Under a Watchful Eye(77)
‘You didn’t track him down?’
‘He was dead when I looked. Alcoholic, someone said on a message board. Drank himself to death in the late nineties after dropping from sight. The other writer, Moira Buchanan, topped herself in the late eighties. Don’t know much about her, but her Hazzard-influenced stories are really strange too. At one time, Buchanan wrote these big sagas about families in Scotland for libraries. All of her books are out of print now and there’s nothing supernatural in them at all. I read two of them and they were more like Gothic romances than anything else. But she dedicated her three horror stories to Hazzard as “the Master”. Right at the end of her career.’
‘Which is what M. R. James called Le Fanu.’
‘Yes, but these two fairly minor pulp writers bestowed the same august title on Hazzard. Maybe they were both affiliated to the SPR. I doubt I’ll ever find out. Moira Buchanan’s horror tales are exactly like the final Hazzard stories in Hinderers. I can dig them out for you. “Come to Light” was the first one. “The Earthly Dark of the Burrow” came next and is very good, very claustrophobic and mad. And there’s one called “Before I Knew I Was Dead”. That was the last thing Buchanan ever wrote, apparently. Very depressing story as she succumbed to suicidal thoughts.
‘Strange that one writer drinks himself to death and another commits suicide, after each writing three stories in Hazzard’s voice, which were entirely different to anything they had ever written before. And they both called him a master, like he was their master. I love that kind of thing, though. People fell under his spell, I guess. Like Ewan, but for him it was only through reading Hazzard’s obscure stories, years after the Master had died. That’s really freaky.’
‘Isn’t it.’ The unnerving connection between Ewan’s desire for Seb to write a book for him and the mimicry of Hazzard’s voice in another two writers, whose lives ended in miserable, tragic circumstances, confused and unsettled him even more than the contents page in the anthology had done the night before. The very pressure of unease’s gravity grew denser and Seb found himself slightly short of breath while Mark enthused about the literary connections.
Mark stood up and moved out from behind the table. ‘I need the loo and am going to seek out another bottle of Doom Bar. Might as well make a night of it. You want anything?’
Seb shook his head. ‘No thanks. But take this.’ He gave Mark a ten-pound note. ‘No arguments. I’m covering all of your expenses.’
‘You don’t have to.’
‘Mark, I want to. And I’m feeling as guilty as hell, as well as being really glad that you’re here. I’m still conflicted about this, but I owe you one.’
Mark smiled. ‘Any time.’
Seb settled into his seat. For once the Quiet Carriage was fulfilling all that it promised. He wasn’t even sure how many people were still aboard the train. He couldn’t see any passengers, but across the aisle some bags were visible in the overhead racks. Warm air and the gentle shifting of the carriage produced a lulling effect.
Seb opened his eyes. Exhaustion had overrun him and he’d fallen asleep and then stumbled in his dream, as if one of his legs had suddenly become shorter than the other and pitched him over.
The train might now have been rolling through the countryside close to the Teign estuary. From the position of his reclined head he could see no lights outside. Perhaps they were in a tunnel or an unlit seascape existed outside. He yawned.
Mark hadn’t returned from the buffet car.
Two rows away, towards the end of the carriage, he became aware of the top of a grey head, the hair completely white. It had risen and then sprouted over the back of the seat and appeared unhealthily thin and unkempt.
Seb had no recollection of anyone occupying that seat before now. A sudden image of an elderly form pushing itself up the backrest, as if to peer over the headrest like a naughty child, made him tense.
Across the aisle, the windows were mostly obscured by the headrests. But the panes of glass were blackened by an absence of light outside the train, so the visible portion of the windows were mirrored and reflecting the carriage across the aisle, at head height.
Seb still needed to squint, and lean across the table, to better make sense of who sat in the chair two rows away. What he saw reflected back at him from the glass suggested a ball of screwed-up newspaper. Without any doubt, the blurred, grey thing was also responsible for the colourless hair drooping over the chair back.
Slowly, Seb got to his feet, the edge of the table keeping him bent at the waist. ‘Anyone . . .’ he said, but had no idea how to finish the sentence. A tiny prickle ran up his back.
The reflection of the papery lump seemed to be moving in a way that suggested a hinge action within its form, like a jaw opening and closing. The white hair also moved, as if caused by the motions of a mouth working at the air.
Seb slid out from behind the table. Better to leave the carriage than verify the existence of a creased face, or a body in a far worse state below the chin.
The reflected head also rose as he stood upright in the aisle, though it remained facing forward and continued to work its mouth. This seemed worse than the head turning around, as if it could sense him without the use of its eyes. And when the pallid scalp became more visible, and when he saw how the pate was stained by large, black moles, from which the sketchy fronds of dead hair protruded, Seb lurched for the door at the front of the Quiet Carriage.