The Wanderer (29 page)

Duncan puled.

‘Hush, you idiot,’ Elliot said. ‘Listen. It’s no easy matter to lure someone over the border. The border between this world and that black place. Most see only the way ahead, not what lies off to the side, can’t see it, stay in their ruts. And, should someone whose blinkers are off be found, it’s then easy to entice them too far from the road, to where they can’t return from. If some part of them is already pledged to darkness they will be lost. Others will, of course, die of fright or lose their minds. It’s been my experience that very few can see those dread hinterlands and return not too violently altered.’

We sat fraught, yet quiet, listening; awaiting a terrible revelation, but with no idea what it might prove to be.

‘You’re a curious incurious lot,’ Elliot jested, fleering. ‘Though actually, of course, in your case,’ he gestured at me with the pipe’s stem, ‘inquisitiveness
was
your undoing. The rest of you were just unlucky, I set toils, drove you into them. Ah, but I’m forgetting you, Duncan. Avarice was your downfall. Anyway, how to goad
you all now? I know.’

Elliot set down the pipe, began moaning. His face moiled, then his features became those of the old man who warned me about wolves that night in the Saracens Head, spoke to me again by Smithfields Market. Flesh boiled again, and he became a good-looking young man with a harelip. Then a hoary ancient, cheeks and forehead begrimed, matted beard, clouded, sightless eyes; an elderly woman, fleshy, piggy face, haughty air; and an old man, kindly air, red-raw skin stretched tight over his skull, lank thinning grey hair, dandruff. Then the pulp weltered a last time, and Elliot sat before us again, though a shade altered, eyes set deeper, baleful, teeth sharper, ears sticking out more, lower jaw lengthened, prognathous, complexion wan, now the flat grey hue of spoilt fish.

Jane opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came from her throat. The rest of us sat listless.

Elliot went on, tone veering between spite, glee, and bragging.

‘Now I’ve your attention, I’ll introduce myself. For a long time I thought I was a scion of a diresome house. Maybe. Or perhaps was a scholar who, prodigiously learned, but in worldly things callow, made a rash deal with an emissary of Satan. Or perchance was not cozened into that pact, but submitted to it voluntarily, was a diabolist who chanted some incantation from an age-yellowed grimoire while standing within a pentagram chalked on the floor. Or it was conceivable, I supposed that I was entirely innocent, that I was what I was simply because the hour of my birth had seen a powerful celestial conjunction. At other times I wondered if I wasn’t the victim, willing or not, of dark forces, but was cursed by good for evil actions. That maybe I was even he who was the first farmer and the first murderer, who was execrated, condemned to wander the Earth till fire comes to cure it, calcine its clods.’

Here Jane whimpered.

‘He who,’ Elliot went on, taking no notice of her, ‘should he attempt to cultivate the land again, will find his tillage turns fertile soil to fruitless dust, and whom no man may kill on pain of suffering vengeance seven times over. Yes, I thought that quite feasible, though, against it, there is no trace of a mark on me, not a mole, birthmark, or liver-spot whose shape could be construed as significant. Since that time, in any case, I’ve learned of another possible reason for my condition, so perhaps none of those surmises were correct. In any case, it’s hardly important.’

Elliot stopped to take a breath, and William flicked a lit cigarette at his face. With his tongue, now long, thin, and darting, Elliot caught the cigarette midair, pulled it back to his lips, smoked it to the filter in one long draw. The ash did not drop, but hung, a withered finger. Then Elliot swallowed the butt and the burnt tobacco, before resuming speaking as if nothing had happened, the strange and now solemn accents of his voice rolling slowly on his auditors’ ears like a peal of distant thunder. William, his hand trembling, reached into his pack for another cigarette.

‘What
is
important is that, by curse, ritual, or chance, I have life without cease. It’s a terrible anguish, for all I may have received it as a sought-after boon, something no ordinary man, oppressed by the certainty of death, could understand. For me, it’d be rapture to know the rattle in the throat that heralds the end.

‘Of course, at first I might well have revelled in my immortality. I can recall that time only murkily, for it is many ages ago, but I seem to remember I devoted myself then to rare evil, unthinkable debauchery, dread cruelty. Thinking on that, maybe it’s most likely, after all, I’m a son of Perdition, granted immortality by some Potentate of Shadow in exchange for a pledge to go through the world corrupting and bringing low. If, however, that is the case, the Enemy of Souls has long since lost interest in my deeds. It’s possible, anyway, that my malevolence was born
merely of perversity.

‘How long I pursued unspeakable paths I can’t say, but at some point, perhaps as an act of rebellion, but more probably simply bored of misdeeds, I turned to benevolence. This also, I discovered, didn’t satisfy my yearning for sensation, for just as I hadn’t felt remorse, or the pricks of conscience, I knew no pleasure in kindness. I knew my term would be endless and felt any deed of mine, good or ill, was as nothing in the balance sheet of eternal life, that, just as in games of chance the outcomes tend toward equilibrium, so my actions, foul or fair, were cancelled out by the conduct of past and future selves.

‘I began seeking other diversions to palliate the appalling tedium of life everlasting. At some time during the years of relative ignorance in Europe following the Classical period, I learnt, from an ancient forbidden book, of places where this world abuts another, one dark and uncanny. The writer of that weird volume wrote of certain unfortunates, of whom he’d heard tell, who’d strayed across the threshold at one of the liminal sites, wandered awful tracts lost and forlorn for years before finding their way back to the mundane sphere once more. Many of those men were maddened, those who remained sane told of terrors beyond imagining.

‘I wanted badly to gain entry to that strange realm. After searching for many decades, I found a way in. It’s a dread place. One of the most disconcerting things about it is that it’s never the same twice, sometimes lurid, grotesque, sometimes seemingly ordinary, but seething with menace. It’s known by many names on this side of the veil, several of which will be familiar to you. I’ve only ever heard its denizens use but one word for it, a drawn-out guttural sound no human throat could give issue to. I call it Tartarus. You,’ he then glared at each of us in turn, ‘have but glimpsed its horrors. I abhor it, but have been compelled by some twisted part of me that seeks sensation and worse, to spend longer and longer there with each passing year. For at least three
centuries now, I’ve spent more time in its umbral regions than in this world of light. And spending so much time down there has given me powers, powers that have alleviated some of my boredom.’

Elliot took up his pint, drained it, ate the dimpled glass jug it had been served in, crunching and swallowing, grinning the while. He squinted, winced, retched, then brought up and took from his mouth a small glass sculpture, very lifelike, very obscene, of William and Rashmi naked, fucking, set it down on the table, winked at William.

Rashmi looked shocked; William flushed, turned his head away.

Elliot swept the sculpture to the floor, where it smashed, then went on.

‘When the Enlightenment was a waxing glimmer on the horizon, I made a strange discovery. I was in southern Ireland, and, having grown bored of the tiresome attentions of a young woman I’d seduced, brought to ruin, I sought to escape her by going to a Tartarean pit I knew of, which lay concealed beneath the cellars of an ancient and evil house situated in the midst of a barren moor about forty miles west of Ardrahan, and flinging myself in. But the girl followed and leapt in after me. We fell a long time, then our falls were broken by a flabby welter of bodies. Once my eyes had adjusted to the gloom, I saw we were in cavern filled with degenerate creatures, pallid, purblind, stinking, shitstreaked, and swinish, if with lingering, debased, loathsome, humanity. These beasts tussled, fornicated, gorged on their weak and dead in eerie silence, save the odd low chortle. I fought free, clambered up on to a ledge above the moil, sat watching, grinning, the girl’s terror, her struggles; the vermin clutched, pawed at her, tore her garments, slobbered over her, and worse, so much worse, so much filth. She shrieked, pleaded at first, then mewled, and finally lay silent, still, staring. Then she managed to free herself, ran wailing. I chased after her, into a pitchy warren,
and, though she was fear fleet, laid hold of her, knocked her out, carried her back to the everyday realm. It was too late, what she’d seen, undergone, had taken her sanity, and when she came to, she raved. I abandoned her.

‘Then, on returning to that country, over a hundred years later, I heard tell of a bugbear, a legend, a banshee haunting a bleak tract of moorland, whose appearance was said to be an omen of death. The stories told she was ageless, could not be killed, had survived a close-range blast from a blunderbuss loaded with rusty nails, fragments of sheep bone, gravel; being run through by a pitchfork; being beaten senseless and cast into a flooded turlough. Hearing these rumours, I realized it was the same girl, that something had made her deathless, as I was. I’d never heard of such a thing before, but it seemed clear it was entering Tartarus that had done it. Which, of course, made me ponder my own state again…

‘Anyhow, I got it into my head to try whether I could do what others had apparently failed to, bring death to her. I sought her out. She was living in a cave, in a tor, out on the barren heath. She was feral, naked, hair all tangled and wild. And she’d not aged. I caught her and throttled her, but she wouldn’t die. I unsheathed the dirk I always carried about with me in those times, gored her with it, but, though blood welled, she lived on.’

Elliot sighed, puffed on the pipe, ran a hand through his hair.

‘Well, irked, I again leapt into the pit, roamed Tartarus for several years looking for something to end that unnatural life. Many times I was tempted to give up, but persevered, knowing the laws of the place were such that, with intentions black as mine, I’d turn up the thing I was after in the end.

‘And this proved true. I found it in a fane consecrated to dire rites. It lay between two black candles set in bone holders, on a stone altar draped with a blood-steeped cloth. A knife, short blade, plain wooden handle. Quite ordinary looking, but I knew straight away it was what I’d been seeking.

‘Armed with this knife, I went back to the surface world, tracked down the young woman, ran her to ground, tried it on her. She died without a whimper, and my frustration was allayed.

‘I pondered these events a long time. It seemed to me they hinted at a way to alleviate my torment, the immortality that dragged, left me listless. I’ve tried the knife on myself, by the way, but it brought no end, only pain. I’m not sure why.

‘Revelation came one night after I’d been on a drunk in London, was lying on the banks of the Thames, swigging from a liquor bottle. I had, by then, by trial and error, ascertained that entering Tartarus ignites immortality in ordinary folk. Why, though, I’ve no idea. Perhaps some smouldering talisman is kindled to flame by its hideous atmosphere. But it had also, in all my trials, driven the poor unfortunate mad. It seemed it was impossible to witness the full horrors of that place without being crazed. But it occurred to me then that, were I able to trick people into following me into Tartarus, but prevent them from experiencing its true terrors, avoid maddening them, I’d have prey who couldn’t die save by my hand, who, able to feel fear, would flee me, and whom I could pass the time hunting.’

Elliot peered about at us. Then sneered, knocked the ash and dottle from the briar, turned to Duncan.

‘Baccy,’ he demanded, holding out his hand.

Scowling, Duncan handed over his pouch, and Elliot set to refilling the pipe again. Once he’d done so, he sat back in his chair, lit a match, held the flame to the pipe’s bowl, puffed till the tobacco was glowing red, giving off a drab fug. No one else moved; we sat aghast and quaking.

‘As I’ve hinted,’ Elliot went on, ‘my first attempts to create such specimens were failures, sometimes striking ones. Indeed, one of my earliest botches has passed into legend. I spent most of 1680 living in Amsterdam, passed much of my time in drunkenness in squalid places frequented by sailors. One autumn day, I was drinking grog with an old tar when our talk turned to the
matter of a ship, a brigantine, which had drawn my notice because it had been languishing in dock since the spring. My acquaintance explained that its captain, a Hendrik Van der Decken, was having trouble hiring on hands. According to gossip, on his last trip out, he’d claimed before the whole crew he’d rather be damned for all eternity, beat about the seas till the Last Judgement, than seek a safe harbour in a storm. The salts of Amsterdam town, a superstitious lot, were chary of signing on with a skipper who’d tempted fortune so.

‘Van der Decken’s rash declaration seemed to me a sign. I managed to get myself taken on as helmsman of the vessel, waited in Amsterdam till it had secured a full complement of crew, many of them desperate men. We got underway, I bided my time. Till, one fateful night during a tempest, when we drew near a fearsome whirlpool I knew of, off the Cape of Good Hope, which sucked vessels down into a sunless sea where kraken spawned. I steered for it. I hoped to be able to have the ship gyre on the brink of the loathsome pit without being swallowed, and awaken immortality in the sailors without exposing them to maddening horrors. But I was thwarted by the power of the maelstrom, and, though the brigantine survived intact, it was drawn down into that dread maw, and, by the time the vortex abated, spat us out, the captain and crew had seen things no men were ever meant to see, and were terror-crazed and useless to me. Without the wits to fly from pain or extinction, they’d have made poor quarries. Though they did afford me some entertainment. In their frantic state they were very suggestible, and I amused myself by, inspired by Van der Decken’s foolhardy boast, instilling in them a peculiar horror of landfall.