WILLIAM DAVEY
For the first time, I beheld the statue that James Esdaile had possessed and that he had promised to me.
The picture was indeed a calotype—a sort of early photograph, made by the exposure of a single chemical, silver iodide, I believe, to produce an image. The paper was thick and mounted on a stiff board that had crumbled a bit at the edges; Esdaile handled it delicately, as if he were holding a fair copy of the Magna Carta (or, given the location, the Declaration of Arbroath).
It was a little thing, I knew, and the picture conveyed no sense of proportion. It had been set upon a table, apparently in sunlight, and it showed evidence of having been polished as one might clean the silver flatware—it seemed to shine and glow, particularly where its extremities picked out and reflected the sun.
It was compelling, all the same. It seemed to be looking out of the frame at me, gazing at me from its past—the frozen moment of time at which it had been preserved.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” David Esdaile said softly. “The object of interest is a work of art.”
“And much more,” I said.
“To be sure.” He took the print from my hands and laid it gently in his lap. He gazed at it for several moments without speaking, then looked up at me.
“The statue is alive,” Esdaile said. “In his letters to me, Jamie told me that it spoke to him. It was very old—it came from a sort of burial mound left behind by a culture we do not know, located in the Indus Valley. The Buddhist monks thought it to be a stupa—a sort of reliquary beneath a small hill, where sacred objects are placed—but it was far older than the Buddha.
“James Fergusson procured this object from a bazaar during one of his treasure-finding expeditions. Jamie told me that Fergusson was very proud of his ability to identify, and acquire, what he called ‘diamonds in the rough’ from stupid Hindoos.”
“It sounds as if your brother did not believe that.”
“Not about this object, Reverend Davey. Fergusson did not find it: it found him. It had been placed in this mound in an unimaginably distant past, had broken free somehow, and had latched onto the first person it found.”
“Fergusson?”
“No, before him. Fergusson was only the recipient of the statue after it had escaped.”
“‘Escaped’?”
“Yes.”
Esdaile picked up the calotype from the table. He returned it to its slipcase, then stood and placed it back on the top shelf of the bookcase between two large folio volumes.
He stood there for several moments with his back to me before he turned to face me once more.
“That is exactly the term that applies, sir. According to my brother, the statue—or, more particularly, the being inside it—had been imprisoned.”
He returned to his seat. He looked weary, as if the image itself—and the revelation he was sharing with me—had been a tremendous burden.
Outside, the sunlight had given way to clouds.
“The statue spoke to your brother.”
“He said that it spoke in his dreams at first, but then in waking hours, as well. It told him that it had been waiting for him, searching for him or someone like him.”
I found that I was breathing very slowly and carefully. I forced my shoulders to relax.
“From the beginning,” David Esdaile said at last, “my brother was only truly able to accomplish the mesmeric trance and its analgesic effects with the assistance of the statue. Even his first success, the notable experiment on the fourth of April 1845, was accomplished due to its proximity during the procedure. It helped him, sir. It guided him to achieve what he had never before done.
“And it led to his death.”
“Your brother was inexperienced with such things, Reverend Esdaile. There are forces, and—intelligences—beyond the ken of most people, that—”
He put his hands up, almost a mesmeric gesture.
“Please do not patronize me,” he said.
“I mean to do nothing of the kind. I fear that we have gotten off the subject.”
DAVID ESDAILE
Jamie told me that he feared for his life.
I know that after the publication of Mesmerism in India and his accounts of the many procedures he performed in Hooghly and on maneuvers with the army, he became quite well-known in the circles of mesmeric enthusiasts. I am also aware that you corresponded with him—and that he had assured you that he would bring the statue back for examination.
Correct. Something did change, and I am not sure what it was. Something convinced him that the statue had an ulterior motive—some clue, some indication that bringing it back with him was wrong.
Then, a few weeks before he arrived, he sent me a letter telling me that he had married again. The young woman, Eliza, was an English girl who had been acting as a governess to some English family in Calcutta, and had lately been working in the hospital with the women relatives of the inmates and patients.
I daresay it did seem sudden, but recall, if you will, that Jamie married a second time and became a widower with scarcely any word coming back to us here in Scotland. Our father had already moved in with us here in Rescobie and was eager to see him again. So were Mary and I. Alice had just been born, and little Annie and Mary were just beginning to talk—we were so looking forward to their arrival.
We met them as they arrived at Edinburgh on the train from London. I scarcely recognized him—no great surprise, given that he had been absent for twenty years. But I knew what Eliza was from the moment Jamie handed her down from the railway carriage. It was as if a chill ran from the nape of my neck to the small of my back—I had all I could do to keep my wits about me.
I knew at once that she was a walking spirit, what esoteric parlance calls a chthonios, a spirit bound to earth. More particularly, she was a spirit bound to my brother.
Of course I knew. I shall explain presently how—but let me assure you that when Father first met Eliza, he was just as convinced, and on the same basis as I had known. My brother James had arrived from India in the company of a chthonic spirit. When he died—and from his obvious physical debilitation, that possibility was never remote—she would receive the reward that all such creatures crave: the consumption of his soul.
My wife and I traveled with them by rail to Perth. There were times during the trip that the chthonios seemed alarmed, or at the very least surprised, at the sounds and sights of the locomotive and the passenger carriage; she—I shall call it a she, for it had the form of a woman—seemed almost unfamiliar with railways. Recall, if you will, that there were virtually none in India at that time; I suppose that the Caledonian car was even more raucous and noisy than the railway they had taken from London.
My Mary, always the gentle soul, sought to befriend Eliza at once but found it difficult—Jamie’s wife was aloof, standoffish, thinking before speaking as if everything she heard had to be translated into some other language and then back again. For his part, my brother seemed on edge and on guard.
They had made arrangements to stay in a guesthouse on Tay Street for a month or so while they settled. Jamie had made an advance application to the General Prison on South Inch, where he might find useful employment due to his experience in India. Eliza seemed to cling to him at every moment, but I was surprised when Mary was able to take her aside to examine the couple’s new apartments. She was unaware of what I had realized—but had sensed my unease, and determined that I should have a few minutes alone with my brother.
We stood in the largely empty front room that overlooked the street. I confronted my brother at once, unsure how soon Eliza might return.
“Jamie, what in God’s name is happening? Do you know—”
“All too well, Davie. I see that you can tell.”
“Yes. I can tell.”
James seemed surprised, but accepted it on its face. “And Mary?”
“She can tell something’s wrong, but doesn’t know what. Tell me this first—is she in danger right now, alone with—with—”
“Eliza. My wife.”
“Mary Ann was your wife.”
“Don’t ever say that name,” he snapped back at me. “Don’t speak of her. Not to Eliza. She is—”
“She is—” I lowered my voice to almost a whisper. “She is not human, Jamie. She is a stoicheion, a chthonios. I cannot imagine what possessed you to—”
And at this point he laughed, Reverend Davey. It was like a madman’s laugh, like the barking of a dog. “Possessed me? No, no. You have it all wrong, brother.”
“Is Mary in danger?”
“No. I believe that Eliza is constrained in what she will do, what she can do. We spent weeks on the voyage out from India. She was terribly sick at first, but when she recovered she did not imperil anyone. She will not imperil your wife.”
“Does she know that I know her nature?”
“Quite frankly, I am surprised that you know. It isn’t just your mesmeric skill—there’s something more to it, isn’t there?”
“Yes.”
“What is it? How do you know?”
Before I could answer—and I am not certain I would have done—Mary and Eliza rejoined us. Mary was smiling, but the look in her eyes indicated that something troubled her severely.
Jamie wrote me a letter from Perth that night—it arrived two mornings later, a day before he and Eliza were to come out to Rescobie to see Father and the children. I still have it—it explained that he had made his contract with Eliza because he feared reprisals from the Committee, and he needed to protect himself from them. He told me that he would explain it all someday, and that he hoped that I—and God—would forgive him for what he had done.
You may find it difficult to believe, but I have forgiven him. I do not speak exclusively for the Lord of Hosts, but I pray that James’s reasons for taking his own life are sufficient for Our Lord to forgive him. At the time, I found his explanation an unsatisfactory answer.
Before I could frame a written reply to his letter, he and his wife arrived on my door-step.
Father and I had discussed Jamie long into the night after we returned from Perth. I had thought to send word to him that we could not have him visit—the children were sick, there was a problem at the farm, or some such—but Father told me that telling such lies would only hold them for some time. He was eager to see his oldest son, and thought that confronting the problem at once was the best policy.
We cannot be afraid, Father told me. If the Lord is with us, who can stand against us?
How could I not be afraid? I had never faced things such as Eliza—I had only read about them. But I had my father beside me. He and I prayed, and then he took up a position in the doorway of the Manse and awaited the arrival of his son and daughter-in-law.
When they came into the yard, I saw him immediately stiffen as if he was in pain. Jamie climbed down from the bench first, and came around to help Eliza to descend, and then led her to the door.
He and Father embraced, for quite a long time. Then Jamie introduced him to Eliza.
“Welcome to the family,” Father said, and embraced her as well. I saw Eliza grimace ever so slightly; she opened her mouth for a moment, but no sound came out. She opened it again, and I heard something disturbing—a noise that had no sound, like an echo out of nowhere. Father stiffened again, but it passed.
I did not know it at the time, but that was the first time that the chthonios attempted to kill my father.