The boys of Crypt Grammar School were not easily frightened. The place was famously haunted, as well as dank, dour, evil-smelling, and cold. The masters were a grim lot, forbidding and prone to capricious punishments – though not, it must be admitted, without a certain sly gallows humor. Taken on the whole, it was no place for crybabies. The few whiners and snivelers who did turn up in September were invariably gone before their first term was out.
So when Arthur Stinson came staggering out of the library one October morning, clutching his books to his chest and all but incoherent with fear, the other boys knew that no ordinary thing had spooked him.
“F-f-f-fingers!” he stammered. “Christ, I swear it! It was fingers! Go and see.”
The boys looked at each other. Though undeniably cryptic, his pronouncement had tickled their imaginations. Someone, assuredly, must go and investigate. It was that, or tell the masters – and to do that would be to show that they were afraid.
At length, all eyes settled on Jasper Hardaway. He was a rangy, redheaded boy, and fearless. He smirked and stretched, puffing up with his own importance. “Let’s have a look, then, shall we? Collins, Wilkinson – fall in behind me.”
Wordlessly, the boys obeyed. They followed Hardaway into the dingy library, where ancient candelabra bled hot wax onto shelves and floors. Like most of Crypt Grammar, the library was underground, with no light but the guttering candles, no fresh air for a thousand years. The ranks of high, teetering shelving marched back into vaulted shadows. As usual, the place was deserted. The air was thick and uncomfortably warm.
“The nook!” cried Stinson, who had recovered some of his self-control and followed the others. “It was in the nook I felt them. Oh God, I can still…” He shuddered, and trailed off.
Hardaway veered to the right, towards a shadowy alcove set into the wall at the end of a rank of shelves. No candle burned there; the nook showed as a black, toothless maw. Even Hardaway hesitated at the edge of that dark lacuna. Then he laughed self-consciously and shouldered his way in.
A single table, heavy and ageworn, stood at the alcove’s center. Hardaway bumped against it, jolted back, and laughed again.
The boys blinked, and their eyes adjusted to the dimness. The alcove was empty. A book lay open on the table. There was no sound but the dripping wax from outside.
Hardaway turned a mocking face on Stinson. “There’s nothing here, you silly little craven. No doubt you spooked yourself, sitting here alone in the dark. What you could have wanted back here without a candle, one can only guess. Perhaps you had some private–”
It was then he felt the fingers – probing, grasping, tense with feverish life. They seized his ankles, tickled his knees. Hardaway shrieked and tried to pull away, but the fingers held him fast.
There was laughter then, in the dark, from under the table. It was not the laughter of ghouls or goblins; it was boys’ laughter. Hardaway twisted his neck and peered down.
Two grinning faces gazed up at him: Aimsworth, and Dillon. Aimsworth released his ankles. Dillon gave his knee one final, playful poke.
They were all laughing now: Stinson, and the others behind him. Hardaway felt his face flush red in the semi-darkness. He was glad the others could not see.
“Who’s the craven now?” taunted Stinson. “You jumped a mile, Hardaway. You’re not so fearless as you like to make out.”
Hardaway said nothing. The laughter tore and flailed him, ripped him to shreds, froze and fired the blood in his veins. Without a word, he dashed for the exit. The laughter followed him all the long way out.
* * *
That night, it was found that Hardaway had vanished. His bed lay empty; none had seen him since the afternoon. Masters and boys alike searched high and low for him. They peered into every cranny, but the boy was simply gone.
Arthur Stinson slept fitfully. In his dreams, a thousand cold fingers twisted his flesh till he cried out in pain. When he woke he could still feel them, crawling like spiders on his clammy skin. He thought of waking Aimsworth, but he didn’t want to be thought a craven. Arthur Stinson was no craven. He could not be cowed by a simple dream.
The days passed, and Hardaway still was missing. Stinson’s nights were a torment of grasping, needling, palpating hands. It’s a trick, he thought. The others are playing a trick on me. He could not imagine how such a prank might be managed – but he resolved to stay awake that night and find out.
He drank tea with dinner – buckets of it – and declined to use the privy before it was time for bed. He lay awake, strung up to a pitch of expectation. The hours ticked by. The ache in his bladder kept him wide awake.
At last he felt it, very distinctly: a single cold finger, tracing a line along his back. A second finger joined it, then a third, and still he waited. When all five fingertips rested on his body, he threw back the sheet and turned to face his foe.
Hardaway was gazing at him with sad, vacant eyes. He didn’t seem the least bit startled. He sat on the edge of the bed, so pale he almost glowed.
Stinson’s fury and terror melted away, replaced by a cold weight in the pit of his stomach. He stared at the pale boy. For long seconds, he could find no words.
“They’re looking for you,” he said at last. The words were barely above a whisper, swallowed up instantly in the silence of the night.
“They’ll never find me,” said Hardaway. His voice was hollow, and very far away.
Tears came into Stinson’s eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It was just a stupid joke.”
Hardaway smiled, and shook his head sadly. “It’s not your fault,” he said. “You couldn’t have known, could you? I was on the verge of it already. You boys only gave the final push.”
“On the verge of what?” But he knew the answer.
Hardaway’s eyes slid away. “The old well near the main gate. As good a place as any. All I had to do was jump, you see. Not very much to it. I didn’t have to drown; the fall did for me, right enough.”
“But if you don’t blame me…” Stinson swallowed. “Then why are you here?”
Hardaway shrugged.
“Lonely,” he said.
There was silence then, as a great clock ticked somewhere a long way off.
“Will you come back?” Stinson wondered. “Will you keep … you know … haunting me?”
Hardaway lowered his head. “No,” he said. “It wasn’t kind of me. I was angry, I suppose – but I’m not angry now.”
There was another dreadful silence, and Stinson thought Hardaway had already begun to grow transparent, as if the darkness beyond him were swallowing up his wan little light.
“You may,” said Stinson impulsively. “Come visit, that is. If you like. Not every night, mind you; I do need some sleep, you know. But, say … on week-ends? I’m sure some of the others would like to see you too.”
Hardaway grinned. “You’re a good egg, Stinson. You always were a good egg. I’ll think on it. One does get awfully lonely. It’s a dreary business, being dead, you know. I don’t recommend it at all.”
He was gone then, the darkness once again total. Stinson shivered, and lay back under the covers. He hadn’t had proper sleep in days; he was desperately tired. Even the pain in his bladder had vanished in a rush of drowsiness.
As he slipped into slumber, he felt a pressure of fingers. Gently, delicately, they took and squeezed his hand.
