by Mike Ashley
It was bad enough, the worst. No. 77—under an alias for the law of libel’s sake—had figured five times in the pages of a certain psychic review, and times innumerable in magazines of a sensational tendency. It had been let twelve times in eight years; no tenant stayed out his term. The first one paid up to avoid trouble, and reimbursed himself by spreading information concerning his experiences. He stayed a month. The second, at the end of a week, wanted to horsewhip the landlord for letting in his wife for nervous breakdown. So the tale went on, the last occupants had left at the half-quarter before Chadwick acquired the treasure; they had refused to pay for the remainder of the year they had agreed on, and had dared the landlord to sue them and embellish the reputation the place already owned. So there had been nothing left for the landlord to do but to sell to some stranger while he removed to a far city.
Local house-agents, consulted, confirmed the tale. They said they would try to get a tenant, but mentioned, pessimistically, that No. 79 was let at thirty per cent below the regular rent in the road because only the detaching tradesmen’s entrances divided from No. 77. Yes, the Psychic Society had investigated, they had even taken up the flooring in the noted front room. And they had found no explanation.
Chadwick was no coward; he spent that evening in the front room of No. 77. At 3 a.m. he stumbled into his own parlour in the throes of panic. Next day he repaired to London to seek aid from Lester Stukeley.
Stukeley and Chadwick were old schoolfellows. Chadwick at fifty was a retired merchant, with gardening for his hobby; Stukeley, at near the same age, still adorned the Civil Service, and had taken to psychic investigation.
“It was utterly beastly, Stukeley,” said Chadwick, mopping his ample bald brow at the recollection.
“We will go into it systematically,” said his friend. “To begin, the house is of modem construction!”
“Built twenty years ago.”
“Of new materials, if you know?”
“I know. Yes. Why, Stukeley?”
“Because I’ve known things happen in modern houses built out of the debris of old ones. You say twelve tenants have lived there in eight years, that leaves twelve since the building of the place to be accounted for.”
“It was in the hands of two tenants; neither complained of any disturbance; the first stayed his full term of five years, the second, by renewals, stayed for seven in all.”
“So it was after the departure of this second tenant that the trouble began? That looks suspicious.”
“I know his address. He is an old Frenchman, and by the house-agents’ accounts most harmless and above-board. He declared, when questioned, that he never noticed anything wrong, nor did his family.”
“There’s always the possibility that they were merely of a solid and unsusceptible nature. Still, I’ll remember this Frenchman. It is somewhat unusual to encounter occult manifestations in a house of such recent construction with no sinister tale attached to it. Has anyone died in it?”
“It happens no death has so far taken place in it.”
“This increases the mystery. Now, if you know, Chadwick, what was the site like before the building took place?”
“My communicative neighbour remembers it; it was a meadow.”
“Were there any knolls that had to be levelled for the building—if you know?”
“My informant describes it as perfectly flat.”
“I must congratulate you, Chadwick, on your foresight in procuring such exhaustive information. I confess I thought a burial barrow might have been disturbed for the builders’ benefit. You watched last night?”
Chadwick got scarlet, then blurted out, “I watched for a while. Then—then I bolted. It was just what all the other people described—the unutterably abominable smell—faugh!—and I knew I’d be compelled to turn out the light in a minute—I just hurled myself through the doorway.”
“To turn out the light?” repeated Stukeley inquiringly.
“Yes,” Chadwick answered explosively. “Everybody agreed about that. It can’t be seen in the dark distinctly, and it can’t be seen at all in full light, a faint light is what suits it. You feel it’s there, and you smell it—heavens, that’s the horrible part of it! Not strong, you’ll understand, but beastly—viscid—and—and—a sort of pale yellow-green, sticky stench.”
“I understand. A strongly developed colour sense is useful in description. And what is seen?”
“I didn’t see. I knew it would give me the horrors. But the people who saw it because they hadn’t gumption to run away all agreed. ’Pon my word, Stukeley, it sounds absurd, but I thought the description of the first feeling absurd, too, before I’d experienced it, and now I’ve experienced that, and know how utterly loathsome it is, I can believe the rest is as bad.”
“One moment,” said Stukeley, with the air of one struck by a sudden thought. “Do not tell me what is said about the ocular manifestation. Let me try with an open mind, and see if what I see agrees with the other accounts. Will you watch with me?”
“Will you draw the protective thing, the what d’ye call it?” Chadwick hesitated.
“The pentacle? Most certainly I will erect it. With no reason for occult manifestations to be found there is always room for hoaxing, but it is well to take precautions.”
“I’ll watch then—inside the pentacle. I don’t believe it is hoaxing, Stukeley, but as nobody has received bodily harm, beyond shock, so far, I feared you would not trouble with the pentacle.”
“I know, Chadwick, that one can never tell when occult manifestations may become dangerous to life. Tomorrow night, then, I hope it will prove a hoax.
“Tomorrow night,” Chadwick repeated. “We’ll have the house to ourselves. Mary and the girls got hold of the tale soon enough. The servants we brought left this morning, they’d heard it, too, and we are staying at the nearest hotel while I decide what is to be done. They all drew the line at even being next door to the thing.”
When Stukeley unloaded his bag from the cab next evening and took a look up and down Herald Crescent, nothing could have presented a more reassuring appearance. The place shouted of respectability, leisure, and fish-and-soup-course-dinners. The kind of place where occult manifestations were the very last things that might be expected to happen. Two rows of three-storey, semi-detached residences sloped before his gaze to a quiet twilight sky, every house a replica of its fellows, white-curtained, brass-plated, trim and commonplace.
No. 77 was only singled out from its neighbours because it was the only one to let, and was plus a brace of notice boards and minus plate and curtains.
In the dining-room of No. 75 the table awaited the dinner for two which a near-by restaurant was to furnish in an hour, the brave charwoman who had agreed to stop till sunset and return at sunrise to see to the wants of the two men was in attendance, and Chadwick was ready for a preliminary daylight inspection of the scene of forthcoming vigil.
Under Chadwick’s key the front door of No. 77 swung open with a reassuring squeak.
Stukeley and his aide went through to the back and inspected the garden. Then they locked and sealed the back door, and set out on an exhaustive tour of the house, leaving the front room to the last, and making a species of drive down to it from the garret.
As each room was overhauled the door was shut, locked, and sealed behind them until of all the apartments in the house only the front one was open. The windows even were closed and sealed, and narrow strips of paper sealed in a network across the register of every chimney.
Chadwick stood nervously by the open door as Stukeley went round the front room.
The occultist raised the blinds, flooding the place with harsh reflected sunset light from the windows opposite.
The apartment was the largest in the house, measuring some twenty feet by thirty, the ceiling was high, the walls painted dull olive-green, the floor oak-stained and polished. Stukeley went round several times, tapping walls and floor questingly, peered up the chimney, then no
dded gravely.
“Once we have locked ourselves in this bare room, nothing outside of the Fourth Dimension could get us without our knowledge,” he commented.
“Lock ourselves in?” Chadwick repeated, without relish.
“Within the pentacle, old chap. Now what is the spot at which the manifestations begin?”
“Between the chimney and the west wall,” Chadwick answered.
The room was bounded at one side by the entry-lobby, the wall opposite was conterminous with the passage of the tradesmen’s entrance outside, the east wall contained the large bay window, the west one separated it from the next room.
Stukeley stamped and tapped the flooring at the indicated spot, but elicited no more signs of hollowness than the ventilation space beneath would justify. They then returned to No. 75, locking the front door of No. 77 carefully behind them.
Dinner put more heart into Chadwick. At eleven, the charwoman having long departed, they locked No. 75 up and adjourned to No. 77 again.
Gas was laid on. Stukeley went all over again, ascertaining that the seals were unbroken before opening each door. Satisfying himself that nobody had been in, he lit the gas all over the place, and repeated the drive of the earlier hour, leaving the light on full cock in each room and the doors open, and seeing that the chimneys and windows were well sealed.
With the blaze of light Chadwick’s courage was augmented. The front room was furnished with an incandescent burner in a hanging chandelier set in the centre of the ceiling. When it was lit the whole apartment was plain and bare to the view. Chadwick shuddered a little as the door was closed. Stukeley laid his bag in the middle of the floor together with a pair of camp stools.
“Now, we will stay here while I make my arrangements,” he said, and Chadwick felt emboldened as he watched the said arrangements.
Producing a little bundle of twigs from the bag, the occultist swept the floor in a circle, extending nearly to the walls, keeping himself within the limit of it. Then, in the same way he drew a pentacle with charcoal within the bounds of the swept space.
“It’s charred rowan wood,” he explained over his shoulder, as he traced with a continuous line the five-pointed figure. “Now just remember, Chadwick, that if either of us should step outside the line, or even touch it sufficiently to break the continuity of it, the pentacle will lose its protective power. Should danger threaten safety lies within this line. But if even a match should fall across it linking the space within to the space without, the virtue of the pentacle is gone.”
In the five points of the star he placed five crusts, each wrapped in a slip of linen, and between, in the five angles, five pinches of white powder.
“Bread and salt, with charcoal, are great protective influences,” he said, standing up. “I’ll guarantee that within this we will be safe from all molestation.”
They established themselves on the camp stools, full in the light of the gas, and waited. Chadwick’s courage oozed. Herald Crescent is a quiet thoroughfare, and before midnight traffic in it practically ceased.
Silence settled down; with it Chadwick knew that darkness—wholesome, respectable darkness—also came to the other houses, with drawn blinds and extinguished lights. Now and then a chance cab rattled past, clattering eerily over the wood-paving between the hushes that followed and preceded its progress.
A couple of strayed revellers fared homewards, none too steadily, their footsteps ringing irregularly; the policeman, who had been apprised of the reason for the lights in No. 77, passed by with a slow tramp of ample boots.
An hour passed. Stukeley sat quiet. Chadwick copied him outwardly, and inwardly quaked. His imagination shudderingly played with the fancy that they were sitting in an island of light in the dark street; it felt as though everybody else in the world were dead; there was no help to be had if help were needed.
A rogue horror, a muddle-headed sense of the bounds of matter, began to grip him. He tried to reassure himself by thoughts of the nearness of his kind. It was a failure.
Looking before him at the brightly illuminated wall, he told himself that beyond the wall was a narrow passage, an open passage full of the blessed free air of heaven, then another wall, and beyond that the merry family of children who, with a jolly father and cheery mother, lived in No. 79.
The thought was of no use, the family would not be in the room beyond the dividing passage now, but upstairs, ever so many walls away, and that boundary passage full of open air—it was a terrible place, with no bound between it and the stars, and the void beyond the stars. It was a continuation of space, it was an immeasurable sundering gap between himself in the haunted room and his kind, as represented by the jolly family in the next house.
Chadwick shuddered and tried another tack. His back was to the door, but if he slewed round there would be nothing but the room wall, the width of the passage, and another wall to divide him from the refuge of No. 75.
Nothing but two walls and the passage—a thousand miles would be no more barrier—he could not leap through solid walls if the need for refuge came when the lights had to be lowered. He must open the door of the room, traverse the passage, open the front door—heavens! It was a tremendous way to go if need pressed and something was after him.
New Zealand came into his mind. It seemed within nearer reach, for all the hours of train journeying and half a world of sea between, than his own home next door, with but the six-foot width of passage and two walls between.
He came to himself with a little cry and sat bristling. By his side Stukeley fumed with a little cool nod.
“Do you feel it?” Chadwick gasped.
Stukeley nodded again, holding up a hand for silence. Chadwick braced himself and steadied his quivering under-jaw.
“My God, don’t you taste it?” he cried suddenly.
Stukeley made no answer. A faint, thin viscid flavour in the air was but too perceptible to him. He sat with his eyes turned to the front of him. Chadwick followed his gaze to the floor, and sat tense with expectation.
The burner high above and somewhat behind the men cast the shadows before them. The shadows were clear-cut, reflected light from the walls lit them to a dark transparency. In them the lines where the floor-boards met were defined blackly. Stukeley’s extended the farthest, nearly to the wall by the fireplace, it went over that side of the pentacle, a sharp cut patch of clear dark.
Within the span of this cast shadow one of the angles and half a point of the pentacle were included, the intersecting charcoal lines clear black, the little heap of salt in the angle dusky grey, half the wrapped crust in the point in shadow, a dirty, white little mass, the other half dazzling white against the lit boards beyond the shadow edge.
Chadwick looked at these details until his gaze swam, then his senses woke and his scalp drew together, chilled and twitching. He had become aware of another bit of darkness on the floor, a flood of black that was creeping steadily forward towards them across Stukeley’s shadow.
It began, clear cut, as the edge of the shadow, and was spreading in a little stream, about a hand-breadth in width, progressing with the lazy, rolling deliberation of spilt ink. For several moments the men sat immovable. Stukeley speculated, clear-brained, as to its origin. Where could it come from, starting, as it apparently did, at the edge of his shadow?
As they watched it languidly split into two irregular branches and so continued on its way.
“It will touch our feet!” Chadwick screamed, springing up and retreating a pace.
Stukeley got up more quietly to join him. The move brought them immediately beneath the gas, and their shadows were concentrated under their feet. The floor around was all in light, no sign of the creeping shadow stream was visible.
Chadwick trembled violently.
“Do you hear it?” he quavered.
Stukeley’s eyes searched the floor. “A little hissing and bubbling near the fireplace,” he said gravely.
“And the—the stench?” gulped his companion.
“Blood—and—corruption—”
“No, new blood,” said Stukeley. “It is like the scent of the drain pit in a Dakhma I examined near Bombay.”
“A Dakhma?”
“Tower of Silence. A Parsee, corpse-exposing building.”
The occultist stepped forward; his shadow ran over the floor to its old place. The creeping stain appeared as before, farther advanced to them.
“It is only visible in the dark,” he commented.
“Come before it touches us,” Chadwick mouthed.
“Stay in the pentacle,” Stukeley commanded sternly. “It is our safety—see!”
Chadwick, half-frantic with horror, glanced along his indicating finger. The stream touched the point of the pentacle, turned as though it had encountered a wall, and ran along outside against the charcoal mark. In its flow it met the pile of salt and laved it without penetrating the absorbent stuff. It continued to spread itself along against the charcoal line. Chadwick understood, and felt less dread: it could not penetrate the pentacle.
Stukeley stepped forward, keeping his shadow crosswise over the mystic one, and advancing parallel to it. As he advanced the edge of his shadow still remained the edge of the other. At last the shadow of his head was low on the wall by the fireplace and that of his shoulders on the floor beneath.
And right in the middle of the shadowed left shoulder was the beginning of the dark stream—a rectangular spot that hissed softly and gave forth bubbles of shadow which rose from it and broke sibilantly.
He moved his shadow away, and the bubbling stream was gone; he moved the shadow back and it reappeared. Behind him Chadwick suddenly cried out in a shrill tone, “Stukeley, there’s something over the stream! It will be on us! I can’t stand it—invisible! I must see it!”
He snatched upwards and turned the gas low. From both men came a gasp. Over the bubbling stream, now clearly defined in the gloom, lay a figure.
It was stretched apparently on the floor, some ten feet from them; they saw it clearly; it was solid to view, yet they could not exactly define details. To each it appeared as though he was wearing spectacles unsuited to his eyes. The figure, naked and flaccid, was half-corpse, half-skeleton. In parts the bones protruded, but the head was untouched; a handsome young head, a face young behind its ashiness, hollow-cheeked and unshaven. As they looked it slowly rose in the air almost as high as the ceiling, then swept down again to the floor.
