The Bog

by Talbot, Michael

  Melanie gasped and Mrs. Comfrey turned around. Undismayed, she said: “Are you ready, dear? We’ll be going soon.” She stood, pulling a towel around her, and stepped out of the tub.

  Terror-stricken, Melanie stumbled backward as she realized now why Mrs. Comfrey wore such heavy perfume. She clambered to right herself after her fall, and Mrs. Comfrey observed her animation with slight surprise. “Oh, now, didn’t you drink your tea?” she asked with the amiability of an old nanny.

  She started for Melanie and Melanie took a step backward.

  “Why are you doing this?” she gasped. “What are you and why are you here?”

  Mrs. Comfrey looked puzzled. “Why, I’m your nurse. I’ve been watching over you all along. I’m to be the midwife at your baby’s birth.”

  Before she even finished the sentence Melanie had panicked and broken into a run.

  “David!” she cried. “David!” But when there was no answer she dashed into Tuck’s room and lifted him up into her arms. When she rushed back out into the hall she noticed that Mrs. Comfrey was in her room with the door open and was leisurely dressing.

  Still running, Melanie went quickly down the stairs.

  “David! Katy! Where are you?”

  “What is it, Mom?” Katy said, coming over to the stairs “Where’s your dad?”

  “He went out.”

  “Oh, no!” Melanie gasped. “Did he take the car?” Not waiting for an answer she ran to the window and looked out. To her relief she saw that it was still in the driveway.

  “Katy, run out and get in the car, now!”

  Seeing the panic in her mother’s face, Katy did as she was bid. Tuck stirred in Melanie’s arms, his eyes rolling around in confusion. Melanie grabbed her purse with her set of keys to the Volvo in it and ran out into the rain.

  “Mom, what is it?” Katy asked, crying, when they were all in the car.

  “Lock all the doors!” Melanie barked back as she started the car. At the front door of the house Mrs. Comfrey appeared in her raincoat and hat.

  Melanie hit the accelerator and the wheels of the Volvo spun uselessly.

  “Oh, no!” she cried, the drug that had been in the tea still tugging at her will.

  Mrs. Comfrey started down the steps.

  Melanie hit the gas pedal again, rocking the car back and forth. “Oh, no! Oh, no! Oh, no!”

  Katy looked out the car window at Mrs. Comfrey’s approach, and discerning that the older woman was the cause of Melanie’s unholy dread, became even more agitated. “Mom!” she screamed. “What is it? What’s going on?”

  “Don’t let her in!” Melanie gasped. She continued to madly rock the car as Mrs. Comfrey trudged slowly toward them.

  “Mrs. Macauley,” Melanie heard her say above the whine of the tires. “It’s quite stuck. I saw it happen out the window. Mr. Macauley couldn’t even get it out.”

  “Oh, where is he?” Melanie exclaimed as she burst into tears. She continued to rock the car, pounding the accelerator again and again as Mrs. Comfrey’s deathly white hand tapped incessantly against the window.

  “It’s no use,” Mrs. Comfrey shouted. “There’s no place for you to run to.”

  Her sobbing had now become convulsive, and Katy was also screaming and crying, but Melanie would not give up. Desperately she kept trying to rock the Volvo out of the ditch as she watched Mrs. Comfrey walk away and retrieve a large stone. Mrs. Comfrey carried the stone back to the car, and with the same ruthless affability, smiled in the window at Melanie.

  “No!” Melanie screamed as she stomped the pedal even more frantically. With supernatural strength Mrs. Comfrey’s thin, scarecrow arms lifted the stone high above her head, and she was just about to bring it crashing down through the windshield when suddenly the Volvo found traction on something and lurched up out of the ditch. Once in the lane Melanie floored it, and they went speeding down the road. It was a short-lived victory. They had traveled only a few hundred yards when suddenly the road, a virtual bog itself from the rain, simply gave way beneath them, and like a piece of butter sliding off a hot skillet, the car slid back down the muddy cascade and buried itself up to its headlights in the mire.

  Realizing there was no hope of getting it out, Melanie grabbed Tuck and ordered Katy out of the car. Their feet sank up to their ankles in the mud as they struggled to get out the car door, and to Melanie’s continued horror she saw that Mrs. Comfrey was running toward them and was only about a hundred yards away. Not knowing what else to do, she wiped the rain out of her eyes, and then reached back into the car, and pulled the trunk release. Then, pushing Tuck back into the car, she went and got the tire iron out of the trunk.

  By this time Mrs. Comfrey was closing fast upon them, and she seemed not at all concerned by the weapon in Melanie’s hand. In a mindless panic, Melanie braced herself, and just as Mrs. Comfrey was lunging for her, she swung the tire iron around and brought it crashing into Mrs. Comfrey’s side. There was a sort of squelching sound and Mrs. Comfrey pitched to the left, but she did not fall. The thunder cracked and the rain continued to pour down as Mrs. Comfrey sedately surveyed the damage. The tire iron had hit her full in the rib cage and had even left an apparent dent, but no blood trickled out, only a sort of white ooze. Mrs. Comfrey looked irritatedly at Melanie, for the first time displaying a hint of anger.

  She lunged again, her white hand becoming clawlike as she grabbed for Melanie’s throat, and Melanie swung the tire iron again, this time catching Mrs. Comfrey full in the neck. Again Mrs. Comfrey careened to one side, but still she did not fall, and again Melanie brought the tire iron crashing down and hammering into her attacker. This time the flesh of Mrs. Comfrey’s neck split open like a ripe melon and a white substance came out. Before Mrs. Comfrey could recover, Melanie got in another blow and then another, until, to Melanie’s unabated horror, chunks of Mrs. Comfrey’s shoulder started to fall away, revealing her decaying insides, which possessed the consistency of a sort of crumbly cheese. Her vision now blurred by crying, Melanie just continued her assault until Mrs. Comfrey’s head came clean off, and indeed much of her upper torso had been whacked away, but the headless body battled on. It was clear it was about to die, but still it stumbled forward, groping furiously.

  No longer thinking clearly, Melanie screamed and stumbled blindly in the opposite direction, not stopping to hear if the thing was still pursuing her, and then suddenly she ran into a pair of comforting arms. Her crying was uncontrollable as she realized that it was David back from the digs, and she looked up, longing for even so much as a glimpse of his reassuring face. But it was not David. It was Grenville. “I’ve been waiting for you,” he said as he closed his hand tightly about her wrist. Melanie looked past him and saw that his Rolls was parked just a little distance up the lane and the chauffeur was already carrying Katy, kicking and screaming, to the car.

  “What about the boy?” the chauffeur asked.

  Pulling Melanie sharply to his side, Grenville directed his attention to Tuck who was still sitting in the Volvo.

  “Leave him,” Grenville returned. “I think that Professor Macauley’s wife and daughter will be hostages enough.”

  When David neared the cottage the first thing he saw was the Volvo half buried in the ditch, its headlights still shooting up into the pouring rain. And then he saw the tiny figure running toward him. At first he was frightened, not knowing who or what the approaching figure was, but then he saw it was Tuck. He looked worriedly into the Volvo and saw Melanie’s purse and the keys in the ignition, but no sign of either his wife or his daughter. And when the lightning flashed he saw the remains of Mrs. Comfrey.

  “My God, what has happened here?” he murmured as Tuck reached him. He looked around one last time before he swept Tuck up into his arms and ran toward the house. He was halfway there before he realized with amazement that at least Tuck had seemed to recognize him, or recognize that he represented some sort of port in the storm.

  When he got to the house he wrapped a b
lanket around Tuck and placed him in one of the living room chairs. Then he searched the cottage from top to bottom. His heart sank when he still found no sign of his wife or daughter. He did not know what had happened to Mrs. Comfrey, but given that there was no trace of either Katy or Melanie he could only imagine that Grenville now had them. He was about to collapse when in the living room he discovered that Tuck had slipped out of his blanket and was now pacing in front of the fire, his tiny hands clasped behind his back.

  “Tuck?” David said, curious at his strangely adult behavior.

  For the first time Tuck seemed almost to know the name, and he looked at David with concern.

  “Tuck, do you understand me?” David asked excitedly.

  In reply, Tuck babbled a stream of the nonsense syllables that had now supplanted his once intelligible vocabulary, and then looked at David beseechingly.

  David rushed forward and, kneeling down, took hold of both of Tuck’s arms.

  “Tuck, you know what happened, don’t you? You’re trying to tell me, aren’t you?”

  Again Tuck slurred out a stream of nonsense, and again David was struck by not only the apparent and desperate intentionality behind it, but by the increasing aura of power that seemed to be emanating from Tuck, the rapidity of his mastery over motor function, and the growing sharpness of his eyes. Now more than ever David got the unnerving feeling that somewhere deep in Tuck there was a working mind, a conscious and thinking being that was as frustrated by the wall of babble dividing the two of them as David was.

  “God, I wish I understood you,” David muttered, and Tuck also rattled out something with a sigh. Only this time David caught something in Tuck’s speech that caused him to freeze with astonishment.

  “What did you say?” he asked, and Tuck looked up at him, searching David’s eyes for some hint of meaning, and then, apparently finding it, he repeated the syllables.

  David would have been moved enough at the fact that Tuck had repeated the same sequence of phonetic sounds twice in a row. But what really staggered him, caused his very heart to stop, was that he had recognized one of the syllables. It sounded to him disturbingly like ancient Eblaite. Thunderstruck, he repeated one of the few phrases he knew in the language, the sentence that he had first heard Grenville say to Julia.

  No sooner had he said the phrase when Tuck’s own eyes widened with amazement and he reached up and gripped David’s arms excitedly. He shot something else back at David, and not knowing what else to say, David repeated a word that he knew was one of the terms by which the Eblaite people knew themselves.

  “Ibri,” he proffered.

  At this Tuck’s rapture knew no bounds. “Ibri,” he repeated, nodding. And then, wringing his hands together excitedly and hopping around, he cast his gaze up toward the ceiling. “Hallelujah, hallelujah hallelujah!”

  TWELVE

  For the rest of the evening they went around the house pointing at objects and feverishly telling each other the words in their respective languages for those things. With the aid of the article that Burton-Russell had given him and a notebook and pen, David started to construct a lexicon of the ancient tongue that Tuck was now speaking. Lacking the proper stylus and the wet clay for which Tuck, or whoever was now inhabiting his body, could use to record his own tongue, David carved a small wedge in the end of a raw potato. Then, giving the makeshift writing instrument to Tuck along with an ink pad and a notebook, he watched with astonishment as Tuck proceeded to deftly stamp out an explosive stream of cuneiform into his tablet. Had David experienced the phenomenon under other circumstances he might have taken the time to meticulously write down phonetic renditions of each of Tuck’s ideographs. But for the moment he was less concerned with the procedures of his science, and far more concerned with simply breaking through the language barrier of whoever, or whatever, was now in possession of Tuck’s soul.

  They worked at their respective notes right through until dawn, and the morning was punctuated only by a telephone call from Grenville, informing David that his wife and daughter would be safe as long as he remained quiescent and tried nothing. The telephone call was brief and in it David discerned nothing to indicate that Grenville was in the slightest way cognizant of the miraculous transformation David was witnessing in his son.

  Exhausted, they took a brief nap, and to David’s surprise, Tuck was up only a scant hour later, walking around the house and animatedly thumbing through magazines. David fixed them a small lunch and then they continued with their work, toiling once again through the night. By the morning of the next day it was obvious that Tuck had assimilated far more English than David had Eblaite. He still had a good deal of trouble with syntax and was completely baffled by certain words, but all in all it was apparent that the intellect now inhabiting Tuck’s body was a formidable and extraordinary one, and voracious for everything that David could teach him.

  By the third day David no longer even tried to keep up with his compilation of a lexicon in Eblaite, and instead assumed only the role of tutor, answering Tuck’s relentless barrage of pantomimed and crudely phrased questions, and rattling off such a mountain of information that he found it difficult to conceive anyone could absorb it all. But absorb Tuck did, until finally he was able to open up written books and actually glean certain fragments of meaning from them.

  Curiously, even as Tuck’s grasp of English grew, he remained reluctant to attempt actual discussion with David, and limited their exchanges to a battery of one-sided interrogations. When David tried to question why this was Tuck returned succinctly: “Not yet proficient.” By the end of the week Tuck no longer even needed David, and spent long hours sitting in a window seat in the living room and turning pages of books with a speed that left David agog. As quickly as David retrieved a stack of volumes from his library’s shelves, Tuck finished them and put them back, until slowly David’s awe became mingled with fear as he wondered not only what was transpiring in his midst, but whether it was a benevolent force, as he had blindly assumed, or perhaps something far more sinister and even dangerous.

  Over the course of the weekend Tuck devoured virtually every volume in David’s library, and when Monday morning came rolling around, his eyes brimming with all of his new knowledge, he fell into a deep sleep. David sat up next to him all the while he slumbered, wondering if perhaps some watershed had been reached, but it wasn’t until late that night that Tuck awoke once again.

  He glanced at David briefly, and with a look of serious determination slipped out of bed. David followed him downstairs and into the kitchen, and then he looked at David once again.

  “I’d like a beer,” he said.

  David was taken completely off guard and stared down at him aghast. His first reaction was to absolutely refuse the request, but then, on seeing a glimpse of something exhausted, but strangely ancient and powerful, in Tuck’s now unfamiliar gaze, he reconsidered.

  “Very well,” he said. “Just go easy on it. It’s not going to take much to get you drunk.”

  “I am well aware of the limitations of this body,” Tuck returned cryptically.

  His conscience still staunchly rebelling at the idea, David went to the refrigerator and, taking one of Tuck’s tiny cartoon-adorned cups, filled it half full of beer. He handed it to his son and waited nervously for him to drink it.

  “Please, just a little more,” Tuck said, handing the cup back.

  Still jarred by the notion, David poured another small gurgle into the cup.

  “Shall we sit?” Tuck returned, motioning at the kitchen table. They both sat down as David continued to keep his eyes trained on the cup in Tuck’s hand. He felt himself stiffen as Tuck lifted it and took a sip of the amber liquid.

  A sour expression came over his face. “This is beer?” he asked. David nodded and Tuck shook his head sadly. “Then the tavern keeper should be flogged for watering.” He set the glass down and looked at David. “I know you must be wondering what is going on. I am now ready to answer all of your ques
tions.”

  A rush of excitement passed through David. “What has happened to you?” he shot back quickly.

  Tuck’s expression grew somber. “I assume that what you are really asking is what has happened to your son?” David nodded as a wave of disquiet swept through him.

  “I do not know,” Tuck returned. “Let me just say that when I came upon this body, your son had already departed it.”

  David’s face went pale. “And who are you?”

  Tuck took another sip of beer. “My name, phonetically translated into your manner of speaking, is Ur-Zababa. If I am not mistaken you are currently locked in combat with an entity I know as Malakil. I am also sure you have discovered by now that he is an individual of not unformidable power. Long ago I was his teacher. I am responsible for everything he knows.”

  A tide of darkness came over David, both at the news that his son was indeed dead, and at the realization that if the personality before him was Grenville’s teacher, was in possession of all of the knowledge that Grenville possessed and more, there was no telling what mortal peril David was now in.

  His apprehension must have been written all over his face for Tuck, or Ur-Zababa, as he now called himself, quickly spoke again. “There is no need for you to be alarmed. You will find that I am cut from quite a different cloth than Malakil.” He took another sip of beer as he gazed off soberly into the distance. “It is true that I taught Malakil everything he knows, that I gave him the keys to his power. But the infamies he has committed are of his own creation, and no one has been made more remorseful by his wickedness than I.” Tuck, or the entity that now inhabited his body, once again returned his attention to David. “That is why I have entered into this time,” he said. “I mean to see that Malakil and the evil that he has wrought are brought to an end.”