As Il Cornacchia grigia shuffled towards him, Ernesto opened his mouth to speak, causing the spectre to look hard at his face as if suddenly called to attention from some innocent reverie of his own.
‘Forgive me. Forgive me, please,’ Ernesto muttered, gazing wildly into the chalky, petulant face. Before he lost consciousness once again, he thought he saw the creature cock his head to one side and mutter something, but he could not make it out.
He awoke in what he sensed was the late afternoon; the light had changed and a cool wind was blowing through the gaping roof. Ants had climbed onto his bare arms, and he studied them with interest for a while. The dog had started up again, and he rejoiced at the sound of it. His head felt strange and light and his eyes were no longer hurting. He shifted position, moving himself away from the fallen beam and propping himself up higher, before once more seeking out his hideous companion. Il Cornacchia grigia was still there in the darkening shadows, with his prudish mouth stretched into a half-sneer, half-smile as he mouthed something incomprehensible. Then, as if suddenly infuriated, he flung his hand up repeatedly as if dismissing an annoying servant, with his eyes all the while feasting on Ernesto’s face and body.
His leg was not broken, although it hurt, and as he began to pick his way through the debris of the Abbey of Thelema, Ernesto thought of nothing except finding himself on the outside of the cursed place. He’d spent close to a day in there, in the filth and dust and rotting wood. He would go to the small hotel, take a long shower, smoke cigarettes and lie on his bed. The following day, if he felt he could do it, he’d go to the farm and stay a while with Sergio and his mother.
Just as he reached the doorway that would take him into the room with the open window, he looked back and could see only darkness, but out of it came a voice, tiny and distant-sounding, but clear as a bell: ‘In the name of Choronzon, dweller in the Abyss, may all you build up become rubble.’
***
He could feel dull pains in his leg as he walked away from the Abbey of Thelema, and he’d cut his arm on something as he’d clambered out of the window. He made his way past the football stadium’s rusted gates and down the long road back to town. He could not wait to be safe and alone in his hotel room; he needed a long shower. He had no sense now of the concussion he’d suffered and he found himself in a strange state of awe, because not only had he finally heard and understood his curse, but he realised, although he hardly dared to believe it was so, that his head was perfectly clear; there were no muffled noises crowding his brain, nothing but wonderful quietness.
When he reached his room again, he took his dusty clothes off, lay down on his bed, and wept. First he cried from the sheer relief of being away from the House of Ghosts, then he cried for his grandfather’s death for the first time, and finally he found himself sobbing for joy because, still yet, his head felt light and empty with no words in it except those that he thought for himself. When he was calm and had showered and dressed again, he stood on the balcony of his little room and smoked a cigarette. Even if the tormenting sounds that he’d lived with most of his life returned, he was so grateful for these few hours of grace that he trembled with joy.
The sounds never did return, and he never did tell anyone what had happened to him in the House of Ghosts—there was nobody he knew well enoughto tell; besides it was a private matter between him and Mr C.
WHERE'S THE HARM?
When we first arrived back home to fix our parents’ house, we were eager for the money we’d make on it; my brother’s latest venture was going bust, and I was despairing of ever making a living from my photography. We reckoned the house could fetch a handsome sum even though it was a bit out of the way down the wooded lane. Our plan was to re-decorate, fix the garden, replace parts of the veranda, put the thing on the market, and get back to our normal and very separate lives in Holesville Nine—my brother and I had never learnt how to get on together, he drank too much and gambled too often to be any real use to me as a brother. At my cruellest I used to describe him as one of those guys who are overly proud of themselves, the type that endlessly pontificate about their honourable natures.
We’d agreed to complete each room before we moved onto the next. Eddie was to remove layers of wallpaper, fill in the gaps and holes beneath it all, then wash the walls down and paint them in some pastel colour that the eye could ignore and that a buyer would not be offended by. I was to remove many years of chipped paint from the skirting boards and the window frames, and re-paint them in simple white gloss.
The evenings had turned chilly and we’d taken to lighting the old log burner in the kitchen. Apart from its heat, it gave us something to focus on because conversation between us was so difficult. Being younger by five years, Eddie felt a peculiar impulse to compete with me, but I had no interest in being drawn into whatever crazy infected jumble was going on in his mind, and whenever I suspected he was attempting to manipulate our interactions, I clammed up. But I have also to own up to the fact that when we were kids, I scared him a lot and he was, deliciously for me, dead easy to scare. It’s how I kept him under control, I now realise. I often wonder just how cruel I really was to him, but he’d be the last person I’d ask.
Each morning, before starting our work in the house, we walked down the lane into the beginnings of the wood, to collect supplies for the log burner. There was one other dwelling that we knew of for certain further on from ours, and in it lived a very ancient man, who, even when we were kids, looked far too old to still be alive. Mr Ratchetson—that was the name, and I used to tell little Eddie that he was a night-creeper who crawled up the wall and stared through our window while we were asleep. He didn’t believe me until I told him about the noises Mr Ratchetson made as he clung to the side of our house and moved disgustingly in and out like a fire bellows.
‘What noises does he make, Ross?’ Eddie asked, wriggling down further into his bed.
I had to think quickly, so he didn’t see my lie. ‘Like the noise Mum’s door makes, Eddie. Just like that . . . squeaking and groaning at the same time.’
‘What does he do it for?’
‘It’s Mr Ratchetson’s way of talking to you.’
‘What’s he saying?’
‘How would I know, it’s a different language, silly.’
Eddie gazed at me for a long time that evening, his eyes steady on my face and widened, and the next morning I saw that I’d convinced him, and felt the grim pleasure of my deceit. Because we now live in the same town, we come across each other every so often, and he still looks at me that way sometimes, so I like to think anyway—but perhaps the uneasiness is mine for my cruelty towards him back then. I don’t know.
As we drew level with Mr Ratchetson on one of our wood gathering trips, he was at his gate looking away from us towards the darkness of the trees. ‘Oh God, look! That’s old Ratchetson, isn’t it? Must be way past a hundred by now,’ Eddie whispered.
‘More like two hundred, and still peeping through windows,’ I said.
‘Thank you, Ross. I don’t want to be reminded of that stuff. And by the way, I never did believe you.’
‘Like hell you didn’t.’
‘You don’t know, do you?’
‘What?’
‘That to keep you happy, I perfected a certain way of looking that convinced you I’d fallen for your crap.’
‘Yeah?’ I half-turned to look at him, but my attention was on Mr Ratchetson. ‘Why do old people do that?’
‘Do what?’
‘Stand and stare into the distance like that?’ I said.
‘They’ve got nothing better to do, I expect.’
On hearing our approach, Mr Ratchetson turned his head slowly towards us, tortoise-like and blinking. ‘Why are you down here?’ he asked. ‘Town is the other way, up on the tarmac road.’
‘We’re the Marshall brothers,’ I explained. ‘We’ve come here to sell Mum and Dad’s house.’
‘Marshall kids?’
I nodded, a
nd he inspected Eddie and me closely. ‘Selling your mother’s house?’ I nodded again. ‘Why, what’s the matter with it?’
Eddie laughed. ‘They’ve passed on, you know. Died . . . and someone has to do something with the house.’
‘They died,’ Mr Ratchetson said, and I couldn’t tell if it was a question or a statement. He turned his head to the wood again and I had the distinct impression he was waiting for something, or at least thought he was—maybe something out of his long and very distant past.
‘Do you have relatives yourself, Mr Ratchetson?’ Eddie asked in a nice voice.
‘They died.’
‘Ah, of course they did.’
I wanted us gone now and I tugged at Eddie’s arm, but remembered suddenly something my father once said which I’d found so intriguing that it’d become a fixture in some part of my mind. ‘We’re going into the wood to get fuel for our log burner. It’s chilly in the evenings now, isn’t it, Mr Ratchetson?’ I began, thinking to lead him gently towards my question.
‘It is.’
‘What’s the best wood to pick up do you think?’ I asked.
‘Ash if you can find some. Most of it’s further in towards the middle of the wood, though. Did you have it in mind to go right inside there?’
‘Yes. We were never allowed as kids, so it’s time we did.’
‘Right inside,’ Eddie repeated, and I could hear an echo of the night-whisperings of our childhood in his voice.
‘You might find a house in there,’ the old man muttered. ‘But if you come across it, you should move on in haste.’
‘What house would that be, Mr Ratchetson?’ I asked trying not to show my interest, for here was the point of my questioning.
‘The last one along this stretch,’ he answered, raising his thin arm into the air for emphasis.
‘I thought yours was the last,’ Eddie said.
‘Lots of folk did,’ he answered.
‘Dad spoke about that house to me once,’ I said. ‘He reckoned it got swallowed up by the encroaching wood, and when I asked if Eddie and I could go and see it, he said if we did, we’d be swallowed up by the wood too, and never find our way out again.’
‘You didn’t tell me that when we were kids,’ Eddie said, frowning at me.
‘I didn’t think there was any point.’
‘Dad liked to know exactly where we were, you see, Mr Ratchetson,’ Eddie explained, and I could hear a tiny scraping of anxiety in his voice.
‘You’re the Marshall boys, you say?’ the old man asked. ‘Ann Marshall was your mother?’ We nodded. ‘She had glorious hair, but I’m glad she cut it off; it put my mind to rest. Mightily to rest.’
‘I remember Mum’s hair when it was long,’ Eddie said. ‘It used to swing about when she had it loosened on Sundays. I really loved it; I was heartbroken when she had it all shorn off.’
Mr Ratchetson shifted from one slippered foot to the other. ‘Wisest thing to do, son; it was attracting a great deal of attention.’
I glanced at Eddie and was startled to find myself moved by the emotion on his face. I too had been sad when Mum cut off her hair. I’d asked her what she did with it and was puzzled when she whispered that Dad had taken it into the field behind our house and burnt it. She wouldn’t say anymore, and Eddie and I could tell by our parents’ faces that we were not to ask about it, and not to stare at Mum’s raggedy shorn head, or at the hundreds of little cuts on her arms and neck.
‘So, the house, Mr Ratchetson?’
‘Try to sell it to decent people,’ he answered, ‘if there are any such left in the world.’
‘The other one; the one inside the wood.’
‘To collect the ash, you mean?’
‘Yes, exactly . . . where we can get ash.’
‘I know where a big old oak has fallen down,’ he said, turning his head first and then by small shaky movements, his body, in the direction we’d come from. ‘Walk along the railway to the old shoe factory. Whole tree down just there.’ He stared at us for a short intense moment, and then, without saying more, turned, and made his way to his open front door.
‘Wow,’ Eddie said, ‘did you see the way the pulse on his skull was twanging?’
‘I want to find that house,’ I murmured, somehow fearful of the words as I spoke them. ‘I’ve been curious about it all my life.’
Eddie shrugged. ‘Let’s not waste more time then; half the morning’s gone already.’
***
Moss had formed vivid green pillows along the route into the deeper wood, some of them huge and glistening with moisture, and although we didn’t see fungus poking out anywhere, I could smell it above the odour of wet rotting leaves. As we walked on, the tree trunks began to take on an unfamiliar slimy look and I was disinclined to reach out and run my palm over them, as had always been my way with trees.
‘It’s a little ecosystem all of its own in here,’ I said, ‘moist and dripping. ’
‘What’s that stuff growing in the rock crevices with black stems?’
‘Maidenhair fern, Eddie. Or Venus’s hair.’ We could see that it had grown lushly and undisturbed for a long time, and it made me shiver despite its beauty.
‘Quaint,’ Eddie whispered, and walked towards it. ‘It’d make a great shot, or have you given up nature photos?’
‘Let’s not stop,’ I said. ‘Time’s getting on, and we’ve got stuff to get in town later.’ As I spoke, just at the corner of my eye something attracted my attention. ‘How weird is that?’ I whispered, pointing it out. ‘Who do you think did it—kids?’
‘Must be, I suppose.’
‘It’s on both sides of that path, look.’ We stood close together, and stared; the vegetation and wood grasses on a small side track off the main path had been neatly plaited and their ends bound together with some kind of delicate twine. ‘Shall we see what’s further on?’ I asked.
‘Let’s just stick on this path and find the ash,’ Eddie said.
I’ve never forgotten those words of his, and each time I think of them, my heart seems to plummet downwards and fall away into a great void of pity, and longing, and grief, for I said, ‘No, come on, let’s just take a quick look down there. Where’s the harm?’
We turned off the main track and walked down the tiny dark and plaited pathway before us. We came to a bend pretty soon and as we rounded it, both of us cried out. We’d found the house, and it was huge with many shabby, grey glinting windows.
‘Abandoned ages ago by the looks of it,’ Eddie murmured.
I could understand why he thought so; trees and spindly saplings had grown right up against the peeling walls of the house and across what once would’ve been a handsome pathway to the front door. But some of the windows on the upper floor were curtained and they weren’t in ribbons or covered in filth, but clean-looking and made of the same shiny fabric that the haberdasher in town kept on a roll at the front of his shop.
We stood in silence for a long time and gazed. I was just thinking how distracting the wind was, when I saw movement. ‘Eddie,’ I said, gripping his arm tightly, ‘that place is not abandoned. I’ve just seen someone in the top room on the left.’
A while later, the same figure moved across a different window.
‘Whoa!’ Eddie said loudly, ‘it was a woman. How can she be living out here? Look, no cars in the front, no road down here anyway.’
There comes a strange pricking sensation, almost like a weight has settled on your shoulders. It’s not a sensation I’ve experienced a great deal, but as Eddie fell silent, I was compelled to turn around, and in the dappled shade of a large tree behind us on the track some thirty yards away, two women were watching us. The smaller one had her arms crossed and was balancing on one foot. The other had her hands on her hips and was stooped forward slightly, the better to see us, I felt. Eddie had turned too, and joined me in my scrutiny. The wind had whipped up the leaves of the tree the women stood beneath and caused changing patterns of moving light on the pa
th, so that we had to blink and look away several times. No words had passed between the four us, and perhaps it was that small oddness more than anything else which alerted me to the peculiar nature of our situation.
It was Eddie who brought an end to the staring. He moved forward a pace or two, and put his hand up in greeting. ‘Hi there,’ he began. ‘I’m Eddie and this is my brother, Ross.’
The women looked at each other and moved slowly out from the shadows. What I’d taken to be cloaks of an old-fashioned kind draped around their shoulders, were no such thing. Their hair hung about them concealing much of what they wore, and it stopped a few inches only from the ground itself. I felt quickly nauseous and assumed, knowing Eddie’s sensitivities that he would too. But he walked straight over to them and although they would not take his outstretched hand, they were, within minutes, smiling up at him. I hadn’t moved and it was as if I was irrelevant, and that unsettled me further.
I stayed put and studied them for several minutes, before Eddie beckoned me over. My very guts seemed to have shrivelled and my breathing was shallow and raspy. Absurd thing to describe, I dare say, but I was acutely alert and conscious of a vague but persistent danger of some indefinable type. I can’t remember what Eddie said to them, the tone of his conversation, or its subject matter. I’d never come across women like them before and I quickly concluded that they were part of a cult. They had that same quiet and thoughtful look that religious women sometimes have. Most of the women I knew laughed too loudly and talked for too long about nothing of interest and in squeaky voices. They had fussy hairstyles and fidgety hands, and were always far too eager to agree with what I thought. These women had a curious melancholic air about them that wasn’t exactly a state of sadness, more as if they—and this is crazy—carried within them a sense of all the isolated places on the earth.
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