Thin Air (29 page)

Jay wasn’t so intimidated. ‘No,
I think you knew I’d find you.’ She held Jem against her.

Dex smiled; a reflex. ‘Perhaps
some part of me did want to be found, but I’m not aware of it.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘Let’s go back to the village.
We need to talk.’

‘We do, but not yet. I want to
see Lorrance, find out what the fuck’s happening here.’

Dex shook his head. ‘You won’t.
You can’t. It’s a waste of time.’

‘I have to try.’ Jay took a firm
hold of Jem’s hand and marched forward towards the glimmer of
stone. It wasn’t so much that she wanted to confront Lorrance. Jay
needed to see the house close up. She had a feeling no-one was at
home, anyway, but in the circumstances, that might be better. She
could take a look around.

Dex watched her for a few
moments, then relented and caught up to walk beside them, some feet
away. ‘You shouldn’t be here, Jay.’

‘I know,’ Jay said. Her heart
was beating fast. ‘But I am.’ In a way, she couldn’t accept Dex was
there beside her. She had looked for him, asked questions, but now
that he’d shown himself, he seemed like a dream. She knew him, yet
she didn’t. ‘Have you been here all the time?’ She couldn’t imagine
him co-operating in the simple, idyllic routines of Lestholme.

‘Mostly.’

Jay shook her head. ‘It doesn’t
seem likely somehow. Are you telling me the truth?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why didn’t you come to me
before? Why wait until now?’

He shrugged. ‘I wanted to, but
sometimes I didn’t. I felt I shouldn’t involve you. It’s not
fair.’

Jay laughed. ‘Involve me? I’m
involved whether you or I want it or not, aren’t I?’

He smiled. ‘I know I shouldn’t
be glad you’re here, but I am.’

‘You must have been lonely…’

He frowned. ‘Please, Jay, not
now.’

She could tell her words hurt
him. ‘So,’ she said, in a more brisk tone, ‘are you here because of
Lorrance, or through him?’

‘Both.’

Jay sighed. He’d said he wanted
to talk to her, yet his answers to her questions offered little.
‘It’s obvious Lorrance has set himself up here as some kind of
feudal lord,’ Jay said. Will you tell me how I got here? Did you
arrange it somehow?’

‘No,’ Dex said. ‘You created
your own gateway, which means things must have got tough for you. I
did warn you.’

‘Warn me? You didn’t warn me of
this. I drove off into the night, then ended up losing some months
of my life. What did they do to me? Was it a tranquillising shot
from across a field?’

‘It didn’t happen like that.
You’ve lost no time. In fact, you’ve probably gained some.’

Jay made a disparaging sound.
‘Dex, please! I can’t accept that. I’m not gullible like those poor
creatures in Lestholme.’

‘I couldn’t have explained any
of this to you when I last saw you,’ Dex said. ‘You wouldn’t have
believed me, and I can see you still don’t believe, even though
you’re living it. I’m amazed you got in here. You must have been
temporarily desperate. What happened?’

‘Didn’t Julie tell you?’ Jay
asked.

Dex paused before answering.
‘The communication I have with Julie isn’t like speaking on the
phone,’ he said. ‘I knew you’d been to see her, and that you’d
found the box, but not what happened afterwards.’

‘My life fell apart,’ she
answered, ‘courtesy of Sakrilege, I think.’ She explained all that
had happened, a story to which Dex listened without commenting, but
she could still feel his anger on her behalf. ‘So, I’d lost my main
avenue of work, my lover and was in danger of losing everything
else.’

Dex shook his head. ‘God, Jay,
I’m sorry you went through that. You shouldn’t have. You really
don’t belong here.’

‘Tell me about it.’

They walked through a thin
fringe of tall firs and then the house was before them. Close to,
it looked odd. There were no pathways around it, no garden. It just
stood in a field. Jay couldn’t even see a driveway now, and the
windows were depthless black holes, reflecting no light, even
though the moon shone full and bright.

Jem said, ‘I don’t want to go
near that place.’

‘It’s safe,’ Dex said. ‘You’re
in no danger. You’ll soon see why.’

‘Jay,’ Jem said. I’m not
sure.’

‘It’s OK,’ Jay answered. ‘I
don’t feel there’s any threat.’

Dex led them up to the gleaming
frontage and then disappeared through the front door, which must
have been open. Jay could see nothing beyond but darkness, and for
a moment she too was nervous of venturing forward.

Dex’s voice called to them from
the other side. ‘Come on. There’s nothing to be frightened of.’

Gripping Jem’s damp hand firmly,
Jay stepped over the threshold. For a moment, she stood in utter
stillness, then said softly, ‘What is this?’

The house was a white shell.
There was nothing inside; no rooms, no roof, only a lawn from wall
to wall and the moon shining high overhead. It did not even look as
if it had ever been a proper dwelling. Looking up, she could see no
sign that floors had once filled it. The white walls were flawless.
It was like a stage set.

‘You see now?’ Dex said,
gesturing around him.

‘It’s a folly,’ Jay said.

‘I don’t like it here,’ Jem
murmured.

‘It’s not a folly, but an
impression,’ Dex said. ‘A sign-post between the reality of
Lestholme and the outside world.’

‘The house of God,’ said
Jem.

Jay pulled a sour face.
‘Lorrance built it so that the villagers think he lives here,
keeping an eye on them.’

Dex smiled wanly. ‘No. It is a
house, Jay, and under different circumstances, in a different
location, you could visit it, climb its stairs, look into its
rooms.’

‘
Where
is it, that other
house?’

‘It’s the same one, and it’s
here, but not here. Lestholme is nowhere, Jay, and to get here you
have to want to
be
nowhere. Some people kill themselves,
some people disappear, and of that latter category, some end up
here.’

‘You’re telling me this is some
weird reality shift or something?’ Jay uttered a caustic laugh. ‘I
can’t buy that, Dex. It doesn’t happen outside of books and
films.’

Dex shook his head and smiled.
‘Always the sceptic. Believe what you like. It makes no difference
to what is. There are different levels of reality, and they can be
accessed by altered states of mind.’

‘That brings me back to my
earlier suggestion,’ Jay said. ‘Drugs.’

‘It’s not that, but concentrated
emotion or will.’

Jay went to examine the walls
close up. They were like porous marble, glittering under the moon.
She rubbed her fingers over the stone. It felt rough beneath her
touch, as if weathered. ‘What has Lorrance got to do with it? Why
is he seen as a god by the people here?’

‘It’s complicated, and I don’t
think you’ll readily accept the explanation.’ Dex sighed through
his nose. ‘Come back to the village now - we’ll talk.’

As they walked back across the
fields, Jem said, ‘I can’t believe we did it. We got into the
house.’ She sounded excited now; relieved and proud of herself.

‘You can enter it if you believe
you can,’ Dex said. ‘Most of the villagers don’t want to see the
empty shell, but that of course has always been the problem with
religion.’

They went to the small pub in
the centre of Lestholme, and here Dex bought pints of beer. It was
the first time Jay had visited the place. At one time, she’d almost
always had a drink in her hand, but now the urge to seek that
temporary oblivion had left her. She didn’t even think about
it.

While Dex was occupied at the
bar, Jem and Jay went out into the garden at the back of the
building, which was surrounded by colossal trees. The ambience was
that of a Dore engraving; the foliage had the immensity and
stillness of a far earlier age. Jay sensed there was water nearby,
perhaps a pool or small lake, hidden among the trees. She sat down
beside Jem at a wooden table, which was streaked with lichen, and
spongy beneath her hands.

Dex came out to them carrying a
tray. It seemed such an ordinary scene; a man, a woman and a young
girl sitting in a pub garden. Jay had to struggle with
disorientation.

‘So, tell me what’s going on,’
Jay said. ‘If anyone can, I’m sure it’s you.’ She sipped the ale
Dex had bought her. Like Ada’s whisky, it was full of flavour but
not any Jay associated with beer. ‘How did you get here? Can you
remember?’

Dex sat down beside Jem, who
wriggled slightly away from him. ‘Always the journalist,’ he said.
‘Asking questions.’

Jay shrugged. ‘I’ve always asked
questions. I’m a journalist because of that rather than the other
way around.’

Dex nodded. ‘I got here because
there was no other place to go. If I wasn’t here, I might be dead.
I’d had enough.’

Those last few words hurt. ‘Why
didn’t you tell me?’ Jay demanded. ‘For God’s sake, Dex, why just
walk out? We could have worked out whatever problem you had. What
you did was so cruel. Didn’t you even think about what it might do
to me?’

Dex’s dragged his fingers over
his face. ‘I know I should have, but… People in my state of mind
don’t think about others, Jay. It’s never as neat as that. I loved
you, I really did.’

Jay herself would not admit to
Dex she might
still
love him, but his use of the past tense
still stung.

‘I thought about killing
myself,’ he said, ‘but lacked the guts. So I walked. And ended up
here. But I wouldn’t collude in it. I haunted this place, explored
its dark corners. For a while, I lived with some people, and time
passed by like water. I did a lot of thinking and came to the
conclusion that, despite everything, I belonged here.’

‘Then why come out to find
me?’

‘Because, despite what you might
think, I do care about you. I didn’t want you to get hurt. I wanted
to warn you.’

She held his eyes for a moment.
This was so difficult. Neither of them really knew how to behave
with the other. They’d had no formal ending, yet it was impossible
to carry on from where they’d left off. ‘Other people don’t seem to
come out of Lestholme,’ she said. ‘Why are you so different?’

He shrugged, placed his beer
carefully on the table. ‘I’m different, because I’m part of Rhys
Lorrance’s world. I have a foot in both camps.’

‘Rhys Lorrance,’ Jay said
softly. ‘Exactly what part does he play in this?’

‘Lorrance has friends even more
powerful than himself. They help him get what he wants, and a
by-product of that is Lestholme. It’s his. That’s all there is to
say.’

Jay smiled wryly, shook her
head. ‘No, Dex, it’s not. This is me sitting here. Talk to me.’

Dex tucked a stray lock of hair
behind his ear. ‘Lorrance works for Three Swords, owned by Lester
Charney. The higher you go within any corporation, the more
concentrated power becomes. Boards of directors are controlled by
cabals - men with the most power and money. Because of their
position, they understand more about the way the world works. They
exploit it. Lester Charney is such a man. And Rhys Lorrance is his
creature.’

‘You’re saying Charney created
this place for Lorrance?’

‘Not exactly. It’s a product of
what Charney has done for Lorrance, what he’s taught him. I don’t
think Lorrance’s even aware Lestholme exists. He’s a symbol of what
created it. It’s his curse, perhaps, but unacknowledged. He doesn’t
take responsibility for it.’

‘What has Charney taught
Lorrance exactly?’

‘The ultimate. The extreme. How
to grow fat on the life force of others.’

‘This doesn’t make any sense to
me.’

‘I’ll tell you my story,’ Dex
said. ‘As you’ll already have learned, it’s the tradition of
Lestholme, and it might help you understand.’

From the first
days of their working together, Rhys Lorrance had singled Dex out
for attention. Perhaps he had seen in Dex some thread, some link
that advised him his
protégé
might have the same hunger for
power he did, as well as enjoy the same avenues of pleasure. After
three years of Dex being with Sakrilege, Lorrance had told him
about a select group of friends, who would meet every month or so
at the Emmertame estate. ‘In this business, with all its
pressures,’ Lorrance said, ‘we need our release. And you’ll meet
people there, people who will be useful.’

Rhys Lorrance was not the sort
of person Dex would normally consider befriending, but there was
something compelling about Lorrance. When he gave Dex his
attention, Dex never doubted he was the whole focus of it. Lorrance
might be a hard-headed businessman, but he was always good company.
If anything, he seemed to have great empathy with people, to know
their secret selves, upon very short acquaintance. Perhaps that was
part of why he was so successful.

Lorrance’s elite club included
various trusted members of the Three Swords empire, certain
celebrities, and shadowy individuals who were unknown to Dex, but
to whom Lorrance seemed almost subservient. They were businessmen,
clearly, but they were different to all Lorrance’s other friends.
They had a disturbing observant quality, lurking at the edges of
every gathering, as if what transpired there was a kind of tax they
considered their due.

Dex himself was now unsure why
he had become so involved with Lorrance’s party set. He had always
felt a grudging gratitude that Lorrance had plucked him from
obscurity and paid to make him a star, but in the beginning, Dex
had been an idealist, scornful of big business, eager to attack it
from the inside. A weakness must have drawn him in, a desire for
gratification in its most fleeting, shallow forms.

Dex had started attending
Lorrance’s gatherings long before he’d met Jay. It had been a
secret then, and one he’d kept throughout their relationship,
though at times it had gnawed at him like gall. The parties always
took place at Lorrance’s country house. Sometimes Dex drove up
there with Zeke Michaels, although Michaels did not attend every
event. Lorrance would send Samantha away shopping in London for the
weekend, and make sure his daughter, Lacey, would not be
approaching the family home.