Voodoo Tales: The Ghost Stories of Henry S Whitehead (Tales of Mystery & The Supernatural)

by Henry S. Whitehead

  It was hard work, this task of reproducing something which I was well aware was some kind of an ‘apparition’, especially after looking at the furniture in the dark bedroom, switching on the light in another room and then trying to reproduce. I could not, of course, make a direct comparison. I mean it was impossible to look at my drawing and then look at the furniture. There was always a necessary interval between the two processes. I persisted through several evenings, and even for a couple of evenings fell into the custom of going into my bedroom in the evening’s darkness, looking at what was there, and then attempting to reproduce it. After five or six days, I had a fair plan, in considerable detail, of the arrangement of this strange furniture in my bedroom – a plan or drawing which would be recognizable if there were anyone now alive who remembered such an arrangement of such furniture. It will be apparent that a story had been growing up in my mind, or, at least, that I had come to some kind of conviction that what I ‘saw’ was a reproduction of something that had once existed in that same detail and that precise order!

  On the seventh night, there came an interruption.

  I had, by that time, finished my work, pretty well. I had drawn the room as it would have looked with that furniture in it, and had gone over the whole with India ink, very carefully. As a drawing, the thing was finished, so far as my indifferent skill as a draftsman would permit.

  That seventh evening, I was looking over the appearance of the room, such qualms as the eeriness of the situation might have otherwise produced reduced to next-to-nothing partly by my interest, in part by having become accustomed to it all. I was making, this evening, as careful a comparison as possible between my remembered work on paper and the detailed appearance of the room. By now, the furniture stood out clearly, in a kind of light of its own which I can roughly compare only to ‘phosphorescence’. It was not, quite, that. But that will serve, lame as it is, and trite perhaps, to indicate what I mean. I suppose the appearance of the room was something like what a cat ‘sees’ when she arches her back – as Algernon Blackwood has pointed out, in John Silence – and rubs against the imaginary legs of some personage entirely invisible to the man in the armchair who idly wonders what has taken possession of his house-pet.

  I was, as I say, studying the detail. I could not find that I had left out anything salient. The detail was, too, quite clear now. There were no blurred outlines as there had been on the first few nights. My own, material furniture had, so to speak, sunk back into invisibility, which was sensible enough, seeing that I had put the room in as nearly perfect darkness as I could, and there was no moon to interfere, those nights.

  I had run my eyes all round it, up and down the twisted legs of the great bureau, along the carved ornamentation of the top of the wardrobe, along the lines of the chairs, and had come back to the bed. It was at this point of my checking up that I got what I must describe as the first ‘shock’ of the entire experience.

  Something moved, beside the bed.

  I peered, carefully, straining my eyes to catch what it might be. It had been something bulky, a slow-moving object, on the far side of the bed, blurred, somewhat, just as the original outlines had been blurred in the beginning of my week’s experience. The now strong and clear outlines of the bed, and what I might describe as its ethereal substance, stood between me and it. Besides, the vision of the slow-moving mass was further obscured by a ghostly mosquito-net, which had been one of the last of the details to come into the scope of my strange night-vision.

  Those folds of the mosquito-netting moved – waved, before my eyes.

  Someone, it might almost be imagined, was getting into that bed!

  I sat, petrified. This was a bit too much for me. I could feel the little chills run up and down my spine. My scalp prickled. I put my hands on my knees, and pressed hard. I drew several deep breaths. ‘All-overish’ is an old New England expression, once much used by spinsters, I believe, resident in that intellectual section of the United States. Whatever the precise connotation of the term, that was the way I felt. I could feel the reactive sensation, I mean, of that particular portion of the whole experience, in every part of my being – body, mind, and soul! It was – paralyzing. I reached up a hand that was trembling violently – I could barely control it, and the fingers, when they touched the hard-rubber button, felt numb – and switched on the bedroom light, and spent the next ten minutes recovering.

  That night, when I came to retire, I dreaded – actually dreaded – what might come to my vision when I snapped off the light. This, however, I managed to reason out with myself. I used several arguments – nothing had so far occurred to annoy or injure me; if this were to be a cumulative experience, if something were to be ‘revealed’ to me by this deliberate process of slow materialization which had been progressing for the last week or so, then it might as well be for some good and useful purpose. I might be, in a sense, the agent of Providence! If it were otherwise; if it were the evil work of some discarnate spirit, or something of the sort, well, every Sunday since my childhood, in church, I had recited the Creed, and so admitted, along with the clergy and the rest of the congregation, that God our Father had created all things – visible and invisible! If it were this part of His creation at work, for any purpose, then He was stronger than they. I said a brief prayer before turning off that light, and put my trust in Him. It may appear to some a bit old-fashioned – even Victorian! But He does not change along with the current fashions of human thought about Him, and this ‘human thought’, and ‘the modern mind’, and all the rest of it, does not mean the vast, the overwhelming majority of people. It involves only a few dozen prideful ‘intellectuals’ at best, or worst!

  I switched off the light, and, already clearer, I saw what must have been Old Morris, getting into bed.

  I had interviewed old Mr Bonesteel, the chief government surveyor, a gentleman of parts and much experience, a West Indian born on this island. Mr Bonesteel, in response to my guarded inquiries – for I had, of course, already suspected Old Morris; was not my house still called his? – had stated that he remembered Old Morris well, in his own remote youth. His description of that personage and this apparition tallied. This, undoubtedly, was Old Morris. That it was someone, was apparent. I felt, somehow, rather relieved to realize that it was he. I knew something about him, you see. Mr Bonesteel had given me a good description and many anecdotes, quite freely, and as though he enjoyed being called on for information about one of the old-timers like Morris. He had been more reticent, guarded, in fact, when I pressed him for details of Morris’s end. That there had been some obscurity – intentional or otherwise, I could never ascertain – about the old man, I had already known. Such casual inquiries as I had made on other occasions through natural interest in the person whose name still clung to my house sixty years or more since he had lived in it, had never got me anywhere. I had only gathered what Mr Bonesteel’s more ample account corroborated: that Morris had been eccentric, in some ways, amusingly so. That he had been extraordinarily well-to-do. That he gave occasional large parties, which, contrary to the custom of the hospitable island of St Croix, were always required to come to a conclusion well before midnight. Why, there was a story of Old Morris almost literally getting rid of a few reluctant guests, by one device or another, from these parties, a circumstance on which hinged several of the amusing anecdotes of that eccentric person!

  Old Morris, as I knew, had not always lived on St Croix. His youth had been spent in Martinique, in the then smaller and less important town of Fort-de-France. That, of course, was many years before the terrific calamity of the destruction of St Pierre had taken place, by the eruption of Mt Pelée. Old Morris, coming to St Croix in young middle age – forty-five or thereabouts – had already been accounted a rich man. He had been engaged in no business. He was not a planter, not a storekeeper, had no profession. Where he produced his affluence was one of the local mysteries. His age, it seemed, was the other.

  ‘I suppose,’ Mr Bonesteel
had said, ‘that Morris was nearer a hundred than ninety, when he – ah – died. I was a child of about eight at that time. I shall be seventy next August-month. That, you see, would be about sixty-two years ago, about 1861, or about the time your Civil War was beginning. Now my father has told me – he died when I was nineteen – that Old Morris looked exactly the same when he was a boy! Extraordinary. The Black People used to say – ’ Mr Bonesteel fell silent, and his eyes had an old man’s dim, far-away look.

  ‘The Black People have some very strange beliefs, Mr Bonesteel,’ said I, attempting to prompt him. ‘A good many of them I have heard about myself, and they interest me very much. What particular – ’

  Mr Bonesteel turned his mild, blue eyes upon me, reflectively.

  ‘You must drop in at my house one of these days, Mr Stewart,’ said he, mildly. ‘I have some rare old rum that I’d be glad to have you sample, sir! There’s not much of it on the island these days, since Uncle Sam turned his prohibition laws loose on us in 1922.’

  ‘Thank you very much indeed, Mr Bonesteel,’ I replied. ‘I shall take the first occasion to do so, sir; not that I care especially for “old rum” except a spoonful in a cup of tea, or in pudding sauce, perhaps; but the pleasure of your company, sir, is always an inducement.’

  Mr Bonesteel bowed to me gravely, and I returned his bow from where I sat in his airy office in Government House.

  ‘Would you object to mentioning what that “belief” was, sir?’

  A slightly pained expression replaced my old friend’s look of hospitality.

  ‘All that is a lot of foolishness!’ said he, with something like asperity. He looked at me, contemplatively.

  ‘Not that I believe in such things, you must understand. Still, a man sees a good many things in these islands, in a lifetime, you know! Well, the Black People – ’ Mr Bonesteel looked apprehensively about him, as though reluctant to have one of his clerks overhear what he was about to say, and leaned toward me from his chair, lowering his voice to a whisper.

  ‘They said – it was a remark here and a kind of hint there, you must understand; nothing definite – that Morris had interfered, down there in Martinique, with some of their queer doings – offended the Zombi – something of the kind; that Morris had made some kind of conditions – oh, it was very vague, and probably all mixed up! – you know, whereby he was to have a long life and all the money he wanted – something like that – and afterward . . .

  ‘Well, Mr Stewart, you just ask somebody, sometime, about Morris’s death.’

  Not another word about Old Morris could I extract out of Mr Bonesteel.

  But of course he had me aroused. I tried Despard, who lives on the other end of the island, a man educated at the Sorbonne, and who knows, it is said, everything there is to know about the island and its affairs.

  It was much the same with Mr Despard, who is an entirely different kind of person; younger, for one thing, than my old friend the government surveyor.

  Mr Despard smiled, a kind of wry smile. ‘Old Morris!’ said he, reflectively, and paused.

  ‘Might I venture to ask – no offense, my dear sir! – why you wish to rake up such an old matter as Old Morris’s death?’

  I was a bit nonplussed, I confess. Mr Despard had been perfectly courteous, as he always is, but, somehow, I had not expected such an intervention on his part.

  ‘Why,’ said I, ‘I should find it hard to tell you, precisely, Mr Despard. It is not that I am averse to being frank in the face of such an inquiry as yours, sir. I was not aware that there was anything important – serious, as your tone implies – about that matter. Put it down to mere curiosity if you will, and answer or not, as you wish, sir.’

  I was, perhaps, a little nettled at this unexpected, and, as it then seemed to me, finicky obstruction being placed in my way. What could there be in such a case for this formal reticence – these verbal safeguards? If it were a ‘jumbee’ story, there was no importance to it. If otherwise, well, I might be regarded by Despard as a person of reasonable discretion. Perhaps Despard was some relative of Old Morris, and there was something a bit off-color about his death. That, too, might account for Mr Bonesteel’s reticence.

  ‘By the way,’ I inquired, noting Despard’s reticence, ‘might I ask another question, Mr Despard?’

  ‘Certainly, Mr Stewart.’

  ‘I do not wish to impress you as idly or unduly curious, but – are you and Mr Bonesteel related in any way?’

  ‘No, sir. We are not related in any way at all, sir.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Despard,’ said I, and, bowing to each other after the fashion set here by the Danes, we parted.

  I had not learned a thing about Old Morris’s death.

  I went in to see Mrs Heidenklang. Here, if anywhere, I should find out what was intriguing me.

  Mrs Heidenklang is an ancient Creole lady, relict of a prosperous storekeeper, who lives, surrounded by a certain state of her own, propped up in bed in an environment of a stupendous quantity of lacy things and gauzy ruffles. I did not intend to mention Old Morris to her, but only to get some information about the Zombi, if that should be possible.

  I found the old lady, surrounded by her ruffles and lace things, in one of her good days. Her health has been precarious for twenty years!

  It was not difficult to get her talking about the Zombi.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mrs Heidenklang, ‘it is extraordinary how the old beliefs and the old words cling in their minds! Why, Mr Stewart, I was hearing about a trial in the police court a few days ago. One old Black woman had summoned another for abusive language. On the witness stand the complaining old woman said: “She cahl me a wuthless ole Cartagene, sir!” Now, think of that! Carthage was destroyed ’way back in the days of Cato the Elder, you know, Mr Stewart! The greatest town of all Africa. To be a Carthaginian meant to be a sea-robber – a pirate; that is, a thief. One old woman on this island, more than two thousand years afterward, wishes to call another a thief, and the word “Cartagene” is the word she naturally uses! I suppose that has persisted on the West Coast and throughout all those village dialects in Africa without a break, all these centuries! The Zombi of the French islands? Yes, Mr Stewart. There are some extraordinary beliefs. Why, perhaps you’ve heard mention made of Old Morris, Mr Stewart. He used to live in your house, you know?’

  I held my breath. Here was a possible trove. I nodded my head. I did not dare to speak!

  ‘Well, Old Morris, you see, lived most of his earlier days in Martinique, and, it is said, he had a somewhat adventurous life there, Mr Stewart. Just what he did or how he got himself involved, seems never to have been made clear, but – in some way, Mr Stewart, the Black People believe, Morris got himself involved with a very powerful “Jumbee”, and that is where what I said about the persistence of ancient beliefs comes in. Look on that table there, among those photographs, Mr Stewart. There! that’s the place. I wish I were able to get up and assist you. These maids! Everything askew, I have no doubt! Do you observe a kind of fish-headed thing, about as big as the palm of your hand? Yes! That is it!’

  I found the ‘fish-headed thing’ and carried it over to Mrs Heidenklang. She took it in her hand and looked at it. It lacked a nose, but otherwise it was intact, a strange, uncouth-looking little godling, made of anciently-polished volcanic stone, with huge, protruding eyes, small, human-like ears, and what must have been a nose like a Tortola jackfish, or a black witch-bird, with its parrot beak.

  ‘Now that,’ continued Mrs Heidenklang, ‘is one of the very ancient household gods of the aborigines of Martinique and you will observe the likeness in the idea to the Lares and Penates of your school-Latin days. Whether this is a lar or a penate, I can not tell,’ and the old lady paused to smile at her little joke, ‘but at any rate he is a representation of something very powerful – a fish-god of the Caribs. There’s something Egyptian about the idea, too, I’ve always suspected; and, Mr Stewart, a Carib or an Arawak Indian – there were both in these islands,
you know – looked much like an ancient Egyptian; perhaps half like your Zuñi or Aztec Indians, and half Egyptian, would be a fair statement of his appearance. These fish-gods had men’s bodies, you see, precisely like the hawk-headed and jackal-headed deities of ancient Egypt.

  ‘It was one of those, the Black People say, with which Mr Morris got himself mixed up – “Gahd knows” as they say – how! And, Mr Stewart, they say, his death was terrible! The particulars I’ve never heard, but my father knew, and he was sick for several days, after seeing Mr Morris’s body. Extraordinary, isn’t it? And when are you coming this way again, Mr Stewart? Do drop in and call on an old lady.’

  I felt that I was progressing.

  The next time I saw Mr Bonesteel, which was that very evening, I stopped him on the street and asked for a word with him.

  ‘What was the date, or the approximate date, Mr Bonesteel, of Mr Morris’s death? Could you recall that, sir?’

  Mr Bonesteel paused and considered.

  ‘It was just before Christmas,’ said he. ‘I remember it not so much by Christmas as by the races, which always take place the day after Christmas. Morris had entered his sorrel mare Santurce, and, as he left no heirs, there was no one who “owned” Santurce, and she had to be withdrawn from the races. It affected the betting very materially and a good many persons were annoyed about it, but there wasn’t anything that could be done.’

  I thanked Mr Bonesteel, and not without reason, for his answer had fitted into something that had been growing in my mind. Christmas was only eight days off. This drama of the furniture and Old Morris getting into bed, I had thought (and not unnaturally, it seems to me), might be a kind of reenactment of the tragedy of his death. If I had the courage to watch, night after night, I might be relieved of the necessity of asking any questions. I might witness whatever had occurred, in some weird reproduction, engineered God knows how!