The Aylesford Skull Read Online Free PDF

doom that awaits us all, some of us sooner than others.” He gestured at the grave by way of explanation. “I can offer you wealth and freedom from want. I won’t press my affections upon you, however. In short, I desire what was rightfully mine thirty years ago when you were a girl of fifteen. Think carefully before you deny me.”
    “ Rightfully yours? Do you say so? You hanged your own brother from a tree branch, leering at him as he swung there choking. It’s my undying shame that I was too cowardly to come forward, although I still can, and you know that. You have no right to ask anything of anyone but forgiveness, which I can assure you you’ll never find on Earth. Even your own mother despises you. I’ve been told that you’ve changed your name. No doubt you despise yourself.”
    “I have the right to do as I please, Mary, including abandoning a name that I had grown to loathe. And the truth is, as we both know, Edward would have hanged himself eventually, or some such thing, if I hadn’t done him the kindness. He was a sniveling little toad. As for your not coming forward when you might have, that was simply good sense. Surely you recall our bargain, and so you know that your silence has so far gained you thirty years of life. Now I’m offering you that same bargain again, except that the life that I would grant you is considerably more handsome than the life you enjoy. You’re a serving wench, or so I’m told, in my own mother’s employ. Or is it a mere charwoman? It amounts to charity in either event. I tell you plainly that you might have servants of your own, if that’s what you desire.”
    She stared at him as if he were insane. “I’d sooner die,” she said.
    He nodded, momentarily silent, and then said, “You’ve always been a woman who spoke plainly, Mary, when you chose to speak. One thing, though, before you take your leave...”
    He turned and drew out his murdered brother’s skull from where it sat atop the wall of the tomb behind him, holding it out to her as if it were an offering. She stared at it in horror, recoiling from it. Unlike the dry bones in the grave, the skull had a mocking semblance of life: the hollows of the eyes were set with illuminated silver orbs, the mouth agape, the skull itself trepanned, the opening fitted with a clockwork mechanism beneath a crystal shell. It sat on a polished wooden base, like a trophy.
    “Your paramour has been well-treated, as you can see,” he said. “In life he accounted for nothing, but in death, thanks to the skills of his own loathsome father, he has ascended to something very like the plain of glory.”
    Narbondo’s interest was drawn to a movement beneath a heavy branch of the willow, a shifting glow like misty candlelight on the fine curtain of leaves. He peered at it, turning his head slightly to the side to see it more clearly. He returned the skull to its resting place, and then nodded for Mary’s benefit at the figure that was slowly taking shape in the light that hovered within the wavering shadows. “The ghost walks,” he whispered.
    The semblance of a boy, Narbondo’s murdered brother, paced silently toward them, his hand outstretched, the animated branches of the willow visible through his transparent body. He seemed to see Mary standing before him, and she put her hand to her mouth in happy surprise. The ghost flickered in the moonlight, winking away and then reappearing beneath the branch as before, walking toward them again over the same ground, reaching out as if there were something that he wanted – to touch Mary’s hand, perhaps. Again he flickered away, and again he reappeared and set out. His mouth worked, as if he were trying to find words that had been choked out of him thirty years ago.
    Mary started toward the ghost, sobbing aloud now, putting out her arms as if to embrace it. In that moment Narbondo sprang across the open grave like an ape, his black cloak flying behind him, a knife glinting in the