“It is Smith’s idea,” he said sheepishly. “If these people are so desperate for a resurrection, we’ll give them one.”
Boyd stood at Challenger’s side. He leaned on the heavy walking stick for support, but his color was good, and he seemed in no imminent danger of collapse.
“So what’s the plan, old man?” I asked.
“Gather up all the gear we can carry. We are walking out of here, and we’re going now.”
I took him at his word and quickly collected my knapsack and jacket. I reloaded the pistol and the three of us made our way to the cave entrance.
As soon as Challenger came into view the wee folk fell to their knees, wailing in joyful exhilaration.
“Sing,” Smith said to Challenger. “Sing, man, as if your life depended on it.”
“Sing what?”
“A hymn. “Abide With Me” again, if you can.”
Challenger, for all his faults, was not slow on the uptake, and furthermore was a most excellent singer. His voice rose and the hymn echoed around the valley.
Abide with me; fast falls the eventide;
The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide.
The wee folk joined in.
“Now walk,” Smith said.
We did as we were told and started to walk away from the cave with Challenger, still singing, in front. The wee folk parted before him, let all four of us through, and followed on behind us. It seemed that we were all going for a walk.
Our slow procession across the valley floor began.
It seemed to go on forever. Challenger sang with gusto the whole way, belting out psalms and hymns at the top of his voice, filling in the words with nonsense when he couldn’t remember them. Smith helped out, being the only one of us who really did know the old songs. As for myself, I was kept busy watching our backs and giving Boyd a shoulder to lean on when required.
By the time we had gone a mile, around a third of the distance to the trail on the other side of the valley, the youngster was starting to falter, and lean on me more often. Finally I had to call to Smith for help. We shouldered the lad between us and half-carried him the rest of the way.
We almost came a-cropper around the halfway point, when our path was blocked by one of the herds of mammoths we had spotted the day before. The beasts saw us coming. The largest male raised his trunk and trumpeted a warning to us that echoed the length and breadth of the valley. Challenger didn’t even flinch, just maintained his steady pace, heading in a straight line toward the herd.
The big male took this as an affront to his territorial rights, and started to swing his huge head from side to side, tusks as long as a man scything the top of the long grass. He pawed at the ground and snorted, like an enraged bull.
And still Challenger did not pause, just kept walking. I decided he might need some help. I managed to take out my pistol, and fired a shot over the big male’s head. That, and Challenger’s belligerent attitude, seemed to do the trick. The beast turned and ran, the herd following him, thundering away down the valley and sending water splashing high in the air as they fled.
Behind me the wee folk clapped their hands and cheered, as if we had just performed a miracle, but by now I too was getting too tired to feel any joy.
We plodded on, fighting through the boggy grass underfoot, splashing through puddles rather than attempting to go round them in our hurry to cross the valley. I could not see how our plan was going to work. The wee folk would surely not just stand by and let us leave, not after the effort they had put in to finding their new Pastor. I tried not to think about it, and concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, marching in time to Challenger’s booming voice.
The first part of our journey ended after more than an hour of hard work. Poor Boyd was the worst off. He had gone quite pale, and was no longer able to put his weight on his wounded leg. Blood soaked the crude bandages we had applied back in the cave.
“Challenger,” I called out as we approached the spot where we had ascended beside the stream on the previous day. “Boyd needs some rest before we tackle a climb.”
The Professor stopped singing for the first time since we left the cave. I helped Smith sit Boyd down, and had my pistol at the ready as I turned back to watch the wee folk. I expected them to continue to be fascinated by Challenger, but there had been a change in their demeanor. They seemed skittish, eyeing the trees warily. Before I could stop him Challenger strode over, stood above them and spread out his arms as we had seen the Pastor do back in the cave. They broke into smiles and surrounded him in a group, stroking at him in what looked to me like religious awe. Challenger did not look to be in any immediate danger, so I turned back to help Smith with the injured youngster.
The wound wasn’t as bad as I expected, and we were able to patch Boyd up again in short order. Some water and some jerky from the packs revived him somewhat, although I stopped short of offering him a smoke as I lit up a cheroot for myself.
“Can we make it?” I asked Smith.
He didn’t answer, He seemed intent on watching Challenger. The Professor was still in communion with his flock. It took me a while to realize what I saw on Smith’s face. It was one thing I hadn’t expected.
I saw envy, writ there large.
We were all so intent on watching each other that we failed to spot the attack before it was too late to avert it. The Smilodon came out of the trees at a run, making straight for Challenger.
~6~
To their eternal credit, the wee folk did not flinch in the face of such a monster. They threw themselves forward in defense of their Pastor. Five died almost immediately, and the air filled with the spray of blood and the screams from broken bodies. They had, however, given us just enough time to deploy our weapons. We fired, too late to stop the big cat from reaching Challenger, who fell under the beast’s onslaught. He caught its two front legs in his hands and, with brute strength and sheer force of will, held it far enough away to stop the twin fangs from tearing off his face.
It gave the rest of us enough time to press an attack. I strode forward and emptied my pistol into the beast. It turned on me and swiped me away with a paw. It felt like being hit by a log and I went to the ground, severely winded. Boyd limped forward and started beating the beast with the walking stick until he too was knocked aside.
The wee folk threw themselves on the Smilodon, a heaving mass of bodies jabbing and stabbing and tearing. I could see Challenger, now lying quite still beneath it, and I feared the worst. The tiger thrashed and lashed out. Even smitten with many wounds it was still capable of maiming and killing many. Fresh screams rang around the valley.
It was Smith who put an end to the matter. As calmly as if he was taking a Sunday stroll he walked forward, put the rifle to the Smilodon’s skull, and put three quick shots into its brain.
It fell, a dead weight, with Challenger beneath it.
I started to crawl toward the body of the cat.
“Stay down,” Smith whispered. “I’ve got a plan to get you out of here.”
I lay still as Smith helped the wee folk roll the Smilodon off Challenger. I heard him whisper to Challenger,
“Play dead.”
The Professor obliged, and Smith proved himself adept at explaining matters to the wee folk with hand actions and acting. He took the overcoat and hat from Challenger’s prone body … and put them on. At the same time he started to sing. The strains of “Abide With Me” once again echoed through the valley.
The wee folk were now looking at him in awe.
There had been another resurrection.
He sang the hymn all the way through. Finally he turned, bent over and pretended to close my eyes.
“Give me twenty minutes, then be on your way,” he said quietly. “And tell Challenger that I’ve made my choice. I do this of my own free will. I have found my path to salvation. I pray he finds his.”
He started up with “Onward, Christian Soldiers” and marched what was left of the wee folk a
way across the valley. I waited until I could barely hear his singing before sitting up. Challenger groaned, and Boyd sat up.
“What in blazes just happened?” the youngster said.
I looked across the valley.
Smith led the small tribe at a quick march. All of them were singing.
“I think Mr. Smith has found a new vocation,” Challenger said dryly. He sat up, grimaced and rubbed at his chest. “Hurts like blazes,” he said. “But I seem to be in one piece.”
Boyd looked across the valley floor.
“We should go after him, save him,” he said.
I put a hand on his arm.
“He would say he has just saved himself. Now come. We’ll have to move fast if we want to be out of here by nightfall.”
I won’t bore you with the details of our climb to the top of the cliffs. Suffice to say it was long and arduous. But nothing attacked us. And when we reached the top, we saw several Thunderbirds, but all were high above, soaring on thermals, paying no heed to us.
We reached the rope pulley half an hour later, just as dusk was settling. After that it was a fairly simple process of shuttling us down, one after the other. As the least injured of the three of us, I elected to be the last to leave. I waited to see if Smith would arrive, giving him as long as I dared, but the only sound was the high keening of the eagles.
Ten minutes later I was down, standing on the floor of the Big Hole Valley. Mere seconds after I stepped out of the holds, the whole pulley system fell off the cliff with a clatter and a flurry of pebbles. We looked up, but could see nothing in the gathering darkness.
We heard him, though. It was a sound I carried with me all night, and through the nights ahead as we made our way back to civilization.
The last sound we heard coming out of the Valley of the Lost was Smith’s singing, the wee folk joining in chorus.
Abide with me; fast falls the eventide;
The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide.
Parting the Veil
~1~
Challenger had been almost a recluse since our return from Montana. Despite my regular forays to the George in the Strand, I never once found him in his favorite seat at the bar, and I did not receive any requests to join him at home for a cigar and a snifter.
As yet I was not unduly worried, as I knew his enthusiasms often got the better of him to the extent that he lost track of time completely. There was, however, the matter of the death of his wife, now more than six months past, a matter that still caused me serious concern for the welfare of my old friend.
I had hoped that our adventure in the Rockies might have gone some way to assuage his grief, but the manner in which we had left the place had obviously weighed on the old chap’s mind. He had been remarkably quiet on the long trip home, and, as I have mentioned already, I had seen precious little of him since our return.
I was therefore somewhat surprised in November to receive a request to join him at an address in Blackheath for what the note said would be an evening that will open your eyes to possibilities. I had no idea what that meant, and I knew of old that any speculation on my part was likely to come up short of what Challenger actually had in store for me.
So it was that I took the train from Charing Cross with the evening commuters that Friday, armed with a notebook, fresh smokes, and too many questions requiring answers.
I arrived at the address Challenger had given me at six o’clock, slightly earlier than I had anticipated. I considered popping into one of the local hostelries for a swift pint, but decided a clear head might be more circumspect. When I saw who answered the door to my knock, I wished I had gone for that beer … and stayed in the bar for more.
I hadn’t seen or heard of John Logie Baird since the summer of the previous year, when his experiments in Photovision nearly brought calamity to the West Coast of Scotland. It seemed his near-disaster had not in any way punctured his dual aura of eccentricity and brilliance. He gave me a huge smile, pumped my hand as if he was trying to draw water from a well, and invited me inside.
“Come away through,” he said, his lilting Scots brogue as prominent as ever. “The Professor is waiting for us.”
I followed the small man through to a well-appointed parlor. Not only was Challenger waiting but it looked as if he and Logie Baird had already made some inroads into the Scotch bottle that sat on a small table near a roaring fire.
“What’s this all about, Challenger?” I asked.
He laughed. “All in good time, Malone. First, join us for some of this fine uisque and a smoke. I need to explain a few things to you before we get started.”
I did as requested and sat in an armchair, fixing up a pipe while Logie Baird poured me a stiff drink. I lit up and puffed smoke, resolved that I would not be the one to initiate whatever conversation was coming. As it turned out, Challenger was to prove the voluble one in that respect.
“Do you think much about what comes afterwards, Malone?” he said. It was a topic we had touched on in the past, but never in any depth. I guessed it was the death of his wife that had brought it round again, and I tried to be careful with my answer.
“You know my views, old boy,” I said. “I saw too many men die bloody, horrible deaths in the trenches. They prayed, constantly and long. And no one answered. If there is a God, then he let that evil happen. And in that case, I want nothing to do with him.”
Challenger nodded. “But I’m not talking of God,” he said. “Or rather, not as any of the established religions envisage him. I’m talking of a personal survival, something that is, in all probability, different for everyone.”
I nearly laughed, thinking him to be joking, until I saw in his face that he was deadly serious.
“Come now, old man,” I said. “Haven’t you told me, often, and at great length, that your rationality, your intellect, is all that you need? Don’t tell me you’ve had a road-to-Damascus moment?”
It was his turn to laugh again.
“Nothing quite so extreme. It’s just that Logie Baird has recently opened my eyes to other … let’s call them possibilities.” He took a long puff on a cheroot before continuing. “Let’s play “what if?” What if we could reach out to the departed, perhaps even converse with them?”
“You’re talking about Spiritualism, aren’t you? Please tell me you haven’t joined the table-knockers. That’s just another way to part a fool from his money. You know that.”
“Nothing quite so fanciful,” Challenger replied. “What if I could show you a scientific method for achieving such contact? One fully verifiable under laboratory conditions, fully replicable, every time?”
“Then I would suggest you’ve had rather too much of this fine Scotch,” I replied. “Such a thing is impossible.”
It was Logie Baird, not Challenger, who replied.
“I discovered it by accident,” he said. “It was in January this year. I was working on one of my Photovision prototypes, broadcasting pictures into the troposphere, and trying to get clear results. At very high frequencies I started to pick up replies … but they were not anything that I had broadcast. Rather, they seemed to be attempts by something to communicate with me.”
It was quite hard to believe the small man, with his uncombed hair, wild eyes and general air of the fanatically obsessed. But I had seen for myself in Helensburgh that his equipment was more than capable of contact with things we did not yet understand.
And that was what I was afraid of.
I turned back to Challenger.
“Remember the last time? It nearly killed us all.”
Logie Baird spoke again.
“I have taken precautions against such intrusions,” he said. “I think you will find it is completely safe.”
“You’re trying to tell me that you can talk to the dead?” I said, incredulously.
Challenger spoke softly.
“And not just talk, Malone. They can be reached. They can be touched. They can be held.”
To my
astonishment I saw tears in my old friend’s eyes. More than ever, I feared, not just for his health, but now also for his sanity.
“I can see you’re a wee bit skeptical,” Logie Baird said. “Challenger said you would be. Come on through to the lab, and we’ll try to change that.”
The “lab” proved to be little more than a glorified potting shed, some twelve feet long and eight feet wide. Every available square foot was crammed with dials, meters, sparking electricity, and buzzing generators. The centerpiece was a tall wing-backed armchair with a metal helmet of sorts hanging above it. Wires trailed from the helmet to what appeared to be a control board. Logie Baird motioned me to the chair.
“Have a wee seat, laddie,” he said. “I promise it won’t hurt.”
I must have looked skeptical, for Challenger laughed loudly. “Don’t worry, Malone,” he said. “You can always come back and haunt us.”
I let myself be led into the chair. Logie Baird lowered the metal helmet over my head. I could see well enough through eye-slits that had been cut into it, but the contraption buzzed loudly, like having a bee in both ears at once.
“Now what?” I said, after I was sure I was not in any immediate danger of electrocution.
“Just relax,” Logie Baird said.
He turned a dial. The buzzing inside the helmet intensified until I thought my teeth might rattle from their sockets. I decided to complain but before I could speak the world outside the eye-slits turned to a thin gray mist.
I went away.
It was the smell that told me where I was. Once you’ve had the tang of gangrene in your nose and throat, you never forget it. The rest filled in quickly around me, with the noise, the constant boom of guns and shells, being the last to arrive.
But by then I knew exactly where or, rather, when I was. The Somme had filled my nightmares for several years now, but never with this depth of clarity. Men wailed and screamed … and died. Hot smoke ate at my lungs, wet mud sucked at my feet. And everywhere smelled of death and corruption.
Professor Challenger: The Kew Growths and Other Stories Page 19
