The Whisperer - Brian Lumley, ebook, CALIBRE SFF 1970s, Temp 2
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THE WHISPERER
by
Brian Lumley
The first time Miles Benton saw the little fellow was on the train. Bentonwas commuting to his office job
in the city and he sat alone in a second-class compartment. The ‘little fellow’ – a very
ugly
little man, from
what Benton could see of him out of the corner of his eye, with a lopsided hump and dark or dirty
features, like a gnomish gypsy – entered the compartment and took a seat in the far corner. He was
dressed in a floppy black wide-brimmed hat that fell over half his face and a black overcoat longer than
himself that trailed to the floor.
Bentonwas immediately aware of the smell, a rank stench which quite literally would have done credit to
the lowliest farmyard, and correctly deduced its source. Despite the dry acrid smell of stale tobacco from
the ashtrays and the lingering odour of grimy stations, the compartment had seemed positively perfumed
prior to the advent of the hunchback. The day was quite chill outside, butBenton nevertheless stood up
and opened the window, pulling it down until the draft forced back the fumes from his fellow passenger.
He was then obliged to put away his flapping newspaper and sit back, his collar upturned against the
sudden cold blast, mentally cursing the smelly little chap for fouling ‘his’ compartment.
A further five minutes sawBenton ’s mind made up to change compartments. That way he would be
removed from the source of the odorous irritation, and he would no longer need to suffer this intolerable
blast of icy air. But no sooner was his course of action determined than the ticket collector arrived, sliding
open the door and sticking his well-known and friendly face inside the compartment.
“Mornin’, sir,” he said briskly toBenton , merely glancing at the other traveller. “Tickets, please.”
Bentongot out his ticket and passed it to be examined. He noticed with satisfaction as he did so that the
ticket collector wrinkled his nose and sniffed suspiciously at the air, eyeing the hunchback curiously.
Bentonretrieved his ticket and the collector turned to the little man in the far corner. “Yer ticket …
sir
…
if yer don’t mind.” He looked the little chap up and down disapprovingly.
The hunchback looked up from under his black floppy hat and grinned. His eyes were jet and bright as a
bird’s. He winked and indicated that the ticket collector should bend down, expressing an obvious desire
to say something in confidence. He made no effort to produce a ticket.
The ticket collector frowned in annoyance, but nevertheless bent his ear to the little man’s face. He
listened for a moment or two to a chuckling, throaty whisper. It actually appeared toBenton that the
hunchback was
chortling
as he whispered his obscene secret into the other’s ear, and the traveller could
almost hear him saying: “Feelthy postcards! Vairy dairty pictures!”
The look on the face of the ticket collector changed immediately; his expression went stony hard.
“Aye, aye!”Benton said to himself. “The little blighter’s got no ticket! He’s for it now.”
But no, the ticket collector said nothing to the obnoxious midget, but straightened and turned toBenton .
“Sorry, sir,” he said, “but this compartment’s private. I’ll ’ave ter arsk yer ter leave.”
“But,”Benton gasped incredulously, “I’ve been travelling in this compartment for years. It’s never been
a, well, a ‘private’ compartment before!”
“No, sir, p’raps not,” said the ticket collector undismayed. “But it is now. There’s a compartment next
door; jus’ a couple of gents in there; I’m sure it’ll do jus’ as well.” He held the door open forBenton ,
daring him to argue the point further. “Sir?”
“Ah, well,”Benton thought, resignedly, “I was wanting to move.” Nevertheless, he looked down
aggressively as he passed the hunchback, staring hard at the top of the floppy hat. The little man seemed
to know. He looked up and grinned, cocking his head on one side and grinning.
Bentonstepped quickly out into the corridor and took a deep breath. “Damn!” he swore out loud.
“Yer pardon, sir?” inquired the ticket collector, already swaying off down the corridor.
“Nothing!”Benton snapped in reply, letting himself into the smoky, crowded compartment to which he
had been directed.
The very next morningBenton plucked up his courage (he had never been a
very
brave man), stopped
the ticket collector, and asked him what it had all been about. Who had the little chap been? What
privileges did he have that an entire compartment had been reserved especially for him, the grim little
gargoyle?
To which the ticket collector replied, “Eh? An ’unchback? Are yer sure it was
this
train, sir? Why, we
haint ’ad no private or reserved compartments on this ’ere train since it became a commuter special! And
as fer a ’unchback – well!”
“But surely you remember asking me to leave my compartment –
this
compartment?”Benton insisted.
“’Ere, yer pullin’ me leg, haint yer, sir?” laughed the ticket collector good-naturedly. He slammed shut
the compartment door behind him and smilingly strode away without waiting for an answer,
leavingBenton alone with his jumbled and whirling thoughts.
“Well, I never!” the commuter muttered worriedly to himself. He scratched his head and then,
philosophically, began to quote a mental line or two from a ditty his mother had used to say to him when
he was a child:
The other day upon the stair
I saw a man who wasn’t there
…
Bentonhad almost forgotten about the little man with the hump and sewer-like smell by the time their
paths crossed again. It happened one day some three months later, with spring just coming on, when, in
acknowledgement of the bright sunshine,Benton decided to forego his usual sandwich lunch at the office
for a noonday pint at the Bull & Bush.
The entire pub, except for one corner of the bar, appeared to be quite crowded, but it was not
untilBenton had elbowed his way to the corner in question that he saw why it was unoccupied; or rather,
why it had only one occupant. The
smell
hit him at precisely the same time as he saw, sitting on a bar
stool with his oddly humped back to the regular patrons, the little man in black with his floppy
broad-brimmed hat.
That the other customers were aware of the cesspool stench was obvious –Benton watched in
fascination the wrinkling about him of at least a dozen pairs of nostrils – and yet not a man complained.
And more amazing yet, no one even attempted to encroach upon the little fellow’s territory in the bar
corner. No one, that is, exceptBenton …
Holding his breath,Benton stepped forward and rapped sharply with his knuckles on the bar just to the
left of where the hunchback sat. “Beer, barman. A pint of best, please.”
The barman smiled chubbily and stepped forward, reaching out for a beer pump and slipping a glass
beneath the tap. But even as he did so the hunchback made a small gesture with his head, indicating that
he wanted to say something …
Benton had seen all this before, and all the many sounds of the pub – the chattering of people, the clink
of coins and the clatter of glasses – seemed to fade to silence about him as he focused his full
concentration upon the barman and the little man in the floppy hat. In slow motion, it seemed, the barman
bent his head down toward the hunchback, and again Benton heard strangely chuckled whispers as the
odious dwarf passed his secret instructions.
Curiously, fearfully, in something very akin to dread, Benton watched the portly barman’s face undergo
its change, heard the
hissss
of the beer pump, saw the full glass come out from beneath the bar … to
plump down in front of the hunchback! Hard-eyed, the barman stuck his hand out in front of Benton’s
nose. “That’s half a dollar to you, sir.”
“But …” Benton gasped, incredulously opening and closing his mouth. He already had a coin in his hand,
with which he had intended to pay for his drink, but now he pulled his hand back.
“Half a dollar, sir,” the barman repeated ominously, snatching the coin from Benton’s retreating fingers,
“and would you mind moving down the bar, please? It’s a bit crowded this end.”
In utter disbelief Benton jerked his eyes from the barman’s face to his now empty hand, and from his
hand to the seated hunchback; and as he did so the little man turned his head towards him and grinned.
Benton was aware only of the bright, bird-like eyes beneath the wide brim of the hat – not of the
darkness surrounding them. One of those eyes closed suddenly in a wink, and then the little man turned
back to his beer.
“But,” Benton again croaked his protest at the publican, “that’s
my
beer he’s got!” He reached out and
caught the barman’s rolled-up sleeve, following him down the bar until forced by the press of patrons to
let go. The barman finally turned.
“Beer, sir?” The smile was back on his chubby face. “Certainly – half a dollar to you, sir.”
Abruptly the bar sounds crashed in again upon Benton’s awareness as he turned to elbow his way
frantically, almost hysterically, through the crowded room to the door. Out of the corner of his eye he
noticed that the little man, too, had left. A crush of thirsty people had already moved into the space he
had occupied in the bar corner.
Outside in the fresh air Benton glared wild-eyed up and down the busy street; and yet he was half-afraid
of seeing the figure his eyes sought. The little man, however, had apparently disappeared into thin air.
“God damn him!” Benton cried in sudden rage, and a passing policeman looked at him very curiously
indeed.
He was annoyed to notice that the policeman followed him all the way back to the office.
At noon the next day Benton was out of the office as if at the crack of a starting pistol. He almost ran the
four blocks to the Bull & Bush, pausing only to straighten his tie and tilt his bowler a trifle more
aggressively in the mirror of a shop window. The place was quite crowded, as before, but he made his
way determinedly to the bar, having first checked that the air was quite clean – ergo, that the little man
with the hump was quite definitely
not
there.
He immediately caught the barman’s eye. “Bartender, a beer, please. And –” he lowered his voice “– a
word, if you don’t mind.”
The publican leaned over the bar confidentially, and Benton lowered his tone still further to whisper, “Er,
who
is
he – the, er, the little chap? Is he, perhaps, the boss of the place? Quite a little, er,
eccentric
, isn’t
he?”
“Eh?” said the barman, looking puzzledly about. “Who d’you mean, sir?”
The genuinely puzzled expression on the portly man’s face ought to have told Benton all he needed to
know, but Benton simply could not accept that, not a second time. “I mean the hunchback.” He raised
his voice in desperation. “The little chap in the floppy black hat who sat in the corner of the bar only
yesterday – who stank to high heaven and drank
my
beer! Surely you remember him?”
The barman slowly shook his head and frowned, then called out to a group of standing men: “Joe, here a
minute.” A stocky chap in a cloth cap and tweed jacket detached himself from the general hubbub and
moved to the bar. “Joe,” said the barman, “you were in here yesterday lunch; did you see a – well, a –
how was it, sir?” He turned back to Benton.
“A little chap with a floppy black hat and a hump,” Benton patiently, worriedly repeated himself. “He
was sitting in the bar corner. Had a pong like a dead rat.”
Joe thought about it for a second, then said, “Yer sure yer got the right pub, guv? I mean, we gets no
tramps or weirdos in ’ere. ’Arry won’t ’ave ’em, will yer, ’Arry?” He directed his question at the
barman.
“No, he’s right, sir. I get upset with weirdos. Won’t have them.”
“But … this
is
the Bull & Bush, isn’t it?” Benton almost stammered, gazing wildly about, finding
unaccustomed difficulty in speaking.
“That’s right, sir,” answered Harry the barman, frowning heavily now and watching sideways.
“But –”
“Sorry, chief,” the stocky Joe said with an air of finality. “Yer’ve got the wrong place. Must ’ave been
some other pub.” Both the speaker and the barman turned away a trifle awkwardly, Benton thought, and
he could feel their eyes upon him as he moved dazedly away from the bar towards the door. Again lines
remembered of old repeated themselves in his head:
He wasn’t there again today –
Oh how I wish he’d go away!
“Here, sir!” cried the barman, suddenly, remembering. “Do you want a beer or not, then?”
“
No!
” Benton snarled. Then, on impulse: “Give it to – to
him!
– when next he comes in …”
Over the next month or so certain changes took place in Benton, changes which would have seemed
quite startling to anyone knowing him of old. To begin with, he had apparently broken two habits of very
long standing. One: instead of remaining in his compartment aboard the morning train and reading his
newspaper – as had been his wont for close on nine years – he was now given to spending the first half
hour of his journey peering into the many compartments while wandering up and down the long corridor,
all the while wearing an odd, part puzzled, part apologetic expression. Two: he rarely took his lunch at
the office any more, but went out walking in the city instead, stopping for a drink and a sandwich at any
handy local pub. (But never the Bull & Bush, though he always ensured that his strolling took him close
by the latter house; and had anyone been particularly interested, then Benton might have been noticed to
keep a very wary eye on the pub, almost as if he had it under observation.
But then, as summer came on and no new manifestation of Benton’s –
problem
– came to light, he began
to forget all about it, to relegate it to that category of mental phenomena known as ‘daydreams’, even
though he had known no such phenomena before. And as the summer waxed, so the nagging worry at
the back of his mind waned, until finally he convinced himself that his daydreams were gone for good.
But he was wrong …
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