Nightmare Farm

by Jack Mann

  He ought to have insisted on going up to the attics!

  From the sagged gate to the house he had seemed to himself to take a very long time in making the journey, but this return between the towering walls of hawthorn appeared to take no time at all. He was at the gate, out in the road with normality about him, and headed back toward the inn, and here came a boy driving an empty milk-float. Gees held up a hand, and the boy reined in and gazed at him, open-mouthed.

  “Can you tell me where a Mr. Cosham lives?” Gees asked.

  The boy pointed ahead of himself. “Goin’ right away from it, you are, mister,” he answered. “Thud gateway along on the left—thud farm, I mean. White house, wi’ apple trees in front.”

  “That is, on your left as you’re pointing?” Gees suggested.

  “That’s what I mean, mister,” the boy said in an injured way, almost as if he had been accused of intent to mislead.

  “Thank you very much,” Gees said, and pursued his way.

  But, when the boy had whipped up and gone on, he faced about and followed. He might be late for lunch at the inn, but he would find what Cosham’s would yield, first. So he went on, past Nightmare roadway again—it looked normal enough as he glanced along it in passing, an avenue of which Denlandham might well be proud, with its scented coverlets of white blossom—and, on the opposite side of the road about a mile farther on, came to a white farmhouse set at the back of a quarter-acre apple orchard, almost past its blossom time, now.

  “No, Mr. Norris isn’t in,” the vinegary-faced little woman who came to the door informed him, while she scrutinised him intently.

  “Mrs. Norris, perhaps?” he suggested.

  She went on inspecting him through a long pause. Then—“Can I tell her what it’s about—why you want to see her?”

  “No,” said Gees, baldly.

  Another, longer pause, and then she said, “I’ll see,” and turned away, to leave him standing on the doorstep, gazing into a wide hallway in which a grandfather clock ticked loudly, just beyond an antique oak coffer that would have set a collector of such things yearning fiercely. Then from the far end of the hallway another woman approached and faced him: she was taller than the first, and it was easy to see that she had been beautiful in her youth, though now, in late middle-age, her face was lined and thin, her brows drawn down and together as if she lived in constant anxiety, or perhaps fear.

  “I am Mrs. Norris,” she said. “What is it you want, Mr.—?”

  “Gees,” he supplemented. “Mr. Gees, you may make it. To tell the truth, I’d rather have seen Mr. Norris, in case you don’t care to assume any responsibility in his absence for”—he ended very slowly—“letting me see your daughter for a few minutes.”

  “Oh, but that’s quite impossible!” she exclaimed sharply, and now he saw real fear in her eyes as her gaze at him became a stare.

  “In the hope of effecting a cure,” he said quietly.

  “Of—did Doctor Haverstock send you?” she demanded.

  “No,” he answered, quite frankly. “I have just been to—to the farm where I understand you and Mr. Norris and your daughter lived till a little while ago. Made a thorough inspection of the place, after making some inquiries when I arrived here last night, and I am convinced that your daughter’s case is not a matter for any doctor.”

  “Then what—who—what do you mean?” she demanded, sharply, now.

  “Exactly what I say,” he answered quietly and confidently. One sign of wavering or lack of confidence and, he knew, she would turn him away. “It is not a case for an ordinary doctor.”

  “Then what—who could cure her?” she asked, less sharply.

  “I—I don’t know who or what you are, coming here like this, and I dread the thought of—of—” she broke off. “Who could cure her?” she repeated.

  “God, and I say it with all reverence,” he answered.

  She stared at him searchingly, and he returned her gaze with steady assurance. Again, one sign of wavering—

  “Are you a religious crank?” she asked at the end of a long pause.

  “No,” he answered. “I call myself a confidential agent, and as that I am here to investigate and—if I can—put an end to certain things that make trouble in Denlandham. And it appears to me that the first and most important thing, since it involves a human being and perhaps life itself, is to cure your daughter, Mrs. Norris.”

  “A—a confidential agent?” she echoed. “Not—not religious?”

  “Did you ever hear of the Kestwell murder case?” he asked. 1

  “I—yes, I do remember reading about it,” she admitted.

  “Well, I am that Gees, the one who sent the police to the murderers.”

  “But—but that was Anarchists,” she objected. “Nothing like this.”

  “Possibly,” he half-agreed, “but I succeeded there in what I set out to do. My only reason for mentioning it was to convince you that I do succeed. I don’t suggest charging you or Mr. Norris one penny for what I will do—or get done—if you let me. And before doing anything at all, I think it will be necessary to see your daughter. Then, if the case is beyond anything I can get done, I’ll tell you so, frankly.”

  Through a long interval she faced him in evident indecision, and he said no more, waited for her to make up her mind.

  “My husband has gone for another look over the farm we’re taking at Michaelmas, and he won’t be back till to-morrow,” she said at last. “I don’t know what he’d say, or whether he’d consent to your trying anything of any sort. You’d have to get his consent.”

  “I shouldn’t think of attempting anything without it,” he told her.

  “All I ask now is just to see the girl for a minute or so.”

  “Well, I suppose there wouldn’t be any harm in that,” she admitted rather dubiously. “I don’t know—my husband got so terribly angry with the doctors, the things they tried on her before he fetched her back.”

  “And I promise you to try nothing, do nothing, without his consent,” Gees said. “Merely seeing her, as you admit, can do no harm.”

  “Then, if you’ll come in”—she drew back to make way for him—“only for a minute, though. This way, Mr. Gees.”

  She preceded him along the hallway, and stopped to tap gently on a door beyond the grandfather clock. After a brief period of waiting the door opened, and the vinegary-looking woman put her head out.

  “All right, Emily,” Mrs. Norris said, “I’ll look after her again now.” She turned to Gees. “You may come in, for a minute,” she added.

  He waited for Emily—Mrs. Cosham, he guessed—to emerge, and then followed his conductress into the room. A claw-leg table, black with the polish generations of owners had applied, stood in the middle of the room, and on it, each on a woollen mat, stood three paraffin lamps, one of which was alight, although sunshine rayed in through the window. The rest of the furniture appeared as old as the table, and in a carved armchair beyond a Jacobean dresser that held old china on its shelves sat a girl, barefooted, and clad in no more than nightdress and dressing gown, this last so far open at the throat that the curves of her breasts just showed. She sat with her head bent down as she gazed at the floor or at her own feet projecting beyond the edge of the long nightdress, and her little white hands grasped each an arm of the chair with a fixity that rendered the knuckles still whiter. She had rippling curls of red-gold reaching almost to her shoulders, tangled by lack of care, and as lovely a profile as Gees had ever seen. She did not move or look up: her mother turned to look at Gees, and he pointed at the lighted lamp on the table in silent questioning.

  “In case the sun should go in—behind clouds,” Mrs. Norris explained. “At night, they are all kept alight. She can’t endure darkness.”

  He nodded understanding. “The real May Norris can’t endure it,” he said, and made it an affirmation, not a question. Perhaps the sound of a strange voice, and a man’s voice at that, roused
the girl from her apathy. She looked up, straight at Gees, and at first her eyes were blank and expressionless, while her lips, slightly parted, revealed perfect little teeth. But then her mouth closed to a thin line, and into her eyes came such a fire of evil hatred that all her beauty vanished, and involuntarily Gees backed a step toward the door behind him, lest, tigress-like, she should spring at him.

  “It was I who brought the gentleman to see you, May,” Mrs. Norris said. “He won’t—only to see you, dear, for a minute. Nothing else.”

  The fire died out from the girl’s eyes. She relaxed her hold on the chair arm, to put up one hand and draw her dressing gown over her breast, and then, resuming her clutch on the wood, looked down at the floor again. Every line of her, Gees could see, was tensed and rigid: it was a posture that she could not maintain for long without exhaustion.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Norris,” he said. “I should like to ask you—”

  “Outside,” she interposed. “If you go out, you’ll find my sister-in-law, Mrs. Cosham, either in the hall or the dining-room. Ask her to come in, and then I can come out and speak to you.”

  He went out and, finding the other woman looking out from a doorway, asked her to go into the room. A minute or less after she had complied with the request, Mrs. Norris came out and faced him.

  “What good has it done, seeing her?” she asked, half-resentfully.

  “You can’t make her wear ordinary clothes?” he rejoined.

  “She tears day clothes off herself, if we put them on when she’s quiet,” she answered. “I mean, when she’s exhausted herself by sitting like that and is all relaxed. As soon as the fit comes on again, she tears at the clothes—rends them to rags. So we gave it up.”

  “And you don’t leave her alone,” he suggested.

  “Not for a moment. The lamps—not that she’s attempted to touch them, but she might. And you saw—saw what she looked like when she was looking at you. Always like that. She hasn’t looked like our own daughter since Mr. Norris brought her back, and I begin to wish he hadn’t done it, but had left her there. Worse now than when she was taken away after—after it happened. These two days—”

  She broke off, and Gees saw despair in her eyes. He shook his head.

  “Don’t give in, Mrs. Norris,” he said. “It isn’t a case for doctors. Most emphatically it is not a case for doctors. Now tell me, what time can I see your husband to-morrow? The sooner the better.”

  “If he’ll let you do anything,” she said.

  “That’s my affair—to see that he does,” he pointed out. “Just tell me when I can see him, and leave all the rest to me.”

  “Any time after midday to-morrow, then,” she told him. “Oh, Mr. Gees, do you really think you can—can cure her?”

  “I know with absolute certainty that I can’t,” he answered, “but I believe she can be cured, quite simply. So I’ll be here to-morrow, probably between two and half-past, though it may be even later, to see Mr. Norris and hear what he has to say about it. Now just—I know it’s useless to tell you to stop worrying, but just try to believe that the world holds as much good as evil, if not more, and if all goes as it should your own daughter will be given back to you, very soon. I would never say that much if I didn’t believe it possible.”

  “You mean—she—my own daughter, you said?” she asked timidly.

  “That’s not your daughter, that in there,” he said, nodding toward the closed door. “Her physical body—yes, but not what it holds. Now wait till to-morrow, and begin hoping and keep on at it.”

  “Oh, if you mean it all!” she exclaimed, sobbingly. “You—you drop down on out of the sky, as it might be, and talk like this, persuade me against my judgment! And then, if it isn’t true—”

  She stared at him, almost fiercely, but he smiled.

  “If it isn’t, put a mother’s curse on me for deceiving you,” he said. “And if there’s a worse curse, I don’t know it. Now I’m off. Tell your husband as much or as little as you like, and I’ll be here to-morrow afternoon to talk to him, and perhaps more.”

  With no other valediction, he left her and went out from the house, turning back toward the inn. He reached it in time to dispose of one satisfying pint of the type of beer that Phil Bird had found so good, and then migrated from the bar to the dining-room, where Nicholas Churchill placed before him more roast duck than he had ever seen as one helping, and squeaked an apology for the green peas, which were not even in flower as yet, let alone in pod. But there was the cauliflower.

  “If you can keep this up,” Gees told him, “I shall probably stay here for the rest of my life. Now tell me, what’s your parson’s name, and what is he, rector or vicar?”

  “It’s the rector, Mr. Perivale, sir,” Nicholas informed him.

  “Ah! Well, that’s all I want to know, thank you. And I think another pint of that excellent bitter, if you will. A duck like this deserves a good swim, and I’d hate to rob it of its rights.”

  When nothing but bones remained on his plate, he refused rhubarb tart and cream, and cheese as well, for the most obvious reason, and sat awhile reflecting. This task he had imposed on himself over the girl May Norris was quite extraneous, independent of his mission here on Hunter’s behalf, but he had known he must undertake it, before all else, after he had taken a dozen paces along Nightmare roadway toward the farmhouse. Nightmare! Yes, but he felt reasonably certain of putting an end to the nightmare in which Mrs. Norris and probably her husband as well were held in dreadful grip. And the girl herself... .

  Where, in the eternity in which earth swims, was that girl? Was she inert, stunned to helplessness by the terrible power that had usurped her place, or was she fighting, striving to regain possession of the beautiful physical organism from which she had been driven?

  Did she know that he planned to help her—was she perhaps with him now, praying, imploring aid that might come through him?

  “Anyhow, my child,” he said aloud, as if she were in truth there, but not in language he would have used to a girl, “I’ll do my damndest. Unfortunately, though, it isn’t all up to me, and it might be hell and all making the man I want to act see that he’s got to take a hand.”

  With which he stubbed out his cigarette, lighted another, and went out. A mere hundred yards or so in the direction in which he had gone in the morning brought him to the churchyard gateway, and he entered there, to stand awhile gazing at the church itself, rather than at the rectory, as the house whose grounds communicated with the churchyard by a side gate appeared to be. From those grounds came the chatter of children’s voices, and once or twice a squeal of protest from some youngster, and Gees nodded to himself as he stood listening as well as sizing up the architectural details of the church.

  “Clerics and rabbits—strong analogy,” he told himself after he had distinguished four undoubtedly different voices. “Meanwhile, the church. Late Norman or early Gothic, and it doesn’t matter. This end, a Hunter restoration, and he made the devil’s own mess of that doorway, too. It looks like late foolery or early drunkenness, the way that arch was restored. Never mind, he meant well, probably. But the damned fool bunged up an authentic leper hole! Oh, blast his restoration!”

  He went on, and found the west door gave him access. By the font, two brasses had evidently been ripped away from tombs, and Gees breathed a malediction on Cromwell’s iconoclasts. The coco-matted nave ended at a scrolled ironwork railing, and the altar beyond was lighted by late daffodils and flame-coloured tulips under and to each side of the Cross. Behind it, the east window showed Christ with little children.