Voodoo Tales: The Ghost Stories of Henry S Whitehead (Tales of Mystery & The Supernatural)

by Henry S. Whitehead

  There was, strangely, as it seemed to him, disappointingly, almost startlingly – none of these things. The rain, reduced now to the merest light drizzle, made the asphalt of the street shimmer as it reflected upwards innumerable slightly distorted lights. Over towards Broadway, certainly, there was clamor. On this his expectant mind seized avidly. But, as he analyzed this automatically, it reduced itself to an accustomed note, heightened and intensified, now, by the emptying of the theaters. It was only the compound eleven o’clock bedlam of Times Square.

  Along Sixth Avenue as he approached it with hurried strides, a pace just short of running, countless weaving taxicabs in a many-hued stream jockeyed for position in the maelstrom of the night-traffic about the Hippodrome. On the corner, a solitary, conspicuous figure, a rubber-coated and helmeted policeman, swinging long efficient arms like a pair of mechanical semaphores, skillfully directed the hypersensitive, crawling traffic, soundless on its multitudinous rubber tires save for the sustained, growling, compound cachinnation of shifting gears and squawking protesting brakes. Against him, as he stood now irresolutely on the curb, scores of hustling pedestrians jostled unheedingly. To his ever-increasing wonderment, all these seemed uniformly to be unmoved, to be totally unconcerned, by what, he supposed, must of necessity be one of the major destructive calamities of modern times.

  Now thoroughly disturbed, vastly perplexed and reeling under this sense of quite inexplicable incongruity, Meredith turned and walked back towards the club. He was at a complete loss now, his mind at a standstill as though reason itself had failed to function. He sought for refuge, to find quickly some mental relief in palliative explanations – the terrific explosion he had heard might, of course, have taken place at some very great distance. On that grand scale one could not easily determine either the source or the direction of sound. The lower end of Manhattan Island might have given way! Like everyone else he had read from time to time varying predictions of such a possible calamity in the pseudo-scientific write-ups which now and again and at almost regular intervals made their appearance in the Magazine Sections of the Sunday newspapers. That vast, pro-gravitational, and ever-increasing accumulation of pressure from the crowding sky-scrapers – the well-nigh incalculable massed weight of towering structural steel and heavy stone blocks always encroaching more and more upon the uncalculated supporting strength of the island’s lower stratum of bedrock – the reckless undermining of that same solid bedrock by more and more tunnels and subways!

  A new idea, a possible explanation! The sudden blowing up of one of the great manufacturing plants across the Hudson in New Jersey! All that territory was to the west and there were many such manufactories far inland. One of them, an ammunition-plant, had blown up during the War. He remembered that that explosion, although some twenty miles away, had blown out windows right here in New York City.

  He came abreast of the club entrance, hesitated, a deep frown corrugating his puzzled brow, mounted the three steps hesitatingly, and entered. He paused at the door-man’s desk. No, that liveried automaton, his whole attention, as always, concentrated upon his duties, had heard of nothing. Neither had the somewhat sleepy clerk at the cigar counter.

  ‘Send me up an “extra”, please, if one comes out,’ Meredith requested of the other clerk at the mail desk. He went up in the elevator to his bedroom completely nonplussed.

  Half an hour later as he lay in bed wakeful and trying to compose in his thoughts the varying, incongruous aspects of this strange affair, he was all at once acutely conscious of a distant, thin, confused, roaring hum apparently the resultant of several composite sounds. These were such sounds as would be made under the stress of a common excitement by a huge concourse of people at a vast distance. The most prominent element in this sound was the deep, soft, and insistently penetrating blending of countless voices. Through it ran a kind of dominant note – a note of horror. The sound positively chilled his blood. It was horrible, eerie. He found himself holding his breath as he listened, straining every faculty to take in that faint, distant, terrible clamor of fear and despair.

  Of just when he fell asleep he had no recollection but when he awakened the next morning there hung over his mind a shadow of remembered horror, not wholly dissipated until he had bathed and begun to dress. He heard none of the sounds at the time of his awakening.

  No ‘extra’ lay outside his bedroom door, and a little later at breakfast he opened expectantly and scanned several newspapers vainly and with a mounting sense of wonderment for any account of a catastrophe which could have caused the sounds. The implication grew upon him staggeringly. He had, actually, heard the convincing, unmistakable evidence of such a catastrophe – and no one else knew anything about it!

  He reasoned himself deliberately away from the mist of something like cold fear that gripped chillingly at his heart with a kind of internal chill. There was quite a variety of news in the papers that morning, too. He glanced through the headings – crimes of violence; the execution of a famous criminal; the earthquake in Tokyo; several divorces; a notable prize-fight; the simultaneous crises of two European cabinets. But there was literally nothing which would account for what he, alone, apparently, had heard.

  Strange dreams, the details gone, dissipated, the vague, devastating general recollection only remaining now, adumbrated in his mind in the form of an intense, horrific recollection. He had been one of those intimately, indeed poignantly, concerned in some vast and deep, some almost cosmic, cataclysm.

  The dreadful thing, vague, disquieting memories of which had seared his mind and heart in those broken, horrific dreams, was not – and this element was entirely clear in his waking thoughts – was not as yet consummated. It was as though in the dream-state, he had been living – that phase of it was also very clear and unmistakable; stamped into his mind – an extraordinarily vivid, tense, and active life in some great urban community, wherein the utter certainty of some forthcoming and inevitable catastrophe was surely impending, a cataclysm the general knowledge of which had keyed up to the boiling-point the whole activity and the entire mental outlook of that community in which he had found himself, and in which he seemed to have been living for a long time under some kind of handicapping condition very irksome to him.

  The one element of the horror and disturbance which lingered on, coloring powerfully that overhanging sense of destruction and sheer, paralyzing terror which had shadowed his waking day, was a sound – a vast, ear-filling, nerve-shattering dull roar as of the rising, menacing commotion of all the waters of the world.

  Much more vaguely, a visual memory, the memory of a view point, lingered in the very back of Meredith’s mind, bound up with, and seemingly a part of the general setting of those horrible dreams. He had been, somehow, under physical restraint in his dreams. It had been through great, massive walls all about him that the roar of impending catastrophe had come, muffled and dreadful, to his ear. And it was not wholly eradicated from his waking consciousness that he had seen through a barred aperture a flaming, red sky and had glimpses of tall towers tottering to the aural accompaniment of soul-shattering detonations, against that awful sound-background of the preternatural roaring of the fury-lashed, earth-shaking, near but unseen ocean.

  He did his sensible best to account for these dreams of horror by attributing their outstanding features to his reading of the now detailed accounts of the great earthquake which had occurred in the Japanese capital, a catastrophe which had aroused the horror and sympathy of the whole civilized world. This, he told himself, was the necessary, the obvious, explanation of such dreams. So very keen and vivid had been the dreams’ import in his mind, that although he attached no significance to the fact, he had to repeat this process of self-assurance, of every-day, material-background explanation to himself, again and again, throughout a day colored by an ever-recurrent, inescapable preoccupation with those night-dreams of dread, and horror, and impending destruction.

  That evening, with his fianceé, Lois Harding, he ha
d a dinner-and-dance engagement. Miss Harding thought him preoccupied; told him he was working too hard.

  It was late when he came home to the club afterwards. He was physically tired and he fell asleep immediately after turning in. The following morning was Sunday. The reading-room was full and he carried his book up to his bedroom after late breakfast to read the rest of it in peace. He was soon immersed in it. Some time later his attention was distracted by the tapping of a window-shade, blown in and out by the breeze. It was annoying and he paused in his reading, intending to rise and adjust the shade.

  As he withdrew his eyes, and part of his attention, from his book, all at once he heard a new sound. It was precisely as though a distant, sound-proof door had been abruptly opened. The new and different sound came through that imaginary door in the form of the composite noise of a distant battle. The details were vague but not so vague as to impair the certainty that what he was hearing now was conflict, the secondary or accompanying element in the compound aural impact being as unmistakably the sounds of conflagration – the crackle and roar of seething, devouring flame, rampant, uncontrollable. And back of these sound-elements, and carrying with it the recrudescence of the dreams’ well-remembered aspect of a communal terror, the deep, underlying, dominating roar of a merciless, barbaric sea.

  A mental picture leaped forthwith into his mind, the precise visual ‘atmosphere’ of those dreams of Friday night.

  As he listened, fascinated, there came back to him and grew upon him a paralyzing, cold fear. There was no stopping it now. It was the fear of that which cannot be related to any previous experience; the fear of the unknown; the fear of certain and imminent destruction.

  Cold sweat suddenly beaded his forehead. The faint penumbra of a slight nausea shook him. He could distinguish overtones now, high tones, cries of battle; the impact of a charge against a resistant horde; noise of plied weapons.

  The window-shade tapped again against the window casing. He snapped back into the familiar environment of his bedroom. He felt a little sick and weak. He rose, rather shakily, walked across the room and into the bathroom, and, noisily splashing the water about, washed his trembling hands and his face. Anything, to disperse those dreadful, haunting sounds from that incalculable world; that No Man’s Land of rending destruction which had begun to project its echoes of cosmic calamity into his mind.

  He paused, suddenly to listen again, a towel gripped between his shaking hands. But he could ‘hear’ nothing now, nothing except the tapping of that window-shade in the fresh breeze blowing through the open window. He hung the towel on its porcelain rod and walked back to his chair. He had seen his face, ghastly, in the bathroom mirror.

  It was an hour too early for lunch, but he wanted urgently to be where there were people about, even waiters, people who were not ‘hearing things’!

  In order to prolong his companionship with old Cavanagh, the only other early luncher, Meredith ate somewhat more than usual. The unaccustomed heavy meal at such an hour made him drowsy and after lunch he stretched out on a davenport before one of the two open fireplaces in the now unoccupied reading-room, and fell at once into an uneasy sleep.

  A little before three he awakened, stale, and as he came to conscious wakefulness he began to ‘hear’, at first quite distinctly, and then with increasing loudness and clarity as though a steady hand were opening up a loudspeaker, that same sound of fire and human conflict, and the dreadful, menacing roar of a thunderous ocean’s incalculable anger.

  Then, Old Cavanagh, napping on the other davenport, struggled with senile deliberation to his feet with many accompanying ‘hums’ and ‘ha’s’, and began lumbering across the room towards him.

  Meredith pulled himself together, forced away from him the idea that his sanity was dissolving into something like imbecility, and sat up; but his face, as his fellow club-member saw it, was again drawn and ghastly. Old Cavanagh plopped down beside him on the davenport. The old gentleman’s kindly, florid face puffed with startled emotion. His eyes goggled. His mouth opened slackly.

  ‘Lord’s sake, what’s the matter?’ he demanded.

  Kindly goodwill looked out of the old man’s distorted countenance. Meredith, as though a spring within him had been released, stammered out his incredible story, the older man studying him narrowly as he talked and nodding sympathetically from time to time.

  ‘Hm! mighty queer!’ was his comment when Meredith had ended. He produced, lighted deliberately, and puffed upon an enormous cigar. He seemed to cogitate as the two sat side by side in a pregnant silence of many minutes. At last he spoke.

  ‘You’re upset, my boy, naturally. But, you can hear everything that’s going on around you, can’t you? Your actual hearing’s all right, then. Hm! This other “hearing” starts up and goes on only when everything’s perfectly quiet. First time, you were here reading; second time, in bed; third time, reading again; this time – if I wasn’t snoring – you were in perfect quiet once more. Let’s test that out, now. Keep perfectly still, and I’ll do the same. Let’s see if you hear anything.’

  They fell silent once more, and for a while Meredith could hear nothing of the strange sounds. Then, as the silence deepened, once again came that complex of sounds indicating devastatingly battle, murder, and sudden death.

  He nodded silently at Cavanagh, and at the old man’s acquiescent murmur the sounds ceased abruptly.

  It took urging before Meredith could be persuaded to consult an aurist. Medical men, Cavanagh reminded him, would keep quiet about anything strange or embarrassing. Professional ethics . . .

  They went uptown together that afternoon to Dr Gatefield, a noted specialist. The doctor heard the story with close-lipped, professional attention. Then he tested Meredith’s hearing with various delicate instruments. Finally he gave an opinion.

  ‘We are familiar with various “ear-noises”, Mr Meredith. In some cases the location of one of the arteries too close to the ear-drum gives “roaring” noises. There are others, similar. I have eliminated everything of that kind. Your physical organism is in excellent condition, and unusually acute. There is nothing wrong with your hearing. This is a case for a psychiatrist.

  ‘I am not suggesting anything like mental derangement, you will please understand! But I recommend Dr Cowlington. This seems to be a clear case of what is sometimes called “clairaudience”, or something similar – his department; not mine. The aural equivalent of “clairvoyance” is what I am indicating, you see what I mean. “Second-sight” has to do with the eyes, of course, but it is mental, although there is often some physical background. I have no knowledge of those phenomena. I hope you will take my advice and allow Dr Cowling – ’

  ‘All right!’ interrupted Meredith. ‘Where does he live? I might as well go through with the thing now as later.’

  Dr Gatefield showed traces of sympathy under his rather frosty professional exterior. He dropped the diagnostician, became the obliging, courteous gentleman. He telephoned to his colleague, the psychiatrist, and then surprised both Meredith and Cavanagh by accompanying them to Dr Cowlington’s. The psychiatrist proved to be a tall, thin, and rather kindly person, with heavy, complex spectacles on a prominent nose, and then, sand-colored wisps of hair in a complication of cowlicks. He showed marked interest in the case from the start. After hearing Meredith’s story and the aurist’s report he subjected Meredith to an examination of more than an hour from which, feeling more or less as though he had been dissected, he nevertheless derived a considerable sense of relief.

  It was decided that Meredith should arrange at once to take several days off, come to Dr Cowlington’s house, and remain ‘under observation’.

  He arrived at the doctor’s the next morning and was given a pleasant, upstairs room, with many books and a comfortable davenport on which, in a recumbent position, the psychiatrist suggested, he should spend most of his waking hours reading.

  During Monday and Tuesday, Meredith, now after Dr Cowlington’s skillful reassurances
no longer upset at ‘hearing’ the strange sounds, listened carefully for whatever might reach him from what seemed like another – and very restless – world! He ‘heard’ as he ‘listened’ for long periods uninterrupted by any aural distractions, the drama of a great community in the paralyzing grip of fear – fighting for its corporate life – against irresistable, impending, dreadful doom.

  He began, about this time, at Dr Cowlington’s suggestion, to write down some of the syllabification of the cries and shouts as well as he could manage it, on a purely phonetic basis. The sounds corresponded to no language known to him. The words and phrases were blurred and marred by the continuous uproar of the fury of waters. This was invariably, and continued to be, the sustained, distinctive background for every sound he heard during the periods while he remained passive and quiet. The various words and phrases were entirely unintelligible. His notes looked like nothing which either he or Cowlington could relate to any modern or ancient tongue. When read aloud they made nothing but gibberish.

  The strange terms were studied over very carefully by Dr Cowlington, by Meredith himself, and by no less than three professors, of Archaeology and Comparative Philology, one of whom, the Archaeologist, was a friend of Cowlington’s and the other two called in by him. All of these experts on ancient and obsolete languages listened with the greatest courtesy to Meredith’s attempt to explain the apparent setting of the sounds – most of them were in the nature of battle-cries and what Meredith took to be fragments of desperately uttered prayer – some of the material having come to him in the form of uncouth, raucous howls – and with the greatest interest to his attempts at reproducing them orally. They studied his written notes with the most meticulous care. The verdict was unanimous, even emphatic on the part of the younger and more dogmatic philologist. These sounds were quite utterly at variance with, entirely different from, any known speech, including Sanskrit, Indo-Iranian and even the conjectural Akkadian and Sumerian spoken tongues. The transcribed syllables corresponded to nothing in any known language, ancient or modern. Emphatically they were not Japanese.