The spiritualists said that when you died, friends and relatives who’d gone before would be waiting for you, to welcome you, show you the way to wherever it was — the endless garden with bird-song and angelsong, fountains of sound.
Bobby Maiden arose from blood and looked up into whiteness and psychotic eyes.
It was not inappropriate that he should be met by the amiable cross-bred bull terrier called Malcolm. It was not unlikely that Malcolm had gone before, shot by one of the Forcefield men.
Moments passed.
The strip light zizzed and flickered.
He could not feel his hands.
He saw a face on the flagstones.
Spirit-voices chattered all around him. The room shimmered blue-white, in all its horror, like the deep-freeze in a meat-packing plant.
‘Bobby?’ A small voice.
‘Grayle. Are you-?’
‘Yeah. You?’
‘Sure.’
At some point he became aware that the face on the flagstones was Gary Seward’s. Maiden raised himself and peered over it.
In the back of Gary’s skull was a bullet hole. The most beautiful bullet hole he’d ever seen. He kept looking at it and looking away and looking back. He wanted to frame the memory of it.
Malcolm sniffed at Gary’s head and then turned away.
‘Vera?’ Grayle’s voice again.
The figure in the doorway was big and still and black and white, except for …
‘Vera!’ Grayle shouted. ‘Vera, hold on …!’
The woman looked once over the room and then turned away. She was all in black and white, except for the yellow rubber gloves. A black pistol, a revolver, pointing down from one of them.
Bobby Maiden said, in disbelief, ‘Connie …?’
As the woman quietly went out, Grayle said, ‘Oh, Jesus, no …’
Cindy stumbled into the kitchen. It stretched away before him like an old-fashioned hospital ward.
He saw Vera before she saw him.
She was at the bottom end, near the fridges. She was tearing off her Victorian waitress’s costume. When Cindy came in, she snatched up something wrapped in brown paper. Instinctively, Cindy didn’t ask her if she’d heard the shot. He asked her how he might get into the cellars.
‘Those outbuildings at the back?’ Vera’s voice had toughened, was like whipcord. ‘The middle one, the stable. Third stall. Where the manger’s been moved.’
‘Thank you.’ He turned, saw Maurice enter the kitchen.
‘From what I gather,’ Vera said, ‘they needed to be able to get in and out from the grounds. That was those …’
‘Crole and Abblow.’
‘Yeah, them. Needed access separate from the house. You go down a bit careful, Cindy, but there won’t be a problem. Don’t worry about them security men, they’re staying well out of it. Nobody to tell them otherwise. They ain’t stupid.’
Cindy nodded. Beckoned Maurice.
‘You never saw me,’ Vera said.
‘No.’
‘Him neither.’
‘Him neither. Count on it.’
Persephone Callard, liquid-eyed, was slowly shaking her head.
‘Silly. Really, really silly, Bobby.’
The liquid in her eyes was blood. Her upper face was all blood, to beyond the hairline.
She laughed. ‘I suppose that’s my … TV career fucked.’
‘Just don’t move, Seffi,’ Grayle said. ‘Don’t move a goddamn inch.’
Maiden and Seffi were still joined at the wrist. Maiden tried to reach for her hand. His fingers refused to respond.
Seffi smiled. ‘He done for me, guv.’ Em’s voice, ironical.
No. Please, no. Please not again.
Grayle hauled on the horror behind her to try and reach Seffi. ‘I guess he fired when Vera shot him. Most of it went high. The table protected us, maybe. I guess Seffi must’ve …’
‘I want to say …’ Seffi spoke softly but firmly, her lip quivering just a little ‘… I want to explain why he … it … didn’t come. Perhaps the one time it would’ve helped, there’s the irony.’
‘It did come,’ Grayle said.
Maiden stared at her. ‘I thought-’
‘You thought I was faking. Well, some of it. Some of it was faked. Like, it didn’t talk. It was a dead thing. I guess that’s what you get, with hypnosis. Aw … Just forget it. I feel stupid now. I don’t know what I saw.’
‘Very good,’ Seffi said. ‘And there’ll be a vacancy now, too.’
No!
‘Listen, I want to tell you where I went, after the window …’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Maiden said. ‘Just …’
‘I took the Jeep and I parked it about… half a mile away. Then I tried to sleep for an hour or two. In the car. And then I walked up to that place … with the burial chamber.’
‘High Knoll,’ Grayle whispered.
‘Yah. I took the cross from around my neck and I laid it on the stone, and I sat there and I waited for the dawn. Wasn’t much of one, but I felt… I felt some strange things. I mean, it was … good. And I was able to … you know, pray and things like that, and I… I told … whoever … that I didn’t want to see anything like … again.’
‘Honey,’ Grayle said, ‘you must’ve been freezing.’
‘Froze my ass.’ Seffi smiled. ‘Actually I didn’t feel cold at all. I feel … I suppose I feel rather colder now.’ She reached out. ‘Just a bit. Hold my hand, Bobby?’
He tried. He couldn’t.
Her hand lay still as stone between them.
‘Thank you,’ Seffi said. ‘That feels so much better.’