The Lamplighter

by Anthony O'Neill

  He was holding a burning candle fifteen inches from her face and repeatedly drawing his thumb and forefinger from the bridge of her nose to the flame.

  “You will remain masterful,” he said, “and clear-minded and cognizant. You will surrender because it is your own command, and with the absolute certainty that it is only temporary, and you are in any case surrendering only to yourself. We are bound by your instruction to do you no harm.”

  Canavan was half sitting on the corner table, having fully accepted his purpose by now: a presence, a foil, the personification of reassurance.

  He watched in fascination as Evelyn began to respond to the Professor’s mesmeric passes. Her limbs by degrees seemed to lighten, her right arm in particular rising as though by some independent impulse. Her eyelids fluttered a moment and were still.

  “You are beginning to see dark spots at the periphery of your vision,” McKnight told her. “A warmth invades and floods through you. All your sinews are loose, your muscles are pliant. You glory in your security and contentment. You have never been more relaxed, and yet you are entirely in control. This universe is completely your own.”

  It was imperative to overcome Evelyn’s barricades, and to do so her defenses had to be breached from within. That McKnight had reached this point, especially after the inflammatory tone of his previous questions, might have been deemed a significant achievement. Except that it was a path down which Evelyn had always been guiding them.

  After nearly twenty minutes of flourishes and deeply intoned words she was frozen, her senses subjugated but alert, and still awaiting a question. The Professor now handed to Canavan the candle, much of which had dissolved into a puddle of wax, and instructed him to hold it steadily as a continuing focus for Evelyn’s eyes. He stretched, worked the blood back into his limbs, and refreshed himself with a few sips of buttermilk.

  “Tastes sour,” Evelyn said dreamily from the chair, and McKnight glanced at Canavan with a smile of satisfaction.

  Lieutenant Colonel Hammersmith of the 4th West Indian Regiment has been hallucinating, stricken by a most implacable species of fever. None of the usual remedies has proved in the least bit effective. He has been moved from the stockade near Kotoko to the cruising HMS Cobra at Accra, where it is hoped the sea air might restore him. But after two weeks he is deemed close to death, and in desperation one sergeant, one bluejacket, and Corporal Ainslie of the Royal Rifle Corps have been dispatched through fifty miles of hostile jungle to Kumasi. Here, in the Ashanti capital, King Kwaku Dua I is rumored to employ powerful native restoratives stewed from acanthema petals and the wings of monarch butterflies. It is said that no Ashanti has died from fever in living memory.

  But when the three Britons fall into Kumasi after days of sapping heat and relentless downpours, they are barely alive. The King receives them in a Moorish palace decorated with skulls and clots of flesh. From his golden stool he booms with laughter when he is informed of Hammersmith’s plight and offers a gourd filled with a stinking paste that might, in fact, be a miraculous remedy but looks like something less. He sends them back through the jungle to the pounding of the death drum.

  Two days later only Ainslie is alive. The Ashanti gourd is completely empty, the supposedly magical restorative consumed in vain by his two companions. Resting half-delirious amid candlestick trees not far from where he first played the pipes, the Scotsman is approached by two saintly natives in saffron robes. He assumes they are tribesmen of the Fanti, who inhabit the surrounding rain forest and have fought alongside the British in numerous engagements.

  They offer him sweet water, which almost instantly clears his head, and escort him to a platform high in the ribbing of a vast, umbrellalike tree—a magical haven festooned with flaglike cloth and populated by chattering monkeys. A fetish priest with ornate scalp tattoos and ageless eyes, chewing continuously on amber leaves, welcomes him and communicates to him with hand signals, the native Twi, and fractured English.

  That thing, you make music with it?

  “If you mean the pipes, I am the one,” Ainslie agrees, ill at ease in the lofty cabin.

  My master, he like to hear this music again.

  “Again?” Ainslie asks, confused. “Your master has heard me before?”

  Some days ago my master, he met you.

  “At Kumasi?”

  In the jungle he met you, at that place you have come from.

  Ainslie blinks, thinking about it. “The boy? The boy is this master of yours?”

  The priest agrees, and Ainslie feels strangely chilled. “I will gladly play for your master,” he manages, “but I have little time to spare.”

  Play now, and my master, he will hear the music echo.

  Ainslie is further puzzled by this, and asks the fetish priest to repeat himself several times to make sure he has understood.

  “Where…where is this master of yours?” he asks, frowning.

  My master, you can see him here, the fetish priest replies, and gestures to his eyes.

  “Your days at the orphanage, Evelyn…what do you see?”

  “A parcel…tightly bound.”

  “But I seek to invoke specific memories, Evelyn.”

  Nothing.

  “Do you recall the Incident of the Chalk?”

  Nothing.

  “Do you remember anything at all to do with chalk?”

  Evelyn’s face was completely unmoving, as though she had not even heard the question.

  McKnight breathed out. “It is important that you transport yourself back to those days, Evelyn. There must be atmospheres, episodes, incidents, and emotions that we can attempt to unlock.”

  No response.

  “Do you not remember enthralling the other girls with your fantasies? Do you not remember those bitterly cold nights when the only warmth was generated through the power of your imagination?”

  Total blankness.

  “This is disappointing, Evelyn. I believe you agreed to this process with the understanding that you would hold nothing back. That there would be no barriers. I will not insist, nor will I drag anything from you forcibly, but I remind you that we cannot succeed without your full cooperation. If you understand me now, I’d like you to respond with a single nod.”

  There was a long pause, but at last she did so.

  McKnight cleared his throat. “Do you remember the chalk?” he asked again.

  Nothing.

  “Do you remember the girls there?”

  Nothing.

  “Your friends? The governor? The ones who came to claim you?”

  No answer.

  McKnight sighed. “This is most disheartening, Evelyn.”

  “I never met him directly,” Hettie Lessels insisted. She had a moistened rag she was using as a handkerchief and she was unfurling and twisting it incessantly. “He did all his dealings with Lindsay and Smeaton, not me. He did not want to be known, and he was a cagey one, that much was plain. He did his business and then he was gone.”

  “And what business was this?” Fleming asked.

  “They…they would not tell the likes of me.”

  “They must have told you something.”

  “Nothing.”

  “Come now, madam.”

  Groves, feeling uniquely authoritative, interjected again. “No one is holding you accountable,” he said. “And Mr. Ainslie is already dead. So please, you may proceed, and hold nothing back. It will all come out eventually.”

  She looked up at him with an air of struggling remorse. And in truth she wanted so desperately to purge herself, to lay herself bare, whatever the consequences.

  “What did they tell you about Ainslie?” Groves went on. “It is clear that you know more than you have said.”

  Lessels hesitated, overcoming a final surge of resistance. “Only that…”

  “Aye?”

  She squeezed her rag. “Only that he came back from Africa with…”

  “With what?”

  “With a way of snaring the de�
��il himself,” Lessels said, and quivered at the memory.

  The Reverend Smeaton and Colonel Munnoch, sitting in the parlor of the latter’s Moray Place abode, observe the visitor with disapproval: a cocksure type, irreverent, insubordinate—his military discharge has been noted—and done up in a burgundy frock coat like a brothel proprietor, he represents in many ways everything they most despise. But he may nevertheless serve a purpose.

  “Lieutenant Colonel Hammersmith made a complete recovery,” Ainslie says. In his hand he has a glass of fine scotch that he is swilling appreciatively, having always had a fondness for whisky. “I made it back to the coast and fed him a mixture of grass and berries in the guise of an Ashanti restorative, the one we had been sent to find, but it was only a pretense. In point of fact, his health was restored by a far greater power, as a form of payment—a pact, if you will—for my performance with the pipes.”

  “And what sort of payment was this,” Colonel Munnoch observes, stroking his mustache, “when you were out on your heels not one year later?”

  “It drew me certain privileges, for a time. But very soon the army had nothing to offer me. I had developed more ambitious plans, you see, of a more personal nature.”

  “You headed back into the jungle?”

  “And I played the pipes some more.”

  “For the fetish priest you speak of?”

  “For the lodger in his mind. The one who walks in his dreams.”

  “The wee fellow—the naked imp you saw on the tree trunk?”

  Ainslie raises his glass and takes a sip, as though to fortify himself. “That was one of his incarnations, aye.”

  Smeaton sniffs, vaguely unsettled. “And how, sir, are we to accept that you would even recognize the one you indicate? Are you a churchgoer, by any chance?”

  “A man does not need a bank account to recognize a financial institution.”

  Colonel Munnoch grunts at the man’s impertinence. “So he appeared to you in person, you claim, when this fetish priest dreamed?”

  “Several times.”

  “And what…what was he like?”

  Ainslie stares into the whisky. “A rather agreeable fellow, I would have to say. A weary old soul, worn out by past revelries. In other circumstances I believe we might have got along famously.”

  Smeaton and Munnoch glance at each other, unhappy with this sympathetic assessment. “And what did the Lord of Lies say to you?” the Colonel inquires pointedly.

  Ainslie smirks and stares at the two men steadily. “He said that he was tired of residing in the old man’s imagination. And that he was hunting for a room with a more interesting view.”

  Canavan cleared his throat. “Try the third person.”

  McKnight glanced at him at first doubtfully, but then remembered her habit of objectifying herself in her dreams, and looking back at Evelyn, he decided that it could do no harm.

  He stared again into her eyes. “There is a little girl, much like you, Evelyn,” he said. “She is in the orphanage. Do you recognize her?”

  Blankness.

  “I believe she is holding something. A piece of chalk. Do you see it?”

  Evelyn’s eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly.

  “You see the girl, Evelyn? The girl? Do you see her?”

  Nothing.

  “I know you see her, Evelyn. What is she doing?”

  Evelyn trembled.

  “Does she cry? Does she sing? Does she remember anything?”

  Evelyn gulped and her pupils contracted as though at a burst of light.

  “She remembers something?” McKnight said hopefully. “What is it, Evelyn? What does she remember?”

  “She remembers Leerie,” Evelyn said.

  “Think of it, gentlemen,” Ainslie says, enjoying the righteous gleam on their faces and rueing the time he has wasted in not returning to Scotland earlier. “The devil. Lured into an empty vessel. Trapped inside and completely at your mercy. I leave it to your own imaginations as to what you might do with him.”

  “I never liked him.”

  “You have said that, madam,” Fleming said impatiently.

  “He was a swindler, he saw only ways of making gain. And if that meant practicing his craft on the very de’il, then so be it, he could not be stopped.”

  “Aye…”

  “There was a lass, she played his wife. A comely type, a lady friend from the theater. The type a man might grieve over and do everything to save. They painted her up to look ill.”

  “To look ill? Why?”

  “As part of the pact.”

  “With the devil?”

  “Aye—with the de’il. The de’il was supposed to cure her, but did not know he was being duped.”

  “Because she was not in fact ill?”

  “Ye do not have to believe me.”

  Groves interjected. “I believe you.”

  But Fleming had a more cutting tone. “And what was this mysterious woman’s name, madam?”

  “I canna remember her name.”

  Fleming nodded skeptically. “Aye.”

  “I never met her at all.”

  “Aye.”

  “She stayed at the lodge for a time, and when she played her part she was gone.”

  “What lodge was this?” Groves asked, fascinated.

  “A hunting lodge of Colonel Munnoch’s. It had not been used for many a year. On the Old Dalkeith Road, next to Drumgate Cemetery…”

  When it becomes clear that the deal will be settled and that he will be receiving a substantial fee, Ainslie produces a formidable cigar and strikes a match on the fireplace: an ostentatious gesture that sets Smeaton’s teeth on edge.

  “We’ll need a house,” Ainslie says, issuing smoke. “A fair house, not bare of furnishings.”

  “It can be arranged,” Munnoch assures him.

  “I’ll need to return to the Gold Coast to fetch the priest. The man trusts me, and he must never be allowed to suspect anything. I cannot make this warning more emphatically.”

  “We appreciate the gravity of the situation.”

  “I will escort him to the house, which I will introduce as my ancestral home, and allow him to memorize the rooms in necessary detail.”

  “That can be arranged,” Munnoch says, but his stomach clenches at the prospect of such a man setting foot on his estate. “How long will all this take?”

  “I believe it will take some days for the house to appear in his dreams, and even longer before his lodger walks in its halls. To facilitate this, the priest will need to be offered some safe and peaceful accommodation…some place conducive to rest and dreams.”

  Munnoch’s throat tightens. “That, too, can be arranged.”

  “The lodger may appear at any time. In order to make the transition as smooth as possible, he will tailor a form specifically to appeal to his new host. I don’t believe that we personally will be in any danger, but I think we should do our best to avoid laying eyes on him.”

  The two men nod uneasily.

  “When the…transaction is complete,” Ainslie says, smiling ambiguously, “I will require the second half of my payment promptly, in pounds sterling. I will never speak of this matter again, and I expect you never to tip your hat to me if you cross me in the street.”

  “That can most assuredly be arranged,” Munnoch says.

  Ainslie smirks. “And we’ll need a host, of course. A young and healthy specimen is in order—a child, perhaps, who I can pass off as my own. It is expected to be an indefinite lodging.”

  Munnoch now looks at Smeaton, who thinks at once of his friend Abraham Lindsay.

  “That also can be arranged,” Smeaton adds quietly.

  “She is in a carriage…she is traveling somewhere…and she is exhilarated.”

  “Where is she going, Evelyn? Can you see?”

  Evelyn shook her head.

  “And there are no distinguishing signs at all? Buildings? Hills?”

  “Her eyes are covered.”

 
“But where is she taken, Evelyn? Can you tell us that?”

  “A large house. She has never seen such comfort.”

  “And is she treated well there, this little girl? She has done nothing wrong, after all.”

  Evelyn looked upset. “No,” she spat. “She is…imprisoned.”

  McKnight nodded sympathetically. “As she was at the orphanage? A parcel, tightly bound?”

  “No…”

  “She is not, Evelyn?”

  “The bed is most comfortable and she is fed well.”

  “Aye? Then how is she imprisoned, Evelyn?”

  “She is restricted.”

  “Restricted, Evelyn? By whom?”

  “The Great Deceiver.”

  “Mr. Ainslie? But why does he restrict her, Evelyn? Is it punishment?”

  “He does not want her to see things.”

  “He does not want her imagination to take flight, is that it?”

  “No,” Evelyn answered firmly. “He does not want her to see beyond the limits of the house.”

  “Why is this, Evelyn?”

  She struggled but could not answer.

  “Does he not want her to know where she is?”

  “Not her…” she answered hoarsely.

  “Excuse me, Evelyn?”

  “Not her,” she repeated, slightly louder.

  “Then from whom is he withholding the location of the house?”

  “From Leerie,” she replied.

  Fleming regarded Hettie Lessels with disbelief. “Let me see if I understand you,” he said. “You say that this African fellow, this witch doctor…he had the devil himself living in his mind.”

  “Aye,” said the widow.

  “Hibernating there, safe and sound.”

  “Aye.”

  “That this is the way the devil has always lived, hidden in the mind of some chosen host. Somebody with a brilliantly developed imagination. An artist, a writer…”

  “Aye…it was what the others believed.”

  “And he can walk the earth, the devil, but only while his host is asleep.”

  “His greatest power, they said. To cast a shadow from the world of dreams.”

  “So if this witch doctor dreamed of the jungle, then the devil walked through that jungle, in whatever shape he desired. And if the witch doctor dreamed of some far-distant city, then the devil walked in that city.”