The Phantom Coach

by Michael Sims

  Forgive, I pray you, this inconsequent digression by what was once a woman. You who consult us in this imperfect way—you do not understand. You ask foolish questions about things unknown and things forbidden. Much that we know and could impart in our speech is meaningless in yours. We must communicate with you through a stammering intelligence in that small fraction of our language that you yourselves can speak. You think that we are of another world. No, we have knowledge of no world but yours, though for us it holds no sunlight, no warmth, no music, no laughter, no song of birds, nor any companionship. O God! what a thing it is to be a ghost, cowering and shivering in an altered world, a prey to apprehension and despair!

  No, I did not die of fright: the Thing turned and went away. I heard it go down the stairs, hurriedly, I thought, as if itself in sudden fear. Then I rose to call for help. Hardly had my shaking hand found the doorknob when—merciful heaven!—I heard it returning. Its footfalls as it remounted the stairs were rapid, heavy and loud; they shook the house. I fled to an angle of the wall and crouched upon the floor. I tried to pray. I tried to call the name of my dear husband. Then I heard the door thrown open. There was an interval of unconsciousness, and when I revived I felt a strangling clutch upon my throat—felt my arms feebly beating against something that bore me backward—felt my tongue thrusting itself from between my teeth! And then I passed into this life.

  No, I have no knowledge of what it was. The sum of what we knew at death is the measure of what we know afterward of all that went before. Of this existence we know many things, but no new light falls upon any page of that; in memory is written all of it that we can read. Here are no heights of truth overlooking the confused landscape of that dubitable domain. We still dwell in the Valley of the Shadow, lurk in its desolate places, peering from brambles and thickets at its mad, malign inhabitants. How should we have new knowledge of that fading past?

  What I am about to relate happened on a night. We know when it is night, for then you retire to your houses and we can venture from our places of concealment to move unafraid about our old homes, to look in at the windows, even to enter and gaze upon your faces as you sleep. I had lingered long near the dwelling where I had been so cruelly changed to what I am, as we do while any that we love or hate remain. Vainly I had sought some method of manifestation, some way to make my continued existence and my great love and poignant pity understood by my husband and son. Always if they slept they would wake, or if in my desperation I dared approach them when they were awake, would turn toward me the terrible eyes of the living, frightening me by the glances that I sought from the purpose that I held.

  On this night I had searched for them without success, fearing to find them; they were nowhere in the house, nor about the moonlit lawn. For, although the sun is lost to us forever, the moon, full-orbed or slender, remains to us. Sometimes it shines by night, sometimes by day, but always it rises and sets, as in that other life.

  I left the lawn and moved in the white light and silence along the road, aimless and sorrowing. Suddenly I heard the voice of my poor husband in exclamations of astonishment, with that of my son in reassurance and dissuasion; and there by the shadow of a group of trees they stood—near, so near! Their faces were toward me, the eyes of the elder man fixed upon mine. He saw me—at last, at last, he saw me! In the consciousness of that, my terror fled as a cruel dream. The death-spell was broken: Love had conquered Law! Mad with exultation I shouted—I must have shouted, “He sees, he sees: he will understand!” Then, controlling myself, I moved forward, smiling and consciously beautiful, to offer myself to his arms, to comfort him with endearments, and, with my son’s hand in mine, to speak words that should restore the broken bonds between the living and the dead.

  Alas! alas! his face went white with fear, his eyes were as those of a hunted animal. He backed away from me, as I advanced, and at last turned and fled into the wood—whither, it is not given to me to know.

  To my poor boy, left doubly desolate, I have never been able to impart a sense of my presence. Soon he, too, must pass to this Life Invisible and be lost to me forever.

  W. F. Harvey

  1885–1937

  William Fryer Harvey began life without one of the burdens that afflict most writers. Thanks to a family inheritance, he did not have to earn a living. He attended excellent Quaker schools and then Oxford’s venerable Balliol College, and when health troubles forced him to take a break after receiving his medical degree at Leeds, Harvey could afford to recuperate with a voyage around the world. He spent some of this time resting in Australia, writing. The result was his first book, Midnight House and Other Tales, published in 1910 by J. M. Dent, the original publisher of the ambitious Everyman’s Library. The volume included the stylish and modern-feeling “August Heat.”

  Harvey’s Quaker family and friends upheld a tradition of philanthropy, to which Harvey also committed himself. Early in his life he worked at the Working Men’s College at Fircroft, a pioneer institution promoting adult education. He joined the famed Friends’ Ambulance Unit, which operated under the auspices of the British Red Cross Society and was staffed largely by conscientious objectors trained at the Quaker center in Jordans, a village in Buckinghamshire associated with Quakerism since the sixteenth century. Later, serving in the Royal Navy as a surgeon during World War I, Harvey received a medal for his heroic shipboard rescue of an officer from a burning boiler room.

  The fumes permanently scarred his lungs, however, leading to a lifetime of illness. Harvey died at the early age of fifty-two, a decade before the appearance of a movie version of his classic, fast-moving horror story “The Beast with Five Fingers.” He is remembered now for that story, for his subtle horror classic “The Clock,” and especially for the elegant, understated gem that follows.

  August Heat

  Phenistone Road, Clapham August 20th, 190—

  I have had what I believe to be the most remarkable day in my life, and while the events are still fresh in my mind, I wish to put them down on paper as clearly as possible.

  Let me say at the outset that my name is James Clarence Withencroft.

  I am forty years old, in perfect health, never having known a day’s illness.

  By profession I am an artist, not a very successful one, but I earn enough money by my black-and-white work to satisfy my necessary wants.

  My only near relative, a sister, died five years ago, so that I am independent. I breakfasted this morning at nine, and after glancing through the morning paper I lighted my pipe and proceeded to let my mind wander in the hope that I might chance upon some subject for my pencil.

  The room, though door and windows were open, was oppressively hot, and I had just made up my mind that the coolest and most comfortable place in the neighbourhood would be the deep end of the public swimming bath, when the idea came.

  I began to draw. So intent was I on my work that I left my lunch untouched, only stopping work when the clock of St. Jude’s struck four.

  The final result, for a hurried sketch, was, I felt sure, the best thing I had done. It showed a criminal in the dock immediately after the judge had pronounced sentence. The man was fat—enormously fat. The flesh hung in rolls about his chin; it creased his huge, stumpy neck. He was clean shaven (perhaps I should say a few days before he must have been clean shaven) and almost bald. He stood in the dock, his short, clumsy fingers clasping the rail, looking straight in front of him. The feeling that his expression conveyed was not so much one of horror as of utter, absolute collapse.

  There seemed nothing in the man strong enough to sustain that mountain of flesh.

  I rolled up the sketch, and without quite knowing why, placed it in my pocket. Then with the rare sense of happiness which the knowledge of a good thing well done gives, I left the house.

  I believe that I set out with the idea of calling upon Trenton, for I remember walking along Lytton Street and turning to the right along Gilchrist Road at the bottom of the hill where the men were at work on
the new tram lines.

  From there onwards I have only the vaguest recollection of where I went. The one thing of which I was fully conscious was the awful heat, that came up from the dusty asphalt pavement as an almost palpable wave. I longed for the thunder promised by the great banks of copper-coloured cloud that hung low over the western sky.

  I must have walked five or six miles, when a small boy roused me from my reverie by asking the time.

  It was twenty minutes to seven.

  When he left me I began to take stock of my bearings. I found myself standing before a gate that led into a yard bordered by a strip of thirsty earth, where there were flowers, purple stock and scarlet geranium. Above the entrance was a board with the inscription—

  CHS. ATKINSON. MONUMENTAL MASON.

  WORKER IN ENGLISH AND ITALIAN MARBLES

  From the yard itself came a cheery whistle, the noise of hammer blows, and the cold sound of steel meeting stone.

  A sudden impulse made me enter.

  A man was sitting with his back towards me, busy at work on a slab of curiously veined marble. He turned round as he heard my steps and I stopped short.

  It was the man I had been drawing, whose portrait lay in my pocket.

  He sat there, huge and elephantine, the sweat pouring from his scalp, which he wiped with a red silk handkerchief. But though the face was the same, the expression was absolutely different.

  He greeted me smiling, as if we were old friends, and shook my hand.

  I apologised for my intrusion.

  “Everything is hot and glary outside,” I said. “This seems an oasis in the wilderness.”

  “I don’t know about the oasis,” he replied, “but it certainly is hot, as hot as hell. Take a seat, sir!”

  He pointed to the end of the gravestone on which he was at work, and I sat down.

  “That’s a beautiful piece of stone you’ve got hold of,” I said.

  He shook his head. “In a way it is,” he answered; “the surface here is as fine as anything you could wish, but there’s a big flaw at the back, though I don’t expect you’d ever notice it. I could never make really a good job of a bit of marble like that. It would be all right in the summer like this; it wouldn’t mind the blasted heat. But wait till the winter comes. There’s nothing quite like frost to find out the weak points in stone.”

  “Then what’s it for?” I asked.

  The man burst out laughing.

  “You’d hardly believe me if I was to tell you it’s for an exhibition, but it’s the truth. Artists have exhibitions: so do grocers and butchers; we have them too. All the latest little things in headstones, you know.”

  He went on to talk of marbles, which sort best withstood wind and rain, and which were easiest to work; then of his garden and a new sort of carnation he had bought. At the end of every other minute he would drop his tools, wipe his shining head, and curse the heat.

  I said little, for I felt uneasy. There was something unnatural, uncanny, in meeting this man.

  I tried at first to persuade myself that I had seen him before, that his face, unknown to me, had found a place in some out-of-the-way corner of my memory, but I knew that I was practising little more than a plausible piece of self-deception.

  Mr. Atkinson finished his work, spat on the ground, and got up with a sigh of relief.

  “There! what do you think of that?” he said, with an air of evident pride. The inscription which I read for the first time was this—

  SACRED TO THE MEMORY

  OF

  JAMES CLARENCE WITHENCROFT

  BORN JAN. 18TH, 1860.

  HE PASSED AWAY VERY SUDDENLY

  ON AUGUST 20TH, 190—

  “In the midst of life we are in death.”

  For some time I sat in silence. Then a cold shudder ran down my spine. I asked him where he had seen the name.

  “Oh, I didn’t see it anywhere,” replied Mr. Atkinson. “I wanted some name, and I put down the first that came into my head. Why do you want to know?”

  “It’s a strange coincidence, but it happens to be mine.”

  He gave a long, low whistle.

  “And the dates?”

  “I can only answer for one of them, and that’s correct.”

  “It’s a rum go!” he said.

  But he knew less than I did. I told him of my morning’s work. I took the sketch from my pocket and showed it to him. As he looked, the expression of his face altered until it became more and more like that of the man I had drawn.

  “And it was only the day before yesterday,” he said, “that I told Maria there were no such things as ghosts!”

  Neither of us had seen a ghost, but I knew what he meant.

  “You probably heard my name,” I said.

  “And you must have seen me somewhere and have forgotten it! Were you at Clacton-on-Sea last July?”

  I had never been to Clacton in my life. We were silent for some time. We were both looking at the same thing, the two dates on the gravestone, and one was right.

  “Come inside and have some supper,” said Mr. Atkinson.

  His wife was a cheerful little woman, with the flaky red cheeks of the country-bred. Her husband introduced me as a friend of his who was an artist. The result was unfortunate, for after the sardines and watercress had been removed, she brought out a Doré Bible, and I had to sit and express my admiration for nearly half an hour.

  I went outside, and found Atkinson sitting on the gravestone smoking.

  We resumed the conversation at the point we had left off. “You must excuse my asking,” I said, “but do you know of anything you’ve done for which you could be put on trial?”

  He shook his head. “I’m not a bankrupt, the business is prosperous enough. Three years ago I gave turkeys to some of the guardians at Christmas, but that’s all I can think of. And they were small ones, too,” he added as an afterthought.

  He got up, fetched a can from the porch, and began to water the flowers. “Twice a day regular in the hot weather,” he said, “and then the heat sometimes gets the better of the delicate ones. And ferns, good Lord! they could never stand it. Where do you live?”

  I told him my address. It would take an hour’s quick walk to get back home.

  “It’s like this,” he said. “We’ll look at the matter straight. If you go back home to-night, you take your chance of accidents. A cart may run over you, and there’s always banana skins and orange peel, to say nothing of fallen ladders.”

  He spoke of the improbable with an intense seriousness that would have been laughable six hours before. But I did not laugh.

  “The best thing we can do,” he continued, “is for you to stay here till twelve o’clock. We’ll go upstairs and smoke, it may be cooler inside.”

  To my surprise I agreed.

  We are sitting now in a long, low room beneath the eaves. Atkinson has sent his wife to bed. He himself is busy sharpening some tools at a little oilstone, smoking one of my cigars the while.

  The air seems charged with thunder. I am writing this at a shaky table before the open window.

  The leg is cracked, and Atkinson, who seems a handy man with his tools, is going to mend it as soon as he has finished putting an edge on his chisel.

  It is after eleven now. I shall be gone in less than an hour.

  But the heat is stifling.

  It is enough to send a man mad.

  Acknowledgments

  First and foremost, as always, I thank my wife, Laura Sloan Patterson, for too many kindnesses and forms of help to be enumerated here. I’m pleased to add our energetic son, Vance, to the list of people to thank, because at the age of one year he reminds me daily that curiosity is a sensual pleasure. I welcome the opportunity to again applaud my splendid agent, Heide Lange, who has been advising and guarding my career since the last years of a previous millennium, and her cordial assistants, Stephanie Delman and Rachel Mosner. Thanks to my intrepid and patient editor and friend, George Gibson, and the rest of
the crew at Bloomsbury USA (Carrie Majer, Lea Beresford, Rob Galloway, and Nate Knaebel) and Bloomsbury UK (Alexandra Pringle, Helen Garnons-Williams, Alexa von Hirschberg, and Madeleine Feeny).

  I incorporated into this book’s introduction a couple of paragraphs from my essay “All the Dead Are Vampires,” which appeared in the Chronicle Review on June 13, 2010. Thanks to Jean Tamarin, the excellent editor who commissioned the essay and granted me permission to cannibalize my own work. The line from Virgil that I quote as an epigraph to the introduction was translated by Robert Fagles; the line from Pliny the Elder was translated by John F. Healy.

  Numerous friends and scholars—including Gwen Enstam, Duncan Jones, Deanna Larson, Fernanda Moore, Jennifer Ouellette, Maria Tatar, and no doubt many others whose names I forgot to note at the time—suggested stories. Jon Erickson was essential, as usual, as was Karissa Kilgore. Thanks to Jerry Felton, Robert Majcher, John Spurlock, and Stephanie Wilson. My thanks to numerous scholars who have written on the topic of supernatural fiction; many of their books are cited in the bibliography. Perpetual gratitude to the Greensburg Hempfield Area Library, especially Cesare Muccari, Diane Ciabattoni, and book detective Linda Matey and her excellent crew.

  Bibliography and Suggested Further Reading

  This bibliography includes sources cited in, or useful in the writing of, this book’s introductory essay or its individual story introductions. It also includes selected biographies, general introductions to the topics of ghost stories up to the Edwardian era, and essays and articles of particular relevance. It excludes works by those authors whose stories appear in this anthology and thus receive attention in the biographical note that introduces their contribution. For further information about many of the authors whose stories are included in this volume, see the other volumes of my Connoisseur’s Collection series for Bloomsbury, cited below under Sims.