Black Wings VII

By S. T. Joshi, Ramsey Campbell, Stephen Woodworth and 15 more

The six volumes in the Black Wings series, from which these "Best of" tales are selected,  stand as a monument to H. P. Lovecraft's incalculable and unassailable influence on contemporary weird fiction, and so the time seemed right for a retrospective volume that exhibits the choicest items from the series. The task of selection was not a simple or straightforward one, for every tale in the series had some claim to be chosen; let it then be said that this volume does not contain necessarily the "best" stories, but rather the most representative stories in the series. If this selection leads readers back to the many other tales featured in those volumes, then its purpose will have been adequately served.

• Language: English
• Publisher: PS Publishing
• Release date: Jul 25, 2023
• ISBN: 9781786369765

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

S. T. Joshi is the author of The Weird Tale (1990), I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H. P. Lovecraft (2010), Unutterable Horror: A History of Supernatural Fiction (2012), and other volumes. Among his anthologies of classic and contemporary weird fiction are American Supernatural Tales (2007), Searchers After Horror (2014), A Mountain Walked (2014), Nightmare’s Realm (2017), and the previous six volumes of the Black Wings series (2010–17). He is the editor of Penumbra, the Lovecraft Annual, and Spectral Realms.

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THE ADJECTIVE LOVECRAFTIAN is nowadays applied so widely and indiscriminately that we are in danger of losing an understanding of its proper focus and parameters. This phenomenon is itself a tribute to the spectacular popularity that Lovecraft’s work has achieved over the past half-century—a popularity that extends not only to the worldwide dissemination of his writings in more than thirty languages but also to adaptations for film, television, comic books, role-playing games, video games, and even merchandising. But one needs more than slimy tentacles or bug-eyed monsters to warrant the designation Lovecraftian, and it might be well to remind ourselves of what the essence of Lovecraft’s theory and practice of weird fiction actually consists of.

The central pillar of Lovecraft’s aesthetic theory is cosmicism—a depiction of the nearly infinite gulfs of space and time and the derisively insignificant place human beings occupy in those realms. As he states in The Silver Key, the blind cosmos grinds aimlessly on from nothing to something and from something back to nothing again, neither heeding nor knowing the wishes or existence of the minds that flicker for a second now and then in the darkness. This conception grew out of Lovecraft’s atheism (there is no god to save us from our own meaninglessness) and fascination with science, especially that of astronomy. In this volume, such diverse tales as Steve Rasnic Tem’s The Things We Do Not See and Katherine Kerestman’s Global Warming suggest the cosmic while at the same time focusing on the human characters who dimly perceive their own insignificance. Donald Tyson’s The Amber Toad effects a union of weirdness and science fiction in very much the manner that Lovecraft did in such tales as The Whisperer in Darkness and The Shadow out of Time.

For Lovecraft, the expression of cosmicism is facilitated by a meticulous realism, especially that of setting. His own writing vividly re-creates both the history and topography of New England as well as other locales he had never visited—not least of them the Antarctica of At the Mountains of Madness, the setting for Nancy Kilpatrick’s haunting Deception Island. Donald R. Burleson draws upon his long years in New England for The Pit of G’narrh, while other tales take us farther afield: remote rural areas of Pennsylvania (Geoffrey Reiter’s The Lime Kiln), very similar to the Massachusetts setting of The Colour out of Space; and most exotically of all, the Calcutta of Aditya Dwarkesh’s Who Killed Augustus Bourbaki? Even seemingly familiar regions in Great Britain (as in David Hambling’s Father Thames and Mark Howard Jones’s A Very Old Song) prove far more disturbing than they appear on the surface.

Dwarkesh’s story highlights another key component of Lovecraftian fiction: the use of the scholarly narrator or protagonist. Lovecraft himself regarded intellectual and aesthetic activity as the pinnacle of human achievement, even though he well knew its psychological dangers. Early in his career he wrote, To the scientist there is the joy in pursuing truth which nearly counteracts the depressing revelations of truth. In this volume, we find such pursuits leading to unthinkable horrors in Mark Samuels’s An Elemental Infestation, John Shirley’s And the Devil Hath Power, and Steven Woodworth’s Er Lasst Sich Nicht Lesen.

In Lovecraft’s fiction, human cults devoted to the gods of the Cthulhu Mythos play a central role. It may well be (as Lovecraft suggests in The Call of Cthulhu) that these cults are seriously in error as to the nature of the entities they worship; but nonetheless, they constitute a baleful counter-culture on the underside of normal civilisation. In this volume, Darrell Schweitzer’s Can We Keep Him?, Mark Howard Jones’s A Very Old Song, and others revivify the motif of the ancient cult stretching back centuries or millennia.

Several tales in this book reflect Lovecraft’s fascination with the notion of abnormal longevity. The wonders and terrors of living beyond the bounds of normal human life were, in his work, embodied most vividly in the figure of Joseph Curwen in The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, and Jonathan Thomas performs a clever riff on this character in How Curwen Got His Hundred Years. Another kind of extended life is found in the hybrid Deep Ones of The Shadow over Innsmouth, and Ann K. Schwader draws upon this tale (as many other leading writers of contemporary weird fiction have done) in Open Adoption.

The forbidden book theme, embodied in Lovecraft’s tales by the redoubtable Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred, became something of an in-joke even in Lovecraft’s own day, as several of his colleagues created imaginary books of occult lore in their own stories. But the motif has serious ramifications, in that these tomes feature the very knowledge that will make us aware of our fleeting tenure on this earth; and it is this element that Ramsey Campbell utilises in The Resonances, as he draws not only on Lovecraft’s tales but his own previous work to create a narrative that fuses metaphysical and psychological terror.

This book is, I trust, one of many recent works that display the continuing vitality of neo-Lovecraftian writing in our day. Critics and scholars have presented a compelling portrait of Lovecraft as a writer whose philosophical vision led him to create an entire cosmogony of gods and monsters that embody his profound awareness of the fragility of a human race lost in the vortices of space and time. Contemporary writers have learned that it takes more to be Lovecraftian than merely tossing in a familiar name or reusing one of Lovecraft’s own plots; it requires a deep understanding of what lies beneath the superficial flamboyance of his tales, reaching to the central core of fear and dread that his transcendent craftsmanship engendered. We are lucky that a small cadre of gifted writers can echo his vision while at the same time expressing their own ideas in tales scarcely less skilful than his.

—S. T. JOSHI

THE RESONANCES

Ramsey Campbell

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Ramsey Campbell was born in Liverpool in 1946 and now lives in Wallasey. The Oxford Companion to English Literature describes him as Britain’s most respected living horror writer, and the Washington Post sums up his work as one of the monumental accomplishments of modern popular fiction. He has received the Grand Master Award of the World Horror Convention, the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Horror Writers Association, the Living Legend Award of the International Horror Guild and the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2015 he was made an Honorary Fellow of Liverpool John Moores University for outstanding services to literature. PS Publishing have brought out two volumes of Phantasmagorical Stories, a sixty-year retrospective of his short fiction, and a companion collection, The Village Killings and Other Novellas. His latest novel is The Lonely Lands from Flame Tree Press, which has also recently published his Brichester Mythos trilogy.

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AS STUART REACHED BRICHESTER CATHEDRAL A confusion of noises came to meet him—a dogged stony trudge accompanied by a rumble suggestive of the dragging of a tail and a repeated squeal like the complaint of joints in need of oil. If he hadn’t been some years too old for fairy tales he might have fancied one of the gargoyles had gone for a wander. He pushed the door next to the massive portal wide and stepped back as the wheelbarrow heaped with rubble lumbered forth, wielded by a workman with goggles dangling along with a facemask around his stubby neck. Got yourself a job there, son, he said.

Murmurs of visitors massed beneath the vaulted ceiling of the cathedral, above the nave Stuart had learned today was Norman. The aisle led to an enormous distant window like a rainbow shattered into fragments and reassembled to depict highlights from the Bible. His research let Stuart recognise that the limestone vines decorating the walls were Perpendicular. A muffled clink of tools on stone drew his attention to the transverse aisle, where he saw Samantha in the pew closest to the lady chapel.

A plasterboard partition shut off the chapel while the renovation was in progress. The metallic hammering put Stuart in mind of miners in a cave. Samantha glanced away from an architectural diagram on the laptop she’d propped beside a hymnal. Oh, it’s you, she said.

Stuart could have felt he’d blundered into the court of the princess her delicate face reminded him of—deep dark eyes, slim nose, full pink lips—while the rest of her made him feel awkward in a different although increasingly familiar way. He meant to murmur, but it emerged as a mumble. I’ve found out some things for you.

The corners of her lips turned up. Just for me?

For my project as well. We can share.

Tell me then, Stuart.

Her use of the name seemed to soften his innards. His friends—his other friends, he hoped he could begin to think—made him sound like the wrong sort of dish. I can show you, he said.

He produced his phone as the empty wheelbarrow trundled up the nave. He was bringing up the first shot he’d taken in the archives when the workman leaned over the ledge of the pew. Can’t you kids even do without your games in church?

Samantha’s stare did without an expression. We aren’t playing any games.

We’ve been asked to look into the restoration of the chapel.

Keeping an eye on us lowlifes, are you? Doing what your teacher told you to, more like. You’d be more use seeing to the doors for us.

That’s not what I’m for and she isn’t either.

Down, boy. I wasn’t going for your girlfriend. You may look big to her but you don’t look big to me.

Can you start behaving like gentlemen, Samantha said. You aren’t impressing anyone.

Keep telling yourself that, sweetheart, the workman said, wheeling the barrow to the door in the temporary partition. Embarrassed by the reference to a girlfriend and demeaned by her rebuke, Stuart stayed mute until she said Aren’t you showing me?

It says the frescoes were meant to be special.

Let me look for myself.

Her soft cool hand touched his as she took the phone, and he thought too late of keeping hold of it to retain her touch. At least he could lean close to her while she scrolled through the information. The site now known as Cathedral Mount was a place of worship long before the eleventh-century cathedral had been built there. The frescoes in the lady chapel were hailed as uncommonly beautiful by everyone who had viewed them before the walls had been covered by new stone, now in the process of removal. Too much for the men in charge to cope with, Samantha declared. They won’t get their way any more. The frescoes had been designed to sanctify the site, and she tapped the sentence with a slim pink fingernail. What does that mean, Stuart?

Make it more sacred, you know, like churches are supposed to be. Like that man tried to make out we were spoiling.

I don’t need a translation. I’m asking if you found out any more.

Not yet.

Find out for me tomorrow, can you? I’ll be here. Just let me copy all this first. As Samantha paired the mobile with her laptop, Stuart hoped she was making more of a connection with him. Thanks for backing me up, she said.

Perhaps she meant his research had confirmed her views, but he let himself think she might have reassessed his confrontation with the workman. As he made his way through the extensive antique churchyard he glanced back to check the man hadn’t followed him. The massive pallid building glimmered in the late October dusk, and for a moment he thought the fellow had sneaked past him as a preamble to an ambush, but the crouching figure must have been a toppled monument he couldn’t even locate.

His parents were at their computers in the workroom, justifying clients’ tax accounts. You were a long time at your archive, his father said.

I went to the cathedral as well. I’m helping someone with their project.

Is she nice? Stuart’s mother seemed to think this didn’t need an answer. What’s her name?

Samantha. She’s doing the architecture part.

She’ll be in your class, then.

She’s in my one at school.

Not just that kind, his father said. You’re as good as any of them or you wouldn’t be there.

Stuart thought this was easy to believe if you weren’t at the school, where many of his classmates didn’t bother hiding how they regarded him as an intruder hardly worth their tolerance. He couldn’t let his parents know when they worked so hard to pay for his education. They were convinced his brain required that kind, a notion that often left him wishing he were stupid. If his intelligence won Samantha over, perhaps it was some use after all.

Next day he used the archive as soon as it was open to the public. Several tables in the long high room enclosed by gloomy oak were occupied by researchers who glanced at him as if he weren’t a member of their club. The librarians brought him items—local histories, parish records, monastic reminiscences, ecclesiastical chronicles—that the archive computer suggested to him. The documents didn’t tell him much that Samantha might want to learn, and he had to remind himself he wasn’t there just on her behalf.

Some of the stone used to build the cathedral had been quarried from a cave, a process that had razed the cave to the ground at the summit of the hill the cathedral stood on. Apparently this had been a stage in the process of sanctification. As far as Stuart could decipher from the mediaeval language, one monk said the frescoes in the lady chapel were designed to counteract the grotesque forms carved on the corbels of the cathedral. Though Stuart hadn’t noticed them, some of those were so misshapen that there had been proposals to destroy them, but presumably preservationists had won the day. Why had the frescoes been covered up? Samantha would want to know, but hours of research failed to enlighten him. As the afternoon grew dark he learned that the original site on the hill had been known as the Cave of the Voice. Following up this lead would have to wait, otherwise he might miss Samantha at the cathedral.

The plasterboard partition had been removed from the lady chapel, and there was no sign of any workmen. His surge of relief dwindled as he saw Samantha had company. Opening the restored chapel had changed the acoustic of the cathedral, which meant his multiplying echoes drew attention to him as he made for the pew by the chapel. As Samantha turned to him, so did her companion, a boy of about his age but bulkier, with a broad flattish face that looked ready to lose interest in the newcomer. What have you brought me today, Stuart? Samantha said.

He sidled past the other boy so as to sit beside her. The frescoes were supposed to make up for the carvings round the outside, he said.

What do you mean by that? The boy’s question sounded accusing, and so did Make up for them.

That’s what some monk said. Don’t blame me.

I’m not too impressed with your helper, Sam.

Stuart’s in my class.

I doubt it.

Heath. Stuart hoped this was a rebuke, but she was introducing her friend. Stuart, she added.

And may we hear what you think of our chapel?

Why’s it yours?

As soon as the retort was out Stuart wished he’d been less childish—he was fourteen, for god’s sake. We worship here, Heath said.

Well, I’m studying it like her.

We look forward to being graced with your insights.

Stuart took this for sarcasm until he realised Heath was gazing at him, which sent him to the chapel. The exposed frescoes looked freshly painted: Mary surrounded by cherubim in the manger, kneeling at the foot of a radiant crucifixion, elevated heavenwards by angels winged with sunbursts...Nobody ought to have covered them up, he told Samantha. I can’t see why anybody would.

The likes of some of us were responsible. Before Stuart could react Heath said I must say you don’t seem to have much to offer.

So what are you doing for her?

Use whatever imagination you’ve got, Heath said and finished staring at him. I’ll leave you to your academic conference, Sam. Just phone when you’re ready for me.

As Heath’s retreat added echoes to the acoustic clutter Stuart said That’s all I could find today about the chapel, Sam.

Don’t call me that, thank you. You’ve still got the rest of the week.

Stuart was halfway to the exit, feeling resentfully dismissed, when his echoes distracted him. They sounded as if someone was blundering along the left-hand side aisle, barely able to walk, if indeed they weren’t proceeding on all lopsided fours. He peered around the pillar behind which the noises appeared to have lodged, and the nearest stained-glass window merged with its vague vista to produce a furtive movement, an illusion that vanished at once.

At home questions were waiting for him. Successful day? his father wanted to hear.

Stuart did his best to think so. Pretty good.

His mother was impatient to learn How’s your Samantha?

I helped her a bit.

So long as it’s mutual. Don’t let yourself be exploited.

We hope she knows how privileged she is, his father said.

Surely the more Stuart found that she could use, the more she should appreciate it and him, but when he reached the archive in the morning he found he was uncertain what to look for. As he passed the counter he saw that the chronicle he’d struggled to decipher had yet to be returned to the stacks. Can I have that book again? he said.

Please request it by the standard method. The librarian, a stooped man who might have chosen his suit to tone with the grey of his hair, gave the volume a weary blink. I shall hold it while you do, he said. May we know the aim of your research?

I’m finding out about the cathedral.

Perhaps there is hope for your generation after all.

Stuart used the nearest terminal to order the book, then had to wait for the librarian to read the screen behind the counter and direct an assistant to bring the massive tome to Stuart’s table. The flimsy plastic gloves provided to protect the book felt like an extra hindrance, as if the mediaeval language weren’t enough of one. By late morning the spiky script and antiquated spellings and bygone words were conspiring to give him a headache. He was close to the end, and so was the afternoon, when he encountered a sentence that puzzled him so much he took the volume to the counter. Do you know what that’s supposed to say?

The librarian winced as Stuart’s finger almost touched the page. What do you take it to mean?

They put an extra wall in the Mary chapel to, what it looks as if it’s saying is they wanted to suppress the echo of the cave.

I believe that is an accurate interpretation.

But there wasn’t a cave any more. They’d knocked it down to build the cathedral.

Perhaps by echo the writer meant a similarity, and I’m sure the builders must have been concerned with the acoustics.

While Stuart found this unsatisfactory, the reference reminded him to look up the Cave of the Voice. The computer listed a single citation, and he requested the book—We Pass from View by Roland Franklyn. His head was gaining only a further ache from the mediaeval text when the librarian came over. Why have you asked for Franklyn?

The computer says it’s got something in about the cave.

I doubt there would be any information you could use.

Can I see anyway?

The librarian rested a ponderous gaze on him before saying Do you propose to visit us tomorrow?

If there’s stuff for me to look at.

I shall consider the matter and give you my decision then.

The rest of the chronicle failed to assuage Stuart’s frustration. He was tempted to stay out of the cathedral even though it was on his way home, but he ought to keep Samantha informed. As he hurried along the nave his thin entangled echoes scuttled down the side aisle, so that he could have fancied they were scurrying ahead to dislodge Heath from the pew. Here’s your assistant, Heath said.

Stuart strove to ignore him while saying I may find out some important stuff tomorrow.

Hardly worth coming to us if that’s the extent of your contribution.

Let me know if you do, Samantha said.

Stuart was about to take his leave when he heard sounds beyond a pillar. They seemed oddly reminiscent of the echoes he’d previously caused, and so clumsy that he stopped short of imagining how whoever was there might look. As he made his way along the nave he thought he glimpsed them dodging out of sight around the pillar. Were they so ashamed of their appearance that they would rather not be seen? For some reason he preferred this to thinking they were about to show themselves, and he refrained from glancing back once he passed the pillar.

At home his mother said Much progress today?

They’re getting me a special book.

We hope all this trouble isn’t only for your friend, his father said.

Stuart wanted it to help Samantha as much as him. He felt he’d been as useless today as Heath wanted him to think he was. In the chill October morning his ectoplasmic whitish breaths kept him company while he waited for the library to let him in. The librarian met him with a look that reserved any welcome. What do you youngsters believe in these days? he said.

Stuart sensed his answer might determine whether he was granted access to the book he’d requested. I haven’t decided yet, he risked admitting.

I shouldn’t think you’d have much time for the likes of Franklyn when you’re involved with the cathedral. This sounded like the preamble to a refusal, and Stuart was about to protest that researching the cathedral didn’t require faith when the librarian said Find a seat and I’ll have your request brought to you.

His assistant gave the book and Stuart a censorious blink as she planted the item in front of him. Once it must have been a brighter blue, but more than half a century had faded the library binding and flaked away most of the gilt from the details embossed on the thin spine. The interior looked self-published and read that way as well. Its mystical meandering seemed hardly worth struggling to understand. Stuart was close to abandoning the effort when a phrase snagged his attention, and he returned to the start of the paragraph.

The secret nature of some regions of the earth creates confluences of the occult and of presences not of this world. Primal practices have lingered there, and ancient powers draw down their like, attracting companions from the infinite and raising hidden dwellers from below. Thus Starfall Water is home to its slumbering denizen, while Goatswood is named for the dread avatar it harbours. The remnants of a primeval breed are penned beneath Clotton, and the vaults under Temphill provide ingress for feasters on unnatural sustenance. The cottages of Warrendown disguise a covert habitation, and the depths of the forest beyond Goodmanswood body forth their awful dweller, but Youtheven awaits an inhuman birth. In mediaeval times and previous eras Brichester boasted the Cave of the Voice, a hilltop cavern that conferred safety on the venerable rite to summon an aspect of Daoloth. The site was commandeered by Christians, who destroyed the cave in their campaign to extirpate the rival belief. Erecting their own edifice proved inadequate, since echoes of the ousted ritual lingered in the cathedral—sounds no sacred place should admit, as one cleric complained. In a bid to quell these reverberations that even the most pious activity was wont to rouse, the walls of a chapel were hastily clad in additional stone ...

Somebody was reading over Stuart’s shoulder—a middle-aged woman with tightly folded arms, above which her badge identified her as the city librarian. That should be on restricted issue, she said and strode to the counter. Did she mean to have the book taken from him? He set about photographing all the unread pages as fast as he could. She and the archivist disappeared into the stacks, and by the time they emerged Stuart had finished his task. Wary of betraying what he’d done, he returned the book to the counter and spent the rest of the day researching the official history of the cathedral.

As he stepped into the nave he had the absurd idea that his echoes had been waiting for him to release them. The Franklyn book must have suggested the notion. When he made for the pew where Samantha and his rival were seated close together, the ungainly mass of sounds preceded him. They dodged behind pillar after pillar like an intruder—like a prowler that would have had to be proceeding on all fours to stay so unseen. He couldn’t tell where the noises settled as he sidled to take his place beside Samantha. Have you got what you wanted? she said.

I don’t know if it’s what you’ll want.

We’ll be the judge of that, Heath said.

Stuart did his best to mime not having heard the comment as he showed Samantha the first page he’d photographed. The secret nature of some regions of the earth creates confluences of the occult and of presences not of this world...He kept hold of the phone rather than risk letting Heath touch it, and Samantha didn’t either. See, he said once she’d had time to read the paragraph, they weren’t getting at women after all.

As a noise lodged in the side aisle—a restless scrabbling like a belated echo of his approach—Heath said What do you mean by bringing Sam this trash?

I thought she’d want to see.

If you’ve any sense at all you’ll be making yourself scarce.

I’ll be doing what Samantha says, not you.

Can you hear how pathetic you sound? You tell him, Sam.

She doesn’t like people calling her that.

I’m not people, little man. Tell him.

Stuart wanted to believe she hesitated on his behalf before saying Heath’s right. I can’t use this.

Now you’ve been told, so you can take yourself off. Don’t come back unless you’re bringing something with a bit of meat on it. Maybe that means just don’t come back.

When Samantha turned her eyes to the window beyond the altar rather than speak, Stuart felt she’d mutely agreed with his rival. He shoved the phone in his pocket and stalked away, bearing his hot face topped with a renewed headache, which confused him into fancying he’d left his echoes behind. The impression made him glance back to see the nearest window and its blurred twilit vista producing the illusion that a figure had reared up beyond a pillar before dropping into a lopsided crouch. The glimpse aggravated his headache as he stumbled out of the cathedral.

The ache hadn’t dwindled much by the time he arrived home. Productive day? his mother said.

Can you not keep asking me stuff like that?

Don’t take that tone with your mother, his father said.

I hope we haven’t let a grump into our house. Whatever the problem is, you know you can always talk to us.

I don’t want to talk.

Then you’d better leave it somewhere else, his father said.

Stuart went to bed feeling the world had turned against him. He didn’t want to read any more of the pages he’d photographed—just one had helped Heath set Samantha against him. He might have left them unexamined if the morning hadn’t stranded him at the end of a queue of requests from the archive. While he waited for the books he’d requisitioned he gave in to consulting his phone. Suppose he’d snapped material that could win Samantha over once again?

Perhaps Plato glimpsed the truth and coded it within his dialogue about the shadows and the cave, to be deciphered by the enlightened. The rite of Daoloth calls for words none dare speak directly and a visitation even the initiated can scarcely bear to look upon, and so some syllables of the conjuration were pronounced only by the echoes of the chanting of the faithful. The summonings conferred power upon the cave, which supplied the leaders of the cult with creatures to send against their enemies. These sendings parodied their masters’ form, monstrously distorted by embodying their echoes from the cavernous depths. When eventually the echoes gathered their unnatural substance, even their progenitors could tolerate only the sight of their shadows. Some familiars proving less controllable than their summoners had wished, they turned upon their creators, which helped bring about the downfall of the cult. The stone that formed the cave was incorporated into the cathedral, where the shapes of the corbels acknowledge their origin. Time itself contains echoes, so that the past may resonate into the present, distorted by the centuries ...

A librarian planted a stack of ecclesiastical histories on Stuart’s table, but Stuart read on until the sentences degenerated into mysticism too abstruse for him to grasp. Should he show Samantha the paragraph? She’d declared no actual aversion to its predecessor, after all. If he visited the cathedral earlier than usual, perhaps he would find her on her own, and he skimmed the histories at speed.

The cathedral was unusually deserted. Samantha was alone in the pew closest to the lady chapel, and Stuart was about to head for the nave when he was halted by the fancy that his echoes had begun without him. Someone out of sight must have produced the eager scrawny clatter. As he made for Samantha, the windows kept playing their optical trick that made a figure seem to dodge from pillar to pillar. Had the paragraph he’d read conjured it up—just in his mind, of course? Samantha didn’t look at him until he resumed the place Heath had ousted him from. What is it this time? she said.

Just thinking, just because they put the new wall up because of what I showed you doesn’t mean they weren’t doing it against women too. They could have put it somewhere else but they did it there.

It took you long enough to see.

Perhaps he shouldn’t have let this prompt him to blurt Have you seen anything?

She saved her essay on the laptop before giving him a tilted blink. Any of what?

Anything that shouldn’t be in here, or you could have heard.

Don’t try and scare me, Stuart. As he hoped her protest had betrayed a hint of enjoyment she said Why would there be anything like that?

There’s more of the book I showed you some of.

He held the phone for her to read and willed her to join her hand to his, but she said Let me have a proper look.

Apparently this entailed handing her the phone. He was waiting for her reaction to the paragraph when he heard a surreptitious