The air inside smelt of old canvas and trampled grass, and was cool, sharp and agricultural. The boy entered suspiciously, glancing covertly about him as though he feared he might be entering a trap. Daniel smiled sadly at this display of adolescent unease, and wished he could say or do something to quell his son’s excessive self-consciousness and irrational and seemingly habitual anxiety.
A couple of the men moved aside as Daniel reached the bar, but not very far, as though they were none too keen to make way. They seemed incurious about the visitors, and otherwise ignored them. Daniel postponed asking about his car for the moment, and bought a pint of pale, soapy looking beer for himself and cola for Marc. There was no food on offer. They sat at a skimpy table some distance from the other drinkers, on metal chairs with thin legs that dug into the ground under their weight.
‘That sinking feeling,’ Daniel thought ruefully. He sipped his beer. It was flat but sharp, like brine. Undrinkable. So far, the day had been a failure: Marc would certainly have preferred to have stayed at home. They should have gone bowling, as usual. Marc was simply not interested in the countryside: to the city boy, it was like a foreign land, and a hostile one at that.
‘Looks as though they’re going to put on some kind of play,’ Marc said, after he had observed the assembled men for a while. ‘Two of them are wearing masks, I think.’
Daniel turned and followed Marc’s line of vision, towards four of the men at the far end of the bar. They were standing very close together and bending forward so their faces were hidden.
‘The two in the middle,’ Marc said, speaking very quietly. ‘You won’t be able to see them from where you’re sitting, but I can, just.’
After tugging his chair out of the soft turf Daniel edged closer to his son. As if aware of his stratagem, the men bunched even closer, though they were still looking away and could not have caught the movements behind them.
‘Perhaps they’re mummers, Marc,’ Daniel suggested. ‘Amateur actors. They perform old folk plays,’ he explained, when he saw the boy’s look of incomprehension. ‘A bit like pantomimes, that sort of thing, with lots of fooling about.’
‘Their masks aren’t very funny. They’re weird. They look like fish.’
Daniel nodded. ‘That’s about right. Probably goes back to nature worship - giving thanks for the creatures of the field and stream. Or maybe it’s religious, what they call a mystery play - Noah’s Ark, and the animals going in two by two.’
‘I didn’t know he had fish on board.’
‘Well, perhaps not,’ Daniel admitted. ‘The Flood wouldn’t have troubled them, I don’t suppose. Though some of them might have got stranded in some strange places when the waters went down.’
Marc shrugged. He was still studying the four men. ‘The others aren’t wearing masks.’
‘They may put them on later. I expect your face gets hot under one of those things on a day like this.’
Marc grimaced and pushed his half-empty glass of cola to the centre of the table. ‘You were going to ask the way to the car.’
‘Yup; you’re right. We should be going.’
Feeling, nevertheless, rather irresolute, Daniel rose again from his sunken seat and approached the person nearest to him at the bar.
‘Excuse me.’ He tapped the man lightly on the arm, then repeated the request for directions he had made to the elderly pedestrian earlier. There was no immediate response, though the man tensed, so Daniel knew he had made some kind of contact. He remained where he was, aware that he loomed rather over the assembled company. He deliberately laid a hand on the counter where he knew it would be seen by the person standing beside him, and drummed his fingers hopefully on the beer-soaked wooden surface. At last the man swivelled round from the hips, looked up, and gave Daniel a hard stare. He had a raw, red face, cracked at angles around the nose and mouth like old leather, and tiny, round eyes: very tiny eyes, Daniel thought, and felt himself gasp as he looked into them. About the same size and shape as his thumb nail, they were as insensate and uncomprehending as stones, and shone brightly, as though they had been polished. Daniel dropped his own gaze away from them at once, down to the man’s mouth, that was slowly opening.
Nearby, someone began to chatter in what sounded like a foreign language. The man next to Daniel, speaking backwards over his shoulder, answered in the same tongue. The men exchanged a few short sentences, their voices clicking and clucking like angry chickens, or so it seemed to Daniel’s ears, then both fell silent. The person Daniel had originally addressed turned back towards his companion then, deliberately, in a gesture positively dismissive of himself, Daniel thought.
He was annoyed with this treatment, but alarmed as well. At first, he had half-suspected the men were speaking in made-up gibberish, to make fun of him, but the absolute lack of any sign of humour in their expressions; in their lack, indeed, of recognizable emotions on their faces at all; and the absence of any motive to mock him that he could think of, made him doubt the truth of that surmise. And the man’s little eyes! Those utterly strange crystalline eyes that had registered absolutely nothing when they had been turned towards him, as though he had been invisible!
Except to turn to look at him, the man had totally ignored him, though he suspected he was the subject of the exchange of speech that had then ensued.
Now feeling almost desperately in need of the simple information he had been seeking, Daniel was tempted to move down the line of men and try again with someone else. Then he remembered Marc’s observation that some of those at the far end were perhaps wearing masks. It occurred to him that the person he had just approached, seen from some distance, might have been thought to have been wearing a mask too, so rigid had been his features. He leaned forwards over the bar and looked down its length, along the front of the line of men, who were all a good six inches or more shorter than himself, in an attempt to get a better angle to take a look at them individually. As he moved, they did too, as though they were joined together by wires.
No, Daniel thought - not quite like that: more like a shoal of fish dipping and turning away through clear water in formation, with perfect coordination, as though they could read each other’s thoughts and intentions!
And, by implication, his, as well.
Though none of them had been looking in his direction, they had changed position in such a way, and so expertly, that he could not see any part of any one of their faces.
He experimented one more time, pushing himself even further forward, with the same result. Each of the little men at once adjusted his posture so as to conceal his own and his nearest companion’s features.
They’re all wearing masks, Daniel thought. Or none of them are. That’s what they’re hiding. None of them have real faces!
He stumbled back away from the bar and spoke Marc’s name sharply. The boy jumped to his feet in consternation at the tone of his father’s voice.
Daniel grabbed his son and hauled him towards the exit flap, which, as they approached it, bulged towards them as someone pushed through into the marquee from the outside. A figure emerged rather hurriedly. A man about five feet tall, his head thatched with layers of short grey hair, with a long, bone-thin, but otherwise normal, mobile face, stood just inside the tent in front of Daniel and Marc. He was not so much clothed as enwrapped, or self-enshrouded, in a full-length cape of some dark, drab material he gripped close about him, and through which only his head and scrawny wrists and hands protruded, his feet being hidden by folds of cloth that trailed the ground around him. The man barred their way by his presence, but there was nothing overtly threatening about him. He held out both hands in front of him at waist height in what could have been a gesture of benediction, then moved one hand further forward purposefully. Somewhat reluctantly, Daniel took it and shook it. The man smiled broadly, arching his eyes in a way that gave him a slightly ludicrous, even clownish, look.
‘Welcome, welcome,’ he gushed, in a high, buzzing voice. ‘It’s good of you to
come and support our little gathering. I hope you’ve been having fun.’
Fun? Daniel looked the man in the eyes searching for signs of mockery, or, at least, of irony. He saw none.
‘We just happened to be passing through,’ he explained, ‘and stopped to take a look round. We didn’t come specially to attend this . . . event.’
The man shook his head sorrowfully. ‘We get so few visitors here,’ he complained. ‘It’s such an out-of-the-way spot. We are, all of us here, in some sense, refugees from the world, if the truth be known, and perhaps a little too isolated. It’s only rarely that anyone discovers our existence, and comes amongst us. When we are discovered, and someone wanders into our community from outside, it’s always a time of great excitement for us. And sadly, very sadly, nobody ever comes back. It’s such a difficult place to find, and people like yourself forget about our existence so easily, so quickly.’
Daniel thought the man must be exaggerating wildly, and wondered if he was quite right in the head. The sample section of the population he had met seemed anything but excited to see visitors.
‘We got lost, actually. Found this place by accident.’
‘Quite so.’
‘Then we mislaid our car.’
‘Really!’ The man made it sound like a clever thing to do.
‘I’d appreciate some help,’ Daniel admitted. ‘Some directions.’
‘Of course you would,’ the man agreed. ‘I can understand that.’
‘We searched about, but seemed to be going round in circles.’
‘Well, yes; you probably were. It’s a maze of a place, our village. It couldn’t be more difficult to find your way about. It’s almost as though it had been designed to confuse.’ All this was said in a cheerful, matter-of-fact way, but was hardly helpful, Daniel thought.
‘We parked the car by the river,’ he said. ‘If you could point us in that direction?’
‘No problem at all.’ The man smiled benignly. ‘The simplest thing in the world.’ He had released his grasp of the huge cloak he was draped in when he had shaken hands. Gradually, it had fallen loose around his neck to reveal a dog-collar. A grubby, grey and frayed dog-collar. ‘The only difficulty is, which part of the river?’ he continued. ‘It flows all around, you see.’
Daniel had heard that before. ‘It can hardly flow all around,’ he protested.
‘I assure you it does,’ the reverend gentleman insisted. ‘Quite literally so. Round and round and round.’
‘Dad!’ Marc sounded angry and impatient. Daniel turned towards him. The boy pulled a crazy face, tapped his left temple, and inclined his head towards the man in the dog-collar.
The vicar saw this, and grinned brightly. Slowly, with smooth motions, he placed his hands together across his chest as though he was about to pray, audibly took a deep breath, then abruptly reached forward and thrust out his hands so the tips of his index fingers just touched Marc’s forehead in the centre, directly above his nose. The boy stood fixed to the spot for a moment, then he gasped and reacted belatedly by jerking his head back seconds after the contact had been made. Daniel turned towards the priest to protest at what could have been an aggressive action, but, as he did so Marc dodged swiftly round the figure in front of them and exited through the flap in the canvas. Daniel, after a brief hesitation, followed him. The vicar, who made no attempt to obstruct either of them, followed Daniel.
Marc was almost running now, past the front of the red brick house close to which the now absent band had been playing. Daniel had no choice but to pursue him. Unabashed, the man in the cloak trotted beside him.
‘I think the boy must be anxious to visit hallowed ground,’ he said. ‘He’s heading in that direction. Your son, I assume?’
Daniel grunted in acknowledgment of this fact.
‘A fine lad. He’ll find plenty to amuse him in our place of worship if he’s interested in that sort of thing.’
‘He isn’t. Not even slightly. As far as I know, he’s never been inside a church in his life.’
‘Really?’ The little man seemed to sneer, then took command of himself and forced his face back into its customary expression of excessive good humour. ‘Well, I suppose there must be many young people like that nowadays. We are all regular attendees here, of course. We’re holding a service very soon, as it happens. I’m on my way to prepare for it now. I hope you’ll join us.’
‘I’d rather be on my way out of this place.’
‘But your son has other ideas, I think.’
‘You’re wrong. I’m certain he hasn’t the slightest interest in your bloody church.’
‘We shall see,’ the vicar said amiably, apparently unoffended by Daniel’s deliberate rudeness.
Ahead of them a bare, gaunt, ugly building had become visible through the trees at the back of the garden. Its walls had a sickly green colour, and it had a red tiled roof. At first it looked nothing like a church, but Daniel saw that its windows were of stained glass, and that it was situated at the edge of a tiny graveyard containing perhaps a couple of dozen weather-worn tombstones. Then, with a shock, he realized why the bleak, slab-sided building was so lacking in ecclesiastical charisma: the outer surface of the walls had been coated with what looked like cement. To keep out the damp, presumably. Pale green moss or lichen had grown over most of this cladding, creating an unpleasant, messy, musty effect. Daniel thought, as he drew nearer to the place, he could detect a concomitant odour of damp rottenness in the air. A tall tower, like a fat chimney with many unglazed windows, was attached to one corner of the building.
Marc disappeared briefly behind some shrubbery, then re-emerged near a gate in the fence at the back of the garden. Here he paused briefly and looked back, then slipped through the gate into the graveyard beyond.
Two slender, stooping, darkly dressed figures came out of the church and stood close to the porch in front of the open door. They were looking towards Marc as though they were expecting him to arrive at that moment: had, indeed, been waiting for him. This was somewhat disconcerting, but there was nothing very alarming about their appearance: from their movements they seemed to be a rather frail, elderly couple. Vergers, probably, but the sight of them caused Daniel’s heart to trip in a sudden and poignant surge of apprehension. For no obvious reason, he was suddenly concerned for his son’s physical safety. He came to a stop, to consider his position.
He found he was still holding the prize he had won earlier. The thing had come partially unwrapped, and he was able to see what it was; a model of the object he and Marc had discovered soon after they had arrived in the village, that he had decided was some kind of monument. About fifteen inches long, it was well made, with very finely worked details, he noticed, even down to the lettering on the broken stone tablet at the base. It was made of some yellow metal that shone like gold. The figure emerging from the base, stripped, in the representation, of the clinging briars that masked the actual object, was rendered with fastidious care. It appeared to be that of a victorious warrior, and certainly not an angel. The projections on its back could have been rudimentary wings, though they more resembled fins. Its minute face pulled tight in an expression of gleeful, vindictive triumph, snarled up at Daniel, baring its tiny sharp teeth. Its one raised fist appeared to stab the air victoriously. It looked somehow familiar, and it took Daniel a few moments to realize it could have been a portrait of the seemingly demented clergyman as a much younger man. He considered hurling the ugly thing away, but something made him finally reluctant to do that, and he rewrapped it as best he could and stuffed it upside down into his pocket.
The vicar, meanwhile, had marched on towards the church, presumably to participate in the forthcoming service he had mentioned. There was no sign of Marc now, or the two old people who had positioned themselves outside the building, and the vicar, well ahead and striding swiftly, would soon reach the church himself. Daniel started after him, but he knew there was no hope of catching up with the man before he vanished inside. As he
entered the graveyard he heard a loud noise in front of him and assumed the vicar had slammed the door shut behind him. Daniel guessed it would be locked when he reached it, and found he was correct in that assumption. He rattled the latch, twisted the big iron handle, and thumped the solid, heavy wooden door with the palm of his hand, to no effect.
He was used to the idea that many country churches were kept locked most of the time for fear of burglars, but he had never heard of anyone shutting in the congregation! He suspected there were people inside, though he had not actually seen anyone enter. Probably a large proportion of the population of the village were gathered there. And where else could his son have gone, unless he was hiding behind one of the gravestones? No: Daniel was sure the boy had long since grown out of such foolishness: at his age, he was too self-conscious and insecure to play infantile pranks.
The Gollancz Book of Horror - [Dark Terrors 05] Page 39