The Ghosts of Sleath by James Herbert
More of the pond filled the car’s interior as it sank, a deep, deep greyness pressing against the windows, seeping through the cracks in the windscreen, the seeping soon becoming a streaming. The lights went out, but even in his terror, the doctor had noticed the darker shapes out there in the murk, all floating towards him as though attracted to this new element in their dingy aqueous world.
Something tapped on the passenger window and his head jerked round. He thought he saw a small hand pressed against the glass. Except there seemed to be no flesh on its fingers.
A thump on the glass next to him caused him to turn in that direction.
It was difficult to see clearly at first, for it was dark everywhere, inside and outside the car; but even so, his eyes adjusted and the face had pressed closer to the glass. Inexplicably - for the gloom had not brightened - he could see more clearly as another face joined the others, it was as if these ghostly mirages were lit from within; other hands pressed against the glass.
At first he thought the faces were grinning at him, and then he realized the pond’s foul waters had eaten away the flesh of their lips.
Freezing liquid constricted his chest and it became difficult to breathe. He could not move. He would not move. Where would he go? Out there with those ghosts?
The faces seemed to nod as if in answer to his unvoiced question. There were more shapes, more lipless faces, more eyeless sockets, filling the windscreen and side-windows.
The water lapped over his chin.
Although the flesh had been worn away in this watery graveyard, he realized that the faces belonged to children, for they were mostly small, just as the fleshless hands that tapped at the windows were small. And they were lonely here, the children told him. They had been without comfort for too long. They needed someone to take care of them. Someone older. Like him.
Water poured into his mouth, rushed up his nose. His spectacles floated away.
The last words of the hymn came to him. A single child’s voice that seemed to make those outside grin even more.
… I am the dance and I still go on.
The water closed over his head.
Maddy Buckler sewed while she waited. Earlier she had placed a small lamp in the window, foolishly perhaps, but feeling it might serve as a beacon.
Gaffer was by her side, snuggled up against the armchair, as close to her as it could get. The dog had followed her everywhere since it had returned alone two nights before and howled at the front door. That was when Maddy had known for certain that something bad had happened to her Jack. She had phoned the police immediately, but they had refused to come over to the estate and look for him. Give it till daybreak, they had told her, when - if anything had happened to her husband - he would at least be easier to find. Besides, he would probably turn up under his own steam at any moment, cursing the dog for having run off. She failed to convince them that something was wrong and they should start a search right away; when she tried to coax Gaffer into taking her to Jack, the dog had refused to leave the cottage, backing away from the front door and cowering under the table in the kitchen.
The police had found Jack’s body later that morning and their apology, with their sympathy, had not helped. Nor had their assurances that they would soon find the person responsible for shooting him through the heart with a metal arrow.
Last night Maddy had waited for Jack to return. Tonight she waited for him again.
He would come. She knew he would come. He would find his way back through that nasty fog and the light in the window would guide him.
Oh, they might have pronounced him dead, they might have taken his body away, but that didn’t mean her Jack wouldn’t return to her.
Because they were all coming back.
Didn’t anyone understand that?
They were all returning.
So she would sit here and sew until Jack arrived. Maddy began to hum a tune.
But stopped when Gaffer’s head shot up. The Airedale began to whine softly.
‘S’all right, you silly old thing. You know who it is.’
The dog stared fixedly at the sitting-room door, the keening in its throat becoming more urgent.
‘Hush now, be a good dog.’
Maddy laid a hand on its long flat head and the dog became quiet. It remained alert though, its head cocked to one side, an ear lifted.
Soon, Maddy, too, heard the footsteps.
They were on the path outside the cottage.
They were coming closer.
37
MORE THAN ONCE Grace rushed ahead of him, forcing Ash to quicken his pace to catch up. The fog was patchy now, thin and wispy one moment so that the wide track ahead and the trees on either side were clearly visible under the half-moon, so dense the next that he was afraid of losing sight of Grace, only the torch she carried guiding his way. The smell, that sickly odour of decay, was still prevalent, but he had become used to it and no longer felt like retching each time he took a deep breath.
Beginning to tire, he caught Grace’s arm. ‘Can we slow down a bit?’ he suggested.
‘We might be too late if we don’t hurry.’ She had barely glanced at him, her concentration on the rutted track before them.
‘For what? Why the hell are we going to the ruin?’
‘You saw what happened to the painting in Father’s study.’
They had both been stunned by the phenomenon, all the more extraordinary because although the picture of Lockwood Hall had virtually been consumed by invisible flames, the frame around it and the wall on which it hung had not even been scorched.
‘We -’ he began to say, but she cut him off.
‘Father is there,’ she insisted, ‘I know he’s there.’
He kept silent, searching the way ahead. A thick cloud bank rolled across their path, obscuring everything, the cloudy night sky included. They walked on, Grace keeping the torch beam on the ground a yard or two in front. They emerged from the worst of it and Ash thought he glimpsed the burnt-out shell of Lockwood Hall in the distance before it was swallowed up once more by the roving mists. Grace had caught sight of it too and she broke into a run, giving him no alternative but to chase after her.
She could not keep up the pace for long for, like Ash, she was becoming wearied by the journey. The fog and the roughness of the track combined to make the going difficult, and at times they had walked along almost blind, the torch light merely reflected back at them by the mists. The shell that was Lockwood Hall came into view again as they drew nearer and for a while, as the haze around it thinned, they saw the gutted mansion almost in its entirety. Under the light of the half-moon Lockwood Hall appeared more bleak than ever.
Ash felt a compulsion to turn away from this cheerless place - even the black pits of its windows seemed forbidding - but Grace would have gone on without him, and that he couldn’t allow. Their lovemaking that afternoon had not merely been an insentient coupling - their passion came from something much more binding, a deep understanding of each other’s nature and a mutual recognition of each other’s vulnerabilities; and of their separate burdens.
As if sensing his thoughts, Grace suddenly took his hand. She did not look at him, but kept her eyes on the ravaged building that loomed so close now. Together, they advanced, and the mists dosed in.
They arrived in the wide clearing where once, a long time ago, carriages had drawn up before the steps of the mansion, where horsemen had assembled with pack hounds milling around their mounts’ legs, where guests had arrived for grand balls and social events. Grace pointed the light at the dilapidated façade.
The upper reaches of the old building were lost in the fog, the walls seeming to vignette into oblivion, a vaporous void that might have led on to infinity. Ash felt its desolation, and something more - there was a canker here, a black virulence that had not revealed itself on his first visit. Perhaps only darkness could bring forth the purulence of its troubled soul, or perhaps it was time’s cycle that governed such unholy effu
‘Father’s inside.’
He looked sharply at Grace. ‘How can you know?’
‘The same way you can,’ she replied, shining the torch towards Lockwood Hall’s entrance. She began to cross the stony, grass-strewn clearing and by the time he joined her she had reached the steps leading to the colonnaded entrance. He took the torch from her as they started to climb.
‘Listen …’ She had stopped behind him and he turned to look back at her, one foot on a higher step. The music was faint, and it swelled and ebbed, so that he had to listen intently to make sure of what he was hearing. It sounded like a distant harpsichord.
Grace stepped up to him and held on to his arm. ‘I used to hear it when I was little,’ she said in a hushed voice, adding, ‘when my father brought me here.’
‘Was he aware …?’
‘I … can’t remember. I’m sure I must have asked him why he didn’t hear it too.’ She touched her fingers to her temple as if the effort of trying to remember was causing pain there. ‘I would dance to those sounds inside my head and he warned me that the floors inside weren’t safe.’
‘Then why did he bring you?’
She could not answer and he wasn’t sure if it was because her memory failed her, or because she was reluctant to probe her own mind further. He suspected the latter.
Rather than persist, he said simply: ‘Let’s find him.’
They climbed the rest of the steps together and, as they reached the large open doorway, the music stopped. It was as if their presence had been noted. Ash shone the torch into the vast, gutted interior.
Nothing was different to his first visit: the sweeping but half-collapsed double-staircase, a pitiful indication of past splendour, rafters jutting from broken walls, mounds of debris, some piled like small hillocks - all was exactly the same as when he had looked inside on that first day. Yet he could now feel an uncertainness about the place - no, a precariousness - that wasn’t there before. He sensed that the damaged structure had become even more frail and, as if to mock his trepidation, the building let loose a shower of dust and rubble from somewhere high above.
They both stepped back and Ash swung the torch beam towards the source of the fall. The fog had invaded the shell so that the light barely reached beyond the first floor. They waited in the doorway until the last pieces of masonry had clattered to the littered floor.
When the echoes had died away, Ash spoke. ‘It’s too dangerous, Grace. We can’t go inside.’ He had kept his voice low, as if afraid of being overheard. ‘Besides,’ he went on, ‘we’ve no real proof that your father is here.’
Grace did not bother to answer. She entered the building, forcing Ash to follow with the light.
She pointed. ‘Shine it along the hallway.’
He did as she asked.
The hallway entrance was between the two arms of the curving staircase, directly opposite where he and Grace stood. He shone the torch along its length but, although thinner at this level, the mists restricted the beam’s penetration.
Grace startled Ash by saying excitedly, ‘I know where he is, David. I remember a place.’
She started off again and this time he kept with her. He aimed the torch low, checking each step of the way ahead, afraid that the flooring might collapse beneath their feet. Dead leaves that had been blown through the openings were piled everywhere. With Ash now leading, they continued their way through, soon passing between the pincer ends of the stairway. The hallway beyond appeared to be even more hazardous.
Parts of the ceiling had fallen in to leave gaping holes above and below, so that Grace and Ash had to skirt their way carefully around the breaks in the floor. The going was so narrow at one point that Ash was forced to brush against the wall. He placed his hand against the discoloured plaster and looked back at Grace.
‘Feel it,’ he told her.
She did so and, with a small gasp, pulled her hand away again.
‘It feels as if it’s vibrating,’ she said.
‘But its surface is steady,’ he replied, almost touching the wall with the head of the torch. ‘Look, the dust there is perfectly still, it isn’t being disturbed at all.’
The music came to them again, its distant, hollow sound joined by others, by voices, laughter, footsteps. Their eyes met, light reflecting from the wall onto their faces. They stood there rigid, and only when the noises faded again did they think to breathe.
‘I’ve always thought I imagined it,’ Grace whispered. ‘Those sounds were real when I was a little girl, David, they weren’t figments of my imagination at all.’
A crash from somewhere nearby sent her into Ash’s arms. He aimed the torch over her shoulder, towards the direction of the crash, but there was nothing to see other than the swirling wraps of fog.
‘This place is going to come down,’ he said, keeping her close against him.
As if in confirmation, they heard another shifting of masonry and rubble. This time it was further away, possibly from one of the upper floors.
‘We’ll find him soon, I know we will.’ Grace drew away and her eyes looked pleadingly into his.
‘Try calling him,’ Ash suggested. ‘Maybe he’ll come to us.’
Grace turned away and called her father’s name, softly at first, as if afraid of disturbing the unstable building further, and then more loudly. The only answer was another fall of brickwork from somewhere above their heads. For a few panic-filled moments, Ash thought the whole section of ceiling above them might cave in and he pulled Grace into the relative safety of a nearby doorway. The hall ceiling held although dust floated down in great choking clouds.
‘We can’t stay here.’ He held her wrist tightly, ready to drag her away. Both of them coughed with the dust, trying to clear their throats.
‘There’s a door further down,’ Grace finally managed to say. ‘I think it leads to the cellars.’
‘And you think your father might be down there? For God’s sake, why?’
There was only confusion in her eyes when he shone the light into her face.
‘All right,’ he said resignedly. ‘We’ll take a look, but if we don’t find him in the next few minutes, we get out. Okay?’
The confusion was still there.
‘Okay?’ he repeated, giving her a shake.
Dust had settled in her hair, and her cheeks and forehead were smeared with dirt. She gave a quick nod of her head and looked past him into the darker reaches of the hallway.
He kept hold of her as they made their way over rubble and piled leaves, avoiding sections of flooring that were visibly unsafe and, in parts, completely gone. Much of each wall was blackened and here and there doors were completely burned away. Each time they passed an opening, Ash shone the light through: all the rooms appeared to be empty except for wreckage. The fire two centuries and more ago must have been horrendous, for no room they passed had gone untouched, and the smell of burnt timbers and scorched brickwork was somehow still an element of the overall stench. Even the rank scent of the mists that drifted through was overwhelmed by the general odour. Each time Ash brushed against the wall or touched a charcoaled doorframe, he felt the same strange oscillation as before, and his unease increased with every step they took. He began to wonder if, in truth, the tension was within his own body and not the building around them, but then remembered Grace had felt it too. A new thought struck him: Perhaps there were tremors from deep below, in the earth itself, a seismic trembling that was sending pulses to the surface and through the old building. It wasn’t an uncommon phenomenon, and it provided a logical explanation which at least assuaged some of his fears. Unfortunately the rationalization did not make the building any safer.
‘Here it is.’ Grace had come to a halt and was staring at a dark opening in the wall opposite.
When Ash s
Beyond was a steep stone staircase leading down, it seemed, to the very bowels of Lockwood Hall.
38
THEY HAD OBSERVED the warm flush emanating from a breach in one of the cellar’s walls even before they had completed the descent, and their last few steps had become hesitant. Ash had also noticed a gaping hole in the ceiling: obviously the fall-in was from the room he’d glanced into a moment or two before. The atmosphere was musty, dank, and everything was filthy with dust.
They reached the last step and Ash swept the light around the room. There was no fire damage as far as he could tell, although the reek of burnt timber was prevalent and rubble had collected beneath the hole in the ceiling. The walls were lined with shelves and empty wine racks, but surprisingly there were no cobwebs; Ash wondered if even spiders had abandoned this godforsaken place. His attention soon returned to the large opening, a soft, unsteady glow emanating there. Something lay at its entrance, a heap that from the staircase he had assumed was more rubble. Now he realized it was a body, legs curled up, hands tucked beneath its chin. It lay in its own dark grume of blood.
With a signal to Grace to follow, he skirted the debris and examined the body more closely. The dead person - impossible to guess his age with his face so bloodied and the tip of some kind of spike protruding from the bridge of his shattered nose - had lank curly hair and wore filthy jeans and a cracked-leather jacket; his mouth was locked shut, caked blood providing the seal, and his stained hands death-gripped the end of the shaft that jutted beneath his jaw. His neutral eyes bulged as if pressured from within.