TWENTY-SEVEN

MARYLEBONE, LONDON. 25 JUNE 2011. 1.10 A.M.

In the rear-view mirror the concerned eyes of the driver moved to Kyle’s face then darted away. Another great heave expanded his chest; an attempt to breathe as much as an involuntary reaction to the idea Dan was gone. And his imagination’s insidious enquiry into how Dan went refused to be suppressed. Hysteria was coming to the boil. He needed to keep a lid on it. Max had to be confronted, because there was a way to get Dan back from wherever he might be. There was. There was? There had to be.

Fury accompanied shock. The urgency of rage drove Kyle back to Max, ratcheted even higher by his refusal to answer his phone, and he silently willed the vehicle to deliver him with a greater haste than was being taken. To get him to a meeting destined to be their last, before he called in the police, or killed Maximillian Solomon with his bare hands. Over and over again, in the back of the taxi, he imagined how it would feel to squeeze that wizened throat; to stare at the surprised face as it reddened.

But after he bounded past the porter and had thrown himself up the stairs to Max’s floor, he found the front door of the apartment open. Max had anticipated his mood and his intentions, and was prepared to disarm them. No surprises there. Though the once immaculately groomed millionaire was now more dishevelled than Kyle thought it possible for him to be.

The executive producer’s pyjama bottoms were spattered with dried blood. The emerald smoking jacket was streaked with long smears the colour of iodine, as if wet hands had been wiped across the front. A medicinal reek hung in the air about the executive producer’s scrawny frame that appeared to have shed half its body weight and could barely stand upright.

Idiotically, Kyle wondered if Iris had served supper improperly and paid the ultimate price after a frenzied scuffle with her fussy master. Briefly, he wanted to laugh with hideous delight at the thought. When the notion passed, he wished to be held down and sedated; had never imagined it was possible to feel so shaken and insubstantial. Tragedy had engulfed him.

But it was the vision of Max’s head that most appalled him, and undermined his intention to beat a confession from the little producer. Because it looked as if someone had done exactly that, and recently too. One side of Max’s head was a thicket of stitches. Purple welts stretched from cheek to artificial hairline and bristled with surgical twine. The eyeball closest to the inflamed scratches was blood-red. One ear was clothed in white gauze and tape.

Kyle’s mouth felt disembodied, thick with saliva. ‘What . . . ?’

Max stood to one side. ‘Quickly. There isn’t much time.’

But Kyle remained mute and gaped at the little damaged head. Max glared at him. ‘Will you get inside. Please! And where have you been? I’ve been holding on for hours. Your plane landed at six thirty!’

‘You could have answered your phone.’

‘I couldn’t . . . it’s in that room. Lost.’

‘What room?’

Max turned on a slippered heel and limped to the wall; he needed it to stay on his feet. The other hand scraped a silver-tipped cane across the marble floor.

Kyle’s dread cooled another few degrees centigrade. The hall lights were out. Since the early hours of the morning, new locks had been fitted to a couple more doors in the hall; now Max’s bedroom was out of action, so was the kitchen. Only two rooms remained open; the bathroom and Max’s study.

At the far end of the corridor a squat black machine the size of a car engine, purred and vibrated. Pro4000E was printed on one side. A generator that issued a deep-sea squid of red cables that ran into the study. A multi-board that belonged at an outdoor event and had no place inside an exclusive west-end penthouse powered a dozen dawn-light simulators on small stands. Every bulb angled its intense fake light upwards at the ceiling of the hall.

‘How?’

Max stopped his slow progress down to the study; he crept more than walked. He looked up as a frightened child might. ‘They came. Right after you left for the airport. I nearly lost an ear.’

‘Jesus Christ.’

‘I heard one inside the ceiling cavity. It got to the bloody cables. After the first time, I had them replaced and –’ Max winced from a sudden pang of agony issuing from somewhere about his body ‘– I opted for a railway grade. But it was only a matter of time before they killed the light again. When they couldn’t chew through the wires, they tore them out of the main frame. The whole wing was in darkness when I was awoken.’ Max looked at Kyle and tried to smile, but it became a pathetic wince beneath eyes that welled with self-pity. ‘I’m living on borrowed time, my dear Kyle. A day of reckoning is at hand. One closer than I ever imagined. But I suggest we make it theirs, not ours.’

‘Ours?’

Max closed his eyes. ‘I’m sorry. But it’s too late for apologies. We need to act. Now.’

‘Dan’s gone.’

Max stopped moving. ‘God, no.’

‘God, yes. My mate is gone.’ Kyle jabbed his finger back at the front door. ‘I’ve just been to his flat! They left a saucer full of teeth in the kitchen.’

Max’s thoughts changed direction. He stared into the middle distance. ‘Three intrusions in one night. Dan. Me. And Gabriel. I’ve been checking in every morning to see if he . . . well, you know, if Gabriel made it through the night. He never. So they came for three of us last night after you left. Four if Malcolm Gonal was included, but I’m not in touch there.’ Max shook his head, then continued down the hall with more determination than he’d shown since opening the front door.

‘Max!’

As if to himself, Max spoke. ‘A concerted effort was made. Be grateful you were travelling. The police are questioning Gabriel’s nurse. Can you believe it? They want to know how he bled to death. Through his stump.’ Max winced as if he’d bitten into rotten fruit. ‘They bled him where he lay.’

Kyle stopped and held his head with both hands. Didn’t know where to begin or even what to say. Was speechless with fury, incomprehension, revulsion, grief, and confusion. ‘Police.’

Max laughed unpleasantly as if their involvement would be ludicrous. ‘Hopeless, I know.’

Kyle was upon him in two bounds. Turned him against the wall. The old man squealed with pain. ‘You bastard!’ Spittle from his mouth forced Max to blink. ‘Dan. Dan!’

Max tried to recover his composure within Kyle’s white knuckles. He stared at Kyle with distaste, and surprise. Didn’t seem to anticipate the wrath of those he had endangered through his self-interest.

‘I want my friend back. How?’ The volume of Kyle’s voice escalated until it echoed inside the hallway. ‘No more bullshit, Max. No more paintings, and hints, and—’

‘You saw them. The Saints of Filth. It’s why I wasted so much time sending you there. So you’d really know what we’re facing. So you can truly accept them.’

‘I don’t know anything. I saw some paintings of an atrocity. But what they suggest . . . isn’t possible. Can’t be. It’s time for the police. Dan—’

‘Possible? The police?’ Max grinned. ‘What would you tell them?’

‘I could break your neck. I’d do the time. It’d be worth it.’

‘Kyle, you’re a smart man. Can you not work it out? Can you not accept what has happened? What is happening? Even after this? Gabriel. Martha. Susan. Poor Dan. And us if we don’t act. My dear boy, it’s time to do the unthinkable.’

‘The what?’

‘You’ll understand. You must. It’s the only reason I’m still here. Waiting for you. So I can show you the rest. Like I promised. To give you a chance too.’

‘What bloody chance? What are you saying?’

‘There is a way to save yourself.’

In a flash of self-preservation that left him feeling reprehensible, Kyle released Max. Whatever could be done, if anything could be done, this poisonous old madman would know how.

Max smoothed out the lapels of his soiled robe. ‘This is not some ghost story for the masses, my boy. Some haunted house you can film and then speculate about on cable television. Some paranormal fantasy you can go and film with your friends. For the festivals and fans. The freaks.’ Max smirked and Kyle had no idea how he restrained himself from caving in his little skull like a ripe satsuma. ‘It’s more, much more. This is real. It always has been. Which is why you couldn’t walk away from it. You smelled authenticity. Smelled it! The genuine article. So blame yourself for your involvement. And you better start believing in what you have seen, if we are to act with purpose and without scruple.’

‘You little fuck—’

Max swept his cane through the air. Pointed the tip at the generator. ‘Come on, while the battery lasts.’ Max checked his watch. ‘We need to be long gone before it runs out.’

Sat in a huge leather chair, Kyle was numb. Strengthless. His head was a flotsam of thoughts adrift. He merely sat and waited and stared at the blank screen on the desk in Max’s study. In one hand he held a tumbler of the brandy he’d shared with Max in better times, if you could call them that. And he considered his still being awake an impossible state of affairs; how many hours had he slept since their last night in America? Five tops in the back of cabs and on Max’s sofa. One shock after another had kept him jumpy, but heavy-headed, wading through treacle, listless and lethargic if he sat down. And so saturated with fear, sleep had never been much of an option anyway.

But if he just lay down, how long before they took him? He imagined his cat sniffing at a black jawbone on the floor of his kitchen. Then killed the thought before he screamed.

Max leaned across the laptop. ‘You need to pay attention, Kyle. I’m leaving the moment this concludes.’

‘You’re going nowhere. Until I’m satisfied every grain of truth has been shaken from what’s left of your miserable body.’

‘You will be sated. I assure you.’ Max looked at the screen as it lit up, and grinned until it hurt his ghastly bruised face. ‘I recently prepared this insert for our film. To add direction to your discoveries.’

Kyle spat the bran dy back into his glass. ‘Insert!’ But what did it matter now? He should have been too tired and witless to feel any ire about interference and ownership, but he wasn’t. Had anyone, in the entire history of film-making, been more ill-treated than he had been by Maximillian Solomon? Probably.

The screen filled with faces in photographs taken decades before; they had the fuzzy grain of scans. Some were black and white. Max cleared his throat. ‘Thirty-two. All dead or missing. All core members of The Last Gathering in London and France. I knew them all. See here.’ Max pointed at one murky picture on the screen: a man with a thin face and long dark hair. ‘Brother Gabriel.’ Kyle leaned forward, squinted, detected a vague resemblance. ‘And here. Sister Isis.’ She’d once been pretty, blonde, petite. ‘The others, of course, you don’t know. They were gone before you came on board.’

On board? Kyle opened his mouth to speak.

Max was not to be interrupted, and picked up a fountain pen to use as a pointer. ‘Brother Marcian died of blood poisoning. From a wound, believed to have been a bite. He was found in a commune in Brighton in 1973.’ Max’s pen moved to another picture. ‘Sister Juno, septicaemia, 1973. Sister Athena, heroin overdose, 1973. Brother Anno was found dead in Aston, Birmingham, in 1974. After the ice melted on a canal. Wounded fatally by an unknown assailant. He’d lost a great deal of blood before he fell in. The police assumed there had been a fight. Anno was an alcoholic: case closed. Sister Selene, barbiturate overdose in St Tropez, 1975. Sister Devota, murdered in Liverpool, also in 1975, case unsolved. Brother Placid’s body was washed ashore in Morocco, 1975. The corpse was in a terrible state. Cause of death unknown.

‘And then we jump forward in time after a hiatus. Sister Zita suicide, 2010. Sister Elinid, heart failure, 2011. Brother Ethan, massive stroke, 2011. And most recently, Brother Heron: blood poisoning from an unknown animal bite, 2011. One of my oldest friends.’

‘The one you said died of cancer when we did the London shoot. More bullshit.’

‘I lied. But I do not lie when I tell you that the remaining eighteen are missing. Have never been found. I spent a great deal of money looking. Serapis, Belus, Orcus, Ades, Azazel, Katherine’s former favourites of The Seven, and poor Brother Abraham were never seen again after the schism at the Norman farm. Three of them had their children with them when they disappeared. Katherine had tried to use them all in France for something unpleasant and the adults revolted. At the mine in Arizona her intention was just as crude, but her execution was more artful, as you will soon see.

‘The other key missing European members walked out of their lives within the last two years. But I’ve come to believe they were taken out of their lives. They were all old, so where could they go?’

‘So you’re the last man standing from the European group?’

Max nodded, took the film off pause. Another screen full of faces, mostly in black and white. ‘Seventeen core members of The Temple of the Last Days from the US period. They all spent a substantial period of time at the copper mine in Arizona.’ Max tapped the screen with the pen five times. ‘Here are those you know of: Brother Adonis, Brother Ariel, Sister Urania, Sister Hannah and Sister Priscilla. Their bodies have never been found. And I have no reason to disbelieve Martha Lake’s claims that they were murdered in 1975 by Katherine’s new elect.’

Max wafted the pen over the screen. ‘The fates of all of the others bear the hallmarks of what I call The Last Days murders. Brother Samuel, blood poisoning, California, 1974. Brother Renus, his body was discovered by hikers in Colorado, 1975. Believed to have been mostly eaten by scavengers. Sister Isadora, septicaemia attributed to dirty needles, 1975. Another heroin addict. As were Brother Lucius, and Sister Cinnia. Both found dead in 1975; cause of death, septicaemia. What’s interesting here, is that their bodies had been partially eaten by rats, or dogs, or so the police reports stated. Though they never looked too closely. The other six with the blue borders are all still missing. Four since the mid-seventies. The other two vanished within the last twelve months. And then, of course, we have Bridgette Clover and Martha Lake. One suicide, and one murder after an intrusion, in 2011.’

Max moved his pen to a press photo of Irvine Levine that Kyle recognized from the back cover of Last Days. ‘Missing since 2010. No trace. Nothing.’

Kyle swallowed. ‘You’ve been researching this for ages.’

Max shook his head. ‘No. This is the result of less than two years’ work. I put as much distance between myself and the organization as I possibly could. I was not lying to you, Kyle. But you will soon understand why the revelation of the facts about my renewed interest in the organization was selective.’

‘Two years ago I was approached by a man called Don Perez. An academic who’d been looking for survivors of cults for a study. He tracked Brother Heron down, who led him to me. Perez discovered that many of the core Temple group who deserted the Arizona mine between 1974 and 1975 had either died in similar circumstances, or were listed as officially missing. Many of them were transients, addicts, alcoholics, manic depressives. You name it, they all had problems. Which encouraged Perez’s thesis on the effects of membership in a cult. Of course, many of the survivors, if not all of them, were so tainted and damaged by their association with the group at the mine, I was even willing to attribute their fates to Perez’s line of inquiry. But during our brief correspondence Mr Perez went missing. His whereabouts are unknown, as of February 2010.’

Max released a long, tired sigh. ‘Then I found the same pattern among the original members who were present in Clarendon Road and the farm. But only those at the time of the vision, and the arrival of what were known as “the presences”, in each location. With the exception of myself, Heron, Isis and Gabriel were the only living members I traced from the two European temples. And think of the odds of this happening to nearly everyone from those key periods in both incarnations of the Temple. This is no coincidence, Kyle. And Isis, Heron, Gabriel and myself had also become beset by unpleasant dreams. This year. A foreshadowing, I now believe. Of what was to come. It seems Katherine’s delight in devising slow torments had not abated. It appears she was making a comeback. Coming for the rest of us.’

‘Hang on. Katherine?’

Max held up a hand to silence him. ‘All in good time. When I researched the actual temple locations, I found this.’ Max moved the slide onto a photograph of the house in Clarendon Road. ‘I chose the property. Others were against it from the start, because of the cost. But Katherine liked the grand gesture, the suggestion of status, and she was in control of our finances before we even set foot in the place. I chose it on account of its reputation. An infamy I believed to have lasted since the late-Victorian period. But it went much further back than that.’

The image on-screen changed to a woodcut or engraving of a man with a pointed beard and a wide-brimmed hat. ‘The charlatan occultist and mesmerist, Valentyne Prowd. Also known as Long Val. And an English member of Lorche’s Blood Friends during their brief stay in London to evade persecution in the Netherlands. They lived in a caravan train like travelling actors, outside the city for no more than a year, in what was then a rural area. Somewhere between what is now known as Marble Arch and Shepherd’s Bush. I believe the Blood Friends chiefly resided in Holland Park on Prowd’s land before returning to the continent without Prowd, who ultimately could not offer the servility Lorche craved.

‘The stories and accounts about Prowd have always been dismissed as fantasy. Nonetheless, he has been mentioned in the works of a variety of cultural commentators and historians, with special note given to his diabolism. Even John Dee once sought his counsel. Because it was rumoured he’d mastered Lorche’s ability to occupy or coerce the minds of others. Until, like his brief collaborator, he came to a bad end. In Prowd’s case, on the gallows at Tyne Cross for the theft of a child.’

Max moved the film forward to a page from a Victorian newspaper. ‘Look at the headline. House of Blood. This is from 1891. Holland Park was a Bohemian slum then, on the outskirts of a sprawling metropolis. Prowd’s farm was long gone, consumed by a brickworks, but this newspaper story takes for its subject the very building that was to become our temple. A building erected upon what was once Prowd’s land.’ Max paused in irrepressible frustration with himself. ‘I knew something of this legacy when I chose the property. But I had no idea it would lead . . . We wanted to be dangerous. Near something of mystical significance. As did the spiritualist Madam Helena Blavatsky. She lived close by in the 1890s, so too did prominent members of the Golden Dawn. Arthur Machen took rooms a few doors down. Machen wrote The Hill of Dreams. The actual hill, Notting Hill, was Machen’s hill of dreams. The Temple house is at the foot of that very hill. And the building was a popular location for séances in Victorian England. A whole gamut of spiritualists congregated there. It was close to something extraordinary, unnatural. And there are always some who can sense such things.

‘The newspaper article is rather sensational, but it concerns itself with the disappearance of Thaddeus Peevey. That’s him in the line drawing beside the column of print. Another mesmer and dabbler in the occult. A contemporary of Florence Farr, Samuel Mathers, and William Butler Yeats. A scoundrel by all accounts. An alcoholic and an actor amongst other things, including a charlatan medium. The Golden Dawn wouldn’t have him in their magical order. They considered him a confidence trickster. Which he probably was, and one with very bad debts. But he took a wager that he would spend a night alone in the Clarendon Road property and confront its evil nature.

‘Thaddeus Peevey was not found the following morning. In fact, he was never seen again, by anyone. It is believed he faked his own disappearance to evade his debtors. I now think otherwise.

‘The turnover of owners and tenants has continued from the day the ground was broken to build that house. I always suspected we were responsible for the psychic condition there. And we were, but only in part. As a conduit. I have come to believe the entire area has a residue. One that we revived, like Thaddeus Peevey. That Prowd and Lorche established, or perhaps even reawoke themselves. I just don’t know. But there are places, as you have seen, where the passage of certain unpleasant things can occur in specific conditions, or near compatible individuals. I’m referring to ideas, influences, and presences.

‘Valentyne Prowd and Thaddeus Peevey also had something else in common, despite the four hundred years that separates their lives. They each exhibited a penchant for grandiosity. Extreme narcissistic behaviour. Accompanied by a fanatical desire for power and wealth. As did their eventual heir, Hermione Tirrill from Kent, aka Sister Katherine, the cheque forger and former Fitzrovian madam.’ Max looked at Kyle. ‘Mere hearsay? Speculation and the kind of improbability you must be accustomed to in your endeavours.’

‘Steady Max. You’re on very thin ice.’

‘Coincidence nonetheless? Or bad luck? Or so our detractors and debunkers would say. Until you look a little harder at the farm in Normandy. Built on the unhallowed ground of St Mayenne. The history of which you are now acquainted with. It appears a residue also lingered there. One much stronger. One that drew our little Gathering to itself after offering us the vision in London, at the house of blood. And had been embedding itself deep inside Katherine from the very beginning I now believe. Clung to its new blessed elect. One who was susceptible to its lies as Lorche and Prowd had once been. I believe it owned Katherine by the time the dregs of her organization moved to California to assuage her lust for glamour and fame, and to evade any scrutiny regarding the earliest disappearances from her flock. The three children and six adults who vanished in 1972 during a violent storm that struck the farm in Normandy.’

‘Gabriel’s letter, from Brother Abraham.’

Max nodded. ‘Which brings me to the other remnants of The Temple of the Last Days, the final incarnation of what I unwittingly began in London. But not Martha, or Bridgette, or any of the others that we know are dead or missing.’

‘Who?’

‘The children, Kyle. The five children of the mine.’

‘They were taken into care.’

‘Yes. Quite right. Which is why it took a great deal of my time and my resources to find them. This spring.’

‘You found them? I googled to see if I could—’

‘Google!’ Max rolled his eyes, then composed himself and proceeded to play the film. ‘What I found, through more unconventional routes, accounted for my haste to commission a documentary film.’

‘The illusion of a film.’

Max glared at Kyle. ‘You may yet have the most astounding tale to tell, dear boy. If your integrity and commitment are what you claim them to be.’

Shaky footage, shot from a distance, of two men on the lawn of an affluent private house, appeared on-screen. The light was bright and the grass was littered with dogs’ toys; balls, chew bones, a bedraggled slipper. In shot, two forty-something men wore identical red tracksuits. But what alarmed Kyle was how they moved. On all fours they smiled and sniffed at each other’s faces. Their tongues were mostly out of their mouths. And one of these mouths soon unleashed a sound picked up a moment later by the distant microphone on the camera. A bark; a good imitation of a dog’s bark. They were pretending to be dogs.

An elderly woman moved into shot and gently rolled a white ball along the lawn. Both men gave ungainly chase.

‘Sardis and Papius were the names Katherine gave them as infants, not long after she separated them from their mothers at the Blue Oak Mine. They are the sons of Sisters Rhea and Lelia, two of the victims shot down by the perimeter fence while trying to escape on the Night of Ascent at the mine. Their children, these two boys, were removed from the mine by the Phoenix police department on the night of 10 July, 1975. They went into care before being adopted by a family within six months. Neither Sardis or Papius have ever spoken an intelligible word since they were rescued by the police officers at the mine. And, as you can see, they still prefer to be on all fours and to exist as if they are dogs rescued from a shelter. Because that is precisely what they are.’

Kyle swallowed three times to moisten his mouth. His voice had more breath in it than speech. ‘How did you find them?’

‘Through the services of a very expensive, and not entirely legitimate, private detective.’ Max moved the film forward to something that made Kyle start in his chair.

‘Sister Urania’s daughter and Sister Hannah’s son were responsible for these pictures. After these two infants were retrieved from the mine in 1975, they were identified by Martha Lake and their nationality was established. Urania and Hannah were both British. Original members of The Last Gathering in London and the organization’s largest benefactors. Between them, they gave Katherine millions. You’ll see how she repaid them.

‘In 1976, Sister Urania and Sister Hannah’s orphans were repatriated to Great Britain and taken in by relatives, initially. I say initially, because they were soon both transferred to the Bethlem Royal Hospital, when the extent of their psychological disorders was fully established. They have remained there ever since, on a secure ward. They were irreparably damaged from the Night of Ascent. Psychopathic at age four. This is some of their artwork that I managed to procure for a considerable sum of money. If you required more proof, and if we had the time, I could probably arrange a visit.’ Max winced and visibly shuddered.

‘Please.’ Kyle turned away from the screen. He didn’t want to look longer than was necessary at the sharp faces, ragged heads and emaciated limbs drawn and coloured so crudely, but so effectively, on paper. ‘I get the point.’

‘Do you? We’re not finished yet, my dear friend.’

Reluctantly, in a daze, Kyle returned his attention to the screen. He’d wanted to know everything, well here it was. But the next image did not inflict another concussion of shock. In fact, his relief was such that a sliver of his grim humour emerged. ‘Think you got the wrong slide in there, Max.’ Something from your porn collection. In better times he would even have laughed at the idea.

It was a studio shot of Chet Regal. The former Hollywood swimwear model, turned A-List actor, badboy, owner of Final Chapter Productions, and the latest occupier of Katherine’s former San Diego mansion.

But Max looked triumphant, if not ferrety. ‘Chet Regal. Long gone from the silver screen, at least in Tinsel Town terms. For at least six years and counting. But only following two divorces you may have read about, a string of high-profile legal actions for possession of narcotics, driving under the influence, and assault. Mostly against members of the press, or his girlfriends. Chet Regal is a lifelong violent hater of beautiful women and a predatory bisexual with sadistic tastes. It is now believed he is swiftly succumbing to the latter stages of AIDS and Hepatitis B.’

‘I know who he is, Max.’

‘While a recluse, as you also know, he has been holed up in here.’

Kyle stared at a split-screen photograph of the fabulous art deco palace Sister Katherine inhabited while her followers imprisoned and murdered each other at the abandoned copper mine in the next state; photographed as it was in the plate section of Levine’s Last Days, in black and white, while the second half of the image featured the building in colour.

‘You . . . you didn’t want it filmed?’

‘Indeed. Not yet, anyway. Chet Regal was the fifth child rescued from the Blue Oak Mine on the night of 10 July 1975. He was known to the investigating officers as the “clean boy”. Though he is anything but clean.’

Kyle’s left eyelid trembled, then spasmed. ‘No.’

‘I am afraid so.’

‘Prissie’s son? Chet Regal.’

‘Exactly. Sister Prissie, the young mother who Katherine had murdered. Not long after stealing her child and assuming the role of the boy’s surrogate mother. And Chet Regal has resided for the last decade in Katherine’s former home. Since, in fact, he took possession of the house from its regent tenants following Katherine’s death. You may remember that only four of The Seven died on the Night of Ascent. The fifth, Brother Belial, was killed in prison for his pains. But the other two, her favourites, are still living.’

‘From The Seven?’

‘Two women were sent to San Francisco on the pretext of settin g up a new temple in 1973. The ever faithful handmaidens, Sister Gehenna and Sister Bellona. They were not sent north for that, but to procure sympathetic parents who would adopt the clean boy when the time was right. They succeeded. The parents are long gone. A music producer and his feckless wife, who had been under Katherine’s spell in the merry-go-round of Hollywood. You might have heard of the husband. Brett Pearson. Worked with The Mamas and the Papas, The Beach Boys. His yacht was found adrift off the coast of Baja California in 1992. Empty. He and his wife never returned to shore. You see, they were also discarded once their function was at an end. When Chet was nineteen, in control and ready to inherit the earth, the clean boy came home to his new guardians, Sisters Gehenna and Bellona.’

Kyle shook his head, was smiling but didn’t know why.

‘Don’t forget, this house is where Chet spent some of his infancy. He should have little memory of that time in seclusion with Sister Katherine, but I believe he remembers a great deal of it.’

Kyle swivelled in his chair to face Max. ‘What are you saying? Chet is . . . what . . . emulating Katherine’s life? Her legacy? He brought these . . . things back?’

‘Afraid it’s a bit more serious than that, my dear Kyle. Chet Regal is Sister Katherine.’

The building seemed to move on its axis.

After a long period of silence in the room, Kyle smiled. ‘Get out of here, Max. Please. And take this horseshit conspiracy theory with you. Can you do that for me?’

Max wasn’t smiling. ‘Money, adoration, the total domination of anyone close to her, the destruction of any opponent. Not sufficient, any of it. You see, not even being remembered for ever was good enough for Sister Katherine. Only living for ever was.’

Kyle tried to swallow, but found he could not.

‘Is it so hard to believe? After all we have shared together, Kyle? Has not history taught us that self-destructive paranoiacs have to reincarnate. Putting their children in power—’

‘No.’

‘Erecting statues, buildings, cities even, that carry their name.’

‘Stop it. Stop now, Max.’

‘Katherine became fully embedded in the boy on the Night of Ascent.’

‘Are you deaf? Enough. Enough, Max.’

‘She wanted to be male, second time around, and she chose the most beautiful of all the Temple’s boys to evolve inside. She had the most handsome man, the notorious Brother Baal, rape and impregnate Prissie, the prettiest maiden. She bred her own heir. Katherine was celibate. Suffered a revulsion of the flesh. Was, I believe, damaged appallingly by her formative experiences in the sex trade. In the beginning, she once confided to Brother Heron that she could only think of her own death at the point of ecstasy. But all of the time she led the Temple in France and America, she was wedded to others. Don’t you see?’

‘Insane. You are insane, Max.’

Max gazed at the nearest dawn-light simulator on the floor. Spoke as much for his own benefit as Kyle’s. An unpleasant intensity came into his one good eye. ‘She has been profligate and careless in her new form. As Chet’s body matured around her, she believed herself invulnerable. Protected by wealth, fame, power, her new cult of celebrity, her mystical origins. But she was not protected. She became ill from her excesses. Her sadistic sexual revenge against beautiful men and women had consequences. Her affectation for blood sports . . .’ He turned quickly to Kyle, and grinned as if with triumph. ‘And so Sister Katherine was forced to seek another transformation. Her third coming has been brought forward. Did you know that Chet Regal and his last wife adopted a boy and called him Avaritia Luxuria?’

‘Don’t you bring these things into my life, Max.’

‘I think they’re already in it, dear boy.’

Kyle stood up. And wobbled. Reached out a hand to seize the arm of his chair.

‘We’re not done yet, Kyle. Can’t you see? She’s been incarnating. For a long time. Inside the infant boy that became the man Chet Regal. She was not even his genetic mother, but Chet Regal’s life bears all of her hallmarks. Her greed. Her sadism. The cruelty. And a pathological lust for power. This should be proof enough.’

‘He’s aping her then. This is not possible.’

‘I wish it were that simple, Kyle. And what of the re-awoken legacy of murder inside the vessel she stole from a two-year-old child.’ Max pointed at the screen. ‘Every recent murder and abduction has been part of a grotesque revenge. A continuance of what began in the seventies.’

‘Max, please—’

‘On her behalf, her old friends were able to pick off the more vulnerable stragglers in the period close to the Night of Ascent. Even after they fled the mine, those victims’ lives and their sleep were still being ravaged by the taint. You can be sure of that. The mark was on them. The scent. Their unfortunate connection to “the presences” was insoluble. It’s why the poor wretches could not function. Why they obliterated their minds and their reason with intoxicants. But the addicts, the broken and the damaged were easy to find. Don’t you see? They were the truly haunted.’ Max sighed. ‘We were all used. From London to France to the United States. We were contaminated by what she called down to us. By what needed to be called upon again, by the only one who knew how. Katherine.’

‘But you and Isis, Gabriel, Heron, why weren’t you killed in the seventies?’

‘Among the weakest connections to the European version of the group, the Gathering, with the slightest contamination, were Isis, Heron and I. We all left the Gathering after the first appearances of what we referred to as “presences”.’

‘But Gabriel—’

‘Gabriel barely lasted a year in France. He missed whatever event preceded the schism. I believe our vestigial associations were too slight in the seventies, when so many more available victims were still around. But Katherine still hoped to eventually complete her vengeance and to run down all those who once forsook her. Those of us still left alive after 1975. To use us as sacrifices during her most recent calling of the Blood Friends.’

‘Martha? Bridgette Clover?’

‘Martha Lake and Bridgette Clover remained perpetually on the run until after the Night of Ascent. Young, wily, always partying in bright lights, surrounded by entourages. They evaded the hunt. But not for ever.’

Max touched the bulging dressing on the side of his head. ‘We are the meat and drink of her vengeance. But our deaths also serve a dual purpose. As she intends to occupy a child again, the old friends will try to occupy us. Katherine has promised to bring them back to life as she did so many years ago. And she has called them. It is she that has the connection. I suspect it has never been an easy alliance. She has had to offer them a great deal. An unstable and diabolical pact at best, I would guess, but through it she has an ability to speak with them, to bargain, as Lorche once did. And I doubt she has ever been free of the Blood Friends within the guise that is Chet Regal. Their very presence has contributed greatly to her monstrousness in this life, twice. And her old friends want to try and return again, through us, to the light they despise but hunger for.’

‘I can’t . . .’

‘Those in the seventies Temple, who withstood the course of her relentless inhumanity and remained until the very end, were promised as vessels for her old friends. Were to have no more purpose other than to serve as eventual hosts to what once was. The Blood Friends, as they have been called since the siege of St Mayenne. The angels whom Lorche served became known by the same name as the sect they consumed. They who took Lorche and his followers back with them, to twist with rage and despair and pain in another place for over four centuries, perhaps still believing in their own greatness, and their elected state in that terrible plane, as Katherine has always done on earth under their influence.’

Kyle began walking, off-balance, towards the door of the study. ‘No. Max. Please. No more.’

Max followed Kyle, a vibration of excitement in his voice. His little eyes bulged with a mad glee. ‘The Blood Friends had a foothold in Katherine from the beginning. She was perfect. They sensed her. In that Clarendon Road house. They were conjured in the right place and in the right conditions.’

Kyle paused. He didn’t know what to do, or where to go. He sat down upon the cold floor. ‘The murders at the mine. On the Night of Ascent. Why, if they needed hosts?’

Max groaned as he moved, but managed to crouch beside Kyle. His voice became hoarse, breathless. His words more determined. ‘The adult members of the Last Days had no real worth as vessels for the Blood Friends. But still Katherine offered those adepts who had deserted her, as well as those faithful and those imprisoned, as potential hosts to the Blood Friends. If not as vessels, then as sacrifices to her old friends to assuage her hateful spite. Their hot living blood was bartered in an exchange for the skills of the Blood Friends. Through the succour of these old appetites she had enlisted to her cause, she wished in return for a second life inside a child. Amongst those still remaining at the mine on the Night of Ascent, rebirth was denied all but Katherine and two of the Blood Friends, who are currently incarcerated at Bethlem Royal Hospital within those deranged vessels that were once children.

‘By the Night of Ascent I believe Katherine knew she’d never get the Blood Friends to take root inside the adults. Their efforts to occupy adults are largely fruitless. So when they cannot return, they feed to remain as long as they can on this side, as they fed during the siege at St Mayenne, on the apostates Lorche had slaughtered to make his “angels” corporeal, and on the unholy communion as blessed by the swine. And so the Blood Friends fed again at the Blue Oak Mine on the Night of Ascent.

‘It was hopeless to use the adults as vessels. She knew by that night in 1975 because she’d already tried. Think of what Martha Lake told you, about those who were taken out at night and who either never came back, or who tried to run. I believe the early transformations at the mine were errors, and the insane results were killed and buried in the desert. Urania, Hannah, Adonis, Ariel, Priscilla. Katherine experimented with them and the Blood Friends. They were either left terrified, insane, or temporarily filled with the consciousness of the Blood Friends, out in that desert. I believe it was only a dress rehearsal for the Night of Ascent. After the debacle in France, she had to prove to herself that the whisperings of her old friends were truthful and that a transfer was possible. In the adults it must have been a momentary occupation, but proof enough. She then had her experiments, her guinea pigs, killed by Moloch and Baal. Had them bury the evidence. She kept up her side of the bargain with those she had made such a pact with, but I believe she secretly knew a permanent transference could only be truly affected with an immature and more receptive vessel, like a dog, a pig, or a child.’

‘No. You’re making me feel sick, Max.’

‘The murders on the Night of Ascent were planned. That night was a trap. The other members of the Last Days may have been promised as unwitting vessels for the Blood Friends, her masters, but Katherine really used them as sacrifices to prolong the Blood Friends’ visit and influence, through which she could take up position within the infant. Much blood was needed to facilitate her transference by what should never have been called down.’

Max gazed at the screen. ‘Despicable. Four of her most devoted Seven, who died beside her in the temple, she had long offered to her invisible allies. She’d tricked them into believing they could live again, inside the children. Children as vessels for four of her chosen, her devoted Seven. That was her ploy, to get them to agree to their execution by the hand of Brother Belial so they also could live again within the children.’

‘It doesn’t add up. Why treat children so terribly if they were to be hosts?’

‘Because a dehumanized condition was more conducive for the entry of a thing as vile as a Blood Friend. Because it was the Blood Friends she had really promised those children to, not her devoted Seven. Only her own intended vessel was groomed separately, at the mansion. Kept clean. Personal tuition. The other four children lived with dogs in a shack. I don’t know which was worse.’

‘The Seven were her most loyal. They murdered for her.’

‘Now you begin to truly understand her nature. And Brother Belial was her confederate. She betrayed those of The Seven who died kneeling beside her in the temple more hideously than those who died by the fence trying to escape. Because she suspected her closest Seven of ambition and they perished for it, as their predecessors did in France. They became nothing more than a blood sacrifice to oil and anoint the ritual in which she would reincarnate. Their usefulness had expired. Their murderous deeds under her tutelage needed to be erased in a blood frenzy she dutifully delivered to her old friends. Belial cut throats on Katherine’s orders. And a great deal of blood was taken by the dirty, poisonous mouths of the Blood Friends after Belial opened those arteries. It’s why the police couldn’t find enough blood at the crime scene.’

‘But two of the children have dogs inside them. What the fuck, Max?

‘I can only speculate. But I believe that in the terrible confusion of the coming of the Blood Friends, in the maelstrom, the psychic storm when souls were bared and throats were opened, two of the dogs became involved. As did two of the Blood Friends, who entered the two infants who could only grow into aberrations, because they were already monstrous at the moment of their rebirth. Such rites are not an exact science. Matters of diabolism never have been, and always demand a high price. There must have been a terrible scrabble amongst the host of Blood Friends to occupy the available adults and the children, during their brief access to that isolated commune.’

Kyle made to stand up. ‘I’ve heard enough.’

Max seized Kyle’s arm. ‘The ones who ran for the wire on the Night of Ascent, they were betrayed and sacrificed also. They realized their fate too late. Their lives were to end in a hideous exchange with the Blood Friends who sought to effect a transition: from a terrible age back to youth, from eternal damnation to blessed mortality. When it did not work, their blood was still spilled as succour to those old friends’ appetites. Before that fence they could not climb, the adepts died frantic with terror. The Blood Friends ate with a horrible rage and thirst at the foot of that boundary. Remember, blood also maintains the brief corporeality of the Blood Friends, as it did during the siege of St Mayenne.

‘Can you not see? It takes an immense effort for them to manifest on our side of things. If they cannot gulp at life’s blood, as you have seen by evading them in your motel room, they are unable to remain and soon disappear. But they leave impressions. And the police never found the murder weapon that delivered the coup de grace by the perimeter. Because there wasn’t one.’ Max’s fingers dug into Kyle’s bicep. ‘And now they come for us. Last night, Kyle, they came for me. Again. Me. I can’t keep them back any longer. Kyle! Wait!’

Kyle was back on his feet in a heartbeat. ‘I don’t want to hear it.’

‘That thing that calls itself Chet Regal is empowered by Katherine’s old friends, the Blood Friends. You cannot deny it. They serve each other’s wishes. You know of whom I speak. You have seen them. In Holland Park. Your motel rooms! They leave tracks. The footprints at the mine! The walls! It was they that came on the Night of Ascent. And they are with us again!’

Kyle reached the brandy decanter. Swept it up and drank from the neck. Gasped. ‘For one person to occupy another? It’s just not possible.’

‘It takes a long time. It needs assistance, from friends, old friends, who have the expertise. You have seen the casualties. The brain-damaged. The irreparable neurological trauma. And the inclusion of less robust consciences inside the minds of the children. In the maelstrom. In the ritual. Can you not see it? In that terrible storm that descended. But it was no storm. It was an aperture. An opening. Wits were lost inside it. In the horrible confusion and slaughter, with the dogs and the children . . . Think of Lorche, Kyle. Think! His second sight. The Bishop he installed inside a pig. We think Lorche also intended to exchange, body and mind, with one of the children in St Mayenne in 1566. One of the children he kept isolated so he could live again. The other children were to serve as hosts for those spirits he served. Lorche’s angels that we do not have names for. But he and his angels were interrupted. By the siege. And Katherine’s first attempt at the ritual at the French farm was a disaster from which she fled. It is a precarious and costly procedure that takes years, to prepare the vessels, and for the unnatural to become natural. What more proof do you need?’

‘No, no, no. Just no, Max. No. OK?’

Max scrabbled after Kyle as he made for the door. ‘It takes time to isolate a candidate in order to make the transfer. Think. What better place to do this than in a deserted farm, a desert? Ghost towns? Wastelands. Something befitting. And there’s not an officer of the law, or an authority in the world, that would believe you. Unless you have proof. Proof, Kyle. Our film is our proof.’

‘I can’t, Max. I just can’t believe you. I don’t know what I believe . . . I’ve seen things . . . dreamed things . . . But transfer of a consciousness. Impossible.’

‘The children were unformed, open and trusting. Separated from the protection of their parents. They were young. The young were perfect. It had worked with dogs and pigs for Lorche. And children were easier than adults. Can’t you see? Katherine was refining the process Lorche began. She was under guidance from the same influences that made a pact with Lorche.’

Kyle couldn’t speak, but tried to push himself away from Max. All he wanted was to leave the half-derelict flat, burning with a fake light that would soon wink out. Max followed him into the hall. ‘It’s why Lorche was cutting throats four hundred years before. It’s critical at a certain point. At a particular time in the ritual, in the “friendship” that must be maintained with hot living blood. Sacrifice. Blood maintains their presence for a short time. And the presence of the Blood Friends suspends the rules we are governed by, which prevent one thing passing into another. And enough blood was shed to get Katherine inside a child locked in that cabin. In the riot and the rout of blood, when the presence of the Blood Friends filled the foul air, she succeeded. As did two of the Blood Friends. They passed over. You have felt their intent too, their investigations as you slept, as have we all. I believe our nocturnal visions were to serve as warnings to us, as well as an exercise of their power. Preparation.’

Kyle made the hall. Max’s stick tapped after him like a jeweller’s little hammer. ‘Katherine had a head start. She’d begun preparing Prissie’s son in her mansion. Katherine made it across into a child, with help, with sacrifice, with blood.’

‘The boy. Prissie’s son. What happened to his . . . spirit, consciousness?’

‘He died in Katherine’s body. As she planned. Belial beheaded her with the soul of a child inside her bloated body. The head was removed to stop the terrified child seeping back out during the ritual. And the blood from her body was feasted upon.’

‘You can’t . . . you cannot expect me to believe this.’

‘Katherine and the boy must have already been exchanging for short times. In California. Out at her mansion. Think of what Martha said. And Lieutenant Conway. That Katherine had become childlike. It wasn’t drugs! Witnesses had already seen Prissie’s boy’s consciousness inside Katherine for short periods of time. Why would this woman, this guru to the Hollywood stars, with millions in the bank, this successful manipulator of hundreds of people, why would she end up so reduced in the dirt of an abandoned mine? Beheaded. Think, man. Why did she order Belial to kill her? It was intentional because she was no longer inside that body. Had left it. The clean boy the police found was Katherine. Successfully in place inside that infant and ready to evolve. I believe the clean boy even directed matters at the mine once Katherine was in place.’

‘Oh Jesus, no. No.’

‘She was in perfect control of things we can barely comprehend. Acquired knowledge, expertise from those others. As far back as 1969 she knew where it was all leading. What drove her narcissism was self-loathing. She wanted to be adored, but she also hated her body, ageing, confining mortality. Would exchange anything for a chance to be free of it.’

Kyle turned around just before the front door. ‘Then why the film? What was the point of involving me and Dan, if you knew all of this?’

Max leaned upon his cane in a revived physical discomfort that Kyle dearly wanted to increase. ‘As my own time approached, I decided to gather evidence. To find out how she was killing from beyond the grave. How it was even possible for her to continue, in this life, after her time. And when I learned of the fates of the children . . . well, it became something else. Something I was ready to accept. Then my intention was to flush Katherine out. A film was my idea of a counter-attack. To make some kind of bargain. To save the last of us. To save myself.’ Max’s face sagged and whited with the most intense expression of fear Kyle had yet seen. His voice came out a whisper. ‘I didn’t want to go to that other place. The one you saw in Antwerp. They made me dream of it. Where they took the poor deluded wretches of St Mayenne and have since reshaped their tortured souls. They even tried to unseat me from my own body as I slept. I didn’t want them inside me. They were revealing their desire to change places with us. The living. And if they cannot, they will slaughter us like cattle to stay among us, if only for brief periods. A full possession can only work with a child, but it seems we adults can also still be taken to that other place. To join the congregation.’

Kyle leaned against the door frame. These invasions he had suffered too. Something with dirty fingers had been trying to feel its way into his life for weeks. It did make sense. Horrible sense. He had seen the Kingdom of Fools in dreams, and seen The Saints of Filth put to the sword. Woken to inhabit a terrible black anti-space. To occupy other ghastly forms for short times. He had been touched and now they intended to either slaughter him where he lay or to take him with them. Back to that other place, to some kind of eternal exile. The dead birds, the whining dogs, the thin tatty figures.

Max’s voice came to him as if from a dream. ‘She called them back to pick up our scents. They want to live, to occupy the living, as does she whose future and continuance is dependent upon their presence. But when they inevitably fail, when so close, they are gripped by spite and hate and rage, they sate old thirsts. Or they seize us, take us away, like treasure.’

‘You thought you could scare her off? With exposure? Didn’t fucking work, did it?’

Max gripped Kyle’s shoulder. ‘No. It did not. I sent her some footage. It made her hunger for revenge greater. And yearn for concealment from what I had learned. Her desires became even more acute. I believe I merely succeeded in bringing things forward.’

‘And you’re still rewriting history, aren’t you? Because Gabriel was right. He and Isis were used as bait so I could film what hunted them. It was too dangerous for you to go and make the film yourself, but you still wanted proof. So you sent me and Dan, and that poor worm, Gonal, out there to get it while you cowered in your world of light. But we got contaminated as well. You bastard, Max. You horrible little bastard. And if you’re right, Max, about all of this, then we’re fucked. We bleed out like Gabriel did last night. Or we get snatched and dumped in the Kingdom of Fools. Either that or we end up with a friggin’ dog inside us. I’m all ears, Max, as to what you propose to do.’

Max looked past Kyle, onto the communal landing, and lowered his voice. Didn’t even try to deny Kyle’s accusations about using the others as bait, or that all he could think of was his own survival. ‘Perhaps we are not entirely “fucked”. Public exposure was merely the first of two defences I believed I might have against her and her old friends. But if she did not call off her hounds, the second outcome . . .’

‘What? What was the second?’

‘Assassination.’

Kyle’s eyes were wild; he felt them elongate within his skull. After a long period of tense silence, he mumbled, ‘Kill Chet Regal?’

Max nodded sagely.

‘I’m really surprised at you, Max. That you haven’t already topped him. Would it have troubled your selective conscience at all?’

‘Ssh. Your voice. Keep it down.’

‘No!’

‘Look, it’s not so easy. I . . . well, I have looked into it.’ Max cleared his throat.

‘You’ve already tried, haven’t you?’

‘Can you blame me?’

‘Jesus.’ Kyle dropped his face into his hands. ‘How? How did I get myself into this?’

‘Chet had private security. Armed. Round the clock nursing staff. Devoted assistants. There is the matter of Sisters Gehenna and Bellona. They are old but not to be underestimated.’

‘Then how do you get to him?’

‘Chet is ruined. Bankrupt from the divorce and various legal settlements from law suits. His chef and trainer and personal doctor were the first to go when their wages were no longer being paid, earlier this year. As of this month, I am reliably informed by my source, the last of the security detail also failed to show up for work. His bodyguard quit a week ago. So now is the time to strike. Chet hasn’t long left. No more than a year. He has already been hospitalized twice this year with pneumonia. A mild infection could kill him. If he even has the strength, he must reincarnate now. I am certain he has been cultivating a new transfer for two years with the adopted child. Practising as ill health crept upon him. It was this that forced him to call down the Blood Friends once more. His illness brought his plans forward when he realized he was sick, he got rid of the wife who he merely used for the adoption. You must have read about the custody battle. He won by paying her off, and by making her drop her suit by threatening exposure of her drug habit that he’d had filmed. Drugs he introduced her to. There is nothing he will not do to pursue his goals. He wanted to be alone with that child for a reason.’

‘So we bust in there and murder a critically ill man?’

‘I wish it were that simple. Sister Gehenna and Sister Bellona are far worse adversaries than his former complement of rent-a-cops. And there is the matter of a tiger.’

‘What?’

‘He has a Bengal tiger. An asset from more lucrative times. And there are snakes, I am told. Deadly pets.’ Max smiled. ‘Serpents. How fitting. So this venture of ours is not without considerable risk.’

‘There’s that word again, Max. “Ours”. I was almost with you until you mentioned the tiger. I’m outta here. Oh, by the way, where is Iris?’

Max looked aghast, and mortified that Kyle would even consider disobeying his wishes. ‘Iris?’

‘The woman who brings cake and toast. She was here this morning.’

‘Have you not understood me?’

‘I’m going to find my friend. With the police.’

‘Katherine’s trying to incarnate again, Kyle! While she still can! Before that body expires out from under her. She has a child. We know she has a child in there with her. We must save the child.’

Kyle scrabbled at the latch. ‘Social services. You better call them.’

‘If you don’t help me, a child will die. I’ll die. You will die. Kyle, you won’t see the fucking morning!’ Max hammered the marble floor with his cane. ‘Documentary proof. We have it. Time to film the final scene. Don’t you see, Kyle? Your film is almost complete.’

Kyle held the front door, and started pulling it closed on Max. ‘No, No, No.’

‘She has a child, Kyle! A child!’

Kyle shut the door behind him.

Max’s final call came from the other side of the door. ‘Don’t turn out the lights, Kyle! For God’s sake!’

Отправить