by Adam Nevill
Found the place. The corridor of black doors. Awake but dreaming in the mist. Couldn’t stop the fear. Was like being a child again. Suspected I was close to something dangerous [text illegible].
Must still be inside the soul-body veil, but never seen this sphere so clearly before. Found the correct room, third on right, and passed inside. Stayed clear from the black windows and slowly seemed to descend to the floor like I was growing smaller and dimmer.
Saw the painting in there. Boy sat on chair with light-coloured hair, holding a bear. Under painting was the same chair with the same bear on it. Actual toy was older, worn to cloth in some places.
There was a row of toys lined up on an old sofa. Before I could look at them I was hit in the face by something soft. A nightgown. Child’s nightgown. Very old and white. It had seemed to hover or float in the corner of my eye, and then it came across the room fast and covered my face. Terrifying!
Fell back into void and woke in the bedroom.
They were very pleased with me the next day for identifying some of the contents of that room. HE was there, they said. Apparently, HE was with me the whole time. ‘HE helps those who come inside his house.’ They keep repeating that.
I mentioned the nightgown and they said it was nothing to worry about. A sign of acceptance, a little trick. ‘HE likes those’, they said.
Reports of Ewan’s assessment continued on the several pages that had come loose from the Kitty pad. Seb had found them at the bottom of one of the bin bags.
Fifth time in corridor with the black doors, but fear is still the same and I was not fully conscious again. Something is holding me back. I’m half asleep and sluggish and a bit [text illegible] confused. But I found the room with the playing cards on a card table.
Read the cards. Found the bookshelves and the little table with the three ornaments – glazed cockerel, two white ceramic bowls with lids, blue flower print. Saw drinks trolley and counted the bottles.
Have never stayed outside my body for so long.
[Text illegible]
Aware of a presence in the sitting room. Not pleasant experience. Started to think of a hat, or dream of a man in a hat, wearing dark glasses and leather gloves who was staring at me. Suit and tie. Pale face.
Then the man was inside the large mirror over the fireplace, but not visible inside the room with me, but I could feel him inside the space.
Heard words inside my head. ‘When the door opens, go through it. Cast thyself down.’ But I couldn’t see beyond the doorframe in the corner of the sitting room. He must have meant that one. There wasn’t another door. Does that door lead to another corridor up there? House is confusing and always so dark. Door was already open, but leading where? I could see it behind the piano with all of the framed photographs arranged on top, but could see nothing through the door that he wanted me to go through. Made me anxious.
[Text illegible]
Had that been HIM inside the sitting room? I asked them in the afternoon when we were eating (food is terrible here). They smiled and said it wasn’t for them to say.
On the day that he’d deciphered one particular cluster of notes, a fragment had frightened Seb enough to stop him working. He’d left the house and spent an evening at a restaurant, followed by the noisiest pub that he could find in the harbour, before dragging his feet back to the house close to midnight.
Bedroom. Big bed with quilted covers. Metal bed frame. Could have been inside a museum. Walked through the room and into an adjoining dressing room. It was filled with women’s clothes in alcoves and on stands, like artist’s busts – fur coats, dresses, lots of shoes, hat boxes. A table with cosmetics and bottles. All very old. From the war, 1940s, and the 1950s, I guessed. Don’t understand why it’s there. Whole floor of the house seems preserved, but from before HIS time. But this was where HE lived, in this sphere. They said that this is where HE was.
[Text illegible]
Voice inside my head said, ‘Come out of there! Gentlemen don’t mooch through ladies’ things!’
I couldn’t turn around and go back through the bedroom. Knew the bed wasn’t empty any more and I became frightened. Could sense that it had become occupied. Don’t like the tricks at all.
[Text illegible]
I tried to end the experience but couldn’t. Have tried before in those rooms. Not possible to get off that floor of the building at all, unless I am inside the corridor of the black doors. It ends only if HE lets it end. That’s what I suspect. But I had to walk through the bedroom, past the bed, to get back to the corridor of black doors to have any chance of getting out. I kept my face turned away from the bed.
Feelings of loathing and revulsion and rage filled the room, but these were not my emotions or my projections.
Bad scene. Angry room. Angry woman inside.
Why wasn’t I told about her?
Saw a bit of her in the mirrors on a dark cabinet at the end of the bed as I left. Very pale, very thin form. Dark glasses like HE wears, and her head was covered by a headscarf. She was sitting up in bed with the bedclothes pulled down to her waist, but showing her little breasts. Nipples and fingertips were black.
Was that Diane?
The experience only ended when I’d returned to the corridor of the black doors.
In the morning I refused to go upstairs in the building again. No way.
They said that was okay. They said I could go outside instead.
Very surprised by that. But I do want to try the next sphere. I told them that I came here for that.
The final two segments that Seb translated suggested to him that Ewan had placed himself in grave danger by continuing with the unpleasant trials, and that he was, more or less, being played with or tormented by his guides, or hosts, or whatever they were. This made Seb wonder at Ewan’s motivations for arriving in Brixham. Perhaps Ewan had reneged on some agreement, or even an association with something that he’d realized was not in his best interests as a projector, but too late.
[Text illegible]
Don’t like the house at all now. Really bad feeling inside and it makes me feel ill. There is no light at all, even in the windows. Just very grey outside, or completely black, or a heavy fog curls and breaks on the window panes. So how can that be the next sphere outside, and this the entrance? There is no light.
They’ve been saying ‘Patience, patience, patience,’ so why are they letting me go outside now?
Tired of the trials though, and the tricks.
[Text illegible]
Spent the day reading the files again. So many. Incredible. But this is not the same place it was once. Those still here don’t know exactly, or won’t tell me, where all of the others are now [Text illegible]
Some of them are in the highest sphere, I am told. They must be because they were already old in the 1960s.
‘Some still come here. You’ll meet them soon.’ But they won’t say when.
[Text illegible]
Just us here, and what comes into the second floor. Something not right about the whole deal.
[Text illegible]
While taking breaks from Ewan’s papers, Seb conducted internet searches for the Society for Psychophysical Research. His slender breakthrough came in the form of comments referencing the society in relation to other similar organizations in the 1960s. But the same secondary articles also led him to the eureka connection with the writer, M. L. Hazzard.
The SPR had no entry on Wikipedia, but was mentioned as a footnote in a long entry on ‘Astral Projection’. It seemed the SPR had been one group, amongst scores of similarly titled societies and organizations, that had flourished from the late Victorian interest in travelling clairvoyance until the 1970s. Many were purely occult organizations, like the Golden Dawn. Others had blended psychology with science and the supernatural. The SPR took its place in the latter category.
On most sites that referenced the SPR, the information never progressed beyond the approximate dates of its existence, in the sixt
ies. There was no mention of the society’s dissolution or start date.
Three commentaries did mention its founding by ‘a writer, M. L. Hazzard’. On an occult site, Hazzard’s theories about ‘planes and spheres’ were referred to once, but without expansion.
Two postings on ‘Astral Projection’ websites were critical of the SPR. But the dismissal in the first piece never extended beyond a reference to it being ‘discredited and disreputable’. The second post commented on Hazzard’s ‘disgrace’ without specifying more than ‘embezzlement’ and of ‘defrauding members of the society’.
No publications seemed to have been produced by the society either, nor were there any available records that tried to formally define its practices or aims. The group appeared to have left almost no trace of itself, at least within the public domain.
It struck Seb that the publications of the British organizations of the time that bore similarities to the SPR may have contained more information on Hazzard’s group, but without recourse to the indexes of the books they’d produced, he’d never know. Nor would he ever reach the end of the published journals and annals from the groups that operated in the same period. There were hundreds of these publications for sale on used-book sites.
He’d also developed an impression that academia’s interest in the phenomenon had never waned. But it repeatedly and comprehensively dismissed, or attempted to dismiss, all of the ideas posed by astral projectors, occultists and pseudo-scientists, like the SPR. Extensive research into the subject had been conducted by several British and American universities, including Cambridge, and recently too. A broad range of physiological causes for the phenomenon were cited. A damn shame, it seemed in hindsight, that they never put the SPR in a laboratory.
Strangely, as often occurred whenever Seb tried to research anything online, he’d also found himself gradually moved away from what he wanted to know. Anything close to relevant about the SPR was inevitably old and buried in the archives of long-abandoned websites. But he did have more luck online when searching for M. L. Hazzard.
The Wiki entry on Hazzard was brief but far more interesting because it had been edited by someone frequently, and recently. Seb quickly recognized four of Ewan’s online reviewer monikers too. So had Ewan considered himself to be the proprietor of the writer’s legacy? If so, why was so little information included in the entry?
Hazzard was listed as the ‘unique and influential author of two collections of strange episodes based upon the author’s actual experiences, while employing his extraordinary ability to travel outside of his physical body’.
Hazzard’s books were listed: Sinking in the Dark Room. Rising in White Light and Hinderers in the Passage. The revelation of the title of the second collection gave Seb such a shock that his vision had blurred. He’d gone and fetched a drink, which he’d consumed while sitting on the toilet, after feeling a hot, urgent need to find one in a hurry.
When he’d calmed down and returned to his office, still dabbing his brow with tissue paper, he’d forced some composure and continued his consideration of the Wikipedia entry. Hazzard wasn’t influential. He’d hardly been read in his lifetime, let alone afterwards. Unique was also an attribute that Seb, at one time, would have considered debatable, though he didn’t question it now. The year of the author’s death was cited as 1982, ‘from cancer’.
Once he’d worked his way past the sales information for the surviving copies of Hazzard’s two anthologies, on antiquarian and book collector sites, and on sale for eye-watering sums, Seb discovered the occasional reference to Hazzard’s curious stories amongst weird tale aficionados.
Most posts of that nature had been online for years. The fact that so few people had read Hazzard’s work, beyond the two anthologized short stories in the early seventies, must have been responsible for the paucity of discussion amongst the writers and collectors who frequented the message boards.
A more recent thread, though still eight years old, on a ‘Classic Weird Stories’ forum began with a question: ‘Anyone read the book: Theophanic Mutations? I hear there’s a section on M. L. Hazzard and his cult? Didn’t even know he had one.’
The thread lasted for two pages:
‘Aren’t we his cult? Or still trying to be?’
‘You gotta write more than two stories to have a cult.’
‘He wrote two collections.’
‘True, but who’s read them?’
‘And it wasn’t a cult. It was a research group that studied astral travelling.’
‘Still no ebook editions.’
‘You’ll be waiting a while. Last I heard his stuff is still in copyright. No relatives can be traced.’
‘Why doesn’t someone scan his books?’
On the second page of the thread, someone calling himself Charles the Dextrous Warden of the Weird claimed to have read Theophanic Mutations:
‘Yes, read it. It came out in Numinosity Press, when they were still going. Limited to 300 copies of a pretty shoddy trade paperback. I was sent a review copy. Good read for the best part, though. Most of it is about The Golden Dawn and The Temple of the Last Days, rehashing the Levine book, but with more detail about their weird-ass medieval belief system. The section on Hazzard is pretty far out. Apparently, he was a con man and his organization – which was a kind of cult btw – shook a lot of old ladies out of their cash. He seemed to have been something of a scientology, sociopath type. Very dodgy guy who used all kinds of aliases. Author makes some outrageous claims. Definitely worth checking out, though, and it made me want to read Hazzard’s stuff, which remains, as we all know, frustratingly unavailable.’
Seb found only six copies of Theophanic Mutations on sale, from between seven hundred and nine hundred pounds. It had been published eleven years before. The author’s name was Mark Fry and his website was still current: a WordPress site called ‘Noise, Notions and Notations’.
Seb found the site comprised of reviews of electronic noise, obscure films, small press occult publications, psychic geography, folklore and art, or anything weird that attracted Mr Fry.
Seb used his credit card to buy the cheapest available copy of Theophanic Mutations from Abe Books. What choice did he have? Losing seven hundred quid was less money than he imagined he would have lost had Ewan lived. He’d have to wait two weeks for it to arrive, though, because the seller lived in New Mexico.
He then introduced himself to Mark Fry in a message via his website, mentioning his interest in Hazzard’s SPR. In order to improve his chances of provoking a response, he added the footer from his standard author email and mentioned that ‘some SPR files have come into my possession’.
Once he’d progressed as far as he was able to with internet searches, the phone recharger for Ewan’s old Nokia phone arrived from an eBay seller and Seb charged the handset.
Even though the screen was faded in the lower half, and probably damaged, Seb was able to operate it. There were seven contacts in the address book, but the text messages had been deleted. The phone was too old to have a camera or graphics, and the memory was minuscule.
The first three numbers he’d called – ‘J’, ‘Dizzy’, ‘Ace’ – were disconnected. The fourth number for a ‘Baz’ rang out twice before the call was answered. A rough male voice exploded inside Seb’s ear the moment the call was accepted, the words frantic and near breathless with anger. ‘Ewan! That you? Ewan, you cunt! I’ll fuckin’ do you! Where are—’
Seb had hung up and found himself shaking for a few seconds. The lingering effect of Baz’s threat flooded his imagination with the sensations and notions of sleeping rough in damp, filthy rooms, crashing on couches that stank of cigarette smoke, owing money, being cold, hungry, hungover, strung-out, skint, depressed, unwell, tired . . . His appetite to delve any further into Ewan’s past faded. Seb deactivated the handset in case Baz called back.
He went out to the balcony afterwards. The grey clouds had blown over. Sunlight had transformed the water from the earlier colour
of ash to a near-luminous blue and produced a glare from the tiered rows of white buildings bordering the harbour. For a few moments Seb felt delirious with gratitude for what he had, for who he was, and for where he lived. And he experienced a tremendous relief that Ewan was no longer alive. He was convinced that the man would have destroyed him.
15
Discarnate Inhabitants of Hades
Seb sat alone on a bench on King Street, in Brixham, embedded inside one of the alcoves that overlooked the old harbour. The tide was high and the water bristled with masts.
Gentle and soothing was the sun’s warmth upon his face. Drowsy and coddled with two pints of Cornish bitter, his thoughts became adrift from the last month, and he recognized the first sign of contentment in weeks. Another comforting, familiar glow spread outwards from a belly full of fresh crab sandwiches, the satiation softening tension. Once again, the sea air seemed capable of nourishing his soul.
Rising up across the harbour and behind his bench, the old stone town teetered upon the edge of the narrow roads that bisected it. Successive levels of ice cream and candy-coloured houses, pink, yellow, white, and sky blue were cut into the cliffs and remained exotic to him after two years a resident. A great shelf of cloud, like a movable ceiling on a sports stadium, inched over the bay from Torquay, but still had some way to travel.
Closer to the shore the sun transformed the sea a green that closed on becoming turquoise. Out past the slipway and lighthouse the water sparkled white gold and heralded the coming of summer. Life could be good again.
Eight days without a nightmare. A week and a half since Ewan had died.
One road in and out of the town and open sea ahead. Natural defences. A town not cut off, but annexed, the architecture and topography remaining unique in the bay. Still a working port with its own fishing fleet and ferry services. An old and established community and he’d been able to live on its edge, like a tourist or retiree, with no shared history. He’d never felt isolated, he’d felt safe. The infinite horizon of the bay made anything seem possible. An insidious, encroaching misgiving that the place had become a trap, he suppressed. And until Mark Fry made contact and Theophanic Mutations arrived in the post, he intended to divert his thoughts away from Ewan’s legacy.