Darker Worlds Read online

  “Mr Armitage departed in the early evening, leaving me and Mrs Littledale alone at Stoke Moran once more. The night, however, proved uneventful and Mrs Littledale slept in her own room, though I dreamed that the cheetah, bony and ghastly pale, circled the house all night looking for a way in.

  “The following day I was sitting on my sister’s bed leafing through some of her books and feeling very dispirited by my recollection of the terror and confusion that had preceded her death when Mrs Littledale sought me out to say we had a visitor. When she gave me his name I told her to have him brought to me in one of the seldom used sitting-rooms in the central portion of the mansion. It was none other than Mr Edward Thurn, who greeted me very cordially and took a seat opposite me while Mrs Littledale went on to prepare tea. I had previously formed no mental image of the man but his appearance, except for his shortness of stature, did not surprise me. He was thin but appeared healthy, his age difficult to ascertain; I would say anywhere from the late forties to perhaps sixty, his black hair less grey than my own. His face was very brown, leathery, and deeply creased by much exposure to the sun and harsh climates, with exceedingly keen dark eyes couched in fleshy folds. I should think at a distance he might be taken for a man of the Orient. He wore good clothes that had seen better days.

  “He said to me, ‘I believe I had a presentiment that things were not well with your stepfather, and that was part of my reason for returning to England. I only just arrived several days ago and immediately wrote that letter you received, to let him know. I am terribly sorry to learn of the death of my good friend, Dr Roylott, and I am sorry for your loss as well, Miss Stoner. I know he had acted as a devoted father to you and your twin since you were very small children.’

  “Unable to stopper the bitterness that rose to my lips, I replied, ‘He never told you of her passing, eh? Small wonder. My twin, Julia, expired two years ago, Mr Thurn. She was murdered by your friend, my devoted stepfather.’

  “ ‘What is this you say?’ my visitor cried. His expression of surprise and dismay appeared utterly genuine to me.

  “ ‘It is a long, strange story,’ I forewarned him, and I proceeded to tell it in all its details, naturally including your own involvement, gentlemen. Mr Thurn sat riveted and was plainly disturbed by what I had to report of his longtime friend’s murder of my sister, his plot to murder me as well, and his own accidental death by the very serpent my guest had shipped from India.

  “Mr Thurn turned his face away and said in an odd, quiet tone, ‘But I never actually shipped him that snake. Nor the baboon or cheetah.’

  “ ‘You did not?’ said I. ‘But if not you, then who?’

  “He said, ‘I am responsible for providing those creatures to him, but not in the way you imagine. It would be very difficult to make you understand, but in all fairness it is my duty to try, after the ordeals you have suffered. Yet first I must explain to some degree about myself.’ He turned his eyes back on me, and if they had been of a piercing quality before I nearly squirmed under their gaze now, as black, glittering, and depthless as the night sky. I trembled at their unnerving intensity and yet, as though hypnotised, I could not look away from them. There was a quality to them that suggested the man possessed an immense reservoir of internal power. I will stress, however, that this did not strike me necessarily as an evil force, but as a power such as electricity held in reserve.

  “Mr Thurn began, ‘You may wonder, as I wonder now myself, how Dr Roylott and I could be such close friends, and yet even after all our years of association with him you and I were blind to the full picture of his nature. Where he and I were similar was that we both possessed questing minds and restless spirits, that led us to seek fulfilment beyond the conventional precincts of man. That is, of European man. I travelled widely in my restlessness, beginning in my youth, without even quite knowing at first if my quest were a spiritual one. I encountered your stepfather in India, yes, but it was not due to my being a patient of his, as he led you to believe. It was in prison that we met, after he had been convicted of killing his manservant. My own crime was of a political nature, but I have more than once run afoul of local law in my travels, since I have often journeyed to places that were prohibited and seen things I was, as an outsider, not meant to see.

  “ ‘I was released from prison much before Dr Roylott, and I resumed my travels, going on to the holy temple of Badrinath, taking my cue from the Portuguese Jesuits Andrade and Marques and masquerading as a Hindu on pilgrimage. After some time in that region I travelled on to Tibet, entering it through the Mana Pass in the Himalayas.’ ”

  Here Holmes cut in, “Are you sure this fellow was not spinning yarns, Miss Stoner? Since three decades ago Tibet has forbidden foreigners from crossing its borders. Violating that ban by entering through such a conspicuous point of ingress as the Mana Pass leaves me suspect.”

  Helen Stoner replied, “I can only relate what I was told, Mr Holmes, and he did say that he had been turned back in an earlier attempt. But Mr Thurn informed me, without any apparent boastfulness, that he was masterful at disguise.”

  “He rather reminds me of you in that regard,” I said to my friend.

  “He also claimed rather provocatively that he had developed the means of going unseen, though he did not elaborate on what he meant by that.”

  Holmes said, “The thought of his actually succeeding in penetrating Tibet is intriguing. I have long desired to travel there myself, and one day may attempt it. But again I apologize. Please resume your account.”

  She did so. “Mr Thurn went on with his personal history, saying, ‘Though anyone who aids a foreigner who has infiltrated Tibet runs the risk of terrible punishment, including death, I nevertheless met people who, having lived all their lives in so isolated a region, were as fascinated by me as I was by them. I was not only sheltered by some of these people but learned much from them. I spent two years in Tibet, during which I devoted most of my time to the study of Buddhism. Ultimately I was fortunate beyond any hopes I might have entertained by impressing with my earnestness a gomchen, one of those Tibetan hermits said to be capable of working wonders, who at great risk to himself accepted me as his secret student. It was he who taught me how to conjure seemingly living entities with my mind.’

  “ ‘I do not understand,’ I told him.

  “He said, ‘I warned you that it would be a difficult thing for you to accept. Nevertheless, what I am telling you is the truth. It is possible for one to materialise a form the Tibetans call a tulpa, which is a manifestation of thought with the appearance of a living being, brought about through intensely focused concentration. It is an illusion, but not a delusion; a hallucination so convincing that not only does the conjurer himself witness it but, ideally, it would be visible to others as well, this phantom construction as convincing as an authentic material entity. A tulpa might even, ultimately, take on a personality of its own and defy its master’s direction, living so to speak as an independent being.’

  “ ‘Are you suggesting,’ I said, ‘that the snake…’

  “ ‘Not only the snake,’ he answered. ‘I manifested the baboon and the cheetah, too, purely through the power of thought. They were not sent physically from India. It was my mind that sent them here at Dr Roylott’s behest. During our correspondence after I had left Tibet I told your stepfather of my experiences there and my own success in conjuring tulpas and he was thoroughly intrigued. We devised an experiment. Would I be able to manifest a tulpa remotely, by transmitting the power of my thoughts to his location in England, with the doctor acting as a sort of receiver to supplement my efforts? Would it be possible to create a tulpa through such a joint effort? Oh, of course the conjurations were mostly mine, but your stepfather’s belief in my efforts, and his own concentration on the subjects we chose as our models, helped enable them to manifest, and after they had done so it was mostly through Dr Roylott’s own will that these forms were sustained. With these things, belief is all, a belief more complex than the b
lind faith of religion, because one is always aware that the object of belief is an illusion.

  “ ‘First I created the baboon, based on mental images I retained of Cape baboons I had seen in South Africa. There are no Cape baboons, incidentally, native to India. Shortly after, when I had sufficiently rested my mind and prepared myself once more for the great mental effort required, I manifested the cheetah, patterned after the Asiatic cheetah, which does exist in India. It was not until later that Grimesby Roylott specifically requested a dangerous serpent. I did question why he should want this particular creature, and his response was that it would render our ongoing experiment all the more fascinating. Would a mouse, for instance, seemingly struck by the fangs of this snake believe so in the creature’s veracity and its nonexistent poison that it would perish as a result? Have you heard of the aborigines of Australia, and their bone pointing? How one of them so cursed will die purely from their belief in the magic?’

  “ ‘This is preposterous,’ I protested. ‘This snake drank milk, proving that it required sustenance as a physical creature. It could not have been an illusion. I am not calling you a liar, sir, and I believe at least that you yourself believe in such things, but my stepfather must have acquired actual animals from another source if not from you.’

  “ ‘Miss Stoner,’ he said, with his black eyes burning into me, ‘snakes do not care to drink milk. If your stepfather put a saucer of milk in front of it, it was only a prop to help him continue to think of the snake as an actual creature, and a loyal pet like a cat besides. Summoning a snake by whistling? As a snake does not hear as we do, I am doubtful one might be trained in such a manner. Again, something Roylott did only to convince himself that his snake was real, and obedient to him. I hardly believe that an actual snake could climb down and up a bell pull, so as to lower itself to your sister’s bed and back again, but this snake did so because your stepfather imagined that it could. In as much as he was able he was controlling those beasts. Why, I ask you, do you think the baboon and cheetah, which could easily have passed over the wall of your property here, did not do so? And incidentally there is no such animal as a swamp adder. Oh, infrequently the African swamp viper may be called that, but its venom is not nearly as toxic as that I imagined for the cobra-like snake I invented for Dr Roylott. Creating an animal that did not truly exist, based on the attributes of a number of snakes, was another aspect of the proposed experiment. I gave it the fanciful name of swamp adder, and it is interesting to learn that the appellation suggested itself spontaneously to the sensitive mind of your friend Mr Holmes.’

  “I said, ‘But if my stepfather knew all along that the snake was not real, why then did he himself succumb to its bite when it was frightened by Mr Holmes back into Dr Roylott’s chamber?’

  “Mr Thurn said gravely, ‘In order for the snake to successfully do you in, Miss Stoner, at that moment your stepfather believed in its existence with all of his might. Without my level of training, he could not just then balance his belief with his awareness of the illusion. His instinctual fear of a snake attacking him leant the manifestation potency. No poison entered him. It was his own mind that killed him.’

  “ ‘Yet how,’ I asked, ‘would this have worked on my sister, who never knew it was a snake that attacked her? She could not die of imagined poisoning if she did not take in the illusion of a snake at more than a glance. She referred to it only as a speckled band.’

  “He said, ‘Grimesby Roylott was a man of great willpower; it is why our experiment was so successful. His will that your sister should die transmitted itself to her mind, almost in the way of a powerful hypnotic suggestion. It was not the snake that killed her, not even an illusory snake, so much as the sheer malevolent force of his own mind. He had no fear of puncture wounds being found on her flesh nor poison in her veins, because there would be neither. You told me your first impression regarding your sister’s demise was that she had died of fear. This was essentially true.

  “ ‘Those three animals were extensions of your stepfather’s will; that is why they were sustained and were so convincing. And from what I have now learned from you, seeing my complicated old friend in a new light, I suspect it was not only to frighten villagers away from his property that he let the baboon and cheetah roam free, but to frighten you and your sister from venturing into the outside world. To keep you prisoners here. I cannot help but wonder if it was not only the money he would lose once you two should marry that caused him to react in so brutal a manner, but fear that you two upon going into the world would inform others of his behaviours.’

  “My visitor’s speculations caused me great discomfort, and you will forgive me if I do not elaborate,” Helen Stoner said, with her eyes averted from Holmes and me. She need say no more on the subject of her personal distress. On the occasion that we had first met her Holmes had exposed the marks of Dr Roylott’s fingers on the flesh of her wrist, and she had evinced a great fear of her stepfather, which suggested abuses that Holmes and I, as gentlemen, had not cared to discuss even with each other in any depth.

  She continued with her narrative, “Mr Thurn went on to say, ‘Roylott could have had a great mind. He had immense resources of willpower and intensity but he lacked the self-discipline required, and now I see how thoroughly he lacked the moral compass as well. Knowing that he had killed a man in uncontrolled fury should have been enough of an indication that he was not a man with whom to share the knowledge I held, but I am too trusting a soul and believe too much in a person seeking betterment. Yet I knew his appetites tended toward the wanton. You told me of the days and even weeks he would spend in the tents of the gypsies he permitted to encamp on this property. I am embarrassed to confess that before I manifested the animals, his first request was for me to conjure a woman for him, a young girl actually, which I refused to do.’

  “Here, my guest paused and looked away from me as though lost in deep reflection. Whatever it was he saw, as if at a great distance or perhaps at too close a distance within himself, he viewed it with the same penetrating black gaze with which he had been staring at me. At last, he directed those eyes with their frightening wells of knowledge back to me.

  “He said, ‘My blindness, Miss Stoner, and my assistance in your stepfather’s plans, however unknowing on my part, shame me beyond words. Would that I had never met him, or having done so had never struck up a friendship with him no matter how fascinating a person he was to me, how ardent a believer in the marvels I revealed to him. I cannot undo what I have done, cannot restore your sister except only by means of an illusion you would merely find perverse, but the least I can do is make certain that the last of the three tulpas is destroyed. With your stepfather dead the creatures have lost the force of his will and have, in a manner of speech, been starving to death one by one, so the tulpa of the cat may have already expired as well, but I must be sure of it. You say you feel the cheetah has taken shelter in a closed-off wing of this mansion? Please, will you take me there now?’

  “And so I did, first fetching the key to the door that closed off the disused east wing of the manor-house from its central block. I also brought with me a lantern, and as I unlocked the door I whispered to Mr Thurn, ‘A portion of the roof has collapsed, and I feel the cheetah has either crawled in through there or through a broken window, although most of them are shuttered or boarded up.’

  “He said nothing, but merely stood silently and grimly beside me at the threshold as I drew the door open. I felt a terror that the great cat might at that very instant be waiting in the shadows beyond to pounce upon us, but the lamplight only showed us a long hallway stretching off into darkness, a kind of mirror of the west wing in which were my bedroom and the former rooms of my sister and stepfather. Again I whispered, ‘The damage to the roof is in the central room. With the door shut and locked it is fortunate that room does not communicate with the rest of the wing.’

  “Before I could utter more, my visitor said, without taking his eyes off the hallway, ‘It
is in there. I can sense it. You may close the door now, Miss Stoner, and pray lock it and leave it locked no matter what sounds you may hear from within.’

  “As I locked the door, and I will say I was greatly relieved to do so, I asked, ‘What do you intend to do now?’

  “Said he, ‘I will be taking the earliest train back to London.’

  “ ‘London?’ I exclaimed. ‘But you said you meant to deal with this situation somehow, Mr Thurn.’

  “ He said, ‘And so is it my intention, but I must be alone and undisturbed. I created these tulpas at a great remove, and at a remove I will destroy the last of them, but it will require the greatest concentration. It is perhaps even more difficult to unmake a tulpa than to make one. You see how they persisted even if only in a declining state after the death of your stepfather, though deprived of his nourishing belief in them? Even before his death they had taken on life of their own. I must have that life back. It will be no small effort.’ Here he affected a smile, but it was a horrid mockery of such an expression. He said, ‘To think that I studied and strived all these years, only to create weapons for a murderous fiend. I have failed in my entire life’s journey, Miss Stoner, having been confronted by this horrid truth.’

  “ ‘Is there nothing I can do myself?’ I asked him.

  “ ‘If it is possible,’ he replied, ‘you must focus on the knowledge that this creature is not a flesh and blood entity. It is an illusion, and you would do best to hold onto that thought with all your power, for surely the creature has been feeding off your own belief all this time, as well.’