The Pariah

by Graham Masterton

  ‘If you knew all this, why didn’t you do something about it before?’ asked Edward.

  ‘My dear sir, do you take me for a fool?’ asked Duglass Evelith. ‘I personally had neither the money, the equipment, the youth, nor the inclination to go searching for a wreck that more than likely had rotted away centuries ago. But, at the same time, I didn’t want to publish my findings, because of the very arguable nature of the laws regarding historic wrecks. Once I made it known where the David Dark was lying, divers would be swarming down there in their hundreds, vandals and enthusiastic amateurs and souvenir-hunters and plain professional thieves. If there did happen to be anything left worth salvaging, I didn’t want to see it pillaged, did I, by bungling tyros and aquatic muggers?’

  ‘I guess not,’ smiled Edward. ‘They did the same thing in England, didn’t they?

  Pretending to be diving on the Royal George, when in fact they were looking for the Mary Rose. It was the only way they could throw the scrap merchants off the scent. A scrap merchant would have dynamited the Mary Rose to pieces, just for the sake of her bronze cannon.’

  Duglass Evelith beckoned to Enid, and asked her in a hoarse whisper, ‘Bring me the charts out of the chart-table. There’s a good girl.’

  ‘Enid’s your grand-daughter?’ asked Forrest, as she went off to get the maps.

  Duglass Evelith stared at him. ‘My grand-daughter?’ he asked, as if he were mystified by the question.

  Forrest actually blushed. ‘Well, you know,’ he flustered. ‘It was just an assumption.’

  Old man Evelith nodded his head, but offered no clarification as to who Enid might actually be. Maid? Mistress? Companion? It wasn’t really our business, but I think all of us would have loved to know.

  ‘Here,’ said Enid, bringing a large folded chart of the approaches to Salem Harbour, and spreading it out on the table. Again, that dark glimpse of red nipples against sheer black fabric; strangely arousing and yet equally frightening, too. Enid caught me looking at her, and looked straight back at me, without smiling, without any hint of possible friendship. The thin sunlight illuminated her hair like a black coronet.

  Duglass Evelith opened a drawer under the table and produced a large sheet of tracing paper, on which coordinates and transit bearings were already marked. He laid the tracing paper over the chart; although only he knew exactly how it had to be keyed into position, so the chart and the overlay would have been useless to anybody else. One bearing ran through the tip of Juniper Point and the southernmost head of Winter Island; the other bearing ran through Quaker Hill, cleaving a sharp line through Quaker Lane Cottage. About 420 metres off the Granitehead shore an X was marked: the supposed position where the David Dark had gone down, over 290 years ago.

  Edward looked at me in excitement. The X was no more than 250 metres south-south-west of where we had been searching the seabed yesterday morning, but under the sea, with its currents and debris and whirling mud, 250 metres was as good as a mile away.

  Duglass Evelith watched us with mild amusement. Then he folded up the chart, and laid it to one side, and slipped the overlay back in his drawer.

  ‘You can have this information on several conditions,’ he said. ‘Firstly, that you never once mention my name in connection with your work. Secondly, that you keep me in daily touch with what you are doing, and that you show me everything, no matter how insignificant, that you bring up from the seabed. Thirdly, and most importantly, that if you locate the copper vessel in which the demon is supposed to be incarcerated, that you do not attempt to open it, but that you pack it at once in ice and bring it here, by refrigerated truck.’

  ‘You want it here?’

  ‘Do you think you can handle it?’ Duglass Evelith demanded. ‘If it should actually arise, and begin to wield its terrible powers again, do you think you could give it what it craves?’

  Forrest said, ‘I’m not sure I like this at all.’

  But Edward said, ‘I don’t have any particular objection, provided we can have access to whatever it is, once we’ve brought it here. We’ll want to make all kinds of tests. Normal, as wel as paranormal. Bone analysis, carbon dating, ultra-violet scanning, X-ray. Then we’ll want to go through the Paarsman test for kinetic energy, and a hypno-volition test.’

  Duglass Evelith thought about this, and then shrugged. ‘As long as you don’t turn my home into an experimental laboratory.’

  Edward said, ‘I have to be quite straight with you, Mr Evelith. We still lack finance. First of all we have to locate the wreck; then, when we’ve done that, we have to clear all the mud out of her, collect and tabulate all the broken bits and pieces, and see just how much of the structure we’re going to be able to bring up to the surface intact. Finally, we’re going to have to rent several large barges, a couple of pontoons, and a floating sheerlegs crane. We have to be talking $5 - $6 million. And that’s just for starters.’

  ‘You mean it may be some considerable time before you can bring the wreck to the light of day?’

  ‘That’s correct. We certainly can’t bring it up next week, even if we find it.’

  Duglass Evelith took off his spectacles. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘that’s rather a pity. The longer it takes, the less chance I have of seeing it completed.’

  ‘You really want to come face-to-face with an Aztec demon?’ I asked him.

  He sniffed. The lord of Mictlampa is not any ordinary demon,’ he told me.

  ‘Mictlampa?’

  ‘That’s the Mexican name for the region of the dead.’ ‘And does the demon himself have a name?’ asked Edward.

  ‘Of course. The lord of Mictlampa is named in the Codex Vaticanus A which was drawn up by Halian monks in the 1500s. There is even an illustration of him, descending out of the night head-first, the way a spider descends his web, to ensnare the souls of the living. He holds sway over all the other Aztec demons of the underworld, including Tezcatlipoca, or “smoking mirror”, and alone with Tonacatecutli, the lord of the sun, is entitled to wear a crown. He is always shown with an owl, a corpse, and a dish of human hearts, which are his chief sustenance. His name is Mictantecutli.’

  I felt a chill go down my back, and looked at Edward sharply. ‘Mictantecutli,’ I repeated.

  ‘Yes,’ said Edward. ‘ “Mick the Cutler.” ‘

  TWENTY-TWO

  I dropped Edward and Forrest off at Edward’s house on Story Street, and then drove directly to Salem Hospital, a gray squarish complex of concrete blocks off Jefferson Avenue, and not far from Mill Pond, where David Dark had once lived. The sky had cleared, and there was a high thin sunset, which was reflected in the puddles of the parking-lot. I walked across to the hospital doors with my hands jammed into the pockets of my jacket, and hoped to hel that Constance Bedford was making a reasonable recovery. I should have insisted that she and Walter stay away from Quaker Lane Cottage. A warning hadn’t been enough. Now the woman was blind and it was all because of me.

  I found Walter sitting in the waiting area on the fourth story, his head bowed, staring at the polished vinyl floor. Behind him there was a lithograph of a pelican by Basil Ede.

  Walter didn’t look up, even when I sat down next to him. A soft chime sounded, and a seductive telephonist’s voice called, ‘Dr Murray, pick up the white phone please. Dr Murray.’

  ‘Walter?’ I said.

  He raised his head. His eyes were red-rimmed, both from tiredness and from weeping.

  He looked about a hundred years older, and I was reminded of what Duglass Evelith had said about the man who had sailed on the Arabella. He opened his mouth, but somehow his throat seemed too dry to say anything.

  ‘What’s the latest?’ I asked him. ‘Is she any better? Have you seen her yet?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen her.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘She’s better.’

  I was about to say something encouraging, but then I realized that there was something wrong about the way he had spoken, some flatness in the in
tonation that didn’t quite ring true.

  ‘Walter?’ I asked him.

  Unexpectedly, he reached over and took hold of my hand, and held it very tight. ‘You just missed her,’ he said. ‘She died about twenty minutes ago. Massive cerebral damage, caused by intense cold. Not to mention shock, and the physical trauma to the eyes and face. She didn’t really have much of a hope.’

  ‘Oh God, Walter, I’m sorry.’

  He took a deep, sad breath. ‘I’m a little giddy, I’m afraid. They gave me something to calm me down. What with that, and the tiredness, and the shock of it all, I guess I’m not much good for anything right at this moment.’

  ‘Do you want me to take you home?’

  ‘Home?’ He stared at me questioningly, as if he didn’t know what ‘home’ was any more.

  Home was only a building now, filled with unpossessed possessions. Rows of dresses that would never be worn; racks of shoes whose owner would never return. What does a single man do with drawers full of lipsticks and stockings and brassieres? The most painful part of a wife’s sudden death, as I had discovered for myself, was clearing out the bathroom. The funeral had been nothing on clearing out the bathroom. I had stood there with a wastebasket full of nail varnish and hair-conditioner and skin-toner, and cried my eyes out.

  ‘You mustn’t blame yourself for it,’ said Walter. ‘You warned me explicitly enough. I somehow thought - well , I somehow thought that Jane would be benign. At least to her mother.’

  ‘Walter, I saw her later myself. She tried to kill me, too. She isn’t Jane, that’s what I was trying to warn you about. Not the Jane that either of us used to know. She’s like a kind of addict now, can you understand what I mean? Her spirit can’t rest until she claims another life, to help feed the force that’s controlling her.’ ‘Force? What are you talking about, force?’ ‘Walter,’ I said, ‘this isn’t the time or the place. Let me drive you home; then you can get some sleep and tomorrow we’ll talk it over.’

  He glanced around over his shoulder, towards the room where Constance must have been lying. ‘She’s there?’ I asked him, and he nodded.

  ‘I shouldn’t leave her,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t seem right.’

  ‘You won’t be leaving her, Walter. She’s gone already.’

  He was silent for a very long time. Every line in his face seemed to have been filled with ash; and he was so numbed by exhaustion and tranquillizers that he could scarcely stay upright.

  ‘Do you know something, John,’ he told me. ‘I don’t have anybody now. No son, no daughter, no wife. All that family that I thought I would see growing up around me; all those people I loved. They’re all gone, and now there’s nobody but me. I don’t even have anybody to will my gold watch to.’

  He drew back his cuff, and unfastened his watch, and held it up. ‘What’s going to happen to this watch, when I die? Constance had it engraved, you know, with my name; and what she said was, “Some day, your great-grandson’s going to wear this watch, and he’s going to look at your name engraved on the back, and he’ll know who he is, and where he came from. And do you know something? That boy will never be.’

  ‘Come on, Walter,’ I told him. ‘I’ll just go check with the doctor, and then I’ll drive you home.’

  ‘Are you going back to - that place tonight? Quaker Lane Cottage?’

  ‘I’ll stay with you if you want me to.’

  He pursed his lips, and then nodded. ‘I’d like that. If it isn’t any trouble.’

  ‘No trouble, Walter. In fact, I’m glad to have an excuse not to go back there.’

  We left the hospital, and walked across the parking lot to my car. Walter shivered in the evening wind. I helped him to climb into the passenger seat, and then we drove out through the suburbs of Salem, southwards towards Boston and Dedham. Walter said very little as we drove; but stared out of the window at the passing traffic, at the houses and the trees and the darkness of the oncoming night, the first night he had known for 38 years which he couldn’t share with Constance. As we approached Boston, the lights of airplanes circling Logan Airport looked as lonely as anything I had ever seen.

  The house at Dedham had been passed down by the Bedfords for four generations, father to son, and although Walter and his father had both worked in Salem, they had kept up residence in the old Dedham house for tradition’s sake. For some years, Walter’s father had also rented a small apartment near the centre of Salem, but Constance had insisted that Walter should drive the 25 miles home every evening, especially after Walter’s mother had discreetly told her at Walter’s father’s funeral that Walter’s father had been seeing ‘women’ at the Salem apartment, and that items of underclothing had been discovered under the bed.

  It was a huge colonial house set in seven acres of ground; the original 41 acres having been parcelled up by succeeding generations of Bedfords and sold off for property development. White-painted, with a peaked five-gable roof, it was approached by a curving driveway lined with maple trees, and in the fall it looked so picturesque you could hardly believe it was a real dwelling. I remembered how impressed I had been the first time that Jane had brought me back here: and I thought how much better it would have been for the Bedford family if I had turned around that morning and driven all the way back to St Louis, non-stop, day and night, anything to save them from the tragedy which had visited them these past few weeks, and from the fear which I knew was still to come.

  I parked the car outside the front door and helped Walter to climb out. He gave me the front door key and I let us in. The house was still warm: the Bedfords had left the central heating on last night because they had walked out of the house with every intention of coming back. The first thing I saw when I switched on the hall light was Constance’s spectacles, lying on the polished hall-table, just where she had left them only 24 hours ago. I looked up, and saw my distorted face in a circular gilt mirror, and behind me, Walter looking shrunken and strange.

  ‘Number one priority is a large Scotch,’ I told Walter. ‘Come on into the sitting-room and take your shoes off. Relax.’

  Walter fastidiously hung up his coat and scarf, and then followed me into the spacious sitting-room, with its waxed honey-coloured floors, its Persian rugs, and its mellow 19th-century furniture. Over the wide fire-place hung an oil-painting of old Suffolk County, in the days before Century 21 Realty and weekend cottages and the Massachusetts Turnpike. Beneath the painting, on the mantelshelf, there was a collection of Dresden figures which had obviously belonged to Constance.

  ‘I feel numb,’ said Walter, easing himself down into his armchair.

  ‘You’re going to feel numb for quite some time to come,’ I cautioned him. I poured two large whiskies out of his heavy crystal decanter, and handed him one. ‘It’s your mind, protecting itself from the shock of what’s happened.’

  Walter shook his head. ‘I can’t believe it, you know. I can’t believe any of it. I keep thinking back on what happened last night, the way that Jane appeared like that, and it seems like a horror movie, something I saw on television. Not real.’

  Walter looked at me. ‘Will she always be there? Jane, I mean? Will she always be a ghost like that? Won’t she ever rest?’

  ‘Walter,’ I said, ‘that’s one of the things I want to talk to you about. But not now. Let’s wait until tomorrow.’

  ‘No,’ said Walter. ‘Let’s talk about it now. I want to think this whole thing out. I want to think about it and think about it until my mind gets tired of thinking about it, and I can’t think about it any more.’

  ‘You’re sure that’s wise?’

  ‘I don’t know, but it’s what I want to do. Anyway, who cares about wisdom? I don’t have anybody. Have you thought about that? I have a ten-bedroomed house, and nobody to live in it but me.’

  ‘Finish your whisky,’ I instructed him. ‘Let’s have another. I need to be partially smashed to tell you about this.’

  Walter swallowed, shivered, and then handed me his empty glass.
When I had poured us both a refill, I sat down again and said, ‘As far as I know, there’s only one way in which Jane’s spirit can be put to rest. Even that isn’t certain. I’ve been hard put to keep believing in all this myself, because the more I find out about it, the weirder it gets. I think the only reason I’ve kept on believing it is because four or five other people believe it as well: three guys I know from the Peabody Museum, and a girlfriend of theirs.

  ‘This morning we went up to Tewksbury, and talked to Mr Duglass Evelith. You know Mr Evelith? Well, you’ve heard of Mr Evelith, at least. Mr Evelith’s been making a study of psychic disturbances in Salem and Granitehead, and he agrees with us that the probable cause of all these manifestations like Jane’s and Mr Edgar Simons’ is - well, is something that’s submerged in an old wreck off the Granitehead coast. The wreck of a ship called the David Dark.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Walter.

  ‘Neither do I, completely. But apparently the hold of that wreck contains a thing like a giant skeleton, which was brought to Salem in the late 1680s from Mexico. The skeleton was said to be a demon called … just a minute, I have it written down here …

  Mictantecutli. The lord of Mictlampa, the region of the dead. It was supposed to have been Mictantecutli’s power that created all the havoc that led to the Salem witch-trials; and even though it’s sunk beneath the ocean, and several feet of bottom-mud, it’s still affecting the dead of Granitehead, and refusing to let them rest.’