To the Farmhouse
OF COURSE THE MATTER WAS NOT AS SIMPLE AS following a single bearing until we reached our destination. For one thing, the pathways through the marshes did not run in a straight line. They meandered and twisted, sometimes doubling back on themselves. For another, our course did not lead exclusively over dry land. There were tracts of boggy ground to be negotiated, deep pools to be circumvented, reed beds to be ploughed through, drainage ditches to be vaulted over.
All of this meant we deviated again and again from true. That, in turn, required us to pause, reassemble the aerolite compass and take a fresh bearing. We must have done so at least a dozen times that afternoon. On each occasion Holmes was obliged to reopen the Necronomicon and chant the relevant portions of the text all over again.
“You must know the words by heart now, surely,” I said after the fifth or sixth rendition. “You do not need to keep taking out that damned book.”
“There is more to the incantation than mere language,” Holmes replied. “Immediate physical proximity of the Necronomicon to the lodestone is crucial. The one casts its influence over the other. My role is to facilitate the exchange verbally. By speaking aloud I awaken the book’s latent power, which in turn activates the compass.”
“In other words, you are fulfilling the function of a messenger boy conveying a telegram from post office to recipient.”
“If you must be so absurdly bathetic with your metaphors, Watson, then yes. Something like that.”
Onward we went, and as the afternoon wore on, the cloud cover that had settled above us with the first opening of the Necronomicon remained in place, acting as a lid over the land, sealing in the day’s heat. The atmosphere of the marshes became oppressive, and I began to resent it. I resented the squelching of my feet within my boots, which were sodden from repeated immersions in water. I resented the sweat that made my shirt cling to my armpits and my collar stick to my neck. I resented the vastness of the grey sky, which stretched high and wide over us to the distant horizon, and the unrelieved flatness of the landscape. I had no desire to be here, and the marshes left me under no illusion that the feeling was mutual.
Now and then we came upon an outpost of civilisation, be it a tiny crooked cottage or a wooden hovel with unglazed windows. The residents of these meagre dwellings eyed us with suspicion as we passed by. One shabbily clothed and shaggily bearded smallholder rushed out with an ancient blunderbuss, which he waved at us while barking threats. Holmes was amused. Once the fellow was out of sight, he said, “I would have loved to see what happened when he pulled the trigger. That weapon was so old, I will wager it would have blown up in his face.”
“It is not something I would like to have put to the test.”
“Well, perhaps not. At least we have established that the natives are unfriendly. I fancy Stanley and Livingstone met a warmer reception in Africa than we have met here.”
“I do not know how you can be in such a cheery mood, Holmes.”
“And I do not know how you can be so glum, Watson. The resolution to our little conundrum is close at hand. Surely a cause for celebration?”
“If we survive.”
“Pooh! We have confronted unnatural beasts before and lived to tell the tale.”
“Never a nightgaunt.”
“Think of it as a challenge, then. An assay of our worthiness.”
There was no reasoning with him when he was in one of his manically upbeat moods. All I could do was trudge on beside him and hope for the best.
Around six o’clock we took a break. Mrs Hudson had prepared us a picnic of ox-tongue sandwiches and hard-boiled eggs, which we ate by the edge of a small lake. A pair of teal swam up to our feet. I fed them my crusts.
Then we were on our way again, Holmes insisting that we were homing in on our quarry. “The compass’s reactions are getting more definite,” he said. “Wherever the lodestone points, it points there swiftly, with less and less hesitancy.”
That had been my observation too, but I was conscious of time slipping away. We had perhaps two hours of decent daylight left.
“We know that a nightgaunt is nocturnal,” I said.
“The clue is in the name. Your point being…?”
“Well, it would be best if we were to locate it before sunset, would it not? I mean, one presumes it is sleeping at present. We stand a better chance against it if we encounter it before it is yet awake or when it is only just stirring.”
“Indeed, and had we embarked upon this escapade first thing, as I suggested last night, we would not be cutting things so fine. Still, we are near. We should be all right.”
Not long after that, we had our first glimpse of the farmhouse.
* * *
The farmhouse perched on a low rise, elevated perhaps no more than twenty feet above the surrounding marshland. Initially it was no more than a black dot on the horizon, and the rise the merest blister.
As soon as Holmes’s eye fell upon it, he halted and went through the rigmarole of taking yet another bearing. This time, the compass seemed to spring to attention. There was no vacillating, no indecision. It pointed straight towards the rise and the building atop it.
“Journey’s end,” said Holmes, evincing a grim pleasure.
I myself felt a mixture of relief and trepidation. Glad though I was that there was not much further to go, I was not exactly enthused by the thought of what might await us at the farmhouse. As the crow flies, we were perhaps three miles from the place. We could have covered the distance in less than an hour, had the going been level and uninterrupted.
In the event, we spent twice that amount of time getting there. Our first obstacle was a river, a tributary of the Thames’s lower reaches, at least twenty yards wide and fast-flowing. We attempted to wade across, but having slithered down the steep muddy bank into the water, we immediately found ourselves submerged to the waist, with the current tugging remorselessly at our legs, doing its best to sweep them from under us. A few steps further on, and the river was up to our chests. By mutual consent, we retreated, scrambling back up the bank. It would have been foolhardy to continue.
Upstream we came to a rickety footbridge. Little more than planks perched upon stilts, lashed together by ropes, it did not look much safer than the body of water it traversed. We went over one at a time, Holmes first. The structure wobbled precariously under him, and more so under me when my turn came, for I was the heavier of us by a couple of stone. At one point the footbridge lurched so far to one side, so abruptly, that I was nearly pitched headlong into the river. Thereafter, the rest of the way, I held on to its rudimentary handrail for dear life.
A further obstacle presented itself in the form of a field of cattle. Presiding over a herd of cows, like a pasha over his harem, was a bull who regarded any interlopers upon his domain as potential rivals, to be repelled with all available aggression. The hulking great quadruped charged at us, snorting hard, his eyes murderously crimson. We fled.
A third and final obstacle was an expanse of marsh so deep and slimy it surpassed even the Great Grimpen Mire. We ventured into this treacherous morass thinking it would be no worse than any of the other patches of marsh we had forged through earlier in the day. Within seconds we were stuck fast, like flies on flypaper. Not only that but we were sinking, getting sucked down through the grassy top layer into the saturated earth beneath.
The situation might have been amusing, were it not so serious: two grown men, up to their knees in the ground and descending by increments. Holmes and I looked at each other with a kind of weary bemusement. I think we may even have shared a laugh.
Then we set about the business of extricating ourselves, which we did by each simultaneously providing support for the other as he hauled one leg out of the marsh, lodged it on the nearest area of solid ground, and bore down upon it so as to lever the rest of him to freedom.
“I do believe,” I said, as we laboriously detoured around the marsh, “that this place hates us.”
“Think how much worse it must have been for the man we seek,” said Holmes. “Fleeing through this landscape in the dark, effectively blind.”
“That will be us too, if we do not make haste.” The sun was by now touching the horizon, a pale and hazy disc. The air had already cooled significantly, and a frog had begun croaking in anticipation of nightfall.
By the time we got our first close-up view of the farmhouse, several hundred other frogs had joined in. To the accompaniment of their rasping cacophony, and the occasional plaintive wail of a curlew, we crouched amongst a thicket of bulrushes, covertly surveying the premises from a few dozen yards away.
The farmhouse must have been a couple of centuries old, and its sagging roof and moss-clad walls spoke of long neglect. The same was true of its outbuildings, which consisted of a stables and a small barn. There were paddocks around it that had become overgrown, and enclosing these were a few rotted, tumbledown runs of post-and-rail fence that were more gap than barrier. Over the entire site hung an air of desolation. The house was the only abode for miles around, and even on a summer’s eve – admittedly, this was not a glorious one – it looked cold and lonely.
“Does anyone even live there?” I wondered.
“You have your answer,” said Holmes, gesturing at the chimney, from which a thin plume of smoke had just started to rise. Shortly afterwards, the glow of a lamp filled a downstairs window. I peered to make out movement within but saw none.
“How do you suggest we approach?” I said. “Walk up to the front door and introduce ourselves?”
Holmes overlooked the flippancy in my tone. “It is one option. We may assume that the occupant is he who has mastery over the nightgaunt and is our quarry’s captor. Presenting ourselves brazenly to him, rather than adopting subtler measures, might put him on the back foot. One should never underestimate the value of the element of surprise. Equally, we could…”
“Could what, Holmes? Holmes?”
My companion did not respond. I assumed that he had become distracted, until I noticed that his eyes had grown wide and his jaw had slackened. He was staring fixedly past me, and at that moment a surge of dread flooded my belly. The sensation worsened as Holmes’s mouth set in a tight, narrow line. His entire body had gone rigid. Whatever lay over my shoulder, just to the right of me, he could not tear his gaze from it.
“Watson,” he hissed.
“Please do not say it, Holmes. Please do not.”
“The nightgaunt, Watson.”
“Oh my God.”
“The nightgaunt. It is here. It is right here.”
