Tristan Farnon: Character Connection

     I [Jim] was home within ten minutes and trotted up the stairs, looking forward to catching up on my lost sleep. Opening my bedroom door I flicked on the switch and felt a momentary surprise when the room remained in darkness. Then I stood frozen in the doorway.
     By the window, where the moonlight flooded in, making a pool of silver in the gloom, a monk was standing. A monk in a brown habit, motionless, arms folded, head bowed. His face was turned from the light towards me but I could see nothing under the drooping cowl but a horrid abyss of darkness.
     I thought I would choke. My mouth opened but no sound came. And in my racing mind one thought pounded above the others–there were such things as ghosts after all.
     Again my mouth opened and a hoarse shriek emerged.
     “Who in the name of God is that?”
     The reply came back immediately in a sepulchral bass.
     “Tristan.”
     I don’t think I actually swooned, but I did collapse limply across my bed and lay there gasping, the blood thundering in my ears. I was dimly aware of the monk standing on a chair and screwing in the light bulb, giggling helplessly the while.
[…]
     “Hell, I’m sorry, Jim.” Then he patted my shoulder reassuringly. “But don’t worry. If it was going to be fatal you’d have dropped down dead on the spot. And anyway, a good fright is very beneficial–acts like a tonic. You won’t need a holiday this year.”
     “Thanks,” I said. “Thanks very much.”
     “I wish you could have heard yourself.” He began to laugh again. “That scream of terror…oh dear, oh dear!”

     Tristan was in pyjamas and he cuddled two hot water bottles to his bosom. He turned his head and gave me a single haggard glance before pushing one of the bottles between the sheets and lay on his back with the second bottle clasped across his chest and his eyes fixed on the ceiling. I went over and looked down at him in some concern. He was shaking so much that the whole bed vibrated with him.
     “How are you, Triss?” I whispered.
     After a few moments a faint croak came up, “Frozen to the bloody marrow, Jim.”
     “But where the heck have you been?”
     Again the croak. “In a drainpipe.”
[…]
     “That’s right,” Tristan whispered. “When I saw that big bloke pounding into the wood I cut straight back and dived into one of the pipes. God only knows how long I was in there.”
     “But why didn’t you come out after we left?”
     A violent shudder shook the young man’s frame and he closed his eyes briefly. “I couldn’t hear a thing in there. I was jammed in tight with my cowl over my ears and there was a ninety mile an hour wind screaming down the pipe. I didn’t hear the car start and I daren’t come out in case that chap was still standing there with his bloody great shillelagh.”
[…]
     “They’re horrible things, drainpipes, Jim.” He looked up at me with hunted eye. “They’re full of muck and they stink of cats’ pee.”
[…]
     Clearly it wasn’t only the cold that was bothering him; he was still in a state of shock. And no wonder. The poor fellow had been enjoying a little session of peaceful haunting with never a care in the world when without warning there was a scream of brakes, a blaze of light and that giant bounding into the middle of it like the demon king.