James Blaylock - The Aylesford Skull

“Communed with his spirit?” St. Ives asked after an interval. “Do you mean literally?”

“Quite so,” she said. “On nights when the fog rose off the fields I projected his… features , if you will, on the mists, and he appeared as he had been, as a boy, and with a semblance of life, or at least movement. He knew I was nearby, although I’m certain he couldn’t see me, not in the sense that I can see you sitting before me now. He couldn’t speak, of course, but his face betrayed his anguish, and I was haunted by the fear that I promoted his anguish each time I called him forth. There was a depravity on my part, too, which I very well knew. I resorted to laudanum in an effort to restore my sanity, but the drug magnified my longing, and soon I had two vices rather than just the one. Endeavoring to keep the dead alive is to murder oneself slowly, do you see? I knew I had to bury my Edward, and with William’s help I finally did.”

Kraken sat staring at the tabletop now, nodding silently. “Nearly a year ago, it was, sir – mid-July. We paid a visit to the churchyard, and with the sexton’s help, we laid him to rest in his coffin.”

“And now Narbondo has recovered it,” St. Ives said. “He had only to murder Mary Eastman to complete his work.”

Kraken stirred in his chair and cleared his throat. “Or to begin it, sir.” And then to Mother Laswell he said, “The door, Mother. Tell the Professor about the door. It’s the door, sir, that we’re up against now.”

She nodded, considered for a moment, and said, “It’s here that we’ll come a cropper, Professor. I don’t ask you to believe what I’m about to reveal, but you must know that I believe it. My late husband had no interest in his son’s ghost for its own sake. As was ever his way, he meant to make use of it. Spirits are misplaced in the world of the living. They long to move on, but for reasons beyond our ken, they sometimes do not. To put it into the simplest terms, John Mason had attempted to contrive a means to open a lane to the land of the dead, through which a ghost might pass on, and through which a man might follow, and might return through it again.

“I’m unaware of the particulars, sir, for the discussions in my late husband’s notebook, when it referred to the opening of the gate, were mere sketches and implications, although there was some discussion of his affairs with John Mason, touching on Mason’s inept work contriving the lamps, as he referred to them. My husband carried his own knowledge in his mind, for the most part, and his mind is closed to us now.

“It was open for a number of years to the youthful Narbondo, however. John Mason blew himself to pieces when he detonated the dust in a grain silo, attempting to project an earthbound spirit onto the suspended cloud before it exploded. Whether he was successful in opening a gate to the netherworld, if you will, God alone knows. I’m certain, however, that my husband was far more adept at necromancy than John Mason had been. My husband was a man of vast knowledge, Professor, arcane, evil knowledge, if you’ll permit me to use the word, and he was very much feared in certain circles. Narbondo, however, had no fear of him, even as a boy, but used my husband to his own ends, just as my husband used others. Narbondo, we’re certain, is in possession of what my husband referred to as the Aylesford Skull, simply to keep it distinct from others of its kind. He never for a moment thought of it as the skull of his only son, objects and people being merely more or less useful to him.”

“You’re worried that Narbondo will make use of the skull, as John Mason attempted to do?” St. Ives asked. “He means to open one of these fabled gates?”

“Exactly, sir, except that his goal, I fear, is to open the gate fully, and to leave it open.”

“I don’t quite follow you,” St. Ives said.

Kraken tugged on his chin, widened his eyes, and said, “She means there’ll be a-coming and going when he’s finished, sir. That a man might walk across Piccadilly and into Hell as easy as kiss-my-hand and back out again with a bucket of brimstone and his hair afire, and so with them that dwells there, the dead and the living in a sort of hotchpotch, as the Scotsman said.”

“Why would a man desire to bring about that end?” St. Ives asked.

“Bill’s account is perhaps a bit fanciful,” Mother Laswell said, “but your question is well taken. Morbid curiosity, might answer, or an opportunity to travel where no man has traveled previously. It is quite possible that a man possessed by evil would be drawn to such an atrocity for reasons of his own, or perhaps in his narcissism he fancies himself a modern Virgil, who would lead people through the realms of the dead. We know nothing of the nature of the gate, Professor, or what lies beyond. We cannot say whether it leads to an actual, earthly place, or to the spirit world, or to both in some manner. But such questions are of secondary importance. It’s the very attempt that we fear – the detonation, the spilling of human blood, perhaps on a massive scale.”

St. Ives nodded. “I would very much like to see that notebook,” he said. “No fragment of it remains?”

She shook her head decisively.

“And the laboratory? Perhaps the foundation still stands?”

“An oast house was built on the site.”

“There’s nothing then?”

“Nothing, Professor. What I know you now know. The only thing separating our mutual understanding has to do with belief.”

St. Ives sat for a time in silence, and then said, “At the moment, Mother Laswell, I’m at a loss for a suitable response. You pay me a great compliment simply by taking me into your confidence, but I’m not certain that I can repay you in kind. Your story has a good deal to do with the ways in which a man’s endeavors might betray the very things that he most loves, or should love – his wife and his children. Since you’ve been candid with me, I’ll pay you in kind. At the moment my life is full of the duties I’ve mistakenly ignored to my own peril – my home and my wife and children. I’ll consider what you’ve told me, and in fact won’t be able to do otherwise, since the tale is compelling, but I tell you truthfully that I see no clear course of action, and, if I did, I’d be disinclined to pursue it. There’s little profit in my speaking falsely here.”

He stood up from the table as the clock was striking ten o’clock, and it came to him that Cleo and Eddie would be in bed by now, quite likely asleep, perhaps Alice also. He had meant to speak of air vessels and elephants to them tonight, simply to inform their dreams, but it would be too late for that. “Good evening, ma’am,” he said, but Mother Laswell’s eyes seemed to be focused on something that was a very great distance away, and his words apparently went unheard.

“I’ll show you out, Professor,” Kraken said in a low voice, leading the way toward the door. They passed through the entry hall and into the starlit night. Ned Ludd the mule was still abroad, as if standing sentinel until St. Ives had gone away and the imaginary drawbridge could be hoisted and secured. The sliver of moon shone in the sky in the direction of the river.

“I can find my way home, Bill. You remain with Mother Laswell. She needs some comfort.”

“Aye, she’s in a state, sir, and has been since the news of Mary Eastman’s death this morning. As soon as she heard of the grave being dug up and the skull gone, she vowed to hunt Narbondo down. She brought him into the world, she said, and it was her bounden duty to take him out of it again and to put poor Edward to rest. She means to kill her own son, sir. I talked sense to her six to the dozen, but I don’t have the words to make her see, and I was hoping that with your help she would…” He fell silent now, as if he had overreached himself.