The Big Book of Ghost Stories

by Otto Penzler

  “But there is one thing, dear, that I shall insist upon. I think too much of my brother to lay aside the light mourning that Father permitted me to wear instead of heavy black. So if you want me to marry you soon, dear, you must wed a bride in gray.”

  Into Kenneth’s mind flashed one line of the Melverson curse:

  “Melverson’s daughters will wed in gray.”

  Could there be something in it, after all? Common sense answered scornfully: No!

  Four months after Albert Melverson had fallen to his death, his sister Arline—gray-clad like a gentle dove—put her hand into that of Kenneth Dinsmore, while Lord Melverson, his lips twitching as he strove to maintain his composure, gave the bride away.

  A honeymoon trip that consumed many months took the young people to America as well as to the Continent, as the groom could hardly wait to present his lovely young wife to his family. Then, pursuant to Lord Melverson’s wishes, the bridal pair returned to Melverson Abbey, that the future heir might be born under the ancestral roof.

  V

  Little Albert became the apple of his grandfather’s eye. The old gentleman spent hours watching the cradle the first few months of his grandson’s life, and then again other hours in fondly guiding the little fellow’s first steps.

  But always in the background of this apparently ideally happy family lurked a black shadow. Jenning, his pale eyes full of foreboding, was always stealing terrified looks in secret at the panel of the great door. Kenneth grew almost to hate the poor old man, merely because he knew that Jenning believed implicitly in the family curse.

  “Confound the man! He’ll bring it upon us by thinking about it,” growled the young father one morning as he looked out of the window of the breakfast room, where he had been eating a belated meal.

  Little Albert, toddling with exaggerated precaution from his mother’s outstretched hands to those of his grandfather, happened to look up. He saw his father; laughed and crowed lustily. Dinsmore waved his hand.

  “Go to it, young chap. You’ll be a great walker some day,” he called facetiously.

  Lord Melverson looked around, a pleased smile on his face. Plainly, he agreed to the full with his son-in-law’s sentiments.

  As usual, entered that black-garbed figure, the presentment of woe: Jenning. Into the center of the happy little circle he came, his eyes seeking the old nobleman’s.

  “M’lord! Would your lordship please take a look?” stammered Jenning, his roving eyes going from the young father to the young mother, then back to the grandfather again, as if in an agony of uncertainty.

  Lord Melverson straightened up slowly and carefully from his bent position over the side of a great wicker chair. He motioned Jenning silently ahead of him. The old butler retraced his footsteps, his master following close upon his heels. They disappeared around the corner of the building.

  “Now, what on earth are they up to?” wondered Kenneth. His brow contracted. There had been something vaguely suspicious about Lord Melverson’s air. “I’ve half a mind to follow them.”

  “Kenneth!” Arline’s cry was wrung agonizingly from her.

  Kenneth whirled about quickly, but too late to do anything. The baby, toddling to his mother’s arms, missed a step, slipped, fell. The tender little head crashed against the granite coping at the edge of the terrace.

  And even then Kenneth did not realize what it all meant. It was not until late that night that he suddenly understood that the Melverson curse was not silly tradition, but a terrible blight upon the happiness of the Melverson family, root and branch.

  He had left Arline under the influence of a sleeping-potion. Her nerves had gone back on her after the day’s strain and the knowledge that her baby might not live out the night. A competent nurse and a skilled physician had taken over the case. Specialists were coming down from London as fast as a special train would bring them. Kenneth felt that his presence in the sick-room would be more hindrance than help.

  He went down to the library where his father-in-law sat grimly, silently, expectantly, a strangely fixed expression of determination on his fine old face. Lord Melverson had drawn a handkerchief from his pocket. And then Kenneth suddenly knew, where before he had only imagined. For the old man’s fine cambric kerchief was streaked with red, red that the unhappy young father knew must have been wiped from the upper panel of the great door that very morning. The baby, Kenneth’s first-born son, was doomed.

  “Why didn’t you tell me? You hid it from me,” he accused his wife’s father, bitterly.

  “I thought I was doing it for the best, Kenneth,” the older man defended himself sadly.

  “But if you had told me, I would never have left him alone for a single moment. I would have been beside him to have saved him when he fell.”

  “You know that if he had not fallen, something else would have happened to him, something unforeseen.”

  “Oh yes, I know, now, when it is too late. My little boy! My Arline’s first-born! The first-born of Melverson!” fiercely. “Why didn’t you tell me that the Melverson curse would follow my wife? That it would strike down her first-born boy?”

  “And would that have deterred you from marrying Arline?” inquired Arline’s father, very gently. “You know it wouldn’t, Kenneth. I tried to put a hypothetical case to you once, but you replied that you refused to consider the mere possibility. What was I to do? I will confess that I have suffered, thinking that I should have insisted upon your reading the family records before you married Arline—then you could have decided for yourself.”

  “Does Arline know?”

  “No. I’ve shielded her from the knowledge, Kenneth.”

  “I can’t forgive you for not letting me know. It might have saved Albert’s life. If Arline, too, had known—”

  “Why should I have told her something that would have cast a shadow over her young life, Kenneth? Are you reproaching me because I have tried to keep her happy?”

  “Oh, Father, I didn’t mean to reproach you. I’m sorry. You must understand that I’m half mad with the pain of what’s happened, not only on account of the little fellow, but for Arline. Oh, if there were only some way of saving him! How I would bless the being who would tell me how to save him!”

  Lord Melverson, still with that strange glow in his eyes, rose slowly to his feet.

  “There is a way, I believe,” said he. “But don’t put too much stress on what may be but a groundless hope on my part. I have had an idea for some time that I shall put into expression tonight, Kenneth. I’ve been thinking it over since I felt that I had wronged you in not pressing home the reality of the Melverson curse. If my idea is a good one, our little Albert is saved. And not only he, but I too shall have broken the curse, rendered it impotent for ever.” His eyes shone with fervor.

  “Is it anything I can do?” the young father begged.

  “Nothing. Unless, perhaps, you want to read the old manuscript in my desk drawer. It tells why we Melversons have been cursed since the days of the Great Plague of 1664.

  “Just before midnight, be in little Albert’s room. If he is no better when the clock strikes twelve, Kenneth—why, then, my plan will have been a poor one. But I shall have done all I can do; have given all that lies in my power to give, in my attempt to wipe out the wrong I have inadvertently done you.”

  Kenneth pressed the hand outstretched to him.

  “You’ve been a good husband to my girl, Kenneth, lad. You’ve made her happy. And, in case anything were to happen to me, will you tell Arline that I am perfectly contented if only our little one recovers? I want no vain regrets,” stressed Lord Melverson emphatically, as he released Kenneth’s hand and turned to leave the room.

  “What could happen?”

  “Oh, nothing. That is—you know I’ve had several severe heart attacks of late,” returned Arline’s father vaguely.

  VI

  Kenneth, alone, went to his father-in-law’s desk and drew out the stained and yellow manuscript. Sitting in a
chair before the desk, he laid the ancient sheets before him and pored over the story of the Melverson curse. He thought it might take his mind off the tragedy slowly playing to a close in the hushed room upstairs.

  Back in 1664, the then Lord Melverson fell madly in love with the charming daughter of a goldsmith. She was an only child, very lovely to look upon and as good as she was fair, and she dearly loved the rollicking young nobleman. But a Melverson of Melverson Abbey, though he could love, could not wed a child of the people. Charles Melverson pleaded with the lovely girl to elope with him, without the sanction of her church.

  But the damsel, being of lofty soul, called her father and related all to him. Then she turned her fair shoulder indifferently upon her astonished and chagrined suitor and left him, while the goldsmith laughed saturninely in the would-be seducer’s face.

  A Melverson was not one to let such a matter rest quietly, however, especially as he was deeply enamored of the lady. He sent pleading letters, threatening to take his own life. He attempted to force himself into the lady’s presence. At last, he met her one day as she returned from church, caught her up, and fled with her on his swift charger.

  Still she remained obdurate, although love for him was eating her wounded heart. Receive him she must, but she continued to refuse him so little a favor as a single word.

  Despairing of winning her by gentle means, Charles Melverson determined upon foul.

  It was the terrible winter of 1664–5. The Black Death, sweeping through London and out into the countryside, was taking dreadful toll of lives. Hundreds of bodies were daily tumbled carelessly into the common trenches by hardened men who dared the horrors of the plague for the big pay offered those who played the part of grave-digger. And at the very moment when Melverson had arrived at his evil decision, the goldsmith staggered into the abbey grounds after a long search for his ravished daughter, to fall under the very window where she had retreated in the last stand for her maiden virtue.

  Retainers without shouted at one another to beware the plague-stricken man. Their shouts distracted the maiden. She looked down and beheld her father dying, suffering the last throes of the dreaded pestilence.

  Coldly and proudly she demanded freedom to go down to her dying parent. Melverson refused the request; in a flash of insight he knew what she would do with her liberty. She would fling herself desperately beside the dying man; she would hold his blackening body against her own warm young breast; she would deliberately drink in his plague-laden breath with her sweet, fresh lips.

  Lifting fast-glazing eyes, the goldsmith saw his daughter, apparently clasped fast in her lover’s arms. How was he to have known that her frantic struggles had been in vain? With his last breath he cursed the Melversons, root and branch, lifting discolored hands to the brazen, glowing sky lowering upon him. Then, “And may the demon of the plague grant that I may come back as long as a Melverson draws breath, to steal away his first-born son!” he cried. With a groan, he died.

  And then, thanks to the strange heart of woman, Charles Melverson unexpectedly won what he had believed lost to him for ever, for he could not have forced his will upon that orphaned and sorrowful maiden. The goldsmith’s daughter turned upon him limpid eyes that wept for him and for her father, too.

  “It is too much to ask that you should suffer alone what my poor father has called down upon your house,” she said to him, with unexpected gentleness. “He would forgive you, could he know that I have been safe in your keeping. I must ask you, then, to take all I have to give, if by so doing you believe the shadow of the curse will be lightened—for you, at least.”

  Touched to his very heart by her magnanimity, Charles Melverson released her from his arms, knelt at her feet, kissed her hand, and swore that until he could fetch her from the church, his lawful wedded wife, he would neither eat nor sleep.

  But—the curse remained. Down through the centuries it had worked its evil way, and no one seemed to have found a way of eluding it. Upon the last pages of the old manuscript were noted, in differing chirography, the death dates of one Melverson after another, after each the terribly illuminating note: “First-born son. Died before his majority.”

  And last of all, in the handwriting of Lord Melverson, was written the name of that Albert for whom Kenneth Dinsmore’s son had been named. Must another Albert follow that other so soon?

  VII

  Kenneth tossed the stained papers back into the drawer and shut them from sight. There was something sinister about them. He felt as if his very hands had been polluted by their touch. Then he glanced at the clock. It was on the point of striking midnight. He remembered Lord Melverson’s request, and ran quickly upstairs to his little dying son’s room.

  Arline was already at the child’s side; she had wakened and would not be denied. Nurse and physician stood in the background, their faces showing plainly the hopelessness of the case.

  On his little pillow, the poor baby drew short, painful gasps, little fists clenched against his breast. A few short moments, thought Kenneth, would determine his first-born’s life or death. And it would be death, unless Lord Melverson had discovered how to break the potency of the Melverson curse.

  Torn between wife and child, the young father dared not hope, for fear his hope might be shattered. As for Arline, he saw that her eyes already registered despair; already she had, in anticipation, given up her child, her baby, her first-born.

  What was that? The sound of heavy, broad-rimmed wheels crunching through the gravel of the roadway; the call of a mocking voice that set Kenneth’s teeth on edge with impotent fury.

  He went unobtrusively to the window and looked out. After all, he could not be expected to stand by the bed, watching his little son die. And he had to see, at all costs, that nightmare dead-cart with its ghastly freight; he had to know whether or not he had dreamed it, or had seen it truly, on the night before Albert Melverson’s death.

  Coming out of the shadows of the enveloping trees, rumbled the dead-wagon with its hunched-up driver. Kenneth’s hair rose with a prickling sensation on his scalp. He turned to glance back into the room. No, he was not dreaming; he had not dreamed before; it was real—as real as such a ghastly thing could well be.

  On, on it came. And then the hateful driver lifted his malignant face to the full light of the moon. His challenging glance met the young father’s intent gaze with a scoffing, triumphant smile, a smile of satisfied hatred. The thin lips parted, and their grating cry fell another time upon the heavy silence of the night.

  “Bring out your dead!”

  As that ominous cry pounded against his ears, Kenneth Dinsmore heard yet another sound: it was the sharp explosion of a revolver.

  He stared from the window with straining eyes. Useless to return to the baby’s bedside; would not those ghostly pall-bearers emerge from the shadows now, bearing with them the tiny body of his first-born?

  They came. But they were carrying what seemed to be a heavy burden. That was no child’s tiny form they tossed with hideous upward grins upon the dead-cart.

  “Kenneth! Come here!”

  It was Arline’s voice, with a thrilling undertone of thankfulness in it that whirled Kenneth from the window to her side, all else forgotten.

  “Look! He is breathing easier. Doctor, look! Tell me, doesn’t he seem better?”

  Doctor and nurse exchanged mystified, incredulous glances. It was plain that neither had heard or seen anything out of the ordinary that night, but that the baby’s sudden turn for the better had astonished them both.

  “I consider it little short of a miracle,” pronounced the medical man, after a short examination of the sleeping child. “Madam, your child will live. I congratulate you both.”

  “Oh, I must tell Father, Kenneth. He will be so happy. Dear Father!”

  The cold hand of certain knowledge squeezed Kenneth’s heart. “If anything should happen to me,” Lord Melverson had said. What did that revolver shot mean? What had meant that body the ghostly pall-
bearers had carried to the dead-wagon?

  A light tap came at the door. The nurse opened it, then turned and beckoned to Kenneth.

  “He’s gone, Mr. Dinsmore. Break it to her easy, sir—but it’s proud of him she ought to be.” His voice trembled, broke. “Twas not the little master they carried away in the accursed dead-cart, thanks to him. I tried to stop him, sir; forgive me, I loved him! But he would make the sacrifice; he said it was worth trying. And so—he—did—it. But—he’s broken the curse, sir, he’s broken the curse!”

  A SOUL WITH TWO BODIES

  Urann Thayer

  URANN THAYER APPEARS TO be as much of a ghost as the disappearing character in this story. The byline is almost certainly a pseudonym, very possibly for William Rollins, Jr. (1897–1950), who also wrote for Ghost Stories magazine under the pseudonym O’Connor Stacy. The deduction that leads to Rollins as the true author is that his full name was William Stacy Uran Rollins, which seems a pretty strong clue, as Uran or Urann are extremely uncommon names. Rollins wrote for several mystery magazines, most notably Black Mask, for which he wrote twenty-one stories. He also wrote several novels under his own name, including Midnight Treasure (1929), The Wall of Men (1938), and The Ring and the Lamp (1947), as well as one mystery novel as Stacy, Murder at Cypress Hall (1933), along with short stories for such pulps as Clues and Mystery Stories. There were three stories by Stacy in Ghost Stories and four by Urann Thayer, the only four stories known under this name.

  Much of this information—and speculation—is the result of research by the outstanding scholar of supernatural fiction, Mike Ashley.

  “A Soul with Two Bodies” was originally published in the February and March 1928 issues of Ghost Stories.

  A Soul with Two Bodies