“A little after eleven o’clock, there was a knock at the front door, and when I went, I found that Inspector Johnstone had arrived, and brought with him one of his plain-clothes men. You will understand how pleased I was to see that there would be this addition to our watch; for he looked a tough, nerveless man, brainy and collected; just the man I should have picked to help us with the horrible job I felt pretty sure we should have to do that night.
“When the inspector and the detective had entered, I shut and locked the front door; then, while the Inspector held the light, I sealed the door carefully, with tape and wax. At the head of the cellar stairs, I shut and locked that door also, behind us, and sealed it in the same way.
“As we entered the cellar, I warned Johnstone and his man to be careful not to trip over the wires; and then, as I saw his surprise at my arrangements, I began to explain my ideas and intentions, to all of which he listened with a very strong approval. I was pleased to see also that the detective was nodding his head, as I talked, in a way that showed he appreciated all my precautions.
“Both Johnstone and his man had brought police lanterns with them, and these they put on the table, by the two that we had borrowed from the station. As he put his lantern down, the inspector picked up one of the pitch-forks, and balanced it in his hand; then looked at me, and nodded.
“ ‘The best thing,’ he said. ‘I only wish you’d got two more.’
“Then we all took our seats, the detective getting a washing-stool from the corner of the cellar, as we had brought down only three chairs. From then, until a quarter to twelve, we talked quietly, whilst we made a light supper of whisky and sandwiches; after which, we cleared everything off the table, excepting the lanterns and the pitch-forks. One of the latter, I handed to the Inspector; the other I took myself, and, then, having set my chair so as to be handy to the rope which lowered the cage into the well, I went round the cellar and put out every lamp.
“I groped my way back to my chair, and arranged the pitchfork and the dark lantern ready to my hand; after which I suggested that everyone should keep an absolute silence throughout the watch. I asked, also, that no lantern should be turned on, until I gave the word.
“I put my watch on the table, where a faint glow from my lantern made me able to see the time. For an hour nothing happened, and everyone kept an absolute silence, except for an occasional uneasy movement.
“About half-past one, however, I was conscious again of the same extraordinary and peculiar nervousness, which I had felt on the previous night. I put my hand out quickly, and eased the hitched rope from around the pillar. The Inspector seemed aware of the movement; for I saw the faint light from his lantern, move a little, as if he had suddenly taken hold of it, in readiness.
“About a minute later, I became aware that there was a change in the colour of the night in the cellar, and it grew slowly violet-tinged upon my eyes. I glanced to and fro, quickly, in the new darkness, and even as I looked, I was conscious that the violet colour of the night deepened. In the direction of the well, but seeming to be at a great distance beyond, there was, as it were, a nucleus to the night; and the nucleus came swiftly towards us, appearing to come through a great space, almost in a single moment. It came near, and I saw again, as on the previous occasion, that it was a little naked child, running, and seeming to be of the violet night in which it ran.
“The child came with a natural running movement, exactly as I have already described it; but in a silence so peculiarly intense, that it was as if it brought the silence with it. I don’t suppose you understand what I am trying to tell you; but I cannot make it clearer. Seemingly, about half-way between the well and the table, the child turned swiftly, and looked back at something invisible to me; and suddenly it went down into a crouching attitude, and seemed to be hiding behind something shadowy that showed vaguely; but, you know, there was nothing there, except the bare floor of the cellar; nothing, I mean, in our world.
“About this time I remember thinking to myself in a queerly collected way that I could hear the breathing of the three other men, with a wonderful distinctness; and also the tick of my watch upon the table seemed to sound as loud and as slow as the tick of one of those old grandfather’s clocks. And, you know, I knew that none of the others saw what I was seeing.
“Abruptly, the Landlord, who was next to me, let out his breath with a little hissing sound; and I knew that something was visible to him. There came a creak from the table, and I had a feeling that the Inspector was leaning forward, looking at something that I could not see. The Landlord reached out his hand through the darkness, and fumbled a moment to catch my arm:—
“ ‘The Woman!’ he whispered, close to my ear. ‘Over by the well.’
“I stared hard in that direction; but saw nothing, except that perhaps the violet colour of the night seemed a little duller just there.
‘I looked back quickly to the shadow where the child was hiding. I saw that it was peering backward from the hiding-place. And suddenly it rose and ran straight for the middle of the table, which showed only as a vague shadow half-way between my eyes and the unseen floor. As the child ran under the table, I saw that the steel prongs of my pitch-fork were glimmering with a violet, fluctuating light. A little way off, there showed high up in the gloom, the vaguely shining outline of the other fork, so that I knew the Inspector had it raised in his hand, ready. There was no doubt but that he saw something. On the table, the metal of the five lanterns shone with the same strange glowing; and about each lantern there was a little cloud of absolute blackness, where the phenomenon that is light to our natural eyes, came through the fittings; and through each complete blackness, the metal of each lantern showed plain, as might a cat’s-eye stone in a nest of black cotton-wool.
“Just beyond the table, the Child paused again, and stood, seeming to oscillate a little upon its feet, which gave me a queer impression that it was lighter and vaguer than a cloud; and yet, in the same moment, another part of me seemed to know that it was to me, as something that might be beyond thick, invisible glass, and subject to conditions and forces that I was vacant to comprehend. In some ways, I might say that the impression left, was as if I had looked through thick, plate-glass windows at someone out in a strong wind; and all the time I could not hear or know of the wind, except by seeing the person rocked by it. Do I get the thing in any way clear to you ?
“The Child was looking back again, and my gaze went the same way. I stared across the cellar, and saw the cage hanging clear in the violet light, every wire and tie outlined with a glimmering of strange light; above it there was a little space of gloom, and then the dull shining of the iron pulley which I had screwed into the ceiling.
“I stared in a bewildered, abnormal sort of way, round the cellar; there were thin lines of vague fire crossing the floor in all directions; and suddenly I remembered the piano-wire that the Landlord and I had stretched. But there was nothing else to be seen, except that near the table there were indistinct glimmerings of light, and at the far end the outline of a dull-glowing revolver, evidently in the detective’s pocket. I remember having felt a subconscious satisfaction, as my brain reasoned out this trifle in a queer automatic fashion. On the table, near to me, there was a little shapeless collection of the light; and this I knew, after an instant’s uninterested consideration, to be the steel portions of the works of my watch.
“I had looked several times round the lost confines of the cellar, and at the child, whilst I was deciding these trifles; and had found it still in that attitude of looking at something. But now, suddenly, it ran clear away to my right into a great distance, and was nothing more than a slightly deeper coloured nucleus far off in the strange coloured night.
“Beside me, the Landlord gave out a queer little cry, and twisted over against me, as if to avoid something. From the Inspector there came a sharp breathing sound, as if he had been suddenly drenched with cold water. And abruptly the violet colour went out of the night, and the sense
of distance and space; and I was conscious of the nearness of something monstrous and repugnant, that made me sweat.
“There was a tense silence, and the blackness of the cellar seemed absolute, with only the faint glow about each of the lanterns on the table. Then, in the dark and the silence, there sounded a faint tinkle of water from the well, as if something were rising noiselessly out of it, and the water running back off it with a gentle tinkling. In the same instant, there came to me a sudden waft of the disgusting smell.
“I gave a sharp cry of warning to the Inspector, and loosed the rope. There came instantly the sharp splash of the cage entering the water; and then, with a quick, stiff, frightened movement, I opened the shutter of my lantern, and shone the light at the cage, shouting to the others to do the same.
“As my light struck the cage, I saw that about two feet of it projected from the top of the well, and there was something protruded up out of the water, into the cage. I stared, with a feeling that I recognised the thing; and then, as the other lanterns were opened, I saw that it was a leg of mutton. The thing was held by a brawny fist and arm, which were rising out of the water; and I stood there, utterly stiff and bewildered, to see what was coming. In a moment there rose into view a great bearded face, that I felt sure in that grim instant was the face of a drowned man, long dead. Then the face opened at the mouth-part, and spluttered and coughed. Another big hand came into view, and wiped the water from the eyes, which were blinked rapidly, and then fixed themselves into a stare at the lights.
“From the Detective there came a sudden shout:—
“ ‘Captain Tobias!’ he shouted, and the Inspector echoed him, and instantly they burst into loud roars of laughter.
“The Inspector and the Detective ran across the cellar to the cage; and I followed, still bewildered. The man in the cage was keeping the leg of mutton as far away from him, as possible, and holding his nose.
“ ‘Lift thig dam trap, quig!’ he shouted in a stifled voice; but the Inspector and the Detective simply doubled before him, and tried to hold their noses, whilst they laughed, and the light from their lanterns went dancing all over the place.
“ ‘Quig! Quig!’ said the man in the cage, still holding his nose, and trying to speak plainly.
“Then Johnstone and the Detective stopped laughing, and lifted the cage. The man in the well threw the leg across the cellar and turned swiftly to go down into the well; but the two officers were too quick for him, and had him out in a twinkling; then whilst they held him, dripping upon the floor, the Inspector jerked his thumb in the direction of the offending leg, and the Landlord, having got the keys from me, harpooned it with one of the pitch-forks, ran it upstairs and so into the open air.
“In the meanwhile, I had given the man from the well a stiff tot of whisky; for which he thanked me with a cheerful nod, and having emptied the glass at a draught, held out his hand for the bottle, which he finished, as if it had been so much water.
“Now, as you will be guessing, this Captain Tobias who had appeared from the well, was the very man who had been the previous tenant. In the course of the talk that followed, I learned the reason why Captain Tobias had been forced to leave the house. He had been wanted by the police for certain smuggling, and had undergone imprisonment; having been released only a couple of weeks earlier.
“He had returned home, to find us tenants of his old home. He had then entered the house through the well, the walls of which were not continued right to the bottom (this I will deal with later); and gone upstairs by a little stairway in my cellar wall, which opened at the top through a panel beside my Mother’s bedroom. This panel was opened, by revolving the left doorpost of the bedroom door, with the result that the bedroom door always became unlatched, in the process of opening the panel.
“The Captain complained, without any bitterness, that the panel had warped, and that each time he opened it, it made a loud cracking noise. This had been evidently what I mistook for raps. He would not give his reason for entering the house; but it was pretty obvious that he had hidden something, which he wanted to get. However, as he found it impossible to enter the house, without the risk of being caught, he decided to try to drive us out, relying on the bad reputation of the place, and his own artistic efforts as a ghost. I must say he succeeded.
“He intended then to rent the house again, as before; when he would, of course, have plenty of time to get whatever he had hidden. Moreover, no doubt the house suited him admirably; for there was a passage—as he showed me afterwards—connecting the dummy well with the crypt of the church beyond the garden wall; and these, in turn, were connected with certain caves in the cliffs, which went down to the beach beyond the church.
“In the course of his talk, Captain Tobias offered to take the house off my hands; and as this suited me perfectly, for I was just about ‘stalled’ with it, and also satisfied the Landlord, it was decided that no steps should be taken against him; and that the whole business be hushed up.
“I asked the Captain whether there was really anything queer about the house; whether he had ever seen anything. He said yes, that he had twice seen a woman going about the house at night. You can imagine how we all looked at one another, when he said that. The Captain told us that she never bothered him, and that he had only seen her the two times; and on each occasion it had been just after a narrow escape from the Revenue People, and when he had been rather badly frightened; that is, I ought to add, so far as a man of his type was capable of feeling fright.
“Captain Tobias was a cute man; for he had seen how I had leaned the mats up against the doors; and after entering the rooms, and walking all about them, so as to leave the foot-marks of an old pair of wet woollen slippers everywhere, he had deliberately put the mats back as he found them, as he left each room.
“The maggot which had dropped from his infernal leg-of-mutton, had been an accident, and beyond even his horrific planning; but he was hugely delighted to learn how it had affected us.
“The faint, mouldy smell which I had smelled, before the leg-abomination, was probably from the little, closed stairway, when the Captain had opened the panel; at least, this was the conclusion I came to when he took me through, to show it to me. The door-slamming was also another of his contributions.
“Now I come to the end of the Captain’s ghost-play; and to the difficulty of trying to explain the other peculiar things. In the first place, it is obvious to you that there was something genuinely strange in the house; which made itself manifest as a Woman. So many people had seen this Woman, under different circumstances, that it is impossible to put the thing down to fancy; at the same time it must seem extraordinary that people should live years in the house, and see nothing; whilst the policeman saw the Woman, before he had been twenty minutes in the place; also the Landlord, the Detective, and the Inspector all saw her.
“I have thought a great deal about this, and I can only suppose that fear was in every case the key, as I might say, which opened the senses to an awaredness of the presence of the Woman. The policeman was a nervy, highly-strung man, and he got frightened. When he became frightened, he was able to see the Woman. The same reasoning applies all round. I saw nothing, until I became really frightened; then I saw, not the Woman, but a Child, running away from Something or Someone. However, I will touch on that later. In short, until a very strong degree of fear was present, the person was not capable of being affected by the Force which made Itself evident, as a Woman. I don’t think I can put it clearer than this. I think my theory explains why some Tenants were never aware of anything strange in the house, whilst others left immediately. The more sensitive they were, the less would be the degree of fear necessary to make them aware of the Force present in the house. This is a peculiar and interesting point.
“The curious shining of all the metal objects in the cellar, had been visible only to me. The cause, naturally, I do not know; neither do I know why I alone was able to see the shining.”
“The Child
,” I said. “Can you explain that part at all, Carnacki… why you didn’t see the Woman, and why they didn’t see the Child. Was it merely the same Force, appearing differently to different people?”
“No,” said Carnacki. “I can’t explain that. But I am quite sure in my own mind that the Woman and the Child were not only two complete and different entities; but also that they were not even in quite the same planes of Existence.
“It is impossible to put the thing into words, because language is not enough developed yet, to have produced words with sufficiently exact shades of meaning to enable me to tell you just what I do know. At the time that the thing occurred, I was quite unable to understand it, even slightly. Yet, later I gained a vague insight into certain possibilities.
“To give you the root-idea of the matter, it is held in the Sigsand MS. that a child ‘still-born’ is ‘snayched bacyk bye thee Haggs’. This is crude; but may yet contain an elemental truth. But, before I attempt to make this clearer, let me tell you a thought that has often been mine. It may be that physical birth is but a secondary process; and that, prior to the possibility, the Mother Spirit searches for, until it finds, the small Element—the primal Ego or Child’s soul. It may be that a certain waywardness would cause Such to strive to evade capture by the Mother-Spirit. It may have been such a thing as this, that I saw. I have always tried to think so; but it is impossible to ignore the sense of repulsion that I felt when the unseen Woman went past me. This repulsion carries forward the idea suggested in the Sigsand MS., that primarily a still-born child is thus (eliminating obvious physical causes) because its ego or spirit has been snatched back, by the ‘Haggs’. In other words, by certain of the Monstrosities of the Outer Circle. The thought is inconceivably terrible, and probably the more so because it is so fragmentary. It leaves us with the conception of a child’s soul adrift half-way between two lives, and running through bye-ways of Eternity from Something incredible and inconceivable (because not understood) to our senses.
The House on the Borderland and Other Mysterious Places Page 28