Night Terrors

by E. F. Benson

  ‘How lovely!’ shouted Sylvia. ‘Do be quick and fix it.’

  There was no sort of doubt about it. There she sat by the window, and close by her was a strange, inexplicable face. So much could be seen from the negative, and when a print was taken of it the details were wonderfully clear. It was the face of a young man; his handsome features wore an expression of agonised entreaty.

  ‘Poor boy!’ said Sylvia sympathetically. ‘So good-looking too; but somehow I don’t like him.’

  Then a brilliant idea struck her.

  ‘Oh, Ludovic,’ she said, ‘is it young Spinach?’

  He snatched the print from her.

  ‘I must fix it,’ he said, ‘or it will be ruined. Of course it’s young Spinach. Who else could it be, I should like to know? We’ll find out more about him this evening. Fancy obtaining that the very first morning!’

  They spent the afternoon on the beach, in order to get in an elevated frame of mind by contemplating the beauties of nature, and after a light supper, prepared for a double séance. Two hooks, so to speak, were baited for Spinach, for in one chair sat Sylvia, with pencil and paper, ready to take down his slightest word, and in another Ludovic, similarly equipped. They both let themselves sink into that drowsy and vacant condition which they knew to be favourable to communications from the unseen, but for a long time they neither of them got a bite. Then Ludovic heard the dash and clatter of his sister’s pencil, suddenly beginning to write very rapidly, and this aroused in him disturbing feelings of envy and jealousy, for something was coming through to Sylvia and not to him.

  This inharmonious emotion quite dissipated the tranquillity which was a sine qua non of the receptive state, and he got up to see what was coming through to her. Probably some mawkish rubbish from Violetta about Savonarola’s sermons. But the moment he saw her paper he was thrilled to the marrow.

  ‘Yes, I’m Thomas Spinach,’ he read, ‘and I’m very unhappy. I came and stood by you this morning when the man was photographing. I want you to help me. Oh, do help me! It’s something I’ve forgotten, though it is so important. I want you to look everywhere and see if you can’t find something very unusual, and tell them. It is somewhere here. It must be, because I put it there, and I hardly like to tell you what it is, because it’s terrible . . . ’

  The pencil stopped. Ludovic was wildly excited, and his jealousy of Sylvia was almost forgotten. After all, it was he who had taken Spinach’s photograph . . .

  Sylvia’s hand continued idle so long that Ludovic, in order to stir it into activity again, began to ask questions.

  ‘Have you passed over, Spinach?’ he said.

  Her hand began to write in a swift and irritated manner. ‘Of course I have,’ it scribbled. ‘Otherwise I should know where it was.’

  ‘Used you to live here?’ asked Ludovic. ‘And when did you pass over?’

  ‘Yes, I lived here,’ came the answer. ‘I passed over a week ago. Very suddenly. There was a thunderstorm that night, and I had just finished it all, and was in the garden cooling down, when lightning struck me, and when I came to – on this side, you understand – I couldn’t remember where it was.’

  ‘Where what was?’ asked Ludovic. ‘Do you mean the thing you had finished? What was it you had finished?’

  The pencil seemed to give a loud squeak, as if it was a slate pencil.

  ‘Oh, here it is again,’ it wrote in trembling characters. ‘I can’t go on now. It’s terrible. I’m so frightened. Please, please find it.’

  Just as on the previous evening, there came an appalling rap somewhere on the wall close to him, and, seriously startled, Ludovic sprang up, and shook Sylvia into consciousness. Whoever this spirit was, it was not a good, kind, mild one like Asteria, who, whenever she rapped, did so very softly and pleasantly.

  Sylvia yawned and stretched herself.

  ‘Spinach?’ she said, drowsily. ‘Any Spinach?’

  ‘Yes, dear, quantities,’ said Ludovic.

  ‘And what did he say? Oh, I went off deep then, Ludovic. I don’t know what’s been happening. Violetta isn’t nearly so powerful. Such an odd feeling! Did I write all that?’

  ‘Yes, in answer to some pretty good questions of mine,’ he said. ‘It’s really wonderful. We’re on the track of young Spinach, or, rather, he’s on ours.’

  Sylvia was reading her manuscript.

  ‘ “I passed over a week ago,” ’ she said. ‘ “Very suddenly – there was a thunderstorm that night – ” Why, Ludovic, there was! That’s quite true. You slept through it, but I didn’t, and I remember reading in the paper that it had been very violent in the Rye district. How strange!’

  Ludovic clicked his fingers.

  ‘I know what I’ll do,’ he said. ‘I shall send a telegram to Mrs Sapson. Give me a piece of paper. She said that wonderful visitors might perhaps come to me here.’

  Sylvia grasped his thoughts.

  ‘I see!’ she cried. ‘You mean to tell her that her late tenant, young Thomas Spinach, who was killed by lightning last week, has communicated with us. That will impress her tremendously, if you think she’s had enough of Asteria. Indeed, I shouldn’t wonder if she lent us this cottage just in order to test us, and see if we really received messages from the other side. What a score!’

  She hastily scribbled on a leaf of her writing-block, counting up the words on her fingers. Her economical mind exerted itself to contrive the message in exactly twelve words.

  ‘There!’ she read out triumphantly. ‘Listen! “Sapson, 29 Brompton Avenue, London. Tenant Spinach killed last week, thunderstorm, communicated.” Just twelve. You needn’t sign it, as it will have the Rye postmark.’

  ‘My dear,’ said he, ‘it’s no time for such petty economies. Better spend a few pence more and make it impressive and rather more intelligible. Give me some paper; I asked you before. And we must make it clear that it’s not a chance word of local gossip that has inspired it. I shall tell her about the photograph too.’

  Before they went to bed, Ludovic composed a more explicit telegram, and in the course of the next morning he received an enthusiastic reply from Mrs Sapson.

  All quite correct and most wonderful [she wrote]. Delighted you have got into communication. Find out more, and ask him about his uncle. Wire again if fresh revelations occur.

  In order to secure themselves from the possibility of interruption, Sylvia gave Gramsby an afternoon out, which she proposed to spend in the excitements of Rye, and as soon as she was gone the mediums prepared for a séance. As Spinach seemed to fancy Sylvia, she composed herself for the trance-condition, with pencil and paper handy, and Ludovic sat by to ask questions. Very soon Sylvia’s eyes closed, her head fell forward, and the pencil she held began to tremble violently, like a motor-car ready to start.

  ‘Are you Spinach?’ asked Ludovic, observing these signs of possession. Instantly the pencil began to write.

  ‘Yes. Have you found it?’

  ‘We don’t know what it is,’ said Ludovic. Then he remembered Mrs Sapson’s telegram. ‘Has it anything to do with your uncle?’ he asked.

  There was a long pause. Then the pencil began to move again.

  ‘Please find him,’ it wrote.

  ‘But how are we to find your uncle?’ asked Ludovic. ‘We don’t know where to look or what he’s like. Tell us where to look.’

  The pencil moved in a most agitated fashion.

  ‘I don’t know,’ it wrote. ‘If I knew I would tell you. But it’s somewhere about. I had just put it somewhere, when the lightning came and killed me, and I can’t remember. My memory’s gone like – like after concussion of the brain.’

  An uneasy thought struck Ludovic. Why did young Spinach allude to his uncle as ‘it’?

  ‘Is your uncle dead?’ he asked. ‘Is it his body that you mean by “it”?’ />
  Sylvia’s fingers writhed as if in mortal agony. Then the pencil jerked out, ‘Yes.’

  Ludovic, accustomed as he was to spirits, felt an icy shudder run through him. But he waited in silence, for the pencil looked as if it had something more to write. Then – great heavens – it came.

  ‘I will tell you all,’ it wrote. ‘I killed him, and I can’t remember where I put him.’

  A spasm of moral indignation seized Ludovic.

  ‘That was very wrong of you,’ he justly observed. ‘But we’ll try to help you if you will tell us all about it. Come; you’re dead. Nobody can hang you.’

  Shocked as Ludovic was, and extremely uneasy also at the thought of the proximity not only of the spirit of a murderer, but the corpse of young Spinach’s uncle, it was only natural that he should feel an overwhelming professional interest in the revelations that appeared to be imminent. It would be a glorious thing for his career to receive from a departed spirit the first-hand account of this undetected crime, and to be able to corroborate it by the discovery of the corpse. Though he had come down here for a holiday, the chance of such a unique piece of work made him feel quite rested already, for it was impossible to conceive a more magnificent advertisement. What a wonderful confirmation it would be also to Mrs Sapson’s wavering faith in his psychical powers. She would publish the news of it far and wide, and the séances would be more popular than ever. Moreover, there was the chance of learning all sorts of fresh information about the conditions that prevailed on the other side, of a far more sensational and exciting quality than the method of the production of thought-flowers and flowing robes and general love and helpfulness . . . He waited with the intensest expectation for anything that Spinach might vouchsafe.

  At last it began, and now there was no need for further questions, for the pencil streamed across the page. Sheet after sheet of the writing-block was filled, and twice Ludovic had to sharpen Sylvia’s pencil, for the point was quite worn down with these remarkable disclosures, and only made illegible scratches on the paper. For half an hour it careered over the sheets; then finally it made a great scrawl, and Sylvia’s hand dropped inert. She stretched and yawned, and came to herself.

  The next hour was the most absorbing that Ludovic had ever spent in his professional work. Together they read the account of the crime. Alexander Spinach, the uncle, was the most wicked of elderly gentlemen, who made his nephew’s life an intolerable burden to him. He had found out that the orphan boy had committed a petty forgery with regard to a cheque which he had signed with his uncle’s name, and, holding exposure and arrest over his head, had made him work for him day and night, fishing and farming and doing the work of the house without a penny-piece of wages, while he himself boozed his days away in the chimney-corner.

  Long brooding over his wrongs and the misery of his life made young Spinach (very properly, as he still thought) determine to kill the odious old wretch, and he adroitly poisoned his whisky with weed-killer. He went out to his work next morning as usual, leaving the corpse in the locked-up house, and casually mentioned to the folk he came across that his uncle had gone up to London and would probably not be back for some time. When he returned in the evening he hid the body somewhere, meaning to dig a handsome excavation in the garden, and having buried it, plant some useful vegetables above it. But hardly had he made this temporary disposition of the corpse, than he was struck by lightning in the terrific storm that visited the district a week ago, and killed. When he came to himself on the spiritual plane he could not remember what he had done with the body.

  So far the story was ordinary enough, apart from the interest in the manner of its communication, but now came that part of the confession which these ardent young psychicists saw would be a veritable gold-mine to them. For on emerging on the other side young Spinach found himself terrifyingly haunted not by the spirit, but by the body of his uncle. Just as on the material plane, so he explained, murderers are sometimes haunted by the spirit of their victim, so on the spiritual plane, quite logically, they may be haunted by the body of their victim. His uncle’s bodily and palpable presence grimly pursued him wherever he went; even as he gathered sweet thought-flowers or thought-fruits, the terrible body appeared. If he woke at night he found it watching by his bed, if he bathed in the crystal rivers it swam beside him, and he had learned that he could never find peace till it was given proper burial. No doubt, he said, Ludovic had heard of the skeletons of murdered folk being walled up in secret chambers, and how their spirits haunted the place till their bones were discovered and interred. The converse was true on the other side, and while murdered corpses lay about unburied in the material world, their bodies haunted the perpetrator of the crime.

  It was here that poor young Spinach’s difficulty came in. The sudden lightning-stroke had bereft him of all memory of what he was doing just before, and, puzzle as he might, he could not recollect where he had put the corpse . . . Then he broke out into passionate entreaties: ‘Help me, help me, kind mediums,’ he wrote. ‘I know it is somewhere about, so search for it and get it buried. He was an awful old man and I can’t describe the agony of being haunted by his beastly body. Find it and have it buried, and then I shall be free from its dreadful presence.’

  They read this unique document together by the fading light, strung up to the highest pitch of professional interest, and yet peering awfully round from time to time in vague apprehension of what might happen next. During the séance the wind had got up, and now it was moaning round the corners of the house, and dusk was falling rapidly, with prospects of a wild night to follow. The curtains bulged and bellied in the draught, hollow voices sounded in the chimney, and Sylvia clung to her brother.

  ‘I don’t like it,’ she wailed. ‘I don’t like this spirit of Spinach; Violetta and Asteria are far preferable. And then there’s “It”. It is somewhere about, and it may be anywhere.’

  Ludovic made an attempt at gaiety.

  ‘It may be anywhere, as you say,’ he remarked, ‘but it actually is somewhere. And we’ve got to find it, dear. Better find it before it gets dark. And think of the sensation there will be when we publish the account of how, in answer to the entreaty of a remorseful spirit – ’

  ‘But he isn’t remorseful,’ said Sylvia. ‘There’s not a word of remorse, but only terror at being haunted. There’s not only a corpse about, but the spirit of an unrepentant murderer. It isn’t pleasant. I would sooner be in expensive lodgings than here.’

  ‘Oh, nonsense,’ said Ludovic. ‘Besides, young Spinach is friendly enough to us. We’re his one hope. And if we find it he will certainly be very grateful. I shouldn’t wonder if he sent us many more revelations. Even as it is, how deeply interesting! Nobody ever guessed that there were material ghosts in the spiritual world. But now we must get busy and search for Alexander. Fix your mind on what a tremendously paying experience this will be. Now, where shall we begin? There’s the house and the garden – ’

  ‘Oh, I hope it will be in the garden,’ said Sylvia. ‘But there’s no chance of that, for he meant to bury it in the garden afterwards.’

  ‘True. We’ll begin with the house, then. Now most murderers bury the body under the floor of the kitchen, cover it with quicklime, and fill in with cement.’

  ‘But he wouldn’t have had time for that,’ said Sylvia. ‘Besides, this was to be only a temporary resting-place.’

  ‘Perhaps he cut it up,’ said Ludovic, ‘and we shall find a piece here and a piece there.’

  The search began. In the growing dusk, with the wild wind increasing to a gale, they annealed themselves for the gruesome business. They investigated the coal-cellar, they peered into housemaids’ cupboards, and with quaking hearts examined the woodshed. Here there were signs that its contents had been disturbed, and the sight of an old boot peeping out from behind some logs nearly caused Sylvia to collapse. Then Ludovic got a ladder, and, climbing up to t
he roof, interrogated the water-tank, from the contents of which they had already drunk. But all their explorations were in vain; there was no sign of the corpse. For a nerve-racking hour they persevered, and a dismal idea occurred to Ludovic.

  ‘It can’t be a practical joke on the part of Spinach, can it?’ he said. ‘That would be in the worst possible taste. Good gracious, what’s that?’

  There came a loud tapping at the front door, and Sylvia hid her face on his shoulder.

  ‘That’s Spinach,’ she whispered. ‘That terrible Spinach!’

  They tottered to the door and opened it. On the threshold was a man, who told them he was the carrier from Rye, and brought a note for Miss Byron.

  ‘I’m going back in half an hour, miss,’ he said, ‘if there’s any answer. A box, I understood.’

  The note was from Gramsby, who, though unwilling to ‘upset’ them, declined to come back to the cottage. She had heard things, and she didn’t like it, and she would be obliged if they would pack her box and send it in.

  ‘The coward!’ said Sylvia, trembling violently. ‘She shan’t have her box unless she comes to fetch it.’

  They went back into the sitting-room, lit the fire, and made it as cheerful as they could with many candles. Their flames wagged ominously in the eddying draughts, and the two drew their chairs close to the hearth. By now the full fury of the gale was unloosed, the whole house shuddered at the blasts, doors creaked, curtains whispered, flurries of rain were flung against the windows, and strange noises and stirrings muttered in the chimney.

  ‘I shall just get warm,’ said Ludovic, ‘and then go on with the search. I shan’t know a moment’s peace till I find it.’

  ‘I shan’t know a moment’s peace when you do!’ wailed Sylvia.

  They were sitting in the fire almost, and suddenly something up the chimney caught Ludovic’s eye.

  ‘What’s that?’ he said.

  He got a candle and held it up the chimney.

  ‘It’s a rope,’ he said, ‘tied round a staple in the wall.’