Under a Watchful Eye(103)

Giles ignored Wendy. ‘Is there any more of this, Seb?’

‘Of course,’ Wendy said. ‘Nat. Bring it in. He might as well begin as he’s finally deigned to visit us. No time like the present.’

‘Bring what in?’ Giles asked.

‘Oh, you’ll see!’ Nat said, her voice breaking into a squeal, before she returned from my office carrying a thin pile of printer paper, pinched at the top by a red paperclip. Nat dropped the manuscript in Giles’s lap before returning, somewhat clumsily in her shoes, to sit beside me.

Giles glanced at the cover page: The Hades Intake. 12 Strange Experiences. It was dedicated to ‘Our Master, M. L. Hazzard’.

I caught a combination of recognition, and an even deeper confusion, filling Giles’s eyes. He’d recognized the name Hazzard immediately, as he was a character in Yellow Teeth – the cross-dressing leader of the SPR. Giles frowned. Strange experiences: that’s also what the author, Hazzard, had called his own stories in Yellow Teeth. ‘This is some kind of sequel then, to Yellow Teeth?’ he said this distractedly.

Wendy raised her thick black eyebrows and answered for me, as she had done all afternoon. ‘In a manner of speaking. But this is the best thing he’s ever written down.’

‘Yes. We’re quite a team,’ Nat added. ‘We share everything.’

Written down? An odd expression, and Giles stiffened when he heard it. ‘A team? Seb, is this a bloody joke?’ Giles shook his head. ‘Seb. This is a short-story collection.’

‘Oh, no,’ Nat said, correcting Giles. ‘They’re not stories. They’re experiences. Strange experiences. And this material has been in the works for some time.’

‘Please, begin. We’re not going anywhere,’ Wendy said, and nodded at the thin manuscript that lay in Giles’s lap, which seemed to be growing heavier as each second of the madness continued.

‘Begin?’ Giles said. ‘Seb, you know that Pan won’t accept a collection of horror stories. No serious publisher will. We’re all expecting a novel. Is this a digression while you work on a new book? A companion piece to ‘Teeth?’

‘It’s what he wants, isn’t it, Seb?’ Wendy added.

He, an unusual and reverential emphasis on a pronoun for an author too. Wendy hadn’t been referring to me either and that really baffled Giles.

Giles raised his hands, palm upwards. ‘What the hell is going on here?’

Characters: yes, that’s what Wendy and Natalie were becoming in Giles’s mind too. And as he reinterpreted the two women in that room, I knew that his scalp had receded beneath his hair. Right then, he must have thought of Yellow Teeth – the story of a writer whose life had been taken over by a sinister organization of astral projectors.

Joyce and Veronica. The two women in the story . . . The women of the SPR. And SPR was very similar to the API?

Giles began to smile. A joke. Yes, he thought it was all a joke. I must have set him up! This was an elaborate practical joke because what he had in his lap was a sequel. And for half a second he was convinced by his own theory.

But the garden . . . the bins . . . and Seb’s appearance . . .

Giles and I held each other’s eyes and Giles knew in a heartbeat that there wasn’t a trace of humour or mischievousness in his client’s thoughts.

Natalie and Wendy each acknowledged the moment too, in which the penny had dropped for my literary agent.

Briefly, and judging by his pallor, I think Giles may then have entertained an image lingering from his reading of Yellow Teeth. I believe he might have imagined a long form, with its head covered by a dirty sack, crawling along the wall of the very building in which he sat.

He dropped his eyes and read the opening line of the first story, entitled, ‘We Are Unshrouded. We Have Enlarged’.

I know the opening line off by heart, because it was the first thing that M. L. Hazzard ever communicated to me, during my third morning as the writer-in-residence at the Tor.

‘And out of the trees they come, the thin people. They cry with joy because one of them says she has seen the light. They all vanish into the tunnel and fall silent.’





31


River of Darkness


‘They betrayed you . . . See how they live now. See! They have deserted you. Enriched themselves. They embezzle the organization. They have grown rich while you waste away here. Where are they now? Tell me? Where are Eunice and Ida? Where are Wendy and Natalie? Where? Where are they? Where are those who have changed their names to throw you off their scent, and who try to live without your guidance in another place entirely? Do you sense them here, ever? No, because they have gone. Flown. They have left you all alone. They have chosen comfort over the mission! They have no interest in your plight. They have forsaken your greatness.’

I have lain upon Diane’s bed, night after night. With my eyes shut tight I have spoken aloud to the darkness when the house is at its most populous. I have said these things and many other things too.

Did you think that when you speak alone that no one hears you? Have you no idea of what glides beside you, briefly, but intent, unsure of itself or its whereabouts, but snatching, with much transformed hands, at the fading echoes of your words that appear in another place, like over there?

Trust me, eventually, something will hear you, if you choose the right place and the right time.