Beware The Peckish Dead!

by William Stafford

  Oh, will I ever attend the theatre again?

  I ploughed onward and downward. The compass arrested its giddy whirling; I was back on track. But how does one find an invisible hole when one cannot see anything at all?

  Time, like my air supply and the diving bell’s fuel, was running out. I puttered to a standstill at the edge of an underwater cliff. Ahead - if I was in the right bally spot - ran the ancient fairy path, older by far than the loch itself. I peered at the wall of blackness beyond my portholes and watched and waited for the Hole and my Cuthbert to appear.

  Something hit the glass, like a tiny stone thrown against a lover’s bedroom window.

  Then again and again. Brightly-coloured bits of something were appearing out of the dark at high speed. I was under attack!

  The glass began to crack under the relentless onslaught.

  Beetles! Scarab beetles! Thousands upon thousands of them, pouring out of the Hole like a hail of bullets. The portholes could not withstand such abuse. The glass shattered and the capsule filled with beetles and black water. I had no recourse but to get out and quickly! I unstrapped myself from the seat, shuddering as the beetles piled up in my lap. I twisted the circular handle on the underside of the lid while the water- and beetle-level continued to rise. At last, the bally thing turned. I pushed upwards - I think the rising mass of insect bodies helped me surge up and out of the sphere.

  The water was thick with them, catching the lantern light, glinting and gleaming like so many coloured marbles. Had they not been there, I would have sunk - my helmet alone would have seen to that - but the beetles kept me buoyant, like floating in the Dead Sea or some such I have read about somewhere or other.

  Still they continued to stream from the Hole, the edges of which were a perfect circle, defined by the insects teeming through it. Beyond, the blackness was complete and unbroken. It was as though the beetles were pouring out of nowhere.

  But I knew they were coming from elsewhere. My best guess was the tomb of Nort-Ist-Hep, where they had feasted and flourished on the corpses of all those priests and the rest of them.

  But where was Cuthbert?

  I strained to see beyond or through the relentless rainbow rush.

  There!

  I discerned a dark shape, the figure of a man, borne by the scintillating surge of scarabs. He was bouncing along like flotsam (or is it jetsam?) in a whirlpool. Surely he would drown within seconds - if he wasn’t dead already.

  I attempted to swim toward him, fighting against the current of beetles. No matter how I brushed them from my visor, they persisted with pelting themselves against me like buckshot.

  At last, I seized Cuthbert by the waist. All that remained was to swim up to the surface and fresh air. ‘All’ I say! The tide of beetles was not heading in that direction. With the added weight of my valet (all of it muscle, I’ll have you know) I began to sink. We dropped through the scarab stream and into the inky depths.

  This was surely it for us, but at least we would be together at the end. Oh, were it not too dark for me to see his face a final time!

  Of course, it wasn’t the end or this book would never have been written. A marvellous thing happened that saved us both from drowning. My feet touched down on something moving. At first I thought I had landed on an underwater train! It carried Cuthbert and I along and upwards, back toward the endless torrent of beetles. As we rose, the shape of the thing came to me in glimpses. Long it was, and sleek. Far ahead on the end of a tapered neck, its maw yawned and feasted on the scarabs.

  Nessie!

  And she was heading directly for the portal! It must have been her time to disappear again. Unless I moved quickly, she was likely to take two drowning men with her and I didn’t much fancy winding up in the cretaceous era, not even with Cuthbert. I shoved him and dragged him and manhandled him as best as I could along the beast’s back. Cambered it was, and smooth. We headed for and reached the posterior just as Nessie’s head and neck disappeared into the Hole. At least I could die knowing I had got to the bottom of the mystery of Loch Ness!

  The Hole expanded to accommodate the monster’s girth. Oh, Cuthbert! I clung to my unconscious valet. Nessie’s hind legs kicked as she swam through the portal and then, perhaps to give herself more forward momentum, or perhaps to dislodge a pair of stowaways, she flicked her great tail, sending Cuthbert and me surging upward and out of the water and into the sudden brightness of daylight, riding a multi-coloured arch of beetles like a rainbow.

  I landed with a smack on the surface of the loch and the weight of my helmet pulled me down head first. Frantically, I twisted it and unscrewed it and let it continue its dive alone.

  On the shore, Miss Lindquist and Laird Baird were jumping up and down in excitement. Cassie was barking with joy and trotted along the water’s edge. I found the water only four feet deep at this point and waded to join them. My dog bounded out to meet me.

  “Bravo!” Miss Lindquist seized my glove but I was too busy casting around for Cuthbert. We had been separated by the thrash of the tail.

  “My grandson!” Laird Baird cried, pointing across the loch. He dithered at the water’s edge like a kitten afraid to get its paws wet.

  Floating several feet away and face down - No! I splashed across to retrieve him. Miss Lindquist followed.

  We pulled him from the water and heaved him onto the silt, rolling him over onto his back.

  “Oh!” I cried.

  Unless his time on the other side of the portal had altered him drastically, the man I had saved was not my Cuthbert.

  “My father! It is being my father!”

  Miss Lindquist pulled up her sodden skirts and, straddling the half-drowned man, proceeded to pound on his chest.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Where then was Cuthbert?

  Ranulf Lindquist had no answer. We swaddled him in blankets and took him to an inn at Auchterawe to thaw him out. I was probably damn near close to hypothermia myself but all my shivers and trembles were reserved for my beloved valet.

  It took half a bottle of whisky before Lindquist came to anything near making sense. He insisted, in a husky voice, he had met no Cuthbert, nor anyone answering his description, during any of his visits through the Hole.

  “Oh, Poppa!” Miss Lindquist flung her arms around him for the dozenth time. “It was being so horrible without you and not knowing where you were being.”

  “I am being here and now, my sweet child,” he answered and I thought, Don’t you be starting.

  Lindquist’s eyes rounded. They were the same glacial blue as his daughter’s. He pointed a quivering finger at Cassie who was happily crunching a bone, provided by the innkeeper, in front of the grate.

  “That dog!” The archaeologist’s voice was tremulous, this time from astonishment rather than cold. “I have seen it somewhere before.”

  ***

  Where Cassie Went

  I had more than enough time to think while I was entombed in that - ah - tomb. I reckon I spent centuries in there, all told, sitting on that sarcophagus. Believe me, it is a long time to be on Nort-Ist-Hep. How is this possible, you reasonably ask? How can this be true when you see me here before you, the same middle-aged man I was before I went in?

  The fairy portal has strange properties. A visitor or traveller or hole-user, or whatever you want to call it, is apparently unchanged, immutable, during visits to other lands and other times. Good for me, what! Or else I would be nothing more than a heap of dust.

  I had no choice but to wait for the portal’s return. I watched and I waited and I made my calculations. Each time, the Hole came back on schedule. And through it I went, hoping it would lead me back to hearth and home and my lovely daughter. But each time, it was somewhere else, some other when. To ancient Thebes I went and Carnac. Once, I found myself in a tropical land of giants
- even the simplest plants were taller than I - and the creatures! Such creatures! Great hulking beasts lumbering mindlessly, like cows at pasture. A land before Man, before time itself.

  And all I could do was try to survive until the portal returned. Each time it did, it took me back to the tomb of Nort-Ist-Hep and that sarcophagus and those beetles.

  I began to keep a record. I scratched into the wall a calendar of my excursions. Eventually, I learned when to let the portal pass on its way. I had no desire to revisit the dinosaurs or the court of Nefertiti; I just wanted to get home.

  And then, just when I thought home was merely two more visits away - disaster! Or the potential for it. The tomb of Nort-Ist-Hep was discovered! They were digging it up!

  Calamity for me! I did not wish to be found when my chance to go home was at hand. I had to prevent my discovery and removal from the spot.

  The portal came along - it was a blank spot, a gap in my calculations - but I plunged through it and found myself in the tent of a French Egyptologist and glory hunter. I stayed with him for quite a while, learning all I could. I wrote my story in hieroglyphs for posterity. I hope you found it, my darling Constance, and it gave you hope.

  Now, here’s the thing. This is where the peculiar properties of the portal played their part - to my advantage, as it turned out.

  While I slept in the Frenchman’s tent, I was able to travel through the portal a second time. I was back in the tomb. I was somehow inside and out at the same time, awake and asleep. And I was able to pass through the portal again. Please don’t ask me to explain it; all I know is it happened. I was desperate. I needed to scare off those who would open the tomb, Dandycroft and Le Clerc - my outside mind knew them by name.

  I put my upper body through the portal. I did not want to go through completely in case I missed my ride home. I saw the beautiful green of the Scottish Highlands, frosted with heather. A dog - that dog! - was snuffling around. I beckoned her to me and pulled her through. I heard English voices, a man and a woman, calling after her, ‘Cassie! Cassie!’ and ‘You’re such a fool, Charles!’ - and then the portal closed.

  Back in the tomb, I took drastic action. An oblong of light had already appeared. The barbarians were at the gates, so to speak. I peered out and someone peered in - Dandycroft, I expect.

  While confusion reigned without, I worked frantically. Gods forgive me, I desecrated Nort-Ist-Hep’s coffin. I prised off the lid and sent it crashing onto a host of beetles. I took out the corpse and put its headdress on the dog. I put the dog on my shoulders and bound her to me, unravelling the bandages that were holding the old pharaoh together. By the time those fools outside had composed themselves, I was ready.

  A few more bricks were removed and more light spilled into the tomb.

  “Anubis!” Lord Dandycroft cried. “He has come to punish us for this sacrilege!”

  Well, as you may or may not know - depending on whether the history books have changed - Dandycroft abandoned the enterprise at once. He believed in the curse and retired from the tomb-raiding business altogether.

  “That’s right,” Laird Baird confirmed. “I read his obituary in The Times. Poor fellow went out of his wits. Could not bear to pass a pillar-box. Could not abide a letterbox in his front door - had the thing boarded up. Afraid of seeing those eyes again, you see. The eyes of Anubis! The eyes of Auld Jock’s dog!”

  Something rankled with me. I raised a finger. “Excuse me but I can’t get my old brain around this. If the remains remain undiscovered, the French fellow never became famous and so you, sir,” I nodded at Lindquist, “would not have learned the hieroglyphs that led them to the discovery of the tomb, which they abandoned... And what happened to the other you? Is there a second handsome archaeologist out there? Did you leave yourself behind?”

  I was growing quite dizzy with it all. For his part, the archaeologist appeared embarrassed; his daughter put her hand on his shoulder. The hard looks I was getting from all quarters told me it would be best not to question such matters; a chap could drive himself gaga.

  “So what is being next, Your Lordship? What is to be doing about your grandson?”

  I answered on His Lordship’s behalf. “I shall persist with the search, of course.”

  To which, Laird Baird turned a lurid shade of puce. “You bloody shall not, sirrah! Your bungling has already cost me several hundred thousand pounds of submarine investment. I shan’t be seeing that ball of brass again. Would I could say the same for your peevish face!”

  Miss Lindquist gasped. “Oh, Your Lordship, you are being too harsh. It is being the bungling of this peevish face that is restoring my father to me, and for that I am being eternally grateful.”

  Laird Baird snorted with disdain. “Be that as it may, as soon as I return to Baird Hall, I shall be alerting the police.”

  Well, we couldn’t have that, could we?

  “My lord,” I dipped my head, “If it’s a question of compensation, I am sure we can come to some amicable arrangement. Once I have written up these outlandish exploits, I shall have another bestseller on my hands, I am sure of it.”

  “It’s not about the money,” Laird Baird gave a dismissive grunt. “I don’t want your money. It’s not about the price tag, you Jessie.”

  I was mortified. To be denounced in such a manner, and in company too! I wondered if we were venturing into pistols-at-dawn territory. O, to consult a copy of Debrett’s!

  Before I could fathom the niceties of etiquette and honour and all the rest of it, our collective blood was curdled by a piercing scream, courtesy of Miss Lindquist.

  She pointed at a window with one hand and clamped her gaping mouth with the other. Pressed against the pane was the pale and pathetic physiognomy of the dreaded Drownded Ned.

  A finger, like a stick of chalk, tapped the glass.

  “It is wanting to be coming in!” cried Miss Lindquist, shielding her father from the spectre.

  “No!” Laird Baird exulted, his eyes and hair wild. “It wants you! Mortlake! It wants you!”

  I looked at the apparition with the ‘Who, me?’ expression of a volunteer selected from an audience. Ned’s blank, boiled fish eyes gave nothing away but his head dipped in a slow nod. Ice water coursed through my veins.

  “Do not be going, Hector!” Miss Lindquist tugged at my sleeve. “I am appealing to you!”

  I shook myself free. How many times do I have to tell her I am not of that temperament?

  “I must go,” I said, unable to take my eyes off the beckoning spirit. “If I do not, the others will come for you all. Why, I’ll wager they are already making their way down that chimney.”

  To confirm my assertion, the fireplace hissed as fat drops of water dripped into the flames. The Peckish Dead were nigh! I approached the window.

  “This is being foolish bravery!” Miss Lindquist cried.

  “In all probability,” I conceded. “I do this to save your dainty fingertips, Miss Lindquist, your father’s nose and, yes, even what His Lordship keeps up his kilt.”

  Laird Baird gasped and clamped both hands over his sporran.

  As though in a dream, I reached for the window latch. Cold air rushed in as I stepped out. The icicle fingers of the long-drowned boy curled around my forearm.

  And everything disappeared.

  Chapter Seventeen

  I opened my eyes to greenery and blue skies. My ghostly escort and I were standing on rough grass on a slope overlooking a valley. Across the divide, on the neighbouring peak, a fellow was looking back at us. Drownded Ned dropped into a crouch as though he did not wish to be spotted - to save the onlooker from the predations of the Peckish Dead, presumably.

  A chill of realisation shivered through me.

  That fellow watching me was me!

  And there was Cuthbert down in the valley, following th
e fairy path before he disappeared!

  And so, the fellow I had taken to be an ovine enthusiast, or sheep-botherer, was none other than Yours Truly.

  “Bah!” I said - although, in fairness, that should have been Drownded Ned’s line.

  I watched myself pelt down the slope to intercept Cuthbert. Cuthbert waved me back, warning me not to come any closer. And then - I hadn’t seen this originally because I had been too concerned about what I might be treading in; I didn’t want to slip and measure my length on the grass - Cuthbert sort of swirled his arms and shrank and then disappeared.

  I saw myself gaze around in astonishment and dismay, before turning back, sitting down - and there was Cassie, all of a sudden, trying to introduce her snout to the contents of my kilt.

  The dog and I headed back to the croft, exiting the scene.

  “Why are you showing me this, O spirit? Have I not been celebrating Christmas properly?”

  It was a literary reference Drownded Ned showed no signs of getting. He pointed down at the empty valley.

  “Yes, beautiful,” I agreed. “Someone should capture it in oils.”

  Drownded Ned rolled his eyes and pointed more insistently.

  There at the valley bottom, something stirred. It was as though a part of the ground decided to get up and move around of its own accord. It straightened and stood and swept off its grass covering.

  Cuthbert!

  “I don’t understand,” I confessed.

  The ghost waved at me to be quiet.

  “Where’s he going?” I hissed. Drownded Ned shrugged. “What’s he up to?”

  The dead youth pulled at my arm. It was time to return but I wrested myself free. I tore down the hillside, almost breaking my ankle in a rabbit hole, and damn near hurtling apex over fundament like a wheel of cheese in some quaint village competition.

  Cuthbert had not gone into the Hole at all. But he had gone to considerable trouble to make me think it was the case.