Dark Encounters: Ghost Stories

by William Croft Dickinson

  But I am going much too fast. Long before Mowat was out of the nursing-home it had become one of my major tasks to try to induce him to tell his tale. It was clear that if only he could unburden himself, his recovery, and particularly his recovery in mind, would not be long delayed. But the terror had bitten deep, and I daren’t tell my own tale first, lest, instead of encouraging him, I should only increase the torture of his mind. At long last, however, I induced him to speak, and the tale, when it came, was much the same as mine. There was this difference, however: Mowat, terrified and powerless, even as I had felt powerless, had seen the face in the mirror; he had seen it slowly draw nearer, the hate in its eyes seeming to burn into his soul; he had felt the hands at his throat; and then, suddenly, those hands had tightened into a grip, powerful, relentless and strangling. With that, he thought he gave a cry before unconsciousness intervened. ‘But what was “it”?’ he asked me. ‘And how did “it” get in?’

  I noticed his use of the word ‘it’. So he also had doubted the nature of his visitor. But the only answer I could give him was to tell him of my own experience, to ask him to forgive me for allowing him to use the room, and, above all, to assure him that he had finished with Cairntoul for good.

  After that unburdening, Mowat recovered quickly, and, as I have said, he was posted direct to Southampton, far removed from the Province of Mar. Meantime, at the castle, we sedulously avoided the Room, but also we took one positive action. We smashed that mirror to fragments and, having carefully collected the fragments, we threw them into an enormous fire, specially built-up for the occasion, where we watched them melt and fuse. Later we collected the shapeless glass nodules and, with the ashes, buried them deep in the earth. Later still, I had one further brief passage with Mother Lum, but her pronouncement, far from being helpful, only increased the mystery.

  I had come back from visiting Mowat in Aberdeen. Meeting her outside the iron yett, I said cheerfully: ‘Well, Mr Mowat seems to be progressing famously now.’

  ‘Mowat, did ye say?’ she cried with a wild look in her eyes. ‘A Mowat is it? May heaven save him!’ And with that she hobbled away.

  ‘Heaven has,’ I muttered, somewhat irreverently, as I cast innumerable though silent maledictions on her retreating figure.

  And that, as you can see, took me no further.

  Then, early in June 1940, the War Office suddenly decided to disband my team. We left Cairntoul and, in the urgency of new tasks, the mystery of Black Dougal and the Turret Room gradually lost its hold and became a bad memory and little more.

  With the end of Hitler and the surrender of Japan, I returned here to the humdrum labours of my Anthropology Department; and yet it was here, in the academic peace of the University, that I learned what had previously been denied.

  I had been back perhaps a week or ten days when Henderson, of the History Department, asked me if I would give a lecture to his ‘mediæval’ students. Naturally I agreed, and, during the course of the conversation, I happened to mention that I had been stationed for a while at Cairntoul in Mar.

  ‘Did you see the ghost of Black Dougal?’ he asked.

  I pride myself that I didn’t start.

  ‘Why?’ I said. ‘Is the castle haunted?’

  ‘It’s supposed to be,’ he answered, cautiously, ‘and with one of the best authenticated ghosts we have. There’s quite a story behind it.’

  And, to conclude, the story I got from Henderson was roughly this:

  Some time about the middle of the sixteenth century, when the Mowats of Cairntoul and the local branch of the Camerons had been long at feud, an attempt was made to end the feud by a Mowat-Cameron marriage. So Mowat of Cairntoul married the daughter of Cameron, but, after a week or so, when the Camerons had gone home, Mowat brutally strangled his wife and then sent defiance to the Camerons.

  I should add that Mowat was supposed to be mad, but naturally the Carnerons were paying no attention to that. They turned out to a man, and, Cairntoul being what I have already described to you, they were wiped out to a man, and nary a footing did they get on that staircase. Wiped out to a man, yes; but there was a young brother to the murdered bride — a boy, Dougal, then about six years old. And upon Dougal fell the whole burden of a new and a more bitter feud. As he grew up, the boy, and then the man, nursed his revenge — and so came the name ‘Black Dougal’, from the hate that burned in his eyes.

  But there was little chance for Black Dougal in the Mowat country, unless he went there by night; and by night the mad Mowat sat and laughed in the Turret Room where he had strangled his bride. Yet mightn’t that give Black Dougal his chance? One night, in the gathering dusk, and the manner of it no one knows, Dougal made that impossible climb up the castle wall, right up to the beacon-turret, only to be beaten at the end by the overhang of the turret’s corbelling. Struggling to breast the corbelling he fell — a sheer forty feet at least — and was killed outright.

  At that Mad Mowat only laughed the louder. But, within a week, he had caused an iron grille to be made to enclose the open turret at its top. Within another week, he was found dead in the Room — strangled, as there he had strangled his bride.

  ‘And now you know why never again will I look into a mirror at twilight,’ continued Drummond, after a pause. ‘Yet there is one further point which makes it all more puzzling still. I’m convinced that no one could climb that outer wall to the beacon-turret. Yet one of our signallers, an honest, sober, and thoroughly unimaginative fellow, had other views.

  ‘It appears that about the time when we were rushing upstairs, after hearing Mowat’s strangled cry, this signaller was walking back to the castle after making some adjustment to the aerial in the old dovecot. Happening to look up to the turret, he was astounded to see a man hanging there by his hands. Then, to his horror, the man dropped like a stone.

  ‘For a second our signaller stood still. Then he ran forward as fast as he could. But, to his astonishment, the climber, who should have been killed outright, picked himself up, ran round the corner of the castle, and out into the open country beyond.

  ‘With a shout (which, of course, in our own preoccupation we didn’t hear) the signaller went in pursuit. Doggedly, in the gathering darkness, he followed his man. Before long, he could see him only against the light in the sky. The man came to a small hill, breasted it, stood silhouetted for a moment on the top, and then disappeared down the other side. In turn our signaller breasted the hill but, when he came to the top, his quarry was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘Admittedly it was dark; and admittedly a man might easily take cover in a fold of the ground. But later I was to discover that the Cameron country started on the far side of that hill.’

  THE EVE OF ST BOTULPH

  I HAD BEEN LECTURING to my class on chronicles and annals, and I had called their attention to a memorandum in the Chronicle of Melrose recording the loan of certain folios of that chronicle to the Abbey of Dundrennan. Thereafter I had spoken of ‘borrowings’ and of ‘common sources’, and I had even tried a mild joke by referring to Max Beerbohm’s comment that, whether or not history repeated itself, historians certainly repeated one another. With the conclusion of the hour the class had dispersed, and I was making my way across the quadrangle to the University Library when I was intercepted by one of the students:

  ‘May I ask a question, sir? We know that Dundrennan borrowed almost the whole of the Chronicle of Melrose. Did it borrow to read, or to copy? Was there a Chronicle of Dundrennan?’

  ‘We don’t know of one,’ I answered briefly, excusing myself, for I was particularly anxious to look up an article by Ferguson in the Scottish Historical Review, and to take some notes from it, before attending one of those tiresome committees which, under present dispensations, absorb far too much of the teacher’s time.

  But I was destined to ‘cut’ my committee and to learn, for the first time, that there had been a Chronicle of Dundrennan; more than that, I was destined to learn not only of its discovery, but also o
f its subsequent mysterious loss.

  I had just started on Ferguson’s article, and I had already noted two wild assertions wholly unsupported by the evidence, when Mair, our Librarian, interrupted me.

  ‘I thought you’d like to see this,’ he said, putting a folded packet of papers in front of me.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked, casting a hasty glance at the packet. Then I looked more closely, and my mind took in what had caught my eye. Written in a neat hand on the outside of the packet were the words: ‘To be opened in the event of my failure to return. Alexander Hutton.’

  ‘However did this come into the library?’ I continued, pushing aside my Scottish Historical Review. ‘And who was Alexander Hutton?’

  ‘Oh! Alexander Hutton’s all right,’ answered Mair, easily. ‘He was a minor antiquary of the early nineteenth century. As for the packet, I found it among General Donaldson’s papers. He too was a minor antiquary of about the same time, and all his books and papers were presented to us after his death. Actually I was looking for a description of the Cross Kirk at Peebles, which I knew was in amongst his papers, when I came across this.’

  ‘Have you read it?’ I queried.

  ‘No,’ replied Mair. ‘I haven’t even opened it. I’ll admit I was strongly tempted to open it, especially after reading that superscription, but then I thought that perhaps I should bring it before the Library Committee. However, you are on the Committee. What do you think? There would surely be no harm in opening it. Hutton must have been dead for at least a hundred years.’

  ‘No harm at all,’ I answered quickly. ‘Clearly Hutton won’t return now, so, equally clearly, we are justified in obeying his injunction.’ And with that I took up a paperknife, broke the seal, and carefully unfolded the packet.

  There were four sheets of paper covered with writing in the same neat hand.

  Mair sat down beside me and together we began to read:

  Kirkcudbright

  If this is read by eyes other than mine it will mean that I have died as strange a death as can come to any man. It is my intention, when I return, to burn this document as being simply an account of a foolish fantasy. But there is always the possibility — strange as it may seem — that I may not return from my adventure. Accordingly I leave this record. If it is to be read by others, it must be interpreted by them as best they may.

  First, however, I must give some account of how I come to be in Kirkcudbright.

  I had long been of opinion that the Abbey of Dundrennan had kept its own chronicle. To give my reasons would be irrelevant to my present purpose and would take too long. Moreover, if I return from my projected adventure, my arguments will be developed elsewhere. Suffice it to say that when, about a month ago, General Donaldson wrote to me, announcing the discovery of an early manuscript chronicle in the attic of an old house here in Kirkcudbright, I knew that my opinion would be proved correct. And so it was. For three days I have barely left my room in this inn; for three days I have been closeted with a manuscript which is none other than the original codex of the Chronicle of Dundrennan.

  At first General Donaldson would have had me stay with him; and I would have been glad to accept his hospitality. But his wife, I knew, had been failing for some time, and the General himself, now nearly ninety, was far from enjoying his former robust health. I knew this excellent inn well; I had stayed here before; here I could stay again.

  ‘Well, stay at the inn, if you must,’ General Donaldson had said. ‘And take the manuscript there. You can then carry it off to Edinburgh for as long as you may want to borrow it. But if you are to stay for more than a day or two — to get what our romantic writers now call “atmosphere” — we shall hope you will find time to dine with us at least once before you leave.’

  ‘Atmosphere’! That word is now much in my mind as I write; and should it happen that this is to be read by others, they will well appreciate the reasons why.

  For two whole days I was fully and happily occupied with my manuscript. But now all that has changed, and I am disturbed and distracted. For today, for the first time, I have examined those three strange passages. Today I have paid a visit to the north grange of the Abbey, and there ‘imagined’ things. Tonight I shall visit the north grange again, ‘on the eve of St Botulph’.

  Writing these events in their proper order, I must record that this morning, on opening the manuscript of the Chronicle, I noticed on one of the early folios (the twenty-first folio, verso, to be exact) something that I had previously overlooked. There, following an account of affairs in Galloway, I noticed for the first time that the immediately following four lines had been expunged and, in their place, had been inserted a brief list of the reigns of the Scottish Kings from Malcolm II to Alexander II. Before, I had paid no attention to that uninteresting list of kings; in fact, I had skipped it. But now, noticing for the first time that it had been overwritten, I was naturally curious to know what had been so carefully expunged. Try as I would, however, the most I could make of the original entry ran, in translation:

  on the eve of St Botulph .....................

  .................. a lay-brother ……………

  saw ………. the north ……… abbot

  ............ devil ............... prayers

  Then, remembering that I had also skipped other and somewhat similar lists, I ran my eye hastily down the next folio and there, under the entries for the following year, again I saw a list (this time a list of the Popes, and their dates, from Urban II to Innocent IV) again covering an expunged passage, and this time one which had run to no less than eight full lines. Once more I strove to decipher the original entry; and this time, owing to the way in which the later scribe had been compelled to spread out his list of Popes, I was much more successful. This time, in translation, the entry ran:

  on the eve of St Botulph the same lay-brother when returning to the north grange by the way that traverses the wood was spoken to by a stranger of soft step and dark habit who for a space accompanied him ………. candle ............ die by fire ………. by many signs and words ......... escaped with difficulty ………. entered the grange and there ………. Telling this to the abbot ………. for the second time ………. devil ………. by prayers

  Wondering vaguely what all this could mean, I glanced quickly down the page, and then overleaf, looking for a similar entry for the following year. And there it was! This time the list was one of the dates of the foundations of the Cistercian houses in Scotland and their first abbots, and the expunged passage was much shorter. This third entry, moreover, had been too carefully expunged and the inserted list of houses and dates and abbots was too full. All that I could decipher was:

  on the eve of St Botulph the ..................

  same lay-brother .................................

  .................. by fire ………..

  ……………….. that same night

  But I also noticed that the two immediately following lines, which had not been expunged, had no initial capital letter, and, being in the hand of the original entry, had apparently formed its conclusion. And those two immediately following lines ran:

  the north grange of the abbey was burned

  and in it the lay-brother lost his life

  then some expunged words which appeared to have been: May God receive him in the celestial choir, and for which the later scribe had substituted: through the badly fixing of a candle.

  Once more, and with eager curiosity, I looked through the entries for the following years, but no further lists had been inserted. No further passages had been expunged. The tale, such as it had been, was ended.

  For a time I tried to puzzle out the story of this unfortunate lay-brother, his encounter with the Devil, and his death in the burning of the northern grange. Pulling out a sheet of paper, I wrote down the entries as I have given them here. Clearly on the first occasion, on the eve of St Botulph, the unhappy lay-brother thought he had been approached by the Devil, and, seekin
g the help of the abbot, had apparently been counselled to prayers. On the second occasion, again on the eve of St Botulph, the dark stranger, the Devil, had openly accosted the lay-brother, had probably tempted him, and had accompanied his temptation with a threat of death by fire. Again the abbot had apparently replied that the Evil One could be overcome only by prayer. Finally, next year, the lay-brother had died by fire in the destruction of the north grange. He had died the death that had been threatened; but whether or not he had met the dark stranger for a third time before his death was not recorded. His death that same night had prevented any account of his closing day.

  So much for the expunged passages. But why had they been expunged? It seemed more than likely that a later abbot had deemed those entries unfit for the Abbey’s Chronicle. The north grange had caught fire, and the lay-brother therein had lost his life, through carelessness in the fixing of a candle. That, and no more. The Chronicle had been purged of a record that would assign too great a power to the Prince of Darkness.

  Then, moved solely by a scholar’s curiosity, I turned up a list of Saints’ days. The feast of St Botulph fell on the 17th of June. And today was the 16th! Tonight would be the eve of St Botulph and the anniversary of the adventure of the lay-brother of Dundrennan.

  At first I was tempted to walk over to General Donaldson’s house and to share my discovery with him. Then came a sudden desire to keep my discovery to myself. It was about eleven o’clock in the morning. I determined to walk over to the Abbey lands forthwith and to try to find the ruins of the northern grange Then, perhaps, if I felt bold enough, I would again visit the grange when evening fell — I would visit the grange on the eve of St Botulph to see if any dark stranger would accompany me.