The Best Ghost Stories Ever Told

by Stephen Brennan

  Coll Dhu had lived thus in his solitude for some years, when it became known that Colonel Blake, the new lord of the soil, was coming to visit the country. By climbing one of the peaks encircling his eyrie, Coll could look sheer down a mountain-side, and see in miniature beneath him, a grey old dwelling with ivied chimneys and weather-slated walls, standing amongst straggling trees and grim warlike rocks, that gave it the look of a fortress, gazing out to the Atlantic for ever with the eager eyes of all its windows, as if demanding perpetually, ‘What tidings from the New World?’

  He could see now masons and carpenters crawling about below, like ants in the sun, over-running the old house from base to chimney, daubing here and knocking there, tumbling down walls that looked to Coll, up among the clouds, like a handful of jack-stones, and building up others that looked like the toy fences in a child’s farm. Throughout several months he must have watched the busy ants at their task of breaking and mending again, disfiguring and beautifying; but when all was done he had not the curiosity to stride down and admire the handsome panelling of the new billiard-room, nor yet the fine view which the enlarged bay-window in the drawing-room commanded of the watery highway to Newfoundland.

  Deep summer was melting into autumn, and the amber streaks of decay were beginning to creep out and trail over the ripe purple of moor and mountain, when Colonel Blake, his only daughter, and a party of friends, arrived in the country. The grey house below was alive with gaiety, but Coll Dhu no longer found an interest in observing it from his eyrie. When he watched the sun rise or set, he chose to ascend some crag that looked on no human habitation. When he sailed forth on his excursions, gun in hand, he set his face towards the most isolated wastes, dipping into the loneliest valleys, and scaling the nakedest ridges. When he came by chance within call of other excursionists, gun in hand he plunged into the shade of some hollow, and avoided an encounter. Yet it was fated, for all that, that he and Colonel Blake should meet.

  Towards the evening of one bright September day, the wind changed, and in half an hour the mountains were wrapped in a thick blinding mist. Coll Dhu was far from his den, but so well had he searched these mountains, and inured himself to their climate, that neither storm, rain, nor fog, had power to disturb him. But while he stalked on his way, a faint and agonised cry from a human voice reached him through the smothering mist. He quickly tracked the sound, and gained the side of a man who was stumbling along in danger of death at every step.

  ‘Follow me!’ said Coll Dhu to this man, and, in an hour’s time, brought him safely to the lowlands, and up to the walls of the eager-eyed mansion.

  ‘I am Colonel Blake,’ said the frank soldier, when, having left the fog behind them, they stood in the starlight under the lighted windows. Pray tell me quickly to whom I owe my life.’

  As he spoke, he glanced up at his benefactor, a large man with a sombre sun-burned face.

  ‘Colonel Blake,’ said Coll Dhu, after a strange pause, ‘your father suggested to my father to stake his estates at the gaming-table. They were staked, and the tempter won. Both are dead; but you and I live, and I have sworn to injure you.’

  The colonel laughed good humouredly at the uneasy face above him.

  ‘And you began to keep your oath tonight by saving my life?’ said he. ‘Come! I am a soldier, and know how to meet an enemy; but I had far rather meet a friend. I shall not be happy till you have eaten my salt. We have merrymaking tonight in honour of my daughter’s birthday. Come in and join us?’

  Coll Dhu looked at the earth doggedly.

  ‘I have told you,’ he said, ‘who and what I am, and I will not cross your threshold.’

  But at this moment (so runs the story) a French window opened among the flower-beds by which they were standing, and a vision appeared which stayed the words on Coll’s tongue. A stately girl, clad in white satin, stood framed in the ivied window, with the warm light from within streaming around her richly moulded figure into the night. Her face was as pale as her gown, her eyes were swimming in tears, but a firm smile sat on her lips as she held out both hands to her father. The light behind her touched the glistening folds of her dress–the lustrous pearls round her throat–the coronet of blood-red roses which encircled the knotted braids at the back of her head. Satin, pearls, and roses–had Coll Dhu, of the Devil’s Inn, never set eyes upon such things before?

  Evleen Blake was no nervous tearful miss. A few quick words–‘Thank God! you’re safe; the rest have been home an hour’–and a tight pressure of her father’s fingers between her own jewelled hands, were all that betrayed the uneasiness she had suffered.

  ‘Faith, my love, I owe my life to this brave gentleman!’ said the blithe colonel. ‘Press him to come in and be our guest, Evleen. He wants to retreat to his mountains, and lose himself again in the fog where I found him; or, rather, where he found me! Come, sir’ (to Coll), ‘you must surrender to this fair besieger.’

  An introduction followed. ‘Coll Dhu!’ murmured Evleen Blake, for she had heard the common tales of him; but with a frank welcome she invited her father’s preserver to taste the hospitality of that father’s house.

  ‘I beg you to come in, sir,’ she said; ‘but for you our gaiety must have been turned into mourning. A shadow will be upon our mirth if our benefactor disdains to join in it.’

  With a sweet grace, mingled with a certain hauteur from which she was never free, she extended her white hand to the tall looming figure outside the window; to have it grasped and wrung in a way that made the proud girl’s eyes flash their amazement, and the same little hand clench itself in displeasure, when it had hid itself like an outraged thing among the shining folds of her gown. Was this Coll Dhu mad, or rude?

  The guest no longer refused to enter, but followed the white figure into a little study where a lamp burned; and the gloomy stranger, the bluff colonel, and the young mistress of the house, were fully discovered to each other’s eyes. Evleen glanced at the newcomer’s dark face, and shuddered with a feeling of indescribable dread and dislike; then, to her father, accounted for the shudder after a popular fashion, saying lightly: ‘There is someone walking over my grave.’

  So Coll Dhu was present at Evleen Blake’s birthday ball. Here he was, under a roof which ought to have been his own, a stranger, known only by a nickname, shunned and solitary. Here he was, who had lived among the eagles and foxes, lying in wait with a fell purpose, to be revenged on the son of his father’s foe for poverty and disgrace, for the broken heart of a dead mother, for the loss of a self-slaughtered father, for the dreary scattering of brothers and sisters. Here he stood, a Samson shorn of his strength; and all because a haughty girl had melting eyes, a winning mouth, and looked radiant in satin and roses.

  Peerless where many were lovely, she moved among her friends, trying to be unconscious of the gloomy fire of those strange eyes which followed her unweariedly wherever she went. And when her father begged her to be gracious to the unsocial guest whom he would fain conciliate, she courteously conducted him to see the new picture-gallery adjoining the drawing-rooms; explained under what odd circumstances the colonel had picked up this little painting or that; using every delicate art her pride would allow to achieve her father’s purpose, whilst maintaining at the same time her own personal reserve; trying to divert the guest’s oppressive attention from herself to the objects for which she claimed his notice. Coll Dhu followed his conductress and listened to her voice, but what she said mattered nothing; nor did she wring many words of comment or reply from his lips, until they paused in a retired corner where the light was dim, before a window from which the curtain was withdrawn. The sashes were open, and nothing was visible but water; the night Atlantic, with the full moon riding high above a bank of clouds, making silvery tracks outward towards the distance of infinite mystery dividing two worlds. Here the following little scene is said to have been enacted.

  ‘This window of my father’s own planning, is it not creditable to his taste?’ said the young hostess, as she
stood, herself glittering like a dream of beauty, looking on the moonlight.

  Coll Dhu made no answer; but suddenly, it is said, asked her for a rose from a cluster of flowers that nestled in the lace on her bosom.

  For the second time that night Evleen Blake’s eyes flashed with no gentle light. But this man was the saviour of her father. She broke off a blossom, and with such good grace, and also with such queen-like dignity as she might assume, presented it to him. Whereupon, not only was the rose seized, but also the hand that gave it, which was hastily covered with kisses.

  Then her anger burst upon him.

  ‘Sir,’ she cried, ‘if you are a gentleman you must be mad! If you are not mad, then you are not a gentleman!’

  ‘Be merciful,’ said Coll Dhu; ‘I love you. My God, I never loved a woman before! Ah!’ he cried, as a look of disgust crept over her face, ‘you hate me. You shuddered the first time your eyes met mine. I love you, and you hate me!’

  ‘I do,’ cried Evleen, vehemently, forgetting everything but her indignation. ‘Your presence is like something evil to me. Love me?–your looks poison me. Pray, sir, talk no more to me in this strain.’–‘I will trouble you no longer,’ said Coll Dhu. And, stalking to the window, he placed one powerful hand upon the sash, and vaulted from it out of her sight.

  Bare-headed as he was, Coll Dhu strode off to the mountains, but not towards his own home. All the remaining dark hours of that night he is believed to have walked the labyrinths of the hills, until dawn began to scatter the clouds with a high wind. Fasting, and on foot from sunrise the morning before, he was then glad enough to see a cabin right in his way. Walking in, he asked for water to drink, and a corner where he might throw himself to rest.

  There was a wake in the house, and the kitchen was full of people, all wearied out with the night’s watch; old men were dozing over their pipes in the chimneycorner, and here and there a woman was fast asleep with her head on a neighbour’s knee. All who were awake crossed themselves when Coll Dhu’s figure darkened the door, because of his evil name; but an old man of the house invited him in, and offering him milk, and promising him a roasted potato by-and-by, conducted him to a small room off the kitchen, one end of which was strewed with heather, and where there were only two women sitting gossiping over a fire.

  ‘A traveller,’ said the old man, nodding his head at the women, who nodded back, as if to say ‘he has the traveller’s right.’ And Coll Dhu flung himself on the heather, in the furthest comer of the narrow room.

  The women suspended their talk for a while; but presently, guessing the intruder to be asleep, resumed it in voices above a whisper. There was but a patch of window with the grey dawn behind it, but Coll could see the figures by the firelight over which they bent: an old woman sitting forward with her withered hands extended to the embers, and a girl reclining against the hearth wall, with her healthy face, bright eyes, and crimson draperies, glowing by turns in the flickering blaze.

  ‘I do’ know,’ said the girl, ‘but it’s the quarest marriage iver I hard of. Sure, it’s not three weeks since he tould right an’ left that he hated her like poison!’

  ‘Whist, asthoreen!’ said the colliagh, bending forward confidentially; ‘throth an’ we all know that o’ him. But what could he do, the crature! When she put the burragh-bos on him!’

  ‘The what?’ asked the girl.

  ‘Then the burragh-bos machree-o? That’s the spanchel o’ death, avourneen; an’ well she has him tethered to her now, bad luck to her!’

  The old woman rocked herself and stifled the Irish cry breaking from her wrinkled lips by burying her face in her cloak.

  ‘But what is it?’ asked the girl, eagerly. ‘What’s the burragh-bos, anyways, an’ where did she get it?’

  ‘Och, och! it’s not fit for comin’ over to young ears, but cuggir (whisper), acushla! It’s a sthrip o’ the skin o’ a corpse, peeled from the crown o’ the head to the heel, without crack or split, or the charm’s broke; an’ that, rowled up, and put on a sthring roun’ the neck o’ the wan that’s cowld by the wan that wants to be loved. An’ sure enough it puts the fire in their hearts, hot an’ sthrong, afore twinty-four hours is gone.’

  The girl had started from her lazy attitude, and gazed at her companion with eyes dilated by horror.

  ‘Marciful Saviour!’ she cried. ‘Not a sowl on airth would bring the curse out o’ heaven by sich a black doin’!’

  ‘Aisy, Biddeen alanna! an’ there’s wan that does it, an’ isn’t the divil. Arrah, asthoreen, did ye niver hear tell o’ Pexie na Pishrogie, that lives betune two hills o’ Maam Turk?’

  ‘I h’ard o’ her,’ said the girl, breathlessly.

  ‘Well, sorra bit lie, but it’s hersel’ that does it. She’ll do it for money any day. Sure they hunted her from the graveyard o’ Salruck, where she had the dead raised; an’ glory be to God! they would ha’ murthered her, only they missed her thracks, an’ couldn’t bring it home to her afther.’

  ‘Whist, a-wauher’ (my mother), said the girl; ‘here’s the thraveller gettin’ up to set off on his road again! Och, then, it’s the short rest he tuk, the sowl!’

  It was enough for Coll, however. He had got up, and now went back to the kitchen, where the old man had caused a dish of potatoes to be roasted, and earnestly pressed his visitor to sit down and eat of them. This Coll did readily; having recruited his strength by a meal, he betook himself to the mountains again, just as the rising sun was flashing among the waterfalls, and sending the night mists drifting down the glens. By sundown the same evening he was striding over the hills of Maam Turk, asking of herds his way to the cabin of one Pexie na Pishrogie.

  In a hovel on a brown desolate heath, with scared-looking hills flying off into the distance on every side, he found Pexie: a yellow-faced hag, dressed in a dark-red blanket, with elf-locks of coarse black hair protruding from under an orange kerchief swathed round her wrinkled jaws. She was bending over a pot upon her fire, where herbs were simmering, and she looked lip with an evil glance when Coll Dhu darkened her door.

  ‘The burragh-bos is it her honour wants?’ she asked, when he had made known his errand. ‘Ay, ay; but the arighad, the arighad (money) for Pexie. The burragh-bos is ill to get.’

  ‘I will pay,’ said Coll Dhu, laying a sovereign on the bench before her.

  The witch sprang upon it, and chuckling, bestowed on her visitor a glance which made even Coll Dhu shudder.

  ‘Her honour is a fine king,’ she said, ‘an’ her is fit to get the burragh-bos. Ha! ha! her sail get the burragh-bos from Pexie. But the arighad is not enough. More, more!’

  She stretched out her claw-like hand, and Coll dropped another sovereign into it. Whereupon she fell into more horrible convulsions of delight.

  ‘Hark ye!’ cried Coll. ‘I have paid you well, but if your infernal charm does not work, I will have you hunted for a witch!’

  ‘Work!’ cried Pexie, rolling up her eyes. ‘If Pexie’s charrm not work, then her honour come back here an’ carry these bits o’ mountain away on her back. Ay, her will work. If the colleen hate her honour like the old diaoul hersel’, still an’ withal her love will love her honour like her own white sowl afore the sun sets or rises. That, (with a furtive leer) or the colleen dhas go wild mad afore wan hour.’

  ‘Hag!’ returned Coll Dhu; ‘the last part is a hellish invention of your own. I heard nothing of madness. If you want more money, speak out, but play none of your hideous tricks on me.’

  The witch fixed her cunning eyes on him, and took her cue at once from his passion.

  ‘Her honour guess thrue,’ she simpered; ‘it is only the little bit more arighad poor Pexie want.’

  Again the skinny hand was extended. Coll Dhu shrank from touching it, and threw his gold coin upon the table.

  ‘King, king!’ chuckled Pexie. ‘Her honour is a grand king. Her honour is fit to get the burragh-bos. The colleen dhas sail love her like her own white sowl. Ha, ha!’

  ‘When sha
ll I get it?’ asked Coll Dhu, impatiently.

  ‘Her honour sall come back to Pexie in so many days, do-deag (twelve), so many days, fur that the burragh-bos is hard to get. The lonely graveyard is far away, an’ the dead man is hard to raise—’

  ‘Silence!’ cried Coll Dhu; ‘not a word more. I will have your hideous charm, but what it is, or where you get it, I will not know.’

  Then, promising to come back in twelve days, he took his departure. Turning to look back when a little way across the heath, he saw Pexie gazing after him, standing on her black hill in relief against the lurid flames of the dawn, seeming to his dark imagination like a fury with all hell at her back.

  At the appointed time Coll Dhu got the promised charm. He sewed it with perfumes into a cover of cloth of gold, and slung it to a fine-wrought chain. Lying in a casket which had once held the jewels of Coil’s broken-hearted mother, it looked a glittering bauble enough. Meantime the people of the mountains were cursing over their cabin fires, because there had been another unholy raid upon their graveyard, and were banding themselves to hunt the criminal down.

  A fortnight passed. How or where could Coll Dhu find an opportunity to put the charm round the neck of the colonel’s proud daughter? More gold was dropped into Pexie’s greedy claw, and then she promised to assist him in his dilemma.

  Next morning the witch dressed herself in decent garb, smoothed her elflocks under a snowy cap, smoothed the wrinkles out of her face, and with a basket on her arm locked the door of the hovel, and took her way to the lowlands. Pexie seemed to have given up her disreputable calling for that of a simple mushroom-gatherer. The housekeeper at the grey house bought poor Muireade’s mushrooms of her every morning. Every morti-ing she left unfailingly a nosegay of wild flowers for Miss Evleen Blake, ‘God bless her! She had never seen the darling young lady with her own two longing eyes, but sure hadn’t she heard tell of her sweet purty face, miles away!’ And at last, one morning, whom should she meet but Miss Evleen herself returning alone from a ramble. Whereupon poor Muireade ‘made bold’ to present her flowers in person.