The Fairies at Browning Grange

by Barrymore Tebbs

  With the sun slanting into the western sky it was not as hot as it had been several hours ago, but I still found it difficult to keep pace with a five-year-old boy. When we reached the edge of the woods I leaned against the ancient oak, calling to Freddie to wait while I caught my breath. The over-exertion caused a mild sense of euphoria, and when I leaned against the tree I immediately thought of Olive. An image of her hair tangled in my hand surged into my mind along with a rush of heat into my loins. The vision was so clear it was as if it were happening before my very eyes.

  “Come on,” Freddie called, and thank God he did, for his voice snapped me from my trance. “We haven’t got all night.”

  Back into the forest we went, Freddie sprinting merrily along the winding path. We made quick time, but I found I had to keep my eyes upon the ground lest my feet become entangled by one of the many roots that reached like gnarled fingers from below the earth. There was still light in the sky when we left the house, but inside the forest it was dark. By the time we reached the clearing, the color was fast fading from the sky.

  We scurried down into the hollow and sat within the mushroom fairy ring. The crater was a pool of deepening shadows. Right away I saw a sprinkle of lazy, twinkling lights; the fireflies had come out to play. We had arrived at the perfect moment for magic to begin.

  I sat with the Speed Graphic at the ready… and nothing happened. From the ground above I could hear the sound of wind rustling through the trees, the cry and call of forest creatures greeting the coming of night.

  But nothing happened.

  The vermillion haze behind the line of trees gave way to black. The moon came out, bright Venus at her side, and now the other stars appeared against the black velvet sky as well, dotting the night with their brilliance.

  Still, nothing happened.

  I began to grow weary of the games and my own naivety at believing there would be some phantasmagorical appearance in the hollow. I don’t know how long we sat there, but I was ready to pack the camera and leave the hollow, never to return again.

  Quite abruptly, as if the forest sounds emanated from a phonograph recording which had been switched off, all noises ceased.

  I looked down at Freddie, or where I thought he was, but couldn’t see him. Despite the glowing moon, the hollow was a mass of shadows. The sudden silence unnerved me, and now I thought I saw something stirring in the shadows. It may have only been a trick of the light, and my own heightened sense of anticipation. Gradually, my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness. I could see the exposed roots of trees crawling out of the walls of the basin, and I thought I saw movement – rapid, darting things clambering and scampering all about. The hairs on the nape of my neck stood on end. There was something there in the hollow with us, there must be!

  There was no way for me to focus the lens in the darkness, but I lifted the camera and hoped for the best. I pressed the shutter switch. The flash split the darkness like a bolt of lightning.

  “Don’t!” cried Freddie so passionately that I was momentarily taken aback by the forcefulness of his command.

  I turned toward him and whispered as softly as I was able, “They’re here, aren’t they?”

  Something was there. I was sure of it, but my frustration was immense. I recalled the dream I had had the night before and was sure that hundreds of eyes now studied me. Something pattered all about, like droplets of rain on puddles, like a shower of pebbles against a roof. Tiny, almost imperceptible sounds… like feet. Yes! Like dozens of tiny feet scampering all around.

  A feather-light touch grazed the back of my neck. I cried out.

  Freddie giggled. Had he done it? It was so black I could not see him. And when he laughed again, it seemed that his voice was coming from somewhere in front of me. Was the boy playing games? Was it him I heard skipping about?

  “Freddie?” I whispered.

  The name was echoed back at me, long and drawn out – “Fffredddeee… ” now in front of me, now behind, and over there, and there!

  “Shh!” said Freddie, and just as quickly came the mocking voices.

  “Ssssss.”

  I tilted my head back as far as it would go and looked straight up into the sky. I could only just make out the tops of the oaks that surrounded the hollow, enough to see that the wind had increased and the branches were being tossed about. Of course, that was all that I heard – merely the rush of wind through the trees.

  But as I looked it seemed that something moved across the sky, something so large and black that for a moment the moon and stars completely disappeared. The phenomenon lasted but a moment, and then tiny lights dotted the sky once again. I must have grown dizzy from tilting my head back so far. I shook my head as if I could shake the illusion from my mind, and stood up. I’d had enough of this nonsense. Fairies, indeed!

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  “But you haven’t seen them yet,” said Freddie.

  “I’ve seen enough.”

  “You haven’t seen anything. Why are you so frightened?”

  Normally I am never cross with children when they question all that they experience – if it were not for the child who asks, “Why?” I would not find my vocation at all rewarding. But I refused to answer him, and only said sharply, “It’s late. We’d better get you back to your room before Miss Enfield discovers you are gone.”

  The boy heaved an exasperated sigh, but he took me by the hand nevertheless and led me up out of the hollow. How he was able to see in the blackness I do not know, but he managed to deliver me to the safety of the ground above. The woods were another matter altogether. As it was, I wondered that the boy was able to make the trip without the aid of an electric torch. But then, I told myself, he had grown up on the Grange, and could probably walk every inch of it with his eyes closed. In my haste to keep up with Freddie I stumbled more than once. I bruised a shin and scraped an arm but I did not dare sit and nurse my wounds. I was grateful when we reached the edge of the meadow.

  In the slab of light from the open kitchen door, I said goodbye to Freddie promising to return to photograph him, Emily, and the new baby in a few weeks time.

  The moon sailed full and bright above the road on my journey home but did little to calm my nerves after the fright I had received in the forest. It was a welcome relief to be within the walls of my own home at last. I felt safe there, and once I had poured the wine and began to drink again, I found it easy to laugh at myself and all the fancies I had conjured in my mind.

  When I slept that night, I once more dreamed that I was in the forest, and again I was not alone. The night in my dreams was black and moonless and I was surrounded by hundreds of tiny creatures, each one staring at me with their wide, inquisitive eyes. In the dream I saw them as clearly as I see anything by day, but of course when I awoke with the dawn pouring in my window, I could remember nothing of their detail – nothing except the eyes staring at me, studying me.

  * * *

  The following morning was hotter than the day before and the valley was covered in a thin grey shroud which seemed to trap the heat beneath its pall. I took my breakfast on the bench in the shade of my garden. Already there was sweat on my brow. The barometer continued to drop and the temperature continued to climb. My head throbbed. I was miserable and unmotivated.

  After breakfast, I took the parcel of photographs up the lane to Mrs. Spencer’s shop to see them off on their journey. There were very few people about, which was unusual for a bright summer morning, but those I did encounter had no comment other than to remark on the unnatural heat. A dog lay in the shade along the road, tongue hanging from its mouth, as debilitated as the rest of us. Even Mrs. Spencer was not her usual effervescent self.

  “What we need is a strong storm to break this spell,” she said.

  As I turned to leave the shop, a harried young girl brushed rudely against me on her way inside. She hardly seemed to notice. I offered an apology even though she had come inside with her head down and did not look where she
was going. The incident would have been immediately forgotten if it weren’t for what happened next.

  When I stepped outside I encountered two small creatures joined together with a rope, the two of them tethered to a post outside the building. I was only able to surmise that they were boys by the nature of the clothing they wore: trousers and shirts. Anyone else might have mistaken them for monsters. Their heads were large and misshapen, their eyes peculiarly angular, their ears malformed and pointed, and their bodies twisted in such a way it was a wonder they were able to walk. I was so startled by their appearance that at first I could do nothing but stare at the horrid things. But then my heart softened when I realized they must be dwarves, or suffering from some other abnormality of birth.

  One of them began to spasm and jerk. At first I thought it only a nervous twitch, but the movement exploded into a violent convulsion without warning. His head bobbed rapidly up and down and then he pitched forward onto the ground, nearly pulling his twin along with him. The little body flopped about without control. I came to my senses soon enough to realize the child was in the throes of a seizure, but the realization afforded me no concept of what I could do to help. His eyes rolled up into his head and specks of blood flew out of his nose. I fell to the ground beside him and held the child down and began to shout for help.

  The girl who had rushed so blindly into the post office came out and began swatting at me and screaming, “Leave him be! He’s all right!”

  She knelt and cradled the child’s ugly head in her arms, whispering and cooing to it in some unintelligible language that God only knew if he actually understood.

  “Do you need help?” I said.

  “He’ll be all right. Just leave us be.”

  All the while the child thrashed on the ground, the twin stood by, his eyes blank and staring as if he had no comprehension of what was happening around him.

  “Are they your brothers?”

  She threw me a dirty look. “They be my boys. What’s it to you?”

  I took several steps back to show her I did not mean to interfere. Still, I couldn’t tear my eyes away. I told myself I was concerned about the children’s safety, but it would be a lie to say I did not have a morbid fascination with their condition. Selfishly, I wished I had my camera with me.

  “Go on, then!” the girl cried. “What are you staring at?”

  I turned and walked away without another look back. As I strolled down the hill to my house, two things occurred to me. One was that these unfortunate children reminded me of the stone gargoyles that were carved all over the face of the house at Browning Grange. The second was that it brought to mind another of our country’s fairy stories, that of the changeling child, a troll-faced substitute left in the place of a stolen child, presumably taken by the fairies.

  Upon returning to my house I took out the notebook in which Freddie had drawn the picture of his goblin for me. Yes, the drawing could easily have been one of these poor deformed children. In retrospect it is clear that my rational mind grasped at whatever logical explanation it could find, but each consideration that occurred to me was soon disputed. The notion that there might be a tribe of deformed children living within the Grange was patently absurd. Next I would be thinking it was the gargoyles crawling across the face of the house which had come to life.

  I slapped the notebook down on my desk in a fit of despair and rubbed my fist against my brow. I felt I had been drawn into some other reality, like Alice through her Looking Glass, where nothing made sense. Was something happening? Was nothing happening? I felt on the verge of madness, and the raging headache only exacerbated my puzzlement.

  And then my gaze fell upon the camera. I remembered that I had snapped a photograph the night before in Goblin Hollow. Perhaps now the secret would be revealed.

  The entire first floor of my house is given over to my studio and the darkroom. I went about filling the pans with the chemicals and in a matter of minutes, the films from the previous night began to reveal their secrets. Here was Tom, proudly posed in front of the Silver Ghost, and here was Freddie inside the fairy circle, gazing up at the sky. And finally, the image captured in utter darkness.

  After processing the sheets I immediately made prints and hung them up to dry. I tilted my head and studied the photograph of the Hollow curiously. It had been full dark and there was nothing for me to focus on, so the image was a disappointing blur. The wall of the basin was drenched in the blinding light from the flash, and the exposed roots which clawed their way out of the earth were black by contrast. When it was dry enough to handle, I took the print outside and studied it with all the scrutiny of Mr. Holmes with his magnifying glass.

  As I have said, the image was blurry, but anyone who has been inside the Hollow would be able to recognize it for what it was; the dirt walls, the dangling roots… but there was something else, whether it was rock formations, or fallen limbs, or something else altogether, there was something there. My finger hovered tentatively over the photograph. This could possibly be a creature’s head, and these its elongated torso and spindly limbs… and here was another, and another. A chill shot up my spine and I shuddered as it burst from the back of my neck.

  It had to be the fairies. It must. If I took this photograph to Browning Grange and showed it to all its residents, would not each and every one of them confirm that it was? I was convinced that would be the case, yet if I took this photograph round to a publisher, or sent it to a magazine, they would laugh in my face. It could be anything, they would say to me, and make me just as guilty of a hoax as the little girls at Cottingley.

  The discovery of the fairy-like images in the photograph provided only a fleeting distraction from my headache. As the day wore on, I began to feel increasingly more ill. The heat was oppressive. The air was thick. The very atmosphere felt charged and threatening.

  I rarely take to my bed in the middle of the day, but the pressure around my head felt as if it were being tightened in a vise. I drew the curtains, removed my shirt and vest, and lay down in just my trousers and stocking feet. I thought that if I lay still the throbbing in my head would pass. It only grew steadily worse.

  From somewhere out in the village I heard the baying of a hound. I slept briefly, but then the sound would bring me back to consciousness. The heat in the room was stifling. I felt wetness at the small of my back. I drifted again into light sleep. At the edge of consciousness I heard another howl, and then another… and then all sound drifted away. I had the distinct sensation that I was floating above my bed, and when I opened my eyes a spasm tore through my body as if I had been dropped suddenly from the ceiling.

  The sensation so unnerved me that I sprang up from my bed. The jarring jangle of the telephone snapped me back to reality. The house was dark. I must have slept the afternoon away. As I staggered groggily down the stairs I noticed that the windows rattled in their casements. Trees scraped against the side of the house. The storm had arrived.

  In my office I lifted the receiver to my ear and said hello. At first there was nothing on the line but an electric crackle.

  I said hello again and was just about to hang up the phone in disgust when a child’s voice said, “They’re here. You must come quickly!” There was such urgency in the voice that the hair on the nape of my neck began to bristle.

  “Emily?”

  “One of them has got inside the house! Come quickly.”

  There was a burst of light outside my window. The telephone line crackled again. Any moment now the skies would open and the valley would be beaten unmercifully by rain. How badly we needed it. It would be a welcome break from the relentless heat, but I would not be able to make the journey to Browning Grange under these conditions.

  “Emily, it’s about to storm. I can’t leave now.”

  “But you must. I’ll send Tom to fetch you.” Before I could protest the line went dead.

  At my window I squinted as another bolt of lightning lit the sky. I listened for the accompanying thund
er… but there was none.

  I went out into the street for a better glimpse of the storm. The sky roiled with masses of black clouds. When another jagged fork of light shot silently from the heavens to the earth I saw two things: the lightning appeared to actually originate from the ground. Forks of blinding light zig-zagged their way upward into the turbulent night… and the phenomenon appeared to be occurring in the vicinity of Browning Grange.

  Still there was no accompanying thunder.

  My body crackled with excitement. I ran upstairs and hurriedly threw on the rest of my clothes.

  Downstairs, I packed the Speed Graphic and stuffed the satchel with film sheets and flashbulbs and went outside to wait for Tom.

  THREE

  I climbed into the seat behind Tom and leaned forward until my mouth was close to his ear.

  “What is it?” I said.

  “The baby is coming,” he said, but there was such nervousness in his voice and his eyes were so wide I knew it was much more than that.

  “Emily said the goblins were inside the house. They’ve come to steal the baby then, is that it?” My words were meant to be acerbic, but my attempt at sarcasm was swallowed by my own self-doubt.

  Tom refused to look at me, but a vein pulsed in the side of his neck. He pressed his foot to the accelerator and the car shot recklessly along the road to Browning Grange.

  It was a wild ride, the night punctuated by bursts of blinding light. We might have been traveling through a combat zone. The display of gravity-defying lightning continued unabated, and when the car turned into the drive, I knew the preternatural phenomenon was centered directly over Goblin Hollow. Madness, indeed.

  Every window in the house shone yellow slabs of light into the darkness. The sight was beautiful. Had it not been for nature’s chaos it would have made a lovely image for the camera.

  A maelstrom of dirt and debris swirled about us as Tom ushered me across the drive.