After a short absence from his favourite seat, in the snuggery of The Squid and Teapot, Trickster had returned, unaccountably frightened following a conversation with a mysterious figure in the cemetery. With a little persuasion from Reggie Upton and Philomena Bucket, he agreed to tell his story…
“Three nights ago,” Trickster began, “I was passing the cemetery when I saw someone standing beside the gate. I thought nothing of it. People are forever lurking about that place, most of them having the perfectly reasonable excuse of being buried there.”
“That sounds exactly like Hopeless,” observed Philomena.
“I made a casual remark,” said Trickster. “It was nothing particularly offensive.”
“I suppose you mean not by your standards?” queried Philomena, looking unimpressed.
“Precisely so. Then the figure turned and looked directly at me.”
“Towards your voice, presumably,” suggested Reggie.
“No. At me. I moved away, without making a sound. It turned its head, following my movements.”
Reggie frowned.
“Can you be seen when you don’t wish to be?”
“Not ordinarily.”
“And then?”
Trickster hesitated.
“It spoke.”
“What did it say?”
“My name.”
“So it called you Trickster?” said Philomena. “We all do that. Why is it such a problem?”
“No,” said Trickster. “You don’t understand. It actually spoke my name.”
The words came out sharply, almost angrily.
“My True name,” he continued. “The one I had before I came here. The one I haven’t heard spoken in centuries.”
Reggie leaned forward.
“So what is it?”
“No!” said Trickster, still angry.
“I only meant…”
“I know exactly what you meant.”
The room grew very quiet.
“Why won’t you tell us?” asked Philomena.
“Because you know as well as I do, Philomena, names have power.”
“Surely that’s an old superstition,” said Reggie.
“And so am I,” said Trickster.
There was nothing amusing in the reply.
Over the next few days Reggie learned that Trickster had not been imagining things.
The figure had been seen near the lighthouse, standing beneath a dead tree on the outskirts of the town and, on one particularly unpleasant occasion, outside an upstairs window of the Squid and Teapot.
This last sighting had been reported by Philomena herself.
She had gone upstairs to fetch some clean linen when she noticed a dark shape beyond the glass. The window overlooked a sheer drop, and there was nowhere for a person to stand.
Nevertheless, someone – or something – had been standing there.
“It didn’t have a face,” she told Reggie.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that I couldn’t see one. There was a head, certainly, but where the face ought to have been there was just darkness. Not a shadow, mind you. Darkness.”
“Did it move?”
“No. Not even when I drew the curtains,” she said. “It seemed to be a sensible precaution.”
Trickster had become almost entirely silent again. Occasionally his chair creaked, but he refused to answer questions. Once, when Reggie entered the snug, he heard a voice murmuring something in a language he did not recognise.
“Trickster?”
The murmuring stopped.
“Were you speaking to me?”
“No.”
“To whom, then?”
There was no reply.
Reggie began to suspect that whatever was troubling Trickster had less to do with the stranger’s appearance than with something in his own past.
“Do you know why it’s here?” he asked one evening.
“No.”
“Are you certain?”
The chair creaked.
“I’ve forgotten many things, Brigadier.”
“Everyone does.”
“Not like this. There are things I remember doing, but not why I did them. Places I’ve been that no longer exist. People whose faces I can see perfectly, although their names have gone.”
“And this stranger?”
“I think we knew each other once, long ago.”
“Then perhaps it simply wishes to renew an acquaintance.”
“No. That’s not it.”
“Why not?”
“Because when it spoke my name, I remembered something else.”
“What?”
Trickster was silent for so long that Reggie thought he had gone.
Then, very quietly, he answered.
“A promise. A promise to pay a debt.”
Then the sightings ceased as suddenly as they had begun.
A week went by and nobody saw the dark figure. Trickster gradually recovered something of his customary disposition, although he remained unusually restrained.
Philomena remarked that the experience appeared to have improved his manners.
“Don’t become accustomed to it,” he replied.
Reggie was relieved. He had become rather fond of Trickster over the past couple of months, although he would have been reluctant to admit as much in the fellow’s hearing.
One evening, as the Squid and Teapot was preparing to close, Reggie sat in the snug, playing dominoes with the inn’s newest resident, Edwin Shadwell. The fire had burned low, and beyond the windows the island lay in darkness. A light rain was falling.
They had just put away the dominoes, and Edwin had retired to his room, when Reggie heard a faint tapping.
Three slow knocks.
Reggie looked towards the window. The figure standing outside was tall, motionless and dressed in a long dark coat.
Reggie felt his mouth go dry.
The figure was close enough for him to distinguish the outline of its head, but where its features should have been there was nothing he could properly describe.
It raised one hand.
Then, with extraordinary deliberation, it pointed towards the corner of the room, where
Trickster’s chair was empty – or at least, it appeared to be.
“Trickster?” said Reggie.
No answer.
He looked back at the window.
The figure had gone.
For a moment Reggie remained perfectly still, listening to the rain. Then the chair creaked.
“Is it gone?” whispered Trickster.
“I believe so.”
Another silence followed.
“Trickster,” said Reggie, “what exactly was the nature of the debt?”
As the fire settled in the grate, the chair gave a sudden, violent creak.
And from directly behind Reggie, in a voice so like Trickster’s that he could scarcely distinguish it, someone whispered:
“I know your name too, now.”
Reggie turned.
There was nobody there.
From somewhere outside, beyond the darkened window, three slow knocks broke the silence.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
To be continued…