Daylight was fading imperceptible from the library, going unnoticed by Amanda. She felt pleasantly distanced from the world, forgetting for a few moments the trauma of last night, absorbed as she was in a novel, while at the same time massive headphones clamped to her head drowned her in a private sea of sound; a low throb of bass guitar, saturated by a deluge of hypnotic feedback and a screeching electric violin.
As she lounged in the soft embrace of the library armchair, protectively shut in by the towering stacks of vinyl, the music coming from the headphones lulled her, made her sleepy. Putting the paperback to one side, she closed her eyes, letting the moody drone of the band, ‘Cargo Cult,’ waft her away.
The group were doing something different and exciting with the metal genre, she thought; taking from stoner, with a touch of dark psychedelia. As an added bonus she rather liked the bass guitarist, an intelligent, softly spoken boy of sixteen with long blonde hair. She had met him a couple of times at gigs and at her dad’s parties. They had spoken, but rather awkwardly as he was in awe of her famous father.
Flinching when she felt a tap on her shoulder, she opened her eyes. Her dad was standing above her, mouthing some words. She listlessly turned down the volume using the remote.
“You’re dinner is on the table,” her father said, repeating himself. “Lucius has turned up. He will be joining us.
His face and tone of voice told the whole story. She knew her father had come to dislike Lucius Peake, one time manager of Blood Moon, now owner of DarkCore records, Cargo Cult’s record label. The reason for his growing animosity was the fascination Amanda had shown for this renegade; a character of high intellect and smooth talking articulation, but holding to a ‘Satanic’ amorality that her father now found disturbing. He did not want him having any kind of influence over her, morally, intellectually or physically, especially as he had a reputation for ‘liking’ teenage girls. He was a striking figure no doubt but Amanda found his English upper-class sliminess kind of repulsive, although she had to admit that deep down inside of her there was an attraction, and her dad could detect it.
Following her father through the sitting room, into the darkened hall and then the dinning area, she felt an odd excitement. She would love to see Lucius Peake clash with Moonbeam’s irritating piety; Amanda was convinced he would easily tear Moonbeam to shreds intellectually. The grand round table in the centre had already been set. Steaming dishes of hot food were placed randomly letting off their rich aromas, lit vaguely by wax dripping scarlet candles held in a four pronged brass candle stick. They offered the only illumination, except for the twilight trickling through an enormous bay window. The room with walls painted light red and a huge grandfather clock that chimed the hour, was expansive but somehow enclosed, due perhaps to the dim iridescence, but also to the ceiling with the cross-beams being lower then usual.
Amanda was unable to find Lucius at first, but glancing at the window, she saw his black stocky silhouette staring out at the topiary and fountains of the garden. He turned and came towards her, a ghost of a cynical smile flickering across his mouth. He was so tall that he had to lower his head slightly so as to stop his shaven scalp from hitting the ancient oaken beams. A face dominated by penetrating dark brown eyes that were usually obscured by sunglasses, was rounded but darkly handsome. His goatee beard, a single loped gold ear-ring on his left lobe, and a black tee-shirt with a white goat's head printed on to a pentagram, the word Inferno beneath, combined with his leather jacket and combat trousers, gave the impression of cool arrogance and disdain. While Jonathan could look Byronically sinister on stage and on record covers, his features on most occasions had an inner glow of child like innocence, in contrast with Lucius, who emitted a brute steely hardness.
“I am honoured to meet you once again, my lady of the Manor, Lucius Peake at your service,” he said sardonically, extending his hand towards Amanda.
“Welcome to Ashbury Manor, your lordship,” she said attempting a refined English accent but failing miserable. Her outstretched hand was held in a vice like grip for a second and then released. She stared into the dark pits of his eyes and felt a grin expand her lips. She laughed quietly and turned to the table ready to eat.
As she had expected the meal did not go smoothly. Lucius and Moonbeam clashed immediately and it was not long before Lucius got the upper hand. He reduced Moonbeam’s arguments to new-age platitudes about love and peace by throwing in word-perfect quotations from the philosopher Nietzsche and the Marquis De Sade. Her father said very little but she could tell he was getting irritated, if not angry at his gleeful baiting of his girlfriend. But Amanda began to lose any enjoyment she had felt at the humiliation of her adversary. His views certainly appealed to her anti-social rebelliousness but being honest with herself she had to admit to feeling unsettled when be begun to propound extreme acts of sadism and evil (if only in theory) and praised the ‘satanic’ integrity of the Nazis.
“I think this has gone on long enough,” Jonathan eventually said looking across at Moonbeam who was now glaring at him, as if to say, ‘so this is the sort of man you like to call a friend.’
With a stern look he turned to Lucius. “You told me that you had something to show me. What is it?”
Picking up his glass of red wine, and sipping disdainfully, Lucius ignored the question for a few moments. Eventually he put his hand into the wide pocket of his combat trousers and drew out a thin, dog-eared and crumpled pamphlet which he flashed before Jonathan’s eyes. Amanda’s father stood mute before it, his arms lying limply at his sides.
“This makes interesting reading,” he said, turning the booklet around and showing its plain yellow frontage to Amanda and then Moonbeam. It was a drab self-published booklet entitled ‘The Dark History of Arnhiem Manor’ by Sir William Barrett,’ written in bold print on the cover.
“How did you get hold of it, it looks like it’s been around a bit,” Amanda said.
“I assume you know something about the history of this old pile and its former owner, but did you know that this is the most detailed description of the Manor’s early years available.” Lucius said, bypassing Amanda’s direct question.
“But how did you get hold of it,” she said.
“Oh, have you heard of ‘The Order of the Arboreal Orb’?”
“Can’t say I have,” her father said, with a note of annoyance. Moonbeam remained coldly silent. If she had heard of such a bizarre organisation, which was unlikely, she wasn’t letting on. But with Amanda, although likewise saying nothing, the name spurred a vague recollection in her mind.
“Well not many people have, but in the mid-eighties they gained a minor notoriety with their supposed connection with the serial killer Charles Marlowe. They always denied a relationship but never condemned Marlowe’s actions.”
Now that she came to think about it, she had heard of them. Marlowe held a morbid allure for her and she had taken an interest in the case, reading a true crime book and watching a documentary on TV. He was a wealthy occultist living in the Cumbrian town of Ulverston accused of the murder of seven young women and although no bodies were discovered, he confessed to the killings and was sentenced to life imprisonment.
But it was the elaborate justification for the murders that had stimulated Amanda’s imagination. He claimed he had made contact with other worlds, alternate dimensions, using a complex labyrinth, built by his obsessed grandfather, beneath a Victorian fake medieval castle, that Marlowe had inherited. To create a mystical epiphany, ‘a loop in space-time’ Marlowe had called it, he engaged in a distressing form of magic with the seven young women and the denizens of these other realms, named the ‘Exiles of Layered Space.’ Much of this insane mysticism came from the beliefs of a shadowy occultist brotherhood called the ‘Order of the Arboreal Orb,’ or so Marlowe said at his trial, but a spokesman from the organisation denied any involvement.
“You still have not answered my daughter’s question, Lucius, how did you get this pamphlet,” Jonathan said.
“I am coming to that. It was the ‘Order of the Arboreal Orb,’ or an acquaintance of mine with ties to them, who gave me the booklet. They have an interest in Ashbury Manor-as its 16th century founder George Browne, is the inspiration behind the Order.”
“But to cut a long story short they want you to read the pamphlet and then contact them. They are offering you membership of the inner circle, Jonathan, which according to my acquaintance is a great honour. Only the most well-connected and powerful are allowed into its fold. Going by the contents of your past lyrics and interviews with the press, they think you will be sympathetic to their ideas.”
“What sort of ideas?”
“Actually, Jonathan, I don’t think they know about your recent change of heart. You have gone all Buddhist on us lately and to be honest it shows, especially in that last record of yours.”
Swearing under his breath, Jonathan clasped his fork tightly in his hand, staring out his friend, who grinned provocatively across the table.
“Look, will you please answer my question directly. What are the ideas of these lunatics you seem to be acquainted with?”
“Temper, temper,” Lucius said, taking another sip of his wine, his humourless grin expanding.
“You might label them as ecologists, environmentalists even, but none of that trite ‘tra-la-la,’ hugging tree stuff for them. They see nature for what it is, a savage amoral arena, where the strong eat the weak and the parasite consumes its host whole. The natural world is not ‘good,’ ‘just’ and ‘equitable,’ it is ‘Evil’ in the true satanic meaning of the word, unrelenting in its need to corrupt and deprave, to use and exploit the innocent and the feeble. For the Order of the Arboreal Orb, the tropical rainforest is the prime metaphor of natural Evil. Its plant life sucks the living juices out of weaker vegetation, its creatures eat others without restraint, and in the process the forest expands into a pulsating, vibrant beauty.”
“What is an Arboreal Orb exactly,” Amanda said, interrupting the flow of Lucius’s speech.
“Good question, but I am afraid I don’t know.” His cold but probing eyes fixed hers briefly.
“The Order is very secretive and as I am not a member I have no access to their teachings. There is no written material about them, except for some forbidden books that have been lost or destroyed, the work of George Browne is an example.”
“I do know that like Pagans they are nature worshipers, but their act of worship is the enactment of unfettered evil, the unleashing of a multitude of unrestrained urges. The rainforest’s fantastical loveliness is the result of an infinite collection of evil acts, the strong dominating and taking their pleasure from the weak. Evil, that is nature itself, the Universe maybe, is celebrated like great art, a form of aesthetics.”
“What a load of garbage,” said Moonbeam, raising her voice angrily. “I am sure Jonathan doesn’t want anything to do with your ‘Order of the Arboreal Orb.’ They are either total fakes, a bunch of losers, or they are for real. If they are for real, just give me some names and I am going to call the police immediately!”
She thumped the table but spilled her glass of wine over her white patterned blouse. Getting up, swearing profusely and brushing the drips of liquid off her chest, she scowled at Lucius.
“Your supposed to be Jonathan’s friend, but I don’t like you one bit. In fact you make me sick. You come here and spout your vile rubbish as if you own the place. Everyone is entitled to their views, including scumbags like you, but not when there is an impressionable teenager in the room.”
She sat down and drummed her fingers, waiting for a reply from Lucius.
He just smirked and was quite for a few moments. “I am only the messenger. I am sure Amanda has heard far worse” he eventually said.
He handed the yellow pamphlet over to Jonathan, who received it not without interest.
“Read it through, it has a few informative things to say about this place. If you want to contact the Order just let me know.”
“I can tell you this straight away; I will not be joining any Satanist cult, but thanks for this anyway.”
As an uneasy silence fell on the table, Amanda had a sudden and disturbing revelation. She now knew what the rough initials OOTAO on Sir William Barrett’s gravestone stood for: Order of the Arboreal Orb.
The connection between the sect and Ashbury Manor had to be stronger then Lucius was letting on. She would read Sir William’s pamphlet as it was possible it would make clearer the connection between the Order and the Manor or at least give some clues leading in that direction. There might be an obscure link between this and her experiences of last night.
Her thoughts were cut short by Lucius’ voice.
“Bye the way, I am going to find it difficult getting back to London. You don’t mind me crashing at your place.”
Stepping quickly up the broad stairway toward the top floor, gazing at the carved flora of the banisters, Amanda felt scared again. The calm she had achieved after returning from the cemetery had gone. Trepidation had been stealthily creeping up on her while she sat listening to Lucius and although she was sleeping in the spare room next to her father’s, her memory of the horrors of the previous night were vivid.
Tired but wondering if she would be able to sleep, she had considered spending the whole night in the library, looking through the volumes of occult encyclopaedias her dad had collected. They might be able to explain the mystery of Ashbury Manor, a mystery she was now desperate to solve. But after midnight the library would be a more frightening place then usual, if for no other reason then it contained those eerie mirrors. Tomorrow she would spend all day researching but not tonight.
Unable to help it her gaze was drawn to the door of the bedroom she had vacated. Everything seemed normal but the gloom at the end of the corridor still seemed to promise a gateway to an eternity of darkness, as if the very structure of the house was infinite. Pulling herself away she walked down the opposite corridor and turned in to her new room directly facing her father’s.
She switched on the bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling, revealing an empty space, uncarpeted and without furniture, except for a plain mattress that had been manoeuvred into the room only this afternoon.
Before wrapping herself in the duvet and resting her head on the pillow, both lying untidily on the mattress, she stood in the middle of the starkly lit room, listening to her father and Moonbeam outside her door.
Moonbeam did not want Lucius in the house, but Jonathan argued he was a friend, someone he had known since the formation of Blood Moon and he was unable to throw him out. For all of Lucius talk about ‘evil’ he was quite harmless. He was a cynical mischief maker, an armchair nihilist rather then a dangerous psychopath. When it came down to it his only sins were those connected to the rock ‘n’ roll world; sex and drugs and a rather pathetic attempt at cultivating a debauched image. Amanda did not hear Moonbeam’s reply because at that point they shut the door to their bedroom.
Sighing, she undressed, having to turn the light out first as there were no curtains covering the single window, and lay beneath the duvet. The oblivion of deep sleep soon consumed her. Amanda’s fears were unable to keep her awake, but she slowly arose from slumber by a light knocking on the door.
Her heart beating she looked at the luminous dial of her wrist watch resting near her scattered clothing. She had been asleep for three hours. Putting on her dressing gown, flicking the light switch, she leaned her head close against the door.
“Who’s there?”
“It’s Lucius. Can I come in and have a chat, I can’t sleep,” was the whispered reply.
Amanda felt relief like a blessing at finding out that it was not some ghostly entity on the other side, but the feeling was soon replaced by a more mundane anxiety.
“No, go away. It’s very late.”
“If you don’t want me in your room, come downstairs. I do want to speak to you, honest, it’s about the discussion we were having around the table. Interested?”
Indeed she was, very interested. There could be no harm in going downstairs with him. If he made any advances she knew how to deal with it; she was no wilting violet. For no other reason then it would be far too easy for her to cry out, Lucius Peake would not try anything on in her father’s house. Even so her thoughts did not make her feel any more comfortable. But her curiosity was far stronger then any qualms she might have.
“Let me get dressed and then I will meet you in the kitchen,” she said after a few minutes of silence.
Lucius was sitting at the table when she finally entered the softly illuminated kitchen, eating a tuna sandwich he had purloined. She sat down as far from him as she could without seeming to be rude, though the table was not large enough to put a huge distance between them.
“This house is the most creepiest I have ever come across,” he said between mouthfuls of his sandwich. “Wherever there are shadowy corners or hidden nooks the place seems to get bigger, it expands.”
“I know, but at least you don’t have to live in it. What do you want to talk about?”
“Do you want to join the Order of the Arboreal Orb or not. I told the guy, the acquaintance of mine, that if your dad was not interested, then maybe you would be. I explained to him that you have an interest in the occult far more so then your father. I also told him your highly intelligent and very self reliant for your age. Of course if you do want to join, don’t tell your dad.”
This came as a surprise and she had to admit to herself she felt flattered. She was being offered the chance to become a member of an extremely secretive organisation allowing her to gain hidden knowledge, knowledge that could disentangle the mysteries of Ashbury Manor. But since coming to England she felt less inclined to worship at the altar of ‘unfettered evil’. After her tiny glimpse into the realties of supernatural malevolency, it did not seem so thrilling. It frightened her like nothing had frightened her before. Furthermore she was not so naive as to believe that they were interested purely in her. They were interested in the Manor and wanted to gain access to it for some obscure reason, and if her father could not provide it, she could.
“But I am a 15 year old kid, why would they be interested in me?” she said, even though she had worked out the answer for herself.
“I am as much in the dark as you. Think about it though, it’s not I that has been given this amazing opportunity, a man of high intelligence and business acumen. They don’t invite just anybody to join, only the most worthy, the most select. You are honoured.”
“But I don’t know a thing about them, except all that stuff you told us, about nature being a metaphor for evil and all that”
“To find out you will have to join them.”
She was tempted. It was not so much Lucius’ praise or an attraction to their ideas; rather it was the promise that the conundrum of Ashbury Manor would be unravelled. The Order of the Arboreal Orb held the key to understanding the fearful events of the previous night.
She made up her mind. She would join them but only if she was unable to unlock the secret herself, through the reading of her father’s occult books.
“I will definitely think about it,” she said, staring him confidently in the eye.
Amanda had registered an unusual sound coming from the unkempt garden. With the silence that now prevailed, this sound was accentuated; a soft but insistent chorus that she had only heard in nature documentaries.
Getting up from the kitchen table, she stood by the window and stared out at the reflection obscured grounds, the tall blades of uncut grass reaching as high as the sill. The light from within was suddenly cut off by Lucius, revealing what lay outside; the garden’s secrets hidden only by the limitations of a moonlit night. The dark sky was cloudless and the white orb of the moon shone like a weak lamp, bathing the thick foliage of grass, weeds and nettles in its pale ambience; the willow like a stern sentinel guarding this ethereal patch of undergrowth, its cascade of shadowed leaves like a billowing cloak.
“I have never heard that sound before in this country,” Lucius said standing close to Amanda, staring like her out of the window. “It’s the chorus of frogs you get at night time in tropical forests.”
There was something else about the scene that was odd. Amanda could see, floating like lanterns of agitated fairies around the shattered greenhouse and rusting lawn roller, tiny lights in constant motion, which flickered in and out of existence.
“Fireflies, there not indigenous to this country either,” Lucius said. He had moved gradually closer to her in this interlude and now his arm had insinuatingly encircled her waist.
“Keep your hands of me you dirty old man,” she hissed, extracting herself from his heavy arm. “You’re older then my dad.”
Briskly turning the light back on, she strode to the door without glancing back, her mind perplexed with the strange thought of foreign wildlife existing in a tiny corner of southern England as well as the unasked for advances of Lucius Peake. But she was really too tired to think about it and it was not long before she was fast asleep on her mattress in the austere spare bedroom.
No comments:
Post a Comment