Stephen Jones (ed)

by The Mammoth Book of Zombies (mobi)

  "… scratches… I hear you! Scratching at the earth… mole, all thin… bleached bones… No! Go away Bones!… wgah'nagl… I can see its head… No!… sh'sh'sh' ftharg… gibbering, must stop, got to leave, get away, white skinny hands all claws crawling across flesh peeling left over floor all damp and stinking eyes lit, burning. No! Got to leave… Help! God help me! Help!… I mustn't, can't say those words… mustn't, can't make me… No, no, no!… evil!…sh'sh'sh'… gibbering, must stop… stop…"

  At last, after several minutes of such torment, he settled into a more easy sleep, his breathing becoming relaxed and even. But, whatever he had been through or deluded himself into believing he had been through in the cellar, must have been awful, I knew, for it to have affected him as severely as this. For a moment I thought about calling in a doctor, but I decided that Poole seemed to have recovered from the wound, such as it was, and I knew, somehow, that it was not the blow to his head that was troubling.

  On an impulse I telephoned the library in Fenley and asked for Foster.

  "What is the matter?" he asked a few moments later after I had introduced myself. "You sound disturbed."

  I explained to him what had happened since my return to the house. "What his mutterings mean, I don't know," I said finally, "though they must be connected in some way with what happened in the cellar."

  "Neurotic hallucinations?"

  "No, I don't think so. Not Poole. Though he hasn't been himself this week-end, I must admit. Something happened, I think, something in the cellar. Though what, who knows?"

  "But you want to find out. Is that why you phoned me?"

  I admitted that it was. "You have a knowledge of the house which I lack."

  "A historical knowledge? Then you believe that it is something from the building's past that has affected your friend?"

  "I do. There's something about this place, something so strong, so suffocatingly strong that it's hardly even possible to think objectively in this place."

  "So that even a man who is a complete, materialistic sceptic could begin to doubt his views and wonder if…?"

  The ease with which Foster was assimilating what I was telling him, made me wonder for a moment if all this came as a surprise to him at all. Or did he know more than what he hinted at? Relieved that I had at least found someone with whom I could confide my fears about the place and who, moreover, had a real knowledge of it, I asked him if he would come to the house after the library had closed. "I would appreciate it immensely if you could help me. I'm sure, as well, that you'll find more than enough to interest you."

  Foster laughed, admitting that he would have been disappointed if I had not asked him. "I have always wanted to investigate that house," he replied. "I am sure that in many ways it could prove as interesting as any in the country. Psychical research has always been an interest of mine, though one which I have so seldom had a chance of investigating before."

  "You believe that is the explanation for all this?" I asked.

  "Did you not suspect that already?" Foster responded, his voice indicating that he knew I had. And, despite the scorn I instinctively felt I should express at the idea, I could not deny it. Such things seemed far from fantastic inside Elm Tree House. I admitted that the thought had not been far from my mind.

  Evidently amused at my reticence, Foster laughed, saying that in that case all doubt had been cast from his mind and he was certain in his conviction that there was definitely something "abnormal" about the house. Before hanging up, he asked if I could pick him up from his house, since he didn't own a car himself and it was a long walk from where he lived to Elm Tree House. Agreeing to this, I told him I would collect him at seven.

  When this had all been settled I returned to Poole to see how he was. The peace that had settled on him after the delirium seemed to have hardly changed. I decided that it would be better to leave him as he was, making do by covering him with a blanket before writing out a note to explain where I had gone in case he woke up before I returned here with Foster. Satisfied that I had done everything I could for the time being, I went out to my car. The sun had only just started to sink lower in the sky, enriching the warm air of the late afternoon with its glow. There were three hours to go before I was due to meet Foster, three hours in which to escape from the depressing atmosphere of the house. I knew that I needed the sight of the invigoratingly healthy countryside with its trees and ferns and hedgerows to lift up my spirits. Driving off down the lane, I headed aimlessly between the rounded hills and valleys that characterize the countryside around Fenley, with its somnolent rivers, forests and glades, the small farmhouses of local stone and the tall church steeples that rise up out of the blue haze of the distance. It is a countryside notable for its subdued beauty and tranquillity. It was, in all, a diversion I had need of and which I savoured to the full. I did not, however, allow myself to forget what had happened, and I thought about it in detail as I drove. It was the sense of freedom, of release from the morbid atmosphere of the house I needed now, not forgetfulness.

  At seven I drew up before Foster's house on the outskirts of Fenley, a bay-windowed building set back between rustling rhododendron. Answering the door himself, Foster showed me into his study. As my eyes adjusted to the rich brown twilight inside, I looked about the room; most of it was filled with a pair of armchairs on either side of an elderly gas fire, a rosewood table by one wall, while before the window, a bust of Goethe set on it, stood a round-topped writing desk which I judged, from the carvings about its darkened wood, to have been inherited from an ancestor who saw colonial service in India. My eyes wandered from this monumental relic to the other items in the room as a way of assessing the character of my new associate. In glass-fronted cabinets along the walls were china ornaments, statuettes, busts and various pieces of bric-a-brac. As we shook hands I turned to the neatly lined shelves of books on one wall, glancing with a nod of my head. "I see you're well read on the supernatural," I remarked, noting such volumes as The Survival of Man by Sir Oliver Lodge, Madame Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine and Crompton 's Guide to Demonology, edited by Nicholai Caffre amongst many other books of this ilk. For a moment I had a feeling of misgiving. Though on the one hand they spoke of an erudite knowledge of the occult, on the other they spoke of a crank. The seriousness on his ascetically intelligent face helped to ease my suspicions, though.

  "I didn't expect to see you again quite so soon," Foster said, smiling at my interest in his books. "Nor with anything quite so intriguing." He ushered me to one of the chairs.

  "You mentioned something about glimpsing a figure in the cellar," he opened, lighting a pipe. "Can you tell me what you thought it looked like?"

  "Hardly," I confessed. "If there really was anything there and I didn't just imagine it, there was hardly more than an instant in which I saw it. Barely enough time to register having seen something at all, except that it was about medium height and pale. And thin. Very thin."

  Foster nodded. Looking up, he said: "Though I doubt if you have ever heard of it, there is a local legend about a 'twig-shinned' phantom which is supposed to haunt the woods about Elm Tree House. This and the thing you glimpsed could be one and the same. As the school boyish name implies, it is reputedly thin and pale, a wasted creature that creeps with distended fingers through the trees. I believe that Elliott O'Donnell has written about it in one of his books, though I cannot just remember which one."

  "And is it known what caused this thing to be there?" I asked.

  "I have always thought it must relate back to the abbey and to the Abbot whose remains disappeared so mysteriously all those years ago. 'Exurgent mortui et ad me veniuntl' - 'The dead rise and come to me,' he said. It's possible that he believed that he would return. Perhaps he did. Somehow, through some unholy alchemy of their blasphemous malpractices, perhaps he and his acolytes were able to bring the semblance of life to his body. This is all very fanciful, I know, but there are references to stitches about the creature's body."

  F
eeling that we were wasting time over matters which would, in all probability have nothing whatever to do with what we were up against, I glanced out of the window at the dimming brightness of the sky. "Whatever it is that lies at the bottom of all this," I interrupted, "cannot be worse than what your suggestions conjure up. However useful they might be in preparing our minds for whatever we discover, I think we would be better spending our time now at the house with Poole. I don't like to leave him there alone, not after dusk. In his state there's no saying what he'll do if he wakes up alone."

  Foster agreed. Collecting his hat from the hallway on the way out, he said: "I had forgotten about your friend in the excitement of the chase, so to speak."

  The last strong rays of the sun were gilding the upper branches of the trees as we set off. These rays had passed by the time we arrived back at Poole's house, a dull grey gloom having settled about its dispiriting grounds. The house itself stood dark and lifeless against the purple haze of the sky.

  "I've rarely seen a grimmer place," was Foster's only comment as we stepped out of the car and approached the house, shivering at the chill. A wind had risen with the dusk, swaying the trees as it circled the house.

  Although Foster's company did something to alleviate the unease that came upon me as I opened the front door and entered the silent twilight inside, it did not disperse it altogether. Perhaps to attempt at hiding this from myself I called out for Poole, though I knew somehow that he would not have as yet recovered. I felt Foster's hand on my arm; perhaps he sensed the atmosphere as plainly as I did and understood the fear filling me now. In a subdued voice Foster said: "Grotesque rites were practised in the abbey they built here all those centuries ago. The effects of this slaughter did not die with those whose bodies were tortured on this spot. They echo through the air even now, marring the peace that should fill this place."

  Switching on the light, I entered Poole's study. Thankfully he was still asleep. "I think it would be better to leave him as he is for the time being," I said. "If anything happens in the next few hours it would be better if he was oblivious of it."

  Foster agreed. "He has been tried to the brink already. It is our turn next, not his. I only hope," he added, with a baleful smile that revealed just how nervous he was, "that we fare better."

  "As long as we remain inside the house we'll be safe," I said. "The doors and window frames will ensure that."

  "I certainly hope so," Foster replied as he shrugged his shoulders dismissively, seating himself in one of the armchairs near the hearth. The embers within it were slowly crumbling into themselves and growing dark. On an impulse I crossed the room and began piling some coal onto them. "We'll need a good fire if we're to stay up all night," I explained. "I take it you intend watching for whatever it is that prowls about the grounds."

  "The poacher? Yes. Though I cannot but feel that the root cause of the whole matter lies inside the cellar. However, I don't suppose either of us would relish the prospect of going there tonight. At least the 'poacher' should cast some light on the mystery of what haunts the woods."

  Eventually, as the minutes passed, we relapsed into silence, Foster patiently reading through a book he had brought in his pocket, while I spent my time alternately checking on Poole and watching the grounds through the window as dusk passed into night. The only sounds were those of a clock slowly ticking on the hearth, the soft moaning of the wind and the rustling of paper as Foster turned the pages of his book. After a while the moon rose in the sky, a grey radiance silvering the leaves of the elms. Yet nothing appeared as the long hours passed. I yawned and began to doze, the tedium tiring me even more than the events of the day.

  It was in such a state, as I drifted between wakefulness and sleep and yearned for nothing more than to be able to slip between the comfortable sheets of my bed, when Foster suddenly spoke. Not catching what it was that he said, I turned from the window and looked towards him. He was staring at Poole, one hand raised into the air for silence.

  There was, I realized, the sound of someone murmuring. Vague, at first, it was not for a moment that I realized it was Poole. There was an almost imperceptible twitching of his lips, as his head rolled softly from side to side. Suddenly he called out. His high-pitched, scream like cry split the air as he leapt to his feet, shuddering. In an instant Foster was beside him. Once, twice the flat of his hand cracked hard against Poole's face, then he grabbed him by the arms and pressed him back to his seat.

  "What was all that about?" I asked, bewildered.

  Foster smiled thinly. There was an incipient trembling in his body which told of the tension coiled inside him. "I wish that I knew," he replied unsteadily. "All that I noticed at first were the words coming from his lips."

  "What words were they?"

  "Old ones - words which few civilized people speak anymore." A fit of trembling, more fierce than any which had passed through him before, shook his body. "Someone must have walked on my grave," he joked weakly. There was a deep gust of wind, and smoke billowed out of the fire. The ashes inside it were almost dead. In an effort to allay the unease that was stealing over me, I made a fuss of restoring life to the fire. A chill, which seemed to me then to be only partially relieved by the brightening glow from the fire as I poked its grudgingly igniting coals, filled the room. I made no more enquiry of Foster concerning what Poole had said. Somehow I did not want to know.

  A further gust of wind suddenly rattled the window panes. Not realizing the cause for their vibration at first, I leapt to my feet in alarm, before an ensuing annoyance at my nervousness overcame it and I made to turn back to the fire. As I did so, however, I heard Poole speak in a low, uncharacteristically sibilant voice. I glanced at Foster, and was surprised to see an expression of terror writhe across his face. Before I could do anything to stop him he grasped a statuette from a cabinet by the wall and shattered it against Poole's head.

  "Why the Hell - " I cried out, catching a hold of Poole as he slumped to the floor, blood flowing from an ugly gash across his forehead. "Are you mad? He's been injured once today already… and now, for no reason at all, you…"

  But I could see that Foster was taking no notice of what I was saying. In silence, he stepped to the window, where he stared into the grounds outside. "Switch off the light!" he whispered authoratively a moment later. So insistent was his voice that, despite the anger I felt towards him for his attack upon Poole, there was nothing I could do but obey his command, placing my friend on the couch once more before crossing to the switch. As the light went off", the room was plunged into a pale twilight lit only by the greyish rays of the moon. Foster crouched at the window, as if to hide himself from view. Nervously I crept towards him.

  "What have you seen?" I asked, but he hushed me to silence. Following his gaze I looked out into the grounds. For a moment or two, until my eyes became adjusted to the gloom, everything seemed as it should have been. The trees were swaying back and forth in the wind, portentous of a coming gale, their actions mimicked nearer the ground by the bushes and shrubs and unkempt tussocks of grass. The woods surrounding the house seemed deep and black and almost impenetrable in the darkness. But then, as the less prominent features became perceptible to me, I realized that something was crawling through the grass. "The poacher?" I whispered for wont of anything more likely to suggest.

  "Poacher?" Foster laughed quietly. "And why should a poacher be prowling so secretively on his belly through the grounds? What wildfowl or game are there here for him to take?" Wiping the mist his breath had left on the window away, he pointed further to our left, adding: "Besides…"

  Looking, I saw another shape in the grass. There was a pale blur of what I took to be flesh. Was it someone's face, looking this way? Shunning the speculations which its abnormal pallor should have given rise to, I noticed that there was another blur, this time partially concealed behind some bushes. Was I mistaken? Were my eyes deceiving me?

  "They must be some children," I said uncertainly a few moments later a
s I made out still more figures.

  "At this time of night?" Foster asked.

  "Then what?" I grasped Foster's arm. "In God's name what?"

  Foster pulled himself free. He pointed at Poole with a look of contempt. "Ask him."

  At this I remembered the way in which Foster had attacked my friend only a few minutes before, and with it the anger I had begun to feel before my attention was diverted to whatever lay hidden outside re-emerged. No doubt discerning the altercations going on inside me as I tried to reconcile Foster's actions with reason, he said: "Can you doubt but that dabblings on his part must be the cause for whatever we can see outside now?"

  "A few prowlers," I said dismissively.

  "Prowlers! You talk as if the word brought order and normality to this house at the mere mention. Can you still not conceive what those things really are?"

  There was a noise at the window as of someone scratching at the glass, and I caught sight of a thin, white hand passing down out of sight. Involuntarily I screamed. I had no choice, for it was a hand from which most of the withered flesh still adhering to it seemed to have been eaten by decay. Overcome by nausea and horror at the hideous sight, I turned away from the window. Badly shaken though he must have been as well, despite his knowledge of what we were up against, Foster had the strength of mind even now to fight against his instincts and speak rationally. "It cannot get inside the house. None of them can. The misshapen door and window frames will ensure that."

  "Them?" I muttered, aghast at the thought. "What are they? What foul, unearthly abominations are those things out there?"

  When he spoke it was with a voice as dry and clinical and matter-of-fact as any man could muster in the situation, dispelling at last what doubts I might have had about him. "The monks who were slaughtered at this spot all those centuries ago," he replied, "servants, even in death, of the man who founded the abysmal abbey they worshipped in, and who was hung, drawn and quartered in the village. It is them or their remnants that prowl about the house."