The Devil and the Deep

by Ellen Datlow

  It didn’t matter now, but still Jenny wondered.

  The little hairs on her arm stood up and she shivered. Despite her nearness to the fire, or perhaps because of it, the ink on her right forearm felt icier than ever. The cold seemed almost to cut her, but she didn’t look at that triple spiral now, refused to glance at that symbol of the infinite sea despite the yearning in her.

  Long minutes passed.

  Another thump against the glass. Something scratched against it but she didn’t look. Jenny told herself it was just a gull, or maybe the first of the crabs to arrive.

  She took the iron shovel from the fire with her left hand, stretched out her right and placed the flame-heated metal against the spiral tattoo. Hissing through her teeth, shuddering, she squeezed her eyes shut and kept the metal pressed there, as tightly as she could. The smell of searing flesh nearly made her retch and she went down on both knees, weeping silently as she fought the urge to take the shovel away.

  At last she slumped to her side and let it fall from her hand. Breathing fast, almost hyperventilating, Jenny forced herself to look at the ruined skin. The tattoo had been cracked and blistered and reddened, but the ink showed through.

  The cool solace of the sea slid up her arm, soothing the burn.

  Jenny sat up and reached her left hand into the fireplace. She screamed as she grabbed the top log, cried out in agony as she dragged it out and pressed it to the spiral tattoo. Body rigid, she held it until her vision went dark and she slumped again to the floor.

  The heat on her face brought her around. Her eyelids fluttered and she found herself staring at the still-burning log, bright embers glowing in the wood. It had landed on the tile between her body and the fireplace, and she knew the whole house could have gone up in flames. The idea did not terrify her the way it should have.

  Her left hand sang with pain. Her right forearm screamed with it. Awkwardly, she shifted into a sitting position, cradling that left hand in her lap and the right arm across her knee. Full of dread, she braced herself to look down at the tattoo she’d worked so hard to destroy.

  Even before she saw the wreckage there, saw the hideous, blackened, oozing flesh that would bear the scars of this day forever, she shuddered with relief. That peace she’d found had left her. The symbol had been burned away. No cool solace touched her skin.

  Slumping, crying softly out of pain and gratitude, she found herself staring at the other tattoo. The one on the inside of her left arm. The one with her father’s name and the dates of his birth and death.

  A terrible thought occurred to her.

  The most terrible thought.

  “No,” she whispered, launching shakily to her feet. “Oh, no.”

  In agony from her burns, Jenny stumbled to the sliding glass door. With her good hand she dragged it open, then ran out onto the deck and down the stairs, ignoring her cracked phone and her coffee mug, noticing only that the gulls were gone.

  “No,” she whispered as she turned at the bottom of the steps and ran down along the path between the pines.

  If only she’d waited.

  Heart thundering, left hand still cradled against her, she picked up speed, stumbled and nearly fell but managed to catch herself as she ran in the shadows of those trees. There were still crabs there, dozens of them, but they scurried away from her as she ran past them, disturbed by her presence. Searching for some comfort she could no longer provide.

  At the dock, she paused a moment, staring out at the waves. Her burns throbbed, the pain only growing, and she felt as if they were still on fire.

  Jenny strode out onto the dock, scanning the water for any sign.

  “Daddy?” she called, quietly at first. Then again, louder, almost screaming.

  She fell to her knees on the warped and weathered boards and stared out at the open sea.

  It gave her no peace.

  THE TRYAL ATTRACT

  TERRY DOWLING

  “A skull watches everyone in the room.”

  —Anonymous

  The sole condition Will Stevens set for letting me spend the night in the room with the skull was telling him everything it said.

  My elderly neighbour was insistent about that. “Just be honest with me, Dave. I’ve lived with this for nearly three-quarters of my life. I need it put to rest.”

  “I swear it. I need this put to rest too.”

  Will stood in the doorway, a tall, weathered figure with a narrow face, pale eyes, strands of white hair combed in close against his own skull, wearing tan slacks, a cardigan over a white shirt. He was holding Solly, his big Persian cat, stroking it as he watched me settle in. “Well, I hope you’re comfortable,” he said. “I had Maggie set it up when she was here. My daughter comes by every day. Stays over on weekends when she can. She’d like closure about this too.”

  “It looks great.”

  A collapsible bed had been set up along the eastern wall of the small square tower room, with a side table with lamp, a digital clock, a decanter of water and a glass, a torch in case one was needed by a stranger in a strange house, even eye-shades since there were no curtains at the windows this high up. And, quaintest touch of all, there was a chamber pot.

  “You know where the toilet is, Dave, but it’s a bit of a hike if you’re half asleep. You might prefer this.”

  “Thanks, Will.”

  “And, Dave, about the skull. I’ve slept here with it many times, all the good it did. Just don’t let it upset you. The whispering, I mean. I’ll believe whatever you tell me.”

  “I’ll log it all in the notebook like I promised.”

  “Thanks. And don’t mind if Solly joins you in the night. He sleeps wherever he wants. Goodnight.”

  “Goodnight.”

  And that was it. Will had closed the door and headed for the staircase at the end of the landing that opened into both the modest square tower and the old Victorian mansion’s upper floor. I heard the stairlift whirring as it took him to his own digs at ground level.

  I changed for bed as if I were in my own bedroom seven doors further along Abelard Street, eased between the covers as if it were my own bed, then checked the time.

  It was 10:07 p.m. Same street. Pretty much the same night sounds through the half-open windows on all four sides: the same chirruping of insects; the occasional tock-tock of a frog in the front-yard pond; the sound of late traffic on Ryde Road; a plane on late approach to the airport on the other side of the city, way across these late-spring suburbs.

  The rush of wind in the trees was closer, of course, this high up amid their foliage. But it was a good sound, and not too loud. I’d still be able to hear the skull, Will had assured me. There’d be no mistaking it.

  Which both fascinated and troubled me.

  To think. A night with a whispering skull!

  There can be distinct layers of unreality in how one thing leads to another. Six nights before, someone had torched a car parked on the southern side of Abelard where our quiet street bordered the playing fields of one of Sydney’s most exclusive boys’ schools, probably as part of an insurance scam or some last-recourse act of evidence removal. Local residents, myself included, had simply assumed that the white sedan parked across from Number 7 for the past week had belonged either to a neighbour or someone visiting.

  But around 2:30 that Tuesday morning, a series of muffled explosions had woken most of the nearby residents, who looked out their windows to see the blazing vehicle, promptly made their separate calls to the fire brigade, then joined other neighbours standing about at safe distances like kids watching a bonfire. The fire engine arrived, a hose was deployed, the fire quickly extinguished. The police were soon there as well, asking their questions. Those not engaged in telling what little they knew continued chatting.

  An elderly man on a walking stick moved in next to me, and I recognised him as the widower from 1A at the far end of the street, the “old guy from the big house,” as he was often called in front-fence conversations.

&n
bsp; “Not something we get very often,” he said.

  “Not around here,” I replied. “I’m Dave. Dave Aspen.”

  “Good to meet you, Dave. I’m Will. Will Stevens. From 1A down there. You lived here long?”

  “Forty-two years. A local boy. Loved your house as a kid, with that tower at the front. Called it the Castle.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “I’ll never forget there was a skull perched on a cupboard or bookcase in the top tower room. Dark-looking thing, more like a mask. I even borrowed my dad’s binoculars for a closer look. Definitely a human skull. Were you there then?”

  Will was watching the firemen working at the car. “I was. Not my idea to put it up there, but yeah.”

  “Well, that bloody skull’s been with me ever since. Still dream about it, if you can believe that.”

  Now he turned to face me. “You do?”

  “Once, maybe twice a year at least.”

  “Well now.” Which was the appropriate step-away, leave-it-be point. But old Will kept at it. “What happens in these dreams?”

  “Different every time. But when it turns up it talks. Tries to tell me something.”

  “What does it say?” Will’s tone had taken on a distinct edge.

  “Can’t make it out. It whispers something. But it’s important, you know?”

  “How do you know that, Dave? That it’s important.”

  “Just how it is. But all these years, I never quite catch what it’s saying. Bloody frustrating really. You think we would’ve reached an understanding.”

  “Dave, we’ve been neighbours all this time. Pity we didn’t get to talk earlier. That skull you remember. It’s still there. Still in the tower, but one floor down now, out of view.”

  “Hey, I’d love to see it.”

  “I’d really like you to. Maybe tomorrow, if you have the time. Drop by in the afternoon. You see, it’s like you say. It whispers in the night sometimes.”

  There was the torched car still smoking in the early hours. Police standing about. The fire crew packing up, murmuring to each other in low voices. An unexpected meeting with a neighbour. And now an odd tingling down my spine. And another at Will’s next words.

  “Who knows? Maybe it’s been talking to you all along.”

  Late spring in Sydney so often means November afternoons with a riot of sunlit jacaranda blooms above the rooftops, rich mauve against brooding storm-clouds as the ragged end of winter settles into its summer run.

  That’s how it was when I headed along to 1A at 12:55. I’d spent the morning finishing off the plans for the Quinn-Elliot shopping mall extensions and had sent scans through to Marta and Eric at our architectural office in Brisbane. This would be my reward.

  Will answered the front door on my second knock, looking more his seventy-seven years in daylight, more like any other elderly person caught outside their comfort zone but putting their best face on it.

  “We’ll have a cuppa when we’re done upstairs, if that’s okay,” he said, and turned to the Stairmaster, whose track ran up the wall of the long wooden staircase leading to the upper floor. “You go up first, Dave. Make a U-turn at the top.”

  I grabbed the banister rail and made my ascent, heard him whirring up behind.

  The skull sat on a thin, dark blue cushion atop a waist-high mahogany stand. True to Will’s word about it being “out of view,” it was now set in the north-west corner between the tall, all-points windows, facing me as I entered the modest tower room.

  “So no impressionable school kids can see,” Will said good-naturedly.

  I smiled. “It’s very discoloured. That honey-amber sheen.”

  “One of its owners, possibly whoever first found it, lacquered it, coated it with vegetable gums and animal fats, something like that. That’s probably what helped preserve it so well. We’ve been told that it’s older than it looks.”

  “Is that silver on the sides?” For that’s what it looked like, added to the zygomatic arches, the nasal bone, and at two places on the mandible.

  “Interesting, eh? We keep it polished as best we can, but that’s the extent of the maintenance. Makes it seem important, yes? A cherished ancestor or something. Despite trying to keep a low profile, quite a few museums want it. We get letters all the time. But we won’t let it out of our sight.”

  “Is there a backstory? Is it from our colonial past? Brought from overseas?”

  “That’s the trouble, Dave. Little is known, though maybe you can help us there. It’s definitely from a male. Its official name is the Farday Skull, after Lucas Farday, the only owner to record any sort of provenance for it in 1907. As late as that.”

  “But he wasn’t the first owner?” I realised my gaffe. “First post-mortem owner?”

  “Two previous owners are mentioned—not counting that original one.” He smiled, though in a distracted way, as if considering facts he was leaving out to give the shortest account possible. “But nothing can be verified. Lucas Farday sold it or gave it to my grandfather in 1919. Farday was a bit of a showman, so it came with the usual clutch of rumours you get when skulls are kept as curios, especially those in curiosity cabinets and tent-shows.”

  “What kind of rumours?”

  “That it screams, for instance. Or utters a prophecy every full moon. That it can only be heard by those about to die. Collectors and spruikers encourage such stories.”

  “You’ve actually heard it whispering, you said.”

  “Many times. So has Maggie. So did my late wife. We’ve just never been able to make out what it’s saying. It’s always just out of hearing.”

  “Can it be a sea-shell effect, Will? You know, put one of its openings to your ear, you hear the ocean?”

  Will chuckled again. “It’s funny how many people never want to put a skull to their ear to find out. But yes, there is the ocean effect, though a skull has surprisingly few openings where you can hear it. But the whisper is much more than white noise, Dave. It can be heard from where we’re standing now.”

  I wanted to ask if there were recordings, or if it had been tested scientifically with appropriate instruments, but I was now being offered the chance to participate in something of a clinical assessment myself. I’d let that be enough on such short acquaintance.

  “It’s complete, I notice. The lower jaw is wired on?”

  “Glued on, actually. So it can’t bite.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Will chuckled. “Another urban myth you get all the time when the lower jaw is still attached. Biting skull stories. This was glued on well before Farday parted with it. Perhaps an earlier owner thought it might stop it sounding. You have to love these provenance junkies. They add whatever they like.”

  “Looks to be from a natural death?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “No trepanning holes. No autopsy line where the top of the skull’s been removed.”

  “You have a sharp eye. But I guess that’s a bit heartening, really. You can pick it up if you want.”

  “May I?”

  “You need to be sure. No faking going on.”

  “Oh, right. I see.”

  I crossed to the stand and—with only a moment’s hesitation—lifted the ale-coloured orb, rotated it slowly in my hands. I’d never touched, let alone held, a human skull before—this ultimate palace, library, vital stronghold of another being, once a complete entity, someone who had left this “container” behind when he’d vanished in death. It was heavier than I expected, maybe three pounds total, though I allowed that the silver counted for something. Apart from the lacquering and silverwork, it was very clean, divorcing it even more from the organic realities it had once been part of. It was more like a piece of décor or a film prop—an emblem of death rather than an actual artefact from it.

  I turned it over and examined the spinal hole in the base. “This opening—?”

  “The foramen magnum,” Will said. “Where the spinal cord entered the cranial vault. You get the echo
chamber effect most there. But, like I said, Dave—it’s not an ocean effect. The whisper will come to you across the room. And you’re free to check the skull again whenever you like if you decide to help us. We know you’ll be careful.”

  “So how do we do this? What do you propose?”

  “You’ll have family commitments, I’m sure. But this is a chance we can’t afford to let pass. I was going to suggest you sleep over each Sunday night for as long as you can manage. Till you hear it.”

  “Or dream about it again.”

  “Till something happens. Will you do it?”

  At 10:34, I was starting to grow sleepy.

  Being this high up certainly made it easier to settle. A basement or a more closed-in space would have added a pressing, claustrophobic feel, but this makeshift tower bedroom had an airy, open quality—made the whole thing bearable somehow.

  The only thing I’d done before slipping between the covers was turn the pedestal so the skull was side-on, not facing me with its empty eye sockets. Positioned in left profile, it actually looked like it was keeping watch, just as it had in my boyhood years when it gazed down on the street below.

  The inevitable thoughts came, of course, but grew less urgent with familiarity.

  Who were you?

  Who added the silver and why?

  What was your death like to cause such embellishment, if the adornment were even remotely part of the death itself?

  No ordinary skull, surely. Then again, there were ultimately no ordinary deaths. No ordinary skulls. Every one was unique.

  The long curtains lifted and fell, breathing in the night.

  What would it be like when it whispered, I wondered, realizing that I truly did expect it to happen, expected something from those calm inner chambers, trusted that they would draw something in, produce the sighs and murmurs that supported its reputation. The occipital hole was blocked by the cushion now, though from what Will had said that made no difference.