The Aylesford Skull

buttery shortcake that Mrs. Langley had brought over earlier today along with a pot of jam, which stood empty, the spoon still in it. He set what was left of the slice onto the oilcloth, carefully wiped his hands on his trousers, and studied the covers of his collection of Cornhill Magazine, eight copies in all so far. The Professor had passed them on to him, which sometimes meant within two or three days of the arrival of the magazine, the Professor being a prodigiously quick reader. Finn meant to tackle the stories one at a time, and he favored reading slowly, attending to the pictures along the way, looking back now and then to reread and savor a likely passage. He was in no hurry to finish good things, whether shortcakes or stories, and that was doubly true for “The Merry Men,” which he had undertaken to read through this evening.

The lamp next to his bedside was smoking, and he turned the wick down a trifle, listening to the night breeze rustle the foliage beyond the window. Through the open curtain he could see that the lamps were still lit in the Professor’s house, or, more rightly, in her house – Alice’s house, Mrs. St. Ives – since it had belonged to her old aunt. Surely it wasn’t respectable to think of her as Alice, but he relished the name and repeated it often to himself, and it had come to sound like a variety of beautiful flower to him.

A loneliness welled up within him now, although it was mixed with a draft of happiness, which led him to wonder at the strange good luck that had brought him here, this snug cottage being the first real home he could remember, discounting the wagon-roofed lorry in which he and his mother dwelt during their days traveling with Duffy’s Circus. He thought about his mother, their happy days on the open road, his two threadbare years following her death, living hard in and around Billingsgate where he earned a few coins shucking oysters, as they called it, for Square Davey the oysterman, and summer nights sleeping beneath London Bridge, where he had discovered on a particularly dark evening that a short-bladed oyster knife might shuck the blood out of a man in short order if a person knew just where to put the blade. He had left the man lying in a crimson pool, black in the moon shadow, although whether dead or alive he couldn’t say, because he hadn’t lingered.

Remembering the man made him shudder, and he still had nightmares of the face looming up before him, and the soft voice, “…Come with me now, boy,” – just those five words, and the hand clutching his arm. He had wished the man dead more than once, if it weren’t already so, although doubtless it was a sin to make such a wish. But that was in another lifetime, it seemed to him now, and he was happy to have got out of London and into the countryside. He still possessed the knife, which he kept sharp out of habit.

There was a scratching on the door – predictable old Hodge, wanting company. He stood up from his bed and slipped on his shoes. In the moment that he opened the door, Hodge flew in past his leg, leaping up onto the table and arching his back, looking keenly out into the night.

“What did you see, Hodge?” Finn asked. “It wasn’t that old stoat out and about, was it?” Hodge didn’t answer, but seemed soothed at the sound of Finn’s voice and shifted his interest to the piece of shortcake that lay on the table. The light blinked out in the gallery windows of the big house opposite, the family settling down. Thinking to take in the night air, Finn stepped out through the door, closing it behind him, and stood listening to a nightingale singing in the trees nearby. The Professor had told him that it was only the male bird that sang at night, lonesome and without a mate. So it went for many things, or so his mother had told him. He saw that a fragment of moon rode in the sky, bright enough so that he could see a shifting in the shadows at the edge of the rose garden now – something solid, not a shadow at all. A deer, perhaps?

He walked in that direction as quietly as he could, the shape of the animal revealing itself as the distance shortened – a red deer, right enough, a stag, enormous it seemed to Finn, with a broad set of antlers, eating the roses right off the stems, the scoundrel. It raised its head, looking at him indifferently. Finn picked up a stone and pitched it at the deer, hitting it on the flank. “Go on, sir!” Finn said to it. He had pruned those roses like old Binger had taught him, in such a way as to bring out the blooms. Precious few would be left by tomorrow if every animal in creation had its way with them. “Be off with you!” He shied another stone, a trifle harder, and the deer bolted up the alley in the direction of the road, but almost at once slowed down, walking at a leisurely gait, as if to have the last word on the matter.

Finn saw a strange shimmering light then, a faint glow moving among the shadows of the trees, perhaps a man with a muffled lantern…? The deer, seeming to see it also, abruptly skittered sideways, as if pushed by a heavy wind, and in the blink of an eye leapt into the undergrowth and disappeared. Finn realized that the night birds and crickets had fallen silent, although he couldn’t say when it had happened, and he saw that the light wasn’t apparently from a lantern at all, but had the look of moonlight – a circle of hovering mist, which was impossible on this warm, dry night, and there was no moonlight beneath the trees anyway.

Corpse candle, Finn thought. He had seen such a thing before, in the Erith Marshes – dead men abroad at night. He wasn’t overly fond of dead men, or of any sort of ghost, but they were a curiosity, taken rightly, and not a thing to be feared, or so his mother had told him. And in fact his only memory of his grandmother was a memory of her ghost, which had appeared to them one night outside Scarborough, where the circus had set up on a lea above the ocean. He remembered that his mother had wept to see the pale presence standing before them, although he was too young and frightened to understand quite why.

He watched the light, which shifted and changed shape, taking on the appearance of a human figure now, very small, like Tom Thumb adrift in the shadows. Then it expanded, and the figure of a young boy stood there, not quite solid, staring through coal black eyes into the distance, as if through a window that looked into an unseen land. The boy’s mouth hung open, not as if he was speaking, but gaping open like a dead man’s mouth, and his head was canted unnaturally to the side. He had been hanged. Finn could see a narrow band glowing brightly on his neck, where he had taken the weight of the rope. There was a whispering now – Finn heard it distinctly – although it sounded within his head, like a voice in a dream. He couldn’t make out any words, just the whisper of a consciousness mingling with his own, and a sense of sorrow and of someone wandering in a vast darkness.

He heard the jingling of a horse’s bell then, certainly out on the road, and the figure dimmed and disappeared along with the whispering. Finn was happy enough to see it go. Curious, he walked a few steps forward, wondering whether someone was out at night searching for the ghost and how they meant to catch it. He had seen a device once, a mirrored box that was baited with sweets as an attractant – Allsorts, being a favorite among ghosts. Once the ghost entered the box, the mirrors would keep it trapped.

There was the sound of the bell again, quite nearby, but it stopped short this time, someone having silenced it. He took another step forward, hesitant to be seen. There it stood – a wagon, a man sitting in it, dressed in black, the horse also black, so that the wagon and the man and horse and all the trappings were nearly invisible against the darkness of the trees behind them.

The man saw him and nodded by way of greeting. “Come here, boy,” he said in a low voice, gesturing Finn forward with the buggy whip. “Step out into the moonlight so that I can have a look at you.”

Finn stood where he was, preferring the shadows. He could sense that the dead boy was still nearby, perhaps already in the possession of the dark man, who, Finn could see, had a distinct hunch on his back, although his cape and the darkness had hidden before now.

“I’m in a quandary,” the man told him. “I’m looking for the London Road, quickest route. I fear I’ve lost my way in the darkness. I’m not too far out, I hope.”

“No sir,” Finn said, “not too far. There’s a turning half a mile ahead that will take you into Wrotham Heath, and then it’s the right fork and all the way into Greenwich. There’s a coach inn at Wrotham Heath, sir, the Queen’s Rest, which you might be wanting if you’re looking for a room. It’s a tolerable long shift into London starting as late as this.”

It occurred to Finn that there was something off about the man, something bent, perhaps sinister, although it might be the lateness of the hour and the strange quiet that had swallowed the night. He heartily wished that he had stayed indoors with Hodge.

“A long shift is it? I’ll take your word on that. You seem to be a likely lad, answering so quick. I’ll pay you a sovereign to see me to the inn, so that I don’t miss the turning. You can sup there and be home well before dawn if you’re not slow-footed. What do you say to that?”

“I say that I cannot, your honor.”

“And why not?”

Because you have the face of Beelzebub, Finn thought, although he said nothing.

“Two sovereigns, then.”

“No, sir, I cannot.”

“Two sovereigns ain’t enough for a lad like you, is it? Three then, and that’s my best offer.”