Coffins (35 page)

Much to my surprise, Jebediah seemed to understand what had just transpired. “Stop him, Davis!” he begged me. “It wants him. It wants our Nate, don't you see?”

I tried to ignore his imprecations and, taking him up in my arms, began to work my way down the stairwell. My mistake was in underestimating his strength. In stature Jebediah might be no larger than a child, but his strength was equal to my own, and he easily loosed himself from my grasp and at once began to crawl up the stairs, seeking his brother.

I tried to persuade him to flee, but he adamantly refused. “I would not die a coward!” he said with a fierceness that could not be doubted. As if to goad us into action, Nathaniel's shriek echoed down through the stairwell. “No! God help me, no!” he screamed in panic. Then a high keening: “Help me! Please help me!”

My heart sank, and with it all my hopes, for his brother's cry meant that Jebediah would not be deterred, or persuaded from the tower. My own dread was such that my knees felt weirdly unhinged, but what could I do? It was not a question of courage—I had none—but of shame. I'd been shamed in the parlor with Lucy, and could not bear the thought of another shameful act.

I took Jebediah's hand in my own and helped him mount the stairs, saying, “Here, friend, I am with you,” and so upward we struggled, as if eager to face our doom.

We were halfway to the next landing when the walls began to drum. Each
boom!
loud enough to make us jump. I stumbled, bumping my shoulder against the wall, and felt an insistent, pulsing rhythm that made my head whirl and my mouth go dry. A crazy phrase began to run through my mind:
the drums are gods, the gods are drums, the drums are gods, the gods are drums
as if the drumming itself was capable of inducing insanity by altering the rhythms of the mind.

the drums are gods, the gods are drums, the drums are gods, the gods are drums

“Don't listen!” I cautioned Jeb. “Don't touch the walls!”

Whereupon the drumming increased in volume and intensity, until the air itself began to pound. The lamp's flame jumped with each beat, and that in turn made the shadows twitch with the repeating rhythm. This was the sound of madness. It must have been, because I knew what the drums were saying.

the drums are gods, the gods are drums, the drums are gods, the gods are drums
chanting, beating, pulsing into the bone marrow.

“Davis!” Jeb whispered hoarsely. “The runner!”

The steps were covered with a rug or runner tacked to each tread. Blood oozed from under the runner, squishy and sticky under my boots. Poor Jeb was in agony, trying to scuff the blood away, but only smearing more upon his twisted little feet. “Ahhh!” he cried in panic. “Get it off me! Off! Off!”

Nathaniel cried out again, and that brought my friend to his senses. We hurried up the stairwell, drawn by the scream, trying to ignore the hideous sensation of stepping on the blood-swollen rug, unable to sustain our shudders of revulsion. And all the while the lamp flickered in rhythm, the shadows twitched, the walls pulsed, the air condensed, expanded, condensed as the drums kept chanting
the drums are gods, the gods are drums, the drums are gods, the gods are drums
in strings of repeating rhythms that entwined, overlapped, writhed like the black snake tongue that had protruded from Lucy's blood-red lips
the drums are gods, the gods are drums, the drums are gods, the gods are drums
the entire structure of the tower booming, shaking, booming with the drums; the horrible, maddening drums.

We found Nathaniel on the last landing before the top, his screams still echoing as we made the turn. Which made no sense, as he was sprawled insensible on the floor, with a gash above his left eye that had been bleeding for several minutes, at the very least. I helped him sit up and pressed a hankie to the wound, which did not appear to be serious. “Tell them to stop,” he implored me. And when I asked “who,” he said, “The awful drums.”

the drums are gods, the gods are drums, the drums are gods, the gods are drums
on and on, never ceasing, always changing, weaving and unweaving, writhing and doubling back upon itself.

“Nathaniel! Look at me!” I said, holding the lamp, so I could see that his eyes still functioned, the lack being a sure sign of concussion or worse. “What happened?”

He shrugged, muttering, “I don't know. Something came out of the dark, just as the drumming started. That's all I remember.”

“So it wasn't you screaming for help?”

Nathaniel shook his head.

“But I recognized your voice,” said Jeb.

“Father called out, not me. We must go to him,” and then to me. “We must!”

I knew then that the Captain could not be left behind, even if he put us in peril. “Trust nothing,” I warned them. “We must stick together. We will link hands, find the Captain, and then all of us will leave together, is that agreed? Nathaniel?”

“Agreed.”

We each took one of Jebediah's hands and, holding our lamps aloft, advanced to the top of the stairwell, as the treads pulsed and bled beneath us
the drums are gods, the gods are drums, the drums are gods, the gods are drums
, never ceasing.

The Captain's door was wide open, which I did not take as a good sign. We stepped through the door and all at once the drumming ceased and the blessed silence nearly made me weep with gratitude. Indeed, it was unnaturally peaceful within Captain Coffin's solitary chamber, so much so that I at first assumed he had fled the place, or left by some other means of egress.

Nathaniel and I raised our lamps with considerable trepidation, only to discover that the old man was sound asleep on his couch. The coon cat lay curled on his chest, wide-eyed as he protected his master. “Scat,” said Nathaniel, but the great beast took offense and rose up, perched on its bandaged hindquarters, ready to spar.

The disturbance awakened Cash Coffin, and the old man sat up groggily, stroking the cat that clung to his lap. “Nate? Jeb? What has happened?” he asked, as if expecting the worst.

His two sons assured him that all was as well as could be expected, considering, but that he must come with us, down out of the tower, before the drumming resumed and tore the walls to pieces. “Drumming?” he said. “What drumming?”

“You must have heard, or felt it, even in your sleep,” I said.

“I know what drums are, sir, and I heard none.”

A strange thought struck me, and I went back through the doorway. Sure enough
the drums are gods, the gods are drums, the drums are gods, the gods are drums
and then once again the blessed silence as I returned to the sanctuary of the Captain's chamber.

“Father, did you not call for help?” Jeb asked him.

“I did not.”

“We've been tricked,” I said. “It wants you here. It wants the sons together with the father.”

“What should we do?” Nathaniel asked, with real fear in his voice.

“Leave at once,” I said. “Captain Coffin, if you wish to join us, please come along. But I believe Nathaniel and Jeb are in great danger if they stay.”

The old man was shaking his head even before I got the words out. “It waits for me below,” he said. “If I leave this room, I won't survive the hour.”

Nathaniel was now gazing at me with palpable distrust. “Why does the doctor want us to leave, hey? Think on that, Jebediah. Wants us to leave the safety of Father's chamber. Why's he want us out there with the drums?”

Jebediah looked even more stricken, and begged his brother not to distrust me, after all I'd done for all concerned. In response Nathaniel rose to his full height and shoved his lamp nearer to my face, as if checking for signs of deception. “Didn't do nothing for Sarah, did he, until it was too late, and then what he saved was half a child, not my wife.”

“What are you saying, Nate?”

“Laid his hands upon her, he did. Maybe that's what made her simple, not the drowning. When did drowning ever make a person simple, hey? Drown and you die. There's never an in-between, except when Dr. Bentwood lays his hands upon you.”

The physician in me was wondering if the blow on the head had precipitated Nathaniel's irrational rage—the effect was not uncommon—but the more sensible man knew enough to draw back, out of range of his powerful fists.

“Answer me, Doctor,” he demanded, advancing. “Tell us your true name. Is it Bentwood? Emerson? Or is it some other impersonation? More like Beelzebub!”

I was at the point of making a stand, and having to defend myself, when the floor of the tower shuddered violently beneath us, and the whole structure began to sway perilously, as if forced by a strong wind—and yet there was no wind.

“It comes!” cried Captain Coffin.

While the others clung to whatever they could grab hold of, I crawled to the doorway and pulled myself through the opening, out into the stairwell. The terrible noise of the drums was nearly overpowered by the cracking and splitting of timbers. Spikes and nails wrenched free with shrieks that were nearly human. Treads exploded from the stairs as the entire framework of the tower twisted under the pressure of imminent collapse.

We must get out or be crushed. There was no longer any need to persuade my companions; they could see with their own eyes that the tower could not long survive. In the panic of confusion Captain Coffin became somewhat addled, crying, “We are wrecked! All hands to the boats!” and barreled out the door with his cat cradled protectively in his arms, as if diving into a stormy sea. He was not entirely delusional, because he recognized the stairwell for what it was, and cautioned his sons to avoid the missing treads, and cling to the walls as we descended.

“Stick together, boys,” he urged them. “Remember who you are, and where you came from.”

Cash hadn't the physical stature of his full-grown sons, but he possessed a remarkable strength for a man his age. I saw him lift a heavy, broken support beam with one hand, and shove it to the side, clearing the way down to the landing.

Behind us the glass of the tower windows shattered, and the air from below began to rush up the stairwell, seeking escape. The wind seemed to dampen or carry away the pounding of the drums, and very gradually it subsided, until it was nothing more than a vibration under our feet, or felt in the hands where we clung to the walls, finding our way down.

Both Nathaniel and I had managed to retain our lamps, but even so we had to feel our way, not trusting the ever-shifting shadows, which often obscured gaps in the stairway. Our progress was torturously slow, and the tower continued to slowly disintegrate around us, twisting and swaying as if struggling to unnail itself.

The Captain stopped us, raising his head to sniff the air. “There's a fog coming,” he announced.

I assumed this was due to his addled state, that he was confusing the tower's wooded interior with the ship cabins where'd he'd spent most of his life. And then I, too, got a whiff of the sea, or rather of the seaweedy smells of the harbor, and a moment later there it was, wafting through the broken rafters and beams, rising up the stairwell like smoke.

Fog. Thick fog. Fog that could not be penetrated by our lamps. Fog so dense I could not make out Jebediah, though I had him by the hand.

I heard Cash Coffin say, “It thinks the fog will make us afraid, and stop us moving. Never mind the fog, we know the way down. Fog's no worse than the dark, if you trust your compass.”

“What do we have for weapons, Father?” I heard Nathaniel hiss, his voice made strange by the clinging mist.

“My old flintlock pistol, the very one that clubbed him to the deck,” the old man said with a kind of fierce pride.

“Pass it to me, Father, and I shall lead the way.”

I heard a fumbling, and then a grunt of satisfaction from Nathaniel, and was relieved to know the Captain was at last disarmed. Doubtless bullets would not be effective against our invisible adversary, since you cannot shoot what you cannot see, but now at least the old man could not wound one of us, or himself. I did wonder, though, if the ancient weapon might have some power to repel the presence, and if it was the old pistol and not the tower chamber that had thus far kept Cassius Coffin safe from his adversary.

Small comfort in the fog, in the dark, with a building collapsing all around us, and the very steps beneath our feet sliding away like pats of butter on a hot fry pan. With every passing moment my terror increased, and my eyes began to invent nightmare shapes in the fog. There a face, there a coiled snake, there a chasm that did not, could not exist, and yet it frightened me all the more.

I waved my lamp, wielding it before me, desperately trying to penetrate the mist. I could not help but think of the fog that had clung to
Raven
, in that hour before the schooner was destroyed, and Tom Coffin so hideously impaled. Truly, so excited was my imagination, and so palpable my fear, that it would not have surprised me if a ship had suddenly loomed before us, though we were a thousand yards or more from the harbor. The fog made anything seem possible. Let your mind invent whatever fed its fear, and the fog would give it shape.

It was all I could do to keep from screaming. Jebediah must have felt my growing desperation, because he gave my hand a reassuring squeeze and said, “It can't be far.” I could feel his hand, hear his voice, but for all I could see, he had ceased to exist. Was I the same to him, a phantom connected by touch? I wondered if this was what it was like to be a ghost, haunting a world you could not see, and which could not see you.

On the step below, not a foot away, I heard the old man grunt. “I hear a strange thing,” he said, and sure enough a new sound had insinuated itself into the confusion of noises as the tower struggled to tear itself apart. Between the shrieking of the nails and the creak of the timbers there came a low animal growling.

Once I heard an African lion, caged for the circus, and turned to see it eyeing me balefully, the growl catching in its mighty throat. It was an old lion, suffering from the mange, and no doubt in pain, but it let me know that but for the cage I'd have been its meat. I was ten years old, or thereabouts, and pretty fearless for my age, but that lion frightened me, and I ran from the circus all the way home, imagining that it might escape and follow me, bounding over the brick and cobbled streets of Beacon Hill, hungry for boy.