Professor Challenger: The Kew Growths and Other Stories

by William Meikle

  Challenger stood on the opposite platform. He took out a hip flask and waved it at me. “It’s Glenfiddich,” he said.

  That and innate curiosity were enough to get me to cross over to his side. My train to London pulled in seconds later, but by then the die was cast. Challenger had an arm around my shoulders, I had his good Scotch in my hand, and another adventure was begun.

  True to his word, he did indeed tell me why he was there, but not until we had boarded a train heading for Cornwall, got into an empty carriage and got fresh smokes lit.

  “There’s been a sighting,” he said.

  I’m afraid I might have sighed rather too theatrically. “Not again, Challenger. We both know that the thing has to be dead. It cannot have survived this long. Not without being spotted.”

  “But it has been spotted. Have I not shown you the reports? And this time they even mention the large wings. And the red eyes.”

  The lost pterosaur had been a bugbear for Challenger ever since the fiasco at the Royal Society on our return from the Amazon. He had managed to convince himself that the beast might yet be alive, in some far corner of the country. Over the past year or so I had gone with him on three separate missions following up on supposed sightings, none of which were even remotely convincing, and no trace of the beast had ever been found.

  “I’m giving up my last bout of leave to help you chase more ghosts? Just so you know, if there’s a bar anywhere near our destination, I intend to spend most of the weekend there.”

  Challenger clapped me on the shoulder, and laughed. “And I’ll be happy to join you … once we capture our old friend. Do you remember …”

  And so it went. The journey lasted several hours longer than the contents of the hip flask. For all his bombast and self-aggrandizement, I have always enjoyed the old man’s company, and, if truth be told, I would rather be spending my last free time with him than sipping ale alone in the bars of London.

  In the course of the journey I learned what had him worked up this time. He’d got a report of three children being frightened in a churchyard in Cornwall. Pretty thin stuff, I thought, and I told him as much. But there was more. Scores of villagers had reported sightings of a strange winged beast—some even said a winged man. That gave me pause for thought, for I well-remembered the pterosaurs and their almost-human-like torsos.

  “It’s possible; you’ll at least give me that?” Challenger said.

  “Possible, but not probable,” I replied.

  But he had indeed got me thinking, and anything that took my mind off my looming trip to chaos across the Channel was fine by me. By the time we arrived in Cornwall I realized that I was intrigued, even looking forward to the days ahead.

  Dusk was falling as we disembarked, but Challenger was in no mood to wait for morning. As I hoped, there was a bar near the station, a rather splendid old coaching inn, the Miller’s Wheel. While I set to booking us into a pair of rooms, Challenger headed straight for the public bar and began questioning the locals. By the time I got back downstairs, he was in deep conversation with a group of farmhands. It looked like he had found the perfect match. They talked, he bought beer, and everyone drank with some gusto. I left him to it, got a pipe lit and sat at a high seat at the bar sipping beer and just enjoying the small pleasures of it all.

  After a time my bladder decided I had to move. I asked the barman for directions and followed his nod of the head to the back door, then out into the courtyard where an old stable block had been converted to privy-houses. I did my business, and I was on my way back to the bar when I met something I have struggled ever since to explain.

  At first I thought it was another man, like me, on leave from a barracks, for he seemed to wear a heavy black overcoat that covered him from throat to ankles. His face lay in shadow, turned away from me with the light from the bar behind him. I stepped to one side to let him pass, but he put a hand on my arm. I felt cold, through to my bones.

  “Three and thirty at three and thirty. None shall see.”

  I was about to ask his meaning when the bar door slammed open and Challenger came out into the yard. At the same instant the newcomer turned toward me. Red eyes blazed in a face that was no more than a dark pool. His overcoat seemed to open out, stretching wide on other side of me like wings.

  “Catch it, Malone,” Challenger shouted. The black shape rose up and away from me. Great wings beat, twice, then it was gone into the shadows high above the privy.

  “You had it, man,” Challenger said. He came forward until he stood almost nose to nose with me, anger and disappointment plain to read in his face. “You had it right there, and you let it go.”

  I said nothing. I pushed past the Professor and headed back to the bar for something a bit stronger than the local ale.

  By the time Challenger caught up with me I had a double Scotch in my stomach and had started to feel more equitable with the world, but I’m not afraid to admit that I was in quite a funk. Challenger himself wasted no time in berating me further.

  “You had it, Malone.”

  “Tell me, old chap. What is it you think that I had?”

  “The reptile, the pterosaur. I saw it plain as day.”

  I laughed, but with little humor. “Unless it has learned the power of speech, I can assure you that you saw no such thing,” I replied, and took to getting more Scotch inside me.

  “Don’t talk nonsense, Malone,” Challenger replied. “I saw it there, clear as I see you now.”

  “Some see the owl, some only see the mouse,” someone said at my shoulder. Again I thought I recognized the voice. I turned, and looked into the smiling face of Thomas Carnacki.

  We spent the next hour in a quiet corner of the bar, catching up on what had brought us here, and trying to make sense of what I and Challenger had seen in the courtyard.

  “I’ve been here several days already,” Carnacki said. “But I’m afraid to say I haven’t yet got to the bottom of the bally thing. I have sent for the electric pentacle and it should be here in the morning. Maybe then I will be able to make some progress.”

  “Stuff and nonsense,” Challenger said. “It was the pterosaur, I tell you.”

  “And yet, last night in the churchyard I saw a great owl,” Carnacki replied. “White as snow and with a wingspan of nine feet or more. You have a mathematical bent, Challenger. What are the odds of there being two—no, three if you count Malone’s experience—different flying beasts in the same small area? Is it not more logical to consider that it is only one thing that is being seen; one thing that is reported differently by each viewer?”

  That gave Challenger pause for thought, and also allowed Carnacki an opening to tell us the rest of his story. We ordered up a round of ales, lit up fresh smokes and heard him out.

  “It started with a telegram last Sunday,” he began. “Over the years I have helped out clergymen in situations where the matter is of some delicacy. The local vicar here was loath to go to church authorities with tales of winged demons with red eyes for fear of being laughed at; demons being thought passé in this day and age. Fortunately, these local vicars all know, or know of, each other, and my reputation had spread even this far. I was asked to visit, and the stories intrigued me enough to make the journey that same day.

  “Like yourselves, I started in this bar, asking questions of the locals. That was when I began to get an idea of the shifting nature of whatever is manifesting itself here. The single thing common to all viewers is that the presence has wings. That interests me, insofar as many cultures over the ages have winged messengers as their motif when they talk of those creatures that ferry between our world and the world beyond, bearing messages.”

  Challenger harrumphed at this, and seemed ready to interrupt, but Carnacki merely ignored him and carried on.

  “After talking to the locals in the bar, I made my way to the vicarage. Tomkinson is rather an old duffer, but his heart is in the right place, and his main concern is for the people of the village here. He ex
pressed some worries about my methods, and the lack of Christianity in my own core beliefs, but he is also a pragmatist and gave me my head in the matter. As it happened, I was to get my first intimation of what was afoot that very night on leaving the vicarage.

  “I was barely halfway down the drive when I felt a cold chill run through me. Something rustled in the old yew. I looked up … straight into the eyes of a great white owl. It spoke to me, a soft sound that was more like a buzz than a voice.

  “‘Three and thirty at three and thirty. None shall see.’”

  As you can imagine, hearing those words again gave me something of a start, but if Carnacki noticed he said nothing. He continued with his story.

  “Since that first night I have been conducting a series of convocations in and around the old churchyard. I’m afraid some of the locals have taken umbrage at this. In an earlier era I might even have been in danger of being branded a warlock. I believe they used to burn people like me around here … and not too long ago, at that. But that’s beside the point. My rituals have got me precisely nowhere. I am no closer to understanding the nature of the entity, and although I have seen the owl three times now, it only spoke to me the once.”

  “About that, old man,” I said. “Are you sure of the wording?”

  “Perfectly,” Carnacki replied. “I’ll never forget it.”

  “Nor will I,” I said. “For I heard the exact same phrase. What does it mean?”

  Challenger spoke for the first time in a while. “I’ll tell you what it means. It means it’s time for another beer.”

  The evening rather went downhill after that. We resolved very little beyond the facts that Carnacki would attempt to use his electric pentacle the next night; Challenger still thought the pterosaur was the source of everything that was going on, and the rigors of my basic training had somewhat diminished my capacity for alcohol. When the barman called time, I was more than happy to drag my weary body upstairs. I fell into a deep, peaceful sleep, untroubled for the first time in weeks by thoughts of war. I dreamed of red eyes in the dark, and a whispered phrase, repeated until dawn.

  “Three and thirty at three and thirty. None shall see.”

  Over breakfast the next morning, Challenger announced his intention to scour the countryside for a nest, and made it clear that I was to join him in his quest. Carnacki merely smiled and had some more toast and tea as the Professor led me out into another drizzly morning.

  What followed was a day to forget. We tramped for miles over muddy fields, along windy cliff tops and through thick gorse and bramble. We found no trace of the pterosaur whatsoever, and by the time we returned to the inn in late afternoon Challenger and I were both in foul moods, for different reasons but with the same baleful result.

  I had almost resolved to take the first available train back east and try to salvage something from the weekend when Carnacki knocked on my bedroom door.

  “Sorry to bother you, old chap,” he said. “But I know you were rather shaken by your encounter last night. I just wondered if you wanted any part in my attempt to get to the bottom of things?”

  Had it been Challenger who had asked, I would have turned him down at that precise moment, but Carnacki was always such a good egg he was hard to refuse. I joined him down in the bar for a pie and a pint, and after a smoke I felt much more relaxed, and no longer quite so inclined to flee the scene.

  Carnacki kept up a constant flow of interesting conversation, although I must admit it was all rather over my head, involving as it did esoteric entities from beyond, something called the Sigsand manuscript, and a long, involved explanation of the workings of his electric pentacle. Of course I had seen the thing in action, during the Kew affair, but I was still none the wiser as to how it worked.

  Challenger’s arrival, with more ale and apologies, stopped me having to think about it too much, although he and Carnacki spoke at length of how light can influence mood and matter. It got rather heated for a while, being in somewhat opposite camps as they were philosophically, but I saw that they respected each other’s position, and the sharing of smokes and ale did much to dispel any animosity. I had started to relax and enjoy their banter and was thus rather disappointed when Carnacki stood up.

  “It is time,” he said. “The vicar has let me have the church for the next two hours. Will you come?”

  He was looking at me, but to my surprise Challenger announced that he would join us, “If only to put paid once and for all to all this mummery.”

  I had a reluctant glance back at the bar, then followed them out into the gathering dusk.

  After the bustle and chatter in the bar the church felt cold and empty. Carnacki’s candles did little to dispel that feeling, throwing flickering shadows that only served to darken the gloom in the corners and bring a fresh feeling of unease and foreboding.

  Carnacki busied himself setting up the pentacle, while I considered beating a strategic retreat back to the bar. He cranked up a dynamo, and with a crackle and hum the valves burst into light. But even the flare of the electric pentacle failed to lighten my spirits, although the effect of a rainbow dancing throughout the old church was rather beautiful in its own right.

  “So what’s the plan, Carnacki?” Challenger said. He had sat himself on a pew and lit up one of his cheroots. I could imagine the vicar being apoplectic if he found out, but I would have expected nothing less of the Professor. Carnacki seemed unconcerned.

  “There is an obscure ritual from Sigsand that speaks of conversing with an entity that it calls merely the messenger. I believe it may be just what we have been looking for.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Challenger muttered, but if Carnacki heard he did not acknowledge it.

  “Now, join me in the circle, if you please?” Carnacki said. I thought Challenger might refuse point-blank, but maybe, like myself, he was remembering how Carnacki’s defenses came to our aid in the Kew business. The Professor and I both stepped forward and joined Carnacki in his circle.

  I immediately felt warmer, more at ease with the world, as if a burden had been lifted from me. I was about to comment on the fact when Carnacki began to chant.

  “Ri linn dioladh na beatha, Ri linn bruchdadh na falluis, Ri linn iobar na creadha, Ri linn dortadh na fala.”

  I felt as if I had heard the same words before, but this was in a different cadence, with different emphasis and pattern. The valves of the pentacle flared and dimmed, flared and dimmed in time with the chant. Despite the glare of the lights of the pentacle darkness seemed to creep back into the corners of the small church.

  Carnacki repeated the chant.

  “Ri linn dioladh na beatha, Ri linn bruchdadh na falluis, Ri linn iobar na creadha, Ri linn dortadh na fala.”

  One patch of darkness grew thicker, taking on almost solid form. Two red eyes stared out of it, fixed on where we stood.

  “Malone,” Challenger whispered at my ear. “What do you see?”

  “I see a tall man, wearing a long black overcoat,” I said as the figure moved forward into the light.

  “I’ll be dammed,” Challenger replied. “It’s a bloody pterosaur. But it can’t be. There’s no way for it to have gotten in here with us.”

  Carnacki paused long enough to hush us into quiet.

  “Some see the owl, others only see the mouse,” he said again. “Now hush. This next bit is dashed tricky.”

  The dark figure had approached closer and now stood right on the edge of the protective circle on the floor. The face was still in shadow, only those piercing red eyes showing. It spoke, in the same soft hissing as before.

  “Three and thirty at three and thirty. None shall see.”

  I heard Challenger gasp in astonishment

  “What does that mean?” Carnacki asked.

  There was no reply. The dark figure moved even closer. Sparks flew as it touched the area bounded by the electric pentacle. The figure opened out its overcoat into wings. One of Carnacki’s valves flared, impossibly bright. I saw no
t a dark man but a white owl, impossibly huge.

  “Three and thirty at three and thirty. None shall see,” it said.

  It started to move forward, pushing as if against a barrier. Sparks flew all around us. The temperature dropped sharply, enough that I saw my breath condense in the air in front of me.

  Another valve flared bright, then popped. The thing’s wings beat twice, and I felt frost on my lips. Darkness swelled above and around us, and outside of the circle pews tumbled and crashed, the old wood being torn to splinters.

  Carnacki stood straight, never flinching, stepped forward and shouted at the top of his voice.

  “Dhumna Ort!”

  The blackness fell apart, torn like so much cheap paper. The great white wings beat, just once, then fell silent. Every one of Carnacki’s valves blew at once. We were left standing in flickering candlelight in a quiet church.

  It was all a bit anticlimactic after that. Carnacki packed up his equipment while Challenger and I did our best to salvage what we could of the pews.

  We went back to the bar and, somewhat chastened by what we’d just seen, drank, mostly in silence, for some time. It was Challenger who spoke up first.

  “Is it over?” he asked.

  Carnacki nodded. “For now, at least. I’m not altogether sure what I did, but I think the entity left of its own accord, having fulfilled its purpose.”

  “And what was that?”

  Carnacki shrugged. “We all heard it. How we can make sense of it, that’s another matter entirely.”

  For me, that was almost the end of it. I went back to barracks, and then to war. I corresponded with Challenger as regularly as I could through letters sent between ever more desperate bouts of trench warfare.

  The end of this particular tale came to me in one of his letters. It was a cutting from a newspaper.

  Thirty-three Cornishmen, all from the same village, were assumed lost at sea when their boat was sunk by enemy fire in the Channel. There were no survivors. Challenger had ringed two things in black ink. The number of dead was thirty-three, and he had also ringed the presumed time of the accident.