Tales of the Grotesque: A Collection of Uneasy Tales

by L. A. Lewis

  Mrs. Jackson looked at me fixedly for a long, long moment before she answered; and twice I thought she was about to speak, and twice she failed. Then, at last; ‘I have seen nothing, sir, and I don’t think there is another woman or man in the village who because we have never stepped through the fence since that night she died. It is just the way we feel, and, as I have told you, sir, I for my part will not - not for ten thousand pounds.’

  ‘But the poacher?’ I cried out. ‘The man from twenty miles away who was after pheasants?’

  Once more she looked at me fixedly in the same compelling silence.

  ‘He died, sir, within the month, of drink and delirium, shouting out the words he first uttered when he staggered into my kitchen long after I had closed the bar: “The Child! O God! The horrible Child!”

  As may be imagined, this revolting story did more than fire my imagination for a ghost hunt. So graphically had Mrs. Jackson told it, and in so obviously certain was she in her own mind that some dreadful curse or haunting had been left in the wood, that I found myself visualising the murder or murders with uncomfortable clarity, and although I enjoyed the excellently cooked supper which I later consumed in a cosy, lamp-lit parlour, I quite failed to derive the anticipated comfort from my night’s rest in a little lean-to room which I had at first much admired, notwithstanding the old' fashioned luxury of a feather bed. My window; for one thing, looked out upon the wood, and I must confess that my brain persisted in speculating on what I should encounter there the next day - for I had determined to reconnoitre it when full daylight should give me confidence. Towards morning I slept a little, my rest broken by half-waking dreams of wild formless things watching my window from the gloom of the thicket.

  I rose early and breakfasted well, telling Mrs. Jackson that one o’clock would suit me admirably for lunch. Then, carefully leaving my cap behind - for I knew that she would otherwise ask my destination and try to dissuade me - I strolled out, ostensibly to admire the garden. Once there, I quickly got out of sight among the pergolas, and was soon through the wire fencing.

  My first action after progressing some yards among the trees was to produce my pen-knife and cut a stout branch from an ash sapling which I trimmed to a length of three feet. This imparted a measure of comfort, and would be useful for poking into hollow trunks or killing possible adders - for one half of me never expected results in the ghost-hunt, and sought to treat the expedition as a nature-study ramble. The thickness of the undergrowth amazed me, since the upper foliage was extremely luxuriant, and I had noticed in other woods that such a condition usually killed off ground vegetation through lack of sun. Here, apparently, the soil, some kind of dark loam, was sufficiently fertile to counteract this tendency, so that, what with trailing brambles and wild briars and thick curtains of creepers falling from higher branches, progress was really hard.

  I remember thinking, too, that it was for the same reason quite the gloomiest wood I had seen, a place of perpetual twilight even in this glorious June weather. I had made up my mind to seek out the cottage first, and then, if it revealed nothing of interest, to spend the rest of the morning idling about after insects and wild-flowers. So, remembering that it was near the centre of the wood, I endeavoured to keep a course at right-angles to the border from the point of entry, no easy matter in so tangled a thicket. At last, however, I burst through a screen of dead brushwood into a kind of leafy tunnel, much overgrown but clearly a path. Just to my right another track branched off on the opposite side, roughly in the direction I had been following, and after a moment’s thought I took to it, beating the brambles aside with my stick as I went along.

  All this time, but for the occasional clatter of a wood-pigeon taking flight forty feet overhead, I realised that I had been progressing in a most uncanny silence. There had been no bird song, no scuttling of rabbits or rats, and never a sign of a squirrel. The fact dawned on me queerly, and I began to look round more carefully for traces of wild life. There were, I observed, plenty of old nests in the bushes, and I had already stumbled in more than one rabbit hole, but whether any rabbits slept in the warrens underground or whether they had been killed or driven out by fear of the Unknown Thing at which Mrs. Jackson had hinted, I could not guess. Despite the warmth I shivered and tramped on along the winding path. Then, round a sharp bend, I was suddenly confronted by the cottage: a grey, stone building, slate-roofed, and almost buried in a mass of ivy. Unlike most of those deserted dwellings, its window's were intact though, of course, uncurtained, and the fact that the front-door stood wide open, mute testimony to that last gamekeeper’s state of mind when he took away his sticks of furniture, almost lent the place an air of immediate habitation. The cottage was much larger than I had expected, having two storeys, and I stood gazing at it for quite a minute before approaching further. Then, acting on some impulse of caution that I have never quite defined, I removed my shoes, and stole in absolute silence across the small clearing until I stood on the front step peering into the cobwebby little hall. The benefit I might have expected from the break in the trees forming the dwelling site was negated by the obvious fact that the fine spell was at an end; for during my short journey the sky had become obscured by thunder-clouds, so that the interior of the house was no lighter than the thicket through which I had come. But for this, I might have seen the baby hand-prints in the dust before I heard the cry.

  As it was, the sound reached me first, and I stiffened against the lintel in sheer astonishment.

  ‘Da, Da, Da,’ came clearly in a childish treble from somewhere upstairs, accompanied by the rhythmic thumping of some hard object on the bare boards.

  I stood absolutely petrified- It was so unmistakably the babble of a very young child that has not yet learnt to speak, and yet Mrs. Jackson had said definitely that no one lived in the place or, indeed, would venture near it. Still, someone must obviously be residing here unknown to the village; and I was about to announce myself with a ‘Hello, there!’ when I realised that, if so, they must be purposely in hiding - perhaps from the Law - and closed my lips. It was then that I glanced down and saw the little hand-marks in the dust on the red tiles. They made definite tracks in all directions, crossing and re-crossing each other, many of them partially smudged out where the baby’s knees had followed, as it had evidently crawled on all fours. Some traversed the step on which I was standing, indicating that it had been outside the cottage as well - and quite recently too, for there was not a speck of dust on these more clearly visible impressions.

  It struck me then, with a shudder for which I could not quite account, since the matter was more odd than terrifying, that every single imprint I could see had been made by the child itself. Nowhere was there the least sign of an adult footprint, and yet such thick dust must have lain many days - I could have believed months - since the last sweeping.

  I frowned thoughtfully, and began tiptoeing across the flags to the foot of the stairs. After all, I was not going back at this point without solving the mystery, and if these queer people were, as they must be, fugitives from justice, they could not prosecute me for trespass, whilst, should they prove aggressive, I still had my ash plant and a strong arm. By this time the great storm which had gathered so speedily since I set out began to break, and, after a preliminary flash and distant rumble of thunder, a deluge of rain poured out of the sulphurous skies, its impact on the surrounding trees making a sullen, monotonous roar above which I could still faintly hear the thumps of the child playing in the upstairs room, and its shrill ‘Da, Da, Da’.

  My own muffled footfalls were quite inaudible, and so, hastening them, I stood a few seconds later on the almost pitch dark landing outside the hall open door of the room from which the noise was coming. There was more light inside the room than in the hall below, the surrounding trees on that side of the house being somewhat stunted, and I could see quite distinctly the half that was visible through the doorway. Like the rest of the place, it was totally unfurnished; but close against the wall
to the right I noticed with astonishment a tumbled heap of carcasses of what appeared to be hens, rabbits and other small creatures furred or feathered, some just white skeletons, but others more or less lately killed and strangely gashed and mutilated. A disgusting odour of rottenness emanated from the heap and the floorboards all around seemed to be streaked with great gouts of blood.

  I think it was at this juncture that I felt my first thrill of real horror as I asked myself into what hell hole I had wandered where a little child played among the putrid bodies of birds and beasts, and there was still no sign of parent or nurse, depraved beyond all measure though such a person must be.

  But the sight that met me as I at last nerved myself to peer furtively through the crack of the hinge was the most weirdly unbelievable of all. Seated in the middle of the floor with its back to me was the naked figure of a baby of. perhaps, two years, prattling wordlessly in its sing-song treble as it played with a pile of gleaming white objects arranged about it in a circle. One of these, a globular thing of peculiar configuration, it grasped in its right hand, and banged down noisily among the rest. Opposite, just discernible in the shadowy corner, sat the largest brindled cat I had ever seen, dreamily watching the play through half closed, flame-yellow eyes. I suppose it must have been many minutes that I stood there dumbfounded, staring at this incredible spectacle, before my dazed senses registered its full hideousness, and then a strangled gasp escaped me, for I saw that the toy in the child’s hand was a tiny human skull and that all the other white things were the various bones of an infant skeleton!

  Slight as it had been, my involuntary intake of breath broke the spell that had enfolded that dreadful room. With a hellish scream, the cat leapt to the open door, glared at me in bestial rage, and bounded past me down the stairs, whilst the child dropped the skull and sprang with almost equal agility to the heap of rotting carcasses. There it paused, and, with no further sign of panic, slowly turned its face to mine.

  That was not only the most ghastly moment of my life, but the most Faith killing. I would not have believed it possible for such stark fear to engulf a human mind without destroying it. One can visualise the malignant expression of a brute desperado who never knew care or kindness making his last stand for life. One can picture him equally unleashing all his lust, malice and cruelty on defenceless women in time of revolution. And one only looks at him with anger and loathing, tempered, if one is very, very just, by pity that his loving child soul was crushed before it could develop. Somehow one always knows - pretty fancies apart - that he was once a child, loving, and asking love.

  This Thing that confronted me in that place of death was spawn of hell - a foul thing, the greatest contradiction of Faith that human eyes have ever beheld! It had the body of a child, and the expression of the most frightful fiend. As I watched, petrified with terror, these thoughts tumbling tumultuously through my brain, I saw its malignant eyes light up with an unholy inner glow of triumph, and I saw one of its miniature hands delve down into the carcasses and come back bloody and holding a filthy old common kitchen knife. It gave a little babyish chuckle, infinitely horrible, and began to crawl towards me, and in the same moment I knew by some strange sense without daring to look away that the great cat was creeping stealthily up the stairs behind me, its head swinging from side to side, and its baleful yellow orbs fixed with dreadful purpose on the back of my head.

  Shrieking like a frightened beast, I sprang backwards, twisting in the air as I went, and the next thing I can remember is running on and on in the drenching rain down one of the forest paths, whipping my face to ribbons on the thorns and nearly bursting my tortured lungs.

  They told me when I was better that I said nothing understandable during my period of delirium, for which I was glad. As I stated at the commencement, I do not know if what I saw was a spirit or an unthinkable survival - that of the fifth child, born as the woman passed through the wood on her way to death on the moor. After all, chickens feed themselves from the moment of hatching.

  The fact to be remembered is, however, that I will not divulge the real name of the place, for if I did, I should somehow be compelled to join another search party - and I could not bear to look at the child again.

  The Dirk

  TRANTER’S MOOD as he turned in at the gate of ‘The Spinney’ on a certain early June evening is best described as one of very slightly qualified exultation. A private income, which he estimated at about £2,500 a year, for the rest of his life. No more sweating at uncongenial jobs under the galling dictatorship of employers. No more penurious interludes in slum lodgings harried by the constant fear of meeting creditors. Above all, this delightful country home in a corner of England unspoilt by the suburban builder, with its peaceful lovely gardens where he could indulge his poetic side in interminable waking dreams. And all achieved by one bold, well-planned stroke - the work of a single night.

  The gravel of the drive crunched familiarly as he strode up to the house between banks of flowering shrubs; and tendrils of creeper swaying here and there from the weathered brickwork as the evening breeze caught them up seemed to wave a welcome to the place he had known and loved in boyhood. Always a haven, the old house still drowsed on, oblivious to the march of industry and growth of cities - an old-world refuge of magic memories unbroken, surely, in their tenor of peace, but for that one night six months ago.

  And that, thought Tranter, as another picture sprang into his mind, must be outweighed by the older associations. He shrugged, then straightened his back, and fumbled for the key. This was no time to ponder an isolated flaw in the serene history of his inheritance.

  But ponder it he must, for control of the muscles is easier than control of thought, and despite his will a second picture kept super-imposing itself upon the scene before him - the picture of the same house, not softly golden in slanting sun-rays, but blackly outlined against a December night sky, its windows dimly lighted from within, and the dead body of his brother drooping over the sill of one that stood open to the rain and wind. Oh well, if this one memory of all would persist, better to meet it and reconstruct the whole thing in his imagination as he had done a hundred times since, but, this time, in the actual setting of the event. Then his sense of proportion could re-assert itself and relegate it to its proper place as the briefest episode in his long association with the house, and therefore the least deserving of recollection.

  He was not surprised by the darkness and the faintly musty smell when he opened the front-door, for the building had been closed and shuttered for nearly half a year, but he frowned at the thin veil of dust on the switch-board as he snapped on the lights. Somehow he had expected there would be no pollution so far from the abomination of factories and arterial roads.

  Not stopping to remove his hat or raincoat. Tranter made straight for the door on his left which opened into what had been his brother’s study. Here too he switched on the lights and glanced alertly about him. Everything was as he last remembered it, a tribute to the thoroughness of the detective officers on completion of their search for clues. He walked over to the shuttered window and bent down. Someone had carefully cleansed the woodwork where the stain had been. There was nothing to remind him unpleasantly of the murder - only that wretchedly insistent mental image that would obtrude itself. Well, it was a pity that violence had been necessary, but it was fair. John had had all the enjoyment of the house and the money for years, whilst the younger brother had been fobbed off at their father’s death with a beggarly £5,000 - enough, as the will had suggested, to set him up tor life if judiciously invested in a business of his own. The younger brother glanced again at the window-sill and smiled wryly. Now it was his turn. He had never had, as he understood things, a business type of mind, and the legacy would not have brought in a living income from public investments. He had been too wise to ‘blue’ it, but he had tried to double it - by the time-honoured methods - and when it had all vanished his brother had not only refused to help him, but had taken it upon hi
mself to censure him.

  That had been the real trouble with John. He had been practical to the point of stolidity-, had lacked all sympathy with artistic souls, and could not understand their incapacity to compete in the cheating and haggling of commercial life. Why, he had been so infernally unromantic that he would have been just as happy in some damned suburb doing what he considered his duty, had their positions been reversed.

  The present heir was better fitted to bestow upon ‘The Spinney’ the appreciation it deserved. The present, heir! It was fortunate that their father, in his desire that the line should continue, had so framed his will as to embrace the possible succession of the younger son, but it had forced the issue when John became engaged.

  Tranter felt for and lit a cigarette. He had already gone far in that mental readjustment to accomplish which he had planned the visit prior to the arrival of his domestic staff. The crime - he clicked his tongue at the word - had been brilliantly simple in execution, neither over-elaborate, nor bunglingly amateurish. There lay the advantage of the imaginative temperament. He had motored from London with false number-plates salved from a scrap-dealer’s yard, on a night when he knew that visitors would be unlikely, parked his car on the edge of an adjacent common, and walked to the house in a pair of shoes, which, having never previously worn, he was not known to possess. Crossing the lawn, he had tapped on the study window and slowly across to the empty hearth. There would be a cheerful fire in it the following night when, after the wedding arranged to satisfy local susceptibilities, he and Vera moved into their new domain. Incidentally, she should be along at any moment now, having promised to walk up from her rooms in the village where she was staying in preparation for the ceremony.