The Unexpected Occurrence of Thaddeus Hobble

Gareth Wiles

Copyright © 2015 Gareth Wiles

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For my father, ‘Gwynny'

I would also like to pay special thanks to Mark ‘Geeks' Longman and Phil Reading, who have both shown tireless dedication to and appreciation of me and my work. Their devotion shows no signs of ceasing…

I Am Dead

Icon's Request

A Matter of Dark

Where the Birds Hide at Night

So far…

At the end of the chalky stone lane, and beyond the dew-drizzled blossoming oak trees, lay a water well. It was here, deep in Myrtle Forest, that puzzlement was the order of the day – for, this water well was in the queerest of locations. Secreted beyond a sensible distance from the village, and disguised in dense lichen, its water served no being. Who had built it, and why, would remain an unknown. Happen that a young lad presently ran up to it; not for water, but to toss a monetary gift down it and make a wish. The mousy young thing was but five years of age, and straying far from where he belonged. It was no matter, because no danger would ever occur to him out here. The well was known only to him, and would grant wishes only to him. He wished to live eternally. He wished to know all there was to know.

‘Peter,' called his mother in a shrill wail, emerging in her drab grey gown from some dense fern foliage in the distance. The boy sought to hide his well, knowing it would no longer grant his wishes if the old girl was to discover its existence. A dash in the opposite direction set the spring growth swinging about him, calling Mother's attention away from his secret. It was damp underfoot, but not slippery, and the elder's longer legs soon caught up with the little boy. She hoisted him into the air and howled with victory: ‘You are the devil himself, child! But, you cannot outwit your own mother. I always find you.' Her hair was grey, though she was not old, and her face creased in all manner of directions as she grinned. Peter's long brown hair lay greasily still like a wig as the rest of his head thrashed violently about in the struggle. It was no good, she was too strong for him. Though some part of him yearned for freedom in its purest form, he adored this about her – she was completely dominant over him, completely in charge. The little boy could rest easy in her bosom, fully protected by her unrivalled strength from any horrors that the outside world threw up. Nature was freedom, humanity was imprisonment.

* * *

Mother tossed a smelly dark lump of scrag end into the skillet above the fireplace, shielding her face as the hot brown water splashed up. There came a knock at the door and it presently opened. In hobbled Beckett the doctor, his bent cane supporting his vast swollen frame. His plethora of chins wobbled as he swished his black coat at Peter, who dodged out of the way and went to hide in the corner of the sparse room. He didn't like Beckett the doctor – he was a difficulty in the little boy's eyes. Nevertheless Mother was here, and Mother would protect him.

‘Good day to you, Mrs Smith. I bring news of your extinguished husband's debts,' the obesity gobbled delightfully, his pinprick eyes moistening as Mother fumbled about in her pockets.

‘I had some coins to pay you, good Doctor, I did,' she wailed, the sweat pouring from her brow. Peter looked sheepish, knowing full well that he'd taken his mother's coins and thrown them down the well.

‘You appear to be struggling to locate the payment I am owed, Mrs Smith,' Beckett purred, licking his lips as he stepped closer and took hold of her arm with his stubby red fingers. ‘I am sure we can think up some way of paying your late husband's debts.' He stroked the erect hair on her arm. Suddenly she dropped to her knees and then flat on her face as Beckett stepped back. ‘Oh dear, she is taken down with illness,' he mumbled vaguely.

Peter ran to his mother and tried frantically to waken her, but she would not move. Reluctantly, Beckett struggled down and lifted her arm.

‘Mother!' Peter cried.

‘Your mother is dead, child,' he sighed.

The little boy shot out of there and dashed away from the ramshackle house as quickly as his tiny legs would allow.

* * *

Peter reached the well and, clasping its stone rim, pulled himself up to peer down inside.

‘Bring her back,' he demanded, ‘bring back Mother.'

He dropped again to the ground and ran from the well, back home.

* * *

A number of folks from the village had gathered around the house by the time Peter got back. Two men were carrying the body out of the door as he stepped forward and made a grab for its limp hand. All at once it firmed up and clasped him back. Her eyes opened and she gave out a deep breath. The two horrified men dropped her and recoiled as loud whispers quickly spread amongst the onlookers.

‘The dead rises,' Beckett gasped. ‘This can mean only one thing…'

‘Witch!' one of the neighbours yelled in fear.

‘She hath the devil within her,' Beckett screeched. ‘We must purge her of this wickedness.'

* * *

Mother sobbed and tugged at the tight rope bonds keeping her fixed to the pole as they tore into her flesh. A toothy old woman held a screaming little Peter back as a villager set some sticks beneath Mother alight. The fire spread quickly, melting the woman's hair and skin off. Eventually her deafening cries for mercy ceased, and her engulfed body went limp. Mania swept through the crowd of onlookers as they roared with burning happiness. The fire went on as Peter managed to pull away and run from this awful place.

* * *

He came back to the well and, in a total fit of despair, threw himself down it. His little body plopped into the water below and he took in a huge mouthful of it. Suddenly, however, a small wooden door in the wall of the well swung open and a pair of hands reached out to Peter and pulled him up. Once lifted through the door, he was dropped and left as the person scurried away. The boy stayed on his knees in the darkness, his wet hands sticking to the soil floor, as a group of hooded figures appeared before him in this dingy recess. They huddled together in the darkness and mumbled to one another. After a moment or two, they dispersed and one approached him.

‘We are The Great Collective – we are a gathering of higher minds. We know who you are, Master Smith, and what you are capable of. You brought your own mother back from the dead. You, small child, are of a higher level like us. You will join us.'

Peter was twenty-one when the large upright box first appeared in The Great Collective's secret meeting hall. It must have come there by itself, for it was too big to have been brought through the small inconspicuous entrance. It was black – a glossy black – and did nothing but stand there. The skinny young man squinted and arched his tall frame forward, his short-sighted eyes not quite sure of the box's presence. Circling it, he hesitatingly brushed his floppy mousy hair aside and moved closer. He wanted to touch it, but couldn't. It was the only thing he didn't feel superior to. The Great Collective had certainly filled him with a sense of self-assurance. The life they'd provided for him, the only life he had ever known, was one of constant deviousness and doubt. They lived separately from the rest of the villagers, putting doubt in his mind about everything the outside world stood for – family, religion… humans as the pinnacle of creation. He believed as they believed, that humanity was an insignificant part of a much vaster universe of beings. Earth had been left in the corner, forgotten. Now that this box was here, Peter felt more than ever that the teachings he had received were correct.

Peter could see the beginning and the end – at the start there was absolutely nothing save for a phantasmal gouging of emptiness, but then all at once a tremendous explosion so vast as to be incomprehensible set forth a scattering of dust holding the very materials for the birth of life until that same dust, moving and moving further apart on its journey, got too distant and too apart that it ceased to be and became nothing once more.

‘What are you, where are you from?' he asked it.

Another of the collective entered – an older man with an auburn parting and tight skin. ‘What is that?' he called out, wide nostrils dilating at the foot of his long nose. Peter could not take his eyes from the box. Literally, he could not move. It would not allow him.

‘Darren,' Peter addressed his fellow, ‘I am overcome by It.'

‘It,' Darren mumbled, he too now drawn by the power of the box.

‘I can feel It within me, I can hear It,' Peter gasped, the culmination of the entirety of universal existence washing through his mind like a vast ungraspable behemoth. Instantly he knew all there was to know, and could see all there was to see. It was The Space, and It had delivered Itself here – open and unending for Peter and the others to peer inside. The box was both there and not there at the same time, willing to be seen by those who wanted to see. That The Space appeared to have a physical presence was but a human impression, the only way It could be understood and reasoned by these ape-variants.

* * *

The Great Collective – forever pompous, eternally seeing what they believed others could not see – had struck it lucky. That The Space had appeared only to them was accepted as divination, and with all the trappings that brought was treated with more right than privilege. They gathered around their meeting place now, Peter and Darren as their new leading forces, to try to comprehend what had occurred. The room was in complete silence, yet it drowned in a hellish din. This came not from vocals of the mouth, but thoughts in their minds. Every thought that crossed those minds could be heard by the others, and each one could hear the minds of every other living being elsewhere. It was a cacophony of madness, stopped only by a recoiling from The Space. But, the lure was too great – to grab hold of infinity was the reward for embracing It.

‘I can hear The Space,' Peter addressed the gathering around him.

‘We can
all
hear The Space,' Darren called over him. ‘It allows us all a portal into whatever we so wish.'

‘It is so clear and yet so vague,' Peter sighed, unable to fully comprehend the situation. He had a portal into endlessness, yet felt he was hitting a wall. At once he stiffened up, his eyes glazing over as his body shook. ‘The Space is beckoning me to deliver Its gift onto us all,' he uttered. ‘Immortality. We all shall never cease to be.'

‘Eternal existence?' Darren mused rather stoically. ‘Quite a useful occurrence.'

The rich man was down on his knees, his lace gown splattered and sodden with mud as Darren danced before him. The jolly man, his floppy auburn hair flapping about as his feet swiftly slipped and sloshed in the mud, roared with laughter. He held no weapon, and no other person was present to restrain the rich man. He was utterly fixed there by forces unseen, terror writ large on his increasingly greying face. Darren presently kicked a heel of mud into that face, and the man was unable to move his hands to wipe it away. He bent down and took a coin purse from the rich victim's pocket, jingling it about as his happiness increased. ‘You dunce, you dolt!' Darren cackled. Suddenly he stopped and looked ahead into the distance. Peter was marching towards him, thunder torn across his face.

‘No!' Peter yelled, ‘this cannot take place. Not now, not ever!'

‘Why not, you fool?' Darren called back. ‘We have the power to control whomever we so wish. The merest thought of keeping this buffoon fixed to the ground and it occurs!'

‘We cannot abuse The Space.'

Darren thought otherwise, pocketing the coin purse and dashing away. This released the sitting duck from the terrible grip and he further collapsed in a heap of shock.