The Yellow Scarf Read online

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  In a corner of the room, a goose neck lamp sat on an old roll top desk, the bulb hovering inches above a Hermes typewriter. There were reams of paper and notebooks and pens and even an old fashioned inkwell crammed onto the desktop beside the typewriter. It might be interesting to take a look at what Uncle Basil had been up to, but Peter was eager to get on exploring the rest of the house. The sooner he had the lay of the land the more comfortable he would be and able to relax and enjoy the rest of the night. He turned and found Barnard facing the wall with a curious look on his face. As he crossed the library to join him, he understood. The wall looked like it had been added to the library at a later time than when the house was originally built. Barnard had pulled aside a curtain, a heavy damask drape that had an oriental motif on it, with ornately designed beasts, tigers and the like, in gold and reds against a faded background of deep, jungle green.

  “Why would he hide a door behind a drape?” said Barnard, his hand on the knob.

  “I haven’t the foggiest,” said Peter.

  Barnard jiggled the handle as if wrenching it hard enough would force the door to open. “Let’s have the key.”

  Peter pretended he hadn’t heard. He knew what was on the other side, and Barnard knew it too. It was Uncle Basil’s ritual room. The vibe in the library was bad enough. Peter would rather wait until morning to have a look inside. He’d been inside Hampton Close less than ten minutes and already the odious atmosphere was beginning to get under his craw.

  A shriek of laughter from one of the girls snapped Peter back into focus. He opened a door on the side of the room and stepped into the kitchen. Bree and Pandora were clutching each other, laughing nervously.

  “What’s happening?”

  “Tristan went round outside and started clawing at the window,” Bree said. “Then he took a snap, the bugger. Good thing we’d just come out of the loo or we’d both have wet knickers.”

  “Too bad you don’t,” said Barnard. Bree slapped him on the chest.

  “Wait till you boys see the loo. It’s nothing more than an old water closet.”

  There was a banging on the door and Bree unhooked the latch to let Tristan in. “I could just kill you!” she shouted.

  Tristan was beside himself with laughter. “You should have seen the looks on your faces.”

  “I hope you don’t mind we opened the window, love, “Bree said. “It’s awfully hot, don’t you think?”

  A boiling kettle began a shrill whistle, and Pandora lifted it off the stove with a towel. “We found some Earl Gray. Peter, be a dear and fetch in the cups.”

  “Aren’t there any in the cupboard? If we are going to have tea I’m sure Uncle Basil would want us to do it up proper.”

  “Are you going to wash them? Haven’t you noticed that everything here is covered in dust?” Bree might have been dead-set against housework, but she ran the towel under the faucet and then used it to wipe the vinyl table cloth, immediately brightening it from a dingy, grey-rose color to a full bodied red.

  “It’s not so bad, really,” said Barnard. “Install a few window fans and it would make a great summer home. What do you say, Peter?”

  “I haven’t seen enough of it yet. From the looks of the chairs in the other room, I wouldn’t trust anything to sit on.”

  “The bedrooms are fantastic,” Tristan said. “Giant four posters with lace canopies.”

  “There’s even a telephone in case we need to ring for help.” Pandora pointed to the phone box mounted on the wall by the outside door. It had probably been there since the early 1900s. She lifted the receiver to her ear and gave the crank a few turns, then hung the receiver back up with a shrug. “We’d better not need to ring for help,” she said with a nervous titter.

  Bree found an unopened tin of McVitie’s Digestives. No one seemed to be particularly hungry, though they drank up their tea in good time. They sampled the biscuits anyway, remarking how fresh they tasted considering the design on the tin looked like it had been tucked up in the cupboard since the Second World War.

  “Right,” said Tristan. “Here we are. What do you suppose we should do with ourselves for the rest of the night? Who’s in for a game of hide and go seek?”

  “I don’t suppose Uncle Basil has a telley,” said Bree,

  “There’s an old gramophone in the drawing room,” said Peter.

  “I’ve got an idea,” said Barnard. “Let’s smoke another joint and then have a peek in that locked room.”

  “What locked room?” asked Bree.

  “The room where good old Uncle Basil keeps his goodies.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You mean like whips and a strappado?” asked Tristan.

  “Didn’t Peter tell you? Uncle Basil was a witch.”

  “Barnard,” Peter warned.

  “Bollocks,” said Tristan.

  “It’s true. There’s a locked room next to the library. Five pounds says it’s Basil Townsend’s ritual room where he took the kiddies when he sacrificed them to Satan.”

  “You haven’t got five pounds, love,” said Bree.

  “That’s not funny, Barnard,” said Pandora.

  “All right, I’m sorry. I only made that part up. But I still want to see what’s inside that room, don’t you? But Uncle Basil was into the Dark Arts, that much is true. Tell them, Peter.”

  Peter nodded.

  Barnard crushed the grass to powder between his meaty fingers and sprinkled it into the cigarette paper. “Who’s in?”

  “I am.” Tristan was always up for new adventures.

  “I’m going where you go, love,” said Bree.

  “Well I’m certainly not going to sit moping about in the kitchen all night,” said Pandora.

  Barnard gave them all a wicked grin. He rolled the joint up and licked it shut. He touched the lighter to the tip and took a deep drag before passing it around the table. “This might be an interesting night after all.”

  6.

  They had to take the torch into the room because there were no lights inside. There were plenty of candles, though – plain white candles, not black as Barnard had expected. The room was smaller than the drawing room and the library, even smaller than the kitchen, with a ceiling so low it felt like they were inside a box. After all, that’s what a chamber was – a box, not a room. The place wasn’t dressed in black curtains, nor did there seem to be an altar; no remains of a magic circle drawn in chalk on the floor and no upside down crucifixes. The odor that permeated the rest of the house was more pronounced inside the room, and it was hot so that the tight room seemed like a greenhouse, like a Petri dish ripe with fungi. The room was indeed a chamber built inside the larger library room, without windows, and with only the one door in and out which had been tightly shut and covered with a heavy curtain, it remained well protected from elements that had encroached on the rest of the house over the years. If houses had souls, then this was the heart of Hampton Close. Only it wasn’t a heart, it was a womb – warm, dark, and wet.

  There were a few small tables in the room, more decorative than practical, and a number of pedestals like the one in the painting of Basil Townsend. The table nearest Barnard had an extravagant doll carved out of wood, with a gruesome visage and a wild headdress made of feathers and twigs twined together. He’d seen something like it before in a book or magazine, and if memory served him right it was an African fetish. He resisted the urge to pick it up and shake it at Bree. The thing was probably valuable.

  He moved to the next table, holding his candle high so he could see what was inside the small coffin shaped box. It was a crude doll, made of some unidentifiable clay or wax with what looked like hat pins sticking out of it. Damned if it wasn’t a bona fide voodoo doll! He wondered if it had worked on whomever it was supposed to represent. There was a placard affixed to the table top and when he held the candle closer he was able to make out the ornate script.

  Poppet. Property of M. Leveau, circa 187
2.

  “Who was Father Urban Grandier?” Bree asked behind him.

  Barnard spun around with excitement. “What’s that?” A tall pedestal which stood as high as his chest had a small glass case containing a piece of charred bone.

  “It says ‘Remains of Father Urban Grandier, 1634’,” said Bree.

  “This is fantastic!” said Barnard.

  “Well, who was he?”

  “Grandier was a seventeenth century priest accused of being able to take the form of an incubus, a male demon,” Barnard explained, “who allegedly took possession of a convent full of nuns. He was burnt at the stake.”

  “You’re not serious.”

  “I’m very serious.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I read. You should try it some time.” He stopped to look around. Every table, tall or short, every pedestal, every mounted shelf on the walls held a container, each with something unique on display. “Do you know what this is? It’s a museum. Did you know about this, Peter?”

  Peter shook his head. The table nearest him bore a coil of rope, which on closer inspection he saw was a noose. Peter read the placard aloud. “‘Salem, 1692.’”

  Barnard came over to have a look. Peter wasn’t certain whether he should be worried about his friend’s interest in the objects in the room. He supposed the items fueled Barnard’s imagination, but it seemed a bit unhealthy to be preoccupied with these sorts of artifacts.

  On another table was a round wooden board with what might be Chinese characters painted just inside the circumference, with another ring of characters inside, and another inside of that. “This looks like some sort of Ouija board,” said Barnard.

  “Shall we give it a go?” asked Tristan.

  “No!” Peter didn’t mean to snap so loudly. The others turned to stare at him. “I mean, these things must have incredible value. I don’t want anyone touching anything.”

  “I was only kidding,” Tristan said soto voce to Bree.

  Bree peered into the darkness behind one of the tables and let out a shriek, grabbing hold of Pandora who was closest to her.

  “What is it?”

  “I… I thought I saw something.”

  Barnard shone the torch down behind the table, the beam splashing the walls. “Still feeling pretty high, are we?”

  Bree shivered. “I think I need to smoke more grass.”

  Barnard grinned. “That can be arranged.”

  On a lectern, an open book revealed images that could only be hand-drawn pornography. A crudely drawn woman dangled by her wrists from a cord hung from a ceiling while a man with a giant penis thrust the erection between the woman’s buttocks.

  “The dick of death,” said Tristan, more to himself than to anyone in the room, and read the placard in front of the book. “Oh, wouldn’t you just know it! It’s the personal sketchbook of the Marquis de Sade.”

  “What’s this?” asked Pandora. When they turned, she held a piece of yellow silk in her hand.

  “Please don’t touch anything,” Peter said. He gripped her wrist until Pandora let the shimmering, yellow cloth drift back into the box. The lid fell shut.

  “But what is it? There’s no label.”

  They all gathered round and stared down at the box. It was a small chest with a curved top upon which was carved a hideous face. It appeared to be a woman, with serpents growing out of her head.

  “Medusa?” said Tristan.

  “Now if that isn’t ugly,” said Bree, “I don’t know what is.”

  “Not Medusa,” said Barnard. “It’s Kali Ma.”

  “Kali who?”

  “The Indian goddess of death and destruction. Look, she has six arms, and a necklace of skulls – the heads of her lovers who she killed in coitus.”

  “Speak English, Barnard,” said Bree.

  “It means she shagged them to death,” said Tristan.

  “Then what’s the significance of the yellow scarf?”

  “Worshippers of Kali Ma were a renegade sect—”

  “Like Scientologists?”

  Barnard laughed. “Worse than that. Her followers were known as Thugs and they used the yellow scarf to strangle their victims. The act was a sacred ritual paying homage to Kali Ma.”

  “Sometimes I worry about you, Barnard,” said Bree.

  “I’m not making any of this stuff up.”

  Bree put her hand inside Barnard’s arm. “Come on, let’s go. I’ve seen enough. This was just what I wanted to see while I’m stoned.”

  “What are you going to do with all this?” Tristan asked Peter.

  “Leave it here, of course.”

  “You’re sitting on a goldmine, Peter. There’s probably no limit to the value of these things to collectors of occultica arcana, am I right, Barnard?”

  “I wouldn’t want any of this falling into the wrong hands. Can you imagine how dangerous this stuff would be to someone with a fragile mind?”

  “Fragile minds wouldn’t be able to afford the prices these things could fetch,” said Barnard. “What about Uncle Basil? He didn’t just find these things, you know. He’s been all over the world, right Peter? Bidding for these things at auction. Tristan’s right. The market for occult artifacts is huge. No wonder the old boy didn’t leave you any money. He spent it all building his collection. If he left you the house and everything in it, he obviously wanted you to have it.”

  “That still doesn’t mean I should sell any of it.”

  “What will you do with it, then?”

  “I don’t know!” Peter shouted. “Why does everyone feel I need to do something with it? If it’s mine, it’s my choice, isn’t it then?” And with that he stalked out of the room.

  “What’s got his goat?” Bree said.

  “Goat,” said Tristan, looking at a giant ram’s horn mounted on the wall. “That’s funny.”

  7.

  “Look, I’m sorry I yelled in there, it’s just…” Peter stammered. He didn’t want the others to know he was nervous, especially if any of them felt it too. Sure, you could chalk it up to drug induced paranoia and over-active imaginations, but the nature of the objects in Uncle Basil’s museum were, at the very least, unnerving.

  “You don’t need to apologize, Peter,” said Bree. “I, for one, don’t think this was a good idea after all. I wish we hadn’t come.”

  “It’s just for a bit of fun.” Barnard put his arm around Bree, pulling her against him.

  “That’s all well and good for you. You love this sort of thing, and you don’t take it seriously. I do.”

  “I do take it seriously.”

  “Things like this are a big joke to you,” Bree insisted. “You and Tristan both.”

  “This place has given me a great idea for a story, how’s that for taking it seriously?”

  “You write Sci Fi.”

  “A good story is a good story, no matter what the genre. Besides, horror and the occult are big sellers these days. Look at Rosemary’s Baby.”

  “I loved that movie,” said Tristan. “‘As long as she ate the mouse she can’t see nor hear. Now sing,’” he said in his best Ruth Gordon imitation.

  “That movie was horrible!”

  “It was brilliant.”

  “You know what I mean. That poor girl. Can you believe her husband would sell his own wife to the devil like that?” Bree shuddered.

  “Come on. It was only a movie.”

  “Where’s that bottle opener?” said Peter. “I think we all need a drink to calm down.”

  “I’ll need something harder than a glass of wine,” said Bree.

  “I’m sure Uncle Basil has a liquor cupboard,” said Tristan.

  “With our luck he’s laced his stuff with belladonna,” said Bree.

  “Fine,” said Barnard. He opened a bottle and poured a plastic cup full and handed it toward Bree. “Anyone else?”

  “Yes, please,” said Peter. He needed something to take the edge off. Tristan took a cup from the stack
and shoved it across the table toward Barnard as well.

  “Cheers,” said Barnard, and the four of them touched the rims of their cups together. “To Uncle Basil.”

  “To Uncle Basil,” chimed in Tristan.

  Pandora yawned.