He had to know.
Now.
Reaching into his pack, he produced the four purple candles, arranged them in the star-like shape, then lit them. He pulled a deep breath, stepped back, and called once again upon the four directions to bring these figures to wholeness.
Nothing.
He kept his breath, and whispered soundless hope.
A stirring came then.
An exhalation like muted wind arrived from a distance, but ever so close that he could feel it brush against his cheek.
Far away the howling began. From the four directions a keening traveled close, closer, then converged on a point between the candles. The flames flickered, then went out. Small tendrils of candle-smoke rose and spiraled to the roof of the pit. The sound echoed through the excavated site, then died.
The new cycle had begun.
Liu tempered the small smile on his lips, but in his heart was exaltation. This time he had been right. Still, there was work to be done.
Slowly, ever so slowly, he reached deep into a pocket for a knife. It glittered with the captured lowering rays of sun that would bring about dusk. Closing his eyes, and breathing deep the musky scent of the tombs and newly extinguished candles, he slashed the knife across his open palm. Like the statues void of but one fixed emotion, he clenched his fist, dropped the blade, and approached the figure of the child fighter.
A drop of blood touched the fighter’s lips. Then, a second. He moved to the compassionate child, repeated the act, then waited.
His gaze darted from one child to the next.
Unacceptable as the emotion was, he could no longer fight the impatience that grew deep within him. And then he saw it.
The fighter, of course. It pleased Liu the fighter would be first.
Orange-brown hues in the small terracotta face lightened to gray, then to warmer shades. A hint of blue surrounded the set mouth. The direct eyes turned dark and clear.
Liu touched the young face and felt cold, hard clay begin to warm. The start of a renewed life burned deep within this one.
The compassionate child figure’s eyes twinkled with a suggestion of light. New color touched the upturned smile and spoke of animation as well.
The archaeologist clasped his hands together in reserved delight. The calculations were correct. His dreams, this time, had been accurate and unflinching. The children were awakening from the dark to see the light of his authority. He would lead them to greatness as he deserved. As it was owed to him.
A faint movement in the shadow. Quick. Decided.
The brick crashed down on his head. He crumpled and fell into a tight defensive posture, face to the wall, then looked up his attacker.
Hsu, the assistant, held the brick high for a second assault if one were needed, then slowly lowered the old weapon. Reaching under his sweater, he pulled out a medallion of a dragon. This one was etched counter-clockwise. He spoke in quiet tones. “It is too soon. The exhumation is not complete.”
Liu tried to move, to protest, but his body was unwilling. He stared horrified as Hsu pulled candles out of a satchel, placed them in a single line, then set them ablaze.
The assistant beckoned something unseen, then, palms out, held it back by offering Liu as a companion on its travels.
Liu mouthed the word “no,” but the wind had already started. Soon it would touch him. And when the dark came it would take his soul. He would not be the leader of these children as he deserved, as he was owed. The small ceremony performed by the assistant had reduced him to the vulnerabilities of nothing more than a common man among far too many.
“It is finished.” Hsu blew out the candles and looked at Liu with pity. “Maybe an accident. Maybe it is not. You wished for more than you should have. It was not the way.” The small, old man in black pants, thin sweater and sandals bowed slightly, then kicked dust over the new intruder. He turned and walked from the pit.
The sun dipped behind a hill. Colors on the horizon brightened, then turned dull. Dusk had settled and brought the end of day and a temporary halt to the subterranean work in progress. It was necessary. It was honorable. But it would have to wait.
Growing food for the masses was, for now, more important.
Liu watched through foggy eyes as the little light waned, disappeared, then turned to inky black. Walled in by culture and necessity, he took a final breath.
The calendar could not be pushed. But soon enough, there would be freedom from the darkness. Then, with another more worthy, his child army would awaken.
The trenches were quickly filled in. The pit was covered by sod.
On the surface farmers had begun to sow seed.
THE HAUNTED HOUSE
E. Nesbit
Edith Nesbit (1858–1924) is today best remembered for her classic children’s books Five Children and It (1902), The Phoenix and the Carpet (1904), and The Railway Children (1906). However, she also wrote a number of short horror stories, often hiding her gender beneath the byline “E. Nesbit” or, following her marriage in 1880, “E. Bland” or “Mrs. Hubert Bland.”
The best of these stories are collected in Grim Tales (1893), Something Wrong (1893), Fear (1910), and In the Dark: Tales of Terror by E. Nesbit (1988), the latter selected and introduced by Hugh Lamb and expanded by a further seven stories for Ash-Tree Press in 2000.
Her other books include the fantasies The Story of the Amulet (1906), The Enchanted Castle (1907), The House of Arden (1908), Harding’s Luck (1909), The Magic City (1910), and Dormant (1911), plus the collections The Book of Dragons (1899) and Nine Unlikely Tales for Children (1901).
The following story was originally published in The Strand Magazine for December 1913 under the author’s “E. Bland” pseudonym …
IT WAS BY the merest accident that Desmond ever went to the Haunted House. He had been away from England for six years, and the nine months’ leave taught him how easily one drops out of one’s place.
He had taken rooms at the Greyhound before he found that there was no reason why he should stay in Elmstead rather than in any other of London’s dismal outposts. He wrote to all the friends whose addresses he could remember, and settled himself to await their answers.
He wanted someone to talk to, and there was no one. Meantime he lounged on the horsehair sofa with the advertisements, and his pleasant gray eyes followed line after line with intolerable boredom. Then, suddenly, “Halloa!” he said, and sat up. This is what he read:
A HAUNTED HOUSE.—Advertiser is anxious to have phenomena investigated. Any properly accredited investigator will be given full facilities. Address, by letter only, Wildon Prior, 237 Museum Street, London.
“That’s rum!” he said. Wildon Prior had been the best wicket-keeper in his club. It wasn’t a common name. Anyway, it was worth trying, so he sent off a telegram.
WILDON PRIOR, 237, MUSEUM STREET, LONDON. MAY I COME TO YOU FOR A DAY OR TWO AND SEE THE GHOST?—WILLIAM DESMOND
On returning next day from a stroll there was an orange envelope on the wide Pembroke table in his parlor.
DELIGHTED—EXPECT YOU TODAY. BOOK TO CRITTENDEN FROM CHARING CROSS. WIRE TRAIN.—WILDON PRIOR, ORMEHURST RECTORY, KENT.
“So that’s all right,” said Desmond, and went off to pack his bag and ask in the bar for a timetable. “Good old Wildon; it will be ripping, seeing him again.”
A curious little omnibus, rather like a bathing-machine, was waiting outside Crittenden Station, and its driver, a swarthy, blunt-faced little man, with liquid eyes, said, “You a friend of Mr. Prior, sir?” shut him up in the bathing-machine, and banged the door on him. It was a very long drive, and less pleasant than it would have been in an open carriage.
The last part of the journey was through a wood; then came a churchyard and a church, and the bathing-machine turned in at a gate under heavy trees and drew up in front of a white house with bare, gaunt windows.
“Cheerful place, upon my soul!” Desmond told himself, as he tumbled out of the back of the bathing
-machine.
The driver set his bag on the discolored doorstep and drove off. Desmond pulled a rusty chain, and a big-throated bell jangled above his head.
Nobody came to the door, and he rang again. Still nobody came, but he heard a window thrown open above the porch. He stepped back on to the gravel and looked up.
A young man with rough hair and pale eyes was looking out. Not Wildon, nothing like Wildon. He did not speak, but he seemed to be making signs; and the signs seemed to mean, Go away!
“I came to see Mr. Prior,” said Desmond. Instantly and softly the window closed.
“Is it a lunatic asylum I’ve come to by chance?” Desmond asked himself, and pulled again at the rusty chain.
Steps sounded inside the house, the sound of boots on stone. Bolts were shot back, the door opened, and Desmond, rather hot and a little annoyed, found himself looking into a pair of very dark, friendly eyes, and a very pleasant voice said:
“Mr. Desmond, I presume? Do come in and let me apologize.”
The speaker shook him warmly by the hand, and he found himself following down a flagged passage a man of more than mature age, well-dressed, handsome, with an air of competence and alertness which we associate with what is called “a man of the world.” He opened a door and led the way into a shabby, bookish, leathery room.
“Do sit down, Mr. Desmond.”
This must be the uncle, I suppose, Desmond thought, as he fitted himself into the shabby, perfect curves of the armchair. “How’s Wildon?” he asked, aloud. “All right, I hope?”
The other looked at him. “I beg your pardon,” he said, doubtfully.
“I was asking how Wildon is?”
“I am quite well, I thank you,” said the other man, with some formality.
“I beg your pardon”—it was now Desmond’s turn to say it—“I did not realize that your name might be Wildon, too. I meant Wildon Prior.”
“I am Wildon Prior,” said the other, “and you, I presume, are the expert from the Psychical Society?”
“Good Lord, no!” said Desmond. “I’m Wildon Prior’s friend, and, of course, there must be two Wildon Priors.”
“You sent the telegram? You are Mr. Desmond? The Psychical Society were to send an expert, and I thought—”
“I see,” said Desmond; “and I thought you were Wildon Prior, an old friend of mine—a young man,” he said, and half rose.
“Now, don’t,” said Wildon Prior. “No doubt it is my nephew who is your friend. Did he know you were coming? But of course he didn’t. I am wandering. But I’m exceedingly glad to see you. You will stay, will you not? If you can endure to be the guest of an old man. And I will write to Will tonight and ask him to join us.”
“That’s most awfully good of you,” Desmond assured him. “I shall be glad to stay. I was awfully pleased when I saw Wildon’s name in the paper, because—” And out came the tale of Elmstead, its loneliness and disappointment.
Mr. Prior listened with the kindest interest.
“And you have not found your friends? How sad! But they will write to you. Of course, you left your address?”
“I didn’t, by Jove!” said Desmond. “But I can write. Can I catch the post?”
“Easily,” the elder man assured him. “Write your letters now. My man shall take them to the post, and then we will have dinner, and I will tell you about the ghost.”
Desmond wrote his letters quickly, Mr. Prior just then reappearing. “Now I’ll take you to your room,” he said, gathering the letters in long, white hands. “You’ll like a rest. Dinner at eight.”
The bed-chamber, like the parlor, had a pleasant air of worn luxury and accustomed comfort. “I hope you will be comfortable,” the host said, with courteous solicitude. And Desmond was quite sure that he would.
Three covers were laid, the swarthy man who had driven Desmond from the station stood behind the host’s chair, and a figure came toward Desmond and his host from the shadows beyond the yellow circles of the silver-sticked candles.
“My assistant, Mr. Verney,” said the host, and Desmond surrendered his hand to the limp, damp touch of the man who had seemed to say to him, from the window above the porch, Go away! Was Mr. Prior perhaps a doctor who received “paying guests,” persons who were, in Desmond’s phrase, “a bit barmy”? But he had said “assistant.”
“I thought,” said Desmond, hastily, “you would be a clergyman. The Rectory, you know—I thought Wildon, my friend Wildon, was staying with an uncle who was a clergyman.”
“Oh, no,” said Mr. Prior. “I rent the Rectory. The rector thinks it is damp. The church is disused, too. It is not considered safe, and they can’t afford to restore it. Claret to Mr. Desmond, Lopez.” And the swarthy, blunt-faced man filled his glass.
“I find this place very convenient for my experiments. I dabble a little in chemistry, Mr. Desmond, and Verney here assists me.”
Verney murmured something that sounded like “only too proud,” and subsided.
“We all have our hobbies, and chemistry is mine,” Mr. Prior went on. “Fortunately, I have a little income which enables me to indulge it. Wildon, my nephew, you know, laughs at me, and calls it the science of smells. But it’s absorbing, very absorbing.”
After dinner Verney faded away, and Desmond and his host stretched their feet to what Mr. Prior called a “handful of fire,” for the evening had grown chill.
“And now,” Desmond said, “won’t you tell me the ghost story?”
The other glanced round the room. “There isn’t really a ghost story at all. It’s only that—well, it’s never happened to me personally, but it happened to Verney, poor lad, and he’s never been quite his own self since.”
Desmond flattered himself on his insight. “Is mine the haunted room?” he asked.
“It doesn’t come to any particular room,” said the other, slowly, “nor to any particular person.”
“Anyone may happen to see it?”
“No one sees it. It isn’t the kind of ghost that’s seen or heard.”
“I’m afraid I’m rather stupid, but I don’t understand,” said Desmond, roundly. “How can it be a ghost, if you neither hear it nor see it?”
“I did not say it was a ghost,” Mr. Prior corrected. “I only say that there is something about this house which is not ordinary. Several of my assistants have had to leave; the thing got on their nerves.”
“What became of the assistants?” asked Desmond.
“Oh, they left, you know; they left,” Prior answered, vaguely. “One couldn’t expect them to sacrifice their health. I sometimes think—village gossip is a deadly thing, Mr. Desmond—that perhaps they were prepared to be frightened; that they fancy things. I hope the Psychical Society’s expert won’t be a neurotic. But even without being a neurotic one might—but you don’t believe in ghosts, Mr. Desmond. Your Anglo-Saxon common sense forbids it.”
“I’m afraid I’m not exactly Anglo-Saxon,” said Desmond. “On my father’s side I’m pure Celt; though I know I don’t do credit to the race.”
“And on your mother’s side?” Mr. Prior asked, with extraordinary eagerness; an eagerness so sudden and disproportioned to the question that Desmond stared. A faint touch of resentment as suddenly stirred in him, the first spark of antagonism to his host.
“Oh,” he said, lightly, “I think I must have Chinese blood, I get on so well with the natives in Shanghai, and they tell me I owe my nose to a Red Indian great grandmother.”
“No Negro blood, I suppose?” the host asked, with almost discourteous insistence.
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Desmond answered. He meant to say it laughing, but he didn’t. “My hair, you know—it’s a very stiff curl it’s got, and my mother’s people were in the West Indies a few generations ago. You’re interested in distinctions of race, I take it?”
“Not at all, not at all,” Mr. Prior surprisingly assured him; “but, of course, any details of your family are necessarily interesting to me. I feel,” he
added, with another of his winning smiles, “that you and I are already friends.”
Desmond could not have reasoningly defended the faint quality of dislike that had begun to tinge his first pleasant sense of being welcomed and wished for as a guest.
“You’re very kind,” he said; “it’s jolly of you to take in a stranger like this.”
Mr. Prior smiled, handed the cigar-box, mixed whisky and soda, and began to talk about the history of the house.
“The foundations are almost certainly thirteenth century. It was a priory, you know. There’s a curious tale, by the way, about the man Henry gave it to when he smashed up the monasteries. There was a curse; there seems always to have been a curse—”
The gentle, pleasant, high-bred voice went on. Desmond thought he was listening, but presently he roused himself and dragged his attention back to the words that were being spoken.
“—that made the fifth death … There is one every hundred years, and always in the same mysterious way.”
Then he found himself on his feet, incredibly sleepy, and heard himself say: “These old stories are tremendously interesting. Thank you very much. I hope you won’t think me very uncivil, but I think I’d rather like to turn in; I feel a bit tired, somehow.”
“But of course, my dear chap.”
Mr. Prior saw Desmond to his room.
“Got everything you want? Right. Lock the door if you should feel nervous. Of course, a lock can’t keep ghosts out, but I always feel as if it could,” and with another of those pleasant, friendly laughs he was gone.
William Desmond went to bed a strong young man, sleepy indeed beyond his experience of sleepiness, but well and comfortable. He awoke faint and trembling, lying deep in the billows of the feather bed; and lukewarm waves of exhaustion swept through him. Where was he? What had happened? His brain, dizzy and weak at first, refused him any answer. When he remembered, the abrupt spasm of repulsion which he had felt so suddenly and unreasonably the night before came back to him in a hot, breathless flush. He had been drugged, he had been poisoned!
The Mammoth Book of Vampire Stories by Women Page 34
