Tales of Alhazred

by Donald Tyson

  We continued to lower him for some time longer. At last the rope went slack.

  “This must be the bottom,” Martala said.

  We waited in silence. Not the slightest sound broke the stillness of the chamber.

  “How are we to know when he has the arm?” Altrus asked.

  As if in response, there came a tapping from inside the shaft. It sounded as though the corpse was beating with something hard against the stones.

  “Pull him in and let us see what we’ve caught,” I said in a good humor. I felt reason to hope the abbot had not failed us.

  We raised him with no great difficulty and stood him upright. The rags that wrapped his body dripped with water. In his hands he clutched the relic. He held it extended out before him the way a man might hold a sword.

  “Don’t touch it,” I said with sudden caution. I remembered the warning of Abbot John Climacus.

  “How are we to get it out of here?” Altrus demanded.

  “We’ll let the corpse carry it.”

  He used his dagger to cut the rope from around the late abbot’s feet and wound it over his shoulder.

  “Follow your master,” I told the dead man and turned without waiting for his response.

  We made our way back toward the hall of the dead.

  “There must be some way to carry it safely,” Martala mused. “Maybe if we wrap it in cloth. Or we could tie a length of rope around its wrist.”

  “We’ll soon find out,” I murmured. “I can’t very well have the corpse carry it up to the Abbot. Christians take a dim view of necromancy.”

  I held up my hand to halt the shambling thing beside his former resting place. He glared at me with hatred from his dried and shrivelled eyes.

  “Lay the arm down over there, on the lid of that sepulchre, and return to your resting place.”

  The corpse did not move. I repeated my command more forcefully. The abbot merely glared at me.

  “Something’s wrong,” Martala whispered.

  “He shouldn’t be able to defy me.”

  “Well, he is defying you,” Altrus pointed out.

  I repeated my commands yet a third time. The dead abbot took a step forward, and then another, and another. He passed the open sepulchre without seeming to notice it.

  “Stand where you are. Your master commands it. I am the one who raised you and I tell you to stand.”

  He continued to go forward, sliding his feet over the stone floor. I had to back away from him.

  “Alhazred, the arm. Don’t touch the arm,” Martala said from behind the corpse.

  “We have to stop him. I think he’s going to try to leave the catacomb. We can’t have him shambling through the monastery halls.”

  “First things first. We need to make him drop the arm,” Altrus said, drawing his sword.

  He extended the blade on its side and slapped down forcefully against the mummified relic. The sword clattered to the floor and he stumbled backward, clutching his right wrist in his left hand.

  “My arm’s gone dead,” he gasped through his pain. “I can’t move it.”

  “Stay out of the way. Martala, help him.”

  The abbot did not hesitate or turn, but continued toward the arch that led to the stairwell out of the catacomb. Backing up as he advanced, I held up both my hands and cried out in the most commanding voice I could muster, “Stop!”

  The corpse ignored me. At the last moment, I jumped aside. He passed me without turning to look and began to mount the stairs.

  “What are we going to do now?” the girl demanded.

  “We need to stop it before it wakes the entire monastery.”

  “I have no feeling in my arm up to the shoulder,” Altrus said. “I won’t be much help to you.”

  “Let us worry about that,” I told him. Picking up his sword, I slid it into its sheath.

  He caught my wrist with his other hand. “Do you think this injury is permanent?”

  “Let’s think about that later. We need to stop that walking corpse.”

  4.

  The dead abbot walked slowly but never paused. By the time we got up the stair, he had already traversed the lower gallery and mounted another staircase to the second level.

  “He seems to know where he’s going,” Altrus said. His face was white and covered with cold sweat, but he did not slow us down. He would rather have died than admit weakness.

  “I think I know his destination,” I muttered, and I quickened my pace.

  A monk walking along the corridor almost bumped into the corpse before he raised his gaze from the floor. When he saw what came toward him, he stumbled backward and fell onto his buttocks. He continued to crawl away, screaming in a thin, high voice.

  In moments the corridor was filled with sleepy monks. They cringed away from the corpse, and the dead abbot ignored those around him.

  “He’s heading for the Abbot’s private chambers,” I said.

  There could be little doubt of it. The Abbot John Climacus’s rooms occupied the end of the corridor.

  Two of the larger monks found their courage and came forward.

  “Don’t touch the hand,” I shouted in Greek.

  They didn’t hear me. There was too much babbling in the corridor. The dead abbot did not break his stride, but only flicked this way and that with the hand of Nilus, and the monks fell to the floorboards, dead with their eyes still open and staring.

  “Alhazred, speak the formula of oblivion,” Martala said.

  I needed no second urging. Things were getting completely out of our control. Striding close behind the corpse, I made the ritual gesture of termination and in a loud voice recited the formula that would deprive the corpse of his animation.

  The dead abbot stumbled and stopped, then slowly turned to face me, his eyes blazing with malice. In the sudden silence of the corridor, there came a cracking, popping noise, and with a grotesque distortion of his sunken cheeks the thing grinned at me. He turned back and continued toward the door at the end of the corridor, the monks edging around him with their backs to the walls like frightened children.

  The door opened. In its frame stood Climacus, dressed in his nightshirt and sleeping cap, a burning oil lamp in his hand. “What is going on out here?”

  When he blinked the sleep from his eyes and saw what came toward him, his face blanched and he stepped back. The corpse continued with its gliding step through the door.

  “He has the hand,” I shouted to the abbot. “Don’t let it touch you.”

  If Climacus heard, he gave no sign, but continued to back up through the audience chamber where I had talked to him the previous afternoon and through another doorway into what appeared to be a private study. We followed as closely as we dared. Climacus continued through the study and into yet a third chamber, which I took to be his bedroom. This time he slammed the door, and I heard something being hastily jammed against it.

  The corpse stopped at the door and stared at it for a time as though undecided how to open it. Awkwardly, he transferred the hand of Nilus to the crook of his left arm, and began to pound and press against the door with his right arm and shoulder.

  “What’s happening?” Climacus shouted through the door in terror.

  “We found the hand of Nilus,” I said loudly so that my voice would carry through the wooden planks. “We’re here to collect our reward.”

  “What? Are you mad? What is that thing?”

  “That is your predecessor, Abbot Cyril Junius. It seems he does not like you.”

  “What are you babbling about? Abbot Cyril is dead.”

  “Not at present.”

  There was silence save for the pounding of the dead thing on the door.

  “Do you mean to say that you raised Brother Junius’s corpse from its tomb?”

  “It seemed the easiest way to locate the hand.”

  “You’re necromancers.”

  As entertaining as this conversation showed promise of becoming, I was growing bored with it.
“Tell us where you keep the thousand pieces of silver, and we’ll take them and leave the monastery.”

  “Will you take his corpse with you?”

  I hesitated and looked at my companions. “That may prove difficult. First, give us our silver, and then we will see what can be done about the corpse.”

  The silence extended for so long, I thought he had not heard me.

  “I cannot,” he said at length, in a smaller voice.

  “What? What did you say?”

  “Alhazred, you must realize, I never dreamed anyone would find the hand of Nilus. Repairs were needed for the monastery. We ran short of grain. I began to take small portions of the silver to buy what was needed to keep my brothers fed.”

  I glanced around the study at the costly wall hangings and shelves of many books, at the velvet seat on the chair behind the reading desk, and at the thick carpets on the floor.

  “You took the silver for your brothers, you say?”

  “Not all of it. There is still some silver left.”

  “How much?”

  Again he paused.

  “Eighty-three pieces.”

  I stared at Altrus and Martala. The girl’s face was shocked, but Altrus had a slight smile on his lips. I don’t know how I looked, but I felt like committing a murder.

  “Eighty-three pieces? Out of a thousand?”

  “That is correct.”

  “Let’s go and leave him to the corpse,” Altrus said.

  “First things first,” I told him, and said in a louder voice, “Where is the money?”

  The abbot told me where to find what was left of the silver prize. It was in a trunk in the corner of the room. I scooped the coins into my purse and drew the drawstring tight. Then I stood, watching the corpse single-mindedly pound away at the door. The latch was weakening. Each time his wooden fist struck it, the door rattled and bounced on its hinges. It was only a matter of time before he broke it down, and he showed no signs of losing his unnatural vitality, which he must have been drawing in some way from the hand.

  “We should leave,” Altrus urged.

  “We can’t just leave him to die,” Martala objected.

  “Girl, you have too much sentiment,” he told her.

  “We can’t leave him, not when it was we who raised the corpse.”

  “You and your scruples,” he said, shaking his head. “I’ve said it before, one day they will get you killed.”

  They both looked at me.

  To be honest about the matter, I wanted to stay and watch the dead abbot batter down the door so that I could see Climacus killed by the hand. I was furious at having spent so much to come so far for only eighty-three silver pieces. Still, the girl had a point. We had raised the corpse, and due to our incompetence we had failed to put it back into its sepulchre. Who knew how many more monks it might kill before its vital forces expended themselves?

  “I will help you on one condition: that you tell me the truth.”

  “Yes, anything! What do you wish to know?”

  “Did you murder Cyril Junius?”

  As I spoke these words, the corpse stopped pounding on the door and stood with its head cocked to the side, listening.

  “Yes, I poisoned him.” The abbot’s voice held an old bitterness. “The fool was destroying the monastery with his mishandling of its finances, and he would not die. I did what I thought was right for my brothers, and I make no apology for it.”

  Even as he uttered this, the corpse gave a powerful thrust of his shoulder against the door and splintered it inward. He lurched into the bedroom.

  Climacus had set his oil lamp down on a table, and now stood on top of his bed with his back to the wall, hugging his sides with his hands, his blue eyes wide with terror. He was a pathetic and somewhat comical figure.

  Abbot Cyril did not pause to admire him but came swiftly forward on his gliding steps and extended the hand of Nilus across the bed with his long arm.

  “Stay away, thing of death. Don’t touch me!”

  His words became a strangled scream that cut short the instant the fingers of the hand brushed his leg. He fell forward on the bed, lifeless before he reached the sheets.

  The dead abbot straightened his back and stood contemplating what he had done. I would swear there was satisfaction in his posture.

  5.

  There was no time to hesitate. I grabbed the coil of rope from Altrus and threw one end to the girl, then leapt up on the bed and jumped across the body of Climacus. The corpse of Abbot Cyril seemed to regain its awareness and began to turn to pursue me, but I quickly ran around it while the girl pulled the rope taut.

  The corpse took the hand of Nilus and brushed it against the rope. There was a slight tingling in my fingers, but nothing more hurtful. As I had hoped, the length of the rope attenuated the poison and rendered it ineffectual.

  “What now?” Martala asked.

  “Pull him out the doorway,” I told her.

  The dead abbot resisted us, but was not strong enough to prevent us from dragging him out of the bedroom and across the floor of the study into the audience chamber. He decided to change his tactics, and instead of resisting he came toward us with the hand extended before him.

  “Get to the side of him and keep the rope taut,” I told the girl. “Pull him toward the window.”

  We were able to draw him against the wall in front of the window and hold him there, pulling on the ropes on either side of him, but there my plan would have ended had not Altrus divined what I intended and grabbed up a wooden clothing rack that stood in the corner of the room. With only his left arm he used it like a lance and ran it against the back of the corpse near the shoulders.

  The sill of the window was at the level of his waist. The dead abbot fell forward and tumbled slowly out the window, smashing the wooden screen out as he fell.

  “Hold tight to the rope!” I shouted to Martala.

  We came together and I looked around for something to anchor the rope. Altrus held up the clothing rack and I nodded. He turned it sideways and pressed it to the wall across the open window, pinning it there while the girl and I tied our ends of the rope to its middle.

  Outside in the darkness, we heard the corpse twist and bang itself against the side of the wall. I looked out and downward. The light was poor, but I was able to make out the dim shape. Cyril still clung to the hand of Nilus, supported by the rope around his waist. The weight of his upper body and the hand caused him to tilt down with his head, and made his legs rise into the air. He was completely helpless.

  “What now?” Altrus said. His injury had sapped his strength. He looked exhausted.

  “We could wait until morning and let the sun destroy him,” Martala suggested.

  “An admirable plan, but do we know that the sun will harm him? The longer he hangs there, thrashing his limbs about, the more chance there is of him somehow working himself loose.”

  Altrus looked around the room. He strolled back into the study, and after a time emerged with the oil lamp.

  “What do you intend?” I asked.

  He did not speak, but went to the window and carefully poured the oil in the lamp down the rope without allowing the burning wick to go out. The girl and I went to the window on either side of him and leaned out, watching the operation with interest.

  “A clever solution,” I admitted.

  He chuckled and touched the burning wick to the rope. A tongue of flame burst forth and began to descend the hemp like a living thing. When it reached the swinging corpse, fire spread itself over his body and limbs, so that after a few minutes the entire dried body was covered in yellow flame. The rising heat washed over our faces. The corpse began to scream, but even then he did not release his grasp on the jeweled hand of the saint. The hand burned along with him. When the body finally broke into two parts and fell to the paving stones far below, there was no movement left in it. The flaming limbs shattered like dry sticks, scattering burning clumps over a wide area.

 
; “Now we go home with our great treasure,” I said, jiggling my purse to make the silver coins clink together.

  “It wasn’t a complete waste of time,” Altrus said. “We managed to turn another Christian monastery against us.”

  “One can never have too many enemies,” I agreed.

  “The five jewels that were on the fingers of the hand may still be below,” Martala pointed out.

  I shook my head.“Even if we could find them before the monks gathered enough courage to try to kill us, they may well still be cursed. It is too great a risk. We will leave them for the monks.”

  ¼

  Red Claws

  1.

  The vultures wheeling in the sky alerted us to death on the road ahead, but it took us an hour to reach the place. I smelled the blood before I saw it upon the rocks and the sand. As we rode our camels nearer, the birds lifted off the corpses, revealing the slashed and mangled bodies of a camel and a man. Both had their throats torn out.

  Great chunks of hair and flesh had been ripped from the camel’s back and its belly lay open, entrails spilled on the ground. A swarm of flies rose from them as I dismounted to examine the slaughter. The man’s back was slashed through his thawb and cloak with long, vertical cuts that laid bare the white bones of his spine. I bent to grasp his arm and rolled him over to find that he also had been disembowelled.

  Altrus swung down from his camel with difficulty, using only one arm. The other was still paralyzed from the injury he had received at Sinai Monastery. In the days we had been on the road, making our way up the peninsula toward Damascus, some tingling had returned to his fingers, but the arm still lacked strength. He walked around the corpses with his head bent low, then motioned for me to come to him. “Look there,” he said, pointing at the sand.

  It was the track of some beast.

  “I don’t recognize it,” I admitted.

  “It’s a leopard. The Sinai is filled with them.”

  “It must be quite large.” I held my hand over it. The track was wider than my palm.

  “It’s bigger than any leopard track I’ve ever seen.”

  “It must be a formidable creature to do this to a camel and a man at the same time.”