Transcribe
Translate
Fantasy Commentator, v. 1, issue 11, Summer 1946
Page 283
More information
digital collection
archival collection guide
transcription tips
FANTASY COMMENTATOR 283 warning to go away from the spot. But reason triumphs over fear, and he proceeds past the mound. On its farther side is the body of a dead man. The nearest constabulary is in a town ten miles away, and thence the curate directs his steps. On arriving there he discovers that it is not Saturday (as he supposes), but Sunday. How can an entire day have been blotted from his recollection? By a cautiously-managed conversation with the landlady at the inn he discovers that his missing day is the preceeding Wednesday, spent at that very place. Much disturbed, the man decides to bed that night at this same inn. Before retiring he discovers in a book there an illustration showing a minister gazing down at the body of a Syrian soldier he has just murdered, and the pose is disturbingly reminiscent of his own that afternoon on the lonely moor. The sickening suspicion that there may be an even closer similarity between fiction and fact than he is consciously aware of is his last thought before falling asleep. The sun is high in a clear sky when he awakes, and in the reassuring light of day he reexamines the book; but no trace of the illustration which haunted him is to be found. Heartened, he revisits the moorland spot by the shale mound, and upon finding no trace of a dead body becomes convinced that he has been suffering from a sort of hallucination. But that evening at the inn he learns that the day is not Monday, but Tuesday---another twenty-four hours has vinished from his ken by some uncanny means! More, on Monday he was seen to set out for the moor with a spade in hand, as though to bury something; and on careful examination the illustration in the book that worried him is seen to have been carefully torn from the binding.... Convinced that he is unconsciously guilty of murder, the curate gives himself up to the police, who discover the buried body near the shale mound and connect him with the crime. Eventually he is committed to an asylum for the criminally insane, where he writes his story... The world, I consider, is governed by God through a hierarchy of spirits...some greater and more wise than others, and to each is given his appointed task. I suppose that for some reason, which I may never know, it was necessary for that sailorman to die. It may have been necessary for his salvation that he should die in a certain way, that his soul at the last night be purged by sudden terror. I cannot say, for I was only the tool. The great and powerful (but not all-powerful spirit did his work as far as concerned the sailor, and then, with a workman's love for his tool, he thought of me. It was not needful that I should remember what I had done---I had been lent by by God, as Job was lent to Satan---but, my work finished, this spirit in his pity took from me all memory of my deed. But, as I said before, he was not omnipotent, and I suppose the longing of the brute in me to see again his handiwork guided me unconsciously to the bank of the shale on the moor, though even at the last minute I had felt something urging me not to go on. That and the chance reading of an idle...story had been my undoing; and, when for the second time I lost my memory, and some power outside myself took control in order to cover up the traces before I revisited the scene, the issue of events had passed into other hands. Sometimes I find myself wondering who that sailor was and what his life had been. Nobody knows. It is, of course, typical of Harvey's artistry to furnish two possible explanations for the phenomenon: is the curate a simple case of insanity---or is there
Saving...
prev
next
FANTASY COMMENTATOR 283 warning to go away from the spot. But reason triumphs over fear, and he proceeds past the mound. On its farther side is the body of a dead man. The nearest constabulary is in a town ten miles away, and thence the curate directs his steps. On arriving there he discovers that it is not Saturday (as he supposes), but Sunday. How can an entire day have been blotted from his recollection? By a cautiously-managed conversation with the landlady at the inn he discovers that his missing day is the preceeding Wednesday, spent at that very place. Much disturbed, the man decides to bed that night at this same inn. Before retiring he discovers in a book there an illustration showing a minister gazing down at the body of a Syrian soldier he has just murdered, and the pose is disturbingly reminiscent of his own that afternoon on the lonely moor. The sickening suspicion that there may be an even closer similarity between fiction and fact than he is consciously aware of is his last thought before falling asleep. The sun is high in a clear sky when he awakes, and in the reassuring light of day he reexamines the book; but no trace of the illustration which haunted him is to be found. Heartened, he revisits the moorland spot by the shale mound, and upon finding no trace of a dead body becomes convinced that he has been suffering from a sort of hallucination. But that evening at the inn he learns that the day is not Monday, but Tuesday---another twenty-four hours has vinished from his ken by some uncanny means! More, on Monday he was seen to set out for the moor with a spade in hand, as though to bury something; and on careful examination the illustration in the book that worried him is seen to have been carefully torn from the binding.... Convinced that he is unconsciously guilty of murder, the curate gives himself up to the police, who discover the buried body near the shale mound and connect him with the crime. Eventually he is committed to an asylum for the criminally insane, where he writes his story... The world, I consider, is governed by God through a hierarchy of spirits...some greater and more wise than others, and to each is given his appointed task. I suppose that for some reason, which I may never know, it was necessary for that sailorman to die. It may have been necessary for his salvation that he should die in a certain way, that his soul at the last night be purged by sudden terror. I cannot say, for I was only the tool. The great and powerful (but not all-powerful spirit did his work as far as concerned the sailor, and then, with a workman's love for his tool, he thought of me. It was not needful that I should remember what I had done---I had been lent by by God, as Job was lent to Satan---but, my work finished, this spirit in his pity took from me all memory of my deed. But, as I said before, he was not omnipotent, and I suppose the longing of the brute in me to see again his handiwork guided me unconsciously to the bank of the shale on the moor, though even at the last minute I had felt something urging me not to go on. That and the chance reading of an idle...story had been my undoing; and, when for the second time I lost my memory, and some power outside myself took control in order to cover up the traces before I revisited the scene, the issue of events had passed into other hands. Sometimes I find myself wondering who that sailor was and what his life had been. Nobody knows. It is, of course, typical of Harvey's artistry to furnish two possible explanations for the phenomenon: is the curate a simple case of insanity---or is there
Hevelin Fanzines
sidebar
