Last Days by Adam Nevill Read Free Book Online Page A

man. Famous! People loved us.
    Barefoot in summer, or sandals. Tight leather boots in winter.
    Black capes and long dresses. We were witchy, darling. And the guys with their little shaped beards and long hair. Their intense eyes. The pentagrams in red silk thread. Or the Circle of Solomon, the ankh, the Celtic knot embroidered on our uniforms. What we believed in was irrelevant, but we had charisma, darling. We were dangerous. I mean, the stories the press used to write about us. Our orgies! Worshipping the devil, they said. Black masses! Nudity!’
    ‘Was it all exaggeration?’
    ‘Ridiculous. Every bit of it. We remained celibate as adepts for the entire first year. And later on, only after a promotion, could you go with a guy. But only the ones that she chose for you. Never the ones you wanted. Unless you were a favourite, of course.’
    Susan narrowed her eyes, and gave the camera a knowing look that Kyle picked up on the laptop they were using as a monitor. ‘But men were intrigued by us Gathering girls.
    Katherine only allowed make-up and perfume when we were out collecting donations and selling the Gospel . Encouraged us to flirt, she did. Made us better collectors. She taught us how to look into their eyes and to smile sweetly, like innocent little nuns and country girls. Guileless. “Make them 46
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    dream of another life,” she used to say. “Our life. And you.”
    But we could be aloof too. She taught us how. So were we virgins or were we whores? Men never knew. Were we a cover for devil worship, and temptation? I think Katherine had a peculiar relationship with sex. With men and their desires.
    But she was happy to let us use it to get donations. Make no mistake about that.’
    ‘I’ve never been in here.’ Susan shook her head in disbelief in the rooms that had once formed Sister Katherine’s former penthouse, astounded by the discovery that so much light and space even existed on the top floor of the building. ‘No one beside The Seven were ever permitted up here. She had a front door with a big brass knocker put in at the top of the staircase to separate herself from us down below.’
    The top storey of the building had been remodelled just like the flats downstairs: wood floors, white walls, fresh paint.
    What it had looked like in the Gathering’s London heyday Kyle could only imagine. No photographs had ever been found.
    ‘Who were The Seven ?’
    ‘One of the reasons I left, dear. Her chosen. A lot of people were promoted and then demoted from The Seven in the first year. But her favourites for most of the last year in London were Serapis, Belus, Orcus, Ades and Azazel. And Sisters Gehenna and Bellona. They were bullies who kept control for her. They had this way of being aloof all of the time. They never smiled, but they would turn and stare, intensely, straight at you. Inside you. And when they did, you were terrified. Of displeasing Katherine. Who they reported to, of course. We were always so scared it would be our turn next 47
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    for an attack in the sessions for being weak, for letting the Gathering down.’
    Kyle’s instincts told him they were getting good material.
    Not just Susan’s natural storytelling and the abundance of information she was supplying with few prompts, but the lighting looked fantastic on the monitor. Dan had created a claustrophobic feel around Susan as she spoke in each room.
    It helped dispel his earlier misgivings about her and the empty location. But what he had picked up in the building’s ambient sound, while he lined up the levels in each room as the shoot progressed, was an unexpected bonus.
    Since Coven in Scotland, when he accidentally recorded some inexplicable subterranean noises in a tunnel beneath a ruined Bishop’s Palace, he’d made sure to record a lot of ambient outdoor sound and indoor tone in every location on their last film, Blood Frenzy . What he could pick up was often better than music for the soundtrack, and the