Coffins (36 page)

This was not a lion's growl, exactly, but something like it, with a similar guttural power. Whatever it was, it seemed to be coming from not far below us, just around the next turn of the stairs, and I froze on the creaking steps, not wanting to advance, not willing to retreat.

“It's a trick,” I heard Jebediah say. “It doesn't want us to leave the tower. We must ignore it and go forward.”

The growl purred louder, as if in anticipation. Hungry for us. I would sooner have walked into a hail of bullets than go forward, toward that angry animal growl, but above me the timbers were collapsing. The entire structure settled to one side, pressing me against the wall, while under my feet the stair rafters shifted and sagged.

“Hurry!” Nathaniel urged us, and so we stumbled down, feeling with our feet.

I very nearly lost my grip on Jeb's hand, my own was so slick with cold sweat. Our urgency was such that I was unaware until much later that my face had been slashed by exposed nails, or perhaps a splinter of snapping wood. There was blood in the air, I knew that much, and I was terrified that the scent of it was drawing the growling closer. A growling so large and powerful that it shivered its way into my chest, and made it hurt to breathe.

“Look!”

A glow approached from below, dipping and swaying as if trying to find us in the fog. Not a single glow, but two, it seemed, twin orbs searching for the source of fresh-cut blood. Slowly a shadow condensed around the orbs of light, and the black beast took shape. The orbs were eyes, yellow and terrible, and the shape was neither man nor animal, but something of each, and hideous, like the beast of Revelation, come at last to proclaim the end of days.

The growl became a thunderous voice: “AND HE CRIED MIGHTILY WITH A STRONG VOICE, SAYING, BABYLON THE GREAT IS FALLEN, AND IS BECOME THE INHABITATION OF DEVILS, AND THE HOLD OF EVERY FOUL SPIRIT, AND A CAGE OF EVERY UNCLEAN AND HATEFUL BIRD. FOR ALL NATIONS HAVE DRUNK THE WINE OF THE WRATH OF FORNICATION, AND THE KINGS OF THE EARTH HAVE COMMITTED FORNICATION WITH HER, AND THE MERCHANTS OF THE EARTH ARE WAXED RICH THROUGH THE ABUNDANCE OF HER DELICACIES. LET THEM SLAY EACH OTHER, ALL OF THEM, AND CHOKE ON THE BLOOD OF THEIR TONGUES, LET THEM ALL DIE FOR A THOUSAND GENERATIONS, UNTIL THE DUST OF THEIR DUST IS FORGOTTEN.”

It coiled then, as if readying itself to spring. A black, misshapen monstrosity with glowing eyes and a growling, sulfurous voice that became a great roaring of wind, driving the mist before it, mounting the buckled stairway with an inhuman agility.

I heard Nathaniel cry out: “Back! Let us pass!”

With a roar it leaped for him. A hot spark flashed, the pistol roared back, and the roar became a scream of pain, a whelp that sounded almost human. Indeed, it was human, for as the mist suddenly cleared, sucked upward by the wind, we saw Benjamin collapsed on the stairway, an oil lantern in one hand, and his Bible clutched to his breast. The bullet had pierced the Bible, then torn a great, sputtering hole in his throat, and his life bled away in but a few moments, with each beat of his dying heart.

I rushed to his side, but there was nothing to be done. He tried to speak, choked weakly, and then the spark of life departed.

Nathaniel gently pried the lantern from his brother's hand and stood up, holding it out. “Father, I have killed him,” he said, in a small and terrible voice. “I've killed poor Ben, who came to save us.”

“You thought he was the beast,” said the old man. “We all did. It tricked us.”

“I can't bear it,” said Nathaniel, looking away from us. “I won't bear it.”

With that he lifted the lantern above his head and emptied the reservoir of oil upon himself, soaking his beard and shirt. A blue flame ran down his arm and in an instant the oil ignited.

“No!” Jebediah screamed.

I lurched to grab him, thinking I might muffle the flames with my coat, but he deliberately took one step back and plunged through a gap in the steps, falling out of reach. He lay in the rubble below with his head and shoulders on fire, and did nothing to save himself as his face began to melt away.

It was all I could do to seize Jeb by his nightgown and haul him back from the edge as he clawed and cried and watched his brother burning.

The horror was not done with us. As the smoke rose in black billows from beneath the broken staircase, as the splintered timbers caught flame, and the fire commenced to take hold of the building, the old man suddenly clutched his throat and fell to his knees, his eyes rolling upward. His body convulsed and a wet gargling scream issued from his mouth.

Beside him his great green-eyed cat howled piteously, tail and hair erect.

“Davis! Do something!”

I let go of Jebediah and threw myself on the old man, trying to pry loose his hands. But the convulsions had locked his fingers in place, in a death grip around his own throat. As I desperately pried, fighting to get a purchase, his eyes bulged horribly and his lips curled back in an awful grin. A lump of flesh shot from his mouth, followed by a great black clot, and I knew then that Cassius Coffin had bitten off his tongue, and was choking on his own blood.

Let them choke on the blood of their tongues, let them all die for a thousand generations, until the dust of their dust is forgotten
. With a
whoosh!
his hair caught fire, and before I could back away his flesh began to swell and blacken, splitting open to reveal the white bones of his skull. And yet something of him still lived, enough to comprehend what was happening, and to suffer. As his flesh was destroyed, his living eyes continued to look at me, and I saw in them an awareness that was unbearable, but nevertheless must be borne. He knew everything that had happened and everything that was to come. He knew what had been taken from him: all he had made himself, all he had bequested to his sons, and their sons, all had been destroyed, and he would carry that knowledge to the grave and beyond, forever and ever. Death would bring no relief, but the misery of eternity.

Cash Coffin had written down the curse in his own hand, in the true log of his slave ship, then waited anxiously for years, until at last it came to pass:
You will be cursed and your sons will be cursed and the womb of your wife will be cursed, until there are sons no more, and everything and everyone you ever loved will perish from the earth
.

I knew of the curse, and believed it inescapable, but duty compelled me to do whatever I could to save the last of the Coffins, and myself. And so I picked up my little friend, who was as soiled and bloody and helpless as a newborn child, and ran straight into the flames.

Epilogue

July 2, 1863

There is little more to tell. We are encamped here on a field near Gettysburg, in Pennsylvania, among the companies of the Army of the Potomac, readying ourselves for war. The reader—if ever there is to be a reader—will know that I survived the great fire that consumed the Coffin house, and was later spread by evil, spark-insinuating wind to the houses and buildings below, leaping from wood-shingled roof to wood-shingled roof, until all of White Harbor was set aflame, and its final, beautiful agony reflected in the cold waters that lapped the shore. The slow but relentless progress of the conflagration was such that all the inhabitants of the village escaped the flames, except those already lost in the tower.

I first carried Jebediah outside and rolled us both in the snow, to damp the flames that had singed us. Then I ran back inside only to discover that Barky had already escorted Miss Lucy to safety, which was a great relief, and then returned again to rescue what he could of our belongings before being forced out by the heat and smoke.

When I later found Lucy on the road, hurrying away, she was wearing a black, fur-lined cloak, and had the Captain's enormous, green-eyed cat cradled in her arms. I begged her forgiveness for my shameful carnal acts, and promised to marry her, if she would have me. At first she would not meet my eyes, and then when I implored her to respond, she confessed she would rather throw herself into the fire than marry a monster like me, and if she found herself with child she would have it torn from her womb—never, never would she bring forth a child of our unholy union.

To my utter despair, I found that I could not disagree. “What will you do? How will you live?” When she would not at first respond, I suggested that she might seek out Mrs. Stanton, and secure a place with her.

“Mrs. Stanton is an admirable woman, but she is not family,” Lucy said, as if appalled by my ignorance, or quite possibly by my very existence, which she now found so offensive. She vowed to abide with Sarah, who now had need of a companion and caretaker. “We shall live as spinsters, simple Sarah and I. The children will call us witches, and taunt us. But we will sit on our porch as the world goes by, and laugh at the folly of men.” With that she walked away and passed out of my life forever.

As to myself, there is little of further interest. I joined with my old friend Colonel Chamberlain, and have followed him dutifully, sawing off whatever shattered limbs they bring me, always expecting to find one of Jebediah's young Harvard Yard tormentors under my knife. If that happens it must be soon, for I am convinced a bullet waits for me in the fight about to commence.

Jebediah disagrees, or rather the one who speaks in his place disagrees. “You will live to be an old, old man,” he says, knowing how much I dread the thought. “You will die alone, far from the field of glory, and your only friend will be Monbasu. You will come to love me, and to love yourself.”

Then he laughs and laughs.

The little man has followed me into the army, acting as my assistant, although the men say he is more like my familiar, and try to keep their distance from the “mad dwarf.” For this I cannot blame them. The presence who dwells within my old friend, and has done since the night of the fire, speaks in many languages, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Dutch, and the several dialects of Dahomey, and his laughter is more cruel and cutting than any of my instruments. It amuses him to act as my slave, and fetch my cocoa, and pick the vermin from my bedroll. He calls me master, but we both know who the real master is, and who the slave.

Tomorrow a great battle begins, a battle that may decide the war, and our little band of soldiers must defend a bluff against rebel forces that are certain to overrun us. Colonel Chamberlain believes that our fate is already decided, and that he himself is sure to be killed, but he will not be dissuaded from his duty. Nor I from mine. For I know now that the whole nation is cursed, and we must cleanse ourselves with the blood of the righteous. Only then may our chains be broken and our souls set free.

Only then will the horror end.

Captain Davis Bentwood
,

Surgeon, 20th Maine, V Corps

Army of the Potomac

Afterword by the Editor

There is no record of a Captain Bentwood being killed in action while with the 20th Maine. Premonition of death was common among Civil War soldiers, and many who were haunted by such premonitions survived, or like the heroic Joshua Chamberlain, “died of their wounds” at an advanced age. Chamberlain was a former schoolteacher whose brilliant strategic maneuvers at Little Round Top turned the tide at Gettysburg, and secured a victory that was the first death knell of the Confederacy. Although at the time of the battle Chamberlain sincerely believed he would never survive the war, he did, and went on to be governor of Maine, and lived to be eighty-five years old, much honored and beloved. What his relationship to Davis Bentwood might have been remains unknown, although there is a curious entry in the governor's daily journal of 1871, noting that Governor Chamberlain made an official visit to the village of White Harbor, recently rebuilt, to cut the ribbon at a new sardine cannery. “Governor had tea with his old friend Dr. B. and his dwarf, and spoke of Africa.” That is all.

Whether or not this was Davis Bentwood, or if he was at that date still accompanied by Jebediah Coffin, or how long they both may have survived, is unknown at this time.

Rodman Philbriek

Kittery, Maine

About the Author

Rodman Philbrick grew up on the coast of New Hampshire and has been writing since the age of sixteen. For a number of years he published mystery and suspense fiction for adults.
Brothers & Sinners
won the Shamus Award in 1994, and two of his other detective novels were nominees. In 1993 his debut young adult novel,
Freak the Mighty
, won numerous honors, and in 1998 was made into the feature film
The Mighty
, starring Sharon Stone and James Gandolfini.
Freak the Mighty
has become a standard reading selection in thousands of classrooms worldwide, and there are more than three million copies in print. In 2010 Philbrick won a Newbery Honor for
The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P
.
Figg
.