by Peter Laws
Matt looked back towards the woods, and saw the torchlight from the others flashing between the tree trunks. Scientists hunting down the misunderstood alien in ET.
‘God, I hope they find him,’ Ethan said, then he hurried back.
Before he turned, Matt noticed the moon, trapped in the surface of the water, while the forest kept calling that name, echoing up into the night.
Pavel, Pavel Basa? Pavel?
Matt turned and jogged back.
It was 2 a.m.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Back in the lobby area, he saw a large crowd gathered. Most of them were Kissell’s clients, and they were looking very twitchy indeed. Some of them, Matt noticed, kept skipping their eyes from one corner of the room to the other. One woman was chewing her fingernails with a rat-like enthusiasm. That was not a pleasant thing to witness, at all.
Deron Johnson was there too, and he was finally dressed. In fact, he’d dressed up, with a black T-shirt, black blazer and a velvety blue scarf hanging from his neck. He’d exchanged his flip-flops for trainers, and was pacing those Vans back and forth, mumbling to himself, or rather at himself. A few of them caught Matt’s gaze and shrank away from him. Others narrowed their eyes.
The entire atmosphere was … he grabbed the best word he could think of … edgy. Like a boiling pan of tension, bubbling under the lid. And where was Nupa? Best to look for her first. He turned to head back to the lift when he felt a heavy hand clamp onto his shoulder. Oh great. It was Richie Gregor in his baseball cap. ‘She’s crying. Did you know that?’ he said.
‘Who is?’ Matt turned.
‘She’s crying, look.’ Richie pointed to Abby in a nearby armchair. She’d changed clothes and was now fully dressed. She had that same ruffled white gypsy top she’d worn in the TV studio, and jeans. She was barefoot. Kissell and Perry were on either side of her, both in full dog collars, hands on her shoulders in prayer. The others sat around her, or were cross-legged at her feet, staring up at her face. In fact, everyone in here seemed to look at her.
‘Abby?’ Matt said. ‘Where’s Pavel?’
Perry flicked his head back and walked over, fast. ‘Can’t you see she’s upset? And I wonder why, Matt?’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘She’s young, she’s vulnerable, and you had her in your room tonight?’
The eyes of the crowd seemed to flash at that, in delight. One of them started moaning.
‘Wait … what?’ Matt shook his head. ‘She just came in.’
‘Oh really?’ Perry said.
‘Did you touch her?’ A voice from the crowd. And then an eager moan that turned into groans. This was crazy. This was getting out of hand. Where the hell was Nupa? Matt took a step backwards towards the lift. He felt his back slam into Richie’s chest.
Crap.
‘Who knows, Professor?’ Perry glanced down at Matt’s crotch. ‘Maybe you’ve got a demon of your own, coiled down there.’
‘Shut up,’ Matt said. ‘Abby? Tell them.’
She looked up finally, wiping a tear from her cheek. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t remember. I just woke up in your bed.’
Perry smirked, ‘Did you hear that everybody?’
Matt leant closer to Perry and whispered, ‘Stop. Seriously. You’re riling them up. They’re not stable.’
Kissell wasn’t saying much, but his eyes kept springing from person to person. He looked pretty nervous. But when he caught Matt’s eye, he seemed to snap into life. He brought the moment into focus with a single clap of his hands. ‘Enough!’ His tone was loud, deep and final. ‘We are getting distracted from the task here. Matt is right, things are losing stability. So let me tell you what we need to do.’ Kissell quickly checked his watch. ‘I’m bringing the exorcism forward.’
‘What?’ Matt tried to ignore the sudden hiss of busy, excited whispers from the others. ‘We have to call it off. Pavel’s missing—’
‘No. We do it right now,’ Kissell said. ‘Pavel must have run away and now he won’t be healed. So we need to help these people who are still here, before they run too.’
‘What if they want to go? What if they’re scared? And where’s Nupa?’
‘Here,’ she called out from across the room.
He turned to see her standing by the glass doors. The doors that led to the Ash Suite corridor. Maybe it was his imagination, or maybe she was tired. But Matt could have sworn she looked more rattled than he’d ever seen her before. She’d kept her distance from the group, and she had her arms folded – her gaze shifting from one possessed person to the next. ‘I think we better do as Bernie says. Let’s just get this done.’
‘You heard the lady,’ Kissell shouted. ‘Let’s go!’
He started shepherding them towards the doors and Perry grabbed Abby’s hand to pull her with him. Matt went to speak to her, but Richie’s massive hand shoved his shoulder back. ‘Let the lady through.’
‘Please, all of you.’ Matt set his shoulders back. ‘This is making things worse.’
Abby’s sobbing voice broke through everything. ‘We just want it to stop. We’re so tired …’ She let herself be dragged away by Richie and Perry, just as Kissell rushed up to her and put a hand on her forehead.
‘Don’t worry. It’ll end tonight,’ Kissell said. ‘Now feel the power of God!’
Abby’s head and shoulders suddenly jerked.
The crowd gasped.
‘Do you feel him, Abby?’ Kissell had the nod of an eager dog. ‘Do you feel the Holy Spirit?’
Tears rolled through her squinted eyes. She nodded and jerked again under his hand. ‘I feel it. I feel it.’
‘Then let your hope rise, everybody. Let freedom ring! Let’s finish this! Love wins!’
Kissell swept through the noisy crowd, putting his hands on their shoulders and arms and heads and with each touch every single one of them jerked and spasmed. Matt saw their faces warping from smiling hope to agonised fear, and then back again. The whole time, Perry and Richie just kept herding them like livestock towards the double doors, heading to the hall. Kissell reached the doors and stood like a rock in a stream, touching them and letting them jerk under his fingers as they swept eagerly around him.
Which was when Matt buried both hands into his hair, because it was so shocking and yet so, so predictable.
‘Take them in.’ Kissell’s voice was victorious. ‘They’ll be free soon.’
As the crowd started to vanish through the doors, Matt rushed to Kissell and yanked his arm to the side.
‘Get off him, you heretic,’ someone shouted.
Even Ethan’s mouth dropped. ‘Matt. Calm down. Let him be.’
Matt ignored him and shoved Kissell against the wall.
‘What the fuck?’ Ethan gasped.
Whispering into Kissell’s ear with a desperate, rattled, frightened breath, Matt said, ‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m helping.’
‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m setting the captives—’
‘Dammit. I saw it. Do you hear me? I just saw it in your hand. Now stop this—’
Hands, many hands, started dragging Matt off, though he couldn’t see whose they were.
‘I’m helping, Matt, you’ll see,’ Kissell said, but there was a flash of fear there.
Perry shouted to the few members of the crew. ‘Keep the professor out of the hall.’ Then he whispered to Matt, ‘I really hoped you’d see this. I hoped you might believe.’
The moment was so mad, so insane, that Matt supposed his own repeated shouting simply blended with the madness. And no amount of him calling it was ever going to stop them now. Even the crew, even Nupa, seemed oblivious to Matt’s ranting. Because after all, this was the moment. This was the TV first. The mass exorcism. This was the spectacle that this entire show had all been hurtling towards like a plane with no pilot. Still though, he felt a deep and profound coldness inside him when he saw them doing Kissell’s bidding. The exorcist and the
possessed and, bolted to the walls, the watchers of the possessed, safe at home. Everyone as eager as each other to get into that room, where Tom Riley’s box was calling the world.
So all he could do was to keep shouting it, as vain as it was, as they disappeared into the hall. He just kept shouting it for Abby, for Deron, for all of them, for the cameras, for himself and his throat raged with pain with the loudness of it.
‘Check his hand. Check it! This isn’t real. Check Kissell’s hand!’
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
He was parched from all the shouting. Like, crawling-through-the-desert, lick-tears-off-the-floor level parched. So the first thing he did after they all vanished into the Ash Suite was to grab a mug in the now deserted lobby. He shoved it under the coffee machine and jabbed the choco-milk button. He listened to it gurgle and spit. Every few moments he’d snap his head over his shoulders, mostly whenever a crackle of the machine sounded like the nearby footfall of a pissed off demoniac.
As he glugged it down, all alone, his eyes flicked from corner to corner, from door handle to plant pot, and especially to all the big sofas that could easily hide … a croucher.
Then he heard it start. The muffled wailing. The moan of the possessed, in the next room, which was punctured every now and then with a chilling, drink-spilling scream. They sounded like they were all falling down into very deep and bottomless holes.
He paced the floor, glugging, wondering what the hell he should do. Wishing he’d driven here by himself because he could taste the buzz of violence in the air. The sheer throb of unpredictability. He considered just holding up in his own room, but with no locks on the door what was the point? Maybe if he found somebody to drive him home. Or heck, maybe grab some keys and steal a car … leave them all to it.
Crap.
He felt that inconvenient throb of guilt. Duty of care, and all that.
And besides … what if Kissell was right? What if this ridiculous placebo ritual might actually calm these folks down, until morning at least?
At one point, curiosity got the better of him, and he crept up to the doors to the Ash Suite corridor. Those glass doors must have been pretty thick too, because pushing them open just a tiny crack brought the wailing groans to eye-wincing levels. Two security guys were in the corridor inside, standing watch at the thick wooden doors that led into the hall. They looked like bouncers in the wildest nightclub on the planet. Both looked jumpy. Both looked white-faced. And both looked like they wished they’d never said yes to this job, guarding the gates of hell.
One of them caught his eye. ‘Mate. You shouldn’t be here.’ A message to himself, perhaps.
‘Relax. I’m going, I’m going.’
Matt let the glass door close, and found himself back in the lobby, still unsure what to do. He figured he might be the only person left who was still worrying about Pavel, so maybe he should head down in the lift again. Go looking for him. Or better yet, just head down in the lift and get the hell away from this place. He’d decide at the bottom. So he pressed the button, and the lift doors immediately slid open.
A rabbit hopped out.
A black rabbit.
It was like the world paused. Like he couldn’t do anything else but become a slack-jawed mannequin smelling the dirt it had tramped in with it. It was, after all, Matt’s nightmare animal of choice. Rabbits had been clawing across his psyche ever since that dreadful time in Menham, South London, though at least this time, it wasn’t standing tall, like a man. But he still staggered back when he saw it. In fact, he felt his knees buckle and he hit a chair and landed hard into it. He heard the air of the leather cushion puff out in a sly, swift hiss. Though it could have been the rabbit, hissing words to him. His mind rabbits often did such things.
Slumped in the chair, he watched the black rabbit start to creep along the carpet towards him and then it stopped to twitch its nose and look around. The room span with a massive internal collision of logic. This was no big deal, technically speaking. There were probably lots of rabbits in the woods, and this one just sprang into an open lift, and that’s that. Bet it happened all the time.
It sat up on its hind legs. Wow, it was big and—
It’s a hare, Matt. It’s a hare.
—it was twitching and tilting its large, stiffening ear towards the sounds of lament. How eager and content it looked. How well nourished it was, by the sounds of pain.
It flicked its head at Matt. And sniffed. In the other room, he heard a dozen people call out the name Baal-Berith in unison.
Click.
The rabbit broke into a mad gallop towards him.
Matt leapt off the chair and ran. Across the room, in the other direction, feet pounding the carpet. Conscious of his reflection in the glass, but not wanting to look at it. Not wanting to see the pursuer growing tall.
Until his shoes clipped a pot plant and Matt thought … what the hell are you doing?
He locked his knees and staggered to a panting stop.
It’s a rabbit, ya big dope. It’s Bugs Friggin’ Bunny. He turned and saw the rabbit hadn’t followed him after all. It was over by the reception desk, burrowing its nose into a strewn pack of crisps, near the glass doors to the dining hall.
See? Matt … see? You can let your heart rate drop back to—
A figure was watching him through the glass doors.
Matt swallowed. Hard.
The figure saw him looking, and now it spun around to step back and he knew who it was on the turn. Because the light seemed to catch her short little haircut, and he wondered if she’d been watching him the whole time. Or had she been watching the rabbit instead? Either way, he saw Claire Perry, eyes raw as if she’d been crying, turning away and vanishing into the dining room.
And then the rabbit was gone too. Hopped off behind a couch no doubt, or it had burrowed back into the deep folds of his subconscious. As if it was never really there in the first place. Still, as he went after Claire, he could smell it in the air. The soil.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Matt followed the corridor around to the dining hall. The lights were off in there. He heard nothing but the low buzz of a vending machine which threw a dull glow across the dark room. The only other light was the tiny blip of red from the static cameras they’d placed in here. Funny, he thought, he’d totally forgotten about those being—
Crap, crap, CRAP!
A sudden crashing realisation made him cringe, and he saw a prophetic vision quite vividly. Of the show being finally broadcast, and people on their sofas slapping each other and laughing, as they watched him spasm in fright and run for his life from a harmless, oversized, and possibly even invisible rabbit.
His sigh sounded like an airbed deflating.
Focus.
Like most of the public spaces at The Reed, the dining hall was surrounded with glass walls. So with the lights off, the usual internal reflections on the glass were gone. He could see the dark forest outside clearly now. The branches were no longer swaying. Actually, the trees were as still as a painting. So strange. He would have dearly liked to have switched the lights on in here, but something said it might be better if he didn’t. Better to lay low.
Something caught his eye.
He turned his head to the far corner of the hall, and immediately dropped into a crouch. A thin line of light was spilling from under a door. The kitchen, he remembered. He’d been in there earlier looking for a fork, because they gave him a slice of carrot cake with a spoon. A bloody spoon. He should have known these guys were totally unprepared for this when they thought that was kosher.
He moved across the dining hall, eyes becoming accustomed to the darkness, and he spotted something odd as he went. There was a long table that he hadn’t seen before, filled with neat rows of bottles of … he squinted and confirmed it … of champagne. Alongside them sat an entire fleet of crystal glasses, ready to be filled and clinked. Next to them, white sheets were draped over unseen bumps and bulges. Body-shaped, he thought, and f
or an icy moment he wondered if that might be Abby again, doing her pound-shop ghost routine. No, he told himself, those were bowls of crisps and nibbles.
A breeze rippled the sheet.
He sped up the pace and put a hand against the kitchen door, deciding that even if she wasn’t in here, it didn’t matter. While he was here he’d grab a rolling pin. Or a meat hammer or a plain old knife, in case things kicked off.
She was in there all right, alone. As the door swung in, she sucked in a swift breath and pushed herself up from a table like she was trying to get away. She saw him and froze halfway up. For a second she was a strange photographic tableau of a pasty-faced pixie surrounded by stainless steel. He saw a half-finished glass of milk and a jug. Her cheeks looked raw.
‘Wait,’ Matt said. ‘Don’t go.’
Claire Perry hovered for a while, one hand splayed against the metal table.
‘You’ve been crying.’ He took another step.
‘Leave me alone.’
‘You were watching me.’
She said nothing. Another tear fell. She sank back into the chair.
‘Claire, what is it?’
‘Maybe I should have listened to Simon and not come.’
He went to sit, keeping one eye on the door. ‘Why did you come?’
She pressed her milk to her lip and spoke into the glass. ‘To offer support … to be a good wife.’ That made her chuckle for some reason, but the milk drowned the laugh.
‘What’s so funny?’
‘Cos I’m not a good wife … I’m not a good person.’
He noticed her other hand was on her knee, unseen. He was eager to see what might be in that hand. But a subtle lean back found nothing. Nothing obvious, anyway.
‘What if demons are way better at hiding than we think?’ She looked at him. For a moment, they were a doll’s eyes. ‘What if demons are all bundled up and bedded down where you least expect them?’
He let his eyes scan the room and spotted knives stuck to a magnetic strip on the wall. None were missing. ‘Claire. Were you in Sneddon on the day of the murder?’