The Ruskin Bond Horror Omnibus

by Ruskin Bond

  As they drew nearer I tried to move, but was powerless, although I could see and hear all that went on around me. Two or three of the soldiers jumped from their horses and knelt beside me. One of them raised my head and placed his hand over my heart.

  'Good news, comrades!' he cried. 'His heart still beats!'

  Then some brandy was poured down my throat; it put vigour into me and I was able to open my eyes fully and look around. Lights and shadows were moving among the trees and I heard men call one another. They drew together, uttering frightened exclamations, and the lights flashed as the others came pouring out of the cemetery pell-mell, like men possessed. When the farther ones came close to us, those who were around me asked them eagerly: 'Well, have you found him?'

  The reply rang out hurriedly: 'No! no! Come away quick—quick! This is no place to stay, and on this of all nights!'

  'What was it?' was the question, asked in all manner of keys. The answer came variously and all indefinitely as though the men were moved by some common impulse to speak, yet were restrained by some common fear from giving their thoughts.

  'It—it—indeed!' gibbered one, whose wits had plainly given out for the moment.

  'A wolf—and yet not a wolf!' another put in shudderingly.

  'No use trying for him without the sacred bullet,' a third remarked in a more ordinary manner.

  'Serve us right for coming out on this night! Truly we have earned our thousand marks!' were the ejaculations of a fourth.

  'There was blood on the broken marble,' another said after a pause—'the lightning never brought that there. And as for him—is he safe? Look at his throat! See, comrades, the wolf had been lying on him and keeping his blood warm.'

  The officer looked at my throat and replied: 'He is all right, the skin is not pierced. What does it all mean? We should never have found him but for the yelping of the wolf.'

  'What became of it?' asked the man who was holding up my head and who seemed the least panic-stricken of the party, for his hands were steady and without tremor. On his sleeve was the chevron of a petty officer.

  'It went to its home,' answered the man, whose long face was pallid and who actually shook with terror as he glanced around him fearfully. 'There are graves enough there in which it may lie. Come, comrades come quickly! Let us leave this cursed spot.'

  The officer raised me to a sitting posture, as he uttered a word of command, then several men placed me upon a horse. He sprang to the saddle behind me, took me in his arms, gave the word to advance and, turning our faces away from the cypresses, we rode away in swift, military order.

  As yet my tongue refused its office and I was perforce silent. I must have fallen asleep, for the next thing I remembered was finding myself standing up, supported by a soldier on each side of me. It was almost broad daylight, and to the north a red streak of sunlight was reflected, like a path of blood, over the waste of snow. The officer was telling the men to say nothing of what they had seen, except that they found an English stranger, guarded by a large dog.

  'Dog! That was no dog,' cut in the man who had exhibited such fear. 'I think I know a wolf when I see one.'

  The young officer answered calmly: 'I said a dog.' 'Dog!' reiterated the other ironically. It was evident that his courage was rising with the sun and, pointing to me, he said, 'Look at his throat. Is that the work of a dog, master?'

  Instinctively I raised my hand to my throat, and as I touched it I cried out in pain. The men crowded round to look, some stooping down from their saddles, and again there came the calm voice of the young officer: 'A dog, as I said. If aught else were said we should only be laughed at.'

  I was then mounted behind a trooper and we rode on into the suburbs of Munich. Here we came across a stray carriage, into which I was lifted, and it was driven off to the Quatre Saisons—the young officer accompanying me, whilst a trooper followed with his horse and the others rode off to their barracks.

  When we arrived, Herr Delbrück rushed so quickly down the steps to meet me that it was apparent he had been watching within. Taking me by both hands he solicitously led me in. The officer saluted me and was turning to withdraw when I recognised his purpose, and insisted that he should come to my rooms. Over a glass of wine I warmly thanked him and his brave comrades for saving me. He replied simply that he was more than glad and that Herr Delbrück had at the first taken steps to make all the searching party pleased; at which ambiguous utterance the maïtre d'hôtel smiled, while the officer pleaded duty and withdrew.

  'But Herr Delbrück,' I enquired, 'how and why was it that the soldiers searched for me?'

  He shrugged his shoulders, as if in depreciation of his own deed, as he replied: 'I was so fortunate as to obtain leave from the commander of the regiment in which I served, to ask for volunteers.'

  'But how did you know I was lost?' I asked.

  The driver came hither with the remains of his carriage, which had been upset when the horses ran away.'

  'But surely you would not send a search-party of soldiers merely on his account?'

  'Oh, no!' he answered, 'but even before the coachman arrived I had this telegram from the Boyar whose guest you are,' and he took from his pocket a telegram which he handed to me, and I read:

  Bistritz. Be careful of my guest—his safety is most precious to me. Should aught happen to him, or if he be missed, spare nothing to find him and ensure his safety. He is English and therefore adventurous. There are often dangers from snow and wolves and night. Lose not a moment if you suspect harm to him. I answer your zeal with my fortune—Dracula.

  As I held the telegram in my hand, the room seemed to whirl around me, and if the attentive maïtre d'hôtel had not caught me I think I should have fallen. There was something so strange in all this, something so weird and impossible to imagine, that there grew on me a sense of my being in some way the sport of opposite forces—the mere vague idea of which seemed in a way to paralyse me. I was certainly under some form of mysterious protection. From a distant country had come, in the very nick of time, a message that took me out of the danger of the snow-sleep and the jaws of the wolf.

  Carnival on the Downs

  GERALD KERSH

  We are a queer people: I do not know what to make of us. Whatever anyone says for us is right; whatever anyone says against us is right. A conservative people, we would turn out our pockets for a rebel; and prim as we are, we love an eccentric.

  We are an eccentric people. For example: we make a cult of cold baths—and of our lack of plumbing—and a boast of such characters as Dirty Dick of Bishopsgate, and Mr Lagg who is landlord of The White Swan at Wettendene.

  Dirty Dick of Bishopsgate had a public house, and was a dandy, once upon a time. But it seems that on the eve of his marriage to a girl with whom he was in love he was jilted, with the wedding breakfast on the table. Thereafter, everything had, by his order, to be left exactly as it was on that fatal morning. The great cake crumbled, the linen mouldered, the silver turned black. The bar became filthy. Spiders spun their webs, which grew heavy and grey with insects and dirt. Dick never changed his wedding suit, nor his linen, either. His house became a byword for dirt and neglect… whereupon, he did good business there, and died rich.

  Mr Lagg, who had a public house in Wettendene, which is in Sussex, seeing The Green Man redecorated and furnished with chromium chairs, capturing carriage trade, was at first discouraged. His house, The White Swan, attracted the local men who drank nothing but beer—on the profit of which, at that time, a publication could scarcely live.

  Lagg grew depressed; neglected the house. Spiders spun their webs in the cellar, above and around the empty, mouldering barrels, hogsheads, kilderkins, nipperkins, casks and pins. He set up a bar in this odorous place—and so made his fortune. As the dirtiest place in Sussex, it became a meeting place for people who bathed every day. An American from New Orleans started the practice of pinning visiting cards to the beams. Soon, everybody who had a card pinned it up, so that Lagg's cellar wa
s covered with them.

  When he went to town, Lagg always came back with artificial spiders and beetles on springy wires, to hang from the low ceiling; also, old leather jacks, stuffed crocodiles and spiky rays from the Caribbean gulfs, and even a dried human head from the Amazon. Meanwhile, the cards accumulated, and so did the bills advertising local attractions—cattle shows, flower shows, theatricals, and what not.

  And the despisers of what they called the 'great Unwashed' congregated there—the flickers-away of specks of dust—the ladies and gentlemen who could see a thumb print on a plate. Why? Homesickness for the gutter, perhaps—it is an occupational disease of people who like strong perfumes.

  I visited The White Swan, in passing, on holiday. The people in Wettendene called it—not without affection—The Mucky Duck. There was the usual vociferous gathering of long-toothed women in tight-cut tweeds, and ruddy men with two slits to their jackets, howling confidences, while old Lagg, looking like a half-peeled beetroot, brooded under the cobwebs.

  He took notice of me when I offered him something to drink, and said: 'Stopping in Wettendene, sir?'

  'Overnight,' I said. Anything doing?'

  He did not care. 'There's the flower show,' he said, flapping about with a loose hand. 'There's the Christian Boys' Sports. All pinned up. Have a dekko. See for yourself

  So I looked about me.

  That gentleman from New Orleans, who had pinned up the first card on the lowest bean, had started a kind of chain reaction. On the beams, the ceiling, and the very barrels, card jostled card, and advertisement jostled advertisement. I saw the card of the Duke of Chelsea overlapped by the large, red-pinned trade card of one George Grape, Rat-Catcher; a potato-crisp salesman's card half overlaid by that of the Hon. Iris Greene. The belly of a stuffed trout was covered with cards as an autumn valley with leaves.

  But the great hogshead, it seemed, was set aside for the bills advertising local attractions. Many of these were out of date—for example, an advertisement of a Baby Show in 1932, another of a Cricket Match in 1934, and yet another for 'Sports' in 1923. As Mr Lagg had informed me, there were the printed announcements of the Christian Boys' affair and the Flower Show.

  Under the Flower Show, which was scheduled for 14 August, was pinned a wretched little bill advertising, for the same fate, a 'Grand Carnival' in Wagnall's Barn on Long Meadow, Wettendene. Everything was covered with dust.

  It is a wonderful place for dust. It is necessary, in The Mucky Duck cellar, to take your drink fast or clasp your hand over the top of the glass before it accumulates a grey scum or even a dead spider: the nobility and gentry like it that way. The gnarled old four-ale drinkers go to The Green Man: they have no taste for quaintness.

  I knew nobody in Wettendene, and am shy of making new acquaintances. The 'Grand Carnival' was to begin at seven o'clock; entrance fee sixpence, children half price. It could not be much of a show, I reflected, at that price and in that place: a showman must be hard up, indeed, to hire a barn for his show in such a place. But I like carnivals and am interested in the people that follow them; so I set off at five o'clock.

  Long Meadow is not hard to find: you go to the end of Wettendene High Street, turn sharp right at Scott's Corner where the village ends, and take the winding lane, Wettendene Way. This will lead you, through a green tunnel, to Long Meadow, where the big Wagnall's Barn is.

  Long Meadow was rich grazing land in better times, but now it is good for nothing but a pitiful handful of sheep that nibble the coarse grass. There has been no use for the barn these last two generations. It was built to last hundreds of years; but the land died first. This had something to do with water—either a lack or an excess of it. Long Meadow is good for nothing much, at present, but the Barn stands firm and four-square to the capricious rains and insidious fogs of Wettendene Marsh. (If it were not for the engineers who dammed the river, the whole area would, by now, be under water.) However, the place is dry in dry weather.

  Still, Long Meadow has the peculiarly dreary atmosphere of a swamp and Wagnall's Barn is incongruously sturdy in that wasteland. It is a long time since any produce was stocked in Wagnall's Barn. Mr Etheridge, who owns it, rents it for dances, amateur theatrical shows and what not.

  That playbill aroused my curiosity. It was boldly printed in red, as follows:

  !!! JOLLY JUMBO'S CARNIVAL !!!

  !! THE ONE AND ONLY !!

  COME AND SEE

  !! GORGON, The Man Who Eats Bricks & Swallows

  Glass !!

  !! THE HUMAN SKELETON !!

  !! THE INDIA RUBBER BEAUTY –

  She Can Put Her Legs Around Her Neck & Walk On

  Her Hands !!

  !! A LIVE MERMAID !!

  !! ALPHA, BETA, AND DOT.

  The World–Famous Tumblers

  With The Educated Dog !!

  ! JOLLY JUMBO !

  !! JOLLY JUMBO !!

  I left early, because I like to look behind the scenes, and have a chat with a wandering freak or two. I remembered a good friend of mine who had been a Human Skeleton—six foot six and weighed a hundred pounds—ate five meals a day, and was as strong as a bull. He told good stories in that coffee-bar that is set up where the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Combined Circuses rest in Florida for the winter. I 'tasted sawdust', as the saying goes, and had a yearning to sit on the ground and hear strange stories. Not that I expected much of Wettendene. All the same the strangest people turn up at the unlikeliest places…

  Then the rain came down, as it does in an English summer. The sky sagged, rumbled a borborygmic threat of thunderstorms, which seemed to tear open clouds like bags of water.

  Knowing our English summer, I had come prepared with a mackintosh, which I put on as I ran for the shelter of the barn.

  I was surprised to find it empty. The thunder was loud, now, and there were zigzags of lightning in the east; the pelting rain sounded on the meadow like a maraca. I took off my raincoat and lit a cigarette—and then, in the light of the match flame, I caught a glimpse of two red-and-green eyes watching me, in a far corner, about a foot away from the floor.

  It was not yet night, but I felt in that moment such a pang of horror as comes only in the dark; but I am so constituted that, when frightened, I run forward. There was something unholy about Wagnall's Barn, but I should have been ashamed not to face it, whatever it might be. So I advanced, with my walking-stick; but then there came a most melancholy whimper, and I knew that the eyes belonged to a dog.

  I made a caressing noise and said: 'Good dog, good doggie! Come on, doggie!'—feeling grateful for his company. By the light of another match, I saw a grey poodle, neatly clipped in the French style. When he saw me, he stood up on his hindlegs and danced.

  In the light of that same match I saw, also, a man squatting on his haunches with his head in his hands. He was dressed only in trousers and a tattered shirt. Beside him lay a girl. He had made a bed for her out of his clothes and, the rain falling softer, I could hear her breathing, harsh and laborious. The clouds lifted. A little light came into the barn. The dog danced, barking, and the crouching man awoke, raising a haggard face.

  'Thank God you've come,' he said. 'She can't breathe. She's got an awful pain in her chest, and a cough. She can't catch her breath, and she's burning. Help her, Doctor—Jolly Jumbo has left us high and dry.'

  'What?' I said. 'Went on and left you here, all alone?'

  'Quite right, Doctor.'

  I said: 'I'm not a doctor.'

  'Jumbo promised to send a doctor from the village,' the man said, with a laugh more unhappy than tears. 'Jolly Jumbo promised! I might have known. I did know. Jolly Jumbo never kept his word. Jumbo lives for hisself. But he didn't ought to leave us here in the rain, and Dolores in a bad fever. No, nobody's got the right. No!'

  I said: 'You might have run down to Wettendene yourself, and got the doctor.'

  ' "Might" is a long word, mister. I've broke my ankle and my left wrist. Look at the mud on me, and see if I h
aven't tried… Third time, working my way on my elbows—and I am an agile man—I fainted with the pain, and half drowned in the mud…But Jumbo swore his Bible oath to send a physician for Dolores. Oh, dear me!'

  At this the woman between short, agonised coughs, gasped: 'Alma de mi corazan—heart of my soul—not leave? So cold, so hot, so cold. Please, not go?'

  'I'll see myself damned first,' the man said, 'and so will Dot. Eh, Dot?'

  At this the poodle barked and stood on its hindlegs, dancing.

  The man said, drearily: 'She's a woman, do you see, sir. But one of the faithful kind. She come out of Mexico. That alma de mi corazan—she means it. Actually, it means 'soul of my heart'. There's nothing much more you can say to somebody you love, if you mean it… So you're not a doctor? More's the pity! I'd hoped you was. But oh, sir, for the sake of Christian charity, perhaps you'll give us a hand.

  'She and me, we're not one of that rabble of layabouts, and gyppos, and what not. Believe me, sir, we're artists of our kind. I know that a gentleman like you doesn't regard us, because we live rough. But it would be an act of kindness for you to get a doctor up from Wettendene, because my wife is burning and coughing, and I'm helpless.