What led Tharg to fix on this house and these people for his attempts at manifestation? Actually, there was little volition in it. This youthful couple, with their Quaker honesty, might have been selected deliberately, if he had had the freedom of choosing, but he had not. The Proctors, plus the house with its aura of the uncanny, attracted him. Yet he willed to be attracted. He let himself be drawn, like an iron filing consenting to be magnetized, toward the Proctors and Willington Mill.
Since he had no second body, he had not the possibilities the dead usually have. He had no physical power. He could not make vibrations in the atmosphere to produce sound, or occupy space, or reflect back impinging light. The impressions he made must be made upon the inner eye, upon the inner ear; and to make even them, he must draw energy from the person of some present human being.
On top of this, though he could hear the thoughts of people indistinctly, like the sound of a rushing wind, the content was often beyond him. And his attempts at manifestation from the very first had the effect of seriously blurring his reception of thought. Finally, since Tharg was after all not a human being himself, his expectations for the conduct of humans were often exceedingly faulty. Tharg found that the difficulties in the way of communication were very considerable.
The third story of the house at Willington Mill was unoccupied. It did not even contain any furniture. The two lower stories were ample for the Proctors' modest wants, and the abandonment of the top floor saved the servants a great deal of running up and down stairs.
On the second floor at the front of the house was the nursery, at present awaiting another occupant. Here Nurse Pollard held forth. Tharg decided that the empty room above the nursery was a good spot to begin his attempts to communicate. So Nurse Pollard heard him first.
He could not for a long time be sure that she had any perception of him. Sometimes, in her attentions to the little Proctor boy, she would pause and seem to listen intently. Tharg could not be sure what she heard, and her thoughts were to him indistinct and confused.
He could follow her thinking considerably better when she put it into spoken words. Tharg did not precisely "understand" English, but he could get the gist of verbal communications accurately enough. He understood, therefore, when after several months Nurse Pollard told the kitchenmaid, "There's somebody walking about in that empty room over the nursery. He walks back and forth, and when he gets over the window comes down so heavy that he makes the nursery window rattle in its frame."
"Walking about?" answered the kitchenmaid, looking serious. "Why, I can't think who it could be. Master never goes above the second floor. When do you hear it?"
"In the evenings, when I'm putting little Joe to bed. It goes on for ten minutes at a time. And then there's the thump, and the window rattles."
"Maybe you'd best tell Mistress," the kitchenmaid suggested.
"I think I will. It's quite overset me, Elsie. I'm all of a tremble when the walking starts."
Walking? Tharg thought. Was that what she heard? He had meant her to have an impression of somebody seeking help, not of random movement. And she was frightened. He didn't like that at all. He wanted help, or at least he wanted to communicate that he wanted to communicate. But if the members of the household were frightened, their fear would twist his message out of shape.
Yet, after all, he felt encouraged. He had succeeded in making a sensory impression on somebody. He would keep on trying. The Proctors were quiet, sensible people; he might be able to impress them differently.
The nursemaid went to Elizabeth Proctor with her story. The third floor of the house was searched, and when nothing at all that would account for the noises she described was found, she was ridiculed gently. But within a few days Mrs. Proctor herself, being in the nursery, heard the heavy walking, then Joseph Proctor heard it, and soon all the other members of the household.
Nurse Pollard, meantime, had given Mrs. Proctor her notice. She hated to leave such a kind lady, she said, and just before her little one was to be born, but she couldn't stand it no longer, not to oblige no one. A new nursemaid was hired; on the third day after her arrival, she too heard the walking.
Tharg realized that he had driven Nurse Pollard away.
He could sense the increasing fear of the others in the house It affected him like a faint, sickening sweetish smell. He was sorry, both for himself and for them. But he hoped that if he kept on they would stop being frightened, and realize that somebody wanted to communicate.
Besides, was there not something of the pleasurable in their fear? A certain delicious terror in their contact with this inexplicable? These quiet Quakers with their quiet Quaker lives, these servants who had never been farther from their birthplaces than forty miles—they might well welcome the frightening, if only because it was so interesting. Nurse Pollard, at any rate, would have a story to tell all the rest of her life.
All the same, Tharg thought he had better try to find some other way of manifesting himself. Willington Mill was only across the lane from the house; he would see what he could do there.
Here he had the same paradoxical success that he had had in the house. Thomas Mann, the foreman of the mill, heard inexplicable creakings from the millyard, and both he and Joseph Proctor heard footsteps going along the gravel path in front of them. Mrs. Mann, going outdoors one night for coal for her kitchen, looked across at the Proctor house and saw, in the upper window, a floating whitish figure, luminous and transparent, like a priest in a surplice. She called the other members of her family to look, and they saw it too. But none of this was much use to Tharg.
Meanwhile, the date of Mrs. Proctor's confinement had come. After a brief and uneventful labor, she was delivered of a healthy, normal child, a little girl who was given the name of Jane.
Mrs. Proctor's pregnancy had been one of the factors that had attracted Tharg in the first place. A pregnant woman, both in folklore and actuality, is the focus of much energy. Tharg had drawn on this energy minutely—he really did not need very much, and he was sure he had done her no harm—so that he might try to manifest himself. With the normal termination of her pregnancy, this energy was no longer available. It seemed to Tharg that it was a good time for him to withdraw himself. He was not at all satisfied with the success he had had. If he ceased his efforts at communication, he might be able to think of some means that might be better.
Tharg had felt, when in contact with these personalities, a sense of pressure. To be perceived at all, he had had to fit himself to them. It was a continuous process of accommodation. Their thoughts were not his thoughts, their meanings were not his meanings, and yet he had had to let himself be permeated by alien patterns and wills. It was with considerable relief that he prepared to withdraw himself.
And now he had an unpleasant surprise. When he tried to go away he found that he was held.
It was not inextricable. He could pull himself loose. But something—perhaps the house itself, perhaps the structure of fear its inhabitants had built up around the knockings, the footsteps, the assortment of uncanny noises they had listened to tremblingly—resisted him. He was like a fly with one foot caught in glue. The focus of attachment seemed to be the room just over the nursery on the third floor.
He was surprised and perturbed. He had thought that he was free, at least, to come and go. He tried hard, with what in the fly would have been a lot of angry buzzing and wing motion, and at last pulled himself loose.
Tharg felt a strong, if short-lived, emotion of relief. His months of trying to communicate with the inhabitants of the house at Willington Mill had given him a disagreeable sense of never being alone. Now he had opportunity to ask himself what he should perhaps have asked sooner: what kind of help had he expected them to give?
The fact of it was, he had had no clear expectation. He had striven blindly toward them, but he had not known what he wanted from them. The sick man consults a physician. He does not know what the doctor can do for him, or what he will prescribe.
&n
bsp; Yes, but were the people at Willington Mill fitted to be his physicians? Did they have any help to give him? Their minds, for all their intelligence, were oddly limited. All Tharg's months of attempts had accomplished was to convince them they were living in a haunted house. Perhaps it would be better to abandon the idea entirely.
No. He couldn't give up his hope. He would keep on trying. It would be too painful to go back to meaninglessness.
The biggest obstacle to effective communication with them was their fear. It distorted all their impressions of him. If he had another opportunity, he must try to teach them not to be afraid. He would be specific. He would try to make them hear the words, "Don't be afraid." And if that; were gained, he would try to ask them for help.
Meanwhile, the household at Willington Mill drew a collective sigh of relief. Spring came. Little Jane Proctor was thriving. Her brother Joseph, an affectionate child, would run out into the garden between showers to pluck a violet or a primrose that he might show it to the baby as she lay smiling in her crib. As cook said, it didn't hardly seem like the same house.
In the summer, Elizabeth Proctor and her two young children went to visit her sister, Jane Carr of Carlisle. Autumn found the baby fretful, since she was teething. But she was a sturdy child, and soon her first teeth were poking through her rosy gums. By November she had been weaned from the breast. And in early March Mrs. Proctor found herself pregnant again.
"Don't tell the mistress or the others," the cook said to the kitchenmaid one evening toward the end of April. "But I'm afraid Old Jeff is back with us again."
"Old Jeff? Why, who's he?" asked the kitchenmaid, staring.
"He's the one that made such a roo-raw on the third floor before. Bumping, thumping, whistling, clucking—oh, we're in for a fine time if he's back."
"I only heard it once," said the kitchenmaid. "But who is he, anyhow, Cook?"
"That's not for me to say. The master quoted out some poetry about 'spiritual creatures walking the earth unseen'."
"Then you think he's a spirit?" Janet asked.
"Some wicked spirit. Mind, now, don't go telling the mistress. She's not in her usual health."
"Is she sickening with a fever, do you think, Cook?"
"A fever!" The cook laughed and prodded the potatoes with an inquiring fork. "Nay, she's got the swelling sickness, Janet. Her'll be giving master another little one."
"When?" asked Janet, round-eyed. She was learning a lot of things.
"In November. Mind you don't go upsetting her. Promise, now."
Janet promised, but it was not long while until Elizabeth Proctor, in the nursery with Jane and Joseph, heard the noises overhead herself. To the usual repertory of footsteps, whirrings, cluckings and heavy objects being dropped had been added several new items: a gobbling noise, the ringing of a handbell, and the sound of a clock being wound. Tharg was really trying very hard. He knew that if he did not succeed in getting through to them with words very soon, he would never do it at all.
It was Joseph Jr. who first heard the sound of articulate speech.
The little boy had gone running up to the nursery after a yarn ball he wanted for playing catch with his little sister. He came running back in a moment, without the ball, and calling "Mama, Mama!" in a shrill, trembling voice.
"Why, what's the matter, child?" asked Mrs. Proctor, looking up from the baby's sock she was knitting.
"Mama ... Old Jeff spoke to me."
"Old Jeff? Who does thee mean?"
"That old man that walks around on the third floor. He walks around even in the daytime now."
Elizabeth Proctor gave a shuddering sigh. "Come and sit by me on the sofa, Joseph," she said. She stroked his hair back from his forehead and patted his hand. "Don't be afraid, child. God will take care of thee ... Did thee hear words?"
"Yes, mama. He made a gobbling noise, and then he said, right at my ear, 'Never mind.' Like this, Mama: 'Never ... mind.' "
"Was that all thee heard, Joseph?"
"I think he said, 'Come ... and get.'"
"Was that all?"
"Yes, Mama. But he said, 'Never ... mind' twice."
"It can't hurt thee, Joseph. It means naught. How thy little heart is beating! Thee mustn't be afraid."
"Yes, Mama."
Tharg had listened to this interchange in what was almost despair. He had hoped that the little boy, at least, might be able to apprehend his message. He had only frightened an already frightened child.
"It means naught," Mrs. Proctor had told her son. Tharg could make her hear him, he had no doubt that she, too, would hear his desperately repeated, "Don't be afraid!" as "Never ... mind," "Come ... and get," or similar gibberish.
They had misinterpreted all his attempts at communication. Would they always misunderstand?
-
Chapter Six
He no longer cared how long it took. Tharg had become resigned to spending years to make his communication effective. Perhaps he had been overoptimistic in thinking that he, a consciousness so abstract that he might be compared to a sentence without either subject or verb, would be able to tell his wishes to human beings in any very short time.
Besides, it seemed to him that he was doing better now. True, the Proctors were still frightened, probably more frightened than they had been at first. But the nauseous smell of their fear no longer bothered him. He was beginning to command a repertory of devices, some of which he was sure would eventually break through their preconceptions about him.
He still had little control over the content of what they heard or felt or saw. But he could control which sense was affected. The Proctors saw things fairly frequently now—an old woman with her head in grave bands, a boy in a drab hat, a priest in a luminous surplice, an ugly old man. They heard inexplicable noises almost constantly, though rarely articulate words. Occasionally they even felt things: little Joe had called out one night that there had been a blow on his pillow, and Mrs. Proctor had felt the bed in which she was sleeping move up and down as if a man underneath were raising it up on his back. Tharg hoped eventually to be able to produce effects on all three senses at once.
Furthermore, he no longer needed to draw on Mrs. Proctor for energy. Since her last child had been born, he had learned to take the minute amount he needed from anyone in the house. In short, if Tharg had made no progress in his basic aim of communication, he had made a great deal in techniques for affecting the human sensory apparatus.
About this time, too, an event occurred that sent his hopes sky-high. The house at Willington Mill was acquiring a more than local fame. Visitors to Tyneside asked to see it, or had it pointed out to them, and this interest appeared natural enough to the Proctors.
Early in 1840 Joseph Proctor received a letter from a Dr. Drury, a young physician in practice at Sutherland, asking for permission to spend the night in the "haunted room". He proposed, he said, to bring a trustworthy companion with him, as well as firearms and a dog.
Mrs. Proctor and the children were currently visiting one of her sisters. Joseph Proctor, after some meditation, agreed to Dr. Drury's proposal, though he objected to the firearms. He did not want them in the house. But he was ready to allow the presence of the dog.
Tharg had heard discussions on the subject of the proposed visit between Joseph Proctor and his father. He felt greatly encouraged. The Proctors, for all their intelligence and many amiable qualities, were people of a strong religious conviction and hence predisposed to view Tharg's activities as those of a "spirit", albeit of a wicked one.
Dr. Drury, on the other hand, was a man of scientific training, accustomed to dealing effectively with the physical; his wanting to bring firearms and dog with him showed that. Was it too much to hope that Tharg would be able to communicate something of his nature and his needs to him? Particularly as he wouldn't be handicapped by the distorting fear that all the inhabitants of the house felt now? Yes, Tharg thought, he could allow himself to hope.
The night of the vigil came
. Dr. Drury and his companion, a blond young man a little older than he, arrived punctually. "We brought neither firearms nor a dog," Dr. Drury said after he had greeted his host. "Nobody in Sutherland had a dog he wanted to risk in the house at Willington Mill." He laughed. "But we brought sandwiches, a lantern and a flask of brandy. We are prepared to spend a comfortable night."
"I am glad to hear it," Joseph Proctor replied politely. "I have had a fire made for thee, John Drury, in the third floor chamber. Shall I show thee and thy companion up?"
"By all means," Dr. Drury said, he looked around the room with interest when they got there. A cheerful fire was burning in the grate, and two chairs had been brought in so that the watchers might be comfortable. "This doesn't look like a haunted chamber," he said.
"No," Joseph Proctor replied briefly. He excused himself after a moment, and retired.
Tharg had been assessing the two men. The companion struck him as a nervous type, prone to look into corners uneasily and jump whenever the fire crackled. Dr. Drury, on the other hand, seemed calm, cheerful, alert and self-contained. He would try to communicate with him.
The watchers made themselves comfortable in the chairs before the fire. They talked desultorily. The doctor related some anecdotes from his practice, and the companion mentioned an unusual short story, by an American writer, that had recently come into his hands. The story dealt with two murders that had turned out to be committed by a gigantic ape. It had been well written though. The companion thought the author must have an unusually logical mind.
About midnight the men decided to eat their sandwiches. The companion thought he would like a little water in his brandy. He would go down to the kitchen after it.
Dr. Drury was left alone. He seemed relaxed and at ease. His feet were stretched out toward the fire, and he was whistling softly under his breath.
Message From the Eocene Page 4
