Last Days (49 page)

ADAM NEVILL

we do not have names for. But he and his angels were interrupted. By the siege. And Katherine’s first attempt at the ritual at the French farm was a disaster from which she fled. It is a precarious and costly procedure that takes years, to prepare the vessels, and for the unnatural to become natural. What more proof do you need?’

‘No, no, no. Just no, Max. No. OK?’

Max scrabbled after Kyle as he made for the door. ‘It takes time to isolate a candidate in order to make the transfer.

Think. What better place to do this than in a deserted farm, a desert? Ghost towns? Wastelands. Something befitting. And there’s not an officer of the law, or an authority in the world, that would believe you. Unless you have proof. Proof, Kyle.

Our film is our proof.’

‘I can’t, Max. I just can’t believe you. I don’t know what I believe . . . I’ve seen things . . . dreamed things . . . But transfer of a consciousness. Impossible.’

‘The children were unformed, open and trusting. Separated from the protection of their parents. They were young. The young were perfect. It had worked with dogs and pigs for Lorche. And children were easier than adults. Can’t you see?

Katherine was refining the process Lorche began. She was under guidance from the same influences that made a pact with Lorche.’

Kyle couldn’t speak, but tried to push himself away from Max. All he wanted was to leave the half-derelict flat, burning with a fake light that would soon wink out. Max followed him into the hall. ‘It’s why Lorche was cutting throats four hundred years before. It’s critical at a certain point. At a particular time in the ritual, in the “friendship” that must be maintained with hot living blood. Sacrifice. Blood maintains 434

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their presence for a short time. And the presence of the Blood Friends suspends the rules we are governed by, which prevent one thing passing into another. And enough blood was shed to get Katherine inside a child locked in that cabin. In the riot and the rout of blood, when the presence of the Blood Friends filled the foul air, she succeeded. As did two of the Blood Friends. They passed over. You have felt their intent too, their investigations as you slept, as have we all. I believe our nocturnal visions were to serve as warnings to us, as well as an exercise of their power. Preparation.’

Kyle made the hall. Max’s stick tapped after him like a jeweller’s little hammer. ‘Katherine had a head start. She’d begun preparing Prissie’s son in her mansion. Katherine made it across into a child, with help, with sacrifice, with blood.’

‘The boy. Prissie’s son. What happened to his . . . spirit, consciousness?’

‘He died in Katherine’s body. As she planned. Belial be -

headed her with the soul of a child inside her bloated body.

The head was removed to stop the terrified child seeping back out during the ritual. And the blood from her body was feasted upon.’

‘You can’t . . . you cannot expect me to believe this.’

‘Katherine and the boy must have already been exchanging for short times. In California. Out at her mansion. Think of what Martha said. And Lieutenant Conway. That Katherine had become childlike. It wasn’t drugs! Witnesses had already seen Prissie’s boy’s consciousness inside Katherine for short periods of time. Why would this woman, this guru to the Hollywood stars, with millions in the bank, this successful manipulator of hundreds of people, why would she end up so reduced in the dirt of an abandoned mine? Beheaded.

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Think, man. Why did she order Belial to kill her? It was intentional because she was no longer inside that body. Had left it. The clean boy the police found was Katherine. Successfully in place inside that infant and ready to evolve. I believe the clean boy even directed matters at the mine once Katherine was in place.’

‘Oh Jesus, no. No.’

‘She was in perfect control of things we can barely comprehend. Acquired knowledge, expertise from those
others
.

As far back as 1969 she knew where it was all leading. What drove her narcissism was self-loathing. She wanted to be adored, but she also hated her body, ageing, confining mortality. Would exchange anything for a chance to be free of it.’

Kyle turned around just before the front door. ‘Then why the film? What was the point of involving me and Dan, if you knew all of this?’

Max leaned upon his cane in a revived physical discomfort that Kyle dearly wanted to increase. ‘As my own time approached, I decided to gather evidence. To find out how she was killing from beyond the grave. How it was even possible for her to continue, in this life, after her time. And when I learned of the fates of the children . . . well, it became something else. Something I was ready to accept. Then my intention was to flush Katherine out. A film was my idea of a counter-attack. To make some kind of bargain. To save the last of us. To save myself.’ Max’s face sagged and whited with the most intense expression of fear Kyle had yet seen. His voice came out a whisper. ‘I didn’t want to go to that other place. The one you saw in Antwerp. They made me dream of it. Where they took the poor deluded wretches of St 436

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Mayenne and have since reshaped their tortured souls. They even tried to unseat me from my own body as I slept. I didn’t want them inside me. They were revealing their desire to change places with us. The living. And if they cannot, they will slaughter us like cattle to stay among us, if only for brief periods. A full possession can only work with a child, but it seems we adults can also still be taken to that other place.

To join the congregation.’

Kyle leaned against the door frame. These invasions he had suffered too. Something with dirty fingers had been trying to feel its way into his life for weeks. It did make sense.

Horrible sense. He had seen the Kingdom of Fools in dreams, and seen The Saints of Filth put to the sword. Woken to inhabit a terrible black anti-space. To occupy other ghastly forms for short times. He had been
touched
and now they intended to either slaughter him where he lay or to take him with them. Back to that other place, to some kind of eternal exile. The dead birds, the whining dogs, the thin tatty figures.

Max’s voice came to him as if from a dream. ‘She called them back to pick up our scents. They want to live, to occupy the living, as does she whose future and continuance is dependent upon their presence. But when they inevitably fail, when so close, they are gripped by spite and hate and rage, they sate old thirsts. Or they seize us, take us away, like treasure.’

‘You thought you could scare her off? With exposure?

Didn’t fucking work, did it?’

Max gripped Kyle’s shoulder. ‘No. It did not. I sent her some footage. It made her hunger for revenge greater. And yearn for concealment from what I had learned. Her desires 437

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became even more acute. I believe I merely succeeded in bringing
things
forward.’

‘And you’re still rewriting history, aren’t you? Because Gabriel was right. He and Isis were used as bait so I could film what hunted them. It was too dangerous for you to go and make the film yourself, but you still wanted proof. So you sent me and Dan, and that poor worm, Gonal, out there to get it while you cowered in your world of light. But we got contaminated as well. You bastard, Max. You horrible little bastard. And if you’re right, Max, about all of this, then we’re fucked. We bleed out like Gabriel did last night. Or we get snatched and dumped in the Kingdom of Fools. Either that or we end up with a friggin’ dog inside us. I’m all ears, Max, as to what you propose to do.’

Max looked past Kyle, onto the communal landing, and lowered his voice. Didn’t even try to deny Kyle’s accusations about using the others as bait, or that all he could think of was his own survival. ‘Perhaps we are not entirely “fucked”.

Public exposure was merely the first of two defences I believed I might have against her and her old friends. But if she did not call off her hounds, the second outcome . . .’

‘What? What was the second?’

‘Assassination.’

Kyle’s eyes were wild; he felt them elongate within his skull.

After a long period of tense silence, he mumbled, ‘Kill Chet Regal?’

Max nodded sagely.

‘I’m really surprised at you, Max. That you haven’t already topped him. Would it have troubled your selective conscience at all?’

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LAST DAYS

‘Ssh. Your voice. Keep it down.’

‘No!’

‘Look, it’s not so easy. I . . . well, I have looked into it.’

Max cleared his throat.

‘You’ve already tried, haven’t you?’

‘Can you blame me?’

‘Jesus.’ Kyle dropped his face into his hands. ‘How? How did I get myself into this?’

‘Chet had private security. Armed. Round the clock nursing staff. Devoted assistants. There is the matter of Sisters Gehenna and Bellona. They are old but not to be underestimated.’

‘Then how do you get to him?’

‘Chet is ruined. Bankrupt from the divorce and various legal settlements from law suits. His chef and trainer and personal doctor were the first to go when their wages were no longer being paid, earlier this year. As of this month, I am reliably informed by my source, the last of the security detail also failed to show up for work. His bodyguard quit a week ago. So now is the time to strike. Chet hasn’t long left. No more than a year. He has already been hospitalized twice this year with pneumonia. A mild infection could kill him. If he even has the strength, he must reincarnate now. I am certain he has been cultivating a new transfer for two years with the adopted child. Practising as ill health crept upon him. It was this that forced him to call down the Blood Friends once more. His illness brought his plans forward when he realized he was sick, he got rid of the wife who he merely used for the adoption. You must have read about the custody battle.

He won by paying her off, and by making her drop her suit 439

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by threatening exposure of her drug habit that he’d had filmed. Drugs he introduced her to. There is nothing he will not do to pursue his goals. He wanted to be alone with that child for a reason.’

‘So we bust in there and murder a critically ill man?’

‘I wish it were that simple. Sister Gehenna and Sister Bellona are far worse adversaries than his former complement of rent-a-cops. And there is the matter of a tiger.’

‘What?’

‘He has a Bengal tiger. An asset from more lucrative times.

And there are snakes, I am told. Deadly pets.’ Max smiled.

‘Serpents. How fitting. So this venture of ours is not without considerable risk.’

‘There’s that word again, Max. “Ours”. I was almost with you until you mentioned the tiger. I’m outta here. Oh, by the way, where is Iris?’

Max looked aghast, and mortified that Kyle would even consider disobeying his wishes. ‘Iris?’

‘The woman who brings cake and toast. She was here this morning.’

‘Have you not understood me?’

‘I’m going to find my friend. With the police.’

‘Katherine’s trying to incarnate again, Kyle! While she still can! Before that body expires out from under her. She has a child. We know she has a child in there with her. We must save the child.’

Kyle scrabbled at the latch. ‘Social services. You better call them.’

‘If you don’t help me, a child will die. I’ll die. You will die.

Kyle, you won’t see the fucking morning!’ Max hammered the marble floor with his cane. ‘Documentary proof. We have 440

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it. Time to film the final scene. Don’t you see, Kyle? Your film is almost complete.’

Kyle held the front door, and started pulling it closed on Max. ‘No, No, No.’

‘She has a child, Kyle! A child!’

Kyle shut the door behind him.

Max’s final call came from the other side of the door.

‘Don’t turn out the lights, Kyle! For God’s sake!’

441

TWENTY-EIGHT

west hampstead, london.

25 june 2011. 3.30 a.m.

‘Mate! Hey, mate! Where is it along here?’

Kyle jerked awake, out of a dream filled with barking children. ‘Not me,’ he pleaded with the children in his dream, who had faces of soot and bayed for what had been taken from them. He sat upright, rigid, awake as a trace of other images dimmed in his mind: black buildings under a yellow sky, squeals from an abattoir. He looked about himself in a panic. A cab. He was in the back of another taxi. He shook himself alert and wiped at the drool on his chin. ‘Here’s OK.’

He struggled to get out of the cab. His gut burned with hunger. He was jet-lagged to a concussion, exhausted, and flu-symptom achy. The waking world was surreal.

At the end of the short path that led to the front door of his building, he looked up and eyed the dark lounge window.

He hadn’t closed the curtains before he left. When was that?

Early hours of the morning the day they flew to America.
So
long ago.
Another lifetime; one still precarious but better than this shuffling horror. Standing up straight was difficult. Down there in the night-time, the weight of what he had lost, was potentially about to lose, and of what he knew, curved his 442

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spine like a sickle, outside a home he had no wish to enter.

Drizzle pricked his face.

He had to get inside; had work to do. A new outline for an edit to compose. And an insert to film: a final piece to camera for the rough cut of a documentary he doubted he would live to see aired. But it would be broadcast, and in the great public theatre of his age; that unregulated market of braying narcissists, that Wild West of disinformation and fraud, that infinite sea of piracy, the great electorate where the constituency of billions voted their approval with a click of a mouse. The internet. It brought governments down and rewrote history; so his film should be right at home.

If it was the last thing he did with the last of himself, he would get a version of the film online. With the last dregs of his energy, he would shoot his postscript, quickly expand the rough cuts of the film with the video diary inserts and get Finger Mouse to cut them together, upload and post the film online with a trailer at the right time,
in his absence
. To be premiered posthumously on any site that would have it.