Last Days (47 page)

‘The stories and accounts about Prowd have always been dismissed as fantasy. Nonetheless, he has been mentioned in the works of a variety of cultural commentators and histor -

ians, with special note given to his diabolism. Even John Dee once sought his counsel. Because it was rumoured he’d mastered Lorche’s ability to occupy or coerce the minds of others.

Until, like his brief collaborator, he came to a bad end. In Prowd’s case, on the gallows at Tyne Cross for the theft of a child.’

Max moved the film forward to a page from a Victorian newspaper. ‘Look at the headline.
House of Blood.
This is from 1891. Holland Park was a Bohemian slum then, on the outskirts of a sprawling metropolis. Prowd’s farm was long gone, consumed by a brickworks, but this newspaper story takes for its subject the very building that was to become our temple. A building erected upon what was once Prowd’s land.’ Max paused in irrepressible frustration with himself.

‘I knew something of this legacy when I chose the property.

But I had no idea it would lead . . . We wanted to be dangerous. Near something of mystical significance. As did the spiritualist Madam Helena Blavatsky. She lived close by in the 1890s, so too did prominent members of the Golden Dawn. Arthur Machen took rooms a few doors down.

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Machen wrote
The Hill of Dreams
. The actual hill, Notting Hill, was Machen’s hill of dreams. The Temple house is at the foot of that very hill. And the building was a popular location for séances in Victorian England. A whole gamut of spiritualists congregated there. It was close to something extraordinary, unnatural. And there are always some who can sense such things.

‘The newspaper article is rather sensational, but it concerns itself with the disappearance of Thaddeus Peevey.

That’s him in the line drawing beside the column of print.

Another mesmer and dabbler in the occult. A contemporary of Florence Farr, Samuel Mathers, and William Butler Yeats.

A scoundrel by all accounts. An alcoholic and an actor amongst other things, including a charlatan medium. The Golden Dawn wouldn’t have him in their magical order. They considered him a confidence trickster. Which he probably was, and one with very bad debts. But he took a wager that he would spend a night alone in the Clarendon Road property and confront its evil nature.

‘Thaddeus Peevey was not found the following morning.

In fact, he was never seen again, by anyone. It is believed he faked his own disappearance to evade his debtors. I now think otherwise.

‘The turnover of owners and tenants has continued from the day the ground was broken to build that house. I always suspected we were responsible for the psychic condition there. And we were, but only in part. As a conduit. I have come to believe the entire area has a residue. One that we revived, like Thaddeus Peevey. That Prowd and Lorche established, or perhaps even reawoke themselves. I just don’t know. But there are places, as you have seen, where the pas-418

LAST DAYS

sage of certain unpleasant things can occur in specific conditions, or near compatible individuals. I’m referring to ideas, influences, and presences.

‘Valentyne Prowd and Thaddeus Peevey also had something else in common, despite the four hundred years that separates their lives. They each exhibited a penchant for grandiosity. Extreme narcissistic behaviour. Accompanied by a fanatical desire for power and wealth. As did their eventual heir, Hermione Tirrill from Kent, aka Sister Katherine, the cheque forger and former Fitzrovian madam.’ Max looked at Kyle. ‘Mere hearsay? Speculation and the kind of improbability you must be accustomed to in your endeav-ours.’

‘Steady Max. You’re on very thin ice.’

‘Coincidence nonetheless? Or bad luck? Or so our detract -

ors and debunkers would say. Until you look a little harder at the farm in Normandy. Built on the unhallowed ground of St Mayenne. The history of which you are now acquainted with. It appears a residue also lingered there. One much stronger. One that drew our little Gathering to itself after offering us the vision in London, at the house of blood. And had been embedding itself deep inside Katherine from the very beginning I now believe. Clung to its new blessed elect.

One who was susceptible to its lies as Lorche and Prowd had once been. I believe it owned Katherine by the time the dregs of her organization moved to California to assuage her lust for glamour and fame, and to evade any scrutiny regarding the earliest disappearances from her flock. The three children and six adults who vanished in 1972 during a violent storm that struck the farm in Normandy.’

‘Gabriel’s letter, from Brother Abraham.’

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Max nodded. ‘Which brings me to the other remnants of The Temple of the Last Days, the final incarnation of what I unwittingly began in London. But not Martha, or Bridgette, or any of the others that we know are dead or missing.’

‘Who?’

‘The children, Kyle. The five children of the mine.’

‘They were taken into care.’

‘Yes. Quite right. Which is why it took a great deal of my time and my resources to find them. This spring.’

‘You found them? I googled to see if I could—’

‘Google!’ Max rolled his eyes, then composed himself and proceeded to play the film. ‘What I found, through more unconventional routes, accounted for my haste to commission a documentary film.’

‘The illusion of a film.’

Max glared at Kyle. ‘You may yet have the most

astounding tale to tell, dear boy. If your integrity and commitment are what you claim them to be.’

Shaky footage, shot from a distance, of two men on the lawn of an affluent private house, appeared on-screen. The light was bright and the grass was littered with dogs’ toys; balls, chew bones, a bedraggled slipper. In shot, two forty-something men wore identical red tracksuits. But what alarmed Kyle was how they moved. On all fours they smiled and sniffed at each other’s faces. Their tongues were mostly out of their mouths. And one of these mouths soon unleashed a sound picked up a moment later by the distant microphone on the camera. A bark; a good imitation of a dog’s bark.

They were pretending to be dogs.

An elderly woman moved into shot and gently rolled a white ball along the lawn. Both men gave ungainly chase.

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LAST DAYS

‘Sardis and Papius were the names Katherine gave them as infants, not long after she separated them from their mothers at the Blue Oak Mine. They are the sons of Sisters Rhea and Lelia, two of the victims shot down by the perimeter fence while trying to escape on the Night of Ascent at the mine. Their children, these two boys, were removed from the mine by the Phoenix police department on the night of 10 July, 1975. They went into care before being adopted by a family within six months. Neither Sardis or Papius have ever spoken an intelligible word since they were rescued by the police officers at the mine. And, as you can see, they still prefer to be on all fours and to exist as if they are dogs rescued from a shelter. Because that is precisely what they are.’

Kyle swallowed three times to moisten his mouth. His voice had more breath in it than speech. ‘How did you find them?’

‘Through the services of a very expensive, and not entirely legitimate, private detective.’ Max moved the film forward to something that made Kyle start in his chair.

‘Sister Urania’s daughter and Sister Hannah’s son were responsible for these pictures. After these two infants were retrieved from the mine in 1975, they were identified by Martha Lake and their nationality was established. Urania and Hannah were both British. Original members of The Last Gathering in London and the organization’s largest benefac-tors. Between them, they gave Katherine millions. You’ll see how she repaid them.

‘In 1976, Sister Urania and Sister Hannah’s orphans were repatriated to Great Britain and taken in by relatives, initially. I say initially, because they were soon both transferred to the Bethlem Royal Hospital, when the extent of their 421

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psychological disorders was fully established. They have remained there ever since, on a secure ward. They were irreparably damaged from the Night of Ascent. Psychopathic at age four. This is some of their artwork that I managed to procure for a considerable sum of money. If you required more proof, and if we had the time, I could probably arrange a visit.’ Max winced and visibly shuddered.

‘Please.’ Kyle turned away from the screen. He didn’t want to look longer than was necessary at the sharp faces, ragged heads and emaciated limbs drawn and coloured so crudely, but so effectively, on paper. ‘I get the point.’

‘Do you? We’re not finished yet, my dear friend.’

Reluctantly, in a daze, Kyle returned his attention to the screen. He’d wanted to know everything,
well here it was
.

But the next image did not inflict another concussion of shock. In fact, his relief was such that a sliver of his grim humour emerged. ‘Think you got the wrong slide in there, Max.’
Something from your porn collection
. In better times he would even have laughed at the idea.

It was a studio shot of Chet Regal. The former Hollywood swimwear model, turned A-List actor, badboy, owner of Final Chapter Productions, and the latest occupier of Katherine’s former San Diego mansion.

But Max looked triumphant, if not ferrety. ‘Chet Regal.

Long gone from the silver screen, at least in Tinsel Town terms. For at least six years and counting. But only following two divorces you may have read about, a string of high-profile legal actions for possession of narcotics, driving under the influence, and assault. Mostly against members of the press, or his girlfriends. Chet Regal is a lifelong violent hater of beautiful women and a predatory bisexual with 422

LAST DAYS

sadistic tastes. It is now believed he is swiftly succumbing to the latter stages of AIDS and Hepatitis B.’

‘I know who he is, Max.’

‘While a recluse, as you also know, he has been holed up in here.’

Kyle stared at a split-screen photograph of the fabulous art deco palace Sister Katherine inhabited while her follow -

ers imprisoned and murdered each other at the abandoned copper mine in the next state; photographed as it was in the plate section of Levine’s
Last Days
, in black and white, while the second half of the image featured the building in colour.

‘You . . . you didn’t want it filmed?’

‘Indeed. Not yet, anyway. Chet Regal was the fifth child rescued from the Blue Oak Mine on the night of 10 July 1975. He was known to the investigating officers as the

“clean boy”. Though he is anything but clean.’

Kyle’s left eyelid trembled, then spasmed. ‘No.’

‘I am afraid so.’

‘Prissie’s son? Chet Regal.’

‘Exactly. Sister Prissie, the young mother who Katherine had murdered. Not long after stealing her child and assuming the role of the boy’s surrogate mother. And Chet Regal has resided for the last decade in Katherine’s former home. Since, in fact, he took possession of the house from its regent tenants following Katherine’s death. You may remember that only four of The Seven died on the Night of Ascent. The fifth, Brother Belial, was killed in prison for his pains. But the other two, her favourites, are still living.’

‘From The Seven?’

‘Two women were sent to San Francisco on the pretext of setting up a new temple in 1973. The ever faithful hand-423

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maidens, Sister Gehenna and Sister Bellona. They were not sent north for that, but to procure sympathetic parents who would adopt the clean boy when the time was right. They succeeded. The parents are long gone. A music producer and his feckless wife, who had been under Katherine’s spell in the merry-go-round of Hollywood. You might have heard of the husband. Brett Pearson. Worked with The Mamas and the Papas, The Beach Boys. His yacht was found adrift off the coast of Baja California in 1992. Empty. He and his wife never returned to shore. You see, they were also discarded once their function was at an end. When Chet was nineteen, in control and ready to inherit the earth, the clean boy came home to his new guardians, Sisters Gehenna and Bellona.’

Kyle shook his head, was smiling but didn’t know why.

‘Don’t forget, this house is where Chet spent some of his infancy. He should have little memory of that time in seclusion with Sister Katherine, but I believe he remembers a great deal of it.’

Kyle swivelled in his chair to face Max. ‘What are you saying? Chet is . . . what . . . emulating Katherine’s life? Her legacy? He brought these . . . things back?’

‘Afraid it’s a bit more serious than that, my dear Kyle. Chet Regal is Sister Katherine.’

The building seemed to move on its axis.

After a long period of silence in the room, Kyle smiled. ‘Get out of here, Max. Please. And take this horseshit conspiracy theory with you. Can you do that for me?’

Max wasn’t smiling. ‘Money, adoration, the total domin -

ation of anyone close to her, the destruction of any opponent.

Not sufficient, any of it. You see, not even being remembered 424

LAST DAYS

for ever was good enough for Sister Katherine. Only living for ever was.’

Kyle tried to swallow, but found he could not.

‘Is it so hard to believe? After all we have shared together, Kyle? Has not history taught us that self-destructive para-noiacs have to reincarnate. Putting their children in power—’

‘No.’

‘Erecting statues, buildings, cities even, that carry their name.’

‘Stop it. Stop now, Max.’

‘Katherine became fully embedded in the boy on the Night of Ascent.’

‘Are you deaf? Enough. Enough, Max.’

‘She wanted to be male, second time around, and she chose the most beautiful of all the Temple’s boys to evolve inside.

She had the most handsome man, the notorious Brother Baal, rape and impregnate Prissie, the prettiest maiden. She bred her own heir. Katherine was celibate. Suffered a revulsion of the flesh. Was, I believe, damaged appallingly by her formative experiences in the sex trade. In the beginning, she once confided to Brother Heron that she could only think of her own death at the point of ecstasy. But all of the time she led the Temple in France and America, she was wedded to
others
.