by Gafford, Sam
“As night fell for a second time in my weekend at the estate, I prepared myself for the coming challenge.
“You may remember my previous mentions of the Sigsand Manuscript and how the knowledge within it had aided me on more than occasion in my cases. That evening I looked to it once again to guide me. There is a little-known portion of it that details a practice which has been referred to by numerous designations, but which here I will call the ‘false death.’ That is only an approximation in English, but one that will suffice for our purposes. I think, perhaps, you may see where this is headed, yes? Can you understand? I set out to enter into a state that night that would duplicate death but not wholly embrace it. Yes, of course it was a gamble—with the stakes my life—though at that time I didn’t entirely see it as such. The picture of the girl was becoming clearer to me, and I hope you will not think me mad when I explain my reasoning behind the attempt.
“The apparition had approached the dog—obviously it had been wounded in a fight with another animal—only because it was dying. Near death, the dog offered something the girl wanted . . . or wanted to do. Am I being clear at all? Death was the key; not life. The animal was at the end of its mortal existence, and that had attracted the girl.
“My presence, after I had exited the cottage, drove her away. My plan was to approach death that night so that she would in turn approach me.
“As I said, I prepared myself. I was about to depart on a journey the likes of which I had never truly envisioned previously. Oh, I have explored death in other ways, surely, as you and our friends have heard me speak of; but this, this was something entirely different.”
Carnacki paused then, sat back into his great armchair, and took a few thoughtful puffs on his cigar. I wondered if perhaps he was debating whether to continue his narrative, but after a moment or two he spoke again.
“The Sigsand Manuscript is not entirely clear on a few points of the ritual, but I gleaned enough from it to enter into the initial trance state and then . . . beyond.
“I had laid myself out on a sofa that I had moved closer to the door of the cottage, just below the window that I had used the night before to spy on the event in the clearing. At first, it was somewhat difficult to peel back the outer layers of my thoughts to quiet them, but on attaining the First Plateau I moved on to the Second. From there I fairly easily alighted on the Third Plateau, and there I paused.
“I will speak of the following matter as if the place I visited then were a real, tangible environment. There is no other way. No physicality actually existed there, but I ‘saw’ the Plateaus as visible platforms of a kind—gateways, if you will, to the beyond. I looked back every so often, tracing my path and memorising it; there was always the thought of my return, no matter how deeply I must dampen my mental workings. There is no movement of any kind in death, outwardly or, most importantly, inwardly.
“Time passed, or the illusion of time passing. At the Sixth Plateau I paused again as anxiety washed over me; had I gone too far? You will sympathise with me, surely, that anyone else would have asked himself the same question and felt the same small stab of panic at that same time. I, a living man, was in a realm that should have been closed to me. And I was not entirely certain that the path I had set out on was not disappearing behind me. And for what? To attract a spirit? The anxiety increased. I turned myself to look fully at my footprints, and it was at that moment that I sensed another’s presence.
“Something was approaching the cottage. My ‘false death’ had sent a signal, I suppose, and I was about to receive a visitor.
“I had no vision in my death-like state, no way of looking out into the waking world and identifying what was transpiring near my mortal shell. All at once, on the Sixth Plateau I felt cold. Mind you, there was no real heat to speak of along my path, but I had not felt cold, either. A numbness crept over me, and my panic rose like bile in my mouth. Outside, the door to the cottage opened.
“I tried to open my mouth to scream; it was impossible. A light came on over my head that lit up the Sixth Plateau like a bonfire. Still the cold permeated my frame. Something drew nearer and nearer, a low rumbling like an approaching storm—no, like a great wave upon the ocean, a rushing of water that threatened to drown me utterly, body and soul.
“Soul, yes; that’s what was at stake. My soul. All at once I felt it being pulled at around its edges, as if it were being lifted off a clothesline by someone eager to get in before it rained. I tried to shout again, but no sound issued from me. Something had my essence—my soul—and it was being taken from me. I could no more fight it then one can fight the wind.
“The irony of it all was that I was not dead, only playing at being dead. Do you understand me? I was not dead. But something or someone believed I was and was facilitating the final journey that I was not ready to take!
“I railed against it, struggling mightily and clutching at my very being with all the power left in me after the descent—or ascent—from Plateau to Plateau. Oh, how I fought! It was the fight of my life, or at least I wrestled with the something as if it were.
“I admit that I had almost given up. The great rushing pounded in my ears; my very breath was being ripped from my lungs, and I felt myself dying for real. I was finished, surely.
“Then I felt the sadness. The very same sadness that infused the woods around Sir Miles’ estate, the overwhelming sadness that I guessed sprang from the girl. It replaced the terrible rushing and washed over me in its stead. There was also a note of confusion; of that I am very certain. Whatever it was that had come for my essence was in great, horrible doubt. Shame came over me then: I had tried to trick it into approaching me, and the jig was up. I was not dead, only ‘play-acting.’
“All at once, it was gone. With absolute quiet all around me, I crossed to the Fifth Plateau, and then to the Fourth and back to my state of life, blessed life.”
My friend paused again. His face was ashen and drawn. I too felt the burn of shame on my face, for it was I that had brought him to relating the tale and to his present torpor. He looked at me through slitted eyes and motioned towards the liquor cabinet, divining his intention. I hurried to pour him a short brandy, and he sipped at it until it was gone. After several minutes, he seemed to gather himself together. I thanked God then and there that Jessop, Arkright, and Taylor were not present to see Carnacki in such a condition. He had always been a towering figure to us; an odd duck, to be sure, but someone we respected and admired. They needn’t see him at his worst as I had.
“I confirmed that I was alone in the cottage and then removed myself to bed. I slept for over twelve hours, don’t you know? The next day, I gathered my bags and walked to the manor and asked to see Sir Miles and his wife. Sitting them down in a cheery little room just off their library, I attempted to describe my experiences at Tranquil House. They were confused, of course; how could they not be? I myself was confounded at much of what I had gone through.
“Just then, as I finished my narrative, Willow appeared in the doorway, hat in and hand and a sober look on his weathered face. He asked if he could speak to his employers, and so I got up to leave. The man caught me at the door and asked me to stay; it seemed what he had to say was something I was to be included in hearing.
“The young girl, he explained, was his own daughter. She had died not quite two years before, and a part of him and his wife had gone with her. Willow described a vibrant young woman who loved all life and most especially the little ones, a kind-hearted girl who never hurt anyone or anything.
“‘She caught the influenza,’ said the caretaker, his voice breaking. ‘She never came out of it. We . . . beggin’ yer extreme forgiveness, Sor Miles . . . we buried her . . . buried her on the property, right here with us.’
“Sir Miles and his wife were clearly dumbfounded. They stammered out protestations, but not as you might think. No, they railed against the injustice of losing a child and asked why they were not told. Willow hung his head and said quietly
that he was mightily angered when the girl had fallen sick and the Paulys had not asked as to her whereabouts and still had not asked after her when she was gone.
“Sir Miles and his wife had no answer to that. A minute passed, then two, and finally Lady Pauly asked if the ghost was most certainly that of the caretaker’s daughter. He nodded and said he believed so. She then asked why he had not told them that. Willow replied that he was quite sure that he would have been let go if he had brought up such foolishness, and that his wife was terribly ill herself and he could not afford to care for her and be without work.
“I left them to the silence that followed that exchange, knowing that I had no right to witness anything further between them. I drove back home and, well, returned to my studies.”
“But what of Willow’s daughter?” I enquired. “What of her spirit? Is it doomed to wander those woods, in turmoil?”
“But she’s not quite in turmoil,” insisted Carnacki. “In fact, she is at home, really, and she’s about her work, I’m sure.”
“Her work?” I asked. My friend nodded and puffed again at his cigar. He motioned for me to take a chair across from him.
“Dodgson, dear lad, let me explain. You see, after a good night’s sleep back here in Chelsea, I rang up Sir Miles and offered a solution to everyone’s problem there at Pauly Pines. I suggested that they conduct Tranquil House as a hospice, of a sort.”
“A hospice?” I was unclear as to what my friend meant. Then, as he explained further, it became very apparent.
“Yes,” he said, “a place for those who are terminally ill and near death to await—in comfort, mind you—their final reward. Think, man: what was it that the spirit was attracted to?”
“Death,” I answered immediately. “Oh, I see. Yes, of course. She will come to those who are dying and—and . . .”
“Help them along on their way,” finished Carnacki. “As her father said, she was a kind-hearted thing in life, and her heart has only grown in death.”
“Good Lord, and she almost took you! But what about Mr. Willow” I asked. “And his wife?”
“Stayed on at my suggestion to Sir Miles,” replied my friend. “Helping to facilitate the running of the hospice, to see to it that its guests are comfortable and secure and then to slip away come the night.”
I thought on it a moment. “The girl will not come where there is life. Only death.”
“Exactly,” said Carnacki with a small, sad smile. “All’s well that ends well, or so the Bard says.”
“And when I came in?” I asked. “You were . . . away again?”
Some colour leaked out of his face then, and he looked off into the distance. “Yes,” he whispered, then with a bit more volume said, “I . . . I thought I . . . saw something there on the Sixth Plateau. Something else. A thing that still haunts me now.”
Quickly, so as to change the subject, for I heard a tone in his voice I did not care for, I then asked him about the beetles. Carnacki brushed the matter off, saying only that the insects were dead and the girl had paused to “see after them.” I could tell that my friend was growing a bit restless, so I prepared to leave. Sensing my intention, perhaps, the man looked at me quizzically.
“Now, then—what was it that you blew in here to tell me? It must have been something extraordinary to jump the gun on our usual meetings by an entire two days . . .”
“Nothing,” I answered plainly, “nothing that might measure up to that tale.”
Carnacki nodded and picked up a book off the little stand next to his chair. “Out you go then!” he said and buried himself in its pages.
I left him to his tome and hurried out into the night, down along the Embankment and to my home.
The Ghosts of Kuskulana
Amy K. Marshall
Please come at once [STOP]
A matter of utmost importance [STOP]
Travel arranged [STOP]
To delay is death [STOP]
Be quick. F.S. [STOP]
Curious,” I admitted turning over the telegram. I leaned forward and replaced it on the table, all the while eyeing the man who stood, his back to me, his hands clasped behind his back, his gaze obviously drawn by the fire burning in my hearth. “Whatever could the man have meant?”
Silence was his answer—not the insubordinate silence of a surly cur, but the silence to which I had become accustomed with my friend. He is a queer one, given to odd silences. I picked up my brandy and swirled it, content in the silence, awaiting his reply in the knowledge that it would not disappoint. The brandy sweet in my nostrils, I chuckled and decided to bait my friend.
“Or was this a woman?”
I watched him carefully, knowing his body language, and the shift of his shoulders confirmed that I had wrung the wryest of smiles from him.
“It is stranger than that.”
I settled deep within my wingback chair, confident that this was merely the first sentence of a tale that portended to be riveting on such a rain-dark night. The brandy was warm against the glass; my business partner, Howard Mills, occupied the chair opposite me, the cherry smoke of his pipe a familiar, sweet tang in my study, and the man at my hearth only recently had returned from the United States—
“Not the United States, dear chap,” he had said as he swept into my study. Trevor, my butler, bustled behind him, with that efficient eagerness to remove his coat and hat and announce him, impetuous as he was, as he burst into my sanctuary. “Alaska!”
From what I could fathom as he wove, animatedly, around the room, he had received a letter from a powerful business magnate who had some economic concern in that wild and frozen place. The man had demonstrated the audacity of his station by demanding that my friend travel to that desolate landscape and address such unnamed events as had effected delays for the company and snarled their commerce. My friend had been considering his reply to such an imperial summons when the telegram had arrived from the manager of the Alaskan concern.
“To delay is death.”
I watched his eyes sparkle with that curious gleam he was wont to demonstrate when ghosts or phantoms or some supernatural force required investigating.
“How could I have refused?”
Mills, who was much less familiar with the queerness of my friend’s obsession with all things weird and unnatural, had cast me a wary glance, which I returned with an indulgent smile. “Indeed,” I agreed, my eyes never shifting from Mills’, holding him firmly in my gaze, “I daresay you could not.”
Thomas Carnacki turned from my hearth, his eyes alight as I had not seen them for some time. “I shall accept that brandy now,” he said.
Carnacki refused to be ensconced in any chair, preferring to pace the Oriental heavy before my hearth. He accepted a snifter but refused my offer of a cigarette. The study rang silence as I drew a whisper-thin cigarette from its silver case. I snapped it shut. Mills kindly lit it for me and the two of us settled back amicably.
Outside, the wind shifted and rain lashed the mullioned windows of my ancestral abode.
The fire crackled comfortably.
Into this silence, Thomas Carnacki spun his tale.
“I embarked from Southampton aboard a steamer bound for New York. The company had provided for the passage, and my cabin was well-appointed. It was an auspicious beginning for my whole adventure. Once I reached New York City, a representative from the company whisked me from the ship and into, of all things, an automobile, which conveyed me to a meeting with certain board members about the Alaska situation. I came to understand that their sense of urgency was made more manifest by the loss of several lives. They were shocked and saddened by these developments, news of which reached them whilst the steamship conveying me was bound for New York. They pressed upon me the seriousness of this investigation; they had not ruled out the possibility of sabotage by rival syndicates. I enquired as to the state of any witnesses to these events. One of the men assured me that I would meet the sole witness, a Mr. William Jenkins, a Welshman
by birth, when I reached Seattle. Jenkins, they said, would accompany me by steam packet from Seattle to Cordova, Alaska, where we would meet the northbound train.”
“By God, man!” Mills began, startled. “In winter? Did they intend you strand you in the wild north?”
Carnacki smiled.
“The syndicate provided me with a simply splendid private Pullman for my journey across the United States,” he continued, undaunted. “I dare say, your study is only slightly more well-appointed than was that carriage! The service was exquisite, the food delicious, and it was with no little regret that I alighted from that conveyance onto the platform in Seattle.
“Jenkins was true as his name, rough and uncouth, but amiable enough and forthcoming with information about the incident when I questioned him upon the occasion of our meeting. ‘I saw what I might describe as a shadow, sir,’ said he. A shadow? Before I could delve further, we were hurried away from the station and accompanied to the curb, where we were met by a well-dressed chauffeur who opened the door of another grand automobile to allow our entry. Poor Jenkins looked a sight, unaccustomed as he was to any show of privilege. I must admit, for my part, that I rather enjoyed this treatment. After we were deposited at the Arctic Club Hotel, I remained alone in my room for some time, poring again over the company’s initial correspondence. It was a weird collection of phrases—thrown together bits of information obviously inscribed by an individual who had no experience with the matter at hand.”
Carnacki stopped pacing. It was evident in his sudden change of demeanour that his last sentence had vexed him. He did not reflect the carriage of a man beset by misgivings; rather, his visage suggested a man upon whom a thought had dawned. In spite of myself, I leaned forward, sure that this sign in him would blossom into some unremembered detail. I admit it saddened me when he appeared to brush the thought away as one would shoo an irksome fly. Without another hesitation, he continued his tale: