Wylding Hall

Chapter 14

Billy

I was back at school after the summer holidays. This would have been end of September. I joined the camera club. It met once a fortnight, and at the first meeting they told everyone to shoot a roll of film, develop it, then bring the prints to the next meeting. One or two people had a darkroom, but I didn’t, and the school didn’t.

My camera was a little Instamatic. It had color film that came in a cartridge. Very convenient. The photo quality was crap, but what did I know? I went with my mum when she went into Alton to do her shopping, dropped off my film at Snappy Snaps, then picked it up the next weekend.

I was so excited! But the film quality truly was crap. Very bright, super-saturated colors, high contrast. Cheap and cheerful. The colors were a bit surreal — a sort of psychedelic feeling. The frame size was square, which as it turned out was perfect for an album cover.

You got twenty frames to a roll. They printed out as neat little squares. If you blew them up they were very, very grainy. But they were snapshots, not professional photos, so no one blew them up.

I looked at the photos right away in the car — my mother was driving. I told you that I didn’t know what I was doing with that camera, and there was the proof in front of me. The first ten photos, you couldn’t even tell what they were supposed to be of. It looked like I’d been taking pictures inside a cave. All blurred and dark. The ones that weren’t dark were so overexposed it looked like a nuclear bomb had gone off, except you could see my thumb in the corner.

So, the first ten of the twenty photographs were a dead loss, and I wasn’t optimistic about the rest. I hadn’t had the presence of mind to buy another roll of film at Snappy Snaps. I thought I’d be screwed come the next camera club meeting. I turned over the next photo and was so stunned, I swore out loud — in front of my mother, which I never did! She looked at me like I’d lost my mind. For a second, I thought maybe I had, too.

Tom Haring

One Saturday afternoon at the end of September, Billy Thomas rings me up at the Larkspur office, so excited he can hardly speak. I had to ask him to slow down, and even then all I could make out was something about a stranger at Wylding Hall. I thought he was ringing because the place had been burgled.

Finally I get it out of him that he’d processed the roll of film he’d taken at Wylding Hall the day I’d brought the mobile unit down. Something had shown up in the photos and he wanted me to see it. He needed me to see it — he was thinking of taking the photographs to the police.

“Whoa, there!” I said.

Actually, what I said should not be repeated. I’d already begun to have some dealings with the police, after Mr. and Mrs. Blake notified them that Julian was missing. I’d sunk almost every penny I had into Windhollow Faire’s summer vacation at Hell Hall, and now I had nothing to show for it but a runaway guitarist and some psychedelic field recordings.

And now there’s some yokel telling me he’s got photos he wants to take to the police. I thought he was blackmailing me, so I told him I’d take him to the police if he tried to contact me again, and I hung up. He tried ringing back, but I told my secretary not to answer. I considered calling my solicitor as a protective measure, in case this kid really did have some incriminating photos.

Next thing I know, the following morning I’m alone at the Moonthunder office, trying to salvage something from the entire Windhollow Faire disaster, and who shows up at the door but Bill-the-lad with an envelope of color snapshots.

“I’m calling the police,” I told him.

“I’m not blackmailing you!” He stuck his foot in the door before I could slam it in his face. “Ask Jonathan, I spoke to him last night!”

At that moment, right on cue, the phone rings. And it’s Jonno.

“Listen, Tom, “ he says, “I have no idea what this kid’s been smoking, but he sounds harmless. Probably he just wants a job. Hear him out and look at his photos and send him on his way home. There’s a train at noon.”

Well, as you know, Jonno has a heart as big as the national debt. So I sigh and ring off with him and tell the boy he has five minutes to say his piece before I throw him out and get back to juggling the books.

“We use professional photographers here for anything having to do with the bands, and graphic designers,” I told him. I’d already spoken to Hipgnosis, hoping they could do the album cover art. Since it was seeming like there wouldn’t be any album, this was turning into a moot point.

“Just look,” he said.

He clears off a desk and lays out ten photos like a deck of tarot cards. Very, very carefully, like he’s putting them in a special order. When he’s finished, he points to me and says, “Look.”

They were the pictures he’d taken in the garden at Wylding Hall. Informal photos — everyone at their mike stands, singing or playing in the sunlight. A few photos of them messing around, tossing roses at each other.

The last three just showed them all looking up at the sky. Ashton was to the left of the frame. Jonno stood in front of his drum kit. Will and Les were side by side, both shading their eyes. Julian was slightly off by himself to the right, neck craned as he stared up.

The light was clearly different in these pictures — very bright, low-slanting sunlight. It made the grass look golden and all the other colors stand out more brightly. They weren’t terrible photos, but they weren’t anything approaching professional quality. Just amateur snapshots.

I turned to the boy and said, “Yes, these are very nice. But as I told you, we—”

“You have to look at them. These three.” He indicated the photos where everyone stared at the sky. “Tell me what you see.”

It was a minute before I saw it. Inside the walled garden with the others was a sixth person. While the band were all looking at the sky, someone else stood to the right and gazed straight ahead, into the camera. In the first picture, the figure was perhaps twenty feet from Julian. In the next photo, it was closer. In the last of the three, it stood directly behind him, and I could see it was a girl, wearing a sleeveless white dress.

“What the hell is this?” I looked at Billy Thomas.

“You tell me.”

I glanced at the photos again — all of them, in order. I shook my head. “Did you doctor these? Is this some kind of joke?”

“I swear to you on the Holy Bible, this is how they came out.”

I stood and stared at the pictures. I tried to recall everything I could about that afternoon. I’d been inside the mobile unit, but the back doors of the lorry had been open the whole time, so I could watch whatever was going on as I worked the boards. I hadn’t moved from there except once, to take a piss.

I remembered exactly when these photos had been taken — I’d yelled at Billy not to trip on the cables as he scampered around. I remembered the sunlight, which had been so beautiful that day. There were only ten shots, so it can’t have taken him more than twenty or thirty minutes, if that.

And there had been no one at Wylding Hall that afternoon, except for the members of the band, and Billy and me.

I looked over at Billy. “That afternoon, when you took these — did you see anyone?”

He shook his head. “There was no one.”

“Pick those up and follow me,” I ordered him. “Back here.”

Moonthunder’s art department was a storeroom where we had a mimeograph machine, some light boxes, a filing cabinet, and a table covered with photos and design sheets and layouts for album art. I swept these aside, pointed to where Billy should put the photos, and found a loupe and a magnifying lens. I kept the loupe, gave him the magnifying glass, and turned on the table lamp, which was very bright. We couldn’t afford a proper light table, but these pictures were so small, it would hardly have made much difference.

I spent the next hour scrutinizing those photos — the only reason I stopped was that I could feel a migraine coming on. With the loupe, it was crystal clear that the person was indeed a teenage girl, fourteen or fifteen or sixteen. Billy’s age. There was nothing fuzzy about her image — it wasn’t in any way blurred or hazy or transparent. She looked as solid and real to life as everyone else.

“Do you know her?” I glanced at Billy. “From school, or the pub? Is she a relative of yours?”

“A relative?” He laughed. “No girl in my family would be allowed to run around like that. Besides, all my cousins live in Farnham.”

“And you don’t recognize her from school?”

“It’s a small school. I’ve known everyone since we were kids.” He hesitated, then said, “She looks like the girl they talked about. The one from the Wren. The girl who went off with Julian Blake.”

I felt like my head was going to explode. “This is crazy. Someone must have doctored these. Or, I don’t know, swapped them out for some other photos. Where’d you get them developed?”

“Snappy Snaps. I already called them. They have a machine they run the film through, it’s all done automatically. The only thing a person does is stick them in the envelope and hand it to you. And take your money.”

We stared at each other across the table and for a long time said nothing. Billy was the one finally spoke.

“Do you think I should bring them to the police?”

“Why the hell would you do that?”

“Because it might help them find him. And her — both of them.”

I thought about that, then said, “No. There’d be too many questions. None of which we could answer,” I added, gazing at the pictures. “Look, can I keep these? Just overnight? I promise I won’t do anything to them — I won’t destroy them or anything like that.”

Billy nodded. “Yeah, sure. I have the negatives at home.”

“Smart lad. You have my word. Any objection to me blowing these up? Enlarging them so I can look at them more closely?”

“I guess not.”

He looked a little put out, so I said, “How’s this — if I can make use of these, I’ll pay you a professional’s fee and give you photo credit. If I can’t make use of them, you let me keep these and give me the negatives, and I’ll pay you a hundred pounds.”

His eyes got big, but he made a show of thinking it over before he nodded. “Okay.”

We shook on it, and I told him I’d ring him up after I had a chance to look over the enlargements. I thought I’d flatter him by suggesting he’d be a pro — I had no intention of doing anything with those photos, except destroy them.

Jon

Tom called me, demanding to know what the hell was going on with Billy Thomas and these photos. As I hadn’t seen the photos, I told him I had no effing clue. Billy hadn’t told me anything about them, other than the fact that they weren’t what he’d expected, and he thought someone from the group should see them. I was the only one whose telephone number he had. I didn’t want to be bothered, so I told him to ring Tom. After leaving Wylding Hall, I’d had to move back in with my parents in Muswell Hill, and I wasn’t too happy about anything right then.

About a week later, Tom rings me up again and tells me to come by the Larkspur office next morning. He wanted to see everyone, he said. It was very important.

Uh oh, I thought.

Lesley

We all went over to Tom’s office. Me and Will went together, so at least we had moral support. I’d spoken to Ashton and Jonno on the phone after they’d gotten the call. I assumed Tom was going to sack us — cancel our contract and tell us we were on our own. We’d still have the first album and whatever piddling royalties that generated, after he’d been paid back for everything he’d spent on Wylding Hall. Without Julian, we no longer had a second album, or a band. Windhollow Faire was dead.

Ashton

Tom waited till we all arrived, then led us into the back room, where the photos were all laid out on a table. He didn’t say anything except, “Look,” and stood back to wait for our reactions.

I thought it was some elaborate, incredibly cruel joke he was pulling. I think everyone else felt the same, except for Les. She actually had to run out of the room because she got sick. By the time she returned, Will and I were shouting at Tom, and Les and Jonno had to pull us off before we knocked him down.

Jon

I knew immediately that they weren’t fakes. They were very grainy, more like cheap newsprint photos, but they were real. What else could they have been? It looked just like her, the girl who’d run off with Julian.

Only the photos had been taken a week before that happened. And, of course, she hadn’t been there the day we did the outdoors recording.

Tom

It took me a good quarter hour to get them all calmed down. I explained as best I could about the photos — which wasn’t much explaining at all, just sharing of information. I’d bought loupes for them all, so everyone spent an hour looking through those pictures like they were searching for gold dust. They were eight by ten enlargements, cropped to accommodate the square format of the film. Like I said, not the best quality, but it was clear to me that they weren’t fakes.

When everyone else appeared to have accepted that much, they all stopped arguing and looked at me. Lesley said, “Now what?”

We debated it all afternoon, into the night and the following morning. At one point we broke for dinner, Jonno ran out for takeaway, and Will popped down to the Off License and bought some whiskey. The consensus we finally came to was that the three photographs were real. The figure staring out at us was the same girl everyone had seen at the pub a week later. It appeared that she had stepped out from the woods behind the walled garden, and that her intent was to reach Julian. Why she was staring directly into the camera was anybody’s guess.

Who she was—what she was — was another matter entirely. We never figured that one out. Everyone had a different theory. Mine was that everything that had occurred, up to and including our arguments around the table in the Moonthunder office, was a horrible group hallucination. Sadly, this didn’t seem to be the case.

Ashton

The photos were truly frightening. Not the first group, where we’re all playing around in the grass, throwing roses at each other and laughing. I love those pictures. I think they capture what was best about Windhollow Faire, what was best about all of us. That was our golden moment — we were all young and beautiful and gifted and so incredibly fortunate to have found each other. That was the peak. It was pure serendipity that Billy Thomas was there with a camera to capture it.

The other photographs … I hardly like to think about them, let alone talk about them. When we had the vote as to whether it should be the album cover, I was the one voted no.

I know that seems out of character. I’m the one always laughed or lost my temper when anyone would start to go on about the occult. I believe that there is a rational, scientific explanation for everything. But I have never been able to understand or explain those photographs.

So, I voted no. I would not be swayed. We all agreed that the other two photos should remain unpublished. Technically, Billy owns them, but he agreed that he wouldn’t ever make them available to the public. Especially now, when they could go viral in a heartbeat. He’s a man of his word and I trust him. He never had a career as a photographer — he became an estate agent back in the village, as you know. So it’s not like these are lost photographs that would revive his career. Or ours.

There were three pictures in which you could see her. The first one, she’s at the back of the garden, towards the woods. On the right-hand side of the frame, same as Julian, who was staring up at the sky along with the rest of us.

You might almost think she’s a statue. She’s facing the camera directly, hands at her sides, bare legged, wearing the same white dress as when I first saw her. Too far off to get a proper look at her face. There was a bit of a breeze, you can see the grasses rippling and everyone’s long hair blown by the breeze. Her hair, it hung lank and straight to her shoulders, unmussed by the wind, and the dress straight to her knees. That’s the photo on the album cover.

The second one, she looks exactly the same. Only now she’s about fifteen feet closer to the camera, maybe ten feet behind Julian. Who does not appear to have moved a fraction of an inch. None of us have. We’re all in the exact same positions as the previous photo, all still gazing at the sky.

The only way you’d even realize any time has passed is if you look really carefully. You can see Julian’s hair has been blown across his cheek, and Lesley’s eyes are closed — she blinked. The light is nearly unchanged: a few more tiny shadows thrown across the grass as that flock of birds flew in front of the sun. I’m still shading my eyes, staring along with the rest. It’s very clear that Billy took that photo immediately after the first one, a millisecond later.

So how did the girl move so quickly across the lawn? It’s like she’s a chess piece someone slid across the grass in a straight line. You can see her better in this one. Her white dress was soiled at the hem, her hands are clenched into fists. You can see her face. Her eyes are open and you can see there’s hardly any iris in them at all. They’re black and staring right at you without any expression. Her mouth is open. Not all the way open, but her lip curled back so you can see a bit of her front teeth. Like a dog starting to snarl.

In the final picture, she’s right behind Julian, still moving in that unbroken line across the grass. A bit to the side so you can see her clearly, perhaps a foot away from him. He doesn’t see her. None of us see her. We’re all still gazing up at the sun.

But now she’s so close, you can see that her eyes are utterly black. No iris, no pupil, no sclera. There might be something in there, but I don’t want to think what it might be. Just these round black holes. Her skin is so white the capillaries look like a web covering her face. Her hands are turned outwards and her fingers have started to unclench, white fingers with sharp little nails. Her mouth gapes open as though she’s screaming. And you can see that inside it she has more than one row of teeth.

Lesley

It was too ghastly for words. I was sick to my stomach, first time I saw them. They all stayed in there arguing, as though that might explain anything. I could hear them from across the hall and that was bad enough. Just knowing those photos existed was bad enough. The only reason I went back inside was because Will finally came to check if I was all right. He said we all needed to decide together: What were we going to do with the pictures?