The Ka of Gifford Hillary (45 page)

As I was incapable of asking any of their drivers where they were going, only too often they took turnings which carried me over ground that I had already covered; so I had to get out, wait for another vehicle which was going in the opposite direction, leave that where the last had taken me off the route I wished to investigate, and pick up yet another in the hope that it would carry me the way I wanted to go.

In that part of the country, too, villages and well-wooded areas cut up into small private properties abound, and during the night I had been so absorbed in trying to find someone to whom I could convey a warning to Sir Charles that I had paid little attention to anything except people and their immediate surroundings. In consequence I may quite well have been carried through the village I was seeking without recognising it; and, as the little Georgian mansion was set some way back from the road, I might have failed to spot it easily when passing had my attention been caught for a moment by something on the opposite side of the road.

Anyway, there it was. After four long hours of searching, and having made fresh starts from Farnham at least half a dozen times, I had no more idea where Sir Charles’s village lay than when I had first arrived in Farnham High Street.

Back there again, with the craving to allow my mind to sink into oblivion growing ever stronger, I forced myself to take a first step towards a half-formed resolution.

The germ of this new concept had first sprouted in my brain as a result of the ill-success that I had met with in the Ministry of Defence that morning. Hastily I had thrust it from me, and escape from having to contemplate it further accounted for a great part of my relief when, in the Park, the passing of a sun-tanned girl had recalled to me the contact I had made with Lolla. But as the afternoon had worn on, and I was becoming more and more despondent of my chances of finding her, the alternative to which failure to do so might compel me had begun to occupy an ever increasing place in my thoughts.

For a whole night and the best part of a day I had used my utmost endeavours to get to Sir Charles a warning of the fate that menaced him, and I had failed. There was now, at
six o’clock in the evening, little more than another night and day to go; and there was no reason to suppose that the methods I was using would prove more successful in the next twenty-four hours than those through which I had striven in vain. Filled with trepidation at the thought of the course I contemplated, harassed with doubts about the possibility of accomplishing the aim I had in mind, and, as yet, far from decided on even attempting it, I took the next bus for Alton.

There I caught another which carried me a further ten miles to Basingstoke. The ancient town, which withstood a siege and held out for Charles I during the Great Rebellion, is on the Waterloo-Southampton line. Many of the fast trains stop there, and I felt pretty certain that the 6.30 down from Waterloo did so. By then it was nearly seven, so I thought I would not have long to wait, and I managed to keep my mind from fading out by reading the advertisements on the station platform.

Another disappointment awaited me. A little before half-past seven a train roared through the station, and I felt sure that it must be the express for which I had been waiting. But better luck, if one can call it luck, was on the way. A few minutes after the half hour the loud speaker announced a train that was about to leave from another platform for Southampton. It was slow, stopping at all stations and not due in until 8.39, but I was rather glad than otherwise as that postponed the decision I would have to take at the end of my journey. Crossing the lines I entered the nearest compartment and instantly gave up all further effort to think.

When consciousness returned to me the train was stationary, empty and unlit. For a moment I half feared, half hoped, that it had carried me on to some terminus further west; but on passing through its roof and looking about me I saw that it had been shunted into one of the innumerable sidings that fringe Southampton Dockyard.

Making for the nearest gate I passed the unsuspecting policeman and ten minutes later reached the town centre. The clock in the tower there showed it to be twenty minutes to eleven; so I had been ‘out’ for just on three hours. The buses were still running, so I took one to Totton; but from there
on my progress was again handicapped. As during the afternoon, I had to use private vehicles and take a chance that they would continue moving in the direction I wanted to go. After three changes I got to within a couple of miles of Long-shot. The last lap of my journey I did at my equivalent of a walk. At a little before midnight I entered the churchyard.

Except for most of the flowers in the wreaths at the sides of my grave now being dead, and that the bricks Johnny had moved from the tarpaulin had been replaced, it was exactly as I had last seen it with him two nights before. The tarpaulin that covered the vault made little material difference to my supernatural sight, and once more I stared down at the two coffins lying side by side in it—my father’s, dull and mottled with streaks of whitish mould; my own, almost as garishly new as when it had been selected by the undertaker from his stock.

Concentrating my gaze I willed it to penetrate the lid of my coffin. During my bus ride from Farnham to Basingstoke, and again while on my way from Southampton to this hallowed but fearsome spot, I had hoped desperately that when I looked down at my body again I should see upon it clear indications that it had begun to decay. My hopes were vain. It appeared as fresh and firm as it had exactly a week ago, when, almost at this hour, Evans and Ankaret had thrown it into the Solent. Now, I admitted to myself that, all the time, I had felt certain that would be so.

For it to show no signs whatever of deterioration after a week was unnatural. But then mine had not been a natural death. It had not even been a violent one in the sense of having my head bashed in, or having received a knife thrust or a bullet through some vital part. Evans’s death ray had, I could only now suppose, driven the electrons which vitalised my physical being out of it, causing an immediate suspension of animation, but otherwise doing my body no harm. Tibitts had said that the reason the Ka left the body during sleep was to act as an accumulator, so that when the Ka returned the body would be able to go about its business with renewed energy. If he were right, and I was right in believing that none of my vital organs had been harmed, should my Ka prove capable of re-entering my body it would at once restore my body to active life.

These thoughts, only half formed and each time repulsed with dread, had gnawed at me on and off during most of the day. But now they crystallised, and there was no escaping the awful conclusion to which they led. If I were prepared to go down into that grave I might yet save Sir Charles from being murdered and Johnny, whom I loved far better than my own son, from having his whole life ruined through my folly in letting my tongue run away with me.

To the possible repercussion which my resurrection might have in other quarters I gave no thought. During the past forty hours, the greater part of which had been passed under appalling strain, I had known only four hours of merciful oblivion. My recent three hours had restored to me only sufficient energy to continue on the path that I had been impelled to take when I had started out from Farnham. My brain refused even to consider any other but the major issue—should I or should I not take a step that made my mind reel with fear and horror but by which I might, perhaps, save one man from death and another from undeserved lifelong shame.

Wrestling against all my instincts, I endeavoured to persuade myself that I really had little to fear. If I could not make my Ka re-enter my body, that was that. Neither I, nor either of those towards whom I felt so great a responsibility to help, would be any the better or worse off. If I could, there should be no difficulty about my arising from the grave. The lid of the coffin had not been screwed down. It was no great weight. All I would have to do was to push it aside, sit up and climb out of the vault. In the very worst event, should I find myself unable to raise the lid, then by the same way as my Ka had entered my body it would leave it, and, once again, no one concerned would be better or worse off than before.

For how long I argued with myself I have no idea; but at last I screwed up my courage to take the plunge. Passing through the tarpaulin I hovered immediately above my coffin. Some instinct told me how to proceed. Perhaps it was a memory of Genesis, and how, in the beginning, the Almighty had breathed into the nostrils of Adam to give him life. Lying along my body I laid the mouth of my Ka firmly against the nostrils, made mentally the motions of breathin
deeply, and at the same time willed my Ka to become one with it.

A few moments passed during which I was not conscious of any change, then I felt the heart of my body start to beat below me; next second I blacked out completely.

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When my brain began to function again it told me that I had just woken after an evil dream. The high spots of my experience during the past week ran through my mind like half a dozen snapshots, but it was just as though I had come out of a deep sleep during which I had had a nightmare.

Wondering what the time was I turned my head slightly in the direction where the window of my bedroom should have been to see if daylight was yet percolating through the cracks between the curtains. A Stygian darkness met my gaze, and the movement caused something soft to brush against my nose and forehead. Jumping to the conclusion that the top sheet had somehow got up over my face I moved again with the intention of throwing it off.

I was lying on my back with my hands crossed upon my chest. For some reason that I could not understand I felt terribly stiff and very tired. It was all I could do to raise my hands a few inches. They too brushed against the sheet, which lifted with them so easily that I was surprised not to feel the weight of other bed-clothes above it. Next moment the backs of my fingers encountered something hard and solid.

Memories of the past week, or my nightmare as I thought it, were now flooding back to me, although still in fragments lacking continuity. All were jumbled, but recent episodes were more numerous than ones that had taken place some days ago. Suddenly I saw again the detectives rummaging in Ankaret’s room and her dead form on the bed.

My left hand jerked weakly in an instinctive gesture to stretch out, touch her and bring me reassurance that she was still alive and lying there beside me. Again the feeble gesture brought my knuckles into contact with something hard beyond the sheet. My elbow too struck some solid substance that had nothing of the yielding qualities of tender flesh. Simultaneously
I again saw Johnny shining his torch down on to my coffin while he wondered if there could possibly still be life in me.

At that I panicked. I strove to thrust outward with all my limbs at once. All I could manage was one spasmodic wriggle. My toes, knees, hands, elbows and forehead were all brought up short by unyielding barriers beyond the sheet. Gasping, I dropped back.

It was true, then—true! I was in my coffin! No, it could not be. This was still part of my nightmare. But I was awake—wide awake. I was not in bed. The surface on which I lay was hard as a board. The sheet that covered me was a winding sheet. My beloved Ankaret was dead; and I—I had been buried alive.

I wonder that in the next few moments I did not go mad. Probably the thing which saved my reason was that like flashes of lightning in a thunderstorm, my stark terror was pierced now and then by further glimpses of my Ka’s experiences while on its travels. In one I saw Tibitts and instantly recalled much of what he had said. In another I saw my Ka standing on the edge of the vault and, again in an instant, followed the way in which it had reasoned with itself.

It had reached the conclusion that once it was reunited with my body I should have no difficulty in pushing up the lid of the coffin and climbing out of the vault, and its grounds for believing that had been perfectly sound. Almost sobbing with thankfulness at this, to me no less than a divine revelation, I endeavoured to control the shudders which were running through me. It seemed that I had only to get a grip on myself and make one great effort, then I should be sitting up, once again breathing the fresh night air.

For some moments I lay quite still rallying my forces, then I thrust upward with all my might. The use of the word ‘might’ in this case applied to will, not the deed. Horror of horrors! My strength had gone from me. My state was much as it would have been had I just regained consciousness for the first time after a long and terrible illness. My traitor limbs made only the feeblest response to the command of my brain. Again my knuckles and forehead struck the heavy coffin lid, but so gently that they failed to raise it by even the fraction of an inch.

Panicking again, I beat upon it frantically; or rather made motions that had I had my full strength would have done so. But they were in fact little better than a wild fluttering of my hands, which did no more than rap against it. As they fell back at last upon my chest, still quivering but incapable of flapping upward any longer, a fresh wave of terror surged over me.

My Ka’s reasoning had been logical enough according to theory; but in this case theory did not accord with fact. Tibitts was no doubt right in his contention that a Ka, on returning to its body after a few hours’ normal sleep, recharged it with fresh energy; but mine had not been a normal sleep. Perhaps my Ka’s failure to revitalise me fully was due to its over-long absence; or the fact that it had been violently expelled from my body, instead of leaving it in the ordinary routine way as I fell asleep. Whatever the cause it had failed to fulfil its proper function. I was as weak as a babe; and with ever-mounting terror I was brought face to face with the fact that I could no more lift my coffin lid than I could have had I had my full strength and ten tons of earth were weighing down upon it.