Herald of the Hidden (8 page)

‘Stern? Or sad?’

‘Well, both. But
now
you mention it,
there
was a feeling of sorrow in there.
Despair
almost,
just
underneath,
like an unspoken
hidden emotion.’

Ralph
considered this for a while. Then:

‘You
know
the track better than most. What could be responsible for this incident?’ But Stephen Hope shook his head.

‘I’ve
been trying
to
puzzle that
out. There’s nothing. But I mean there
can’t
have been a
real
crowd of
people
like that in the old
lane
for over a
century.
Longer than that.’

‘Hmmm,’ Ralph mused, ‘Then is that how it
seemed to you?
A scene
from
long ago?’

Our
visitor hesitated. ‘I suppose so.’

‘But nothing happened to you?
You
didn’t feel in any way
threatened?
This mass apparition, it didn’t seem to be for your benefit? It just happened; and you were there?’

‘All that is absolutely true. Of course I was scared at the unfamiliarity of it all. So I ran. But I never seemed to be in any danger. I wasn’t harmed.’

Ralph got up. ‘Thank you for coming so soon after your experience. Those first impressions are invaluable. I ask you to give me a few days. I will be in touch with you both . . .’ he nodded to me as a sign for my departure too, ‘. . . as soon as I have anything to report.’

‘In the meantime, should I go near the Ash Track?’ enquired Hope anxiously.

‘Entirely up to you,’ was my friend’s reply.

It was, unusually, several days before I heard from Ralph Tyler again concerning this matter. From past cases, I had grown accustomed to Ralph’s habit of examining a scene of an apparent incident at the earliest opportunity. I assumed, therefore, that he would be in touch with me very quickly after our meeting with Stephen Hope. But it was not until four days had passed that a message was left for me to pay him a visit at his flat in Bellchamber Tower. On arrival in the early evening, after work, I found that Stephen Hope was there before me. We exchanged greetings, and desultory comments, before Ralph, pacing within the limited floor space of his confined accommodation, summarised the purpose of our gathering:

‘I have already explained to Stephen that I feel we will be enlightened if we visit the Ash Track tonight, abiding as closely as possible to the conditions of his previous experience, with the sole exception . . .’ here Ralph grinned wryly, ‘that we cannot take in two pints of intoxicating refreshment beforehand. I am perfectly assured that what Stephen drank in the New Inn was of no account so far as the later occurrence is concerned, but we must be
certain
of our faculties this time.

‘We have already discussed the probability that the vision, or apparition, which he encountered is of no harm. It is my expectation that our only rôle tonight should be that of watching—there may even be disappointment, although I don’t think so. I’m sorry that I don’t feel it would be fair to give you anything of my theory, yet. Later perhaps.’

Frankly, I did not necessarily share
my friend’s implication that the absence of any manifestation
would be a source of disappointment. The description that had
been
evoked by Stephen Hope so
freshly
after the event
was
a little unnerving at best. Flickering faces in dark,
sombre
rows
waiting ahead as far
as the eye could see, in a narrow
green
hollow of a
lane, for no
known reason? But as usual the
prospect
of once more becoming involved in a deeply
intriguing
matter overcame my instinctive caution,
and
I trusted to Ralph Tyler’s singular
intuition and
methodical approach.

Heavy clouds were in the
process
of suppressing the feeble yellow
glimmerings
of a close-to-full moon as we left Stephen Hope’s car in a gateway
and tramped
up the
short access
path to the
Ash
Track. It
was
not long
after
ten. Fierce gusts of wind blew about us, stirring the leaves and twigs of the trees
and
the hedgerow,
setting
up swathes of
whispering and
moaning that hardly
assisted
to
soothe our trepidation. It was not
an exceptionally cold
night,
but the very remoteness of our situation seemed to
bring
on a
sense
of vulnerability and I shivered quite
distinctly.

We had not progressed
far
onto the
Ash
Track itself before I knew
once
again
pangs
of
deep
unease.
My
strained
vision,
almost
clamouring
to
see
something,
kept
picking
up
slight
movements caused by
the
strong breeze,
and reinterpreting
them as
sinister
or unnatural. In this
state
of edgy anticipation
my responses
could scarcely be deemed
reliable.

But the vision, when finally it
began
to emerge, happened so
calmly
and quietly that it seemed
perfectly proper and
acceptable. Stephen Hope had just
murmured
that it could not have
been much further
along that he
had begun to see the
apparition before, when Ralph, after a few strides more, halted, held up a hand, then pointed ahead. I
gazed intently
at the dim green alley in front, and my heart
jumped
awkwardly as a blurred splash of hovering flesh formed
itself unmistakably
out of the atmosphere,
and was
followed, like an echo, by many others, in pale
shimmering
rows.
Hope’s
expression
mingled
stubborn determination
with
deep
unease; I must have looked pretty sickly; Ralph Tyler
was glancing
gravely around, seeking a
cause,
a hint, a clue; but none of us seemed able to venture
any
further forward, into the field of the
vision, nor yet
to
tear ourselves
away.

And there swelled from the air that thronging drone which Stephen Hope had previously identified, a bewildering
cluster of dull tones quite unlike any
sound I could
clearly place. Staring hard at the lane ahead, I knew that
some
stronger, more tangible change had
taken
place, for the insubstantial
masks
of faces were now supported by stolid bodies, stock still,
like
dark
columns. And the faces themselves
seemed
to gather expressions
and character,
seemed
to become individual; and
every
one was grim and
heavy.

As the
squall
of groans, deep, despairing and sonorous, struck
through
the
silence
with
painful
weight
and
force, I saw from out of my
own
trancelike condition
Ralph
Tyler moving
rapidly
aside, mouthing words I
could
not hear. The next
thing
I knew
was a dizzying fall into
the thick undergrowth of the ditch, and both he
and
Stephen Hope followed suit, sprawling awkwardly in the damp wilderness of weeds and brambles. Before I
could remonstrate
rather forcibly at
this
abrupt treatment, jolted out of my
morbid
fascination by the sudden physical sensation, my angry oaths faltered away at the sudden switch of
pitch in
the sound, which
began soaring
to a high whine, then
seemed
to disintegrate and
could
only be heard in
irregular
spasms.

Just above us, on the old lane, passed a cart
pulled
by a donkey, whose head
was
held by an old
man;
and by
his side stumbled a woman of similar age, her grey hair fluttering in wisps from
out of a coarse brown shawl. On the grimy boards of the cart
was
a bundle of rags.
This
humble procession
seemed to take
an
age
to
pass, as
the reluctant beast paced at
one
with the tortuously
slow
shuffling of
the couple, their heads
bowed. What I
can still
recall
is the
bleak
clarity of
this scene;
every tint of
colour,
every
creak
of
sound,
the
almost tangible sense of presence, the vivid decrepitude and
desolation
of
the
elderly man and woman, the rattling, bumping cart and its huddled pile; yet
this
too
was
a
vision, an ethereal work, for it
plodded
beyond us and into the swarm of
waiting figures, seeming
to
become absorbed
within
them all, as those
dark
forms which had
been still as statues swayed inwards, taking
the cart and the donkey and the
broken, aged
beings into an abyss of utter silence.
One last glimpse
was
afforded
to each of us as we scrambled
from our
place, the cart succumbing to the depths of the vision; it was of the load it
carried,
crumpled on its crude planks; not a jumble of
rags, but
the twisted, torn
body
of a boy,
hideously contorted and barely concealed by a hasty, makeshift winding sheet.

‘The obvious place to start,’ commented Ralph, when we had returned to number 14, Bellchamber Tower, partaken of some fortification and emerged some hours later from cramped, bleary sleep in his armchairs, to demand some kind of explanation, ‘was the nearby village of Fernho. If the vision Stephen had seen did recall some past event, as he seemed to sense, then all of the people must have come from there. I tried the church guidebook for hints of any religious ceremonies or folk customs, which would warrant such a gathering in the lane. Nothing. There’s a brief history of the area in the library, from 1877, but it spends most of the time discussing the local squire and his lineage, doubtless because he substantially funded the treatise; and this was of little help. But it gave me the idea that maybe there was once a turnout of the village to honour some eminent visitor; so I followed that up, but without success. Then I had the bright idea of sketching on the map the rough route the old green lane used to take up to as far as Fernho. It joins the “A” road for a good while, then winds away again, becomes bridleways, narrow strips of field and so on, crosses the county border and disappears into the outskirts of Bedford. I let my gaze idle along the pencil line I’d drawn when one name pulled me up sharply—Furze Farm. Look, it’s here. . . .’

Ralph pointed to a place on the map which he had spread out on the table.

‘As you see, about five miles from Bedford. Now that meant
something to me. I rummaged through my files. . . .’