The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 23 (Mammoth Books)

by Jones, Stephen

  “There is no point in denying it: this story is a deliberate pastiche of M. R. James’ style and manner, and set in his period,” Oliver confesses, “though perhaps with a few flourishes that are my own.

  “It was originally written as an inset story inside a tale called ‘The Giacometti Crucifixion’, and appears as such in my latest collection, Mrs Midnight.

  “There, it is purported to have been written by ‘The Rev. A. C. Lincoln’, an Oxford contemporary and rival of James’. However, the story was thought capable of standing on its own and appears as such in The Eighth Black Book of Horror.

  “It is one of a number of stories I have written located in the fictional English cathedral city of Morchester. Readers who know the lovely old city of Salisbury will have some idea of my inspiration for Morchester.”

  ONE OF MY first clerical positions was that of a curate to a parish just outside the cathedral city of Morchester. Being of a naturally studious inclination, I devoted my spare time to researching the history of the district and, in particular, the cathedral. I even proposed to write a short monograph on some of the more curious funerary monuments to be found in that building. One in particular attracted my attention because of its strange inscription and carving. My enquiries about this particular monument elicited a story of some very shocking events connected with that tomb which happened some ten years prior to my arrival in Morchester. Despite the passing of a decade, the events were still very clear in the minds of those who witnessed them and who were willing to speak to me. Their accounts are the foundations of the story I am about to tell.

  Let me therefore remove you a while to the ancient city of Morchester in the County of Morsetshire in the year 1863. Though the railway had arrived some fifteen years previously, it could be said that in all other respects time had stood still in the city for many decades. It had been and remained a prosperous market town; it boasted a fine cathedral, mostly in the Early English and Decorated styles. Rooks cawed among its towers and in the immemorial elms that punctuated the sward of its fine old close.

  One cloudless afternoon in the July of that year the great bell of the cathedral began to sound its bass note, summoning the city to the funeral of one of its servants. The Dean was dead. That ancient knell, that call to remembrance and reminder of mortality, would no doubt have seemed to Morchester’s inhabitants no more than a slight eddy in the changeless flow of life and death which washed about its walls. Who could have foreseen that it tolled the commencement of a series of horribly inexplicable events?

  In all conscience, the passing of The Very Rev. William Ainsley, Dean of Morchester was greeted with little sadness, and was the occasion, in some quarters, of no small relief. Dean Ainsley had for many years been infirm and fulfilled his decanal duties with a listlessness only just short of rank incompetence. When, on the day of his funeral, the Very Rev. Stephen Coombe, acceded to the position and sat in his stall in the choir, there was much talk of new brooms sweeping clean. Even those who did not find such a metaphor entirely reassuring were compelled to admit that anything was preferable to the disarray of the previous regime.

  Dean Coombe was a tall lean man in his forties, heavily whiskered as was the fashion in those days, and of High Church leanings. He was in possession of a wife and a daughter, almost as angular as he was. He was an upright man, but stiff and overbearing; he inspired respect perhaps, but no great affection. Being active and zealous in all his dealings, he very soon began to turn his attention to the fabric of Morchester Cathedral which was indeed in a woeful state of disrepair.

  The tenure of Dean Ainsley had been marked by neglect towards the great building he was appointed to maintain, so it was perhaps only just that this legacy of dereliction should be mitigated by his posthumous one. The late Dean had left his entire and considerable fortune to the cathedral, with the provision that a chapel, dedicated to the Virgin Mary, in the north transept should be made as a permanent memorial to him. As the legacy more than amply provided for this, it was resolved, by the dean and chapter, to accept it. There had been murmurings from some of the more low church canons that the building of a Lady Chapel might give rise to accusations of popery, but these were properly dismissed as old fashioned. The Dean was a forceful man and was used to carrying all before him.

  An architect was engaged and there needed only a decision to be made over the location of the chapel. The obvious place was an area closest to the crossing and facing east. This would entail the partial destruction of the eastern wall of the north transept, an exercise which would require the relocation of a number of 327 funereal plaques and stones, the most significant of which was a sixteenth century memorial to a Canon of Morchester Cathedral, one Jeremiah Staveley. It was quite an elaborate affair in polished black basalt about seven foot in height overall, set into the wall some three feet above the ground. It consisted in a slab topped with scrollwork, crudely classical in feel with a niche in which was set a painted alabaster image of the Canon, standing upright in his clerical robes with his arms crossed over his chest. The figure was tall and narrow, the bearded face gaunt: a somewhat disconcerting image which looked as if it portrayed the corpse rather than the living being. Beneath this on the polished slab an inscription had been incised, the lettering picked out in white. It read:

  JEREMIAH STAVELEY

  Canonus Morcastriensis, obiit anno 1595 aetat 52

  It was followed by these verses in bold capital letters:

  BEHINDE THESE SACRED STONES IN DEATH STAND I

  FOR THAT IN LIFE MOST BASELY DID I LIE

  IN WORD AND SINNE FORSAKING GOD HIS LAWE,

  I DANCED MY SOULE IN SATANN’S VERIE MAWE.

  WHEREFORE IN PENANCE I THIS VIGILL KEEPE

  ENTOMBÉD UPRIGHT THUS WHERE I SHOULDE SLEEPE.

  WHEN DEAD RISE UP I’LL READYE BE IN PLACE

  TO MEET MY JUDGE AND MAKER FACE TO FACE.

  STRANGER, REST NOT MY CORSE UNTIL THAT DAYE

  LEST I TORMENT THEE WITH MY SORE DISMAYE.

  The implication of these lines, that the body of Canon Staveley was actually entombed behind the slab, was borne out by the cathedral records and one of the old vergers whose family had been connected with the cathedral since time immemorial. Dean Coombe was disposed to be rather benevolent towards this worthy whose name was Wilby. The man was a repository of cathedral history and lore and the Dean was content to listen politely to Wilby’s ramblings, but he did not expect his condescension to be rewarded by opposition to his plans.

  “Mr Dean,” said Wilby one afternoon, as they stood before the memorial in the north transept. “You don’t want to go a moving of that there stone, begging your pardon, sir.”

  “My dear man, why ever not?”

  “Don’t it say so plain as brass on that there ’scription? ’Tis ill luck to move the bones of the wicked. So said my granfer, and his before him.”

  “And who says this Canon Staveley was a wicked man?”

  “Why ’tis well known. There are tales that have passed down about Jeremiah Staveley, which I might blush to tell you, Mr Dean. The poor women of this city were not safe in their beds from him, they say. A harsh man too, to those below him. But he was a fair man of music and when I were a lad in the choir they still sang his setting to the Psalm one hundred and thirty seven. ‘By the waters of Babylon . . .’, all nine verses too. With the dashing of children agin the stones and all. Some said he would have fain dinged his choir lads agin the stones, too, when they were singing awry. Certain it was, he spared not the rod among them. And there were tales of meeting at night in the church with a man all in black and a gold treasure that he found under the earth in a field that the black man took him to. But it weren’t no good for him, for soon as he was by way of enjoying his gold, the plague fell on him and he wasted to a wraith of skin and bone, and him as tall and narrow as may be already. And when at last he came to be in extreme, as you say, and within a hand’s breadth of mortality, he summons the Dean, as it might be you, sir,
a man with whom he had had some mighty quarrel, and begs him for forgiveness and to be shriven of his many sins. And all his treasure they say he left to the dean and chapter but saying he must be buried upright, to keep him awake, he says. Because in the last days he suffered terribly from dreams and was as mortally afeared of sleep as he was of death. So he begged to be buried upright that he might not sleep till the Last Judgement, even as a dead man. And when the Dean of that time, Dean Cantwell, as I think it was, came out from seeing Canon Staveley in his deathbed, they say the Dean’s face was as white as a linen altar cloth and he spoke not a word to a mortal soul for seven days. This I had from my granfer who had it from his, and it came down in the family with a warning, as my old father used to say. ‘Don’t you touch the Staveley stone, nor go nigh it at night, nor suffer his bones to be moved.’ And that’s what I say to you, begging your pardon, Mr Dean.”

  “Well, well, Wilby,” said Dean Coombe who was rather more shaken by this recitation than he cared to admit, “that is indeed a most fascinating legend. Most interesting. I must write some of it down.”

  “It weren’t no legend, Mr Dean,” said old Wilby. “I had it from my granfer, and he—”

  “Quite so, quite so, my dear man,” said the Dean hurriedly. “Nevertheless, move this old monument we must. But make no mistake, we shall re-site it well, for it is certainly a curiosity, and if there are any human remains behind it we shall lay them to rest with all due respect. Goodness me! What was that noise?”

  Both Wilby and Dean Coombe heard it, a sound like a long inhalation of breath, ragged and rattling, somewhat as if the breather – if such there was – was experiencing difficulty in drawing in air. It was magnified and distorted by the cathedral’s echo which was particularly reverberant in that part of the building. Dean Coombe was not a fanciful man but he had been at his father’s deathbed and he knew the sound of a man’s breathing as he nears the end. This sound was uncomfortably like it.

  “Dear me,” said the Dean. “I really must have that organ seen to.”

  Wilby gave the Dean a quizzical stare, then, bidding him a hurried “Good day, Mr Dean”, he began to shuffle off in the direction of the west door with surprising swiftness. Dean Coombe remained behind standing before the monument. A passer-by was surprised to hear him mutter.

  “Hah! You won’t affright me that easy, Master Staveley. We shall see!”

  The following day the workmen moved in and began the demolition of the eastern wall of the north transept. Dean Coombe had given explicit instructions that the memorial slabs were to be most carefully removed, and, towards evening, he was on hand when the dismantling of the Staveley Memorial began. Palmer, the head mason, had set up scaffolding and constructed a wooden cradle in which to take the stone.

  Dean Coombe suggested that the painted alabaster effigy in the niche be removed first, but this proved unexpectedly troublesome. The statue had been very securely cemented to its base, and one of the workmen cut himself on one of the folds of the statue’s long gown. The workmanship was unusually precise and unworn by time.

  When the effigy was finally removed, Dean Coombe was intrigued to find that it had been carved all round and that the back of the figure, which had been unseen by any living soul since it had been placed in the niche over two hundred and fifty years ago, had been carved with as much care as the visible front. He noted with particular interest the minuteness with which the sculptor had represented every snaking strand of the subject’s unusually long black hair. He had also taken care to represent a gold seal ring on the third finger of the left hand, even incising the seal with a strange geometrical figure.

  The face too repaid closer inspection. As Dean Coombe remarked to a colleague the following day, in a rather striking phrase, it would seem to have been “done from the death rather than from life”. The skin had been painted white, with a slight yellow tinge, the cheeks were sunken and gaunt and – a rather troubling detail – the mouth gaped slightly, revealing a tiny set of jagged greenish teeth. Then there were the eyes.

  Dean Coombe did not care to dwell long on the eyes. There was, as he later remarked, something “not quite dead” about them. Under the heavy lids an area of creamy white showed punctuated by the pinpoint of a pupil in a cloudy, greyish iris. The impression given was of a last wild stare at life. The painter of the statue had somehow managed to convey the terror of the sinner at the very point of death.

  Despite a certain distaste (as he chose to call it) Dean Coombe was impressed by the remarkably fine workmanship of the image. In the few moments of leisure that he allowed himself he was something of an antiquarian which was why one of his many projects for the cathedral was the setting up of a museum in the chapter house where some of the old plate and vestments of the cathedral could be displayed for the benefit of both the public and the cathedral which would take its sixpences.

  “This is such fine work,” said the Dean, in reality thinking aloud, but ostensibly addressing Palmer the mason. “I wonder if the craftsmanship could be Spanish, though they tended to carve in wood rather than alabaster. Certainly whoever did the painting, not necessarily the sculptor, for the painting of sculpture was a specialised art in those days, you know, looks to have been trained in the peninsular. Most unusual. I must get up something to one of the learned journals on the subject. Now then, Palmer, I want you to set this aside. Take great care of it. I shall have a plaster copy made. The replica we will put back in the niche and we can display the original in my chapter house museum, in a glass case where it may be appreciated from all angles – Good gracious, what was that?”

  There had been a cry of pain accompanied by – had it been an oath? Palmer and the Dean looked around much startled as they had been absorbed in the contemplation of the effigy. However they soon discovered the cause: it was one of the workmen who had accidentally dropped a lump hammer on his foot. He was much rebuked both by Palmer for carelessness and by Dean Coombe for making an unseemly noise in a sacred building. The man protested that some mysterious force had knocked the hammer from his hand, but he was not listened to, for by this time the light was dimming and it was decided to abandon work for the day.

  And so Dean Coombe began to make his way home to the Deanery across the darkling close on that cool March evening. Picture him if you will as he takes this journey, a man you might say not much given to strange fears and frets. Here is a man who walks in life both inwardly and outwardly straight ahead, looking neither to left nor right, untroubled by fancy. This is what you would have said had you seen him stride out from the west door to face a sun which was falling behind the ancient elms in an untidy wrack of clouds. Now he turns a little to his left, and sets forth diagonally across the grass to where the Deanery is situated at the south-west corner of the great close which surrounds the edifice of St Anselm’s, Morchester.

  Barely has he begun on this journey when a whole crowd of rooks, a “building” of them, if I may use the correct ornithological term, rises as one from the elms and begins to wheel about above the trees uttering their distinctive “kaa, kaa” sound. Dean Coombe must have witnessed this behaviour countless times, and yet he starts and stops for a moment to consider those birds. Their flappings across the ensanguined sky of evening appear to him more than usually agitated and chaotic, and their strange, forlorn cries, more desolate even than normal. But these thoughts occupy him for no longer than a few seconds, and then he is on his way once more.

  He quickens his pace, now more resolved than ever to reach his destination. Yet once or twice we see him glance quickly behind him, so quickly that one wonders if he truly wants to see if anything follows. By the time he reaches the gate of the Deanery passers-by are amazed to see that this very sober divine is almost running. The housemaid is equally astonished to open the door to a breathless man.

  We will pass over the Dean’s next few hours. Let us say only that the Deanery, though spacious, is a chilly, damp old house, rather too near the river for comfort. Its physi
cal atmosphere, moreover, is matched by that which exists among its inhabitants. Relations between the Dean and his wife have become distant over the years, and his daughter is a silent creature who longs to escape the Deanery but possesses neither the youth, nor the looks, nor the accomplishments to do so.

  After dinner the Dean spends some time in his study before retiring to bed writing letters and making notes for the forthcoming chapter meeting. His wife passes by his study door twice bearing an oil lamp. She has taken to these nocturnal perambulations lately because she cannot sleep. On the second occasion, it being close on midnight, she looks in to remind her husband of the fact and finds him not writing, but staring dully at the dying embers of his fire. When he becomes aware of her presence he starts violently and stares at her as if she were a stranger. Coolly Mrs Coombe reminds him of the hour, a remark which he dismisses with a perfunctory: “Thank you, my dear.” Soon afterwards she hears his heavy tread on the stairs as he goes to his bedroom.

  Unlike his wife Dean Coombe is accustomed to sleeping soundly, and it is one of the reasons why he sleeps apart from his wife. She would plague him far into the night with troublesome questions and admonitions if they still shared a bed. She has acquired a habit of discontent of late and he lacks the imagination to supply the remedy.

  His own bedroom is small, for Mrs Coombe occupies the offi-cial matrimonial chamber, but it has a fine view over the close, and from the bed, if the curtains are open, you may just see the western front of St Anselm’s. Dean Coombe does not close the curtains because he likes to imagine himself the guardian of this great edifice, keeping watch over it by day and night.

  Once his night-shirt is on the Dean feels suddenly exhausted, but still he kneels dutifully by the bed to say his prayers. But when he has climbed into bed he falls almost immediately into a heavy sleep from which two hours later he is awakened with almost equal suddenness.