Last Days, page 12
Kyle finished his piece and removed the mics. He went inside the temple to assess where they should set up the lights. The ground oozed, then moved under his feet. He adjusted his footing, ventured further into the barn and took more photos with his stills camera: the blackened roof and the patchy walls from a distance.
The camera flash lit up the vaulted air in bursts. Moved shadows. Made intangible shapes dart back and forth in the damp miasma of neglect, as if they sought the darkness through an aversion to his light. He checked the shots on the viewfinder screen as he retreated, eager to be out of the stink and away from the source of his unpleasant thoughts that suggested a responsive character in his surroundings. Dan could get better lit footage when he came back, with or without Gabriel.
Beside the door he had come in through, he paused. And looked more closely at a section of wall four feet down from the edge of the door frame he had passed as he entered, but was now facing on exit; a place where the scent of decomposition was at its worst. The black paint had chipped away, or had been chipped away, and left behind what looked like the hem of a complicated stain on the pale stone. He thought of the Clarendon Road basement, of what the barrister Rachel Phillips had said. Took his mobile phone out and lit the wall up with the screen.
‘No way.’
This was no smear, but an outline of an upright figure. Kyle took out his Zippo and sparked it up for more light. The blue-gold flame batted about, steadied. He peered closer.
Could a watermark, or the vestiges of old paint, or a formation of mildew and fungus, create such a shape? He stood back. It would have been about five feet tall, were it not crouching to shield an indistinct face he was glad he could not see in the same level of detail that shaped the bony legs and thin fingers, the latter raised as if to protect its eyes from something hateful or painful.
No, this was definitely no stain. Individual metatarsals had been fashioned to depict the figure’s sharp feet. And here was a rib cage and a concave stomach, the colour of a tea stain between the darker streaks that represented bones and limbs. He took more photos. Zoomed in on the appalling mouth and its long teeth. Horse teeth with receding gums.
He reached out, touched it. Cold against his fingertips, some kind of matter was not so much raised from the wall, but seared onto it. Fused into the stone like a fossil. He took his hand away. Tried to convince himself it was an accidental formation. Please let it be. A kind of Turin Shroud, but on stone. No, it couldn’t be. This was a man-made image, but made ghastly through physical deterioration surely.
‘Dan!’ he called out through the door. ‘Dan!’ There was no answer. ‘Dan!’
Kyle shivered as if in response to the sun having lowered further behind the farm. Looked about the other walls. It was too dark to see them by the door. Why had he not thought to bring a torch? He dithered. Looked more longingly at the dying light outside than he wanted to admit to himself. Checked his watch: another hour before dusk. And they still had to shoot Sister Katherine’s fermette and get back to the van. If Max saw a photo of this figure, he would start wheedling about them going back to finish the job properly. What had started with such promise was slipping away fast. ‘Shit.’
Kyle walked close to the inside front wall, eager to reach the next narrow pillar of light that fell through the second empty window frame. He traced his lit Zippo down the wall at chest height, a few inches from the stone. In several places the paint had fallen from the wall, but he detected nothing uncanny about the discolourations left behind.
Until he reached the head of the temple. Towards the middle of the wall, he came across what looked like feet, unclothed by raiment or flesh. They hovered a yard from the ground, as if the owner of the feet were levitating. He immediately snapped the Zippo shut. Then realized the darkness beneath those fleshless toes was worse than the sight of them and he fumbled to get the lighter ignited. And saw not just the feet again, but the entire silhouette and in more detail within the surge and retraction of the small flame.
The rest of the figure had flung its arms above a threadbare head. The chin was raised. And pale eyes were rolled back in an ecstasy that was horrible to behold. A malnourished groin exposed its sex as that of a female. As did an impression of dark shrunken paps beneath pronounced collar bones. Strands adrift from the patchy skull could have been lengths of unhealthy hair or some sort of headdress.
It was striding. There was no other word for it. Striding as if through the wall, and downwards from above. The image suggested the idea, and one that was deeply unpleasant for Kyle to entertain, that the figure had been passing through the stone in a moment of wild exultation when its negative, or a trace of its physical remains, had somehow been scorched into the hard, inflammable stone. It must have been etched on somehow. Painted? Carved? Rachel Phillips said they faded. This one hadn’t.
Again, as if Kyle stood upon something not yet desiccated, the scent of carrion was apparent near it. Accompanied by another odour he identified as stagnant water. Carrion and sewage. And . . . and . . . he thought of sneezes . . . dusty feathers around his face. Old greasy pillows. Yes, old feathers, pillowcases stained yellow. Aged clothes, maybe. Damp, unwashed, rotted fabric. The very same odour from Clarendon Road.
His scattering thoughts snatched at an explanation: the cult had dug a septic tank and made primitive latrines; their vintage silage had seeped into the floor of the temple. And these figures had been put upon the walls because the cult had gone mad out here. Madder, gone crazier.
Kyle took photos of the second figure from three angles at close range; the flash lit the thing up horribly in the dank enormity of the barn. When he zoomed onto its face and tried to get the entire murky head framed within the viewfinder, a tremendous crash outside obliterated the silence of the farm. It sounded like a heavy door slammed shut. With force, with anger. What door? The buildings had no doors, were empty. Old and empty so maybe some timber had fallen. A roof slate. The place is unsafe. Is dangerous. Condemned. Damned.
‘Hey!’ he called out from where he crouched in the darkness and stared at the distant doorway: a square of grey light in a black surround. And was only motivated to straighten his legs and stand up when he realized he had cowered again, in what now felt like a fearful sublimation beneath the clawed toes of the thing upon the wall; at the head of the temple where a crucifix would hang in a chapel.
He should leave. Go.
‘Dan! Dan!’ The others were here, just outside; there was nothing to worry about. But he suddenly cramped inside at the unwelcome recollection of the hasty exit he and Dan had made from the house on Clarendon Road. They’d heard a door slam there too. Shit.
Kyle relit his lighter. Tried to move quietly through the dead leaves, the broken wood, the unseen objects that bumped against his toes and broke beneath his heels. His jerky movement across the uneven floor put the lighter out. All he could hear was his own desperate breath, the thump of hot blood inside his ears. But he dare not take his eyes from the doorway. And it was so dark in the middle of the temple; the light from the two windows and gaping entrance remained within the rotten frames and came little further.
Just ahead of him, he heard quick feet flit through the dross. ‘Dan?’ He thrust out both hands to fend off an unseen form racing through the darkness. At him. If anything were to touch him, his heart would stop: he knew it at once.
Nothing came. There was just him in the silence. The terrible stillness. The waiting. The darkness. It had been a figment of his own witless confusion and near total blindness.
All in your mind. An animal. Rat or fox.
Zippo open and flaring; the shadows retreated across the murky floor. Back to the walls. The black walls. He followed the ragged hem of one shape that threw itself upwards to the ceiling, in flight from the flame. The shadow vanished into the blackened timbers of the roof’s underside where they met the wall opposite the door he’d come in through. And just beneath the place where timber met stone, high up, at the very edge of his lighter’s pale luminance, he glimpsed another patch of haphazardly flaking stone.
He moved closer to the wall opposite the door and held the stills camera aloft. Gripped by a thoughtless curiosity, he lingered in that terrible place long enough to shoot another wide-angle shot of the wall where he thought he’d seen the ragged silhouette of a third figure. He must have missed it earlier as he took most of the other pictures at eye level.
He checked the viewfinder of the digital camera: too dark. He’d need a light stronger than the camera’s flash.
Kyle left the barn and brought in the camera and its tripod; it still had the ND filter attached. And he wanted his own breathless shock on tape, so attached a tie mic to the neck of his shirt and ran out a longer cable from the mixer. Checked the sound levels on the DAT. With jerky, fumbling hands he placed a little portable LEDPAD light in the doorway. Dan could light up the etchings properly, or whatever they were, when he came back.
On the far wall, the little LEDPAD cast a vague phosphorescence upon the blackened stone, a horrible glow that spread to the ceiling of the temple. He stepped back inside and confirmed the depiction of a third figure in the thin light. ‘Christ almighty.’
It too was composed of stains or scorches. But it differed from the other two figures, because this one was partially clothed. Remnants of a dark cloth twisted about its emaciated length. The visible limbs were more bone than flesh, and the sharp face was gripped with an excitement that inspired nothing but revulsion. There was a suggestion of a jaw wide and loose, if not hanging open. Like its companions, the eyes were wide, pale, and lost in some private joy. About its head there might have been a cowl loose about the thin head. And one long hand held a staff or sceptre.
‘Not sure what I am seeing here,’ he said into his tie mic. ‘But it’s inside the Gathering’s temple. On the wall. What looks like a figure. And there’s another above the doorway. A third at the far end.’ Kyle carefully retraced his steps across the soft floor of the barn. He should get something with the ND filter, so he shot the first figure by the door and the second one opposite the entrance quickly, but spent time looking about himself, into the half-lit barn while he did so, because of his earlier suspicion that something other than him had moved in side.
And there it was again: a rapid skitter through dead leaves at the far end of the building, where the LEDPAD light barely touched the walls. ‘Jesus!’ Before he managed to turn towards the sound, something brushed against him.
Kyle lost his balance. Lurched towards his right, fell to one knee. His right hand plunged through a surface cold and wet. Moisture instantly pooled about the knee sunken into the floor. Frantic, he raked a hand about. It met thin air. He stood up too quickly in the gloom, staggered about, disoriented by the dark and the stench. That’s all it is. Keep cool.
In the half-light, he saw nothing near him, nor against any of the three walls the little LEDPAD light tried to illuminate. But a thin and brittle touch lingered on the side of his neck, like the delicate impression of leafless sticks brushed while passing through an autumnal wood.
Holding his breath and then whispering to prevent himself tearing outside, he moved the camera about on the tripod and shot the peeling walls, the charcoal timbers and murky stains. But nothing moved in the viewfinder. He swallowed. ‘It’s uncanny, but inside here, you get the feeling that you’re not alone. I’m really not liking this.’
Under the unwieldy bulk of the camera and tripod, Kyle retreated through the barn and burst back through the doorway, peering over his shoulder as he stumbled forward, fearing a second set of footsteps in swift pursuit to the threshold.
‘An auditory and visual hallucination. That is what it was.’ Surely, because he could see by the dusky light in the doorway that nothing was behind him. Aiming the camera back at the interior from outside, he picked up the distant glow of the far wall on the viewfinder, but no motion. He could study the audio tracks and footage later. He didn’t want to play back those awful figures here, when so near the derelict temple.
He sucked at the air and hurriedly packed the second camera and tripod into their bags. Glancing about the courtyard, he now imagined faces just out of sight, peering down at him from the empty windows and from between the gaps in the nursery walls. Those faces would be smaller. He shook himself, hating the direction of his thoughts. ‘Stop it.’ Then, ‘Dan!’
No answer. So who had made the noise? And touched you inside the temple? Even louder: ‘Dan!’
No answer.
The sky had purpled from the Atlantic blue-grey he remembered before entering the last building, but he suspected some kind of permanent stain had been smeared across his eyes inside the temple barn. He looked to the sun behind the low cloud and tried to cleanse his vision.
What to do?
Sister Katherine’s fermette still had to be found. He’d have to shoot the remainder of the footage alone. At least until Dan chose to reappear to do his bloody job. Which meant none of his footage would be properly composed or lit in the fading light, and they wouldn’t have variety from two cameras. He’d also have to do the sound on one microphone. But this was too good to miss, let alone ruin. Coming back the following day was a bridge too far; the farm was too far away from the hotel and they had the ferry to catch. They were flying to the States in two days; as it was they hardly had time to prepare for that. ‘Christ.’
Kyle packed the sound equipment he’d need to go solo. Shouldered the first camera with the low-light filter still attached, but left the rest of their stuff near the temple. He took big strides across the overgrown courtyard, his eyes everywhere, looking for Dan, for Gabriel. He paused to peer at the copse of trees. No sign of them. He thought very hard about splitting. The other two must have returned to the van. Why? What was Dan thinking? He didn’t want to go back across the field in the dark, alone. It could be difficult to find the gate. And there were the traps that he believed to be utterly plausible now. ‘Fuck this.’
Then he became conscious again of the stillness of the air about him, between the buildings. Not a breath of wind stirred the grass. And not a single bird opened its yellow beak for miles around. So what had caused a timber or tile to abruptly dislodge in one of the ruins? He swallowed. Wet his lips. Tried to slow his heavy breathing under the weight of the equipment he carried. Bit down on his panic and staggered past the former artisan’s workshop in the direction of where the meadow continued below the farm.
Once clear of the main farm buildings, he spotted the chimney of what had to be Sister Katherine’s little house, about half a mile away, almost entirely concealed by a line of willow trees.
His focus returned. Nervous excitement bustled anew. A long shot on the tripod, then a medium shot, would be ideal to catch more of the curious atmosphere contained in the landscape he no longer doubted was imagined. But the time for varying the camera work was long gone, as was a delay of the inevitable. Now or never.
Cursing Max, Dan and Gabriel, Kyle broke through the long grass and headed towards Sister Katherine’s abandoned fermette, alone.
Forty years after Sister Katherine packed her bags, the fermette remained fifteen square metres of squat stone of uneven sizes, beneath a mostly absent layer of earthen stucco. One end of the house was concealed by ivy that clambered up to the chimney. Many roof tiles had dislodged, but the lines and angles of the roof appeared straight and firm. A sea of grass, white at the tips, reached the sill of the ground-floor windows. The panes of glass were intact and the front door in place.
Kyle set the camera up on the tripod and shot close-ups of the fermette from the front: one door; three small windows, two of them on the ground floor. He lined up the sound on the mixer and fitted his mic. Took a breath and looked about the darkening landscape. Satisfied he was still alone, he turned to the door and hoped it was locked. It wasn’t. He pushed it open.
In the grainy light prior to dusk, three thick beams crossed with smaller ribs of the same dark timber appeared on the ceiling. Dirty plaster filled the spaces between the beams and covered the walls too. On the cement floor, before the great blackened fireplace, he was confronted by an ancient-looking bathtub, mounted on clawed feet. It supplied a sudden notion of domesticity he found unwelcome amongst such neglect. A cramped staircase made of dark wood turned once then disappeared into the first floor.
Kyle crept inside and set up the camera to resume his commentary from behind the tripod by reading from his script. If this wasn’t extreme guerrilla film-making, then nothing was. Battery level on the camera wasn’t great. There was a spare in the bag, but he wanted to be quick; though he refused to dwell on the reasons why.
‘This is Sister Katherine’s fermette. In London, the trend was set. And the same physical separation between herself and the rest of The Last Gathering continued here. This building had electricity and basic plumbing, but it was still more primitive than she could stand, and she would never sink to this level again. In the Arizona desert, she bought the fabulous art deco palace for herself, miles from the abandoned copper mine that her followers in The Temple of the Last Days occupied. Perhaps the mansion was a reaction to the privations she endured in France.
‘There are no photos in existence of the interior of this building during Sister Katherine’s occupation, so we can only rely upon the hearsay of the apostates that Irvine Levine interviewed, to imagine what it was once like. But out here in those cold Norman winters, it was claimed that Sister Katherine acquired a fondness for antique furniture and thick rugs, for velvet drapes. She was sensitive to the cold and impatient with the heat.
