“I shall explain it to you in the same manner as I explained it to the vicar over a flagon of ale in The Bull’s Head later that day, and you can draw your own conclusions.
“As I have previously stated, I have always believed in a progression of our energy, from the Microcosm to the Macrocosm. I have formed a belief that the source of our being, that which makes us what we are, passes whole and still complete into an afterlife, in whatever form that might take.
“But what I witnessed in the graveyard changed that. The old tree, ancient as it was, had somehow managed to draw life-force, souls if you will, from those buried on the site. Not only that, it had devised a way to put that energy to use in its own reproductive processes, amalgamating the energy into its own life field to produce something new and strange.
“I believe I might have watched some of Mr. Darwin’s evolutionary theory in action, as that old tree adapted to its conditions, and found new ways to colonise niches. But what of the poor buried souls? Has anything passed to the Macrocosm? Or would they now be bound to the tree for eternity, part of an entirely new entity, in some kind of primitive hive mind?”
Carnacki sat back and I saw dark shadows under his eyes from lack of sleep.
“And now maybe you chaps can think on it for me for a while, and I might get some sleep.”
Carnacki showed us to the door.
“Out you go,” he said.
Arkwright was still in some confusion, turning back as we left.
“I say old chap,” he said. “If you are still unsure, why do you not return to the oak and investigate further?”
“I wish I could,” Carnacki said just before closing the door. “But the vicar took exception to my theory. Even as I was packing to leave the inn, I could hear the noise of chopping and sawing.
“He had the old tree torn down until not even a root remained.”
The Shoreditch Worm
I was late for my appointment. It was a quiet night on the embankment, and I heard the clock at Westminster chime the hour for seven while I was yet a mile from Carnacki’s lodgings. It was closer to the quarter past before I knocked on his door in Cheyenne Gardens, and I feared they might have begun without me.
My fears however proved groundless. With his customary good grace Carnacki had kept the others occupied with a short tale of his ongoing efforts in exploring the mysteries in the caves at Chiselhurst; a story whose conclusion he was saving for another day. So it was that my arrival merely allowed him to stop at an opportune moment in his tale and herd us through to the dining room.
As ever Carnacki’s table did not disappoint. We were served some perfectly cooked roast beef with dumplings and baby carrots, followed by a bread and butter pudding that filled all available nooks in our bellies. We were all grateful when we rose and made our way to the parlour for a period of digestion and story telling.
Carnacki gave us time to get our drinks charged and fresh smokes lit, then started straight into his latest story.
* * *
“Our tale tonight starts two weeks ago; in fact it was the Saturday morning after our last evening together. I was at breakfast, sampling some fine marmalade I had procured the previous day in the King’s Road when there was a heavy knock at the door.
“I opened it to a small portly man with a bristling moustache and a personality to match. I fetched him in and I got a pipe lit by the fire while listening to the purpose that had brought him to me.
“He introduced himself as a Mr. Carruthers, a warehouse owner in Devonshire Square up by Liverpool Street, and the tale he had to relate was one of the strangest that had come through my door.
“It took him several minutes to get settled and I could see that he was somewhat embarrassed to be bringing his troubles to a stranger, but whatever was troubling him, he finally came to a decision to tell it.
“‘I have heard that your specialty is dealing with ghosts and such,’ he said, chewing on his pipe stem with such fervor I feared it might break. ‘And it is on that matter I come to you today. I have recently instigated a Sunday shift in the warehouse. Now I am as Godly as the next man, and have always kept the Sabbath, but business is business Mr. Carnacki, and that stops for no man, Sabbath or not. Of course the men grumbled and moaned, but the prospect of time-and-a-half soon got them moving. That first day, five weeks ago now, things went smoothly at first.
“‘But just around eleven that all changed. Young Mooney was first to get the heebie-jeebies. I found him out back smoking a cigarette. I thought he was malingering but the lad was white as a sheet and swore he could not go back inside – not when the spook was there. Three other men – stout hearted East-Enders all, also succumbed and by noon I had a rebellion on my hands. I could not for the life of me get them back to work, but when I went to see for myself what the fuss was all about, all I found was a cold empty stock room.
“‘When it came round to allocate staff for the next Sunday I had a mutiny on my hands. I was forced to offer double-time, and I don’t need to tell you how difficult that is for a businessman. But the goods had to go out for a profit to be made, and the offer of the extra money was just too good for some of them to turn down. And this time I vowed to keep a close eye on proceedings, determined to get to the root of the matter.’
“He stopped there and gazed into the fire for a while, still chewing on the pipe. At first I thought he would not continue, but after a time he went on.
“‘I should tell you Mr. Carnacki, it has fair shaken me up, and made me question all that I thought true. If you cannot help me, I do not know what I shall do.’
“I promised to do all in my power to help, and that seemed to give him the fortitude to get to the meat of his story.
“‘As I said, that next Sunday, I thought I was prepared. But nothing could prepare a man for that. I had a glimpse of Hell, and I will never be the same. At first things went smoothly. We got three carts loaded and sent on their way before it went to the dogs. Just after the church bells started ringing I noticed it had gone cold on the stockroom floor - cold enough that I could see my breath in front of my face. That in itself is not unusual at this time of the year… but the thing that came up through the floor made up for that. Gray it was, and long, like some huge worm, two feet thick coils of it lying, steaming in the middle of my best stock. I was having none of that I can tell you. I strode forward and I do believe I intended to kick it… but just then it turned, and looked at me. God help me Mr. Carnacki, it had a face. And it’s them milky white eyes that I’ll never forget as long as I live. You’ve got to help me. You’ve got to.’
“And at that the poor chap broke down and started to sob so uncontrollably that I had no choice but to pour us both a stiffener, despite the early hour.
“The brandy seemed to perk him up somewhat, but he had already told me almost all that he knew. And when I asked if there had been a repeat of the manifestation, he could not say.
“‘I am ashamed to say, I have not been back,’ he said. ‘But the business is suffering, and if I do not get them all back to work right soon the whole thing will be over.’”
* * *
Carnacki paused to knock out his pipe before continuing.
“As you chaps can see, it seemed right up my street, and I will admit to a certain degree of excitement that next morning as I made my way to Devonshire Square. It being Sunday the carriage had no trouble at all with traffic and I arrived at the warehouse just after ten o’clock. I had taken the precaution of bringing along some basic protections and I carried them in a small travelling case as I rapped hard on the tall wooden doors.
“Carruthers himself met me there and led me into a long hall with a staircase at the far end.
“‘It’s up there Mr. Carnacki,’ he said. ‘But I can’t go with you. I just can’t.’ He whispered something I almost did not catch. ‘It’s getting stronger.’
“I told him that I understood, and indeed I did, for he was not the first to take a blue funk at a meeti
ng with a denizen of the Outer Regions, and he will not be the last.”
“I walked up the staircase quietly, checking at each step for any feeling that a manifestation might be present, but beyond a certain coldness that is, after all, common in warehouses at this time of the year, there was no sign that this was anything other than an empty building.
“The main stock room was huge - high and cavernous with the almost sepulchral feel of an old church. Barrels of what smelled like tea and nicotine lined all the walls, leaving a bare space in the center of the floor, and it was there that I had determined to make my preparations.
“Just as I opened my travelling bag a cloud passed over the sun and the room fell into deeper darkness.
“That is when I saw it for the first time. It was faint and indistinct, as fragile as cigar smoke in a warm parlor. But there was no denying the presence of the worm. As Carruthers had described, it lay in the center of the chamber in thick coils, like a huge piece of rope. But no rope ever breathed, and no rope ever turned at my presence and stared straight at me.
“It gave me quite a turn I can tell you, for there was indeed a face at the narrowest end of the worm. Or I should say to be correct, almost a face. There were no visible nostrils, and the mouth was little more than a razor-thin slash. But the eyes drew all my attention; like two white saucers embedded in the flesh. They watched my every move as I set about my protections.
“I started by drawing a circle of chalk, taking care never to smudge the line. Beyond this I rubbed a broken garlic clove in a second circle around the first.
“When this was done, I took a small jar of water that had been blessed by a priest and went round the circle again just inside the line of chalk, leaving a wet trail that dried quickly behind me. Within this inner circle I made my pentacle using the signs of the Saaamaaa Ritual, and joined each Sign most carefully to the edges of the lines I had already made.
“In the points of the pentacle I placed five portions of bread wrapped in linen, and in the valleys five phials of the holy water. Now I had my basic protective barrier and already felt secure enough to step into the circle and get a pipe lit so that I could watch the proceedings at my leisure.
“I did not have to wait long. I had barely got the pipe lit when I realized that there had been a subtle change in the atmosphere in the room. I took several seconds to notice that I had been hearing it for a while without registering – the Sunday morning call to church was being rung on the bells of the City.
“I was not the only thing in the room that noticed. The worm started to pulse in time with the clap of the bells. I began to pay more attention, and soon spotted that the song of the bells, while mostly regular in its peals, was being disrupted somewhat by one bell tower. The noise came from some way in the distance and was out of step with the others, singing a different song and disturbing the rhythm. These were the bells that were causing a response in the worm, and as the peals continued, so too did the worm swell and grow there in the confines of the room.
“Now you chaps know that I have stood in some dashed tight spots without taking to my heels, but there was something about that pale worm, something ancient and primal, that made me want to flee immediately. But stand I did, even as it swelled yet further and threatened to approach the boundary of my defences. Outside the bells continued, ringing through the changes. Now that I had made note of it, it was easy to spot the one discordant partner, but it was impossible from where I stood to try to allocate any point of the compass to the source. But I knew one thing instinctively – the root of this manifestation was intimately tied to that discord.
“Right then however I had mere survival at the forefront of my mind. The worm pulsed once more and its outermost coil brushed through the air above my protective circle. There was an immediate sizzle and I smelled burned flesh. It seemed the manifestation was more physical than I had imagined. A wind came up out of nowhere in the room swirling and blasting like a sea gale. I was hard pressed to stand upright. Coils of the worm slithered and thrashed. I felt relatively safe inside the defences, but the barrels around the walls tossed into the air and broken like so much kindling, their contents of tea and tobacco flying around in a swirling maelstrom.
“I readied myself to call out an exorcism spell; my last resort against the onslaught… but it was not needed.
“With no warning silence fell. Tobacco and tea dropped from the air to lie in piles on the floor and once again the worm was a mere wisp of smoke and mist, only dimly to be seen in the centre of the room. It looked larger now and it breathed more deeply; but it too was silent.
“I checked my pocket-watch. It was dead on eleven o’clock, and outside the bells had stopped.”
* * *
Carnacki too stopped, and we all recognized that it time for a natural break in the story, a spot where we could stretch our legs, refill our glasses and light some fresh smokes.
And as ever, Arkwright was keen to get ahead of the tale.
“It’s some dashed oriental import that’s at the root of it all, isn’t it Carnacki? Importers are never to be trusted that’s what I say. Why only last week I went to see a rug I had acquired on spec only to find that…”
Carnacki stopped him with a single look. We all knew that to give Arkwright the floor was to give him free rein to any amount of meandering that might lead to an evening long discourse on the perils of foreign trade or, worse still, more insight into his encyclopaedic knowledge of cricket statistics. Luckily Arkwright caught the look and he joined the rest of us in sampling some of Carnacki’s particularly fine brandy.
After a few minutes we all settled in our respective seats and got our smokes in order as Carnacki prepared to continue.
* * *
“I stayed inside the defences for several hours to observe the situation. The smoke from my pipe was now more substantial than the almost faded presence of the worm, but there was no denying that it still maintained a presence in the room. And I now knew that if I were to understand the nature of this beast, then I would have to understand precisely what had happened with the church bells.
“Just after one o’clock I stepped out of the circle. There were no repercussions; the worm seemed asleep. I left my circle in place and went in search of the bells’ source.
“That proved more difficult that I had imagined; I had quite forgotten the sheer density of places of worship, even there in the centres of commerce. I knocked on several church doors but, if they had been open for earlier services, they were now certainly closed and quiet. I was already weary and footsore by the time I reached Cheapside and St. Mary-le-Bow, but the epiphany I had on the steps more than made up for the discomfort. A fragment of a rhyme echoed in my head.
“I do not know, says the Great Bell of Bow.
“I will not insult you chaps’ intelligence by reminding you of the origin; I am sure we all knew the song intimately in our childhood. But I knew more, as I had at some time past had occasion to research the history of the churches in this area. I knew for example that there are many older variants of the child’s rhyme. And in one of them there is a reference that had my mind in turmoil, for it says;
“Blind Father Bald Pate, Ring ye Bells Aldgate.
“To my mind, there could only be one subject of that line; the very blind bald worm that I had left in that storeroom in Devonshire Square.
“I got no answer from my knocking on the door at St. Mary-le-Bow, and by this time my mind was in turmoil with theory and counter-theory. Research was in order, and there was no better place for that than my own library back here in Cheyenne Walk. I took a carriage back along the river and arrived here in the early evening, tired but ready to grapple with this latest quandary.
“I was to be in the library late into the night, but by the end of it I had started to build a theory, and a possible plan of attack for the removal of the worm from the warehouse. But to explain it to you, I shall need to give you a short demonstration.
He paused,
just long enough to reach below his chair and bring up what looked to be a hand-bell of the kind that used to summon us to class back at school.
He rang, and spoke in a sing-song voice in time.
“Oranges and lemons say the bells of St. Clements.
“The phrase seems innocuous enough,” he said. “But I have found that it was designed with a purpose in mind, a very specific purpose. It is rung in a round of the twelve largest churches in the east of the City, every Sunday. Each church has slightly different intonations in its ring, and each church has its own place to play in the round which has been rung since at least the early Eighteenth Century, and perhaps further back than that.
“A notation in the margins in my “History of Shoreditch” gave me a further clue. Where it stated that ye lange wyrmme is held in place by ye calls to the faithful for sae lange as there be ye faithful to be called.
“It was now apparent to me that ringing of the Sunday bells acted as a cage, holding the inhabitant of the warehouse at bay. This did not particularly surprise me, for have I not already related to you how vibration and sound were used to hold the inhabitant of the Larkhall Barrow? I was coming to believe that I was dealing with a similar manifestation of the Outer Realm, and one that might need similar methods to overcome it.
“I still however had more questions than answers, and I am afraid I sat up most of the night by the fire, smoking, drinking brandy, and looking for answers that seemed just out of reach. In the morning I still did not know why the bell ringing was necessary in the first place, nor why one of the churches had chosen to disrupt the very purpose for which it had been set up. The only way I was going to get that answer was by asking the right questions of the right people, and in the morning, after a nap and some fortification with toast and marmalade, I made my way once more to the east.
“My first port of call was the old church in St Mary-le-Bow. Now that the weekend was over the normal hustle and bustle of commerce had returned to the area, and the Church itself had opened its doors for any workers needing religious sustenance. I made my way inside and, after questioning several people to no avail, was finally shown to a room behind the apse where a very old vicar sat behind a desk, eyeing me quizzically.
Carnacki: Heaven and Hell Page 15