Call Me Ismay Read online

  Langston took a fearful step, then another, followed by another, worried over how much noise he was making, fretting about just what exactly he would do when he found what he was looking for. He narrowed his eyes as he continued to move forward on the Bittbear Aisle of the Gidley Chapel, unsure of the precise location of what he was seeking. He allowed himself one quick glance upward- taking in the view of the church's exquisite ceiling, which consisted of timber rafters and arch braces. At last, he could make out the form of the crypt he was seeking. Yes, there it was on the wall, its enigmatic epitaph bringing him sorrow- while the information he'd brought along in his diary evoked simultaneous anger and confusion.

  Here underneath lyeth

  Immaturely enterr'd

  and

  Generally lamented

  BARTHOLOMEW GIDLEY EsqUIRE

  Nephew and heir to ye deceased

  And Father

  To ye surviving

  Who left this Transitory World

  And his affectionate and Disconsolate Wife

  Who erected Him this Monument

  With Four Sons and as many daughters

  2nd of Aug: in 34th year of his age

  And of our Lord 1762.

  Langston allowed himself one last moment of sadness and reflection as he finished reading the inscription:

  All you deare pious relicts hither Come,

  Bedeck with flowers, Bedew with Teares his Tomb.

  His Love, his Kindness, still retain in mind,

  No Parent was more fond, or husband kind.

  Indeed, it could not be said that those who had left this memorial so many years ago felt anything but the utmost respect and deep abiding love for Mr. Gidley. Langston closed his eyes and allowed himself one quick recitation of the Lord's Prayer- then drew a sigh, looked around the sanctuary once more, and assured himself that no one was nearby. It was time to resume the role of journalist, not pilgrim.

  However, he would only manage to take one step when the sensation hit him- warmth, sweat, and the almost certain arrival of another bout of diarrhea. He froze, groaning in despair. This was a problem that had been plaguing him for nearly a year now- ever since the anonymous letters had increased in frequency and taken on an even more urgent tone than before. Langston knew that his condition had to be the result of bottling in the information and compartmentalizing his life for so long- his worries literally were eating at him. As he glanced around in the dim gloom of the chapel, he was thankful to be alone in the event of soiling himself- a dreadful thing which he'd endured many times before. He reminded himself that the feeling might pass in a few moments- a false alarm, perhaps- and he'd be able to continue his work. Gingerly, he took a step or two backwards and then eased himself into the foremost pew of the chapel. He caught his breath and reflected on the cruel irony of being so close to the subject of his quest, only to be crippled by a digestive system that had been strained and tested to its limits by enduring stress. He closed his eyes in an attempt to concentrate- to focus on Bartholomew Gidley- yes, Bartholomew Gidley, dead for 149 years and yet as much as a daily presence in Langston's life as any living soul had been. Gidley, with his estate in Moretonhampstead, son of the town clerk, a solicitor and--

  Langston sighed heavily as the absurdity of it all washed over him, then allowed himself to think the controversial thoughts once more: Bartholomew Gidley, solicitor and current Parliamentary Private Secretary for Edward Lyons.

  Current. Current. Langston's stomach roiled in hot anger as the insanity of the statement rolled over him once more. Poppycock! Gidley, the portly little monitor of the backbenchers, did cut an enigmatic figure with his peculiar reticence and short, dark curly hair that never seemed to move, but come now - was this little PPS a veritable Lazarus? And yet, the detailed insistence of Langston's source seemed to be pointing in that direction. Whomever the mole was, they'd done an astoundingly good job of detailing Lyon's daily habits and routines, placing him accurately at certain locations at specific times. It had occurred to Langston that perhaps it may have been Lyons himself who'd been winding him up for his own amusement, so intimate the details were; however, he'd been able to conclusively determine the notes were not written in the MP's hand. Keeping a charade so tightly choreographed for so long would have been an impossibility, especially in an environment where loyalties can turn on a sixpence. Langston did remind himself that the directions he'd been given in looking up Bartholomew Gidley's resting place did not directly make weird immortal claims, and in fact may have instead been referring to a concealed cipher in the memorial's epitaph. But although the directive was frustratingly vague, he'd been able to memorize it and come to his own conclusions with ease: Bartholomew Gidley has risen from deep sleep in Winkleigh and sits at the right hand of Lyons. Seek his monument in the chapel if you believe me not, and bare (sic) your tools for the fight that comes after.

  Anxious- indeed, desperate- to distract himself from the horrible ache in his bowels, Langston fumbled in the pockets of his tweed coat, not looking for his diary but rather a small folding knife he had brought along for the trip. He groaned once more as he sized up its feeble size, especially when he let his eyes absorb the solid reality of the cathedral's walls. Initially he had intended to bring along a more formidable blade, but in his haste to depart London he'd only had time to grab one of his own sterling silver fruit knives. As he rolled the unopened knife with its elegant mother of pearl handle in his sweaty fingers, his painfully poor execution of this portion of his mission both perplexed and infuriated him. “You come all this way and that's all you've got, eh?” he mumbled to himself, his eyes quickly darting back and forth in an attempt to confirm that he remained alone and undetected in the chapel.

  For what seemed like the millionth time, a passage in cursive writing flashed through his mind: Seek his monument in the chapel if you believe me not. The implied message was that he must actually locate the gravesite, which he had done with relative ease; obviously there was not an elaborate trick involved to finding it. The commandment 'bare your tools for the fight that comes after'- with its apparent misspelling of the word bear- to Langston seemed to infer that he should bring tools of some fashion along with him. A knife seemed the obvious choice for both its functionality and small size. “I can't allow myself to walk the streets of Devon and approach a gravesite with a shovel- why would that be suspicious?” Langston had joked to himself ruefully. His anonymous source's choice of the words 'the fight that comes after' seemed to possibly indicate the potential of danger, so Langston concluded that a knife should be his preferred choice of weapon.

  The tempest of intestinal discomfort that had forced Langston to clench his legs eventually began to subside. He turned his eyes back toward the monument on the wall, realizing that if he wanted to get physically closer to it he'd have to ascend a small altar table- and then his mind rapidly raced into confusion. 'Here underneath lyeth...' It's a inscription on a wall, Langston thought to himself, so does that mean the actual crypt is underneath that table, or were his remains interred behind the inscription? His pulse quickened as real doubt and fear threatened to derail his mission completely. He found himself rocking nervously in the front pew of the Parish Church of All Saints, Winkleigh, hearing the rain outside continuing to fall and- in a bit of luck- seeming to increase in its intensity. A full-fledged storm seemed to have begun in earnest, and it occurred to him that it certainly made it less likely for anyone to encounter him in the course of an unholy deed, and certainly the sheer noise would obfuscate any of his audible movements within the chapel.

  Langston breathed in deeply, and in an attempt to bolster himself as he slowly rose from the pew, he pictured his body encasing itself in impermeable steel- first his feet, then his ankles, his calves and then his knees- no further traces of tension or doubt were to be allowed within his being. He approached the table and in one quick move took a higher than usual step, planting himself successfully on top and within inches of the memorial itself.r />
  The stormy weather that continued outside suddenly produced a flash of lightning, illuminating the interior of the cathedral in all directions with shafts of red, green and blue light, projecting religious figures onto the walls in elongated, haphazard fashion. Langston turned just quickly enough to see St. Peter with the Keys to Heaven and Hell hanging like a shining ghost in midair, then disappear. Seconds later a terrific crack of thunder snapped and rolled and shook the ancient building, forcing Langston to produce a short, frightened chuckle. Am I tempting fate? he wondered. Am I going to regret this?

  As the thunder subsided, he resumed his study of the memorial at close range, the smell of musty mold almost overpowering him. The letters of the strange epitaph, blue in colour, seemed to gradually fade as he re-read every line, and a crack in the stone seemed to obscure the date of death. Langston allowed his fingers to gently graze the surface of the text, retracing the path of each and every letter and number, and in doing so made a horrifying discovery.

  2nd of Aug: in 34th year of his age/And of our Lord 1702. The stone, upon close examination, clearly read 1702, not 1762. A full sixty years now had to be factored into Bartholomew Gidley's vital statistics.

  Langston gulped, feeling weight on his shoulders and an ache in his lungs as he silently pondered the awful truth: Gidley's actually been dead for 209 years, not 149? The words and the utter absurdity of it all now slammed into Langston's skull like a hammer; the voices of critics who suspected that he'd had a personal vendetta against Edward Lyons echoed in his ears with cruel potency. His source on what he felt was the story of the century now couldn't even be relied upon for correct details on something as profoundly important as some of the dates involved.

  It took him a few minutes to muster the energy to verbalize his outrage and despair. “The wrong dates? My source gave me the wrong dates?” He attempted to stand still for a moment, and while his raging stomach had subsided, he could feel his legs beginning to quake with agitation and fear. “Well, what bloody difference does it make on the dates?” Langston spit his words out angrily in an attempt to bolster his courage, no longer taking into account the possibility of being overheard in the chapel. “Forty years, a hundred years, Gidley's still dead, isn't he?” He felt his anger rising as he began fumbling violently in his pockets for the fruit knife. “Is it back to London, then, with nothing? Damn it! Godammit! Godammit it all to hell!”

  Langston pulled the knife open and impulsively plunged it into the stone memorial, making only the smallest dent and actually inflicting serious damage on the blade itself. Undaunted, he lunged again, this time dislodging a portion of wall the size of a pebble, and causing a small amount of dust to cover the lenses of his glasses. Months and months of untold pressure came rushing through his muscles, as he thrust the knife a third time and punctuated his action with an anguished cry.

  It was his final assault. As Langston completed the third lunge forward, the blade bent backward, drawing blood just above his wrist; then the knife slipped through his fingers. As he convulsed forward in pain, the table he'd been standing on suddenly groaned loudly as his weight forced it away from the memorial's wall by several inches. Langston fought to keep his balance, but in doing so managed to force his wounded wrist into the wall, causing him to crumble and push the table further backward. Within seconds, Langston collapsed into the small space between the table and the cathedral's wall, finding himself covered in dust, and bleeding.

  Langston lay still for a moment, feeling beaten and suffocated- only to realize that he'd been holding his breath the entire time. He turned over into a kneeling position and gulped in air desperately, but managed to take in only a mouthful of foul dust and cobwebs. When he realized what he'd inhaled, he began to cough violently, so hard in fact that his head snapped up and back and right into the tabletop above him, nearly knocking him unconscious. Langston gripped the back of his head with his uninjured hand, an overwhelming sense of embarrassment and failure enshrouding him. Time to go, he thought, his soul a seething pot of shame and guilt. Time to go back to the George Hotel, clean up and perhaps sleep for about a week. I can reason with the editors later. Another flash of lightning occurred outside- its bolt not as bright nor its thunder quite as loud as the one that had struck moments before, but it still felt like a condemning shout from heaven nonetheless. Langston felt his knees digging into the floor below, and he wondered whether he'd now resemble some poor, pathetic blighter who'd gotten himself into a pub brawl, once he managed to stumble away from the chapel. “Perhaps the rain will be good for washing the blood and the dust that's all over me,” he muttered.

  Langston moved slowly, fearing another collision with the heavy table that now surrounded him. A slight panic began to stir as he realized the table was constructed in such a way that merely crawling out from under it wasn't a possibility. The table's weight and lack of much space between its legs meant that Langston would have to leverage his way out by lifting the table from underneath, using his shoulders, and hopefully getting the table to scoot a few inches with every push. Already weakened and tired, Langston groaned loudly on every attempt to move the table away from the wall, his body unable to force the table to move more than an inch at a time. With every shove the table creaked mightily, its stout legs reconnecting to the floor with a resounding thud.

  As Langston strained to free himself, he noted that the table was causing damage to the floor, and not just by leaving scratch marks on every move, but also weakening and cracking the stone in places. It struck Langston that it was entirely possible the table was covering a crypt. Perhaps it's the Gidley family crypt, he mused bitterly. It'd almost be fitting if the floor gives way and I'm forever entombed with the cursed Gidleys.

  Langston continued to struggle, when he noticed that an outright collapse of the floor might not be too far-fetched. Cracks and holes were starting to form, and he could hear pebbles and other debris shaking its way to the floor and perhaps even settling upon whatever lay beneath. Just how poorly produced are these stones? he pondered, growing more alarmed and annoyed. With his uninjured hand, he stuck a finger into a hole that had just formed, and watched in amazement as the opening crumbled and widened in response to the movement of his dusty digit.

  Then the unthinkable happened. The floor accepted his entire hand as he dug deeper, coming apart as easy as dust, until a opening at least three feet long created itself as it caved in, almost as if a small earthquake had struck in this corner of the Winkleigh Church. Langston didn't consider himself a vandal, but more a horrified observer of shoddy workmanship. With renewed vigor, Langston forced the table further away from the wall, fearing the floor was about to create a full-blown fissure that could devour both himself and the heavy furniture.

  Freed at last from the underside of the table, Langston sat a few feet from the hole in the floor, mopping his brow with the sleeve of his jacket, and still spitting granules of dirt as they rolled through his teeth. What exactly lay under here? he wondered, debating whether or not he really wanted to see what inhabited the floor below.

  He glanced over his shoulder, once more taking in the majestic solitude of the chapel. Not much had changed in terms of the lack of outside light, and the storm outside was most definitely still underway. I do want to see what's down there, he determined, even if it is a coffin or a urn.

  He lay on his stomach just above the newly formed hole, keeping his wounded hand elevated by bending his arm. With his other hand, he tugged at the rough edges of the hole until he was able to dislodge a small pebble. After rolling it through his fingers for a moment, attempting to even it out by letting some of its edges crumble a bit, he carefully and deliberately dropped the small stone into the void, attempting to determine how deep it was.

  The reporting sound was immediate. “It can't be more than a few inches!” he declared to himself in surprise. Impulsively- perhaps even a bit foolishly- Langston thrust his hand into the darkened space, trying to determine what he had uncovered.r />
  His knuckles made immediate and painful contact with what seemed to be a small wooden box. He ran his fingers over what felt like four separate edges, and then discovered that the box was resting on a solid level just inches under the crumbled floor. If this had been intended as a grave, it was a most shallow one. Langston quickly determined that while the box was of moderate weight, he could probably leverage his uninjured palm just enough to be able to grab it and pull it out. Grunting and straining, and noticing that his pulse had greatly quickened, he was able to lift the box out with a slow and steady hand.

  He cradled the dark teak wooden box in his trembling hands as he slowly stood, then took a few steps back to the pew where he had been sitting a short while before. It occurred to him the box- in its general size and weight- resembled the Langston family Bible that had been passed down a few generations. The box, though it bore a few scratches on its corners, did not appear to be covered with an unusual amount of dust, nor did it seem in its design to be more than a few years old.

  Langston's mind was racing. One major inaccuracy involving the year of Gidley's death, and yet this doesn't seem to belong here, he thought to himself. He noticed the box had a small latch in front that did not seem to require a key. Maybe I should take this back to the George and open it there.