by Sam Hurcom
‘You’re unwell. No one would carry on the way you are.’ He spoke sternly but poured me another drink when I had consumed the first. ‘You were a madman in your room, in my cellar.’
‘You saw the images I developed down there.’ I knocked back my second Scotch, and felt the wretched stuff burn down my throat. Solomon laughed dryly.
‘What I saw was a man, whites of his eyes burnin’ like fire. Skin drenched in sweat, sitting about the floor with strange waters all around, muttering and scratching like he was possessed. I saw nothing in those pictures of yours, but you alone were enough to scare me.’
As I started to ask him to let me return to the cellar to search for my negatives, I stopped myself. Quite suddenly I felt like a fool. Embarrassed, in fact, for how I must have appeared and the damned way I had acted. I felt ashamed in many ways, for in that very moment, all ghosts and spirits and other unworldly things I had seen were nothing but symptoms of an illness I had let get the better of me. I realised that the remnants of said illness were now passing, as was all my lunacy. As I tapped my empty glass upon the bar, I struggled to grasp how I had ever thought such things could be real. Even that morning seemed an age past, as though I had been a totally different man. Whether I had been conscious of it or not, the symptoms of my lingering illness had lessened throughout the afternoon. As the day had worn on, I had gradually returned closer to a being of sound mind.
Solomon brought food for me. I thanked him, but he barely spoke and began closing up the inn before I had time to finish. He dimmed all but one lamp and told me he was off to bed. It wasn’t long before I followed, the Scotch and my seemingly revived sanity giving me courage enough to enter my room, close the door behind me and sit upon the bed. It was unmade, though the rancid sheets piled upon the floor had been taken away. It mattered little to me, for I lay down gratefully, staring up at the ceiling and thinking of only one thing.
Had Mrs Shaw intended to tell me of other murders?
I tried to recall her words exactly.
We never thought this would happen a—
She’d caught herself at the very last moment. Again. Surely what she had meant to say was again.
I laboured over what else it could have been:
We never thought this would happen around here.
We never thought this would happen against someone in the village.
I was clutching at straws; why would she stop herself from saying such things? More and more, as the minutes then hours unfurled, I grew certain that she had meant to say again, in doing so telling me of other murders. If so, there was no one here I could trust, for all had surely been lying to me, conspiring in mass subterfuge for whatever unknown purpose. I wondered if it was perhaps driven by Cummings, seemingly unhappy with my being here from the very outset. I was so exhausted, my thoughts merely went around and around, going nowhere but back to Mrs Shaw’s words and the feeling I had that a grave secret was being kept from me.
I tried then to sleep but to no avail. I moved over to the small writing desk, intending to make some notes in my diary, but that was no good either, for the words would not come to me and I simply began to write a sentence before scribbling it out and starting to write another. In frustration I let my pen fall to the paper and sat staring into the darkness.
Rain chattered. Winds howled.
Something scratched in the ceiling above me.
I looked upwards, my heart jolting a little, for I recalled in a flash the last such time I had heard this scratching, deep in the throes of my fever. I saw myself sat upon the floor, shrieking with torn pages of my diary all about me.
The scratching was faint, coming from right above me. I moved slowly and stepped upon the chair, raising myself so high that I had to bend my neck and shoulders to press my ear against the ceiling. Indeed, I could hear the awful vermin, though they (for I envisaged more than one) moved away quickly, scampering in the direction of my bed.
For a moment or two they seemed to fall silent and I stepped down from the chair with a sigh. I returned to my diary, stubbornly trying to write something of the day. To my great irritation the scratching returned, moving all over the ceiling in successive short bursts.
I threw my pen down, cursed aloud and went back to bed. I pressed my eyes shut and tried to close off the world entirely. I let my mind think of happier things, pictured myself as a boy in London walking through Greenwich Park with my mother, the sun beating down upon us, not a care or concern in either of our hearts and no frets or worries to dampen our smiles or curtail our joy.
The scratching only seemed to get louder, burrowing through the ceiling and into the deepest recesses of my skull. The harder I tried to ignore it, the louder it seemed to get, so that soon I grabbed at the thin pillow and wrapped it around my head in the vain hope of dulling the noise. It did nothing. The scratching seemed to stop and start, stop and start with a constant rhythm. I could only picture beady black eyes and grotesque tails, scampering and fleeting, chewing on splints of wood and for ever hunting measly things to eat. There came more and more of the creatures, running over from other corners of the loft space, meeting at a point right above my head and joining with the incessant, maddening noise, so that I started humming a tune and tried to focus on some other, kindlier sound.
At last, as it all seemed to reach a dreadful crescendo, I groaned and cursed again (vile language, I must admit), throwing myself from the bed, marching to the door and flinging it open with some force. I stepped into the darkness, before returning and fetching the small candle.
The scratching seemed to follow me as I moved towards Solomon’s door; I intended on waking him. I stopped myself as I raised my hand to knock. It seemed unfair to rouse the man at such a late hour. I looked instead toward the ceiling, assuming then that there must be a hatch or other means of entry to the loft space above.
There was nothing in the short hallway. I sighed a little despondently, guessing then that any entrance to the loft would likely be in Solomon’s room. I meant to return to bed, but the scratching stopped me before I could shut myself in my chamber.
In the shadows across the hallway, I eyed the door of the third room. I recalled the argument I had heard on the day of my arrival, the assumption I had made that the room must have been occupied by guests or even Solomon’s family. The man had never mentioned what was in there.
I crept across the landing toward the door and pressed an ear against it. I heard nothing stir within, though the scratching above seemed to grow even louder. Tentatively I laid a hand upon the doorknob and turned it slowly. With a gentle shove the door opened, and I stepped into the room, my candle held out before me.
It was smaller than mine, completely empty and no windows were fitted in the walls. Consequently, the air felt close and stale; in the far-left corner I noticed damp coming from the ceiling. A small hatchway was fitted there, a pull string hanging limply from it.
It was plain to see that the room had been empty since before my arrival. Whatever I thought I had heard was surely a result of the illness, perhaps even the first warnings of the mania to come.
I stepped over toward the hatch and stretched my arm up to try reaching the pull string. I was some inches too short and with little dignity (for I was still in my undergarments at this point) leapt up once and then twice, upon which I took hold the string and pulled open the hatchway. A thin wooden ladder extended and clattered to the floor, near hitting me where I stood. I winced at the sound and listened for any signs of Solomon waking. All I heard was the incessant scratching.
I stepped awkwardly up the wooden rungs, being sure to hold my candle firmly. It flickered as I reached the hatchway and I felt a cool breeze against my exposed skin. I paused momentarily, thinking of the vile vermin that I would surely find. I had no real plan for dispersing them but thought to gaze upon their number first.
I gingerly immersed myself in the
darkness and looked about me. The loft was just high enough to stand in, though the warped and misshapen rafters hung low in places, so that one would have to crouch to get under. The place was filthy, the rickety slats of the floor uneven, creaking at every minor movement. The smell of mildew was palpable, the howling wind and driving rain outside seeming to shake the very roof. Indeed, a tile had come loose just above the open hatchway. It exposed the dark night and allowed rain to drip and trickle, pooling just beside where I stood and no doubt causing the damp in the empty room below.
I saw no signs of rats.
I stood in one corner of the loft space, the exterior walls of the building behind and to the right of me. The candle I held provided little more than a foot of light; I fumbled my hand about on the floor, grimly feeling for any droppings. There were none and suspecting that the rats had fled at the sight of me, moved forwards in search of where they hid.
I heard no sounds of scratching.
There was nothing but paper-thick cobwebs hanging all around. These I cast my arm through, though on more than one occasion I felt the spindly legs of spiders crawl across my hand. My bare feet trod on damp wood in places, where more of the elements had seeped in through the cracks in the roof. The space seemed vast, for the depth of darkness made it so.
I recalled the cellar beneath All Saints church. It stopped me in my tracks, for then I felt more than just fear of hidden vermin. I took a few deep breaths, convincing myself that what I had seen in that dreadful place was nothing but fantasy, invention of the fever, unreal, no matter how real it had seemed. It gave me confidence enough to continue onwards, though I moved the little candle more frantically as I swept my eyes about the loft space.
I grew more confused for nothing stirred around me.
As I came towards the farthest wall I spotted some shapes in the gloom; a few crates and small wooden boxes. These looked aged, tatty and broken. I knelt to have a look inside, though most contained nothing but rotten papers and broken glass.
I shook my head, holding my breath for a moment to listen. Not a peep, nor even a small squeak or natter. I moved a little along the wall, feeling with my hands for any breaks in the masonry where the horde of scurrying vermin could have escaped. Nothing – not even the smallest crack through which a field mouse could squeeze.
My heart began to race a little faster. If not rats, what had caused the dreadful scratching? It was surely no creation of the fever, for that was passing, its effects all but gone. The noise had seemed so real, being so loud just moments before. Yet so had the argument in the empty room when I first heard it, and the dreadful natter of the claws that had burrowed into the flesh below my left shoulder blade.
I looked about me in the dark and the silence for a spectre hiding, a dreadful figure with hollowed eyes waiting to strike. The candle tremored in my hand. The loft space groaned and creaked from the wind outside.
Nothing came. All was still.
I wanted to believe my tiredness was getting the better of me, though my heart still fluttered, and my mind could not fathom what had brought me up here. I decided to return downstairs; all perhaps would make sense in the morning. I moved back towards the open hatchway, swinging my candle slowly as I did, taking a few short steps to inspect one final corner of the attic. Something caught my eye, barely visible from where I stood.
Here, the roof sloped down considerably, so that as I moved towards the corner I had to drop down onto my haunches and then crawl a short distance on my hands and knees. A dusky sheet had been placed loosely across a few misshapen items. Melted wax had pooled in two places on the floorboards.
With my free hand I pulled the sheet away. I couldn’t quite understand what I found at first.
What took my attention were two wooden soldiers at the top of several crates, stacked irregularly. One red, one blue, their paint chipped all over. Below these were more items clearly belonging to children. Two pairs of finely made boys’ trousers, a brown cap and two small shirts, ‘dressed’ as it were, on two very large, empty glass bottles. Between the bottles were two pairs of shoes, arranged neatly in a single line. These were surrounded by five half-used candles, and before these two small wooden plaques. There were names inscribed onto them – Evan and Peter.
‘What in God’s name—’ was all I could whisper. I moved my light about, finding a few other trinkets and items stacked in this ‘shrine’ (for no other word described it better). Someone had taken great care in arranging it.
So focused was I on all this, I paid no credence to anything else.
Something was watching me, but its creeping steps across the floorboards went unnoticed. It moved so slowly, ducking below the rafters and edging around the loft space so that soon it stood at my very back. It drifted silently through heavy cobwebs, its hands reaching out to me as it drew ever closer.
‘What is all this?’ I murmured, taking the two soldiers in hand and shifting backwards to stand.
In the corner of my eye I noticed warm light shining upwards from the open hatchway at the far end of the loft. I scanned the room in that direction but saw no one. Only when I heard the last few footfalls approaching me from behind did I turn in quite the panic, spinning and extinguishing the little candle as I did.
In the darkness I tried not to scream. A match was struck close to my face.
‘Inspector,’ Solomon muttered, ducking under the low roof. ‘What are you doing up here?’
20
One Man’s Grief – June 22nd, 1904
We sat in the bar once more, though Solomon had only lit a few candles, spaced out across some of the tables. The two wooden soldiers sat between us. Solomon was sipping on what I thought was brandy, a few fat tears rolling from his sad eyes. He looked quite pitiful, his large body hunched forwards, meaty hands clasping the small glass, what little hair he had sticking unkempt in all directions.
He had near run from the loft upon finding me and seeing what I had found. I’d scrambled after him, thinking in an instant that he wished to flee me. But I’d found him at the bottom of the narrow ladder, his head lolled against it. He had been sobbing quietly and didn’t meet my gaze as I looked down upon him from above.
‘My children,’ was all he’d whimpered repeatedly, though in that moment I didn’t fully understand. I’d returned to the shrine and gathered a few of the items, before easing myself down from the loft and coaxing Solomon to the bar downstairs.
He was regaining some of his composure, his breathing becoming steadier. I tapped my finger lightly against the table, thinking where best to begin.
‘These were your children’s?’ I asked. He nodded slowly. ‘They have, um … passed, I presume?’ I felt quite a stab of guilt as he slowly nodded once more. ‘May I ask how?’
He fell silent again for quite some time, taking one or two small sips of his drink before wiping his eyes with the back of his hand.
‘Wife died in childbirth. She was a good woman, would have been a good mother. The boys were all I had.’ He emptied the remainder of his glass and hit it down hard on the table. ‘We found ’em in the woods. Some bastard had done away with ’em – cut their—’ He ran a finger along his throat before cradling his head. ‘I didn’t want to look upon this anymore – their toys, their clothes. But I couldn’t be rid of it. For so long I had left their room as it was, but in time I couldn’t bear to look at it all without them there.’
I sat in complete shock. Words wouldn’t come to me.
More murders in the village! It was beyond all belief. Even with what Mrs Shaw had said (or not said, more to the point), I don’t think I truly believed it possible. How could it be? Why would it be kept such a secret?
‘Why on earth would you not tell me of this, man?’ I asked dumbfounded.
‘I wanted to,’ he replied, his voice breaking, his words choked with sorrow. ‘So many times, I wanted to. But Mr Cummings –
some of the others – they begged me not to. They were afraid you may awaken it, that evil spirit they think is out there! I just want to forget – some days I wish I were never born.’ He began sobbing loudly once more.
As thoughts dashed through my mind I moved quite mechanically, heading back to my room to fetch my notepad. When I returned, I barely paused before rattling off questions in as calm a manner as I could maintain.
‘This is hard, Solomon, but you need to tell me everything – when did this happen?’
He rubbed at his eyes. ‘Five years ago this summer. Beginning of this month. I moved their things I wished to keep in the loft about three years ago. I go up there each year on the day it, the day it—’ He stopped, his lips trembling.
I jotted this down frantically. ‘Their names, Evan and Peter?’
He nodded. ‘Evan was the wife’s father so one of ’em had to have it. Hated it myself.’
‘How old were they?’ He replied that they had been five. ‘Why were they out by the woods – had you lost them, were you with them?’
He shook his head and hit his hand down on the table thrice as he spoke. ‘They were just playing. They had no school and were just off playing, what children should do, what they should have done …’
He stood and began to pace, raving, moving his heavy frame around quickly. I wished only to calm him down.
‘What happened when they were found – do you recall who found them?’
‘No. The Constable came to tell me.’
‘And do you recall the time of day?’
He said nothing to that. ‘They put ’em in the hall, laid out on the floor. Brown sacks on ’em. Just lying there.’
‘Did Vaughn carry out an enquiry? Were there any suspects?’