Strayers From Sheol by H. R. Wakefield

Author:H. R. Wakefield [Wakefield, H. R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Horror
ISBN: 9781553101949
Publisher: Arkham House
Published: 1961-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The Sepulchre of Jasper Sarasen

SIR REGINALD RAMLEY was by temperament and inclination no frequenter of cemeteries. Such dormitories depressed him mildly, not so much because they reminded him of Man’s mortality, against which he cherished no grudge, but because they provided even further proof, if such were needed, of Man’s inanity, vulgarity, and sentimentality. Why, for example, spend good and often ill-spared money on headstones and plinths, or even artistically execrable emblematic figures and designs, when a few quick years would weather their inscriptions into illegibility and—a little later—level the pious metal with the ground? And the asininity of those optimistic mottoes which usually figured thereon! ‘Till we meet again’, ‘Till a brighter dawn’, and so on. Never satisfied! How much better the incomparable reality, a dreamless sleep!

It was, therefore, by mere chance that he entered the vast Death Field near his new West London home. He was strolling past it one Sunday morning in May when he heard coming from one of its trees, now proudly preening themselves in their new livery, the liquid tinkle of a willow warbler. To so keen, if intermittent, an ornithologist this was a matter of import, a willow warbler within four and a half miles of Hyde Park Corner! He hurried through the gates between the wardens’ lodges toward the clump of hawthorns in which, he judged, the singer was hidden, but when he reached it the little tune was already coming from a lime forty yards away, and soon it was a case of ‘Adieu, Adieu, the plaintive anthem fades’. The intrepid little visitor to town was returning a-quiver to his proper habitat.

However, it had served the purpose of introducing Sir Reginald to that many-acred morgue. Having given up the hunt, he found himself in a secluded corner of the place, hemmed in by a dense ring of distasteful yews and, somewhat to his astonishment, glancing into a small stone hut where some coffins could be dimly discerned through a gap at the top of a much rusted iron door. He approached nearer and found there were six of those boxes resting on two tiers of shelves. Two were full-sized, the other four smaller. This seemed odd. He glanced up and there over the door were engraved the words, The Sepulchre of Jasper Sarasen. Quite; but why was it so indecorously open to the eye? He looked around him and there were headstones chipped and broken, some lying on their backs, and a half-dozen other small sheds in varying degrees unclosed to the view. So then he realised what had happened in this place, a bomb had dropped there, probably early in the war just ended, and its effects, though muted by time, were still plain to see. Jasper Sarasen’s abode had suffered severely. It was constructed of limestone with speckled granite panel insets in one side wall. It was about fifteen feet long by nine broad and twelve high. It could never have been a thing of any beauty or distinction.

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