‘I can’t give you the answers.’
‘You mean you won’t.’ Blake said, challengingly. ‘What made the photo frame break? That glass looked as if it had been hit with a hammer.’
‘The windows were open,’ Mathias suggested. ‘The breeze could have blown it off.’
“Come on, Jonathan,’ said the writer, wearily. ‘What the hell do you take me for?’
‘What do you think made it break?’ Mathias snarled, his brilliant blue eyes looking luminous in the darkness. ‘This … power of mine?’ The psychic turned and headed back towards the house, leaving Blake alone beside the pond. The writer walked slowly around the pool, catching sight of a fish once in a while. He let out a tired breath. The broken frame. The prophecy. Were they more of Mathias’ tricks? A mind-fuck — as he’d heard it put by an American psychologist? He was beginning to doubt if tricks was the right word. He had seen too much of the man over the past five or six days to dismiss him as a charlatan or fraud.
Blake shook his head and gazed into the pond, as if seeking his answers there.
He caught sight of his own reflection.
Blake froze momentarily, gaping at the vision which stared back at him from the water.
It was his reflection but the features were contorted into a mask of sheer terror. The mouth open in a soundless scream, eyes bulging wide in the sockets.
He took a step back, eyes still riveted to the image, his feet crunching on the hundreds of tiny stones which surrounded the pool. One of them bounced into the water, breaking the surface as it sent out endless ripples.
The reflection disappeared and, as the water slowly regained its stillness, Blake found that his image had also returned to normal. For long moments he looked down, as-if expecting that terror-stricken visage to appear once more, but it didn’t. A particularly cold breeze ruffled his hair and he shivered
slightly, deciding that it was time he returned to the house.
Whistling through the branches of the nearby tree, the wind sounded like soft, malevolent laughter.
3.04 a.m.
Blake pushed back the covers and clambered out of bed. He had been tossing and turning for the past hour and still sleep eluded him.
Mathias’ chauffeur had dropped him back at his hotel just after 1.30. By the time they had left Toni Landers’ house only a handful of people remained and the atmosphere retained the air of solemnity which seemed to have descended after the incident with the cards.
Upon returning to the hotel, Blake had downed a couple of much-needed bottles of beer in the bar then retreated to his room but he had found the oblivion of sleep elusive. Now he stood at his window looking out on the dark mass that was Central Park. Trees bowed and shuddered silently in the wake of the wind and the writer thought how forbidding the place looked once the cloak of night had fallen over it.
He switched on the TV, flicking from channel to channel until he found an old black and white film. Audie Murphy was busy winning the war single-handed for the USA. Blake gazed at the screen for a while then changed channels once more. There was a programme about Chinese cookery so he left it on, turning the sound clown. After five minutes he tired of that as well and switched the set off altogether, seeking comfort from the radio instead. He twisted the dial until he found the rock station, adjusting the volume as Y&T thundered out the opening chords of ‘Mean Streak’.
Outside, the wind crept around the building as if seeking some means of entry, wailing mournfully every so often.
Blake padded into the bathroom and filled one of the tumblers with water which he gulped down thirstily. Then he returned to the bedroom, seating himself at the writing table where his notes were spread out. He had already filled three large pads with information, random jottings, hard facts and a lot of speculation. All that would have to be filtered and sifted through before he could begin preparing his next book. Blake disliked research at the best of times but, in this case, the dislike had intensified. The subject of Astral travel, Astral projection and its related phenomena, he had discovered, was even vaster than he had first thought. The paradox being that the more he learned the less he knew. He had the pieces but could not fit the jigsaw together.
As the author of five world-wide bestsellers he could afford to live comfortably, one of the few writers who ever succeeded in making a decent living from such a precarious profession. The money and the attention had been welcome if somewhat unexpected. Blake had never intended to earn his living from writing books about the paranormal, it had all come about rather suddenly.
He’d left home at twenty, hoping to make his mark as a journalist but working for the local paper covering events like school fetes, or interviewing people who were complaining because their sewers were bunged up, did not hold his interest for long. He began writing fiction in his spare time. Tucked away in his miniscule bed-sit above a laundrette in Bayswater he would return from the office and set to work at his own typewriter. He had left the paper for a job in a West End cinema but the financial rewards were small. He eked out his meagre earnings by supplying pornographic stories to a magazine called Exclusive who paid him fifty pounds for each 5(XX) word opus he delivered. He had a couple of articles published by Cosmopolitan then he decided to write a novel. It took him just three weeks and was subsequently rejected by eight publishers before finally gaining acceptance from a small, independent house. It went the way of most first novels, sinking into obscurity within a month. But, he had never been one to give up easily. He turned to non-fiction and, after six months of careful research and another two actually writing, he produced his first book about the paranormal.
After four rejections it finally found favour with a prominent hardback
publisher.
A Light in the Black had been published two weeks before his twenty-second birthday.
Blake had used the advance to take a holiday. A luxury he had not been able to afford for three years. He returned to find that his book had not only been bought by Nova, a large paperback house, but the American rights had also been sold1 for a substantial sum. Blake suddenly found that he could afford to leave his bed-sit and rent a flat in Holland Park.
Two years and two more books later he bought the place and now, with five world-wide successes behind him, he had, only five months earlier, bought a large house off Sloane Square.
He no longer needed to rush his work either. He now took up to eight or nine months on research and the rest of the time completing the mechanics of the book — the actual typing. Blake was at his happiest shut away in his study working. He was not a solitary man however, quite the contrary in fact. He was well liked by most people. An easy smile always at the ready, he was comfortable around people and yet at times still preferred his own company.
Someone had once told him that the key to popularity was hypocrisy. If it was possible to be all things to all men at all times — do it. Blake had cultivated an easy-going image over the years which even those closest to him found hard to penetrate. He was all things to all men. Those he hated he spoke to with the same apparent warmth which he reserved for those who were allowed to pierce his facade.
Women were drawn to his practised charm, each one made to feel that she was the only girl in his life. The numerous encounters he had enjoyed since leaving home (that number increased once he became well-known) had only ever been superficial. To Blake at any rate. He smiled as he remembered something he’d read, attributed to Saul Bellow. He couldn’t remember the words exactly but the gist of it was there.
‘Telling a woman you’re a writer is like an aphrodisiac. She can’t wait to go to bed with you.’
He chuckled now as he flipped open his pad and reached for a pen.
Outside the hotel bedroom window the wind continued to blow strongly, hammering soundlessly at the panes as if threatening to break in. On the radio The Scorpions were roaring through ‘Coming Home’ and Blake decided he’d better turn the radio down.
That done he returned to his chair and scribbled a brief account of what had happened at Toni Landers’ house that evening, including the incident with the picture frame and also of seeing his own twisted reflection in the pond.
As he wrote he found that his eyelids were growing heavy, as if someone had attached minute lead weights to them. He yawned and sat back for a moment, stretching. It was good that he felt tired, perhaps at last he’d be able to sleep. He scanned what he’d written and sat forward once more, allowing his eyes to close tightly.
The lamp flickered.
It was probably the wind disturbing the power lines, he thought but then remembered that he was in New York where cables ran underground, and not in the English countryside where they were suspended from
