The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories

by Peter Haining

  “And do you get the puff of warm wind? Smelling of spring. Almond blossom, that’s what it is! A most marvellous scent of almond blossom. Isn’t it an extraordinary thing!”

  She went on triumphantly past the church, and came to the row of little old houses. She entered her own gate in the little railed entrance.

  “Here I am!” she said finally. “I’m home now. Thank you very much for coming with me.”

  She looked at the young policeman. His whole body was white as a wall with snow, and in the vague light of the arc-lamp from the street his face was humble and frightened.

  “Can I come in and warm myself a bit?” he asked humbly. She knew it was fear rather than cold that froze him. He was in mortal fear.

  “Well!” she said. “Stay down in the sitting-room if you like. But don’t come upstairs, because I am alone in the house. You can make up the fire in the sitting-room, and you can go when you are warm.”

  She left him on the big, low couch before the fire, his face bluish and blank with fear. He rolled his blue eyes after her as she left the room. But she went up to her bedroom, and fastened her door.

  In the morning she was in her studio upstairs in her little house, looking at her own paintings and laughing to herself. Her canaries were talking and shrilly whistling in the sunshine that followed the storm. The cold snow outside was still clean, and the white glare in the air gave the effect of much stronger sunshine than actually existed.

  She was looking at her own paintings, and chuckling to herself over their comicalness. Suddenly they struck her as absolutely absurd. She quite enjoyed looking at them, they seemed to her so grotesque. Especially her self-portrait, with its nice brown hair and its slightly opened rabbit-mouth and its baffled, uncertain rabbit eyes. She looked at the painted face and laughed in a long, rippling laugh, till the yellow canaries like faded daffodils almost went mad in an effort to sing louder. The girl’s long, rippling laugh sounded through the house uncannily.

  The housekeeper, a rather sad-faced young woman of a superior sort – nearly all people in England are of the superior sort, superiority being an English ailment – came in with an inquiring and rather disapproving look.

  “Did you call, Miss James?” she asked loudly.

  “No. No, I didn’t call. Don’t shout, I can hear quite well,” replied the girl.

  The housekeeper looked at her again.

  “You knew there was a young man in the sitting-room?” she said.

  “No. Really!” cried the girl. “What, the young policeman? I’d forgotten all about him. He came in the storm to warm himself. Hasn’t he gone?”

  “No, Miss James.”

  “How extraordinary of him! What time is it? Quarter to nine? Why didn’t he go when he was warm? I must go and see him, I suppose.”

  “He says he’s lame,” said the housekeeper censoriously and loudly.

  “Lame! That’s extraordinary. He certainly wasn’t last night. But don’t shout. I can hear quite well.”

  “Is Mr Marchbanks coming in to breakfast, Miss James?” said the housekeeper, more and more censorious.

  “I couldn’t say. But I’ll come down as soon as mine is ready. I’ll be down in a minute, anyhow, to see the policeman. Extraordinary that he is still here.”

  She sat down before her window, in the sun, to think a while. She could see the snow outside, the bare, purplish trees. The air all seemed rare and different. Suddenly the world had become quite different: as if some skin or integument had broken, as if the old, mouldering London sky had crackled and rolled back, like an old skin, shrivelled, leaving an absolutely new blue heaven.

  “It really is extraordinary!” she said to herself. “I certainly saw that man’s face. What a wonderful face it was! I shall never forget it. Such laughter! He laughs longest who laughs last. He certainly will have the last laugh. I like him for that: he will laugh last. Must be someone really extraordinary! How very nice to be the one to laugh last. He certainly will. What a wonderful being! I suppose I must call him a being. He’s not a person exactly.

  “But how wonderful of him to come back and alter all the world immediately! Isn’t that extraordinary. I wonder if he’ll have altered Marchbanks. Of course Marchbanks never saw him. But he heard him. Wouldn’t that do as well, I wonder! – I wonder!”

  She went off into a muse about Marchbanks. She and he were such friends. They had been friends like that for almost two years. Never lovers. Never that at all. But friends.

  And after all, she had been in love with him: in her head. This seemed now so funny to her: that she had been, in her head, so much in love with him. After all, life was too absurd.

  Because now she saw herself and him as such a funny pair. He so funnily taking life terribly seriously, especially his own life. And she so ridiculously determined to save him from himself. Oh, how absurd! Determined to save him from himself, and wildly in love with him in the effort. The determination to save him from himself.

  Absurd! Absurd! Absurd! Since she had seen the man laughing among the holly-bushes – such extraordinary, wonderful laughter – she had seen her own ridiculousness. Really, what fantastic silliness, saving a man from himself! Save anybody. What fantastic silliness! How much more amusing and lively to let a man go to perdition in his own way. Perdition was more amusing than salvation anyhow, and a much better place for most men to go to.

  She had never been in love with any man, and only spuriously in love with Marchbanks. She saw it quite plainly now. After all, what nonsense it all was, this being-in-love business. Thank goodness she had never made the humiliating mistake.

  No, the man among the holly-bushes had made her see it all so plainly: the ridiculousness of being in love, the infra dig. business of chasing a man or being chased by a man.

  “Is love really so absurd and infra dig?” she said aloud to herself.

  “Why, of course!” came a deep, laughing voice.

  She started round, but nobody was to be seen.

  “I expect it’s that man again!” she said to herself. “It really is remarkable, you know. I consider it’s a remarkable thing that I never really wanted a man, any man. And there I am over thirty. It is curious. Whether it’s something wrong with me, or right with me, I can’t say. I don’t know till I’ve proved it. But I believe, if that man kept on laughing something would happen to me.”

  She smelt the curious smell of almond blossom in the room, and heard the distant laugh again.

  “I do wonder why Marchbanks went with that woman last night – that Jewish-looking woman. Whatever could he want of her? – or she him? So strange, as if they both had made up their minds to something! How extraordinarily puzzling life is! So messy, it all seems.

  “Why does nobody ever laugh in life like that man. He did seem so wonderful. So scornful! And so proud! And so real! With those laughing, scornful, amazing eyes, just laughing and disappearing again. I can’t imagine him chasing a Jewish-looking woman. Or chasing any woman, thank goodness. It’s all so messy. My policeman would be messy if one would let him: like a dog. I do dislike dogs, really I do. And men do seem so doggy!—”

  But even while she mused, she began to laugh again to herself with a long, low chuckle. How wonderful of that man to come and laugh like that and make the sky crack and shrivel like an old skin! Wasn’t he wonderful! Wouldn’t it be wonderful if he just touched her. Even touched her. She felt, if he touched her, she herself would emerge new and tender out of an old, hard skin. She was gazing abstractedly out of the window.

  “There he comes, just now,” she said abruptly. But she meant Marchbanks, not the laughing man.

  There he came, his hands still shoved down in his overcoat pockets, his head still rather furtively ducked, in the bowler hat, and his legs still rather shambling. He came hurrying across the road, not looking up, deep in thought, no doubt. Thinking profoundly, with agonies of agitation, no doubt about his last night’s experience. It made her laugh.

  She, watching from t
he window above, burst into a long laugh, and the canaries went off their heads again.

  He was in the hall below. His resonant voice was calling, rather imperiously:

  “James! Are you coming down?”

  “No,” she called. “You come up.”

  He came up two at a time, as if his feet were a bit savage with the stairs for obstructing him.

  In the doorway he stood staring at her with a vacant, sardonic look, his grey eyes moving with a queer light. And she looked back at him with a curious, rather haughty carelessness.

  “Don’t you want your breakfast?” she asked. It was his custom to come and take breakfast with her each morning.

  “No,” he answered loudly. “I went to a tea-shop.”

  “Don’t shout,” she said. “I can hear you quite well.”

  He looked at her with mockery and a touch of malice.

  “I believe you always could,” he said, still loudly.

  “Well, anyway, I can now, so you needn’t shout,” she replied.

  And again his grey eyes, with the queer, greyish phosphorescent gleam in them, lingered malignantly on her face.

  “Don’t look at me,” she said calmly. “I know all about everything.”

  He burst into a pouf of malicious laughter.

  “Who taught you – the policeman?” he cried.

  “Oh, by the way, he must be downstairs! No, he was only incidental. So, I suppose, was the woman in the shawl. Did you stay all night?”

  “Not entirely. I came away before dawn. What did you do?”

  “Don’t shout. I came home long before dawn.” And she seemed to hear the long, low laughter.

  “Why, what’s the matter!” he said curiously. “What have you been doing?”

  “I don’t quite know. Why? – are you going to call me to account?”

  “Did you hear that laughing?”

  “Oh, yes. And many more things. And saw things too.”

  “Have you seen the paper?”

  “No. Don’t shout, I can hear.”

  “There’s been a great storm, blew out the windows and doors of the church outside here, and pretty well wrecked the place.”

  “I saw it. A leaf of the church Bible blew right in my face: from the Book of Job –” she gave a low laugh.

  “But what else did you see?” he cried loudly.

  “I saw him.”

  “Who?”

  “Ah, that I can’t say.”

  “But what was he like?”

  “That I can’t tell you. I don’t really know.”

  “But you must know. Did your policeman see him too?”

  “No, I don’t suppose he did. My policeman!” And she went off into a long ripple of laughter. “He is by no means mine. But I must go downstairs and see him.”

  “It’s certainly made you very strange,” Marchbanks said. “You’ve got no soul, you know.”

  “Oh, thank goodness for that!” she cried. “My policeman has one, I’m sure. My policeman!” And she went off again into a long peal of laughter, the canaries pealing shrill accompaniment.

  “What’s the matter with you?” he said.

  “Having no soul. I never had one really. It was always fobbed off on me. Soul was the only thing there was between you and me. Thank goodness it’s gone. Haven’t you lost yours? The one that seemed to worry you, like a decayed tooth?”

  “But what are you talking about?” he cried.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “It’s all so extraordinary. But look here, I must go down and see my policeman. He’s downstairs in the sitting-room. You’d better come with me.”

  They went down together. The policeman, in his waistcoat and shirt-sleeves, was lying on the sofa, with a very long face.

  “Look here!” said Miss James to him. “Is it true you’re lame?”

  “It is true. That’s why I’m here. I can’t walk,” said the fair-haired young man as tears came to his eyes.

  “But how did it happen? You weren’t lame last night,” she said.

  “I don’t know how it happened – but when I woke up and tried to stand up, I couldn’t do it.” The tears ran down his distressed face.

  “How very extraordinary!” she said. “What can we do about it?”

  “Which foot is it?” asked Marchbanks. “Let us have a look at it.”

  “I don’t like to,” said the poor devil.

  “You’d better,” said Miss James.

  He slowly pulled off his stocking, and showed his white left foot curiously clubbed, like the weird paw of some animal. When he looked at it himself, he sobbed.

  And as he sobbed, the girl heard again the low, exulting laughter. But she paid no heed to it, gazing curiously at the weeping young policeman.

  “Does it hurt?” she asked.

  “It does if I try to walk on it,” wept the young man.

  “I’ll tell you what,” she said. “We’ll telephone for a doctor, and he can take you home in a taxi.”

  The young fellow shamefacedly wiped his eyes.

  “But have you no idea how it happened?” asked Marchbanks anxiously.

  “I haven’t myself,” said the young fellow.

  At that moment the girl heard the low, eternal laugh right in her ear. She started, but could see nothing.

  She started round again as Marchbanks gave a strange, yelping cry, like a shot animal. His white face was drawn, distorted in a curious grin, that was chiefly agony but partly wild recognition. He was staring with fixed eyes at something. And in the rolling agony of his eyes was the horrible grin of a man who realizes he has made a final, and this time fatal, fool of himself.

  “Why,” he yelped in a high voice, “I knew it was he!” And with a queer shuddering laugh he pitched forward on the carpet and lay writhing for a moment on the floor. Then he lay still, in a weird, distorted position, like a man struck by lightning.

  Miss James stared with round, staring brown eyes.

  “Is he dead?” she asked quickly.

  The young policeman was trembling so that he could hardly speak. She could hear his teeth chattering.

  “Seems like it,” he stammered.

  There was a faint smell of almond blossom in the air.

  The Visit to the Museum

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Location: Montisert, France.

  Time: November, 1939.

  Eyewitness Description: “Then I found myself in darkness and kept bumping into unknown furniture until I finally saw a red light and walked out onto a platform that clanged under me – and, suddenly, beyond it, there was a bright parlour, tastefully furnished in Empire style, but not a living soul, not a living soul.”

  Author: Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) the Russian-born author and academic is best known for his notorious novel, Lolita (1955) which records the obsession of a middle aged intellectual for a twelve-year-old girl and coined the term, “nymphet”. Nabokov studied at Trinity College, Cambridge in the late Thirties where he became aware of the work of M. R. James and wrote several fantasy stories. Among his relevant books from this time are The Enchanter (1928), The Eye (1930) and The Waltz Invention (1938), all written in Russian and not translated until Nabokov moved to America in 1940. Here he worked as a research fellow in entomology at Harvard before becoming professor of Russian literature at Cornell in 1948. Among Nabokov’s excellent fantasy stories must be mentioned “The Vane Sisters”, “Signs and Symbols” and “Scenes from the Life of a Double Monster,” with the nearest to a traditional ghost story being “The Visit to the Museum”. It can, though, be regarded as a significant step in the development of the genre and an outstanding contribution to the “Golden Era”. In praise of the story, Robert Aickman wrote in 1971, “Mr Nabokov’s genius unites the searchlight with the microscope.”

  Several years ago a friend of mine in Paris – a person with oddities, to put it mildly – learning that I was going to spend two or three days at Montisert, asked me to drop in at the local museum where there hung, h
e was told, a portrait of his grandfather by Leroy. Smiling and spreading out his hands, he related a rather vague story to which I confess I paid little attention, partly because I do not like other people’s obtrusive affairs, but chiefly because I had always had doubts about my friend’s capacity to remain this side of fantasy. It went more or less as follows: after the grandfather died in their St Petersburg house back at the time of the Russo-Japanese War, the contents of his apartment in Paris were sold at auction. The portrait, after some obscure peregrinations, was acquired by the museum of Leroy’s native town. My friend wished to know if the portrait was really there; if there, if it could be ransomed; and if it could, for what price. When I asked why he did not get in touch with the museum, he replied that he had written several times, but had never received an answer.

  I made an inward resolution not to carry out the request –I could always tell him I had fallen ill or changed my itinerary. The very notion of seeing sights, whether they be museums or ancient buildings, is loathsome to me; besides, the good freak’s commission seemed absolute nonsense. It so happened, however, that, while wandering about Montisert’s empty streets in search of a stationery store, and cursing the spire of a long-necked cathedral, always the same one, that kept popping up at the end of every street, I was caught in a violent downpour which immediately went about accelerating the fall of the maple leaves, for the fair weather of a southern October was holding on by a mere thread. I dashed for cover and found myself on the steps of the museum.

  It was a building of modest proportions, constructed of many-coloured stones, with columns, a gilt inscription over the frescoes of the pediment, and a lion-legged stone bench on either side of the bronze door. One of its leaves stood open, and the interior seemed dark against the shimmer of the shower. I stood for a while on the steps, but, despite the overhanging roof, they were gradually growing speckled. I saw that the rain had set in for good, and so, having nothing better to do, I decided to go inside. No sooner had I trod on the smooth, resonant flagstones of the vestibule than the clatter of a moved stool came from a distant corner, and the custodian – a banal pensioner with an empty sleeve – rose to meet me, laying aside his newspaper and peering at me over his spectacles. I paid my franc and, trying not to look at some statues at the entrance (which were as traditional and as insignificant as the first number in a circus programme), I entered the main hall.