The Bog

by Talbot, Michael

  Melanie gasped and David clasped his own hand over hers when they saw what lay beyond. Lying half naked in the bed was Julia. Her eyes were closed and she was drenched in sweat. But the most striking aspect of her feature, what captured their attention immediately, was the gaping wound in her chest and shoulder. A massive chunk of her torso was missing and clearly visible was half an eviscerated lung and a dangling section of esophagus. Still, remarkably, she was alive. What remained of her breast rose and fell, and the shredded fragments of her windpipe fluttered as she breathed, but David failed to comprehend how anything biological could survive the wounds that she had apparently sustained. Equally astonishing as the fact that she was alive was the color of her internal organs. Unlike human viscera, they were a nacreous and cadaverous gray, and the veins that entwined them a darker and more leaden color still. Most incredible of all was her black heart, which protruded prominently from the bloody splay of her abdomen, and it too pumped and quivered like some creature from the deep stranded on land by a storm.

  At first David did not connect Julia’s wound with the creature he had seen in the bog, but as he continued to stare at her, it slowly dawned on him that the bloody cavity was exactly the same as the gunshot wound he had delivered to Ol’ Bendy the night before. He looked at Grenville incredulously.

  Grenville returned his stare. “She’s going to be quite angry with you once she’s up and around again.”

  David blinked. “You mean Julia is the creature?”

  “One and the same.”

  “But how?”

  Grenville smiled. “Certainly in your encounter last night you gleaned some hint of the fact that Ol’ Bendy possesses somewhat remarkable powers of transformation.”

  David still could not believe his eyes. He looked down once more at the reclining form in the bed, at the remaining breast and the distinctly feminine figure. “But the creature I shot was male!”

  “Strictly speaking, Julia is a male spirit, but you must understand, she can assume virtually any form that she wants. In addition, her appetites are rather wide ranging, so it becomes somewhat meaningless to speak of her as possessing gender.”

  At this last remark David noticed that Melanie went completely white, but he assumed that she was merely reacting to the extraordinariness of what they were witnessing. Still searching madly for some flaw in what he was being told, he said: “But the creature reconstituted itself after I shot it. When it chased me to the church the wound had already healed.”

  “It was a temporary measure on Julia’s part. She was furious with you, and just as humans display more than normal abilities in times of trauma, Julia was able to affect some semblance of her normal self. But it will take her a couple of days to recover completely.”

  At the very moment Grenville finished saying this, a tremor passed through Julia as she was apparently wracked by an unseen pain, and arching her back like a woman in labor, she let out a wail. As she did this a cloud of acrid and sour air flooded forth from the bed, and at the same time the enigmatic pain that he had first experienced in the thicket shot through David’s jaw. He looked at Grenville questioningly.

  True to form, Grenville perceived what was puzzling him instantly. “You must forgive her. Most of the time she can suppress the painful effect she has upon people.”

  “Why does she have that effect?” David asked, still stroking his jaw tenderly.

  “Julia is no normal physical entity. You see, under normal circumstances she does not belong on this plane of existence. But because she’s here, quite literally she has a foot in two worlds, and when you feel the pain in your jaw you are feeling the tug of her realm. You are feeling the dissonance of the two worlds coming together, a sort of static.”

  David was about to ask another question when suddenly Julia’s head lolled to one side and it looked as if she were about to regain consciousness. Her eyes opened and rolled about in her head as her lids fluttered. And then her eyes stopped rolling as her gaze fastened on David and recognition came.

  “You!” she hissed, rising up like a serpent about to strike, and shot a long and pitchy tongue at him accompanied by a ferocious snarl. Drawing on some unearthly reservoir of power she lunged at him, but Grenville stepped quickly between them. She looked at him, infuriated.

  “Ip hur ib du ni!” she cried.

  “Ish ma na ni ia ip!” Grenville shot back as he glowered at her. For a moment she hesitated, still challenging his authority, but then she fell back into the bed and lapsed once more into her feverish delirium.

  Grenville turned to David once again. “She really is very peeved with you.”

  Noticing not at all the immensity of Grenville’s understatement, David focused his attention instead on the unknown language that Grenville had just used to address Julia. It sounded to him vaguely Phoenician, although he knew enough of that ancient tongue to know that it was not.

  “What language was that?” he asked.

  “Its name would mean nothing to you,” Grenville returned. “You would not know it.”

  “It’s not Celtic,” David countered.

  “No, it’s not,” Grenville replied and seemed unwilling to comment any further on the matter.

  Another tremor wracked Julia and Grenville allowed the bed-curtains to flutter shut.

  “I think it is time we return to the drawing room,” he said, holding the candelabrum aloft and motioning for them to follow him. He closed the parlor doors as they once again took their seats on the sofa.

  “So why are you telling us all of this?” David asked as Grenville sat back down in his chair of bog oak.

  “Well, you see, Julia has been in the trust of the de L’Isle family for quite some time, many centuries, in fact.” Grenville paused as if to allow the ramifications of what he was saying to fully sink in.

  “So she is responsible for the deaths of the bodies we’ve unearthed in the bog,” David filled in as he glanced at the portrait of one of Grenville’s ancestors over the fireplace and noted once more the mysterious veil that was draped across its face.

  Grenville nodded. “Indeed, but more important is the fact that it has long been the duty of the de L’Isle family to watch over Julia, to protect her, and in this regard it is most imperative that her existence remain a complete secret. You see, we have learned to control her and understand her ways, but if news of her existence went beyond this valley, and curiosity seekers started to rain down upon us, heaven only knows what the consequences would be.”

  “So what do you want out of us?” David asked.

  “I would like to make you an offer. I would like to propose that you and your family stay in the hunter’s cottage and you continue with your work, but with the promise that you will say nothing of the events of these past several days to anyone, not even your assistant. And in return I will promise you that I will keep Julia away from you and not allow her to harm you or your family in any way.”

  David’s hackles began to raise. “But Julia is a murderer!”

  “You mean the bodies in the bog? But that was centuries ago. As you have seen for yourself, we now keep Julia restricted to sheep. Surely you cannot call that murder.”

  “What about Winnifred Blundell?”

  “That was an accident.”

  “But I thought you said you could control Julia?”

  A hint of rancor flashed in Grenville’s eyes, but he remained calm. “True, but that was the first such accident in over a hundred years and it was due to an oversight on my part. It will not happen again.”

  David remained unappeased. “And what if we don’t agree to your demands? What if, as a scientist, I cannot simply forget what I have seen and heard in the past several days, and I decide that I have no recourse but to tell the world about Julia’s existence?”

  Melanie clenched his knee as she sensed that this had somehow been a dangerous remark to make.

  Grenville made a church with his rubied fingers. “Then I would be forced to allow Julia to
do with you what she will,” he said placidly.

  This caused David to completely lose his temper. “How dare you threaten me in this manner!” he said, standing. “Who do you think you are to presume that just because you are the local gentry you have absolute powers of censorship over anything that happens in this valley?”

  Following David’s outburst Grenville just continued to stare at him, offering no hint of what he was thinking.

  David continued to pace angrily. “And where did this creature come from, anyway? And how is it that you are able to control it whereas others cannot?”

  He looked again at the veiled portrait hanging over the fireplace and on impulse he charged over and snatched the drapery away from the canvas. As he did so, Melanie gasped, and he himself stood back and stared mutely at the countenance himself. For the face, the visage done in a style from over a century before, was not of Grenville’s facially deformed ancestor as he had said, but was none other than Grenville himself.

  Grenville stared at David icily. “I do wish you hadn’t done that.”

  He continued to gaze at them silently for several moments and then he stood. “But now that you have, you certainly deserve to see the others.” He strode briskly in the direction of the dining room. He turned and cast them another sharp glance. “Come along. Come and see, if you are so curious.”

  With growing trepidation, they followed. Once in the dining room, Grenville moved from portrait to portrait, removing the little curtain from each, and each was in turn revealed to be another yet more ancient likeness of himself. As the paintings increased in apparent antiquity, his clothing style changed, and the manner of the brushstroke altered according to the fashion and sophistication of the times, but in each, the face, hair, and eyes were undeniably his. Even the ruby ring had been recorded, and the Malacca cane that David had seen him carrying at their first meeting.

  David rushed forward to examine the crackle in the varnish.

  “They are not fakes,” Grenville informed him. “They are all of me.”

  “I don’t understand,” David said.

  “It’s really quite simple,” Grenville returned. “You see, there is no de L’Isle family line. I am the only one. I’m as old as Julia is. It was I who first conjured her up.”

  David’s understanding of the world was once again assaulted, but this time the mental siege that followed was short-lived. With Grenville’s last revelation he laid down what remaining vestiges of skepticism he possessed and stood ready to face whatever lay ahead.

  “What are you?” he asked.

  Grenville’s eyes narrowed as he at last seemed relieved in being able to reveal his true colors. “In colloquial terms you might say that I’m a sorcerer.”

  “How old are you?”

  “My precise age is not important, but I am very old, certainly as old as the bodies you are digging out of the bog.”

  With this final surrender to the strangeness of Grenville’s world David also discovered new courage, and he looked his adversary fixedly in the eye. “I know what has preserved them all of these years. What has enabled you to weather the centuries?”

  “Why, Julia, of course,” Grenville said, folding his hands and walking around the side of the table. “Surely you must be cognizant of the relationship between a magician and his demon? Since time immemorial it has been understood that there is great power in the world of darkness. It has long been the role of the thaumaturgist to break through into this world and bring one of its inhabitants under submission. It is true that one must have some innate talent to accomplish this, but the brunt of a sorcerer’s power comes from his enslavement of the demon and his channeling of the ocean of unfathomable energy available to that darkling creature.”

  “So it was you who made the candelabrum vanish the other evening?”

  Grenville smiled. “A simple trick, really.”

  “What other powers has Julia enabled you to wield?”

  “Oh, a vast number of them. Even more power than most who have preceded me in my profession. You see, under normal circumstances the magician is only able to allow the demon to manifest on this plane of existence for a short period of time. But long ago I discovered a way to make Julia manifest permanently, to give her actual physical form. That is what has enabled the two of us to survive so long. It is the perfect symbiotic relationship. I provide her with physical form and allow her to sate her needs, and she functions as the energy source, the conduit through which all of my powers flow.”

  “And what do you want with us?” David asked. “Ahh, here we come to the meat of the matter. To begin, I want you and your family to remain in the hunter’s cottage and I want you to continue with your work.”

  “That won’t be possible,” David retorted quickly. “My family is leaving this very afternoon.”

  Grenville looked at him quiescently. “You don’t understand. I’m not giving you any choice in the matter. The truth is, I’ve never had any intentions of ever letting you leave this valley. It is regrettable that you forced my hand in this matter because I wanted to apprise you of this fact more slowly, but I’m afraid that this is the case nonetheless. You see, as you are no doubt aware, I have quite a number of human servants to take care of this house, the grounds, and in general maintain the standard of living to which I am accustomed. When they grow old and die, I need replacements. Normally, I get them from among the villagers, but as you may have noticed the people in this valley are becoming quite pithless. The trouble is that, as the years have passed and times have changed, the valley has become an almost totally closed community, and inbreeding and incest have become quite a problem. To put it bluntly, I need new blood. That is why I gave you the hunter’s cottage. I want you to stay, and ultimately I want your children to intermingle and marry into the community.”

  “Forget it!” David cried.

  “But you have no choice.”

  “What if we just refuse and pack up and leave?”

  “I have ways of stopping you. Just because Julia has been temporarily downed does not mean that the flow of my power has ceased. I have eyes everywhere and there is nothing in this valley that I do not know about.” He looked at them smugly. “Do you remember the moth in the Swan with Two Necks? Do you wonder why the villagers were so afraid of it? Well, I’ll tell you. You see, the moth too was one of the ways I have of keeping an eye on things around here. The moth was Julia. I had her assume that form so that I could send her there to spy on you. That was how I knew that Winnifred Blundell so foolishly tried to warn you to leave.”

  “So you did murder her?” Melanie interrupted.

  “I had Julia kill her,” Grenville replied. He turned to David. “As you have seen in your exhumations of the bodies in the bog, it is a task she does with unusual relish.” He smiled. “And please be advised that Julia is only one of the tools of surveillance I have at my disposal. There are others. And so, if you tried to leave you would never know what set of eyes watching you might really belong to me, a tiny moth between the folds of the clothing in your luggage, a gnat following a discreet distance behind, or even a flea sequestered amongst the hairs of your scalp, any one of them might actually be one of my little emissaries.”

  The notion that Julia could shrink down and become the size of an insect once again challenged David’s reason, but given what he had witnessed so far he did not doubt that it was true. He shook his head. “But I have my work, my reputation. If I do not return to Oxford people are going to start wondering why. They’ll come looking for me.”

  “I’m sure something can be worked out,” Grenville returned. “You must understand, we are not totally cut off from the outside world. Some intercourse is allowed. For example, when we need a new vicar I always arrange a way for one of the villagers to attend seminary.” He paused. “In fact, I see no reason why you could not come and go as you please as long as your wife and children remain here to remind you that you must ultimately return.”

  “What about Brad?
” Melanie asked.

  “Good point,” Grenville said. “I’ll tell you frankly that I would prefer that he didn’t stay. Two outsiders at a time I can handle with ease. Three makes me uncomfortable and might bolster your courage and inspire you to dissent and rabble-rouse. However, I warn you, if you say one word to him about either Julia or myself, at the very least he will become a prisoner in this valley as well. At most, I might even decide to let Julia have her way with him. She’s most intrigued by the fact that he’s a vegetarian.”

  Melanie looked horrified.

  “The same goes for your housekeeper,” Grenville went on. “And anyone else you may be in touch with in the outside world.” He looked at them harshly. “Please don’t underestimate the range and scope of my power. Others have made that mistake in the past, and all who have are among the bodies you are now unearthing from the bog.”

  David and Melanie just sat staring at the ancient magician.

  “One final word,” Grenville murmured. “I am aware that I have just given you a great deal about which to think. On the brighter side let me add that life need not be so grim for you here. To begin, when I say we need new blood in the valley that does not mean I am going to force anything. So please do not feel any undue pressure on that count. Just relax and I’m sure as the years pass nature will inevitably take its course.” Grenville paused and looked distractedly at his fingernails. “If I am not mistaken, the floodwaters of womanhood are already beginning to flow through your daughter. Who knows, she may fall in love with one of the village boys on her own accord.”

  The thought of one of the scrofulous boys he had seen in the village laying a hand on his daughter filled David with revulsion.

  “Never!” he shouted, lunging at Grenville. He was halfway to him and filled with enough venom to strangle him barehanded, when the old sorcerer suddenly raised one of his hands and passed it swiftly through the air in front of him. Then something invisible hit David with the force of a bag of concrete and sent him flying across the room into a row of chairs.