Last Days by Adam Nevill Read Free Book Online Page B

ocean sounds of the Swedish forest alone had formed the entire soundtrack to the Blood Frenzy documentary; he’d never needed anything else to suggest such a sense of belittling vast-ness and age in a Boreal forest. But inside his cans, before they recorded Susan’s renunciation segment, deep inside the cult’s West London headquarters, he’d heard what sounded like a distant crowd. Before it faded, he’d then become certain it was wind. Far off. But like it had struck the top floor of the house. And come inside.
    The boom mic must have picked up draughts and air currents in a riser, because all the windows were shut; they’d checked to reduce traffic noise. But the house had supplied its own naturally eerie sound effect, and one they’d be hard pressed to find in a sound library.
    48
    LAST DAYS
    ‘Susan, can you tell us about Katherine’s changing role?’
    Susan was nervous again. Or anxious after her disclosure about The Seven, or by the very fact that she was actually inside the penthouse. ‘Susan? Susan?’
    She looked up. He repeated the question.
    ‘Yes. Yes. Katherine. In the second year she rarely led a session. She withdrew up here.’ Susan peered about the walls, as uncomfortable as a kitten beneath a shadow. ‘That would have been in 1969. We saw less and less of her from the Christmas of the previous year. After April of 1969, I never saw her again.’
    ‘She completely withdrew?’
    ‘Totally. Stayed up here. When we were out during the day, she tutored The Seven. They ran the sessions through the night in her absence.’
    ‘So while you slept thirty to a room, she had this entire floor to herself?’
    Susan rolled her eyes. ‘And her dogs. Her beloved “vargs”, who ate like kings. That’s when it became known as the penthouse by some of us who were fed up. She’d taken to wearing a purple gown too. Imperial purple with an ermine collar.
    And The Seven wore red. You know, to set them apart. As the leaders. Our spiritual guides. But I didn’t like it. This sudden exclusivity, when we were all supposed to be in it together.’
    ‘Is that why you left, because of the hierarchy she imposed?’
    ‘That was one of my reasons. She began electing favourites amongst us adepts too. Usually girls. The best earners and arse-lickers. The girls who indulged her without threatening her. The clever ones. The ones most like her. Manipulative.
    Who had their choice of the guys. And her favourites were 49
    ADAM NEVILL
    always the attractive girls. Because she used them as honey-traps, and they started giving personal meditation and therapy sessions to private clients. Rich marks. Most of us were forced into celibacy and she was running call girls, dear. These girls would do anything for her, for the Gathering. You know she’d been a madam in her former life?’
    Kyle nodded as he watched the monitor.
    ‘Well, we never knew all that then. That all came out later, after what happened in America. But she set up rooms on Wimpole Street for her favourites. A couple of the pretty boys too. Gave them very expensive gifts as rewards for their services. They had their own room on the first floor, at the front.
    To motivate the rest of us and to make us jealous, to pine even harder for her attention. And we must have given ourselves away. How we felt. The long faces. Chatter. Gossip.
    The Seven had informers amongst us. Oh, yes.’
    ‘So what do you think she was doing up here?’
    Susan screwed up her small face with frustration and anger. ‘We were told Katherine existed up here in a state of permanent repose, meditating. But that she was with us always. Her presence. That she knew everything about us, all of the time. What each of us thought, and felt. The Seven said she was protecting us. And assessing us for election. For ascent. But of course, we’d already confessed everything about ourselves in the early days of the Gathering, so she knew all of our secrets. She had a pretty good idea of what we were