Set in Stone
Short Stories
There! That thumping again! Beneath the floorboards, as if something trapped there seeks egress!
But I have already prised up the ancient boards and peered into that dusty cavity, and found nothing but spiders for my troubles. I have mentioned it to my landlady, but she swears that the tenants in the room beneath me have never complained of any nocturnal disturbance.
It all started, I believe, when I brought the stone to my apartment.
I first came upon it during a routine archaeological dig as part of my studies, my eye drawn to it by something more than its suggestion of truly antique design, and I plucked it up from the soil at once.
It was pitted with age and fitted snugly into the palm of my hand, and whilst half of it was crumbled as if it had been broken from a larger piece, the other half was sharply angled and ornately carved with the worn remnant of foliate patterns and the face of a goddess, broken so that only half remained. But that half seemed to possess some inner quality, something that hinted at its past grandeur despite the degradation of ages.
I jumped nearly out of my skin when a hand touched me on the shoulder, breaking my rapt examination and making me turn, abashed.
“What have you there, lad?” asked a rather portly man in a tweed jacket, whom I took to be a member of the professorial staff I had not yet been acquainted with.
“I…” I stumbled, feeling a sudden and unaccountable chill run through me.
“Piece of masonry, undoubtedly,” said the man, taking the stone from my hand and turning it in his own with practised skill. “Romano-British, I should say, judging from the decoration. Perhaps part of a household shrine or the interior decoration of a temple,” he concluded, handing it back to me. “Keep hold of it. Perhaps it will be a suitable subject for your dissertation.”
With that the professor walked away to another part of the dig, and needing no further impetus I stowed away the stone in my satchel and set about my work again, though strangely distracted by my discovery.
I hurried home that evening, the stone heavy in my bag and on my mind, and even as I fumbled with the stiff lock of the outer door and hurried up the creaking stairs I was already opening my satchel to examine it again, when I almost bumped into my landlady.
“Excuse me,” I said politely, attempting to move past her down the corridor and not to become entangled in one of her interminable conversations.
“No need to apologise,” she said merrily, leaning against the wall as if making herself comfortable for the aforementioned ordeal. “Just making sure the upstairs room is presentable. There still haven’t been any takers yet, but I’m sure it’s just the winter’s chill dampening spirits, wouldn’t you agree? I’m sure we’ll have someone before long,” she said, not giving me the time to agree or disagree, and it was full ten minutes before I managed to extricate myself on the pretence of urgent study.
I say pretence, but as I entered my small room and closed the door behind me I did feel a strange kind of urgency to look upon the stone again. When I did, however, I had to admit to myself to being disappointed.
The thing seemed to lack the quality that had entranced me to it earlier, that spark of mystery and antiquity that would have led me to pocket it even without the professor’s insistence. Now it seemed but what it was; the ill-defined, broken-off corner of an object so time-worn as to be barely recognisable at all. Even the half-face of the goddess seemed, under the light of my oil-lamp, to be so pitted and poorly preserved as to barely suggest a human face at all anymore.
Thoroughly dejected after such a long and eager wait, I put the stone down on my desk and went to wash my face and hands before going out to dine.
Even the warm fare of a public house could not lighten my spirits, however, so after a quick meal I drained the contents of my tankard and left the warm, smoky confines for the cold of the oncoming night. Veils of freezing fog hung between the glowing oil-lamps like eerie decorations, and I pulled my scarf tight about my neck as I walked down the empty street.
As I turned a corner I became aware of footsteps behind me, keeping time with my own. Shivering despite the hot food and ale inside me I increased my pace, only to hear the same increase in the footsteps of my pursuer. I walked on until I was certain that I was being followed, and then I glanced over my shoulder. Nothing. The street was empty.
I walked on, cursing myself for allowing a tired brain and a pitcher of ale to spook me, but soon again I heard those footsteps behind me, matching my own pace. No, not matching. The footsteps following me were fractionally faster than my own.
I increased my pace but to no avail, and for some reason I dared not look back again, like the man in The Ancient Mariner, who:
Like one that on a lonesome road
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And having once turned round walks on,
And turns no more his head;
Because he knows, a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.
As I turned the last corner and saw the light of my lodgings my pace became a near run, and as I searched desperately for the keys I heard the pounding of those footsteps behind me.
With a final panting effort I reached the door, and by chance found it to be on the latch. I hurled myself inside and slammed it shut behind me, covered in a cold sweat with my lungs burning within me.
I looked with wide eyes at the opaque glass of the door as I saw a shadowy figure step in front of a street light, and suddenly the door was pushed open with a blast of shrieking, freezing wind.
I fell back in horrified surprise, but my surprise only increased as I saw standing in the doorway the couple from the room below me. They too regarded me with shock, and asked if I were alright.
Agape and still gasping for breath I asked them if they had not seen or heard anyone pursuing me, but they only replied that they had heard what must have been my solitary running footsteps as I raced back ahead of them.
I mumbled an apology for affrighting them and went quickly up to my room, not knowing what to think. But after I had locked the door and shed my outer garments, now unbearably warm against my sweat-soaked clothes, another shock assailed me.
The papers and journals on my desk, usually neatly arranged, were disordered as if someone had rifled through them. Having spent the whole weekend categorising my notes for my next essay my first impulse was anger at that busybody of a landlady who had chosen this evening for her cleaning, but then I noticed that the stone was gone.
I felt a stab of fear beneath my anger which only deepened as I shuffled impatiently through my papers without finding the ancient piece of masonry. My heart was still pounding after my phantom pursuit as I stormed down to berate the landlady for her bumbling interference.
“Oh lawd no,” she said at once, apparently not noticing my mood, “I ’aven’t ’ad time for any cleaning tonight, but if you’re desp’rate I can come up first thing in th–”
But I was already going back upstairs, my initial anger fading and my fear rising.
Someone had been in my room. Or perhaps it had simply been a gust of wind down the chimney that had disturbed my papers. But then where was that stone?
For a few minutes I hunted through my possessions, checked my satchel and piled up my papers, but having no luck and being extraordinarily fatigued by the day’s exertions and the evening’s frights I resolved to forget the matter and go to bed.
Doubtless I would find the stone immediately in the morning somewhere I had forgotten to look, or else the landlady would come across it during her cleaning.
I awoke suddenly alert and lay breathless on the bed. Ordinarily no light from the street could penetrate the thick curtains, yet now the room seemed almost preternaturally dark. I realised that I was shivering as if frozen, and it was as if some hidden instinct within me were holding back my breath, listening intently.
Then I felt it too; the sense that there was some other presence in the room, some slinking, deliberate movement in the blackness around me.
I trembled, recalling my childhood night terrors, and reached slowly for my oil-lamp with a shaking hand.
Gods, was it me that made that noise; that guttural, whining exhalation that caused me to drop the lamp to the floor with a clatter?
Instantly the thumping began.
It was as if some heavy object were being dropped again and again on the boards, and as I fumbled desperately in the darkness for the lamp, a part of my mind calculated that the object would be approximately the size and consistency of a human body.
Cursing my wild imagination I finally got a Lucifer to light, and in the glow of that flame I saw that the room was empty. But still the thumping went on.
I slowly got out of bed, struggling to rationalise what I was hearing.
It seemed to be coming from beneath the floorboards, as if something caught there was trying to effect a violent escape, yet what could make such a devilish noise I had no idea.
Despite a thorough search of the room I failed to pinpoint the source of the thumping, and just as I was about to go down and waken the landlady the noise abruptly ceased.
For a time I wandered the room, tapping experimentally on the floorboards, but when nothing came of this I sank back into bed, attributing the whole affair to the mind-clouding effects of sleep and my previous excitements.
I had the most strange dream that night, one that I have had many times since. The scene was unclear, perhaps a forest grove or a tree-lined path, but the protagonists were exceptionally vivid.
They were, I somehow knew, a Centurion of the XIV Legion and his retinue, sent to investigate certain disturbing rumours regarding the local populace of this benighted region, mere decades after the birth of Christ.
I can recall their clothing and armour so clearly that I have even provided experts with charcoal sketches and been lauded for my historical accuracy and attention to detail, though they have been unable to explain the nature of the words I feel compelled to write as a heading. For one the Latin is corrupted, they say, perhaps a local dialect, or perhaps obfuscated by its obvious ritual nature. I never hear the words spoken in my dream, but rather they seem to form some summary of the dream’s content or meaning:
VOTVM QVOD A SABHA PROVISSIT DEA GABHADH DEDA
To return to the dream, however.
The Centurion and his men, on entering this scene, are greeted by several queerly garbed individuals whom I am loath to describe as druids, for their dress, customs and language seem to hint at something older than even the earliest of Celtic shamanistic traditions, something that speaks of the Asiatic and which seems to corroborate the connections propounded by several prominent scholars to a primordial northern civilisation known to the Ancients as Hyperboria.
The dream is over quickly. There is a brief conversation in Latin between the two groups, and then suddenly the grove comes alive with ululating bestial howls, and figures come racing out from the trees and bear down the Centurion and his followers.
One of the oddities of the dream is that many of these wild men are still dressed in the torn remnants of clearly Roman garb, yelling out in some barbaric tongue that may well be the degenerate Latin of the phrase or chant that has burnt itself into my brain.
As the dream ends I can do nothing but watch as these savages, like a pack of baying hounds, begin to tear and bite and feed upon their still-screaming fellow men.
Rarely does a night pass when I do not see that act of brutal, ritual cannibalism acted out before the eyes of my soul, yet I dare not speak too openly of such things, for fear of what the alienists, ever greedy for more subjects, would think.
The next day I awoke unrefreshed, but could not afford the luxury of sleeping late as I had my essay to write. After dressing I gave the room a cursory search but could still find no sign of that damned stone. The landlady would find it, I assured myself, and set off with my papers for the library.
The day was cold and overcast, and try as I might I could not focus on my work. I felt as though someone was perpetually looking over my shoulder as I tried to write, though this was obviously a delusion as the library was practically empty, and by mid-afternoon I decided to give up and try again later in the privacy of my own room.
Night encroaches rapidly as winter begins to settle herself, and as I walked home I passed the lamplighter busy about his duties, but felt little joy in my heart at the frail, pitiful flames that flickered in those glassy globes.
The shadows in my rented lodgings seemed deeper, the house more broodingly silent yet filled with subtle creakings and conspiratorial sounds without explainable origins.
As I unlocked my door I was startled by the presence of a man standing, apparently without purpose, in the lightless corridor.
“Good evening,” I said, managing to keep my voice steady as I drew in the man’s unhealthy pallor and the threadbare meanness of his clothes. “You must be the new lodger of the upstairs room,” I added conversationally.
“Yes,” he said, pleasantly enough, “I have been waiting to make your acquaintance and I heard you climbing the stairs.”
“I’m afraid that you won’t find me a very neighbourly soul,” I said apologetically as I opened the door to my room, drawing an interested glance from the man. “I’m a student of archaeology and my studies occupy a good deal of my time.”
“Then I shall interrupt you no further,” he said, with a slightly formal bow, and retreated up the winding stairs to the attic room.
I went into my room and closed the door behind me, a sense of disquietude playing on my mind all the while.
I had brought my dinner home with me that night, feeling a sense of creeping fear about venturing out into the chill, fog-wrapped streets. I dined in solemn silence before taking out my notes once more, but a queer feeling came upon me as I sat down and tried to focus.
For some reason I had the uncanny sensation that someone was standing just outside the door in perfect silence, and somehow the idea came into my head that it was the man from upstairs. It was noticeably silent in the room above me. Was that a creak on the stair, or just this accursed old house shifting its weight?
In the end I took to some desultory reading, but I took nothing in and the feeling of someone standing there persisted. At one point I almost convinced myself to throw open the door and find out the truth one way or the other, but my nerve failed me when I thought of what I might discover lurking there.
Eventually the sensation of menace seemed to pass, and not long later I heard sounds of quiet movement upstairs.
I tried to begin my essay again, but found myself unconsciously listening to the almost stealthy sounds emanating from that attic room. How damnably did that man shuffle.
Finally, exhausted and unsatisfied, I threw myself into bed unwashed and fell into a deep sleep.
I was awoken by the thumping.
I instantly lit my oil-lamp and resolved to get to the bottom of this nocturnal mystery, but try as I might I was no wiser when the thumping once again ceased.
During my round of the room I had the queerest sense that someone was listening to me, and something drew my attention to the room above me, which was silent as if with intense concentration.
I got back into bed and blew out the oil-lamp, aware all the while of being listened to or observed.
Eventually I managed to fall asleep, but I was once again haunted by that bloody dream, and awoke with that chant in my head:
VOTVM QVOD A SABHA PROVISSIT DEA GABHADH DEDA
Shaking my head to try and rid myself of those savage images, I became aware of another nocturnal sound, coming from the attic room at the top of the house.
It was as if the man up there had chosen this early hour of the morning, long before the sun had reared her head, to rearrange his furniture!
I turned over in bed and tried to block out the noise, but the man continued in his rearrangements for some time.
It was not the noise so much as the purpose behind these movements that began to unsettle me more and more as I lay there listening.
This was no simple rearranging of a room; there was a plan behind it!
I lay there, listening, as the furniture shifted and shifted above me like chess pieces in some grand invisible game. And what if they should get me in a checkmate?
I woke up late the next morning, having missed my lectures, and wearily got out of bed to break my fast. On the way out I met the landlady, who noted my fatigued expression and asked if I had slept poorly.
“Just all the moving around, I suppose,” I said, not having the willpower to talk to her for long. “By the by,” I added before she could reply, “did you happen to come upon a carved stone when you cleaned my room?”
“A stone, sir?” she said, mystified. “Can’t say that I did, sir.”
I spent the rest of the day writing, and though I had some success I felt a growing discomfort when looking upon my handwriting. Something about it was different, subtly changed, so that I almost feared to dip my pen into ink and leave a trail of words in an ominously alien style.
As the evening drew on I grew more and more restless, and when my stomach began to growl I looked out with horrid realisation at how dark it had suddenly become.
For a time I tried to quell my hunger with what provisions I had left, but when the pangs became too much to bear I resolved to go out to the public house again.
Having pulled on my coat and boots, my hand was on the doorknob when I became suddenly, chillingly aware of that presence on the other side.
I stepped away, terrified, my flesh crawling with the unknown horror of whatever force was stalking me, and curled up on the bed, my stomach in agony as I cursed the day I had ever found that missing stone!
I sat bolt upright, still fully clothed on the bed. The room was pitch black, and the darkness had an almost palpable, viscous quality to it.
Suddenly the room was filled with a terrifying sense of utter menace, and as I struggled to strike a Lucifer I became aware of that deadly, slinking presence, at the very foot of my bed.
In the momentary flare before the match was blown out by a shriek of wind from the chimney, I saw clearly the form of a woman, dressed in an antique toga, standing and looking at me.
But the face that looked at me! Merciful heavens! It was the face from the stone, in all its time-distorted inhumanity! And worst of all was that, like the stone, this goddess of dread had but half a face.
I awoke from a swoon to hear that dreadful thumping, and I believe I began to weep. When the thumping finally stopped, the man upstairs began his slow, steady shifting of furniture, ponderous and inevitable as Fate.
The weeks after that were a monotony of these horrors; of the dream, the thumping, the shifting of the furniture, the fearful presence lurking in the corridor outside my room, and worst of all were the visitations by that gargoyle goddess made flesh, whose single baleful eye held such hatred as I never imagined could exist.
My studies were thrown aside in place of a single goal. I stopped attending my lectures, cast aside my books, and spent my days searching my room again and again.
If I could but find the stone, I reasoned, and return it to its rightful resting-place, then perhaps the terrible half-faced goddess and her cavalcade of horrors would leave me in peace!
I even tried to find the professor who had been with me on the day when I had discovered the stone, hoping beyond hope that his knowledge could shed some light on the alarming happenings that had plagued me ever since, but was informed that no one matching his description had ever been a member of staff at that institution.
Though my comings and goings after that became fewer, I still occasionally spoke with the man from upstairs, though I never mentioned his eternal nocturnal shiftings to him. After one particularly dreadful night, however, when I swear that I heard something crawling down the chimney towards me, I met with the landlady by chance and felt that enough was enough.
“I wish to complain,” I said, “about the tenant in the upstairs room.”
“But… sir,” she said, slowly. “We don’t have a tenant in the upstairs room.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I replied. “I’ve spoken with the man on a dozen occasions. He shuffles about up there and moves the furniture around at queer hours.”
“The door to that room,” she said, giving me a curious look, “has remained locked for weeks, and the key is always on my person.”
I knew not what to say. I even had her show me the room, but found it quite empty and devoid of any personal possessions. Even the furniture bore the undisturbed dust of several weeks.
“Have you found that stone I mentioned before?” was all I could muster.
After that things have become worse. Whoever that man is, he no longer lives in the room upstairs. Now he lives in mine.
At night I feel him watching me, breathing on me, and I hear him slowly – with such deliberation – pushing my furniture about the room so that in the morning everything is subtly different.
I must find that stone. Where can it be?
I pace the room, searching everywhere. I pull up the floorboards and feel around in that cavity, but find only dust and spiders.
In the corner of the mirror I see the dour faces of people who stare at me, and out in the street I see that the oil-lamps have not been lit despite the encroaching darkness.
Once I saw a herd of spectral deer rush beneath the sheets of fog that hang in the moonlit air, and wondered if the King were out on another of his hunts, and another time I saw the legionaries marching up to secure the northern regions of this desolate province.
But where is that stone? I do not think I could bear another visitation from that half-faced, inhuman goddess of uncounted ages past.
I need time to think. But how can I concentrate with the sound of that witch-burning in the street below my window?
I push open the shutters and shout down at the rabble, but someone only yells up at me and says that I am drunk.
And now I can hear the sound of that wretched landlady making her way quickly up the stairs. She wants to know if everything is alright, if I should require any assistance. And then that damnable thumping begins again, and I yell at her and ask if she does not hear it.
There it is! It’s coming from my satchel!
Ha ha! Can it be? Has the stone been under my nose all this time? How smooth and firm it feels in my hand, how mighty it is – she is – to have survived so many millennia, even in this broken condition!
Yet still that thumping continues.
And then I suddenly realise. It is not thumping at all. It is drumming!
And they were not trees in my dream, they were the pillars of this temple!
The sages and their savage followers await me; it was they who have watched me so closely all this time! And the stone, yes, it is a sacrifice that the stone has wanted all along! Votum quod a sabha provissit dea gabhadh deda! The half-faced goddess must be appeased!
Postscript:
“On breaking into the locked and bolted room, the officer called in by the victim’s landlady was met with a gruesome sight. The youth was stretched out on the floor amidst the smashed remnants of his possessions, with his clothing torn and half of his face crudely bashed in, and the blood-stained piece of stone in his own hand.”
The Fox and the Fiend
A small selection of my as yet unpublished short stories, reflecting my love of folk tales, ghost stories and weird fiction.
The arrival of the Fiend came without any of the expected trappings. There was no sulphurous exhalation, no wailing of lost souls, no blast of unholy wind, and no glaring red flames.
There was the squeak of a fieldmouse, but that may have been because it had realised that it was being eyed up by a nearby owl.
Indeed, there was nothing at all to suggest that a devilish denizen of the nethermost Pit had just appeared in the quiet corner of a field at a quarter past one in the morning.
The owl, so lauded for its wisdom and keen eyesight, was too focused on its next meal to notice anything else. The chattering night-birds were too busy squabbling quietly amongst themselves to pay any heed. And the hedgehogs and badgers and other snuffling scavengers failed to detect anything out of the ordinary at all.
But the Fox did.
His sharp nose didn’t exactly smell anything, and his bright eyes didn’t exactly see anything, and his pointed ears didn’t exactly hear anything, but somewhere between his neck and his bushy tail he felt a prickling sensation, and he knew that something queer was afoot.
The Fiend, meanwhile, was lost in a reverie of fresh sensations. Imagine for a moment, if you will, what it must feel like to be a Fiend newly escaped from Hell, and to find yourself in the corner of a field in the cool early morning darkness.
Angels, even fallen ones, have far more developed senses than our own fallible five. Imagine the range of sensations, imagine the bliss of that night-time air compared with the blighted, Sin-laden fumes of Tartarus, and imagine the battling emotions of triumph and relief at such a deliverance.
The Fiend could barely contain himself. He revelled in his own cunning, mocked the many horrors and trials that he had faced to come here, and gleefully considered the merry havoc he was now at liberty to play with the souls of humanity.
But something was missing. He was alone.
There were none of his damnéd peers here to gloat with over their continuing vengeance against the so-called Almighty, no one to glory and cackle with as one by one they tempted the weak-minded folk of flesh into eternal damnation.
The Fiend could not go back. No, never. True, there might be others of his kind abroad on the night air, but he was exultant now. For a moment he considered finding some human vassal to dominate and to tell the tale of his escape from Hell, but it would be like talking to the most small-minded of impish spirits.
Then he saw the Fox.
“Of course!” spake the Fiend. “The Fox, second only to the Serpent in cunning and guile! He will make a fine accomplice! He will understand my triumph and skill! He will come close to matching my brilliance!”
And with a wave of the Fiend’s hand, it was done.
The Fox had not moved all this time, and as he stood perfectly still, his eyes and nose and ears all straining to detect the source of the strangeness, a curious understanding began to enter his brain.
Suddenly he knew the secret names of the Moon and stars; he saw written in the Heavens the hidden portents of the Lord; he saw the hosts of Angels and other wingéd spirits of the æther; and he understood the ways of Men, which until that moment had been known but alien to him.
Then, as the Fox stood there blinking his bright eyes with surprise, the Fiend appeared before him, glittering with fallen glory, and made a deep bow.
The Fox, though surprised, now knew his manners, and responded with a polite dip of the snout.
“Know ye,” spake the Fiend, “how this sudden understanding hath come upon thee?”
“Nay,” answered the Fox, astonished at his own speech.
“’Twas I that granted it,” said the Fiend, and the Fox bowed a deeper bow of gratitude.
“I am in your debt,” said the Fox, making the Fiend’s eyes glitter, “but tell me, friend, what thou art, for thou art not of the beasts of the field.”
“Nay, verily,” replied the Fiend.
“And neither art thou of the flapping family of fowls,” spake the Fox.
“Indeed, nay,” replied the Fiend.
“Yet thou art not, I think, of the race of Man,” said the Fox, “Nor of the company of blissful spirits that hold sway over this world and the next.”
“In sooth, I am not,” replied the Fiend, “Though once I was. But, my dear and modest Fox, I think that truthfully thou dost know what I am, what is my situation, from whence I am come, and what I now desire.”
“Indeed I do, master,” spake the Fox with a bow. “Thou art like a Fox, whom having been cast out into the barren, foodless and harmful wilderness, has long lurked at the edge of a great coop of fat yet tender chickens, licking his chops, and now thou hast discovered a means of ingress and an escape from thy torments, and are free at last to go about what merry wickedness thou wouldst.”
“Thou art a witty and a sharp fellow indeed,” spake the Fiend, tremendously pleased at his choice of companion. “Yet I see that this comparison of thine is not without its deeper meaning, for thou too art lean and thin, and thy flesh is pinched by cruel hunger.”
“Alas, sir, ’tis true,” affirmed the Fox sadly. “But with this understanding thou hast granted me, I have a scheme as shall please us both, filling my belly whilst granting you the chance to torment the first of many of the unsuspecting folk of these parts, preparing their souls for the eternal fires of Hell.”
“Speak on,” the Fiend eagerly replied, “but name not those flames, for I have felt their empyreal lickings.”
“There is,” said the Fox, “a certain Farmer of these parts, a wicked man, miserly and cruel with customers and livestock alike, who has done me great harm on a dozen occasions. And the pride of this man’s stock is his poultry, well-fed and tender, held within the strongest of coops and guarded by a pair of brutal mastiffs so starved by their wretched master that they strain against their chains to fall upon any who come near that spot. But with your aid,” said the Fox, “we could strip this mean and spiteful man of his livelihood and give him a taste of his own wicked medicines.”
“Thou art a lively and a cunning fellow,” said the Fiend, “and dost deserve a good meal as I deserve merriment. Lead on!”
At this the Fox began to trot quickly toward his usual haunt by the chicken coop, and as he did so he suddenly found a pitch-black fox at his side, observing the night with eyes that were pinpricks of glowing red light.
Anon they came to the coop, and there, to his wonder, the Fox found the fearsome mastiffs fast asleep, curled against each other like pups. The Fiend said nothing.
Moving on, the Fox was about to start at the arduous work of digging and wriggling his way beneath the strong wire fence of the coop, but when he came to it he found its firm mesh rent asunder as if by some terrible wild beast. The Fiend again said nothing.
Then, stalking serenely into the coop, and being but an animal imbued with intellect, the Fox obeyed the impulses of his animal nature and joyfully massacred every last one of the much-prized poultry.
Ever was the Fiend at his side in the shape of a black fox, rejoicing in the bloodshed, and when the Fox was done, licking his chops with satisfaction, the Fiend spake thus:
“Continue thuswise, dear Fox, and there shall be guaranteed for thee a place amongst the crownéd Princes of Hell. Now thy belly is full, yet my need to tempt and torment urges me on to acts of greater violence. Watch, brother,” he said, before crying out a loud “Hoi!”
At once a light came on in the Farmer’s house, and a moment later the jealous Farmer himself appeared, a long coat pulled over his night-dress, thick boots on his feet and a lanthorn in his hand.
“Who goes there?” he cried out as the Fox and the Fiend fled the scene, and then he was running towards his precious chickens, his night-cap dangling and flapping in the night breeze.
He reached the coop and cried out in such pain as it seemed his heart was rent in two, but the next moment he was kicking and cursing at his sleeping hounds with greater savagery than even the Fox had displayed.
Awoken from their charmed slumber, the mastiffs were possessed of a sudden frenzy, and before the furious Farmer had realised his peril they had fallen upon him, barking and snapping.
They tore at his clothes, pulled the boots from his feet, and sent him sprawling into the mud, and always amongst them did it seem that there was a third dog, bulky and black, which sank its fangs into his flesh with even greater ferocity than the others.
At last the Farmer managed to pull himself free, his clothes in tatters and his boots and lanthorn lost, and he fled into his home smeared with mud and blood, his pride in ruin and his avaricious soul heavy with the loss of his famed fowl.
“All the countryside shall hear of this,” spake the Fiend with a chuckle as he reappeared by the Fox’s side in his vulpine form. “But come, my friend,” he said, “the night is but half gone, and I am hungry for more mischief. Thou dost know the region; guide me to some fresh sport!”
“There is,” said the Fox, “a fat old Alderman of these parts, whose outward shows of pious generosity hide a greed and avarice matched only by his prideful nature. A soul, in other words, already well on the path towards damnation, who may provide us with some sport before the night is done.”
“Lead on, friend,” spake the eager Fiend, and the full-bellied Fox ran on into the darkness.
Soon they came to the nearest town, in the heart of which they found the house of the Alderman, and as they took refuge in the shadowed alleyway behind, the Fox explained:
“Aforetimes, when the ways of Men were still a mystery to me, oft did I scavenge here for scraps, and with my new-gained understanding I do realise that I smelt and heard things that none of the townsfolk ever suspected.
“For their Alderman, though they take him to be the very paragon of virtue and generosity, is in truth a spendthrift and a glutton, often lining his own pockets from the Corporation’s coffers to fill his chambers with lavish decorations, and to line his stomach with only the finest of foods, and a great deal of it too.”
“I long to meet this most dishonourable of dignitaries,” said the Fiend with a glint in his eyes. “Let us enter.”
At that his form began to shift, so that in a moment there stood before the Fox the tall and comely figure of a man in black gentleman’s garb, with a thin and handsome face ending in a short pointed beard.
Thus apparelled in the borrowed shape of Man, the Fiend reached into his pocket and took out a long thin key which appeared to be made wholly from bone. To this key the lock instantly resigned, and with a push the door was open and the Fox followed the Fiend inside.
The Fiend went without hesitation to the kitchen, whereupon there began a great clattering of pots and pans, and presently there came wafting out the sweetest of aromas; of roasting meat dripping with juices; of freshly-baked loaves; of steaming puddings and of hot mulled wine.
These scents reaching the top of the house entered into the nostrils of the Alderman, and he awoke famished and salivating from dreams of a sumptuous feast.
Pulling aside his luxurious bedclothes, which had cost more of the town’s money than the amount he had so kindly donated for the upkeep of its almshouses, he slipped on his silken dressing-gown freshly delivered from the Orient, and proceeded downstairs to see who could be preparing such wondrous food at this hour.
And the sight that met his eyes as he entered the kitchen! It was as if the crockery and utensils were alive, whizzing about the kitchen of their own accord, mixing, stirring, chopping, frying, basting and broiling. The Fiend, in his gentleman’s guise, stood in the centre of the kitchen like a conductor orchestrating it all, and at his feet sat the Fox.
“Please be seated,” spake the Fiend deferentially, bowing courteously as a tablecloth whipped itself over the table in front of the Alderman and a napkin tucked itself under his chin. “Dinner is served.”
Accepting the chair that was nudging at the back of his calves, the Alderman sat, amazed, as the courses began to serve themselves to him one after the other. Platters of the most exquisite duck pâté; deep bowls of the most flavoursome soups; slices of thick-crusted pie; whole roasted fowls, many a side of pork and steaks cooked in every way imaginable; and then the desserts! And all of this washed down with the crispest of ciders, the most succulent of wines, and the stoutest of ales.
The greedy Alderman gulped down all this and more, lost in a delicious delirium, until he could but sit there, gasping for breath and covered with sweat and gravy.
“How dost thou like my fare?” asked the Fiend as the utensils continued about their preparations.
“My dear sir!” spoke the Alderman gratefully between gasps for breath. “I know not by what sorcery you conjure up such culinary delights, but I would give you every penny this town has for thy continuing services!”
“I work not for money,” replied the Fiend, “but prefer a sort of… contract of honour between individuals.”
“Even better, even better!” cried the Alderman eagerly, having signed so many contracts during his duties whilst only pretending to read them that he had forgotten their binding nature.
With a flourish the Fiend produced both pen and parchment, and so flushed was the Alderman with food and drink that he felt not the prick of the nib into his greasy flesh before he signed in his own blood.
At once he felt a terrible sickness come over him, and what food was left on the table became as ash. The pots and pans fell to the floor with a dreadful clamour, and the cooking fire flared up like a furnace.
“Tell me again,” the Fiend laughed cruelly as the Alderman retched and writhed in agony in the burning glare of the flames, “how thou dost like my fare. Accustom thyself to it, for thou hast signed thy soul over to me for evermore.”
With that the Fiend took up the contract and left the Alderman ashen, quaking and feverish amidst the foul-smelling remnants of his feast, and for a moment the Fox was struck with pity for the vice-ridden man.
The Fiend stepped out into the early morning air with a sigh of great satisfaction.
“My dear Fox,” said he, “How can I thank thee enough? Thou hast guided me to the torments and temptations which are a necessary balm to my much-vexed spirit, and have even delivered me the soul of a sinner for my troubles. Surely, even with all thy cunning, thou canst not top the result of this last adventure.”
As the Fiend spake thus, there came echoing over the fields and through the grey morning mist the low, reverberating sound of a solitary church-bell tolling, calling the early wakers to matins.
And then a scheme entered the Fox’s mind.
“Hearest thou yonder solemn tolling?” he asked.
“Hsst,” replied the Fiend. “Speak not to me of it.”
“Have I not twice this night led you on worthy ventures?” asked the Fox. “Have we not nigh tormented a man out of his wits, ruined his business and punished his pride? Have we not stripped a man of his soul, weighted down with avaricious trickery and insatiable luxuriance? Dost thou, who did give to me the very reason I now use, doubt that the final act I have planned for this night will be the best of all?”
“Speak on, brother,” the Fiend replied, “for thou hast more than matched my expectations.”
“Follow, rather,” spake the Fox, “and I shall show thee.”
With that the Fox sped off through the empty streets of the town, slipped though hedgerows and clambered over streams, and finally reached the gates of the churchyard from which that slow, sombrous tolling proceeded.
“In yonder church,” spoke the Fox to the Fiend that had matched his pace all the way, “resides the holiest of men; a paragon and not a pretender. This Priest practices what he preaches, he chides with a clean conscience, and ever and anon is he at prayer.”
“Bah!” spat the Fiend. “What ill can I hatch against this pious man, unless ye know of some secret sinfulness by which we may snag him?”
“Nay,” answered the Fox, “the man is pure. Yet would it not be a greater victory still, and a fitting conclusion to your first night escaped from Hell-fire, to confound and humiliate a minister of the very Power that imprisoned you?”
“’Twould indeed mark aptly the beginning of my vengeance,” agreed the Fiend. “Speak thy part; what is thy plan?”
“Canst thou, I wonder,” asked the Fox, “enter through yonder doors of solid oak and breach the sanctuary of the church?”
At this the Fiend waxed wroth.
“I have breached the adamantine walls of Hades’ House!” he roared. “I have suffered Hell-fire and baleful, frozen winds from unhallowed depths! I have fought up and up through light and dark, air and water, warmth and cold to this miserable Sphere! I have faced horrors unimagined, and eluded the ken of Angels who would have cast me back down in a moment! Question not my abilities!”
“I meant no disrespect, master,” spake the Fox with a bow. “Yet I have heard that agents of the Infernal Power may not enter a House of God without assistance, just as an impure spirit may not cross clean flowing water, and it so happens that I have concocted such a method of secreting you inside.”
“Speak,” quoth the Fiend, a spark of anticipation in his eyes.
“Thou hast throughout this night displayed thy powers of altering the appearance of things,” spake the Fox. “Couldst thou alter my form, and clothe me in the shape of man?”
“Easily,” answered the Fiend, and it was done.
“But,” said the Fox, much marvelling at the tall posture and fine clothing of his new form, “will this illusion last within those sacred walls, or will it become as ash like the Alderman’s feast?”
“I swear to thee that it shall last,” replied the Fiend. “Even a scryer gazing in his glass would not guess at thy true nature.”
“Then this is what I propose,” said the Fox-man, much pleased. “If thou canst conjure up a small travelling chest, and hide thyself within it in the form of a fly, I shall knock upon the doors of the church and pretend to be an out-of-luck traveller come to make a morning prayer and an offering.
“When the Priest invites me in, much pleased by my pious words and humble demeanour, I shall carry thee over the threshold safely hidden, position myself between the man and his bell, book and candle, and when the time is right I shall throw open the chest, whereupon the Priest, helpless without his tools of exorcism, shall be yours to torment, and the House of God yours to desecrate!”
So taken by this idea was the Fiend that in a flash there sat before the Fox-man a sturdy wooden travelling chest, and with a final mischievous buzzing the Fiend shifted forms and slipped inside.
The Fox-man picked up the chest and entered the churchyard, enjoying the feel of the cold breeze on his furless flesh, and as the bell ceased its tolling the Priest took to praying alone inside as he often did.
Now, the churchyard had always been one of the Fox’s favourite haunts after an evening’s scavenging, and he had often listened with dumb interest to the Priest’s quiet prayers as he had snuffled around outside.
But now, with his animal understanding augmented with a far greater intellect, and clothed in the shapely form of Man, the Priest’s words took on another, deeper meaning to the Fox.
He knocked on the doors and soon heard the shuffling steps of the old man approaching. The doors were opened and the Priest looked out with pleasant surprise at the seemly, earnest features of the Fox-man.
“Hail, stranger,” spake the Priest warmly. “Come in from the cold and tell me thy tale.”
“Many thanks, kind father,” replied the Fox-man with due reverence, stepping inside and sealing the portal after him. “I have come far this last night, and seek only a brief respite from the morning chill and the chance to say my prayers, and to make an offering to the Lord of Lords.”
They walked through the church towards the altar, and the Fox-man felt the Fiend trembling with gleeful anticipation within the chest.
“I thank thee for thy hospitality, father,” spake the Fox-man as they reached the far end, carefully positioning himself between the Priest and his sacred tools and placing the chest on the stone floor, “yet I must confess that there is… another reason for my visit.”
Before the Priest could respond, the Fox-man had snatched up the heavy church Bible, which was thankfully not chained to the lectern, and had slammed it down on top of the chest.
At once the whole church echoed with the Fiend’s howl of rage as he realised that he was betrayed, and the chest began to shake violently as the Fiend struggled savagely to cast off the holy burden.
“Now, in the name of Heaven, father!” shouted the Fox-man. “Fetch the Host!”
The Priest stood agape as the chest rattled like a possessed thing, before the Fox-man shouted again:
“’Tis a minister of the Enemy I have trapped here! By the God we both adore, fetch the sacred Host!”
Spurred into action the Priest rushed for the Communion wafers, and in a moment he had one in his hand and had placed it on the Bible covering the chest.
Instantly all movement ceased within. There was but a low, drawn-out groan from the imprisoned Fiend, and then silence.
The Priest and the Fox-man looked upon each other for a moment before the Fox-man spoke.
“Come,” he said, “we must finish this work. Have ye any strong chains hereabouts, and a stick of sealing wax?”
The Priest fetched these things, and together they wrapped the chest and Bible together and fixed the chains firmly, and then they melted on droplets of wax and placed more sacred wafers all about it, so that no unholy purpose should unbind those bonds.
“Tell me, friend,” spake the Priest in wonder when it was done, “How dost thou know of these things? And how didst thou entrap this fell Fiend?”
“Being but a humble traveller newly arrived in these parts,” spake the Fox-man, “and hearing the mellow bell calling out to the Faithful, I was proceeding this way over the fields, when I did hear the most malicious laughter, and the sound of someone speaking to themselves.
“Surprising then this Fiendish plotter, whom I overheard both glorying over the unholy schemes he had enacted this past night, and preparing more with which to plague the nearby burg, I did with a Holy word charm him into my travelling chest, whereupon I came here as quickly as I could without awakening the Fiend within.”
“Thou hast done a great and worthy deed this dawn, my brother,” spake the Priest gratefully, putting his hands on the Fox-man’s wide shoulders. “Pray with me now in thanks for our deliverance, and for the grace that hath lain low the subtle Serpent, and then I shall take thee to the town and find thee a place of lodging.”
And so they prayed and gave thanks to God, and as the first sunbeams cut through the haze they arrived at the town.
There they found a great commotion in the morning marketplace, for merchants and buyers from across the country had come on this day to purchase the finest chickens in the land, yet there was no sign of their proud purveyor.
The Fox-man held his tongue, and anon a messenger returned from the Farmer bearing strange tidings.
He had found the farm still closed up from the night before, the prize coop broken into and no chickens left alive, and the Farmer cowering at the window in a state of disarray as his dogs slept outside the door. There would be no more chickens, he had said, and that was all.
Grumbling with baffled disappointment, the crowd began to disperse mutteringly away.
“Hold, fellows!” called out the Fox-man. “I am but new to these parts, yet I have heard tell of a most generous resident of this region, the Alderman of this very town. No doubt he will compensate you for your troubles, and grant you breakfast at least for the cost of your fruitless foray here this morn.”
Taken by the Fox-man’s words, for they too had heard rumour of the charitable Alderman, the merchants and farmer-folk let the Priest guide the way, their stomachs growling at the thought of breaking their fast, and very soon they came to the house of the Alderman.
Knocking on the door, however, they were met by the concerned face of the steward, telling them that his master’s thoughts had become strangely unsettled during the night, that he seemed on the verge of madness, and that he could entertain no guests that day.
Upon spotting the Priest amongst the throng, however, the steward gasped with relief and spoke on.
“Father!” he said. “I am glad to see thee here, for I was about to send for you myself. My master has begged for me to summon you, babbling all the while of demons and devils escaped out of Hell.”
The Priest and the Fox-man exchanged a significant look.
“My friend here had better accompany me,” spake the Priest to the steward. “Meanwhile, thou canst not refuse these men their hospitality.”
So it was that the Priest and the Fox-man went upstairs to the Alderman’s private chambers whilst the steward organised a makeshift meal in the disordered kitchen.
The Alderman was sitting amidst the ill-gotten finery of his bedchamber a broken man. As soon as he saw the Priest enter he began to confess everything; his purloining of public gold for private uses; his unquenchable appetite and avarice; and his final folly of the night just passed; the selling of his soul for a feast of ashes.
At the conclusion of this tale of sin and woe, the Alderman broke down into repentant tears.
“Had I but been given a sign…” he moaned, “I could have changed my ways. But now it matters not what I do, for I have signed myself away with an unbreakable contract.”
“Nay,” spake the Priest to the sobbing Alderman, “thou art delivered by Providence, for this good man hath caught the very Fiend which was abroad this night.”
“And so long as it remains imprisoned,” added the Fox-man, “thy soul shall be free to rise or fall by its own volition.”
“Sayst thou so?” wept the Alderman with joyful relief. “Then I shall redeem mineself at once.”
And so it was. The Alderman went directly downstairs and admitted his past wrongdoings to the assembled men, and the news quickly spread throughout the town and beyond.
Yet so genuine was the repentance of the Alderman that none could remain resentful for long, for he sold all of his precious goods, his fine clothes and his costly trinkets, and returned all of the money to the town, which prospered as it never had before.
“And what shall ye do?” asked the Priest of the Fox-man as they parted ways at the end of that eventful day, having secured lodgings for him.
“I believe that I wish to settle here,” he replied. “And as there looks to be rather a dearth of poultry since the Farmer’s tragic loss, I thought that I might try my hand at the trade. It has been an interest of mine for some time.”
So, with the aid of the Priest and the support of the eternally-grateful Alderman, and due in great part to his own Fiendishly bolstered intellect, it was not long before the Fox-man found success, whilst the humbled Farmer reduced himself to the breeding of swine.
And before long the peculiar talents of the Fox-man became of use to the townsfolk, for he understood the secret workings of the world; he knew when the weather would change; he could read the very hearts of men; and some even whispered that he held converse with Angels.
At any rate he prospered in the town, and it was not long before the old Alderman, weary of the busy sinfulness of the world, retired himself to a monastery, and the Fox-man was unanimously voted in as his replacement by the town Corporation.
He governed wisely and was liked by all (and still enjoyed a good meal of chicken better than any other), and it was not long before his excellent wit, his good looks, and his mysterious reputation attracted the attention of the most beauteous young lady of the town.
They were married by the Priest in the very same church where the Fiend remained (and still remains for all I know) in his solitary imprisonment, and soon enough the couple were blessed with children.
But whether these children took after the true nature of their father, or that of their mother, or a commingling of both, this tale does not tell.