Wylding Hall (7 page)

The place was immense. From outside, you just had no idea of the scale. It was originally a manor house, where a knight would have lived—you could see where the old part began, because the walls changed from wood and plaster to herringbone brick, with massive oaken joists and beams.

The hall grew narrower as I wandered along. Diamond-paned windows, that beautiful leaded glass that catches the light and throws it back in rainbows, like a prism. There were crooked wooden doors, oak planks banded with iron, so heavy and warped I couldn’t open most of them.

And of course I tried—who wouldn’t? The ones I could open seemed to be have been used as storerooms for the last few hundred years, dank and musty and dark. I wasn’t going to start poking around in them.

So, I kept going, until I found a stone stairway and climbed to the next floor. It was so dark, I kept my hand on the wall the whole time to make sure I didn’t lose my footing. I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face, and the passage was so narrow that my shoulders brushed the walls. It was like climbing into my own tomb.

I’d forgotten my watch, and so I lost all track of time. But finally I reached the top of the stairs and stepped out onto a landing. There, to one side, was an open door. Light poured into the hall, and it took a moment for my eyes to adjust before I walked in.

It was a library—a very, very old library. You’re supposed to keep books out of the light, but this room must have been at least five hundred years old, built at a time when you’d want—need—natural light to read properly. Assuming you were literate and
could
read.

I’ve never been in such a beautiful room. Dark oak walls with carved linenfold paneling, hand-carved bookshelves. A row of diamond-paned windows, with leaves blown against them on the outside, so that the light that filtered down seemed to come from a forest canopy. One of the windows must have been broken—there were leaves scattered across the floor, green willow and birch.

And there was a fireplace big enough to walk into, filled knee-high with gray ash. The room smelled of woodsmoke: when I held my hands above the ashes, the air felt warm. Someone had been burning something.

Another odd thing was the walls. When I first walked into the library, I assumed the paneled walls were linenfold—what you usually find in posh houses of that vintage. But when I looked closer, I saw the paneling was carved like overlapping feathers—there must have been thousands of them. Not big peacock feathers, either: small feathers, about the size of your thumbnail. The detail was extraordinary; you could see every quill, and the wood was so smooth it felt like silk.

The bookshelves were carved, too: a repeating pattern of twigs and leaves with a little bird like a sparrow worked in here and there. You had to look carefully to find the birds, they were so small and carefully concealed within the larger pattern. The shelves weren’t filled, but there were still a lot of books—several hundred at least. Not very orderly. It looked like a library used often by the same person, someone who always knew where to find whatever book he wanted to put his hands on.

There were more books on a table by the window, in a language I couldn’t make out. Arabic, maybe? I can’t remember, it’s been so long. And another grimoire, not much bigger than my hand. It was in good nick, the leather cover very soft. The pages felt stiff and new. The ink looked new as well, not at all faded: black ink, not that dull brown you find in most very old books.

And this book was very old. I’m no expert, but even I could tell it must have been written around the time this wing was built. When I opened it, I swear I could smell fresh ink. I looked at the frontispiece for a date or name, but found nothing.

I did come across a bookmark—a birch leaf that had been picked within the last day or so, still green. Beneath it was a fragment of manuscript covered with writing, so old it crumbled when I touched it. I had my notebook with me—I’m a journalist, remember—and I quickly began to copy out the writing word for word. I thought it might make good copy.

“Burna thyn haer yn flamme

Tiss wrennas fedyr and thyn hatte blod.”

That’s all I got down when I heard someone behind me. I whirled around, but there was no one by the door. When I turned back, someone was at the other end of the room, watching me. A very old woman I thought at first, not as tall as me, slight and white-haired. But she wasn’t old—it was a trick of the sun in the window above her, bleaching the color from her hair.

Then I saw that her hair really
was
white—bright as silver, rather mussed-up hair that fell just above her shoulders. She didn’t look more than fourteen or fifteen, wearing a plain white dress that came just below her knees. A vintage petticoat, the kind of hippie frock that girls snapped up at Portobello Road. Strange tawny eyes. She took a step toward me and stopped. She looked surprised, as though she’d been expecting someone else.

“What are you doing here?”

I jumped: it was a man’s voice. And it didn’t come from her, but from the door, where Julian stood, staring at me. I couldn’t tell if he was angry or just confused.

I said, “Nothing,” and glanced back at the girl.

But she was gone.

Tom

It was a good article, what Patricia Kenyon wrote for
NME
—a very good piece. Unfortunately, by the time it appeared that fall, we were all focused on damage control. The album had to come out on schedule, and there was a tour all lined up—shows in London and Brighton. I was in the last stages of booking them in the United States around the holidays. The rumor mill had been running for a few months by then. Patricia’s article did a lot to calm that down, put things into perspective. I suspect she could have caused us a lot of trouble if she’d wanted to.

But that was never her intent, with us or anyone else. She’s a brilliant writer, one of the best. Deserves every bit of praise she’s ever received. In retrospect, it was extremely fortunate that I let her go down there, much as I was dead set against the idea at first. She became a sort of witness for the defense, long after the fact.

Patricia Kenyon

Afterward, I thought she must’ve been his girlfriend, the one he met in the pub. I never met her and there aren’t any photos, other than the cover for Wylding Hall. But from the description, that’s who it must have been. Right?

Chapter 9

Lesley

Julian was into black magic. Well, okay—he never called it that. But something to do with the dark arts. “Magick” with a
K
, that Aleister Crowley bullshit. So fucking pretentious. Most of Crowley’s quote-unquote magick was just a way of getting laid—he was a total con man. If you can read his stuff with a straight face, you’re a stronger woman than me.

Julian wasn’t like that. He was interested in the nature of time. The only thing he loved more than his guitar was that fancy wristwatch of his, with all the dials and arrows and whatnot. He loved to play with it, winding it back and forth and watching the hands turn. Like a kid. I think he actually believed that he could control time.

Or no, it’s more like he believed there were other
kinds
of time; that you could step out of our ordinary time and into another one. Like Rip Van Winkle. Julian was fascinated by that kind of story. He must’ve pulled every book off the shelves at Wylding Hall, looking for them. Before we even went to Wylding Hall, he’d asked Will to search for ballads like that at Cecil Sharp House. There aren’t many, so Julian made up his own. That’s what his version of the Campion song was.

Spells, that’s what Julian was trying to write. He wouldn’t cop to it, but I knew he was up to something. I’d knock and knock at the door; he wouldn’t answer, so I’d let myself in.

He wouldn’t even know I was there. He’d stand in the middle of the floor with his eyes closed, talking to himself. I’d speak to him, and even if I touched him, he wouldn’t react. This would go on for minutes. When he’d finally snap out of it and open his eyes, they’d dilate—but not like a normal person’s eyes. More like an owl’s: one second they were all pupil, and then suddenly they’d shrink to almost nothing.

The first time it happened, I almost jumped out of my skin. I screamed and grabbed him, and it was like pulling a bedsheet from a piano. I could barely feel his arm between my fingers.

He just—
crumpled
and fell to the floor. Like his bones had dissolved. I thought he was dead. But after a minute, he blinked and his eyes seemed to focus, and I knew he could see me. He started yelling that I’d ruined it: he’d almost done it and I’d fucked it all up, whatever “it” was.

That happened, what? Three times, maybe four. Those are just the times I know of, when I walked into his room or came on him when he was out in the woods and saw it for myself.

I don’t think it was drugs. That’s the obvious answer, I know. But I’ve seen so many people strung out on heroin or whatever, and this was different. His eyes—I’ve only ever seen one other person whose eyes went like that.

Yeah, her. Guessed it in one.

Will

There’s probably a hundred variations on the wren carol. Different words, different melodies. God knows where Julian found the one he sang. He never went to Cecil Sharp House, not as far as I know.

And he never asked me about the songs I found there, or anywhere else, which got my back up somewhat. I didn’t expect the others to appreciate what I was doing, not from an archival perspective. But Julian, you’d think this was exactly the sort of thing he’d be interested in. Never said a word to me about it. Whenever I’d ask about the songs he covered, where he found them, why he’d chosen that particular arrangement, he’d just shrug and say he couldn’t remember.

His version of the carol went like this:

We are the boys who come today

To bury the wren on St. Stephen’s Day.

Where shall we bury her feathers?

In a grave mound.

What shall we do with her bones?

Bury them in the ground.

They’ll break men’s plows!

Cast them into the sea.

They’ll grow into great rocks

That will wreck ships and boats!

We’ll burn them in the fire

And throw her ashes to the sky.

A bit bloodthirsty. You’d be surprised how many old songs are like that. I was very curious as to where he’d found his variation. I knew there was a library at Wylding Hall and that Julian spent time there. In the Tudor wing, he told me.

“It’s easy—you go a ways into the Tudor wing, through a long passage with windows, then up a flight of steps. Stone stairs, I think that bit’s older than the rest. Norman, maybe. Once you reach the top, the library’s on the your right. Can’t miss it.”

Famous last words. Not only was it possible to miss it, I got so lost I was afraid I’d never find my way back. The hallway with the windows was easy enough—very pretty, diamond panes and glimpses of the gardens outside.

But after that, I must’ve taken a wrong turn. I walked and walked, but there was no sign of a stone stairway. Nothing but old storerooms, doors that I couldn’t pry open. Dark, too—there weren’t many windows, and the ones I saw were all high up and deeply recessed, so I could see pockets of blue sky, but not much else. The glass might have been broken, or maybe they never had glass in them at all. Maybe the original structure was even older than Julian thought.

Either way, it was much colder than the rest of Wylding Hall. There was no central heating, of course, not in a heap that old and that big, but the part we stayed in got a lot of sun. And it was summer.

Here it felt more like autumn, or even early winter. Cold enough to see my breath. That freaked me out.

And the wood smelled strange—the timbers that crisscrossed the ceiling and the paneled walls, even the furniture. Everything was made of wood, so the smell was quite noticeable. Not like furniture polish or beeswax: a nasty smell, putrid and slightly sweet. Like roses left in a vase where the water goes all green and scummy. Even now, I don’t like to think of it.

I pulled open doors, looking for a stairway or another passage, but I didn’t see anything but nearly empty bedrooms with cupboard beds, all so covered with cobwebs it looked like ash.

Finally, I just gave up. I stopped and turned and began to retrace my steps.

Immediately I was lost. Nothing looked the same—the windows seemed higher and narrower, and outside the sky looked darker. I could see stars. I know that sounds crazy, but it’s true.

Now I was really starting to freak out. Hallways branched off the passage, and I knew I hadn’t seen them before, because I was looking for the stairwell. I stopped and listened, but I couldn’t hear a sound. No voices. None of the creaks you usually hear in old houses. It wasn’t rational, but I grew terrified that I wouldn’t be able to find my way back at all. Every time I turned a corner, there’d be two or three more passages branching off from the one I was in.

I remembered something I’d once read about the maze at Hampton Court: to find your way out, you should keep one hand on the wall at all times. I had a bandanna tied around my head to keep my hair out of my eyes, paisley silk—Nancy had given it to me for my birthday. I took it off and tied it to a doorknob. If I ended up back there again, I’d know I’d come in circles. I made my best guess as to the correct direction, put my hand on the wall to the right, and started walking.

If my hand hadn’t been on the wall, I would have missed it. An alcove so narrow that anyone bigger than me wouldn’t have been able to slip inside: the entrance to a stone stairway.

Once inside, I had only to raise my arms slightly to touch the walls. The stone risers were steep, slightly concave in the center where they’d been worn over the years. Hundreds, even thousands of people must have walked those steps. I wondered if anyone had been there recently, besides Julian and myself and the other members of Windhollow.

The stairway was lit by a strange ghostly light, just enough to see by. Yet I saw no lamps or windows. It was as though the light seeped from the stone. I crept along, afraid I’d lose my footing and crack my head. The walls pressed in on me, and the air was so cold my chest ached with each breath. It smelled dank and loamy, with a faint reek of rotted wood.

And it was deathly silent. I stopped once and stamped hard as I could on the steps. I heard only a whispery sound, like a falling leaf.

Goddam Julian
, I thought. I thought it was some kind of bad joke, that he’d decided to take me down a peg. After five minutes, I stopped again, panting, and looked back.

That was a mistake.

Behind me, the passage spiraled down and down, deeper into shadows than I could have imagined, before it winked from sight entirely. My mouth went dry, and I clutched at the wall to keep from falling.

It was impossible that I could have climbed that high, impossible that the building could reach such a height, or plunge so deeply into the earth.

But when I turned, heart pounding, the stairs seemed to wind upwards just as endlessly, until they too disappeared. If I continued on, I’d walk into utter darkness. If I turned back, the same black spiral awaited me, coiling down into some unimaginable abyss.

I couldn’t budge. The thought of moving even a fraction of inch, forward or back, made me so dizzy, I was afraid I’d pass out. The steps were far too narrow for me to sit, so I leaned against the wall and tried to calm myself, counting backwards from a hundred.

I reached about fifty when I heard it. A voice so faint, I had to hold my breath to be sure I hadn’t imagined it. It was the same voice I’d heard the night Nancy was with us and we all held hands in the dark. I couldn’t make out any words.

Almost imperceptibly, it grew louder: loud enough that I realized it was singing. I still couldn’t understand the words, but after a few minutes I recognized the melody as a song by Thomas Campion.

Whoever was singing seemed to swallow the words: they became a mindless jumble, and try as I might, I couldn’t recall them, even though the sound was growing closer.

And now I could hear another sound—a kind of slithering, like something being slowly dragged up the steps.

Or something dragging itself. The wordless song went on. The dank air grew putrid, until I gagged and clapped my hand to my mouth.

With that sudden motion I found I could move again—and I did. I raced up those stairs so fast I nearly tripped, gasping and trying not to choke on that smell. Ahead of me, the gray light grew brighter, until a silver line sliced through the darkness—the outline of a door.

Behind me, the slithering became a high-pitched rattle that drowned out the wordless song. I reached the top step and flung myself against the door, pounding as I searched for a latch. My fingers closed around a metal spike and I yanked at it, pulling until the door inched open. I angled around to squeeze through—

And I swear to you, the door began to close on me. I clawed at the wood, but it only squeezed more and more tightly.

Then, all at once, I was on the other side and stumbling down the hall. I didn’t stop till I saw my bandanna tied outside a bedroom. I grabbed it and kept on running, through the corridors and down the stairs to the rehearsal room.

Ashton nearly had a heart attack when I burst inside.

“What the hell are you doing?” he yelled, but I just slammed the door shut and pulled a chair in front of it. I wouldn’t talk until he found a bottle of whiskey and shoved it at me. When I
could
talk, I gave him some bollocks about needing to use the telephone for an urgent call. Of course, by the time I drank half the bottle and managed to calm myself down, I forgot all about the telephone. Took me the rest of the day before I felt anything like myself again and could pick up my guitar.

I never told Ashton what really happened, or anyone else. At first I was afraid they’d laugh at me. Later, I was afraid they’d be angry I hadn’t told them sooner. I never told anyone, till now.