“It’s not that I don’t believe in the Bible,” he said, “but …”
He shrugged and went to check the back door.
Our sleep was disturbed around midnight by the doorbell, then banging and hammering on the door, frantic shouting—and the angry retorts from the parrot. It sounded as though a madman were trying to get in. Mr. Hall went down, armed with a short, thick iron bar, some relic from his sailing days. He looked out through the glass. Then he put the bar on a shelf, moved the parrot into the front room, and opened the door.
“It’s for you,” he called up, and I heard Daniel’s voice before I saw him bouncing up the stairs.
“William! It’s a collapsing wave function!” he shouted in my face. His eyes had that wide-open stare of madness or uncontrollable enthusiasm. “A superposition of Eigenstates! Look at this!”
He waved a bundle of notes, then kneeled down on the floor and started spreading them out, babbling excitedly about orthonormal functions and complex conjugates.
“Is he drunk?” asked Mr. Hall. “Or just barmy?”
“It’s not easy to tell madness from higher mathematics,” I said. “Daniel, please, calm down.”
“I am calm!” he said, almost shrieking. “Look at this! The process of collapse maps right on to Heisenberg’s model, but there’s paradox—”
I let him run on in this vein, and after some time it was possible to slow him down enough to explain himself. It took somewhat longer for me to understand what he was saying. My mathematics was passable, but I had trouble telling whether half of what he said was a very advanced theory or just gibberish.
The problem that had been puzzling Daniel was the intersection of the other world with our own, which he simplified as a three-dimensional object breaking through a two-dimensional surface. If it was like a sunken castle rising from a lake, then the highest parapets would simply break the surface of the lake. Instead it was more like a vast sheet stretched tight and lowered over the castle: it was only where the sheet tore that the castle would break through. And each tear would be a small one, until their number increased, the fabric started to give, the tears started growing, and the whole thing burst through.
The tearing, said Daniel, was not just a matter of geometry. There was something else involved; that was why Whatley said he had the power to raise things from that other world, why that one house was demolished as R’lyeh started to erupt through.
Daniel’s theory, derived from the latest work in the field of electromagnetism, suggested that it was a presence of an observer that made the difference. The other world only existed as potential until someone in our world perceived it; then the shimmering abstract possibility condensed into concrete reality. Or, as Daniel put it, the wave function collapsed and the dimensions intersected each other. Science showed it worked for sub-atomic particles, and Daniel believed it could work on a larger scale as well.
Whatley was the first to see through the veil; it tore at the spot he was seeking, and the chamber appeared. The second rift happened when the house collapsed on Saturday and another piece of that other world peeked through. But what was the connection with that toad-like thing?
“Can we just look at this ‘breaking through’ again?” I said, dragging him back for the fifth time. We were in the front room now, his papers on the tables and sofa and floor around us. Long John the Macaw watched us suspiciously. “It happens when the observer sees something?”
“Yes, they see the observable associated with the Eigenbasis—”
“How? How can they see something in another dimension? I thought the whole point was that the two worlds do not coincide.”
Daniel rubbed his head and looked unhappy.
“The observer also has to exist partially in an extra dimension,” he said eventually.
“What does that mean?”
Daniel rubbed his head again, scratched his ear, then began pulling at his hair distractedly. Then he shuffled some of the papers around before putting them back. A light was dawning for me, a light through the crack that separates dimensions and holds the worlds apart.
“You’re talking about a mental dimension,” I said. “Like a mind that has been warped, or folded, into a different shape. Insane! That’s what it would look like. The way Whatley was.”
And, I thought, as many of the parishioners at the church seemed to be.
Warped by the influence of the thing that Whatley had summoned.
“A mutation,” said Daniel, brightening visibly at the thought. “A quantum mutation! Why not? Maybe even…maybe …”
Whatley would be the most susceptible to it, born with a mind apt to flex in that way. Now the rest of us were being warped too, our minds stretched out of shape into another direction.
He produced a pen, turned over a sheet of paper, and began sketching a diagram. I could make nothing of it, especially when it started sprouting annotations in Greek with subscripts.
“I hadn’t thought of it that way, but maybe we can get it to join up…” He stopped in mid-flow. “But if the observer dies in the process, ceases to be, it wouldn’t be valid.”
“That thing,” I said, “with the eyes. It all happens when you look into its eyes. The person sees into the other world, reality tears, they die. But the thing remains. It’s part of the process.”
“Observer observes observer,” he said slowly. “That might just work…the collapse has to take place in both directions at once, and the two worlds bring each other into existence. A human on one side and your toad on the other—who survives the experience. I wonder.…” He went back to his equations with renewed energy.
“Enough, Daniel,” I said, standing up. “It’s the middle of the night and I need to sleep.”
“I haven’t slept since Saturday,” he remarked without looking up.
“Well, go home and get some rest. You can finish all this tomorrow. You’ve done enough.”
“All right then.” He gathered up the notes and assembled them in order. He was calmer, but his brain was still working away at that problem, feeling his way around it. He was not going to go to bed. “Thank you, William.”
As he stepped out the front door into the cool night air, he turned around and looked at me anxiously.
“Do you think I’m right?” he asked.
“I’m afraid you are,” I said. “If this was all some mad dream we were sharing there would be nothing to worry about. But you seem to have proved mathematically that there really is an evil other world breaking through into ours.”
“Thank you,” he said again, reassured, and walked off into the dark.
Over the next few days I received a series of cryptic notes from George giving me updates and asking me to find out various pieces of information. Many of these were drafted by Sophie, who was evidently acting as his secretary. He was too busy to meet up, “organising the effort” as he put it, and I gathered that he was pounding the streets of Whitehall to try and gather support. Though brief, his letters never neglected to tell me to keep my chin up, remember I was from the Bulldog Breed, and keep being the stout fellow he knew I was.
On Tuesday there was a message marked “Strictly Personal and Secret” which I thought was rich even for George.
Tues 11 a.m.
Will,
Things are moving pretty fast now. Don’t know if you’ve heard the word, but there are two more houses down and several dead. DON’T TELL ANYONE. It’s being kept quiet because the Home office don’t want a panic, but those idiots won’t do anything about the REAL PROBLEM. Even the ministers are blockheads, and Scotland Yard are worse.
Gas Explosion is their explanation, and they’re giving the South London Gas Board hell—for all the good it’ll do. There were two science Johnnies poking around this morning, I couldn’t get them to see sense.
THE VICAR is part of it, a key part, I’m morally certain of that. We need to act fast and deal with him—decisively—before things get worse. It won’t be pretty, but I know I can count on you. Do not
hing until you hear from me.
Semper Fortis old man,
G.
P.S. Don’t tell Daniel ANYTHING.
That afternoon when I left my tutorial room I was surprised to find Sophie waiting for me, twirling a parasol and radiating glamour. I’m not the most observant chap when it comes to women’s clothing, but even I noticed the silk stockings and the new hat.
“We need to have a chat,” she said. It was a sunny afternoon and she linked arms with me as we walked down the Common road to the playing fields. We sat under the shade of a willow tree to watch the cricket. It was like sitting inside a tent and peering out through a green veil. The First XI was playing Harrow; it was a fast-pitch and a cracking game, but with Sophie beside me, my attention was soon distracted from the game.
“Has George given you a half-day holiday?” I asked.
“I’m through with George,” Sophie said, making a face. “I don’t want to hear his horrible name. It’s a lovely day; it should be just the two of us.”
She was sitting so close that I could smell her perfume.
“You’re looking even lovelier than usual today,” I said. “What’s the occasion?”
“You, darling,” she said, and giggled. “You know me, William, always the direct approach. William, let’s run away together, today.”
“And get married?”
“If that’s a proposal, I accept. Let’s get away, go to Canada or New Zealand or somewhere. Buenos Aires—we could dance the tango. Wherever you like. You won’t have any trouble setting yourself at any university. I can help you,” she said. “And don’t worry about money.”
“You make it all sound so easy,” I said, laughing. “Just go, tonight, the two of us, and leave everything.”
Sophie nodded excitedly. “We can do it, William—darling. Just the two of us.”
I was overwhelmed, but clear thought cut through the rush of emotion.
“You want to leave all the horror here behind,” I said at last. “You think this whole place is doomed. You’d leave the others to fight that thing.”
When she saw that I was not going to agree, her expression changed and her excitement evaporated.
“George is destroying himself politically,” Sophie said, lighting a cigarette and fitting it into a holder. “He’s been trying to call in favours or beg help from everyone with any influence he’s ever known. He’s broken with his father over it. The harder he tries the more they call him loony and shut the door in his face. It’s what I call the Horshell Common Problem.”
“Horshell Common?” I said. “Ah, from The War of the Worlds.”
“Exactly. When you find a cylinder full of invading aliens in your back garden in Horshell Common, whom do you call? Until they start destroying things with their heat ray, nobody believes you.” She blew a slow stream of smoke out in front of her.
“We need concrete evidence,” I said.
“Tom is convinced he can photograph it and show the world, and then everyone will listen,” said Sophie. “Pas du tout…look at all those imaginary cities in Metropolis—they can fake anything these days. George’s latest wheeze is to go through the bishop. Apparently the bishop knows something is going on here with the vicar and the parishioners, but I doubt he’ll talk to George about it.”
“He said something about the vicar in his last note. I suppose I can see the connection, with Whatley’s book and everything. Is that what he thinks, that the vicar is the source of it?”
“Something like that,” she said. “There was another one last night, by the way. A man walking his dog in Dulwich woods. George still has his informants.”
“What makes you think it was connected?”
“The body was found by a stone construction,” she said. “From the description I think it’s more of your crazy paving.” She blew smoke. “Try explaining that one as a gas explosion.”
“You’ve heard Daniel’s theory about tears in the sheet as the other world breaks through?” I asked.
“Yes, George has grilled him thoroughly about it. George doesn’t trust Daniel, though. Daniel is Jewish, you know,” she added to my questioning look. “I know, I don’t see what that has to do with it either, but as far as George is concerned, it’s all about purity of blood and alien contamination. Daniel thinks it’s a clash between mathematical worlds rather than good versus evil, and as far as George is concerned, Daniel Knows Too Much.”
“As far as I’m concerned, the more we know the better.”
“Oh, and George took some of the Second Eleven on a hunting expedition to the Whatley house,” she said. That was her name for some of the less favoured members of our social circle. “Rupert and Philip and Jonathan. Armed to the teeth, you know, shotguns and everything.” Sophie raised her eyebrows.
“Really?”
“Truly. Of course they didn’t find anything. Just as well. As if they could just shoot it.”
“I don’t know …”
“William dear,” Sophie said, “you’re as bad as he is. If I can’t seduce you with feminine wiles, let me try and move you with logic. You do not know what you’re dealing with. Ergo, you don’t have the faintest idea of how to defeat it. Are you going to throw stones at it? That’s why I think we should pack and go far, far away.”
“Sophie, people are dying, and this thing is responsible. Doesn’t that give us rather a strong moral basis for action?”
“That’s a surprisingly naïve argument to hear from you,” she said, with a puff of smoke. “Just because the Martian invaders have a face full of tentacles and look beastly, they might still be on the side of the greater good. In a sort of Nietzschean way. What makes us superior?”
“I saw it, Sophie. It’s not just strange and alien and inhuman. It’s actual evil.” The words surprised me as I heard myself speaking. “It’s not intelligent as we understand intelligence; it reacts and responds, rather than thinking. It has purpose and that purpose is chaos and destruction …”
“I see.”
“And as you well know,” I added, “nobody ever needed a philosophical basis for defending home and hearth. I have to side with George.”
“Even though he hasn’t a clue. He’s utterly, utterly wrong about it.”
“How so?” I was surprised by her conviction.
“George wants to turn this into a race war, a war against people like the Whatleys rather than facing—things.” She blew smoke. “That’s why he’s fastened on the vicar, the enemy within. He’d rather fight people, and frankly I don’t think the real enemy is human.”
“I agree with you there.”
“And none of us has the faintest notion of how to deal with it.”
“I’ve survived two encounters already,” I said. “It can be scared off. And if Daniel is right, we could stop it by evacuating everyone away from the danger area. No more observers, no more breaking through into our world.”
“A capital notion requiring merely the assent of the local and national authorities,” Sophie said witheringly.
“Well, we’ve got to do something.”
Sophie crushed out her cigarette on the turf and looked at me without speaking. I was not sure who had won the argument.
I had never seen Sophie so beautiful, or so sad. I smelled her perfume again as she leaned suddenly closer, and we kissed for a long, long time in the secrecy of that willow tent. I had never kissed a girl like that before, never knew that kissing could be like that. It ended when Sophie broke away from me suddenly and handed me an envelope.
“Marching orders from George,” she said. “King Arthur sends for his knights to assemble for battle, tonight. He’ll probably quote Henry V’s speech before Agincourt at you, Lord help us. I won’t be with you, but …”
“Sophie?”
She turned away, standing up. I thought I heard a stifled sob, and I knew that I should not go after her. I had never seen Sophie cry—Sophie the tough, rational one. She had decided that she did not want to be part of George’
s crusade. Her reasons were opaque to me. I was at least aware enough to know that the arguments she put forward were simply the ones that she thought might appeal to me.
Tues 11 a.m.
Will,
This is it, old chap—the game’s afoot!
We meet outside the church at 10:30 sharp. The vicar is holding a special service, and we’re going to finish things with him once and for all. Corruptio optimi pessima—the corruption of the best is the worst. There might be a ruck, but I know you’re not scared of that. Come prepared.
As my right-hand man, I’m counting on you absolutely—we’re all counting on you—there is more in the balance than you may realise.
G.
VII
I arrived early, to find George, Tom, and Jessica already there. To my surprise, Daniel and Daisy were also present. The mood was determined and business-like. In spite of the warm evening, George was wearing a tweed jacket, which I realised was to cover the revolver tucked into his belt. He was deadly serious. None of the others were armed, as far as I could tell; Tom had a bulky press camera with a flash unit. Tom handed me an armband; we all had them, to give us some sort of official look as part of George’s plan. It also made us look like we were part of a military unit—George’s own Irregulars, I thought.
“Right then,” said George. He consulted a small notebook. “As I said, Daniel and Daisy will stay outside and keep an eye on things.”
I saw that this was his way of keeping Daniel out of it. Daisy was there to keep an eye on him, or more likely, to stop him from going anywhere else.
There was a brilliant flash of light and I was left temporarily blinded.
“Stop that!” George irritably said to Tom, who was checking his camera and loading another flash. “Daniel and Daisy out here; the rest of us go in. Jessica and Tom tell the parishioners to leave. Will keeps back and stops anyone from interfering with me while I take on the vicar myself.”
“What are you going to do?” I asked.
“I’m going to make him undo what he’s done,” said George. “By whatever means are necessary.”
The Dulwich Horror & Others Page 7