Bernard starts to run back down the hall, away from Dad. So I trip him up.
As the Authorities flow themselves into the house, their shadows fall over the hallway. It’s a grey you can’t get in this world, and I notice that wherever they fall, all the orchids are wilting to mush.
THE HIGHLAND AIR
by Gethin A. Lynes
MR AONGHAS CROWTHER
SCHIMEL ST
WATERLOO, NEW SOUTH WALES
HAVE ARRIVED SAFE STOP VOYAGE UNEVENTFUL STOP AWAITING ARRIVAL OF UNCLE CORMACK STOP WILL WRITE PROPERLY SOON STOP
DOUGAL
The telegram brought some small measure of relief, though until my son was safe in the care of my brother, Cormack, I could not help a lingering sense of unease. For all our differences, my brother was a good man, and I knew he would do his best for Dougal. My son had suffered long from both a sickly constitution and, in more recent years, increasing mental ill health. Despite his frailty, Dougal had always been a contrary lad, full of argument and question, and I worried often that if his health did not take him from me, his wont to question society’s beliefs would get him into trouble of a sort from which I could not save him.
From the earliest age he displayed an intelligence beyond his years, and I held high hopes that he would elevate himself above his station. That is not to say that we were of a lowly birth, nor that our emigration to the antipodes had not provided us with fortune. Indeed, quite the contrary. Being of no small wit myself, the colonies of Australia proved to be a most opportune place in which, with hard work and ingenuity, one could grow wealthy.
It is, however, to a standing of respect, even honour, beyond that afforded by wealth alone that I hoped Dougal might rise, perhaps as a surgeon, or member of the judiciary. But it was not to be.
Even in his early schooling, he surpassed his tutors. He was placed with children older and, I think unfortunately for Dougal, duller of wit than he, and while he quickly became as much an aid to his teachers as a student, it was to his social detriment. He was oft derided, even bullied by his peers, and being of a slight stature unmatched to his fiery temperament, he retreated from the company of other children, and took to spending his every moment indoors.
He was always reading, as though he might learn enough to question the very nature of the universe. Which, I suppose, in his way, he did.
I enrolled him in The King’s School, with no small amount of convincing, a full two years before he was of an age. I thought that the guidance and discipline provided by boarding at the school would prove to be a boon for Dougal’s delicate health, believing that what he needed was a firm hand and some physical exertion.
Under the school’s supervision and tutelage, however, he seemed to suffer more than prosper. He took no interest, much to his Housemaster’s grievance, in those pursuits, sportsmanship and military training and so on, to which young men, I was oft informed, ought to take rather keenly. He was at odds, also, with the school’s religious instruction, against which he railed constantly. On more than one occasion, I was called into the school to account for his ungodly ideas.
On this count, I cannot blame the boy, for the escape from my own staunchly Calvinist upbringing formed no small part of my decision to leave Scotland. It was also the chief reason that in the years since I came to New South Wales, at least until I sent Dougal to his care, I had exchanged not two words with my brother.
It was only a few months before he was due to graduate from King’s that I was called back from business in the Western Plains to find that Dougal had been expelled from the school. He would have been well placed, according to his examination results, to have entered university in whichever faculty he desired, and I thought to argue for the school to rescind their expulsion.
I was met, however, by a resolute refusal to discuss the matter. I left with the distinct impression that the Headmaster, Reverend George Fairfowl Macarthur, was, more than anything else, afraid.
Dougal himself refused to speak of what had occurred, and eventually I was left with no choice but to cease my inquiries.
In the two years following, Dougal’s health deteriorated. He got about everywhere with the aid of a cane and, wrapped in a thick shawl, he was wracked by bouts of shivering, even in the hottest months.
He took work in the Sydney Free Public Library. There he worked closely with the young principal librarian, Robert Cooper Walker, with whom I became well acquainted, and was instrumental in helping to expand the library’s collection. Dougal found himself lodging close by the Library, and though I saw less and less of him, I became great friends with Mr Walker, though he was much closer to my son’s age than mine. He told me Dougal was fascinated, almost obsessed, with the Library’s rare books collection, and spent long nights closeted in the archives, poring over its contents. He confessed that he had rather received the impression that Dougal was searching for something, though what that might be, neither he nor I had any clue.
Dougal worked for Robert Walker for over three years. Eventually, and quite suddenly, he announced that he was going to seek his fortune in the goldfields of Victoria. I made no effort to conceal my surprise, and concern, for both his health and his prospects of success. I questioned him repeatedly, not understanding at all where this sudden, and quite odd, desire had come from. I was in no way short of funds. The fact that Dougal could live out his days comfortably in good health and pursuit of his interests, on my moderate wealth, fell on deaf ears. Despite my efforts, Dougal remained firm in his resolve.
I did not hear word of him for the better part of three years. When I did, it was most alarming.
♦
MR AONGHAS CROWTHER
SCHIMEL ST
WATERLOO, NEW SOUTH WALES
YOUR SON DOUGAL EXCEEDINGLY UNWELL STOP FEAR THE WORST STOP IN NO CONDITION TO TRAVEL STOP PLEASE COME AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE TO GLENROWAN STOP
JOSEPH BYRNE
By the time I arrived in Glenrowan, Dougal was barely clinging to life. He was laid up in the Glenrowan Hotel, under the care of the now infamous Joe Byrne. For all the violence for which Mr Byrne was later responsible, and all that has been said of him, I found him to be both an exceedingly courteous and considerate young man. His concern for my son was immediately apparent, and he tended Dougal, who lay pallid and sweating on his cot, with a surprisingly gentle hand.
Dougal had become horrendously thin, his face skeletal and his eyes sunken in black pits. To his chest, in one thin hand, he clutched a worn, leather-bound journal, a strange symbol scratched on its cover. It echoed the Celtic triskelion design, and yet it had some indefinable, almost squid-like quality in its form. I felt an immediate revulsion towards the thing, and I made to remove it from Dougal’s grip. But Joe quickly stayed my hand, and handed me the cool cloth with which he had been mopping my son’s sodden brow.
Joe left me then for a time, and I sat by the bedside for a long while, deeply concerned. In all his childhood bouts of illness I had never seen Dougal in such a wretched condition.
I do not in truth know how long it was that I sat there, but night had fallen by the time Joe returned. He had a bottle of whisky and two glasses, and he motioned me from the room, taking me to his own, where he related the events, or at least what he knew of them, that had led my son to this dark place.
Dougal had fallen to the devil of opium, which was a common affliction, I was told, amongst the Chinese encampments of the goldfields. Joe admitted, with much candour, that he himself partook of that drug on occasion, and he feared that it had been his friendship and influence that had introduced my boy to it.
“I feel much responsibility to my friends, Mr Crowther,” he said. “But I’ve not been the friend to your boy I should have.”
I said nothing, sensing in the young man the need to make a confession of sorts.
“He is
a remarkable intellect,” he went on. “And perhaps I didn’t realise how little experience of the world he has. I should not have left him alone. I’m no saint, but I’ve been much maligned by the law, and I didn’t think my disappearance would leave Dougal... I didn’t think he would have been so indulgent with the opium.”
He was obviously much pained by what he was telling me, his eyes on the floor and an anguished cast to his features. Despite my anxiousness over Dougal’s condition, I found myself unable to be overly angry with him. Still, I remained quiet, and allowed him to continue in his own time.
“I was gone for months, avoiding the coppers, and too much concerned with my own welfare. When I came back, he was in a terrible way. The Chinese had put him in a little tent, or he had crawled there. It was not much more than a lean-to, a pitiful shelter, but no one would go near him.”
He fell silent then, his eyes far off, as though reliving the experience. There was a long silence.
“Mr Byrne?” I said eventually, prompting his from his reverie. He shook his head, and looked up. After a moment, he went on.
“I could make neither head nor tail of it, Mr Crowther. I have seen men in the grip of opium before, but not like this.” Another silence. “Do you know what, or who, The Old Ones are?” he asked suddenly.
I shook my head.
“Dougal raved about them. He was in some state of delirium, and I could barely understand what he said, but he said it over and over. He was always holding that little book, and would go mad if I tried to put it aside, screaming and thrashing about. He seemed near dying, but the strength he held that book with was beyond me to break.”
I looked away, as though I might stop seeing that image of Dougal in my mind. When I turned back, Joe was quietly holding out the bottle of whisky. He waited while I poured, and took a long swallow.
“Even in his moments of clarity, I could get nothing from him. All he would say is ‘Time, Joe, I have no time’, as though he knew he was dying. There was an old man, a Chinaman, who didn’t seem to share his compatriot’s fear, and had been giving Dougal water, and what food he’d eat. He told me that I needed to take the lad elsewhere, before someone did away with him.”
Joe had sent for his friends the Kelly brothers, and together they had brought Dougal here to Glenrowan.
I had consumed more whisky in the telling of that story than I was used to and, tired and worried, I excused myself to return to my son’s side. Joe, who was to take his leave again the next morning, warned me of what to expect in the aftermath of Dougal’s dependence on the opium, and that I would see him in worse condition yet before he recovered.
He was not wrong, and I remained several weeks with Dougal in Glenrowan before he was well enough to make a slow trip back to Sydney. I say well enough, but in truth it was only that he was able to be moved at all. I was afraid he might not make the trip, but was determined to get him to where he might receive the best care.
Though he was past his desperate need of the drug, Dougal’s body was ravaged, and his dreams fevered. He slept the bulk of the journey north, and he rambled much in his sleep, mumbling strange, indecipherable phrases, and occasionally raving and crying out as if in pain.
I could make little sense of it, but that he seemed to think he was very close to something, and repeated often “no time left”.
At home once more, and under professional care, Dougal made a very gradual recovery, at least to a state where he could tend to himself. He was much frustrated by his slow healing, and would become angry and even violent when he proved incapable of performing anything beyond the simplest tasks. On more than one occasion I was forced to clean up a shattered cup and saucer where Dougal had flung it from the table, unable to lift the teapot to pour himself a cup.
I had extricated myself as much as possible from the parts of my business that required my attention outside Sydney, so that I could tend to my son in whatever capacity I was able. During his long convalescence I saw no sign of his little journal, and remembering Joe Byrne’s description of Dougal’s reticence and violence when asked of it, I let the subject be and soon forgot all about it.
Eventually he began to talk of going back to work at the Public Library. I could not see what he could manage in the way of work, his frailty being what it was, but I arranged for Robert Walker to visit him and discuss the matter.
They spent over an hour closeted together in the parlour. I was alerted to Robert’s departure by the slamming of the front door, which was strange. He and I had remained great friends after Dougal’s departure for Victoria, and I had expected him to join me for an evening drink, as we often took together.
“I was expecting Robert to stay for a drink,” I said, stepping into the parlour.
Gazing out the window, Dougal said nothing.
“Dougal?”
He continued to ignore me.
“Look at me when I’m talking to you boy,” I said.
He pulled his gaze sulkily from the window.
“What has happened?” I asked.
“I shan’t be returning to my work at the Library,” he said, and turned back to the window. I left him alone.
He fell thereafter into a deep ennui, spending his days in bed and staring blankly out the window, and talking to himself. I stood quietly outside his door at times trying to make sense of his mutterings. I could understand little, but he seemed bitter and angry, and I heard him repeat on several occasions, as though an echo of his past delirium, “no time left”.
There was nothing I could do to rouse him, and he would take little in the way of food or drink. The height of summer was upon us then, which had always ill suited Dougal’s constitution, and coupled with his paltry appetite, he began to lose the small measure of vitality that he had regained.
Thinking that perhaps Robert Walker could shed some light on this new malady of Dougal’s spirit, I called upon him at the Library. But he would not see me. I could not begin to guess what had occurred betwixt him and Dougal to so sour him to our friendship, or to have such a dire influence upon my son’s psyche. I returned home, if anything more confused than when I had ventured out.
In a state of near desperation, I resolved soon after to send Dougal to my brother, Cormack, in the hills of Pitlochry in Scotland. It would not be an easy voyage in his condition, but neither was the oppressive heat of this southern summer doing him any good. I hoped the good highland air would prove more suited to his blood, and that my brother, a stout, pragmatic man, hard yet not unkind, would be able to work Dougal into a state of health, of both the body and the spirit.
To my surprise, Dougal was not immediately opposed to the idea, and though he turned a sceptical eye on me at the suggestion, he seemed content to entertain at least the possibility whilst I awaited word of approval from my brother.
It was several weeks before arrangements were finalised and passage booked aboard the clipper Samuel Plimsoll for London. Dougal emerged from whatever malaise had kept him bedridden. He was still far from well, but he managed to drag himself downstairs to sit in the parlour and look out into the street. With no argument coming from Dougal, I worked with the assumption that he was going willingly to Scotland.
The day before he was to set sail, I returned from my morning’s work to see a great hulk of a man coming down our front steps. He crossed the road and passed me by on the other side without so much as a glance in my direction.
I asked Dougal about him, and he waved absently at a parcel of paper and a small range of pens and brushes. For the voyage, he said. Something to keep him occupied.
The following morning, Dougal seemed tense, almost agitated as I helped him into the hansom to take us to Circular Quay. He clutched a small leather satchel, and would not loosen his grip upon it even to climb into the cab. I put it all down to a case of nerves regarding the impending voyage
.
I watched Dougal closely on the ride to the harbour, at first to monitor his condition, in case at the last minute I decided he was not capable of the voyage, but then I looked at him simply out of curiosity. He seemed in better health than I had seen him in some time. Though by no means hale, there was a flush in his cheeks that I had not seen since the days he first began work in the Public Library.
He did not notice my surveillance, though I took no measures to hide it, but stared avidly out the window of the cab, as we made our way through the city. As we passed the north end of Hyde Park, we came upon a great commotion, and the hansom slowed to a crawl.
Looking out the window, I saw a crowd gathered at the top of Macleay Street, where a haze of smoke hung thick in the air. I was surprised that I had neither seen nor smelled it before now, but put it down to being too much concerned with watching Dougal.
I looked over at him. To my surprise he had slumped back in his seat and showed no interest in what was going on outside the cab. I put my head outside to see what was happening. A policeman, directing the onlookers into Hyde Park to clear the roads, told me that someone had burned down the Free Public Library during the night. I was saddened to learn that by the time the authorities had arrived, the building was nothing more than a smouldering heap.
I pulled my head inside the cab, and looked at Dougal. For the briefest moment I thought I caught the hint of smile on his lips, but it was gone in an instant, and he seemed genuinely overcome by emotion. Whatever falling out he had had with Robert Walker, the Library had been an important part of his life, and he sat the rest of the ride to the Quay in silence.
Cthulhu Lives!: An Eldritch Tribute to H. P. Lovecraft Page 23
