The Haunting of Toby Jugg

by Dennis Wheatley

  Then two days later I got an Me. 109. But there is no point in writing all this. It’s a good thing to sit and think of, though.

  Wednesday, 20th May

  I have had no luck with Taffy yet; and am beginning to fear that, short of giving him a direct order to stand dead still and stare at me, I never shall. I don’t want to do that, but I have got to get a letter past Helmuth somehow and can think of no way to do so other than by making Taffy act as my unconscious agent. Unfortunately I am up against the time factor, so if I fail to pull it off today I’ll have to risk an all-or-nothing attempt on him tomorrow.

  According to Dr. Bramwell, however difficult persons are to hypnotise, once they have been got under it is always much easier to get them under a second time. So I had hoped to try Taffy out once or twice with simple tests before actually giving him a letter; but there is not now a sufficient margin of time left to take any chances. If I can get him under I shall have to make the most of the opportunity.

  In consequence, most of the time I have spent indoors today has gone in writing a letter to have ready to give Taffy should my efforts to put him under control prove successful. I have given Julia full particulars about the haunting to which I have been subject, and have implored her to come to my rescue at once; but I have said nothing about Helmuth being at the bottom of it. She has shown such faith in his abilities and his apparent devotion to me, for such a long time past, that I feel it would be unwise to make any accusation against him in a letter.

  When she recalls my ‘burglar’ and my horrible experience of the broken tomb at Weylands, I am sure she will not think that I am appealing to her without real cause now; and knowing Helmuth’s apparent scepticism about such matters she will take that as my reason for asking her to arrange for my removal; but if I told her in addition that I believe he is deliberately attempting to drive me insane, I fear she would begin to wonder if I were not so already.

  It will be time enough to tell her the sickening truth about him when she gets here. However, I’ve made it clear that I have already sounded him about my being moved, and that he is very averse to it, so she must come prepared to meet with, and overrule, his opposition. I even went so far as to suggest that she should bring with her a chit from Uncle Paul, authorising her to take me away.

  That line will prove a bit of a bombshell to her, as on no previous occasion has it ever been necessary even to consider giving Helmuth a direct order concerning me. She may put it down to my being terribly overwrought, or read into it that I have told Helmuth about my ‘spooks’, and since he does not (?) believe in such things, we have quarrelled violently. Whichever way she takes it will be all to the good as in the first sense it would stress the gravity of my condition, and, in the second, prepare her for ructions between Helmuth and myself on her arrival.

  I doubt very much if she will bring a chit from Uncle Paul, as it is a hundred to one that she will think it a fantastic idea, and quite unnecessary. All the same, I hope she does, as Helmuth seems determined to keep me here and may take a high-handed line with her. But Uncle Paul is still my Guardian and I believe that even Helmuth would think twice about refusing to accept his written order.

  I urged on Julia that, even if she did not bring a chit from Uncle Paul with her, she must speak to him about my letter and at least secure his verbal consent to my immediate removal, as then Helmuth would not be able to postpone the issue by saying that he must consult Uncle Paul before the matter could be finally decided.

  To stress the vital importance of quashing any proposal on Helmuth’s part about postponement, I pointed out to her that the full moon is due again on the 30th, so, judging by the previous bouts, I shall be in acute danger again from about the 27th on, although there is no guarantee at all that these damnable attacks may not start even earlier.

  It is already the 20th, and I have yet to get this letter off; so I said that when she does get it she must act without a moment’s delay, tell Uncle Paul any damn’ thing she liked, and come down here with his authority to take me away, if possible before the 25th.

  Thursday, 21st May

  Last night proved a milestone in my silent battle against Helmuth. While I was in my bath I had another crack at Taffy but, as on the two previous occasions, without result; until I suddenly thought of a new line of attack. I pretended that I had got something in my eye and, holding it open, asked him to fish the offending body out.

  As there was nothing there he naturally could not find it, but he had to keep peering down into my eyes and I stared up at his. After we had had our glances locked like that for a few moments, with only about nine inches between our faces, I said softly:

  ‘Taffy, you’re looking very tired. You are tired, Taffy, aren’t you—very tired?’

  As he did not reply, I went on: ‘I think you had better go to sleep, Taffy. A sleep would do you good. Go to sleep, Taffy. Close your eyes.’

  Imagine my elation when his eyelids drooped and those lovely dark eyelashes of his fell like two little fans upon his cheeks. I took his hands and stroked them gently, as, according to Bramwell, a lot of hypnotists have found that touch helps the thought waves to flow to the subject.

  My wheeled chair was standing beside the bath, so I made him sit down in it and relax. Then I asked him a few simple questions, such as where he had been born, if he had had a nickname when he was at school, if he would have liked to be a gardener like his father or preferred being with me, and so on; all of which he answered between half-closed lips in a toneless voice, but without hesitation.

  Next, I told him to stretch his right arm straight out from the shoulder, and hold it there. In a normal state the average person can hold their arm out at right angles to their body without showing fatigue for about three minutes, then their hand begins to droop. They can keep lifting it, but each time they do so it starts to sag again almost at once; and after about five minutes the pain of keeping their arm extended becomes too much for them.

  Under hypnosis the muscles hardly seem to tire at all, and Bramwell’s book cites instances where subjects have remained with their arms outstretched for long periods, even when heavy weights have been attached to their wrists trebling the normal strain. I sat in the bath watching Taffy while I slowly counted five hundred. That must have been a good eight minutes, and his arm was still as rigid as when he had first stretched it out in obedience to my order. I needed no further proof that I had him properly under.

  Then, to my fury, I suddenly remembered that I had not got the letter to Julia with me; it was still in the top drawer of my bedside table.

  Yet, having at last succeeded with Taffy, I simply could not bring myself to abandon the opportunity of using him, so long as there was the least chance of my being able to do so.

  When I have had my evening bath I am not dressed again, but put to bed; Deb gives my back a quarter-of-an-hour’s massage while Taffy gets me a cocktail; then my dinner is brought to me there. Sometimes Deb is ready, waiting for me, when I get back from the bathroom, but at others she is a few minutes late.

  It is certain that both she and Taffy have instructions to take any letters I may give them for the post to Helmuth, so if I gave one to Taffy in front of her the odds are she would mention it to Helmuth and it would be taken from Taffy before he had a chance to get down to the village with it. Moreover, I am exceedingly anxious to keep secret the fact that I can hypnotise people, and Deb might have guessed the reason why Taffy’s face was looking so wooden and expressionless if she had seen him as he was when with me in the bathroom last night.

  So it came to a race against time. The second after I realised my blunder in leaving the letter behind, I saw that if I could get back to my room before Deb came in to massage me, I should still be able to pull the cat out of the bag; but if she got there first I would have to abandon my plan for the time being.

  One of the most maddening things about being semi-paralysed is its effect when one wants to do something in a frantic hurry. Had I had the
use of my lower limbs I would have been out of that bath in a jiffy, given myself ten seconds’ rub with the towel, pulled on my dressing gown and been back in my room under the minute. As it was I had to submit to the infuriatingly slow ministrations of Taffy; and the fact that he was still under my hypnotic control did not help matters; on the contrary, it seemed to slow him up.

  At last he had me back in my chair and began to wheel me along the corridor. He was still acting like an automaton, and I did not want to wake him while there was a chance that things might be all right; because I knew that, at best, I would have only a few minutes to work in, and that might not be enough to get him under again. But I was worried stiff what construction Deb would put upon it if she saw him like that. Half-way down the passage a sudden inspiration came to me, and I said:

  ‘If Sister Kain is in my room when we enter it, Taffy, you are to wake up. Directly you see Sister Kain you are to wake up, d’you understand? and you are to forget all that has happened in the past twenty minutes.’

  ‘Yes, Sir Toby,’ he muttered obediently, and at that moment we reached my door.

  I suppose if I had been accustomed to hypnotising people I should have said that to him earlier. Anyhow, thank goodness I did say it before we entered my room, as Deb was there.

  It was a bitter disappointment. Afterwards, on glancing at the clock, I realised that it was not Deb being unusually early that had caused me to miss the boat, but our being unusually late. In the excitement of trying to beat her to it I had quite forgotten the time I had spent in putting Taffy through the tests, and including the eight or nine minutes for which I made him hold out his arm, they must have taken up the best part of a quarter of an hour.

  Still, although I was stalemated last night, I am immensely heartened by this success. Now I have had Taffy under I feel confident that I can get him under again. Moreover it means a lot to know that he reacts to post-hypnotic suggestion. It was an anxious moment as he wheeled me across to my bed and I screwed my neck round to get a glimpse of his face as soon as I could. He was wide awake, and went about his duties quite normally, without indicating by a word or look that he had just passed through an unusual experience. I feel confident now that, provided no entirely unforeseen piece of misfortune upsets my plans, I shall be able to get my letter away by him tonight.

  Now I will set down the little more there is to tell of my personal history, and so be finished with it.

  I continued to be a fully operational G.D. officer in the R.A.F. up to July the 10th, 1941, the date on which I was shot down for good. I had, of course, been shot down several times before, as was the case with nearly everyone who flew consistently for any length of time in the early years of the war. Once a Jerry followed me in and shot me up when I was flying too low to dare to bale out, so I had to crash-land on a reservoir. That was not funny, as I darn’ nearly drowned; but if I had to make a choice, I’d rather go through that again than repeat my only experience of baling out over the North Sea. Fortunately that was in mid-May, as it was seven hours before they found me, and had it been earlier in the year I should have died of cold; I was blue when I was pulled out of the Drink, and if my strength had not enabled me to go on flailing my limbs for the last hour or two, I would have died of it anyhow.

  My bag was 14 Jerrys and 7 probables, more than half of them being scored during my first ten weeks as an operational pilot. After that it got more difficult, as we had given the Luftwaffe a bloody nose, and they went over to the defensive. My D.F.C. came through in May, and I was promoted to Flight-Lieutenant just before I got my packet.

  As I did not hold the rank for six months I am no longer officially entitled to it. In all such cases if an officer ‘goes sick’—which covers everything from appendicitis to having his eyes shot out or being burnt to a living skeleton—and is unable to perform his duties for more than three weeks, he is automatically deprived of the rank he has held and reduced by one ring.

  Of course, the idea is to save money on their pensions. I am one of the fortunate ones to whom it does not matter, but by now there must be thousands of poor fellows to whom those extra few pounds a month would make an enormous difference. As the ruling applies to all three Services it is pretty obvious that it was inspired by the Treasury; and, if only I had the use of my legs again, nothing would give me greater pleasure than to have five minutes behind a haystack with the mean-minded little Whitehall rat who thought that one up.

  After the excitement of flying and the fun of sing-songs in the Mess, and sometimes going with a crowd of good fellows for an evening’s bust to the towns near the various airfields at which I was stationed, I got awfully browned-off in hospital; but once it had been broken to me that there was very little chance of my ever walking again I did my best to resign myself to my fate.

  I was operated on five times and, within the limits they set themselves, the surgeons were successful, as they managed to repair a certain amount of the damage. In fact I owe it to them that I can sit up for two or three hours at a stretch without discomfort instead of having to be wheeled about on my back the whole time; but to get me on my feet again proved beyond them. A long-term policy of rest and massage was, in the end, all that they had left to suggest; so, after nine months of living in an atmosphere of iodoform, I was, at my own request, boarded and invalided from the Service.

  The problem of what was to happen to me had already been settled. I should greatly have preferred to go to Queensclere, but Kent is constantly the scene of enemy ops; and, although I was quite prepared to stay put during air-raids, Julia and Uncle Paul would have thought it imperative to get me down to a shelter every time a siren sounded, so I could not decently make myself such a burden to them. The same applied to London. Helmuth had been running Llanferdrack for over two years then, and he had the care of me all through my teens. One could have searched Britain and not found a place more suitable for anyone in my condition; and Helmuth as good as said he would be deeply hurt if I did not allow him to look after me.

  I wonder, now, if he had already hatched this devilish plot to drive me insane once he succeeded in getting me down here?

  Anyhow, on March the 14th last I arrived at Llanferdrack, and was duly installed with all the honours of a war-scarred hero. For the first fortnight I enjoyed the change of scene and the freedom from hospital routine enormously; then things began to happen. But I have already gone into that.

  Perhaps I should add for the sake of anyone who, never having known me, may one day find and read this journal, that my hair and moustache—I still retain one of those fluffy affairs that many of us grew in the R.A.F.—are red. My face is freckled, my eyes are grey, my teeth are a bit uneven but white and strong. My shoulders continued to develop even while I was in hospital, and I swing a pair of Indian clubs for ten minutes every morning, so the upper part of my body is that of a minor Hercules; and if I couldn’t wring a python’s neck I could guarantee to give it one hell of a pain there for the rest of its life. I will eat and drink pretty well anything, but I am allergic to oysters, cauliflower, almond icing and pink gin. I was always keen on outdoor sports, but I now thank God that I have always loved reading too. My sex-life started early but, in all other respects, was, up to the time of the crash, perfectly normal—unless it can be considered abnormal that I have never been in love. I am white—inside as well as out, I hope—but I am not free, and I am not yet twenty-one.

  That, then, is all about me; and also all the speculations regarding the plot of which I believe myself to be the victim, that I have to make for the present. So, for the future, the entries in this journal will consist of little more than day-to-day jottings, recording the development of the battle I am waging to retain my sanity and regain my freedom.

  Later

  This evening I put Taffy into a trance again without difficulty. I gave him my letter and told him that after dinner he was to go down to the village on his push-bike and post it; and that he was not to mention the matter either before or after
wards to anyone.

  Friday, 22nd May

  I am furious. That oaf Taffy bogged it. But I suppose it was partly my fault, as I ought to have realised that the letter needed a stamp and that the village post-office would have already shut for the night when I gave Taffy my letter.

  Naturally I was anxious to get confirmation as soon as possible that he had actually sent it off, so as soon as Deb had left us this morning and he started to dress me, I said: ‘Look at me, Taffy,’ and in a moment I had him under. It is as simple as that now, and I have only to point the two first fingers of my right hand at his eyes, then lower them slightly, for his eyes to shut.

  To my amazement he immediately burst into tears. Of course, in his normal state he does not remember my having given him the letter, but directly I put him into a trance his sub-conscious again made him fully aware of that, and the fact that he had been unable to carry out my instructions.

  Apparently, what happened was as follows: He had his supper with the other servants as usual, then, although he had no memory of my handing him a letter, it suddenly came into his mind that he had one, with orders to go down to the village and post it, and, when he looked in his pocket, it was there.

  But it was not stamped, and realising that he would not be able to buy a stamp in the village at that time of night, he asked the other members of the staff if any of them could lend him one. Unfortunately none of them were able to do so, but Helmuth’s man, Konrad, said at once: ‘There are always plenty in the office, and I am going up there now to take the Doctor his evening coffee, so I will get you one.’

  A few minutes later he came downstairs again and told Taffy that the Doctor wanted to see him about something, and at the same time would give him the stamp for his letter.