Last Days, page 17
And too long, too long, these feet that hung in the cold air, and this length of clawed finger on gristle hands too weary to move from where they had been cast outwards like the crucified of the air. He was gone from himself and was inside this thing.
Twisting, he fought and struggled to wake the moment he half comprehended this entrapment inside something frail and unfamiliar above the bed; a body that still rose gently to the ceiling he could not see. And the very notion of who he was writhed in search of a return to whatever flesh had once clothed his own bones.
Nearby, beyond him, in the darkness, there was a scratching and bumping, then a frantic bang bang bang. The noise erupted from another room, but one close by.
And then he dropped. And came awake from a sense of being in the air. Was shocked into a palsy, a jerking in disorderly bedding, and left panting, turned on his side, cramped over, bent in half.
Slowly, he explored his face with tremulous fingertips. Felt stubble around an immediately familiar mouth: his snub nose, his tatty hair. The rush of recognition spread and he lengthened his own back, his own legs and arms. Clenched his fists and curled toes.
Sat up.
There had been bumping, but now there was only scratching. Frantic carpet pulling. The cat, somewhere out by the front door.
Kyle rolled across the bed and turned the bedside lamp on. Squinted in the light that bruised his eyes. Staggered from the bed and crossed the room that functioned as the bedroom and living room. Snapped on the hallway light and peered down the corridor.
The cat turned its head briefly from where it crouched at the front door, nose dipped to the thin crack between the mat and the door. It glanced at him only to flash eyes gone to ebony marbles in fright. Its hackles were up. Out, out, out; let me out.
Feet numb and dragging like he had a trapped nerve in his groin, Kyle careened down the hallway, past the kitchen and bathroom; the caravan dimensions and dollhouse appliances were in darkness beyond doors pulled to but not closed. Somewhere within the murk of the kitchen was the litter tray. A backup. Maybe the cat couldn’t wait to go, had held on, but had reached the critical moment and was embarrassed and unsettled as cats can be about such matters. Better get it outside.
Wakefulness complete, Kyle shivered in the cold. If he let the cat out, he’d have to go down a flight of stairs to let it into the communal garden at the back of the block. ‘I thought we were past all that. Thought you could wait until the morning. Eh?’
Catch off, lock unlatched, he only managed to open the door a fraction before the cat fled out, slippery and sinewy as water, through the crack and onto the unlit stairwell. Shivering in his briefs, his body still frail with the residue of a troubled dismorphic dreamtime, Kyle knocked the staircase lights on and padded down the dusty carpeted stairs to the ground floor, pondering the nightmare all the way to the bottom: he’d never experienced anything like it, anything so vivid. Twice now. Out of his body, and off his bed like he had become lost outside of himself, or been taken and put somewhere else, far worse. Why? Those things on the walls in France and London, flashed, then flickered inside his mind.
Cold air seeped under and around the back door and broke the uncomfortable enquiry of his thoughts, returned his focus to the real world. No trace of dawn outside; sky black, clouds concealed the stars. What time is it? The cat climbed the wood and reached out its front legs to hurry him. Still frantic and coal-eyed, muscles tensed and twitched under the bushed-up fur. And then it was gone, without a sound or backward look, into the garden darkness. ‘Not coming down again tonight,’ he said, but the cat wasn’t listening. It had already scattered away through the overgrown yard.
He might need the bleach and a rag, a plastic bag, from under the kitchen sink to clean up and dispose of the mess in the litter tray, or worse. A hassle that should have been unbearable at this time of night, though he discovered he was glad to be awake. To not be in, or above, his bed any longer.
The lights would stay on. He’d doze again when the sun rose. Still be up in plenty of time to start work. Would be no time for the gym, again. Pity that. A trivial matter compared to the simple and profound relief of being awake. Of not being stuck inside a nightmare.
But back inside the hallway of his flat, he paused under the overhead light. Raised his chin and sniffed at a scent of burned hair, a whiff of decomposition. And more: old water, damp clothes forgotten in dark unheated rooms. Something else too . . . What was that? That smell? The moist ashes of a dead fire. Like a garden fire full of newspaper that had been hosed down. In here? How?
He checked the bathroom. Could smell the mildew on the wall above the cistern, his own musty animal scent on the one bath towel that needed washing, the scent of once wet but now dry lino, the municipal scents of old bleach and disinfectant. He went further inside. Sniffed. A sickly tang of cheap spray-on deodorant that left white grit inside the armpits of his shirts. Distant deep-well smells of the toilet, seat up. He had a good nose; had never taken cocaine, a rarity in film and television production. But there was nothing amiss in the bathroom. The walls were clear.
He recalled the noise in his dream, the slaps, bangs and scratching like the rake of fingers. Thought about the hotel room in Normandy. Leaned against the wall, dizzy with a sudden suspicion of the improbable becoming probable. He shivered, swallowed. Not here. Never. Please.
Kyle fled back to the kitchen with his breath caught high in his chest. Looked up at the wall space; saw white paint shadowed to ivory between the cabinets, and above the sink and cooker. Some cooking oil and tomato sauce splatter above the hot plates, but nothing unusual there. The litter tray was clean, the grit dry. The windows were locked.
He looked up at the ceiling. Cobwebs, and the small black dots that insects leave in an orbit of tiny yellowy rings you only ever see in rented flats. Old stains that he managed to avoid; but they were in place when he moved in two years ago. A small moth trembled in a corner. Beyond the one small window, the outside world was black.
But the smell originated from the kitchen. Was weaker now, but still noticeable, as if a window had recently been opened to air the room. He moved further inside the kitchen, chased the scent of stale carrion and bad water to the bin. Opened it: not in there. Peered into the cabinets under the sink: a burst of furniture polish and lemon. Not there. He checked the two cupboards beside the cooker: a tang of aluminium, a trace of dust. Spun around and went across to the two cabinets that held his tins and dry goods, opened them.
And stepped back with a gasp. A tin of pineapple and a tin of red kidney beans fell and banged off the top of the microwave oven, followed by a trickle of spice cubes, a desiccated bulb of garlic, and a green net with one onion inside. After the small avalanche came a concentrated gust of stagnant water, of corruption gone dry, lit matches, wet clothes.
Every other packet and can inside the cupboard had been swept aside, and was bunched or upended at either side of the wooden storage space. At the rear of the cabinet the wallpaper distinguished itself with a pattern of stains.
Jesus, God, no. He looked away. No. No. Looked back. Stepped forward, kicked the onion on the floor aside. He squinted at the broad discolouration. Stared and stared for some kind of meaning. It looked as if a soil pipe had burst behind a wall to spend a year soaking into the plaster and wallpaper. But when he fed the cat yesterday afternoon, he’d had this cupboard open. There had been no stain on the wall.
Gingerly, he reached a hand forward, pressed the stain at its heart. The paper looked singed too, as if by a flame that had been quickly doused.
He stepped away, concentrated on the thicker detail, the longer band through the centre of the contamination on his wall, this reeking stigmata that had appeared suddenly in the night. Not dissimilar to the stone in Normandy, the unpainted plaster of Clarendon Road’s basement wall, and the smooth paint of the bathroom in his Caen hotel room. Different surfaces, but all redecorated with the same colour scheme: singed, glazed, wet, the murk of soiled bandages, dark moisture dry on a shroud, impressions of . . .
Dear God. Two long curving bands across the centre of the blemish suddenly kick-started his comprehension. Ulna. Radius. Latinate phrases dropped into his mind from biology at school. And at one end, like a cluster of stones, were the impressions of carpals; the bones of a hand papered by a veneer of skin. At the other end, the twin bulbs of an elbow . . . humerus . . . the funny bone, though Kyle wasn’t laughing.
It was as if a forearm had been inside that cupboard, having emerged through the solid wall to cast about. To slap and bang the cupboard doors open and closed as he slept, like an arm thrust through a window ajar to flail for purchase inside a room; before it was withdrawn, leaving an impression of itself, a dirty reproach to the naked eye, and to the living.
THIRTEEN
WEST HAMPSTEAD, LONDON. 17 JUNE 2011. 7 A.M.
He called Dan. ‘Dude. Where you at?’
‘Home. Wassa time?’
‘Seven. Get over here. Please.’
There was a lot of heavy breathing, coughing, the sound of a large shape moving. ‘What’s the hurry? I’m knackered. Didn’t get in till two.’
‘You need to see this. I mean, you need to see this.’
‘I already got a call about the Normandy shoot from Finger Mouse. Last night. He went straight to the temple scene. And he’s doing his nut. Thinks you’re bullshitting him about the documentary and making a horror film on the QT instead.’
‘Maybe we are. And we are the feckin’ cast, mate. Only Max forgot to tell us.’
‘Whaddya mean?’
‘Just joking. Get over here asap. And bring the Canon. It’s shown up on the kitchen wall.’
‘What is it?’
‘An arm.’
‘Get out of here.’
‘See.’ Kyle traced his finger above the hint of forearm bones in the discolouration. The miasma now issued little further than the cupboard space, but there was still a residue. ‘Forearm. That, at the end, looks like hand bones to me. Which would make that lump at the other end a bit of elbow. Zoom in on it.’
Dan looked at Kyle over the viewfinder. ‘You did this.’
‘Fuck you and your mother.’
‘No shit?’
‘No shit. And like I told you, I had this weird dream. Then woke up in another dream . . . was off the bed. Felt like I was in the air or something, but like in a different body.’ Kyle shrugged, and appealed to Dan for understanding. ‘Pretty sure it was the same thing I dreamed in Caen. Like I was someone else. And when I came out of the dream there was this scratching and—’
‘No way am I believing this crap, Kyle.’
‘Dan! I am not bullshitting you. This is for real. It was the cat scratching to get out that woke me up. Only thing that has ever frightened him as much were the fireworks the twats next door let off last year—’
‘Glad to hear it was the cat. You had me going, but only for a second.’
‘Forget the cat. OK. Forget it. When I was dreaming I also heard this knocking. Banging. That’s what freaked the cat and made it claw the carpet. I let him out and when I came back inside the flat I checked the bathroom and kitchen. And smelled exactly the same thing I smelled in France. And in Clarendon Road. It was coming out of here.’ Kyle thrust an index finger at the stained wall. ‘The banging was the cupboard doors. These. But the doors were being banged from inside. And that stain was there when I looked. Stinking like sewage and something dead. How? How, mate? The hand in the hotel, same deal.’
Dan shrugged, but was paler than the fridge door. He swallowed. ‘Why are you special? I’ve had no dreams. Nothing left an impression of its arse on my walls. I was at both shoots.’
‘Beats me.’ Kyle thought on what Dan had said; it made him feel better, for a moment, until he recalled Max asking him if he had been touched. ‘He knows something. That old fruit.’
‘What?’
‘Max. He asked me if I had been touched. Touched? Why would he ask that?’
‘But you weren’t.’
Kyle looked at Dan. ‘I thought . . . I thought someone was in the temple. Felt like someone ran at me. In the dark. And I felt something. On my neck . . .’
‘You never said anything.’
‘Because what happened in the fermette was worse and then Gabriel stepped in a trap. I told you someone was downstairs in Katherine’s cottage. It was like . . . like they were looking for me.’ Kyle looked at the wall then dragged his fingers down his face. ‘This is just crazy.’
‘Think I need to sit down to take this in, mate. Got anything to eat?’
Kyle shook his head. ‘Don’t be silly.’
‘What a surprise.’
‘Let’s do a piece. Me to camera. I want to record what happened last night. Video-diary style. Yeah?’
It had gone dark when they finished the rough cut of the Normandy footage; backup copies from Finger Mouse’s all-nighter had arrived at midday, after Kyle completed an unscripted narration to camera about what had befallen Gabriel at the farm, Susan White’s death, their executive producer’s previously undisclosed past, his own dream experiences and the stains on the wall of his kitchen. Afterwards he went and sat alone at his desk and attempted to work on the Arizona scenes in the script and his questions for the cops.
He hadn’t drawn the blinds and in a stunned silence stared at his own reflection in the bay window overlooking the street. The cat slept on his desktop, its tail occasionally feeling about the keyboard of his laptop before it returned to drape itself across his forearm, as if to make sure Kyle was still in place in the chair. The cat had shown up at one to eat an entire tin of cat food and most of the anchovies off Dan’s pizza, before making a fuss of him and Dan. He wasn’t the only one who needed company now the sun had sunk and the night had come in.
The recordings of the three figures in the barn lost something of their impact on a screen, as they did on his stills camera when loaded as jpegs on to his laptop. But even though they appeared less distinct, more expressionistic and open to interpretation, repeat viewings and a lack of definition hadn’t dimmed their suggestive power, nor a hint of a suspended animation about the emaciated silhouettes. Seeing them again left him too nervous to fully concentrate on the script notes.
Under the noise his feet had made amongst the debris of the temple barn, it was almost impossible to tell if another set of footsteps had announced themselves near him. They could isolate that section of the audio track when they had more time. But there was no mistaking the sound of a door slammed downstairs in the fermette, or the distant scrape of feet on cement, while he cowered upstairs beside a rotted bed, wet and alive with what appeared to be an amalgam of newts, centipedes and small grass snakes.
Behind him in the flat, summer sunlight suddenly burst across the ceiling and over his shoulders. ‘These are badass, mate,’ Dan said, who’d begun unpacking Max’s lights to distract himself. He grinned beside a desk lamp that cast the same intense white light Kyle recalled from Max’s apartment.
Kyle turned in his chair. ‘Imagine that one hundred times stronger, and you have Max’s place.’
‘I’m not kidding, mate, but I feel better already. Max sent some to me too last night when I was out. Neighbour took them in. Three lamps. Same as you. Man’s a star.’
‘Max said they’d cleanse your soul. Any joy?’
‘I can feel a few dirty marks wearing off. Where’d you want the other two. By the bed?’
‘Hell no. Sleeping in there’s going to be difficult enough without the midday sun shining in my bloody eyes.’
Dan peered about the skirting board. ‘You’re out of sockets anyway. Where’s the Jack Daniels?’
‘Fridge. Put some Coke in mine. There’s two cans in there.’
‘Ice?’
‘Freezer box is shot. Hasn’t worked in ages.’
Dan walked out with one of Max’s lamps, tearing plastic off the cable and plug. Kyle turned back to the window and acknowledged something else that he could not deny, and that was how affecting their footage was. Little was lit by anything other than the LEDPAD light in the temple and fermette locations, which didn’t abet clarity, but what he had recorded was engrossing. The dilapidated buildings Dan had shot in the still, silent, overgrown meadow contributed something of the atmosphere of expectation, if not scrutiny, that he’d intuited. Gabriel looked wizened, half crazed, anxious, afraid. Dan had captured Brother Gabriel’s discomfort with a few great close-ups of his fidgety, sweaty face; his thin lips wincing and muttering. The guy was broken and broke; he had no choice about his participation either. Something they had in common. Maybe it was the same deal with Susan, though she wasn’t around any more to spend her fee. And Max had told them both to keep his involvement in the Gathering secret. Susan White got carried away. A new plot line, a new tension had emerged; the story of the film’s mishaps within the story of the cult, and a sideline about a duplicitous executive producer. Magic.
A second interview with Gabriel in his hospital bed when they returned from the States would be terrific; he’d augment that with the sobering news about Susan’s death, one week after they interviewed her. Bring those sounds from Clarendon Road up and into the mix. Loop back Susan’s dialogue about “presences”. In his mind, he was already screening and rescreening edits, nurturing climaxes, to suggest a much greater involvement from the crew, reluctantly dragged into the story as unwitting witnesses, into unexpected and uncanny phenomena. The material was priceless. Even he and Dan’s reactions were genuine; you couldn’t fake fear like that.
‘Kyle! Kyle! Get in here.’
Kyle was out of his chair and at the kitchen door in four bounds from his desk. The cat overtook him and scratched at the front door before Kyle poked his face around the kitchen doorway and saw Dan’s astonished, if not horrified, expression.
