Haggopian and Other Stories

Crow saw knowledge written in my dumbfounded face and nodded. “His birthdate, Henri, adds up to eighteen—666, the Number of the Beast!”

“And his ten factories in seven countries,” I gasped. “The ten horns upon his seven heads! And the Beast in Revelations rose up out of the sea!”

“Those things, too,” Crow grimly nodded.

“And his death date, 999!”

Again, his nod and, when he saw that I was finished: “But most monstrous and frightening of all, my friend, his very name—which, if you read it in reverse order—”

“Wh-what?” I stammered. But in another moment my mind reeled and my mouth fell open.

“Resurgam!”

“Indeed,” and he gave his curt nod. “I shall rise again!”

Beyond the spiked iron railings the priest gave a sharp little cry and dropped the bowl, which shattered and spilled its contents. Spiralling winds, coming from nowhere, took up the ashes and bore them away…

Recognition

By January 1977 my military career had moved on somewhat. Into my last four years, I had become the Initial Training Sergeant-Major—the DI—at the Royal Military Police HQ in Chichester, Sussex; an establishment which has only recently relocated all these years later. While my work didn’t leave me a great deal of spare time, still I managed to write a few stories in the evenings. Recognition was one of them, and four years later it saw print in W. Paul Ganley’s Weirdbook 15. In the next half decade Paul would become the most regular of my very few literary outlets; for by then my agent in the US, Kirby McCauley, was more or less obliged to concentrate his efforts on a guy called Stephen King. Perhaps it’s a good job I was in the Army and didn’t have to support my family with my writing! The narrator of this story could easily be mistaken for a psychic investigator similar to Titus Crow; in fact I almost made it a Crow story. But no, that wasn’t to be, for Crow’s nature was far more bold, daring and… inquisitive? I’m sure that you’ll understand my meaning at the story’s very end.

I

As to why I asked you all to join me here, and why I’m making it worth your while by paying each of you five hundred pounds for your time and trouble, the answer is simple. The place appears to be haunted, and I want rid of the ghost.”

The speaker was young, his voice cultured, his features fine and aristocratic. He was Lord David Marriot, and the place of which he spoke was a Marriot property: a large, ungainly, mongrel architecture of dim and doubtful origins, standing gaunt and gloomily atmospheric in an acre of brooding oaks. The wood itself stood central in nine acres of otherwise barren moors borderland.

Lord Marriot’s audience numbered four: the sprightly octogenarian Lawrence Danford, a retired man of the cloth; by contrast the so-called “mediums” Jonathan Turnbull and Jason Lavery, each a “specialist” in his own right; and myself, an old friend of the family whose name does not really matter since I had no special part to play. I was simply there as an observer—an adviser, if you like—in a matter for which, from the beginning, I had no great liking.

Waiting on the arrival of the others, I had been with David Marriot at the old house all afternoon. I had long known something of the history of the place…and a little of its legend. There I now sat, comfortable and warm as our host addressed the other three, with an excellent sherry in my hand while logs crackled away in the massive fireplace. And yet suddenly, as he spoke, I felt chill and uneasy.

“You two gentlemen,” David smiled at the mediums, “will employ your special talents to discover and define the malignancy, if indeed such an element exists; and you, sir,” he spoke to the elderly cleric, “will attempt to exorcise the unhappy—creature?—once we know who or what it is.” Attracted by my involuntary agitation, frowning, he paused and turned to me. “Is something troubling you, my friend…?”