The Thing in the Woods 7 – Williams · Verses Across
Literature · Crime, Thrillers & Mystery
The Thing in the Woods 7What Happened in the Laboratory
18
Literature · Crime, Thrillers & Mystery
The Thing in the Woods 7
What Happened in the Laboratory
WilliamsEnglish
Instead, it was Lessing who came a day or two later to see me. He lounged in one evening when I was sitting smoking on the porch, after supper, and my first advice of his presence was the clatter of a zinc pail which Pete let fall promptly in the side yard. When Lessing rounded the corner of the porch he was grinning.
"Your nigger must have a bad conscience," he said. "I never saw anyone so afraid of the devil in all my life!"
I made a sound of annoyance. Evidently I had not finished with Pete yet. "He's a born idiot!" I said.
"I'm not so sure," Lessing returned. "He has a very practical regard for his own skin. I appreciate that."
"You ought to."
He gave me one of those habitual quick looks, his head on one side.
"Thanks! Do you find the mosquitoes bad around here? I got all bitten up coming past Dutchman's Hollow."
I took the hint.
"We'll sit indoors," I said. "It's pretty cool in the surgery."
He followed me into the room, glancing curiously about him.
"So this is where old Lennox hung out ... the place has a look of him. What's that, butterflies? He always had a weakness for things he could stick a pin into and label nicely!"
"Have you never been here before?"
"Never. He used to come to my place. I have an idea you know, that Lennox still thinks I'm not right in the head."
I lit the student lamp on the table and set out whisky and a couple of glasses. Lessing settled himself in the shabby armchair opposite me, and for a little while we smoked in silence. In the half-shadow beyond the ring of lamplight I could see his face, fine and clear cut against the shabby morocco of the chair back, the dark hair tumbled over his forehead. He was staring up at the smoke wreaths in a curious intensity of abstraction.
"I suppose," he began at last, "that I owe you some sort of an explanation, as things go."
I made a little gesture of indifference. I was beginning to know my man. If it pleased him to work upon my curiosity I was prepared to give him the least possible satisfaction.
"You offered me one," I corrected him. "I believe we decided to let it go at that."
He turned his gaze upon me, with a rather charming impertinence.
"That was when I took you for a fool. As I admit the error you ought to forgive my expression of it. The truth is..." He paused so long that I reached for a fresh cigarette to break the interval. "I'll be damned if I know what the truth is myself!" He finished almost violently. "I can give you facts--all you want. When it comes to putting things together.... Do you know how maddening it is to have your hand on a thing--actually on it--and feel it all the while slipping through your fingers?"
He threw his cigarette away. "Let's drop all this nonsense, anyway. I came over here tonight to have a talk with you. I tell you frankly, because you're about the only sane man I'm likely to cross down here. I tried Lennox once, and Lennox thought I was batty, and there the matter ended. But I've got to a point now where it's absolutely necessary, for the sake of my own mental balance, that I should have someone else's opinion about things. I'm going to put certain facts before you, and you'll say what you think about them."
I nodded.
"About eighteen months ago," Lessing began, "my wife was in rather bad health. It was some sort of nervous trouble, which I need not enter into here, but the doctor said she needed complete change, and that she must positively live in the country for some time, a year or two at least. We came down here. I bought the piece of ground up the hill there and built the little bungalow we are living in, with the idea of using it later on, when her health is restored, simply as a summer cottage. I have a fondness for dabbling in chemistry, as I think I told you, and shortly after we moved down here I built that sort of outdoor study you have seen, so that I could have a place, perfectly quiet, that I could work in without being disturbed, and without messing the house up with my things. I am not a good sleeper. I sit up pretty late at night as a rule, and it worries me to know I'm disturbing other people in the house or that the women are liable to drop in in their dressing-gowns at half-past one or so, to ask whether I'm going to bed or not.
"My laboratory has a top light for day use, and I have rigged up an acetylene lamp just over my table, with a pretty strong light. One night last fall I happened to be working rather late. As a rule I have no difficulty whatever about keeping awake--it's the other way about, in fact--but along about one o'clock I began to get rather drowsy. It might have been the fumes of the chemicals I was using, but I'm used to that, and anyway I don't think they could have affected me. My interest in what I was doing was still awake, but the other side of my mind seemed to get drowsy at the same time. I fought against it a long while, and then gradually I seemed to get the consciousness of something--some presence--in or near the room. I don't know if you have ever attended a séance, Haverill?"
"Never--of any account."
My cigarette had burned down to my fingers, and I threw it away. I was beginning to get keenly interested in his story.
"Well, if you had, you would know that one sometimes gets the sense of a materialization some minutes before it actually takes place. I suppose the subconscious part of one's mind acts more quickly than the senses in receiving an impression. Anyway that was what seemed to happen with me. I waited. I was awake; I want you to understand that clearly. I was as awake as I am now. I saw everything about me, but I seemed to see it in a quite impersonal sort of way.
"The top light is arranged to open in sections, the top as well as the four sides. The side glasses were my idea for bad weather, so that I could always have ventilation on one side or the other without rain driving in, as it will with an ordinary skylight. I had the middle section raised, and one side open as well. Presently I was conscious that something was trying to enter at the glass. There were no sound on the roof itself, which is galvanized, but I could hear plainly a sort of scraping at the window. The inside light was so strong that I could see nothing, but something was gradually obscuring the opening. I had a conviction that the thing, whatever it was, was attracted by my light, and I made an effort, with the strange drowsiness gaining on me, to reach the lamp and turn it out.
"I was on my feet, reaching across the table, with the glare of the lamp full in my eyes, when something--I don't know what--struck me and threw me to the ground. My hand was already on the lamp, and I must have managed to turn it out actually in the moment of falling. I have a recollection of struggling for a moment there in the darkness, of trying, with some sort of hazy instinct, to drag myself under cover of the table, and then I suppose I became unconscious.
"When I came to it was broad daylight. I was lying on the floor, near the table. There was broken glass near me, and I seemed to remember the crash of it before I lost consciousness. My clothes were torn, my arms and chest were badly scratched--I must have somehow defended my face without knowing it--and I was stiff all over when I moved. When I got into the open I was seized with an intense nausea, which lasted for several minutes. My wife and sister are used to my being up till all hours, so that my absence had caused no uneasiness. I went into the house, washed myself as well as I could, and went to sleep. It was then five o'clock, so that I must have been nearly four hours unconscious."
"Did you notice any other symptoms besides the nausea?" I interrupted.
"Yes; an intense fatigue. It was not sleepiness. I was tired out, as if I had been through some great exertion."
"Well?" I said, for I knew he had not finished.
"That was last October, the twenty-fourth, to be exact. Since then the thing has happened twice again. On each occasion I have had the same premonitory drowsiness. I have struggled against it, and it has mastered me at just the critical moment. The second time when I came to I was more badly hurt than before. My sister happened to be up early that morning, and there was no disguising my condition from her. She went off for Lennox. When he came he fixed me up and gave me a sleeping draught--which I didn't need--and I slept nearly the whole day. He held the opinion, which I wrested from him later, that I had had some sort of seizure, the result of overwork, and that I had inflicted the injuries on myself during unconsciousness. The rest he put down to hallucination. He was a fool, and I told him so. Whatever the thing was, it was no hallucination."
"How wide was the skylight open?"
"About eighteen inches."
"Did you find any traces in the morning?"
"Not a mark. The building is high, as you know, and the sides are of perfectly plain boarding. There is nothing that could give foothold, except to a monkey, and the nearest tree is eight feet off. Oh, I went over the whole ground carefully! Whatever it was that came, it did not reach me from the ground."
I moved impatiently. "But what other way could it have reached you?"
"That's what I ask myself," said Lessing grimly. "Do I look like a man subject to brain trouble?"
"No," I said. "I gave that theory up almost immediately."
"Then what do you make of it?" he asked quietly.
"Make of it!" I cried. "Good heavens, man, do you realize that you're asking me to believe a thing that's outside the range of all human possibility!"
"Human possibility! What is human possibility? I tell you the thing as it happened, simply." He rose and began to pace to and fro in the room. "I'm a sane man. I'm not given to imaginary things. And besides--you saw yourself----"
"Wait a moment," I said. "About this light. Have you used the same lamp right along?"
Lessing gave a quick look. I wondered if he had divined my visit to the laboratory that first morning.
"No. I altered it after the second time. There was an interval of over four months when nothing happened at all. I tried to reason it all out, and I concluded that in some way the lamp had had to do with it. From the position of the building, and the woods about it, the light I was at first using could be visible only from one certain direction. I wanted to investigate the whole thing systematically, and with that idea I raised the lamp and fitted a strong reflector that would throw the light outside the building at will, and in any direction."
His description corresponded with the light I had seen above the tree-tops, the night of Pete's adventure with the turkey-buzzard.
"You were using this the last time?"
"Yes. I had been experimenting with it, off and on, for several weeks."
"Have you any idea of the shape of the thing?" I asked him.
"So far as I could make out anything, outside the glass, I might describe it as some kind of dog. It seemed to be greyish.... But that as a theory is sheer nonsense. You know that no dog could have made the scratches you saw."
One thing still puzzled me.
"You say that you put the light out yourself the first time?"
"Yes."
"And the second?"
"There was scarcely time to get any definite impression," he answered evasively. "I was struck down almost at once."
"But you had the impression of a dog?"
"What does it matter?" he cried, with a sudden change of voice. "I tell you, Haverill, it was like nothing that I can describe!"
We sat there for some minutes in silence. I can see now the turn of Lessing's head, the restless movement of his fingers on the chair-arm. It seemed incongruous that we should be sitting here in this common-place room, amid surroundings which spoke so emphatically of the practical routine of life, discussing that which should have branded us both as madmen.
It was Lessing who broke the silence first.
"What the good?" he said, with a short laugh. "I've told you the whole business, and it's up to you to make what you choose of it. The only conclusion seems to be that we are up against something which is, as you put it, outside the range of experience. Good. But suppose I told you that it wasn't outside the range of experience--that what I saw has been seen by other people, upon independent testimony, ten, twenty, thirty years ago?"
I thought of the reporter's story. But there would be time to contribute my data presently, after Lessing had told me all that he knew.
"Did you ever hear of an apparition called the Jersey Devil?" he asked.
"I don't remember it."
"You probably wouldn't," Lessing replied. He took a fresh cigarette from the box and lit it. "The tale afforded some stray paragraphs in the papers, at different times, much as the periodical accounts of 'authentic' ghosts do, but I don't believe anyone gave the slightest credence to it. The Jersey Devil, to sum up all that I have been able to glean on the subject, was a legendary monster, reputed to have been seen, on the evidence of several persons, at different periods during the past fifty or sixty years. The legend goes back, I believe, to just before the Civil War. According to the story, its appearance gives warning to some national trouble or calamity. It was said to have been seen before Lincoln's assassination, before the Spanish-American War, and before the assassination of President McKinley. It is described as a creature having the body of a bat and the head of a horse--sometimes as a quasi-human head on a winged animal body--and it haunts certain counties of New Jersey, chiefly Monmouth and Ocean counties, and has also been seen as far north as Pennsylvania. The legend goes that it is a changeling, that is to say, a devil which took possession of a child's body at birth and flew off in the shape of a monster. Why it should have developed the sort of national solicitude they claim for it is unexplained. Of course the evidence is almost entirely that of superstitious country people who saw it, or thought they saw it, but the fact remains that the evidence in every case tallies, even after intervals of ten or twenty years.
"We may take it that very legend has somewhere some natural origin, however much it may be subsequently exaggerated or distorted. Why, if this particular legend is purely imaginary, should it be confined to certain districts and not to others? We are not dealing with an apparition reputed to haunt one particular place. It has a pretty wide range of country, on the contrary, and its appearance has been vouched for, almost simultaneously, in places a great many miles apart. Why should it be seen in one certain county and not in the adjoining ones, where the inhabitants are probably equally superstitious? Also it is not seen actually at the time of trouble, when people's minds might be most naturally influenced by superstition, but days and sometimes weeks before the event. That fact in itself I attach no importance to. There is a coincidence, and people naturally connect the two ideas. But I mention it to prove that in no instance was the thing seen because it was expected to be seen; its appearance in each case was entirely without warning or predisposition."
I moved in my chair.
"We've got enough to deal with as the thing stands. If you're going to back it up with any old wives' tales of a bat-winged horse----"
"I'm not backing it up," Lessing retorted. "I'm only asking myself whether the experiences that give rise to the tale of the Jersey Devil have any connection with my own. The details don't matter. I want to get at the origin of the thing."
"The two don't even tally!" I spoke sharply, for I had still uncomfortably before my eyes the vision of the dead cyclist on the stretch of empty road.
"They don't, on this point," Lessing continued coolly. "The Jersey Devil has never, to my knowledge, been credited with any malevolent intent. At the worst, assuming the tales to have some basis of truth, it has merely scared one or two respectable farmers driving home at night. Now the thing that attacked me, attacked me deliberately, and with an almost extraordinary ferocity of onslaught. I don't think there can be any question about that. That fact alone puts the apparition theory out of the game. We are not dealing with any mere visual phenomena. We are dealing with some actual existing menace. There is just one point that can lead up to the connection, if there is one, between the two."
"The attraction of the lamp?"
"Exactly. Those other people may have been carrying a lamp or they may not. In any case, it was probably a lantern of so slight a power as to escape notice. I said that the thing attacked me. But the real object of its attack might very well have been the lamp, and not me at all. I merely happened in each instance to be near it."
"But even admitting," I objected, "for the sake of argument, that the thing was a bat, I am not certain about bats being actually attracted by light. They blunder into it."
"Nor am I. As I say, I give you my only theory. And if you assume a bat, you must assume a bat of sufficient size to strike a man down at one blow. The whole thing's grotesque." He pulled out his watch, and rose abruptly. "I must get back, or Mary will be worrying about me. We'll talk over this another time. If you go into the thing with me, we'll go into it thoroughly. Only you know now why I warned you against cycling with a strong lantern."
"Even to the extent of slitting my bicycle tire?"
"Even to that extent," returned Lessing gravely. "You see, I wasn't taking any risks."
We shook hands, and I followed him out to the porch. There was a clear moon, and the road glimmered white between the black line of the woods. As I watched the swing of his shoulders down the path I was left, I admit, with a definite sense of comfort at the proximity of my own four walls. And before sleep overtook me that night the words of the reporter came back again and again to my mind:
"What's the animal that goes round in these woods that's strong enough to wreck the steel tubing of a bicycle, that attacks with its claws instead of its teeth, and that's quick enough to knock a man down without the chance of a struggle?"
