The Invisible Hand

by James Hartley

  “Well, the abbot was summonsed and only then did old Sybil reveal what she wanted. That was, she told the bemused abbot, to sell him three books she had with her which, she promised, were of very great importance to the future of the monastery. The only condition she laid down was that the abbot may not read the books before he bought them.

  “The abbot rejected this strange offer out of hand – he thought the price too high and had no time for magic and superstition. He slammed the door in poor Sybil’s face and told her in no uncertain terms to get off his property.

  “Thinking that was the end of the matter, it was with some consternation that a short time later the abbot heard his monks declaring they’d just witnessed the old lady setting one of the books alight on the monastery pathway. Indeed, when he looked out, the abbot saw her standing guard over the fire, watching the pages turn to ash. None of the monks quite knew what to make of this sight but they hoped it was the end of the matter.

  “But it wasn’t.

  “Old Sybil returned to the monastery door and knocked again, once again refusing to speak to anyone but the abbot. Again she tried to sell the remaining books – two now, of course – but once again she was refused and again the door was slammed in her face.

  “Again the monks watched as old Sybil set another tome alight and waited until it burned to ashes. It was about now that the abbot, watching from within with his brother monks, started to become rather worried. When he came to the door the next time, for the old lady rang again, the abbot agreed to buy the final book for the same price the old woman had originally asked for all three.

  “Taking the tome into the abbey, the monks and their abbot prepared to pour over the contents but instead found each page completely blank.

  “The old lady was never seen again.

  “It was not until many years later, after Henry VIII came to the throne, that the monks then inhabiting the monastery thought it might be a good idea to write down their history. For one reason or another a scribe was given old Sybil’s book, empty of course, but it wasn’t long before they found that the tome contained very strange powers. Legend says that it quickly became apparent to this lowly scribe, and later all the monks, that whatever was written on the blank pages could somehow affect both the present and the future of the monastery.

  “When the dissolution of the monasteries began, the book, along with most of the valuables kept in the monastery, was secreted out via the tunnels I was telling you about earlier. Nobody quite knows what happened next, but there is talk of the monks becoming trapped in the tunnels and of the book being lost somewhere under the school grounds, where some people say it remains to this day.”

  Leana smiled. “Do you think the book is buried somewhere under the school, Mr Chipping?”

  The old master looked back to them, his eyes faded-green again. “Yes, I do. I think it’s hidden. Safe. Waiting for the right person to find it.”

  “The right person?” asked Leana.

  “Not everybody has the power to write in the book and have what they write come true,” explained Mr Chipping quietly. “Only some.” His eyes were very pale. “Many try. Many are called. Few are chosen.”

  “You seem to know a lot about the book, sir,” Sam said.

  “Oh, I’ve seen it,” replied the old master, smiling cryptically. “And held it in my hands.”

  “When?” Leana was wide-eyed.

  “During the last war there was a lot of terrible damage done to the school. There is an airfield not far from here, or there used to be. I don’t know if you know it? Well, anyway, the enemy took a great deal of effort to put the runways out of action and in one raid some stray bombs fell upon us. Damage was done, as I say, and all of us made great efforts at the time to save what we could find in the rubble.

  “I remember one morning as clearly as if it were yesterday. The whole school in line, passing books, photographs and shelving and what not in a great long line out of this enormous hole in the ground. And one of the books that was thrown up by all this chaos was, I believe, the famous book from the monastery. Old Sybil’s book.”

  Sam was perplexed. “But why do you say that, sir?”

  “Because of what happened next.” Mr Chipping sipped his tea. “The person in charge of storing the books was the Head Girl of the time, who was a very ambitious, rather bossy girl, but very clever with it. At some point that day I believe she realised what that book was, and the power it held. She must have heard the legend – everyone had at that time, perhaps we were rather more naïve, or open to different interpretations of the world – I’m not sure. But she brought it to me and yes, I did hold it in my hands.”

  “Did you use it?” asked Leana. “Did you write in it?”

  “No,” answered the master. His face was very serious now, very pale. “I had other concerns. The bombs had caused great loss of life.” He sat silent for a long while and the pug at his feet yawned. Neither Sam nor Leana wanted to interrupt him.

  Mr Chipping leaned forwards and stared out of the window at the fog. “The personality of an author shines through in the book they are writing whether they like it or not. Sometimes this is quite unconnected with the subject of the book itself. That is why evil can be so attractive and good, sometimes, so repellent.”

  Leana looked at Sam and shrugged her shoulders. What’s he on about?

  “Where’s the book now, sir?” Sam asked. “Do you know?”

  Mr Chipping turned to Leana and Sam with a faraway look on his face. “What?”

  “I asked if you knew where the book is, sir?”

  “Oh.” Mr Chipping shook his head slowly, sadly. “All that is behind me.” And then he smiled. “Yes. It’s all behind me. Ancient history.”

  Watching the old man lie back in the chair and close his eyes, Leana nudged Sam and whispered, “Let’s go.”

  They stood up and left the sleeping master and his dog and met Mrs Wickett in the hall by door. “Drop off in the middle of the conversation, did he?” she asked, chuckling.

  “Yes,” Sam nodded. “Thank you very much for the food and drink.”

  “That’s all right, my dears,” smiled Mrs Wickett. She opened the front door and the cold air immediately raced in. “Told you the story of the book, did he? I did hear.”

  “Yes,” nodded Leana.

  “Goodbye, children,” said the housekeeper, and closed over the door.

  “Can we stay out of the school for a while?” Leana asked when they were alone again on the cold, foggy path. “Let’s go up to the church and see if we can find any secret tunnels.”

  “Or books,” Sam added with a laugh.

  “I don’t want to go back to the school,” Leana repeated, quietly. And then, as if something suddenly occurred to her, she added: “I think she’s here for the book, you know.”

  “Who?”

  “The Queen of the witches.”

  “Mrs Waters?”

  Leana nodded. She felt a cold kiss on her neck and shivered. “She’s the most powerful of them all, you know. But if she wants that book, it must be even more powerful than she is.”

  Sam held her close as they began walking uphill. “Let’s not jump to conclusions. Come on.”

  Neither of them saw the headmistress watching them from the foggy shadows at the main entrance of the school, hellfire smouldering in the black orbs of her eyes.

  12

  Hell Is Empty And All The Devils Are Here

  The warm lights of The Admiral Benbow shone through the first flurries of snow as Sam and Leana walked up towards St Catherine’s, the village church. Peering through the thick, low, porthole windows they saw Mr Firmin at the bar chatting with Mr Bukowski and Mr Thomas. The pub was an old coach house, its facades restored: a winter’s afternoon two hundred years before would hardly have been any different.

  The village shop was closed and the road deserted as far as they could see in either direction as they unhooked the latch and passed into the churchyard. A gaggle of
elderly women in drooping hats and flowery dresses were standing in the church porch looking out at the snow falling over the grey tombstones. One of them called out, “You’ll catch your death of cold if you don’t get a move on, children!”

  “Hurry up, hurry inside, that’s the way,” said another as Sam and Leana jogged up to the porch. “Father Brown has been finally persuaded to put the heating on so do scurry inside. It is worth it, I can assure you.”

  Incense tickled Sam’s nostrils and Leana’s ear’s pricked up at the sounds of Blake’s Songs of Innocence wheezing from the organ loft as they walked inside a warm St Catherine’s. A small, moon-faced priest was walking towards them from the altar. He might have been smiling but it was difficult to tell. His arms were interlocked inside the sleeves of his cassock. “You’re too late for mass, I’m afraid, children.”

  Sam smiled. “We were wondering if you could tell us a bit about the history of the church, father.”

  “Ah, I see.” The priest tapped his mouth with a white, clean finger. “Righto. Here’s what we’ll do. You’ll give me five short minutes to say goodbye to Miss Julian, Miss Corelli and Mrs McCullers and then I’ll see what I can show you. Miss Julian must get back to Norwich and the others want to see her off. Do you think you two can amuse yourselves for a minute while I attend to them?”

  “Of course.” Sam nodded. He and Leana wandered the aisles separately and Sam was surprised when he turned, later, to see Leana kneeling and praying in front of a stepped bank of votive candles.

  “I thought we might start with the crypt,” purred the priest’s voice, interrupting his thoughts.

  “Whatever you think best, father.”

  They collected Leana and walked up onto the altar where Leana and the priest knelt and crossed themselves. “You’ll notice that the chancel is out of alignment with the nave,” Father Brown whispered to them, pointing out the discrepancy in the architecture. “This is very common in ancient churches such as ours, with Saxon and Norman heritage. They call it a weeping chancel and we now think the old architects did it on purpose, to try to suggest the inclined head of our Lord as he hung on the cross. See it there?”

  Sam, looking back, could see the shoulders of the organist high up in the loft. He was playing Burgess’s Napoleon Symphony, the great silver pipes, which rose up to the vaulted roof, singing out the story.

  “Through this door.” Father Brown smiled, extending a hand.

  The narrow stairs descended sharply, turning around on themselves like a dog preparing to sleep. They were lit on one side by small bulbs buried somewhere in the brickwork and a cold, rusty handrail slid through their palms as they went circling downwards.

  At the bottom of the staircase, Sam was pleasantly surprised to find a dingy but modern room, something like a vaulted brick basement, with a chair, a table, a visitor’s book and a huge crucifix hung at the far end. The air was cool, not warm, and Father Brown began pointing out the vaults in the wall. “The work here is wonderful – Flemish. This piece is Bohemian and very typical. And this one here is Percy Mishingan. A most illustrious member of the village – when was it?” He peered over his half-moons to better read the inscription. “1881. Yes, that sounds about right.”

  Never heard of him, Sam almost said, but a sharp tinkling somewhere near the stairs interrupted him, saving him the embarrassment.

  “Father Brown!” came a ringing, echoing call down the stairwell.

  “Please excuse me.” The priest smiled. “Do feel free to look around.”

  Leana watched the priest disappear up the stairs and tiptoed across to Sam. “There’s nothing here, you know. This is all too modern. The tombs are old but there’s no medieval tunnels.”

  Sam was walking around the floor, reading the worn engravings on the stones under their feet. “I know. But this can’t be the only place. There has to be other stuff under here.”

  After a few minutes more of fruitless searching, Sam and Leana gave up and went back upstairs. Father Brown waved goodbye to them from the doorway of the sacristy and they walked out together into the wintry dusk. “Let’s do a loop of the church and go back to the school,” Sam suggested. “I’m getting tired. There’ll be people coming back now, I hope. I’ll stay with you. You won’t be on your own.”

  Leana seemed unsure but they set off two-abreast, walking on either side of a line of old graves, aiming to make a circle of the church. Sam started reading the names on the headstones but the light was bad, the cold was creeping into his bones and he had a strong feeling that there was nothing worth seeing. When he glanced across at Leana he saw the same dispirited look on her face. You look pretty when you’re tired, he thought, and offered his coat. “Take this.”

  “You’re going to freeze.”

  “I’m fine.”

  As Leana let Sam drape his coat over her shoulders she noticed what she thought was a firefly in the deepening shadows beneath some nearby trees. “Look.”

  Sam followed her arm and saw – his eyes were better than hers – the outline of a man, smoking, leaning on a rake. “I think it’s a gardener.”

  Leana could see him now, too. “Let’s keep going. We have to walk past him anyway.”

  When they got to the corner of the church they both raised a hand in greeting.

  “Nice night for it,” the gardener called out cryptically. He had a northern accent.

  “Yes.” Sam turned to Leana and shrugged. “It is, isn’t it?”

  “Looking for owt in partic’lar?”

  “I don’t know.” Sam shrugged. “Anything interesting?”

  “Oh.” The gardener pushed the peak of his cap with a dirty thumb. “Well, there’s always the lych-gate, if you’re after ghouls or ghosts. Old Crace was the last person buried here, not a week past, and he’ll be waiting there, of course, to show the new arrivals in.” He sniffed and thought. “P’haps you’ll find what you’re looking for up there, thattaways. That small garden yonder is where the unbaptized children lie, the excommunicated and the suicides. That’s where they place the bodies found on the downs, you see; and them that no one claims or wants. There’s a fair bit of history there.”

  Sam stared over at the dark corner they were talking about. “Mind if we have a look?”

  “If yer brave enough. Got a life of its own that place.”

  “Ah, I think we’re brave enough,” Sam replied, taking Leana’s hand. “Thanks a lot.”

  “Evening to you both,” the gardener replied, turning back to his rake.

  “If it’s the oldest part of the graveyard there might be something,” Sam said to Leana as they walked around the mossy graves. “Let’s just have a quick look before we go back.”

  The corner they’d been directed to was separated from the rest of the graveyard by a low but sturdy bramble hedge. There was only one small place to enter where a wooden, mossy trestle arched over the pathway. The gateway wasn’t high but Sam and Leana crouched as they walked under it and both were struck by a sudden change as they stepped inside. There was a thickness to the air, a kind of staleness.

  “Oh, what a horrible atmosphere this place has,” Leana whispered, summing up what both of them were feeling.

  “Right, well, nothing here,” Sam answered, turning to leave. “Let’s go.”

  “What’s that over there?” Leana asked. “Is it a little window?”

  Sam turned and saw a small mound in the turf only a few steps ahead. Yes, Leana was right. It looked like there was a small window in the hillock, with a little ledge of turf sticking out over it. “Maybe it’s some kind of offering. Something someone’s left?”

  They moved closer. Sam knelt down, feeling the dampness seep through to his knees. He reached out his finger towards the small pane of glass, rectangular and about the size of a letterbox slot in a door, and tapped it. The glass gave and flapped upwards. “Wow, it’s hollow inside, I think,” he reported.

  Leana had her hands in the pockets of Sam’s coat. “Can you reach insid
e?” When he said he could she quickly added, “But be careful!”

  Sam took a deep breath and slid three fingers through the gap. “Nothing,” he said. “I think there’s more space but I can’t feel anything. Should I keep trying?”

  Leana shrugged. “Up to you.”

  Sam reached in until his arm was through the flap up to his elbow. His chin was resting on the wet grass. As he was about to retract his hand his face changed. “Wait. I think I can touch something. It feels metal or wood. It’s not soil.”

  “Maybe a coffin?” Leana wondered quietly.

  Sam’s eyes widened. “Oh. Didn’t think of that.”

  “Come on, let’s go.”

  “Wait, wait.” Sam pulled a face, sucking his bottom lip into his mouth. “There’s a handle here. I think it’s a handle.”

  “A handle? Are you sure it’s not a bar? For carrying?”

  “I’m turning it. Wait, wait, wait.” Sam had to use all his strength but suddenly something gave, there was a small explosion of dirt and Sam ended up lying on his back. When they looked back at the mound they saw a large hole in the ground. Sam was first across to look into it.

  “Oh, please don’t tell me there’s someone in there.” Leana had her hands to her mouth.

  “No,” Sam answered, turning to her with a smile on his face. His teeth were spattered with dirt. “Steps!”

  The soil steps led them down into dank, fetid darkness but by the time they’d realised how deep they were there seemed to be nothing to do but walk on and on into the cold earth.

  The tunnel smelled of worms and soil. Occasionally hanging roots, some sharp, some waspish, would tickle their faces, but Leana pressed herself close to Sam as Sam pressed stubbornly on. If anything goes wrong I’ll just retrace our steps, he thought. Out loud he said, “We’ll just see where it leads. This might be our only chance. It has to be a tunnel!”