Elizabeth Hand: Wylding Hall

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 We all agreed that the other two photos should remain unpublished.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?

Tom Haring

We put it to a vote. Ashton voted no. The others all said yes. And me, of course. It was only after we voted to use it as the cover art for the album that Jon asked, “ What album?”

I don’t know, it sounds mad, but I’m a bit mad. You had to be, to be successful in the music business. But all at once it came to me that we should release the tapes we’d recorded in the garden that day. No one had ever done such a thing — Dylan wouldn’t release his basement tapes for three years. To release an album of songs that were essentially demos sounded like career suicide for a band that had only released one studio album from a smallish record company like Moonthunder.

Les asked, “What about Julian?”

“What about Julian? Sod Julian!” I shouted. I was starting to get stroppy. We were all exhausted, half-drunk, hoarse from arguing, and scared out of our wits.

And I had a very strong feeling that Julian was not going to be coming back. Call it a premonition, call it common sense, call it a perfectly reasonable reaction to those three photos — call it whatever you like, but I thought he was gone for good. Gone for the foreseeable future, anyway.

I’d been talking up Windhollow Faire’s follow-up album for months. I’d paid for advertising, scheduled studio time, contacted session musicians. If the album didn’t appear in the next few months — if we waited for Julian to return before doing a proper studio take — we would miss our chance to cash in on Christmas sales. I was broke. The band were broke.

But I had heard those rough tapes — I was the only one who had. And while the sound quality was iffy in places, overall the songs held up well.

Better than that — if you discounted the sound of bees and wind in the grass and Billy laughing in the background and the in-between-songs chatter, the performances were brilliant. The songwriting by Julian and Les was superb, and the covers were well-chosen. Only nine songs all told, but enough to fill up two sides of vinyl.