The House of Lost Souls - F. G. Cottam [131]
Their crossing was made in bleak driving rain that stippled the grey Solent and made sombre monoliths of the forts rising from the surface of the sea. There was no other shipping traffic visible to them as they huddled under a dripping awning on the promenade deck of the ferry, sipping coffee. When they got to the dock at Fishbourne, the weather worsened, rain drumming an insistent tattoo on the canvas roof of the Saab. Seaton switched on the lights to see and the wipers washed waves of water from the cascading windscreen. This time, at the wheel of a car on empty autumnal roads, he did skirt the perimeter of the forest. And he approached the Fischer house from the south. They flapped and jounced through soaking trees along a forestry trail until their headlamp beam picked out a single gatepost surmounted by a stone griffin still wearing the weathered remnants of a snarl. Seaton slowed. He saw the second gatepost, prone and snarled in ivy. And he shifted from second to first and picked a path between the two, forgotten gravel firm under his tyres on the twisting drive to Fischer’s abandoned mansion.
Mason spoke. ‘What will we find?’
‘The seminar group were armed with keys to padlocks securing the one gate in the barrier they found surrounding the place. They discovered a ruin, fortified by chain-link fencing and barbed wire. That’s what their lecturer remembered, before the confusion and the chaos overcame them. I expect our welcome somehow to be warmer than theirs was.’
‘That’s my feeling, too. But we’re armed with a whole lot more than padlock keys.’
They found no fence to exclude them. The house lights were burning. They were not bright, but they were undeniable. Seaton willed himself to raise his eyes to the tower, before their approach lifted his view of it above the windscreen of the Saab. There, light glowered, blinking reddish through the thick uneven panes. Beside him, he could see Mason load and reload twin magazines for a short snub-barrelled weapon he’d pulled from a bag in the the boot during a roadside stop he’d insisted upon only a few minutes after they’d disembarked. The tower receded over the roof of the car with their approach. Seaton saw now that canvas shrouds were stretched over the curves of majestic cars on the sweep of drive fronting the house. In a tear in one of these he caught the glimmer of chrome and black-waxed bodywork. The soldier to his left was breathing hard and winding coloured adhesive tape around his clips of bullets. It occurred to Seaton that a decade earlier, when vanity and self-consciousness had played the role in him they will among the young, he’d hoped for a significant cameo, at least, in the spectacular movie of life. Be careful what you wish for, he said to himself now, as he drew the car to a halt and got out and approached the door to the Fischer house through the graveyard of limousines, in the heaving thrum of the rain.
Twenty-Nine
He found himself alone when he reached the door. No matter. It was too late now for retreat or prevarication. He pushed, but on this occasion he found the door firmly locked. He hammered on the knocker. After a moment, his knock was answered by a tall figure dressed in the livery of a butler.
Above the servant’s spoiled face, the plates of his skull looked as though a clumsy infant had reconstructed them. Old brain-matter stains still tarnished the bone. From behind him, in the house, Seaton heard the drift of music and faint laughter. The man held a covered salver. He bowed to the visitor.
‘Hello, Giuseppe,’ Seaton said. The butler gestured him in and then stooped forward confidentially. His breath was cold with decay, his voice the whispering saw of a Chicago ghost.
‘I should warn you that Mr Greb has been drinking, sir.’ Giuseppe cocked his ruined head towards the stairs. Seaton willed himself to look. They were carpeted with a plush pile that receded into blackness after six or seven steps. The house had changed in other ways. The vestibule had been improvised into a sort of ballroom, tables pushed in a circle against remote