The Haunting of H. G. Wells

by Robert Masello

  The Earl of Boleskine had stepped up to commandeer the podium, and announced that anyone wishing to take shelter there was welcome to do so. “The beams in this ceiling have withstood the test of time, my friends, and if we were to summon up the force of psychic will that resides within us all, we could bolster them even more.” The sirens were screaming now, the noise echoing around the vaulted chamber. Under it, Rebecca could hear the ack-ack-ack of the anti-aircraft guns and even more menacingly, a low and sustained roar, like the growl of some dinosaur; it was a sound she had heard before, the thrumming of the massive engines in the zeppelin—the baby-killer—soaring high above the city. It was just a matter of time—seconds—before she would hear its bombs exploding on the streets and houses of London.

  “Focus your thoughts,” the earl was imploring them over the cacophony, “and send your spirit energy to ward off the danger! Together, in the name of the powers whose temple this is, we can make of these bricks and timbers an impervious sanctuary!”

  Rebecca sent no spirit energy to hold up the roof, but she did slink to the floor, where a gray-haired couple were already holding each other tight, and on the other side a bearded young man, eyes closed, was clutching a rosary and reciting a prayer. She could still see, just above the back of the pew, the earl holding the stage, head and arms upraised, his ferret-like friend crouching at his feet and the blond brute from the vestibule, clutching the cashbox under one arm, sticking close to his side. The earl was shouting something indecipherable—it sounded as if he were calling upon strange and ancient gods—before there was a cataclysmic explosion that shook the whole building. The pew rocked in place as a wave rattled through the slate floor, and the curtains billowed out on both sides of the hall. The stained glass windows shattered into a million gleaming shards that sprayed the room like shrapnel; people closest to them screamed as the dagger-like fragments tore through their clothing, or into their exposed skin. One green glass piece, pointed as an icicle, pierced a pew across the aisle, and stayed there, vibrating. But Rebecca wasn’t hurt, nor were the others who had been seated, as she was, in the middle of the assembly hall.

  Only when the attack was over, and the zeppelin had moved on, and the all-clear was sounded by Boy Scouts blowing bugles from the back of taxi cabs, did Rebecca dare to lift herself up. Brushing the dust and debris from her coat and hair, she was glad that she had paid attention to the earl’s advice about the acoustics. But was that really why he had advised her to sit where she had? She had the momentary, and unsettling, impression that he had known a bomb was going to rock the hall—an impression that she just as quickly dismissed as impossible.

  The earl was attending to several of the shaken parishioners, or so she thought of them, at the front of the hall, but before she followed some of the others, wounded or not, out to the vestibule, she saw his gaze settle upon her. So did his little accomplice’s. It looked as if they were even exchanging a word or two about her. But perhaps it was just conceit on her part. Her mother told her that she had always thought, even as a little girl, that she was the center of everyone’s attention, even when she wasn’t.

  Outside, she saw a crowd milling around, some still nervously glancing up at the sky, others peering into the huge black crater smoldering in the middle of the street. At its bottom she could see the wreck of the vegetable wagon that had been parked outside, along with the mangled remains of the poor old horse that had drawn it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Wells was awake long before he let on. He lay on the straw-stuffed pallet, listening to the voices around him. One was speaking German, another was answering in English. Accompanied by the wheezing of an accordion, someone sang a few lines from a popular French song, in French, and when he finished, to the clapping of hands and a “Bravo!” the place fell silent again.

  Where was he? Wells wondered. What had happened? The last thing he remembered was being crushed under a pile of timbers and a ton of dirt and clay. If he had died, this could hardly be heaven where he found himself now. It was much like the officers’ dugout where he had billeted with Captain Lillyfield and his crew, but felt, if that were possible, even more subterranean. Deeper, and more clandestine. The ceiling was lower, the space more cramped, the air thinner. The light, from an assortment of candles and lanterns, flickered more feebly, and the walls of clay were punctured by low portals, more like bolt-holes than doors of any kind.

  Turning his head on the pillow—a coarse sack that reeked of old potatoes—he saw three men going about mundane tasks—mending a jacket, reading a magazine, fiddling with an accordion. They all wore different uniforms, some of them in tatters, others relatively intact, as if the garments had been acquired more recently. But what struck him most was the pallor on the men’s faces; they were white as ghosts, except where their sunken cheeks betrayed a hint of sickly green. How long, he thought with horror, had these men been at the Front? They looked as if they had never seen the light of day.

  The one in a gray German uniform was the first to notice Wells was awake.

  “Guten Morgen.” He was thin—they all were—and about thirty or thirty-five years old. Old enough to be an officer, which, judging from the stripes on his sleeve and the one epaulet still clinging to his shoulder, he’d been. “Sprechen Sie Deutsch?”

  “Now why would he sprechen that?” the one in the uniform of a Tommy said. Taking over from his perch on a rations crate, he said to Wells, “You with the Northumberland Fusiliers?”

  Wells was still too disoriented to answer.

  “’Cause I am.” He plucked at his sleeve to display his badge, a circlet of St. George and the dragon, inscribed with the words “Quo Fata Vocant.” Or, “Whither the Fates carry me.”

  “Where am I?” Wells asked. “How did I get here?”

  The Tommy lifted his chin toward the German, who was sitting at a table made of a wooden plank suspended between two ammunition boxes. “Fritz there found you, dragged you out by your heels.”

  The one who had been singing in French was lying on a heap of old coats with an accordion in his lap. “Moi aussi. C’est moi qui vous ai permis de respirer.”

  He was the one who’d gotten Wells breathing again; Wells could speak French well enough to understand that much. A bandage, encrusted with dried blood, was wrapped around one of the Frenchman’s hands.

  Teetering from one side to another, Wells sat up. He had the oppressive sense of being a deep-sea diver, so far down it would be nearly impossible to reach the surface ever again.

  “What about the others?”

  “What others?” the Tommy asked.

  He thought first of Sergeant Stubb. And McCarthy. And the two sappers who had been working at the face of the tunnel. “The British soldiers I was with.”

  The Tommy shrugged. “They mighta got out, can’t say for sure. We found four dead Jerries,” he said, adding, “No offense” to the German soldier, who appeared to take none. “Blown up with their own grenade.”

  The last time he’d seen Stubb, the sergeant had been trying to drag him to safety. Had that last act of valor cost him his life? Wells would never forgive himself if it had.

  “If you’re hungry, help yourself,” the Tommy said, gesturing at a pile of dirty and dented ration tins. “The French ones are the best, no offense to Whitehall.”

  Wells couldn’t make out the labels from where he sat, but he could tell they were from all different armies. “No . . . thank you,” he said. “Maybe later.”

  “Suit yourself. So who are you, anyway?”

  “The name’s Wells. Bertie,” he added, rather than using the initials he was best known by. “And you?”

  “I’m called Tommy, ’cause that’s what I am. A Tommy.” Pointing at the German, he said, “And he’s Fritz, naturally. And the Frenchie here is called Nappy, after Napoleon, of course.”

  “That makes things easy.”

  “That, and because once you’re down here, you’re a dead man, anyway. Not much point in names a
nymore.”

  Down here. Dead men, anyway.

  The German officer—Fritz—brought him a chipped porcelain cup, with some murky brown tea swimming in it. “It is not, I do not think, of the best,” he said, in his halting English, “but it is hot.”

  Wells took the cup gratefully—there were baggy dark circles under the man’s eyes, and his mustache had turned a premature gray—and drank. The tea was sweet with sugar. But his mind was succumbing to the inevitable realization.

  “Good, yes?” Fritz asked, hovering like a headwaiter, and Wells nodded without looking up from the cup.

  Ghouls. He was in the underground den of the ghouls—the deserters from every army. The cowards who had abandoned their fellows-in-arms to save their own lives. The men Lillyfield declared would have been better off dead than so disgraced.

  “You do not look such as a miner,” Fritz observed.

  “I’m not.” The living dead . . . and he was among them.

  “Ah, you are then an engineer?”

  “No, not that either.”

  Nappy had gone back to fiddling with his accordion, but awkwardly because of the bandage around one hand. Was he the one who had been hit by Lillyfield’s potshot the night before? Tommy returned to leafing through a ragged magazine.

  “May I sit?” Fritz said, as if asking to draw up a chair at his club.

  “Of course.” What else could he say to the man who had apparently saved his life?

  Fritz pulled up a packing box and perched on it. “In what capability, then?”

  “Capacity?”

  “Yes,” Fritz said, “that is the word. Excuse my English.”

  “Nothing to excuse. I’ve almost no German.” Realizing that he still hadn’t answered the question, he said, “As an observer.”

  Fritz looked puzzled.

  “A reporter. Correspondent. On the war effort.”

  The German nodded. “And what is it that you have reported?”

  What is the man? it occurred to Wells. A spy?

  “Nothing much so far, I’m afraid.”

  “Is anyone winning?”

  Much as he might have liked to say otherwise, Wells replied with honesty. “At the moment, no one. It’s a stalemate.”

  Fritz dolefully shook his head. The answer did not seem to surprise him. “And do you, may I ask, live in London?”

  “Some of the time.”

  Fritz was up to something, that much was clear. There was a knowing, and eager, glint in his otherwise weary blue eyes. To turn the conversation, Wells asked him his real name.

  “Friedrich,” the man said, as if with relief at recovering it. “Friedrich Von Baden. Major in the Imperial German Army.” He extended a hand, and Wells found himself shaking it. His skin was so paper dry, Wells felt as if he were shaking hands with a mummy. But the German did not relax his grip for several seconds. He was studying Wells.

  “I know who it is you really are,” he finally confided in a low tone.

  “Because I’ve just told you.” The man had been a major, Wells was thinking, and was now consigned to this veritable grave? How did that happen?

  “No. It is because I have seen also your picture in my books.”

  “Your books?”

  “Ja, in The Time Machine. And The Invisible Man. And in the one that is my favored, The War Between the Worlds.”

  Wells was aware that his books had been translated into German, printed there in fancy leather sets with his portrait on the title page. Judging from his royalty statements, they sold quite successfully. He saw no point in denying it, and when he didn’t, Friedrich grinned and clapped his hands together in delight.

  Nappy and Tommy glanced over, curious, then went back to their respective tasks. The accordion wheezed.

  His voice even softer now and leaning close, Friedrich said, “Now I know. You have been sent here on a purpose.”

  “Yes. To report. As I’ve said.”

  “No,” he replied, dropping his head and shaking it. “You have been sent to me.”

  “To you?”

  “Ja. And on a more great purpose than that.”

  “Really?” The man was mad, apparently, but who would not be under these circumstances?

  “More great than you even know.”

  Wells wondered what was coming next. “And that momentous purpose would be?”

  Raising his head again, and looking Wells squarely in the eye, he said, “To save your country.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The moment Jane saw the car marked Easton Livery Service turning up the drive, with Maude Grover in the back seat, she muttered an unladylike epithet under her breath. This was absolutely the last thing she needed. She had so hoped that the woman had put the incident in the surgery out of her mind, but that would have been asking too much. Maude was, after all, the head of the local watch, a job that she took to entail nosing into every single thing that happened in Easton Glebe.

  By the time Jane got downstairs to answer the door, Maude was busy affixing a white nurse’s cap to her thinning brown hair. Oh, this was too much.

  “Good afternoon, Jane! I was making my rounds today, and thought I’d just stop in to see how your nephew was doing.”

  “Oh, that is so kind of you. But your husband has the situation well in hand.”

  “Does he? Sometimes I worry about the poor man—too much on his plate these days. Too much on everyone’s plate,” she added, with a false laugh.

  “Yes, there’s no getting around the war,” Jane said, standing fast with one hand still on the door. The burly Mr. Slattery had lumbered out of the car and was leaning against the hood, lighting a cigar.

  “But could you spare me a few minutes? I have some things to discuss.”

  “It’s not a good time, actually, as I was just—”

  “I’ll be here and gone in no time,” she said, and before Jane could physically interpose herself, Maude had snaked past. Mr. Slattery tipped his cheroot and blew a cloud of smoke in the air to signal that he would be fine waiting in the driveway.

  Maude had already gone into the front sitting room, where she was admiring—or pretending to admire—a new set of Wells’s novels, translated, that had just arrived the day before.

  “Good gracious,” she said, “I can’t even make out what language these must be in.”

  “It’s Norwegian,” Jane said, coolly. “H. G. is quite popular in the Scandinavian countries.”

  “Is he? I expect his work is popular most everywhere by now.”

  Jane waited for her to come to the point, while Maude, she suspected, was waiting to be asked if she’d like a cup of tea. Well, she wasn’t going to get one.

  “Is the great man at home?”

  “No, he is out of town for the time being.” She saw no reason to advertise his perilous mission; people would read about it soon enough when his dispatches appeared in the papers.

  “That’s a pity. I’m sure he’d have been supportive of what I’m about to suggest.”

  At that, Jane did prick up her ears.

  “It’s about my sister,” Maude said, quite unexpectedly. “Seems she’s taken a turn for the worse, and I’ll be having to run back and forth between here and Berwick Hill for the next few weeks . . . provided she recovers at all.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it.”

  “We were never very close—she’s five years older—but blood’s blood, as they say.”

  Jane had her first intimation of where all this was going.

  “Which leaves an extremely important role in the village unoccupied in my absence. I mean, of course, commander of the local watch.”

  The words fell on Jane like an anvil. To come at a time when she was harboring an enemy fugitive in her attic, unbeknownst to her own husband . . . Thinking fast, she said, “Surely, Mr. Slattery would be honored to accept the post.”

  “Mr. Slattery is in his cups by eight every night.”

  Jane was well aware of it. H. G. had regaled her wi
th stories of Slattery, weary after a day of shooting hares and grouse, slipping off his bar stool at the Four Crowns pub.

  “No, I was wondering if you might be willing to fill in as deputy commander on those occasions when I’m away? No one is more respected in Easton Glebe and I think having Mrs. Wells herself would be considered quite a feather in our cap.”

  “While I’m flattered by the offer,” Jane fumbled, “I’m afraid I have my hands full, as it is.”

  “With what?” Maude said, rather sharply. “Your husband’s away, your children are off at school—I should think you would welcome the opportunity to be of service.”

  “I am of service, as you call it. I manage all of H. G.’s business affairs. Right now, I’m transcribing and typing the pages he left of his new novel.”

  “I meant to the country.”

  Jane’s neck prickled. “We all do our duty, as we see fit.”

  “Yes, well, of course we do,” Maude said, securing the nurse’s cap to her hair again. “I’m not asking you to give an answer right now. Why don’t you sleep on it? Will you do that much for me?”

  Jane nodded assent.

  “Good. Then all I’ll need to do is look in on the patient, and be on my way. Mr. Slattery will be wanting us to finish our rounds.”

  “Look in on? What do you mean?”

  “See if he’s doing all right.”

  “He’s doing quite well, thank you.”

  “The doctor will want to know that, from my own professional observation.”

  “Surely he didn’t send you.”

  “He didn’t need to. Even if I were not the watch commander, it would be my responsibility.”

  Jane was flummoxed, and Maude seemed to sense her momentary advantage. “Your nephew, you say? How old is the lad? From the glimpse I caught of him, he was of an age to volunteer.”

  Ignoring the implication, Jane said, “He’s sleeping, the best thing for him, and I do not want him disturbed.”

  Maude paused, and then, in a lower key, said, “He’s not a conchie, is he?” A conscientious objector. “Because you can tell me if he is.”