down, glancing nervously round me at the swaying shadows. On my right, there was a heavy door. Without being told, I knew it must lead to a subterranean crypt. I noticed that it was not wholly shut.

  Duncan looked at his watch.

  ‘Gentlemen, I think we should begin.’

  He took a robe from a cupboard and put it on. The altar had been removed from the chancel, and a large pentacle painted in the space it had occupied, framing a red circle. Duncan stepped into the centre of this arrangement. The others pulled their hoods up and stood in a circle along the perimeter.

  Duncan began to chant in Arabic. Hearing him, I realized that this had been the language of the liturgy I had heard in my dreams. His friends responded in the same language, and I recognized from snatches that they were using a text from which I had been taught by Sheikh Ahmad in Fez. Listening to their voices rise and fall, I had to fight to keep my growing panic down. I knew that, if I were to close my eyes, I would believe myself trapped in my nightmare again.

  The chanting continued. There was nothing absurd about it, nothing preposterous in these respectable Edinburgh citizens dressed in robes and reciting magical texts in an abandoned church. Quite the contrary. The longer they chanted, the more sonorous grew their voices, the more controlled and purposeful their gentle swaying movements. The stone walls echoed to the carefully modulated rhythms of the chant, the Arabic words rolled through the church, calling, summoning, imploring. ‘Come,’ they chanted, ‘come. Make haste and come among us. Come. We are waiting, we are waiting. Come.’

  And something came. Their movements slowed, their breathing steadied, their voices deepened. They knew that a presence had come among them. Petrified, I felt it. Duncan’s voice rose again and again, a note of triumph in it now. I heard a slithering sound behind me. Unable to stop myself, I looked round. The door of the crypt had moved. The sound was coming from behind it and, as I watched, something thin and white appeared in the gap.

  I could bear it no longer. Frightened beyond measure, I leapt from the chair and ran down the nave. No one stopped me. Behind me, the voices continued uninterrupted. ‘Come,’ they chanted, ‘come.’ I reached the door and ran outside, and kept on running, but the voices would not leave me, however far I went.

  SEVENTEEN

  Duncan rang me the following morning, apologetic.

  ‘I should not have taken you,’ he said. ‘I thought you were ready, but clearly you need more preparation. Try not to worry about what happened: it’s part of growing in the craft. You have yet to learn how to dominate your fears, how to prevent them taking over and colouring what you see and hear.’

  We talked for a little, Duncan explaining his theories about the power of the mind over place. But I did not believe him. What had happened in Morocco, what I had seen in Penshiel House, and what I had heard and witnessed the night before in the church left me with no choice. I could no longer believe in Duncan’s high-mindedness, I could not take a step further down the path on which he was leading me. But I did not know how to break away.

  It was Duncan himself who gave me the opportunity.

  ‘Andrew, I have to go away for a week or so. There’s some important business I have to attend to in London. It won’t wait, and I can’t send anyone in my place. We’ll talk properly when I come back. I’ll give you a ring.’

  ‘Have a good trip, Duncan. I’ll see you when you get back.’

  But I had already decided what to do. I would not be there when he returned.

  A chance meeting with one of my former students from New College put me on the tr
ack of a fresh place to live, a small flat in Drumdryan Street, in Tollcross, which a friend of his had just vacated. It was much cheaper than my current rooms, but, better than that, it was well away from Duncan’s normal haunts. Though I lost a month’s deposit by doing so, I gave my notice and moved in to my new lodgings the next day.

  As soon as I closed the door, I felt almost giddy with relief. It was as though the simple act of moving had served to wake me from a nightmare I had been almost unaware I was dreaming. I thought of Morocco and the events I had witnessed there with revulsion, and in my relief I vowed to have no more to do with Duncan or the dark world he inhabited.

  At the same time, the more I felt free from his influence, the more incredible some of my earlier fears began to seem. On the cold grey streets of Edinburgh, much of what had taken place that summer seemed bizarre – the result of fancy or self- alienation or drugs. Men did not live for centuries, the dead did not wake in the mornings to get on with life, it was not possible to kill at a distance without mechanical means. Or so I reasoned.

  I had been in my new quarters a week when I admitted to myself that it was time to visit Harriet. She had been much on my mind since my return, but until now I had been almost paralysed by my feelings of guilt about Iain’s death. My newfound rationality scattered all such notions, and I now felt greater guilt at having neglected her for so long. I telephoned right away, and this time Harriet herself answered.

  There was a long silence when she heard my voice, as though I were someone she had thought lost or dead and never expected to hear from again.

  ‘I got your letter,’ I said. ‘I rang from Fez, but you were away. Someone else answered; a woman.’

  ‘That was my mother. She said someone had called without giving a name. I thought it might have been you.’

  ‘I’m back in Edinburgh. Can I come to see you?’

  She paused, and for a moment or two I thought she was about to say no. But I was mistaken. She wanted to see me, there were things she had to talk with me about. Could I come that afternoon?

  I took a bus to Dean Village. Harriet was waiting for me with tea and cake, just like the old days. She had just arrived home from school. A pile of dog-eared exercise books sat on the table, ready for marking. A copy of the collected poems of Eliot lay open on the arm of a chair by the fireplace.

  She had changed. Physically, her face was thinner, and there were grey streaks in her hair that had not been there before. More striking was the alteration in her manner. The brightness that had once impressed and cheered me had dimmed, and I was left with an abiding impression of sadness. Sadness, and what I took to be anger, not very far beneath the surface. She simultaneously comforted and frightened me.

  ‘Thank you for coming,’ she said. ‘I knew you would in the end.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I should have come before this.’

  ‘There’s no need to apologize. You say you got my letter?’

  ‘It reached me in Tangier.’

  ‘Tangier? How very exotic that sounds. I wrote it just before . . . Iain’s death. You were away so long – I had no other means of contacting you.’

  ‘I should have come back. Seen Iain, talked with him.’

  ‘No, why should you? It wouldn’t have made any difference.’

  She lifted the pot and poured two cups of tea, Earl Grey, in china cups, milk for her, lemon for myself. Thin slices of Dundee cake lay on the plates. Tangier and Fez and Marrakesh, Duncan Mylne and Sheikh Ahmad and the Comte d’Hervilly all suddenly grew remote, components of a world I no longer inhabited, wiped out by the ordinariness of tea and cake.

  ‘How did it happen?’ I asked. ‘You said very little in your letter.’

  ‘There was little enough to say. It started a day or two after Iain went to visit you. He came back that evening quite upset. About what was happening to you, about this man Mylne. He’d asked around a bit more, found out things about Mylne that he didn’t like. Anyway, a couple of days after seeing you he had the most blinding headache. It was gone by the next day, but I was really worried about him that night. Nothing had the least effect on the pain. He was awake all night, and at one point I found him in the kitchen, crying, it was so bad.’

  I could see that she was growing upset, reliving Iain’s illness. ‘Harriet, you don’t have to go on. You’ve been through enough.’

  She looked up at me suddenly, catching a tear with a finger grown skilful over the past months.

  ‘Enough? Really? You think there’s a point at which someone says “that’s enough, you can feel better now”? Well, there isn’t, because it just goes on and on, getting worse. It’s not like prison, you know, you don’t have a day or an hour when they come along and say, “that’s it, your time’s up, you’ve done your stretch, you’re free to go now”.’

  I looked at her gently.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I know.’

  Her eyes widened.

  ‘I’m sorry, Andrew. I just forgot. You know what it’s like as well as I do.’

  ‘Well enough,’ I said. I smiled. ‘It doesn’t matter. I haven’t been a very good friend to you this year.’

  ‘Let’s forget about all that, Andrew. The chief thing is you’re here.’

  She looked thoughtful.

  ‘It is all over, isn’t it?’ she asked. ‘Mylne and everything?’

  I hesitated. I had not really thought about it in such stark terms; but now the question had been put directly, I realized that was just how matters stood.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I think so. I’ve decided to break with Duncan. I don’t plan to see him again if I can help it.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear that. Iain worried about you a lot in the last weeks. His headaches kept coming back, and he started losing weight. They did all sorts of tests, but nothing seemed to come back positive.

  ‘In between the headaches he wrote a long letter to you. He never let me see what was in it, or even so much as look at it; but he told me several times it was vital you read it.’

  ‘I see. Was this why you wanted me to come back?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Yes. Iain was very disturbed in his mind, as though something was haunting him. There was a dream that kept troubling him. He would call out in his sleep, night after night. I tried to talk with him about it, but he would say nothing. “I need to speak to Andrew, I must speak to Andrew” – that was all he would say. I thought your being here might calm him down.’

  ‘I’m sorry. If I’d known sooner.’

  ‘I don’t think it would have done much good in the end. You couldn’t have saved his life, no one could have done that. Perhaps your being here would have made him easier in his mind, it’s hard to tell. But it might as easily have worsened his condition.’

  ‘You’ve no idea what was in his mind?’

  She shook her head. Her gestures were wooden and somehow charmless. I understood. Grief is not ennobling.

  ‘What about this letter? Did he finish it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘If he did, I haven’t been able to find it. I looked everywhere after he died, when I was going through his things, but there was no sign of it anywhere.’

  ‘Could he have posted it to me?’

  ‘That’s possible. Early on, he was still going out in between bouts of illness. It was only later that he was forced to stay indoors. They took him in to the Royal Infirmary at the end: that’s where he died.’

  This time the bonds she had fashioned for herself did not hold. Her hand started trembling, and she put her cup down quickly, spilling tea across the table. I looked on helplessly as she doubled over, huddling against the force of the thing inside her. It passed slowly, as I had known it would, retreating back into its little black lair, gathering strength for the next time, and the next.

  ‘It was a very painful death,’ she said, without apology. ‘Even with sedation, he suffered a great deal. The postmortem results were ambiguous. Whole sections of his brain were scarred, but they cou
ld find no cause for the injuries, no obvious agent. But it’s over now. Knowing won’t bring Iain back.’

  We mopped up the spilt tea and I poured a fresh cup for her. Her hand had steadied again.

  ‘I’ll look for the letter,’ I said. ‘He may have sent it to the department. Or to Tangier. There must be a way of getting it back, if it’s there.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ she said, but I could see that she no longer wanted to talk about it.

  ‘Have you been to church much since . . . Iain died?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘I went at first,’ she said. ‘I thought it would help: it always had done in the past. But nothing anyone said made sense any longer. I don’t go much now, I don’t feel in harmony with it. My old church friends are shocked, of course. And perhaps they’re right, perhaps I’ll change again.’

  We went on talking until the cake had been eaten and the teapot drained. Outside, it had started to grow dark.

  ‘I’d better be going,’ I said. ‘I’ll get a bus on Queensferry Road.’

  As I got up, I knocked the copy of Eliot from the armchair. I picked it up and made to replace it. It had fallen open at ‘The Waste Land’. As I lifted it, my eye caught a passage on the right-hand page.

  Who is the third who walks always beside you?

  When I count, there are only you and I together

  But when I look ahead up the white road

  There is always another one walking beside you

  Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded . . .

  I shut the book and handed it back to Harriet. She had seen what I was reading.

  ‘That was Iain’s dream,’ she said. ‘A hooded figure luring him to something terrible. It’s what he said in his sleep. He would never speak of it in daylight.’

  EIGHTEEN

  In the course of our conversation, Harriet asked if I had been in touch with my parents. The truth was that I had neglected them badly, seldom writing, and telephoning not at all. I had sent a short letter from Morocco, but it might as well have been penned by a stranger, so remote was its content from the reality I was then living. Since my return, I had given priority to sorting out my life in Edinburgh and had avoided making contact with home.