If Jak hadn’t wagged his tail when the footfalls sounded in the corridor, Fisher would have hurled the heavy iron pan into the face of whoever walked through the door. Jittery? Ye Gods, he was convinced it would be the murderer Cantley.
‘Josanne!’ Fabian crashed through the door then embraced the woman so fiercely Fisher thought her ribs would crack.
Fisher and Marko slapped him on the back.
‘What the hell happened to you?’ Fisher demanded. ‘Where did it put you?’
‘The house? It didn’t put me anywhere. I drove back from the motel.’
They were all talking at once. Josanne told him about finding Sterling dead in the ballroom. Marko pulled knives from the drawer while calling out they had to arm themselves in case they ran into Cantley. Fisher stated, ‘Fabian, you must be immune to the house. It can’t get its hooks into you.’
‘You might be right,’ Fabian agreed, as he unpeeled his arms from a trembling Josanne. ‘But I’d wager good money it’s still going to try its hardest to hit me in some way. Any sign of Adam?’
Marko shook his head. ‘We were hoping he’d just show up, like you.’
Fabian was wired. His eyes darted round the kitchen. ‘We all know that running away isn’t an option. It won’t let you.’
‘There’s nothing to stop you,’ Fisher pointed out.
‘There’s no way I’m leaving without you all.’
Josanne took a deep breath to steady her nerves. ‘It may come to that, Fabian.’
‘No way. I’m staying until we’ve beaten this crock of shit.’ He clenched his fists. ‘Listen. I’ve been figuring this out. We’ve got to fight back.’
Marko frowned. ‘How?’
‘Yeah,’ Josanne said nervously. ‘This place can do what it likes to us.’
‘No, it can’t.’ He picked up the heavy iron pan that Fisher had contemplated hurling at him, until Jak signalled the visitor was friendly. ‘The house did its best to drown you, Josanne, but it failed. This place isn’t all powerful: it’s got limitations.’ He crossed the kitchen to the window where he swung the iron pan at a pane. It bounced back with a clang. He tried again. Same result. The pan struck the glass. Bounced off.
Fisher pointed out drily, ‘If it has limitations we haven’t found them yet.’ Marko grabbed a chair. ‘Here! Let me try.’ He hurled the chair at the window. It bounced back, forcing him to dodge it.
Josanne’s voice came as a frightened gulp. ‘It won’t let you damage it.’
‘There’s a way!’ Fisher shouted. ‘We’ll find a way to hurt it so badly that it’ll be glad to be rid of us.’
Marko rubbed his jaw. ‘But if we can’t even break one of its damn windows …’
‘How are we going to trash the place?’ Josanne added. ‘Besides, it hears what we say. It knows what we’re trying to do.’
Fabian clenched his fists. ‘Remember what Fisher told us about evil? About the nature of evil? That evil is opportunistic. It drifts along in an aimless way until it gets the chance to cause hurt. Evil needs a victim. If there aren’t any victims then it can’t inflict damage.’
‘That’s like saying if there wasn’t gravity then we couldn’t fall down,’ Marko said. ‘It’s a fact: there is gravity, and there are victims. They don’t choose to be victims. People don’t invite murderers to kill them.’
‘The point is,’ Fabian said, ‘we’ve got to act like we aren’t victims. We’ve got to be brave, so overwhelmingly brave that we beat this thing through sheer will power.’ His voice rose. ‘Tell yourself that the house can’t hurt you. Convince yourself that if we chose to do so, we can rip down the walls with our bare hands.’ He still held the heavy-duty pan. Without any warning he slammed it back against the wall with so much force it became mangled out of shape. ‘There!’ He pointed. ‘There’s your proof!’
Fisher looked at where Fabian pointed at the wall. ‘There’s a dent. A small one, but he’s marked the paint.’
Fabian’s eyes blazed. He was ready for a fight. ‘OK. Let’s throw a party.’
‘A party?’ Josanne’s expression suggested that she thought her lover had gone crazy.
‘A party,’ he repeated. ‘It’s to celebrate the impending destruction of the house!’
A metallic shimmer sounded on the air. A cold steel sound. Fisher didn’t think Fabian heard it. The rest did. They looked about anxiously. The house knew what Fabian said. Its reaction was something like the warning growl in a tiger’s throat.
‘Come on, we’re going to the ballroom. We’re going to play music.’
‘Music. Hell man, you’re crazy.’ Marko’s face flushed red. ‘Didn’t you hear what we told you about Sterling?’
‘I know. That’s why we’re doing this. We’re going to find out where the house is weak. When we’ve found its Achilles’ heel that’s when we’ll strike.’ Fabian swept toward the door. ‘Come on. Music! That’s what we’re magnificent at!’
They ran along the corridor to the ballroom. Jak raced alongside them. He barked as he picked up on their mood that had become nothing less than electric.
Or have we gone mad? Fisher thought. Has the house won? Has it sent us crazy? Because I don’t feel terrified anymore. I feel as if my nerve endings are on fire. I feel so up! that I’m never going to come down.
Sterling still lay on the sofa. That made them all pause with the exception of Fabian who raced across to the keyboard. He shouted back, ‘We’re doing this for Sterling as well. And for Belle and for Kym! This is payback!’ He thumped the power button on the keyboard then ran to the amps to switch on each one in turn. ‘All the way up to ten, guys!’ He cranked the volume. Speakers buzzed like a swarm of angry bees. ‘Marko! Fisher! You can do it!’ Fabian played a run on the electric keyboard. As if in defiance of the clock chimes he set the electronic voice to mimic bells. The notes rang in the air at such volume that the dog flinched.
‘Are we really doing this?’ Marko asked. ‘Or are we sitting in a padded room hallucinating like crazy?’
Fisher felt a wild grin reach his mouth. ‘Either way. We’ll go with the flow.’ He picked up his bass guitar from the stand and plugged in. Instantly, it came to life in his hands. He sensed the power running through its circuits. Fisher loosened the handkerchief from his injured left hand. The little finger still jutted out at an odd angle. Strangely, however, it didn’t hurt anymore. Neither could he feel pain in the swollen fingers. If he didn’t try and force the little finger to perform he could still use the other digits to depress the strings against the fret board while the fingers of his good hand did the plucking.
Marko sat on the drum stool. Looking up at the ceiling, he cried out, ‘Keith Moon! If you can hear me, guide my hands! And give me strength to raise bloody hell!’ He gave a savage laugh. It wasn’t because he was amused by his spontaneous prayer to the patron saint of rock drummers, this wild rush of energy crackled through him, too. Seizing his sticks, he flailed at the drums in a mighty roll that sounded as if thunder crashed inside the ballroom. Fisher played a vicious rhythm on the bass. At the same moment Fabian struck keys on a laptop connected to the keyboard. His prerecorded synthesizer lines swirled through the air. He stepped back from the keyboards as it obeyed the presets to play a stabbing salvo of notes.
‘Keep playing,’ he shouted over the wall of noise. ‘This might not kill the house but it might give it a headache … enough to distract it.’
A weird logic began to emerge from this. Fisher realized that The Tower frightened people by its repeated use of the clock chimes. If it knew that sound had the power to frighten, then might it be susceptible to sound, too? Fisher imagined the vibrations of the deafening music running through the fabric of the building to assault the foundations.
Marko must have been thinking along similar lines because he yelled, ‘Walls of Jericho! Walls of Jericho!’
Then trumpets brought the walls tumbling down. Fabian gestured to Josanne to bring a newspaper that lay on the floor by the sofa that still held the body of Sterling Pound. She didn’t hesitate. With a determined expression she ran to pick it up as Fabian went to the windows. He pulled the curtains from the wall with one hand as he delved into his pocket for his lighter with the other. He thumbed the button to produce a narrow blue flame. Josanne realized what he intended. She held the newspaper over the flame. It caught in a second. Fabian held the curtain out to the orange flame that consumed the paper. He stayed like that for all of thirty seconds until the flames threatened to scorch Josanne’s fingers. Then he shook his head and gestured to her to drop the burning newspaper.
Fisher realized that his and Marko’s music faltered.
Fabian ran across the ballroom floor. Both his hands were outstretched as he made a lifting gesture. He was urging them to keep playing.
‘I couldn’t get the material to burn,’ he shouted. ‘It’s stopping the flame touching it somehow. But don’t stop playing. Keep the tempo up. Play faster! We’re not beaten yet!’ As he crossed the floor again the chimes sounded for eight o’clock. Immediately Fabian dashed to the keyboard and began hitting buttons. Then he straightened a microphone stalk so it pointed into the air. That done he tapped more keys. As the chimes of eight o’clock died away he pressed another key. The chimes returned through the speakers. Only this time it wasn’t The Tower’s doing. Fabian had digitally recorded the sound. Now he replayed the chimes. He teased the sound using the synthesizer’s modulators. He tortured the notes into new shapes, adding overlays, altering the pitch, and the tempo – as far as the house was concerned, an unholy racket.
‘Fight fire with fire!’ he shouted, over the wash of electronic harmonics. ‘It might only piss the house off … but we can try to hurt the bastard.’ He made adjustments to the keyboard controls then stepped away from the instrument as the repeat function kicked in. Now it recycled the same sequence of sampled chimes over and over. Fisher and Marko fell in line to play their instruments as a backing to Fabian’s cloned chimes.
Fabian beckoned Josanne. As he headed for the door, he turned round to shout through cupped hands. ‘If it works … it’s going to distract this thing … whatever’s been trying to hurt us … Josanne and I are going to attack the underbelly … while it’s not looking.’ He gave Fisher and Marko the thumbs up. ‘OK, guys. Play your hearts out!’
Fisher watched the pair of them leave the ballroom. This is it, he told himself, we’re fighting back.