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 pylons.
It flickered again, this time plunging the room into darkness for a second or two.
Blake muttered something to himself and peered at the bulb. The bloody thing was loose, no wonder it kept going on and off. He picked up his pen once more, now scarcely able to keep his eyes open. He turned to a fresh page but, before he could start writing, he had slumped forward in his seat and, within seconds, he was sound asleep. The bathroom was full of steam.
Like a swirling white fog it curled and twisted in the air, condensation covering the mirror like a shroud so that when Blake looked into it, his reflection was smudged and unclear. He could still hear taps running, water splashing noisily into what was obviously an overfilled tub. Rivulets of water were
running down the side of the bath which, for some reason, was hidden by the shower curtain which had been pulled around it. Blake shrugged, he didn’t remember doing that.
He reached over and turned off the hot tap, cursing when he felt the heat in the metal. The condensation was on the shower curtain too, pouring down to puddle on the tiles beneath his feet.
Blake pulled back the flimsy plastic.
He shrieked aloud at the sight which met him.
Sitting up in the scalding water, skin covered by hideous welts from the blistering temperature, was a man.
The man was smiling broadly, his lips little more than ragged puffed up sores still leaking clear fluid. His head had obviously been immersed in the searing water because his face was red like a boiled lobster, the skin having risen to form innumerable liquescent blisters, some of which had burst and were spilling their contents down his cheeks. His entire body was scarlet and, such was the intensity of the water’s heat, Blake noticed that three of the man’s fingernails had been scalded free. They hung by thin tendrils of skin from the ends of the raw digits.
Blake stood rooted to the spot, his eyes gaping wide. But, it was not the appearance of the man which terrified him. It was his features.
Scalded and burnt though they were, they were unmistakably those of Blake himself.