‘Mr. Flute!’ Florence Dripping cried out. She ran to him and gently turned the big man over. The three villagers followed briskly, concern on their faces and murmuring sympathies. The policeman groaned and rubbed his sore head. He pulled himself to his feet, aided by Florence and Sammy Solomon.
‘You alright sir?’ said the farmer’s son. The policeman nodded and pulled out a handkerchief to dab his burning nose. He winced when he touched his grazed face. Brushing himself down and thanking his helpers, he looked about the store room.
‘Well, there isn’t anyone here now. They’ve scarpered,’ he said. ‘If you come along with me, Sammy – you’re a hefty lad – we’ll have a look upstairs.’
Before they could move, Alastair leapt out from behind the door and gave a yelp. All eyes turned to him. He stood with both hands behind his back and his boyish features twisted into a veneer of hatred. He gazed at them. ‘So sorry, best bacon is off today,’ he sneered.
‘Alastair, where is Mr. Stalk?’ Florence said and she took a few paces towards him before being rooted to the spot: he produced the boning knife from behind his back and jabbed it threateningly towards her.
‘No further, Florence,’ was Alastair’s harsh command.
‘How dare you use my first name again,’ Miss Dripping said. ‘Alastair, what has got into you? Are you still feeling ill?’
‘Bloody hypocrite,’ Alastair screamed.
‘Now really,’ the policeman interjected, ‘keep your foul mouth to yourself, youngster. Especially in front of a lady.’
‘A lady? Our tittering maid a lady?’
Florence Dripping gasped and blushed. ‘You don’t realize what you are saying, Alastair.’
‘Don’t call me Alastair. This is Theodore you are speaking to.’ The villagers threw glances to each other. ‘Jumped into my bed, she did,’ Alastair whispered coarsely. ‘Made a regular habit of it.’ He addressed the whole group. ‘How do you think Abergail came into being? Why do you think she keeps the girl a prisoner? Young unmarried maid, pregnant? None of you knew she existed.’
‘The boy has gone totally mad. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about,’ moaned Florence Dripping imploringly to all.
How could he know of her past? When she was a maid in the Stubb household, even William Stubb would not have known such details. Even if he did, she knew that he was loathe to talk about times gone, let alone impart such intimate facts to his son.
The policeman was not looking at Florence, but instead kept a steady gaze on the boning knife. He had been edging towards the boy, inch by inch, but not slowly enough, for Alastair threw his head forward and his derision vanished. He stabbed with the knife.
‘Don’t you take a step nearer or I will cut you up for lamb cutlets,’ he threatened and he backed out of the doorway into the shop.
Nobody moved until he had jerked the front door open and was running across the green, grinding insects into the snow with his boots.
‘After him,’ shouted PC Flute.
‘But what about Mr. Stalk?’ said Florence Dripping.
‘It doesn’t look as though he’s here, does it?’
‘But I heard his voice, I’m sure I did.’
‘We’ll look for Stalk later,’ answered the policeman. ‘Come on, let’s catch the scoundrel boy.’
CHAPTER 44
The Chase
BROOD STALK THE butcher gained a vague, disembodied, frozen consciousness; enough to listen to his own last few heartbeats before the cold darkness about him departed and was replaced by a warmer, blacker nothingness. And, with a weak heart giving way, eyelids frozen open, and fingers white and set as though carved into claws, he died.
The landlord’s spectators had dispersed to resume their drinking inside the public bar. Their excited discussion continued on the strange appearance of the insects, picking some wriggling from their jugs and pints of ale; watching them scurry over the plaster and crooked beams on the uneven walls.
Alastair awoke as though from escaping a dream. He found himself standing on the green by The Bulldog Fish Tavern, its snow-laden roof seemingly peppered with soot. ‘What am I doing here?’ he asked himself. His hands had numbed and felt to him as though he was wearing gloves. He looked down to them and upon seeing the long but thin boning knife which he held by the blade, he dropped it as if it was a scorching poker. The snow swallowed it. He was baffled by the sight of sore and bleeding cuts across his palm, then to the generous amounts of flies dotted about him, the furious buzzing while busy with their flying and nest building.
There were shouts and Alastair turned to look back across the green over to the length of small buildings which included the butcher shop and tea room shouldering each other. Hazy, dark clouds of insects masked them, shifting this way and that.
Catching sight of the policeman and the other villagers paddling their way through the blooms of insects, Alastair began to jog casually towards them, expecting them to stop. When he saw that they kept on running, with angry and determined faces – one of them shouting, ‘Come here you little devil’ – he turned sharply to their right. With his energetic legs, he easily ran a half-circle about with a wide berth, to behind them, heading for the straight-through alley which was next to the wooden shuttering over the blacksmiths and the large spoked cart wheels of the wheelwright on the other side.
He went quickly through the alley and out onto the lumpy white track which led down past farmer Solomon’s field. The land held the ghost of Thimriddy Fair and odd snow shapes, hiding rusted tractor wheels and other abandoned farming equipment.
With the help of a slight decline, Alastair accelerated his pace in an attempt to escape his pursuers. Several times he nearly tumbled to the ground when stumbling over dead vines and iced roots. Bushes tore at his clothes and he slipped and slid.
Ranks of bees flew from the trees, and a host of woodlice and weevils were swarming from holes in their wood. Earwigs in their thousands walked the same path.
Alastair held a strange elation that he could not explain. There was a feeling of achievement close by, as though an episode in his life was about to end. He stopped for a moment to catch his breath before looking back from where he had run.
Four figures jogged along the track, coming even closer, though he had gained a lot of ground in front of them with his younger limbs and lighter frame. Not that it mattered if they caught him, he knew; it was still a dream. He pinched his arm. Sure enough, he did not feel anything.
After a minute he found that the track levelled before starting a gentle incline. There was no mistaking the reason for Reverend Musty asking to abandon the church and for wanting another to be built on the scrubland surrounding the canal; Alastair was puffing and sweating from his armpits.
He lost all sense of time. When he reached the zenith of the hill, the church still a way onward, he stood panting for breath, moisture puffing from him as steam; and he gazed down to the village spread out below. The cool sky was clear and cloudless. The village green was grey with its insects, a patch of the muted quilt spread over the hills and slopes that formed the other side of the valley. The chattering brook wound its way down to the scrubland. A writhing mist played along the horizon. Isolated accumulations of insects rose from the scene before dispersing like steam or powder. The afternoon sun had become surprisingly warm for the season.
To the east, the smoking stacks of Grinding sent their dark vapours to the sky. He scanned the panorama again and his eye was caught by a bird wheeling and diving in the expansive sea of air. It floated for a while as though suspended on an invisible wire then pumped its wings and began to shrink until it was a speck of dust hanging over the side of the valley. He looked down to the track again and saw the four pursuers beginning the climb of the hill. They were no more than a minute away.
But what attracted his attention more was the abandoned family church alongside Dr. Snippet’s manor house, there in the distance along Daisytrail Lane. A colossal dusty ball hung over it. All
varieties of flying insects were hovering in position above its spire to form the perfect sphere. The shape made by their collaborative efforts flattened to oblate – becoming wider than the depth of it – only for the spheroid to morph into prolate, and then back again – flattening, then becoming taller again and thinning, flattening and thinning – as if the individual organic components making up the insect ball had become one breathing animal. But then, like a flock of birds or shoal of fish, wide curling strands emerged, depleting the sphere until it was no more, those strands weaving and flailing, curving and spiralling. New granulated black shapes were made fleetingly against the white of the sky; melancholic faces, oil lamps and candles.
Alastair stretched the muscles in his limbs and recovered from his exertion. He turned around, running back down another plain snowed track which came out into farmer Solomon’s sheep field at the top of it. There was excitement within; he felt as though it was a game and that he was escaping from men with guns or crazed chimpanzees.
‘There he is, we’ll get him now,’ called out one of the youths, and Alastair’s pursuers pushed their way through undergrowth in a tree grove before coming out into the same field.
CHAPTER 45
The Church
ALASTAIR REACHED THE bottom of the white, blank field and climbed over a wide gate into the quietness that was Marshmallow Lane. He ran along a verge so as to disguise his footprints. Not far down the tree-lined track was Mrs. Wickling’s ramshackle cottage sunken at the bottom of a bank of wild snow-covered shrubbery, as though hiding. From there, he jogged along to the end of the lane and turned right into Daisytrail Lane. The manor house was ahead but before it stood the flint wall surrounding the church. He ran the ten yards or so, turned and skipped through the brick archway of the derelict graveyard, brushing past the abundance of ivy daubed with snow.
Row upon row of snow-crested tombstones stood at all angles. Nature had overtaken: the alabaster figures strangled by vines; the graves overgrown with weeds and nettles; all layered with whiteness, flawless and clean. He took great pleasure from being the first to impress the drifts with his footprints before leap-frogging over tombstones and patting carved memorial figures on their stone feet. He made his way up to the church and glanced at epitaphs as he went. Such phrases on the monuments for the dead were weather-worn, or snow and moss-covered, though others, perhaps chiselled deeper into the stone, could still be read: “Josiah Crookneck. May He Rest With the Angels in Paradise” and “To our darling daughter Ermintrude Pole, taken from us so early in life”.
Alastair glanced to the left, over the wall to the back garden of the manor house. The marble statue there writhed with the countless insects upon it. The pair of angel wings fell from its shoulder blades into the mounds of pure snow about it.
The church stood with stained glass windows smashed and the stonework weathered and crumbling. Either side of the outer archway could once have boasted fine sculpture that was now marred and unrecognizable. A blackbird on the roof – still many insects there to be seen – let out a croak of a birdcall and flew into the writhing swirls. Alastair pulled on the large door, hanging by one hinge, and to his surprise it swung open wider without much effort.
He came into the nave of the church from the entry porch. A stench of decay and other musty odours emitted from within the interior. Suspensions of dust hung about, picked out by shafts of light that were thrown through the broken coloured windows and breaches in the roof. Pews were haphazardly scattered throughout, many upturned or laying on their backs, and carvings that had adorned them strewn about as though a giant hand had swept them all into confusion.
Alastair picked his way through the wreckage and stood as though in reverence before the bare altar. Cobwebs spanned arches and pillars, and weeds had pushed up through the mosaics and flagstones on the floor of the church. The pulpit lay on its side and was broken and splintered, covered with stone chips and fine powder. Though every step that Alastair took reverberated within the building, a deadness seemed to envelop all else, swallowing the few sounds which came from outside. A shower of dust fell onto his head as there was a flurry of wings above him. Looking up he saw a group of pigeons swoop from their lofty perches in the vaulting before disappearing through a gap in the side of the nave. There, on the column capitals between each clerestory window, weird carvings of beasts and imaginary creatures jutted, all with jaws, mouths or jowls agape, their stone tongues hanging down.
Alastair decided he should hide. His nose began to run so he wiped it with his sleeve and as he did so he saw a door to his left, shielded behind a large pillar. The door was heavy and ornately carved. He went to its brass ring and turned it and pushed to open it. Beyond was another door and a landing with a flight of granite steps leading down. He opened this second door to find a small room lit by a subdued light coming from a half-boarded stained glass window set high into one wall. The place had been the vestry. Alastair kicked at the shards of glass and bricks and rubbish. He pulled open the drawers of an upturned writing desk and found that they were all empty save some sticks of chalk and pen nibs. He saw the many boxes of candles piled waist high at the end of the vestry, but disregarded them for he felt suddenly exhausted.
‘You must get tired,’ he muttered, ‘even in a dream.’ His head felt light. He rubbed his eyes with dusty hands. There was a familiar buzzing and then the fatherly voice, soft and soothing; and, not bothering to listen to the words, he drifted to some dark, quiet corner of his mind where he could be warm and safe and asleep.
Theodore, within the stolen spirit of his son Alastair, bent and picked up one of the candles from a torn carton. It was one of the smaller and thinner ones, and although he saw much larger and thicker candles in crates, he decided his choice would be adequate. He lit it with a match taken from his matchbox. He shielded the flame from a wayward draught and after spluttering and spitting wax and sending out a coil of black smoke, the candle settled and burned steadily. He walked through to the top of the steps then, waiting for a moment only, began to descend.
Constable Flute gasped for breath in Daisytrail Lane and surveyed the white graveyard before him. The muscles in his legs were so fatigued that they shook. He and the group of three youths stood for a full minute without speaking. They had been running the wrong way along Marshmallow Lane. Finally the policeman said, ‘Right. If you three patrol the outer walls, I’ll go inside the church to see if I can find the little scoundrel. Understood?’
The young men nodded and after a brief discussion as to who would take which side, all four walked through to the graveyard with determination. They began to disperse until the constable shouted out, ‘Wait!’ He looked to the ground and all followed suit. Winding its way before them about the gravestones and up to the outer porch of the church was a set of footprints in the snow. ‘Quickly,’ the policeman ordered. ‘All inside.’
CHAPTER 46
Crypts
THEODORE – OR AT least some impression of his mind overtaking the now sleeping mind of Alastair – stood at the bottom of the steps, the mildew-covered walls brought to life by the shadow of a boy prancing across them, cast from the flickering candle.
Along the top edge of the stone corridor ahead, in between arches, were large and thick panes of glass set at ground level outside, allowing sunlight or strong moonlight to illuminate the corridor through them. Oil lamps at intervals were there also, hung on hooks down the length of the corridor, as well as a child’s toys – clockwork amusements, dolls, playing cards, board games – laid neatly in a line.
The being within Alastair, that which was not Alastair, was not truly Theodore either. At least, it was not Theodore as he had been in life. It was a distillation of the man’s inner self, his hopes and desires and ambitions, his evil and cunning. It was the embodiment of all of these characteristics and it was strong enough to live on and to steal another’s corporeal self. But though an unusual type of consciousness existed for this version of Theodore to be aware of hi
s final task, memories of the crypts and grey-shadowed corridors had left him. He was vaguely familiar with the place though he could not remember how and a feeling of unease began to grow.
He quickly reached the end of the first corridor under the church’s length for it opened out to a small crypt, emptied of its tombs and religious artefacts. Upon walking its perimeter he saw that the place had been inhabited. The larger lights – those thick blocks of glass to allow light through, set in the stone ceiling – indicated that the crypt projected past the church, for even though the glasses were mostly snow-covered, light from the sun still managed to penetrate the gloom, sending feeble shafts underground. Sunlight even found its way through some of the airbricks set high up.
There was an abundance of straw on the ground and the smell of staleness and stagnation. He found a set of bowls, one with the remains of a meal soiling it, and then he came across three stoneware jars as well as piles of clothing, blankets, mugs and utensils in alcoves set in one end.
He coughed and the sound echoed about him and disappeared into the mysterious corners. Continuing the tour of the perimeter and trying not to touch the wet mossed walls, he discovered another corridor as he had expected, leading under the width of the church. It was wider than the first.
Coldness and dampness. The sound of dripping water from behind one of the walls. With an unexplainable sense of urgency pushing him along he began to walk briskly. The snow on the glass lights here must have been heavier, he thought. It was a short while after when the borrowed eyes became more accustomed to the darkness ahead and it was then he noticed the blackness seemed blacker still, richer and deeper in quality. The yellow light from the candle ate the darkness before him and he was confronted with a wall across his way: the corridor had taken a sharp turn to the left. This must be under the other longer side of the church, he decided. He followed it. Striding at a steady pace, he soon shrugged off the damp chill and felt warmer.
The Unusual Possession of Alastair Stubb Page 24
