by Unknown
He was touchingly keen to be engaged by me, but I could not feel altogether happy at the thought of this gloomy old bird sitting alone through the winter nights in my wind-swept cottage so near the sea. I warned him that it was a lonely place.
He shook his head. "I don't mind being alone," he said. "It won't make me any lonelier."
He spoke thoughtfully, and his voice, which was always melancholy, did not change.
"Well, if you feel like that–" I began.
"I do," he said, interrupting me, but not rudely. He merely gave the impression that he was thinking aloud.
I wondered about him, but I engaged him on the strength of Jem's recommendation.
The flat marshy bit of coast which lies between the New Forest and the sea was then far more desolate than it is today. My cottage was a tough little stone building which looked as if it had faced the sea for centuries, and had stood so long exposed to the wind and the waves that it had become an embodiment of the grey weather surging round it. It was a bit too bleak for me in the winter, but I spent all my summer weekends there, and I loved the place. It really was the only house from which I have literally been able to bathe out of my bedroom window. At high tide the waves actually washed my walls.
I thought to myself that if the sea had got on to Horter's nerves, he had by no means escaped from it now; but that, after all, was his affair.
Horter was not a good correspondent, though I generally heard from him about once a fortnight. He wrote an educated hand, which was singularly legible, but his letters were always short, and they told me little beyond the facts that he had received my fortnightly cheque and that all was going well at the cottage.
It was in February that he failed to write. I had been abroad, and my letters had not been forwarded, so that only when I returned home did I observe that Horter's acknowledgment of my last cheque was nearly a fortnight late. Another was almost due, and I sent that off a day or two early, with a letter asking how things were going on. There was no reply.
I felt anxious. Also I had a longing to see the cottage, for I had not been in Hampshire for nearly three months, and that year, the 26th of February, was so soft and spring-like that I could not resist the thought of my little house by the sea. I telegraphed to Horter that I should arrive in time for a simple luncheon of sausages and mash.
The cottage looked completely deserted. No smoke came from the chimneys. Doors and windows were rigidly closed and shuttered against the sunlit air, and the only sign of life was given by the great flocks of seagulls which drifted around and over the house. Their soft, harsh, mournful cries floated in the air like little drifting clouds transposed into sounds.
I walked briskly down the narrow shingled path, and tried the door. It was locked. I felt nonplussed. Horter must have been out when my telegram came, and evidently the cottage contained neither fire nor food for me. Presumably he had gone away for the day, and I was at first annoyed with him for leaving the house thus unprotected. Then I realized that this was unreasonable. The man must go out sometimes, but as I walked round the cottage to the seafront I began to wonder whether Horter had indeed only gone out for the day. The shuttered windows were ominous, and I remembered those unanswered letters. Could my caretaker have deserted his post weeks ago?
The kitchen door faced the sea, and as I approached it, I saw something very disquieting. A little stream of dried-up blood issued from under the door. I sensed foul play, and went quickly to the window, to be faced by blank shutters. I could not see into the house.
My cottage was strongly built, as I have already remarked, and my shoulder failed to break in a door made to withstand the south-west gales. I walked round, vainly trying every possible place of entry. Even if my caretaker had left it, it seemed that my cottage was still eminently able to take care of itself. There appeared to be no way in. I looked at the thick short chimney, with a wild idea of climbing on to the roof and getting in that way.
As I stood there, thinking what to do, one of the seagulls which had been flying round the house broadened the circle of his flight, and swooped suddenly down upon me. With an ugly screech he went straight for my eyes. The brute! He meant to pick them out. I struck at him with my stick and broke his wing. He fluttered, and dropped into the sea, where he rocked to and fro, a few feet from the shore. In a moment half a dozen of his fellows were upon him. They looked threatening, and I thought they meant to peck him to death. I turned away, revolted, wishing that I had not caught him with my stick, although he had looked an extremely ugly customer as he made for my face.
It was an extraordinary thing to happen. Never in all my sea experience had I been attacked by a gull. I began to feel eerie and uneasy, almost frightened. Again my eye fell upon the blood which had oozed out from under the door. That decided me. I must get in.
I broke a window on the other side of the house, cutting my hand rather badly as I did so. More blood. I felt sick and tied my handkerchief round the wound. My luck was out that day.
In spite of the gay sunshine outside, it was pitch dark in the hall, for all the shutters in the house were closed. I stumbled against one of the hall chairs, barking my shin. Furiously I unbarred the shutters and let in some light. Then I threw open the window too, for the house was utterly airless, and a revolting smell permeated it. Horter had certainly failed as caretaker.
The sitting-room was dusty, dirty, and cold. I looked into it, opened its windows, and went to the kitchen. Just inside the door I caught my foot in something soft which lay upon the floor. It felt like a dilapidated feather bed, and I kicked the impediment aside and hastened to unshutter the window, for the stench was more than ever horrible. Then I turned and looked back into the room.
No wonder there was a smell. The place was crowded with dead birds. Eight or nine great seagulls lay piled up on one another in a state of complete decomposition. Their fallen feathers littered the floor. I stood there staring, aghast; and as I stared, I saw, protruding from beneath this heap of decaying corpses, a bone which was on another scale. It was a man's shinbone.
Feeling like some horrible ghoul I hurled the birds aside, and when I had done so, I had laid bare the skeleton of Horter. It lay upon the tattered fragments of his clothes.
A few hairs still clung to the skull, otherwise the bones had been picked completely bare. Feathers drifted over the face, disturbed by the wind which now blew from the open window into the room. The gusts disturbed too the pages of an old exercise book lying open upon the table. I had not observed it before, but the rustling roused my attention and I picked it up. I thought at first that the handwriting was quite unknown to me. It was very wild and untidy, the lines sprawling all ways. The pages were blotted with blood, and reminded me of those disgusting little bills which I had seen in butchers' shops, skewered on to joints of meat. I conquered my repulsion and forced myself to turn back a page or two. Earlier in the book, the writing was smaller, neater, and more legible. It also began to grow familiar, and when I reached the opening pages, I saw that they were in a hand which I had learnt to know during the past few months. Horter's careful script was unmistakable.
Then I forgot everything else, and I sat down at that kitchen table to read the story left behind by the caretaker.
'I have tried all ways to make atonement,' the manuscript began, 'and all ways seem blocked. They say that confession to a priest will ease the mind of any weighty matter, but priests don't often come my way, so here I leave this to any and all who after me shall enter this kitchen. I confess to them all. I keep no secret back. But when they read these words, who knows where I shall be? No ease of mind for me anywhere, but I swear that all you readers shall share this weight. It weighs too much for me, and it comes round and round, over and over again. There is no atonement, until I have told it all to someone. Yes, all. All. Everything. Did you know that I am Jonah born again? No, I did not say 'a' Jonah, but Jonah himself, the very man. Down, down he went to the bottom of the sea, but I could not get there. Poor
Allan went, and I scrambled on shore. We were together, he and I, both in the same boat. It was but a little one, like the city of Zoar, and I was Lot and got there safely. Lot's wife was a pillar of salt. Ah, the taste of it! I can never forget it. When I was alone on that island, I kept looking for him. I didn't forget him, and then, when he came, I didn't know him. How could I know him, for he had wings, and dear old Allan never was an angel. Still I should have known him, if I could have gone on remembering him all the time. That's where I went wrong. I was hungry, and there were all those darned gulls about. They came so near that I thought they meant me to eat them. Manna from heaven, they seemed. Great white things coming down, and I couldn't help it. But oh! it was salt. Salt always in my mouth, in my belly, on my brain. A pillar of salt. That's me too. But I must get on with it. I've got to make it clear. You see I ate that gull because I'd stopped thinking of Allan, and when I had eaten it I knew what I had done. The souls of dead sailors go to seagulls. He flew so near because he wanted my help, and I ate him. Yes, I ate him. Now you know what I am – a cannibal. Can the priests cure that? That's why it all turned to salt – salt everlastingly. I can taste it now. It maddens me, and oh Lord! this thirst! I can't stop drinking whisky, though that's salt too. Salter than the blood of seagulls, and I know the taste of that.
'A ship came and took me off, but they didn't guess I was a cannibal, or they wouldn't have had me on board. I said nothing, because I was afraid they would leave me behind again. But God knew. He knew me for old Jonah, and he wrecked that ship too. Jonah can't drown, and I couldn't go to the bottom that time either. Another ship lost and me washed up again. All my fault.
'But the gulls are around me here too. Dead sailors crying for their shipmate, and I have scrunched up his soul between my teeth. No wonder it tasted salt, but this whisky here is even salter. I hate it and I can't stop drinking it.
'There. I have confessed. That's all.'
So far the writing had been unmistakably Horter's, but when I turned to the next page I saw that it had become wildly different, and now the page was streaked with mud and blood. There were fingermarks tinged with both.
'Those gulls are coming nearer and nearer. It's like that day on the island when they came all round me and I killed Allan's soul. Perhaps they're hungry too. I'll find 'em something to eat. But it's all too salt. They won't like it. It will make them thirsty, and then they'll go mad. Unless they like salt. Do you, gulls? Answer me, you devils. I believe you do, I can't make out what it is they are saying. Just calling and calling and coming round me with their huge wings, but they don't speak the King's English. It makes 'em very hard to understand.
'Now I've got them in the room. Ten or more. How they fill it, squawking round and round with their great wings like huge millwheels turning and turning. Shut the windows. Bar them. And I will confess to the gulls. Why can't they keep still and listen to what I say?
'Round and round and round and round, and the room too small to hold them. It's all wheels, and I shall be broken on them. They are coming so close and those wings are so wide. Wheels and wings. Wings and wheels. Flap, flap, out goes the candle, but it's not dark yet. The fire burns like hell tonight. I believe they know I ate him and they are telling me to make atonement. Look, all you gulls. That's just what I'm doing. It's all in this book. My atonement. My confession. It's all down here. But what's the good of showing them that when they can't read it? Don't know the King's English. What language do they know? Words! Words! Words! Words mean nothing at all. Atonement is more than that. It's what you do, not what you say. And yet you can never begin to make atonement till the thing is done, and then it's too late. That's what it is with me. Too late. All turned to salt. I can't do anything more.
'They want food. So did I. Atonement. They want that soul I ate. Allan's soul, and they know where it is. They've come for it. I must give it back of my own accord. They shan't take it from me. It's salt blood they want. Life for life. Soul for soul. Food for food.
'Where's the knife. Hack it off. Hack it off. God. How it hurts! Now there's a gull gobbling it up. You liked that, didn't you? Now they're all coming at me. What a noise! What a crowd. And there's a crowd of knives too. Hack away, knives! There. I've got off another bit. It comes well off the thigh. I must get some more.
'These knives won't cut. So blunt. Now they are turning into beaks. Is that a beak or a knife? There's another, and another. Hundreds of them coming at me. Beaks without birds. They're clawing at me, biting me, tearing at me. It's Allan! When I ate him, I left the beak and I meet it again in the end. He's here. He's got me. Tearing, tearing, and, oh my God! it's hell! Torture! Allan!...'
The end was only blood.
NIGHTMARE JACK
John Metcalfe
It's curious how things are forgotten on the river. Has it ever struck you? People live and die upon its banks, ships come and go upon its muddy waters, and of them all hardly the names survive the morrow. Love and crime, despair and death, make the city with every flood and pass out with every ebb, but they scarcely leave a ripple on the secret river; it flows on and forgets them all.
A bare ten years have slipped by since Nightmare Jack was last seen about the docks, yet I would lay you long odds that, save for his deformity, he might walk to-day from Poplar to the Isle of Dogs and pass unrecognised. Even he, whom we thought unforgettable, the little, hare-lipped man with the hoarse voice of clutching terror, victim of the strange, incessant dream.
It is as well that he cannot come back. He dreams no longer. We who gave him to the keeping of the river can sleep the sounder knowing that the brown waters hold him fast...
I shall give you the story as at last he told it to us those ten years back in the upper room of the little, black inn at Shale, whilst the sweat broke and glistened on his face and the horror gathered in his eyes.
The four of us had dropped down in Cohen's boat with the ebbing tide and made Roaring Middle by early afternoon. All day long the river had shone in a hard, dull light like a great, brown muscle, but as we turned out of the stream and crept up the creek and alongside the tiny stone causeway back of the deserted inn the sky began to darken, and a wind stirred the surface of the water into little, choppy waves.
We made fast the boat and stepped ashore, and I gave the three low raps upon the door that Jack, and Jack's Eliza, understood. As we waited I looked at my three companions, and saw that over two of them as over me there hung the shadow of that black business we had afoot.
There were Crabbe, Coben, myself, and that other – Gilchrist. Heaven knows why he was there, that shameful, silent man with his white, pasty cheeks and his dull, averted eyes! Even to his face we had called him "Dead Fish," and he had never raised a hand to strike or given us the lie. Yet he was safe enough, we thought, and had the uses of all evil things...
No answer came to my knocking, so having tried in vain to turn the handle, we climbed in through a low window which had been left half-closed, and then marched upstairs, Cohen leading. He threw open the door of the room we knew for Jack's, entered, and signed to us to follow. We filed in, bending our beads under the low doorway. Gilchrist, who was the last, turned the key.
Never have I seen a man more sick than he who lay half-dressed upon the bed. The scanty hair lay dank upon his forehead, and the face was gone a dead grey colour like the belly of a slug. One look at him was enough to tell us that we had been anticipated in our errand. He could hardly last more than a few hours at the longest. Only in his little, wicked eyes did the old, evil light yet creep and flicker, and the succulent sin seem still to well and ooze.
He turned his head to the door as it closed behind us, and when his gaze rested upon Gilchrist he managed to raise his voice in a hoarse whisper and a slow and dwelling rage.
"You!" he said. "You beeg, white scum. Why have you come? You of all men, you Nurse, you mother's plague, you man-stealer!"
The venomous words did not sting Gilchrist to retort, but the blood mounted sluggishly about his
neck and ears, and a dull hate smouldered in his eyes.
Suddenly, as he was turning inwards from the locked door, he uttered a cry of fear, and raised an arm to protect his face from something which, at a motion of Jack's elbow, leapt at him from the bed-end like a flying, furry shadow. When he put down his hand we saw the crimson drops starting from a long scratch across one cheek. Below him a great, neuter cat rubbed, purring noisily, against his shins.
Crabbe laughed grimly. "Pongo has learnt that trick well," he said, "and after all we could hardly expect a better welcome."
The man on the bed stirred and cleared his throat.
"Leesten," he said, in that curious, lisping, almost cultured voice of his in which the occasional French accent sorted so strangely with the foul idiom of the river, "Leesten, you coves! You needn't tell me why you've come, but you're too late – too late. The las' trip's been run. I been expectin' you, though, ever since Eliza leave me two days back. She knew Rory'd tol' you where I was. She was afraid and ran. Two days I been lyin' 'ere, Sirs, waitin' for the scrape o' your boat against the stage an' the soun' o' your boots up the stairs. And in me dreams–"
"Curse your dreams!" snarled Cohen. "You've them to thank for our visit. The man who dreams aloud about us and our concerns must sleep where he won't be heard..."