Fighters of Fear

by Mike Ashley

  The solid wall seemed to wave and buckle before Forrester, almost as though it were not a wall but a sheet of white cloth, held and waved by hands as cloth is waved in a theatre to simulate waves. More and more cloth-like the wall became, and, as we gazed at this strange sight, the simulacrum of Simon Forrester seemed to become less opaque, to melt and blend in with the waving wall, which gradually ceased to move, and then he was gone and the wall was as it had been before. . . .

  On Monday morning, at Carruth’s urgent solicitation, Snow assembled a force of labourers, and we watched while they broke down the wall of “the shut room” opposite the doorway. At last, as Carruth had expected, a pick went through, and, the interested workmen, labouring with a will, broke through into a small, narrow, cell-like room the plaster of which indicated that it had been walled up perhaps two centuries before, or even earlier—a “priest’s hole” in all probability, of the early post-reformation period near the end of the sixteenth century.

  Carruth stopped the work as soon as it was plain what was there and turned out the workmen, who went protestingly. Then, with only our host working beside us, and the door of the room locked on the inside, we continued the job. At last the aperture was large enough, and Carruth went through. We heard an exclamation from him, and then he began to hand out articles through the rough hole in the masonry—leather articles—boots innumerable, ladies’ reticules, hand-luggage, the missing jeweller’s sample case with its contents intact—innumerable other articles, and, last of all, the “harness” with the pistols in the holsters.

  Carruth explained the “jester case” to Snow, who shook his head over it. “It’s quite beyond me, Lord Carruth,” said he, “but, as you say this annoyance is at an end, I am quite satisfied; and—I’ll take your advice and make sure by pulling down the whole room, breaking out the corridor walls, and joining it to the room across the way. I confess I can not make head or tail of your explanation—the unfulfilled wish, the ‘sympathetic pervasion’ of the room, as you call it, the ‘materialisation,’ and the strange fact that this business began only a short time ago. But—I’ll do exactly what you have recommended, about the room, that is. The restoration of the jeweller’s case will undoubtedly make it possible for me to get back the sum I paid Messrs Hopkins and Barth of Liverpool when it disappeared in my house. Can you give any explanation of why the ‘shade’ of Forrester remained quiet for a century and more and only started up the other day, so to speak?”

  “It is because the power to materialise came very slowly,” answered Carruth, “coupled as it undoubtedly was with the gradual breaking down of the room’s material resistance. It is very difficult to realise the extraordinary force of an unfulfilled wish on the part of a forceful, brutal, wholly selfish personality like Forrester’s. It is, really, what we must call spiritual power, even though the ‘spirituality’ was the reverse of what we commonly understand by that term. The wish and the force of Forrester’s persistent desire, through the century, have been working steadily, and, as you have told us, the room has been out of use for more than a century. There were no common, everyday affairs to counteract that malign influence—no ‘interruptions,’ if I make myself clear.”

  “Thank you,” said Mr. Snow. “I do not clearly understand. These matters are outside my province. But—I am exceedingly grateful—to you both.” Our host bowed courteously. “Anything that I can possibly do, in return—”

  “There is nothing—nothing whatever,” said Carruth quietly; “but, Mr. Snow, there is another problem on your hands which perhaps you will have some difficulty in solving, and concerning which, to our regret”—he looked gravely at me—“I fear neither Mr. Canevin with his experience, nor I with mine, will be able to assist you.”

  “And what, pray, is that?” asked Mr. Snow, turning slightly pale. He would, I perceive, be very well satisfied to have his problems behind him.

  “The problem is,” said Carruth, even more gravely I imagined, “it is—what disposal are you to make of fifty-eight pairs of assorted boots and shoes!”

  And Snow’s relieved laughter was the last of the impressions which I took with me as we road back to London in Carruth’s car, of The Coach and Horses Inn on the Brighton Road.

  DR. MUNCING IN

  DR. MUNCING, EXORCIST

  GORDON MACCREAGH

  Gordon MacCreagh (1885–1953) was a real-life adventurer and explorer as well as a prolific writer of adventure fiction. Details about his life vary according to different sources, including his own accounts, but it seems he was born and educated in Scotland, coming to the United States where his father came to study the Native Americans. He purportedly studied at Heidelberg University where he had a sabre duel with a fellow student and was sure he’d killed him. He hadn’t, but MacCreagh fled to India and ended up collecting butterflies and insects for a museum, and then animals for a circus, extending his operations to Africa. He eventually returned to the United States in 1911 where he began writing, his primary market being the leading pulp Adventure. In 1921 he joined the Mulford Expedition on its biological explorations of the Amazon Basin. Although it did not fulfil its primary purpose, it did return with over two thousand specimens of plant and insect life, identifying many new species. MacCreagh wrote about his experiences in White Waters and Black (1923). In 1927 Adventure magazine financed an expedition by MacCreagh and his wife to Abyssinia (now Ethiopia) in the hope of finding the Ark of the Covenant. His experiences were written up for Adventure and expanded in the book The Last of Free Africa (1928). During the Second World War he went to Africa as a translator and interpreter and was shot down, but survived.

  Although all of this gave him plenty of material for his stories and lectures, it provided little for his rare forays into weird fiction, though there is some evidence that he learned many native suspicions and remedies. He wrote just two stories featuring Dr. Muncing, the sequel being “The Case of the Sinister Shape” (1932) before the magazine, Strange Tales, ceased. It is possible, but unlikely, that a third story, “The Hand of Saint Ury” was revised to remove Dr. Muncing and sold to Weird Tales in 1951 at the end of MacCreagh’s career.

  THE BRASS PLATE ON THE GATE POST OF THE TRIM WHITE WICKET said only:

  DR. MUNCING, EXORCIST.

  Aside from that, the house was just the same as all the others in that street—semi-detached, whitewashed, respectable. A few more brass plates announced other sober citizens with their sprinkling of doctors of medicine and one of divinity. But “Dr. Muncing, Exorcist”: that was suggestive of something quite different and strange.

  The man who gazed reflectively out of the window at the driving rain, was, like his brass sign, vaguely suggestive, too, of something strange; of having the capacity to do something that the other sober citizens, doctors and lawyers, did not do.

  He was of a little more than middle height, broad, with strong, capable-looking hands; his face was square cut, finely criss-crossed with weatherbeaten lines, tanned from much travel in far-away lands; a strong nose hung over a thin, wide mouth that closed with an extraordinary determination.

  The face of a normal man of strong character. It was the eyes that conveyed that vague impression of something unusual. Deep set, they were, of an indeterminate colour, hidden beneath a frown of reflective brows; brooding eyes, suggestive of a knowledge of things that other sober citizens did not know.

  The other man who stared out of the other window was younger, bigger in every way; an immense young fellow who carried in his big shoulders and clean complexion every mark of having devoted more of his college years to study of football rather than of medicine. This one grunted an ejaculation.

  “I’ll bet a dollar this is a patient for you.”

  Dr. Muncing came over to the other window. “I don’t bet dollars with Dr. James Terry. Gambling seems to have been one of the few things you did really well at Johns College. The fellow does look plentifully frightened, at that.”

  The man in question was hurrying down the st
reet, looking anxiously at the house numbers; bent over, huddled in a raincoat, he read the numbers furtively, as though reluctant to turn his head out of the protection of his up-turned collar. He uttered a glad cry as he saw the plate of Dr. Muncing, Exorcist, and, letting the gate slam, he stumbled up the path to the door.

  Dr. Muncing met the man personally, led him to a comfortable chair, mixed a stimulant for him, offered him a cigarette. Calm, methodical, matter-of-fact, this was his “bedside manner” with such cases. Forcefully he compelled the impression that, whatever might be the trouble, it was nothing that could not be cured. He stood waiting for an explanation. The man stammered an incoherent jumble of nothings.

  “I—Doctor, I don’t know how—I can’t tell you what it is, but the Reverend Mr. Hendryx sent me to you. Yet I don’t know what to tell you; there’s nothing to describe.”

  “Well,” said the doctor judicially, “that is already interesting. If there’s nothing and if the Reverend Mr. Hendryx feels that he can’t pray it away, we probably have something that we can get hold of.”

  His manner was dominant and cheerful, he radiated confidence. His bulky young assistant had been chosen for just that purpose also, to assist in putting over the impression of power, of force to deal with queer and horrible things that could not be sanely described.

  The man began to respond to that atmosphere. He got a grip on himself and began to speak more coherently.

  “Doctor, I don’t know what to tell you. There have been no—spooks, or anything of that sort. We’ve seen nothing; heard nothing. It’s only a feeling. I—you’ll laugh at me, Doctor, but—it’s just a something in the dark that brings a feeling of awful fear; and I know that it will catch me. Last night—my God, last night it almost touched me.”

  “I never laugh,” said Dr. Muncing seriously, “until I have laid my ghost. For some ghosts are horribly real. Tell me something about yourself, your family, your home and so on. And as to your fears, whatever they are, please don’t try to conceal them from me.”

  A baffled expression came over the man’s face. “There’s nothing to tell, Doctor; nothing that’s different to anybody else. I don’t know what could bring this frightful thing about us. I—my name is Jarrett—I sell real estate up in the Catskills. I have a little place a hundred feet off the paved state road, two miles from the village. There’s nothing old or dilapidated about the house; there’s modern plumbing, electric lights, and so on. No old graveyards anywhere in the neighbourhood. Not a single thing to bring this horror; and yet—I tell you, Doctor, there’s something frightful in the dark that we can feel.”

  “Hm-m!” The doctor pursed his lips and walked a short beat, his hands deep in his pockets. “A new house; no old associations. Begins to sound like an elemental, only how would such a thing have gotten loose? Or it might be a malignant geoplasm, but—Tell me about your family, Mr. Jarrett.”

  “There’s only four of us, Doctor. There’s my wife’s brother, who’s an invalid; and . . .”

  “Ah-h!” A quick breath came from the doctor. “So there’s a sick man, yes? What is his trouble?”

  “His lungs are affected. He was advised to come to us for the mountain air; and he was getting very much better; but recently he’s very much worse again. We’ve been thinking that perhaps this constant terror has been too much for him.”

  “Hm-m, yes, indeed.” The doctor strode his quick beat back and forth; his indeterminate eyes were distinctly steel grey just now. “Yes, yes, the terror, and the sick man who grows worse. Quite so. Who else, Mr. Jarrett? What else have you that might attract a visophaging entity?”

  “A viso-what? Good God, Doctor, we haven’t anything to attract anything. Besides my wife’s brother there’s only my son, ten years of age, and my wife. She gets it worse than any of us; she says she has even seen—but I think there’s a lot of blarney in all that.” The man contrived a sick smile. “You know how women are, Doctor; she says she has seen shapes—formless things in the dark. She likes to think she is psychic, and she is always seeing things that nobody else knows anything about.”

  “Oh, good Lord!” Dr. Muncing groaned and his face was serious. “Verily do fools rush in. All the requirements for piercing the veil. Heavens, what idiots people can be.”

  Suddenly he shot an accusing finger at Mr. Jarrett. “I suppose she makes you sit round table with her, and all that sort of stuff.”

  “Yes, Doctor, she does. Raps and spelt-out messages, and so on.”

  “Good Lord!” The doctor walked angrily back and forth. “Fools by the silly thousand play with this kind of fire, and this time these poor simpletons have broken in on something.”

  He whirled on the frightened realtor with accusing finger, laying down the law.

  “Mr. Jarrett, your foolish wife doesn’t know what she has done. I myself don’t know what she has turned loose or what this thing might develop into. We may be able to stop it. It may escape and grow into a world menace. I tell you we humans don’t begin to know what forces exist on the other side of that thin dividing line that we don’t begin to understand. The only thing to do now is to come with you immediately to your home; and we must try and find out what this thing is that has broken through and whether we can stop it.”

  The Jarrett house turned out exactly as described. Modern and commonplace in every way; situated in an acre of garden and shrubbery on a sunlit slope of the Catskill Mountains. The other houses of the straggly little village were much the same, quiet residences of normal people who preferred to retire a little beyond the noise and activity of the summer resort of Pine Bend about two miles down the state road.

  The Jarrett family fitted exactly into their locale. Well meaning, hospitable rural non-entities. The lady who was psychic was over-plump and short of breath at that elevation; the son, a gangling schoolboy, evinced the shy aloofness of a country youth before strangers; the sick man, thin and drawn, with an irritable cough, showed the unnatural flush of colour on his cheeks that marked his disease.

  It required very much less than Dr. Muncing’s keenness to see that all of these people were in a condition of nervous tension that in itself was proof of something that had made quite an extraordinary effect on their unimaginative minds.

  Dilated eyes, tremulous limbs, backward looks; all these things showed that something had brought this unfortunate family to the verge of a panic that reached the very limits of their control.

  The doctor was an adept at dispelling that sort of jumpiness. Such a mental condition was the worst possible for combating “influences,” whatever they might be. He acknowledged his introductions with easy confidence, and then he held up his hand.

  “No, no, nix on that. Give me a chance to breathe. D’you want to ruin my appetite with horrors? Let’s eat first and then you can spread yourselves out on the story. No ghost likes a full stomach.”

  He was purposely slangy. The immediate effect was that his hosts experienced a measure of relief. The man radiated such an impression of knowledge, of confidence, of power.

  The meal, however, was at best a lugubrious one. Conversation had to be forced to dwell on ordinary subjects. The wife evinced a painful disinclination to go into the kitchen. “Our cook left us two days ago,” she explained. The boy was silent and frightened. The sick man said little, and coughed a dry, petulant bark at intervals.

  The doctor, engrossed in his plate, chattered gaily about nothing; but all the time he was watching the invalid like a hawk. James Terry did his best to distract attention from the expert’s scrutiny of everybody and everything in the room. By the time the meal was over the doctor had formed his opinion about the various characteristics and idiosyncrasies of his hosts, and he dominated the company with his expansive cheerfulness.

  “Well, now, let’s get one of those satisfying smokes in the jimmy pipe, and you can tell me all about it. You”—selecting the lady—“you tell me. I’m sure you’ll give the best account.”

  The lady, flustered and frig
htened, was able to add very little to what her husband had already described. There was nothing to add. A baffling nothingness enshrouded the whole situation; but it was a nothingness that was full of an unnameable fear—a feeling of terror enhanced by the “shapes” of the wife’s psychic imaginings. A nameless nothing to be combated.

  The doctor shrugged with impatience. He had met with just such conditions before: the inability of people to describe their ghostly happenings with coherence. He decided on a bold experiment.

  “My dear lady,” he said, devoting his attention to the psychic one, “it is difficult to exorcise a mere feeling until we know something about the cause of it. Now I’ll tell you what we ought to do. When you sit at your table for your little séances you get raps and so on, don’t you? And you spell out messages from your ‘spirit friends,’ isn’t it? And you’d like to go into a trance and let your ‘guides’ control you; only you are a little nervous about it; and all that kind of stuff, no?”

  “Why, yes, Doctor, that is just about what happens, but how should you know all that?”

  “Hm,” grunted the doctor dryly. “You are not alone in your foolishness, my dear lady; there are many thousands in the United States who take similar chances. They look upon psychic exploration as a parlour game. But now what I want to suggest is, let’s have one of your little séances now. And you will go into a trance this time and perhaps you—I mean your guides—will tell us something. In the trance condition, which after all is a form of hypnosis—though we do not know whether the state is auto-induced or whether it is due to the suggestion of an outside influence—in this hypnotic condition the subconscious reflexes are sensitive to influences that the more material conscious mind cannot receive.”