The Spectral Book of Horror Stories (11 page)

“When you see her. Don’t get nervous. Everything will be okay. I promise.”

It wasn’t my father sitting in the back of the car. Instead, there was a middle-aged woman with black shoulder-length hair and the same dark eyes as her daughter.

“This is my mother.” She took hold of my hand and gripped it as if she were trying to prevent me from running away. “I thought she might like to meet your father.”

He was standing nearby, in the shade of a tree. He had on his favourite baseball cap and a pair of baggy jeans. His shirt was hanging out of the waistband of his jeans and the buttons were open to the middle of his hairless chest.

“I told you I understood.” She squeezed my hand tighter; so damn tight that it began to hurt. “We have a lot in common, you and me.”

I closed my eyes and stared into the familiar dull fire. This time the blaze drew closer, closer, and when it was right in front of me I could see that it was in fact a house on fire. The flames had almost consumed the place, and a woman was standing in a first floor window waving her hands. I couldn’t make out her features because of the smoke, but she had dark hair down to her shoulders. Her mouth was open in a silent scream. I couldn’t see her eyes.

Tentatively at first, but gaining in confidence as she got into her flow, Lisa started to speak: “She died in a fire when I was thirteen. I squirted lighter fuel on the bed while she was sleeping and got the flames going with a box of matches I’d shoplifted from the local shop. It went on for longer than I expected. In the movies, they always make it look so quick. When she finally stopped screaming I could still hear the sound ringing in my ears.” She spoke in a monotone, as if the facts no longer touched her: an actress reciting her lines.

My father walked over from his spot under the tree. He winked at me, opened the rear door and climbed in. Lisa’s mother shifted sideways to accommodate him. He nodded at her but they didn’t speak. She held his gaze for a couple of seconds and then looked away. There was a bruise on her cheek. I didn’t think it had been there before.

“Let’s go,” said Lisa. “Let’s get moving.”

I didn’t know what else to do, so I got in the car and started the engine.

We were a few miles down the road before the man and the woman in the back of the car started hitting each other. They took it in turns to throw punches; it was all incredibly civilised. The sound of fists hitting flesh and bone was unbearable at first, but I’ve learned that it’s possible to get used to anything if you’re exposed to it for a sustained period of time.

Lisa rested her hand on my knee as I drove. She didn’t say anything; she simply wanted me to know that she was there, that she would always be there, right on till the end of the road—wherever and whenever that might be. We were a family now. We were together.

I tried not to look into the rear-view mirror. The sounds were enough; I didn’t need to see what was going on. The blows took on their own rhythm after a while, a brutal song played by a dark musician. It was the percussion of hurt, the awful drumbeat of abuse.

Before long, I stopped wincing at the sound of each blow and ceased wondering if they could feel any pain.

Continuous violence can have a numbing effect. A person becomes immune to it. If you’re not careful, you can even start to like it.

#

Whenever I close my eyes I can still see that dull fire. But every time I do so, it gets a little further away, diminishing, moving gradually towards some point where it will disappear altogether from view.

The endlessly burning house is nothing but somebody else’s memory. Soon it will not even be there. I am certain of this. I know it to be true.

I often wonder what Lisa sees when she closes her eyes.

I wonder, but I’m too afraid to ask in case she ever gives me an answer.

There are some things we don’t need to know, and everybody wears scars that should never be shown, even to those whom we claim to love the most.

THE BOOK AND THE RING

Reggie Oliver

The name Jeremiah Staveley
(?1540-1595)
is now becoming increasingly well known to lovers of early music as a composer of church motets in the Elizabethan period. I am not going to claim that he is up there with Tallis or Byrd, but he is a considerable figure and his remarkable forty part setting of
Per Flumina Babylonis
(“By the Waters of Babylon”) bears comparison with Tallis’ exquisite and justly famous
Spem in Alium
. Most visitors to Morchester Cathedral will remember seeing his rather bizarre tomb in the North Transept with its odd inscription.

Last year I was commissioned to write the sleeve notes for a CD devoted entirely to Staveley’s choral music, so I visited the library of Morchester Cathedral to do some research on his life. Besides unearthing some hitherto undiscovered manuscripts of his—anthems mostly, and one or two madrigals— I managed to work out an outline of his life.

Having been a chorister at the Chapel Royal during the reign of Bloody Mary, he had reverted to Anglican Protestantism when Elizabeth came to the throne and taken holy orders. Most of his best compositions come from the years 1590-1595 when he was a canon of Morchester Cathedral and the choir master. In various documents I came across scraps of legend about his life and sudden death which are very picturesque but not easy to substantiate. It is true however that he was buried, rather bizarrely, standing upright in the wall of the North transept according to his own instructions and self-penned epitaph to be seen on his tomb:

BEHINDE THESE SACRED STONES IN DEATH STAND I

FOR THAT IN LIFE MOST BASELY DID I LIE

IN WORD AND SINNE FORSAKING GOD HIS LAWE

I DANCED MY SOULE IN SATANN’S VERIE MAWE

WHEREFORE IN PENANCE I THIS VIGILL KEEPE

ENTOMBÉD UPRIGHT THUS WHERE I SHOULDE SLEEPE

WHEN DEAD RISE UP I’LL READYE BE IN PLACE

TO MEET MY JUDGE AND MAKER FACE TO FACE

STRANGER, REST NOT MY CORSE UNTIL THAT DAYE

LEST I TORMENT THEE WITH MY SORE DISMAYE

That is strange enough, but stranger still is the manuscript that I discovered in a box full of deeds and documents from the Elizabethan period. The fact that it was jumbled up with them may account for the fact that it has been hitherto unnoticed. I did not use any of its material in my sleeve notes for reasons that will become obvious.

The opening page has on it the following verses by Staveley and nothing more.

I wandered in ten thousand wayes

Seeking the gates of Life and Death

Through manye a desert, manye a maze

I journeyed till I scarce had breath

And when all hope had bene forsook

I found deliv’rence in a booke

It open’d on a path that led

Unto two portals fasten’d well

Before which stood the countless dead

The gates of Paradise and Hell

And those who know whereon they look

Have found their answer in that booke

Both gates are heavy, rude and dark

My booke hath said by what device

I might both open, learne and mark

The gates of Hell, and Paradise

So I a fearfull path have took

By reading of that curséd booke

Jeremiah Staveley anno 1595.

On the following and subsequent pages Staveley had written a kind of testament. It is penned in crabbed and tiny handwriting which I found very difficult to transcribe. I have preserved as much as I could the original spellings and have not tried to modernise any of its constructions apart from adding some modern punctuation. You may make of it what you will. Certainly it provides ample evidence of the weird psychology of the Elizabethan mind and that, to paraphrase L. P. Hartley, in the past they do things differently.

I, Jeremiah Staveley do here faithfully sette downe my testament and confessioun, knowing that my mortall body approaches with dreadfull and unfaltering pace its finall dissolution, and my immortall soul stands on the very threshold of the pitt of everlastynge fire. I here sett downe that you may knowe and praye for my soule, limed and ensnared as it is in the net of sin, awaiting in terror the ravishment of that Great Beaste which stands yet silent on the borders of my waking minde and roars even now in my dreams, yet distant, as the cry of the wolf is heard in a lonely forest at midnight, heralding the inevitable and frightfull feaste. Oh, Christe Jesu, woulde that
I
had knowne! Yet knowe I did after a fashioun, and in this manner as I shall tell without further ado.

In the yeare 1590 I was appointed Canon in Ordinary to the Cathedrall of St Anselme’s in Morchester. Many thought my preferment long overdue for I was knowne for my skill and genius in Musick. Yet there were ever those who murmured against me and did utter all manner of wicked slander against my person, such as that my giftes were of the Devill and not of God, and suchlike foolishness and damned malice. Yet my merits, though they were conspicuous enough to overcome such calumnies, yet these mutterings ceased not. Notwithstanding, I applied myself most diligently and with much rigour, to improve the musickal capacity of the cathedrall choir such that men and women did stand amazed at my mastery of these arts.

Such being the way of the world, the more I excelled at my art, the more did certain folk of inferiour genius carp and cavill, and, seeking to bring me down from my exalted state above them, saw only that the most monstrous libels and slanders might effect it. Thus in deepe secrecy they did harbour dark designes against me, and I all unknowing stood in the light of innocence unsuspecting.

It was well known, for I made no secrett of it, that I was in the habit of wandering abroad in the countryside around Morchester, to visit the country folk and to extract from them memorialls of old tunes, songs and ditties that they, all unlearned in the higher arts, had taken from their rude forefathers before them. And many of these said tunes, roundes, catches and rhymes were reliques, as I suspect, of ancient rituals and superstitions that went back even to Pagann times before yet the light of the most true Gospel of Christ did shine upon our green hills and fair-flowered meadows.

On Midsummer’s Eve Anno 1592 I hearde an olde blinde fiddler playe a fine melodious tune (though somewhat melancholique) in a field. They that stoode bye called it the
Dance of Damned Soules
, and certaine, I did see some white figures in robes like grave cerements at the end of the field who did writhe and turne to his playing, but when I did approache they all vanish’d away like smoke in the summer dusk. And I did thinke, though t’was but my fancy and not to be regarded, that they were the dead or damned on holidaye for a brief sojourne from their infernall home

I sought these things, not merely for my owne curiose learning, but as a refreshment to my musickall genius and invencion. But being greene in the ways of the world, I heeded not that some of these songs were or might be seen as incantacions, summonings of the spirits or demons, spells, or yet curses and maledictions emanating from that prince of Demons, Satann no less.

There was one goodwyfe or beldame, Mother Durden was her name, from whom I acquired many of these cantrips and fancies. She dwelt in a cabin in the woods below Cutberrow Hill, and many were the tales told of her. The countryfolk round about would have it that she was possessed of demons, that a hare was her familiar; others told me that she could turn herself to a fox by anointing her body with the fat from a hanged man’s corse. But for all their pratings these dolts would go to her for a salve if they had warts, or to cure a sick beaste. In my prudence I would visit her in secret and had from her many ancient sayings and incantations, many wise saws and prophesies, so that I was many hours in her company. Yet, for all the benefit she did impart to me, I had to summon all my forbearance to stay in her company, for her person was most noisome and stinking and her ancient face like an old misshapen rock that has stood too long in the rain scored with deep lines of bitterness and hatred. Her cabin, moreover, was dark and dank, o’er run with rats and other vermin, and when she spat into her fire—which was a habit of hers—it was green bile that sang in the embers and gave off a choking and most vile smoke.

This notwithstanding, I persisted with the old crone, for she had yet one secret, which she did call ‘the secret of her heart’ that she would have me know, but forebore to tell me, indicating that such a secret would be of great profit and encompass all desires. At length, seeing me growe impatient, she did impart it to me. She told me that from her mother she was of the ancient family of Cutbirth, of great note hereabouts since before the Conqueror, yet of ill repute to some. This mother of hers, she says, was gently born, but most ill-favoured, so that no gentleman would have her to wife, for all her fortune, and she would be condemned to live and die a maid. But one day a common ploughboy spied and wooed her and they lay together in the grass on Cutberrow Hill at Midsummer’s Eve, so that by Michaelmas she was seen to be big with child. Then the family of Cutbirth, which to this day remains over mindfull of the lustre of its ancient lineage, was incensed with her and cast her out. For a while she lived with her rustick swaine in a cabin in the woods—the same still occupied by Mother Durden—but, after the birth of their daughter, he wearied of her and deserted the unfortunate mother.