The Elliott O’Donnell Supernatural Megapack

by Elliott O'Donnell

  Gladys did not go to bed: surrounded with lighted candles, she sat on the top of a wardrobe till daybreak. The following morning the house was fumigated with sulphur; and people were told off to kill the cockroaches, as they made their escape out of doors. By this means an enormous number were killed; but at night they were just as bad as before.

  An engineer friend then suggested a freezing-machine. The temperature of the house was reduced to ten degrees below zero; the pipes froze (and burst next day), the milk froze, the housemaid’s toes and the cook’s little finger of the left hand froze, everything froze; and presumably the beetles froze, for there was not one to be seen.

  However, it was quite impossible to resort again to this extreme measure. John Martin had the most agonizing attacks of lumbago. Gladys had neuralgia, and Miss Templeton—a slight touch of pleurisy.

  When Gladys reached the Imperial that evening, she found that the staff had been battling with cockroaches all day, and that they had at last succeeded in getting rid of them with a fumigation mixture of camphor, cocculus, sulphur, bezonia and assafœtida—suggested to them by a Hindoo student.

  For the next week not a beetle was to be seen at the theatre nor at the Cottage; and Gladys was beginning to hope that Hamar had ceased plaguing her (in despair of ever winning her), when the persecutions suddenly broke out again.

  She had been in bed about half an hour, and was falling into a gentle and much needed sleep, when a tremendous rap at the wall, close to her head, awoke her with a start, and set her heart pulsating violently. Thinking it must be some one on the landing, she got up and lit a candle. There was no one there. The moment she got into bed again, the rapping was repeated, and it continued, at intervals, all night. This went on for a week, during which time Gladys was never once able to sleep.

  A brief respite ensued; but it was abruptly terminated one morning, when Gladys awoke feeling as if some big insect were attempting to penetrate her body. Uttering a shriek of terror, she whipped the clothes from her, and sprang out of bed. Miss Templeton, who slept in the next room, came rushing in, and they both saw an enormous insect, half beetle and half scorpion, dart under the pillow. John Martin was fetched, but although he searched everywhere, not a trace of the insect could be found.

  That night, directly Gladys got in bed and blew out the light, she heard a ticking sound on the sheets, and a huge insect with long hairy legs ran up her sleeve. Her shrieks brought the whole household to the room, but the insect was nowhere to be seen.

  She was thus plagued for nearly a fortnight. One insect only—never a number, but only one, of prodigious size and terrifying form—appeared to her in the least suspected places, i. e., on the dressing-table or chimney-piece, in her shoes, or pockets; crawled over her in the dark; and could never be caught.

  These perpetual frights, and consequent sleeplessness, wore Gladys out. She grew so ill that she had to give up acting, and go into a home to try the rest cure.

  Hamar then communicated with her, through a third person, and offered to leave off tormenting her, if she would agree to be engaged to him.

  “I never will!” she said.

  “Then I will never leave off persecuting you,” was his retort.

  But he was wary. He had no wish to kill her or to damage her looks—so he let her get well and remain thus for a brief space. When she was once again in full vigour, acting at the Imperial, he recommenced his unwelcome attentions.

  At first he confined his new plague to the servants at the Cottage. The cook was one day turning out a drawer in the kitchen dresser, when she was horrified out of her senses to find squatting there, a large, black toad, which stared most malevolently at her, and then sprang in her face. She shrieked to the housemaid to help her kill it, but before a weapon could be got, the creature had bounced through an open window, and disappeared.

  After this incident the servants knew no peace. Their bedclothes were thrown off them at night, their dresses torn and bespattered with ink, their brushes and combs thrown out of the window, and the water they poured out to wash in was sometimes quite black, sometimes full of a bright green sediment, and sometimes boiling, when it invariably cracked both the jug and basin.

  Unable to stand these annoyances the servants left in a body. Their successors fared the same, and worse. Besides having to endure the above-named horrors, pebbles were thrown through the windows, their chairs were pulled away as they were about to sit down (the cook, who was one of those upon whom this trick was played, thereby seriously injuring her spine), and all sorts of obstacles were placed on the stairs, so that those who ran down unwarily tripped over them and hurt themselves (two successive housemaids broke their legs, whilst another sprained her wrist).

  The meat, too, was a constant worry—it went so bad that enormous maggots crawled out of it by the thousand and covered the table and floor; and the milk, of which a large quantity was taken daily, “turned” in a very curious manner. After being deposited, in its usual place, in the pantry, it began to darken; first of all it became light blue, then deepened into an almost inky blackness, exhibiting curious zigzag lines; and, lastly, the whole mass began to putrefy and to emit a stench so overpowering that every one in the house retched, and the whole place had to be disinfected. This occurred day after day. Nothing would stop it. The dairyman who supplied the milk did all he could to counteract it. He had his dairies constantly cleansed, he saw that the cattle had a change of food, he bought an entirely new stock of dairy utensils, and no milk was ever sent to the Cottage that he had not had carefully analyzed.

  The troubles continued for three weeks, at the end of which period John Martin received a telephone call from Hamar.

  “Hullo!” the latter said, “I guess you’ve had about enough of it by this time. Wouldn’t you like some sweet-smelling milk for a change, or do you prefer to go on till you all get typhoid? The remedy, you know, lies in your own hands. You’ve only to tell that daughter of yours to accept me, and I’ll undertake all your troubles shall cease.”

  “I’ll see you hanged first,” John Martin answered.

  “Very well, then, you old mule,” Hamar shouted, “look out for yourself—and Miss Gladys.”

  CHAPTER XXIII

  LOVE

  To bring about plagues of insects Hamar had resorted to a very simple method. He had first of all made a wax image representing a cockroach—scorpion—centipede, or whatever other species came into his mind. Then, placing the image he had made in front of him, and repeating the prayer he had learned from the Unknown, through the medium of Mrs. Anderson-Waite’s table, he had concentrated body, soul, and spirit on plaguing Gladys with the insect, which the image represented. When his concentration reached the highest degree, insects in their actual physical bodies were transported from the tropics;[5] but when he was unable to concentrate to the utmost, only the ethereal projections of the insects were obtainable; hence the hybrid—partly scorpion and partly beetle, that appeared and disappeared in Gladys’s bed and bedroom.

  To produce the rappings on the walls of Gladys’s room, he had made a wax representation of a wall, and whilst concentrating to the very utmost, had struck it with his knuckles.

  The plaguing of the servants Hamar had also accomplished by means of images and concentration.

  But in order to bewitch milk, he had been obliged to resort to other means. He had converted the mumia of an idiot into a magnes microcosmi; and bribing the man who delivered the milk, he gave him instructions to soak the magnes microcosmi, for a few minutes, in every portion that he left at the Cottage.[6]

  At length Hamar having failed to gain his object by plaguing Gladys and the servants, set about tormenting John Martin. He made a wax image of the latter, and after pronouncing the necessary prayer, stuck the image full of pins, crying out as he did so “John Martin, I hate you. John Martin, I curse you. John Martin, a plagu
e on you.” And each time Hamar stuck a pin in the image he had made of John Martin, the real John Martin felt an acute pain in the region of his body corresponding to that in which the pin was stuck.

  The doctor, who was called in, could make nothing of the malady, but, following the etiquette of the profession, cloaked his ignorance with a look of profound wisdom, and the pronouncement that he would tell them, in a day or two, what was the matter. In the meanwhile, he found it necessary and politic to prescribe a non-committal mixture of chalk and rhubarb, which, although disguised under the usual fanciful pharmacopœia appellation, did not, however, allay the pain. Sharp, agonizing pricks, now on the neck now in the chest, now in the most sensitive part of the knee-cap, now under the toe-nail, now—most painful of all—under the finger-nail—continued to torment John Martin, who, though as a rule fairly stoical, could not stand these attacks with any degree of composure. He screamed, and swore, and cursed, until the whole household was terrified—and Gladys, pretty nearly out of her mind.

  During a lull—an interval, wherein John Martin enjoyed a brief respite, the telephone bell rang.

  “Hulloa,” called a voice, “I’m Hamar. Haven’t you had about enough of it? Remember, you’ve only to say the word and I’ll stop.”

  “Tell him I’ll do nothing of the sort,” John Martin said, “that he’ll never get the better of me this way.”

  Miss Templeton gave the message, and Hamar replied “Wait! Wait and see!”

  He then thrust wool, pins, horsenails, straw, needles and moss into the mouth of the image, and John Martin had such frightful pains in his stomach that he went into convulsions; and, after an emetic had been given him, vomited up all the above-named articles, save the pins and needles which worked their way out through his flesh, causing him the most exquisite tortures.

  Gladys, having given up going to the theatre in order to be with her father during these attacks, now declared that she could no longer bear to see him in such excruciating pain, whilst it was in her power to prevent it.

  “Tell him,” she said, “tell Hamar you’ll accept his conditions. Don’t think of me! I would rather do anything than see you suffer like this.”

  “I can hold out a bit longer,” he groaned, “at any rate I needn’t give in yet.”

  Every now and then there came a respite—perhaps for several hours, perhaps for several days—then the tortures recommenced. And always John Martin steeled himself to bear them. At last came the climax.

  Hamar, infuriated that his efforts, so far, had proved fruitless, resolved, since time was pressing, to play his trump card and either win, or lose all. He rang up Gladys on the telephone.

  “My patience is exhausted,” he said. “I’ll give you one more chance, and one—only. Agree to be engaged to me at once—or I’ll smite your father with the most virulent form of cancer, and leave him to die.”

  There was no question now in Gladys’s mind as to what she should do. Of all things in the world, she dreaded cancer most, and after the many evidences Hamar had given her of his skill in Black Magic, she did not doubt for one instant that he could, immediately he chose, carry out his threat.

  “I have decided,” she said faintly, “to—to—give in.”

  “You accept me, then?” Hamar said.

  “Y-yes!”

  “When may I see you?”

  “When you like.”

  “Then I’ll come at once,” Hamar replied. “Au revoir.”

  But Hamar, when he arrived at the Cottage, did not realize any of the gleeful anticipations he had indulged in en route. Gladys was ill—so Miss Templeton informed him—at the same time begging him, if he really had any regard for Miss Martin, not to ask to see her for the next few days; and to this request Hamar, seeing no alternative, was obliged to assent.

  Shortly after he had gone, Shiel Davenport called, and found Gladys alone in the garden.

  “I’ve been told that your father is ill,” he said, “and should like to hear better news of him. How is he?”

  “I think he’s all right now,” Gladys replied, “but he has suffered frightfully. Indeed, we’ve all had a terrible time,” And she told him what had happened.

  “Then you’ve not been acting at the Imperial lately?” Shiel asked.

  “Not for the past week,” Gladys replied. “I couldn’t leave father.”

  “How has Mr. Bromley Burnham got on without you?” Shiel asked bitterly.

  “I don’t understand you,” Gladys said quietly. “I have an understudy, and from what I am told she has given every satisfaction. I have some news which I fear won’t be altogether welcome to you.”

  Shiel turned a shade paler. “What is it?” he faltered.

  “I’m engaged to be married.”

  For a few moments there was silence, and then Shiel exclaimed mechanically “Engaged to be married! To whom?”

  “To Leon Hamar! I couldn’t help it.” And she explained the position.

  “But he’ll never keep you to it,” Shiel said. “He couldn’t be such a brute.”

  “I’m afraid he will,” Gladys replied. “He’s shown pretty clearly that he’s capable of anything. I’ve given him my promise—I must keep it.”

  “Then it’s good-bye to all interest in life—for me,” Shiel said, with a gulp. “I’ve thought of no one but you since we first met. For you—in the hope of someday winning you, I’ve struggled on; I’ve reconciled myself to a bare existence. Now I’ve lost you, I’ve lost everything. I hate life. I shall—”

  “You’ll do nothing of the sort,” Gladys interrupted, “unless you want me to regret ever having met you. I wonder that you say ‘I’ve nothing to live for’—when we can still be friends; and when you can, at least, win my respect, by putting your shoulder to the wheel, and exerting yourself to the utmost to get on.”

  “And you—what about you?”

  “Never mind me—I can well look after myself.”

  “You’ll live in Hell,” Shiel cried, her eyes goading him to madness. “Even though you may not care for me, I do not choose to stand quietly by, whilst you spend your life in Purgatory. Hamar has won you through some diabolical trickery, and if I can’t thwart him in any other way—I’ll kill him. He shan’t marry you.”

  “He will,” Gladys sighed. “No one can stop him. He is omnipotent.”

  Apparently, Gladys’s statement was more or less true; and ninety-nine men out of a hundred, in the same circumstances as Shiel, would have now recognized the hopelessness of the situation. But Shiel was abnormal. As he walked home from the Cottage that evening he kept on repeating to himself “Gladys is my goal. I want only Gladys. I’ll have only Gladys.” And having once made up his mind to get Gladys, it seemed to him, as if out of every obstacle, that lay between him and Gladys, he could and would merely make a stepping-stone. “Since,” he argued to himself, “all’s fair in love and war, I’ll win Gladys through another woman.”

  And he straightway telephoned to Lilian Rosenberg to have tea with him.

  The latter had already made an engagement for the afternoon; but, all the same, she accepted Shiel’s invitation.

  “Will you do me a favour?” he asked.

  “If it is anything that lies in my power,” she said. “What is it?”

  “I want you to find out how Hamar works his spells. I asked you before?”

  “I know you did and I’ve not forgotten,” Lilian said, “but I have to be very careful. I’ve played the part of eavesdropper once or twice, and heard enough to confirm me in my suspicions that Hamar is in touch with evil, occult powers. I’ve heard him praying aloud to them on more than one occasion, and I’ve also a shrewd idea he performs, at least, some of his spells by means of wax images. But why do you want to know?”

  “Only curiosity. I am intensely interested i
n the occult.”

  “You don’t want to start a rival show, do you?” Lilian asked jestingly.

  “With a maximum capital of two pounds—and a minimum of knowledge!” Shiel laughed. “Hardly. I wish I could. I would offer you the post of manageress.”

  “Partner!”

  “Well, partner, if you like. Would you take it?”

  “Perhaps!” she said, looking at him with a sudden shyness. “What a pity you are not rich. Can’t you get a post that would bring you in about £200 a year for a start? I believe you really want something to stimulate you, to make you work in grim earnest—then you would succeed. There’s grit in you—I love grit—but at present it’s latent, it wants bringing out.”

  “You are very kind,” Shiel said, “but I’m afraid I’m a hopeless case, and, being such, have no business to be in your company. Will you come to the theatre with me?”

  “The theatre! When you’ve no business to be in my company, and when it is as much as you can do to pay the rent of a back attic!”

  “Oh, never mind that. I’ve had tickets given me. I’ve been doing odd bits of journalism lately, and a dramatic critic I know has given me two stalls at the Imperial!”

  “The Imperial!” Lilian Rosenberg ejaculated. “That’s where Gladys Martin is acting, surely! I can’t bear her!”

  “She’s not the only person in the cast,” Shiel observed drily, “and the play’s a good one! Do come!”

  With a little more persuasion Shiel gained her consent; and both he and she enjoyed the play, or more correctly speaking, the occasion, immensely. So long as Gladys was on the stage Shiel’s eyes never once left her; whilst throughout the performance Lilian Rosenberg saw only Shiel, thought only of Shiel. The interest she had taken in him, the interest she had so confidently asserted was only interest, had grown apace—had grown out of all recognition. It needed only a fillip now to convert that interest into something warmer; and the fillip was not long in coming.