The Ribbajack

On entering the school, the matron waved cheerily to the cleaning lady, who was busy mopping the entrance hall. “Good morning, Mrs. McDonald, do I smell the aroma of our chaplain brewing tea in the headmaster’s study?”

The cleaner paused, leaning on her mop. “Rev. Miller ain’t up out o’ bed yet, Matron. I took a cuppa me own tea up t’the poor man earlier. I s’pect it’s a touch of the malaria from ’is service out in India. All manner of h’ailments a body could catch out there, they say. You wouldn’t catch me goin’ to foreign parts. Margate’ll do nicely for me, thank you.”

Mr. Plother stayed the matron’s progress for the stairs. “I’ll pop up and take a look at the Padre. You know how he hates ladies fussing about after him. Stay down here and have a cup of tea with Mrs. McDonald.”

Mr. Plother’s hesitant tap on the chaplain’s door was answered by a booming voice. “Enter!” Rev. Miller was sitting up in bed, looking rather flushed. The top of his nightshirt was torn, with three buttons missing. The headmaster smiled encouragingly.

“Just back from Harrogate. The two boys are staying with an aunt, no cause for alarm. Mrs. McDonald said you weren’t feeling quite up to the mark, old chap. How d’you feel now, better?”

Rev. Miller snorted. “Confounded busybody, that lady. There’s not a thing wrong with me. Bit of a bad dream last night, nothing more. Huh, veal’n’ham pie, and two large glasses of claret before bedtime—self-inflicted injury, as they say in the army. Feeling right as rain now, though, eh!”

Mr. Plother made the error of pursuing the subject. “Bad dream . . . perhaps you had a nightmare, Padre?”

One person was all the chaplain required as an audience. “Nightmare? Well, judge for y’self, sir. Let me tell you about it. I went to bed about eleven, never had any trouble sleeping, went off like a top. Don’t know what woke me, in fact I don’t know whether I was really awake—jolly strange things, dreams. Anyhow, I felt a definite presence in the room. One doesn’t spend all those years in the military and not know about these things, y’know. I almost sat up straight, don’t know what possessed me, but I couldn’t cry out at the creature.”

The headmaster shifted his gaze from a pair of Ghurka Kukri knives crossed over the mantelpiece. “You saw a creature, here, in your room?”

Knowing he had intrigued his listener, the Rev dropped his voice to a dramatic whisper. “Oh, yes, indeed I did, sir. Great hulking shuffling thing, standing there in the moonlight. The blighter looked like a crocodile standing upright. Had long arms, like a gorilla, with suckers growing on them. It was glaring right at me from one big eye, had a head of feathers and a big, ugly parrot’s beak. What d’you think of that?”

A smile formed on the headmaster’s lips. “Really, Padre, and how many glasses of claret did you have before retiring last night?”

The Rev’s wattled neck quivered indignantly. “I resent that implication, sir. Two glasses is my limit, always is, and always has been, since I resigned my commission. How dare you insinuate that I was under the influence!”

Aubrey Plother, I.O.U.E., held up an apologetic hand. “Forgive me, Padre, it was a thoughtless remark. But what was this monstrous thing you saw?”

The chaplain nodded knowingly. “A Jibberack, or a Jabberwok. I don’t recall the exact name they had for it out in Burma, but I recognised the beastie right away. I’ll have to go back a few decades to explain myself, so I hope you’ll bear with me, Headmaster.”

Good manners dictated that Mr. Plother could not refuse. That, and the fact that he was becoming interested in the tale. “By all means, Padre, carry on, please do.”

Rev. Miller continued his narrative. “Many years ago I was Padre to a garrison in Burma, stationed in the Paktai Hills. One day I had occasion to save a chap’s life, Burmese fellow. It was in the floods of ’twenty-three, as I recall. I was younger and fitter then, y’know. Heard villagers wailing and shouting down by the river, so I went to investigate. Saw this poor blighter being swept away, half drowned by the floodwaters. Of course, chap like me, never stopped t’think. Dived right in, swam out, grabbed the man and dragged him bank to the bank. His name was Arif—splendid old boy, as it turned out. Anyhow, after that Arif became my man, wasn’t nothing he wouldn’t do for me, looked after me like a mogul emperor. We became the closest of chums, he was like a brother to me. When my term was served and I was due to return to England, poor Arif, he looked like a lost dog. I was pretty sad, too. We both knew it was the last we would see of each other.