The Haunting of H. G. Wells

by Robert Masello

  Mrs. Fairfield, who had once been so deferential, was well past that now. She blamed Wells for having involved her daughter in such a terrible situation, and had quickly supplanted him as the one Dr. Phipps was to consult and keep informed. It was Emma who would then later relay the findings to Wells, out of the family’s earshot.

  This afternoon, Wells was fortunate enough to intercept the doctor on his rounds. The man was so overworked that he had come to resemble the pallid and sallow patients in his ward. Spotting Wells, who always delayed him with questions and entreaties, he had tried to scurry past, head down, but Wells was too quick for him.

  “A word, Phipps!” he called, springing up from his chair.

  “I am behind my time already, Mr. Wells.”

  “I quite understand, and apologize for this delay. But about Miss West—”

  “The range of options is narrowing very fast.”

  “Meaning?”

  “The leg will have to go. It should have gone yesterday.” His tone indicated that he was past mincing words. The man, his white coat splotched with blood and God knows what else, was simply exhausted. “Only her age and sex have kept me from acting sooner.”

  Wells was stunned. Even though he had known all along that the situation was dire, he hadn’t yet heard it so bluntly expressed from the physician in charge. “That is the only way?”

  “Even so, it may be too late.”

  “For what?” he asked, though he knew perfectly well what the doctor was suggesting.

  “The infection is so virulent, we cannot stop it. We cannot even specifically identify it.”

  “But if you could?”

  Phipps sighed in exasperation. “At least then we might know better how to fight it. We would have a chance.”

  He shambled off, as Wells stood, transfixed, desperately wondering what he could do. Mrs. Fairfield and her daughters had gone home an hour or so before, clutching damp handkerchiefs and avoiding so much as any eye contact with Wells, which meant that he might have the small viewing window into her cell all to himself. While Nurse Chasubel was busy with the other patients in the main ward, he went back to the quarantine sector, hung with warning signs, and donned a fresh white gown and mask from the supply in the cabinet. Glancing through the crosshatched windows set in the steel doors, he saw in each room a single man, lying still, breathing tubes protruding from his mouth or nose, a white blanket with a blue stripe drawn across the ravaged shell of his body. At Room 6, he hesitated before looking in again. He was always afraid of what he might see.

  But when he did step close enough to look in, he saw Rebecca, as usual, lying, swaddled in bandages and sheets, on the iron cot. Her head was propped up, as was her left leg. Her brown hair, usually so rich and lustrous, was matted and spread across the pillow; her eyes and mouth were closed, and angry black blisters marred her cheek and arm.

  And then, oddly, he found his view obscured.

  It was as if something had passed before the little window, though what he could not tell.

  Thinking it must be a problem with his eyes, he rubbed them, and then looked again.

  The view was unobstructed now, but something even stranger was happening. Portions of Rebecca’s body and bed were omitted from his field of vision, as if something were standing in the way. Wells felt that familiar twinge at the bridge of his nose, and the faint odor of the trenches. And even as he watched, the faint outline of another person—a man, all in gray, a uniform—appeared at her bedside.

  But this was no patron saint. This was a ghost.

  A German ghost. Ministering to her.

  Even after all he had already seen and been through, Wells was stunned.

  Had Von Baden remained in this ward ever since Wells had first seen him standing forlornly behind his beloved Emma Chasubel?

  Wells considered barging in, he had even taken hold of the door handle, when the apparition turned toward him, shaking its head slowly. Wells stopped short, and the ghost drifted toward the door, taking on definition as it came. When it was close to the little window, it looked steadfastly, even imploringly, into Wells’s eyes, and through pallid lips uttered two words. “Das Notizbuch.” A moment later, in English, “the notebook.”

  Wells’s mind scrambled to make sense of that, then remembered the notebook—of course!—that Von Baden had entrusted to him in the underground lair. Wells had turned it over to Colonel Bryce at the Ministry, on the chance that, once translated, it might contain some information useful to the British war effort. Did it instead contain some information that might prove vital to Rebecca’s salvation?

  “Why?” Wells said. “What’s in it? Can’t you tell me now?”

  Through the closed door, the ghost simply repeated, “the notebook.”

  Nodding vigorously to acknowledge that he understood, Wells was off like a shot, nearly bowling over Emma as he hurried through the main ward, still cloaked and wearing the gauze face mask. In fact, he did not remember to doff them at all until he had left the confines of the hospital and leapt into a passing cab. “Whitehall!” he tried to shout to the driver, who had to say, “What’s that? Can’t hear you behind that mask, Doctor.”

  Wells ripped the mask away, and shrugging off the gown, reiterated his destination, adding that haste was of the essence. “It’s a matter of life and death!”

  “These days,” the driver said, turning on his headlamps in the gathering dusk and stepping on the gas pedal, “what isn’t?”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

  “What do you mean, you don’t have it?” Wells said. “I gave it to you myself!”

  “And I gave it to the Admiralty office,” Colonel Bryce explained with maddening composure. “The best translators and code-breakers are all assigned to them.”

  “Code-breakers?”

  “In case you have forgotten, Mr. Wells, even a cursory examination of the notebook revealed a number of equations, figures, and formulas. I thought it best to leave it in their hands.”

  “And they have it now?” Wells said, not rising from a chair as he had never even bothered to sit down.

  “I presume so.”

  And Wells was off again, on foot, crossing the street to the Old Admiralty office, where he was fortunate enough to find his friend Winston still at his desk.

  “What is it, Wells?” Churchill exclaimed at the sight of his frantic friend.

  “The notebook,” Wells said, dropping into a chair this time, “from the German deserter.”

  “One of the ghouls?”

  “I do not choose to call them that,” Wells said, bridling, “but yes—the notebook that Friedrich Von Baden gave me. I need to have it back, immediately.”

  “Calm yourself,” Churchill said, buzzing a button on his desk. An adjutant, the same one that Wells had breezed right past, appeared in the doorway, was given his orders to retrieve the notebook forthwith, and then vanished.

  “And now, may I ask why? What’s so important about this notebook?”

  “Rebecca West is at death’s door. She has been infected with something, some bacterial strain, and that notebook may contain some medical notes, experimental protocols, crucial to her cure.”

  “I’m sorry, H. G., I was unaware. We have all had our hands full, as you can imagine, with the disaster in St. Paul’s.”

  “Rebecca was there. So was I.”

  Churchill’s ears perked up. “It wasn’t Rebecca, was it, who manned the pulpit and warned everyone to leave?”

  That confirmed it for Wells. The papers had carried stories of the anonymous but heroic young woman who had done so.

  “She saved countless lives,” Churchill said.

  “All the more reason that we must save hers now.”

  “By all accounts, there was a struggle in the Whispering Gallery, too. Several people attested to seeing some commotion up there before they ran for their lives.” He waited, but Wells said nothing. “May I assume, then, that the man who exploded the bomb—whose remains were atomized in
the explosion—was the elusive Dr. Graf?”

  “You may.”

  “And that he did not intend for the attack to be suicidal?”

  Wells nodded.

  “May I also assume that he had some assistance, then, in falling from that great height?”

  Wells demurred, but that did not keep Churchill from rising from his chair to clasp his hand and shake it heartily. “Good job, old man, good job. For an ink-stained wretch, you do quite well in the field.”

  “Excuse me, sir,” the adjutant interrupted from the doorway, “but I have a copy of the notebook’s translation from the Linguistics and Codes departments.”

  Although he tried to hand it straight to Churchill, Wells was too fast and intercepted it. “What’s this?” he said, as he scanned the twenty or thirty loosely bound pages. On many of them, he saw blank spaces and the letters “CSP” typed instead. “Winston, what on earth do these letters stand for?” he demanded, jabbing his finger at them.

  “Censored for security purposes.”

  “But those may be the very parts crucial to me, and to Rebecca. Von Baden only said to get the notebook.”

  “The ghoul—excuse me, Von Baden—said to get it?” Churchill asked, confused. “When was that?”

  “This afternoon,” Wells said, defiantly.

  “The one who was killed in the underground trench?”

  “Yes. And don’t think I miss your point. You think I’ve lost my mind. Well, maybe I have. We can argue about it later. Right now, I need that notebook—the original—and in its entirety.”

  Churchill looked at the adjutant, standing in the doorway for further orders. “Can you go back to Coding and retrieve the original?”

  “I’m afraid it’s no longer there, sir.”

  “Then where is it?”

  “The bio-warfare department.”

  “Why?” Churchill asked, though Wells could easily guess.

  “Apparently, the translators immediately deciphered enough of the text to determine that much of it had to do with bacterial agents and toxins.”

  “Where is that department quartered?” Wells barked. “Where?”

  The adjutant started to explain that it was several buildings away, around a corner, when Wells grabbed him by the arm instead and said, “You are taking me there, right now!”

  The adjutant threw a look at Churchill, who nodded his assent, and reaching for the phone, said, “I’ll tell Professor Metzger that you are coming there on my authority.”

  Hustling the bewildered young man through the streets, Wells could think of only one thing—time. Would the notebook yield some lifesaving clue, and even if it did, would it be soon enough to save Rebecca?

  It did not look promising at first. The adjutant drew Wells toward what appeared to be an old abandoned horse stable, several blocks behind the impressive structures of Whitehall. Its windows were boarded up, and its steel door, stenciled with the words “Ancillary Research Programs,” was guarded by a sentry in a box.

  But their arrival had plainly been anticipated, as the sentry immediately admitted them. A steep flight of steps led down to another set of steel doors—guarded again—and behind this, to Wells’s surprise, an enormous cavern-like space, with circular lights overhead, the low susurration of fans, and long lab counters dotted with microscopes and all the other familiar lab equipment. Fifteen or twenty young men—and women, too—were seated on metal stools, bent over their work.

  Professor Metzger, removing his rubber gloves, approached Wells and the adjutant, and introduced himself. An elderly man, and short to begin with, he was stooped over so badly he could barely raise his head high enough to look them in the eye.

  “A pleasure to meet the man who wrote my favorite story, ‘The Stolen Bacillus,’” he said to Wells, who thanked him, but wanted to waste no time on pleasantries. “I need your help, Professor. Urgently.” In quick strokes, he outlined what had happened to Rebecca—the cut foot, Graf’s lab, her present sickness and dangerous decline—as Metzger bobbed his head, taking it all in. When Wells paused, he said, “Come with me,” and led the way, at a maddeningly slow pace, toward another room at the rear of the cavern, where a basket of face masks hung beside the sealed door.

  “Protocol,” he said, putting one on, and waiting for Wells to do the same. “No need for you to do so,” he said to the adjutant. “You may wait out here.”

  Inside, the air became markedly cooler, and the light dimmer. Locked glass cases lined the walls, but no one else was present.

  “The notebook, which I’m afraid has been utterly disassembled, described experiments with enteric diseases—cholera, dysentery, typhoid, things I hardly need to explain to you—but also a number of other animal diseases, such as swine fever, rinderpest, foot-and-mouth, anthrax, and glanders.”

  That last pair, the ultimate unholy coupling.

  “It sounds to me as if your young friend has been infected with some variant or combination of the latter two.”

  “Regrettably,” Wells acknowledged, “I agree.”

  Going to the most remote of the glass cases and unlocking it with a key from a long silver chain looped to his belt, Metzger removed two vials stoppered with red plugs, and labeled with a host of numbers and letters.

  “Mark you,” the professor said, “I cannot guarantee anything. I have not seen the patient myself, or the symptoms you have so carefully described, but from what you say of her grave condition, I can only urge her physician to administer one or both of these as promptly as possible.”

  “But how could you have cultured them so quickly?”

  “We started the antitoxin formulation the moment we got the notebook, days ago. We were told it had come from an anonymous German source, one who had, based on some of the formulas, previously worked at their secret base in the Baltic Sea.”

  “And so it did.”

  “We were—and are—afraid that these deadly poisons are being manufactured on an industrial scale. We had no choice but to take immediate action.”

  Wells started to wrap the two vials in his handkerchief, when Metzger said, “Oh, we can do better than that,” and instead placed them in a cotton-lined box the size of a cigar case.

  “I can only wish you the best of luck,” Metzger said, his pale eyes peering up just above the mask. “Perhaps the work of this monster may have yielded some small good in the end, after all.”

  “The man who wrote that notebook,” Wells said, turning to go, “was no monster. No monster at all.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

  She was only occasionally aware of her true surroundings, a narrow bed in a small cell. She would catch a partial glimpse of masked faces, of Dr. Phipps, or that kindly nurse Emma, and even snatch a few words of what they were saying to her—“Rebecca, can you tell us anything more about what you cut your foot on?”—or what they were saying to each other—“We can only drain the wound so often before something more drastic will have to be done.” She knew she was in a very bad way, and only hoped that when the time came for her to die, she would not be in the middle of one of the nightmares in which, most of the time, she was now living.

  In those foggy dream states, she was usually running, running from a host of enemies—Anton Graf, wielding a needle the size of a kitchen knife, or his brutal henchman, Schell, with half his head gone. Although she often envisioned roaring flames all around her, and even felt their heat scorching her skin, she simultaneously felt, deep down inside, nothing but a cold ache, as if a stubborn lump of ice were wedged there. However uncomfortable the ice made her feel, she didn’t want it to melt, because when it did, she felt she would be gone.

  The passage of time was meaningless; she did not know if she had been there for hours, or days, or even weeks. The only moments approaching some sort of solace were those when she heard the voice, muffled by a mask, of Wells, and even felt his gloved hand rest lightly on her shoulder, or, once, brush some hair from her cheek. She longed to reach up and touch him, but her a
rms were restrained—why?—and the only words she could utter came out, even to her own ear, as garbled and incoherent. He had lovingly whispered, “My Panther, come back to me,” and she had so wanted to reply, “Jaguar, I am trying,” but even something so simple as that had been beyond her.

  But now, she had become vaguely cognizant of additional activity. The doctor and nurse were murmuring encouraging words, and she felt the sleeves of her gown being raised to receive inoculations. At first, she shuddered—needles made her think of Graf and his hideous experiments—but Graf was dead. With her own eyes, she had seen him plummet from the gallery at St. Paul’s. Whatever the doctor and nurse were doing now was surely intended for her benefit. How could it not be?

  When they were done, and another cold compress had been laid across her forehead and eyes, she lay still, alone again in the cell . . . except for that vague apprehension of another presence in the room. Not Wells. But something, or someone, benign and invisible. Was it an angel, like one of those in Machen’s story? She had felt its touch, but could not touch back. She had spoken to it, but heard no reply. Still, she took some comfort from it. The spirit was an ally, willing her to fight for her life, and she was grateful for its ineffable protection.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

  That night, even after Dr. Phipps had agreed to administer the antitoxins—“At this point, we might just as well try anything,” he said to Wells in a tone that plainly suggested he thought the whole business a lost cause—the only change was for the worse. Rebecca’s fever seemed to rage, the sweat breaking out on her brow and blistered limbs. Wind and rain battered the hospital walls, as she twisted and turned in the soaked sheets, sometimes calling out for Wells, and sometimes, to his puzzlement, speaking to someone who seemed closer, in the cell, someone bending over the bed itself.

  Could it be . . . Von Baden? He struggled to see him, but to no avail. Were the two of them—the dying girl and the dead soldier—communing in some strange purgatory?