The Algernon Blackwood Collection

by Algernon Blackwood

  I laughed again, a little uncomfortably perhaps, and said it reminded one of the story of Giles de Rays, maréchal of France, who was said to have killed and tortured to death in a few years no less than one hundred and sixty women and children for the purposes of necromancy, and who was executed for his crimes at Nantes. But Shorthouse would not “rise,” and only returned to his subject.

  “His suicide seems to have been only just in time to escape arrest,” he said.

  “A magician of no high order then,” I observed sceptically, “if suicide was his only way of evading the country police.”

  “The police of London and St. Petersburg rather,” returned Shorthouse; “for the headquarters of this pretty company was somewhere in Russia, and his apparatus all bore the marks of the most skilful foreign make. A Russian woman then employed in the household—governess, or something—vanished, too, about the same time and was never caught. She was no doubt the cleverest of the lot. And, remember, the object of this appalling group was not mere vulgar gain, but a kind of knowledge that called for the highest qualities of courage and intellect in the seekers.”

  I admit I was impressed by the man’s conviction of voice and manner, for there is something very compelling in the force of an earnest man’s belief, though I still affected to sneer politely.

  “But, like most Black Magicians, the fellow only succeeded in compassing his own destruction—that of his tools, rather, and of escaping himself.”

  “So that he might better accomplish his objects elsewhere and otherwise,” said Shorthouse, giving, as he spoke, the most minute attention to the cleaning of the lock.

  “Elsewhere and otherwise,” I gasped.

  “As if the shell he left hanging from the rafter in the barn in no way impeded the man’s spirit from continuing his dreadful work under new conditions,” he added quietly, without noticing my interruption. “The idea being that he sometimes revisits the garden and the barn, chiefly the barn—”

  “The barn!” I exclaimed; “for what purpose?”

  “Chiefly the barn,” he finished, as if he had not heard me, “that is, when there is anybody in it.”

  I stared at him without speaking, for there was a wonder in me how he would add to this.

  “When he wants fresh material, that is—he comes to steal from the living.”

  “Fresh material!” I repeated aghast. “To steal from the living!” Even then, in broad daylight, I was foolishly conscious of a creeping sensation at the roots of my hair, as if a cold breeze were passing over my skull.

  “The strong vitality of the living is what this sort of creature is supposed to need most,” he went on imperturbably, “and where he has worked and thought and struggled before is the easiest place for him to get it in. The former conditions are in some way more easily reconstructed—” He stopped suddenly, and devoted all his attention to the gun. “It’s difficult to explain, you know, rather,” he added presently, “and, besides, it’s much better that you should not know till afterwards.”

  I made a noise that was the beginning of a score of questions and of as many sentences, but it got no further than a mere noise, and Shorthouse, of course, stepped in again.

  “Your scepticism,” he added, “is one of the qualities that induce me to ask you to spend the night there with me.”

  “In those days,” he went on, in response to my urging for more information, “the family were much abroad, and often travelled for years at a time. This man was invaluable in their absence. His wonderful knowledge of horticulture kept the gardens—French, Italian, English—in perfect order. He had carte blanche in the matter of expense, and of course selected all his own underlings. It was the sudden, unexpected return of the master that surprised the amazing stories of the countryside before the fellow, with all his cleverness, had time to prepare or conceal.”

  “But is there no evidence, no more recent evidence, to show that something is likely to happen if we sit up there?” I asked, pressing him yet further, and I think to his liking, for it showed at least that I was interested. “Has anything happened there lately, for instance?”

  Shorthouse glanced up from the gun he was cleaning so assiduously, and the smoke from his pipe curled up into an odd twist between me and the black beard and oriental, sun-tanned face. The magnetism of his look and expression brought more sense of conviction to me than I had felt hitherto, and I realised that there had been a sudden little change in my attitude and that I was now much more inclined to go in for the adventure with him. At least, I thought, with such a man, one would be safe in any emergency; for he is determined, resourceful, and to be depended upon.

  “There’s the point,” he answered slowly; “for there has apparently been a fresh outburst—an attack almost, it seems,—quite recently. There is evidence, of course, plenty of it, or I should not feel the interest I do feel, but—” he hesitated a moment, as though considering how much he ought to let me know, “but the fact is that three men this summer, on separate occasions, who have gone into that barn after nightfall, have been accosted—”

  “Accosted?” I repeated, betrayed into the interruption by his choice of so singular a word.

  “And one of the stablemen—a recent arrival and quite ignorant of the story—who had to go in there late one night, saw a dark substance hanging down from one of the rafters, and when he climbed up, shaking all over, to cut it down—for he said he felt sure it was a corpse—the knife passed through nothing but air, and he heard a sound up under the eaves as if someone were laughing. Yet, while he slashed away, and afterwards too, the thing went on swinging there before his eyes and turning slowly with its own weight, like a huge joint on a spit. The man declares, too, that it had a large bearded face, and that the mouth was open and drawn down like the mouth of a hanged man.”

  “Can we question this fellow?”

  “He’s gone—gave notice at once, but not before I had questioned him myself very closely.”

  “Then this was quite recent?” I said, for I knew Shorthouse had not been in the house more than a week.

  “Four days ago,” he replied. “But, more than that, only three days ago a couple of men were in there together in full daylight when one of them suddenly turned deadly faint. He said that he felt an overmastering impulse to hang himself; and he looked about for a rope and was furious when his companion tried to prevent him—”

  “But he did prevent him?”

  “Just in time, but not before he had clambered on to a beam. He was very violent.”

  I had so much to say and ask that I could get nothing out in time, and Shorthouse went on again.

  “I’ve had a sort of watching brief for this case,” he said with a smile, whose real significance, however, completely escaped me at the time, “and one of the most disagreeable features about it is the deliberate way the servants have invented excuses to go out to the place, and always after dark; some of them who have no right to go there, and no real occasion at all—have never been there in their lives before probably—and now all of a sudden have shown the keenest desire and determination to go out there about dusk, or soon after, and with the most paltry and foolish excuses in the world. Of course,” he added, “they have been prevented, but the desire, stronger than their superstitious dread, and which they cannot explain, is very curious.”

  “Very,” I admitted, feeling that my hair was beginning to stand up again.

  “You see,” he went on presently, “it all points to volition—in fact to deliberate arrangement. It is no mere family ghost that goes with every ivied house in England of a certain age; it is something real, and something very malignant.”

  He raised his face from the gun barrel, and for the first time his eye caught mine in the full. Yes, he was very much in earnest. Also, he knew a great deal more than he meant to tell.

  “It’s worth tempting—and fighting, I think,” he said; “but I want a companion with me. Are you game?” His enthusiasm undoubtedly caught me, but I still w
anted to hedge a bit.

  “I’m very sceptical,” I pleaded.

  “All the better,” he said, almost as if to himself. “You have the pluck; I have the knowledge—”

  “The knowledge?”

  He looked round cautiously as if to make sure that there was no one within earshot.

  “I’ve been in the place myself,” he said in a lowered voice, “quite lately—in fact only three nights ago—the day the man turned queer.”

  I stared.

  “But—I was obliged to come out—”

  Still I stared.

  “Quickly,” he added significantly.

  “You’ve gone into the thing pretty thoroughly,” was all I could find to say, for I had almost made up my mind to go with him, and was not sure that I wanted to hear too much beforehand.

  He nodded. “It’s a bore, of course, but I must do everything thoroughly—or not at all.”

  “That’s why you clean your own gun, I suppose?”

  “That’s why, when there’s any danger, I take as few chances as possible,” he said, with the same enigmatical smile I had noticed before; and then he added with emphasis, “And that is also why I ask you to keep me company now.”

  Of course, the shaft went straight home, and I gave my promise without further ado.

  Our preparations for the night—a couple of rugs and a flask of black coffee—were not elaborate, and we found no difficulty, about ten o’clock, in absenting ourselves from the billiard-room without attracting curiosity. Shorthouse met me by arrangement under the cedar on the back lawn, and I at once realised with vividness what a difference there is between making plans in the daytime and carrying them out in the dark. One’s common-sense—at least in matters of this sort—is reduced to a minimum, and imagination with all her attendant sprites usurps the place of judgment. Two and two no longer make four—they make a mystery, and the mystery loses no time in growing into a menace. In this particular case, however, my imagination did not find wings very readily, for I knew that my companion was the most unmovable of men—an unemotional, solid block of a man who would never lose his head, and in any conceivable state of affairs would always take the right as well as the strong course. So my faith in the man gave me a false courage that was nevertheless very consoling, and I looked forward to the night’s adventure with a genuine appetite.

  Side by side, and in silence, we followed the path that skirted the East Woods, as they were called, and then led across two hay fields, and through another wood, to the barn, which thus lay about half a mile from the Lower Farm. To the Lower Farm, indeed, it properly belonged; and this made us realise more clearly how very ingenious must have been the excuses of the Hall servants who felt the desire to visit it.

  It had been raining during the late afternoon, and the trees were still dripping heavily on all sides, but the moment we left the second wood and came out into the open, we saw a clearing with the stars overhead, against which the barn outlined itself in a black, lugubrious shadow. Shorthouse led the way—still without a word—and we crawled in through a low door and seated ourselves in a soft heap of hay in the extreme corner.

  “Now,” he said, speaking for the first time, “I’ll show you the inside of the barn, so that you may know where you are, and what to do, in case anything happens.”

  A match flared in the darkness, and with the help of two more that followed I saw the interior of a lofty and somewhat rickety-looking barn, erected upon a wall of grey stones that ran all round and extended to a height of perhaps four feet. Above this masonry rose the wooden sides, running up into the usual vaulted roof, and supported by a double tier of massive oak rafters, which stretched across from wall to wall and were intersected by occasional uprights. I felt as if we were inside the skeleton of some antediluvian monster whose huge black ribs completely enfolded us. Most of this, of course, only sketched itself to my eye in the uncertain light of the flickering matches, and when I said I had seen enough, and the matches went out, we were at once enveloped in an atmosphere as densely black as anything that I have ever known. And the silence equalled the darkness.

  We made ourselves comfortable and talked in low voices. The rugs, which were very large, covered our legs; and our shoulders sank into a really luxurious bed of softness. Yet neither of us apparently felt sleepy. I certainly didn’t, and Shorthouse, dropping his customary brevity that fell little short of gruffness, plunged into an easy run of talking that took the form after a time of personal reminiscences. This rapidly became a vivid narration of adventure and travel in far countries, and at any other time I should have allowed myself to become completely absorbed in what he told. But, unfortunately, I was never able for a single instant to forget the real purpose of our enterprise, and consequently I felt all my senses more keenly on the alert than usual, and my attention accordingly more or less distracted. It was, indeed, a revelation to hear Shorthouse unbosom himself in this fashion, and to a young man it was of course doubly fascinating; but the little sounds that always punctuate even the deepest silence out of doors claimed some portion of my attention, and as the night grew on I soon became aware that his tales seemed somewhat disconnected and abrupt—and that, in fact, I heard really only part of them.

  It was not so much that I actually heard other sounds, but that I expected to hear them; this was what stole the other half of my listening. There was neither wind nor rain to break the stillness, and certainly there were no physical presences in our neighbourhood, for we were half a mile even from the Lower Farm; and from the Hall and stables, at least a mile. Yet the stillness was being continually broken—perhaps disturbed is a better word—and it was to these very remote and tiny disturbances that I felt compelled to devote at least half my listening faculties.

  From time to time, however, I made a remark or asked a question, to show that I was listening and interested; but, in a sense, my questions always seemed to bear in one direction and to make for one issue, namely, my companion’s previous experience in the barn when he had been obliged to come out “quickly.”

  Apparently I could not help myself in the matter, for this was really the one consuming curiosity I had; and the fact that it was better for me not to know it made me the keener to know it all, even the worst.

  Shorthouse realised this even better than I did. I could tell it by the way he dodged, or wholly ignored, my questions, and this subtle sympathy between us showed plainly enough, had I been able at the time to reflect upon its meaning, that the nerves of both of us were in a very sensitive and highly-strung condition. Probably, the complete confidence I felt in his ability to face whatever might happen, and the extent to which also I relied upon him for my own courage, prevented the exercise of my ordinary powers of reflection, while it left my senses free to a more than usual degree of activity.

  Things must have gone on in this way for a good hour or more, when I made the sudden discovery that there was something unusual in the conditions of our environment. This sounds a roundabout mode of expression, but I really know not how else to put it. The discovery almost rushed upon me. By rights, we were two men waiting in an alleged haunted barn for something to happen; and, as two men who trusted one another implicitly (though for very different reasons), there should have been two minds keenly alert, with the ordinary senses in active co-operation. Some slight degree of nervousness, too, there might also have been, but beyond this, nothing. It was therefore with something of dismay that I made the sudden discovery that there was something more, and something that I ought to have noticed very much sooner than I actually did notice it.

  The fact was—Shorthouse’s stream of talk was wholly unnatural. He was talking with a purpose. He did not wish to be cornered by my questions, true, but he had another and a deeper purpose still, and it grew upon me, as an unpleasant deduction from my discovery, that this strong, cynical, unemotional man by my side was talking—and had been talking all this time—to gain a particular end. And this end, I soon felt clearly, was to convince
himself. But, of what?

  For myself, as the hours wore on towards midnight, I was not anxious to find the answer; but in the end it became impossible to avoid it, and I knew as I listened, that he was pouring forth this steady stream of vivid reminiscences of travel—South Seas, big game, Russian exploration, women, adventures of all sorts—because he wished the past to reassert itself to the complete exclusion of the present. He was taking his precautions. He was afraid.

  I felt a hundred things, once this was clear to me, but none of them more than the wish to get up at once and leave the barn. If Shorthouse was afraid already, what in the world was to happen to me in the long hours that lay ahead? . . . I only know that, in my fierce efforts to deny to myself the evidence of his partial collapse, the strength came that enabled me to play my part properly, and I even found myself helping him by means of animated remarks upon his stories, and by more or less judicious questions. I also helped him by dismissing from my mind any desire to enquire into the truth of his former experience; and it was good I did so, for had he turned it loose on me, with those great powers of convincing description that he had at his command, I verily believe that I should never have crawled from that barn alive. So, at least, I felt at the moment. It was the instinct of self-preservation, and it brought sound judgment.

  Here, then, at least, with different motives, reached, too, by opposite ways, we were both agreed upon one thing, namely, that temporarily we would forget. Fools we were, for a dominant emotion is not so easily banished, and we were for ever recurring to it in a hundred ways direct and indirect. A real fear cannot be so easily trifled with, and while we toyed on the surface with thousands and thousands of words—mere words—our sub-conscious activities were steadily gaining force, and would before very long have to be properly acknowledged. We could not get away from it. At last, when he had finished the recital of an adventure which brought him near enough to a horrible death, I admitted that in my uneventful life I had never yet been face to face with a real fear. It slipped out inadvertently, and, of course, without intention, but the tendency in him at the time was too strong to be resisted. He saw the loophole, and made for it full tilt.