by Ashby, R. C.
I said dryly: ‘I know, and you know. But I thought it was harmless?’
‘Who told you?’
‘Mr. Barr.’
‘Oh.’
Suddenly I couldn’t stand it any longer. ‘For heaven’s sake, tell me!’ I said. ‘Let’s thrash it out. You’re frightened—you’re hiding it awfully well, but you are. I felt it too, almost from the minute I entered that house. It’s a hateful house. Something seemed to get me by the neck . . . a creeping horror. I haven’t even admitted it to myself until this moment. I’ve explained my sensations away, but now that you feel it too——! What is it? What is the beastly thing? Barr takes it lightly; a sort of jolly little house-spirit that plays tricks with the marmalade. That isn’t the impression I’ve had. Is it malevolent, this poltergeist, as they call it? It must be. It brought that look to your face——’
She suddenly turned on me and the colour rushed to her angry cheeks. ‘Mr. Mertoun! Have you gone mad?’ she said. ‘How can you believe in such rubbish? A spirit! The most utter nonsense. No intelligent person——’
I froze up instantly. ‘Very well, dear lady,’ I thought; ‘but I call it rottenly unsporting of you.’ It was her fault that I had given myself away; and then to draw back . . . Well, she wouldn’t catch me twice.
I got up, and of course she had to, because I wanted my mackintosh; so I slung it across my shoulder and we went down to the house without saying anything, the heather stalks snapping under our feet. I held open the gate for her. ‘Will you please forgive me?’ she said unexpectedly. ‘I don’t know how——’
‘Certainly,’ I interrupted, pretty stiffly.
We both went in, and separated. I didn’t see her again that day or the whole of the next; and in the evening to my relief Charlie Barr came back.”
v
“Now this was the night of my first unquestionable experience. I haven’t tried until now to put it into words. I suppose it is impossible to make you feel it as I felt it, but even now—hundreds of miles away—the chill of it is taking hold of me again. Don’t think me more of a fool than you can help. I’m struggling with a string of memories that only free speech can relieve.
Very well, then. As I said, Charlie came back in the evening and he came back unlike himself, gloomy and almost morose. He nodded to me and went straight to his study, where he had his supper sent to him, but later he came to the library and made an attempt at conversation. Probably this attitude of his affected my own feelings. It was a horrible night too, gusty and raw, and the wind down the chimney filled the room with billows of smoke. We both coughed and bore it for a time, and then Charlie admitted to being desperately tired and we both went to bed.
Once in my room I discovered that I still had the poetry anthology of the previous day in my pocket, so I read myself to sleep with Cavalier lyrics and fantastic love lays. I slept soundly, and woke at the sound of a light tap on the door. It was pitch dark, and my luminous watch said it was a little before three. The wind was raging outside, and there was a dreary sluicing of rain on the window. A sickly beam from the lighthouse stole in for a second and was gone; the crashing of the breakers on the shore was very distinct.
Someone tapped again, very lightly. I got out of bed, put on a dressing-gown and opened the door. It was Miss Goff. She was wearing her uniform with apron and coif.
‘Will you dress quickly, please,’ she said quietly; ‘I want to show you something.’
Of course I dressed and went out and joined her. There wasn’t a light anywhere; I could see her white apron gleaming in the blackness of the corridor. I couldn’t imagine where she was taking me, and to tell you the truth I wasn’t thinking of anything sinister. You know how silent it is in a house in the middle of the night; instinctively you walk as softly as a cat. Neither she nor I made much sound. We came to the stairs and began to descend towards the half-landing on the way to the hall. There was a deep window on the half-landing and it made the stairs faintly light, light enough to see what we had come to see. ‘Look,’ Miss Goff said to me.
There was a large picture hanging on the wall at the turn of the stairs, some sort of a portrait in oils. I had noticed it several times. Now I saw that it was slashed almost to ribbons, as though it had been attacked with fiendish ferocity. There was something repulsive in those dark cuts, like wounds in human flesh.
Miss Goff stood quietly beside me. ‘Was it like that when you went to bed?’ she whispered.
‘No,’ I said, and I hardly recognized my voice.
‘You see!’ she said.
And then everything went black and I should have fallen if I hadn’t clutched the banister-rail. ‘It’s here!’ I heard myself say, and both her hands went into mine. They were as cold as ice. I felt myself fighting with a thick and hideous darkness that I could smell and taste. It was very old, slow-creeping, and evil. I couldn’t move; I was waiting, waiting, for something to come and then I was going to give one mighty heave with my fists and end it, somehow. But it didn’t come; there wasn’t anything, any more than there is in a nightmare. That made it just ten times more horrible. How long it went on I don’t know; probably several minutes. I know that suddenly I gave a choke that wrenched my throat most painfully, and opened my eyes, and discovered myself sane but feeling iller than I’ve felt for many a year. Miss Goff was drawing her hands out of mine. Her face was queerly contorted. I put my hand up to my brow and brought it away wet. And of course the first thing I said was something utterly absurd and inadequate. I said, ‘So that’s that,’ and she gave a sort of a sob. Then we both stiffened up. Whatever the thing was, it had gone.
‘Look here,’ I said, ‘how did you find out about—this?’ And I pointed to the slashed picture.
‘I thought I heard something,’ she said quietly; ‘so I came down to see.’
I admired her fearfully for making so little fuss.
‘This is worse,’ I said, ‘than playing with marmalade and hiding hats.’ She covered her face with her hand.
‘Why did you come to me?’ I asked her.
‘Because I thought you’d understand,’ she said.
‘Thank you,’ I said; ‘I think I do. But I wish Barr needn’t know, though of course he’ll have to. Still, I don’t think he’ll realize the full significance of the thing, do you?’
She said slowly: ‘I think he will.’
‘You mean,’ I said, ‘he knows there’s danger, but he’s braving it out?’ I could understand Barr’s attitude completely now; deliberately making light of what he knew might prove to be frightful danger. ‘I’m glad you didn’t wake him,’ I said, ‘but I don’t think he ought to come on this suddenly to-morrow morning.’
‘You might go to his room and tell him,’ she suggested.
I nodded. ‘I suppose this is a portrait of a Barr?’ I said.
‘Yes. Some generations back. I think it was the one who built this house.’
‘So it is malevolence,’ I said. ‘I wonder what the Barrs can have done?’ She didn’t speak, but her fingers were nervously turning the key of her patient’s room. Suddenly I saw light. ‘You’re afraid for him?’ I whispered.
Her face hardened. ‘Please, Mr. Mertoun!’ she said. I could see that there was a reserve which I should find it very difficult to penetrate.
All this time we were standing on the stairs in the cold, grey light before the slashed picture.
‘Shall I take it down and put it away?’ I suggested suddenly. ‘The servants——’
‘Leave it,’ she said.
We went upstairs again, along the ghostly darkness of the corridor. I was thankful that Charlie Barr had heard nothing; it would have been so much worse for him, when even I still felt cold and shaken. Miss Goff unlocked the door of the Colonel’s room and went in, and I heard the grate of the bolt
inside. I had a faint feeling of resentment, as though she suspected me of a desire to intrude.
I got back to my room—I wonder what you’re thinking!—with the appalling feeling, which properly belongs to nursery days, that something was at my heels. I remember turning the key in the lock—much good could that do me—and groping in the dark for cigarettes and matches. I couldn’t go to bed. I threw up the window and let the wet, gusty air rush in; wild and salt from the sea, fresh and clean on my face. The night shadows were deep over the tangled garden and the crouching hill; above was a tattered sky, like a grey pool into which inky poison had been dropped. The cold revived me; I began to face up to things. I faced the fact that I had been afraid, with a fear which the guns of Loos and the gas-clouds of the Marne had never wrung from me. What was there that had power to make me afraid, afraid of—nothingness?
Hours went by, and then the dawn struggled over the hill and the stones of the old tower glimmered faintly on the mist of early morning. I heard the housemaid rattling at my locked door, but I found it too difficult to walk over and turn the key, so presently I heard her put down the can and go away.
Half an hour later I went to Charlie’s room, but he was already gone. The bed was stripped and the window thrown up; the long curtains were flapping madly in the wind.
When I arrived at the head of the stairs I saw I was much too late. He was standing before the slashed portrait of his ancestor. He didn’t hear me coming, even when I stood close to him. His face was quite calm, hardly curious, quietly considering. He stood like that for another moment, and then turning saw me.
‘Breakfast is in,’ he said. ‘Come on down.’
‘He’s brave,’ I thought; ‘it’s the northern blood.’
We ate breakfast rather quietly and read the papers. I got absorbed in the notice of a forthcoming sale at the Park Lane home of a ducal family, and I booked the date for future use. Charlie yawned, throwing down the Daily Mail.
‘Do you ever begin the day,’ he said, ‘with an utter distaste for work? I suppose you’ll say, Physician, heal thyself; but frankly I’ve never discovered the therapeutic procedure. Of course two days’ holiday make a fatal break. How are you getting along? Have you nearly finished?’
‘Far from it,’ I said. ‘I’ve only just received the files and cards from London.’
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Sorry you’ve got such a thankless job. You’ll be glad to leave here.’
On that our eyes met, and I think he read something in mine which made him conscious that his final phrase might have an unfortunate significance. His hand flew up in a gesture I couldn’t understand, and he left the room abruptly. I saw him no more that day, though I heard him making a savage protest in the evening; in fact, he was furious, and from what I gathered of the facts I didn’t blame him. M‘Coul had taken his sopping overcoat, slung it over an oven door to dry, and forgotten it. The house was full of the smell of charred wool and Charlie’s coat was a back number. Not so easy to replace in those wilds, a good overcoat; besides, I had an impression—I don’t know why—that money was tight in that house. And yet if so, why was the Colonel retaining me at my own figure? I couldn’t explain it; perhaps it was only Charlie who was hard up.
That afternoon, feeling guilty of melodrama, I took an electric torch and searched the hidden corners of the house. I don’t know what I expected to find. With my teeth set and a slightly choked sensation in my throat I dragged open cupboard doors in shuttered rooms, swept the torch’s beam inside, and made myself look. But all that afternoon there was nothing; no horror but what existed in my own mind, and only the smell of dry rot which you couldn’t call evil, though it is nasty.
From the front of the house I heard for the first time in my life the cry of the curlew, and saw the sad wheeling of that ancient bird prophet. That cry! What tragedy! It was like a lament for all the dead of the battle-scarred Border; the crying to Heaven of the blood-soaked heather of the North. I thought of the gallant swords that flashed for Hotspur and Stuart; and then of older and fiercer days when men of Naples and Rome had sobbed out their last breath under these sullen, foreign skies, and the ancient curlew on her nest had added their agony to her note. Poor bird, what tortured ancestral memories gave you that song? . . .
So after all my trouble I found nothing but empty and musty rooms, and I went back to my indexing; but on the half-landing I stopped before a square of deeper colouring in the faded red wall-paper. The slashed picture had been taken away, and I never saw it again. I now began to ask myself whether I seriously believed that there was some grim fate in store for the members of the Barr family. I only had my own psychic impressions and that slashed portrait to go on. Perhaps it was just chance that it was the portrait of a Barr, and yet those gashes had breathed malevolence. I could see again the pallor of the pictured face and hands, sliced to shreds. And then I immediately thought of Uncle Ian. Charlie had said that first his Uncle Bourdon died and then his Uncle Ian, and he had stopped short on the last name. Someone else too had broken off abruptly on that name—was it the chatty maid, or was it Miss Goff? There was certainly something unmentionable about Uncle Ian, though that didn’t say it had any connection . . . however, you can imagine how I reasoned. Futile! And at last I remembered how the porter from Glasgow had told me that Uncle Ian fell over the cliffs; and though that seemed to me an unpleasant end I didn’t see how, except by a stretch of imagination, I could connect it with a malicious influence in the house. Accident put Uncle Ian out of the running.
That night I had an absurd experience, and the fright of my life. It was too ridiculous, and only my mental state accounted for it; in fact, I was so enraged with myself the next morning that I nearly threw everything up and came back to London. It proves how when verging upon psychic matters, especially upon debatable phenomena, the mind ought to be kept particularly balanced and reasonable, clear-cut and logical. I nearly made a fool of myself. The fact is, when I went to my room at night I saw something moving at the foot of the Celtic tower, the broch, and my spine shivered. Just a dark, low form, moving. I indulged in a lot of mental madness. In the morning when I got up the sun was shining and a mild wind blew. I dragged up the blind. On the slope below the broch two ewes were feeding, each with a weak-legged, new-born lamb at her side. Against the jagged, stained stones of the tower a young man was leaning. He wore sacking across his shoulders and held in his arms another lamb. Soon he stretched out a hand to the sunlight, unflexed cramped fingers, lit a pipe, and went swinging down the hillside. This young shepherd had made a shelter for his early-lambing ewes within the thick walls of the ruin. Simple, wasn’t it?
I told Charlie at breakfast. ‘One of your superstitious villagers isn’t so simple,’ I said. ‘A shepherd took possession of the ruined tower last night for his lambing, and I saw him come out safe this morning.’
He was amazed. ‘It’s almost incredible!’ he said. ‘There isn’t a man, woman, or child within miles will go near the broch. They predict the most horrid fate for those who do—you know the kind of thing; your cows will dry up, your crops rot in the ground, and your wife present you with coal-black twins. And worse! I can’t believe it.’
‘I’ll tell you if he does it again,’ I said. ‘I’ll fetch you to see.’
The very next morning I fetched him to see, but he seemed to have lost interest by then. ‘Oh yes,’ he said, evidently recognizing the man; ‘an independent sort of fellow.’
Within a day or two the independence of this young man—Blaik was his name—was the topic of the village and countryside. I forget who gave me the gossip—oh yes, it was the girl, Gwennie, who said that whatever happened to that shepherd in the near future he would only have himself to blame. Blaik was a sturdy, shrewd type; read Tolstoy and Marx; had no imagination, and declared with the dogmatic assurance of his type of mind that he didn’t believe in spirits. Pers
onally, I rather applauded Blaik. I mean, to me that broch superstition was sheer village fable, and I concluded that once Blaik had had the temerity to quash the ghost story the rest of the local shepherds would be fighting for the use of such a convenient shelter.
However, the village community went on prophesying disaster for Blaik, and I seem to have gone two or three days out of my reckoning; so let’s get back to where we were and I’ll tell you how I came across Ingram, the doctor.”
vi
“On the afternoon of the day I’m talking about—do you follow me? I mean the day after I saw the shepherd Blaik at the broch—I hunched myself on M‘Coul’s cycle and went for a spin across the moor. It was rather good fun. The roads were switchback, and though you might have to toil up a stiff rise there was a long, downward sweep on the other side where you could put up your feet and let her fly. The scenery was gloomy and unattractive, for the sun had forgotten to shine and the hills were correspondingly sullen, and the road owed little to anyone save the Romans who first made it; but I hadn’t been on a bike since I was a kid, and it was glorious. Then a storm came on, and I had to climb down and wait, crouching in the lee of a boulder. I didn’t get very wet, but unfortunately the clouds had swallowed up the daylight, and though it was only a little after three o’clock it never came light again. I mounted and began to grope my way back, but soon I hit a stone in the dark and did a rather good cartwheel over my handle-bars. The bike wasn’t hurt, but those flint roads are the very dickens on the human frame. Like razors. I felt blood running, and found my left sleeve ripped and a three-inch gash in my upper arm.
However, on I pedalled, making a rather gory progress, with the one idea of getting back to the Barr residence, but when I arrived within about a mile of the village I decided it was hardly fair to hurl myself upon Miss Goff’s tender mercies in this nasty state, so I stopped a rustic with a cart and asked him to direct me to the doctor.
