I was at my wits’ end, almost out of my mind with the fear of death. Downstairs there was a banging and crashing, hooligans being thrown out of the coffee house, a nightly occurrence. In his lighted room across the road I saw the barber bent over his books.
V
I felt an inner tug, several times in rapid succession. I had to stand up – there it was again – what was it? I was gradually pervaded by an obscure urge. There was another tug, a pounding, stronger this time. ‘I hear. What is it?’ I made a great effort and concentrated on the vague sensation. ‘Patera’, was the word I heard coming from within. ‘Patera. Palace. Come.’ It grew more and more urgent, persuasive, terribly distinct and clear. In the dark I went downstairs, sure of myself without having to think. I was being pushed and pulled, and surrendered completely to the force directing me. No one took any notice of me and when my mind cleared I found I was halfway to the Palace. ‘For God’s sake’, I thought, ‘what am I doing? What is this I have to do?’ I decided to turn back. ‘Yes, I’ll definitely turn back at the next corner.’ It was no use. I had to carry on. I wanted to shout out to people, ‘Help me! Stop me!’ but it was as if my jaws were screwed together. Then I saw the imposing Palace with its huge gateway, its empty window sockets, like a skull…and I stepped into its darkness.
On all sides a labyrinth of colonnades stretched out. I walked on like a wooden marionette, mechanically, one–two, one–two. The long galleries were sparsely lit by suspended lamps. I came to the state rooms. All the doors were ajar. I heard a bang – the melodious chime of a clock – the draught made the doors open of their own accord – a crash! Sweet merciful Jesus! The tiger! The thought was like torture and the sense of urgency such I was almost running while trying to make as little noise as possible. Several times I thought I heard my name called out close by, quite loudly, then softly, but nothing could make me look back. Broken furniture was lying round the empty, deserted rooms and the stifling, musty atmosphere made breathing difficult. I passed through extensive chambers, dimly lit by a single candle: rumpled beds, torn-down draperies, bricked-up windows, fires going out in magnificent stoves, tapestries hanging askew. Like a sleep-walker I hurried up small, dusty staircases, down long, silent corridors, then I saw a low oak door I recognised. ‘Patera’, I kept on thinking, ‘Patera, Patera…’ This door was also ajar. From the ceiling hung a silver lamp with a flickering candle shining on the dangling tatters of a canopy. Apart from the faint outlines of the mosaic floor I could hardly see anything. I stopped – now I could stop! There! There! That face! Immediately a cold sweat broke out on my forehead.
Wrapped in a gauzy, silver-grey robe, Patera was standing there, upright and asleep. I was filled with uncontrollable dread at the sight. In the deep, greenish shadows under his eyes lay suffering beyond that of ordinary mortals. Then I noticed that on one of his large, shapely hands the top section of the thumb was missing. Immediately I recalled the children born in the Dream Realm. Again there was the whispering I had heard on my first visit.
‘I called you.’ It sounded as if it came from a long way away. This time there was no chameleon-like change of expression. His facial muscles rippled, bulged and contracted, but there was no expression in it. His features went slack, only his lips twitched, a horrible sight in the otherwise inert face. And then it started again, very softly, as if muffled by a veil. At first I just heard a whispering, disjointed, meaningless, then I began to understand:
‘Can you hear the dead singing, the bright-green dead? They disintegrate in their graves, easily, painlessly. If you put your hand into their bodies all you feel are fragments, and the teeth come out so easily. Where is the life that drove them, where is the power? Can you hear the dead singing, the bright-green dead?’ I smelt the sharp odour of Patera’s breath and a sensation of weakness spread through my limbs. Then the Lord seated himself on his high bed and threw off his robe. Sitting there, straight-backed, bare-chested, his flowing locks tumbling to his shoulders, I could not but admire his broad, noble physique. His gleaming white body was like a statue. I drew on my last ounce of strength to ask my question. ‘Patera, why do you allow all this to happen?’
For a long time there was no answer. All at once he cried out in a resounding metallic bass voice, ‘I am weary.’
I started. The next moment I was staring into those expressionless eyes. I was spellbound. His eyes were like two empty mirrors reflecting infinity. The thought crossed my mind that Patera was not alive at all. If the dead could look that is what their gaze would be like. I felt a command to speak inside me, but I could only stammer, I babbled and was surprised myself to hear what it sounded like. The question seemed to come from the deepest depths of time, the words must have been spoken billions of years ago and only now did I utter them, only now were they heard here: ‘Patera, why did you not help?’
Slowly, lifelessly, the lids closed and I felt easier. His features were now flooded with an inexpressible gentleness. They had an immeasurable softness, sadness which entranced me. Again came the whisper, clear and distinct, ‘I did help, and I will help you.’ It sounded like music. I was overcome with a sweet weariness, I bowed my head, my eyes closed…
A spine-chilling laugh, a laugh from hell, tore me out of my reverie. Standing in front of me in the brightly lit room in place of Patera was the American.
How I managed to get out of the Palace I no longer know. I ran and screamed. Men tried to stop me but I must have broken loose from them, for when I had my body under control again I was huddled up in a coach-house. Inside an overturned carriage I saw a litter of dead pangolins.
Snatches of the mocking laughter were still echoing in my ear, but it no longer had any effect on me. My nerves had given way completely. Fate, in whatever shape or form, had lost the power to drag me out of my torpor. Incapable of extended thought, I took strength from the consciousness of my own impotence. I couldn’t understand or solve these contradictions but, after all, what concern were they of mine? All my fear had vanished. The horrific vision, which revealed Patera’s double nature to me, closed off the abyss of my doubts and anxieties.
The Screaming Skull
F. Marion Crawford
Francis Marion Crawford (1854–1909) was an Italian-born American writer and historian noted for his many novels, especially those set in Italy, and for his classic weird and fantastic stories, including ‘The Upper Berth’ (1895), ‘For the Blood is the Life’ (1905), and the story included herein, the lively and horrific ‘The Screaming Skull’ (1908). A posthumous collection of Crawford’s tales published in 1911 as Wandering Ghosts in the US and as Uncanny Tales in England was an important transition point between old and new approaches to supernatural fiction. The story contains an outstanding early example of modern monologue, verging on stream-of-consciousness at times.
I have often heard it scream. No, I am not nervous, I am not imaginative, and I have never believed in ghosts, unless that thing is one. Whatever it is, it hates me almost as much as it hated Luke Pratt, and it screams at me.
If I were you, I would never tell ugly stories about ingenious ways of killing people, for you never can tell but that someone at the table may be tired of his or her nearest and dearest. I have always blamed myself for Mrs Pratt’s death, and I suppose I was responsible for it in a way, though heaven knows I never wished her anything but long life and happiness. If I had not told that story she might be alive yet. That is why the thing screams at me, I fancy.
She was a good little woman, with a sweet temper, all things considered, and a nice gentle voice; but I remember hearing her shriek once when she thought her little boy was killed by a pistol that went off, though everyone was sure that it was not loaded.
It was the same scream; exactly the same, with a sort of rising quaver at the end; do you know what I mean? Unmistakable.
The truth is, I had not realized that the doctor and his wife were not on good terms. They used to bicker a bit now and then when I was here, and I often noticed t
hat little Mrs Pratt got very red and bit her lip hard to keep her temper, while Luke grew pale and said the most offensive things. He was that sort when he was in the nursery, I remember and afterward at school. He was my cousin, you know; that is how I came by this house; after he died, and his boy Charley was killed in South Africa, there were no relations left. Yes, it’s a pretty little property, just the sort of thing for an old sailor like me who has taken to gardening.
One always remembers one’s mistakes much more vividly than one’s cleverest things, doesn’t one? I’ve often noticed it. I was dining with the Pratts one night, when I told them the story that afterwards made so much difference. It was a wet night in November, and the sea was moaning. Hush! – if you don’t speak you will hear it now…
Do you hear the tide? Gloomy sound, isn’t it? Sometimes, about this time of year – hallo! – there it is! Don’t be frightened, man – it won’t eat you – it’s only a noise, after all! But I’m glad you’ve heard it, because there are always people who think it’s the wind, or my imagination, or something. You won’t hear it again tonight, I fancy, for it doesn’t often come more than once. Yes – that’s right. Put another stick on the fire, and a little more stuff into that weak mixture you’re so fond of. Do you remember old Blauklot the carpenter, on that German ship that picked us up when the Clontarf went to the bottom? We were hove to in a howling gale one night, as snug as you please, with no land within five hundred miles, and the ship coming up and falling off as regularly as clockwork – ‘Biddy te boor beebles ashore tis night, poys!’ old Blauklot sang out, as he went off to his quarters with the sail-maker. I often think of that, now that I’m ashore for good and all.
Yes, it was on a night like this, when I was at home for a spell, waiting to take the Olympia out on her first trip – it was on the next voyage that she broke the record, you remember – but that dates it. Ninety-two was the year, early in November.
The weather was dirty, Pratt was out of temper, and the dinner was bad, very bad indeed, which didn’t improve matters, and cold, which made it worse. The poor little lady was very unhappy about it, and insisted on making a Welsh rarebit on the table to counteract the raw turnips and the half-boiled mutton. Pratt must have had a hard day. Perhaps he had lost a patient. At all events, he was in a nasty temper.
‘My wife is trying to poison me, you see!’ he said. ‘She’ll succeed some day.’ I saw that she was hurt, and I made believe to laugh, and said that Mrs Pratt was much too clever to get rid of her husband in such a simple way; and then I began to tell them about Japanese tricks with spun glass and chopped horsehair and the like.
Pratt was a doctor, and knew a lot more than I did about such things, but that only put me on my mettle, and I told a story about a woman in Ireland who did for three husbands before anyone suspected foul play.
Did you never hear that tale? The fourth husband managed to keep awake and caught her, and she was hanged. How did she do it? She drugged them, and poured melted lead into their ears through a little horn funnel when they were asleep…No – that’s the wind whistling. It’s backing up to the southward again. I can tell by the sound. Besides, the other thing doesn’t often come more than once in an evening even at this time of year – when it happened. Yes, it was in November. Poor Mrs Pratt died suddenly in her bed not long after I dined here. I can fix the date, because I got the news in New York by the steamer that followed the Olympia when I took her out on her first trip. You had the Leofric the same year? Yes, I remember. What a pair of old buffers we are coming to be, you and I. Nearly fifty years since we were apprentices together on the Clontarf. Shall you ever forget old Blauklot? ‘Biddy te boor beebles ashore, poys!’ Ha, ha! Take a little more, with all that water. It’s the old Hulstkamp I found in the cellar when this house came to me, the same I brought Luke from Amsterdam five-and-twenty years ago. He had never touched a drop of it. Perhaps he’s sorry now, poor fellow.
Where did I leave off? I told you that Mrs Pratt died suddenly – yes. Luke must have been lonely here after she was dead, I should think; I came to see him now and then, and he looked worn and nervous, and told me that his practice was growing too heavy for him, though he wouldn’t take an assistant on any account. Years went on, and his son was killed in South Africa, and after that he began to be queer. There was something about him not like other people. I believe he kept his senses in his profession to the end; there was no complaint of his having made bad mistakes in cases, or anything of that sort, but he had a look about him –
Luke was a red-headed man with a pale face when he was young, and he was never stout; in middle age he turned a sandy grey, and after his son died he grew thinner and thinner, till his head looked like a skull with parchment stretched over it very tight, and his eyes had a sort of glare in them that was very disagreeable to look at.
He had an old dog that poor Mrs Pratt had been fond of, and that used to follow her everywhere. He was a bulldog, and the sweetest tempered beast you ever saw, though he had a way of hitching his upper lip behind one of his fangs that frightened strangers a good deal. Sometimes, of an evening, Pratt and Bumble – that was the dog’s name – used to sit and look at each other a long time, thinking about old times, I suppose, when Luke’s wife used to sit in that chair you’ve got. That was always her place, and this was the doctor’s, where I’m sitting. Bumble used to climb up by the footstool – he was old and fat by that time, and could not jump much, and his teeth were getting shaky. He would look steadily at Luke, and Luke looked steadily at the dog, his face growing more and more like a skull with two little coals for eyes; and after about five minutes or so, though it may have been less, old Bumble would suddenly begin to shake all over, and all on a sudden he would set up an awful howl, as if he had been shot, and tumble out of the easy-chair and trot away, and hide himself under the sideboard, and lie there making odd noises.
Considering Pratt’s looks in those last months, the thing is not surprising, you know. I’m not nervous or imaginative, but I can quite believe he might have sent a sensitive woman into hysterics – his head looked so much like a skull in parchment.
At last I came down one day before Christmas, when my ship was in dock and I had three weeks off. Bumble was not about, and I said casually that I supposed the old dog was dead.
‘Yes,’ Pratt answered, and I thought there was something odd in his tone even before he went on after a little pause. ‘I killed him,’ he said presently. ‘I could not stand it any longer.’
I asked what it was that Luke could not stand, though I guessed well enough.
‘He had a way of sitting in her chair and glaring at me, and then howling.’ Luke shivered a little. ‘He didn’t suffer at all, poor old Bumble,’ he went on in a hurry, as if he thought I might imagine he had been cruel. ‘I put dionine into his drink to make him sleep soundly, and then I chloroformed him gradually, so that he could not have felt suffocated even if he was dreaming. It’s been quieter since then.’
I wondered what he meant, for the words slipped out as if he could not help saying them. I’ve understood since. He meant that he did not hear that noise so often after the dog was out of the way. Perhaps he thought at first that it was old Bumble in the yard howling at the moon, though it’s not that kind of noise, is it? Besides, I know what it is, if Luke didn’t. It’s only a noise, after all, and a noise never hurt anybody yet. But he was much more imaginative than I am. No doubt there really is something about this place that I don’t understand; but when I don’t understand a thing, I call it a phenomenon, and I don’t take it for granted that it’s going to kill me, as he did. I don’t understand everything, by long odds, nor do you, nor does any man who has been to sea. We used to talk of tidal waves, for instance, and we could not account for them; now we account for them by calling them submarine earthquakes, and we branch off into fifty theories, any one of which might make earthquakes quite comprehensible if we only knew what they are. I fell in with one of them once, and the inkstand flew stra
ight up from the table against the ceiling of my cabin. The same thing happened to Captain Lecky – I dare say you’ve read about it in his ‘Wrinkles.’ Very good. If that sort of thing took place ashore, in this room for instance, a nervous person would talk about spirits and levitation and fifty things that mean nothing, instead of just quietly setting it down as a ‘phenomenon’ that has not been explained yet. My view of that voice, you see.
Besides, what is there to prove that Luke killed his wife? I would not even suggest such a thing to anyone but you. After all, there was nothing but the coincidence that poor little Mrs Pratt died suddenly in her bed a few days after I told that story at dinner. She was not the only woman who ever died like that. Luke got the doctor over from the next parish, and they agreed that she had died of something the matter with her heart. Why not? It’s common enough.
Of course, there was the ladle. I never told anybody about that, and it made me start when I found it in the cupboard in the bedroom. It was new, too – a little tinned iron ladle that had not been in the fire more than once or twice, and there was some lead in it that had been melted, and stuck to the bottom of the bowl, all grey, with hardened dross on it. But that proves nothing. A country doctor is generally a handy man, who does everything for himself, and Luke may have had a dozen reasons for melting a little lead in a ladle. He was fond of sea-fishing, for instance, and he may have cast a sinker for a night-line; perhaps it was a weight for the hall clock, or something like that. All the same, when I found it I had a rather queer sensation, because it looked so much like the thing I had described when I told them the story. Do you understand? It affected me unpleasantly, and I threw it away; it’s at the bottom of the sea a mile from the Spit, and it will be jolly well rusted beyond recognizing if it’s ever washed up by the tide.
The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories Page 5