“Ah! You are awake?”
“Yes,” I replied, thinking that if she asked me one more silly superfluous question that day I should scream.
“Follow me,” she went on. “Some of the guests are here already, and I am sure, most eager to meet you.”
She led me along the hallway to some big oak double doors, flinging them open to reveal a large oblong room, in which a number of people stood talking and laughing together. Several of them looked at me curiously, but I paid them no notice. I walked slowly forward, looking all about, scarcely able to believe my eyes. On one or two previous occasions I had seen briefly inside this room; but it was only now, when I saw it all decked out with Christmas adornments, that I recognised it as the room in my dream.
All at once I was being introduced to various people on all sides – and returning their greetings most perfunctorily – while my head filled with curiosity and astonishment.
Time passed, and one or two people made efforts to speak with me, but I was unable to spare them much attention. I was far too occupied with observing every part of the room, again and again, to satisfy myself that everything was indeed exactly as in the dream. Then suddenly there came from outside the double windows the familiar sound of childish voices, singing the Wassail song. I tottered slightly for my legs seemed to grow weak with my excitement.
“The village children,” cried Mr Lansdowne gleefully. He turned to his wife. “The village children are here. My dear, tell Betsy to have cakes and fruit and a jug of cider taken out to them.”
Mrs. Lansdowne nodded with a grin and hurried from the room. My eyes followed her to the door. In my dream it was always now that the dark figure entered. I did not know quite what to expect in reality; but everything that had occurred thus far corresponded so perfectly with the dream it seemed to me inevitable that something must happen; that I should see at last the face and identity of the black stranger, and that prospect thrilled me beyond all description. For I think some part of me was already convinced that it would be she – the mysterious girl whose face I had glimpsed years before on that strange summer night.
My eyes fixed on the doors while my muscles froze, my heart thumped, and my body trembled with anticipation. A minute or two passed, and then the doors swung open. I stared, growing tense with excitement. Mrs Lansdowne came back into the room alone, and I nearly cried out aloud in anger and frustration. Calming myself I continued watching.
Minutes went by. They passed into hours. The girl did not come. Nothing whatsoever occurred.
I was stunned. Devastated and overwhelmed by a misery and disappointment that was beyond anything I was able to understand.
I spent the next two days in the midst of happy Christmas revellers, trying to be pleasant, or at least passably polite, while inside I was a turmoil of inconsolable confusion and grief. Eventually I could bear it no longer. I said I was feeling unwell and thought it best that I returned home. I do not doubt they were all secretly relieved to see me go, although they expressed regrets.
* * *
Back at home I felt no better. Soon my depression grew so intense that I became ill with a violent fever, and tossed and raved in bed for several days. It was for a time feared that I would not survive, and I myself supposed as much, for my occasionally lucid spells brought on such black fits of gloom that I was left with little will to live. It was a long time since I had last had my dream, and in view of what had happened at the Lansdownes I doubted I would ever have it again. This served only to increase my misery, for I missed the dream, even though it had proved false. It was as if the one thing of mystery and excitement in my life was gone; and I felt lonelier than ever. Apparently, when the fever was on me, I raved and babbled continually about “the dark girl”.
When at last I grew strong enough to leave my bed I found myself frequently affected by strange fits of irritability and restless energy, during which I would spend hours just pacing and wandering aimlessly all about the house.
Then one day during one of these restless spells, I ventured up into the attic, where I had not been since I wandered up there as a small child. On that occasion I had at once run downstairs again, frightened by the dark. This time I took a lamp up with me. The air was most unpleasant, damp and dusty, making me cough and sneeze constantly. But it was a fascinating place, a veritable museum of my family history. There were many old toys, some of which had been mine, now crammed into trunks and corners, covered in cobwebs, which made the place seem like the deserted nursery of some long dead child. And there were also numerous ornate and exotic artifacts, many of which were no doubt obtained by my grandfather, who travelled widely as a young man, but whose souvenirs, particularly those from the East, lamps, pictures, carvings of strange-faced gods and idols, were relegated up here by my father, who had considered them gaudy.
I held up my lamp and looked about as the dim, flickering yellow light spread around. My attention was suddenly taken by the portrait of a stern faced man in a white powdered wig, that stood on the floor, propped up against the wall on the far side of the attic. I examined it to discover it was a portrait of my great-great-grandfather, Richard LePerrowne, who lived from 1696–1765. Behind this portrait were stacked two others. Naturally curious to discover what my forebears looked like I began to study them, brushing away the dust and grime. The first was of Richard’s younger brother, Henry. They were very much alike, both very good looking. As far as I could see neither of them bore any resemblance to me or to my father, or to the portrait of my grandfather that hung downstairs; we being fair while these others were dark and slightly swarthy: a tribute no doubt to our distant family origins in Brittany, and our ultimate descent from the Angevins, who were reputed to be descendants of the Devil, and whose most infamous son, King John, was said in legend to have wandered the countryside after his death in the form of a wolf.
Then I uncovered the last of the portraits, the sight of which made me gasp out in astonishment. There, staring up at me from the ancient, dirty canvas was a face that bore a striking resemblance to my own. The eyebrows seemed a shade darker – though the hair itself was covered by a wig – and the face was perhaps a little fuller, but otherwise our pale skins, dark blue eyes and rather soft features were virtually identical. I stared at the portrait for some time before I glanced down at the dull metal plaque at its foot, which read:
William LePerrowne
1675–1698
This was the father of Richard and Henry. It was absolutely remarkable. He could quite easily have passed for my father – or indeed my twin brother – yet he bore no resemblance to his own sons. Had it not been for his likeness to me, his descendant, I might have suspected the presence of a dark handsome young groom or footman in his service.
I took all the portraits downstairs to my bedroom, where in future they were kept. The one of my look-alike, William, I hung near to the foot of my bed. But intriguing though this portrait was, I found myself – though I could not quite define why – becoming even more fascinated by the other two. There was something about them that had a profound effect on me.
The question troubled me, and preyed on my mind for several days, until at last, one afternoon, with nothing better to do, I placed the portraits of Richard and Henry against the wall facing me. Then, sitting at my desk, I took pencil and paper and began idly to sketch out a likeness, as accurately as I could, of the features common to both – high cheekbones, small nose, dark eyes and full lips. After several crude attempts I managed finally to reproduce these with passable accuracy; then sat and stared at the face I had formed, until my hand, as if by its own will, reached out and drew about it a mane of hair, which I then began to scribble over until it was virtually black. Realisation came so suddenly that I dropped my pencil and jolted upright with such force that I nearly toppled over in my chair. For several minutes I sat staring upon my sketch, half-numb with shock. For the face that I had drawn was roughly but unmistakably that of the mysterious dark girl; and the resemblance
between she and the faces in the two portraits seemed suddenly so striking that I could not understand how I had failed to recognise it before.
As I reached down to pick up the pencil, which had rolled from the desk onto the floor, my hand was trembling. I could think of only two possible explanations for this incredible occurrence, and both were profoundly disturbing.
The first was simply that my mind was unbalanced: that the apparent resemblance did not in fact exist, but was a morbid trick of my memory or imagination. Perhaps I had drawn the face of the girl not because she genuinely resembled my ancestors, but because I was obsessed with her to a degree that made me blind to reality. But the harder I gazed upon the portraits, the more objective I tried to be, the more vivid and real the likeness seemed.
The second explanation was that I was haunted – that the girl was some weird but real ghostly presence. Who she was – who she had been – I could not say. But she differed from most phantoms, that haunt houses, gardens, graveyards, or such traditional places. Her manifestations were of a far more disturbing kind. She haunted my mind. She haunted me.
III
Time passed but my fear remained. Worst of all was my helplessness. There was no one I could turn to for help or counsel, and there seemed no way I would ever find any concrete answers to the mystery that had risen about me.
Then one day, while I sat reading in the library, my gaze wandered suddenly to where several dusty old bound volumes stood, up on one of the high bookshelves. About two years earlier I had, out of curiosity, glanced through some of these. They were a random collection of family records; stacks of old letters and papers that went back for generations. Most were concerned just with everyday trivia, and I had found them to be of little interest. However, now it occurred to me that perhaps they might contain references to my ancestor, William, and his family, and I felt a sudden urge to study them.
At once I took them from their shelf, then spent several hours browsing through them. There were indeed a number of letters and notes written by or addressed to William, but these seemed to me mostly uninteresting and commonplace. I read through one letter sent by William to his mother, while he was staying in Exeter one summer, in which he described in detail the girl he married a year later when he was eighteen. He said she was tall with grey eyes and blonde hair; and I reflected that she sounded as if she bore no more resemblance to her dark sons than William did. Next I read a letter addressed to William, dated two years later. It was a letter of condolence. It appeared that at the beginning of the year 1695 there occurred the death of William’s only sister Helena – whom he had loved dearly – at the age of only twenty-one. I now vaguely remembered having been told of this long ago by my nursemaid Sally. Helena LePerrowne, a girl renowned for her beauty and virtue, had died of some unknown and sudden illness, despite all efforts to save her, just a short time before her proposed marriage to a handsome and wealthy young gentleman. It was said that one night in a fit of delirium she had run from the house into the grounds, and was finally discovered dead from exposure in the woods beyond the back lawn. Word of the tragedy was sent to the man to whom she was betrothed; and the man was said to have disappeared, never to be seen or heard of again – and he was commonly supposed to have ended his own life, or otherwise died of grief.
I thought on this as I began to read the next letter. It was sent to William, several months after Helena’s death, by one of his friends: a certain Sir Humphrey Landers. This letter was evidently in reply to one already sent. And as I read it a chill spread gradually through me.
… I advise you, my friend, to quit your home and Cornwall for a time. It is plain to me that you have been deeply and greatly disturbed by the tragedy, as any man might be. But you must place no belief in the wild tales of the base and ignorant, nor allow them to work on your mind. Common men are a gullible and superstitious rabble. As for the nurse who claims she could not restrain her charge! It is plain to me that the woman was asleep when she should have been attending to her duty. And the servant who first went out into the night after your sister. Clearly he was drunk. How else might a sick girl have eluded him? I should make sure he has not stolen a key to your wine cellar. Beware, my friend, for you may no more trust a servant with drink than you may a fox with a lamb! As for his drunken babble! A black form that stole upon your dear sister and bore her away! Indeed! Now that you are master of your house you must, I pray, come to know the endless wiles of the servant classes. Cheats, thieves and idlers all. They will invent any monstrous and incredible lie to conceal their own base worthlessness and ingratitude.
But to return to the tragedy. I fear that while you remain there in that house the condition of your mind is scarce like to improve. I fear, my friend – and my physician is incidentally of the same mind – that in view of the terrible imaginings of which you have written, if you remain there much longer madness may soon overtake you. Such a place to a man in your state of grief is sure to lend itself to strange fancies. Accept that she is gone! You and your wife must, I insist, accompany Lady Landers and I to Bath, or perhaps to London…
I sat and considered all this. It was plain from Sir Humphrey’s references to “terrible imaginings” and “strange fancies” that, following the death of his sister, William had had some sort of experience that left him fearing for his sanity. Now my head was filled with a series of strange and presumptuous ideas that somehow seemed entirely logical to me. I asked myself: could it be, as the letter implied, that William was troubled by dreams or visions of his dead sister? Then I asked: could the presence or the image of Helena LePerrowne exist in some form here in the house where she had lived and died? For if any spirit roamed this ancient place, it seemed to me that it must be hers, whose death was so tragic, and apparently so cloaked in mystery. Could it be her face I had seen that night? It might at least explain the resemblance between the dark girl and the portraits of William’s sons. Did Helena haunt me as she had once haunted her own brother – my great-great-greatgrandfather, to whom I bore so strong a likeness?
Absurd as all this might seem, it appealed perfectly to my then dark and morbid state of mind. And I felt a powerful, compelling desire to find out more about the mysterious Helena. But now it occurred to me that I had no way of discovering what she had looked like. To my knowledge there were no existing drawings or portraits of her – which was hardly surprising since she had died so young. I realised to my dismay that far from having come any closer to solving the mystery I had only succeeded in making the whole thing infinitely more tantalising.
For an hour or so I sat brooding in impotent anger. Until at last a thought took gradual shape in my mind. A ripple of shock passed through me as I realised what I was contemplating. I shook my head quickly. It was lunatic. And yet! I remembered once reading of cases where corpses sealed in coffins had been remarkably preserved long after death, although deterioration was always rapid once they were exposed to the atmosphere. I knew very little of the process of decay, but though I supposed that the body of Helena, dead for more than one hundred and fifty years, could probably be no more than a mound of dust, it seemed not impossible that something might yet remain: that the body could still be intact and by some chance retain some vague mummified suggestion of how it had looked in life. Some strands of that jet black hair. Something.
I shook my head again. I was surprised by this dreadful notion – to venture into my old family tomb and uncover a corpse in the faint hope that something about it might satisfy an unwholesome urge of my imagination. I tried to put it from my mind. But it was no use. The idea kept returning, as if something were forcing it back into my head. And the more I thought about it the more insane it seemed; yet in spite of this I felt increasingly drawn to it. Until slowly I came to see that truly it did not shock me – or if it did that shock was all part of a great sense of excitement that was fast mounting in me. For a while longer I fought the impulse, until it became clear that my scruples reflected an aversion I did not truly feel.
I was determined to do this thing, however distasteful or irreverent it might seem. I suspect the desire transcended even my wish to solve the mystery of the girl’s identity. I believe it was because it went against all my Christian upbringing had taught me that it obsessed me so. The whole idea smacked of some thrilling, forbidden adventure. And perhaps even some vague premonition of the great chain of mysteries I was beginning to uncover. Indeed, so great was my compulsion that I resolved to go to the tomb at once, as soon as I had obtained a lamp and some instrument to prise open the coffin.
The tomb stands in the grounds of my home: in a remote private cemetery in a small clearing amidst a dense wooded area at the bottom of the back lawn. It is a big imposing structure of grey stone with a high roof surmounted by small stone gargoyles, and worn steps that lead down to a great square iron door, beyond which lies the main underground vault where for several centuries, up until the time of my great-grandparents, most of the members of my family were interred.
When I arrived outside the tomb it was already late in the afternoon, and the sun was setting. But the fading light made little difference to me since the tomb was in any case deep and dark and I had my lamp. I confess I did hesitate for a moment, wondering if I might feel more comfortable returning the next morning in full daylight. But having gathered my nerves enough to go ahead with the deed, I wished it done. Besides, no doubt the approaching darkness would help speed my progress.
I had brought the key with me, but discovered that the padlock was ancient and broken. I pulled away the rusty chains then dragged open the cumbersome door as a long discordant creak escaped the hinges. A dry musty smell came from inside making me cough as I stepped forward and held up my lamp, peering in as the pale glow faintly penetrated the gloom. Inside the vault was long and narrow. I moved slowly, passing dust covered coffins of lead on the low shelves on either side, shivering at the peculiar clammy chill that seemed to emanate from the stone walls and cling to the stale air. By counting the coffins as they stretched back into the dark, then brushing the filth from the top of several and reading their ancient name-plates, I soon found those of Henry, Richard and William LePerrowne; and then at last that which I sought: the coffin of Helena.
The Revenants Page 3