The Year's Best Horror Stories 9

by Karl Edward Wagner (Ed. )

  “Ah,” continued Hook, sighing, “he made some alterations, did Mr. Faik, and not much to Dr. Propert’s liking as it turned out. But yet I will say this, sir, Mr. Faik must’a been partial to the old chapel for look how he bought up every picture of it far and near as he might lay ’is ’ands upon. I warrant there’s scarce a painting o’ Peryford anywhere in England but was in ’is persession when he died. That’s what makes me think some o’ these ’ere might be valuable, sir.”

  “But,” objected Sir Leslie, ignoring the last suggestion, “I understand that Mr. Faik almost entirely rebuilt the chapel when it became a library. Why should he make such drastic alterations if he valued the original building? This east end with the turrets, for instance, bears no resemblance to the place as it is now.”

  “Now you’ve beat me, sir,” replied Hook. “All I can say is—there’s summat queer about the edifice. Take them turrets now: it’s my belief they was ’aunted and best done away with.”

  “What makes you say that?” inquired the baronet with mild interest, handing him a glass.

  “Only what I’ve ’eard, sir, and putting two and two together, as you might say. (Thank you, sir.) When them alterations was in and Mr. Faik he comes to me and says ‘Hook, I don’t like that east end and I’ve got an idea to improve it. I’m having a bigger window put in to give more light.’ You see, sir, there was some tracery for an old rose window, as they call it, among them priory ruins in the grounds, and he told me he’d got a firm from away to fix in some glass sent special from Boyhemia or some foreign place. Well, sir, that was the beginning of all the trouble. The rector, Mr. Laycock—afore Mr. Sanderton came—objected to Mr. Faik’s ‘remodeling scheme’ as they called it, and wrote off to Dr. Propert. Then there was quarrels between my men off the estate and the foreign chaps from London measuring and ordering. In the end, sir, Mr. Faik had all the gable, window and all, covered up with a tarpaulin sheet, sacked the local men, and sent me off to work at his place there in ’Engsward.

  “When next I was past Peryford—that is for Mop Fair at the back-end—I see the chapel all completed and these Italian ‘craftsmen’ (what’s wrong with ordinary workmen, I don’t know) all cleared back to London. The turrets is gone, and the gable all altered just as you see it now, but to keep up the old appearance like they’d trained the ivy and stuff back to cover the new stonework. Aye, and to cap all, my cousin (as was housekeeper to Mr. Laycock afore he died, sir) she tells me Mr. Faik is busy with all sorts o’ science professors and whatnot (a queer sample by all accounts) having meetings in the new library every month.”

  Sanderton looked pointedly at Sir Leslie. “And you, had you any hand in the alterations?” he said.

  “O yes, sir. That’s the funny part. Me and the under-joiner, Tom Cass, and two lads had very near done all the woodwork when this ’ere plan for pulling out the east end come up. Gallery was finished and I had all but fixed the walls with shelves when we was packed off. When the new window was in, some of Mr. Faik’s men filled in the sides of it with some old paneling (as you may still see, sir, at the gallery end and in that Monument Room).”

  “You mean the Muniment Room! Yes, I have seen it—some old Tudor work, nearly black,” nodded Sir Leslie. “But I thought you said the place was haunted or queer in some way?”

  “I’m coming to that, sir,” continued the old carpenter. “Changes came very quick. Poor Mr. Laycock died, sir, as you know. Then one day Dr. Propert came back from China or somewhere—it was afore Mr. Sanderton’s time—and there was ’ard words by all accounts, and Mr. Faik left pretty sharp. It was plain the old doctor was grieved about the alterations. Not that he could ever ’a seen the chapel as it was, for he had never lived at Peryford, but he had heard plenty from Mr. Laycock.

  “Well, all I know is, one Friday when I was mending a wagon in the yard over there, who should come in but Dr. Propert on that roan hunter of his. He’d been told about me, doubtless, and what he wanted was to know why I’d gone to ’Engsward, seeing as our family was always on the Peryford estate. I told ’im, sir, what I’ve told you. ‘Well,’ he says, ‘you’ve made your bed and I’m not sure but you’ll have it to lie on. Anyway I want you now to come over to the priory with me and bring some keys and locksmith’s gear with you.’

  “So I got ready and he took me to the library, and round through the bushes at the back, to the left ’and corner outside . . .”

  “Yes,” interposed Sanderton, “the northeast corner, you mean?”

  “That will be so, sir,” continued the joiner. “The doctor went straight to it. ‘Now, Hook,’ he says, ‘get that axe and clear this ivy back.’ I did as he said, and there was a little door in the wall; and I soon had it unlocked. The turrets may be gone,’ says the doctor, ‘but the turret stairs are still here at any rate. Give me that lantern, and stay here and see that nobody comes prying round.’

  “With that, sir, he went up and I ’eard ’im tramping round and round up them winding steps inside the wall. I had not noticed before, but there were one or two window slits higher up among the ivy, and I saw them light up as he climbed to the top. After that I waited a longish time, and no sign of the doctor at all. I was just going to shout up after ’im when he came round the corner outside, behind me, and I got quite a start.

  “ ‘Don’t be alarmed, Hook,’ he says, ‘there’s a way through to the gallery inside. That’s what I suspected. When one sees lights in the night, it may be ghosts—or, it may be burglars, eh? Come along inside with me. No, not that way—it’s rather stuffy and unpleasant. We’ll “enter by the door” as the Bible says.’

  “So along we went to the main door into the library and up to the gallery, right to the far end. We went quite close to the east window and I saw at once how the doctor had got through: one of the panels was evidently a door, for it stood open as he had left it, and I could see a spiral stairs inside, leading down.

  “Well, sir, to cut a long story short, Dr. Propert got me to bar up that bottom door outside, so as nobody could get in or out again. I was to have fixed the panel door up in the gallery too, but he got the idea of locking it instead. I thought perhaps it might lead up to the roof and be useful in case of fire. But that was not the idea, sir. The doctor ordered a special little safety latch and I had to place it neatly on the inside. (In fact I was doing it that day when Professor Courtleigh came the first time to look round.)

  “I often wondered what the doctor’s game was, and I think it was a trap, for you could set it so as anyone could push it open from the gallery side (that is if they knowed about the panel!) and get into that stair. But if you was inside when it springed to—well, you’d be catched like a rat in a cage! But that was the doctor all over. A very egsentric man, sir, if I may say so. Well, he took the little key when I’d finished the job, and then he looks at me very stem, and says, ‘Now, Hook, you’ve left my service and I’m not sure whether I can find room to have you back. I’ll give you a trial; and if you can keep your own counsel about this little discovery of ours, I’ll not forget you later on.’

  “I didn’t know what he might mean, sir, but when he died, not so long after, there was fifty pound for me in the will. I’ve not told a soul about this panel, but you’re an educated man and a gentleman—and the rector, too, sir—and I see no ’arm as can be done now as the doctor’s dead?”

  Sir Leslie nodded his head reassuringly. “You need have no fear, Hook. But there’s one thing I should like to know. I gather that the stair of the northeast turret is still there. But what about the one on the other side of the window—I mean where the Muniment Room is? Didn’t you explore that too?”

  “No, sir,” answered the old man. “There was a doorway outside, like the other, but it was already built up, so no one could have got in there.”

  “Thank you,” said Sir Leslie, bringing the interview to a close. “This is very interesting. There’s a friend of the rector’s—Professor Courtleigh, in fact—coming to see us tomorrow about the l
ibrary. After what you’ve said, I should like to be able to show him this panel. So perhaps you can come round again in the morning?”

  As Hook took his leave the rector returned him his parcel. “Look after these pictures of yours. I think I know a purchaser for them,” he said, adding with a grin, “and thanks for bringing back my old scores!”

  His pleasantry gave place to something quite serious, though, as soon as the carpenter had gone. “That’s a rare story!” he said gloomily. “Something sinister about all this. Here’s Faik with his expensive alterations and secret conclaves—and for what purpose? What is behind it all?”

  “Well,” said Sir Leslie with a shrug, “there’re all the symptoms of Black Magic! In India, you know . . .”

  “Yes, but seriously,” interrupted the rector with a wry smile, “would anyone in England, any educated person, fool about with that nonsense?”

  “I’m not so sure,” answered the other, composed. “This country had plenty of it in the past and, as for education, well, it’s sometimes the scholar versed in antiquity who’s most susceptible to this kind of thing. As a matter of fact, I came across an instance of what I mean just before you arrived. When I lifted the lid of the window seat in my dressing room (thinking it a good place to put my bootjacks in), I found a curious sort of prayer-book inside. You shall see it,” he promised, ringing for Perkins.

  When the book came Sanderton recognized it. “Why,” he said, “it’s an old psalter of Dr. Propert’s: he used to have it in the oratory. I know it by that braided bookmark and crucifix. He mentioned bringing it over with him the night he died. In fact he collapsed while upstairs fetching it. I often wondered where it had disappeared to.”

  “I suppose you’ve never perused its contents?” suggested Sir Leslie. “No? Well, have a look at it now. I take it to be a Jacobean psalter bound up with certain eighteenth-century additions to form a private manual of devotions.”

  As he handed it to the rector the little book sprang open at a well-thumbed page entitled:

  AN OFFICE FOR DELIVERANCE FROM THE EVIL ONE.

  Ps. xxvii, 5—For in the time of trouble He shall hide me in His pavilion.

  Several collects ensued, then an old metrical version of Psalm 91, introduced by rubric in italics, thus:

  Divers portions of Holy Writ are commended for ejaculatory usage, and in especiall certain verses of the Psalms xxxi, xxxv, xxxviii, cxlii, and the like. Or, let him that is distress’d sing or chant the following to himself aloud, duly making the sign of the Cross—

  Ps. xci: It shall not come nigh thee.

  Whoso doeth reach the secret Shade

  Of God’s most holy Place

  Shall pluck his Soule that was afraid

  From its most deadly case.

  Whenas that Horror draweth nigh

  At Noon with shadow fell,

  The Lord upon thine instant cry

  Shall stay the powers of hell.

  The Hunter’s visage here in vaine

  Shall peer into thy Bower

  And o’er thy blood its nightly bane

  May have no mortal power.

  “Good heavens,” gasped Sanderton. “I begin to see why the doctor fled to the oratory so much, and why he furnished it in the first place. It’s almost unbelievable. He must have been deluded. Surely there’s nothing in all this?”

  “Don’t be too sure,” warned Sir Leslie. “Neither Faik nor Propert were fools. Anyway, we’ll talk it over with Courtleigh and be careful to act together in this. The danger with these things comes by tampering with them unawares.”

  While the rector lingered at the hall conversing with Sir Leslie, Professor Courtleigh was in fact up at the rectory awaiting his return. By a stroke of fate he had arrived before his time.

  That morning when Sanderton was getting ready to set out for Hengsward, the Professor had received two letters in his rooms at Durham. The first was his friend’s hurried note giving news of the sale and regretting that since it was such short notice he would have to go alone. “I should like you to have come a day earlier and gone with me to bid for those books of Faik’s,” ran the message, “but I know how difficult it is for you to come, even on Tuesday.”

  The second letter was from the secretary to say the examiners’ meeting, called for that day, had to be unexpectedly postponed. On receiving this, Courtleigh pondered the irony which could cause last-minute situations like that. Here he was, after all, comparatively at a loose end. When he came to think of it, this Peryford visit might well prove to be more important than anything else he could be doing for his university just then. He had another matter too which would take him to York. With a sudden resolution he reached down the railway time-table.

  “I’ll be there for lunch at any rate,” he thought as the train went moving south, “and we shall be able to go on to Hengsward together in the afternoon. It will be a pleasant surprise for Nat.” He had somehow had it in his head that the sale began at 2:30 or so. Not till he arrived at Peryford Rectory and found that Sanderton had gone off hours before, on the only possible train that way, did he realize how irritating it can be to follow an impulse without going into the practical details.

  Mrs. Willerby, poor lady, housekeeper at the rectory, thought out all the ways of bringing the two friends together but it turned out to be as impossible to get word to the rector as it was to get a train till nearly tea-time. Unfortunately, too, Sanderton had left word that he hoped to call after the sale on a friend near Malton but would be back at Peryford in the evening in time for dinner. “But, sir, you’ll surely stay for lunch, and I’ll stack up a good fire in the study and it’s all cozy and private.”

  Courtleigh had no mind to be “all cozy and private” for seven or eight hours. He had business in York and there was plenty of time to do that and still be back to meet Sanderton on his return. After a slight snack, therefore, he was strolling leisurely through the park while the stable boy caught the cob and got ready the rector’s gig.

  And then it was he could not forbear having another peep at the fateful library. It was unlocked—probably left ready for the decorators—so he went inside. Certainly it was dingy and neglected beyond words. Dust lay thick upon the furniture everywhere, and shaggy cobwebs hung from the roof timbers and festooned the corners of every alcove and recess. Most of the books had been removed of course, but some miscellaneous volumes remained up in the gallery. Courtleigh, in idle vein, reached down a few of these, but the place was so imbued with melancholy that he soon gave up and went below again.

  He was crossing the center of the floor when he noticed that the matting, which ran full length there, had got pulled on one side. Was that an old brass he could detect beneath it? Throwing the matting back, he discovered a large square flagstone of white marble bearing a circular pattern inlaid in black. It was divided out in sectors and marked off somewhat like the chart of a mariner’s compass; but in place of the cardinal points and sub-points were curious hieroglyphics around the edge. The main spaces were quite blank, and it was a puzzle to Courtleigh to think what the purpose of it all could be.

  As he was stooping over it, he again sensed—for in that position he could not see—the swoop of something above. It darkened the atmosphere for one quick second, and his ears pricked up at that faint, uneasy pattering sound once more.

  That old fear, experienced at his first visit, was upon him again. He had a guilty feeling of being watched. He looked up and got a shock to see Dr. Propert observing him from the gallery with a most intent and frightening look. Another moment and he knew it could not have been so. Nevertheless he decided to retreat before morbid thoughts took any further hold upon him. So he wisely left the place and went around to the stables where the gig was just about ready.

  He had an excellent time in York. He saw his man—a fellow antiquary—enjoyed yet another visit to the minster, had a meal at a curious little inn nearby, and left himself but little daylight for returning. The cob, it seemed, knew its own way to P
eryford and the lamp-lit ride had almost lulled the professor to sleep by the time they got to the rectory. To his disappointment, though, Sanderton had not yet returned. Mrs. Willerby was almost distracted with anxiety but rallied a little at the guest’s reassurances and set about serving dinner for him. Had she but known it, her master was not a mile away dining with Sir Leslie.

  Alone at the rectory things were getting dull for Courtleigh. After vainly trying to keep himself interested in a bookseller’s catalog, he finally informed the housekeeper he would not wait up any longer but would see the rector in the morning. He then retired for the night.

  Now it was the professor’s regular routine when undressing to take two special sedative pills which his doctor had ordered on account of his nerves. Without them he was subject to insomnia followed by most dreadful nightmares. You may judge of his annoyance, therefore, when he felt in the accustomed pocket for the little box and found it gone. He went downstairs again but it was not there. Could he have lost it on the road or while in the town? It seemed unlikely. Then he remembered—“This afternoon when I was in the library I took off my jacket in the gallery to shake the dust from it. My matchbox fell out and I picked it up. No doubt the box of pills fell out too and I never noticed. Yes, that will be it . . .”

  He was not very keen to turn out again now, and tried for some time to settle down and forget it. But the thing went round and round in his mind and gave him no peace. It was no use denying it: he dare not face the night without that sleeping dose. So, after some reluctance, he put on his overcoat, opened the front door quietly, and sallied forth across the park.

  There was almost a full moon, that orb casting about the whole prospect of lawns and trees a magic atmosphere of still expectancy, like an opera stage the moment before the eloping heroine steals across. The library itself, in the soft night air, stood out with toyland boldness, a pinnacled casket of silver steeped slantwise in pools of indigo shade. As he traversed the open moonlight toward the shadowed doorway, Courtleigh felt strangely conspicuous, and almost pathetic, like an insect crawling across the lens of a great telescope. In a dreamy surmise he brought his own Cassandra to the scene. What if a human speck entering that slumbering panorama should constitute a sort of outrage? But he knew he had to go and, putting aside poetics, was soon stepping to the heavy door.