The Woman in Black: A Ghost Story

by Susan Hill

  After a while, I forced myself to look at the last document also. That too was a death certificate, but dated some twelve years after the other two.

  It was for Jennet Eliza Humfrye, spinster, aged thirty-six years. The cause of death was given simply as “heart failure.”

  I sat down heavily in my chair. But I was too agitated to remain there for long and in the end I called to Spider and went out again into the November afternoon that was already closing in to an early twilight, and began to walk, away from Mr. Daily’s house and garden, past the barns and stables and sheds and off across some stubble. I felt better for the exercise. Around me there was only the countryside, ploughed brown in ridges, with low hedges and, here and there, two or three elm trees, their bare branches full of rooks’ nests, from which those ugly black birds flew up in a raucous, flapping flock, every now and then, to reel about, cawing, in the leaden sky. There was a chill wind blowing over the fields driving a spatter of hard rain before it. Spider seemed pleased to be out.

  As I walked, my thoughts were all concentrated upon the papers I had just read and the story they had told and which was now becoming clear and complete. I had found out, more or less by chance, the solution—or much of it—to the identity of the woman in black, as well as the answer to many other questions. But, although I now knew more, I was not satisfied by the discovery, only upset and alarmed—and afraid too. I knew—and yet I did not know, I was bewildered and nothing had truly been explained. For how can such things be? I have already stated that I had no more believed in ghosts than does any healthy young man of sound education, reasonable intelligence and matter-of-fact inclinations. But ghosts I had seen. An event, and that a dreadful, tragic one, of many years ago, which had taken place and been done with, was somehow taking place over and over again, repeating itself in some dimension other than the normal, present one. A pony trap, carrying a boy of six called Nathaniel, the adopted son of Mr. and Mrs. Drablow, and also his nursemaid, had somehow taken a wrong path in the sea mist and veered off the safety of the causeway and onto the marshes, where it had been sucked into the quicksands and swallowed up by the mud and rising waters of the estuary. The child and the nursemaid had been drowned and so presumably had the pony and whoever had been driving the trap. And now, out on those same marshes, the whole episode, or a ghost, a shadow, a memory of it, somehow happened again and again—how often I did not know. But nothing could be seen now, only heard.

  The only other things I knew were that the boy’s mother, Jennet Humfrye, had died of a wasting disease twelve years after her son, that they were both buried in the now disused and tumbledown graveyard beyond Eel Marsh House; that the child’s nursery had been preserved in that house as he had left it, with his bed, his clothes, his toys, all undisturbed, and that his mother haunted the place. Moreover, that the intensity of her grief and distress together with her pent-up hatred and desire for revenge permeated the air all around.

  And it was that which so troubled me, the force of those emotions, for those were what I believed had power to harm. But to harm who? Was not everyone connected with that sad story now dead? For presumably Mrs. Drablow had been the very last of them.

  Eventually I began to be tired and turned back but although I could not find any solution to the business—or perhaps because it was all so inexplicable—I could not put it from my mind, I worried at it all the way home and brooded upon it as I sat in my quiet room, looking out into the evening darkness.

  By the time the gong was sounded for dinner I had worked myself up into such a fever of agitation that I determined to pour the whole story out to Mr. Samuel Daily and to demand to hear anything whatever that he knew or had ever heard about the business.

  The scene was as before, the study of Mr. Daily’s house after dinner, with the two of us in the comfortable wing chairs, the decanter and glasses between us on the small table. I was feeling considerably better after another good dinner.

  I had just come to the end of my story. Mr. Daily had sat, listening without interruption, his face turned away from me, as I had relived, though with surprising calm, all the events of my short stay at Eel Marsh House, leading up to the time when he had found me in a faint outside early that morning. And I had also told him of my conclusions, drawn from my perusal of the packet of letters and the death certificates.

  He did not speak for some minutes. The clock ticked. The fire burned evenly and sweetly in the grate. The dog Spider lay in front of it on the hearth-rug. Telling the story had been like a purgation and now my head felt curiously light, my body in that limp state such as follows upon a fever or a fright. But I reflected that I could, from this moment on, only get better, because I could only move step by steady step away from those awful happenings, as surely as time went on.

  “Well,” he said at last. “You have come a long way since the night I met you on the late train.”

  “It feels like a hundred years ago. I feel like another man.”

  “You’ve gone through some rough seas.”

  “Well, I’m in the calm after the storm now and there’s an end of it.”

  I saw that his face was troubled.

  “Come,” I said bravely, “you don’t think any more harm can come of it surely? I never intend to go back there. Nothing would persuade me.”

  “No.”

  “Then all is well.”

  He did not answer, but leaned forward and poured himself another small tot of whisky.

  “Though I do wonder what will happen to the house,” I said. “I’m sure no one local is ever going to want to live there and I can’t imagine anyone who might come from outside staying for long, once they get to know what the place is really like—and even if they manage not to hear any of the stories about it in advance. Besides, it’s a rambling inconvenient sort of spot. Whoever would want it?”

  Samuel Daily shook his head.

  “Do you suppose,” I asked, after a few moments in which we sat in silence with our own thoughts, “that the poor old woman was haunted night and day by the ghost of her sister and that she had to endure those dreadful noises out there?”—for Mr. Daily had told me that the two had been sisters—“if such was the case, I wonder how she could have endured it without going out of her mind?”

  “Perhaps she did not.”

  “Perhaps.”

  I was growing more and more sensible of the fact that he was holding something back from me, some explanation or information about Eel Marsh House and the Drablow family and, because I knew that, I would not rest or be quite easy in my mind until I had found out everything there was to know. I decided to urge him strongly to tell it to me.

  “Was there something I still did not see? If I had stayed there any longer would I have encountered yet more horrors?”

  “That I cannot tell.”

  “But you could tell me something.”

  He sighed and shifted about uneasily in his chair avoiding my eye and looking into the fire, then stretching out his leg to rub at the dog’s belly with the toe of his boot.

  “Come, we’re a good way from the place and my nerves are quite steady again. I must know. It can’t hurt me now.”

  “Not you,” he said. “No, not you maybe.”

  “For God’s sake, what is it you are holding back, man? What are you so afraid of telling me?”

  “You, Arthur,” he said, “will be away from here tomorrow or the next day. You, if you are lucky, will neither hear nor see nor know of anything to do with that damned place again. The rest of us have to stay. We’ve to live with it.”

  “With what? Stories—rumors? With the sight of that woman in black from time to time? With what?”

  “With whatever will surely follow. Sometime or other. Crythin Gifford has lived with that for fifty years. It’s changed people. They don’t speak of it, you found that out. Those who have suffered worst say least—Jerome, Keckwick.”

  I felt my heartbeat increase, I put a hand to my collar to loosen it a little, dre
w my chair back from the fire. Now that the moment had come, I did not know after all whether I wanted to hear what Daily had to say.

  “Jennet Humfrye gave up her child, the boy, to her sister, Alice Drablow, and Alice’s husband, because she’d no choice. At first she stayed away—hundreds of miles away—and the boy was brought up a Drablow and was never intended to know his mother. But, in the end, the pain of being parted from him, instead of easing, grew worse and she returned to Crythin. She was not welcome at her parents’ house and the man—the child’s father—had gone abroad for good. She got rooms in the town. She’d no money. She took in sewing, she acted as a companion to a lady. At first, apparently, Alice Drablow would not let her see the boy at all. But Jennet was so distressed that she threatened violence and in the end the sister relented—just so far. Jennet could visit very occasionally, but never see the boy alone nor ever disclose who she was or that she had any relationship to him. No one ever foresaw that he’d turn out to look so like her, nor that the natural affinity between them would grow out. He became more and more attached to the woman who was, when all was said and done, his own mother, more and more fond, and as he did so he began to be colder toward Alice Drablow. Jennet planned to take him away, that much I do know. Before she could do so, the accident happened, just as you heard. The boy … the nursemaid, the pony trap and its driver, Keckwick …”

  “Keckwick?”

  “Yes. His father. And there was the boy’s little dog too. That’s a treacherous place, as you’ve found out to your own cost. The sea fret sweeps over the marshes suddenly, the quicksands are hidden.”

  “So they all drowned.”

  “And Jennet watched. She was at the house, watching from an upper window, waiting for them to return.”

  I caught my breath, horrified.

  “The bodies were recovered but they left the pony trap, it was held too fast by the mud. From that day Jennet Humfrye began to go mad.”

  “Was there any wonder?”

  “No. Mad with grief and mad with anger and a desire for revenge. She blamed her sister who had let them go out that day, though it was no one’s fault, the mist comes without warning.”

  “Out of a clear sky.”

  “Whether because of her loss and her madness or what, she also contracted a disease which caused her to begin to waste away. The flesh shrank from her bones, the color was drained from her, she looked like a walking skeleton—a living specter. When she went about the streets, people drew back. Children were terrified of her. She died eventually. She died in hatred and misery. And as soon as ever she died the hauntings began. And so they have gone on.”

  “What, all the time? Ever since?”

  “No. Now and again. Less, these past few years. But still she is seen and the sounds are heard by someone chancing to be out on the marsh.”

  “And presumably by old Mrs. Drablow?”

  “Who knows?”

  “Well, Mrs. Drablow is dead. There, surely, the whole matter will rest.”

  But Mr. Daily had not finished. He was just coming to the climax of his story.

  “And whenever she has been seen,” he said in a low voice, “in the graveyard, on the marsh, in the streets of the town, however briefly, and whoever by, there has been one sure and certain result.”

  “Yes?” I whispered.

  “In some violent or dreadful circumstance, a child has died.”

  “What—you mean by accident?”

  “Generally in an accident. But once or twice it has been after an illness, which has struck them down within a day or a night or less.”

  “You mean any child? A child of the town?”

  “Any child. Jerome’s child.”

  I had a sudden vision of that row of small, solemn faces, with hands all gripping the railings, that surrounded the school yard, on the day of Mrs. Drablow’s funeral.

  “But surely … well … children sometimes do die.”

  “They do.”

  “And is there anything more than chance to connect these deaths with the appearance of that woman?”

  “You may find it hard to believe. You may doubt it.”

  “Well, I …”

  “We know.”

  After a few moments, looking at his set and resolute face, I said quietly, “I do not doubt, Mr. Daily.”

  Then, for a very long time, neither of us said anything more.

  I knew that I had suffered a considerable shock that morning, after several days and nights of agitation and nervous tension, consequent upon the hauntings of Eel Marsh House. But I did not altogether realize how deeply and badly the whole experience had affected me, both in mind and body.

  I went to bed that night, as I supposed for the last time under the Dailys’ roof. On the next morning I planned to catch the first available train back to London. When I told Mr. Daily of my decision, he did not argue with me.

  That night, I slept wretchedly, waking every hour or so out of turbulent nightmares, my entire body in a sweat of anxiety, and when I did not sleep I lay awake and tense in every limb, listening, remembering and going over and over it all in my mind. I asked myself unanswerable questions about life and death and the borderlands between and I prayed, direct and simple, passionate prayers.

  I had been brought up, like most children, to a belief in the Deity, brought up within the Christian church but although I still believed that its teachings were probably the best form of guidance on living a good life, I had found the Deity rather remote and my prayers were not anything but formal and dutiful. Not so now. Now, I prayed fervently and with a newly awakened zeal. Now, I realized that there were forces for good and those for evil doing battle together and that a man might range himself on one side or the other.

  The morning was long in arriving and, when it did, it was again an overcast and wet one—dank, drear November. I got up, my head aching and eyes burning, my legs heavy, and somehow managed to get dressed and drag myself downstairs to the breakfast table. But I could not face food, though I had an extreme thirst and drank cup after cup of tea. Mr. and Mrs. Daily glanced at me anxiously now and again, as I talked of my arrangements. I thought that I would not feel well again until I was sitting in the train, watching this countryside slide away out of sight, and I said as much, though at the same time endeavoring to express my great gratitude to them both, because they had indeed been saviors, of my life and of my sanity.

  Then I got up from the table and began to make my way to the dining room, but the door receded as I went, I seemed to be fighting toward it through a mist which was closing in upon me, so that I could not get my breath and felt as if I was pushing against a heavy weight which I must remove before I could go any further.

  Samuel Daily caught me as I fell and I was dimly aware that, for the second time, though in very different circumstances, he was half-carrying, half-dragging me, this time up the stairs to my bedroom. There, he helped me to undress, there he left me, my head throbbing and my mind confused, and there I remained, having frequent visits from an anxious-looking doctor, for five days. After that, the worst of the fever and the delirium passed, leaving me exhausted and weak beyond belief, and I was able to sit up in an armchair, at first in my room and later downstairs. The Dailys were kindness and solicitude itself. The worst of it all was not the physical illness, the aching, the tiredness, the fever, but the mental turmoil I passed through.

  The woman in black seemed to haunt me, even here, to sit on the end of my bed, to push her face suddenly down close to mine as I lay asleep, so I awoke crying out in terror. And my head rang with the sound of the child crying out on the marsh and of the rocking chair and the drowning whinny of the pony. I could not break free of any of them and, when I was not having feverish delusions and nightmares, I was remembering every word of the letters and death certificates, as if I could see the pages held up before my mind’s eye.

  But at last I began to be better, the fears died down, the visions faded and I found myself again, I was exhauste
d, drained, but well. There was nothing else the woman could do to me, surely, I had endured and survived.

  After twelve days I was feeling almost completely recovered. It was a day of winter sunshine but there had been one of the first frosts of the year. I was sitting at the open french windows of the drawing room, a rug over my knees, looking at the bare bushes and trees, silvery-white and stiff with rime, stark against the sky. It was after lunch. I might sleep a little or not but, in any case, no one would disturb me. Spider lay contentedly at my feet, as she had done throughout the days and nights of my illness. I had grown more fond of the little dog than I would ever have imagined possible, feeling that we shared a bond, because we had been through our time of trial together.

  A robin was perched on one of the stone urns at the top of the balustrade, head up, eyes bead-bright, and I watched him happily, while he hopped a foot or two and then paused again, to listen and to sing. I reflected that, before coming here, I would never have been able to concentrate on such an ordinary thing so completely but would have been restless to be up and off, doing this or that busily. Now, I appreciated the bird’s presence, enjoyed simply watching his movements for as long as he chose to remain outside my window, with an intensity I had never before experienced.

  I heard some sounds outside, the engine of a motor car, voices round at the front of the house, but paid them little attention, so wrapped up was I in my observation of the bird. Besides, they would have nothing to do with me.

  There were footsteps along the corridor and they stopped outside the door of the drawing room, and then after a hesitation it opened. Perhaps it was later than I thought, and someone had come to see how I was and whether I wanted a cup of tea.

  “Arthur?”

  I turned, startled, and then jumped from my chair in amazement, disbelief, and delight. Stella, my own dear Stella, was coming toward me across the room.