Wylding Hall

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.