The Unexpected Occurrence of Thaddeus Hobble

by Gareth Wiles

Mother could not answer, for she knew not what. It was for Peter himself to decide what he wanted to achieve in life. Still, simply surviving could be deemed an achievement all of its own in these times. He somehow felt, having already lived before, that he could relax this time around and muse over what he wanted to accomplish in future lives. He had plenty of time – endless time – to do as he wished. He did not need to be forthcoming with the opposite sex. Things would sort themselves out.

  1666

  ‘You are not the first Peter Smith to live in Myrtleville.’

  ‘A common name.’

  ‘You share his name and his personality, and yet…’ but the old woman petered off.

  ‘And yet what, hag? Speak up, move your rotten old tongue.’

  ‘And yet I saw Peter Smith hanged here in the year 1611. I was a young girl, but I remember it clearly. You were so confident you would return to life.’

  ‘And I did. I was born again – I have lived my entire life again.’ He looked rather glum as he turned from the old woman. ‘The same people who murdered me stood by and watched as my mother burned alive when I was but a boy,’ he grumbled.

  ‘That was the way of things back then, we are trying to change for the better,’ she replied gingerly.

  ‘I have witnessed just as much evil in this life as I did in my original life. Humanity will never change.’

  ‘It will, my boy, it will!’ she replied with such conviction. Peter turned to face her again, wanting desperately to believe her. She smiled warmly.

  ‘I wished for eternal life, I wanted to know all there was to know – I was granted both. The Space has shown me all that ever was, is or will be and it fills me with dread. Tell me, old one, how can I use my position to do good in the world?’

  ‘You must seek out the good in others and emulate it,’ were her simple words.

  ‘And if I can find no good?’

  ‘Then you are correct, and humanity’s course is predestined to disaster.’ With this, she shuffled away and Peter would never see her again. He was getting used to never seeing people again. Some, of course, he saw too much of.

  He thought back to his original life, and he remembered it well. His mother had so suffered at the hands of those ordinary villagers and they had all gone unpunished. It was too late to try and seek revenge now – they were all dead, save a minuscule number of the children who were now like the crippled old woman. He had been born again, memory intact, to another mother whose fate had not been so gruesome. He felt guilty that he’d been able to experience a new mother and leave his first life behind. But, it hadn’t been left behind – he lived it over and over in his mind. Rebirth felt like a curse. Were he to forget, he could potentially cope with such a burden. Yet, what would be the point if he could not remember from one life to another?

  He was now thirty-six, the same age he was when he’d first died. He looked back to 1651, when he was twenty-one, and that reminded him of his first culmination of twenty-one years in 1596. That big upright box had made itself known to The Great Collective, and especially to him, and had opened their minds to some strange entity that seemed to encourage them to name it The Space. It was difficult to decide upon what it actually was called, or if indeed it had a name at all. More difficult still was pinpointing what The Space actually was or wanted, but what it provided was certainly what that group of arrogant men had wanted – immortality, complete knowledge. There was too much information to fully appreciate or sort through; it just rushed about in their minds. Still, The Space had certainly come good on its promise of everlasting life as Peter’s presence right now proved. There, too, was the potentially devastating tool that allowed control over the mind and body of others. He had witnessed others of the collective deploy it, but he had always sought to shy away from such power. He knew The Space was the culmination of everything that ever was, is or will be, but that in itself felt like a gap – a gap in experience. He wondered what he still had to encounter after two lots of thirty-six years.

  Ahead of him stood a very thin, very plain woman. Her long blonde hair lay flat against her head, as did her arms against her body. She was unmoving, unresponsive, as Peter stepped closer. ‘Who are you?’ he called out to her. ‘What do you want?’ He called out to The Space for an answer. Silence. It was the first time The Space had declined to give him what he required. He blinked and the woman was gone. Her unremarkable, yet sharply-pointed, face was not in the least bit unpleasant. No, if anything Peter was drawn to it. The anguish of not knowing about her after having known all there was to know was what drew him to her. Nonetheless she was no more, and he posited he had imagined her.

  ‘Hath the plague not yet wiped the smirk off thy face?’ a voice called out from within the woods behind him. It was the voice of Darren. He stepped out into the open, with three other members of the collective, all dressed in their ritualistic red lace gowns.

  ‘Anthony the silent,’ Peter laughed, turning and catching sight of the gathering. ‘You were once of the highest order amongst us. Now you cannot utter a single word.’

  ‘His mind is burnt, destroyed by the true intensity of all knowledge,’ Darren answered for him. Anthony just stood there, behind Darren as were the other two, with a vacant stare upon his chubby face. He was tall, but bent forward, and he looked like a lost child – ignorant of the future, almost aware of danger.

  ‘And then there is Stephen Noble – Stephen the righteous,’ Peter carried on, pointing out the next man behind Darren. He was a dashing young chap with a neatly trimmed beard and looked rather smart in his gown, carrying it better than the others. Without the facial hair he’d have looked almost feminine – his cheeks were smooth and rosy under there – and his brow was soft and rounded. He smiled back at Peter and nodded.

  ‘Ahem,’ the third man interjected, clearing his throat and twitching his eye.

  ‘Oh yes, and then Jim… just Jim,’ Peter acknowledged the man – who sported a wide open mouth which somewhat appeared to hold up and support a set of drooping eyes – almost as an afterthought. ‘What can I do for you all?’

  ‘I shall speak for us, collectively,’ Darren started. Peter raised an eyebrow, knowing full well that this person had always been somewhat of a troubling character morally. ‘There is concern amongst the collective, and not just us four but others, that you seem to see yourself as our leader.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ Peter responded glibly, waving his hand about to illustrate the preposterous nature of Darren’s claim. His accusers narrowed their eyes. ‘I was, despite perhaps not being the longest serving of the collective, the first to make contact with The Space.’

  ‘Alongside me,’ Darren emphasised.

  ‘I did come across the box first… not that it matters, of course.’

  ‘We would like to use our skills for gain,’ Jim cut in, ‘and you would appear not to.’

  ‘Personal gain?’ Peter asked. All at once he felt his feet dashing about. He looked down to see that he was dancing like a drunken idiot. ‘Stop this,’ he bit at them, as Darren and Jim smiled. Stephen looked on contemplatively, whilst Anthony was as blank and as empty as ever.

  ‘Make us stop, why don’t you?’ Darren goaded. ‘Tap into your own power and push us away.’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Then you will be our puppy,’ Jim laughed.

  ‘Pure, perfect Peter the puppy,’ Darren cried out in mirth.

  Suddenly Peter did stop, and Darren and Jim seemed briefly impressed as they ceased their ribbing. However, the once-dancing one was again drawn to a reappearance of the blonde woman, who was standing behind the four men. Their eyes too became fixed on something behind Peter, and they simultaneously dropped to their knees. He knew the big box was behind him – he could feel Its pulse – but he chose not to turn and face it. The choice of doing anything was quickly removed altogether when he felt a piercing sensation through his chest. It brought him crashing to the ground, dead.

  The men were taken somewhat unawares, and
Stephen was the first to register unease. ‘Stricken down, gone after thirty-six years,’ he gulped. ‘That was his exact age when last he was taken from this world.’

  ‘What are you saying?’ Jim demanded, grabbing hold of Stephen’s collars as he instantly felt the weight of the universe struggling to run through his brain.

  ‘You know exactly what I am saying,’ Stephen came back at him, pulling away, ‘you can see into my mind with The Space’s aid.’

  ‘Tis a benefit of fate that all four of us were returned to this world at different times than Peter, and lived various years in our first lives,’ Darren mused. ‘I came back three years later than he this time, and I was that much older when we first succumbed to the reaping that befell us all in 1611. Does that mean I have a precise set of years left to live this second life?’ He looked around at horrified faces. ‘Answer me!’

  ‘The Space gifts us all that we wish, up to a point,’ Stephen remarked. ‘We must try to draw It closer.’

  ‘Tis a horror of horrors!’ Jim cried, his face spasming as his twitch intensified. ‘I was a youngster then as I am now… will I never see old age?’

  Darren’s sight fixed on Anthony and it froze there, his brow becoming increasingly less tense. A smirk gradually appeared on his lips. ‘There are ways to test our theory, Collective,’ he uttered, his eyes still glued on the bulky mute.

  ‘Go on,’ Stephen encouraged.

  Jim grabbed hold of Darren and shook him in desperation. ‘Tell us, tell us!’ he shouted. Darren slapped Jim across the face with the back of his hand as he moistened his lips with a hairy tongue.

  ‘If my calculations are correct, then Anthony should outlive all of us. He is the youngest of us now, yet he was even older than I when we hanged,’ Darren pointed out.

  ‘So?’ Jim replied.

  ‘We should not live to see him die in this life,’ Darren responded, bringing out a dagger from inside his coat.

  Jim and Stephen stepped back as Darren ran at Anthony and went to thrust the knife into his stomach. But, it would not go all the way. His hand ceased to move, the dagger slipped to the ground and Darren halted right where he was as the unharmed simple man outstretched his hand and took his attacker’s to shake it. Darren pulled his hand away, using it instead to smack Anthony across the back of the head. The lad slowly wept – more from disappointment than pain – as the aggressor picked the knife back up and lunged at him. This time it went all the way, piercing the lad’s stomach and, as he turned to shield himself, his back. The fierce man went on in a bloody frenzy as Anthony dropped down in a pool of his own blood – stabbing, slashing, slitting whatever portion of body came forth as his victim sort of slopped about in a sloshy mess.

  The two onlookers just stood watching, aghast at the dreadful carnage presently unfolding before their own eyes. Neither seemed too shocked nor surprised, just worried – worried about themselves. Darren ended his onslaught by pulling Anthony’s head up by his hair and dragging the knife across his throat. Coughing and spluttering, his head remained up as blood spurted all over the place. The slayer, soaked through, threw the weapon aside and stepped back; only now did he begin to let what he’d just done run through his mind. All at once he felt a squeezing in the pit of his stomach. Tighter, tighter. What had he done? In a way he felt that this was something that was always going to happen – it was written in stone, destined to occur just as he believed The Space coming to The Great Collective was always going to happen. This thought alone allowed Darren to immediately remove himself from any notion of responsibility, let alone blame and incrimination. He’d simply carried out an action that was always going to occur. If anything, Darren was the victim – or, at least, his mind was able to reach that conclusion. To not have done this to Anthony would have been fighting against The Space.

  Still Anthony’s head stayed up as the three men encircled him, growing more and more interested in studying the scene rather than recoiling in horror from it. He outstretched his hand once more towards Darren, who held out his own dripping hands and stared down at them. Anthony’s soaking mouth moved about, as if to try and speak for the first time in his life. No sound came out, but he kept doing it. The three men leant in to hear what he was trying to say. Nothing. The only sound from the apparently dying man was a wheezing release of air from the gaping slit in his neck, which neither worsened nor ceased as the men wondered what to do.

  ‘He lives, he continues to exist,’ Jim pointed out in a bizarre tone somewhere between mild surprise and awe.

  ‘It is yet early to judge conclusively from our test,’ Darren mused.

  ‘No man can live through such a draining of blood,’ Stephen cut in, his own breathing beginning to wheeze as the realisation of witnessing an attempted murder began to sink in. Darren had undertaken it with such ease, and it could easily have been himself lying on the ground in agony right now. He ran his fingers along his own neck as his sight lay fixed on Anthony’s slit. ‘We must help him, ease his suffering if he is to live.’

  The gushing of blood had halted, and Anthony was making attempts at standing. Stephen gave him his hand, but he wouldn’t take it; he reached out to Darren, who helped him to his feet.

  ‘Remarkable,’ Jim uttered, rubbing at his twitching eye. An intense spasm befell his face again and he cleared his throat and shook his head to try and stop it. His attention focused on the dead body of Peter, still lying where it fell. ‘Utterly monstrous,’ he carried on, his words powerful but his tone of voice devoid of feeling.

  * * *

  Peter Smith was dead, yet he was still experiencing consciousness. His location was nothingness and at the same time it existed – he was there, waiting. He knew he was waiting for something but didn’t know what, and had no notion of the passage of time. Seconds, centuries; it was all the same here. None of it mattered. His entire being was up ahead spinning – a vast, or possibly minuscule, flat disc with no corners or sides besides the surface itself, pivoted in the centre by a flimsy dead stick that was endlessly there and yet on the brink of snapping. Peter reached out to himself and slammed his hand onto the wheel as he tried desperately to stop its incessant spinning. It would not cease and instead took Peter with it, his hand first sticking to and then being absorbed by the hazy surface. There seemed more beyond this flatness, some kind of depth, but it was beyond reach; the shallow material of the disc would not let up and allow more absorption other than the hand. As it carried him around and around and around, he flicked his vision from one area to another in a hopeless bid for either foresight or insight – looking, looking, looking, looking, looking.

  1738

  The simple washerwoman hurriedly made her way across the field, back towards her humble home. Hurry she did, but with a hint of a hobble as a lifetime of labour had left its toll on her round frame. She lived alone in a small shack of a thing where she did all her work for her wealthy clients. Right now she clutched tightly onto a swelling bundle of filthy clothes with her swollen knuckles, ready for a late night wash. The wealthy could be mucky folk. This latest load was extra work, on top of her hours and hours of daily work – it would all help pay her way. Her husband was dead, her children were dead. The desire to live still burnt brightly in her. She dreamt of past hardships replaced with future comforts and someone doing her washing. In her mind, she would achieve greatness too. It was just around the corner, just another step away.

  She took another step forward, nearer her home and hopefully nearer to an easier life. As she did so, a huge sword swept across the darkness and took her head clean off. Her body and the dirty laundry dropped one way as her head plopped into a puddle the other way. A figure stepped forward, sticking the tip of the sword in the ground and brandishing a dagger. A foot kicked the washer woman’s head aside and it bounced down the field, cushioned only by curly grey hair, as the murderer bent over the body and used the dagger to cut the hands off.

  * * *

  ‘There have been a number of mysterious deaths
recorded here in Myrtleville which cannot possibly be attributed to a resurgence of the plague or any other pestilence,’ the righteous Stephen Noble pointed out. Darren’s eyes darted around the room mischievously. They came across Peter and he grinned at the sweating man. ‘All the deceased are women of advancing years, and all have had various body parts removed. In each case, the woman has had her head lopped clean off. If we piece these missing parts together, we could almost make an entirely new woman – is this the intention of the slayer?

  ‘What about the heads?’ Darren asked.

  ‘All have been found near the discarded bodies,’ Stephen answered. ‘One of the deaths is the wealthy landowner Thaddeus Hobble’s wife Mimsie,’ Stephen continued. ‘A healthy reward has been offered by Hobble for the successful capture of her murderer… and the return of her breasts.’

  ‘We could just pick up a homeless pauper and frame him for these murders to get our hands on the reward,’ Jim offered, his eye twitching as he cleared his throat.

  ‘We must use our connection to The Space for good,’ Peter spoke up. ‘This is our chance to start doing so. With a tiny bit of effort, we can solve this crime using our skills. For too long we have sat around and called ourselves The Great Collective, without doing anything great.’

  ‘Why must we waste our time on this silly, trivial nonsense? We should be training our minds to strengthen our powers and seize control of the world,’ Darren cut in.

  ‘I balk at you, Aubrey!’ Peter interjected. ‘The man who hath used his connection to The Space to steal an apple off a child.’

  ‘No such thing ever occurred!’

  ‘We can set humanity on the right course,’ Peter insisted.

  ‘A course of our choosing, with us central to it,’ Darren suggested. ‘Your ideas appear to be shifting away from the general consensus, Peter,’ he noticed. ‘You are also struggling to remember the entirety of your prior existences.’