A Bunch of Fives - Stories by James Roderick Burns (51)

The Hand of Glory

THE HAND OF GLORY

‘WHAT’S THAT?’ SAID Felicity brightly, full of coffee and optimism and looking forward to the fourth week of her internship.  Despite the warm summer morning, her breath was visible in the chilly air of the Acquisitions Room.

‘That,’ David said, ‘is a Hand of Glory.’

‘Well, I can see it’s a hand.  It seems to have a candle, too, and its own wooden box.  But what is it?’

While the signal wasn’t strong all over Park Museum – Whitby was a small town, after all, and the Curator restricted resources to absolute essentials – beneath the front desk a creaky old router still gave out a puff or two of wi-fi, if you waved your tablet about in the rafters and supplicated the ancient gods.  David wiggled around for a while before snagging a connection.

‘There now.  Alright, Ms Hordern.  A Hand of Glory is the severed, dried and pickled hand of a hanged man.  When combined with a tallow candle, made from the fat of the same – and with the lit candle in its fingers – the Hand of Glory is a perfect burglar’s tool, rendering all to whom it’s presented motionless, and powerless to prevent thievery.  Furthermore –  ’ he scrolled awkwardly – ‘the Hand must be used as candleholder, the wick be plaited from the corpse’s hair, and the whole thing can be extinguished only with milk.  Oh, and more helpful still to the spiring burglar, it unlocks any door it touches.  So there you are.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘That’s what it is – a Hand of Glory.’  He smiled.

Felicity had known there was no salary, but hoped she’d pick up other things of value along the way: contacts, knowledge, maturity; wisdom, even.  Ghoulish tools-of-the-trade, not so much.  Still, she liked David – though he was paid for his work – and with admirable restraint, repressed a grimace.

‘And what’s its story, Mr Pearce?’

‘I really don’t know.’

He picked up the box gingerly, knocking here and there with the butt of his pocketknife.  One thin section sounded hollow.  He tapped a line, then opening the longer blade, pried out a panel from the end.

‘Oh, David – !’  She placed her palms under the opening while he ran the longer blade around the interior.  From the last corner a folded note sprang out.

‘What does it say?’

She thumbed the spotlight on her phone, directing its beam down through the umber gloom onto the parchment.  The crisp paper dropped open under its own weight.

*

The Vicarage, Danby, N. Yorks.

August 16^th, 1880

To: whomsoever may find the enclosed

I write to avert disaster in those who, against Providence and decency, lacking all natural sense of self-preservation, may be tempted to avail themselves of the enclosed fell device.

It is no item of common amusement – no harmless folkway; nor remedy; nor any curiosity fit for display.

This, reader, is an evil thing: an occult and cursed object, sealed in wood to protect against all deployment, preserved against possibility of liberation by accident or design, which equally may ensnare the user.

I, in concert with the witness undersigned, dispatch this dread thing for permanent sequestration within a museum strongbox.  It is not to be tinkered with, released, even inspected, under any circumstances whatsoever.  I have seen the effects of such activity on my departed friend, Stephen Peacock, late of the Anglican mission to Japan.  They are not to be countenanced. 

Abundans cautela non nocet

Canon JC Atkinson

Revd, BA (Cantab)

Angus McFall

Keeper, Holly Lodge, Danbydale

Signatures, &c.

*

The note was a faint, oysterish yellow, and folded crisp as the cracks in a bone-handled knife.  It had been ingeniously fitted into the compartment, yet seemed to leap into her hand with willing speed.  Felicity frowned, read the contents again.  Her voice trailed away to nothing.

‘I think it’s – well, disturbing, David.  If true.  It’s disturbing even if it’s not true.’

‘May I see it?’

He read the note for himself, then held it up to see if there was anything written on the back, replaced it on the inspection table and flattened it with the knife.

‘I agree – disturbing.  Not to be taken lightly.’  She raised one eyebrow, tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.  ‘Fancy talking it through over lunch?’

*

They headed down Flowergate to Phyllis’s Authentic American Diner.  He held the door, noting her look of horror.

‘Come on,’ he said.  ‘They do the biggest English breakfast in town.  Salads, too.’

She rolled her eyes but went in anyway, wondering how he stayed slim if he frequented such places.  A skinny waitress in a huge red puffball skirt greeted him by name, showed them to a window booth.  Felicity nervously regarded the menu.

‘Alright, love,’ the waitress said, pulling a pencil from her beehive.  ‘Worrer yer avin?’

David was no help, already staring at his phone.

‘Uh, the – ah, salad niçoise?’ she said.  ‘A diet coke?’

The waitress nodded and disappeared into the back.

‘What’re you having?’

‘The usual.  Got something, I think.’

‘Really?’

‘It’s the whiff of protein, you know.  And grease.  Look.  Come on – the Curator’s not staring over your shoulder.  It’s just us chickens.’

He held out his phone, canon jc atkinson, folklore and hand of glory in the search box.  A long tail of results stretched away below.

‘Skip the first few; they’re just Moorsy stuff.  But near the bottom – ’ he tapped the screen – ‘look at that journal listing, the PDF.’

She clicked, scrolled through the summary, then hesitated.

‘Data?’

He shook his head, excitement in his eyes.  From the back of the diner came the noise of clattering pans, the rollercoaster burp-and-hiss of a Gaggia machine ramping up.

‘Alright.’

It took her a second to pinch the image to readable size.  Felicity flicked through the apparatus – Philosophical Transactions of the Imperial Folk-Lore Society, Vol. IX, and so on – but stopped at his intake of breath.

‘Interesting?’

‘Could be, but how did you know?’

At that moment the salad and coffee arrived, followed by a beaded can of Coke, a fat-lipped white platter the size of a hubcap brimming over with sausages, bacon and wedges of charred tomato.  She leant over for a look.  A single fried egg stared back, its rheumy eye set in a cavern of black-pudding.  She shook her head.

‘You already found this, didn’t you?’

He scoffed, then looked sheepish.

‘Course not!  Just handy with a search engine, that’s all.’

Felicity popped the can in his direction.  A few droplets flew into his hair, spattered his glasses.  He took them off and laughed, speared a round of black pudding and waved it back at her.

‘Okay.  You got me.’

She made up a bite of lettuce, egg and anchovy, but hesitated.  For a moment the bustle of the café washed over them.

‘And you dug that thing out on purpose, too, didn’t you?’

He shook his head.

‘Didn’t you?’

He considered Charlie-Chaplining his way out with a pair of sausages dancing on forks, but she was too clever for distractions.

‘Let’s say I did.’

‘Why, David?’

‘It’s interesting.  You have to admit that – read the journal!  Useful, too.  More than what she ever has us doing.  You fancy typing up another of her conference proposals, or reordering the storage racks – again – because she feels alphabetised “isn’t quite the modern way”?’

‘Well, no.’

She handed him his phone, finally taking her mouthful of salad.  It wasn’t bad.  Outside, the light flickered briefly as a crow flew past the café.

‘Let’s eat,’ she said.

*

At midnight, Felicity sat by an open window, wondering whether she could chance a cigarette.  Her parents were out – some restaurant or other – but her younger brother lurked downstairs, never missing the opportunity to snitch.  She had her lighter open when the phone rang.

‘Hey.  Working late?’ she said.  If she craned her neck she could see a sliver of the Abbey between the buildings across the way.  She thought David might appreciate the view, and made a mental note to invite him when the moon was out.  He seemed like a night owl.

‘As a matter of fact, I am,’ he said.  ‘Printed the article – don’t tell her! – and found a couple more.  Turns out our artifact has – other powers.’

Suddenly the evening seemed colder.  She closed the window.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Oh, you know – ’

‘No, I don’t.  What did it say?’

‘Well, it’s a bit creepy.  Are you alone in ze howse?’

‘Very funny.  I can see a bit of the Abbey from my bedroom.’

‘Really?  I’d like to see that.’

She smiled to herself.

‘Listen, this sounds interesting and everything, but – ’

‘If you don’t use it correctly, it doesn’t just freeze people.  Apparently.  They die.’

‘What?’

‘That’s what it said.  I mean – oh, shit!’

‘What!’

‘Nothing – got wax on my good trousers.  The wind’s up high, tonight.  Are you doing anything?’

‘It’s late.  What would I be doing?’

‘Oh, I don’t know.  The night is young, as they say.  Do you want to see something – ah, intriguing?’

‘Now?’

‘It’s not that late.  I bribed George in security to let me stay.  The back door’s open.’

‘You’re still there?  She’ll kill you!’

‘Come on.  She loves presenteeism, and it’s almost time for annual reports.  I’ll walk you back, afterwards.’

For a minute she hesitated, then slipping on her flat-soled shoes, lit up and eased the front door home.

*

The park was black and silent, overhung with lush summer leaves.  In front of her the path was diced up by the light of the street-lamps.  As she rounded the main building, she saw a small glow on the second floor: flash on, then off, then on again, finally angling towards a crack in the staff door.  George was nowhere to be seen, so Felicity slipped down the main corridor to the office.

‘David!’

‘Shush!’

A hand flew through the doorway, pulling her inside.

‘Don’t do that!’

‘Sorry.  I just – well, it’s a bit weird, like I said.  Bit jumpy.’

‘You are – I almost jumped out of my skin!’

‘Sorry about that.’

He took her coat like a gentleman, ushered her into the side office with the conference facilities (she goggled for a moment), then the plush leather chair at the head of the table.  He’d spread out a fan of photocopied pages.

‘David?  This is her chair.  You know how she gets; I can’t – ’

‘Oh forget it, Felicity.’  He sat down in an old fabric chair, dragged it up beside her with a screech.

‘Look.  I wanted to show you what I found, about powers.  It’s – well, fascinating.  I read more widely than just the folklore journals, talked to – ’

She took out another cigarette.

‘Hey, I wouldn’t …’

‘Oh, the hell with that.  Talk.’

‘I thought this thing could make the centrepiece for an exhibition, Folk Wisdom: Magic of the Esk Valley, something like that.  And – well, you know Canon Atkinson, all those old-time polymath fellas.  Knowledgeable, but dry.  So I read into wise-women, healers, all of that.  Magic.’  He gulped at the same time as she blew out a long, frustrated plume of smoke, then coughed hard into his fist.  ‘And, you know – witchcraft.’

‘David, why?’

‘She’s bloody awful, that’s why!  A few more weeks and you’ll head off into the sunset, but  I’m here the whole damn time, under her thumb, and annual reports are due.  I wanted to do something that would blow her socks off …’

She leaned in and he lowered his voice.  In the hall an errant breeze pushed at the shutters; something dark cut across the window, the glossy surface of the table.

‘Yes?’

‘I tried it.’

Felicity waved her hand as if in disbelief as smoke rose in a languid curl towards the ceiling.  He stared back, one finger ringing his collar.  Surely he hadn’t … No!  She laughed, smiled nervously, touched his lapel.  The sound of her laughter bounced off the glass wall in a clatter of discordant notes.  He caught her hand.

‘Please, Felicity – listen!  I know you think this is mad, and normally I’d agree, but I’ve been under so much pressure, and it seemed like a little, harmless prank – and I – I just wanted to get out, from underneath.  All of it.  So I – ’

She stared at him, cigarette untouched.  Through winding smoke his face was wan as milk.  It was all she could do to nod.

‘I lit the thing, put the candle in its hand – the fingers were dry, but horribly pliable – and I waited till she was in her office with the door locked, working on the reports, and I lit the thing with George’s lighter – ha ha!  he knows I don’t smoke – and it smelled like singeing flesh, but I kept going.  I held it up and the light it gave off was green – green, Felicity!  And I took it down the corridor with the lights off and the thing held out in front of me, and I touched the door.  It opened, but there was no creak!  Her door always sounds like rigging in a high wind, but it just swung inwards, and I walked up behind her at the desk – she was typing something, and sort of chuckling – and I was going to say something, “Curator, look this way!” or something, but she turned as I got there – as it got there – and it sort of reached out of its own accord and – and – ’

‘What, David!’

‘It went right through her!’

‘What?  What!’

There was a huge crash from the hall, harsh and musical and awful as a grandfather clock pushed downstairs, then all the lights went out and David dropped his head on the table.  All she could see was the tip of her cigarette, pulsing like a small red eye.  She shivered, and shaking reached out.

‘David?’ she said.

Slowly he rose up with his face in his hands.

‘Please,’ he said, ‘you’re the only one who understands – come and see her.  We’ve got to move her, maybe, make it right.  Please!’

Clinging tight like rats in a drain, they slid from the conference room and down the empty stairs to the Curator’s office.  On the threshold, he was shaking so badly she pushed by, her phone torch lit.  The beam played over clean brown tile, the wall of Curator photographs, hobnobbing with every possible local celebrity, their smiles fixed as nails, over the empty chair and the lone, moronic blinking of the cursor.

‘David – what – ?’

She turned again to see his mouth opening, head rounding on a new sound – a shuffling gait, stealthy and low, heavier than George’s but dancing, somehow, just out of range – as he said a single word in the umber darkness.  It tasted of soil and iron, of ashes and temptation, of all in the past they had striven to repress now come horribly to light.

‘David?’

‘Acquisitions,’ he said.

First published in The Willow & Thorn Anthology (Willow & Thorn Publishing, 2024)

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