CARNACKI: The New Adventures

by Gafford, Sam

  Matilda said, “Well, whatever you did, you saved my boy’s life, and Alice’s as well. You are always welcome here in this house, Mr. Carnacki.”

  “Carnacki,” Sir Hugh said, “when your doppelgänger was closing in on you, you called it Zoroaster. What did you mean?”

  Carnacki smiled. “A line from Shelley, my friend. From Prometheus Unbound. ‘Ere Babylon was dust, the Magus Zoroaster met his own image walking in the garden.’ It seemed to fit.”

  The Haunting of Tranquil House

  Jim Beard

  So excited was I to relate my adventures abroad to my friends that I raced to Cheyne Walk in Chelsea along the Embankment and then realised that I had not actually seen the usual card of invitation from Carnacki. This thought occurred to me as I set foot upon the porch of the man’s domicile, but with momentum moving me along I made a snap-decision and rang the bell.

  I imagined that Jessop, Arkright, and Taylor had preceded me and were already enjoying a drink before dinner was served. Checking my watch, I frowned at the door. It remained unanswered, which was odd indeed; I could not remember ever waiting on any past visit.

  Courageously—some might say recklessly, or even rudely—I turned the knob and swung the door open. Then I stepped inside and was greeted by a sight that will remain with me for the rest of my days.

  The entry hallway was dark, save for a clutch of candles arrayed around a body that lay prone on a small table off to one side. The figure looked stiff and lifeless. Treading my way over to it, I saw with a start who it was that lay there, as if dead to the world: Carnacki, my friend.

  Disbelief assaulted me first, then panic, and then confusion. I leaned over the man and took in his ghastly grey pallor, the absence of chest rising and falling with breaths, and the complete lack of signs of precious life. I heard small sounds like gasps echoing around in the hallway, but realised that they came from my own mouth.

  I was dumbfounded. Had my friend, he who sought to solve the mysteries of death itself, finally been claimed by that all-powerful and undeniable force? And if so, who had laid him out there, as if in a mortuary?

  I listened for a moment but detected no other sounds in the house. We were alone, or rather I was—Carnacki was far beyond, I presumed. Still in shock and disbelief, I saw my own hand, my very own fingers, creep towards the body, haltingly at first but then with certain purpose. Even before I touched the colourless skin of Carnacki’s face, I sensed a radiating coldness from it.

  Then, in a mixture of sheer wonder and utter horror, I saw the eyelids on the lifeless skull flutter and then open.

  “Dodgson,” said Carnacki with a dry croak, “why, whatever are you doing?”

  A short time later, after I had been given a rather large bracer of brandy to calm my jangled nerves, my friend sat down in his great armchair, lit a cigar, and stifled another chuckle of amusement at my shaky state. I myself saw little to be amused at in the situation.

  “Carnacki,” I said with some exasperation, “you must admit that if you yourself had come upon such a scene like that . . .” I waved my hands about futilely, searching for the words and spilling my drink.

  The man nodded, suppressed a smile. “Yes, yes; of course, lad. I can see your point. Please accept my humble apologies for startling you—though you did queer up quite an experiment for me, you know.”

  I set my brandy down, leaned forward in my chair, and asked him what he meant by that. Experiment? Carnacki had told me many strange tales of his profession which involved the supposed spirits of the deceased, but I had never heard of his own excursions into the Undiscovered Country. I sensed another story coming on and eagerly leaned closer to my friend to catch every word of it.

  “I can see that I’ve piqued your interest,” he said while blowing out a bit of cigar smoke. “Yes, there’s a meaning and a method to my ‘madness,’ and you shall hear of it, if you like.”

  He needn’t even ask; I was all ears.

  “Two weeks ago,” he began, “I had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of Sir Miles Pauly and his lovely wife. You remember them—there was a bit of fluff in the papers last year about their estate, about the kennels they keep there and some sort of award their dogs had won. Regardless, I was invited to come and stay over with them there for a few days and, finding a hole in my busy schedule, I accepted.

  “After only an hour there at Pauly Pines—yes, a silly appellation—I came to realise that its owner is the literal salt of the earth, one of those rare human beings for whom you develop a deep admiration and begin to trust in their every utterance. For one such as myself, who has brushed up against the worst that humanity has to offer in this world and the next, meeting Sir Miles was something of a revelation. His wife, too, is an open and honest person, a good mate for the master of Pauly Pines.

  “But it was shortly thereafter I formed my eternal opinion of my hosts that I divined that there was more to their invitation than a weekend of good food and amiable conversation. They had a problem—the kind of problem that a man of my experience would find interesting. Cutting to the chase, I asked Sir Miles to explain the situation.

  “‘Damnable thing,’ he said sheepishly, clearly reluctant to speak much further on the matter. ‘The little wife and I seem to have a, well, a—a ghost!’

  “Sir Miles then screwed up his resolve and began to outline a series of odd happenings that centred upon a small structure, a cottage that rested upon the outskirts of their property. Tranquil House they call it; you can guess by the name that it is both picturesque and peaceful there, one of those settings that an artist would sell his soul to capture on canvas or in chalks. For myself, I received an immediate rush of unease when Sir Miles first said the name to me. Though I believed every word he spoke, I knew the little cottage was, even before seeing it, in the middle of a whirlwind of turmoil, not tranquillity.

  “‘What would you have me do?’ I asked my host. The thought of a restful weekend had vanished from my mind, and I opened all my senses for the puzzle that Sir Miles was laying out for my edification. He explained that for the past year the estate had been witness to a string of what he could only call ’queer soundings.’ Unearthly noises spread through the trees on the grounds at night, weird lights around the cottage moved away if anyone approached them, and a vague feeling of unease floated about the acreage of Pauly Pines.

  “I seized upon that one word ’unease,’ for that was what I had felt myself. The very word indeed. Seeing the concern in my hosts’ eyes, I seemed to grant them some comfort by holding up my hand and volunteering to stay over in the cottage and get to the bottom of the disturbances. Sir Miles, visibly brightened, told me he’d fetch his caretaker to take me in hand.

  “The caretaker, a man called Willow—it seems the entire estate was riddled with odd names—presented himself as a surly sort, uncommunicative and begrudgingly helpful. It was only when I remarked to him on the walk down to the cottage that I had been asked to look into the disturbances that he grew more animated.

  “‘I shouldn’ think Sir Miles’d bother with such claptrap, sor,’ he growled at me over his shoulder. ‘No, I can’t credit it. He minds things he shouldn’ an’ he doesn’ minds things he should.’

  “With my own faculties focused on the investigation ahead, I cared little for favouring the man with a retort to that. So I merely nodded in assent, a gesture that went unnoticed by Willow as he insisted on walking ahead of me the entire time and never looking me in the eye. Rude sort; you know the kind.

  “As we neared Tranquil House, I began to notice that the light around was seeping away, owing not only to the lengthening day but also to a queer quality of the environment there that I shall not put a name to. No, it was odd indeed. The trees surrounding the little structure were very old, if I’m a good judge of such things, and they hung about the area. ‘Hung,’ yes, that’s a good word for it—the trees hung down and permeated the air with their ponderous presence. Overall, the immediate area around the cottage
was filled with a kind of miasma; not evil or foreboding necessarily, but definitely melancholy and infused with a tangible sadness. Do you take my meaning here? You must try to picture the scene: the little house, squatting in a clearing that was barely larger around than its walls and caged in by giant old trees that held the sun at bay and seemed to weep with despair.

  “Willow glanced back at me as he walked up to the cottage’s door and pulled out a set of keys that hung on a rusty old ring. He grumbled something under his breath and, turning a key in the door’s lock, swung open the portal and stepped aside, staring at his shoes.

  “‘Here ye be—and if it weren’ an order from Sir Miles himself, I’d have no part o’ it,’ he whispered, barely audible. Fortunately, the silence in the little clearing was absolute—no birds, no animals, no breeze through the branches—and I heard every syllable of it most clearly.

  “‘I shall commend you to your employer for your help, Mr. Willow,’ I told him as I crossed the threshold of Tranquil House. ‘I trust you will be around somewhere nearby if I need any more assistance?’ The man looked up at me with a start, fixed me with a look, the first of our entire acquaintance, and then narrowed his eyes into an observational squint.

  “‘Aye,’ he said with a kind of hiss. ‘Aye, me and the missus live just over there, a stone’s throw or more. Ye need but shout an’ I’ll hear ya. Good day t’ya, sor.’

  “I shook my head at the man’s impertinence and churlishness as he shambled away, but then turned back to the task at hand. The cottage awaited me and I entered it, shutting the door behind me and latching it.

  “Night came soon and it found me before a small fire I’d managed to light in the little house’s hearth. The glow from the flames dispelled a bit of the gloom about me, but did not drive it off completely. The sadness I mentioned before was overpowering at that moment, but I steeled myself for its onslaught and made up my mind to crack a book I had found on a shelf in the cottage and read myself into a preamble to slumber. If there was to be a ghost, I would have it approach in a natural fashion, not due to any movement or action of my own to force it into the open. I sensed that this was the best scheme for the situation.

  “Some hours later I awoke from sleep to find I’d drifted off with the book still open on my knee and the fire in the hearth nearly absent. Frankly, I was none too happy with myself and got up to see what I could do to build the fire up again.

  “Then I noticed a light just outside the window, out in the clearing somewhere.

  “Pale and wan, the light seemed to me to be spread out over a length of, oh, let us say, ten feet or more just beyond the first ring of trees around the cottage. Peering through the window, I watched as it moved back and forth, wavering as if in a breeze, or, better still, as if with the movement of a weak tide at the beach. I had seen a display like this before and I silently wished the light to come nearer to the little house.

  “The most remarkable thing happened just then. Out of the corner of my eye, while I was staring at the will-o’-the-wisp, I caught a kind of movement on the other side of the clearing. From out between two trees stepped a canine.

  “The animal moved slowly, hesitantly, taking one small step after another, but gingerly, as if in great pain. Though dark outside, almost Stygianly so, the queer light that danced just outside the clearing allowed me to see that the dog was injured. Blood shone on its left flank and from its head and jaws. Then I saw that one of its eyes was sealed shut with blood—or perhaps the eye was missing all together. I couldn’t be sure.

  “I watched as the animal moved towards the cottage, haltingly, its gaze clearly unfocused and its mien unsure and unstable. The feeling of sadness that permeated my surroundings intensified, nearly eliciting a gasp from me. Some part of me, that natural section of our humanity that views a creature in distress and desires to render aid, roiled and nagged, but I tamped it down and continued to only watch, to witness the unfolding events.

  “The light among the trees coalesced into a single source but still wavered in the air, sliding from tree to tree, as if to garner a better vantage point to ‘see’ the dog. I felt very strongly that something was about to transpire. Within a matter of seconds, I was rewarded in that assumption.

  “The dog came to a stop, raised its head ever so slightly, and then fell over. It lay there, barely moving save for its tongue sliding in and out its mouth in a kind of slow-motion panting. I could see that its chest lowered and rose in a ragged mockery of breathing. There was no doubt in my mind that it was near death.

  “Then—and here I must beg your indulgence in my feeble attempt at description—the light from behind the trees moved out into the clearing. When I say ‘moved,’ that is hardly the most apt word for it; in fact, it . . . rolled out into the opening, in mid-air, much like a spool of cloudy thread or yarn releasing its wares. At the end of the ‘thread’ there was a sort of blob or ball of light, stronger in luminescence than when it wavered among the trees and becoming even brighter.

  “The ball of light took the form of a figure. A human figure. A girl, in fact.

  “The diaphanous figure of the girl—I would guess her age to be about thirteen or so—walked towards the canine. Walked or floated or . . . it is very confusing, for I am not sure now how it came to be near the animal from where it had exited the woods. That is something that is difficult for me to recall. Regardless, the girl hovered over the dog and reached out with one vaporous extremity to touch it. . . .

  “The dog whined, softly though I distinctly heard it, even through the glass of the window. The girl seemed to stroke the poor creature’s head for a moment, and then the ragged thing shuddered once, twice, and with a third convulsion it moved no more.

  “The air of sadness that I spoke of? That hung over the woods, the cottage? It changed somehow then, lifting in a fashion, I suppose, though I could still feel it in the atmosphere around me. The figure of the girl stood up again, and from her hand trailed a thin thread of dull light; so minute was it that I believed at first that it was not really there, a trick of the light or some such. But, as I shifted my position slightly, I discerned the thread to be real, or at least as real as the entire scene playing out before me. There was little in my experiences with the unknown to inform me on what I had just witnessed; I was lost, a feeling I can assure you was not a welcome one.

  “The spectre of the young lady turned and moved towards the trees once more, oblivious of my presence, or so I assumed. As I continued to watch, she did a strange thing as she approached one gnarled and particularly ancient specimen of oak. Once next to it, she reached out her hand again and set it just above a small part of the tree that had long ago formed a little basin or cup that had recently collected rainwater from a small shower earlier in the day.

  “I suddenly felt that the apparition would be gone in a matter of heartbeats. Animation flooded back into me and I surged forth, hoping to approach the girl outside the cottage and verify her reality.

  “I crept to the door of the little house and opened it, slowly and carefully. It creaked as doors will do on such old structures, and so I risked it all and flung myself through the opening and into the clearing. Turning towards the trees, with my naked eyes I spotted the ghostly form of the girl.

  “My immediate impression was that she was, in fact, nude. This impression was then replaced with my discernment of wispy clothing of a sort that hung on her form like rags. Then, with colder realisation, I could see that the girl was draped in a shroud.

  “Incredibly, she rotated in place and faced me. I swear to you that a look of puzzlement came over her features and then one of alarm. Forgetting myself, forgetting my experience with beings of her kind, I opened my mouth to speak.

  “Then, before my eyes, she vanished. Her figure grew dim and like a memory, faded from view.

  “The miasma of sadness returned. I retreated to the cottage, spent. Falling into the armchair from which I had risen barely a few minutes before, I drifted into an une
asy sleep.

  “In the morning, I exited the cottage and looked around the clearing. There I found the canine, quite dead and cold. That at least I had not dreamed. The girl—well, at that moment I was not certain of anything. I removed myself to the cottage once again and re-exited an hour later, fed and cleaned and properly clothed for a short hike. I needed to think; and the great outdoors, I presumed, would afford me the clarity of thought and imagination I desperately needed.

  “Before I struck off, I remembered something from the night before and, finding the tree I sought, looked down into its little water-filled cup. There, floating on the surface of the water, was a small clutch of beetles, all very dead. I gazed at them for a moment and then moved off and away from Tranquil House feeling anything but tranquil. To be frank, I was in a bit of turmoil.

  “I had intended to avoid Mr. Willow’s place, but, unsure of its exact location, I stumbled upon it a few hours later. The man in question was chopping wood as I approached and looked up at me sourly when he heard my footfalls in the dead leaves that swirled around us in the slight breeze.

  “‘Didja find yer ghost, Mr. Carnacki?’ he asked without preamble. I felt that I had little to hide and saw no reason for subterfuge.

  “I admitted that I had. Willow screwed up his features and spit on the ground near where he’d set his axe down. He looked back at me, shook his head ruefully, and returned to his chopping. As I moved to leave, I caught a momentary glimpse of a sickly-looking female face peering out at me from a window in the side of Willow’s small cabin.

  “I walked the woods for another hour or so and then made my way back to the cottage. I had made up my mind about how I would approach another night at Tranquil House, inspired not only by the deep thought with which the walk had gifted me, but also, somewhat surprisingly, the caretaker’s curious attitude.