Elizabeth Hand - Wylding Hall

Let me tell you, I wasn’t happy about Windhollow busking at the pub. But what’s done is done. As for Julian taking up with some little teenybopper, who cares? I certainly didn’t.

“Well, I just thought you should know,” said Lesley. I could hear her pouring something into a glass; she was hitting it pretty hard back then. “I haven’t seen him since Saturday night. Her either.”

“It doesn’t sound like we need to call Scotland Yard, Les. He’s needed a good lay since Arianna died. Go easy on him.”

I’d had no idea Lesley and Julian had been sleeping together, otherwise I wouldn’t have been so blunt. By the long silence that followed, I realized they must have been involved. Fuck , I thought, now Les will fall to pieces .

She didn’t, though. “My room’s next to theirs and I haven’t heard a peep,” she said. “They could be lying dead in there for all we know. That girl — I think she’s unstable.”

Now I did start to get anxious. Also angry. There’d been rumors of Julian and drugs but I’d tried to ignore them. This sounded like it might be something more serious, like maybe the girl had brought something with her — heroin or cocaine. Hard drugs.

“For Christ’s sakes, Les, why are you ringing me in London? Get Jonno and Ashton to break the door down! Or ring the police. No, wait—”

All I needed was some kind of Redlands drug scandal with musicians and a naked girl. Or an OD.

Or — and I feel guilty even saying this — something worse. Because Julian was the one who’d always struck me as unstable. Not dangerous, but tightly corked, the way upper-middle-class English guys could be.

Arianna’s suicide flashed before me. We only had Julian’s word that she had jumped to her death. There’d been an inquest, but no investigation. Julian’s father was well-placed and had some connections, and the whole tragic event had been dispensed with very quickly.

It hadn’t crossed my mind before, and god forgive me for saying it now. But at that moment I thought that perhaps Julian had killed Arianna. And now he’d killed this second girl.

“No, don’t do anything with the police,” I quickly told Lesley. “I’m coming up there, I’ll be as fast as I can. Just hold tight.”

I don’t know what I imagined I might do if it turned out that Julian really had killed someone. Spirit Les out of the country, at least. She was so young and an American to boot. I could just see the headlines: Innocent Yank seduced by decadent rockers, dead teenager in the room next door …

Of course, in the long term, you can’t buy that kind of publicity.

Lesley

I got off the phone with Tom and I was shaking. Booze was part of it — I needed a couple drinks before I got up the nerve to call him, especially that early on a Monday morning.

Still, it was more than drink made me shake. I was jealous, but I was even more frightened. There was something deeply unsettling about that girl. The way she looked and appeared out of nowhere; the way Julian reacted when he first saw her.

But also the way she stuck in my mind — like a song you can’t get out of your head. An earworm. She was like a brainworm. No matter how hard I tried not to think about her, I kept seeing that little white face and hair and those spooky eyes.

That’s what creeped me out the most — her eyes were so pale you couldn’t see what color they were. Not blue and not green, though you’d see flickers of those. Not grey, either. They were like water — they took on whatever color was around them. She’d flick her tongue out to lick her lips over and over, little bit of a tongue like a cat’s. Or a snake’s. There was something wrong about her, something horrible.

I was afraid to go into Julian’s room by myself, but I couldn’t bring myself to wake up anyone else. It was only six A.M.; they’d be furious.

And what was I going to say? “I’m worried because Julian’s been in there with that girl since Saturday night.” They’d just laugh at me.

So, I went alone. For a long time I stood in front of the door, listening. It was a very still morning, not a breath of wind. Sun shining, but I didn’t hear a bird outside and that seemed odd, too. You’d always hear birds at first light; they’d make such a racket you couldn’t fall back asleep. But that morning, nothing.

I don’t know how long I stood there. Ten minutes at least. Maybe longer. I was thinking maybe I’d go back for another splash of vodka, when I heard a noise from inside Julian’s room. Something soft struck the wall, just once. Not like someone knocking, more like something had been thrown. A kind of muffled sound, like whatever it was had been wrapped in cloth or newspaper.

I held my breath and listened for voices or someone moving around inside, but everything had gone silent. I was starting to think maybe I’d imagined it, when the sound came again, much louder this time.

Whatever it was had been thrown against the door in front of me. I jumped backward, and heard it again.

Whump. Whump. Whump .

After a minute, the sound stopped. I crept back to the door, and it started up again. Now the noise came from the other end of the room, by the window. I pressed my ear against the door and listened.

“Julian?” I whispered. Then louder, “Julian?”

I took a deep breath, put my hand on the knob, cracked the door open and peered inside. I saw nothing but the usual mess — clothes and books on the floor.

“Julian?”

No answer. I went inside, the door closing behind me.

The room was empty; the bed was empty. I can’t tell you what would have been worse, to see Julian dead or to see him in bed with that girl. But there was no one at all.

I stepped over a pile of books and saw Julian’s guitar leaning against the bed, as though he’d been playing it. The clothes he’d been wearing at the pub were on the floor. So was Jonno’s blue cape. The window was cracked open two or three inches. Everything was utterly still. The bed sheets were tossed around — it was obvious no one could be hiding there, but still I pulled back the coverlet.

Immediately I wished I hadn’t. There was blood on the bottom sheet — not much, just a few large drops, dried now. I yanked the coverlet back. I looked under the pillows — don’t ask me what I was looking for. I even rested my hand on the mattress, testing to see if it was warm.

Of course it wasn’t. Finally, I turned to look at the wall.

At first I thought Julian had scribbled there. It was covered in little dark jots and blots, like musical notes. The walls in our bedrooms were white plaster, and Will liked to write on his: ideas for songs, phone numbers, girl’s names.

But these marks weren’t ink or pencil. They were tiny dots of fresh blood, speckled across the plaster like someone had flicked a paintbrush at it.

The other wall was the same — and the ceiling, and the back of the door. Blood was spattered everywhere, not great splashes of it, but droplets, no bigger than a pinprick. My heart started pounding. I wanted to run for the door, but my legs were like jelly.

And then I heard it again, this time behind me — that same soft whump . My mouth was so dry that when I tried to scream, nothing came out. I turned.

A tiny dark blur hovered just outside the window, like a leaf blowing against the glass. Another whump , and the dark blur fell to the windowsill inside the room. A tiny bird, motionless.

Now I could move, and I did, very cautiously. The window glass was like the walls, spattered with blood. The dead bird lay on the sill. It would barely have filled my palm. Its feathers were reddish-brown, white at the breast. The wingtips were darker, almost black. Each toothpick leg had long, reddish claws. Eyes like poppy seeds. Its tiny beak wasn’t quite shut, and it was leaking blood. I leaned down and softly blew on it, but it didn’t stir.