It did not look like a “happier and better place” to me.
Even then, I managed, mostly, to believe that what I was experiencing was no more than some kind of mental projection … until I met Jack Brown.
Jack and I were close friends back then; watching each other’s back, sharing our smokes and getting drunk together during what short spells of leave we got … right up until he caught it from a shell that blew a hole in him the size of a football.
The hole was still there, a weeping wound in his belly that oozed blood and gore. There was no doubt in my mind that this was my old friend, for he greeted me with a wide smile.
“How do, mate?” he said. “Got any smokes?”
He reached out a hand and patted me on the shoulder. I felt the weight of the touch, smelled the blood and smoke on his breath.
I’m afraid that I screamed.
I blinked …
… and was back sitting in the chair in Logie Baird’s shed.
I could scarcely get the helmet off quickly enough, and once free of it, I headed straight back to the parlor and started to make inroads into the Scotch. Challenger and the small inventor found me halfway down my second glass.
“You should destroy that thing,” I said. “No good will come of it.”
“Come now, Malone,” Challenger said. “Surely you saw? We can talk with our loved ones again. How can we destroy that gift?”
I laughed bitterly.
“What I saw was no gift. It was a reminder of something best left alone, a memory too painful to revisit.” On voicing that thought, another one came to me. “And besides, I am not convinced I actually talked with the dead. I relived a memory, that is true, and in vivid detail. But perhaps that is all it was? It was my own mind showing me what I wanted to see, no more, no less.”
Challenger shook his head. “It is more, much more. If you are willing to return to the shed, we can prove that to you.”
Logie Baird laughed. “Bring the Scotch with you. You might need another after you see what we have in store next.”
I went back with them to the shed, reluctantly. But I did take the Scotch.
It seemed it was to be Challenger’s turn under the helmet.
“You don’t have to do this for me, old man,” I said.
He waved me aside. “I’m not,” he replied. “I’m doing it for me. I told you, it’s a gift. And tonight I am able to meet her again, to be with her, if only for a short time.”
I saw that he was determined; more than that, he seemed driven, as if he was in the grip of one of his more serious enthusiasms. I was not going to be able to sway him.
Logie Baird put the helmet over Challenger’s head and started to twiddle dials on the main board. The electrical system hummed, the noise getting steadily louder until the windows rattled in sympathy. The air around the chair seemed to thicken and coalesce, a mist forming in a swirling vortex.
“More!” Challenger shouted, his customary bellow somewhat muffled from inside the helmet. Logie Baird turned another dial. The noise became almost deafening. Something moved in the mist, a darker form that solidified into a definite shape, a small woman, arms outstretched toward Challenger.
He responded by reaching with both hands.
“More!” he shouted again.
By this time the whole shed shook and rattled. If I’d remembered I still carried the whisky bottle I might have been tempted to drain its contents. The floor underfoot buckled and swayed like the deck of a boat in a heavy swell. I could see the woman’s face now, and realized with some despair that I recognized her all too well. It was Challenger’s wife, dead these many months.
The Professor reached again, engulfing the … ghost, for want of a better word, in his huge arms. My head pounded and I became rather dizzy, as if floating in a heavy sea.
“Turn it off, man,” I shouted.
“No!” Challenger bellowed. “Not yet! I almost have her.”
She looked solid now, dressed in a prim black dress with white lace trimmings, black leather boots and a bonnet that lay, lopsided, on a mop of bedraggled hair.
“Turn it off,” I shouted again as the floor bucked, almost toppling me over. I didn’t get Logie Baird’s attention. But Challenger’s wife heard me. She turned her head, and I forgot to breathe. A rigid white death mask of a face stared at me, through me, to the depths of my soul. There were no eyes, no mouth, just pitch-black pits that led to eternity.
Logie Baird finally saw sense, just as Challenger made a despairing grab for his wife. The small man threw a switch. A blue crack of electricity jolted through the room and this time I was indeed thrown off my feet to land in a crumpled heap by the door.
By the time I got to my feet, Challenger had already been helped out of the helmet. He rose from the chair, his legs shaky at first.
“It was her,” he said softly, and there were fresh tears in his eyes. “I touched her, Malone. I had her in my arms again.”
I resolved there and then to keep my own counsel regarding what I might have seen, and passed him the whisky bottle. He took a long gulp from it, and when he handed it back, his eyes were clear again. He grinned widely and clapped me hard on the back.
“Well, what say you, Malone? Do we have the scientific breakthrough to beat all others, or not?”
I bit my tongue and helped myself to another slug of the Scotch. Luckily Challenger had been energized into one of his more voluble moods, and on our return to the parlor, he engaged Logie Baird in a long discussion that soon descended into technical jargon that went far over my head.
As for myself, I stared into the fire, smoked a pipe, and tried not to think of those black eye holes that led only to despair.
~2~
After that night I got weekly reports on progress from Challenger, but despite several offers of further demonstrations, I always managed to find an excuse to cry off from returning to Blackheath. However, matters were soon to force my hand.
McGuire gave me the first intimation that something was wrong. He called me into his office on a Monday morning, and bade me close the door behind me.
“I need you to go to Blackheath,” he said without preamble. I prayed it was merely a coincidence, but his next words proved that to be a false hope.
“It seems there’s been an outbreak of spooks and specters,” he said with a smile. “Knowing your predilection for the stranger stories like this, I thought it would be right up your street, Malone. Why don’t you take your pal, Challenger along with you?”
“I suspect I’ll find him already there,” I replied as I left the editor’s office. He raised an eyebrow, but I didn’t reply. I was already beginning to worry about what awaited me south of the river.
I did not have to travel far in Blackheath to get the gist of the story. After leaving the railway station I made for the tobacconist’s, and the old man behind the counter was only too happy to pass on the gossip of the day.
“It gave me a right turn, sir,” he said as he handed over my ounce of Virginia leaf. “You see, we buried her six months ago, and to have her standing there at the foot of the bed nearly had me in a box alongside her.”
“I take it you mean that you have seen your dead wife?” I asked.
He nodded, and leaned forward to whisper to me.
“She were none too happy to see that I’d taken up with Mrs. Fowler from two doors down. Then again, Mrs. Fowler was not best pleased either, for Bessie caught us in, shall I say, a compromising position.”
I do believe I was still smiling as I left the shop, but a visit to a local hostelry soon wiped the grin from my face.
It was just after noon, on a working day in December. I’d expected the place to be mostly empty, giving me a chance to pump the bar staff for information. But I had to push my way through a crowd just to get to the bar. There was a lot of whispered conversation going on, and plenty of hard drinking despite the early hour. It did not take me long to inveigle my way into a conversation and get to the bottom
of the matter.
“You can’t get away from them nowhere, mate,” my newest drinking companion said. From the grime on his face and under his nails I took him to be a manual worker. “And not just in the cemeteries either. They’re bloody coming up out of the ground all over.”
I had a rather alarming vision of skeletal hands breaking through earth, but I eventually found out he meant that spectral forms were being seen, in spots all over the village.
“And it ain’t just the recently departed neither,” an older gent said in a whisper. “I saw my old granddad last night, and he’s been gone since I was a nipper meself.”
I asked a few more questions. Nobody had, as yet, made any connection between these new spooks and the experiments being carried out by Logie Baird.
But it was surely only a matter of time.
By this time I myself was quite certain that Logie Baird was the cause of the manifestations. My belief was only strengthened when I almost bumped into a man walking on the pavement outside the inventor’s residence, only for my shoulder to pass right through the walking man’s form, with only the merest chill in my bones to tell me it had actually happened.
When Logie Baird answered the door he must have seen something of my shock in my face, for the next thing I knew, I had a glass of Scotch put in my hand.
“Get it down fast, lad,” the small man said. “They don’t call it the ‘water of life’ for no reason.”
I did as I was bid, and felt the heat spread through my innards, immediately dispelling any lingering chill. Once I felt suitably recovered I got straight to the point.
“You’ve got to stop your experiments,” I said.
“Nonsense,” the inventor replied. “We’ve just started making progress. I do believe we might even have a chance of bringing people back.”
“That’s the problem,” I muttered. “They’re coming back already.”
I told him the tales I had heard in the village. He went pale and began talking to himself.
“The field is stronger than we anticipated. But it’s not a big problem. All we have to do is focus it more intensely in the laboratory. That should stop it bleeding over a wider area.”
He headed for the rear of the house, making for the shed, ignoring me completely. I was used to this kind of behavior from Challenger. I followed Logie Baird out to his laboratory and I was not greatly surprised to find that Challenger was already there, sitting in the chair, with Logie Baird once again placing the helmet on his head.
“Did he tell you?” I asked Challenger.
The old chap nodded. “It’s not a problem …” he began.
“I can assure you, old chap, the residents of the town see it slightly differently. And if they find out that this shed is the focus of their troubles, they’ll be round with the oil and firebrands in double-quick time.”
“Don’t worry,” Logie Baird said. “I’ve already narrowed the field. It shouldn’t extend beyond the limits of the shed from now on. And I’m glad you told me, for we might not have noticed otherwise. It should have another effect, too … it should make the field around the chair itself even stronger.”
That fact did not inspire any confidence in me, but Challenger took it in his stride.
“Let’s just get on with it, shall we?” he said, his voice muffled from inside the helmet. “She’s here, waiting for me. I know it.”
“Just say when,” Logie Baird said.
“When,” Challenger replied.
The inventor threw a switch and turned a dial. The noise level rose almost immediately to a roaring cacophony, as if we stood too close to a huge engine starting up. The air around the chair turned to mist, and Challenger’s wife walked through it toward him, already a fully formed figure, the black dress brushing dust devils off the wooden floor of the hut as she passed.
“It’s working,” Logie Baird shouted. He seemed almost deliriously happy at the thought, but as for myself, I was full of foreboding. The floor bucked and swayed as Challenger reached out his arms, hands spread in anticipation. She walked inside his hug. They embraced … and Challenger began to fade, growing misty and dim.
“Switch it off,” I shouted.
Logie Baird started to make for the control board.
The female figure turned and stared at him, and the small inventor stopped dead in his tracks, rooted to the spot in fear even as the specter’s grip on Challenger tightened and he became wispy, almost formless.
I could see no other course of action. I stepped forward to the control panel and flipped every switch I could see.
The shed lifted bodily from the earth and slammed back down, hard enough to smash the windows, tip the control system off the trestle to the floor and send the chair in which Challenger sat flying through the air to smash, hard against the far wall. A crack of electricity ran through the room, blue sparks flashing across the equipment. I smelled burning. There was mist in the air again, and I thought I had failed to banish the specter, but as the shed settled I realized it was only smoke from burning electrical components. There would be no more experiments for a while—the control system was little more than burned-out metal and wire.
Challenger rolled away from the wreckage of the chair, pulled off the metal helmet and dropped it to the floor at his feet. He looked ta beaten man.
“I was there. Malone. I was with her again,” he said, and I heard his pain, felt it like a knife in my own heart. I patted him awkwardly on the shoulder.
“Perhaps this is for the best,” I said. He didn’t reply. He was listening to something. Then I heard it too, a hum, growing in intensity, seeming to come from somewhere far beneath our feet.
“Logie Baird?” Challenger asked.
The small man was puzzled. “It’s not my doing. There’s no power going through any of the laboratory circuits—at least none that I can discern.”
The floor bucked again, threatening to throw us to the ground. Wood splintered and cracked.
“There’s something under the shed,” Logie Baird said softly.
At the same moment, two floorboards were thrust up from below and a hand appeared … or rather, a set of bones appeared, for there was only sinew holding them together. I remembered my earlier worry—it seemed I had been closer to the mark than I thought. More boards were thrust aside. Skeletal arms reached in the air, pushing wood aside as they dragged decayed bodies up out of the ground.
I remembered where Blackheath got its name. It had been a mass grave for victims of the Great Plague. And now they were rising, brought forth by whatever Challenger and Logie Baird had done.
A bony hand gripped at my ankle. I kicked it away, turned, and fled alongside the two scientists as the shed was pulled apart behind us.
~3~
We intended to make for the house. It was only ten yards from the shed, but the whole lawn between the buildings seethed and roiled. More muddy hands broke through the sod and grasped at the air. Logie Baird slipped as a bony hand grabbed his ankle. He fell to one side, and another arm burst from the ground and gripped at his hair. Challenger responded without hesitation, stepping forward and stamping down hard on the exposed arm. It snapped under his feet, leaving Logie Baird to pick pieces of bone from his hair as I got him up.
I saw immediately that we were in trouble. A dozen skeletal bodies had already pulled themselves up out of the ground and blocked the path to the patio door at the rear of the house.
“This way,” Logie Baird cried, and led us through the privet hedge that bounded the south side of the property. We pushed through some thick twigs that tugged at clothes like grasping fingers, and came out onto the edge of the Heath proper.
“It seems our situation has not improved,” Challenger said dryly.
That was something of an understatement.
The whole Heath in front of us, as far as we could see, writhed as if massive worms dug just beneath the surface. The first hand to break through was the sign for a veritable forest of limbs to appear, like gr
otesque plants opening in the sunlight.
Screams came from my right. I turned around in time to see a well-dressed lady fall beneath a tumbling group of almost twenty reanimated corpses that fell on her like ravenous animals. The screams were cut off almost immediately and I turned away, not wishing to watch the abominations visited on her body by the creatures.
“What is going on, Challenger?”
He shook his head.
“I do not yet know. I only know that I mean to stop it,” he said. “But first we must find safety.”
The corpses from the Heath, an army of them it seemed, had risen almost fully from the earth and were stumbling across the broken ground, many of them heading in our direction.
Logie Baird turned back toward his residence, but that way was already closed to us too, as half a dozen shambling figures came down the path.
“We must get away from the Heath,” I said. “It’s our only hope.”
“I need to get back to the laboratory,” Logie Baird said. Challenger grabbed his arm and held tight. There was no possible way the smaller man could escape that grip.
“The laboratory is gone. You saw that. Now come. Electrical equipment can be rebuilt. Your brain cannot.”
So we fled down the hill away from the Heath, making for Greenwich through the park. Even here, the ground heaved in places, and decayed bodies pushed their way up into the light, but we were able to spot them in plenty of time to give them a wide berth and hurry down toward the river.
As we got to the foot of the park, it seemed we had escaped from the influence of the problem, but any hopes we had were dashed by the sound of screams coming from the town itself.
I had not seen scenes like it since my time in the trenches. Reanimated corpses in various stages of decomposition seemed to be everywhere we looked. Some had come up out of the park itself, and others were clambering out of a churchyard that bounded the park’s northern end.
Professor Challenger: The Kew Growths and Other Stories Page 20