Tales of the Grotesque: A Collection of Uneasy Tales

by L. A. Lewis

  ‘I concluded that it had, for once, found a man it could take a fancy to, and that it might, in future, be quite a good tractable “flying pig”. Had I paused to consider, I might have realised that its malign intelligence embraced no mean degree of subtlety.

  ‘I got another contract about then, ferrying mails between London and Lisbon, and on the expiry of this found Derek all set for an attempt on the Cape Town record. He wanted me to join him as copilot, so that we could make a non-stop effort, taking it in turns to sleep; but I figured that, although the “swine" might have cottoned on to him, it quite definitely disliked me, and, knowing something of the route, I appreciated some of its unique opportunities of getting its own back on the only pilot who had consistently held it down. I accordingly made plausible excuses and left him to carry on with a promising young ex-sergeant pilot whom he had met - incidentally an accomplished navigator - just the man for that class of work.

  ‘About a month ago, and some few days before they were due to start, I happened to be on Lympne Aerodrome, which they had chosen as their jumping-off point, and saw them warming up the engine for a test. The sergeant had done the “sucking in" with Derek in the cockpit attending to the switches. As soon as the engine got going, Derek climbed out of the “iron swine" and left it ticking over with the usual chocks before the wheels to prevent it moving. He busied himself rolling up the engine covers and screw pickets which had been dumped some ten yards in front of the machine, and his co-pilot walked over to ask me for a match. We stood talking for a few moments, and it was by the merest chance that I noticed, out of the corner of my eye something unusual in the behaviour of the “iron swine”. Whether its engine revs, accelerated slightly, causing my trained ears to catch the sound first, I am not prepared to say, but when I looked straight at it, the thing was gently swinging its tail as though alternately operating its left and right wheel brakes, and, in so doing, pushing the chocks aside,

  ‘Strictly speaking, it is a bad practice to leave an engine running without some responsible person at the controls, but I am afraid I’ve seen it done very often, though I have never previously known an aircraft to move when throttled down. This thing, however, was accomplishing the feat, and I had never sensed a more diabolical threat than I read in the small, piggy eyes that were its twin cockpits. As it lurched free of the chocks and rolled forward at the unwitting

  Derek, I yelled a warning to him and jumped for the port wing. It nearly had both of us then, for, as if again automatically working its brakes, it swung fast after him as he ran, and would have damn near beheaded me with its trailing edge if I hadn’t thrown myself down. The sergeant pilot - a devilish athletic man - cleared me in a jump, was up the wing to the cockpit and switched off the ignition.

  ‘I heard the thing squeal at him as he did it.

  ‘Well, it was no use talking either to him or Derek about an aeroplane possessed of a devil. They just hadn’t the mentalities to picture such a thing, and put the whole affair down to a fluky sort of accident probably due to the fact that the grass was wet. I wished them a successful trip, and caught a coach for Town.

  ‘The rest of their attempt is very recent history, and you must all know the main facts, though perhaps I can supply details not published in the Press, having had one or two private cablegrams from Derek, despatched at points en route. Apparently they got down to the Mediterranean without any particular trouble, and then the fun started.

  ‘I fancy the ‘Iron swine" was accustomed to Europe, and didn’t like being taken South. At all events, they had all imaginable snags from engine failure to sand-storms, and lost all chance for the record in the first three days. After that, as you’re aware, they kicked off to fly the Sahara and went missing.’

  Beckett stopped, and moodily tapped his teeth with a pencil. In view of his gift for narrative, the yarn seemed strangely incomplete, and we all kept our mouths closed, wondering if he had anything to add.

  At last the vicar broke the silence. ‘I think you said earlier on,’ he remarked, 'that you knew of five owners of this machine, but you have only mentioned four. Who was the fifth?’

  Beckett looked at him with a very thoughtful expression.

  ‘I am,’ he replied unexpectedly. ‘Derek and I were old friends, and he left the aircraft to me in his will.’

  ‘But,’ I interrupted, ‘as the thing’s missing and probably crashed, you can scarcely claim - ’

  Beckett transferred his gaze to me, and he is the kind of man who can stop the average speaker by that gesture alone.

  ‘It hasn’t crashed,’ he answered. ‘I received a cable from Cairo just before I reached the Club, telling me that it has been found in the desert by an R.A.F. rescue formation, nearly three hundred miles off its course. They wore both good navigators, and I can only assume that the ‘iron swine" managed to fake its compass for them. It is evident that they ran out of petrol, and attempted to get away overland without adequate provisions, as their bodies have been located several miles from the aircraft and, of course, picked clean by vultures.’

  ‘Well,’ said Jacobs, the Club instructor, who had been a silent, if incredulous, listener, ‘now the machine’s yours, what do you propose to do with it?’

  Beckett thrust out his jaw, and a hard light came into his eyes as he turned to his questioner. ‘I’ve never done a parachute drop yet,’ he observed with deliberation, ‘and I wouldn’t start ’em for fun at this stage of my career - but I’m going out to Egypt, and I’m taking a caravan to the “iron swine”. When I reach it, I shall put on a ’chute and pour enough into the tanks to take me to five thousand feet. At about that height I shall tie the controls, step out, and pull the rip-cord.’

  Animate In Death

  WHEN EYSTONT'S old schoolfellow, Raymond Cary, wrote asking him to spend a long fishing holiday on his newly constructed houseboat in Norfolk, the middle-aged journalist accepted the invitation with alacrity, little dreaming what lay behind it.

  True, mid-winter did not seem the most attractive season in which to pursue this sport, but it was unquestionably the best time of the year for pike, and, from what he knew of Cary, he could trust him to supply alternative amusements when the weather proved really foul. Eyston was, moreover, a widower without family ties and, by vocation, strictly a freelance writer - both of which factors left him every liberty in the matter of changing his address. His only serious hobby was psychic research, and it was said of him by the very few who could call themselves intimate acquaintances that his real existence was bound up in this pursuit, and that his impecunious spasmodic reporting activities were an irksome interference that he only tolerated through sheer financial need.

  He consulted time-tables, and wired Cary his hour of arrival at Yarmouth. The latter met him at the station with a baby saloon, and they set off for the hinterland with Eyston’s suit-cases piled on the back seat.

  ‘Well,’ said Cary conventionally enough, ‘glad you could come, old boy. Brought any fishing tackle? Haven’t got any? No matter. I’ve plenty of rods and lines, and think I can promise you some decent sport. Should love one of us to take a record fish if only this other matter wasn’t so - Still, you’ve not heard of that yet!’ Eyston pretended not to notice the strained, even frightened look in his eyes and the incoherence of his speech. His friend was clearly troubled over something - and to no small degree but he preferred not to press him.

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ said Cary at last, ‘fishing isn’t my only object in asking you down. I naturally remembered your old-time keenness for it, but I also recalled your interest in the - well, er - the Occult.’ He glanced momentarily from the road ahead at his companion’s face, but Eyston replied only by an inquiring cock of the eyebrow. They were neither of them loquacious men. ‘It’s like this, you see,’ Cary continued; ‘as you know. I’m a sort of natural-born gipsy, and a year or so ago it struck me what an ideal existence it would be to live on a houseboat in some really isolated spot, whenever one felt like a rest from t
he noise of cities and travel. Being, as you also know, something of an all-round handy-man, I thought half the fun would be in making the thing myself. I did so in the yard of a local boat-builder - flatter myself I did it well, too - and had it towed by him to its present anchorage. The point is, I constructed every blessed bit of it, furniture and all, out of new timber, and it has only been completed a fortnight. It can't be haunted.'

  Eyston lowered the near side window to throw out a cigarette stub, and methodically raised it again before offering any comment.

  ‘But what makes you think it is?’

  His friend drew in to the bank as the klaxon of an approaching car sounded beyond a bend; but the movement was mechanical. His eyes appeared to be focused on vacancy.

  ‘A dream, I suppose,’ he answered in a far-off voice, ‘and yet a dream that was real Oh, I don’t know! Explain better when we get there.’ He shrugged himself back into normality and accelerated They crossed a bridge, turned into a by-road, and arrived some

  twenty minutes later at one of the infrequent staithes, or public landing-stages, that sene shore-going parties during the pleasure-boat season, and occasional sugar-beet wherries in winter.

  Cary ran the car into a deserted barn and got out, followed by Eyston. 'Keeping the old barrow here for the present,’ he explained, 'and I don’t even have to lock it up. There are few holiday-makers about now, and the locals in these parts are very honest. That’s my dinghy,’ he added, pointing to a small craft moored between two hay-boats alongside the barn.

  Dusk was now falling, and beyond the boats Eyston could see the unruffled sweep of one of the larger Broads fading away into the gathering evening mist.

  His host lifted the luggage from the car and dumped it on board the dinghy. ‘Perhaps you’d like to row?’ he suggested. 'It’ll keep you warm, and as I know the way to the houseboat it will be quicker for me to steer.’

  He dropped into the stem seat and picked up the rudder cords while Eyston untied the painter and pushed off with an oar.

  ‘We go practically straight across,' Cary went on. ‘It’s about half an hour’s pull, and there’s just enough visibility to see the guide -posts. For really bad fog I’ll have to get a pocket compass.’

  Eyston nodded, watching the landing-stage gradually vanish as he pulled out on the open water.

  ‘The setting is first rate for ghosts and bogies,’ he remarked. 'Suppose you tell me some more of what’s on your mind?’ His friend, eyes fixed on an approaching guide-post, hesitated for a moment.

  ‘Have you ever dreamt identically the same thing two or three times?’ he countered.

  ‘No,’ said Eyston. “but I’ve met people who claim they have. Most occultists put it down to subconscious memory of an episode in a past life.’

  Cary grunted. ‘Yes, I know - but this isn’t a memory. Look here, old man. I guess I’ll leave you to experiment with the dream part of it at first hand. There is, though, a story concerning this water, which I will tell you now, because I honestly believe the two things are connected.

  ‘Some time last July - I was at work on the houseboat then, and read of it in the local press - two girls wore camping out on the Broads in a skiff fitted with an awning. They must have made a pretty comprehensive tour, for their craft - an unusual one in these parts - was noticed from time to time in various districts. They used to shift their location mostly at night or early morning to avoid the head wash and risk of collision occasioned by motor cruiser traffic which, as you may guess, is not always in expert hands.

  ‘It was this habit which resulted in their arrival here somewhere between midnight and one a.m., and as it was too dark for them to find the staithe, and they were dead tired anyway, they tied up to the first reed-bed they struck and promptly turned in for the night. Possibly, in their haste, they didn’t moor the skiff securely, for it was observed soon after dawn adrift in mid-water with the awning lowered. The staithe-keeper went out in a boat to rouse the occupants and bring them in shore, and found one girl fast asleep and the other missing. He naturally supposed the second girl had landed somewhere, until her half-awakened companion suddenly aroused herself, and asked him in some excitement where she was. The staithe-keeper suggested that she might have gone ashore in the night without awakening her, and that the boat had happened to break adrift at that particular period; but when, after a whole day’s search, involving enquiries on all other craft moored in the vicinity, the missing girl failed to show up, it was taken for granted that she had fallen overboard in her sleep, and caused the boat to come adrift.

  ‘How this could have happened without the shipping of any water aboard the lightly balanced skiff and disturbing her friend, was by no means clear, but the other girl was so genuinely distressed that no suspicion of foul play on her part was entertained, and she was finally established at a local inn, having refused to remain on the skiff alone, while a more exhaustive search was organised.

  ‘To make my ending brief, the missing girl never has been found, despite the use of drag-nets and the voluntary help of hundreds of holiday-makers who swam over the entire Broad, exploring the bottom as they went - an easy matter, as the depth is only four or five feet.’

  Eyston rowed on in silence for several minutes. In any discussion of this nature he always tried to maintain an attitude of impartial receptiveness, as from experience he had found that too many queries and promptings sometimes suggested ideas to the other person’s mind and confused his statement of facts.

  He observed finally, when it became obvious that Cary did not mean to continue, ‘I used to know all this water pretty well, and, to my recollection, the mud is both soft and deep. That could easily account for not recovering a body.’

  ‘Mud be damned!’ was the irritable reply, followed by a contrite apology. ‘Sorry, old boy! Rude of me! But you don’t know what I’ve been through! Four times in ten days - every time I’ve slept in that top bunk - the corpse thing has been my night-long companion - a hideously decayed yet living body - gesturing to me - supplicating - swimming!’

  ‘Steady,’ warned Eyston as they ploughed on through the darkening mist, ‘if this show is jarring your nerves like that you’d best quit. In the meantime you’ve got me interested and I want to smell around.

  We can stay up all night if you like. I suppose you've got some food and beer on board?’

  ‘And so, you see,’ Cary ended up, sipping his eighth Scotch and splash, the thing finally got beyond me. and you were the only consultant I could think of. I’ve had no previous experience of such matters, and I’ll admit candidly that I'm scared stiff. It’s not only the ghastly aspect of this rotting carcass, but the terror of knowing I’m asleep and yet being unable to wake up.

  ‘The first time that only seemed to last a minute or two - bad enough even so - but I did manage to force my eyes open at last, and came to my senses literally soaked in sweat. The second and third occasions were a bit worse. I kept closing my eyes, willing myself awake, and then opening them to find myself still hanging suspended in that veil of greenish water, staring at the writhing, worm-eaten body. The night before last was the worst of all. I could not awake! I tried - Oh, my God, Eyston - so hard! I even bit my fingers till they bled... There are the scars - real physical scars on my real, physical body. I remembered the exact conditions of falling asleep, precisely how I had been lying and how the furniture had looked in the light of the lamp which I had left burning; but, try as I would, I could think myself back into reality. All that I saw was real; the green, cloudy water, the corpse, and the sluggish fishes. My ordinary life was cut off from me by an invisible, impalpable barrier, suggesting that Death itself had overtaken me. It was not until the body’s rotting lips opened as though to speak and an eel swam out that I awoke out of that horrible sleep. I fainted then for the first time in my life - or, if you like, dreamed that I fainted - and came to lying just where your chair is on the cabin floor. Thank God it was then daylight! This is the first time I’ve been back
since. I wrote you at once and stayed last night in Yarmouth.’

  Eyston removed his pipe, and tapped his teeth thoughtfully with the stem, his features grave.

  ‘The exact conditions you’ve described,’ he said soberly, ‘are quite new to me, but, by a sort of intuition that often helps me, I’ve a hazy idea of their cause. As far as you’re concerned, in fact, I feel I can already give you some advice without going further into the matter.

  ‘Your observation in the car was correct. Your brand new house boat can't be haunted. It’s the site where you’re moored that is. Shift the houseboat and it’s a safe bet you won’t be troubled again.’

  Cary broke out feverishly: ‘But, Eyston, you don’t understand! She - it - never actually spoke, but I could sense each time that there was life there - somehow imprisoned - trying to escape. The pity of it almost equalled the horror. Somehow’ I feel as if I had been positively sent here to be of some help. Of course, I know I can’t do anything, being a hopeless ignoramus in such affairs. That’s why I sent for you.

  ‘You see,’ he continued after a frowning pause, ‘I’ve heard of such things as earth-bound spirits, even though I haven't believed. I’m convinced that this is one, and I can’t shift the houseboat until her spirit is free. Also - why, I don’t know - I’ve a conviction that it isn’t the girl’s own fault. She is the victim of either an accident or a trap set by devils. God knows just where her physical body really is - but I’m sure she’s tied to it - snared as I was nearly snared two nights ago. She cannot die until she wakes, nor wake until she dies, but the life is there, the movement - unmistakably. It isn't just the water currents. Sleep in that bunk, Eyston, and prove it for yourself.’

  The occultist shook his head and slowly poured himself out a glass of ale.