The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories

by Peter Haining

  “Try!” said Sanderson. “How?”

  “Passes,” said Clayton.

  “Passes?”

  “Complicated series of gestures and passes with the hands. That’s how he had come in and that’s how he had to get out again. Lord! what a business I had!”

  “But how could any series of passes—” I began.

  “My dear man,” said Clayton, turning on me and putting a great emphasis on certain words, “you want everything clear. I don’t know how. All I know is that you do – that he did, anyhow, at least. After a fearful time, you know, he got his passes right and suddenly disappeared.”

  “Did you,” said Sanderson slowly, “observe the passes?”

  “Yes,” said Clayton, and seemed to think. “It was tremendously queer,” he said. “There we were, I and this thin, vague ghost, in that silent room, in this silent, empty inn, in this silent little Friday-night town. Not a sound except our voices and a faint panting he made when he swung. There was the bedroom candle, and one candle on the dressing-table alight, that was all – sometimes one or other would flare up into a tall, lean, astonished flame for a space. And queer things happened. ‘I can’t,’ he said; ‘I shall never—!’ And suddenly he sat down on a little chair at the foot of the bed and began to sob and sob. Lord! what a harrowing, whimpering thing he seemed!

  “ ‘You pull yourself together,’ I said, and tried to pat him on the back, and . . . my confounded hand went through him! By that time, you know, I wasn’t nearly so – massive as I had been on the landing. I got the queerness of it full. I remember snatching back my hand out of him, as it were, with a little thrill, and walking over to the dressing-table. ‘You pull yourself together,’ I said to him, ‘and try.’ And in order to encourage and help him I began to try as well.”

  “What!” said Sanderson, “the passes?”

  “Yes, the passes.”

  “But—” I said, moved by an idea that eluded me for a space.

  “This is interesting,” said Sanderson, with his finger in his pipe-bowl. “You mean to say this ghost of yours gave way—”

  “Did his level best to give away the whole confounded barrier? Yes.”

  “He didn’t,” said Wish; “he couldn’t. Or you’d have gone there, too.”

  “That’s precisely it,” I said, finding my elusive idea put into words for me.

  “That is precisely it,” said Clayton, with thoughtful eyes upon the fire.

  For just a little while there was silence.

  “And at last he did it?” said Sanderson.

  “At last he did it. I had to keep him up to it hard, but he did it at last – rather suddenly. He despaired, we had a scene, and then he got up abruptly and asked me to go through the whole performance, slowly, so that he might see. ‘I believe,’ he said, ‘if I could see I should spot what was wrong at once.’ And he did. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘What do you know?’ said I. ‘I know,’ he repeated. Then he said, peevishly, ‘I can’t do it, if you look at me – I really can’t; it’s been that, partly, all along. I’m such a nervous fellow that you put me out.’ Well, we had a bit of an argument. Naturally I wanted to see; but he was as obstinate as a mule, and suddenly I had come over as tired as a dog – he tired me out. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘I won’t look at you,’ and turned towards the mirror, on the wardrobe, by the bed.

  “He started off very fast. I tried to follow him by looking in the looking-glass, to see just what it was had hung. Round went his arms and his hands, so, and so, and so, and then with a rush came to the last gesture of all – you stand erect and open out your arms – and so, don’t you know, he stood. And then he didn’t! He didn’t! He wasn’t! I wheeled round from the looking-glass to him. There was nothing! I was alone, with the flaring candles and a staggering mind. What had happened? Had anything happened? Had I been dreaming? . . . And then, with an absurd note of finality about it, the clock upon the landing discovered the moment was ripe for striking one. So! – Ping! And I was as grave and sober as a judge, with all my champagne and whisky gone into the vast serene. Feeling queer, you know – confoundedly queer! Queer! Good Lord!”

  He regarded his cigar-ash for a moment. “That’s all that happened,” he said.

  “And then you went to bed?” asked Evans.

  “What else was there to do?”

  I looked Wish in the eye. We wanted to scoff, and there was something, something perhaps in Clayton’s voice and manner, that hampered our desire.

  “And about these passes?” said Sanderson.

  “I believe I could do them now.”

  “Oh!” said Sanderson, and produced a pen-knife and set himself to grub the dottel out of the bowl of his clay.

  “Why don’t you do them now?” said Sanderson, shutting his penknife with a click.

  “That’s what I’m going to do,” said Clayton.

  “They won’t work,” said Evans.

  “If they do—” I suggested.

  “You know, I’d rather you didn’t,” said Wish, stretching out his legs.

  “Why?” asked Evans.

  “I’d rather he didn’t,” said Wish.

  “But he hasn’t got ’em right,” said Sanderson, plugging too much tobacco into his pipe.

  “All the same, I’d rather he didn’t,” said Wish.

  We argued with Wish. He said that for Clayton to go through those gestures was like mocking a serious matter. “But you don’t believe—?” I said. Wish glanced at Clayton, who was staring into the fire, weighing something in his mind. “I do – more than half, anyhow, I do,” said Wish.

  “Clayton,” said I, “you’re too good a liar for us. Most of it was all right. But that disappearance . . . happened to be convincing. Tell us, it’s a tale of cock and bull.”

  He stood up without heeding me, took the middle of the hearthrug, and faced me. For a moment he regarded his feet thoughtfully, and then for all the rest of the time his eyes were on the opposite wall, with an intent expression. He raised his two hands slowly to the level of his eyes and so began . . .

  Now, Sanderson is a Freemason, a member of the lodge of the Four Kings, which devotes itself so ably to the study and elucidation of all the mysteries of Masonry past and present, and among the students of this lodge Sanderson is by no means the least. He followed Clayton’s motions with a singular interest in his reddish eye. “That’s not bad,” he said, when it was done. “You really do, you know, put things together, Clayton, in a most amazing fashion. But there’s one little detail out.”

  “I know,” said Clayton. “I believe I could tell you which.”

  “Well?”

  “This,” said Clayton, and did a queer little twist and writhing and thrust of the hands.

  “Yes.”

  “That, you know, was what he couldn’t get right,” said Clayton. “But how do you—?”

  “Most of this business, and particularly how you invented it, I don’t understand at all,” said Sanderson, “but just that phase – I do.” He reflected. “These happen to be a series of gestures – connected with a certain branch of esoteric Masonry. Probably you know. Or else— How?” He reflected still further. “I do not see I can do any harm in telling you just the proper twist. After all, if you know, you know; if you don’t, you don’t.”

  “I know nothing,” said Clayton, “except what the poor devil let out last night.”

  “Well, anyhow,” said Sanderson, and placed his church-warden very carefully upon the shelf over the fireplace. Then very rapidly he gesticulated with his hands.

  “So?” said Clayton, repeating.

  “So,” said Sanderson, and took his pipe in hand again.

  “Ah, now,” said Clayton, “I can do the whole thing – right.”

  He stood up before the waning fire and smiled at us all. But I think there was just a little hesitation in his smile. “If I begin—” he said.

  “I wouldn’t begin,” said Wish.

  “It’s all right!” said Evans. “Matter is
indestructible. You don’t think any jiggery-pokery of this sort is going to snatch Clayton into the world of shades. Not it! You may try, Clayton, so far as I’m concerned, until your arms drop off at the wrists.”

  “I don’t believe that,” said Wish, and stood up and put his arm on Clayton’s shoulder. “You’ve made me half-believe in that story somehow, and I don’t want to see the thing done.”

  “Goodness!” said I, “here’s Wish frightened!”

  “I am,” said Wish, with real or admirably feigned intensity. “I believe that if he goes through these motions right he’ll go.”

  “He’ll not do anything of the sort,” I cried. “There’s only one way out of this world for men, and Clayton is thirty years from that. Besides . . . And such a ghost! Do you think—?”

  Wish interrupted me by moving. He walked out from among our chairs and stopped beside the table and stood there. “Clayton,” he said, “you’re a fool.”

  Clayton, with a humorous light in his eyes, smiled back to him. “Wish,” he said, “is right and all you others are wrong. I shall go. I shall get to the end of these passes, and as the last swish whistles through the air, Presto! – this hearthrug will be vacant, the room will be blank amazement, and a respectably dressed gentleman of fifteen stone will plump into the world of shades. I’m certain. So will you be. I decline to argue further. Let the thing be tried.”

  “No,” said Wish, and made a step and ceased, and Clayton raised his hands once more to repeat the spirit’s passing.

  By that time, you know, we were all in a state of tension – largely because of the behaviour of Wish. We sat all of us with our eyes on Clayton – I, at least, with a sort of tight, stiff feeling about me as though from the back of my skull to the middle of my thighs my body had been changed to steel. And there, with a gravity that was imperturbably serene, Clayton bowed and swayed and waved his hands and arms before us. As he drew towards the end one piled up, one tingled in one’s teeth. The last gesture, I have said, was to swing the arms out wide open, with the face held up. And when at last he swung out to this closing gesture I ceased even to breathe. It was ridiculous, of course, but you know that ghost-story feeling. It was after dinner, in a queer old shadowy house. Would he, after all—?

  There he stood for one stupendous moment, with his arms open and his upturned face, assured and bright, in the glare of the hanging lamp. We hung through that moment as if it were an age, and then came from all of us something that was half a sigh of infinite relief and half a reassuring “No!” For visibly – he wasn’t going. It was all nonsense. He had told an idle story, and carried it almost to conviction, that was all! . . . And then in that moment the face of Clayton changed.

  It changed. It changed as a lit house changes when its lights are suddenly extinguished. His eyes were suddenly eyes that were fixed, his smile was frozen on his lips, and he stood there still. He stood there, very gently swaying.

  That moment, too, was an age. And then, you know, chairs were scraping, things were falling, and we were all moving. His knees seemed to give, and he fell forward, and Evans rose and caught him in his arms . . .

  It stunned us all. For a minute I suppose no one said a coherent thing. We believed it, yet could not believe it . . . I came out of a muddled stupefaction to find myself kneeling beside him, and his vest and shirt were torn open, and Sanderson’s hand lay on his heart . . .

  Well – the simple fact before us could very well wait our convenience; there was no hurry for us to comprehend. It lay there for an hour; it lies athwart my memory, black and amazing still, to this day. Clayton had, indeed, passed into the world that lies so near to and so far from our own, and he had gone thither by the only road that mortal man may take. But whether he did indeed pass there by that poor ghost’s incantation, or whether he was stricken suddenly by apoplexy in the midst of an idle tale – as the coroner’s jury would have us believe – is no matter for my judging; it is just one of those inexplicable riddles that must remain unsolved until the final solution of all things shall come. All I certainly know is that, in the very moment, in the very instant, of concluding those passes, he changed, and staggered, and fell down before us – dead!

  Full Fathom Five

  Alexander Woollcott

  Location: Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

  Time: October, 1908.

  Eyewitness Description: “On the spot in front of the fireplace where the apparition had seemed to stand, was a patch of water, a little circular pool that had issued from no crack in the floor . . .”

  Author: Alexander Humphreys Woollcott (1887–1943) was one of the great American comedic figures of the first half of the 20th century – as a person, a raconteur and a writer. Rotund, self-opinionated with a waspish wit, he was the inspiration for the main character, Sheridan Whiteside, in the play, The Man Who Came to Dinner by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart – the title of which became his soubriquet. After graduating from Hamilton College in New York, Woollcott was soon a hugely influential literary and drama critic on the New Yorker and a member of the famous Algonquin Round Table. He also became famous for his weekly radio programme that ran from 1929–40 and his savage remarks about plays – of one poor production he remarked, “The scenery was beautiful but the actors got in front of it” – and was one of the most quoted men of his generation. His florid, ornate style was best seen in his book, While Rome Burns (1934), which was voted one of the “52 Best Loved Books of the 20th Century” in 1954. Woollcott’s interests ranged the spectrum from drink (he is credited with inventing the Brandy Alexander) to tall stories and humorous ghost yarns – of which this little gem written for the New Yorker a couple of years before his death is exemplary.

  This is the story just as I heard it the other evening – a ghost story told me as true. It seems that one chilly October night in the first decade of the present century, two sisters were motoring along a Cape Cod road, when their car broke down just before midnight, and would go no further. This was in an era when such mishaps were both commoner and more hopeless than they are today.

  For these two, there was no chance of help until another car might chance to come by in the morning and give them a tow. Of a lodging for the night there was no hope, except a gaunt, unlighted frame house which, with a clump of pine trees beside it, stood black in the moonlight, across a neglected stretch of frost-hardened lawn.

  They yanked at its ancient bell-pull, but only a faint tinkle within made answer. They banged despairingly on the door panel only to awaken what at first they thought was an echo, and then identified as a shutter responding antiphonally with the help of a nipping wind. This shutter was around the corner, and the ground-floor window behind it was broken and unfastened.

  There was enough moonlight to show that the room within was a deserted library, with a few books left on the sagging shelves and a few pieces of dilapidated furniture still standing where some departing family had left them, long before. The sweep of the flashlight which one of the women had brought with her showed them that on the uncarpeted floor the dust lay thick and trackless, as if no one had trod there in many a day.

  They decided to bring their blankets in from the car and stretch out there on the floor until daylight, none too comfortable, perhaps, but at least sheltered from that salt and cutting wind.

  It was while they were lying there, trying to get to sleep, while, indeed, they had drifted halfway across the borderland, that they saw – each confirming the other’s fear by a convulsive grip of the hand – standing at the empty fireplace, as if trying to dry himself by a fire that was not there, the wraithlike figure of a sailor, come dripping from the sea.

  After an endless moment, in which neither woman breathed, one of them somehow found the strength to call out, “Who’s there?”

  The challenge shattered the intolerable silence, and at the sound, muttering a little – they said afterwards that it was something between a groan and a whimper – the misty figure seemed to dissolve. They strained their ey
es, but could see nothing between themselves and the battered mantelpiece.

  Then, telling themselves (and, as one does, half believing it) that they had been dreaming, they tried again to sleep, and indeed did sleep until a patch of shuttered sunlight striped the morning floor. As they sat up and blinked at the gritty realism of the forsaken room, they would, I think, have laughed at their shared illusion of the night before, had it not been for something at which one of the sisters pointed with a kind of gasp.

  There, in the still undisturbed dust, on the spot in front of the fireplace where the apparition had seemed to stand, was a patch of water, a little circular pool that had issued from no crack in the floor nor, as far as they could see, fallen from any point in the innocent ceiling. Near it in the surrounding dust was no footprint – their own or any other’s – and in it was a piece of green that looked like seaweed. One of the women bent down and put her finger to the water, then lifted it to her tongue. The water was salty.

  After that the sisters scuttled out and sat in their car, until a passerby gave them a tow to the nearest village. In its tavern at breakfast they gossiped with the proprietress about the empty house among the pine trees down the road. Oh, yes, it had been just that way for a score of years or more. Folks did say the place was spooky, haunted by a son of the family who, driven out by his father, had shipped before the mast and been drowned at sea.

  Some said the family had moved away because they could not stand the things they heard and saw at night.