Chapter IV.

(Pages 40-51)

Chapter IV.

Concerning the alleged existence of Old Man Jacarbi

I.

With Sir Desvot dripped out dry and well-informed by Sir Humphrey of his indisputable tale pertaining to the perturbing poltergeist, the trio return to the hut wherein they discover that there had not even been plates of sushi to begin with – the same reining true regarding the anomalous, spectral vase that Humphrey had heeded in their previous venture through the hut. They now enter the door at the end of the hallway, inside of which are dittoed colinear staircases, Sir Levit leads into the attic as Humphrey and Desvot dawdle at the bottom, “What is it with you, art thou cowering in fear of an attic? I’ve met annelids, arthropods, cnidarians, hell, even mollusks with more backbone than thee. We have here two fully-matured nyctophobic phasmophobes wetting themselves over a creepy old cottage.”

“Sir Levit, I insist we must linger here below thee; for in lore, legends, and tales before we, it is known that the attic is naught but a purlieu for spooks and further specters than we have encountered even thusfar, especially in such persisting shade,” Sir Humphrey reasons.

“If thou would wish Sir Humphrey, I may return to the fire and fetch us a torch to light forth a path into the darkness and thenceforth we may ward off what spirits may be lurking above us,” Desvot offers, still skeptical as to Sir Humphrey’s proclamation of such powerful spirits’ presence in the hut. Sir Levit, impatient and uncaring of any potential haunting or dangers dormant in the dark, disappears past the impenetrable penumbra presiding near the top of the staircase.

What follows is naught but silence until Sir Humphrey parts it, “Sir Levit, what is into thou to go forth so unfraught by the fearful phantasms floating through the cursed air around thee? Art thou well?”

“I believe this attic to be an artist’s studio, sir,” Levit announces, “I cannot make out but silhouettes of easels and canvases, not even the paintings thereon.” Humphrey and Desvot hear his footsteps proceed until a crashing clangor of what sounds to be tin or some similar metal, his footsteps cease for a moment before they relapse and again through the darkness echo. Soon down the staircase drools the appearance of some viscous red liquid, as well now as green, blue, and yellow, Humphrey and Desvot step back. “There appears to be a lantern placed here in front of me, would ye wish to take claim of it?”

“Please, Sir, whatever may shed this dreadful darkness,” says Humphrey before he hears what sounds to be Sir Levit tearing his hand through canvas.

“I apologize to have hoisted thine hopes too high, but the lantern was illusory – only an oil painting of one on canvas. One of the greatest I’ve ever seen, in fact.” Sir Levit’s footsteps patter across the attic floor and back to the staircase, “Just a heap of junk up there as far as I can tell,” he says, stepping through the paint, “Well, aside from all the potentially priceless artwork that is. Say, would ye please follow me into the basement?”

“No,” Humphrey says, proud and simple.

“You know, I may just oblige thee, Sir Levit,” Desvot decides following Levit into the only slightly darker basement; Sir Humphrey looks around the room, waiting patiently until a small boy faulters past the doorway. He briskly catches up with Levit and Desvot in the basement.

“On second thought, I may just follow thee,” Sir Humphrey says, delving deeper into the darkness.

“Does anyone hear that?” Desvot asks anxiously.

“Hear what?” asks Humphrey hearing now the noise he is referring to: the morose sobbing of a man in his fifties, or by his judgement more specifically the spirit of such a man.

“Who art thou, sobbing someone? Present thyself,” Levit calls out confidently to him. The sobbing stops, and Levit steps toward the source of the noise – nearly tripping over a chair but catching his balance and making it to a doorway, beyond which lies naught but impenetrable murk. “Oh sobbing sir, I wish not any harm; only to offer my welcoming cordiality in hopes to raise thine spirits. Sir, art thou inside this room? I heard thee quite apparent from across thine basement; we are lost in this wood and thought this hut were empty; although, thou hast made it vivid that the opposite is true, and I plea thou wilt forgive us.” Humphrey and Desvot catch up with him at the doorway, and inside they see the spark of a match, producing ample light to discern the detail of his scruffy whiskers, an aggrandizing network of wrinkles, one wartlike wen stuck on the bridge of his nose, and not much else. There is another spark that briefly illuminates a flannel shirt, one more spark, and he at last gets the matchhead to light – it moves over to a bureau on which is placed a paraffin lamp that sets the room aglow; the man has no teeth in but has not a care in the world about it. He snarls at them, producing a pungent odor that lingers in their olfactory receptacles.

“Hello, my name is Sir Levit, and these are Sirs Humphrey and Desvot. I apologize for intruding upon thine abode, but we were cast under the impression that it had been abandoned. May I inquire thee as to thine name?”

The man takes a cigarette from the breast pocket of his cardigan, bites down and lights it through the glass with the wick of the lamp. He drags plenty of smoke and exhales, the exhaust rises to the ceiling, “Eh, just call me Jacarbi or something like that, it doesn’t mean a lick of ass to me,” he says before taking another pestilent puff of his paper pipe. “Why’re you three dopes talking so stupid anyway, with all those thees, thous, thines and all that, I just don’t get it. You only end up looking like dimwits and damned assholes in the end for it.”

“Oh, on the contrary Sir, do thou not understand the satisfaction of speaking aloud with such grace and grandiloquence?” Sir Levit responds, to which ‘Jacarbi,’ as he potentially could be named, takes another puff of his cigarette and spits on his Levit’s boot.

“And what is it that makes you think you’re so smart?”

“Well, let me say sir, that I am not so nescient as not to believe that I am as grossly erudite as I present myself to thee” he says, placing his left index finger on his nose to close one nostril and ejecting a mass of mucous onto the man’s bare foot with astounding accuracy. He wipes his foot off with a dirty sock he picks from his hamper. Sirs Humphrey and Desvot, under the impression that this man standing before them is indeed a ghost keep safely behind Levit’s back and wonder why he hasn’t killed them yet. Humphrey, being an expert on such phenomena, understands that a spirit able to manifest itself so flawlessly before them has the power and often will as well to commit such foul play.

“Well if ye mind not, there is a bedroom and couch upstairs to sleep in. There is probably another one down here if I can find it; might be a bit dirty is all,” Jacarbi says with the last of his cigarette that flicks into the trash by the door to the half bath attached to his master bed where it hits an inch below the rim, bouncing into the canister. “I also made some sushi, and there should be plenty upstairs to share amongst the four of us,” he declares, disappointed he does not get to engorge the entire feast of uncooked fish fillet himself.

            They follow him back through the hallway where Humphrey could have sworn the clock had stopped moving completely, and into the dining room whereupon the table are lain multifold platters of pristine, succulent sushi, and in the center of either half of the table are placed two menorahs with all the candles inside them. Jacarbi walks up to one of them and lifts it up, “Aren’t these neat? Got these two candelabras at a yard sale a few years back. They really light up the room,” he says setting down his lamp. He removes one candle from it that he lights with it and then uses to light the rest of the candles in the menorah; he puts it back in place.

            “Hey, did not thou have no teeth when we were downstairs?” Desvot asks him, having glanced two even rows of pearly whites in his mouth while he spoke.

            “Didn’t you see me pop them in just a second ago? Or weren’t you paying attention?” he speaks through a grin, clacking his dentures together to demonstrate their quality craftsmanship and continues, “You can go ahead and dig in, I’m not gonna keep you waiting or anything.”

The men now tear into all the display of raw fish lain before them, partway through which Humphrey interrupts, “Pardon me Jacarbi, but may I ask what harsh fate hath wrought itself upon thine teeth?”

“Lost a game of pool,” he begins with an expression like that alone should explain the entire event, “made a bet I couldn’t pay, so he shoved the eight ball in my skull and knocked my jaw onto the table to get it to stay. Nearly choked out on the shattered shards of my teeth. Didn’t even have to pay him after ‘cause he said the entertainment of performing trick shots off it the rest of the night was enough to cover the debt.” He carries on in his consumption of those four rolls he had been holding onto the whole story. The rest of the meal carries on in near silence until Jacarbi starts going on again, “You know, it’s actually rather nice to have you guys here for company; It sure is lonely without Magdeline here next to me. She left to go to town four years ago and still hasn’t returned, but I don’t even know how to get back out of these woods to find where she’s gone off to or even if she’s safe.” His eyes begin to tear up again, but he gets back into the mood with one slice of katsuo.

“How long have thou been living out here in the forest for?” Humphrey asks through a mouthful of ebi.

“House was actually my father’s until he passed and left it to me, so I’d say I’ve owned it nearly twelve years now give or take a few.” Sir Levit takes the final piece of sushi, the sashimi and rolls already finished, now swallows it whole just as he did all the others. Jacarbi rises, “I suppose I should be heading in for the night; I’m getting tired as it is, and I’ve got some firewood to be chopping in the morning. This hut turns so frigid in the winter, and I don’t have anything ready to burn in it yet.”

“Wouldst thou be opposed to us carrying the couch from thine basement hither? It is just that I am not so accustomed to sleeping in such mustiness and dust with which this basement is replete, it is practically unbreathable,” Levit proclaims. “May we borrow thine lamp to guide our way? We have the funds to compensate for what paraffin we consume.”

Jacarbi hands Levit the lamp, “Go ahead kid, I’ve got another one downstairs I can use if I truly need a lantern. I’m going to retire for the night; I suppose I’ll be seeing you in the morning then. Don’t worry about the dishes, I’ll get them in the morning.” Levit takes the lamp and watches Jacarbi leave for the staircase.

“Goodnight; Night; Night Jacarbi,” the three in approximation with one another. He maneuvers through the assemblages of rubble and rubbish without stumbling and can be heard shutting his door, plopping flat into his bed behind it.

“So I have been deliberating Sirs, dost ye believe that Magdeline may be the same skeleton I had landed upon at the bottom of the wishing well? Or may she be another lass?” Desvot asks, starting his way down the hall to aid with the relocation of the sofa.

“Well sir, I believe this theory to hold some plausibility; especially on account that he is perhaps just as old as the skeleton had been. Who knows how long his spirit may have been haunting this house for?” Humphrey follows Sir Levit down the staircase.

“Sirs, thou’rt making fools of thineselves, there is no such a thing as a specter or haunting, and children are thee for investing any belief in such a ludicrous concept,” Sir Levit declaims as he reaches the bottom of the staircase. “Ye wilt not treat him so poorly as if he is not even human, for such is unrighteous and rude of you. He is human as the rest of us and we thusforth shall treat him as such.”

Walking through the basement they happen upon an authentic suit of plate armor to which Levit turns his attention, “Although sirs, if mayhap this man we know as Jacarbi in actuality is an authentic ghost as ye make him out to be, then I shall lay claim of this lovely plated suit here before us. The way it glistens under the glow of the lamp so heartfully, you feel the heat from the flame itself radiating off its immaculate sheen.”

“Is this the couch that Jacarbi had specified?” Desvot points to one covered by a tattered sheet near the corner of the room next to an egregiously cluttered desk stacked how high with cards, papers, and scraps.

“Yes, I believe this must be the one,” Humphrey says as Levit and he both scan the room to assure that there is not another like it less filthy, which there is not. Sirs Humphrey and Desvot lift either (on account of Levit being uncomfortable touching a surface so sordid) end of the couch and follow the lamplight up the stairs, cautious not to get wedged into the corner, they make safely up to the main level where it takes too much time to turn it through the door and into the living room opposite the divan, especially getting tangled in the hallway and nearly knocking over that vase which must have just been there on the floor next to the grandfather clock to begin with then by Levit’s logic.

            Desvot conks out on the bed with Levit on the divan and Humphrey the sofa (after removing the sheet and scrubbing it over with water to remove all the gelatinous gunk from the fabric). One can hear Jacarbi’s snore haunting the halls all throughout the night, each excruciating inhale followed by a soft whistle. Sir Humphrey doesn’t sleep. At about three in the morning he pulls the blanket up over his eyes as the entity of a woman dressed in a garish silk gown hovers through the hallway with a child behind her who looks him straight in the eye when he passes by and back under the blanket Humphrey hides. He peeks above the blanket to see four rotted fingers slowly projecting from the edge of the doorway and curling around it. He retreats back beneath his blanket until Sir Levit shall later awake around eight after raving about the overwhelming and infinitely gorgeous Delcita Lavie in his sleep for about two hours, keeping Humphrey even more alert and sleepless. It was something about her smile, so infectious and radiant. It almost makes Humphrey sad how much he misses her.

II.

            “Aaaauuuuhhhh,” he yawns through a sharpened falsetto.

            “Sir Levit, art thou yet awake? Or must I hassle thee into a state of functionality?”

            “I think I’m going back to sleep,” he announces before rolling over and cuddling back up with the blanket he imagines to be Delcita Lavie herself lying next to him; he wraps his arms around the blanket tenderly with a chapstick chaperone smacked into it while Humphrey just looks at him like a jackass. Levit falls back asleep and Humphrey decides to get to his feet, now able to see more clearly through the hut with such purifying daylight cracking through boards, gleaming and glaring through the windows around them. He knocks on the door to the room which Desvot is sleeping in to no response and opens it to see that indeed he is still passed out. After taking his matchbook (left on the nightstand with his cigarettes), Humphrey finds the lamp Sir Levit had borrowed (on the floor next to the divan) and lighting it. He returns the matchbook to Sir Desvot’s bedside and closes the door behind him as he tries his hardest to drag the couch out by himself, which works until he gets it into the hallway, knocking over that vase that was placed quite inconveniently in the middle of the floor. Levit lightly sneezes (not a full Achoo! But rather the more precise and punctual Tchoo!) and says something in his relapsed slumber on the subject of Delcita’s indescribable and unfathomable earthly appeal. He brushes his hands through where her hair would be if she were truly there next to him, but alas, a fool he makes of himself once more and remains such impermanently.

            Sir Humphrey gives up on the couch and walks back downstairs to see if Jacarbi has woken up yet, which upon inspection of his room he seems to have. The room is empty except for a lantern on the same bureau and a doll with Jacarbi’s face sat upright in bed where he had been sleeping. Humphrey turns around to see Jacarbi standing right behind him and he falls backward shrieking – he drops the lantern which spills on the floor and starts the whole room on fire. Looking back up he sees Jacarbi has vanished. He springs to his feet and snatches the suit of armor on his way back up the stairs careful not to lose one piece of its magnificence; banging on it with his open hand, he opens the door to Desvot and continues this pounding.

            “Everyone up and out, the house is going up in flames!” Humphrey shouts, getting Desvot out of bed and managing to squeeze further loving praise of Delcita Lavie from the slumbering, lunatic romantic. “Levit, get up – the house is on fire!”

            “Oh, Delcita, any room thou art inside of catches to flames, thou sweltering heat.”

            “Levit,” Desvot says, throwing a cushion off the couch that bounces of his head.

            “Augh? Thou art not the Delcita I prayed for!”

            “Get. Out. Of. This. House; it is Burning down Fast.”

            Levit rolls off the divan and hears the crackling of flames already spreading from the basement. Making safely out the hut with their new suit of armor, they untie the leads to their horses and begin the debate upon who gets which piece of the armor. Levit convinces them to allow him both the helmet and gauntlets, which he slides his arms inside with ease. Sir Humphrey takes the chest plate, and Desvot is quite happy with simply the greaves and boots. They ride away from the hut as it is engulfed inside a fistful of flames, soon to be banished from existence. Humphrey swears he can see the shadowy figure of Jacarbi standing near a tree that he walks behind and disappears.

            They find their way back past the fire they had burned through another time, and they inevitably wind up back at the same crossroads where a left turn leads them around a loop and back down the left fork but backward. They turn around and proceed forth the left fork once more which now leads them to the right fork, and once more to the right fork, once through the main path, and once more they take a left turn which leads them along a trail that sets itself apart from the others by its straight simplicity.

            It leads on into tall grass through which they can now see the exit from the forest; daylight beaks through blinding and fulgent, and as they exit the forest into the barren landscape what is known to residents of Valji’ik as Pladus Plain, their stomachs start to churn and choke. Levit, wondering if there may be anything around for them to feed upon, is beguiled by a bird nest at the top of a towering tree with what appears to be eggs inside of it.

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