Herald of the Hidden (11 page)

‘So
what
happens next?’ I asked, still a little bemused by what I had heard.

‘We’ll go there tonight, of course,’ said Ralph. ‘But we’ll have to divide our forces. None of the locals could be of any help to us. You watch the noticeboard. . . .’

‘Thanks,’ I responded, with rather heavy irony. The prospect of a solitary vigil, in darkness, simply waiting for a rather unpleasant manifestation, did not directly appeal to me. In any case, I had to go to work in the morning. But nonetheless, I could not opt out now, and the matter possessed a distinct fascination, I will admit.

‘Where will you be?’ I enquired.

‘At his house.’

We arrived in Hubgrove late—half past eleven at least, I should say. It had taken Ralph some time to recount all the foregoing details to me. I wheeled my cycle to the noticeboard, glancing at it nervously. No new card had appeared to replace the one Ralph had seized. Peering into the cool, gloomy night air, I could detect no signs of movement. A few lights shone from the cottage windows. In time these were extinguished, and I was left with very little to guide my sight. For the first hour or so, my nerves were on edge, and I sat astride my bike feeling very tense and alert. Then my thoughts began to wander, I may almost have begun to doze. For greater comfort, I lay my bike on the grass verge, and crouched down on the moist ground, leaning against the post which held the noticeboard. Despite the strangeness of my situation, I began to become rather bored. Perhaps nothing would happen after all. Maybe Ralph’s intervention had scared a trickster off. Even this treadmill of tedious surmisings gave way to blankness before long. Concentration became more and more difficult, and I should think my head drooped, my eyelids hovered near closure.

I was dragged out of that state very sharply when I abruptly sensed the approach of a moving figure. Complete blackness surrounded me. But I could hear very slow, stealthy rustlings. A shape distinctly loomed ahead, swaying a little as it drew nearer. I shrank back closer to the hedgerow, deserting my post. I felt as if all my faculties were suddenly and unpredictably suppressed. My breathing was very shallow, and whilst my thoughts were racing, they were not coherent. I waited, numbly.

It was a human figure that came into view, gaunt and dishevelled, eyes wide but somehow unseeing, motions oddly wooden. He stopped before the board. His arm was raised stiffly, he jerked out a rusting pin, and pushed that through a document he carried, and back onto the board. Then he swayed slightly, turned, and began to move away. I finally recovered my presence of mind, and switched on the glaring flashlight from my bicycle. The culprit reeled, and clutched his eyes as if badly dazzled, though the beam was not that strong. My dry, cracked voice called:

‘Alright, that’s the end of it, we’ve got you now.’

On the edges of the shaft of light I caught sight of Ralph, ambling rather casually to join me. Well, he was too late, this time, I remember thinking; I’d done all the nasty work.

‘Got him!’ I bawled hoarsely at Ralph.

He moved towards the figure, a concerned expression on his face, and muttered to him reassuringly, helping to steady him.

‘Yes and no,’ Ralph responded quietly. ‘This is Tom Wallace from up by the Terrace I believe?’

The man nodded slowly: he was staring around him as if in disbelief.

‘Go and look at the board,’ Ralph urged me. I did. I shone my light on the familiar inscribed, black-bordered card and read aloud:

‘William Sorrell requests the pleasure of the company of Mr Thomas Wallace.’

Quite how much of the matter Ralph explained to the people of Hubgrove, when they collected together in the home of the Hammonds in the early hours of that morning, I do not know. I had returned home to get some snatched sleep to enable me to work during the day, leaving my friend to bring the whole affair to a more thorough conclusion. I know that he first spent some time alone with each of the affected individuals, Gerald Davidson, Arthur Hammond, Pamela Darby, Tom Wallace and, though he did not tell me everything, it is clear he was patiently and carefully ‘bringing them back to themselves’ as the popular phrase aptly has it. Then, before all of the little community, he deliberately and solemnly burnt a pile of black-bordered cards, each of which bore a name.

In the familiar confines of number 14, Bellchamber Tower, Ralph Tyler’s third floor flat, he supplied me that evening with the explanations that had, to say the least, troubled and hindered my rather humdrum day’s work.

‘When I left you at the noticeboard last night, I went straight to William Sorrell’s rather ramshackle house, set back beyond the end of the Terrace. I don’t mind admitting I intended to force an entry if need be, but in the event that was unnecessary. The place is nearly falling apart, I’d say it had no attention at all in his later years. One window was without glass, very poorly boarded up, and the back door was off one of its hinges. I had a good look around and, as you can guess, that cousin who had arranged the funeral and so on, had paid very little attention to much else. No doubt he means to return later and sort everything out, but it’ll be a tiresome business, and not a job you’d want to tackle with any great enthusiasm, especially when it’s a distant relative you’ve perhaps not seen for years.

‘However that may be, I found things pretty much as they must have been when Sorrell died. And in a drawer of a desk in a back room that must have been his study, beneath many other old papers that had clearly been disturbed, I found the invitation cards, a whole stack of them. Nearby was a wad of envelopes, carefully addressed. I think he knew his end was coming, and had it in mind, as a last bizarre act, to invite every single neighbour to his funeral. It could’ve been a spasm of black humour, a hideous act of spitefulness, or a genuine last hint of sorrow and reconciliation. We’ll never really know. But each card, like those you’ve seen, is painstakingly hand-designed. The solemn, wreathed urn, the black border, the immaculate calligraphy. The plan must have become a fixation with him, a final, perhaps senile purpose in life. He spent hours dwelling over it, thinking of nothing else. And so, when the idea was unfulfilled at his death, because he had not the strength or time left to him to deliver or post the invitations, some impulse lingered on which would not relinquish this final obsession. This is not unknown.

‘Again, that may be interpreted two ways. Either the macabre hatred which drove him to make the cards whilst living had somehow remained and worked in the minds of his intended victims to even better effect than he supposed; or, more kindly, this was a mad, tragic plea, a desperate cry—acknowledge me, you who would not go to my funeral, go now to my grave and give me pity, forgiveness.’

Ralph paused thoughtfully before continuing.

‘And then we must not overlook the emotions of the locals themselves. The decision to shun Sorrell even in death, was not taken lightly, you may imagine. It was a cause of unease and distress amongst each one of them since the day he died. Old scores and enmities were brooded over, yet at the same time there would be an intermingling sense of guilt—how long can a vendetta go on? Shouldn’t there be a time when you call a halt and “bury the hatchet”?

‘All of these powerful but unreleased impulses meshed together in a very confined and intense environment, and whether it was a case of “possession” by something of Sorrell; or somnambulism inspired by their own anguished doubts; or a kind of collective hysteria, remains an open question—perhaps each contributed. But the fact is that Davidson, Hammond, Darby and Wallace each entered Sorrell’s home, found their own invitation, and, entranced and oblivious, placed it on the board, and returned home.

‘I saw Wallace of course—his entry disturbed me in my search, and gave me quite a fright, so I crept behind a bookcase and waited. I didn’t know what I was going to see.

‘But I needn’t have bothered—he wasn’t “seeing” as we normally do, he was transfixed by a simple purpose. He went straight to his invitation, then I followed him to the noticeboard, where of course you come in. I am convinced the others all did something similar. It is of interest that it is in
their
gardens that people had noticed shadows and sounds, and believed them to be Sorrell—but of course it was the occupants themselves, on their strange mission.

‘When they awoke in the morning, and went with the others to look at the board, a fragment only of the night’s walk remained in their consciousness. They were haunted by the impression, insubstantial but irrevocable, of that nocturnal impulse. The sight of their name on the invitation card, the hushed fear of the crowd around, had a devastating effect on their already harried reason. When the mind is pushed too far, beyond the limits it can accept, then it just takes refuge in inactivity, and allows no external stimulus to enter. So, the trancelike state of the victims. It takes some remedying, but as an outsider comparatively unaffected by the emotional turmoil around, I had the best chance. Fortunately, now Hubgrove can return to normality, I feel they will make a fair recovery. I advised them to consult a G.P. of course, tell him what they like: overwork, distressing bereavement, sleeplessness.’

I sighed deeply and shook my head.

‘Of your theories,’ I conjectured, ‘I prefer the possibility that something of Sorrell was working upon them. That would explain why they succumbed one at a time: he was desperately trying to “get through”.’

‘Mmmm,’ Ralph mused. ‘But on the other hand, it was notable that when I didn’t tell them whose name was on the card that Tuesday morning, nobody succumbed at all. That points to a psychological explanation. But I repeat—we cannot know—and it is just as likely that each suggestion has a part to play.

‘And after that,’ he continued, ‘I think an adjournment to the Unicorn Inn is very much in order,’ a suggestion with which I heartily concurred.

There remains one detail to add to the matter of Hubgrove hamlet, and it concerns the modest grave of William Sorrell, in St Helen’s churchyard, Merrow; for rarely is it without flowers, in any season, and frequently enough the grass path to its side is trodden by those who come to give respects, and mull over certain matters. Now that is a circumstance which baffles and provokes the good people of Merrow.

The Hermit’s House

‘I imagine being an undiscovered sculptor is even less rewarding —financially—than the career of a psychic investigator,’ remarked my friend Ralph Tyler to the angular, dark-eyed young man opposite him, who involuntarily glanced around the ramshackle sitting room of number 14, Bellchamber Tower.

‘Well, I get by—but sometimes only just. The only reason I could afford the cottage was because it was so cheap. . . .’

‘Because it’s haunted,’ I interjected, helpfully as I thought.

The young man winced and I rather wished I had stifled my comment.

He laughed nervously.

‘Yes, perhaps. But also it was semi-derelict. It’d been empty for years. In any case, it’s not the house as such. It’s the road.’

‘The road?’ I repeated.

‘Shall we let Mr Palmer tell us the full story, without the benefit of an echo?’ suggested Ralph.

I lapsed into silence.

‘The cottage is called the Hermit’s House, and it certainly is remote,’ he continued, ‘I don’t really know for sure where the nearest neighbour is—some farm, I suppose. It’s in that tangle of single track roads the locals call The Lanes: do you know where I mean? Anyway, my road doesn’t seem to go anywhere else and joins up with about five other equally narrow and aimless by-ways. The only thing to be said for it, is it doesn’t have the blind twists and turns of most of the others.’

‘Of course, the cottage is very quiet and that’s just why I wanted it. I need to spend a lot of time simply being with my work, if you follow me, without any distractions.’

Robin Palmer smiled, but this scarcely brightened the pale flesh and did not touch the sombre gaze.

‘I suppose you could say I’ve had nothing but distractions. Oh, I shrugged them off at first, because they didn’t seem to amount to very much. But—they’re getting to be too much now.’

He paused, looked at each of us in turn, and then down at his worn fingers, tightly interlaced.

‘What happened first? I suppose it was just the sudden gusts. I’d be walking along the road, taking a breather, perhaps before breakfast or maybe around dusk, and there would be these strong breezes, rising from the dust and nearly toppling me over. I put those down to some freak effect of the hollow lane, acting like a tunnel somehow. But then—after about a week of this—I started to sense deep, sweet scents in the air, faintly at first, but gradually becoming so powerful and pleasurable that I wanted to fill my breath with them: yet, this made me uneasy, because I knew no wild flower on earth could be anything like so pungent. So where on earth could it be coming from?’

Ralph Tyler lit an acrid cigarette and leant forward intently. The young sculptor visibly recoiled. He put one hand to his chin.

‘And then the sounds began. Voices, murmured, a droning, muffled thudding, sudden sparks of sound which seemed to sweep in and out of the heavy wafts of air. As soon as this strange cloud of noises descended on me—and it happened three times—I just turned and ran back to the cottage. And it got so I dare not go out. I just stayed in and got on with my work. If I needed anything, I dashed out to my old wreck of a car and drove off pretty hastily to town or wherever it might be. Then I got back inside equally swiftly on my return.’

Ralph sank back in his armchair, puffing pensively at his cigarette.

‘What are you working on?’

Robin Palmer blinked. ‘Ah—mmm. A new departure, really, for me anyway. Using natural materials to enliven abstract shapes. Leaves, berries, twigs and so on. It has worked quite well.’

Ralph nodded. The young man waited a moment and then went on.

‘Well, trying to avoid the road was no good. It made me feel a prisoner anyway, and I began to think I was being too sensitive about the happenings so I started to go for short walks again.

‘At first nothing happened. And then, one evening, as I stopped to watch the last of the sunset sink down beyond the far end of the lane, I had a dream—or it might be a vision, I don’t really know. And it was very vivid, very actual, not hazy at all; and also very simple. I thought I was trying to walk out through the end of the lane, through the crossroads, but before I could get there, a huge dark snake reared up and prevented me. It was a highly gleaming black, like mourning jewellery of jet, and its eyes blazing with intelligence and purpose—it almost seemed to be grinning. It just writhed there, erect, and when I made a move to pass by, it matched my movement and flickered its forked tongue as if daring me to try.

‘So I turned on my heels and pounded down the road, as if to make for the other exit, where the lane joins an equally nameless track at a horseshoe bend; and again just as I seemed to be about to reach my goal, up starts another dark snake, a carbon copy of the first, which wavers and lunges and watches me from glistening, greedy eyes.

‘And then I seemed to dash wildly from one to the other, devoid of reason, as the dark closed in and I could no longer see for sure where they were, but only sense some soft, silent swaying in the gloom, or catch a spark from their shining eyes. How long this game went on I could not say: at last I just sank down on the grassy bank by the side of the road and covered my head with my arms.

‘I lay there some time and they did not seem to advance from behind or in front and everything seemed to stay very still, and so at last I cautiously looked up, and they were quite gone. So I bolted back into the house at once and forced myself to stay calm and just think as hard as I could about what was going on.

‘Everybody expects artists, you know, to have a “temperament”, but I thought I was quite level-headed.’

He stopped here, as if aware that his fingers were tightly clutched together, and deliberately unlocking them, laid his hands flat on his lap.

Ralph gazed at him through half opened eyes, his head halfway down the cushion at the back of his battered armchair, in his usual slumped position.

‘So you can think of nothing whatever which might have induced the experiences?’ he asked, abruptly.

The sculptor shook his head, slowly.

‘It’s completely beyond me,’ he said, with deep conviction.

‘Anything else?’

‘Yes. This is what made me decide to get some help. You see, when I decided to go out one more time, to try to face down whatever it was, I knew at once that there was still a presence out there. It must have been early. I hadn’t slept much after seeing those wretched serpents, as you can imagine. I suppose it was just after dawn, the ground was still damp and there was a faint mist. I went to the gate and looked up and down the lane. It was very quiet—quieter even than usual, it seemed to me. As if the mist was a sort of visual silence sucking in any sound. I was just staring about me, wondering whether to venture out a bit further, when I thought I saw a glint of gold some way in the distance on a stretch of the road to the right. And then again, another glint. And of course, I knew something was coming. I just knew. I tore myself away from the gate and sort of stumbled back to the cottage, but my legs were nearly giving way, I can tell you.

‘And I couldn’t help but stop and look. I had to. But what with the mist and the radiance I don’t quite know for sure what I saw. It was a figure, yes, a tall figure, but sheathed in some sort of glow, so you couldn’t really see details; but I do know this, there was something very powerful about the presence, a blazing-out of a hard force of some kind. And one thing else I noticed, could not help but see.’

Our visitor halted, and looked at each of us with a mute appeal on his white face.

‘This thing, whatever it was, looming out of the mist: it walked as we do; but it seemed as if it had horns.’

**

There was a clinging drizzle as Ralph Tyler paced from one end of the lane to the other. It seemed unremarkable enough. On one side was a bedraggled verge, a slight ditch and a thick hedge bordering fallow fields. On the other, where the Hermit’s House stood, was open moorland. The road itself was rutted and sunken in many places.

Lighting an oval shaped cigarette, a new Greek brand he was trying, Ralph rejoined us.

‘Now let me see round the house,’ he requested.

Robin Palmer led us through a dank wooden gate, and was about to take us inside the low cottage, with its dark brow of rough-hewn slate, when Ralph paused.

‘Where do you do your work?’ he enquired.

‘In an old barn at the end of the back garden,’ Robin replied.

‘There first please.’ The tall, tumbledown timber structure was reached through a stubborn door. Inside, a makeshift shelf held a display of maquettes, while tools were neatly arranged on a row of hooks. The middle of the barn was occupied by a cone of old stones, much like a mountain cairn, into which the young sculptor had contrived several niches. They were empty.

‘This was the work I told you about,’ Robin explained. ‘The idea is to place natural things in the hollows—twigs, leaves, berries and so on.’

Ralph shrugged and, crouching, inspected the work more closely.

‘Where did you get the stone?’

‘Mmm? Oh—nothing mysterious there. At the top of the lane was an old broken wall and they were just lying around. I’ve had to shape them a bit, but it was surprising how easily they fitted together into this form. Why, do you think . . . ?’

‘What gave you the idea?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. It just sort of came to me. Rather different to what I’ve done before though.’

Ralph nodded absently and pushed through the reluctant door back into the damp air.

‘Is that just another shed?’—he pointed to another, smaller, outhouse.

‘Yes. A wood shed. I’ll get some logs in actually. We’ll need a fire in this weather.’

He strode ahead of us and began to pile fuel into a sack. Ralph pushed inside and stared moodily around. Idly he picked up a shabby black-bound book lying askew on the grimy floor. He turned a few brittle, mottled pages.

‘Where did you get this?’ he asked, diffidently.

Robin Palmer looked up from his labours. ‘Uh? Oh, there was a pile in here. Somebody before me must have used them as tinder—they were just scattered in with the sticks and newspapers. Mostly religious stuff. I haven’t burnt any myself—I just put them aside. Is that one interesting?’

‘Possibly. I’ve heard of the author. Constance Naden. Philosopher and poet. Last century. Not very well known really: odd that it should be here.’

‘Well, take it if you want.’

‘Thanks. I’ll borrow it if I may.’

In the rather Spartan parlour, we drew our chairs closer to the fire and Ralph Tyler summarised the results of the researches he had carried out the day before, while Robin Palmer had stopped with me.

‘What appears to be this house is marked on the first series Ordnance Survey map around the middle of the last century, but it is not named. Whellan’s directory of the county—1848—which is notoriously unreliable—doesn’t list anyone here. Your deeds only go back about sixty years, but that’s not unusual. In these, it is always called the Hermit’s House. As far as I can tell, the occupants have been temporary farm labourers, or the owners have lived elsewhere, and been absentees.’

Our client nodded: ‘When I bought it, I was told it had just been used as a holiday home.’

‘It may be that you are the first person for years to stay here for any appreciable length of time. That is why you are able to bear witness to a whole sequence of incidents.’

‘You think these things are for my benefit?’ There was a silence. A half burnt log shifted in the grate.

‘Not quite for your benefit, perhaps.’ replied Ralph, drily. ‘No, I would say that there is something reacting specifically to your presence. And although you have been troubled by so many disturbing experiences, it’s my belief that whatever is at work here has also affected you in ways you hardly know.’

Robin Palmer stared at my friend, then sighed and turned away. ‘But what can we do?’

‘I should like some time on my own to get all the evidence clear in my head, and perhaps to seek for inspiration. But if my surmise is correct, I rather think we must perform a sacrifice,’ replied Ralph Tyler, equably.

**

For the next forty minutes or so we followed Ralph Tyler, baffled, as he assembled a miscellany of items from around the house: a dish of honey, some wine, flowers, fruit, seeds, salt, candles. We carried them solemnly to the wooden outhouse which Robin Palmer used as a studio: a slow dusk was falling as we helped Ralph to arrange them on and around the cone of old stones which the sculptor had created.

‘In ancient times,’ Ralph explained, ‘a sacrifice was the giving of any thing to the gods, not necessarily the lives of animals. In fact, the greatest pagan sages—Orpheus, Empedocles, Apollonius —all decried the spilling of blood. They said that such things as we have gathered were just as pleasing to the gods. . . .’

‘But, Ralph,’ interjected his client, ‘What has all this got to do with what I experienced?’

‘I think all the signs point in a certain direction,’ replied my friend, ‘and I suspect they have been getting stronger day by day: so that a presence invoked once in this house is seeking again its proper acknowledgement. If the pattern of events you have experienced so far is any guide, we may expect another visitation very soon. This time we must be prepared.’

‘What do you want us to do?’ I asked. All too often in the past my friend’s yearning for the dramatic, or his doubt about his hypothesis, had led him to leave his client and me dangerously unprepared.

‘Concentrate on the offerings. Imagine giving them freely to some highly honoured guest of the house. Behave with respect.’

‘Huh,’ I riposted. ‘Easier said than done. If you think I’m going to linger gracefully while a great horned figure advances on me out of the mist, you can . . .’

‘Not horns, I think,’ interrupted Ralph softly, just as I was warming to my theme. ‘Are you sure that is what you saw, Robin?’

Our client made as if to give a ready confirmation, then closed his lips and frowned.

‘Well—it seemed like that. I mean, there was such a hard shining light it was difficult to look directly. But definitely there was something there, on the sides of the head. . . . What else could it be?’