Manly Wade Wellman - John Thunstone 01 (16 page)

           
“I think I must; I don’t want anyone
to know about it just yet.
Now, good bye for the present.”

 
          
“Mr.
Thunstone,” she said, her voice wretchedly shaking, “do you think you’re doing
a good thing here, with so much danger around and about?”

 
          
“There’s
always danger,” he said, “at every point in our lives.”

 
          
“But
this,” she said, “this going back into the long ago, all among those savage
people. What if you go back again and they kill you?”

 
          
“I
hope they won’t, but what if they do?”

 
          
She
seemed to sway before him, she almost staggered. “Aren’t you afraid of death,
Mr. Thunstone?”

 
          
He
looked at her. He smiled, and shook his big dark head.

 
          
“No,”
he said, “I’m not. That doesn’t mean I want to die—if l wanted that, I’d be
crazy. But I’m not afraid of death. Several times I’ve come close to death, and
I was never afraid, not any of the times. Why, Connie? Are you afraid?”

 
          
“Yes,
I am,” she whispered. “Thinking of it makes me run all cold inside. I don’t
know what will happen after I’m dead. Maybe nothing will happen.”

 
          
“Maybe
nothing will happen,” he repeated the words. “Of course, we don’t know. There
are lots of promises about an afterlife, but we don’t know what they mean. But
anyway, I’m not afraid of death. I can’t afford to be.”

 
          
She
gazed at him as though she tried to comprehend.

 
          
“But
what if there’s nothing?” she asked him after a moment.

 
          
“Then
it will be like going to sleep, I suppose. And some of the happiest times I’ve
known have been spent in sleep.”

 
          
“Then
you’re not afraid,” she said, almost an accusation.

 
          
“No,
by God, I’m not. There just isn’t any future in being afraid of death. So don’t
you be afraid, either.” He turned toward the door. “Good bye,” he said again.

 
          
“Good
bye,” she said again, as though saying it forever.

 
          
Cane
in hand, he hurried downstairs and across
Trail Street
to the Moonraven. Hawes lounged in the
parking lot.

 
          
“Good
morning, sir,” he said. “We don’t open till eleven.”

 
          
“I
wondered when the next bus to
London
stopped here,” said Thunstone.

 
          
“Next bus to
London
?
Ten-thirty, if it's on time, and most days
it is.”

 
          
Thunstone
glanced at his watch. It was just
ten o'clock
. “I'll have to telephone,” he said.

 
          
“Call
box right there, in front of the post office,” Hawes told him, pointing.

 
          
Thunstone
hurried to it. He fumbled out coins and rang a number at the
University
of
London
, the office of Leslie Spayte. A deeply
drawling voice answered.

 
          
“Yes?
Professor Spayte here.”

 
          
“This
is John Thunstone. I'm glad I could catch you in your office, Professor.”

 
          
“I'm
more or less always in my office, even on a Saturday. What can I do for you,
Thunstone?”

 
          
“You
can talk to me, and hear me talk. I'm catching the ten-thirty bus here in
Claines. I should be there in two hours, as I figure.”

 
          
“Why
not a spot of lunch?” asked Spayte. “Why not meet me at a pub where we've been
together before, the Friend at Hand in Her- brand Street? Say
one o'clock
, or thereabouts?”

 
          
“Fine,
that's one of my favorite pubs,” applauded Thunstone. “I wish we could have
Philo Vickery along. He'd appreciate a few of the things I have to tell.”

 
          
“As
it happens, I'd say we can have him,” drawled Spayte. “He was in here just
now—full of wild surmises as usual, like stout Cortez's men silent upon a peak
in
Darien
, though it must have been Balboa if they
gazed on the Pacific. Even Keats could be wrong sometimes. Anyway, Vickery left
to go to the bookstore, Dillon's. Seems that one of his nightmarish books is on
sale there and he wonders how it's going. But he'll be coming back. If you can
be at the Friend at Hand at
one o'clock
, I’ll just fetch him along.”

 
          
“Great.
I'll see you.”

 
          
“I’ll
count the minutes. All right, Thunstone.”

 
          
A
click as Spayte hung up.

 
          
Thunstone
went back to the door of the Moonraven. Hawes remarked that it was a fine day,
but that last night's rain would be a help to the crops. He went on to say that
he was glad for Thunstone to put Albert Porrask in his place the night before,
that it would take Porrask months to get shirty again. When Thunstone guardedly
mentioned the possibility of night visions at the time of the turning of Dream
Rock, Hawes said that only Constance Bailey had clothheaded notions like that.
The bus rolled in and stopped, and Thunstone got aboard and paid his fare to
London
.

 
          
He
sat by a window and watched
Trail Street
trundle past, watched Congdon Mire slide
under, watched the country beyond. It was like leaving a place he had lived in
for years to get away from Claines. The bus purred to a stop at Gerrinsford,
where people got off and more people got on. A pudgy old man in a tan suit came
to sit beside Thunstone and speak to him with ready friendship about the
fineness of the weather. When Thunstone replied, the man asked if he were a
Scot.

 
          
“I'm
American," said Thunstone.

 
          
“Oh,
ah," said the other. “You're of such a fine height, I thought Scot. Now
America
, there's a land I hope to visit one
day."

 
          
He
went on to say that his daughter had gone there, that she had married a man
from
Texas
,
that
her son was
in the United States Army. Rattling on, he mentioned the ancient friendship
between
England
and the
United States
, asked Thunstone about income tax in
America
, and when Thunstone explained as best he
could, wished earnestly that taxes in
England
were as low.

 
          
As
they talked, the bus cruised through other towns, stopping to let passengers
off or take passengers on. Nine came and went, and they rolled through the
streets of
London
, at last coming to the terminal at Victoria
Station.

 
          
Everyone
got off. Thunstone said good bye to his seatmate and sought the underground
station. Far below the earth, he waited for his train and rode away northward.

 
          
He
changed at
Green
Park
, passed the stations at
Piccadilly Circus
,
Leicester Square
, and Holbom, and got off at
Russell Square
. There was an escalator to ride up and up a
tall, cliff like slope; then a walk to a heavily grilled door and another
ascent in a crowded elevator like a soaring freight car and at last the open
air of
London
on the street.

 
          
It
was a street that Thunstone knew, not far from his hotel on Southampton Row. He
walked a few yards and turned left into
Herbrand Street
.

 
          
That
was more like an alley, a narrow, seamed pavement between buildings closely
crowding on either hand. As before, he wondered how one car could safely pass
another there. On ahead of him rose a sign he recognized, painted in tawny
yellow on blue-green. It depicted a rescuer leaning down from an open boat to
reach and help an understandably desperate flounderer in tossing waves. The
door of the place displayed above it, in raised, gilded letters, the name
the friend at hand.
To
the left of that, more letters promised
splendid
food,
and to the right,
excellent
ales.

 
          
Thunstone
entered a spacious room amid a hubbub of voices. The Friend at Hand was always
thronged at lunchtime. Customers lined the bar, besieged the long buffet on the
far side of it. He stood for a moment, looking here and there. Then a voice
rose to shout his name.

 
          
At
a table on a sort of raised platform in the left rear corner sat his friends
Spayte and Vickery, both lifting their arms to wave a greeting to him.

 
          
Thunstone
flung up his own right arm to acknowledge the salutation. Then he worked his
way through the considerable crowd to a place against the bar. A white-jacketed
barman looked up and saw him. "Oh, you're back in town, sir,” he said.
"Missed you here.”
"I’ve been in the country for a
few days,” said Thunstone. "Let me have a pint of the special bitter.”

           
The bartender drew it. Thunstone put
down a pound note and went up two steps to where Spayte and Vickery sat,
smiling their welcome. Spayte was impeccable in tailored gray, and gray was his
close-curled hair. His beard was trimmed to a smart point, his mustaches
carefully waxed. As often before, Thunstone thought he had an Elizabethan look.
Vickery was considerably younger, leaner, than Spayte. He was dressed in an
open-fronted jeans jacket and a blue T- shirt which bore on its front the
cryptic word LATER. He had the face of an Indian warrior, with gaunt cheeks,
straight nose,
strong
chin. His dark hair was swept
back from a broad, high brow, and fell on either side to his square shoulders.

 
          
"On
time to the dot,” Spayte greeted Thunstone. "
One o'clock
, as 1
believe
I
said. And
one o'clock
it is.”

 
          
"You
said
one o'clock
or thereabouts,” said Thunstone, setting down his mug. "I see that both of
you are eating. Give me a minute to get myself something.”

 
          
The
buffet, too, had its crowd of customers. Thunstone chose a long sausage of a
kind he had learned to like, a scoop of salad, and some white bread and butter.
He carried the food back to where Spayte and Vickery were eating. Spayte had a
slice of quiche. Vickery had taken a generous wedge of liver pate and a Scotch
egg, both of which he ate with good appetite, and drank from his mug of dark
beer. Thunstone sat down and began on his own lunch.

 
          
“I
got your letter from there in Claines," said Spayte. “That little place
isn't hospitable to scholars, and so I haven't gone there as yet. Like Alan
Breck Stewart, I'm no very keen to stay where I'm no wanted. How have you fared
there?"

 
          
“That’s
what I came to tell," said Thunstone. “Claines is jumping with uncanny
things."

 
          
“You
wrote me nothing about those," said Spayte. “You should have done, I'm
interested in Claines, however inhospitable."

 
          
“Fine ale, this," said Vickery, drinking.
“Excellent,
as promised on the sign outside. Even George Borrow would approve." Then
he looked sharply at Thunstone. “Uncanny, did you say uncanny? Why haven't you
told us before?"

 
          
“I'm
not surprised to see that word fetch him," said Spayte to Thunstone. “You
know that the uncanny is his enthusiasm, and he writes it into his books. He's
been at me the last day or so with something he came on at the Museum library,
all about old churches being built on the sites of abandoned pagan temples, and
what it means, at least to him. For my part, I've forgotten what it may mean,
if anything."

 
          
“Our
professor here is rock-ribbedly empirical," said Vickery affectionately.
“Believes only in material evidence, and decides for
himself
what the material evidence is."

 
          
“I’ve
always been glad to hear him talk on any subject," said Thunstone.

 
          
“I
also, because then I can disagree each time," said Vickery. “I wouldn't be
without him, Thunstone; he's a fascinating character. I'd put him in a novel,
only I'm afraid he'd bring an action for damages."

 
          
“What
damages?" wondered Spayte. “What could you write that could damage me? But
hold on; we're interrupting Thunstone here. What's the uncanniness you say
you've found in Claines?"

 
          
“I’ll
tell you about that," said Thunstone, and as they ate their lunches and
drank from their mugs, he did so.

 
          
He
did his best to omit nothing. He told about the Moonraven and Mrs. Fothergill's
bed-and-breakfast enterprise, about St. Jude's and the opinions of David Gates,
about Chimney Pots and Gram
Ensley,
about the ancient
chalk outline of Old Thunder on Sweepside and the fallen pillar called the
Dream Rock and the traditional activities at both of them. He described, too,
his grapple with Porrask, at which Vickery remarked, “Well done,” and told of
Ensley’s courteous but cryptic manner and speech, and finally of his sense of
seeing and feeling a strange landscape at night.

 
          
They
listened with great attention, and when he had finished they made eager
comments.

 
          
“This
dream or nightmare you had, now—” began Spayte.

 
          
“It
wasn’t a dream, and I can prove it,” interrupted Thunstone, somewhat
impatiently. “I told you I brought back a Stone Age spear from it, a spear that
was used to threaten me. I can show you that. But in any case, a man knows the
difference between a dream and a reality.”

 
          
“I
don’t,” vowed Vickery. “Quite often, I wonder if life itself isn’t a dream, and
a thoroughly unpleasant one most of the time.”

 
          
“I
believe that of you, Vickery, and Sigmund Freud himself would be puzzled by
your dreams,” said Spayte. “But you’re into the supernatural here, Thunstone
old man, and I’m not a good friend to the supernatural.”

 
          
“Supernatural
is the laziest word in the vocabulary of ignorance,” put in Vickery. “Nothing
is supernatural, because nothing can transcend the laws of nature. Don’t
glitter at me like that, Herr Professor; I’m only quoting from Louis K.
Anspacher. I don’t know much about him, but I liked that statement of his
enough to commit it to memory.”

 
          
“Touche,
so I’ll change the word to supernormal,” said Spayte. “Let me ask you a cheeky
question, Thunstone, and you can answer it or not as you choose. Do you take
drugs of any sort?”

 
          
“Not
the kind you mean,” replied Thunstone, with a grin. “The only narcotics I ever
use, and I try to use them temperately, are alcohol, tobacco, tea, and coffee.”

 
          
“All
good of their kind,” said Vickery approvingly. “Let me say something,
Thunstone. I believe your whole story, believe it implicitly, and 1 can offer a
good precedent for evidence of journeying back to the past.”

 
          
"What
sort of precedent, for God’s sake?” demanded Spayte.

 
          
"It’s
in a very interesting book called
An
Adventure
, and there’s an equivocal title for you, I grant, but it tells
about an adventure, right enough. It seems that in 1901 there were two highly
intelligent and deeply respected English schoolmistresses, Anne Moberly and
Eleanor Jourdan, who visited Versailles and went into the Trianon gardens,
where the French court liked to amuse itself before the Revolution wiped out
the court and the courtiers, at the end of the eighteenth century.”

 
          
"Yes,
of course,” said Thunstone, interested. "I’ve read about that. There have
been some interesting articles.”

 
          
"I’ve
seen the book myself, some years back,” added Spayte, finishing his quiche.

 
          
"And
I happen to own a copy, edition of the 1930s,” continued Vickery. "Let me
just summarize for you. These ladies—and I say again, they came from
distinguished families of educators and churchmen—well then, they walked into
the Trianon gardens, not paying attention to which way they took, and they
found themselves among people in eighteenth century costumes.”

 
          
"Masqueraders,”
growled Spayte in his beard.

 
          
"Yes,
that’s been charged,” said Vickery, unabashed. "They spoke to some of
these in French, and found the conversations more or less mystifying. They
crossed a bridge, over a ravine where a cataract flowed, and at last they came
back among scenes and people of their own time, the beginning of the twentieth
century.”

 
          
"I
remember some of those details,” nodded Thunstone, but Spayte kept a gloomy
silence.

 
          
"All
right then,” went on Vickery, "these two ladies came away wondering
exactly what it was they had seen. They wrote out their impressions, both of
them. They studied maps of Trianon, and didn’t understand. Buildings on the map
didn’t agree with the buildings they had seen on their walk; some seemed to
have been moved, some seemed to have disappeared.”

 
          
“The
accounts I’ve seen had maps to demonstrate that,” said Thunstone. Spayte still
was silent.

 
          
“They
brought their accounts to show to the SPR, the Society for Psychical Research,”
Vickery warmed to his story. “Had they journeyed into the past, they wondered.
The SPR brushed them off. In those days, it included distinguished scholars
like Sir William Crookes, like Sir Oliver Lodge. People who read their accounts
said they were all wrong, especially about the ravine and the cataract and the
bridge, none of which existed in the Trianon gardens at the time of that visit
in 1901. And that sort of disbelief went on after they published the first
edition of their written recollections.”

 
          
“Yes,
that’s right,” said Thunstone. “They did a lot of research, carloads of it.
They even identified people they’d met on their walk, gave their names as
courtiers and servants of the year 1789, isn’t that the date?”

 
          
“So
they did,” said Spayte. “They even purported to have seen Marie Antoinette.”

 
          
“And
finally,” said Vickery, “after their book had been published and pretty much
derided by all the reviewers who cared to notice it at all—after they’d been
accused of having illusions, perhaps of making up the whole story—a map turned
up, in 1913 as I remember, an old lost map crumpled and stuffed up a chimney in
a house where Jean- Jacques Rousseau had lived. And that map showed the gardens
as those two ladies had seen it in 1901 and as it had been in 1789—all the
buildings in their 1789 places, and it included the vanished ravine and the
bridge and so on.”

 
          
Triumphantly
Vickery spread his hands, with a fragment of his Scotch egg in one of them.
“And since then,” he said, “there’s been a whole lot of taking back of all the
sneers and charges.”

 
          
“So
I’ve heard,” said Thunstone. “What’s your opinion, Spayte?”

 
          
“It’s
certainly an interesting story,” replied Spayte.
“A curious
one.
And I’m afraid I must reserve judgment.”

 
          
“Which
means, you're afraid to give the right answer to the thing,” charged Vickery
good-humoredly.

 
          
“I
don’t know where to go for a logical answer,” said Spayte.

 
          
“Try
going to Einstein,” urged Vickery. “To Einstein’s theory of relativity, and
what J. W. Dunne calls serialism. The point they make is
,
we're cramped into a three-dimensional world. We experience it only instant by
instant of time.”

 
          
"Thomas
de Quincey had one of his opium dreams about that," said Spayte.
"About
a water
clock, and drops passing through,
a hundred of them every second. When the fiftieth drop was on its way through,
forty-nine drops didn’t exist because they were gone, and fifty more drops
didn’t exist because they were yet to come. That’s the way it happens here with
us, a hundredth of a second at a time. That’s what time is, a scrap of a
second.’’

 
          
"But
time exists,’’ Vickery pursued, "so that if we can get out of our three
dimensions into the fourth dimension of time—’’