The Fairies at Browning Grange

by Barrymore Tebbs

  The tantrum abruptly ceased. The black-eyed gaze bored into mine, then darted toward the others, and then focused on the door. With a final, wretched scream, it turned sideways and hurtled up the wall at lightning-like speed, skittering like a spider underneath the ceiling, and then disappeared into the hall. I raced out after it, but the thing was gone. How it got outside I’ll never know but I hoped to heaven that it did.

  The children were all right, thank God. Emily was badly frightened, but it hadn’t hurt her in any way. Freddie was a brave little soldier to have come to his sister’s rescue the way he did, but he seemed to take the whole thing in stride. It was only a game to him, a grand adventure.

  * * *

  Rupert usually served Freddie his supper in the nursery, but Olive invited me to stay for supper and she and I and the children ate together in the dining room.

  It lifted Emily’s spirits to be able to eat in the formal dining room. I’m sure it was seldom used since Mr. Conklin’s death and Mrs. Conklin’s retreat to her room. Freddie was so beside himself it was a wonder he would be able to sleep that night. I for one found the whole ordeal had been exhausting, and the first glass of wine went straight to my head.

  After we ate, Olive rang for Miss Enfield who gathered the children to take them upstairs to prepare for bed. Emily protested that she did not want to sleep in the nursery that night, and who could blame her.

  “Would you like Rupert and me to go upstairs with you,” I offered, “and make certain it is truly gone?”

  “It’s all right, then,” said Olive once we had thoroughly examined the nursery. “It’s a lot cooler now, don’t you think? The rain has got rid of this miserable heat. You should have no trouble falling asleep. Would you like me to read to you?”

  Freddie yawned.

  The rains continued to fall heavily, and Olive decided I should spend the night at Browning Grange and Tom would drive me home in the morning. Rupert protested that he had little time to prepare a room, but Olive and I both assured him formalities were not expected.

  Rupert showed me to one of the guest rooms and supplied me with a nightshirt which had belonged to the late Mr. Conklin. The steady tattoo of rain against the windows quickly lulled me into a deep, dreamless sleep…

  …Only to be awakened as Rupert burst into my room, bearing the news of that final horror.

  “It’s the baby, sir. It’s disappeared.”

  It took me a moment to regain my bearings. I recalled the previous night’s storm, the desperate phone call, the chaotic turmoil within the house that precipitated the baby’s arrival.

  And now the baby was gone.

  Within the quarter hour I had joined the search party. Paired with a lanky adolescent hall boy, we searched most of the rooms in the upper west wing of the house. These halls and bedrooms appeared seldom used, but there was not a speck of dust or piece of furniture out of place. With a service staff as immense as that at Browning Grange, it was no small wonder.

  We reconvened in the servants’ hall an hour later. If the search of the house seemed futile, we were faced with an even more daunting task of scouring the grounds. To make matters worse, the land was blanketed in an impenetrable fog. If someone truly had stolen the baby, surely he was long away from here.

  Someone! I snorted derisively at my rational self. I knew full well someone had not crept into the house and stolen the Conklin baby. It was something, and that thing was a hideous grey goblin which had done its best to abscond with poor Emily. When it couldn’t have her, it returned for that precious, innocent baby. Damn this fairy business! Three days ago I should have laughed in Olive’s face when she enticed me to Browning Grange with the possibility of photographing fairies.

  But would that simple act of denial have altered the course of history or simply removed my own involvement?

  The trek across the meadow through the fog was arduous. Until I reached the edge of the forest, there were no landmarks with which to orient myself. I shuffled forward at a maddeningly slow pace, my arms outstretched like a blind man, anchored only by the calls and shouts of the other men in the search party.

  Somehow I was able to recall the route I had followed each time I went into the forest, for no sooner had I stepped inside than I tripped on an exposed root. I landed indelicately on my backside beneath a tree I recognized as the ancient oak where Olive and I had lain together. I reached out my hand and touched the root.

  The root moved, and yelped!

  I snatched my hand away, and then tentatively reached out again. The root moved again, and to my horror I found it was not a root I had stumbled on, but a man who scrambled awkwardly away from me. Though I could not have seriously hurt him, he emitted a pitiful moan like a wounded animal. It was a harsh, guttural sound.

  I could not believe my eyes – the man was completely naked. The sound he made, though not quite human, was harsh to my ears.

  I muttered some word of apology and offered to help him up, but all he did was wrap his arms around his body and begin to rock and sway, crooning to himself, babbling gibberish.

  “Are you all right?” I asked. His wide, frightened eyes never left my gaze. His mouth moved silently as if he was attempting to imitate my words.

  I reached out my hand to him. “I’ll help you up. Can you tell me your name?”

  But the boy – a young man really – was not only naked but there was not a hair on his head or anywhere on his body, not even on his eyebrows or groin. His eyes were as blue and clear as a cloudless summer sky. He appeared to be fully grown, perhaps as tall as me, but with the lack of hair I could not determine his age.

  And there was a mark, red as blood, which obscured almost the entire left side of his face.

  There is a mark on his face – Olive’s words from the night before tugged at my memory – livid red, like raw meat.

  Something twisted like razor sharp wires inside of me. My stomach lurched. In that moment I knew that something altogether inexplicable had occurred. Olive had told me that Mrs. Conklin’s baby was born with a livid mark upon his face. Sometime during the night, the child had disappeared, yet in its place I had found this man who, save for the fact that he was fully grown, was little more than a newborn baby himself. All he could do was cower in fear at the incomprehensible world into which he had been born.

  Was it possible that the creature we had all seen in the nursery had stolen the baby and left this man in its place?

  Was it possible this man was that baby?

  The idea defied every natural law. Such a thing was not only patently absurd, but physically impossible.

  Unless, of course, years had passed in the twinkling of an eye and this was indeed the missing child, grown to manhood.

  I tried to help the young man to his feet, but he was so terrified of me that he continued to crawl and scramble away from me. It was almost unbearable to watch, and I wanted nothing more than to have his nakedness covered. I tore off my shirt, but he refused to let me touch him. Instead he screamed, and even that sound was nothing like that which a full grown man would make.

  There was a sudden shriek of birds and the flapping of wings in the branches far above me. My patience was taxed. I could no longer try to help this man on my own.

  “Help!” I shouted. He covered his ears and screamed at me in return, never taking his gaze from me as I called again and again. “Over here,” I cried. “I’ve found something. Come quickly.”

  A shout responded from out of the fog. It was Tom Mosely. I was uncertain from which direction it came, but I continued to shout so that my voice could guide him through the fog. I needn’t have bothered. The strange man’s anguished cries were as loud and alarming as my own. Soon, another voice responded, and another, and within a matter of minutes a small band of men converged around the ancient oak.

  “Crikey!” said Tom when he saw the naked man, and that was about the size of it. In a week of bizarre occurrences, this sight was beyond comprehension.

  The
poor man flew into a fit of hysterics when we held him down and forced the shirt around his shoulders. We dragged him to his feet in an attempt to lead him back to the house, but his legs would not hold his weight. It was as if the man had never learned to walk.

  If somehow for him time had leapt forward twenty years while for the rest of us it had been mere moments, he would have no skill or knowledge beyond that of a newborn baby, no ability to speak or walk.

  Rupert eyed the man with undisguised hostility. “He’s the one who stole the baby!” From the ire in his voice I knew that given half a chance, he would tear the man limb from limb.

  “We don’t know that,” I insisted.

  “Then what’s he doing out here on the Grange?” said another of the men. “And where are his bloody clothes? And why in God’s name won’t he speak?”

  “He’s mad,” said another. If I had told them my suspicions, would they have thought me mad as well?

  It took four of us to drag and carry him out of the forest as best we could. He kicked and flailed every step of the way. One of the men received a cracked lip for his efforts. He wanted to retaliate, of course, but I took control of the situation and convinced the man it was an accident. This frightened boy was nothing but a child who only meant to defend himself in the way that only children can.

  In the garage we managed to dress him in a pair of Tom’s trousers. I whispered soothingly to the young man. Though it felt strange to do so, some paternal instinct in me took over; I stroked his arms and caressed his cheek. Now that I had my first opportunity to inspect him at close range I guessed his age would be eighteen to twenty years.

  But was he? Or was he less than a day old? The mystery confounded me.

  I insisted Rupert bring food from the house, and if the footman were not so well-trained and respected me as a guest in the house, he would have disobeyed me.

  I spooned porridge leftover from the morning’s breakfast into the young man’s mouth. He ate ravenously. It was a daunting task and he made a right mess of it. It was like feeding a newborn baby – more of the stuff got all over his face than in his mouth.

  After he had been fed, he mewed complacently to himself and rolled away from us on the floor and curled into a ball and went to sleep.

  The others were as bewildered as I.

  “He stole the baby!” Rupert was still insistent.

  “How could he have stolen the baby,” Mr. Brooks said. “He’s barely more than a child himself.”

  “Wot we going to do wit’ him?” said Tom.

  “I don’t know,” I said, “but I don’t think we should tell anyone in the house. It will only distress Olive and I can’t imagine what Mrs. Conklin might feel.”

  Mr. Brooks was in agreement. “We must at least tell the constable,” he said. “What else are we to do with him?”

  I looked at the sleeping boy on the floor. I looked at faces of the men around me. What else, indeed, would we be able to do with him?

  When the constable arrived, I told him everything that had happened, from the time of the baby’s birth, and the description Olive had given me of the birthmark, through to my discovery of the lad as I found him naked in the forest. I did, however, have the good sense to make no mention of the creature we had seen in the nursery.

  The constable showed no sign that he made any connection between the missing baby and the man curled on the floor before us. I doubt that it even occurred to Rupert that the goblin, or whatever it was, had stolen the baby. For all I know his mind had already blocked all memory of the previous night. The baby was stolen and the young man we found was responsible. The notion that the goblin had stolen the baby, kept it somewhere until it was fully grown, and then returned it here all within the twinkling of an eye defied all logic, but I had no other explanation.

  In the end, the poor fellow was taken away, crying and flailing with his fists, but there was nothing more that could be done. Whatever became of him, I do not know; I didn’t ask. He was probably taken to an asylum. It all seems like a dream to me now, but I swear that what I have told you is the truth. God help me, I wish it wasn’t.

  I never saw Olive Gibbs again. I went briefly into the house, collected the camera, and asked to have a word with Miss Gibbs. Rupert told me she was consoling her sister and could not be disturbed. It was just as well. It would have been difficult to keep the story from her.

  * * *

  I am married now, with two children of my own – a boy and a girl. I have published a book of my photographs, and have enjoyed some notoriety and a modest income which has enabled me to buy a larger house for all of us. I still teach, and I still take photographs, though with my income I am now able to travel on holiday and to take pictures in other corners of our beautiful country.

  The picture I took of Freddie Conklin sitting inside the fairy circle hangs in my studio. Patrons frequently comment about the magical quality in the picture, about the look of sublime peace on the boy’s face. I have never shown anyone the other photograph I took that night in Goblin Hollow. To any other eye, it would appear as nothing more than an abstract array of blurs. From time to time I take it out and look at it, confident in my heart that what I see in those blurred images are real, living things. I am still not certain of what they are, but they are not fairies. They are not gremlins, or goblins, or anything else we care to call them.

  One afternoon, not long ago, a young man in his late teen years passed me on the street and addressed me by name. His large eyes, an impossibly vivid blue, were vaguely familiar to me, and when he introduced himself as Freddie Conklin, I greeted him with an affectionate embrace and invited him to a nearby pub where we enjoyed a glass of ale together.

  “I haven’t seen my aunt in years,” he said when I pressed him for news of Olive Gibbs. “Whether she still lives in Birmingham, or has moved on, I don’t know. Mother passed away not long after my baby brother was born. After the death of our father and my brother in quick succession, I’m sure she lost her will to live.”

  No one had ever told him the truth about his brother. He believed the baby had simply died. Perhaps that was for the best.

  “Emily married a solicitor and lives in Glasgow now. I haven’t seen her since the wedding, but she writes me nearly every week.”

  He had grown into quite a handsome fellow, and I was certain once he had reached his maturity he would enjoy married life as master of Browning Grange.

  “And what of the fairies?” I asked.

  Freddie threw his head back and laughed. “Those damned fairies! I still remember the night one of them got in the house. You were there, weren’t you? What a wild night that was!”

  “Do you still see them lurking about in that dark hollow deep down in the forest?”

  The blue eyes sparkled. “Not once. They’re gone, gone for good. It’s been so long ago, but I can still vividly see the one that had got hold of Emily. What an ugly little thing it was. Rupert and Emily give me strange looks whenever I mention it. Perhaps they don’t remember, but the image of that beastly thing is burned into my mind’s eye forever.”

  “It was a strange night,” I agreed. “I wonder what it really was.”

  “I don’t think we’ll ever know.”

  “What do you suppose became of it?”

  “It flew away along with the rest of them.”

  “The rest of them?”

  “Yes, the white fairies, and the greenish looking ones.”

  I had a vague memory of Olive telling me that the fairies didn’t actually fly, but that they seemed to leap or hover above the ground.

  “Tell me, Freddie, how did they fly?”

  Freddie smiled. “They boarded a ship… and it flew away.”

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thanks are in order to two of my favorite photographers, Amy Hartman, for introducing me to the Speed Graphic, and Justin Warrick, for letting me use his name; also to Tammy Wilke whose discussions on the nature of fairies helped plant the seed which eventually
sprouted into this tale.

  I am deeply indebted to the very talented Kim MacKay who helped shepherd The Fairies at Browning Grange out of the tangled forest of my brain.

  And as always, a special thank you to readers who have bought and read my books, who have sent messages, posted comments, and written reviews to let me know I’m on the right track. Your kindness and generous feedback is immensely appreciated.

  ALSO AVAILABLE

  Night of the Pentagram

  Black Valentines

  The Yellow Scarf

  The Haunting at Blackwood Hall

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