by Nick Brown
I spent the period until noon pleasantly enough conducting a limited, but accurate, survey of the mound. It now seemed to me quite possible that it be a burial mound of the ancients although smaller than those of which we read and had recorded during our happy days of enquiry at Oriel. There seemed no evidence of the mound having been tampered with; so the possibility presented itself of my effecting an opening and gazing on a burial of the ancient type, pristine and complete with grave goods. I determined that in the afternoon I would return with pick and shovel and the aid of a willing labourer and drive a tunnel from the top to the centre of the mound. I whiled away the passage of my walk home with reflections of the monogram I would write and present to our old college library. This pleasant reverie was briefly interrupted by my catching a distant and fleeting glimpse of the surly fellow I had greeted earlier.
Having sent Mrs Wardle to fetch Mr Brigstock I fortified myself with some splendid game pie and cold hare washed down with half a bottle of good Madeira. Brigstock arrived and after I had complimented him on his labours in the churchyard I outlined to him my plans for the afternoon. To my surprise the fellow proved obstinate and refused to accompany me. When I pushed him further his manner bordered on the impertinent as he not only refused to change his mind but to suggest that I, as a man of the cloth, should have no such inclinations. I dismissed him from my presence and made a mental note to seek a replacement.
The hours of remaining daylight were few and remembering Virgil’s advice on the ‘hastening winter sun’ determined to be about my business. The day had grown chill so donning greatcoat and muffler I hastened with my tools of excavation to the Mound. I was relieved to see no sign of the fellow lurking by the fringe of the woods but the fields enclosing the mound had acquired a sombre aspect. Notwithstanding I pressed on and identified a spot atop the mound to begin my passage.
Now it is a curious thing, but I am sure that when I left the shelter of the trees, the fields were in sunlight. Yet not five minutes later when I stood atop the mound posed to deliver the first blow to loosen the earth with my pick the sky was almost dark. Clouds had gathered out of a windless clear sky, with rapidity hard to believe. As I struck the first blow a fierce gust did suddenly blow up to such an extent that I was temporarily blinded by earth debris carried on the wind. Once my vision was recovered and the moisture in my eyes under control, I understood myself to be in the grip of a storm generated by some freak of nature and determined that I should postpone my antiquarian activities until more clement weather return.
I must own that I was by no means reluctant to have reached that decision as by now the atmosphere of the place had changed from the cheer of the morning and its desolation depressed my spirits. I collect also that large numbers of great black birds, which these last days have infested the churchyard, had gathered in the great trees by the estate boundary and commenced a harsh and discordant clarion.
I was much, I repent to relate, discomforted by these creatures, which the vulgar regard as harbingers of the tomb, so took up my equipment and hurried against the wind towards the gate in the estate wall. Just before reaching this sylvan shelter I felt, I know not why, a sudden and overpowering compulsion to turn round and regard the mound. I did so and saw to my shock and amazement that the top of the hump where I had stood had a new occupant. There stood a shape, a type of human form clothed in black, too far off to be distinct but the contrast between the black of the garments and the white of what I took to be its face was strangely terrible to contemplate. I confess I turned and ran for the woods. Once having gained the shelter I turned again to ascertain whether the occasioning of my alarm should have been imagination.
Would that it had, for what I beheld chilled my blood. Now it is a singular thing but it was the way that the creature moved rather than its appearance that heightened my alarm; terrible but insubstantial as if boneless though that appearance was. It seemed to gain distance in a series of awful twisting jerks, its apparel, like rotted grave windings, flapping round it. But even worse, and it was this that that caused my very blood to freeze, it seemed also to have arrived at its new place before it had left its last – to be both here and there at the same time. Its movement was accompanied by a sound like the creaking of old leather aprons being rubbed together or the beating of great ancient wings. For a moment I stood rooted to the earth with terror; then with a shout for Our Lord’s protection I dropped my tools and fled.
22nd Nov 1776
Sir
Having written the above I felt disinclined to continue my epistle as the daylight was receding. It took the bustle and energy of Mrs Wardle’s lighting of the lamps and candles to restore any form of equanimity. I dined on some excellent mutton chops, followed by a dish of toasted Cheshire cheese, and then retired with a decanter containing the remains of the burgundy to my study to peruse and correct the translations of Horace’s Epodes which I have as you may recall recently effected. In this manner I whiled away some hours wishing myself with Horace on his estate in the Sabine Hills. I was indulging myself with the lines where he
‘Lightens all your ills with wine and song
Sweet comforts for the ugliness of pain’
when Mrs Wardle knocked and entered to inform me that, as all in the house was ready for the morrow, she would return to her cottage. I heard her leave and was therefore somewhat surprised when soon after she returned to inform me that behind the church, beyond the estate there were strange lights to be seen. I had no wish to leave the comforts of my study where the fire blazed and the candles shed soft light on the pages but could tell from Mrs Wardle’s expression that as the shepherd of the local flock it was my duty to investigate. So, after having instructed her to send a message to the Squire, I left the study and with great reluctance robed myself and lightening a lanthorne set out into the night.
Outside the moonlight cast the shadow of the church tower in sharp relief and, after having assured myself that all was well, I, with as great a fortitude as I could muster, proceeded to the estate boundary whence I had returned in such haste that afternoon. Long before I reached the wall I could see the lights which had so troubled Mrs Wardle. They brought to memory the Jack o’ Lanthorne of which we read with such fear, yet enjoyment, as boys. The lights appeared to emanate from the mound, around which they seemed to dance in a circular motion. My sight was too much obstructed by the trees to see clearly but I fancied that it must be some fellows up to no good. Yet no one from these parts would visit such a spot, even in daylight. The only person I had ever seen in the proximity apart from myself was he from whom I had fled this afternoon. At that thought the blood ran cold in my veins and I determined to return to the house and await the Squire and not remain like doomed Hector outside the Scaean Gate.
In the depth of night the trunks of the trees melded with the darkness but suddenly a patch of darkness separated itself from them and turned its white and awful visage upon me. It stood regarding me from a distance of no more than nine feet and on its face, the oddness of which I could not begin to describe, was the appearance of some manner of malicious and sardonic smile.
I was unnerved and unable to move. I knew this thing lived outside the will of our creator and that its disembodied malice would not be possible to contest. Slowly, it raised a limb from the folds of its awful rotting cloak and made an almost stately claw like gesture then with a sound like wind disturbing dry dead leaves it was gone. I knew the gesture spoke of my fate and with legs quivering I turned and for the second time that day ran. By the house I met the Squire with some fellows whom he sent on to the boundary wall. Myself he took inside and had me sit in my chair in the study. Having ordered Mrs Wardle to fetch brandy he addressed himself to me in the following manner.
‘You look like you have seen the devil, Sir. Here drink this. My lads will go no further than the wall, what’s over there is to be left alone. We keep to our part of this world, they keep to theirs. I’ve tried to tell you before, Sir, like it says in one of yo
ur books ‘there are more things in Heaven and earth than are dreamt about in your philosophy’. Do not meddle. Leave well alone. One more thing, Sir, I like not the look of that solitary dark cloaked fellow that you have lately taken on to watch by the church. My advice is to send him from here.’
With that he departed leaving me to the terrors of the night. I hear the noise of wings, the crows, that filthy rustle of their great black feathered limbs. Surely not in the darkness. Oh God.
23rd Nov 1776
Sir
I proffer no salvation as I now collect that these letters will never be sent. I write only to let out that which I cannot inwardly contain. These writings I will secrete against the day on which they may prove of use to another soul that has tampered as I have, with that which is best left alone. I slept ill in the night, and such sleep as I had was wretched, nightmares haunted and filled with leathery rustlings that I could scarcely distinguish from reality. Whether I did rise in the night, pull aside the bed curtains and look out of the window to see the figure at the bottom of the garden amongst the apple trees or if I dreamt it is of no matter. Neither option gives me hope. Neither did the morn bring any cheer, the day being dull and cold.
It watches……
It watches from the trees and seems to come by degrees closer to the house yet when I direct Mrs Wardle’s attention to it she sees or effects to see nothing. She has told me that she must away after luncheon to visit a relative who has taken sick and lives towards Poynton and may not return for some days. I believe her not. She may not see what I see but she fears. Yes, she fears. I darest not to church; I know he has been there!!
This evening I felt a disturbance in the shrubs by the window of the drawing room and fancied I heard dry laughter in the air. I shall not to bed tonight but bank up the fire in the study and remain there until morning. The great crows are loud again tonight: what do they sense?
I shall endeavour to beseech Almighty God to bring me comfort in the darkness. In the light of the day I shall send for a carriage. How dark it seems to be, O how dark.
Is he within the house? No, there by the lych-gate, he watches. How dark it seems.
What is it in the mound that I have disturbed? Where is the reason? Oh Lord protect and comfort thy servant.
24th
Oh God, what is that which stands and watches?
***
And that was how it ended. Ed Joyce sat in his armchair in silence for several minutes before he could tear his eyes away from the page. The ending was abrupt. The writing of the last section clearly deranged but the impression of horror was palpable; he could feel it in the room, with him. In fact so much so that he felt a reluctance to leave his chair and turn round in case there was something behind him. He knew that he was sitting in the same room in which Heatly Smythe had written these pages. Despite all his modern ideas about religious metaphors and symbols, there was in the journal a paralysing sense of terror and, like Heatly Smythe, he wished that the mound had been left well alone. During the rest of the evening he felt uneasy and waited until Mary was ready to come to bed. As he lay sleepless in the dark the same phrase repeated in his head.
‘Oh God what is that which stands and watches?’
CHAPTER 8
CAN THE DEAD SPEAK?
Hung over and frustrated with the mass of bureaucracy Giles was relieved to be told Steve was calling from the site. He hated Mondays, always spent either in the vast but dingy basement rooms of the Unit or even worse, in a series of tediously pointless meetings. An unusually excited Steve blurted out,
“Gi, we’ve located the entrance and we’re not the first to find it.”
“Hey great work man, tell me.”
He lit a cigarette and leaned back in his chair, feet on the desk to listen.
“We’d only been on site about an hour when Jan broke through all the Iron Age shit and hit a new layer, an in-filled ditch and it’s much older. Rose was right, Giles, we’ve got something: it must be a burial and I think we’ve nearly got the entrance. We could be in tomorrow.”
“You sure? Jeez, that’s great Steve.”
“It’s not all great: there’s something odd about it: it looks like our villagers found it first and then sealed it right back up, even tried to restore it. Plus whatever is messing with the site hasn’t stopped. But we can live with that a couple more days I guess ’cos we can excavate and be off site by the end of the week. I can have it ready and recorded by tomorrow. Seems you’ve got your five minutes of fame after all, Gi.”
He asked Steve to meet him back at the Unit after work with more details and rang off.
So this was a special site. He rang the Journal and left Jim a message to be at the site with Lisa tomorrow by mid day, then settled at his desk to while away the grey hours of admin until Steve arrived. By six fifteen he was impatient, bored and was toying with the idea of leaving a message to meet at the Royal Oak when the door crashed open and Steve burst in. He brought updated site plans and photographs, which he spread on the table, hands filthy with excavation dirt. The grubby site plan showed clearly the excavated segment of the mound.
“This is the real deal Gi; a ritual site, and if it wasn’t for the fact that there’s no other evidence in the area, I’d say definitely Neolithic. It’s like a hurriedly put together version of a chambered cairn although there shouldn’t be one here. Look at the trench: it’s the foundations of a wooden palisade. The fill is organic material and from the size of it, it must have been small tree trunks about 6 feet high screening the barrow and containing it. But look at this here, just between the trench and the entrance; it’s the soil fill we found just before we packed up for the day.”
He pointed to a darker patch on the plan about one metre from the entrance.
“We think that this is some kind of pit, maybe ritual. Jan and Leonie are going to have a closer look at it first thing tomorrow. From its position right in front of the entrance we think it’s linked to whatever’s in the chamber. But this is the weird bit, Gi, and I can’t think of a parallel: the entrance has already been opened once.
“What we found isn’t the original sealing. So what was it that made our boring villagers open it up then reseal it, and reseal it bloody quickly? It makes no sense. I mean it’s been there all those years right next to them, so why suddenly break into it? But, from the evidence it’s clear they not only rapidly closed up the chamber but then equally quickly reburied it under a great mound of earth. Why? Unless whatever it was they saw in there really freaked them so much they couldn’t stand to be near the place any more. Hey, perhaps we should have accepted the offer from that sorry looking vicar.”
“Yeah, well that’s certainly different.”
“ Yeah and it gets even stranger because the earth covering the mound contains the latest dateable evidence on the whole site; so they must have re-buried it then immediately abandoned the village that had been their home for hundreds of years. So you and your reputation may have made it big time ’cos you’ve not only got an important find but you may have the makings of a horror movie.”
“Yeah, whatever, but we’ll get plenty of coverage.”
Giles smiled as Steve moved back from the table to accept the cigarette he offered. He rubbed his eyes; the only light in the large basement came from the pool provided by the Angle poise lamp on the table. They smoked in silence for a few moments thinking what they could get out of this increasingly peculiar site. But the silence gradually became oppressive and when Giles suggested the pub and then a curry Steve agreed straight off.
The Royal Oak was cheerful and noisy as they entered, a good antidote to the gloom of the unit. Giles bought two pints of Pedigree and carried them across to the corner table. Steve swallowed half his drink in one go, carefully placed the glass back on the beer mat and leant back in his chair. Giles thought he looked pale, dirty and dishevelled, as archaeologists tend to do, but also troubled. After half an hour of desultory conversation and a second pint Giles was read
y to suggest that they go to eat when Steve, having hesitated twice, started to speak more urgently.
“OK, I’d better tell you: had some trouble with the team on site, Leonie in particular. I think she’s off her head and it’s getting to the others. Maybe it’s because we’ve been on it too long but the sooner we finish there the better. The tool shed was vandalised again last night only hours after I shut it when I cleaned the place up. Don’t ever ask me to do that again.”
“Sorry, Steve I won’t, I was too strung out to do it myself.”
“Yeah, OK, but listen: there’s a dead fox inside, head was missing, smelt like it’d been dead for ages; wasn’t there yesterday. What’s all that about? And where have all those bloody noisy crows come from?”
He broke off as if to collect his thoughts.
“What’s going on? Who’s doing it? It’s like the dig’s being stalked. Ever since Rose started going on about the mound someone’s been watching from that copse on the estate boundary. There’s occasionally something like this on rural digs: you know, a combination of working with the long dead and morbid imagination. But even I feel someone watching when I close the place down at night and no one’s got less fucking imagination me.”
Steve’s flow was interrupted by the ringing of his mobile. He answered and muttered a few words and then looked up at Giles.
“Can’t make the curry, sorry, Gi, that was Anna, she’s going to pick me up here in five minutes and wants to go and see a band at the uni. Just time for one more though.”
As they were finishing the third pint a slim dark haired girl wearing tight jeans picked her way to the table and wrapped her arms around Steve’s neck. Giles thought he recognised her as one of the history department’s post grad students. Steve put down his glass and kissed the girl, pushed back his long hair, and got up to leave. Then he turned back to Giles.
“Oh yeah, almost forgot: I spoke to Rose today. Strange conversation; was glad when it ended, made my flesh creep. Soon as I walked in she hissed at me ‘the dead can speak.’ She was rambling of course, told me someone had got inside her head and led her to the mound. She was hysterical: tried to tell me about some dead thing in black that attacked her but she was shouting so loud a nurse came in and told me to go. As I was leaving she called out, ‘don’t excavate, it’s what it wants: it’s waiting for you, it knows, it’s been waiting, it’s beyond death, it was never alive.’ I got out of there pretty fuckin’ quick but I could still hear her halfway down the corridor.”