Eldritch Tales (40 page)

On the opposite side of the moor I turned sharply to the left, as I had been directed, branching from the main road. There were several houses in the vicinity, I noticed; houses which were scarcely more than huts, reflecting the extreme poverty of their owners. The road here passed under the drooping branches of enormous willows which almost completely shut out the rays of the sun. The miasmal odour of the swamp was still in my nostrils, and the air was damp and chilly. I hurried my pace to get out of that dismal tunnel as soon as possible.

Presently I found myself in the light again. The sun, now hanging like a red ball upon the crest of the mountain, was beginning to dip low, and there, some distance ahead of me, bathed in its bloody iridescence, stood the lonely church. I began to sense that uncanniness which Haines had mentioned; that feeling of dread which made all Daalbergen shun the place. The squat, stone hulk of the church itself, with its blunt steeple, seemed like an idol to which the tombstones that surrounded it bowed down and worshipped, each with an arched top like the shoulders of a kneeling person, while over the whole assemblage the dingy, grey parsonage hovered like a wraith.

I had slowed my pace a trifle as I took in the scene. The sun was disappearing behind the mountain very rapidly now, and the damp air chilled me. Turning my coat collar up about my neck, I plodded on. Something caught my eye as I glanced up again. In the shadow of the church wall was something white – a thing which seemed to have no definite shape. Straining my eyes as I came nearer, I saw that it was a cross of new timber, surmounting a mound of freshly turned earth. The discovery sent a new chill through me. I realised that this must be my uncle’s grave, but something told me that it was not like the other graves near it. It did not seem like a
dead
grave. In some intangible way it appeared to be
living
, if a grave can be said to live. Very close to it, I saw as I came nearer, was another grave; an old mound with a crumbling stone about it. Dominie Slott’s tomb, I thought, remembering Haines’s story.

There was no sign of life anywhere about the place. In the semi-twilight I climbed the low knoll upon which the parsonage stood, and hammered upon the door. There was no answer. I skirted the house and peered into the windows. The whole place seemed deserted.

The lowering mountains had made night fall with disarming suddenness the minute the sun was fully hidden. I realised that I could see scarcely more than a few feet ahead of me. Feeling my way carefully, I rounded a corner of the house and paused, wondering what to do next.

Everything was quiet. There was not a breath of wind, nor were there even the usual noises made by animals in their nocturnal ramblings. All dread had been forgotten for a time, but in the presence of that sepulchral calm my apprehensions returned. I imagined the air peopled with ghastly spirits that pressed around me, making the air almost unbreathable. I wondered, for the hundredth time, where the old sexton might be.

As I stood there, half expecting some sinister demon to creep from the shadows, I noticed two lighted windows glaring from the belfry of the church. I then remembered what Haines had told me about Foster’s living in the basement of the building. Advancing cautiously through the blackness, I found a side door of the church ajar.

The interior had a musty and mildewed odour. Everything I touched was covered with a cold, clammy moisture. I struck a match and began to explore, to discover, if I could, how to get into the belfry. Suddenly I stopped in my tracks.

A snatch of song, loud and obscene, sung in a voice that was guttural and thick with drink, came from above me. The match burned my fingers, and I dropped it. Two pin-points of light pierced the darkness of the farther wall of the church, and below them, to one side, I could see a door outlined where light filtered through its cracks. The song stopped as abruptly as it had commenced, and there was absolute silence again. My heart was thumping and blood racing through my temples. Had I not been petrified with fear, I should have fled immediately.

Not caring to light another match, I felt my way among the pews until I stood in front of the door. So deep was the feeling of depression which had come over me that I felt as though I were acting in a dream. My actions were almost involuntary.

The door was locked, as I found when I turned the knob. I hammered upon it for some time, but there was no answer. The silence was as complete as before. Feeling around the edge of the door, I found the hinges, removed the pins from them, and allowed the door to fall toward me. Dim light flooded down a steep flight of steps. There was a sickening odour of whisky. I could now hear someone stirring in the belfry room above. Venturing a low halloo, I thought I heard a groan in reply, and cautiously climbed the stairs.

My first glance into that unhallowed place was indeed startling. Strewn about the little room were old and dusty books and manuscripts – strange things that bespoke almost unbelievable age. On rows of shelves which reached to the ceiling were horrible things in glass jars and bottles – snakes and lizards and bats. Dust and mould and cobwebs encrusted everything. In the centre, behind a table upon which was a lighted candle, a nearly empty bottle of whisky, and a glass, was a motionless figure with a thin, scrawny, wrinkled face and wild eyes that stared blankly through me. I recognised Abel Foster, the old sexton, in an instant. He did not move or speak as I came slowly and fearfully toward him.

‘Mr Foster?’ I asked, trembling with unaccountable fear when I heard my voice echo within the close confines of the room. There was no reply, and no movement from the figure behind the table. I wondered if he had not drunk himself to insensibility, and went behind the table to shake him.

At the mere touch of my arm upon his shoulder, the strange old man started from his chair as though terrified. His eyes, still having in them that same blank stare, were fixed upon me. Swinging his arms like flails, he backed away.

‘Don’t!’ he screamed. ‘Don’t touch me! Go back – go back!’

I saw that he was both drunk and struck with some kind of a nameless terror. Using a soothing tone, I told him who I was and why I had come. He seemed to understand vaguely and sank back into his chair, sitting limp and motionless.

‘I thought ye was him,’ he mumbled. ‘I thought ye was him come back fer it. He’s been a-tryin’ t’ get out – a-tryin’ t’ get out sence I put him in there.’ His voice again rose to a scream and he clutched his chair. ‘Maybe he’s got out now! Maybe he’s out!’

I looked about, half expecting to see some spectral shape coming up the stairs.

‘Maybe who’s out?’ I inquired.

‘Vanderhoof!’ he shrieked. ‘Th’ cross over his grave keeps fallin’ down in th’ night! Every morning the earth is loose, and gets harder t’ pat down. He’ll come out an’ I won’t be able t’ do nothin’.’

Forcing him back into the chair, I seated myself on a box near him. He was trembling in mortal terror, with the saliva dripping from the corners of his mouth. From time to time I felt that sense of horror which Haines had described when he told me of the old sexton. Truly, there was something uncanny about the man. His head had now sunk forward upon his breast, and he seemed calmer, mumbling to himself.

I quietly arose and opened a window to let out the fumes of whisky and the musty odour of dead things. Light from a dim moon, just risen, made objects below barely visible. I could just see Dominie Vanderhoof’s grave from my position in the belfry, and blinked my eyes as I gazed at it. That cross
was
tilted! I remembered that it had been vertical an hour ago. Fear took possession of me again. I turned quickly. Foster sat in his chair watching me. His glance was saner than before.

‘So ye’re Vanderhoof’s nephew,’ he mumbled in a nasal tone. ‘Waal, ye might’s well know it all. He’ll be back arter me afore long, he will – jus’ as soon as he can get out o’ that there grave. Ye might’s well know all about it now.’

His terror appeared to have left him. He seemed resigned to some horrible fate which he expected any minute. His head dropped down upon his chest again, and he went on muttering in that nasal monotone.

‘Ye see all them there books and papers? Waal, they was once Dominie Slott’s – Dominie Slott, who was here years ago. All them things is got t’ do with magic – black magic that th’ old Dominie knew afore he come t’ this country. They used t’ burn ’em an’ boil ’em in oil fer knowin’ that over there, they did. But old Slott knew, and he didn’t go fer t’ tell nobody. No sir, old Slott used to preach here generations ago, an’ he used to come up here an’ study them books, an’ use all them dead things in jars, an’ pronounce magic curses an’ things, but he didn’t let nobody know it. No, nobody knowed it but Dominie Slott an’ me.’

‘You?’ I ejaculated, leaning across the table toward him.

‘That is, me after I learned it.’ His face showed lines of trickery as he answered me. ‘I found all this stuff here when I come t’ be church sexton, an’ I used t’ read it when I wa’n’t at work. An’ I soon got t’ know all about it.’

The old man droned on, while I listened, spellbound. He told about learning the difficult formulae of demonology, so that, by means of incantations, he could cast spells over human beings. He had performed horrible occult rites of his hellish creed, calling down anathema upon the town and its inhabitants. Crazed by his desires, he tried to bring the church under his spell, but the power of God was too strong. Finding Johannes Vanderhoof very weak-willed, he bewitched him so that he preached strange and mystic sermons which struck fear into the simple hearts of the country folk. From his position in the belfry room, he said, behind a painting of the temptation of Christ which adorned the rear wall of the church, he would glare at Vanderhoof while he was preaching, through holes which were the eyes of the Devil in the picture. Terrified by the uncanny things which were happening in their midst, the congregation left one by one, and Foster was able to do what he pleased with the church and with Vanderhoof.

‘But what did you do with him?’ I asked in a hollow voice as the old sexton paused in his confession. He burst into a cackle of laughter, throwing back his head in drunken glee.

‘I took his soul!’ he howled in a tone that set me trembling. ‘I took his soul and put it in a bottle – in a little black bottle! And I buried him! But he ain’t got his soul, an’ he cain’t go neither t’ heaven n’r hell! But he’s a-comin’ back after it. He’s a-trying’ t’ get out o’ his grave now. I can hear him pushin’ his way up through the ground, he’s that strong!”

As the old man had proceeded with his story, I had become more and more convinced that he must be telling me the truth, and not merely gibbering in drunkenness. Every detail fitted what Haines had told me. Fear was growing upon me by degrees. With the old wizard now shouting with demoniac laughter, I was tempted to bolt down the narrow stairway and leave that accursed neighbourhood. To calm myself, I rose and again looked out of the window. My eyes nearly started from their sockets when I saw that the cross above Vanderhoof’s grave had fallen perceptibly since I had last looked at it. It was now tilted to an angle of forty-five degrees!

‘Can’t we dig up Vanderhoof and restore his soul?’ I asked almost breathlessly, feeling that something must be done in a hurry. The old man rose from his chair in terror.

‘No, no, no!’ he screamed. ‘He’d kill me! I’ve fergot th’ formula, an’ if he gets out he’ll be alive, without a soul. He’d kill us both!’

‘Where is the bottle that contains his soul?’ I asked, advancing threateningly toward him. I felt that some ghastly thing was about to happen, which I must do all in my power to prevent.

‘I won’t tell ye, ye young whelp!’ he snarled. I felt, rather than saw, a queer light in his eyes as he backed into a corner. ‘An’ don’t ye touch me, either, or ye’ll wish ye hadn’t!’

I moved a step forward, noticing that on a low stool behind him there were two black bottles. Foster muttered some peculiar words in a low singsong voice. Everything began to turn grey before my eyes, and something within me seemed to be dragged upward, trying to get out at my throat. I felt my knees become weak.

Lurching forward, I caught the old sexton by the throat, and with my free arm reached for the bottles on the stool. But the old man fell backward, striking the stool with his foot, and one bottle fell to the floor as I snatched the other. There was a flash of blue flame, and a sulfurous smell filled the room. From the little heap of broken glass a white vapour rose and followed the draft out the window.

‘Curse ye, ye rascal!’ sounded a voice that seemed faint and far away. Foster, whom I had released when the bottle broke, was crouching against the wall, looking smaller and more shrivelled than before. His face was slowly turning greenish-black.

‘Curse ye!’ said the voice again, hardly sounding as though it came from his lips. ‘I’m done fer! That one in there was mine!
Dominie Slott took it out two hundred years ago
!’

He slid slowly toward the floor, gazing at me with hatred in eyes that were rapidly dimming. His flesh changed from white to black, and then to yellow. I saw with horror that his body seemed to be crumbling away and his clothing falling into limp folds.

The bottle in my hand was growing warm. I glanced at it, fearfully. It glowed with a faint phosphorescence. Stiff with fright, I set it upon the table, but could not keep my eyes from it. There was an ominous moment of silence as its glow became brighter, and then there came distinctly to my ears the sound of sliding earth. Gasping for breath, I looked out of the window. The moon was now well up in the sky, and by its light I could see that the fresh cross above Vanderhoof’s grave had completely fallen. Once again there came the sound of trickling gravel, and no longer able to control myself, I stumbled down the stairs and found my way out of doors. Falling now and then as I raced over the uneven ground, I ran on in abject terror. When I had reached the foot of the knoll, at the entrance to that gloomy tunnel beneath the willows, I heard a horrible roar behind me. Turning, I glanced back toward the church. Its wall reflected the light of the moon, and silhouetted against it was a gigantic, loathsome, black shadow climbing from my uncle’s grave and floundering gruesomely toward the church.