‘I swear,’ we said, one after another. ‘I swear.’
What happened next? Ah, my dear young man, there’s no need to look so alarmed. Time passed, as it must always do. The bodies were discovered. There was a police inquiry but no murderer was ever found. No one ever asked me about my movements that night. The Junior Dean made a point of consoling me over my friend’s death and I said, truthfully, that I was grief-stricken. He sympathised but quoted a chilling little epithet from Homer, doubtless intended to foster a stoical spirit. Be strong, saith my heart; I am a soldier; I have seen worse sights than this. And it was over. Consummatum est.
Or so I thought.
Listen to the wind howling. It seems to rock the train, does it not? We’re quite safe here, however. After all, there’s no connecting door between the carriages. No one can come in or out. More brandy?
What happened next? Well, the prosaic truth is: nothing much to speak of. Gudgeon’s parents took his body away and he was buried at his home in Gloucestershire. I didn’t attend. I don’t know what happened to Wilberforce. As I said before, the police never found their killer. A year later, the ruined house was demolished. I continued my studies. I think I became quite solitary and strange. Other students would look at me oddly as I crossed the court or sat in the dining hall. ‘That’s him,’ I heard someone whisper once. ‘The other one.’ I suppose I became ‘the other one’ to most men in Peterhouse, possibly even to myself.
I didn’t see much or Bastian or Collins. I was now officially a member of the Hell Club but I didn’t attend their meetings or the infamous Blood Ball, which was held every year. I spent most of my time in my rooms or in the library. My only contact with my fellow students was with members of the shooting club. With them, at least, I managed some uncomplicated, comradely hours.
I graduated with a first, which was gratifying. I had heard that Lord Bastian had been sent down and that Collins did not complete his degree. But they were at different colleges and our paths had long since diverged. I began to read for a doctorate, continuing with the solitary, bachelor existence that I had established in my undergraduate days.
Then, in my first term as a postgraduate student, I received some rather strange correspondence. It was November, a bitterly cold day, and I remember the frost crunching under my feet as I walked to the porters’ lodge to collect my post. Not that I ever received many letters. My mother wrote occasionally and I subscribed to a couple of scholarly theological journals. That was it. But on this day there was something else. A letter with a foreign postmark, inscribed in a strange, slanting hand. I opened it with some curiosity. Inside was a cutting from a Persian newspaper. I did not, of course, understand the Perso-Arabic script but there was a translation, written with the same italic pen. It said that a man called Amir Ebrahimi had been killed in a freak accident involving a hot air balloon. The ascent had gone perfectly but, at some point during the flight, Ebrahimi had fallen from the basket underneath the balloon and had plummeted to his death. I turned the letter over in my hands, wondering why someone would have thought that I would be interested in this gruesome event. It was then that I saw the words written on the reverse of the paper. Hell is empty. And I remembered that Ebrahimi had been the name of the third man, the companion of Bastian and Collins.
The other one.
Of course Ebrahimi’s death was a terrible shock. I remember standing there with the newspaper cutting in my hand, then going back to my rooms, lying down on my bed and shaking. Who had sent me the fateful papers? Who had written the translation with that slender, slanting pen? And who had written the words ‘Hell is empty’ on the reverse? Could it be Bastian? Or Collins? It seemed impossible but who else could possibly have known about the Hell Club and that terrible night?
I pondered these questions over the next few days. Indeed, I thought of little else. But in the end, I pushed my fears away and carried on with my life. After all, what else could I do? And I was young, I had my health and my strength. You understand, my dear young friend? Yes, I see that you do. Youth is arrogant, which is as it should be. I was sorry that Ebrahimi was dead — and I sincerely mourned my friend Gudgeon — but there was nothing that I could do to bring them back to life. So I continued with my studies and even began to court a young lady, the daughter of my tutor. Life was sweet that spring, perhaps all the sweeter for the thought that I had escaped from the pall of death. For, at that time, I believed that I had escaped.
How the wind howls.
‘What happened next?’ Ah, the perennial, unanswered question. That is the very essence of narrative, is it not? ‘Please read another page’, begs the child at bedtime . Anything to ward off the horrors of the dark. And you have not long left childhood behind yourself, my dear young friend. It is only natural that you should want to know what happens in the next chapter.
Another year passed. I became engaged to Ada, the daughter of my tutor. I started work on my thesis, which dealt with the Albigensian heresy. I also taught undergraduates, though, in truth, I was a solid and uninspiring lecturer. I heard them whispering about me sometimes, caught the words ‘Hell Club’ and ‘murder’. But I chose to dwell in the light that year. And I acquired a companion. Yes, the very animal that you see before you in this train carriage. What a friend dear Herbert has been to me in my trials. Truer and more steadfast than any human acolyte.
Autumn passed and with it Halloween. I confess I breathed a sigh of relief when the dread day passed without incident. But then, several weeks later, I heard the bedders talking in the corridor and caught the name ‘Collins’ and the word ‘killed’.
I burst out of my room and demanded, with a passion that surprised them, ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Mr Collins, from King’s, as was, sir,’ came the reply. ‘We were talking about the way he died. So unnatural.’
‘What happened?’ I said, aware that a coldness had swept over me. Collins, the companion of Lord Bastian, had been a student at King’s.
‘He was killed, sir. He was driving his own carriage across the fens. He set off from Ely, as right as rain, heading for Cambridge. No one knows what happened but his horse was found a day later, running wild, still harnessed to the carriage. A search party was sent out and Mr Collins was found in a ditch. His throat had been cut, sir.’
‘When was this?’
The older of the two bedders answered me. ‘It was on Halloween night, sir. I remember because Bert, who was one of the searchers, said it fair chilled the blood to see the horse galloping on his own as if the hounds of hell were after him.’
It was another week before the newspaper cutting reached me. ‘Cambridge man found murdered on the fens.’ And scrawled across the headline the handwritten words, ‘Hell is empty.’
I broke off my engagement to Ada. I wasn’t fit company for any decent person. I kept to my room, ostensibly working on my thesis but, in fact, writing the story with which I am now regaling you, my dear young friend. About the Hell Club and Halloween at the ruined house. About the dead bodies and our vow, made in the blood of our comrade. About Ebrahimi and Collins. About the nemesis that seemed to be following me. Again and again, I wrote the words:
Hell is empty.
When 31st October came around again, I was a mere shell. I knew people were worried about me. My tutor had tried to talk to me (even though he hated me now because of the way I had treated Ada), and the Junior Dean had gone as far as to request an interview, during which he impressed upon me the necessity of eating well and performing regular exercises. Mens sana in corpore sano. If only he knew the true state of my mind.
All day I waited. I didn’t leave my room because I knew the nemesis would come, locked door or not. I didn’t hear the news until the next day, All Saints’ Day. I went for a stroll through the town, late at night. I often liked to do this, prowling the silent streets, alone with my thoughts. But, outside St John’s, I saw a fellow cal
led Egremont standing in the shadow of the lodge, smoking his pipe. I recognised him as a member of the Hell Club but I hurried past, not wanting to get into conversation.
‘Hallo there.’ He called after me. ‘You were a friend of Bastian’s, weren’t you?’
‘I knew him,’ I said cautiously, although my heart was pounding.
‘Have you heard what happened to him? Awful news.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘What has happened to him?’
‘I heard it from one of the scouts just now. Bastian was in a train. One of the new sorts with connecting carriages. He was moving from one carriage to another when the train suddenly divided. He was crushed under the wheels. Poor fellow. What a terrible death.’
I looked at Egremont, saw his pale face and the skull’s head badge on his lapel.
‘When did this happen?’ I asked.
‘Only yesterday,’ he replied. ‘I’m sure it’ll be in tomorrow’s Times.’
It was a week before the newspaper cutting reached me, with the now familiar addendum.
Hell is empty.
Well, today’s the anniversary of that day and I’m the only one left. What a strange thought that is, my dear young man. I am sure that your lively brain has long since recognised the pattern that is unfolding here and the inauspiciousness of the date. Why is he telling me this story? you must wonder. Have I been chosen to witness the demise of the narrator?
But do not fear. After all, I am not about to go up in a hot air balloon or attempt to drive a coach and pair across the fens. I can’t plummet from the air or be dragged by footpads from my carriage.
I am in a train, it’s true, but I’m not about to leave this carriage.
Ah, my dear young man. How still you are. That was the brandy, of course. Atropa belladonna or Deadly Nightshade. It will give you strange visions, I fear, and your sight will be impaired. I am sure that, even now, I am metamorphosing before your eyes, becoming watery and indistinct. Perhaps I have disappeared altogether. Though who is to say what is real and what is not? As I quoted earlier, a man may see how the world goes with no eyes. How wildly you look at me, your orbs completely black now. But, of course, you cannot move. I am sorry, you know. I wish it didn’t have to be this way. But whatever demonic entity it is that demands my blood — the same that has already taken the lives of Gudgeon, Wilberforce, Ebrahimi, Collins and Bastian, so many, alas, so much blood — this creature will not be satisfied until it has garnered another soul. Oh, it wants me, of course. This day, this Halloween night, was meant to be the day of my death. The day of reckoning. Hell is empty and all the devils are here. The ghoul awaits. He is hungry, I hear him in the howling of the wind and the anger of the storm. But I think it will be satisfied with you, innocent soul that you are.
Do not fear. The end will be painless. And who knows what will await us on the other side? Perhaps I am simply hastening your journey towards perfect felicity. I hope so. I really do.
Farewell, my dear travelling companion.
Acknowledgments
TK
The Stranger Diaries Page 31
