“This ‘Straw Platters’ business reminds me, you know, of the ‘Searcher’ Case, which I have sometimes thought might interest you.
It was some time ago, in fact a deuce of a long time ago, that the thing happened; and my experience of what I might term ‘curious’ things was very small indeed.
“I was living with my Mother, when it occurred, in a small house just outside of Appledorn, on the South Coast. The house was the last of a row of detached cottage-villas, I might call them, each house standing in its own garden; and very dainty little places they were, exceedingly old, and most of them smothered in roses; and all, you know, with those quaint, leaded windows, and the doors built of genuine oak. You must just try to picture them for the sake of their complete niceness.
“Now I must remind you at the beginning, that my Mother and I had lived in that little house for two years, and in the whole of that time there had not been a single thing peculiar to worry us.
“And then, you know, something happened.
“It was about two o’clock one morning, just as I was finishing some letters, that I heard the door of my Mother’s bedroom open, and she came to the top of the stairs, and knocked on the banisters.
“ ‘All right, dear,’ I called; for I supposed that she was merely reminding me that I should have been in bed long ago; then I heard her go back to her room, and I hurried my work, for fear that she should lie awake, until she had heard me safe up to my room.
“When I was finished, I lit my candle, put out the lamp, and went upstairs. As I came opposite to the door of my Mother’s room, I saw that it was open, and called good-night to her, very softly, and asked whether I should close the door.
“As there was no answer, I knew that she had dropped over again to sleep, and I closed the door very gently, and turned into my room, just across the passage. As I did so, I had a momentary, half-aware sense that there was a faint, peculiar, disagreeable odour in the passage; but it was not until the following night that I realised that I had seemed to smell something that offended me. You follow me, don’t you? I mean, it is so often like that—one suddenly knows about a thing that really recorded itself on one’s consciousness, perhaps a year before.
“The next morning at breakfast, I mentioned casually to my Mother that she had ‘dropped-off’, and that I had shut her door for her. But, to my surprise, she assured me that she had never been out of her room. I reminded her about the two raps that she had given upon the banister; but she was still certain that I must be mistaken; and in the end I teased her that she had got so accustomed to my bad habit of sitting up late, that she had come to call me in her sleep. Of course, she denied this, and I let the matter drop; but I was more than a little puzzled, and did not know whether to believe my own explanation, or to take the Mater’s, which was to put the noises to the blame of mice, and the open door to the fact that she may not have properly latched it when she went to bed. I suppose, away in the subconscious part of me, I had a stirring of less reasonable-seeming thoughts; but certainly, I had no knowledge of real uneasiness at that time.
“Then, the next night there came a further development, for about two-thirty a.m., I heard my Mother’s door open, exactly as on the previous night, and immediately afterward she rapped sharply, on the banister, as it seemed to me. I stopped my work a moment, and called up to her that I would not be long; but as she made no reply, and I did not hear her go back to bed, I had a quick wonder whether she might not be doing it in her sleep, after all, just as I had said.
“With the thought, I stood up, and taking the lamp from the table, began to go towards the door, which was open into the passage. And then, you know, I got a sudden nasty sort of thrill; for it came to me, all at once, that my Mother never knocked, when I had sat up too late, but called. But you will understand that I was not really frightened in any way; only vaguely uneasy, and pretty sure that she must be really doing the thing in her sleep.
“I went up the stairs quickly, and when I had come to the top, my Mother was not there; but her door was open. I had a little bewildered sense that she must have gone quietly back to bed, after all, without my hearing her; but, for all that I thought I believed this, I was pretty quick into her room. Yet, when I got there, she was sleeping quietly and naturally; for the vague sense of trouble in me was sufficiently strong to make me go over to look at her, to make certain.
“When I was sure that she was perfectly right in every way, I was still a little bothered; but much more inclined to believe that my suspicion was right and that she had got quietly back to bed in her sleep, without waking to know what she had been doing. This was the most reasonable thing to think, as you must see.
“And then, it came to me, suddenly, that there was a vague, queer, mildewy smell in the room; and it was in that instant that I became aware that I had smelt the same strange, uncertain smell the night before, in the passage, as you remember.
“I was definitely uneasy now, and began quietly to search my Mother’s room; though with no aim or clear thought of anything, except to assure myself that there was nothing in the room. And all the time, you know, I never expected really to find anything; only that my uneasiness had to be reassured.
“In the middle of my search round, my Mother woke up, and of course I had to explain. I told her about her door opening, and then the knocks on the banister, and that I had come up and found her asleep. I said nothing about the smell, which was not very distinct; but told her that the thing happening twice had made me a bit nervous, and possibly fanciful, and that I thought I would take a look about, just to feel satisfied.
“I have thought since then that the reason I made no mention of the smell, was not only that I did not want to make my Mother feel frightened—for I was scarcely that way myself—but because I had a vague half-knowledge that I associated the smell with fancies too indefinite and peculiar to bear talking about. You will understand that I am able now to analyse and put the thing into words; but then I did not even know my chief reason for saying nothing; let alone appreciate its possible significance. You follow me?
“It was my Mother, after all, who put part of my vague sensations into words:—
“ ‘What a disagreeable smell,’ she exclaimed, and was silent a moment, looking at me. Then:— ‘You feel that there’s something wrong,’ still looking at me, very quiet, you know; but with a little, questioning, nervous note of expectancy.
“ ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I can’t understand it, unless you’ve really been walking about in your sleep.’
“ ‘But the smell,’ she said.
“ ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘That’s what puzzles me, too. I’ll have a walk through the house; though I don’t suppose it’s anything.’
“I lit her candle, and then taking the lamp, I went through the two other bedrooms, and afterwards all over the house, including the three underground cellars, which I found a little trying to the nerves.
“Then I went back to my Mother, and told her that there was really nothing to bother about; and, you know, in the end, we talked ourselves into believing that it was nothing. My Mother would not agree that she might have been sleep-walking; but she was ready to put the door opening, down to the fault of the latch, which certainly snicked very lightly. As for the knocks, they might be the old warped woodwork of the house, cracking a bit, or a mouse rattling a piece of loose plaster. The smell was a little more difficult to explain; but finally we agreed that it might easily be the queer night-smell of the moist earth, coming in through the window of my Mother’s room, from the back garden, or—for that matter—from the little church-yard beyond the big wall at the bottom of the garden.
“And so, at last, we quietened down, and finally I went off to bed, and had some sleep.
“I think this is certainly a good lesson on the way in which we humans can delude ourselves; for there was not one of these explanations that my reason could really accept. You just try to imagine yourselves in the same circumstances, and you will
see how absurd our attempts to explain the happenings really were.
“In the morning, when I came down to breakfast, we talked it all over again, and whilst we agreed that it was strange, we also agreed that we had begun to imagine queer things in the backs of our minds, which now we felt half ashamed to admit. I think this is very funny, when you come to look into it; but it’s absurdly human.
“And then, you know, that night, my Mother’s door was slammed once violently, just after midnight.
“I caught up the lamp, and when I reached her door, I found it shut. I opened it quickly and went in, to find my Mother lying with her eyes open, and rather nervous; having been waked by the slam of the door. But what upset me more than anything, was the fact that there was a simply brutal smell in the passage and in her room.
“Whilst I was asking her whether she was all right, a door slammed twice downstairs; and you can imagine how it made me feel. My Mother and I looked at one another; and then I lit her candle, and taking the poker from the fender, went downstairs with the lamp, feeling really horribly nervous. The culminative effect of so many queer little things was getting hold of me; and all the apparently reasonable explanations seemed abjectly futile.
“The horrible smell seemed to be very strong in the downstairs passage; also in the front room and the cellars; but chiefly in the passage. However, I made a very thorough search of the house, and when I had finished, I knew that all the lower windows and doors had been properly shut and fastened, and that there was certainly no living thing in the house, beyond our two selves.
“Then I went upstairs again to my Mother’s room, and we talked the thing over for an hour or more, and in the end came to the conclusion that we might, after all, be reading too much into a number of little things; but, you know, inside of us, we did not believe this. You just think!
“Later, when we had talked ourselves into a more comfortable state of mind, I said good night, and went off to bed; and presently managed to get to sleep.
“Then, in the early hours of the morning, whilst it was still dark, I was waked by a loud noise. You can imagine that it made me feel rather queer, after the little unexplained things that had been happening; and I sat up pretty quick in bed, and listened. And then, downstairs, I heard:—bang, bang, bang, one door after another being slammed; at least, that is the impression that the sounds gave me.
“I jumped out of bed, with a tingle and shiver of sudden fright on me; and at the same moment, as I lit my candle, my door was pushed slowly open; you see, I had not latched it, so as to feel that my Mother was not shut off from me in any way.
“ ‘Who’s there!’ I shouted out, in a voice about twice as deep as natural, and with that queer breathlessness, that a sudden fright so often gives one. ‘Who’s there!’
“Then I heard my Mother saying:—
“ ‘It’s me, Thomas. Whatever is happening downstairs?’
“She was in the room, by this, and I saw that she had her bedroom poker in one hand, and her candle in the other. I could have smiled at her, if it had not been for the extraordinary sounds downstairs; for, you know, she was such a little woman; but with heaps of pluck.
“I got into my slippers, and reached down an old sword-bayonet from the wall. Then I picked up my candle, and begged my Mother not to come; but I knew it would be little use, if she had made up her mind; and she had, with the result that she acted as a sort of rearguard for me, during our search. I know, in some ways, selfishly, I was very glad to have her with me.
“By this time, the door-slamming had ceased, and there seemed, probably because of the sheer contrast, to be a simply beastly silence in the house. However, I led the way, holding my candle high, and keeping the sword-bayonet handy.
“When we got downstairs, I saw that all the room doors were wide open; and when we had made a thorough search, and found the outer doors and the windows all secured, I tell you, I wondered whether the noises had been made by the doors at all. Of one thing only we were able to make sure, and that was that there was no living thing in the house, beside ourselves. But everywhere, in the whole house, there seemed the taint of that extraordinarily horrible smell.
“Of course, it was absurd to try to ‘make-believe’ any longer. There was something strange about the house; and as soon as it was daylight, I set my Mother to packing. After breakfast, I saw her off by train to one of my aunts, with a wire in advance, to prepare them.
“Then I set to work to try to clear up this mystery. I went first to the landlord, and told him all the circumstances. From him, I found that twelve or fifteen years back, the house had got rather a curious name from three or four tenants; with the result that it had remained empty for a long while; and in the end he had let it at a low rent to a Captain Tobias, on the one condition that the Captain should hold his tongue, if he saw anything peculiar. The Landlord’s idea—as he told me frankly—was to free the house from these tales of ‘something queer’, by keeping a tenant in it, and then to sell it for the best price he could get.
“However, when Captain Tobias left, after a ten years’ tenancy, there was no longer any ‘talk’ about the house; so that when we came and offered to take it on a five years’ lease, he had jumped at the chance. This was the whole story; at least, so he gave me to understand. When I pressed him for details of the supposed peculiar happenings in the house, all those years back, he said that the tenants had talked about a woman who was always going about the house at night. Some tenants never saw anything; but others would not stay the first month’s tenancy.
“One thing the landlord was particular to point out, that no tenant had ever complained about knockings, or doors slamming. As for the smell, he seemed positively indignant about it; but why, I don’t suppose he quite knew himself, except that he probably had some vague feeling that it was an indirect accusation on my part that the drains were not right.
“In the end, I suggested that he should come down that evening and spend the night with me. He agreed at once, especially as I told him that I intended to keep the whole business quiet, and try to get really to the bottom of the curious happenings; for he was very anxious to keep the rumour of the haunting from getting about again.
“About three o’clock that afternoon, he came down, and we made a thorough search of the house, which, however, showed us nothing unusual. Afterwards, the Landlord made one or two tests, which showed him that the drainage was in perfect order; and after that, we made our preparations for sitting up all night.
“First, we borrowed two policemen’s dark lanterns from the station near by, where the Superintendent and I were very friendly; and as soon as it was really dusk, the Landlord went up to his house for his gun. I had the sword-bayonet that I have told you about; and when the Landlord got back, we sat talking in my study until nearly midnight.
“Then we lit the lanterns and went upstairs on to the landing, where I brought a small table and a couple of chairs out of one of the bedrooms. We put the lanterns and the gun and bayonet handy on the table; then I shut and sealed the bedroom-doors; after which we took our seats, and turned off the lights.
“From then, until two o’clock, nothing happened; but a little after two, as I found by holding my watch near to the faint glow of the closed lanterns, I had a time of quite extraordinary nervousness. At last I bent towards the Landlord, and whispered to him that I had a queer feeling that something was about to happen, and to be ready with his lantern. At the same time, I reached out towards mine. In the very instant that I made this movement, the night which filled the passage seemed to become suddenly of a dull violet colour; not, mind you, as if a light had been shone; but as if the natural blackness of the night had changed colour, as I might say from the inside. Do you understand what I am trying to tell you? And then, coming through this violet night, through this violet-coloured gloom, came a little naked child, running. In an extraordinary way, the child seemed not to be distinct from the surrounding gloom; but almost as if it were a concentration of
that extraordinary atmosphere; almost—can you understand?—as if that gloomy colour which had changed the night, came from the child. It seems impossible to make clear to you; but try to take hold of what I’m saying.
“The child went past me, running, quite naturally, as a chubby human child might run; only in an absolute and inconceivable silence. I remember that it was a very small child, and must have passed under the table; but I saw it through the table, as if the table had been only a slightly darker shadow than the coloured gloom. In the same instant, I saw that a fluctuating shimmer of violet light outlined the metal of the gun-barrels and the blade of the sword-bayonet, making them seem like faint shapes of glimmering light, floating unsupported where the table-top should have shown solid.
“Now, curiously, as I saw these things, I was subconsciously aware that I heard the anxious breathing of the Landlord, quite clear and laboured, close to my elbow, where he waited nervously with his hands on the lantern. And, you know, I realised in that moment that he saw nothing; but waited in the darkness, for my warning to come true.
“Even as I took heed of these minor things, I saw the child jump to one side, and hide behind some half-seen object, that was certainly nothing belonging to the passage. I stared, intently, with a most extraordinary thrill of expectant wonder, and fright making goose-flesh of my back. And even as I stared, I solved for myself the less important problem of what two black clouds were that hung over a part of the table. I think it is very curious and interesting, that double working of the mind, often so much more apparent during times of stress. The two black clouds came from two faintly shining shapes, which I knew must be the metal of the lanterns; and the things that looked black to the sight with which I was then seeing; could be nothing else but what to normal human sight is known as light. This phenomenon I have always remembered. I have twice seen a somewhat similar thing, in that Dark Light Case, and in that trouble of Maaetheson’s, which you know about.
The House on the Borderland and Other Mysterious Places Page 26