The Bog

by Talbot, Michael

  For several seconds he sat staring at them, wondering if the exchange that he had thought he had seen had actually transpired, when suddenly he heard another strange rustling sound scraping along the floor behind him. He turned quickly, assuming that it had to be one of the footmen, but saw that they were all standing motionless and at attention. He looked around the room, still searching for some sign of the mysterious draft, but saw nothing. Not even the candle flames flickered.

  “Is something the matter?” Grenville asked.

  “I thought I heard something.”

  “What did it sound like?”

  “A rustling, like a leaf being blown across the floor.” Grenville smiled. “This old house has been here for many years. When a structure gets as old as it is, it takes on a life of its own. It becomes filled with many strange sounds.”

  “There are a lot of strange things in this valley,” David commented nervously.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, for example, an experience we had the other night at the pub, the Swan with Two Necks.” Melanie and Brad both looked up with interest as David explained the reaction of the villagers to the appearance of the moth. “How do you explain that?” he asked when he had finished.

  “I don’t,” Grenville returned simply.

  “You don’t have any idea why they behaved so strangely?”

  “None at all. Why don’t you ask them?”

  “I did. They won’t tell me.”

  This seemed to please Grenville. He shifted languidly in his chair. “You must understand, I really don’t have much contact with the villagers. We live a rather solitary life out here, Julia and I. However, I can tell you, if you have not already figured it out for yourself, that the people of Fenchurch St. Jude have always had a disarming way about them. They keep to themselves. They behave peculiarly at times. No one knows why. Perhaps they see more in the moth than you see.”

  “What could they possibly see that we don’t?” David said skeptically.

  Grenville took a slow sip of his wine. “Who knows? But what was it Hamlet said? ‘There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’”

  “Bah!” David said, reacting emotionally. “It’s a nice turn of phrase, but I’ve never really bought that line.” Grenville looked at him, his eyes flashing, almost as if he took the remark as a challenge. “Oh, really,” he said, munching on a piece of candied fruit.

  At the same moment David noticed that the flame of one of the candles in a candelabrum sitting on the mantelpiece began to sputter and elongate, sending a ribbon of black smoke upward toward the ceiling. As it did so, a rivulet formed on its side sending a stream of hot wax downward onto the mantel.

  “You know, there’s a Norse version of that saying,” Brad interrupted.

  “The quote from Hamlet?” Melanie asked.

  Brad nodded. “I don’t recall the name of the epic poem it comes from, but I do remember that it’s tenth century. Translated loosely it goes something like, There are more things beneath the tree of life than any stupid ape would suppose.’”

  “The name of the epic poem is the Grimnismal and it dates from a.d. 950,” Grenville informed them.

  David looked at the Marquis, impressed that he should be in possession of such an obscure fact. Because of the unpleasantness of their first meeting and his generally unfavorable opinion of the inhabitants of Fenchurch St. Jude, it had not really occurred to him that the Marquis might be of more than ordinary intelligence and character. But as he looked into the older man’s eyes he realized that something unusual did indeed dance in their depths. More than that, now as he reassessed the striking figure before him, he realized that there was even a special air about Grenville, a sense of power and presence.

  “So Shakespeare took the line from the Grimnismal?” Melanie asked.

  “There’s no way that we can know that for sure,” Brad returned. “But we do know Shakespeare was a great borrower. Many of his plots he lifted from older and lesser-known classics.”

  The conversation continued until finally Julia shifted restlessly. “Shall we retire to the drawing room for our void?” she asked.

  Melanie and Brad looked at her questioningly.

  “A ‘void’ is a medieval expression for a dessert or an after-dinner cordial,” David explained. “It refers to whatever victual one uses to cleanse the palate after a large meal and in another room while the servants are busy clearing or ‘voiding’ the table of its dishes.”

  Grenville looked at him admiringly. “Quite correct,” he commended. And then he cast a somewhat reproving glance at Julia. “Sometimes Julia has a tendency to use terms that are a little out of date.”

  “In any case, I don’t think I could consume another drop of anything,” David said. He went to pull away from the table and suddenly noticed that he wasn’t feeling very well. He felt painfully bloated, and realized that everything had taken on a gauzy appearance. His temples throbbed.

  “Ooo,” Melanie added, “I don’t feel very well.” She raised her hand to her head as if to suggest that she too were feeling a sudden pounding in her forehead.

  David chalked up both of their reactions to their unrestrained gluttony.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” Grenville said, concerned. “Is there anything I can get you?”

  “I think I just need a bit of fresh air,” David returned.

  “Oh, then let’s you and I go for a walk by the lake,” Julia said to him, hopping up excitedly.

  David noticed that Melanie was not at all thrilled at the prospect of him going for a moonlight stroll with Julia, but his head was spinning, and he feared that if he did not get some air he might be ill. Given that Julia had offered to accompany him, he saw no tactful way of getting out of it.

  “I don’t feel very well at all,” Melanie repeated firmly, and she looked at David as she assumed the pinched expression that she always employed when she wanted to go home immediately.

  David looked at her peevishly. First, he resented the fact that she did not trust him. But of equal importance, he did not think that it would be polite of them to stuff their faces and then immediately leave. Given that their coming to dinner had been Grenville’s requirement in return for giving them permission to dig on his land, David did not want to risk offending their host in any way.

  The Marquis intervened. “You and Julia get some air. I’ll take care of your wife. I’ll get one of the servants to bring her some clear tea. We’ll sit by the fire in the drawing room and have a nice chat. She’ll be all right.’”

  David stood, and Julia immediately crossed around the table and latched on to his arm. “This way,” she directed. As they departed he noticed that Melanie was looking at him with daggers in her eyes and he realized that there would be hell to pay later for his insubordination.

  As they approached the door, David glanced once again at the mantelpiece, and to his astonishment saw that the candle that had been dripping wax was gone. Indeed, the entire candelabrum was gone. The room was still filled with countless other candles, and he might scarcely have noticed its absence, were it not that he had been lost in reverie of staring at it earlier. Even the stalagmite of wax where the candle had guttered was now completely absent and the mantelpiece was absolutely clean.

  David looked quickly at Grenville, and the older man smiled faintly, but continued with some piece of courteous patter he was carrying on with Melanie. David was stupefied. He looked again at the empty mantelpiece. Had the candelabrum been carried out by one of the footmen, surely he would have seen it, or at least he would have noticed when someone cleaned up the accumulation of dripped wax. But he had seen nothing. His head spun, and he wondered if he could possibly have imagined the entire occurrence.

  “Come along,” Julia prodded, pulling him out the door.

  Outside, the night was cool but comfortable, and an evening fog had begun to roll in from the lake. The sky had also begun to clear a little and occasional
ly, through a rift in the clouds, a bright and nearly full moon was visible. As they strolled across the grounds David was impressed again by the strange beauty of the place. The well-manicured lawn was like a dewy emerald carpet beneath their feet, and the languid wisps of fog that inched slowly through the trees gave the landscape a dreamlike cast. They reached the ancient balustraded terrace at the end of the lawn, and David observed that even the stagnant waters of the bog lake possessed a darkling beauty. Here and there lilies glowed ghostly white in its calm and obsidian surface, and occasionally, when it broke momentarily through the clouds, he could see the cratered reflection of the moon.

  He looked at Julia. In the bluish glow of the moonlight she appeared even more beautiful than before, and he found himself fighting his attraction for her. Had he not been married, he fancied that he would have thrown himself at her feet. Seldom in his life had he encountered anyone he found more tantalizing and desirable. Her pale white flesh was almost luminous in the moonlight and her perfect visage even more radiant. In a momentary indulgence he imagined himself making love to her, running his fingers through her dark: hair, and kissing her full and exquisite lips.

  She seemed to reciprocate his feelings and suddenly pressed up against him until he could feel her large, full breasts through the black silk of her gown. He pulled away.

  “Is something the matter?” she asked.

  “I’m married,” he said simply.

  “Does that matter?”

  “To me,” he returned. He was extraordinarily drawn to her, even hungered for her, and he sensed that she felt an equal intensity of desire for him. But David had always prided himself on being a man of principle, and he loved both his wife and his children dearly and would do nothing to jeopardize his marriage.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, and the very moment he mouthed the words, the haze of the bog-myrtle wine suddenly welled up in him with a vengeance, and he almost found his lips forming an adulterous invitation in spite of himself. For several moments the strange visceral storm swept through him, as if every fiber of his body were suddenly pliant and no longer had any will of its own. The very night itself seemed to take on a more gossamer cast, and he wondered for a moment if he had been drugged.

  Julia looked at him as if she knew what he was experiencing, and she waited patiently as if to see which opponent, he or the bog-myrtle wine, would come out the victor.

  Several times he found his brain sending out the command to pull her into his arms, but he fought the impulse. Finally, the influence of the wine seemed to pass.

  Julia looked at him oddly and stepped back. “You are a man of unusual will and conviction. Too bad,” she sniffed. “I could be quite entertained by a man like you.”

  She turned and strolled ahead of him and then leaned against the balustrade, gazing out dreamily over the lake. At length, she looked at him again. “Have you ever been unfaithful to your wife?”

  He looked at her with surprise. “No,” he said falteringly, and then suddenly looked down at his feet.

  “Are you telling me the truth?”

  Again he hesitated. “Well, I’ve never really been unfaithful, but...”

  “But?”

  He looked at her, slightly affronted by the brazenness of her questions, but then the entire story came pouring out of him, almost as if he had needed to tell someone for years. “Once, when I was quite a bit younger, I was in Amsterdam strolling on the grounds of the Rijksmuseum when a girl asked me to take her picture.” He leaned against the balustrade and gazed out over the water. “I don’t know if you’ve ever had this experience where once or twice in your life you see someone who’s exactly right. The face, the hair, everything, is just how you would design it if you could design your own perfect lover.” He grew wistful. “Well, this girl was it. The face, the figure... and she had the greenest eyes, like chips out of a jade idol, those eyes.” He shook his head.

  “So what happened?”

  “I took her picture.”

  Julia looked at him, dumbfounded. “That’s it? That’s the transgression that it was just so difficult for you to tell me?”

  He shook his head. “There’s more. After I took her picture I saw that it was the last one on that roll of film, and while she was getting her things, I stole it. I stole the roll of film.” He withdrew his wallet and out of a secret compartment took out a snapshot, trimmed so that it would fit into the credit-card-size enclosure, and handed it to Julia. “I had the film developed, and I’ve carried around that picture ever since.”

  Julia examined the picture carefully.

  He looked at her while she continued to scrutinize the snapshot. “You know, I’ve never told anyone about this before,” he said.

  She shrugged as if she did not consider the honor that extraordinary, and handed the photograph back to him. Again she directed her gaze out over the lake, and he noticed a strange smile cross her face. After several moments he spoke.

  “Julia?”

  She looked at him. “Yes?”

  “Tonight I saw something very strange happen. When we were leaving the dining room a candelabrum sitting on the mantelpiece just vanished. I can’t be sure, but I think Grenville may have made it disappear, as some sort of trick or something.”

  “It was no trick,” she murmured.

  “You mean it did happen?”

  “I did not see it happen, but it’s the sort of thing Grenville would do.”

  “How did he do it?”

  She turned to him, her eyes strangely afire. “Grenville is a man of unusual power, great power. Such a feat would be child’s play for him.”

  “You mean he’s an illusionist?”

  She laughed tauntingly. “Of great ability, I should say. But not an illusionist in your sense of the word.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Then it’s time you learn more about Grenville. It’s time you witness a little more of his power.” She walked up behind him and stood just out of his sight. He saw her hand extend beyond him as she pointed in the direction of the house. “Just watch over there,” she said, allowing her hand to fall.

  He squinted at the distance, at the fog moving lazily through the trees, and at first he saw nothing. He continued to look in the direction he had been instructed, but it wasn’t until a minute or two later that it seemed to him the fog had started to glow. At first the light was so faint that he attributed it to the moon. But then, when the moon passed behind a cloud and the light remained, he realized that there was more to what he was seeing than just moonlight. Suddenly the ghostly luminescence grew brighter, and out from behind the trees walked a sight that caused him to freeze with disbelief.

  In certain respects it seemed to be a centaur, in that it had the torso of a man and the lower body of a horse. In height it stood about eight feet tall, and even in the moonlight he could see the sinews of its massive and well-developed musculature. As it strolled farther into the clearing he saw that the human portion of it was male and possessed handsome and finely chiseled features. Still, a number of its features were distinctly uncentaurlike, and suggested to him that perhaps the true nature of the beast was something quite different. First, and most anomalous, were its fore and middle fingers, which projected some six inches longer than the other fingers on its hands, and these it allowed to droop in a relaxed way like the pincers on some great insect. Equally striking was the look of its flesh. Although all portions of its anatomy were massive and powerful looking, somehow its muscles seemed to have rotted and were only hanging against its body. Here and there its ghostly bluish-gray flesh was flecked and pitted, and withal it had the look of something carious and nearly decomposed.

  It took a step forward, and as it did so he was astonished to discover that the pain in his jaw suddenly throbbed into wakefulness. It stood in the clearing for several moments, preening itself, the fog glowing around it in faint swirls and eddies as it became infused with its preternatural light. And then it stopped and turned its gaze
in his direction.

  The moment it did so he felt another sharp spasm of pain in his jaw. The creature smiled, as if it seemed to understand the influence it was having upon him, and took another step forward. For a moment David remained frozen, staring into the centaur’s hypnotic and strangely beguiling eyes, and then he looked behind him to gleen some hint of what to do next from Julia. To his surprise and growing disconcertion, he discovered that she was nowhere to be seen. He was alone with the thing.

  He turned around and started to run. When he reached the end of the balustraded terrace he looked madly about, wondering if he should try to make his way back to the house, but he realized he was trapped. Even if he did break and try to make a run for it, surely the creature could outrun him. He looked back with horror at the advancing creature. It continued to smile at him malevolently, the fog parting before it as it walked, and with its every step the pain in his teeth and gums intensified.

  Finally, when it reached the balustraded terrace, instead of coming up onto it, to David’s astonishment the creature walked right by and ambled down to the edge of the bog lake itself. It looked at him bewitchingly one last time and then strolled leisurely into the inky black water. The normally placid lake rippled gently as the centaur vanished beneath its surface. Shaken, David ran to the end of the terrace and looked down, and to his continued amazement saw that he could still see it walking along the bottom. He watched, mesmerized, as the eerie luminescence moved deeper into the lake, and finally the glow faded, and all that could be seen in the dark water was the undulating reflection of the moon on its surface.

  In the distance he heard a rumble of thunder and he noticed there was a smell of rain in the air. Still, he could not take his eyes off the lake. He continued to lean against the balustrade and gaze outward, until about twenty minutes later, he thought he saw something come out of the waters on the opposite shore. It seemed to glow dimly in the moonlight, but if his eyes were not deceiving him it no longer possessed the shape of a centaur, but seemed more amorphous, even larval, like a giant and faintly glowing worm.