Under a Watchful Eye(88)

Talking to the desperate living dregs of what Hazzard had founded and then lost was making Seb feel about as unstable as they clearly were.

This woman must have been here as a teenager, and perhaps in the early eighties as Hazzard was dying. She’d never left him either, or been allowed to. Maybe she would return after her own first death too.

Seb turned about and walked to the stairs.

‘Seb! Seb!’ Joyce whispered insistently, and she kept on calling after him until her voice was lost in the lightless depths of the old hall.

Outside the Tor, Seb could see Mark engaged in an animated discussion with Veronica. Or, at least, Mark seemed agitated and that accounted for the wild gesticulations that he was making with the one hand that he kept thrusting into the air, as if pointing at the sky. Veronica regarded him with what amounted to a contemptuous indifference.

Seb walked over.

‘No. No. Not again. I can’t get any more . . .’ Mark stopped talking when he became aware of Seb’s approach.

Veronica redirected her thin smile towards Seb. ‘I hope you have found a room to your liking.’

‘Shut up!’ Seb barked into Veronica’s face. She did nothing but blink and resume a display of her mottled grin; an expression still filled with an unaccountable loathing for him from the first time they met.

Seb seized Mark by the elbow and forced him away from the woman. ‘What the fuck? Mark, what the fuck?’ He looked into the eyes of a man with whom he’d spent the last three days, realizing that he hadn’t a clue who Mark Fry really was. The man’s face was pebbled with droplets of perspiration. He also looked about as guilty as anyone could manage.

Mark shrugged his arm free of Seb’s hand and glanced at the top floor of Tor Hall. ‘I was on notice. Ever since I wrote that bloody book. They made me buy the whole print run, except for a few review copies that I couldn’t get back. Shit, I hadn’t heard from them in years. I thought I was off the hook.’

‘You bastard.’

‘I had no choice. You know what they can do, you know their reach . . . And you got me involved again. Don’t forget that. So thanks, mate.’

‘Fuck yourself. Those women on your tapes, what about them?’

Mark swallowed and shook his head. ‘This place reached out one final time when my book was published.’

‘Webster and Buchanan?’

‘Unfortunate enough to have been friends with Hazzard. I don’t know much more about them. I think he had plans for them too, but it didn’t work out. Or for me . . . but I managed to persuade them that I was no good. They didn’t need much convincing. They hated Mutations. Doesn’t appear that Ewan was up to the task either.’

‘To hell with Mutations! And it didn’t work out for those others, is that so? Funny way of putting it! You know what happened to them.’

‘I hope it works out for you, Seb. I really do.’

‘You could have warned me.’

‘What good would that have done? Once . . . once you are part of the image forming. Like I am. Like Ewan was. That’s all it takes. If that thing up there . . . if he is made aware of us. If he has a sense of us . . . and has an image of us. I think that’s how it works. And it can’t be undone. I’ve tried. And no one will ever believe you. No one sane. They’ll think you’re mad. They’ll think you’re seeing things. They commit perfect crimes here, Seb. Don’t you get it? And they’re so bloody greedy. They made me take out loans. I’m bankrupt.’

‘You better get me out of this, and fast. I am not staying here.’

‘You have to. Where can you go? Home? Manchester? You can’t hide anywhere. Neither of us can. Distance doesn’t matter. We’re in the flood now, Seb. We’re in Hazzard’s stream. He goes backwards and forwards. Time doesn’t mean a thing over there. But you don’t have to be swept away.’

‘How? How is this possible? It’s just not real. It can’t be happening,’ Seb said uselessly, and more to the sky than to Mark.

‘You ask me that? How can I explain this? But you help them and maybe they’ll cut you some slack. There’s no other way. You have a publisher and readers. You get paid to write. That’s what they’re after, money, and exposure for his ideas. You think death has shrunk Hazzard’s ambition? I’d say it’s made it worse. But I tried to explain to them, on your behalf, that it’s not all that simple. You know, with books, and with horror always being a hard sell, and your last book about the ship not being so good . . . But they’re expecting a film too. So be prepared. You’ll have to manage their expectations from the start. That’s the first thing you need to do, because they think that you are a big, fat cash cow.’

Seb was almost in tears when he said, ‘I don’t want this . . .’

‘I’m sorry, Seb.’ Mark looked at his watch and winced. ‘Gotta get a move on. Train to catch. I’ve a taxi coming. Local driver. Oh, and the locals, watch out for them. Some of them help Joyce and Veronica. Feed them. Stuff like that. “Them up at the college”, that’s how they referred to these bitches while I was mooching about. I knew something was up ten years ago before I even saw this bloody place. I found boxes of food by that gate. They were left there by people from round here. Some kind of bloody tithe or tribute, I don’t know, to sustain the SPR. But there are surviving connections from when Hazzard was alive. Only it’s all going wrong, I think. The network they’ve used for years is literally dying off. They’re skint and barely hanging on now. They think you’re the answer to their prayers.’