I will not recount the circumstances or details of my transportation to Australia and my difficulties there. Nor will I recount how I was exonerated and returned to Cornwall where I became embroiled with that horrid affair with the Pictish fetish-hammer, as my fellow Pickmanites have assured me I have rehashed those accounts with such frequency that they have grown tiresome. Let me instead relate the details of a later affair.
After being dismissed from my position with Nupkins and Braithwaite after a misunderstanding around a discrepancy of some three hundred twenty pounds and sixpence, I found myself once again at my leisure, wandering the environs of the Forest of Dean. Word had reached me that an old schoolmate, Sam Meagles, was engaged in building a coke-fired furnace in that area using a novel design of his own invention. I was not surprised to hear Meagles was undertaking such a project. He was an imaginative lad in his youth prone to flights of fancy that often intruded on his perception of the realities of life.
The locals directed me to his operation with many a wry glance. I gathered they found Meagles amusingly eccentric. It was situated deep in a sparsely travelled area of the forest. I followed a narrow pathway for some miles before I arrived.
The furnace itself dominated the clearing in which it was constructed, and its design was indeed novel. Even with my desultory smattering of engineering knowledge, I could tell that once in full operation it would without doubt revolutionize the steel industry.
However, as I gazed upon it, it became clear to me the furnace had lain idle for some time. Foliage had encroached upon it, and rust had formed on some of the more exposed areas. Perplexed by this, I proceeded to the crude shack erected near the furnace where I assumed Meagles and his crew made their abode.
I rapped heavily upon the door with my stick and receiving no reply, I called out. "Meagles! Meagles, it is I, Conrad! Are you there?"
From within, I heard a faint stirring and a muffled thud, as if a heavy slab were dropped to the floor. After a rattling of multiple latches and the door opened, and at last I clapped eyes on my old friend.
He was in a remarkable state of dishevelment, his hair and moustache were wildly disarrayed, with the remainder of his face unshaven for a week or more. His stained shirt was without collar or cuffs, and his demeanour was one of the utmost agitation. Still, he seemed genuinely pleased to see me and greeted me warmly.
"Conrad? Can it be? It is you! Conrad my good fellow! Come in, come in."
He ushered me into the shack. The interior consisted of one large room, spartanly furnished with a large table, several straight-backed chairs, and a few rows of bunk beds meant to accommodate a crew of workers. A cast iron stove sat near the center. Adjacent to this was a heavy trapdoor no doubt leading to a cellar. I surmised this had been the source of the booming noise I heard upon my arrival. The whole place was filthy and cluttered with empty bottles, cans, and other detritus.
"Are you alone here, Meagles?" I enquired. "Seems like a big operation for one man."
"Alone? No. I sent my assistants away… a while back. I have suspended work with the smelter. Another project has presented itself that occupies my full attention. No, I am not alone."
Meagles was agitated and his wide eyes rolled about alarmingly. They ceased to flit when he fixed them upon me and stared with a burning intensity.
"Conrad, we haven't seen one another since our school days, but I always remembered you as a fellow of strong character. I must confide in someone lest I go mad. Can I count on your discretion?"
I assumed he had devised some sort of invention that he feared may be co-opted by a third party. "Of course, Meagles, my lips are sealed."
"Very well. I will give you the facts of the matter, then show you what is in the cellar."
Meagles shuffled to the stove and fiddled with it nervously before continuing.
"I found him hiding amongst a wagonload of coal brought in for our experiments."
"Him?"
"Yes. A child. Cowering naked in the coal wagon. I don't know how he came to be there. Perhaps he took shelter in the wagon. At any rate I discovered him and brought him inside. Secreting him in the cellar so as not to alarm the others. You see, the lad has many… peculiarities that the less discerning among us might find distressing."
"Surely you informed the authorities and made enquiries as to the boy's next of kin?"
"That had occurred to me, but the child is so extraordinary I felt that would be counterproductive. I believe the lad is a feral child, born of the wilderness and untouched by civilization. "
In a burst of frenzied energy, Meagles abruptly wheeled from the stove and snatched open the trapdoor. I was taken aback by the strength thus exhibited. Taking up a paraffin lamp, He stood panting over the open trapdoor. He gestured to the opening then to his ear. I gathered he wished me to listen.
I will refer to the sounds I heard as speech, for it describes the sounds as well as any other word in my arsenal, but it was like unto speech a is the warbling of a bird or whimpering of a dog. It consisted primarily of a droning high-pitched rattle, occasionally my mind would try to put the sounds into words and language, but the effort soon set my temples to pounding.
"Clearly he was never taught to speak" stated Meagles. "Come and meet him."
I followed him down the steeply inclined stairs of roughhewn timbers into the basement. The name glorifies what was basically a roughly oblong pit dug out beneath the shack. It was filled with various crates and barrels containing sundry supplies used by Meagles' group.
"Charlie!" Called Meagles. "Charlie, come out and meet Mr. Conrad!" Meagles turned to me with a wink. "I call him Charlie."
"So I gather."
There came a rustling from the far end of the cellar.
A shape lurched into view. It was indeed about the size of a boy of perhaps six years of age, clad in a suit of workman's clothes, inexpertly tailored to fit its smaller frame. Its skin was of a sickly bluish pallor.
A bulbous hairless head perched atop a long curiously crooked neck. Without projecting ears or nose, it had the look of a rotten gourd or pumpkin. Large lidless black eyes leered at us above a pulpy lipped mouth that worked over the yellow irregular pegs of its teeth. A ceaseless litany of droning nonsense streamed from it.
The hands were incongruously large and broad for its stature, tipped with thick spatulate nails and filthily encrusted with dried mud and clay. It waddled toward us on short, bowed legs with a gait that was hideously comical.
"Meagles." I croaked. "I don't believe that is a child."
"Nonsense. He suffers from deformities, but this should not be cause for us to deny his humanity! It is our duty to see he has a chance to contribute to society."
Charlie stood before us, arms akimbo in an attitude of confrontation, his droning growing louder and insistent. My nerves were reaching a breaking point.
"Let's go back up Meagles, and we can discuss it."
We went back up and I seated myself at the table. After I had fortified my nerves with two glasses of brandy, I questioned Meagles as to what he intended for the creature in the cellar. He stood and paced the floor with one arm behind him, as though he were a professor addressing his classroom.
"Obviously, he cannot stay here. I will arrange to have him brought to Monmouth, where I have rented rooms. There I will educate him, at least to the point where he can communicate and comport himself in a reasonably respectful manner, then I will arrange for his formal education."
"Have you considered consulting a doctor, or perhaps a… zoologist?"
"Don't be silly Conrad. Such over-educated jackanapes would only hinder the lads' education."
"See here Meagles! I don't believe it is a child, it seems to be… to be… perhaps an orang-outan, rendered hairless in some way. It may have escaped a menagerie."
Meagles waved a hand dismissively. "An Ape? Charlie is nothing of the sort. I thought you were more compassionate, Conrad."
"I assure you I am, but I am more concerned with your wellbeing. You seem unhealthily fixated with this creature. Perhaps you fancy yourself Lord Stanhope to his Kaspar Hauser?"
Meagle’s face reddened, and his hands curled into fists, I feared he might strike me. But suddenly he sighed and relaxed.
"Forgive me Conrad, it is true the matter has agitated me to the extreme. Let us not speak of it further until morning. I will pour more brandy, over which we will confine our conversation to old reminiscence."
This we did, we finished the bottle as we merrily discussed our school days. I became so relaxed that I barely registered the gibbering from below.
After some time, we grew weary and retired to the bunks. The soporific effects of the brandy had quieted the agitation of my nerves. I was untroubled by the muffled tittering and scratching coming from the basement. Indeed, these served almost as a lullaby and soon sent me into slumber. I am unsure how long I slept, but I next found myself in that half-slumbering state that sometimes proceeds full wakefulness.
My gaze fell upon the trap door. A ruddy glow emanated from the gaps around it. I watched as the gaps widened, flooding the shack with crimson illumination. I was not alarmed. I think I felt the whole proceedings were part of a dream. The illumination flickered as thick spatulate fingers wedged into the gap. The door was opened, and Charlie emerged from the basement. His pulpy bulbous head swivelled on his gangly neck, looking to and fro. When his eyes settled upon Meagles his face split into a wide toothy grin. Clambering out of the basement Charlie scuttled across the floor.
Behind him another figure emerged. It was a duplicate of Charlie in many ways, but rather than the outsized workman's costume this creeping homunculus was naked save for a filthy rag wrapped about its nether regions like a crude kilt. In its massive, outsized fist it gripped what I would call a pickaxe, though one of foreign and extraordinary design. Its bare feet were as incongruously large and robust as its hands, with heavily nailed hammer toes. Thick hairs, like those upon the legs of a fly, grew upon the tops of the feet, comprising the only visible hair on the thing's repulsive body.
A third dwarf emerged, and a fourth, followed by more. It was as if the earth vomited forth an endless stream of these stunted abominations.
Yet I took no action, I lay under a lassitude that left me a passive observer to the phantasmagorical events playing out inside that crude shack. I now observed how Charlie gripped a serrated knife of the same outré make as his fellow's pickaxe, and he closed in on the slumbering Meagles.
My mind screamed for my body to act, but I was immobilized by unseen fetters. As one part of my mind strove against spectral bonds, another opened like a cauldron into which poured cosmic truths rejected by men for centuries. Charlie was no child, deformed or otherwise. Rather he and his brethren were those stunted, burrowing troglodytes who have lived alongside man since he was cast out from Eden.
As man's forebears reared great towers into the sky, Charlie's delved deep and wide into the earth, making obeisance to primordial god-things in subterranean tabernacles. We above have always known of them, cloaking their true horror in whimsy and folklore, yes, but we have always known them.
By some misadventure one of these infernal goblins found himself in the coal wagon and fell into the hands of Meagles, who in his ignorance had heaped indignity upon it. Now Charlie wished revenge.
Charlie crept toward Meagles who lay as though stupefied. Charlie clambered up onto the bed and stooped over Meagles' face like a clerk stooping over his ledger.
I sought to scream, to wake Meagles to the approach of doom, but I could do little more than shudder and emit a muffled squeak. Thus, I could only watch as Charlie cut Sam Meagles’ throat from ear to ear.
The deed done, Charlie began a recital of squeals clicks and titters that left no doubt as to its celebratory mood, he paused this only to occasionally lick his reddened blade with a long purple tongue that wrapped about the knife like the arm of an octopus.
Whether it was through an act of will, or through the shock of witnessing the horrid fate of Meagles, the paralysis that held me faded. I bounded from the bed and faced a brace of goblins who stood before me brandishing their bizarre pickaxes. Lacking a weapon of my own I seized the frame of the bunk and with all the power my panicked muscles could muster, I hurled the affair toward them. They scrambled out of the way giving voice to inhuman, guttural howls.
I made a mad dash to the door but was arrested when one of them grasped me about the knees and endeavoured to bowl me over. It was incongruously strong for its stature. Casting about for any means of defence I snatched the paraffin lamp from the table and smashed it repeatedly into the pallid orb of the goblins head. The glass chimney shattered, slashing open the things head which then oozed a sickly black ichor.
Guided by desperation or panic, I hurled the undamaged base of the lamp hard against the stove. It shattered and spilled its contents upon the stove. In seconds, it belched tongues of flame and a billowing cloud of acrid smoke.
The fire and smoke vexed the goblins and they shrieked and wailed. I strove once more for the door. They belaboured me with their knives and pickaxes, succeeding in dealing me several wounds, but none serious enough to stop me. The flames and smoke no doubt hindered their efforts at ending my life.
I staggered out of the shack into the first rays of the dawning sun and fled as though the hounds of hell were upon my heels. Perhaps I became unhinged, for I spent some days living as a wildman in the forest until stumbling upon a rail line. I waited alongside it until I was able to leap upon a slow-moving freight car which eventually delivered me to Gloucester. There, having recovered my senses, I secured a situation as a stevedore.
It was nearly two months later when I came upon a newspaper account of the mysterious disappearance of Meagles. As it happened some of his assistants returned to the site to inquire after him and discovered the shack destroyed by fire. No bodies, human or otherwise were discovered. The police professed bafflement and had no persons of interest in the matter save for a "vagabond" some locals recalled asking after Meagles prior to his disappearance, needless to say I made no effort to illuminate the authorities as to the identity of this person.
That, Fellow Pickmanites, is the long and short of it. I am hopeful that my account has both amused and enlightened you.