In a moment of time all sorts of thoughts jostled for place in my terrified brain: Could the Horror hypnotise me against my will? Why had it left out this all-important middle stage of the process two nights before? Was it, perhaps, as much mentally blind and fumbling as it seems to be physically? How could I best attempt to thwart its evil purpose? What means could I employ to stop that sinister little silvery voice from impinging on my mind?
Of all those questions the last was that which called most urgently for an immediate answer. While the sweat trickled in icy rivulets down my face and I wrung my hands together in an agony of fear, I strove to concentrate upon it.
Suddenly, in the very midst of a groan that broke from me at my impotence, the answer came. It is difficult to catch any remark addressed to one in a room where a person is singing, and next to impossible to do so if one is singing oneself. By roaring out a song I could drown that small, insidious, evil voice that uttered its phrases over and over again in my own mind.
I suppose it was the fact that I had been praying so hard which instinctively led me to launch out with a hymn. I started with ‘Rock of Ages’, but the tempo seemed so slow and dirge-like that I quickly switched to ‘Onward, Christian Soldiers’.
The effect was instantaneous. The voice was smothered and the Thing out in the courtyard knew it. From having remained quite still it suddenly leapt into its devil-dance. Quivering with rage, hate and fury, it sprang up and down, and hurled its heavy body against the window-panes.
But my triumph was short-lived. The only Church services that I have attended since I was a child were the compulsory parades to which I was detailed during my early months in the R.A.F., so I could remember only the first verse and chorus of ‘Onward, Christian Soldiers’. I sang them over three times while I frantically searched my mind for another hymn, but I could think of nothing. Then, as I began to falter, the tapping came through again.
‘Stop that! Stop that! Stop that!’ it commanded angrily.
In desperation, rather than fall silent, I changed from the sacred to the profane, and began to roar out ‘There is a Tavern in the Town’. From that I ran through half-a-dozen old favourites that had always figured in our repertoire when, in those now far-off days, we had shouted ourselves hoarse grouped round a piano after guest-night dinners in the Mess. With one thought only in my mind—to keep on singing—I made no attempt to pick the songs, but sang them one after another as they came into my head; so it is hardly surprising that such pieces as ‘Roll Out the Barrel’ and ‘We’ll Hang Out the Washing on the Siegfried Line’ became interspersed with bawdy choruses like ‘A German Officer Crossed the Rhine’, and ‘She was Poor but She was Honest’.
I was bawling out ‘The Harlot of Jerusalem’ at the top of my voice, when the door suddenly was flung open. There stood Helmuth, holding a lamp aloft in his right hand, and beside him Nurse Cardew. Both of them were in their dressing-gowns.
No doubt from fear, strain and effort I was as near off my rocker as makes no difference at the time. Anyhow, the sheer impetus of the song and the paramount necessity of continuing to drown that evil voice caused me to carry on for a couple of lines. It was only when Helmuth shouted at me: ‘Toby! Stop singing that filthy song—instantly!’ that I realised the significance of the chorus I had been yelling.
At that second I caught Nurse Cardew’s glance and, goodness knows why, but a quick flush of shame ran through me. In this day and age it takes more than a few bawdy words to shock most girls, and as a trained nurse she must have heard plenty. All the same, just for a second, I felt as though I had been caught out doing something quite frightful.
But the feeling had passed in an instant, submerged by the far more powerful causes for agitation which were still making me sweat and tremble. With my head craned up to stare at my visitors over the foot of the bed I thrust out my arm and pointed to the strip of moonlight.
‘Look! Look!’ I cried. ‘D’you call that an hallucination?’
Then I swivelled my glance to follow my own pointing finger. With a groan I let my head fall back on to my pillow. The shadow was no longer there.
Helmuth’s voice came, with the false sadness of crocodile’s tears in it. ‘This is a tragic business, Nurse. It was lucky that I heard the poor boy and fetched you. I’m afraid he has been suffering from something worse than a bad dream, and that we have real grounds to fear for his sanity.’
At that I went off the deep end. I called him a dirty, lying, hypocritical bastard, and every other name that I could think of. For a good two minutes or more I raved and shouted at him, and their efforts to check me were in vain.
People with red hair are said to have violent tempers, and mine can be a pretty hot one if I once let myself go. When Helmuth set down the lamp and came near the bed I grabbed his arm and tried to pull him to me. If I could have got my hands on his throat I really believe that I would have killed him. But Nurse Cardew came up on my other side and gave me a sharp slap in the face.
I was so astonished that I let go of Helmuth, stopped shouting, and turned to stare at her.
‘That’s better,’ she said quietly. ‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself, making such a scene, and attacking Dr. Lisický. You don’t want to be put into a straitjacket, do you?’
‘Oh come, Nurse! Please don’t suggest such a terrible thing,’ Helmuth protested. Then, after a second, he added: ‘But, loath as I am to do so, I fear I shall have to call a mental specialist in if he goes on like this.’
Her remark, and his right on top of it, sobered me up completely. I cannot believe that she is a party to Helmuth’s plot—as yet, at all events—so her mention of a straitjacket could only have been made spontaneously as a direct result of seeing me, as she evidently thought, behaving like a madman. It flashed on me then that Helmuth must have been waiting for something like this to happen, and had deliberately brought her along so that later he would be able to call her as an eye-wintess. By letting fly at him I had played right into his hands.
With an effort I collected my scattered wits and did the little that could be done to repair the position. I said:
‘I’m sorry, Nurse. I shouldn’t have used such language in front of you; but, believe it or not, I have very good grounds for losing my temper with Dr. Lisický. For weeks past I have been sleeping abominably badly in this room, and again and again I have asked him to move me to another. Since he flatly refuses to do so I hold him responsible for my nightmares.’
‘There is nothing wrong with this room,’ she replied coldly, as she began to remake my pillows. ‘It’s large and light and airy, and most invalids would consider themselves lucky to have such a beautiful apartment to live in. Since you suffer from nightmares you would have them just as badly anywhere else; and it is very wicked to get such horrible ideas about people who are doing their best for you. Now, if I give you two triple bromides, will you promise to behave yourself and try to get off to sleep again?’
As further argument seemed futile, I said ‘Yes’; then, as soon as I had drunk the draught, Helmuth picked up the lamp and having wished me better sleep for the rest of the night, they left me.
But the night’s battle was not over. Within five minutes of their having gone, the cold came again, and I had a sudden empty feeling in the pit of my stomach. One glance at the band of moonlight was enough. There was the shadow back where it had been before, and the horrid, insistent tapping started once more.
After that I am not quite clear what really happened. I can recall praying again, sweating anew with funk, and saying choruses and nursery-rhymes over to myself in an effort to shut out the silvery voice. The struggle seemed to last for an eternity, and the frightful thing is that I have no idea how far the Horror succeeded in dominating my sub-conscious before the bromides took effect, and I drifted off into a sort of coma—or rather a nightmarish, hag-ridden sleep.
This morning I feel, and look, like a piece of chewed string, Nurse Cardew seemed quite shocked at my appearance, b
ut she puts it down to my having over-excited myself last night; and when I started to tell her about Helmuth’s refusal to have the blackout curtain lengthened, and to let me have my radio beside my bed, she wouldn’t listen to me. It is clear that he has already completely won her over, and she thinks that my requests are inspired solely with a view to making trouble.
What will happen tonight, God alone knows; and I can now place my hope only in Him. If the Devil in the courtyard did succeed in hypnotising me, the odds are that I shall become subject to a blackout sometime this evening, and ask either Taffy or Nurse Cardew to open that window after the curtain has been drawn, then come out of my trance without realising what I have done.
If that happens I have no illusions about my fate. The Horror will slither in and across the floor; one swift spring and it will be on the bed, wrapping its filthy tentacles round me in a ghastly embrace. By the time my screams bring help it will be too late. They really will find me a raving lunatic.
Later
I believe my desperate prayers for help have been answered in the nick of time. I cannot tell for certain because, being Sunday, Taffy has the afternoon off, so I have not yet had a chance to tackle him. But an entirely unforeseen event has brought me new hope, and I have been hard put to it to conceal the intense excitement I am feeling from Nurse Cardew.
Indirectly I owe this lifeline which seems almost within my grasp to the great raid on Cologne. Last night Bomber Command went out in force—in far greater force than most people would believe possible. They sent a thousand aircraft against one objective, and at a guess I would not have thought that we could have put half that number in the sky. It makes a landmark in the war, and its effect on the city must have been too frightful to contemplate.
All the same, I would rather have been there, and taken my chance as the bombs rained down, than as I was, lying on my back here sweating with terror under the baleful influence of the Evil that is hunting me.
But that is beside the point. It was thinking about this giant R.A.F. raid that recalled to my mind the official letter Helmuth gave me when he brought me the one from Uncle Paul on Thursday. I was so put out by Uncle Paul’s reply that I did not even open the other; I just pushed it into a drawer of my bedside table and forgot all about it. But this morning I remembered it, and on opening the envelope I found that it was from the Air Ministry and contained various papers, including a cheque for £147 10s. 5d.
The money is the final settlement—exclusive of pension—on my being invalided out. Most of it was due to me months ago, but as I could not account for some of the items of flying-kit with which I had been issued, the usual generous procedure was followed. They hung on to the whole lot, while numerous dreary little men made quite certain that the total could not be further reduced by docking me for some other article of war-equipment graciously lent to me by the nation as an aid to fighting our enemies.
However, in this case, praises be for the dilatoriness of those chairborne warriors whose lot is cast among ledgers. If the bulk of this cash had been paid to me last March it would long since have joined the rest of my private money in the bank, where I can’t get at it without Helmuth knowing; whereas it has now arrived like manna from Heaven, providing me with the means for an attempt to bribe Taffy.
It is still a toss-up whether he will be prepared to risk Helmuth’s wrath, but I think he will for close on £150. That is a lot to a young Welsh country bumpkin who, but for my arrival here, would still be doing odd jobs in the garden at about £2 a week. Besides, there is this laudable ambition of his to become an engineer, like his brother Davey in Cardiff. A wad like this would easily cover his fees at a technical school for the elementary course, which is all he is capable of mastering to begin with, and keep him while he is on it into the bargain.
The thing that I fear is most likely to put him off is the idea of taking a cheque—particularly one made out to someone else and crossed account payee. But I hope to get over that by also giving him a letter to my bank, instructing them to credit the cheque to my account and to pay the bearer out its value in cash. That would amount to giving him an open cheque in exchange for paying in the other, really; although he won’t realise it. Still, it should help to allay any apprehensions he may have that when he presents the cheque the cashier will think he has stolen it and send for the police.
Of course, if only I can get to London I’ll be able to see to it myself that he gets his money; but my bank being there presents another snag. Naturally, if he does his stuff and gets me out, his instinct would be to grab the cheque and make a bolt for Cardiff. But I can think of no way of enabling him to cash the cheque except by taking it to my London bank.
In one way that is an advantage, as although I could have myself put in the guard’s van in my wheel-chair and make the journey on my own, it would make everything much easier, particularly at the other end, if I had him with me. But it means that I’ll have the additional fence to cross of persuading him that, instead of disappearing into the blue, he must accompany me to London.
Lastly there is the question of our fares. As I have no ready he will have to ante-up for both of us. I don’t doubt that he has a bit tucked away somewhere, but it may be in the Post Office; and for me it is tonight or never. If it is there he will have no time to draw it out, and God forbid that he should attempt to borrow from the other servants. Still, if the worst comes to the worst we can use whatever cash he has on tickets to carry us part of the way, and I can offer my gold cigarette-case to the collector as security for later paying the surplus on the remainder of the journey.
Taffy always gets back in time to give me my bath, and there could be no better opportunity for tackling him. He can’t make any excuse to get away and leave me there, so he will have to listen to all I have to say. I shall offer him the full amount of the cheque in any case, as an assurance against failure and the loss of his job; and double the amount in addition, payable at the end of next month, in the event of his getting me safely to London.
To offer him more might make him suspicious that I mean to rat on him; but a round £500—and that’s what I’ll make it—won’t sound to him too high a price for the successor of his family’s feudal Lords to pay for freedom. On the other hand, he’ll know without telling that it is only once in a lifetime that a poor gardener’s son has the chance to earn such a sum for a single night’s work.
If he agrees, I mean to get him to come back as soon as Nurse Cardew has gone to her room, dress me, get me into my chair and wheel me along to the bathroom. It was the old flower-room, and was specially fitted up with a bath for me so that I wouldn’t have to be carried upstairs; but it has no window, only a blacked-out skylight, so I’ll be safe there from the Horror while the household is settling down for the night.
I daren’t leave my get-away later than midnight, in case Taffy should drop off to sleep; but by twelve o’clock everyone should be in bed, and he can come and get me.
On second thoughts, though, I think I’ll keep him with me; that will eliminate the risk of his giving the game away inadvertently to any of the other servants, or anyone thinking it strange if he is seen loitering about instead of going to bed.
That is certainly an improvement in my plan, as it means that we won’t have to leave the house till it is a safe bet that everyone is sound asleep.
It is four miles to the station, but downhill most of the way; so, making due allowance for Taffy’s deformed foot, which has saved him from being called up, he ought to be able to push me that far in well under three hours. So if we leave at two o’clock we should reach the station by five, easily; and I doubt if the earliest train leaves much before six.
So that is what is cooking. I pray God that it comes to the boil.
Later
Taffy fell for it; and tonight’s the night. I fancy my grandfather must be turning in his grave, though, as the avaricious little bounder stuck out for £1,000 and a job in the Juggernaut factory, if he succeeds in getting me to
London. But who cares! I would give him the Castle and make him the Lord of Llanferdrack just for getting me out of this room until tomorrow morning.
Tuesday, 2nd June
I am still here. I could not bring myself to write anything yesterday. I was too utterly depressed and mentally exhausted. My only remaining hope is that I may manage to hang out somehow till Uncle Paul arrives on Thursday.
On Sunday night everything went according to plan; but my luck was too good to last. Taffy came for me, dressed me, took me along to the bathroom, waited there with me for nearly three hours, then got me out of the house with no more noise than a first-class burglar would have made getting in. The moon was still up and for the first time in many weeks I was glad to see it, as it lit the way for us through the grounds and for the first mile or more down the road. We reached the station by a quarter to five, and had to wait outside it for three-quarters of an hour, as it was not open; but soon after 5.30 the staff of three made their appearance and began the day’s routine. Taffy is a bit suspicious of the Post Office, and he keeps his savings in an old cigarette tin concealed somewhere in his room, so we were able to buy two tickets to London, and went on to the platform.
At 5.55 a milk train came through. Why, oh why, didn’t we take it? I must have been crazy not to. But everything was going so perfectly that it seemed much more sensible to wait for the 6.20, that does not dither round the loop line but goes direct to the junction.
We were the only people on the platform, and the whistling of the solitary porter was the only sound that broke the stillness of the post-dawn hour. Suddenly I caught the hum of a car engine driven all out. Next moment it roared up to the station entrance. There was a brief commotion and the noise of running footsteps, then Helmuth and Nurse Cardew shot out of the booking office and came dashing towards us.
At the sight of them I knew the game was up. The train was nearly due, but even if it had come in at that moment I could not have got Taffy to heave me into it. From fear of Helmuth, he had already taken to his heels.
The Haunting of Toby Jugg Page 21
