by Ruskin Bond
Someone, coming out of the darkness, had struck him softly. A blow of a doubled-up fist in the face. Like a joke, by the Lord! But where had the fellow got to?
‘Who’s that?’ called out Donovan, his voice a little startled in the night. ‘Who’s there? What the blazes are you doing?”
There was no answer. Donovan crouched a moment in the darkness, very still, then changed his walking-stick to the other hand. But he must have been flustered, for his fingers didn’t catch on it, and down it went clattering against the uncarpeted stairs, stopping once, clattering again, staying finally where it was. He stopped and groped, but thought better of going back for it. He stared about him and in the blackness thought he saw a soldier patch, a man facing him a couple of steps up. That was the man who had struck him. But why on earth didn’t he say something?
‘Who’s there?’ he shouted again.—’ Speak up, whoever you are!’
There was no answer, so he stepped forward boldly. But again someone pushed him—pushed him so plainly, as though with a playful gentleness, that he could feel the woollen jacket of the shoulder thrust against him. As in indignant alarm he tried to grasp it, it silently eluded him, moving soundlessly, eerily, out of reach.
Donovan’s blood crept in his veins, and his heart seemed to lunge downwards in his body. Suddenly he wished he felt steadier, that he hadn’t had so many drinks. Then he thought instinctively how another good stiff whisky would hearten him—yes give him fire to tell this sly fellow, whoever the hell he was, what he thought of him.
He paused and gasped, listening with all his ears. Not a sound could he catch; and swiftly changing mood, convinced that it was only some silly trick being played on him, he became wildly angry.
‘Come on!’ he shouted, his excited voice falling back to the cadence of his native West. ‘Come on, you puppy! Come on, you coward you, if you’re a man at all, and I’ll wrastle you in the Connemara fashion!’
He bent down over his right knee in an attitude of defence. ‘I’ll fight you! I’ll wrastle you!’ he repeated belligerently.
For a few seconds he held up his fists, awaiting his assailant. But the latter did not move. Then, like a bull, Donovan made to rush up the stairs. Ah! With a soft thud he struck his head into the stomach of the lurking enemy. The invisible man, silent and unshocked, moved stealthily away.
But Donovan followed him, and as he did so was surprised to find the other coming towards ‘him. He flung away caution and grasped his man about the body. Something rigid but yielding, human yet cold, lay unprotestingly within his arms. He released it and stepped back, weak and shuddering.
It swung—it hung... Ah, God!
Donovan recoiled, as sober as at morning. For a full minute he waited where he stood, overwhelmed with a nameless dread. Then he struck a match and, peering up, saw above him the blackened face of little Terry Shaughnessy, hanging from his attic banisters....
The most rational of men can succumb to a fear of the unknown. The author of the hilarious Three Men in a Boat could switch moods and write a tale of terror and retribution.
THE SKELETON
BY JEROME K. JEROME
One evening Jephson asked me if I believe in spiritualism to its fullest extent.
‘That is rather a large question,’ I answered. ‘What do you mean by “spiritualism to its fullest extent”?’
‘Well, do you believe that the spirits of the dead have not only the power of revisiting this earth at their will, but that, when here, they have the power of action, or rather, of exciting to action? Let me put a definite case. A spiritualist friend of mine, a sensible and by no means imaginative man, once told me that a table, through the medium of which the spirit of a friend had been in the habit of communicating with him, came slowly across the room towards him, of its own accord, one night as he sat alone, and pinioned him against the wall. Now can any of you believe that, or can’t you?’
‘I could,’ Brown took it upon himself to reply; ‘but, before doing so, I should wish for an introduction to the friend who told you the story. Speaking generally,’ he continued, ‘it seems to me that the difference between what we call the natural and the supernatural is merely the difference between frequency and rarity of occurrence. Having regard to the phenomena we are compelled to admit, I think it illogical to disbelieve anything we are unable to disprove.’
‘For my part,’ remarked MacShaughnassy, ‘I can believe in the ability of our spirit friends to give the quaint entertainments credited to them much easier than I can in their desire to do so.’
‘You mean,’ added Jephson, ‘that you cannot understand why a spirit, not compelled as we are by the exigencies of society, should care to spend its evenings on a laboured and childish conversation with a room full of abnormally uninteresting people.’
‘That is precisely what I cannot understand,’ MacShaughnassy agreed.
‘Nor I, either,’ said Jephson. ‘But I was thinking of something very different altogether. Suppose a man died with the dearest wish of his heart unfulfilled, do you believe that his spirit might have power to return to earth and complete the interrupted work?’
‘Well,’ answered MacShaughnassy, ‘if one admits the possibility of spirits retaining any interest in the affairs of this world at all, it is certainly more reasonable to imagine them engaged upon a task such as you suggest, than to believe that they occupy themselves with the performance of mere drawing-room tricks. But what are you leading up to?’
‘Why, to this,’ replied Jephson, seating himself straddle-legged across his chair, and leaning his arms upon the back. ‘I was told a story this morning at the hospital by an old French doctor. The actual facts are few and simple; all that is known can be read in the Paris police records of sixty-two years ago.
‘The most important part of the case, however is the part that is not known, and that never will be known.
‘The story begins with a great wrong done by one man unto another man. What the wrong was I do not know. I am inclined to think, however, it was connected with a woman. I think that, because he who had been wronged hated him who had wronged him with a hate such as does not often burn in a man’s brain, unless it be fanned by the memory of a woman’s breath.
‘Still that is only conjecture, and the point is immaterial. The man who had done the wrong fled, and the other man followed him. It became a point-to-point race the first man having the advantage of a day’s start. The course was the whole world, and the stakes were the first man’s life.
‘Travellers were few and far between in those days, and this made the trail easy to follow. The first man, never knowing how far or how near the other was behind him, and hoping now and again that he might have baffled him, would rest for a while. The second man, knowing always just how far the first one was before him, never paused, and thus each day the man who was spurred by hate drew nearer to the man who was spurred by Fear.
‘At this town the answer to the never-varied question would be:
‘ “At seven o’clock last evening, Monsieur.”
‘ “Seven—ah; eighteen hours. Give me something to eat, quick, while the horses are being put to.”
‘At the next the calculation would be sixteen hours.
‘Passing a lonely chalet, Monsieur puts his head out of the window:
‘ “How long since a carriage passed this way, with a tall, fair man inside?”
‘ “Such a one passed early this morning, Monsieur.”
‘ “Thanks, drive on, a hundred francs apiece if you are through the pass before daybreak.”
“And what for dead horses, Monsieur?”
‘ “Twice their value when living.”
‘One day the man who was ridden by Fear looked up, and saw before him the open door of a cathedral, and passing in, knelt down and prayed. He prayed long and fervently, for men, when they are in sore straits, clutch eagerly at the straws of faith. He prayed that he might be forgiven his sin, and, more important still, that he might be pardone
d the consequences of his sin, and be delivered from his adversary; and a few chairs from him, facing him, knelt his enemy, praying also.
‘But the second man’s prayer, being a thanksgiving merely, was short, so that when the first man raised his eyes, he saw the face of his enemy gazing at him across the chair-tops, with a mocking smile upon it.
‘He made no attempt to rise, but remained kneeling, fascinated by the look of joy that shone out of the other man’s eyes. And the other man moved the high-backed chairs one by one, and came towards him softly.
‘Then, just as the man who had been wronged stood beside the man who had wronged him, full of gladness that his opportunity had come, there burst from the cathedral tower a sudden clash of bells, and the man, whose opportunity had come, broke his heart and fell back dead, with that mocking smile still playing round his mouth.
‘And so he lay there.
‘Then the man who had done the wrong rose up and passed out, praising God.
‘What became of the body of the other man is not known. It was the body of a stranger who had died suddenly in the cathedral. There was none to identify it, none to claim it.
‘Years passed away, and the survivor in the tragedy became a worthy and useful citizen, and a noted man of science.
‘In his laboratory were many objects necessary to him in his researches, and, prominent among them, stood in a certain corner a human skeleton. It was a very old and much-mended skeleton, and one day the long-expected end arrived, and it tumbled to pieces.
‘Thus it became necessary to purchase another.
‘The man of science visited a dealer he well knew—a little parchment-faced old man who kept a dingy shop, where nothing was ever sold, within the shadow of the towers of Notre Dame.
‘The little parchment-faced old man had just the very thing that Monsieur wanted—a singularly fine and well-proportioned “study”. It should be sent round and set up in Monsieur’s laboratory that very afternoon.
‘The dealer was as good as his word. When Monsieur entered his laboratory that evening, the thing was in its place.
‘Monsieur seated himself in his high-backed chair, and tried to collect his thoughts. But Monsieur’s thoughts were unruly, and inclined to wander, and to wander always in one direction.
‘Monsieur opened a large volume and commenced to read. He read of a man who had wronged another and fled from him, the other man following. Finding himself reading this, he closed the book angrily, and went and stood by the window and looked out. He saw before him the sun-pierced nave of a great cathedral, and on the stones lay a dead man with a mocking smile upon his face.
‘Cursing himself for a fool, he turned away with a laugh. But his laugh was short-lived, for it seemed to him that something else in the room was laughing also. Struck suddenly still, with his feet glued to the ground, he stood listening for a while: then sought with starting eyes the corner from where the sound had seemed to come. But the white thing standing there was only grinning.
‘Monsieur wiped the damp sweat from his head and hands, and stole out.
‘For a couple of days he did not enter the room again. On the third, telling himself that his fears were those of a hysterical girl, he opened the door and went in. To shame himself, he took his lamp in his hand, and crossing over to the far corner where the skeleton stood, examined it. A set of bones bought for three hundred francs. Was he a child, to be scared by such a bogey!
‘He held his lamp up by the front of the thing’s grinning head. The flame of the lamp flickered as though a faint breath had passed over it.
‘The man explained this to himself by saying that the walls of the house were old and cracked, and that the wind might creep in anywhere. He repeated this explanation to himself as he recrossed the room, walking backwards, with his eyes fixed on the thing. When he reached his desk, he sat down and gripped the arms of his chair till his fingers turned white.
‘He tried to work, but the empty sockets in that grinning head seemed to be drawing him towards them. He rose and battled with his inclination to fly screaming from the room. Glancing fearfully about him, his eye fell upon a high screen, standing before the door. He dragged it forward, and placed it between himself and the thing, so that he could not see it—nor it see him. Then he sat down again to his work. For a while he forced himself to look at the book in front of him, but at last, unable to control himself any longer, he suffered his eyes to follow their own bent.
‘It may have been an hallucination. He may have accidentally placed the screen so as to favour such an illusion. But what he saw was a bony hand coming round the corner of the screen, and, with a cry, he fell to the floor in a swoon.
‘The people of the house came running in, and lifting him up, carried him out, and laid him upon his bed. As soon as he recovered, his first question was, where had they found the thing—where was it when they entered the room? When they told him they had seen it standing where it always stood, and had gone down into the room to look again, because of his frenzied entreaties, and returned trying to hide their smiles, he listened to their talk about overwork, and the necessity for change and rest, and said they might do with him as they would.
‘So for many months the laboratory door remained locked. Then there came a chill autumn evening when the man of science opened it again, and closed it behind him.
‘He lighted his lamp, and gathered his instruments and books around him, and sat down before them in his high-backed chair. And the old terror returned to him.
‘But this time he meant to conquer himself His nerves were stronger now, and his brain clearer; he would fight his unreasoning fear. He crossed to the door and locked himself in, and flung the key to the other end of the room, where it fell among jars and bottles with an echoing clatter.
‘Later on, his old housekeeper, going her final round, tapped at his door and wished him good-night, as was her custom. She received no response, at first, and, growing nervous, tapped louder and called again; and at length an answering ‘good-night’ came back to her.
‘She thought little about it at the time, but afterwards she remembered that the voice that had replied to her had been strangely grating and mechanical. Trying to describe it, she likened it to such a voice as she would imagine coming from a statue.
‘Next morning his door remained still locked. It was no unusual thing for him to work all night and far into the next day, so no one thought to be surprised. When, however, evening came, and yet he did not appear, his servants gathered outside the room and whispered, remembering what had happened once before.
‘They listened, but could hear no sound. They shook the door and called to him, then beat with their fists upon the wooden panels. But still no sound came from the room.
‘Becoming alarmed, they decided to burst open the door, and, after many blows, it gave way, and they crowded in.
‘He sat bolt upright in his high-backed chair. They thought at first he had died in his sleep. But when they drew nearer and the light fell upon him, they saw the livid marks of bony fingers round his throat; and in his eyes there was a terror such as is not often seen in human eyes.’
He tortured and tormented his uncomplaining wife. But retribution lay just around the corner. A powerful tale from the author of Mr Weston’s Good Mine.
A SUET PUDDING
BY T.F. POWYS
Sometimes it happens in country places, where lanes are lonely, that a wife is not always treated in the kindest manner. And often, though she may not be able to retaliate, owing to the strength, of her oppressor, she waits her time, with revenge in her heart, until an opportunity occurs for her to assert herself.
If one leaves the main road to Stonebridge and takes the next turning to the right hand, that is very near to Farmer Wanley’s old barn, one finds oneself in Deadman’s Lane. This lane is very pleasant to walk in during the summer, but in the winter, when ways are miry and a solitary tree looks sad and forlorn, there is no more dismal place to take a turn in.
Deadman’s Lane eventually leads to Dodderdown, but along it and about a mile from Mr Wanley’s barn, there is a small-holding, in front of which is a solitary fir-tree, rented from Mr Roddy and occupied by John Brine.
It is a nice and a pleasant thing to see a little farm kept neat and pretty, and here it is nearly always the woman who does the work, for when the man is out of the way it is she who keeps the pigs clean, scrubs out the dairy and tends the ducks and hens.
Everyone in the neighbourhood, although all hadn’t been down Deadman’s Lane, knew John Brine by sight. Although a little lonely by nature, he rarely had a word spoken against him. He was a big man with a great black beard and huge fists, who travelled in the summer with a reaper, with which he cut and tied the corn of any neighbour who required his services.
Mr Brine would be paid by the acre, but he expected his food as well, though when anything coarse or badly cooked was brought out to him he would never touch it. How a man eats and what he likes to eat is always a mark of his character, and everyone who employed Mr Brine knew that his appetite was nice and genteel, even though his beard gave him the appearance of a great bear.
Sometimes Mrs Wanley, when Mr Brine cut her husband’s field of barley, would send her son Fred to him with a meat pudding, hoping to please, but Mr Brine would always refuse to taste of it, telling the boy that the only pudding he ever ate was a suet pudding, and the only woman in the-world who could make one as he liked it was his wife, Alice Brine.
During harvest Mr Brine was very busy, and he cut the corn so cleanly and well that he was always made welcome, and was given the best white bread and cheese, which he ate so carefully that he never appeared to drop a crumb.
Though Mr Brine would often stay so long in the fields with only his horses to talk to—and he never urged them forward with any unpleasant words—yet if any neighbour came to him in a wet hour when he sat under an ash-tree in the large hedge, with his horses and reaper drawn near to him, he would be willing enough to talk upon a subject that interested him.
