Fingers of Fear

by J. U. Nicolson

  “This is interesting!” I cried. “I’d no idea your ghostly companions were so much in evidence.”

  Now I had been kissed in my sleep, last night—well, call it a kiss!—and I could not believe, in broad daylight, that a ghost had done the kissing. Upon discovery of the mark on my throat, I had at once concluded that one of these mysterious women who preferred the quiet of Ormesby to life in New York had been on the prowl. Which one? Yet I had locked my door and I had bolted it, before getting into bed, and the bolt had not been shot, nor had the lock been turned. The windows remained, as possible means of exit and entrance. Therefore I had carefully examined them, each of them, finding that the screens fastened on the inside. How could they have been replaced by anyone leaving the room that way? Moreover, the wall beneath those windows was of brick and it fell sheer to the ground, and the distance could not have been less than fourteen or fifteen feet. How could a living person have kissed me, then? But the blood drawn near to the surface of the skin of my neck was real enough.

  Gray attempted to change the subject of conversation. She began to speak, in a general way, of literature and of the work I had agreed to do; but, as may be imagined, my answers were perfunctory and not always quite to the point. What occupied me to the exclusion of every other interest was the possibility—could I call it the probability?—that it had been Gray’s graceful and yet inordinately large mouth which had lain against my throat just where the artery throbbed nearest under the skin.

  “I think I understand,” I was saying, “that you mean to tell me your ghosts here are subjective phantoms, as perhaps all ghosts are everywhere. If I understand you, it is the life one leads here, the routine one falls into, the habit of going back into the past for companionship, and perhaps the persisting influence of all the dead and buried Ormeses that——”

  “Indeed I don’t, Mr. Seaverns. I don’t mean anything of the sort. The Ormesby ghosts are as objective as . . . well, as I am. They walk and you see ’em. After you have seen them, or one of them—the woman, perhaps —you’ll know better what I mean.”

  “You think, then, that they’ll appear to me?”

  “If you remain here. You may even speak with them. I have.”

  “What?”

  “Yes. So now you see that I’m not speaking of subjective visions. But enough of ghosts! What a splendid day it’s going to be! I’m for a ramble over the hills. Want to come along?”

  “I wish I could.”

  “Can’t you?”

  “No, I ought to start work. Your brother will be back in a week, and——”

  “No, I suppose you can’t. It’s too bad.”

  Whatever else she might be, I told myself that this wholesome, healthy young woman of mixed ancestry and doubtful beauty was not the intruder who had left the print of her sucking mouth on my throat. She claimed to see ghosts and to speak with them, but what woman does not? Surely such an absurd confession was not to be imputed to any particularly deranged mentality in Gray Ormes. Her laugh was hearty enough, her eye and complexion as bright as one could wish for. I decided that I must look farther for my nocturnal visitor. Besides, what had Ormes told me about Gray? That she was “boss” at Ormesby, even when he was present. Well, it was plainly to be seen that she was boss. Hobbs had been entering and leaving the room, serving us, and whenever she interrupted her talk with me to fling him the scrap of an order, as she did repeatedly, he snapped into attention as rigid and immobile as a soldier’s, every line of face and figure and every movement of his manner bespeaking respect and a desire to understand fully so that he might perform her will without error. It was scarcely possible that such a woman went a-prowling at dead of night into the bedrooms of strange men.

  But Agnes? The hellion? The woman who would not live among Ormes’s friends, but preferred this haunted house in the hills? The woman of whom I had never heard her husband speak, in all the years of my casual acquaintance with him? Undoubtedly it was to my employer’s wife, rather than to his sister, that I must look for a solution of the mystery of that kiss. I became so convinced of Gray’s innocence, and further, so convinced of her ability to deal with any situation that could arise, that it was several times on my tongue to speak of the matter to her. But I refrained. After all, and be it given in what manner it may, a kiss is a kiss. What right had I to inform Gray of her sister-in-law’s doings?

  But we had finished our breakfast and taken a second cup of coffee. She rose and left me, smilingly and with a renewed invitation to forget books and ramble with her across the hills. Do you think that I was not tempted? I refused, but I freely admit that it was because I knew so little of the girl, not because I did not wish to learn more. Everything, even the manner and purpose of my employment, was mysterious at Ormesby. How could I be sure that she was not testing me? I sighed and watched her leave the room, her long slender legs swinging gracefully beneath her short brown skirt. Lighting another cigarette, I sought the library.

  It was damp and cool in there. It should not have been cooler in that room than in any other, for it had been built against the eastern wall of what had been the main part of the older house, toward the rear of it; and the morning sun fell unhindered upon it and entered its gloom through five or six tall windows. Nevertheless, the air in there was almost too cool for comfort. Certainly the damp and musty odor pervading the place reminded one more of a tomb than of a study in which to do creative work. I shivered, surveying the chaos before me, wondering where to begin upon it. I knew that I must first manage to catalogue everything. I said to myself that it would be best to start with the bound volumes; by the time I had completed the labor of listing them, I should perhaps be sufficiently familiar with the task to tackle the pamphlets and other papers. And then I sighed again.

  The front door opened and closed, rather noisily. I was perhaps a hundred feet away from it, yet the fact that I heard it so distinctly told me that whoever had entered or left the house was careless of waking others who might be still asleep. It must have been Gray. And I wished again that I might join her and forget the unwelcome toil awaiting me. Probably she’d take one or more of the dogs. Probably she’d wear breeches and a man’s shirt, with her light hair covered by a man’s cap or sombrero. How fine it would be to roam those green and wooded hills with her, returning tired and happy to the house just before the twilight. The things we two could find to talk about! There might be just a hint of sentiment (certainly not more, not enough to spoil the day for comradeship), only a recognition of the difference in sex, but never a giving way to its demand. That is, today. Well, and why not for many days to come? For I was tired of the feminine in women. Muriel had done enough to sicken me of their ways, their wants, their weaknesses. Away to the rearward of the house I heard dogs barking, suddenly and joyously, filling me with added bitterness because I was less free to follow my inclination than a dog. Why should I not run after Gray?

  I believe that I might very well have yielded to the temptation assailing me had it not been that by the merest chance my attention was momentarily caught by a typewriter. This must be the machine used by Gray herself, the one of which Ormes had spoken. It stood on a little table, and it was very dusty from lack of use. I had paused beside it but a moment, idly allowing my fingers to touch the keys which had been touched by Gray’s fingers, noting that the machine was of a make with the operation of which I was quite familiar.

  But I was not touching any of those keys now.

  Yet now, and though I saw the thing with half an eye only, yet I saw it plainly—I knew then, as I know now, that I had not been mistaken—the “O” key of the typewriter moved sharply downward and the type clicked against the roller!

  So I became aware—once more!—that though I stood alone in one of the rooms at Ormesby, yet I was in company of a thing which was not to be seen but which was quite capable of moving material objects.

  A mom
ent later I saw the woman.

  I straightened and half turned toward the south wall. I had not heard the door open. Nor had I heard it close. Nor had it opened, nor had it closed. A moment before, looking at the typing machine I had been alone in that long room. Now I saw the woman.

  She stood before me, distant perhaps twenty feet. She was a young woman; certainly her years could not have been more than thirty. It flashed across my mind that this was about the age of the female spectre at Ormesby. Was this really the ghost, then? We of the modern world fear these things . . . oh, yes! But we have been taught for so long that they are but creatures of our imagining that even in the midst of fear we somehow doubt. I remember thinking, even then, that I must be dreaming and that it was time to rouse myself out of sleep.

  The figure stood between me and one of the long windows, far from the single door of the room; and the north light, spilling in through the window, spread round her hair and clothing, seeming to throw an aura about her and perhaps intensifying the appearance of unreality she exhibited. At least, that is the way I tried, in that moment, to account for the look of her.

  She was not very tall, but she was slender and graceful, and I do not think I have ever seen a living woman’s face that was more beautiful. I am still of that opinion to this very day. The hair rose on my scalp—or seemed to be doing so—and I shivered in swift fear. I would not give way to fear. I was resolved to conquer it. Yet I shivered in spite of everything my will could do to prevent it. Incongruously, I thought, I was seeing the first ghost of my experience on a bright and wholesome morning in June, not in the dead of night and not in mysterious and eerie surroundings.

  And still, for all that the eastern and southern windows of the room were flooded with warm sunlight, which flowed in bright streams over the parqueted floor and set the dust motes dancing, the air of the library was cool to the point of being uncomfortable, so that again I shivered involuntarily as I stood and watched that visitant.

  “Good morning,” said the vision, her voice low and musical and anything but ghostlike. “I hope you don’t mind our ways here. And I hope you’ll do just as you wish, without interruption.”

  Rather fatuously I remembered that the ghosts of Ormesby were able to speak and hear. Gray had told me so not half an hour since. But if one must be visited by a spectre, then let it be so beautiful a vision as that before me now, and let it come at such a time and into such a place.

  “I expected to be interrupted, however,” I managed to say.

  “You did?”

  “Oh, yes!”

  “But by whom?”

  “By you, I suppose. And by the other.”

  “The other? Which other?”

  “What,” I cried, “are there more than two of you?”

  “I’m afraid,” she said, her eyes widening in a queer, old-fashioned, staidly modest manner, though she barely breathed the words loudly enough for me to hear them, “that I don’t very well understand you.”

  I was delighted with her! I had no leisure, at that moment, to analyze my feelings, nor any time to consider the preposterousness of this ghostly visitation, and I was, besides, still rooted to the floor by the mere physical fear which everyone experiences in presence of the unknown, but nevertheless I repeat that I was delighted with the appearance and words of this gentle goblin. She wore, I remarked, a little silken mauve-colored scarf about her neck and shoulders, and under this a long robe or gown of a slightly darker mauve, which just escaped touching the floor as she moved. Her hair was a dark brown, though there seemed to be gray streaks within it, and I could have sworn that her deep eyes were brown also. She was pale, though not so deathly pale and livid as I should have expected her to be. But she was certainly not transparent, for all that the north light shone round her and made an aura on her robe and hair. To look at the figure was almost as if one looked at that of a living woman. Even in the moment I found time to marvel on this opacity. But she was speaking again.

  “I’m sorry to have disturbed you. I was looking for . . . but I see she’s not here.”

  She glanced at me, a fleeting, modest, shy little glance. Then she turned and walked away toward the west end of the room, not toward the door, which was in the south wall and gave into the long transverse passage, as I have said. I watched her going, wondering whether I should see her disappear before my eyes. Her little feet made not the slightest sound as she moved across the dusty parquetry, though I fancied that I caught the faint rustling of the silken robe. She held on without pause until she had come to the very end of the room. Then she drifted slowly toward her own right and vanished into the wall!

  But there is this to be said for seeing ghosts by day: the net of terror and horror they weave about one is dispelled sooner and far more easily than by night. Whatever had just happened before my eyes, and however incredible it may have been, I was not troubled by fancies of nameless creatures creeping and swooping behind me. After a few moments I mastered fear and followed the figure to that spot where it had vanished. There was no break in the line of deep-shelved bookcases. From where I had stood, she had seemed to walk into the bookcase and merge with it. And it was only then, I think, that I really began to believe, for all the fear that had unreasonably gripped me and made me shiver like a man with ague, that I had actually seen and held converse with an uncorporeal being from beyond the grave. I had already begun to rationalize the entire proceeding, as I walked the length of the library, following the Lady in Mauve. “Fool!” I had reasoned, “The woman couldn’t have been any other than Mrs. Agnes Ormes. Why, her first words were words of greeting and they were expressive of the hope, perfectly natural in your hostess, that you should be comfortable and able to work without interruption. And you answered her like an idiot of the first water. And yet . . . and yet . . . there’s nothing of the hellion about that little thing.” So thinking, I had followed her very slowly to the spot where she had disappeared. Of course there would be a door of some kind there, some kind of panel in the wall, at any rate, some means of egress of which I had not yet learned. But there was nothing. There were only the deep-lined book shelves. How could any living creature have walked through those?

  And how could any living creature have pressed down that “O” key of the typewriter without touching it?

  Then I heard another voice. It came from behind me, and again it was a woman who was speaking.

  “Good morning, Mr. Seaverns! I am Mrs. Ormes.”

  IV

  I whirled and confronted the speaker. She was large, pale, red-headed, not a little coarse, rather loud, certainly vulgar. I knew in a flash why Ormes had never told me of his marriage. Apparently, also, he had mentioned it to no one in town, else I must have heard of it from one or another of our mutual acquaintances. But why he had called his wife a hellion was not so clear to me. I supposed the woman had a temper; her heavy eyebrows and chin indicated as much. But it seemed to me that she may have been a bit justified in asserting it. For it was plain that she was lonely here. I had not listened ten minutes to her talk before I had formed the opinion that she wanted to be in New York, but that she was compelled to remain at Ormesby for some reason over which she had no control. Maybe that reason was her husband’s reluctance to have her by him. He would unquestionably have been ashamed of her in town. Perhaps he had married her to avoid a scandal. I judged that she was not above forcing a man to do such a thing.

  All this passed through my mind while she talked volubly of everything under the sun—my projected work; her husband’s business affairs, which kept him so much away from home, especially since the beginning of this horrible depression; Gray and her dogs, a dozen, it appeared, all large, always hungry, and all so fierce that everyone was afraid of them, except Gray herself and . . . and Barbara. She had hesitated just a little before pronouncing the name of her husband’s aunt. Then she was off again. Now that summer was fai
rly come, she was positively afraid to venture out of doors because her skin freckled so easily; she had a new car, but didn’t like it and was thinking of trading it for another, to which Ormond objected; the servants were incompetent, but what could you do; it was so hard to get any kind of servants to remain steadily in the country, especially during the winter; and then these horrible hills, all about, hemming one in till one couldn’t breathe.

  Hearing all this, and taking advantage of the verbal torrent to collect my own somewhat scattered fancies, I put this creature down as a gossip too silly and inconsequential to be harmful, a woman merely lazy and useless, born to bear children without any knowledge of what to do with them or how to rear and educate them after giving them birth. I did not think she could be much of a hellion, save perhaps in her husband’s imagination, and that may very well have been warped and prejudiced against her at the time of their marriage.

  “And Miss Barbara?” I asked, when the woman’s tongue had slackened, at last, for I wished to be given more detailed information than I then had—“And Miss Barbara? Is her last name Ormes?”

  “Yes. Oh, yes. She’s Ormond’s aunt, you know. She never married. She’s such an odd little old thing, though I guess she’s only thirty-one at that.”

  “Only thirty-one? But Ormond’s about that age, isn’t he?”

  “Yes. I think they’re the same age. She was about thirty years younger than her only brother, Ormond’s father. But she’s certainly a queer one. Sometimes I wonder whether she’s . . . well, she’s so queer, Mr. Seaverns. Hardly ever leaves her room. I don’t s’pose you’ll see very much of her. Not that you’d want to. She’s a kind of an invalid, Ormond says, though I tell him it’s just foolishness. I say she’s a hypochondriac. I don’t hesitate to tell her so, too.”