CARNACKI: The New Adventures (20 page)

Dodgson.
I suspect not. But I’ll discharge it all the same.

Carnacki.
Well, I suppose the outcome’s the important thing. Now, how about a yarn?

Dodgson.
Is this really the time?

Carnacki.
Both of us must stay quite alert until dawn, and neither of us may smoke.

Dodgson.
Well, when you put it like that.

Carnacki.
I fancy I might see the thing clearer, after I’ve told it all out straight. Pour us both another drink, won’t you?

Dodgson.
Obliges.

Carnacki.
Gazes beyond the circle at things unseen. Knuckles his eyes, slaps his cheeks, etc. Composes himself.

Dodgson.
Hands
Carnacki
a tumbler of whiskey.

Pause.

Carnacki.
The tale that’s led us both here began many generations hence, and to recount it all would counter my purpose of keeping us both awake, so I’ll start from yesterday morning, the beginning of my own part in the affair. I’d not been long awake when I heard something trying to batter in my front door. I admitted my besieger and discovered her to be a gentlewoman in late middle-age, whom I knew by association as one Mrs. Allenby.

Dodgson.
Not by any chance a Mrs. Judith Allenby?

Carnacki.
The same. You’re acquainted?

Dodgson.
I’ve been shooting with her husband, the major. Two or three times last season. A stern woman—straight-backed—lifts her chin, like this, in low company?

Carnacki.
Stern? Perhaps, though yesterday morning she was rather discomposed. She’d crossed town at great speed, having left home in some hurry.

Mrs
. Allenby.
You’ll forgive my appearance, Mr. Carnacki. I left home in some hurry.

Morning.

Carnacki.
You must have a seat, Mrs. Allenby. Some tea? Or a brandy?

Mrs
. Allenby.
No, thank you.

Carnacki.
Well, how can I be of service?

Mrs
. Allenby.
You’re the Thomas Carnacki that Captain Hisgins speaks so highly of?

Carnacki.
I am a Thomas Carnacki, and I did help out Captain Hisgins with a small matter last year.

Mrs
. Allenby.
The small matter of a family curse.

Carnacki.
Actually I believe it was a case of what I might term induced haunting.

Mrs
. Allenby.
Regardless, some unnatural creature threatened—

Carnacki.
Ab-natural.

Beat.

Mrs. Allenby.
Some unnatural creature threatened poor Mary Hisgins and her fiancé, until banished by your intervention.

Carnacki.
That’s about the size of it. Mary Hisgins became Mrs. Beaumont not long after.

Mrs
. Allenby.
And the couple have had no trouble of the sort since?

Carnacki.
If they have, they’ve not seen fit to involve me in it.

Mrs
. Allenby.
Proof enough for me. You must come with me at once, Mr. Carnacki. My cab is outside.

Carnacki.
Why such a hurry?

Mrs
. Allenby.
My Florence heard the herald’s cry last night.

Carnacki.
I’m afraid I’m not familiar with the term.

Mrs
. Allenby.
You’ll have the journey to learn, and till sunset to save her. Are you coming or not?

Carnacki.
I’ll come, of course, and I’ll do everything I can to help. But you understand, I’m sure, that I cannot guarantee success—can’t even guarantee an explanation, let alone a solution?

Mrs
. Allenby.
Cavil in the cab if you must do it at all, Mr. Carnacki.

Carnacki.
Yes, of course. We’d better have the cabbie load my instrument trunk.

Mrs
. Allenby. Very well.

They seat themselves in the cab.

Mrs. Allenby.
I’m surprised a man in your line of business has never heard about our family. Did Captain Hisgins never mention us?

Carnacki.
The captain and I aren’t well acquainted. We talked about how best to safeguard his daughter, little else.

Mrs
. Allenby.
Good. Forge a similar relationship with me and we’ll get on famously.

Carnacki.
Let’s start with this herald’s cry.

Mrs
. Allenby.
The herald’s cry comes to the eldest Allenby in each generation, usually not long after they come of age. It sounds like some monstrous bird, my Florence says, and deafening. It woke her around two o’clock this morning, but her sister sleeps in the same room and she didn’t hear a thing.

Carnacki.
And it’s supposed to herald what?

Mrs
. Allenby.
Madness, Mr. Carnacki.

Beat.

Mrs. Allenby.
I wasn’t born an Allenby, of course. But our families have always been close, and we were overwintering in Sussex together when Robert Allenby heard the cry. It was the night after his sixteenth birthday. I was ten, my sister Louisa twelve or thirteen, and we argued at his party which of us would marry him. But the next day at breakfast he told us all the dining-room walls were turning to fog and he could see bright lights beyond. By dinner he couldn’t see the house at all, nor any of the people in it. It was like we’d all become ghosts, or he had. He kept whispering to himself about impossible peaks and drifting specks as bright as stars. He wept constantly, but sometimes it didn’t seem like sorrow. The next morning Robert was a rag doll. He resides in Bedlam even now.

Carnacki.
But he lives? It wasn’t fatal?

Mrs
. Allenby.
No. Nothing so merciful.

Carnacki.
And before Robert?

Mrs
. Allenby.
The same story, the first born of every generation, as far back as anyone can recall.

Carnacki.
Then if you were aware of all this, why did you still marry into the Allenby family?

Mrs
. Allenby.
Hector and I were a good match.

Carnacki.
But the two of you suspected what might be in store for any children.

Mrs
. Allenby.
Are you married, Mr. Carnacki? Do you have children of your own?

Carnacki.
I’m afraid not.

Mrs
. Allenby.
Then I can’t expect you to understand.

Carnacki.
But you do credit this story of the herald’s cry? You believe there’s some truth in it?

Mrs
. Allenby.
I told you, I saw what it did to Robert.

Carnacki.
What I mean is, do you believe the phenomenon is ab-natural in origin?

Mrs
. Allenby.
Of course it’s the work of devils, if that’s what you mean. I thought this was your area of expertise, Mr. Carnacki.

Carnacki.
It is, and I’ve witnessed too many true manifestations to doubt that they can and do occur. But I make it a point of principle to view all reported hauntings as unproven until I’ve made examinations, and I must tell you that ninety-nine cases in a hundred prove to have nothing abnormal in them.

Mrs
. Allenby.
There is nothing normal about what’s in store for my daughter, Mr. Carnacki.

Carnacki.
I will of course bear your theory in mind, but you must allow me to investigate and form my own.

Mrs
. Allenby.
I shall allow you whatever’s in my Florence’s best interests, not an inch more.

They dismount.

Mrs. Allenby.
I must try to get word to my husband. I’m putting my life in your hands, Mr. Carnacki.

Carnacki.
To
Dodgson
.
With that she abandoned me to the ministrations of the butler, Tilbury, who fairly frogmarched me to the library and presented me, finally, to Miss Florence Allenby. Did you ever meet the young lady?

Dodgson.
No, but the major spoke of her constantly. He said she takes after her mother.

Carnacki.
Yes, that was my assessment too, at first. Youth, and beauty, and good prospects, and a mother like Judith Allenby. Hardly surprising that she reacted as she did to the whole business.

Florence
.
Did Mother send for you? Are you a doctor?

Carnacki.
No.

Florence
.
A psychiatrist, then.

Carnacki.
No.

Florence
.
What, then? A priest?

Carnacki.
I’d style myself an investigator of sorts.

Florence
.
An investigator of sorts? I’m losing my mind, and the best Mother can come up with is an investigator of sorts? No, this won’t do. Tilbury? Where on earth have you gone?

Carnacki.
I am, I should say, an investigator of what I might term inexplicable things. Like this cry you heard last night—

Florence
.
Oh, a charlatan. I’d have preferred a priest. Where did Mother even find you?

Carnacki.
A mutual friend. And I’ve been called worse than a charlatan in my time. Still, I’d rather you called me Carnacki.

Florence
.
What’s a Carnacki?

Carnacki.
I am. Thomas Carnacki, at your service.

Florence
.
A pleasure to make your acquaintance, I’m sure, Mr. Carnacki, but my mother’s wasted your time.

Carnacki.
I don’t think so. In fact, yours seems a rather interesting case.

Florence
.
I’m glad I intrigue you, but I need a doctor, not an investigator of inexplicable things.

Carnacki.
Surely it would do you no harm to see both.

Florence
.
But it wouldn’t help me any more than seeing a doctor alone.

Carnacki.
And if he were to find himself stumped? Then might you concede that you’re in the realm of the inexplicable?

Florence
.
I think then I might lose hope.

Carnacki.
As long as there’s one avenue left unexplored, there’s hope.

Florence
.
Vain hope.

Carnacki.
But hope nonetheless. Come now. Shake off this funk. Let me try a little experiment or two, nothing drastic, just to see how the land lies; and whatever I find, I give you my word I’ll march straight to your mother and tell her to send for a medical man without delay.

Florence
.
I’d be the one to decide whose advice to take on board, yours or the doctor’s?

Carnacki.
I’d rather expect our conclusions to complement each other, than to conflict.

Florence
.
You can’t believe in devils and in medicine, Mr. Carnacki.

Carnacki.
I’ll thank you not to dictate what I may and may not believe, Miss Allenby.

Florence
.
You’re quite unfathomable.

Carnacki.
Then it’s just as well you are the one we must try to fathom, not I. If I may?

Florence
.
As long as you keep your word.

Carnacki.
Good. We’ll start with questions and answers. This all started last night. You heard a sound. Correct?

Florence
.
Yes. A cry like a crow’s. It woke me up. I couldn’t move. I felt like a field-mouse, frozen looking up at something horrible swooping down on me.

Carnacki.
Where did the cry come from?
Examines
Florence
’s ears.

Florence
.
I don’t know. From everywhere. Or maybe from inside my head. I thought straight away, this is it: I’m going mad, just like Uncle Robert. And I was right. Not long afterwards I started seeing things.

Carnacki.
What manner of things?

Florence
.
Nothing very distinct. Little sort of specks of bright-coloured light, drifting about in the distance. They were quite pale to begin with, as if I’d just been looking into a flame. Now they’re brighter than the daylight.