by Scare Street
Richard kissed his fiancée on the tip of her nose and got out of the car. Behind him, he heard her exclaim ‘Oh. My. God!’ presumably at some celebrity scandal or a bit of tasty gossip from one of her friends. There was the rustle of a plastic packet as she carried out her chip-based threat.
He shut the car door and took a deep breath. It was fine, country air, he concluded. When he inhaled again, he gagged, having swallowed what was almost certainly a fly. The air seemed thick with tiny, black dots darting around.
“Bugger!” he cursed in between coughs and splutters.
Hoping Mari had not seen his moment of embarrassment, he made his way to the nearest hedgerow and looked out at the rolling fields. Hallowfield had definitely been around here somewhere, but—as he had expected—nothing survived above the surface. From the air, he knew lost medieval villages could show up clearly as marks where grass or crops grew less well. But it was much harder to make out any pattern here, at ground level.
She’s right, he thought. This detour was a waste of time.
But Richard did not want to admit that he had basically driven them to the middle of nowhere. He clambered through a gap in the hedge and started to walk across the field, peering at the ground as if observing some fascinating archaeological features. He had no idea if Mari was watching, and he tried to discreetly check by glancing back over his shoulder. At that precise moment, he stumbled, twisting his ankle, cursing as he fell onto the damp grass, as graceful as a sack of potatoes.
“Bloody Hell!” he moaned, rubbing his ankle.
As he was trying to clamber upright, Richard felt something hard and smooth under one hand. On his knees, he examined the object half-buried in the rich, black soil. It was not, as he had thought, a twig. It was brown and roughly cylindrical, about four inches long and perhaps as wide as his index finger. But it was hollow, and definitely not made of wood. Could it be pottery, a clay pipe?
No, he realized, tapping it gently against his watch. It’s bone. The bone of some small animal, of course.
He preferred not to think of the alternative. He rubbed some more of the dirt off of it and found that what he had taken for a row of black marks were, in fact, three small holes for fingering. What was more, there were traces of writing on the object, faint lettering scratched into the surface of the bone.
“Of course!” he said aloud, standing up and brushing the dirt off his jeans. “It’s a whistle. What an idiot, it’s a bloody whistle!”
A hand fell onto his shoulder and he shrieked, spun round to see Mari looking at him with her familiar, mischievous expression. She enjoyed sneaking up on him, giving him little frights. He had tried in vain to persuade her that it was not a cute trick, especially in lonely places. But he was too pleased with his discovery to be annoyed. Talking rapidly, he described the find. Mari took the dirty bone gingerly between finger and thumb and looked at it dubiously.
“It looks kind of disgusting,” she said. “Oh God, you’re not going to bring that thing back with us? You are, aren’t you? Richard, it’s a piece of some dead animal…”
“I’ll clean it up,” he promised. “It could be a valuable find. I might donate it to a museum.”
“I’ll donate you to a museum if you cover the new carpet with dirt,” she warned. “What do you want an old whistle for, seriously?”
“It’s a link to the past,” he said simply, setting off back toward the car. “Part of my heritage.”
“Well,” she said resignedly, “it’s a crappy part of your heritage, but I give up, keep it.”
Richard wrapped the bone whistle in some tissues and put it in the pocket of his old coat. As he backed the car out of the lay-by, he remembered the scarecrow he had seen in the distant hedge earlier. It was no longer visible.
Maybe it got blown over, he thought.
He could not recall any gusts of wind when he had looked for Hallowfield.
***
They got home at dusk, and after taking their bags inside, they ordered pizza and Mari collapsed in front of the TV. Richard made some coffee, then remembered his find. He took the tissue-wrapped whistle from his coat and laid it on the kitchen table. It seemed smaller and a lot less interesting in the familiar environs of his home. But he persevered and cleaned it, poking out the dirt with a length of wire. Only then did he think to put some old newspaper underneath his find.
“Still disgusting,” remarked Mari. “And where’s my coffee?”
“Sorry,” he said. “This is fascinating, though. It does seem to have a sort of inscription. But it’s so worn I can’t make it out.”
“Property of Manchester United?” she suggested.
Richard looked at her, straight-faced.
“They did play football in those days,” he said. “But they didn’t have referees, which meant games tended to end in total carnage. And whistles, well, not sure what they used them for. Maybe luring birds into nets, something like that?”
“Ugh! Cruelty,” she said. “The past is gross.”
Mari put a mug of coffee by Richard’s elbow and sat down opposite with her own.
“Seriously,” she said. “That thing looks creepy to me. Unpleasant. Not just dirty. Even if you clean it, it’s not something I’d like to have about the place, you know?”
Richard turned the carved bone over in his hands. The whistle did feel peculiar—cold, slightly sticky, and oddly heavy for a hollow tube. He held it up to the light and looked down the tube, wondering if a pebble was jammed inside. But the aperture was clear. Frowning, he laid the whistle down, then took a mouthful of coffee. Mari reached over, but at the last moment flinched and did not pick up the dark brown tube.
“No,” she said firmly. “I don’t like it. Give it to a museum. Or throw it in the trash. But please, don’t keep it ‘round here.”
Richard raised the whistle to his lips. Mari’s face twisted in disgust. Partly because she didn’t want him to, but he blew into the hollow bone. There was a pathetic hissing sound, and Mari giggled. Richard, feeling slightly peevish, concluded that he had been too energetic. He blew more softly, and a low tone emerged.
It was a peculiar sound, slightly off-key, and unpleasant in a way Richard could not quite define. He stopped blowing at once, but not before he felt a chill run down his spine. The sound of the whistle seemed to linger for a split second after he took it from his lips, but he attributed it to the weird noise. It stuck in the mind, somehow.
“Is that it?” Mari asked, as if he had blown a cheap novelty from a Christmas cracker. “Kind of feeble, huh? Not very nice. Off key.”
“Really?” he said. “I thought it was—rather haunting.”
That night Richard woke from an uneasy dream and clutched at his armpits. He had no idea why, and he recoiled when he found his pits unpleasantly sweaty. The details of the dream were already vanishing, but he remembered Hallowfield. Not the site of the long-abandoned village, but the thriving medieval community it had once been. It was a place, he vaguely recalled, of pleasant half-timbered houses.
But in his dream, it was also a place of fear.
***
Richard put the bone whistle away the next morning and almost forgot about it. Almost, but not quite. Mari’s remark about a museum reminded him of an old college friend he had not seen in a while—a friend who worked at the British Museum. He contacted Toby Filer, and the archaeologist was happy to take a look at Richard’s unusual find during his lunch hour.
The first thing Toby did was surprisingly old-fashioned. He wrapped the whistle in tracing paper and then used a soft lead pencil to take a rubbing. When he unfolded the sheet, Richard was impressed to see that the vague scratches he had seen were, in fact, Latin words. On one side the words SALVA NOS DIABOLO, on the other he read TER SIBILABIT. The second phrase puzzled him, but the first—while startling—he translated without difficulty.
“Save us, Devil?” Richard exclaimed. “That’s—interesting. Not to mention weird.”
Toby shrugged,
picked up the whistle, and turned it over in his slender fingers.
“Not so surprising, really. There’s an old Turkish saying that a drowning man will clutch at a serpent. Desperation makes people do funny things, doesn’t it?”
Richard nodded dumbly as the archaeologist continued.
“Imagine you’re a medieval man, with some education in the occult, or the mystical. The plague comes, and people pray to God to save them, but the plague keeps coming, and millions die. To someone in the fourteenth century, those are unimaginable numbers, end-of-the-world numbers. Most people will probably still call on God, the Virgin Mary, various saints. But you, being exceptional, might just give up praying to God, and give the other guy a try.”
“Okay,” Richard said slowly. “So that makes this a kind of, what? Devil summoning device?”
“In theory,” said the expert.
The two men stared at each other in silence for a few moments. Filer laughed first, and Richard joined in, though with less enthusiasm.
“Don’t take it too seriously,” Toby went on. “It obviously didn’t work, did it? Hallowfield was pretty much wiped out.”
The expert frowned suddenly, and looked along the length of the tube, just as Richard had done. Then he put the whistle down and absent-mindedly wiped his hands on his pants. Richard took the opportunity to offer the find to the museum. Toby seemed surprised, and slightly dismayed.
“Why not offer it to the county museum near Hallowfield itself?” he suggested. “It’s more their kind of thing. To be honest, we have storerooms full of stuff that will never be seen by the public, so we hardly need to add any more items.”
“Yes,” said Richard, miffed at the instant rejection. “But how many items are musical instruments? Even primitive ones. Listen to this!”
He picked up the whistle and blew. Toby raised his hands to his ears, mouth, and eyes wide open in shock.
“Stop!” Toby shouted. “Stop that awful noise!”
“Sorry,” said Richard, slightly offended. “It didn’t seem that bad.”
Toby looked embarrassed, somewhat confused. He made an excuse that was transparently just that, and almost hustled Richard out of his office. As they said awkward goodbyes, Richard suddenly remembered the second inscription. He asked what it meant.
“Oh, that?” Toby said, dismissively. “It just means ‘Whistle Three Times.’”
As he drove back to work, Richard pondered the archaeologist’s odd reaction. The first time he had blown the whistle, Mari had not liked it very much. The second time, Toby had found it unbearable. Yet he, Richard, had found the tone quite intriguing, both times.
Does the user hear something different to a mere listener? And did the tone become more unpleasant the second time?
Richard pondered the two inscriptions. When he got to his office, he found a piece of paper—just an old receipt from a sandwich bar—and jammed it into the end of the whistle, then shoved the object in a desk drawer. He felt slightly absurd and made sure nobody saw him. Then he composed an email to the county museum near Hallowfield, apologizing for taking an item from the site, and offered to donate it. But, at the last minute, he erased the message. And, after a few days, he forgot the whistle.
For a while.
***
Four months after their visit to Hallowfield, Mari was diagnosed with a particularly rare and virulent form of cancer. What she had taken to be mere tiredness, a few aches and pains, turned out to be advanced symptoms. Various experts explained that there was no effective treatment, merely pain relief as things got worse, and then the inevitable, rapid decline. A list of possible hospices was provided.
Mari took the news better than Richard. They had rows, bitter fights more intense than he could have imagined in happier times. There were long silences, and days when both were determined to ‘put a brave face on it.’ But every time he woke up next to her, Richard felt the terrible, implacable approach of death, more terrifying than if it had been his own mortality he was contemplating.
Richard did his job like an automaton and was cut some slack by bosses who knew the situation. This meant that he sometimes found himself at a loose end, carrying out trivial tasks because the major ones had been allocated elsewhere. One afternoon, he felt a sudden urge to clear out some junk from his desk drawers, a need to impose order and control on something, however trivial.
At first, he did not remember what the whistle was. He saw a dark brown tube with crumpled paper stuffed into one end. But his brief exploration of the lost village came back, feeling remote and strange, like someone else’s memory. Then he recalled what Toby had said about the desperation that drove people in the days of the plague, and the strange logic behind the creation of the whistle.
And he remembered that he had already blown it twice.
That night was one of their quiet, tense dinners. Mari had given up her job and was on strong pain meds. She spent her time at home watching TV, reading, or cooking. As always, the meal was excellent, but for Richard, it might as well have been flavorless mush. He glanced up at her furtively a few times, wondering if he should share his thoughts. He decided against it, on the grounds that he was quite possibly insane.
When Mari, always tired now, went to bed around nine, he said he was going to stay up and watch a movie. He waited for half an hour, then went to his jacket and took out the whistle. He switched off the light in the hall and living room, leaving just one lamp for illumination. Then he unplugged the whistle, putting the crumpled till receipt carefully in the wastepaper basket.
This is insane, he thought. But so is death, so is mortality closing in on someone I love, someone I love more than life itself, someone who should not die.
Richard raised the whistle to his lips and blew. The eerie, off-key tone filled the silent room, and even when he lowered the hollow bone, it seemed to linger for a second, maybe two. He waited, poised for nothing to happen, for anything to happen. He suddenly realized that he did not believe in the Devil, hoofed and winged and horned, red-skinned and reeking of sulfur. He did not believe any of that, not one bit.
So, who am I waiting for?
Disgusted with himself, he hurled the whistle into the wastebasket to join the crumpled paper. He suddenly felt hot, slightly delirious, and the room was now oddly bright. The dizzy spell passed as quickly as it had arrived, and Richard decided to go to bed. With luck, Mari would be asleep. They had long since stopped talking in bed.
The bedroom, like the living room, seemed lighter than usual, as if the faint glow through the curtains had grown more intense. After Richard undressed, he lifted the duvet on his side of the bed, but then decided he was not tired. An odd compulsion came over him and he walked around to Mari’s side, and reached down gently to uncover her body. She moaned, turned over, but did not wake as he uncovered her.
What am I doing?
An answer, strange and exhilarating, suddenly flashed into his mind. It was so simple—he was amazed that he had not thought of it before. It was the way to cure Mari. Not merely treat her, but free her of all disease. And the solution lay, quite literally, in his hands. Richard lifted his hands to examine them, turned them over, flexed the strong fingers. There was something new about them, something different, but he could not quite grasp what. He shrugged off the problem, reached down, and began to work on the cure.
At first, things went well. His new fingers slipped through Mari’s flesh as if it were smoke, and from her ailing body he drew out clumps and strands and skeins of cancer. He cast aside the disease, scattering the vile black rot across the bedroom floor, grinning with delight at his new-found talent. He wished all the very well-qualified doctors could be here to see this. He imagined the astonishment on their faces.
Soon, he had finished removing the cancer. His eyes had evolved along with his fingers, he found, and he could easily look into her body as if it were made of glass. No trace of rottenness remained, no hint of cancerous cells betraying the body that bred them. He
had saved her! It was a miracle. Again, she turned over restlessly in her sleep, moaned a little, and hugged a pillow.
For a moment Richard contemplated leaving her to wake in the morning and discover what he had done. But what would he do in the meantime? How could he let her sleep when she could wake and share his joy at this strange deliverance? No, he would wake her.
Gently, he reached out and shook her by the shoulder, being careful not to let his hand sink into her, touching her as a mundane human would.
“What—Richard?”
Her eyes opened, and she peered up at him.
“What? Richard? Who is it?”
She reached out, and her hand touched his bare flank, jerked back. She sat up quickly, chest heaving, eyes wide now.
“It’s okay,” he said, rather awkwardly, voice choked with emotion “It’s me.”
She picked up her phone and the light from it was so intense it pained him. He raised a hand to cover his face as she started screaming.
“Darling? Honey, I saved you,” he said, or tried to say. His voice was now a strained gurgle, deep and unpleasant.
Through spread fingers he saw Mari clambering across the bed, trying to get away from him, at the same time shouting his name. Richard was baffled by her behavior, confused by his inability to speak, slightly frightened by the turn of events. He decided to give Mari some space, wondering if her panic was partly down to the miracle. He wished he could tell her about it.
I could write it down, he thought. There’s a notepad in the kitchen.
He turned to leave the bedroom, then reeled back in terror. The figure before him was not the conventional Devil he had dismissed earlier. No, it was something far worse, far more believable. The skin of the creature was pebbled and gray, much like a snake but mottled with patches of dark hair. Small horns sprouted from a low forehead, while hands and feet were clawed. But it was the face that made the thing a nightmare, because while the yellow eyes and fanged mouth were monstrous, there was still a trace of humanity in its expression.