Shadows at Midnight.: The Maynard Sims Library. Vol 1

by Maynard Sims

  "How long do you think it's been like this?" Emily said, suppressing a shudder.

  "Quite a while, I should imagine. Do you want to try to get inside?"

  She considered for a while, looking about her uneasily. Finally she said, "We're not going to find out very much standing around out here, are we?"

  We circled the house with difficulty, because the paths had long since succumbed to an overgrowth of thistle and nettles. At the back of the house was an old brick and glass conservatory, many of the panes cracked and broken, and it was here we found a point of entry. The previous winter's gales had taken out a section of the glazing large enough for a person to walk through. The evidence of the wind's assault lay in jagged shards amongst the prolific weeds.

  We entered carefully, almost hesitantly. As she followed me inside I saw Emily glance up at the sun, which was hanging low in the sky, a final glimpse of brightness before descending into the dank, gloomy interior of the Grange.

  Once inside I was appalled that a house could be left to get into such a state. The conservatory gave onto what once must have been the drawing room. There were still carpets on the floor and curtains at the windows, but the carpets were covered with dead leaves, and spotted with white blotches of fungus. The curtains were in a similar state, their once rich burgundy brocade dusty and faded, and again attacked by the same mould that grew on the floor. There was an unpleasant odour in the house. Rotting vegetation came first to mind, but as we proceeded deeper into the house the smell grew more pungent, and Emily gagged. "It smells like a sewer," she said, covering her nose and mouth with her hand.

  We reached the stairs and paused. They didn't look safe. Many of the risers appeared to be rotten and two, near the top of the flight were missing. "If we're going to find any answers in this house, then it will be up there we find them," I said. "I'll go up alone and take a look around."

  For a moment I thought she would argue, but then a shiver ran through her body and she turned away from the stairs. "Be careful," she said. "I'll take another look around down here."

  The stairs were treacherous, but by clinging to the banister rail, and treading gingerly on the parts of the risers closest to the wall, I managed to reach the top without crippling myself. I found myself on a landing with a long corridor leading off from it. The corridor stretched the entire length of the house, and what little illumination there was dribbled in through a begrimed window at the far end.

  In all there were eight doors leading off the corridor, four on each side. These, I guessed, led into the bedrooms. As I approached the first I wished I had possessed the foresight to bring a torch with me, as I found the darkness in the house becoming more and more oppressive. That, coupled with the smell, served to make the atmosphere of the house coldly claustrophobic. A light of any kind would have helped dispel the growing sense of dread I had about opening the first bedroom door. I gripped the handle, took a breath and opened the door, stepped into the room, and recoiled instantly as the floor gave way beneath my feet. Floorboards, lathes and plaster crashed down to the floor below, leaving in their wake a spuming cloud of dust and dirt. Had I not reached out and gripped the doorframe I might have joined them. I heard Emily call up from below and I shouted back that I was safe.

  I went to the next door and opened it, treading carefully on the boards this time, making sure they supported my weight before stepping into the room. There was lino on the floor, and more light. This room had a window that was free from wooden planking, and the late afternoon sunlight poured in, catching dust motes in the air, making them glint and sparkle. I stepped carefully and realised I was in the room which had once been home to the trio of furniture, and my wardrobe in particular. I could clearly see the deep hollows the feet of the furniture had left in the linoleum.

  I went across to examine them and almost at once felt the hairs on the back of my neck begin to prickle. It is difficult to describe what I felt as I approached the site of the furniture. Physically I felt nauseous, and my head started to spin. A sweat broke out on my skin and I could feel it running in rivulets down my back. My heart began to beat rapidly and the saliva vanished from my mouth, my tongue suddenly feeling twice its size. I took a step backwards and the physical ills receded. But the feelings of oppression and claustrophobia I had felt earlier on the landing increased, and mingled with those feelings was another. A very deep, almost sub-conscious sensation of terror. I knew I could go no farther into the room. Emily would be disappointed. The answers she sought, I'm sure, were here, but I wasn't going to be the one to find them. I wanted desperately to get out of the house.

  She was waiting at the foot of the stairs as I descended.

  "Anything?" she said.

  "No," I said, avoiding her gaze.

  As I reached the bottom she took my arm and said, "There's something I would like you to see." She led me back into the drawing room. While I had been upstairs she had somehow rolled back the mouldering carpet. The boards underneath were smooth and highly polished, untainted by the fungus that had lain above them.

  "What do you make of that?" she said, and pointed down at the pattern that had been carefully wrought on the polished boards.

  It was about eight feet in diameter and, even with close inspection, I could not tell whether it was painted onto the wood, or whether it had actually been inlaid somehow into it.

  "It's a pentagram," I said, my voice sounding flat in the brooding room.

  "Yes," she said. "That's what I thought. I saw one in a book Bill was reading a few months ago. Can we go now?"

  I nodded silently and, arm in arm, we made our way back to the car.

  It was early evening when we finally got back to my house. I offered to drive Emily home but she was reluctant to go, saying she didn't care to spend this particular night in an empty house. The way she said it suggested that she too had been bothered by the same kind of feelings that had overcome me at the Grange.

  After dinner we relaxed with a glass of port in my lounge. I was glad to be home, and yet there was a part of me that still hadn't shaken off the disquiet I had felt earlier. The conversation with Emily dwelt on Bill for a long time, the type of life he had led, the growing feeling of distance between them as the months went by.

  "I knew the furniture bothered Bill in some way, but I could never quite understand why. He used to say he could see figures in the veneer, but I never really understood what he meant."

  "I do. I've seen them myself." Her eyes widened at the confession. I continued, "And yet the furniture never troubled you at all?"

  She hesitated. "Well, not exactly." She stared down into her port as she swilled the deep red liquid around in her glass. "I suppose I didn't really associate it with the furniture before, and I'm not sure there's any logical reason why I should now."

  "This isn't really a very logical situation," I said.

  "No, I suppose not. I've had this dream a few times, that's all. In fact I last had it the night after the auction. I'm sure it means nothing," she said, reluctant to continue, but I urged her to go on.

  "I'm sleeping in a strange bed, in fact the whole room seems unfamiliar to me. I wake and hear music outside the window, strange lilting music, with a haunting, repetitive rhythm which becomes hypnotic the more I listen to it. I sink into some kind of trance and I feel myself being lifted from the bed and carried from the house. There is a group of people dressed in robes who carry me away to a mound of earth where a small fire is burning. They lay me on the mound next to the fire and form a circle around me. Then they begin chanting. I can never quite hear what they are saying, the language sounds foreign. And then a figure breaks from the group and approaches the mound. The chanting grows louder, and I feel myself falling, falling down this huge bottomless chasm. It's then I wake up."

  We discussed the dream for a while, and I told her about Bill's visits to the library and the type of books he was borrowing towards the end of his life.

  "Poor Bill," she said. "If only he ha
d told me about it."

  "Would you have believed him?"

  "Would you?"

  The question hung in the air as we sipped our port. I was about to say that it was time to turn in when there was a shattering crash from the bedroom directly above our heads. My bedroom. Emily's face blanched, and with a shouted order to, "stay there!" I ran from the room and mounted the stairs two at a time. Emily ignored the order and joined me on the landing a second later. I ran to the bedroom door and threw it open.

  The scene was one of chaos. The window had exploded into the room, glass and woodwork littering the floor. A gale-force wind was blowing in through the gaping hole left by the window, and the curtains were flapping madly, straining at their ties. My bed-clothes were caught up in the gale, pirouetting above the bed, sheets flapping, blankets tossed in the air as if they were made of tissue paper.

  I rushed across to the window to see if there was any way I could reach the shutters outside, to try to close them against the wind, but it was futile. All I succeeded in doing was to free one of them. The wind caught it and sent it crashing towards me. It caught me on the brow and split the skin from my hairline to the bridge of my nose. I staggered backwards and fell to my knees. Through a curtain of blood I looked across to Emily who was standing in the doorway, her fist tightly balled, rammed against her lips, her eyes open wide in total shock and fear. She was staring at the wardrobe.

  Its doors were wide open, the clothes being sucked out into the vortex. And there, crouched in the corner of the wardrobe was a hunched figure, taller than any man, covered in matted black fur. The eyes were wildly blazing, the nose flattened and the mouth open to reveal jagged yellow teeth. There was blood spattered over the coat of hair, the skin beneath cracked and lined with age.

  For a moment there was a pause as the creature regarded us, and then Emily screamed, and the creature burst from the wardrobe. I hurled myself at it before it could reach Emily, but a savage blow from its long simian-like arm sent me flying backwards. I called out for Emily to run, but as the words left my lips she toppled forwards in a faint. My head hit the wall, and as an inky blackness threatened to sweep over me, it took every ounce of will power I possessed to stop myself passing out completely.

  I shook my head and opened my eyes. Emily was lying on the floor, partly covered by the sheets and blankets from my bed, which had fallen in a heap on top of her. She was groaning softly. The wind had died and a heavy silence filled the room. Of the creature there was no sign at all.

  We spent the rest of the night in my study, with the door locked. I sat in my desk-chair with my service revolver clamped tightly in my hand, whilst Emily slept fitfully on the chaise lounge, rousing every so often with a whimpering cry, until the gentle stroke of my hand on her brow soothed her back to sleep.

  When morning came I unlocked the study door and looked carefully about. I found nothing except claw marks on the banister rail, and gouges on the front door where it had been forced open. When I was satisfied the house was empty, we went up to the bedroom. It was in tatters. The bedclothes, curtaining and all my clothes from the wardrobe were shredded into unrecognisable rags. The wardrobe was unharmed, its doors wide open. Nothing on earth would have induced me to keep it a moment longer. With Emily's help I shifted the accursed thing away from the wall, intending to get it down the stairs and out of my house as quickly as possible.

  As we tipped it forward I noticed a small panel of metal, about six inches square, fixed to the back of the wardrobe. It looked very much like a maker's label, but was so scratched as to be unreadable. Sticking out from beneath it was what appeared to be a scrap of material. The metal label was fixed to the wood by four rivets. With the aid of my penknife I pulled them out one by one until the label came off in my hand. Behind it, wrapped in a thin gauze-like material, faded and crumbling, was a tuft of matted black hair. On the thin material, drawn in something that resembled the rusty brown of dried blood, was a pentagram.

  "Burn them," Emily said quietly. "For God's sake burn them."

  I took the gauze and the hair down to the boiler, and threw them onto the coals where they crackled and flared violently before burning to a cinder.

  BENJAMIN'S SHADOW

  It was always understood that my elder brother would inherit the house in Cornwall after our aunt died. With our parents dead we were not a close family; I had seen my brother only twice in the past five years. My aunt had seen me even less frequently, and that only when she came to London. On both occasions my natural shyness prevented any memorable conversation between us. It was a surprise therefore, that when she died, I received a letter from her solicitors urging me to attend their offices in all haste. I did so, expecting a small legacy, a lump sum or trust of some kind. When I arrived I met my brother on the stairs, his face red with fury. He couldn't find the words to express his anger, but his eyes told me the depth of his feelings. Even as I entered the solicitors' office I could guess the reason for my brother's angry departure.

  "Her whole estate! But why me? I don't understand."

  The balding solicitor was obviously embarrassed by my brother's attitude. "Mr Gibbs, this is a delicate situation. Your brother, shall we say, had good reason to expect the estate to come his way."

  "Exactly. It was to be his."

  "Quite, quite," the solicitor said. "There is a provision in the will for a payment to be made to your brother when the estate is finalised. However you are the sole benefactor so far as the house and land are concerned. These you inherit completely, together with sufficient capital to last a reasonable man for the rest of his days." He looked at me as if wondering whether I looked like his idea of a reasonable man.

  I was at a loss to see why my aunt had so favoured me. "I only met her a few times, and even then we merely passed normal pleasantries. We were hardly close."

  The solicitor smiled thinly. "Although you regarded her as a distant relative, she obviously had a great deal of affection for you. I was privileged to meet with her on several occasions in the preparation of her affairs, and she spoke about you with great warmth." He hesitated, gave a slight cough and then, as if he had decided he could say what he intended, he proceeded. "She once confided that she considered you to be the son she never had. I understand she was unfortunate to lose her only child when he was quite young."

  I vaguely remembered my parents discussing the subject of my aunt's tragedy. Her young son, Benjamin, died when he was about a year old.

  Although I was conscious it would sound mercenary, my curiosity about the size of my inheritance had to be satisfied.

  "In terms of cash I cannot give you a definite figure but, as I have alluded, I doubt you will have financial worries at any time in the future."

  I sat back and stared at the small bald headed man who, at that moment, I regarded as my benefactor. That was not true, of course, it was my aunt who had rewarded me handsomely, and seemingly for just being pleasant to her.

  "There is one technicality," the solicitor said. "The house in Cornwall. It is your aunt's express wish that you should live there and maintain it in good living order."

  I had not expected such a condition. My immediate reaction to the news of my inheritance had been to sell the house and build my own near to London where I had always lived. Although I had never seen my aunt's house it had been described to me by my parents as a large old mansion surrounded by several acres. I imagined it to be a gloomy house, and the land to be nothing but unkempt gardens. In any case it was in the house that my aunt had died.

  "To live in the house would mean uprooting everything; my job, house, friends, the life I know."

  "Your aunt's wish is quite explicit; let me read her own words. `If the heir to my worldly possessions is to benefit from them, and is to achieve the pleasure from them that I occasionally found, then he is, without question, to remain in residence on my estate until his death.' I am afraid, Mr Gibbs, that if you wish to inherit your aunt's fortune then you must live in her house. I
have a letter here, unopened, that you are not to read until you have slept one night there. I believe she named the place, where is it, ah yes, the house is called, Benjamin's Shadow. A strange name."

  "It was the name of her son who died," I said almost absently, my mind still coming to terms with events.

  So that is how I came to be sitting on a train speeding towards Cornwall, and that strangely named house that was to become my home.

  I soon grew tired of the book I had brought along to read, and my thoughts turned to the will and my aunt's reasons for leaving me such wealth. The legal jargon of the document was explicit only in her desire that I should live in her house. I still wanted to know why. I felt in my pocket for the sealed letter. There surely must lay the answer.

  On the envelope were the instructions for when and where I should open it. I could not wait. Almost guiltily I tore open the seal, and pulled out a single folded sheet. I flattened it out to reveal in a scrawled and weak handwriting the following message:

  My Dear James,

  When you read this you will already have seen the house, and indeed you will already have spent one night alone with its silence.

  You will notice that I call it ,`the house', for I have not felt it to be mine for some time, despite the many years I have lived there. You will have thought me a lonely old woman, especially after poor Benjamin passed over, and for the most part I was, but there were times when I screamed to be left alone.

  Many were the occasions when I knew I was not alone, but that others were in the house with me. You see I was not the first owner, nor the first to experience the loss of a child.

  I expect now you will think me a foolish old woman, or perhaps you suspect that I was more than foolish.

  The loneliness of the house can have a strange effect, but I think you will find the companionship a sight worse.