The Dark and What It Said Read online

  "There's naught saying who she was. The Woodthorpes don't speak of the matter." He fell to thinking for a moment, then added, "But I think I might once seen a picture of him when I was a kiddie and up at the Manor for a Christmas do. They'd set a marquee on the lawn, but I got away somehow and played a game of hide-and-seek with myself in the Manor House where I weren't supposed to be." He chuckled at his memories. "Well, one way or another I managed to get right up under the roof, and I found this painting there, just lying there on its face. So I picked it up." All expression of happy memories disappeared as he said, "I tell you I near died of fright, because it weren't the sort of painting a six year old expects to find in the roof of the Manor House at Christmas. It was the head of a black man, like a ebony block all chopped about to make a face. His hair and beard was grey, especially the beard, all stringy-like and had a little pouch tied into it."

  "If he was the one haunting the Manor way back when," I said, thinking things through, "it could be that the witch woman stopped it by having his body buried on the island maze. There's a notion in magic that spirits lose strength if they have to cross water."

  "It's a thought, isn't it," said Mr Scudamore.

  It was indeed, and I was thinking on it as I asked my way to my next port of call -- the local vet.

  ***

  The Norton was thumping along beautifully as I approached Woodthorpe Manor late that afternoon. The sun hung low in the west, and this time I wasn't flattened by a sudden big silver car.

  Throttle back. Lean it through the gateway. Twist the grip, crackle up the drive.

  The two groundsmen were emerging from the lodge to begin their evening rounds as I passed. Big boys carrying big sticks, they stared for a moment, then waved. I'd never met them, though I expected Keenen had spun them some story to explain my presence at the Manor. Perhaps they were even in on the conspiracy. Paranoid as that might sound, with what I'd heard from Mr Scudamore and especially from the vet I was prepared to find almost anything under the bed now.

  A face pulled away from an upstairs window as I pulled up outside the East Front. Now, I thought, perhaps now that I look on the verge of leaving, Mrs Winton might be forced to resort to honesty.

  She must’ve flown like a broomstick to get from that upstairs room to the entrance hall where I met her a few seconds later.

  "Well," she said after looking at me as if for the first time.

  "Yes, well I suppose I'll be off now." I was grinning inside, lying through my back teeth and loving it.

  "Right now?'"

  "I've imposed long enough."

  Her expression was saying Please impose!

  "Oh by the way,” I continued, "I found this on the maze island,” and produced from my jacket pocket the bone. "Did you know the local vet used to work at the London Zoo? He was able to tell me that this is part of the wing bone of the Australian emu bird. Now how do you suppose --"

  I would never have guessed Mrs Winton to be the fainting kind.

  ***

  "It's like Burke and Hare."

  I said nothing to Keenen's comment, apt though it was. The sun was going down, the shadow of the marble ruin creeping over us. I just kept digging.

  Mrs Winton had revived after a moment, and I'd helped to get her into a sitting position on the stairs. "You should never have taken the bone from the island," she said, settling herself against the banisters. "It was the only thing that really held him there; that and the water, though the water won't stop him now once the sun goes down."

  “You should've told me all this -- and a lot more besides -- in the first place.”

  “You would've left.”

  “I should leave now."

  "He'll run amok."

  "All the more reason to scram." I let that sink in a moment. "He's the black man whose ghost haunted the Manor in the early eighteen hundreds, isn't he?"

  She nodded. "Actually he's from New South Wales. His name was Korrabilla, but they called him Birdfellow because he practised bird-magic."

  "I see. It takes an Australian ghost hunter to hunt an Australian ghost.”

  “A dozen investigators over the past five years haven't even known where to start. All they could tell His Lordship was to let sleeping dogs lie. But they haven't looked across the grounds on still evenings to see the trees in the centre of the maze tossing and tossing. They've never felt as if there's an animal out there crashing against its cage, and that one day it'll break out."

  "And the bone?" I held it up at eye level.

  Mrs Winton flinched. "I suppose you've been talking to Mr Scudamore."

  "Yes."

  "Back in 1823 the Eleventh Earl brought this Birdfellow back from a voyage into the Pacific."

  "Which explains the palm and the gum trees in the grounds," I said.

  She nodded again, nervously. "The Earl thought to train him as a servant, and perhaps even have him work magic. But Birdfellow ran away only a week after coming to the Manor. It must’ve been a terribly alien place to him -- England, I mean. He didn't know how to survive in one of our winters, and so he died. But it wasn't long before his ghost began plaguing the Manor in the shape of a monstrous bird like an ostrich."

  "Emu," I said.

  "Was it? Servants and tenant farmers ran off, and live stock died. So the Earl called in the witch known as Mother Gwynne. She told him the body had to be surrounded by moving water, and to bury that," she gestured at the bone I was holding, "with him as it was his source of magic. That stopped the haunting, though it didn't put him to rest. Possibly Mr Scudamore told you about the children who wandered into the maze one night?"

  I nodded.

  "When the brooks running into the maze dried up five years ago, the pond water stopped moving, and the ghost began to come out into the maze itself. If it wasn't for the bone the ghost would've broken loose. It's going to break loose tonight." She peered despairingly through the banisters.

  I sat down beside her. “What if I put the bone back?"

  "The spell's broken," she said, and she was probably right. "Mother Gwynne said he couldn't rest because he wasn't buried in his own land, so you might think the obvious thing would be to ship his remains back to Australia. But she warned that the moment his bones leave the island he'll come chasing them.”

  What had been so wrong with winter back home?

  I tried to remember all I knew about Aboriginal burial customs -- which took about ten seconds. All I came up with was something to do with trees, a half-formed idea at best. Then, scraping the bottom of my brain, I recalled that during an inquest into Black deaths in police custody the court was instructed to refer to the dead only as 'Deadfella' and 'Deadlady', as it was Aboriginal law that no record of the name, no image or belongings of the individual must be allowed to exist after death. I said, “There may be a second reason why Birdfellow doesn't rest. Is there anything connected to him that's still in the house: writings, drawings, paintings, belongings?"

  "There's only the diary I hoped you'd find on the library shelf and a portrait painting up in the roof."

  I suddenly remembered where trees might come into all of this. "Better find it and bring it with the diary to the south-east lawn. Get the groundsmen to hollow out one of the gum trees with axes.”

  "What are you going to do?"

  "Shift old Birdfellow's bones."

  The front door opened. Keenen entered, his footsteps echoing in the hall, slowing to a stop at the bottom of the stairs. He saw the emu bone in my hand and went very pale.

  "But I won't be shifting the bones alone," I said, and meant it.

  ***

  "It's like Burke and Hare."

  I said nothing to Keenen's comment. The sun was going down, the shadow of the marble ruin creeping over us. I just kept digging, and presently our shovels brought up vertebrae. Birdfellow had been buried face down, an ancient way of burying the feared dead.

  We dug with small spades, with our hands and with the care of archaeologists, gathering up
the arms, legs, pelvis, ribs, every vertebra, every finger and toe bone. And of course the skull and its grey, stringy beard with the little kangaroo skin pouch tired into its strands. "This contains magic powders", I said to Keenen, trying to sound like I knew what I was talking about as I placed the pouch in the canvas sack with the bones. One of the eye teeth on the lower jaw was missing, had probably been knocked out as part of manhood initiation ceremonies. But to make sure we sifted the bottom of the grave until just on sunset when we made a hurried retreat from the island.

  As we reached the gate in the inner wall I yielded to temptation and turned around for one quick look. There was a shadow over the island, somehow darker than the night coming on; a shadow that seemed to flex out across the water. I hurried Keenen through the gate, pulling it shut on its rusty hinges. We were out of the garden, but no yet out of the woods. There was still a long, crooked course ahead of us to the south-east lawn.

  A couple of minutes later and several alleys into the maze we became aware of a growing dryness in the air, a smell of deserts and a sense of open spaces.

  "The ghost is following its bones,” said Keenen.

  I nodded. “God knows what'll happen if it finds them, and God help us if it finds them with us.”

  "I think it's about to catch up,” whispered Keenen.

  We dodged through a gap into a dead end to hide.

  The bones in the sack rattled of their own accord. We hugged it tightly, smothering the sound. Then Keenen went “Ugh!” as something writhed inside the bag. We flung it from us. It hit the ground with a dry crunch then began to squirm as if something alive was inside, fluttering, pushing, clawing to get out. I kicked it back against the wall where Keenen and I stood on it, hearing bones snap. It was only then that I realized there was the sound of birds in my head, getting closer.

  We lay down with our faces to the wall, making ourselves small and silent with our arms wrapped around the bag. The bird sounds and the desert dryness grew, seemed to beat against the wall we hid behind, then faded. We waited a minute, maybe two, but heard, felt, smelt no more.

  We did the bone-bag shuffle back into the main alley. Keenen, while we'd been digging up Birdfellow's grave, told me he'd had Mrs Winton coaching him on the ins and outs of the maze from the library diagram since the night of my arrival (an unsurprising revelation), so I followed on blind faith. He took what he explained was the round-about way out as the ghost would be stalking the more direct route, at least at first. Both of us wanted to carry the sack by its extreme edges, but we knew it would only rattle again. So we held it close, all the time afraid of sudden squirmings.

  We had torches, but didn't dare use them. There was half a moon out, which helped sometimes. But a lot of the alleys were still in deep shadow.

  A kookaburra's laugh, a strident oooohahahaaaoooorrrr of mental noise right between the ears, no telling direction or how close. We froze.

  "It's trying to psych us, make us panic," I said, not admitting how good a job it was doing on me. "It's probably reached the entrance and now knows we're still here."

  Keenen wet his lips. "If it's at the entrance we're trapped. It can just sit there and wait."

  "Yeah, that's a thought." It's what I would've done if I were the ghost. But then I wasn't the ghost.

  We were huddling in the shadows of a five way junction of alleys, looking this way and that and over our shoulders when it happened. The bag wriggled and a skeletal arm ripped out, thrusting into the air, wavered a moment, then clutched at Keenen's throat.

  The old man yelled -- and the arm fell back into the sack with a laugh of clattering bones.

  "No more!" Keenen yelled. He threw the sack from him. "No more! No more!”

  He ran.

  And so did I, because panic is contagious.

  ***

  A blur of walls, of benches and statues. A blaze of stars as I ran headlong into a dead end.

  I collapsed, dazed and shaking, eyes watering from the blow to my nose. And in all this, the raucous cawing of crows heard with the mind and a human scream heard with the ears.

  Then silence.

  For a long time only silence.

  Something was scraping along the pavement outside in the main alley, coming nearer. A scrape, a pause. A scrape, a pause, coming on, coming near. I tried not to imagine what it was. I wished I had a stick to smash its bones to dust.

  The only moonlight in this alley was far up one wall. All else was dark. I felt for the torch in my pocket. I had to will my hand to switch it on.

  It was almost at my feet, that one arm, bones white in the light, dragging the bag behind it. The bag reared up as I stood there, staring stupidly. The bony fingers spread and struck.

  The torch went spinning, hit the wall, went out. Finger bones, cold and clicking, smelling of the grave, dug into my face. The bones in the bag knifed through the sacking, into my leg, into my side.

  I pulled away, bringing my head against the wall, smashing the hand against stone. Its grip loosened. I wrenched it from me. But the finger bones closed about my hand, trying to crush it, make me cry out so the spirit of these bones stalking the alleys would come.

  I pushed to my knees with all my strength, swinging the arm, bringing the bag around after it in a half circle, smashing it against the wall. Bones splintered with a lovely crack! But the grip was still there. I swung the bag again and again. "Goddamn it! I'm trying to help you!" Finally the arm itself snapped and the bag sagged to the ground like a K.O.ed fighter, the skeletal hand dead in mine.

  As quick as I could I shoved all the bones I could find back in the sack. There were noises in my head like tinkling bells, the bush chimes of the bellbird getting louder and louder. I limped from the dead end alley, dragging the bag behind me.

  "Now where?" I asked myself. I had no idea which way I'd ran, not even which way was in and out. Birds were singing, chiming in my head, louder than before. I struggled off as fast as my leg and side allowed, leaving a trail of blood old blind Harry could’ve followed. I was trying to find a familiar statue or flowerbed. But everything looked so unfamiliar. Behind me the maze pushed back into angles of darkness where a form, a shape glided and flitted. Parrots screeched. I'm dead, I thought.

  But a long moment passed and nothing happened.

  Something white lying on the path back down the alley caught my eye. It was a bone fallen from the sack, and it occurred to me then that maybe other bones had fallen out of rips in the bag, and that the thing tracking me had been stopping to pick them up with an exalting cry of parrots.

  Hoping this was true I dropped a rib here, a collar bone there to keep it busy as I worked my way through the maze.

  I was beginning to feel the loss of blood, starting to get cold, dizzy and tired. It wouldn't be long, I knew, before I'd get to the point where I'd throw down all the bones, sink down into sleep and never wake up.

  A sundial at midnight is a useless thing, but the moment I stumbled up to it I hugged its pedestal, knowing now there was a fighting chance. It was a landmark I remembered. Nearby was one of my dirt mounds from yesterday, further along another and another. Across this dead oblong garden and through that gap, over to the right and round to the left, a back-track here and --

  I dropped an ankle bone at the gate, hoping it would slow it down just that little bit more. It was still some distance to the south-east lawn and I was in no condition to sprint.

  There were lights on in the house, far away. The grounds were moonlit, except for the slim sticks of tree shadows.

  "Hello!" said someone from a distance. I stared behind me, disorientated, saw the gate to the maze swinging wide.

  The next thing I knew I was being picked up off the grass where I'd collapsed. Someone said, "Quick!" and someone else said, "For Gawd's sake don't look back!"

  They carried me and the bones between them like so much hand luggage toward a waiting smell of petrol. I must’ve been holding on to the bag with a death-grip as they didn't even try to take it
from me. They just ripped open the bag, and I saw as if from a long way away the two groundsmen tumbling bones into the newly hollowed out gum tree.

  There was just one more thing to be done -- and damnit! -- it should’ve been done already.

  Mrs Winton, hands fluttering with nerves, stepped back from the painting of Birdfellow, an old black man with a mysterious pouch tied into his stringy grey beard. Beside the painting, face up and open was the diary.

  Mrs Winton looked down at them, shook her head sorrowfully.

  "It has to be,” I said, surprised at the croak my voice had become. “No images, no record of name, nothing of the dead must be allowed to exist after death. It's their way of life. It's that portrait and his name in that diary that's keeping him earthbound and angry just as much as not giving him a proper tree burial in 1823."

  From the direction of the maze came the sound of something big galloping across the Manor grounds toward us.

  A match scratched a spark. The petrol soaked painting and diary whoofed into flame. In that sudden glare I glimpsed the emu, far bigger than any in nature. Its neck was an elongated travesty of a human neck, and far above it a human face of ebony and grey. In that instant I read in its features anger, and then... happiness?

  Birdfellow's portrait had crisped, the book, each word and name shrivelling, had become an open flower of fire.

  A few seconds later I looked back into the silent darkness and knew we were alone.

  ***

  Later that night they found Keenen wandering the maze, eyes vacant and staring. It was many days before he was reeled back to reality, before doctors were able to convince him that his eyes had not been clawed out. He never went back to the Manor, having now an aversion to birds and their noises. Where in the world he'll find a place without birds is a place I can't imagine. Certainly not the maze island which now teems with water fowl.

  I would've liked to have been a fly on the wall the afternoon Mrs Winton explained things to His Lordship, in particular why one of his trees on the south-east lawn had been so strangely mutilated, then plastered over. But on that afternoon I was still in the local hospital being treated for, among other things, serious loss of blood and what the doctors described as nervous exhaustion.