The Skull - A Short Story by Horace Tempest

Everyone loves a spine-chilling story set to prick the flesh with goosebumps...right?

One person we can be certain did was our founder Horace Tempest. During preparations to celebrate 100 years since young Horace snapped his very first school photo, we became aware of a short story that had long been lost to the mists of time. This was no ordinary tale. This was something infused with eerie Lovecraftian hues and the macabre air of Edgar Allan Poe. And it was penned by Horace himself back in 1955! 

As an additional, curious, twist, due to a long-standing dislike of the birth name he had been given, Horace chose to write - and sometimes travel - under the alias - Reuben Dobb.

You can imagine our delight in stumbling upon this horror short in the run-up to Halloween and during our '100 Years of Horace' campaign. It was almost as if something otherworldly was at play. But surely not, as tales of the supernatural have no actual footing in reality...do they?

Anyway, the witching hour is upon us. Draw the curtains, bolt the door and hold your nerve.

We have a tale to tell.

 

 

The Skull

A short story by Reuben Dobb c.1955

I am not a brave man. I panic very easily. On the other hand, I console myself with the thought that fear is common to us all. We are social creatures. Surrounded by our friends, in the bright lights of the towns, the noise of traffic providing reassurance, we can put on a bold front all right. But would any man’s feelings be very different from mine if he were, as I was, alone by the sea and far from help - half a thousand miles from London and the nearest railway fifty miles away - there was not a human being within two hours’ hazardous tramp across the moor, bog and rock - and on a dark October night?

I had not seen John Maitland since before the war. He had been engaged on some obscure mission in the East, and when I got his letter inviting me to spend a few weeks with him at his cottage in Sutherland, I wasted no time, but arranged my long-postponed holiday with the chief assistant and set off by car the following day.

Great Britain looks a very tiny island on the world map, but it was a long way to the north-west coast of Scotland. After two days of almost continual driving, I was still forty miles short of my destination and, rather than risk having to get my friend out of bed, I slept in the car. In the morning I pushed on until, the road petering out, I consulted my written directions, locked up the car, and walked the last few miles, humping my kit.

It was grand to see my friend again and we had much to talk about. A more solitary place for a holiday is hard to imagine. John’s place was a rough but comfortable stone cottage built on a narrow promontory. The sea at high tide all but lapped the walls. East and south were the mountains of Sutherland, Suilven, Canisp and Ben More Assynt. Westward, the turbulent seas of the Minch beat against the islands of the Hebrides. On the north side stretched a line of sandy beach. The only forms of life were an occasional sheep cropping the mossy grass half a mile away and the sea birds foraging among the seaweeds. The only sounds, the rush of wind, the froth and boom of mighty waters and the desolate cries of the gulls. A good place for a private summer holiday. Perhaps not in winter though, and this was October. The nights were beginning to lengthen.

 

 

“How did you find this place, John?” I asked.

“Not very difficult,” replied John. “The Highland population keeps on dwindling.”

The house was all that remained of a one-time healthy community. It was, he explained, shown on old maps as Port Eriskol. Bonny Prince Charlie was reputed to have set sail from there.

“You can still see the remains of a slipway at low tide,” said John.

I was intrigued by the odd curios which my friend had brought back from the East. All sorts of queer things. One in particular, which at once fascinated and repelled me, was a skull, complete with lower jaw and teeth, which had been fixed on a stand and used as a gruesome sort of lampshade. The light was, of course, a candle. The effect of the rays flickering through the open jaws of this object was weird indeed. The thing might have been considered quaint in Mayfair, but in that setting, I found it rather disturbing.

“He must have been a handsome brute when he was alive,” I said. “The teeth are beautifully even and only one missing."

John smiled. “How do you know if it was a he?”

I waited.

He went on, “It is not really supposed to be a human skull at all. As told to me, it belonged to a female ‘Tau-Tau’, a kind of manatee, or something between manatee and seal. Reckoned though, to be of human intelligence. Never seen one myself.”

“Sounds like a far eastern mermaid,” I laughed.

I gathered there was a story attached to this grim object.

It seems this lady Tau-Tau, or manatee or seal, had taken a human lover in the belief that she could live ashore with him for the rest of her life. Finding this impossible, she had dragged her man into the sea to introduce him (as John put it) to her relations. He had, of course, reacted to this in the way one would expect and, when he had been submerged an hour or so and was becoming colder and colder, the Tau-Tau distracted, took his corpse back to his people in the hope that everything would be put right.

The tribe, however, tortured her by pulling out her teeth one by one, then cut off her head and stuck it on a post at the water’s edge as a warning to others of her species. That night the headman of the tribe disappeared, the only traces being tracks down to the sea. It was then noticed that the head had grown a new tooth.

The following night, and frequently afterwards, a male member of the tribe was lost. Each time another tooth being restored to the skull until, in terror, the village was abandoned and the head left alone on the pole by the sea. It was said that whenever some unwary traveller, native or European spent a night at that spot, he was never heard of again.

It was a childish sort of yarn of course, and John told the story in a matter-of-fact way. But, alone as we were in this wild and, at night, eerie place, I felt a slight shudder. There was still one tooth missing.

 

 

In these parts, the days are long in summer but after the September equinox, the light goes very quickly.

We spent, therefore, much time reading by candlelight, and this was not altogether a good thing for my nerves. Supplies being a long way off, we had to be economical, or I, for one, would have had a dozen or more burning at one time.

After a week of this, I began to get a little edgy. When alone, I would find myself looking over my shoulder, and sometimes listening. Once, out in the north bay in our little fishing coble, a seal gave me the fright of my life by emerging from the water not ten feet away and surveyed me steadily in characteristic human fashion for some half a minute before disappearing again. Seals are perfectly harmless creatures, of course, even friendly, but I felt uncomfortable until I pulled up the boat on the sand and got back to John’s solid and dependable presence.

“Seen a ghost?” he enquired.

“No,” I said. ”Why?”

“It must be this light, I thought you looked rather white. By the way,” he continued, “one of us will have to run over to the Clachen to get some things. Candles particularly”.

“I’ll go,” I said. Anything for a change from here, I thought. And the sight of a few more people would not come amiss, even if I could not speak the Gaelic.

“Better make a start then,” said John, “to get back before dark. Here, I have made out a list.”

In spite of my efforts, however, I did not succeed in getting back before dark. In addition, I had to contend with one of those Highland mists, and the lights of my car were almost useless. When eventually I returned to the road’s end I cursed myself for a fool in not remembering to get a torch.

I stumbled along the way carrying the provisions, fairly confident of the route, which ran for most of the way beside a stream. It should take me within sight of the cottage, I mused. That is if this confounded mist would clear.

 

 

It got thicker. I must have been off-course half a dozen times, and it was very late, when, exhausted and rather strung up, I finally got my bearings and reached the strip of sand which led directly to the cottage.

It was still misty and quiet. Apart from the steady rhythm of the waves along the beach, there was a dead calm. I didn’t know what it was, but I felt apprehensive. The nearer I got to the cottage, the jumpier I became. Suddenly I noticed the coble was not in its usual place. I looked again to make sure. It was not there.

But something was there. Footprints on the sand. Strange footprints. Not made by boot or shoe. They led to and from the house and down to the water. I had no time to investigate for I had now realised there was no light in the cottage. John would not go to bed without leaving a light, especially on a night like this. I didn’t like it at all. I was almost afraid to go into the house.

I beat back my fears and, angry at myself, lit a candle and looked around.

“All right, John?” I called. There was no reply.

I went to the bedroom. One thing I had learned in the service, and that was to make my own bed. I had made up both beds that morning. Mine was as I left it. John’s had been occupied. Had he got tired, gone to bed, and then gone outside again? What for?

Something on the bed made me draw nearer. An icy feeling crept up my spine. It was a strand of seaweed.

In a sudden panic, I ran from the bedroom. Something caught my eye. It was the skull. In the flickering light of the candle, I stared in horror. The teeth. They were complete. None were missing.

The candle fell from my nerveless hand, guttered and went out.

I stood rooted in the darkness. I felt there was something there besides myself. I strained, listening, in the direction of the door.

From outside came the sigh of the sea…and a distant moaning.

My ears caught another sound, a shuffling, dragging noise. It was quite distinct now. It was approaching the door. I am ashamed to admit it, but I was petrified with fear. My nerve had entirely gone. With a pounding heart, I saw the door open slowly. A smell flooded the room. Inescapable, all-powerful. Outlined against the gloom of the open door I saw a shape. Monstrous. Menacing…

The next thing I remember is that something was burning my throat, rum I think, and John’s serious face was bending over me, muttering “Damn fool. Damn fool.”

He meant himself, not me. He blamed himself, he said. Resting after lunch he had gone fishing in the bay rather late in the afternoon and been caught in the mist.

“Had to leave the coble round the point,” he said.

Reluctant to leave his record catch behind, he had brought it home with some pride, half carrying, half trailing. His catch was a giant cod, fully five feet long! The seaweed was merely a strip of a native ritual costume which had dropped from the wall onto the bed.

And the teeth?

We examined the skull. There was still one tooth missing. A trick of the light and my overwrought imagination had got to work.

“Feel all right again?” John asked the next morning as we sipped hot tea in the keen northern air.

“Much better,” I said. Everything had been explained quite simply. I felt very sheepish, and yet… “John,” I exclaimed, with a sudden thought, “what about the footprints?

“What footprints?” he asked.

I explained.

“Well, if they were there last night, they will be there this morning,” said John. “The tide cannot have washed them all away.”

We hurried down to the beach. The tide was receding and the sand appeared smooth and unbroken. But above the high water mark, we found what we were looking for. We gazed a long time before either of us spoke. Each knew what the other was thinking. Footprints were there all right. Although rather smudged they clearly resembled those of a man or woman.

But one thing was equally clear.

The creature that had formed those prints had webbed feet.

END.

 

 

How's that for an eerie dip into the isolated claustrophobia and supernatural trappings of the rugged Hebridean coast?

Horace had a voracious appetite for books and actually created a small library within the walls of his Trevethoe House home. Lining the shelves are books covering all manner of subjects, from history to art, photography to poetry, and of course a dedicated shelf for the wilder side of sci-fi and horror fiction. 

Perhaps somewhere within the many books and assorted papers is another little tale penned by Horace waiting to be found. But in the meantime, thank you for reading, and keep one eye on the rising tide.