by Otto Penzler
Worse was to come.
The old woman let go of the sabre and stepped away from him.
“Remember, Doheny!”
The old priest’s claw-like hands came to the handle of the sabre and then, with a mighty tug, he pulled the great blade out of his body with a slow, deliberate motion. It was bright and shining and without a speck of blood upon its blade.
I stood at the small window transfixed with terror.
I could not believe what I had seen. It was impossible. She had thrust a sharp sword through a frail old priest and the priest had not batted an eye. He had merely withdrawn it. And it had made no wound!
“Remember, Doheny!”
I suppressed a cry of fear, turned and ran back to my bike. Panic seemed to impede my every move. I tried to start the motor but everything I did seemed wrong. I heard a cry from the old woman, became aware of a shadow on the path. I could feel fetid breath on my neck. Then the bike started with a roar and I was speeding away.
The track was twisting, the mud on the road slowed the machine. I felt as if I was in some cross-country bike race, swerving, twisting, leaping down the mountain pathway in the direction of the nearest village which was Ballynagree. I had never ridden so hard in all my life, ridden as if a thousand devils from hell were at my heels.
Just as I was beginning to relax, I saw a small hump-back bridge over a winding mountain torrent. I knew it to be an old granite stone bridge which was scarcely the width of three people walking. I eased back the throttle on my machine to negotiate it in safety and then . . .
Then, by the light of my front lamp, I saw the pale figure of the priest standing in the centre of the bridge; standing waiting for me.
In fright, I tugged at the handlebars of my machine, wrenching them, as I made a silly and futile attempt to ride through the gushing stream rather than run over the bridge.
My front wheel hit a stone and the next thing I knew was that I was cartwheeling over and over in the air before smashing down on a soft muddy surface of the bank. The impact still drove the breath out of my body and I lost consciousness.
It was only a momentary loss. I remember coming to with a swimming, nauseous sensation. I blinked.
A foot away from my face were the pale, parchment features of the priest. The colourless eyes seemed to be staring through me. His breath was stale, fetid and there was a terrible stench of death on him. I felt his hands at my throat. Large, powerful claws, squeezing.
“Stop, Doheny!”
It was the old woman’s shrill tones. Beyond the priest’s shoulder I caught a glimpse of her, the veil thrown back, while the skull-like face was staring in triumph with a livid weal of a scar showing diagonally from forehead to cheek.
The pressure eased a little.
“He is not one of them, Doheny. Leave him be. He is to be witness to what we have done. Leave him be. What we have done will live in him and he will pass it on so that it will be known. Leave him be.”
The old priest, with incredible strength, shook me as if I were no more than a rag doll.
“Leave him be,” commanded the old woman again.
And then I must have fainted.
When I came to, there was no one about. I pressed my hand against my throbbing temples and rose unsteadily to my feet. For a moment or two I could not remember how I had wound up in the mud of the mountain stream. Then I did remember. I gave a startled glance about me but could see no sign of the old priest and woman. The mountainside was in darkness. The only movement was that of the trees whispering, swaying and rustling in the winds that moaned softly over the mountain.
I stood a moment or two attempting to get my bearings. Then I saw the black heap of my Triumph motorbike lying in the shallows of the stream. I tried to move it out of the water but saw immediately, by the buckled wheel and splintered spokes, that even if I could start the machine it would be useless. Nevertheless, I attempted to start it. The starter gave a weak “phutt” and remained lifeless. It was obviously waterlogged.
I manoeuvred it to the bank of the stream and then waded up to the humpback bridge. There was nothing for it but to start walking down the mountain to Ballynagree. My head was throbbing and my mind was a whirl of conflicting thoughts. Was someone playing some terrible joke, a joke which was in bad taste? But no one would go to that extreme? Surely?
It took three hours of trekking down the muddy pathway before I saw the first signs of habitation.
I finally saw the dark outline of the garage where I had stopped for petrol. I stumbled towards it numb and frozen and hammered on the door. It was a while before I heard a window go up in the room above the garage front. A light shone down and a voice cried: “Who’s there?”
“My motorbike has broken down and I’m stranded,” I yelled. “Can I get a taxi from here or stay the rest of the night?”
“Man, do you realize that it is three o’clock in the morning?” came the stern reply.
“I was stranded on the mountain, on Musheramore Mountain,” I replied.
A woman’s voice came softly to my ears although I could not hear what was said.
The window came down with an abrupt bang. I waited hopefully. A light eventually shone in the downstairs window. Then the door was opened.
“Come away in,” said the male voice.
I entered, feeling ice cold and drained from my experience.
As the light fell on me, the garage man recognized me.
“You’re the young man who asked me the way to ‘Teach Droch-Chlú’ earlier this evening, aren’t you?”
I nodded. It was the man whose overalls had proclaimed his name to be “Manus.”
“That’s right. My motorbike has broken down. I need a cab.”
The man shook his head, nonplussed.
“You look all in.” He turned and drew up a bottle of Jameson from a cupboard and a glass. “This will warm you up,” he said, pouring the whiskey and pushing the glass into my hands.
“What were you doing up at ‘Teach Droch-Chlú’ at this time of night? Are you a ghost hunter? Is that it?” And without waiting for a reply he continued: “I can telephone Macroom for a car to collect you, if you like. Where do you want to get to?”
“To Cork City.”
“And where did your bike break down?”
“Up the mountain track somewhere, near a river crossing. By a humpbacked bridge.”
“Ah, the spot is known to me. I’ll go and pick your bike up tomorrow. Give me a number where I can contact you and I’ll let you know what repairs need to be done.”
I nodded, frowning at him as I sipped my whiskey.
“Why did you ask if I was a ghost hunter?”
“You asked for ‘Teach Droch-Chlú.’ That’s what the locals call it hereabouts, the house of evil reputation. We call it that on account that it has a reputation of being haunted. You know, it is one of the old ‘famine’ cottages which have survived in these parts.”
I gave a diffident shake of the head and pressed the whiskey to my lips, enjoying its fiery warmth through my chill body.
“I was looking for Father Nessan Doheny,” I explained.
The burly man stared at me a moment as if in surprise and then gave a low chuckle.
“So I was right then? Well now, I hope that you didn’t find him.”
I stopped rubbing my hands together and gazed at him in astonishment.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because Father Nessan Doheny has been dead these last one hundred and sixty years.”
A chill, like ice, shot down my spine.
“Dead one hundred and sixty years?”
“Surely. Didn’t you know the story? He led his flock to Musheramore Castle during the time of the ‘Great Hunger’ to plead with Lord Musheramore to help the surviving peasants and stop the evictions. The soldiers were called in from Mallow and given orders to charge the people who were kneeling on the lawn of the castle in prayer. Father Nessan Doheny was sabred to death with many of his
flock.”
I swallowed hard.
“And . . . and what happened to Bríd Cappeen?”
He roared with laughter.
“Then you do know the old legend! Of course you did. It is local knowledge that ‘Teach Droch-Chlú’ was her old cabin. All part of the old legend. Well frankly, I think it is simply that. No more than a legend. Poor Father Doheny and the demented Bríd Cappeen are long since dead. To think on it, the idea of an old woman reanimating the corpse of a priest to enact vengeance on Lord Musheramore and his ilk! God save us!” He genuflected piously. “It is a legend and nothing else.”
(SYDNEY) THOMAS BURKE (1886–1945) was born in the London suburb of Clapham, but when he was only a few months old his father died and he was sent to the East End to live with his uncle until the age of ten, when he was put into a home for respectable middle-class children without means. He sold his first story, “The Bellamy Diamonds,” when he was fifteen. His first book, Nights in Town: A London Autobiography, was published in 1915, soon followed by the landmark volume Limehouse Nights (1916), a collection of stories that had originally been published in the magazines The English Review, Colour, and The New Witness. This volume of romantic but violent stories of the Chinese district of London was enormously popular and, though largely praised by critics, there were objections to the depictions of interracial relationships, opium use, and other “depravities.” Several of the stories in Limehouse Nights served as the basis for films, most notably D. W. Griffith’s Broken Blossoms (1919), based on “The Chink and the Child.” It starred one of America’s most beloved actresses, Lillian Gish, as the daughter of a sadistic prizefighter, and Richard Barthelmess as a kind Chinese youth. Charlie Chaplin based his silent movie A Dog’s Life (1918) on material from the book. Sequels to this volume include Whispering Windows (published in the United States as More Limehouse Nights, 1921) and The Pleasantries of Old Quong (A Tea-Shop in Limehouse in the United States, 1931), which contains the short story “The Hands of Mr. Ottermole”; based on the Jack the Ripper murders, it was voted the best detective short story of all time in 1949 by Ellery Queen and eleven other mystery writers.
“The Hollow Man” was first published in the author’s collection Night-Pieces (London: Constable, 1935).
HE CAME UP one of the narrow streets which lead from the docks, and turned into a road whose farther end was gay with the lights of London. At the end of this road he went deep into the lights of London, and sometimes into its shadows. Farther and farther he went from the river, and did not pause until he had reached a poor quarter near the centre.
He made a tall, spare figure, clothed in a black mackintosh. Below this could be seen brown dungaree trousers. A peaked cap hid most of his face; the little that was exposed was white and sharp. In the autumn mist that filled the lighted streets as well as the dark he seemed a wraith, and some of those who passed him looked again, not sure whether they had indeed seen a living man. One or two of them moved their shoulders, as though shrinking from something.
His legs were long, but he walked with the short, deliberate steps of a blind man, though he was not blind. His eyes were open, and he stared straight ahead; but he seemed to see nothing and hear nothing. Neither the mournful hooting of sirens across the black water of the river, nor the genial windows of the shops in the big streets near the centre drew his head to right or left. He walked as though he had no destination in mind, yet constantly, at this corner or that, he turned. It seemed that an unseen hand was guiding him to a given point of whose location he was himself ignorant.
He was searching for a friend of fifteen years ago, and the unseen hand, or some dog-instinct, had led him from Africa to London, and was now leading him, along the last mile of his search, to a certain little eating-house. He did not know that he was going to the eating-house of his friend Nameless, but he did know, from the time he left Africa, that he was journeying towards Nameless, and he now knew that he was very near to Nameless.
Nameless didn’t know that his old friend was anywhere near him, though, had he observed conditions that evening, he might have wondered why he was sitting up an hour later than usual. He was seated in one of the pews of his prosperous Workmen’s Dining-Rooms—a little gold-mine his wife’s relations called it—and he was smoking and looking at nothing. He had added up the till and written the copies of the bill of fare for next day, and there was nothing to keep him out of bed after his fifteen hours’ attention to business. Had he been asked why he was sitting up later than usual, he would first have answered that he didn’t know that he was, and would then have explained, in default of any other explanation, that it was for the purpose of having a last pipe. He was quite unaware that he was sitting up and keeping the door unlatched because a long-parted friend from Africa was seeking him and slowly approaching him, and needed his services. He was quite unaware that he had left the door unlatched at that late hour—half-past eleven—to admit pain and woe.
But even as many bells sent dolefully across the night from their steeples their disagreement as to the point of half-past eleven, pain and woe were but two streets away from him. The mackintosh and dungarees and the sharp white face were coming nearer every moment.
There was silence in the house and in the streets; a heavy silence, broken, or sometimes stressed, by the occasional night-noises—motor horns, back-firing of lorries, shunting at a distant terminus. That silence seemed to envelop the house, but he did not notice it. He did not notice the bells, and he did not even notice the lagging step that approached his shop, and passed—and returned—and passed again—and halted. He was aware of nothing save that he was smoking a last pipe, and he was sitting in somnolence, deaf and blind to anything not in his immediate neighbourhood.
But when a hand was laid on the latch, and the latch was lifted, he did hear that, and he looked up. And he saw the door open, and got up and went to it. And there, just within the door, he came face to face with the thin figure of pain and woe.
TO KILL A fellow-creature is a frightful thing. At the time the act is committed the murderer may have sound and convincing reasons (to him) for his act. But time and reflection may bring regret; even remorse; and this may live with him for many years. Examined in wakeful hours of the night or early morning, the reasons for the act may shed their cold logic, and may cease to be reasons and become mere excuses. And these naked excuses may strip the murderer and show him to himself as he is. They may begin to hunt his soul, and to run into every little corner of his mind and every little nerve, in search of it.
And if to kill a fellow-creature and to suffer recurrent regret for an act of heated blood is a frightful thing, it is still more frightful to kill a fellow-creature and bury his body deep in an African jungle, and then, fifteen years later, at about midnight, to see the latch of your door lifted by the hand you had stilled and to see the man, looking much as he did fifteen years ago, walk into your home and claim your hospitality.
WHEN THE MAN in mackintosh and dungarees walked into the dining-rooms Nameless stood still; stared; staggered against a table; supported himself by a hand, and said, “Oh.”
The other man said, “Nameless.”
Then they looked at each other; Nameless with head thrust forward, mouth dropped, eyes wide; the visitor with a dull, glazed expression. If Nameless had not been the man he was—thick, bovine, and costive—he would have flung up his arms and screamed. At that moment he felt the need of some such outlet, but did not know how to find it. The only dramatic expression he gave to the situation was to whisper instead of speak.
Twenty emotions came to life in his head and spine, and wrestled there. But they showed themselves only in his staring eyes and his whisper. His first thought, or rather, spasm, was Ghosts-Indigestion-Nervous-Breakdown. His second, when he saw that the figure was substantial and real, was Impersonation. But a slight movement on the part of the visitor dismissed that.
It was a little habitual movement which belonged only to that man; an unconsciou
s twitching of the third finger of the left hand. He knew then that it was Gopak. Gopak, a little changed, but still, miraculously, thirty-two. Gopak, alive, breathing, and real. No ghost. No phantom of the stomach. He was as certain of that as he was that fifteen years ago he had killed Gopak stone-dead and buried him.
The blackness of the moment was lightened by Gopak. In thin, flat tones he asked, “May I sit down? I’m tired.” He sat down, and said: “So tired.”
Nameless still held the table. He whispered: “Gopak . . . Gopak . . . But I—I killed you. I killed you in the jungle. You were dead. I know you were.”
Gopak passed his hand across his face. He seemed about to cry. “I know you did. I know. That’s all I can remember—about this earth. You killed me.” The voice became thinner and flatter. “And then they came and—disturbed me. They woke me up. And brought me back.” He sat with shoulders sagged, arms drooping, hands hanging between knees. After the first recognition he did not look at Nameless; he looked at the floor.
“Came and disturbed you?” Nameless leaned forward and whispered the words. “Woke you up? Who?”
“The Leopard Men.”
“The what?”
“The Leopard Men.” The watery voice said it as casually as if it were saying “the night watchman.”
“The Leopard Men?” Nameless stared, and his fat face crinkled in an effort to take in the situation of a midnight visitation from a dead man, and the dead man talking nonsense. He felt his blood moving out of its course. He looked at his own hand to see if it was his own hand. He looked at the table to see if it was his table. The hand and the table were facts, and if the dead man was a fact—and he was—his story might be a fact. It seemed anyway as sensible as the dead man’s presence. He gave a heavy sigh from the stomach. “A-ah . . . The Leopard Men . . . Yes, I heard about them out there. Tales.”
Gopak slowly wagged his head. “Not tales. They’re real. If they weren’t real—I wouldn’t be here. Would I?”
