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

I wanted to ask if there were recordings, or if it had been tested scientifically with appropriate instruments, but I was now being offered the chance to participate in something of a clinical assessment myself. I’d let that be enough on such short acquaintance.

“It’s complete, I notice. The lower jaw is wired on?”

“Glued on, actually. So it can’t bite.”

“Excuse me?”

Will chuckled. “Another urban myth you get all the time when the lower jaw is still attached. Biting skull stories. This was glued on well before Farday parted with it. Perhaps an earlier owner thought it might stop it sounding. You have to love these provenance junkies. They add whatever they like.”

“Looks to be from a natural death?”

“Excuse me?”

“No trepanning holes. No autopsy line where the top of the skull’s been removed.”

“You have a sharp eye. But I guess that’s a bit heartening, really. You can pick it up if you want.”

“May I?”

“You need to be sure. No faking going on.”

“Oh, right. I see.”

I crossed to the stand and—with only a moment’s hesitation—lifted the ale-coloured orb, rotated it slowly in my hands. I’d never touched, let alone held, a human skull before—this ultimate palace, library, vital stronghold of another being, once a complete entity, someone who had left this “container” behind when he’d vanished in death. It was heavier than I expected, maybe three pounds total, though I allowed that the silver counted for something. Apart from the lacquering and silverwork, it was very clean, divorcing it even more from the organic realities it had once been part of. It was more like a piece of décor or a film prop—an emblem of death rather than an actual artefact from it.

I turned it over and examined the spinal hole in the base. “This opening—?”

“The foramen magnum,” Will said. “Where the spinal cord entered the cranial vault. You get the echo chamber effect most there. But, like I said, Dave—it’s not an ocean effect. The whisper will come to you across the room. And you’re free to check the skull again whenever you like if you decide to help us. We know you’ll be careful.”

“So how do we do this? What do you propose?”

“You’ll have family commitments, I’m sure. But this is a chance we can’t afford to let pass. I was going to suggest you sleep over each Sunday night for as long as you can manage. Till you hear it.”

“Or dream about it again.”

“Till something happens. Will you do it?”

At 10:34, I was starting to grow sleepy.

Being this high up certainly made it easier to settle. A basement or a more closed-in space would have added a pressing, claustrophobic feel, but this makeshift tower bedroom had an airy, open quality—made the whole thing bearable somehow.

The only thing I’d done before slipping between the covers was turn the pedestal so the skull was side-on, not facing me with its empty eye sockets. Positioned in left profile, it actually looked like it was keeping watch, just as it had in my boyhood years when it gazed down on the street below.

The inevitable thoughts came, of course, but grew less urgent with familiarity.

Who were you?

Who added the silver and why?

What was your death like to cause such embellishment, if the adornment were even remotely part of the death itself?

No ordinary skull, surely. Then again, there were ultimately no ordinary deaths. No ordinary skulls. Every one was unique.

The long curtains lifted and fell, breathing in the night.

What would it be like when it whispered, I wondered, realizing that I truly did expect it to happen, expected something from those calm inner chambers, trusted that they would draw something in, produce the sighs and murmurs that supported its reputation. The occipital hole was blocked by the cushion now, though from what Will had said that made no difference.

If not tonight then in time. For Will and his daughter Maggie it had just been the whispering. For me it had been a string of dreams over nearly forty years in which a skull—this skull quite likely!—had tried to tell me something. Somehow it meant everything.

I woke several times, first at 12:02 when Solly jumped off the bed (I hadn’t even known he’d paid a visit), then again at 12:55 and at 1:23 for reasons I couldn’t quite fathom.

Maybe it was Solly fussing about again, chasing insects in the balmy night, though I’d heard nothing. Each time, I’d check the green numerals of the clock, then lay considering the different sound and spatial signatures of the house, tracking the obvious things—how everything felt larger, higher, older, dustier, redolent of years of waxing and polishing—trying to fathom others far more elusive, far harder to put into words.

Each time I listened for the skull sounding, wondering if it might have done so just now, enough to waken me, but that I had missed what it had to say.

It didn’t happen like that. Rather it came on a dream. At 2:18, I was startled awake by the terrifying certainty that the skull was looming over me, poised there with jaws hideously agape and about to bite. It took a while to free myself from that terrible image, but finally I did manage to sleep again.

There was no such image when I woke a short time later, lathered in sweat, heart pounding, just the familiar night sounds through the partly open windows. But there was the chilling sense that it had been there, that any breathing, any whispering, that now came would be laden with suppressed screams, thwarted spite, ancient mischief.

The jaws are glued shut, I told myself as the panic ebbed. No possibility of biting. Or screaming. Or whispering, for that matter. It’s the mind playing tricks.

But there! Did I imagine it? I kept absolutely still, tried to calm my heart.

Like escaping gas? The hiss of a snake?

A sibilance.

There was. There was. From across the room. I didn’t dare switch on the light lest it stop.

A far rush of surf up an impossible shore.

“…sssssssssssssssssssssssssssss…”

It came and fell away, exactly like the sea.

“…ssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…”

The curtains lifted and settled. Leaves stirred in the night. The sibilance grew stronger.

“Thissssssssssss…”

I had the word, as easily as that. This .

“…chanssssssssss…”

Chance.

“…ourssssssssss…”

Ours.

I’d never forget this moment. Such words. I remembered to grab my notebook and pen from the side-stand, made myself write them down.

“…adlarsssssssss…”

What it sounded like.

But no. No.

At last!

This chance ours at last.

Then grasped what I’d heard.

Not “Our chance at last” but “This chance ours at last.” The odd syntax. The contrived quaintness of it.

It wanted the s ’s for dramatic effect. No, needed them most likely, needed them to slide along, exactly like the sea running up the strand. Economies of delivery. Working with what it had.

“I’m listening.” It sounded silly to say it, melodramatic, and part of me resolved to check for wires, a relay or receiver when this was done, some kind of set-up.

Better yet, do it now, I told myself. While it’s sounding.

I pushed back the covers, swung my feet to the floor, waited for the next word to begin. I’d move on the next word.

It came with the same rush of ocean on sand.