The moon is up and shines across his bedchamber with a clear cold light. Coombe thinks he has been awakened by a noise, but all is silence. Then he hears a sound. It is like wings fluttering in a confined space, a bird trapped in a box perhaps, but he cannot tell whether it comes from within the room or just outside the window. He chooses to believe the latter and sits up in bed to see out. There is not a cloud in the sky and the pitiless stars are out. The west front of the cathedral, whose details he can barely make out, looks to him like a hunched old man in rags, the dark rents in his clothing formed by the windows and niches of its elaborate façade. He is invaded by a feeling of infinite solitude, and in the silence that follows his ears become increasingly alert to any noise, but none comes. The stillness now seems to him unnatural.
As he continues to stare at the view beyond the window, screwing and unscrewing his eyes to get a better sight of it, he begins to be troubled by what he is looking at. For some moments he tries to find a rational explanation. At length his eyes become concentrated upon a dark bump or lump at the bottom of the window and beyond the glass. It looks to him as if he is staring at the top of a man’s head, the greater part of which is below the window. He even thinks he can make out a few wayward strands of hair upon it.
“Nonsense!” he says to himself several times. “Ridiculous! Impossible!” But the fancy does not leave him. Then the head begins to move and lift itself up, as if to look at him.
With a great cry Coombe leaps out of bed and dashes to the window in time to see a rook, which had been perched on the sill, flap away towards its building among the elms. It was only a rook! But then, rooks are not in the habit of perching on windowsills at dead of night.
Nothing more happened to the Dean that night, but he did not sleep. At breakfast the following morning his wife noted how pale and drawn he looked, but she offered no solicitude. That would have been to break the barrier that had arisen between them, and she could not do that. She felt safer behind it. The Dean would have been glad of some comfort, but he, like her, had passed the point of being able to ask for it.
That afternoon in the cathedral Dean Coombe was present when Palmer and his men began to ease away the memorial slab to Jeremiah Staveley. All had been prepared for the possibility of human remains being found in a recess behind the stone, but no one had anticipated the smell. As the slab, supported by ropes, came slowly away to be laid on a specially constructed wooden cradle, an overpowering odour pervaded not only the north transept but the whole cathedral. The organist stopped playing and several of the workmen took their hands off the stone slab to put handkerchiefs up to their noses. For a moment the memorial stone swung free on its ropes and threatened to crash into the wall and break into fragments, but just in time Palmer called his men to order and the object was laid to rest in its cradle on the scaffolding.
For almost half a minute after this had happened, nothing could be heard in that great cathedral but the sound of coughing and retching. One of the apprentice boys was violently ill into the font. Those who recalled the incident to me describe the odour as being one of mould, more vegetable than animal, “like,” as one told me, “a heap of decaying cucumbers in a damp cellar.” Others offered different similes, but all agreed that the scent stayed with them, on their clothes and in their nostrils for several days. Another told me that from that day forward he could never so much as look at a ripe cheese without feeling ill.
It was a while therefore before those present could bear to look at what the removal of the slab had revealed. When they did they found themselves looking at a figure that strikingly resembled the painted alabaster effigy which had been removed the previous day.
It was the body of a man in a black clerical gown with his arms crossed over his chest. The skin was still present, but dark yellow, leathery and stretched tightly over the bones. The eyes had fallen into the skull, the nose was somewhat flattened, but otherwise the face was in a remarkable state of preservation. As with the alabaster effigy, the mouth gaped slightly to reveal a set of jagged and discoloured teeth. The hair and beard were an intense and almost lustrous black. Even the nails were still present on the digits of the skeletal hands and feet. A seal ring on the third finger of the left hand was of bright, untarnished gold incised with an unusually elaborate geometrical figure.
In silence the company wondered at this strange vision, and it occurred to several of them that it was astonishing that the corpse still remained upright. Then, as they looked the body began to collapse and disintegrate before their eyes. The first thing to go was the lower jaw, which fell off the face and shattered into a thousand dusty fragments on the cathedral floor. Then, almost like a living thing, the corpse buckled at the knees, lurched slightly forward and plunged to the ground from its recess. A dreary sound, half way between a rattle and a sigh, accompanied this final dissolution.
It was a shocking moment, but the Dean was the first to recover from it. He commanded that the remains should be gathered up and placed in the long deal box which had been provided for the purpose.
While this was being done the Dean suddenly uttered a sharp: “No you don’t, young man!” and sprang upon one of the apprentices who had been putting Canon Staveley’s bones into the box. Dean Coombe thrust his hand into one of the boy’s pockets and brought out a bright, golden object. It was Staveley’s seal ring.
When I interviewed that boy ten years later, he was by then a most respectable young man, and the owner of a thriving building business in Morchester. He told me honestly that he had intended to steal the ring and sell it to buy medicine for his sick mother. Nevertheless, he said, he came to be very glad that he had been caught out in the theft. He also told me that Dean Coombe had not returned the ring to the deal box but had placed it in his waistcoat pocket, muttering something about “the cathedral museum”. I can testify that there is no sixteenth century seal ring among the antiquities on display in the Morchester Cathedral Museum.
When he left the cathedral later that day Dean Coombe seemed in more than usually good spirits. So we will leave him for a moment and return to the young apprentice whom I have mentioned. His name was Unsworth and he told me that Palmer, the head mason, a strict but fair man, had spoken to him sharply about the attempted theft, but knowing his situation with a sick mother and no father, said he would not dismiss him. Nevertheless, as a punishment, he made the boy stay on in the cathedral to sweep and tidy up after the other workmen had gone. Never, Unsworth told me, had he performed a task with greater reluctance.
If there had not been a verger or somebody about – Unsworth heard footsteps occasionally and some fragments of dry, muttered conversation – the boy might have fled the scene and braved the consequences. As it was, he did his work conscientiously in spite of the smell which was still all-pervasive.
One of his last tasks was to nail down the lid of the deal box which held the remains of Canon Staveley. Before the body was hidden forever from public gaze Unsworth felt a compulsion to take a last look at the corpse. Much of it had turned to dust but parts of the skull and the long thin limbs were intact with shreds of parchment skin still clinging to the bone. Curiously, the black gown in which Staveley was clothed had suffered even more than the body from exposure to the air. It was now in rags and tatters, no longer recognisable as a cassock.
Unsworth covered the deal box with the lid and banged in the nails with a hammer to secure it. With each blow of the hammer Unsworth fancied he heard a cry, distant, perhaps coming from a dog or a cat outside the cathedral. He finished his work with reckless speed.
As he left the cathedral, Unsworth told me, some sort of choir practice was in progress. He remembers the groan of the organ and a piercingly high treble voice singing in a style that was unfamiliar to him. Nevertheless he remembered the words because he knew that they came from the end of the 137th Psalm:
“Happy shall he be that taketh thy children and dasheth them against the stones.”
As he stepped outside the c
athedral Unsworth saw that the sun was low in the horizon sinking through a yellow sky dappled with purple cloudlets. He breathed the untainted evening air with relief. There were not many people about in the close and the noise of the day was hushed. The rooks had settled into their nests in the elms. It was a still evening with very little wind, perhaps even a trifle oppressive.
Unsworth had come out of the west door of the cathedral, the only one open at that time of day, but his home lay to the east of it. His quickest route home took him around the northern side of the cathedral with the setting sun behind him. Unsworth remembers feeling a vague sense of apprehension as he set off.
Along the northern side of the close were a few private dwellings and a long low stretch of almshouses occupied by the poor pensioners of the diocese. Unsworth could see a few of their windows dimly glowing. In front of these almshouses were little gardens bordered by a low stone wall with gates in them for each dwelling. Most of these gates were wooden and painted white which showed up against the grey stone houses and the deepening violet of the northern sky. As he rounded the north transept of the cathedral Unsworth had to pass quite near to these gates and it was then that he saw a human figure silhouetted against one of them.
He took the figure to be that of a man because he could see the legs which were unnaturally long and thin, almost stick-like in appearance. The arms were similarly emaciated and the head narrow and oblong. He could not see any clothes on the creature except for a few black rags, which fluttered faintly in the mild evening breeze.
He did not care to look too closely, but he took it to be some drunken vagrant, not simply because of the rags but because of the way it moved. It was swaying uneasily from side to side and waving its arms about. Unsworth told me that he was reminded of some long-legged insect, perhaps a spider, that has become stuck in a pool of jam and is making frantic efforts to escape from its entrapment. The thinness of those writhing legs and arms appalled him.
Unsworth started to run, but was brought up short by the sound of a cry. It was perfectly expressive, but so high above a human pitch that it resembled a dog whistle. It pierced his brain and stopped him from moving. The noise spoke to him of desolation and rage, like that of a child that has been left to scream in its cot, except that the cry was even more shrill and had no innocence to it. It was the shrieking fury of an old, old man. Unsworth found that his legs could not move. Looking behind him he saw that the stick creature had begun to stagger stiffly towards him, still uncertain on its feet, but with growing confidence.
A succession of little screams accompanied these staggering steps which seemed to indicate that movement was causing it pain, but that it was determined to stir. With its long attenuated legs it began to make strides towards him. It was coming on, but still Unsworth told me, he could not stir, “like in those dreams, sir,” he said, “when you want to fly but cannot.”
Suddenly the great bell of the cathedral boomed out the hour of seven and Unsworth was released from his paralysis. He ran and ran until he reached the gatehouse at the eastern end of the close where he stopped for breath and looked back. The creature was no longer coming towards him. He could see its starved outline clearly against the last of the setting sun. It had turned south-west and with long, slightly staggering strides was making its way, as Unsworth thought, towards the Deanery.
Let us now go there ourselves before whatever it was that Unsworth saw arrives.
Dean Coombe sups, as usual, with his wife and daughter. Conversation, even by Deanery standards, is not lively during this meal. It is plain to Mrs Coombe and her daughter Leonora that their master is preoccupied and anxious to escape from them to his study. Perhaps he has a sermon to write, thinks Mrs Coombe idly, half remembering a time when she interested herself passionately in his doings. Even the fact that her husband seems quite indifferent to her company no longer troubles her.
The Dean has barely taken his last mouthful when, with a muttered apology, he wipes his mouth with his napkin and excuses himself from the table. A few minutes later we find him in his study. A fire is glowing in the grate and an oil lamp illumines the desk on which it has been placed. Outside the uncurtained window dusk is falling rapidly over the cathedral close.
The Dean begins to take several volumes down from his shelves. One of those he needs is on the very topmost shelf, and to obtain it he makes use of a set of library steps. He plucks the book from its eyrie and, for some moments, he leafs through it rapidly on the top of the steps until we hear a little sigh of satisfaction. He descends the steps with his book which he places beneath the lamp on his desk. The work is Barrett’s Magus and the page at which it is open has many sigils and diagrams printed on it. The Dean now takes the gold seal ring from his waistcoat pocket and begins to compare the design incised upon it with those in the book.
There is a rap at the door. The Dean looks up sharply and plunges the golden ring back into his pocket.
“Yes!” he says in a voice, half-irritable, half-fearful.
The door opens. It is his wife. She says: “Stephen, did you hear that dreadful noise just now?”
“What noise, my dear?”
“A sort of shrieking sound. From the close. Do you think it is those boys from the workhouse making a nuisance of themselves again? Hadn’t you better see what is going on?”
“My dear, I heard nothing. Are you sure it wasn’t a bird of some kind?”
“No, of course, it wasn’t a bird. It was nothing like a bird. I would have said if it was a bird. Are you sure you heard nothing?”
“Quite sure, my dear,” says Dean Coombe in his mildest voice, though inwardly he seethes with impatience. The truth is, he has heard something, but he does not want to prolong the conversation with his wife. Mrs Coombe expresses her incredulity with a pronounced sniff and leaves the room, shutting the door in a marked manner.
As soon as she is gone the Dean has taken the ring from his pocket once again and begins to pore over the designs in the book. So intent is he on his studies that at first he really does not hear the odd crackling noise that begins to manifest itself outside his window. It is a sound like the snapping of dry twigs. Slowly however, he becomes vaguely aware of some mild irritant assaulting the outer reaches of his consciousness, but he applies himself all the more ferociously to his research. Then something taps on his window.
Startled he looks up. What was it? The beak of a bird? There it is again! No, it is not a bird. Some sort of twig-like object or objects were rattling against the pane. Perhaps his wife had been right and it was those wretched workhouse boys up to their pranks. Dean Coombe goes to the window and opens it.
It was at this moment that a Mrs Meggs happened to be passing the Deanery. She was the wife of a local corn merchant and a woman of irreproachable respectability. I had the good fortune to interview her at some length about what she saw that evening, and, after some initial reluctance, she proved to be a most conscientious witness.
Despite the gathering dusk, she told me, there was still light enough to see by. What she saw first was something crouching in the flowerbed below the window of the Dean’s study. It appeared to be a man in rags, “though ’twas all skin and bone, and more like a scarecrow than a living being,” she told me. The man’s hands were raised above his head, and with his immensely long and narrow fingers he appeared to be rattling on the Dean’s window. Then Mrs Meggs saw the Dean open the window and look out, “very cross in the face,” as she put it. Immediately the figure that had been crouched below the windowsill reared up and appeared to embrace the Dean with its long thin arms. It might have looked like a gesture of affection except that for a moment Mrs Meggs saw the expression on Dean Coombe’s face which, she said, was one of “mortal terror”.
“Next moment,” Mrs Meggs told me, “the thin fellow in rags had launched himself through the window after the Dean and I heard a crash inside. Then I heard some shouting and some words, not distinct, but I do remember hearing the Dean cry out, ‘God curse
you, take your ring back, you fiend!’ And I remember thinking such were not the words that should be uttered by a Man of God, as you might say. Then comes another crashing, and a cry such as I never hope to hear again as long as I live. It was agony and terror all in one. Well, by this time I was got to the door of the Deanery and banging on it with my umbrella for dear life. The maid lets me in, all of a flutter, and when we come to the Dean’s study, Mrs Dean and Miss Leonora, the Dean’s daughter, were there already, and Miss Leonora screaming fit to wake the dead. And who could blame her, poor mite? For I saw the Dean and he was all stretched back in his chair, his head twisted, and his mouth open and black blood coming out of it. There was no expression in the eyes, for he had no eyes, but only black and scorched holes as if two burning twigs had been thrust into their sockets.”
Only one thing remains to tell. At the Dean’s funeral in the cathedral some weeks later it was noticed that, though the widow was present, Dean Coombe’s daughter, Leonora was not. However, as the congregation were leaving the cathedral after the service, they heard a cry in the air above them. Looking up they saw a tiny figure on the south tower of the west front. It appeared to be that of a woman waving her arms in the air. Some of the more sharp-sighted among the crowd recognised the figure as that of Miss Leonora Coombe.
In horrified impotence they watched as Leonora mounted the battlements of the tower and hurled herself off it onto the flagstone path at the base of the cathedral. Her skirts billowed out during the fall but did nothing to break it, and, as she descended, all the rooks in the elms of the close seemed to rise as one and set up their hoarse cries of “kaa, kaa, kaa”.
When Leonora hit the ground her head was shattered, and the only mercy of it was that she had died instantly.
Later, in recalling this final episode of the tragedy, several witnesses quoted to me, as if compelled by some inner voice, those final words of the 137th psalm:
The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 23 (Mammoth Books) Page 38