But presently, interspersed with these commands, were others of a meaningless, childish, yet revolting character such as might be invented by a decadent imbecile, or, it must be admitted, by the idle fancies of any ordinary man who permits his imagination to wander unbridled. Mr Corbett was startled to recognize one or two such fancies of his own, which had occurred to him during his frequent boredom in church, and which he had not thought any other mind could conceive.
He at first paid no attention to these directions, but found that his new speculations declined so rapidly that he became terrified not merely for his fortune but for his reputation and even safety, since the money of various of his clients was involved. It was made clear to him that he must follow the commands in the book altogether or not at all, and he began to carry out their puerile and grotesque blasphemies with a contemptuous amusement, which, however, gradually changed to a sense of their monstrous significance. They became more capricious and difficult of execution, but he now never hesitated to obey blindly, urged by a fear that he could not understand, but knew only that it was not of mere financial failure.
By now he understood the effect of this book on the others near it, and the reason that had impelled its mysterious agent to move the books into the second shelf so that all in turn should come under the influence of that ancient and secret knowledge.
In respect to it, he encouraged his children, with jeers at their stupidity, to read more, but he could not observe that they ever now took a book from the dining-room bookcase. He himself no longer needed to read, but went to bed early and slept sound. The things that all his life he had longed to do when he should have enough money now seemed to him insipid. His most exciting pleasure was the smell and touch of these mouldering pages as he turned them to find the last message inscribed to him.
One evening it was in two words only: ‘Canem occide.’
He laughed at this simple and pleasant request to kill the dog, for he bore Mike a grudge for his change from devotion to slinking aversion. Moreover, it could not have come more opportunely, since in turning out an old desk he had just discovered some packets of rat poison bought years ago and forgotten. No one therefore knew of its existence and it would be easy to poison Mike without any further suspicion than that of a neighbour’s carelessness. He whistled light-heartedly as he ran upstairs to rummage for the packets, and returned to empty one in the dog’s dish of water in the hall.
That night the household was awakened by terrified screams proceeding from the stairs. Mr Corbett was the first to hasten there, prompted by the instinctive caution that was always with him these days. He saw Jean, in her nightdress, scrambling up on to the landing on her hands and knees, clutching at anything that afforded support and screaming in a choking, tearless, unnatural manner. He carried her to the room she shared with Nora, where they were quickly followed by Mrs Corbett.
Nothing coherent could be got from Jean. Nora said that she must have been having her old dream again; when her father demanded what this was, she said that Jean sometimes woke in the night, crying, because she had dreamed of a hand passing backwards and forwards over the dining-room bookcase, until it found a certain book and took it out of the shelf. At this point she was always so frightened that she woke up.
On hearing this, Jean broke into fresh screams, and Mrs Corbett would have no more explanations. Mr Corbett went out on to the stairs to find what had brought the child there from her bed. On looking down into the lighted hall, he saw Mike’s dish overturned. He went down to examine it and saw that the water he had poisoned must have been upset and absorbed by the rough doormat, which was quite wet.
He went back to the little girls’ room, told his wife that she was tired and must go to bed, and he would take his turn at comforting Jean. She was now much quieter. He took her on his knee where at first she shrank from him. Mr Corbett remembered with an angry sense of injury that she never now sat on his knee, and would have liked to pay her out for it by mocking and frightening her. But he had to coax her into telling him what he wanted, and with this object he soothed her, calling her by pet names that he thought he had forgotten, telling her that nothing could hurt her now he was with her.
At first his cleverness amused him; he chuckled softly when Jean buried her head in his dressing-gown. But presently an uncomfortable sensation came over him, he gripped at Jean as though for her protection, while he was so smoothly assuring her of his. With difficulty, he listened to what he had at last induced her to tell him.
She and Nora had kept Mike with them all the evening and taken him to sleep in their room for a treat. He had lain at the foot of Jean’s bed and they had all gone to sleep. Then Jean began her old dream of the hand moving over the books in the dining-room bookcase; but instead of taking out a book, it came across the dining-room and out on to the stairs. It came up over the banisters and to the door of their room, and turned their door handle very softly and opened it. At this point she jumped up wide awake and turned on the light, calling to Nora. The door, which had been shut when they went to sleep, was wide open, and Mike was gone.
She told Nora that she was sure something dreadful would happen to him if she did not go and bring him back, and ran down into the hall where she saw him just about to drink from his dish. She called to him and he looked up, but did not come, so she ran to him, and began to pull him along with her, when her nightdress was clutched from behind and then she felt a hand seize her arm.
She fell down, and then clambered upstairs as fast as she could, screaming all the way.
It was now clear to Mr Corbett that Mike’s dish must have been upset in the scuffle. She was again crying, but this time he felt himself unable to comfort her. He retired to his room, where he walked up and down in an agitation he could not understand, for he found his thoughts perpetually arguing on a point that had never troubled him before.
‘I am not a bad man,’ he kept saying to himself. ‘I have never done anything actually wrong. My clients are none the worse for my speculations, only the better. Nor have I spent my new wealth on gross and sensual pleasures; these now have even no attraction for me.’
Presently he added: ‘It is not wrong to try and kill a dog, an ill-tempered brute. It turned against me. It might have bitten Jeannie.’
He noticed that he had thought of her as Jeannie, which he had not done for some time; it must have been because he had called her that tonight. He must forbid her ever to leave her room at night, he could not have her meddling. It would be safer for him if she were not there at all.
Again that sick and cold sensation of fear swept over him: he seized the bedpost as though he were falling, and held on to it for some minutes. ‘I was thinking of a boarding-school,’ he told himself, and then, ‘I must go down and find out – find out –’ He would not think what it was he must find out.
He opened his door and listened. The house was quiet. He crept on to the landing and along to Nora’s and Jean’s door where again he stood, listening. There was no sound, and at that he was again overcome with unreasonable terror. He imagined Jean lying very still in her bed, too still. He hastened away from the door, shuffling in his bedroom slippers along the passage and down the stairs.
A bright fire still burned in the dining-room grate. A glance at the clock told him it was not yet twelve. He stared at the bookcase. In the second shelf was a gap which had not been there when he had left. On the writing-bureau lay a large open book. He knew that he must cross the room and see what was written in it. Then, as before, words that he did not intend came sobbing and crying to his lips, muttering, ‘No, no, not that. Never, never, never.’ But he crossed the room and looked down at the book. As last time, the message was in only two words: ‘Infantem occide.’
He slipped and fell forward against the bureau. His hands clutched at the book, lifted it as he recovered himself and with his finger he traced out the words that had been written. The smell of corruption crept into his nostrils. He told himself that he was not a
snivelling dotard, but a man stronger and wiser than his fellows, superior to the common emotions of humanity, who held in his hands the sources of ancient and secret power.
He had known what the message would be. It was after all the only safe and logical thing to do. Jean had acquired dangerous knowledge. She was a spy, an antagonist. That she was so unconsciously, that she was eight years old, his youngest and favourite child, were sentimental appeals that could make no difference to a man of sane reasoning power such as his own. Jean had sided with Mike against him. ‘All that are not with me are against me,’ he repeated softly. He would kill both dog and child with the white powder that no one knew to be in his possession. It would be quite safe.
He laid down the book and went to the door. What he had to do, he would do quickly, for again that sensation of deadly cold was sweeping over him. He wished he had not to do it tonight; last night it would have been easier, but tonight she had sat on his knee and made him afraid. He imagined her lying very still in her bed, too still. But it would be she who would lie there, not he, so why should he be afraid? He was protected by ancient and secret powers. He held on to the door handle, but his fingers seemed to have grown numb, for he could not turn it. He clung to it, crouched and shivering, bending over it until he knelt on the ground, his head beneath the handle which he still clutched with upraised hands. Suddenly the hands were loosened and flung outwards with the frantic gesture of a man falling from a great height, and he stumbled to his feet. He seized the book and threw it on the fire. A violent sensation of choking overcame him, he felt he was being strangled, as in a nightmare he tried again and again to shriek aloud, but his breath would make no sound. His breath would not come at all. He fell backwards heavily, down on the floor, where he lay very still.
In the morning, the maid who came to open the dining-room windows found her master dead. The sensation caused by this was scarcely so great in the City as that given by the simultaneous collapse of all Mr Corbett’s recent speculations. It was instantly assumed that he must have had previous knowledge of this and so committed suicide.
The stumbling-block to this theory was that the medical report defined the cause of Mr Corbett’s death as strangulation of the windpipe by the pressure of a hand which had left the marks of its fingers on his throat.
The Mainz Psalter
Jean Ray
Translated into English by Lowell Blair
Jean Ray (1887–1964) was a prolific Flemish writer, considered one of the pre-eminent members of what is sometimes called the Belgian School of the Weird. Ray’s real name was Raymundus Joannes de Kremer and he used many other pseudonyms for his comic strips and detective stories. ‘The Mainz Psalter’ falls into the ‘weird voyages’ category; the author purportedly read William Hope Hodgson’s ghost pirate stories only after writing the story. The original 1965 Jean Ray collection Ghouls in My Grave, a mass-market paperback, remains the best English-language translation of his work. The famed and hard-to-find Midnight House collection My Own Private Spectres (1999) provides the valuable service of bringing more stories into English.
A man who is about to die is not likely to be very elegant in his last words: being in a hurry to sum up his whole life, he tends to make them rigorously concise.
But it was different with Ballister as he lay dying in the forecastle of the trawler North Caper, from Grimsby.
We had tried in vain to stop the flow of blood that was draining his life away. He had no fever; his speech was steady and rapid. He did not seem to see the bandages or the bloody basin: his eyes were following remote and formidable images.
Reines, the radio man, was taking notes.
Reines spends all his spare time writing stories and essays for short-lived literary magazines. As soon as one of them is born in Paternoster Row, his name is sure to appear on the list of contributors. Do not be surprised, therefore, by the rather special style given to this final monologue of a mortally wounded sailor. The blame must fall on Reines, a literary man without glory, who transcribed it. But I can testify that the facts it contains are the same as those reported before four members of the crew of the North Caper: Benjamin Cormon, the captain; yours truly John Copeland, first mate; Ephraim Rose, engineer; and the aforementioned Archibald Reines.
Thus spoke Ballister:
It was in the Merry Heart Tavern that I first met the schoolmaster, and it was there that we struck our bargain and he gave me his orders.
The Merry Heart is more of a meeting-place for bargemen than for sailors. Its dilapidated façade is reflected in the water of one of Liverpool’s back docks, where barges from the inland waterways are moored.
I looked at the well-drawn plan of a small schooner.
‘She’s almost a yacht,’ I said. ‘In heavy weather, she must be able to sail close to the wind, and that broad stern will make it possible for us to maneuver well when there’s a head wind.’
‘There’s an auxiliary engine, too,’ he said.
I frowned, having always loved sailing.
‘Built by Hallet & Hallet, Glasgow, 1909,’ I said. ‘She’s very well rigged. With her sixty tons and a crew of six, she’ll take to the sea better than a transatlantic liner.’
His face took on a look of satisfaction, and he ordered a round of expensive drinks.
‘Why are you changing her name from the Hen-Parrot?’ I asked. ‘It’s a nice name. I’ve always liked parrots.’
He hesitated slightly.
‘It’s a matter of…sentiment, or of gratitude, if you prefer.’
‘So the ship will be called the Mainz Psalter…It’s odd, but I suppose it’s original.’
Alcohol had made him a little loquacious.
‘That’s not the reason,’ he said. ‘A year ago a grand-uncle of mine died and left me a trunk full of old books.’
‘So?’
‘Wait! I was looking through them without enthusiasm when one of them caught my attention. It was an incunabulum…’
‘A what?’
‘An incunabulum,’ he said with a slight air of superiority, ‘is a book published shortly after the invention of the printing press. And I was amazed to recognize the almost heraldic mark of Fust and Schaeffer! Those names probably mean nothing to you. Fust and Schaeffer were partners of Gutenberg, the inventor of the printing press. The book I had in my hands was nothing less than a rare and splendid copy of the famous Mainz Psalter, published toward the end of the fifteenth century.’
I gave him a look of polite attention and false understanding.
‘What will impress you more, Mr. Ballister,’ he said, ‘is that a Mainz Psalter is worth a fortune.’
‘Ah!’ I said, suddenly interested.
‘Yes, it’s worth a fine bundle of banknotes big enough to buy the former Hen-Parrot and pay ample wages to a crew of six men for the cruise I want to make. Now do you understand why I want to give such an unmaritime name to our little ship?’
I understood it perfectly, and I congratulated him on his greatness of soul. ‘And yet it would seem more logical to me,’ I said, ‘to name the ship after that dear uncle who left you the book.’
He burst into loud, disagreeable laughter. I was disconcerted by such coarseness on the part of an educated man.
‘You’ll leave from Glasgow,’ he said, ‘and sail the ship through the North Minch to Cape Wrath.’
‘Those are hellish waters,’ I said.
‘I chose you precisely because you know them, Mr. Ballister.’
No finer praise can be given a sailor than to say that he knows the horrible corridor of water that is the Minch Channel. My heart swelled with pride.
‘That’s true,’ I said. ‘In fact, I was once nearly killed between Chicken and Tiumpan Head.’
‘South of Cape Wrath,’ he went on, ‘there’s a sheltered little bay that’s known only to a few bold sailors, by a name that doesn’t appear on the map: Big Toe Bay.’
I looked at him in surprised admiration.
‘Do you
know Big Toe?’ I said. ‘That’s something that would make you respected by Customs, and would probably get you stabbed by certain men of the coast.’
He made a gesture of indifference.
‘I’ll rejoin the ship at Big Toe Bay.’
‘And from there?’
He indicated a precise westerly direction.
‘Hm, that’s a nasty place,’ I said, ‘a real desert of water strewn with sharp rocks. We won’t see many trails of smoke on the horizon.’
‘You’re quite right,’ he said.
I winked at him, thinking I understood.
‘As long as you pay the way you’ve said,’ I replied, ‘I don’t care what you do.’
‘I think you’re mistaken about my plans, Mr. Ballister. They’re of a rather…scientific nature, but I don’t want to have a discovery stolen from me by some envious rival. In any case, it doesn’t matter, because I’ll pay as I said.’
We spent a few minutes drinking. Then, just as we were about to discuss the question of the crew, our conversation veered off strangely.
‘I’m not a sailor,’ he said brusquely, ‘so don’t count on me to help with handling the ship. Let me be specific: I’m a schoolmaster.’
‘I respect learning,’ I said, ‘and I’m not entirely lacking in it myself. A schoolmaster? Good, good!’
‘Yes, in Yorkshire.’
‘Let’s go over the crew now,’ I said. ‘First of all there’s Turnip. It’s an odd name, but he’s a good man and a good sailor. There’s…a prison term in his recent past. Is that a drawback?’
‘Not in the least.’
The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories Page 43