The Big Book of Ghost Stories

by Otto Penzler

  “Hammer!” In the silence that had followed the last line my cry boomed like a gun. And with the boom, Hammer turned.

  He came like a fury, black hair slithering back from a lean face and eyes that were crackling madness above a dark and twisted mouth where teeth gleamed white. He came snarling, the breath husking in his nostrils, saliva drooling from his mouth. He came head first, lean shoulders driving—a man who had forced himself to the edge of death, going first to take the place of the friend who followed, but whose nerves had broken at the last step, flinging him backward and insane.

  I threw up my hands and he crashed into me. We went over, hard. It seemed that we fell a long time and all that while through utter silence. Then we struck the path.

  The breath jumped from my lungs and I heard Carl Hammer sob. I was teetering, rolling; my legs were swinging out into space and my fingers were clawing at the path while I hung there, almost like a bird who has stopped, wings outspread and motionless for a long second. Then I heard Hammer sob again, far away and below me; and I was pulling myself back on the path when I heard the crash of his body. There was the tinkling of rocks, the rustle of stilling leaves after the body passed through, and then there was silence.

  I lay on my back on the path and did not move. High above me I could see the broad gold beam of the sunlight. It was like a clear river, flowing deep and strong. It touched the mountain-top and soaked it in warmth and flowed around it without movement, without ever a ripple.

  Far off a goat bleated lugubriously.

  I got to my feet then. My hands were grimy from clawing at the path and one fingernail was broken. It hurt but the pain seemed totally removed from my body. It was as if I were watching someone else nursing a broken fingernail, knowing that it hurt them, but unmoved, unsympathetic.

  I went to the curve in the path and looked around it. The steps led twistingly downward. A ragged cliff on the left stuck out far enough to hide the sea.

  During the whole time that I struggled down to Carl Hammer’s body I was in that dazed, almost unconscious condition. It was seeing him lying there, one leg bent under him, the bone sticking out through his linen trousers, the bone unbearably clean and white, whiter than the linen through which it stuck, that brought feeling back to me. I didn’t cry, yet there were tears sliding from my eyes. I kept trying to get the lump out of my throat and I began to curse, slowly, completely. Letting each word stand on my tongue, mouthing the full harshness of it, letting it fall slowly before I said the next one, I cursed myself.

  Carl Hammer had known all the while what was coming. He had tried to tell me, but I had refused to listen. And then, because he had known, he had come ashore with me and had walked to his death ahead of me, standing between me and the thing which no human being could fight.

  After a while I got the body up in my arms. There was blood on it and the blood felt clammy on my arms. I fought my way through the brush and the cactus trying to shield his body with my own, remembering always how he had shielded me and that the gesture I was making now was only absurd, yet forcing myself to do it, cursing at the pain of the thorns and cactus.

  The sun was down when I reached Fort Bay, but in the east there was a flaming rose of piled clouds. I made my way through the big rocks to the water’s edge and stopped. The rowboat was gone. Looking out to the anchored schooner I could see the shadow of the boat bobbing at its side.

  “Oh God!” I said aloud. “He couldn’t—couldn’t—” I swallowed hard,

  “And the woman died from shame.”

  The line stabbed suddenly through my mind.

  Still holding Hammer’s body in my arms I began to shout, “Pete! Pete! Mary!” A shadow moved on the deck. It was the Negro cook.

  “Bring me that boat!” I yelled.

  For a moment he didn’t answer. Then I heard his voice, soft in the twilight. “Boat?”

  “You’re damn’ right, the boat!” I shouted. “It’s tied forward.”

  He went to the rail, looked over. Then he went forward and climbed over and into the boat.

  There’s always a heavy surf around Saba, probably the roughest seas in the West Indies. I don’t know how Pete ever got the boat ashore by himself. I didn’t watch. I stretched Hammer out on the ground, straightened his leg as best I could, covered his face with my coat. Then I began to wash the blood from myself—I didn’t want to frighten Mary any worse than need be. But I did these things almost unconsciously, for my brain was clamped cold with fear. Who had rowed that boat out to the ship?

  I tried to think of something else, knowing that guessing would do me no good. But I couldn’t shake the thought from my mind. Mary couldn’t have swum ashore and rowed back. Who had carried the boat out to the schooner? And why?

  I heard the boat grate on the beach and looked up. Pete had gone over in water waist deep and, waiting until a wave came in, heaved the boat higher. He came up on the rock and turned toward me. All at once he noticed Hammer’s body. He stopped and even in the twilight I could see his eyes growing wider, the whites seeming to spread across his face.

  “What—what dat?” he asked.

  “Mr. Hammer fell over the cliff,” I said.

  Pete began to stammer, to ask questions, but I stopped him. “Who rowed the boat out to the schooner?” I asked.

  The words seemed to come to him slowly and far apart. As he listened his mouth dripped open; the pupils of his eyes contracted until they were invisible in the rolling whites. “I ain’t goin’ back on dat ship,” he said at last. “Naw, Sur, not yit. I—I’se goin’ where dere’s folks.”

  He began to back away from me, up the path. I watched him go without speaking. It didn’t seem important to me then. For a long moment nothing seemed important. And then, abruptly, I thought of Mary.

  She was on the schooner—alone or—with Bill Wales!

  I caught Hammer’s body in my arms, carried it to the boat and put it in. I shoved the boat off and began to row. It’s strange that I didn’t capsize in that sea. I don’t even remember the passage. But I remember tying the boat to the schooner. Then I was crawling over the rail with Hammer’s body in my arms.

  It was dark now. Just over the sea to the east the sky was growing white and gold from the rising moon, but now I could hardly see the length of the deck, the dark shadow of the boat-house and the cockpit. I laid Hammer on the deck and went aft. There was no sound except the lap of the water against the schooner, the dull echo of the surf booming on the rocky shore. No light came up from the cabin into the cockpit.

  I stood on the deck for a long minute, gazing down into the darkness, scarcely breathing. My heart ached against my ribs. I could feel a nerve twitching at the right corner of my mouth. On the seat of the cockpit I could see the pale blur of a box of writing paper. Evidently Mary had been there during the afternoon.

  I hadn’t thought much of Mary during the last twenty-four hours. I had believed Wayne’s death an accident and since Hammer’s sudden madness and death I had been too shocked to think. But now the full significance of the song which rang as a death knell came to me.

  “The third man went to a watery grave.

  And the woman died from shame.”

  Standing there, looking down into the silent darkness of the cockpit, seeing the black square of doorway which led into the cabin, those words kept beating through my mind.

  I was the third man, and Mary …

  Chapter Four

  “And the Woman …”

  My fists knotted suddenly and I jerked a great breath into my lungs. By God! I wouldn’t go down without fighting. Nothing would touch Mary until—My fingers relaxed and the breath slid in a sickening gasp from my nostrils. Fighting—how could I fight this thing? It had killed twice without ever touching its victim. At last I knew what I was facing, and I knew that no human being could hope to withstand it.

  How long I stood beside the dark cockpit I don’t know, but with each moment I grew more afraid. There was only darkness and silence i
n the cabin. Suppose I called to Mary and she didn’t answer. Where would she be? What would have happened to her? What horrible thing …

  And then I couldn’t stand it any longer. I heard my voice calling out, calling frantically,

  “Mary? Mary!”

  For a long while there was nothing. The water lapping against the schooner took on an awful roaring. My breath congealed in my nostrils. And then, “What is it, Tom?”

  “Thank God!” I said aloud.

  I went down into the cabin with a rush. I flicked a match across the doorsill, lit a storm lantern, and turned. Mary was sitting on the edge of Wayne’s bunk. Her hands were folded in her lap, fingers motionless. Her hair was golden in the light and hung very still around cheeks as pale as those of a corpse. Her blue eyes were wide and large, and in them an expression which took the joy out of seeing her. It was as if she were looking into the face of death and waiting, waiting quietly, knowing absolutely there was no escape.

  “Mary,” I said. I found myself wondering if it had already happened. Had she—but I put the thought from my mind.

  Her voice was like her face, emotionless, dead. “He killed Carl like he did Wayne. I saw him.”

  I made a gasping sound, then stiffened my muscles. “Where did you see him? On the ship?” She shook her head slowly. “No. I didn’t see Bill Wales. I saw Carl fall from the cliff.”

  “But—but Mary …” I was close to her now, kneeling in front of her, holding her folded hands. “How did you get ashore?” At the same time I could feel hope coming up through my chest, spreading out like a soft flame. That meant she was the person who had rowed the boat out to the schooner.

  “I didn’t go ashore,” Mary said. “I was trying to write a letter, sitting in the cockpit. I saw it from there.”

  My hands tightened savagely about hers. “You couldn’t have seen it from the ship. There’s a cliff in the way, and—”

  “I saw it,” Mary said. “I was in the cockpit. I just—just saw it. I knew just when it happened.”

  I didn’t say anything. I had heard of persons who had visions of things which happened miles away. It did not seem strange to me now. Nothing seemed impossible anymore.

  But one thought did keep growing in my mind: if Mary had not rowed the boat out to the schooner someone else had. And the only other person …

  I stood up. Mary did not move. She sat with her hands folded, looking off into space. I took the storm lantern from its bracket and made a slow circuit of the cabin. Nothing there. I went into the small cabin where Mary stayed, found nothing. I searched all the ship below-decks that I could reach from the cockpit. Everything was exactly as it had been.

  Leaving the lantern with Mary, I went on deck.

  The moon had swung up out of the sea now. It was a silver bubble and a shimmering path led from it to the schooner. The water was a rolling blackness where now and then white foam glimmered and vanished as the wind whipped the top from a wave. On the port side Saba rose in a great, dark shadow into the sky.

  What I intended to do if I found Bill Wales, I didn’t know. But somehow it seemed that I had to find him. Perhaps I thought I could do something which would help Mary to escape; I don’t know. But I went toward the forward hatch, intending to enter it. I had the tarpaulin off when I stopped, rigid, staring.

  I was on the starboard side of the hatch, looking out across the empty deck to the port rail. The deck showed clearly in the moonlight and little shadows rippled up and down it as the schooner rocked.

  I was looking at the spot where I had placed Carl Hammer’s body—and it was gone!

  . . .

  It was a long time before I began to laugh, a half crazy, guttural laughter. Carl Hammer had gone overboard, without a Christian burial; and he had believed in a hereafter …

  “There was only one before,” I said, and my voice had a ringing, insane note, “but now there’re two.” I kept holding to the edge of the uncovered hatch and laughing. The sound grew higher, wilder, madder. My shoulders began to shake. Madness clawed through me and burst out with the laughter.

  “Tom! Tom!” Mary was calling to me from the cockpit.

  My hands tightened on the hatch. I jerked at it, shook it and shook myself. The laughter choked in my throat.

  “Steady,” I said to myself. “Steady. You’ve got to help Mary.” I turned and went aft, conscious of the fingernails biting into my palms, the pain from the one I had broken.

  Mary was standing in the cockpit. The moonlight made her hair and cheeks seem very white and her eyes were dark pools of shadow. “I have never seen her quite so beautiful,” I thought. “And soon …”

  “What—what was that laughing, Tom?” she asked.

  I dropped into the cockpit beside her, put my arms around her. It was the first time I had ever held her that way except when dancing. Her body was warm and firm. “It was me,” I said. “I think I—I was going crazy.”

  She pulled away just enough to tilt back her head and look at me. She smiled, a pitifully brave smile with her lips trembling. “You can’t do that,” she said. “I had given up for a while, but we can’t. Carl and—” a shadow of pain came in her eyes before she said her brother’s name “—and John wouldn’t want us to give up. They fought it out.”

  I pulled her close, held her there, her breasts flattened against my chest. I had loved this woman for five years and never held her this way until now, and now … Her hair brushed softly against my chin and mouth. “We won’t give up,” I said. “I’ll get you out of this some way. There’s got to be a way. Got to be!”

  After a few minutes we went back into the cabin, sat side by side on what had been Wayne’s bunk. I rested elbows on knees, hands clenched in front, head bowed, thinking. There had to be some way. If I could only be certain whether or not the thing was on board. If I could get him ashore … But Mary couldn’t sail the schooner alone. If I could get her ashore, and sail off, carrying the thing with me …

  “The third man went to a watery grave.”

  That was the line he’d sung and I was the third man. Well, I wasn’t afraid of drowning, if I could save Mary. When the Brigadier had told us the story he’d said the local boatmen never left shore without a cross in the back of their boats.

  All at once I sat up straight and stiff. That was it! I’d row Mary ashore, forcing the thing to stay on the ship. Then I’d come back and sail away. If I drowned, why …

  “What is it, Tom?” Mary asked.

  “I’m going to get you out of this,” I said.

  “Listen—”

  And then, as if in answer to the word I’d spoken, I heard the sound. In the half second after I said, “Listen,” and paused to draw a breath, there was no noise except the lap of the water against the wooden hull of the schooner. But before I could speak again the sound came.

  It came softly, gently, like the very lapping of the water, like waves striking one after another against the side of the ship, each coming a little faster and a little harder than the one before and yet maintaining a perfect rhythm, a growing cadence. The sound started in silence and yet it was a visible, audible silence like a current of water revolving slowly, and it grew louder as the current grew, whirling up, up until it crashed and roared about us.

  “Oh, the first man died in a fall from the cliff,

  And the second man died the same.

  The third man went to a watery grave—”

  The sound boomed and whirled around us like a giant wave, filling the cabin, coming from nowhere and everywhere. Mary and I turned, slowly, like puppets on a string, until we faced the companionway to the cockpit. The light of the storm lantern spilled out into the darkness and faded. I got to my feet. “And the woman died from shame.”

  There was a silence in which the world died. Mary and I had stopped breathing. I believe the water quit lapping against the ship. My ears were aching for some tiny sound, screaming into the silence.

  And then, standing in the light of the companionw
ay, motionless and grinning horribly, was Bill Wales. And beyond him, straight through him, I could see the light spilling out into the darkness of the cockpit, and fading.

  It seemed an eternity that no one spoke, no one moved. And in that long silence I could feel myself plunging downward, downward. I was like a man falling from a cliff, living aeons of time in the seconds that it takes him to reach the bottom, waiting for the next line of Bill Wales’ song, powerless to move.

  “And the third man …” Destruction whirled up. I thought of Wayne, seeing it coming.

  “Went to a watery …”

  Something moved in the light that slid through Bill Wales’ body, some shadow that at first I could not believe. The last line of Wales’ song was never uttered. It was jerked from his mouth. He whirled, crouched and snarling. He stepped backward into the full glow of the light.

  The shadow in the cockpit moved again. It was a man, but I could see through him as I had seen through Wales; and then the light was on him as he stood in the doorway, and I was looking at the blood-smeared face of Carl Hammer.

  “Now there are two of them,” I said half aloud. On the bunk Mary did not move.

  Bill Wales quit snarling and for a long while there was no movement in the cabin. Then he began to laugh, softly. It was a quiet laugh, but terrible in its quietness. If ever there was a sound of absolute confidence, it rang in that cabin.

  Still laughing, Bill Wales stepped toward the cabin door, his eyes—which showed no mirth, no light, no life—fixed on Hammer’s bloody face. There was no sound in the cabin except the laughter.

  Wales was very near him when Hammer stepped backward. Wales followed, laughing. The light from the storm lamp fell on his face, the lifeless blue eyes, the twisted mouth. And then he had passed through the door and he was only a shadow among shadows, and that shadow moved again and vanished.

  From the deck overhead the laughter kept flowing, softly, horribly. It glided forward and toward the starboard. It grew fainter, more distant, but not for one instant did it lose that note of dreadful certainty.