Resurrection House

by James Chambers

  The moon hung high in the clear sky when he awakened, and its faint glow dripped through the cracks between the boards of the deck above him. He shook off sleep, wondering what had roused him when a sickening scream sounded from above and the entire vessel heaved violently as though caught in the thick of a terrible storm. A second scream followed, as did another and soon the entire vessel trembled with the cries of men and shook at the will of some unknown violent force. Terrified for his life Diego thrust his body repeatedly against the sturdy locked door that bound him, desperate to flee. The voices above him escalated and then came the sound of wood splintering, and he imagined great cannon balls crashing against the ship, though he could not hear the report of cannon. Once more the ship lurched, as if some massive force beneath it were rising up only to drop it harshly back to the water’s surface. The Spaniard feared the hull would burst at any moment and flood him in his jail. Something large moved overhead, blotting away the meager moonlight in its passage.

  He noticed the black coffin, then, its lid flung wide, a thin beam of lunar illumination probing its freshly empty depths. The corpse of the old Indian priest was gone.

  A scream whose voice could only be that of the pirate captain burst through the air. Tumbling down the stairs a body rolled end over end into the hold, and when it came to rest, its legs and arms spread wide, Diego could see by its dress that it was indeed the captain, and that his head had been taken from his shoulders. A pool of blood formed around the open wound of his neck, but the body remained prone briefly as the dark verminous shape Diego had spied earlier seemed to emerge from the shadow to tug the figure away. So like a giant rat it appeared that Diego knew a fleeting moment of relief before the thing shifted quickly into the light revealing the unnatural man-like features of its head and the strangely elongated digits of its gnarled paws. Horrible teeth protruded from behind its lips. It removed the captain’s body to the dark recesses of the ship, and the sounds that followed were beyond Diego’s ability to describe, but to say that upon hearing them, his mind took mercy and transformed them into a gentle lapping like the waves of a calm sea breaking on a shallow beach. He succumbed to oblivion soon after, his mind overwhelmed, while the vessel rumbled around him as if it might snap apart at any second.

  He could not estimate how long he remained unaware, but when he again knew his senses, daylight poured through the boards above him and the ship was calm but for the gentle rocking of the waves. The air seemed eerily still. Beyond the door of his cell the coffin remained, but now its lid rested shut tight. Unable to look full upon the sight, Diego inspected the hold but perceived no signs of life. The lock on the door that imprisoned him had somehow come undone, and when finally he screwed up his courage, he inched open the portal and thrust himself free. Without pause he raced to the deck, drinking in the warmth of the sunlight that rejuvenated his chilled, clammy flesh. But above was as below, and not a single living thing stirred around him, nor was there evidence of the corpses of the crew.

  Several days passed and the vessel remained adrift. Diego dared not return to the hold, and when darkness came he passed the hours curled in a niche of the hull, shivering and awake, a sword clutched in his arms. He ate and drank what meager provisions he could find without venturing below, and when finally he spied the sails of our ships breaking the horizon, he chose to conceal himself. Half mad with fear and nearly delirious from lack of water, he sought the confinement that had protected him once before, this time shutting himself away in a small compartment off the hold, pulling closed the door behind him, and settling in to await our arrival.

  Piano and strings bring a moment of quiet anticipation, and a single trumpet mourns Diego’s loss. The audience sits transfixed and on the verge of tears though they haven’t the slightest idea of that for which they mourn. I watch them from my box above the stage. How like Westerner and her crew they are in that if they were to leave now they might go untouched by that which I have to give to them, even as Westerner at this point still held some small chance to avoid the fate that awaited her, though not one among the Americans could have conceived of what Diego knew. Even Diego did not truly understand what he had witnessed. That Webster extracted such a coherent account from him in his tortured state is remarkable, and the general feeling was that the Spaniard had fully lost his mind, that his entire tale was a delusion. Or at least that’s how Captain Franks chose to look at it.

  The Frenchman turns to Webster after the Spaniard says his piece. His eyes are bloodshot and watery. He whispers “Le Revenant,” but Webster doesn’t know the word.

  Captain Franks, who prides himself as a practical man, orders the crew to remain overnight aboard the ship since darkness is falling, and in the morning to take whatever valuables they can carry. He divides the crew between Westerner and the pirate ship. The decision is not popular with the men, who would be just as pleased to leave the ship and forget they ever set foot upon it. The black box and its preserved corpse terrify them.

  At dusk they gather together and choose a representative to approach the captain and request that, at the very least, he shut the lid of the casket. Stubborn to the last Franks refuses as if to teach his men a lesson about superstition. Meanwhile, the Spaniard begs to be allowed above deck, but instead he is returned to the very same cell in which the Turks kept him and once again locked behind its haughty door. James Webster and René are ordered to stay with him.

  Diego sinks into constant prayer as the night thickens. Prayers, Webster realizes, for God to bless him with oblivion before the night can grow much older.

  René, who also understands, finds the prayers disturbing, and begins pacing. To calm him, Webster strikes up a conversation, chatting perhaps about women and liquor or a good meal. It works, but then slowly, he turns the talk around to René’s earlier comment.

  “The Black Man grants revenge to those who ask for it, James,” he says. “But once raised the beast of vengeance cannot be destroyed for one hundred years.” He refuses to speak any further.

  Above them Captain Franks walks the decks unafraid with the brassy hubris of a self-assured man.

  The crew settles in for the night, but none of the men can sleep. They’re too nervous and several of them murmur constantly in prayer, keeping the others awake. A few pass a bottle of rum between them. For a while the night passes peacefully, but shortly before midnight, one of the men leaps up and runs to the other side of the deck, screaming. Those sitting around him jump up after him as if contaminated by his panic. When they finally calm themselves, all the man can say is that he felt a large rat crawl across his legs as he tried to sleep. They scour the deck, but find no sign of vermin.

  It’s the last distraction before Westerner greets her destiny, and you should take note, Henry, of all the prayers and exhortations to God brought forth by those men that night in their desperate need for salvation and how they amounted only to a great lot of wasted breath. You see, not one among them looked on his death without fear, not one trusted in the promise of a better life waiting to meet him on the other side.

  The night’s darkest hour approaches and sleep has overtaken both prisoner and guards, though upon waking, all three men feel as if something unnatural stained their repose. They have little time to worry about it though, as the Spaniard releases a loud shriek, and then succumbs to a fit of heaving laughter. The black casket is unoccupied.

  Webster and René stand transfixed by the empty, consuming shadows within the box. It must be a joke, they hope, a trick of Captain Franks’ meant to make an example of the crew, but then Westerner lurches strangely in the water. A rabble of sound goes up from the men displaced around the deck. A shot is fired. The laughing prisoner makes it impossible for the two men to think clearly. Should they hold their posts or rush above to investigate? Neither relishes the idea of leaving the hold, which seems for the moment, a safe haven. Again something jolts the ship, straining its wood to the limit. The screaming continues, and finally Webster and René can igno
re it no longer. Together they ascend to the deck.

  Webster’s journal entries become irregular from this point forward before later falling back into a coherent style. His words as written are confusing and difficult to follow, and they require multiple readings before one begins to see the pattern to them and decipher their true meaning. He was attempting to record things so beyond the pale of human experience that without words to describe them he was forced to resort to a kind of coded metaphor, perhaps something that later influenced his poetic works. Perhaps Henry put those works to the flame in hopes of destroying the key to his code. Grandad spent more time with Webster’s journal than perhaps any of its other readers and eventually succeeded in distilling Webster’s apparent ramblings into a rational sequence.

  Chaos greets the two men. Their fellow crewmembers dash around them in a wild panic, swords flailing and pistols firing as quickly as they can be reloaded. The bodies of those already dead lay scattered about the ship. René and Webster stand still, unable to perceive that which threatens them, until by degrees they come to see the horrible, unearthly shapes that loom up from the black depths of the sea to clutch the ship like a hideous hand. Tentacles as thick as two men twine about them, shaking the craft at their whim, lingering forty feet above them in the sky before plummeting to deliver instant death to the men. They crush and splinter portions of the ship with each impact, and a terrible stench like rot dredged up from the muck of the sea bottom floods the air. One man loses his life not four feet from Webster as a writhing appendage lashes out with its horrible dark opening to snap off his head. At the center of the pandemonium stands Captain Franks, his face an utter blank of shock, his rigid mind shattered.

  Across the water Westerner provides apt reflection of the carnage unfolding aboard the Yaşli Yildiz. The two ships smash together, their hulls colliding with each new surge from the wretched thing beneath them.

  Webster whirls around as a new shrieking launches behind him. Two of the crew are caught in the clutches of another figure, something hidden behind the sailor’s bodies, but which stands the height of human though its shape is something very different. The men go down beneath its embrace and the shape sets upon them in a motion like that of a wild boar driving its snout into the meat of its prey, its fur-covered back and glistening black skin quivering with excitement. Webster draws his flintlock to fire, but René seizes him backward and thrusts him out of the way of one of the sweeping tentacles, only to unintentionally place himself in its path. The slime-coated limb envelopes the Frenchman’s head and upper torso, both of which vanish with it when it releases its grip.

  Desperate for his life, Webster races to the hold and throws open the door of their prisoner. He yanks Diego, still trembling with laughter, to his feet and slaps him three times at his cheeks. Diego, perhaps, can tell him something of the unearthly menace that devours them, if only he can return him to his senses. But his efforts prove hopeless, and when the ship again heaves, Webster returns above deck, thinking perhaps his only escape lies in the water, though God knows the thought of swimming near that horrible creature draws his chest tight.

  When he reaches the deck, all thought of escape evaporates.

  The black tentacled thing emerges further from the sea, the shape of its torso vaguely humanoid, but topped by a head that is mostly mouth, an aching shadow-filled maw ringed with endless darts of jagged bone, and above it sprout three horrible globes, the thing’s gleaming eyes. All strength leaves Webster’s body and he slumps against a cabin wall for support.

  On deck before the beast kneels the unholy creature that savaged many of the crewmen, bent in supplication. At its inhuman biceps and throat gold rings gleam dully.

  The Spaniard emerges from the hold, giggling, still, and dancing about the deck to music only he can hear. He covers his eyes with his hands and wriggles like a blind man.

  Webster places his pistol against his head, wraps his finger around the trigger.

  The orchestra goes silent. One by one my flutes raise their voices, joining each other in an untamed array of discord. The notes dance among each other like berserkers on the field of battle, darting together and breaking apart with savage energy. They ripple and unfold in contempt of every accepted musical theory. They grow and spread like bacteria. It continues, drifting, hypnotic, for as long as my listeners can bear it. They are fascinated and repulsed. It is music they have never before heard, but it speaks to them of undeniable truths and abysmal sensations. Perfectly timed to the limits of their endurance, it breaks off as their faces screw tight in grimaces, and then the strings rise in tightly structured arpeggios, the woodwinds joining them and the percussion section beating out a predictable, pedestrian beat to spread comfort in its speed and formality.

  Webster feels something he never thought he would feel again: the warmth of the morning sun.

  He lies on deck where he fell last night. His pistol rests nearby, unfired.

  The ship is empty. There are no bodies anywhere. Westerner is gone. Taken or sunk, Webster cannot know, but no trace of the vessel remains.

  He rises in a stupor and surveys the ship. It is damaged even more horribly than when they found it, but will stay afloat. He waits a long time before braving the hold. The air is cooler there, shaded from the sun, but he can only force himself to stay for a few moments. Every shift of light or shadow becomes a strange creature scurrying about him, and his heart races.

  The casket is sealed once again. The Spaniard cowers in his cell, still shaking and giggling. Dumbly he follows Webster above.

  I wonder if Grandad might not have lived as long as he did if the lives of my grandfather and uncle hadn’t turned out as they had, or if he’d never raised a family to keep James Henry Webster’s story in the memory of men. He refused to speak of his own father or what his life was like, though he knew him as a child. Charles Peter Webster died when my great-grandfather was seven. His death is documented and recorded because at the time he was a wealthy merchant with powerful political connections. The question of how he turned up hanging by his neck from a street lamp in the Bowery during a business trip to New York has never been adequately answered. At the time he died he had on his person a collection of papers written by William Webster, which he had recently purchased from unknown sources, and though the pages eventually came into my great-grandfather’s possession, they vanished in 1939 after arsonists burned the building that housed Grandad’s office. The papers either burned in the fire, or as I’ve often imagined, were stolen beforehand and the fire set to cover their theft.

  William Webster, though, who never knew his father, spent a good portion of his life learning everything he could about the man, with only his journal and modest personal effects to lead him. William left copious notes throughout Webster’s journal. Most of them are questions as to possible points about his father’s personal life and remain unsolved. William’s most interesting comments appear near the most disjointed passages, which he, like his grandson, spent much time deciphering, though William’s script here is almost as puzzling as his father’s. William disappeared for several months in 1861 during his service for the Union in the Civil War, and he was officially recorded as a prisoner of war for that period of time. In actuality William spent that time hidden away in the home of a wealthy and reclusive Southern scholar who opened to him a library of unparalleled breadth that he used to unravel Webster’s journal. William’s dark patron, whose name was once famous in this country, arranged for him to review copies of certain arcane and obscure works essential to understanding his father’s work. The most remarkable event of William’s absence was his meeting with Diego Eduardo Velez, who had some years past, come under the guardianship of William’s unnamed benefactor. Webster could not put to paper what he learned from Velez, but noted that after several hours alone with him in a room, he lost all his senses and became desperately disoriented to the point of needing three days of bed rest before he felt himself again.

  Any hopes or fears
William might have had of continuing his search ended upon his return to duty and his death in battle a scant three weeks later.

  The closing strains of my symphony begin, and as I gaze out at my listeners, they appear to me like so much cattle or swine herded together, blind and stupid, to receive the gift of slaughter, only to be spared by uncertain mercy before the final blow can be delivered.

  Webster and the Spaniard passed a few days adrift before he built a makeshift raft from pieces of the Yaşli Yildiz. He did the work all himself, Velez being incapable of almost any action. He stowed provisions and the few items with which he was unwilling to part, and then one morning at sunrise, he smashed a gaping hole in the hull of the ship below the waterline, and when he was certain it was sinking, he fled taking Velez with him.

  Think of it, Henry, that obsidian casket resting in utter peace upon the ocean floor like a nightmare waiting for a willing dreamer.

  The miracle of Webster’s story is that only two days later he encountered another American vessel in the area. They took him aboard, fearing him mad upon hearing his disjointed recollections, but after some rest, Webster recanted and labeled his words the product of delusion. This satisfied the men, who gradually brought him back to health and made him a member of their crew until they put in at Baltimore several months later. It seems he never again passed off his story as truth, though in his heart he knew it to be so. The Spaniard spoke not a word for many years, and though cast away like rubbish by the sailors upon their arrival in America, he somehow survived long enough to be taken in by William Webster’s occult associate with whom he probably lived out his remaining days.

  I rise before my seat as applause sweeps the hall. On stage the conductor bows weakly. He is sweating and exhausted. I attend the reception following the performance and amid the elegance and champagne, I wander alone, few of the guests daring enough to approach me. In the papers tomorrow morning a review of my symphony will appear. It is my second work, the first having been performed with little fanfare but with enough interest to assure that this one would be noted. It will be labeled a work of unfettered genius tainted by unspeakable deviations that both fascinated and repulsed the audience. The reviewer will discuss the final chorus of flutes in particular; he intends to call it “an unbearable work of brilliance which, once heard, should not be dared a second time.” I know this because he told me, this powerful and confident man stammering to me with a mix of awe and horror.