He broke off, gulping with sheer rage.
‘My dear Maddox!’ said Foster, startled by his silent friend’s outburst. ‘I’m awfully sorry. I wasn’t trying to snub you in the least. I simply thought—’ He too broke off. Then he decided to risk another annoyance. ‘What have you got on your mind?’ he asked, rather urgently. ‘Tell me, Maddox, there’s a good chap. What is it?’
He paused hopefully; but Maddox had dried up. He could not explain. He knew that his solid, comfortable friend would never, could never understand that his terror was not imaginary; he could not bear to watch him soothing down his friend, to see the thought ‘hysteria’ in his mind . . . Yet it would be a relief to tell . . .
‘Look at this,’ he said at last. He took from his pocket the case he had found on the beach. ‘What do you make of that paper?’ he asked.
Foster moved out of the shadow of the wall so that the pale watery sunlight, struggling through the clouds, fell on the parchment. Maddox, a little relieved by the serious way he took it, turned back to examine the painting again. It was certainly very odd that the figures, which he remembered so clearly and which had seemed so very distinct, should now appear so dim that he doubted their reality. They seemed even fainter now than they had when he had looked at them a few minutes ago. And that heap flung beneath the hillock—what did that represent? He began to wonder whether that, too, were a figure—a drowned man, perhaps. He bent closer, and, as he stooped, he was aware that someone beside him was looking over his shoulder, almost leaning on him.
‘Odd, Foster, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘What do you make of that huddled thing under the stones?’
There was no answer, and Maddox turned. Then he sprang to his feet with a shuddering cry that died in his throat. The thing so close to him was not his friend. It was the hooded creature of the beach . . .
Foster found the parchment so interesting that he was anxious to see it more clearly. He peered at it closely for a minute, and then decided to go into the presbytery for a light. He had some difficulty with the old-fashioned oil lamp; but when he finally got it burning he thought that the document fully repaid his trouble. He became so absorbed that it was not for some minutes that he realized that it was growing very dark and that Maddox had not yet come in. He felt quite disproportionately anxious as he hurried out to the tiny overgrown churchyard.
He was startled into something very like panic when he found no one there. Without reason, he knew that there was something horribly wrong, and blindly obeying the same instinct, he rushed out of the tiny enclosure and ran at his top speed down to the beach. He knew that he would find whatever there was to find on that lonely reach that was pictured on the old wall.
There was a faint glimmer of daylight still—enough to confuse the light until Foster, half distraught with a nameless fear, could hardly tell substance from shadow. But once he thought he saw ahead of him two figures—one a man’s, and the other a tall wavering shape almost indistinguishable in the gloom.
The sand dragged at his feet till they felt like lead. He struggled on, his breath coming in gasps that tore his lungs. Then, at last, the sand gave way to coarse grass and then to a stretch of salt marshland, where the mud oozed up over his shoes and water came lapping about his ankles. Open pools lay here and there, and he saw, as he struggled and tore his feet from the viscous slime, horrible creatures like toads or thick, squat fish, moving heavily in the watery ooze.
The light had almost gone as he reached the line of beach he knew: and for one terrible moment he thought he was too late. There was the pile of stones; beneath them lay a huddled black mass. Something—was it a shadow?—wavered, tall and vague, above the heap, and before it squatted a shape that turned Foster cold—something thick, lumpish, like an enormous toad . . .
He screamed as he dragged his feet from the loathsome mud that clooped and gulped under him—screamed aloud for help . . .
Then suddenly he heard a voice—a human voice.
‘In nomine Dei Omnipotenti . . .’ it cried.
Foster made one stupendous effort, and fell forward on his knees. The blood sang in his ears, but through the hammering of his pulses he heard a sound like the howling of a dog dying away in the distance.
‘It was by the providence of the good God that I was there,’ said Father Vétier afterwards. ‘I do not often come by the shore—we of Kerouac, monsieur, we do not like the shore after it is dusk. But it was late, and the road by the shore is quicker. Indeed I think the good saints led me . . . But if my fear had been stronger so that I had not gone that way—and it was very strong, monsieur—I do not think that your friend would be living now.’
‘Nor do I,’ said Foster soberly. ‘My God, Father, it—it was nearly over. Sacrificium hominum, that beastly paper said . . . I—I saw the loathsome thing waiting . . . he was lying in front of that hellish altar or whatever it was . . . Why, Father? Why did it have that power over him?’
‘I think it was that he read the—the invocation—aloud,’ said the curé slowly. ‘He called it, do you see, monsieur—he said the words. What he saw at first is—is often seen. We are used to it, we of Kerouac. We call it Celui-là. But it is, I believe, only a servant of—that other . . .’
‘Well,’ said Foster soberly, ‘you’re a brave man, Padre. I wouldn’t spend an hour here if I could help it. As soon as poor Maddox can travel I’m going home with him. As to living here alone—!’
‘And you are right to go,’ said Father Vétier, gravely. ‘But for me—no, monsieur. It is my post, do you see. And one prays, monsieur—one prays always.’
THE FACE IN THE FRESCO
Arnold Smith
In the years between the wars, the London Mercury magazine was a veritable gold-mine of gems of uncanny literature, and many now-classic stories made their first appearance here—by names such as John Metcalfe, Margaret Irwin, H. R. Wakefield, Charles Williams, Walter de la Mare, L. P. Hartley, A. E. Coppard, and M. R. James himself, with ‘A View From a Hill’ (May 1925), ‘A Warning to the Curious’ (August 1925), and his last story, ‘A Vignette’ (November 1936). One of the most Jamesian, but least known, stories that appeared in the London Mercury is the one that follows. It was first published in the June 1928 issue (No. 104).
Mr Jones was an elementary schoolmaster and a bachelor of shy, retiring disposition. An early disappointment in love was responsible for a lonely existence which custom had made natural to him. At the time of his extraordinary adventure he had become so accustomed to the pleasures of solitude that he preferred to take even his Saturday afternoon walks—his sole recreation—without a companion. This accounts for the fact that he was alone on the occasion of his visit to Godstanely, where he intended to see the recently discovered twelfth-century frescoes in the old church, which stands about a mile from the modern village.
Although Godstanely is only about fifteen miles from the metropolis and is not more than two-and-a-half miles from Hopton, the nearest station on the London and South Eastern Railway, it is for all practical purposes very remote. The stream of traffic between London and the south coast passes along the main road at the foot of the Downs, unheeding the steep and narrow lane which toils tortuously upwards to Godstanely through some lovely country, hitherto undesecrated by motor-bus and charabanc. The cyclist must follow this lane and make a long detour to reach the site of ancient Godstanely and its church, but the pedestrian can get to it by a steep path straight over Terrible Down. It may be added that the train service to Hopton is entirely worthy of the railway company to which this station belongs; the reader will, therefore, feel little surprise when he is told that the tripper rarely finds his way to Godstanely.