James Palmer - Shadows Through Time

“In fact,” Elizabeth Marsh continued, “it has been occurring as far north as Greenland and as far south as…” She took the artifact from Challenger. “Rapa Nui, where this was found.”

Challenger grinned and began stroking his beard. “Madam, are you suggesting that this little trinket is somehow the cause of a few so-called mediums falling out of their tree?”

“No. What I am suggesting is that it is the symptom of a greater malady. One that spans the globe.”

Professor Challenger bellowed laughter that rocked his barrel chest and threatened to send him out of his chair and onto the floor. Burton kept his response a bit more reserved.

“Miss Marsh, you must understand that it is quite hard to believe that this artifact, found in the South Seas, is tied in any way to mental instability in London, England.”

“I understand your reluctance to believe, Captain Burton. I scarcely believe it myself, but there is something else. Something that is happening beneath the ocean even as we speak. Something my traveling companion and I discovered during our explorations of a remote section of the ocean, far from any landmass.”

Professor Challenger ceased his laughing. “Oh, I have got to hear this!”

When Challenger calmed down, Elizabeth Marsh continued. “There is a great, undersea upheaval at coordinates 49°51′S 128°34′W.”

Professor Challenger glared at her, then got up and left the room. Burton and the woman followed him.

The big zoologist was in the Society’s map room, selecting a map from a rack set along one wall and spreading it out on a large desk. He bent over it, studying it intently.

“What is it?” asked Burton.

Challenger stood up and looked at Elizabeth. “Those coordinates of yours are in the middle of the ocean between your South Seas islands and Antarctica. There’s nothing out there for thousands of miles.”

“That is correct,” said the woman.

“Well,” said Challenger. “My question then, Madam, is how could you possibly be aware of some undersea upheaval this far from land? There have been no large sea quakes reported that I know of.”

Elizabeth Marsh grinned. “Your curiosity is understandable, gentlemen. But to find out, you must meet me at this address.” She handed both men slips of paper with an address scrawled on them. “Be there, tonight at midnight, and your questions shall be answered.”

Without another word, Elizabeth Marsh departed. They watched the mysterious woman as she hurried from the map room and, retrieving her carpet bag, moved toward the entrance to the hall and was gone.

“What the devil do you think that was all about?” muttered Challenger.

“I haven’t the foggiest,” said Burton. “But I really must be going. I’m late for my other engagement.”

Burton grabbed his topper and walking stick, leaving the professor to stand there muttering to himself about the strange woman who had just vanished from their lives as quickly as she appeared.

Thirty minutes later, Richard Francis Burton exited a horse-drawn carriage in front of a building near Fleet Street. He paid the driver and stood staring up at the familiar edifice as the driver urged his tired old dray into motion. The upper floor windows were suffused with a warm glow, and Burton could see the shadows of figures milling about up there. Burton grinned. The Cannibal Club had been his home away from home for several years, and he couldn’t wait to see his friends once more.

“Burton!” Thomas Bendeshye called as Burton entered the upper room and doffed his topcoat and beaver. “About damned time you show up. Where the devil have you been?”

“At the Royal Geographic Society,” murmured the explorer. “That zoologist Challenger bent my ear.”

“Oh no,” Bendeshye said with a chuckle. “He didn’t invite you to his museum, did he?”

“No, he was consumed with other news. Where’s my brandy?”

Charles Bradlaugh thrust a snifter of the stuff in the explorer’s face. The other man’s eyes were wide and bloodshot. Burton could tell he had a lot of catching up to do.

Burton selected a wingback chair in the center of the room and sat down in it. In a matching chair directly across from him, his friend, the poet Algernon Charles Swinburne sat cross-legged, his long red hair hanging in his face. “What ho, Richard?” he screeched. “You look positively flummoxed. What’s got hold of you?”

“I just had the strangest conversation,” said the explorer.

“No doubt,” the poet agreed. “You were talking to that blowhard Challenger!”

“No, that’s not what I mean. We were discussing the recent bouts of madness among the city’s population of spiritualist mediums.”

“Yes,” said Dr. James Hunt, his voice slurred by the brandy. He was standing behind Swinburne lighting a pipe. “I’ve been reading about that. They say Bedlam’s almost full. Though I believe we’re all much better off without those charlatans running rampant.”

“True,” said Burton. “Still, to affect only them and not the rest of the population? I don’t believe in that spiritualist nonsense any more than the rest of you, but even I can’t ignore how strange a coincidence it is.”

The five of them mused on that for a while as they drank, Burton doing his best to catch up to the level of inebriation of his friends. Only the young poet Swinburne constantly bested them. Their mutual friend and fellow Cannibal, Richard Monkton Milnes, once quipped that Swinburne woke up drunk, but whatever the case, the poet demonstrated a remarkable tolerance for alcohol.

The conversation drifted on to other topics, and Burton contented himself with listening as his friends conversed. Burton needed a stable, stationary point in his life, and the Cannibal Club was it. The group had a steadying, recuperative effect on him that he didn’t know he needed until right at that very moment.

He just wished the Cannibal Club’s full roster was in attendance—it appeared that Milnes, Sir James Plaisted Wilde, General Studholme John Hodgson, and Charles Duncan Cameron were otherwise engaged. He would have liked to hear their thoughts on the mysterious Elizabeth Marsh and her strange invitation.

Talk soon turned to Speke’s death, with everyone keen to hear Burton’s take on the matter. The explorer was still angry with Speke and confused by the suddenness of his death, and was, therefore, reticent to speak on the matter. That didn’t stop the others from pontificating about it at some length. Burton drank and listened, but kept his own thoughts to himself.

Speke had appeared quite competent before the expedition began. Burton had known him for years, and was confident that there was no one he’d rather travel with to Africa than John Hanning Speke.

However, Speke had some rather strange ideas with regards to ethnology, and seemed intent on pursuing some esoteric line of study during their travels. He kept a journal separate from the one he used to detail their journey, and grew angered when a curious Burton attempted to read it. Burton awoke on several occasions to Speke screaming in his tent, in the throes of some horrible dream, long before both of them succumbed to malaria. What was it he chanted? Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtagn! Burton had a great talent for languages, and he was damned if he knew what Speke was uttering on those nights. And that particular chant occurred too often to be ascribed to malarial gibberish.

Eventually Burton too had contracted malaria, and had to be carried much of the way by their porters while he warred with his own delusions. To make matters even more strained, Speke, who had recovered from his bout of malaria before Burton, had journeyed north without him from Lake Victoria to Lake Tanganyika and, despite lacking the equipment to survey and study it properly—said equipment having been damaged or stolen—claimed that Lake Tanganyika was indeed the long-sought source of the Nile.