The House of Lost Souls Read Online Free PDF Page B

of the London morning had become a mournful November grey en route to Surrey in the afternoon. Now, when Seaton looked up, the cloud was blank and low and bruised heavily with its burden of impending rain. Gravel, in larger fragments than he thought usual for paths, crunched or was squirted stubbornly out from under his feet. He could feel the sharpness of individual stones through the soles of his shoes. Halogen lamps had been wired high at intervals in some of the trees and he was glad of the light. He had been obliged to park at the very bottom of the hill. The humanities building was closer to the top. His breathing became more laboured as the incline steepened. The path seemed to narrow and the trees grew denser, limiting the daylight through their crisp brown and orange autumn foliage. So he was glad of the halogen lamps. And particularly grateful for their flat, white glare when he thought he heard the approach of something large and stealthy through the ferns and branches, over the dead leaves and damp grass behind the wall of trees rising along his left, parallel to the narrowing path along which he walked. He stopped and the sound ceased. He could hear his own breathing and the whisper of water dropping on to leaves as the rain began to fall. Up ahead, above him, lights flickered on and off in the humanities building that was his destination.
    He looked around, half-waiting for the sound to stir again. The rain strengthened. He heard drops begin to drip from stiffening leaves and dribble down runnels of bark. It occurred to him that he was soaked, again, for the third time in less than twenty-four hours. And it occurred to him that the wood on the hill was a great deal older than the university buildings so sympathetically designed to blend in with their austere and gloomy surroundings. He waited in the rain to hear again the predatory prowl of whatever was concealed in the trees to his left. He waited for five minutes, glancing a couple of times at his wristwatch. It was growing darker. But no sound came. After five minutes, he moved on up the hill to his meeting with Andrew Clarke, the ethics professor. He did not want to be late. Though he was confident Professor Clarke would have no further, pressing engagements after this. It was a Saturday, after all. And Saturday was a quiet day in academia.
    There was moss spreading on the wood of the building. It furred the sills of the windows and encroached across the stone surround of the main entrance, soft and deeply green. And there was mildew inside. Seaton smelled its scent of subtle decay as soon as the glass door closed behind him and he paused in the blink and stutter of failing fluorescents overhead, wondering which way he ought to go to find the ethics man. There was no one in the long corridor in front of him. There were doors to right and left, numbered he saw, as he progressed along the passage. But none of them bore a name. The mildew smell grew stronger. He saw two doors marked WC with male and female symbols under the initials and went into the Gents because he needed to pee.
    Mildew blotched and spotted the porcelain of the urinals. In the sinks, the mouths of the dripping copper taps were stained and swollen with mould. The mirrors above the sinks reflected black. Seaton saw all of this in the feeble glow of an emergency light screwed into the plaster above the door. The fluorescents were out in here. He peed calmly and then deliberately washed his hands. The paper from the dispenser, when he dried them, felt dusty between his fingers. He liked the mirrors above the row of sinks least. There was a temptation, very compelling, to look into them. He’d glanced at one of them on walking in and thought he’d glimpsed in its dark reflection a grinning flapper under a glitter-ball. It would be a terrible mistake to look into the mirrors in here. He compressed his paper towel in his palm and aimed it at a bin screwed to the wall. It missed. He was reaching