We Are Toten Herzen (TotenUniverse Book 1)
Page 17
Voiceover
"Eventually, a local publisher was prepared to print a limited run of Terence Pearl's book. And here in Stow on the Wold, Peerview's is the bookshop utilising the power of technology to spearhead a new printing technique."
Will Peerview
"It's available on our website and we print it on demand when an order is received. These new ways of printing are helping small independent bookshops like this and we're finding we can be both retailer and publisher which is giving us a much needed second income stream."
Voiceover
"The book is also available as an ebook, in a range. . . ."
-
"What the fuck! Look at that guy there." Elaine sat forward to get a closer look at the television. Onscreen, as the camera panned around Peerview's bookshop Terence Pearl was visible in the background talking to a customer. "Get over yourself. That guy is spitting image of Pete. Hey, quick get a load of this." Elaine shouted to the others to come through to the lounge, but by the time they appeared the camera was looking somewhere else and the mysterious customer was gone in a breath. Pearl was shown buying a copy of his own book and leaving the shop.
"What?" Susan recognised the alarm and appeared first.
"You missed it," said Elaine slapping the settee. "This guy here was in a bookshop and he was talking to someone. . . ."
"What's so odd about that?" said Susan.
"Pete!" Elaine repeated. Wallet wasn't in on the secret yet.
"What do you mean?" asked Susan.
"It obviously wasn't him, but there was a guy talking to this Terence Pearl character who was the spitting image of Peter Miles." Dee arrived expecting more information than she was given.
There were no further clues to the mystery shopper. Why he was around Terence Pearl (whose own name meant nothing)? What he was doing in a bookshop in Stow in the Wold (nowhere near Ipswich)? Why he should show up in an article about Nosferatu's biography or whatever hokum this Pearl guy had found under his hat?
"Pete was always a plain looking guy though," said Dee. "Half the world could have passed for his brother."
Elaine grimaced her disapproval. "There's similarity and there's spitting image and then there's uncannily alike," she said.
"The guy being interviewed. Who was he?" asked Susan.
"Terence Pearl," said Wallet. The aroma wafting off Elaine was filling his head as she squirmed on the settee. "He's written a book about vampires in the record industry."
"Right," said Susan. "Another crank." She shook her head and followed Dee out of the house.
Elaine's face had solidified into an intense hypnotic stare as if willing the doppelganger to step out of the television, identify himself and explain what was going on.
"I'll try to find the interview again on the net. See if we can freeze the picture. Get a better look at him."
"It was him," she whispered.
"I'm not arguing with you. If we can get the video we can identify him properly."
Elaine vanished, but the forest left its scent behind with a softly pungent suggestion scattered on the atmosphere like incense. Inspired by it, Wallet took a walk outside and sniffed the late night air around the stony beach of the lake. He was drawn towards Susan's lonely silhouette on the edge of the lake. Her outline was more classical than his, crafted by a much finer sculptor.
"No reflection here either," he said crunching across the gravel. She shook her head and continued looking out at the distant lights of Nyon on the opposite shoreline. With the lake surface so calm, the lights looked close enough to walk to. "Somewhere over there Byron and Shelley, Mary Godwin and Polidori shared a house writing ghost stories and Frankenstein."
"Is that supposed to comfort me?" asked Susan.
"No. I just thought it was a nice coincidence. Polidori over there writing a vampire novel."
Susan gasped. "You're impossible, do you know that?"
"No, I didn't know that. Has that character freaked you out as well? Elaine looks like she's seen a ghost."
"Well maybe she has. Maybe we all did. And the Villa Diodati is that way." Susan jabbed her thumb over her left shoulder before turning back to the house.
If reflections had still been possible Wallet's would have been the only one floating on the weird waters of Lake Geneva where Polidori prematurely wrote his vampire novel. But then, no he didn't write it here, it only came later on. They all gave up except for Shelley's better half who saw a monster and conjured up a tale that floored the rest of them. He found a flat stone and lobbed it, low down, across the surface of the lake, watching it kiss the water five times before sinking. The ripples radiated towards him then silently disappeared into the evening.
The Independent
Sony Deal Collapses
Music industry gives up on Toten Herzen. Final nails in the coffins
Rock band Toten Herzen have been informed by Sony that they will not be offered a lucrative reunion contract following the deaths of their songwriting team and a murder charge against their marketing strategist, Linda Macvie. In a statement issued to the media from their New York headquarters, Sony's Acting Chief Commissioning Officer Todd Moonaj described the band as 'cursed', uncooperative and lacking remorse following the gruesome murders of two of their management team.
"Since day one," Moonaj said in a charged press conference, "Toten Herzen have been a difficult act to manage. They had come to Sony with unrealistic expectations considering they had been away from the music scene for so long, they were still in a nineteen seventies mindset and expected everyone around them to put aside the realities of the day and join them in a fantasy world of their own making."
The deaths of their songwriting partners, Grammy nominated Torque Rez and Mike Flambor, followed by the arrest of Linda Macvie for the alleged murder of Leo Travner, a freelance pilot, persuaded Moonaj to pull the plug on a recording deal and concert tour that was rumoured to be worth around thirty million dollars.
It isn't the first time the band have been surrounded by violent behaviour and strange deaths. In the seventies, they were the victims of their own publicity stunt when an alleged fan killed them all in a vampire styled ritualistic slaying in Highgate Cemetery in north London. In the same year, the band's manager Micky Redwall was killed by his own dogs at his home near Ipswich, but rumours persisted that he may have been murdered by someone acting on behalf of the band. Last month the fan at the centre of Toten Herzen's faked deaths in 1977, Lenny Harper, was found decapitated by police in Germany. (The murder of 14 yr old Anthony Rawls in Boston in a similar style, whose head was left at the scene of the Rez and Flambor slaying, has not yet been linked to the band according to the NYPD.)
A spokesman for the band, ex-music journalist Rob Wallet, confirmed that Toten Herzen were disappointed by the news and that they would still be looking for another deal and continue with their planned comeback. He also quashed rumours that the band were being framed for the murder of the pilot of the plane. "The rumour is coming from the accused. You can draw your own conclusions from that," said Wallet.
RavensWish - gutted at @TotenHerzen deal being canceled #badsony will never get to meet them now def want to kill myself after this
WhiteRotterdam @ravenswish you don't want to kill yourself over this deal there are other opportunities
RavensWish @WhiteRotterdam so let down everything I do is to meet TH feels like the world is against me
WhiteRotterdam @ravenswish put things into perspective and live with hope
RavensWish @WhiteRotterdam all hope went down when the deal blew up
WhiteRotterdam @ravenswish trust me. . . .
27 (June)
Mark Lawson
"Hellobackin1977 there was a twelve hour gap between the discovery of four bodies in a tomb in Highgate Cemetery and the public hearing the news of the murders of four members of the rock band Toten Herzen. Today, with twenty four hour rolling news and instant reactions on social media, that kind of delay is simply unimaginable
. When the band's comeback single Give Me Your Heart was leaked online the public heard the remixed track before the band did. So tonight I'll be asking the question who is in for the greater shock? The public faced once again with the antics of a rock band best known for fans taking a dead horse to one of their concerts, or a band who haven't been involved with the music industry or modern society for over thirty five years?
"My guests to discuss this are the rock historian Anna Parkinson, former band photographer Lance Beauly, gothic novelist Jonathan Knight, and new age blogger and writer Terence Pearl. If I can start with you first Terence Pearl: is the public shockable anymore or is their reaction more morbid curiosity?"
Terence Pearl
"I don't think they are shocked, I think they are entertained and the shock is more akin to that experienced on a roller coaster ride or a horror film. It's a reaction that is expected. They expect to be shocked and they expect things to happen that will shock them. It is a new virulent form of entertainment."
Mark Lawson
"Anna Parkinson, there's nothing new in this behaviour or the response it provokes, but is the audience's reaction today different in any way?"
Anna Parkinson
"Not really. What it takes to shock a modern audience is obviously greater year by year. If a singer split his trousers on stage people would giggle. . . ."
Mark Lawson
"And call it a wardrobe malfunction. . . ."
Anna Parkinson
"Exactly. But fifty years ago P.J. Proby was virtually deported for that kind of thing and we saw the kind of headlines we see now. So the reaction will always be the same and it comes down to, basically, the same old generation gap, with young people wanting to upset their elders and their elders, who write the headlines, reacting right on cue. It's as if everyone is following a script or stage directions and no one has bothered to update that script."
Mark Lawson
"Although the incident from which we get the phrase wardrobe malfunction did cause a near hysterical reaction when it happened."
Anna Parkinson
"I think that was more to do with the context. A Superbowl final, the display of a female body part and an America that is seeing a revival of protestant conservatism. If that had happened during a regular concert the reaction would have been different. I think it would have been confined to the arts pages, maybe a bit of titillation in some of the tabloids, but happening in the middle of a mainstream family event like that raised the bar."
Mark Lawson
"The reaction to Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction was transmitted around the world at the touch of a smartphone button and that may have multiplied the severity of the indignation."
Anna Parkinson
"Yes, but if the technology to do that had existed in the 1970s the reaction then would have been exactly the same as it is now and by the same people. The usual suspects."
Rob Wallet had just woken up. He slept better in the isolation of the farmhouse near Rotterdam. Yvoire was a stunning place to be, but it was busy. A tourist beehive, buzzing all day with the ever present threat of distant voices and accidental trespassers. The band had been back at the farmhouse for a week and were almost entering a state of idleness following the hysteria of New York. Things were happening, but nothing he was being made aware of. Susan kept telling him be patient, we'll explain when there's something to explain and he was starting to feel like a turkey who had been promised better things to come once December arrived.
Now he could hear the television in the lounge as he dozily wandered into the kitchen to make breakfast. Seeing the empty fridge he remembered he hadn't eaten a breakfast since staying in the motel just outside Obergrau. And then he remembered you don't have breakfast at twenty past ten at night. He joined Elaine in front of the television and saw Jonathan Knight sitting next to Lance Beauly.
"What channel's this?"
"BBC2, I think. What did we do before internet streaming?"
"What did we do before BBC2?" asked Wallet. Sat in front of the telly all afternoon waiting for the test films to come on about building Liverpool Cathedral and power boat racing.
"Recognise any of them?" said Elaine.
Wallet studied the line up. "I've met him there, Jonathan Knight, and Lance Beauly and I know Mark Lawson, but never met him. Her face looks familiar."
"And the other guy?"
"Is that Terence, what was it, Terence Pearl?"
"Yep. The guy in the bookshop when Peter Miles's doppelganger appeared in the background."
Wallet remembered the ghostly response from the band the last time Pearl was on the box. Coincidence? What was he up to now?
"How long you been up?" asked Wallet.
"Half hour. Others have gone out, but I'm already full. I saw this advertised on a forum so thought someone should stay in and watch it."
Lance Beauly
"The technology you're talking about expands the level of outrage, but don't forget it can be used to create an expanded outrage in the first place by artists and their management and record labels."
Mark Lawson
"Where you ever asked, I suppose you would have been, to engineer a publicity stunt or collaborate on something knowing there was going to be a strong public reaction?"
Lance Beauly
"With Toten Herzen? Not directly, but then you didn't have to engineer it. No one engineered the dead horse in a horse box when the police stopped it."
Anna Parkinson
"But who tipped them off? Why would the police arbitrarily stop a horse box in Halifax unless they already knew something?"
Lance Beauly
"Probably something to do with the trail of blood following it round the streets of Halifax city centre."
"And we get the blame for it," said Elaine. "You going out later?"
"No," said Wallet. "Got things to do."
"You should get out more. You'll get stiff cooped up in here all day."
"I already am stiff," said Wallet going back to his room. "I'm dead remember."
Elaine watched him go. "So, get over it."
-
Wallet turned on his laptop, activated his anonymising software and surfed to the BBC's site and continued watching the programme on iPlayer. He split the screen to search the net for anything he could find on Terence Pearl. As his ears listened to the debate criss crossing the decades he found numerous pages reproducing Pearl's deranged essays. His personal site was littered with animated gifs, advertisements for his own books, most of them ebooks, and an endless list of subjects ranging from Black Death being a 14th century form of germ warfare to the Hindenburg tragedy being carried out by a prototype CIA with a Bolshevik agenda. Pearl was unconcerned with the usual anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and a lot of his essays were apparently written within a few weeks of each other: between April 19th and June 4th Pearl had penned twenty six articles, four of them about Toten Herzen and vampires.
Mark Lawson
"Jonathan Knight you were writing about Toten Herzen back in the 1970s. You were suspicious of their behaviour and I believe the first person to suggest there might be something supernatural about them. How did they react to you at the time?"
Jonathan Knight
"I'd be surprised if they even knew I existed. I contributed to several underground magazines at the time such as Macabre, Within the Gothic Arch, Land of Plenty, that sort of thing and had a number of short stories published in anthologies, but I doubt if more than a few thousand people read any of it. There weren't the outlets back then. Terence has probably been read by more people in the last week than I had in several years in the 1970s."
Mark Lawson
"And of course that kind of coverage brings with it a responsibility which is being heavily debated at the moment. It's very easy to use the power of social media to attack somebody, especially if you can do so anonymously. Terence Pearl what has been the reaction to your accusations that the band are a suicide cult?"
"Can you hear this?" said Elaine to Wallet.
"Just reading one of his essays now. Apparently you're the relative of a 13th century German Cathar called Dalen."
"That would be my Uncle Brian. Wonder where he found that."
"Ancestry.com probably."
Terence Pearl
"The usual reactions. That I'm mad, that I'm making it up. That you can see anything anywhere if you want to. But what I think is important is that the band are provoked into coming out into public scrutiny and speaking up for themselves. We're just not getting that."
Jonathan Knight
"I agree. It's what I call the complicity of silence. Back in the seventies there was a whirlwind of gossip, rumour, the wildest stories about what the band did and didn't do and yet they hardly ever came out in public and say that's all rubbish. They knew it was great publicity and the more extreme it became the more records it sold. They allowed a vacuum to develop and people filled it with whatever preconceived notion they had. In the press the silence was evidence of guilt, in the public the lack of denial was admittance, for the fans it was like a knowing look, a nod or a secret handshake."
Anna Parkinson