Paul Doherty: The Midnight Man

‘I had no choice.’ Parson Smollat stepped forward. ‘The eerie happenings here, God save us.’ He breathed out noisily. ‘Sir William wants that, don’t you, Sir William?’

‘I certainly do. The cemetery will be closed until these matters are settled.’

‘This is our parish church.’ Bardolph wouldn’t give way.

‘Enough!’ Sir William declared. ‘Bardolph, this can be discussed elsewhere.’

‘God will resolve all these problems,’ Anselm offered.

‘Then I hope He does so soon.’ Bardolph grasped the torch and stomped off up the path.

They were about to follow when a loud banging echoed from the church. Anselm ordered everyone to go on. They did, following the pool of light thrown by the fluttering torch up to the narrow corpse door. The path turned and twisted between the stark, fading memorials of the dead. Briar, bramble and bush snaked out to catch the ankle or snare the cloak. The ominous banging continued. Simon explained how it might be the door leading down to the crypt, the charnel house where the gleaming white bones and skulls of the long dead were stored. Bardolph, holding the torch, began to tremble, the flame shaking and juddering. Stephen could even hear the man’s teeth chattering. Beauchamp seized the torch and dismissed Bardolph back to the house.

‘We are in the realm of the rat and rot,’ Beauchamp turned, face all smiling, ‘of corruption and decay. If you have the words, you can even summon up each soul buried here and ask them if they’re damned or not.’

‘Walk on,’ Anselm insisted. ‘The dead gather here but so do a horde of angry, hostile spirits.’

‘Or,’ Beauchamp, still trying to make light of it, lifted the torch and stood blocking the narrow path, ‘I remember the story of a man who, every time he passed a cemetery, recited the De Profundis for the departed. One night, as he did so, he was attacked by robbers but was saved by the dead who rose up, each holding the tool they’d used in their lifetime to defend him vigorously.’

‘Not here,’ Anselm whispered hoarsely. ‘This is not the place for your mockery. I am an exorcist — ghosts gather here. I can hear their faint chatter. Listen!’

‘Nothing!’ Beauchamp retorted.

‘Exactly,’ Anselm replied. ‘Can you hear anything? Where’s the snouting fox, the furtive rat, the floating, ghost-winged owl?’

Beauchamp stared around, lowering the torch. ‘True, true,’ he conceded. ‘There’s nothing but silence.’

‘And the dead.’ Stephen spoke before he could stop himself. The novice pushed his hands up the sleeve of his gown. He knew he could see and hear things others, like Beauchamp, could not. In spite of Beauchamp’s mockery, this was happening. Strange lights had appeared. Sparks of flame leaped up only to sink into the blackness, followed by chattering, whispered conversation where one word could not be distinguished from the next. Across the cemetery shapes and shadows moved, darting shifts between the headstones. A hideous scream rang out.

Beauchamp cursed, fumbling with the torch. ‘Now I hear,’ he declared. ‘Let us. .’

Anselm didn’t wait but, clutching his leather satchel in one hand, the other on Stephen’s shoulder, stepped round the royal clerk and marched swiftly through the darkness. Simon hurried behind, jangling his keys. They reached the narrow door with its rusty iron studs. Simon unlocked and pushed back the creaking door. Anselm, Beauchamp and Stephen entered. The royal clerk lit one of the sconce torches just inside. Immediately a cold wind swept by them; the torch flickered and died. Higden and the rest hastily retreated.

‘You should also go,’ Anselm warned Beauchamp. The clerk just shrugged. Anselm walked into the church and pulled across a bench into the centre of the nave. He sat down with Stephen on his right. Once again the exorcist began the ritual. ‘Oh, God, come to our aid. .’

Stephen and Beauchamp murmured the responses. The novice began to tremble. Anselm grasped his hand and squeezed it. Beauchamp was at a loss, aware of the cold, the rank stench, though he could not see the faces which swarmed out of the gloom, white and drawn, eyes black holes of fire, hair like trailing wisps of mist.

‘You see them, Stephen?’

‘Aye, Magister.’

‘What?’ Beauchamp whispered.

Anselm ignored him as he concentrated on the gathering malevolence. The dire memories those terrors of the night summoned up swept in to distract his mind and chill his soul. Anselm was back as a soldier in that French city the English had stormed, its streets full of wild animals feeding on human flesh. Drunken ribauds, armed to the teeth, looting and raping as they moved like a horde of demons through the fallen town. Old women dragging out corpses from houses filled with fire and smoke. Packs of rats, bellies full, snouts stained with a bloody froth. Corpses stacked like firewood in the middle of squares. The black smoke of funeral pyres winding everywhere. The screams and yells of souls in their last extremity. The gallows breaking under the weight of cadavers while corpses crammed the wells and polluted the streams. Anselm forgot the rite and began to mouth the memories which plagued him.

‘Magister!’

Anselm heeded the cry. He began to recite the Credo as he stared at the haunting, nightmare faces massing close. Beside him, Stephen could take no more. He fell to his knees, head bowed, hands clenched in prayer. Beauchamp, cloak tight about him, drew his sword and half-raised it. Anselm pressed on the clerk’s arm until he lowered the blade.

‘By the grace of God,’ he whispered at the wraiths which surged all around him. ‘By the grace of God, in the name of that same God, by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, who are you? Why are you here? Why do you haunt this place? In the Lord’s name, tell me, here in the House of God and at the very gate of heaven.’ Anselm closed his eyes and prayed. Neither he nor Stephen knew if the phantasms spoke or whether their own souls echoed the desperate pleas for forgiveness, for justice.

‘Against whom?’ Anselm begged. ‘Take comfort. I shall light tapers and sing Masses for the repose of your souls. Tell me, who are you? Why are you here?’

‘Thrust out!’ a voice hissed close to Stephen. ‘Thrust out, our souls winkled out of their shells; now we swim amongst the dark ones.’

‘Except for me!’ A man’s voice, mocking and strident, called out. ‘Taken, plucked from my rightful place but then. .’ The voice faded like the rest.

Stephen strained to hear but it was like listening to the murmured conversation of a crowd passing beneath a window. He caught some words and phrases, some in English, others in French or a patois he couldn’t understand. Stephen opened his eyes. ‘They’re going,’ he murmured. He felt the press around him ease. The cold faded. The stench seeped away, turning back to the general mustiness of that old church. Stephen sat back on the bench. Beauchamp began to softly whistle the tune of a song.

‘What happened. .?’ A clatter and clash stilled the clerk’s question. Beauchamp jumped to his feet as around the church kneeling rods, stools, benches and other furniture were violently overturned.

‘They are leaving,’ Anselm explained. ‘They vent their temper at not being believed or not being helped. They are withdrawing for a while but I think they’ll return.’

‘But why are they here?’ Beauchamp insisted.

‘In a little while. .’ Anselm sighed. ‘Sir Miles, that will have to wait. For the time being, we are finished here. .’

Sir William Higden gathered all his guests into his dining parlour, a fine pink-washed room with a gleaming oaken table. A mantled hearth, the carved face of a dragon in its centre, warmed the chamber, while on the walls either side of it hung tapestries celebrating David’s victory over Goliath. Green, supple rushes, tossed with herbs and sharp garden spices, covered the floor and sweetened the air as they were crushed underfoot. A partition to the petty kitchen had been removed. A cook, assisted by two sleepy-eyed servitors, prepared bowls of diced chicken smothered in mushrooms, cream and garlic sauce. Sir William had broached his finest cask of wine sent from Bordeaux four years earlier. Goblets were filled, except for Anselm’s — he never drank. The exorcist had once confided to Stephen that if he started to drink the delicious juice of the grape he’d never stop.