by Daniel Mills
I trembled to think of the departed minister, who had gone to the grave with the promise of resurrection, only to find waiting his own annihilation: a patient, noisome darkness like the fires of Gehenna.
Crabb stooped down beside me, breathing hard through lungs half-choked with dust or fluid. “We have uncovered the root,” said he and pointed down into the coffin, indicating a position immediately below the broken skull. “Do you see?”
A thin cable, one inch round and similar to an umbilical cord, had entered the infant’s skull via the trachea, having first penetrated the box from below. Arising, I stooped to shift the weight of the coffin, moving it just enough to expose the tail of the umbilical underneath.
From the coffin, the cord led southeast toward the meetinghouse. I dared not touch it, and could scarcely breathe for weight of the realisation, but Crabb hesitated not at all. He hefted the mattock behind his head, and then, with one deft stroke, split the root in two.
We breathed easier, then, and the moon shone bright upon us as we filled the grave with wet sod. I suggested we conceal the disturbed ground with weeds and brown grasses, to which task the Verger attended ably, but our labours that night were not yet at an end. Crabb sensed this as well as I did, and I motioned to him to collect our tools and follow me to the new section, hiding our lights when we passed within view of the parsonage.
IX
We arrived at the Reverend Cooper’s stone, which the lanthorn revealed to be completely featureless, the last of the chiselled epitaph having been erased by the creeping rot. I nodded to Crabb and took from him the spade; and though it pained me worse than grief, I knew we had no choice but to disturb my dear friend’s grave.
After the Gale of Sixty-Eight, in which the aspens came down, we had uprooted the stumps out of the earth, where, to our surprise, we found the trees were not in themselves separate, but grew from a single root. Much in the same way, I thought that if we were to trace the roots from every fibrous branch, every dark and crumbling flower, then we might yet pinpoint the source of the infestation and cut it away.
Crabb broke the earth with his mattock, the blade biting deep. From out of the ground steamed that familiar odour that was at once sweet and bitter, like that of moulding apples. Together, we worked at unburying the minister’s coffin. The labour wore hard upon the Verger, I could tell, for he rested often, and coughed and shook, but always returned to the task with the listless focus of a somnambulant, or of a man long dead.
At last, the outline of the minister’s box revealed itself, whereupon I turned away, aghast, and could not stir myself to continue. I covered my face with my hands, but could not tamp my ears, which heard first the shriek of the dislodged nails as they were removed, followed by the distinctive squeal-and-bite of the saw-blade and the groan of the shifted lid.
The Verger inhaled sharply. Silence ensued, stretching for a minute or more before the spade descended and struck the inside of the coffin with a hollow thunk. I heard the coffin lid replaced, the mournful sound of sod on coffin-wood, and then—nothing.
I opened my eyes. Crabb had perched himself upon the edge of the grave with the spade-handle resting betwixt his legs. On his face he wore an expression of utter shock and bewilderment. I lowered myself beside him. His head swiveled. He looked at me directly, but his expression was curiously placid, almost vacant.
“‘Twas horrible,” said he. “He looked the same as on the day we laid him down, no different save for the rot. It had grown out of his throat, the black thing, wide enough for to crack the jawbone. His mouth was open, as if he were crying out in agony, and the expression on his face—I have never seen such despair.”
“It is done?” I asked, not wishing to consider the implications of his discovery. “The root, it has been severed?”
“Aye,” he affirmed. “It is done. Though I fear we may have tarried too long.”
“Where did it lead?”
“Northwest.”
“Toward the meetinghouse?”
He turned his eyes upon me again, the moon glimmering like foxfire upon his pale visage. “Not toward it,” said he, shaking his head. “Not ‘toward’ it at all. But to it. There can be no question but that it began there.”
X
Scarcely an hour of darkness remained by the time I reached the village. Exhausted and unsettled, I resolved myself on sleep, only to be roused from slumber after no more than a quarter of an hour by a frantic pounding at the door.
‘Twas John White, the youngest member of his family. The sun hung low in the eastern sky, violet at this early hour, and I realised upon seeing him that John must have left his home, on foot and unaccompanied, in the darkest hour of the night.
I wasted no time in extracting the tale from him. Earlier that evening, his younger brother Martin, who had been ill these last three days, had taken a turn for the worse and slipped into unconsciousness. With Ethan unrecovered, and his mother occupied in tending to Martin, she had sent her youngest child to fetch help. And so, he had come to me.
I dressed myself and readied the horse. Then, taking John behind me in the saddle, I rode hard for the White farm. The road was empty before us, the maples green and flowering, and I knew, by the warmth of the light on my back, that the day would be humid in the extreme.
At the White Farm, we dismounted in the yard. I handed John the lead and bade him stable the horse while I flew into the house and climbed the narrow staircase to the loft space, adjacent the chimney, wherein the family customarily slept.
But upon that morning, not one member of that household lay slumbering: Ethan, aged 16, tossed restlessly on one side of the bed and cried out piteously, pained by the itch of his missing limb, while Martin lay quietly beside him with his face upturned, soaked through with fever, his underclothes hanging from him like wet rags. Their mother occupied a chair by the bedside, one hand resting on Martin’s brow, holding in place a scrap of white cloth. She acknowledged me with the slightest of nods, but I knew she did not intend for rudeness. In widowhood, she had grown strong, but these latest trials had nearly defeated her.
Immediately, I made haste to examine the unconscious lad. By inclining my ear to his chest, I ascertained that the heart was still beating, though its rhythm was uneven. His breathing was likewise staggered and shallow, so that I suspected the presence of some obstruction in the lungs. I rolled back the fabric of his shirt, exposing his chest to the light of my candle. At this, his mother gasped. I fear that I, too, may have recoiled in shock.
For the boy’s chest was obscured by a mass of tumourous black growths, domed in the manner of warts and sprouting from the flesh to either side of the sternum. They must have seeded in his lungs and thenceforth expanded until breaching the skin like mushrooms after a rain. I touched my finger to the top of one such growth and observed its porous consistency; the tumour depressed at contact before springing back to resume its earlier shape. This recalled to my mind certain facts: not only the infestation in the churchyard, but the Verger’s sickness and the visit that Martin himself had made but recently to Meetinghouse Hill.
I rolled the lad onto his right side, so that I might better view the pale flesh of his back. Here, my candle picked out the same dark growths, presented in rough alignment with the position of his lungs in his breast. ‘Twas a miracle, surely, that Martin yet lived, but I knew his chances of recovery to be slim. Nonetheless, I could not allow this illness to claim him uncontested.
I opened my bag, removing first the cups, then the curettes. By this time, John had joined us in the loft and I asked him to heat the glass cups in the fire downstairs. He returned shortly, at which time I took the cups from him and applied them directly to Martin’s back.
The skin swelled and blistered, and his mother winced at the sizzle of charred flesh. Incredible though it appeared, the sickness itself seemed to retreat from the outer edges of the cups, and even flamed up under the dome of the glass, where the heat was most intense. Slowly, boils took shape beneath
the cups, drawing the ill-humours out of the body and concentrating them in a single place, so that they might be easily lanced and drawn away.
Removing the cups, I placed each of them twice more, so that a total of six boils had formed, three to either side of the spinal column. Selecting the slimmest and sharpest of the curettes, I lanced the fluid from each of these boils in turn, collecting the bloody runoff in a pewter dish, which I directed John to empty into the fire downstairs.
This being speedily accomplished, I bandaged the open wounds. Calling next for water, I scrubbed clean the cups of char and pus. Then I uttered a quick prayer for the boy’s recovery and wished his family farewell.
I was halfway home when the cough overtook me. My chest heaved with every painful hack, as though attempting to expel, by force, some foreign body that had lodged itself inside of me. I reined in the horse and gasped for air, lest I collapse, unconscious. At length, the fit passed, and when I wiped clean my mouth, my hand came away smeared and flecked with dark matter.
XI
The remainder of the day was spent in prayer and fevered meditation. I had already correlated the illness of the White child with that of the Verger Crabb; the onset of my own cough with my recent proximity to the aforementioned persons; the location of the infested graves with the site of the meetinghouse; and, perhaps most alarmingly, the onset of the rotting sickness with the arrival in Falmouth of the Reverend Stone. Confronted with such evidence, I knew not in which way I should proceed, but knew only that I could not stand idle.
And so, I rode for Meetinghouse Hill. Arriving at dusk, I climbed the hill to the Verger’s cottage, careful to avoid the windows of the parsonage, and rapped peremptorily at his door. No answering cry came within, no din of footsteps. I waited; knocked again. Receiving no response, I admitted myself to the common room.
Crabb lay sprawled, face-up, on the dirt floor. His mouth was wide, his cheeks so blue and swollen that I scarcely recognised him. ‘Twas likely he had died of suffocation, which was, I believe, a small mercy, as it spared him the sight with which I found myself confronted.
From his throat there protruded an erect black coil, three inches across and hooked at its end, terminating more than a yard above his mouth. Knotted, rope-like, it rippled and twitched in place, moving like a leech, clawing upward, as though to seek the light.
I turned and fled. I dared not halt until the door was shut behind me and I was well clear of the cottage. I thought of the Verger’s soul, on which the thing had fed itself, and forced myself to leave him, making for the graveyard, certain, as I was, that I could do nothing further for him.
By this time, the sun was all but gone, leaving behind a fragrant darkness, scented with the musk of spring shoots and the aroma of contagion. In less than a week, the sickness had germinated, rooted and given flower. The Reverend Cooper’s stone was crumbling into powder, as were the graves all around, and there was not a single stone in that churchyard that did not carry the signs of infestation and decay. Only one place remained for me to explore.
I crossed the graveyard to the meetinghouse and unfastened the door to the sanctuary. The air inside was at once stale and damp and nauseating. The sweet stench of putrescence lay upon that place, as strong here as in the minister’s opened grave, but, even in the gloom, the interior appeared to me unaltered.
Lighting my lanthorn, I stepped through the doorway. The windows were dark and the shadows, layered thickly, unravelled in the lanthorn’s beam to reveal the same unpainted trusses, the familiar pews. I proceeded midway down the aisle and turned to scrutinise the balcony overhead. All was as it should have been and yet, the churchyard infestation had begun here; of that, there could be no doubt.
Then to my ears came the rustle of fabric, like a broom being dragged over the floor. I spun round, terrified, and directed my light toward the pulpit, beneath which stood the Reverend Stone.
His bearing was stiff, as from hours knelt in prayer, and he stood before me shirtless with a Cat O’ Nine Tails in hand. The barbed rope-ends shewed crimson in the lanthorn’s glow, beaded with blood where they had scourged his back. Worse still was the sight of his chest, which was covered with dark tumours in such thick profusion that I nearly mistook them for hair.
But it was his expression which froze me with horror, at the same time that I was moved, somehow, to pity. For never before had I seen such anguish in a human face, nor would I have dreamed it possible to bear such agony and live—if he were truly living.
The whip dropped from his hands. His eyes bulged, the whites shining, and he stumbled toward me with arms outstretched, as though to catch me in an embrace.
Sickened and fearful, I forced myself to step backward, nearly tripping over the aisle’s skirting as I did so, but unable to turn around, unwilling to show my back, even for a moment, to this man—this thing—that continued to advance on me, not with menace but with pathetic desperation, murmuring his prayers all the while.
“O God, as You are my judge, You know I never meant for it to happen. You alone know what it is like to bear this burden, to be cursed with this affliction for the greater glory of Your Name. I ask only that You help me, for I cannot help myself.”
He lunged toward me. His bare arms, like his chest, were covered in black growths, and I understood at once the reasons for his habitual manner of dress. I threw myself backward, but caught my foot on the skirting so that I dropped heavily onto my back. The lanthorn went sailing through the dark, striking the low balcony overhead, where it shattered.
The wooden beams ignited. Fire raced up the tresses to the ceiling, traversing the sanctuary with shocking speed, as though the building were not merely infested with the black rot, but verily made of it, formulated entirely of the selfsame sickness as the minister possessed, the same corruptive influence of which Martin, Crabb, and I, too, had been made a victim.
Stone paid the flames no heed, but fell upon me like a crying child, moaning as he fastened his arms round me. “Hold me,” said he. “Hold me.”
I smelled the sickness on him for the first time, the odour that lurked beneath the rose-water in which he regularly washed. I gagged, lost my breath, and nearly fainted, but, by some supreme effort born out of terror, succeeded in dislodging the diseased minister and throwing him wide so that he landed in the aisle.
The ceiling dripped overhead. Coals fell, burning, from the balcony, igniting where they landed amidst the pews. The windows exploded outward, causing an in-rush of cool air that fanned the blaze ever-higher, sweeping toward us like a rolling wave. The heat was unbearable, the stench even more so, but I forced open the door and threw myself beneath the flames, which erupted at this new incursion of air, and rolled until I reached what I judged to be a safe distance.
I looked back toward the meetinghouse. Through the doorway, I glimpsed the minister, who continued to gaze at me through the flames, his face a mask of the uttermost anguish, watching me even as the fires broke over him and consumed him from the inside-out.
Shortly thereafter, the roof fell with a splitting crash, causing sparks to fly loose in great clouds. I lurched to my feet once more, ignoring the pain of my many burns, and staggered down the slope of the drumlin, turning round one final time to watch the Reverend Cooper’s grave go up like a torch, followed by the whole of the northwest corner and the Verger’s cottage. I fell to the ground before the parsonage and there lay insensible until the villagers found me.
XII
I awoke in the custody of the law, accused of lighting the fire and of the two deaths that resulted. On the following morning, I was taken in chains to the courthouse in Westminster and detained until my trial. There, it emerged that the Falmouth meetinghouse had burned through in mere minutes. My lanthorn was recovered, though no traces of the man of whose murder I stand convicted, while Crabb’s cottage was likewise consumed with his body inside, leaving me as the final witness to the strange events on Meetinghouse Hill—or so, for a time, I allowed myself to believe.
This evening, I learned of the fate of Martin White, who died three nights past of a “sickness like the pox,” and was buried quickly, for fear of spreading contagion. I hesitate to write this, for I am acquainted, intimately, with the hardships his family has endured, but the lad’s body must be exhumed, and speedily, and burned as I am to be. He shall have neither corpus nor stone, but the Lord will not forget him, even as He has not forsaken me throughout these latest trials.
My illness has worsened in the days since the fire. The black tumours, now present in abundance, grow from my chest and back so that I scarcely sleep at night, and even then, I dream. In the mornings, I wake to this filthy cell, my shirtfront dirtied with blood and spittle, but I remain untroubled, knowing myself fortunate, for these sufferings will end—and soon.
Only with the most acute grief do I think of the Verger Crabb, who died in agony on the floor of his cottage, and of my dear friend the Reverend Cooper, the greatest man I have known, and of the black thing that fed upon them both, denying them, in this way, the promise to which Election made them heir. For them, there is only darkness, as there was for the Reverend Stone, and I can but mourn them as the unbeliever mourns all life, all loss, and the final passing of this world into a night unending.
Thus concludes my account.
May the peace of Our Lord Jesus Christ be upon your spirit—
H. Edwards
Westminster, 1773
THE PHOTOGRAPHER’S TALE
I heard this story from a passing acquaintance, a fellow photographer whom I shall call Lowell. I met Lowell in June of last year at a mountaintop resort in New Hampshire. I had traveled there for my health and was surprised to meet another who shared my profession.