Gaslit Horror
Page 20
“Oh, indeed. I don’t see, however, what the—.”
“Great heavens! You mean to say that you don’t see—Oh, you will have your joke.”
“I hope I will have one eventually; I can’t say that I perceive much chance of one at present, however. You’ll not give us much of your interesting society during the week of our treat, as you call it.”
“I’ll give you as much of it as I can spare—more than you’ll be likely to relish, perhaps. A week’s a long time, Jim.”
“ ‘Time travels at divers paces with divers persons,’ my friend. I suppose she’s as lovely as any of the others of past years?”
“As lovely! Jim, she’s just the—”
“Don’t trouble yourself over the description. I have a vivid recollection of the phrases you employed in regard to the others. There was Lily, and Gwen, and Bee, and—yes, by George! there was a fourth; her name was Nelly, or—”
“All flashes in the pan, my friend. I didn’t know my own mind in those old days; but now, thank heaven!—Oh, you’ll agree with me when you see her. This is the real thing and no mistake.”
He was good enough to give me a genuine lover’s description of the young woman, whose name was, he said, Sylvia St. Leger; but it did not differ materially from the descriptions which had come from him in past days, of certainly four other girls for whom he had, he imagined, entertained a devotion strong as death itself. Alas! his devotion had not survived a single year in any case.
When we arrived at the hotel, after a drive of eight miles from the railway station, we found Tom Singleton waiting for us rather impatiently, and in a quarter of an hour we were facing an excellent dinner. We were the only guests at the hotel, for though it was picturesquely situated on the high bank of the river, and was doubtless a delightful place for a sojourn in summer, yet in winter it possessed few attractions to casual visitors.
After dinner I strolled over the house, and found, to my surprise, that the old walls of the Priory were practically intact. The kitchen was also unchanged, but the great refectory was now divided into four rooms. The apartments upstairs had plainly been divided in the same way by brick partitions; but the outer walls, pierced with narrow windows, were those of the original Priory.
In the morning I made further explorations, only outside the building, and came upon the ruins of the old Priory tower; and then I perceived that only a small portion of the original building had been utilised for the hotel. The landlord, who accompanied me, was certainly no antiquarian. He told me that he had been “let in” so far as the hotel was concerned. He had been given to understand that the receipts for the summer months were sufficiently great to compensate for the absence of visitors during the winter; but his experience of one year had not confirmed this statement, made by the people from whom he had bought the place, and he had come to the conclusion that, as he had been taken in in the transaction, it was his duty to try to take in some one else in the same way.
“I only hope that I may succeed, sir,” he said, “but I’m doubtful about it. People are getting more suspicious every day.”
“You weren’t suspicious, at any rate,” said I.
“That I weren’t—more’s the pity, sir,” said he. “But it’ll take me all my time to get the place off my hands, I know. Ah, yes; it’s hard to get people to take your word for anything nowadays.”
For the next two days Tom Singleton and I were left a good deal together, the fact being that our friend Arthur parted from us after lunch and only returned in time for dinner, declaring upon each occasion that he had just passed the pleasantest day of his life. On Christmas Eve he came to us in high spirits, bearing with him an invitation from a lady who had attained distinction, through being the mother of Miss St. Leger, for us to spend Christmas Day at her house—it had already been pointed out to us by Arthur: it was a fine Georgian country house, named The Grange.
“I’ve accepted for you both,” said Arthur. “Mrs. St. Leger is a most charming woman, and her daughter—I don’t know if I mentioned that she had a daughter—well, if I omitted, I am now in a position to assure you that her daughter—her name is Sylvia—is possibly the most beautiful—But there’s no use trying to describe her; you’ll see her for yourselves tomorrow, and judge if I’ve exaggerated in the least when I say that the world does not contain a more exquisite creature.”
“Yes, one hour with her will be quite sufficient to enable us to pronounce an opinion on that point,” laughed Tom.
We remained smoking in front of the log fire that blazed in the great hearth, until about eleven o’clock, and then went to our rooms upstairs, after some horse-play in the hall.
My room was a small one at the beginning of the corridor, Arthur Jephson’s was alongside it, and at the very end of the corridor was Tom Singleton’s. All had at one time been one apartment.
Having walked a good deal during the day, I was very tired, and had scarcely got into bed before I fell asleep.
When I awoke it was with a start and a consciousness that something was burning. A curious red light streamed into the room from outside. I sprang from my bed in a moment and ran to the window. But before I had reached it the room was in darkness once more, and there came a yell of laughter, apparently from the next room.
For a moment I was paralyzed. But the next instant I had recovered my presence of mind. I believed that Arthur and Tom had been playing some of their tricks upon me. They had burnt a red light outside my window, and were roaring with laughter as they heard me spring out of bed.
That was the explanation of what I had seen and heard which first suggested itself to me; and I was about to return to bed when my door was knocked at and then opened.
“What on earth have you been up to?” came the voice of Arthur Jephson. “Have you set the bed-curtains on fire? If you have, that’s nothing to laugh at.”
“Get out of this room with your larking,” said I. “It’s a very poor joke that of yours, Arthur. Go back to your bed.”
He struck a light—he had a match-box in his hand—and went to my candle without a word. In a moment the room was faintly illuminated.
“Do you mean to say that you hadn’t a light here just now—a red light?” he cried.
“I had no light: a red light floated through the room, but it seemed to come from outside,” said I.
“And who was it laughed in that wild way?”
“I took it for granted that it was you and Tom who were about your usual larks.”
“Larks! No, I was about no larks, I can promise you. Good Lord! man, that laugh was something beyond a lark.” He seated himself on my bed. “Do you fancy it may have been some of the servants going about the stables with a carriage-lamp?” he continued. “There may have been a late arrival at the hotel, you know.”
“That’s not at all unlikely,” said I. “Yes, it may have been that, and the laughter may have been between the grooms.”
“I don’t hear any sound of bustle through the house or outside,” said he.
“The stables are not at this angle of the building,” said I. “We must merely have seen the light and heard that laughter as the carriage passed our angle. Anyhow, we’ll only catch cold if we lounge about in our pyjamas like this. You’d best get back to bed and let me do the same.”
“I don’t feel much inclined to sleep, but I’ll not prevent your having your night’s rest,” said he, resting. “I wonder is it near morning?”
I held the candle before the dial of my watch that hung above my bed.
“It’s exactly five minutes past twelve,” said I. “We’ve slept barely an hour.”
“Then the sooner I clear out the better it will be for both of us,” said he.
He went away slowly, and I heard him strike a match in his own room. He evidently meant to light his candle.
Some hours had passed before I fell into an uneasy sleep, and once more I was awakened by Arthur Jephson, who stood by my bedside. The morning light was in the room.
I tried to realize his words. Some moments had elapsed before I succeeded in doing so. I sprang from my bed and ran down the corridor to the room occupied by Tom Singleton. The landlord and a couple of servants were already there. They had burst in the door.
It was but too true: our poor friend lay on his bed with his body bent and his arms twisted as though he had been struggling desperately with someone at his last moment. His face, too, was horribly contorted, and his eyes were wide open.
“A doctor,” I managed to say.
“He’s already sent for, sir,” said the landlord.
In a few moments the doctor arrived.
“Cardiac attack,” said he. “Was he alone in the room? No, he can’t have been alone.”
“He was quite alone,” said Arthur. “I knocked at the door a quarter of an hour ago, but getting no answer, I tried to force the lock. It was too strong for me; but the landlord and the manservant who was bringing us our hot water burst in the door at my request.”
“And the window—was it fastened?” asked the doctor.
“It was secure, sir,” said the landlord.
“Ah, a sudden cardiac attack,” said the doctor.
There was, of course, an inquest, but as no evidence of foul play was forthcoming, the doctor’s phrase “cardiac attack” satisfied the jury, and a verdict of “death from natural causes” was returned.
Before I went back to town I examined the room in which our poor friend had died. On the side of one of the window-shutters there were four curious burnt marks. They gave one the impression that the shutter had at one time been grasped by a man wearing a red-hot gauntlet.
I started for India before the end of the year and remained there for eight months. Then I thought I would pay a visit to a sister of mine in Queensland. On my return at the end of the year I meant to stop at Cairo for a few weeks. On entering Shepheard’s Hotel I found myself face to face with Arthur Jephson and his wife—he called her Sylvia. They had been married in August, but their honeymoon seemed still to be in its first quarter. It was after Mrs. Jephson had retired, and when Arthur was sitting with me enjoying the cool of the night by the aid of a pretty strong cigar or two, that we ventured to allude to the tragic occurrence which marked our last time of meeting.
“I wish to beg of you not to make any allusion to that awful business in the hearing of my wife,” said Arthur. “In fact I must ask you not to allude to that fearful room in the Priory in any way.”
“I will be careful not to do so,” said I. “You have your own reasons, I suppose, for giving me this warning.”
“I have the best of reasons, Jim. She too had her experience of that room, and it was as terrible as ours.”
“Good heavens! I heard nothing of that. She did not sleep in that room?”
“Thank God, she didn’t. I arrived in time to save her.”
I need scarcely say that my interest was now fully aroused.
“Tell me what happened—if you dare tell it,” I said.
“You were abroad, and so you wouldn’t be likely to hear of the fire at The Grange,” said my friend, after a pause.
“I heard nothing of it.”
“It took place only two days before last Christmas. I had been in the south of France, where I had spent a month or two with my mother—she cannot stand a winter at home—and I had promised Sylvia to return to The Grange for Christmas. When I got to Northavon I found her and her mother and their servants at the Priory Hotel. The fire had taken place the previous night, and they found the hotel very handy when they hadn’t a roof of their own over their heads. Well, we dined together, and were as jolly as was possible under the circumstances until bedtime. I had actually said “Good night” to Sylvia before I recollected what had taken place the previous Christmas Eve in the same house. I rushed upstairs, and found Sylvia in the act of entering the room—that fatal room. When I implored of her to choose some other apartment, she only laughed at first, and assured me that she wasn’t superstitious; but when she saw that I was serious—I was deadly serious, as you can believe, Jim—”
“I can—I can.”
“Well she agreed to sleep in her mother’s room, and I went away relieved. So soon as I returned to the fire in the dining-room I began to think of poor Tom Singleton. I felt curiously excited, and I knew that it would be useless for me to go to bed—in fact, I made up my mind not to leave the dining-room for some hours, at any rate, and when the landlord came to turn out the lights I told him he might trust me to do that duty for him. He left me alone in the room about half-past eleven o’clock. When the sound of his feet upon the oaken stairs died away I felt as fearful as a child in the dark. I lit another cigar and walked about the room for some time. I went to the window that opened upon the old Priory ground, and, seeing that the night was a fine one, I opened the door and strolled out, hoping that the cool air would do me good. I had not gone many yards across the little patch of green before I turned and looked up at the house—at the last window, the window of that room. A fire had been lighted in the room early in the evening, and its glow shone through the white blind. Suddenly that faint glow increased to a terrific glare—a red glare, Jim—and then there came before my eyes for a moment the shadow of two figures upon the blind—one the figure of a woman, the other—God knows what it was. I rushed back to the room, but before I had reached the door I heard the horrible laughter once again. It seemed to come from that room and to pass on through the air into the distance across the river. I ran upstairs with a light, and found Sylvia and her mother standing together with wraps around them at the door of the room. “Thank God, you are safe!” I managed to cry. “I feared that you had returned to the room.” “You heard it—that awful laughter?” she whispered. “You heard it, and you saw something—what was it?” I gently forced her and her mother back to their room, for the servants and the landlord’s family were now crowding into the corridor. They, too, had heard enough to alarm them.”
“You went to the room?”
“The scene of that dreadful morning was repeated. The door was locked on the inside. We broke it in and found a girl lying dead on the floor, her face contorted just as poor Singleton’s was. She was Sylvia’s maid, and it was thought that, on hearing that her mistress was not going to occupy the room, she had gone into it herself on account of the fire which had been lighted there.”
“And the doctor said—?”
“Cardiac attack—the same as before—singular coincidence! I need scarcely say that we never slept again under that accursed roof. Poor Sylvia! She was overwhelmed at the thought of how narrow her escape had been.”
“Did you notice anything remarkable about the room—about the shutters of the windows?” I asked.
He looked at me curiously for a moment. Then he bent forward and said—
“On the edge of the shutter there were some curious marks where the wood had been charred.”
“As if a hand with a red-hot gauntlet had been laid upon it?”
“There were the marks of two such hands,” said my friend slowly.
We remained for an hour in the garden; then we threw away the ends of our cigars and went into the hotel without another word.
William Hope Hodgson
Few horror authors have been strong enough to lift a man over their head with one arm, but William Hope Hodgson (1877–1918) managed it. In addition to writing some of the most highly regarded works in this field, he was a physical fitness enthusiast and remarkable athlete.
Born in Weathersfield, Essex, Hodgson was the son of a clergyman and one of twelve children. Samuel Hodgson, his father, moved round the country a lot, even spending some time in Ireland, and friction between Hodgson and his father ended in William running away to sea in 1891 (it also left him a lifelong atheist). He joined the merchant navy, sailed round the world three times and won a medal from the Royal Humane Society
for saving the life of a shipmate in New Zealand. He should have held on a bit longer, we now know; his father died the year after he left.
While in the merchant navy, Hodgson took up photography and body-building. He became an expert boxer into the bargain. His family, meanwhile, had fallen on hard times after Samuel’s death, so William came home for good in 1899. The family had moved to Blackburn and here he set up a school of physical culture in 1901.
Around this time, he encountered Harry Houdini, the great magician and escapologist, who was then on a tour of northern theatres. Hodgson almost defeated the great man by challenging him to escape from a pair of handcuffs. It took Houdini an hour: he was not happy by all accounts!
Hodgson began his writing career in 1902, with a mixture of fitness articles and the short stories that would one day make his name. Very quickly, this led to him writing the brilliant novels that are now classics: The Boats of the Glen Carrig (1907), The House on the Borderland (1908), The Ghost Pirates (1909) and The Night Land (1912).
Hodgson moved to London in 1910 and married Bessie Farnworth, a girl from his home town, in 1913. They moved to France but Hodgson’s dreams of a quiet married life were rudely shattered the next year with the outbreak of the First World War.
He returned to Britain and joined the Royal Artillery as a lieutenant. An injury in training forced him out of the RA for a while but he could not stay away from the war and what he saw as his duty. He re-enlisted in 1917 and was sent to France.
On 19 April 1918, after fighting in the battle of Ypres, he was manning an observation post at Mont Kemmel in Belgium. A German shell landed straight on the post and Hodgson was blown apart.
It was as much a tragedy for those who enjoy his writings as it was for his family. We are left with a small output in book form and a steady uncovering, as years pass, of more of his short stories by diligent researchers.
Such a tale is “A Tropical Horror.” It was first published in the Grand Magazine, June 1905, and never saw book form in Hodgson’s lifetime. It was resurrected in an American edition of his stories in the mid-1970s but is still not widely known.