Chapter Ten: The Barrow Downs -- Where Up Takes Six Feet of Digging
Bombadil insisted in no uncertain terms that the Hobbits spend the night. The Hobbits were, of course, uneasy at the prospect of sleeping in the queer Old Forest, but jolly old Tom reassured them they would be safe under his roof.
"Fear no nightly noise," Tom crooned comfortingly.
But even in the House of Bombadil the Hobbits were wracked with strange dreams and wrestled with fitful sleep, particularly since Bombadil and Beorn stayed up half the night singing 1970's love duets like 'Up Where We Belong' and 'Endless Love' (Beorn did a passable version of Joe Cocker, but his Diana Ross was atrocious). By the morning, the bleary-eyed Hobbits were more than ready to face the Nazgul or Sauron himself rather than spend another minute with Bombadil.
Tom was bitterly disappointed that the Hobbits would not be staying for dinner, as he was preparing some linguine con calamari Bolognese, with squid shipped fresh from a lake just below the western walls of Moria; but nevertheless, he cheerfully led Frodo and company to the very borders of the Old Forest. Before them stretched the misty, rolling meadows and gorse-laden hills of the Barrow Downs.
"Now, if you listen to Old Tom's advice, you'll hit the East Road in about a day's march," Bombadil imparted. "Keep to the grass up north a' ways, and don't you go a' meddling with them wicked wights, or pry into their houses; unless you got brass balls, which I never heard was a Hobbitish trait. If you do come upon a barrow, always pass to the west. Them wights are terrible with their left and right as they usually only got one arm to speak of."
The Hobbits bade Bomdadil farewell and dutifully followed his instructions. And for the early part of the day, the Hobbits made excellent time, eventually viewing the tree line of the distant East Road from a tall tumulus that overlooked much of the Downs. But, as with all things Hobbitish, the need for an extended lunch took precedence over any thought of danger. With the noonday sun shining hotly on them after a long march, the Hobbits sought shelter under the shade of a monolithic standing stone, which jutted up inexplicably from atop a flat tor that rose prominently from the Downs.
"It's quite phallic, isn't it?" Frodo murmured admiringly.
Merry peered sidelong at Samwise, who merely shrugged and held up his hand in a limp-wristed manner. Frodo turned around quickly, but Sam was quicker and brushed his upraised hand through his hair.
"Did you say something, Sam?" Frodo asked with an accusing rise of an eyebrow.
"Me, Mister Frodo?" Sam answered innocently. "No, I aint said naught since the last chapter. But I agree with your assessment of this here stone -- it is like a big prick, aint it?" And then Sam's eyes stared off in the distance, and his face adapted a profound look of intense concentration that came over him whenever he got poetic: "A titanic tadger rising rock hard from this trembling tumulus mound to consummate a celestial union with the trollope-y heavens." Sam gave Merry and Pippin a wink, and added, "I guess 'at's why they say there are black 'oles out in space."
Merry and Pippin snickered and Frodo scowled, but frivolity and merriment ceased as soon as the Hobbits got down to the serious business of lunch. They had a goodly supply of foodstuffs Sam had brought from the Shire, so naturally they ate themselves into a food coma. Several hours later, they awoke uneasily from a nap they never meant to take. By now, the sun was setting.
"Well, there's naught we can do about the nap," Samwise grumbled in irritation, "but I can still see the tree line along the road from here. As long as we head in that direction, we'll be straight, Mister Frodo."
"I guess the Barrow Downs isn't as bad as tales do tell," Frodo sighed in relief.
Without warning, there was a cry from offstage: "Cue the gloomy atmospherics!" and suddenly, the fog began rising on the Downs. It crept with insinuating misty fingers up the craggy tor where the Hobbits stood and draped grass and stone in a ghastly shroud of white.
"This fog's as thick as tater soup!" Sam cried in amazement.
"Don't you mean 'as thick as pea soup'?" Merry corrected.
"Naw," Sam said with a disgusted shake of his head, "pea soup gives me the runs somethin' awful. And a' sides, tater soup is more in keepin' with the plot – leastwise, as far as us Hobbits are concerned."
Without any further delay, or puns for that matter, the Hobbits speedily made their way down the hill and headed in what they believed to be the direction of the road; however, the uncanny fog blinded them: it confused their bearings, distances became distorted, and they found themselves walking in circles.
"We seem to be walking in circles," Pippin grumbled.
"I believe the narrator has already mentioned that," Merry rebuked. "Besides, "I think that standing stone has it in for us -- it's as if it were moving about to block our way. And have you noticed how cold it's gotten?"
Frodo gazed up at the imposing standing stone and mumbled, "It's almost…mesmerizing." But while Frodo was brazenly adoring the monolith, he had lost his friends, who had bumbled off into the mist without him. "Samwise…Merry?" Frodo cried anxiously, and he was answered by "Hallooo, Frodo!" somewhere off to the east.
Frodo stumbled off in the direction the call had come from, but when he arrived at the spot, the shouts came from further off and started to falter. "Where in the hell are you?" Frodo shouted angrily, but then he heard faint cries of alarm, and finally a muffled "Help!"
"Oh, where are you?" Frodo cried again.
"Here!" said a cold, harrowing voice that would have made even Aragorn wet his knickers.
Frodo bravely decided to run away, saving his valor for another day. Unfortunately, he was gripped by a hidden hand: as cold as a witch's bosom in a brass bra, with a grip tighter than Ernest Hemingway's sentence structure. Frodo swooned. His head swam. He fell. Darkness took him.
~~oo~OO~oo~OO~oo~~
We interrupt this ghastly sequence of unparalleled, Hemingwayesque terror so that we may segue somewhat unobtrusively into a wardrobe and scenery change.
This is BBC War Correspondent Borstal Ulysses Rabelais-Picaresque, still here in Edoras, the dreary capital of war-weary Rohan. By means of some well-placed bribes, we've managed to sneak past the wily Grima Wormtongue to secure an exclusive interview with the King, Théoden, son of Thengel, son of Fengel, son of Folcwine, son of Folca, son of Walda, son of Brytta, son of Fréaláf Hildeson, et cetera, ad nauseam.
B.U.R. Picaresque: Good evening, your majesty.
*Silence*
BURP: Ummm…your majesty?
King Théoden: Eh? Ahhhh grzzzt grmph.
BURP: I'm sorry, what was that?
KT: Eh? I s-a-a-a, ahhhh grzzzt grmph.
BURP: Excuse me, but could you speak up?
KT: I… greet you…
BURP: Well, thank you, milord. Here…let me adjust your drool cup.
KT: Maybe you look for welcome…but truth to tell…
BURP: Yes?
KT: …that is…
BURP: 'Truth to tell, that is'…what?
KT: Errr…doubtful.
BURP: Okay.
KT: You…you have ever been a herald of woe.
BURP: Look, I don't make the news, I just report it!
KT: Troubles follow you like crows.
BURP: Now, there's no need to be insulting.
KT: But news from afar is seldom sooth.
BURP: Sooth you say?
KT: Forsooth.
BURP: What exactly do you mean?
KT: Lathspell I name thee…Ill-news is an ill guest.
BURP: Well, it's obvious you haven't watched FOX or CNN lately. Now, your majesty, I'd like to ask you a few questions regarding…
KT: Where now the horse and the rider?
BURP: Please, your majesty, stay with me here…
KT: Where is the horn that was blowing?
BURP: Hmmm…you really are a few prongs short of a crown, aren't you? *snaps his fingers* Helloooo, anyone home?
KT: Who shall gather the smoke of the dead wood burning?
BURP: Well, it seems somebody has been gathering smoke, and it's not from dead wood, obviously.
KT: I've just wet myself and there isn't a thing you can do about it! I am the King, you know!
BURP: Oh, for the love of…
KT: Where is my Grima? I need a changing.
BURP: This has been B.U.R. Picaresque, BBC news, reporting from Edoras. And now back to our regularly scheduled programme, already in progress. Oh good Lord, he's pissed on my shoes! Bad king! No gruel for you tonight!
~~oo~OO~oo~OO~oo~~
When Frodo awoke, he found himself lying on a cold stone slab. There was a stabbing pain in his arm where the invisible hand had clawed him, but he still managed to struggle upward to lean upon his elbows. Looking about him through the darkness, he knew all too well where he was: a cruel wight had dragged him down into a barrow! Well, isn't this just friggin' wonderful! he thought to himself. But as his eyes became accustomed to the dimness (characters in fantasies can somehow always see underground in the pitch black), he noticed that Sam, Merry and Pippin were laying unconscious to his right. They each lay on a slab, and they were robed in white satin nighties (where the Moody Blues perhaps got the song title "Wights in Night Satin'). Their hands were adorned with bejeweled rings, their heads were crowned in diadems and a sword lay at each of their feet.
From a vestibule or hallway to his left there rose a faint green emanation, a phosphorescent glow straight out of any 1950's B-grade Hollywood horror flick, which was still quite frightening to Frodo as the cinema had not arrived in the Shire as of yet. He heard bones rattling and skeletons scratching as they dragged their white knuckles across the stone floor towards him.
"What skullduggery is this?" Frodo hissed in a barely audible whisper.
Suddenly the rattling and scratching, crawling and scrawling began falling into a cadence, then the cadence into a regular rhythm, and the rhythm thrummed with a beat: scrawl-crawl-scratch-scratch-rattle-rattle-scratch, scrawl-crawl-scratch-scratch-rattle-rattle-scratch, scrawl-crawl-scratch-scratch-rattle-rattle-scratch, and an eerie, mournful voice began to sing in a low moan to the bony beat:
There's a saying going 'round and I begin to think it's true,
It's awful hard to love someone, when they're rotting through and through.
Once I had a lovin' ghoul, but now I start to wonder,
Why I'm sad and lonely, cos' she's buried me six feet under.
Won't somebody go and find my ghoul and bring her to me?
It's awful hard to decompose without a little sympathy.
Once I had a loving ghoul, as good as any on the Downs,
but since my deadhead left me, I'm the saddest wight around --
Because…
From another room of the barrow came faint echoes of music that rapidly rose in timbre and tone until Frodo could make out an entire netherwordly ensemble – a hamstring quartet, perhaps, or an entire Orcestra: there were trombones and organs, tympanis and eardrums, nose flutes and jaw harps, not to mention the hairy bagpipes, all playing ragtime. And the ghostly voice belted out a banshee wail:
I'm just a bag 'o' bones and everywhere I go,
Cadavers are the part I'm playing.
Paid for every bone dance, risen up by necromance --
Ooh, what they're saying!
There will come a day when youth will pass away,
What will they say about me?
When the end comes I know,
they'll say, "He was just a bag 'o' bones"--
Life goes on without me…
And then, to Frodo's surprise, a chorus line of skeletons burst into the room with arm bones locked together and kicking in unison so high he could see their metatarsals and phalanxes flailing in the air. And they were all singing with jawbones flapping out of time with the lyrics:
Cos' I aint got NO BODY!
No body cares for me, no body, no body cares for me!
I'm so cold and stony -- cold and stony, cold and stony --
Won't some grave ghoul come take a chance with me…
But before the skeletons could utter another refrain -- BOOM! There was a tremendous explosion and the roof of the barrow came crashing down. Frodo could see daylight streaming in from behind a monstrous beaver tail. Astride the giant beaver was none other than Tom Bombadil, who waved at Frodo and shouted, "That racket was loud enough to wake the dead, if you'll pardon the pun!"
And with one final bluesy note from a hidden sax, the wightish skeletons fell into crumpled heaps of bone and dust.