“I wish,” he said abruptly, “you’d try to get that damned book away from Henry.”
I looked up with surprise. “Why should I, Dave? It keeps him amused apparently.”
Baines removed his steel-rimmed spectacles and rubbed his eyes. “That list Henry brought Miss Winnie contains some very strange words—including the names of at least four different devils. And several names which must refer to—entities—maybe worse than devils!”
I poured more wine. “I’ll see what I can do. But I really can’t imagine what harm could come of it. That book is just a new toy to Henry. He’ll tire of it eventually.”
Dave replaced his spectacles. “Well, maybe. But the other day Giles Cowdry heard this funny high-pitched voice coming out of the woods. Said it gave him the creeps. He slipped in to investigate and there was Henry standing in a clearing among the pines reading out of that moldy book. I suppose his Latin pronunciation was pretty terrible, but Giles said a strange feeling came over him as Henry went on reading. He backed away and I guess he was glad enough to get out of earshot.”
I promised Dave I’d see what I could do. About a week later while I was taking a walk through the woods in the vicinity of Henry’s shack I heard a kind of chant emanating from nearby.
Pushing through a stand of pines, I spotted Henry standing in a small open area among the trees. He held a hook in one hand and mouthed a kind of gibberish which, to me at least, only faintly resembled Latin.
Unobtrusively, I edged into sight. A fallen branch cracked as I stepped on it and Henry looked up.
He stopped reading immediately.
I nodded. “Mornin’, Henry, just taking a stroll and I couldn’t help hearing you. Must be a mighty interesting little book you’ve got there. Can I take a look at it?”
Ordinarily, Henry would greet me with an easy grin. This time he scowled. “Ain’t givin’ my book to nobody!” he exclaimed, stuffing the volume into a pocket.
I was annoyed and I suppose I showed it. “I didn’t ask to keep the book, Henry. I merely wanted to look at it.” Actually this wasn’t entirely true; I had hoped to persuade him to give me the book.
He shrugged, hesitated and then, turning, started off through the woods. “I got chores. No time for talk,” he muttered over his shoulder.
The next day I reported my failure to Dave Baines.
“Too bad,” he commented, “but I suppose we’d better just forget about it. If he won’t give that infernal book to you, he won’t give it to anybody. Let’s just hope he loses interest in it after a time.”
But Henry didn’t lose interest in the vellum-bound book. On the contrary, he developed an obsession about it. He went hunting or fishing only when driven by acute hunger. He neglected his potato patch. His shack, never very sturdy, began to disintegrate.
Less often during the day now, but more often at night, his high-pitched voice would be heard arising from one of the dense groves of pines or hemlocks which bordered the dusty country roads. Scarcely anyone in Juniper Hill knew Latin, but everyone who heard Henry’s chant drifting from the dark woods agreed that it was an eerie and disturbing experience. One farmer’s wife averred that Henry’s nocturnal readings had given her nightmares.
Somebody asked how Henry could see to read in the dark, since nobody ever had seen a light in the woods from whence the sounds emanated.
It was, as is said, “a good question.” We never found out for sure. It was possible that Henry had finally memorized the contents of the book, or part of it. This, however, I personally found difficult to believe.
Henry’s explanation, when it came, was even more difficult to accept.
One hot summer morning he turned up at the village general store. He looked emaciated and his clothes were in tatters, but he seemed imbued with a kind of suppressed animation. Perhaps exhilaration might be the better word.
He bought a two-dollar work shirt and three tins of corned beef. He did not appear chagrined that these purchases very obviously emptied his tattered wallet.
Loungers at the store noticed that he was wearing a ring. Some commented on it.
Surprisingly, Henry held it out for inspection. He was visibly proud of it. Everyone agreed later that they had never seen a ring like it before. The band might have been shaped out of silver, but worked into it were tiny veins of blue which appeared to glow faintly. The stone was disappointing: black, flat-cut and dull in luster.
Unusually voluble, Henry volunteered some information on the stone. “Ain’t no good in daylight. Nighttime it comes alive. Throws out light, it do!”
He gathered up his purchases and started for the door. He paused at the threshold, chuckling, and turned his head. “Light a-plenty,” he added, “’nuff light to read by!”
Still chuckling to himself, he walked out into the hot sunlight and off down the road.
The only other information we received about the ring came from Walter Frawley, the town constable, who met Henry in the woods one day. Frawley reported that he had asked Henry where he had acquired the ring.
Henry insisted that he found it, purely by chance, tangled up among the roots of a huge pine tree which formerly grew near the ruins of the old Trobish house. The great pine had toppled in a severe windstorm several years before. Natives estimated the tree was at least one hundred years old.
Nobody could satisfactorily explain how the ring had become entangled in the roots of a century-old pine tree. It was possible, of course, that old Hannibal Trobish had buried it there many decades ago—either to hide it, or to get rid of it.
As the hot summer advanced, Henry went on chanting in the woods at night, giving late travellers “a case of the nerves” and causing some of the farm watch dogs to howl dismally.
One day I met Miss Winnie in the village and asked for her opinion of Henry’s book, based on the list of words and names which he had brought to her for translation or clarification.
“The book is medieval in origin,” she told me. “And I think it was written by someone who pretended to be a wizard or sorcerer. Poor Henry is out there in the woods at night chanting invocations to nonexistent devils dreamed up by some medieval charlatan who was quite possibly burned at the stake!”
I frowned. “Why do you say ‘nonexistent devils,’ Miss Winnie?”
“I don’t believe in such things,” she replied a bit stiffly. “I went to Dave Baines about the book because I thought it was having a bad effect on Henry. Heaven knows I’d be delighted if he learned Latin, but I don’t think he’s going about it properly. And he’s neglecting everything. People tell me his little hut is falling apart and that he doesn’t eat properly anymore.”
I thanked her and went my way, even more concerned than I had been before, but totally unable to see how I could help. I felt that Henry still liked me, but I knew his stubbornness was monumental.
Not long after my talk with Miss Winnie, I heard rumors that Henry was building some kind of stage or platform on a small knoll adjacent to one of the deeper stands of hemlock. The knoll was about a mile from one of the less-traveled country roads. It was quite high, almost level with the tops of the hemlocks. I had been on it a few times and recalled that on a clear day it overlooked a huge expanse of forest and field.
One afternoon when the summer heat had subsided somewhat, I went to have a look at Henry’s platform. After nearly becoming lost in the dark hemlock woods, I slipped into the sunlight and climbed the side of the knoll, a small hill made up of glacial stones and gravel.
It was barren except for a few stunted shrubs, ground creepers and dried lichen patches. Centered on the exact top was a twenty-foot structure built primarily out of willow saplings. A few stakes of heavier wood had been driven in around the base to strengthen the whole. The top of the bizarre lookout tapered to a tiny wooden platform, just large enough for one person. A crude hand-ladder had been attached to one side and a kind of rail ran around the perimeter of the platform.