Clay (21 page)

The pages fluttered dustily; a clammy musk clung to my fingers. As if from habit, the book fell open at a place near its heart, set off by a red velvet marker on which some Victorian hand had embroidered the name: “Bone.” Wickford pressed closer, reading over my shoulder. The words of the heading crawled slimily across the page:

THE CURSE OF THE MARK OF CLAY

“According to certain obscure documents in the archives of the New English hamlet of Dunnesmouth, there dwelt in that town, in the year 1603, a woman named Hester Titus. Sprung from a family of ill-repute, much mistrusted because of her secretive ways and physical ugliness, Hester Titus was known to consort with one William Bone, a taciturn, sardonic individual suspected by more than one of black magic and unholy witchcraft. Tried for the kidnapping and murder of a young girl in the community, William Bone was found guilty and burned at the stake. As his vile oaths died in cries of agony, Hester Titus broke through the watching crowd, screaming that they could never kill ‘her husband,’ for she bore in her the seed of his kind, and would hereafter give birth to the child of William Bone.

“In the ensuing months, this woman led a secret solitary existence, avoided by the God-fearing folk of the Village. Only at the final moments of her accouchement was a midwife induced to attend her. This midwife afterward related a strange and terrible story. Hester Bone, in supreme agony, had given birth to twins. The one child, named Solon, strong and lusty with the saturnine look of his father even at birth; the other boy was born dead; curled in a pitiful ball, his tiny form was covered with bruises. Tears of blood stained his swollen cheeks. In the midwife’s own words: ‘God help us, it was as if Solon strangled his weaker brother to death, before they even saw the light of day!’ And thus, Solon Bone was branded a prenatal murderer.

“Hester Bone reared her child in something approaching complete solitude. Witnesses who, in passing the decadent Bone farm, glimpsed the boy during his formative years, told yarns of his singular grotesqueness. Tremendous head, the body of a weakling, and the huge muscular hands of a powerful man: so they described Solon Bone. Swiftly, he became half-legendary in the bleak countryside of Dunnesmouth.

“Perhaps fifteen years after the birth of William Bone’s son, the first of a series of peculiar local murders took place. The victim, a boy who had once or twice attempted to befriend Solon Bone, was found at the bottom of a dried-up cistern, his face bloated by strangulation, and on his throat, a series of gray dusty fingerprints that seemed like nothing but the mouldering clay from some ancient grave. It was not until the third monstrous crime had been committed that the citizens of Dunnesmouth rose in arms and descended on the Bone farmhouse.

“They found the body of the woman, Hester, crammed in the blackened fireplace. She had been throttled. A party of irate men cornered the boy in the attic; he babbled strange stories of how his twin haunted him, forcing him to kill others as he had killed that brother. His hands were those of, the murderer, stained with the clay of death, and leaving their hellish mark on the throats of his victims. As Solon Bone spoke, he seemed to reach a frenzied pitch, until finally, pointing at a dim corner of the attic, he screamed, ‘It’s him! He wants me to kill again!’

“There are extant statements signed by witnesses to the horrible scene, to the effect that as the boy cried, there appeared in that dark comer a liquescent shining thing that slowly formed the twisted crying form of Solon Bone’s twin brother. An instant later, when the boy dove for one of his captors, and caught the charge of a shotgun in the chest, that unnatural being faded and was gone, never to be seen again.

“Yet, this was not the last of the Mark of Clay. It would appear that through succeeding generations the family of Bone—as if damned by the godless practices of their ancestor—were cursed by the recurrence of these unholy twins. More than one successor of William Bone has caused the prenatal death of his brother, and throughout his hellish life, borne upon his murdering hands the foul stains of graveyard clay.”

***

Silence enveloped the room like a pulsing membrane. I could hear Wickford’s hoarse breathing. Across the grounds rolled the melancholy rhythm of the bell in the Chapel tower. Swan’s head lolled back and forth, keeping time. He chanted idiotically:

“Ding, dong, hear the bell, ding, dong, ding, dong… Wickford shook his shaggy mane.

“Impossible. The boy was a weakling; Gaunt was a man in the prime of life… alert, powerful…

He stopped short. His gaze had fallen on the teakwood chest. He bent and drew from the drawer a folded sheet of yellowed paper. He opened it and stared with widened eyes. The words were a dry croaking in his throat.

“Birth certificate. County of Dunnesmouth. Born this day, December 13, 1930, twin sons, to James and Letitia Bone. One boy was called Jeremy, the other, dead at birth, bore the name Oliver…”

He blinked at me dully.

“But, I tell you, Lambert, it’s fantastic! Sheer lunacy!” I was not listening. Somehow, suddenly, all I could hear was the monotonous, “Ding-dong,” that tolled from Swan’s thick tongue. Somewhere at the back of my brain a dark memory slithered into glaring light. An hysterical voice screeched: “I warn you! I won’t let him torture me any more! No more Oliver. No more Gaunts. I swear, I’ll hang myself in the tower!”

I said, “Good Lord!” I spun toward the door.

Wickford blurted: “What the devil?…”

“The belfry,” I told him. “That’s where he’ll be! Don’t you remember? What he said?…”

The pink mouth fell open. By the time I reached the corridor, Wickford was pounding at my heels. I believe I have never since run as swiftly as I did that night. I stumbled. I heard Wickford cursing the brambles by the Chapel gate. Every throb of the bell was like a white-hot needle driven through my eardrums. I rushed through the gloomy sanctuary, twisting behind the organ, into a tiny vestry. The door to the tower was ajar; the ladder was ancient and strung with cobwebs. A cold draft slithered down the shaft. The trap door was open; now, the clangor of the bell was like slow thunder.

I halted abruptly; Wickford was right behind me. I didn’t speak. I only pointed. In the darkest reach of the belfry tower, an eerie shifting brilliance slowy took on form. Curled at the heart of an amoebic oval, we saw a tiny naked child; its blind features, exquisitely wrought, were warped in ancient agony; blood-red tear drops stained the closed eyelids. The phosphorescence wavered and blurred; a wail, as if of some defeated power of darkness, shrilled through the tower. The vision bled into surrounding night; at last, only a pinpoint of malevolent silver light gleamed. Then, nothing. The Chapel bell tolled on.

***

We found Jeremy Bone quite easily. Apparently, he had simply secured the hangrope to the crossbar of the bell, slipped the noose about his neck, and jumped into the black well of the tower. Without a word, Wickford and I drew him up to our level. I loosened the rope; the fragile body lay sprawled on the tower floor in a puddle of moonlight. The eyes bulged; the head was twisted at an ugly angle. The body was still warm, but Jeremy Bone was not breathing. His neck was broken.

Wickford sounded sick.

“I tell you, it’s mad, Lambert. We’re rational men of science. Not ghost-hunting women. There must be a more logical answer.”

“And that vision in the dark?”

“Mutual delusion… something we both thought we saw. Something we
expected
to see.” The big head shook, staring down at the limp body. “No. I won’t believe it. It’s physically impossible! A mere boy strangle a man as strong as Gaunt? Nonsense! Why his hands wouldn’t have been powerful enough… Besides, he always wore those gloves, gray gloves that would never leave the sort of stain we saw on Gaunt’s throat.”

“But, if he
took off
the gloves?…”

Wickford did not answer. The bell moaned a death knell. We exchanged one more glance, then I knelt beside the corpse of Jeremy Bone. I unsnapped the wrist-button, and slowly peeled the glove from his clawed right hand…

***

Now, in the quiet passage of days and nights that comprise my life as a general practitioner in a small town, there are moments when I might bring myself to believe it was all a hellish nightmare; that there is, indeed, a more “logical” explanation of the events which led to Peter Gaunt’s death; or that Doctor Wickford retired because he wanted to, and not because he could never again be certain—not because he could never rid himself of Gaunt’s quiet voice: “Can we ever draw definitely the boundary line between sanity and insanity?” Perhaps I could tell myself that madness is a definable state after all, and creatures like Jeremy Bone are truly insane, not merely pitiable beings who have seen beyond a veil that should never be drawn aside. I could rationalize; and, in the end, I might convince myself. But for one detail.

It will never be possible to explain away the thing I saw that night in the Chapel tower. As long as I live, I shall hear the mournful booming of the bell and see frosty moonlight shifting across Jeremy Bone’s hand; that tremendous, sinewy hand of a man of prodigious strength; that hand whose gnarled fingers were coated with clay from the crumbling walls of an ancient grave.