Yet as respectable folk in church let their attention wander from the sermon, so, while Uncle Thomas preached, Bill thought of other things. Especially his mind concentrated upon his father. Time out of mind the bargeman, like everybody else, enjoyed a drink when he got a chance. Who didn't! Even mother said it was all right.
Mother always said that she managed father quite easily until Uncle Joey got hold of him. And Uncle Joey never knew when to stop. The pair of them took to drinking together, more, so said Uncle Thomas, than was good for anybody.
They were mixed up in business, too, not father's trade of honest smuggling with the barge between Margate and London, but something downright crooked. Father's cargo was bought, but Joey's goods were stolen.
Anybody could see that father didn't like it. When they were drunk, father and Joey were always quarreling.
Then Joey was captured with stolen goods and everybody said that father gave him away. Father certainly turned King's evidence against his brother, so that, excepting Uncle Thomas, nobody would speak to him. He drank alone. He drank harder than ever.
When poor Uncle Joey was hanged, the family in their Sunday clothes attended the show at Tyburn in a hired wagon. The rain completely spoiled their day.
From that time onward—a month it must be now, or even more—while father was busy drinking himself to death, Bill always saw the Shadow. It was not an ordinary shadow. It was not a shadow cast by any light.
It was something awful, a blur in the air, shaped like a man, like Uncle Joey. It went about with father, glided behind him, stooped over him. Father drank because he was frightened of It; and when he drank It sprang upon him from behind, wrapped Its legs and arms about him, sucked at him. Then father craved and screamed for drink, and drank, always with the awful Thing wrapped round him, sucking him. Only when he was dead drunk the Shadow stood behind him watching, waiting.
The ghost of Uncle Joey was murdering father. Every day the awful Thing gained power, and sometimes there were horrible fits which could not be prevented, could not be eased, or stopped. One could only watch.
The Shadow was there now. While Uncle Thomas preached his usual Sunday sermon of high treason, and father crouched there drunk, the Thing was standing behind him in the window frame. It was stooping over him. There was going to be another seizure!