Under a Watchful Eye(98)

‘It is a lovely house,’ Natalie said, and clapped her withered hands like a little girl. ‘We’ve always enjoyed coming here and admired what you’ve done with the place, Seb.’

‘Indeed, Natalie. You could say this house has become a prominent asset to the organization.’

‘Indeed. Yes, yes.’

I finally broke my stupefied silence. I’d commented upon their mental state before, but couldn’t resist repeating myself. ‘You’re mad. You think you can take my home . . . and deposit me out there, in that place?’

‘And we can only hope,’ Wendy said, elatedly, ‘that you will feel compelled to record what will be shared with you, faithfully this time. We can only hope that it does not compromise your artistic integrity.’

‘Agreed,’ said Natalie, beaming. ‘Because you don’t have any fucking choice.’





29


Looking at Myself from Nothing


The psychic stream flows thickly through this place.

Those who have detached and who continue their search rarely bother me while I work. I’m not sure they are even aware of me. But I do see them, and often. Sometimes by day, but mostly at night.

When the sun goes down, I keep to the cottage because when I see them now, I see them more clearly, or they are better formed as my time in their presence lengthens.

I’ll give you an example. Yesterday at dusk as the light dwindled, I came across a woman on the other side of the rose garden. Or, at least, I saw what was left of her between the vines and thorns. She had been wearing a hat with a wide, floppy brim, but her head was bowed as if she were searching for something about her feet, or even trying to locate her feet. I saw part of a lower jaw, the flesh stretched over the bone, the dirty teeth pronounced. I saw something of an arm, too, and one that was as thin as the branches of the plants that she crouched beside.

But I heard her voice clearly, as if she were still alive, and she said to me, ‘It’s not far now.’

She then asked if I had ‘seen Sylvia’, before informing me, ‘She’s not been well, you know.’

After that, the figure was no longer there at all.

Those I come across are trapped in repetitive trivialities. I often hear the same voices repeating the same phrases inside the rose garden where Hazzard’s ashes were scattered by the last handful of his followers, one grey morning in 1984. Or so I have learned from the records in the archive. But there are many here that are best avoided, because they rage blind against the invisible cords that bind them. I cannot endure their antics. I move on from where they thrash in nothingness.

In my sleep, each evening, I follow the sound of the stream and the wet, grey procession until it vanishes. I often find myself trapped before a wall inside the building, the place to which they all scurry in panic or ecstasy.

Sometimes I find myself dreaming that I am far away from the house, but still inside the grounds. I am on all fours, begrimed, and talking to myself as if I have a fever.

Awake, I can never locate the stream. I often hear it, rushing nearby, in various parts of the grounds when I go out to walk. Finding the confines of the study stifling, as I wait each morning for that voice to rise from the unlit, shuttered places that abound inside the building, I go out.

He comes to those who have entered his house in many ways. Sometimes, as I sit still with my eyes closed against the bustling darkness, I await the first image to bloom inside my mind.

There can be nothing for me to write for days, and I kid myself that this intermittent hinderer activity has finally lifted from the dead building and perhaps moved further downstream. Or maybe it has stumbled out of its captivity to enter the light. But it doesn’t work like that, not for them. They seem to have forfeited any right to what they sought so many years ago. Their frantic scrabbling at the air to get back inside what no longer lies below, dead-eyed upon a bed, is also made in vain.

The Master’s voice, on the rare occasion that I hear it, suggests a fussy and brittle temperament. And sometimes I hear this self-important intonation and, despite the great gulf that divides us, I sense that this presence remains acutely sensitive about its appearance and status, and might be easily offended. I fear that no slight would ever be forgotten. Achieving its will over others is still very important. So I refrain from causing injury.

Hazzard speaks but never manages to complete much of a thought, let alone an actual tale.

He most often adopts the female persona, Diane, and there is just as much mimicry involved in the tone of Diane’s voice as there was in Hazzard’s original masquerade here, on this earthbound side.

But I have seen Hazzard and Diane. I am sure I have, though it can be hard to tell them apart from the others, who hinder and crawl about the floor here, or who suddenly seize themselves upon a ceiling and bay like hunting animals. Many do nothing but stand and stare, as if forgetting why they are here, or even who they once were. And as they forget what they were, I fear they wither. I fear they transform into something baser that is wounded and cornered.

Sightings of Hazzard are as rare as his intermittent communications. Hearing these bursts of his speech is like trying to tune an old radio, with an aerial insufficient to the task of locating transmissions. His narration forms fragments of sentences that seem to be directed at someone else in another time, or even another place, that I partly overhear. But I start typing what I catch, in case it is an experience that is required for our collection.