The House on the Borderland and Other Mysterious Places

by William Hope Hodgson; Jeremy Lassen

  “The three of them got together a scratch feed, and Tassoc told me all about the trouble, whilst we were at table. It is most extraordinary, and different from anything that I have had to do with; though that Buzzing Case was very queer, too.

  “Tassoc began right in the middle of his story. ‘We’ve got a room in this shanty,’ he said, ‘which has got a most infernal whistling in it; sort of haunting it. The thing starts any time; you never know when, and it goes on until it frightens you. All the servants have gone, as I’ve told you. It’s not ordinary whistling, and it isn’t the wind. Wait till you hear it.’

  “ ‘We’re all carrying guns,’ said the boy; and slapped his coat pocket.

  “ ‘As bad as that?’ I said; and the older brother nodded. ‘I may be soft,’ he replied; ‘but wait till you’ve heard it. Sometimes I think it’s some infernal thing, and the next moment, I’m just as sure that someone’s playing a trick on us.’

  “ ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘What is to be gained?’

  “ ‘You mean,’ he said, ‘that people usually have some good reason for playing tricks as elaborate as this. Well, I’ll tell you. There’s a lady in this province, by the name of Miss Donnehue, who’s going to be my wife, this day two months. She’s more beautiful than they make them, and so far as I can see, I’ve just stuck my head into an Irish hornet’s nest. There’s about a score of hot young Irishmen been courting her these two years gone, and now that I’ve come along and cut them out, they feel raw against me. Do you begin to understand the possibilities?’

  “ ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Perhaps I do in a vague sort of way; but I don’t see how all this affects the room?’

  “ ‘Like this,’ he said. ‘When I’d fixed it up with Miss Donnehue, I looked out for a place, and bought this little house-shanty. Afterwards, I told her—one evening during dinner, that I’d decided to tie up here. And then she asked me whether I wasn’t afraid of the whistling room. I told her it must have been thrown in gratis, as I’d heard nothing about it. There were some of her men friends present, and I saw a smile go round. I found out, after a bit of questioning, that several people have bought this place during the last twenty odd years. And it was always on the market again, after a trial.

  “ ‘Well, the chaps started to bait me a bit, and offered to take bets after dinner that I’d not stay six months in this shanty. I looked once or twice to Miss Donnehue, so as to be sure I was “getting the note” of the talkee-talkee; but I could see that she didn’t take it as a joke, at all. Partly, I think, because there was a bit of a sneer in the way the men were tackling me, and partly because she really believes there is something in this yarn of the whistling room.

  “ ‘However, after dinner, I did what I could to even things up with the others. I nailed all their bets, and screwed them down good and safe. I guess some of them are going to be hard hit, unless I lose; which I don’t mean to. Well, there you have practically the whole yarn.’

  “ ‘Not quite,’ I told him. ‘All that I know, is that you have bought a castle, with a room in it that is in some way “queer”, and that you’ve been doing some betting. Also, I know that your servants have got frightened, and run away. Tell me something about the whistling?’

  “ ‘O, that!’ said Tassoc; ‘that started the second night we were in. I’d had a good look round the room in the daytime, as you can understand; for the talk up at Arlestrae—Miss Donnehue’s place—had made me wonder a bit. But it seems just as usual as some of the other rooms in the old wing, only perhaps a bit more lonesome feeling. But that may be only because of the talk about it, you know.

  “ ‘The whistling started about ten o’clock, on the second night, as I said. Tom and I were in the library, when we heard an awfully queer whistling, coming along the East Corridor— The room is in the East Wing, you know.

  “ ‘That’s that blessed ghost!’ I said to Tom, and we collared the lamps off the table, and went up to have a look. I tell you, even as we dug along the corridor, it took me a bit in the throat, it was so beastly queer. It was a sort of tune, in a way; but more as if a devil or some rotten thing were laughing at you, and going to get round at your back. That’s how it makes you feel.

  “ ‘When we got to the door, we didn’t wait; but rushed it open; and then I tell you the sound of the thing fairly hit me in the face. Tom said he got it the same way— Sort of felt stunned and bewildered. We looked all round, and soon got so nervous, we just cleared out, and I locked the door.

  “ ‘We came down here, and had a stiff peg each. Then we landed fit again, and began to feel we’d been nicely had. So we took sticks, and went out into the grounds, thinking after all it must be some of these confounded Irishmen working the ghost-trick on us. But there was not a leg stirring.

  “ ‘We went back into the house, and walked over it, and then paid another visit to the room. But we simply couldn’t stand it. We fairly ran out, and locked the door again. I don’t know how to put it into words; but I had a feeling of being up against something that was rottenly dangerous. You know! We’ve carried our guns ever since.

  “ ‘Of course, we had a real turn-out of the room next day, and the whole house-place; and we even hunted round the grounds; but there was nothing queer. And now I don’t know what to think; except that the sensible part of me tells me that it’s some plan of these Wild Irishmen to try to take a rise out of me.’

  “ ‘Done anything since?’ I asked him.

  “ ‘Yes,’ he said— ‘Watched outside of the door of the room at nights, and chased round the grounds, and sounded the walls and floor of the room. We’ve done everything we could think of; and it’s beginning to get on our nerves; so we sent for you.’

  “By this, we had finished eating. As we rose from the table, Tassoc suddenly called out:— ‘Ssh! Hark!’

  “We were instantly silent, listening. Then I heard it, an extraordinary hooning whistle, monstrous and inhuman, coming from far away through corridors to my right.

  “ ‘By God! said Tassoc; ‘and it’s scarcely dark yet! Collar those candles, both of you, and come along.’

  “In a few moments, we were all out of the door and racing up the stairs. Tassoc turned into a long corridor, and we followed, shielding our candles as we ran. The sound seemed to fill all the passage as we drew near, until I had the feeling that the whole air throbbed under the power of some wanton Immense Force—a sense of an actual taint, as you might say, of monstrosity all about us.

  “Tassoc unlocked the door; then, giving it a push with his foot, jumped back, and drew his revolver. As the door flew open, the sound beat out at us, with an effect impossible to explain to one who has not heard it—with a certain, horrible personal note in it; as if in there in the darkness you could picture the room rocking and creaking in a mad, vile glee to its own filthy piping and whistling and hooning; and yet all the time aware of you in particular. To stand there and listen, was to be stunned by Realisation. It was as if someone showed you the mouth of a vast pit suddenly, and said:— That’s Hell. And you knew that they had spoken the truth. Do you get it, even a little bit?

  “I stepped a pace into the room, and held the candle over my head, and looked quickly round. Tassoc and his brother joined me, and the man came up at the back, and we all held our candles high. I was deafened with the shrill, piping hoon of the whistling; and then, clear in my ear, something seemed to be saying to me:— ‘Get out of here—quick! Quick! Quick!’

  “As you chaps know, I never neglect that sort of thing. Sometimes it may be nothing but nerves; but as you will remember, it was just such a warning that saved me in the ‘Grey Dog’ Case, and in the ‘Yellow Finger’ Experiments; as well as other times. Well, I turned sharp round to the others: ‘Out!’ I said. ‘For God’s sake, out quick!’ And in an instant I had them into the passage.

  “There came an extraordinary yelling scream into the hideous whistling, and then, like a clap of thunder, an utter silence. I slammed the door, and locked it. Then, taking the key, I l
ooked round at the others.

  “They were pretty white, and I imagine I must have looked that way too. And there we stood a moment, silent.

  “ ‘Come down out of this, and have some whisky,’ said Tassoc, at last, in a voice he tried to make ordinary; and he led the way. I was the back man, and I knew we all kept looking over our shoulders. When we got down-stairs, Tassoc passed the bottle round. He took a drink, himself, and slapped his glass on to the table. Then sat down with a thud.

  “ ‘That’s a lovely thing to have in the house with you, isn’t it!’ he said. And directly afterwards:— ‘What on earth made you hustle us all out like that, Carnacki?’

  “ ‘Something seemed to be telling me to get out, quick,’ I said. ‘Sounds a bit silly-superstitious, I know; but when you are meddling with this sort of thing, you’ve got to take notice of queer fancies, and risk being laughed at.’

  “I told him then about the ‘Grey Dog’ business, and he nodded a lot to that. ‘Of course,’ I said, ‘this may be nothing more than those would-be rivals of yours playing some funny game; but, personally, though I’m going to keep an open mind, I feel that there is something beastly and dangerous about this thing.’

  “We talked for a while longer, and then Tassoc suggested billiards, which we played in a pretty half-hearted fashion, and all the time cocking an ear to the door, as you might say, for sounds; but none came, and later, after coffee, he suggested early bed, and a thorough overhaul of the room on the morrow.

  “My bedroom was in the newer part of the castle, and the door opened into the picture gallery. At the East end of the gallery was the entrance to the corridor of the East Wing; this was shut off from the gallery by two old and heavy oak doors, which looked rather odd and quaint beside the more modern doors of the various rooms.

  “When I reached my room, I did not go to bed; but began to unpack my instrument-trunk, of which I had retained the key. I intended to take one or two preliminary steps at once, in my investigation of the extraordinary whistling.

  “Presently, when the castle had settled into quietness, I slipped out of my room, and across to the entrance of the great corridor. I opened one of the low, squat doors, and threw the beam of my pocket search-light down the passage. It was empty, and I went through the doorway, and pushed-to the oak behind me. Then along the great passageway, throwing my light before and behind, and keeping my revolver handy.

  “I had hung a ‘protection belt’ of garlic round my neck, and the smell of it seemed to fill the corridor and give me assurance; for, as you all know, it is a wonderful ‘protection’ against the more usual Aeiirii forms of semi-materialisation, by which I supposed the whistling might be produced; though, at that period of my investigation, I was still quite prepared to find it due to some perfectly natural cause; for it is astonishing the enormous number of cases that prove to have nothing abnormal in them.

  “In addition to wearing the necklet, I had plugged my ears loosely with garlic, and as I did not intend to stay more than a few minutes in the room, I hoped to be safe.

  “When I reached the door, and put my hand into my pocket for the key, I had a sudden feeling of sickening funk. But I was not going to back out, if I could help it. I unlocked the door and turned the handle. Then I gave the door a sharp push with my foot, as Tassoc had done, and drew my revolver, though I did not expect to have any use for it, really.

  “I shone the searchlight all round the room, and then stepped inside, with a disgustingly horrible feeling of walking slap into a waiting Danger. I stood a few seconds, expectant, and nothing happened, and the empty room showed bare from corner to corner. And then, you know, I realised that the room was full of an abominable silence; can you understand that? A sort of purposeful silence, just as sickening as any of the filthy noises the Things have power to make. Do you remember what I told you about that ‘Silent Garden’ business? Well, this room had just that same malevolent silence—the beastly quietness of a thing that is looking at you and not seeable itself, and thinks that it has got you. O, I recognised it instantly, and I whipped the top off my lantern, so as to have light over the whole room.

  “Then I set-to, working like fury, and keeping my glance all about me. I sealed the two windows with lengths of human hair, right across, and sealed them at every frame. As I worked, a queer, scarcely perceptible tenseness stole into the air of the place, and the silence seemed, if you can understand me, to grow more solid. I knew then that I had no business there without ‘full protection’; for I was practically certain that this was no mere Aeiirii development; but one of the worse forms, as the Saiitii; like that ‘Grunting Man’ case—you know.

  “I finished the window, and hurried over to the great fire-place. This is a huge affair, and has a queer gallows-iron, I think they are called, projecting from the back of the arch. I sealed the opening with seven human hairs—the seventh crossing the six others.

  “Then, just as I was making an end, a low, mocking whistle grew in the room. A cold, nervous prickling went up my spine, and round my forehead from the back. The hideous sound filled all the room with an extraordinary, grotesque parody of human whistling, too gigantic to be human—as if something gargantuan and monstrous made the sounds softly. As I stood there a last moment, pressing down the final seal, I had little doubt but that I had come across one of those rare and horrible cases of the Inanimate reproducing the functions of the Animate. I made a grab for my lamp, and went quickly to the door, looking over my shoulder, and listening for the thing that I expected. It came, just as I got my hand upon the handle—a squeal of incredible, malevolent anger, piercing through the low hooning of the whistling. I dashed out, slamming the door and locking it.

  “I leant a little against the opposite wall of the corridor, feeling rather funny; for it had been a hideously narrow squeak…. ‘Theyr be noe sayfetie to be gained bye gayrds of holieness when the monyster hath pow’r to speak throe woode and stoene.’ So runs the passage in the Sigsand MS., and I proved it in that ‘Nodding Door’ business. There is no protection against this particular form of monster, except, possibly, for a fractional period of time; for it can reproduce itself in, or take to its purposes, the very protective material which you may use, and has power to ‘forme wythine the pentycle’; though not immediately. There is, of course, the possibility of the Unknown Last Line of the Saaamaaa Ritual being uttered; but it is too uncertain to count upon, and the danger is too hideous; and even then it has no power to protect for more than ‘maybee fyve beats of the harte’, as the Sigsand has it.

  “Inside of the room, there was now a constant, meditative, hooning whistling; but presently this ceased, and the silence seemed worse; for there is such a sense of hidden mischief in a silence.

  “After a little, I sealed the door with crossed hairs, and then cleared off down the great passage, and so to bed.

  “For a long time I lay awake; but managed eventually to get some sleep. Yet, about two o’clock I was waked by the hooning whistling of the room coming to me, even through the closed doors. The sound was tremendous, and seemed to beat through the whole house with a presiding sense of terror. As if (I remember thinking) some monstrous giant had been holding mad carnival with itself at the end of that great passage.

  “I got up and sat on the edge of the bed, wondering whether to go along and have a look at the seal; and suddenly there came a thump on my door, and Tassoc walked in, with his dressing-gown over his pyjamas.

  “ ‘I thought it would have waked you, so I came along to have a talk,’ he said. ‘I can’t sleep. Beautiful! Isn’t it!’

  “ ‘Extraordinary!’ I said, and tossed him my case.

  “He lit a cigarette, and we sat and talked for about an hour; and all the time that noise went on, down at the end of the big corridor.

  “Suddenly, Tassoc stood up:—

  “ ‘Let’s take our guns, and go and examine the brute,’ he said, and turned towards the door.

  “ ‘No!’ I said. ‘By Jove—NO! I ca
n’t say anything definite, yet; but I believe that room is about as dangerous as it well can be.’

  “ ‘Haunted—really haunted?’ he asked, keenly and without any of his frequent banter.

  “I told him, of course, that I could not say a definite yes or no to such a question; but that I hoped to be able to make a statement, soon. Then I gave him a little lecture on the False Re-Materialisation of the Animate-Force through the Inanimate-Inert. He began then to understand the particular way in which the room might be dangerous, if it were really the subject of a manifestation.

  “About an hour later, the whistling ceased quite suddenly, and Tassoc went off again to bed. I went back to mine, also, and eventually got another spell of sleep.

  “In the morning, I walked along to the room. I found the seals on the door intact. Then I went in. The window seals and the hair were all right; but the seventh hair across the great fireplace was broken. This set me thinking. I knew that it might, very possibly, have snapped, through my having tensioned it too highly; but then, again, it might have been broken by something else. Yet, it was scarcely possible that a man, for instance, could have passed between the six unbroken hairs; for no one would ever have noticed them, entering the room that way, you see; but just walked through them, ignorant of their very existence.

  “I removed the other hairs, and the seals. Then I looked up the chimney. It went up straight, and I could see blue sky at the top. It was a big, open flue, and free from any suggestion of hiding places, or corners. Yet, of course, I did not trust to any such casual examination, and after breakfast, I put on my overalls, and climbed to the very top, sounding all the way; but I found nothing.

  “Then I came down, and went over the whole of the room—floor, ceiling, and walls, mapping them out in six-inch squares, and sounding with both hammer and probe. But there was nothing unusual.