Haunted
Authors: James Herbert
In memory of
George Goodings – rascal,
rogue, Dam Buster, and
my finest friend
To be haunted
is to glimpse a truth
that might best
be hidden
A dream, a memory
A whispered name.
The boy stirs in his sleep. A pale, vaporous moon lights the room. Shadows are deep.
He twists his head, turning towards the window so that his face becomes a soft mask, unblemished, colourless. But the boy’s dream is troubled; beneath their lids, his eyes dart to and fro.
The whispered name:
‘
David
. . .’
Its sound is distant.
The boy frowns; yet the voice is within his own slumber, a silky calling inside his dream. His arm loosens from dampened bedclothes, his lips part in a silent murmur. His floating thoughts are being drawn unwillingly from their free-roaming hinterland towards consciousness. The protest trapped in his throat takes form, emerges as he wakens.
And he wonders if he has imagined his own cry as he stares through the glass at the insipid moon.
There is, in his heart, a dragging sorrow that seems to coagulate the blood, so that movement in his veins is slothful, wearisome, somehow making all effort to exist a ponderous, perhaps even hopeless, affair. But the whispering, almost sibilant, voice dispels much of that inner lassitude.
‘. . .
David
. . .’ it calls again.
And he knows its source, and that knowledge causes him to shudder.
The boy sits up, rubs the moisture from around his eyes (for he has wept while sleeping). He gazes at the dim shape of the bedroom door and is afraid. Afraid . . . and fascinated.
He draws aside the covers and walks to the door, the trouser cuffs of his rumpled pyjamas caught beneath the heels of his bare feet, a boy of no more than nine years, small and dark-haired, pale-skinned and strangely worn for one so young.
He stands at the door as if fearing to touch. But he is puzzled. More – he is curious. He twists the handle, the metal’s coldness leaping along his arm like iced energy released from a brumal host. The shock is mild against the damp chill of his own body. He pulls the door open and the darkness beyond is more dense; it seems to swell into the bedroom, a waxing shadow. An illusion, but the boy is too young to appreciate such natural deception. He shrinks away, reluctant to allow contact with this fresh darkness.
His vision adjusts, and the inkiness dissipates as if weakened by its own sudden growth. He advances again, timorously rather than cautiously, passing through the doorway to stand shivering on the landing overlooking the staircase. To descend this would be like sinking into the blackest of all pits, for darkness down there appears absolute.
Still the hushed whisper urges:
‘. . .
David
. . .’
He cannot resist. For there is hope for him in that summons. A fragile hope, one that is beyond the tight and restricting bounds of sanity, but nonetheless the faintest denial of something so dreadful that he had become fevered with its burden.
He listens for a moment more, perhaps wishing that the peripheral voice would also rouse his sleeping parents. There is no sound from their room; grief has exhausted their bodies as well as their spirit. He stares into the umbra below, terribly afraid and, even more terribly, compelled to descend.
The fingers of one hand slide against the wall as he does so, their tips rippling over the textured paper. Disbelief mingles with the fascination and the fear, small lights – caught from who knows where? – glitter in his pupils, tiny twin beacons moving through the shadows, gleamings that slip jerkily into the depths.
At the foot of the stairs he pauses once again, glancing back over his shoulder as if seeking reassurance from his spent parents. There is still no sound from their bedroom. No sounds in the house at all. Not even the voice.
From ahead, at the end of the corridor in which he hesitates, comes a soft glow, a shimmering strip of amber. Slowly, each footstep measured, the boy goes to the light. He stops outside the closed door and now there
is
a sound, a quiet shifting, as though the house has sighed. It could be no more than a breeze stealing through.
His toes, peeking from beneath his pyjama legs, are bathed in the warm shine from under the door and he studies them, a delaying diversion from what he knows he must do next. The light is not constant; it flickers gently over the ridges of his toes. His hand grasps the doorhandle and this time there is no cold shock; this time the metal is wet. Or is it merely the wetness of his own palm?
He has to wipe his hand on the pyjama jacket before he can make the handle turn. Even so his grip is tenuous, skidding over the smooth surface before lodging and turning. A brief thought that there is someone clutching the other side, resisting his effort; then the handle catches and the door is open. He pushes inwards and his face is flushed by the lambent glow.
The room is a display of burning candles: their light bows with the opening of the door and their waxy smell welcomes him. Shadows momentarily shy away then rush forward in their own greeting as the myriad flames settle.
At the furthermost point of the room, resting on a lace-clothed table, is a coffin. A small coffin. A child’s coffin.
The boy stares. He enters the room.
His step is leaden as he approaches the open casket, and his eyes are wide. The moisture on his skin glistens under the candlelight.
He does not
want
to look into that coffin. He does not
want
to see the figure lying there, not in such alien state. But there really is no choice. He is only a child and his mind is not closed to unnatural possibilities. Optimism may sometimes be bizarre in the very young, but it is no less potent for that. A voice has whispered his name and he has responded; he has his own reasons for grasping at the inconceivable.
He draws closer. The form inside the silk-lined casket is gradually revealed.
She wears a white communion gown, a pale blue sash tied at her waist. She is – she was – not much older than the boy. Her hands rest together on her chest as if in supplication. Dark hair frames her face and in her death she is almost serene, a sleeping, untroubled child; and although, in truth, she is perfectly still, unsteady light plays on the corners of her lips so that it seems she suppresses a smile.
But the boy, despite his yearning to disbelieve, knows there is no life within that pallid shell: the rituals of grief these past two days (not yet complete) were more convincing than her shocking absence. He is close above her, his brow pleated by a desperate longing. He wishes to speak her name, but his throat is constricted by the wretchedness of his emotion. He blinks, dislodging a swell of tears. He leans forward as if he might kiss his dead sister.
And her eyes snap open.
And she grins up at him, her young face no longer innocent.
And her hand stirs as if to reach for him.
The boy is frozen. His mouth is locked open, lips stretched taut and hard over bone, the scream begun but only breaking loose a moment or two later, a shrilling that cuts through the louring quietness of the house.
His cry wanes, dissolves, and the boy’s eyes close as reason seeks sanctuary behind oblivion’s velvet walls . . .
. . . His eyes opened and uncertainty surfaced with the wakefulness. The clatter of iron on iron, wheels on tracks, and the rhythmic lurching of the carriage banished the lingering shreds of his dream. He blinked once, twice, disturbed by gossamer after-images that had no clear form and certainly no context. David Ash drew in a breath and let his head loll to one side so that he could watch the passing scenery.
The fields were wearied by the season. Leaves, once crispy-brown now rain-soaked and dulled, were beginning to gather beneath the trees, leprous things discarded by their hosts. Here and there a house or cluster of buildings nestled against a hillside, a brief intrusion on the landscape with no prevalence at all over their surroundings. The late-autumn sky appeared as greyly substantial as the land it glowered over, a solid force whose lowest reaches softened hilltops.