‘“I don’t discount things simply because modern opinion laughs at them,” I told him. “Nor should you, Aster; an open mind is the best asset a journalist can possess.”
‘“The best thing this journalist possesses is a flashlight,” he replied, drawing one from his pocket and switching it on, “not a piece of silly superstition.”
‘The bright light dazzled me momentarily and I screwed up my eyes against it, but before I could admonish Aster, an awful chill swept over me. I knew what it was at once.
‘“Get inside the barrier – or get out!” I shouted at him. “Hurry, Aster!” He turned a puzzled face to me, and I actually reached over the defence to try and seize his arm, fearful of breaking the barrier but somehow more fearful for Aster himself.
‘Then, just as Jago had described, everything went dark – a stifling blackness that you knew would not admit any light, ever. And in that Stygian darkness I heard Aster scream, followed by a thud and soft rumble as his flashlight hit the floor and rolled away somewhere.
‘“I’ve gone blind – blind!” he cried. I tried to call to him, but my throat had closed up and I could not make a sound, although I was in mortal dread that he would blunder into my defence and make a path for whatever was in that room. Then he screamed again, and the sound was one I hope I never hear a man make again. All semblance of humanity had gone from his voice – I can’t begin to describe the sick feeling of horror I felt at it. It was the negation of all that is clean and sane and wholesome to us, as is the touch of the outer monstrosities. No, it’s no good – I am quite unable to convey to you the sheer depth of vileness in it.
‘I crouched in the centre of the pentacle, all sense of direction lost. I had no idea where the door was, or the window, or even Aster – the thing which had been Aster – although I could hear him crawling round, making a sick, inhuman moaning noise which was somehow worse than the scream. In the utter silence it sounded like a voice from the pit.
‘Even now I do not know how I got through that night. I felt physically and spiritually ill, and almost paralysed with fear – although if I had been able to see the door, I think I might have made a run for it. Thank goodness I didn’t.
‘At some stage the noises coming from Aster ceased, and at long last light began to grow outside the window – the cold and wholesome light of a winter morning. I found I could see again, and sure enough, my candles were still alight. Aster’s body was huddled in a corner, and his flashlight glowed where it had rolled, just outside my outer circle. I made a move to pick it up, and then, you know, the most horrible thing of all happened.
‘What made me look in Aster’s direction then I don’t know, for I was sure he was dead. But as I moved, his eyes snapped open and met mine. Their very lack of expression was so monstrous that I was paralysed, not with physical fear, but with the hideous conviction that I was actually on the brink of being dragged down into some foul depths beyond anything we humans are ever meant to know. And all that stood between me and the instrument of that descent which stared at me with its dead and gleaming eyes was a pentacle and a ring of garlic!
‘Aster began to shuffle towards me, with an odd, broken-limbed crawl. I fumbled for my revolver and then paused. Aster’s progress had halted. As I watched, he snuffled at the outer circle of my defence and drew back; crept around a little way and sniffed again – I felt a thrill of hope. The barriers were holding him back! The pathological, spiritual change which he had suffered – put simply, soul destruction – had transformed Aster into something so totally unhuman that he was as unable to cross as any purely aetheric manifestation.
‘Then, as suddenly as it had become animated, Aster’s body went limp and collapsed in front of me. It took me an instant to realise that it lay in a beam of weak sunlight which had just that moment struck through the window. Nevertheless I waited until full daylight before venturing out of the defence, and even then I had to “take my courage in both hands” before I could bring myself to touch Aster’s body. He was quite dead.
‘The house was demolished last week. There was absolutely nothing in the way of physical remains to suggest how the haunting had reached such a tremendous pitch.’
‘No pathetic little skeleton buried in the cellars, then?’ queried Arkwright.
Carnacki shook his head. ‘Possibly the simple fact of the woman’s dying a lonely, painful death in that room was sufficient to imbue its fabric with the feelings of her last months.’
‘And Aster?’ I asked. ‘Do you think the defence would have protected him, since he didn’t believe in it in the first place?’
‘That particular brand of metaphysics is not my field,’ replied Carnacki sternly. ‘Out you go! I want a sleep.’ And he ushered us all out on to the quiet Embankment, as always.
SAKI
(1870–1916)
Hector Hugh Munro, who wrote as ‘Saki’, had a short life marked by the sort of black comedy which is the distinguishing mark of his fiction. His father was a senior officer in the Burmese police force, while his mother died of shock after being chased by a cow in a Wessex lane; as a result, Munro’s childhood, with his sister Ethel, was effectively an orphaned one, ruled with a rod of iron by two maiden aunts, Ethel and Augusta. After an abortive start in the Burmese police force (cut short by malaria), he embarked on a literary career with a series of vignettes in the Westminster Gazette. He later became the Morning Post’s foreign correspondent in the Balkans, Russia and Paris and an acclaimed writer of coruscating and acidic satires on Edwardian society. When war came he immediately joined up, refusing a commission, and was killed by a sniper at Beaumont-Hamel in 1916. His last words were said to be: ‘Put that bloody cigarette out.’
THE HEDGEHOG
A ‘MIXED DOUBLE’ of young people were contesting a game of lawn tennis at the rectory garden party; for the past five-and-twenty years at least mixed doubles of young people had done exactly the same thing on exactly the same spot at about the same time of year. The young people changed and made way for others in the course of time, but very little else seemed to alter.
The present players were sufficiently conscious of the social nature of the occasion to be concerned about their clothes and appearance, and sufficiently sport-loving to be keen on the game. Both their efforts and their appearance came under the four-fold scrutiny of a quartet of ladies sitting as official spectators on a bench immediately commanding the court. It was one of the accepted conditions of the rectory garden party that four ladies, who usually knew very little about tennis and a great deal about the players, should sit at that particular spot and watch the game. It had also come to be almost a tradition that two ladies should be amiable and that the other two should be Mrs Dole and Mrs Hatch-Mallard.
‘What a singularly unbecoming way Eva Jonelet has taken to doing her hair in,’ said Mrs Hatch-Mallard; ‘it’s ugly hair at the best of times, but she needn’t make it look ridiculous as well. Someone ought to tell her.’
Eva Jonelet’s hair might have escaped Mrs Hatch-Mallard’s condemnation if she could have forgotten the more glaring fact that Eva was Mrs Dole’s favourite niece. It would, perhaps, have been a more comfortable arrangement if Mrs Hatch-Mallard and Mrs Dole could have been asked to the rectory on separate occasions, but there was only one garden party in the course of the year, and neither lady could have been omitted from the list of invitations without hopelessly wrecking the social peace of the parish.
‘How pretty the yew trees look at this time of year,’ interposed a lady with a soft, silvery voice that suggested a chinchilla muff painted by Whistler.
‘What do you mean by this time of year?’ demanded Mrs Hatch-Mallard. ‘Yew trees look beautiful at all times of the year. That is their great charm.’
‘Yew trees never look anything but hideous under any circumstances or at any time of year,’ said Mrs Dole, with the slow, emphatic relish of one who contradicts for the pleasure of the thing. ‘They are only fit for graveyards and cemeteries.’
Mrs Hatch-Mallard gave a sardonic snort, which, being translated, meant that there were some people who were better fitted for cemeteries than for garden parties.
‘What is the score, please?’ asked the lady with the chinchilla voice.
The desired information was given her by a young gentleman in spotless white flannels, whose general toilet effect suggested solicitude rather than anxiety.
‘What an odious young cub Bertie Dykson has become!’ pronounced Mrs Dole, remembering suddenly that Bertie was rather a favourite with Mrs Hatch-Mallard. ‘The young men of today are not what they used to be twenty years ago.’
‘Of course not,’ said Mrs Hatch-Mallard; ‘twenty years ago Bertie Dykson was just two years old, and you must expect some difference in appearance and manner and conversation between those two periods.’
‘Do you know,’ said Mrs Dole confidentially, ‘I shouldn’t be surprised if that was intended to be clever.’
‘Have you anyone interesting coming to stay with you, Mrs Norbury?’ asked the chinchilla voice hastily; ‘you generally have a house party at this time of year.’
‘I’ve got a most interesting woman coming,’ said Mrs Norbury, who had been mutely struggling for some chance to turn the conversation into a safe channel; ‘an old acquaintance of mine, Ada Bleek –’
‘What an ugly name,’ said Mrs Hatch-Mallard.
‘She’s descended from the de la Bliques, an old Huguenot family of Touraine, you know.’
‘There weren’t any Huguenots in Touraine,’ said Mrs Hatch-Mallard, who thought she might safely dispute any fact that was three hundred years old.
‘Well, anyhow, she’s coming to stay with me,’ continued Mrs Norbury, bringing her story quickly down to the present day; ‘she arrives this evening and she’s highly clairvoyant, a seventh daughter of a seventh daughter, you know, and all that sort of thing.’
‘How very interesting,’ said the chinchilla voice; ‘Exwood is just the right place for her to come to, isn’t it? There are supposed to be several ghosts there.’
‘That is why she was so anxious to come,’ said Mrs Norbury; ‘she put off another engagement in order to accept my invitation. She’s had visions and dreams, and all those sorts of things, that have come true in a most marvellous manner, but she’s never actually seen a ghost, and she’s longing to have that experience. She belongs to that Research Society, you know.’
‘I expect she’ll see the unhappy Lady Cullumpton, the most famous of all the Exwood ghosts,’ said Mrs Dole; ‘my ancestor, you know, Sir Gervase Cullumpton, murdered his young bride in a fit of jealousy while they were on a visit to Exwood. He strangled her in the stables with a stirrup leather, just after they had come in from riding, and she is seen sometimes at dusk going about the lawns and the stable yard, in a long green habit, moaning and trying to get the thong from round her throat. I shall be most interested to hear if your friend sees –’
‘I don’t know why she should be expected to see a trashy, traditional apparition like the so-called Cullumpton ghost, that is only vouched for by housemaids and tipsy stable boys, when my uncle, who was the owner of Exwood, committed suicide there under the most tragical circumstances and most certainly haunts the place.’
‘Mrs Hatch-Mallard has evidently never read Popple’s County History,’ said Mrs Dole icily, ‘or she would know that the Cullumpton ghost has a wealth of evidence behind it –’
‘Oh, Popple!’ exclaimed Mrs Hatch-Mallard scornfully; ‘any rubbishy old story is good enough for him. Popple, indeed! Now my uncle’s ghost was seen by a rural dean, who was also a Justice of the Peace. I should think that would be good enough testimony for anyone. Mrs Norbury, I shall take it as a deliberate personal affront if your clairvoyant friend sees any other ghost except that of my uncle.’
‘I dare say she won’t see anything at all; she never has yet, you know,’ said Mrs Norbury hopefully.
‘It was a most unfortunate topic for me to have broached,’ she lamented afterwards to the owner of the chinchilla voice. ‘Exwood belongs to Mrs Hatch-Mallard and we’ve only got it on a short lease. A nephew of hers has been wanting to live there for some time and if we offend her in any way she’ll refuse to renew the lease. I sometimes think these garden parties are a mistake.’
The Norburys played bridge for the next three nights till nearly one o’clock; they did not care for the game, but it reduced the time at their guest’s disposal for undesirable ghostly visitations.
‘Miss Bleek is not likely to be in a frame of mind to see ghosts,’ said Hugo Norbury, ‘if she goes to bed with her brain awhirl with royal spades and no trumps and grand slams.’
‘I’ve talked to her for hours about Mrs Hatch-Mallard’s uncle,’ said his wife, ‘and pointed out the exact spot where he killed himself, and invented all sorts of impressive details, and I’ve found an old portrait of Lord John Russell and put it in her room, and told her that it’s supposed to be a picture of the uncle in middle age. If Ada does see a ghost at all it certainly ought to be old Hatch-Mallard’s. At any rate, we’ve done our best.’
The precautions were in vain. On the third morning of her stay Ada Bleek came down late to breakfast, her eyes looking very tired, but ablaze with excitement, her hair done anyhow, and a large brown volume hugged under her arm.
‘At last I’ve seen something supernatural!’ she exclaimed, and gave Mrs Norbury a fervent kiss, as though in gratitude for the opportunity afforded her.
‘A ghost!’ cried Mrs Norbury, ‘not really!’
‘Really and unmistakably!’
‘Was it an oldish man in the dress of about fifty years ago?’ asked Mrs Norbury hopefully.
‘Nothing of the sort,’ said Ada; ‘it was a white hedgehog.’
‘A white hedgehog!’ exclaimed both the Norburys, in tones of disconcerted astonishment.
‘A huge white hedgehog with baleful yellow eyes,’ said Ada. ‘I was lying half asleep in bed when suddenly I felt a sensation as of something sinister and unaccountable passing through the room. I sat up and looked round, and there, under the window, I saw an evil, creeping thing, a sort of monstrous hedgehog, of a dirty white colour, with black, loathsome claws that clicked and scraped along the floor, and narrow, yellow eyes of indescribable evil. It slithered along for a yard or two, always looking at me with its cruel, hideous eyes, then, when it reached the second window, which was open, it clambered up the sill and vanished. I got up at once and went to the window; there wasn’t a sign of it anywhere. Of course, I knew it must be something from another world, but it was not till I turned up Popple’s chapter on local traditions that I realised what I had seen.’
She turned eagerly to the large brown volume and read: ‘Nicholas Herison, an old miser, was hung at Batchford in 1763 for the murder of a farm lad who had accidentally discovered his secret hoard. His ghost is supposed to traverse the countryside, appearing sometimes as a white owl, sometimes as a huge white hedgehog.’
‘I expect you read the Popple story overnight, and that made you think you saw a hedgehog when you were only half awake,’ said Mrs Norbury, hazarding a conjecture that probably came very near the truth.
Ada scouted the possibility of such a solution of her apparition.
‘This must be hushed up,’ said Mrs Norbury quickly; ‘the servants –’
‘Hushed up!’ exclaimed Ada, indignantly; ‘I’m writing a long report on it for the Research Society.’
It was then that Hugo Norbury, who is not naturally a man of brilliant resource, had one of the really useful inspirations of his life.
‘It was very wicked of us, Miss Bleek,’ he said, ‘but it would be a shame to let it go further. That white hedgehog is an old joke of ours; stuffed albino hedgehog, you know, that my father brought home from Jamaica, where they grow to enormous size. We hide it in the room with a string on it, run one end of the string through the window; then we pull it from below and it comes scraping along the floor, just as you’ve described, and finall
y jerks out of the window. Taken in heaps of people; they all read up Popple and think it’s old Harry Nicholson’s ghost; we always stop them from writing to the papers about it, though. That would be carrying matters too far.’
Mrs Hatch-Mallard renewed the lease in due course, but Ada Bleek has never renewed her friendship.
E-book bonus story
THE BELL
Ryan Price
‘Do you like ghosts?’
‘I’m sorry?’
She repeated the question, with the same quiet conversational air as she’d asked it the first time. She could have been asking ‘Do you like peanuts?’ or ‘Do you know where the toilets are?’ But it wasn’t the question itself that had caught me off guard, so much as the fact that a girl I’d never met had appeared at my side and asked it. That’s simply not the kind of thing that happens to me.
‘Yeah,’ I said.
I had no real opinion on the subject, but my instinctive reaction was to try to sound positive. Realising halfway through that my answer sounded pathetically weak, I tried to tack on ‘Love ’em!’ as a last minute addition, but it only barely stumbled out of my throat, tripped over my tongue and landed lamely in the air somewhere between me and my unexpected companion.
‘Good,’ she smiled. And with that, a little glimmer of composure returned. I smiled back, and tried to figure out what I was supposed to do next.
I’d had girlfriends, I wasn’t a complete novice. But I wasn’t in the habit of chatting up strangers. I liked to think that my successes had been built on gradually revealing my deeper qualities. But at thirty, I liked to believe all sorts of crap. One thing was certain though, you wouldn’t need a hand to count the number of times that girls had chatted me up.
So there I was. My friends had downed their last pints to run to the bus stop and I was finishing up mine ready to take a beer-fuelled leak and set off on my walk home. I’d sunk a few pints, but only what I normally had and I could easily have dissected the previous day’s cricket or debated the merits of modern art.
Tales from the Dead of Night Page 22