“True enough,” remarked Dan, scanning the yellowing pages again. “Your grandfather would not be born at this time. And this Harlyn Trezela had no children when he was writing. It seems that he had only just married before coming to Mountmayne.”
“Nevertheless, it is a curiosity,” I conceded. “Is it true what he says about Mountmayne?”
Shawn Duff grinned wryly.
“Sure, there were stories of a curse which the old ones used to talk of. But they were stories. Mind you, it was about this time when Castle Mountmayne and the estate fell into disuse and broke up. Several people grabbed the land after the Land Purchase Acts at the end of the last century. They managed to get advances to buy their own small plots. Come to think of it, the last time Castle Mountmayne was used was in 1921 when it was converted into a barracks for the ‘Black and Tans’. It was attacked by the republicans and set on fire. Several people were killed there, including the commander of the Tans, a Major Mayne. There was some talk that he was related to the Mountmaynes. But Castle Mountmayne has been empty ever since.”
While he was speaking, my mind was still racing as to whom this Harlyn Trezela could have been? Some relative, that seemed likely. That much was obvious by the name. But what relation was he to me?
“Do you have a phone?” The idea came into my mind quite suddenly and I acted on it.
Dan nodded to a cubicle in the corner of the bar.
It did not take me long to get through to my Aunt Rita in Sheffield.
“What? You’re ringing from Ireland? Isn’t that expensive, Hal?” she demanded. The family always called me Hal.
I suppressed a smile.
“Not really, aunt. Look, you know a bit about the Trezela family, don’t you. I mean, have you heard of another person called Harlyn Trezela?”
“My father, your grandfather, of course . . .” she began but I cut her short.
“No, not him. This Harlyn Trezela would have lived before grand-dad. His wife was, Peggy. But I don’t think he had any children.”
There was a pause.
“No,” Aunt Rita spoke slowly and was clearly thinking. “No. All I know is that your grand-dad came to Sheffield from Truro. He was in his early twenties, and that was about Nineteen-oh-five.”
“Do you know anything about his family before that?”
“No. Why is this important? You’ve hardly shown an interest in your family while over here and then you go to Ireland and start ringing up wanting your family history. What’s happened to you?”
“Nothing, auntie,” I replied patiently.
There was an audible sniff.
“Well, the only other thing I know about your grand-dad was that his mother was called Maggie and that his grandmother was called Pernel.”
“Pernel?”
“That’s right.”
“There’s some strange names in our family,” I commented reflectively.
“Look, I have some old papers belonging to your grand-dad. If it’s that important, I’ll look through them. Why don’t I call you back later this evening?”
Not knowing where I would be, I agreed to call her back later and then returned to join Dan and Shawn at the bar. But Shawn Duff had already left. He had, apparently, had to return to his demolition job.
“Well? Have you solved the mystery?” asked Dan with open interest.
I shook my head with a wry smile.
“Not much of a mystery,” I said. “This Harlyn could only have been some distance relative, if that.”
“Yet you share the same name?”
“I know. It’s odd. But a lot of people have the same name.”
“Not one as distinctive as yours,” grinned Dan. He glanced down at the letter, oilskin and tin box. “What will you do with these?”
“Well, it’s not mine.”
“But the name . . . ?”
I sighed and thought for a while.
“Tell you what. I shall be in this area for the next few days. I’ll return here soon. If you keep it, I’ll come by here in a day or two and might have made up my mind. I’m asking a relative to do a little research on the family. We might be able to sort it out then.”
Dan agreed and together we rewrapped the letter into the oilskin and returned it to the box.
It was late afternoon when I left Dan’s bar and began to wander along the valley road. The curious letter was on my mind. Had my namesake gone insane? Had his mind been turned by the tales of a curse? Indeed, what had happened to him? Perhaps he had returned to his beloved Peggy.
Peggy! I suddenly halted. Peggy was a diminutive, a diminutive of Margaret. And Maggie was also a diminutive of Margaret. Maggie. Aunt Rita said that grand-dad called his mother Maggie. Could it be possible?
Was Harlyn Trezela’s wife really called Margaret, and he called her Peggy? Had he not returned from Ireland? Had she borne him a son whom she also called Harlyn? And that son had grown up without knowing his father but hearing friends call his mother, Maggie?
My mind spun in confusion.
I had meant to leave the Fascoum area that afternoon and make my way into the neighbouring Monavullagh Mountains, the next range to the Comeraghs, to examine their highest peak at Seefin, but something kept me in the area. Perhaps it was a longing to clear up the mystery. I spent the next few hours walking around the old Mountmayne estate. Castle Mountmayne was never a castle but a grand Georgian country house – or had been once. Now it was gaunt, blackened, with charred timbers, standing desolate and lonely in the countryside.
I spent a little time examining it from a distance, for I could see workmen employed on demolition work there and did not particularly want to fall in with Shawn Duff again.
Realizing that evening was approaching, I decided to pitch my tent on the lower slopes of Fascoum and began searching for a good spot.
The girl was young and pretty and I did not see her until I came abreast of the rock on which she was sitting in the pale early evening sun. She had dark hair, pale skin and bright eyes whose colour was difficult to determined, changing between grey and green as the light slanted against them.
“Good evening,” I smiled, as I realized her presence.
She stared at me but made no reply. Unusual, I thought, for the Irish were usually courteous to strangers.
“I’m looking for a spot to camp near here. Is there a place with a fresh spring or stream?”
She continued to watch me silently, until I grew uncomfortable and was about to say something else, wondering whether she was deaf or dumb. But then she raised a languid hand and wordlessly pointed along the track.
I thanked her politely, thinking that I must be right, that she was dumb, and made on.
I’d gone only a few yards when I heard a female voice distinctly say: “Even unto the seventh generation, Mountmayne.”
I turned swiftly round, confused.
The girl was no longer on the rock. It was as if the earth had swallowed her. I bit my lip wondering why my imagination was playing me tricks. I’d had a long tiring day, it was true, and the curious events at Dan’s Bar must have set my imagination rioting.
Time for rest.
I found a spot by a stream a little further on and, a short way down the hill, I spied a small roadway and, of all things, a telephone kiosk. The Irish seem to have a habit of sticking telephone kiosks in unexpected, desolate places by roads that come from nowhere and lead to nowhere. The sight of the phone box reminded me of my promise to telephone Aunt Rita. I decided to pitch my tent and have a meal first.
It was a nice, scenic spot to camp, overlooking the ruins of Castle Mountmayne, still standing out dark and gaunt in the gathering dusk. A little way behind the house, quite near to the road where I had spotted the telephone kiosk was a clump of trees in which I could see another ruin, an odd affair like an old church. I wondered whether it could be a family chapel or perhaps a grandiose piece of architecture for the stables of the house.
It was almost twilight when I went into
the cream and green box marked “Telefon”, the interior lit by a dim, dirt covered light-bulb, and checked the direct dialling for Sheffield, England. I fed the coins and dialled. Aunt Rita answered.
“Well, you made me spend an interesting few hours with your grand-dad’s papers. What’s more it seems that we have a skeleton in the family closet.”
“What do you mean, aunt?” I demanded.
“Well, grand-dad’s father seems to have been illegitimate.”
“Yes,” I sighed, slightly impatiently, “but that doesn’t sort out my problem, does it?”
“Hang on, Hal. I have your grand-dad’s birth certificate. He was born in March, 1882. His father was Harlyn Trezela, deceased, and his mother was Margaret Trezela. Not Peggy but Maggie.”
I groaned for it didn’t really solve anything.
“But Peggy is a diminutive of Margaret,” I pointed out.
“Is it, dear?” she replied absently. “Well, the main thing is that I found a birth certificate for another Harlyn Trezela. He was born in 1857. His mother was a Petronella Trezela. The boy was illegitimate. She named her son Trezela, her own name, for there is no father registered. That means he was illegimate.”
She sounded quite proud of the fact. I sniffed.
“Well, that was happening all the time in the so called Victorian age of morality. Was he the Harlyn Trezela who I’m looking for?”
“Well, whoever he was, dear, it would mean that he was only twenty-four when grand-dad was born but according to granddad’s birth certificate, his father was already dead. It ties in but grand-dad called his grand-mother Pernel not Petronella. It’s a different name. There’s a reference to her in his papers . . .”
The beeps sounded and I had no more money, so I quickly bade Aunt Rita goodbye and said I would be in touch soon.
I turned out of the dimly lit public telephone kiosk into the darkening September evening.
I began to turn my steps back slowly towards my encampment. I realized that it would be dark before I reached it but, thankfully, I had brought my flashlight with me.
I did not think there could be any doubt that Harlyn Trezela, who died when he was twenty-four, was the person who had written the curious letter. Could he have been granddad’s father? His wife was Peggy, a diminutive of Margaret. Grand-dad’s mother was called Maggie, also a diminutive. Harlyn son of Petronella was dead when grand-dad was born in 1882. So, too, was Harlyn, grand-dad’s father. They had to be one and the same person. Which meant that Harlyn Trezela had not returned from Ireland. Grand-dad had been born and brought up without knowing what had happened to his father.
So what had happened to Harlyn Trezela at Mountmayne? Had he fallen to the fabled curse? Had he been driven insane by a morbid fascination with the fate of the Mountmaynes, a morbidity clearly demonstrated in the document which I had been shown? But if he had felt threatened by the Mountmayne curse . . . why? Why was he a victim of a curse which was only to affect the Mountmaynes? It seemed to make no sense at all, even if one believed in the curse of the Mountmaynes.
I suddenly realized that I had been so deep in thought that I had made a wrong turn at the stone wall which led up to where I had pitched my camp and, in the dusk, came to the old overgrown copse which I had spied from the hillside.
I stood, squinting into the darkness. I could just make out the dark shadows of the ruined building, Gothic in form, like an old chapel.
I realized that I been right in my original assessment of what the building was and that I had wandered into what was once the private chapel and graveyard of the Mountmaynes situated behind the great house.
I was turning away when a headstone obviously newer than the rest of the ancient cracked and decaying memorials caught my eye.
I turned towards it, reaching for my flashlight, for the darkness had descended so quickly that it was no longer possible to read anything in the gloomy twilight.
A simple headstone. It was simply inscribed.
HARLYN TREZELA, 1857–1881.
Surprise went through me. Here was the grave of the very man whose letter I had read. The man who had borne my name. The grave, I now had little doubt, of my great-grandfather.
I heard a whisper in the shadows. The voice of a woman mocking me.
“Even unto the seventh generation, Mountmayne.”
I swung round, heart pounding, but could see nothing.
The hairs on the nape of my neck rose.
“Ridiculous!” I said aloud, almost to give courage to myself. “If there was a curse on the Mountmayne family, it had nothing to do with the Trezelas.”
I returned my gaze to the headstone.
I felt sorry for the man, this unknown ancestor of mine. If Aunt Rita had been right, he had a half life. Illegitimate, yet he managed to become an officer in the army. Someone with influence, in those days, would have had to buy him a commission. Wounded in the Afghan wars, crippled and invalided out. Married. Given a job in Ireland as a land agent. He had died without seeing his wife again, nor knowing that she was pregnant and would give him a son. A sad sort of life.
My mind suddenly seemed to stop at one thought.
My mouth went dry.
The word “illegitimate” had stayed in my mind, clanging like an alarm bell.
What was it that he had written? Jervis Mountmayne had arrived on the estate in 1857 “with a crowd of rowdy friends and a mistress, whose name recalled Roe, my overseer, was Ella . . . Ella had soon after returned to London and rumour had it that she later gave birth to Jervis’ illegitimate brat”.
Ella! Ella! Petronella! Petronella Trezela!
Oh God!
And grand-dad called his grand-mother Pernel. And what was Pernel, I suddenly recalled, but one of the accepted contractions for Petronella!
Harlyn Trezela had been a Mountmayne without knowing it. The illegitimate son of Jervis!
“Even unto the seventh generation!” came the mocking sibilant laughter in the darkness.
Harlyn was the fourth to suffer the Mountmayne curse.
He was my great-grandfather. Grandfather, Father and me – three more generations. I was the seventh generation! Even unto the seventh generation! The curse spoke of “generations” and not “heirs” of Mountmayne.
I felt a terrible icy fear grip me. Panic sent my limbs into action. I turned and began to run from the decaying old burial ground.
I stumbled and almost fell into a large hole which lay across my path. I regained my balance and, thankfully, I did not loose grip of my flashlight but shone it before me.
The hole was long and narrow. It had the appearance of a freshly dug grave.
There was a stone at the head. A fairly new quarried stone.
A man was standing behind it grinning in the darkness. It was old Shawn Duff. Seán Dubh? Black John! He stood pointing, pointing and grinning. In the curious light his face seemed to take on a sharp pointed aspect, the eyes bright and unblinking . . . almost fox-like. I followed the indication of his finger.
Inscribed on the stone was: Harlyn Trezela. 1953–1993.
I strained my eyes back to where Shawn Duff stood but he was no longer there. Instead, in the darkness, there sat a lean looking dog fox, its mouth seemed to grin evilly at me. At its side was a larger fox; a great pregnant vixen which regarded me keenly with its sharp, bright eyes, the jaws slightly open, displaying rows of razor-like incisors on which were tiny flecks of blood.
Around me from the encompassing blackness of the mountains came a series of wailing barks, strange child-like cries in the night.
Karl Edward Wagner
ONE PARIS NIGHT
Karl Edward Wagner (1945–1994) is remembered at the insightful editor of fifteen volumes of The Year’s Best Horror Stories series (1980–94) and an author of superior horror and fantasy fiction. While still attending medical school, Wagner set about creating his own character, Kane, the Mystic Swordsman. The first novel in the series, Darkness Weaves with Many Shades, was published in 197
0. It was followed by Bloodstone and Dark Crusade, and the collections Death Angel’s Shadow, Night Winds and The Book of Kane. Wagner’s horror fiction was collected in In a Lonely Place, Why Not You and I?, Author’s Choice Monthly Issue 2: Unthreatened by the Morning Light and the posthumous Exorcisms and Ecstasies.
The story that follows was one of two that the author wrote featuring gunslinger Adrian Becker: “He is supposedly a distant offspring of Kane,” explained the writer, “and was conceived about the same time in my imagination in the early 1960s.” Wagner intended to write a novel about the character, entitled Satan’s Gun, but only a fragment survives.
“I can’t understand how you came to be shot there.”
Adrian Becker was in a foul mood. He paced about the rubble of the shelled cathedral. In the distance they could hear the Prussian shells hammering Paris.
“What’s so odd about being shot in a sporting house?” Sir Stanley examined the dressing.
“I meant being shot in the arse!” Becker had performed the attendant surgery and applied the dressing himself. While he had some medical education, he had gained extensive practical experience while riding with Quantrill during the recent American Civil War.
“I imagine it was the first target the Communard saw,” Sir Stanley argued. “You saw how they burst in upon us. Paris is in chaos. There is no respect for any institution.”
“You should have guarded your backside.” Becker retained the Prussian zeal for order, despite the fact his former fellow Uhlan Lancers would now shoot him on sight.
“Well, it was her backside I had in mind just then, old man,” Sir Stanley pointed out. He had found most of a cigar in his coat, and he lit it from their lamp. Despite the risk, Becker had demanded proper light to dress the bullet wound. “Furthermore, one doesn’t expect a husband or angry suitor to make an outraged entrance into a whore’s bedroom.”
“Why then did he shoot you?”
“He shouted that I had devoured his sister.” Sir Stanley sucked on the bedraggled cigar.
“He said what?”
The Mammoth Book of Wolf Men Page 27