“Both of us were very wrong.”
^
Blacklaw stopped as he was hit by a sudden coughing fit that brought flecks of blood to his lips, but he waved Carole away when she started to get out of her chair to go to his aid.
“I’m busted up inside, my dear,” he said once he had calmed. “The lungs are shot, my guts can only hold enough food to feed a mouse, and I’ve got about as much muscle as a newborn chick. But I’m good for a wee bit longer yet. Let me tell my tale—it feels good to get it out, after all these years, and we need to get to the nub of the matter before I get too tired to continue.
“I left Hugh outside the Café Royal late that afternoon and did not see him for another two weeks, but in that time he managed to persuade the BBC to give us a chance. He sent handwritten letters relating our progress, which all went remarkably smoothly, and around a month later, we were ready to go.
“We set up in the cellar downstairs—right beneath where we are sitting here. I had some extra chains and manacles added for effect, and McKinnon—who was also a sprightly young thing back then—had to cart several truck loads of accumulated junk up and out onto the drive before we had room for filming.
“I remember most clearly that the girls Hugh had brought up from London whined the whole time during rehearsals about the cold and the damp, and the wine cellar’s contents took a pounding that cost me a pretty penny to replenish. But Hugh was happy—more than that, he was energized in a way I had not seen him for several years.
“The night before filming we were sitting in these very same chairs having a drink and a smoke when he showed me the passage in the book—the ritual he intended to perform. There was an illuminated drawing there that drew my gaze.
“CALX was the heading. The drawing showed a naked young man, bound to a burning wheel by hands and feet in a figure X. The wheel was set on a remote patch of land. It looked to be a barren heath on a high plateau that would have borne a striking resemblance to the view out of my front window if the mountains had been a tad higher in these parts. The fire from the wheel was starting to consume the man’s arms and legs, and flames were taking hold in his hair. But despite the torment, the bound figure was smiling broadly.
“Hugh tapped at the picture.
“‘This is the lasting image I want the viewers to remember. It is from Greek mythology. Zeus punished Ixion, a poet, for trying to seduce the goddess Hera. For his presumption Ixion was bound to a perpetual wheel of fire. But the poet had seen the face of the goddess, and although he was bound in eternal pain, he was also eternally happy. That is something there’s a lot of in the Concordances—duality. Everything can be seen from two angles. Everything has at least two meanings. But for our purposes it is simple. We won’t be mentioning the Greek stuff at all. We’ll have the wheel, some chanting, some drums and some girls in their underwear—that’ll get the viewing figures rocketing if nothing else.’
“’So it’s really all going to be a sham?’ I asked.
“Hugh smiled.
“’Not all of it—as I told you back in the Royal, I intend to use the chant as detailed in the book—but we’ll both know that’s just for verisimilitude. Don’t worry, old boy. A couple of hours of filming; then the lads will get it off to London and we’ll be back on top before the summer’s out.’
“We went down into the cellar the next night.”
^
“It all started smoothly enough.
“The cellar was dashed cold, and the girls suddenly shy about shedding their clothes, but Hugh was not to be argued with. He took control of the whole shoot and orchestrated it with the bravado of a top conductor. As I said before—he seemed energized by the whole affair. We soon had a chant ringing and echoing around us—the acoustics of the cellar being such that it often sounded like there were many more voices than our own raised in the chorus. You have seen the photographs, so you have some idea as to what went on, but what the photos can’t describe is the tension—the electricity—in the air. Drums beat loudly, the girls danced, and the chanting rose to frenzied heights. Hugh laid himself down, naked on the circles we had painted on the floor and shouted out the final line of the ritual.
“‘Dhumna Ort!’
“There was a crack, and a flash, and all the electrics in the house shorted out at once, leaving us in total blackness.
“As you can imagine there was a certain degree of panic, but between McKinnon and myself we managed to get the crew and the girls back up into the light—it was only then I noticed that Hugh wasn’t with us.
“I took a lantern back down into the cellar and called his name—but Hugh would never answer me again.
“He lay in the center of the circle where I had last seen him—eyes staring sightlessly upward, a broad smile on his face.”
= 8 '
“He died here? In the cellar?” John said. “Why wasn’t I ever told?”
“You’ll have to ask your father that,” Blacklaw said. “Your grandmother knew the story well enough, although she never spoke to me again after the funeral. She was a close-mouthed woman, though, and it may be that she took the story with her to her grave—your own father might never have been told.”
“Okay—I understand that the family might want to bury such a story—but what about the media? And what about your legacy?”
Blacklaw laughed, then had to stop again when a cough brought blood to his lips.
“The media didn’t want any trouble,” he said. “‘BBC crew in black magic orgy death’ was not the kind of headline they were thinking of when they sent their people up here. As for legacy—all I wanted after Hugh passed was to be left alone to mourn.”
“So it was covered up?” John asked.
Blacklaw seemed almost too tired to reply.
“Of course it was,” he said. His voice was throaty and little more than a croak. “It wasn’t just the BBC who had a stake in us. We had publishers, agents and newspapers all earning from our exploits. A scandal could not—would not—be tolerated. But it wasn’t really a cover-up—after a while people just stopped talking about us. How do you say it these days? We fell off the radar.”
“Quite a fall,” John said.
“Well, I may have helped by jumping,” Blacklaw replied, and smiled. “I got my wish of retirement and moved permanently to this house. We gave Hugh a quiet funeral, and I settled down to a much simpler life while the world turned.”
He picked up a small bell from the table and rang.
The butler, McKinnon, appeared at Blacklaw’s side to help him rise from the table, as if he’d been standing just outside the door waiting for the call.
“Now, if you will excuse me,” Blacklaw said, clearly struggling to get the words out. “I have talked more this morning than I have all year. I need to lie down. But I think I have left you more than enough to mull over. If I am well enough to get downstairs, we shall speak again this evening.”
Once again the old man and the butler shuffled out of the room, leaving John and Carole in a dumfounded silence.
^
“Do you think he’s telling the truth?” Carole asked.
John leaned over and switched off the recorder before answering.
“He’s got no reason to lie to us—at least none that I can see. It’s a hell of a story though—and just the sort of thing I need. If he’ll let me use the photos, we could be looking at a big seller here. There could even be a bidding war for the rights if we play our cards right. Imagine the stir—a naked photo of Hugh Fraser during a Satanic ritual—the Sundays will eat it up and shout for more.”
He noticed, too late, that Carole was none too happy with him.
“You’d use your own family that way?”
John nodded.
“Why not? All’s fair in this game.”
“And what would your parents have thought—would your dad like to have his own father’s name dragged through the mud backwards?”
“I hadn’t thought of it like that…�
�� John started, but wasn’t given time to finish.
“Of course you hadn’t. You never do. I’ll be upstairs. Leave me alone for a while if you know what’s good for you.”
She stood, too fast, knocking her chair over with a loud crash, but didn’t stop to right it and didn’t look back as she left. Any thought of following her was swiftly dispelled by memories of previous arguments—none of which he had come close to winning.
He poured himself some coffee—it was still warm enough to drink, although not piping hot—and took it through to the library.
He’d intended to have another look at the photo album. He’d left it on the floor the night before, but as he entered the room he saw the album was no longer there. Suddenly reminded of his nighttime experience, he looked up to the rafters. Thin sunlight leaked in from a skylight at the highest point. There was no sign of any movement. If there had been even the slightest hint of rustling, John was ready to flee, but the house had fallen quiet again now that breakfast was over, and the thick fog soundproofed it against any external noises. The library was silent and still.
John made his way over to the library table. Someone—McKinnon again, probably—had replaced the photo album in its previous position. It sat on top of two other books—John wondered if they were the same two that had fallen at his feet during the night, then pushed that thought away—he did not need any more reminders of how close he’d come to a screaming funk.
He took the photograph album back to the chair by the fire and sat, lost in thought, going over and over again in his mind what Blacklaw had revealed to him of his grandfather’s death.
^
The photographs at the end of the book fitted Blacklaw’s story, but the tale felt unfinished somehow, as if an important piece had been left off the board. John looked closer at the photographs, studying not just the foreground figures, but any detail that could be made out in the background, hoping that something vital might jump out at him and bring the story into focus. Now that he knew they were mere props, the chains and manacles looked slightly cheesy and out of place, and the dancers seemed posed for effect, caught like groups of sculptures in half-embarrassed poses. Even Hugh’s naked body on the ritual circle looked too pale—too clean.
He kept staring at the pictures for a good twenty minutes, but it was no use. The flat black-and-whites from more than forty years ago had no more secrets to give up.
I’ll need to talk to the old man again.
Given Blacklaw’s state of health, he didn’t know how much more time he would be allowed. He’d come here hoping for a story that would form the backbone of his biography. What he’d got was stunning, yes, but still not enough to satisfy the current excesses of the media—the photographs only served to emphasize the fact that the story was old—and getting older by the day. He needed more.
After studying the images, he switched on his recorder and played back the interview—or monologue, as it had turned out. Blacklaw’s voice sounded even weaker on replay—the whispers of an obviously dying man. Like the photographs, the playback didn’t reveal any new secrets—not until it got near the end.
“You have seen the photographs, so you have some idea as to what went on, but what the photos can’t describe is the tension—the electricity—in the air. Drums beat louder, the girls danced, and the chanting rose to frenzied heights,” Blacklaw said.
And at that, the playback became distorted with banging and hissing sounds, a cacophony of white noise much louder than Blacklaw’s voice. It grated on the ears and sent spikes of lancing light dancing in John’s eyes, a ten-second assault like standing too close to the stage at a rock concert that rose to a blasting crescendo before cutting off as quickly as it had come. The old man’s voice took over again.
“‘Dhumna Ort!’
The rest of the playback continued normally. John let it play through, then went back to where the white noise had kicked in. He turned the volume of his recorder down to a level where he could stand listening to the cacophony and played back the section, over and over again, listening for anything that might give him a clue as to what he had picked up.
At first he thought it might be no more than a glitch in the recording, a bad section on the solid-state drive that held the box’s recordings. Then he started to hear voices in the sound, a rhythmic chanting that underpinned the white noise. He tried to use the controls on the side of the box as filters, and found that by turning the treble right down and the bass up to maximum, he could almost discern words.
It sounded like Latin, a deep chanting, like monks at prayer. He played it over and over, trying to discern meaning.
And in answer, something rustled, high in the rafters above.
^
“You need to hear this,” John said two minutes later as he pushed open the bedroom door.
Carole looked him up and down. “I really don’t, you know,” she said.
It seemed she was still angry with him, but John ploughed on regardless. “Okay—I get it, I’m an insensitive wanker—I agree with you. Now will you listen to this? It’s important.”
“Important how?”
“I don’t rightly know as yet—but just listen, will you?”
He took the recording back to the section where the noise started. Blacklaw’s voice whispered back at him again.
“Drums beat louder, the girls danced and the chanting rose to frenzied heights. Hugh laid himself down, naked on the circles we had painted on the floor and shouted out the final line of the ritual.
“‘Dhumna Ort!’
“There was a crack, and a flash, and all the electrics in the house shorted out at once, leaving us in total blackness.”
There was no sign of any white noise, no break at all in the flow of Blacklaw’s words. He fiddled with the bass and treble controls and played it again, and again but each time there was only the old man’s voice on the playback.
= 9 '
Carole saw that John was confused—more than that, he looked almost scared.
“What is it?” she said. “What did you want me to hear?”
John sat down hard on the edge of the bed. He shook the recorder, tapping it hard with his hand, then played back the same section again, three times before she asked him to stop.
“You’re starting to scare me here. Talk to me, John. Tell me what happened.”
He couldn’t take his eyes off the recorder.
“I’m starting to scare myself. But it was there. I heard it.”
“What was?”
He finally started to talk, telling her about an area of white noise on the recording that might—or might not—have contained some ritual chanting in Latin. He mentioned hearing a rustling in the rafters—then went on to tell her about his experience the night before.
“There’s something in that library,” he said softly. “I’m sure of it. Something that’s not meant to be there.”
She wasn’t quite sure whether he was being serious. John wasn’t a man prone to flights of fancy and had always been dismissive of anything even remotely claiming to be supernatural.
“Something? What do you mean by that?”
He was quiet for several seconds before continuing.
“The old man isn’t telling us everything he knows. And I mean to get to the bottom of it.”
He started to rise but she pulled him back down beside her on the edge of the bed.
“Slow down,” Carole replied. “The old man’s sick—and probably asleep. What are you going to do—slap him awake and torture him into a confession?”
John slumped against her. She stroked his hair.
“We need to take our time,” she said, softly. “You’ve had a shock—you’ve just learned how your grandfather died. It’s no surprise that you’re a bit on edge.” She felt him relax at her side—not much, but it was a start. “Let’s get outside for a bit—some fresh air might do us both good—and we need to walk off some of that breakfast if we don’t want to leave here several po
unds heavier than we came.”
John had another look at the recorder, than put it down on the bedside table before joining her in dressing for a walk on the moor.
^
It was getting on for noon as they went out the main door. As soon as they stepped out onto the gravel drive it was immediately obvious that they weren’t going to see much in the way of views. The fog clung to the moor like a thick blanket, shifting only slowly, almost languidly, in what little breeze existed and limiting their view to a hundred yards at most. Everything looked washed-out and gray, and John was all for turning straight back inside.
“No, you don’t,” Carole said, and took John by the arm. “We’ll head up the driveway for a bit—it might clear up further along.”
She didn’t believe it herself—the weather looked to be settled in for a long stay—but she’d been right earlier—they needed some clear air and a fresh perspective, if only to keep them away from each other’s throat for a while longer. Besides, it would also keep John from obsessing about what might—or might not—inhabit the high spaces in the library.
They walked arm in arm in silence for several minutes, until John turned for a look back at the house.
It was already mostly obscured by fog, showing only as a darker patch against the gray, a yellow light in one of the windows like a single unblinking eye looking back at them, the opposite window closed, as if winking. Suddenly Carole had an image of the house as the head of some malevolent giant, buried to his neck in the bog, but perfectly happy to be standing there, drinking fog and leering at passing travelers. She wasn’t normally prone to morbid thoughts, but it wasn’t only John who had gotten more than slightly spooked. She shivered, and gripped John’s arm tighter.
“I’ve been thinking,” John said.
The House on the Moor Page 4