The Ghosts of Sleath

by James Herbert

  ‘Jus’ gimme a coupla minutes.’

  ‘No!’ She couldn’t contain her anger any longer. She pushed by him, brushing away his hand and striding off down the lane.

  Danny followed, then ran ahead, turning to face her and blocking her way again. ‘Why won’t you talk to me? What’ve I done. Is it be -’

  ‘It’s nothing to do with that!’ she snapped. She turned her head aside, despising the smell of cider on his breath. Munce had liked cider, she remembered.

  ‘I didn’t mean nothin. I thought you wanted me to.’ He reached out for her again, this time with both hands, taking her by her bare upper arms. She squirmed in his grip, trying to pull away, but he held on to her, drawing her close. He kissed her, at first on the cheek, then when she froze in his arms, he slid his lips - his wet lips - over to her mouth.

  He was aware that they were in a quiet lane, fields on one side, woods on the other, and there was hardly any traffic at all at that time of day. He pressed himself hard against her, loving the soft contours of her body, her stomach squeezed against his groin, her breasts crushed against his ribs. He pushed his tongue between her lips and spittle - his spittle - drooled onto her chin.

  The paralysis that held Ruth there was as frightening to her as his intentions, for although her limbs were locked tight, her mind was in a frenzy, and the scream that was captive in her throat was shrill inside her head. She could not move. No matter how much she tried, no matter how much her heart convulsed, her silent shrieks pierced her mind, her flesh crawled, she could not move one little muscle against this … dirty … drivelling …

  One hand released her, sliding between their bodies, rising to slip between the buttons of her blouse. His fingertips touched her breast.

  That violation liberated her scream. It burst from her with a fierceness that shocked her foolhardy assailant. He shot away from her and as he did, his hand, which was trapped inside her blouse, ripped away two buttons.

  Ruth stared down at the opening, saw her exposed breast spilling over the top of her lacy white bra, and screamed again, and then again, and then again.

  When Danny came back towards her, his eyes pleading, his hands appealing, Ruth scratched at the air between them. He came to a swift standstill, then foolishly took one more step towards her.

  Ruth ran from him, not caring in which direction she went, blinded by tears, finally released, wanting only to be away from him, out of reach of those dirty, filthy hands, those shiny, dribbling lips. Undergrowth caught at her skirt and thin branches whipped at her bare arms and face as she fled deeper into the woods, and she could hear him calling her name, telling her to come back, that he hadn’t meant to upset her, and in her mind he sounded like Munce all those years ago pleading to her daddy, those same words, that same snivelling tone, the same denials.

  Ruth stumbled around trees, tripping on tree roots, hitting out at foliage that sought to block her path; but she did not stop, she kept going without even looking back to see if she was being followed, crashing through the woods, looking for a place to hide … as she had fled when Daddy had found her and Munce in the woods together, doing … those … things. She had hidden somewhere - she couldn’t remember where now, but it was somewhere safe and dark - but Daddy had found her anyway, he’d heard her weeping and he’d told her it was all right, it wasn’t her fault and that Munce would never harm her again, he would never be able to because he would be shut away in a place where all dirty, disgusting men were kept so that they could be punished and never let out to bother tiny innocents again, but first she had to tell Daddy exactly what Munce had done to her, where he had put his hands and what other part of his filthy body he had used …

  She kept running, words and images tumbling through her head, confusing her so that she had no sense of direction, her bare feet - for her shoes had slipped from her feet - pounding into the forest dust, stirring the dead leaves and breaking small twigs. Her hands and arms were bleeding, there was a gash on her chin where a prickly branch had scythed across it, and her legs were crosshatched with shallow cuts. Her feet bled too.

  Ruth was close to exhaustion when she finally fell. She went down hard and fast, her forehead smacking against the lower trunk of a stout tree. Her cry was small and heard only by herself. She lay there stunned, watching a kaleidoscope of greens and blues and browns wheel around her.

  Gradually the patterns began to slow and take on separate shapes. Her hand was shaking badly, but she was able to wipe moisture from her lashes. She did this again, using both hands this time, afraid of not being able to see.

  She pushed herself up against the tree she had crashed into, half-turning so that one shoulder rested against it. Her forehead was numb where it had made contact with the rough bark and her senses had been numbed too. At least the blow had driven off the hysteria. Now she could only lie there, a quiet, wounded creature who was still full of dread but too exhausted and too dazed to flee any further. She noticed her blouse had opened wider, one half loose from her skirt, and her breasts bore the marks of her flight through the woods, tiny beads of blood beginning to ooze from the scratches and cuts. Ruth slowly drew the sides of the blouse together, hardly aware of what she was doing, instinct telling her she shouldn’t be uncovered that way. She held the material, pressing hard as if willing it to fuse, and drew her legs up so that her knees touched her elbows.

  ‘Oh dear God,’ she murmured. ‘Oh dear God …’

  She crouched there against the tree until her trembling had become less violent and her panic had settled to mere terror.

  She must get home. To where it was safe. To where no one … no one could … touch … her. And she wouldn’t tell Daddy. No, that would be the wrong thing to do. He might look at her in that funny way. The way he had looked at her when he had found her with Munce. She didn’t want him to look at her like that ever again. She hadn’t liked it. It was as if … as if … as if he were … blaming … her …

  Ruth tried to stifle the sob, but it shook her shoulders, convulsed her chest, nevertheless. She must get home. Home was safe.

  The sound hardly registered at first, so soft was its stirring. And then, as the sound became a gentle rustling, her attention was drawn towards it.

  A nearby sapling, quite tall but rod-thin, with branches full of young leaves, appeared to be quivering. At first Ruth thought it was no more than an illusion caused by her own trembling, but when she realized that the sound was the rustling of its leaves she knew that the tree really was moving. Yet no others near or around it stirred. For there was no wind. There wasn’t even a breeze here so deep in the woods. It was as if some powerful invisible hand were shaking the slim trunk to make the leaves above shiver. Yet the trunk was still.

  And the leaves were beginning to loosen and fall.

  It was early summer and the tiny leaves were beginning to fall and they were turning from a fresh, vibrant green to a crisp brown as they floated down and their edges were curling inwards and tearing because of their own brittleness and their lifelessness was making them lighter so that they swooped and seemed to linger in the air.

  Her vision was clearer by now and Ruth watched intently, mesmerized by the display. More and more leaves dropped, so that soon it was like gazing upon a coloured snowstorm, where vivid green changed in flight into first rich, then lustreless, brown. Even as the first of the dead leaves touched the soil around the sapling the unaccountable breeze scooped them up so that they fluttered and spiralled, rising again to mingle with those still falling. The breeze that had no source grew into a wind that whipped up the leaves, sent them diving, tumbling, rearing, and rather than disperse them, drew them into a vortex so that they began to spin, faster and faster, round and round, sucking in even more so that soon Ruth was watching a diminutive cyclone of variegated greens and golds.

  Ruth pushed herself hard against the tree behind her, her eyes wide, her mouth open, her heels digging into the earth. The storm of twisting leaves grew more frenzied as more were
drawn in and within moments they presented an almost solid spinning shape; and still more leaves were torn from the spindly branches so that their flight and the rushing of air filled Ruth’s head with their noise. She wanted to look away, but could not: she was transfixed by the sight.

  The form began to change, to take on a new shape: it lost height, becoming thinner at the top, broadening, then tapering towards the ground.

  The sound became a hissing. And the hissing became a multitudinous whispering, a legion of hushed voices.

  Abruptly, it began to disintegrate.

  To reveal a shape beneath.

  It wasn’t clear, it could not be focused upon; but it took the rough form of a man.

  And Ruth knew who that man was.

  The figure moved within the leaf storm and it seemed to Ruth that a bowed head was slowly rising to look towards her. A shudder interrupted her trembling, for she recognized that amorphous face even before the first feature, a sharp, bent nose whose tip descended too close to the upper lip, had presented itself. Her feet scuffed the soft forest wood in an eccentric pantomime of running, and her cheek crushed itself against the rough bark as she watched at an awkward angle; it was as if she really were fleeing and looking back over her shoulder at the thing that fashioned itself among the swirling leaves. A small sound, almost a mewling, came from her when a dark hole appeared beneath the crooked nose, a hole that had lips - wet, glistening lips.

  It spoke, but its words, like its mass, were still ill-formed, difficult to understand. It might have called her name, it might have declared its own misery; Ruth could not be sure.

  She wanted to close her eyes against this evolving monstrosity - perhaps if she didn’t see it, it really would not be there - but the lure was too great, the fascination too perverse and too compelling: she could not help but watch from the corners of her eyes.

  The blurred figure was stirring again as if testing its own mobility, the movement slow, minimal, when suddenly the leaves around it scattered as if blown by a fiercer wind. The shape was unveiled to her and she saw that Munce was naked.

  ‘Oh no …’ she said in a quiet, mournful voice.

  His flesh had mouldered - for God’s sake, a voice screamed inside her head, of course it had mouldered, he’d been dead for nine years! - and tiny feeding things nestled inside his open wounds. He gazed at her with dead, black eyes.

  The deepest cuts were across his small - for Munce had always been thin - but bloated belly, although the lacerations on his scraggy arms and thighs made up for their superficiality in numbers. She was drawn back to his deadened gaze as if he willed it so and to her further horror she realized that gaping hole of a mouth with its sheeny edges was smiling at her. His head bowed again as he looked down at his own savaged body and she followed his gaze as she knew she was meant to. His marked hands moved inwards towards his groin in a macabre parody of those times long ago when Ruth was a child and they had played their secret games, guiding her attention to the wound that was the deepest of all.

  She suddenly understood the extent of Munce’s self-mutilation and how he had finally ended his wretched and tormented life when she watched a thick glob of black blood ooze from a ragged hole where his genitals had once been.

  12

  GRACE LOCKWOOD KNOCKED once more on the yellow-painted door while Ash stood on the path and looked along the row of small gardens. They were all neat and the two on either side were particularly well kept; the one he was in, however, was showing signs of recent neglect, for weeds were beginning to gain the upper hand and some of the flowers were in urgent need of pruning back. He squinted up at the little window over the front door and wondered why it had interested him so earlier that day.

  The door opened a few inches after a third knock from Grace, and a round face peered from the shadows through the gap.

  ‘Hello, Ellen,’ he heard Grace say. ‘It’s me, Grace Lockwood. I haven’t seen much of you lately.’

  For a moment Ash thought that Ellen Preddle might close the door again, for it narrowed a fraction before the woman’s face came closer for a better inspection.

  ‘I saw the vicar only a few days ago.’ It came out almost as a statement of defence.

  ‘I know, Ellen,’ Grace reassured her. ‘It was Reverend Lockwood who sent us to you.’

  There was a moment’s hesitation. “You’re his daughter, aren’t you?’

  ‘Of course, Ellen. You know me, we’ve spoken on several occasions.’

  ‘I knew you when you were little. And I knew your mother. She was a very kind lady.’

  ‘May we come in?’

  ‘No.’

  The intransigence of her reply startled Grace. She glanced over her shoulder at Ash before trying again. ‘We’re here to help, Ellen. Please won’t you reconsider?’

  ‘How can you help?’ Ellen Preddle’s tone was brusque. ‘None of you understand what’s happened. You couldn’t.’

  Grace stepped aside to allow a clear view of the investigator. ‘Ellen, this is David Ash. I promise you, he knows about these things.’

  ‘Knows? What does he know?’

  Ash wondered why the brusqueness had turned to nervousness. He went forward, a hand lightly touching the door. ‘Mrs Preddle, I’m from the Psychical Research Institute. Reverend Lockwood contacted us to see if we could discover just what’s happening to you.’ It seemed pointless to mention that it had been the vicar’s daughter who had, in fact, contacted the Institute and it would have done a great deal of harm to point out that Reverend Lockwood hadn’t been in favour.

  ‘He said he wouldn’t tell anyone, he said it was just between me and him.’ There was no anger, only despair. ‘He promised.’

  ‘Yes, I know, but other things have happened here in Sleath recently. He hasn’t spoken to anyone else about you, though. He respects your wishes, Mrs Preddle.’

  ‘Miss Lockwood seems to know all about it.’

  ‘I insisted that he told me everything after he visited you last,’ Grace quickly put in. ‘He was in a very distressed state. Look, can we come in and talk to you? Just talk, nothing else. And then if you want us to leave, we will. Mr Ash is … well, he’s a sort of scientist who deals in matters of this kind, and he’ll do his best to understand what’s going on. Perhaps he’ll be able to give us reasons.’

  The door widened and the woman came into the light. Ash noticed Grace give a start.

  Ellen Preddle’s eyes had a strange, distant cast to them, as though her thoughts were elsewhere and the present was only registered in part. There was a darkness around them also, like the smudges of weariness that had discoloured the fresh skin of the young girl in the Black Boar Inn; the flesh beneath the woman’s eyes was puffed, both exhaustion and tears no doubt the cause, and a vein beneath the finer skin of her temple throbbed visibly. Tendrils of black hair mixed with grey hung untidily over her broad forehead and her hands did not seem capable of keeping still for a moment: they clutched at her clothes, touched her face, wrung themselves together constantly. Ellen Preddle, Ash realized, looked haunted.

  She stared directly at him. ‘Can you help my Simon?’ she pleaded, the anxiety in her voice as startling as her appearance.

  ‘You mean your son?’ he replied, keeping his own voice mild and as if there were nothing wrong at all with her question. ‘I think I can help you both, if you’ll let me.’ He was uneasy with his assurance, for his function was merely to explain, disprove or verify; he was neither exorcist nor comforter. However, in these circumstances one small pretence might gain her cooperation.

  Uncertainty at least brought some expression to the woman’s withdrawn gaze and Grace quickly followed up. ‘My father and I are sure that Mr Ash can discover the cause of all this, Ellen, and if he does we’ll probably be able to put an end to it.’

  Ash regarded her with barely disguised astonishment and Grace returned the look with a faint smile of apology.

  The exchange was lost on Ellen Preddle, for her hands had covered
her face. ‘Put an end to it?’ she said in a low, soft moan. ‘Can you really do that? Would Simon finally be at peace?’

  ‘Let us come inside,’ Grace said gently, already moving forward.

  The bereaved woman’s hands fell away from her face and she turned to walk back into the room, neither inviting them in nor refusing them entry.

  Ash followed Grace and scanned the interior of the little terraced cottage. The room he found himself in was cramped but comfortable with its old furniture and bright curtains. To his right was a doorway through which he could see a small kitchen, and a staircase stood directly opposite the front door. A rose-patterned armchair was angled towards the fireplace while table and chairs filled much of the space in the other half of the room. Several ornaments decorated the mantel over the fireplace, but there was only one framed photograph, this of a young boy with large dark eyes and a mop of unruly hair, much of which covered his forehead. The boy was smiling, but it seemed to Ash there was unhappiness in his eyes.

  Ellen Preddle waited in the centre of the room, her shoulders hunched, her hands never still, until Grace guided her towards the armchair. ‘Sit here, Ellen, and let Mr Ash ask you some questions,’ she said as the woman looked up at her for reassurance.

  Ash brought over a hard chair from the table and placed it opposite the seated woman. She regarded him with a demeanour so sad and lost that for several moments he was unable to say anything to her.

  Grace observed his discomfort and stooped to put an arm around Ellen’s shoulders. ‘Don’t be afraid,’ she soothed. ‘Remember, David is here to help you. Just answer his questions the best you can. Now, how about I make us all some tea? Would you like that?’

  The woman nodded slowly, one hand pulling at the cardigan she wore, drawing it across her chest as though she were chilled despite the heat of the day. As Grace left them and went through to the kitchen it suddenly dawned on Ash that it was cold in this room. Before then it hadn’t registered with him that Ellen Preddle was wearing a knitted cardigan over a cotton blouse when it was a particularly warm day. He felt his own flesh contract with the change in temperature almost as though mental recognition had prompted his body.