Professor Challenger: The Kew Growths and Other Stories

by William Meikle

  My mood was not improved by young Boyd, who kept up a constant flow of excited chatter about what we saw around us. As far as I was concerned a bog was a bog, but seemingly this one had many peculiar features, most of which he was able to expound on at great length. I gritted my teeth on my old pipe and plodded on behind Challenger, being careful only to step where he had stepped, and thus avoided going up to my knees in sucking mud.

  I had been looking at my feet for so long that I was rather surprised to look up and find we had come all the way across the plain. Afternoon was fading into dusk, but the caves were only a hundred yards or so away. Smoke still drifted from the middle one of three large entrances into the cliff side.

  “Hello?” Challenger shouted. I saw Boyd casually take a rifle from over his shoulder and chamber a round. Smith likewise now had a pistol in his hand that hadn’t been there seconds before. I followed their lead and took out my own weapon.

  “Hello?” Challenger called again. “You in the cave. We’re travelers, seeking refuge for the night.”

  There was no answer.

  Challenger kept walking forward, calling every ten yards or so.

  The three of us followed behind rather more circumspectly, so that it was Challenger who reached the cave mouth first. He stopped abruptly.

  “Listen,” he said. There was something in his voice that I only recognized later. It sounded like awe.

  Deep in the cave someone was singing.

  Abide with me; fast falls the eventide;

  The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide.

  ~4~

  We headed inside, careful not to make a sound. The smoke lay in a thin cloud above us as it made its way outside, but the air was perfectly breathable. The singing continued, louder now, echoing and resounding around us until it seemed like there were many voices raised in song. I knew it was just a function of the acoustics of the cave, but it fair gave me the willies, and I’m not afraid to admit it.

  The narrow passageway opened out into a wider chamber, a high, almost church-like vault. The air was clearer here, with much of the smoke escaping through a vent high above. The walls were rough, but obviously hewn by hand, and were covered in a variety of crude glyphs and paintings depicting what at first glance seemed to be hunting scenes. But I didn’t take time to look too closely, for my attention was drawn to the source of the singing. A hunched figure sat by a fire. As we approached he finally fell quiet and turned his head toward us.

  He was the oldest-looking person I have ever seen, somewhere north of ninety, at a guess. He had once been a large—in fact, huge—bulk of a man, now shrunken by the years, his frame dwarfed by the huge tattered greatcoat hung on his shoulders. His eyes were milky white, completely clouded by cataracts, but his voice was strong.

  “Are ye saints or sinners?” he asked. The timbre of his voice indicated that it was a question of some importance to him.

  Smith surprised the rest of us into silence by walking forward and addressing the man.

  “We are simple pilgrims, looking for rest and succor in a strange land, Pastor.”

  “Then ye are welcome in my home,” the blind man said. “Come and sit by the fire. We shall share stories, and break bread together.”

  Smith indicated by hand actions that we should leave the situation to him. He seemed to know what he was about, so we concurred, sitting on the opposite side of the fire as Smith and the Pastor spoke in whispers I could not quite hear above the crackling flames.

  Challenger and Boyd seemed most interested in the glyphs and paintings, but I had been taken with weariness after the travails of my drenching and subsequent hike to this cave. I took out my pipe and managed to salvage some tobacco from my pouch. Just the small mundane act of lighting up and taking a puff made me feel a whole lot better about our situation.

  It was mere seconds later when the blind man looked up. His nose twitched.

  “Is that tobacco I smell? I ain’t had a smoke in a long count of years.”

  I am not a man to ignore the pleas of a fellow addict. I moved over to sit next to him and put the pipe in his hand. He took a long puff. The smoke went in, and very little came back out until he sighed in deep contentment.

  “Thank ye, sir,” he said, handing the pipe back to me. “A simple pleasure, but one I have longed for these many years.”

  I was going to reply, but Smith motioned me to silence again, and they went back to their conversation. I was close enough to almost hear them, but as it was I only caught snippets, and they only served to confuse me, with talk of gold, monsters, bloody death … and resurrection.

  After a while Challenger and Boyd came over and joined me in a smoke by the fire.

  “Fascinating,” Challenger said. “These pictographs go back for thousands of years as far as we can tell. And some of them are new, in this past year only. I am most excited to meet the artists, for they seem to have been indigenous to this valley, and only this valley, since the last ice age.”

  The old man looked up.

  “My flock will return soon enough,” he said. “And if the Lord wills it, the hunt will have gone well and there will be fresh meat for supper.” At almost the same moment the sound of footfalls echoed around us, the noise originating at the cave mouth.

  “And here they are now,” the old man said.

  At first I only saw the children.

  Hairy children?

  I soon realized that my first impressions were wrong. These weren’t children. Yes, they were small, but their features, even obscured by the shaggy hair that seemed to cover them from head to foot, were those of adults. More than twenty of them now stood just inside the cave. All were armed with spears or stone axes.

  And none of them were more than forty inches tall.

  Boyd reached for his weapon but stopped when Smith raised a hand.

  “I don’t think there is any danger here,” Smith said.

  I wasn’t too sure of his conclusion and eyed the stone spears and axes warily as the small folk came closer. They were almost as wary of us as we were of them, but the old man soon put all of our fears to rest. He stood, somewhat shakily, and opened his arms wide. The small people ran forward, laughing merrily, to be embraced in a communal huddle.

  “Suffer the little children to come unto me,” the old man said, and he, too, laughed, a booming roar of joy that echoed and rang around us. It was so contagious I could not help but smile, and Challenger too laughed, his own bass boom causing more reverberations in the chamber.

  The little folk seemed fascinated by this, and they crowded round Challenger, prodding at his belly and stroking his beard. They jabbered to each other, then, finally leaving Challenger alone, they gathered round the old man. There was more jabbering, and much gesticulating on the old man’s part. I gathered he was none too happy at something that had been said, and was trying, only partially successfully, to calm them down. Something had got them excited, that much was obvious.

  And my wariness had returned. Once again I eyed their weapons with suspicion, and promised myself that I would keep my pistol armed and ready should it be required.

  It took the old man a good five minutes to calm the little folk down, and when he shooed them out of the cavern they went reluctantly, with many looking back at Challenger; looks I did not like one bit. They left behind two large rabbits that the old man skinned and cleaned with a practiced ease that belied his blindness. Soon our supper was cooking on spits over the fire, the aroma doing much to dispel any unease I felt from our encounter with the inhabitants of this valley.

  “How did you come to be among such people?” I asked the old man. In answer I got a soft snore. He had fallen asleep beside the fire. Smith put a finger to his lips, and led us to the far side of the chamber. There he told us the old man’s story, or at least as much of it as he had managed to understand.

  “He is so old he scarcely remembers how he got here,” Smith started. “But he believes it was sometime in the seventies, which me
ans he has been here nigh on fifty years as their Shepherd. That is how he sees himself, a tender of the flock, bringing God’s word to the heathens. And it seems he has succeeded, after a fashion, for he has them following the tenets of the Good Book.”

  Challenger harrumphed at that, but said nothing, so Smith continued.

  “He’s more than a touch befuddled by age, but I gather he was not always the Pastor, but that he took on the persona after the death of a previous one. Again, the details are skimpy but I believe it was an expedition on a hunt for gold. It went wrong, most of them died, and the old man—he merely calls himself the Pastor—stayed here to tend to the wee folk.”

  “And what of the more recent gold hunters?” Boyd asked. “The ones that led us here?”

  Smith shook his head. “I asked, but he wouldn’t speak of it.

  “‘They have been punished, and will be judged before the Lord for their sins,’ is what he said. But I am not sure he understood my question, and he may have been speaking on another matter entirely. As I said, he gets confused very easily. Whether it’s because of his age, or whether he was rather simple to start with, it is hard to be sure. But the important thing is that these wee folk seem to both respect and obey him. It would be well for us to stay on his good side.”

  “But what of these “wee folk,” as you call them?” Challenger said, his frustration plain to see. “What does he know of their history?”

  Smith shrugged. “Precious little from what I can tell, beyond what is depicted on the glyphs on the wall.”

  “There has to be more,” Challenger said.

  Smith shrugged again. “Wishing it so does not make it so,” he replied and, having spoken more in the previous five minutes than he had in our whole journey to the valley, once again lapsed into silence.

  I went to have a closer look at the glyphs for myself, but darkness had obviously fallen outside the cave, and although the flickering firelight seemed to give some manic life to the paintings on the walls, there was not enough illumination for me to make out any detail.

  When I returned to the fire, the old man was awake again and already carving up portions of the rabbits to hand around, seemingly oblivious to the warm fatty liquids running from the cooked meat to cover his hands and wrists. But for all that the meat did not look in the slightest bit appetizing, it tasted delicious and, accompanied with some dry biscuits from our packs and fresh water from our canteens, it was a splendid meal indeed, there in the increasingly warm confines of the cave.

  Smith and the old man fell back into whispered conversation. Boyd, whose eyesight seemed better than my own, started to make a pictorial record of the glyphs in a notebook. Challenger lit up a cheroot and, obviously in no mood to talk, stared into the fire. I fired up a pipe and did the same. Tiredness hit me so fast that I barely had time to knock the pipe out on the hearth before sleep took me.

  I woke once during the night. Smith and the old man were still whispering to each other, Challenger was sound asleep on the floor by my side, and Boyd sat at the far wall, cross-legged, still sketching what he could see of the paintings. A movement in the mouth of the cave caught my attention. A score or more of the wee folk stood there, unmoving. As one they stared, not at the old man, but at Challenger’s sleeping frame.

  I did not sleep after that, lying awake on watch. Their gaze never left Challenger.

  And my hand never left the butt of my pistol under my jacket.

  ~5~

  All of the others managed to get some sleep at some point after that, and despite my misgivings, there was no attack on our persons.

  I rose as thin sunlight started to show through from beyond. Challenger woke as I shifted position, groaned and stretched. The wee folk in the cave mouth kept staring at him as he stood, but my own attention was now on the far side of the fire. Smith had woken, and was now bent over the slumped form of the old man. When he turned round to look at us I knew straight away that we were in trouble.

  “I think he’s dead,” Smith said.

  Boyd had obviously been of like mind to myself, for he already had his rifle in hand. I moved to take out my pistol as the wee folk came into the cave, but it was immediately clear that, for now at least, they meant us no harm. As one they surrounded the old man’s body and carefully, almost reverentially, removed his overcoat, leaving it and the battered hat by the fireside as they lifted him out and away. It all took place in total silence, and we were left alone in the chamber.

  “I think we should follow,” Smith said.

  “I think we should leave,” I said. I looked to Challenger for agreement but none was forthcoming.

  “I’m with Smith on this,” he said. “We should learn as much of their customs as we can while we are here.”

  There was to be no argument, it seemed. Reluctantly I followed as the three scientists went out into the morning. But I made sure my pistol was fully loaded, and the holster unbuttoned. I was also gratified to see that Boyd had kept firm hold of his rifle.

  We got outside just in time to see the wee folk carry the old man’s body round a slab of rock and into a ravine carved into the cliff side. We followed a circumspect distance behind, creeping round into the ravine.

  There we discovered the fate of the gold-hunters who had led us here. At first, I could scarcely believe my eyes.

  Fifteen tall wooden crosses were arranged in three groups of five on the floor of the ravine. On them hung the decayed remains of what had obviously been the gold hunters who had preceded us into the valley. They were little more than skeletons now, but torn clothing and visibly broken bones told the story of deaths that had been far from peaceful.

  The wee folk had already started tying the old Pastor to another cross on the ground, and within minutes had pulled him upright to hang almost directly over our heads.

  Then they all started to sing.

  The words were mangled and confused, but the tune was carried perfectly. The strains of “Abide with Me” echoed around the ravine. We joined in, and I’m afraid I was not the only one of us with a tear in his eye as the hymn came to a close.

  The wee folk gathered in a huddle beneath the old man, first looking up, then turning to look at us, or rather, at Challenger.

  “I don’t like this, old man,” I said. “I believe they intend to do you a mischief.”

  Challenger looked grim.

  “I’m starting to come round to your way of thinking on that score, Malone,” he said.

  Boyd raised his rifle and fired without any warning, over the heads of the wee folk.

  “That might have been a bad idea,” Smith said, as the tribe started to come forward toward us, many of them carrying weapons. A stone spear thudded into the ground less than an inch from my left foot.

  “Run,” Boyd shouted. “I’ll cover you.”

  I let Challenger and Smith retreat ahead of me and stood by Boyd’s side. We each fired another warning shot over the heads of the attackers. It didn’t slow them. We backed out of the ravine with the wee folk close on our tails.

  I was loath to actually shoot one of them, knowing that, with their small frames, a single shot would most probably prove fatal, but I feared it would not be long before I had to take that option. More spears flew through the air, thudding on the ground around us. It was only sheer good luck that had kept us alive so far. Our retreat was rapidly turning into a rout.

  I turned to see Smith and Challenger had reached the cave mouth. I expected them to keep running, to head for our entrance route to the valley with all speed. Instead they both ran into the cave.

  Such was the speed of the little people that Boyd and I had no option but to fall back until we too stood at the cave mouth. A spear thudded into the youngster’s thigh, almost felling him. He retaliated by shooting three of our attackers in quick succession. All three dropped, stone dead.

  And finally the attack stopped. They stood in a rough circle around the mouth of the cave, some twenty yards away from us, blocking all chance
of escape.

  Challenger arrived at my side.

  “Take Boyd,” I said. “He’s hurt.”

  Boyd passed me his rifle. “There’s three shots left. Use them wisely,” he said. He let Challenger take his weight and they went inside, leaving me alone to face the attack.

  Thankfully, Boyd’s parting shots had given them pause. They stood in their circle, unmoving, just staring at me. If any of them had as much as twitched, I’d have put a bullet in them straight off, but it seemed we had a standoff.

  After ten minutes of this the rifle started to feel heavy in my hands. I sat down in the mouth of the cave, leaned against the rock face and cradled the weapon across my legs. None of the wee folk moved, so I felt safe enough to light up a pipe. It took several attempts, I’m afraid, as my hands shook rather badly, but I was soon puffing away, if not exactly merrily.

  I heard footfalls in the cave behind me. I expected Challenger, but it was Smith who arrived first.

  “We’ve had an idea,” he said. “But I’m not sure you’re going to like it. Challenger’s waiting for you inside.”

  He took the rifle from me and kept watch as I went through to the main cavern, wondering with each step what was waiting for me.

  It was more of a surprise than I could have imagined. Challenger stood by the fire, dressed in the Pastor’s overcoat and hat. Flame reflected in his eyes, and his flowing beard seemed to bristle. He looked like nothing less than a prophet, come to preach hellfire.

  I am afraid I laughed, for Challenger, with his strict rationalist outlook, was among the last men I’d ever imagine as a man of the cloth. To his credit, he looked suitably embarrassed to be thus dressed.