by John Buchan
The doctor was wrong. I had no headache, but I had the most devastating dreams. I fell asleep at once, but it was not proper sleep for I seemed to remain half-conscious of my environment. I was having a long argument with a solicitor, one of my best clients, who insisted on keeping his face hidden. That I remember, for I had heard that he had shaved his beard and wanted to see what he looked like, but he obstinately evaded me. The place seemed to be my Temple chambers, but it was also Scaip, and at one end was the choir of the Fanways church. Presently I woke feeling outraged, for the solicitor was cocking snooks at me — I saw his hands and was exasperated because I could not see more of him.
I lay awake for a little, telling myself that this was the kind of thing I might expect after a concussion. My bodily comfort had gone, and I felt restless and rather hot. The fire had sunk to one red coal.
In my second dream there could be no doubt about the place. I was in the Scaip guest-room, and, though there was no light anywhere and the windows were shuttered, I could see it clearly. The bed had gone and also the furniture; the chamber was perfectly bare, and, what is more, it did not seem to be quite finished. There was a hole where the fireplace should have been, and above it, instead of panelling, a patch of wet mortar. I disliked the place intensely, disliked it and dreaded it in the irrational way one has in dreams. But at the same time I knew I was dreaming. Though I could not see myself I was aware that I was lying somewhere in the room. I was even aware that I had had an accident and must not move — otherwise I wanted to get up and go away.
And then, suddenly, I was aware of something else in the room, which I could feel, but could not see. It was somewhere near the hole which should have been the fireplace. My eyes, in the dream, saw nothing; but my mind received the impression of something menacing and horrible. I saw no movement, but all the same I was certain that the presence was advancing towards me. Terror awoke me, and I found my bandaged forehead damp with sweat.
I lit a candle with shaking fingers, and there was the corner of new plaster-work on the ceiling and all around the silent shadows. I was having an abominable night, and I had a childish longing to ring the bell merely for the sight of Thistle’s honest features. But I resisted the impulse and forced myself to lie still on my back, while I repeated all the cheerful poetry I remembered. I went over the details of the library I was fitting up at Borrowby, and by and by I fell asleep again.
This time I had the worst nightmare of all. I was still in the room, but now I could see nothing whatsoever. Darkness, like thick black velvet, muffled the air. But I could hear, and what I heard was a faint tapping, like the sound of a mason’s mallet. Steadily, rhythmically, it continued, and sometimes it was accompanied by a hollow sound, as if the worker was beating on the rim of some cavity. I had the impression that the space round me was becoming constricted; that if I stretched out my hands I might touch raw stone and wet mortar. This time I had no subconscious awareness that it was a dream. It seemed to me an awful reality, and I did not dare to put out an arm to make the test, for I believed that in a minute I should want all my strength to fight off a burden that would suffocate me...
And then, in the dark, the lineaments of a face slowly took shape. I remember nothing about it except that it was the face of a human being in the last agonies. The mouth was open, the eyes protruding, the cheeks livid, the veins on the forehead black and swollen. It did not menace me, but it made me suffer with it. I felt a clutch at my throat and a ton’s weight on my chest, and I awoke gasping.
I was terrified — I freely admit it — but I think my discomfort was more of body than of mind. For my difficulty in breathing did not end with the nightmare. I was lying broad awake, and I had the same horrible constriction of breath that I had had in my dreams. I lit a candle and decided that the trouble was the curtains of the four-poster and the heavy windows. Yet the bed-curtains had been looped up high, and I remembered that Thistle at my request had opened the upper part of the windows.
I had a struggle not to ring the bell. What prevented me was the thought that all this might be the result of my accident. I had never had a concussion before, and this one might be behaving according to form. That reflection did a good deal to lessen my fright, but it did not make my breath more comfortable. I seemed to be shut up in a chest, and was gasping like a fish out of water. The air I inhaled did not fill my lungs, and my heart was fluttering wildly, just like a man suffering from claustrophobia. But I took a pull on myself and managed to keep quiet till I became a little easier. I was resolved not to fall asleep, for I was in terror of seeing that livid, tortured face again.
But the upshot was that towards morning I did fall asleep and had no further dreams. I woke to find the candles burned down to their sockets, and Thistle undoing the curtains and letting in the light of the spring morning. He expressed the hope that I had had a good night, as he set my early tea beside me.
The doctor came after breakfast and was very displeased with me. He re-did my bandages and informed me that my temperature was up. ‘What have you been doing with yourself?’ he asked. ‘No headache, you say? But you have got quite a lot of fever. How did you sleep?’
I told him that I had had the most infernal nightmares.
‘That’s odd,’ he said. ‘You’re a strong man, suffering from nothing but a clean hole in your head and a slight concussion. Last night you were the perfect patient, and this morning you are all to bits. You haven’t anything to worry you by any chance?’
When I told him that my conscience was clear, he answered that he would call in in the evening and, if necessary, give me a sedative. The temperature, he expected, would go down during the day.
It did, but I had a very disturbed time for all that. It was glorious weather, and through the open window came the spring scents and the sun, and the sound of birds and sheep. Barnes sat with me for most of the morning, and read me the newspaper. Thistle brought me admirable meals, at which I only pecked. The trouble was that I was wrestling with cowardice. I was in a blind funk of another night in that room, and longed to ask Barnes to move me back to my old powdering-closet, and at the same time I was heartily ashamed of myself.
I never spent a more miserable day. I was certain that I had no fever, and after luncheon I had a couple of hours of quiet sleep. Barnes had tea with me and complimented me on my obedience to doctor’s orders. The doctor came about six and was better pleased with me. He was willing to give me some sort of mild dope, but I refused, for I had a notion that I mustn’t sleep soundly, for if I did I might be caught by the gaping, agonised face.
The weather all day had been still and fine, but about twilight there came a brisk April shower. It stirred up all sorts of echoes in the old house. The wind sang in the chimney, and the raindrops pattered on the terrace and drifted against the window panes. To my ear there was a tune in the place, a jigging dance tune with an odd wild catch in it. Now, as you know, I am the most unmusical creature on God’s earth, but I have a good memory for airs - the rudiments of them, for I get the details all wrong. You remember Summerfïeld, who was the great authority on old folk music and published several collections. Well, Summerfïeld used to play some of his discoveries to me on a flute or a penny whistle, and one took my fancy. When I asked about it he looked wise. ‘That’s witch music,’ he said. ‘I had the devil of a job to find it, and there are places in England and Wales even today where the old folk wouldn’t let you even hum it. If you started it in a public-house, the tap-room would empty. Heaven knows what antique devilry was at the making of it.’
Well, it seemed to me that I was hearing Summerfield’s tune somewhere in the joists and the panelling. It had a good effect on me, for it made me ashamed of my babyishness. I told myself angrily that I was behaving like a fool, and the result was that I screwed up my resolution. Once for all I would put this nonsense outside my mind. When Thistle brought me my dinner I was quite cheerful, and told him that I was feeling better. But before he tucked me up for the night I ba
de him leave the curtains undrawn and open the windows at the bottom, though he protested that it was early April and the night might be chilly. I also bade him leave the door ajar which opened on to the terrace. The room was in a projecting buttress of the house, and the terrace door opened at the side into an alcove which was shielded from the wind, so there was no question of draughts. I gave these orders — at least, so I told myself — not because I was any longer nervous, but because I believed that somehow the place got unbearably stuffy during the night.
I lay for some time in a fairly comfortable mood, watching the fire which flickered in the light airs that blew from the windows, and the gently shaken curtains, and the window squares which were ebony dark before moonrise. Slowly, I must have drifted into sleep, and the first hour or two must have been peaceful. I know that from the timing of what happened later, for the moon did not rise till nearly midnight.
When I began to dream I was conscious only of a deep unhappiness. There was no fright in it, but the bottom seemed to have dropped out of everything and left an aching emptiness. I knew where I was — with my mind, for I saw nothing with my eyes. I was in Scaip, and Scaip was a shrine of the uttermost sorrow. I felt, so acutely that it seemed like ice in my veins, the misery of life. I am a cheerful being and never in my days had I known anything like it. Wave upon wave of abysmal distress seemed to flow over me and paralyse me.
And then a form of words began to run in my brain. I traced them afterwards - they were from one of Lord Rosebery’s perorations about the Empire. ‘Cemented with men’s blood and tears’ — a harmless platitude you will say. But, as they came to me out of the void, they were like a dreadful incantation. They sharpened my consciousness of my environment, for they were the voice of the walls that surrounded me. I knew I was in a place which had been built out of the heart of darkness. The mortar had been wet with tears and blood, and death had plied the mallets.
Suddenly, I seemed to be looking into a gulf of unimaginable evil. I say ‘unimaginable’, for it bore no relation to the world I knew. It was something that had rotted in the hoary past and on which God had mercifully shut the door. It was only an impression you understand — I remember no details, only the blank, heavy cloud of horror. Things had been wrought here — in these walls and in this room — which came from the nether Pit, things aeons removed from the common trivial wickedness of mankind. The weight of them suffocated my mind and senses, and, though my soul shuddered at them, my body and will were atrophied and I could only sink — sink.
I woke to find myself stifling. Not my mind, but my body. There was no weight on my chest, no clutch at my throat, but I simply could not breathe. Honest fear galvanised my impotence. I fumbled for the electric bell, and tried to press the button, but there was no strength in my fingers. I put my knuckles on it, but my fist seemed to have become as frail as gossamer.
I was now in the uttermost panic. Somehow or other I rolled out of bed, and lay gasping on the floor. The moon was up, and I saw the windows as squares of light. If I could reach them I might breathe free air.
I crawled towards an open sash — reached it — and found no comfort. Outside was the quiet moonlit night and a green hill with sheep on it. If I could clamber over the sill I knew I could breathe, but I was too weak for that. The terrible room had me in its clutches. It made a curtain of suffocation beyond which I could not penetrate, though only an inch or two separated me from freedom.
I felt that I was dying, that in a few seconds more I should be a corpse on the floor... There was a thin streak of moonlight at the terrace door which Thistle had left ajar. I struggled towards that, as a drowning man struggles towards a life-belt. Of that awful moment I have no clear memory, but I must have reached the door, for when Thistle opened it he found me at the threshold.
Yes, the bell had rung somehow, and Thistle says he skipped down at once. There cannot have been more than a few minutes between my waking and his finding me... They took me to the cottage hospital, for I couldn’t have stayed in that house another hour. As it was, I was a sick man for most of the summer, not the concussion, which never troubled me, but an odd kind of low fever which puzzled the doctors.
‘Explanation?’ Leithen said, when he had finished his tale. ‘You may take any you like, for I have none. You may say that it was the result of a crack on the head combined with a peculiar nervous system, though I’ve never considered myself neurotic. You may take Hurrell’s view, that I was chosen by Providence to be the spark that fired some old devilry that was built into the walls of Scaip.’
‘What became of Lacey?’ Peckwether asked.
‘Dead. He gave up Scaip in the same year as my story — said the place did not suit his health — and went to live in Cornwall. Scaip had no tenant till poor Thomasson leased it last autumn. If I could prevent it, it wouldn’t have another.’
Leithen answered the unspoken question in Hurrell’s eye.
‘Yes. I mean that. I went over there yesterday, as I’ve told you. Thomasson occupied the terrace room, the one I had. He died in it. The doctor called it heart failure, which no doubt it was in the end. But something came before — shortness of breath.’
The Strange Adventures of Mr Andrew Hawthorn
ANY DISAPPEARANCE is a romantic thing, especially if it be unexpected and inexplicable. To vanish from the common world and leave no trace, and to return with the same suddenness and mystery, satisfies the eternal human sense of wonder. That is why the old stories make so much of it. Tamlane and Kilmeny and Ogier the Dane retired to Fairyland, and Oisin to the Land of the Ever Living, and no man knows the manner of their going or their return. The common world goes on, but they are far away in a magic universe of their own.
But even ordinary folk can disappear. Sometimes they never come back and leave only blank mystery behind them. But sometimes they return and can explain what happened. Here is a true tale of what befell a most prosaic Scots gentleman rather less than two centuries ago.
Let us call him Andrew Hawthorn. He was thirty-two years of age and had no wife, but lived with his sister, Barbara, in a steep-roofed, stone house a dozen miles from Edinburgh. The house stood above a narrow wooded glen, what is called in Scotland a ‘dean’, at the bottom of which ran a brawling stream.
Mr Hawthorn was a stiff gentleman, very set in his ways. His wig was always carefully powdered, his clothes were trim, and his buckles bright. He enjoyed a modest competence, which enabled him to devote his life to his hobbies. These were principally antiquities, and he had been busy for some years on a great work on the Antonines.
He was in the habit of breakfasting at seven with his sister, and being particular in his habits, he liked to have his meal served punctually at that hour. He was always in the little dining-room as the clock struck, while his sister was usually a few minutes late. His custom was to take a walk after breakfast and be at his books at eight o’clock. Therefore he liked to finish his meal by a quarter after seven, and this meant punctilious service. In especial he disliked having his porridge so hot that he had to delay some minutes before he could begin on it.
On a fine May morning Mr Hawthorn appeared in the breakfast room at the exact hour. His sister was not down, but two steaming bowls of porridge stood on the table. Mr Hawthorn was annoyed. He strode into the little hall and shouted upstairs.
‘Babbie,’ he cried, ‘how often have I told you the porridge should be dished up earlier? They are scalding hot again. I am going out of doors until they cool.’
He walked out into the garden. He also walked out of the world for five years and seven months.
There was a great hue and cry in the countryside. The Procurator Fiscal made his precognitions, and even the capital city was stirred by the mystery, but no trace could be found of Mr Andrew Hawthorn. His footsteps were followed on the coarse dewy turf which ran along the edge of the dean, and there they disappeared. In the dean itself there were signs of an old fire on a little shelf of ground, and a good deal of trampled grass
and broken underwood; but the latter might have been due to the cattle-beasts that were always straying in from the neighbouring hillside.
Mr Hawthorn had no near kin besides his sister, but his lawyers offered a considerable reward for news of him. None came, and most people assumed that he was dead. His sister, who was his heir-at-law, would have succeeded to his estate had his death been presumed, but she resolutely refused to admit the presumption. Andrew, she said, would come back, though she would give no grounds for her belief. She conducted the household as usual, and every morning she had a plate of porridge set for him at breakfast, as if at any moment he might appear from the garden. She even remembered his wishes and saw to it that the porridge was dished up a little earlier.
Mr Hawthorn went out into the bright sunshine and impatiently sniffed the morning freshness. He walked to the edge of the dean, and there, on the well trodden path among the fir trees, he saw one Bauldy Grieve, a packman, whose rounds took him up and down the Lowlands. Bauldy was an old friend who had often provided him with minor antiquities. It appeared that he had something important to communicate, for he was sitting there to intercept the laird on his morning walk.
