He discovered a small tunnel leading from one side. It had slabs on its sides roughly hewn and was no more than four feet high. A cap which lay broken must have masked it at some time in the past. A priest’s secret passage, he decided. He ignored it in preference to his arched corridor.
The corridor came to an end with a heavy wooden door barring his way. He tugged at the handle but it did not budge. Looking it over, only a trickle of memories seeped through to him. He shuddered at its sight though he did not know the reason. He quickened his pace away for he felt uneasy. He turned and inspected the candle. Already the cheap and poor quality wax had burned a quarter of its length.
A feeling of heaviness and oppression. Theodore wiped the back of the stolen neck and forehead with a hand. He sat down on a stone arch base to rest: he sensed the young body he inhabited was dangerously weary.
He stood and made his way back to the priest hole.
Taking hold of a side of the cold entrance and bending, he extended the other hand gripping the candle and entered. He shuffled along, kicking flints and stones, those rattling out of his path. He stopped after a few seconds only to rub an aching back which he was beginning to feel.
Further on, there had been a fall of dirt and rocks, narrowing the way still further. He went to his hands and knees and was forced to crawl along now.
With practice he found that by holding the candle from the ground with one hand, he could slide along over the piles of earth and boulders at a surprisingly fast rate on Alastair’s remaining limbs. His trousers wore holes, and the knees and a hand bled. The pain was not his; the body of Alastair a borrowed convenience for Theodore’s essence. He quickly learned how to transfer the pain to its rightful owner.
The spirit of Alastair, tucked away within his own persona, wanted to shout in anger as his warm dream was turning into a cold nightmare. If he was tucked up in his bed asleep then why did his limbs seem tired and painful and why did they sting so and why was his back sore?
Theodore knew that the time was near. Because of the speed that he crawled, he did not see a large projection jutting down from above. He was not quick enough to avoid it; Alastair’s forehead hit it and the agony that punched his brow caught him unawares. Theodore was roughly jolted back to his private purgatory and the essence of Alastair unfolded and bloomed to fill the whole of him once more from the dark corner of his being.
The ambushed passageway was plunged into darkness as the candle was dropped and extinguished. Alastair moaned and rubbed his head. His fingers felt warm and sticky. He groaned in terror: however wide he stretched his eyelids he could not see anything save for strange translucent amoeba shapes of purples, greens and blues that convulsed and floated past his vision. Upon a closer scrutiny they would vanish only to appear at the periphery of his sight. All this was on a backdrop of a dense, impenetrable darkness. He had gone blind, he was certain, in this tortuous nightmare; his cosy place of sleep had turned to something cold and hard. He whined in confusion and groped along the sides of his prison, an ultimate dread taking hold. His thighs shook and he collapsed onto his face as they gave way. He sobbed without measure.
It was then that something happened. He ceased his miserable weeping when, upon shifting what he thought was a small rock from under his outstretched leg, he discovered what felt to be a candle. Then as soon as his crying had ceased, another voice was heard at an indeterminable distance ahead. It was laughter, high and free of inhibition and echoing strangely.
The remainder of the candle was broken into two, he could feel. He sensed the unknown horrors of the darkness creep closer. Instinctively he felt in his pockets and, to his surprise, found a shape he knew to be a box of matches – previously placed in his pocket when under Theodore’s influence. He ignored the deranged laughter and fumbled for a match. He struck it and shielded his eyes from the blinding flash. With his eyelids pressed to slits, he lit the candle. It was a few moments before he was used to the light from the flame and saw that the tunnel turned suddenly to the right.
Turning the corner, he looked with fascination and chuckled excitedly when he saw the dark stone tunnel, touching it to feel its texture; as he smelled the sulphur fumes of the match. He knew his nightmare had vanished and he was dreaming again, no matter how peculiar it seemed. He resumed the underground journey onward towards the steady glow lighting the exit, dragging his feet behind him.
‘There’s no sign of him, sir,’ reported one young man as he scanned the church’s dilapidated balcony.
‘I suggest we all look harder then,’ replied Constable Flute.
‘I’ve discovered some steps and I reckon he’s down there.’
‘I think he’s hopped it over the hills again,’ someone else remarked. ‘Could be on his way to Stillstone by now.’
The policeman ignored him. ‘While you three make a more thorough search up here I’ll go down those steps to see what I can find.’ He puffed out his chest and feeling an irritating itch to his head, he put his hand up but found himself scratching his helmet.
‘You’ll need someone to help,’ suggested Sammy Solomon.
Constable Flute was secretly relieved. ‘Agreed. You will do nicely,’ he decided, nodding his head towards him.
The constable was led to the stone steps, the other two men splitting off to search. PC Flute warned Sammy, ‘Now, don’t you say a word unless I speak to you.’ With a flick of his thumb he switched on his police regulation torch.
CHAPTER 47
Finale
ALASTAIR GAPED AT the pulsing illumination ahead. He found that he could walk with his back stooped again and when finally out of the passageway, could stand upright. The laughter had ceased, the only sounds being his own panting breath.
He watched the large catacomb with suspicion. The glow he had seen came from thick candles which stood on tombs and sarcophagi, and encircling the pillars of stone and wooden posts, as well as being lit by more glass lights above from the church’s floor letting in the diluted sun’s rays. This sunlight threw stripes across the sculptures and carvings. Around each candle was a scarf of wax built up to strange and contorted shapes. A fetid smell; the straw that was scattered about was orange and black; a mass of cobwebs hung in dark corners. A rat scurried across a tomb and disappeared.
Alastair furtively went into the underground chamber and held his nose at the stench of the place. Life-size figures of stone lay broken on the floor between tombs. He crept forward and noticed that from one end of the left wall decorated with pilasters was the opening of a short corridor, the line of toys and juvenile amusements from it, flanked by candles and oil lamps, continuing across the icon-painted floor, to a stone archway. Whatever was beyond was shrouded in the darkness. Alastair went to the short corridor lit with candlelight and saw the heavy door which Theodore controlling Alastair had found; a bar of wood across it had kept it from opening.
As Alastair was looking in his hazy dreamstate over the main crypt he felt weary and began to sway when heard the familiar voice. This time he tried to fight but he was too weak to combat it. Finally letting go of consciousness, he again slept in a small corner of his mind.
Eyelids flickered and now Theodore looked about. He walked along by the wall to the archway, kicking toys, and candles falling and rolling away, taking a step into this other part of the catacomb. He could make out vague impressions – ghost-like tombs set into the walls but nothing more. Going back to one of the candled tombs in the main part, he pulled a candle from its moorings and resumed his place before the archway and as the fingers of light groped along the walls, they showed a hazy shape. There was a muffled snigger. The shape became larger, gaining definition until it lost its fluidity and upon emerging from the darkness, took on human form.
Queenie – the mad Eleanor – corrugating her nose and looking bored, pointed downward. Theodore automatically followed the line of her finger and stared blankly at her big toe that wiggled through a hole in one of her green slippers. The spell was broken
; he advanced towards her. The trickle of memories had grown to a stream.
‘You sorceress, Eleanor!’ he hollered with his voice echoing from the bricks and granite. ‘You, more than all the others, must realize how you hurt me; and how much love I held for you.’
Queenie cocked her head to one side as if recognizing her name before taking exaggerated steps backwards. Theodore followed her under an arch which led to yet another foul-smelling and cobweb-tangled chamber. With him holding the candle threateningly as though a weapon, Queenie leapt backwards and from the few strands of light that escaped into this section of the catacomb, she was seen to leap about, pirouetting and jumping in a frenzied dance of madness. She pranced and gyrated, twirling her arms and crowed and shouted. Theodore stood waiting.
Suddenly, as if by some unseen cue, she ceased her insane ballet. She threw her head back in a snap and gripped her ears, emitting a high-pitched wail; a sickening monotone that made Theodore hold teeth together. He ignored the outburst and spoke gently but forcefully.
‘Eleanor, this is Alastair. Your son, your offspring. Come here and stand before me.’ His softened voice acted like a potion on her ill and tormented mind and she ceased her wailing and gave him a quizzical look. ‘Yes, your child, your baby.’
He pointed to a spot a yard in front of him. As though in a hypnotic trance, the woman advanced, her arms outstretched and her eyes bulging as she stared to the ceiling, and she crooned, ‘Bay–beeee…’
Theodore felt he must frighten her, perhaps even to shock her from her madness. All he would wish was for her to be frightened by flame, as he was frightened, and burned, in the attic fire thirteen years ago. He bent the knees of Alastair until he was low to the ground and leant as far forward as he was able without toppling. Then he extended an arm and touched the flame of the candle to the hem of Eleanor’s nightdress. It was tattered and dry and set light without trouble. She looked down and saw the flames growing upon her and with a howl, leapt from left to right.
Once more she began her frenzied dance but this time trying to beat out the fire upon her with the palms of her hands. She cried out; the flames reached her middle and she shouted wordless sounds as it rasped her flesh. The old woollen cardigan over her dress began to singe. She flung herself to the ground and rolled and tumbled but the dry straw caught alight around her writhing body and the burning heat overwhelmed her, and a sickening scream filled the chambers and corridors but was cut short. Her hair caught fire and her arms flayed wildly about until, with a groan, she fell and was still, Eleanor’s body engulfed by the blaze.
Theodore was shocked beyond measure. And then – from the light of her burning body – he caught sight of something which would have made his heart lurch had it been his own.
Through the odorous vapours of burning flesh and dense smoke he saw what he recognized as a massive chrysalis, as large as a cot. On closer inspection he found it was made of woven raffia, rope and thin branches. He looked down through the opening at the top; there within was the mummified remains of a rabbit dressed in the miniature clothes of a young child, half-covered with a silk blanket. And behind this strange construction were the remains of his own body on the stone tiles of the floor, the skull of it easily showing past dental work and missing teeth, with the ivory bones of the arms and legs spread-eagled from him, a hefty splinter of stone between two ribs, almost as long and sharp as found on a swordfish.
Theodore had been pinned like a butterfly.
A watch chain hung loosely from about the vertebrae and unusually shaped flints stood by the white bones of the feet.
Memories of the fateful day thirteen years before came to him in their scratching, terrible poignancy and he let out a howling echoed scream of revulsion.
Impressions from the past were a catalogue of insistent memories and they were presented as if flicking through index cards of himself; flashing before him, one after the other…
Thirteen years before, feigning death from arsenic poisoning; being carried up the stairs. Visiting Eleanor as she lay in her bedroom with labour pains then hiding after Dr. Snippet arrives to deliver the child. Moving the child to the spare room, dragging Eleanor’s unconscious mind to wakefulness by slapping and shaking her to arousal; her immediate despair at losing her child again, tipping her more into maddened distress. Then Eleanor following to the insect collection in the attic, her mental state easy to persuade that her baby is safe there. Theodore listening as William returns and tries to find the body; mocking William as he considers he might be in the presence of a phantom; then chuckling upon William Stubb’s anguish at the missing Eleanor. Returning to his attic to check on Eleanor’s mental state, turning the key of the door and being pulled in, the door closed and locked; desperate features of a man condemned to die within the scorching embrace of a fire; the attic door opening again and Eleanor moving as if sleepwalking. Theodore escaping the flames and easily convincing Eleanor that the child is now in the church where her stillborn lay buried, knowing he must also leave the doomed house condemned by fire. Both coming down the staircases and Eleanor picking up the dead rabbit in the hall. Eleanor wrenching the entrance door open, now believing her child to be safe in her arms, naked but for strange fur, needing warmth and protection where she had prepared for Alastair’s return; running to the abandoned church with her bewildered madness, Theodore following, insisting she return his watch, his prized possession.
The plumped moon sending silver light into the underground corridors, lighting their way until they reach the open wooden door to the catacomb. And there, before the eyes of the sculpted forms – shining as if alive – Eleanor placing the rabbit carcase into a handmade construction of raffia and branches; to her, the found child Alastair finally safe in his cot.
Theodore trying to calm her manic ways as she murmurs sweetness to what she saw as her baby but hissing to Theodore as he tried to intervene. Eleanor’s piercing screams as Theodore pushes her out of the way, ready to pick up the dead animal to show her that that was all it was; Eleanor screaming more with her body quaking as Theodore pulls on the chain out from her pocket, Eleanor snatching the pocket watch back. A tug of war then, no less serious than the event at Thimriddy Fair, the chain snapping from the watch fob. She, snatching up a flint from the stone floor, battering tombs and granite ornaments in a maddened rage, until finally turning to Theodore. And with shock, Theodore seeing the flint raised high into the air, then down quickly to hit him sharply on the temple; sinking to the floor in shock and agony while Eleanor strikes him again and again…
The burned and battered body dragged to where it then lay with the strength of the insane, a large splinter of stone which had been knocked from a tomb puncturing and ripping his flesh as Eleanor hammers it with the flint into the chest of the deceiving cockroach; a total fragmentation of personality and normality for the already deranged Eleanor, gabbling and sobbing fitfully, now pulling tight the watch chain about Theodore’s neck until the last of his life remaining left him.
Theodore felt his essence depart the place even then, perhaps to a denizen of the wicked undead or an unknown purgatory. Alastair’s spirit blossomed and filled him, seeing through his own eyes once more; and he stared horror-stricken at the unidentified mass that burned on the ground, and to the bones of the long dead. He cried out and clutched his fists to his mouth, smoke stinging his startled eyes.
Choking, running blindly back into the main crypt and along the short corridor, finding the door there, drawing along the bar which held the door shut.
Pulling it open and seeing two misted silhouettes ahead, haloed with light. Running into a soft, warm mass, the last he knew as darkness descended; falling into a natural sleep.
‘I’ve got him,’ shouted Constable Flute and his voice echoed through the corridors of stone. ‘He must have fainted.’
What’s that burning? What a stench,’ someone else remarked.
‘Leave that for the moment, let’s get him to the top.’
A
lastair’s sealed eyes opened as fast as any spring-loaded box lid and he looked up to the domed expanse above, sparse clouds rallying about the sun as they prepared to drag it over the horizon. A hint of the moon was beginning to gain definition. He greedily gulped the freshest of air to wash the smoke and dust from his dried throat and lungs.
He was uncertain of his whereabouts. Perhaps he was within his dreaming existence again – not that he cared.
A scarlet balloon was floating gracefully away, through the clear air, its basket holding two passengers, one of them seeming to glow with an effervescent light, the utmost love and affection emanating from her being.
Four misted shapes appeared in the firmament and as he looked with bleary eyesight, they became hazy plates which wore expressions of concern and sternness. He smiled generously, and then smiled the more for he found it an unusual but pleasant sensation.
‘Hello,’ he said, ‘My name is Alastair Stubb,’ and as he spoke, a shower of red admiral butterflies flew into the sky.
DAVID JOHN GRIFFIN is a writer, graphic designer and app designer, and lives in a small town by the Thames in Kent, UK with his wife Susan and two dogs called Bullseye and Jimbo. He is currently working on the first draft of a third novel as well as writing short stories for a novel-length collection.
His second novel, due for publication by Urbane in spring 2016, is a literary/psychological novel, entitled Infinite Rooms. He has independently-published a magical realism/paranormal novella called Two Dogs At The One Dog Inn. One of his short stories was shortlisted for The HG Wells Short Story competition 2012 and published in an anthology.
The Unusual Possession of Alastair Stubb Page 25
