The Ruskin Bond Horror Omnibus

by Ruskin Bond

  There was only one more match in the box. Her hands were so numb with the cold that she could scarcely hold it, and her injured fingers were a torture. She trembled, partly from nervousness and partly from cold, as she struck it.

  Just as it flared into light there was a tremendous gust of wind, which blew into the room through the crack under the door and through the very walls, where the boards had contracted from the dryness of the cold. She was afraid that the draught would put out the flame, and as soon as the edge of the paper had caught alight she slammed the door of the firebox with her elbow. She was taking good care not to touch any more metal with her fingers.

  She had no fear that the fire would not go this time. Canadian stoves are far superior to an English range, and there is never any difficulty in getting the fire to go if you lay it properly, especially in zero weather. She thought no more about it, and hurried to the dresser to put some cold cream on her fingers. They were hurting so much that she felt it wiser to dress them before lighting the lamp.

  The cream eased the pain a little, and she went back to the stove to see how the fire was going. Strange. There was not the roar from the stove pipe that there should have been in such a weather. Once more she felt a quiver of fear. It was positively eerie the way everything was going wrong. If only her husband had been there to chaff her for taking such a long time! At the thought of it she felt sick with loneliness.

  She put on her right mitten and opened the fire-box. As she had feared, the fire had not caught. It must be bewitched, she thought, for she had laid it properly and the wood was dry enough in all conscience. There was not a vestige of moisture within hundreds of miles in that blizzard. It must be another portent of ill omen, and in her tension she felt that the fates must indeed be against her.

  She took out the sticks of wood and the kindling, and straightaway understood. The paper itself had not burnt. She held it up to the remnants of the daylight, and once more uttered an exclamation of anger. It was just possible to make out the heading, 'The Sunday Times'.

  The paper which her husband's English relations sent to them every week. A good solid paper, she knew, but not the least bit of use for lighting the fire. No English papers seemed to be much good for that purpose, and from past experience she knew that the Sunday Times was easily the worst of the lot.

  She bit her lip with vexation. It really did seem as if the fates were against her, or was it just because she was alone? Again she glanced fearfully round the room. It was horrible to be alone like that. Why on earth had she not taken a bit more care and used a Canadian paper? There were the Winnipeg Free Press and the Family Herald on the table. If only she had used them, she would have been warm by this time.

  She flung the offending Sunday Times into the wood box, stuffed some pages of the Family Herald into the stove and once more set her fire. Now for another box of matches and then at last she would be warm.

  But her groping fingers found no matches on their accustomed shelf. Growing more nervously excited every minute, she moved her hand over every inch of that shelf. Then over the one below it. And then over the one above it. She was gasping a little now; for though her fingers encountered cups and plates, bottles of essences and tins of salt and pepper, and all the other appliances of the kitchen, they did not close round the familiar box of matches.

  She gave a little cry of alarm, for it did seem as if the place were bewitched and that something dreadful was going to happen to her. It was horrible to be so alone. Just when she thought she was going to have hysterics, she suddenly remembered, and laughed aloud from sheer relief.

  Of course! What an idiot she was! It was simply absurd the way your nerves played tricks with you when you were alone.

  Her husband had taken the other three boxes with him for his stay in the shack. She sighed with relief when she remembered how they had laughed over it that very morning when he put them in his pocket just before he left. How he had said it was a good thing she did not smoke, or else he could only have taken two boxes with him, and that she must not forget to buy a packet in Sunset that afternoon.

  Of course, everything had a rational explanation if you did not get rattled and start thinking the house was bewitched just because you were alone. And she had bought a packet of matches in Sunset. You did not forget things like that when you only went shopping once in a blue moon and if there was enough butter made to trade with the store. She laughed once more as she stepped to the table where the box of groceries was lying. All she had to do was to open the packet, take out a box of matches, strike one and then all would be well. The stove would get red-hot, and the whole house would be warm, and she could laugh at the blizzard raging outside.

  But when her hands rummaged among the paper parcels in the box, they did not feel a packet of matches. Thinking it must be because of her mittens, she took them off She shivered as her bare fingers touched the snow between the parcels. She felt every one deliberately, expecting each time she touched one to find it was the packet she wanted.

  Her heart thumped with excitement and fear when she came to the end of the box and still she had not found the packet. The house must be bewitched after all, or else she would have found it by this time. For a moment she stood in irresolution, and then, sobbing with anxiety, she turned the box upside down on the table and blew the snow away from the parcels.

  It was dark and she could only see a blurred outline where they rested. She wanted to snatch at them in her search, but she knew she must be calm or she really would have hysterics. The loneliness was more terrifying than ever now, and the blizzard seemed to be threatening to carry away the whole house. She bit her lip and forced herself to stand still until she had got her nerves under control once more.

  After a minute's wait she sat on a chair, put the box in her lap and methodically picked up each parcel one by one from the table and laid it in the box. Her heart began to thump again as she was nearing the end, and still she could not find that packet. At last there were no more parcels on the table, and the matches were not there!

  At first she could not believe it, and moved her arms backwards and forwards over the table in ever wider sweeps, until finally she knocked two plates on the far side on to the floor. Then she was forced to believe. She was alone and she had no matches. It was dark and she would not get warm now.

  It must have been the packet of matches the wind had blown away when she said good-bye to Mawson. Why, oh why, had she not stopped to look? They were past finding now. Why had she not taken more care when she set the fire? Why had she not lit the lamp first? Why…?

  Her nerves got the better of her, and she screamed with terror. She was experienced enough to understand her plight. She knew that she would certainly freeze to death before morning if she went to sleep, and was more than likely to do so even if she kept herself awake. She had been on the move from two that morning, getting things ready for her husband's early start, and after that making butter to trade for their groceries, seeing to the stock, and then going to Sunset. She had eaten nothing since eleven, she was dog-tired and ravenously hungry, and above all else she was cold—cold right inside to the innermost part of her body. She did not know if she could keep awake till morning, and, even if she did, the blizzard was very unlikely to have died down.

  It was hopeless to think of trying to reach her neighbours. Along the straight prairie roads she would never find her way in that maelstrom of whirling snow. And if she could find her way, she would probably die of cold before she had gone a mile. And there was nothing in the house to warm her.

  Ah! She straightened with a faint hope as she thought of the barn. If she could reach it, she could snuggle between the two cows and perhaps keep life in her that way. She half started up from her chair and then sank down again despondently. There was not the slightest hope of her being able to reach the barn without a lantern.

  She knew that even with lanterns, and warmed after a good meal, men had gone out in a blizzard to attend to their stock and
never been seen alive again: had just set out to walk the fifty or hundred yards which they walked four times every day of their lives, and had missed their way in that bewildering fury of powdered snow. There was nothing for her to do except walk up and down the room and try to keep awake till morning came.

  The loneliness, and the darkness, and the cold, weighed upon her like tangible enemies. It was so dark that she blundered into the wall at the far end of the room, and her head bumped into something. Her nerves almost made her jump from it, but when she put out her hand she felt a familiar outline, and her stifled cry turned into an exclamation of joy.

  The telephone! Why had not she thought of it before? Even in that awful storm, when her plight was known, somehow or other they would form an expedition in Sunset and bring help to her.

  But as she turned the handle to ring up Central, her joy gave way once more to despair, all the more bitter for the momentary ray of hope. As if she could not have remembered! The telephone had been disconnected months ago, because they could not afford the expense, and the telephone company had not bothered to take the instrument away. When No.1 Northern was only sixty cents a bushel in Winnipeg, the telephone company would not be asked to install it anywhere else. They had more disconnected instruments than they could handle as it was.

  With a sigh of utter despair she pulled her overcoat closer round her shoulders and resumed her walk. Fifteen paces to the door and fifteen paces back to the telephone. Back and forward. Back and forward, and all the time her brain flayed by the tortures of Tantalus.

  She was cold, and she knew that there was a great pile of wood in the box by the stove; she was hungry, and she knew that there was bread and butter and jam and pork and veal in plenty; she was afraid of the dark, and there was a lamp on the table filled with coal oil; she was lonely, and there was a telephone. But none of these things was any good to her, and as she paced slowly up and down she found herself babbling incoherently: 'Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink.'

  Her woollen blizzard-cap was stiff against her face where her breath had frozen, and her injured fingers were throbbing. Before her eyes swam visions of a red-hot stove and a hot supper on the table and a light in the lamp, until she could stand them no longer. Even though she knew it to be useless she simply had to do something different.

  If only she were not so hungry! She stumbled to the pantry and automatically caught up the bread tin. With trembling fingers she opened it and took out a loaf. She found a knife and tried to cut a slice, but it would not make the slightest impression. The loaf was frozen as hard as a stone.

  'Ask for bread and ye give them a stone.' The words danced before her eyes until she knew she was nearly hysterical again. She ran her hand aimlessly along the shelf until it encountered a pat of butter. That alone, out of all her supply of food, would not be frozen like a stone. She gouged out a lump from the pat with her knife and had almost put it to her lips when she remembered her hurt fingers. If the knife touched her lips it would take all the skin off them.

  She stuck the lump on her mittens and bit off a piece, but, famished as she was, it was so greasy that it nearly made her sick. She moaned with despair and idly ran her hand along the shelf again. It encountered a long, round object, and for a moment she could not think what it was. Her half-frozen fingers in their clumsy mittens could not feel, and she fidgeted with it until with a shock of surprise she saw a ray of light.

  She was holding the electric torch they had bought in case they had a breakdown in their car when driving at night, and it had been put on the shelf when they could no longer afford the car. Not much good to her now, but the light was a little bit of company.

  She returned to the kitchen and flashed it over the room. The walls and roof of the house cracked at intervals almost like a pistol shot as the timber contracted. She did not like the colour of the little bit of her cheek showing in the opening of her blizzard-cap. It was a dirty white and she knew she had a touch of frostbite there.

  She must do something! Her despairing brain caught at the hope that there might be an odd match lying somewhere. She knew it was hopeless, but any sort of action was better than aimless pacing up and down. With the aid of her torch she searched every nook and cranny of the house, but there was no match. She turned out the drawers and all the pockets of her husband's clothes.

  How she wished that she had not lectured him on his habit of leaving loose matches in his pockets, in case they set the house on fire; and how she wished he had remained firm in his contention that there was no danger in that! If only he had gone on laughing at her, and had not conquered his habit simply to please her and turned out his pockets every time he took off his clothes!

  She closed the last drawer and returned to the kitchen to resume her walk. Up and down. Back and forward. Till her brain was mesmerised and her legs ached with fatigue and cold. She was so tired that she could keep going no longer.

  At any cost she must sit down and rest for a little while. She found her chair and sat down. Her head began to nod and her eyes closed, but she fought against the temptation That way led to certain death. She began to count the minutes to help herself keep awake, but once more her eyes closed. She tried desperately to think of some possible place she might have overlooked in her search for an odd match, some possible garment of her husband's which perhaps she had missed.

  Her brain swam with visions of overalls and pairs of trousers. She could not think of one she had missed, and they made her dizzy like the sheep she counted when she lay awake at night sometimes. Her head nodded again, and this time she did fall into a doze.

  The electric torch slid from her nerveless fingers on to the floor, and the bang awoke her with a start. If it had not been for that torch, she would soon have been dead. Thoroughly frightened at her near escape, she picked it up and once more began her walk. But the brief period of sleep had given her subconscious mind a chance to work, and suddenly she remembered.

  There was an old pair of blue denim overalls hanging on a nail on the veranda wall. They had been there for over a year. She had been meaning to cut them up for clothes to wash the milk pails with and was always forgetting. There was just one chance in a million that he left them there before he had started to turn out his pockets.

  One chance in a million. There might be a match in them. Anyway she would see, and then if there was not she might just as well walk towards the barn and the warmth of the cows' bodies. She would never reach them, but it was better to die quickly attempting something than to die slowly trying to keep awake in the kitchen.

  With her breath coming in sobs, she went to the door. There was a pile of snow where it had drifted through the key-hole. She caught hold of the door handle and began to turn it. But before she opened the door she glanced back and looked round the darkened room in which she had toiled and eaten and, in spite of the drudgery, been happy with her husband. She knew that it was a thousand to one she would never see it again.

  With an effort she tore her eyes away and pushed open the door. It slammed behind her as the wind and snow swooped down like a million knives cutting at her body. She flashed her torch along the veranda wall. The beam of light wavered and then fastened on a tattered pair of blue overalls. There was still a chance!

  She crept towards them and pulled off her right mitten with her teeth. Surely after all the misfortunes of the last few hours it was too much to expect him to have left any matches in the pockets. And if he had, supposing the pockets had holes in them. And if….

  She had no more time to think, for her fingers were inside the first pocket. As she had feared, it was empty. She sobbed as she tried the second—and then the third. They, too, were empty.

  She drew in her breath and paused. There was only one more pocket—the right hip-pocket—and she could not bring herself to try it. If it was empty too, then she was done for.

  She could hardly move her bare fingers and knew that if she waited another minute or two they would be frost-bitten. Th
ere was nothing for it but to try, and then, if she drew a blank, that last walk to the barn. With the impatience of desperation she thrust her fingers in the pocket. They felt nothing, and with a gasp of despair she was about to withdraw them when they touched a little hard object in one corner.

  It was scarcely worth trying, but she picked at it with the nail of her forefinger. It seemed to be round, and she caught her breath with excitement and fear. She was sure now that it was the head of a match, but her fingers were so cold, and she trembled so in her eagerness, that for a moment she could not move it.

  Finally her reawakening hope gave her the wit to push the torch underneath the outside of the pocket. She clawed and picked at the object with her nail, and then at last she knew that it was a match, a whole match which had slipped down a tiny hole in the pocket.

  Slowly and with infinite care she drew it upward with her fingernail while the torch in her left hand held the cloth steady. Higher and higher it came until at last she was able to close the other fingers of her right hand round it. She cried aloud with joy as she clutched it, and her head swam from the reaction. She stood thus trying to pull herself together, for she had yet to regain the kitchen and light the match. Her hand was almost useless from the cold, and if she was not careful she would drop the match as she took it out of the pocket.

  Salvation was so near, and yet it was so fatally easy to make a mistake. With infinite caution she put her mouth against the overalls and slowly drew her lips away from the mitten she had been holding in her teeth. She pressed her cheek against the end of it to keep it against the overalls and then slowly edged her lips into the pocket.

  In her excitement she almost bit the match in two as her teeth closed over it, but with a great effort she restrained herself and at last stood erect with the end of it in her mouth. Her right hand felt dead as she wriggled it into her mitten again, but the match was still between her teeth as she turned and made for the door.