Mean Spirit Part 33

His right hand, tight around the pencil, moves across the pad. Across the s.p.a.ce between their chairs, she seems to reach out and touch his hand with one long finger.

Bobby Maiden shudders with a sudden rush of pa.s.sion for her that's far more complex than desire. He needs to draw her face, convey the weight of her hair, the dark lamps of her eyes.

And Cindy's brain pulses with the sudden sense of something violently squalid, poisonously shrivelled.

a.s.sailed now by the stench of a lavatory l.u.s.t, so strong and physical that he wants to run from the room before it sucks him into that steaming, sordid pit on the edge of which more than once, to his shame he has teetered.

Cindy is badly shocked, close to panic, almost wrenches his chair away from it, from whatever monstrosity is forming like a gas in the chair next to his own. It is with enormous difficulty that he keeps his voice low and steady.

'Talk to it, Persephone.'

'I can't.'

'Try,' Cindy hisses, teeth clenched.

'I don't know what to call him.'

'Ask for a name.'

Persephone sits with her spine straight, her hands clasped in the lap of her skirt.

She says, her voice robotic, 'What's your name?'

Cindy urgently visualizes the seventeen little stones under the window, at the foot of the shelves, beneath the computer table and, with a burst of will-power, makes them glow.

Persephone says, stronger now, 'What's your name?'

Cindy conjures in his head the sound of a drum beating, his own drum, his painted bodhran (knowing that the drum, lying on the back seat of his car, will now be vibrating).

'Who are you?' Persephone cries in anguish. 'Who are you, who are you, WHO ARE YOU?'

The drum is beating on its own, Cindy thinking rapidly: this business of No Name indicates not so much the absence of a name but that Persephone refuses to hear it. Refuses to confront the possibility Grayle, it was, suggested this and Grayle might well be right that she may, in the time-honoured, deliberate formality of the seance, be conjuring a personification of her despised art at its most foetid and contemptible, summoning a spirit of the lowest order, comprised of spittle-like strands of sick longing.

You and I, we are prisoners in the same old, mildewed tower.

'Ask its name, Persephone!'

'He won't ... tell me.'

He. Always he. Part of the denial. Giving it maleness, giving it a hard, damaged face.

'All right. All right then ...'

The drum beating louder in his head, the circle of seventeen stones glowing brightly there, Cindy braces himself, aware that what he is about to suggest is not terribly wise. It will bring with it pain and suffering, awaken memories of old, foul dreams.

'Throw it to me,' Cindy says lightly, and turns to look directly at the sixth chair. 'Throw him to me, lovely.'

His hands, both of them, moving rapidly on the pad, Maiden is becoming aware of a surge of enthusiasm, a sense of violent arousal. His thumb is smudging the freshly laid pencil shading into misted whorls as he sculpts the face.

He's in Justin's garage, rich with the smell of oil and fear, and Justin is sobbing, 'Please ... I don't know ... I've told you ... for f.u.c.ksake, man, I don't ...' There's a silent, gloating presence suspended in the vault of grimy light from the roof.

'Nice one.' A low and guttural sigh. A rasp. Rapture.

Seffi Callard screams. 'He's touching my face!'

Maiden jerks at once to his feet, the pad and pencil falling to the floor, and moves towards her, but it seems a long way, like swimming through dark, muddy water, his hands clawing at the soup.

Hearing Cindy, sharply, 'Bobby, sit down.'

Maiden feels frustration. Anger. An old resentment running as deep as a sewer. Hate. Then Seffi- 'He's touching me-'

Seffi draws in a huge breath and her body rears back, shuddering, and then it goes still and tight and Maiden waits for her breath to come out, but it doesn't. She's frozen, arched and rigid, an abandoned sculpture in bronze.

Maiden throws himself at her, but there's something in between, something that hones the air, makes it vicious like a blade. Far away, Malcolm's howl is close to a scream.

'The smell!' Grayle blurts. 'Oh Jesus, it's coming ... it's coming off of her.'

Maiden tries to touch Seffi but his hands don't reach, and Seffi, though still rigid, starts to vibrate, as though there's electricity forking into her, and there's sweat forming like a second, bubbling skin on her face, and when Maiden's hands hover over her shoulders he expects the electric charge to go through him like a sizzling knife, and he doesn't care.

'Please,' he whispers.

And they're all dead, the stupid irresponsible b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!

'Not now!' Cindy shouts. 'Leave me alone, can't you?'

The drumming has lost its rhythm and the seventeen small stones from High Knoll have lost their lights, and despicably all Cindy can think about is his own predicament, the dissolution of his brilliant career. In a sick, dispiriting moment, he finds himself looking at the sixth chair.

It is empty but, above it, he would swear he sees Kurt Campbell's sharp face projected into the window, in the light of the oil lamp.

And then the window itself collapses, a waterfall of gla.s.s.

x.x.xIV.

THE BULKHEAD BULB CAME ON, AWAKENING SHADOWS IN THE castle walls, as if the explosion had summoned to the surface all the violent drama locked into its eight hundred years of history. Grayle stood in the yard in the rain and the irritable wind, hugging herself to squash the shakes. Feeling the banging of her own heart, like an iron bucket against the sides of a deep, deep well.

Marcus stumbled out through the fan of light, slivers of gla.s.s s.h.i.+ning like snow crystals in his hair, an open cut on his forehead.

'Just don't say it, Marcus!' Grayle's voice rising like an elevator out of control. 'Just like the old days. Just like the old freaking school. Only difference is, this time it's you got to explain to the insurance guys.'

And then she was sorry because Marcus, barely free of the flu, looked like s.h.i.+t. Looked like he'd been beaten up on.

'Should be some ... chipboard.' He was looking around vaguely. 'In the old pigsty, round the ...'

'Huh?'

'To board up the window. Got to keep ... keep the rain out.'

A fog behind his gla.s.ses. The sour chill in the air, the smell, the sound, the taste of it, and all of it right there in his own back yard, within his own castle walls. The shock of invasion.

Grayle took his arm. 'We'll deal with it, Marcus. Bobby and I will handle it. You come back inside. Let's get you a big gla.s.s of something strong. Get that cut cleaned up.'

'Cut?' A nerve tweaking his cheek. 'Where's ... where's Persephone?'

'I guess she's still in there, with Cindy and Bobby. Leave it, huh?'

'I have to talk to her. She'll be distressed. She needs rea.s.surance.'

'No, Marcus,' Grayle said patiently. 'That was last time. That was twenty years ago. She grew up. She knows precisely what she did.'

Cindy came out, followed by Malcolm the dog, loosed from the study. Then Bobby.

'Marcus? You OK? Grayle?'

'We're fine, Bobby. Just deciding which of the all-night glaziers in St Mary's we should call out.'

A bubbling giggle forming. Here we go, that old hysteria, welcome home. Some gla.s.s splinters fell out of her hair.

Bobby was looking at Malcolm, who didn't move. Grayle shook her head hard, watching more gla.s.s fall around her feet. Bobby bent and patted his thighs. Malcolm looked uncertain. Grayle thought, What is this? Did Bobby collect something in there?

Malcolm gave a slow wave of his stumpy tail, ambled over. Bobby crouched. He and the dog bonded under the bulkhead lamp.

Cindy nodded. Whatever it was, it was OK now.

'Where's Persephone?' Marcus demanded.

Bobby looked up. 'I thought she came out with you.'

'I don't think so.'

'She was ahead of you. She ran out of the room. When it happened, she ran out, hands over her ears.'

'Then she's out here, someplace.'

'Persephone?' Marcus stumbled out into the yard. 'Persephone!'

Stopping and listening and getting no reply. Only the wind against the castle walls. Marcus strode to the dairy. Hammered with a fist on the door.

'Persephone! Are you in there?' He turned to them, blood oozing down his forehead. 'What if she's in there with ... with ...?'

He couldn't say it. But Grayle knew she wouldn't have laughed at him this time if he had. She breathed in hard to cancel the memory of the feral, male smell.

'Stand back,' Marcus said.

'Aw, Marcus-'

Marcus hurled himself sideways at the door. Bounced off, moaning, holding his shoulder.

'b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l, Marcus.' Bobby putting himself between Marcus and the door. Malcolm started barking, figuring this was a fight.

'She's in there ... don't you see, Maiden? She's locked herself in. She's trying to deal with it herself. b.l.o.o.d.y Lewis screwed it up, and she-'

'All right.' Bobby pulled hair out of his eyes; he was sweating, anxious. 'Before we kick it in, you've got another key to this place, haven't you?'

'Lost it. Months ago. Persephone's got the only key. Persephone!' Marcus kicked the door, under the lock. 'Please ...' He rattled the handle and the door sprang open. Marcus crashed through like an old bull, flung down on his hands and knees inside the dairy.

Bobby moved to help him up. Grayle pushed past them both, putting on the light. Marcus was shaking Bobby off, ramming his gla.s.ses into position.

'Oh,' Grayle said.

On account of there was no-one else in the dairy.

She saw the bed was half made, the duvet turned back. A lone silk blouse hung limply on a hanger on the closet door.

But there was no sign of Callard's bags. Grayle went quickly into the other rooms. She opened the closet: empty. No personal stuff in the kitchen, in the bathroom just a tube of toothpaste and a toothbrush on the shelf over the basin.

This Mary Celeste feel about the whole place.

'What's going on?' Marcus demanded. 'What's happened here. Underhill?'

'Looks like she checked out.'

'I don't understand ...'

'Hold on. Let's ...'

Bobby Maiden had run out into the night, Grayle trailing behind him across the yard, towards the entrance. When they got there, they found the wooden farm gate unlatched, the wind smacking it against the post.

Grayle looked back, rain in her face. She guessed the Cherokee was also gone. They hadn't heard the motor start up. Probably on account of the wind.

Part Five.

From Bang to Wrongs: A Bad Boy's Book.

by GARY SEWARD.

Preface to the paperback edition.

CLARENCE JUDGE A TRIBUTE.

As you may have read in the papers, since this book first come out, my dear old mate Clarence has been taken from us ... taken from behind, in cold blood.