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The Haunting of H. G. Wells

Page 32

by Robert Masello


  But it wasn’t the gun he went for—it was the cylinder a few yards away.

  Wells spun around, but Graf had already managed to pick it up. Holding it above his head with both arms—one of them broken and bent—he teetered to the railing, a wicked grin creasing his face. His glittering eyes were fixed directly below, on the gold roundel in the cathedral floor, and he was shouting something in German just as Wells leapt to tackle him. But the distance was too great, and all the tackle succeeded in doing was knocking the man over the rail, the bomb still clutched in his hands. Through the filigree, Wells watched in horror as Graf plummeted from the gallery, the tails of his overcoat flapping as wide as Satan’s wings, and then, on impact, disintegrating in a blinding ball of white smoke, crimson flame . . . and green gas.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

  Rebecca, perhaps the last one left on the cathedral floor, saw Graf fall.

  Like a bat swooping down from a belfry, he plunged over the balcony rail, something gray and metallic in his hands. And then, before she could even comprehend what she had just seen, came the white-hot detonation, the blast so extreme it threw the raised pulpit off its base and sent it flying toward the south transept. She was thrown with it, and only when it crashed against the far wall, was she able to lift her head enough to see the cloud of green vapor, mottled with specks of what looked like tiny flitting moths, spreading in all directions.

  The gas mask was still entwined in her fingers and with trembling hands she affixed it to her face, before crawling to her feet and stumbling from the wreckage. Fire and fumes were everywhere. The door to the crypt had been nearly blown off its hinges but she staggered toward it, shoving it back up against the door jamb the moment she had passed through, then clambering, half-blind behind the ill-fitting goggles, back down into the deepest recesses underground, as fast and as far as she could go from the creeping green tendrils of the gas. Her left foot felt as if it were a cake left baking in the oven.

  But what about Wells? What had happened to him, up in that gallery? Had he survived the struggle with Graf, only to perish—God forbid—in the deadly fumes filling the cathedral?

  The body of Schell lay where she’d left it, several yellow teeth and a hank of his hair swimming in the pool of blood. She slunk to the farthest end of the crypt, past the massive sarcophagus of Nelson, which rested directly beneath the gold medallion in the nave above, and then past the granite tomb of the Duke of Wellington, too, before collapsing atop a black marble slab that marked the grave of the cathedral’s great builder himself.

  She was tempted to remove the mask, but for fear of the gas somehow having penetrated even to these depths, she left it on, and instead closed her eyes and tried to regulate her breathing, slow the trip-hammer of her heart, and squeeze her leg to keep the agony in her foot from coursing up the rest of her body. It didn’t bear to think of what might lie ahead; she had seen what had happened to Silas Drummond.

  But at least, she reflected grimly, there was one mystery that had now been solved. Even if it was too late to do anything about it, she knew at long last what deadly cargo Graf had been carrying in that precious viola case.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

  From his time in the trenches, Wells knew the taint of gas, and sprang for the mask lying on the bench, yanking it on. But he still needed to get out of the way of the noxious cloud, billowing upward like some poisonous toadstool.

  Picking up the gun, he staggered through the archway, then up another flight of stairs to the Stone Gallery, which surrounded the outer dome and cupola. A padlock secured the door, but a shot from the gun blew it to pieces, and then, with a swift kick to the frame, he was outside, the stars twinkling in a moonlit sky, the whole vast city of London, largely dark from the blackout, spread out around him on all sides. He risked lowering the mask, and gulped at the night air. From such a windy height, it was a miraculous, but knee-rattling, sight, the towers and steeples of the metropolis rising like black needles, the silver sash of the river Thames wending its way under the graceful bridges.

  From far below, he could hear the clanging of the fire brigade’s wagons, and though it was blood-chilling to look down, he could see crowds of people fleeing from the cathedral in all directions. Had they all escaped in time, or had the bomb claimed a host of lives?

  Had it claimed Rebecca’s? He prayed that she had remained below, in the crypt, where she might have been sheltered from the explosion. If only he had been able to stop it, if only he had figured out the plot sooner, and in time to avert it . . .

  “You did well,” he heard a voice, full of gravel, murmur at his elbow.

  He didn’t even need to turn to see who it was.

  “Not well enough.” How long would it be before he could safely descend and go in search of Rebecca?

  A lone cloud passed across the sky, but when it was gone and Wells did turn his head, he saw Sergeant Stubb etched in moonlight, silver and shimmering, leaning beside him at the stone parapet, as casually as if the two of them were simply observing the ducks from the bridge in St. James’s Park.

  “I’m not your charge anymore,” Wells said, gently. “You can, if you wish, move on.”

  “Noted.” His fingers were unwrapping a packet of Victory lozenges. “But have a look at that, will you?” he said, gesturing at the limitless expanse of night sky and distant stars, the silver moon hanging as if on an invisible chain.

  “Yes.”

  “Hard to give up on all that, wouldn’t you say?”

  Wells couldn’t imagine doing so. Even with all the horror he had seen, the death and destruction, it would be hard, when his own time came, to give up on all that. The very notion of such a renunciation was a thread that wound its way through some of his most famous books, stories in which all the quotidian joys and pleasures were judiciously weighed against the cosmic indifference and routine cruelties of life upon earth. After a pause, he asked, “What happens next?”

  The soiled St. George’s patch on Stubb’s sleeve twitched with his shrug. “Give it time. You’ll see soon enough.”

  Easier said than done. Wells had always been a man impatient for the future to unfold, a man who looked toward a world where mankind had learned to live in peace, where science served only to better the earth and the myriad creatures who inhabited it, where, one day, even the power of the atom had been mastered and its unlimited potential harnessed.

  Like the baying of hounds, Wells heard the rising cry of air-raid alarms from the East End. In the distance, and by squinting, he could just make out a pair of zeppelins, the size of silver buttons, hovering high above the city. The wardens had been right—with the weather so clear, it was a likely night for a bombing raid. On the wind, he could hear the first concussive blows, and see the reddish glow from the fires that the bombs had ignited. That warm glow, he knew, denoted ruined buildings and slaughtered people . . . a vision conjured in one of his own stories. A veritable war of the worlds. Another instance of life imitating art, not the other way around. How tragic that his imagination should have prefigured such a grimly authentic scene.

  When he looked to his left, Stubb was already half-gone, his body dissolving before Wells’s very eyes. It was as if it had been composed of a million fireflies, all of them now dispersing in the night wind, winking out, one by one. Among the last things to go were the sergeant’s eyes, dark and mournful.

  Hard to give up on all that.

  And then, the eyes vanished, too. He was now, truly, an invisible man. Another of Wells’s own creations.

  All that remained on the parapet was the lozenge packet. Wells reached for it—a last memento—but then it was snatched up by the wind, or perhaps an unseen hand, and whisked into the darkness like an albatross flying before a storm.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  Although it was unlikely that Wells would have been anywhere near St. Paul’s Cathedral—he was by no means a religious man—Jane had been frantic all the same after hearing the news of the catastrophe there. S
he had tried several times to contact Wells at the flat on St. James’s Court, but with no success. The zeppelin raids had been known to interfere with communications not only between London and Easton, but to all parts of the country.

  So it was with mixed emotions that she saw Slattery’s familiar livery car proceeding up the rectory drive the next day. She had not had to face the man since he had wantonly killed young Kurt in the barn and she would have liked to keep things that way, but she also knew that he might be carrying a telegram from her husband. There was little reason for him to be coming there, otherwise.

  She was already at the open door, bundling her sweater around her shoulders, as he approached with not one but two envelopes in hand. She could hardly bear to look him in the eye, as she ripped open the telegram first.

  “FEAR NOT STOP I REMAIN INDESTRUCTIBLE,” it began, and she had to smile. “BUT MUCH TO DO HERE STOP DEBRIEFINGS WITH WINSTON ET AL STOP HOPE ALL IS WELL AT HOME STOP MISS YOU AND SEND MUCH LOVE. H. G.”

  What she missed were the long, discursive letters he used to send, years ago, from his far-flung lecture destinations or research trips, brimming with colorful anecdotes and amusing doodles. But she knew he was too busy for that now, and she resolved, on the spot, to go to London on the afternoon train. Why was she fretting and pining in the countryside, when there was no longer any need for her to be there? When, in fact, nothing would be more welcome than to get away from the scene of such a recent tragedy, even if it did mean subjecting herself to the zeppelin attacks on the city?

  “Do you want me to wait for you to write out a reply?” Slattery asked, his tone a bit more curt than it had once been. He still suspected some collusion here, something amiss about the German boy in the barn, and he apparently wanted her to know it.

  “No need,” she said, “you can go.”

  “Not till you’ve opened that other one,” he said. “It’s from Doc Grover’s wife.”

  “You know what’s in it?” she said, though it was still sealed.

  “She said I was to wait for you to answer something, and then return it to her.”

  Jane could guess what it would be, and she was right. Maude had written her a cursory note saying that she was to be relieved of her duties as deputy watch commander, and asking that she sign and date the note as a receipt for the official town records. “Wait here,” she said, stepping into the foyer to find a pen. She’d never wanted the job in the first place, and would be glad to be rid of it. She folded the note into the envelope and gave it back to Slattery. He weighed it in his hand, as if wondering at its contents, and raised his eyes in a deliberately insolent manner. Jane figured he knew exactly what the envelope contained.

  “That’s it, then?” he said.

  “That’s it. And goodbye,” she said, closing the door so quickly it might almost have caught his nose. Secretly, she wished that it had. Leaning against the back of the door, she took a breath, relieved not only that her husband was well—that was the paramount thing—but that she had been freed from an unwanted duty.

  She missed H. G., even if it was only the sound of a scratching pen or pounding typewriter. The silence of the house oppressed her. And truth be told, she grieved for the young enemy soldier—how perverse was that?—who had become so much more than that to her; harboring him, despite the dangers, had given some structure, and higher purpose, to her days. She felt alone, and adrift, and was wondering where she should fetch up next. How many other women, she thought, were left in much the same quandary these days, caught between the life they had once led and the uncertainty of the one that now lay before them? She knew she should take some comfort from that camaraderie, but, as with most abstract concepts, in the last analysis it provided little actual help. Life was just something one stumbled through, as best one could, until even one’s stumbling came to its inevitable end.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

  Wells was slumped in the chair when Nurse Chasubel put the cup of hot tea on the table at his elbow, then draped a scratchy wool blanket over him. He looked up, wearily, and thanked her.

  “If you insist on staying the night again, we could probably find you a bed,” she said, but Wells declined. The hospital was overcrowded as it was, and the last thing he wanted to do was occupy a cot that might be used for one of the war wounded.

  “How is she?” he asked, and Emma said, “Much the same.”

  “No better at all? What about the fever?”

  “It won’t break any sooner just because you’re here keeping vigil. You could go home, you know. I promise that I will send you word of any change in her condition.”

  But that was not good enough. He was not going to leave the Communicable Diseases Ward until he was sure that Rebecca was out of the woods and safely on the road to recovery. It was, he felt, the least he could do. If she had never met him, she would not be in the peril she was in right now.

  When he’d come down from the cupola, gas mask firmly in place, and clawed his way through the wreckage left by the bomb and the gray-green miasma that hung in the air like a ghastly pall, he’d seen no sign of life in the cathedral. But no bodies either, thank God. The wardens must have had sufficient warning—had he heard Rebecca’s voice, booming from the pulpit, or simply imagined it?—and herded everyone out the doors, which had been slammed shut after the last evacuee had made it out. He’d had to clamber over the shattered frame of the pulpit and a million shards of plaster and mosaic and stone, before coming to the door leading down to the crypts. It was closed—a lucky sign, as it might have provided some protection to Rebecca if she had remained down below—but when he shoved it with his shoulder, it fell from its hinges and crashed to the floor. A cloud of milky dust rose toward his mask. The winding stairs were dim, just enough light filtering up from the gas lamps below for him to see the crumpled body of the watchman Graf had shot. He stepped over it, and once in the crypt, he saw Schell, even bloodier and more battered than he recalled, sprawled out on the floor.

  But Rebecca was nowhere to be seen.

  Had she recovered enough to make it out alive? Had someone come along to help rescue her? His heart leapt at the thought. Even now, perhaps she was on her way to the hospital. He longed to lift the thick goggles to see the scene more clearly, but knew better than to try. Not yet.

  There were scuff marks in the dust, even a spot or two of congealed blood, all leading away from the corpse. Moving cautiously through the gloom, he traced them back, past the monumental sarcophagi, and all the way to the grave site of Sir Christopher Wren himself. A black marble slab set into the floor . . . on which he found Rebecca, prostrate and unmoving.

  His heart had seized up in his chest, as he dropped to his knees and gathered her to his breast. It was several seconds before he was able to detect a breath—faint and shallow—and then, lift her from the grave. He could barely recall how he managed to carry her all the way up and out of the cathedral, but once outside, he had collapsed from the exertion. Two of the St. Paul’s watchmen had found him, with Rebecca still in his arms and his gas mask discarded on the pedestal of the statue to Queen Anne, and transferred them both to an ambulance.

  “Guy’s Hospital,” Wells had croaked, but the drivers in the front seat had insisted, “There’s closer than that.”

  Shaking his head, Wells said, “Must be Guy’s.” She had to be admitted to the Communicable Diseases Ward as quickly as possible.

  “Who’s he to tell us our job?” one muttered to the other.

  Wells, having overheard them, piped up, “I’m H. G. Wells, that’s who.”

  They stopped to look at him, and also at the unconscious girl, more closely, before the driver said, “Blimey. He may be right.” Leaning on his horn repeatedly, he forged his way through the frantic crowds still milling about in the streets. “Guy’s Hospital it is.”

  Driving into the central courtyard, horn still blaring—for once, Wells was happy to have been able to trade on his fame—Rebecca was moved to a gurney and wheeled to t
he upper floor, with Wells holding on to one of her own hot and damp hands. Nurse Emma Chasubel promptly rose from the entry desk, and then, seeing who it was, hurried toward them. “Were you at the cathedral?”

  That news had traveled fast. Wells nodded. “She’s burning up. But it’s from a previous injury—in the German’s lab.” He and Emma exchanged a look, full of import.

  “Then we’ll put her in Room 6,” she said. “It’s just been vacated and sterilized.”

  It did not escape his notice that Room 6 was the same private cell in which Silas Drummond, late of the Horse Guards Parade, had been housed. Wells slumped into a chair at the table where he had once seen a copy of Sons and Lovers, while Emma and another nurse went about removing Rebecca’s clothes and cleansing her body. When it was done, Emma came to Wells and said, “The wound on her foot. How did that happen?”

  He told her what he knew, then quickly followed up by asking when Dr. Phipps would be there to assess the situation.

  “He’s in surgery, and won’t be out for another hour or so. In the meantime, we have started all the necessary and prescribed procedures.”

  Wells must not have looked sufficiently reassured.

  “We are doing everything that can be done,” she reiterated.

  “But will it be enough?”

  She didn’t answer him, but how could she? No one could reliably foresee the outcome of something like this.

  And that was how it had remained for two days now. Rebecca swam in and out of consciousness, her fever smoldering like a fire in an underground coal seam, her foot and leg swelling ominously, like a pink balloon about to burst. Every so often she would become lucid enough to recognize him and even speak a few words, but not everything she uttered was coherent. Mixed in with talk of horses and penny arcades were invocations to the patron St. George, which he took to be a reference to Machen’s story. He only hoped that it was true, that some guardian angel was indeed watching over her, though most of the time it was her mother or one of her sisters, who, like Wells, waited anxiously for any sign of improvement.

 

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