Manly Wade Wellman - John Thunstone 01 (13 page)

 
          
“I
don’t think that’s quite accurate,” said Thunstone. “Ruth St. Leger-Gordon
wrote that the word was French to begin with,
s’esbattre,
an old term that she says means to frolic. Now, in
America
they call a country dance a
frolic,
and they dance round and round, sometimes back to
back like witches—what the dance-caller names a do-si-do.” He smiled at her,
trying to reassure. “I’ve danced at such frolics myself in the mountains, and
never thought I was turning into a witch.”

 
          
“I’ve
never danced; I don’t dance.”

 
          
“So
this is what you mean by being a white witch.”

 
          
“Yes,
it is. I only try to help people. The holy saints could do such things. I can
cure warts and I can stop the blood from a running wound. I can draw out the
fire from a bum by saying a text from the Bible—I must not tell you what it
was, or it wouldn’t work for me anymore. I’ve done things like that in Claines;
I could take you to people who’d tell you.”

 
          
“And
your methods are secret?” he asked.

 
          
“They
have to be, I say. I can’t tell them, except to somebody I’m teaching, not if I
want to keep my power. There’s another Bible text to say when I stop the flow
of blood. But now, if I cure people, make them well, it’s no more a sin than if
I was a doctor, is it?”

           
"Not that I can see/’ said
Thunstone
. "
Let me tell you something else I've
learned about witchcraft in the southern part of the States. Someone like you,
who tries to do helpful things and combat evil, isn't called a witch, but a
witch master or a witch mistress. I know one of the foremost of the witch
masters over there. He has the same name as I do, John."

 
          
"John what?"

 
          
"The
people just call him John. He's also a fine guitarist. You should hear
him."

 
          
"Well,
in any case, you're convinced that I'm good," said Constance Bailey.
"You speak as though you trust me. Let me tell you how I feel about
certain things here, and trust me in that as well."

 
          
"Of course."

 
          
"Well,"
she said again, and gestured with both hands. "It's always uncanny here in
Claines, every year at the turning time for the Dream Rock, but this year it's
worse than usual. Not everybody can feel it, but you said that you did. You
said that last night you had a vision of what must have been other times
here."

 
          
"Ancient
times long dead," he said.

 
          
"No,"
she said. "No.
Ancient times but not dead, not when they
come to life in the night.
You and I can see that, know that."

 
          
"Just
the two of us?" he asked.
"Nobody else?
Not Mrs. Fothergill, for instance?"

 
          
"She
laughs at me; she won't credit me when I talk about it. She says I dream it at
night, in my sleep."

 
          
"How about somebody like Gram Ensley?"
Thunstone
suggested.

 
          
She
creased her brow. "Now, you make me wonder about him. I can't properly say
what he sees and knows, or doesn't. I told you that he asked me once about
white witchcraft,
then
he told me that I was wrong, I
was a fraud. Said I did my spells to cheat people. But I've never done that.
Never asked a penny for anything else I did. I'm not a black witch."

 
          
"You
truly believe what you're saying," said Thunstone.

 
          
"I
have to believe. It's all in the Bible, about witches and spirits of the dead,
so it has to be true. And at night this time of year, it's no dream, certainly.
You felt it." She leaned forward. "You know it's not a dream. You
know the house goes away all around, and strange things move.” Her eyes grew
wider. “It’s dark now. If you should turn out your light here—”

 
          
“Suppose
we turn it off and find out,” he said suddenly.

 
          
“No,
not for your life!” she squeaked. “Who knows what would happen?”

 
          
“Nobody
will know what would happen if we don't find out.” He studied persuasion into
his voice. “You and I have had the experience, but both of us had it when we
were alone. Mrs. Fothergill thought you were dreaming. I don't think I dreamed,
but I wonder. If we turned out this light, and that other landscape came to us
in the dark when we were together, we'd be sure of it.”

 
          
“But
it frightens me,” she whimpered, her head sunk low, her face half-hidden in her
dark flood of hair.

 
          
“Naturally
it does, or you wouldn't have good sense. Let's try it, Miss Connie.”

 
          
“Well,
then.” She lifted her head up. “Maybe I won't be so frightened if you're with
me.”

 
          
“I'll
be with you every moment, and I'll be prepared.”

 
          
He
searched in his smaller satchel and brought out a flashlight no bigger than a
fountain pen. This he clipped in the upper pocket of his robe.

 
          
“Constance
Bailey,” he said, “
are
you ready?”

 
          
“Yes,
all right.”

 
          
Thunstone
sat on the edge of the bed. Constance Bailey came and sat close beside him. He
could feel her body tremble.

 
          
“Now,”
he said, and put his hand to the light and turned the switch.

 
          
Darkness
hurried through the air around them.

 
          
And
Thunstone knew at once that he was somewhere outside, knew it as he had known
it the night before. The rain that had clattered at the window was gone, and so
was the window. Dimly he saw the landscape he had seen that previous night,
dimly but more clearly than the first time. It was the place where Claines
stood, but no Claines was there. Overhead winked stars, and the moon was only a
curved scrap where it had been greatening to the full. And no streetlights on
Trail Street
, no
Trail Street
either. But he could see the dim,
night-shadowed upward climb of Sweepside, and upon the surface there the
outline of Old Thunder, with some sort of glow upon it to pick out the white
perimeter.

 
          
"
Constance
,
¹
” he said, "where are you? Do you see?”

 
          
"I
can see,”
came
her voice out of the dark beside him,
smothered with awe. "You can see too, is that right?”

 
          
They
were sitting together on a hummock of something, certainly not the bed. He
lowered his hand to explore. It seemed to be rock, with a coating of what must
be shaggy lichen. He turned and saw Constance Bailey there, a darker shape in
the dimness. He felt her nervous grip upon his arm.

 
          
"We
both see,” he decided. "That means it’s not imagination, not delusion. Not
mass hypnotism; I’ve never believed in mass hypnotism, anyway. We both see what
we see.”

 
          
"This
is Claines, but there's no Claines,” she said.
"Nor a
house, not a street.
We're in the open. I can see Old Thunder, shining
like. And over there, where Chimney Pots ought to be—”

 
          
He
looked in that direction.

 
          
Light
showed over there, as of several ruddy fires. Around the fires clustered dark
shapes, uncouth shapes even in the distance. He heard, far off, a jumble of
voices, and they were not particularly merry voices. If they sang, they were
discordant. He had time by now to feel that the air was chilly, not like July
in Claines.

 
          
“
Constance
/’ he said, “
listen
carefully to what I say. I’m going out there to get a better look at what’s
going on.”

 
          
“Oh
no, don’t!” she wailed, the words stumbling over each other. “Listen
carefully,” he urged her again. “I’m only going to where I can see and hear
them better. I won’t go all the way, and I’ll come back here to where we’re
sitting. This is the point where we must be when I turn on a light and fetch us
back to our right time and place.” “Don’t go,” she besought him, and clung to
his arm and shoulder. “I’m going,” he said, more sternly than he wanted. “But
you stay here, right where you are. Don’t move hand or foot until I come back.”

           
“If you do come
back!”

 
          
“I’ll
be coming back,” he promised. “And when I call out to you, answer me loud and
clear, to guide me again. Do you understand?”

           
“Ye-es.”

           
“And you understand everything? And
you’ll do what I say?”

           
“Ye-es,” again.
“But—what if you don’t come back?”

           
“I said I would, but, yes, suppose I
don’t. Here, take this.”

 
          
He
pushed the pencil flashlight into her hand. “Don’t turn it on, not now. Just
wait for me. Watch me the best you can in this darkness. You ought to be able
to see my coming and going. But if something does happen to me and you think I
can’t make my way back, turn on that flashlight and then turn on the light in
the room, and you’ll be safe.”

 
          
“Don’t
go,” she pleaded again, almost tearfully.

 
          
“Stop
talking like that,” he commanded, and freed himself from her trembling hands.
He rose to his feet and moved carefully in the gloom toward the fires and the
chanting groups there.

 
          
He
walked carefully, setting his feet flat to the ground, for he could feel
a strew
of pebbles under the thin soles of his slippers. He
had no sense of being brave, though he did ask himself if he were not foolish.
But Judge Pursuivant would approve of what he was doing, and so would Jules de
Grandin, the brilliant little Frenchman he knew and admired. They, too, would
want to see and hear and know. It was natural, it was human, to find things
out. Mankind's poor underprivileged cousins, the apes and monkeys, had that
prodding curiosity. And curiosity had grown into man’s giant exploration of
things, his search for the stuff of which reality is made, his will to cross
oceans, cross space even, and find things out even while he dreamed of finding
out more. Compulsive had to be the word, though Thunstone felt it was a word
overused and misunderstood.

 
          
In
the dark he came to what seemed to be the crest of a rise, and there he
stopped. He strained his eyes to see what went on at those fires. The creatures
there—they must be people—moved in a circle around the flickering flames. They
moved in a ring. Thunstone remembered what he and Constance Bailey had talked
about, witches dancing in a ring. If these people danced back to back, he could
not see clearly. He did see that they tossed their arms. Several held long
poles, perhaps spears.

 
          
They
kept up a hubbub of voices. “Ohh, ohh, ohh,” they seemed to chant.
“Hai, hai, hai.”
Into their song came the sound of a
thudding drum, and the bubbling skirl as of a wind instrument. Thunstone
remembered the bone flute Ensley had shown him.

 
          
He
had better come no closer, or he would lose his way back. He turned and tried
to make out the lichen-shagged rock on which he had sat. “
Constance
!” he called loudly. “Constance Bailey!”

 
          
“Here,
here,” drifted back her voice.

 
          
At
that, the singing by the fires beat up more strongly. Closer to Thunstone three
figures bobbed into view. He could make out
a shagginess
to them, perhaps the clothes they wore. They stood for a moment; they seemed to
peer in his direction. Then they moved purposefully toward him.

 
          
He
backed away toward where Constance Bailey had hailed him. Once his foot slipped
on a loose stone, his ankle almost turned. “Constance Bailey!” he called to her
again.

 
          
“Here
I am!”

 
          
At
that, one of the approaching shaggy figures said something in a language he had
never heard, and flexed
itself
and threw something.

           
The something whizzed close, struck
earth with an abrupt whack. It was there almost against him, jutting upward. He
seized it, dragged it free of the earth, and headed swiftly back. He came close
enough to make Constance Bailey out, huddled on the boulder. He reached her
side and sat down himself, then looked back along the way he had come.

 
          
The
figures were approaching.

 
          
“Give
me the light,” he said, and took it from Constance Bailey’s hand. He touched
the switch, and his room sprang into view around him. Reaching for the light
above his bed, he turned it on, and they were back in familiarity.

 
          
Rain
clawed at the window, the rain that had not been there just now, when they had
been outside in some other time of the world’s long life. Again they sat
together on the edge of the bed, Thunstone and Constance Bailey.

 
          
Still
she cowered against him. Her trembling lips moved as though to form silent
words. Perhaps she prayed.

 
          
“Steady,”
Thunstone urged her. “We’re safe now. What I saw out there, in whatever
long-ago time it was, looked like people dancing, sounded like people singing.
But they’re not out there now. The light brought us back here.”

 
          
“The
light,” she echoed him. “The darkness—it was terrible.”

 
          
“We’re
safe,” he insisted. “Look here; they threw this at me.”

 
          
He
still held it in his hand, and he himself looked at it for the first time.

 
          
It
was a spear, with a wooden haft nearly five feet long, straight as a ruler and
oiled to darkness. Its point was of stone, beautifully chipped,
a reddish
quartz, perhaps jasper. The lashing was of stout,
dull sinew.

 
          
“They
threw it at me,” he said again.

 
          
“They
might have killed you.”

 
          
“Well,
it was dark out there for throwing.” He got up and leaned the spear in a comer.
“That came back from that ancient time, and it proves that we saw and heard and
felt what we thought we did. Listen to me,
Constance,
don’t mention this spear to anybody for the time being.”

           
“I won't,” she promised.

 
          
"And now you can go to your room, and see if you can get a
night's rest.''

 
          
"My
room’s up steps,” she chattered. "A flight of
stairs,
and dark all the way up. I'm afraid.”

 
          
"I'll
come and stand at the foot, and shine my flashlight up for you,” he offered.
"When you’re in the room, turn on your light and everything will be
normal. Sleep with your light on if you want to.”

 
          
"I
will, and thank you.”

 
          
"Don’t
thank me,” he said.

 
          
"I
do thank you, thank you for being what you are.”

 
          
She
went into the hall. He followed to where she opened a door that showed gloomy,
steep steps. Standing there, he leveled the lean beam of his flashlight along
the way she must climb. She mounted, not confidently, and opened a door above.
He saw the light there as she turned it on. Then she closed her door and he
returned to his own room. There he sat down to think.

 
          
What
had it been, this experience? Time travel, as H. G. Wells had imagined it? If
so, how did it work?

 
          
Because it had worked, with him and with Constance Bailey as a
witness.
He had been back in time and had returned, and yonder was a
stone-headed spear to prove it.

 
          
Time
travel had been a matter for speculation for many years. Theorists had
considered it long before H. G. Wells had popularized it with his novel
The Time Machine
, published in 1895 as
Thunstone remembered. He mused over the introduction to that curious tale, in
which Wells had called time another dimension, had said that if man could
somehow win free of his cramping world of length, breadth, and altitude he
could travel in time, backward or forward. Here in Claines was no machine to
take one through centuries. It seemed to be an accomplishment possible to only
a few like
himself
and Constance Bailey, as
extrasensory perception is the gift of only certain persons with a special
aptitude.

 
          
Indeed,
time travel might be something like extrasensory perception. Anyone could look
back in memory to experiences of the past. And vividly you could imagine,
rationalize the future—choose a winner in a race, divine a course of action
that would bring you a success in a day or a year. And your dreams, they could
give you a glimpse of the long ago. Maybe they even gave you glimpses of the
future, those visions of tremendous, intricate cities, with the air crystal
clear above remote towers, strange traffic on strange streets.