A Shadow on the Wall

by Jonathan Aycliffe

  Sometime Rector of the Parish of Thornham St Stephen

  “Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death:

  that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father even so we also should walk in newness of life.”

  Rom. VI:4

  R.I.P.

  “My mother chose the verse,” said Atherton. He stood beside me, shivering slightly in the chill wind.

  The words were finely cut, sharp and deep in the face of the new stone. But a delicate film of moss had already blurred the bottom half of the inscription, and the grave itself was looking bedraggled and ill-tended.

  “Does no one come here often?” I asked.

  Atherton shook his head.

  “My mother did in the beginning. But she stopped some months ago, when . . .”

  “What is it? What did you want to show me?”

  In answer, he pointed to the stone.

  “Take a closer look,” he said.

  I bent down, bringing my face close to the headstone. As I did so, I noticed, faint beneath the layer of moss, what seemed to be a tracing of another inscription. With my bare hand I wiped some of the moss clear, then peered closely at the stone. There were indeed letters, not cut by any chisel, but somehow apparent in the marble as though by the action of some intense stain, or a discoloration rising out of the stone itself.

  EVIGILAVIT ADVERSUM TE ECCE VENIT

  “It’s from the Book of Ezekiel,” prompted Atherton. “It watcheth for thee; behold, it is come.” [Euigilabit in Amiatinus, Florence, Bibl. Mediceo-Laurenz; Amiatino, I, s. VIII in. in Northumbria; also in Orleans, Bibl. Mun. 17 (14), s. VIII-IX Floriaci.]

  In the west, the sun sank finally, returning the world to darkness. Our lantern seemed a pitiful thing before the force of the coming night. I straightened and looked at Atherton.

  “I would like to speak with your mother,” I said.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  We drove to Wilburton in silence, broken only by the sound of our horse’s hooves and the turning of the dogcart’s wheels, now on stone, now on grass, now on earth. I had no explanation for the letters that had appeared on Edward Atherton’s tombstone, and for the moment I preferred not to let my thoughts dwell on the subject.

  Abbeystead is a medium-sized dwelling set in an isolated part of the fens. The Hoghill Drove lies to its west, and the Twenty-pence to the east, and all in between is open and bleak and swept by cold winds all winter long. The house itself seems eminently suited to a bishop’s widow, being neither too luxurious nor unduly spartan. A fine red-brick house with five straight gables, it dates back to the seventeenth century, and has, I understand, been in Mrs Atherton’s family since the eighteenth.

  The doctor was there when we arrived, this being his second visit of the day. He took Atherton aside into the little library, and talked earnestly with him before taking his leave.

  “Hastings says Mother has recovered somewhat, but that we must not tire her. No doubt the nurse will pitch us out if we go on too long. Would you like to eat before we go up?”

  I shook my head. Mrs Atherton might well relapse if we left it too long.

  We went directly to her bedroom, our feet unconsciously soft on the stairs, as though fearing to alarm her. The air was pervaded by the scents of candle-wax and lamp oil, for, as in Thornham St Stephen, gas had not yet reached Wilburton, let alone Abbeystead. Flames shivered in a cold draught, and danced in the polished woodwork of the balustrade. Atherton knocked on his mother’s door, and moments later the nurse let us in. She was young and pleasant-faced, with the efficient manner of someone trained in one of the new teaching hospitals.

  The room was in darkness, save for a lamp on the table to the left of the bed, where the nurse had been sitting. A smell of carbolic soap and strong medicine filled the air, mixing with the odours of lamp oil and burning logs to create the unmistakable, dreary scent of a sick-room.

  “She’s more herself, sir,” whispered the nurse, “but still sinking.”

  “This is the gentleman she expressed a desire to see. Is it all right if he speaks with her now?”

  “That’s all right, sir, but Dr Hastings says she mustn’t be kept talking long, and you’ll excuse me if I see she’s not distressed.”

  Atherton ushered me forward. The old lady was propped up against a sea of pillows, all encased in voluminous white lace. A lace cap was tied round her head, and from it long strands of white hair spilled out across the pillows like foam. All this whiteness served as a sort of frame to hold a face almost as white, and the face in turn framed a pair of eyes like faded coral.

  “Mother, this is Professor Asquith. He has come from Cambridge specially to see you.”

  The trace of a smile crossed the half-dead lips, and the old woman motioned faintly with her right hand. I crossed to the nurse’s chair and sat down. Atherton stood alongside me, gazing down at his mother with an anxious expression, as though expecting her to depart this life at any moment.

  “I’m sorry to have . . . brought you all this way . . . for so little, Professor,” the old lady began. Her voice, though weak, was clear enough, and I sensed behind it a strength of will that had not altogether deserted her.

  “The sick are not to be denied,” I said. “I am pleased to be here.”

  “I fear you do not find me . . . sick . . . but dying.”

  I began to perceive how with each word she struggled to speak something imperceptible went out of her. I waited, saying nothing. Her eyes held me steady. I knew she could see me clearly, and I knew I was not all she saw.

  “I was never . . . afraid of death before,” she continued. “I have . . . lived a long life . . . and I have always . . . known the comfort of the Church . . . But since my son Edward . . . died, I have known . . . no peace . . . and I have had no comfort.

  “Matthew has told me nothing . . . of the circumstances . . . of Edward’s death . . . But I . . . guess more than he thinks . . .”

  “Mother—” Atherton broke in.

  “Keep quiet, Matthew. This is . . . between Professor Asquith . . . and myself.” She returned her gaze to me. Every word weakened her, she was determined to make the most of what she said.

  “Professor, I am a . . . frightened woman. I have seen my son . . . twice since his death. Each time . . . he has appeared to me . . . terribly changed. He is not . . . in the arms of a . . . loving God. Nor do I think . . . he is in hell. He inhabits a sort of . . . limbo, where he is tormented by something . . . I do not understand. He tells me . . . he said you had freed him . . . but that he was not yet free.”

  I still said nothing. I knew what she was driving me to.

  “He said there is still . . . a great evil . . . at Thornham St Stephen. That it is not at rest . . . He said you must put it to rest . . . that the prayers were not enough . . . I do not understand. Do you?”

  I nodded.

  “Yes,” I whispered. “I understand perfectly.”

  “And you will do it? You will . . . put this thing to rest.”

  I hesitated. I thought of Simone, of our coming marriage, of the risks I would be taking. But this was a dying woman, and she was frightened.

  “Why did Edward speak to you? Why not to me?”

  “He did not know . . . where to find you. I am his mother. He came to me.”

  “Is he here now?” I asked. “Is he in this room?”

  She shifted for the first time, her head uneasy on the sea of pillows, as though suddenly adrift.

  “He has been here,” she whispered. Her voice was growing faint now, as though receding from us along a thin corridor of death. “But not now . . . not now.”

  I felt the nurse’s hand on my shoulder.

  “She needs to rest now,” she said. “It’s not good to keep her talking.”

  I took Mrs Atherton’s hand in mine and looked into her eyes. They were starting to close, but their gaze still penetrated me.

  “Very well,” I said, and my heart sank with
in me. “I shall do what has to be done.”

  She smiled then, a little girl’s smile in an old woman’s dying face, and said no more to me, and closed her eyes, which I never saw open again.

  Atherton and I dined together alone, for there were no visitors, none being admitted to his mother. He expected relations on the following day, an aunt and some cousins, and friends from the neighbourhood would undoubtedly call, to enquire about his mother’s condition, or to bid her a tearful farewell. He himself was prepared for the event; it held few terrors for him.

  “I only pray that she will slip away peacefully,” he said. “Her life has not been peaceful since my brother died. And she took my father’s death very hard before that. I would not see her suffer now.”

  I said nothing, but thought to myself, if only suffering were all.

  “When you saw your brother,” I went on, after a brief silence, “was he altered, as your mother found him?”

  “He was a little, yes, though not as gravely as she says. But you must remember that I saw him less clearly, and for a shorter time. I am certain he was trying to speak to me, to communicate something: a message, a warning—I’m not sure.”

  “And did you try to speak to him?”

  He hesitated, putting down his knife and fork as though all appetite had suddenly left him.

  “No,” he said. “I was frightened. There was . . . something in his expression . . .” His voice faltered. “Something hungry . . .”

  After dinner, we passed to the library, to drink a little port and talk of books we had recently read. Neither alluded to the true reason for my presence there, whether from politeness or fear I cannot say. In one corner, a clock ticked with flat, precise strokes, and from time to time one or the other of us would look round at it, to see how long had now passed since the last time. Two or three times, Atherton rang for the maid, to ask her to enquire after his mother. Each time, the answer from upstairs was simply, “No change, sir.”

  At ten o’clock, we retired. I had been given a room near Atherton’s, with a wide bed and a pleasant fire. The window overlooked a wide lawn, beyond which lay the fens, bleak and silent under a white moon. I stood by the window for a long time, staring out into the darkness, lost in my own musings. I tried to think of Simone and the life we would begin together, but again and again my thoughts returned to the old woman whose room lay only a few doors from my own, and whose coming death pervaded the house.

  The moon slowly changed position, and thin clouds came up from the west, darkening its light. I caught sight of a flickering of dark wings in a clump of trees at the foot of the lawn, then all returned to the stillness in which it had been.

  Just then, a deeper shadow caught my eye, something moving slowly a little to my left, just where a dip in the grass led down to a summerhouse. I strained to make out what it was, but though I stood there for some time, I did not see it again. In the end, my eyes grew tired, and I returned to the fireplace.

  I undressed, but I found my bed oppressive and sleep impossible. Getting up again, I lit the lamp and sat by the fire, trying to read. The stillness was unbearable. On the mantelpiece, a carriage clock ticked. Outside, an owl screeched twice, then silence fell again. My book lay open on my lap. I had not read a single sentence. Footsteps passed in the hall, a door opened and closed, and the stillness returned. The fire burned down steadily, but I did not add fresh wood. I stared into the embers, thinking of the promise I had made. Somewhere, a clock chimed midnight.

  I went to the window and looked out again. A thick mist had drifted in from the fens. I could see nothing clearly. The whole world seemed to be holding its breath. Outside my window, the mist moved dreamily about, now parting, now opening to reveal darkness. I pulled the curtains to and returned to the fire.

  It cannot have been more than a minute after I did so when the silence was broken by a loud cry, a long, wrenching cry uttered by someone in mortal terror. I stood at once, my heart thudding unpleasantly, aware that the scream had come from the direction of Mrs Atherton’s room.

  When I got there, Atherton had just reached the door. I joined him and put my hand on his shoulder.

  “Let me go in,” I said. No sound came from the room. All I could hear were footsteps downstairs as the house staff came to investigate.

  “It’s my mother, for God’s sake.”

  “All the more reason. I’ll come for you once I’ve seen everything’s all right.”

  Reluctantly, he stood back and let me go in alone.

  The room was almost as I remembered it from my earlier visit. The nurse’s lamp still burned on the bedside table. As I stepped through the door, I noticed that a curtain had been pulled back from the window to the right of the bed, and that the window itself had been opened. At the same instant, I became aware that the temperature in the room had dropped, and that a patch of mist lay between the window and the bed. I also observed that the sick-room odour that had been so strong previously had been overlaid by another smell, a most unpleasant stench of decay.

  No sooner had I taken notice of these things, than my attention was drawn to the bed. Mrs Atherton lay there as before, but her face no longer had the composed expression of a woman who has made up her mind to die, but rather one of the most agonizing terror. Her features had been contorted by fear into a mockery of what I had seen not many hours earlier.

  It was immediately obvious to me that she was dead. Nonetheless, I looked round to find the nurse, as though to seek confirmation. At first I could see her nowhere, and thought angrily that she must have deserted her post. And then I looked more closely at the shadows around the foot of her chair, and saw her slumped there, her body limp and twisted.

  I rushed across to her and bent down, fearing that she too was dead, and from the same cause. To my relief, I saw she was still breathing, though unconscious. I started to raise her to a sitting position against the bed, and as I did so, I happened to look up directly at the open window on the other side of the room. As long as I live, I shall regret having done so. For I caught a glimpse of something in the mist behind the curtain, a shadowy thing that emerged with a quick motion and made for the opening.

  Its image is still vivid on my waking mind, set there like a photograph, though mercifully blurred. In the seconds before it vanished, I saw something tall and stooped and horribly thin, a gangling thing that moved disjointedly, almost like an insect. It wore a tattered habit that barely covered its limbs, and a hood pulled over its head. As it passed through the window, it turned its face to me, and for the briefest of moments I glimpsed its eyes. The next moment, it was gone, and Matthew Atherton was by my side, helping me to my feet.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The following week was spent in making arrangements for Atherton’s mother’s funeral, and settling her affairs. I returned to Cambridge to consider what must next be done, and to devise a strategy for how best to go about it. Atherton stayed at Wilburton all that week, although, at my advice, he stayed with friends in the village, and not at Abbeystead.

  Before leaving the house myself, I took care to speak with the nurse, a girl from March called Lily Barnes, and to elicit from her the details of what she had seen and heard the night before. Her story was confused, and her narrative much affected by the very real fear that telling it caused her.

  A little before midnight, she had felt inexplicably drowsy. Since falling asleep could lead to her instant dismissal, she took steps to freshen herself, stepping to the window and drawing up the sash, in order to let some cooler air into the room. Having done so, she felt much better, but decided to return to her seat, leaving the curtain drawn and the window a little open.

  Not many minutes had passed when she noticed that mist from outside had drifted into the room. At that same moment, she observed that her patient was stirring in her sleep and appeared distressed. Mrs Atherton began to mumble incoherently and showed signs of waking. Lily went to her side, intending to reassure her and to encourage her to return to slee
p; as she did so, she happened to glance up at the window, thinking the change in air might have been to blame for the change in the old lady’s condition. At the window, she saw a “horrid” figure climbing into the opening. As it straightened and looked at her, she caught sight of its face . . .

  “What I mean, sir, is that it didn’t exactly have a face. There were eyes, I know that, and something very like a mouth, but it wasn’t . . . a face as such . . .”

  She remembers nothing after that, poor girl. Her prospects have been much blighted by the experience, for she now refuses to take any night jobs, and is uneasy even to be left alone with a sick patient during daylight hours. I said what I could to encourage her, but it was not much.

  In Cambridge, I spent several days in the University Library, sorting through various monastic documents, some printed, some in manuscript, most of them dating from the fourteenth century—cartularies, rolls, chronicles. Though I could not find exactly what I wanted, I was able to form a broader picture than before, and to see more clearly what was missing.

  Atherton got back from Wilburton late on the Friday, much worn down by his new-found responsibilities. He had not entered his mother’s room until after I closed the window, and I had said nothing to him of what I had seen, and repeated nothing of Lily Barnes’s tale. Nonetheless, he was not a man to be easily deceived. I had been unable to prevent him seeing his mother in those terrible moments after her death, and the expression on her face, so similar in all respects to that imprinted on his brother Edward’s features, had told him all he needed to know.

  He got in touch with me straight away, and we dined that evening at my college before retiring to my rooms to talk. I still thought it prudent to say nothing of the figure the nurse and I had seen, but I told him I believed that William de Lindesey had returned from the grave and that he sought a proper human form in which to resume his existence. Failing that, he would draw strength from others, driving them to their deaths if need be.

  “What are we to do?” Atherton asked when I had finished my explanation.