The Year's Best Horror Stories 9 (20 page)

How odd, thought Mr. Pearsall, as he moved from scene to scene full of wonder and admiration, that the inhabitants of this town should discourage tourists! Here they had some of the finest mosaics on the island, if not in the whole of Italy, and yet they were left to decay out of sight in a locked and dirty church. Why, with just a little initiative and energy from the town’s authorities, visitors would surely come flocking to see such marvels. Did they object to the very idea of tourists? Surely there were enough prospective cafe owners and postcard dealers in the place to insist that something was done! And why was the church not mentioned in any of the guidebooks which he had read so assiduously before starting on his tour? Such were the musings that passed through Mr. Pearsall’s mind, but after a while, he began to have doubts.

It became noticeable that, though the artist had great natural vigor, it was the portrayal of evil which called forth his finest efforts. The serpent in the Garden of Eden, for instance, was given a human face that bore a sinister and seductive leer. In the story of Cain and Abel, there was no doubt that it was Cain who was intended as the hero; for Abel as he lay helpless on the ground was a mere hapless simpleton, whereas his murderer, standing over him with a spade raised to cleave his skull, was full of savage power. King Nimrod’s soldiers at Babel looked like mindless automata. The picture of Saul and the Witch of Endor was situated in the darkest corner of the church, perhaps deliberately, and was covered with cobwebs. After examining it closely, Mr. Pearsall was almost glad of this, for inside the witch’s cave were certain unpleasant nonhuman shapes that were perhaps well left unseen.

“Perhaps the artist was a Manichaean,” mused Mr. Pearsall, “a Cathar or an Albigensian (or are they the same thing? Have I got the dates right?), more convinced of the existence of evil than of good. Perhaps his mosaics were condemned as heretical. But in that case, why weren’t they destroyed, instead of just closing the church down? Now I wonder what he’s made of the New Testament!”

These mosaics were even more unsettling. Mr. Pearsall could not find an Annunciation, or even a Nativity, but there was a quite horribly realistic Massacre of the Innocents, in which a number of ingenious and disgusting means had been devised of slaughtering the children, while King Herod sat on his throne overlooking the carnage and laughed. The portrayal of Judas receiving his thirty pieces of silver from Caiaphas would have stood as one of the artistic masterpieces of all time, were it not so exceedingly unpleasant. And so it progressed; through various nasty portrayals of people possessed by devils; through the stories of Simon Magus and Ananias, both of whom once again were the most vivid characterizations in their particular scenes; right up to a terrifyingly powerful portrayal of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

By this time, not only was Mr. Pearsall distinctly upset by the mosaics, but he was feeling increasingly ill at ease. At first the church had been completely silent, but as time went on it seemed full of little noises he could not locate. His footsteps echoed round and round in a long diminuendo, but they seemed to be answered by odd rustlings and creakings. No doubt these were the normal sounds of rodent life, or of aged woodwork at the start of its death throes; but when, like Mr. Pearsall, one is alone in an ancient church in the middle of a strange town where not a single human inhabitant has yet shown his face, and when furthermore one is surrounded by the most disturbing illustrations of Biblical evil, such rational explanations carry distinctly less force. Once or twice he held his breath and stood perfectly still, to see if the noises continued. Not only that, he also increasingly felt that he was being watched. Probably it was only the faces in the mosaic that caused this, but on more than one occasion he thought he saw a movement right in the corner of his field of vision, and whirled around in alarm only to find nothing.

Finally he came to a Virgin Mary who was quite devoid of the usual serenity, but instead had the voluptuousness of a vampire. So appalling was her expression that he thought for a while she must be a portrayal of the Scarlet Whore of Babylon, but no, she had the posture and the usual clothing of the Virgin, and there in her arms was the Christ-child, a hideous infant with an oily and sanctimonious grin which put Mr. Pearsall in mind of a satiated appetite for something perverse. He shuddered and was filled with a sensation of such acute distaste that for a moment he quite forgot the noises.

All this time, he had avoided looking at the east end, intending to keep till last his viewing of what was always the glory of the Sicilian churches; the great figure of Christ in the apse above the altar. Now he could keep from it no longer, and turned his gaze in that direction.

It was indeed a masterpiece, in spite of the dirt and the cobwebs that encrusted it. As usual, Christ’s head and shoulders were portrayed, robed in red and blue, the right arm extended in blessing, the left holding an open book lettered in Greek. The treatment of the material by the unknown artist was marvelous, but the expression on Christ’s face was uniquely horrible; a malignant sneer of contempt. The eyes were very piercing. Mr. Pearsall could not read Greek, but he suspected that the words written on the open page of the book were hardly a normal scriptural text. And the right hand—was that the usual gesture of blessing? Or was it the first and last fingers held up—the gesture known as the devil’s horns?

“This is a blasphemous church,” said Mr. Pearsall to himself. “The mosaics may be very fine, but they are also very horrible. Some bishop, perhaps even the Pope, condemned them and had the church closed down. Even the townspeople don’t like to talk about them, because they are still a very religious people, and they don’t let tourists in. Just as well, these pictures are enough to give anyone nightmares! Well; I’m glad I’ve seen them, but it’s not a pleasant place to visit on your own, and I can’t say I’ll be sorry to leave.” He glanced at his watch, and was almost relieved to find that his hour had practically expired; it gave him an excuse to leave without exploring the rest of the church. With a brisk walk that an unsympathetic observer might have thought perilously close to a panic-stricken run, he turned away toward the south door by which he had entered. But now it was locked.

For some time Mr. Pearsall struggled in a quiet futile fashion, shaking the door, twisting the iron ring this way and that, searching for a catch, but he was entirely unable to shift it. He thumped the door with the palm of his hand and kicked it, and a great ringing boom echoed round the church like a salvo of cannonfire, and to this day he swears that from somewhere there came a kind of sinister chuckle in answer.

With a considerable effort, he pulled himself together. “This is stupid,” he told himself. “There is probably some custodian who forgot to lock the church up before his siesta, and only realized his mistake when he woke up. But he must be a very careless or stupid man, or he would have checked to see if anyone had gone inside.” All the same, he did not want to knock again and risk that dreadful echo, so he decided to search for another door that might be open. Logic suggested there should be one on the north side, perhaps opening to a cloister or something similar. Crossing the nave with a certain trepidation (and carefully avoiding a glance at the blasphemous figure of Christ, though he imagined he could sense the cruel eyes bearing on him with an almost tangible force), he went in search.

Sure enough, there was a door in the corner of the north aisle, and it was not locked, though it seemed a long time since it had been opened. A strong thrust was needed to shift it, and it groaned horribly as it swung inward, dislodging a shower of dirt. A peculiar musty smell seeped into the air. Mr. Pearsall found himself peering at a flight of worn stone steps running downward into the darkness.

Now this did not look like the way out at all; indeed, the smell suggested that the lower chamber, whatever it was, was completely sealed from the outer air, and had been so for a very long time. It was a most unpromising route for one wishing to leave the building, and to this day Mr. Pearsall has never been able to give a satisfactory explanation of why he decided to descend those steps. He was already late, and after the unsettling effect of the mosaics, most of his exploratory zeal had evaporated, but nonetheless he could not resist the lure of the doorway. He wondered afterwards whether he was in full control of his movements anymore. The whole place bore a distinctly sinister air, but still he had to push the door fully open and take his first tentative steps into the darkness.

The stairs were long and curiously dank in spite of the dryness of the climate. Soon all trace of the light of the main body of the church (which had itself seemed so gloomy when he had first entered) had been lost, and he was obliged to take his cigarette lighter from his pocket and proceed by its flickering illumination. He turned a corner beneath a glowering archway of uncut stone, descended a ramp, and gasped at what he saw.

It was a catacomb. A long corridor opened before him, with side passages running from it. Perhaps the whole area beneath the nave was covered. And it was inhabited. A long double line of human forms stood along each passage. All ages and classes had their representatives here; men and women and infants, monks and warriors, learned scholars and ladies of fashion. They were dressed in clothes that must once have been their finest, furs and silks and embroidered gowns, now sadly moldering and decayed, but bearing still a glimmer of their former glories. And they had faces, for clearly much ingenuity had been expended to preserve the bodies, though with mixed degrees of success. There was a girl-child whose clothing looked at least two hundred years old, but who from her skin and hair might just have fallen asleep; but beyond her a man in priestly robes had lost his nose and his cheeks, and his eyes had decayed to blank milky globules; and further on the soldier in the chased steel breastplate, who was perhaps a mercenary from the Renaissance period, had lost his flesh entirely, and now grinned mindlessly with a naked skull.

Poor Mr. Pearsall! The effect would have been quite nasty enough under bright electric lights and surrounded by his fellow tourists; but here, on his own, locked in, and after already being alarmed and upset by those hideous mosaics, and furthermore with just a single weak flame to protect him from the darkness, the shock was overwhelming. Quite why he did not turn and bolt he has never managed to explain. He takes refuge in mysterious talk of “feeling a call” which dragged him onwards. Certainly it is irrefutable that he walked on down the passage, through the grisly ranks of the dead, horror mounting within him, but quite unable to save himself.

All the bodies had been there a very long time. Mr. Pearsall’s knowledge of the history of costume was not great, but he was fairly certain that none of the garments worn could be placed any later than the middle eighteenth century, and the majority seemed to be medieval. What was left of his rational mind told him that similar catacombs were not unknown elsewhere, but such a piece of information seemed extraordinarily useless. As he walked onward, he appeared to be moving back steadily in time toward the early middle ages. Very few of the faces had any flesh on them by this time; some were left almost naked, with their clothing in flimsy rags, and others had simply fallen and lay in heaps on the floor. But still he had to go onward until he reached the end.

He had lost all sense of direction by now, but suspected he was moving beneath the altar, beneath the Christ of the devil’s horns blessing and the malevolent glance. And here was the center of this labyrinth of death; a great throne of gilded wood, much rotted, where sat a body clad in the gorgeous robes and mitre of a bishop. This much Mr. Pearsall took in at a distance; but as he drew near, he would not look at the figure directly. He tried to force his eyes to look only at the slippers; he was sure he would lose his reason if he looked higher, but he could not fight as a force stronger than his mind raised his head gradually higher; the gold-embroidered cope, the skeletal hands with the episcopal ring loosely enclosing a bony finger, the crozier propped up in the other hand, the bones of the face bare of all flesh, the grinning yellow teeth, the eyes . . . the eyes! Not decayed at all, but alive, piercing, glaring! My God! The same eyes as Christ in the mosaic!

The lighter fell from Mr. Pearsall’s nerveless grasp and he plunged into darkness. It was a lighter of cylindrical shape, and he heard it roll tinkling away out of his reach. For a few seconds he scrabbled uselessly on the floor for it, then realized how pointless such a search was. He would have to find his way out in total darkness. How far was it? How many turns had he taken? He waved his arms in front and to either side, walked a few paces, touched stone, turned, walked more until he met another obstacle, turned again . . . it was at this stage that he began to hear noises again; a horrible dry rustling, which he would have loved to think was a rat. It came from behind him. He moved quicker, and walked slap into one of the bodies. His face buried itself in the rotting fabric and he felt the lifeless arms slump across his shoulders. His nerve snapped entirely and he screamed; a muffled noise quickly extinguished. He ran at random, hit another body, and ran again, and struck again. Corpses were collapsing all around him, but still there was a rustling and a padding and a dry, gravelly cackling behind him, and it too was moving; not fast, but soon it would reach him if he could not find the stairs. He fell and cut his hands, and screamed again, but not from pain. He lost count of how many times he smashed into obstacles, until, bruised and bleeding, he could go no further, and cowered back against the stone wall. The rustling was quite close now. Light; he must have light! He had lost his cigarette lighter, he had no matches. Frantically his hands searched his pockets for a miracle. Of course! He had flash-cubes for his camera! With trembling fingers he pulled one out and fiddled for what seemed an eternity to fit it into place. He pressed the shutter-button and nothing happened. A dud! He turned it around and tried once more. Still nothing. The rustling was only inches away. Think, man, think! He had forgotten to wind on the film, so of course nothing would happen. Pull round the winding lever and try again . . . just time . . .