The 4th Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories

CARLTON’S FATHER Eric Ambrose

My friendship with John Carlton was never bound by very strong ties. He was about twelve when we first met, and I, although two years his senior, always lagged far behind him in class.

Yet, until he came, I automatically headed the lists and I suppose really I should have been jealous of him, but he was physically weak and my feeling of superiority led me to protect him from the bullying of others whom I disliked, so that he came to be looked upon as my protégé. He was likeable enough, did my prep when I felt lazy—which was pretty often after I’d been made a prefect—and during those last few months, when I was beginning to realise that play days were drawing to a close, extraordinarily interesting.

He told me once, on one of those rare occasions when he unburdened his inner thoughts—the result of some particular cruelty on the part of a master—that his father was a scientist. I think it was the extraordinary way in which his face lit up as he spoke of his father which aroused my curiosity, and not so much the subject, which seemed to suggest that if his father was a genius he was also a crank. He never talked to me about him again after that.

It is no exaggeration to say that young Carlton, at the age of sixteen, possessed a knowledge of physics and chemistry far in advance of any of his teachers. If a master or demonstrator was temporarily at a loss for a word Carlton could, and did, supply it, usually to his own detriment.

He was not popular with the staff. There were occasions when he would argue with them about established beliefs and, whether he was right or wrong, his powers of argument were superior to theirs, so that they sought means of arresting those powers and, being schoolmasters, they did not have far to seek.

Personally, I liked to listen to him because he was always so convincing, however outrageous the premises of his argument might be, and always as I listened to him I thought of the father whom he worshipped as a demi-God. That was why I asked him to stay with me during my last summer holidays, expecting in return a similar invitation to his home when I should meet his father. The invitation was not forthcoming, and I felt slighted. It wasn’t that the fellow couldn’t afford to entertain—he was always amply supplied with funds—nor did he ever pretend to excuse the omission.

I remember just before the last Founder’s Day I asked him whether his father was coming. He was definitely uncomfortable then and said that his father was a busy man and could not leave his work. Then I tried a shot in the dark. “Well, why don’t the other members of your family come—your sister or your mother?”

Of course, only an important schoolboy would have asked a question like that, and I could see that he was hurt. “I haven’t a sister,” he said, but he didn’t mention his mother and and I thought it must have been as I suspected, that she was dead.

When I left school I went to London, into my father’s office. Then the war came and I was fortunate enough to come through unscathed. Afterwards I got a County Surveyor’s job and went to live at Spelford. Of course I had forgotten all about Carlton by that time—in fact when I did see his name I never connected it with the precocious schoolboy I had known.

We, that is, my department, had condemned a group of farmhouses, for structural reasons, and it appeared that the group was Carlton’s property. I had not seen the places myself, but judging from my assistant’s report, they were pretty bad.

He recognised me as soon as he came into the room, and I thought he looked mightily relieved. For my part, I resolved to give him the benefit of my experience, but to keep rigidly to my duty—I had given the fellow too much in the past without his appreciating the fact.

Our conversation was cordial enough. We chatted about old times and those whom we had seen and those whom we had not, those who had succeeded and those who had failed. He himself, he told me, had become a physicist and, although he had published little, one day he would startle the world, and that day was not far off . . . and so on and so forth.

Frankly, I was disappointed when I heard him talking like that because I felt that he was a greater failure than all those others we had discussed, because his potentialities which had seemed so great were now proved to be merely the reflection of precocious eccentricity.

But at last he came to the subject of his call. He wanted me to realise that the premises were old, almost of historic interest, and even if my assistant had reported an overhang of four inches on some walls, they were in no way dangerous. Oh yes, he understood all about the “middle third” and although he had not calculated it in this case, he knew quite definitely that the structure hadn’t moved within the last twenty years. However dry the summer had been, it was absurd to suggest that there had been a settlement, because it would have shown itself on the inside; wouldn’t it?

I had always possessed a great respect for his oratorical powers and his ability to start from a fallacy and then argue logically, to prove you finally and utterly wrong. Experience had taught me that to take up the trend and answer him was fatal. Besides, tucked away in the back of my mind was the memory that years before I had wanted to see this place of his and now, strange irony, I was to be almost the sole arbiter as to whether or not its structure should be razed to the ground.

“I’ll come and lunch with you to-morrow,” I said, “and we’ll examine the parts which you say are unaffected.”

“You mean, you’ll want to see inside,” he said.

“Yes, if it’s convenient.”

He hesitated ever so slightly, “I suppose it will be necessary?”

“I don’t know about it being necessary, it may be quite useless,” I said bluntly.

He hesitated again, as though not quite sure whether to leave matters as they were or take me into his confidence. “You see, MacIre,” he said, “it’s not myself I’m worrying about—but my father is engaged on some very delicate experiments, and I don’t want him worried.”

“Your father still alive!” I said, and apologised. “You see I never imagined”—and my voice trailed off in embarrassment.

“Yes, he is still alive, with my elder brother”—then he bit his lip—very noticeably, because he was angry at what he imagined to be an indiscretion.

But now there was a guard upon my tongue. I did not want to offend him, and it was obvious that he was hurt. I remembered at school he had never answered my query about his mother. “To-morrow,” I said, “at lunch.”

The next day I arrived punctually at Carlton’s place. I had brought more instruments than I needed, but he had always overawed me by his use of scientific apparatus and this was where I was going to get my own back.

A glance at the building showed that I had a good case. If only the ass had made some attempt to tie in the bulges he might have had grounds on which to base his protest. But once inside the building, my sympathies veered round a little towards him. The interior certainly was worth while preserving.

There was a man to serve at table, and a girl who brought in the food. After all, I felt, if the man could afford to live in some sort of style, he could afford to rebuild a few bulging walls, even if it did cost a little more to preserve the character of the place.

Only the two of us sat down to eat. “Your father isn’t here?” I asked, and I think he must have detected the note of disappointment in my voice. At least one of the reasons for my presence there had been the hope of meeting his father.

He answered my question casually—except that he did not look at me—rather like an actor saying his lines to his dresser before a first-night—“No, they don’t eat here. As a matter of fact they live in their own house—over there,” and he pointed through the open window to a large, gabled, barn-like affair.

The meal was good enough, and the wine execrable. I complimented him on both, took his proffered cigar and came straight to the point. “Let’s see that wall, Carlton.”

So two of his men held the ladder and I plumbed the wall. I made a mental note to speak pretty sharply to Barter, my assistant. One part bulged five and three-eighths inches!

I was quite blunt with Carlton—there was no hope of saving the front—he’d have to pull the whole lot down, provide new foundations if he wanted to rebuild it, and that went for part of the flank also.

He took it quite differently from what I had expected. “If it’s got to be done, MacIre, then it will be done. I’d like to leave the whole thing in your hands if it’s permissible.”

I told him it was, and gave him the name of a fairly honest builder.

“What will it cost?” he asked. It was the first time I had ever heard him mention money.

“About £350.”

“Very good,” he replied.

“But that’s not all.” He looked up at me—I had always been a good three inches taller than he—“Not all?” and now his face was a pale sickly colour.

“No, there’s the other place where your father lives.”

I knew he thought that he himself had drawn my attention to the place during dinner.

He did not answer, but just stood looking at me as though trying to make out what I was thinking—what my attitude towards him was.

“I’ll have to plumb it,” I said. I was feeling uncomfortable beneath his gaze. His eyes never left me as I had the ladder adjusted and got one of the men to hold the plumb aloft I measured the overhang.

“It’s five inches,” I told him.

He said nothing.

“I can’t pass it, you know.”

He opened his mouth and seemed to have difficulty in speaking. “It’s a historic building.”

“Then you’d better protect it by rebuilding this front and the corner-returns. You can re-use the old bricks.”

There was dead silence. He looked a picture of misery.

“Is it a question of money?” I asked, knowing perfectly well that it wasn’t.

“Tell me, MacIre,” he said after a long pause, “why do you have to condemn a building?”

“Because it is a danger to those people living in it, or likely to pass by it.”

“And to which class does this belong?”

“Both.”

“The walls are bulged, they can only fall outwards.”

“That is probable.”

“I will build piers against them.”

“You couldn’t make a proper job of it—the bulge is too big and there are several nasty cracks.”

“I would build a continuous buttress.”

That knocked me off my stride for a bit. It was absurd. “There would be a weakness over the windows.”

“I would build the buttress over the windows.”

I laughed. “Don’t be an idiot, Carlton.”

“But listen, MacIre, it shows no defect inside.”

“Impossible,” I said. “With a five-inch bulge! Still I’ll have a look at it, then you won’t be able to say I wasn’t reasonable.”

He just stared at me again—that look half of misery, half of interrogation. “Look here, MacIre, that wall won’t fall. I’ll deposit any sum in the bank you like to name, to cover you. I’ll insure you against dismissal, or a claim for negligence.”

“I’m sorry, Carlton,” I said. “I would if I could—but you’re being very childish. Why save that wall (how I wanted to know!) when you can build a new home for your father and brother with the greatest of ease?”

Then his attitude changed. He blustered, he took the strong-man attitude, he tried to do to me, what I had prevented others from doing to him. It was pitiful because he over-acted.

“I shall appeal to the court,” he raved. “I shall bring the finest opinions money can buy. I will make you look a fool.”

I could have been dignified then and walked off, but I knew what I wanted. “In that case, Carlton, I shall have to examine the inside of the house,” I lied. I chuckled inwardly at my astuteness. Would to God that I had not been so clever!

“You cannot come in,” he said.

“I have a right of entry,” I reminded him, “at any reasonable time.”

I felt that it was fully on the cards for him to call the two labourers who had helped with the ladders and order them to throw me off the farm. My position would have been a particularly unpleasant one then, but one never knew just how Carlton would act.

“We’d better go in,” he said.

I followed him to the front door of the place, not without a certain trepidation. He took a bunch of keys from his pocket and used two of them before the heavy oak door swung inwards on its hinges. I followed him in.

He switched on the light and shut the door behind us. We were in a completely closed lobby. On one of the side walls two wheels were fixed. He crossed and turned the nearer one, and for a moment or two, I did not realise what was happening. Then I saw that a wall was rising behind us, through the floor, to shut off the oaken door.

It seems strange to me now, that I just watched him and did nothing, but that is what did happen. Then he moved to the second wheel and turned that. Silently the wall in front of us began to drop, revealing a door. I felt as though I were leaving a submarine by means of a flooded chamber.

He unlocked the door, again using two keys, and we passed through.

I do not know which was the greatest surprise—the fact that the hall in which I found myself was brilliantly lit with electric candelabra in the middle of the day; or the fact that there was no sign of a door or window in the bare smooth walls; or the two people who were in the hall.

One of the figures rose as we entered and came towards us. That was another surprise. You see, I had understood Carlton to refer to his elder brother, but this person was a mere youth of eleven or twelve, except that the eyes possessed a shrewdness one would not ordinarily associate with a child.

The boy caught sight of me, took a step backwards, and his mouth dropped open. He turned to Carlton, and I could see that there was anger in those shrewd eyes, but he did not speak.

Carlton advanced into the centre of the room and I followed him. I could see a second figure with its back towards us, reading.

At the sound of our footsteps, the seated figure rose and turned towards us.

That was another surprise. You see I had expected to see Carlton’s father—a venerable old man with a long beard but he was a young man, tall and slim, no older than thirty.

And then I really did become afraid. It was he, Carlton, who had lied to me, and lured me into this place and not vice versa. I had been tricked. His whole attitude that afternoon had hardly been that of a normal, sane man, and I shivered as I thought what it might mean.

But however vague my fear had been, it took definite shape when Carlton addressed the young man. I was then certain beyond any doubt that I was dealing with a maniac.

“Father,” he said, “this is the surveyor who has come to see our outer structure. I had to ask him in—because the law is on his side and it was the last hope.”

The young man looked at me, and his look was not unkindly, but his words in answer to Carlton turned the fear that was upon me into something akin to terror.

“The law,” he said, “well, well, well. But to which law does he refer?”

Nobody moved. “But there isn’t anything wrong with the structure, is there, John—how can there be, eh, son?” and he laughed.

I could think of only one thing. No one knew where I was, I had not troubled to tell even Barter, and here I was with a group of people, one of whom wanted to support a brick wall with a continuous pier running over the windows, and another who believed he was the father of a man at least ten years his senior. If there hadn’t been the thought of those secret surrounding walls, I think my sense of humour might have come to the rescue.

I jumped as my sleeve was jerked. “My father is talking to you,” said Carlton. I apologised. It was essential that I should humour these people.

“The walls are perfectly sound, you can see that. They have to be, or else the insulation would be useless. You must see that . . .”

Carlton interrupted him. “I have told him nothing, father.”

The “father” looked surprised. “Cannot you trust him?”

“I thought he was my friend. We were at school together—you remember E. B. MacIre?”

The young man smiled and looked at me. “Of course I do. There was a MacIre who was very good to you . . . invited you to his home during the holidays and protected you from the bullies. You wanted to bring him home, here . . . I remember, but that was impossible after we died.”

I fell on my knees. I had always imagined myself a courageous man, but now before these people I was a craven.

“Let me go,” I implored, “only let me go, I will not touch your farm.”

“Get off your knees,” said Carlton. “This isn’t the MacIre I knew, the MacIre who was slightly contemptuous of fear and physical weakness.”

But I could not rise. I just remained there, sweating, incapable of movement except for the chattering of my teeth, and the trembling in my palsied body. They helped me to rise and put me in a chair.

“Listen to me,” said Carlton. “You have promised to spare the farm, but I am sorry, I do not believe you. The first thing you would do would be to communicate with the medical officer of health and try to put us all in an asylum. Oh yes, you would, even though you may not intend to at the moment. But you would not succeed. You see this is my father and this is my brother, and they are both dead, dead, do you understand? My mother, too, is dead, but she is not here . . . she . . . she is dead, too . . . but she is not here.”

No one spoke. We all watched Carlton—the boy with his lips tightly drawn, the “father” smiling slightly.

“You heard my father say this room is insulated. It is insulated, insulated against something that is not material, not even spiritual. It is insulated against a dimension . . . against Time itself. For those who are in this room the wheel of Time does not turn, there is duration but no Time. I cannot expect you to understand that.”

Then something within me broke the spell. “You cannot insulate against Time,” I cried, “not in a stationary system. You would have to travel with the speed of light and that is impossible, because the Lorentz transformation formula shows . . .” and I jabbered on to prove to him that he was raving.

Carlton waited till I was finished. “You are wrong as usual, MacIre. This room is outside the ordinary four dimensions of space and time. My father constructed this room when he was a young man. He was ready to give his secret to the world when the accident, the tragedy occurred . . .” He paused for a moment.

“They were riding in a car, in the early days of motoring. I was only eleven years old, but I had spent much time in this room with my father and people called me precocious.

“They brought back my father and brother. They brought back my mother, too. I ordered the servants to take them to this place. They obeyed me because they thought I was soon to be the head of the household.

“The doctor who came said he could do nothing. I watched him, silently, noting his surprise when he saw that my brother and my father did not die. My mother, you see, was already dead. . . .

“Then, I said to the doctor, ‘please operate.’ I know he thought it was hopeless, but because the bodies grew no older, no germs multiplied, and no poison spread, he operated and they lived. For them, the time in this room has remained February 17th, 1907. If they go from here, it is death, death as you understand it, and they will be unable to return to this dimension, the fifth dimension of a space—time—universe—in the second dimension of Time. That is why you must not disturb the fabric of this barn, lest you injure the insulation within.”

“I understand,” I said.

“I thought you would,” said Carlton.

I got up from the chair. “Now that I understand, I will see that you are not molested.” Once more I saw a way of escaping from these lunatics. “I think I had better be going.”

I saw him look at the others and I did not like the look.

“I shall come and visit you, perhaps, in a few weeks’ time.”

Still there was silence. “Will you please open the door?”

“You cannot go,” said Carlton.

I took up a menacing attitude. My courage seemed to have returned. “Why not?”

“Because if you go outside, you will die.”

I laughed uneasily. “I’ll take the risk.”

“But I won’t,” said Carlton. “You see they might hang me for murder. Tell me honestly, did you enjoy the wine at lunch?”

“It was horrible,” I said, smiling at his delightfully inconsequential remark.

“That was because I poisoned it. You see, whilst time does not exist in this room time rolls on outside. Actually you died about seven minutes ago, according to my calculations.”

I laughed, roared with laughter, genuine, hysterical laughter. So mad were they that I had almost become convinced by their talk.

“You will write a letter to Barter, your assistant, and tell him he is not to worry about the walls here.”

“Certainly,” I said. So I wrote: “You need not trouble about the wall here as it is only four and a half inches out of plumb.” I signed it. I knew that as soon as Barter got that note he would suspect either that I was crazy, and search for me here, or foul play.

According to Carlton that was “three weeks” ago. It is a strange thing that I do not want to escape from this place any more, but many strange things have happened. My watch ticks but does not “go.” They allowed me to shave on what seemed to be the second day, but my beard has not grown since. I have eaten nothing since I have been here. They say that it is because there is no Time, only duration here. I spend my duration either in reading or listening to Carlton’s father. They cannot have given Barter the note yet or he would have come here. They tell me I am dead, so I suppose it doesn’t matter much, what happens.

E. B. MacIre.

The above document was sent to me by a gentleman who found it between the leaves of a volume of Encyclopaedia Britannica which he purchased in a second-hand book shop. It is without doubt in the handwriting of Esor B. MacIre, who was my superior until his disappearance in 1934.

I found it very interesting reading, but hardly what I would have expected from the very sober County Surveyor. However, it serves one purpose—it strengthens the theory that I gave to the police, when MacIre disappeared, that he had overworked and was still living in the district. He probably saw the account in the local paper of the three male skeletons we discovered when we pulled down Carlton’s Barn. Carlton himself was never found, he probably murdered the three. It was a strange place, that barn.

There is one point, however, which still worries me. The Encyclopaedia Britannica, in which the document was found, bore the name “Harold Carlton,” written in faded ink.

I must admit that it seems strange that MacIre, who was probably unbalanced, should have taken the trouble to attend to such a small detail. Still, the ways of a madman, and I am convinced that MacIre was such, are strange and beyond understanding.