Don't Read Alone

by Finch, Paul

  “How sedate,” I said.

  “Hey!” Charlie snapped, ushering his wife away. “We are sedate.”

  When they’d gone, Rob turned back to me as though all his worst suspicions were confirmed. “See what I mean? Sedate, for Christ’s sake! We’re fucking sedate!”

  We strode on towards the front doors, passing the entrance to what Miss Ryder-Howe had called ‘the bar’. This was basically another reception room, with its own bar-counter. Not surprisingly, Luke was perched on one of the stools. Nobody was at the bar serving, though its shelves were well stocked and he seemed to have acquired a full bottle of Jack Daniels from one of them.

  When he saw us, he grinned and raised the bottle in toast. “To the old fucking Romans, eh? Long may they reign!”

  “I don’t believe that guy,” Rob said as we moved on.

  “Just shows,” I replied, “there’s always someone worse off than you.”

  No-one had actually voiced it yet, but I think there was already an assumption that we wouldn’t be needing any vocalisations for this project. And if we did, we’d probably hire session singers to do them.

  We wandered out onto the front steps, and peered over the sweeping grounds. Even jaded appetites like ours were enthused by the pastoral scene. There was no sign of anybody else. Charlie and Barbara had already vanished from sight, and, apart from Luke, I wasn’t sure where the others were. Joe would almost certainly be catching some sack-time, and I had the feeling that Troy was with Miss Ryder-Howe, doing what I couldn’t imagine. Well – to tell the truth, I could imagine, but it didn’t seem likely. The two of them were very matey. They’d probably hooked up in some hip Chelsea winebar, but I didn’t think it possible there was more to it than that. I’d always assumed (though never known for sure) that Troy was gay, while Miss Ryder-Howe was apparently engaged to some chinless wonder from Belgravia. Either way, there was no sign of them at present.

  “Where are we going, anyway?” Rob asked. “Fancy a game of croquet, Rick?”

  I sniggered at the thought, and it broke the ice a little. “No,” I said. “I’m checking out the Lamuratum.”

  I don’t know where that idea came from. Earlier on, I’d anticipated a languid evening spent drifting aimlessly; now I suddenly had a goal, and, for some reason, a vaguely ominous one. Rob pursed his lips, but then nodded.

  We crossed the drive and the right-hand lawn, and came upon the first line of trees. Despite what we’d been told, we only scouted for about fifty yards along the boundary of the Plantation before a pathway opened in front of us. I thought about Miss Ryder-Howe’s earlier advice that we’d need a guide, and wondered if she genuinely didn’t know the layout of her own land, or had simply been trying to put us off coming here. But once inside, it wasn’t nearly as sinister as we’d expected. This was no nightmare forest of twisted shapes and naked, claw-like branches. The trees grew close together, but the golden sunlight of early evening shafted between them, casting violet shadows – a striking effect that any cinematographer would have been proud of. Undeniably, there was an odd quiet. A ‘listening quiet’, you might call it. It did give you the impression that you weren’t entirely alone.

  As we ventured along the winding trail, which was grassy and rooted but well trampled considering no-one was supposed to come here, we scanned the avenues of trunks to either side. Nothing stirred. I glanced at Rob. He’d always been a big guy, perhaps six feet three, and burly to go with it; on stage he’d been a hulking presence. A lot of that had now turned to fat, but he wasn’t grossly overweight, and anyway, I’d never known him be intimidated by anything, even the Hell’s Angels who’d muscled up to the front of the stage at the Freewheel Festival in 1973 (Rob had personally thrown one back into the crowd, who’d climbed up alongside us “to get a better view”). But already, not five minutes into the Plantation, his brow was beaded with sweat.

  “What’s up?” I teased him. “Not used to the exercise?”

  He grinned unconvincingly, and mopped the moisture away with his denim sleeve.

  That was when we heard the first noise: the simple snap of a twig.

  It sounds like such a cliché, that; in fact, worse yet, it sounds like exactly the sort of thing you’d expect to hear in a wood – so why the heck should you be alarmed by it? But Lord – in reality, the snap of a twig, when there isn’t supposed to be anyone else there, is so loaded with menace that I can’t adequately explain how quickly it brought us to a halt.

  We stared around. Beyond the first cover of the trees, only more trees were visible: gnarled, mossy stanchions, their lower boughs heavy with bright new leaves. Here and there, rhododendrons had risen up between them, great profusions of glossy, tangled vegetation, which blotted out all vision.

  “Are we going back?” Rob wondered.

  “No,” I said.

  Don’t get me wrong. I’m no hero, but I’m fifty-one years old and I’ve been around. I’ve seen and done things, both good and bad, that the average man couldn’t even dream of – I wasn’t going to be spooked by the eerie hush of an English woodland.

  So we pressed on. And eventually we came to the Lamuratum.

  It emerged through the trees ahead of us in steady, unspectacular fashion.

  The Grecian pillars, each one about nine feet tall, were made from marble and arranged in a neat circle. As the picture I’d seen earlier had illustrated, small lintels or roofs connected them. Initially it must have been quite startling; a gleaming white edifice amid all this lush, natural greenery. But over the decades it had accumulated considerable filth: leaf-mould, watermarks, streaks of bird-droppings. The tall stones were now mottled a yukky grey-green and filmed with lichen. I think its phoniness – the fact that it wasn’t really ancient – made it all the more repugnant. It was like a modern building gone to rack and ruin through sheer, bloody-minded neglect.

  We approached it reluctantly. I’d expected the structure to be half-buried in undergrowth, but that wasn’t the case. The open space surrounding it was bare earth, beaten flat as though trodden by countless feet. Its interior was equally accessible. No fence or barrier had been put around it. All we needed to do was walk in between the pillars and there we were. The ground inside was also firm and bare. In the very centre was a low marble plinth, squarish, about three feet wide by three, and standing to knee-height. Its upper surface was slightly concave and coated with a greasy, black residue that was odious just to look at.

  “I’m liking this place less and less,” Rob said.

  “We were warned not to come here.”

  “No … I mean this whole place. Rillington Chase.”

  I didn’t bother answering that. I still didn’t share Rob’s misgivings about why we were here. In fact, I couldn’t understand them. Not that this particular part of the estate was very wholesome. It was strange that I couldn’t hear any birds singing here. When I glanced upward, I saw the sky; it was a pleasant pebble-blue, but framed by branches, and it looked a long way away. In fact everything suddenly felt a long way away; the house, the coach, the others. The encircling ranks of forest could have been colossal, could have covered hundreds of square-miles and I wouldn’t have felt more cut off.

  “Is that writing on there?” Rob said.

  He’d spotted something beneath the black, sticky mess on the plinth. At first glance I hadn’t noticed it, but, now that I leaned forward to look, I saw an inscription carved into the marble. Rob picked up a stick, which he used to scrape away as much of the scum as he could. Soon the inscription was visible. Part of it had been erased, probably by the passage of time, but the rest of it was legible. It read:

  ELIGAT A – PROFICIS TVA

  “Latin,” he said.

  I mumbled agreement. As former grammar school boys we’d both studied Latin, but only briefly. I scarcely remembered a word of it. Rob took a notebook from his back pocket and began jotting something down with a stub of pencil.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  I was su
rprised, but not displeased. My first thought was that he’d suddenly started gaining inspiration from his surroundings. For as long as I’d known him, it had been Rob’s habit to carry a pad wherever he went – even when we were on tour, or on holiday – so that if some new idea came to him he could write it down.

  “This might mean something. I’m copying it.”

  “It’s probably gibberish. Put there to make the thing look authentic.”

  “Whatever,” he said. But he continued writing.

  I turned, assessing the rest of this so-called Lamuratum. There was a silliness to it, I now realised. It was sad, even pathetic, that some bloke who had more money than sense was so into his pet historical period that he could go off and rebuild a small portion of it for no other reason than to be able to say he’d done it. No wonder these things were called ‘follies’. Then I noticed something about the pillars that I hadn’t noticed before. From this angle – the inside of the circle – they were covered with stains; large, brackish stains. I mean, they were as sullied on the inside as they were on the out, but this was something extra. This staining was darker, ingrained into the stone. It was also extensive – I thought again of the painting I’d seen, and of how plumes of sooty smoke had been spilling upward from the middle of the little temple. I glanced back at the blackened plinth.

  Then I heard something: a slithering, a crackling of leaves.

  I froze, listening intently – but there was no mistake. Somewhere beyond the pillars, there was movement amid the undergrowth.

  Rob made to speak again, but I held up a hand for silence.

  He clamped his mouth shut. We both listened.

  There it was again. A rustling, as of foliage being brushed aside, interspersed with the occasional snap or crack of twigs.

  “Charlie!” I said aloud. “That you?”

  Instantly there was silence. All movement abruptly ceased.

  Rob and I looked at each other. Sweat spangled our brows.

  “This is fucked!” he suddenly said, turning and striding out between the two nearest pillars. “Who the fuck’s farting around?”

  I hurried out with him, but came to a halt once we were outside. Rob had stopped too, the profanities dying on his lips. The encircling woods looked dimmer, cooler. The long violet shadows had turned purple. Here and there, a twist of ground-mist had arisen. But there was no sign of anybody.

  “I think maybe we should go back,” Rob said.

  I didn’t bother with a reply, just started walking.

  But now it struck us that we didn’t know the way.

  Inside the Lamuratum, we’d turned ourselves around several times. As such, we were faced by an unbroken wall of trees and bushes. There was no trace of the path.

  “Must be round the other side,” Rob said.

  I went with him, all the time scanning the undergrowth. Briefly, I caught a glimpse of something – a glint of metal perhaps, but dull, tarnished metal. The speed with which we were moving precluded further investigation.

  “Must be around here,” Rob said, an urgency in his voice I’d never heard before.

  From behind us, there came a long, low creak – like old leather, or an aged bough bending against its will.

  We didn’t look back. Just walked faster, much faster.

  And now, at last, the pathway came into view, but it wound off through a Plantation we no longer recognized, a Plantation bathed in spectral twilight. Gone were the shafts of sunlight, the dappled shadows in the verdant glades.

  “We’ve been in here longer than we thought,” I said.

  Again from somewhere to our rear, perhaps inside the Lamuratum, there was an even more curious sound: a short, sharp clatter , like the collision of metal on stone. It rang after us in a series of clanking echoes. There was something else too; I didn’t risk a glance sideways, but to my left I’d spotted movement – awkward, capering movement, like something crippled or deformed, keeping a steady pace with us.

  “Rob, we’ve got to get out of here,” I said tautly.

  He grunted. Then ducked – almost spasmodically, as though in direct kneejerk response. I didn’t bother to ask if something had just been thrown at us. Neither did I stop to look around to see what it was.

  I just ran.

  We both ran.

  And now there was definite movement in the surrounding trees.

  Vegetation was rent aside. Another clash of metal on stone rang to our rear. More twigs broke. And about thirty yards ahead, a shape lumbered out in front of us.

  That was when we diverted from the path.

  It was an automatic response. We veered sharply to the left, oblivious of the undergrowth tangling our feet, of the thorns catching our clothes, of the leaves whipping our faces. We drove through it frantically, gasping for breath but urging each other on. We only had eyes for the route ahead, confused though that route appeared. Huge trunks swept at us; we had to sidestep around them, tripping on roots, slipping in mulch. Low tree-limbs threatened to shatter our skulls. We had to crouch to get under them, or hurdle to get over. But it came to us naturally, for we were past our second wind and the adrenalin prevented us feeling our cuts and scrapes.

  Yet the ordeal ended almost as quickly and inexplicably as it had begun.

  One minute we were tearing through a cramped jungle of half-lit flora – and then, in a second we were out of it, in the fresh air, a swathe of neatly mown turf in front of us.

  We came to a tottering standstill.

  Evening had not yet relapsed into night. The sky was still blue, the sunset throwing a ruddy hue over the frontal façade of the house; we were much closer to it now than we had been when we’d first penetrated the Plantation. The rotund figure of Joe, standing on the front step in a t-shirt and jeans, smoking a cigarette, was absurdly reassuring.

  On spotting us, he raised a finger in acknowledgement. He wasn’t close enough to see the lacerations on our hands or the sweat on our florid faces. Even if he had been, it’s unlikely he’d have commented. Joe was never an intrusive person. He just stood there and smoked as we strolled shakily across the lawn towards him. By his continued lack of reaction, I assumed that nothing was going on in the trees behind us. But at that moment neither Rob nor I were in the mood to look back.

  5

  It’s a difficult thing to bring off in the hard rock business, to reach middle age with your health and credibility intact, but at the same time to have grown old so disgracefully that you’re still able to sell thousands of records to hordes of hardened, cynical youngsters. Ozzy Osbourne and Alice Cooper managed it, but legions of others didn’t. And Luke Hennessey was one of the latter. He was raw talent through and through, but had never had anything like the necessary levels of discipline and professionalism to keep it all together for longer than a few years.

  That evening, at dinner, he made another sad spectacle of himself.

  All the way through the first course he told dirty jokes – and I mean really dirty ones – and as he did, he waved his brimming whisky glass around with a long, bony hand that didn’t look as though it had been washed in several weeks. He’d also been smoking something – probably up in his bedroom – because his eyes were glazed and rolling, and he stank of cannabis; for once it was stronger than his usual combined body odour of sweat and patchouli oil. He was just about to give us another predictable punchline, which no doubt would be riddled with terms like ‘cunt’, ‘shit’ and ‘arsehole’, when he suddenly collapsed.

  Just like that.

  Like a marionette with its strings cut.

  His eyes snapped shut and he slumped forward over what remained of his meal – which was quite a lot, as he hardly ever ate anything – and started snoring.

  The embarrassed silence that followed weighed heavily on the portraits of the great men gazing down on us, on the extensive silver tea-service laid out on the oak sideboard at our rear, on the heavy tapestries and rich, Italianate woodwork. We’d met for dinner in the baronial banquet hall
, which really was the last word in first-class dining. An eighteen-foot long mahogany table ran down the centre. Wonderful medieval chairs were arranged along either side of it; they were actually leather canopies fixed loosely on carved frames (wherever your butt wanted to go, these chairs could effortlessly accommodate it). The food Mrs. Hacket had prepared was exquisite. For the first course, we’d had asparagus tips steeped in sugar and melted butter, and, after that, a choice between roast quail in orange sauce or eggplant parmigiana with parmesan.

  And now Luke was slumped at centre table, the ratty, greasy mop of his hair spread out over his half-full plate, making noises that would have shamed a pregnant walrus.

  Charlie gave our hostess a solemn stare. “You must think we’re a bunch of complete wasters, Miss Ryder-Howe.”

  She smiled. She was the only one who’d dressed for dinner, and wore a delightful pink silk evening gown, which seemed to meld itself around her graceful form. “Not at all. And it’s Lucille … how many times must I remind you?” She glanced back across the table towards Luke. Her expression was almost fond. “Everyone’s entitled to find their lifestyle too much for them now and then.”

  “Trouble is,” Joe said, “he never knows that’s what it is. He’ll be awake again in half an hour and back at it. Won’t remember a thing.”

  “The memory’s the first bit that goes,” Barbara cut in. “Do you know, Lucille … at Christmas ’88, which is the last time this lot were on the road, I found him in the dressing room writing a card to his mother. When she’d already been dead for six years.”

  Miss Ryder-Howe looked horrified.

  “It’s a miracle he hasn’t already joined her,” I said.

  Joe nodded. “It’s a miracle he lived out the ’70s.”

  “Oh!” Charlie threw his hands up in mock-despair. “Don’t talk about that halcyon age. I can’t believe it’s gone.”

  We chuckled and sipped our wine. Mrs. Hacket, politely and unobtrusively, began to clear away our dishes.

  “It was back in the ’70s when I first heard about you guys,” Miss Ryder-Howe said. “I was in infant school at the time.”