Ghosts and Scholars: Ghost Stories in the Tradition of M. R. James

AN INCIDENT IN THE CITY A. F. Kidd

A. F. Kidd is an advertising copywriter and freelance artist whose interests include astronomy and campanology. She has written several Jamesian ghost stories, most of which have been published in Ghosts and Scholars along with her own illustrations. One of these tales, ‘Old Hobby Horse’, was later reprinted by Karl Edward Wagner in his Year’s Best Horror Stories series. Her first collection of supernatural tales was published under the title Change and Decay in 1985. In ‘An Incident in the City’, which appeared in the first issue of Ghosts and Scholars, the author makes full use of the knowledge of London which she gained ten years ago while working for a law degree at London University. The small book that plays such an important role in this tale really does exist!

The bookshops which line the Charing Cross Road, with their shelves of dilapidated volumes outside (it is curious how everyone but oneself manages to transform a book into a tattered block of paper), are far from likely these days to yield anything in the nature of a ‘find’ to a bibliophile: their proprietors are far too astute to let anything go at much less than twice its actual value.

It was, therefore, with some degree of surprise that a gentleman of literary tastes—he was a University lecturer—picked up a small volume bound in green cloth from the shelves of one of these emporia, and found its price well within his means. Accordingly he paid the assistant, a pale-faced youth, the sum requested, and made his way with unaccustomed speed to Leicester Square underground station, whence a train took him to within a few minutes’ walk of his home. He gallantly forbore from examining his purchase during the journey, though he permitted himself a smile of self-satisfaction.

In his rooms, however, with hot coffee beside him and, somewhat self-indulgently, a packet of biscuits, he unwrapped the book and set to the thoroughly congenial task of browsing through this newly acquired addition to his library.

The academic—let us call him Sandford—cast aside the crumpled brown paper wrapping (on the floor, it must be admitted: he was not a man of tidy habits. From this the reader will assume correctly that he had no wife), and drew out the small volume.

It measured perhaps five or six inches by four, and its olive green binding (somewhat watermarked on the spine) bore a fanciful design of curlicues, in the centre of which was stamped in gold the Gothic legend London, What to See and How to See it. Further embellishment on the title page, beneath an engraving of a pastoral nature, evinced the information: ‘With numerous illustrations. London: H. G. Clarke & Co., 252, Strand. 1854.’

A quick flick through the pages proved the assertion concerning illustrations to be no idle boast, and Mr Sandford, taking a sip of coffee, addressed himself to the ‘Advertisement’ upon the second page.

Later, having examined with fascinated interest the ‘Brief Account of London’, the ‘Directions to the Principal Lines of Streets’ (with reference to the final chapter, ‘Omnibus Routes in the Metropolis’, where he was delighted to discover that ‘most of them have two charges—threepence for part of the distance, and sixpence for the whole distance’; and that from the ‘Atlas Omnibus’ which started from Camberwell Gate, as it crossed Westminster Bridge, there was a fine view of the ‘new Houses of Parliament’), the ‘Royal Palaces and Mansions of the Nobility’, ‘The Parks’, the ‘Legislative and Legal Establishments’ (Mr Sandford read this more carefully) and ‘The Government Offices’, he was about to commence the chapter entitled ‘Religious Edifices’ when he observed that the light was fast fading and that it might be advisable to turn on his reading lamp.

When he returned to his book, he found, somewhat to his annoyance, that a draught or capriciousness of the binding had turned the pages somewhat further on than the point at which he had halted; but looking at the attractive engraving decorating the page thus disclosed, he did not turn back to the beginning of the chapter.

Here it is necessary to rely upon hearsay, but Mr Sandford has a clear recollection of the matter on these pages, which made a peculiar impression upon him.

Mr Sandford knew little of architecture beyond the shape of Norman arches and his own good eye; but nonetheless the church in the illustration which confronted him struck him as being somehow out of the ordinary—why it should do so, he could not say.

The engraving showed the exterior of a church, with the conventional figures in the foreground; set back from the road, which brought to his mind a church in Bishopsgate whose name he was unable, for the moment, to recall; possessed of a tower which had a small spire or spike at each corner; and of the usual long nave, as he supposed it to be called. Indistinct birds fluttered round the tower.

Examined thus closely, it now seemed unremarkable, mediocre even; yet, as he looked at it, he felt himself drawn—there is no other way to describe the sensation—towards it. The thin parallel lines of shading seemed to become lowering clouds, the building to take on the aspect of weathered stone; and he states that the figures acquired certain details which were not pleasant to look at.

When he had, with difficulty, dragged his gaze away from the picture, Sandford began, since it was uncaptioned, to read the text below it. As he recalls, it ran thus, commencing in the middle of a sentence:

(Here Mr Sandford frowned: he thought it odd that such names should be unfamiliar to him—he was a legal historian. He had not been surprised at not knowing the name of Sadler, and determined to ask his friend Mr Udall, of the English Department, about the poet.)

Sandford frowned at this doggerel, and looked back at the engraving for a last time before turning the page. He was a little disappointed, as well as inexplicably relieved, to find that it seemed to have lost its power to compel his gaze; yet strangely (or maybe not so strangely) he had a sudden thought that he knew where the church in question was.

‘I suppose I could go and find out the dates of those wretched jurists,’ said Mr Sandford to himself, for he knew that they would grow on his mind and bother him if he tried to ignore their unfamiliar names. He got up from his chair, set down the book, and, taking a pen from the inner pocket of his discarded coat, wrote on the back of an undergraduate’s essay which lay on the table, ‘Jameson. Ashmole.??’

Picking up the book once more he found that the pages had turned themselves further on to a chapter headed ‘The Bridges and the Tunnel’. Reluctantly laying the book aside, he addressed himself to the essay mentioned above, which, though as turgid in style as the book which he had been perusing, afforded him much less amusement.

Sleep came to him rather late that night, and seemed full of restless dreams; accordingly he woke late on Saturday morning with the strong impression that he had intended to do something that day, but no recollection of what that might be.

Sandford went to his favourite coffee shop for breakfast (somewhat later than was his custom) and there encountered a colleague from his Faculty. Words passed between them—mere desultory ‘shop’—and then Sandford’s friend, who knew his predilections, said: ‘Had any luck lately in those disgusting musty bookshops you’re so fond of?’

‘Yes, actually,’ replied Sandford, suddenly recalling the picture of the church with the curious figures and his determination to find it. ‘Did you know that in 1854 bus rides cost either 3d or 6d?’

‘Wish they still did,’ observed his friend, with feeling.

When he left the coffee shop, he proceeded directly to the underground station, where he took a tube to the Bank, and emerged from one of the numerous exits of that labyrinthine station some thirty minutes later.

Sandford liked the City of London, that strange self-contained and self-sufficient maze of oddly-named streets, although he invariably lost himself there; he had frequently intended to make an effort to familiarize himself with its intricacies but had never penetrated those mysteries any further than the merest outskirts. The curious names fascinated him; and as he wandered slowly along the streets on that fine and deserted winter Saturday—for the City is solely a weekday phenomenon—the monumental concrete and glass towers of the P&O and its taller neighbour, the CU, buildings, were less real to him than the narrow by-ways and unexpected alleys, which seemed to retain their character of a hundred years before.

He thought he was wandering aimlessly, going down a road at random simply to see where it went, but all the time in the back of his mind was a vague consciousness of the church of the engraving.

The reader will have guessed that he found it; but it took him far longer than he had expected. By the time he came out of one of those small squares endemic to the City via a narrow alley with three iron posts at one end, and saw before him the building he had half expected and half dreaded to see, it was mid-afternoon and the winter dusk had been hastened by a dull drizzle.

Although his fascination with the church had from the beginning been tempered by a kind of dread, he was altogether unprepared for the actual impression which the building made upon him. It may have been a trick of the light, or lack of it; indeed Sandford, for his peace of mind, insists that it was no more than this—but the church struck him in some way as extremely unpleasant, not to say unholy.

He could not define exactly why this should be his impression, but its whole aspect seemed to exude a kind of gloomy malevolence. As in the engraving, he could make out certain figures in the grounds of the building whose aspect was not entirely wholesome. Also as in the engraving, the actual building had the power to compel his gaze—and his steps—towards it.

The church was, as has been mentioned, set back from the road. There was an expanse of ground, bare of grass, for some twenty yards, traversed by a path of large paving stones, before it. Sandford opened the gate, which moved smoothly on its hinges, and walked up the path, The stones were even but deeply worn, and, curiously, he had the impression that they had not been worn by feet.

The day grew darker with an abruptness which surprised him. He tried to look at the figures in the distance, but they had never been clear, and seemed not to grow any nearer; indeed, he received the impression that they slid out of his vision when he looked at them. Soon the mirk became so thick that he could see little of anything.

Sandford halted, irresolute, and then a thin rain began to fall, of that peculiarly penetrating quality which seems to fall nowhere but in cities and when one is as far from home and shelter as possible. At this, he ran for the nearest shelter, which was of course the church.

Within, it was hung with a vast darkness: he could make out very little, but the sense of oppression was so strong that he found breathing difficult. The smell of the church was strange: it had not the calm cool austerity of stone, but was at once both musty and sour. The cold was intense. Sandford felt his way, with no clear purpose or intent, along the aisle. When he reached the front row of pews he saw vaguely to his left a small alcove. With a sense of relief that he would feel more sheltered there than in the hollow, empty church, he groped his way towards it.

It was a small, many-sided niche in which were laid several stone slabs surmounted by the usual marble effigies, their hands folded upon the hilts of their swords, which lay upon their breasts in the manner of those brasses of which schoolchildren and diligent ladies in tweeds make rubbings. At the feet of each was carved a small, unidentifiable beast.

From this point, events took on the quality of a peculiarly horrible nightmare. Sandford, still feeling his way along, touched the side of one figure and swears he felt the chain mail beneath his hand. He was unable to assimilate this at once, but the horror was undeniable when, the next moment, the stone image opposite him slowly sat up and turned its sightless head towards him.

Sandford screamed and ran. He is understandably reluctant to speak of these events, but he had a distinct impression of a figure close on his heels, a figure terribly thin and swift and silent, except for a faint clack as of bones as it reached out fleshless hands towards him. It was the silence, he says, which he found most terrible.

Drawing by A. F. Kidd

There is a stage in that progressive emotion terror which, when once reached, cannot adequately be recalled. Sandford ran until he was sure the eldritch thing no longer followed him; nor had it, to his recollection, touched him, for all its strivings. But there was a place upon his shoulder which still sends a thin pain through him when the days are dark and cold. And since that visit to the City, though Mr Udall was as unable to enlighten him about the poet Sadler as Sandford himself was to find any reference to Ashmole and Jameson, he has heard the name of Francis Magister and his unholy burial ground in terms which made him sure that that worthy did not sleep as soundly as he might. Neither is he surprised that he cannot find the page in his book upon which that church was described, although there is no break in the numerical sequence so no pages are missing.

The student upon whose essay he had noted the names saw no significance in them, either; but this may be because he did not look for them. Sic transit gloria mundi.