A peacock appeared in the entrance and he watched it pause and display its extraordinary fan of feathers, bending its neck as though it was bowing to him. As he watched its feathers retract, he became aware of a voice which had been audible for some time, but which in his daze he hadn’t noticed. It was a girl’s voice carried softly by the wind from somewhere beyond the hedgerows, and it fixed him to his seat, unable to move.
Her words were so gentle and sad that they sounded almost like spoken song. She said how she had woken up in this strange place, and that she did not know how she had got here, only that lots of time had passed. She wondered whether this was heaven, or perhaps purgatory, and if she would be trapped here for all eternity, and whether anyone could even hear the words she was saying. She had hoped to see her family again in the afterlife, she said, as all of them were dead, and it had been the only wish of her short life to do so. But they were not here, no one was here . . . She began to sob bitterly, and then angrily, as if going mad with desperation.
Bartle remained in his seat, staring at the fountain but not seeing it, as a silence fell. A new chill began to settle into his bones as he got the sense that he was being looked at, and it intensified suddenly, with the strong feeling that someone was standing behind him.
‘You!’ said a voice in his ear. He shouted and jumped up, turning round. But the garden was as peaceful and empty as ever.
‘You did this to me!’ came the voice again, as close as if its owner’s mouth was next to his ear. He broke into a run for the house, covering his ears, and finding that this made no difference to the voice.
‘You’ve brought me here, you’ve trapped me . . .’ it went on as he reached the open French windows and ran inside. The voice was dark and cold with anger. Now she was talking fast and her bitterness grew with every word.
‘I will drive you mad,’ she was saying. ‘I’ll drive you to your death. I’ll haunt your every waking moment, and haunt your dreams . . .’
He was in his room now, pulling frantically on the rope to call his valet. When Smuck arrived, he was piling clothes from his wardrobe on to his bed and, without looking up, he said, ‘Smuck, I am going on holiday. I leave at once. Send all the essentials on after me.’
‘Very good, sir,’ said Smuck, passing from the room without a sound.
Bartle pulled on an overcoat, grabbed his passport and pocket book, crammed them into his coat pocket and ran out of the house. He took Trumpty from the stables, left word of his destination and rode for mile after mile across the countryside.
He didn’t want to stop until the voice was gone from his head. At first it was the pounding of hoofs on earth that drummed it out. Then, once he reached the nearest port, the clatter of the horse crossing the cobbles was even louder. He rode clear up to the side of a ship due to leave at any minute, and the crashing of the waves against the side of the vessel was louder even than the noise of the cobblestones. He paid a boy to stable the horse, and when he had secured passage on the boat he leaned over the side for the whole journey. He listened to the stormy sea, and occasionally felt very sick indeed, for he was a poor traveller at best, but for once he didn’t care.
He did not relax for the whole journey by boat, even when the seas calmed and he realized he could not hear the voice any more. On the other side of the Channel, he bought a fresh horse and set out again. For four days and nights he rode until he found himself at another coast and here, at last, he rested.
He bought new clothes, rented a hotel room, cleaned himself up and poured a glass of champagne to drink while he dressed in his smart new dinner jacket. He began to hope for the first time that his madness, or his possession by spirits, whichever it was, might have left him.
When he was ready, he went down to a very expensive and delicious dinner in the restaurant that overlooked the ocean and when he was so full and happy that he could barely remember the troubles of the past few days, he walked through to the hotel’s casino. He watched the games being played for a while and enjoyed the excitement of seeing rich men and beautiful women winning and losing vast sums of money, persuaded now that a few days in the hotel would be enough to make him feel well. At the table of roulette (a ridiculous game that some adults who are disappointed with life like to play, because they are bound to lose) he stopped to gamble some money for fun. In roulette, a circular board with forty numbers spins round and round and a little ball spins round it in the opposite direction, eventually landing against one of the numbers. He picked twenty-four, because it was his age, but the ball spun and dropped, and landed against the number sixteen.
‘Twenty-four! I knew that’d never win!’ said a female voice in his ear.
Bartle twisted round. There was no woman within twenty feet of him. ‘No! It can’t be! I can’t bear it!’ he cried. The other players stared, and thought he was overreacting a little to losing one bet, but Bartle paid them no attention. He clutched his head once more with both hands and stumbled through the casino, and out into the street.
He knew what he must do, but could not bear to think about it. In fact he was desperately trying not to think at all, lest he hear the voice again, which he feared would drive him so far out of his mind that he might throw himself from a bridge, or instantly drop dead. Without recovering any of his personal effects, and dressed quite inappropriately for the journey, he found a horse and set off for home at once.
The speed he made on his way back made the first journey seem like a relaxing jaunt. He fairly tore a hole through the countryside without stopping or eating or thinking. Three horses died from fatigue underneath him, but each time he simply ran to the nearest stable, bought another and rode on, faster than before.
Soon he was at the coast again, where, without his passport, he stowed away in the hull of a fishing boat, which reeked of stale and rotting fish. He did not care. He leaped from the side of the boat once it reached the shore on the other side of the Channel and rushed to the local ostler to reclaim Trumpty for the final leg of the journey .
He arrived home unrecognizable: thin, bearded and haggard, his torn dinner jacket hanging from him in muddy strips. Silently he let himself in with his key and stole down the long corridors towards his rooms. The voice now rang out, echoing in the chambers of his head as loud as it would have down the miles of corridor. She swore vengeance, she laughed coarsely, she screamed for minutes on end, her voice never becoming hoarse. As he reached his room, he saw the clock standing exactly as before.
‘This will all be over soon,’ said Bartle, walking doggedly forward. He tore one of the tall curtains down from its rail and spread it out on the floor behind the clock. Then he ran at it and barged it with all his strength sixteen or seventeen times, until finally it fell over with a heavy smash of breaking glass and splintering ebony .
‘What are you doing?’ asked the girl’s voice.
‘Shh!’ said Bartle, holding a finger to his lips. He listened, but could hear no steps coming towards the room. The servants’ quarters were so far away they probably wouldn’t have heard if he had been conducting a sixty-four-piece orchestra, or testing a dozen of the navy’s largest cannons. T a king two corners of the curtain in his hands, with all his streng th he dragged the clock over acre after acre of polished floor to the front door where Trumpty waited.
The long journey he had made and the effort of dragging the huge clock told on him, and he felt weak as he tied the edge of the curtain tightly to the horse’s saddle. Then, even though it was deep into the night and raining hard, he climbed wearily up into the saddle and set off back into town, and down the hill towards the bridge in the rainy district where he had first encountered Mr Grum. The strange-looking package slid along behind him, silently through mud and noisily over stone.
It was the sort of downpour usual to Tumblewater Hill at that time of night but unlike any Bartle had ever known – dense, slanting rain almost violent enough to knock you over. He struggled against it with his eyes averted and shivers running down hi
m, his exhaustion almost defeating him. As they reached the bridge, the horse staggered with the weight of the clock and, slipping down off him, Bartle used the last of his streng th to get the clock propped upright against the wall, ready to be tipped over into the thundering torrent. He stared at its face as the clock of St Hildred’s on the hill behind him began to strike five o’clock in the morning. His own clock, nearly destroyed as it was, struck at exactly the same time.
‘What are you doing?’ asked the voice in his head, bewildered.
‘It’s the only way,’ he said apologetically, feeling that in a few seconds his life might be his own again.
As she realized what was about to happen, she began to shout encouragement. ‘Do it!’ screamed the voice. ‘Nothing can be worse than this! Push me in!’
Slowly, as the twin clocks struck the last chime of the hour, and at the last minute feeling a great sadness, Bartle leaned the clock back until it lay balanced across the bridge wall, and then turned it over to fall down into the raging water. He looked up and opened his mouth to sigh with relief only to find it opening wider with horror as he was pulled violently forward, tumbling over the wall himself. He managed to hang on to the edge for an instant and realized in panic that one of the straggling cuffs of his coat had caught on the corner of the clock’s base before its weight pulled him down towards the mad, thrashing water. He pounded into it, and the waves crossed over each other again as though he had never existed, and he knew nothing more.
‘Is that the time?’ said a quiet voice that Bartle recognized.
He tried to open his eyes, happy to be alive, only to find he couldn’t quite feel them. Slowly he found he could see the brown, dirty colours of a small room containing a few cheap chairs and in one of them, a very little, very old man. It was the same strange individual whom he had seen in that crooked little street so long ago.
‘What am I doing here?’ he said.
The little old man stared placidly back, and said, ‘I am pleased with you, little clock. I thought I’d never find a replacement after that funny impatient man broke my last one. Rude sort of fellow he was.’
Tr ying not to be alarmed, Bartle repeated, ‘What’s going on? Can you not hear me? Hello? HELLO?’
The little old man sat, wearing his contented little smile. He raised a tiny cup to his lips, sipped it, raised his eyebrows in appreciation, and lowered the cup again. Slowly, Bartle realized that not only was he unable to feel his eyes, but neither could he feel his arms, or his legs, or any thing at all. Then he felt the gentle, steady swish of something like an arm, or a finger, but which was not quite either. It kept moving, though, slowly, round in a circular movement that in an arm would be horribly awkward. But this wasn’t uncomfortable – it felt more natural with each passing second, and it refused to stop.
The old man sipped his tea again and smiled benevolently. ‘But Mr Grum came through at last. Good old Mr Grum. And now I have you, little clock. And we can look forward to many happy years together. After all, my mother only died last Christmas, and she was two hundred and forty-three. And her mother only died the year before that, and she was . . .’
As the old man’s speech petered out and he fell into a doze, Bartle remembered his deafness, and his efforts to get the old man’s attention died in the air. He thought hard, and wondered what he might do to escape. A man of his ability would not be trapped like this for long, he was sure of that. He looked around the room for something to help him, but couldn’t see anything at present. That was all right. He would be out of here soon. He would wait.
When the villainous-looking man had finished his tale, there were murmurs of appreciation from the room. I saw that a few people had left but that more had joined us, and the fire had been replenished so that young flames flickered hesitantly around the fresh coals. The man who had been serving drinks was sitting near the storyteller, his chin on his hand, as if reluctant to accept that the story had ended.
Once again, I had a new favourite tale. I longed to live through the night, and the week, so that I could write them down for Jaspers & Periwether to publish. I sat on the sill and stared out of the window.
Without waiting for people to say what they thought of Rudy’s story, the hard-voiced woman said, ‘You like that one? Wait till you hear mine.’
So she began another story – a very good one about a miser, which I want to write down here, but I’m running out of space, so it’ll have to wait for another book. And when she had finished someone else told another about a chimney sweep who made a terrible discovery. This story was followed by another, and then another. As they spoke, I opened the silver box that I’d been holding, and discreetly looked at what was inside it. What I found consumed my thoughts for a few minutes, and afterwards I sat listening to more stories and watching the flooded street, which had swelled to a fast-flowing river. I committed the tales to memory as I heard them, relishing their bloodcurdling endings. Outside the window the water rose as high as my neck, making it feel as though I was underwater, and the strength of the current was fearful – it was hard to believe the glass would hold it out.
As a new story began, I turned my attention back to the room, but at the last second glanced back and thought I saw a dark shape beneath the water. I looked again – it was still there: the size of a man, hovering with great strength against the current. Suddenly it coiled like an eel, and disappeared. I told myself it could have been a shadow, except there was no moon to cast it. Then I thought it could have been a sack or cloak – except that it had flowed away uphill, against the stream. I couldn’t deny that it was man-sized, and that what I had seen kicking at its side looked a lot like clawed feet.
I put this to the back of my mind, pulled the silver box close to me and enfolded it with my arms, only to find that everyone in the room was looking at me, as though waiting for me to say something. I realized that someone had asked me a question, and I hadn’t heard it.
The woman by the fire repeated herself: ‘Daniel, you know it’s only fair?’
‘What is?’ I said.
‘Seeing as we’re giving you all these stories, young man, it’s only right that you should tell us one of your own.’
I hesitated. ‘Until a moment ago, I would have said that I didn’t have one.’ The silver box was open on my lap, its contents spread around.
‘But it turns out I do. This, then, is my story:
‘My first memory,’ I began, and now it’s time to tell you, too, what had brought me to Tumblewater . . .
. . . is of being in the orphanage. I never knew my parents, and don’t have even the faintest glimmering memory of them. My brothers and sisters were the other orphans who had grown up in this tall building in the countryside, miles from the nearest village. It was run by an old couple called Mr and Mrs Gammery who looked after us well but without affection, as though they didn’t understand why children would need such a thing. When one of the children reached the age to leave, which is sixteen, they would find them a place to live and a place to work and put five pounds in their pocket, which is more than many parents can do, so we were lucky in that regard.
I didn’t know what I was missing in not having parents, and told myself I was quite a lucky boy in that respect too. The orphanage grounds were large and had a big pond and the ruins of a cottage in one corner where we could play and make up stories. All in all this was a much larger playground than most children have so, more than ever, I felt lucky, and didn’t miss my parents, or feel too sorry for myself.
That is until a few months ago, shortly before I was to leave, when I started to hear rumours from other children that I had once had a sister. A real flesh-and-blood sister! The idea that this might be true and that it had been kept from me made me wild. I became uncontrollable, running away from home for days on end and climbing high up into trees where no one could find me. Finally I confronted the Gammerys and they admitted it was the truth. I had had an older sister. She had died before I was two years old.
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As you can understand, the news made me inconsolably sad, and for days afterwards I was quiet and withdrawn, walking around the grounds in silence, uninterested in the other children. I couldn’t stop thinking about how I had always wanted a brother or sister, and wondering what she had been like. Finally, I asked Mrs Gammery if I could see my sister’s grave. Instead of answering straight away, she hesitated, and eventually said, ‘Of course, Daniel. Of course you must.’ She promised they would take me at the weekend, in a few days’ time.
When the day came, they rode with me out to the cemetery. Mr Gammery stopped at the graveyard gate smoking his pipe, and looked away, as if to save my feelings. Mrs Gammery walked me into the mossiest, most overgrown corner and pointed between a carved marble angel and a wide, deep sarcophagus, both very decayed, to a stone twenty feet away. I walked forward carefully, not wanting to disturb anything. What I saw was not quite what I expected.
The stone was untouched – so spotless the engraving even looked fresh. For some reason, as I looked at it the sadness I had expected to feel did not come. MARIA DOREY, read the inscription. She had been fifteen years old.
Walking back towards Mrs Gammery, I looked at the other gravestones in this part of the graveyard. The most recent one I saw was over a hundred years old, and crumbling at the edges.
The next week I asked to go back again. This time Mr Gammery took me on his own and again he stopped to smoke at the gate as I went in. I had lain awake for several nights, wondering why I hadn’t felt sad at seeing my sister’s grave, and now I got there I realized I wasn’t even interested in her grave at all, but found myself exploring the newer part of the graveyard instead, where the graves were much more recent – some of them so new that they still had mounds of earth piled on them. Without knowing what I was looking for, eventually my attention strayed to the far corner, across a patch of untouched grass, where a holly bush grew. I went over to it and saw a stone had been leaned against the wall, hidden by the holly. It was much older than all of the other stones in this part of the graveyard – a hundred and twenty years older than those nearby – but the inscription was still quite clear. It read Elizabeth Hope Stranger. The earth beneath the bush was dry and starved of sun, so it was impossible to tell if it had ever been disturbed. As I walked back to Mr Gammery, I wondered why it had been hidden away in a forgotten corner.
Grisly Tales from Tumblewater Page 18