Haggopian and Other Stories

Lord Marriot nodded, understanding Lavery’s meaning. For the medium’s talent was a supposed or alleged ability to speak in the tongue of the ghost, the possessing spirit. In the event of a non-human ghost, however, then his mouthings might well be other than speech as we understand the spoken word. They might simply be—noises.

“And that leaves you, Turnbull.”

“Do not concern yourself, Lord Marriot,” Turnbull answered, flicking imagined dust from his sleeves. “I, too, would be loath to break an honourable agreement. I have promised to do an automatic sketch of the intruder, an art in which I’m well practised, and if all goes well I shall do just that. Frankly, I see nothing at all to be afraid of. Indeed, I would appreciate some sort of explanation from our friend here—who seems to me simply to be doing his best to frighten us off.” He inclined his head inquiringly in my direction.

I held up my hands and shook my head. “Gentlemen, my only desire is to make you aware of this feeling of mine of…yes, premonition! The very air seems to me imbued with an aura of—” I frowned. “Perhaps disaster would be too strong a word.”

“Disaster?” Old Danford, as was his wont, repeated after me. “How do you mean?”

“I honestly don’t know. It’s a feeling, that’s all, and it hinges upon this desire of Lord Marriot’s to know his foe, to identify the nature of the evil here. Yes, upon that, and upon the complicity of the rest of you.”

“But—” the young Lord began, anger starting to make itself apparent in his voice.

“At least hear me out,” I protested. “Then—” I paused and shrugged. “Then…you must do as you see fit.”

“It can do no harm to listen to him,” Old Danford pleaded my case. “I for one find all of this extremely interesting. I would like to hear his argument.” The others nodded slowly, one by one, in somewhat uncertain agreement.

“Very well,” Lord Marriot sighed heavily. “Just what is it that bothers you so much, my friend?”

“Recognition,” I answered at once. “To recognise our—opponent?—that’s where the danger lies. And yet here’s Lavery, all willing and eager to speak in the thing’s voice, which can only add to our knowledge of it; and Turnbull, happy to fall into a trance at the drop of a hat and sketch the thing, so that we may all know exactly what it looks like. And what comes after that? Don’t you see? The more we learn of it, the more it learns of us!

“Right now, this thing—ghost, demon, ‘god’, apparition, whatever you want to call it—lies in some deathless limbo, extra-dimensional, manifesting itself rarely, incompletely, in our world. But to know the thing, as our lunatic anthropologist came to know it and as the superstitious villagers of these parts think they know it—that is to draw it from its own benighted place into this sphere of existence. That is to give it substance, to participate in its materialisation!”

“Hah!” Turnbull snorted. “And you talk of superstitious villagers! Let’s have one thing straight before we go any further. Lavery and I do not believe in the supernatural, not as the misinformed majority understand it. We believe that there are other planes of existence, yes, and that they are inhabited; and further, that occasionally we may glimpse alien areas and realms beyond the ones we were born to. In this we are surely nothing less than scientists, men who have been given rare talents, and each experiment we take part in leads us a little further along the paths of discovery. No ghosts or demons, sir, but scientific phenomena which may one day open up whole new vistas of knowledge. Let me repeat once more: there is nothing to fear in this, nothing at all!”

“There I cannot agree,” I answered. “You must be aware, as I am, that there are well-documented cases of—”

“Self-hypnotism!” Lavery broke in. “In almost every case where medium experimenters have come to harm, it can be proved that they were the victims of self-hypnosis.”

“And that’s not all,” Turnbull added. “You’ll find that they were all believers in the so-called supernatural. We, on the other hand, are not—”

“But what of these well-documented cases you mentioned?” Old Danford spoke up. “What sort of cases?”

“Cases of sudden, violent death!” I answered. “The case of the medium who slept in a room once occupied by a murderer, a strangler, and who was found the next morning strangled—though the room was windowless and locked from the inside! The case of the exorcist,” (I paused briefly to glance at Danford) “who attempted to seek out and put to rest a certain grey thing which haunted a Scottish graveyard. Whatever it was, this monster was legended to crush its victims’ heads. Well, his curiosity did for him: he was found with his head squashed flat and his brains all burst from his ears!”

“And you think that all of—” Danford began.