“Even as I understood this matter of the lights, I was looking to my left, to understand why the child was hiding. And suddenly, I heard the Landlord shout out:— ‘The woman!’ But I saw nothing. I had a vague, disagreeable sense that something repugnant was near to me, and I was aware in the same moment that the Landlord was gripping my arm in a hard, frightened grip. Then I was staring back to where the child had hidden. I saw the child peeping out from behind its hiding-place, seeming to be looking up the passage; but whether in fear or not, I could not tell. Then it came out, and ran headlong away, through the place where should have been the wall of my Mother’s bedroom; but the sense with which I was seeing these things, showed me the wall only as a vague, upright shadow, unsubstantial. And immediately the child was lost to me, in the dull violet gloom. At the same time, I felt the Landlord press back against me, as if something passed too close to him; and he gave out again a hoarse little cry:— ‘The Woman! The Woman!’ and turned the shade clumsily from off his lantern, which seemed to let loose instantly a great fan-shaped jet of blackness across the violet-coloured gloom. But I had seen no Woman. Abruptly, the violet tint went out of the night, and the fan-shaped jet of blackness became plain to me as the funnel of light from the landlord’s lantern. I saw that the passage showed empty, as he shone the beam of his light jerkily to and fro; but chiefly in the direction of the doorway of my Mother’s room.
“He was still clutching my arm, and had risen to his feet; and now, mechanically and almost slowly, I picked up my own lantern and turned on the light. I shone it, a little dazedly, at the seals upon the doors; but none was broken; then I sent the light to and fro, up and down the passage; but there was nothing there; and I looked at the Landlord, who was saying something in a rather incoherent fashion. As my light passed over his face, I noted, in a stupid sort of way, that it was drenched with sweat.
“Then my wits became more handleable, and I began to catch the drift of his words:— ‘Did you see her? Did you see her?’ he was saying, over and over again. I found myself telling him, in quite a level voice, that I had not seen any woman. He became more coherent then, and told me that he had seen a Woman come from the end of the passage, and go right past us; but he could not describe her, except that she kept stopping and looking about her, and had even peered at the wall, close beside him, as if looking for something. But what seemed to trouble him most, was that she had not seemed to see him, at all. He repeated this so often, that in the end I told him, in an absurd sort of way, that he ought to be very glad that she had not. You can imagine what my nerves felt like. What did it all mean? was the one question; and somehow I was not so frightened, as utterly bewildered. I had seen less then, than since; and knew less of possible and actual dangers. The chief effect of what I had seen, was to make me feel adrift from all my anchorages of Reason.
“What did it mean? He had seen a Woman, searching for something. I had not seen this Woman. I had seen a Child, running away, and hiding from Something or Someone. He had not seen this Child, or the other things—only the Woman. And I had not seen her. What did it all mean?
“I had said nothing yet to the Landlord about the Child. I had been too bewildered in the first few moments; and afterwards, I realised immediately that it would be futile to attempt to explain it to him. He was already frightened and stupid, with the thing that he had seen; and not the kind of man to understand. All this went through my mind very quickly, as we stood there, shining the lanterns to and fro; and as a result, I said nothing of what I had seen. And all the time, intermingled with this streak of practical reasoning, I was questioning to myself, what did it all mean; what was the Woman searching for, and what was the Child running from? You can understand the multitude of vague minor questions that kept rising.
“And suddenly, as I stood there, bewildered and nervous, and making random answers to the Landlord, a door was violently slammed downstairs; and directly I caught the horrible reek of which I have told you before.
“ ‘There!’ I said to the Landlord, and caught his arm, in my turn. ‘And the Smell! The Smell, do you smell it?’
“He looked at me, stupidly, so that I shook him, with a sort of nervous anger.
“ ‘Yes,’ he said, at last, in a queer voice, and trying to shine the light from his shaking lantern at the stair-head.
“ ‘Come on!’ I said, and picked up my bayonet; and he came, carrying his gun awkwardly. I think he came, more because he was afraid to be left alone, than because he had any pluck left, poor beggar. I never sneer at that kind of funk, at least very seldom; for when it takes hold of you, it makes rags of your courage, as I know.
“I began to go downstairs, shining my light over the banisters into the lower passage, and afterwards at the doors to see whether they were shut; for I had closed and latched them, leaning a corner of a mat up against each door, so that I should know which had been opened, in the event of anything happening.
“I saw at once that none of the doors had been opened; then I paused and threw the beam of my light down alongside of the stairway, so as to see the mat that I had leaned against the door at the top of the cellar stairs. In a moment, I got a horrid thrill; for the mat was flat. I waited a couple of seconds, shining my light to and fro in the passage. Then, holding pretty solid on to my courage, I went down the remainder of the stairs.
“As I came to the bottom step, I saw suddenly that there were wet patches all up and down the passage. I shone my lantern on to one of them. It was the imprint of a wet foot on the black oak floor; not an ordinary footprint, but a queer, soft, flabby, spreading imprint, that gave me an extraordinary feeling of horror.
“Backward and forward I flashed the light over the impossible footprints, and saw them everywhere. And suddenly I saw that they led to each of the closed doors. I felt something touch my back, and glanced round swiftly, to find that the Landlord had come down close to me, almost pressing against me, in his fear.
“ ‘It’s all right,’ I said, but in a rather breathless whisper, meaning to put a little courage into him; for I could feel that he was shaking through all his body. And then, you know, even as I tried to get him steadied enough to be of some use, his gun went off with a tremendous bang and knocked the seat clean out of one of the hall chairs. He jumped, and yelled with sheer terror; and I swore at the top of my voice, because of the shock.
“ ‘For God’s sake give it to me!’ I said, and slipped the gun from his hand; in the same instant there was a sound of running footsteps up the garden path, and immediately the flash of a bull’s-eye lantern upon the fanlight over the front door. Then the door was tried, and directly afterwards there came a thundering knocking, which told me that the policeman on the beat had heard the shot, and run up to see what was wrong.
“I went quickly to the door, and opened it. Fortunately the Constable knew me well, and when I had beckoned him in, I was able to explain matters in a very short time.
“Whilst I was doing this, Inspector Johnstone, whose round lay that way, came up the path, having missed the officer, and seen the lights and the open door. I told him as briefly as possible what had happened; but nothing about the Child or the Woman; for it would have seemed too fantastic for him to notice seriously. Then I showed him the queer, wet footprints and how they went towards the closed doors. I explained quickly about the mats, and how that the one against the cellar door was flat, which showed that the door must have been opened.
“The Inspector nodded, and told the Constable to draw his staff and guard the door. He asked then for the hall lamp to be lit; after which he took the policeman’s lantern, and led the way into the front room. He paused with the door wide open, and threw the light all round; then jumped into the room, and looked behind the door; there was no one there; nor had I expected that there would be anyone; but all over the polished oak floor, between the scattered rugs, went the marks of those horrible spreading footprints; and the whole room was tainted with the disgusting smell.
“The
Inspector searched carefully but quickly, and then came out and went into the middle room, using the same precautions. You can imagine just how beastly it was going into those rooms. There was nothing, of course, in the middle one, or in the kitchen and pantry; but everywhere went the wet footmarks about all the rooms, showing plain wherever there was clear woodwork or oilcloth; and always wherever we went there was the smell.
“The Inspector ceased from his search, and spent a minute in trying whether the mats would really fall flat when the doors were open, or merely ruckle upward again, in such a way as to appear that they had been untouched. But in each case, the mats fell flat, and remained so.
“ ‘Most extraordinary!’ I heard Inspector Johnstone mutter to himself. Then he went towards the cellar door. He had inquired at first whether there were any windows to the cellars, and when he knew there was no way out, except by the door, he had left this part of the search to the last.
“As Johnstone came up to the door, the policeman made a motion of salute, and said something in a low voice; and something in the tone made me flick my light across him. I saw then that the man was very white, and he looked scared and bewildered.
“ ‘What?’ said Johnstone, impatiently. ‘Speak up!’
“ ‘A woman come along ’ere, sir, and went through this ’ere door,’ said the Constable, clearly, but with that curious monotonous intonation that you sometimes get from an unintelligent human who is badly frightened.
“ ‘What!’ shouted the Inspector.
“ ‘A woman come along ’ere, sir, and went through this ’ere door,’ said the man, monotonously.
“The Inspector caught the man by the shoulder, and deliberately smelt his breath.
“ ‘No!’ he said. And then sarcastically:— ‘I hope you held the door open politely for the lady.’
“ ‘The door weren’t opened, sir,’ said the man, simply.
“ ‘Are you mad—’ began Johnstone.
“ ‘No,’ said the Landlord’s voice from the back, and speaking steadily enough. ‘I saw the woman upstairs.’ It was evident that he had got back his control again.
“ ‘I’m afraid, Inspector Johnstone,’ I said, ‘that there’s more in this than you think. I certainly saw something very extraordinary upstairs.’
“The Inspector seemed about to say something; but, instead, he turned again to the door, and flashed his light down and round about the mat. I saw then that the strangely horrible footmarks came straight up to the cellar door; and the last print showed under the door; yet the policeman said the door had not been opened.
“And suddenly, without any intention, or realisation of what I was saying, I said to the Landlord:—
“ ‘What were the feet like?’
“I received no answer; for the Inspector was ordering the Constable to open the cellar door, and the man was not obeying. Johnstone repeated the order, and at last, in a queer automatic way, the man obeyed, and pushed the door open. The disgusting smell beat up at us, in a great wave of horror, and the Inspector came backward a step.
“ ‘My God!’ he said, and went forward again, and shone his light down the steps; but there was nothing visible, only that on each step showed the unnatural footprints.
“ ‘The Inspector brought the beam of the light vividly on to the top step; and there, clear in the light, there was something small, moving. The Inspector bent to look, and the policeman and I with him. Now I don’t want to disgust you; but the thing was a maggot. The Policeman backed suddenly out of the doorway.
“ ‘The churchyard,’ he said, ‘…at the back of the ’ouse.’
“ ‘Si-lence !’ said Johnstone, with a queer break in the word, and I knew that at last he was frightened. He put his lantern into the doorway, and shone it from step to step, following the footprints down into the darkness; then he stepped back from the open doorway, and we all gave back with him. He looked round, and I had a feeling that he was looking for a weapon of some kind.
“ ‘Your gun,’ I said to the Landlord, and he brought it from the front hall, and passed it over to the Inspector, who took it and ejected the empty shell from the right barrel. He held out his hand for a live cartridge, which the Landlord brought from his pocket. Then he loaded the gun and snapped the breech. He turned to the Constable:—
“ ‘Come on,’ he said, and moved towards the cellar doorway.
“ ‘I ain’t comin’, sir,’ said the policeman, very white in the face.
“With a sudden blaze of passion, the Inspector took the man by the scruff, and hove him bodily down into the darkness, and he went downward, screaming. The Inspector followed him instantly, with his lantern and the gun; and I after the Inspector, with the bayonet ready. Behind me, I heard the Landlord come, stumbling nervously.
At the bottom of the stairs, the Inspector was helping the policeman to his feet, where he stood swaying a moment, in a bewildered manner; then the Inspector went into the front cellar, and his man followed him in a quiet, stupid fashion; but evidently no longer with any thought of running away from anything we might find dangerous or horrible.
“We all crowded into the front cellar, flashing our lights to and fro, over the place. Inspector Johnstone was examining the floor, and I saw that the footmarks went round the cellar, into each of the corners, and across and across the floor. And I thought suddenly of the Child that was running away from Something. Do you realise the thing that I was seeing vaguely?
“We went out of the front cellar, in a body, for there was nothing to be found. In the next, the footprints went everywhere in that same queer erratic fashion, as of something or someone searching for something, or following some blind scent.
“In the third cellar the prints ended at the shallow well that had been the old water-supply of the little house. The well was full to the brim, and the water so clear that the pebbly bottom was plain to be seen, as we shone the lights into the water. The search came to an abrupt end, and we stood about the well, looking at one another, in an absolute, horrible quiet.
“Johnstone made another examination of the footprints; then he shone his light again into the clear shallow water, searching each inch of the plainly-seen bottom; but there was nothing there. The cellar was heavy with the dreadful smell; and we all stood silent, turning the beams of our lamps constantly to and fro around the cellar.
“The Inspector looked up from his search of the well; and nodded quietly across at me; and with his sudden, dumb acknowledgment that our belief was now his belief, the smell in the cellar seemed to grow more dreadful, and to be, as it were, a menace—the material evidence that some monstrous thing was there with us, invisible.
“ ‘I think—’ began the Inspector, and shone his light towards the stairway. With the hint, the Constable’s restraint went utterly, and he ran for the stairs, making a queer sound in his throat.
“The Landlord followed, at a quick walk, and then the Inspector and I. He waited a single instant for me, and we went up together, treading on the same steps, and with our lights held backwards. At the top, I slammed and locked the stair door, and wiped my forehead. By Jove! my hands were shaking.
“The Inspector asked me to give his man a glass of whisky, and then he shunted him out on to his beat. He stayed a short while with the Landlord and me, and it was arranged that he would join us the following night, and watch the Well with us from midnight until daylight. When he left us, the dawn was just coming in; and the Landlord and I locked up the house and went over to his own place for a sleep.
“In the afternoon, the Landlord and I returned to the house, to make arrangements for the night. He was very quiet, and I felt that he was to be relied on, now that he had been ‘salted’, as it were, with his fright of the previous night.
“We opened all the doors and windows, and blew the house through thoroughly; and in the meanwhile, we lit all the lamps we could find, and took them down into the cellars, where we set them all about, so as to have light everywhere. Then we carried down
three chairs and a table, and put them in the cellar where the well was sunk. After that, we stretched thin piano wire across the cellar floor, at such a height that it should trip anything moving about in the dark.
“When this was done, I went through the house with the Landlord, and sealed every window and door in the place, excepting only the front-door and the door at the top of the cellar stairs.
“In the meanwhile, a local wire-smith was making something to my order; and when the Landlord and I had finished tea at his house, we went down to see how the smith was getting on.
“We found the thing completed. It looked rather like a huge parrot’s cage, without any bottom, made of heavy-gauge wire, and about seven feet high. It was exactly three feet in diameter. Fortunately, I had remembered to have it made longitudinally in two halves, or else we should never have got it through the doorways and down the cellar stairs.
I told the wire-smith to bring the cage up to the house right away, so that he could fit the two halves rigidly together for me; and as we returned, I called in at an ironmongers, where I bought some thin hemp rope and an iron rack-pulley, like those used in Lancashire for hauling up the ceiling clothes-racks, which you find in every house and cottage. I bought also a couple of pitchforks.
“ ‘We shan’t want to touch it,’ I said to the Landlord; and he nodded, looking rather white all at once, but saying nothing.
“As soon as the cage had arrived, and been fitted together rigidly in the cellar, I sent away the smith; and the Landlord and I suspended it exactly over the well, into which it just fitted easily. In the end, and after a lot of trouble, we managed to hang it so perfectly central from the rope over the iron pulley, that when hoisted to the ceiling, and dropped, it went every time plunk into the well, like a candle-extinguisher. When we had got this finally arranged, I hoisted it up once more, to the ready position, and made the rope fast to a heavy wooden pillar, which stood in the middle of the cellar, near to the table.
“By ten o’clock I had everything arranged, with the two pitchforks and the two police lanterns; also some whisky and sandwiches on the table; and underneath, I had several buckets full of disinfectant.
The House on the Borderland and Other Mysterious Places Page 27