The Wanderer

by Timothy J. Jarvis

  Duncan had been waiting some time when Walker came skipping down the road, out of the sallow smother, dressed in motley, carrying a canvas bag, and grinning obscenely, his periwig askew.

  ‘So glad you’ve come,’ he slurred.

  The man was a soused buffoon; there were no riches to be had, no revelations; Duncan wondered why he’d come.

  ‘Sorry. A mistake. Think I’d better leave.’

  ‘Nonsense. Don’t get chicken-hearted on me. You probably just need a drink.’

  Walker proffered a hip-flask, solid silver, ornate chasing, an antique, probably worth quite a bit. Shrugging, Duncan took it, sniffed its contents. Cognac, good quality. He tilted his head back, took a swig, savoured it before swallowing.

  ‘So, will you come with me?’ Walker asked.

  Duncan shrugged.

  ‘You said there were riches. Proof of the strange.’

  ‘Beneath the knoll,’ Walker gestured behind him. ‘Do you know about the catacombs?’

  ‘I know plans were made, but abandoned. It was unsafe or so?’

  ‘My dear sir, don’t believe all you’re told. Those plans were carried out. The place is riddled. As for unsafe, well…’

  Walker scratched his scalp under his wig with long filthy nails, then went on.

  ‘When the Necropolis was first opened there were entrances all over. But they were sealed up, that untruth you’ve heard put about, and that was that. But I’ve been down there.’

  ‘What’s it like?’

  ‘There are tunnels, vaults filled with treasures. You see, before the catacombs were closed, a number of the great and good of the city of that time were buried there, some inhumed amid opulence, crypts crammed with luxuries, for all the world like Pharaohs, as if the pull of pagan rites was too strong at the last, and they abandoned religious scruples.’

  He took out the hip flask again, had another pull from it.

  ‘This is something I found down there. There’s lots of other loot like it. Some of it’s too unwieldy for me to carry alone and it’s all fairly deep underground. The upper levels have already been plundered. But together we could make a good haul.’

  Duncan nodded.

  ‘Right.’ It sounded unlikely, but perhaps there was something in it. ‘What about this preternatural stuff?’

  ‘Well…I must warn you, the place has a dread atmosphere, and strange things are said to have happened there. I’ve seen things too.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not afraid of boggarts, or anything of that sort.’

  ‘No. You’re a man of reason,’ Walker said, a mite sardonic. ‘Good. But, still, I feel I must tell you the stories. It’d be on my conscience otherwise.’

  He smirked.

  ‘Fine. Get on with it then.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Walker doffed his periwig. Duncan glimpsed scabs, boils, before it was slapped back again.

  ‘So, burial in the catacombs proved very popular with nobs in the years after the Necropolis opened, even for many who’d also monuments or mausolea commissioned for the graveyard itself. The vaults were all soon taken, and a decision was made to dig out more. Miners, working to this purpose, hacking away with picks by oil lamp, broke through into some primeval warren. A crew of six was sent down to explore it. Only one was ever seen again, found several days later in the cellar of a house some miles distant, naked, gibbering, hair turned white as new-fallen snow. No sign of how he got there. The foreman, fearful of losing labour, had him committed to a lunatic asylum, put about the lie the others of the detail had blundered into a pit. But, the miners were anyway wary and the olden ways were blocked off.’

  Walker paused, grimaced, before continuing.

  ‘He’s still there, that man, in the madhouse, still deranged. I’ve visited him. Feral, now very old, cowering, filthy, in the corner of his cell, whimpering, shrieking. His flesh is all over cankered.

  ‘Anyhow, the works continued, but were plagued. Knockers tormented labourers, moved props. Strange howls and scrabblings were heard, and lamps were, of a sudden, extinguished where all was still and the air, good. Then there was a cave-in. Thirty-seven men killed. The tunnels were abandoned altogether after that.

  ‘These incidents have been forgotten by all, save a few with long memories, grey hair, wrinkled, sagging skin. Some of those grizzled ancients insist the tunnels broken into weren’t delved by nature, but terrible elder beings, were outerlying passages of the regions of Agartha, those primeval borings said to riddle this spinning husk.

  ‘I don’t know what I believe about this myself, but I’ve heard scuffling and muttering down there, felt, at times, stalked. And I’ve seen things too.’

  Walker stared at Duncan, eyes wide.

  ‘Pah!’ Duncan scoffed. ‘If weird things do exist down there, I’d like to see them. But I don’t believe it.’

  ‘As you will. Still, I wanted to assuage my scruples, apprise you we may be in danger. I see you’re a brave man, not to be discouraged, and esteem it nonsense, in any case. But, anyway, here is your opportunity to wash your hands of the venture.’

  Walker folded his arms across his chest, regarded Duncan sly.

  It was chill. Duncan rubbed his hands together.

  Walker was a sot. If there were any riches to be found, it would be easy enough to cheat him of his share, perhaps even without violence.

  ‘No, no. I’m undeterred.’

  Walker grinned.

  ‘Good. Follow me.’

  He turned, and, producing a key, unlocked the Necropolis gates, went through, lurched away. Duncan followed, close on his heels. The two men went along a cobbled path, crossed the Bridge of Sighs, a bridge of lichen-starred masonry spanning a stream, the Molendinar Burn, that was, that night, in spate, seethed. On reaching the far side, Duncan looked up at the Necropolis knoll. The graveyard’s trees had shed their leaves, and a drab mulch lay thick on the ground. But, as it had been wet, the place was still green, overgrown with weeds, moss, ivy, bramble, nettle.

  Taking a track that climbed the hillside obliquely, the two men first passed, on their right, a squat, ugly monument commemorating the life of the physicist William Thomson, then, a little further on, a sculpture of Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander Hope Pattison, in military uniform and cloak. The effigy’s right arm had been broken off at shoulder and wrist, and the severed hand nestled grotesquely in its fob pocket. Nearby was the cenotaph of the Lieutenant-Colonel’s brother, the anatomist Granville Sharp Pattison. He was a rogue, to scandal and trouble what raw meat is to blowflies; he kept a loaded brace of antique dragoons’ pistols on his desk always. In his youth, he’d consorted with resurrection men, but, unlike other surgeons forced to rely on the illicit trade in cadavers, had been quite brazen about it, and was finally indicted for body-snatching, though a ‘notproven’ verdict was recorded. Then, in 1816, he was forced to flee to the US after an affair with the wife of a colleague became public. He lived dissolute in Philadelphia a few months, before moving to Baltimore, where he was known for toping and brawling. In 1822, he returned to Britain to take up a post at London University, but his teaching was so poor, indignant students rioted in his lectures, and he was sacked. After this, he left Albion, never to return, sailed back across the Atlantic and, after a time living in a doss house in Atlantic City, playing the pipes on the boardwalk for small change, his fortunes were revived when a former colleague spotted him and found him work at a university in New York. There he lived out his final years, an anatomy lecturer, known and beloved for his flamboyance.

  Bearing left after they’d passed by the anatomist’s cenotaph, Duncan and Walker trudged up a miry path, passing an ancient oak – bark scarred by the pocket-knives of young lovers – and rows of monuments – obelisks, Celtic crosses, draped urns. When they crested the hill, Walker turned, went over to a low parapet, looked down on the city sprawling beneath. Duncan crossed to join him. Most folk were abed, but a few lights glimmered here and there, in the less salubrious quarters, Duncan’s h
aunts; he thought of buttocks, beaten livid by his fists, strewn with clusters of bright pox pustules, smiled. Near to where he and Walker stood, gazing out at the prospect, there was a very grand mausoleum, design modelled on a Templar church: the Monteath tomb. Under its porch, a group of drinkers huddled round a bad fire of newspaper and brushwood, passing a bottle of whisky between them. Monteath, born poor, had, after coming of age, joined the East India Company, and, by dint of diligence, risen to the rank of major. But still, his income would have been limited. Yet, when he returned to Glasgow from the subcontinent, he entered the city’s high society, a man of great wealth. No one knows quite how the Major came by his fortune, but the story goes that, one day, while watching a Maharajah’s procession, he chased after and recovered a stampeding elephant. In a howdah on the animal’s back had been a casket of precious stones; Monteath claimed it had been lost, fallen into a river, but, had, in truth, secreted it somewhere to pick up later. Duncan suspected the truth was a mite more sordid.

  Walker and Duncan turned away from the prospect, went on. Ahead was an odd monument, silvered by light from the crescent moon, a sculpted likeness of a proscenium arch. It had been erected in honour of renowned theatrical entrepreneur, John Henry Alexander, who suffered a long decline and finally passed after a hocus cry of fire at one of his playhouses kindled a panic and a trample for the exits that led to sixty-five deaths. Duncan knew him best as the pioneer of the Great Gun Trick, a bullet-catching illusion.

  As they went by the grim stylite Knox’s column, a darting fawn startled them; Duncan sought to curb tremors, Walker giggled. Then they walked on. Beyond the pillar were two sepulchres set a little apart from other monuments. One was squat, plain, had niches on either side of its entrance holding effigies: on the left, the Virgin, cradling the infant Christ, on the right, Mary Magdalene. Peering in, through the iron gate, Duncan saw, but dimly in the gloom, statues of a crowned woman, and, flanking her, two female angels at prayer.

  But it was to the other tomb Walker led Duncan, a tomb of Moorish design, octagonal, with a domed roof, the final resting place of early travel writer, William Rae Wilson. Walker took out a key, unlocked the padlock securing the gate, pushed it open. Hinges shrieked. That trope (again). Though Gothic novels had already worn it out, Duncan, who’d not read any, jumped. Walker giggled again. They went in. Three cartouches adorned the walls inside the mausoleum; they were water-stained, worn, their inscriptions, difficult to decipher, but Duncan could just make out the phrase, ‘Thy Saints take pleasure in her stones and favour the dust thereof.’

  ‘What?’

  He said it aloud.

  Walker turned to him, sneered.

  The floor of the tomb was strewn with the leavings of opium eaters and louts: empty vials, empty bottles, lewd scrawls, among them a sketch of Zeus’s possession, as a bull, of Europa, that, though crude, had an anatomical fidelity that made Duncan flush, jaded as he was. Sweeping the dross aside, Walker cleared off a trapdoor, then lifted it, let it crash open. A stink rose up. He took an oil lantern from his bag, lit its wick with a match, turned the flame up, held it over the hatch. By its glimmer, Duncan saw a deep shaft sunk into the knoll, rusty iron rungs bolted to the rock. Then Walker spoke, the first words to pass between the two men since they met at the gate.

  ‘We’re going to need another snifter. Steady our nerves.’

  Duncan gulped down the brandy when it was passed to him. The boneyard at night had unnerved him. And now there was the stench wafting from the hatch. And a low snickering; he thought he could hear a low snickering rising with the fetor. He shook.

  ‘I’ve changed my mind. I’m not interested in seeing these riches. In fact, I don’t believe there are any to be had.’

  ‘Oh, there are.’

  ‘So you say, but…’

  Walker seized Duncan’s wrist in his bony grasp.

  ‘Are you a coward?’ he hissed.

  ‘No.’

  The drunk let go, was jovial again.

  ‘Well, in that case…’

  He gestured at the pit.

  The two men clambered down into the stink and the murk. After a while, they reached the foot of the ladder. Before them was a low dank tunnel. They stumbled on in the half-light, Walker in front, Duncan following. Duncan used his handkerchief to cover his mouth and nose against the high, cloying stench, but still choked. Walker capered, gurned, whistled cracked reels. The passages they took sloped down.

  ‘Where are the treasures? Why are we heading deeper?’

  ‘I told you, the upper levels have already been pillaged.’

  It grew warm, close, Duncan began to sweat. He paused to take off his heavy overcoat. As he fumbled with its buttons, Walker, standing a little way ahead, turned, sniggered.

  ‘Lasciate ogne speranza,’ he chanted.

  Then he cackled, winked, plucked off his periwig, bowed low, pointed to his mangy pate.

  ‘The bones of my skull never fused. Look.’

  He prodded with his fingers, dug with dirty talons, peeled back a flap of scalp. There was a gape beneath. A little clear liquid seeped, but there was no blood. Duncan thought he saw maggots squirming in the brainpan, but then Walker stood, put his wig back on.

  Duncan gagged.

  Walker grinned at him, then opened the lantern, pinched out the flame.

  When running his rigged card games, Duncan would sometimes play blindfold, claiming he could still best all-comers. A ruse; the blindfold would be tied by a plant, tied slightly askew, giving Duncan sight of the cards with one eye. Once, though, the plant, drunk, missed his cue, and someone else came up, tied the blindfold, tied it tight. That was a smothering dark, but the dark of the catacombs then was even starker; it was as if it hadn’t been the light that had been put out, but Duncan’s eyes.

  There was no sound. He called out, frantic, began groping his way along the tunnel, not even sure if he was heading up, towards the ladder, or further into the ravelled passageways.

  Then, after some time had passed, he saw a faint glow a little way off, made towards it. As he approached, though, it ebbed from him. He stumbled, staggered after it. Soon he was wrapped in a shroud of filmy spiders’ webs. Then he struck his head on a jutting rock, laid open his brow. Blood ran into his eyes, stung.

  He blundered onto a steep scree, his feet went from under him, and he slid, then dropped, landed hard on dank rock scattered with potsherds. The air knocked from his lungs, he lay there gasping, a landed fish. His ankle hurt; he gently prodded the joint; it was sprained, swelling. He felt round him, crawled about a bit. Then his fingers closed on something; it was cloth, greasy, an oil slicker; he reached into the pockets, turned up a candle stub and a single match. Striking the match against the sole of his boot, he lit the stub.

  By the fitful flame, Duncan saw he was at one edge of a vast cavern. The far side and the ceiling were lost to gloom. The near wall was slick grey rock, starred with strange pale fungi. A little distance away, towards the centre of the cave, was what looked like a cromlech, two upright stones supporting a large slab. It wasn’t potsherds strewing the floor, but bones, some old, yellowing, others stark white, with scraps of pink meat still clinging. Duncan saw, among them, the skulls of animals, the skulls of cattle, sheep, and swine, one he thought was a large dog’s, or possibly a badger’s, a stag’s, with branching antlers, and what he guessed to be a crocodile’s. But there were human skulls too. A great many human skulls.

  Not far off was an entrance to a tunnel. Duncan staggered to his feet and hobbled towards it. But didn’t get far before the flame went out. He limped on. Then heard a low gurgling close by.

  ‘Who’s there?’

  There was silence a moment, then the blackness dinned in his ears: a tumult of snarls, gibbers, howls, sobs, yowls, yawps, yatters, yammers, pules, whickers, wails, shrieks, moans, groans…

  He sensed lurkers in the dark, put out his hands to fend them off, felt cold yielding slimy flesh, rough scaly hide, matted greasy fur. Retc
hing, he backed away. Then turned and ran, ankle pangs dulled by fear.

  All Duncan could ever dig up of that flight were sherds, fragments. His right arm felt dull, leaden, as if touching the vile things had corrupted. There was a low narrow passage, chocked with clay; Duncan had to lie, squirm, kick, fight, dislocated his left wrist. Hordes of black rats. A flooded tunnel, frigid water that chilled his very bones. A fraught painful clamber up a chimney. The half-rotted carcass of some thing that could not, should not be. A rotten rickety plank crossing an abyssal chasm.