The Midnight Eye Files: Volume 2 (Midnight Eye Collections) Page 2
“Is there anything to eat?” I asked.
“Not on music nights,” she said, “Just nuts and crisps.”
“Bring me a pile of each,” I said.
She smiled, just with her mouth, and teetered off again.
A few of the customers looked my way, but nobody spoke to me. I guess sitting at the big man’s table brought some compensations with it. I did my best to look enigmatic and glared at anybody that looked sideways at me.
The snacks arrived as the lights went down and the band walked on stage. There were no announcements; some polite applause rippled around the room, and got louder as a plump female struggled up the small steps onto the raised platform.
She reached no more than five feet tall, and looked to weigh at least fifteen stone. Her ample bosom tried to escape from the gold lame ball-gown she’d been poured into; if it jiggled any further she was going to blind the drummer. Her face showed up too white under the lights, and her mascara started to run as she stepped up to the front of the stage. The band struck up a slow blues.
I wasn’t expecting much, but as soon as she launched into ‘Cry Me a River’ she transfixed me, rooting me to the chair. She sang like an angel, her voice echoing around the room without the need of a mike. Nobody spoke, nobody ordered a drink. It was like a service at a funeral home as she poured her heart into the song and out again over us. When the band brought it down to a nearly whispered ending we sat in the sudden silence, before erupting into loud applause.
For the next hour she held us captivated with a series of standards, culminating in a solo unaccompanied ‘Summertime’ that made grown men cry.
The lights went up. I had barely touched my beer and the small pile of snacks lay on the table unopened. Brian Johnson sat in the seat beside me. I had no idea how long he’d been there.
“She’s something special, isn’t she?” he said, still applauding.
I nodded.
“Where did you find her?”
“She found me,” he said. “She came in for an audition one night three years ago, and she’s been on every Wednesday ever since.”
He motioned for a waitress. There was one at his side in less than five seconds.
“Two Highland Parks,” he said, “And make them large ones.”
“Not for me,” I said. “I had a skin-full last night.”
His smile faded. The shark had woken up, and he wasn’t taking no for an answer.
“This is my night off,” he said, “And I’m buying. So shut up and enjoy yourself.”
“An offer I can’t refuse, right?”
“Show me some respect,” he mumbled in a very bad Brando impression, before lapsing into his normal voice. “And no business will be spoken until the punters go home.”
“And when’s that?”
“When the band stops playing,” he said.
“And when’s that… usually?” I asked.
“When the punters have gone home,” he said and his huge laugh bellowed out across the room.
And so the long night went on.
The stage got cleared quickly and a six piece trad band came on and played Acker Bilk and Kenny Ball covers. Not my thing, but the punters lapped it up. Some of them even got up to dance on the small square floor in front of the stage. By the time they’d finished I’d been served my second large malt and I started to feel mellow.
I tried to get Johnson to talk about why I was here but he refused point-blank. And the smile left when he spoke.
“Listen Adams. I’ve told you once. This is my club, and I have rules. And top of the list is no shop talk until the punters go home. Savvy?”
I savvied. Johnson didn’t tell anybody twice. I shut up and tried to relax.
We talked about jazz; Goodman and Krupa, Ella Fitzgerald and Dinah Washington, Coltrane and Mingus. He drank the whisky at twice the speed I did, but it didn’t seem to be affecting him at all.
Sometime later I checked my watch and was surprised to find it was nearly midnight.
He saw me looking.
“Just one more act,” he said. “But I think you’ll like this one.”
The lights went out completely, just for a second, before a single spot lit up the center of the stage and we lurched sideways in the twilight zone.
“This one’s called Rhythm and Booze,” the drummer said, and started assaulting his kit.
At first there was no discernible rhythm or pattern, but soon a martial marching beat came through. My stomach started to rock in time to the bass drum… then my head joined in.
Things got woozy. My whole body shook, vibrating in time with the rhythm. My head swam, and it seemed as if the walls of the bar melted and ran. The stage receded into the distance until it was little more than a pinpoint of light in a blanket of darkness. I was alone, in a vast black emptiness where nothing existed save the dark and the pounding beat.
I tasted salt water in my mouth. I was buffeted, as if by a strong, surging tide, but as the beat grew stronger I hardly cared. I gave myself to it, lost in the dance, lost in the dark.
I forgot myself in blackness where only rhythm mattered.
I was gone for a while.
I came out of it slowly, aware that I wasn’t sitting at the table. I was on the dance floor… along with everyone else in the bar, including the waiting staff and the band. We were tightly packed in a group, all facing the stage, all sweating and trembling. I felt like I’d just run a fast mile. My feet and knees hurt and blood pounded in my ears.
“Some trick, eh Adams?” Johnson said and punched me on the shoulder. Sweat ran in shining runnels from his head but he wore a huge grin.
He led me back to the table. A large swig of the whisky had me approaching some kind of normality, but a glance at my watch lurched me away again.
“Four thirty? That’s not possible.”
But my legs knew better.
“What happened?” I asked.
He shrugged.
“The same thing that happens every time the drummer does that track. Everybody goes away for a while.”
“A drug in the booze?”
He shook his head.
“Nope. It’s an all free high.”
“And this is why you brought me here? You want to stop it?”
“Hell no,” Johnson said, smiling. “I want you to find out what it is and how it works. I want to market the shit out of it… bring it to the world.”
Three
I cornered the drummer as he was packing up the kit.
“So what’s the story?” I asked. “Where did you get the riff?”
The man looked as tired as I felt; white, almost ashen. His eyes were sunk deep in a face waxy with sweat. I realized that, all the time we had been gone, he had been on the drums, keeping the beat.
“I just want to find a bed and sleep for a week,” he said wearily and tried to brush me off.
I pointed to Johnson.
“Your boss there wouldn’t be too happy,” I said.
“He’s not my boss,” the drummer replied, but I knew I had him from the sudden stiffening of his back and the way he would no longer look me in the eye.
He reached into a drum case and came up with a sheaf of papers.
“It came from here,” he said. “It was something my granddad left me, something from the twenties. I was looking for a new beat; and I found one. God help me, I found one.”
I took the papers from him. The top one had an address.
Eillan Eighe, Arisaig, Argyll.
“Your granddad’s place?”
“No. It belonged to a friend of his. But that’s where you’ll find your answer. But do me a favor,” the drummer said. “Keep it to yourself. I’ve had more than enough of that beat.”
“You could always just stop playing it,” I said.
He laughed bitterly.
“I wish it was that easy. It has got its hooks in me now. “
Then he said something under his breath, so soft that that I didn’t quite catch it. I didn’t understand what it meant. Not then,
Soon I’ll be meeting the worm.
~o0O0o~
I had nothing better to do, and Johnson had offered me an almost obscene sum of money if I was successful. I went back to the flat, showered, shaved and changed. A coffee, two cigarettes and a couple of hours later I was sitting on a train heading for Mallaig.
This case already had me by the balls. I couldn’t shake the memory of the beat, and the dark place where only rhythm mattered. It called to me, in much the same way that whisky does, but with a stronger sense of urgency. My fingers drummed the beat on the table in front of me until a stern-faced old lady two seats away threw me a look that suggested murder if I didn’t stop.
I took the papers from my pocket and started to read, from the top. Underneath the address there was a long story, written in a neat stylish hand. I settled back and was soon lost, more than eighty years back.
Four
By the time I arrived at Eillan Eighe I was wet, miserable, and dearly missing my warm apartments back in the college. But Roger had called for me, and although we had not met for several years the bonds between us were still taut, and I could do naught but answer when his telegram arrived.
I regretted it at that point of course, standing in the Western Highlands on a wet mud track in the gathering gloom, with rain beating on my head and cold water seeping into my ten guinea brogues.
But just as I was about to turn and head back for the dry waiting room in the railway station I turned a corner, and the view opened up ahead of me. And there, little more than a mile distant, sat the squat cubic keep that was Roger's ancestral home, Eillan Eighe.
Roger himself welcomed me at the door.
“C
ome in man,” he said. He helped me out of my sodden overcoat, and showed me into a hall dominated by a huge fireplace and a roaring log fire.
He sat me down in an armchair and placed a tumbler full of whisky in my hand.
I was so relieved to finally get some heat into my bones that it was several minutes before I realized that my friend was not the man I remembered him to be.
We'd first met before the war, at Oxford. We made a strange pair, him tall and ruddy and full of rude health, and me, short, pale and permanently marked by a childhood pox that had almost claimed me. But we found common interest in the wonders of modern science, and had sat up late into the night on many occasions wondering at the implications of the work of Rutherford, Bohr and Einstein.
Then the war came, and we came to see the dark side of man's invention. Roger was never the same after returning from the Somme. He would not talk of it, but one look into his eyes told me everything I needed to know of the horrors that plagued his dreams.
The rigours of battle not withstanding, he had seemed on his way back to some kind of health when I'd last seen him in our club in Piccadilly in '21.
But no longer.
When I looked over to where he sat by the piano, he seemed less the country gentleman, and more like some gothic aesthete, a romantic poet suffering for his art. He was so pale, so wan that his veins showed blue at hands and forehead, and his hair, once black and vibrant, hung in lank grey strands at the nape of his neck. His eyes looked like two black coals sunk in snow, and his hands trembled as they reached for a whisky glass.
“Dear God man,” I said. “Whatever is the matter with you?”
He managed to raise a small smile, and for a second, my old friend was there.
“Bad day at the office, old boy. I'm glad you've come. I need you.”
I rose and went to him. I took his hand and checked his pulse. It was thin, thready, running like a train.
“You don't need me. You need a doctor.”
“Not now,” he said. “Not when I'm so close.”
“The only thing you're close to is death's door.”
He smiled once more, and swallowed a large dose of whisky, which immediately brought some colour to his cheeks.
“Not when the water of life is so readily available.”
He moved quickly to the piano, surprising me with his speed.
“I will show you why I asked for you to come.”
He started to play. I immediately noticed that his style was clumsy and forced, but the piano was in good tune, and the height of the hall gave the acoustics a resonance and depth that hid a multitude of playing sins. What Roger lacked in style, he more than made up for in vigour, and the room rang as he pounded out a succession of minor chords.
Sweat poured from his brow, and his breath became short and shallow, but still he pounded.
I moved to put a stop to the insanity... just as an answering pounding arose from below.
I felt it first through the soles of my feet, but soon my whole frame shook, vibrating in time with the rhythm. My head swam, and it seemed as if the very walls of the keep melted and ran. The fireplace receded into a great distance until it was little more than a pinpoint of light in a blanket of darkness, and I was alone, in a vast cathedral of emptiness where nothing existed save the dark and the pounding beat from below.
Shapes moved in the dark, wispy shadows with no substance, shadows that capered and whirled as the dance grew ever more frenetic.
I tasted salt water in my mouth, and was buffeted, as if by a strong, surging tide, but as the beat grew ever stronger I cared little. I gave myself to it, lost in the dance, lost in the dark.
I know not how long I wandered, there in the space between. I forgot myself, forgot my friend, in a blackness where only rhythm mattered.
And I do believe I would be there yet if Roger had not come to the end of his endurance.
I snapped out of my reverie at the same moment as Roger, exhausted, slumped over the piano. The rhythm from below died and faded, and the room once more filled back in around me, leaving me weak and disoriented. I only came full back to my senses when Roger slid off the piano stool and fell, insensate, on the stone floor.
I took time to take a long slug from his whisky glass to fortify myself before I bent to lift him. He was out cold, and it took all of my strength to get him into the armchair by the fire. By the time I got him seated upright with a rug around him, he had started to snore gently.
Exhausted, I helped myself to more of the whisky and sat myself in the chair on the other side of the grate. For a time I kept close watch on my friend, but sleep was waiting for me, and I gave myself to it with no small relief.
There were no dreams.
~o0O0o~
I know not how long I wandered, there in the space between. I forgot myself, forgot my friend, in a blackness where only rhythm mattered.
That sounded too familiar to be a coincidence. It seemed I was on the right track. The train rolled through some countryside that might under some circumstances be thought scenic. As for me, I was in agreement with an old acquaintance, wee Jimmy Morton.
“Fucking countryside,” he said. “If it’s green it smells like shite, if it’s brown it looks like shite and if it’s green and brown it is shite.”
I sat looking at shite for a while, trying to fight the overwhelming urge for nicotine. The only way was to dive, head first, into an era where such restrictions didn’t reply. I went back to the story.
~o0O0o~
Roger woke me early.
There was a sheepish grin on his face as he placed a plate of bacon and eggs on my lap.
“No standing on ceremony old chap,” he said. “Just tuck in.”
He still looked pale, but not in any imminent danger of keeling over.
“What about last night… What...?”
He didn't let me finish.
“Breakfast first, to set you up for the day ahead. I'll explain soon. I promise.”
He stoked the fire while I ate. The bacon was burnt and the eggs fried until I could have bounced them on the floor, but I do believe it was the most welcome breakfast of my life.
“Don't you have servants for that?” I mumbled through some soggy toast as he poked at the embers.
Once more he grinned as he stood away from the grate.
“They all left. The piano playing got too much for them,” he said, and laughed loudly, so much so that I could almost believe that last night's escape had been no more than the fevered dream of a tired man.
“Now finish that off,” he said. “I have something else to show you… something that only you can help me with.”
I wolfed down the last of the toast and followed him out of the room.
He was more animated this morning, more like the boy I knew at Oxford.
“This place is ancient,” he said as he led me through to a scullery that was piled high with unwashed dishes and pots. “The first of my line built it nigh on seven hundred years ago…. And there have always been stories told that he built it atop a far older settlement.”
He opened a door, revealing a set of steps leading down into what I took to be a cellar.
“I got bored in the summer and decided to do some impromptu archaeology.”
He lit a firebrand and led me down a winding staircase that opened out some twenty feet below into a large chamber.
It was immediately obvious that it was man-made. The walls were built of large blocks of sandstone. I had visited several Neolithic tombs, in Carnac, in Orkney and on Salisbury Plain. This gave the same sense of age, of a time long past. What I hadn't expected, what was completely different, was the overwhelming feeling that this place was in use. The walls ran damp and there was a salt tang in the air but there was no sign of moss or lichen on the walls - only the damp glistening stone.
Roger moved over to one wall and held the firebrand closer.
“Here,” he said. “Here's why I called for you.”
The wall was covered in small, tightly packed carvings. At first I thought it might be a language, but it was none that I recognized from my studies, indeed, it bore no resemblance to anything I had ever seen before.