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.

‘Look,’ Dan said, and nodded at the cupboard doors, still open from where they had filmed inside the cabinet.

Kyle continued to stare at Dan. Swallowed hard at the lump of fear that made his whole body feel insubstantial. ‘I can’t . . . what is it, Dan?’

‘It’s going.’

Kyle peered into the cupboard space. And saw a vague series of thin dark lines, as if the stain had retracted back into the plaster, or suddenly been scrubbed away. ‘You rubbed it.’

Dan shook his head. ‘It’s the light.’ He held Max’s lamp higher in his big left hand. ‘I switched it on. To see how bright it was without the overhead light on. You know, if it really was like daylight. And I put the lamp over there, by the cooker, where the radio is. Then I noticed the wall. And I saw it, mate. I watched it shrink. In the light. It just started to fade.’

They looked at each other with wild and watery eyes. Neither of them spoke, or could speak for a long time.

Dan sat on the end of Kyle’s bed and stared into his third neat whisky. ‘We can’t.’

‘Don’t start with that quitting shit. I booked the tickets online.’

‘Mate. This isn’t right.’

‘Right? This is our future. We finish this film, we’re out of shit town, for life. What we always talked about. After this, we can make anything we want, our own way, with a decent budget. Think about that. I cannot, simply cannot work one more shift in that warehouse. Mate, please.’

‘Kyle . . . it’s too much. What if that shit comes into my flat? You ever think about that? I can’t believe you’d even consider going to where they killed each other. After this?’

‘Dan—’

‘That’s a warning!’ Dan pointed at the entrance into the hallway. ‘You hear me? A bloody warning, mate.’ Dan stared at his hands, then gulped at his whisky. ‘And what about the figure in the Clarendon Road house? I can’t stop thinking about it. That wasn’t a stain or dream, Kyle.’

‘Some junkie. Homeless type,’ Kyle said quickly, hoping more than believing it was even plausible.

‘You don’t know that. Bits of him were transparent. And where was he hiding? Think of that. We checked the whole floor.’

‘But not the loft on the second floor. He could have come from there.’

‘Possible. But we would have heard him coming down. A projection maybe? Could Max be sending us up?’

‘Fuck knows. But if it . . . if it actually was something, there is no way on God’s earth we are quitting. I mean, come on. Get fucking real.’

‘What did Max say about it?’

‘He wants to wait for the US footage before he makes up his mind. He had to rush off to Susan’s funeral.’

‘Convenient. You still think he’s bullshitting us?’

‘Hard to tell.’

‘Why does he want the main focus of the film to be on the paranormal elements? Maybe because he thought we’d find something? And now we’re up to our plums in head-expanding strangeness.’

Kyle watched fear flicker in Dan’s eyes. He’d rattled his friend’s fragile confidence again; he should never have shown him the thing in the cupboard or the bathroom in Caen. But it would have been wrong not to, though it had crossed his mind. He tried to alleviate the tension. ‘That’s our area of expertise. Kind of makes sense. If you think about it.’

‘That’s Max’s line. So again, I am worried we are now talking ourselves deeper into something really weird and—’

Kyle cut him off. ‘I want to do more diaries. To camera. About stuff off the record. About our unexpected involvement in the story because of the freaky material we’ve uncovered. And Max is not going to see these segments until after the final edit. Call it security.’

‘I read the contract again today. He doesn’t even want to be referred to on film at all. Says he’ll use a pseudonym for the credits. Because of his reputation? Smells funny to me. Bit like bullshit.’

‘Which is why we are going to involve our executive producer in ways he can’t imagine.’

Dan nodded, but took another nervous swig from his glass.

Kyle struggled to maintain a smile. ‘This is getting even better. We now have a story within the story. Another layer. About Max. And about us.’

‘About what we’re drawing out. You ever think of that?’

‘Another reason why this is too good to bin. That one scene in Holland Park will get this on a million screens. Maybe cinema screens. Cinema.’

It failed to reignite his friend’s enthusiasm.

‘I can clear my entire debt with the fee, but only if we complete. You’ll be able to lay off those weddings too.’

Dan nodded, but still didn’t look convinced.

‘Four shoots. Four days. That’s it. A wrap. Four bloody days. Come on. In America. America! Then you’re done. Thirty grand in your pocket. Finger Mouse and me do the edit. And you step away until the premier. Until the festivals. Eh? Cannes. Sundance. They’ll lap this shit up.’

Dan looked at his feet. ‘Mate. I don’t . . . I don’t think I can.’

‘That’s just great.’ Kyle nodded. ‘Because I can’t do it without you.’

‘Please, Kyle. Let this one go.’

‘You’re a genius with a camera, Dan. It’ll look shit without you.’ Kyle nodded at the laptop. ‘And that’s my future. Right there. I don’t take this opportunity, I might as well cut my own throat right now.’

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