Under a Watchful Eye(68)

Seb imagined that Mark had never enjoyed more than a limited audience, because he immediately relished the opportunity to expound. ‘Oh, now you’re getting somewhere. The hinderers. Marvellous! It’s quite complicated, but in his stories, Hades and paradise kind of interpenetrate the earth. In the same way that we are supposed to have these corresponding forms, the body, the vehicle, and soul-body, that interpenetrate each other, these other realms are also here at the same time as us.

‘So the inhabitants of Hades and paradise are never far away from us in the real world, but you can’t measure the distance physically. And Hazzard believed that discarnate soul-bodies are all around us, all of the time, but most of us can’t see them. The incarnate and discarnate are all overlapping, all of the time, in different spheres that exist simultaneously in the same place, but don’t interact.

‘Mediumistic people, clairvoyants, like Hazzard claimed to be, were able to see or even feel the crossovers, at certain times or when they were prepared. I loved all of that. Great stuff. It’s like this whole mystical mythos he used for his fiction, and he was very consistent. He never wrote about anything else.

‘Oh, I have these for you.’ Mark opened his rucksack and removed two books in protective plastic envelopes. He placed them on the table. ‘You can borrow them. But please, please, guard them with your life. They’re irreplaceable. You’ve seen the prices online, and these were my dad’s too.’

‘Of course. I’ll return them before I go home.’

Seb looked at the covers. Pulpy oil paintings. The first collection, Sinking in the Dark Room. Rising in White Light, featured a wraith-like form levitating from a bed in which a woman lay screaming. The second, Hinderers in the Passage, was pitched as ‘17 Blood-Chilling Tales of Supernatural Horror’, which Seb recited without a trace of irony. On the book jacket, a clawed hand appeared around the side of an opening door. The silhouette of the door was lit by a luminous, ghostly light.

Mark grinned. ‘Yeah, cheesy, I know. Sign of the times. And you know Hazzard hated horror. He felt it misrepresented his ideas. But what else did he think he was writing for that second book?’

Mark stacked five old cassettes on the table as well as a box file, then removed a tape recorder from his bag. ‘These are Liza’s recordings, the better stuff. I’ll transfer the other two to disc tomorrow so you can take them with you. How long do you plan on staying?’

‘I’ll start on these tonight, after dinner. I have all day tomorrow, so I hope to be finished by late afternoon. I’ve booked a train for seven and I’ll return these before I go.’

Mark nodded and said, ‘I can swing by and pick them up. Nice room, by the way,’ perhaps seeing the place properly for the first time.

His rucksack remained half-full. Through the elasticated rim of the bag, Seb saw the cover of his novel Occupied.

Mark caught his eye. ‘Hope I’m not taking the piss, but would you mind signing my books?’

Seb smiled. ‘That would be a pleasure. Then we should eat.’

At the table in the restaurant, feeling giddy from the first bottle of wine, Seb carefully leafed through the first Hazzard book, Sinking in the Dark Room. Rising in White Light.

He read the epigraph ‘No sudden heaven nor sudden hell for man – Tennyson’, and then he checked the contents page:

Sinking in the Dark Room. Rising in White Light Through the Mist





This Prison of the Flesh





Thousands of Invisible Cords

In the Body of my Resurrection





Born Through a Cloudy Medium





My Soul Rose Trembling A Tight Glove Pulled from my Finger She Beckoned and I Followed Shed the Body’s Veil

Carry Me Softly on Shoeless Feet The Discarded Coat





He’d not read any of them.

‘That book is more mystical,’ Mark offered around a mouthful of steak and jacket potato. ‘In the preface he explains that the stories came from “a greater power than exists in my pen”. A typical Hazzard flourish. A Hazzardism, I call it. But for a horror man, you’ll be more interested in the second collection. Hinderers is very dark. His output evolves from the mystical to a psychic and spiritual horror across the two periods in which he was published, which spans about twenty-five years.’

As the waitress arrived to offer the dessert menu, Seb removed the second collection from its protective sheath. Seb ordered coffee. Mark had tiramisu and coffee.

As Mark had attested, the titles on the contents page of Hinderers in the Passage suggested a change in tone, and one that effortlessly formed unpleasant images within Seb’s memory.

A Dark, Slowly Flowing Flood





Down the Last Valley

The Same Event in a Converse Direction Many Communications Must Remain in Doubt This Coat is Too Tight

A Sack with a Narrow Opening

Discarnate Inhabitants of Hades Indeed, I Have Seen my Sister

I Can See in an Absence of Light Greylands





Cast Thyself Down





Hinderers in the Passage





A River of Darkness





Broken Night