by Brian Lumley
“How?”
“I’ve an idea. It may be feasible, and it may not. But it certainly couldn’t be considered outside the law, and it has to be worth a try. We have to work fast, though, for Muriel Anderson goes down the day after tomorrow, and it will have to be ready by then. Come on, let’s go and speak to your cousin.”
Mr Forster’s cousin, Jack Boulter, made his coffins for him; so I later discovered.
“Wait,” said Forster, as I once more began backing away from the door. “Did they find this…this creature, these Bulgarian peasants of yours?”
“Oh, yes,” my uncle answered. “They tied him in a net and drowned him in the river. And they burned his house down to the ground.”
When they left the house and drove away I went into the study. On my uncle’s desk lay the book he’d shown to Mr Forster. It was open, lying face down. Curiosity isn’t confined to cats: small girls and boys also suffer from it. Or if they don’t, then there’s something wrong with them.
I turned the book over and looked at the pictures. They were woodcuts, going from top to bottom of the two pages in long, narrow panels two to a page. Four pictures in all, with accompanying legends printed underneath. The book was old, the ink faded and the pictures poorly impressed; the text, of course, was completely alien to me.
The first picture showed a man, naked, with his arms raised to form a cross. He had what looked to be a thick rope coiled about his waist. His eyes were three-cornered, with radiating lines simulating a shining effect. The second picture showed the man with the rope uncoiled, dangling down loosely from his waist and looped around his feet. The end of the rope seemed frayed and there was some detail, but obscured by age and poor reproduction. I studied this picture carefully but was unable to understand it; the rope appeared to be fastened to the man’s body just above his left hip. The third picture showed the man in an attitude of prayer, hands steepled before him, with the rope dangling as before, but crossing over at knee height into the fourth frame. There it coiled upward and was connected to the loosely clad body of a skeletally thin woman, whose flesh was mostly sloughed away to show the bones sticking through.
Now, if I tell my reader that these pictures made little or no sense to me, I know that he will be at pains to understand my ignorance. Well, let me say that it was not ignorance but innocence. I was a boy. None of these things which I have described made any great impression on me at that time. They were all incidents—mainly unconnected in my mind, or only loosely connected—occurring during the days I spent at my uncle’s house; and as such they were very small pieces in the much larger jigsaw of my world, which was far more occupied with beaches, rock pools, crabs and eels, bathing in the sea, the simple but satisfying meals my uncle prepared for us, etc. It is only in the years passed in between, and in certain dreams I have dreamed, that I have made the connections. In short, I was not investigative but merely curious.
Curious enough, at least, to scribble on a scrap of my uncle’s notepaper the following words:
“Uncle Zachary,
Is the man in these pictures a gypsy?”
For the one connection I had made was the thing about the eyes. And I inserted the note into the book and closed it, and left it where I had found it—and then promptly forgot all about it, for there were other, more important things to do.
It would be, I think, a little before seven in the evening when I left the house. There would be another two hours of daylight, then an hour when the dusk turned to darkness, but I would need only a third of that total time to complete my projected walk. For it was my intention to cross the fields to the viaduct, then to cross the viaduct itself (!) and so proceed into Harden. I would return by the coast road, and back down the half-metalled dene path to the knoll and so home.
I took my binoculars with me, and as I passed midway between Slater’s Copse and the viaduct, trained them upon the trees and the gleams of varnished woodwork and black, tarred roof hidden in them. I could see no movement about the caravan, but even as I stared so a figure rose up into view and came into focus. It was the head of the family, and he was looking back at me. He must have been sitting in the grass by the fence, or perhaps upon a tree stump, and had stood up as I focused my glasses. But it was curious that he should be looking at me as I was looking at him.
His face was in the shade of his hat, but I remember thinking: I wonder what is going on behind those queer, three-cornered eyes of his? And the thought also crossed my mind: I wonder what he must think of me, spying on him so rudely like this!
I immediately turned and ran, not out of any sort of fear but more from shame, and soon came to the viaduct. Out onto its walkway I proceeded, but at a slow walk now, not looking down through the stave fence on my left but straight ahead, and yet still aware that the side of the valley was now descending steeply underfoot, and that my physical height above solid ground was increasing with each pace I took. Almost to the middle I went, before thinking to hear in the still, warm evening air the haunting, as yet distant whistle of a train. A train! And I pictured the clattering, shuddering, rumbling agitation it would impart to the viaduct and its walkway!
I turned, made to fly back the way I had come…and there was the gypsy. He stood motionless, at the far end of the walkway, a tall, thin figure with his face in the shade of his hat, looking in my direction—looking, I knew, at me. Well, I wasn’t going back that way! And now there was something of fear in my flight, but mainly I suspect fear of the approaching train. Whichever, the gypsy had supplied all the inspiration I needed to see the job through to the end, to answer the viaduct’s challenge. And again I ran.
I reached the far side well in advance of the train, and looked back to see if the gypsy was still there. But he wasn’t. Then, safe where the walkway met the rising slope once more, I waited until the train had passed, and thrilled to the thought that I had actually done it, crossed the viaduct’s walkway! It would never frighten me again. As to the gypsy: I didn’t give him another thought. It wasn’t him I’d been afraid of but the viaduct, obviously…
The next morning I was up early, knocked awake by my uncle’s banging at my door. “Sandy?” he called. “Are you up? I’m off into Harden, to see Mr Boulter the joiner. Can you see to your own breakfast?”
“Yes,” I called back, “and I’ll make some sandwiches to take to the beach.”
“Good! Then I’ll see you when I see you. Mind how you go. You know where the key is.” And off he went.
I spent the entire day on the beach. I swam in the tidal pools, caught small crabs for the fishermen to use as bait, fell asleep on the white sand and woke up itchy, with my sunburn already peeling. But it was only one more layer of skin to join many gone the same way, and I wasn’t much concerned. It was late afternoon by then, my sandwiches eaten long ago and the sun beginning to slip; I felt small pangs of hunger starting up, changed out of my bathing costume and headed for home again.
My uncle had left a note for me pinned to the door of his study where it stood ajar:
Sandy,
I’m going back to the village, to Mr Boulter’s yard and then to the Vicarage. I’ll be in about 9.00 p.m.—maybe. See you then, or if you’re tired just tumble straight into bed.
—Zach
P.S. There are fresh sandwiches in the kitchen!
I went to the kitchen and returned munching on a beef sandwich, then ventured into the study. My uncle had drawn the curtains (something I had never before known him to do during daylight hours) and had left his reading lamp on. Upon his desk stood a funny contraption that caught my eye immediately. It was a small frame of rough, half-inch timber off-cuts, nailed together to form an oblong shape maybe eight inches long, five wide and three deep—like a box without top or bottom. It was fitted where the top would go with four small bolts at the corners; these held in position twin cutter blades (from some woodworking machine, I imagined), each seven inches long, which were slotted into grooves that ran down the corners from top edge to bott
om edge. Small magnets were set central of the ends of the box, level with the top, and connected up to wires which passed through an entirely separate piece of electrical apparatus and then to a square three-pin plug. An extension cable lay on the study floor beside the desk, but it had been disconnected from the mains supply. My last observation was this: that a three-quarter-inch hole had been drilled through the wooden frame on one side.
Well, I looked at the whole set-up from various angles but could make neither head nor tail of it. It did strike me, however, that if a cigar were to be inserted through the hole in the side of the box, and the bolts on that side released, that the cigar’s end would be neatly severed! But my uncle didn’t smoke…
I experimented anyway, and when I drew back two of the tiny bolts toward the magnets, the cutter on that side at once slid down its grooves like a toy guillotine, thumping onto the top of the desk! For a moment I was alarmed that I had damaged the desk’s finish…until I saw that it was already badly scored by a good many scratches and gouges, where apparently my uncle had amused himself doing much the same thing; except that he had probably drawn the bolts mechanically, by means of the electrical apparatus.
Anyway, I knew I shouldn’t be in his study fooling about, and so I put the contraption back the way I had found it and returned to the kitchen for the rest of the sandwiches. I took them upstairs and ate them, then listened to my wireless until about 9.00 p.m.—and still Uncle Zachary wasn’t home. So I washed and got into my pyjamas, which was when he chose to return—with Harden’s vicar (the Reverend Fawcett) and Mr Forster, and Forster’s cousin, the joiner Jack Boulter, all in tow. As they entered the house I hurried to show myself on the landing.
“Sandy,” my uncle called up to me, looking a little flustered. “Look, I’m sorry, nephew, but I’ve been very, very busy today. It’s not fair, I know, but—”
“It’s all right,” I said. “I had a smashing day! And I’m tired.” Which was the truth. “I’m going to read for a while before I sleep.”
“Good lad!” he called up, obviously relieved that I didn’t consider myself neglected. “See you tomorrow.” And he ushered his guests into his study and so out of sight. But again he left the door ajar, and I left mine open, so that I could hear something of their voices in the otherwise still night; not everything they said, but some of it. I wasn’t especially interested; I tried to read for a few minutes, until I felt drowsy, then turned off my light. And now their voices seemed to float up to me a little more clearly, and before I slept snatches of their conversation impressed themselves upon my mind, so that I’ve remembered them:
“I really can’t say I like it very much,” (the vicar’s piping voice, which invariably sounded like he was in the pulpit). “But…I suppose we must know what this thing is.”
“‘Who’,” (my uncle, correcting him). “Who it is, Paul. And not only know it but destroy it!”
“But…a person?”
“A sort of person, yes. An almost-human being.”
Then Mr Forster’s voice, saying: “What bothers me is that the dead are supposed to be laid to rest! How would Mrs Anderson feel if she knew that her coffin…” (fading out).
“But don’t you see?” (My uncle’s voice again, raised a little, perhaps in excitement or frustration.) “She is the instrument of Joe’s revenge!”
“Dreadful word!” (the vicar.) “Most dreadful! Revenge, indeed! You seem to forget, Zachary, that God made all creatures, great, small, and—”
“And monstrous? No, Paul, these things have little or nothing to do with God. Now listen, I’ve no lack of respect for your calling, but tell me: if you were to die tomorrow—God forbid—then where would you want burying, eh?”
Then the conversation faded a little, or perhaps I was falling asleep. But I do remember Jack Boulter’s voice saying: “Me, Ah’ll wark at it arl neet, if necessary. An’ divven worry, it’ll look no different from any other coffin. Just be sure you get them wires set up, that’s arl, before two o’clock.”
And my uncle answering him: “It will be done, Jack, no fear about that…”
The rest won’t take long to tell.
I was up late, brought blindingly awake by the sun, already high in the sky, striking slantingly in through my window. Brushing the sleep from my eyes, I went and looked out. Down in the cemetery the gravediggers John and Billy were already at work, tidying the edges of the great hole and decorating it with flowers, but also filling in a small trench only inches deep, that led out of the graveyard and into the bracken at the foot of the knoll. John was mainly responsible for the latter, and I focused my glasses on him. There was something furtive about him: the way he kept looking this way and that, as if to be sure he wasn’t observed, and whistling cheerily to himself as he filled in the small trench and disguised his work with chippings. It seemed to me that he was burying a cable of some sort.
I aimed my glasses at Slater’s Copse next, but the curtains were drawn in the caravan’s window and it seemed the gypsies weren’t up and about yet. Well, no doubt they’d come picnicking later.
I washed and dressed, went downstairs and breakfasted on a cereal with milk, then sought out my uncle—or would have, except that for the first time in my life I found his study door locked. I could hear voices from inside, however, and so I knocked.
“That’ll be Sandy,” came my uncle’s voice, and a moment later the key turned in the lock. But instead of letting me in, he merely held the door open a crack. I could see Jack Boulter in there, working busily at some sort of apparatus on my uncle’s desk—a device with a switch, and a small coloured light-bulb—but that was all.
“Sandy, Sandy!” my uncle sighed, throwing up his hands in despair.
“I know,” I smiled, “you’re busy. It’s all right, Uncle, for I only came down to tell you I’ll be staying up in my room.”
That caused him to smile the first smile I’d seen on his face for some time. “Well, there’s a bit of Irish for you,” he said. But then he quickly sobered. “I’m sorry, nephew,” he told me, “but what I’m about really is most important.” He opened the door a little more. “You see how busy we are?”
I looked in and Jack Boulter nodded at me, then continued to screw down his apparatus onto my uncle’s desk. Wires led from it through the curtains and out of the window, where they were trapped and prevented from slipping or being disturbed by the lowered sash. I looked at my uncle to see if there was any explanation.
“The, er—the wiring!” he finally blurted. “We’re testing the wiring in the house, that’s all. We shouldn’t want the old place to burn down through faulty wiring, now should we?”
“No, indeed not,” I answered, and went back upstairs.
I read, listened to the wireless, observed the land all about through my binoculars. In fact I had intended to go to the beach again, but there was something in the air: a hidden excitement, a muted air of expectancy, a sort of quiet tension. And so I stayed in my room, just waiting for something to happen. Which eventually it did.
And it was summoned by the bells, Harden’s old church bells, pealing out their slow, doleful toll for Muriel Anderson.
But those bells changed everything. I can hear them even now, see and feel the changes that occurred. Before, there had been couples out walking: just odd pairs here and there, on the old dene lane, in the fields and on the paths. And yet by the time those bells were only half-way done the people had gone, disappeared, don’t ask me where. Down in the graveyard, John and Billy had been putting the finishing touches to their handiwork, preparing the place, as it were, for this latest increase in the Great Majority; but now they speeded up, ran to the tiled lean-to in one tree-shaded corner of the graveyard and changed into clothes a little more fitting, before hurrying to the gate and waiting there for Mr Forster’s hearse. For the bells had told everyone that the ceremony at Harden church was over, and that the smallest possible cortège was now on its way. One and a half miles at fifteen miles per hour, which m
eant a journey of just six minutes.
Who else had been advised by the bells, I wondered?
I aimed my binoculars at Slater’s Copse, and…they were there, all four, pale figures in the trees, their shaded faces turned toward the near-distant spire across the valley, half-hidden by the low hill. And as they left the cover of the trees and headed for the field adjacent to the cemetery, I saw that indeed they had their picnic baskets with them: a large one which the man and woman carried between them, and a smaller one shared by their children. As usual.
The hearse arrived, containing only the coffin and its occupant, a great many wreaths and garlands, and of course the Reverend Fawcett and Mr Forster, who with John and Billy formed the team of pallbearers. Precise and practised, they carried Muriel Anderson to her grave where the only additional mourner was Jack Boulter, who had gone down from the house to join them. He got down into the flower-decked hole (to assist in the lowering of the coffin, of course) and after the casket had gone down in its loops of silken rope finally climbed out again, assisted by John and Billy. There followed the final service, and the first handful of soil went into the grave.
Through all of this activity my attention had been riveted in the graveyard; now that things were proceeding towards an end, however, I once again turned my glasses on the picnickers. And there they sat cross-legged on their blanket in the long grass outside the cemetery wall, with their picnic baskets between them. But motionless as always, with their heads bowed in a sort of grace. They sat there—as they had sat for Joe Anderson, and Mrs Jones the greengrocer-lady, and old George Carter the retired miner, whose soot-clogged lungs had finally collapsed on him—offering up their silent prayers or doing whatever they did.
Meanwhile, in the graveyard:
At last the ceremony was over, and John and Billy set to with their spades while the Reverend Fawcett, Jack Boulter and Mr Forster climbed the knoll to the house, where my uncle met them at the door. I heard him greet them, and the Vicar’s high-pitched, measured answer:
