Whispers: An anthology of Fantasy and Horror

THE SCALLION STONE by Basil A. Smith

“So you’re on your way to Northumberland and the Farne Islands, are you?” said Aitchison, and added with genial irony, “I suppose if it hadn’t been for my having Prideaux Selby’s catalogue, you’d never have broken your journey here at all!”

“Well, I did want to check up on one or two species,” laughed the ornithologist. “And I don’t dislike sleepy little Durham, you know. For a night’s lodging, within hearing of the cathedral chimes, I can even put up with a cantankerous old sinner like you!”

With such good-natured banter and amid the comfortable surroundings of Aitchison’s library, a stranger—had there been one there, hidden for some melodramatic reason, behind an armchair—would have had no difficulty in guessing that Drury was an old academic friend with a good claim to familiarity with his aged host.

“Ah!” reflected Aitchison a few minutes later as the pair of them, like good bachelors, sat watching the fire go out, “it’s a long time since I did more than peep at Holy Island. Let’s see; it’s fifty years since the St. Cuthbert centenary. I remember crossing to the Farne about then.”

“Is there much archaeological stuff there?” asked Drury. “Any Cuthbert relics still?”

“Fourteenth-century chapel and site of the old boy’s hermitage. But unless you’re keen there’s nothing very exciting,” said Aitchison.

“It’s the birds I’m after chiefly, of course,” said Drury, “but while I’m there I might as well kill two birds with one stone!”

“Talking of stones,” responded the antiquary quite seriously, “you really ought to see the Scallion Stone.”

“What’s that then?” asked the other. “Some ancient carved work?”

“No,” said Aitchison, “it’s more of a geological curio—in shape, something between an oblong block and a wedge—about five feet in length and nearly two in breadth at its widest, I should say—surface pretty smooth, with five elongated shapes like fossils standing out. The name comes from these, I suppose, for they look like spring onions, or scallions as they call them in these parts. The whole thing’s very curious.”

“And you say this is still to be seen on the island?” asked Drury.

“I should be surprised if anyone’s disturbed it,” rejoined Aitchison. “In fact I doubt whether many people know of its existence, and with the amount of seaweed there is, they are not likely to come across it by accident.”

Drury was quite intrigued, and very soon the two had forgotten their wine, while Aitchison was drawing sketches and setting down directions which would help his guest to locate the phenomenon which seemed so well worth searching for.

Drury enjoyed his expedition, and a few days later he was back in Durham loaded with notes and photos of his beloved seabirds. Aitchison had urged him to stay the night, and talk soon turned upon the Scallion Stone once more.

“Yes, I did manage to get at it after tearing up a load or two of Channeled Wrack,” said Drury. “In fact, I took a photo, too. I got a print out from it last night. You can have it if you like.”

Aitchison was most interested when Drury brought down the photo for him. He scrutinized it for a minute, then put it down with knitted brow.

“That’s strange,” he murmured, “it must have changed.”

“How do you mean?” asked Drury with some astonishment.

“Well,” said Aitchison reflectively, “your photo here shows five ‘scallions’ all pretty much the same. Actually, when I saw this stone, four were complete and the fifth was what I should call disfigured, almost as if wrenched and depleted at the end.”

“You re probably mistaken,” said Drury half-amused. “Anyway it seems a trivial point to keep in mind for all these years. Archaeology has made you mighty keen and observant, my boy.”

“Oh, it’s not that,” repudiated Aitchison, “it’s the legend that fixes it in my mind. I ought to have told you. It comes from Bede. You remember he tells us St. Cuthbert used to go from Lindisfarne into solitary retreat over on the Farne. There, with the sea to shut him off from the rest of the world, he spent his time in prayer and fasting. He was so engaged at the last period of his life, and when his monks came—fearing for his life—to look after him, they found the good man dying. All he had by him were five onions—or at least four, and a fifth which looked to be partly eaten.”

“So, so,” said Drury with mild enthusiasm, “and now my photo here just fails to tally with the tale by making the five complete. Are you sure it wasn’t always the same, and this bit of detail from Bede has put a twist on your memory? It’s no great matter anyhow.”

Aitchison was rummaging in a receptacle at his desk. Presently he handed to his friend another photo, old and discolored but accurate enough in detail.

“There,” he said, “I took that myself when I was there. Now compare it with yours.”

Certainly there was a difference. It was as Aitchison had said: the recent likeness showed five scallions, plump and alike, the old one showed four complete and one quite mutilated and apparently hollow and dank at the lower end.

“Very queer,” admitted Drury, “how could it come about?”

“Broken fossils do not heal themselves,” declared the serious Aitchison. “That’s not a natural thing.”

“By the look of you, one would think it boded something supernatural,” teased Drury gaily.

Aitchison turned sharply on him then.

“That’s what I mean exactly,” he said with smart decisiveness.

“You surprise me, Aitchison,” replied the friend, somewhat askance.

“I know. You’re still a skeptic about such things. So was I, and should be still but for a nasty experience. And, indeed, the whole thing hangs round this stone, and a certain man called Calladine.”

“You’d better tell me about this,” said Drury quite animated now.

“I will,” said Aitchison, “if you’ll first poke that fire.”

It was in the Christmas vacation of 1886 that I came across Calladine. I had long promised myself a thorough survey of the castle at Bamburgh and the better to do so I was staying in the village at—the “Penda” I think it was called then—a little inn kept by old Colin Gray and his wife. I was scarcely more than an undergraduate in those days, and it was a real pleasure to me when I found another guest there capable of providing some good company and conversation. I was at first puzzled to think why a young doctor—he would be in his early thirties—was secreting himself in such an outlandish place as the Northumberland coast, which as you know is uncommonly bleak and melancholy in the winter months. He told me at first he was “spying out the land” with a view to setting up a country practice in those parts, having had to leave London through a nervous breakdown. As I afterwards learned, he was there for a double reason: on the advice of a criminal psychologist he was seeking both to recuperate his health and to avoid public attention. (You may have heard of the Crewe-Delton case which gave the police such trouble but ended in a complete acquittal for Delton in the trial. Well, “Calladine” was none other than Delton, but he shall always be Calladine for me, poor devil.)

We got on well, the short time I was there. He was a man of cultured interests, especially in your line of Natural Philosophy, as we used to call it. Our talks together when we strolled on the seashore were often interrupted by little excursions on his part into the field of marine botany and zoology. He was also an uncommonly fine photographer, and I well remember how proud he was to have designed his own camera, which had a remarkable flashlight device for use in semi-darkness. This, together with his own skill, he most generously put at my service for making records of various architectural features at the castle. Indeed, it was one afternoon at the end of such operations that I first noticed something queer about him.

I had turned back to fetch my pipe, which I suddenly remembered was on the ledge of one of the upper windows, and I left Calladine down in the inner bailey waiting for me. Now it so happened that as I picked up the pipe I caught a glimpse of him through the window. He was gazing out to sea and I should have thought that natural enough but for an open-mouthed attitude of fascination that seemed to have taken hold of him. Whatever he was looking at, I could not from my position see, but as I watched I suddenly saw him shudder as if something revolting had been enacted before his eyes. When I rejoined him he looked pale and said nothing. Somewhat inquisitive, I made excuse to look out seawards myself but detected nothing unusual.

“There is something haunting about the twilight on the coast, isn’t there?” I observed.

“How do you mean?” asked Calladine eagerly, then added, “I suppose if you’re of a poetic turn you can imagine some fantastic things at times.”

There is a sense of restraint which prevents a man from making pointed intrusions into another’s thoughts on certain occasions, and my curiosity had to go unsatisfied. I felt that if Calladine had some sort of secret fear it was probably due to his illness, and the best motto for a friend in such a case seemed to be Quieta non movere.

You will understand this the more when I tell you Calladine could, on occasion, be very violent and scornful, especially about matters of superstition. An instance will show what I mean. Gray, like most fisherfolk, had quite a mental museum (as I should call it) of local tales and beliefs. One evening in the bar his talk had been running on these lines when I came in. The topic, whatever it was, had evidently ended and I was only in time to catch something about “sea blood.” Pricking up my ears, I asked what the mystery was about. Gray, to satisfy me, was going to take up the thread again when Calladine, who had been sitting pensively in the corner, sprang up with an oath and broke the whole gathering up with a stormy tirade against “such credulous nonsense.” After this he flung out of the room and I followed him in some anxiety, for it was obvious that the poor fellow’s nerves were playing the devil with him again.

Actually, however, he seemed to come round very cheerfully out of these fits. For days he was serenity itself, rambling along the shore in the mornings with his camera and often meeting me at the castle later.

Only once was this harmony broken. It was in November when we were looking forward to some duck-shooting. The weather had been very hard, and Gray—who was an expert in such matters—thought we might expect a flight or two of inland birds coming seawards from the frozen ponds. Now in this sport, as you know, a good deal depends upon your getting well hidden from sight, usually in a shelter pit dug in the sands. And so we found ourselves with spades “howking a hole,” as Colin called it, in readiness for the flights. The old man was choosing for himself a strategic point some yards away while Calladine and I got to work with our shoveling. We had been at it silently for a time, and a goodish oblong cavity was beginning to take shape, when Calladine drew in his breath with a gasp and suddenly stopped work.

I had my back to him at the time, but turning round I saw him staring into the sand and trembling from head to foot.

“Did you see that?” he said, pointing down. But I could see nothing remarkable.

“It’s gone now, of course,” he added, with relief, “but it gave me a queer turn.”

“Why, what did you see?” I asked in some bewilderment.

“Oh, I know,” said he, despairingly. “It’s my crazy nerves again. I suppose you think I’m mad.”

And there he sat with his handkerchief to his brow looking very sick and tired, I thought, while Gray came up and looked silently on. We rallied him a bit but he had no more appetite for sport that evening, so we got him back home and into a warm bed.

I felt sure at the time that these hallucinations would be serious for Calladine sooner or later. Next day, however, he came down to breakfast much refreshed, and the matter was scarcely referred to at all. A few days later I had to be back in Newcastle, and when I left him he seemed as sane as any man could be.

Weeks passed without any news. Then one morning I got a letter from Gray—one of those clumsy, countrified epistles which only appear at times of domestic crisis—begging me to return to Bamburgh at once to settle whether “the Doctor is quite Wise in his head.”

It was a sorry tale the old man had to tell as we drove along in the dogcart after he had met me at the train. To cut a long story short, suffice it to say he had let Calladine persuade him (no hard matter with an old sportsman!) to get the guns out and have another try at the ducks, despite the lateness of the season. Gray had an idea of the flight lines, and so the pair of them were lying in wait one evening some distance apart among the hollows, watching the sky. Then what should happen, but Calladine gives a cry of terror, just as the birds could be heard coming overhead. Of course, off they veered out of shot and left the old man cursing with disgust. But he ran to his companion none the less, and found him lying dazed and shuddering. His plight was worse than ever before.

Indeed, the upshot was that Calladine had been little better than a nervous invalid since. He became more than usually morose and developed such frightening symptoms that Gray and his wife began to watch him closely. They had heard him in his room at nights get out of bed, strike a light, and groan time and again. He sounded to be always washing at the bowl. Then one morning he apologized to Mrs. Gray for leaving bloodstains on the sheets.

“I meant to mention it before,” he said. “My hands—I mean my nose—sometimes bleeds in the night.”

The strange thing is, there was no trace of blood about, but she dare not tell him so for he was an awkward man to contradict at any time. She talked the matter over anxiously with her husband, and that day Colin wrote for me to come.

When I arrived at the inn Mrs. Gray was very thankful to see me, and I was equally relieved to learn that Calladine was upstairs sound asleep. I could not help reflecting, as we sat at tea, upon the difficulties of my position. After what I had heard, it seemed plainly my duty to get Calladine away at all costs, but it was not a pleasant thing to realize that I had practically come to certify the wretched man as insane. On such an errand one is not sanguine about the sort of reception that is in store. I had a delicate task before me, and one thing I wanted to do first was to talk matters over more fully with Gray. During our conversation in the dogcart I thought I had detected in him a note of understanding toward Calladine, as if the old man believed there was really “something in” these delusions. Moreover, my curiosity about that interrupted episode over “sea blood” was again demanding satisfaction. All told, I determined to probe the mystery at its most mysterious.

As soon as Mrs. Gray had retired (after a weary day and several sleepless nights) to an early bed, I plied old Colin with an extra drink or two, then got him to draw up to the fire and unburden his mind.

And a fine tale I got, to be sure. First, about “sea blood.” To say in local parlance that a person had “got the sea blood” meant, I found, that he was contaminated by an insidious disease resulting from a sort of curse. Local people—“St. Cuthbert’s ain,” as Gray would call them—were thought to be immune from this scourge because the ancient spirits of the coast had no power against those born within the pale of the saint’s domain. Even strangers were not susceptible except at certain times, like anniversaries, and then only in winter months; so very rarely was a case expected. But tradition still held the day of St. Cuthbert’s death to be an evil time each year. The last quite clear eruption of this curse fell, as I now learnt, upon a little French girl, a refugee and orphan of one of the prisoners at Berwick when Gray was a small boy. (The end of the Napoleonic wars it would be, for he was a good age in ’87 when he told me all this.)

I asked him what the symptoms were. All he remembered was that she could not sleep at all at nights for fear, but would cry out most pitifully about some ghastly vision. It was in these spasms that her feet were noticed to exude a sickly, blood-like sweat. The village folk then put it down to her going barefoot in the sands—a thing she did, it seems, quite often despite the cold. Rumors spread that the girl had trodden on some evil creature of the sea. Then one old fishwife gravely recalled that this could be none other than the half-forgotten “sea blood” curse. There was no cure, she said, except the victim should go across to Farne to “touch the Scallion” in St. Cuthbert’s name. (And that was how I first came to hear about this Stone of ours.) Most folks, Gray said, were loath to make resort to such unearthly charms, but yet all felt a growing pity for the child.

At last one day, in spite of some fear of “what parson would say,” they wrapped her up in shawls, and six men took out a boat for the island, so that they could at least try the power of this reputed spell and see if Mother Blackett was right about it after all.

Alas, they never reached the island. Winds or currents tossed them back out of their course, and finally the boat capsized not far from where they started. Some of the crew always swore it was sucked down by supernatural forces claiming the child. At any rate, despite all care and effort, she alone was drowned. The poor thing never even rose, and—search as they would—no trace of her was found. The wrecked boat, however, was at rare intervals partly visible some distance out beyond low tide.

“It’s an ill place,” remarked Gray in conclusion, “and folks that’s canny will give it a wide berth.”

We sat for a while with no sound but the fire flames and the ticking of the clock in all the house, and the distant rustle of the eternal sea outside. I was trying to think out the bearing of this sinister tradition upon Calladine and his troubles, when—all at once—we were both startled by the clicking of the latch on the stair door and turned round to find Calladine himself, disheveled and half-dressed, coming toward us. There was an awful smile of desperation on his face which, coupled with a false sort of calmness in his manner, made him seem almost a different person from the steady companion I had first known.

“Sit down, the pair of you,” he ordered, “I’ve overheard the whole delightful story. And now I suppose, Mr. Aitchison, you’re going to call it ‘very interesting’ and say ‘how picturesque these old fancies are.’ Very pretty superstition, isn’t it, my friend?”

There was a leering hostility about the man which scared me for his sanity, but I answered with some warmth, “Look here, Calladine, don’t be a fool. No one believes in evil spirits nowadays. Queer things may have happened, but all this is heightened by subjective coloring, as any man knows.”

“Oh yes!” he said, with mocking scorn. “What are you doing here, anyhow? You think I’m off my head. And you’ve come to tell me to pull myself together, and haul me off to some genteel madhouse ‘for the good of all concerned.’ Very kind of you, I’m sure, but I’ll have you know my reason is as sound as yours.”

“Of course it is,” I put in as patiently as I could. And then he snapped at me.

“None of your soothing nonsense, either. My reason’s sound, I tell you, but that does not save me from being under this hellish curse that Gray’s been telling you about. I’m hounded to my grave by something devilish, and all your talking will not alter it.”

He sobbed and wept in pitiful hysteria, so I motioned Gray to bring some whisky in, and tried to steady the poor chap.

“It’s no good coddling me,” he raved, “I used to tell myself it was a case of nerves and I was only seeing things. But now I know the affair is real. When Gray picked me up that night I knew it was not fancy. As I’m alive, there was something both visible and—yes, good God—and tangible. I touched the brute, Aitchison, like a snake there in the sand. And every night I wake to feel that horrid slime and find my hands all bleeding with it again. Yet, because I cannot prove it to you, you think I’m just a ramping lunatic, eh?”

His voice was rising again. I could not answer him and dared not ask for details from him in such a state. Moreover, as I looked at Gray, I knew the old man too believed the reality of Calladine’s account. Then, on the spur of the moment, a way occurred to me that might, I thought, bring reason into play.

“Now listen,” I said, “you’ve had your say. Both you and Gray believe all this. But I tell you plainly I’m convinced there is no unearthly monster in the case. I’m convinced this ‘sea blood’ is a delusion. I’m also convinced, Colin, there is no such thing as your Scallion Stone, or any other shred of fact behind this stuff. You can’t prove anything.”

“And there you’re wrong, sir,” answered Gray quietly. “I’ve not seen the ‘blood’ on Mr. Calladine, but there’s them as did see it on that bairn. And I have seen queerish sights around the shore, times past.”

“What things have you seen then?” I demanded.

“Well,” said he uncomfortably, “they’re hard to talk about. Movements in the sand, I’d say, and sometimes lights and shapes—uncanny things, sir, particular near-in at sea.”

“Until I see something myself,” said I impatiently, “I cannot help thinking the pair of you are deluded. You can’t show me anything ‘tangible.’ ”

“I think I could take you to the Stone, if need be, Mr. Aitchison,” said Gray. “Would you believe us then? It was about the time I took Mr. Nettleby, our other Vicar, to it that I saw those lights very plain at night. If I could get Mr. Calladine there, and him to touch the Stone, I am sure, sir, he might be saved.”

I noticed Calladine prick up his ears a bit but he said nothing. I too was hesitant, but a moment’s thought showed me my opportunity.

“You really can find us the Stone?” I said slowly, like one prepared to be convinced. “If you do prove right, I’m with you both. After all, I suppose, it’s not unreasonable: when there’s a curse, there’s a way of breaking it. If natural powers are really beaten, I’ll join you to get this supernatural charm. I meet you with an open mind.

“So cheer up, Calladine,” I added. “We’ll fathom this and have your mind freed from the beastly scourge somehow. And when can we see this Stone to start with, Colin? The sooner the better—but not a word to Mrs. Gray.”

The old man thought we could manage it next day and promised he would have a boat ready straight after breakfast if we wished. And so it was agreed. We drank up more cheerfully than we had done with Calladine since first I knew him. When I saw him up to bed again I felt I could congratulate myself on having humored him at least some way toward recovery.

I did not myself intend going to bed just then, despite the departure of Calladine and Gray, for it was not yet ten o’clock. In all probability I should have sat with a book for a while. But my inclinations were overruled by the importunate looks and antics of Gray’s young terrier, Rap. It seemed a pity on such a fine night to refuse giving the poor little fellow a stroll, so I took up my hat and stick, and off we went.

While Rap was pursuing his own particular investigations here and there, I too was trying to sniff out a trail of sense and satisfaction in the dark corners of my mind. I began of course to seek justification for my role of benevolent hypocrite. These old wives’ tales of Gray’s were too fantastic for my serious credence, but this I thought might well be a case where—psychologically speaking—Beelzebub might cast out Beelzebub. And for Calladine’s sake it seemed worth trying: to cure a deluded sufferer it could certainly not be very wrong for me to pretend to share the delusion. So I thought.

Then, for some unknown reason, I began to toy with the matter in a reflective rather than a practical mood. Perhaps it was the struggling moonlight softening the atmosphere and my common sense at the same time. I tried in vain to dismiss the significance of Gray’s having seen something as well as Calladine’s. It must be superstitious imagination, I told myself, but who had started the process? Had Calladine influenced Gray, or had the gossip and attitude of Gray and his neighbors home in upon Calladine? Superstition is curiously infectious. Would anyone ever have seen a ghost if he had not first heard of someone else’s seeing one?

By this time our walk had taken us almost to the castle. My steps, or Rap’s, being on familiar ground, decided their own route, and I soon found myself looking out to sea from the inner bailey. It was the spot where Calladine had stood when I glanced at him from the window and first noticed him with that queer, fascinated stare. And now I was looking out where he had looked, toward the Longstone light. It was about high tide, and I was taking a drowsy interest in the rhythm of the rollers, crumbling to whiteness in the dim moonlight, when something made me strangely alert.

A little beyond what would be low-water mark when the tide ebbed, there seemed to be a patch of submerged light, like a pool of phosphorescent green, shimmering on the sea bed. From it there came, straggling limply in all directions, a number of short rootlike lines. But one line, like a huge proboscis, thicker than the rest, was pointed shorewards. To all appearance it was anchored there, for not only did it heave and waver in the water, but I caught glimpses of it shining here and there across the sands. But my eye was mainly on that central ganglion in the sea, with its floating, nervous threads.

Now, as I looked, the color changed and the whole shape shone magically transfused with crimson, like some colossal lobster seen through the thick, distorting medium of a bull’s-eye windowpane. Then suddenly up shot those cruel feelers; a seabird shrieked; I saw an eddy of dispersing wings above the bloody spot, and all was gone. In a twinkling the glowing light had died and every mark of the apparition vanished.

I waited, staring, to assure my wits but nothing further happened. Yet Rap was back, cowering at my side, no doubt disturbed—as I was—by that harrowing scream. Back to the inn we went and I had strange thoughts to ponder on the way. If superstition fools the senses to such a pitch, then who is sane? All my earlier self-assurance had deserted me, and when I got to bed it was to find but intermittent sleep. A haunting spirit of misgiving brooded over me and cast a shadow on the outcome of the morrow’s doings.

Events moved rapidly that day. First, when we woke, our plans had gone awry. Calladine was ill and haggard beyond description—after some extra-hellish dream, he said, some nightmare on the fate of that dead girl. He was completely demoralized once more, and in no mood to keep our bargain of the previous night.

“I saw her beckoning to me, poor little wretch, as the boat sank and the waters were drowning her cries,” he muttered. “I know this is an evil day for me out there. That sea moan is sounding in my head like a ghost call. Let’s all stay here till it goes off. After today I know I shall be all right again.”

Poor Calladine! I never shall forget those words of his, and that imploring look. What devil drove me to make light of such an appeal? Oh, yes, I soothed and sympathized all right. I coaxed him off to rest again. I even fetched tobacco for him from the shop. But in my heart I secretly determined I was going to see that Stone myself: Gray had the boat all ready and it might be many a day before the sea was again suitable to cross; and then I must be back to town next day at least, I argued to myself. My own experiences had wrought in me a fascination close on frenzy to see and know the most that could be known. And soon, so deadly soon, I knew it!

Within an hour I left him dozing—God forgive me—and we went. I need not tell you of that little voyage in the morning sun. You’ve been yourself. Nor need I tell you of the Stone and of my childish wonderment at seeing it in fact as Gray had said. There were the four completed bulbs—and the fatal fifth so dank and gaping: I well remember that. And then, of course, I took my fill of satisfaction by photographing it as well.

But was I satisfied? I wondered. What was there yet in store? I felt as one who hears a prelude played and waits the fall of chords that mark the onset of the major theme.

“We should have brought him with us, sir,” I heard Gray murmur in reproach. And then at once I saw the lines of fate converging on him—my poor friend, Calladine. A sudden guilty fear welled up inside me now. Old Colin’s thought was doubtless of the man’s being cured by touching the Stone, but in my mind I saw a thousand chances of some untoward act he might be led to by his crazy brain while we were dallying there.

Into the boat we tumbled, and as we rowed I heard anew those ominous words, “I know this is an evil day for me out there.” The afternoon sky was darkening noticeably as we rowed. A yellow dullness lowering in the air boded the rising of an unseasonable storm. No rain, however, had fallen when we got to land, but Mrs. Gray came running out to meet us from the house.

“Mr. Calladine’s gone out,” she panted. “Can’t you find him, Colin, afore this storm comes on? If he’s caught I’m sure hell get his death.”

We took the coat she gave us and hurried down the beach, and as we ran I felt it was a race against a darker foe than rain. At last Gray spotted him. Indeed, but for a surface mist, we should have seen him earlier from our boat.

“Good Lord!” cried Gray, “the man’s stark mad. Look there! He’s at the wreck.”

In the distance we could see the black hulk of that fatal boat in which the girl had drowned. An exceptionally low tide—due to the equinox, no doubt—had brought about one of those rare occasions when the sea exposed this melancholy hulk. And that small figure moving about was surely Calladine, clambering on the half-buried vessel.

“Dang the fool! What’s he tampering with?” groaned Colin with a curse. “He knows to keep away. I told him there’s something wicked there. And now the tide’ll cut him off.”

As we approached I noticed Calladine had got his camera in his hand, and now we heard him call.

“By Jove! I’ve made a choice discovery, Aitchison. Queer sort of sea plant with abnormal features, and quite huge. Seems to be growing through the timbers down here.”

“Yes, all right, but come on, man! You look like being caught,” I cried. “The tide’s already here.”

Gray had dropped back somewhat and was scanning the blackening clouds.

“There’ll be a clap just now, sir,” he bawled.

But neither of us could get quite to the boat because of a shore pool engulfing it on our side. The first fringe of the approaching tide was now lapping also on the seaward side, whence Calladine apparently had come upon his prize. Nor had we any view into the boat as it was shored up on its side, facing away from us. All we could see in that livid daylight were the rotting timbers, and Calladine slithering round the gunwale and fumbling with a flashlight pan.

“I must just get one exposure of it somehow,” he yelled, strapping the camera to a withered rowlock.

A moments silence followed, then—

“Good God! It’s . . .”

One agonizing scream, a blinding flash, and I felt myself thrown headlong in the wet, quaking sand, with the mortal crack and roar of thunder in my ears.

The next I knew was being dragged to my feet by Gray amid the drenching torrents of a cloudburst. Giddily I pulled myself together, and joined with him in calling, “Calladine! Hey, Calladine,” and wading about in the swirling sea. All our cries were in vain. Nothing could we find save bits of wreckage floating here and there. From one I snatched the fatal camera still strapped to it.

In haste I went for help while Colin stayed to search. Even when men and lanterns and a boat arrived it was a fruitless task. Splinters of wood and fragments of what seemed like bloody seaweed—all beefy red and gristly—and that was all. There was no sign of unhappy Calladine. With the lanterns flickering we took our last look across the evening sea and I could not help but muse upon my vision of the previous night when

“Death by misadventure” was all that could be safely said of my poor friends fate. The only evidence was a fresh-stripped skeleton found three days later. But the fisherfolk put the whole tragedy down to malevolent powers. Talk turned on spiritual forces, incarnate in some carnivorous sea plant of monstrous dimensions. Folklore was rife about “St. Cuthbert’s fiends,” and “sea blood” and the like.

The sexton, too, who had been digging a grave that tragic afternoon, soon had a tale to tell. I got it from the parson later, when no doubt it had gathered details by transmission several times. This fellow had, so Mr. Ainsley said, often noticed a reddish slime in the ground when he was excavating. Beetles and worms seemed greatly drawn to this stuff from all directions, and he could not make out where it oozed from. He had never liked the look of it himself and so had kept pretty clear. Besides, it had a most obnoxious stench, he said. Now, on the afternoon of Calladine’s death, this man was in the graveyard at his work when the ground began to quake and he saw a subsidence, not in the old quarter where you might expect it among the vaults, but where the recent burials had been. He rushed to where the soil was broken most and was in time to see a curious sight.

There were his beetles and other insects by the hundred making, through a ruddy patch of soil, toward a writhing length of something like an elephant’s trunk. It gleamed with a phosphorescent light, he said, and seemed to have tough veins pulsating along it, but it lashed out so violently that in a moment it was gone. He saw what looked like tawny-colored bristles twitching on the thing, with insects being impaled upon them and sucked into scaly apertures within the trunk. But what horrified the fellow most were tentacles stuck piercing through a newly buried coffin for purposes so obvious and evil.

It must have been a gruesome sight, and it always sets me wondering about that rootlike line I saw, the night before the tragedy, running from the sea across and under the sands, and also about what Calladine must certainly have seen and touched when out with Gray the other time.

I should think less of this but for a startling thing that came from that camera of his. One of the demonstrators at the laboratory—for amusement, it seems—betook himself to develop the plates when it arrived, along with Calladine’s other things, in Newcastle. Anyway, what should Dr. Angus bring me one morning but a photograph of the very sight that Calladine beheld at the moment of his death!

If you will kindly reach down that large book—that old one in faded leather—on my cabinet, you will find this same photograph inside.

Drury had soon seen enough. Even after a glass of brandy and soda he was still shivery for some time at the thought of those countless layers of rank, concentric lobes and the unfolding bunch of antennae, just glimpsed there in the very instant of disclosing that inane and meager “face” within the vortex.

“Poor devil!” he shuddered. “What did he take it for at first? Some monstrous species of Drosera? That stuff like fungus reminds me of those ghastly frilled lizards they have in Australia. But then these writhing tubes? If you think of an ultra-ghoulish octopus as well, you’ve still not sized this nightmare up. There’s something horrible beyond—”

“Yes,” mused Aitchison solemnly, “ ‘something beyond.’ ”

“I almost feel that you are right,” said Drury reluctantly, “but I don’t quite grasp your supernatural basis for all this.”

“Well,” answered Aitchison, ‘even in the modern texts we have Bede’s word for it that Farne Island was haunted in St. Cuthbert’s time. But I confess it was a reference in this antiquated folio here that first made me read between the lines. Look at it yourself.”

Here he passed his friend the book in which that ugly photograph had long been kept. After glancing with some curiosity at the title page (A Discreet Inquirie into the Spiritual Topographie of the Northern parts of Englande, by the Revd. Dr. Wm. Danby, 1579), Drury turned to the place inside, which Aitchison had found, and read:

“Ah! I begin to see it now,” murmured Drury in reverie, as his host rose and put both book and photograph away. “That’s where your Scallion Stone comes in. So, Demon Number Five, that gave old Cuthbert the slip, has now done his damnedest and been put to rest. But what a sinister thing to know when you stood that morning looking at the last fossil, clammy and vacant, that Thing was still at large!”

“Aye,” said Aitchison, “and what of Calladine who knew it? He asked me once what sort of hell hag an ‘amphibian vampire’ would be to dream about.”