The Elliott O’Donnell Supernatural Megapack

by Elliott O'Donnell

  “I intended waiting there only until I had consumed a sandwich, but when I rose to go, something held me back, and I tarried on and on, until the evening set in and dark and strangely formed shadows began to dim the walls and floor.

  “As I was mounting the stairs to explore the upper premises a gentle gust of wind blew in my face and filled my nostrils with the most delightful odour of ‘cherry-pie.’ Intoxicated, I halted, and, leaning against the banisters, inhaled the perfume to the full extent of my lungs. Then I listened. The breeze rustling past me down the stairs rattled the window panes and jarred the doors, and seemed to disseminate, in its wake, new and even more perplexing shadows. Presently a door slammed, and I distinctly heard footsteps cross the hall and begin to ascend the stairs.

  “It was now for the first time that terror laid hold of me, but the fascination of it was so compelling that I lowered my head over the balustrade to listen. I tried to reason the thing out. Why, I asked myself, should these footsteps alarm me? What was it that made them different from other footsteps? Surely there was no difference. And yet, if that were so, why was I certain that they were not the footsteps of any trespasser from outside? I debated earnestly, desperately, but could arrive at no other conclusion than that there was a difference, and that this difference did not lie in the sounds themselves, but in the sense of atmosphere they conveyed, an atmosphere that was peculiarly subtle and quite incompatible with the natural. At last I knew for certain that the sounds were superphysical, and yet such was my dread of the Unknown that I fought most frantically against my convictions.

  “The steps had, by this time, so I calculated, reached the first landing, and I now noticed in them a cautiousness that I had not remarked before. What should I see? There was still time for flight, but whither could I go? Behind me were a row of half-open doors, through which the sun, sinking fast, shone its last rays. The effect—a sad one—forcibly reminded me of the end of all things—death; and the sadness of it harmonised well with an air of silent expectation that seemed suddenly to have filled the whole house. My fears grew. I was certain that the oncoming footsteps could only emanate from a phantom of the most startling and terrifying description, and I bitterly repented of my rashness in coming to the house alone. With a supreme effort, I averted my gaze and turned to seek refuge in one mad headlong plunge, should there be no other haven, through a window; but the power to do so was denied me. I was paralysed. The steps came nearer, and now, some distance below me, moving rapidly up the staircase, came something bright. I watched it pass swiftly round one bend, and then another, and at the moment my suspense had reached its limit and I felt I was on the border-line of either death or insanity, it turned the last corner and shot fully into view. The reaction was then so great that I reeled back against the wall and burst out laughing. Instead of some distorted semblance of humanity, instead of some grotesque, semi-animal elemental, something too grim and devilish for the mind to conceive and survive, I saw—a child: a girl of about twelve, dressed in the most becoming frock of soft white satin, high in the waist, and from thence falling in folds to her feet. She had long bright golden hair hanging in loose curls on either side of her low white forehead; delicately pencilled eyebrows that were slightly knit, and wide open blue-grey eyes that were fixed on me with an expression of the gravest anxiety, mingled with a something enigmatical, something sorely puzzling and with which I seemed to be familiar. Again and again I have tried to diagnose it, and at times the solution has seemed very near; but it has always eluded me in the end, and the mystery is still as great and as poignant as ever. The child held a leash in one hand, whilst she stretched out the other confidingly towards me.

  “Always a worshipper of beauty, I was stooping down to kiss her little hand, when, to my consternation, she abruptly vanished, and I found myself standing there—alone.

  “An intense sadness now seized me, and throwing myself on the floor I gave way to an attack of utter dejection. The vision I had just seen was in very deed the embodiment of all my boyhood’s dreams, and for the moment, but only for the moment, my old self, a little pensive boy adoring heart and soul a girl’s fair face, had lived again.

  “It was all too cruelly brief; for with the vision my old ego vanished too; and I felt—I knew it had been wrested from me and hurried to some far-off place where the like of my present self could not be admitted. I rose at length chilled and hopeless, and tearing myself away from the landing with a desperate effort, wandered home. I could not rest. An intense dissatisfaction with myself, with my whole mode of life, my surroundings, obsessed me. I longed to alter, to become something different, something unsophisticated, simple, even elementary. This change in me brought me into closer sympathy with Ghoul, who, as I have said, was strangely altered himself. He avoided Darnton with the most marked persistence, and was always hovering round my doorstep and lying on the lawn. At last one day I could stand it no longer. ‘Ghoul,’ I said, ‘the same yearning possesses us both. It’s the child—the child with the lovely eyes. We must see her. You and I are rivals, old fellow. But never mind! We’ll visit the house together and let her take her choice. Come along!’

  “Ghoul’s joy on entering the garden of Barcombe House knew no bounds. He tore in at the gate, capered across the grass, barked, whined, wagged his tail furiously, and behaved like the veriest of lunatics. Gaining admittance into the house as easily as before, I quickly made my way to the third-floor landing, Ghoul darting up the stairs ahead of me. Without a moment’s pause he bolted into a room immediately in front of us, and springing on to the sill of a large casement window that was wide open, peered eagerly out, exhibiting, as he did so, the wildest manifestation of excitement. Following the direction of his eyes, I looked down into the garden, and there, gazing up at us, her curls shining gold in the hot summer sun, stood the little ghost. The moment she saw me, she smiled, and, moving forward with a peculiar gliding motion, entered the house. Once again a door slammed, and, once again, there came the patter of ascending footsteps. Ghoul ran to meet her. She stooped over him, patted his head and fastened the leash to his collar, whilst I, merely a spectator, felt the bitterest pangs of jealousy. Then she looked up, and instantly the joy in her face was converted into pity—pity for me. Without a doubt Ghoul had triumphed.

  “Still patting him on the head and urging him forward, she ran past me, and, mounting the window sill, glanced round at me with a mischievous smile. Even then I did not comprehend the full significance of her action. I merely stood and stared—stared as if I would never grow tired of staring, so fascinated was I by the piquante beauty of that superhuman little face. I was still staring when she put one foot through the open window; still staring when the other foot followed; still staring when she waved her hand gleefully at me and sprang out—out into the sunny brightness of the hot summer noon. I thought of Ghoul. He had sprung, too. Sprung barking and whining with a joy unequalled.

  “I ran to look for him. He lay where he had fallen, his neck broken and his spirit fled.

  “Darnton, of course, would not believe me. We had a stormy interview, and we have never spoken to one another since.

  “The house—Barcombe House—is now let, and the occupants inform me that they have never once been troubled—at least not by ghosts.”

  CHAPTER V

  THE DRESSING-ROOM

  CASES OF HAUNTINGS AT THE PRINCE REGENT AND OTHER THEATRES

  The idea of a theatre being haunted—a theatre where everything is bright and everyone full of life—must, for the moment, strike one as preposterous. Why, the mere thought of the footlights, to say nothing of the clapping of hands and thunders of applause from the Gods, conjures up a picture which is the very antithesis of ghosts. Besides, why should a theatre be haunted? To be haunted, a place must have a history—someone must have committed a crime there, such as murder or suicide; and surely no such thing has ever happened in a theatre! Imagine a murder, a rea
l one, at Drury Lane, or a suicide, say, at the Gaiety! Why, the thing is monstrous, absurd! And as to a ghost—a bona fide ghost—appearing on the stage or in the auditorium, why, such an idea is without rhyme or reason; it is, in fact, inconceivable, and the public—the all-wise public—would, of course, laugh it to scorn.

  But stop a moment. Does the general public know everything? Is not the theatre, to it, simply the stage, and is it not profoundly ignorant of all that lies beyond the stage—away back, behind the hidden wings? Is it not profoundly ignorant, also, of the great basement below the stage with its dark and tortuous passages; and profoundly ignorant of the many flights of cold and carpetless stairs, leading to story upon story of seemingly never-ending dressing-rooms and corridors? What does it know, too, of the individual lives of the many generations of actors and actresses, call-boys and dressers who have toiled wearily up those stairs and along those dimly lit passages in between the acts? what does it know of the thoughts of all that host of bygones—of their terrible anxieties, their loves, their passions? what does it know of the tragedies with which, doubtless, many of these people have been intimately associated, and of the crowd of ghosts they have, wittingly or unwittingly, brought with them from their own homes?—for ghosts, even as they haunt houses, haunt people and mercilessly attach themselves to them. Moreover, although they have long since been forgotten, tragedies have occurred in some of the oldest of the London theatres. Hunt up the records of eighty and ninety years ago, and you will find that more than one dressing-room witnessed the tragic ending of some lesser star, some member of the crowd, a mere “walker on”; that duels were not infrequently fought in grim earnest on the boards; and that more than one poor super has been found hanging from a cobwebby beam in a remote corner of the great maze-like basement of the building.

  Again, think of the site of a London theatre! Prehistoric man or beast may well lie buried there; witches accused of practising their nefarious rites on or near that site may well have been burnt there.

  Think, too, of the houses that once may have stood there! Inns, with dark tell-tale stains on their boards; taverns, tainted with vice—the rendezvous of truculent swashbucklers and painted jades; and even more terrible still, cruel and ghastly slaughter-houses.

  Ground, then, and houses alike, all may have had their hauntings; and the ghosts may have stayed on, as ghosts often do, haunting anew each successive building. Yes, more than one London theatre is haunted—and several of these theatres have more than one ghost.

  The proprietors affect ignorance and of course tell you nothing. They like to see long queues of people waiting for admission to their show, but they have no desire to see a corresponding crowd at the box office seeking permission to sit up all night in the theatre to see the ghost. No, if you want to find out if a theatre is haunted, you must not apply to the proprietor, you must inquire of the actors themselves; and, in order to stand a really good chance of discovering the truth, you should, if possible, for a time become one of them. It was for the purpose of making such a discovery that I took it into my head one day last year to apply for a walk on at the Mercury. I had often wondered if the Mercury was haunted. I speedily found out that it was not. Still, I was not altogether disappointed, for I learned from some of my fellow-walkers on and from one of the stage hands of several very interesting cases of hauntings at other of the London theatres. There is the Prince Regent’s, for instance, which, as recently as the late nineties had a dressing-room, 25, that was always kept locked. It was in the autumn of 1897 that John W. Mayhewe was engaged to play a small but rather important part there in The Merciful Pirate. The cast was an unusually large one, and Mayhewe discovered that he had to share dressing-room 25 with another actor called Talbotson. The opening night of the play, however, Talbotson was laid up with influenza, and Mayhewe had room 25 to himself. Being one of those over-anxious people who err on the side of being ultra-punctual, he arrived at the theatre at least an hour before the curtain went up, and, on the way to his room, he paused to chat with the stage doorkeeper.

  “I noticed,” he remarked, “when I was dressing for rehearsal yesterday that my room smelt very musty. Isn’t it often used?”

  “It hasn’t been used since I’ve been here,” was the reply.

  “Why?” said Mayhewe.

  “I can’t tell you,” the doorkeeper answered surlily. “If you want to know, you had better ask the stage manager.”

  Not caring to do this, Mayhewe made no further remarks, but hastened upstairs. No one was about, and the noise of his footsteps sounded strangely loud in the silent emptiness of the passages. He entered his room at last, hung his coat and hat on the door, and, crossing to his seat in front of a small mirror, sat down. “After all,” he said to himself, “I’m glad Talbotson won’t be here to-night. I’m not in a mood for talking, and the fellow bores me to distraction.” He lit a cigarette, leaned back in a more comfortable attitude, and for some minutes allowed himself to revel in the luxury of a perfectly blank state of mind. Suddenly the handle of the door turned—a solitary, isolated sound—and he sat up sharply in his chair. “Who’s there?” he shouted. There was no response. “I couldn’t have latched it properly,” he reasoned, and once again he leaned back in his chair and smoked. Five or six minutes passed in this fashion, and he was thinking of beginning to dress, when there was another noise. Something behind him fell on the floor with a loud flop.

  Once again he turned swiftly round. It was his hat—a hard felt bowler. It had fallen from the door peg on which he had hung it, and was still feebly oscillating.

  “It is curious how one sometimes notices all these little things,” he reflected. “I dare say door handles have turned and hats have fallen a thousand times when I might have heard them and haven’t. I suppose it is because everything is so very quiet and I’m alone in this part of the building.” Then he glanced at his coat—a long, double-breasted ulster—and rubbed his eyes thoughtfully. “Why,” he exclaimed, “what a curious shape the thing has taken! It’s swelled out just as if someone were inside it. Or has my eyesight suddenly gone wrong?” He leaned forward and examined it closely. No. He was not mistaken. The coat was no longer untenanted. There was something inside it—something which filled it like he had done; but it was something to which he could ascribe no name. He could see it there, and mentally feel that it was peering at him with eyes full of the most jibing mockery and hate; but he could not define it. It was something quite outside his ken, something with which he had had no previous acquaintance. He tried to whistle and appear nonchalant, but it was of no avail. The coat—his coat—had something in it, and that something was staring back at him. What a fool he had been to come so early. At last, with a supreme effort, he took his eyes from the door, and, swinging round in his chair, resumed smoking. He sat thus for some moments, and then a board close behind him creaked.

  Of course there is nothing in a creak—boards and furniture are always creaking, and most people attribute the creaking to a change in the temperature. So did Mayhewe. “The room is beginning to get warm—the gas has heated it,” he said; “that is why.” Still he gradually lowered his eyes, and when they rested on the mirror in front of him, he gave the barest suspicion of a start. In the mirror were reflected the door and the coat, but the latter hung quite limply now. There was nothing whatever filling it out.

  What in Heaven’s name had become of the thing? Where had it got to? Close beside Mayhewe was the grate, and a sudden rustling in it, followed by a hurried descent of soot, made him laugh outright. The explanation was now so very simple. The wind was responsible for it all—for the door handle, the hat, the coat, and the creak. How truly ridiculous! He would dress. With that object in view he threw the end of his cigarette in the fender and, rising, was about to quit his seat, when his eyes fell on his gloves. He had thrown them quite carelessly on the wash-stand, almost immediately in front of him, and he had noticed nothing
remarkable about them then. But now—surely it could not be the wind this time; there were hands in them, and these hands were strangely unlike his own. Whereas his fingers had blunt, spatulate tips, the tops of these fingers were curved and pointed like the talons of some cruel beast of prey, and the palms were much longer and narrower than his own. He stared at them, too fascinated to do otherwise, and it seemed to him that they shifted their position and came nearer to him, with a slow, stealthy, silent motion, like that of some monstrous spider creeping murderously towards its helpless victim. He watched them for some moments quite motionless, and then, yielding to a sudden fit of ungovernable fury, he threw his tobacco pouch at the nearest.