Night Terrors

by E. F. Benson

  Just because some chain of conjecture was beginning to form itself in my mind, I made no allusion to this odd adventure, and after dinner Margaret, amid protests from Hugh, got out the planchette which had persisted in writing ‘gardener’. My surmise was, of course, utterly fantastic, but I wanted to convey no suggestion of any sort to Margaret . . . For a long time the pencil skated over her paper making loops and curves and peaks like a temperature chart, and she had begun to yawn and weary over her experiment before any coherent word emerged. And then, in the oddest way, her head nodded forward and she seemed to have fallen asleep.

  Hugh looked up from his book and spoke in a whisper to me.

  ‘She fell asleep the other night over it,’ he said.

  Margaret’s eyes were closed, and she breathed the long, quiet breaths of slumber, and then her hand began to move with a curious firmness. Right across the big sheet of paper went a level line of writing, and at the end her hand stopped with a jerk, and she woke.

  She looked at the paper.

  ‘Hullo,’ she said. ‘Ah, one of you has been playing a trick on me!’

  We assured her that this was not so, and she read what she had written.

  ‘Gardener, gardener,’ it ran. ‘I am the gardener. I want to come in. I can’t find her here.’

  ‘O Lord, that gardener again!’ said Hugh.

  Looking up from the paper, I saw Margaret’s eyes fixed on mine, and even before she spoke I knew what her thought was.

  ‘Did you come home by the empty cottage?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes: why?’

  ‘Still empty?’ she said in a low voice. ‘Or – or anything else?’

  I did not want to tell her just what I had seen – or what, at any rate, I thought I had seen. If there was going to be anything odd, anything worth observation, it was far better that our respective impressions should not fortify each other.

  ‘I tapped again, and there was no answer,’ I said.

  Presently there was a move to bed: Margaret initiated it, and after she had gone upstairs Hugh and I went to the front door to interrogate the weather. Once more the moon shone in a clear sky, and we strolled out along the flagged path that fronted the house. Suddenly Hugh turned quickly and pointed to the angle of the house.

  ‘Who on earth is that?’ he said. ‘Look! There! He has gone round the corner.’

  I had but the glimpse of a tallish man of heavy build.

  ‘Didn’t you see him?’ asked Hugh. ‘I’ll just go round the house, and find him; I don’t want anyone prowling round us at night. Wait here, will you, and if he comes round the other corner ask him what his business is.’

  Hugh had left me, in our stroll, close by the front door which was open, and there I waited until he should have made his circuit. He had hardly disappeared when I heard, quite distinctly, a rather quick but heavy footfall coming along the paved walk towards me from the opposite direction. But there was absolutely no one to be seen who made this sound of rapid walking. Closer and closer to me came the steps of the invisible one, and then with a shudder of horror I felt somebody unseen push by me as I stood on the threshold. That shudder was not merely of the spirit, for the touch of him was that of ice on my hand. I tried to seize this impalpable intruder, but he slipped from me, and next moment I heard his steps on the parquet of the floor inside. Some door within opened and shut, and I heard no more of him. Next moment Hugh came running round the corner of the house from which the sound of steps had approached.

  ‘But where is he?’ he asked. ‘He was not twenty yards in front of me – a big, tall fellow.’

  ‘I saw nobody,’ I said. ‘I heard his step along the walk, but there was nothing to be seen.’

  ‘And then?’ asked Hugh.

  ‘Whatever it was seemed to brush by me, and go into the house,’ said I.

  There had certainly been no sound of steps on the bare oak stairs, and we searched room after room through the ground floor of the house. The dining-room door and that of the smoking-room were locked, that into the drawing-room was open, and the only other door which could have furnished the impression of an opening and a shutting was that into the kitchen and servants’ quarters. Here again our quest was fruitless; through pantry and scullery and boot-room and servants’ hall we searched, but all was empty and quiet. Finally we came to the kitchen, which too was empty. But by the fire there was set a rocking-chair, and this was oscillating to and fro as if someone, lately sitting there, had just quitted it. There it stood gently rocking, and this seemed to convey the sense of a presence, invisible now, more than even the sight of him who surely had been sitting there could have done. I remember wanting to steady it and stop it, and yet my hand refused to go forth to it.

  What we had seen, and in especial what we had not seen, would have been sufficient to furnish most people with a broken night, and assuredly I was not among the strong-minded exceptions. Long I lay wide-eyed and open-eared, and when at last I dozed I was plucked from the border-land of sleep by the sound, muffled but unmistakable, of someone moving about the house. It occurred to me that the steps might be those of Hugh conducting a lonely exploration, but even while I wondered a tap came at the door of communication between our rooms, and, in answer to my response, it appeared that he had come to see whether it was I thus uneasily wandering. Even as we spoke the step passed my door, and the stairs leading to the floor above creaked to its ascent. Next moment it sounded directly above our heads in some attics in the roof.

  ‘Those are not the servants’ bedrooms,’ said Hugh. ‘No one sleeps there. Let us look once more: it must be somebody.’

  With lit candles we made our stealthy way upstairs, and just when we were at the top of the flight, Hugh, a step ahead of me, uttered a sharp exclamation.

  ‘But something is passing by me!’ he said, and he clutched at the empty air. Even as he spoke, I experienced the same sensation, and the moment afterwards the stairs below us creaked again, as the unseen passed down.

  All night long that sound of steps moved about the passages, as if someone was searching the house, and as I lay and listened that message which had come through the pencil of the planchette to Margaret’s fingers occurred to me. ‘I want to come in. I cannot find her here.’ . . . Indeed someone had come in, and was sedulous in his search. He was the gardener, it would seem. But what gardener was this invisible seeker, and for whom did he seek?

  Even as when some bodily pain ceases it is difficult to recall with any vividness what the pain was like, so next morning, as I dressed, I found myself vainly trying to recapture the horror of the spirit which had accompanied these nocturnal adventures. I remembered that something within me had sickened as I watched the movements of the rocking-chair the night before and as I heard the steps along the paved way outside, and by that invisible pressure against me knew that someone had entered the house. But now in the sane and tranquil morning, and all day under the serene winter sun, I could not realise what it had been. The presence, like the bodily pain, had to be there for the realisation of it, and all day it was absent. Hugh felt the same; he was even disposed to be humorous on the subject.

  ‘Well, he’s had a good look,’ he said, ‘whoever he is, and whomever he was looking for. By the way, not a word to Margaret, please. She heard nothing of these perambulations, nor of the entry of – of whatever it was. Not gardener, anyhow: who ever heard of a gardener spending his time walking about the house? If there were steps all over the potato-patch, I might have been with you.’

  Margaret had arranged to drive over to have tea with some friends of hers that afternoon, and in consequence Hugh and I refreshed ourselves at the club-house after our game, and it was already dusk when for the third day in succession I passed homewards by the whitewashed cottage. But tonight I had no sense of it being subtly occupied; it stood mournfully desolate, as is the way of untenanted houses,
and no light nor semblance of such gleamed from its windows. Hugh, to whom I had told the odd impressions I had received there, gave them a reception as flippant as that which he had accorded to the memories of the night, and he was still being humorous about them when we came to the door of the house.

  ‘A psychic disturbance, old boy,’ he said. ‘Like a cold in the head. Hullo, the door’s locked.’

  He rang and rapped, and from inside came the noise of a turned key and withdrawn bolts.

  ‘What’s the door locked for?’ he asked his servant who opened it.

  The man shifted from one foot to the other.

  ‘The bell rang half an hour ago, sir,’ he said, ‘and when I came to answer it there was a man standing outside, and – ’

  ‘Well?’ asked Hugh.

  ‘I didn’t like the looks of him, sir,’ he said, ‘and I asked him his business. He didn’t say anything, and then he must have gone pretty smartly away, for I never saw him go.’

  ‘Where did he seem to go?’ asked Hugh, glancing at me.

  ‘I can’t rightly say, sir. He didn’t seem to go at all. Something seemed to brush by me.’

  ‘That’ll do,’ said Hugh rather sharply.

  Margaret had not come in from her visit, but when soon after the crunch of the motor wheels was heard Hugh reiterated his wish that nothing should be said to her about the impression which now, apparently, a third person shared with us. She came in with a flush of excitement on her face.

  ‘Never laugh at my planchette again,’ she said. ‘I’ve heard the most extraordinary story from Maud Ashfield – horrible, but so frightfully interesting.’

  ‘Out with it,’ said Hugh.

  ‘Well, there was a gardener here,’ she said. ‘He used to live at that little cottage by the foot-bridge, and when the family were up in London he and his wife used to be caretakers and live here.’

  Hugh’s glance and mine met: then he turned away.

  I knew, as certainly as if I was in his mind, that his thoughts were identical with my own.

  ‘He married a wife much younger than himself,’ continued Margaret, ‘and gradually he became frightfully jealous of her. And one day in a fit of passion he strangled her with his own hands. A little while after someone came to the cottage, and found him sobbing over her, trying to restore her. They went for the police, but before they came he had cut his own throat. Isn’t it all horrible? But surely it’s rather curious that the planchette said “Gardener. I am the gardener. I want to come in. I can’t find her here.” You see I knew nothing about it. I shall do planchette again tonight. Oh dear me, the post goes in half an hour, and I have a whole budget to send. But respect my planchette for the future, Hughie.’

  We talked the situation out when she had gone, but Hugh, unwillingly convinced and yet unwilling to admit that something more than coincidence lay behind that ‘planchette nonsense’, still insisted that Margaret should be told nothing of what we had heard and seen in the house last night, and of the strange visitor who again this evening, so we must conclude, had made his entry.

  ‘She’ll be frightened,’ he said, ‘and she’ll begin imagining things. As for the planchette, as likely as not it will do nothing but scribble and make loops. What’s that? Yes: come in!’

  There had come from somewhere in the room one sharp, peremptory rap. I did not think it came from the door, but Hugh, when no response replied to his words of admittance, jumped up and opened it. He took a few steps into the hall outside, and returned.

  ‘Didn’t you hear it?’ he asked.

  ‘Certainly. No one there?’

  ‘Not a soul.’

  Hugh came back to the fireplace and rather irritably threw a cigarette which he had just lit into the fender.

  ‘That was rather a nasty jar,’ he observed; ‘and if you ask me whether I feel comfortable, I can tell you I never felt less comfortable in my life. I’m frightened, if you want to know, and I believe you are too.’

  I hadn’t the smallest intention of denying this, and he went on.

  ‘We’ve got to keep a hand on ourselves,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing so infectious as fear, and Margaret mustn’t catch it from us. But there’s something more than our fear, you know. Something has got into the house and we’re up against it. I never believed in such things before. Let’s face it for a minute. What is it anyhow?’

  ‘If you want to know what I think it is,’ said I, ‘I believe it to be the spirit of the man who strangled his wife and then cut his throat. But I don’t see how it can hurt us. We’re afraid of our own fear really.’

  ‘But we’re up against it,’ said Hugh. ‘And what will it do? Good Lord, if I only knew what it would do I shouldn’t mind. It’s the not knowing . . . Well, it’s time to dress.’

  Margaret was in her highest spirits at dinner. Knowing nothing of the manifestations of that presence which had taken place in the last twenty-four hours, she thought it absorbingly interesting that her planchette should have ‘guessed’ (so ran her phrase) about the gardener, and from that topic she flitted to an equally interesting form of patience for three which her friend had showed her, promising to initiate us into it after dinner. This she did, and, not knowing that we both above all things wanted to keep planchette at a distance, she was delighted with the success of her game. But suddenly she observed that the evening was burning rapidly away, and swept the cards together at the conclusion of a hand.

  ‘Now just half an hour of planchette,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, mayn’t we play one more hand?’ asked Hugh.

  ‘It’s the best game I’ve seen for years. Planchette will be dismally slow after this.’

  ‘Darling, if the gardener will only communicate again, it won’t be slow,’ said she.

  ‘But it is such drivel,’ said Hugh.

  ‘How rude you are! Read your book, then.’

  Margaret had already got out her machine and a sheet of paper, when Hugh rose.

  ‘Please don’t do it tonight, Margaret,’ he said.

  ‘But why? You needn’t attend.’

  ‘Well, I ask you not to, anyhow,’ said he.

  Margaret looked at him closely.

  ‘Hughie, you’ve got something on your mind,’ she said. ‘Out with it. I believe you’re nervous. You think there is something queer about. What is it?’

  I could see Hugh hesitating as to whether to tell her or not, and I gathered that he chose the chance of her planchette inanely scribbling.

  ‘Go on, then,’ he said.

  Margaret hesitated: she clearly did not want to vex Hugh, but his insistence must have seemed to her most unreasonable.

  ‘Well, just ten minutes,’ she said, ‘and I promise not to think of gardeners.’

  She had hardly laid her hand on the board when her head fell forward, and the machine began moving. I was sitting close to her, and as it rolled steadily along the paper the writing became visible.

  ‘I have come in,’ it ran, ‘but still I can’t find her. Are you hiding her? I will search the room where you are.’

  What else was written but still concealed underneath the planchette I did not know, for at that moment a current of icy air swept round the room, and at the door, this time unmistakably, came a loud, peremptory knock. Hugh sprang to his feet.

  ‘Margaret, wake up,’ he said, ‘something is coming!’

  The door opened, and there moved in the figure of a man. He stood just within the door, his head bent forward, and he turned it from side to side, peering, it would seem, with eyes staring and infinitely sad, into every corner of the room.

  ‘Margaret, Margaret,’ cried Hugh again.

  But Margaret’s eyes were open too; they were fixed on this dreadful visitor.

  ‘Be quiet, Hughie,’ she said below her breath, rising as she s
poke. The ghost was now looking directly at her. Once the lips above the thick, rust-coloured beard moved, but no sound came forth, the mouth only moved and slavered. He raised his head, and, horror upon horror, I saw that one side of his neck was laid open in a red, glistening gash . . .

  For how long that pause continued, when we all three stood stiff and frozen in some deadly inhibition to move or speak, I have no idea: I suppose that at the utmost it was a dozen seconds. Then the spectre turned, and went out as it had come. We heard his steps pass along the parqueted floor; there was the sound of bolts withdrawn from the front door, and with a crash that shook the house it slammed to.

  ‘It’s all over,’ said Margaret. ‘God have mercy on him!’

  Now the reader may put precisely what construction he pleases on this visitation from the dead. He need not, indeed, consider it to have been a visitation from the dead at all, but say that there had been impressed on the scene, where this murder and suicide happened, some sort of emotional record, which in certain circumstances could translate itself into images visible and invisible. Waves of ether, or what not, may conceivably retain the impress of such scenes; they may be held, so to speak, in solution, ready to be precipitated. Or he may hold that the spirit of the dead man indeed made itself manifest, revisiting in some sort of spiritual penance and remorse the place where his crime was committed. Naturally, no materialist will entertain such an explanation for an instant, but then there is no one so obstinately unreasonable as the materialist. Beyond doubt a dreadful deed was done there, and Margaret’s last utterance is not inapplicable.

  Mr Tilly’s Séance

  Mr Tilly had only the briefest moment for reflection, when, as he slipped and fell on the greasy wood pavement at Hyde Park Corner, which he was crossing at a smart trot, he saw the huge traction-engine with its grooved ponderous wheels towering high above him.

  ‘Oh, dear! oh, dear!’ he said petulantly, ‘it will certainly crush me quite flat, and I shan’t be able to be at Mrs Cumberbatch’s séance! Most provoking! A-ow!’