Night Shift - Stephen King [21]
Should I write no more, may God bless and keep you, Bones.
CHARLES
Posiscriptum - The birds have set up their cry, and the horrible shuffling sounds have begun again. Cal does not think I hear, but I do.
C.
(From the pocket journal of Calvin McCann)
27 October 1850
He is impersuadable. Very well. I go with him.
4 November 1850
DEAR BONES,
Weak, yet lucid. I am not sure of the date, yet my almanac assures me by tide and sunset that it must be correct. I sit at my desk, where I sat when I first wrote you from Chapelwaite, and look out over the dark sea from which the last of the light is rapidly fading. I shall never see more. This night is my night; I leave it for whatever shadows be.
How it heaves itself at the rocks, this sea! It throws clouds of sea-foam at the darkling sky in banners, making the floor beneath me tremble. In the window-glass I see my reflection, pallid as any vampire's. I have been without nourishment since the twenty-seventh of October, and should have been without water, had not Calvin left the carafe beside my bed on that day.
0, Cal! He is no more, Bones. He is gone in my place, in the place of this wretch with his pipestem arms and skull face who I see reflected back in the darkened glass. And yet he may be the more fortunate; for no dreams haunt him as they have haunted me these last days - twisted shapes that lurk in the nightmare corridors of delirium. Even now my hands tremble; I have splotched the page with ink.
Calvin confronted me on that morning just as I was about to slip away - and I thinking I had been so crafty. I had told him that I had decided we must leave, and asked him if he would go to Tandrell some ten miles distant, and hire a trap where we were less notorious. He agreed to make the hike and I watched him leave by the sea-road. When he was out of sight I quickly made myself ready, donning both coat and muffler [for the weather had turned frosty; the first touch of coming winter was on that morning's cutting breeze. I wished briefly for a gun, then laughed at myself for the wish. What avails guns in such a matter?
I let myself out by the pantry-way, pausing for a last look at sea and sky; for the smell of the fresh air against the
putrescence I knew I should smell soon enough; for the sight of a foraging gull wheeling below the clouds.
I turned - and there stood Calvin McCann.
'You shall not go alone,' said he; and his face was as grim as ever I have seen it.
'But, Calvin -' I began.
'No, not a word! We go together and do what we must, or I return you bodily to the house. You are not well. You shall not go alone.'
It is impossible to describe the conflicting emotions that swept over me; confusion, pique, gratefulness - yet the greatest of them was love.
We made our way silently past the summer house and the sun-dial, down the weed-covered verge and into the woods. All was dead still - not a bird sang nor a wood-cricket chirruped. The world seemed cupped in a silent pall. There was only the ever-present smell of salt, and from far away, the faint tang of woodsmoke. The woods were a blazoned riot of colour, but, to my eye, scarlet seemed to predominate all.
Soon the scent of salt passed, and another, more sinister odour took its place; that rottenness which I have mentioned. When we came to the leaning bridge which spanned the Royal, I expected Cal to ask me again to defer, but he did not. He paused, looked at that grim spire which seemed to mock the blue sky above it, and then looked at me. We went on.
We proceeded with quick yet dread footsteps to James Boon's church. The door still hung ajar from our latter exit, and the darkness within seemed to leer at us. As we mounted the steps, brass seemed to fill my heart; my hand trembled as it touched the door-handle and pulled it. The smell within was greater, more noxious than ever.
We stepped into the shadowy anteroom and, with no pause, into the main chamber.
It was a shambles.
Something vast had been at work in there, and a mighty destruction had taken place. Pews