Саймон Бествик - The Devil and the Deep - Horror Stories of the Sea

The rush of wind in the trees was closer, of course, this high up amid their foliage. But it was a good sound, and not too loud. I’d still be able to hear the skull, Will had assured me. There’d be no mistaking it.

Which both fascinated and troubled me.

To think. A night with a whispering skull!

There can be distinct layers of unreality in how one thing leads to another. Six nights before, someone had torched a car parked on the southern side of Abelard where our quiet street bordered the playing fields of one of Sydney’s most exclusive boys’ schools, probably as part of an insurance scam or some last-recourse act of evidence removal. Local residents, myself included, had simply assumed that the white sedan parked across from Number 7 for the past week had belonged either to a neighbour or someone visiting.

But around 2:30 that Tuesday morning, a series of muffled explosions had woken most of the nearby residents, who looked out their windows to see the blazing vehicle, promptly made their separate calls to the fire brigade, then joined other neighbours standing about at safe distances like kids watching a bonfire. The fire engine arrived, a hose was deployed, the fire quickly extinguished. The police were soon there as well, asking their questions. Those not engaged in telling what little they knew continued chatting.

An elderly man on a walking stick moved in next to me, and I recognised him as the widower from 1A at the far end of the street, the “old guy from the big house,” as he was often called in front-fence conversations.

“Not something we get very often,” he said.

“Not around here,” I replied. “I’m Dave. Dave Aspen.”

“Good to meet you, Dave. I’m Will. Will Stevens. From 1A down there. You lived here long?”

“Forty-two years. A local boy. Loved your house as a kid, with that tower at the front. Called it the Castle.”

“I can imagine.”

“I’ll never forget there was a skull perched on a cupboard or bookcase in the top tower room. Dark-looking thing, more like a mask. I even borrowed my dad’s binoculars for a closer look. Definitely a human skull. Were you there then?”

Will was watching the firemen working at the car. “I was. Not my idea to put it up there, but yeah.”

“Well, that bloody skull’s been with me ever since. Still dream about it, if you can believe that.”

Now he turned to face me. “You do?”

“Once, maybe twice a year at least.”

“Well now.” Which was the appropriate step-away, leave-it-be point. But old Will kept at it. “What happens in these dreams?”

“Different every time. But when it turns up it talks. Tries to tell me something.”

“What does it say?” Will’s tone had taken on a distinct edge.

“Can’t make it out. It whispers something. But it’s important, you know?”

“How do you know that, Dave? That it’s important.”

“Just how it is. But all these years, I never quite catch what it’s saying. Bloody frustrating really. You think we would’ve reached an understanding.”

“Dave, we’ve been neighbours all this time. Pity we didn’t get to talk earlier. That skull you remember. It’s still there. Still in the tower, but one floor down now, out of view.”

“Hey, I’d love to see it.”

“I’d really like you to. Maybe tomorrow, if you have the time. Drop by in the afternoon. You see, it’s like you say. It whispers in the night sometimes.”

There was the torched car still smoking in the early hours. Police standing about. The fire crew packing up, murmuring to each other in low voices. An unexpected meeting with a neighbour. And now an odd tingling down my spine. And another at Will’s next words.

“Who knows? Maybe it’s been talking to you all along.”

Late spring in Sydney so often means November afternoons with a riot of sunlit jacaranda blooms above the rooftops, rich mauve against brooding storm-clouds as the ragged end of winter settles into its summer run.

That’s how it was when I headed along to 1A at 12:55. I’d spent the morning finishing off the plans for the Quinn-Elliot shopping mall extensions and had sent scans through to Marta and Eric at our architectural office in Brisbane. This would be my reward.

Will answered the front door on my second knock, looking more his seventy-seven years in daylight, more like any other elderly person caught outside their comfort zone but putting their best face on it.

“We’ll have a cuppa when we’re done upstairs, if that’s okay,” he said, and turned to the Stairmaster, whose track ran up the wall of the long wooden staircase leading to the upper floor. “You go up first, Dave. Make a U-turn at the top.”

I grabbed the banister rail and made my ascent, heard him whirring up behind.

The skull sat on a thin, dark blue cushion atop a waist-high mahogany stand. True to Will’s word about it being “out of view,” it was now set in the north-west corner between the tall, all-points windows, facing me as I entered the modest tower room.

“So no impressionable school kids can see,” Will said good-naturedly.

I smiled. “It’s very discoloured. That honey-amber sheen.”

“One of its owners, possibly whoever first found it, lacquered it, coated it with vegetable gums and animal fats, something like that. That’s probably what helped preserve it so well. We’ve been told that it’s older than it looks.”

“Is that silver on the sides?” For that’s what it looked like, added to the zygomatic arches, the nasal bone, and at two places on the mandible.

“Interesting, eh? We keep it polished as best we can, but that’s the extent of the maintenance. Makes it seem important, yes? A cherished ancestor or something. Despite trying to keep a low profile, quite a few museums want it. We get letters all the time. But we won’t let it out of our sight.”

“Is there a backstory? Is it from our colonial past? Brought from overseas?”

“That’s the trouble, Dave. Little is known, though maybe you can help us there. It’s definitely from a male. Its official name is the Farday Skull, after Lucas Farday, the only owner to record any sort of provenance for it in 1907. As late as that.”

“But he wasn’t the first owner?” I realised my gaffe. “First post-mortem owner?”

“Two previous owners are mentioned—not counting that original one.” He smiled, though in a distracted way, as if considering facts he was leaving out to give the shortest account possible. “But nothing can be verified. Lucas Farday sold it or gave it to my grandfather in 1919. Farday was a bit of a showman, so it came with the usual clutch of rumours you get when skulls are kept as curios, especially those in curiosity cabinets and tent-shows.”

“What kind of rumours?”

“That it screams, for instance. Or utters a prophecy every full moon. That it can only be heard by those about to die. Collectors and spruikers encourage such stories.”

“You’ve actually heard it whispering, you said.”

“Many times. So has Maggie. So did my late wife. We’ve just never been able to make out what it’s saying. It’s always just out of hearing.”

“Can it be a sea-shell effect, Will? You know, put one of its openings to your ear, you hear the ocean?”

Will chuckled again. “It’s funny how many people never want to put a skull to their ear to find out. But yes, there is the ocean effect, though a skull has surprisingly few openings where you can hear it. But the whisper is much more than white noise, Dave. It can be heard from where we’re standing now.”