CARNACKI: The New Adventures (15 page)

“I left them to the silence that followed that e
xchange, knowing that I had no right to witness anything further between them. I drove back home and, well, returned to my studies.”

“But what of
Willow’s daughter?” I enquired. “What of her spirit? Is it doomed to wander those woods, in turmoil?”

“But she’s not
quite
in turmoil,” insisted Carnacki. “In fact, she is at home, really, and she’s about her work, I’m sure.”

“Her
work
?” I asked. My friend nodded and puffed again at his cigar. He motioned for me to take a chair across from him.

“Dodgson, dear lad
, let me explain. You see, after a good night’s sleep back here in Chelsea, I rang up Sir Miles and offered a solution to everyone’s problem there at Pauly Pines. I suggested that they conduct Tranquil House as a hospice, of a sort.”

“A
hospice
?” I was unclear as to what my friend meant. Then, as he explained further, it became very apparent.

“Yes,” he said, “a place for those who are terminally ill and near death to await
—in comfort, mind you—their final reward. Think, man: what was it that the spirit was attracted to?”

“Death,” I answered immediately. “Oh, I see. Yes, of course. She will come to those who are dying and—and .
 . .”

“Help them along on their way,” finished Carnacki. “As her father said, she was a kind-hearted thing in life, and her heart has only grown in death.”

“Good Lord, and she almost took
you!
But what about Mr. Willow” I asked. “And his wife?”

“Stayed on at my suggestion to Sir Miles,” replied my friend. “Helping to facilitate the running of the hospice, to see to it that its guests are comfortable and secure and then to slip away come the night.”

I thought on it a moment. “The girl will not come where there is life. Only death.”

“Exactly,” said Carnacki with a small, sad smile. “All’s well that ends well, or so the Bard says.”

“And when I came in?” I asked. “You were . . . away again?”

Some colo
ur leaked out of his face then, and he looked off into the distance. “Yes,” he whispered, then with a bit more volume said, “I . . . I thought I . . . saw
something
there on the Sixth Plateau. Something
else
. A thing that still haunts me now.”

Quickly, so as to change the subject, for I heard a tone in his voice I did not care for, I then asked him about
the beetles. Carnacki brushed the matter off, saying only that the insects were dead and the girl had paused to “see after them.” I could tell that my friend was growing a bit restless, so I prepared to leave. Sensing my intention, perhaps, the man looked at me quizzically.

“Now, then
—what was it that you blew in here to tell me? It must have been something extraordinary to jump the gun on our usual meetings by an entire two days . . .”

“Nothing,” I answered plainly, “nothing that might measure up to
that
tale.”

Carnacki nodded and picked up a book off the little stand next to his chair. “Ou
t you go then!” he said and buried himself in its pages.

I left him to his tome and hurried out into the night, down along the Embankment and to my home.

Please come at once [STOP]

A matter of utmost importance [STOP]

Travel arranged [STOP]

To delay is death [STOP]

Be quick. F.S. [STOP]

C
urious,” I admitted turning over the telegram. I leaned forward and replaced it on the table, all the while eyeing the man who stood, his back to me, his hands clasped behind his back, his gaze obviously drawn by the fire burning in my hearth. “Whatever could the man have meant?”

Silence was his answer
—not the insubordinate silence of a surly cur, but the silence to which I had become accustomed with my friend. He is a queer one, given to odd silences. I picked up my brandy and swirled it, content in the silence, awaiting his reply in the knowledge that it would not disappoint. The brandy sweet in my nostrils, I chuckled and decided to bait my friend.

“Or was this a woman?”

I watched him carefully, knowing his body language, and the shift of his shoulders confirmed that I had wrung the wryest of smiles from him.

“It is stranger than that.”

I settled deep within my wingback chair, confident that this was merely the first sentence of a tale that portended to be riveting on such a rain-dark night. The brandy was warm against the glass; my business partner, Howard Mills, occupied the chair opposite me, the cherry smoke of his pipe a familiar, sweet tang in my study, and the man at my hearth only recently had returned from the United States—

“Not the
United States, dear chap,” he had said as he swept into my study. Trevor, my butler, bustled behind him, with that efficient eagerness to remove his coat and hat and announce him, impetuous as he was, as he burst into my sanctuary. “Alaska!”

From what I could fathom as he wove, animatedly, around the room, he had received a letter from a powe
rful business magnate who had some economic concern in that wild and frozen place. The man had demonstrated the audacity of his station by demanding that my friend travel to that desolate landscape and address such unnamed events as had effected delays for the company and snarled their commerce. My friend had been considering his reply to such an imperial summons when the telegram had arrived from the manager of the Alaskan concern.

“To delay is death.”

I watched his eyes sparkle with that curious gleam he was wont to demonstrate when ghosts or phantoms or some supernatural force required investigating.

“How could I have refused?”

Mills, who was much less familiar with the queerness of my friend’s obsession with all things weird and unnatural, had cast me a wary glance, which I returned with an indulgent smile. “Indeed,” I agreed, my eyes never shifting from Mills’, holding him firmly in my gaze, “I daresay you could not.”

Thomas Carnacki turned from my hearth, his eyes alight as I had not seen them for some time. “I shall a
ccept that brandy now,” he said.

Carnacki refused to be ensconced in any chair, pr
eferring to pace the Oriental heavy before my hearth. He accepted a snifter but refused my offer of a cigarette. The study rang silence as I drew a whisper-thin cigarette from its silver case. I snapped it shut. Mills kindly lit it for me and the two of us settled back amicably.

Outside, the wind shifted and rain lashed the mu
llioned windows of my ancestral abode.

The fire crackled comfortably.

Into this silence, Thomas Carnacki spun his tale.

“I embarked from Southampton aboard a steamer bound for
New York. The company had provided for the passage, and my cabin was well-appointed. It was an auspicious beginning for my whole adventure. Once I reached New York City, a representative from the company whisked me from the ship and into, of all things, an automobile, which conveyed me to a meeting with certain board members about the Alaska situation. I came to un
derstand that their sense of urgency was made more manifest by the loss of several lives. They were shocked and saddened by these developments, news of which reached them whilst the steamship conveying me was bound for New York. They pressed upon me the seriousness of this investigation; they had not ruled out the possibility of sabotage by rival syndicates. I enquired as to the state of any witnesses to these events. One of the men assured me that I would meet the sole witness, a Mr. William Jenkins, a Welshman by birth, when I reached Seattle. Jenkins, they said, would accompany me by steam packet from Seattle to Cordova, Alaska, where we would meet the northbound train.”

“By God, man!” Mills began, startled. “In winter? Did they intend you strand you in the wild north?”

Carnacki smiled.

“The syndicate provided me with a simply splendid private
Pullman for my journey across the United States,” he continued, undaunted. “I dare say, your study is only slightly more well-appointed than was that carriage! The service was exquisite, the food delicious, and it was with no little regret that I alighted from that conveyance onto the platform in Seattle.

“Jenkins was true as his name, rough and uncouth, but amiable enough and forthcoming with information about the incident when I questioned him upon the o
ccasion of our meeting. ‘I saw what I might describe as a shadow, sir,’ said he. A shadow? Before I could delve further, we were hurried away from the station and accompanied to the curb, where we were met by a well-dressed chauffeur who opened the door of another grand automobile to allow our entry. Poor Jenkins looked a sight, unaccustomed as he was to any show of privilege. I must admit, for my part, that I rather enjoyed this treatment. After we were deposited at the Arctic Club Hotel, I remained alone in my room for some time, poring again over the company’s initial correspondence. It was a weird collection of phrases—thrown together bits of information obviously inscribed by an individual who had no experience with the matter at hand.”

Carnacki stopped pacing. It was evident in his su
dden change of demeanour that his last sentence had vexed him. He did not reflect the carriage of a man beset by misgivings; rather, his visage suggested a man upon whom a thought had dawned. In spite of myself, I leaned forward,
sure that this sign in him would blossom into some unremembered detail. I admit it saddened me when he appeared to brush the thought away as one would shoo an irksome fly. Without another hesitation, he continued his tale:

“After supper, I met Jenkins in the lounge. We were joined by
F. S.
”

“F.
S.?” Curiosity had beset poor Mills.

“Yes,” Carnacki replied with no impatience in his voice. “The man had trave
lled from Alaska a fortnight before me and tarried in Seattle until I arrived. I had assumed, upon meeting him, that he would accompany us to Alaska, but that was not to be. He had merely wished to speak to me privately. Understand, Mills, it was upon his discovery that the entire endeavour in Alaska began. He, being bestowed with that most unfortunate of labels of the
nouveau riche,
was eager to put this unpleasantness behind himself and his backers. ‘Understand, Carnacki,’ he impressed upon me, ‘the survival of everything I have built depends upon your getting to the bottom of this problem.’ I regarded the man carefully. He was tall, thin, and, in this instance, nervous. The way he held his cigarette, the way he clasped his glass of whiskey as he pulled it from the table beside his chair, all bespoke a man who had something more to say about the subject. Keen to remember we were in the presence of one of his employees, Mr. Jenkins, I chose my next question carefully in order to provide him with the opportunity to refuse to answer gracefully.

“And did he?” Mills was nearly out of his chair in a
nticipation. His hands closed against the arms of the chair. “Did he refuse?”

Never had I witnessed my business partner so e
nrapt.

“He did not refuse me, but drained his glass and stood to take his leave. I had asked if he had any other information about the incident. F.
S. tossed a careless nod at Jenkins, who did not look at us, and told me to question the only witness to the events, and to then enquire after him in the morning. Therefore, I turned my attention to Jenkins. While the man had witnessed
something,
such was his terror of the thing that he could not fully articulate what he had seen. He insisted on seeing a shadow, first on the train that left Cordova, and then
outside
the train as it crossed the Copper River. I questioned him further. The light in those northern climes at this time of year is such that shadows are everywhere. Darkness falls so early and so completely, that merely the appearance of shadows along the route of a fast- or even slow-moving train is hardly worth mentioning. Now, what became queer is that he insisted that
shadow
is the only word to describe what he had seen. There was more to this apparition . . . a coalescence of sorts . . . a phantom . . . close by the windows . . . that crawled across the exterior of the railcars . . . whose breath condensed against the glass . . . whose icy hands crackled against the wood . . . clawed the shrieking iron wheels and . . .”

Carnacki hesitated, his gaze upon Mills
, who had drawn back, pale and terrified, into the depths of the chair.

The man was barely breathing.

“Are you quite all right?” Carnacki enquired kindly.

“Wha—?” Mills faltered. He cleared his throat and shifted uncomfortably. “Yes, yes,” he muttered. I noticed it was an unsteady hand that reached for his snifter. “Quite all right.”

“Impressions,” Carnacki continued, “were all I could glean from the man; no more. I thanked Jenkins for his information and included all he had told me in my notes. Upon retiring to my room, I pondered what he had said and ruminated about what had been left unsaid. Welsh, you know. It is no national fault that made the man untrusting, but untrusting he was. He was evasive, also, when I enquired after the makeup of the workforce at the Company. ‘We hail from everywhere, sir,’ he told me. Indeed, F. S. had also intimated that
their employees were a wild mix of all nationalities and languages. There are Swedes and Danes, Americans and English. There are Poles and Chinese, Russians and Norwegians; a diverse mix, and this fact was
not lost upon me, gentlemen.
Each brought with him his own culture, his own superstitions, his own ghosts. It is not for nothing that men flee to the wildest places in order to put pick to earth and crush a living from the rock. Truly, there is more to every story. And come the morning, I vowed, I would discover all.

“It was over coffee in his suite that F. S. finally d
ivulged what I had merely surmised. Bits of the story hearkened back to 1898, when the man first touched toe to the Great Land. Gold, my friends; F. S. had originally found himself cast upon the shores of Alaska in search of gold. Whilst others endured the hardships of the rush to the Yukon, F. S. and his compatriots set their sights further west. They pushed into the interior by means of the Copper River. They were befriended by Native inhabitants, and, through exhaustive conversations, F. S. managed to glean information not about gold, but about another ore greatly in demand. They guided his company further in to a place of indescribable beauty, and on the side of a mountain F. S. beheld what he described to backers in New York City as being
a green field
. No grassy-grown field, but a field of stone—of copper. But no discovery such as this comes without a price.”

“Price?” I hazarded.

“It was during their return to the Copper River that the party suffered loss. It was late spring, and the climate’s natural freeze-thaw had loosened the so-called
scree
—sharp rocks that littered the sides of the mountains. As the group was traversing a particularly difficult pass, they were caught in a sudden rock slide. I daresay, I can imagine that moment of terror when he watched three of his companions standing no further than I stand from you here, crushed beneath boulders that tumbled down without warning. The man’s demeanour changed as he spoke of how the Natives accompanying him cried out that this was the work of some malevolent manifestation.

“‘Superstition,’ he said. ‘I believed they were attemp
ting to frighten me with talk of demons and shadows of death.’

“I admit to being intrigued. There was no mention of this horror in his original report to investors in 1898, but many hardships of exploration go unreported where mere commerce is the motivating force. He went on to describe the legends of the green field.
‘Cursed,’ he continued. The word itself unnerved him, and he rose and began to pace agitatedly before the room’s massive hearth. ‘The deaths of my associates were no mere coincidence. I had ignored the warnings to my peril.’ This Shadow of Death, this loosened dark, supernatural creature that has begun to sate itself on the blood first of his fellow explorers and later of his employees, he believes, will stop at nothing until it drags him into the Pit!”

Mills drew an audible breath.

“‘Jenkins has it right,’ F. S. insisted. ‘A shadow that is not a shadow, a darkness that is, in itself, corporeal, began its pursuit in 1898, and I am its quarry.’