by Неизвестный
‘My reason failed me. For twenty minutes, or twenty seconds, I was able to think of nothing else but this awful figure, till there came, hurtling through the empty channels of my senses, the remembrance that Broughton and his friends had discussed me furtively at dinner. The dim possibility of its being a hoax stole gratefully into my unhappy mind, and once there, one’s pluck came creeping back along a thousand tiny veins. My first sensation was one of blind unreasoning thankfulness that my brain was going to stand the trial. I am not a timid man, but the best of us needs some human handle to steady him in time to extremity, and in this faint but growing hope that after all it might be only a brutal hoax, I found the fulcrum that I needed. At last I moved.
‘How I managed to do it I cannot tell you, but with one spring towards the foot of the bed I got within arm’s length and struck out one fearful blow with my fist at the thing. It crumbled under it, and my hand was cut to the bone. With a sickening revulsion after my terror, I dropped half-fainting across the end of the bed. So it was merely a foul trick after all. No doubt the trick had been played many a time before; no doubt Broughton and his friends had had some large bet among themselves as to what I should do when I discovered the gruesome thing. From my state of abject terror I found myself transported into an insensate anger. I shouted curses upon Broughton. I dived rather than climbed over the bed-end on to the sofa. I tore at the robed skeleton—how well the whole thing had been carried out, I thought—I broke the skull against the floor, and stamped upon its dry bones. I flung the head away under the bed, and rent the brittle bones of the trunk in pieces. I snapped the thin thigh bones across my knee, and flung them in different directions. The shin bones I set up against a stool and broke with my heel. I raged like a Berserker against the loathly thing, and stripped the ribs from the backbone and slung the breastbone against the cupboard. My fury increased as the work of destruction went on. I tore the frail rotten veil into twenty pieces, and the dust went up over everything, over the clean blotting paper and the silver inkstand. At last my work was done. There was but a raffle of broken bones and strips of parchment and crumbling wool. Then, picking up a piece of the skull—it was the check and temple bone of the right side, I remember—I opened the door and went down the passage to Broughton’s dressing room. I remember still how my sweat dripping pyjamas clung to me as I walked. At the door I kicked and entered.
‘Broughton was in bed. He had already turned the light on and seemed shrunken and horrified. For a moment he could hardly pull himself together. Then I spoke. I don’t know what I said. Only I know that from a heart full and overfull with hatred and contempt, spurred on by shame of my own recent cowardice, I let my tongue run on. He answered nothing. I was amazed at my own fluency. My hair still clung lankily to my wet temples, my hand was bleeding profusely, and I must have looked a strange sight. Broughton huddled himself up at the head of the bed just as I had. Still he made no answer, no answer, no defence. He seemed preoccupied with something besides my reproaches, and once or twice moistened his lips with his tongue. But he could say nothing though he moved his hands now and then, just as a baby who cannot speak moves its hands.
‘At last the door into Mrs Broughton’s room opened and she came in, white and terrified. “What is it? What is it? Oh, in God’s name! What is it?” she cried again and again, and then she went up to her husband and sat on the bed in her nightdress, and the two faced me. I told her what the matter was. I spared her husband not a word for her presence there. Yet, he seemed hardly to understand. I told the pair that I had spoiled their cowardly joke for them. Broughton looked up.
‘“I have smashed the foul thing into a hundred pieces,” I said. Broughton licked his lips again and his mouth worked. “By God!” I shouted, “It would serve you right if I thrashed you within an inch of your life. I will take care that not a decent man or woman of my acquaintance ever speaks to you again.” “And there,” I added, throwing the broken piece of the skull upon the floor beside his bed, “there is a souvenir for you, of your damned work tonight!”
‘Broughton saw the bone, and in a moment it was his turn to frighten me. He squealed like a hare caught in a trap. He screamed and screamed till Mrs Broughton, almost as bewildered as myself, held on to him and coaxed him like a child to be quiet. But Broughton—and as he moved I thought that ten minutes ago I perhaps looked as terribly ill as he did—thrust her from him, and scrambled out of the bed on to the floor, and still screaming put out his hand to the bone. It had blood on it from my hand. He paid no attention to me whatever. In truth I said nothing. This was a new turn indeed to the horrors of the evening. He rose from the floor with the bone in his hand and stood silent. He seemed to be listening. “Time, time, perhaps,” he muttered, and almost at the same moment fell at full length on the carpet, cutting his head against the fender. The bone flew from his hand and came to rest near the door. I picked Broughton up, haggard and broken, with blood over face. He whispered hoarsely and quickly, “Listen, listen!” We listened.
‘After ten seconds’ utter quiet, I seemed to hear something. I could not be sure, but at last there was no doubt. There was a quiet sound as of one moving along the passage. Little regular steps came towards us over the hard oak flooring. Broughton moved to where his wife sat, white and speechless, on the bed, and pressed her face into his shoulder.
‘Then, the last thing that I could see as he turned the light out, he fell forward with his own head pressed into the pillow of the bed. Something in their company, something in their cowardice, helped me, and I faced the open doorway of the room, which was outlined fairly clearly against the dimly lighted passage. I put out one hand and touched Mrs Broughton’s shoulder in the darkness. But at the last moment I too failed. I sank on my knees and put my face in the bed. Only we all heard. The footsteps came to the door, and there they stopped. The piece of bone was lying a yard inside the door. There was a rustle of moving stuff, and the thing was in the room. Mrs Broughton was silent: I could hear Broughton’s voice praying, muffled in the pillow; I was cursing my own cowardice. Then the steps moved out again on the oak boards of the passage, and I heard the sounds dying away. In a flash of remorse I went to the door and looked out. At the end of the corridor I thought I saw something that moved away. A moment later the passage was empty. I stood with my forehead against the jamb of the door almost physically sick.
‘“You can turn the light on,” I said, and there was an answering flare. There was no bone at my feet. Mrs Broughton had fainted. Broughton was almost useless, and it took me ten minutes to bring her to. Broughton only said one thing worth remembering. For the most part he went on muttering prayers. But I was glad afterwards to recollect that he had said that thing. He said in a colourless voice, half as a question, half as a reproach, “You didn’t speak to her.”
‘We spent the remainder of the night together. Mrs Broughton actually fell off into a kind of sleep before dawn, but she suffered so horribly in her dreams that I shook her into consciousness again. Never was dawn so long in coming. Three or four times Broughton spoke to himself. Mrs Broughton would then just tighten her hold on his arm, but she could say nothing. As for me, I can honestly say that I grew worse as the hours passed and the light strengthened. The two violent reactions had battered down my steadiness of view, and I felt that the foundations of my life had been built upon the sand. I said nothing, and after binding up my hand with a towel, I did not move. It was better so. They helped me and I helped them, and we all three knew that our reason had gone very near to ruin that night. At last, when the light came in pretty strongly, and the birds outside were chattering and singing, we felt that we must do something. Yet we never moved. You might have thought that we should particularly dislike being found as we were by the servants; yet nothing of that kind mattered a straw, and an overpowering listlessness bound us as we sat, until Chapman, Broughton’s man, actually knocked and opened the door. None of us moved. Broughton, speaking hardly and stiffly, said, “Chapman, you can come
back in five minutes.” Chapman, was a discreet man, but it would have made no difference to us if he had carried his news to the “room” at once.
‘We looked at each other and I said I must go back. I meant to wait outside till Chapman returned. I simply dared not reenter my bedroom alone. Broughton roused himself and said that he would come with me. Mrs Broughton agreed to remain in her own room for five minutes if the blinds were drawn up and all the doors left open.
‘So Broughton and I, leaning stiffly one against the other, went down to my room. By the morning light that filtered past the blinds we could see our way, and I released the blinds. There was nothing wrong in the room from end to end, except smears of my own blood at the end of the bed, on the sofa, and on the carpet where I had torn the thing to pieces.’
Colvin had finished his story. There was nothing to say. Seven bells stuttered out from the fo’c’sle, and the answering cry wailed through the darkness. I took him downstairs.
‘Of course, I am much better now, but it is a kindness of you to let me sleep in your cabin.’
The Frontier Guards
H. Russell Wakefield
What a charming little house!’ said Brinton, as he was walking in from a round of golf at Ellesborough with Lander.
‘Yes, from the outside,’ replied Lander.
‘What’s the matter with the inside-Eozoic plumbing?’
‘No; the “usual offices” are neat, if not gaudy. Spengler would probably describe them as “contemporary with the death of Lincoln,” but it’s not that—it’s haunted.’
‘Is it, by Jove?’ said Brinton, gazing up at it. ‘Fancy such a dear little Queen Anne piece having such a nasty reputation. I see it’s unoccupied.’
‘It usually is,’ replied Lander. ‘Tell me about it.’
‘During dinner I will. But you seem to find something of interest about those windows on the second floor.’ Brinton gazed up for a moment or two longer, and then started to walk back in silence beside his host.
In a few minutes they reached Lander’s cottage—it was rather more pretentious than that—an engaging two-storeyed structure added to and modernized from time to time, formerly known as ‘the Old Vicarage’, and rechristened ‘Laymer’s’. Black and white and creeper-lined, with a trim little garden of rose trees and mellow turf, two fine limes, and a great yew, impenetrable and secret. This little garden melted into an arable expanse, and there was a lovely view over to some high Chiltern spurs. The whole place just suited Lander, who was—or it might be more accurate to say, wanted to be—a novelist; a commonplace and ill-advised ambition, but he had money of his own and could afford to wait.
James Brinton, his guest for a week and a very old friend, occupied himself with a picture gallery in Mayfair. A very small gallery—one rather small room, to be exact—but he had admirable taste and made it pay.
Two hours later they sat down to dinner. ‘Now then,’ said Brinton, as Mrs Dunkley brought in the soup, ‘tell me about that house.’
‘Well,’ replied Lander, ‘I have had, as you know, much more experience of such places than most people, and I consider Pailton the worst or the best specimen I have heard or read of or experienced. For one thing, it is a “killer”. The majority of haunted houses are harmless, the peculiar energy they have absorbed and radiate forth is not hostile to life. But in others the radiation is malignant and fatal. Pailton has been rented five times in the last twelve years; in each case the tenancy has been marked by a violent death within its walls. For my part, I have no two opinions concerning the morality of letting it at all. It should be razed to the ground.’
‘How long do its occupants stick it out as a rule?’
‘Six weeks is the record, and that was made by some person called Pendexter. That was three years ago. I knew Pendexter pére, and he was a courageous and determined person. His daughter was hurled down the stairs one night and killed, and I shall never forget the mingled fury and grief with which he told me about it. Previous to that he had detected eighteen different examples of psychic action—appearances and sounds—several definitely malignant. The family had not enjoyed one single day of freedom from abnormal phenomena.’
‘How long since it was last occupied?’ asked Brinton.
‘It has been empty for a year, and I am inclined to think it will remain so. Any one who comes down to look at it is given a pretty straight tip by one or other of us to keep away.’
‘Does it affect you violently?’
‘I have never set foot in it.’
‘What? You, of all people!’
‘My dear Jim, just for that very reason. When I first discovered I was psychic I felt flattered and anxious to experience all I could. I soon changed my mind. I found I experienced quite enough without any need for making opportunities. I do to this day. Several times I have had a visitor in the study here after dinner, an uninvited guest. And it has always been so. I have many times heard and seen things which could not be explained in places with perfectly clean bills of psychic health. And one never gets quite used to it. Terror may pass, but some distress of mind is invariable. Any person gifted or afflicted like myself will tell you the same. It seems to me sometimes as if I actually assist in evoking and materializing these appearances, that I help to establish a connection between them and the place I inhabit, that I am a most unpleasant kind of lightning conductor.’
‘Is there any possible explanation for that?’
‘Well, I have formed one, but it would take rather a long time to explain, and may be quite fallacious. Anyhow, there has never been any need for me to visit such places as Pailton, and I keep away from them if I can.’
‘Would you very much object to going in for a minute or two?’
‘Why?’
‘Well, I have been bothered all my life about this business of ghosts. I have never seen one; in a sense I “don’t believe in them”, yet I am convinced you have known many. It is a maddening dualism of mind. I feel if I could just once come in contact with something of the kind I should feel a sense of enormous relief.’
‘And you’d like me to conduct you over Pailton?’
‘Not if it would really upset you.’
‘It would be at your own risk,’ said Lander, smiling.
‘I’ll risk it!’
‘You mustn’t imagine that you can go into a disturbed spot such as this and expect to see about ten ghosts in as many minutes. Even in the case of such a busy hive as Pailton there are many quiet periods, and some people simply cannot see ghosts. The odds are very much against your desire being granted, though, if you are psychic, the atmosphere of the place would affect you at once.’
‘How?’
‘Well, you’ve often heard of people who know by some obscure but infallible instinct that there’s a cat in the room. Just so. However, I’ll certainly give you the chance. It won’t seriously disturb me. I can get the key in the morning from the woman who looks after it, though I need hardly say she doesn’t sleep there. There is no need for a caretaker. It was broken into once, but the burglar was found dead in the dining room and since then the crooks have given it a wide berth.’
‘It really is dangerous, then?’
‘Beginning to feel a bit prudent? ‘
‘No, I shall feel safe with you.’
‘Very well then. After coming back from golf we’ll pay it a visit. It will be dark by five, and we’ll make the excursion about six. The chances of gratifying your curiosity will be better after dark. I’d better tell you something else. I never quite know how these places are going to affect me. Before now, I have gone off into a kind of trance and been decidedly weird, my dear Jim. My sense of time and space becomes distorted, though for your assurance I may say,’ he added smiling, ‘I am never dangerous when in this condition. Furthermore, you must be prepared to make acquaintance with a mode of existence in which the ordinary laws of existence which you have always known abdicate themselves. Bierce called his famous book of ghost stories, Can Th
ese Things Be? Assuredly they can. Now I’m sounding pompous and pontifical, but some such warning is necessary. When I touch that front door tomorrow I may become, in a sense, a stranger to you; once inside we shall cross a frontier into a region with its own laws of time and space, and where the seemingly impossible can happen … Do you understand what I mean and still want to go?’
‘Yes,’ replied Brinton, ‘to all your questions.’
‘Very well then,’ said Lander, ‘I will now get out the chess men and discover a complete answer to Reti’s opening which you sprang on me last night; so you shall have the white pieces.’
November 21st was a lazy, drowsy, cloudless day, starting with a sharp ground frost which, thawing unresistingly as the sun climbed, made the tees at Ellesborough like tiny slides. In consequence, neither Brinton nor Lander played very good golf. This upset Brinton not at all, for he was thinking much more of that which was beginning to impress him as a possible ordeal, the crossing of the threshold of Pailton a few hours later. As they finished their second round, a mist, spreading like a gigantic spider’s web, was beginning to raise the level of the Buckinghamshire fields. As they walked homewards, it climbed with them, keeping pace with them like a dog; sometimes hurrying ahead, then dropping back, but always with them.
It was exactly five o’clock as they reached Laymer’s. Tea was ready. ‘Do you still want to go, Jim?’ asked Lander abruptly.