Thirteen Chairs (5 page)

Breath of woodcutter is just tiny thing now. In, out, just little bit. Is little gasps. All he do now is watch and feel. Even to cry out, now he cannot do. And he feel chest all very so tight, and all pains is everywhere.

Very slow and all agony he twist neck and look up, up into highest branches, all frosted in cold morning air. And he see branches is all icy silver. Is silver like ghost.

And all slow, tree is growing new twigs. Is like teeth of wood, like teeth of snake, like wooden
fangs
all biting in his flesh, growing into him. Is so much pain. Is no words for this pain.

And woodcutter feel blood is all spilling out, running down his body, running down onto tree. And he strain his head to look down, to see his blood. Staining clothes all torn and ragged, and dripping down all fast. Is like red stream flowing down grooves of bark. Is painting bark.

Is making red tree.

J
ack sits bolt upright, his arms stretched down by his sides, his hands clutching at the seat of his chair. His chest feels tight, as if he is himself caught in the crushing branches of the red tree, and his breathing is rapid and shallow. He fixes his eyes on the table in front of him. He doesn’t want to look at anyone else just at the moment, not until he’s calmed down. He looks at the pattern of the grain in the wood.

Then, when this makes him think of the tree, he moves his attention to his candle, sees the molten wax dripping down the sides, like the woodcutter’s blood. So he stares very hard at the candle-holder. It is a dull bronze dome with a hole in the top and it doesn’t remind him of anything. It is the plainest, most boring thing, and he studies it closely until he is breathing more or less normally again.

Piotr, his enormous hands gripping the edge of the table, is leaning forward and swinging his head from side to side, surveying the others, gazing at them with wide puppyish eyes, looking for their reaction. Weather-beaten Mr Fowler is the first to respond.

‘Well, that’s a grand tale, sir, and well told. I’ve heard few finer, and you know I have heard very many in my time. Thank you.’

‘So glad you like,’ says Piotr, and continues to swing his nodding head from side to side in a grateful arc, taking in the smiling approval of all but one of the
others around the table. He doesn’t notice the exception, at first, but Jack does.

Next to Frances Crane is a woman in her fifties, with cruel eyes and a hooked nose. She makes a tiny snorting noise, and Jack looks over at her, but without moving his head: just darts his eyes in her direction. She has a rather sour expression on her face. Jack imagines it must be one she finds a lot of use for.

Piotr frowns massively, his face a caricature of disappointment. ‘You do not like, Mrs Professor?’ he says.

‘Oh, it’s a jolly enough little tale, of its kind, I suppose,’ says the professor. ‘But it’s not really what we’re here for, is it? More of a folk tale, really. Folk tales from Eastern Europe were something of a speciality of mine back at the university, you see, so I do know about these things. Your little story seems to be nothing more than a slight variation on an old Polish tale, with a few elements of one of the Mother Adela stories from Romania thrown in for flavour. This sort of cross-fertilization is fairly common in—’

‘Is not Polish story,’ says Piotr quietly and slowly. ‘Is not Romanian story.’ He is staring Professor Cleary straight in the eye. ‘Is my grandmother’s story. Is true story my grandmother tell.’

He stands up, and he’s even bigger than Jack thought. He leans forward, palms flat on the table, arms braced, looming over the professor. She looks a lot less sure of herself now.

‘She tell with little true words. Not your long fancy-pants words, Mrs Professor Fancy-Pants.’ His voice is still quiet.

Professor Cleary blinks. ‘No. Quite.’ She blinks again. ‘And, ah … that very simplicity is what gives the tale its charm.’ She forces an amateur smile. ‘Very well done, Piotr. Thank you.’

‘Yes, thank you, Piotr. Your grandmother would be proud, I’m sure,’ says grey-haired Frances, smiling warmly and tapping the fingers of one hand lightly against the palm of the other in polite applause. The bangles round her wrists make more noise than her clapping. The others murmur and smile their praise too.

Piotr’s beard splits open again to unleash a wide, unruly grin, full of childish delight and bad teeth.

‘Thank you, Piotr,’ says pale Mr Osterley.

Piotr blows out his candle, then lifts his chair back and away from the table and sits back down on it.

‘And now, perhaps, Professor Cleary, you might take your own turn?’ says Mr Osterley.

‘Er, yes. Yes, of course. I, um …’ The professor gives a little cough. She leans stiffly forward, her bony arms knotted tightly across her chest, and she looks at her candle for a moment rather than facing anyone. Then she blinks and turns her head, slowly unwraps her arms, as if she’s trying to conceal the fact that they were folded in the first place, and subtly shifts her expression, pulling a grimace into a false smile.

She starts to speak, in a voice made of dust.

‘Well, you may think my story rather dreary and down to earth compared to Piotr’s, I’m afraid, but I hope you’ll still find it agreeable. It concerns a fellow of my former university, albeit many years before my time there …’

P
rofessor Seabright could not sleep. He could not sleep and he did not know why, and this annoyed him.

He was certainly tired. It had been a long day, and he had walked a good deal in the hot sun. Past experience suggested that exercise, sun and plenty of sea air during the day would usually ensure a very good night’s sleep to follow. But not tonight, it seemed.

He thought back to try to find some cause. Well, there had been that funny turn he’d had at lunch time, but that had been quickly over, and he hadn’t thought of it since. He had eaten nothing unusual at dinner and drunk no more nor less wine with it than usual, and he had come up to his room and to bed at the usual kind of hour. So he had expected to fall asleep at the usual time too. He had changed into his nightwear and stacked his neatly folded clothes on a chair. The mattress had creaked a quiet hello to the weight of him as he lay upon it, and the cold bedclothes had warmed their welcome. He had lain there in serene comfort and warmth, and turned out the lamp, and closed his eyes.

But he could not sleep.

Something was keeping him awake. Something, like a gently prodding finger,
tap, tap, tapping
inside his
head. It was only the faintest noise, but in a steady rhythm, insistently repeating. He lay there a long while, semi-conscious, still hazily confident that he could ignore it and soon drift off. But once half an hour had passed, he finally admitted to himself that sleep was beyond him, and his senses roused themselves to try to identify the problem.

The blurry sound came into focus. It was barely audible, and so it was difficult to identify. But in the quiet of the night it stood out just clearly enough, and eventually he made himself sure: it was the ticking of a clock.

How odd, he thought. He had not noticed a clock when he had checked into the room in the morning, and he had stayed in the same guesthouse countless times before and there had never been a clock in any of the rooms. They were all rather similar, so he could not be absolutely sure, but he thought he had even stayed in this very room on at least one previous occasion.

Oh well. Perhaps it was a new addition. Or it had been here all along and he simply hadn’t noticed it. It was close to silent, after all, so it was a wonder that he had noticed it now. But now that he had, he found himself unable to ignore it. He turned his bedside lamp back on and scanned around the room. He could not see a clock anywhere.

No matter. Now that he was awake he might as well do something useful. He decided to take the opportunity to write up his notes.

The dean of his university had an absurd idea that the professor had been working too hard and had insisted that he take some time off. So Professor Seabright was meant to be on holiday. And he was, mostly. But while he was here he had taken the opportunity to visit the church in a nearby village. He was preparing a book on the subject of carvings and statuary in church architecture, and there were some fine gargoyles to be found at St Radegund’s that he had spent much of the day studying and sketching.

It had been a most productive and fascinating visit, albeit not wholly straightforward. The long walk there and the unseasonally hot sun had combined to make him rather weary by lunch time, so when he’d reached the village pub on the way to the church, it had seemed like a good idea to stop in for refreshment, shade and rest.

It had been a sound enough idea in itself, but his choice of drink had proved unwise. The landlord had suggested
Devil’s Wallop
, an ale that he brewed himself, and the professor had politely accepted his recommendation. It had turned out to be a well-named brew of unusual darkness and strength, and the professor now found the interpretation of the notes and drawings made in the afternoon altogether a trickier task than transcribing his work from the morning.

But still, it was a challenge he relished, and sitting up in the creaking bed he read and wrote and redrew very happily for two solid hours. He took particular
delight in a drawing of one especially gruesome carving that he had seen, taking care to capture its hideous features exactly.

Yawning once more, he set down his books on the bedside table, placed his spectacles on top, lay down and turned off the lamp. He smiled when he heard the ticking of the clock again. Absorbed in his work he had entirely forgotten about it, but now, with an empty head and in dark silence, he registered again the faint beat of the seconds passing. Sleep would come soon enough, though, he felt sure.

He was wrong. A quarter hour passed, and then a quarter hour more, and he found himself still wide awake. There was, he felt, no good reason for this, and he was not fond of things that happened without good reason.

The professor was an orderly man of fixed habits, and had never before had trouble sleeping. What is more, he had a busy day planned tomorrow that he would struggle to cope with without first getting his usual seven and a quarter hours’ repose. And yet here he was in the dead of night, frustrated, as if sleeping was a skill that he had lost. As if he had simply forgotten how.

And now that quiet ticking of the unseen clock seemed not so quiet. It seemed ridiculous to blame that one small noise for his sleeplessness, but he was a logical man and he could find no other cause. Therefore he lifted his pillow, lay his head down upon the cool sheet
beneath, and then clamped the pillow firmly over his upturned ear. How it was that the ticking remained, even then, clearly audible, he was at a loss to explain, but there it was: constant, insistent, nagging. This was ridiculous. Professor Seabright’s fingers clawed at the pillow, and an angry tension took hold of his whole body.

With a rather embarrassing yelping cry, the professor hurled the pillow away (though not very far; it was a feeble throw). Again he turned the lamp on. He decided he must find the clock and stop it, or else remove it from the room. But locating it proved no simple task. No matter which way he turned, and no matter whereabouts in the room he stood, the ticking sound grew no louder or fainter. This defied reason. And not only did his ears provide no useful clue to finding the mysterious clock, but his eyes could find no sight of it either. Clearly, then, it must be hidden from view. Well then, he would search until he found it.

He began, as anyone who knew him even slightly would expect, in a methodical manner. Starting in one corner and working along each of the walls in turn, he opened drawers and cupboards, scrutinized the contents of shelves inch by inch, looked even in the most unlikely locations. He went so far at one point as to move the lamp over to the fireplace and look up the chimney. Then, when he was back where he had begun, he looked under the bed. He looked
in
the bed. He opened up his own luggage and meticulously
checked inside (though the contents of his bags and case were known to him to the last tiny item and, he knew full well, included no timepiece). And when, having searched everywhere, he had still found nothing, he stood in the middle of the room, and with silent annoyance noted how each quiet tick of the clock fell exactly between his short, fast, angry breaths.

This was wrong. Professor Seabright checked over every possibility in his mind, scanned once, twice around the room, looking for some possible hiding place that he had not yet considered. Nothing. There was nothing he had missed; he was sure of it. There would be no point at all in looking again. It would be a waste of time and an insult to reason.

He returned to his bed. He told himself he would sleep now. As a matter of principle he would sleep now. He would
not
allow himself to be kept awake by this nonsense. But he didn’t lie down, and he did not turn off the lamp. Nor did he close his eyes, or iron out the creases in his forehead. Trembling tension filled him. Professor Seabright was not, in the normal course of events, an emotional man, but if anyone had been able to see him now, they would probably have described him as seething.

Tick, tick, tick …

The professor looked down at his right hand, clamped tightly around the upper part of his left arm and found that the index finger of that hand was, quite without any conscious intention on his part, tapping
against his pyjama sleeve. Tapping in time with that infernal, unseen clock!

Tick, tick, tick …

Tap, tap, tap …

Tick, tick—

Now sometimes, when a man appears to have lived a calm life, ruled by reason, steady and measured and controlled, his placid exterior can actually conceal something quite different. Sometimes such a man holds within himself a bubbling well of madness and fury that, quite unseen, builds in pressure within him, awaiting its release. All it needs is a crack in that calm façade to allow the inevitable explosive outcome.

Twenty minutes later, standing with his back against the door, Professor Seabright surveyed the devastation strewn across the floor. Luckily room eleven, like all the rooms at the guesthouse, was quite sparsely furnished. There had been only one chair for the professor to fling angrily aside as he stamped towards the bookcase. The bookcase itself contained only a very few books (and none of any interest or value) for him to scatter across the floor. The few ornaments upon the mantelpiece had been cheap but surprisingly robust, all surviving the fall as they were swept onto the floor (and the sole piece of delicate chinaware had quite by chance landed unharmed upon the bed). Nevertheless, these few items combined with the contents of the professor’s luggage, the assorted fire irons, the shredded remains of the morning’s newspaper and sundry
other items from around the room, had still created a considerable amount of mess when flung wildly about in frustrated rage.

It was fortunate, though, that just as he had been deciding whether or not to tip over the writing desk, Professor Seabright had been interrupted by a knock at the door.

The owner and manager of the guest house, Mr Boulting, had not seemed particularly convinced by the professor’s story about tripping over in the night and stumbling into the chair, but, tired as he was, he had been willing to pretend that this adequately explained all the noise. He made no mention of the screaming, and made no attempt to be let into the room to investigate further. He had always considered the professor eccentric, and he was suspicious of academics in general, but he guessed that whatever had just happened would not happen again and, if the damage was as bad as it had sounded, then the professor would pay suitable compensation without argument. Returning to his soft warm bed seemed, in the circumstances, a much more welcoming prospect than attempting to uncover the truth of the matter. He shot the professor a dark look, tersely wished him a good night, and returned to his room.

Professor Seabright’s legs folded beneath him, his back slid down the door, and he crumpled into a tangled knot on the floor. He had managed to conjure a reasonable impression of normality while talking
to Mr Boulting, but it had been an effort. He made no such effort now that he was alone again. It felt as if he was losing the one thing most dear to him: his mind.

The wild fury and abandon with which he had inflicted his clumsy violence on the contents of his room were unrecognizable to him now. It was as if they had been the actions of someone else entirely. He felt as if surely he had merely dreamed them. Or that he was still dreaming them. Yet the mess upon the floor offered clear evidence to the contrary. In amongst the debris he spotted some shards of white crockery: the remains of a fine china teacup. He felt himself to be just as broken. He sat upon the floor and shook. Tears came to his eyes and, as quietly as he could, he sobbed.

The clock was still ticking, of course, insolently counting out the seconds, each stroke thumping in the professor’s head. And now two other rhythms joined it. He had cut his left hand on one of the shards of the smashed teacup, and, as he hugged his knees to his chest, drops of blood fell to the floor, just as tears dripped onto the fabric of his nightshirt where it was stretched between his knees. The different rhythms of the three sounds fell in and out of time with one another, mesmerizing Professor Seabright as he stared into the chaos of scattered debris on the floor.

He picked up one of his notebooks, fallen open at the drawing of the gargoyle on which he had laboured with such care earlier. The stone demon returned his
stare and the professor was reminded of his earlier visit to the church.

Somewhat tired from the morning’s long walk in the hot sun, and further befuddled by the effects of potent ale, the professor had been foolish to accept the vicar’s eager invitation to climb the stairs to the clock tower.

The tight spiralling staircase had added dizziness to mild drunkenness, and he had emerged into the top of the tower, housing the impressive and ancient mechanism of the church clock, in a disorientated, rather alarmed state. The vicar had been prattling on, trying to inform him of the church’s history, but Professor Seabright, in his distressed condition, had not taken in a word of it. He had felt dizzy and sick and panicked, and the stern iron beat of the clock had seemed to thud through him.

The reverend had made him sit, and after only a moment or two his breathing had steadied and he had felt calm again. In fact, he had soon forgotten about it entirely. But now, in room eleven of the guest house, that moment was back with him, and he could hear the ticking of the church clock again, shaking his bones …

and the hidden clock,

and the drip of blood,

and the drip of tears.

And his breath, another rhythm adding to the cacophony.

And the beat of his heart, a further pulse, loud and relentless.

‘Make it stop!’ he pleaded to the still night. ‘Please make it stop!’

His vision began to blur and darken around the edges. The room receded into blackness leaving only the notebook in light and focus, a dark bloodstain blooming on the cover, growing from his cut hand. He could hear his heartbeat now above everything else, like a mighty drum, could feel the shudder of it rattling through him, as if his heart was striking hard against the inside of his ribcage with each fierce beat, barging at it as if eager for release.