G H O S T    S T O R I E S M R    P E T T I N G E R ' S    D Æ M O N by John Connolly The bishop was a skeletal man, with long, tapering white fingers and raised blue veins that ran across his hands like tree roots over thin soil. I watched while the fingers of his left hand curled slowly and carefully around the bowl of his pipe and his right hand gently tamped tobacco into the hollow. There was something almost spiderlike about the way those fingers moved. I didn't like the bishop's fingers, but then I didn't like the bishop. "How have you been, Mr Pettinger?" the bishop asked, when his pipe was lighted to his satisfaction. I thanked him for his concern and assured him that I was feeling much better. I still had some trouble with my nerves, and at night I woke to the sounds of shelling and men screaming and the scurrying of rats in the trenches, but there was little point in telling that to the bishop. All I wanted was some quiet place where I could minister to the needs of my flock, preferably a flock that was not intent upon blowing the brains out of someone else's flock. "I was hoping that you might have found a living for me," I replied. "I am anxious to resume parochial work." The bishop waved those arachnoid fingers in response. "In time, Mr Pettinger, in time. First, I require you to comfort an afflicted member of our own flock. You know Chetwyn-Dark, I assume?" I knew it. Chetwyn-Dark was a small parish, perhaps a mile or two from the coast. One minister, hardly any parishoners and not the most rewarding of livings, but there had been a church there for a long time. A very long time. "Mr Fell currently has responsibility for the parish," said the bishop. "Despite many admirable qualities, he has had his difficulties in the past. But it appears that he has begun to behave a little more oddly than usual. He has taken to locking the church, I hear. From the inside. He also appears to be engaged in some form of renovation work for which he is temperamentally and vocationally ill-suited. His congregation has heard him digging, and hacking at the stone, although there are no obvious signs of damage to the chapel, I understand. At least, not yet. Talk to him, Mr Pettinger. Comfort him. If necessary, have him committed, but I want this to stop." And with that, I was dismissed. It was raining and I could smell salt on the air as I walked up the path to the minister's house the following evening, the sound of the departing pony and trap echoing behind me as it continued along the road to Chetwyn-Dark. A light burned in the hall, but when I knocked no-one came. I tried the door and it opened easily, revealing a wooden hallway leading to a kitchen straight ahead, with a flight of stairs to the right and a doorway to the left into a living room. "Mr Fell?" I called, but there was no reply. In the kitchen, some bread lay on a plate covered by a tea-cloth, a jug of buttermilk beside it. Upstairs, both bedrooms were empty. One was tidy, with spare blankets laid out carefully at the base of a newly-made bed. But the other bedroom... It was strewn with clothes and half-eaten food. The bed did not appear to have been slept in for some time and there was a smell in it, as of an old man's unwashed body. Yet it was the writing desk that drew my attention, for the desk and what lay upon it had obviously been the focus of Mr. Fell's attentions for some time. Three old manuscripts, so yellow and decaying that the writing had almost faded away, occupied pride of place at the centre of a storm of papers. The language was Latin, but the script was in no way ornate. Instead it was neat, almost businesslike. At the end, beside an illegible signature, was a darker stain. It looked like old, dried blood. The documents were incomplete, with sections missing or illegible, but Mr Fell had made a considerable job of translating what remained. In his neat script he had recorded three extended sections, the first relating to the original chuch which had existed on the site of the current chapel and dated back to the start of the millennium. The second appeared to describe the location of a particular stone formation on the floor, originally marked by a tomb of some kind. Mr Fell had obviously encountered the greatest difficulty with the final section. His translation was littered with gaps, or guessed words indicated by question marks, but he had underlined the words of which he was certain. They included "entombed", "malefic" and "pit". But there was one that had been repeated again and again throughout the text, and which Mr Fell had in turn emphasised in his translation. That word was "dæmon". I left my bag in the spare bedroom and looked out the window. It faced towards the chapel, and in it a light burned. I watched it flicker for a time, then went downstairs and, remembering Mr Fell's habit of locking the church, searched for a time until I found a set of keys in a small cabinet. These in hand, I took an umbrella from the stand beside the door, and made my way towards the house of God. The front entrance was locked. I knocked hard and called Mr Fell's name, but there was no reply. I was walking to the rear of the church when, close by the east wall, but low, almost as if it came from beneath the ground, I heard it: the sound of someone tunneling, slowly, stone by stone. And yet, listen though I might, I could not discern the use of any tool. It was as if all the work was being done by hand. I continued quickly to the back door and tried each key in turn until the lock clicked and I found myself standing in the chapel, with carved heads on the cornices above me. And as I stood, the sound came again. "Mr Fell?" I called, and I was surprised to find my voice catching in my throat, so that the words came out as almost a croak. I cleared my throat and tried again, louder this time. "MISTER FELL?" The sound of digging stopped. I swallowed loudly and moved towards a light that burned in a small alcove, my feet echoing softly on the stone floor. Despite the cold, there was sweat on my brow and upper lip. The first thing I saw was the hole in the floor. A number of stones had been removed and placed against the wall, leaving a gap big enough for a man to squeeze through. Beside it stood an oil lamp, its fuel almost gone now, so that the flame was tiny and flickering. The hole was dark and sloped gently down, but I thought that I could see some faint light from way beyond the lip. I was about to call again when the digging resumed, faster this time, and the sound made me stumble back in fright. On the floor, the oil lamp was almost sputtering its last. I took a candle from the main altar and placed it in the lamp as I knelt towards the hole. I caught the smell that came from within, faint but definite, the stench of rotting meat, of profound, intense decay. I took my handkerchief from my pocket and wrapped it around my nose and mouth. Then I sat on the lip of the hole and gently lowered myself down. The hole was narrow, and I felt myself sliding on stone and loose earth for a few feet, the lamp held behind me. For a moment, I feared that I might fall into some great chasm, with only darkness around me as I plummeted, never to be found again. Instead, I landed on stone, and found myself in a low tunnel, perhaps only four feet at its highest point, which curved ahead of me to the right. Behind me, there was only a wall. The tunnel was intensely cold. The sound of digging was stronger and more noticeable now now, but so too was the smell of decay. Holding my lamp ahead of me, I walked, crouching along the stone flags of the tunnel, following it as it curved gently down, ever down. Where old supports had decayed, someone - I guessed that it was Mr Fell - had made some improvements, adding new braces to support the roof. One support in particular caught my eye: it was larger than the others, and covered in carvings of writhing serpents, with the face of a beast at its highest point, tusks sprouting from either side of a snouted mouth, its eyes hidden beneath a thick, wrinkled brow. From either side of the brace, two heavy ropes snaked, with a knot at each end. When I looked closely, I found them connected to a pair of iron rods hammered into a gap in the stone. The ropes were new, the rods old. From the looks of it, if these ropes were pulled, the stones would collapse, taking the brace with them and causing the roof to collapse. And I wondered why this tunnel had ever been built and why someone would have taken the precaution of allowing it to be destroyed if the need ever arose. The sound of digging grew louder and louder, the tunnel cooler and cooler. It was narrower now, and difficult to negotiate, but I found myself hurrying, my curiosity briefly overcoming my unease. I was crouched almost double, and the stench was becoming unbearable, when I rounded a corner and my foot touched something soft. I looked down and heard myself moan softly. Mr Fell lay at my feet, his mouth contorted, his face deathly white. His eyes were open, and there was blood in the corneas, where tiny vessels had burst under some dreadful pressure. His hands were raised slightly, as if to ward off something before him. When I looked up, I saw what I thought at first was simply a blank, stone wall. But at the center of the wall was a hole, big enough for a man's head, and from behind it came that picking sound, and I knew then what I had been hearing. It was not Mr Fell digging down, but something else digging up. I raised the lamp and saw a gleaming from within, as the light caught a pair of small red eyes and long, yellowed tusks. There was a hiss, like an exhalation of breath, and then a thud as the thing struck the wall from behind. I heard it gasping with the effort as it struck again and again. Cracks began to appear in the wall as the beast struck once more and dust descended upon me from the roof. And then a claw appeared through the hole. Its fingers were long, impossibly so, and appeared to be jointed five or six times. Huge curved nails erupted from the ends, their points sharp as knives. A grey scaling covered the claw, with thick dark hairs protruding from cracks in the skin. It reached for me, and I felt its fury, its malevolence, its searing, desperate intelligence and its absolute loneliness. It had been imprisoned here in the darkness for so long, until Mr Fell had found the map and begun to explore, moving rock where it had fallen, clearing debris, restoring braces as he moved closer and closer to the mystery of this place. The beast hurled itself again at the wall, and a fine tracery of cracks shot out from the hole like threads on a spider's web. I moved backwards, further and further away from it, until the tunnel grew wide enough so that I felt that I could turn. For a moment, I thought that I had trapped myself in turning, and found that I could go neither backwards nor forwards. I heard the sound of the beast again, and my jacket tore, and I was free. And then I ran. I heard it burst through almost as soon as my back was turned, could hear the sound of its clawed feet on the stones behind as it moved swiftly after me. I began to pray and cry at once, so terrified was I. My feet could not move fast enough, and the narrow, curving tunnel arrested my pace. I could sense the thing growing nearer, could almost feel its breath on my neck. I cried out, and fearing the darkness ahead of me less than what lay behind, I threw the lamp back and heard the sound of glass breaking and a roar as the tiny drops of oil that still remained ignited in the flame. I did not look back but ran and ran through the darkness, ripping my skin on the stones and stumbling twice on the uneven ground until I reached, once more, that ornate support, where I turned at last. There came the sound of those claws scraping on the stone, moving faster and faster, as I groped for the ropes, found them, and pulled. Nothing happened. I heard iron bolts falling, but nothing more. And then, only nine or ten feet ahead of me, a pair of red eyes glowed, and the scraping came, and I prepared to die. But as I closed my eyes, something rumbled above me, and I pushed myself back instinctively. The tunnel shook as the beast advanced, and a shower of rocks fell at my feet. The creature paused, and I heard it roar, and suddenly it was lost from sight as the ceiling collapsed. Yet I thought that I could still hear its progress as the rocks fell, deeper and deeper, fainter and fainter, and I imagined it retreating further down as it attempted to escape burial beneath tons of rubble. Then I was running too until at last I was hauling myself up into the blessed calm of the chapel, and dust was belching from the hole, and the sound of stones falling seemed to go on forever. I got my living. It is a small church, an old church. There is sunken ground nearby, and visitors sometimes stop and stare at it, at the remains of this unexplained phenomenon. Some damage to the floor of the chapel has been repaired and a new, larger stone set in place where Mr Fell had begun his excavations, and which now marks the place of his burial. I have few parishioners, and fewer duties. I read, and I write, and I take long walks by the seashore. And sometimes, when I am in the church alone at night, I can hear it digging away, patiently and intently, moving tiny stone after tiny stone, its progress infinitesimally slow, yet still progress for all that. It can wait. After all, it has eternity. © John Connolly