WE HAD FINISHED DINNER and Carnacki had drawn his big chair up to the fire, and started his pipe.
Jessop, Arkright, Taylor and I had each of us taken up our favourite positions, and waited for Carnacki to begin.
“What I’m going to tell you about happened in the next room,” he said, after drawing at his pipe for a while. “It has been a terrible experience. Doctor Witton first brought the case to my notice. We’d been chatting over a pipe at the Club one night about an article in the Lancet, and Witton mentioned having just such a similar case in a man called Bains. I was interested at once. It was one of those cases of a gap or flaw in a man’s protection barrier, I call it. A failure to be what I might term efficiently insulated—spiritually—from the outer monstrosities.
“From what I knew of Witton, I knew he’d be no use. You all know Witton. A decent sort, hard-headed, practical, stand-no-kind-of-nonsense sort of man, all right at his own job when that job’s a fractured leg or a broken collarbone; but he’d never have made anything of the Bains case.”
For a space Carnacki puffed meditatively at his pipe, and we waited for him to go on with his tale.
“I told Witton to send Bains to me,” he resumed, “and the following Saturday he came up. A little sensitive man. I liked him as soon as I set eyes on him. After a bit, I got him to explain what was troubling him, and questioned him about what Doctor Witton had called his ‘dreams’.
“ ‘They’re more than dreams,’ he said, ‘they’re so real that they’re actual experiences to me. They’re simply horrible. And yet there’s nothing very definite in them to tell you about. They generally come just as I am going off to sleep. I’m hardly over before suddenly I seem to have got down into some deep, vague place with some inexplicable and frightful horror all about me. I can never understand what it is, for I never see anything, only I always get a sudden knowledge like a warning that I have got down into some terrible place—a sort of hellplace I might call it, where I’ve no business ever to have wandered; and the warning is always insistent—even imperative—that I must get out, get out, or some enormous horror will come at me.’
“ ‘Can’t you pull yourself back?’ I asked him. ‘Can’t you wake up?’
“ ‘No,’ he told me. ‘That’s just what I can’t do, try as I will. I can’t stop going along this labyrinth-of-hell as I call it to myself, towards some dreadful unknown Horror. The warning is repeated, ever so strongly—almost as if the live me of my waking moments was awake and aware. Something seems to warn me to wake up, that whatever I do I must wake, wake, and then my consciousness comes suddenly alive and I know that my body is there in the bed, but my essence or spirit is still down there in that hell, wherever it is, in a danger that is both unknown and inexpressible; but so overwhelming that my whole spirit seems sick with terror.
“ ‘I keep saying to myself all the time that I must wake up,’ he continued, ‘but it is as if my spirit is still down there, and as if my consciousness knows that some tremendous invisible Power is fighting against me. I know that if I do not wake then, I shall never wake up again, but go down deeper and deeper into some stupendous horror of soul destruction. So then I fight. My body lies in the bed there, and pulls. And the power down there in that labyrinth exerts itself too so that a feeling of despair, greater than any I have ever known on this earth, comes on me. I know that if I give way and cease to fight, and do not wake, then I shall pass out—out to that monstrous Horror which seems to be silently calling my soul to destruction.
“ ‘Then I make a final stupendous effort,’ he continued, ‘and my brain seems to fill my body like the ghost of my soul. I can even open my eyes and see with my brain, or consciousness, out of my own eyes. I can see the bedclothes, and I know just how I am lying in the bed; yet the real me is down in that hell in terrible danger. Can you get me?’ he asked.
“ ‘Perfectly,’ I replied.
“ ‘Well, you know,’ he went on, ‘I fight and fight. Down there in that great pit my very soul seems to shrink back from the call of some brooding horror that impels it silently a little further, always a little further round a visible corner, which if I once pass I know I shall never return again to this world. Desperately I fight; brain and consciousness fighting together to help it. The agony is so great that I could scream were it not that I am rigid and frozen in the bed with fear.
“ ‘Then, just when my strength seems almost gone, soul and body win, and blend slowly. And I lie there worn out with this terrible extraordinary fight. I have still a sense of a dreadful horror all about me, as if out of that horrible place some brooding monstrosity had followed me up, and hangs still and silent and invisible over me, threatening me there in my bed. Do I make it clear to you?’ he asked. ‘It’s like some monstrous Presence.’
“ ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I follow you.’
“The man’s forehead was actually covered with sweat, so keenly did he live again through the horrors he had experienced.
“After a while he continued:
“ ‘Now comes the most curious part of the dream or whatever it is,’ he said. ‘There’s always a sound I hear as I lie there exhausted in the bed. It comes while the bedroom is still full of the sort of atmosphere of monstrosity that seems to come up with me when I get out of that place. I hear the sound coming up out of that enormous depth, and it is always the noise of pigs—pigs grunting, you know. It’s just simply dreadful. The dream is always the same. Sometimes I’ve had it every single night for a week, until I fight not to go to sleep; but, of course, I have to sleep sometimes. I think that’s how a person might go mad, don’t you?’ he finished.
“I nodded, and looked at his sensitive face. Poor beggar! He had been through it, and no mistake.
“ ‘Tell me some more,’ I said. ‘The grunting—what does it sound like exactly?’
“ ‘It’s just like pigs grunting,’ he told me again. ‘Only much more awful. There are grunts, and squeals and pighowls, like you hear when their food is being brought to them at a pig farm. You know those large pig farms where they keep hundreds of pigs. All the grunts, squeals and howls blend into one brutal chaos of sound—only it isn’t a chaos. It all blends in a queer horrible way. I’ve heard it. A sort of swinish, clamouring melody that grunts and roars and shrieks in chunks of grunting sounds, all tied together with squealings and shot through with pig howls. I’ve sometimes thought there was a definite beat in it; for every now and again there comes a gargantuan GRUNT, breaking through the million pig-voiced roaring—a stupendous GRUNT that comes in with a beat. Can you understand me? It seems to shake everything.... It’s like a spiritual earthquake. The howling, squealing, grunting, rolling clamour of swinish noise coming up out of that place, and then the monstrous GRUNT rising up through it all, an ever-recurring beat out of the depth—the voice of the swine-mother of monstrosity beating up from below through that chorus of mad swine-hunger.... It’s no use! I can’t explain it. No one ever could. It’s just terrible! And I’m afraid you’re saying to yourself that I’m in a bad way; that I want a change or a tonic; that I must buck up or I’ll land myself in a madhouse. If only you could understand! Doctor Witton seemed to half understand, I thought; but I know he’s only sent me to you as a sort of last hope. He thinks I’m booked for the asylum. I could tell it.’
“ ‘Nonsense!’ I said. ‘Don’t talk such rubbish. You’re as sane as I am. Your ability to think clearly what you want to tell me, and then to transmit it to me so well that you compel my mental retina to see something of what you have seen, stands sponsor for your mental balance.
“ ‘I am going to investigate your case, and if it is what I suspect, one of those rare instances of a “flaw” or “gap” in your protective barrier (what I might call your spiritual insulation from the Outer Monstrosities) I’ve no doubt we can end the trouble. But we’ve got to go properly into the matter first, and there will certainly be danger in doing so.’
“ ‘I’ll risk it,’ replied Bains. ‘I can’t go on
like this any longer.’
“ ‘Very well,’ I told him. ‘Go out now, and come back at five o’clock. I shall be ready for you then. And don’t worry about your sanity. You’re all right, and we’ll soon make things safe for you again. Just keep cheerful and don’t brood about it.’ ”
2
“I put in the whole afternoon preparing my experimenting room, across the landing there, for his case. When he returned at five o’clock I was ready for him and took him straight into the room.
“It gets dark now about six-thirty, as you know, and I had just enough time before it grew dusk to finish my arrangements. I prefer always to be ready before the dark comes.
“Bains touched my elbow as we walked into the room.
“ ‘There’s something I ought to have told you,’ he said, looking rather sheepish. ‘I’ve somehow felt a bit ashamed of it.’
“ ‘Out with it,’ I replied.
“He hesitated a moment, then it came out with a jerk.
“ ‘I told you about the grunting of the pigs,’ he said. ‘Well, I grunt too. I know it’s horrible. When I lie there in bed and hear those sounds after I’ve come up, I just grunt back as if in reply. I can’t stop myself. I just do it. Something makes me. I never told Doctor Witton that. I couldn’t. I’m sure now you think me mad,’ he concluded.
“He looked into my face, anxious and queerly ashamed.
“ ‘It’s only the natural sequence of the abnormal events, and I’m glad you told me,’ I said, slapping him on the back. ‘It follows logically on what you had already told me. I have had two cases that in some way resembled yours.’
“ ‘What happened?’ he asked me. ‘Did they get better?’
“ ‘One of them is alive and well today, Mr. Bains,’ I replied. ‘The other man lost his nerve, and fortunately for all concerned, he is dead.’
“I shut the door and locked it as I spoke, and Bains stared round, rather alarmed, I fancy, at my apparatus.
“ ‘What are you going to do?’ he asked. ‘Will it be a dangerous experiment?’
“ ‘Dangerous enough,’ I answered, ‘if you fail to follow my instructions absolutely in everything. We both run the risk of never leaving this room alive. Have I your word that I can depend on you to obey me whatever happens?’
“He stared round the room and then back at me.
“ ‘Yes,’ he replied. And, you know, I felt he would prove the right kind of stuff when the moment came.
“I began now to get things finally in train for the night’s work. I told Bains to take off his coat and his boots. Then I dressed him entirely from head to foot in a single thick rubber combination-overall, with rubber gloves, and a helmet with ear-flaps of the same material attached.
“I dressed myself in a similar suit. Then I began on the next stage of the night’s preparations.
“First I must tell you that the room measures thirty-nine feet by thirty-seven, and has a plain board floor over which is fitted a heavy, half-inch rubber covering.
“I had cleared the floor entirely, all but the exact centre where I had placed a glass-legged, upholstered table, a pile of vacuum tubes and batteries, and three pieces of special apparatus which my experiment required.
“ ‘Now Bains,’ I called, ‘come and stand over here by this table. Don’t move about. I’ve got to erect a protective “barrier” round us, and on no account must either of us cross over it by even so much as a hand or foot, once it is built.’
“We went over to the middle of the room, and he stood by the glass-legged table while I began to fit the vacuum tubing together round us.
“I intended to use the new spectrum ‘defense’ which I have been perfecting lately. This, I must tell you, consists of seven glass vacuum circles with the red on the outside, and the colour circles lying inside it, in the order of orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet.
“The room was still fairly light, but a slight quantity of dusk seemed to be already in the atmosphere, and I worked quickly.
“Suddenly, as I fitted the glass tubes together I was aware of some vague sense of nerve-strain, and glancing round at Bains, who was standing there by the table, I noticed him staring fixedly before him. He looked absolutely drowned in uncomfortable memories.
“ ‘For goodness’ sake stop thinking of those horrors,’ I called out to him. ‘I shall want you to think hard enough about them later; but in this specially constructed room it is better not to dwell on things of that kind till the barriers are up. Keep your mind on anything normal or superficial—the theatre will do—think about that last piece you saw at the Gaiety. I’ll talk to you in a moment.’
“Twenty minutes later the ‘barrier’ was completed all round us, and I connected up the batteries. The room by this time was greying with the coming dusk, and the seven differently coloured circles shone out with extraordinary effect, sending out a cold glare.
“ ‘By Jove!’ cried Bains, ‘that’s very wonderful—very wonderful!’
“My other apparatus which I now began to arrange consisted of a specially made camera, a modified form of phonograph with ear-pieces instead of a horn, and a glass disk composed of many fathoms of glass vacuum tubes arranged in a special way. It had two wires leading to an electrode constructed to fit round the head.
“By the time I had looked over and fixed up these three things, night had practically come, and the darkened room shone most strangely in the curious upward glare of the seven vacuum tubes.
“ ‘Now, Bains,’ I said, ‘I want you to lie on this table. Now put your hands down by your sides and lie quiet and think. You’ve just got two things to do,’ I told him. ‘One is to lie there and concentrate your thoughts on the details of the dream you are always having, and the other is not to move off this table whatever you see or hear, or whatever happens, unless I tell you. You understand, don’t you?’
“ ‘Yes,’ he answered, ‘I think you may rely on me not to make a fool of myself. I feel curiously safe with you somehow.’
“ ‘I’m glad of that,’ I replied. ‘But I don’t want you to minimise the possible danger too much. There may be horrible danger. Now, just let me fix this band on your head,’ I added, as I adjusted the electrode. I gave him a few more instructions, telling him to concentrate his thoughts particularly upon the noises he heard just as he was waking, and I warned him again not to let himself fall asleep. ‘Don’t talk,’ I said, ‘and don’t take any notice of me. If you find I disturb your concentration keep your eyes closed.’
“He lay back and I walked over to the glass disk arranging the camera in front of it on its stand in such a way that the lens was opposite the centre of the disk.
“I had scarcely done this when a ripple of greenish light ran across the vacuum tubes of the disk. This vanished, and for maybe a minute there was complete darkness. Then the green light rippled once more across it—rippled and swung round, and began to dance in varying shades from a deep heavy green to a rank ugly shade; back and forward, back and forward.
“Every half second or so there shot across the varying greens a flicker of yellow, an ugly, heavy repulsive yellow, and then abruptly there came sweeping across the disk a great beat of muddy red. This died as quickly as it came, and gave place to the changing greens shot through by the unpleasant and ugly yellow hues. About every seventh second the disk was submerged, and the other colours momentarily blotted out by the great beat of heavy, muddy red which swept over everything.
“ ‘He’s concentrating on those sounds,’ I said to myself, and I felt queerly excited as I hurried on with my operations. I threw a word over my shoulder to Bains.
“ ‘Don’t get scared, whatever happens,’ I said. ‘You’re all right!’
“I proceeded now to operate my camera. It had a long roll of specially prepared paper ribbon in place of a film or plates. By turning the handle the roll passed through the machine, exposing the ribbon.
“It took about five minutes to finish the roll, and during all tha
t time the green lights predominated; but the dull heavy beat of muddy red never ceased to flow across the vacuum tubes of the disk at every seventh second. It was like a recurrent beat in some unheard and somehow displeasing melody.
“Lifting the exposed spool of paper ribbon out of the camera I laid it horizontally in the two ‘rests’ that I had arranged for it on my modified gramaphone. Where the paper had been acted upon by the varying coloured lights which had appeared on the disk, the prepared surface had risen in curious, irregular little waves.
“I unrolled about a foot of the ribbon and attached the loose end to an empty spool-roller (on the opposite side of the machine) which I had geared to the driving clockwork mechanism of the gramophone. Then I took the diaphragm and lowered it gently into place above the ribbon. Instead of the usual needle, the diaphragm was fitted with a beautifully made metal-filament brush, about an inch broad, which just covered the whole breadth of the ribbon. This fine and fragile brush rested lightly on the prepared surface of the paper, and when I started the machine the ribbon began to pass under the brush; and as it passed, the delicate metal-filament ‘bristles’ followed every minute inequality of those tiny, irregular wave-like excrescences on the surface.
“I put the ear-pieces to my ears, and instantly I knew that I had succeeded in actually recording what Bains had heard in his sleep. In fact, I was even then hearing ‘mentally’ by means of his effort of memory. I was listening to what appeared to be the faint, far-off squealing and grunting of countless swine. It was extraordinary, and at the same time exquisitely horrible and vile. It frightened me, with a sense of my having come suddenly and unexpectedly too near to something foul and most abominably dangerous.
“So strong and imperative was this feeling that I twitched the ear-pieces out of my ears, and sat awhile staring round the room trying to steady my sensations back to normality.
The House on the Borderland and Other Mysterious Places Page 35