by Orrin Grey
We admitted this was so and Crabb proceeded to summarise the strange happenings of the last three days. He made rather a neat account of it, pausing, from time to time, only to cough into his kerchief. When he had finished, I offered my own conclusions and advised in favour of delving beneath the graveyard so as to find the source of the infestation. At this suggestion, Stone raised his hand and addressed us in tones of tired admonishment.
“We must not be overly hasty,” said he. “Your findings are strange and, undoubtedly, they are suggestive. However, they are, as yet, little more than that.”
He stood and shewed us out of the parlour. “And now I fear you must excuse me, for young Martin White will be here shortly. Please be assured that I shall pray upon the matter, as you have described it, and that you shall soon have my decision.”
Outside the parsonage, the Verger and I bade each other farewell, but the other man lingered purposefully beside his cart, so that I knew he had more to tell me.
“There is something else,” said he, after a moment’s consideration. “I did not like to say, at first, for I know the esteem in which you hold his memory, but the rot has spread to the new section of the burying ground, southeast of the meetinghouse, where the Reverend Cooper lies.”
“Show me,” said I, attempting an air of authority, though my words came out strangled and faint. And so it was that we climbed the hill to the churchyard once more and made our way to the Reverend Cooper’s stone. Dread beset me as we entered the new section, followed in turn by a surge of terror at my first glimpse of the Reverend’s monument. Although every grave-marker bore a dusting of black powder, Reverend Cooper’s stone appeared most sorely affected.
The rot had pushed out from behind his carved likeness and rendered him faceless: as grim and terrible as the specter of Death. My words of tribute had been erased entirely, blotted out by the spreading stain, so that only the final words of his epitaph were visible:
Out of heaven from God.
‘Twas a dire omen, suggesting, as it did, that this strange infestation was visited upon us as a judgment from the Almighty; yet, I knew this could not be the case, for there was no man alive or dead more saintly than the departed minister. Our town deserved no such punishment, I was sure, but I was likewise certain this was no deed of man or nature. That left only Lucifer, the Father of Lies. But is it not true that even the work of the Devil glorifies His Holy Name?
Much shaken, I returned to my horse, mounted and kicked the beast toward home. After forty paces, I encountered Martin White, a boy of twelve, who was evidently en route to his appointment with the new minister. He walked with slate and hornbook beneath one arm and with face downcast, as though immersed in a reverie. He did not lift his head, nor display recognition of any kind, but merely passed by me without speaking and, thusly, into the shadow of Meetinghouse Hill.
VII
For the next two days, I strove to push the matter from my mind and see to my duties about the village. But when Friday came with yet no word from the Verger, I decided, myself, to call on him at once. I readied my bag and the instruments of my profession, and rode to the meetinghouse, where I found the man at work on the edge of the churchyard.
His illness had worsened and he was plainly quite weak — too weak, I thought, to manage the ox and cart on his own, thereby explaining his prolonged absence. Nonetheless, he refused an examination. “It is not yet so bad as that,” said he, “nor is it a physick I require.”
I did not understand his meaning, for the man’s illness was clearly of a deteriorative nature: His collar was soaked through with sweat, while his breast was flecked with bits of black spittle. Crabb shook his head. “You must not think me a fool, Doctor. I am unwell, aye, but such sickness as I may have lies not only here” (he pointed to his breast with his thumb) “but all round us. In the graveyard. In the earth itself.”
He coughed noisily into one cupped hand, then turned over the palm to shew me. There was spittle there, and blood, but also present in suspension were fine strands of a black material identical to those produced by my experiment.
Crabb smiled horribly, baring his teeth. “The rot is far-progressed,” said he. “The Mead girl’s stone is crumbling, shedding itself like the skin of a leper, while the Reverend Cooper’s grave is blackening more each day. To-morrow, ‘twill be naught but dust and ashes.”
“We must tell the Reverend Stone. Has he rendered his decision?”
“He has not. Nor will he welcome the interruption.”
“Perhaps not, but I see no other recourse.”
“Aye,” the Verger agreed. “I have kept the folk of the village away, but they shall learn of it in time — by the Sabbath morn, if not before. What then?”
He was right, of course; I could well imagine the ensuing panic, the fear that takes hold in small towns like Falmouth and soon breeds itself into hysteria, as in Salem Village or in the days of the last war. We needed to act, and quickly.
The door to the parsonage was opened by the Reverend Stone, who wore his customary robes and perfume. By the grimness of his bearing, ‘twas plain that he was ill-pleased by our presence there, while his features were pale and contorted as in pain.
He did not invite us inside, but heard us out from the doorway, careful to maintain a courteous manner throughout our relation, despite his clear displeasure. After we had finished, he remained silent for a long time before addressing us with a voice like spring’s last ice.
“Yesterday, you sought my counsel and today, you tell me what must be done? In all likelihood, this ‘rot’ you speak of is merely another natural phenomenon that Men of Science,” (and here, he looked directly at me) “for of all their claims to erudition, are helpless to explain. Under no circumstances will the Lord permit us delvings in this graveyard. I would implore you both, as your pastor and as shepherd to this community, to trouble yourselves no more. Good day.”
With that, he shut the door on us. The sound echoed from the hill with the finality of a musket’s shot. Crabb turned to look at me. His canines appeared startlingly white against the black depths of his throat and his breath, too, was foetid.
By instinct or intuition, I knew he would not live to see another Sabbath, but we were not, as yet, helpless to save him. What is more, I could not countenance his death, any more than I could allow for the final profanation of the Reverend Cooper, a man unblemished in all things, who had gone to his grave with humble dignity to await the Day of Resurrection.
The time was short. I detailed my plan to the Verger, who gave his assent and arranged for me to meet him in the dark of the midnight. Then I mounted and returned home.
VIII
Four hours after twilight, I readied my saddlebags with spade and mattock, set a fresh candle within my lanthorn and stole behind the house to the stable, where the horse stood sleeping. I woke him with a gentle pat and laid my saddlebags across him. Then I climbed into the saddle and nudged him to a walk.
Soon, we were outside the village and amidst the woods, where the trees were budding, though not yet in blossom. Black and cancerous, their branches rattled with the wind, bending themselves to the cries of the owls and the calls of wolves from the north, so that they formed a kind of music, an eerie cacophony that followed me from the village and trailed me like the moonlight to the base of Meetinghouse Hill.
Fifty paces from the parsonage, I dismounted and ascended the hill on foot, with the saddlebags over my arm. There were no lights visible inside, not even the faint glow of a fire, but I waited until summiting the drumlin before lighting my lanthorn.
Crabb lingered near the gate of the churchyard. He was attired in heavy furs and woollens, with cold sweat shining on his face. With both hands, he held an unlit torch, the end of which trembled visibly, though with fright or fever I could not tell.
We did not speak, nor had we need of it. Crabb ignited his torch and, lifting high the light, shuffled toward the northwest corner of the burying ground. He was unsteady o
n his feet, dangerously so, and I made certain to walk beside him, so that I might catch him if he fell.
As Crabb had indicated, a profound change had taken place in the days since my last visit to the graveyard. All of the stones in the northwest corner had succumbed to the rot, including that of the Mead girl’s mother. Around her marker lay strewn innumerable shards of slate, which had cracked and fallen away, leaving behind a stone-shaped duplicate composed of that queer material: dark and spongy, not unlike the inside of a bone.
I handed to Crabb the mattock and took the spade in hand. Together, we began our diggings, confining our efforts to the vicinity of the infant’s grave. We soon learned that what had formerly been her stone — and was now a monstrous outgrowth — reached all the way down to the small coffin. Indeed, upon closer inspection, this black column seemed to grow from the box itself, narrowing to a rough circle, no wider than a man’s closed fist, where it breached the lid.
“More light,” I urged Crabb, who leant forward to direct his torch’s glow into the grave itself. In that flickering illumination, I observed clearly that the black thing had, in fact, grown up from inside the coffin. In appearance, it resembled a kind of hideous, ropy cord that had been braided and twisted several times over. As I watched, it quivered faintly along its muscled length, pulsing rhythmically, as with the beating of a heart.
My stomach turned; the fever-stench was overwhelming.
With a prayer for courage, I raised the spade and brought its edge down hard upon the unnatural growth. I directed the blow toward the narrowest point of the rope, only to find that its essential substance was as dense as granite: The spade cut no deeper than half-an-inch before being repulsed. I employed my bone-saw but to no better result, for the teeth, despite their sharpness, failed to find their grip. Crabb offered his assistance, but was likewise unable to sever the ropy fibers with the mattock. We had little choice, then, but to prise open the already-ruptured coffin, though we were both affrighted of what might lie within.
Crabb removed the nails with the blade of the mattock, but could not lift the lid on account of the obtruding growth. We dared not risk breaking open the box, as the resulting din would surely lead to our being discovered in our ghastly work, but I contrived a solution with the use of the bone-saw and successfully removed the bottom two-thirds of the lid, thus allowing us to shine a light inside.
After three years in the ground, the child’s flesh had been eaten away, leaving a rough jumble of bones and joints. I glimpsed her feet first of all, then discerned the shape of the ribs and pelvis. What I saw next chilled the very breath in my lungs.
The babe’s skull was shattered, burst open like a bird’s egg. The black growth sprouted up from the remnants of her jaw, eruptive, in the manner of a seed that has nourished itself on the earth before exploding into flower. Reeling, I staggered back and dropped to my knees, as in weary supplication to whatever dread power had loosed itself upon the village.
The child was dead these three years. Naught remained save bones; on what, then, had the black rot fed itself? I thought of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians: There is a natural body and there is a spiritual body. In the absence of the former, had this creature, whether of God or the Devil, found sustenance on the latter; and then, finding it to its taste, proceeded to feast?
I trembled to think of the departed minister, who had gone to the grave with the promise of resurrection, only to find waiting his own annihilation: a patient, noisome darkness like the fires of Gehenna.
Crabb stooped down beside me, breathing hard through lungs half-choked with dust or fluid. “We have uncovered the root,” said he and pointed down into the coffin, indicating a position immediately below the broken skull. “Do you see?”
A thin cable, one inch round and similar to an umbilicus, had entered the infant’s skull via the trachea, having first penetrated the box from below. Arising, I stooped to shift the weight of the coffin, moving it just enough to expose the tail of the umbilicus underneath.
From the coffin, the cord led southeast toward the meetinghouse. I dared not touch it and could scarcely breathe for weight of the realisation, but Crabb hesitated not at all. He hefted the mattock behind his head, and then, with one deft stroke, split the root in two.
We breathed easier, then, and the moon shone bright upon us as we filled the grave with wet sod. I suggested we conceal the disturbed ground with weeds and brown grasses, to which task the Verger attended ably, but our labours for that night were not yet at an end. Crabb sensed this as well as I did and I motioned to him to collect our tools and follow me to the new section, hiding our lights when we passed within view of the parsonage.
IX
We arrived at the Reverend Cooper’s stone, which the lanthorn revealed to be completely featureless, the last of the chiselled epitaph having been erased by the creeping rot. I nodded to Crabb and took from him the spade; and though it pained me worse than grief, I knew we had no choice but to disturb my dear friend’s grave.
After the Gale of Sixty-Eight, in which the larches came down, we had uprooted the stumps out of the earth, where, to our surprise, we found the trees were not in themselves separate, but grew from a single root. Much in the same way, I thought that if we were to trace the roots from every fibrous branch, every dark and crumbling flower, then we might yet pinpoint the source of the infestation and cut it away.
Crabb broke the earth with his mattock, the blade biting deep. From out of the ground steamed that familiar odour that was at once sweet and bitter, like that of moulding apples. Together, we worked at unburying the minister’s coffin. The labour wore hard upon the Verger, I could tell, for he rested often and coughed and shook, but always returned to the task with the listless focus of a somnambulant, or of a man long dead.
At last, the outline of the minister’s box revealed itself, whereupon I turned away, aghast, and could not stir myself to continue. I covered my face with my hands, but could not tamp my ears, which heard first the shriek of the dislodged nails as they were removed, followed by the distinctive squeal-and-bite of the saw-blade and the groan of the shifted lid.
The Verger inhaled sharply. Silence ensued, stretching for a minute or more before the spade descended and struck the inside of the coffin with a hollow thunk. I heard the coffin lid replaced, the mournful sound of sod on coffin-wood, and then — nothing.
I opened my eyes. Crabb had perched himself upon the edge of the grave with the spade-handle resting betwixt his legs. On his face he wore an expression of utter shock and bewilderment. I lowered myself beside him. His head swiveled. He looked at me directly, but his expression was curiously placid, almost vacant.
“‘Twas horrible,” said he. “He looked the same as on the day we laid him down, no different save for the rot. It had grown out of his throat, the black thing, wide enough for to crack the jawbone. His mouth was open, as if he were crying out in agony, and the expression on his face — I have never seen such despair.”
“It is done?” I asked, not wishing to consider the implications of his discovery. “The root, it has been severed?”
“Aye,” he affirmed. “It is done. Though I fear we may have tarried too long.”
“Where did it lead?”
“Northwest.”
“Toward the meetinghouse?”
He turned his eyes upon me again, the moon glimmering like foxfire upon his pale visage. “Not toward it,” said he, shaking his head. “Not ‘toward’ it at all. But to it. There can be no question but that it began there.”
X
Scarcely an hour of darkness remained by the time I reached the village. Exhausted and unsettled, I resolved myself on sleep, only to be roused from slumber after no more than a quarter of an hour by a frantic pounding at the door.
‘Twas John White, the youngest member of his family. The sun hung low in the eastern sky, violet at this early hour and I realised upon seeing him that John must have left his home, on foot and unaccompanied, in the dark
est hour of the night.
I wasted no time in extracting the tale from him. Earlier that evening, his younger brother Martin, who had been ill these last three days, had taken a turn for the worse and slipped into unconsciousness. With Ethan unrecovered, and his mother occupied in tending to Martin, she had sent her youngest child to fetch help. And so, he had come to me.
I dressed myself and readied the horse. Then, taking John behind me in the saddle, I rode hard for the White farm. The road was empty before us, the maples green and flowering, and I knew, by the warmth of the light on my back, that the day would be humid in the extreme.
At the White Farm, we dismounted in the yard. I handed John the lead and bade him stable the horse while I flew into the house and climbed the narrow staircase to the loft space, adjacent the chimney, wherein the family customarily slept.
But upon that morning, not one member of that household lay slumbering: Ethan, aged 16, tossed restlessly on one side of the bed and cried out piteously, pained by the itch of his missing limb, while Martin lay quietly beside him with his face upturned, soaked through with fever, his underclothes hanging from him like wet rags. Their mother occupied a chair by the bedside, one hand resting on Martin’s brow, holding in place a scrap of white cloth. She acknowledged me with the slightest of nods, but I knew she did not intend for rudeness. In widowhood, she had grown strong, but these latest trials had nearly defeated her.
Immediately, I made haste to examine the unconscious lad. By inclining my ear to his chest, I ascertained that the heart was still beating, though its rhythm was uneven. His breathing was likewise staggered and shallow, so that I suspected the presence of some obstruction in the lungs. I rolled back the fabric of his shirt, exposing his chest to the light of my candle. At this, his mother gasped. I fear that I, too, may have recoiled in shock.
For the boy’s chest was obscured by a mass of tumourous black growths, domed in the manner of warts and sprouting from the flesh to either side of the sternum. They must have seeded in his lungs and thenceforth expanded until breaching the skin like mushrooms after a rain. I touched my finger to the top of one such growth and observed its porous consistency; the tumour depressed at contact before springing back to resume its earlier shape. This recalled to my mind certain facts: not only the infestation in the churchyard, but the Verger’s sickness and the visit that Martin himself had made but recently to Meetinghouse Hill.
