Gaslit Nightmares

by Lamb, Hugh;

  There was silence. The two men stared at each other. With a gasp Mr. Howitt found his voice.

  ‘Douglas!’

  ‘Andrew!’

  ‘I thought you were dead.’

  ‘I am risen from the grave.’

  ‘I am glad you are not dead.’

  ‘Why?’

  Mr. Howitt paused as if to moisten his parched lips.

  ‘I never meant to kill you.’

  ‘In that case, Andrew, your meaning was unfortunate. I do mean to kill you – now.’

  ‘Don’t kill me, Douglas.’

  ‘A reason, Andrew?’

  ‘If you knew what I have suffered since I thought I had killed you, you would not wish to take upon yourself the burden which I have had to bear.’

  ‘My nerves, Andrew, are stronger than yours. What would crush you to the ground would not weigh on me at all. Surely you knew that before.’ Mr. Howitt fidgeted on the back of his chair. ‘It was not that you did not mean to kill me. You lacked the courage. You gashed me like some frenzied cur. Then, afraid of your own handiwork, you ran to save your skin. You dared not wait to see if what you had meant to do was done. Why, Andrew, as soon as the effects of your drug had gone, I sat up. I heard you running down the stairs, I saw your knife lying at my side, all stained with my own blood – see, Andrew, the stains are on it still! I even picked up this scrap of paper which had fallen from your pocket on to the floor.’

  He held out a piece of paper towards Mr. Howitt.

  ‘It is the advertisement of an hotel – Hotel de la Couronne d’Or, St. Helier’s, Jersey. I said to myself, I wonder if that is where Andrew is gone. I will go and see. And I will find him and I will kill him. I have found you, and behold, your heart has so melted within you that already you feel something of the pangs of death.’ Mr. Howitt did seem to be more dead than alive. His face was bloodless. He was shivering as if with cold.

  ‘These melodramatic and, indeed, slightly absurd details’ – the stranger waved his hand towards the efts, and newts, and snakes, and lizards – ‘were planned for your especial benefit. I was aware what a horror you had of creeping things. I take it, it is constitutional. I knew I had but to spring on you half a bushel or so of reptiles, and all the little courage you ever had would vanish. As it has done.’

  The stranger stopped. He looked, with evident enjoyment of his misery, at the miserable creature squatted on the back of the chair in front of him. Mr. Howitt tried to speak. Two or three times he opened his mouth, but there came forth no sound. At last he said, in curiously husky tones –

  ‘Douglas?’

  ‘Andrew?’

  ‘If you do it they are sure to have you. It is not easy to get away from Jersey.’

  ‘How kind of you, Andrew, and how thoughtful! But you might have spared yourself your thought. I have arranged all that. There is a cattle-boat leaves for St. Malo in half an hour on the tide. You will be dead in less than half an hour – so I go in that.’

  Again there were movements of Mr. Howitt’s lips. But no words were audible. The stranger continued.

  ‘The question which I have had to ask myself has been, how shall I kill you? I might kill you with the knife with which you endeavoured to kill me.’ As he spoke, he tested the keenness of the blade with his fingers. ‘With it I might slit your throat from ear to ear, or I might use it in half a hundred different ways. Or I might shoot you like a dog.’ Producing a revolver, he pointed it at Mr. Howitt’s head. ‘Sit quite still, Andrew, or I may be tempted to flatten your nose with a bullet. You know I can shoot straight. Or I might avail myself of this.’

  Still keeping the revolver pointed at Mr. Howitt’s head, he took from his waistcoat pocket a small syringe.

  ‘This, Andrew, is a hypodermic syringe. I have but to take firm hold of you, thrust the point into one of the blood-vessels of your neck, and inject the contents; you will at once endure exquisite tortures which, after two or three minutes, which will seem to you like centuries, will result in death. But I have resolved to do myself, and you, this service, with neither of the three.’

  Again the stranger stopped. This time Mr. Howitt made no attempt to speak. He was not a pleasant object to contemplate. As the other had said, to judge from his appearance he already seemed to be suffering some of the pangs of death. All the manhood had gone from him. Only the shell of what was meant to be a man remained. The exhibition of his pitiful cowardice afforded his whilom partner unqualified pleasure.

  ‘Have you ever heard of an author named De Quincey? He wrote on murder considered as a fine art. It is as a fine art I have had to consider it. In that connection I have had to consider three things: 1. That you must be killed. 2. That you must be killed in such a manner that you shall suffer the greatest possible amount of pain. 3 – and not the least essential – That you must be killed in such a manner that under no circumstances can I be found guilty of having caused your death. I have given these three points my careful consideration, and I think that I have been able to find something which will satisfy all the requirements. That something is in this box.’

  The stranger went to the box which was on the table – the square box which had, as ornamentation, the hideously alternating stripes of blue and green and yellow. He rapped on it with his knuckles. As he did so, from within it there came a peculiar sound like a sullen murmur.

  ‘You hear? It is death calling to you from the box. It awaits its prey. It bids you come.’

  He struck the box a little bit harder. There proceeded from, it, as if responsive to his touch, what seemed to be a series of sharp and angry screeches.

  ‘Again! It loses patience. It grows angry. It bids you hasten. Ah!’

  He brought his hand down heavily upon the top of the box. Immediately the room was filled with a discord of sounds, cries, yelpings, screams, snarls, the tumult dying away in what seemed to be an intermittent, sullen roaring. The noise served to rouse the snakes, and efts, and lizards to renewed activity. The room seemed again to be alive with them. As he listened, Mr. Howitt became livid. He was, apparently, becoming imbecile with terror.

  His aforetime partner, turning to him, pointed to the box with outstretched hands.

  ‘What a row it makes! What a rage it’s in! Your death screams out to you, with a ravening longing – the most awful death that a man can die. Andrew – to die! and such a death as this!’

  Again he struck the box. Again there came from it that dreadful discord.

  ‘Stand up!’

  Mr. Howitt looked at him, as a drivelling idiot might look at a keeper whom he fears. It seemed as if he made an effort to frame his lips for the utterance of speech. But he had lost the control of his muscles. With every fibre of his being he seemed to make a dumb appeal for mercy to the man in front of him. The appeal was made in vain. The command was repeated.

  ‘Get off your chair, and stand upon the floor.’

  Like some trembling automaton Mr. Howitt did as he was told. He stood there like some lunatic deaf mute. It seemed as if he could not move, save at the bidding of his master. That master was careful not to loosen, by so much as a hair’s-breadth, the hold he had of him.

  ‘I now proceed to put into execution the most exquisite part of my whole scheme. Were I to unfasten the box and let death loose upon you, some time or other it might come out – these things do come out at times – and it might then appear that the deed had, after all, been mine. I would avoid such risks. So you shall be your own slayer, Andrew. You shall yourself unloose the box, and you shall yourself give death its freedom, so that it may work on you its will. The most awful death that a man can die! Come to me, here!’

  And the man went to him, moving with a curious, stiff gait, such as one might expect from an automaton. The creatures writhing on the floor went unheeded, even though he trod on them.

  ‘Stand still in front of the box.’ The man stood still. ‘Kneel down.’

  The man did hesitate. There did seem to come to him some consciousness
that he should himself be the originator of his own violation. There did come to his distorted visage an agony of supplication which it was terrible to witness.

  The only result was an emphasised renewal of the command.

  ‘Kneel down upon the floor.’

  And the man knelt down. His face was within a few inches of the painted box. As he knelt the stranger struck the box once more with the knuckles of his hand. And again there came from it that strange tumult of discordant sounds.

  ‘Quick, Andrew, quick, quick! Press your finger on the spring! Unfasten the box!’

  The man did as he was bid. And, in an instant, like a conjurer’s trick, the box fell all to pieces, and there sprang from it, right into Mr. Howitt’s face, with a dreadful noise, some dreadful thing which enfolded his head in its hideous embraces.

  There was silence.

  Then the stranger laughed. He called softly –

  ‘Andrew!’ All was still. ‘Andrew!’ Again there was none that answered. The laughter was renewed.

  ‘I do believe he’s dead. I had always supposed that the stories about being able to frighten a man to death were all apocryphal. But that a man could be frightened to death by a thing like this – a toy!’

  He touched the creature which concealed Mr. Howitt’s head and face. As he said, it was a toy. A development of the old-fashioned jack-in-the-box. A dreadful development, and a dreadful toy. Made in the image of some creature of the squid class, painted in livid hues, provided with a dozen long, quivering tentacles, each actuated by a spring of its own. It was these tentacles which had enfolded Mr. Howitt’s head in their embraces.

  As the stranger put them from him, Mr. Howitt’s head fell, face foremost, on to the table. His partner, lifting it up, gazed down at him.

  Had the creature actually been what it was intended to represent it could not have worked more summary execution. The look which was on the dead man’s face as his partner turned it upwards was terrible to see.

  A Derelict

  J.A. BARRY

  Many Victorian anthologies demonstrate the popularity of tales of the sea in this era, and here is a superbly atmospheric tale of the ocean by a man who spent twelve years sailing round the world.

  John Arthur Barry (1850 – 1911) went to sea from his native Torquay at the age of thirteen and after twelve years in the Merchant Marine, left to prospect for gold in Australia. He obviously didn’t do too well at this, for he is next reported as a station manager in the bush before finally settling in Sydney in the early 1880s. His first literary contribution appeared in The Times in 1884 and his first book was published in Australia nine years after that. Oddly enough, this first book was one of the few ever to deal with a mythical Australian monster, STEVE BROWN’S BUNYIP (1893).

  Barry’s archetypal sea story book, IN THE GREAT DEEP (1895), was probably his best. I have selected from this ‘A Derelict’ in which Barry, as William Hope Hodgson was to later, writes of an encounter with a derelict vessel. Unlike Hodgson, however, Barry’s derelict is probably much nearer to the nasty reality of many of those Victorian hulks and the reason for their abandonment.

  ‘Take the glass, Mr Staunton, your eyes are younger than mine, and tell me what you make of her.’

  The speaker was the master of the British ship Minnehaha, just thirty days out from London to Algoa Bay, and at that moment lying becalmed about two degrees south of the Equator, with a great deal more easting in her longitude than she had any business with. Indeed, we should not have been very much surprised, owing to the set of a current the ship had got into, and the incessant calms experienced of late, to sight the African coast at any minute. Taking the telescope from the captain’s hand, and resting it on the ratlines of the mizzen rigging, I had a long look at the distant object, which had since daybreak been exciting our curiosity.

  That it was a ship of some kind or other, and a big one, there was no doubt; and presently, as she floated into the field of the glass, I could see that, whilst she appeared very high out of the water, she had nothing standing aloft above her topmasts, and, as far as I could make out, no sail of any kind set, nor any signals flying.

  ‘Ah,’ remarked the captain, ‘a derelict, I expect, and one, in this part of the sea into which our singular bad fortune has brought us, of no recent making. If you don’t mind losing your watch below you can take two or three hands in the quarter-boat, or perhaps the gig will be lighter, and board her. It’s just possible there may be some poor wretch on her still. We shall, worse luck, be drifting closer to you all the time. I shouldn’t be much astonished to find ourselves at anchor off some infernal swamp, with the ship full of fever and mosquitoes, if this kind of thing lasts much longer,’ and so saying, the skipper went below, with a sigh of weariness, and a glance around at the monotonous scene, familiar for so long, the bleaching decks and spars, the drooping, listless canvas, with everywhere the deadly sameness of oily-looking, greenish-blue water.

  I was the second mate of the Minnehaha, and the hard routine of my profession had not as yet in those days wholly knocked the romance out of me, so that it was with not a little feeling of eager anticipation for the adventure that I waited for the bell to strike eight, and my relief to turn out.

  ‘Fair and easy, my boy,’ said the first officer as he, at length, stood yawning by my side after having taken a long squint at the stranger; ‘take my advice, and have breakfast before you start. It’s a long pull, and the sun will be out strong by the time you’re halfway. I’m of the old man’s opinion that she’s been knocking about for some time, months perhaps. A foreigner, I should imagine, by the cut of her, and likely enough, grass on her decks a foot long.’

  After breakfast, myself, the boatswain, and two of the able seamen – the latter, in spite of the long pull before them, as happy as schoolboys at the prospect of a holiday and a change from the weary ship – set off on our visit to the derelict.

  It was now about nine o’clock, and before we had gone one mile out of the four that we had judged the distance at, the men’s clothes were wet through with perspiration.

  I had brought a small beaker of water, two bottles of ship’s rum, and some eatables with us; so, after a good draught of six-water grog all round, the boatswain and myself gave the two seamen a spell at the oars; and soon the mysterious ocean wanderer loomed up large ahead of us. As we drew nearer we saw that she was a ship of fully 1400 tons, nearly twice the size of our own little clipper, and that she had originally been painted white with a yellow streak.

  At last we were alongside, and, as the men ceased rowing, we all gazed with something of awe up at the desolate, forsaken thing. She was an immense height out of the water, and her sides – weatherbeaten, blistered, for the most part bare of paint, and with long streaks of iron rust straggling down them – towered above us, grim, forbidding, and uncanny.

  As we slowly paddled round her we saw that in one place the sea had made a clean breach through her bulwarks on either side. Strips of her topsails and courses were still hanging from the yards, and, as we came athwart her bows, the rotting bolt-ropes of some of her head-sails swung to and fro under the bowsprit with every little lurch she gave: Aft we noticed the davit-falls and tackles, all fagged out and minus the lower blocks, drooping down just as they had been left when the boats deserted her to let her wander about the ocean, the sport and plaything of every little breeze that blew. It was indeed a melancholy sight, and to a sailor more especially, of all men!

  No name was on her stern, only the broad, blank, yellow streak continued.

  ‘I think, sir,’ remarked the boatswain, a fine old seaman named Dyson, ‘that she’s a Portugee or somethin’ o’ the kind, an’ she may have been deserted for years by the look of her. My eye, she’s light an’ no mistake! In ballast, I s’pose. No name ahead or astern, either,’ continued he, glancing suspiciously up at the old-fashioned quarter-galleries, which gave her such a cumbrous look aft. ’I don’t like her nohow, an’ I don’t care how soon we all gets aboa
rd the little Minnie agen.’

  ‘Come, come, Dyson,’ said I laughingly, ‘it would never do for us to go back without overhauling her. We’ll have a snack here in the boat and then we’ll take a look aboard this big castaway.’

  We were by this time again under the bows, and one of the sailors putting up his boathook and dragging away a portion of the canvas which hung down, disclosed to view the derelict’s figurehead, a piece of magnificent carving, representing a woman in three-quarter length, clad in flowing classical drapery, and whose features seemed to look down upon us with an expression of solemn sadness, whilst one arm, slightly raised, pointed to the dark sky overhead. It was a masterpiece of the sculptor’s art, such as I had never dreamed of seeing placed on the bows of a ship, and was doubtless meant for the Madonna. And, strangely enough, the paint, so worn and abraded everywhere else, still showed on the figure above us in almost all its pristine whiteness. Perhaps the overhanging canvas had protected it.

  ‘Good Lord!’ ejaculated the old boatswain presently, as we all stared at the nobly gracious, but sorrowful features. ‘Did ever mortal man see such a figgerhead as that! I never did; and forty year an’ more I’ve been a-roamin’ about amongst every sort o’ craft as sails. I almost begins to believe, sir, as this old derelick’s been a sort o’ floatin’ gospel-house – that is,’ he quickly qualified, ‘so long as I looks at that bit o’ work there.’

  Evidently many a great sea, tall as she was, had swept her fore and aft, without, however, doing much damage beyond making the two rents in her thick bulwarks mentioned above. The hatchways were closely battened down, and the main one, which we could see had been fitted with gratings, was now secured with inch planks fastened to the deck by stout iron bolts.