by A. L. Lester
“No, not at all. Just very thin, weak, and fading away. His family couldn’t look after him at home anymore, so they asked us to take him. But he’s not manic. Just very fixed in his own mind, within a logical framework as you describe.”
“Have you been able to examine him properly?” Sylvia said. “I wondered whether it was a growth in the brain or optic nerve. He says he can see lights.”
“There’s nothing that we can see. Of course, when he goes, we’ll be able to open him up and have a look.” He sounded very matter of fact. “But for now, all we can do is make him comfortable.”
Sylvia hummed. That was all she could do for Webber, really.
“Do you want to send him down, Dr Marks?” the officer asked. “We do have space if you think it necessary. But if he can be nursed at home it’s probably for the best.”
“He’s fine where he is for now,” Sylvia said. “But if he gets any worse before his brother comes home from France, I may need to contact you. If you do a post-mortem on your chap, can you let me have the results?”
“Certainly. And likewise, if you have anything else helpful, could you pass it on? I feel sorry for the poor old chap, just fading away there.”
“Of course. Thank you.”
She replaced the earpiece thoughtfully and put the telephone back on the sideboard.
How peculiar.
Chapter 3
One hot June day she met Annie Beelock in the lane as she was on her rounds in the village.
“He’s getting worse,” Annie said glumly. He won’t let me into the sitting room to clean unless he’s there. And he’s doing a lot of muttering to himself.” She shot Sylvia a worried look. “I’m starting to think he’s not safe to be alone up there at night when I go home,” she said.
“No word on Matthew coming home yet?” Sylvia asked.
Annie shook her head. “No. I wish they’d hurry up and finish discharging.”
Sylvia pulled a face back at her. “Wishing won’t make them quicker. I’ll call in, shall I? I’m nearly done down here.”
“If you would. At least he talks to you. All he says to me is to not disturb his books.”
Sylvia hadn’t spoken to anyone about his delusions. It seemed too private, as well as being a breach of confidentiality. She let the unspoken enquiry slide by her.
“I’ll be up in an hour or so. Are you on your way out?”
“Yes, down to market.”
It was a Saturday.
“I’ll let you know if there’s anything I’m worried about.”
Annie nodded. “Thank you, Sylvia. It’s a lot to take on without a professional opinion.”
* * * *
She saw her last patient in the village and went back to Courtfield for the car. The farm was a couple of miles out of the village, and she didn’t want to walk.
She followed the rough lane up to the house and pulled up outside the fenced-in garden, hopping out and slamming the door behind her.
As she opened the garden gate, she glanced up at the house. Through the sitting room window, she could see the silhouette of a man…Webber, she assumed…He was marching around, waving his arms.
There was a cloud of light following him around the room.
It took her completely aback. She watched, slack jawed.
He threw himself about, flinging his arms wide and pointing and spinning round. She couldn’t hear anything, but when he turned a certain way into the light, she could see his mouth moving. So, he was speaking, too. She poised herself to run in and stop him if it looked like he was going to hurt himself. But he didn’t. He finished what he was doing, took his glasses off, polished them, and put them back on like a perfectly normal person and sat down in his chair, vanishing below her line of sight.
She shoved her heart out of her mouth back down into its proper place in her chest and marched up and knocked on the door.
“What are you doing to yourself, Arthur Webber?” she demanded, as he opened it. It took him ages to get there, slow, shuffling steps coming down the hall. “What was that I just saw through the window?”
He looked at her with his head on one side, yellowing, unhealthy skin sunk over the bones of his skull with no padding underneath at all to provide shape. His eyes were bright, despite that.
“What did you see?” he asked her. “What did you see, Dr Marks?”
“The light,” she said. “I saw the light. It was you, you made it.”
“Come in.” He shuffled off down the passage, leaving her to shut the door behind her. “Come in and sit down.”
She sat in her habitual chair in the sitting room and watched him pace around. He was obviously sick and exhausted, but something was driving him.
“I’ve been telling you. You’ve not heard me though, have you?” he said to her. “You’ve sat there listening to me each time you’ve come to visit, listening, and thinking I’m mad and wondering whether you should sign the papers to have me put away. But you can see now…now you’ve seen it yourself!” He paused. “I should have shown you right from the start and then you’d have believed me. I’ve found a way to make a weapon to end the war! To end the war and bring the boys home!”
“The war is already ended,” she said, gently. “It ended months ago. I know Matty’s not home yet, but they’re coming. They’re bringing them all home.”
“A weapon like this will mean that no-one ever goes to war again,” he said. “It’ll be so terrible…so fearsome…that no-one will dare. And I’ll be in charge of it, so it can’t be used wrongly! I’ll be able to stop it all from happening again.”
He was clearly completely potty, whatever she’d seen.
She shut her eyes briefly and when she opened them, she said, “So what was the light I saw?”
That she had seen it, she was certain.
He looked at her smugly. “Power, my dear. That was power. I pull it up and I use it to do whatever I want.”
He stopped pacing and stepped closer to her; she leaned back in her chair, refusing to let him see he was intimidating her. She was fairly sure she could fight him off if it came to it…he was a husk of the man he’d been, all skin and bone…but really, she preferred not to have to wrestle her patients to the ground if she could possibly avoid it.
Instead of leaping on her foaming at the mouth, which, ugh, she had half been expecting, he extended a hand, palm up.
“Watch,” he said.
She watched.
There was a flickering a couple of inches above his palm, like a match being struck. It steadily grew into a ball of light about three inches across, hovering over his palm.
She looked at it and then up at him. He was watching her, waiting for her reaction.
“Magic?” she said, in a tone she rather hoped wasn’t as awed as she felt.
“Not magic, my dear. Power. Just power. Like air or water or electricity. You just have to know how to get it. And once you have it…you can do anything.”
He made a dismissing gesture with his hand and the light snapped out.
“True practitioners don’t call it magic. It implies a sense of superstition, a lack of understanding.” He sniffed and settled into the chair opposite her. “And now I suppose you’ll sign a piece of paper and have me put away somewhere.”
She looked at him steadily. “I don’t think there’s any need, do you? You’re clearly not delusional, that was real. I have the evidence of my own eyes. But Mr Webber. Is this what’s making you unwell? Because Annie Beelock is very worried about you. That’s why I called today. I met her in the lane earlier and she asked if I’d drop in on my way home.”
He pulled a face. “That woman fusses far too much, she always has.”
“She cares about you, that’s all. She’s known you a long time. And I’m sure Matty would be worried if he knew you were so unwell.” She paused. “Do you know when he’s coming home?”
He shook his head. “No. He says he hasn’t heard anything yet. They’re taking their time discharging everyone.”<
br />
“It’s a lot of men to bring back,” she said. “Logistics. And paperwork.” She huffed a small laugh. “So much paperwork.”
He looked at her shrewdly, a trace of the old Arthur Webber, the incisive journalist he’d been before he’d come home to the farm. “You were with the Women’s Hospital, weren’t you? In an administrative role?”
She shook her head. “No. Surgical. Shrapnel. Gas-gangrene, mostly.” She rubbed a hand over her face. “Look, Mr Webber. Arthur. Will you let me examine you? Because magic or not, you don’t look well. Please?”
He shook his head and said, formally, “No. There’s no point, Dr Marks. It’s the power that’s draining me. Whatever I do now, I can’t stop it. I’ve just got to make the best of the time I’ve got left. I can pull power to keep me going and I need to finish my work and make sure nothing like this war can ever happen again.” He stared into space. “It’s coming, you know. This war is only just ending, and I know there’s another one coming. With terrible weapons. So terrible. I’ve been told. They showed me.”
“Who showed you?” she asked, gently.
“The people from the future,” he said. “They opened a gate in the border between the worlds and they came through and told me that it was all going to happen again. They were trying to stop it.” He wiped his hands over his face. “So much death, Dr Marks. We can’t allow it.”
“Mr Webber. Arthur. Are you telling me that this magic—” he raised an eyebrow at her, and she corrected herself, “—not magic—this not-magic…can allow people to travel through time?”
She stared at him.
He didn’t meet her gaze. “That’s what they said. They said they could leave from one time and travel to another. I saw them appear. They were here for a little while. They showed me…some things…” His voice wavered on the phrase, awed.
She wondered what they’d shown him.
He continued, “And then they left again. In a cloud of light. A cloud of mist, with sparkling light in it. And these peculiar howling sounds, like wild animals. Creatures that were attracted to the power, they said…” His voice drifted off and then he seemed to pull himself back. “And they said they’d got the wrong time.”
They sat in silence. Sylvia couldn’t comprehend it. It would have been much easier to think he was potty if she hadn’t seen him make the light in his palm.
People from another time? Lights…mist…howling.
She bit her lip. He was mad. He must be.
But…he still didn’t look like a madman. He looked ill, and excited. But perfectly sane. What he was saying made her remember…but she didn’t want to think about that. Not here, anyway.
She pushed the rising memory away.
Her mind was blank. Completely blank. If she wouldn’t let herself think about that, then it refused to process anything.
She blinked, frantically, a sudden upswell of emotion taking her by surprise.
Good grief. She certainly wasn’t going to cry. Not in Arthur Webber’s sitting room, anyway. She bit the inside of her cheek sharply to stop herself.
They sat in silence.
Webber had his eyes shut, head resting on the back of the armchair as if he were asleep. She studied him as she got herself back under control. She could ask him questions. But…she didn’t know if she wanted any more answers. And she didn’t want to disturb him if he was asleep, she told herself, recognising it for the excuse it was, even as she thought it.
Eventually, taking refuge in professionalism, she said quietly, “Well. If you still won’t let me examine you and you think there’s nothing I can do for you, then I need to get back for lunch.”
She rose, shaking out her loose trousers. “But Mr Webber, will you come to me if you need any help?”
He struggled with the effort but rose when she did and looked across at her seriously. “I don’t think there’s any help anyone can give me now, Dr Marks. But yes, I will.”
Chapter 4
Walter had gone to visit an old army friend for a couple of days and that left her on her own with plenty of time to think things over and wonder about what she’d seen. Had she dreamed it all? It was completely unbelievable.
She didn’t know what to do with it. The power—energy, magic, whatever he called it—she could allow that into her view of the world. There were lots of things science didn’t know or understand properly yet. New discoveries were being made all the time. X-rays and radiation hadn’t been thought of fifty years ago. Why not a different kind of energy that worked in the way she’d seen, the way he explained?
No, she hadn’t believed him initially…but she’d always thought his tales had a logical framework. And having seen the lights he made with her own eyes…that wasn’t something she could ascribe to hallucinations unless she was hallucinating along with him.
She supposed mass hallucinations could happen…she pondered briefly on witch trials and the recent events in Portugal where the sun was supposed to have moved. But she also began to wonder again about the patient down at Cotford. Was this a real, true thing that was happening? With more than one witness? However unbalanced and sick they seemed?
The evidence of her own eyes told her it was.
But…what about the things Arthur had told her about his visitors? They said they were travellers from another time. And told him another war was coming.
If she believed some of what he’d told her was true, then she had to believe the rest of it. Either he was insane with a complicated fantasy life she needed to understand to help him but reject as unreal, the product of a sick mind; or he was telling the truth about it all and she had to accept it.
She couldn’t pick and choose some from one column and some from another. It was all or nothing.
The trouble was…it had made her think about Anna.
That was what she’d had to crush down inside her today, when Webber began to speak about travelling through time and clouds of sparkling light and howling noises.
Not that she didn’t always think about Anna. She carried Anna with her constantly, in a place tucked tight behind her heart. She would until the day she died. She’d never find anyone who meant the same to her as Anna did.
That wasn’t it, though. That wasn’t the thing.
The thing was…Webber’s bizarre story about visitors from the future made her remember how Anna had gone west.
Yes, fine, lots of bodies were never found on the battlefield. But Anna hadn’t been on a battlefield. She’d been driving her ambulance along the road from Royaumont down to the railhead at Creil to pick up wounded.
She was a driver. That was her job. There were three of them at the hospital, with an ambulance each that they maintained and drove alone. No staff could be spared to ride beside them. They moved patients up and down the twelve miles to the railhead as needed and to the satellite hospital forty miles away at Villers-Cotterets. It was a huge responsibility and the women who took on the role were some of the bravest and most stalwart of the whole Women’s Hospital set-up.
That was what attracted Sylvia to her in the first place. Anna was small and dark-haired and completely focused on whatever task she had in hand. That could be driving the ambulance, or helping in the kitchens or with the laundry, or listening to music on the portable gramophone she’d brought home from leave, or kissing Sylvia.
She put that last out of her mind immediately. That was gone and past and there was no point upsetting herself remembering it.
Anna wore boots and puttees and had hacked her hair off like a man’s shortly after arriving at Royaumont and discovering the paucity of washing facilities. She had a ridiculous goat-skin coat that stank to high heaven when it got wet, but which she wore like a second skin all through the winter; and she had a sharp tongue that covered the kindest of hearts.
Sylvia missed her every day. It was a manageable missing now, though. Straight after, when it had happened, she had kept going as if she was a clockwork automaton. She got up. She treated the wounde
d. She ate a little when there was food, she lay down and slept if there was time. It was only after the worst of the Nivelle Offensive passed in the middle of May that she was able to begin to shed some of the frozen numbness and start to grieve.
It had been one of the dreadful unsolved mysteries of the war. They were eighty miles from the front line as the crow flies at that point. It simply couldn’t have been gas or a shell or a sniper, as they’d eventually decided. That was what it had been officially reported as…Sheila, Anna’s fellow driver, hadn’t wanted to be sent home for hallucinating, any more than Sylvia wanted to tell anyone what she’d seen at Webber’s this afternoon. She had given a very minimal account in her official report.
She’d described how a cloud of what she’d thought was gas had suddenly appeared like a wall in the road front of her. They’d both jammed the brakes on, and Sheila had been lucky her ambulance hadn’t skidded. Anna hadn’t been so lucky, and her vehicle had slid off the road behind Sheila into the mud. Sheila’s vehicle was between the stuck ambulance and the cloud of gas. There was no room to turn it. She and Anna had abandoned the useless vehicles and tried to outrun the cloud coming toward them.
They weren’t able to, though. It had rolled forward over them—Sheila had been certain she was going to begin coughing and burning and drowning in her own lungs. But that hadn’t happened. It hadn’t been that sort of gas. However, as they were running, they’d become separated. When the cloud had dispersed, Shelia had gone back and found both ambulances; but no sign at all of Anna.
Her official report suggested it must have been a benign weather anomaly that had behaved in a very peculiar way. Or maybe artillery smoke? Or a fire? She didn’t know what had happened to her colleague. Perhaps there had been sniper fire and Sheila hadn’t noticed it?
However.
She had come to Sylvia later and described a cloud of gas that wasn’t gas. Sparkling lights suspended in it. Howling, singing, haunting voices that called to her across an enormous void. Putting it in the official reports was out of the question, it was all so unlikely. But she had come to Sylvia and told her what she’d seen and heard because she knew how important Anna was to Sylvia. Sylvia hadn’t known what to think. She’d put it down to the stress of the experience. Sheila clearly felt guilty for surviving when Anna had been lost. The mind was a peculiar place under those circumstances and Sylvia had allowed Sheila to talk to her about it, accepted that she was feeling guilty and needed a story to help her feel better.
