The M.R. James Megapack: 27 Classic Horror Stories

by M. R. James

  As I turned into the back garden and came in sight of the little potting-shed or tool-house or whatever it was, I started. Someone was just coming out of it. I gave a loud cough. The party turned round hastily; it was an old man in a sleeved waistcoat, made up, I thought, to look like an “odd man.” He touched his hat civilly enough, and showed no surprise; but, oh, horror! he held in his hand the garden squirt.

  “Morning,” I said; “going to do a bit of watering?” He grinned. “Just stepped up to borrer this off the lady; there’s a lot of fly gets on the plants this weather.”

  “I dare say there is. By the way, what a lot of horseshoes you people leave about. How many do you think I picked up this morning just along the road? Look here!” and I held one out to him, and his hand came slowly out to meet it, as though he could not keep it back.

  His face wrinkled up into a horrible scowl, and what he was going to say I don’t know, but just then his hand clutched the horseshoe and he gave a shout of pain, dropped the squirt and the horseshoe, whipped round as quick as any young man could, and was off round the corner of the shed before I had really taken in what was happening. Before I tried to see what had become of him, I snatched up the squirt and the horseshoe, and almost dropped them again. Both were pretty hot—the squirt much the hotter of the two; but both of them cooled down in a few seconds. By that time my old man was completely out of sight. And I should not wonder if he was away some time; for perhaps you know, and perhaps you don’t know, the effect of an old horseshoe on that sort of people. Not only is it of iron, which they can’t abide, but when they see or, still more, touch the shoe, they have to go over all the ground that the shoe went over since it was last in the blacksmith’s hands. Only I doubt if the same shoe will work for more than one witch or wizard. Anyway, I put that one aside when I went indoors. And then I sat and wondered what would come next, and how I could best prepare for it. It occurred to me that it would do no harm to put one of the shoes where it couldn’t be seen at once, and it also struck me that under the rug just inside the bedroom door would not be a bad place. So there I put it, and then fell to smoking and reading.

  A knock at the door.

  “Come in,” said I, a little curious; but no, it was only the maid. As she passed me (which she did quickly) I heard her mutter something about “‘ankerchieves for the wash,” and I thought there was something not quite usual about the voice. So I looked round. She was back to me, but the dress and the height and the hair was what I was accustomed to see. Into the bedroom she hurried, and the next thing was a scream like that of at least two cats in agony! I could just see her leap into the air, come down again on the rug, scream again, and then bundle, hopping, limping—I don’t know what—out of the room and down the stairs. I did catch sight of her feet, though; they were bare, they were greenish, and they were webbed, and I think there were some large white blisters on the soles of them. You would have thought that the commotion would have brought the household about my ears; but it did not, and I can only suppose that they heard no more of it than they did of the things which the birds and so on say to each other.

  “Next, please!” said I, as I lighted a pipe; but if you will believe it, there was no next. Lunch, the afternoon, tea, all passed by, and I was completely undisturbed.“They must be saving up for the bat-ball,” I thought. “What in the world can it be?”

  As candle-time came on, and the moon began to make herself felt, I took up my old position at the window, with the garden squirt at hand and two full jugs of water on the floor—plenty more to be got from the bathroom if wanted. The leaden box of the Five Jars was in the right place for the moonbeams to fall on it.… But no moonbeams would touch it to-night! Why was this? There were no clouds. Yet, between the orb of the moon and my box, there was some obstruction. High up in the sky was a dancing film, thick enough to cast a shadow on the area of the window; and ever, as the moon rode higher in the heavens, this obstruction became more solid. It seemed gradually to get its bearings and settle into the place where it would shut off the light from the box most completely. I began to guess. It was the bat-ball; neither more nor less than a dense cloud of bats, gradually forming itself into a solid ball, and coming lower, and nearer to my window. Soon they were only about thirty feet off, and I felt that the moment was come.

  I have never much liked bats or desired their company, and now, as I studied them through the glass, and saw their horrid little wicked faces and winking wings, I felt justified in trying to make things as unpleasant for them as I could. I charged the squirt and let fly, and again, and again, as quick as I could fill it. The water spread a bit before it reached the ball, but not too much to spoil the effect; and the effect was almost alarming. Some hundreds of bats all shrieking out at once, and shrieking with rage and fear (not merely from the excitement of chasing flies, as they generally do). Dozens of them dropping away, with wings too soaked to fly, some on to the grass, where they hopped and fluttered and rolled in ecstasies of passion, some into bushes, one or two plumb on to the path, where they lay motionless; that was the first tableau. Then came a new feature. From both sides there darted into the heart of the ball two squadrons of figures flying at great speed (though without wings) and perfectly horizontal, with arms joined and straight out in front of them, and almost at the same instant seven or eight more plunged into the ball from above, as if taking headers. The boys were out.

  I stopped squirting, for I did not know whether the water would fell them as it felled the bats; but a shrill cry rose from below:

  “Go on, M! go on, M!”

  So I aimed again, and it was time, for a knot of bats just then detached itself from the main body and flew full-face towards me. My shot caught the middle one on the snout, and as I swung the squirt to left and right, it disabled four or five others, and discouraged the rest. Meanwhile the ball was cloven again and again by the arms of the flying squadrons, which shot through it from side to side and from top to bottom (though never, as appeared later, quite through the middle), and though it kept closing up again, it was plainly growing smaller as more and more of the bats outside, which were exposed to the squirt, dropped away.

  I suddenly felt something alight on my shoulder, and a voice said in my ear, “Wag says if you could throw a shoe into the middle now, he believes it would finish them. Can you?” It was, I think, Dart who had been sent with the message.

  “Horseshoes, I suppose he means,” I said.“I’ll try.”

  “Wait till we’re out of the way,” said Dart, and was off.

  In a moment more I heard—not what I was rather expecting, a horn of Elf-land, but two strokes on the bell. I saw the figures of the boys shoot up and away to left and right, leaving the bat-ball clear, and the bats shrieked aloud, I dare say in triumph at the enemy’s retreat.

  There were two horseshoes left. I had no idea how they would fly, and I had not much confidence in my power of aiming; but it must be tried, and I threw them edgeways, like quoits. The first skimmed the top of the ball, the second went straight through the middle. Something which the bats in the very centre were holding—something soft—was pierced by it, and burst. I think it must have been a globe of jelly-like stuff in a thin skin. The contents spurted out on to some of the bats, and seemed to scald the fur off them in an instant and singe up all the membranes of their wings. They fell down at once, with broken screams. The rest darted off in every direction, and the ball was gone.

  “Now don’t be long,” said a voice from the window-sill.

  I thought I knew what was meant, and looked to the leaden casket. As if to make up for lost time, the moonbeam had already made an opening all round the part on which it shone, and I had but to turn the other side towards it—not even very slowly—to get the whole lid free. After cleansing my hands in the water, I made trial of the Fifth Jar, and, as I replaced it, a chorus of applause and cheering came up from below.

  The Jars were mine.

  WAG AT HOME

  There was no s
crambling up to the window-sill this time. My visitors shot in like so many arrows, and “brought up” on their hands on the tablecloth, or lit on their feet on the top rail of a chair-back or on my shoulder, as the fancy took them. It would be tedious to go through all the congratulations and thanks which I offered, and indeed received, for it was important to them that the Jars should not get into wrong hands.

  “Father says,” said Wag, who was sitting on a book, as usual—“Oh, what fun it is to be able to fly again!” And he darted straight and level and butted head first into the back of—Sprat, was it?—who was standing near the edge of the table. Sprat was merely propelled into the air a foot or two off, and remained standing, but, of course, turned round and told Wag what he thought of him. Wag returned contentedly to his book. “Father says,” he resumed,“he hopes you’ll come and see us now. He says you did all right, and he’s very glad the stuff got spilt, because they’ll take moons and moons to get as much of it together again. He says they meant to squirt some of it on you when they got near enough, and while you were trying to get it off they’d have got hold of——” He pointed to the box of jars; there was a shyness about mentioning it.

  “Your father’s very kind,” I said, “and I hope you’ll thank him from me; but I don’t quite see how I’m to get into your house.”

  “Fancy you not knowing that!” said Wag. “I’ll tell him you’ll come.” And he was out of the window. As usual, I had recourse to Slim.

  “Why, you did put some on your chest, didn’t you?” was Slim’s question.

  “Yes, but nothing came of it.”

  “Well, I believe you can go pretty well anywhere with that, if you think you can.”

  “Can I fly, then?”

  “No, I should say not; I mean, if you couldn’t fly before, you can’t now.”

  “How do you fly? I don’t see any wings.”

  “No, we never have wings, and I’m rather glad we don’t; the things that have them are always going wrong somehow. We just work it in the proper way with our backs, and there you are; like this.” He made a slight movement of his shoulders, and was standing in the air an inch off the table. “You never tried that, I suppose?” he went on.

  “No,” I said, “only in dreams,” which evidently meant nothing to him. “Well now,” I said, “do you tell me that if I went to Wag’s house now, I could get inside it? Look at the size I am!”

  “It doesn’t look as if you could,” he agreed, “but my father said just the same as Wag’s father about it.”

  Here Wag shot on to my shoulder. “Are you coming?”

  “Yes, if I knew how.”

  “Well, come and try, anyhow.”

  “Very well, as you please; anything to oblige.”

  I picked up a hat and went downstairs. All the rest followed, if you can call it following, when there was at least as much flying up steps and in and out of banisters as going down. When we were out on the path, Wag said with more seriousness than usual:

  “Now you do mean to come into our house, don’t you?”

  “Certainly I do, if you wish me to.”

  “Then that’s all right. This way. There’s Father.”

  We were on the grass now, and very long it was, and nice and wet I thought I should be with all the dew. As I looked up to see the elder Wag I very nearly fell over a large log which it was very careless of anyone to have left about. But here was Mr. Wag within a yard of me, and to my extreme surprise he was quite a sizeable man of middle height, with a sensible, good-humoured face, in which I could see a strong likeness to his son. We both bowed, and then shook hands, and Mr. Wag was very complimentary and pleasant about the occurrences of the evening.

  “We’ve pretty well got the mess cleared up, you see. Yes, don’t be alarmed,” he went on, and took hold of my elbow, for he had, no doubt, seen a bewildered look in my eyes. The fact was, as I suppose you have made out, not that he had grown to my size, but that I had come down to his.“Things right themselves; you’ll have no difficulty about getting back when the time comes. But come in, won’t you?”

  You will expect me to describe the house and the furniture. I shall not, further than to say that it seemed to me to be of a piece with the fashion in which the boys were dressed; that is, it was like my idea of a good citizen’s house in Queen Elizabeth’s time; and I shall not describe Mrs. Wag’s costume. She did not wear a ruff, anyhow.

  Wag, who had been darting about in the air while we walked to his home, followed us in on foot. He now reached up to my shoulder. Slim, who came in too, was shorter.

  “Haven’t you got any sisters?” I took occasion to say to Wag.

  “Of course,” said he; “don’t you see ’em? Oh! I forgot. Come out, you sillies!”

  Upon which there came forward three nice little girls, each of whom was putting away something into a kind of locket which she wore round her neck. No, it is no use asking me what their dresses were like; none at all. All I know is that they curtsied to me very nicely, and that when we all sat down the youngest came and put herself on my knee as if it was a matter of course.

  “Why didn’t I see you before?” I asked her.

  “I suppose because the flowers were in our hair.”

  “Show him what you mean, my dear,” said her father. “He doesn’t know our ways yet.”

  Accordingly she opened her locket and took out of it a small blue flower, looking as if it was made of enamel, and stuck it in her hair over her forehead. As she did so she vanished, but I could still feel the weight of her on my knee. When she took it out again (as no doubt she did) she became visible, put it back in the locket, and smiled agreeably at me. Naturally, I had a good many questions to ask about this, but you will hardly expect me to put them all down. Becoming invisible in this way was a privilege which the girls always had till they were grown up, and I suppose I may say “came out.” Of course, if they presumed on it, the lockets were taken away for the time being—just in the same way as the boys were sometimes stopped from flying, as we have seen. But their own families could always see them, or at any rate the flowers in their hair, and they could always see each other.

  But dear me! how much am I to tell of the conversation of that evening? One part at least: I remembered to ask about the pictures of the things that had happened in former times in places where I chanced to be. Was I obliged to see them, whether they were pleasant or horrible?“Oh no,” they said; if you shut your eyes from below—that meant pushing up the lower eyelids—you would be rid of them; and you would only begin seeing them, either if you wanted to, or else if you left your mind quite blank, and were thinking of nothing in particular. Then they would begin to come, and there was no knowing how old they might be; that depended on how angry or excited or happy or sad the people had been to whom they happened.

  And that reminds me of another thing. Wag had got rather fidgety while we were talking, and was flying up to the ceiling and down again, and walking on his hands, and so forth, when his mother said:

  “Dear, do be quiet. Why don’t you take a glass and amuse yourself with it? Here’s the key of the cupboard.”

  She threw it to him and he caught it and ran to a tall bureau opposite and unlocked it. After humming and flitting about in front of it for a little time, he pulled a thing like a slate off a shelf where there were a large number of them.

  “What have you got?” said his mother.

  “The one I didn’t get to the end of yesterday, about the dragon.”

  “Oh, that’s a very good one,” said she.“I used to be very fond of that.”

  “I liked it awfully as far as I got,” he said, and was betaking himself to a settle on the other side of the room when I asked if I might see it, and he brought it to me.

  It was just like a small looking-glass in a frame, and the frame had one or two buttons or little knobs on it. Wag put it into my hand and then got behind me and put his chin on my shoulder.

  “That’s where I’d got to,” he said; “h
e’s just going out through the forest.”

  I thought at the first glance that I was looking at a very good copy of a picture. It was a knight on horseback, in plate-armour, and the armour looked as if it had really seen service. The horse was a massive white beast, rather of the cart-horse type, but not so “hairy in the hoof”; the background was a wood, chiefly of oak-trees; but the undergrowth was wonderfully painted. I felt that if I looked into it I should see every blade of grass and every bramble-leaf.

  “Ready?” said Wag, and reached over and moved one of the knobs. The knight shook his rein, and the horse began to move at a foot-pace.

  “Well, but he can’t hear anything, Wag,” said his father.

  “I thought you wanted to be quiet,” said Wag, “but we’ll have it aloud if you like.”

  He slid aside another knob, and I began to hear the tread of the horse and the creaking of the saddle and the chink of the armour, as well as a rising breeze which now came sighing through the wood. Like a cinema, you will say, of course. Well, it was; but there was colour and sound, and you could hold it in your hand, and it wasn’t a photograph, but the live thing which you could stop at pleasure, and look into every detail of it.

  Well, I went on reading, as you may say, this glass. In a theatre, you know, if you saw a knight riding through a forest, the effect would be managed by making the scenery slide backwards past him; and in a cinema it could all be shortened up by increasing the pace or leaving out part of the film. Here it was not like that; we seemed to be keeping pace and going along with the knight. Presently he began to sing. He had a loud voice and uttered his words crisply, so that I had no difficulty in making out the song. It was about a lady who was very proud and haughty to him and would have nothing to say to his suit, and it declared that the only thing left for him was to lay himself down under a tree. But he seemed quite cheerful about it, and indeed neither his complexion nor the glance of his eye gave any sign that he was suffering the pangs of hopeless love.