The William Hope Hodgson Megapack

by William Hope Hodgson

  “‘My God!’ he said, from out of the darkness, ‘what must Christ have suffered!’

  “It was in the succeeding silence that I had the first realisation that I was vaguely afraid; but the feeling was too indefinite and unfounded, and I might say subconscious, for me to face it out. Three minutes passed, whilst I counted the almost desperate respirations that came to me through the darkness. Then Baumoff began to speak again, and still in that peculiarly altering voice:

  “‘By Thy Agony and Bloody Sweat,’ he muttered. Twice he repeated this. It was plain indeed that he had fixed his whole attention with tremendous intensity, in his abnormal state, upon the death scene.

  “The effect upon me of his intensity was interesting and in some ways extraordinary. As well as I could, I analysed my sensations and emotions and general state of mind, and realised that Baumoff was producing an effect upon me that was almost hypnotic.

  “Once, partly because I wished to get my level by the aid of a normal remark, and also because I was suddenly newly anxious by a change in the breath-sounds, I asked Baumoff how he was. My voice went with a peculiar and really uncomfortable blankness through that impenetrable blackness of opacity.

  “He said: ‘Hush! I’m carrying the Cross.’ And, do you know, the effect of those simple words, spoken in that new, toneless voice, in that atmosphere of almost unbearable tenseness, was so powerful that, suddenly, with eyes wide open, I saw Baumoff clear and vivid against that unnatural darkness, carrying a Cross. Not, as the picture is usually shown of the Christ, with it crooked over the shoulder; but with the Cross gripped just under the cross-piece in his arms, and the end trailing behind, along rocky ground. I saw even the pattern of the grain of the rough wood, where some of the bark had been ripped away; and under the trailing end there was a tussock of tough wire-grass, that had been uprooted by the towing end, and dragged and ground along upon the rocks, between the end of the Cross and the rocky ground. I can see the thing now, as I speak. It’s vividness was extraordinary; but it had come and gone like a flash, and I was sitting there in the darkness, mechanically counting the respirations; yet unaware that I counted.

  “As I sat there, it came to me suddenly—the whole entire marvel of the thing that Baumoff had achieved. I was sitting there in a darkness which was an actual reproduction of the miracle of the Darkness of the Cross. In short, Baumoff had, by producing in himself an abnormal condition, developed an Energy of Emotion that must have almost, in its effects, paralleled the Agony of the Cross. And in so doing, he had shown from an entirely new and wonderful point, the indisputable truth of the stupendous personality and the enormous spiritual force of the Christ. He had evolved and made practical to the average understanding a proof that would make to live again the reality of that wonder of the world—Christ. And for all this, I had nothing but admiration of an almost stupefied kind.

  “But, at this point, I felt that the experiment should stop. I had a strangely nervous craving for Baumoff to end it right there and then, and not to try to parallel the psychic conditions. I had, even then, by some queer aid of subconscious suggestion, a vague reaching-out towards the danger of “monstrosity” being induced, instead of any actual knowledge gained.

  “Baumoff!’ I said.’ Stop it!’

  “But he made no reply, and for some minutes there followed a silence that was unbroken save by his gasping breathing. Abruptly, Baumoff said, between his gasps: ‘Woman—behold—thy—son.’ He muttered this several times, in the same uncomfortably toneless voice in which he had spoken since the darkness became complete.

  “‘Baumoff!’ I said again. ‘Baumoff! Stop it!’ And as I listened for his answer, I was relieved to think that his breathing was less shallow. The abnormal demand for oxygen was evidently being met, and the extravagant call upon the heart’s efficiency was being relaxed.

  “‘Baumoff!’ I said, once more. ‘Baumoff! Stop it!’

  “And, as I spoke, abruptly, I thought the room was shaken a little.

  “Now, I had already—as you will have realised—been vaguely conscious of a peculiar and growing nervousness. I think that is the word that best describes it, up to this moment. At this curious little shake that seemed to stir through the utterly dark room, I was suddenly more than nervous. I felt a thrill of actual and literal fear; yet with no sufficient cause of reason to justify me; so that, after sitting very tense for some long minutes, and feeling nothing further, I decided that I needed to take myself in hand and keep a firmer grip upon my nerves. And then, just as I had arrived at this more comfortable state of mind, the room was shaken again, with the most curious and sickening oscillatory movement, that was beyond all comfort of denial.

  “‘My God!’ I whispered. And then, with a sudden effort of courage, I called: ‘Baumoff! For God’s sake, stop it!’

  “You’ve no idea of the effort it took to speak aloud into that darkness; and when I did speak, the sound of my voice set me afresh on edge. It went so empty and raw across the room; and somehow, the room seemed to be incredibly big. Oh, I wonder whether you realise how beastly I felt, without my having to make any further effort to tell you.

  “And Baumoff never answered a word; but I could hear him breathing, a little fuller; though still heaving his thorax painfully in his need for air. The incredible shaking of the room eased away; and there succeeded a spasm of quiet, in which I felt that it was my duty to get up and step across to Baumoff s chair. But I could not do it. Somehow, I would not have touched Baumoff then for any cause whatever. Yet, even in that moment, as now I know, I was not aware that I was afraid to touch Baumoff.

  “And then the oscillations commenced again. I felt the seat of my trousers slide against the seat of my chair, and I thrust out my legs, spreading my feet against the carpet, to keep me from sliding off one way or the other onto the floor. To say I was afraid was not to describe my state at all. I was terrified. And suddenly, I had comfort, in the most extraordinary fashion; for a single idea literally glazed into my brain and gave me a reason to which to cling. It was a single line:

  “‘Aether, the soul of iron and sundry stuffs’ which Baumoff had once taken as a text for an extraordinary lecture on vibrations in the earlier days of our friendship. He had formulated the suggestion that, in embryo, Matter was, from a primary aspect, a localised vibration traversing a closed orbit. These primary localised vibrations were inconceivably minute. But were capable, under certain conditions, of combining under the action of keynote-vibrations into secondary vibrations of a size and shape to be determined by a multitude of only guessable factors. These would sustain their new form, so long as nothing occurred to disorganise their combination or depreciate or divert their energy—their unity being partially determined by the inertia of the still Aether outside of the closed path which their area of activities covered. And such combination of the primary localised vibrations was neither more nor less than matter. Men and worlds, aye! And universes.

  “And then he had said the thing that struck me most. He had said that if it were possible to produce a vibration of the Aether of a sufficient energy, it would be possible to disorganise or confuse the vibration of matter. That, given a machine capable of creating a vibration of the Aether of a sufficient energy, he would engage to destroy not merely the world, but the whole universe itself, including heaven and hell themselves, if such places existed, and had such existence in a material form.

  “I remember how I looked at him, bewildered by the pregnancy and scope of his imagination. And now his lecture had come back to me to help my courage with the sanity of reason. Was it not possible that the Aether disturbance which he had produced had sufficient energy to cause some disorganisation of the vibration of matter in the immediate vicinity, and had thus created a miniature quaking of the ground all about the house, and so set the house gently a-shake?

  “And then, as this thought came to me, another and a greater flashed into my mind. ‘My God!’ I said out loud into the darkness of the room. ‘It explain
s one more mystery of the Cross, the disturbance of the Aether caused by Christ’s Agony disorganised the vibration of matter in the vicinity of the Cross, and there was then a small local earthquake, which opened the graves, and rent the veil, possibly by disturbing its supports. And, of course, the earthquake was an effect, and not a cause, as belittlers of the Christ have always insisted.

  “‘Baumoff!’ I called. ‘Baumoff, you’ve proved another thing. Baumoff! Baumoff! Answer me. Are you all right?’

  “Baumoff answered, sharp and sudden out of the darkness; but not to me:

  “‘My God!’ he said. ‘My God!’ His voice came out at me, a cry of veritable mental agony. He was suffering, in some hypnotic, induced fashion, something of the very agony of the Christ Himself.

  “‘Baumoff!” I shouted and forced myself to my feet. I heard his chair clattering as he sat there and shook. ‘Baumoff!’

  An extraordinary quake went across the floor of the room, and I heard a creaking of the woodwork, and something fell and smashed in the darkness. Baumoff’s gasps hurt me, but I stood there. I dared not go to him. I knew then that I was afraid of him—of his condition, or something I don’t know what. But, oh, I was horribly afraid of him.

  “‘Bau—’ I began, but suddenly I was afraid even to speak to him. And I could not move. Abruptly, he cried out in a tone of incredible anguish:

  “‘Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani!’ But the last word changed in his mouth from his dreadful hypnotic grief and pain to a scream of simply infernal terror.

  “And, suddenly, a horrible mocking voice roared out in the room, from Baumoff’s chair: ‘Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani!’

  “Do you understand, the voice was not Baumoff’s at all. It was not a voice of despair; but a voice sneering in an incredible, bestial, monstrous fashion. In the succeeding silence, as I stood in an ice of fear, I knew that Baumoff no longer gasped. The room was absolutely silent, the most dreadful and silent place in all this world. Then I bolted; caught my foot, probably in the invisible edge of the hearth-rug, and pitched headlong into a blaze of internal brain-stars. After which, for a very long time, certainly some hours, I knew nothing of any kind.

  “I came back into this Present with a dreadful headache oppressing me, to the exclusion of all else. But the Darkness had dissipated. I rolled over on to my side, and saw Baumoff and forgot even the pain in my head. He was leaning forward towards me; his eyes wide open, but dull. His face was enormously swollen, and there was, somehow, something beastly about him. He was dead, and the belt about him and the chair-back alone prevented him from falling forward onto me. His tongue was thrust out of one corner of his mouth. I shall always remember how he looked. He was leering, like a human-beast, more than a man.

  “I edged away from him, across the floor, but I never stopped looking at him until I had got to the other side of the door and closed it between us. Of course, I got my balance in a bit and went back to him, but there was nothing I could do.

  “Baumoff died of heart-failure, of course, obviously! I should never be so foolish as to suggest to any sane jury that, in his extraordinary, self-hypnotised, defenseless condition, he was “entered” by some Christ-apeing Monster of the Void. I’ve too much respect for my own claim to be a common-sensible man to put forward such an idea with seriousness! Oh, I know I may seem to speak with a jeer; but what can I do but jeer at myself and all the world when I dare not acknowledge, even secretly to myself, what my own thoughts are. Baumoff did undoubtedly die of heart-failure; and, for the rest, how much was I hypnotised into believing? Only, there was over by the far wall, where it had been shaken down to the floor from a solidly fastened-up bracket, a little pile of glass that had once formed a piece of beautiful Venetian glassware. You remember that I heard something fall, when the room shook. Surely the room did shake? Oh, I must stop thinking. My head goes round.

  “The explosive the papers are talking about. Yes, that’s Baumoff’s; that makes it all seem true, doesn’t it? They had the darkness at Berlin after the explosion. There is no getting away from that. The Government knows only that Baumoff s formula is capable of producing the largest quantity of gas, in the shortest possible time. That, in short, it is ideally explosive. So it is; but I imagine it will prove an explosive, as I have already said, and as experience has proved, a little too impartial in its action for it to create enthusiasm on either side of a battlefield. Perhaps this is but a mercy in disguise; certainly a mercy, if Baumoff’s theories as to the possibility of disorganising matter, be anywhere near to the truth.

  “I have thought sometimes that there might be a more normal explanation of the dreadful thing that happened at the end. Baumoff may have ruptured a blood-vessel in the brain, owing to the enormous arterial pressure that his experiment induced; and the voice I heard and the mockery and the horrible expression and leer may have been nothing more than the immediate outburst and expression of the natural “obliqueness” of a deranged mind, which so often turns up a side of a man’s nature and produces an inversion of character that is the very complement of his normal state. And certainly, poor Baumoff’s normal religious attitude was one of marvellous reverence and loyalty towards the Christ.

  “Also, in support of this line of explanation, I have frequently observed that the voice of a person suffering from mental derangement is frequently wonderfully changed and has in it often a very repellant and inhuman quality. I try to think that this explanation fits the case. But I can never forget that room. Never.”

  THE TERROR OF THE WATER-TANK

  Crowning the heights on the outskirts of a certain town on the east coast is a large, iron water-tank from which an isolated row of small villas obtains its supply. The top of this tank has been cemented, and round it have been placed railings, thus making of it a splendid “look-out” for any of the townspeople who may choose to promenade upon it. And very popular it was until the strange and terrible happenings of which I have set out to tell.

  Late one evening, a party of three ladies and two gentlemen had climbed the path leading to the tank. They had dined, and it had been suggested that a promenade upon the tank in the cool of the evening would be pleasant. Reaching the level, cemented surface, they were proceeding across it when one of the ladies stumbled and almost fell over some object lying near the railings on the town-side.

  A match having been struck by one of the men, they discovered that it was the body of a portly old gentleman lying in a contorted attitude and apparently quite dead. Horrified, the two men drew off their fair companions to the nearest of the afore-mentioned houses. Then, in company with a passing policeman, they returned with all haste to the spot.

  By the aid of the officer’s lantern, they ascertained the gruesome fact that the old gentleman had been strangled. In addition, he was without watch or purse. The policeman was able to identify him as an old, retired mill-owner living some little distance away at a place named Revenge End.

  At this point the little party was joined by a stranger, who introduced himself as Dr. Tointon, adding the information that he lived in one of the villas close at hand and had run across as soon as he had heard there was something wrong.

  Silently, the two men and the policeman gathered round, as with deft, skillful hands the doctor made his short examination.

  “He’s not been dead more than about half an hour,” he said at its completion.

  He turned towards the two men.

  “Tell me how it happened—all you know?”

  They told him the little they knew.

  “Extraordinary,” said the doctor. “And you saw no one?”

  “Not a soul, doctor!”

  The medical man turned to the officer.

  “We must get him home,” he said. “Have you sent for the ambulance?”

  “Yes, sir,” said the policeman. “I whistled to my mate on the lower beat, and ’e went straight off.”

  The doctor chatted with the two men and reminded them that they would have to appear at the inques
t.

  “It’s murder?” asked the younger of them in a low voice.

  “Well,” said the doctor. “It certainly looks like it.”

  And then came the ambulance.

  * * * *

  At this point, I come into actual contact with the story; for old Mr. Marchmount, the retired mill-owner, was the father of my fiancée, and I was at the house when the ambulance arrived with its sad burden.

  Dr. Tointon had accompanied it along with the policeman, and under his directions the body was taken upstairs, while I broke the news to my sweetheart.

  Before he left, the doctor gave me a rough outline of the story as he knew it. I asked him if he had any theory as to how and why the crime had been committed.

  “Well,” he said, “the watch and chain are missing, and the purse. And then he has undoubtedly been strangled; though with what, I have been unable to decide.”

  And that was all he could tell me.

  The following day there was a long account in the Northern Daily Telephone about the “shocking murder.” The column ended, I remember, by remarking that people would do well to beware, as there were evidently some very desperate characters about, and added that it was believed the police had a clue.

  During the afternoon, I myself went up to the tank. There was a large crowd of people standing in the road that runs past at some little distance; but the tank itself was in the hands of the police officer being stationed at the top of the steps leading up to it. On learning my connection with the deceased, he allowed me up to have a look round.

  I thanked him, and gave the whole of the tank a pretty thorough scrutiny, even to the extent of pushing my cane down through lock-holes in the iron manhole lids, to ascertain whether the tank was full or not, and whether there was room for someone to hide.