That steadied her. But the fear stayed, sick surge after sick surge of it. A woman, forty-five, without income, in the depths of the depression. There was Federal relief, of course, but they wouldn’t give that to her till the money was gone. There was old-age pension – twenty-five years away.
She drew a deep breath. Actually, those were meaningless things, utter defeats. Actually, there was only her desperate plan – and that required the fullest co-operation from Bill.
She studied Bill when he came in from the field at lunch. There had been a quietness in him this last year or so that had puzzled her. As if, at twenty, he had suddenly grown up.
He looked like a man; he was strongly built, of medium height with lines of dark passion in his rather heavy face.
That was good, that passion; undoubtedly, he had inherited some of her own troubled ambition – and there was the fact that he had been caught stealing just before they left the city, and released with a warning.
She hadn’t blamed him then, felt only his bitter fury against a world that lashed out so cruelly against boys ruthlessly deprived by fate of spending money.
That was all over, of course. For two years he had been a steady, quiet worker, pulling his full share with the other hired men. Nevertheless—
To get Phyllis, that earlier, harder training would surely rise up once more – and win for all of them.
Slyly, she watched as, out of the corner of his eyes, he took one of his long, measured glances at Phyllis, where she sat across the table slantwise from him. For more than a year now, the woman had observed him look at Phyllis like that – and besides she had asked him, and—
Surely, a young man of twenty would fight to get the girl he loved.
Fight unscrupulously. The only thing was—
How did a mother tell her son the particular grim plan that was in her mind? Did she . . . she just tell him?
After lunch, while Phyllis and Pearl were washing the dishes, the woman softly followed Bill up to his room. And, actually, it was easier than she had thought.
He lay for a while, after she had finished, staring at the ceiling; his heavy face was quiet almost placid. Finally:
“So the idea is that this evening you take Pearl in to Kempster to a movie; the old man, of course, will sleep like a log. But after Phyllis goes to bed at her usual time, I go into her room – and then she’ll have to marry me.”
It was so baldly put that the woman shrank, as if a mirror had been held up to her; and the image was an incredibly evil, ravaged thing. The cool voice went on:
“If I do this it means we’ll be able to stay on the farm, is that right?”
She nodded, because no words would come. Then, not daring to stay a moment longer, she turned and left the room.
Slowly, the black mood of that interview passed. It was about three o’clock in the afternoon when she came out into the veranda; and the old man looked up from his chair, and said:
“Terrible thing,” he said, “your sister hanged. They told me at the hotel. Hanged. Terrible, terrible; you’ve been right to have nothing to do with her.”
He seemed to forget her, simply sat there staring into space.
The whole thing was utterly unreal, and, after a moment, quite unthinkably fantastic. The woman stared at him with a sudden, calm, grim understanding of the faint smile that was creeping back into his face, a serene smile.
So that was his plan, she thought coolly. The mischievous old scoundrel intended that Phyllis should not marry Bill. Therefore, knowing his own reputation for prophecy, he had cleverly told her that Phyllis and Charlie Couzens—
That was his purpose. And now he was trying to scare her into doing nothing about it. Hanging indeed. She smiled, her thick face taut with inward anger.
He was clever – but not clever enough.
In the theater she had a curious sense of chattering voices and flickering lights. Too much meaningless talk, too much light.
Her eyes hurt and, afterward, when they came out onto the pale dimness of Kempster’s main street, the difference – the greater darkness – was soothing.
She must have said, “Pearl, let’s go in and have a banana split.”
She must have said that or agreed to it because after a while they were sitting at a little table; and the ice cream was cold as it went into her mouth; and there was a taste of banana.
Her mind held only a variation of one tense thought: If she and Bill could put this over, the world was won. Nothing thereafter could ever damage them to the same dreadful degree as this could.
“Aw, gee, ma, I’m sleepy. It’s half past eleven.”
The woman came to reality with a start. She looked at her watch; and it was true. “Goodness gracious!” she exclaimed with artifical amazement. “I didn’t realize—”
The moon was shining, and the horse anxious to get home. Coming down the great hill, she could see no light anywhere in the house. The buildings loomed silent in the moonlit darkness, like great semiformless shapes against the transparent background of the land.
She left Pearl to unhitch the animal and, trembling, went into the house. There was a lamp in the kitchen turned very low. She turned it into brightness, but the light didn’t seem to help her feet on the stairs. She kept stumbling, but she reached the top, reached Bill’s door. Ever so softly, she knocked.
No answer.
She opened the door. The pale, yellow light of the lamp poured onto the empty bed – and it was only the sound of Pearl coming into the kitchen downstairs that made her close hastily the door of Bill’s room. Pearl came up, yawning, and disappeared instantly into her own room.
The fat man stopped abruptly as a distant telephone thrummed. He rolled apologetically out of his seat. “I’ll be right back,” he said.
“One question,” Kent asked hastily. “What about this prophecy of hanging? I thought Mrs Carmody was in a madhouse, very much alive.”
“She is.” The vast bulk of the hotel proprietor filled the door. “We figured out that the old man was definitely trying to put something over.”
The minutes dragged. Kent took his note-book and wrote with the elaborate ornateness of vague purpose.
An old man
Who can tell the future
Who caused a woman to murder him
But still lives
Who walks through solid objects
Who reads minds (possibly)
He sat thoughtful, then added to the list:
A senile ghost
For long minutes he stared at the combination. Finally he laughed ruefully – and simultaneously grew aware of the clicking of pool balls inside.
He stood up, peered through the door – and smiled sardonically as he saw that fat Jenkins was playing a game of snooker with a chunky man of his own age.
Kent shrugged; and, turning, went down the steps. It was obvious that he would have to get the rest of this story piecemeal, here and there over the countryside: obvious, too, that he’d better write Miss Kincaid to send him some books on ghosts and seers, the folklore as well as anything remotely scientific.
He’d need everything he could lay his hands on if he was going to solve the mystery of – the ghost!
The books kept trickling in over a period of four weeks. Miss Kincaid sent ghost stories, compilations of true ghost tales, four books on psychic phenomena, a history of magic, a treatise on astrology and kindred arts, the works of Charles Fort; and, finally, three thin volumes by one J. W. Dunne, on the subject of time.
Kent sat on the veranda in the early morning just after the arrival of the mail that had brought them, and read the three books in one sitting, with an excitement that gathered at every page.
He got up at last, shaky, and half convinced that he had the tremendous answer; and yet – there were things to clear up—
An hour later he was lying in a little wooded dell that overlooked the house and yard, waiting. It was almost time for the – ghost – to come out, if he intended to take his morn
ing walk—
At noon Kent returned to the hotel, thinking tensely: The old man must have gone somewhere else today . . . somewhere else—
His mind nearly came out of his head from contemplating that somewhere else. The following morning, eight o’clock found him in his little copse, waiting. Again, the old man failed to appear.
The third morning, Kent’s luck was better. Dark, threatening clouds rode the sky as he watched the thin, tall figure move from behind the house and slowly approach the gate. The old man came across the field; Kent showed himself in plenty of time, striding along out of the bush as if he, too, was out for a walk.
“Hello, there, Mr Wainwright,” he said.
The old man came closer without answering, and Kent saw that the man was peering at him curiously. The old man stopped.
“Do I know you, young sir?” he asked politely.
For the barest moment Kent was thrown mentally off balance; and then—
“Good heavens!” he thought excitedly, “even this fits. It fits. There had to be a time when he met me.”
Aloud, he explained patiently that he was the son of Angus Kent, and that he had come back to the district for a visit. When he had finished the old man said:
“I shall be glad to come to the hotel and talk about your father. It is a pleasure to have met you.”
He walked off. The moment he was out of sight, Kent started toward the gate. The first drops of rain fell as he crawled laboriously under the wire. He stood just inside the gate, hesitant. It was important that he get inside the house before the old man, driven by the rain, returned.
The question was, would he have time?
He hurried toward the buildings, glancing over his shoulders every few seconds, expecting to see that long form come into sight.
The house stood quietly under the soft, glinting rain. The weight of the neglected years lay heavily on its wooden walls. A burst of rain whipped into Kent’s face, and then thudded dully on the wood as he ducked into the shelter of the building.
He stood there waiting for the blast to die down. But, as the seconds passed, and there was no abatement, he peered around the corner and saw the veranda.
He reached the safety it offered; and then, more leisurely, investigated the two boarded windows and the boarded door. They were solid, and, though he had expected it, the reality brought a stab of disappointment.
Getting inside was going to be a tough job.
The rain became a thin splatter; and he went hastily down the steps, and saw that there was an open balcony on the second floor. It was hard work climbing, but the effort proved its worth.
A wide, loose board on one of the two balcony windows came off with a jerk, and made it easy to tear off the rest. Beyond was a window, locked.
Kent did not hesitate. He raised one of the boards and, with a single sharp blow, struck. The glass shattered with a curious, empty tinkling sound.
He was inside. The room was empty, dusty, dark, unfurnished. It led out onto a long, empty hallway, and a line of empty, dark rooms.
Downstairs it was the same; empty rooms, unlived in. The basement was dark, a cemented hole. He fumbled around it hurriedly, lighting matches; and then hurriedly went back to the ground floor. There were some cracks in the boards that covered the downstairs windows and, after locating the likeliest ones, he stationed himself at the one that faced the gate – and waited.
It didn’t take long.
The old man came through the gate, toward the house. Kent shifted to a window at the side of the house, then at the back; and each time the old man came into view after a moment.
Kent raced to the crack he had selected in the veranda window, expecting to see the old man come into sight.
Ten minutes passed; and that tall figure had still to come around the back corner of the house. Slowly, Kent went upstairs, and out onto the balcony.
It was simple hammering the boards back into position, not so simple easing down to the ground.
But he had his fact. Somewhere at the rear of the house the ghost vanished. The problem was – how to prevent that disappearance.
How did one trap the kind of – ghost – that the long-dead Mr Wainwright had become?
It was the next day, nearly noon. Kent lay well into the field south of the farmhouse. Earlier, he had watched the old man emerge from the gate, and go past his hiding place along the valley. Now—
Through his field glasses Kent watched the long, straight form coming toward him, toward the farm.
Kent emerged casually from the wood and walked along as if he had not seen the other. He was wondering just what his verbal approach should be when the old man hailed him: “Hello there, Mr Kent. Out for a walk?”
Kent turned and waited for the aged man to come up to him. He said: “I was just going to go in to Mrs Carmody, and ask for a drink of water, before heading on to the hotel. If you don’t mind, I’ll walk with you.”
“Not at all, sir,” said the old man.
They walked along, Kent consciously more erect, as he tried to match that superb straightness of body. His mind was seething. What would happen at the gate? Somewhere along here the old man’s body would become less substantial, but—
He couldn’t hold the thought. Besides, he’d better start laying his groundwork. He said tautly:
“The farm looks rather deserted from here, does it not, Mr Wainwright?”
Amazingly, the old man gulped; he said almost swiftly: “Have you noticed it, too, Mr Kent? I have long thought it an illusion on my part, and I have felt rather uneasy about my vision. I have found that the peculiar desolated appearance vanishes as soon as I pass through the gate.”
So it was the gate where the change began – He jerked his soaring thought back to earth, listened as the old man said in evident relief:
“I am glad that we both share this illusion, Mr Kent. It has had me worried.”
Kent hesitated, and then very carefully took his field glasses out of their case; and handed them to the old man.
“Try a look through these,” he said casually. “Perhaps they will help to break the illusion.”
The moment he had given the instrument over, compunction came, a hard, bright pity for the incredible situation he was forcing.
Compunction passed; pity yielded to an almost desperate curiosity. From narrowed eyes he stared at that lined face as the man’s thin, bony hands held the glasses up to his face and slowly adjusted the lens.
There was a harsh gasp; and Kent, who had expected it, leaped forward and caught the glasses as they fell toward the ground.
“Why,” the old man was quavering, “it’s impossible. Windows boarded up, and” – a wild suspicion leaped into his eyes – “has Mrs Carmody gone so swiftly?”
“What’s wrong, sir?” Kent said, and felt like a villain. But – he couldn’t let this go now.
The old man was shaking his head. “I must be mad. My eyes . . . my mind . . . not what they used to be—”
“Let’s go over,” Kent suggested. “I’ll get my drink and we’ll see what’s wrong.”
It was important that the old man retain in his wandering mind that he had a companion. The patriarch straightened, said quietly:
“By all means, you shall have your drink, Mr Kent.”
Kent had a sick feeling as he walked beside that tall form across the road to the gate, the empty feeling that he had meddled in human tragedy.
He watched, almost ill with his victory, as the trembling nonagenarian fumbled futilely with the padlocked gate.
He thought, his mind as tight as a drum: For perhaps the first time since this strange, strange phenomena had started, the old man had failed to walk through the gate.
“I don’t understand it!” the old man said. ‘This gate locked – why, this very morning, I—’
Kent had been unwinding the wire that held the large gate. “Let’s go in here,” he said gently.
The dismay of the old man was so pitiful it was dreadful
. He stopped and peered at the weeds. Incredulously, he felt the black old wood that was nailed, board on board of it, over one of the windows. His high shoulders began to sag. A haunted expression crept into his face. Paradoxically, he looked suddenly old.
He climbed the faded veranda steps with the weariness of unutterable age. And then—
The flashing, terrible realization of the truth struck at Kent in that last instant, as the old man stepped timidly, almost blindly, toward the nailed door.
“Wait!” he shrilled. “Wait!”
His piercing voice died. Where the old man had been was – nothingness.
A thin wind howled with brief mournfulness around the house, rattling the eaves.
He stood alone on that faded, long-unused veranda. Alone with the comprehension that had, in one dreadful kaleidoscope of mind picture, suddenly cleared up – everything.
And, dominating everything else, was the dreadful fear that he would be too late.
He was running, his breath coming in great gulps. A tiny wind caught the dust that his shoes kicked up from the soft road-bed, and whipped it in little, unpleasant gusts around his nostrils.
The vague thought came that it was lucky he had done so much walking the past month; for the exercise had added just enough strength to bring the long, long mile and a half to the hotel within his powers—
A tangy, unpleasant taste of salt was in his mouth as he staggered up the steps. Inside, he was blurrily aware of the man, Tom, staring at him across the counter. Kent gasped:
“I’ll give you five dollars if you can pack my things and get me to Kempster in time to catch the twelve-o’clock train. And tell me how to get to the insane asylum at Peerton. For Heaven’s sake, make it fast.”
The man goggled. “I had the maid pack your things right after breakfast, Mr Kent. Don’t you remember, this is 17 August.”
Kent glared at him with a blank horror. That prophecy come true. Then what about the other, more awful one—
On the way to Kempster he was vaguely aware of the driver speaking, something about Peerton being a large town, and he’d be able to get a taxi at the station—
The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories Page 64