Professor Challenger: The Kew Growths and Other Stories

by William Meikle

  “Leave her where she is,” Challenger shouted. “She’s on the paved road. She should be safe, for now.”

  I was about to ask what he meant when I saw more bodies: five of them, to be exact. These had been less fortunate than the old lady; they had fallen under the mushrooms’ spell while on bare earth. They had obviously lain down, subdued by the music.

  And now the fungi fed on them.

  Fine white tendrils snaked and ran over and through the bodies. I was close enough to see one no thicker than a hair slither up a nostril and thread inwards. Others curled around ears, into mouths, filling every available hole, writhing and whipping like a nest of angry snakes. I moved toward the nearest body, not knowing if I could help, but willing to try.

  Challenger pulled me away, none too gently, almost wrenching my arm from the socket.

  “Don’t touch them,” he said. “It isn’t safe.” He held up his hand and turned it to show me the palm. A red welt, deep and oozing, ran from the webbing at his thumb joint all the way across to the pinkie. “I tried to save a dog. Dashed stuff is as fast as the wind in latching on to things. We should stay well back until we have a means of dealing with it.”

  “What can we do?” I said, averting my gaze as one of the bodies on the ground started to fall in on itself, as if all life had been sucked from it to leave a mere shell behind.

  Challenger looked grim. “We need to try Whitehall again, I think. Let us see if we can render any assistance there.”

  Generally I have little, if any, respect for the pen-pushing meddlers in the corridors of power, but I could see little choice short of calling in the Army.

  We set off south.

  We did not get far before we realized that the situation was even worse than we had realized. Everywhere we looked we saw more bodies. Most lay on paved areas of road and pavement and seemed alive, but in the same kind of music-induced coma I had seen in the old lady on my street. But many that had fallen victim to the growths had been trapped on open ground and were already lost inside an ever-crawling web of white tendrils. I shuddered to think what carnage might have been wrought had the growths appeared in daylight when the bulk of the population was up and about. It was bad enough as it was.

  Far to the east a persistent siren sounded, clearly audible even through the wads of cotton in my ears. Black towers of smoke rose high in the air over in that direction. Parts of the city were afire, and if what we were seeing was any indication, there was nobody but us awake to deal with it.

  We hurried on, at each turn meeting new sights of terror and despair. The thought that the shifting mounds of people under the parasols could not be helped filled me with abject sorrow … that, and a quiet rage that festered in me until I had to do something, anything, to relieve the growing frustration.

  With a roar building in my throat I threw myself at a nearby parasol, putting my weight into it and crushing the meaty, moist stem between my hands. The fungi fell before my attack, the parasol toppling to the ground. I was about to cheer my success when I saw a puff from the gills, and a cloud of spores rose into the air. Challenger and I covered our mouths and backed away as the wind took the spores and dispersed them away to our west.

  “Don’t try that again, old boy,” Challenger said. He smiled, but not a lot of it reached his eyes. “I don’t believe it has improved things in any way.”

  We gave Hyde Park a wide berth. The decision lengthened our route considerably, but neither Challenger nor myself wished to walk beneath the shadow of the forest of parasols that bloomed in the once-green spaces in the heart of the city. Regent Street and the Strand were quiet and empty. Pale, frightened faces looked out at us from several of the premises, but no one else seemed foolhardy enough to venture out into the open as we had done. We passed several of my favorite watering holes as we reached the city center, and I was more than tempted to step inside, quaff some ale, and let someone else sort out this bally problem. But I knew that, as long as I was with the Professor, there was only ever going to be one course of action. He led and I followed.

  “Hurry,” Challenger said as we finally reached an empty Trafalgar Square. “We must do something before these things mature enough to release more spores. In this breeze the Home Counties could be lost in a day, and the whole country soon afterwards.”

  My lack of fitness and general ill-health started to tell on me, and I felt dog-tired and leg-weary by the time we reached Whitehall. It quickly became apparent that our trip had been for nothing. Two officers—they may even have been the same ones who had shown us out so rudely on our last visit—lay prone in the main doorway, alive but unseeing, their smiles seeming to mock us as we stepped over them. We ventured inside cautiously, but found only empty offices and comatose cleaning staff. If indeed anyone was governing the situation, they weren’t doing it from here.

  After half an hour of fruitless searching, we stopped in a quiet office on the second floor. Challenger patted at his pockets, looking for a smoke, but it seems he had none on him. I rooted around in my jacket and came up with a pouch of tobacco, a lighter, some papers … and a business card belonging to Thomas Carnacki, 472 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea.

  As I rolled us our smokes, I tried to broach the subject with the Professor. “You know, it might be a good idea to get a second opinion on this matter from someone with experience. What about Carnacki?” I started.

  “That occultist chap? I sincerely doubt if his kind of claptrap is of any use at all in the current situation.”

  I handed Challenger a thin cigarette, rolled a similar one for myself, and we lit up.

  “He did manage to stop the sporulation process in the greenhouse. There may be some merit in his methodology,” I said.

  Challenger guffawed loudly, but I had got him thinking, and I pressed the issue while I had the chance. “And he seemed to know something about the history, and maybe even the habits, of … whatever this thing is.”

  The Professor sucked at his smoke for long seconds, and tugged his beard, an old habit I might have poked fun of on another occasion. Finally he nodded. It seemed he had come to a swift decision.

  “You’re right. We can’t achieve anything here. So let’s visit the one man we know who has practical experience … even if I do find his work the worst kind of populist tripe.”

  Getting to Chelsea proved more difficult than I imagined. Westminster was quiet and empty, but as we approached Victoria we started to see people in the street. I went to hail two men less than a hundred yards away. Challenger put a hand on my arm and dragged me into a shop doorway.

  “Look,” he mouthed.

  I peered round the corner. Both of the men I had seen carried shotguns. They used the butts to break the glass frontage of the nearest shop, and started looting whatever they found inside. Challenger put his finger to his lips and pulled me away down a side street. We didn’t speak until we were sure we were out of range of the armed men.

  “I suspect we’ll see a lot more of that kind of thing,” the Professor said. “The veneer of civilization is thin at the best of times. And this is not the best of times.”

  We kept to side streets and alleys after that. We had to step over several more of the comatose victims, all of whom smiled up at us as we passed, none of whom saw us or heard anything more than the music.

  The area around Victoria Station had been particularly badly hit. The concourse was a mass of prone bodies lying across and on top of each other, all with that same placid grin on their faces. Past the concourse, out on the platforms, there had been enough bare earth at the track level to give the fungi a foothold, and they had taken the opportunity with some alacrity. Tall parasols loomed over stationary trains, and beneath the umbrellas mounds of the dead were being digested.

  I’m afraid I took rather a funk, and bolted at the sight. Luckily for me, Challenger had his wits about him, and pulled me aside just before I ran straight into another tall clump of fully-grown parasols. We sidled away carefully until we were out fro
m under the shadow of the umbrellas, and only then did I manage to get my panic under control.

  The extra exertion had almost done me in, though. My legs were like jelly and I struggled to catch my breath. I do believe that if I hadn’t had Challenger to lean on for the last mile down to Chelsea, I might have lain down and joined the others in smiling at the sky. As it was, I almost fell across Carnacki’s doorstep when he opened the door to our knocking.

  I was so exhausted that I didn’t notice at first that it was deathly quiet inside Carnacki’s home. All that morning I had been hearing, as if from a distance, the swelling chorus of the fungi. But now it had gone completely.

  Carnacki shouted at us.

  “You can take out the earplugs, gentlemen. I can assure you, you are quite safe in here.”

  His voice sounded hollow and toneless. I put it down to the earplugs, but when I removed the wadding, I knew there was still something off. The room wasn’t just quiet; it was silent, a complete absence of all noise.

  Carnacki noticed my puzzlement. “Come through to the library,” he said, his voice seeming to come from a great distance. “We’ll get you a snifter, and I’ll explain.”

  He led us through the hallway to a well-appointed library beyond. Our footsteps sounded flat and dampened like slapping a wet cloth on a table and there was no sense of depth in any noise we made. I was almost tempted to shout out loud as an experiment, but the place felt so quiet, almost sepulchral, that it would have been like yelling in church.

  A large chalk diagram on the floor composed of concentric circles drawn around a central pentagram dominated the library. Multicolored valves blazed at the points and valleys, and in the very center, a pair of Graphophones sat, their wax cylinders rotating, but seemingly no sound coming from them.

  Carnacki saw me looking, and smiled. “I assure you, gentlemen,” he said, “the instruments are working correctly. I have managed to set up a countering song against the fungi’s music, one that exactly cancels out all the tonal qualities produced by the singing gills. It has an unfortunate side effect of dampening all other sounds around, but I’m sure you will agree it is preferable to the alternative?”

  Challenger showed every sign of understanding. As for myself, I dropped into the nearest armchair and resolved not to move until the world stopped spinning.

  “I congratulate you on your original thinking, Mr. Carnacki,” Challenger said. “I presume you mean that you have employed a harmonic dampening effect?”

  Carnacki went to a cabinet before replying and returned with a bottle and three glasses. He poured us each a stiff measure of what turned out to be a most fine Scotch.

  “Harmonic dampening? Yes, that is one term for it. It also dampens the psychic attack and …”

  I knew Challenger wouldn’t let that stand.

  “Psychic attack? There’s no such thing,” he said. “If you’re going to start any of that bally nonsense, then I shall take my leave.”

  Carnacki smiled again. “It is only my “bally nonsense” that is protecting you at this very moment,” he said. “But I will turn it off—if you wish? Although I can assure you, the consequences might not be to your liking.”

  Challenger never did take too well to being mocked, and this time was no exception. I intervened before the explosion that was surely coming.

  “Whatever you have done, Mr. Carnacki,” I said. “It seems you are the only man in London with a method of nullifying the effect of these fungi. But what we need is something that will take effect, not just in this house, but all across the city. Something that will halt any incipient sporulation before we lose the whole of the southern counties.”

  Carnacki went pale. “It is that bad out there?”

  “It is worse,” Challenger said, and proceeded to bring Carnacki up to date while I tried to get as much Scotch in me as I could manage.

  The Scotch also did much to soften Challenger’s mood, and when Carnacki passed round some fine Russian cheroots, all was quiet for some time as we smoked.

  Carnacki, although he did not know it himself, had a similar habit to Challenger. Although he was beardless, he rubbed at the side of his chin while he was thinking, as if he was mulling over a problem.

  “I was about to attempt a ritual from the Sigsand manuscripts when you gentlemen arrived,” he finally said. “I would be grateful if you would consent to stand in the circle with me, for it might be dangerous for you to be without protection if things do not go the way I plan.”

  “Protection? From what? How is a chalk circle going to stop us from being charmed like all the rest? And how in blazes does …”

  Yet again I had to butt in, for Challenger seemed to be building up a head of steam.

  “Whatever you say, Carnacki,” I replied. “It seems we are in your hands.”

  I gave Challenger a look that told him to behave himself, and to my astonishment he sat back in his seat and took a hefty slug of Scotch.

  “Never let it be said that I am not open to new ideas,” he said.

  Carnacki laughed and clapped Challenger on the shoulder. “Don’t fret, old chap,” he said. “I can promise you a new experience. Surely that is worth more than your skepticism?”

  Challenger and I smoked another of Carnacki’s cheroots while we watched him make preparations for his ritual, most of which involved re-tracing the lines drawn on the wooden floor with garlic and water from a small phial he took from a pocket. I had a suspicion that this water might have been blessed by a minister of the church, but did not voice that thought, for to do so would only set Challenger off again, and I was enjoying the relative quiet of the moment. After a time Carnacki motioned us forward. A minute later we stood inside his circle.

  He turned toward us and suddenly looked most serious.

  “I am going to attempt the Saaamaaa Ritual where it refers to the expulsion of Certayne Spyryts,” he said. “I have done it before, but never on such a grand scale, and never in quite such dire peril as now. This may get rather uncomfortable.”

  Challenger guffawed softly, but said no more.

  Carnacki looked at me and grinned. “I told you I was prone to a touch of melodrama from time to time,” he said to me, and moved so that he was standing in the exact center of the circle. “Malone, if you please, turn off the Graphophones.”

  “But won’t we fall under the influence of the fungi?”

  “I sincerely hope not,” Carnacki said, and started to chant, the same harsh sounds I had heard him use that night in the Kew greenhouse. I did as requested, bent, and switched off the Graphophones. Almost immediately the singing of the fungi wafted in from outside, and once again I felt dreaminess cloud my thinking. But that mist was quickly dispelled as Carnacki’s chant grew in power. The library hummed and vibrated in sympathy as he put more force into it, and my whole frame shook, as if being gently rattled in the hands of a giant.

  And then the strangest thing happened. Pictures formed in my mind——not dreamlike, but with perfect clarity. I still saw Carnacki in front of me, but I could also see these new images, of a high mountain plain. Mushrooms grew there, tall elegant parasols bent against a stiff wind. But what drew my gaze weren’t the fungi … but the things that moved among them in that high forest under the purple sky, the slumping, disfigured things that crept slowly among the stalks, picking delicately at the gills with long white tentacles. Even as I watched one turned in my direction. A face that was little more than a gaping maw topped by a lidless eye stared at me, through me, down to the depths of my soul.

  I’m afraid to say that my nerve failed me completely. I screamed.

  Carnacki shouted.

  “Dhumna Ort!”

  And suddenly everything was deathly quiet again. I blinked and looked around the library. The memory of the high mountain plain was still fresh in my mind, etched there with remarkable clarity.

  “Is that it?” Challenger asked, softly. “Is it done?”

  I could see that the Professor was somewhat sh
aken by our experience. I wondered if he had perhaps shared the same vision of the high mountain plain, but I had no time to inquire. Carnacki stepped out of the circle and went to the library window. He drew back a curtain and looked out over what might once have been a neatly tended courtyard garden but was now a dry brown ruin. A tall parasol stood in the center.

  Carnacki beckoned us forward. “Come and see. I think I was successful.”

  I stepped out of the circle, half expecting at any moment to be assaulted with fresh visions of mountains and amorphous, faceless blobs that were somehow sentient. But no such attack came. I joined the others by the window, looking out at the high parasol of the fungus. Even as we watched it sank in on itself, and toppled sideways. It hit the ground with a thud we heard even through the window. I watched closely, but there was no sign of any release of spores.

  I felt like cheering.

  But in the same breath my hopes were dashed. Far off, some distance away but still audible even through the windowpane, the high singing of the fungi continued unabated. Carnacki walked back over to the circle and switched the Graphophones on.

  The room fell deathly quiet once more.

  Carnacki looked as weak and tired as I felt. “It seems we are defeated,” he said, his voice flat, almost lifeless. “The range of the ritual is too short to be effective.”

  “I wouldn’t give up just yet, old man,” Challenger said. “You managed to destroy the one in the garden. I believe you are on the right track. But what you need is more amplification.”

  Carnacki smiled sadly. “All I have available are these Graphophones,” he said.

  Challenger wasn’t to be dismayed. “Can you record your chant on these wax discs?”

  “Certainly,” Carnacki replied. “But, as you have seen, the range of the Graphaphone is limited to little more than this room, and …”

  “Leave that to me,” Challenger replied. “But I will need us to get to Piccadilly and the Royal Society archive at Burlington House.”