The Legacy: Part VI
...and all creeping things that creep upon the earth...
Previously in Part V
…Steven scrabbles in the weeds to claim the bell as trophy at least, and bending to the dirt, his eyes fall level with the writing on the stone. It is not quite legible, but with some scraping away of moss, letter by letter he spells out what is revealed:
“S…P…E…I…. Speighthart!”
He speaks the word, his own name, and all falls silent in the churchyard. The wind stops, no bird sings. There is not a sound, for a heartbeat, for another and another still and then all begins again as if the world held its breath for that moment. Beneath the ground, something old and bitter stirs into wakefulness…
Part VI
Steven stands oblivious to the bones that smoulder below with ancient ire. He fingers at the clapper within his prize: the bell that rang for him but which had tolled, mutely, a death-knell for the Reverend, doom-bound by the severed chain. Nor does Steven know the provenance of the spade handle with which he had been beating merry hell from it. The ash wood haft, tung-oiled and seasoned, has outlasted the ironwork which once graced either end of Mungo’s spade. The very tool which dug the grave that Steven has been drawn to now brings to wakefulness Speighthart’s slumbering shade.
Cold ethereal fingers emerge from the ground, caressing Steven’s foot. The yew tree, like a wood-bound witch, creaks a curious “ah-haaaa.” Does Steven hear his own name whispered by a guttering ghostly tongue? His head turns quick-sharp and sudden to left and then to right. Goose bumps prickle a warning; of what, he has no inkling. There’s nothing there; nothing he can see, but all the same he senses…something.
“Steven the peeven! Steven the peeven!”
It is Harry, shouting. He has grown tired of hiding and detects no sign of Steven searching for him. He emerges from dense shrubbery, impatient, smiling; he has a surprise for Steven.
“Steven the PEEEEVENN!” Harry shouts out again the current favourite insult for his little brother. It matters not that the words are meaningless: it is the intent behind them that makes this moniker an unbearable torment for Steven and thus a delicious barb for Harry.
With a rush of juvenile indignation, Steven is snapped back into the there and then. “Ninety nine, a hundred! Coming ready or not!” he shouts back, and jumps down from the churchyard, forgetting in his haste, quite how high up he is. Gravity takes him before he can judge the drop and prepare himself for safe landing.
OOOph!
His ankle twists and he falls forward, skinning his knees and winding himself with a judder. Worst of all, Harry has witnessed it all. He points gleefully at Steven, sprawling and awkward in the dirt, and laughs, head back and uncontrolled; a mocking hyena.
“Found you!” Steven gasps, pointing right back at Harry. It is only the bravado that brotherly rivalry demands that keeps tears from Steven’s eyes. Pain makes itself known in his ankle, knees and the knuckles of his left hand which gripped the bell and punched into the ground in the fall. Tears will wait for mummy; Harry must not have that victory.
“It doesn’t count, Steven Peeeeeeven! I wasn’t even hiding! Slow coach! Did you forget what comes after ten?”
Tousled, Steven sits up and draws his knees in, picking grit with a wince from the crimson beads forming on his grated knees. He puts down the bell and sucks on his bleeding knuckles which scream for attention; but in soothing them, his knees hurt all the more. His resolve is cracking at the sight of blood, but still he will not cry.
“I got all the way to a hundred, ackshly! And it’s not my fault if you’re rubbish at hiding.”
“Least I’m not rubbish at flying, Steven Peeeeeeven. I found you, so you are the loser and the loser gets the booby prize!”
Before Steven can ask what a booby prize is, Harry bends down and slaps a thick, fat, mottled slug onto his forehead. Harry found it whilst hiding in his bush, and, chuckling with gleeful anticipation, wrapped it carefully in a dock leaf. He was intent on mischief at his brother’s expense but could never have dreamt of such a perfect moment to present this gloriously awful award.
The wetness of it takes Steven by surprise. The magnificent specimen is some four inches long and fat as a blacksmith’s thumb. Steven senses its size from the heaviness of its adherence to his skin. The walls of Steven’s Jericho crumble and a wail begins to rise from deep within him at the realisation of what the grimness is upon his face. He cannot bear to feel it moving, but neither can he be rid of it, for that would require he touch it. So, the slug remains and Steven sits, paralysed. Its shadow creeps over an eyebrow as it journeys down his forehead. Steven’s eyes roll upwards, he cannot help himself. He sees it and the wail surfaces; bursts out of him.
“Mummy!”
It is the cry of a most wretched, helpless little boy. All power to move is sapped from him; his faculties are overwhelmed and everything is too terrible and all at once.
“I’m the winner; I get the trophy!”
Harry bends down and swipes the brass bell for himself, wringing out yet more anguish. Such merciless thievery! Such harrowing undulations as the slug crosses Steven’s brow! He screws shut his eyes, his only defence to these assaults, hands gripping gravel. The wail reaches a ragged end and with staccato sobs, poor Steven grabs quick, short handfuls of breath until he has enough to call once more for his saviour.
“Muh-uh-uh-uh-me-ee-ee!”
Harry scarpers out of sight towards the rear of the house just as Mother emerges from the front door. His escape attempt is doomed: who else could it be but he to leave the younger brother in such pathetic disarray?
“HARRY! Come back here AT ONCE! What on EARTH is going on?”
“It was just a game,” says Harry, scuffing the ground with one swinging foot. His head hangs sheepish as Mother peels off the glistening gastropod with a grimace. “It was just a stupid slug. He’s such a baby.” Harry’s peevish justifications cut no motherly mustard and her glare stings like a slap.
“And he can have his stupid bell.” Harry tosses it to the ground with a dull clank. It is a futile and empty effort at atonement.
“GET to your room THIS MINUTE! Your Father will speak to you about this!”
The evening brings comforting coos from Mother and superhero plasters for Steven. There is an early bedtime and stern words from Father for Harry.
“Remember that Steven is only eight.”
Harry muses over what this means he could get away with. Meanwhile, Steven gets a story of his choice and a cuddle from Mother in his parents’ bed. She asks him about the bell he seems so possessive of, and he is about to tell her all about the graveyard, about the stone with the family name on it, but something stops him; a whisper in the ear.
It’s a seee-cret.
“I found it in...in a bush. When I was looking for Harry,” he lies.
“Oh clever you!” says mother “It looks very old. Shall we polish it up all shiny and new tomorrow? Would that be nice?”
Steven nods; he thinks it will be very nice. He drifts towards sleep in the thick duvet which smells of Mother, of safety. Another nice thought seeps into his head: Slugs! How many slugs there must be in the graveyard…and how very wonderfully horrible it is going to be for Harry to find out.
Within the churchyard, something is awakened, something formless save for the precision of its intent. It was summoned by the footfall of young Steven, a descendent of the cursed; but yet…but yet? He is something else as well. Ripples of recognition stir within the incorporeal residue of the Reverend’s unholy demonic pact. It cannot leave the confines of the churchyard; the rules are strict. It waits without understanding the passage of time. Minutes, days, decades…all are one and the same. Just one moment in time was all that was required for the malignancy to be made manifest when the rubicon was crossed. It waits. It bides.
A week has gone by, the first week in the new house, and there has been much to distract the family: unpacking, exploring, the first days at school. But for Steven, something else is a distraction, like a scrap of flesh between the teeth that a tongue cannot dislodge. It becomes a bad taste, the bitterness of a revenge not yet had. Whispers of secrets, echoes of bells and faint marks on his left foot that bath time soap does not remove. Marks like the touch of an ice cold hand. Sinister omens? Not so to a child of tender years with no understanding of the boundary between this world and the supernatural.
Harry has, throughout the week, heeded Father’s warning and spared his brother the usual dose of torments and teasing. It has been a long week, and restraint has taken not a little effort. He has no idea that thunderheads are gathering; but he is bored with Steven’s insistent sulk. The weekend comes; there is rain and they cannot go outside. Steven continues to refuse any suggestion that they might play together. He stares from his window towards the ruined church and the darkness of the trees around it. Harry slopes away to exorcise his boredom annoying Mother instead.
Slugs come out when it rains. Slugs and worms. Steven creeps into the garage then slips outside, foregoing a coat in his desire for secrecy, but holding a cheerful yellow plastic bucket and spade. He is soon standing before the gravestone, wet through and raindrops dripping from the end of his button nose.
“Speighthart,” he whispers, then kneels in the dirt and begins to dig…
To be continued…Here
Gloriously written this is! I love this totally OTT gothic thing.
The slug was a nice touch...
You remember childhood well! Hopefully Stephen rids himself of the influence of his evil ancestor before something horrible happens to Harry... but I fear something worse than worms and slugs are in store for him. I used to find the slimy critters to be great playmates, back in the day.