The Matrix (15 page)

Suddenly, another form appeared, this time from the direction of the house. A man wearing a long coat was walking towards the creature, and in moments I recognized him as Duncan. I almost cried out to warn him of the creature’s presence, but it was quickly apparent that he was actually heading straight for it. Trudging through the deep snow, he took perhaps half a minute to reach it. When he did so, he bent down and helped it raise itself on its legs. His back concealed it from me at first, then, as he moved to one side in order to assist it, I saw it stand erect. And though it was still too far from me to see more than the outline, I saw that it wore a long dress and that its hair fell almost to the ground.

I pulled the window down and let the curtains fall across it. In the darkness, I could hear my own breath rasping.

I did not sleep again that night. In the morning, before breakfast, I looked out of my bedroom window again. The sky was thick with cloud, and I could tell that more snow had fallen. Whatever tracks had been left on the meadow had been obliterated.

Duncan drove me back after breakfast. Once we reached the main roads, the going was easy. Ploughs had already been out, and the sun had melted the top surface of the snow. We parted at the entrance to Bakehouse Close. Duncan had work waiting for him at the law courts, and I said I wanted to put some notes in order before visiting the library.

In fact, I wanted to go to bed in order to catch up on the sleep I had lost the night before. I was still profoundly unsettled by what I had seen. The image of that curious, misshapen creature in the snow went ahead of me everywhere. I tried with little success to convince myself that it had, after all, been no more than a dream or an hallucination. Snow had not covered the creature’s tracks, for there had never been any to cover. Or so I reassured myself.

I did sleep, but not well. My curtains were not thick enough to keep out a measure of daylight. From time to time, traffic sounds drifted in from the street. And sometimes, on waking, I was sure I could hear sounds in the empty space above me.

During the next few days, I stayed out as much as possible, and did not answer my phone when it rang. I wanted time alone, to think things over and to decide what to do next. It was still not too late to look for a job, even if it meant leaving Edinburgh. My faith in Duncan had been shaken, yet the thought of a complete break left me breathless and frightened. The truth was I had become psychologically dependent on Duncan. You haven’t met him, you can’t guess the force of that personality. He was my drug, and I needed a regular fix.

I went for long walks, out to Arthur’s Seat and Lauriston Crags. There was snow underfoot, and a cold wind constantly in my face, but that was better than staying indoors brooding, waiting for night sounds outside my door. I thought a lot about Catriona, how she would have disapproved of what I had become involved in, calling it a waste of time, or worse. I disapproved of it myself, in my rational mind; but I was not being rational, I was behaving like an addict for whom the decision to give up still seems like the most difficult thing imaginable.

In the end I grew tired. My thoughts seemed aimless and confused after the directed pursuits in which I had been engaged. I could not justify my behaviour in ignoring Duncan: had he not treated me with extraordinary kindness, paying for my trip to Morocco, allowing me to keep on my flat, giving up hour upon hour of his valuable time merely to instruct me in the knowledge I was so eager to acquire? I went back to my flat and rang him at his office.

He did not ask where I had been, did not say he had been trying to get in touch with me. There was no suggestion that I was anything but a free agent, no hint that I might be answerable to him in some way. I thanked him for his hospitality.

‘Nonsense,’ he said, ‘it was a pleasure to have you there. You must come again soon. It gets very dull in the countryside sometimes.’

There was a pause. I waited. This was an awkward moment, for I felt we could not just continue as we had been.

‘I’m glad you rang when you did,’ Duncan went on. ‘Are you free this evening?’

I said I was. He had not needed to ask.

‘Excellent. You may remember that, when we first talked about your studies, I said I would introduce you to some friends of mine, people further along the path than yourself. I think the time has come. Get yourself ready for seven o’clock, I’ll pick you up.’

He drove me to Claremont Place, on the border between Pilrig and the New Town. It was a clear night, the moon less full than it had been at Penshiel House, but bright for all that, hanging lazily in a sky without clouds. Duncan had said nothing to me of where we were headed. I expected a terraced house or a small clubhouse, at most a set-up like that in Ainslie Place, perhaps part of a Georgian house touched by Duncan’s wealth. I was not prepared for the reality.

The tower came in sight before we reached our destination, high, lifted up above the roofs, tall and black, as though light had never touched it. The moonlight appeared to slide off it, or to be swallowed by the stone. There could be no question, even at this distance: this was the church of my dreams.

Duncan parked on the opposite side of the road. We stepped out of the car and he led me across the street. The tall doorway stood where it had always stood in my dreams, waiting silently for me to come. I had to force myself to continue walking towards it, it was a struggle not to turn and run, to keep on running until I was free of that terrible place forever. Except that I knew deep down that running while awake would be no more use than running while asleep, that I could never break free of my nightmare simply by turning my back on it and all that it contained.

At first glance it seemed that the church was derelict, that it had not been in liturgical or other use for some time. The signs of neglect were visible everywhere, from boarded-up windows to broken or slipping masonry. Scaffolding had been erected at one side to carry out repairs, but it appeared that no one had worked there for years. A section of one wall was held in place by wooden buttresses.

And yet, for all the neglect, the building had lost none of its power. It had been designed to communicate a sense of religious awe, and that remained in the sheer scale with which it towered over the passer-by. But it possessed something else, something I had felt the first time I saw it in my dream: a sense of brooding evil so overpowering that it took the breath away. There was a force in the very fabric of the building, a strength of purpose, as though the stones themselves had been imbued with a malign and ancient consciousness. Even without setting foot inside, I could feel that same presence of fear and loathing and brutality that I had sensed in the temple beneath d’Hervilly’s house in Tangier.

‘Is something wrong, Andrew?’ Duncan asked as we started to climb the short flight of steps that led to the main door.

I was tempted to say, ‘no, of course not, everything’s fine,’ but I could no longer bring myself to do so. I was afraid, really afraid this time, and no pretence could wipe it away.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’ve been here before. In my sleep.’

‘Of course you have,’ said Duncan without hesitation. ‘You are neither the first nor the last. We have all dreamed of being here. This place is a focus, a beacon, a brightness.’

‘But they were terrible dreams, nightmares . . .’

He nodded.

‘I expect they were. You can tell me about them later. I said this place is a focus. It acts as a prism for our emotions, it amplifies them, alters them. Some dream of what they most hope for, others of what they most fear. Don’t be alarmed by that. Now you are here, the dreams will change. You will learn how to overcome your fears, how to use them for your own benefit and the good of others.’

He smiled and took my arm.

‘Come on, Andrew. Nothing awful will happen. You’re perfectly safe with me.’

From the outside, not a fragment of light had been visible through the boarded-up windows. Entering, I saw that candles had been lit in tall sconces along the aisles and in the chancel. They flickered in long, evenly spaced rows, barely touching the thick shadows that lay on every side and high above. I felt my heart freeze over like the surface of a pool that an icy wind has crossed. This was, in every detail, though smaller in scale, the dark cathedral of my dreams, and all it lacked was the sound of voices chanting.

Ahead of us, gathered at the chancel end, was a group of half a dozen figures wearing hoods. At any moment, I thought, they would break into that abominable singing, and when they turned, their faces would be pale and eyeless. But they did turn then, and when they pulled back their hoods, they looked just like anybody else.

Duncan introduced us, one at a time. Colin Baines, a bank manager; Alan Nesbitt, a venture capitalist with offices in Charlotte Square; James Partridge, an executive with BBC Scotland; Trevor McEwan, the chairman of a pharmaceuticals company; Paul Askew, a consultant in public relations; Peter Lambert, one of Edinburgh’s leading insurance brokers.

I saw at once that they had several things in common. They were all men, they were successful and fairly wealthy, and they belonged to the same class as Duncan. Not one of them had a Scottish accent. I remembered the people I had met in Tangier, and I asked myself again why Duncan took such an interest in me.

‘Andrew, this evening I’d like you just to sit and watch. Do you mind?’

I shook my head.

‘It won’t be long before you’re ready to take part,’ he went on. ‘But I’d like you to settle in first.’

There was a chair near the choir stalls. I sat down, glancing nervously round me at the swaying shadows. On my right, there was a heavy door. Without being told, I knew it must lead to a subterranean crypt. I noticed that it was not wholly shut.

Duncan looked at his watch.

‘Gentlemen, I think we should begin.’

He took a robe from a cupboard and put it on. The altar had been removed from the chancel, and a large pentacle painted in the space it had occupied, framing a red circle. Duncan stepped into the centre of this arrangement. The others pulled their hoods up and stood in a circle along the perimeter.

Duncan began to chant in Arabic. Hearing him, I realized that this had been the language of the liturgy I had heard in my dreams. His friends responded in the same language, and I recognized from snatches that they were using a text from which I had been taught by Sheikh Ahmad in Fez. Listening to their voices rise and fall, I had to fight to keep my growing panic down. I knew that, if I were to close my eyes, I would believe myself trapped in my nightmare again.

The chanting continued. There was nothing absurd about it, nothing preposterous in these respectable Edinburgh citizens dressed in robes and reciting magical texts in an abandoned church. Quite the contrary. The longer they chanted, the more sonorous grew their voices, the more controlled and purposeful their gentle swaying movements. The stone walls echoed to the carefully modulated rhythms of the chant, the Arabic words rolled through the church, calling, summoning, imploring. ‘Come,’ they chanted, ‘come. Make haste and come among us. Come. We are waiting, we are waiting. Come.’

And something came. Their movements slowed, their breathing steadied, their voices deepened. They knew that a presence had come among them. Petrified, I felt it. Duncan’s voice rose again and again, a note of triumph in it now. I heard a slithering sound behind me. Unable to stop myself, I looked round. The door of the crypt had moved. The sound was coming from behind it and, as I watched, something thin and white appeared in the gap.

I could bear it no longer. Frightened beyond measure, I leapt from the chair and ran down the nave. No one stopped me. Behind me, the voices continued uninterrupted. ‘Come,’ they chanted, ‘come.’ I reached the door and ran outside, and kept on running, but the voices would not leave me, however far I went.

Duncan rang me the following morning, apologetic.

‘I should not have taken you,’ he said. ‘I thought you were ready, but clearly you need more preparation. Try not to worry about what happened: it’s part of growing in the craft. You have yet to learn how to dominate your fears, how to prevent them taking over and colouring what you see and hear.’

We talked for a little, Duncan explaining his theories about the power of the mind over place. But I did not believe him. What had happened in Morocco, what I had seen in Penshiel House, and what I had heard and witnessed the night before in the church left me with no choice. I could no longer believe in Duncan’s high-mindedness, I could not take a step further down the path on which he was leading me. But I did not know how to break away.

It was Duncan himself who gave me the opportunity.

‘Andrew, I have to go away for a week or so. There’s some important business I have to attend to in London. It won’t wait, and I can’t send anyone in my place. We’ll talk properly when I come back. I’ll give you a ring.’

‘Have a good trip, Duncan. I’ll see you when you get back.’

But I had already decided what to do. I would not be there when he returned.

A chance meeting with one of my former students from New College put me on the track of a fresh place to live, a small flat in Drumdryan Street, in Tollcross, which a friend of his had just vacated. It was much cheaper than my current rooms, but, better than that, it was well away from Duncan’s normal haunts. Though I lost a month’s deposit by doing so, I gave my notice and moved in to my new lodgings the next day.

As soon as I closed the door, I felt almost giddy with relief. It was as though the simple act of moving had served to wake me from a nightmare I had been almost unaware I was dreaming. I thought of Morocco and the events I had witnessed there with revulsion, and in my relief I vowed to have no more to do with Duncan or the dark world he inhabited.

At the same time, the more I felt free from his influence, the more incredible some of my earlier fears began to seem. On the cold grey streets of Edinburgh, much of what had taken place that summer seemed bizarre – the result of fancy or self- alienation or drugs. Men did not live for centuries, the dead did not wake in the mornings to get on with life, it was not possible to kill at a distance without mechanical means. Or so I reasoned.