The Face in the Frost (3 page)

“I hate liver,” said Prospero.

“As well you might,” said Roger in a quiet, despairing voice. “As well you might. But be that as it may, I spelled it out.
R
as in rotogravure process...” He waited, but Prospero, who was biting down hard on his pipe to keep from laughing, did not interrupt. “...
A
as in Anaxagoras,
S
as in Symplegades, and
S
as in Smead Jolley, the only baseball player in history to make four errors on a single played ball.”

“And what did the head say?”

“It said ‘Umpf,’ or something like that, and then it started to rattle off a long formula, which I may have copied wrong. Or maybe the head didn’t know what it was talking about. At any rate, when I chanted the formula the next day, down by the seashore, I heard a sound like crumhorns and shawms, and behold! All of England was encircled with an eight-foot-high wall of
Glass!
”

“Glass? Plain, ordinary glass?”

“Yes, and not very good glass at that. Paper-thin and full of bubbles and pocks. The first boatload of Vikings that came over after the wall went up turned around and went back, because it was a sunny day and the wall glittered wonderfully. But the next day, when they came back, it was cloudy. One of them gave the wall a little tap with an ax, and it went tinkle, tinkle, and now there is a lot of broken glass on the beach. Not long after that, I was asked to leave.”

Prospero could not think of anything adequate to say, so he suggested that they break out the brandy and cigars.

They talked on into the night, and the large candle in the corner, shaped like the head of a mournful monk, got sadder and sadder looking. But as the candle got scowlier, the two men became more delighted and talkative, so that Prospero finally felt up to telling Roger about the cloak in the cellar. Roger listened with a concerned and sometimes frightened look on his face, and when the story was over, he put his brandy glass down and waited a bit before he spoke.

“You don’t mention the moth, but I suppose that neither of us has to dot such a large
i
. Has anything else happened?”

Prospero nodded. “Last night I dreamed that I was still in bed, but wide awake, staring at something near the foot of my bed. I stared for a long while at the vague shape, and I gradually made out the form of an old man standing there. When he came forward into the moonlight, I could see that he was watching me with a scornful smile—it was a cruel, cynical face, the arrogant face of a man who is secure in some superior power or knowledge. Without saying anything, he went to the window, which was bright with the light of a full moon. And then he began to write on the windowpane with his index finger, and it seemed to me that each stroke of his finger cut into the glass like a diamond. For some reason, although the words glowed with a silver light, I couldn’t get any meaning out of the writing. I strained my eyes and stared, but it all seemed like nonsense. Then the old man turned to me and said, ‘Can you read what I have written?’ When I said that I could not, he laughed a low, mocking laugh and his whole face contorted in a contemptuous sneer. ‘That is unfortunate,’ he said in a cold voice. ‘You will suffer because of your ignorance.’

“At that point, I woke up. The room was bright with moonlight, but of course there were no words on the window and, as far as I could tell, there was no one in the room. So I went back to sleep again, and I’m not sure how long I slept, but I was awakened by the sound of someone tapping on my window. It was a sharp, metallic sound, not like someone rapping with his knuckles, and I sat up with a start. When I looked at the window, which is not very far from my bed, I saw that there was a large bird outside on the sill. And a second later I saw that it was not an ordinary bird. It was skeletal. The gray light was shining through its rib cage and its eye holes; it was pecking at the pane and clattering its horrible black wings against my window. I was suddenly seized with the fear that it would break through the glass at any minute and get in, and I jumped out on the opposite side of the bed. I got hold of my staff, which was leaning against the wall near the bed, and I muttered some kind of charm, I forget what. It didn’t work, but a minute or two later the bird gave an awful scraping cry and fell over backward, off the sill.”

Roger opened his mouth to say something, but Prospero raised his hand.

“I know what you’re going to say. But the bird was
not
in a dream. I sat there on the edge of the bed for some time after the thing vanished, but I finally did get some sleep. The next morning—this morning—I looked to see if the bird had left any mark on the ground where it fell. It had. The grass was crushed down in one spot under my window. It wasn’t a dream, and these things—the bird, the moth, and the cloak—are not just apparitions.”

“I don’t see what you mean.”

“Roger, you know as well as I do that apparitions, evil or otherwise, are abroad in the world. You have put them down with incantations and so have I. But
these
things were tangible—they were real in a way that a ghost is not. Have you ever gotten close enough to an apparition to try to touch it?”

Roger thought for a minute. “Well,” he said, “I once had to put to rest the ghost of an old woman who was haunting a village south of here. She had been a witch, and her power to return came from a little wooden charm she had hidden under the floor of her house. I found it and decided to burn it in the town square—with the proper ceremonies, of course. When I set fire to the amulet, she appeared and rushed at me with her arms raised. She had long hooked nails and looked as though she wanted to scratch my eyes out.”

“And what did you feel? Did she touch you?”

“She passed right through me. There was a cold breath, but not much else.”

“Exactly. But
these
things could be felt and smelled. That evil gray cloak never touched me, but it must have been as palpable as the others. It had a dead smell about it, and it made a swishing sound as it moved across the floor. And there was something else, something that you must have felt when the moth appeared. You said that you were scared by the moth, even though it didn’t come near you. Do you know why you were scared?”

Roger looked nervously around the dark room.

“I felt that there was someone there. I felt the power of some incredibly hateful will, a human will that wanted to kill you. And just before the moth flew away, I felt the will grow fainter.”

“Not quite ready,” said Prospero with a sour smile. “Whoever he is, he can’t do what he wants to do just yet.
If
there is such a he, that is. We may be wrong about all this. Anyway, we ought to talk about something else. There’s nothing more maddening than empty speculation.”

Roger sat up in his chair. “Good Lord! I had forgotten all about the notes I brought you. On the book.”

“Book?” said Prospero.

Roger looked at him in exasperation. “Yes, book! Remember? Just before I left for England you asked me to trace that book, the one written in the cipher that no one had been able to crack. Well, you were right. The book has been in England and may still be there, for all I know, though I couldn’t locate it. It had been in several castle libraries and was mainly thought of as a curiosity. Most of the old scholars I talked to thought the book must be some kind of practical joke, an elaborate sport. It made its way from one library to another because people borrowed it and never returned it. Not that anyone tried to get it back. No one in England took the book seriously, as far as I know, except one monk at Glastonbury Abbey. He has been dead for about fifty years now, but I found his notebooks under a pile of old papers in the abbey’s archives. When you read what he has written, you may think that he was a little crazy. But I don’t think so. Here, let me get the papers for you. I couldn’t bring his actual notes, but I copied out everything pertaining to the book.”

Roger got up and went to the hallway, where he fumbled about in his raincoat for a while. When he came back, he was holding a bundle of rain-spotted foolscap sheets that were covered on both sides with his neat uncial script. Prospero refilled the brandy glasses, and he had just risen from his chair to look for his watch when a small marble clock high up on a dark shelf near the ceiling struck two. Not
bong-bong
, but
clunk-clunk
, since Prospero had stuffed the bells with paper to keep them from waking him up. When the muffled striking had finished, two wooden doors opened in the front of the clock and a small brass cannon rolled out. The spring-action barrel fired two metal pellets which flew across the room into the open mouth of a bust of Aristotle. The philosopher’s eyes blinked red twice as the pellets went down his throat.
Gulp-gulp
,
ping-ping
. Roger stood staring at the spectacle.

“I do not think, Prospero,” he said, “that one should attribute a very high degree of reality to your house.”

“That clock is altogether too real,” said Prospero. “I think I will have to stuff Aristotle’s mouth with paper.”

“You might try not winding up the clock,” said Roger.

“Oh my, no!” said Prospero, dead-panning. “What would the clock think?”

The two men sat down again in the easy chairs. Prospero had brought a large floor candelabrum from the other room, and he had placed it between the two chairs. Now, he began to read by the wavering shadowy light. He mumbled the first few lines of the first page to himself and looked up.

“This seems to be a very thorough description of the book. Is it from a catalogue of some sort?”

“Yes,” said Roger. “The monk kept a descriptive list of all his books. Most of the entries are very brief and limited to standard descriptive terms, but this note is quite elaborate, and it certainly goes beyond the kind of thing you’d expect to find in a book list. The rest of the material you have there I copied from a diary he kept. I didn’t include anything that did not pertain to the book. At first, there are just a few scattered notes, but later he writes about the book obsessively. You will see why.”

“You
do
know how to arouse curiosity,” said Prospero, smiling. “Why don’t I read this aloud? I hate long silences as much as you do, and we both enjoy being read to.”

“Very well,” said Roger, sitting back. “Anyway, I haven’t read the thing since I was in the archives at Glastonbury. Read on.”

Prospero began to read in a slow, matter-of-fact voice.

“ ‘Item 1036. Small quarto volume in vellum-covered boards. No markings on back or front cover or on spine. Little sign of wear. Contains 73 parchment leaves. Writing on both sides of leaves. Colored drawings in margins, small woodcuts used for initial letters, and some full-page woodcuts. Curious dolphin cross on last page. Bookplate on inside front cover. This latter has been defaced by some crisscross slashes probably made with a pen, but I can make out the design, which is this—’ ” Prospero found himself looking at a macabre heraldic device.

“Even though it’s my drawing of his drawing,” said Roger, “it’s probably accurate. And it’s familiar too, though I can’t think why.”

Prospero nodded. “I feel the same way. Well, let’s go on. ‘The book appears to be written in a cipher, though I cannot even make out the alphabet that is used. The writing is neat and flowing, and there seem to be words and word groups. There is something vaguely disturbing about the writing. The decorations are similarly odd and much more unsettling. The flowers drawn in the margins are minutely detailed, though they correspond to no flowers that I have ever seen, either in life or in my herb books. Some flowers have men and women rising from them. Woodcuts used for initial letters are executed with skill. One shows a lighted window in a moonlit tower. A figure in the window, hunched over a lectern. A similar cut shows the scholar at his desk before an open book. A shadowed figure, presumably a friend, looks over his shoulder. One full-page woodcut shows (I imagine) the Witch of Endor. Certainly, there are “gods ascending from the earth.” The witch’s back is to us and she is thrown into silhouette by the light of a fire. She holds a rod. The spirits, which are crawling out of the fire, look like horribly emaciated men. Some are on their knees begging, some are trying to flee, and one is crawling toward the witch with a look that gave me a bad dream the other night. Another full-page cut shows a man who has apparently just been awakened. He is in a nightgown and he holds a candle. Again, the face is away from us, for he looks toward a large open window. The light, or something about the drawing, is incredibly well done, making the window a terrifying black hole. Anything might crawl through it. Not that there are shapes in the window. It seems absolutely dark. I have contemplated burning this woodcut, but I cannot do it. Twice I have awakened at night to find myself in the situation of the figure in the picture. Without a candle, but in bright moonlight. Once I woke up and found that I was unfastening the latch on my bedroom window. I have never been a sleepwalker before. God save me from a moonless night!’ ”

Prospero shuddered. “Even reading about this is horrible! Did anything happen to the poor man?”

“No...well, that is to say, he was not dragged off by dark creatures. But he—oh, read on! The diary is next.”

Prospero continued:

“ ‘
October 15:
Found an interesting-looking book in the library today. I asked the abbot if he would let me have it for my own collection in my laboratory, and he said yes. It appears to be in a strange language, and it may deal with magic.’

“ ‘
November
28:
I must find time to study that new book; I fear my lack of training in languages will hinder me.’