The Third Grave
Page 18
I don’t remember our flight from that room, from the house. It was a frenzied retreat through a void. Awareness did not return until we stood outside, beside the car. Arabella was sobbing against my chest. I had one arm around her shoulders, the other on the door handle. The moon had risen, and the world transformed into a palely translucent chiaroscuro. I had become very cold, very composed now. There is a limit to the emotions the human mind can endure. Arabella was releasing hers in tears; I had frozen mine in ice. I took my hand from the door and held her in both arms. She felt very fragile. I was looking beyond her, at the woodpile. In the moonlight, the woodpile too was cold. It seemed carved from a block of ice. The axe stood upright and cast a long shadow. The shadow pointed at me.
Presently, Arabella drew back and gazed at me, trembling, questioning.
“I have to go back,” I said.
“Yes, I know.”
“I can’t just leave him like that.”
“I know, Thomas.”
“Lock yourself in the car.”
“I’ll come with you.”
I shook my head.
“But, Thomas—I have to.” She was wide-eyed, logical. “You can see that. I can control him. He’d kill you alone. But he—you saw—he obeyed me. He helped me.” She trembled violently with those words. But it was true. It was the most terrible part of all, but true. Arabella was right. Sam might be uncontrollable now, he might kill both of us, but there are things worse than death. I nodded. She tried to smile. I grasped the axe.
Sam was still crouched over Mallory’s body.
We saw him from the door. It was not an occasion for the traditions of bravery, and I let Arabella step first into the room. She stood just inside the door and spoke his name, softly. After what seemed a long time, Sam gaped upward, crooking his head sideways.
The fury was gone from his eyes now, his jaw dripped strands of gore. Arabella’s shoulders quivered as she saw his face, but she didn’t look away. And slow, very slowly, Sam’s expression changed. His face drew upward at the mouth.
Arabella gasped.
Dutiful, faithful, pleased to have served her, Sam Cooper was smiling.
Impaled upon that smile, Arabella swayed.
Sam lowered his face once more to Mallory.
Arabella closed her eyes. Sam did not appear to notice me as I moved past Arabella and into the room, holding the axe across my chest. I took my stance behind him, my feet spread wide. I couldn’t see his face from there, and I didn’t wish to. Thar terrible smile had been incised into my soul. But I could see the arched back of his neck. I shifted my weight and lifted the axe at the angle. Sam’s head moved from side to side on Mallory’s body. I hesitated, but only for a moment; only to gauge the distance. There was no moral problem here to be judged.
This was no murder.
The murder already had been committed.
This was simply the final rites.
There was little blood.
Blood does not rush forth when no heart beats. My blow was true, and Sam’s head fell to the side, rebounding twice and turning over. His body, as if long awaiting this moment, collapsed instantly and seemed to deflate and flatten, boneless and liquescent. I had to take two steps, slow and steady, before I stood over the severed head. It rested face upward on the stones. The eyes were open, Sam stared up at me, for a moment our gaze locked. Perhaps he understood, then. Freed of his body, he may have known. I like to tell myself that he did, that the look he raised to me from his disembodied head was one of gratitude. I finished the task deliberately, not stopping until the axe blade was ringing on the stones and nothing remained there without purpose to a corpse.
The task finished, I began to tremble.
My bones rattled.
I had barely enough strength left for Encephalon, but he was old, old, and the effort was small. Done, I hurled the axe aside and leaned against the operating table, my head lowered, twitching spasmodically. Arabella came to stand behind me and touched my shoulder. I raised my face. The ikons and idols leered at me from the shelves, preserving their timeless vigil. Each and every one out of Egypt, they all represented immortality. I cursed them blasphemously, savagely. Arabella, startled, stepped back. But the ikons and idols did not move at all. Manifestations of immortality, they were motionless forever.
It was Arabella who suggested I wipe my fingerprints from the axe. At first I couldn’t apprehend her meaning. I had no sense of having committed a crime. But slowly the facts came clear. The truth was impossible; it would never be believed. To admit to what I had done, I could only plead self-defense, but with the absolute destruction I had authored, it would be a feeble defense indeed. My mind began to function again. As I considered obliterating my fingerprints, it came to me that far more than the marks of my hands should be removed from this room; rather removed from the memory of mankind. I began shoving and hauling the packing crates and tables into the center of the room. Arabella understood my purpose immediately. She assisted me, keeping her eyes averted from the bodies. I added the mummy case to the burgeoning pile with reluctance, but determination. Mallory’s relics were ancient and dry, they would burn well. Many of the chemicals were combustible, and I poured them over the wood. I placed the papyrus last atop the pile. It was the sum of Mallory’s knowledge, offered up beside his corpse. Mallory’s knowledge, too, was ancient. It was as old and as dry as his relics. It would also burn well.
We left the house together, hand in hand. Already we could hear the flames crackling from within. It was better that Mallory’s car remained, and we walked down the drive toward the road. Halfway there, my emotions overwhelmed me and I had to pause, leaning against the stone fence. Arabella still held my hand. She was watching me, tight-lipped, wide-eyed. I told her I’d be all right in a moment and pressed her hand. She returned the gesture. We were coupled by more than a handclasp, locked together by the knowledge we shared. Perhaps we were joined for a lifetime. I looked at her. I was older than she, but having stared into the jaws of eternity, I realized that the fleeting years seemed insignificant. One lives a span, one grows old, one dies. That is as it should be. Exactly as it should be. I smiled, and Arabella smiled back. Perhaps she was sharing my thoughts. At that moment the first flames blazed into the night.
We both turned back.
The fire had burst from the narrow window of the workroom, raging up the wall in a fiery conflagration. Black smoke was roiling from the other side of the house, and in a moment the fire roared there too. The seething smoke was shot through with fierce red flames. For a few minutes this furious tableau was maintained: one hook on either side of the house, like a burning hand holding the structure upright in its palm. The smoke plumed and billowed upward, obscuring the angles of the house but leaving the peaked roof starkly resplendent in the cold moonlight. It made the building seem angular, wedge-shaped. I felt that I had experienced the impression before, but only afterward did its significance become apparent to me. The blazing structure eerily resembled a pyramid thrusting up from the desert, built to last forever, a monumental mockery of mortal dreams.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
David F. Case was born in upstate New York in 1937, but lived most of his adult life in London, as well as spending time in Greece and Spain. His acclaimed collection The Cell: Three Tales of Horror appeared in 1969, and it was followed by the novels Fengriffen: A Chilling Tale, Wolf Tracks and The Third Grave. His other collections include Brotherly Love and Other Tales of Trust and Knowledge, Pelican Cay & Other Disquieting Tales, and an omnibus volume in the Masters of the Weird Tale series from Centipede Press. A regular contributor to the legendary Pan Book of Horror Stories during the early 1970s, his powerful zombie novella “Pelican Cay” in Dark Terrors 5 was nominated for a World Fantasy Award in 2001. He died in 2018.
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