Don't Read Alone

by Finch, Paul

  It struck me that he’d assailed the crowd in similar fashion back at the Free Trade Hall in ’78, when they’d picked him up and carried him over their heads.

  “He’s really overdone it this time,” Barbara said.

  Luke overdoing it wasn’t exactly a new thing in our lives, and Barbara had been present at some of his most spectacular moments, but even she seemed surprised at the mindless level he’d apparently descended to.

  “I just don’t see how he could have got into this state,” I replied.

  On the face of it that was a ridiculous comment, because Luke was a past master at getting into any sort of state. But all I could think about was the relatively clean condition of his bedroom, and how little evidence there was that he’d been drinking or doing gear to any greater extent than the rest of us.

  For all his continued yipping and yowling, it only took a minute or so to install Luke in his tent, and after that we were able to relax again. We sat around the fire, chatted some more and shared the alcoholic coffee. We covered a variety of subjects, but mainly the old days, past acquaintances, and things we’d each been doing in the meantime. We studiously avoided the subject of the new project. I don’t know why this was, but I still don’t think any of us believed it was really going to happen. For the most part, since our glory days had ended, we’d failed in our attempts to remain millionaires. Oh, we were all comfortable – there was no problem there, but once people had stopped buying our music, we’d lacked the wherewithal to generate by any other means the vast incomes we were used to. This movie project could be the solution to all our problems, yet it seemed too good to be true, and I don’t think anyone wanted to raise the subject properly until Troy finally sat us down and laid out a fully-costed plan.

  We were also getting tired. It wasn’t even midnight yet, but despite our former status as all-night ravers, the events of the day – we’d all risen relatively early, had put ourselves around and perhaps had taken in more fresh country air than we were used to – were taking a toll. One by one, we declared ourselves ready for bed. And it was only then, I suppose, that the reality of what we’d let ourselves in for dawned on us. No soft sheets, no plump pillows, no sumptuously furnished bedrooms awaited us; just sleeping bags, hard ground and tents, the interiors of which have always smelled damp and mildewed to me.

  “So, Troy,” I said, as we stood up, stretching and yawning, “how exactly is this ordeal you’ve arranged going to inspire us to write about the Romans?”

  He smiled. “Think of yourselves as legionaries on campaign, bivouacking somewhere in Cisalpine Gaul.”

  “Eh?” Joe said.

  “Or here,” Troy amended. “Claudius’s troops, newly arrived and about to press north into the barbarous interior of the mysterious island that is Britain. And remember that back in 43 AD, that’s exactly what was happening. Right on this spot.”

  “Or somewhere near to it,” Charlie corrected him.

  “Somewhere near to it,” Troy agreed.

  “Doesn’t really work for me,” Rob said dourly.

  But Troy made no reply to that. And I noticed that Miss Ryder-Howe, who’d been quiet all night – which was understandable, as she had nothing in common with us, and no past that she could share – was standing inordinately close to him. She was even holding his hand. Fleetingly, I felt contempt for her; that she should be so open and unashamed about her motives. But then I began to think that maybe I was wrong. And the clue seemed to be in her taut body language. There was nothing erotic there, or even vaguely suggestive. Gone was the panting, sensual vamp of earlier; gone the mannered, delightful hostess. If anything, she looked like a frightened little girl. Her posture was stiff, yet she moved uneasily from one foot to the other. A smile was still plastered to her pretty face, as it had been all evening, but it was a phony smile; it didn’t reach her eyes, which seemed to gleam as they were so wide, so visibly frightened.

  I didn’t comment on this. Not even to Rob when we clambered into our dark, dank tent a few minutes later, and wormed into our sleeping bags. Was she just unnerved by the proposition of camping out in the middle of a wood when she was no doubt used to greater comfort and security, or was it something else? Did she actually know more about this place than she was letting on?

  Rob announced his intention to read for a while, and switched on an electric torch. I didn’t object. I’d only removed my trainers, and though it’s hardly ideal to try and sleep fully clothed, I was soon snug and relatively warm, and oblivion began to steal up on me.

  I was probably half way gone when Rob sat bolt-upright and hissed: “That bloody little bastard!”

  “What?” I mumbled.

  Rob was still peering into his open book. “That bastard Troy was lying to us? About the Ides of May?”

  “What about it?”

  He shook his head. “This isn’t the Ides of May.”

  For some reason, I woke up fully when he said this. I propped myself on my elbow. “Today, you mean?”

  “Yeah. The Ides falls on the 13th of every month with the exception of March, July, October and May … when it falls on the 15th .” He sat up. “And Troy knew that. He must have.”

  I sat up too. It didn’t take a genius to work out that something was afoot. Troy had specifically brought us out here on this night to bask in the ambience of a Roman festival, the Ides of May, which it actually wasn’t.

  “So what’s today?” I asked. “I mean, what occasion is May 13th ?”

  Rob kicked his way out of his sleeping bag. “Good bloody question.”

  “Wait … what’re you doing?” I asked, but he was already climbing down the length of the tent, where he turned awkwardly and began to drag on his boots. A moment later he’d unzipped the flap and crawled outside, hauling his croquet mallet behind him.

  “I’m going back to the house to check some stuff.”

  By now he was outside, so I had to crawl out after him. “At this hour?”

  He stood beside the tent, glancing around at the fire-lit woods. “It’s only ten minutes’ walk.”

  “It’s after midnight,” I said.

  But he was already on his way, in such haste that he’d forgotten to take the quad bike, or maybe had decided not to as its engine would almost certainly wake the others. I gazed after him while he strode off, the mallet over his shoulder, the torchlight bobbing along in front. I was unsure what to do. It felt vaguely disloyal not to go along with him, but I’d just got warm and comfortable, and besides, he’d given no indication that he’d expected my company. On top of that, of course, I really didn’t fancy traversing that winding path through the silent, black tangles of the Plantation. I surveyed the encampment. No-one else had been disturbed, and the only sound was the popping and hissing of the fire as it died down into a heap of glowing embers.

  Reluctantly, I crawled back into the tent. But when I got in there, I saw Rob’s book lying on top of his sleeping bag. I picked it up. It was open on a page dedicated to the month of Maius . With growing interest, I scanned down it. Snippets of scholarly text were attached to many of the dates there listed. As Rob had said, the 15th was indeed the official Ides of the month, but others of note were also mentioned. The 1st and 2nd were named Floralia , and deemed sacred to the goddess Flora, patroness of the spring. May 21st was Agonalia , and as well as being used to honour Vediovis, was a rite of passage for young Roman males, who would receive their first adult toga on this day. May 25th was called Fortunis , and was the day on which the goddess of fate and fortune was worshipped. Other dates, however, had no written explanation beside them, and one of these was May 13th , which was simply listed as Lemuria .

  Which struck me cold.

  Because however you look at it, Lemuria and Lamuratum don’t sound worlds apart.

  I flicked through a few additional pages, but found nothing else. Then something occurred to me. It was a long shot, but why not give it a try? I fished into my anorak pocket and produced the dog-eared Anglo-Latin d
ictionary. It was a small, compact piece of work, and, even as I raced through it, I assumed it would do no more than skim the surface of the Latin language, let alone go into detail about practices and traditions. And I was right. It didn’t even mention the word Lemuria .

  But it did mention the word lemures .

  Which sounded uncannily similar.

  With a creeping of my spine, I checked it out.

  It read:

  Lemures n. pl. – the baleful dead

  That was all it said. Nothing further was given, no insights offered.

  Somewhere in the back of my head, a voice was shouting: “It doesn’t mean anything. It’s nothing more than an entry in an old, probably discredited book.”

  But that book fell from my hands all the same. I felt sweat on my face and under my clothes.

  May 13th – the Feast of the Baleful Dead.

  No, it might not mean anything. It might be entirely a coincidence.

  But it didn’t bloody sound like one.

  I pulled my trainers on without bothering to tie the laces, and scrambled for the entrance, stopping only to grab up my croquet mallet. The next thing I knew, I was crossing the camp and following Rob along the footpath. He’d be ten minutes ahead of me by now; he might already be at the house. The temptation to shout was strong, but I didn’t dare. On one hand, I didn’t want to alert any of the others – it was still possible that I was foolishly overreacting. But on the other, I didn’t want to alert anybody else .

  I know that must sound ridiculous, but suddenly I was in pitch darkness with deep stretches of woodland on all sides of me, stumbling along a path that I could barely see. In fact, once I’d got a few yards from what remained of our fire, I couldn’t see it at all. I frequently veered off and found myself kicking through undergrowth. On one occasion, I blundered into a tree trunk. And always there was my memory of the night before, and the gnawing sense that I wasn’t alone; that in the distant reaches of this wretched wood someone was listening, just waiting for the first sign that I’d ventured away from the safety of the others. And all the while, that phrase continued to go through my head:

  Lemures … the baleful dead, the baleful dead…

  If it had just said ‘the dead’, or even ‘ghosts’, I perhaps could have stomached it better. But ‘the baleful dead’. Jesus!

  Maybe because I was so preoccupied, and also, I don’t doubt, because I was refusing to glance either right or left, I emerged from the path onto the lawn with my sanity intact. I glanced around. Only starlight illumined the open spread of gardens and driveway. There was no sign of Rob. I looked towards the house. Much of the building stood in darkness, but the front door was open and light spilled out. I dashed across the grass, at last feeling brave enough to call out.

  “Rob! Rob … hold up! I’ve just found something!”

  There was no reply, which didn’t really surprise me. He was probably in the sitting room, going through the rest of the books. I hurried through the front door into the great hall, where all the lights had been turned on. I’d have made a beeline for the passage leading down to the sitting room if something hadn’t stopped me in my tracks.

  A gargled choke, which was abruptly cut off.

  12

  I could not believe what I was seeing.

  I would not believe it. I simply refused to accept it. And I think that would have been any normal person’s response. Forget what you’ve read in books, or seen at the cinema. When you’re actually, in real life, confronted with homicidal violence, especially when it’s directed against you or a loved one, you do not go into a heroic action-man routine. In fact, you don’t do anything. You are rooted down with shock and horror.

  That was what I felt as I stood there in the doorway to the kitchen at Rillington Chase. Internally, like everywhere else here, it was spacious and airy, and though equipped with modern fittings, it still retained its olde worlde charm. The floor was stone-flagged, the ceiling beamed, the walls wainscoted and hung with pots and pans, while the central table was a good fifteen feet in length and made from solid oak.

  And yet none of this mattered.

  All that mattered was the sight of Rob being throttled.

  I felt myself go weak at the knees, almost had to lean against the doorframe.

  But it was happening. It was really happening. And right before my eyes.

  Rob was in the process of making a call on the kitchen telephone. Or he’d been about to make that call, because though he still had the receiver in his right hand, Lionel – the gargantuan gardener – had approached him from behind and launched what could only be described as a ferocious attack. Rob was a big fellow, but Lionel was all that and more. He literally dwarfed our former keyboards man. What was more, he had attacked unseen, for he’d thrust his left arm around his victim’s neck from behind, tightened it over the throat and was now yanking Rob’s head backward, exerting a strength and power that our guy was simply helpless to resist.

  As a rule, I don’t fight. Why should I? In the latter part of my life I’ve hardly ever needed to. But that wasn’t always the case. When we first formed Wolfbane, we’d all of us shared the same working class background and ethos. More to the point, we’d made a pact that we wouldn’t take any shit. Don’t get me wrong, we weren’t like Zeppelin, whose mean reputation was known far and wide, but we swore that in tight spots we’d look after each other. And in the very first moment of our very first gig, that vow got put to the test. We were on Tyneside, in one of the roughest nightspots I’ve ever seen. A minute after we came on stage, a thrown bottle hit Charlie in the face and broke his nose. An instant later, Joe had spotted the miscreant responsible, hurled down his guitar and gone into the crowd like a Viking berserker. We’d all of us followed, and through sheer defensive anger, we cleaned up the front row yobbos … then, later on, feeding off the same fuel, we cleaned up the club with a blistering opening-night performance. Of course, in those days we’d been lean and hungry, and since then I’d grown lax, soft. I might have been trim because I worked out. I might have looked good because I lived in a healthier climate than Great Britain’s. But I hadn’t thrown a punch or kicked an ass in as long as I could remember. Even so, Rob was being murdered right in front of my eyes. The bear-like Lionel was apparently intent on snapping his neck.

  I advanced towards them slowly, unwillingly, wishing this wasn’t happening. Rob was the one who saw me first. The eyes were straining like cue-balls in his sockets; crimsoned with broken blood-vessels. There was spew and froth all over his mouth. I needed no further invitation.

  I threw the croquet mallet over my shoulder like a battle-axe, and charged.

  If I’d really been an old-fashioned warrior, I’d have struck hard and true without giving my opponent any warning. The semblance of a civilised man remained, however. I wanted Lionel to desist, to back off, to surrender before we even engaged. So I shouted, in fact roared, letting him know that I was coming. He looked sharply around. But the eyes which earlier on I’d seen glazed with apparent docility were now feral. The carroty red ‘village idiot’ hair was matted across his florid brow with licks of sweat. He knew exactly what he was doing, and he wasn’t going to stop now. All the same, he had to respond to my threat.

  I swung the croquet mallet down in a full overhead arch, but he moved with amazing agility for a man of his size, and threw up his left forearm to deflect it. The next thing I knew, he’d released Rob, dropping him face-first onto the kitchen table, and was aiming a blow at me with his massive right fist. I ducked it, and drove my mallet upward into his ribs. It impacted solidly, but there was no great power behind it, and this time he managed to grab hold of it, which left him free to punch me again. He drew his ham-fist back, but forgetting about Rob was a mistake. Rob was still conscious: his face was slathered with spittle, his eyes leaking blood – but his mouth had twisted with rage.

  Having no other weapon to hand, he struck hard with the telephone receiver.

  Lionel didn’
t see it coming. It smashed across the side of his head and burst apart with the impact. Even then, aside from knocking the giant sideways, it had no discernible effect. Lionel responded to this new assault with a huge left hook, which connected cleanly with Rob’s jaw and slammed him backward onto the table.

  With Rob out for the count, the gardener turned back to me, but I was ready for him. I’d hauled the croquet mallet from his grasp, and now swept it around in a wide circle. It whacked him full in the side of the face. The CRACK was deafening. A broken, bloody tooth flirted from his scrunched-up mouth. He went staggering leftward, caromed off the cast-iron cooking range, and fell chest-first to the floor.

  His eyes had rolled white even before his face smacked onto the flagstones.

  I stood there breathless, racked with pain even though I hadn’t taken a single blow. Then I scrambled to the table to check on Rob. Once again, my makeshift medical expertise came into play. He was out cold but breathing; his heart-rate seemed steady. There wasn’t much more I could do, other than check around his neck to ensure there was no obvious damage there, and then roll him over into the recovery position. After that, I scanned the wreckage of the room, trying to piece together what had happened. It rapidly became clear. A book also lay on the table-top. It seemed Rob had gone back into the sitting room and found something. Whatever it was, it had prompted him to come straight in here and make a phone call, almost certainly to the police. Lionel, probably acting under orders, had been lying in wait, and had viciously intervened.

  I looked at the telephone receiver. It was shattered: sharp fragments of plastic and a nest of twisted wires. I had my mobile, but I hadn’t yet charged it up again. In any case, what exactly was I supposed to be phoning the police about? I snatched up the book. This one was titled Ancient Feasts and Ceremonies . It was already open on the page I sought:

  LEMURIA: Day of the Baleful Dead