The Fairies at Browning Grange

by Barrymore Tebbs

  We arrived abruptly inside the servants waiting area. A long, plain wooden table bore the remnants of a meal that had been abandoned in haste. On the wall behind the table the bells on the bell panel clanged insistently, first one and then another, bells of different tones competing against each other for attention, but no one was about to answer the summons.

  I followed Tom through the narrow corridor which led into the heart of the house, the great hall. A harried maid scurried down the steps and brushed past us with scarcely any notice. The look on her pale face was one of shock and wonder.

  From the upper floor I heard the wild shriek of a child’s laughter followed by a woman’s chastising voice. The dog barked relentlessly. A harried voice shouted, “Shut up!” but the barking continued. “Ruff,” it said, “ruff ruff ruff,” without end.

  “Wait here, sir. I’ll let Miss Gibbs know yer here.”

  As Tom raced up the steps, a heavy-set woman in a drab grey service uniform emerged from the corridor on the other side of the hall. She took one look at me, shook her head in despair, and without so much as a by-your-leave rumbled up the steps and disappeared after Tom.

  What in the name of heaven was happening here? Where was the footman who so formidably commanded control of the front of the house?

  From somewhere upstairs I heard a door slam, and then it slammed again, and again. The dog barked on and on. The lights in the hall flickered. For a moment, I thought the electricity would fail and the entire place would be plunged into darkness.

  Olive appeared at the top of the stairs.

  “Oh, it’s you. I thought it was the doctor. He’d better come quickly. What are you doing here?” Her hair had come loose and her clothes were in a state of disarray, as wrinkled as if they had lain at the bottom of a pile of laundry. I was amazed she could look so disheveled.

  “The children sent for me. Tom Mosely came and fetched me in the car. They said the fairies are here.”

  “The little brats have taken leave of their senses.” Though she feigned exasperation, there was a tremor in her voice as if she balanced on a precarious edge. “The entire household has gone mad.”

  “What is it?”

  “The baby is coming, nothing more. No one has been able to find the doctor. Mrs. Smith is upstairs with Eleanor now. The maids are in a panic. The children are playing games, sending the rest on a wild goose chase.” Her voice reeked of desperation as she strove to cling to sanity.

  I took a few steps up the staircase, meeting her halfway, and took her hands in mine. Her palms were damp. She was trembling, and she would not look at me.

  Another wild shriek tore through the upper hall. We both jumped, and then little Freddie came hurtling around a corner, naked as the day he was born. He screamed and cackled with abandon. Rupert scrambled after the boy, Freddie’s nightshirt in his hands. He nearly stumbled in the hall as Freddie feinted by first going this way then changing directions and disappearing into another corridor. Seconds later he appeared again, screaming like a deranged banshee, and whizzed down the steps past us.

  From somewhere deep inside the house I heard a woman’s scream of pain – Eleanor in labor. A door slammed and another maid came trundling down the steps. She would have run us both off the stair if we had not stepped out of her way.

  The lights flickered again. There was a loud fizzle, and the house went black.

  “Good Lord,” whispered Olive.

  Something rushed up the stairs past us at such an incredible speed I felt the wind in its wake. Only when it was followed by the maniacal shrieks of Freddie as he went racing up the stairs after it did I realize the first thing was not the boy.

  I gripped the camera against my chest as if something might tear it from my arms.

  There was a thud below followed by a masculine, “Oof!” Rupert, I suppose, had slipped and fallen on the impeccably polished parquet floor.

  Something touched me and I very nearly jumped out of my skin, but it was only Olive groping for my hand. “Come, help me find some candles.”

  I wasn’t certain how I would be able to help locate candles seeing as how I was wrapped in the darkness of an unfamiliar house, but I allowed her to lead me to the top of the stairs where we began to inch our way through the hall. There was another rush of wind as something blasted its way past us in the opposite direction, young Master Freddie in hot pursuit.

  “Come here you bloody little bugger!”

  “Freddie!” Olive shouted.

  “I’ve got it! I’ve got it!” There was a brief struggle only several feet from where we stood. There was a loud thud as something collided against the wall and then Freddie began to cry. “Ow!”

  Olive’s hand gripped mine so tightly I thought she would crush my bones.

  A door opened and a meager spot of light dispelled the shadows at the end of the hall. A woman approached, an old spirit lamp in her hand, and I saw it was dour-faced Miss Enfield. She hurried past us uttering apologies to Olive and calling for Master Freddie. From behind closed doors came another muffled scream.

  Giggling, Freddie shot past us once again.

  “I can’t control him, Miss,” said Miss Enfield. “He’s gone off his nut, he has.” Even the no-nonsense governess had come unhinged.

  Miss Enfield disappeared around a corner, the light gone as quickly as it came.

  A door opened next to me and Olive pulled me into a room. The room was illuminated briefly by rapid bursts of light as the lightning flashed outside. I heard the sound of a key turn in a lock, and then Olive was on me, planting her mouth on mine.

  Her timing could not have been more inopportune.

  Olive’s hands danced lightly across the front of my trousers, teasing me to a swift and powerful erection. My hands went instinctively to her breasts, but she pried them away and guided them back to my trousers, coaxing me into opening them. She pulled me onto the floor with her.

  I tore the camera strap from around my neck and the camera tumbled out of reach, forgotten.

  Olive’s clothing rustled as she cleared a path and then she was on top of me, skirts bunched in her hands. She squatted over me. I did not fumble once as my fingers homed in on her moist crevice. My phallus pushed boldly inside.

  My mind was torn away from the reality of whatever was happening around us as my body gave way to the sensation of being locked inside this woman. Lightning flashed again, revealing her face above me. In that bright instant her eyes turned ecstatically up into her head, her lips parted in a saucy pout and loosened strands of hair clung wetly to her face.

  There was swift, sharp banging on the door, followed by a frantic female voice.

  Good Lord, not now!

  “Miss Olive, are you in there?”

  Olive rode me furiously. Tiny footsteps scurried from one end of the hall to the other and the woman on the other side of the door shrieked in terror. My buttocks beat a mad tattoo against the floor.

  The muffled screams of the mother in labor, the barking dog, the children leading the servants on a wild goose chase through the corridors of the house – it was all too much for my fevered brain. My tension snapped inside of her but still I pounded away, mad with lust.

  Olive’s breath began to come in ragged gasps. I pushed my hand against her mouth in an attempt to stifle her cries, but she sank her teeth into my palm. I yelped in pain.

  And something in the room yelped in return.

  Our coupling abruptly ceased.

  “What was that?” said Olive, her whisper very nearly a shriek.

  “Shh,” I said, and then the sibilant sound was repeated, just as I had heard it when I sat with Freddie at the bottom of Goblin Hollow.

  Sssh, sssh, sssh—

  Olive rolled off me and scrambled across the floor.

  “There’s something in here!” I whispered again, though heaven only knows why I bothered. No living thing could have been in that room with us and not have heard our every sound and movement.

  The key tur
ned in the lock. The door was flung open and Olive ran into the hall.

  I struggled to fix my clothing and stumbled after her. I was grateful for the merciful darkness so that no one could see our state of dishevelment. I pulled the door shut behind me, and as I did I felt it being tugged from the other side.

  “The key,” I demanded.

  “I left it on the inside,” Olive said.

  “Oh, God,” I moaned, and held the door handle with all my might.

  And then we heard a child’s giggling from the other side of the door.

  “It’s only Freddie!” she hissed.

  “Freddie can’t be inside. He’s been running wild in the halls the entire time.”

  “It’s Emily, then!” But she knew as well as I it wasn’t Emily inside the room.

  The knob twisted violently against my hand.

  The screaming from Mrs. Conklin’s room reached fever pitch.

  The door knob was wrenched from my hand. The door flew open and something bolted past us and shot down the hall.

  Olive screamed.

  The door at the end of the hall opened, spilling light into corridor. “Miss Olive, I need you!”

  Footsteps pounded on the stairs. The dog yelped once and then its barking ceased. From far away, I heard Freddie shouting over and over, “I’ve got it! I’ve got it!”

  Olive rushed down the hall and the door to Mrs. Conklin’s room slammed shut behind her. A tremor ripped through the house until I thought the very foundations would be torn out from under us. I slunk down onto the floor, my hands over my ears, desperately trying to shut out the pandemonium that raged around me. I wanted badly to scream. I opened my mouth, but no sound would emerge.

  And then a different sound sliced through the din – the unmistakable sound of a newborn baby’s squall. I rolled onto my hands and knees like a drunken man and slowly stood up, holding fast to the wall so I did not lose my balance.

  All the other sounds, Freddie, the dog, the shouting servants, all of it faded away until all I heard was the sound of the baby crying. I followed the sound to the end of the hall and nearly stumbled into a maid as she darted from the birthing room.

  “It’s a boy!” she exclaimed and ran down the hall, a town crier proclaiming the news at the top of her lungs. “It’s a boy!”

  Though I had never met Eleanor Conklin, my heart was filled with joy for her. What a relief it must be for everyone in the house that the ordeal of her labor had come to an end.

  A noisy crackling not unlike the sound I had heard over the telephone line whipped through the house. The hall was flooded with light as the electricity came back on. From all over could be heard the sound of clapping and shouts of “Hurrah!”

  Before long, the hallway was a busy thoroughfare as one by one the maids came out of the room hauling baskets of soiled linens. Presently, Olive emerged from the room as well. She had a radiant glow about her, and when she saw me she started, as if she were surprised to see me.

  “Forgive me,” she said. “I had completely forgotten you were here.”

  “It’s quite all right. Under the circumstances I’m nothing but an extra heel.”

  “You’re nothing of the sort. You were very kind to come.”

  “Mother and child are well, I hope?”

  A shadow crossed Olive’s face. “Eleanor is… distraught.”

  “Is the baby not well?”

  She smiled. “The boy is healthy. He has a powerful set of lungs.”

  I tittered nervously, knowing there was something more she wished to tell me.

  “But—” I prompted.

  “But, there is a mark… on his face.”

  “A birthmark?”

  She nodded.

  “It is livid red, like raw meat,” and she gestured with her hand so that I understood the birthmark covered the entire left profile. “He has been blessed by the angels.”

  I felt bad for Mrs. Conklin, for surely every mother wishes her child to be healthy and beautiful. Of course, her mind must be overtaxed from the pain of delivery. Surely it must be natural that she might feel that God had slighted her. I prayed that the baby might be healthy and beautiful in every other way. Perhaps, over time, such a mark would fade until it was little more than a discoloration of the skin.

  We stood in the hallway for a moment, silent in each other’s presence. The joyful sound of the baby’s howls was slowly joined by a new sound, one with a steadily mounting rhythm which beat against the walls and windows of the house.

  The rains had at last begun.

  Rupert appeared from the other wing of the house, Master Freddie’s ear twisted in his grip. The boy now had his nightshirt on, at least. Freddie was sniffling and wiping his nose with the back of his hand, but when he saw Olive and I, he redoubled his efforts and tried to escape the footman’s grasp. Rupert would not let him go and Freddie howled dramatically.

  “Aunt Olive, Rupert is trying to kill me!”

  “Behave,” she said sharply. “He’s doing nothing of the sort. You were a naughty boy to lead Rupert around in circles like that. I shall speak to Miss Enfield about a suitable punishment for this nonsense.”

  “It wasn’t my fault,” the boy protested. “I told you one of them got into the house.”

  “Freddie, this is no time for your fairy nonsense.”

  “It isn’t nonsense, it isn’t. Tell her, Rupert. You saw it didn’t you?”

  “I saw nothing but a wicked little boy running wild without his trousers,” said Rupert. “I have half a mind to turn you over my knee myself.”

  “You wouldn’t dare!”

  “He shall if I allow it,” said Olive, and from the sudden change in the boy’s expression, he knew she was in earnest.

  “Why won’t you believe me?”

  “Take him to his room, Rupert. Master Freddie is going to bed early.”

  “But I haven’t had my supper,” he whined.

  “Naughty boys are sent to bed without supper.”

  Now he tried a new strategy. “You can’t send me to my room. It’s in there.”

  “One of your fairies?” Rupert scoffed at the boy.

  “Yes!”

  “Freddie,” said Olive, “we’ve all grown quite tired of your games. You’re only begging for attention because you’re jealous of your new little brother, isn’t that so?”

  “No!” the child protested. “There is one in my room, I tell you, there is! If you don’t believe me then come see for yourself.”

  Olive’s nose wrinkled in exasperation, but I thought of the strange noises I had heard in the bedroom.

  “Perhaps we should go to Freddie’s room,” I said, and before Olive could protest further, I said to Freddie, “Will you take me to your room?”

  Freddie marched triumphantly ahead of us around the corner into the next wing. He opened a door and switched on the light. I barely had time to survey the room – a toy chest at the foot of a bed, a rocking horse, an unwanted dollhouse crammed into a corner – as Freddie went around to the other side of the bed and stopped.

  There was a snuffling sound and a muffled cry

  At first all I saw were bony fingers clamped over Emily’s mouth. She was struggling to be heard, her eyes wide with panic, but the creature held her tight. The rest of it was in shadow, but I could see that the head was large and bulbous. Its eyes were shining, wet, and black. A thousand childhood nights gazing in wonder at the pictures in fairy books could not have prepared me for the hideous sight of this creature before me.

  I heard a sharp intake of breath from Olive followed by Rupert’s barely audible, “Oh my God.” With caution I knelt on the floor in front of Emily and held out my hands, palm up.

  “Let go of the girl,” I said.

  The goblin hissed. It was not unlike the sound of an angry cat. But this thing was no cat, nor was it human. I inched forward until I was less than a foot away from it. It never took its eyes from me. All the while it held its grip on the girl’s face. Emily w
himpered in fear and pain.

  I had no plan. I didn’t have time to think. All I knew was that I had to somehow get Emily away from it. I didn’t know if the creature wanted to hurt her or if it was merely frightened of us and wanted nothing more than its freedom.

  “Give me the girl,” I said again, gesturing with gentle supplication. Emily reached out a trembling hand to me, and when I extended my hand she grabbed hold of me. Her grip was like a vise. I reached out my other hand and Emily took it as well. I tugged gently, but still the goblin would not relinquish the girl.

  “Let go of her!” I finally shouted, glad that my voice was strong and confident, the way one would talk to an unruly dog. It would not do to let Emily know I was equally as afraid as she, and I certainly did not want the creature to know I was frightened of it.

  Nevertheless the goblin hissed and held her tight.

  Freddie crawled around beside me and faced the creature on his hands and knees. I don’t think I have ever seen a little boy so brave in all my life. He grimaced at the goblin, showing his teeth, and then he roared at it the way children do when they play at being king of the jungle.

  It roared right back. Its breath was foul, worse than a day old chamber pot left out in the sun.

  And then Freddie pounced. He clamped his teeth on the thing’s hand. It howled in pain. Emily wrenched herself free and flew past me into Olive’s arm.

  There was a blur of movement as the creature flailed its arm in agony. It seemed to spin and tumble and scrabble about in all directions at once, defying all sense of physics. I crawled back away from it and stumbled into the legs of the footman behind me.

  Rupert at last found his voice. “What in God’s name is that?” he said. We all watched in wonder as the thing had its fit, for there was no other word to describe it, a tantrum worse than any child’s I had ever seen.

  “What are we going to do with it, is the question,” I said.

  “Let it go,” said Olive. “I can’t bear to look at the ugly thing.

  I stood up and moved slowly backward toward the door. “Stand aside so it can leave if it wants to.” The others did as they were told. Rupert held Freddie tight against his legs. Olive enfolded Emily in her arms.