Last Days (18 page)

Only once he was back amongst the bracken and spindly boughs of the copse with the second load of equipment did he see a tall distant figure, beneath a darkening sky, stood upright with its head down. It approached from the direction of the road they had parked upon.

And, for a while, too frightened to move or breathe, Kyle remained rigid. Could do nothing but stare, trapped between the horrid farm and the barely moving figure. He thought he might scream. Until he realized the figure in the meadow was Dan. But something wasn’t right. Because Dan was walking so slowly he was hardly moving. His face never rose from his feet as if he were studying the ground intently.

‘Dan! Dan!’

The distant shape of his friend looked up. Stopped moving. And what he shouted to Kyle slowed the blood cold and thick inside his veins. ‘Don’t move! Stay there! Traps!’

It sounded like Dan was crying, or trying not to. ‘Gabriel stepped in a fucking trap!’

154

NINE

caen, normandy. 16 june 2011. 2 a.m.

When Kyle came out of the bathroom with a towel tied around his waist, one half of the rum in the Sailor Jerry bottle was gone. Wrapped in the other bath sheet, Dan sat cross-legged on the floor, a coffee cup by his huge knee. He was playing back Kyle’s footage in the temple barn. Kyle heard his own tiny voice rise from the laptop speakers:
‘Not sure
what I am seeing here. But it’s inside the Gathering’s temple.

On the wall, here. What looks like a figure . . .’

In one corner of the room a plastic supermarket bag bulged with bloodstained clothes. Like the bag was a revenant noth -

ing dared go near, it sagged alone on the only bit of floor space not littered with equipment and the dross that spilled from their rucksacks.

Kyle sat on the foot of the bed, cupped his cheeks in his hands. ‘Jesus.’

‘Bit shaky, mate. Dark too.’

‘You surprised?’

‘We can use some of it.’

Kyle knew Dan only inspected the footage to keep his mind preoccupied with technical matters, to evade scrutiny of what ranked as the worst day of their lives. Since the return to the 155

ADAM NEVILL

hotel in Caen, they had not been able to speak to each other, let alone discuss what they’d endured for the previous five hours.

‘I’m sorry, mate,’ Kyle said. ‘I didn’t hear you. Back there.

At the farm. If I had, I would have come straight away. You must have been with him for ages.’

‘Over an hour. Trying to get it off his leg. Shouted myself hoarse. He could have bled to death.’

When Kyle reached Dan in the meadow, the first thing he noticed about his friend were his arms; they were wet to the elbow. It looked like he had been pressing grapes.

Dan sat back from the camera, rubbed his eyes. ‘Couldn’t get it apart. Off his leg. I still feel sick, mate. It was the sound more than anything. The sound of the trap closing on his leg made me feel sick. Right to the tips of my fingers. I can’t get the sound out of my head.’

Kyle nodded. The events of the night were held in a series of haphazardly edited images that jolted him, then turned his stomach, each time his recalcitrant memory replayed fragments. The rum, half of a pizza, the hot shower, the basic comfort of their hotel room, had all been unable to penetrate through his shock for more than a few minutes.

Kyle stared between his bare feet. Saw again his ungainly movements through the field towards Dan; the prod of the stick at the hidden meadow floor; the clench of terror in his stomach at the certainty of more traps still hidden in the long grass; Dan’s wild white face in the silent twilight; his friend’s eyes tearing up as he drew closer, and he’d never seen Dan cry before; Dan’s dark hands; the horizon a thin line of fire; the distant bray of a goat they never saw.

And then the small huddled figure of Gabriel, buried in 156

LAST DAYS

the long grass; the terrible wetness of the black trousers about his thin leg; the horrible rattle of the iron trap in the grass; raising the frail body from the earth, the face so white, the tiny mouth flecked with spittle, the keening sound that came out of him like he was a dying animal. They never found his glasses. All followed by the uprooting of the iron stake and chain attached to the trap, and the lifting of that broken-doll body over the gate, where Gabriel was sick onto the arm Kyle had fixed under the little man’s hot armpit.

Then Gabriel fainted, and they believed he had died. There was the throwing of the bags that Kyle had dragged to the point of total exhaustion through the meadow, into the boot of the minivan; Dan being sick too, over the passenger-side door; them getting lost in the lanes around the farm; Gabriel waking and his cries of pain on the back seat at every bump in the road they traversed; the trap and the smashed shin bone covered in Dan’s coat. There was the not knowing about hospitals, or doctors; the crushing, confounding ignorance of first aid, of what to do or where to go; the banging on the doors of the grey village buildings; the failure to communicate with the man who came to the only door that opened in that desolate cluster of miserable houses, while Dan sat in the road, silent; the whispers in French between the bald man and Gabriel, who had begun to shiver on the back seat, and whose face went the grey of the landscape’s chalky stone.

Then came the fetching of tools, and the unshackling of those rusted iron scythes from the little leg; the flopping of the small foot in the tatty sports shoe, black with old blood.

‘Ambulance?’

‘Non.’

157

ADAM NEVILL

‘Why?’

‘Non.’

The hopeless asking for directions, the cries of Gabriel drowning them out; their following of the rusted Citroën to the hospital, driven by the bald Frenchman who spoke no English; the eternity of the drive under a dark sky, and then just more of it, on and on, under a black sky. Was the journey ever going to end? Where was he taking them?

But then there was the hospital with its green and yellow lights and he and Dan began the chant of panic-talk and gibberish, fired at little Gabriel. ‘Hospital. Hold on, mate.

Hospital, mate. Nearly there. You’re gonna be fine. Here we go.’

Kyle sighed, cradled his ribs. Poured himself a generous measure of Sailor Jerry and gulped at it like it was water.

Gasped at the after-burn as the taste of Christmas and the Caribbean filled his body with warmth. ‘Finish the pizza, Dan.’

‘Can’t face it.’ Dan closed his eyes, groaned. ‘I couldn’t do anything. Didn’t know whether to move him to the car. But you had the keys. And . . . I thought . . . I was convinced there were traps, everywhere, all around us. I couldn’t move.

Just kept calling for you, mate.’

‘I never heard a word. How was that possible? I should have heard you.’

At the hospital there had been a long heated exchange between the doctor and the Frenchman from the village. Kyle and Dan had no French. They had nothing but a minivan full of film equipment and blood.

He remembered his relief at hearing that Gabriel would live: the news delivered in nonchalant broken English from a black nurse at the hospital.

158

LAST DAYS

‘But ze leg. Gone. From . . .’ A doctor had then indicated a cutting motion at his own knee. ‘Amputation.’

What will happen to that tiny foot in the white running shoe, Kyle had thought in his shock, his horror, his cold stupefaction at the news. And then he and Dan had waited in the hospital for another three hours, still bloodied, faint with hunger and shock.

Pacing the tarmac, insensible, drifting through rage and shock and exhaustion, Kyle had then called Max from the car park. And Max had been unable to react for a long while to the information Kyle spat into the phone about ‘the bloody traps you had us walk through!’

Eventually, in a faint tired voice, Max had said,
‘The path.

I told you to stay on the path
.
’

‘There was no path, you fuckwit!’

‘Now look, I’ve never been there. How would I know
?
’

‘
Why? Why have you never been there?
’

‘Will he live
?
’

‘
Yes, but he’s lost that leg. Lost it! Fucking amputated from the knee.
’

‘Oh, dear God, no
.
’

‘Dear God, yes.’

‘
Insurance. You are all insured
.
’

‘Tell that to Gabriel! And his ninety-year-old mum he’s looking after. What were you bloody thinking, Max?’ There had been a long silence. ‘Max! Max!’ Kyle had cried into the phone.

‘Even now. Even now. She can
.
’

‘
What? Can’t hear—
’

‘Did you . . . see anything
?
’

‘See anything? What do you mean?
’

159

ADAM NEVILL

‘Unusual
.
’

‘Yes, mate, as a matter of fact I did. Her bloody bed is still in that
fermette
. And it was full of . . . of . . . toads. Worms.

Snakes. Fuck knows. And there are . . . things on the walls.

The walls, Max! The temple, the bedroom. What are they?

Those figures? And the place . . . the farm is not right. It’s just not right.’

‘What do you mean?’

Kyle had sat down on the tarmac. By that time he did not care about what people thought of him; the weary paramedics who walked by, the people going in and out of the Accident and Emergency entrance. ‘Gabriel freaked out. Said something about
them
still being there. Right around the time we arrived. Then he wouldn’t go inside the buildings. And it was like something was
there
. Inside the temple. I heard someone in there when I was filming. And in Katherine’s cottage. Downstairs. Someone came in. But they weren’t there when I went down. I’m confused, Max. It’s freaking me out.

What is wrong with this place? What is it?’

‘We’ll talk when you come home
.
’

‘Home! What do we do, Max? With Gabriel? What?’

‘I’ll take care of it. Just come home as planned tomorrow.

We’ll meet when you are rested. You’ve done enough for one
day. I thank you for that. Text me the name of the hospital.

The phone number. I need to go now. I have something else
to attend to
.
’

‘Attend to! What’s more important than this? I want answers, mate.’

‘Kyle. Please. You’re emotional
.
’

‘Wouldn’t you be, after what we’ve been through?’

160

LAST DAYS

‘I understand. I do. But . . . there has been some more
unfortunate news. Today. Affecting our film
.
’

‘What?’

‘Sister Isis. Susan White. She went in the night
.
’

‘Went? Went where? What?’

‘She died, Kyle
.
’

‘I don’t know about this any more, mate.’

Kyle turned his head from the laptop screen, on which he was immersed in his rough cut. He looked at Dan, who finally swallowed the mouthful of pizza he chewed.

‘The film.’ Dan looked at Kyle, deep into his friend’s blood-shot eyes. ‘Feels wrong.’

‘No shit. And Max isn’t telling us everything. He’s holding out on us. Has been from the start.’

‘What about?’

‘Beats me, mate. I don’t know. He freaked out when I spoke to that barrister. Said I was digressing. But she lived there, in the building that was the Gathering’s first temple.

How is that not relevant? And what she said about the walls. The stains. Whatever they are. How they just appeared.

With things in them. There were no leaks. No faulty wires.

Never were. We never got it in detail, but I’m going to take a running guess that what we saw in the Clarendon Road basement is not dissimilar to the walls in that bloody barn.’

Kyle pointed at the laptop screen to emphasize his point.

‘Rachel Phillips heard sounds too. What we heard. That figure

. . . outside the penthouse . . . So it’s all connected to the Gathering. Gotta be. The myths might not be myths. You believe I am even saying this?’

161

ADAM NEVILL

‘Which is what the whole film is supposed to be about.

What Max wanted. Bit too bloody convenient if you ask me.

And then, out here? I mean, God’s sake . . . those things on the walls. No way they’re watermarks. No way. They’re drawn on. Who’d want to draw that though? They must have been bat-shit crazy.’

‘They’re not drawn on.’

‘Come again?’

Kyle shook his head, swallowed. ‘They’re in the stone. I touched one. It’s like they’re burned into . . . through the actual stone. There is no paint. It’s like a scorch. That stinks.

Like something’s died in the wall.’

Dan blew out a long stream of air. ‘This room no

smoking?’

Kyle nodded. ‘Fuck it. Light up.’

Dan clambered to his feet and made his way to Kyle’s packet of Lucky Strikes on the bedside table. ‘You want one?’

Kyle nodded, then caught the cigarette Dan tossed at him.

Dan paced about. In silence, Kyle watched his friend’s hairy feet in order to avoid the sight of his hairy belly. Dan’s speech was slurred, his cheeks flushed. ‘This shit is too freaky.

I mean Gabriel nearly died. If I hadn’t plugged the bleeding with my shirt, he’d have bled out. Doctor said so. Or mimed as much. Susan Isis, or whatever she’s called, is dead. Dead.

As well as some other old hippy mate of Max’s involved in this shit. This feels . . . dangerous. I know you have debts.

And a hundred grand is a lot of cash, but we should walk.

Just bloody walk, mate.’

Kyle bit down on his irritation and his disappointment that Dan would even suggest such a thing as abandoning the film.
And what a film.
Dan was upset. That was natural. But 162

LAST DAYS

he had just suggested the unspeakable. ‘Dude. We’re in no place to be making major decisions here. Today—’

‘Today was the worst day of my life. Today was all fucked up.’