“My pleasure. Will you come this way?”
If we were supposed to be celebrating, Chalmers and his wife and the pair of waitresses from the village must have decided that the Roebuck’s cuisine wasn’t our pleasure that evening, to judge from how we picked at it. Or else we were engaged in a peculiar silent quarrel about the choice of fare. However, we did sink some wine, almost a bottle apiece. As we toyed with our food, the restaurant began to fill up with local subgentry enjoying a night out. When we returned to the other room for coffee, the place was crowded and the fan was busily sucking smoke out. Incense of drugful death, I thought, wondering whether this might be a phrase from Keats.
Jenny and I lay stiffly on top of the bedspread, never quite sinking below the surface of sleep. Eventually our wristwatch alarms roused us. Soon Charlotte tapped at our door. She had a torch. We tiptoed down creaky though carpet-muffled stairs to rendezvous with Martin, who had switched on the dim wall lamps in the bar and was up on a chair, scrutinizing the surface of the Xtractall with a powerful torch beam. Before we went up to our separate bedrooms, he had fetched his tool kit – nonchalantly, as though the metal box was a suitcase containing our absent pajamas and nighties.
“Charlotte,” he said, “nip behind the counter and find the switch for the fan. It’s bound to be labelled. Make sure that it’s off. Not that being off might make much difference!”
“Why not?”
“How do mice get sucked into it overnight?”
“If they do,” I said. I should have followed this thought through. I should have pursued this possibility. I should have!
“Fan’s off,” she stage-whispered.
“Right. Up on a chair, Derrick. Hold the torch.”
I complied, and Martin unscrewed the housing, then removed the safety grille.
“ ’Course, it mightn’t be possible to reverse the action . . .” Perspiration beaded his brow. He wasn’t looking forward to plunging his hands into the works. “Hold the beam steady. Ye-ssss. The mounting unfastens here, and here. Slide it out. Turn it round. Bob’s your uncle.”
He worked away. Presently he withdrew the inner assembly gingerly, reversed it, slid it back inside.
“I keep imagining Alice walking in,” said Jenny. “What silly jokers we would seem. What a studenty sort of prank, gimmicking a fan so that cold and smoke blow into the pub!”
Martin unclenched his teeth. “If Alice tried to come through the front door now, she’d probably set off a burglar alarm . . . There we are! Pass the grille up, Jenny, will you? Now the slats. It’s got to be just the way it was before . . .”
We both stepped down and cleared the chairs away, then hauled a table aside to clear a space, as if Alice would simply float down from that little opening above, her feet coming to rest lightly on the carpet.
“Switch the power on, Charlotte. Got a cigar handy, Derrick?”
When I shook my head, Charlotte brought a pack from behind the counter, stripping the cellophane wrapper with her nails. Lighting a panatela, I didn’t merely let the smoke uncurl. I sucked and blew out powerfully.
“Let’s all hold hands and wish,” suggested Jenny.
We did so. Me, puffing away like a chimney, Jenny, Martin, and Charlotte. What silly jokers.
Clunk-clack. The slat opened and the fan whirred, blowing a dusty breeze down at our faces. The noise of the mechanism altered. Without actually becoming louder, the fan seemed to rev up as if a furious turbine were spinning inside the wall almost beyond the pitch of our ears. Our chorus line retreated. Then it happened.
Matter gushed through the slats of the fan – bubbling, convulsing substances, brown and white and crimson, blobs of yellow, strands of ginger and black – which all coalesced into a surging column of confusion struggling to reassemble itself before our eyes.
“Alice!” squealed Jenny.
The thing before us was Alice, and it wasn’t Alice. It was her, and it was a cat, and it was mice and iridescent black beetles and spiders and flies, whatever the fan had swallowed. The shape was human, and most of the mass was Alice, but the rest was fur and wings and tiny legs and all else, melted together, interwoven with scraps of clothing, black hair growing out at random. I was too appalled to scream.
The Alice-creature jerked brown lips apart as if tearing a hole in its head, and it might have wanted to shriek. The noise that emerged was a coughing, strangled growl. Facetted eyes ranged the room. And us; and us.
“We’re sorry!” babbled Martin. “We’re so sorry. Tell us what to do!”
Unbidden, I knew. Terrified, I snatched from my pocket the medallion and the keys to the Saab and tossed these onto the table nearest to the half-human creature.
Her fingers seized the keys. Her legs took her to the front door. Her hand unlatched and unbolted the door – so she was still intelligent. Tearing the front door open, she fled into darkness.
A few moments later an engine roared, headlamps stabbed the night, tyres gouged gravel. Her Saab slewed its way onto the road. It was Martin who shut the door and relocked it – he had been wrong about burglar alarms. There were none.
“What have we done?” moaned Jenny.
“Maybe we saved her from something worse,” I said. “Maybe she knows how to heal herself. She left her medallion . . . why would she do that?”
Martin groaned and sat down heavily. “You don’t need fucking jewelry when your body’s glistening with bits of beetles.”
I gathered the worn, cryptic medal up. “This is much more than jewelry. We’d better keep it.”
“No,” mumbled my wife, as I dropped the disc into my jacket pocket.
“It would be terrible not to have it to give to her if she comes back.”
“It could lead that thing to us, Derrick.”
“What’s going on?” John Chalmers had come down-stairs, attired in a paisley dressing gown and, God help us, a nightcap with dangling tassel. He seemed to be holding something behind his back – a cudgel, a shotgun? He moved in behind the counter and laid down whatever it was.
“Our friend came back for her car,” Charlotte attempted to explain. “We’re sorry we woke you.”
“You’re all fully dressed. You weren’t intending to . . . depart?”
“You said we could partake of a late drink if we wished, Mr. Chalmers.”
“Mm. Screwdrivers?”
For one stupid moment I imagined he was offering to fix cocktails for us. However, he was eyeing Martin’s tools, still lying in view.
Charlotte was quick on the uptake. “Our friend’s car needed fixing. That’s why she had to leave it earlier.”
Chalmers shook his head skeptically.
“I’d like a brandy, please,” she told him. Her hand was straying automatically to the shoulder bag she had brought down with her, hunting in it . . .
“Don’t smoke, love!” Martin said urgently. “If you have any, don’t light up! Make that two brandies, will you? Doubles.”
“Same for us,” I said.
As Chalmers busied himself, Martin nodded significantly at the fan. It was still set to blow, not suck. Could anything else emerge from between those slats? Or was the eerie zone beyond its blades, the zone of the past, empty now? Where the hell had my panatela gone? I was dimly aware of discarding it when the fan began to gush. Ah – it was lying in an ashtray. Gone out, by the look of it. Nevertheless, I crushed the cigar into extinction. How could we put the fan to rights? Chalmers would be on the alert till daybreak. We couldn’t. We would have to abandon the Roebuck in the morning, abandon and never come back. We gulped our brandies and trooped upstairs.
Next morning, haggard and exhausted, we ate bacon and eggs in the restaurant, paid our bills, and went out to the two cars. The day was bright and crisp; frost lingered.
“So, no more Fridays for us,” Martin said dully. “Get rid of that medallion, will you, Derrick?”
“Alice may need it,” I said.
“She may need us, she may need you,” said
Charlotte, “but not in the same way as before.”
We parted and drove off from the Roebuck through the dead, cold countryside.
Jenny worked on me all weekend about that wretched medallion until I did promise to dispose of it. On Monday morning, walking through London to work, I dropped the worn disc down a sewer grating.
That night I dreamed about Alice, the Alice we had known before. This time she beckoned me lasciviously toward a doorway. She dropped her clothing. Naked, she invited me.
On Tuesday, prior to a meeting with some Japanese about supplies of Butadiene, Martin phoned me at the office.
“A car followed me home last night, Derrick. It hung well back, but when I was passing through—” – he mentioned a village with some decent street lighting – “I’m sure it was a Saab. Thought I’d better tip you off, eh? I’ve been thinking . . .” He sounded furtive. “I’ve been thinking about Alice. She never knew where we lived, did she?”
“I’m not sure she wanted to know.”
“She knows now, so far as I’m concerned.” He rang off.
Martin didn’t phone again – though I made a call, to Webster-Freeman, publishers. They had never heard of an Alice. I wasn’t surprised.
It’s Friday night, and I’m driving home on my own, listening to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. It’s the time that should be the happy hour. Jenny and I both took our cars to MK today. Headlights are following me, always keeping the same distance behind whether I speed up or slow down. If Alice comes calling, what do I give to her now?
Since Monday I’ve been increasingly haunted by mental snapshots of the old Alice. The other day I heard on the radio how the average male thinks about sex eight times an hour; that’s how often Alice crosses my mind.
I realize that I’ve fallen in love – or in lust – with her. Does Martin secretly feel the same way – for his “lamia”? These feelings overpower me as surely as I was possessed in the pub that night by an urge to piss, the need to release myself. Even after what happened, maybe Alice left that medallion behind to protect us – from the altered lamia? Now that token no longer does so.
Ahead there’s a lay-by where a caravan is parked permanently: Sally’s Cafe, serving breakfast to truck drivers all day long – but not by night, when it’s locked up, shuttered, abandoned.
I’m pulling in, and braking fifty yards past the caravan. Will the car in my mirror overshoot, pass by? No. It pulls in too. It parks abreast of Sally’s Cafe, douses its lights. A Saab, I’d say.
The driver’s door swings open. Soon I may understand all about Alice and her domain, which we first denied, then stupidly desecrated. Has the past’s love of us all turned sour now? Grown vicious?
A dark, amorphous figure emerges from the Saab, and rushes toward me. I’ll let her in. The Alice we knew always appreciated jokes. The final joke is: I’ve become an almighty fan of hers. Will I have time to tell her? To hear her laugh – or shriek? I open the door. I can’t help myself.
3
SHADOWY CORNERS
Accounts of Restless Spirits
The Ankardyne Pew
W. F. Harvey
Prospectus
Address:
Ankardyne House, Garvington, Worcestershire, England.
Property:
Early eighteenth-century gentlemen’s residence. Imposing building with numerous rooms and servants’ quarters. It has exceptional views across the neighbouring fens. The house is also linked to the local church by an underground flagged passageway.
Viewing Date:
February 1890.
Agent:
William Fryer Harvey (1885–1937) was born in Yorkshire, educated at Balliol College Oxford, and won a medal for gallantry during World War I. He is best remembered for a single, much anthologised and filmed horror story, “The Beast with Five Fingers” – despite having written numerous other weird stories, collected in The Beast With Five Fingers (1928), Midnight Tales (1946) and The Arm of Mrs. Egan (1952). Houses and inns disturbed by ghosts occur in several of his tales, notably “The Heart of the Fire”, “Midnight House” and “The Ankardyne Pew”, which describes the events at an old mansion haunted by the most ominous noises and sounds.
The following narrative of the occurrences that took place at Ankardyne House in February 1890, is made up chiefly of extracts from letters written by my friend, the Rev. Thomas Prendergast, to his wife, immediately before taking up residence at the vicarage, together with transcripts from the diary which I kept at the time. The names throughout are, of course, fictitious.
February 9th. I am sorry that I had no opportunity yesterday of getting over to the vicarage, so your questions – I have not lost the list – must remain unanswered. It is almost a quarter of a mile away from the church, in the village. You see, the church, unfortunately, is in the grounds of the park, and there is a flagged passage, cold and horribly draughty, that leads from Ankardyne House to the great loose box of the Ankardyne pew. The squires in the old days could come in late and go out early, or even stay away altogether, without any one being the wiser. The whole situation of the church is bad and typically English – the House of God in the squire’s pocket. Why should he have right of secret access? I haven’t had time to examine the interior – early eighteenth-century, I should guess – but as we drove up last evening in the dusk, the tall gloomy facade of Ankardyne House, with the elegant little church – a Wren’s nest – adjoining it, made me think of a wicked uncle, setting off for a walk in the woods with one of the babes. The picture is really rather apt, as you will agree, when you see the place. It’s partly a question of the height of the two buildings, partly a question of the shape of the windows, those of the one square, deep-set, and grim; of the other round – the raised eyebrows of startled innocence.
We were quite wrong about Miss Ankardyne. She is a charming little lady, not a trace of Lady Catherine de Bourgh, and is really looking forward to having you as her nearest neighbour. I will write more of her to-morrow, but the stable clock has struck eleven and my candle is burning low.
February 10th. I measured the rooms as you asked me to. They are, of course, larger than ours at Garvington, and will swallow all our furniture and carpets. But you will like the vicarage. It, at least, is a cheerful house; faces south, and isn’t, like this place, surrounded by woods. I suppose familiarity with the skies and wide horizons of the fens accounts for the shut-in feeling one gets here. But I have never seen such cedars!
And now to describe Miss Ankardyne. She is perhaps seventy-five, petite and bird-like, with the graceful, alert poise of a bird. I should say that sight and hearing are abnormally acute and have helped to keep her young. She is a good talker, well read, and interested in affairs, and a still better listener. Parson’s pride! you will exclaim; since we are only two, and if she listens, I must talk. But I mean what I say. All that the archdeacon told us is true; you are conscious in her presence of a living spirit of peace. By the way, she is an interesting example of your theory that there are some people for whom animals have an instinctive dislike – indeed, the best example I have met. For Miss Ankardyne tells me that, though since childhood she has had a fondness for all living creatures, especially for birds, it is one which is not at first reciprocated. She can, after assiduous, continuous persevering, win their affection; her spaniel, her parrot, and Karkar, the tortoiseshell cat, are obviously attached to her. But strange dogs snarl, if she attempts to fondle them; and she tells me that, when she goes to the farm to feed the fowls, the birds seem to sense her coming and run from the scattered corn. I have heard of cows showing this antipathy to individuals, but never before of birds. There is an excellent library here, that badly needs cataloguing. The old vicar, had, I believe, begun the task at the time of his fatal seizure.
I have been inside the church. Anything less like dear old Garvington it would be impossible to find. Architecturally, it has its points, but the unity of design, on which everything here depends, is broken by the Ankardyne pew. Its
privacy is an abomination. Even from the pulpit it is impossible to see inside, and I can well believe the stories of the dicing squires and their Sunday play. Miss Ankardyne refuses to use it. The glass is crude and uninteresting; but there is an uncommon chancel screen of Spanish workmanship, which somehow seems in keeping with the place. I wish it didn’t.
We shall miss the old familiar monuments. There is no snub-nosed crusader here, no worthy Elizabethan knight, like our Sir John Parkington, kneeling in supplication, with those nicely balanced families on right and left. The tombs are nearly all Ankardyne tombs – urns, weeping charities, disconsolate relicts, and all the cold Christian virtues. You know the sort. The Ten Commandments are painted on oak panels on either side of the altar. From the Ankardyne pew I doubt if you can see them.
February 11th. You ask about my neuritis. It is better, despite the fact that I have been sleeping badly. I wake up in the morning, sometimes during the night, with a burning headache and a curious tingling feeling about the tongue, which I can only attribute to indigestion. I am trying the effect of a glass of hot water before retiring. When we move into the vicarage, we shall at least be spared the attention of the owls, which make the nights so dismal here. The place is far too shut in by trees, and I suppose, too, that the disused outbuildings give them shelter. Cats are bad enough, but I prefer the sound of night-walkers to night-fliers. It won’t be long now before we meet. They are getting on splendidly with the vicarage. The painters have already started work; the new kitchen range has come, and is only waiting for the plumbers to put it in. Miss Ankardyne is leaving for a visit to friends in a few days’ time. It seems that she always goes away about this season of the year – wise woman! – so I shall be alone next week. She said Dr. Hulse would be glad to put me up, if I find the solitude oppressive, but I shan’t trouble him. You would like the old butler. His name is Mason, and his wife – a Scotchwoman – acts as housekeeper. The three maids are sisters. They have been with Miss Ankardyne for thirty years, and are everything that maids should be. They belong to the Peculiar People. I cannot desire that they should be orthodox. If I could be sure that Dr. Hulse was as well served . . .
The Mammoth Book of Haunted House Stories (Mammoth Books) Page 23