Fighters of Fear

by Mike Ashley

  “Very well. When first I thought about the evil dead one’s reappearances I noted that each time he stared outside the window. Glass, apparently, he could not pass—and glass contains a modicum of iron. Iron window-wire stopped him. ‘He are not a true ghost, then,’ I inform me. ‘They are things of spirit only, they are thoughts made manifest. This one is a thing of hate, but also of some physical material as well; he is composed in part of emanations from the body which lies putrefying in the grave. Voilà, if he have physical properties he can be destroyed by physical means.’

  “And so I set my trap. I procured a screen of copper through which he could effect an entrance, but I charged it with electricity. I increased the potential of the current with a step-up transformer to make assurance doubly sure, and then I waited for him like the spider for the fly, waited for him to come through that charged screen and electrocute himself. Yes, certainly.”

  “But is he really destroyed?” I asked dubiously.

  “As the candle-flame when one has blown it out. He was—how do you say it?—short-circuited. No malefactor in the chair of execution ever died more thoroughly than that one, I assure you.”

  “It seems queer, though, that he should come back from the grave to haunt those poor kids and break up their marriage when he really wanted it,” I murmured wonderingly.

  “Wanted it? Yes, as the trapper wants the bird to step within his snare.”

  “But he gave them such a handsome present when little Dennis was born—”

  “La, la, my good, kind, trusting friend, you are naïf. The money I gave Madame Arabella was my own. I put it in that envelope.”

  “Then what was the real message?”

  “It was a dreadful thing, my friend; a dreadful, wicked thing. The night that Monsieur Dennis left that package with me I determined that the old one meant to do him in, so I steamed the cover open and read what lay within. It made plain the things which Dennis thought that he remembered.

  “Long, long ago Monsieur Tantavul lived in San Francisco. His wife was twenty years his junior, and a pretty, joyous thing she was. She bore him two fine children, a boy and girl, and on them she bestowed the love which he could not appreciate. His surliness, his evil temper, his constant fault-finding drove her to distraction, and finally she sued for divorce.

  “But he forestalled her. He spirited the children away, then told his wife the plan of his revenge. He would take them to some far off place and bring them up believing they were cousins. Then when they had attained full growth he would induce them to marry and keep the secret of their relationship until they had a child, then break the dreadful truth to them. Thereafter they would live on, bound together by their fear of censure, or perhaps of criminal prosecution, but their consciences would cause them endless torment, and the very love they had for each other would be like fetters forged of white-hot steel, holding them in odious bondage from which there was no escape. The sight of their children would be a reproach to them, the mere thought of love’s sweet communion would cause revulsion to the point of nausea.

  “When he had told her this his wife went mad. He thrust her into an asylum and left her there to die while he came with his babies to New Jersey, where he reared them together, and by guile and craftiness nurtured their love, knowing that when finally they married he would have his so vile revenge.”

  “But, great heavens, man, they’re brother and sister!” I exclaimed in horror.

  “Perfectly,” he answered coolly. “They are also man and woman, husband and wife, and father and mother.”

  “But—but—” I stammered, utterly at loss for words.

  “But me no buts, good friend. I know what you would say. Their child? Ah bah, did not the kings of ancient times repeatedly take their own sisters to wife, and were not their offspring sound and healthy? But certainly. Did not both Darwin and Wallace fail to find foundation for the doctrine that cross-breeding between healthy people with clean blood is productive of inferior progeny? Look at little Monsieur Dennis. Were you not blinded by your silly, unrealistic training and tradition—did you not know his parents’ near relationship—you would not hesitate to pronounce him an unusually fine, healthy child.

  “Besides,” he added earnestly, “they love each other, not as brother and sister, but as man and woman. He is her happiness, she is his, and little Monsieur Dennis is the happiness of both. Why destroy this joy—le bon Dieu knows they earned it by a joyless childhood—when I can preserve it for them by simply keeping silent?”

  FRANCIS CHARD IN

  THE SOLDIER

  A. M. BURRAGE

  Today, Alfred McLelland Burrage (1889–1956) is remembered solely for his ghost stories, which included some of the best of his day. But he was so prolific that at the time he was just as well remembered for his many lighthearted school stories, much in the vein of Frank Richards, and his historical adventures. Many of his best ghost stories were collected as Some Ghost Stories (1927) and Someone in the Room (1931), the latter under the byline Ex-Private X, an alias he had created for his book of wartime reminiscences War is War (1930). Burrage was so prolific that many more ghost stories appeared in magazines that were collected posthumously, including his series about ghost hunter Francis Chard. Chard wasn’t Burrage’s first such attempt. He had written two stories featuring the rather athletic Derek Scarpe for The Novel Magazine in 1920, but the series ended abruptly, perhaps through editorial stricture or because Burrage changed his mind about the character. When he returned to the genre his new detective, Francis Chard, is in the more traditional role with his consulting room and a chronicler in the form of Mr. Torrance. There were ten stories featuring Chard, an unusual number when most magazines liked to run series in sets of six, to fit in with a six-monthly bound volume. This suggests that Burrage had written twelve, but the first two featured Scarpe and then he revised everything and changed the character to Chard. Though why it took him seven years to complete the series, which was serialized in The Blue Magazine in 1927, is beyond me.

  Burrage came from a writing family. Both his father and uncle were prolific writers of stories for boys, and young Alfred soon followed in their footsteps selling his first stories when he was fifteen. His writing was so prolific that one barely noticed the gap in his output during the war. He was enlisted in the Artists Rifles in early 1917 and fought at Passchendaele in October 1917, being finally invalided out with trench foot in April 1918. The following story with its wartime connections is especially pertinent.

  WHEN MR. LIONEL DANSON RETIRED FROM HIS ACTIVITIES IN THE City, he bought the attractive little property called Vailings, which is situated on the south side of Minthaven. Minthaven stands on the Hampshire coast and looks across at the Needles, over the western entrance to the Solent. Mr. Danson liked ships, and he was gratified by the spectacle of giant liners on their way to and from Southampton. These were visible from any of the upper windows on the south side of the house, and in order to have a more perfect view Mr. Danson purchased a powerful telescope.

  The house called Vailings was a converted farmhouse, with some seven acres of land attached to it. It stood beside the road leading straight down to the sea, and the first of the few buildings between Mr. Danson’s residence and the shingle beach was his own gardener’s cottage, which stood about a hundred yards up the road and at the end of his own garden.

  Mr. Danson kept two indoor servants, and he also required a gardener whose wife could do some of the family washing and assist with some of the rough housework. A suitable couple named Wratham was discovered in Lymington, and they were promptly engaged and installed in the cottage.

  The Wrathams were not Hampshire people. Indeed, they seemed to have been in most parts of the country since the war, but despite the number of their situations their references were all excellent. Mrs. Wratham was white and neurotic and not very strong, but otherwise they were a perfect couple for Mr. Danson’s needs.

  Mr. Danson had been comfortably settled in his new home so
me three months, and was preparing for bed one night, when he heard loud blasts from a siren. Looking out of his window he beheld the dark shape, gemmed with a thousand lights, of a great liner, homeward bound, gliding up the Solent. It happened to be a perfect moonlight night, so Mr. Danson reached immediately for his telescope.

  It was a large glass and clumsy to handle, and Mr. Danson had not yet acquired skill in focussing an object quickly. Thus the road in front of the gardener’s cottage was brought, it seemed, within a yard of his eyes, so that he could have counted every pebble. And then, as he shifted the focus, he saw something which caused him to forget all about the liner.

  He kept vigil for part of the next three nights, and what he saw at close quarters and with his naked eyes sent him to town to see Francis Chard. I was with Chard at the time and heard his story.

  Lionel Danson was a short, stoutish man in the fifties and belonged to the happy type, which normally lives well and worries about nothing. He gave me the impression of being a good fellow, and at ordinary times, I daresay he would have been the best of company. But just now he was pale and worried, for sufficiently good reasons. Let me tell in his own words what he saw through the telescope.

  “I wasn’t astonished, for the first moment or two, when I saw that the man was a soldier. Two or three families in the village have sons in the Army who come home on furlough. But I certainly wondered why he was wearing a shrapnel helmet and what he could want with the Wrathams. Then I must have given the screw some slight adjustment, and every ghastly detail of him blazed upon my eyes. Remember it was bright moonlight, and the telescope seemed to bring him within a yard of me. I saw a small roadside weed at his feet shivering in the night air.”

  Danson paused. It was as if he could not bring himself to come straight to the gist of what he had to tell us.

  “The gardener’s cottage,” he continued, “stands flush with the road. There is no garden in front and no path. As the road leads straight to the sea, it carries very little traffic, and I suppose a path would be superfluous. Well, he—it was standing before the door of the cottage and seemed to be knocking at it.”

  He broke off abruptly, and Chard said, “Perhaps you had better have a whiskey and soda?”

  Danson smiled weakly.

  “Thanks. Perhaps I had, if you don’t mind. You’ll think I’m an idiot, I know, but you’ll remember that I saw him afterwards as close as I am to you.”

  He drank the contents of the tumbler, which Chard presently brought him, at a single gulp. Then he resumed.

  “He was a big fellow. I couldn’t guess his age, because the face I saw in profile was the grey face of a corpse. His left side was turned to me, and he knocked on the door with his right hand. He could not have knocked with the left because he had none. The sleeve hung down, ragged and empty, and I saw a slow, steady drip of blood.

  “His stained and faded khaki tunic was slightly powdered with something that looked like snow, and blackened with something that looked like soot. He was wearing leather equipment, but he was not in full kit. His bayonet scabbard was empty, and his haversack, instead of hanging over it, was on his back in place of a pack, with something rolled up underneath it.”

  Chard nodded. “That would be a ground-sheet,” he said. “He was in what we used to call ‘battle order.’”

  “I can remember all these details perfectly,” Danson continued, “because his appearance was such a shock to me that a complete picture of him immediately impressed itself on my mind.”

  “The more details the better,” said Chard. “You couldn’t by any chance see his numerals? I mean, what regiment did he belong to?”

  “I don’t know. But on his shoulder was a narrow strip of faded yellow ribbon, and underneath it, on the top of his sleeve, was a little red square, but inverted so that its angles pointed up and down and left and right. There was no mud on his boots and putties, but they looked wet. He had no rifle with him.

  “The telescope shook so in my hands that I kept missing him, but I must have watched him off and on for several minutes. Not once did he move from his position, but stood there staring at an upper window and beating upon the door with his one fist. And suddenly he went—I don’t know where. Just for a fraction of a second my unsteadiness of hand caused me to miss him with the telescope, and when I focussed it once more on the spot he was gone. There was only the empty road, and the same roadside weeds fluttering in the breeze.

  “Well, Mr. Chard, I went to bed feeling like nothing else on earth, and when I woke up in broad sunlight I tried to persuade myself that I’d dreamed or imagined the whole beastly business. But I knew I hadn’t. I knew I had seen something which is commonly called a ghost, and I knew that it must have been the ghost of a soldier killed in the late war. I said nothing to my wife or to the Wrathams, but I started making inquiries in the village. Jokingly asked if there were a local ghost, you know, but nobody had heard of one. And then, beginning elsewhere, I asked who had been living in my cottage during the war. That was easily discovered. The couple are still in the village. They have three grown-up daughters, all married, but they never had a son; nor do they seem to have lost anyone very near and dear to them.

  “The only thing to do, to satisfy myself—although I hated the idea—was to sit up and see if It came again. To cut my story as short as possible, It missed two nights. Then on the third night I focussed It once more in exactly the same spot, beating upon the door as before.

  “I was ready and fully dressed, so I crept downstairs and out, and up the road. It was still there, facing the door, with Its back to the road. The blows on the door made only a faint muffled throbbing, which perhaps explained why the Wrathams did not hear and come down, to be confronted by the awful Thing which wanted to enter. I passed behind It with my heart thumping like an engine, went on up the road, and waited until I felt steadier. Then I turned and forced myself to go back, and for the first time I saw It from the other side.

  “Mr. Chard, I went right up to him and asked him what he wanted. Yes, I managed to do that. But the side on which I approached him was worse than the other. The breast of his tunic was blackened all over, and there was a great ragged hole in it. He took no notice of me. He did not even turn to look at me. But in that indescribable moment I felt myself fainting and reeling forward against that terrible Presence. I must have clutched at It to save myself, but I don’t know if I touched anything. When I came to, I found myself lying face downwards on the road, and mercifully, alone.

  “So now you will have guessed the cause of my visit. From what I have heard you would seem to be the only man able and willing to help me. I want to find rest for that poor soul who gave his body for his country, and I want to rid the neighbourhood of his terrifying presence. I don’t know whether to tell the Wrathams or not. I would risk their thinking me a lunatic if it would do any good to tell them. The question is, whether it would be kinder to let them know and keep them in a state of apprehension or let them suddenly discover the horror for themselves.” Chard considered, and glanced at me.

  “That,” he said, “is a point which we can decide later.”

  Danson’s pale face brightened a little.

  “You mean,” he cried eagerly, “that you will come down and help me.” “Certainly,” Chard replied. “We both will. Today if you like.

  And so it befell that we accompanied Danson back to Hampshire, but before we started Chard and I had a private talk.

  “Here’s a very curious case,” Chard commented, “pre-supposing that our friend Danson isn’t a liar or a lunatic. Here’s a soldier, evidently killed in the late war, haunting the outside of a cottage with which he apparently had no connection in life. What do you make of him so far, Torrance?

  “He was evidently killed by a shell,” I said, “and probably his rifle was blown out of his hands at the same time. The black stuff on him must have been explosive, but I can’t account for the white stuff unless it were snow.”

  “But what do y
ou make of that yellow strip on his shoulder and the red patch on top of his sleeve?”

  “I’m coming to that,” I answered, “and it’s rather a coincidence that I should know. I believe the yellow slip indicates that he belonged to the Fourth—shires, who were in the 190th Brigade attached to the Naval Division. In that case the red patch would mean that he was in ‘A’ Company. I happen to know, because my brother was a second loot in that very company, and was wearing the same strips and patches when I ran across him near Bapaume. Perhaps, if I write, he’ll be able to help us.

  “Perhaps he will,” Chard agreed, “when we get a little more data. Did he ever do any fighting in the snow, do you know?”

  “Almost certain, I should think. There was plenty of snow about during both the winters he was out there. I’m glad I remembered his yellow strips and red patches. It’s about the first time I’ve been able to give you any material help, Chard.”

  We met Danson at Waterloo in the afternoon and caught a good train to Brockenhurst, where his car was garaged. He drove us the ten miles over a corner of the New Forest, through the western outskirts of Lymington, and down into Minthaven, which is at the head of a spear of dry land striking through marshes to the sea.

  It was not a typical old-world seaside village. There was little to see, and nothing to interest the archaeologist: no crazy, dilapidated cottages leaning over cobbled streets in an odour of fish, tar and hemp. The place was open and scattered and wind-swept, and most of the buildings which took the eye were comparatively modern, but it had a charm of its own.