There were tears in Garth’s eyes as he flattened the marble chips back into place. “The flowers are so I won’t see it if it ever breaks the surface,” he said. “See, I can’t bear the thought of that filthy stuff in her coffin. I mean, what if it’s like what you saw under the floorboards in that house back there?” He sat down again, and his hands trembled as he took out an old wallet, and removed a photograph to give it to me. “That’s Lily-Anne,” he said. “But God! – I don’t like the idea of that stuff fruiting on her . . .”
Aghast at the thoughts his words conjured, I looked at the photograph. A homely woman in her late fifties, seated in a chair beside a fence in a garden I recognized as Garth’s. Except the garden had been well tended then. One shoulder seemed slumped a little, and though she smiled, still I could sense the pain in her face. “Just a few weeks before she died,” said Garth. “It was her lungs. Funny that I worked in the pit all those years, and it was her lungs gave out. And now she’s here, and so’s this stuff.”
I had to say something. “But . . . where did it come from? I mean, how did it come, well, here? I don’t know much about dry rot, no, but I would have thought it confined itself to houses.”
“That’s what I was telling you,” he said, taking back the photograph. “The British variety does. But not this stuff. It’s weird and different! That’s why I think it might have come here with that ballast wood. As to how it got into the churchyard: that’s easy. Come and see for yourself.”
I followed him where he made his way between the weedy plots towards the leaning, half-timbered shack. “Is that the source? Johnson’s timber yard?”
He nodded. “For sure. But look here.”
I looked where he pointed. We were still in the graveyard, approaching the tumbledown end wall, beyond which stood the derelict shack. Running in a parallel series along the dry ground, from the mill and into the graveyard, deep cracks showed through the tangled brambles, briars and grasses. One of these cracks, wider than the others, had actually split a heavy horizontal marble slab right down its length. Garth grunted. “That wasn’t done last time I was here,” he said.
“The sea’s been at it again,” I nodded. “Undermining the cliffs. Maybe we’re not as safe here as you think.”
He glanced at me. “Not the sea this time,” he said, very definitely. “Something else entirely. See, there’s been no rain for weeks. Everything’s dry. And it gets thirsty same as we do. Give me a hand.”
He stood beside the broken slab and got his fingers into the crack. It was obvious that he intended to open up the tomb. “Garth,” I cautioned him. “Isn’t this a little ghoulish? Do you really intend to desecrate this grave?”
“See the date?” he said. “1847. Heck, I don’t think he’d mind, whoever he is. Desecration? Why, he might even thank us for a little sweet sunlight! What are you afraid of? There can only be dust and bones down there now.”
Full of guilt, I looked all about while Garth struggled with the fractured slab. It was a safe bet that there wasn’t a living soul for miles around, but I checked anyway. Opening graves isn’t my sort of thing. But having discovered him for a stubborn old man, I knew that if I didn’t help him he’d find a way to do it by himself anyway; and so I applied myself to the task. Between the two of us we wrestled one of the two halves to the edge of its base, finally toppled it over. A choking fungus reek at once rushed out to engulf us! Or maybe the smell was of something else and I’d simply smelled what I “expected” to.
Garth pulled a sour face. “Ugh!” was his only comment.
The air cleared and we looked into the tomb. In there, a coffin just a little over three feet long, and the broken sarcophagus around it filled with dust, cobwebs and a few leaves. Garth glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. “So now you think I’m wrong, eh?”
“About what?” I answered. “It’s just a child’s coffin.”
“Just a little ‘un, aye,” he nodded. “And his little coffin looks intact, doesn’t it? But is it?” Before I could reply he reached down and rapped with his horny knuckles on the wooden lid.
And despite the fact that the sun was shining down on us, and for all that the seagulls cried and the world seemed at peace, still my hair stood on end at what happened next. For the coffin lid collapsed like a puff-ball and fell into dusty debris, and – God help me – something in the box gave a grunt and puffed itself up into view!
I’m not a coward, but there are times when my limbs have a will of their own. Once when a drunk insulted my wife, I struck him without consciously knowing I’d done it. It was that fast, the reaction that instinctive. And the same now. I didn’t pause to draw breath until I’d cleared the wall and was half-way up the field to the paved path; and even then I probably wouldn’t have stopped, except I tripped and fell flat, and knocked all the wind out of myself.
By the time I stopped shaking and sat up, Garth was puffing and panting up the slope towards me. “It’s all right,” he was gasping. “It was nothing. Just the rot. It had grown in there and crammed itself so tight, so confined, that when the coffin caved in . . .”
He was right and I knew it. I had known it even with my flesh crawling, my legs, heart and lungs pumping. But even so: “There were . . . bones in it!” I said, contrary to common sense. “A skull.”
He drew close, sank down beside me gulping at the air. “The little ‘un’s bones,” he panted, “caught up in the fibres. I just wanted to showyou the extent of the thing. Didn’t want to scare you to death!”
“I know, I know,” I patted his hand. “But when it moved –”
“It was just the effect of the box collapsing,” he explained, logically. “Natural expansion. Set free, it unwound like a jack-in-the-box. And the noise it made –”
“That was the sound of its scraping against the rotten timber, amplified by the sarcophagus,” I nodded. “I know all that. It shocked me, that’s all. In fact, two hours in your bloody Easingham have given me enough shocks to last a lifetime!”
“But you see what I mean about the rot?” We stood up, both of us still a little shaky.
“Oh, yes, I see what you mean. I don’t understand your obsession, that’s all. Why don’t you just leave the damned stuff alone?”
He shrugged but made no answer, and so we made our way back towards his home. On our way the silence between us was broken only once. “There!” said Garth, looking back towards the brow of the hill. “You see him?”
I looked back, saw the dark outline of an Alsatian dog silhouetted against the rise. “Ben?” Even as I spoke the name, so the dog disappeared into the long grass beside the path.
“Ben!” Garth called, and blew his piercing whistle. But with no result. The old man worriedly shook his head. “Can’t think what’s come over him,” he said. “Then again, I’m more his friend than his master. We’ve always pretty much looked after ourselves. At least I know that he hasn’t run off . . .”
Then we were back at Garth’s house, but I didn’t go in. His offer of another coffee couldn’t tempt me. It was time I was on my way again. “If ever you’re back this way –” he said as I got into the car.
I nodded, leaned out of my window. “Garth, why the hell don’tyou get out of here? I mean, there’s nothing here for you now. Why don’t you take Ben and just clear out?”