The Ka of Gifford Hillary

by Dennis Wheatley

  Presumably as my animation had been suspended absolutely from that moment that Evans had loosed his death ray upon me, my tissues had hardly yet absorbed the fortifying vitamins contained in that last dinner which I had eaten so cheerfully with Ankaret. Moreover, I was no starveling. While by no means a glutton I had, within reason, indulged my good appetite and love of rich foods freely for many years past. Even though I was not burdened with much surplus fat, regarded simply as a warehouse my big healthy frame must contain a fine stock of those chemicals which kept life going; and had I been called on to play my part as a citizen in a medieval town withstanding a siege lasting many months, it was a very good bet that I should have remained capable of carrying on long after a big percentage of my fellow townsfolk had starved to death.

  But that was really beside the point. For the maintenance of life liquids were far more necessary than solids. Men had often gone for three weeks or more without food, but the case of anyone who went without water for even three days would be desperate. And the awful thing was that one did not die of thirst. At least not until it had sent one mad.

  That, then, was the fate to which I was condemned. In a few days thirst would drive me mad. But no; I should be mad long before that. The constant strain of having consciously to draw in each breath through the sheet, claustrophobia and anticipation of the agony inseparable from my final death throes would drive me insane before I began to suffer seriously from thirst. Perhaps within a few hours.

  If so, I might still hope for a relatively swift escape. For madness was surely a state in which the mind refused any longer to put a true value on the circumstances of the person to whom it belonged. It could regard rags on the body as royal raiment or remain convinced that while eating mashed potatoes it was enjoying a dish of peacock’s brains. Yet the body of a madman, despite its supernatural strength, did not become insensible to pain. I might imagine myself to be the Pharaoh Cheops entombed in the centre of the Great Pyramid, still by far the vastest monument ever raised by human hands. I might fool myself into believing that my winding sheet was a mummy’s bands that I had managed to loosen in an effort to free my limbs from them. But I would still be buried alive, and be subject to the most ghastly physical torture before I finally expired.

  Again, time is relative. Most people can recall how their school hours dragged; so that during an afternoon class ten minutes would often seem like half an hour. And contrariwise, how an evening out with someone with whom one was in love, although lasting for six or seven hours, would seem to be over before it had properly begun.

  How long it was since my Ka had re-entered my body I had not the faintest idea. It already seemed as though half the night must have passed, because such a great variety of fears, hopes, speculations, panic thoughts and awful apprehensions had in turn occupied my brain. Yet all of them might have sped through it in a few moments, and I doubted if in fact my mind had been again one with my body for more than ten minutes.

  How long then, in terms of my own consciousness, was it going to take before either claustrophobia or thirst drove me mad? To me it might seem like days, or even weeks. A fresh fit of shuddering shook me.

  For a time I prayed desperately, abjectly; begging God either to give me the strength to force my way out of my coffin, or by some means I had not yet thought of decree for me a swift end. Both prayers remained unanswered. A new attempt to raise the heavy lid above me showed me that my physical strength was still hopelessly unequal to the effort needed, and no sudden choking or heart stroke seized me giving promise of a convulsion that might carry me off.

  I began, within the limitations of my weakness, to thresh about, in the hope that by exhausting such energy as remained to me I might die sooner. But very soon I was forced to abandon that idea for possibly accelerating my death. The quicker breathing necessitated by my exertions became a torture, and the bumping of my head against the sides of the coffin resulted only in giving me a headache.

  It was as I lay still once more, painfully recovering from my latest exertions, that, like a sail seen by a shipwrecked mariner on a desert island, new hope flamed in my breast. Ankaret was to be buried on Saturday, and this was Friday night.

  With that thought my attitude towards my ghastly situation instantly became reversed. Instead of doing anything I could to hasten my end I must conserve my energy by every means in my power. Somehow I must hang on to my sanity. I must fight the demons of fear with every ounce of will-power that I had left. If I could defeat panic and do nothing whatever but lie there breathing quietly for a few hours, I might yet be saved.

  When the Vicar had conducted the first half of Ankaret’s funeral service in the Church, her coffin would be carried out for the second part to be read over it as it was lowered into the grave. Some minutes before that the Sexton would make the vault ready by drawing back the cover from it. Owing to the air-holes in the coffin I could not fail to hear the tarpaulin scrape across the vault’s brick edge. That would be the signal for me to begin to shout. Even if the Sexton happened to be as deaf as a post, the Vicar, the coffin bearers, or some of the mourners assembled round the grave’s edge to witness the last rites were bound to hear my cries and come swiftly to my rescue.

  Now, how I thanked God for those air-holes. I marvelled too at the wondrous ways of Providence; for had I not left instructions that they were to be drilled, I would already be suffering the excruciating tortures of slow suffocation and be dead long before morning. It seemed that those youthful nightmares in which I had feared that I might be buried alive had been sent to me on purpose; so that I could make provision against it. There was, then, a pattern in things after all. I recalled now my Ka’s kneeling in Westminster Abbey and praying in vain to be rescued from its loneliness; and how I had later railed against God for ignoring my plea to be guided to a place where I might mingle with others who were dead. How wrong I had been to do so. He had known that my body was still in a state to receive my Ka back; and He meant me to live.

  It was that thought ‘He meant me to live’ which now buoyed me up and gave me the courage to face the hours that I must pass imprisoned in that awful darkness.

  My greatest concern was to make my breathing easier. Raising my hands a little till they were above my mouth I got a fold of the sheet between my fingers. To tear it was beyond the strength of my weakened arms, but I began to knead and scratch at it with my nails. Frequently I had to stop and rest owing to the feebleness of my wrists and fingers. How long it took I had no idea, but at last I succeeded in wearing a small hole in the material. Thrusting a finger through it, I exerted all the strength I could and tore a rent a few inches long. The relief was immediate. Gradually I drew long breaths of the cold air deep down into my lungs. After a few moments I forced both my hands, back to back, through the rent, clutched the torn edges of the sheet and tore them apart. By feeble pulling I was then able to free my face from it entirely.

  My limbs showed no signs of regaining their strength, but the better air supply helped to clear my brain. Or, at least, no longer having to labour for each breath enabled me to think more coherently. Further scenes witnessed by my Ka during the past week now came back to me, and began to take their proper place in the sequence of events.

  Normally when one wakes after a dream the impressions of it are vivid but soon forgotten unless one makes a deliberate effort to retain them in order to describe them to someone else. But in this case the process was reversed. My first memories of what had occurred had been vague and fragmentary, but as the night wore on they came back to me with increasing clarity until I could recall every detail of my Ka’s experiences. Why that should have been I do not know. I can only suppose that it was because my Ka had not left my body in natural circumstances and to the conditions in which it returned enabled it to inform my physical brain of how it had been ejected and of all that had followed.

  As I thought of the threat to Sir Charles’s life I realised that it should now be in my power to save him. Ankaret’s f
uneral would almost certainly take place, as had mine, in the morning. Even if it did not do so till the afternoon there would still be ample time to telephone a warning to him before he left his office.

  At the same time, while telephoning to him, I should be able to get him to clear Johnny of the weighty charge made against him by Admiral Waldron and order his release from arrest. Perhaps, even, Johnny would be able to get down to Longshot that evening and join me in celebrating my resurrection.

  Another thought on the strange workings of Providence came to me. It was through Ankaret’s irresponsible encouragement of Evans that the little Welshman had all but killed me. Now, it was through her own death and funeral that I was to rejoin the living. Yet the knowledge that she was dead struck me with renewed force, and for a time I was once more overwhelmed with grief at my loss.

  In an endeavour to assuage my misery I tried to turn my mind to other things. My reappearance in the world was going to require a lot of explaining, and there were many matters that would have to be straightened out. Amongst others Harold would have to be told that he was not ‘Sir’ Harold after all. As I imagined his angry disappointment I actually laughed in my grave.

  The hollow sound was positively terrifying, and it brought me back with a jerk to the awful fact that I was, literally, not yet out of the wood. Thoughts can pass through a mind so swiftly that although it seemed to be hours since my Ka had re-entered my body, it might in reality be only about thirty minutes. The dawn I should not see was still probably hours away, and after it another six, or perhaps even nine, hours must somehow be got through before I could hope to be rescued. My real battle to hang on to my sanity still lay before me.

  For some time I had been increasingly conscious of the cold. It now filled me with a new fear. As my movements were so restricted and the vitality of my body so low, I might die of cold before the hour of Ankaret’s funeral.

  In an endeavour to counter it I began to exercise such limbs as I could move a little. Again I thanked God for having led me to make special provisions about my burial in my will. Had I not done so I would have been encased in a satin-lined lead casket within the wood coffin and certainly dead from suffocation by now. But, that apart, whoever had measured me for my coffin had either not been told, or had forgotten to allow for, the fact that it was not to contain an inner casket. As a result of this oversight, instead of my body being wedged tightly against the wood it had an inch or two of free space all round.

  That enabled me to stretch my legs, flex my toes, wriggle my hands down until they rested on my thighs, and even ease my position from time to time by turning slightly sideways. There then began a struggle between my continued weakness and my endeavours to do my utmost to keep my circulation going. Naturally I had made further attempts to lift the coffin lid, and tried using my knees instead of my hands, but the lid seemed to weigh a ton and I was utterly incapable of shifting it. All I could do was weakly to roll my head from side to side or stretch a limb occasionally, but to that I stuck with grim determination.

  All further thoughts about how other people might be affected by my return from the grave, I put from me, because it had, once again, become a question of ‘if’ not ‘when’ I was rescued. I no longer dared to count on it. The seeping cold might finish what Evans had begun. Yet had I allowed my mind to become vacant new fears and terrifying possibilities would swiftly have drifted into it, so to keep it occupied I began to say over silently all the poetry I could remember.

  I must have gone on like that for a long time; for I had always been fond of poetry and, although far from word perfect, my repertoire was considerable; and I ran through most of my favourite pieces twice. No doubt it was the cadences that first soothed then lulled my overwrought mind. Without realising what was happening, I fell asleep.

  It was the sound of a loud bump immediately above my head that awoke me. I had slept deeply and, opening my eyes with a start, I stared up into inky blackness. For what, unrealised by me, were now several incredibly precious minutes, I did not know where I was. My brain, bemused by sleep, stumbled as through a fog, grasping at first only physical essentials; that I was cold, that my limbs were numbed, and that I was lying without a pillow on a hard surface in complete darkness. It was another sound which brought back to me with awful suddenness the fact that I was in my coffin and how I had got there.

  Somewhere above me I caught a sudden faint murmur. It ceased and then came again almost at once. It had in fact been only one word of two syllables pronounced simultaneously by a number of people and repeated after a very brief interval. Yet even at a distance it was plainly recognisable. A congregation had twice made the response ‘Amen’.

  Ankaret’s funeral was taking place. I had slept while the sexton was drawing the tarpaulin cover aside from the vault. Slept on while the Vicar had read the short second half of the service at the grave-side. It was her coffin when lowered bumping on mine that had aroused me. For the minutes while the last paragraphs of the service were being pronounced I had continued to lie there inactive, still half asleep. Only at its very end had the truth crashed home into my comprehension. The opportunity for which I had striven so hard to survive was almost gone. The crowd that had assembled about the grave-side and stood there for a good five minutes must now be moving away from it. My hope of life now hung by a thread.

  Galvanised by desperate fear I went into instant action. At the same moment my hands shot upwards and I called for help. To my horror my voice, through having been unused for a week, was no more than a hoarse croak.

  In vain I strove to force a shout. My mouth gaped open, the sinews of my throat contracted, but only guttural sounds emerged. My agonised cries were little louder than the mewings of a cat and could not possibly have been heard by the people now moving away from the grave-side.

  Yet, as I thrust upward, it flashed upon me that during sleep my strength had returned. My muscles were stiff and severe pains were shooting through them; but in this frightful emergency I gave little heed to that. With unspeakable relief at the thought that it now needed only an effort to burst my way out of the coffin, using hands, knees and head, I made it. To my amazement and terror the lid refused to budge.

  Suddenly the awful truth dawned upon me. Ankaret’s coffin could have been lowered on to either my father’s or mine. The funeral mutes had, for no particular reason, chosen to let it down on my side of the vault. She was now lying immediately above me and the weight of her coffin made it impossible for me to raise the lid of my own. My strength had returned to me too late, and I had slept through my one chance of getting myself rescued. This was the end. After a few hours of agony I must now die where I lay.

  * * * *

  I was no exception to the rule which makes battling to survive a paramount instinct in man. I refused to accept the logical conclusion that there was no hope for me. As I croaked on my voice grew stronger. I shouted, raved, cursed, pleaded. Had I done so as loudly five minutes earlier I must have been heard. But those little holes in my coffin, while large enough to give me air, were too small to allow my shouts to be audible above ground level as more than muffled sounds. The Vicar must have closed his prayer book and with solemn mien be making his way to the vestry to disrobe. Bill, Ankaret’s aunts and cousins, James Compton, the rest of my co-directors, and the other mourners would all now have left the grave by divergent paths across the churchyard to drive off in the cars that had brought them there.

  Fighting down the instinct to go on shouting, I forced myself to become silent for a moment while I listened. After the reverberations of my yells in that closely-confined space the silence was almost stunning. It had that eerie quality which has been so aptly described as ‘of the grave’.

  I shuddered at the thought it conveyed. My sentence had not after all been suspended, but was confirmed. Up there, probably in the September sunshine, a score or more of people any one of whom would have dashed to my help had they known that I was alive were quietly walking off, thinking
no doubt of their lunches, or perhaps their teas. I had lost my chance to make contact with them and it would never come again. No; never. Once more I was completely isolated from my fellow men and this time my isolation was final.

  Yet, for as long as I can remember, I had always believed in the old adage that ‘God helps those who help themselves’. By what seemed a miracle He had restored my strength to me. I suppose that having fallen into a natural sleep my Ka had, unrealised by me, again left my body, and fulfilled its normal function by returning as I woke to recharge it with new energy. In any case, although my limbs were cold and my movements still cramped, physically I felt as strong as I had ever been. Perhaps the feat of raising Ankaret’s coffin as well as my own coffin lid was not now beyond me.

  Bracing myself, I made the attempt, thrusting upwards with my knees. With frantic excitement I felt the weight above me yield. A faint streak of greyness appeared low down near my left leg between the coffin and its lid. I heaved again. The streak widened. Once more I heaved. The gap was now at least three inches wide. If only I could sustain and increase the pressure I might yet escape death by inches.

  Yet, even as new hope flamed so brightly within me, I suddenly realised that my strivings were in vain. To free myself I must, somehow, overturn Ankaret’s coffin sideways on to that of my father. To lift it even a foot or more was not enough, I could not possibly raise it on end with my knees alone, and keep it suspended in mid-air while I crawled out from beneath it.

  To yield those few inches of grey daylight which I had gained by such tremendous exertion was one of the hardest things that I have ever done. But done it had to be. The hope of achieving freedom that way I now recognised as an illusion. To pursue it was as useless as butting one’s head against a brick wall.