The Ghost Club

by William Meikle

  This new broadening of Wee Davie’s imagination also did much for his general wellbeing. Indeed, by the time his father visited, almost two months after Davie’s arrival in the house, the lad had some color in his cheeks, and was able to get up out of bed to greet his parent at the door. Unfortunately for Davie, he had brought Sandy with him in his right hand, for the two had become completely inseparable. Davie’s father’s visage went from a look of welcome joy at his son’s good health to a frown, even as Davie was still some way across the room.

  “What do you have there, lad?” he said, and Davie’s headlong rush towards his father’s arms faltered and failed in the middle of the room. He tried to hide Sandy behind his back, but it was too late. His father put out a hand, and Davie did not have it in him to disobey, despite Sandy’s silent screaming in his head. He stepped forward and handed the puppet over.

  The soldier looked much smaller in the man’s large, broad hand. His father looked at the doll, turning it to examine the whole of it, his lips pursed in disapproval.

  “His name is Sandy, father,” Davie said. “He is my friend.”

  The man’s look of disapproval deepened.

  “You are almost a man now, David,” he said. “It is time to put away such childish notions.”

  Without any further warning, Davie’s father strode over to the window, opened it wide, and threw the doll out with all the force he could muster. Even through sudden tears Davie heard screams and vile curses as Sandy fell away before passing out of sight and sound.

  Davie quite lost all sense of decorum. He pummeled with his fists at the back of his father’s legs, screaming in rage, tears running down his suddenly hot cheeks, until the man was forced to back away, bewildered by the fury that had so swiftly risen in the boy. Davie ran across the room and stood on tiptoes by the window, straining to look, hoping to hear, but there was only the soft wash of sea on pebbles far below. Sandy had gone, and without him Davie’s world had, once more, grown small and claustrophobic.

  ***

  Wee Davie retired to his bed. He would not speak a single word to his father, despite the man’s many entreaties. Perhaps if the man had shown any remorse at so pointedly evicting Davie’s friend, their relationship might have been retrieved. But as it was, the father left two days later, bemused and bewildered at Davie’s newly found recalcitrance.

  Over the days to come Davie looked up every time Agnes entered the room, only to look away again to hide his tears when she shook her head sadly. Wherever Sandy had gone, it seemed that the doll was beyond being found in the immediate vicinity of the house, and Davie had visions of the wee soldier, face down in the surf, being carried away by the waves to adventures that would never be recounted.

  The days dragged on, with only persistent heavy autumnal rain drumming against the window to keep him company. Davie tried to recreate some of Sandy’s stories with his troops in the hills and valleys of the eiderdown quilt, but without the wee soldier’s voice it was not the same, the experience being thin and devoid of the weight and heft of reality.

  Every morning Agnes found him slumped ever further beneath the covers, as if he was sinking, drowning, in the depths of the bedclothes, and after her chores were done, before heading homeward, she would search the shoreline, hoping for a glimpse of red serge or tartan. But she found none, and Wee Davie’s health once again took a rapid downward tumble, one from which it was feared he might not recover.

  Davie took a fever two weeks after the loss of the soldier. In his delirium he spoke in two distinct voices, one of a frightened, sick boy, the other of a foul-mouthed man, railing against the injustices of the situation at the top of his voice, in language the like of which the household had not heard in many a long year. Agnes was of the opinion that the boy might need a priest, that he might be possessed by an evil spirit intent on doing him harm. But the Seton family came from a long line of Presbyterian stock and would not give the time of day to any talk of either demons or witchery.

  The lad’s uncle did yield enough to allow visits from a doctor and the local minister, both of whom left with the same, sad, diagnosis; poor wee Davie was not long for this world and preparations should be made to make his departure as peaceful as could be managed. An expectant hush fell over the household, as if everyone and everything, even the very fabric of the building itself, held their breath until Davie would have breathed his last.

  As for Davie himself, the lad did not even take note of the ministrations of his adult visitors. He was lost, adrift in a fever dream filled to the brim with war and battles, pirates and treasure, sailing in tall ships amid islands where it never rained and where no little boy was ever sick. But even in his dreams, he missed Sandy, missed the old soldier’s stories, his voice, his company.

  Davie’s fever broke in the early hours of the morning three days after the last visit from the doctor, and he woke, lucid for the first time in a week, swaddled in bedclothes that suddenly felt too heavy, too oppressive. He threw the eiderdown aside, and felt some relief at the sudden draft that played around his feet and legs. The rain had finally stopped, and watery light flowed through the window and danced in waves across the sheets. Davie let his toes play in the light, imagining that he was back in the dreams, wading under bright, warm sunshine in the hot water of some impossibly blue lagoon.

  He was about to try to swing himself off the mattress when he heard a sound—a distant scratching, as if something was attempting to get his attention. The noise seemed to be coming from the window. Davie lowered himself gingerly out of the bed, wincing at the cold seeping up from the floorboards. He almost fell with his first step as his legs wobbled, but the scratching had got more insistent, and he needed to investigate, so he stumbled, a toddler again, across to the window. He reached up, threw it open wide, and heard, clear and distinct in the night air, the voice of Sandy—a plea for aid from his friend.

  “I could do with some help down here, laddie,” the old soldier said. “I am afraid I find myself in a wee spot of bother.”

  ***

  Davie dressed as quickly as he could, and as quietly as he was able. It had been so very long since he had worn anything but a nightgown that his outdoor wear felt too bulky and far too oppressive in the cold night air. But even in his sickness Davie knew that to go outside in the dark without appropriate clothing was likely to bring him to a considerably more rapid end than the one that was surely coming for him.

  He padded across the room carrying his shoes in his right hand, but even then the ancient boards creaked and complained like an old man with toothache. He stopped and stood still, waiting for quiet to fall around him again, waiting for the sound of footsteps on the stairs as someone came to investigate. But Agnes had not yet arrived for her morning duties, and Davie guessed that his uncle was either sound asleep, or did not have any worries about creaking noises in the old house on a cold night. He took a deep breath and headed for the door. It swung open with another loud creak—Davie thought for sure that it was more than loud enough to alert the household, but still no one came to check.

  Once he stepped out on the landing, navigating the staircase almost proved to be an obstacle too far for Davie. His room was on the top floor, and up here he had the benefit of the moonlight coming in from a domed skylight high above to light his passage. But on looking down the well of the stairs, Davie could see only dark shadows and shifting blackness below, and his courage almost failed him before he even took the first step. He looked back into his bedroom—his sanctuary, and his prison. It was that very thought that got his feet moving.

  Before venturing off the top landing he sat on the uppermost step and put on his shoes. The stairs creaked as he stood, and once again he stopped and listened for any sign that his uncle had been alerted to the noise. But the house stayed quiet—disconcertingly so, for as clouds scurried over the moon so too did the shadows caper and dance beneath him on the stairs, as if in anticipation of him falling into their clutches. But Sandy was in trou
ble down there—and soldiers do not leave their fellows in danger. Sandy had taught him that, and Davie was resolved not to let his new—indeed his only—friend down.

  He started down the stairs, slowly at first, and always with his right hand on the banister rail for fear of tumbling headlong into the waiting dark. He feared that every footfall would bring his uncle running, but after descending the first of four flights of stairs with no other movement in the dwelling, he felt more comfortable in moving freely. But any time he might have gained from losing one worry was only lost again by the increasing darkness gathering around him and making every step a sore fight against his growing panic. The moonlight did not seem to penetrate to the lower depths of the stairwell, and it took many seconds for Davie’s eyes to adjust to the gloom. The blackness pooled and gathered everywhere he turned—bears and tigers and assassins, lurking just out of sight and waiting for a mistimed step.

  He stopped at the foot of the second staircase and looked up—the dim glow of the dome far above reminded him, of the still warm bed up there, and the comfort he could take from laying his head on the too-soft pillow. His courage nearly left him completely then—and Sandy must have sensed it, for Davie heard the old soldier’s voice again, coming from still further below.

  “Courage, lad. I am here for you, if you can be here for me. Just come and fetch me. Be brave—it will be a story that you can tell to me for a wee change.”

  That got Davie moving again. He went extra carefully past his uncle’s bedroom door, but quickly realized that he need not have bothered trying to be silent, for his uncle’s snoring was clearly audible even through the thick wooden door.

  And the next two sets of stairs proved to be easier than the last, for there was now a modicum of moonlight washing in through the half circle of a window above the door that led out to the promenade and then the sea. Davie had a bad moment when he feared that the door itself might be locked against his exit—his escape as he was coming to think of it—but the handle turned smoothly enough in his hand and Davie walked out into the night.

  ***

  The chill sea breeze immediately threatened to send him scurrying back indoors, for Davie had quite forgotten the feel of a stiff east wind in his face and found the sensation rather alarming. But any thought of retreat soon vanished completely when he heard Sandy’s voice again—louder now, and coming from somewhere down and away to his right—down, near the shoreline.

  “Hurry, laddie—I cannae hold them off much longer.”

  The moon gave him just enough light to see the whiteness of the spray where the waves hit the beach. Davie headed in that direction, trying to discern where the voice had originated even as he slid and almost tumbled among the cobbles of the lower shore.

  “I’m coming,” he shouted, dismayed to note that his small voice was swallowed almost completely by the wind, which whistled loudly at his ears. There were other sounds in the wind—the squeaking caw of gulls, a dozen or more at a guess, and all coming from the same spot to which Davie was headed.

  He saw the birds soon after hearing them, white and flashing, darting ghosts above the surf, swooping and diving in wave after wave of attacks on something at the water’s edge.

  “To me, Davie, lad. To me.”

  It was only then that he saw the small figure standing in the surf, slashing and stabbing with his small sword, holding off the gull’s attack. As Davie closed in, the gulls’ swooping grew ever more frenzied. Sandy speared one through the chest—red blossoming in the white feathers, and it fell, dead, in the sea to be quickly taken away by the same waves that threatened to engulf the little soldier. But Sandy’s thrust had only exposed him to another beak, one that tore at his red serge tunic, tearing off a patch the size of Davie’s thumb.

  Seeing his friend so sorely assaulted, Davie waded in with no hesitation, hands waving and feet kicking, dispersing the birds almost immediately, the white ghosts soaring silently away and being quickly lost in the dark. Sandy lay at the edge of the tide line, half in, half out of the water, and he groaned when Davie lifted him.

  “Thank ye, laddie. I thought I was heading for the Pearly Gates that time for sure.”

  The serge tunic was ruined beyond repair, the little sword was bent into a curve, Sandy’s bearskin hat had gone, lost to the sea, and there was a deep gouge in the wood at the bare spot where the tunic had been torn asunder. But Davie cried tears of joy at having his friend again, and stood there for the longest time in the cold air with the sea filling his shoes and splashing unheeded around his ankles.

  “Do not weep, laddie,” Sandy said. “You have saved my life—we are brothers in blood now, bonded forever. And do not mind these wee scratches. I have had worse—far worse. Have I told you about the time I was caught between a boat on fire and an island of cannibals ready to put me in a pot? Well, there I was . . . ”

  ***

  Agnes found Davie in bed in his room the next morning, on top of the sheets and fully clothed, still dripping wet but oblivious to the fact. The lad was going to be oblivious to everything for evermore, for he was quite, quite dead.

  It was obvious that he had gone easily, for he had a broad smile on his face, and he clutched his friend, Sandy, tight to his chest, the pair of them inseparable, even in death.

  Rudyard Kipling did not have far to travel to accept our invitation for dinner and a story, for he has taken rooms in Charing Cross and only had a short stroll to join us here in the hotel.

  I am greatly enamored of this young man’s tales, and no little in awe of his prodigious energy with the pen. His lively, almost frantic style of working was evident all over his starched white shirt when he arrived at the table. Despite the obvious strenuous efforts of a laundry, the black stains, now an array of blues, browns, and purples, showed where his imagination had overrun his penmanship and spattered the results hither and thither.

  On arrival he addressed me as Brother Doyle and gave me the sign, which I returned with pleasure without alerting Stoker or James to the bond between our guest and myself. When I got him alone I admonished him lightly for his skirting rather too close to the secrets of the craft in one of his recent stories, to which he informed me that he was about to reveal a few more.

  Suitably intrigued, I settled after dinner most eager to hear what adventures he had in store. He read from reams of paper covered in his frantic, yet perfectly legible scrawl, handing each sheet over to me as it was told—and as it is typed up here now.

  Here is his tale.

  THE HIGH BUNGALOW

  Rudyard Kipling

  Shimla, capital of the Punjab, has had a reputation for frivolity, gossip, and intrigue ever since the British Army started using it as their summer refuge from the heat of the plains. It serves both as a seat of power and a summer holiday encampment, with the concomitant good and bad points of both being intertwined and intermingled.

  The city’s hillside aspect gives it a climate that, at times, is little warmer than any good English summer’s day rather than the burning inferno that has been left behind at lower climes. I had the good fortune to spend my weeks of annual leave there in the summers of ‘85 through ‘88, taking a month in visiting my family and enjoying the cool evenings, wood fires, and blessed cups of strong locally grown tea for breakfast.

  On a weekend, the whole family and the servants would take ourselves out of the city and head off higher still, to a remote hamlet in a high pass where the nights were so cold as to require extra bedding and the days were gloriously clear and bright among the mountains. At such altitudes the mind is given flight, freed from earthly ties, and all manner of things begin to seem possible. It was there in my father’s bungalow, in late August during my third such visit, that I heard the most extraordinary tale.

  It begins, as many soldiers’ tales do, with some of that aforementioned frivolity.

  Captain Mackie had taken the bungalow on the higher edge of the ridge just a hundred yards or so from our place, and he walked over to join
us for supper on the Saturday night. I had not met the man before, although my parents knew him well enough from previous summers’ introductions at parties in Shimla. I knew the type though, as soon as I saw him; he had the pre-requisite bristling whiskers and oiled hair, a ruddy nose from too much Scotch, a blustery manner, and the worn boots from kicking the backsides of the men; this was a career army officer through and through. And like many of his fellows Captain Mackie had all the usual vices, being a heavy taker of strong liquor, a smoker of decidedly foul smelling cheroots, and having lost and won several small fortunes at the gaming tables in Shimla over recent summers.

  But it was none of those tales that caught my attention. Rather it was something much more recent—for Captain Mackie had arrived in his weekend bungalow accompanied by the wife of a prominent—and prominently absent—banker. They had hoped for a quiet, illicit rendezvous with only each other for company, only to find that they were not the sole occupants of the property for the night.