FOUR

WEST HAMPSTEAD, LONDON. 12 JUNE 2011. 1 P.M.

By Sunday the whole episode felt imagined. They’d pulled off a successful dawn raid and got out of the building with all the equipment intact.

An animal had crept inside the Clarendon Road house. A dog. A fox. A bird. Pigeons. They were everywhere. And the smallest movements and sounds of an avian or animal intrusion were amplified enough to frighten them witless. Or maybe, like Dan said, a trespasser had followed them inside.

But then why hadn’t the gear been tampered with, or worse?

He’d ruled out a TV or radio because the house was detached and its windows were closed, but reminded himself that darkness attuned any imagination to suggestion. It was natural. And unsurprising after Susan White’s stories about visions and presences in a vast empty building. A couple of beers and the creak of a floorboard were the only requirements to set them off. Though the fewer people who knew about the incident the better. He was embarrassed now he felt more secure after a day at home in his desperate studio flat; in his joggers, at work on the script, cigarette smoke permanently adrift from the gargoyle ashtray, another cafetière on his desk.

Inside his little scruffy sanctuary, he’d gradually let his senses feel about and settle on the fusty anchors of his life: the ancient leather sofa that gave him backache; wall-racks filled with hundreds of DVD spines; the stereo; the smoothie-maker that had been a present, but was a dog with fleas to clean; hundreds of books shelved as if by a monkey over three units; black-and-white movie stills; the framed poster of Herzog’s Aguirre: The Wrath of God; the desk from Ikea that had been in the flat when he moved in, now cluttered with folders, more books and DVDs.

Not much to cling to: a worn-out retreat with a perpetually empty fridge, a vague smell of cat piss near the front door, two sash windows that never closed fully, and storage heaters that didn’t work. He couldn’t even read his own gas and electricity meters because they were sealed in the basement flat two floors down, whose occupant he’d never seen.

The flat appeared even more ramshackle than he remembered after the space and grace of the Holland Park town house. Same deal after an overnight in a hotel when you lived like a bum. But it was home. Secure and real. And even if the previous night’s experience left him uneasy enough to suffer a late night, followed by dreams he couldn’t recall in the morning, as the new day’s light filled the world, the edge to his fear had dimmed.

Kyle removed the fourth flash drive from the back of his laptop; it was marked London, June 11, Clarendon Road, Penthouse Interview: Susan White aka Sister Isis. Some great footage was already visible in the first four drives. Susan White’s interview segments all ascended to critical points when her agitation became visible; usually close to the end of each segment. Neat. Her scenes couldn’t have been better if they’d used a well-rehearsed actor. She was for real. It all looked good too. The natural light dimmed as the day progressed; faded from a white sterility and vacancy in which Susan looked withered and reduced, to evolve into an amber hue at dusk, full of shadows as the walls came in around her. It was a marvel to see a story find its own pace and tone so quickly. And the eerie sounds he’d picked up in the boom mic provided the London section with a soundtrack it was never meant to have.

He forced himself to wolf down a sandwich. He was getting lightheaded with euphoria. This could be something. Really something. He desperately wanted to discuss it with Dan. And the thought of the last of the raw footage, from the previous night’s shoot, appearing on the screen of his laptop, made him so nervous and excited he struggled to breathe normally as he fitted the fifth flash drive into the machine. He’d saved it until last. The money shoot.

The camera mic was never used for anything save a guide track, but it was recording on their way down through the building to the basement, and then inside the basement too when they were first spooked, as Dan had been using the camera as a torch.

And there they were, him and Dan, on the unlit penthouse floor. The camera was on Dan’s shoulder, set to a wide angle. On the laptop screen, the floor and walls of the house appeared in a narrow white beam of the camera’s spotlight. The light’s power decreased at its extremity, then vanished into the murk. The shadowy field of vision appeared as if deep underwater, like they were filming inside a sunken wreck. Glimmers of fresh paint and the burnish of floorboards served as little reminders of the ordinary character of the flats during daylight hours, which was a fragile comfort at night.

The small sphere of light washed the back panels of Kyle’s leather jacket as he walked out front, and created a blue sheen on his jet hair. The world of the camera’s eye bounced and shuddered; it threw weak intrusive beams into the lightless vacancy of the stairwell. But never penetrated far.

Until the camera suddenly rushed forward and stared upwards at the ceiling. On the audio track, Kyle heard Dan shout, ‘Dufus!’

‘Why’d you stop?’

‘Shush. You shut the front door when we came back in?’

‘Yes. Locked it.’

‘Listen.’

Kyle paused the disc. He moved the footage back to the point before Dan slipped on the stairs. Shuffled closer to the speakers. Raised the volume. Something on the audio? Yes, just about. There was a faint clatter. A far-off sound. A series of knocks, or slaps, in the distance. Three times he played it back and listened. Ambient, far off, but it could be anything.

He hit PLAY.

Listening hard for anything unusual on the audio, Kyle detected their footsteps to and then into the basement, their breath, the rustle of garments, but nothing untoward. They discussed the smell, the camera raked left and right and nothing came into focus, until Dan zoomed onto the wall behind a jumble of broom-and mop-handles. ‘Bingo.’ The camera’s light hit a wall; the lens zoomed onto a yellowy-brown discolouration. Panned back to pick up the cloudy marks. At a glance, it was a stain left by the evaporation of unclean water.

Kyle paused the disc, then jogged it back until he could see the widest-angle shot of the stain. The discolouration suggested a second layer of thick branches raised from the wall. Which shone like glassy striations as if the sand inside the plaster had fused. It was not a water stain.

He jogged the film forward, one frame at a time. The streaks blurred, but when they flickered into clarity he sucked in his breath. He rewound the footage right back to Dan’s discovery of the marks. He went through the clip again. And there it was, for two frames: what looked like a scrawny spine attenuated by ribs.

He rewound. Looked again. Paused the footage. Yes, it could actually be a glazed impression of a curved vertebral column at the centre of the stain, half concealed behind the glistening streaks, like a fossil of a skeletal spine. Which would suggest the lighter surround offered a hint of meagre flesh papered across the vertebrae, as if the bones were being glimpsed under grubby but mostly transparent skin. Above what looked like the shrivelled remains of a pair of shoulders, long threads seemed to waft, or sway like fine-spun wisps, out from what might have been a small skull. A head that dipped away from sight.

Kyle made a note of the timecode. Then sat back and stared, mystified, bewildered, but also frightened. He swallowed, looked about his flat as if he expected to find someone stood beside him. He lit a cigarette. Watched himself on-screen talk about the children of the Gathering, until he was interrupted by Dan’s tense whisper: ‘Shit’.

Faint, but still audible. A dull bang had been picked up by the microphone. As if someone had fallen against a door on the floor above.

From behind the camera, Dan’s voice went tight and urgent with fear. ‘Someone is definitely in here. You must have left the front door open.’

Intently enough to make his eyes smart, Kyle watched his recorded image leave the basement and search the building with the camera running. Until Dan lowered it to urinate on the first floor. The camera mic had picked up nothing besides the sound of their voices and movements. And he felt a mild shame at how tight with fright his face had appeared, how jumpy his eyes were. Finger Mouse would have a belly laugh at their expense.

The screen went black when Dan turned the camera off before they moved up to Sister Katherine’s former penthouse, at the top of the building.

Smoking vigorously, Kyle waited for the next scene to start. And recalled that they hadn’t set the lights up in the penthouse because they had been rushing through a rehearsal to see how it looked in night mode when they were interrupted. But they did line up the sound for the final penthouse segment, using two tie mics and the boom mic. So the playback of the audio as they fled the penthouse would be crystal clear. This was the moment of truth: how much of the disturbance had they caught?

The next scene began. On-screen, Kyle was filmed by Dan; he spoke to camera about Sister Katherine’s separation from the adepts of the Gathering, until the camera shook and skewed and left only half of Kyle’s face in shot, as Dan said, ‘Dude! We have definitely got company.’

Kyle’s scalp shrank under his hair at the faint sound of something that scraped about a hard floor, out of shot. The sound progressed from the far reach of the hallway inside the penthouse. No mistake, the sound may have been faint, but that was a clear shuffle of unsteady and unseen steps.

The next image was of Kyle’s pallid face on the screen. He could see his throat’s struggle to swallow the tightness in his trachea.

‘What is it?’ Dan said, as he unfastened the camera from the tripod and lowered it to the floor. The walls of the bare room shook in the spotlight, until the camera settled to face the dark hollow of the doorway. Out of shot, the hurried exchange between him and Dan, their voices tight and breathless, was all too audible:

‘How the fuck do I know?’

‘This is not funny. Just not funny.’

‘I’m going to—’

In the murky enclosure of the on-screen world that only revealed the faint white flood of the camera spotlight across the floorboards, a door slammed in the distance. And with so much force the image flickered.

‘Get the fuck out . . .’

Inert upon the floor, the camera vibrated as it captured the stampede of their feet and legs towards the door of the room. Where they paused. Kyle’s scuffed Converse looked grey at the farthest reach of the spotlight; Dan’s black trainers clashed with the greenish tinge of his big pale legs; he’d been wearing shorts and the spotlight depilated the black hair from his skin. Their images stood together in the doorway, rigid with fear. The camera angle recorded them to the waist, but no further up.

In the safety of his studio flat, Kyle listened hard for whatever it was they had heard in the supposedly vacant property.

His own strained voice called out from the laptop speakers: ‘Who’s there?’ There was no answer, only a cessation of the noise. He remembered looking to his right at that point; had peered into the unlit hallway from which another three unseen doorways were closed on three lightless rooms.

But there it was. A distant shriek.

Kyle paused the footage. Jogged it back. Played it again.

A cry. Like a bird. Or a whistle. Sharp, abrupt.

‘You hearing that?’

On the recording he asked Dan if the sound had come from outside.

‘Let’s take off,’ Dan said, with difficulty, his voice wheezy with fright.

The mics recorded Kyle’s groan and Dan’s cough. The smell; there was the stench then. Billowing from the unlit confines of the top storey. And again, on the audio track, came a distant burst of whistles from the distance, like birds panicked from a hedgerow. And then . . .

Kyle jogged the film back. Listened again to what was it? Bestial. Sudden. Throat-deep, a wet rumble, with the beginning of a snarl inside it. And something else in response to the growl; what he had thought was a dog. Yes, it sounded like a frightened dog whistling through its muzzle.

He played the footage back three times. Listened again. Could a man make such a sound?

Kyle hit PLAY. And lurched away from the laptop. Pushed himself back from the speakers that vibrated with the thump of feet; the footsteps of someone who staggered through the dark passage towards where he and Dan cowered.

On-screen, their legs jumped and then fled. They bumped into each other and fought in the doorway, then lurched for the staircase two abreast and went out of shot. The microphones caught the chaos of their rout on the unlit staircase: hands squealed on banister rails, feet thudded wooden stairs, breath was panted out as if by overheating machines. And then he and Dan were distant thuds on the audio track. But the camera continued to record the void of the unlit hallway, beyond the doorway of the room they had evacuated.

A new series of sounds dispersed from the speakers. They reminded Kyle of a frantic slap of hands against a wall. As someone unsteady on their feet attempted to move quickly through the hallway after them.

A second door slammed on the same floor, as if yanked shut by the frantic hands. There were two intruders? Impossible.

‘Jesus. Jesus.’ Hunched over on the floor of his flat, he stared at the laptop screen and didn’t blink in case he missed what he really did not want to see. The picture on the screen remained unchanged for a few seconds: the camera stationary and shooting from ground level, the image in the viewfinder static. Until a thin figure raced across the open doorway.

On ungainly legs, uncoordinated but quick, it flitted for a moment before it too descended the staircase. In pursuit. And as it appeared, the darkness of the doorway and the void beyond was filled with the scratch of the figure’s feet; reminiscent of a dog’s claws that skid and scratch upon a varnished surface.

Kyle hit PAUSE. Someone, almost certainly unclothed, had been in there with them the whole time. But how? They checked every room of the top storey before they began the last scene. And closed all the doors behind them. This just wasn’t possible. For a while, he believed himself too unnerved to watch the clip again. But found himself slowly jogging the shuttle back until the smear of the pale shape reappeared on-screen to rush across the doorway.

He sat back and stared at the frozen image of an upright figure, mid-stride in the dark. He moved the footage forward two frames. The figure was still vague, almost superimposed, but the camera focus marginally improved. Yes, there was a little more detail now. A pair of haggard legs beneath a shrivelled groin. And the insinuation, more than the actuality, of wasted buttocks. Flesh bleached like a fish’s belly. The knee bones were pinched, the calves stringy, the ankle and heels more bone than tissue. And the second foot, the one raised from the floor, was a blur. But there was a trace, an indication, that the second foot was long and pointed, if not spiky at its extremity. Fleshless.

Kyle remembered to breathe out. Nudged the JOG forward and watched the emaciated silhouette blur, stoop, and then drop out of sight, which implied the figure had fallen to all fours at what would have been the top of the staircase, out of shot.

He returned again to the last three frames; the only ones with the intimation of a face in profile. But the hallway was dim and the figure was blurred because of its haste. Little was clear besides a trace of sharp features on the front of a hairless head.

His legs cramped, but Kyle couldn’t move as the footage played out. The figure had gone from the screen, but the sounds of its descent, a scrape and grate at the wooden steps, suggested that four sets of long nails scrabbled for purchase. The microphones picked them up for a few unbearable seconds. Until the noises of the figure’s descent were obscured by a rush of wind through the building, the periphery of which even made the camera shudder. In the tail of the gust, that must have been generated from the summit of the property, came a final sound: the excited shriek of swine.

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