“What d’ye want me to do?”
“Only tell us all about your accident—non, I mean your injury. Precisely how did it happen? We must know about this thing we are to fight, how it looked—”
“I tell you it didn’t look at all. I couldn’t see it. Only feel—and smell—it!”
“But if you could not see it, Mademoiselle, is it not possible that you fell down the stairs—”
“I didn’t trip, I didn’t fall; it threw me.” The dammed-back memories of her ordeal flooded to her lips and she spoke rapidly, as if she had to finish in a given time. “It was last Wednesday morning, when I was takin’ Miss Doris’ breakfast tray up. I was goin’ up the back stairs, and had reached the landin’ on the second floor when it set on me. I didn’t see nothin’, there wasn’t anything to see; but all at once I felt a pair o’ hands about my throat, shakin’ me till I dropped the tray, and then it threw me down the stairs so hard I tumbled half a dozen somersets as I went down, and then I must ’a’ fainted, for the next thing I knew—”
“Quite yes, we know what happened next, but what of your assailant? Is it dark at the hall landing?”
“No, sir. It’s quite light, for there’s a window at the stair turn, and the sun was shinin’. If anything had been there I’d ’a’ seen it, but there wasn’t nothin’ there, just an awful smell and then the hands around my throat—”
“Hands, Mademoiselle?”
“Well, no, sir, not exactly hands. It was more like someone wrapped a loop o’ Turkish towel around me, and drew it tight an’ sudden. A wet, cold towel, sir.”
“And what kind of smell was it?”
“Dreadful, sir. It like to smothered me—like sumpin’ dead.”
“Which did you notice first, the smell or the choking sensation?”
She wrinkled her smooth bandaged brow a moment, then: “I think it was the smell. I remember thinkin’ that a rat must ’a’ crawled into the walls and died, and just then it grabbed me.”
De Grandin tweaked the waxed ends of his mustache. “A frightful smell, a choking grasp upon your throat, a blow that knocked you down the stairs,” he recapitulated. “It was a most unpleasant experience—”
“An’ that’s not all, sir.”
“No? What then?”
“It was here last night!”
“Name of a small blue man! Here, you say?”
“Yes, sir, that it was. I woke up last night about half-past nine, and smelt it in the room. Then, just as I was fixin’ to cry out it snatched the bed-clothes off’n me an’ piled ’em on my face. I know I wasn’t dreamin’, sir. How could I pull my covers off and put ’em on my face? They’re tucked in at the foot and sides, and I’m that helpless with my arm strapped up against me—”
“It is because of this you want a night nurse?” he broke in.
“Yes, sir. I’m scared. I’m terrible scared o’ it.”
“Very well, then you shall have one. I shall speak about it as we leave, and see you have a nurse with you all night.”
“Oh, gee, thanks, sir!” The tired blood washed back in her wan cheeks. “I’ll feel lots safer, now.”
“THIS IS THE CRAZIEST business I ever heard of,” I declared as we drove from the hospital. “There’s no sense to any of it. Swan Upping’s never had the reputation of being haunted, and certainly there’s nothing about the Thorowgoods to attract ghostly visitants. Scott’s as pragmatic as the iron pipe he manufactures, and from what I’ve seen of them I’d say that neither of his daughters is interested in anything appertaining to spirits, except the kind cocktails are made of. Why should a ghost move in on them?”
He nodded. “Why, indeed?”
“And it’s such a silly, clownish sort of ghost. Scaring servants, snatching blankets off the beds, smashing crockery—”
“And killing people,” he put in.
“Exactly. And killing people. If it confined itself to buffoonery or to malignancy I could understand it, but it seems like a peevish child turned loose in a toy shop. First it plays stupid, prankish tricks; then it kills as ruthlessly as a spoiled child might smash a toy; then goes back to silly, beetle-headed capers. Sometimes it’s good-natured, sometimes vicious—”
“Non. There you make the mistake, mon vieux. It is never good-natured; always it is malignant.”
“Why, but—”
“Consider, if you please: everything it does brings some measure of discomfort to someone, whether it be but the annoyance of knocking pots and pans and plates off of the kitchen shelves, tweaking bed-clothes off of sleepers, throwing a poor, frightened girl downstairs, or breaking the neck of a stable boy. You have compared it to a naughty child. A juste titre. Have you ever seen a small, dull-witted, rather vicious child play with a fly? Have you observed how he pulls off its wings, then watches it intently as it crawls in agony, thereafter pulling off its legs, one at a time, and pausing between torments to observe its helpless antics? Finally, you will recall, he kills it; not to put a period to its sufferings—oh, no—merely because he has grown tired of the cruel sport and can think of nothing else to do. There is playfulness of a sort in such actions, but there is a viciousness and cruelty, too. Does not all this remind you of the harmless pranks, as you have called them, of this poltergeist?”
Little chills of apprehension had begun to chase each other up my spine as he talked. To be confined in a house with an unseen but powerful malignancy, to be the subject of oafish experiments of a thing with the mentality of a four-year-old moron and the strength of a gorilla . . . “Is there any way for us to overcome this thing?” I asked.
For several seconds he did not reply, gazing straight before him, thoughtful-eyed, tapping out a devil’s tattoo on the silver handle of his cane. At last: “The thing confronting us is technically a poltergeist, though it displays some aspects I have not seen in such phenomena before. The distinguishing characteristics of poltergeist hauntings are aimless violence unaccompanied by materialization of the manifesting entity. Generally these mischievous phenomena are associated directly or indirectly with children, adolescents, old, fragile people or those whose strength has been reduced by long illness. The skeptic’s explanation is to attribute mischief or a desire to mystify or to be revenged on someone by the child, the invalid or the old one. However, it has been demonstrated that if the child or invalid suspected be removed and an accredited medium substituted, the disturbing manifestations will be continued as effectively as ever.” He paused a moment, as if reaching out for loose thought-threads, and:
“Let’s see if I understand you,” I broke in. “A child, or someone in poor health, is generally associated with the antics of a poltergeist. Is there any explanation?”
“We cannot say, exactly. On a few occasions people in poor health, especially sufferers from enervating fevers or chronic disorders, have been seen to glow with, or exude, faint luminosity. This is scientifically attested. The haloes traditionally associated with the saints were not due to artists’ whims, nor, as has sometimes been suggested, to poetic reference to the Pentecostal flames which shone on the Apostles. The records of the early and mediaeval church testify that people noted for their piety and asceticism were often seen to radiate luminous auras. What the connection between bodily frailty and the emanation of this light may be we do not know; we only know there seems to be some. But may we not assume this luminosity is akin to astral light, psycho-physical in origin, and identical with psychoplasm? I think so. Très bon. The weakling child, the frail old man or woman, the invalid, can supply this force, then—”
“What about the adolescents? They are not often very frail—”
“Précisément. But they are peculiar people. We might almost say they are a third sex. As a physician you know of the derangement of the mind and body which accompanies adolescence; no one knows better that ‘the long, long thoughts of youth’ are often thoughts of suicide. The powerful derangements of our complex human organism accompanying adolescence make the boy or girl at that stage
an ideal source of psychoplasm.”
“But why the spiritualistic medium? They’re mostly grown men and women; childish-minded, often, and sometimes rather frail, but—”
“Quite yes. But the medium who does not exude psychoplasm is no medium at all. Whether one is mediumistic because he is supplied with superabundant psychoplasm, or whether he is thus well stocked with it because he is a medium is as profitless to discuss as the question of priority between the chicken and the egg. En tout cas, mind cannot affect matter without the intervention of a human intermediary, whether it be a child, an invalid, an adolescent or a medium. One of these is always present. He supplies the needed psychoplasm to make the manifestation possible, serves as dynamo to generate the necessary energy—”
“But you just said that poltergeists do not materialize.”
“Bien oui. Ordinarily they do not; also ordinarily they are harmless, though annoying. This one is very far from harmless, this one has partially materialized, and may succeed in doing so entirely. Alors, we can but reason by analogy. We cannot treat this as an ordinary poltergeist, nor can we look on it as a malignant strangler merely.
“We must adapt our strategy to meet unusual conditions, and proceed most carefully.”
A note lay on de Grandin’s dressing-table:
Dear Doctor: After what occurred in this house last night I do not dare stay here another minute. I am convinced the whole place reeks with evil and probably is haunted by a savage elemental which has but one desire, to work harm to humanity. Only fire can cleanse a place so fearfully attainted, and I have advised Mr. Thorowgood to burn the whole place, house, furniture and furnishings, without delay. Only by so doing can he hope to rid the neighborhood of a deadly peril, and it is my opinion that if he remains here with his family or permits this house to be inhabited, dreadful tragedy will result. For Mr. Thorowgood’s sake, as well as your own, I hope you will add your advice to mine, and urge on him the need for acting quickly.
Yr. obt. svt.
Thaddeus Bradley.
“Well, what about it?” I demanded as I passed the letter back to him. “I’ve always heard that fire’s a cure for hauntings.”
His thrifty Gallic soul was horrified at the suggestion. “Burn this fine house, this so exquisite furniture? But no, I will not hear of it. We do not know just how this thing came in, nor why, but if it entered it can leave. Our problem is to provide an exit.”
“Do you think it’s an elemental?”
“Je ne sais pas. It may be so. The aimlessness of its violence indicates a very low mentality, and yet—” He broke off, staring into space.
“Yes?” I prompted.
“Have you not noticed an increasing method in its acts? At first it seemed experimenting, trying out its power; then when it had thrown the Mullins girl downstairs it murdered Meadows, then sought to give itself a ponderable form, to force an entrance into Monsieur Bradley’s body. What will its next move be, more killing or a fresh effort to materialize? Which would you do, were you a poltergeist?”
“If I were a polt— don’t be absurd!”
“I was never more serious, my friend. Conceive yourself as evil, infinitely evil, loving wickedness for its own sake and desiring above everything to gain strength that you might work more harm. What would you do?”
“Why, I suppose I’d try to draw vitality from some fresh victim. There’s no strength to be had from the dead—”
“Par la barbe d’un bouc vert! Why had I not considered that? Come, my friend, let us hasten, let us rush, let us fly!”
“Where, in heaven’s name—”
“To the hospital. At once. And we do go in heaven’s name, too.
“You are invaluable, incomparable, my old one,” he assured me as the big car gathered speed. “Had you not given me the suggestion—”
“Whatever are you talking of?”
“Of you, my priceless old one, and the hint that you let fall unwittingly. Did not you say, ‘There’s no strength to be had from the dead’?”
“Of course. Is there?”
“How do we know it? Who can say? In common with all discarnate intelligences, this thing we are opposed to gains strength from body emanations. Someone in that house had furnished these until it found itself sufficiently supplied with force to throw the poor young Mullins person down the stairs, to kill the so unfortunate young Meadows, finally to brave us all at the séance and make a bold attempt to take the Bradley person’s body by assault. Is that not so?”
“Why, I suppose so, but—”
“No buts, I do entreat you. Where else had it been yesternight? At half-past nine, to be specific?”
“Why, you can’t mean the—”
“By blue, I do. I do, indeed! At half-past nine the Mullins girl was wakened by its noisome stink and felt it snatch the covers from her. She was its point of contact. It had handled her before, had overcome her. Is it not probable it had its motivating psychoplasm from her at the first?
“Bien. Let that question pass. We can return to it anon. What interests us immediately is that in a place devoted to the sick, the dying and the dead it would have found a feast of strength-imparting emanations, and that within half an hour of its visit there it returned to Swan Upping to do the poor young Meadows man to death.
“Now, attend me: Granted that such things thrive on vital force exuded from the human body, can we say with certainty—can we say at all, indeed—the flow of such force stops with death? Certainly, it continues during sleep. Is it not possible that the very process of disintegration of the body strengthens it? We know there are two kinds of death, somatic and molecular. A man ‘dies’ legally and perhaps medically when his respiration ceases and his heart stops beating. But though the man is dead his individual cells live on for varying periods. The brain, for instance, lives in this way for a possible ten minutes, while the muscle of the heart may survive twice that long. As for the hair-roots and the nails, they are the same a week succeeding death as they were when it occurred. Why should these emanations stop at death? The graves of saints become the shrines where miracles are wrought; many of the most revolting vampire phenomena are associated with unhallowed tombs. Why could not this thing have stored up energy from the sick, the dying and the dead in that hospital, then, after killing Meadows, used the vital force set free by him as rigor mortis crept upon him—”
“That’s too fantastic—”
“Parbleu, the whole thing is fantastic! The fantastic seems to be the commonplace. Should things keep on as they are going, only the commonplace will be fantastic, I damn think!”
“IS THERE GOOD REASON for retaining the young Mullins woman here, Monsieur?” he questioned Doctor Broemel.
“Actually, there isn’t, Doctor,” Broemel answered. “Naturally, she’s more comfortable here with our facilities than she would be at home, but she’s certainly sufficiently advanced to go, if you desire it.”
“Merci beaucoup,” de Grandin smiled.
Five minutes later, as we entered Daisy’s room:
“Mademoiselle, we have the pleasant tidings for you. It has been decided that you leave the hospital—”
“But I can’t do that, sir. I have no home. I’d been livin’ in a furnished room in New York before I came down here in October, and I don’t think Mr. Thorowgood will want me round the place, unable to dress myself, and everything—”
“Ah bah, you make the mistake. It is not to Swan Upping that you go, nor to a furnished room, but to an hotel at Asbury Park. A nurse will go with you to see that you are taken care of; arrangements will be made with a physician at the shore to inspect the progress of your healing fracture, and you shall stay there as the guest of Monsieur Thorowgood until you are all well. Are not those joyous tidings?”
The girl burst into tears. “Y-you mean he’s doing all this just for me and my salary goes on, too, just like he said it would?”
“Indubitably, Mademoiselle.”
“When do I leave?”
“At once. As soon as you can get your clothes on. A motor is waiting to convey you to the shore.”
“Oh, sir,” she sobbed happily, “I’ll never be able to tell him how delighted and surprised I am—”
“Corbleu,” de Grandin chuckled as we left the hospital, “I damn think he will be the surprised one, although, perhaps, he will not be delighted, when he learns what I have done in his name.”
“What’s our next move?” I asked as we drove back to Swan Upping.
“To ask some questions of Monsieur Thorowgood. One part of my surmise has proved correct. Undoubtlessly it was the Mullins girl from whom this haunting thing drew strength. You heard her say she came here in October. That must have been soon after Monsieur Thorowgood moved in. She is the perfect type, thin, inclined to anemia, undernourished. It was from her he drew his first vitality. Yes, certainly.”
“Then why did he turn on her—”
“Tiens. He had no further use for her. He had gained sufficient strength from her to go about his own nefarious business; accordingly, he cast her away, literally.”
“YES,” THOROWGOOD TOLD US, “the house was practically rebuilt, but we used old material as much as possible. The addition to the north wing where the servants’ quarters are, and the smoke house which we use for wine cellar, were entirely built of old red brick and old timber. They’ve pre-served the weathered colors beautifully, haven’t they? No one would guess they weren’t a part of the original house—”
“By blue, my friend, you would be surprised at things which people guess!” de Grandin interrupted. “Can you tell us where these bricks and timbers came from?”
“Why, yes. I picked ’em up at Blakeley’s lumber yard at Toms River.”
“Ah-ha, we make the progress. Excuse us, if you please. We go to interview this Monsieur Blakely.”
His little round blue eyes were dancing with excitement; every now and then he gave a chuckle as we drove pell-mell toward Toms River.
Black Moon Page 17