Creeping Jenny

by Jeff Noon

“Maude Bryars told me a little about him. He was the very first Tolly Man. And viewed as a villain, an evil man from an evil family.”

  “Yes, that’s how he’s perceived. Well, Adam’s wife was named Guinevere. She was by all accounts as bad and as crazed as he was, and met with an untimely end. Stories and legends have grown up around her. And ever since I was a child, I have heard tales of how the demon of Guinevere Clud might be summoned up, under the correct circumstances. Over the centuries her first name was modernized to Jennifer.”

  “Creeping Jenny?”

  “Herself. Her spirit.”

  “You think this is what they were doing, the elders? Summoning a demon?”

  “I do. I do. And I saw the process take place before my eyes, as an act of possession. For within a few days I barely recognized the man who stood before me, my husband. He was thirty-nine years old. But he looked ten years older than that, easily. He wouldn’t even talk to me anymore. Thomas retreated into himself, and I barely existed as a person in his world. I was no longer his wife, except for one aspect alone: that I cared for him, and cared deeply. But I could do little that was good, or useful. He would often not even respond when I said his name. And then he told me one day – quite calmly, with no trace of madness – that he was no longer to be called Thomas Dunne, that he would prefer to take up a surname from his family tree, his great-great-grandmother’s maiden name.”

  “Which was?”

  “Your own surname. Nyquist.”

  The flames flickered in the circle of stones. Far off an owl hooted, a lonely sound in the night.

  “You may find her grave in the churchyard, if you wish. Myrtle Winifred Nyquist–”

  “Stop. Please.” Nyquist stood up. He began to pace about, agitated. The air grew darker about him. He said, “I won’t let this story happen,” without really knowing what he meant. “I won’t let it happen.” He stood with his back to her, facing the wall of Clud Tower, staring at the sevenfold knot. “I won’t let it happen.” Whispering now, over and over.

  Agnes waited a moment. “I know it’s difficult.”

  He turned to her. “You don’t understand. I’ve never had anybody, not since I was a child. I was abandoned twice over, by my mother’s death, and then by my father. I’ve been alone ever since. But I have lived! I have lived in a city half in darkness, half in light, and been happy within that world. I have at times drank myself into oblivion. But always, always knowing I would be the one in charge. That I would fight! Fight on.” He drew a deep breath and he gazed at Agnes and he said, “But now… to know of a family, of a line, a bloodline… I cannot grasp it.”

  “Sit down. Sit down, please, John.”

  He stayed on his feet, but he kept himself still, and he waited.

  She said, “The photographs drew you here, didn’t they?” He nodded. “So then, let me tell you how they were taken.”

  This settled him a little. “Yes, I’d like to know.”

  “As I said, Thomas had given up on photography. But he was still going into the darkroom on a regular basis, at least once a day. One evening I joined him there. He was no longer locking the door and he made no protest. By now, only his work mattered to him, and I don’t think he cared if I knew his secret or not. He took a clean piece of photographic paper from a box, and set it adrift in the tray of developing fluid. I stood there and watched as he lowered his hands, his two bare hands, into the tray.” She licked a flake of tobacco away from her lip. “I didn’t understand, but I made no attempt to stop him. I needed to witness the full extent of his illness, or his madness, whichever it was.”

  Nyquist said, “He’d taken the fluid from the tarn?”

  “Yes, yes. I know that now. But all I could do was watch as he kept his hands in the tray. Minutes went by. Not a word was spoken. He was concentrating deeply, forcibly. His eyes were gently closed. I believe he was forming an image in his mind. And then he drew his hands from the tray. I stepped closer. The piece of photographic paper floated in the liquid, alongside dead insects, seeds, a leaf, bits of silver stone. And I looked on in wonder, I really did. It was astonishing.”

  Nyquist took his seat at the fire. “You mean an image formed on the paper?”

  Agnes nodded, grateful for the confirmation. “Yes. Oh, it was a blur, that’s all, a dark fuzzy shape with a few smoky dots of light in it, showing the bare traces of a human face, nothing more. And Thomas was disappointed, I could tell that. But he placed it in the fixing tray and then he hung it on a line to dry, alongside other images, earlier efforts, all of them showing the same blurring, and the darkness. He was… he was trying to create something from the depths of his mind, trying to bring it alive, and it just wouldn’t come out properly, not yet.”

  “He didn’t need a camera?”

  “It was a kind of direct exposure, that’s all I could think. But he could not yet control it. It took him a few days to get it right. I helped him, I had to, because I didn’t want him to be alone. And all the time he was changing further, and becoming in my sight a different man – or rather, another man was taking control of him. Only the photographic project gave him any kind of hope. He was no longer going outside, so I had to do all the work as well, to support us, and the shopping and everything. He couldn’t show himself to anyone, because he’d changed so much. One time Doctor Higgs knocked on the door, but he refused to let her in. It was shame, or anger, I don’t know which. God knows how he felt when he looked in a mirror.” She frowned, and found a little strength. “This is when I grew closer than ever to Leonard Sadler. He was my truest companion.”

  Nyquist leaned forward. “Agnes, you said that your husband produced photographs, using this new method. Were they the ones sent to me?”

  “They were. But that came a little later. The first successful image was rather different. Here, I can show you.”

  She had a duffle bag next to the stool and she rummaged around in it for a moment, and then drew out a single photograph. “He created this by the same technique, the laying of his hands in the tray, in the waters of the tarn that he’d carried here, and then closing his eyes, his whole being concentrated in the process. I saw it all happen, the image slowly forming on the paper, right before me.”

  She handed the photograph to Nyquist and he looked at it. The image was grainy, and still blurred, and dark around the edges, but enough light had gathered in the center of the picture for a shape to be seen, clearly seen, conjured into view as from a dream. His eyes were drawn to the figure revealed. He found himself shaking.

  “Do you know what you’re looking at?”

  He nodded. “I do. It’s a young boy, he’s holding a toy gun. He’s five or six years old. I remember this back yard.” He looked at her. “My father chalked those goal posts on the back wall for me. And this washing line, the dustbin, everything… I remember it all.”

  “Now do you see, why you had to come here?”

  Agnes pulled another stick from the Tolly Man, causing it to fall into pieces, a face collapsing into nothingness.

  PORTRAIT OF WOMAN WITH TWIGS

  “I asked Thomas who the boy was, and he said, ‘My son. It’s my son, John.’”

  Nyquist continued to stare at the photograph, as Agnes Dunne talked on. He was barely listening.

  “He said it over and over again, like a spell that had taken him over. It hurt me to hear him talk in this way, for we were a childless couple. And always would be.”

  Now he looked at her.

  “My mind raced, trying to understand what my husband was saying. I asked him, ‘You mean you have a child already, by another woman?’ It was all I could think. But he gazed at me blindly, without speaking. He was as confused as I was, about what was happening. He was in pain, as well. Physical pain. His brows were knitted, his teeth set hard in his mouth, exposed, red raw at the gums, and I saw a tiny trickle of blood coming from one nostril. He’d been through hell. Just to produce this one, grainy, blurred image of a child. And for what purpose?”
/>
  “He… he made… he made this happen…”

  Nyquist was searching for words. Agnes reached over the fire to take his hand in hers. “Everything changed at that point,” she said, “after that photograph. I knew I was dealing with something I could never understand, or control. I pledged only to look after Thomas as I could, because I know for certain he would’ve done the same for me.”

  He pulled away from her.

  “Anger was growing in me. Anger at the people who did this to my husband, the so-called elders, the committee in charge of the Tolly Man festivities, self-appointed one and all, serving only themselves – Sutton, Bainbridge, Coombes, Higgs.” Disgust flavored every name. “They knew precisely what they were doing. And Thomas was their victim, their chosen sacrifice.”

  Nyquist took another look at the photograph. “I will keep this. Please.”

  She nodded. “I tried to get Thomas to explain, but my questions only riled him, and he started to shout at me. He was turning violent. I left and he slammed the door behind me. I heard him turn the lock.”

  Nyquist felt cold, he could hardly feel his hands, his fingertips, he was shivering. Stray thoughts tumbled one upon the next.

  Agnes continued, “A few hours later Thomas came into the living room. He apologized to me for losing his temper. I looked him fully in the eyes for the first time in weeks; usually he turned away from me, as though ashamed of what I might find.”

  “What did you see?”

  “A face not unlike yours, John.” She took in each of his features in turn. “Of the same lineage, the same blood. But aged. One man halfway to being someone else. He would no longer answer to the name Thomas.” She paused, and then said, “You do know, you know what name he wanted to be called by?”

  “I know.”

  Almost in dread, almost in hope, he said his father’s name out loud. Almost in pain. He felt that all his adult life was leading to this place, this one moment, these words.

  George Oliver Nyquist…

  “Of course,” Agnes continued, “part of me still thought Thomas was being delusional. That the physical changes were in some way psychosomatic.”

  “What did he do next?”

  “He had with him another seven photographs, the ones I sent to you.”

  “He asked you to post them?”

  She nodded. “I had to find your address. It was a hell of a business. The only clue he gave me was the name of a city, Dayzone, and his son’s full name.”

  “He didn’t know anything else about me?”

  “I don’t think so. I had to drive into Lockhampton, to visit the library there. I looked up John Henry Nyquist in the telephone directory for Dayzone. There were two listings, and a further seven John or J. Nyquists. I rang each in turn and made my enquiries. Only one person could help me, saying that John Henry Nyquist no longer lived at this address, but he had a forwarding address, in Storyville.”

  Nyquist told her, “Yes, I moved there a few months back.”

  “They had an old directory for Storyville, but you weren’t listed there. So I gave in. I was all set to send them to the forwarding address, but for some reason my hand would not drop the envelope into the postbox.”

  “You were worried? Of sending them to the wrong address?”

  “No, not that. But I suddenly imagined you looking at the photographs, especially at the one of your father’s face, distorted in that way. I knew it would be a shock to you, and that it might well ruin your life, whatever… whatever your life might be.” Agnes glanced away. “I lied to my husband. I told him I’d sent them. But it was only much later, about two weeks ago this was, that I found the envelope again and decided to send it on. Guilt, I suppose. And the thought had already entered my head, of what my next course of action must be. Perhaps sending them to you was one last attempt at stopping myself?”

  “Well, they found me. Eventually. Thank you.”

  “I didn’t know what else to do.”

  “Why did he want me to see the photographs? There was no letter, or explanation.”

  “He did try to write a letter. He took some time over it, could never get it right. And he ripped up one sheet of paper after another. In the end he told me to send the photographs on their own. He said that they were enough, and that you’d understand.”

  “I’m trying to.”

  “Thomas was existing at that moment on a kind of borderline. An internal border where one person crosses over into another: we all have those, even if we don’t like to think about it.”

  “We are never one person only?”

  “Exactly. And for Thomas this border had now been made real. Your father’s spirit was crossing over, taking charge. The photographs came out of that period of confusion, when one side of him was still fighting the other, in every moment that went by. One of them wanted to remain as he was, the other wanted to change completely.”

  “Which was which?”

  “I truly don’t know.” Agnes shrugged. “But I think the plea for help, calling you to the village – that too was born from the same confusion.”

  Nyquist struggled to take it all in.

  Agnes was speaking more to herself by now. “When I got back home from the library, I could see that Thomas had changed yet again. And I’ll continue to call him by that name, for as long as I live. Thomas Dunne.”

  “How did he look?”

  “Distant. Like he was standing a mile away from me, just across the room. It was almost impossible to talk to him. We grew even further apart.”

  “He left you? Agnes, is that it?”

  She nodded. “We were barely speaking to each other. We were no longer husband and wife, but two strangers in the same house. He kept to his rooms, never venturing outside.” She laughed bitterly. “I remember people asking about Thomas, how they hadn’t seen him in a while, and I made an excuse, saying that he’d gone away, that he was looking for a new place of business, in a new town. And then one morning I woke to hear him screaming. Oh, it was a terrible noise, it pained me to my heart, it did. I rushed out of bed and found him lying on the floor of the darkroom, clawing at his face with his hands, trying to tear his skin off. There was… there was blood. Blood on his fingernails.”

  Agnes breathed in deeply. She wiped at the corner of one eye with her hand. And her fingers continued on, to the cuts the Tolly mask had made on her.

  “I see it now as one last attempt to gather back what was his. His own face, his features and memories, and his life, Thomas Dunne’s life. His rightful life! But when, later on, I cleaned his face, I could see that the change was complete. I searched his eyes desperately for a sign, an inkling, that I might yet spy the man that I loved.” Frustration crossed her face. “In vain. For another man now lived in his body, and upon his face. Another man.”

  Nyquist clung on to what she was saying.

  “And that night he left, in the early hours. Creeping away. I don’t know where he went. But I knew, I just knew, that he was gone for good.”

  “He went to live in a cottage outside the village, near King’s Grave.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “And then, a while later, I believe he was kidnapped. Taken away.”

  “Yes, that makes sense. They would have to wait for the opportune moment, for the ritual to work properly. Thomas would have to be changed utterly, with every last vestige of his old self removed.”

  Nyquist could see the sense in this. But he had to ask, “But what were they trying to do, with this ritual?”

  “To bring Creeping Jenny into the world. Each of them with their own purpose.”

  “What about Len? Leonard Sadler?”

  “Oh, he was kind. He was glad, in a way, I’m sure… that Thomas and I were growing apart. Of course, I could never tell him the truth. But he could sense my anger, my rage, and he took it for something else. He gathered an amount of hope from it. And myself in turn, I could have done with a loving hand in those times. But in truth…” She s
tared deep into Nyquist’s eyes. “In truth, I was alone. And have been so, ever since.”

  She stirred the embers with a stick. A tiny red glow was uncovered.

  “I put a sign out-front, saying that we were closed for business, and I refused to open the door for any customer. Or even for my friends and neighbors. And in the darkness of my house, I nurtured my pain, and gave it sustenance, and fed it daily on bitterness and I cursed the saints, aye, all three hundred and sixty of them, and I blasphemed against the old gods. Only Creeping Jenny escaped my curses, for I hoped she would see my story concluded as it should be, in blood and justice.”

  The depths of hurt were evident in every mark on her face, every line, the cropped hair, the ash-smeared fingers.

  “Until, the urge to take some… recompense came upon me. Yes, that was the word. To take some payment for the loss of my husband, and for all they had done to him. For how they had used him, and submitted him to this trial.”

  “Are you saying… Agnes, look at me.” She did so, reluctantly. “Are you saying that you killed Ian Bainbridge, and Jane Sutton? Is that what you did?”

  “I came to Ian’s house on the night of Saint Meade, when the entire village lay silent around me. There would be no argument from him, because of the ruling, when I showed him exactly what I thought of his part in this. I swear, that was all that was in my mind. And his poor wife, why, she hasn’t uttered a word in a good long while.”

  Nyquist thrust his hands into the pockets of his overcoat. He asked, “What did you do?”

  “At most, I thought I might spit in his face. I brought Mr Peck with me, to wreck havoc in the household, and to shit on the furniture. But when I got there, Ian let me in willingly. His face showed a kind of relief, as though he welcomed my visit. He gestured for me to follow him, into the kitchen, and there we both took a seat. Before him on the table was the bowl with the moonsilver already in it, each berry ripe for the eating. A twig from the myre tree lay close by.”

  “He’d picked the berries himself?”

  “That is the case. That very day.” Agnes reached into her duffle bag and drew out some papers. “There was no sign of Ian’s wife, although I once heard a noise from upstairs. So the two of us sat there in silence. And then Ian picked up the branch and he pressed its sharpened thorns into his face, first here, then here, and then again here, pressing the thorns deep until the blood flowed. Like a penitent monk he was using a scourge on himself, hoping to cleanse his soul of sin. But his face held little expression, and there was no sign of pain, only a cold determination. He lay the branch down and then wrote a few lines on a sheet of paper, even now keeping his silence. I have it here.”