The Reddening

by Adam Nevill

  Dull, tired and too heavy for their sockets were the eyes that soon confronted her, their light reduced, snuffed by what throttled the mind behind. His attention was either projected beyond the room or back inside his skull, giving his worn face the appearance of vacancy. And when he was seated, his knees jumped and hands trembled without cease. That looked like Parkinson’s. His fingers only calmed to roll a cigarette.

  ‘You still fly?’ Kat asked.

  ‘Stopped all that.’ His words accompanied by a wince that nearly shut an eye. ‘Been put off . . .’

  Katrine maintained a cheery tone. ‘Tell me you still make that beautiful furniture. I still think about the table you’d made from mountain ash. If I’d had the space at home I’d have bitten your hand off.’

  The smile Matt attempted required too much effort, which made Kat unsure whether to ask after his boy. The man’s domestic situation might be the cause of his current plight. During their first interview most of what Matt Hull had confided was about his son. When she couldn’t think of anything else to say, her nerves prompted, ‘Your son doing okay?’

  He calmed a fraction at the mention of his child. ‘Colin’s doing well, yeah. Cracking little rugby player. He’ll play for the county at Colts. Sailing too. Really taken to that.’

  ‘Great. How exciting for both of you.’

  The twitching resumed. ‘I’m only here because of my boy. He’s with his mum in Brickburgh. I don’t want to be any further away.’

  Kat fidgeted to stir her own mind into less of the blank it was intent on becoming, which prompted him to add, ‘I can’t talk about it any more. Not in the way we did.’ His doleful gaze rose from the end of his cigarette. ‘The caves. It’s something I try not to think about. Without much success, it must be said. Gotta move on, though. At least try. Been over four years. Colin’s my priority.’

  ‘Of course.’

  But if talking about the dig was off the table, Kat couldn’t fathom why he’d accepted her request for a follow-up interview. The magazine had space for a few comments to augment her feature on the second exhibition, a showcase of finds from the excavation’s second phase, housed in Exeter Museum. Most of the article would be pictorial. A chat over the phone with the man who discovered the cave would have sufficed. At best, Matt Hull was a footnote in the cave’s history, his name rarely mentioned now. But when she’d called him, he’d insisted they meet at his home.

  ‘I will say I wish I’d never found it.’

  Tense, her awkwardness increasing with the cooling of the terrible coffee in her hand, Kat struggled to respond. ‘I’m surprised to hear you say that, Matt. I really am.’ She braced herself for a story of how finding the cave had brought him nothing but misery.

  ‘A few years back, I never thought I’d hear myself say it either.’

  ‘I’m curious about what’s changed for you.’

  ‘This off the record?’

  ‘If you like. I was only looking for a follow-up comment. A then-and-now quote because of what the site has clearly done for the area and economy. I have to say, I’m a bit taken aback at just how rapidly the village has changed. It’s almost unrecognisable from two years ago.’

  Matt nodded, smiling a wry acknowledgement as if she’d hit upon the very thing, though she had no idea what that might be.

  ‘The article will only be about the new finds,’ she offered. ‘I take it you’ve heard the hints about what they found in the new caves? So I thought you might want to contribute something. A few words. None of the new developments would have been possible if you’d not been flying over there.’

  Matt returned his attention to the end of his cigarette and his smile vanished in the trail of smoke, his face turning an even unhealthier grey.

  ‘Matt, are you all right? You seem . . . very tense.’

  His lips moved for a while but he didn’t speak out loud.

  ‘Would another time be better?’

  He pulled on his cigarette in an attempt at composure, though one betrayed by a shaky hand. ‘For the first exhibition I was interviewed in all the local press. TV, radio, the works. I was on the BBC too. Sky, everything. In America too. All over. I was at all the UK openings.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘But back then, you were the only person I spoke to who was different.’

  ‘I’m not sure what you mean.’

  ‘In all the excitement you saw things a bit differently. About the cave. That was my impression.’

  Katrine scoured her memory to identify what signals she might have transmitted to him during the first interview.

  ‘I’m good at reading people and you had a bad feeling about what they found. And I remember you telling me that you came down here for a new start, away from the city. London, was it?’

  Kat nodded.

  ‘You’d had it hard there. That’s what I felt. I think a person who’s had a bad time of it makes a particular kind of impression. Like I did after the breakup with my wife. Makes you tuned-in to others too. Their distress, you know? You said you’d been through something similar to me. Bad relationship. Even if you’d said nothing specific, I’d seen it in your eyes. It made you sensitive . . . to people, situations that could cause you more trouble. Instinct sharpens. Sixth sense, yeah. Same with flying. I just knew when to call it a day if things didn’t feel right on the cliffs. I knew.

  ‘And no matter how much time passed between when the caves was in use and me finding that hole, you suspected something was off about the place. Because of all the terrible things that happened there, even such a long time ago, you still knew what they found wasn’t for gawping at or raking over. The caves still had a kind of . . . I don’t know, power. Like they wasn’t dead.’

  Kat shifted her position and couldn’t prevent a noisy swallow.

  ‘Down there by the sea, that place was special, you know, like . . . Stonehenge or something, to people in the past. And when I got over the adrenalin of finding the skull and that little carving, it hit me too, in a weird way. That all took a while to sink in. Maybe even a year. But things changed for me. Lots of things. They never stopped changing.’ His rapidly blinking eyes paused to watch her with so keen a scrutiny that Kat coughed to create a distraction.

  Matt was unstable. What he said next confirmed her diagnosis.

  ‘Morbid. From that time onwards, my thoughts were very morbid. That’s when it started. And I’d never thought about things in that way before. I can assure you of that. Strange, I felt strange, here. Here was different afterwards. And I got a sense that you felt something similar. You didn’t even like thinking about what they’d dug up. I remember that as clear as day. What was done in there, in that dark, horrible place, should have stayed buried. And no good will come of them digging up any more of what’s down there.

  ‘You remember, we ended up talking over our problems? Me mostly, about my boy. But your ex came up. It was like we were always avoiding the real subject of the interview, which was the cave.’

  An unusual observation but Matt was right. After the press conference in Plymouth Kat hadn’t wanted to cover the first exhibition two years later. She’d have been happy to skip the new revelations, the latest cycle of prehistorical horror.

  Initial reports and rumours suggested that what had been uncovered in the Brickburgh cavern during the previous two years was even more barbaric and gruesome than what had been excavated at the first level. But she needed the money. Steve needed work for his portfolio too. And as affable as Sheila, her editor, was, she was not to be defied. The assignment was always going to be Kat’s.

  Matt pulled on his cigarette. ‘It’s different for me. I’m local. I live on the same land as the caves. That place is only a few miles from where I sleep. But you ain’t that far away either. And there’s miles of tunnels down there. They reach out, like.’

  ‘Miles?’ Not to Kat’s knowledge. And though a larger chamber had been found and several annexes attached to the first cave, she was curious as to what bro
ught Matt to this conclusion.

  ‘We’re separated from what happened by thousands of years, Matt.’

  ‘You tell that to my dreams.’

  ‘Dreams?’

  ‘Dreams. What got inside me. My moods too.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Or you don’t want to. But I wanted to tell you a few things that you can’t print. This, today, is not for that, for the news and all that. The magazine. You wouldn’t get it in there anyway. Your readers would think I’m mad. Maybe I’m going that way but this is something I wanted to tell you. Only you, because I think you might get it. And today is also for insurance.’

  The Brickburgh Curse. She wondered if his imagination had dialled itself into that story. Did he believe that his mind had been influenced by his proximity to the cave? These would have been her questions on a professional basis. His answers might even add an interesting local angle to the better-known stories circulating about the fate of several members of the archaeological team, who’d spent so much time underground in the early period of the excavation. But that would be unsuitable for Devon Life and Style. Sheila had little time for the conspiracies. That was the preserve of the internet and the tabloids. Life and Style, or L&S, filled its glossy pages with coastal vistas, restaurant reviews, local conservation. Not features on curses, unless it was a cosy ghost story, something cheesy about a lady in white in a castle tower. Over the years, her editor had even managed to erase any mention of the cannibalism in any story related to the caves. That didn’t fit with editorial direction or the publication’s tone. L&S’s sole focus had been on the carved artefacts, the bone flutes and the idea of primitive music, the opportunities for upscale tourists. This time around, the feature would be dedicated to the incredible cave paintings. Some details of those had already surfaced. ‘Insurance?’ she ventured.

  Matt nodded. ‘There’s no one else I can say this to. Not round here.’

  ‘No neighbours, a friend?’ She stopped short of suggesting a GP.

  He cleared his throat to speak, circling a trembling hand around his head. ‘It’s hard to explain.’

  Kat pondered making an excuse and leaving but there was a conviction in what Matt was trying to impart: to her, only to her.

  ‘It’s more surface with some folks. An attitude that covers something deeper. Only I don’t know what. I can identify the signs though. Maybe you think I’m paranoid or something but I don’t think it’d be in my best interests to mention any of this out loud, not round here.’

  ‘You think you’re in danger?’

  Matt chuckled humourlessly, then whispered, ‘I’m a bit past figuring that out.’

  ‘Because of the caves?’

  ‘There’s a connection. But I think this vibe has been round here for a while. In other things. Other business. Hints of it. An atmosphere is what I’m talking about. Like an influence. And it’s got this kind of momentum now. Even if it was mostly buried in those cliffs, maybe it was the cause of the change. As well as the other stuff that’s been happening. Here.’

  Kat frowned. He’d lost her.

  ‘It’s like something was restless, you know, in them rocks. In the spaces between them. How deep they go and keep on going . . . all that’s buried, you know, could still come out a bit. That’s what I reckon. Been that way before I found the cave. There’s lots of local stuff you don’t know about.’

  Kat's disappointment and pity came close to a physical manifestation, a sensation akin to indigestion. Matt Hull wouldn’t be included in the article at all: that was clear to her. She also worried that if he didn’t get it together as a parent, he’d be facing problems with access to the most important person in his life, his son. She found that idea unbearable; it would destroy what was left of the twitching man on the worn leather couch.

  ‘You see, Kat, I’ve had a privileged perspective. If privilege is the right word. Up there, in the sky, I’ve seen things. Seen a lot of things. They know it. My gear is bright orange. It was always hard to miss me when I was airborne and I’ve been all over, all round here, twenty miles in every direction. I’ve noticed stuff.’

  Kat’s discomfort merged with bewilderment. Curiosity was the only thing keeping her in the room.

  ‘There are things I’ve seen that I won’t mention to you. Things that’d bring some real trouble down on me and on the people who are important to me. Stuff that goes on round here. Things that make people desperate to protect their interests, if you follow. Ruthless. And they have been ruthless, at times. I know they have been. But that’s got nothing to do with me or my boy. So I always looked the other way. Always kept my head down. Told them that too when they’ve confronted me about flying round here.’

  ‘I’m not following, Matt.’

  ‘That’s . . . just background. You probably know how some folks make their money round here. That’s not what this is about, not what I wanted to talk to you about. Forget it. That’s something else.’

  Now she got it: illegal activity. Unlicensed alcohol: she’d heard the rumours. And the talk about cannabis farms. That’s what Matt was alluding to, the drug farms. She’d never believed there was much validity to the rumours but assumed a kernel of truth existed at the root of the tales. Not everyone was content with fruit picking, serving in a café, emptying bedpans in care homes or selling ice cream on the beach for £3 an hour. Hydroponics in a loft was, allegedly, a traditional income stream north of Divilmouth.

  ‘There’s a connection, yeah. One thing getting into another. The caves have already seen to that. That’s what I am saying. And then bad places and hard people get worse. More lines get crossed, until what’s done on the other side of the lines becomes normal. Part and parcel. Perfect environment was in place here. This is what I am telling you. You’d not notice if you were only passing through, like a holidaymaker. But if this was your home, you’d get it. And you get noticed by it too, because it spreads.’

  No matter how subtle she’d tried to be, Matt caught her inspecting her watch.

  ‘This is hard for me to say, Kat.’

  ‘Can you tell me something more specific about what is upsetting you so much?’

  Before he spoke again, Matt looked at the floor for the best part of a minute before sighing resignedly. ‘Not long after I found that cave, I was told that the sky, the actual air, yeah, above Brickburgh, was out of bounds to me. All of it.’

  ‘By who?’

  ‘I’m not getting into that. For your sake, not mine. Trust me, girl, you don’t want to go there. But why did they want to ground me not long after I found that cave? I already knew what they were doing round here, on some of the farms. I’d seen parts of their operations, yeah. They let that slide. I’m talking about other things . . . things that have happened that they never wanted anyone to see. The bigger changes is what I am talking about. The change is common knowledge here.’

  Kat’s skin chilled. She didn’t want to hear any more. A horrible suspicion of becoming implicated in an unpleasant racket or local feud seemed to alter the air pressure around her head. She was a lifestyle journalist, her specialty being fashion, luxury properties, holidays, not organised crime. ‘I’d rather not . . . I’m not sure I want to . . . not sure this is in my brief –’

  ‘They don’t want me flying in case I see something as bad as I have already. And they aren’t the kind of people you can disagree with. A heavy presence. Their spies here, they have this air about them too. Call it a tone. Just looks and things, you know? But people have been getting hurt, Kat. Here. Since I found that cave. Before that too, I reckon. That crack in the cliff wasn’t the only opening, yeah, to what’s down there.’

  Katrine’s body tensed. ‘The police? I don’t know what it is you’re trying to tell me, Matt. But maybe you should go to the police.’

  ‘As I said, things have changed. You can’t be sure who already knows stuff. Who’s on which side now. This goes deep. It’s spread wide.’

  A confused conspiracy, that�
��s all it was, whipped to critical mass by a shut-in’s paranoia. But something Matt said earlier continued to work at her mind as a source of discomfort, like a stone in a cerebral shoe. ‘Dreams. Matt, you mentioned your dreams?’

  Though she was keen to change the subject from the topic of criminal activity, her own unpleasant imaginings had lasted for months following the first press conference. Her nightmares had also been reignited by the first exhibition of the earliest artefacts. They’d never really gone away.

  Matt grinned. ‘I guessed as much.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You know what I’m talking about. You had them too.’

  ‘I had a natural reaction to some very upsetting revelations and to the physical evidence found in those caves. I’d say that was a healthy response.’

  ‘Or for someone on the edge emotionally and up here.’ Matt tapped his head. ‘Even if you only brushed against what had been in that ground for so long.’

  ‘And you’re saying that because you found the cave it’s been worse for you?’

  ‘Not just found it but reached inside and took a few things out. I admit it, I kept a few things here, for a while.’

  ‘More than enough has been discovered in that cave. No one will worry about you taking a few souvenirs.’

  ‘It’s not them I worry about, the museums and universities, or the Land Trust. It’s others . . . who’ve been touched by that place more than most.’

  ‘Who?’

  Matt smiled grimly and shook his head. ‘Let me put it another way. Don’t you think it’s strange that two of the archaeologists topped themselves? They’d been inside those cliffs for over a year. No past history to account for suicide. They went downhill inside that place, in the caves. The head of the project even quit. They say he’s a mental case, a wreck.’

  ‘There were other contributing factors. Stress, his relationship fell apart –’