Fighters of Fear

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Fighters of Fear Page 9

by Mike Ashley


  But the child grew no stronger on its legs, nor did it grow the least bit less unlike the chubby-cheeked Johnson brood. It seemed to have no wish to walk. It was a patient little thing, and when planted by a chair would stand there; but so soon as attention was drawn from it, it would drop to its hands and knees again, and creep to the door.

  Johnson made a little fence, to keep it from straying; but it developed a weird sagacity for evading this, wriggling through or clambering over, or escaping by a back door. Then, if not intercepted, it would work its way across the patch of ground till it reached the doorway of the shed. There it would sit for hours together, straining its eyes upon some portion of the floor—always the same portion. Rain, snow, or wind it minded not. Frequently it was found squatted there in the entrance, wet to the skin, with a heavy rain beating on it, to all appearance unconscious of its wet and chilled condition—its gaze and powers magnetised. It took but little food and was a puny, miserable morsel. Such food as it took, it took mechanically and in obedience to its mother. It never seemed hungry, or interested, as babies are interested, in the sweet and edible.

  It did not play, nor did it seem to have a notion of the use of toys. A doll or painted ball it would turn seriously over in its fingers, then lay aside with a quaint solemnity as though it had weightier matters on hand. Its only comfort was its thumb, which it sucked gravely, and with a thoughtful sobriety as of an old man smoking a pipe. It had no fear of darkness. It was found in the shed at dead of night, having scrambled stealthily from its cot, down the cottage stairs and out at the door. Sometimes it sat at a distance gazing spell-bound. Generally it spent its time shuffling round and round a certain area of floor dragging itself laboriously on hands and knees as one doing penance.

  The villagers grew scared at it, and whispered that it had the evil eye. They would turn back to avoid passing it in the road. I have had boys thrashed for stoning it. Even its matter-of-fact mother came to have a horror of it, with its weird ways and terrible eyes. Yet it was patient and gave no trouble, so long as it were permitted to be in the shed. Its limbs, they told me, were raw and red, from the continuous rub of the boards against its baby skin. And the nails of toes and fingers were worn to the quick with its ceaseless clambering.

  That the child suffered mentally, I cannot say. Possibly not. It seemed to gather satisfaction from its treadmill labours, though there was always that horror in its eyes.

  “Perhaps your lordship would be pleased to come and see it,” my agent suggested one day, when I chanced to pass the Johnson cottage. “Mrs. Johnson has gone into the village. The baby was shut in, but it has got out somehow and crept to the shed.”

  I followed her. We went quietly; but I doubt if the child would have heard in any case, so absorbed was it. We watched it through the window. Its frock and feet were stained with the soil over which it had dragged itself. The day was damp, and mud clung about its hands. But it minded nothing. In the half-sitting, half-kneeling posture of creeping children it dragged itself sideways round and round a circle encompassing some six feet of floor—six feet in length and from three to four in breadth. Dust lay thick on the boards, so that the circuit made by it was clearly traced. It went always over the same ground, marking a curious zigzagged shape. Round and round, now up, now down, tracing the same inexplicable course it plodded, a thick dust rising on either side to the infantile flop of its skirts.

  Its face was bent towards the centre of the trail it followed, its eyes rivetted. Sweat stood moist on its skin, and in the moisture dust clung, giving it a dark, unearthly look. It sighed and panted at its task. Every now and again it would cease from utter weariness and, sitting up, would lift its dusty frock and wipe its lips. After a minute it resumed its treadmill round. I went in. It lifted its awed and grimy countenance and looked at me with that terrible intelligence. Then it resumed its dusty way.

  I took it up and sat it on a pile of wood. It whined and fretted, stretching its arms to the shape on the floor. I left it where it was and, crossing the shed, stood looking down upon the figure it had traced. I could make nothing of it. It was an irregular oblong of indefinite form, wider to one end, narrowing to the other. A grim thought struck me that it resembled a coffin. I was interested. What was the meaning of it all? What, if anything, did those weird eyes see? I bade the woman bring some cake or sweets. She came back with an orange.

  “He’ll do anything for an orange,” she said.

  I made her take the child and set him on the floor to one side of the figure. I placed myself on the other. The oblong was between us at its widest part. I held the orange up and beckoned him.

  “Go get it!” the woman urged.

  He gazed at me questioningly, as though probing my intention. His eyes rested on the orange; then something that in another child would have been a smile floated over his face. He set out, creeping toward me. I watched him intently. Would he cross that circle? He came on, shuffling slowly, raising a cloud of dust. But when he reached the further limit of the oblong, he stopped short. He turned his face down and bent his looks on something that he seemed to see within the circle—something about the level of his eyes.

  I stamped my foot and called to him. He looked up curiously but did not move. I held the orange toward him. He stretched his hand out, raising it carefully as though to prevent it coming into contact with the something that was there.

  “Come,” I said.

  His eyes again levelled. They travelled slowly over that I could not see. Then he looked up at me, dully reproachful.

  “Come,” I called again, tossing the orange.

  He shook his head with a grave, old-man solemnity. I stamped my foot once more.

  “Come,” I insisted.

  His lips quivered feebly. Tears came into his eyes. Suddenly his features quickened with a new sagacity. He swerved aside and came creeping to me round the outer edge of the figure he had traced, bending his looks with an awed avoidance upon that he saw there. I tried a dozen times. But he would not cross the line. He scanned me plaintively. Why did I so torment him?

  I took him in my arms. I carried him toward the charmed circle. Looking back I can see that the act was a brutal one, such a brutal one as the curiosity we dignify by the terms intellectual or scientific is frequently guilty of. But the woman stopped me. She caught him out of my arms.

  “For heaven’s sake, don’t, my lord,” she gasped, “I did it once. I thought he would have died.”

  Thank goodness she was in time! I looked down into his face. Poor little wretch! There was all the dumb agony of a ripe intelligence frozen on it. He clung to me strenuously, turning his rigid looks from that over which we stood. I gave him to her.

  “Take him away. Get the poor little wretch out into the air. Give him the orange. Give him anything—only drive that look from his face.” She took him out. He turned a shuddering head over her shoulder seeking that spot. It was the spot where Cooper had lain. I knew it now. He had lain there stretched full length, and over him Dell had stood with stricken eyes. Heavens! Why had the child those eyes? And why had it been cursed with this terrible vision? Had re-birth come so soon? Were the retributive forces of murder thus expiating in a little child?

  I stood looking down at the figure traced in dust. I thrust my stick into it. Did I really feel a dull resistance? I lowered my hand to within some inches of the floor. Was the air really chill? Pshaw! The babe had infected me. It was but a draught from the door. As I stood my stick slipped from my hold, and sliding stopped between the curves composing the lower end of the oblong. A tree-branch, stirred by the wind, shot its shadow through the doorway immediately across the tracery. In a moment, as a few strokes put to outlines which had had no meaning gather the lines into life, so now the unmeaning tracery took shape. The stick formed a line of demarcation between extended legs, a limb of the shadow-tree lay like an outstretched arm and hand. Even for a moment convulsing features were given to a curve that might have been a face, as a flicker of twigs and
fluttering leaves hurried like vanishing pencil marks across the outline. In that moment the murdered body of Cooper was reproduced as I had seen it. I am sufficiently strong-nerved. Yet I admit I turned sick. I picked up my stick and went out.

  I knew now that what had been momentarily visible to me was ever before the doomed baby, that to its eyes the murdered man was always there. I felt my hair lift as though an ice-wind swept under my hat.

  I had the shed pulled down. I had the ground it covered sown with flowers. But the spot kept its old fascination for the poor little creature. He could not now drag round it, the way being barred. But he sat for hours tracing with waxen fingers something that for him lay there, something that to us was but space between flower-stalks.

  I sent him to the sea, a hundred miles away. In three days his life was despaired of. His impulse in living was gone. He fell into a state of stupor. He revived when brought back. He dragged himself out to the flower-bed and sat there crooning with a kind of plaintive content, tracing that outline with his pallid hands.

  One morning they found him dead there. He had crept from his cot at some time during the night and had scrambled in the darkness—he never learned to walk—to the old spot. Rain was falling, and he lay on his back with face upturned and wet, his fair hair limp about him. His brows were unbent and tranquil, through his half-unclosed lids at last peace looked. The flowers stood round him like gentle sentinels, their flower-cups full of rain as eyes with tears. For the first time in his life the smile of a child lay over his lips. And the blood-spot in his palm was white as wool.

  JOHN BELL IN

  THE MYSTERY OF THE FELWYN TUNNEL

  L. T. MEADE & ROBERT EUSTACE

  With John Bell we reach our first true psychic investigator. He tells of his own origins in A Master of Mysteries (1898) in which these stories were collected after being serialized in Cassell’s Magazine, during 1897. “From my earliest youth the weird, the mysterious had an irresistible fascination for me. Having private means, I resolved to follow my unique inclinations, and I am now well known to all my friends as a professional exposer of ghosts, and one who can clear away the mysteries of most haunted houses.” His use of the word “professional” is key here. This is no amateur seeker of the curious, or a doctor who occasionally encounters the bizarre, but a true explorer of the unexplained. Although Meade makes no specific reference to the Society for Psychical Research, Bell is clearly modeled on those who worked for the Society, such as Frank Podmore or Edmund Gurney. Like them, Bell looks for a natural solution to the mystery.

  Elizabeth Thomasina Meade (1844–1914), usually known as Lillie, was a prolific Irish-born writer, producing some 280 books in her near forty-year career. She wrote for all ages and became highly collectible for her books for girls, being voted the top writer of girls’ school stories. She edited the magazine for adolescent girls, Atalanta, from 1887 to 1893, but once freed from the shackles of editorial duties her output rocketed. She became a regular contributor to the newly emerging popular illustrated magazines of the day such as The Strand and Cassell’s producing a breathtaking number of series. To help her in her research she relied on a couple of doctor friends who became pseudonymous collaborators, firstly Clifford Halifax, who was really Edgar Beaumont (1860–1921), and then Robert Eustace, who was Eustace Robert Barton (1868–1943). The series included Stories from the Diary of a Doctor (1894, with a second series, 1896), The Brotherhood of the Seven Kings (1899), and The Sorceress of the Strand (1903). One short series that ran in Pearson’s Magazine in 1902 introduced Diana Marburg who, while not an occult detective, nevertheless solved normal crimes through the reading of palms.

  Meade became something of a figurehead for the suffragette movement as an example of a woman who could earn her own way in the world. She was a leading figure in the Pioneer Club for progressive women. She married the solicitor Alfred Toulmin-Smith with whom she had a son and two daughters.

  I WAS MAKING EXPERIMENTS OF SOME INTEREST AT SOUTH Kensington, and hoped that I had perfected a small but not unimportant discovery, when, on returning home one evening in late October in the year 1893, I found a visiting card on my table. On it were inscribed the words, “Mr. Geoffrey Bainbridge.” This name was quite unknown to me, so I rang the bell and inquired of my servant who the visitor had been. He described him as a gentleman who wished to see me on most urgent business, and said further that Mr. Bainbridge intended to call again later in the evening. It was with both curiosity and vexation that I awaited the return of the stranger. Urgent business with me generally meant a hurried rush to one part of the country or the other. I did not want to leave London just then; and when at half-past nine Mr. Geoffrey Bainbridge was ushered into my room, I received him with a certain coldness which he could not fail to perceive. He was a tall, well-dressed, elderly man. He immediately plunged into the object of his visit.

  “I hope you do not consider my unexpected presence an intrusion, Mr. Bell,” he said. “But I have heard of you from our mutual friends, the Greys of Uplands. You may remember once doing that family a great service.”

  “I remember perfectly well,” I answered more cordially. “Pray tell me what you want; I shall listen with attention.”

  “I believe you are the one man in London who can help me,” he continued. “I refer to a matter especially relating to your own particular study. I need hardly say that whatever you do will not be unrewarded.”

  “That is neither here nor there,” I said; “but before you go any further, allow me to ask one question. Do you want me to leave London at present?”

  He raised his eyebrows in dismay.

  “I certainly do,” he answered.

  “Very well; pray proceed with your story.”

  He looked at me with anxiety.

  “In the first place,” he began, “I must tell you that I am chairman of the Lytton Vale Railway Company in Wales, and that it is on an important matter connected with our line that I have come to consult you. When I explain to you the nature of the mystery, you will not wonder, I think, at my soliciting your aid.”

  “I will give you my closest attention,” I answered; and then I added, impelled to say the latter words by a certain expression on his face, “if I can see my way to assisting you I shall be ready to do so.”

  “Pray accept my cordial thanks,” he replied. “I have come up from my place at Felwyn today on purpose to consult you. It is in that neighbourhood that the affair has occurred. As it is essential that you should be in possession of the facts of the whole matter, I will go over things just as they happened.”

  I bent forward and listened attentively.

  “This day fortnight,” continued Mr. Bainbridge, “our quiet little village was horrified by the news that the signalman on duty at the mouth of the Felwyn Tunnel had been found dead under the most mysterious circumstances. The tunnel is at the end of a long cutting between Llanlys and Felwyn stations. It is about a mile long, and the signal-box is on the Felwyn side. The place is extremely lonely, being six miles from the village across the mountains. The name of the poor fellow who met his death in this mysterious fashion was David Pritchard. I have known him from a boy, and he was quite one of the steadiest and most trustworthy men on the line. On Tuesday evening he went on duty at six o’clock; on Wednesday morning the day-man who had come to relieve him was surprised not to find him in the box. It was just getting daylight, and the 6.30 local was coming down, so he pulled the signals and let her through. Then he went out, and, looking up the line towards the tunnel, saw Pritchard lying beside the line close to the mouth of the tunnel. Roberts, the day-man, ran up to him and found, to his horror, that he was quite dead. At first Roberts naturally supposed that he had been cut down by a train, as there was a wound at the back of the head; but he was not lying on the metals. Roberts ran back to the box and telegraphed through to Felwyn Station. The message was sent on to the village, and at half-past seven o’clock the police inspector came up to my house with the news. He and
I, with the local doctor, went off at once to the tunnel. We found the dead man lying beside the metals a few yards away from the mouth of the tunnel, and the doctor immediately gave him a careful examination. There was a depressed fracture at the back of the skull, which must have caused his death; but how he came by it was not so clear. On examining the whole place most carefully, we saw, further, that there were marks on the rocks at the steep side of the embankment as if some one had tried to scramble up them. Why the poor fellow had attempted such a climb, God only knows. In doing so he must have slipped and fallen back on to the line, thus causing the fracture of the skull. In no case could he have gone up more than eight or ten feet, as the banks of the cutting run sheer up, almost perpendicularly, beyond that point for more than a hundred and fifty feet. There are some sharp boulders beside the line, and it was possible that he might have fallen on one of these and so sustained the injury. The affair must have occurred some time between 11.45 p.m. and 6 a.m., as the engine-driver of the express at 11.45 p.m. states that the line was signalled clear, and he also caught sight of Pritchard in his box as he passed.”

  “This is deeply interesting,” I said; “pray proceed.”

  Bainbridge looked at me earnestly; he then continued—“The whole thing is shrouded in mystery. Why should Pritchard have left his box and gone down to the tunnel? Why, having done so, should he have made a wild attempt to scale the side of the cutting, an impossible feat at any time? Had danger threatened, the ordinary course of things would have been to run up the line towards the signal-box. These points are quite unexplained. Another curious fact is that death appears to have taken place just before the day-man came on duty, as the light at the mouth of the tunnel had been put out, and it was one of the night signalman’s duties to do this as soon as daylight appeared; it is possible, therefore, that Pritchard went down to the tunnel for that purpose. Against this theory, however, and an objection that seems to nullify it, is the evidence of Dr. Williams, who states that when he examined the body his opinion was that death had taken place some hours before. An inquest was held on the following day, but before it took place there was a new and most important development. I now come to what I consider the crucial point in the whole story.

 

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