Under a Watchful Eye(73)
Whoever was wearing the dark coat moved away, and swiftly, across the floor of the landing on the other side of the glass. They turned and vanished into a lift or onto the staircase. There is no staircase on that side, just the two lift doors.
A faint bump behind his back brought him about quickly. He lost his balance and lurched sideways, but caught sight of the origin of the sound. He’d seen whoever had just withdrawn their face from the panel of glass in one of the doors that sealed the opposite end of the corridor. That passage, beyond those fire doors, contained the staircase. Yes, he remembered now. But didn’t want to go down there because someone had been watching him. As they had moved backwards quickly, the smudge of a pale face had closed its mouth. An aperture disconcertingly dark and wide as if it had been in the act of calling out but soundlessly.
Seb moved his head from side to side on his shoulders. He tried to see through the reinforced glass panels and into the spaces beyond to identify who was on the other side of the fire doors.
And it was then he saw something move again through one glass panel. What appeared to be the back of a dark coat retreating, while seeming to shrink in size. It was as if he was watching a figure moving at speed, and across a distance much longer than the one that existed beyond the closed doors.
Maybe what he’d thought was movement behind the glass panel of the fire door was his own reflection as he’d turned around.
Please let it be.
Perhaps the face had been a part of his mirrored flesh too, and the open mouth some dark feature of the corridor beyond, superimposed through the refraction of light. Maybe he’d even mistaken a fire extinguisher for something else?
Under closer inspection, the panels in the fire doors now revealed no movement, or any other sign of a presence beyond the glass.
Above his head the lights buzzed at the end of his hearing. He could smell the fragrance of carpet cleaner. It reminded him of an airport lounge, or a boardroom. A sense of stillness and emptiness within these communal corridors made a mundane entry into his awareness.
At the same time, he became aware of how cold he was while standing shirtless in a hotel corridor.
20
A Tight Glove Pulled from my Finger
‘Bad night?’ Mark Fry came into Seb’s room, smiling. He probably believed a hangover responsible for Seb’s downcast face and crumpled appearance.
Mark taught sociology and film studies classes at a local college of further education and his classes had finished in mid-afternoon. For this Seb was grateful because he didn’t want to be on his own.
He looked at Mark with a dour and humourless expression that encouraged Mark to straighten his face. Being unable to explain to Mark why he was a wreck was frustrating but the least of his troubles.
Seb nodded at the recordings. They were stacked on the table beside the tape player and Hazzard’s books. ‘All yours, Mark. And thank you again.’
‘My pleasure. I pulled some favours with the admin staff and they copied the SPR stuff for me this morning.’ He parked the wheeled case that he’d brought with him beside the table.
With his foot, Seb tapped the large treasury box he’d left under the table. ‘I’ll leave Ewan’s notes with you for the time being. See if you can make out more than I managed.’
‘I’m an expert at reading poor handwriting. Years of practice. Everything is typed now, though the quality of the content hasn’t been improved by Microsoft Word.’
Seb was too preoccupied to smile.
‘Were they of any use?’ Mark asked, as he raised Hinderers in the Passage from the table.
Not a question that was easy for Seb to answer. He’d read parts of each collection after starting on them at around four a.m. He’d not attempted to return to sleep following the disturbance and had sat alone in his room with the television murmuring, drinking endless cups of coffee until Mark arrived.
The best two Hazzard stories, which resembled plotted short fiction, were the two stories that Seb had read years ago. Structured narratives, found in traditionally told stories, were absent in most of Hazzard’s work. The majority of the tales were better defined as surreal, weird imaginings, filled with ghastly images. Plots were added to some of the stories in the first anthology, though awkwardly, as if the recorded experiences were unsuited to logic.
The earlier stories were akin to cosmic fever dreams in which distant, astral shapes communicated with the narrators through sensations, and often before a background of blinding light.
The narrators were inveterate spies. Voyeurs with unscrupulous motives who often enacted revenge on earthbound rivals through the projection of malign versions of themselves. If the stories were biographical then the manipulations of Hazzard’s ‘astral body’, his gift no less, had never been put to positive use. In this respect the author appeared to have been a mentor to Ewan Alexander.
Had he read the books with innocent eyes, Seb might have been impressed by the author’s resistance to spells, rites, and rituals to evoke the supernormal. Unworldly phenomena was just there without question, and was always becoming within the ordinary world for those with special talents, those who had accessed other planes in a dreamy loosening of their consciousness.
Mythology was often referenced to attest to the existence of other places. Realms that folklore had long tried to encompass, or to explain. Hazzard had definitively explained the ghost, poltergeist, premonition, revenant, demon and angel. At least to himself.