by Ruskin Bond
‘No; the “usual offices” are neat, if not gaudy. Spengler would probably describe them as “contemporary with the death of Lincoln,” but it’s not that—it’s haunted.’
‘Is it, by Jove!’ said Brinton, gazing up at it. ‘Fancy such a dear little Queen Anne piece having such a nasty reputation. I see it’s unoccupied.’
‘It usually is,’ replied Lander.
‘Tell me about it.’
‘During dinner I will. But you seem to find something of interest about those windows on the second floor.’ Brinton gazed up for a moment or two longer, and then started to walk back in silence beside his host.
In a few minutes they reached Lander’s cottage—it was rather more pretentious than that—an engaging two-storeyed structure added to and modernised from time to time, formerly known as ‘the Old Vicarage’, and rechristened ‘Laymer’s’. Black and white and creeper-lined, with a trim little garden of rose-trees and mellow turf, two fine limes, and a great yew, impenetrable and secret. This little garden melted into an arable expanse, and there was a lovely view over to some high Chiltern spurs. The whole place just suited Lander, who was—or it might be more accurate to say, wanted to be—a novelist; a commonplace and ill-advised ambition, but he had money of his own and could afford to wait.
James Brinton, his guest for a week and a very old friend, occupied himself with a picture gallery in Mayfair. A very small gallery—one rather small room, to be exact—but he had admirable taste and made it pay.
Two hours later they sat down to dinner. ‘Now then,’ said Brinton, as Mrs Dunkley brought in the soup, ‘tell me about that house.’
‘Well,’ replied Lander, ‘I have had, as you know, much more experience of such places than most people, and I consider Pailton the worst or the best specimen I have heard or read of or experienced. For one thing, it is a “killer”. The majority of haunted houses are harmless, the peculiar energy they have absorbed and radiate forth is not hostile to life. But in others the radiation is malignant and fatal. Pailton has been rented five times in the last twelve years; in each case the tenancy has been marked by a violent death within its walls. For my part, I have no two opinions concerning the morality of letting it at all. It should be razed to the ground.’
‘How long do its occupants stick it out as a rule?’
‘Six weeks is the record, and that was made by some person called Pendexter. That was three years ago. I knew Pendexter père, and he was a courageous and determined person. His daughter was hurled down the stairs one night and killed, and I shall never forget the mingled fury and grief with which he told me about it. Previous to that he had detected eighteen different examples of psychic action—appearances and sounds—several definitely malignant. The family had not enjoyed one single day of freedom from abnormal phenomena.’
‘How long since it was last occupied ?’asked Brinton.
‘It has been empty for a year, and I am inclined to think it will remain so. Any one who comes down to look at it is given a pretty straight tip by one or other of us to keep away.’
‘Does it affect you violently?’
‘I have never set foot in it.’
‘What? You, of all people!’
‘My dear Jim, just for that very reason. When I first discovered I was psychic I felt flattered and anxious to experience all I could. I soon changed my mind. I found I experienced quite enough without any need for making opportunities. I do to this day. Several times I have had a visitor in the study here after dinner, an uninvited guest. And it has always been so. I have many times heard and seen things which could not be explained in places with perfectly clean bills of psychic health. And one never gets quite used to it. Terror may pass, but some distress of mind is invariable. Any person gifted or afflicted like myself will tell you the same. It seems to me sometimes as if I actually assist in evoking and materialising these appearances, that I help to establish a connection between them and the place I inhabit, that I am a most unpleasant kind of lightning conductor.’
‘Is there any possible explanation for that ?’
‘Well, I have formed one, but it would take rather a long time to explain, and may be quite fallacious. Anyhow, there has never been any need for me to visit such places as Pailton, and I keep away from them if I can.’
‘Would you very much object to going in for a minute or two?’
‘Why?’
‘Well, I have been bothered all my life about this business of ghosts. I have never seen one; in a sense I “don’t believe in them”, yet I am convinced you have known many. It is a maddening dualism of mind. I feel if I could just once come in contact with something of the kind I should feel a sense of enormous relief.’
And you’d like me to conduct you over Pailton?’
‘Not if it would really upset you.’
‘It would be at your own risk,’ said Lander, smiling.
‘I’ll risk it!’
‘You mustn’t imagine that you can go into a disturbed spot such as this and expect to see about ten ghosts in as many minutes. Even in the case of such a busy hive as Pailton there are many quiet periods, and some people simply cannot see ghosts. The odds are very much against your desire being granted, though, if you are psychic, the atmosphere of the place would affect you at once.’
‘How?’
‘Well, you’ve often heard of people who know by some obscure but infallible instinct that there’s a cat in the room. Just so. However, I’ll certainly give you the chance. It won’t seriously disturb me. I can get the key in the morning from the woman who looks after it, though I need hardly say she doesn’t sleep there. There is no need for a caretaker. It was broken into once, but the burglar was found dead in the dining-room, and since then the crooks have given it a wide berth.’
‘It really is dangerous, then?’
‘Beginning to feel a bit prudent?’
‘No, I shall feel safe with you.’
‘Very well then. After coming back from golf we’ll pay it a visit. It will be dark by five, and we’ll make the excursion about six. The chances of gratifying your curiosity will be better after dark. I’d better tell you something else. I never quite know how these places are going to affect me. Before now, I have gone off into a kind of trance and been decidedly weird, my dear Jim. My sense of time and space becomes distorted, though for your assurance I may say,’ he added smiling, ‘I am never dangerous when in this condition. Furthermore, you must be prepared to make acquaintance with a mode of existence in which the ordinary laws of existence which you have always known abdicate themselves. Bierce called his famous book of ghost stories, Can These Things Be? Assuredly they can. Now I’m sounding pompous and pontifical, but some such warning is necessary. When I touch that front door tomorrow I may become, in a sense, a stranger to you; once inside we shall cross a frontier into a region with its own laws of time and space, and where the seemingly impossible can happen.... Do you understand what I mean and still want to go?’
‘Yes,’ replied Brinton, ‘to all your questions.’
‘Very well then,’ said Lander, ‘I will now get out the chessmen and discover a complete answer to Reti’s opening which you sprang on me last night; so you shall have the white pieces.’
November 21st was a lazy, drowsy, cloudless day, starting with a sharp ground frost which, thawing unresistingly as the sun climbed, made the tees at Ellesborough like tiny slides. In consequence, neither Brinton nor Lander played very good golf. This upset Brinton not at all, for he was thinking much more of that which was beginning to impress him as a possible ordeal, the crossing of the threshold of Pailton a few hours later. As they finished their second round, a mist, spreading like a gigantic spider’s web, was beginning to raise the level of the Buckinghamshire fields. As they walked homewards, it climbed with them, keeping pace with them like a dog; sometimes hurrying ahead, then dropping back, but always with them.
It was exactly five o’clock as they reached Laymer’s. Tea was ready. ‘Do you
still want to go, Jim ?’ asked Lander abruptly.
‘Sure, Bo!’ replied Brinton lightly.
‘Here’s the key,’ said Lander, smiling, ‘the Open Sesame to the Chamber of Horrors. The electric light is turned off, so all the light we shall have will be produced by my torch. One last word of advice—if you want to get the best chance of a thrill, try to keep your mind quite empty—don’t talk as I personally conduct this tour. Concentrate on not concentrating.’
‘I understand what you mean,’ said Brinton.
‘Well, then, let’s get a move on,’ said Lander. An idea suddenly occurred to Brinton. ‘How will you be able to show me over it if you’ve never been inside it ?’
‘You needn’t worry about that,’ replied Lander.
The fog was thick by now, and they wavered slightly as they groped their way down the lane, compressed by high hedges, which led to Pailton. When they reached it, Brinton’s eyes turned up to observe the windows on the second floor. And then Lander stepped forward and placed the key in the lock.
As the door swung open, the fog, which seemed to have been crouching at his heels, leapt forward and entered with him and inundated the passage down which he moved. The moment he was inside, something advanced to meet him. He opened a door on the left of the passage and flashed his torch round it. The fog was in there too. Jim, he could feel, was at this elbow.
‘This is where they found the burglar—it’s the dining-room.’
His voice was not quite under control. ‘Quite a pleasant room, smells a bit frowsty.’ The little beam wandered from chair to desk, settling for a moment here and there. Then he shut the door and stepped along the passage until the little beam revealed a flight of stairs which he began to climb. He still heard Brinton’s steps coming up behind him. Up on the first floor he opened another door. ‘This is the drawing-room,’ he said, ‘the Proctors’ cook was found dead here in 1921. Round swung the tiny beam, fastening on chairs, tables, desks, curtains. He shut the door and began to climb another flight of stairs. He could hear Jim’s feet pattering up behind him. On the second floor he opened still another door. ‘This, my dear Jim, is the nasty one; it was from here Amy Pendexter fell and broke her neck.’
His voice had risen slightly, and he was speaking quickly. Once again he flashed his torch over chairs, tables, curtains, and ahead.
‘Well, Jim, do you get any reaction ? Do you ? You can speak now’ As there was no answer, he turned, and swung the beam of his torch on to the person just behind him. But it wasn’t Brinton who was standing at his elbow....
‘What’s the matter, Willie ?’ asked Brinton, ‘can’t you find the keyhole ?’ The figure in front of him remained motionless
‘Can’t you find the keyhole?’ asked Brinton more urgently.
As the figure still remained motionless, Jim Brinton lit a match and peered forward.... And then he reeled back.
‘Who, in God’s name, are you ?’ he cried.
THE RUPA
CARNIVAL OF TERROR
By the same author:
Angry River
A Little Night Music
A Long Walk for Bina
Hanuman to the Rescue
Ghost Stories from the Raj
Strange Men, Strange Places
The India I Love
Tales and Legends from India
The Blue Umbrella
Ruskin Bond’s Children’s Omnibus
The Ruskin Bond Omnibus-I
The Ruskin Bond Omnibus-II
The Ruskin Bond Omnibus-III
Rupa Book of Great Animal Stories
The Rupa Book of True Tales of Mystery and Adventure
The Rupa Book of Ruskin Bond’s Himalayan Tales
The Rupa Book of Great Suspense Stories
The Rupa Laughter Omnibus
The Rupa Book of Scary Stories
The Rupa Book of Haunted Houses
The Rupa Book of Travellers’ Tales
The Rupa Book of Great Crime Stories
The Rupa Book of Nightmare Tales
The Rupa Book of Shikar Stories
The Rupa Book of Love Stories
The Rupa Book of Wicked Stories
The Rupa Book of Heartwarming Stories
The Rupa Book of Thrills and Spills
THE RUPA
CARNIVAL OF TERROR
Edited by
Ruskin Bond
Typeset copyright © Rupa & Co. 2006
Selection and Introduction Copyright © Ruskin Bond 2006
First Published 2006
This edition 2010
Second Impression 2011
Published by
Rupa Publications India Pvt. Ltd.
7/16, Ansari Road, Daryaganj,
New Delhi 110 002
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Typeset in 13 pts. ElegantGaramond by
Mindways Design
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New Delhi 110 019
CONTENTS
Introduction
The Bird Woman
By H. Spicer
The Coat
By A.E.D. Smith
The Squaw
By Bram Stoker
The Tiger
By A.E. Coppard
Hunger
By Philip Lindsay
The Bath
By E.H.W. Meyerstein
They Never Get Caught
By Margery Allingham
The Voice in the Night
By W.H. Hodgson
The Doll’s Ghost
By F. Marion Crawford
Encounter at Night
By Mary Frances McHugh
The Skeleton
By Jerome K. Jerome
A Suet Pudding
By T.E Powys
Florence Flannery
By Marjorie Bowen
The Man on the Ground
By Robert E. Howard
The Finding of the Graiken
By William Hope Hodgson
Eyes of the Cat
By Ruskin Bond
INTRODUCTION
‘Mr Bond, I have a complaint,’ said a young reader the other day, when I met her in the local bookshop.
‘Well, carry on complaining,’ I said, always ready for a little constructive criticism.
‘Your ghost stories,’ she said. ‘They’re not scary enough. Can’t you make them more frightening?’
I had to admit that many of my ghosts were the gentle, friendly sort, often prepared to help or comfort instead of scaring a living person out of his wits. But youngsters brought up on television—on monsters of every description, aliens, decomposing corpses, the walking dead, blood-drinkers, cannibals, torturers—all calculated to give the viewers nightmares—will find my own ghosts rather tame and old-fashioned.
However, I hope to correct this defect, if you can call it that, by presenting herewith a collection of grisly tales which certainly terrified me—but then, I’m a person easily scared, unlike my young friend who can sit down to dinner with a ghoul or a vampire for company.
‘You’re a nervous sort of boy,’ said my grandmother, when I refused to sleep in a particular room because one of my uncles had shot himself there.
I wasn’t the least bit courageous. But I countered that by learning to run very fast. When in danger, run! And that’s what I do when faced with other-worldly forces of evil.
But I know my devil-may-care young reader would rather read than run, and I hope she will revel in this carnival of horror.
There are some fine writers represented here: William Hope Hodgson, unjustly neglected, whose supernatural tales of the sea will chill the blood; Bram Stoker, better known as the creator of Dracula, represented here by a story that gave me nightmares; Jerome K. Jerome, k
nown as a humorist and author of Three Men in a Boat, reveals the darker side of his creative powers; A.E. Coppard, one of the finest short story writers of the last century, is at his best in this tale of human and animal ferocity; Philip Lindsay gives us a harrowing picture of starvation; Marjorie Bowen and Margery Allingham, distinguished writers, are represented by stories that probe the human and its disposition towards evil.
If there is one thing that I have learnt from these stories, it is that the living are more dangerous than the dead. Very few people have died of fright. No sad, ineffectual phantom is going to murder you in your bed. But watch out for that smooth-talking person who has just slowed down to offer you a lift. That knife in his pocket is not kept for peeling apples.
Take care. Terror lurks where you least expect it.
Ruskin Bond
The girl said she had no fear of lunatics or human oddities, but she met with a case that shook even her strong nerve.
THE BIRD WOMAN
BY H. SPICER
The events of this strange tale, though they actually occurred in England but a short while since would scarcely be out of place in a book of German dreams and fancies.
The narrator, a girl of the servant class, but of rather superior education and manners, had called on the writer’s sister on the subject of a place to which she had been recommended, and in the course of conversation, related the following as a recent experience.
The advertisement in which she set forth her willingness to take charge of an invalid, infirm, or lunatic person, or to assume any office demanding unusual steadiness of nerve, was replied to by a lady whose letter was dated from a certain locality on the outskirts of a large commercial city, and who requested her attendance there at an appointed time.
The house proved to be a dingy, deserted looking mansion, and was not rendered more cheerful by the fact that the adjoining tenements on either side were unoccupied. It wore altogether a haunted and sinister aspect, and the girl, as she rang the bell, was sensible of a kind of misgiving for which she could not account. A timid person might have hesitated. This girl possessed unusual firmness and courage, and, in spite of the presentiment we have mentioned, she determined, at all events, to see what she would be called on to encounter.,
