The thing in the woods
"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?"
VIII
I GO FISHING
The next morning was one of the most glorious that I remember in that
whole summer. I rose early, throwing the windows wide open while I
dressed to let in the full blaze of sunshine, and set myself, while
the morning common-sense mood was still upon me, to go over carefully
in my mind every detail of Lessing's story. Somewhere there must be
a natural explanation; it was only the question of finding it. Among
other things it occurred to me that someone, for reasons unknown,
might be playing a series of practical jokes upon him, but it was
difficult to credit a hoax of such malignant and serious intent, and
even assuming for a moment that Lessing was the victim of any such
plot, it did not explain those mysterious deaths which, I felt more
and more convinced, were in some way connected with his own
experiences.
It was at least certain that I was in for a fairly interesting
vacation. I remembered with grim humour Lennox's assurance that I
would find the practice a quiet one; opinions might well differ on
that point. Even if Lennox came back at the time agreed upon, I had
still another six weeks before me, and in six weeks a good deal might
happen. It would be my own fault if I did not get some part of the
mystery cleared up before then.
Everyone has his own private specific for clearing the mind. Mine
was fishing. After breakfast I hunted out my tackle, asked Mrs.
Searle to pack me a lunch, and set out resolutely, with the
determination to remain in the open air until nightfall.
Part of the creek that lay behind the house I had already explored,
and this morning I decided to work upstream, in the direction of the
dam. The air was clear and fresh and the woods were alive with
birds. Here and there the sumach and poison ivy were already
beginning to turn colour, showing patches of tawny scarlet against
the green of the undergrowth. Great painted butterflies flitted
across my path, and once, as I sat quietly on a boulder in midstream,
a kingfisher flashed near me in the broken sunlight.
The creek ran with a pleasant sound in its bed, now swirling between
great boulders, now trickling over shallows of waving bronze-tinted