Creed (41 page)

He took the shot.

Now you might think that the sight of Antony Blythe’s eviscerated corpse would have been the last straw for Creed, the occasion that finally sent him over the edge; but then, blinded by his many faults so diligently recounted thus far, you might have forgotten how much stubbornness and dogged determination, not to mention sheer nerve, it takes to reach the top of the ignoble paparazzo tree. He’d had doors slammed in his face for years, and suffered threats, even physical violence against his person; yet in general he’d managed to overcome most of these setbacks and adversities, so much so that he was acknowledged as
pap supreme
by his peers, albeit grudgingly. The point being, there had to be some strong inner drive within Joe Creed’s nature that endowed him with resilience, resolve against all odds (most odds, anyway). So far, two emotional concerns have prevailed over this evening’s substantial disincentives to proceed: firstly (in correct order, that is), the sensing of a great – a truly great – news story and all the allure that went with that; and secondly, paternal instinct to protect his son. As of this moment, a third emotion has been aroused, and that is anger. Creed is bloody livid. Scared too, no denying that, but the outrage perpetrated upon a colleague (he’d had no liking for Blythe, far from it, but the man was a member of the NUJ, for God’s sake!) has not only fired the other two motives already mentioned: the story is HUGE and the danger to Sammy has been proved beyond doubt. No Sir Galahad he, no defender of righteousness, but charge on does Creed . . .

‘Joe – wait!’

Cally let the plastic door flap back and hurried after the photographer, who was by now some distance down the corridor. She caught up with him and pulled at his sleeve to bring him to a halt.

‘What are you going to do?’ she asked, gripping his arm tightly in case he tried to run off again.

‘I’m gonna find my son and get him out of here. Then we’re going straight to the police.’

(You didn’t imagine, in all his anger, he was going to apprehend these vile villains himself, did you?)

‘My moth—’

‘She can wait! After I blow the lid off this place you’ll get her back anyway.’ Now he gripped her arm. ‘You had a name for these people. What was it? Fallen Angels? Demon worshippers, didn’t you say? Well, after seeing what they did to Blythe, I believe you. Oh yeah, I believe everything you’ve told me. What I don’t believe, though, is those things I saw for myself – the woman, Laura, changing shape, becoming that disgusting glob of slime, and Dracula’s double drilling a hole in me with a finger and watching me through a window that he couldn’t possibly reach. Those, and more. A bed full of spiders making a meal of my blood, trees that go hiking, lifts that have a will of their own – you know, little things that don’t happen every day of the week. I want to know, Cally, I want to know how they happened. They were all illusions, weren’t they? But how did I think those things, how did they do it to me? I know you fed me something the other night that sent me a little crazy, but that was the only time you had the chance to. How did they make me
think
all those other things?’

‘You didn’t “think” them. They happened.’

He thrust her away. ‘Go screw yourself.’

They faced each other, Creed white with rage and a big quota of fear, Cally in earnest, desperate to convince him.

‘Look,’ she said, moving in closer again and laying a soft hand on his chest, ‘I know it all seems impossible, but there’s a way you can prove it to yourself.’

Oh God
, he thought,
she’s sincere, she really means it.

‘The camera never lies, does it?’ she persisted.

‘Of course it bloody lies. The camera can say whatever you want it to say if you’re clever enough.’

‘But not to the person who’s in control.’

‘So what are you getting at?’

‘Can you take pictures without using a flash?’

‘In here? Sure, if the light’s good enough. I’ve got the film for it and I can open up the camera setting. The shots won’t be the greatest, but they should be usable.’

‘Something will happen at the ball tonight that you’ll see with your own eyes, but still you won’t believe. Make the camera a witness too.’ She tugged gently at his lapel. ‘I can find a place to conceal you. No one will notice you if you’re careful.’

Excitement began to hold sway over anger and fear. This sounded like an offer that was hard to refuse.

‘You’ll get a photograph that will make world news, Joe.’

Impossible to refuse.

‘Give me a clue,’ he said.

‘I can’t. You’ll have to see for yourself. Even then you’re going to doubt, which is why you’ll need the camera.’

‘Okay, you got me, I’m hooked. But what about Sammy? I’ve got to find him.’

‘I’ll do that while you’re taking the photographs. Everyone will be intent on what’s happening in the ballroom, so I won’t be missed. It’ll give me an opportunity to search the whole place if I move fast. I’ll bring him to you and we’ll leave.’ She was nodding as if reassuring herself. ‘You’re right about my mother – nothing will happen to her now. I’ll have her back as soon as the people who run this place are exposed for what they are. And you’re going to help me do that.’

He drew in a deep breath. ‘All right. One other thing while we’re down here, though – where do they keep those pickled organs?’

It was a good place to observe while unobserved.

Cally had brought him to a shadowy balcony overlooking the long ballroom and although the floor below where the costumed guests were gathered was brightly lit by crystal wall lights, the upper regions were in gloom, as though hovering darkness over a gaiety of colour was a designed effect. Further along from the pillar behind which Creed knelt, his camera pointing through the fancy balustrade, was a minstrels’ gallery; even there the musicians were cast in shadow, the only illumination being soft lights over their music sheets. A harpsichordist led the quartet through a lively High Baroque piece, music that was in keeping with the general choice of early eighteenth-century dress worn by the assembled company. Handel, Creed guessed, although for all he knew of the difference between classical and Baroque, it could have been Mozart or Bach. Whoever, the composer would have rolled over along with Beethoven had he known the sinister kind of establishment in which his jolly tunes were being aired.

He watched the dancers cavort or gavotte, whatever it was they did to this sort of thing, and cursed silently because they were all wearing masks – and some pretty bizarre ones at that. The shots he had taken so far were interesting enough, but worthless without the identities. He could only hope there would be a mass unmasking later on.

The musical piece came to an end and the dance (it seemed like nothing more than a sedate barn dance to Creed) concluded with it. Chatter and subdued laughter filled the gap until the orchestra began a minuet. As the dancers paired up again and the pale colours – golds, blues, pinks – of hooped gowns and flared coats genteelly swirled and dipped, Creed indifferently reeled off a few more frames, this time concentrating on the more preposterous masks among the crowd.

Although in a minority, a number of guests were in costumes other than the period most in evidence, some of the men even in normal black tie and dinner jackets, their partners wearing fashions you’d find in today’s
Tatler
; yet no one was without a mask, be it half-face, full-face, or covering the head completely. And these, even the simplest, had one common theme: they were all grotesque. Like Cally’s jackal head, many were caricatures of animals, several of the more exotic kind such as griffins, serpents, dragons and rukhs. One person wore the giant head of a rat.

And then there were the demons among them.

These came in all shapes and sizes and all manner of images. With the Nikon’s zoom lens, Creed was able to pull in close and he had to admit that the make-up and disguise of some of the guests was quite incredible, if somewhat over the top.

Creed thought they must be hired masqueraders, there to lend fantastical atmosphere to the revelry, for they were treated with almost mock reverence as they wandered through the crowd. Oddly, their clothes – robes, tunics, or loincloths in some cases – seemed lacklustre and shabby, like well-worn jumble from a village sale, and the creatures themselves (difficult to think of them as people, so professional were their disguises) appeared weary, as if the evening was a little too much for them. They shuffled rather than walked, their bodies stooped and uncertain. In truth, they looked dreary rather than exotic.

One was almost naked, a fat-bellied thing with the beak and crest of a rooster; a faded crown adorned his head and a tail in the form of a snake dragged behind him. He wore dulled metal amulets, carried a whip, and appeared to be walking on serpents rather than legs (how did he
do
that?). Another resembled a peacock, tail feathers spread in dingy splendour, his face elongated like a donkey’s. Yet another sported limp, tattered wings and a long gown whose ragged edges dragged along the floor; he would have looked like a downtrodden angel had not his countenance been so disgustingly ugly and had he not carried a mock viper that wriggled and squirmed as if real (clever stuff, this). Creed wondered if this was the idiot’s crass idea of a Fallen Angel. His attention was drawn to someone wearing a crown over long horns. Huge thick-haired ears protruded from this one’s skull, and the goatish face was enhanced by a straggly beard. Fingers and toes tapered impossibly and on his wrist was perched an unhooded goshawk. A white-haired woman – he
assumed
it was a woman – hobbled past the dancers, her face so haggard and severe it seemed she bore the world’s ills upon her crooked shoulders. She was strange enough in herself, but what was even stranger was that one half of her body was painted blue. An individual who Creed couldn’t figure out at all was a man who had a single eye in the centre of his face, a hand that emerged from his chest, and an extra leg that came out of his backside (how
did
he do that?). His skin was covered in metallic feathers.

Creed shook his head in scorn. Maybe
they
thought they looked like demons, but to him they were merely a bunch of badly designed freaks. There were others down there – some even more bizarre – but by now Creed was bored by them.
If you’ve seen one devil, you’ve seen ’em all
, he told himself as he sank into a more comfortable position on the balcony floor. He rested his back against the pillar, taking care he couldn’t be seen by the musicians further along.

Was this what Cally wanted him to witness? Christ, there were better weirdos at the annual Alternative Miss World, when the more extravagant drags went on parade.

He wondered if she had found Sammy yet. The journey from the basement had been easy enough, although once they’d had to duck out of sight when they heard voices around the corner ahead. By this time they were on the ground floor and the room they’d hidden in was an office filled with filing cabinets. He’d recognised the high piping voice of the fat receptionist as footsteps passed by the closed door. Creed had taken the opportunity to change the film in his camera, and then had wanted to snoop into some of those files; but Cally wouldn’t allow it, telling him it was too dangerous to loiter.

Avoiding the main reception area, they had moved towards the rear of the house, into the quieter regions. Cally found a narrow staircase (she seemed to know the place like the back of her hand, and Creed was uneasy about that; still, her mother
had
been locked up there a long time, so maybe it was almost a second home to Cally) which led them to a side entrance to the balcony overlooking the grand ballroom. Behind the minstrels’ gallery was another, much wider, staircase which he assumed descended to the ballroom itself. She had left him there to observe proceedings, warning him to stay hidden and to keep very, very quiet; she promised to return as quickly as possible. That had been over an hour ago, perhaps a bit longer.

At first the spectacle downstairs had dazzled and even excited him, although he soon sensed that the atmosphere wasn’t quite as convivial as it appeared. The mood of the revellers(?) seemed strained, anxious somehow, rather than cheerful. There was a tension in the air, a brittle kind of expectancy that was almost tangible.

He decided he wasn’t going to wait around much longer. Another ten minutes and he’d go in search of Sammy himself. He’d find him even if it meant checking every room in the goddamn place and kicking down doors to do so! Enough was enough.