Overview
Brendan Childs is a supporting character in “Dark Peak.” He is the corporal at the wireless post aboard Sea Witch and the crew member who first frames Dark Peak through stories of wraiths and fetches.
Role
Childs warns Martin Mercure not to ask Irving Platt about his friends and repeatedly tries to keep the cockpit from becoming disorderly. When command reports clear weather despite the storm, Childs also reports that the wireless has gone dead.
After Mercure drinks during the flight, Childs reveals that his parents, sisters, and brother died on a ferry early in the war. He says the disaster was blamed on the Germans, but that the actual cause was a drunk captain running the ship aground. His anger turns the crew’s drinking into a moral and personal fault rather than simple recklessness.
Childs is thrown from sight when lightning strikes the aircraft. On the moor after the crash, he tells Platt that he has seen another man in Platt’s uniform named Wallis. He then sees his own dead family, runs to them, and disappears with them into the bog.