The Mammoth Book of Nightmare Stories

by Stephen Jones

  But some weeks later, it was again in the forefront. He had received an urgent message from the Chairman of the Exhibition Committee when spending a weekend at the Kent coast. It asked him to return to London at once.

  Sir Portman Ackroyd was a solid, red-faced man, whose claret features seemed even more suffused as he passed a buff message from across his desk to a confused Jordan. The message read: sicilian statuary crated arrived london docks today stop bonded warehouse for clearance stop awaiting instructions stop ross.

  Jordan’s feelings, as he read this extraordinary message, can perhaps be imagined rather than felt. His first instincts, as he discussed the matter with Ackroyd, were that a mistake had been made. Then his face lightened. There had evidently been some confusion at Palermo. No doubt the plinth alone had arrived.

  Sir Portman’s brow cleared, and he got on the telephone. Ross could not be reached, but inquiries would be made at the docks. In half-an-hour the phone rang again. There were definitely four crates, three of them upright and one horizontal.

  To say that the room turned black, Jordan explained to his two friends, would be a slight exaggeration, but the receipt of this stupefying message had something of that effect.

  In fact, he looked so queer that Sir Portman solicitously led him to a deep easy-chair and poured him a liberal brandy. Then the two men debated the curious mystery, and Jordan decided that he would leave for the docks himself, and investigate. Sir Portman insisted that he would come also. In the meantime, he left his secretary with the task of checking with the Italian shipping company which had handled the transportation of the crates. They could do little else, without appearing foolish, until they had personally inspected the contents.

  At this point Jordan fell silent, and the quiet atmosphere of the Florentine café again came back to my ears. Far away there was the thin, high note of a violin and this, mingled with the occasional clink of glasses and the splash of the river at our front, gave an agreeable touch of sanity after hearing this nightmare tale.

  Grisson leaned toward me as Jordan stopped speaking. “To give Arthur a chance to catch his breath,” he said, “I feel I owe you an apology. As you may have guessed, I didn’t make my visit with you totally unprepared.”

  “I gathered that,” I said. “I picked up one of your earplugs after we left the site. I kept it all these years.”

  And I handed him a small scrap of tissue paper. Grisson reddened, and then joined in the laughter of Arthur Jordan and myself. Jordan evidently knew this story, and he continued amused for some minutes as Grisson drew out the earplug from the twist of paper.

  “I was really sorry about that,” he told me. “But I had to have a neutral observer who knew nothing of the area or of the history of “The Gossips.” I wore these to see whether or not I would be affected, and also to ensure there would be someone on the spot who could act freely in case of emergency.”

  He broke off awkwardly as he finished his sentence, but was reassured by the smile I gave him. All the same, I was glad he had offered his explanation, which cleared up many things. As Jordan prepared to take up the story again, Grisson shifted his position in his chair and said something whose significance escaped me until later.

  “You will not have overlooked two curious facts, I presume? One is that the statues are of women and that, so far as is known, all the victims were males.”

  I had not much time to ponder on this cryptic announcement when Arthur Jordan, who was already beginning to display impatience, recommenced his story.

  He and Sir Portman had driven to the docks. There, in a vast shed, backed by cranes and all the maritime activities of a great port, were the four enormous crates, plainly labeled for their destination. Ross led the two men into the stone-floored shed, where a crowd of dockers had gathered.

  As Sir Portman gave the order, several of them began to carefully pry back the stout boards on the top of one box which Jordan had indicated. In about a quarter of an hour, after boards, straw, and packing had been removed, the unmistakable features of one of the hideous stone trio was revealed.

  Even some of the hard-bitten dock workers were shaken at the savage expression on that vile face, and Sir Portman’s rubicund features turned a shade whiter. Arthur Jordan did not shriek, neither did he faint away, but he felt the shed whirl around him and had to be helped back to the taxi.

  All the way back into central London, as the mean streets of the docks fled past the windows, he said, over and over to Sir Portman, “How could such a thing be? With my own eyes I saw them smashed to fragments. With my own eyes!”

  As for Sir Portman, who had never experienced the appalling atmosphere of their Sicilian setting, he no longer debated whether devilry or science was at the bottom of the things’ arrival in London. He knew he had the statues for his exhibition, and that was the principal matter which concerned him. Jordan turned paler than ever when he learned that Ackroyd intended to go ahead with the display of the statuary as planned, but all his pleading to the contrary was in vain. Sir Portman advised him to rest for several days, and in the meantime he would have inquiries put in train.

  Jordan turned over to him such documents as were necessary for this purpose. Once arrived at his flat near the museum, where he usually worked, he went to bed for three days with a raging fever. At the end of this time, his housekeeper, who had tended his wants during his illness, admitted an excited Sir Portman and a fellow colleague from the museum. The Exhibition Committee Chairman had seldom been so enthusiastic about an exhibit.

  “The Gossips” had been uncrated and reassembled, and in a month’s time would be set up on their exhibition site in the hall. Designers were fashioning a miniature cliff, so that they could be displayed in something of their original setting. Sir Portman thought they would be the sensation of the entire show and congratulated the unfortunate Jordan on all he had done to secure them.

  As for the mystery, he confessed himself as baffled as anyone else, but what did it really matter—the great thing was that they were available for display. Sir Portman had cabled the Duke immediately, but had a reply from his steward to say he had gone abroad for a protracted tour. He had then cabled again, asking for an examination to be made at the foot of the cliff at the palazzo. This cable had gone to one of the museum’s agents in Palermo, a man who Jordan had originally contacted, and he had personally visited the site.

  He had replied that the figures had disappeared, but there were boulders and crushed stone at the foot of the cliff, as though there had been a bad rock fall. Further inquiries at the Palermo docks had revealed that the crates had arrived for loading shortly after Jordan left for London.

  The orders for the shipping of the consignment to London had never been cancelled. Jordan had been too upset to remember this, and no doubt the crated plinth had given the impression to the shippers that things were proceeding normally.

  Records of the Italian shipping line engaged had confirmed afterward, continued Jordan, that the crates had arrived in the normal manner: local labor had brought them to the docks on large lorries. But the greater mystery remained.

  Had it been possible, asked Sir Portman, for the Duke’s agents to have reconstructed the figures in time for them to have been forwarded? It would have been a colossal task, but skilled savants from one of the Italian museums could have achieved this.

  Jordan had to admit that it was barely possible, but the job would have taken months. He would like to examine the group himself, he said, when he felt up to it. Sir Portman, the antiquarian in him still intensely excited by the whole affair, and far more enthusiastic than Jordan ever felt likely to be again over this particular exhibit, said the whole surface of the group was cracked and pitted, and it could well have been pieced together from fragments. He felt the effect added to the diablerie of the group.

  A few days later Jordan, quite recovered, visited the warehouse in the City where the group was being prepared. Despite his fears, the figures seemed quite normal, and no
one who had been concerned in their erection had noticed anything untoward. Indeed, beneath the prosaic electric light, and in the close company of other groups of figures and statues from the same period, they seemed to have lost something of their diabolical quality. To Jordan’s relief, after a close examination of the stone, he felt they could have been reassembled after fragmentation. The granite-like, brownish-stone from which they were carved was split and fissured from end to end—that was apparently a quality of it. But if the group had been reassembled—and it had to be, for no other theory would account for it—then the job had been done with tremendous cunning and skill.

  What dark shadows hovered around the fringes of Jordan’s mind, he no longer confided to Sir Portman. With the exhibition fast coming upon them, it would have done no good. So he kept his forebodings to himself, with the mental reservation that the responsibility was no longer his. The whole affair had been discussed in camera at a full meeting of Sir Portman’s Committee, all distinguished men in their various fields, and they had decided to go ahead with this once-in-a-lifetime coup.

  What mainly troubled Jordan still was that no one had yet heard anything from the Duke, though they had sent him at least three cables, asking for the messages to be forwarded. Also, further diligent inquiries both in Sicily and on the mainland of Italy had failed to unearth any more information on the reassembling of the figures, or who had given the orders for their crating and forwarding.

  But as the weeks went by, and with the exhibition work mounting up, he found less and less time for his wilder imaginings and was content to leave the affair of “The Gossips” to more stolid spirits who had not accompanied him on the Sicilian expedition, and who knew nothing of their wild history.

  No less than five of London’s largest halls were to be utilized for this biggest exhibition of its kind ever staged in the capital, and almost a month beforehand the three female figures and their plinth were moved to their final position in one of the most prominent positions in the Steinway Hall.

  This vast auditorium had been chosen for a number of reasons. The principal one was that it featured a huge balcony, supported by enormous iron trusses of Victorian manufacture, which together provided the tremendous strength necessary for the support of such a heavy group.

  Engineers had calculated the stress and had told the exhibition organizers there was a large safety margin. The balcony railings were then dismantled, slabs of stone laid down, and eventually a most realistic artificial cliff was erected to give “The Gossips” the most impressive setting of the entire exhibition.

  Skillful lighting, with sky effects at the rear, gave a day and night cycle of dawn, daylight, sunset, and night, which lasted twenty minutes and was destined to be a most memorable sight for the crowds who witnessed it.

  Even Jordan, who viewed the progress of the work with understandable interest, had to admit that the effect was splendid. But for the lamentable tragedy of a month or two before, which he could not erase from his mind, it would have been a triumphant climax in his career. As it was, the matter brought many congratulations from distinguished colleagues, and he was the subject of a number of articles in the press.

  Curiously enough, those pressmen and photographers who were given a preview a week before the exhibition opened to the public, though delighted, like the laymen, with the group’s fantastic qualities, saw nothing extraordinary in it. Neither was there anything wrong with their photographs.

  “But,” said Jordan, looking at me with expressive eyes across the café table, “within six months after the exhibition, every single photograph or photographic block had faded and disappeared, even to the individual images in newspaper files.

  “But by that time World War II had broken out, and people had other things to think about. The scientists had theories about the fading, too. They argued that dampness and storage conditions may have been responsible—as if that could have affected zinc and lead blocks, not to mention the countless thousands of newspaper file copies stored under dry, perfect conditions.”

  He was silent again for a moment, and the noise of the river a few yards away from our chairs appeared suddenly to intrude with its compelling murmur.

  Grisson seemed to awake with a start from a trance-like pose—evidently he had been deeply stirred by Jordan’s fantastic story.

  However, all he said, in a mild voice, was, “My round, I think,” and another tray of drinks presently appeared.

  The night before the exhibition was due to be opened to the public, Arthur Jordan was invited to a celebration dinner by Sir Portman and the Exhibition Committee. This started at 7:00 p.m. and was attended by many distinguished guests. Later, a fleet of cars toured the five halls to view the exhibits. Everything went well, and those present enjoyed a memorable evening.

  Some genius had thought up a selection of recordings of genuine medieval Sicilian folk-tunes as a background for “The Gossips” tableau, and when the day and night lighting cycle had finished, and the last quavering note died in the gallery, the large audience of invited guests broke into furious and spontaneous applause.

  Arthur Jordan found himself, unwillingly, the center of all eyes, and his introduction was sought by many of these distinguished people. Some of their questions he found embarrassing in the extreme—the music in fact was out of period, but few of the guests seemed to realize this—and it was with gratitude that he was able to excuse himself, over an hour later, and sought a side-exit to make his way home.

  He had to pass near the gallery in which the group of statues was exhibited, and as he made his way through the now empty, echoing building, someone began to extinguish the lights, one by one. His footsteps sounded unnaturally loudly along the deserted stairs and corridors, and to Jordan’s nerves, strained as they were by his recent experiences, the sounds were unpleasantly evocative.

  Some light yet lingered in the galleries and he was descending a spiral staircase, whose metallic clangor gave back a somber echo from the gallery beyond, when he heard the sharp, staccato steps of a man in the gloom below him. He clung to the staircase, as the noise came nearer, and then saw a miniature flashlight bobbing uncertainly about beneath.

  “Who’s there?” he called out, in unnecessarily loud tones, clamping down a rising wave of hysteria. The light swerved in an alarming manner, and then came toward him, picking him out on the staircase like an acrobat pinpointed in the spot lamp of a circus.

  “Thank God it’s you, sir.”

  With relief Jordan saw the uniform and peaked cap of one of the museum attendants.

  “Hullo, Hoskins,” he said. “Anything wrong?”

  He had reached the ground floor by this time and was not prepared for the answer which came. In the dim light of the lamp Hoskins’s face looked pale and strained.

  “I can’t help telling you, Mr. Jordan, I nearly lost my head when someone switched out the lights just now. I was up on top there, near those ugly big statues, and I heard the most horrible whispering coming from the gallery.”

  Jordan had started and put his hand on the other’s arm.

  “Let’s find a light-switch before you go any further,” he said, with all the strength of mind he could command. As light sprang out in the nearby galleries, he reflected that his face probably looked just as pallid and unnatural as the gallery attendant’s. “Right, now …” he went on.

  “Well,” said Hoskins, switching off his lamp, his tones more normal as the atmosphere was restored to everyday. “I was on the Somme in the last war and I’ve seen some things in my time, but that whispering fair gave me the creeps. I thought someone had got in the gallery, or perhaps some of the guests were playing a joke, so I shone my flashlight up and went along to see what was up. Well, I didn’t like it at all.

  “To tell you the truth, I didn’t dare go in among those statues. They were all in silhouette, and I know it sounds daft, but I could have sworn the faces were moving. I expect it was the effect of the shadow, God knows my hand was trembling e
nough. Anyway, I was just debating what to do when some fool put the main lights out. I couldn’t face that, not in the darkness, sir, and I turned and ran.”

  “Quite understandable,” said Jordan in a kindly manner, laying his hand on the other man’s shoulder. “I don’t mind telling you that I’ve had quite an experience with these statues myself, one way or another.”

  “Ah, of course, you brought ’em over, didn’t you, sir, now I remember,” said Hoskins, in evident relief. “So you know what I’m talking about.”

  “I do indeed, Hoskins,” said Jordan. “I can assure you it’s a mere aural trick, caused by natural draught and their clever method of construction.”

  He had decided to take this attitude, for the success of the exhibition meant a lot to him and the organizers, and he could not afford to let an attendant’s panic—though how he sympathized with the poor devil!—prejudice the opening and spread a lot of dark rumors about.

  “Let’s go and have a look, shall we?” he continued to Hoskins, walking easily and naturally forward, though what this effort cost him, no one would ever know.

  The attendant, his confidence restored, went back into the main hall with him and in the full light of the flood-lamps self-respect slowly oozed back.

  The statues glared malevolently in the strong lighting, but the silence was absolute. For once, Jordan understood the meaning of the phrase “not a whisper,” and he was profoundly thankful for it.

  “You see, all well,” he said, with what he felt was nonchalance in his voice, hoping to God that nothing untoward would occur. And after this brief inspection the pair moved off, Jordan to find his car and Hoskins to continue his round. As he drove off, Jordan looked in his mirror, and saw the lights in the great exhibition hall dying in the night, one by one.