Well, it comes again, the winter,
In a tempest, overnight,
Coming down hard as we’re sleeping,
Washing the forest with white.
Well, it rattles in the corners,
And bustles on the boughs,
And coats the drowsy dormers,
And crowns the placid cows;
Well, it comes on feet so silent
We only hear the wind;
We roll over, half-smiling,
And whisper to winter: “Come in.”
The moon had been lost hours ago, in a thick pall of suffocating cloud. Edward held the lamp high, casting a red glow over the yawning grave. Below him, the two men labored and sweated, flinging up dirt that vanished in the dark.
It was cold in the churchyard. A raw wind howled out of the north. Above him the bare branches creaked and snapped in the breeze, and somewhere far off in the valley a lone dog bayed against the demon night. Edward shuddered and tightened the cloak about his neck.
There were stories about this place. Edward tried not to think of them. It was said, and half-believed, in the district that on moonless autumn nights, the dead would stir in their graves and rise up to take the air. The faithful swore they rose only to avenge some dreadful sin: a murder, a betrayal, a blasphemy, a fratricide. But who is without sin? whispered others – less certain, perhaps, of the benevolence of God’s world. Let that man walk in that churchyard late at night. Let him brave the houses of the dead, if he chooses; me for the tavern, and my bed before middle night.
At last, with a scraping crunch that Edward felt in his teeth, one of the shovels found the lid of the coffin. Sensing an end to their efforts, the men below quickened their pace. They cleared the dirt from the coffin’s lid, tied a thick rope to its iron handle, and helped each other to climb free of the grave. Edward set his lamp aside and took hold of the rope along with the others. Heaving with all their strength, they jerked one end of the coffin loose.
It cost them a feverish effort to drag the heavy oaken box up to level ground, but at last it lay before them, dark and dirt-encrusted, with the black womb that had borne it gaping behind like a toothless mouth. They looked at it, breathing heavily, their breath a warm white wraith in the lamplight. For long, black moments they were still, and the world was still.
It was Edward’s father that broke the silence. “Pass me that crowbar, boy.”
“One moment, Simeon.” This time it was the priest who spoke. He knelt down in the dirt, held his little cross to his lips, and muttered a quick prayer.
Edward handed the crowbar to his father, and with a few quick jerks he pried the lid free. A smell rose up from the coffin, a stench of long, slow, lightless decay. Edward stepped back, repulsed, but curiosity drew him forward again. His father took a deep, steadying breath and threw back the lid.
It was a body, but it was not Sarah’s. A black-stained mass of matted fur lay in the coffin, legs folded, broken and pitiful. Edward sucked in his breath, and tears came into his eyes.
Reverend Shaw looked at Edward’s father. “Yours?” he asked softly.
Simeon Barrett nodded. “Aye, that’s Tippet. I’m sorry, boy. I know you were fond of him.”
Edward fought back the tears, willing himself to be stoic and calm. After all, it was Sarah they were concerned with; it was she they had come seeking, there in the cold and starless night. Sarah was not in the coffin. Sarah might yet be alive.
“I owe you an apology, Simeon,” the reverend was saying. “When Loren Teague came to me with the coffin, and said he had found your Sarah dead when he went calling, I took the man at his word. The devil’s in those Teague men, I know it, but in my innocence I never conceived…”
“ ’Tisn’t your fault, Jonas. I ought never to have left her alone on that farm. Ought to have left the boy with her, leastways. But that’s all past, and beyond all mending. The main thing is, we know now that Teague lied.”
Edward looked at his father. “What’s he done with her, sir?”
Simeon Barrett’s jaw tightened beneath the skin. “It don’t bear thinking on.”
They were silent then, a chill wind soughing through the hush. Below the wind, a dry, shuffling noise rose up at the edge of hearing. No doubt it was only the dead leaves stirring among the gravestones, but to Edward’s ear it summoned up all the legends of this haunted place: the unrestful dead, clawing their way up from out of the earth’s bosom, silent and terrible, fingers itching for the feel of living flesh. Edward shivered and buried himself in his cloak.
A loud snap only a dozen yards off made all three of them jump. “Who’s there?” called Edward’s father. His voice was clear and booming, but there was a hoarseness in it that made Edward’s heart beat faster still.
Edward held up the lantern, but its flickering light only seemed to deepen the shadows. Out there, in the icy blackness, the shuffling had grown louder. Shapes moved at the limit of his vision – dark things that crowded forward with queer sidling steps. Father tightened his grip on the shovel. They had brought no gun. Yet even had the three of them been armed and ready, what victory could a living man hope to achieve over the shambling dead?
A pale face rose up out of the shadows, ghastly and thin in the trembling lamplight. Pale lips curled into a mockery of a smile. Edward held his breath. He knew that face. This was no dead man come to harry them; this was Loren Teague.
Teague stopped, a few paces away. “A greeting to you, Simeon,” he said mildly. Behind him, other men emerged from the night’s bosom: Paul Teague, Loren’s brother, and Amos Teague, their cousin, and mad Dabny Russart, who had married a Teague girl. There were others, lurking back in the shadows, half-seen at the edge of the lamplight. They were eight or ten men in all.
“What have you done with my daughter, Teague?” Father’s voice came thick, choked with fury. The shovel hung at his side, an unspoken threat.
Loren Teague smiled. It was the ugliest thing Edward had ever seen.
“It ain’t what I’ve done, Simeon; it’s what I’m going to do. Your girl and I are engaged to be married. We ride for Pommeret Sunday morning; the priest there knows me, and he knows I’m to be obliged. It grieves me sore that you won’t make it to the wedding. You have my word, though, I’ll take good care of the girl.”
Father tightened his grip on the shovel. “God damn you, Teague.”
The other man grinned, showing a mouth of jagged teeth. “God smiles upon me, Simeon. He always has.”
Loren Teague gave a signal, and his men came forward, raising rifles and shotguns. With a sudden jerk of his arm, Father dashed the lantern from Edward’s hand; it shattered on the half-frozen ground, plunging them into darkness. A shot rang out, lonely against the vastness of night. With a cry, Father surged forward to attack.
What happened then would haunt Edward for the rest of his life. A hideous noise of rending and wrenching rose up about them, drowning out all thought. Strange cries and wails and howls clove the night. Men screamed, and the screams were silenced; guns were fired, and then fell silent too. Snappings and grindings and horrible wet squelches followed, making Edward feel sick. He found himself clinging to his father – and found, to his horror and consternation, that his father was clinging back.
Then it was done. The wind wove through the high branches above them. A vague shuffling, as of a million leaves falling at once, filled the night; then silence reigned again.
With uncanny swiftness, the moon broke free of its veil of cloud. Edward saw that it was not his father, but Reverend Shaw, that he was clinging to. They pulled apart with an embarrassed movement and turned to survey the scene before them.
The bodies of the Teague men were strewn about like discarded dolls. They had been torn and twisted in a dozen nauseating ways. Stray limbs lay here and there, like toys in a child’s untidy room. Some of the bodies bore the marks of teeth.
Simeon Barrett knelt amidst the carnage, stroking the dead dog Tippet with gentle fingers. “Good boy,” he was saying softly. “Good boy.”
He lifted Tippet, cradling him tenderly, and laid him down in his coffin to rest. In silence, by moonlight, the three of them lowered the coffin into the grave and piled the dirt back on top of it. The other graves appeared undisturbed, but Edward knew better. Dead men had walked that night – walked, and killed.
* * *
The Teague men were buried in a hollow, far from the church. “The churchyard is for the righteous,” opined Reverend Shaw. “God’s dead look after God’s children. And the wrath of God is fearsome to behold.”
It’s not there to be made into a poem,
Captured in a photograph, remembered in a song;
It’s not there to symbolize or signify,
Conveniently enciphering
What you already believed.
It’s there for a thousand reasons,
None of them to do with you,
And when you gun your engine and pass on,
It’ll be there still, equally indifferent;
More lucid than a poem, truer than a photograph,
And stronger than any symbol –
Carved in memory till you die.
There are more leaves up there than you would imagine.
They fall for a month – longer – and never stop.
Thousands a day, and that should be the end of it,
But thousands fall tomorrow,
And Thursday, and on and on.
It’s a little like the moments of your life,
Drying up and tumbling, with a rustling shower, past,
In reckless profusion, uncaring, spent in the wind –
And still, after thousands and millions have flown by,
You have a few moments left to survey the wreckage,
Before the last leaves drop, and winter silence falls.
