Old House of Fear

by Russell Kirk

  It was inconceivable that any such man could persist in plans of violence – supposing he contemplated any schemes of that character – once he knew that he was facing a responsible person who had come to Carnglass on legitimate business. And if Mr. Lagg should be alive still – Donley, after all, had admitted that he had not seen Lagg die – presumably Logan would find an ally in him. Yet it might be wise to reconnoitre the Old House before knocking at the gate.

  It was possible to half-believe Donley’s tale because of the deathly solitude that enveloped Carnglass. The island was like a great bony corpse. Even here within the thick walls of the black house, the whole drowned mountain seemed dehumanized – perhaps hostile to humanity. Small nonhuman night noises drifted through the hole in the thatch:

  the rustle of bracken, unpleasantly like sepulchral whispering; the cry, again, of that nocturnal bird of prey: the surge of the devouring sea against the cliffs. Listening to these, Logan fell into a restless doze, now and then rousing himself with a start. Fragments of nightmare beset him during the sporadic periods when consciousness drifted away. And one of those fragments was deeply disturbing.

  He found himself in some place utterly dark, and made all of stone, without door or window; and his hands, when he extended his arms, could touch the cold walls on either side. Whether he was lying or standing, it was hard to guess: time and space and gravity and equilibrium had no meaning here. Something was belted to his side – a sword. And he was not alone.

  Something else, foul and malign, existed there in that oppressive dark space. Of this, he could perceive nothing but its eyes; and there were three of its eyes. It was a devouring thing. In that cramped dead place, he drew the sword, and he hacked at those eyes. Yet the sword rebounded, as if he were striking feebly with a blade of grass against some enormous hard-shelled insect. “Strike through the sham!” a voice cried within him. “Strike through the sham!” Frantically he thrust again the blackness below the eyes. He was in terror not so much for himself as for someone else; but the name and face of that other someone would not come to him. And then, trembling and suffering from cramp in one leg, Hugh Logan woke.

  Outside the black house, birds were singing at the first feeble gleam of light in the east. Still shaken by the vividness of that nightmare vision, Logan flung on his clothes and strapped his knapsack on his back and took up his stick. It would be well to vacate this cottage before the man-stalkers of Carnglass were up and about; for, considering the direction in which Donley had fled the previous evening, Dalcruach was the most likely target for them this morning. Donley’s pistol, in its holster, Logan fixed round his shoulder under his tweed jacket; it seemed adequately concealed.

  He climbed the landward cliff more easily than he had the previous afternoon, now knowing the neglected path; and when he reached the summit, and saw the valley empty before him, he turned to his left along the ragged crest of those titanic cliffs.

  The cliff-top was no narrow ledge: rather, it constituted an irregular plateau, in some places only a few feet wide, but in most twenty or thirty yards, and here or there a good deal wider. Broken by great boulders and dotted with springs or pools – some of them almost little ponds – this summit was rough going; surely it would take Logan almost twice as long to reach the Old House by this route. Up here, no doubt, Donley had lurked much of the time. When the mists were dense, it would be next to impossible to track down a solitary man at the top of this little world.

  This was one of those high places in which Satan offers the kingdoms of the earth, Logan thought. Because of the winds, and the lack of soil, nothing grew here except occasional clumps of heather and little ferns and rock-plants. For the most part, the summit-plateau sloped inward toward the valleys of the island; the sea-face seemed to be sheer drop, almost everywhere. Today the wind was fairly strong, sweeping the spring fog out to sea, and Logan had clear glimpses, half the time, of the interior of Carnglass. The island was much better wooded than are most of the Hebrides: thick plantations were dotted here and there below the screes, doubtless the work of old Sir Alastair MacAskival. Twice, as he made his precarious way over the wind-swept rocks, Logan saw red deer grazing near the cliff-foot. And everywhere was trickling water. Early spring in the Western Isles has its charms, but it made the rocks treacherous for Logan and soaked his boots through. He used his binoculars when he came to a bold promontory of cliff, looking northward, though he lay down to avoid making a mark of himself. Near the ruined farmhouse at Mucaird, a small flock of sheep was browsing, some straying upward upon the hill itself; yet there was no sign of any man.

  But a quarter of an hour later, as he drew near to a jumbled mass of living rock and broken boulders covered with lichens, something moving against the heather of Mucaird caught his eye. Half sheltering himself behind a rock, he took out the binoculars again. Yes, it was three slim men with rifles, close to the derelict farmhouse and shielings, and walking in the direction of Dalcruach. Something in their movements suggested that they were very ill at ease. And at that moment Logan felt himself to be in peril.

  For only fifty yards away, and scrambling toward him, came two armed men. Their attention was fixed upon the scene in the valley, as his had been, and apparently they did not see Logan. He slid quickly down behind his boulder. It scarcely was possible that this cliff-patrol should fail to detect him. Should he stand up and call out to them now, or wait until they should be right upon him? Either course had its perils. Then the decision was taken out of his hands.

  Down in the valley, one of the men flung his rifle to his shoulder and fired into the bracken on his left. The other hunters in that party knelt and fired also. Having put his binoculars back into their case, Logan could not see whether there was any movement in that brush. Whatever could they be firing at? Mere nerves, probably, since they had no idea Donley had escaped from the island; or possibly a stray sheep or a deer, which they in their tension mistook for a man.

  “Ferd!” one of the men on the cliff called out to the other. “Ferd!” They were so close to Logan now that they sounded almost on the other side of his rock. “They’ve flushed him!” Then the voices of his neighbors receded, and Logan risked a peek around the boulder. The two had turned about and were retracing their steps, apparently looking for some way down the cliff to the screes, and so to the valley floor. It had been a close call. As the two riflemen scrambled round a rock shelf and began a tentative descent, Logan crept toward the seaward side of the cliff and so on toward the west, sometimes on hands and knees, until he felt safe from their sight.

  When next he ventured toward the inland side of the cliff and took out his binoculars, the party of three men in the valley was vanishing behind a knoll toward the northern cliffs, and the other two, who had so nearly stumbled upon him, were nowhere to be seen; presumably they still were groping for a way down. Now, Logan guessed, he would be secure from such patrols until he came close to the Old House. Likely enough, two or three men had been sent to search the northern line of cliffs, so as to drive the elusive Donley like a wild beast toward Dalcruach; and that would leave only a handful of men about the Old House, the New House, and the harbor – if, indeed, even these last, or most of them, were not out searching elsewhere. He ought to be able to get very close up to the Old House before being noticed.

  Soon he was past the ridge or saddle that joined the cliffs to the hill of Mucaird; and now he could look down upon the further valley. Broader than the first, it also was less stricken by the plague of bracken; there were cattle grazing – yes, the shaggy Highland beasts, he could see. The ring of cliffs was lower here than at the other end of the island. At the southwestern extremity, those gray walls dipped down to the ocean, forming the neck of Askival harbor. On the northern side of the harbor, the cliffs rose again and merged into a steep hill, which must be the one called Cailleach, The Nun. At its foot he could make out the scanty ruins of an ancient village: here Duncan MacAskival’s crofting ancestors had lived.

  Askiv
al harbor was a good deep anchorage. On either side of its mouth, an old pier of rubble ran out to narrow the entrance still further against the ravenous ocean. And at the quay nearest to him, the burnt yacht lay lurched against the rocks; it was low tide again now, and her deck, or what remained of it, was just awash. The New House, rather a modest and neat eighteenth-century mansion, stood close by the harbor, surrounded by plantations and over-grown gardens. Further up the valley, in the shelter of the southern cliffs on which he stood, there was another farmhouse, apparently empty, but in better condition than the one by Mucaird; and near it some cottages and shielings.

  All this, Logan took in through a long, low sweep of the binoculars. Then he focused upon the object of this troubled journey of his, the Old House of Fear. A quarter of a mile back from the harbor, the stark gray walls of the Old House rose upon a massive outcrop of rock: a place of great strength once. No man was stirring about it.

  Fine old trees grew at the very foot of the living rock on which the Old House was built; but the castle defied the wind in its naked power, showing no touch of greenery except a glimpse of leaves at the back, possibly in a small walled garden. The late-Victorian wing blended fairly harmoniously with the mass of the ancient tower, and seemed to close off the original entrance from the present exterior of the complex; the modern gate must front toward the harbor, and so lie hidden from Logan’s view, from his present position upon the cliffs. Talk of castles in Spain! The Old House of Fear, here upon the desolate verge of civilization – at the limits, indeed, of human existence itself – had a brooding glamour denied to Roman and Saracen lands.

  Here toward the harbor, the cliff-face was easier than the precipices toward the northeastern end of the island. If he were cautious, he might make the descent without alarming anyone at the Old House. Having climbed several summers both in the highlands of Perthshire and in the Rockies, Logan could avoid sending boulders thundering before him. Supposing no one chanced to make a target of him, he might reach the Old House about noon.

  Now how might he descend toward the Old House unobserved? Coming down the cliff-face and the screes, if he should try it just now, he must make a fair mark; although when he should reach the cliff-foot, he might pass to the back of the New House through the plantations and then slink along a belt of aspens and firs which stretched from the New House to the wood round the base of the rock where stood the Old House. First, however, he must make his way along the cliffs until he should come nearly abreast of the New House, and then seek for a way down. And the thing might be done, in this mistiest of islands, in this mistiest of seasons. For the breeze was subsiding again, and the sky had darkened; and once more the fog might settle over cliffs and hilltops, though possibly it would not sink low into the valley.

  It took Logan half an hour to discover – always taking advantage of cover – a tolerable fissure in the cliff down which he might make his way. Still no one was to be seen between him and the Old House. Twice he thought he heard gunshots in the distant northeastern valley; but, the wind being eccentric and generally against him, he might have been mistaken. And presently, as he had hoped, the mist began to settle like a shroud upon the cliffs. His tweeds blended with rock and heather. For twenty minutes more, he crouched at the summit, the fog slowly shutting off his view of harbor and New House and Old House. Then, carefully, he began the slippery descent. When he reached the talus-slope, he walked gingerly, lest he start a warning slide of rock debris.

  Still he saw no one, nor heard anything. At length he was in the first of the outlying plantations of the New House, and moving swiftly toward the Old House. It was midday, on a Wednesday, a full week since he had left Michigan. And now he stood, sheltered by old trees, right below the Old House of Fear.

  Immediately above him, nearly thirty feet up the steeply-sloping gray outcrop, was the little walled garden he had glimpsed from the cliffs; and a stout stone dyke about eight feet high enclosed it. The garden was set against the rear wall of the great ancient tower, the windows of which looked upon the wood, so that the moment Logan should emerge from the cover of the trees, he must be fully visible to anyone at those windows. Most of the apertures in the tower-wall – from this position below, it seemed like a skyscraper – were the original or at least medieval windows, perhaps a foot square, though now closed with glass panes; but the windows of the third story had been much enlarged, perhaps at the end of the seventeenth century, so that they were taller than a man, and fitted with double sashes of nine panes each. Crouching near the northeastern angle of the tower as he did, Logan could see the range of seventeenth-century buildings that extended to the smaller medieval tower, and beyond that the jutting bulk of the late-Victorian additions, which covered the whole surface of the seaward part of the rock. So long as he kept to the rear of the old tower, he could not be observed from the later portions of the mansion. And it stood to reason that some sort of postern-door must open from the old tower into the walled garden.

  There drifted to him a sound of voices. Lying flat in the wood, Logan made out two men with guns, striding from behind the façade of the Victorian building in the direction of the hill called Cailleach; thus their backs were to him, or soon would be. The leader was a tall gaunt gawky creature, possibly Donley’s “walking cadaver,” Royall. So Logan knew that he had not yet been seen; and there were two less snipers to fret about for the moment. He let them go out of sight downhill. By hooking the handle of his stick over the lip of the garden dyke, he thought, he should be able to scramble up and into the little garden. It had best be now.

  But at that moment, as he rose to step out of the wood and clamber upon the rock, he perceived someone at the nearest third-story window of the old tower. “Saints be praised,” Donley would have said; for it was a woman’s shape. If this should be Lady MacAskival herself, Logan’s work might be made easier for him. He stepped into the open.

  From high above, she saw him; and though perhaps she started a little, she gave no sign of real dread. This was the first calming thing that Logan had observed in Carnglass. Unhurried, the woman lifted the sash. Surely she could not be Lady MacAskival, for she was slim and graceful and apparently young; that much Logan could make out, though she stood so high above him. Could this be the “Young One” to whom Donley had referred vaguely? There had not been much time for asking incidental questions of Donley. Then she spoke, with a gentle lilt to her voice, and very low, so that her words just carried to Logan. “If you can come over the dyke,” she said, “I will open the little door for you.” Her shape vanished from the window.

  Logan skipped up the great rock and hooked his stick upon the dyke, putting his feet against the wall; and up he went, and grasped the top – luckily there was no broken bottle-glass set into it – and pulled himself over, and sprang into the square of garden, which must have been wearisomely established by patient labor in this unlikely spot. There were a half-dozen flowering shrubs, and some small yews, and two neat beds of flowers. And beyond these lay a small heavy iron door set into the great wall. Logan waited a long minute before bolts grated back and the door swung inward.

  “Quickly, now,” that soft voice said, “and please take off your boots once you are inside.” The foundation-wall into which the doorway had been cut must be at least ten feet thick. Logan slipped past the woman, who bolted the door behind him, and he had unlaced and removed his boots almost before she turned to him. They stood in an enormous empty vaulted chamber, in the earliest days of the stronghold a stable and storehouse, no doubt. At one angle, a stone stair wound upward into the blackness of the great wall itself. Though the only light came from slits three feet above their heads, he saw her fairly plain.

  “Really, sir,” she was saying, ever so quietly, but with an undertone of amusement, “you seem to have scrambled over the worst of Carnglass.” Logan became conscious of his rock-bruises and his two-day beard. “Now what is your name, please, and who sent you?”

  She was young, less than twenty, and
a tiny beauty: her shapely head came scarcely above Logan’s shoulder. The oval face with the high cheek-bones was a charming pink-and-white; the firm lips had an infinite grace and mobility, and the dreamy wide eyes were green. The nose, perhaps, was a trifle masculine in so small a face, straight and strong. And the flaming glory of her red hair, which descended to her supple waist! She wore a close-fitting simple suit, of the green tweed of the Islands. Blood tells, Logan thought: this girl is of the old line. She made him stammer.

  “I’m Hugh Logan,” he said, “representing Mr. Duncan MacAskival.”

  She clapped her slender hands noiselessly. “I knew you must come from him! It was I that sent for you, you know. Are there others just outside?”

  Logan shook his head. This would be the Young One. But who was she?

  “And I am Mary MacAskival,” she told him. “Come away, and make no noise. I do not think we shall be long alone together. Carry your boots.” She sprang to the twisting dark stair in the wall, with Logan at her heels. They were naked delicate heels, Logan saw, as they scampered up into the wall: she wore no shoes and stockings, as if the chill stones of the Hebrides were warm sand to her. The bare feet of Scottish girls, it came to him incongruously, had been one of the principal attractions of the land for French visitors in the eighteenth century.

  In silence, they passed a shallow landing and a massive door; and hurried up another corkscrew flight, she pausing to whisper, “Do watch your feet here; it is the bad step – the place they made to trip enemies in the fighting with claymores, you know.” Yes, the single step was two inches higher than the rest, to throw off balance a man leaping upward. They passed a second recessed landing and a second heavy door; and then Mary MacAskival swung open the door opening upon the third story, ushering Logan into a noble ancient vaulted chamber. “This is my very own parlor,” she told him, with just a hint of vanity.