Тим Леббон - New Fears 2 - Brand New Horror Stories by Masters of the Macabre

The students exchanged glances. Mr Haringa offering them the opportunity to depart class before the bell—after one or two minutes past the bell—was almost as startling as the scarlet waistcoat, the removal of his jacket and tie. One of the better students raised her hand. Mr Haringa nodded at her. She cleared her throat and said, “Are you serious? We can go?” The class tensed at the directness of the question, ready for it to provoke their teacher’s notorious sarcasm.

But his razored wit remained in its scabbard; instead, he said, “Yes, Ashley, I’m serious. If you want to leave, you may.”

Another student raised his hand. “What happens if we stay?”

“You’ll have to wait to find out.”

In the end, slightly less than half the class accepted the offer. Once the door had closed on the last student’s departure, Mr Haringa closed the watch and returned it to its pocket. “Aidan,” he said, “would you get the lights?”

For an instant the classroom was plunged into darkness. Someone laughed nervously. There was a click, and a series of lights sprang on around the room’s perimeter. Positioned at the base of the walls, each cast upward a crimson light whose long oval shape suggested a window. A trick of their placement made the lights appear to hover ever so slightly in front of the painted brick. A couple of the students wondered when Mr Haringa had been in to set up so elaborate a display. They had watched him walk to his car yesterday afternoon, and they had seen him exiting it this morning. Not to mention the teacher had not impressed them as especially proficient in technology. Perhaps another faculty member had helped him? Mr Baillie, maybe?

Despite the fabric enveloping it, the pocket watch was louder in the crimson space, every tick opening into a tock. Yet when Mr Haringa spoke, his voice, though low, was clear. “You will recall,” he said, “that, following his trip up what was then the Congo River, Joseph Conrad became ill. As does Marlow, yes. Unlike Marlow, Conrad went to a spa in Switzerland the year after his trip, to continue his recovery. He was suffering from a variety of complaints, including gout, which likely was unrelated to his time on the Congo, recurrent malaria, which likely was related to his months on the river, and pain in his right arm, which may or may not have been connected to his recent activities. Oh, and there was something wrong with his hands too, a strange swelling. To put it mildly, he was not in good shape.

“The spa he went to overlooked a mountain lake. A small steamboat, not unlike the one Conrad had captained on the Congo, ferried passengers to and from the spa to a modest town on the opposite shore. From his chair on the spa’s front porch, Conrad could watch it chug across the lake’s smooth blue surface. He found the sight simultaneously comforting and unnerving. Eventually, once he was feeling well enough, he left his chair, ventured down to the landing, and bought a ticket for the crossing. When the boat reached the town, he did not disembark; instead, he remained on board as the vessel took on a fresh load of passengers and set off for the spa. At the dock, he stepped off and made his way up to the spa.

“Conrad repeated this trip the next day, and the one after that, and every day thereafter for a week and a half. Finally, the steamboat’s captain introduced himself to him. His name was Heuvelt. He was from Amsterdam, originally, had commanded a merchant vessel in the Dutch East Indies for twenty years before retiring to the Swiss mountains, where he had established the steamboat service and was now as busy as he had ever been. He was approximately ten, fifteen years older than Conrad, late forties to early fifties. In a letter Conrad described him as weather-beaten to handsomeness. The two of them had a pleasant exchange. Conrad complimented Heuvelt on his vessel. Heuvelt invited him to try the wheel. Conrad declined, politely, but he and Heuvelt continued their conversation over the course of their next several visits, trading stories of their respective ocean voyages. According to everyone who knew him, Conrad was an accomplished raconteur, and apparently Heuvelt was reasonably gifted as well. Their daily meetings, Conrad wrote, did as much to restore him to well-being as any of the spa’s therapies. Eventually, he accepted Heuvelt’s offer to steer the boat, to the irritation of the young local whose job it was. Heuvelt was impressed with Conrad’s handling of the boat, and soon this became part of their daily routine. Conrad would board the steamboat, assume the wheel, and he and Heuvelt would converse while he guided the boat back and forth across the lake.

“After another couple of weeks, Heuvelt asked Conrad if he would be interested in joining him on board that evening, around sunset. There was something he wished to show Conrad, a peculiarity of the lake Heuvelt thought he would find of interest. Conrad agreed, and a few hours later was waiting alone on the landing as the steamboat pulled up to it. To his surprise, Heuvelt had the wheel, his young man nowhere to be found. ‘This is not for him,’ Heuvelt said, which sounds more odd, and even ominous, to us than it did to Conrad: ship captains are notorious for keeping secrets from their crew, no matter that the crew consists of a single man. Whatever their destination, Conrad understood Heuvelt was trusting him to keep it to himself.

“Heuvelt turned the boat toward the other end of the lake, which was hemmed in by steep mountains. About halfway to their destination, the sun set, leaving in its wake a crimson sky. The water caught the light, and it was as if, Conrad wrote, they were steaming across a tide of blood, beneath a bloody firmament.”

For an instant, a handful of students had the impression that the light saturating the classroom was in motion, as if they were seated on the steamboat with the writer and his friend. The tick-tock of Mr Haringa’s pocket watch echoed like an enormous grandfather clock. The students shook their heads and returned their attentions to the teacher. A couple of them noticed that, despite the red filter laid over everything, Mr Haringa’s waistcoat remained visible as its own distinct shade of the colour, but did not know what, if any, significance to ascribe to this.

His words still audible through the pocket watch’s seesawing progress (perhaps he was wearing a microphone?), Mr Haringa proceeded: “With the sun setting, the mountains ahead grew shadowed. As the boat drew closer to them, Conrad saw that what he had taken for a recess among the peaks was in fact a steep valley, through which a surprisingly wide river rushed into the lake. Heuvelt turned the wheel to bring the prow in line with the river, and started them up it. To either side, thick walls rose, reducing the sky to a single red strip. There was a light on the boat, but Heuvelt made no move toward it. Conrad wondered if the man was attempting to impress him. If so, he was succeeding. While the river was sufficiently broad to admit the steamboat’s passage, rocks and clusters of rocks pushed up through its current every few yards, requiring a skill at navigation Conrad did not think he would have been able to summon. He assumed Heuvelt was steering them toward another lake, because he could see no way for the boat to turn around in the river, but he did not want to distract Heuvelt from his task by asking him to verify his assumption.

“They rounded a bend in the river, and there in front of them a great tree stood in the midst of the water. Easily a hundred feet high, a third that in girth, it was like no tree Conrad had seen anywhere on his travels, which, as you know, had been considerable. Deep grooves ran up its bark, clumps of moss and small plants filling the channels. Pale lichen tattooed the tops of the ridges. High overhead, thick branches formed a crown like a vast umbrella, from which a network of vines hung in loops and lines. To show him such a thing might well have been Heuvelt’s intent, but the steamboat showed no signs of stopping, so Conrad assumed there was more to come. In order to circumvent the enormous obstacle, Heuvelt had to steer perilously close to its vast trunk, an arm’s length away, less, and this close, Conrad could feel the tree’s age. This was an ancient of its kind; when the Romans were laying roads across their empire, the tree must already have stood proud. Conrad stretched out a hand to touch the hide of so venerable a being, only to be warned off completing the act by a shake of Heuvelt’s head.