Great Ghost Stories

by Unknown

  The other coughed, and rising, walked slowly to the window. ‘The firm wished me to convey their sincere sympathy with you in your great loss,’ he said, without looking round. ‘I beg that you will understand I am only their servant and merely obeying orders.’

  There was no reply; the old woman’s face was white, her eyes staring, and her breath inaudible; on the husband’s face was a look such as his friend the sergeant might have carried into his first action.

  ‘I was to say that Maw and Meggins disclaim all responsibility,’ continued the other. ‘They admit to no liability at all, but in consideration of your sons services, they wish to present you with a certain sum as compensation.’

  Mr White dropped his wife’s hand, and rising to his feet, gazed with a look of horror at his visitor. His dry lips shaped the words, ‘How much?’

  ‘Two hundred pounds,’ was the answer.

  Unconscious of his wife’s shriek, the old man smiled faintly, put out his hands like a sightless man, and dropped, a senseless heap, to the floor.

  III

  In the huge new cemetery, some two miles distant, the old people buried their dead, and came back to the house steeped in shadow and silence. It was all over so quickly that at first they could hardly realize it, and remained in a state of expectation as though of something else to happen—something else which was to lighten this load, too heavy for old hearts to bear.

  But the days passed, and expectation gave place to resignation—the hopeless resignation of the old, sometimes miscalled apathy. Sometimes they hardly exchanged a word, for now they had nothing to talk about, and their days were long to weariness.

  It was about a week after that the old man, waking suddenly in the night, stretched out his hand and found himself alone. The room was in darkness, and the sound of subdued weeping came from the window. He raised himself in bed and listened.

  ‘Come back,’ he said tenderly. ‘You will be cold.’

  ‘It is colder for my son,’ said the old woman, and wept afresh.

  The sound of her sobs died away on his ears. The bed was warm, and his eyes heavy with sleep. He dozed fitfully, and then slept until a sudden wild cry from his wife awoke him with a start.

  ‘The paw!’ she cried wildly. ‘The monkey’s paw!’

  He started up in alarm. ‘Where? Where is it? What’s the matter?’

  She came stumbling across the room toward him. ‘I want it,’ she said quietly. ‘You’ve not destroyed it?’

  ‘It’s in the parlour, on the bracket,’ he replied, marvelling. ‘Why?’

  She cried and laughed together, and bending over, kissed his cheek.

  ‘I only just thought of it,’ she said hysterically. ‘Why didn’t I think of it before? Why didn’t you think of it?’

  ‘Think of what?’ he questioned.

  ‘The other two wishes,’ she replied rapidly. ‘We’ve only had one.’

  ‘Was not that enough?’ he demanded fiercely.

  ‘No,’ she cried triumphantly; ‘we’ll have one more. Go down and get it quickly, and wish our boy alive again.’

  The man sat up in bed and flung the bedclothes from his quaking limbs. ‘Good God, you are mad!’ he cried, aghast.

  ‘Get it,’ she panted; ‘get it quickly, and wish——Oh, my boy, my boy!’

  Her husband struck a match and lit the candle. ‘Get back to bed,’ he said unsteadily. ‘You don’t know what you are saying.’

  ‘We had the first wish granted,’ said the old woman feverishly; ‘why not the second?’

  ‘A coincidence,’ stammered the old man.

  ‘Go and get it and wish,’ cried his wife, quivering with excitement.

  The old man turned and regarded her, and his voice shook. ‘He has been dead ten days, and besides he—I would not tell you else, but—I could only recognize him by his clothing. If he was too terrible for you to see then, how now?’

  ‘Bring him back,’ cried the old woman, and dragged him toward the door. ‘Do you think I fear the child I have nursed?’

  He went down in the darkness, and felt his way to the parlour, and then to the mantelpiece. The talisman was in its place, and a horrible fear that the unspoken wish might bring his mutilated son before him ere he could escape from the room seized upon him, and he caught his breath as he found that he had lost the direction of the door. His brow cold with sweat, he felt his way round the table, and groped along the wall until he found himself in the small passage with the unwholesome thing in his hand.

  Even his wife’s face seemed changed as he entered the room. It was white and expectant, and to his fears seemed to have an unnatural look upon it. He was afraid of her.

  ‘Wish!’ she cried, in a strong voice.

  ‘It is foolish and wicked,’ he faltered.

  ‘Wish!’ repeated his wife.

  He raised his hand. ‘I wish my son alive again.’

  The talisman fell to the floor, and he regarded it fearfully. Then he sank trembling into a chair as the old woman, with burning eyes, walked to the window and raised the blind.

  He sat until he was chilled with the cold, glancing occasionally at the figure of the old woman peering through the window. The candle-end, which had burned below the rim of the china candlestick, was throwing pulsating shadows on the ceiling and walls, until, with a flicker larger than the rest, it expired. The old man, with an unspeakable sense of relief at the failure of the talisman, crept back to his bed, and a minute or two afterward the old woman came silently and apathetically beside him.

  Neither spoke, but lay silently listening to the ticking of the clock. A stair creaked, and a squeaky mouse scurried noisily through the wall. The darkness was oppressive, and after lying for some time screwing up his courage, he took the box of matches, and striking one, went downstairs for a candle.

  At the foot of the stairs the match went out, and he paused to strike another; and at the same moment a knock, so quiet and stealthy as to be scarcely audible, sounded on the front door.

  The matches fell from his hand and spilled in the passage. He stood motionless, his breath suspended until the knock was repeated. Then he turned and fled swiftly back to his room, and closed the door behind him. A third knock sounded through the house.

  ‘What’s that?’ cried the old woman, starting up.

  ‘A rat,’ said the old man in shaking tones—‘a rat. It passed me on the stairs.’

  His wife sat up in bed listening. A loud knock resounded through the house.

  ‘It’s Herbert!’ she screamed. ‘It’s Herbert!’

  She ran to the door, but her husband was before her, and catching her by the arm, held her tightly.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ he whispered hoarsely.

  ‘It’s my boy; its Herbert!’ she cried, struggling mechanically. ‘I forgot it was two miles away. What are you holding me for? Let go. I must open the door.’

  ‘For God’s sake don’t let it in,’ cried the old man, trembling.

  ‘You’re afraid of your own son,’ she cried, struggling. ‘Let me go. I’m coming, Herbert; I’m coming.’

  There was another knock, and another. The old woman with a sudden wrench broke free and ran from the room. Her husband followed to the landing, and called after her appealingly as she hurried downstairs. He heard the chain rattle back and the bottom bolt drawn slowly and stiffly from the socket. Then the old woman’s voice, strained and panting.

  ‘The bolt,’ she cried loudly. ‘Come down. I can’t reach it.’

  But her husband was on his hands and knees groping wildly on the floor in search of the paw. If he could only find it before the thing outside got in. A perfect fusillade of knocks reverberated through the house, and he heard the scraping of a chair as his wife put it down in the passage against the door. He heard the creaking of the bolt as it came slowly back, and at the same moment he found the monkey’s paw, and frantically breathed his third and last wish.

  The knocking ceased suddenly, although the echoes of i
t were still in the house. He heard the chair drawn back, and the door opened. A cold wind rushed up the staircase, and a long loud wail of disappointment and misery from his wife gave him courage to run down to her side, and then to the gate beyond. The street lamp flickering opposite shone on a quiet and deserted road.

  The Rose Garden

  M. R. JAMES

  MR AND MRS ANSTRUTHER were at breakfast in the parlour of Westfield Hall, in the county of Essex. They were arranging plans for the day.

  ‘George,’ said Mrs Anstruther, ‘I think you had better take the car to Maldon and see if you can get any of those knitted things I was speaking about which would do for my stall at the bazaar.’

  ‘Oh well, if you wish it, Mary, of course I can do that, but I had half arranged to play a round with Geoffrey Williamson this morning. The bazaar isn’t till Thursday of next week, is it?’

  ‘What has that to do with it, George? I should have thought you would have guessed that if I can’t get the things I want in Maldon I shall have to write to all manner of shops in town: and they are certain to send something quite unsuitable in price or quality the first time. If you have actually made an appointment with Mr Williamson, you had better keep it, but I must say I think you might have let me know.’

  ‘Oh no, no, it wasn’t really an appointment. I quite see what you mean. I’ll go. And what shall you do yourself?’

  ‘Why, when the work of the house is arranged for, I must see about laying out my new rose garden. By the way, before you start for Maldon I wish you would just take Collins to look at the place I fixed upon. You know it, of course.’

  ‘Well, I’m not quite sure that I do, Mary. Is it at the upper end, towards the village?’

  ‘Good gracious no, my dear George; I thought I had made that quite clear. No, it’s that small clearing just off the shrubbery path that goes towards the church.’

  ‘Oh yes, where we were saying there must have been a summer-house once: the place with the old seat and the posts. But do you think there’s enough sun there?’

  ‘My dear George, do allow me some common sense, and don’t credit me with all your ideas about summer-houses. Yes, there will be plenty of sun when we have got rid of some of those box-bushes. I know what you are going to say, and I have as little wish as you to strip the place bare. All I want Collins to do is to clear away the old seats and the posts and things before I come out in an hour’s time. And I hope you will manage to get off fairly soon. After luncheon I think I shall go on with my sketch of the church; and if you please you can go over to the links, or——’

  ‘Ah, a good idea—very good! Yes, you finish that sketch, Mary, and I should be glad of a round.’

  ‘I was going to say, you might call on the Bishop; but I suppose it is no use my making any suggestion. And now do be getting ready, or half the morning will be gone.’

  Mr Anstruther’s face, which had shown symptoms of lengthening, shortened itself again, and he hurried from the room, and was soon heard giving orders in the passage. Mrs Anstruther, a stately dame of some fifty summers, proceeded, after a second consideration of the morning’s letters, to her housekeeping.

  Within a few minutes Mr Anstruther had discovered Collins in the greenhouse, and they were on their way to the site of the projected rose garden. I do not know much about the conditions most suitable to these nurseries, but I am inclined to believe that Mrs Anstruther, though in the habit of describing herself as ‘a great gardener,’ had not been well advised in the selection of a spot for the purpose. It was a small, dank clearing, bounded on one side by a path, and on the other by thick box-bushes, laurels, and other evergreens. The ground was almost bare of grass and dark of aspect. Remains of rustic seats and an old and corrugated oak post somewhere near the middle of the clearing had given rise to Mr Anstruther’s conjecture that a summer-house had once stood there.

  Clearly Collins had not been put in possession of his mistress’s intentions with regard to this plot of ground: and when he learnt them from Mr Anstruther he displayed no enthusiasm.

  ‘Of course I could clear them seats away soon enough,’ he said. ‘They aren’t no ornament to the place, Mr Anstruther, and rotten too. Look ’ere, sir’—and he broke off a large piece—‘rotten right through. Yes, clear them away, to be sure we can do that.’

  ‘And the post,’ said Mr Anstruther, ‘that’s got to go too.’

  Collins advanced, and shook the post with both hands: then he rubbed his chin.

  ‘That’s firm in the ground, that post is,’ he said. ‘That’s been there a number of years, Mr Anstruther. I doubt I shan’t get that up not quite so soon as what I can do with them seats.’

  ‘But your mistress specially wishes it to be got out of the way in an hours time,’ said Mr Anstruther.

  Collins smiled and shook his head slowly. ‘You’ll excuse me, sir, but you feel of it for yourself. No, sir, no one can’t do what’s impossible to ’em, can they, sir? I could git that post up by after tea-time, sir, but that’ll want a lot of digging. What you require, you see, sir, if you’ll excuse me naming of it, you want the soil loosening round this post ‘ere, and me and the boy we shall take a little time doing of that. But now, these ’ere seats,’ said Collins, appearing to appropriate this portion of the scheme as due to his own resourcefulness, ’why, I can get the barrer round and ‘ave them cleared away in, why less than an hours time from now, if you’ll permit of it. Only———’

  ‘Only what, Collins?’

  ‘Well now, it ain’t for me to go against orders no more than what it is for you yourself—or any one else’ (this was added somewhat hurriedly), ‘but if you’ll pardon me, sir, this ain’t the place I should have picked out for no rose garden myself. Why, look at them box and laurestinus, ’ow they reg‘lar preclude the light from——’

  ‘Ah yes, but we’ve got to get rid of some of them, of course.’

  ‘Oh, indeed, get rid of them! Yes, to be sure, but—I beg your pardon, Mr Anstruther——’

  ‘I’m sorry, Collins, but I must be getting on now. I hear the car at the door. Your mistress will explain exactly what she wishes. I’ll tell her, then, that you can see your way to clearing away the seats at once, and the post this afternoon. Good morning.’

  Collins was left rubbing his chin. Mrs Anstruther received the report with some discontent, but did not insist upon any change of plan.

  By four o’clock that afternoon she had dismissed her husband to his golf, had dealt faithfully with Collins and with the other duties of the day, and, having sent a campstool and umbrella to the proper spot, had just settled down to her sketch of the church as seen from the shrubbery, when a maid came hurrying down the path to report that Miss Wilkins had called.

  Miss Wilkins was one of the few remaining members of the family from whom the Anstruthers had bought the Westfield estate some few years back. She had been staying in the neighbourhood, and this was probably a farewell visit. ‘Perhaps you could ask Miss Wilkins to join me here,’ said Mrs Anstruther, and soon Miss Wilkins, a person of mature years, approached.

  ‘Yes, I’m leaving the Ashes to-morrow, and I shall be able to tell my brother how tremendously you have improved the place. Of course he can’t help regretting the old house just a little—as I do myself—but the garden is really delightful now.’

  ‘I am so glad you can say so. But you mustn’t think we’ve finished our improvements. Let me show you where I mean to put a rose garden. It’s close by here.’

  The details of the project were laid before Miss Wilkins at some length; but her thoughts were evidently elsewhere.

  ‘Yes, delightful,’ she said at last rather absently. ‘But do you know, Mrs Anstruther, I’m afraid I was thinking of old times. I’m very glad to have seen just this spot again before you altered it. Frank and I had quite a romance about this place.’

  ‘Yes?’ said Mrs Anstruther smilingly; ‘do tell me what it was. Something quaint and charming, I’m sure.’

  ‘Not so
very charming, but it has always seemed to me curious. Neither of us would ever be here alone when we were children, and I’m not sure that I should care about it now in certain moods. It is one of those things that can hardly be put into words—by me at least—and that sound rather foolish if they are not properly expressed. I can tell you after a fashion what it was that gave us—well, almost a horror of the place when we were alone. It was towards the evening of one very hot autumn day, when Frank had disappeared mysteriously about the grounds, and I was looking for him to fetch him to tea, and going down this path I suddenly saw him, not hiding in the bushes, as I rather expected, but sitting on the bench in the old summer-house—there was a wooden summer-house here, you know—up in the corner, asleep, but with such a dreadful look on his face that I really thought he must be ill or even dead. I rushed at him and shook him, and told him to wake up; and wake up he did with a scream. I assure you the poor boy seemed almost beside himself with fright. He hurried me away to the house, and was in a terrible state all that evening, hardly sleeping. Some one had to sit up with him, as far as I remember. He was better very soon, but for days I couldn’t get him to say why he had been in such a condition. It came out at last that he had really been asleep and had had a very odd disjointed sort of dream. He never saw much of what was around him, but he felt the scenes most vividly. First he made out that he was standing in a large room with a number of people in it, and that some one was opposite to him who was “very powerful,” and he was being asked questions which he felt to be very important, and, whenever he answered them, some one—either the person opposite to him, or some one else in the room—seemed to be, as he said, making something up against him. All the voices sounded to him very distant, but he remembered bits of things that were said: “Where were you on the 19th of October?” and “Is this your handwriting?” and so on. I can see now, of course, that he was dreaming of some trial: but we were never allowed to see the papers, and it was odd that a boy of eight should have such a vivid idea of what went on in a court. All the time he felt, he said, the most intense anxiety and oppression and hopelessness (though I don’t suppose he used such words as that to me). Then, after that, there was an interval in which he remembered being dreadfully restless and miserable, and then there came another sort of picture, when he was aware that he had come out of doors on a dark raw morning with a little snow about. It was in a street, or at any rate among houses, and he felt that there were numbers and numbers of people there too, and that he was taken up some creaking wooden steps and stood on a sort of platform, but the only thing he could actually see was a small fire burning somewhere near him. Some one who had been holding his arm left hold of it and went towards this fire, and then he said the fright he was in was worse than at any other part of his dream, and if I had not wakened him up he didn’t know what would have become of him. A curious dream for a child to have, wasn’t it? Well, so much for that. It must have been later in the year that Frank and I were here, and I was sitting in the arbour just about sunset. I noticed the sun was going down, and told Frank to run in and see if tea was ready while I finished a chapter in the book I was reading. Frank was away longer than I expected, and the light was going so fast that I had to bend over my book to make it out. All at once I became conscious that some one was whispering to me inside the arbour. The only words I could distinguish, or thought I could, were something like “Pull, pull. I’ll push, you pull.”