December Read online

  Prologue

  I

  Cemented in Blood

  DECEMBER 8, 1980

  By the time he makes the doorman's office, his glasses have come off, and blood and tissue and stuff are emptying urgently from his mouth.

  He falls.

  He lies in the blood on the office floor, and he doesn't move. A short while later, two cops are turning him over, real careful, and seeing the blood around the holes - four holes, maybe five. And then they're carrying him, bloody face up, out to the patrol car, leaving behind these puddles and blotches on the doorman's floor.

  Normal way of things, these cops wouldn't move a man in such poor condition. The state of this one, it's clear there's going to be no premium in hanging around for an ambulance.

  'This guy is dying,' one cop says.

  When they raised him up, the doorman thought he heard a sound like the snapping of bones.

  It's just after eleven p.m.

  Somewhere out there in the night, Dave hears what he thinks is the snapping of twigs. And the twigs are talking, crackling out words.

  death oak,

  Say the twigs.

  Dave's under the swollen branches of some old tree. Not an oak tree. But twigs in the copse are crackling the words, and they come as this weird rasp on the night wind, and he hears the echo of a barn owl across the valley, and the owl - he'd swear - is screeching,

  death oak.

  Between the shadowy mesh of bare branches and broken stone arches, Dave can see the lights inside the Abbey.

  The Abbey is old and ruinous. A glowering heap of twelfth-century stone, which by day is the raw, wind-soured pink of an old farmer's skin. By night - like now - it's mainly black, a jagged and knobbly rearing thing among the wooded border hills flanking the Skirrid, the holy mountain of Gwent. Legend says the Skirrid was pulled apart by a massive seismic shudder at the very moment of Christ's crucifixion.

  The shudders inside Dave tonight are not exactly seismic. But he wouldn't deny, standing trembling under the dripping tree, that he's coming apart.

  In a corner of the ruins, incongruous as a heart inside a skeleton, is a stone tower built over the vaults where the monks stored wine imported from France. The studio's down here now, built into the vaults. A romantic, evocative place to record music. In the daytime. In summer. Maybe.

  At night, in winter, forget it.

  Tonight, nervy lights were wobbling behind pimply, leaded glass as Dave spun away from the Abbey, hurling himself, sobbing, at the trees, his canvas shoes skidding on the winter-wet lawn. Clamping his hands over his cars, vibrating them as if he could somehow shake the phrase - death oak - out of his skull.

  I can handle it, I can direct it, I can …

  Ah, but you know you really can't.

  See, the problem is, if you're in some way … sensitive, then people - the ones who don't think you're a phoney, or misguided or totally out of your tree - have this curious idea that you must be spiritually advanced. Serene. In control.

  This means not running away.

  Well, it's fine for them to talk, the ones who think it's a beautiful gift. They should be here tonight in this holy place.

  And we, Dave thinks, should have listened lo Tom Storey.

  'What the fuck is this?'

  Big Tom from Bermondsey, lead guitar, fearless on the frets, was wedged into the narrow, arched doorway at the top of the steps, roaring at everybody. Some of it was outrage. Most of it, Dave could tell, was panic.

  In the studio, the churchy light, wavering.

  About a dozen lighted candles in metal holders, brass and wooden candlesticks and saucers were spread out, apparently at random, around the whitewashed vault.

  In the recording booths, candles burned. Little white snow-drop lights glimmered from ledges and amps. Melted wax was oozing down Lee Gibson's middle cymbal.

  No other light than this. Looked quite cosy, Dave thought irrationally. A touch Christmassy.

  And then he thought, No, it could be cosy. Somewhere else. Almost anywhere else. Anywhere but the Abbey of Ystrad Ddu, where it was said that every stone in the walls had been cemented with blood.

  He'd followed Lee, Moira and Simon into the studio, and Moira had stopped at the bottom of the steps and said quietly, 'I don't like this.' And now Tom wouldn't come through the door.

  Dave looked at Moira and mouthed a word: joke?

  'Well, I'm no' laughing,' Moira said out of the side of her mouth.

  She was young and moon-pale, wearing a long dark velvet dress and a lustrous silver headband and glowing far brighter, for Dave, than the candles.

  'OK.' Simon St John strolled languidly into the centre of the studio. 'If whoever did this is listening from anywhere, we're all suitably terrified, aren't we, Dave?'

  'Er ... yeh. Right. Crapping ourselves.' Dave looked at Simon and Simon raised an eyebrow, probably signalling that Dave should remember tonight's motto, which was, Don't Worry Tom.

  Dave nodded.

  'Come on down, Tom. Come on.' Simon sounding as if he was calling a dog. 'Nothing to worry about, squire. Nothing sinister. Somebody taking the piss, that's all.'

  Simon, smooth and willowy, had credibility. While it was acknowledged that Tom was the best musician, he was still a rock musician. Whereas Simon was, er, classically trained, actually. Plus, he was public-school educated, a laid-back, well-spoken guy, a calming influence. Serene? Did a good impression, anyway.

  Tom looked nervously from side to side, like he was on the edge of a fast road, and then came down, making straight for the metal stand where his solid-bodied Telecaster guitar sat. He snatched up the Telecaster and strapped it on, like armour. He was tense as hell.

  'Joke, right?' The brash young session drummer, Lee Gibson, had followed Tom down the steps. Lee was not a full member of the band, lacking the essential qualifications - i.e. he was too close to normal.

  Dave began to count the candles, becoming aware of this rich, fatty smell. The candles had been burning a while and dripping. Christmas was wrong; the studio looked like a chapel of rest awaiting a body. Except in a chapel of rest, the candles wouldn't be ...

  'Black!' Tom let out this hoarse yelp, flattening himself instinctively against a wall. 'Fucking things are black! You call that a bleeding joke?'

  Dave finished counting. Thirteen. Oh hell.

  'Hey, come on, candles can be protective, too,' Moira said uncertainly.

  'Bullshit.' The wavy light was kinder to Moira than to Tom. His eyes were puffy, heavy moustache spread across his mouth like a squashed hedgehog. 'Bullshit!' Clamping his Telecaster to his gut, its neck angled on a couple of candles like a rifle.

  The flames of the two candles, dripping on to adjacent amps, seemed to flare mockingly.

  'Brown,' Lee Gibson said. 'They're only dark brown, see?'

  Dave peered at one. It looked black enough to him, and it smelled like a butcher's shop in August. Also - and this wasn't obvious because several were concealed by the partitions around individual booths - if you stood in the centre of the studio floor, you could see the candles had been arranged in almost a perfect circle. If this was a wind-up, somebody had gone to a lot of trouble.

  Be totally pointless organizing a witch-hunt. This was a residential recording studio, people coming and going, silent, discreet, like the medieval monks who'd built the Abbey.

  'Fuck's sake, man, they only look black.' Lee had on leather trousers and a moleskin waistcoat over his bare chest, a guy already shaping his own legend. Clearly anxious to get started; this session would be crucial to his career-projection.

  Tom regarded him with contempt. 'Thank you, son.' A warning rumble Dave had heard before; he tensed. 'That makes me feel so much better,' Tom said. And then spasmed.

  'Hey, man ...'
Lee reeling back . . fuck's sake! as Tom swung round, his guitar neck sweeping a candle from an amplifier stack. It spun in the air before dropping into a heap of lyric sheets on the floor. Cold flames spurted.

  Nobody spoke. Simon walked over and calmly stamped on the papers. Meanwhile Russell Hornby, the producer, had slid noiselessly into the studio.

  'OK, guys. Let's become calm, shall we?' Russell was slight and bald. He wore dark glasses, even at night.

  'Russell,' Tom snarled, 'this is the end of the line, my son. We are packing up. You are getting us out. We have taken enough of this shit.'

  'Excuse me,' Russell said blandly, 'but surely this "shit" is part of the object of the exercise, isn't it?'

  'Hang on.' Dave picked up one of the candles. It felt nasty, greasy, like a fatty bone. 'Are you saying you did this, Russell? These are your candles?'

  'Dave, you think I'd cut my own throat? Nor, before you ask, do I know who's responsible for the blasted lightbulbs bursting last night. Nor the apparent blood on the dinner plates. Nor even your inability, Dave, to keep a guitar tuned for five minutes.'

  He snatched the candle from Dave and blew at it. The candle stayed alight. Russell threw it to the stone floor and crushed it with his heel. 'Now, what I suggest is we get rid of them before we're in breach of fire regulations, yeah? And then let's go to work.'

  This guy was well chosen, Dave thought. If you were putting four musicians with special qualities - one of Russell's slightly sneering phrases - into a situation as potentially volatile as this, you needed a producer who was calm, efficient, businesslike and about as sensitive as a shower-attendant at Auschwitz.

  'Look,' Russell said reasonably. 'Let's not overreact. It's been a difficult week ...'

  '"Difficult",' Dave said. 'That's a good word, Russell.'

  '... But I take it none of us wants to have to start all over again, yeah? So I suggest we bolt the doors against any marauding ghouls, restless spirits and whatever the word is for those things alleged to move the furniture around ... and give me something I can mix.'

  'I'll give you something you can fucking mix ...' Tom advanced on Russell, his face pulsing electrically in the unsteady candlelight.

  'Stop it!' Moira had marched between them and stamped her foot. 'Tom, you're taking this far too seriously. And Russell, you're not taking us seriously enough. Nobody's asking you to believe in the paranormal, just don't be so damn superior and contemptuous of people who do, OK?'

  Oh God, Dave thought, I love her.

  Everybody had gone quiet. 'Yeah, well, that's all I've got to say,' Moira said. She came and stood by Dave. He felt her warm breath on his ear, essence of heathery moors sloping down to long white beaches and a grey, grey sea, and he thought he was going to pass out with the longing.

  'Come on then.' Snapping out of it, slapping his thighs with both hands. 'Let's get rid of the buggers.' Dave padded around the studio, blowing out the remaining candles, collecting them up. Afterwards his hands felt like he was wearing slimy rubber gloves. Yuk, horrible! He piled the candles into a corner, feeling slightly sick.

  Someone put on the electric lights, and Russell Hornby took Tom into another corner and talked placatingly at him until, at last, the big guy shambled to his feet, his brass-studded guitar strap still over his shoulder like the bridle on a shire horse.

  'Right, then. Four hours.' Tom jabbed a big, hard finger at Russell. 'And then I'm out of here, no arguments.' Tom was the only one of them staying in a hotel, to be with his wife.

  He stared balefully at the rest of them before stumping off to the payphone in the passage. They heard him bawling down the phone, telling the long-suffering Deborah when to pick him up. 'Yeah, main gate, say 'bout half four, quarter to five ... Yeah, yeah ... Too right.'

  'Guy's got no consideration whatsoever,' Moira said. 'Eight months gone, Jesus, she needs all the sleep she can get. I mean, how's he know what the roads are gonna be like by then?'

  Dave was wishing he was driving back to a hotel ten miles away. There to lie with Moira, warm and naked in his arms and smelling of heather and salt-spray and ...

  He stifled a moan. It was only these little Moira fantasies that kept him sane. He watched her pick up her guitar, one of the new Ovations with a curving fibreglass body. She began to sing softly.

  ... the doors are all barred, the candles are smothered ...

  Her tune, his lyric. He loved watching her soft lips shape his words, eyes downcast over the guitar, the black hair swaying like velvet curtains drawn across an open window.

  ... and nobody wants to hear Aelwyn ...

  Moira's lips had touched his own just once, in greeting - Hi, Dave, mmmph - but a man could hope.

  When Tom slouched back into the studio and grumpily shouldered his guitar, they all wandered into their booths and pushed on with it, prisoners of the small print on their contract.

  ... this album shall be recorded exclusively and entirely at the Abbey Studios, North Gwent, between midnight and dawn.

  The great experiment initiated and financed by Max Goff, founder and managing director of Epidemic Independent Records UK Ltd and student of the Unexplained, the man who maintained that: Music is the only art form that's also a spiritual force.

  Outside, the wind might have been moaning a little, although you wouldn't know it in the sealed capsule of the studio, but it was really quite a mild night. For December.

  But it was cold out on the hills, and there was snow, and he had no cloak; he could feel neither his fingers nor his toes in his worn-out boots, and the sweat froze on his face as he ran towards the distant light, a candle in a window slit.

  At least the killing wind was with him. The wind blew at his back and speeded his footsteps, though he stumbled many times and knew his hands and face had been opened and the blood frozen in the wounds.

  His ears always straining for the sound of other footsteps on the icy track, the clamour of men and horses ... knowing the wind which speeded his flight would also speed their pursuit, these murdering, damned ewe-fuckers ...

  Final track, side-one, live take: 'The Ballad of Aelwyn Breadwinner.' In which, absorbing the subtle emanations, we retell the tragic tale of the famous medieval Celtic martyr in the very place where he was so brutally cut down by Norman soldiers in the year 1175.

  Let's get this over.

  In his personal booth, hugging his Martin guitar, eyes closed, Dave was Aelwyn. But Aelwyn was alone, while Dave could hear Simon on safe, plodding bass, Tom's low, undulating guitar. And there was Moira's voice in his cans, soft and low and dark as Guinness. He could feel the closeness of her, closer than sex; she was in his head, she was with him on the frozen hills, as he ran from the soldiers and mercenaries, wondering if he would even feel it as they cut him down with their blades of ice. The cold from the song, the all-shrouding inevitability of imminent death, the end of everything, was around him in the booth, his bare arms tingling as he played.

  When the cans went funny, Moira was playing soft, gliding, rhythm guitar and singing counterpoint - an ethereal voice, distant on the winter wind. The voice from the holy mountain guiding Aelwyn to safety.

  Aelwyn had been very tired, tramping through the snow towards the Abbey. Had known they were coming for him, but simply hadn't the strength to run any more. But he also knew that when he reached the Abbey he'd be OK. Even these bastards were not going to smash their way into the house of God, especially not this house of God, founded upon the site of a famous Holy Vision.

  This was where the cans went funny. Where other voices came in, as though, as sometimes happened, a radio signal had got into the system.

  She couldn't hear what the voices were saying. She carried on playing and singing but looked out of the glass panel in the partition around the booth. Nobody came out on to the studio floor waving his hands. In the booth opposite, Dave played on. Maybe - she didn't understand too much technical stuff - Russell and Barney, the engineer, were not picking up the extraneous voices on their
tape.

  So Moira played on, too.

  The band had rehearsed the song several times today. She figured she was pretty much immune to the ending by now, but she'd still been feeling tension on Dave's behalf. Dave was not what you'd call a great singer but he sure could get himself into a role. For now, for the duration of this song, Dave was Aelwyn and Aelwyn was Dave, and the last sound she'd heard before the voices intruded was his breath coming harder, and she'd felt the fatigue and the creeping sense of cold despair as Aelwyn realized he wasn't going to make it.

  But surely ... he could have made it.

  This strange thought came to Moira just as the lights dimmed outside the booth.

  She leaned forward on her stool, still playing, and peered out through the glass. All was indistinct: rumbling shadows, the snaking flex and rubber leads were like roots and vines, the amplifier stacks like black rocks. As she watched there were three small explosions in the sky, lightbulbs blowing silently in the ceiling, like the dying of distant worlds.

  Under her fingers, the guitar strings felt cold and sharp like the edges of blades. As the bulbs went out, several small, blue-white spearpoint flames flared in the middle distance.

  This would be the corner where Dave had laid the candles, some still upright in trays and holders. All of them snuffed.

  All of them snuffed.

  Oh no ...

  II

  Electric Grief

  He saw ...

  ... a fortress: massive, dark, forbidding, ungiving - a Bastille of a place. It rose in billows, a towering mushroom of smoke, lighted windows appearing, and peaks and gables forming out of the smog. Overpowering. Dizzying. And warped, like through a fisheye lens. Like it was swaying before it toppled on to him. Or somebody.

  He heard a roaring, shot through with vivid screams, like thunderclouds speared by lightning forks.

  And more.

  Through the glass side of his booth, he'd seen the dead candles flickering, triumphant.