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By The Hooded Hood suggests a quiet dark room to read this story in Sat Jun 11, 2005 at 09:00:41 am EDT |
Subject #215: Untold Ghost Stories of the Parodyverse: The Lighthouse –
Part One: 14th February 1885
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| #215: Untold Ghost Stories of the Parodyverse: The Lighthouse –
Part One: 14th February 1885 14th February, 1885: A cold February rain made the narrow pathway slick even before the Nor-Westerly wind drove the freezing ocean onto the rocks. Sprays of spume rose ten feet over the embankment, spooking the horses no less than their riders. “Hmph,” frowned Sir Mumphrey Wilton, glancing worriedly at his companion. “I don’t suppose you could…” “No,” answered Hagatha Darkness, the neat young woman who sat astride her bay like a man. “This is a very bad time to interfere with the forces of nature.” “Why so?” The witch pointed to the grey skies. “The moon is at perigee, its closest point to Earth. So it’s tidal pull is increased, a spring tide. It’s a new moon, which means its lined up with the sun, so the sun’s gravity is dragging at us on the same line. The barometer is falling so the waters and winds are rising. There’s going to be a storm. So there’s a proxigean tide rising, a black tide. A killing tide.” “You’re always an informative travelling companion, Miss Darkness, of not always a cheerful one,” the eccentric Englishman commented. “Well, we’d best brave the tempest then, what?” The two members of the League of Improbable Gentlemen carefully directed their horses over the spit of rock that stretched out from the cliff shore towards the Willingham Lighthouse. Their destination was built from the same black rock that formed the jagged treacherous coastline north of the tiny fishing village. The light was in a high, thin tower with a metal balcony at its apex. Even now in the gloomy afternoon it shone seawards to warn shipping of the hidden reefs. At the base of the tower were two stone huts. Sir Mumphrey and Hagatha tethered their horses in the nearer one, where another mount already waited. Then Mumphrey hammered on the metal-bound lighthouse door. “Ah, the gentleman Dr Waltz recommended!” the Fisheries Commissioner greeted Sir Mumphrey, his voice and manner over-hearty with nervousness. “And… a lady?” His tone suggested surprise that a member of the weaker sex should have been dragged to such a gristly business. “I insisted on coming, Mr Peterson. I would have fainted if I’d been left behind.” “Er, of course,” Peterson nodded uncertainly. There was something about the woman’s gaze that unnerved him. “May I introduce Officer Gedney of the Sherriff’s Office, and Dr Yarmouth, our medical man?” Mumphrey shook hands then got down to business. “Had a spot of bother, what?” “A spot,” replied Peterson. “You’ve been to Herringcarp Asylum? Seen the lighthouse keepers?” “Raving loons, the lot of ‘em,” the Englishman agreed. “One screaming and throwin’ himself at the walls, another sitting rockin’ and dribbling, the third shoutin’ obscenities and threats at something only he could see. Bad show.” “They were very disturbed,” Hagatha frowned. “Their minds were quite broken by something. I don’t think that bedlam is the best place for them.” “Herringcarp’s a disturbing place for anyone to visit,” Dr Yarmouth agreed, “especially a young lady.” He turned to Mumphrey. “They say there’s a mad marquis locked up there who is over a hundred years old,” he confided. “You’re wonderin’ what on Earth could have so affected three experienced lighthouse keepers that they’d all be gibbering loons the next morning,” Sir Mumphrey summarised. “But that’s not all, is it?” Hagatha surmised, reading the worried expressions on the three local men’s faces. “What else is there?” “Well,” Peterson explained reluctantly, “that tragedy was two nights ago. And of course last night we had to keep the light burning. So we sent in the second crew. There are always three men here, serving two weeks on two weeks off.” “Where are the second crew now?” Hagatha asked. Peterson glanced at Gedney and Yarmouth. “We don’t know,” he admitted at last. “This morning when we checked on them they had just disappeared.” Willingham was a little cluster of shingled houses clinging to a tiny bay in the otherwise unrelenting cliffline. The main street from harbour to Masonic Hall was a one-in-three slope. The bay was littered with fishing cobbles pulled out of the water as much as possible to protect them from the coming storm. “It’s all storms this year,” the old man squatting on a bollard overlooking the water told Sir Mumphrey and Hagatha as they battled past against a cutting wind. “No calm seas and no fish and no wonder.” “No wonder?” Hagatha Darkness asked him, but he would say no more. Dr Yarmouth’s house was the largest in the village, a double-fronted period dwelling with thick chimney-stacks rising above the steep roofs. Like the other seafront properties it had a widow’s walk balcony atop it, overlooking the churning waves. “My wife, Drusilla,” Yarmouth introduced a thin woman whose hair was starting to grey. “Our daughter Sabine.” Sabine was an attractive girl of eighteen, but her eyes were reddened and she wore funeral black. “How d’you do,” Sir Mumphrey bade her. “Is this a house of mourning?” “My daughter’s fiancée was killed earlier this year,” Yarmouth explained. Mumphrey uttered appropriate condolences, but Hagatha watched the girl. “You’ll be quite comfortable here, Miss Darkness,” Dr Yarmouth told the witch. “Drusilla will see to your needs and you can sit out the storm while Sir Mumphrey joins us in our vigil at the Lighthouse. On a stormy night like this it is vital that the light be maintained.” “Jolly good of you to let Miss Darkness sit this out in your home,” the eccentric Englishman told the doctor. He exchanged a knowing glance with Hagatha. “Yes, thank you,” the Darkness witch agreed. “I’m sure I’ll be much better here with you and your family.” Officer Gedney barred the lighthouse door from the inside. “There. Nobody can intrude now to cause us harm.” Mumphrey said nothing. Surely the last two lighthouse crews had taken similar precautions; but earlier today the empty lighthouse had been found unsealed. “I apologise for dragging you out on such a wild night,” Mr Peterson told his comrades, “but none of my crews are willing to come here after the last two tragedies, and the light must be maintained. The Willingham shoals are very treacherous, although good for the small fishing boats who reap the sea’s harvest in the shallows.” “Not so good recently, from what I’ve heard,” Mumphrey commented. “It’s been a bad season alright,” Gedney admitted, with a glance at Peterson. The fisheries man flushed and turned away. “Hmph. Well then,” Sir Mumphrey went on, pretending not to notice, “best we get the lie of the land, eh? And take some precautions.” The lighthouse was a round tower, with a spiral staircase rising up its centre. The cellar housed supplies for the keepers who might be stranded if a high tide covered the outcrop path. The ground floor was mostly one large interconnected living area, with alcoves for a kitchen and wash-house. Above that were bunkhouses and an office, although a quick check showed nothing unusual entered into the log for either of the two previous nights. Then came another set of storage rooms, and a “weather room” where the keepers kept a barometer and other instruments to help them record and predict coming conditions. Atop that was the lamp room itself, with its thick glass walls and its ring of iron balcony. Mumphrey passed the flare of the great oil light and looked over the safety rail at the black rocks far below and at the misty grey blur of the sea horizon. “Place feels dashed peculiar,” he muttered to himself, and spent some time fiddling with the pocketwatch that hung prominently on his waistcoat. “How did he die?” Hagatha asked Sabine Yarmouth as the two of them prepared for bed. “Your fiancée?” The young woman blanched at so bold and brutal a question. “There was an accident,” she answered reluctantly. “A bad accident.” “At sea?” Hagatha persisted. “In the harbour.” The witch considered this. “Recently?” No-one else in the Yarmouth household was in mourning. “Two months ago,” Sabine told her. Hagatha finished brushing her hair and dragged on her nightgown. She noticed there was an old brass telescope on a tripod at the window, set not to look out to sea but at the skies. “What happened?” she asked. “It’s cruel of you to make me talk of it,” Sabine complained with a little sob. “Enoch’s dead, and that’s enough.” “Not about the death,” Hagatha clarified. She reached out and caught her bed-mate’s hand and touched a red scar around the girl’s wrist. “This.” Sabine withdrew her arm quickly. “Nothing,” she replied. “An accident.” “Another one? It almost looks like the mark of a fetter.” “I just hurt myself is all,” Sabine answered, close to tears again. “Let’s just go to sleep.” “There’s something out there,” Mumphrey said. “Out where?” Peterson demanded. Another great wave lashed over the lighthouse, swathing it in twenty-foot of water before receding again into the howling storm. “Outside the tower. I saw something obscure the window for a moment.” The windows were thin rectangles no more than six inches wide and eighteen inches high, and the one that the eccentric Englishman was indicating was on the top-but-one level. “Impossible,” Gedney said nervously. “Nothing could climb up the outside of this tower. And certainly not in this storm, with the waves pounding us like they are.” “Hmph. I’m goin’ up top to check,” answered the Improbable Gentleman. He hefted his Holland and Holland Nitro .600 Express double-barrelled hunting rifle and made for the stairs. “Don’t go onto the balcony,” Peterson warned him. “Every time a wave hits us the tower rocks, and this wind could rip you from the loft and hurl you to your death.” Mumphrey waited until he was halfway round the last turn of the central spiral stair before hitting the tab on his temporal pocketwatch to step outside of time. The sudden silence after the tempest’s wrath seemed almost eerier than the storm. He quickly climbed to the lamp room and slid aside the glass screen to the balcony. The waves below hung motionless in mid-crash, drops of spray hanging in the air above them. Mumphrey pulled out a pocket-mirror and used it to reflect some of the great light’s rays down the side of the tower, marvelling how his Chronometer of Infinity allowed him to perceive and direct light even though time was in stasis. The black thing was half-slug and half frog and it was crawling up the side of the building with webbed cupped digits. A dark trail of slime – or maybe blood – betrayed its passage up the outside of the lighthouse. And despite the cessation of time it was still coming. Mumphrey hefted his Holland and Holland, too careful aim, and released two barrels into the thing. It screeched once then fell back into the swelling tide to vanish under the time-frozen sea. The eccentric Englishman cursed to see his quarry escape; but with a diminishing temporal charge on his pocketwatch he had to withdraw to the safety of the lamp room, secure the door again, and let time return to its normal course. The storm renewed its fury, as if controlled by a wounded, angry beast. Hagatha couldn’t sleep, so she occupied her time prowling the darkened Yarmouth house. The telescope was useless in the current weather, but she checked Dr Yarmouth’s notations and saw that he had been observing Cassiopeia rising. She occupied herself examining various household items and returned to Sabine’s bed before the spring tide turned. Dr Yarmouth came for her about one in the morning, with half a dozen of the fishermen. “I’m sorry,” Sabine told her. “I’m so sorry.” “I’m sorry too, Miss Darkness,” Dr Yarmouth told her sincerely. “You have to believe this is not what we wanted to do, not how we wanted things to be. If only Enoch Whitfield hadn’t been such a fool…” “He loved me!” Sabine almost shouted back. “What did you expect?” “You weren’t for him,” Drusilla Yarmouth told her daughter. “You were never for him.” Hagatha struggled as the men tied her hands together. “So who was she for? Or should I say what was she for?” “The fishing has been bad since Enoch’s blasphemy,” the old man from the seafront spat. “Real bad. People are starving without the Blessing.” “There’s a Blessing,” Hagatha understood. “And… a sacrifice?” “A wedding,” Sabine shuddered. “Enoch tried to save me from the Merman. He came to me in the chamber and he had a shotgun…” “Enoch doomed us all with his blasphemy,” Dr Yarmouth said. “Since the Merman was wounded he has turned the waters against us. The old covenant is broken.” “So I get to be the bride of the beast?” the witch suggested. “To try and patch things up?” “It’s horrible,” Sabine admitted, “but what can people do? We only eke out a living here. Everybody knows when Cassiopeia’s chair rises above the Pole Star…” “You sent Mumphrey to his death in the lighthouse so you could take me to the beast,” Hagatha realised. “You weak spineless fools, offering your young in exchange for a few netted fish! Murdering Enoch? His ‘accident in the harbour’?” “Nobody is happy about this,” Dr Yarmouth apologised. “But times are hard.” “And so is the Merman,” somebody quipped. “Why would somebody or something want to get into the lighthouse?” Sir Mumphrey Wilton reasoned. “And why now, all of a sudden, what?” “I don’t know,” Mr Peterson admitted. “At first we suspected contaminated food had driven the men mad, the first three to raving insanity and the second crew to suicide in the sea. But Dr Waltz’s tests indicate nothing of the sort. Then we considered smugglers, hidden locals passions…” “They’re a queer folk round here,” Officer Gedney admitted. “Law-abiding for the most part, although there was something odd about that young man that drowned in the harbour after New Year. But they keep themselves to themselves, never moving away or marrying outside their village much. Except Dr Yarmouth, who brought a wife from Parodiopolis.” “You’re not local?” Sir Mumphrey asked the policeman. “Gothametropolis born and bred,” Gedney answered proudly. “Finest city in the world.” “I think we’d better do more than sit around waitin’ for something to happen,” Mumphrey opined. “If this tower’s become a target of sorts, best we find out why, and what somebody’s lookin’ for.” “The whole tower was searched this morning, from top to bottom,” Officer Gedney pointed out. “I have a knack for finding secret passages,” Mumphrey noted, not explaining further his pocketwatch’s ability to shift chunks of masonry seconds into the future to see what was behind them. “I’d like to be takin’ a look in those cellars, don’t y’know?” The basement of the Masonic Hall has a rough-cut staircase down into the granite, then into ancient tunnels below. The low passageway curved out past the harbour and under the ocean bed, culminating in a vast subterranean cavern half filled with water. “Very homey,” Hagatha told her captors coldly. They waded her through the salt water to a rock island in the centre of the cold lagoon. A metal manacle with a chain let into the rock perfectly matched the old scar on Sabine’s wrist. Few of the merman’s brides came willingly to the altar. Sabine turned away as they closed the iron band on Hagatha. Hagatha shuddered involuntarily as the metal hoop imprisoned her. A witch could not work magics when bound with cold iron. Then again, she’d taken precautions. “Yarmouth, if you don’t let me go now I’ll see you dead, and your wife and daughter with you!” Dr Yarmouth ignored the threats, although he was clearly disturbed at having to offer up another young life for the wellbeing of the village. Hagatha pulled out the stitched rags she’s pocketed, a crudely-cut silhouette of a man cobbled together of Yarmouth’s discarded handkerchief, some hairs from his comb and razor, a scrap of uneaten food from his plate. She drew a silver pin from her hair, letting her black mane fall loose, and jabbed the pin into the crude doll. Yarmouth screamed. This wasn’t magic Hagatha was casting now; this was magic Hagatha had cast back then. “You think I would let you bring me here if I was helpless?” the witch challenged them. “You think your wounded Merman is the only being with power?” The citizens of Willingham backed away uncertainly. Dr Yarmouth scrabbled back across the slimy floor, clutching his bleeding chest. Sabine watched with wide, hungry eyes. And something moved beneath the waters. Bubbles burst in noisesome sprays of green liquid. A v-trail moved through the underground lake towards the little island where Hagatha was shackled. “This would be a really good time to appear, Mumphrey,” the worried witch called. The wounded merman rose from the murky depths. It was something between a man, a frog, and a jellyfish, and one side of its body was smeared with gore from a septic hole. Part of its face was missing, from shotgun injuries so horrific that they would have killed a human. Enoch Whitfield had done his work well. “The sea god has arisen!” Dr Yarmouth cried out. “Ia! Ia! Take this bride of sacrifice in compensation for your hurts. Breed from her the next sea god to bless our harvests and let us prosper.” “How could there be a tunnel here without me knowing of it?” Mr Peterson fretted as Mumphrey led the fisheries inspector and the local law officer down a narrow ancient passageway. “I’ve seen the plans for this lighthouse. They had some problems building it, yes, because of foundation difficulties, but…” “The passage cut to connect the lighthouse cellar was fairly new,” Matt Gedney noticed. “The part we’re in now seems ancient, natural.” The eccentric Englishman shone his lantern onto the weed-choked wall and scrapped some of the decaying vegetation clear. “Not natural,” he noted grimly. “Gnawed.” “Nothing can gnaw through basalt,” Peterson asserted nervously. Sir Mumphrey hefted his rifle and pressed on. “Can you communicate?” Hagatha asked the mer-thing that slithered towards her. “Have you any sentience left at all? Or has that lead shot to your brain left you as a mindless beast, reacting only to the survival instincts of your kind? Can you even die like a human?” The dweller from the depths made no reply, merely pressed forward with some ancient primal need to spawn. The shes of its kind were long extinct, but it could still use a human vessel to reproduce when the stars were right. “I don’t do the impregnation thing,” Hagatha warned the creature, backing away to the limits of her chain. “It’s a family quirk.” The citizens of Willingham stared at the tableau with hungry, desperate eyes. Sabine turned away. “Is this how you want to live your whole lives?” Hagatha demanded of them. “Breeding your daughters with a mindless entity to make the fishing easier? Committing murder when the spawn of rape claw themselves from their mother’s womb? Hiding the truth behind your Masonic rites and your inbred insularity? Enoch Whitfield was the only one amongst you who had any courage!” Sabine sobbed. “The lighthouse was built to prevent the shipwrecks your monster caused, wasn’t it? Never local vessels, only those from other villages where tribute wasn’t paid. And it blocked the ceremonial route that the beast used to enter this cave, so the keepers had to be bribed, or distracted, or driven insane, or simply murdered. Is that it? And the creature you serve is so far gone in its injuries that it doesn’t remember what you did for it or what its side of the black bargain is now. It just keeps coming, again, and again, and again, seeking to spawn.” “When the stars are right,” Yarmouth replied. “And so it must be.” Hagatha jabbed the needle she carried into her poppet’s heart, and Dr Yarmouth toppled over dead. “Lots of things must be,” the witch said. “My curse upon you all.” The shambling beast had reached her now, and one gory hand grabbed her and pressed her close. And then she was gone. One minute she was struggling in the beast’s grip, the next she was simply not there. The chain that held her hung limply on the empty rock. “That was close,” Hagatha complained to Sir Mumphrey in the Chronometer’s time-stop. “Do you do these last minute rescues deliberately for dramatic effect?” “Thought I did jolly well just findin’ the deuced tunnel,” Mumph objected in a hurt tone of voice. “Best deal with the slimy brute now, what?” “I already killed Dr Yarmouth,” Hagatha answered. “But you can put that poor creature out of its misery if you like.” To the people of Willingham it was as if Sir Mumphrey Wilton had appeared from nowhere like the ghost of Enoch Whitfield, discharging his .600 double barrelled weapon into the beast, then reloading and firing again. “Fishing season is over,” Sir Mumphrey told the shocked and silent villagers of Willingham. The shattered merman, the sea-god of the fishing people, sank down into the water, deflating like a rotten bladder, and vanished into the foetid depths. Next Time: The Lighthouse – Part Two: 29th January 1945 Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2005 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2005 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. |
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