Under a Watchful Eye

by Adam Nevill

  ‘No. They’re called case studies. They go up to the early seventies. Hazzard is mentioned in a few of them too, but only ever in capitals, as if he was a god.’

  ‘I would love, just love, to get my hands on these.’

  ‘Mark, where exactly is Hunter’s Tor Hall on Dartmoor?’

  ‘Off the A38 somewhere, about halfway to Plymouth. It’s quite isolated. I stayed in Totnes and drove to it from there.’

  When Seb had recovered sufficiently from the impact of the revelation of just how close Hunter’s Tor was to his home, he couldn’t resist manoeuvring himself nearer to making his own confession. ‘Mark, I think they are still going.’

  ‘The SPR? No chance.’

  ‘I don’t think they ever stopped.’

  ‘Not possible. They’ve been gone over thirty years. Unless someone is using their name, revived it or something. Though I don’t know why anyone would.’

  ‘This is what I intend to find out.’

  ‘I went there, to the Hall.’

  ‘You did?’

  ‘Yes, and it’s derelict. Boarded up. Fenced off. When I was there it had been closed since the early eighties. Some locals told me. They called it “the college”. So there’s been no one there for decades. I think the organization must have gone down when Hazzard passed. It was all going tits-up by the middle seventies anyway. And I’m going back to 2004 when I was there.

  ‘The building was owned by some holding company that listed the building as a college. Might still be, for all I know. I couldn’t get any kind of response out of the holding company when I tried, either. I took some pictures, though, but didn’t get a plate section for the book, so the photos were never used. Pictures were too expensive for the publisher.’

  ‘But you went inside?’

  ‘No. Couldn’t even get through the fence. It’s got massive grounds, but you can see it in the distance in a couple of places. The best thing were the gates. Over the top of the railings there’s this iron plate with an inscription on it: Let us go out of ourselves. Let us enlarge. I loved that. Really nice touch.’

  Seb finished another drink and gripped his own hair painfully. ‘You have recordings?’

  ‘A few hours of them. I spent a full day with Liza.’

  ‘Could I . . . ? This may sound strange, but I’d really like to listen to them.’

  ‘Afraid I wouldn’t release the original tapes. They’re on cassette. I’ve been meaning to transfer them to disc, but haven’t done it yet.’

  ‘You have a transcription?’

  ‘Only for the bits I wanted for the book. Most of it didn’t make the final draft. But, I’ll do you a deal: if you let me read the SPR files, you can listen to poor old Liza, Virginia and Flo. It is quite upsetting, though.’

  ‘Done. When are you free?’

  ‘Well, when did you have in mind?’

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  Mark Fry laughed. He thought Seb was joking. ‘Half-term in a week. We could sort something out for then. I may have a couple of days free.’

  A week? Seb didn’t want to imagine what could happen in that time. ‘Maybe I could get the train up to you and I’ll get a room somewhere, and while you’re at work I can go through the recordings. Tomorrow?’

  There was an awkward moment in which Seb sensed the man’s discomfort. ‘I hope you don’t mind me saying, Mr Logan, but it’s quite an odd request. What’s the hurry?’

  ‘Seb, please call me Seb. I know it’s strange and an awful imposition but . . . I need to learn as much as I can about the SPR, and Hazzard, and quickly. I’ve no time.’

  ‘This isn’t a book. Research?’

  ‘No. Well, not right now. That’s not the main reason.’

  ‘Then I don’t understand the urgency. I mean, you’ve only just found out about all of this.’

  ‘This is going to sound odd. Christ, how do I explain this? I’m being threatened, blackmailed, I think.’

  ‘Bloody hell.’

  ‘By an old friend, who died.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I think.’

  ‘He was trying something on. I mean, he was trying to use me for his own reasons. But he’d spent years, literally years, trying to master projection. He was obsessed with Hazzard too. And he . . . well, before he died, he came here with these files. That’s how I have them. And his diary. I guess you could call it that. Hundreds of fragments, and what I can read of them suggests that he’d been engaged in something very strange.

  ‘Mark, I believe he was there, at the SPR property. He must have been. And he wasn’t working alone, because now I have someone else bothering me. A very odd woman. I just want to know what I am up against.’

  ‘Your friend, and this woman, they said they were from the SPR?’

  ‘No, neither said much of any use. They were very careful about what they told me. But I’m piecing things together from these papers. And if I can get access to your notes, and these recordings, I might be in a better position to know what to do.’

  ‘Have you called the police?’

  ‘No. Yes. Earlier. It’s hard to explain. I don’t think they’d understand what this is all about.’

  ‘I see.’ Though Mark clearly didn’t, he was still intrigued.

  ‘So, would that be possible, my coming your way? I won’t bother you at all. You can have the SPR stuff while I check out what you have, and then I’ll leave you alone.’

  ‘Well, I’ve a full week on. Lot of lessons.’

  ‘I won’t get in your way, I promise. I’ll go through the recordings while you’re at work. And I’m happy to spring for a good dinner. Anywhere you want to go. And when you’ve more time, you’d be very welcome to come down here, for a holiday. It’d be my treat.’

  Again the uncomfortable pause.

  Seb tried again to reassure Mark. ‘God, I must come across as a really strange bloke. But I’ll explain more to you when I see you.’

  This made Mark laugh. ‘I’m not going to disagree with you, but if you really think my stuff will help you out, then I’m not going to leave a fellow explorer of the weird hanging in emptiness! Let me give you my address. Can I also say, it’ll be a thrill to meet you.’

  17

  There Were Two of Me in that Room

  Their reactions to the material could not have been more different; it was akin to one man shrivelling with fear at the sight of a large snake, while another declared it a beautiful creature.

  Mark Fry closed a file and replaced it on the table in Seb’s hotel room. He picked up another and began to read, his lips and head moving as he consumed the text.

  No sooner had Seb led Mark to the treasury boxes that held the files than the man had become elbow deep, before gazing at the documents with a mixture of wonder and nervous excitement. ‘This is amazing stuff. The mastery of the super-consciousness. It’s coming through at a glance. That’s what Hazzard was after.’

  Seb had met Mark Fry at five in the hotel bar, and though incapable of putting people at ease because he came over like a box of scissors electrified by static, he’d invited Mark up to his room. And now stood to one side, content with watching the man’s rapture. ‘Super-consciousness?’ he prompted.

  Mole-like, his head shaved but silvery at the sides, his skin naturally dark, Mark nodded his head rapidly, blinking his small watery eyes behind silver-framed spectacles just as fast. As his black denim jacket swung open, Seb got a better look at Mark’s T shirt: Neurosis, Through Silver in Blood, now faded black and stretched by a loose stomach that exceeded his belt. ‘He was looking to control his super-consciousness in order to find the paradise belt. The celestial spheres.’

  Mark struck Seb as a naturally amiable character so the sudden intensity was a surprise. The presence of the SPR files were also making the man jitter.

  ‘There’s not much in there about him,’ Seb offered. ‘But I sense the people have been guided or tutored, and been given a terminology to frame their experiences.’

  Mark agreed with
a nod. ‘At least he didn’t try and turn the SPR into a religion. I think he had that in his favour. He kept it pseudo-scientific too, even if it was for the sake of appearances to get funding. He never believed science or cosmology were ready for his discoveries, which couldn’t be observed or measured by conventional means. I’m guessing most of these case studies were written by women too.’

  ‘Most don’t offer a name. But maybe they are, from what you’ve said about his methods.’

  ‘He was a con man. A total narcissist.’

  ‘I find it difficult to take seriously. I can’t help wondering why so many did. It’s the terminology. Soul-bodies. Vehicles of vitality. The double. Astral body. And my friend, Ewan, used the same terms, so I’m certain he had contact with the SPR, or whatever has assumed its ideas. He was a fervent believer in the soul too. That death wasn’t an end.’

  ‘They all were. You said I can take these away?’

  ‘Of course. I need to take them back with me, so copy or scan them tomorrow, if you can. I don’t know for how long I’ll have them.’

  ‘Thanks! I want to go through them all, carefully.’

  The only way Seb could think of disentangling himself from whatever Ewan had embroiled him in, was to arrange some kind of handover of the files with the odd woman who had appeared beside him in King Street. The thought of it made him feel ill, but he’d been unable to come up with another plan. Assuming she had a connection to Hunter’s Tor Hall, he felt far better paying her a visit than waiting for her to appear near his home again. He’d take his cheque book too, in case a donation might both improve his standing and hasten his exit strategy.

  He finally popped the question that was burning through his mind. ‘Mark, I know you think the SPR members were delusional, but can I ask you what you made of Hazzard’s hinderers?’

  Seb imagined that Mark had never enjoyed more than a limited audience, because he immediately relished the opportunity to expound. ‘Oh, now you’re getting somewhere. The hinderers. Marvellous! It’s quite complicated, but in his stories, Hades and paradise kind of interpenetrate the earth. In the same way that we are supposed to have these corresponding forms, the body, the vehicle, and soul-body, that interpenetrate each other, these other realms are also here at the same time as us.

  ‘So the inhabitants of Hades and paradise are never far away from us in the real world, but you can’t measure the distance physically. And Hazzard believed that discarnate soul-bodies are all around us, all of the time, but most of us can’t see them. The incarnate and discarnate are all overlapping, all of the time, in different spheres that exist simultaneously in the same place, but don’t interact.

  ‘Mediumistic people, clairvoyants, like Hazzard claimed to be, were able to see or even feel the crossovers, at certain times or when they were prepared. I loved all of that. Great stuff. It’s like this whole mystical mythos he used for his fiction, and he was very consistent. He never wrote about anything else.

  ‘Oh, I have these for you.’ Mark opened his rucksack and removed two books in protective plastic envelopes. He placed them on the table. ‘You can borrow them. But please, please, guard them with your life. They’re irreplaceable. You’ve seen the prices online, and these were my dad’s too.’

  ‘Of course. I’ll return them before I go home.’

  Seb looked at the covers. Pulpy oil paintings. The first collection, Sinking in the Dark Room. Rising in White Light, featured a wraith-like form levitating from a bed in which a woman lay screaming. The second, Hinderers in the Passage, was pitched as ‘17 Blood-Chilling Tales of Supernatural Horror’, which Seb recited without a trace of irony. On the book jacket, a clawed hand appeared around the side of an opening door. The silhouette of the door was lit by a luminous, ghostly light.

  Mark grinned. ‘Yeah, cheesy, I know. Sign of the times. And you know Hazzard hated horror. He felt it misrepresented his ideas. But what else did he think he was writing for that second book?’

  Mark stacked five old cassettes on the table as well as a box file, then removed a tape recorder from his bag. ‘These are Liza’s recordings, the better stuff. I’ll transfer the other two to disc tomorrow so you can take them with you. How long do you plan on staying?’

  ‘I’ll start on these tonight, after dinner. I have all day tomorrow, so I hope to be finished by late afternoon. I’ve booked a train for seven and I’ll return these before I go.’

  Mark nodded and said, ‘I can swing by and pick them up. Nice room, by the way,’ perhaps seeing the place properly for the first time.

  His rucksack remained half-full. Through the elasticated rim of the bag, Seb saw the cover of his novel Occupied.

  Mark caught his eye. ‘Hope I’m not taking the piss, but would you mind signing my books?’

  Seb smiled. ‘That would be a pleasure. Then we should eat.’

  At the table in the restaurant, feeling giddy from the first bottle of wine, Seb carefully leafed through the first Hazzard book, Sinking in the Dark Room. Rising in White Light.

  He read the epigraph ‘No sudden heaven nor sudden hell for man – Tennyson’, and then he checked the contents page:

  Sinking in the Dark Room. Rising in White Light

  Through the Mist

  This Prison of the Flesh

  Thousands of Invisible Cords

  In the Body of my Resurrection

  Born Through a Cloudy Medium

  My Soul Rose Trembling

  A Tight Glove Pulled from my Finger

  She Beckoned and I Followed

  Shed the Body’s Veil

  Carry Me Softly on Shoeless Feet

  The Discarded Coat

  He’d not read any of them.

  ‘That book is more mystical,’ Mark offered around a mouthful of steak and jacket potato. ‘In the preface he explains that the stories came from “a greater power than exists in my pen”. A typical Hazzard flourish. A Hazzardism, I call it. But for a horror man, you’ll be more interested in the second collection. Hinderers is very dark. His output evolves from the mystical to a psychic and spiritual horror across the two periods in which he was published, which spans about twenty-five years.’

  As the waitress arrived to offer the dessert menu, Seb removed the second collection from its protective sheath. Seb ordered coffee. Mark had tiramisu and coffee.

  As Mark had attested, the titles on the contents page of Hinderers in the Passage suggested a change in tone, and one that effortlessly formed unpleasant images within Seb’s memory.

  A Dark, Slowly Flowing Flood

  Down the Last Valley

  The Same Event in a Converse Direction

  Many Communications Must Remain in Doubt

  This Coat is Too Tight

  A Sack with a Narrow Opening

  Discarnate Inhabitants of Hades

  Indeed, I Have Seen my Sister

  I Can See in an Absence of Light

  Greylands

  Cast Thyself Down

  Hinderers in the Passage

  A River of Darkness

  Broken Night

  Flight from Malignant Forms

  Second Death

  Incertitude

  Mark noticed the change in Seb. ‘You all right, Seb?’

  Seb nodded, but kept his response vague. ‘Reminders.’

  ‘Of?’

  ‘Ewan.’

  ‘The guy that died. I didn’t want to pry. But you said he was into Hazzard in a big way.’

  ‘You could say that.’

  ‘Was he a writer?’

  ‘Not really. But he had ambitions in that direction.’ Seb cleared his throat. ‘I’d like you to read his diary. The more legible bits. See what you make of it.’

  ‘It would be a pleasure, I think. If it’s Hazzard-influenced.’

  ‘And I’m sure the last parts were written at this Hunter’s Tor.’

  ‘I’ll look at his stuff, but I seriously doubt he was there.’

  ‘You haven’t been there in ten years. But you�
��ve read Hazzard’s stories, and Ewan did. If someone was determined enough to find out more . . .’

  ‘But they’d have to be crazy to follow in Hazzard’s astral footsteps. Wait until you read the second collection. That’s enough to put anyone off.’ Mark chuckled. ‘Here. Let me find it.’

  He picked up the copy of Hinderers. ‘Very last story. This is how Hazzard closed his account as a published writer.’

  Mark sat back and began reading from the end of the book. ‘I never cooperated with the divine plan. I have died too many times and walked the in-between land. I forced death. I went beyond space and time, beyond the earth. My own nature inhibited my greater self. My spirit never fully left matter and yet I believed I had found eternity. We are ever conscious of the third sphere, Elysium, Paradise, Summerland, but we can never ascend. Its rays merely warm our cold flesh in Hades. We are the super-physical who are trapped beside the temporal.’

  18

  Born through a Cloudy Medium

  [Tape 1. Recorded 2 September 2004. Liza]

  [Liza]: I’d been fasting for two days. Nothing but water. That was how you began the cultivation. You were already lightheaded, weak, and dizzy, before you started. But I think I was always too anxious about the medication. Some never needed it, the formula, and Alice and Fay were always on hand to reassure you. But they were always quietly insistent that some of us took it.

  At that time, I also remember how I’d started to look about myself in the room that was called Elysium. This was at the Tor. You see, all of the rooms had names that carried promises. And in there I could really see how frail Margaret and Lizzy were. They were very old at that time, and they’d both been there for years. That is when the Tor began to appear to me like a retirement home, in which the residents were sedated. Drugged and controlled and then led back to their rooms, where they would wait, alone, to cultivate.

  It was in your room that you would focus on the image and begin the words. That’s where we did the cultivation, alone. Never in a group like they used to do, only in our rooms, to cut out distractions. We’d practised rhythmical breathing every morning for months, right from the start of a residency. The breathing was vital to clearing the mind. You had to start there.