The Dark Corners

by Robert J. Tilley

  “Where was the first paper?”

  “I left it in the headmaster’s study when I brought the alternative paper back with me.”

  “And you say you prepared the first paper the night before the exam. Where did you do it?”

  “Here.”

  “And you’re convinced in your own mind that it would have been impossible for this boy or anyone else to have seen it before you took it to the classroom that morning?”

  “Utterly impossible.”

  Hull said, flatly, “Then what are you actually saying? That the headmaster left his copy lying around for anybody to pick up, or that the boy is a mind-reader?”

  “He can read minds, yes,” Pardoe said.

  Hull watched him for a long silent moment, his face impassive. The dog yawned, a cavernous exercise that concluded with a muffled snap as its jaws closed. It slumped again, its chin resting across its forelegs.

  Hull said, “What happened then?”

  “I told him to go back to his seat, then I finished writing the questions on the board. I watched him while the exam was in progress. He wrote nothing, simply sat there staring at me for the better part of two hours. When it was over, I had the papers collected and told him to stay behind when the others had gone. When we were alone, I asked him if it was true,”

  “That he was a mind-reader?”

  Pardoe nodded. “Yes.”

  “What did he have to say for himself?”

  “He admitted it.”

  Hull’s eyebrows lifted. “Just like that?” He fumbled his pipe from his pocket, and tucked it into a corner of his mouth. “Did you believe him?”

  “Of course.” Something like anger showed in Pardoe’s eyes. “Don’t you see? I had to believe him. This was the culmination of it all, the label for the hundred and one demonstrations that I’d witnessed and been so puzzled by. His anticipation of things, his never-failing—preparedness. He knew what to do in any situation that involved dealing face to face with an opposite party.” He stared down at the carpet, his hand automatically reaching for the supine figure of the dog.

  “I asked him if he really realised what this meant. He said yes. His facial expression when he said it was the most complex thing I’ve ever seen; contempt, malice, hatred, triumph, they were all there, and others, besides. I asked him to tell me about it, and he did. He told me what it was like for a seeing person to live in a world of the blind, where everything was etched in detail for him and only him. He talked about the unbelievable dirt of the human mental condition, and the fear and ignorance and pathetic fumbling in the darkness of not knowing. He talked about man’s lack of faith in man and how it justified itself by its existence, and the stupidity of commitments to unseen gods. Then he went on to tell me how he used these things.”

  Hull watched him as he talked, sensing desperation and resignation in the tableau, the quietly talking man and the limp animal at his feet, the stale and shabby book-littered room, thick with the afternoon heat. Just how sane is he? Hull wondered. He searched for his lighter, his eyes steady on Pardoe”s dulled, waxy face.

  “He used them as a tool, a procuring instrument. When he wanted something, he probed with his mind until he knew the best way to get it. He exploited misfortune, guilt and circumstance as it suited him, using anyone around him that could assist with his requirements of the moment. He described several instances of how he’d done this. The one that particularly stuck in my mind involved his sister. She’s a year older than him, and left school last year. Carver knew that she’d been out with various boys, and on one occasion had let rather more happen than was really wise. He wanted money at the time, I forget what for. He told her that he’d seen what happened on the particular evening involved, and unless she got hold of five pounds for him, he would see to it that their father was told. She got it by taking two pounds from her father’s wallet, and the rest from other girls’ clothing in the gymnasium dressing room. Since then, he’s used her as a steady source of income whenever his interests of the moment have required financial investment.”

  Hull said, “Assuming for the sake of argument that all this is true, there’s one thing that puzzles me. Harking back to the time of the exam, how was it that he came to write those wrong answers at all, since he must surely have known that you were out getting a substitute set, or, alternatively, why didn’t he destroy the paper before you got back with them?”

  Hull said, “His range seems to be relatively limited. He wouldn’t admit it at first, but I later found out that his effective reading area is somewhere around fifteen to twenty feet. The headmaster’s study is on the far side of the building, and I was back in the room before he fully realised what was going on. He was picking up a lot of random interference from the rest of the class, too, of course.”

  Hull inclined his head, clicked his lighter, and commenced to puff his pipe alight. “All right. Then what?”

  “When he’d finished telling me all this, I asked him if he simply intended to go on abusing his ability in the same sort of way. He laughed at this. He pointed out that since he had us, the fumbling, blind people, firmly by the throat, and quite unable to take any form of legal action to stop him, to abandon his present thoroughly pragmatic use of his talents would be quite senseless. What would he gain by it? His outburst of confidence, he admitted, had been largely induced by the circumstances in which he’d been trapped. It was a chance for him to boast about his power, and in the confines of the classroom, he felt perfectly safe in telling me what he did. Once outside again, of course, he would simply deny anything that I chose to make public.” Pardoe paused, briefly.

  “He also told me that if I made a statement of any kind, he would retaliate with an accusation of attempted indecency and subsequent malicious slander. Despite the fact that he was confident that my awkwardness caused by my production of the written answers could be bluffed aside, he would simply prefer to be spared the trouble. In my own interests, therefore, I would be wise to destroy the only piece of evidence that could support such a claim on my part.”

  Hull said, “He’d have a job proving anything himself, of course.”

  Pardoe smiled, thinly. “That’s true, but he knows more than enough about the workings of human nature. In the case of his own, much more credible story, peoples’ imaginations and ingrained suspicions would accept it as readily as they would dismiss mine.” His face showed no bitterness. “Anyway, I eventually told him that he could go, and he did. I sat there for a long time, an hour at least. The caretaker was late making his rounds that evening, and it was only his arrival that snapped me out of the daze that I was in. When I left, though, I knew what I had to do. He had to be taken to a place where it would be impossible for him to continue to prey on anyone that he chose. I had a wild hope that if he could be isolated from the dirt and greed and exposed to nothing but pure theory for a time, his mind would still be open enough to accept the sense of a balanced social order and all the curtailments that are essential ingredients of it.”

  Hull grunted non-committedly. “How did you get him out here?”

  “He lives some way out of the town, as you know. I followed him to the cinema that evening, and then home again. He was riding a bicycle, and I had my estate car. I kept my distance until we were clear of the houses, then when the road was free of traffic I pulled up to him and ran him into the hedge. Before he had a chance to untangle himself, I was out of the car and had a chloroform pad over his face. Then I put him and the bicycle in the car and brought him here.”

  “Very efficient,” Hull said, drily. He squashed the dottle in his pipe with a heavy finger, and flicked his lighter again. “I take it no traffic passed you while all this was going on.”

  “No, none. When I got back here, I took him up to the attic where he’s been ever since. I had to keep him tied up for the first couple of days while I soundproofed the room and bricked up the window, because otherwise he might easily have broken his neck trying to climb down a drainpipe, or
something of the sort. I took all the furniture out of the room, too, just leaving a camp-stool and a sleeping-bag. I didn’t think it wise to leave anything heavier that he might try to knock the door down with.

  “When I’d done all this, I untied him and talked to him, and explained why I was doing it, a foolish procedure under the circumstances. He let me finish, and then spat at me and told me he knew all my pathetic reasons and precisely what he thought of them. I asked him if he failed to see the logic behind a disciplined society, and he told me no, he could see it very clearly. But what he could see even more clearly was the flimsiness of the façade that made such things possible, and the incurable weaknesses of the structures themselves. I tried to reason with him for the rest of the week-end, but he simply spat, or screamed or cried. I had to leave him alone, eventually. I left books with him when I went to school on the Monday, hoping that out of sheer boredom he would read them and that some fragment of their reasoning would touch him. When I got back, he’d ripped them to pieces.”

  “How did he get out the other day?”

  Pardoe’s smile was bitter. “He fooled me. It was bound to happen eventually. About a fortnight ago, his attitude seemed to be changing slightly, for the better. The hysterics had gone, and he seemed to be listening to what I was saying when I talked to him. One day, he asked for some books. I’d stopped giving him any after the first week; they all ended up in pieces, and there didn’t seem to be a lot of point in wasting them until he showed some indication that they might be read instead of mutilated. I was overjoyed, but cautious, of course. I gave him one or two, and it was obvious from later conversation that he’d actually read at least parts of them. He asked for others, and I gave them to him, which was where I made my mistake.” Pardoe shrugged, almost apologetically.

  “One of them was a dictionary, a rather large, heavy item. He dropped some other books that I was handing him at the time, and he made as though to pick them up. Stupidly, I bent down to help him, and he hit me across the neck with it. He didn’t knock me out, but I was dazed for a few seconds. He snatched the key from my jacket pocket, unlocked the door, and then he was out. It was his intention to lock me in, but I was on my feet and at the door while he was still trying to get the key into the keyhole. He panicked and ran, and I caught him when he fell outside the house.” He paused. “You know about that, of course.”

  “Yes,” Hull said. He picked with a fingernail at some exposed strands that showed through the arm of his chair. “So in fact you’ve made no real progress with him at all.”

  “No”, Pardoe said. He sounded suddenly and utterly exhausted.

  “And what were you planning to do with him if this continued for, say, another two or three months, with no evidence of any headway?”

  Pardoe shook his head over his limply interlaced hands. “I don’t know.”

  Hull watched him, biting thoughtfully on his pipe. The dog stirred by Pardoe’s feet, whined fitfully, then looked around the room with heavy eyes. Watching it, Hull said, “What do you know about his background?” He lifted his gaze to Pardoe’s suddenly blank look. “Do you know anything at all about his parents, his home life? Has he volunteered anything himself?”

  After a pause, Pardoe said, “It’s not too good from what I’ve heard at the school. I’ve tried to sound him out once or twice, but he wouldn’t talk about it.”

  Hull nodded. “I’m not altogether surprised to hear it. His mother pushed off with some chap a few years back, and his father’s in and out of jobs almost as often as he’s in the pub.” He busied himself with the lighter again.

  “Assuming still that you’re telling me the facts as you see them, it just occurs to me to wonder which way he’d have jumped if he’d had a stable sort of home, some sort of reasonable example set him all this time.” He tucked the lighter away. “What would you say about it?”

  Pardoe’s tongue appeared, briefly moistening his lips. “It may even have been the beginning of it.”

  “What?”

  Pardoe jerked his head, a nervously impatient dismissal. “I didn’t quite mean that. But I have wondered a lot about cause and effect, the actual reasons for it happening.” He spoke more rapidly now, a faint flicker of brightness showing far back in his eyes. “Just suppose that in fact the entire human race is on the brink of some evolutionary breakthrough; the gradual opening out of the part of our brain that we’ve never been able to categorise or map. Perhaps what you’ve just said is the key. Deprivation has caused him to seek some sort of consoling factor, a kind of refuge that only he can enter. He may have somehow jumped the gun, or discovered a short-cut, if you like, activated entirely by a lack of affection and understanding.” His eyes locked with Hull’s, and Hull saw that the brightness was a glint of fear.

  “This is only theorising, but suppose I’m right? Do you realise what it means? It means that in all the dark corners of the world, uncountable millions of them, something similar may be happening. Children may be growing up possessed of the same talent, and because of their immaturity, the unformed standards of adolescence, they see it only as a means of acquisition and revenge—” He jolted to an abrupt halt, his eyes gradually re-focussing on Hull”s watchful face. He pushed a faintly vibrating hand across his mouth.

  Hull said, “Then he doesn’t claim to have been born like it.”

  “No,” Pardoe said, dully. He moved his feet slightly, as though they ached. “As far as he can remember, it started about three or four years ago. It began very gradually, from what I can gather.” For the first time his voice held a note of tired uncertainty. “As to what he actually is, I simply don’t know. He may be the next stage in our evolutionary programme, or he may be a sport, some kind of throwback. Perhaps he’s just a freak.” He lifted his head and stared at Hull, his eyes betraying a muted something that was hard to define.

  “But whatever he is, he’s dangerous. No more dangerous person ever lived. He’s a raging megalomaniac already, and he’s incurable. Psychiatry could do nothing for him, because he sees beyond the confines of reason as we know it. He has the world in the palm of his hand, and it’s only a matter of time before he learns how to close his fingers around it.”

  There was a long silence in the room. Hull stirred, reached over to a nearby table, and carefully tapped his pipe in a bulky ceramic ashtray. He returned it to his pocket, then reached down for his hat. “That is the lot, I take it?”

  Pardoe nodded. His face was rigid, and his eyes were slightly glazed.

  “What do you think will happen?”

  “To you?” Hull said. He shrugged. “It isn’t my job to speculate on the possible outcome of court action. Whatever the charges eventually are, you can’t deny that you’ve broken the law.”

  “The law,” Pardoe said. Sudden disgust and anger choked his voice. “Don’t you realise that what you’re doing at this moment is letting loose the worst lawbreaker that ever lived, an incurable abuser of privacy, decency, and all the man-made rules that have enabled societies to be built that contain at least some element of justice?” He was white and shaking. “Don’t you see that?”

  Hull fiddled with the brim of his hat. He said, slowly, “If what you say about him is true, it’s hardly his fault. Someone like that is bound to make their own rules.”

  Pardoe stared at him, appalled. “But don’t you see what you’re saying? You’re admitting that I’m right, but you’re still permitting it to happen!”

  “You might be right, in theory at least, but even if I knew it to be fact, what could I do about it?” Hull said. He rose, set his hat on his head, and tugged it into position. “As it is, I don’t know whether I believe you or not. Perhaps I do, but whether anyone else will is another matter. Not that it will make a great deal of difference, either way.” He looked vaguely apologetic.

  “No,” Pardoe said. He rose slowly to his feet. “No, of course not.” His voice had changed again, and now Hull heard fear and saw it mirrored in his face, mingled with strangely fo
rmal regret. “It would be too much to expect, of course. Dan, watch him.”

  Startled, Hull swung his head towards the dog as it lurched growling to its feet. There was a blur of movement to his right. Hull stepped back, abruptly, jerking up an arm in a reflex protective action, just in time to block the clumsily wielded sauce bottle that splintered heavily against his elbow. Sudden vertigo threw him off-balance. He pitched on all fours, pawing feebly for Pardoe’s legs, sickly aware of the snarling breath of the dog by his face. He heard Pardoe’s snapped command, a flurry of movement, then abrupt slam of the door.

  He levered himself to his feet, enormous pressure weighting the back of his head and blurring his vision. He stumbled to the grate, grabbed the poker that lay there, then moved unsteadily towards the corridor. Somewhere near, Chapman shouted furiously, his voice mingling with the thud of a closing door.

  At the far end of the passage, the alsatian had its jaws locked on Chapman’s right forearm. Chapman was behind and astride it, his free arm locked around its neck. Beyond them was a closed door. There was no sign of either Pardoe or the boy.

  Hull went forward, the poker raised. Chapman stared up at him, then swung his leg free of the dog and backed away, his caught arm stiff and straight. Hull clubbed the dog, heavily. It staggered, whining, and Chapman cried out, buckling against the wall. Hull swung again, and the dog went down. Chapman went with it, his face chalky, and his free hand pulling feebly at its lower jaw.

  Hull blundered across the prone body of the alsatian, and wrenched at the handle of the door. It was locked. He backed, braced himself with a hand on either wall, and kicked heavily beside the lock.

  The door crashed open to reveal a stone-floored kitchen. The boy stood at the far end, pressed back against the sink, his face working convulsively and his eyes closed. There was a bread-knife in his hand, half its blade discoloured with blood.

  Pardoe was on the floor at his feet. He lay in a foetal curve on his left side, one hand buried against his stomach, the other groping for the boy. As Hull watched, the spread fingers suddenly relaxed and the hand fell.