Death Trance

Twenty-Three

I spent Monday in the shop, even though there was very little business around. I sold a set of etchings of compass roses designed by Theodore Lawrence in the 1830s, and a ship in a bottle, but I really needed to sell a few figureheads and a couple of cannon to keep my profits up to scratch. At lunchtime I went across to the Crumblin' Cookie and talked to Laura.

'You're looking down today,' she remarked. 'Anything wrong?'

'My mother-in-law died over the weekend.'

'I didn't think you liked her too much anyway.'

'I've always admired you for your tact,' I retorted, a little too caustically.

'We don't serve tact here,' said Laura. 'Only coffee and cookies and cold hard facts. Was she ill?'

'Who?'

'Your mother-in-law.'

'She, um… had a kind of an accident.'

Laura stared at me, her head slightly cocked to one side. 'You're upset, aren't you?' she asked me. 'You're really upset. I'm sorry. The way you used to talk about your mother-in-law before… I didn't realize. Look, I'm really sorry.'

I managed a smile. 'You don't have to be sorry. I'm tired, that's all. A whole lot of bad things have been happening one after the other and on top of that I haven't been getting much sleep.'

'I know what to do,' said Laura. 'Come round to my place this evening and I'll cook you my Italian specialty. You like Italian?'

'Laura, you don't have to. I'm fine, really.'

'Do you want to come or don't you? I expect you to bring some wine.'

I put up my hands. 'Okay, thanks, I'd love to. I surrender. What time do you want me?'

'Eight, sharp. I may not get too hungry for dinner at eight, but I do get too hungry for dinner at eight-oh-five.'

'Even working here?'

'Brother, when you've eaten one cookie you've eaten them all.'

The afternoon back at the shop went by with unimaginable slowness. The sunlight crawled around the walls, illuminating the marine chronometers, the sailing-ship paintings, the brass cleat-hooks. I tried to telephone Edward at the Peabody, but I was told that he was out at an auction. Then I called Gilly but she was busy in the store and said she would call me back. I even called my mother in St Louis but there was no reply. I sat back at my desk reading a property magazine that had come through the door that morning and feeling as if I were totally alone on a strange planet.

At five o'clock after I had closed the shop, I went across to the Harbour Lights Bar and sat by myself in a corner booth and drank two glasses of Scotch. I don't know why I bothered to drink, except out of habit. With all the problems that were pressing on my mind, I never seemed to get drunk, only irritable and blurry. I was just considering the possibility of another one before I hit the road when a girl walked past my booth, a girl in a brown cape, and just before she disappeared she turned and glanced at me and I felt myself jump with involuntary nervous spasm, the way you do when you're about to fall asleep. I could have sworn that it was the same girl I had seen on the road to Quaker Lane, that night when I had been driving home with Mrs Edgar Simons; and the same girl who had been watching me in Red's Sandwich Shop in Salem. I struggled out of my seat, banging my thighs on the fixed table, but by the time I had reached the door the girl had disappeared. 'Did you see a girl walk past just then?' I asked Ned Sanborn, behind the bar. 'She was wearing a kind of a brown cape, very pale face, but pretty.'

Ned, shaking up a whisky sour, pulled a face that meant sorry. But Grace, one of the waitresses, said, 'A tall girl, was she? Well, quite tall? Dark eyes and a pale face?'

'You saw her too?'

'Sure I saw her. She came out of the back room and I couldn't work out how she got in there. I didn't see her come in, and she hasn't been drinking here.'

'Probably a hippie,' remarked Ned. According to Ned, any girl who didn't dress in "a sensible skirt-and-blouse and wear flat-heeled court shoes and subscribe to Red-book was a hippie. 'Summer must be coming. First hippie of the summer.'

Normally I would have teased Ned about his use of the word 'hippie', but this evening I was too disturbed and too worried. If the influence of the demon beneath Granitehead Neck was steadily growing, then who could tell who was one of its ghostly servants and who wasn't? Maybe that girl was a manifestation, more solid than most. Maybe more people than I realized were actually manifestations; maybe Ned was, and Laura, and George Markham. How was I to tell who was a living human being and who wasn't? Supposing Mictantecutli had already claimed them all? I began to feel like the doctor in Invasion of the Bodysnatchers, who couldn't tell which of his friends and associates were aliens and which ones weren't.

I left the Harbour Lights Bar and walked over to my car, which was parked in the middle of the square. There was a torn-off note under one of the windshield wipers, on which was scrawled in lipstick 'Eight sharp, don't forget, L.' I climbed into the car and drove out of the village centre, heading towards Quaker Hill. I wanted to check that the cottage was all right, and pick up some wine at the Granitehead Market.

At the top of Quaker Lane, the cottage waited for me old and forbidding and now more neglected-looking than ever. I still hadn't fixed that upstairs shutter, and as I got out of the car it gave a slow shuddering squeak. I walked up to the front door, and took out my key. I almost expected that familiar whisper to say 'John?' but there was no sound at all, just the frustrated seething of the ocean, and the soft rustle of the laurel hedges.

Inside, the cottage was very cold, and beginning to smell damp. The long-case clock in the hallway had stopped, because I hadn't wound it. I went into the living-room and stood for a long time listening for scurries and whispers and footsteps, but again there was silence. Perhaps Jane had given up haunting the cottage now that she knew she was unable to claim me for the region of the dead. Perhaps I had actually seen the last of her. I went into the kitchen, and opened up the icebox to make sure there was nothing in there which was growing mould on it; no hot dogs with green fur or peach preserve with penicillin. I took out a bottle of Perrier water and drank four or five large swallows of it straight from the neck. Afterwards I stood there grimacing at the coldness on the roof of my mouth, and the uncompromising fizz of bubbles which seemed to be stuck in my throat forever.

I was going back into the living-room to light the fire when I thought I heard a single footfall upstairs. I hesitated in the hallway, listening hard. It wasn't repeated, but I was so sure that I had heard somebody in one of the bedrooms that I took my umbrella out of the umbrella-stand and began to climb the dark ornamented stairs to see who was up there. I paused halfway up, gripping the pointed umbrella tightly, breathing more tightly and tensely than I wanted to.

I thought to myself: don't panic. You know that Jane has no hold over you now. You've faced up to hordes of apparitions from the Waterside Cemetery, and you're still sane and still alive; so there can't be anything up here that's any worse, or any more likely to harm you.

Yet it was the silence that alarmed me, more than the squeaking of the swing had done; more than the whispering and the sudden coldness. This cottage was never silent. Old buildings rarely are; they're always creaking or settling or shifting in their dreamless sleep. They're never silent, utterly silent, as Quaker Lane Cottage was at that moment.

I reached the top of the stairs, and walked along the darkened landing until I reached the end bedroom. No sound, no breathing, no whispering, no footsteps. I carefully put my hand into the room and switched on the light, then I eased open the door with my foot. The bedroom was empty. Just a painted pine bureau, a narrow single bed covered with a plain woven coverlet. An embroidered sampler was hung on the far wall, with the legend LOVE THY LORD. I looked around, my umbrella half-raised, and then I switched off the light and closed the door behind me.

She was waiting on the landing, under the harsh light of an old marine lantern I had borrowed from the shop. Jane, in the flesh. Not flickering this time, like a half-seen movie; but in the flesh. Her brushed hair shone in the lantern-light, and her face, though white, looked as solid and as real as it had on the morning before she died. She was wearing a simple calico nightgown, off-white, which trailed on the floor, and her hands were clasped in front of her demurely. Only her eyes betrayed the fact that there was something supernatural about her: they were as black and as deep as pools of oil, pools in which a man and all his convictions could easily drown.

'John,' she said, somewhere inside of my head, without moving her lips. ‘I came back for you, John.'

I stayed where I was, my skin tingling with the sight of her, with the sound of her voice. She had frightened me enough when she had looked like a distant holographic image; but now she stood here in the flesh, I felt as if I were actually going mad. How could this possibly be an illusion? How could a woman look so alive, and yet be dead? Jane had been crushed and destroyed, and yet here she was, my saddest memory brought to life.

The most horrifying thought of all, though, was that the power of Mictantecutli must be increasing every day, if he could bring Jane back to me in such a solid form.

What kind of influence and energy it must have taken to conjure her up as she was now, I could only guess. Sometimes I thought I detected her image waver, as if I were seeing her through water, but she remained as solid as ever, smiling slightly, as if she were thinking of all of those times we had spent together when she was alive, times which we could never spend together again.

She had come back for me. But what she was offering now was not fun and laughter and companionship. What she was offering now was death, in the most grisly form imaginable.

'Jane,' I said, in a quavery voice, 'Jane, I want you to go away. You mustn't come back here, not ever.'

'But this is my home. I shall always be here.'

'You're dead, Jane. I want you to go away. Don't come around here any longer. You're not the Jane I once knew.'

'But this is my home.'

This is a home for living people, not travesties of living people from the graveyard.'

'John…' she said coaxingly. 'How can you speak to me like that?'

'I can speak to you like that because you're not Jane and because I want you to go. Get out of here, leave me alone. I loved you when you were alive but I don't love you now.'

Gradually, subtly, Jane's features began to change. I saw the face of Mrs Edgar Simons, contorted with incomprehensible agony, melt and change and then disappear again. I saw other women's faces, and men's faces, too, rippling across her features as if she couldn't make up her mind which character she wanted to be. I saw Constance, and Mrs Goult, freshly-dead faces whose expressions were still blank and tortured with the trauma of dying.

'They are all here,' said a deep, blurting voice. 'All their faces, all their characters. They are all here and they are all mine.'

'Who are you?' I demanded. Then, stepping closer, I shouted at the creature, 'Who are you?'

The creature laughed, a whole assembly of laughs, and then that soft, familiar voice said, 'It's me, it's Jane. Don't you recognize me?'

'You're not Jane.'

'John, darling, how can you say that? What are you saying to me?'

'Keep away,' I warned her. 'You're dead, so keep away.'

'Dead, John? What do you know of death?'

'I know enough to want you out of this house.'

'But I'm your wife, John. I belong here. I belong with you. Look, John — ' and here she proudly held her protuberant stomach ' — I'm going to have your baby.'

At that moment, I was close to snapping. I could feel my mind expanding and expanding as if it refused to believe any of the information which was being fed to it by my eyes and my ears. Your wife and baby son are dead, it insisted. This can't be real. What you're seeing and hearing is a delusion. This can't be real.

'What do you want?' I asked her. 'Just tell me what you want, and then go away and leave me alone.'

Jane smiled at me, almost lovingly, except for the terrible blankness in her eyes. And when she spoke, her voice was grating and rough, more like the voice of an elderly man than a girl who hadn't even turned 30.

'It's very cold down here… cold, and isolated… sealed off… a kingdom without subjects and without a throne…''

'You mean down there…in the David Dark?’ I asked her.

She nodded, and when she did so, I thought I caught the faintest glimpse of smouldering blue fire within her eyes. ‘I thought you would understand…' she told me. ‘I knew from the beginning that I would find an ally in you…'

'I intend to salvage the David Dark, if that's what you mean.'

'The ship? The ship is unimportant. It is what the hold contains that you must seek…the vessel in which those accursed people imprisoned me…'

'I intend to bring your vessel up, too. But I warn you that I also intend to destroy you.'

Jane let out a burst of hissing laughter. 'Destroy me? You cannot destroy me! I am part of the order of the universe, just as the sun is; just as life itself is. The region of the dead stretches for ever under dark skies, and I am its chosen lord. You cannot destroy me.'

'I'm going to try.'

'Then you will condemn yourself to a death far more terrible than any that you can imagine. And everyone you ever loved or cherished will be cursed by your action; and doomed to wander the region of the dead for ever, without rest, without peace, with nothing but eternal torment and misery and ceaseless dissatisfaction.'

'You can't do that,' I asserted.

'Do you want to see me try?' blared the demon's voice. 'Look for yourself, if you want to understand how powerful I am!'

At that moment, a small naked boy of about four or five appeared from my bedroom, and stared up at me. Shyly, slowly, he reached out for Jane's hand, and then clung close to her, staring at me all the time as if he knew me, but was frightened of me. Jane ruffled his dark hair with her hand, and then looked at me with an expression that was like a mask of complete contempt.

' This boy is your son, as he would have been if he had lived. I have taken his whole life; for if anybody dies before their time, I am rewarded with all the years that are left. All the energy, all the emotion, all the youthfulness; and all the blood. I feed off unused life, John, and believe me if you attempt to cross me in any way, then I will feed off yours.'

Jane passed her hand over the boy's head, and he vanished as suddenly as he had appeared; but not before he had left me with a heartrending image of the child I had helped Jane to conceive, and then lost. I had tears in my eyes as Jane said to me, 'Salvage the David Dark; open the copper vessel; but do not attempt to hurt me, because my power at that moment will be devastating, and invincible. If you assist me, I will reward you the same way that I rewarded David Dark, with his life and with his sanity. I will also reward you one more way: and listen close. If you assist me, I will return your Jane to you, and your son. I have that power, since I am lord of the region of the dead, and they only pass through this region who have my authority. I can turn them back, and you will be able to live again the life you believed you had lost. Constance Bedford, too, could be returned to you. Had you thought of that? Help me, John, and you could regain your happiness.'

I stared at Jane speechlessly. The thought of having her back again seemed wild and impossible; yet so many wild and impossible things had happened since I had first heard the garden-swing creaking on that dark and windy night that I could almost believe it. And, God, what a temptation, to have her here again, to have her back in my arms again, to talk to her again!

'I don't believe you can do it,' I said. 'Nobody can resurrect the dead. And besides, her body is smashed. How can you bring back somebody whose body is smashed? I don't want to be like that mother, in The Monkey's Paw. The one who hears her son knocking on her door at night.'

Jane smiled. Blandly, artlessly, as if she were dreaming a dream of other existences, other places; as if she already had memories that I would never be able to share. 'Am I smashed now?' she asked me, hauntingly. ‘I have been recreated from the matrix from which I was very first born. You are dealing with one who controls the process of life, as well as death. That ruined body of mine is well-decayed by now; but I can live again, as I was meant to have been. And so could your child.'

'I don't believe you,' I said; although I half-believed already. God, just to hold Jane's hand again, to kiss her, to feel her hair, to make love to her. There were tears streaming down my cheeks and I didn't even notice.

Jane's image began to waver again, and shrink. Soon, she was almost invisible, nothing more than a shadow on the landing, a silhouette without substance.

'John,' she whispered, as she vanished.

'Wait!' I called her. 'Jane, for God's sake, wait!'

'John,' she murmured, and was gone.

I stood on the landing for a very long time, until my back began to ache, and then I went downstairs. I went into the living-room and poured myself a whisky from a bottle of Chivas Regal that was already well below the label. I would stay here tonight, I decided. I would light a fire. Perhaps the warmth would tempt the spirits back here. To think that the time might come when Jane and I could sit down beside this fire together, as we used to, watching the flames and telling each other stories of what we would do when we were rich. It was almost more than I could take.

I sat up very late that night, until the fire that I had built had eventually died away to ashes, and the room began to grow distinctly cold. I locked the doors, wound up the clock, and went upstairs, more than ready for sleep. I stared at myself in the mirror as I brushed my teeth, and wondered if I was actually going mad, if at last the supernatural stresses and strains of the past week had tipped me over the edge.

Yet Jane had been here, hadn't she, speaking to me in the voice of Mictantecutli, the lord of Mictlampa, the region of the dead? She had promised me my happiness back, hadn't she? Jane and our unborn son, restored to life; and maybe Constance Bedford, too. I couldn't have imagined anything like that, and if it was only a dream, why did I feel so torn about committing myself to helping Mictantecutli to be free? Scores of people would die if it were to be released unchecked from its copper vessel; yet what did that matter to me? Scores of people die on the highways every day in road accidents, and there was nothing I could do about it. I would only be assisting destiny to take its natural course; and think of the rewards of it.

I was almost asleep when the telephone rang. I picked it up clumsily and said, 'Hello, John Trenton here.'

'Oh, you're there, are you?' a girl's voice said sharply. 'Well, you must be, since you're obviously not here. Thank you for a great evening, John. I'm just scraping your filetto al barolo down the sink-disposal.'

'Laura?' I said.

'Of course it's Laura. Who else do you know who would be stupid enough to cook you an Italian meal and then wait for you to turn up, thinking that you actually would?'

'Laura, I'm so sorry. Something happened tonight… something that totally threw me off.'

'What was her name?'

'Laura, please. I'm sorry. I got all caught up in something very emotional and the whole thing of going to dinner with you got wiped out of my mind.'

'I suppose you want to make it up to me.'

'You know I will.'

'Well, don't bother. And next time you come into the cookie shop, go sit someplace else, where Kathy can serve you.'

She put down the phone and I was left with a flat whining tone. I sighed, and cradled my own receiver.

As I did so, I heard the faintest high-pitched singing.

'O the men they sail'd from Granitehead, To fish the foreign shores…'

And the haunting quality of the voice was made even more chilling now that I knew what the words actually meant.

'But the fish they caught were naught but bones With hearts crush'd in their jaws.'

It wasn't an old sea-chanty after all; and it certainly wasn't a song about fishing. It was a rhyme about Mictantecutli, and how David Dark and the crew of the Arabella had sailed to Mexico to bring him back to Salem. It was a song of death and supernatural destruction.