Shadows 7 (27 page)

Oh, yes. Robert Clairthorpe and I were definitely going.

We had a copy of Bram Stoker's
Dracula
on the table between us. It was a beautiful copy, a first edition, first impression, and of course very rare, especially in this nearly mint condition. Under ordinary circumstances, one would not actually open and read such a copy—it was Robert Clairthorpe's most prized volume—but this occasion, we both felt, justified it.

We talked for a very long time, discussing the advisability of selecting various scenes, weighing and considering which passage in the entire novel would best suit us. At long last, we settled on one. It was an outdoor scene, since we did not care to be trapped indoors anywhere in that book. And it was in England, as we thought that safer than a Transylvanian scene. Once the top of the showcase was closed, we would find ourselves, we trusted, in the road that bordered Carfax.

"All right then," Robert said quietly, his breath coming short with excitement.

"All right," I said. "Let's do it."

And then Robert shocked me with what he said. I was so taken aback that I hardly knew how to react, whether with mere surprise, with disappointment, with concern for him, with anger, or with an expression of love and gratitude.

He would not let me come with him, he said, because he feared the danger. He would go first, alone, and if he returned safely, then the two of us would go together.

We argued, as friends argue when each would outdo the other in expressions of love and concern, but he would not hear of anything but his own plan. He would not, he insisted, allow me to place myself in any danger on account of him.

I tried, again and again, but I could not convince him otherwise. Reluctantly, I was forced to yield.

And found myself more anxious about my friend's safety than I had been about my own.

Robert lifted the book from the table and marked the place with his finger. We moved across the room and stood before the showcase. I reached out and lifted back the cloth that covered the glass.

"The wood never needs polishing," he whispered. "The glass never grows dusty or cloudy."

We looked at each other for a long moment, each of us seeking to penetrate into the other's mind and thoughts.

"Come back," I said, and Robert nodded. But it was a foolish thing to say out loud, because it only crystallized the fear we both felt, gave form to the danger that we now felt lurked before us.

Robert looked at the showcase. "All right," he said.

Using both hands, I lifted the wood-framed glass top. Robert took a step closer and placed the open book in the center of the space inside. Then he raised his hands and grasped the wooden frame of the top himself. I released it and stepped back.

"Robert . . . "I said.

"I promise you," he said, and now it was my turn to nod.

Slowly, holding his breath, he began to lower the top. With it only halfway down, he stopped and raised it again.

"You'll wait here?" he said, not looking at me. He was staring at the book.

"Of course," I said instantly. "I'll be here."

"Thank you," he said. "I must do this quickly, or I shall lose my nerve."

With a firm, quick movement he lowered the glass top into place. At the instant it touched the body of the showcase, my friend vanished from before me.

And in almost the same instant, after the fraction of a second it took me to react to what I'd seen, I was shouting, "No! No! Robert!"

But it was too late.

The pages of the book had been lying fully flat. The heavy Victorian paper was rather stiff and this, combined with the book's seldom, if ever before, having been opened, and its tightly bound spine, had caused the pages to drift upright a little. And then the movement of the glass top must have created a tiny current of air, just enough to make the pages flutter and resettle themselves, with a different passage from the one we'd selected now open in the book.

My friend was gone and I did not know where.

I have been alone again ever since that night.

I waited, of course. I waited there all the rest of the evening and well into the night, never once taking my eyes from the pages of the book in the showcase.

After a while, although my heart cried out that
this must not happen,
I knew he would not be coming back. Something had happened to him . . . wherever he had gone. And it had happened a century before.

Until I moved at last, I was hardly aware of the pain and stiffness in my legs and back from standing still for so many hours. I approached the showcase cautiously, scarcely daring to breathe, but at the same time I knew it held no danger for me. Robert, my friend, had himself suffered the danger he had insisted on sparing me.

I studied the pages of the book in the showcase, as this was the only chance I had—if there were any chance at all—of locating him or helping him. I sobbed aloud once before gaining control of myself.

Without once taking my eyes from the exposed pages, I slowly lifted the top of the showcase. As soon as it was high enough, I reached in with one hand and took hold of the book, pressing open the stiff pages that were uppermost. Holding my breath, I read the passage.

He was in Whitby, on the west coast, on the very night when Dracula, ravening with thirst after his long sea voyage, first arrived in England.

It is not easy to travel from London to Whitby late on a Saturday night. I can recall now none of the details of my trip, only the dread and the loss and the loneliness that I felt that night. By Sunday afternoon, chilled and wet from a ceaseless rain, I was in the tiny, gray port town of Whitby.

I was unable to think very clearly, I must admit, but by the time I reached my destination, I had come to one sad conclusion. Whatever fate had befallen my friend, he must be long dead by now.

Before leaving his bookshop, I had replaced the book, open to the same passage, in the showcase, so that he would be able to return—so that the doorway would be open to him, as it were—whether I was there or not. Even so, I had no expectation of ever seeing him again. He was lost to me forever.

And why did I not go after him? No. Had he been able to return, he would have. He would have
had
to; it was in the nature of the way the showcase worked. Also, I knew with absolute certainty that were I to follow him, I would arrive in the exact place and time where he had arrived, and would have suffered the same fate, whatever it was. That is what he had spared me. No, I could not follow him. At least, now, I do not have to regret that.

Whitby did not welcome me. The cold rain would not let up and the cobbles of the street, perhaps the same cobbles that Robert Clairthorpe had trod, were slippery in the wet. I walked and walked, going nowhere, and seeing only a few bedraggled figures like myself, hunched over against the rain.

There was no one I could go to see, no one whom I could ask, no one to whom I could tell my tale. I must remain silent, with the secret, and the pain, locked tight and hard within me.

I took a room in a bed-and-breakfast house at the outskirts of the town. I paid the landlady in cash for two weeks, and she looked less suspicious then and was immediately concerned for my health in this wet weather. She kindly fixed me a cup of tea and I could have wept in gratitude. In my room I pulled off my wet clothes and slept for three hours.

When I awoke, the rain had eased off to a drizzle and the sky was black. Although my clothes were still wet, I dressed and went out to walk again in the empty dark streets of Whitby.

My mind was clearer now, and the instant I stepped out the door and started along the pavement, I saw the very place where I knew I would find my friend. From the steps of the house I could see the leaning iron railings of the graveyard.

I went back inside and climbed up to my room at once. I rushed to the window, opened it, and looked out. It faced the graveyard, I could see that much, but there was too little light to see anything else.

I could get a flashlight, a torch, from the landlady, I thought desperately. I could . . . Wearily, I sat back on the edge of the bed to try to think things through carefully. The next thing I knew, I had slept through the night and the gray light of morning was coming through the window.

I ate the breakfast the landlady fixed for me without tasting a bite of it. I knew I must eat, and so I ate. As I was finishing, she inquired casually if I had come to Whitby for business or pleasure. I told her I had come on business and might be staying awhile. She seemed satisfied at that and asked me nothing further.

I was stiff and uncomfortable from sleeping in my damp clothes all night, and of course my clothing was in a sorry state. But I had no time for that now; when the opportunity offered, I would buy new clothes. I thanked Mrs. Williams for breakfast and, feeling a little more fortified for what lay ahead, ventured out into Whitby once more.

The rain had ceased, but shimmering pools still lay on the uneven flags of the pavement, their rippled surfaces reflecting the gray tumult of clouds overhead. The wind was brisk, fresh with the smell of salt from the sea, and its dampness cut to the bone. I walked steadily toward the graveyard. I could see the gates ahead.

Shock and exhaustion had combined to numb my thoughts, but now it all came rushing back to me as the sharp breeze touched my face and cleared my mind. Had Robert Clairthorpe breathed this air the night before, I wondered; had the same rain chilled my friend? Was there a chance he might still be among the living? If I returned at once to London, would I find him in the warm, familiar bookshop, waiting for me, worrying about me, wondering where I'd gone? No. He was not there, I was certain of it. He was here, in Whitby, and I was beginning to think—with the most terrible dread I had felt up to that day—that I knew what had happened to him, what his fate had been.

I pushed back the gate—the black-painted iron was cold and wet and rough against my hand—and walked into the cemetery.

It is on a hillside and one can see the ocean while walking among the stones. The chilling winds come in here, cold and determined, and lay flat the straggly grass, polish the stones and push them over. The narrow paths are wet and weedy. A few brave trees, bent by the wind, struggle for life in this place of death. I was the only living person in the graveyard.

It was less than an hour before I found it. Just a very simple gravestone, little more than a marker, certainly not a memorial. The letters carved into it were shallow and a little uneven, and nearly obscured by the work of wind and rain: only his name and the year of his death. There would be no more, of course; he had been a stranger here. No one in Whitby knew him and he had been alone when he died.

I knelt on rough stones, in wet grass, with the wind flapping the collar of my coat, and murmured a prayer for the friend I had known so briefly, who had kept me from lying here in Whitby's graveyard myself. That thought chilled me and made me shudder. I stood up. And, looking down at the worn and leaning gravestone, I realized that my obligation was not ended, would never end. There was more I had to do for Robert Clairthorpe, a task that I was bound, by ties of love and friendship and human decency, to perform. The wind from the sea was cold but I did not feel it, for a colder wind moved within me.

It was still early in the day. I still had plenty of time to prepare.

I returned to the cemetery in the late afternoon. I had purchased a new raincoat and I concealed beneath it the other things I had bought. The grave was on the slope facing the sea, away from the fence of the cemetery and the street that ran along it, and visible only to one or two of the highest windows of nearby houses, one of which, I thought, must be my own. No one would see me digging, but I had not wanted to take the chance of doing it in full daylight. I did not fear being arrested—I had no room in my thoughts for such a fear—only that I would be prevented from doing what I must do. And it must be done, the whole task completed, before the gray of evening turned into the black of night.

I am not accustomed to the work of digging. I had to stop often to catch my breath and to ease the pain of cramped muscles. I prayed that my heart would not fail me before I finished here; if it failed me afterward, I would welcome the end. As for the rest of it, I tried not to think of it, tried not to picture what I would find at the bottom of the grave, tried not to think of what I had to do, tried to think only of taking out one more shovelful of dirt, and then another, and another, and another. I prayed in gratitude now for the nasty weather that kept ships and pleasure craft from the water and so prevented anyone there from seeing me digging up a grave.

The coffin—it did not surprise me—was of the thinnest, cheapest sort, and had almost rotted back into the earth. My shovel struck it and went right through the wood. I stopped and threw my head back up to the heavens to draw air into my aching lungs. And to spare myself another moment before having to look at the thing beneath my feet. But my heart almost stopped then, for only the tiniest glimmer of gray daylight remained in the sky. In another moment the graveyard would be swallowed by night.

I had laid the other implements at the edge of the hole. I grabbed them now and, with the pick, pried up what remained of the coffin's lid. It was a pauper's grave, the grave of a stranger alone in the world, and the body had not been dressed, only wrapped in a heavy winding sheet and laid in the box. The sheet was as fresh and white as it was the last day human hands had touched it. Not permitting myself to stop and think of what I was doing, fearing I would fail in the task I'd set myself, I slit the sheet open with a knife.

I was looking at the face and the naked chest of Robert Clairthorpe. Time and the earth had worked no horrors on his body. He was pale, but otherwise looked exactly as I had last seen him the night before in London, the same kind face, with the same promise of gentleness in it. My hands were shaking violently. I had to bite my lower lip to keep from crying.

The stake was actually a small fence post. I had bought four of them. I reached for it at the edge of the hole, dropped it from trembling fingers, scrabbled around and found it again. And took the heavy mallet in the other hand. For a moment, I thought I could not do it. I looked at the sky. At most there might be a couple of minutes left before it would be too late. My hands were shaking so badly that I could barely hold the stake and mallet. My mouth was open but I could not get enough air into my burning lungs. And this was my friend. Had been my friend. Would always be.