The Unexpected Occurrence of Thaddeus Hobble (3 page)

The simple washerwoman hurriedly made her way across the field, back towards her humble home. Hurry she did, but with a hint of a hobble as a lifetime of labour had left its toll on her round frame. She lived alone in a small shack of a thing where she did all her work for her wealthy clients. Right now she clutched tightly onto a swelling bundle of filthy clothes with her swollen knuckles, ready for a late night wash. The wealthy could be mucky folk. This latest load was extra work, on top of her hours and hours of daily work – it would all help pay her way. Her husband was dead, her children were dead. The desire to live still burnt brightly in her. She dreamt of past hardships replaced with future comforts and someone doing
her
washing. In her mind, she would achieve greatness too. It was just around the corner, just another step away.

She took another step forward, nearer her home and hopefully nearer to an easier life. As she did so, a huge sword swept across the darkness and took her head clean off. Her body and the dirty laundry dropped one way as her head plopped into a puddle the other way. A figure stepped forward, sticking the tip of the sword in the ground and brandishing a dagger. A foot kicked the washer woman's head aside and it bounced down the field, cushioned only by curly grey hair, as the murderer bent over the body and used the dagger to cut the hands off.

* * *

‘There have been a number of mysterious deaths recorded here in Myrtleville which cannot possibly be attributed to a resurgence of the plague or any other pestilence,' the righteous Stephen Noble pointed out. Darren's eyes darted around the room mischievously. They came across Peter and he grinned at the sweating man. ‘All the deceased are women of advancing years, and all have had various body parts removed. In each case, the woman has had her head lopped clean off. If we piece these missing parts together, we could almost make an entirely new woman – is this the intention of the slayer?

‘What about the heads?' Darren asked.

‘All have been found near the discarded bodies,' Stephen answered. ‘One of the deaths is the wealthy landowner Thaddeus Hobble's wife Mimsie,' Stephen continued. ‘A healthy reward has been offered by Hobble for the successful capture of her murderer… and the return of her breasts.'

‘We could just pick up a homeless pauper and frame him for these murders to get our hands on the reward,' Jim offered, his eye twitching as he cleared his throat.

‘We must use our connection to The Space for good,' Peter spoke up. ‘This is our chance to start doing so. With a tiny bit of effort, we can solve this crime using our skills. For too long we have sat around and called ourselves The Great Collective, without doing anything great.'

‘Why must we waste our time on this silly, trivial nonsense? We should be training our minds to strengthen our powers and seize control of the world,' Darren cut in.

‘I balk at you, Aubrey!' Peter interjected. ‘The man who hath used his connection to The Space to steal an apple off a child.'

‘No such thing ever occurred!'

‘We can set humanity on the right course,' Peter insisted.

‘A course of our choosing, with us central to it,' Darren suggested. ‘Your ideas appear to be shifting away from the general consensus, Peter,' he noticed. ‘You are also struggling to remember the entirety of your prior existences.'

‘Maybe that is a good thing. I feel this is somewhat of a curse.'

‘We all remember the untold evils committed against us by our fellow man in lives gone by. No, we are above other men – we are The Great Collective.' Some of the gathering cheered, others mumbled their general support. ‘You are thirty-six now, Peter,' Darren carried on, ‘you have very little time left of this current life of yours.'

‘I eagerly await a time when your allotted years cease before mine,' was Peter's cold fire back.

‘There is some character in the bore, after all,' Darren chuckled. ‘Tell me, Peter – would you rather spend your final few days clamouring to get your hands on Hobble's money only to never spend it, or would you go out in a bang of glory by committing a string of murders yourself on the enemies you have made in this life and go unpunished due to your imminent demise thereafter?'

‘If I could remove
you
, I would,' Peter snapped at Darren. This prompted a mere grin from the receiver of this retaliation. ‘I will persevere even harder to forget you in my next existence.'

‘Forgetting me weakens your connection to The Space. Only with your mind fully immersed in Its grasp can you hope to retain and build upon your prior lives. You must reap what you have sown.'

Peter felt a sharp shiver ride down his spine as he fought hard to remove his mind from Darren's. Therein lay something in the corner; something shaded and altogether malevolent. It appeared as a tumour of mentality instead of physicality, hiding in its special little place away from dutiful eyes. Peter could see it as clear as night – as clearly as something in the darkness
can
be seen.

‘Peter,' Stephen interrupted the pair, ‘whether you like it or not, Darren is right. We are a collective – we move together. Move forward with us.'

‘Darren does not move with us, he moves only for himself,' was Peter's response. All at once the tumour left Darren's mind and threw itself at his own. He looked around and could see it everywhere and nowhere. Everyone was afflicted one second and cured the next.

‘We are here, together, for eternity. We are all icons, stuck with each other whether we like it or not,' Stephen went on. ‘If you break away, if you weaken your link to The Space by watering down your memories, we shall all suffer. The Space came to us as a collective, not a singular. Stand with us, let us all agree on the actions we must take in the world and put them into action. We are all forgetting – the collective is beginning to dilute and splinter. Anthony is but one casualty of a much wider weakening.'

‘You make a sensible case, Stephen, and this mystery with the incentive of Hobble's reward is enticing, but you still fail to see what I see,' Peter replied.

‘We, as a collective, surely see all the same?' Jim came in.

‘He claims to see that which we cannot,' Darren laughed, ‘he thinks he stands apart from us and sees further than we can.'

‘Praytell, do you see that which we do not?' Stephen asked as the rumblings from the gathering around them started getting more raucous.

‘We have all experienced inherent evil in our lives, yet I am the only one who can see that it is infiltrating
us
. Surely we must use our position to stamp it out, not nurture it?' was Peter's reply.

‘Preposterous,' Darren dismissed.

‘Preposterous that there is evil within us, or that we must stamp it out?'

‘We are finished here,' Darren concluded, rising to his feet. ‘There is nothing more to be said today, only that you, Peter, should try to enjoy your final few days of this life.' Peter squinted across at him, his fists clenched. ‘If my calculations are correct, you have less than a week to go.'

‘Your attempt at calculation is a failure – I have nine days left.'

* * *

‘You are hoping to stave off the dilution with that?' Stephen questioned Peter as they stepped up to Hobble's abode. Peter, having been scribbling away furiously in a notebook, pocketed it and grimaced at Stephen.

‘If I could forget, I would,' was his grave response.

‘But why? We can do whatever we so wish with our place in this world.'

‘Yet we do not – we choose to tickle around and make drunkards hand us their last coins and other pointless trivialities. No, Stephen, I can see terrible evils coming. The Space reveals unimaginable horrors to me.'

‘Such as?'

‘Countless murder after murder, wicked sin after sin,' Peter sighed.

‘Can you not be more specific?'

‘Does The Space not show you?'

‘I see what I wish to see – not what I do not.'

‘Then you must keep it that way – no being would want to see what I have seen. There is untold darkness to come for the human race. A mere two hundred years from now, for example, millions will die by one man.'

‘How can one man kill millions all by himself?'

‘By controlling and influencing others. The Space even gives me a name – he will be called Hitler. I have made notes, I will make it my goal to stop him before he starts with his wickedness.' Peter tapped the pocket where he'd just placed his trusty notebook.

The pair looked up at the house before them – vast, endless in height and so very cold. The wind blew strong, slapping them with a severe, albeit brief, chill. Pale stones bled lazily into each other to make the walls, as rusty brown bars hid the windows. The men held their nerve as images flashed through their minds, images of a blood-stained corpse lying strewn in the woody grounds behind the building. The Space was showing them – when they stretched their minds in that direction, of course. Peter took hold of the brass knocker on the door and thrashed it three times. Soon it opened, a young woman stepping aside to let the men enter. Her deep brown eyes kept their gaze away from the new presence in her hall as she fumbled to keep her long dark hair under control in the rushing wind. She slammed the door shut and shot away before having a single word uttered to her. Peter and Stephen glanced at each other, before their sight fell once again on the mystery beauty exiting the room.

‘She is a fine looking woman,' Stephen uttered.

‘I didn't like her dress, it was a sickly green,' Peter replied.

‘You don't need to like her dress… tis what lies
under
the dress that should interest you.'

‘I cannot see what is under the dress.'

‘Stretch your mind, my friend,' Stephen trilled, ‘The Space allows many pleasures.' He winked at his cohort, who immediately felt uneasy. The Great Collective? They were surely destined to greater things than these kinds of seedy actions. Stephen could see Peter was displeased. ‘You are a stranger with the women, Peter – you never allow yourself the base joys of the human body.'

‘Perhaps I am saving myself for the right woman, or perhaps I cannot allow myself to grow close to a woman because I know I will die at thirty-six.'

Stephen laughed. ‘That does not halt your ability to enjoy dalliances here and there. I, too, am like you in many ways but…' he trailed off, looking away at images etched into his mind from prior lives.

‘Go on,' Peter encouraged, half-knowing what was coming.

‘There is a woman, one woman, who keeps me from committing in the here and now. She comes to me, right at the end, just standing to deliver me to the next world. But no, I never get there – I am reborn and come back to life as Stephen Noble again in this world. She is a vision of perfection in all her intense golden hue. And, I know who she is.'

Peter, with some trepidation, asked: ‘Who?'

‘She is the
one
, the woman of my existence who waits for me in my final life. We shall be together at the end.'

‘I see,' Peter whispered, turning from his friend. He thrust all his energy into sealing his mind right now, forcing a shell around himself as Stephen stood deep in thought. He wanted – had to – block any way of his mind being revealed to Stephen, because he too saw the same woman and
knew
that she would be with
him
and not Stephen in his final life. ‘How do you know we will have a final life?' Peter eventually asked him.

‘Even endlessness must cease in the end, surely?'

It seemed like there was a gust of wind carrying Thaddeus Hobble into the room – but no, it was just his thin legs. They danced as only thin legs could – quickly, and without order or method, as the lanky thing delivered himself to the men. ‘Stephen Noble, Peter Smith – thank you for coming to me,' he said in a high yawn, holding out his hand. Before either man could stretch to shake it, Hobble had pulled it away and proceeded to wave it about the room. There was likely no reason for this other than to display and jig about the silk tassels dangling from his bright white sleeve. He was not a young man – far from it – but he was not aged. He wore the passage of time well on his taut face, and a thick head of white curls played well with the swooshing cloak draped over his narrow, slightly bent, shoulders.

‘Honoured to meet the great Thaddeus Hobble,' Stephen cooed, bowing for added effect.

‘At your service,' Peter joined in, nodding.

‘You have met my daughter, gentlemen,' Hobble grinned furiously, lowering his head. ‘Monetary reward is not all I offer you.'

‘She is a fine looking specimen,' Stephen jumped, pushing Peter aside to get closer to the older man.

‘Alas, poor Willemina – she cannot settle since her mother's murder. These are lawless times in which we live. The breasts she once suckled from as a babe are removed,' Hobble sighed. ‘She needs a man to bring her from her stupor.'

‘Indeed she does,' Darren replied grandly, appearing at the top of the stairs. Peter and Stephen were taken by surprise – Darren had clearly willed his presence here be kept secret from their roving minds.

‘Ah,' Hobble joyously lapped, ‘Master Aubrey.' It was now Hobble's turn to bow.

‘What are you doing here?' Peter snapped.

‘Exactly as I wish,' was his cryptic response as he slowly made his way down the stairs towards them. As he neared, Hobble reached into his pocket and brought out a silk coin purse, dropping to his knees and outstretching his hand. Darren snatched it off him, slipping it into his own pocket. ‘Payment number one,' he clarified.

‘I feel ever so glorious!' Hobble elated, staying on his knees.

‘I have planted that emotion within him,' Darren proclaimed in pleasure, ‘for a small fee.'