Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror (13 page)

'What on earth?' said the slightly flustered middle-aged man who appeared in the doorway. 'I'm not sure you should be in here, you know.'

'Sorry, Uncle Giles,.' said Emily, recovering her wits and smiling coyly. 'We just talking, sir. We will leave if you want.' Uncle Giles smiled, embarrassed by the attention of so many females.

'I'm sure you are doing no harm, ladies,.' he said knowingly, and tapped the side of his nose. 'You carry on. Adieu, my lovelies.'

Uncle Giles fingered his moustache rakishly and left with a bow. Emily made a vomiting face and everyone did their best to stifle their giggles. They all began to settle themselves down once more.

'Where was I?' said Emily.

'You were saying that old what's-his-name was really guilty and really hanged -' began Annabel.

One of the girls interrupted to suggest that perhaps if Garnet
had
been wrongly hanged, that was probably why he haunted the house, because she had heard that ghosts are always annoyed about something. Another girl agreed, saying that her mother went to spiritualist meetings in London and had told her that ghosts were unhappy spirits.

'What are you
talking
about?' said Emily finally. 'I never said
Garnet
was the ghost.'

All the listeners, including Victoria, gave Emily a puzzled look.

'If not him, then who?' Annabel asked.

'His victim, silly,.' answered Emily with a sigh.

'But you said Charlotte really was ill - so did he kill her or didn't he?'

'Well,.' said Emily with another sigh, 'if you would just let me finish, for goodness' sake. The ghost wasn't Garnet, or his wife.'

Emily went on to explain to her puzzled listeners that the victim was an orphan girl the kindly Charlotte had taken in from a local orphanage. Charlotte could not have children herself and doted on the girl. She was even going to be a bridesmaid at the wedding.

Charlotte already had a bad heart, but it was the mysterious disappearance of this girl that sent her into the illness that killed her. She and Garnet married as planned, but after Charlotte's death, when he had finally inherited all her money, Garnet turned himself in to the Justice of the Peace, admitting everything.

'But why did he kill the girl?' asked Annabel.

'It turns out that the girl saw the good doctor with the governess, canoodling in the shrubbery,. ' said Emily.

'Canoodling?' said one of the smaller girls.

'Kissing and cuddling,.' said Emily, hugging herself and puckering her lips obscenely. The girls rolled around, giggling.

Emily went on to explain that the doctor had been pretending his love for Charlotte just to get her money all along. He sent the governess away, promising they would be together after Charlotte died. But Charlotte's adopted daughter threatened to tell her mother what she had seen. Garnet panicked and killed her.

He got away with the murder completely. The girl was wayward and unruly and everyone but Charlotte thought she had simply run away. Garnet helped to encourage the impression by stealing some jewellery and trinkets to make it appear as though the girl were a thief as well as an ingrate.

'What a beast!' said Emily's sister. Victoria shifted uneasily inside the chest. Her skirts and petticoats were uncomfortably wet now and she had become less sure about jumping out in that state, for fear that the effect would be more amusing than frightening. Perhaps she would wait until they had gone.

'Why did he own up?' said one of the girls.

'He said the girl started to haunt him,.' said Emily quietly. 'She would appear suddenly, staring at him accusingly. In the end his mind snapped and he handed himself in.'

'How did he kill her?'

'He smothered her and hid her in a blanket chest until he could carry her out and dump her in the lake. They found her body tied to a big boulder by a rope. They say she wanders the house to this day, water still dripping from her clothes . . .'

Victoria burst from the chest like a crazed jack-in-the-box. As she had hoped, the girls in the room were suitably terrified. Two of them needed smelling salts to bring them out of a faint and one of them required laudanum to calm her when she came round.

It took two servants to restrain Victoria while another was sent to fetch her parents. She was screaming continually, only stopping when her voice would no longer function, huddled in a ball by the bed, staring at the empty chest.

I looked down at the photograph once more and saw this time that the smudge was no fault or fingerprint, but the blurred image of a young girl in a white dress; and the expression on the man I now knew was Garnet, which I had taken for arrogance, was actually more like the expression of someone holding their hand over a candle flame.

It really did look as if Garnet could see Margaret while no one else could, although something about his expression suggested that he was desperately trying to pretend that she was not there.

'The fog seems finally to be lifting,.' said Uncle Montague, who was now standing by the window. 'You really ought to think about leaving, Edgar, while it is still light.'

I had been growing a little concerned about the approaching dark myself. It had only been my resistance to walking home in the fog - and my concern for my uncle's well-being - that had kept me so long. Besides, I was starting to feel as though I myself might become unhealthily influenced by my uncle's mental state were I to stay.

'Yes, Uncle,.' I said, getting to my feet. 'Perhaps I should be getting along. I do not wish to worry Mother.' I winced a little at this transparent lie. My mother would barely have noticed my absence.

'Of course, Edgar. I am flattered that you would listen to the ramblings of an old man for quite so long.'

'Not at all, sir; I have been fascinated to hear your stories,.' I said. 'And I shall look forward to coming back and hearing more.'

I stood a little self-consciously. I was of an age when I was still unsure of myself in such formal matters as greetings and partings. I had decided that I would shake my uncle's hand, but it didn't feel correct to do so while he was still seated and he showed no signs of getting up. Instead Uncle Montague smiled and picked up an old brass telescope that had been standing on the table next to his chair. Holding it to his eye he looked out of the window towards the woods. The smile seemed to disappear from his face as if he had seen some scene of great sadness to him.

'Uncle?' I enquired.

'It's nothing,.' he said rather unconvincingly.

'I could not help noticing the telescope, sir,.' I said. 'It looks like something a ship's captain might use.' Uncle Montague looked at the telescope in his hand but made no response. He merely looked back towards the woods.

'Uncle?' I said again.

'Forgive me, Edgar,.' he said. 'I should not detain you. I have taken up enough of your time.' Still he did not stand, and once again looked down at the telescope.

'Does the telescope have a story?' I asked.

'Everything has a story.' Uncle Montague sighed. 'Everything and everyone. But, yes,.' he said, cradling the telescope in his hands. 'This does have a particular tale to tell. But it can wait for another time.'

I looked down at my uncle, who seemed suddenly older, and I had not the heart to leave him.

'Please tell me, sir,.' I said, sitting back down.

Uncle Montague smiled again.

'You may not thank me for telling you, Edgar.'

'Even so,.' I said. 'Please tell me. One last story, Uncle, and then I shall away home.'

'If you insist, Edgar,.' he said solemnly, returning to his seat by the fire. 'If you insist.'

Matthew Harter came to a halt beside the huge lichen-encrusted stone that stood beside the entrance to the sheepfold and turned to take one last look at his home.

He almost changed his mind there and then as he looked at the huddle of stone buildings that had been the only world he had known for his short life, save for the fells and lakes that surrounded them. Matthew had lived all his years in that wild and mountainous area of the north country they call Cumbria, his family's house sitting at the base of the hills that girded it around like fortress walls.

But it was this closed view of things that lay behind his creeping out of the family house that dawn, a pack on his back and a note left for his mother to cry over when she woke.

When he had spoken to his father of the curiosity he felt for what lay over the crag tops, his father had said, 'Son, we are like those sheep we tend. They lamb on a certain part of the fell, and to that part of the fell they will return when they grow old enough. They are bonded to the hills and so are we. That's the course that the Almighty has set for us. We're sheep farmers. We're hill folk and that's an end to it.'

And so it was for Matthew's father, but not for Matthew. He had looked to his grandfather on his mother's side for another point of view; for though his grandfather, like his mother, had been born in the very next valley, he had escaped. He had run away to sea.

Matthew's grandfather had returned to the Lakes stuffed full of stories and needed no encouragement to tell them. He was a fine storyteller and even finer when his tongue was oiled with whisky. He was an institution at the Old White Lion until his death in the lambing season that year.

The only death Matthew had experienced prior to that was of his favourite sheepdog, and it hit him hard. It was as if a safety rope attaching him to the outside world had been severed. With his grandfather's death, a whole world of possibilities seemed to die.

This was not to say that Matthew was particularly fond of the old man, or the old man of him. Matthew was only interested in the vistas his grandfather opened up to him.

When Matthew sobbed through the funeral service at the little granite and slate church high among the fells, the tears were for the loss of the stories, not the loss of the man. If anything, Matthew felt anger and resentment rather than sadness.

The tears were enough to convince his mother that though the boy had not seemed especially attached to her father, Matthew had obviously been terribly hurt by his death. A few days after the funeral she approached Matthew with a small parcel, which when unwrapped revealed a brass telescope.

'Father wanted you to have it,.' said his mother.

'He did?' said Matthew, intrigued to hear a lie on his mother's lips.

'Yes . . .' she said hesitantly. 'He thought you might like it. It went all over the world with him you know.'

Matthew held the telescope to his eye and was amazed to see the bracken beneath Brock Crag waving gently in the breeze as if it were only feet away, rather than the hundreds of yards away it actually was. His mother smiled at him and left him alone. It was at that instant Matthew decided to leave.

The telescope was a sign: a sign that he needed to get out of the valley and see the world for himself. He would walk to Penrith and take a stagecoach to Liverpool, and there he would sign himself aboard the first vessel that would take him; slave ship or whaler, he did not care, so long as it took him away from the place he was born.

He would need a little money, but that was all right - he knew where his father kept his cash and though, strictly speaking, it was theft, his parents would have one less mouth to feed. It was a fair exchange.

He might have picked up a ride in a cart had he walked the valley road, but Matthew had decided that that was not the way to leave somehow. He needed to walk the fell-top route to Penrith. He wanted his last view of home to be from above - to see it way below as he so often had in the past when he was up among the sheep on the high crags.

It was a fine morning but it was bitterly cold. There was a little snow on the high fells but not enough to put him off. He loved the fells best of all when they were white at their peaks like sugared buns, and it would be a fond memory for him to enjoy when he was basking in the heat of the Caribbean or the coast of Africa.

The sun was just coming up over the pass and the lake was beginning to glow like polished pewter. Birds were singing in the copse beside his house and among the twisted willows along the brook. Matthew took one last look at his home and walked away.

He crossed the road at the bridge and walked past the weavers' cottages. An old man who had known Matthew since he was a baby came to the door as he was passing, and Matthew felt suddenly guilt-stricken. He had an urge to go straight home, tear up the note and return the money he had taken. But his choice had been made. He must go on.

'Morning, Matthew,.' said the old man.

'Morning, Mr Beckett.'

'Where you bound for at such an hour?'

'I lost something up top,.' said Matthew. 'My grandfather's telescope. I was hoping to find it before my mother finds out.'

'Aye?' said the old man with a tone of scepticism that Matthew did not like. Who was he to question where a person did and did not walk? 'Well, I wish you luck then, young Mattie. He was a great fellow your grandfather. You must miss him.'

'Of course I do,.' said Matthew more defensively than he had intended. 'I must be getting on. Goodbye, Mr Beckett.'

'Aye,.' said the old man with a nod. 'You sure everything's all right, son?'

But Matthew was already walking away, heading towards the main path that snaked up towards the tarn and to the high drover's track that led to town. As he got to a sharp bend in the path, above the rows of the weavers' cottages, he took a smaller track - a barely perceptible sheep track - that ran by a massive stone barn and up the side of the fell, under the crags, rejoining the main path at the Black Tarn.

This was his path. He had walked it since he was old enough to walk anywhere without his brothers or parents, and though the track was clearly used by sheep and deer, he had never seen another person use it and felt it to be the only piece of this world that was his and his alone. There could really be no other route by which to leave it all behind.

He looked down at the weavers' cottages and smiled, imagining the conversation old Beckett and his father would have, but his smile quickly faded. He wished now that he had found the courage to tell the truth: that he was leaving this valley, these fells, this life; that he was following in his grandfather's footsteps and running away to sea. Unlike his grandfather, though, he would not be coming back.

He began to walk the narrow track, carefully tracing its path through the loose scree. It arced away up the fellside, its thin line so faintly impressed upon the landscape it was scarcely visible.

Matthew walked in the slow, evenly paced way of hill people. He could walk for hours with barely a pause for breath, keeping his feet to a rhythm that he dictated and not the ever-changing terrain. He was in no hurry.

A buzzard mewed as it quartered the hillside. Matthew could see smoke rising from the chimneys in the valley, but he would be on the tops before anyone realised he was gone. Even if they wanted to stop him, he would be beyond their reach.

The path grew steeper as it rose towards the crags and Matthew regretted not bringing a staff with him. He was forced to scrabble up the last part as it squeezed itself through a cleft in the rocks, heaving himself up and over with his hands, the rock face icy to the touch.

Finally, he climbed up on to the crag and sat with his feet dangling over the edge, looking out over the valley. The sun was up over the pass now and sheep were bleating, calling to their lambs.

From where he sat he could see two lakes: one shining in the sunlight, the other, to the west, dark and brooding, grey from the reflected crags above it. Both were still as paintings, their surfaces like polished steel.

Matthew opened his pack and took out a hunk of bread and some ham he had taken from the pantry and ate it mechanically as if it were fuel and nothing more. The temperature suddenly dropped and the valley below darkened. He looked towards the east and saw clouds building, obscuring the sun. He pulled his collar up and held it close to his throat. He would be warm enough once he was on the move.

It was then that something caught his eye, way down below at the small outcrop of rock where the sheep track split off from the main path. Someone was following him! Matthew peered at the tiny form below him, frowning with incredulity and with an irritation born of possessiveness. This was his path, his alone!

It suddenly occurred to him that maybe his note had been spotted earlier than he had hoped and that this was one of his brothers sent to fetch him back. Even as he thought this, he knew it was not so. He had seen his brothers out on the hillsides a hundred times; he knew their shape and the way they carried themselves.

Besides, there was something strange about the way this figure moved, frantically clambering up the path. It was hard to see from that distance, but it almost seemed as though he - Matthew was sure that the person must be male - were running away from something.

Matthew could see that one of the stranger's arms hung at his side and flapped uselessly about like a rag doll's arm every time he scrabbled over a rock. The sight of it set Matthew's teeth on edge.

Worse still were the odd glimpses Matthew kept getting of the stranger's face. Mostly, the figure climbed with his head bowed, looking at the ground and Matthew could only see the top of his head, the hair seemingly wet and glinting dimly in the sunlight.

Occasionally, though, the stranger would look up, as if to check his route, and Matthew gained the impression that the fellow was wearing some sort of mask, or partial mask, as if he were a carnival figure. This, added to the stranger's bizarre movements, caused Matthew to shake his head in confusion.

He resolved to let the fellow catch up and pass him, deciding that the bother of having to exchange greetings with someone so odd was more palatable than having them dogging his footsteps. Then he remembered his grandfather's telescope.

Intrigued by the thought of getting a better look at the peculiar stranger below him, Matthew rummaged about in the bottom of his pack and took out the instrument. He put it to his eye and scanned the path, unable at first to find his target. He lowered it and when he had fixed the fellow's position, he put the telescope back to his eye and focused, the stranger disappearing momentarily behind a rock as he did so. As he reappeared and looked up towards Matthew, Matthew gave a cry and almost dropped the telescope over the edge. It was some time before he forced himself to look again.

The stranger was moving even faster than Matthew had imagined from a distance. He was indeed running and scrabbling upwards at a phenomenal rate. His motion was crazed and the eccentric movements of his body were now clearly explained.

His left arm was obviously broken - in more than one place, Matthew guessed. The left hand was scarcely recognisable as such, and looked as if a blacksmith had been hammering it. His left leg, too, was clearly smashed and flailed and juddered sickeningly as he moved. His clothes were ripped and sodden with blood.

The hair he had thought to be merely wet was clotted with gore and he looked as though he had been scalped by one of the American savages Matthew's grandfather had told him about. But it was the fellow's face that had caused Mathew to gasp in horror.

The features were utterly ruined and looked like something glimpsed in an abattoir or a nightmare. One side of the face was a hideous mass of gristle and torn flesh, like a sheep carcass after the rooks have worked it. An unblinking eye looked out from the other side.

Matthew immediately thought that the stranger must have been the victim of some terrible assault - but by whom, or what? He had passed that way himself only half an hour earlier and had seen no one save old Mr Beckett. Besides, this fellow looked as though he had been mauled by a lion.

Why did he not cry out for help, thought Matthew, and how, when he was so badly injured, could he move like that? Matthew could not run up that track if the devil himself was behind him, and he was fully fit. He looked through the telescope once more, and once more he almost dropped it.

The stranger was not looking behind him as a terrified person might do, and neither was he looking up, as Matthew had previously thought, to check his path. As Matthew looked through the telescope the stranger looked up, not at the path, but at Matthew himself, and with an expression that managed to force itself through the ruined face - an expression of fanatical intent. He was not running
away
from someone. He was running
towards
Matthew.

Matthew scrabbled to his feet and stuffed the telescope into his pack. As he walked away from the crag's edge a scattering of snowflakes began to fall, but his thoughts were completely focused on the ghoul that was pursuing him. He had been on the fells in snow many times before. He knew these paths as well as anyone.