Shifters of Grrr 2 (30 page)

"Well?" Matthew loomed in my doorway and barked. "Do you have anything to say for yourself,
James
?"

"No," I muttered, staring at my knees. I hated it when Matthew used my real first name. He only did it because he knew it made me uncomfortable, and Matthew loved making people uncomfortable. Silently I cursed my parents for naming me – their only daughter – after James Fauntelroy, my famous male ancestor.
Who does that?

A thousand excuses loomed on my lips. It wasn't my fault the paintings were late. The Halt Institute had just won the contract for one of the most anticipated exhibitions in the entire country. The artist, Ryan Raynard, despite being one of the darlings of the modern art scene (and probably my favourite English artist), was a recluse. He lived in his family's crumbling manor not far from my own flat in Crookshollow, but he hadn't been seen outside the manor walls for at least ten years. Despite never having exhibited, never doing press, and never schmoozing with the rich collectors who made the art world go round, Raynard was one of the most sought-after artists painting in the modern impressionist style – buyers snapped his pieces up as soon as they hit the auction houses. His paintings leaked into the market through his secretary, Simon Host, who was the man I had been dealing with over Raynard's first ever public exhibition. And everything had gone well initially, until I needed to have the paintings shipped to the Institute. Despite numerous calls, emails, and even a drunken attempt to smoke signal from the pub last night (courtesy of my flatmate Kylie helping me drown my sorrows) to Simon's office, I'd heard not a single reply about the delivery of the paintings.

Of course, Matthew didn't care about any of that. All he saw was a big gap in the warehouse where the Raynard paintings should've been, and a staff photographer getting paid to Instagram pictures of his nostrils.

Matthew leaned against the doorframe and scowled at me. He'd curled the ends of his moustache with wax, so it looked as if he was smiling and frowning at the same time. "Gareth isn't going to work this weekend. If those paintings aren't here by tomorrow, the photographs don't get shot until next week, which means the advertisements don't get to the printers on time,
The Guardian
hold back our editorial, and I start wondering why on earth I hired someone so goddamn incompetent."

I gritted my teeth. "I know this, Matthew. I've got it under control."

"Tomorrow, then. On your head be it." Matthew shot me a final, deadly stare, and continued down the hall to harass another curator.

I rose and shut the door, turning the key in the lock so Matthew couldn't walk in again. Belinda waved at me through the glass. I glared at her and pulled down the shade, hoping she hadn't noticed my red face and shaking hands.

I slumped back into my chair, rubbing my fingers against my throbbing temples. I didn't need Matthew to tell me that the artwork was going to be late. I knew it was going to be late, if it even showed up at all. What I didn't know was what to do about it.

Two years ago, I'd landed my dream job as an assistant curator here at Halt, off the back of a successful kinetic exhibition I managed at the Tate Modern. But compared to some of the other curators – who'd been working at Halt so long they remember when Warhol was just an upstart young commercial illustrator with a canned foods fetish – I was green. I'd been so astounded when Matthew shoved a thick file on my desk two weeks ago and announced that it was my job to co-ordinate the exhibition details with Raynard.

My astonishment quickly turned to dread when I realised Raynard wasn't going to be easy to deal with. Despite his absurd insistence on an opening only a month away (most of our exhibitions at this scale were planned a year in advance) he refused to even get on the phone to discuss a single detail, and had a list of demands rivalling that of a rock star. He knew no gallery would turn down his wishes, and he was clearly a man of some considerable ego. I was beginning to hate him more and more each day.

Right now, my fear of losing my job boiled that hate over into seething, unadulterated rage.

Calm down, Alex. You have to think.
I wiped my sweaty palms against my wool skirt. Perhaps Simon Host is just busy with other preparations for the exhibition. Perhaps he's in his office right now. I dialled the number I now knew by heart, after calling it twenty times already today. While I listened to it ring, I refreshed my browser. No new emails. The phone rang and rang... ten times... twenty times... Raynard's secretary still wasn't answering, and there was no way to leave a message.

What am I going to do?

This was the first major exhibit Matthew had entrusted me with. If I messed this one up, I'd be back to doing administration and running the children's gallery talks. If I had any hope of becoming a senior curator one day, I had to figure out a way to solve this. Panicking wasn't going to get those paintings to the gallery. I stared at my car keys on the table. There was nothing else to do.

I was going to talk to Ryan Raynard and make him hand over the artwork, even if it meant breaking into Raynard Hall itself.

***

TWO

I sped out of the Halt Institute parking lot, and straight into a line of cars waiting to turn on to Main Street. The radio blared out a news report about another hiker who'd been attacked by a rabid fox while walking in the forest. That was the third such incident this month.
Must be a seasonal thing,
I thought, flicking the radio over to the local indie station.

I tapped my foot impatiently on the pedal, in my mind seeing Matthew's red face and curly moustache as he chewed me out. It was nearly four pm, and traffic was starting to pick up for the afternoon, especially now that tourist season was closing in. I needed to get across town to Raynard Hall as quickly as possible, so I could catch this Simon Host before he left the estate for the evening.

Like Salisbury and the Fens, Crookshollow Village and the surrounding forest was one of those English landscapes known for its ritual significance throughout history. There were several Neolithic henges and other ancient religious sites scattered across hilltops and hidden in the dense groves of Crookshollow forest. Witches used to gather in the trees to dance naked and take part in ritual orgies - that was, until the witchfinders swept in and put a stop to that. More than 200 convicted witches had been burnt in the market square at the opposite end of Main Street, or at least that's the story they tell at the local medieval torture museum. It's said the witches left their imprint in the landscape – that they transferred their spirits to their animal familiars, and their magic still dwells within the wild cats and foxes and deer and birds of the forest.

Growing up in the village, these stories thrilled me and filled my imagination with enchanted worlds of witches and werewolves and fairies, right there in the forest on my own back doorstep. I was the weird loner kid, the strange girl who drew pictures all the time and sucked at playing footy. After enduring days at school where kids either ignored me or threw things at me, I would take my paints and my camera and hike for miles into the gloom, stopping to draw fantastical scenes of witches dancing by the stream and half-human, half-crow creatures flying between the towering oaks. The forest fuelled my art and held together my soul.

I moved to London as soon as the final bell rang, studied at the Wimbledon College of Arts, got an internship at the Tate Modern, than was offered a full-time position as a professional ass-kisser and errand-girl. In the four years I worked at the Tate, I didn't once pick up a paintbrush. But still the forest had called me. When Halt offered me the job, I accepted without a second thought, packed up my apartment and moved into a tiny two-bed brick semi I shared with my roommate Kylie, a pudgy calico cat named Miss Havisham and several recalcitrant mice. Our tiny flat garden backed onto the forest edge.

I leaned on my horn as a woman wearing a kaftan covered with moon symbols stepped out from a candle shop and wandered across the street in front of the car, staring at her smartphone screen and completely unaware of the fact I had to slam on my brakes to avoid hitting her. It was all just another summer's day in Crookshollow. Because of its significance as an ancient religious landscape, as well as being the site of numerous modern tales of hauntings, Crookshollow was a popular destination with free spirits and new age pagans, all of whom were apparently on the road at
this very moment
, taking things as slowly as their pot-addled brains allowed. Downtown Crookshollow was a hodgepodge of occult stores, artisan candle makers, and alternative record shops, attracting a crowd with a particular disregard for traffic rules. The Halt building - a gleaming, modern installation of steel and glass, housing the art galleries, a witchcraft museum and some bank offices – loomed over the quaint main street, a constant reminder that corporate power still reigned supreme.
 

Soon I escaped the tangle of Main Street and was speeding out toward Raynard Hall. Despite being back in Crookshollow for nearly two years, I hadn't travelled out near the crumbling manor since my childhood. I'd grown up in a small bungalow nearby, on Roundoak Drive, and the grounds of Raynard Hall were as familiar to me as my own childhood home. Back then, the manor had been in the hands of Alistair Raynard, Ryan's father, who lived somewhere up in the Scottish mountains but kept on a few servants at the manor to maintain the estate. They never did a very good job. Overgrown and decaying, the manor had been a popular place for local kids to play, daring each other to approach the windows and peer in at the drab, empty rooms. Its dark stone facade, high gothic windows and sinister gargoyles lining the edge of the roof made it a popular source for local legends of ghosts and strange sightings. One of the most oft-told stories was of a younger Alistair Raynard – when he still lived in the Hall – hunting deer in the night and coming across a coven of witches in the forest. He chased them off his land with his rifle before they could complete their ritual, and so they'd cursed him with some kind of affliction, and that was why he'd fled to Scotland.

I pulled into Holly Avenue. Raynard Hall dominated the street - its towering grey turrets and black shuttered windows casting a dim shadow across the bright townhouses that lined the street. A couple of tourists had parked their bikes at the gates and were snapping pictures of the famous artist's home, but they quickly moved on when they saw my car approach. I parked the car outside the heavy iron gates and stared up at the gothic manor, my breath catching in my throat. I'd walked passed Raynard Hall hundreds of times as a kid, even sneaking into the grounds at night and peeking into the grimy windows to see what ghosts might lurk inside, but it had never looked so menacing before.

I sucked in a breath.
You've got to do this, Alex. You need to call on all your hidden powers of persuasion and allure, and get inside that house. Or you can kiss your career at Halt goodbye.
 

I leaned out the window and pushed the button on the intercom. It buzzed impatiently. My mind went completely blank.
What am I going to say? Ryan Raynard hasn't opened these doors to anyone else in ten long years. What will possibly make him open them for me?
 

The intercom crackled, as if urging me to speak. I took a deep breath, then said, "Hello, Mr. Host? Mr Raynard? I need to talk to someone about the exhibition–"

"Go away," a voice crackled on the other end. "This is private property."

I bristled. Who did this guy think he was? That haughty tone – coupled with my agitation at having being forced to stand outside the manor at all – made me snap back. "I'm parked on the road, sir, which is
not
private property at all, so I'd thank you to lose that tone and let me speak uninterrupted. I'm James Alexandra Kline, from the Halt Institute. I need to know when Ryan Raynard's paintings are being delivered. They should have arrived on Monday and we have a photographer waiting–"

"No one by that name lives here. Now go away."

Now I was getting angry. "Do you think I'm an idiot? Ryan Raynard may be an artistic genius, but he's a fool if he thinks he's flying below the radar living in a manor that would make the Addams Family jealous. How many gargoyles have you got on that facade? One... two... three..." I counted them aloud. "
Fifteen
gargoyles. I mean, that's
obviously
the aesthetic choice of someone who wants to stay hidden away. I'm being sarcastic, in case you can't tell. Listen, whoever you are, I know Raynard is inside that house, and I need to talk to him about the exhibit, and he's left me no other way to contact him. So either you let me in, or I cancel the exhibition. It's that simple."

My heart pounded against my chest. I hadn't planned to say all that. I'd got angry and it had all just slipped out, and now I wished I could take it back. I was taking a huge risk. Raynard could simply decide to cancel the exhibition, and my career would be over before it had even began.

The intercom crackled. "What did you say your name was?"

"James Alexandra Kline. But people just call me Alex–"

"Very well. Drive up to the doors."

The gate creaked open, and I slammed down on the accelerator, careening up the cracked concrete drive before the voice on the end of the intercom could change his mind.
 

"Woah," I said, as I gazed up at the imposing facade. Up close, the manor appeared even more sinister. It didn't appear as if Ryan had done any upkeep on the place since he'd moved in. Weeds snaked across the drive from the wild, overgrown flower beds. Vines twisted around the columns flanking the main entrance. I could see the glass on several windows was cracked or missing, and most were covered with thick, soiled drapes.