"There's a curious story attached"
The Plague Pit
Summoning Knells and Other Inventions by A. F. Kidd (Ash-Tree Press, 2012) is a collection of fifty supernatural stories. Told with brevity and a graceful clarity, they are uniformly outstanding work. So far I have only read the first half of the book, the stories collected under "Ghost Stories of a Campanologist."
Like the stories of David G. Rowlands, about whom I have written here, Kidd's tales wed a few guiding Jamesian rules to modern circumstances of work or hobby. For Rowlands it was adventures of men who ran pest control businesses or played in Hawaiian music bands. For Kidd it is men and women from various walks of life who are united by a passion for change ringing.
❖
The Sins of the Fathers
A haunted bell tower and a ringer presaging disasters and tragedies.
I never understood what Graham did, there in the tower. If he spoke at all, I heard nothing, and I didn't see him move.
But while he frowned in fierce concentration for what seemed like a long time, I felt a coldness creeping into the chamber. It crawled like mist on a marsh. I kept thinking I saw movements in the shadows, and jerking my head round to try and see them.
The chill seeped into my bones, but though I was shivering, I could hardly keep my eyes open. I shook because I knew there was something in the darkness, like a chill wind waiting to blow. But by then I didn't even dare to look behind me.
'Brian!' said Graham sharply. 'Over here.'
I got up, slowly. I felt as if I were trying to run through thick viscous fluid. Each movement was an effort: I think I was somewhere beyond mental terror.
'Hurry!' snapped Graham, and grabbed my wrist.
* * *
Postman's Knock
An old woman who spent her life as a ringer is beset by the ghost of her wartime lover. And their drowned child.
'This was the last letter he wrote,' she said. 'His C.O. sent it on to me.'
Edward's writing was fairly neat, if a little laborious, and his spelling not execrable. The letter was short, and I had another vivid mental picture of him bent over the page in the filth of a trench, water running down his neck, trying to put his thoughts on paper.
My dear Love,
What a terible day this has been. There has been so many good men killed. The rane never stops and there is Mud all around. I think about you all the time and our son. Im sure he will be a son. I receved your letter. Pray God Ile retern to you and our son soon. I wold walk thrugh Hell or cum from the grave to be with you. I cant see to wright anymore now dear love, there will be a big Push as they call it tomorow. I have your letter next my hart thogh. Dont worry Ile retern.
With all my Love,
Your Edward.
'He has come back,' whispered Harriet. 'It's taken sixty years, but he's come back. To the bones of a little child in a coffin and an old woman who's ready for her grave.'
'But how——'
'He knocks on the door. He leaves flowers, dead flowers. He tried to help me ring today, the way he used to.'
* * *
And Turns No More His Head
A ringer's ghost goes after an ad agency executive who has figured out how to computer-automate change ringing.
* * *
The Grey Lady
A bored young ringer creates a new method and names it after a woman who haunts the local bell tower.
It was at this point that he decided to invent a new method. It was perhaps surprising that he had not attempted to do so before. The owner of a precise and mathematical brain and, perhaps more to the point, of a small computer, he reasoned that it would be an interesting diversion (and, to judge by the regular appearance of strangely-named new methods in The Ringing World, not too difficult a task). He was well aware that he might duplicate one already listed, but this did not bother him overmuch as long as it had not yet been named.
* * *
The Plague Pit
While the others were ringing, I noticed a curious thing from one of the windows. I was looking across a broad and tree-lined swathe of grass, redolent with wild flowers. Almost in the centre of this I could see what I can only describe as a bald patch. It looked most odd in the midst of such luxuriant grass, so I asked my new friend, who bore the impressive name of Cecily Fairbrother, what it was.
She gave me an odd look, and seemed about to reply when the method being rung came round, and shortly afterwards came the call of 'Stand'. I got up and we rang a touch of something else, Double Norwich I think it was, and I forgot what I had been thinking of.
After our time was up and we had, with regret, descended the staircase, most of us went to sit in the meadow for a few minutes. Miss Fairbrother, however, walked a short way off and seemed to want me to follow her.
I did so, and found her standing by the bare patch I had seen. Looking at it from close to, I was surprised that I'd been able to see it from the tower: the angle seemed wrong.
There was no fence or rail, but in a space roughly eight feet square the grass grew very short and sparse, with a single unmarked stone standing in the centre. It bore no inscription as far as I could see; in fact, it was only very roughly shaped into the semblance of a gravestone, as if the mason had taken no care over it.
'Whose grave is it?' I asked.
'It's the Plague Pit,' she replied, 'where all the local victims of the Great Plague were buried.'
'Who tends the grass?'
'No one. It just never grows higher than that.'
I had seen something like this before, in a churchyard in north Wales, where a cruciform patch of land said to be a murderer's grave would never support any growing thing: so I mentioned it to Miss Fairbrother.
She nodded, and said, 'That's slightly different. This, you see, is unsanctified ground.'
Somewhat surprised, I remarked that I had thought in those days the only people who had not been buried in holy ground were suicides. She shook her head, and added, 'There's a curious story attached.'
But if she intended to tell it to me, we were interrupted by urgings for me to return to the coach for the next stage of our journey, and I had, regrettably, to take my leave of Miss Fairbrother. However, I left with an invitation to return; and eventually did so, although it was over a year later when I found the time.
The local legend finally reveals its true terror and majesty on Midsummer's Eve.
* * *
Spliced Surprise
Ringer Christine Price finds herself alone at night in the ringing chamber of a strange church. She plans to practice for an upcoming wedding. Until she gets a grip on the first rope.
* * *
Great Emmanuel
....Following John through the door, he came to a halt in a tiny well which reached his chest—and found himself staring into space.
Hugging the outside of the massive tower and barely six feet wide, guarded only by a handrail, ran a wooden catwalk. Neatly knotted, the eight ropes hung down at intervals around it. And far below Tom could see, vertiginously clear, the richly tiled floor of the church.
After the initial shock of disbelief, Tom's knees began to shake. He shrank against the wall, but even the feel of the cool solid English stone did not calm him. Snakes coiled and writhed in the pit of his stomach. They had rung that Stedman here? Surely no man could concentrate with that abyss yawning a few feet away from him.
'Look up,' said John Thornton. 'Look up, Tom.'
Tom raised his eyes from the fascinating, awful drop to the intricate carving of the vaulted ceiling. Serpentine patterns drew his gaze, mesmerised him. Light glinted dully from a myriad carven snakes—winged snakes, banded and hooded snakes, serpents of myth and serpents of nature.
He looked down and calmly took the rope handed to him—the third. John Thornton took the tenor, Great Emmanuel, greatest of the weighty ring of eight, and his tall son Ned caught hold of the treble.
The calmness which surged through Tom was not of his own making: it seemed to come from outside himself, so that when he looked back, he rather resented it.
'Look to the treble,' called Ned Thornton in his not-quite-broken voice. 'She's going—she's gone.' And the bells swung into their rounds.
Tom quickly caught the feel of his bell, and sensed approval from his seven colleagues.
The service touch over, they descended the tower and slid quietly into a pew at the back of the church. Tom was bemused, bewildered. His eyes kept straying to the strangely carved roof; his mind took in nothing of the sermon.
* * *
In and Out of the Belfry
Then quite out of the blue, we were offered two trebles saved from a bombed church in London, and it was too good an opportunity to turn down. We reckoned we could save money by having the frame built locally; so, about a year after we launched the appeal, we were able to instruct the Whitechapel Foundry to proceed.
They were, we thought, a nice little pair of bells, though I know some of you find them too light—well, that's your fault. There's no such thing as a bad bell, only a bad ringer. Well, I think so now.
There'd been a bit of trouble before we finally got the bells installed—little things, really, like Ron Malley nearly amputating his fingers while making the frame, and Linda Howard falling off a ladder in the tower and spraining her wrist (she wasn't well pleased about that, I remember—she was supposed to be ringing a peal the day after). But we got the bells installed without any bother at all, and we were all looking forward to having a go on ten—some of us for the first time, I dare say. There was much swotting of Caters and Royal and people referring to scraps of paper at every spare moment.
I remember that first night very clearly. We'd taken the opportunity to redecorate the ringing chamber, and it looked very smart with its clean white walls. Someone had donated a newish carpet: the bit of rain damage down one edge didn't show much. The two new treble ropes with their bright fat sallies didn't look out of place—on the contrary, it was our old ropes which seemed a bit sorry for themselves in comparison—thin, much-spliced, and rather grubby.
'Right,' I said as soon as we had ten people and the bells were all up, 'let's see how they go in rounds.'
I put Linda on the treble, as she was pretty competent, and I took the second. We had, of course, all had a few pulls prior to this and they'd seemed to go all right.
Linda untied the rope and took hold of the sally—and froze.
'What's the matter?' I asked. She shivered suddenly, and frowned. 'Goose walk over your grave?'
'No—no. I just suddenly felt odd, as if something was going to happen. The sort of feeling I used to get just before the siren went off. I'm all right now. Look to!'
The sound soared out as we pulled off in turn, difficulties sorted themselves out as the band got used to the slower pace, and presently I called them into Queens and back again.
'Stand,' I said, and frowned in embarrassment as the bell wouldn't set. On and on it went, and me a ringer for twenty years. I finally managed to stand the thing—scarlet in the face, I have no doubt.
* * *
Flintstones
....Recently, there seemed to be boy sopranos cropping up everywhere: voices like crystal tears crept from radio and television every time you turned a switch. And though some of them look angelic enough, it's often a shock to see children's wicked little goblin faces opening their sticky lips and pouring out such purity of sound. It was one such which prompted a friend of mine to relate a curious story.
* * *
Stone Music
The car rocked in the wind as Simon Webb applied the handbrake. Trying to avoid the relentless tourists, he had come to this high place; and an elderly guidebook had yielded a gem:
MONKSFORD STONE, Monksford, Devon. Is said to turn when the sound of Monksford's church bells reaches it.
Simon liked to think of himself as an amateur of folklore. He had travelled the country in search of tradition, observed countless Morris dancers growing progressively more intoxicated as their programmes progressed, seen with faint cynicism the intrusion of commercialism into the likes of the Furry Dance; and been strangely chilled by something he did not quite like in the horned progression from Abbots Bromley.
His other interest, campanology, might have been viewed by outsiders as just as strange a ritual, but it made the entry doubly intriguing. He found Monksford in Dove,the bellringers' bible, and discovered that the church of St Peter possessed a ring of six light bells. Six bells and light were not his preference: he was snobbish about twelves, and tenor-grabbing. But he would condescend to visit Monksford, if thereby he could see a stone which moved.
* * *
The Bellfounder's Wife
"The Bellfounder's Wife" is an ambitious story in length and scope. Karl Edward Wagner selected it for The Year's Best Horror Stories XVI.
'Joshua was asked to cast a ring of bells for St Dunstan's in 1732. Now he didn't have a proper foundry then, because he dug a pit and set about doing the work in the churchyard. And there was a dreadful accident, and his wife was killed—some say burned to death in the furnace, some by molten bell-metal. It took the spirit out of him: he refused to go on with the job, and St Dunstan's stayed without bells for nigh on fifty years.
'After Joshua died they asked his son—Abraham, that was—to cast the bells for St Dunstan's. He did the work, but reluctantly, and that's the back five now. He later said that all the time he was doing the work he was aware of his mother's presence, and that she disapproved. Which I suppose is logical, if ghosts can be logical....
* * *
Alice
"Alice" is an ambitious and masterfully executed story. It tells parallel stories centered on the bells of the church of St Mary the Virgin, Shore. In the first, set in 1750, focuses on bellfounder (bell maker) Nicholas Lamb. The second plot line, taking place in 1987, shows preparations for the first peal of all St Mary the Virgin bells for the first time.
Both plotlines reveal aspects of a series of hidden 1750 crimes that allowed St Mary the Virgin to acquire enough metal to cast its bells. The crimes cast a variety of supernatural shadows on the belltower past and present.
Kidd conveys the atmosphere beautifully here.
'God, I don't like this room,' said Sue Pierce. 'I really don't like it.'
The ringing chamber gave little hint of the ruin it had been some months before. It was so newly painted that the smell still lingered; the floor was covered with carpet tiles (not all matching); and eight fat bright sallies hung down on clean new ropes.
Ashley Lawrence was feeling guilty. He had not shown the strange document, the journal of Nicholas Lamb, to any of the other ringers: he didn't quite know why. He felt the chill atmosphere too. Though the summer night was warm, gooseflesh was bumping his arms.
With an attempt at cheerfulness, he said, 'Well, let's get them up. We'd better do some pretty intensive practice for this Bob Major. Mark, have you learnt what to do at a single yet?'
'Yeh, I learnt it,' said the youngster thus addressed. 'Can't guarantee that I'll be able to actually do it, though, when it comes to it.'
'Well, don't worry about it. Let's have a crack at it. Choose your weapons, all. I'll lead up.'
Ashley made loops in the treble rope, a curious feeling in the pit of his stomach. He could feel the blood pounding in his head. 'Here's treble,' he said, starting the bell.
The raise was lumpy, and the tenor refused to set when Ashley called 'Stand', but he put it down to being their first go on the bells. Or tried to. He found he was physically shaking as he tied the rope, and jumped when the door opened.
'Hello, Martyn,' said Sue, a little surprised. 'Come for a ding?'
'Yes, why not?' replied the vicar. Ashley was watching him closely. His face looked very pale. 'Remember, I'm not very advanced!'
'Would you like to treble, then?' asked Ashley. 'We'll ring some Triples, if you'd prefer it to Major.'
'Well, all right, then. Is this the treble?'
'Yo,' said young Mark, who sometimes affected curious Americanisms.
It was not a satisfactory practice. Everyone seemed affected by the strained, nervous atmosphere. On the way to the pub later, Martyn fell into step beside Ashley.
'You're right,' he said quietly. 'There's something not right about that room.'
'What are we going to do?'
The vicar grimaced. 'I don't know, Ashley,' he replied. 'I don't know.'
* * *
Water from the Well
A deft point-to-point remake of "An Episode of Cathedral History" by M. R. James, "Water from the Well" gives us a well-dwelling amphibian in place of the tomb-dwelling lamia.
* * *
Immortal, Invisible
Arriving at St Peter's the following day for his rendezvous with King, Malcolm found the church deserted and the door locked. As he tried the big chill handle he was suddenly struck by an almost physical reluctance to pursue the matter, so he crossed the road to the pub. There he found two of the people he'd expected to be in the church.
'Bells out already?' he asked, bringing his pint over. 'That was quick.'
Johnathan Marlowe, from the Foundry, looked up. 'Yes, they're out,' he said shortly. 'Don't relish getting 'em back in, though.'
'What do you mean?'
'It's difficult to explain,' answered Marlowe. 'I'd have thought I was imagining things if the others hadn't felt it too.'
'Felt what?'
Joanna elected herself spokesman. 'It was weird. When we went in, it felt, well, same as usual. But as soon as we started getting the bells out, everyone got this feeling of being watched. And it got stronger as we went on, until when all eight were out I didn't dare look over my shoulder. All the time we were in there—it just felt as if something evil was getting nearer and nearer.'
Malcolm could only repeat 'Evil?' Such a recital from the unimaginative tower captain was utterly astonishing. As nothing else could have done, it made something clench in the pit of his stomach.
Then Marcus King walked in. 'Dr King——' began Malcolm, half-rising.
'Are the bells out?'
'Yes,' said Joanna. 'And something else is in.'
'Not precisely,' King contradicted her. 'What is "in" has always been there; it was the removal of the bells which—activated it, as it were.'
'Did you know something would happen?' asked Marlowe.
'No, I only suspected.'
'The font?' enquired Malcolm.
'Yes. It contains something which the bells prevented from escaping.'
'I don't understand,' said Joanna. 'How can there be something in the font? It's solid stone.'
'As easily as you have blood and bones and organs in your body,' replied King. There was a stunned silence.
'You mean it's alive?' said Marlowe doubtfully.
'Not precisely, no. Whatever was in the font, was there before it ever was a font. Maybe once it was a standing stone, or the marker for a grave—but at least I know now why it was as close to the bells as possible, so their sound and their mere presence would keep it there.'
'You're talking in the past tense,' Malcolm said uneasily. King nodded.
'Whatever it is—it's got out?' asked Joanna; not disbelievingly, because King sounded too sure for doubts.
'I mean to go and see,' said King. The others exchanged dubious glances.
* * *
Lords of Misrule
David called the back six into Queens and back again. Really, their handling was appalling. Not one of them seemed to be able to feel what the bell was doing. He suddenly doubted whether he could improve their ringing. What's wrong with them? he thought. Angrily, he began to call them into plain hunting. It was an agonisingly slow way of doing it, and one of which he'd never really seen the point, but at least it was better than those eternal, apparently random, call-changes. He supposed he might one day get them to ring Grandsire or Plain Bob like this.
Gradually he became aware of a curious sensation in his head. When he thought about it later, he likened it to someone rubbing out pencil marks. As if his thoughts were being erased. His anger seeped away, and he slipped into a sort of trance.
Jess saw David emerge from the tower door and for a strange, disorienting instant she did not recognise him. She checked her steps at something in his eyes, but then it was gone and David was back again.
He didn't say much about the ringing either, but be told her they'd invited him back the following week.
'I'll come this time,' she suggested, but he shook his head.
'Not yet,' he said. 'I'll tell you when.'
At ten past two the following morning Jess jerked sweating out of nightmare: something appalling had been stalking her dreams, something she was glad she had not been able to see clearly, a thing humped and unhuman and tight with malice. Its quarry had been David. She listened until she heard his breathing: obviously nothing was haunting his sleep.
* * *
Memento Mori
Mr. Lindsay, vacationing in a small town, comes across a mystery following the plot of "The Uncommon Prayer Book."
* * *
Bread Eaten in Secret
'Oh yes, I remember now,' said Kit. 'They called her the "Rose Girl" or something—and didn't they think it was the sound of the bells that drowned out her screams?'
* * *
Campanalogia
A found-manuscript story set in the 17th century.
* * *
The Cankerworm and the Caterpillar and the Palmerworm
'Well now I spect as you'd like to hear the tale, you being a perfessor and all. Many years ago there was this magician, this old warlock, he was, and he had a forbidden book written by the Devil himself. And he read a spell in this old book and summoned up a great worm what went all around eatin' up everything it could find till 'e got so big there wasn't nothing left for him to eat. And so they went to the old wizard and said as how he oughter send the worm back where it come from, but he only laughed. But there was this old monk in the monkery libr'y and he dreamed that St George and St Augustine came and showed him a book, so when he woke up he went to look for the book, and when he found it, it showed them how to ring the church bells till the worm died of the noise. And to this day what the bellringers ring is called Saint George and Augustine.'
* * *
Don's Guest
The maleficent statue of a Great War officer is sited in a ringing chamber for some reason.
Don lit his low-tar coffin nail and went on with his story. 'I'm in that church. It's dark, but there's a sort of glow coming through the door of the ringing-chamber. And I'm petrified. Scared out of my wits, like you are when you're a kid and something's really possessed your imagination. I'm shaking like a leaf, but I still have to go towards the ringing-chamber. It's like wading through thick porridge. I get to the door and look round it. The statue's there. Only it's not the statue. Well, it's a statue. It's got the same face, and it's even got the same fingers broken off. But it's got like an army uniform on. And as I watch it, it moves.' He paused to take a deep swig of beer, then sighed and closed his eyes.
'Yes?' Nicky prompted.
'It's horrible. I can't tell you how horrible it is. I read a book once that had demons or something in it, they were called "the men who advance like spiders". That's what it makes me think of, except that it movesexactly like you'd expect a statue to move. Very slow, very careful, and sort of creaking. No, a bit like the sound of walking on gravel, but—slower. It gets down from the wall, and it—it looks at me. And the eyes, the stone eyes, they move too. White pebbles of eyes, in a white marble face with a moustache carved onto it.' Nicky felt a shiver run down her back, like the one which had visited her outside The Masterson Arms the previous Friday. 'And then I look at the hand with the broken fingers, and there's blood coming from the stumps. And then, usually, I wake up.'
* * *
Jay
12 February 2021
No comments:
Post a Comment