by Tony Walker
The year turned, the harvest was brought in and Autumn turned the trees golden-brown and the leaves fell in damp heaps around Croglin Hall. Though Cromwell and his Parliamentarians discouraged it, the local folk kept the customs of Harvest, All-Hallows and Christmas much as their ancestors had. The Cranswells kept themselves to themselves and let local life go on around them without joining in.
What they got up to on their lonely farm was a mystery to their neighbours. Though they spoke and greeted those they came across, they were rarely seen out and about. The flickering of candles was seen through the mullioned windows, though they did seem to go away and for weeks at a time, Croglin Low Hall was shuttered up, until they returned from wherever they had been; London, Suffolk or even further afield.
Spring came, with Snowdrops then Daffodils. Bluebells filled the woods in April and sweet yellow and white blossom like foam coated the hedgerows in May, filling warm evenings with heady scents. June was warm, July hotter and cloudless days extended from week to week.
Dorothy was the youngest. Her two brothers John and Jacob had always looked after her since the death of their parents. She had always been a sickly girl with an overactive imagination. She spent her days at Croglin in embroidery and reading and conversation and looking out of the window at the shadows of clouds drifting along the high green fells to the east.
One particular airless summer night at the beginning of August, John and Jacob sat with Dorothy watching the moon rise. After a time, the candles burned low and the white moths batting around the flames grew fewer. The temperature dropped a little, but not much. Dorothy stretched and said, ‘I think it’s time to go to bed. I’m yawning my head off here.’
She retired and her brothers remained in low conversation. Her bedroom was on the ground floor, along the corridor. She entered her familiar room and locked the door as was her habit from sleeping in so many inns as they roamed around the countryside in England and abroad. Then she undressed, washed from the jug and ewer and got into her bed, but she couldn’t sleep. It was hot, almost unbearably so. Dorothy lay in her bed, the bedclothes cast off because of the heat. She had closed her window to stop the moths getting in, but had not fastened the shutters. She gazed out of her window, propped up on her pillows as the long summer day faded out and night took its place. A huge ivory moon rose, and she lay there, watching it through the diamond-cut window panes.
An owl hooted in the darkness outside, a curlew called from far away, and Dorothy grew tired. Her head grew heavy and her eyelids closed. She was almost asleep when some sixth sense shocked her awake. She sat up in bed and looked out of the unshuttered windows.
There were lights outside where there should be none. Two lights flashing red like the eyes of a fox caught in a lantern light. But she knew they were not the eyes of a fox, because they were too high off the ground. And then she started back, frightened that they were of a man — a stranger intruding onto their grounds late at night. But they did not seem to be the eyes of a man, because of their colour: they were a glimmering blood red.
Dorothy thought of calling out to her brothers but told herself she was being foolish. No man’s eyes gleamed red like these, almost as if they had their own strange luminescence. And what would a man be doing here? They had no livestock to poach, and it was not on the way from anywhere to anywhere, so no one would use their grounds as a shortcut.
It must be some animal, and there were no wolves or bears hereabouts, much less lions or tigers so she told herself not to fret or vex herself about these eyes in the dark.
But still she watched, fascinated and frightened. It seemed the lights came from where she knew the ruined chapel was. It was a place she hardly ventured into. She had gone to it a number of times, thinking to look over the historical and romantic ruin, but had always hesitated because there was something about the old ruin that unsettled her.
The lights like eyes moved outside her window. Dorothy lay in bed and followed them with horrified fascination. The cold moon cast a silver radiance over the lawn and path to the Hall. At first the lights stood in the inky shadow, but now they approached closer and that meant they would soon cross into the moonlight and she would truly see what manner of thing they were.
As the shadow separated out from the deeper shadows surrounding it, Dorothy started as she made out the shape of a man. Those red lights were indeed his eyes.. She could not understand how a natural man’s eyes gleamed in such an eerie fashion. And then with a flash of fear, she thought perhaps it was not a natural man at all.
Normally, she would not give such a thought an instant’s consideration. She was not a woman given to superstitious dread, and she laughed at the country folk for their beliefs in elfs and trolls and all manner of dobbies and boggles. But now, a terrible horror seized her as the shape slithered and shuffled across the gravel path outside.
The thing fully emerged into the moonlight, but still somehow she could not clearly see it. It was man-shaped, but thinner and more spindly. The lights were indeed its eyes and below the eyes she got a sense of a mouth. It seemed that whatever it was; it was coming to her window.
Dorothy thought of getting up and running out of her room, but to go to the door would have meant she had to go right by the window. Besides, she had locked the door from the inside and so would have to stand there and unlock it — with her shaking hands all the while visible in the spill of moonlight. She hoped it would pass by her window, so she lay still and shook with fear in her bed.
Dorothy stared at the shape but at the last minute, when she was certain it was coming to look in the window, it half turned and started to move around the house.
Seizing her opportunity, Dorothy jumped up and ran towards the door. Her hands were trembling so much that she found it hard to turn the key. And then her heart nearly stopped. Behind her, she heard a scratching as if of long nails on the glass of the window. Whatever it was, was outside. Just feet away.
Dorothy stood petrified with fear still not daring to turn her head and look round to see it. Her fear destroyed her concentration, and she fumbled the key in the lock and could not stop her hand shaking enough to turn it so she could escape.
Then she heard it unpicking the lead which held the glass in place. She forced herself to look and saw that one pane of the mullioned glass had come away and a long bony hand stretched in and turned the window catch to let itself in. In a panic, she ran at the window, determined to pull closed the wooden shutters and stop it gaining entry.
But she was not quick enough. She got to the window, got her hand on the shutters, but it was in, pulling itself into the room.
Whatever it was, it came in through the window with a rush and grabbed her — its fingers in her hair, its mouth at her throat. It stunk of death and graves and its wiry strength was inhuman. It thrust her back. She flailed at it with her arms but to no avail. She felt it bite her neck as it forced her onto the ground. Blood ran from a wound on her neck and she screamed and screamed.
From along the corridor, Dorothy’s brothers heard the noise and came and battered at the locked door. The creature looked up and as the door was smashed open, it turned and fled out of the open window, leaving her lying on the floor, bleeding profusely from a wound at her neck.
One brother, John, clambered out of the window and went after it. He ran into the darkness to where he thought it had gone. But it was fast and before he could catch it — and perhaps it was lucky for him that he didn’t — it disappeared into the pitch blackness around the ruined chapel.
It was a great shock to her — to them all. They had felt so safe there at Croglin, so far away from their political enemies. They thought they had escaped all danger, but it was not so.
John and Jacob had not seen the thing as clearly as Dorothy and when she told them about its leathery skin and foul odour, they said it must be a vagrant — a madman loose in the countryside.
And because Dorothy always wanted to believe the rational explanation, she herself eve
ntually came to tell herself that it was indeed true: the creature that had seemed so supernatural at first must merely have been a dangerous lunatic. And it was not just merely because she had been terrified for her life.
Her nerves were shredded. She said they could stay at Croglin, but seeing how fearful she had become of the tiniest thing, they felt it would be best to leave the area for a while. They had a standing invitation to visit friends in France, and so they took it up and John and Jacob took Dorothy away from Croglin to recover — over to the Continent.
They did not give up the tenancy though. Though they stayed away for a while moving from friend to friend, spending time among those who plotted and conspired to return a Catholic king to England, eventually, as autumn turned to winter, it was Dorothy who urged them to return to Croglin. She argued that they had paid for the tenancy, and besides, she joked, it would be very bad luck to come across two escaped lunatics in the same place.
So indeed, they returned to Croglin as the first snow fell and coated the eastern fells, and then the moors, woods and bogland around Croglin Hall grew thick with white drifts and travel around the locality became impossible. They got in fuel and food and spent the winter there. Dorothy had the same room, but always closed the wooden shutters. John and Jacob took to carrying loaded pistols with them around the house. But nothing happened until one night in March.
Dorothy was lying in bed in a deep sleep, when into her dreams intruded a terribly familiar scratching at the window. She struggled to get fully awake, gasping for breath as terror constricted her chest. With shaking hands, she scrabbled for a candle and a flint and steel to spark it with. When she got a flame, cradled behind her trembling hand, she saw that the shutters were opened. Staring in at her was a brown shrivelled face, and she saw its long bony hands picking at the lead of the windows. Its glowing eyes fixed on her and it opened its dried mouth, showing receded gums and long yellow teeth like those of an old dog.
This time she screamed immediately. Her brothers ran down the corridor with their pistols. The door was left unlocked now and as they burst in; she pointed to the window, but the creature had gone.
The brothers ran to the front door and round the side to where Dorothy’s window was.
“There!” John yelled.
Jacob looked where his brother pointed and saw the thing moving across the lawn towards the ruined chapel. He fired his pistol, and it seemed he hit it in the leg. It stumbled but did not go down, and it scrambled away into the darkness and they lost it.
The next day the brothers summoned their neighbours to the inn at Croglin. As they sat with their ale, John and Jacob explained what their sister had seen, and what they had shot at. Dorothy was with the women in the next room, but the door was opened and there was much clucking and nodding through at her.
John Penrice, the farmer at Croglin High Hall said, “My youngest Nelly, had bite wounds at the throat. We put it down to rats.”
Another neighbour, Adam Bell, said, “Aye, but that chapel has always been a place best avoided. Ever since the Howards left.”
There was much nodding and agreeing.
“So will you come with us?” John Cranswell asked the men in the inn.
“Are you afeared to go yourselves?” William Graham, the man who spoke, was well-known for his ill-temper and pleasure at others’ misfortunes. John and Jacob ignored him and then John Penrice said, “Aye, I’ll come with you.”
Adam Bell was the next to join. After that all the men agreed to come until there was around ten of them all told, lads and men; sons, brothers and fathers of the village and surrounding farms.
Fortified by ale, the walked from Croglin village. Adam Bell looked at the sky. “We were talking too long. It won’t be long until it’s dark. We should have set off sooner.”
John Penrice laughed. “Keep your courage, Adam. I’ve brought lanterns,” and he nodded to his son Edward who held up two brass lanterns.
Another said, “Still, it would be best if we got there and did what we need to do before nightfall.”
“I reckon we have an hour, if that.” Adam Bell said. He sounded less bold now than he had when he had a leather tankard of Croglin ale in his fist.
“It will be enough.”
“And what are we do do once we get there?” William Graham asked with his usual mischief.
John Cranswell said sourly, “Put an end to the thing that hurt my sister.”
The sun had not set by the time the men got to Croglin Low Hall. Dorothy with the village women came along behind, but the mood of everyone grew sombre as the clouds gathered, darkening the day, and the ancient stone walls of the chapel, stood there, the dark red sandstone tumbled in places but still standing high enough to hide whatever was lurking below.
They stood in front of the chapel and John Penrice said, “Are we ready then?”
John Cranswell nodded. “There’s nothing much above ground. Just the ruined chapel with the roof in and the walls fallen. I am guessing whatever it is, lies downstairs in the crypt.”
Jacob Cranswell, by way of explanation said, “We’ve never ventured down there. At least I haven’t.”
John nodded. “Nor me. Why would we? I had no wish to disturb the dead in their vault.”
John Penrice said, “Aye, well. It’s time to disturb them now. Or perhaps disturb those which have never died.”
A humourless laugh rippled round the gathered men. Adam Bell, showing courage for the first time, went to the ruin. “There’s stairs down,” he said.
“Yes,” John Cranswell said. “That’s down to the crypt.”
Adam Bell said, “We’ll need lanterns. The steps down are dark, in the shadow of the walls and trees.” He looked up over his shoulder. “I reckon we have ten minutes until the sun is down.”
“Best get to it,” John Penrice said. Some of the other men, including William Graham, produced torches and used flints and steels and shavings of kindling from their tinder box to light them until they burned, fluttering in the breeze.
Still they hesitated.
“Come on, you Jessies. Time to man up,” John Penrice proved the bravest, and with him at their head, the small knot of men advanced to the top of the stairs, and stood there.
Then John and Jacob Cranswell forced their way forward from where they had been talking to their sister. The local men parted for them. It was the brothers task to avenge their sister’s injury and fear.
They held up lanterns and descended.
Jacob looked to John. “This door has been newly opened.” He pointed to a scrape in the dirt that showed the door had been pushed open recently.
“Yes, but it’s locked now,” said John, trying the handle.
“What manner of dead man locks the door after him?” said Adam Bell, his voice shaking.
There was silence then. John Cranswell knocked the locked, old door in with his heavy boot.
The damp rotten smell of the crypt assailed their nostrils: the odour was a mix of moulded wood, old rain, beetles but something sourer too. Shelves lined the walls of the crypt and on them, decayed coffins. Some completely in, yellowed bones showing through the broken panels in the lights of the lanterns. But the lanterns cast shadows as much as they did light and the shifting shade gave the impression of things moving in the crypt.
The men crowded the door; the ones behind braver than the ones in front. ‘What’s there? What do you see?" called the ones behind.
“Just coffins. Old coffins,” called back John Penrice.
“And what’s in them?” yelled the voice of William Graham, who made sure he was the hindmost.
“Old bones, just old bones,” said John Cranswell, his voice low and fixed as he looked among the ruined coffins.
His brother stepped forward to get a better view, the shadows flickering and shifting over his shoulders. He shook his head. “They’re of different ages.”
Jacob pointed. “That one. It is least decayed.”
And it was true, the
re was a coffin there of newer design and less rotted than the others, as if it had come from elsewhere and was ensconced here among the local caskets.
“There’s no name on it,” said Jacob. “Here, help me with the lid.”
His brother came, and others and they soon removed the lid.
“It wasn’t nailed,” Jacob said.
They shifted the full coffin and beheld the manner of thing that occupied it. It was naked and withered. The shape of a man, but taller and thinner and spindled. Its fingernails were like curled brown talons and its thin brown lips drew back to show fangs like those of an animal. Dried on its chin was blood as if it had recently fed on something living.
“Call Dorothy,” John said.
Dorothy was outside at the top of the stairs with the women. “I don’t want to come, brother,” she called down.
“But only you can say if this was the thing that attacked you,” John said.
“Still, I will not come. Say that it is. I don’t need to see it again,” Dorothy said.
John Penrice nodded. He stood with the Cranswells looking at the thing in its coffin. “Let’s burn it, anyway.”
Adam Bell was behind, not daring to come closer. “There’s only minutes left before the sun goes down. What if it’s true that these things stir once the sun is gone.”
Jacob pointed at the thing's leg. “A pistol ball. Look.”
And there in the dried flesh of the dead thing was the ball of a pistol such as that fired by the Cranswell brothers. Such as the shot they hit it with as it stumbled back to its foul lair after attacking their sister.
“That’s good enough for me,” Jacob Cranswell said. “Bring tallow and shavings and we’ll set this vile thing afire.”
Tallow and candles were produced. They packed them in the coffin alongside the monster along with the driest of wood they found inside or outside the crypt. Then as they stood back at the door, Jacob Cranswell set light to the coffin with the thing inside and watched it burn.