Lych Way

by Ari Berk

  “Then, as it befell, the young man and his health soon parted company. Illness came, and pain, and each day was filled with great discomfort. But still, the youth smiled. ‘I know that I will not die,’ he told himself, ‘for Death will first send his messengers. Though these days of illness are grievous, I shall be happy knowing they will end in health once more.’

  “And the youth did regain his health and began to live joyfully again. Then one day he felt someone tap him on the shoulder. When he turned around, Death was standing there. ‘Come with me now, son. The hour of your demise and departure from this world is here.’

  “Surprised and angry that he’d been cheated, the youth said, ‘Are you breaking your oath to me? Didn’t you promise to send your messengers to me before you’d come to take me away? I have seen no messenger! Not one!’

  “ ‘Be silent, man! Be still!’ Death said. ‘Have I not sent messengers to you already, one after another? Did not Fever come and did not your blood burn and did not your skin grow chilled? Has not Dizziness turned your head from back to front? Has not Gout stabbed you in the toe? Did Darkness not come and draw a veil across your eyes? And, most nights, did not my brother Sleep come to remind you of me and what was coming?’

  “The youth could find no words with which to answer Death, and so he gave up his life and followed Death away.”

  “But what happened to the Howesman man?” asked Silas.

  “He is a wanderer still, so it’s said. And as for Death? It’s told he walks the world as he ever did, but now looks over his shoulder from time to time for fear of being struck down once more by a Howesman!”

  Silas looked up to see that his great-grandfather had finished his story and was looking at him for some response. There was something about the story that rang false to Silas. To fight with Death, or try to hold Death at arm’s length—this only invited other kinds of troubles. But Silas didn’t want to argue about an old family legend. Instead, he said flatly “Oh, thank you, sir. It’s a good story. Hopeful in its way, I guess.”

  The old man slowly cocked his head to the side. “Are you sure you’re all right, grandson?”

  “No, sir. I am not all right. I have come home and found my mother dead. How am I supposed to feel?”

  “No particular one way or another. I’m sorry, Silas, for both of us. I feel your mother was only coming into her own, starting to like her life a little, and then . . . well . . . now this.”

  “I know who killed her,” Silas said, not looking up.

  “Silas, how could you know that?”

  “Great-grandfather, believe me, I know. I killed her. I brought curses home with me from beyond the marshes and they killed her. If I’d been more careful . . . if I’d known more . . . I might have—”

  “Oh, Silas. No more guilt. The troubles of her life, as she once knew it, are over. Don’t make yours worse by taking on her problems. And if it was something or someone from that house beyond the marshes that you believe has caused her death, please, let it go! To think on evil calls evil to your side.”

  “She died so I could live. . . .”

  Augustus Howesman was about to speak again, but stopped. After a moment, he said, “Son, what happened to you at that house? Maybe I could help you in some way. Did it happen like in my vision? Were they all there?”

  Silas nodded, but then said softly, “I don’t need any help, sir.”

  “All right. I understand. You don’t want anyone meddling. I respect that.”

  “Great-grandfather, you don’t understand.”

  “Well, son, I understand that, like your father, you sometimes prefer to keep your own counsel. I also know that when we needed you, you helped me and some of the others most selflessly. And I know that you know that if there was anything I could do for you, all you’d need to do is ask.”

  Silas’s expression softened. “Of course,” he said, but quickly looked away. “There are some very terrible things hidden in that place, and I know, somehow, one of them is part of what’s happened to my mom. I’m not even sure the place I visited is still there beyond the gates. It’s not a place for the living. You know this.”

  “So it was that bad, eh? I am sorry.”

  “Not all of it . . . ,” Silas started to say, but then Lars’s face came into his mind . . . and the pillar of ash that his friend had become when time refused him at Arvale’s gate.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to talk about it, Silas?” asked Augustus Howesman, seeing his great-grandson’s face falling. “Was it that you saw someone there you knew? Son, was your father in that house?”

  “No,” said Silas, looking down into the fire. The mention of his father pushed him over the edge. He turned away from his great-grandfather, trying not to cry.

  “I’m sorry, Silas. I just thought perhaps . . . never mind.”

  “He is doing what he’s always done. Taking care of his own business in his own way. I don’t know where he is. The people at Arvale were prisoners. They were bound to that house. My father wasn’t among them and I am never going back there. For all I know, he could be a prisoner himself somewhere. I have no idea where he went after his funeral, and he has not appeared to me again.”

  Augustus Howesman stood up and put his hands on Silas’s shoulders. A quick wind blew down the chimney and pushed smoke from the fire back into the dining room. He looked up toward the ceiling, as though he could hear something above. “Silas, do you know if all the windows upstairs are closed and locked?”

  Turning around, Silas said, “I think so. When I went up there, all the windows on the north wing had been sealed. My mother wouldn’t have opened them. Except for her bedroom, she hardly uses the upstairs rooms.”

  As though roused from sleep, the mantel clock began to stir itself and slowly chime.

  “Son, I don’t want to frighten you, but I am going to need you to be alert. I can’t explain everything you may see tonight. Hell, I don’t understand most of it myself. But believe me when I tell you your mother could still be in some danger. She, and those who keep vigil over her.”

  “Sir, I am not unaccustomed to terrible things. Tell me what might happen.”

  His great-grandfather stepped up close to Silas, his voice low and wavering. “It’s possible that something will come after your mother tonight. Maybe more than one thing. No one’s died in our family for some time, at least not in Lichport. But I’ve been told winter is the worst. The earth is frozen and some clamor and claw for a place to hole up. I am glad you’re here, because I’m not really sure what to do if we get into any trouble.” He smiled. “There are some problems even a wealthy man can’t write a check for.”

  Silas wasn’t distracted by his great-grandfather’s forced levity.

  “Sir, are you saying something may trouble her ghost?”

  “No, no, son . . . it will try to inhabit her body. If what I’ve heard is correct, it will come for her corpse.”

  IT WAS LATE AND THE store was quiet.

  Mother Peale’s daughter, Joan, had taken the truck to the Mennever place for the bull. Lord, but that would be something to see. When was the last bull brought to Lichport? Must have been years ago. What does that betoken? she wondered. Old ways all becoming new again and whatever would folk make of it? Certainly, the town had not grown more accepting in its decrepitude. And poor Silas at the heart of it all, and so likely to catch the blame should there be any trouble. So like his father . . . the boy was a magnet for misfortune, and there’d be more to come, as like as not. And here was a note from them on Fort Street to get a bull, then off the boy goes to Newfield to, she suspected, inquire of them even older ones. Maybe it’s just the way of the rich, old families. Those who were too well off to let go. The rich always have their traditions, and Dolores Umber was one of them, even though any money she’d had at the end came from the Umbers. “Well, well,” she said, “we will see what’s to be seen tomorrow.”

  Though the fire in the small stove next to her was burning do
wn, she was too comfortable in its lingering heat to brave the cold outside and make her way home. She might just doze in her chair and wait for Joan to come back. She picked a few small pieces of wood from the bucket and used one to open the belly of the stove. The warmth poured out toward her. Inside, the coals glowed like rubies, and tiny flames danced above them, wrapped in smoky veils. Within the wisps of smoke and flickering flames she could feel something coming—a vision lurking within the fire. She closed her eyes for a moment, drew a deep breath, then opened them and looked with intention into the glowing stomach of the stove.

  She saw a rider astride a horse of bones. Shadows were before and behind it, and the earth burned and buckled as the horse’s hooves struck the ground. A soft whimper escaped her and she sat back in her chair. She was sweating, and her brow was hot to the touch. Her eyes hurt from gazing too close to the fire, and her throat felt dry and sore. She leaned her head back, took a few quick breaths, and then said to the flames, “You horseman, you dark huntsman! You, who I see riding this night, you just pass on. In the name of the Almighty, ride ye on now and pass right on by and do not stop and do not return!”

  Even as she spoke, she felt the feebleness of her prayer.

  The huntsman was coming.

  She quickly shut the front of the stove. Then she rose from her chair and locked the front door. Recrossing the room, she moved her chair closer to the fire, for though her skin was warm to the touch, weren’t there suddenly goose bumps rising up and down both her arms, and wasn’t she shaking with chills?

  She sat down again and leaned her head back.

  Tomorrow, she thought, the soul bell must be rung. For the beloved dead and for the dead that return uninvited to put distress upon the living. She felt her legs shaking under the blanket, and hoped they’d be up to the long climb to the top of the bell tower.

  LEDGER

  Unseemly ghost, what dost thou here?

  Thou were in hell many a year.

  Who has unlocked hell’s door

  and let thee out?

  — FROM “THE PAINS OF HELL,” (JESUS COLLEGE MS. 29, LEAF 271, COLL. 2)

  Out of the east we come

  with hallows full of dread—

  an idol of bronze,

  and first-born’s blood—

  we come to rule the dead.

  — CREDO OF THE BROTHERHOOD OF THE EASTERN TEMPLE

  The oldest of the Wandering Spirits can be the worst of all, for they are bound to no single place and their histories, if they can be found, are broken at best. They come and go like storms and bring every manner of ill in their wake. And should they find some artifact connected to their past, both their desire to remain close to it, and their hatred for the living are considerable. Curses they call down against both kin and any who reside with or about them. Those old sealed tins are packed with such terrible ghosts, for who would claim the Wandering Spirits or wish to set them free, or risk their wrath? Who can know the sorrows they’ve endured, or what horrors they carry with them as they pass from one place to another?

  —MARGINALIA OF AMOS UMBER

  THE HUNTSMAN HAD LAIN LONG in the earth.

  A broken oath had set him free only to be hunted by the devils of the Summer House. He had known fear, and had fled before them. Now darkness was behind him, and in his heart churned restlessness, wrath, and hatred. Still, his pursuers had lost his trail or had abandoned the chase. The sound of their horns had faded and he was clear of them and wandering.

  The night was grown still. He found himself riding on the lych way, a pale ribbon of illumination flowing out across the land. With his pursuit abandoned, he might seek some other place of habitation. And he had quarry of his own to track. The hunt would not be over until the kill was draped over the horse.

  He would find the Undertaker. Surely he was dead by now.

  With a thin, knotted strip of leather hanging from his rotted sleeve, he whipped the horse until it rose up on its back legs and screamed as it leapt forward.

  Memory and pursuit. Past and present. Now all was one.

  He remembered coursing through the forest of five hundred years ago. He remembered his daughter running like a frightened doe as he bore down upon her. He remembered the crying of her babe and how his daughter’s fear had thrilled him. Those days were gone but not forgotten. His daughter was lost to him. The young Undertaker had put her and her child where he could not harm them, and in return, the huntsman had set a deathly curse upon the Undertaker’s arm.

  Now his revenge was nearly complete. He needed only the corpse of Silas Umber. And when that was burning within the idol of Moloch and the Undertaker’s flesh had fallen into ash, then all would be well done.

  The huntsman slowed what was left of his mount. The horse had been fashioned from bones and rotted wood, held together with grim spells, but during the chase, the necromantic vigor had gone out of the beast and the burning coals that were the horse’s eyes had nearly been extinguished. “O felix sonipes, tanti cui frena mereri numinis et sacris licuit seruire lupatis!” he said in mockery of the horse’s wretchedness, for truly, there is no nobility in a broken puppet.

  “Take me to the corpse of my enemy,” he said to the horse-thing.

  The creature threw back its head, unsure where to go.

  In the distance, the huntsman could see the glint of metal under the moon.

  As he approached the boundary, he summoned in his mind the words that might allow him to pass the gates.

  Somewhere in the distance, a marsh bird called out from the water’s edge.

  As he approached, he could see the gates rising up before him, and that they hung broken on their hinges. The way was open.

  The huntsman drew the reins back. Silas Umber, Undertaker, Janus of Arvale, keeper of the threshold, had not sealed the gates when he’d passed back into his own country.

  The huntsman looked at the land, wondering if the corpse he sought lay hard by. Perhaps the curse had claimed its due before Silas Umber had made it home? But seeing nothing upon the ground, slowly, with some trepidation, the huntsman rode over the boundary and past the gates.

  The air changed, and the qualities of the night intensified. Even the flashes of the distant stars were piercing. Stars. He was again moving through a world bound by time. A world in which he might, once more, claim authority.

  The horse shook its head, and splinters of bone flew from its neck.

  Reaching back with a hand of shriveled flesh and exposed bone, the huntsman struck the horse’s flank and shattered the rotten boards that formed its misshapen pelvis. But still it broke into a pathetic gallop, throwing its tortured head from side to side as it ran.

  The huntsman was well pleased. The air gave way easily before him. Nothing restrained his progress. The path was unguarded. Old Law held sway. There had been an unpaid debt between himself and the Undertaker, so Silas Umber could work no power against him, not then, and not now that the huntsman’s curse had driven the life from him. It would be a pleasure to drag the Undertaker’s corpse behind his horse and push it, finally, into Moloch, god of the furnace. And should the Undertaker’s ghost rise, he would consign that to oblivion as well. Like the ancients before, the huntsman would sacrifice a firstborn child and receive the gift of life and power over the living and the dead so long denied him.

  But before the huntsman could spit the Undertaker’s accursed name upon the ground with what remained of his lips, a sound took hold of his attention. Merely a whisper at first, a thin cry muffled by earth and stone, like a memory of a memory, yet it was terrible and familiar and ravishing. A child’s cry, then another, and another. And the smell of smoke, of burning flesh, and the sound of lamentations filled his frame with vigor.

  In the shadowland of Arvale, the idol of Moloch had been present in his prison house, as it had been present with him in life. Now he could feel with growing certainty, the idol still existed in the world beyond Arvale. His descendants had kept it, or, more likely, the Brothers
of the Temple had reclaimed it and taken it someplace where, hidden and safe, it had waited down the centuries. The idol was somewhere very close. Its presence gave off a kind of awful sound that enlivened him. It was the voice of his god. Moloch was calling him!

  The huntsman looked about. The lights and shapes of a town were around him: the town into which Silas Umber had fled.

  “Here shall be Hinnom!” he cried. “I shall dwell upon the hill of that god who requires only the blood of the firstborn for its beneficence! Moloch, Lord of the Earth! Moloch! Bull of blood! Where are you, Lord? Rise up so that you may receive the sacrifices I am eager to pour out for you!”

  Infected with the idol’s song, he rode faster. It was here. The statue was close but hidden.

  The streets of the town were becoming more discernable. To his left and right a house or small manor would rise up, broken, ruinous. The architecture was unfamiliar. He saw the cobbles of the street, briefly revealed like stones upon the shore, only to be swiftly hidden by waves of mist that flowed about him.

  The huntsman rode south upon a lane marked “Newfield” until the idol’s presence sang out like a mighty chorus within his mind. He turned his limping horse onto another lane and then halted along the side of a columned rotunda. He could feel the bronze god below the earth, waiting, eager to be worshipped. He pulled back quickly on the horse’s reins and the beast reared up, flames once more flying from its nostrils and winding through its wild mane. It leapt forward, casting down its head, and as the horse’s molten hooves struck the ground, the earth opened up, swallowing horse and rider both.

  Again, the huntsman knew darkness.

  A moment later he dismounted in a vast underground chamber. The horse shook, trembled, and collapsed into a pile of bones and charred wood. The huntsman barely noticed. He spoke words of conjure, and the sconces on the wall behind him crackled into acrid flame. Before him was a sort of corridor stacked high on both sides with the spoils of pilgrimages and holy wars: Egyptian sarcophagi, Assyrian statuary, every manner of heathendom rendered in bronze and stone and clay, and gold, all stacked and piled up along with some of the crates that once held them to make a sort of high walled lane. On many of the crates and coffers were scrawled the word “Lichport.” About him and in the distance, the air churned with echoes of those long-ago and hidden rites: chants and prayers brought from the east, drumming and the clanging of rough bronze bells, the piteous music of the cries of the sacrificed.