Grim Expectations

by KW Jeter

  “Lord, do carry on, don’t he?” An amused voice spoke from close beside me. “Some types in this world, love the sound of their own voices. Be one of that breed, surely.”

  “My desire for companionship at the moment is greatly diminished.” I did not bother to glance over and determine who had accosted me. The humid mists were so thick, and the shadow so thorough from whatever enormous object loitered overhead, that the individual might easily have approached without me noticing, or perhaps had already been standing at the spot – and I, preoccupied, had not even discerned him. “If you desire conversation, you had best seek elsewhere.”

  “Palaver’s fair enough, suppose – most the species rattle away, whether have something to speak of or not.” The individual, whoever he might be, sounded highly amused by his own observation. “Myself, speak as much or more than the general run of humanity – but then, I’ve cause, being industrious sort and all.”

  Strangely, this man’s voice seemed familiar to me, though I could not immediately summon from memory the occasion on which I might have heard it. Curiosity as to his identity got the better of me, overbalancing my previous nettled disdain. I turned and studied his face, seeking some clue there. A younger person, presentably attired – more than presentable, to be truthful; his swallow-tailed suit was of ostentatious cut and expense, trimly fitted to his slender form. A silken, bottle-green cravat knotted at his throat, trousers of an extravagant hound’s-tooth check, more suitable to salon than funeral – the effect produced was that of someone not only given over to fashion, but who could afford the most au courant tastes.

  “Nick Spivvem, at your service–” He gave a slight incline of his head, with a lopsided smile rather more insinuating than the constant and honest one I had become used to seeing on Rollingwood’s face. “Did promise, Mr Dower, that we’d a meeting again – soon enough, seems, that haven’t forgot already!”

  The contrast was jarring, between the costly attire of this Spivvem character – if such was his actual name; my suspicions were already aroused as to everything about him – and his slangy patois. A criminal sort, perhaps, his habiliments both an indicator of the success of his felonious enterprises and an aping of the moneyed classes upon which he was most likely to prey, either as a thief or a swindler.

  “You!” This perception was enough to trigger my recognizing the man, and recalling the time when I had last seen him. “That was you who came to the inn – and who I had to chase off, with threat of violence–”

  The man’s sly, narrow face was the only similarity between his previous incarnation and the one which stood beside me now, and even that had been greatly transformed; before, his visage had been scruffy and ill-shaven, seemingly weathered by the exposure to the elements that vagabonds suffer as a consequence of their wandering lives. Had that been some artful disguise, along with the ragged, dirt-blackened garb and worn-thin boots in which he had appeared at my doorstep, put on with some intent to deceive? And to what purpose?

  “Indeed, was I.” The pleasure Spivvem took in his masquerade was evident. “Didn’t get along very well then, did we? But all’s forgiven – imagine had great deal on your mind, and not given to usual ways of hospitality.”

  Back in Cornwall, during our regrettable encounter at the inn, his manner of speech had been considerably coarser, evidently assumed as another facet of his disguise; it remained odd and elliptic, a cant typical of his thieving breed.

  “There is nothing,” I said, “which requires absolution. My manners are not the issue, you blackguard–”

  “Eh! Uncalled for, that!”

  “What is your purpose in coming here?” I could feel the temper of my blood mounting up my neck and into my own face. “Nothing well-intentioned, I’m certain.” Under other circumstances, I might not have been as quick to anger – but the man’s unexpected appearance on the site, along with the continued battering of Jamford’s oration, and the sky’s ominous and still unexplained darkening, had frayed my nerves to a snapping point. “Explain yourself – do you mean to aim another bullet in my direction, with a pistol rather than a rifle this time?”

  “Bullet? Bluidy hell, Dower – never fired gun in life, and not likely start with target such as yourself. Kindly disposed toward you, am I.”

  “Pardon my skepticism in that regard – but if you were not the marksman skulking about in the night, then who was?”

  “Very good inquiry, much worth discussing. Would enlighten you, given chance. Time on hands? Say, once done hereabouts? The Flask down High Street’s private enow.”

  “I have no intention of accompanying you to any establishment.” I drew back, fixing a colder glare upon this Spivvem. “What reason have I to trust you? Privacy is what you speak of – but you have intruded upon mine twice now. You come here uninvited, and you came there in Cornwell with your form disguised in a peculiar and loathsome manner. And now you assure me of your friendliness? I think it rather more likely that you intend to separate me from my present companions, so that you can privately do me some harm.”

  “If all’s wanted, do it easily enough, without all that bother.” Spivvem’s expression hardened into something less cordial. “Gents about grave – know ‘em?”

  “Other than as hired mourners, I do not. I have been informed, though, that they are also functioning as the guardians of my person, in case of various beasts intruding upon us. That being the case, they might as well be usefully employed in ejecting yourself from the premises.”

  “Yes,” said Spivvem, “would for certain. Be acquaintances of mine, so know proclivities – can be counted on not just for fists and boots, but for enjoyment of using them. Fun-loving types, they are. But if wanted do you over, easily have slipped few quid in their pockets, and goner you’d be.”

  “But they are not currently in your employ?”

  “As said–” Spivvem gave a shake of his head. “At moment, no. Didn’t think necessary, mission being more to help than hinder.”

  “I am glad to hear you have not purchased their allegiance.” I turned from him, preparing to stride back toward Rollingwood and the others, my interest in whatever else this intruder might say having come to an end. “Perhaps you should count yourself fortunate that your presence here has not yet been noted by others than myself. Before, you forced yourself upon me when I had few if any allies to forfend your unwanted meddling, and my own efforts were insufficient to put a stop to it. The situation is otherwise now; these rowdy mercenaries, engaged on my behalf, are undoubtedly prepared to alter your mind in this regard. Whatever advantage you sought by contacting me, either here or elsewhere, I advise you to abandon its pursuit before lasting harm comes to you.”

  “Speak very well, Dower, you do–” Spivvem called after me when I was but a few steps away. “Concern for my welfare very noble. But be better off, thinking of yourself. In worse mishaps than can imagine, and walking blind into ‘em. Great deal could help you with – spurn me at your peril.”

  “That is a risk I am prepared to assume.” I halted and glanced back over my shoulder at him. “It seems no greater than the others from which I must choose.”

  He shouted no rejoinder as I continued walking away – which was just as well, for I would have paid no attention, had he done so.

  SIX

  Mr Dower Disdainfully Regards the Future

  I continued on my short way back to the grave. Reaching it and the assembly gathered around, I looked again to the spot from which I had returned; the mysterious Spivvem had disappeared, having either completely departed from the area or been swallowed up by the intervening mists and deepening gloom.

  The latter of which had increased to such a profundity that lanterns had been lit and placed at the head of the grave, their upward glow illuminating the Right Reverend Jamford in a spectral manner, and allowing the rest of the company to be discerned.

  “Where did you go?” Rollingwood’s anxiety visibly diminished when he perceived my reappearance beside him. “
I told you – we approach the final moments of the service.”

  “Calm yourself,” I said. “I but went for a brief stroll, being overcome with my emotions; I am certain you sympathize. And rest assured – I would not have missed this for all the world.”

  What I had missed, and for which I was grateful, was a considerable amount of Jamford’s eulogy – a mild term for his performance, now even more agitated and discomforting than when I had strayed from the full force of its delivery. If my suspicions had been aroused before as to his mental state, further attention confirmed that his grip upon sanity was a precarious thing.

  “Light springs from the earth’s depths!” Wild-eyed, hair in greater disarray as though electrified, he thundered on in a mounting passion. “The machinery of Grace abounding! The dead shall not be mired in cold clay – they rise to the heavens! And not on some day which our old outmoded faith promised but never delivered – the promised day is upon us now!”

  That final and rather startling announcement seemed to act as an initiating signal to all those congregated about the gravesite – save myself, of course. An excited hubbub coursed through the hired mourners, as though they anticipated some desirable event with which they were familiar from previous funerals. Rollingwood shared in this emotion; craning his neck, he joined with the others in raptly gazing up at the darkness over their heads.

  As did I, scarcely being able to do otherwise, given the apparition above.

  The awesome shadow was rendered more intimidating by the advent of a swelling wind, as though the proximity of the object had summoned the forces of Nature. One moment a freshening breeze, lessening a margin of the steaming humidity about us, then the next a veritable gale scouring in from the hills, strong enough that I needed to brace myself shoulder-first, to keep from being knocked off my feet.

  “What is happening?” I shouted to make myself heard. About the grave, the hired mourners had assumed similar stances, heads lowered and hands clutching the brims of hats tight against their brows. Jamford remained eerily upright, rock-like in a transport of ecstasy, his widened eyes gleaming and the leather tome clutched against his chest. “Is this some part–”

  There was no time for me to pursue the query, or for Rollingwood to reply. The wind had the effect of dispelling the mists, sending ragged clouds scudding over the ground, and revealing much of what had been hidden before. I saw no beasts waiting to pounce; very likely they had been frightened away, not so much by the increasing wind, but by the grinding mechanical noise I now heard coming from somewhere above. The gears and pinions capable of producing such clashing, deafening noise would need to have been on a scale commensurate with that which cast the immediate world into shade.

  My vision had adjusted sufficiently that I was able to discern some details of that immensity. The impact upon me was vertiginous in the extreme – for a dizzying moment I felt as if the landscape had somehow been inverted, with the boggy soil beneath transformed into a sky solid enough to prevent my plummeting through it, and the vista overhead now comprising the earth from which I had been removed. For above me – or was it below? Disoriented, I could not tell – I saw a vast expanse of tombstones and marble statuary, all of the cemetery’s aspects reproduced to perfection. If the graves my gaze swept across had opened up, their grisly contents might have tumbled upon my head, or I might have fallen into their embrace.

  “There!” Pointing ahead of where we stood, Rollingwood crowed in triumph, his expression even more radiantly happy than before. “Did I not tell you this would be wonderful?”

  That to which he had directed my attention was a set of thick hempen ropes, that had come tumbling and looping down from the aerial cemetery overhead. Two of the mourners, it appeared, had been engaged for additional duties; they sprang into the open grave, and with practiced speed secured these lines to the iron hardware on either side of the casket. But a few seconds later, I was set aback, witnessing that which I had never expected–

  Its weight tautening the ropes, higher and higher the casket rose from out of the earth, the wooden form swaying in the unabated wind. For a moment, I could gaze directly at it, suspended with the mortal remains of my late wife contained within. Then the coffin’s upward progress resumed, drawn inexorably toward the vast graveyard occluding the sky above.

  “Unbeliever!” A cry incisive and brutal as a trumpet call struck my ears. “Doubt you now?”

  I looked across the emptied hole in front of me and saw the Right Reverend Jamford, greatly magnified in triumph. His maddened eyes locked upon mine.

  “I told you!” He jabbed a blunt fingertip toward the dangling coffin. “The Resurrection comes!”

  * * *

  “I had hoped you would like it–” Sitting upon a boulder rendered bright green by overlapping badges of damp lichen, Rollingwood was the image of utter dejection. “So many others before you have expressed their appreciation for the services we provide.”

  “So many others are bloody idiots.” I stood some distance away, having turned my back to him and folded my arms across my chest. “How else did the world get this way?”

  “Rail against the modern as you wish, Mr Dower.” A defensive note sounded in Rollingwood’s voice. “But I do believe you regard the Gravitas Maximus Funerary Society in an unjust manner. We have endeavoured to raise the standard of human practices that have been the same since our naked ancestors hunted with sharpened sticks and stone axes. We would all regard customary burial practices as filthy and disgusting – shoving our beloveds’ remains in the wormy ground, then tamping the dirt upon their faces! – if we were not jaded by the long centuries’ usage. Have we been doing any more than merely removing them from view, so that they might moulder and rot unobserved? Were you to ask my opinion, crypts and mausoleums are scarcely more reverent, the only difference being that they rest upon the surface of the earth, rather than being assembled in its depths.”

  “So this is your great innovation?” I glanced over my shoulder at him, then angled my gaze up to the sky. The mists and clouds had partially gathered once more, but the immense burial ground I had witnessed floating above, its inverted landscape thickly studded with simple tombstones and more elabourate memorials, remained in sight. “That our dead should not repose peaceably in the ground, but instead be deposited in the air?”

  “And why not, if we have the means to do so?” Rollingwood’s words became a bit more heated. “We wish those departed from us to ascend to Heaven – skeptics such as yourself might sneer at the notion, but such is still the common creed – and if so, what is the purpose of miring their bones and cold flesh somewhere beneath our feet?”

  “I rather believe that blessed abode, if it exists at all, is some distance away.” I spoke my objection as drily as possible. “Given the miles and miles that the deceased would have to ascend in order to gain their wings and harps, the interval from here–” I pointed to the damp ground “–to there–” my forefinger indicated the aerial cemetery “–it hardly seems noticeable.”

  “Perhaps so; I will not debate these finer theological points with you. People’s souls are immaterial things – they are unlikely to tire, no matter how far they have to go. But consider a matter of practicality for us, the living, who remain behind. This world is a material object as well, and there is only so much of it. To the degree we fill it up with coffins and corpses, there is correspondingly less room left for those still animate. Whereas the sky is, to all intents and purposes, infinite; the dead we place there do not crowd and encumber us.”

  “I had not heard that we are now cheek-to-jowl with our ancestors.” I shook my head at the man’s sophistry. “You continue to astound with your revelations. To me, it had seemed that we still had some empty space left, in which we could deposit a few stiffened parcels.”

  “Mock me as you will, Mr Dower – you are able to do so only because you despise the days to come. My employers and I take a longer view, and a kinder one.”

  Our conversation h
ad reached an impasse, beyond which I did not feel it worth pursuing, at least for the moment. Falling silent, I gazed across the expanse of Highgate, its features obscured as much by my deep brooding as by the overgrown foliage and slowly tumbling waves of steam. My late wife’s funeral, such as it was, had been concluded for some time; the coffin containing the unbreathing body of Miss McThane had been lifted to that vast cemetery above – literally an unearthly thing, separated from the world most familiar to us – and was secured in some inverted grave there. Or so Rollingwood had assured me; on this point alone I did not doubt him, as it was unlikely that he could have devised an account that would have been more distasteful to me.

  His job done, the Right Reverend Jamford had departed, to tend to other functions of his new faith, and to its acolytes; the lunatical imagery of his booming words no longer assaulted my ears, for which I was grateful. The hired mourners had departed as well, after having received some discreet payment from Rollingwood, pound notes in plain, unlettered envelopes; they were probably drinking away the proceeds from their minimal labours, down at one of the nearest pubs in the district of Highgate proper. I had chosen not to leave at the same time; whatever protective services those ruffians had provided, I felt I had no further need of them. Let the beasts prowling about Highgate’s grounds rend me limb from limb, and feed upon my flesh; this would not be the first occasion upon which disgust prompted the judgment that my own life was a mere trifle, discarded without regret.

  Somewhat to my surprise, Rollingwood elected to remain with me, at least for a time; I would have thought that concern for his own safety would have prompted a hastier exit. But as I had noted before, he was of that breed of men who esteem sociability as much as I disdain it.