Ghost Stories

by Bill Bowers

  By this time I was in a state of considerable nervous tension, although to my reason there was no adequate cause for my condition. My mind, however, was perfectly clear. I postulated quite unreservedly that nothing supernatural could happen, and to pass the time I began stringing some rhymes together, Ingoldsby fashion, concerning the original legend of the place. A few I spoke aloud, but the echoes were not pleasant. For the same reason I also abandoned, after a time, a conversation with myself upon the impossibility of ghosts and haunting. My mind reverted to the three old and distorted people downstairs, and I tried to keep it upon that topic.

  The somber reds and grays of the room troubled me; even with its seven candles the place was merely dim. The light in the alcove flaring in a draft, and the fire flickering, kept the shadows and penumbra perpetually shifting and stirring in a noiseless flighty dance. Casting about for a remedy, I recalled the wax candles I had seen in the corridor, and, with a slight effort, carrying a candle and leaving the door open, I walked out into the moonlight, and presently returned with as many as ten. These I put in the various knick-knacks of china with which the room was sparsely adorned, and lit and placed them where the shadows had lain deepest, some on the floor, some in the window recesses, arranging and rearranging them until at last my seventeen candles were so placed that not an inch of the room but had the direct light of at least one of them. It occurred to me that when the ghost came I could warn him not to trip over them. The room was now quite brightly illuminated. There was something very cheering and reassuring in these little silent streaming flames, and to notice their steady diminution of length offered me an occupation and gave me a reassuring sense of the passage of time.

  Even with that, however, the brooding expectation of the vigil weighed heavily enough upon me. I stood watching the minute hand of my watch creep towards midnight.

  Then something happened in the alcove. I did not see the candle go out, I simply turned and saw that the darkness was there, as one might start and see the unexpected presence of a stranger. The black shadow had sprung back to its place. “By Jove,” said I aloud, recovering from my surprise, “that draft’s a strong one”; and taking the matchbox from the table, I walked across the room in a leisurely manner to relight the corner again. My first match would not strike, and as I succeeded with the second, something seemed to blink on the wall before me. I turned my head involuntarily and saw that the two candles on the little table by the fireplace were extinguished. I rose at once to my feet.

  “Odd,” I said. “Did I do that myself in a flash of absentmindedness?”

  I walked back, relit one, and as I did so I saw the candle on the right sconce of one of the mirrors wink and go right out, and almost immediately its companion followed it. The flames vanished as if the wick had been suddenly nipped between a finger and thumb, leaving the wick neither glowing nor smoking, but black. While I stood gaping the candle at the foot of the bed went out, and the shadows seemed to take another step toward me.

  “This won’t do!” said I, and first one and then another candle on the mantleshelf followed.

  “What’s up?” I cried, with a queer high note getting into my voice somehow. At that the candle on the corner of the wardrobe went out, and the one I had relit in the alcove followed.

  “Steady on!” I said, “those candles are wanted,” speaking with a half-hysterical facetiousness, and scratching away at a match the while, “for the mantel candlesticks.” My hands trembled so much that twice I missed the rough paper of the matchbox. As the mantel emerged from the darkness again, two candles in the remoter end of the room were eclipsed. But with the same match I also relit the larger mirror candles, and those on the floor near the doorway, so that for a moment I seemed to gain on the extinctions. But then in a noiseless volley there vanished four lights at once in different corners of the room, and I struck another match in quivering haste, and stood hesitating whither to take it.

  As I stood undecided, an invisible hand seemed to sweep out the two candles on the table. With a cry of terror I dashed at the alcove, then into the corner and then into the window, relighting three as two more vanished by the fireplace, and then, perceiving a better way I dropped matches on the iron-bound deedbox in the corner, and caught up the bedroom candlestick. With this I avoided the delay of striking matches, but for all that the steady process of extinction went on, and the shadows I feared and fought against returned, and crept in upon me, first a step gained on this side of me, then on that. I was now almost frantic with the horror of the coming darkness, and my self-possession deserted me. I leaped panting from candle to candle in a vain struggle against that remorseless advance.

  I bruised myself in the thigh against a table, I sent a chair headlong, I stumbled and fell and whisked the cloth from the table in my fall. My candle rolled away from me and I snatched another as I rose. Abruptly this was blown out as I swung it off the table by the wind of my sudden movement, and immediately the two remaining candles followed. But there was light still in the room, a red light, that streamed across the ceiling and staved off the shadows from me. The fire! Of course I could still thrust my candle between the bars and relight it!

  I turned to where the flames were still dancing between the glowing coals and splashing red reflections upon the furniture; made two steps toward the grate, and incontinently the flames dwindled and vanished, the glow vanished, the reflections rushed together and disappeared, and as I thrust the candle between the bars darkness closed upon me like the shutting of an eye, wrapped about me in a stifling embrace, sealed my vision, and crushed the last vestiges of self-possession from my brain. And it was not only palpable darkness, but intolerable terror. The candle fell from my hands. I flung out my arms in a vain effort to thrust that ponderous blackness away from me, and lifting up my voice, screamed with all my might, once, twice, thrice. Then I think I must have staggered to my feet. I know I thought suddenly of the moonlit corridor, and with my head bowed and my arms over my face, made a stumbling run for the door.

  But I had forgotten the exact position of the door, and I struck myself heavily against the corner of the bed. I staggered back, turned, and was either struck or struck myself against some other bulky furnishing. I have a vague memory of battering myself thus to and fro in the darkness, of a heavy blow at last upon my forehead, of a horrible sensation of falling that lasted an age, of my last frantic effort to keep my footing, and then I remember no more.

  I opened my eyes in daylight. My head was roughly bandaged, and the man with the withered hand was watching my face. I looked about me trying to remember what had happened, and for a space I could not recollect. I rolled my eyes into the corner and saw the old woman, no longer abstracted, no longer terrible, pouring out some drops of medicine from a little blue phial into a glass. “Where am I?” I said. “I seem to remember you, and yet I cannot remember who you are.”

  They told me then, and I heard of the haunted Red Room as one who hears a tale. “We found you at dawn,” said he, “and there was blood on your forehead and lips.”

  I wondered that I had ever disliked him. The three of them in the daylight seemed commonplace old folk enough. The man with the green shade had his head bent as one who sleeps.

  It was very slowly I recovered the memory of my experience. “You believe now,” said the old man with the withered hand, “that the room is haunted.” He spoke no longer as one who greets an intruder, but as one who condoles a friend.

  “Yes,” said I, “the room is haunted.”

  “And you have seen it. And we who have been here all our lives have never set eyes upon it. Because we have never dared. Tell us, is it truly the old earl who—”

  “No,” said I, “it is not.”

  “I told you so,” said the old lady, with the glass in her hand. “It is his poor young countess who was frightened—”

  “It is not,” I said. “There is neither ghost of earl nor ghost of countess in that room; there is not ghost there at all, but worse, fa
r worse, something impalpable—”

  “Well?” they said.

  “The worst of all the things that haunt poor mortal men,” said I; “and that is, in all its nakedness— ‘Fear!’ Fear that will not have light nor sound, that will not bear with reason, that deafens and darkens and overwhelms. It followed me through the corridor, it fought against me in the room—”

  I stopped abruptly. There was an interval of silence. My hand went up to my bandages. “The candles went out one after another, and I fled—”

  Then the man with the shade lifted his face sideways to see me and spoke.

  “That is it,” said he. “I knew that was it. A Power of Darkness. To put such a curse upon a home! It lurks there always. You can feel it even in the daytime, even of a bright summer’s day, in the hangings, in the curtains, keeping behind you however you face about. In the dark it creeps into the corridor and follows you, so that you dare not turn. It is even as you say. Fear itself is in that room. Black Fear . . . And there it will be . . . so long as this house of sin endures.”

  20

  Teig O’Kane and the Corpse

  THERE WAS ONCE A GROWN-UP LAD IN COUNTY LEITRIM, AND HE WAS strong and lively, and the son of a rich farmer. His father had plenty of money, and he did not spare it on the son. Accordingly, when the boy grew up he liked sport better than work, and, as his father had no other children, he loved this one so much that he allowed him to do in everything just as it pleased himself. He was very extravagant, and he used to scatter the gold money as another person would scatter the white. He was seldom to be found at home, but if there was a fair, or a race, or a gathering within ten miles of him, you were dead certain to find him there. And he seldom spent a night in his father’s house, but he used to be always out rambling, and there was “the love of every girl in the breast of his shirt,” and many’s the kiss he got and he gave, for he was very handsome, and there wasn’t a girl in the country but would not fall in love with him, only for him to fasten his two eyes on her, and it was for that someone made this rann on him—

  At last he became very wild and unruly. He wasn’t to be seen day or night in his father’s house, but always rambling or going on his kailee from place to place and from house to house, so that the old people used to shake their heads and say to one another, “It’s easy seen what will happen to the land when the old man dies; his son will run through it in a year, and it won’t stand him that long itself.”

  But it happened one day that the old man was told that the son had ruined the character of a girl in the neighborhood, and he was greatly angry, and he called the son to him, and said to him, quietly and sensibly—“Avic,” says he, “you know I loved you greatly up to this, and I never stopped you from doing your choice thing whatever it was, and I kept plenty of money with you, and I always hoped to leave you the house and land, and all I had after myself would be gone; but I heard a story of you today that has disgusted me with you. I cannot tell you the grief that I felt when I heard such a thing of you, and I tell you now plainly that unless you marry that girl I’ll leave house and land and everything to my brother’s son. I never could leave it to anyone who would make so bad a use of it as you do yourself, deceiving women and coaxing girls. Settle with yourself now whether you’ll marry that girl and get my land as a fortune with her, or refuse to marry her and give up all that was coming to you; and tell me in the morning which of the two things you have chosen.”

  “Och! Domnoo Sheery! Father, you wouldn’t say that to me, and I such a good son as I am. Who told you I wouldn’t marry the girl?”

  But his father was gone, and the lad knew well enough that he would keep his word too; and he was greatly troubled in his mind, for as quiet and as kind as the father was, he never went back on a word that he had once said, and there wasn’t another man in the country who was harder to bend than he was.

  The boy did not know rightly what to do. He was in love with the girl indeed, and he hoped to marry her sometime or other, but he would much sooner have remained another while as he was, and follow on at his old tricks—drinking, sporting, and playing cards; and, along with that, he was angry that his father should order him to marry, and should threaten him if he did not do it.

  His mind was so much excited that he remained between two notions as to what he should do. He walked out into the night at last to cool his heated blood, and went on to the road. He lit a pipe, and as the night was fine he walked and walked on, until the quick pace made him begin to forget his trouble. The night was bright, and the moon half full. There was not a breath of wind blowing, and the air was calm and mild. He walked on for nearly three hours, when he suddenly remembered that it was late in the night, and time for him to turn.

  “Musha! I think I forgot myself; it must be near twelve o’clock now.”

  He stood listening, and he heard the voices of many people talking through others, but he could not understand what they were saying. “Oh, wirra!” says he, “I’m afraid. It’s not Irish or English they have; it can’t be they’re Frenchmen!” He went on a couple of yards further, and he saw well enough by the light of the moon a band of little people coming towards him, and they were carrying something big and heavy with them. “Oh, murder!” says he to himself, “sure it can’t be that they’re the good people that’s in it!” Every rib of hair that was on his head stood up, and there fell a shaking on his bones, for he saw that they were coming to him fast.

  He looked at them again, and perceived that there were about twenty little men in it, and there was not a man at all of them higher than about three feet or three feet and a half, and some of them were grey, and seemed very old. He looked again, but he could not make out what was the heavy thing they were carrying until they came up to him, and then they all stood round about him. They threw the heavy thing down on the road, and he saw on the spot that it was a dead body.

  He became as cold as the Death, and there was not a drop of blood running in his veins when an old little grey maneen came up to him and said, “Well, now, isn’t it lucky we met you, Teig O’Kane?”

  Teig could not open his lips, his blood ran so cold.

  “Teig O’Kane, isn’t it timely you met us?”

  Teig could not answer him.

  “Teig O’Kane, isn’t it lucky and timely that we met you?”

  But Teig remained silent, for he was afraid to return an answer, and his tongue was as if it was tied to the roof of his mouth.

  The little grey man turned to his companions, and there was joy in his bright little eye. “And now,” says he, “Teig O’Kane hasn’t a word, we can do with him what we please. Teig, Teig,” says he, “you’re living a bad life, and we can make a slave of you now, and you cannot withstand us, for there’s no use in trying to go against us. Lift that corpse.”

  Frightened as he was, Teig was still obstinate: “I won’t.”

  “Teig O’Kane won’t lift the corpse,” said the little maneen, with a wicked little laugh, for all the world like the breaking of a lock of dry kippeens, and with a little harsh voice like the striking of a cracked bell. “Teig O’Kane won’t lift the corpse—make him lift it”; and before the word was out of his mouth they had all gathered round poor Teig, and they all talking and laughing. And then all twenty of them bounded together, grabbing Teig, and forced the corpse on his back. The corpse must have still had some life in it, for its two strong arms seized him about the neck fiercely, and its two strong legs squeezed his hips tightly, and whatever Teig tried, he could not dislodge it.

  “Now, Teigeen,” says the little man, “you didn’t lift the body when I told you to lift it, and see how you were made to lift it; perhaps when I tell you to bury it you won’t bury it until you’re made to bury it!”

  He was terribly frightened then, and he thought he was lost. “Ochone! for ever,” said he to himself, “it’s the bad life I’m leading that has given the good people this power over me. I promise to God and Mary, Peter and Paul, Patrick and Bridget, that I’ll mend
my ways for as long as I have to live, if I come clear out of this danger—and I’ll marry the girl.”

  “Listen to me now, Teig O’Kane, and if you don’t obey me in all I’m telling you to do, you’ll repent it. You must carry that corpse to Teampoll-Demus, and you must make a grave for it in the very middle of the church, such that no one could know a new grave had been made there.

  “But perhaps there will be no room there; another man may have that grave-bed and be unwilling to share it with anyone else. In that case you must carry the corpse to Carrick-fhad-vic-Orus and bury it there; and if you cannot bury it there, take it to Teampoll-Ronan; and if not there, then Imlogue-Fada; and if not there, you must take it to Kill-Breedya. In one church or another of these you will be able to bury the corpse.

  “If you do this work rightly, we will be thankful to you, and you will have no cause to grieve; but if you are slow or lazy, believe me we shall take satisfaction of you.”