The Revenants

by Geoffrey Farrington

  I had found an old iron crowbar to use as a lever. Placing the lamp on the ground by my feet, I managed to wedge the tip of the crowbar beneath the coffin lid, then stood flexing my muscles, ready to apply force. I was trembling now, but whether from nervousness, apprehension or excitement I was not sure. I pushed the lever down, trying to gauge the amount of pressure required, when the crowbar slipped loose and I stumbled backward against one of the coffins opposite, arms flailing, clutching at it to steady myself. I stepped two paces forward. With a sudden thrill I saw that I had dislodged the lid to Helena’s coffin and that now it stood slightly ajar. It had come free remarkably easily, but then I told myself that after so many years that was perhaps not surprising. Gripping the crowbar I thrust it forward, knocking the lid from the coffin so that it fell down onto the shelf behind with a deafening clatter.

  I stood for several moments, my body rigid, holding my breath, waiting for the distant echo to die completely away. Then slowly I leaned forward to look inside the open coffin.

  Deep inside lay a body which seemed quite whole and free from any corruption. It was she. Though it was too dark for me to gain any more than the vague impression of a white face, and masses of black hair that merged with the gloom, I knew at once simply that it was she.

  Gasping in astonishment I turned, leaning down to grasp clumsily at the lamp by my feet. In my haste I nearly tripped. I lifted the lamp up above the coffin, my hand shaking violently as I stared down in the flickering light. I felt a cold trickle of sweat run over my cheek. The coffin was empty. The body was gone.

  I did not know if I had imagined the lifeless form and for the moment I did not care. I was seized by blind panic and I turned and ran, beyond the power of thought as I hurtled through the darkness. Then I tripped and fell on the rough stone floor, losing my grip on the lamp which flew forward and smashed to pieces on the ground. Winded, cut and grazed, I looked up blinking into the dark. A short distance ahead I could just see the door of the tomb, slightly open, the last dull rays of daylight barely shining through. I wanted to run to it but found myself overwhelmed by such an intense sensation of dread that my head spun, my strength died away and a wave of cold nausea flooded through me. My head sank down. I felt the cold hard stone floor against my cheek. Desperately, with immense effort, I began to crawl painfully forward on my torn and bloody hands and knees towards the door, intent only on escaping from that horrible and unnatural place. Eventually, gasping in agony, sweat pouring from me, I reached the door and, twisting my body to pull it wider open, struggled through.

  Now the sun was no more than a few flecks of red on the horizon. Dark clouds were gathering overhead to threaten a dismal evening. Stiffly I climbed to my feet and lurched forward, staggering halfway up the stone steps outside the tomb before the effort overcame me and I sank down again. I gazed ahead at the shadowy, towering clumps of ancient and twisted trees. The great terror was still on me. A sense that I was not alone there, but that some unseen, inhuman presence lurked very near.

  I went to scream but such was my fright that only a low rattling hiss emerged. Again I tried to raise myself up, but now my eyelids grew heavy and a sudden numbness fell over me. And there rose in me then that same burning heat I had experienced on that distant night when I had first seen the dark girl, the very thought of whom now filled me with horror. It increased rapidly, quickening my heart and pulse, swelling my veins until it felt as if my whole body might explode. Then it seemed that darkness engulfed me as there came the coolness, like a soft breeze blowing all about me, sinking slowly into my skin and filling me with that same chill of pleasure and relief as before. And yet this pleasure was more terrible and loathsome to me than any pain could have been. To feel it here, writhing on the steps of the tomb, on a bed of cold stone, dead leaves and damp earth; yet to have no strength to do other than yield to it. It seemed obscene and horrible beyond words. After that I have no more than the vaguest memory of holding something in my arms. And blackness.

  I was eventually woken late that night by a spot of rain splashing my face. I still lay on the ground outside the tomb; cold, aching and horribly tired. As I picked myself up the rain began to fall more heavily. I stumbled in the wet and the pitch dark through the trees and back to the house. I went straight to my room where I fell aching and exhausted down onto the bed. My brain swam but was sure of just one thing: that this time it had been something more than a dream. I drifted into a deep sleep.

  IV

  I did not wake until the afternoon of the next day, but still I felt tired and wretched. Outside it was dreary and still raining hard. I had fallen asleep in my dirty clothes, so I bathed, washed my cuts and grazes and changed before going downstairs for the early dinner I had instructed Moore to have prepared for me. Oddly I thought little on the events of the previous night. I think shock had blanked out the memory of much of it, but also my mind felt strangely dull and sluggish. I found it impossible to train my thoughts on anything for any length of time. Moore – dear old man – looked me over with some concern and asked if I was well. I had no wish to worry him. I told him I had been sleeping badly.

  I found I could not eat. In spite of my hunger it was difficult to force the food down. Early that evening, after a brief and unsuccessful attempt to read a book, I felt exhausted again and went back to bed.

  My memories of the days and nights that followed are even now somewhat vague and disjointed. I slept for much of the time, but was often aware of myself lying in bed surrounded by creeping shadows and soft whispers that I could not understand or identify. But gradually it seemed they were becoming clearer, that my mind bordered on strange and unfamiliar levels of consciousness and perception. And all the while my physical condition worsened. I grew pale and sallow. My cheeks sank. My mind was daily more clouded and confused. I found it impossible to concentrate: the slightest effort to do so caused my head to throb with violent pain. Very soon I went about unthinking or unseeing, in a constant daze. Moore became worried and offered to send for my doctor. But without even considering I forbade it. I was unconcerned and virtually unaware of my state of health. I shut myself up in my room and instructed the servants that I was not to be disturbed unless I called them.

  Alone I tossed, and twisted on my bed, my head filled with things that I cannot describe, shapes obscured in gloom, that I sensed rather than saw. But I pursued them, these unseen images, towards the horizons of my senses which seemed to shift and expand constantly as my body grew more weak and feverish.

  Several days passed like this until my mind grew suddenly lucid again, as if emerging from a long sleep, one night as I lay in bed. In a single moment I became aware how dreadfully ill I was. All the fear and concern I should have felt for days gripped me at once. Gasping, I clambered out of bed and stumbled over to look at myself in the dressing mirror. What I saw appalled me. Only my eyes, heavy, sunken and blazing, held any remaining trace of life – like last surviving outposts that stubbornly fight on, refusing to surrender even though the war is lost. My body was horribly emaciated. I was dying. I became certain of it in that instant. Exhausted by the very effort of standing I staggered back and fell onto my bed. Now for the first time I was recalling clearly the bizarre events that had taken place at the tomb. I did not begin to understand what had happened – what was still happening. There was only the certainty that some unearthly force was at work. That something was attacking and slowly destroying me.

  I lay a long, long while staring up at the low flame burning from the lamp by my bedside, flickering gloomy and misshapen shadows onto the wall. This final recognition of my situation should have aroused some feeling in me, but it did not. Slowly all sensation left me. My spirit seemed weak and exhausted beyond caring. Life meant nothing to me. I was ready now to submit to my fate whatever it might be. My illness had destroyed me for my powers of reason had returned too late, when the last of my strength and will were gone.

  The lamplight was suddenly obscured. A shadow fell over me.
Slowly I looked up through the parted bed-curtains, yet nothing was there. But then as my head dropped back onto the pillow I shivered slightly. I glanced to one side. She lay beside me on the bed, her dark eyes wide open, her face gaunt and so chillingly familiar. And yet strange. For her beauty was so stark, her skin so pallid, her face so utterly still and without any human emotion or expression that she seemed unlike the soft, alluring creature I had glimpsed here in this room those years before. Rather, she seemed like the lifeless thing I believed I had seen lying in the coffin on that awful night at the tomb. She lay quite motionless, dressed in a long white gown, her head on one side, her eyes upon me, but so blank and unmoving they did not seem to see me. It seemed as if a corpse had been laid out alongside me. With a gasp I placed my shaking hand on the bed, pulling myself up that I might crawl away from her. But as I did so I saw one of her slender, bloodless arms begin to move, creeping over the blankets like some white serpent, until her hand came to rest gently upon my own and her fingers closed about my wrist. I grew rigid. Her touch was deathly cold and my arm grew instantly numb as her hand ran along it, gripping my shoulder as I watched with a strange fascination. She pushed me down again, and I felt like a wretched marionette for I had no power to resist her. Now that cold hand came to rest on my forehead, and in spite of my dread it felt peculiarly soothing and my body began at once to feel drowsy and relaxed.

  My head was spinning slightly as I watched her rise up above me now, throwing back her head so that her long black hair fell down almost to her waist. She regarded me a few moments, her pale, impassive features like those of a marble statue; but then her lips curled slowly in a sensual smile. Her teeth were even and well formed and seemed to glimmer with her lips and her eyes in the glow of the lamp. In that moment she put me in mind of some graceful, exquisite creature of prey. Then she drew nearer to me. Now I felt that heat begin to rise up in me and I realised at once that it was her very closeness that caused this. The coldness of her body that aroused in me a great sensitivity, a preternatural awareness of the life force that, despite my dreadful condition, still burned hot in me. She came closer still, until her lips touched my cheek and I felt her light, cold breath against my skin, while her fingers ran slowly over my chest.

  Once more I made a feeble attempt to pull away from her. But then she spoke, and I ceased my struggles and simply stared at her in astonishment. As if in answer to the question I had not power or thought to voice, she whispered:

  “I am Helena! You must not resist me. I have come to you. Did you not come to me John LePerrowne? I have long known you. Your loneliness. Your sickness. Your misery. Have you not wished and prayed again and again to be released? Now! You must listen hard to what I say. Tonight I take you beyond life. Together we will journey into death itself. And there I must leave you. It must be of your own will and strength that you return to me.” She reached out and lightly stroked my hair. “You must lie shrouded and lost in darkness. It will seem that you are dead, but you shall be simply suspended hard and cold like a chrysalis in the completion of its metamorphosis. It is imperative that you remain undisturbed. Is it safe for you to remain here? Or will your servants intrude?”

  “No,” I answered at once, quite involuntarily, as if in some way commanded to speak. “I often keep strange hours. They will not come until I call them.”

  “I will bolt the door to be sure of it,” she said, her manner at once practical, almost business-like as she rose quickly and went to the door, which all seemed strangely incongruous with the unearthly, ethereal image she presented.

  When she returned and sat on the bed by my side, I stared up at her and I felt nothing. Not fear. Barely even curiosity. Only the vague sense that ironically everything was reversed. That now she was my only reality, and that every old reality was fast fading to become the distant, intangible dream she had once been. She sank down on me, taking me in her arms and pinning me to the bed as her icy body rocked against mine, and I stretched out with a light moan as those great waves of cold flooded over and through me.

  Now I could feel my heart beating, faint but fast. And gradually the pounding grew deeper, but slower, and slower, until at last each beat burst with a huge and painful throb that echoed in my hollow chest, leaving what seemed an eternity before the next. I could feel what remained of my life ebbing slowly away; being drawn from inside me. My breath caught and rattled in my throat, my limbs lost all feeling and the weight upon me increased. Through blurred eyes I saw her face above mine, and heard her soft voice whispering:

  “I will call to you. When it is time you shall hear me call to you.”

  Her image grew more vague and distant until at last a grey mist descended over me, sweeping me away, outside my mind and beyond my senses into a vast and endless universe of black.

  Life, death and eternity. For a fleeting moment before unawareness came I knew these things as they merged in me. And it was then, in that instant, that it began.

  * * *

  There was a sound. A voice. It came from somewhere beyond the blackness in which I was suspended. I did not hear its words, but gradually I felt myself rising towards consciousness, as if floating from a sea of murk upwards into the light. My eyes fluttered open. I was alone. I still lay on my bed in my nightshirt. Slowly I rose. I was at once aware that some immense transformation had occurred in me, and yet I could not begin to guess its nature. But although I was so confused, so unable to understand what had happened to me, my brain seemed sharper and clearer than ever before. As if all my life I had seen through a fog, and that fog was now lifted. I possessed greater awareness, although I was not yet certain of what I had become aware. There was simply the power of some great new perception, as yet sensed rather than realised.

  Yet as I stood trying to grasp these things I saw slowly that my senses had grown wonderfully acute. I could hear the soft breeze rustling the grass outside and the leaves on the trees in the distance. And I could hear Moore with his stiff, slow stride walking through the room below – now stopping to cough and clear his throat – now walking on. And the heavy atmosphere and faintly musty smell that pervaded my old house – which I having always lived there had barely even noticed before – seemed suddenly overpowering. But I realised the most remarkable thing of all only as I began to glance all about the room. For the curtains were drawn and the bedside lamp had long since burned itself out. The room was in complete darkness. Yet I saw all about me quite clearly.

  My skin, however, seemed to have become somewhat dull and insensitive. It was cold in my room and I had always been most susceptible to the cold. But now, although I was still aware of it, it no longer seemed to affect me. For I was cold. My body was cold with death – yet I lived on.

  I went over to the window and flung open the curtains. I stared out into the night, intrigued and absorbed by the subtle sounds, images, shades and motions my new senses were making available to me. Eventually I looked down. Helena stood beneath my window, gazing up at me. She wore a dark cape over her white dress, which made her less conspicuous in the night. At once she moved forward, scaling with remarkable speed the thick ivy that grew up the side of the house. I stood back from the window, which I now saw was unlatched. She pushed it open then scrambled quickly and noiselessly inside. She stared at me a moment, then she said:

  “Go down at once and show yourself to the servants. They must be beginning to worry about you by now. When you have assured them you are well come back here. I will wait for you. But be quick. There is much to do tonight. Go!”

  Her tone conveyed such urgency that I made no reply, but went and dressed at once, then hurried downstairs to carry out her instructions. Moore frowned when he saw me. He was still greatly concerned by my odd appearance and behaviour. He asked me when I would require dinner, but I told him that I would prepare my own food later, and until then I was not to be disturbed in my room. He frowned again, but said nothing.

  I returned to my room to find her standing, staring out of the wi
ndow. She spoke slowly and softly, without turning to look at me.

  “No doubt there is much you wish to ask me? Many questions?”

  I remained silent. There were of course countless questions I had to ask. So many that I was not sure where to begin.

  “It must wait,” she said. “It must wait until later.” She turned to me. “How do you feel?”

  “I – I can’t… I don’t… I can’t… ” I faltered wretchedly. I was finding it very difficult to put my strange new feelings into words.

  “Cold?” she said. “Cold inside?” She walked over to me and placed her hand gently on my shoulder. She was warm tonight, her skin fresh and pink; not cold and white like me. “That is to be expected. You are drained. You are exhausted. We must remedy that at once, before anything else. Ask your questions after. Come.”

  She went over to the window, climbed through and grasped the ivy that covered the wall outside, hurling herself downwards with effortless agility. I watched her, amazed that the flimsy green leaves seemed to support her weight so easily. I went to the window and stared down after her.

  “Come!” she called softly from below, looking up at me.

  Previously the very thought of attempting such a dangerous and precarious feat would have terrified me. But now I slipped through the window without a thought, gripping the leaves, and clambered down to join her.