by Rhys Hughes
“At this he shook his head emphatically and urged her not to do so. ‘Nothing but trouble has come from that book,’ he said. And then he revealed that the voice in her dream had been the book calling her, the same way it had called out to Septimus Weber from the library of his monastery when the plague had closed in and Colonel Pritchard from the cellar when the armies had gathered before him. It was alive and needed to be used. Claire then asked him if there was a viable alternative. Apparently there was. He told her that it would be much better if the ravens which lived on the farm could be persuaded to eat the worms. Although the worms were ghosts, they were still capable of being eaten. They were solid ghosts.
“Claire said that the birds never ventured onto the fields. ‘That is because they are frightened,’ the little man said. ‘They can sense that something is amiss. We will have to overcome their reluctance by tempting them.’ Claire nodded but confessed that she could think of no way to do this. And then the little man whispered a suggestion in her ear. She carried out his suggestion, the birds were attracted onto the fields, they ate the worms and suddenly it was possible to plant seed that would not vanish overnight. Claire burned the book of spells in her hearth and it being an infinite book, it is burning still and will continue to save on her heating bills. . . .”
I stopped and yawned. The telling of this tale had made me sleepy. The two travellers looked up as if expecting me to say more. I shook my head and they blinked in disbelief. It was obvious that they felt cheated. The first traveller re-filled his pipe and snorted.
“Is that all?” he demanded. “It explains nothing. Those worms were not in the same league as my highwayman. They were only partly solid, after all. And there was no personal element to the story.”
The second traveller frowned. “I don’t understand how the thread of the last tale ties in with the others. What did the little man suggest to Claire? How exactly did they tempt the birds onto the fields? And do ravens really eat worms?”
The first traveller smirked. “It all seems far too melodramatic for my taste. I’m not very impressed.” He turned his back on me and stared out across the dark landscape.
“He suggested that she tie him to a pole and carry him out onto the field,” I said. “Doesn’t that explain everything?”
“I’m afraid it doesn’t,” the second traveller admitted. “Are you saying that she planted him in the soil or something and that he beckoned to the birds and they saw how safe it was out there and they flocked onto the fields?”
I shrugged. “Let’s just say that nothing attracts a flock of hungry ravens like a scarecrow.” I pulled my straw hat down over my eyes. There was only one thing left to say. I stifled another yawn with my hand. I smiled benevolently down. “Now if you’ll promise not to thank me, I’ll bid you goodnight.”
The Crab
My name will never go down in history. My portrait will never adorn the walls of scientific academies. But my statue will stand on the highest plinth in our largest public park. The paradox is not so strange at it might seem. I am the great benefactor of the age. I am also unknown. Such a fate was inevitable for the man who discovered the cure. A grandiose claim, but if you continue to read, you would see that I do not lie.
The origins of the plague were a mystery. Some people claimed it was brought here by a comet or meteor shower from outer space. Certainly there were peculiar lights in the sky on the night it first manifested itself. Bright streaks in the constellation Cancer, the crab. An apt location. Not that this disease bore any relation to its older namesake. A tumour is a defective attempt at self-regeneration. This new mutation was a defective attempt at suspension. Cells hardened and petrified. They literally turned to rock.
Madness was one of the final symptoms. And that is what you now suspect me to be suffering from. As the brain begins to solidify, who knows what psychological changes take place? There are enough jabbering idiots in this city. But even if you doubt my sanity, there is no reason for you not to listen. No, I am not a doctor by trade. My knowledge of biology is limited to the pains in my chest and neck. Actually I am, or was, a mason. Fine irony! But I can tell you are already growing bored with my narrative. I will try to get to the point as quickly as possible.
I am called Lazlo Dobson. Two years ago, when the plague first made its presence known, I was employed to clear the corpses from the streets. A hazardous task, for the method of infection was unknown. I used my hammer and chisel to dismantle the victims where they stood. A cart waited to convey the rubble to the disused quarry on the edge of the city. In the beginning, I worked alone.
Strange how we spent years digging stone from that quarry only to attempt to refill it later! And refill it I nearly did. By the end of the first year, half the city population had succumbed. It was an unpleasant business, chipping away men, women and children. But you are yawning! You have no patience with my memories. Then I shall play my trump card now. Do you know why I had to destroy the corpses? So that they would not be mistaken for the statues of city councillors dotted around the parks and boulevards!
This is not bitter cynicism. This is truth. I risked my life for their sakes. Bureaucrats who stayed safely out of the way while their citizens perished. How joyful I was on those occasions when, one of them venturing out into the street and catching the disease, I could leave them there and dismantle their statue instead. Nobody was any the wiser. Sweet, though rare, revenge. A revenge like granite, durable and satisfying.
I still do not have your undivided attention. You are too busy to listen to my confessions. So be it! I was about to reveal how I chanced upon the cure. The story is perhaps more relevant to your own health than you presently suppose. Whether you choose to complete my work is dependent on your character and resources. My wish is to issue a warning about the implications of undertaking the project. You will understand soon enough. Already you are turning the key to the solution, but opening the lock may expose as much horror as hope.
It began when I had just finished a particularly grim morning’s work. It was December, and a fine snow covered the city. The few children who remained were building snowmen, piling the snow around the figures of petrified people. Wild dogs, crazed with hunger, roamed the streets searching for bodies whose substance would not shatter their teeth. Eyes blazing, they would bite at a victim and retreat, trailing shreds of skin and sprinkling blood which was already turning to red dust.
There were instances when the dogs went for living prey. The onset of the disease was fast. The symptoms were always the same. First a numbness in the extremities, the fingers and toes, spreading up the limbs to the body. Then up the neck to the head. Petrification proper would follow, working inward to the vital organs, brain first, heart last. The entire process from living human to granite statue rarely took longer than thirty minutes. Immobility always preceded death, and the dogs would pounce at the parts which were still tender, ripping holes in throats and bellies.
I had acquired an assistant, a big man who was useful with a hammer. Eric Kemp was a hard worker and he rarely spoke, deeming small talk to be the source of the infection. As company he was inadequate, but he more than doubled the number of statues reduced to fragments in a single day. While he continued to smash the immobile figures, I pushed the full cart to the nearest cemetery. The quarry was too distant to make regular trips efficient. The council had considered many alternative sites for disposal. They had calculated that there was plenty of unused space in old tombs.
It may appear faintly ludicrous that so much emphasis was placed on concealing the crumbs of stone which had once been living humans from general view. Public morale was cited as the major motive, though I always felt that this waste of building materials was inexcusable. Still, without people to live in them, new houses would be an extravagance, and the population was already lower than it had been a century ago. But I did not question my orders aloud. I was too weary to be anything other than obedient.
The overgrown cemeteries were the m
ost fitting places for this operation. Trampling down the weeds, I would stray off the path and approach a weathered tomb. If the writing on the side was still legible, I tried to avoid reading it. If erosion had faded the name to almost nothing, I traced my fingers over the faint depressions and so deciphered the letters. Such is the perversity of human nature. I would slide my spade under the lid and lever it aside. Imagine me squatting on my haunches, struggling to rise, the handle of my tool resting on a shoulder as I gripped it, and the cover of the tomb groaning as it lifted free and tumbled into the nettles.
Then I would shovel the contents of my cart into the exposed emptiness. Tombs are always fashioned too large for their occupants. That was to my advantage. I never peered over the side, but I could often judge the contents from the sounds made by the rubble as it dropped inside. Sometimes it struck the rotting wood of a coffin, or something softer, a decayed shroud. More often the fragments skittled loose bones. There were many unexpected noises, little chimes and clangs, evidence of material artefacts, perhaps ornaments or jewellery, buried with their owners. Once I heard the splash of some underground stream which had worn through the bottom of the sepulchre, snatching the bodies away into the deep crevices of the Earth, washing them eventually out to sea.
On this occasion, there was only silence. It was an obscure cemetery in the oldest quarter of the city. I opened the tiny iron gate and pushed my cart along the neglected path under the twisted yews. The chapel it served was ruined. The windows had been smashed and the top half of the steeple was missing. I approached the tomb nearest the boundary wall. It was so overgrown that I had difficulty manoeuvring the cart to its side. To my surprise, the lid offered little resistance. It was a relatively thin slab and devoid of any inscription. I shall refrain from saying that it opened like a mouth. The image is safely creepy, but also lazy. Besides, in this case it was not true.
I did not hesitate. I did not pause to ponder on the ineffable mysteries of life, death and whatever lay between and beyond. That sort of pretension, which is essentially naïve romanticism, had left me long before. I simply started shovelling the rubble into the empty space. I was on my seventh turn and still waiting for the first deposit to strike a sound inside when I was overcome by the unnaturalness of it all. It was a subtle discrepancy, the only kind left which can disturb someone as immune to shocks as I. There seemed little benefit in peering over the edge on my own, so I returned to fetch my assistant.
Eric was a pragmatic fellow, and he doubted nothing. He rested his hammer at the base of a partly demolished statue and came back with me. He had a rope, used for pulling over the taller statues, or dragging them away from the middle of the road, and a box of magnesium flares, for scaring off the wild dogs. We argued briefly over who should have the honour of solving the mystery, both of us deferring to the other. Finally, because he was the larger and more persuasive man, I accepted the mission. He looped the rope under my arms and lowered me over the side. I descended into warm darkness. There was no floor to the tomb, and no river. Nor was there a breath of wind.
At last I dangled at the full extremity of the rope. There was no more slack to give. High overhead, a square of grey sky showed like another granite slab, the top of a tomb viewed from above. Eric’s face spoiled the mirage, or perhaps added to it, the head of a gargoyle carved into the stone. So I activated the flare and shielded my gaze from the sudden burst. I held it high, forgetting the mutual dislike between flames and ropes. The smoke poured up the shaft.
I was fifty feet down and the bottom continued into darkness. I lack the confidence to assert that it had no base. I prefer to believe that the rubble of the smashed people had been burned up in a lake of magma, deeper than the range of human hearing. But this is irrelevant. The amazing point of the incident existed all around me. Because it sounds ridiculous, I shall state it with minimum fuss. The walls of the shaft were lined with shelves. Unadorned plain planks of wood. I called up the fact to Eric. He responded with the suggestion that he swing me back and forth for a closer look. Because his own life was not in the balance, he made a joke about a pit and a pendulum. I did not laugh.
Most of the shelves were bare. I wondered if other tomb raiders had preceded me. It seemed likely. Some shelves contained little mounds of dust or puddles of glass. It is not generally known that glass is a very stiff liquid rather than a solid. A bottle or jar standing up will slowly flow down its own length and spread itself evenly over a surface, forming a thin circular window. The process may take many aeons. I could not believe that these shelves had existed for so long. As I was swung toward them, I gripped the edge of one and stood on another. My boots threw up clouds of dust.
It was fortunate that my grip was firm. The rope snapped at that instant. The flare had weakened its fibres. I dropped the sputtering tube and clung on in the smoky twilight. Eric guessed what had happened and shouted for me to climb. Realising that the longer I hesitated, the greater the chance of a fatal accident, I began the ascent. I remember few details of this adventure. It was mercifully brief. When I was at the top, I felt the strong arms of Eric plucking me out. He dropped me in the nettles, but I felt no pain. I looked up into his face, his enormous frown.
“Why did you climb up with that?” he demanded.
A slim volume protruded from my pocket. I could not say which shelf it had come from. The cover had a foul odour, like rotting weeds. I must have snatched it from its resting place and thrust it into my pocket without being aware of the fact. There was no proper explanation. I shrugged at my assistant and told him a lie. For some reason, I felt an urge to keep this discovery entirely to myself. I was jealously guarding a secret which even I did not know.
“It is mine. I took it down with me.”
He scowled mildly. “Then why have I never seen it before?”
Before I could think of a reasonable excuse, he turned away. He was not really interested. I pushed the cart after him, out of the cemetery. We returned to our task. Nobody had stolen his hammer. He took it up again and swung at the statue he had been working on. It is easier treating rubble with practical contempt than a statue with an expression of terror. But the process of conversion is not easy. We filled the cart again, but this time we pushed it together to a different cemetery. It was not a decision arrived at by debate. It was purely instinctive. I think he wanted to keep an eye on me, to ensure that I did not fall, literally, into more unfathomable trouble.
When the day was finished we parted company and walked back to our respective homes. I felt sure the subject of the bottomless tomb would never again be raised between us. When I reached my apartment, I locked the door and examined my prize. It was an old volume with the obligatory warty cover, but it had no iron clasp. I opened it on my desk. I was disappointed. The text was in Latin. Needless to say, I do not read that language, though I can recognise the odd word. There was an illustration on nearly every page, but they were of minimal help in determining what the book was about. Complex charts and diagrams. I was confident only that they were of an occult character.
The following day, I persuaded Eric to begin clearing the streets outside the main public library. Although they were not yet on our itinerary, he acceded. After all, it was impossible to pursue a systematic approach in our line of work. During our lunchbreak, while he sat with a sandwich on a mound of rubble, I entered the deserted building and stole a Latin to English dictionary. When he spied the bulge in my pocket, he emitted a gruff laugh. Perhaps he assumed it was the same volume I had borrowed from the tomb. It was clear he suspected me of adopting a strange but harmless new habit. I had the feeling he wanted to be intrigued but was too fatigued or polite to bother.
It seemed right to illuminate my apartment that night only with candles. Probably it was to nurture an unspecified atmosphere. My second theft was the key to the first. But the lock did not turn easily. By the time I retired to bed, I had learned only that the ancient volume was a grimoire, a book of magical recipes. The style was turgid, po
ssibly a result of my translating word for word. The tomb belonged to an occult experimenter by the name of Bungay Peele. He had not been persecuted by the authorities because of his wealth and political connections. Also he had arrived rather late on the sorcerous scene. The date of publication on the title page was MDCCXXVII. He must have been a stain on the Age of Reason.
I surmised he was a gentleman amateur, one of those dilettante alchemists and necromancers who had flourished among the upper classes at a time when genuine visionaries were embracing the real wonders of chemistry and physics. He cited Paracelsus, Geber and Trithemius as influences. I was sure a claim to have known them personally was waiting in later chapters. The whole thing seemed too strongly reminiscent of a certain type of ghost tale. I slept well, against all conventions of the genre, and dreamed of paranormal phenomena, but there was no real dread in the disjointed images. Illogically, I felt in control.
I broached the subject obliquely with Eric. I asked him if he had ever read any horror stories. He had little love for fiction of any sort, but replied that he had flirted with a few such books and collections in his youth. He recalled one about a nest of giant spiders living in a large hollow tree, and another about a man with unnaturally long arms who drowned in a quicksand. He claimed to have misunderstood both. Only a few memories remained. The tree burning, and the man still waving his hands above the surface even when his legs touched the bottom. I pleaded an upset stomach and left work early. He grumbled and made a fuss, and I felt enormous relief that he was an entirely normal man.
My translation proceeded slowly. A hard seed of excitement began to sprout in my brain. The author had experimented with brass heads. This is a tradition which stretches back to Roger Bacon and earlier. This time I did not retire to bed. Just before dawn, after I had replaced every candle in the room, I came upon an astounding assertion. Mr Bungay Peele claimed to be able to impart life to any inanimate head, whatever its substance, shape or initial expression. Indeed, he promised to reveal the secret in the following chapter. I licked my lips in disbelief and joy. The cure for our plague was at hand! I think I lay on the floor in an attempt to calm my nerves. It must have worked, for I woke with a slanting sunbeam conveying a cylinder of weightless dust from the window to my nose.
