I picked a solid minor chord, and began striking the keyboard in time with the rhythm transposed on the pages. Almost immediately I felt the sympathetic resonance rise from the chamber beneath.

  “It’s working,” Roger shouted. But I was already lost in a world of pounding chords.

  Something was far wrong. I knew it at an intellectual level. But the music controlled me deeper than that, in the hindbrain where the evolutionary equivalent of a gibbering monkey hit a log with a stick and enjoyed the noise. My hands pounded the keyboard, hands clenched into fists. The beat sped up a notch and the walls shook, loose mortar falling from the ceiling.

  Just as I felt I could go no further, the beat slowed, mellowed.

  As it had the first time, my head swam, and the walls of the keep melted and ran. The fireplace receded into a great distance until it was little more than a pinpoint of light in a blanket of darkness, and I was again alone, in a vast cathedral of emptiness.

  A tide took me, a swell that lifted me and transported me, faster than thought, to the green twilight of ocean depths far distant.

  I realized I was not alone. We floated mere shadows now, scores… nay, tens of scores of us, in that cold silent sea. I was aware that Roger was near, but I had no thought for aught but the rhythm, the dance. Far below us, cyclopean ruins shone dimly in a luminescent haze. Columns and rock faces tumbled in a non-Euclidean geometry that confused the eye and brooked no close inspection. And something deep in those ruins knew we were there.

  We dreamed, of vast empty spaces, of giant clouds of gas that engulfed the stars, of blackness where there was nothing but endless dark, endless quiet. And while our slumbering god dreamed, we danced for him, there in the twilight, danced to the rhythm.

  We were at peace.

  For a time.

  Then it came for us.

  The first I knew was a subtle shifting in the beat. The empty spaces no longer felt empty; instead they had filled with something cold. Cold, and completely indifferent.

  But we had its attention. It came to us, summonsed by our beat, for we had, inadvertently or otherwise, sent an invitation.

  God help me. We invited it.

  And it came.

  It rent the keep around us, tossing stone aside like pebbles. I looked over at Roger. He had a large smile of contentment on his face. Even as the keep fell on him he smiled.

  It is my last memory of that terrible night… the smile, the last I saw of my friend, before he went to his eternal peace.

  Seven

  I turned the page, expecting more. But the tale ended there. The remainder of the papers was the transcript of the notations from the cellar walls; page after page of lines and dots. They meant nothing to me, but even as I looked at them my fingers started to drum the rhythm on the windowsill.

  I downed the last of the whisky and went in search of more.

  The hotel was in the last stages of closing down for the night, but the barman was still there, putting chairs upside down on tables.

  “We’re closed,” he said as I entered. All his earlier bonhomie had long gone. But that was OK. I had a cure for that. I took out two twenties.

  “One gets me a bottle of whisky. The other goes in your pocket.”

  That got me a small smile as he went behind the bar and got a bottle. He handed it over, put a twenty in the till and made the other disappear.

  “Fine by me sir. But I’ll no’ be telling you anything.”

  “You’ve had your orders then?”

  He went back to stacking chairs, already pulling the three wise monkey routine.

  I left him to it and took the whisky upstairs. I needed the company.

  I read the papers again while working my way down the bottle. Then I spent a long time staring at the dots and lines of the rhythmic notation, trying to make sense of them, trying to match them with the beat I could still hear, still feel.

  After a while the whisky started to do its job.

  Finally the beat was dampened. The last forty-eight hours caught up with me in a rush.

  I lay on the bed fully clothed and was asleep minutes later.

  ~o0O0o~

  The beat in my head in the morning was a different rhythm altogether, one I was all too familiar with. I took it outside with a pack of cigarettes and a coffee and showed it who was boss.

  Half an hour later I was on my way back to the keep.

  The weather was fine so I decided to walk. It gave me a chance to clear my head and get my nicotine level up to something approaching normal. By the time I approached the gate into the field I was almost feeling normal. All that changed as I walked towards the ruin of the keep.

  My head began to buzz, thrumming in time with the beat that my hands had set up, slapping against my thighs. The world blurred and ran.

  Like too much whisky, and standing too close to a train.

  I backed away.

  The symptoms receded, slowly. By the time I was back at the gate my head had cleared, but I had to force my hands still. I stood there, breathing heavily, for several minutes.

  An old lady approached up the road from town, leading an even older looking dog on a long leash. She nodded, but didn’t speak, and put her hand on the gate.

  “I wouldn’t go in there,” I said. “There’s something not right.”

  She looked me up and down.

  “Lad, I’ve been walking this path near every day for forty years. I’d ken if something wisnae right.”

  “But the keep… it’s…” I didn’t have a word for what I wanted to express, but she nodded anyway.

  “Aye,” she said softly. “It is. But if you dinnae bother it, it will nae bother you.”

  She patted me on the hand.

  “Dinna worry lad. It’s an auld thing. It cannae hurt naebody.”

  She walked through the gate. The dog hesitated long enough to cock his leg and mark the route before following. They walked off across the field, passing within ten yards of the rubble. Neither seemed to be affected in any way.

  I walked through the gate again, heading after them. But after only five yards my head throbbed and my hands twitched.

  I knew when I was beat. I backed off again, and stood by the gate smoking a cigarette down to the stub. I watched the keep all the time. Nothing moved, there was no sound.

  But there was something there.

  I remembered the words of the master of the keep.

  There is something there whose dreams are stronger than mine, something oblivious to the petty squabbles of men, something in which I might lose myself.

  I wasn’t quite ready to be lost just yet.

  But I was ready to be paid. I made my way slowly back to the hotel. I kept looking over my shoulder, back towards the keep. I don’t know what I expected, but something had me worried… a nagging fear, like a forewarning of trouble to come. In my business you learn quickly to trust your hunches, and mine was now telling me to run away, back to the comforts of the city. But, like Billy in the bar the night before, the call of ready cash was currently louder and stronger.

  I should have listened more intently.

  Eight

  Brian Johnson was a man of action. Less than five hours after I called and laid out the story for him, he arrived in Arisaig with a team of sound technicians garnered from Glasgow University and the BBC.

  He’d told me to meet him at the keep. He wasn’t a man to refuse. I took what was left of the whisky with me, bought a spare pack of cigarettes, and went to wait. I found a rock by the roadside with a view over the loch and sat there for several hours, letting the quiet fill me. I was aware the keep was at my back, but I was in no hurry to turn.

  They arrived in the middle of the afternoon in two huge trucks, with Johnson bringing up the rear in an SUV that was nearly as big as my office. I walked up and met them at the gate.

  “This is it?” he said as he got out of the car. “This pile of rubble?”

  I nodded.

  “Just take a walk through the gate, you’ll see what I mean.”

  He opened the gate and motioned me forward to join him.

  I shook my head.

  “I’ve seen it.”

  He managed to get ten yards before he staggered back, clutching at his forehead. While he was recovering one of the techs stepped forward. I didn’t stop him.

  But neither did anything else. Whistling a happy tune he walked up to the rubble and starting setting up his kit.

  I’d had enough time to come up with a theory.

  “Have any of the tech guys been to your club?”

  Johnson was only now recovering, his eyes starting to regain focus. I passed him the whisky bottle and he sucked at it eagerly before answering.

  “This lot? Nah. These are all just guys that owe me a favour.”

  I didn’t need to know why.

  “I think that somehow the keep knows when you’ve heard the rhythm before. Somehow it resonates.” I rapped at my forehead with my knuckles. “Up here. And when you get close enough, it resonates a lot.”

  Johnson looked around. The tech boys crawled all over the site setting up the kit and generally being industrious.

  “Let’s leave it to the experts,” Johnson said, leading me to his 4X4. “I need a beer.”

  Ten minutes later I was back on the same seat at the bar. But the barman was being a lot more cooperative. Johnson’s reputation stretched even this far. Everyone in the bar watched him, but the big man seemed oblivious. He knocked his first beer back in silence then turned to me.

  “The tech lads are all excited,” he said. “They think you’ve stumbled on a vibrational anomaly.”

  I laughed.

  “What’s one of them when it’s at home?”

  He took a pocket watch from his jacket and let it hang on the length of its chain. It hung straight down, unmoving.

  “Put your hand below the watch,” he said. “Palm up.”

  I did as he asked.

  The watch started to move. First it swayed from side to side then slowly started to spin in a circle that widened until the watch rotated slowly above my hand.

  “Take your hand away,” Johnston said.

  Again I complied.

  The watch stopped moving and went back to hanging dead on the end of the chain.

  “Now you try it,” he said, handing me the watch.

  I took it from him and held it by the chain. The watch hung dead until Johnston put his hand under it, whereupon it immediately started to spin in a circle.

  When he took his hand away, the watch went dead again.

  I examined the watch.

  “You’re doing it wrong,” Johnston said. “You’re looking at the dancer rather than the dance.”

  He took the watch back and held it over his beer. It swung in a much wider circle this time.

  “Everything has a beat. Even the beer,” he said.

  “I think I’ve heard of this,” I said. “It’s dowsing, isn’t it?”

  He shook his head.

  “Not quite. According to the tech lads a dowsing rod responds to electromagnetic fields. This is more of a mechanism for accessing innate rhythms. Your unconscious makes slight adjustments to your muscles in response to the rhythms, and these are amplified and turned into rotational movement by spin vectors being produced in your fingertips. The same as dowsing, but different, if you get my meaning?”

  “No,” I laughed. “You’ve been spending too much time with the geeks… you’re starting to sound like one.”

  It was his turn to laugh.

  “This beat has got to me. I need to know what it is.”

  He held the watch dangling over his beer. I watched it spin.

  “Let me try again.”

  I took the watch from him and held it by the chain, letting it still before putting my hand under it.

  “It will also answer questions,” Johnston said softly. “Your unconscious knows a lot more than it tells you, but you can fool it and get an answer using the pendulum.”

  “How?”

  “Just let it hang and ask a question you know the answer to,” he said. “It will respond with either a yes or no, true or false.”

  Here goes nothing.

  “Is my name Derek Adams?”

  The watch started to swing, slowly at first then gathering momentum until it swung, in a tight three-inch circle.

  “OK,” Johnston said. “You’re a clockwise positive.”

  “Nah… I’m a Protestant,” I said, laughing.

  He pointed at the watch.

  “Clockwise spin for a true response. Try again, with a false this time.”

  He reached out and stopped the watch. It hung dead on the end of the chain again.

  “This is just a stupid parlour trick. It has to be,” I said.

  Even before I’d finished the sentence, the watch started to move, side to side at first, then settling down into a tight three-inch circle. A tight counter-clockwise circle.

  It had me wondering.

  “That doesn’t prove anything.”

  “No. But it is indicative of something. It gives me hope, that there is more to life than just blood and flesh, that there might just be a point beyond staying alive as long as possible.”

  “I don’t know about that,” I said. “As you said, if it’s anything, it’s just your unconscious mind finding an outlet.”

  Johnston looked wistful.

  “Maybe. But why not ask it some questions that there is no way you know the answer to either consciously or unconsciously? See what happens then. Would you think it wondrous if you started to get some truth from the great beyond?”

  I looked down at the watch, then back at him.

  “You might just be the strangest gangster I’ve ever met.”

  He laughed so loud that everyone in the bar looked up.

  “I’ll take that as a compliment,” he said, taking the watch from me.

  He put it away in his pocket and stood.

  “And now my rhythm says it’s time we were moving. Let’s go see what the other geeks have dug up.”

  Nine

  Gloom gathered around the keep as dusk fell. Johnson and I stood by the gate, sharing the whisky and smoking. I had no idea what the tech team had been up to, but it looked like they were taking it seriously enough.

  One of them, slightly older than the rest, walked over to us just as the first star appeared in the sky to the east.

  “We’re ready for an experiment Mr. Johnson,” he said. I saw that they had placed a series of amplifiers and speakers around the keep. Suddenly I wanted very much to be somewhere else.

  “We tried this in the club,” Johnson said. “But that didn’t get us anywhere.”

  “Tried what?” I asked, but I already knew the answer.

  The drumbeat started to roll from the speakers, getting steadily louder. From somewhere the rhythm was answered.

  My whole body shook, vibrating in time with the rhythm. The ground kept time. Somewhere beneath us there was a deep ringing, as if we were inside a huge bell. My head swam, and it seemed as if reality itself melted and ran. The world around me receded into the distance until it was little more than a pinpoint of light in a blanket of darkness.

  I was alone, in a vast black emptiness where nothing existed save the dark and the pounding beat. I tasted salt water in my mouth. I was buffeted, as if by a strong, surging tide, but as the beat grew stronger I hardly cared. I gave myself to it, lost in the dance, lost in the dark. I forgot myself in blackness where only rhythm mattered.

  I felt a presence, something moving in the darkness, something huge that danced alongside me. It filled every part of my being with rhythm. I shook, vibrating like a tuning fork, faster, ever faster.

  Crash!

  The world rushed back. I came to lying on the ground by the gate. Johnson lay nearby, blood dripping steadily from his nose. My bowels felt loose. My head too. I moved slowly, fighting nausea, and got to my feet. All around the tech crew groggily did the same.

  One of them stood beside the rubble of the keep. He looked over at Johnson, a big grin on his face, and gave a thumbs-up.

  Johnson stood beside me, clapped my shoulder, and smiled.

  “Cheer up Adams,” he said. “It looks like you’ve earned your payment.”

  ~o0O0o~

  Johnson’s reputation got me another night in the hotel. I was upgraded to a better room but in all honesty, a mattress on the floor would have done. I fell into bed and slept solidly for fourteen hours.

  I woke to my fingers drumming out a rhythm on the bed. The shower helped, but I had to get out prematurely when the water started pounding in time with the beat in my head.

  Over breakfast the clink and clang of cutlery on plates sounded like they were trying to communicate some meaning. I would have screamed, but I feared that it too would only add to the mounting pressure.

  I ran, getting as far as the station platform. I stood there for nearly an hour, chain smoking and trying to find calm.

  I wasn’t successful.

  The beat grew, pounding in my temples, in my blood. When I realised I was keeping time by rapping a lamp-post with my knuckles I gave in to the inevitable and headed, half-running, back towards the keep.

  ~o0O0o~

  Johnson stood by the field gate, a broad smile on his face. He wore what I took to be a pair of earmuffs but which on closer inspection proved to be heavy duty head-phones.

  “What’s with the Mickey Mouse outfit?” I said.

  He handed me a pair of the headphones.

  “We’ve worked out a dampener, just until we get to the root cause.”

  I put them on. The world suddenly seemed a whole lot brighter place. I lost all compulsion to drum my fingers. It was as if a weight had been lifted from me.

  Johnson laughed.

  “Told you,” he said. “Now come on. I’ve got something to show you.”

  He walked towards the keep. I stayed at the gate until he was more than ten yards into the field. He turned and waved me forward.

 

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