Dark Encounters: Ghost Stories

by William Croft Dickinson

  Curia burgi de S. tenta ibidem in pretorio ejusdem per Alexandrum Bannerman et Johannem Blar ballivos dicti burgi . . .

  ‘The most interesting entries are those under the dates 17th November 1573 and 20th April 1574,’ he continued.

  It did not take me long to find the first entry to which Lindsay referred, and at once I realized the reason for his own interest in this record of the past. Couched in the legal phraseology of the time, I read that the Nunnery, which had been ‘unoccupeit sen it was last purgeit’, was now ‘much decayit and abil hastilie to fall doun’, and that therefore the provost, bailies, dean of guild and town council had given permission to Andro Black, mason, to ‘tak the stanes thairof’ at the ‘sicht of the dene of gild’ for the ‘bigging’ of a house on a piece of land ‘boundit’ . . . and thereafter followed the ‘gate’ and the boundaries of the land to east and to west.

  I looked up and caught Lindsay’s eye.

  ‘That’s your house, all right,’ I said. ‘The boundaries are quite definite. That is, if Andrew Black did take the stones and build.’

  ‘Oh, he took the stones, right enough,’ Lindsay answered, ‘and he built. Hence The Monal, in which you can now recognize the Latin moniale, or nunnery. But read the other entry, for 20th April 1574, and then you’ll see why we have a ghost.’

  Quickly I turned the leaves to the entry for 20th April 1574. But this time the passage I was meant to read lay not in the formal record of the sitting of the court, but in a scribbled memorandum made by the clerk at the foot of the page. And there, in a couple of lines, the clerk had noted that ‘intimation’ was to be made to the minister anent the bones found by Andro Black between the north wall of the Nunnery and two of the pillars there.

  ‘You see what that implies?’ queried Lindsay.

  ‘You mean that Black had come across the remains of a nun who had been immured?’

  ‘I’m afraid so. For although part of the north wall and some of the piers are still standing in the ruins of the Nunnery, it would appear that Black did not hesitate to use part of the wall and those two pillars. In fact he seems to have used them for one of the walls of your room, and the stones and piers he used must have been those where the remains were found. The bones of an immured nun never troubled that thrifty builder. But they seem to have troubled our last two visitors, both of whom slept in your room.’

  ‘Queer sounds?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes. Nothing serious. Just a faint insistent knocking that defies identification and that gradually grows fainter and fainter until it dies away.’

  ‘Well, that doesn’t sound too bad,’ I replied. ‘And I’m quite ready to sleep in your “pillared room”. A ghostly tapping will be a new experience, and especially so now that I know the whole history of the knocking ghost.’

  ‘Good,’ answered Lindsay. ‘I had an idea you would be interested; though naturally I thought it best to word my letter as carefully as I could.’

  We left the study and joined Mrs Lindsay in a small drawing-room that overlooked a long restful garden similar, I thought, to that of the house in St Andrews where the ill-fated Mary Stewart was said to have drawn her own bow in an archery contest with one of the douce citizens. As we entered, Mrs Lindsay said the one word: ‘Well?’

  ‘Well it is,’ I replied. ‘Your spectre seems to be no more than a knocking on the wall; and I’m ready to listen to most things once.’

  ‘That’s all right then,’ she answered. ‘But neither Sandy nor I could be absolutely sure. And although this seems a big house, actually the “pillared room” is the only room we can offer to our guests.’

  Our talk drifted to other topics, and for a while the ‘pillared room’ was ‘clean forgot’. But about half-past eleven, when I rose to retire for the night, Mrs Lindsay gave me a quick, questioning glance.

  ‘It’s all right,’ I assured her. ‘Tomorrow you shall have my own version of the knocking nun.’

  As I slowly undressed, I wandered round my ‘pillared room’ examining its walls, and aimlessly testing here and there the panelling or stone. For when the house had been taken over and restored by the University, the plaster had been stripped from the walls and replaced by some lovely old panelling which ran all round the room, save on the one side where the two piers with the stone wall between them stood uncovered and bare. ‘Strange,’ I remember murmuring to myself, ‘it almost looks as if the workmen themselves knew the story of the nun immured.’ And with that, I climbed into my bed, switched off the bedside lamp and, untroubled by midnight fancies, was soon fast asleep.

  What first awakened me I cannot say. Indeed I cannot say whether I was awake, or whether all that followed was merely a dream. All I can tell you is that, awake or dreaming, I heard the noise. To call it a knocking would be misleading. Rather it was a steady scrape and tap-tap exactly similar to the sounds a blind man would hear were he to stand by a bricklayer at work. And the pauses were the same — the same scrape of the mortar gathered up, the same tap-tap on the brick to seat it firmly in its place, and then the same scrape of the trowel to remove the mortar from the outer face of the wall. So it went on: scrape, tap-tap, scrape. But brick by brick? No! With a sudden surge of horror I realized that I was listening stone by stone to the immurement of the nun; listening to a grim entombment of the living flesh, conjured up from some dark shades beyond the fathoming of man. And as that harrowing noise went on I felt my nerves beginning to give way. That inexorable scrape, tap-tap, scrape, which meant so much and yet which left so much more to be imagined, was too horrible to be endured.

  Then, just when my nerves seemed stretched too far, a bell began to ring, sharp and shrill. Strangely enough, the new and wholly different sound seemed to bring immediate relief: partly, perhaps, because it took my mind from that other and more awful sound; partly, perhaps, because I realized that although the bell was ringing somewhere in the house, it was not ringing within my room. Urged by some impulse that it is impossible to explain, I slipped out of bed, made for my bedroom door, opened it, and felt my way on to the dark landing outside. The bell was ringing downstairs — strident, persistent, demanding immediate answer. And suddenly, all at once, I realized it was the telephone. The telephone and nothing more. But, instead of the normal double-ring and pause, the bell was ringing continuously as though its summons were too urgent to allow for any intermission.

  Moving as quickly as I could in an unfamiliar house, I descended the stairs and felt for the table on which I had noticed the telephone when I first arrived. I took up the receiver and at once the ringing ceased. Bending down, I said: ‘Yes? This is Dr Lindsay’s house.’

  But through that instrument came no normal and reassuring voice. Instead there came the sound of a voice, far distant or strangely muffled, intoning some phrases in measured and sonorous Latin. Then came recognition! I was listening to the concluding dread sentences of an excommunication: ‘And as this candle is now extinguished so may her light be extinguished before Him who liveth for ever and ever. May her soul be sunk in the nethermost pit of Hell ever there to remain. So be it. So be it. Amen.’

  Again so much was heard but so much more was left to be imagined. Nor did the horror end there. For, as my mind took in that awful scene, there came through Lindsay’s telephone a sound such as that which might be made by many candles dashed to the ground and so extinguished, followed at once by the slow tolling of a bell, deep-toned and relentless.

  Had I really heard that grim echo from the past? Had those sounds really come to me through the telephone in my hand? Fumbling to replace the receiver in the dark, I dropped it on the table, and there I let it lie. I stood trembling, my lips still repeating the closing sentences of the excommunication, my ears still ringing with the tolling of the bell. I turned, and struggled painfully back upstairs, only to halt, with renewed fear, as I reached the threshold of my room. Suddenly, I felt cold, bitterly cold, and I realized that I was shivering from head to foot. I must get back into my bed at any cost! With somethin
g between a stumble and a rush I reached my bed and hastened to draw the blankets round me — and perhaps over me! But somehow they seemed perverse and obstinate, and I was shivering more violently than ever. I sat upright in my bed and strove to gather the sheets and blankets into some sort of order. And then I felt the wind! It was blowing hard outside, almost a full gale, and strong gusts of wind were beating upon me from the open window. I was certainly awake. Awake, and sitting up in bed; holding the blankets in front of me, and shivering with cold.

  Had I dreamed it all? Time to think over that later. Quickly I slipped out of bed and across the room to shut the window. And there was the noise again! Scrape, tap-tap, scrape. For a second I stood paralysed. But now came an overwhelming surge of relief. The scraping noise came from the window — the catch was giving slightly to and fro with each gust of wind; and the tap-tap came from something loose outside, something that was tapping against the window, likewise with every gust of wind. So that explained it all! I shut the window and went back to my bed, calling myself every kind of fool. But just before a refreshing dreamless sleep intervened I remember asking myself, ‘But what of that telephone call? How does that fit in?’

  Henderson leaned back in his chair, and the tension relaxed. Yet before any of us could speak he continued:

  ‘I said there was a coincidence, however; and here it is.

  ‘We were having breakfast next morning and I had just finished the story of my dream.

  ‘“How horrible!” exclaimed Mrs Lindsay. “What an awful night!”

  ‘“Not a nice dream, by any means,” added Lindsay. “Yet it fits in with all the usual theories. We had been discussing the immurement of the nun and Andrew Black’s use of the piers and the stones. It only needed the scrape of the window-catch and that tapping noise — and there’s your dream.”

  ‘“All of it?” I asked quietly.

  ‘“Why? . . . What? . . . What do you mean?” asked Lindsay.

  ‘“I suppose it’s only an adjunct to the dream,” I answered, “but somehow or other I can’t fit in that telephone call. Why should I dream that? The continuous ringing of the telephone bell, instead of the usual short double-ring and pause; the concluding sentences of the excommunication; and then the extinction of the candles and the tolling of the bell. There could be no association of ideas there. We had not mentioned excommunication, and the thought of excommunication had never occurred to me.”

  ‘A slight cry escaped Mrs Lindsay, and she put her hand up to her mouth.

  ‘“Why, my dear . . .” began Lindsay.

  ‘“I’ve just remembered,” she said, almost in a whisper, and with a startled look in her eyes. “When I came in to prepare the breakfast this morning, I noticed the telephone receiver was lying on the table, and I replaced it. I wondered then who had left it like that. But in your dream,” she continued, turning to me, “you fumbled with the receiver, you dropped it on the table, and you left it there!”

  ‘And as the three of us sat at the breakfast table, each battling with the impossibility of every strange surmise, a bell rang, sharp and shrill.

  ‘I think we all jumped, involuntarily. But it was only the bell of the front door. The bell rang again. Mrs Lindsay rose to answer it, and, as she left the room, she left the door ajar. We heard her open the front door, and we heard a voice:

  ‘“Good morning, ma’am. I’m from the Post Office. Your telephone wire is down. Came down in the night with the wind. But we’ll soon connect you again. The men are on the job now, though there’s a fair stretch of it to be repaired.”

  ‘There was a murmured reply from Mrs Lindsay. Then the voice began again:

  ‘“No! It won’t be a big job. But it’s queer the way it came down. You won’t believe it, ma’am, but the wire from your house was blown clean off its course; right across the ruins of the old Nunnery; and queerer still, it was coiled there so tightly round one of the old pillars by the north wall that we had quite a job to get it free again.”

  ‘I looked at Lindsay, and our eyes met. Trailing across the ruins of the old Nunnery, coiled round one of the piers so tightly that it could hardly be released.

  ‘“And that’s the explanation of your tapping noise,” said Lindsay, striving to sound as matter-of-fact as he could. “I wondered what could be loose outside your window. And of course it was the telephone wire. It’s connected to that corner of the house.”

  ‘I didn’t answer, and I had a shrewd suspicion that Lindsay didn’t expect me to.

  ‘Then, literally, I could see him pulling himself together. “And I suppose a broken wire like that might easily lead to some kind of short-circuit which would give a continuous ring. That’s possible, isn’t it?”

  ‘Still I didn’t answer him, and still he persisted. “Yes, it all fits in now. Just a dream, my friend, just a dream. A damned bad one, I’ll admit. And this business of the wire stretching across the ruins of the old Nunnery, and tightly coiled round one of the remaining columns there, is simply a strange coincidence. Coincidence and nothing more. After all, haven’t we all rather jumped to conclusions about those bones found by old Andrew Black? There’s nothing to prove they were the remains of an immured nun. And would a sentence of excommunication be pronounced before or during an immurement? More than that, is there a single recorded instance in Scotland of the immurement of a nun?”’

  Again Henderson moved in his chair.

  ‘I didn’t answer him,’ he continued. ‘I didn’t ask him how he would explain that telephone-receiver which Mrs Lindsay had found still lying on the table. I didn’t ask him if that also was a coincidence. More than that, I’m certain he was relieved that I didn’t ask. Perhaps there are some questions it is better not to ask. Perhaps there are some experiences into which we should not inquire too closely. And perhaps because of that, I have never sought to know whether a sentence of excommunication would be pronounced at the time of the immurement of a nun.’

  THE WORK OF EVIL

  EVER SINCE his return to duty from his long illness, Maitland Allan, our Keeper of Printed Books, had been singularly reluctant to grant any access to the Special Collections which were in his charge; so much so that the Rare Book Room in the Library had become well-nigh as sacred and as difficult to enter as the secret courts of an Eastern harem. Thus, when he suddenly said to me: ‘Come, and I’ll show you the whole Collection,’ I was taken completely by surprise.

  I had asked for an early Italian work by Aeneas Sylvius. The assistant at the library counter had disappeared with my form. Allan had come back with him. And now, strangely, I was to be shown ‘the whole Collection’. Was this simply a piece of unexpected good fortune? Or had the old man some ulterior purpose? I had noticed during the last two or three weeks that he had made a point of stopping to talk to me whenever we met in a room or corridor. Had he singled me out in some way from the rest of my colleagues? And if so, why? Everyone knew that his recent illness had made him a little ‘queer’.

  Opening a door marked ‘Staff Only’, Allan led the way through a maze of book-lined passages until at last, passing a heavy steel door, we stopped before an inner iron grille. This he unlocked and, stepping aside, he ushered me into the room.

  I glanced around with curiosity; but he gave me time for no more than a quick glance.

  ‘There they are,’ he said, pointing to one of the stacks. ‘An extraordinary collection. A frightening collection. The Lucretia and Eurialus which you want happens to be in it, but it’s very much of a stranger there. For the rest, I hate them,’ and his voice rose nervously as if in emphasis.

  I walked over to the stack, but I noticed he did not accompany me. There, as I saw two long rows of beautiful bindings, I murmured something of my appreciation and delight, Reverently taking down one volume after another, I examined the bindings more closely. All were of rich leather elaborately tooled in a variety of intricate patterns in which whorls and strange cabalistic signs predominated. I also turned to the title-pages: every work
was either an incunabulum or of a date early in the sixteenth century. But every work was on the same theme. I ran my eye along the shelves, picking out the volumes which bore titles on their spines. Still the same theme.

  ‘Why!’ I exclaimed, turning towards him; ‘they are all on black magic and necromancy. What you might call a collection of evil; or at any rate a collection of evil intent. Who on earth gathered together all this devilry? It looks as though someone was striving hard to find something which at last would work.’

  ‘An unfortunate young man whose history you know as well as I do,’ answered Allan, slowly. ‘John, third Earl of Gowrie. You may remember that after studying here he became a law student at Padua, and was there said to have dabbled in magic and witchcraft. Well, here’s his library — or part of it. And I wish it had never survived.’

  Again I noticed the nervous pitch in his voice.

  ‘Well,’ I replied, lightly, ‘if he did dabble in the forbidden art he must have found it pretty ineffective. The very number of his books shows that. One would have thought that constant experiment followed by constant failure and disappointment would have been bound to bring disillusion.’

  For a full minute Allan made no reply. Instead, he gazed at me with an odd look in his eyes.

  ‘“Ineffective”!’ he said, at last. ‘I wish to God you were right! Do you see that safe over there? It contains one further book belonging to Gowrie’s collection. No one knows it is there but myself — and now you. That book is the one book which, at last, Gowrie found would work. Listen to me — you must listen to me — and I’ll tell you a tale of devilry that has tormented me ever since this collection came in. Then you’ll believe in “effectiveness”.’

  He had pointed to a small safe in a corner of the room. I made a step towards it, but he seized me by the arm.