Old House of Fear

by Russell Kirk

  Mary MacAskival stood before the Cross of Carnglass, her red hair brushing the white stone, her haughty nose and firm chin marking her as the last of an old, old, fierce line: perhaps, truly, the descendant of the Merin whose bones lay beneath one of these grass-grown grave mounds. “If anyone could call spirits from the vasty deep, you could, Mary,” Hugh told her.

  She smiled queerly. “It may be I will do just that, Hugh Logan. But here, I’ll show you the chapel.” She took him through a Gothic doorway – the wooden door, ajar, sagged on its hinges – and flashed the torchbeam over the tombs within. A grotesque stone face, rudely carved, stared at them from a niche. Directly before them stood up an ornate modern tomb of marble. “Sir Alastair is beneath that. And here’s his postbox.” She pointed to a slot in the marble surrounded by a carved funerary wreath; and she slid her hand into the opening. “Oh, there’s nothing within now!” she said, as if really disappointed. “For years, you know, my aunt used to send letters by the butler or footman to Sir Alastair in his tomb. And I used to post my letters here, too, when I wasn’t watched.”

  Post her letters there! Mary must have read the amazement on his face, for she added, as if to reassure him of her sanity, “Oh, yes. The letter I sent Duncan MacAskival, that brought you here, was posted here in Sir Alastair’s postbox.” Was this some macabre witticism of the uncanny little beauty, or a delusion grown out of dreams and isolation? “But we daren’t linger here, Hugh. If Dr. Jackman sees our fire, he’ll come up the cliff straight away.” She pointed to the old dirk, which Hugh Logan had thrust into his belt. “That was Askival’s. You must be my Askival, Hugh. I am Merin, you know: Merin of Carnglass, who’s haunted this place since time began.” She was half playful, half in earnest. The dirk, Logan thought, might be small use against the guns of Jackman’s men, but it was some comfort. Then he followed Mary MacAskival out of the silent chapel, and toward the towering broch by the precipice. Their fire still leaped against the night sky of lonely Carnglass, but in a few minutes only embers would remain.

  “The Pict’s House,” Mary was saying, “is the best place we can hide. By the sea, away below these cliffs, is a great cave; but even I could not lead you down the path to it in darkness; and besides, the tide is coming in now, and the cave will be full almost to the top. It must be the Pict’s House for us. One still can climb the stair to the top of it.” She was quite calm, as if, having done all that she could do, she abandoned herself to fate and fortune. “And from the Pict’s House, we can see nearly all of Carnglass, once the sun is up.”

  They entered the tower through a square doorway ten feet above the ground; a worn timber, sea-drift, propped against the wall just below the door, made this scramble possible. The doorway was capped, by way of lintel, by a great stone slab; the Picts had not known the arch. Empty and roofless, the round interior cavern of the broch was before them, but Mary turned into the wall itself: a circling stair led upward, its steps vast rude slabs. By it they came to the crumbling summit of the broch, and Logan observed, while they climbed, that no mortar lay between the cunningly-placed stones of the tower; this was the work of men in the dawn of history, and beside it the Old House across the island was a thing of yesterday.

  Round the top of the broch ran a stone platform. “Stoop down behind the parapet, Hugh,” the girl told him, “so Jackman won’t see us, if he comes this way.” The earliest hint of a spring dawn glimmered in the east; a corncrake fluttered up from the parapet. Right below them, the tremendous cliffs, the cliffs over which Lagg had gone, fell sheer away to the ocean. From this point, the last Pict chieftain may have watched the long ships of the Vikings as they swept inexorably out of the seamist to the north. On that sea, nothing was visible this morning but whitecaps breaking on a submerged reef.

  “No, there’s nothing, no sail,” Mary MacAskival said anxiously, almost as if she had expected one. “Do you know the tale of the fairy boat, Hugh, that sails through the mists? If a girl glimpses it, she vanishes before nightfall. I wish one could carry me off – and you. Now you see my Carnglass, Hugh Logan.”

  He looked landward. Far to the west-southwest, beyond Cailleach, the Old House stood grim on its rock; lower down, the New House, among its plantations. Between them and the Old House stretched glen and hill, heather and bracken, boulder and peat-bog, waterfall and burn. On this lovely morning, the mists were quite gone, and there was revealed to him the unearthly beauty of the forgotten island. The girl took his arm. “Hugh, were it yours, would you live here always – or almost always?”

  “That I would, Mary MacAskival.” Carnglass, for good or evil, set its mark on men.

  She faced him squarely, putting her hands on his shoulders. “We may be under that sea tonight, Hugh Logan. But if we are not, why shouldn’t Carnglass be yours? I’ve known you but thirty-six hours, Hugh. You’re all the man I need to know. Do you fear me? Some men do, though I’m so little.” She kissed him then, and said, “Hugh Logan, I have kissed you more times than I have kissed all other men in all my life. Do you mean to ask me to marry you?”

  Torn between love and doubt, in that high place, Logan looked long into her green eyes. “They would say, Mary, that I took advantage of a lonely girl who had barely met me, for the sake of her money.”

  She tossed her bright hair at that. “Don’t be so canny, Hugh! Do you know the MacAskival motto, over the door of the old tower? ‘They have said and they will say; let them be saying.’ The MacAskivals, man or woman, have no concern for what they say in Glasgow or Edinburgh or London or all the wide world.” Then a look of fright came into her flashing eyes. “Is it that you are married already, Hugh?”

  “No,” he said, “but I will be, if we get alive out of this.” And as the sun rose, he took her in his arms. Rash, proud, and strange that girl was, perhaps a little mad; but in that moment he loved her more than all the kingdoms of the earth.

  She clung to him, sobbing and laughing softly in her moment of triumph and surrender. But abruptly he thrust her back, and pulled her below the level of the parapet. “Mary, Mary! They’ve come!” For three armed men were climbing the slope toward the chapel, and Jackman was the first of them. Logan thought that they two had not been seen. No shots were fired, at least.

  His arm around the girl’s waist, he ventured a second glance between two heavy stones that teetered precariously on the parapet’s brink. Yes, Jackman and Anderson and Powert. The men got over a low wall that ran round the graveyard, close by the remnants of the burnedout futile beacon. Then they entered the chapel.

  “Mary, girl,” he whispered, “they’ll be on us in three or four minutes, I think.” She did not cry, but kissed him once more, and then composed her young face, as if The MacAskival ought to meet enemies without flinching.

  “Hugh,” she said, “every second we can delay may help us.” He did not see why, but she gave him no time to dissent. “Back down the stair, Hugh, and if they try to come in, we’ll cast down the timber by the door.” Yes, they could do that, though without guns they could do no more than delay Jackman briefly. Back down the stair they went, and crouched by the empty archaic doorway. It wouldn’t do to push away the timber-gangplank that led up from the ground unless they must, for the noise of its fall would bring Jackman and his men.

  Now they heard Jackman’s voice; he was coming right round the broch from the chapel. Anderson’s sullen Gallow-gate mutter replied to Jackman. And in a moment the hunters stood just below the broch’s door, though Logan dared not look out. “All right, Powert,” Jackman said, “up with you.” At that, Logan and Mary MacAskival shoved against the timber with all their strength. It slid sideways and fell to the ground. They showed themselves for an instant as they pushed, and someone fired, but the bullet passed over their heads into the broch.

  “Ah, well,” came Jackman’s voice from below, “you did lead us a chase, didn’t you? Anderson, Powert, take hold there.” The timber was heaved back into place; Logan could not risk rising again to push it off, for J
ackman would have a gun trained on the doorway. “Powert, Mr. Logan is not armed,” said Jackman. “Quick, now!” A man sprang up the timber and through the door.

  Thrusting at him with the dirk, Logan got home to Powert’s upper arm, and the man cried out and grappled with him. Before he could slash Powert again, Jackman was up, and poked the little pistol Meg right into Logan’s face. “Gallant, Logan, very gallant; but drop that.” Logan flung down the dirk. Mary MacAskival was struggling in Anderson’s arms. “A pleasant morning, eh, Logan?” Jackman said. “You’ll not see another.”

  Chapter 13

  THEY TOOK HUGH LOGAN and Mary MacAskival out of the Pict’s House. Anderson tied Logan’s wrists together, behind his back, with a length of heavy cord, pulling the knots savagely tight. Jackman held the girl by the arm meanwhile; and when Anderson had finished with Logan, under Jackman’s instructions he tied a cord to Mary’s right wrist, and retained the other end of the cord in his hand while Jackman removed Powert’s jacket and bandaged the flesh-wound with a strip torn from the tail of Powert’s shirt. This done, Jackman had Anderson tie the other end of Mary’s cord to Jackman’s own left wrist.

  “There!” Jackman said, contentedly, “a brisk morning’s run, and no harm done. Anderson, Powert and I will take this charming couple to the Old House while you trot down the brae and call back Ferd and Niven; I think they should be near the shieling this side of Cailleach.”

  Anderson glowered at Logan. “Ye said I wud hae the thrashin’ o’ that clot, Doctor.”

  “That you shall, Anderson, my man, that you shall – once we’re at the Old House. I do believe Anderson will learn all we need to know from you, Logan, in short order. Our treatment of you, Miss MacAskival, will need to be rather more laborious: the washing of the brain, as our Chinese friends say. But it will all come out in the wash, won’t it? And Powert, too, will be given his fair turn at you, Logan: fair shares for all, eh?” Jackman ran his tongue over his thin lips. “In one thing, at least, you seem to have told me the truth, Logan: you’ve no people in Carnglass, for you’d not have been cow ering in that ruin if there were any. There’s Carruthers to be accounted for; but I suppose he may have missed his footing in the dark and have gone over the cliffs. I must confess that my estimate of your abilities has diminished, Logan. Whatever possessed you to light that fire here by the chapel? You might have eluded us four or five hours longer if you hadn’t done that. Well, drive him along, Powert.”

  With his unwounded arm, Powert gave Logan a fierce shove in the back, setting him stumbling in the direction of the Old House, and Jackman tugged on Mary’s cord, pulling her with him behind Logan and Powert. The girl’s face was quite drained of color, but very haughty. “My dear,” Jackman said to her, casually, “how changed you are going to be within a few days! How very changed!”

  Then, from somewhere below in the nearer valley, there came to them the crack of a rifle-shot. It was answered by another, apparently from a different gun. Next was a burst of firing, and then a faint cry.

  Jackman’s satisfied smile altered horribly; he was Rumpelstiltskin again. “Logan,” he muttered, “is there a man of yours in Carnglass, after all? Or is that only Niven’s or Caggia’s nerves playing them tricks? Anderson, you and I must go down to see. Powert, we’ll leave you with Logan; he can’t do you harm. The girl will come with me. We’ll send back a man to help you get Logan to the Old House, Powert.”

  Powert most obviously did not relish the plan. “Coom, Dr. Jackman, I’ve a bad arm, and this cove’s a queer one.”

  “Nonsense,” Jackman said, “we’ll bind his feet, too, until we send Anderson or someone else for you.” Away below, there was only silence, but Jackman ran his hand across his forehead uneasily. “Here: we’ll put him inside the chapel with you, and you can watch the door, with your back to the wall: that’s safe enough.” Powert scowled, but shoved Logan toward the door of St. Merin’s Chapel. Jackman herded the four of them inside.

  Now that the dawn came through the broken tracery of the chapel’s pointed windows, Logan could see that the single room contained seven or eight tombs raised above the floor, some of them very old; and a number of the flagstones, deeply incised by some rude stonecarver, apparently covered other graves. “Wha’ in hell’s yon!” cried Anderson, abruptly, pointing.

  Near the northeast corner of the room, one of the flagstones had been raised, and now was leant against the wall. Where it had lain, a little mound of earth, freshly dug, protruded above the floor; and in the earth was thrust a curiously primitive wooden spade. The mound was about six feet long. They all crowded close to it. An earthenware dish had been set atop the mound, and the dish was filled with, of all things, nails and what looked like salt. Across the dish lay a branch from a rowan tree. “That,” Mary MacAskival said softly to Dr. Jackman, “is how the spirits of the newly dead are laid in these islands.”

  “Wha’ fule’s been diggin’ graves?” Anderson growled, looking back over his shoulder toward the empty doorway.

  Jackman stood rigid; then, “I think Carruthers must be under that clay. Anderson, take the spade and uncover him.” Mary MacAskival shivered slightly.

  Anderson cursed, but under Jackman’s hard eye he began to shovel. The grave was very shallow. In a minute or two, a heavy shape could be made out, wrapped in a big piece of tarred canvas. “That will be the head at the far end,” Jackman whispered. “Powert, draw the canvas from the face.”

  Mary had turned away, but Logan, dreadfully fascinated, saw clearly the smashed and fallen face of a man he never had looked upon before. And Jackman screamed: he screamed twice, and so terribly that his men shook, for the screams were worse than the ruined face in the grave. “Lagg! It’s Lagg!”

  Quivering, Anderson dropped the spade. “Aye,” he said, “Tam Lagg, that we pit ower the cliff into the sea. For the love o’ God, Powert, cover his mug.”

  Powert, his teeth chattering, let the canvas drop back over the corpse.

  “Logan,” shrieked Jackman, turning a frantic face on him, “Logan, what are you? What are you? Do you make dead men rise from the sea? Was it you that put this thing here?” He had the pistol in his hand, and thrust it against Logan’s middle.

  He will fire now, Logan thought, for he’s quite out of his head. There was the sound of a shot. But I’m not hit, Logan realized; I feel nothing. Jackman sprang away and looked out the doorway; the shot, after all, had come from outside, though in his tension Logan had thought, for an instant, that Jackman had pulled the trigger. Yet surely a gun had gone off fairly close at hand.

  “Anderson, watch this door,” Jackman ordered; he had a measure of control over himself. “Powert, give me that rope.” He forced Logan to sit, and tied his ankles together. “We’ll return for you in a few minutes, Powert.”

  “Me? I’ll not sit here by the dead man.” Powert scarcely could hold his rifle.

  Jackman sent him a deadly look from those glowering black eyes of his. “You’ll be another dead man yourself, Powert, if I hear another word from you. Now, Anderson, we’ll look into this. Miss MacAskival, if you cry out, I’ll be forced to put a bullet through your head.” He shoved her through the doorway.

  “Hugh,” Mary called back, reckless of Jackman, “Hugh, I love you!” Then she and Jackman and Anderson were out of sight.

  Powert, left with Logan and the corpse, still shook; and he cursed Logan and Jackman and Carnglass while he made his preparations as if for siege. He pushed the helpless Logan roughly against Sir Alastair’s tomb, facing away from the doorway, and parallel with the open grave and the awful thing under the canvas. Then he pulled shut the sagging door of the chapel, so that some force would be required to budge it; and he himself leaned against a tombstone that came up to his shoulders, with his face toward the door, and his rifle in his hands, the barrel resting upon the head of another tombstone. So situated, Powert could watch the door, keep an eye on Logan and the sheeted thing, and have the comforting feel of stone at his back.
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br />   Logan himself, after the repeated shocks of that fair morning, was in little better state than Powert. Silent, he lay motionless against the tomb of Sir Alastair MacAskival, his brain dull, dull, dull. There were no more shots outside: only the rustle of a breeze in the rowan trees. The stillness was a trying thing. Powert was mumbling to himself: obscenities, blasphemies, scraps of nearly-forgotten prayer. The sunlight was pouring into the chapel through the unglazed Gothic windows. Five or six minutes passed thus.

  Then a faint sound came. Was something stirring in the high graveyard grass, just outside the closed door? Did the door itself creak, as if very gently tried? “Anderson,” Powert cried out, choking, “is it you, man? Dr. Jackman?” Nothing answered. Did the door creak again, ever so slightly, or was it the breeze? “Sing out,” Powert shouted, glaring wildeyed at the flimsy door, “or I’ll shoot!”

  High in the wall behind Powert was one of the pointed windows, its stone tracery for the most part broken away. It must be at least eight feet above the level of the graveyard. Though Logan could see this window, Powert, intent on the doorway, could not. And as something rose cautiously above the windowsill, from outside, Logan bit his lips to keep back a cry.

  It was a man’s head that cut off the morning light: a lean man, keeneyed; and there was a long white beard on his chin; and there was a little black knife between his teeth. His eyes took in the room. Steadying himself by clutching the broken tracery with his left hand, stealthily he rose until his shoulders came above the window-ledge. In his brown right hand he held a large stone.