The Dark Boatman: Tales of Horror and the Cthulhu Mythos (5 page)

Now the sound of water was louder, and I felt I must be approaching its source. I had tried to rationalise the noise by telling myself that the sea flung itself hard against the base of the cliffs whenever the tide came in, and odd echoes and reverberations would distort the sound into what I was hearing. Certainly the sheer size of the cellars, when I reached them, would have accounted for such deep-toned resonances as now clambered through the air all around me.

I shouted Ambrose’s name at the top of my voice, straining my vision to pick out any movement in the darkness ahead of me. But there came no answer to my repeated calls, and I shuffled forward, taking care where I put my feet, for there were numerous obstacles littering the cellar floor. The lamplight threw long shadows ahead of me and picked out tall, rearing columns whose tops I was unable to distinguish.

I had taken less than a dozen shuffling steps when I happened to glance down and saw, a little to my left, a line of footprints in the dust and, just beyond them, a second set of prints, fainter than those nearer to where I stood. The one was clearly quite recent, and I knew they could belong to none other than my companion. As for the other, I could not guess whose they were, although they could not have been made more than a few months previously—and that could only mean that my uncle had been down here for some reason.

Confident I was now on the right track, I followed the prints into the darkness, finally coming up against a great stone wall which was clearly the boundary of the foundations.

Set in it was a massive metal door and I saw that both sets of prints led up to it and vanished. In the lock was the metal key covered with the weird hieroglyphs. Evidently, Ambrose had taken it from the desk where I had posted for safekeeping. Somehow, he had guessed at its purpose. There was an iron ring just above the lock and I grasped it firmly with one hand and pulled with all my strength. The door opened reluctantly as if it were seldom used.

I had thought to see darkness before me, perhaps another room abutting onto the cellars. Instead, shock and horror paralysed me, held me rooted there, gripped in a frenzy of hallucinatory delirium. I must now choose words with great care, for in that horror-filled moment I saw everything; knew why there were never any records of the deaths of my ancestors, nor any trace of their earthly remains.

I realised, in a cataclysm of superstitious fear, the nature of the
time
measured by that unimaginably old clock whose origins lay in the legend-shrouded aeons of time, marking off the hours remaining to each of the Dexters, and—by some terrible quirk of fate—poor Ambrose as well. And most terrible of all, the true identity of that mighty river whose nearer shore lay immediately below the Dexter mansion.

My condition as I stood teetering on the brink of that illimitable cavern was one of indescribable mental tumult. Before me an endless flight of steps lead down to the black swirling waters of the great river that ran into a far distance, towards an unseen cataract where it thundered down into abyssal depths, lit by the lurid glare of hell fires pouring up from below.

All this I saw in a single mind-searing glance. But there was more than that. Would to God I had turned and fled back through those noisome cellars before witnessing the final scene. But see it I did, and the unbelievable horror and its implications will haunt me for the remainder of my days.

Far, far below me I made out the diminutive figure of Michael Ambrose standing like a man in a dream on the bank of the river. I tried to call his name, but nothing more than a feeble croak emerged from my shaking lips. And then, out of the swirling mist that formed a curtain across the foreground, exactly as I had seen it in my dream, something black appeared, heading for the very spot where he stood.

Gliding to the bank, the ebon boat grounded there and the hooded boatman held out a hand to Ambrose. I saw my former companion hand him something which shone yellow in the dim radiance, and knew it to be the curious coin which had fallen from behind my uncle’s portrait and which I had unwittingly given to Ambrose. A coin that had no value in this world, but was the tribute paid to Charon in return for ferrying the soul across the Styx!

As Ambrose seated himself in the prow of the boat, the boatman thrust away from the bank, and in that same instant raised his head to stare upward in my direction; and as he did so the night-black hood fell away and I glimpsed the grinning skull beneath. In that moment, my nerve broke completely. I was babbling insanely at the top of my voice during my precipitous flight through the cellars and up the nitre-coated steps.

I remember little of reaching the top of the steps and slamming the cellar door shut. My earliest coherent memory is of lying on my bed, shivering and shaking and staring at the brightening dawn light beyond the window.

This then was the curse of the Dexters. Only the long-dead members of that forgotten race, which created that hideous clock in the concealed room upstairs could possibly have told me what will happen next. For soon there will come a time when the solitary hand, once more, comes to rest upon that grinning skull, and I shall have to make my way down to the grim black river and await the coming of the dark boatman.

But what will be my dire fate when He comes and I have no coin with which to pay Him? To what infernal hell will I be consigned—or will it be my lot to be refused that final journey across the Styx, forcing me to live out an eternity in this grim old house on the edge of the cliffs?

AUNT AMELIA

I had terrifying dreams about the episode for a long time after it all happened—the kind of nightmare where you find yourself in a dark room in a place where you know for certain there is no one else, and then the door begins to open slowly and something, not fully visible, enters. You make desperate efforts to scream, to do something to release the awful tension inside you, but nothing comes out—nothing can stop that thing from coming in—and I always woke with a bubbling, inarticulate groan on my lips, shivering and sweating.

It all began when I received a letter from my Aunt Amelia. It came at a time when I was working long hours for a pitifully low wage, and when she suggested I should go and stay with her. As she was now old and lonely with no other living relative, I thought seriously about her proposition.

I had not seen Aunt Amelia for almost twenty years. My last and only visit to her rambling old house deep in the country had been at the age nine, and we had corresponded only once or twice in the interim. My vague childhood memories of her were of a tall, slender woman, white-haired, always elegantly dressed, with prim, though attractive, features. A woman who lived alone in the big house except for a manservant even older than herself.

Receiving her invitation quite out of the blue surprised me. Undoubtedly, she would be set in her ways, although her handwriting was a good indication that she was still in possession of all her faculties. The letters were also far bolder than I would have expected of anyone her age.

However, common sense told me I had nothing to lose by accepting, and as far as the material things of this world were concerned, providing companionship to a woman who could only have a few years left might leave me, as her only heir, quite comfortably well off in a very short time.

Accordingly, I gave in my notice, and the next day took the train for Exeter, and then a rattling old taxi to the house, half a mile from Twyford, arriving there just as dusk was falling. Walking up the path to her door, I suddenly found myself back in the past, back almost a quarter of a century, to when I had first seen the house. All of those memories came flooding back as I saw, to my surprise, that nothing seemed to have changed. The flower-filled borders and the small wooden gate at the side of the house, leading into the apple orchard where the trees were in full blossom. The low stone walls which formed the perimeter of the grounds and the old-fashioned wicker gate which led around the lee of the hill to the ancient cemetery. They were all there. I recalled how frightened I had been when she had insisted on taking me there, moving among the headstones and inside the dark, somber church with the stern figures outlined in colored glass and leaden strips in the high windows.

My sense of shock and unpreparedness was compounded when Aunt Amelia met me at the door. For an instant, I really believed that, by some trick of time, I was in reality back in those distant days. I had expected to find a frail old lady, bent and twisted, with wrinkled features, possibly confined to a wheelchair. Instead, the woman who stood waving to greet me was still tall and straight.

“Welcome, James,” she said. “It was good of you to accept my invitation. I trust you had a pleasant journey.” She stood on one side to allow me to enter, following and closing the door behind her.

“Very pleasant,” I managed to say.

“Good. I’ll show you to your room. Everything is ready for you. Then you must come down and have something to eat. I’m sure we have a lot to talk about. Why, it’s such a long time since you were here with your parents, and you’ve changed so much I hardly know you.”

“If you’ll forgive me for saying so, Aunt Amelia,” I replied, “but you don’t seem to have altered at all.”

She led the way up the wide stairway, saying over her shoulder, “I suppose it’s living here that keeps the years at bay. It’s so very peaceful. None of the worries you younger people have nowadays.”

Opening the door at the end of the corridor, she showed me inside, pausing just inside the doorway. “When you’ve settled in, come down and let me hear all your news.”

Supper was laid out on the large oak table in the dining room when I went downstairs a quarter of an hour later. While I ate ravenously, she plied me with questions regarding my work, and how I had fared over the years since she had last seen me. When I had finished, I leaned back and lit a cigarette while she talked about herself.

She began with all the friends she had known in the past, all of whom were now either dead and buried in the nearby graveyard, or had moved away from the district and no longer bothered to communicate with her.

When I asked about Jenkins, the manservant, there was a short hiatus in the conversation. Then she said abruptly: “I’d rather not talk about him, James, if you don’t mind. I employed him for more than thirty years and then he simply left. No notice or warning. He just went out one night and never came back.”

“Didn’t you make any inquiries? Perhaps he took ill. After all, he was very old.”

Aunt Amelia sniffed. “Why should I have done? If he wanted to desert me after all those years, then good riddance.”

“And no one comes in to help you?”

“I don’t need help and I expect you to make yourself useful. You won’t mind that, will you?” She glanced at the large ornamental clock above the fireplace. It was almost eleven-thirty. We had been talking for nearly two hours. “It’s getting late. You must be tired after that long journey.”

In spite of my weariness, I did not fall asleep immediately. It was a warm, sultry night with no wind to bring any coolness, even though the window was open. For some reason, I felt decidedly uneasy even though I could find no reason for it.

I was just dropping off to sleep when a sudden sound brought me fully awake. It was the sound of the front door being opened and closed quietly. I knew my aunt was the only other person in the house, and wondered where she could be going at that time of night.

Slipping out of bed, I padded to the door, crossed the corridor into one of the other rooms which overlooked the front of the house, and drew back the thick curtains a fraction. A wash of moonlight flooded the grounds and, a few moments later, I made out my aunt. She was walking swiftly and purposefully towards the far side of the garden, not once looking right or left. I watched as she passed through the gate, and from my vantage point it was quite easy to see over the low wall and in the bright moonlight everything was as clear as day.

There was no doubt in my mind where she was going—to the old graveyard just beyond the hill where I could see the square tower of the church silhouetted against the sky. I remained there for the best part of half an hour, keeping a close watch, but there was no sign of her returning.

All sorts of weird ideas raced through my mind during my vigil. Whatever the purpose of her nocturnal trip, I could find no reason for it. Certainly some of her old friends would be buried there, but why visit their graves during the night?

In the morning when I came down to breakfast, I found her seated at the table. Everything had been prepared and, surprisingly, she did not look in the least tired despite clearly having been up all night.

“Did you sleep well, James?” she asked sweetly. “Sometimes it can be difficult getting to sleep in a new place.”

“I slept like a log,” I lied. “I woke up only once. Some sound must have disturbed me, but I’ve no idea what it was.”

She smiled at me across the table. “There are all kinds of noises in the country which you aren’t used to living in the town.”

After breakfast, she said, “There’s something I want you to do for me.”

“Just name it,” I replied.

“I intend to take up a little hobby, something that has fascinated me for some time. I want to make some rubbings of the old engravings in the church. It’s very old, you know. Goes back to Norman times with such a lot of history attached to it.”

“I’m glad you’ve found something to occupy your mind,” I told her, although I could scarcely imagine her going down on her hands and knees on the stone floor of the church. “What is it you want me to do?”