Noah pressed the fingers of one hand briefly against his eyes. He could hear her screams even now. ‘It was too overwhelming, too alien. We always did these sessions by the light of one candle, so we couldn’t see much, but it was as if the night just surged into the room. We were surrounded by a presence, not evil exactly, but beyond good and evil. It was amoral, and we were nothing to it. Even I could sense it, and I’m no great psychic. In moments, I realised how we’d been playing with something inconceivably huge and beyond us, something immeasurably powerful. We’d pulled at its skirts too insistently and now it had noticed us.’
‘What happened?’
‘Well, once Sarah started screaming, I just leapt up and put the lights on. If something really had been there, it disappeared.’ He finished off the warm lager left in his glass and shook his head. ‘Sarah was writhing on the floor. I didn’t know what to do. The noises were hideous. In the end, I slapped her. It’s what you’re supposed to do, isn’t it? And she kind of came out of it. But even if the thing had gone, it left a taint behind.’
‘Did it kill her?’ Lara asked bluntly.
Noah detected a faint note of scorn in her voice. ‘No, no. Of course not. Sarah was an experienced psychic, but she was damaged by what she’d felt and seen. It changed her and there was nothing I could do about it. Nothing. She became paranoid, jealous and afraid. It destroyed us.’
‘It wasn’t your fault,’ Lara said, reaching out to touch one of Noah’s hands.
He laughed cynically. ‘They all said that, but it’s not true. I was so eager to discover the truth, I didn’t think about the dangers. I just kept pushing and pushing. After we split up, Sarah lost her job. She just lost it, big time. The last I heard she’d admitted herself to hospital. She dropped all her old friends.’
‘It wasn’t your fault,’ Lara insisted. ‘Sarah just wasn’t strong enough.’
‘She was,’ Noah said. ‘It was stronger than both of us.’
‘I don’t believe that.’
‘You weren’t there. Even as a writer, I don’t have the words to describe to you how terrible that night was, how real the entity that came to us. This wasn’t Christopher Lee in a silk cape, Lara. This wasn’t a nice, safe little meditation like all those we did today. This was the most raw and primeval energy; it could snuff you out like that!’ He snapped his fingers before her face, but she did not flinch.
‘I want it,’ she said.
He laughed shakily. ‘What?’
‘It’s what I want. I need to know the truth. I’m not afraid.’
Noah raised his hands and shook his head emphatically. ‘No. You don’t know what you’re asking for. The vampires you’re so enamoured of, they’re just fashion accessories, a romantic myth. You don’t want the truth of it, believe me.’
‘How dare you!’ Lara snapped. ‘You make me sound like some stupid little girl who’s just into looking weird. I’m not enamoured by anything.’ She thumped her chest with a closed fist. ‘I’ve lived with this stuff all my life, felt it tugging at the corners of my mind, trying to make itself known to me. Their carrion smell has always been strong to my senses. When I read ‘Nosferatu’, I thought I’d found someone who would understand, who wouldn’t think I was mad.’ She put her hands against her head, scraped them through her sleek, confined hair, pulling strands of it free. ‘If you really are so against it, why did you put all those coy clues in the book?’
Noah thought she now looked demented, with her hair beginning to fall over her face, a hectic flush along her cheekbones and those wild, wide eyes. But she was breathtakingly beautiful and, in those moments, he could believe she was as strong as she claimed to be. ‘You’d better tell me what you mean by saying you’ve lived with it,’ he said.
Lara ducked her head in assent and then summoned a waiter to order more drinks.
‘No,’ Noah said. ‘I’m driving. Let’s get the bill. We can talk at my place.’
They were silent in the car on the drive home. Lara sat with her hands folded in her lap, staring through the windscreen. Noah wondered what he was doing. He guessed what would come. In was as inexorable as a tidal wave, and he could already see it massing on the horizon. He could stop it now, take her home.
They passed the turn off that would lead to her road. His hands tightened on the steering wheel. In ten minutes, he was parking the car outside his house.
Inside, Lara wandered around the living-room, touching lightly the ancient artefacts that clustered on every available surface. Sarah had collected most of them, but hadn’t wanted to take them with her when she left. She hadn’t taken anything, or exercised her rights to have half of the house. She’d just wanted out, to cast off any vestige of her life with Noah, desperate to live in the here and now, in safe mundaneity. But it was denied her. No one else should go to the place where Sarah was. No one.
Noah made coffee in the vast silent kitchen, where modern appliances gleamed on the spotless work surfaces. Sarah had had the kitchen installed, paid for it herself. The cutlery and crockery Noah had used for his lunch still lay in the sink, but generally he kept the house tidy out of respect for her, as if she was still around in an etheric kind of way, and might disapprove of clutter and mess. On the way back to the living room, he took a bottle of brandy and two huge globe glasses out of his liquor cupboard and placed them onto the tray next to the cafetiere and mugs.
Lara was curled up in the big leather armchair by the hearth and had lit the log effect gas fire. She had also managed to find the tiny ashtray that Noah kept reluctantly for guests. ‘You’re so lucky,’ she said, as Noah came into the room. ‘This place is great. Tons of books and things. How many bedrooms has it got?’
‘Five,’ Noah answered.
‘I’m in the wrong job!’ Lara said, laughing. She seemed just like an ordinary girl now, gamine and flirtatious.
Noah set down the tray on the coffee table and set about pouring drinks. ‘We got this place for a song,’ he said, rather apologetically. ‘It was a dump. Sarah did it up.’ He looked around the room. ‘It’s worth a bit now, of course, but all I’d need is a couple of bad years and I’d have to sell it. Writing is not the millionaire’s game it’s made out to be, you know.’
‘I’m surprised to hear you say that,’ Lara said.
‘Most people are. They think we all live like Jackie Collins.’
‘No, I meant that you know how to change fate, how to make things happen. Why don’t you use it for yourself, so that you don’t get any of those “bad years”?’
‘You’ve lost me,’ Noah said, pushing a glass of brandy and a coffee across the table towards her. ‘I’m a writer, a researcher, not a bloody magician!’
Lara smiled, turning in her fingers a lock of hair that hung beside her face. ‘Oh, come on! What about the “weird stuff”?’
‘If I knew how to meditate money into existence, I’d be rich. But I don’t. I just use the “weird stuff” to delve into the past.’
‘But the vulture people knew how to change their world. You said so.’
‘Strangely enough, I have no compelling desire to drink blood and murder people.’ He was enjoying their exchange, sure that the undercurrent was sexual.
Lara picked up the brandy globe. ‘You’ve contacted them,’ she said. ‘How many people have done that? If you weren’t scared shitless, you could use that energy for yourself.’ Slowly, sensuously, she drained her glass.
Noah knelt back on his heels, his hands braced against his thighs. ‘I think you are a dangerous young woman,’ he said.
‘You wouldn’t have to kill anybody,’ she said, holding out her glass for more brandy. ‘I’m sure the smallest of blood sacrifices would do.’
Noah poured out a generous measure of the golden liquor. ‘I’m not going back there, Lara. I got burned and sensibly pay attention to what hurts. You don’t put your hand in the fire twice.’
‘When people have no fear, they can walk across red hot coals,’ Lara said. ‘I’m scare
d of madmen with knives, and perverts hiding in alleys. I’m scared of people, because they’re shit. But etheric entities don’t frighten me. They don’t have hands of flesh and blood. They can’t fire a gun. The only way they can hurt you is through fear, your own mind. You must know that.’
Noah hesitated. He could feel the conviction pulsing from Lara’s body. ‘You are a witch,’ he said and took a long drink of his brandy. It burned his throat, felt good.
Her eyes were hooded now. ‘Take me there, Noah. I’m not afraid to go alone and I won’t freak you out by having the screaming heeby jeebies. Just take me there.’
‘Why?’ he said.
‘Because they want you to,’ she said. ‘I’ve heard their voices whispering in my dreams since I was a child. I’ve seen their shadows in the curtains of my bedroom every night. I’ve felt their carrion breath on my face in the dark. I’m one of them, Noah. Not in this life perhaps, but I know them. I want to go home.’
The silence in the room was absolute and the atmosphere had become still and watchful, as if vulture shamans were already gathering round them. It was as if Lara had conjured something into being through the passion of her words. There was no way he could disbelieve her. She looked remarkably sane, but driven. He could not speak.
‘I’m not some sick cow who wants to drink blood,’ Lara said in a conversational tone. ‘I don’t have a black bedroom or collect horror films. I don’t want to be a vampire in the traditional sense. I just need to know what it is that has been trying to get through to me, that’s all.’ She smiled. ‘God, I must sound mad. What else do I have to say to convince you I’m not?’
He stared at her, wrestling with himself, thinking of Sarah.
‘I’m a bloody good psychic,’ she said mischievously, cocking her head to the side. ‘You can always use one of those, can’t you?’
‘Then why do you need me? If you’re that good, do it yourself.’
‘You have the map,’ she said. ‘You are the guide. It’s that simple.’ She adopted a mock serious tone. ‘I’ll look after you, Noah, don’t worry. You’ll be perfectly safe.’
His meditation room was at the back of the house on the second floor, overlooking fields and a small wood. As he’d always done with Sarah, he kept the curtains open and lit a single candle. His heart was beating fast, but not through fear. He was not sure exactly what he felt. As he prepared to light some loose incense, to help conjure the right atmosphere, Lara said, ‘Have you got a pin?’
‘What?’
‘To prick our fingers. We should put our blood into the incense.’
‘Lara…’
‘Noah…!’ She was laughing at him.
It took some minutes to find a pin, by which time Lara had consumed another globe of brandy. Noah himself was beginning to feel the effects of the alcohol. Perhaps it was numbing his sense of apprehension. He let Lara prick his thumb and squeeze a bright droplet of blood from the wound, which she shook into the incense. Then she put his thumb into her warm mouth and sucked it. ‘Scared?’ she said.
‘Horrified.’
She pricked her own thumb, but didn’t offer to let him taste her blood. It was a slight disappointment.
Lara lay down on the rug before the cold hearth, while Noah sat crossed-legged beside her, and took her gently into a light trance. The words were soporific. His own eyelids began to droop. He led her back through time, made her watch the centuries fall away, until he told her to visualise herself standing at the mouth of a cave amid high, wind-sculpted crags. Beyond the threshold, all was dark.
‘This is the Shanidar Cave,’ he murmured. ‘Home of the vulture people. Walk into it.’
He paused, listening to her light breathing. ‘Tell me what you see,’ he said.
‘Darkness,’ she replied. Her brow had creased into a frown. ‘But I can smell…’
She would say blood, he thought.
‘Flowers,’ she said faintly. ‘Everywhere, flowers. They’ve placed them over the bones. I see them. So many bones. There are wings…’
‘Is anyone there with you?’
‘Yes.’ Her voice was like that of a child, young and tremulous.
‘Do you want to leave?’ Noah said. ‘You can leave at any time.’
‘No. He knows me. He wants to give me something.’
‘What?’
‘The talking bone…’
‘What does he look like?’
Suddenly, Lara gasped, her eyes flew open and she sat bolt upright. Noah reached out to steady her. ‘It’s okay,’ he said.
She turned her head slowly and when she spoke, her voice was deep and rasping. ‘Keep me not from her, son of Lamech. Her laughter filled the mountains and bowed the heads of the wild beasts. Shame took her from me. Shame!’
Noah could smell carrion, the reek of her breath.
Abruptly, Lara sighed and fell back gracefully onto the floor.
‘Lara,’ Noah breathed, leaning over her. ‘Lara. Are you all right?’
She laughed and wriggled her body on the rug. ‘Oh yes.’ Without opening her eyes, she reached up for him, dragged him down. When he kissed her, he tasted brandy, the flame of it.
‘Thank you,’ she murmured, between kisses. ‘Thank you.’
Her skin was hot beneath his hand, exuding the last warmth of her perfume. He made love to her where she lay, wondering if she was fully in this world or not. It didn’t matter. She was a dream come to life, a woman who could walk alone into the dark and come back laughing and smelling of flowers.
Afterwards, she lay naked beside him, smoking a cigarette. ‘What the hell was there to be scared of?’ she said. ‘Have I brought anything back with me? No. And believe me, I willed it.’
Noah lay on his side, stroking her taut belly. ‘What did it – he – look like?’
She grimaced. ‘Pretty much how you’d think. At first, he was crouched down, wrapped in this immense cloak of black feathers. It looked like it had been made from the whole wings of a single vulture. I could just see the slits of his eyes peering over the top. He looked like a vulture himself… like a vampire! Although he was crouched down, I could tell he was a giant; magnificent, wise and savage.
‘That’s pretty powerful imagery,’ Noah said.
‘Then he stood up and opened his cloak of wings. Beneath it, he was dressed in animal skins. His body was covered in some kind of paint, but it wasn’t blood. There were patterns in it like primitive cave paintings. He did have bones in his hair and wore a necklace of bones. Bird bones, I think. You’ll be pleased to know he had pointy teeth. All of them.’
‘Filed down?’
‘Probably.’ She took a fierce draw off her cigarette. ‘Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I saw what I wanted to see, or was influenced by what you said earlier.’
‘What about what he said through you?’
‘I don’t know. It was as if he’d known me before, obviously. He seemed to know you too, in a way. Lamech was the father of Noah in biblical myth, wasn’t he?’
Noah nodded, uncomfortable with the idea that the entity might be aware of him.
‘If the whole thing wasn’t subjective,’ Lara said, ‘maybe I lived in his time once. Maybe we were lovers. I certainly felt really horny when I came out of it.’
‘He doesn’t sound very attractive!’
Lara stubbed out her cigarette and reached for Noah’s crotch. ‘Oh, but he was! Beautiful, in fact. His eyes were amazing, this deep piercing blue. Christ, I wanted him to possess me. Utterly. It was the archetypal thing.’ She laughed huskily. ‘I’d have been quite happy for him to sink his teeth into me.’
Noah leaned over and nipped the skin of her throat. ‘Come on, let’s go to bed. It’s getting cold in here.’
They made love several more times. Noah felt euphoric, hardly daring to believe a woman such as this could come into his life. She was full of humour and warmth, serious about her ability yet amusingly irreverent. She was uninhibited, open, mysterious and fey. A witch woman. A priest
ess.
‘Where have you been all my life?’ Noah said.
‘I bet you say that to all the girls,’ she replied, and they giggled like children at the stupid clichés for several minutes.
About four o’clock, Lara said she was tired and turned onto her side in the bed. Noah studied her for some time, drinking in each detail of her smooth contours, the spill of dark hair upon the pillow. He passed his hand in the air above her body, and she squirmed and made a sound of pleasure as if she felt him stroking her aura.
‘Beauty,’ he whispered. ‘Love.’ He lay down to sleep, closing his eyes with the after-image of her white flesh burning in his mind.
Waking came with a shock in the grey of predawn twilight.
He was aware at once of cold, and saw that the bed beside him was empty. A terrified pang of loss coursed through him, then he saw her clothes still draped on the pale wicker chair by the window and told himself she had gone to the bathroom, or else to get herself a drink.
He lay on his back and pulled the duvet over his chilled torso. A hiss in the corner of the room made him start.
‘Lara?’
He sat up. Most of the room was still in shadow, but he thought he could make out a dark shape hunched in the corner near his clothes rail. ‘Lara…’
He reached to turn on the bedside lamp, but the switch did not respond. The bulb must have gone.
Again, a hiss, low and sibilant.
Something moved in the shadows, sidled forward. He saw the eyes clearly first: a deep piercing blue. She was naked and had covered herself in what looked like dark paint, which was possible because there were a few tins left in the garage. Her hair was wild and straw-like, filled with a sticky substance. Her tongue protruded unnaturally from her mouth, like that of the destroyer goddess, Kali. Her teeth could not possibly be pointed. There were no tools in his house she could have used to do that. She hissed and stamped with one foot.
‘Lara.’
He got out of bed slowly. This was so different to the time before with Sarah. Lara wasn’t screaming. She wasn’t raving or weeping.