Ash saw the mutant was looking directly at him, and any courage he had left shrivelled inside him.
Dimly, he became aware of gunfire coming from the other end of the corridor and then the screams, not of pain but of fright. Babbage’s men? Surely they wouldn’t just open fire indiscriminately.
Now there were shrieks, more high-pitched screams, and much moaning. He guessed what was happening out there: Tasers were being used on the more hysterical cases, the guards herding them back into their cells.
He took his chance. The big man filled the doorframe, still backing away. Ash shoved him out so hard that the man bounced off the opposite wall. He pushed past and, perversely, was glad once more to be part of the mayhem outside.
44
‘My God, Ash,’ Haelstrom said with genuine concern. ‘Were you in the lift when it crashed through to the basement?’
‘I wasn’t the only passenger,’ Ash replied unsteadily. ‘You’ll find the dead body of one of your guests at the bottom of the lift shaft. A Serbian, I think.’
‘Good God! General Lukovic?’
‘He didn’t really introduce himself properly,’ Ash reflected sourly as he ran a dry tongue around his mouth and examined his clothes. Chalky powder still covered his lips. What I need most is a stiff drink, he told himself. And then a bath or shower.
Ash had been recognized by the guards and orderlies by his clothes (dirty and torn though they were). He’d been dragged roughly towards a rising staircase at the opposite end of the dark-brick corridor. At the top was another metal door, which was open, allowing even more guards and medics through to pacify – or at least, control – the patients below.
Ash had still been shaky and battle-worn and Haelstrom, who had been directing operations from the luxurious and state-of-the-art medical unit, had quickly gone to the investigator, eyeing his condition warily as he approached.
Ash knew one thing for sure, and that was that he wanted to leave this place. He’d had enough and seen too much. If only he could speak to Kate McCarrick; he was certain she’d find a way to get him home. But maybe not . . .
‘I imagine you could do with a drink after what you have been through,’ said Haelstrom solicitously, as if he’d read the psychic investigator’s thoughts.
Ash would have smiled wryly if his cracked lips hadn’t been so painful. This time the big man wasn’t trying to get him drunk. His genuine concern was evident in his gimlet eyes and the expression on his clenched features.
‘What on earth was Lukovic doing there?’ asked a bewildered Haelstrom as if to himself.
‘Waiting for me.’
‘Why would – ’ Haelstrom began, then stopped. ‘Let’s leave that for now and get you tidied up, a drop of strong brandy first and then we’ll have you fixed up in the infirmary.’
The CEO’s tight suit jacket was unbuttoned, his tie was at half-mast, shirt neck open as if forced so by the flesh of his neck. More must have happened at Comraich that evening, Ash realized, remembering the faint, eerie screams he’d heard coming from the castle’s dining hall before he’d made the dash to find out what was happening.
So what had happened? he wondered to himself, remembering his own nasty episode with the foil-covered sandwich.
‘No. I’m okay. Just a few scratches and bruises, that’s all.’
‘I’d still like to have you examined,’ insisted Haelstrom. ‘I mean, you must have been injured in the lift crash alone.’
Yeah, thought Ash, not to mention being almost throttled to death. ‘In fact,’ he said, after swallowing to clear the dryness of his throat, ‘it was Lukovic who saved me in the end. But I’ll explain about that later. What I need right now is a shower, maybe a change of clothes, and a stiff drink to settle my nerves. Not necessarily in that order – I think the drink might come first.’ To hell with pretending he’d given up the booze; no one would blame him after all that happened to him this evening. Hell, no – he’d been in what could have been a fatal air crash before he’d even reached Comraich. That alone could drive a man to drink!
Haelstrom was watching him with what passed for his version of concern.
‘If you won’t be looked over by one of our medical team,’ Haelstrom urged Ash attentively, ‘then by all means let’s start with that brandy. Pandemonium has broken out in the castle this evening and I believe I need a strong drink myself. Apart from the inexplicable crash of the lift – perhaps it was age, wear and tear, who knows? – and then the attack on you in the containment area, well, we’ve also had a terrible incident in our dining room. With the help of our staff, some kind of order has been restored, and most of our guests have been sedated and taken to their rooms for the night. Regretfully, some have died. Heart attacks mainly; some crushed in the panic.’
Sir Victor didn’t say what had caused the panic, Ash noticed, though if his own ghastly culinary experience was anything to go by, he could make a fair guess. Neither had he referred to the conditions in which the patients in the basement were kept. Perhaps Haelstrom was already in denial. Whatever the reason, it could wait. Right now, Ash needed that drink.
Later that evening David Ash was alone. Utterly exhausted. Extremely jittery.
Stoical by nature, he was nevertheless beginning to think that enough was enough. But what could he do? He should have tried to get hold of Kate somehow and check his legal position here. Malign forces had built up in this place, century after century. Were their powers unstoppable now?
He’d tried to explain to Sir Victor Haelstrom earlier, as he recounted his experience over a generous measure of Armagnac, his belief that dark spirits were using ley-line energy for their own iniquitous purposes, having been drawn to this place because of its egregious past, heinous events that possibly had acted as psychic beacons for dissolute spirits.
He’d half expected the big man to dismiss or debunk the notion out of hand, but as he’d told Ash in more detail all that had happened in Comraich earlier in the evening, Haelstrom had seemed to lose all his previous scepticism. Ash shouldn’t really have been surprised. There could be no doubt by now to anyone that there were dark forces at work in this castle. And it was Ash’s job to find out what they were.
Back at work while the rest of the castle slept, the investigator was sitting on a giltwood chair in a long, wide hallway, a galleried wall at his back, moonlight flooding through the windows in the opposite wall. Behind him were several portraits in oils and busts on plinths, some cast in stone, others in bronze.
He’d tried to convince Haelstrom to abandon Comraich, leave whatever malevolence dwelt within to itself, so that its strength might fade with time, becoming too weak to sustain its influence any longer. The violent history was probably the key element that had sustained the link between Comraich and these parasitic manifestations, but to put it plainly, someone here had reopened the ‘door’ of the netherworld to them.
‘Someone in Comraich,’ Ash explained, ‘is acting as a conduit for spirits of ill-nature – whether consciously or subconsciously, I have no idea. But their strength is undeniable. My guess is that the woman I encountered in the cell is responsible for channelling the powers of these unknown entities from the spirit world.’
Haelstrom had blanched at this last remark. Ash had wondered then whether experiments were taking place here, especially upon those poor wretches in the cells.
He thought of the mutant woman, living in almost permanent darkness. Was her deformity the result of some gruesome experiment? And what of the mysterious black orbs, floating in her room, gathering around her frail, crooked body, as if to protect her? He recalled his feelings in there, the dreadful fear, the wish to flee the unknown. And her cell itself, he was certain, was directly beneath Douglas Hoyle’s observation room. What manner of spiritual creatures had been sent to him through her?
Haelstrom had fixed him with his brow-shadowed eyes and told him firmly that evacuating all the guests and staff from Comraich was not, and never would be, an option.
> The big man’s surliness had returned as he’d laid down the law. Ash had been reminded in no uncertain terms that he was committed to a non-negotiable contract to investigate the haunting of Comraich Castle. Haelstrom had demanded that Ash finish his investigations and present a full – a full, he’d repeated forcefully – report on what was happening in the castle and why.
Without another word, Ash had stood and walked to the door, where he’d turned and said, ‘I’m going to give it one more night and one more day. You’ll get your written report, but only when I’m back in London.’
Haelstrom had begun to bluster, but Ash had already turned on his heels and walked out the door.
45
When he’d left Haelstrom, Ash had gone looking for Delphine, anxious that she hadn’t been caught up in the frenzy of guests, carers and guards, but she was nowhere to be found. He’d knocked on her door but there had been no response. He’d tried to return to the containment area, but found the heavy door to the stairs closed tight, an armed guard barring the way. Ash had then made for the medical unit, where an equally intractable nurse had refused him entry, though she did tell him she hadn’t seen Dr Wyatt for an hour or so.
Ash had given up, gone to his room, quickly showered and examined his cuts and scratches. Incredibly, no real damage had been done, though he knew by morning some very large bruises would make their presence felt. His neck was red and sore where he’d been half-strangled. All in all, though, he’d suffered no lasting harm.
He’d showered and donned clean jeans and a worn-leather jacket over a soft-quilted gilet. He’d remembered to take the biker’s dark muffler again for warmth later, then had taken the rest of any extra equipment he might need for the night. Into the leather bag now lying at his feet in the fifth-floor hallway, he’d tucked a Polaroid camera, his digital camera already inside. There were also reels of synthetic thread to stretch across doorways, stairs and passageways and surgical adhesive tape for making permanent seals. He’d added colour, black and white, and infrared film for his Nikon camera, these going into the gilet’s deeper pockets. The tripod for this camera could be shortened or lengthened to a reasonable height, its minimum length used for the shoulder bag. A small DVD recording camera had also gone in. Batteries, flash bulbs, lenses and filters he carried in his gilet where he could reach them easily; a winding measuring tape in a leather casing would be useful to gauge distances and his last thermometer (his other four had already been set in likely places to register cold spots earlier in the day). Sound scanners, magnetometers and certain electric field measuring devices were, again, already in use elsewhere.
In truth, there really weren’t enough instruments to spread around such an enormous building and he probably needed much more sophisticated equipment than he’d been able to carry in his big but limited suitcase: frequency change detectors, closed-circuit television monitors, electric field measuring devices, thermal heat scanners, anemometers, ventimeters and air meters (he’d the latter three, but needed more), and so on. But what he required most was a team of psychic investigators with walkie-talkie radio transmitters and receivers so that they could report back to him, enabling him to be situated at a central monitoring base controlling the searches.
Ghost hunting had moved on significantly since the time it took one lone investigator with minimal apparatus such as powder tape, greenhouse thermometers and the like, to do the job. But Kate and he had underestimated both the seriousness and the enormity of the problem at Comraich.
He retrieved one other item from the battered case; the flask of absinthe which he pushed into an inside pocket of his jacket. Ash couldn’t resist taking a good swallow first. He rattled it beside his ear: it was almost empty.
Ash checked the luminous dial of his wristwatch: 11.15 p.m. Everything in Comraich Castle was quiet and still.
As he’d been setting up a movement detector camera in the west corridor, one of the guards had informed him that security patrols would be monitoring the halls and passageways of the lower floors throughout the night.
Earlier, Haelstrom had shown Ash the devastation in the dining room. Even as they climbed the broad stairway, the investigator had heard what sounded like a hundred vacuum cleaners in use and had felt sea air gusting down from open windows somewhere above. Ash guessed that all the long windows must have been thrown open to try to rid the place of the fetid smell he could still detect. He’d shivered from the cold coming from inside the room and his eyes had widened as he’d taken in the scene.
All the tables and chairs had been moved to one side and ten kitchen staff were using industrial-sized vacuum cleaners – that was why the sound had been so loud – to sweep the floor clean of what looked like volcanic sand.
Ignoring the stench, Ash knelt down and collected a handful of the dark grey grains, more like dust than sand, he thought as he let it sift through his fingers.
‘They were flies before!’ Haelstrom had had to raise his voice to be heard over the din of the vacuums.
Ash had stood, looking at Haelstrom in bewilderment.
‘One minute they were flying around the room,’ Haelstrom had told him, his mouth close to Ash’s ear, ‘attacking people’s faces, getting into their eyes and ears, and into their mouths!’
He’d taken the investigator by the elbow. ‘Let’s get out of here so we can talk. Best let the staff get on with their job.’
On the way to the lounge bar, Haelstrom had told Ash about the calamitous invasion of maggots – crawling through the very food the diners were eating! – and then hundreds – thousands – of flies that swarmed through the room attacking – attacking! – the castle guests. Ash was glad he’d thrown out his own infested food before the maggots had metamorphosed. Despite his experiences with the unnatural, he’d never come across a manifestation of this magnitude before and he was left almost breathless by the shock of it.
Now, as Ash continued his vigil in the long gallery, one painting in particular caught his eye: a bloodthirsty altercation between brutal-looking kilted warriors, some of whom waved claymores over their heads or stabbed into the exposed bellies of red-coated English soldiers while others slashed at their enemies with vicious-looking blades. He rose from his chair to examine it more closely. The head of one unfortunate Englishman had been almost severed, the wild-eyed terror on the poor victim’s face brutally displayed in fine detail. Smoke fouled the sky, darkening the clouds as if to reflect the carnage below. Ash found the picture’s realism almost too gruesome to contemplate for long and he moved onwards, hoping to find a subject that was mellower, more reassuring.
He soon found one, a depiction of three fine bewigged ladies peacefully concentrating on the lace-work lying across their laps while they chattered among themselves, perhaps waiting for their menfolk to return from a day’s hunting – or even a savage battle in some faraway glen. Their skin was almost as white as their flouncy dresses, although their cheeks were crudely rouged, stained dark against the whiteness of their skin.
His musings were interrupted by the sound of soft footsteps in the long, draughty hallway. Ash peered in the gloom as the steps grew louder and a strangely familiar figure emerged from the darkness.
Cedric Twigg, whose vision was as sharp as ever despite the onset of Parkinson’s disease, recognized the man standing alone in the moonlit corridor. He immediately straightened up and tried to walk normally, although he didn’t entirely succeed: his left leg felt heavier than the right one, and tended to drag a little. The deep canvas bag he carried in one hand was feeling increasingly heavy. Before reaching the investigator, he wiped the drool from his chin with the back of his trembling free hand. His steps were still short, though, and his head continued to nod forward slightly, the muscles of his face visibly stiffened. The neurologist he’d consulted had warned him this might happen, and Twigg had realized he was to be one of those unlucky victims of Parkinson’s for whom the onset of symptoms was rapid, barely affected by the Pergolide he was taking.
&n
bsp; The other man – he recalled Ash was his name, supposedly some kind of ghost hunter – waited for Twigg to come to him. The assassin hoped the slight tremors that ran through his thin body were not too noticeable.
‘Mr Twigg, isn’t it?’ Ash said as the killer drew near.
Twigg said nothing, noting Ash’s glance towards the bag he was carrying.
‘I’m David Ash,’ the investigator tried again. ‘We met on the plane, remember?’
Twigg, who had now reached Ash, nodded his head, a deliberate movement this time. ‘We weren’t actually introduced,’ he said.
‘May I ask what you’ve got there?’ Ash pointed at the tight-zipped canvas bag, which Twigg was cradling protectively.
Before the assassin answered the question, he took a moment to appraise the ghost hunter, wondering how a man could become involved in such trivial nonsense. ‘A package. I’m delivering it to someone,’ he said softly. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Ash,’ he continued, ‘but I don’t have time to chat. If you’d just step aside, please . . .’
The other man opened his mouth as if to protest, but a sound from outside the castle caused them both to pause.
The noise was like . . . no, Ash didn’t want to guess until he heard it more clearly. Stepping away from the galleried wall, he went across the hallway and opened one of the corridor’s tall windows.
Twigg moved to join him, and both men stood and listened.
Ash remembered Gordon Dalzell, the chauffeur, remarking on the eerie sound that sometimes came from the woods at night since the wildcats had gained entry into the estate: like the babble of babies wailing. Caterwauling.
That must be what they were hearing now. Sometimes the pitch changed, became hissing snarls, nasty, vicious shrilling, and Ash thought he could hear the screeches of other, terrified, animals, even the agonized barking of deer. By the light of the full moon he saw black shapes rising from the trees in great flurries of wings as if the birds themselves were under attack. Growls, squeals, shrieking, animals baying, other creatures howling, all in the distance. He couldn’t shake the dreadfulness from his mind. It sounded like a massacre was taking place in the darkly veiled woods.