Julie told me something else, too – something which quite made my blood run cold. Armand Dubois, said Julie, had, half-concealed in his hand, as he stood talking to her, a small vial. Julie was sure it contained vitriol. I was almost afraid to venture out to the street after that, and it was a long time before I recovered from the shock of it. Vitriol – think of it, Mr Canevin! – if indeed that were what he had in the vial; and what else could he have had?
Of course, I did not dare tell my husband. It would have distressed that dear, kind man most atrociously; and besides, the collection of the notes was, so to speak, a venture of mine, carried out, if not exactly against his will, at least without any enthusiasm on his part. So I kept quiet, and commanded Julie to say nothing whatever about it. I was sure, too, that even a person like Armand Dubois would, in a short time, get over the condition of rage in which Monsieur Henkes’s visit to him must have left him to induce him to come to me at all. That, or something similar, actually proved to be the case. I had no further annoyance from Dubois, and in the course of a few weeks, probably pressed by Monsieur Henkes, he settled the note, paying seven hundred and twenty-four dollars, to be exact, with seventeen years and eight months’ interest at eight per cent.
Of course, Mr Canevin, all that portion of the story, except, perhaps, for Armand Dubois’s unpleasant visit, is merely commonplace – the mere narrative of the collection of two demand-notes. Note, though, what followed!
It was, perhaps, two months after the day when I had gone into my husband’s office and discovered those notes, and about a month after Dubois had paid what he owed Monsieur Du Chaillu, that I had gone to bed, a trifle earlier, perhaps, than usual – about half-past nine, to be exact. My aunt was staying with us in the rectory at the time, and she was far from well, and I had been reading to her and fanning her, and I was somewhat tired. I fell asleep, I suppose, immediately after retiring.
I awakened, and found myself sitting bolt-upright in my bed, and the clock in the town was striking twelve. I counted the strokes. As I finished, and the bell ceased its striking, I felt, rather than saw – for I was looking, in an abstracted kind of fashion, straight before me, my elbows on my knees, in a sitting posture, as I have said – something at the left, just outside the mosquito-netting. There was a dim night-light, such as I always kept, in the far corner of the room, on the edge of my bureau, and by its light the objects in the room were faintly visible through the white net.
I turned, suddenly, under the impulse of that feeling, and there, Mr Canevin, just beside the bed, and almost pressing against the net though not quite touching it, was a face. The face was that of a mulatto, and as I looked at it, frozen, speechless, I observed that it was Armand Dubois, and that he was glaring at me, with an expression of the most horrible malignancy that could be imagined. The lips were drawn back – like an animal’s, Mr Canevin – but the most curious, and perhaps the most terrifying, aspect of the situation, was the fact that the face was on a level with the bed, that is, the chin seemed to rest against the edge of the mattress, so that, as it occurred to me, the man must be sitting on the floor, his legs placed under the bed, so as to bring his horrible leering face in that position I have described.
I tried to scream, and my voice was utterly dried up. Then, moved by what impulse I can not describe, I plunged toward the face, tore loose the netting on that side, and looked directly at it.
Mr Canevin, there was nothing there, but, as I moved abruptly toward it, I saw a vague, dim hand and arm swing up from below, and there was the strangest sensation! It was as though, over my face and shoulders and breast, hot and stinging drops had been cast. There was, for just a passing instant, the most dreadful burning, searing sensation, and then it was gone. I half sat, half lay, a handful of the netting in my hands, where I had torn it loose from where it had been tucked under the edge of the mattress, and there was nothing there – nothing whatever; I passed my hand over my face and neck, but there was nothing; no burns – nothing.
I do not know how I managed to do it, but I climbed out of bed, and looked underneath. Mr Canevin, there was nothing, no man, nor anything, there. I walked over and turned up the night-light, and looked all about the room. Nothing. The jalousies were all fastened, as usual. The door was locked. There were no other means of ingress or egress.
I went back to bed, convinced that I must have been dreaming or sleepwalking, or something of the sort, although I had never walked in my sleep, and almost never dreamed or remembered any dream. I could not sleep, and it occurred to me that I would do well to get up again, put on my bathrobe, and go out to the dining room for a drink of water. The water stood, in earthenware ‘gugglets’, just beside a doorway that led out to a small gallery at the side of the house – which stood on the corner – in the wind, so as to keep cool. You’ve seen that, a good many times, even here, of course. On St Martin we had no ice-plant in those days, nor yet, so far as I know, and everybody kept the drinking-water in gugglets and set the gugglets where the wind would blow on them and cool the water.
I took a glass from the sideboard, filled it, and drank the water. Then I opened the door just beside me, and stood looking out for a few minutes. The town was absolutely silent at that hour. There was no moon, and the streets were lighted just as they were here in Frederiksted before we had electricity, with occasional hurricane lanterns at the corners. The one on our corner was burning steadily, and except for the howling of a dog somewhere in the town, everything was absolutely quiet and peaceful, Mr Canevin.
I went back to bed, and fell asleep immediately. At any rate I have no recollection of lying there hoping for sleep.
Then, immediately afterward, it seemed, I was awakened a second time. This time I was not sitting up when I came to my waking senses, but it did not take me very long to sit up, I can assure you! For the most extraordinary thing was happening in my bedroom.
In the exact center of the room there stood a round, mahogany table. Around and around that table, a small goat was running, from right to left – that is, as I looked toward the table, the goat was running away from me around to the right, and coming back at the left. I could hear the clatter of its little, hard hoofs on the pitch-pine floor, occasionally muffled in the queerest way – it sounds like nothing in the telling, of course – when the goat would step on the small rug on which the table stood. I could see its great, shining eyes, like green moons, every time it came around to the left.
I watched the thing, fascinated, and a slow horror began to grow upon me. I think I swooned, for the last thing I remember is my senses leaving me, but it must have been a very light fainting fit, Mr Canevin, for I aroused myself, and the room was absolutely silent.
I was shaking all over as though I had been having an attack of the quartan ague, but I managed once more to slip under the netting, reach for my bathrobe, and go over and turn up the night-light. I observed that the door of my bed-room was standing open, and I went through it and back to the dining room, as I had done the first time. I felt very uncomfortable, shaken and nervous, as you may well imagine, but there in the next room I knew my husband was sleeping, and my poor old aunt on the other side of the hall, and I plucked up my courage. I knew that he would never be afraid, of anything, man or – anything else, Mr Canevin!
I found that I must have been more upset than I had supposed, for the door out onto the small gallery from the dining room, where I had stood the other time, was unfastened, and half open, and I realized that I had left it in that condition, and I saw clearly that the young goat had simply wandered in. Goats and dogs and other animals roamed the streets there, even pigs, much as they do here, although all the islands have police regulations, and on St Martin these were not enforced nearly as well as they are here on St Croix. So I laughed at myself and my fears, although I think I had a right at least to be startled by that goat dancing about my bedroom table, and I fastened the door leading outside, and came back into my bedroom, and fastened that door too, and went back to
bed once more. My last waking sensation was of that dog, or some other, howling, somewhere in the town.
Well, that was destined to be a bad night, Mr Canevin. I remember one of my husband’s sermons, Mr Canevin, on the text: ‘A Good Day’. I do not remember what portion of the Scriptures it comes from, but I remember the text, and the sermon too. Afterward, it occurred to me that that night, that ‘bad night’, was the direct opposite; a mere whimsy of mine, but I always think of that night as ‘the bad night’, somehow.
For, Mr Canevin, that was not all. No. I had noticed the time before I returned to bed on that occasion, and it was a little past one o’clock. I had slept for an hour, you see, after the first interruption.
When I was awakened again it was five o’clock in the morning. Remember, I had, deliberately, and in a state of full wakefulness, closed and fastened both the door from that side gallery into the dining room, and the bedroom door. The jalousies had not been touched at any time, and all of them were fastened.
I awoke with the most terrible impression of evil and horror: it was as though I stood alone in the midst of a hostile world, bent upon my destruction. It was the most dreadful feeling – a feeling of complete, of unrecoverable, depression.
And there, coming through my bedroom door – through the door, Mr Canevin, which remained shut and locked – was Armand Dubois. He was a tall, slim man, and he stalked in, looking taller and slimmer than ever, because he was wearing one of those old-fashioned, long, white night-shirts, which fell to his ankles. He walked, as I say, through the closed door, and straight toward me, and, Mr Canevin, the expression on his face was the expression of one of the demons from hell.
I half sat up, utterly horrified, incapable of speech, or even of thought beyond that numbing horror, and as I sat up, Armand Dubois seemed to pause. His advance slowed abruptly, the expression of malignant hatred seemed to become intensified, and then he slowly turned to his left, and, keeping his face turned toward me, walked, very slowly now straight through the side wall of my bedroom, and was gone, Mr Canevin.
Then I screamed, again and again, and Placide, my husband, bursting the door, rushed in, and over his shoulder and through the broken door I could see Julie’s terrified face, and my poor old aunt, a Shetland shawl huddled about her poor shoulders, coming gropingly out of her bedroom.
That was the last I remembered then. When I came to, it was broad daylight and past seven, and Dr Duchesne was there, holding his fingers against my wrist, counting the pulse, I suppose, and there was a strong taste of brandy in my mouth.
They made me stay in bed all through the morning, and Dr Duchesne would not allow me to talk. I had wanted to tell Placide and him all that had happened to me through the night, but at two o’clock in the afternoon, when I was allowed to get up at last, after having eaten some broth, I had had time to think, and I never mentioned what I had heard and seen that night.
No, Mr Canevin, my dear husband never heard it, never knew what had cast me into that condition of ‘nerves’. After he died I told Dr Duchesne, and Dr Duchesne made no particular comment. Like all doctors, and the clergy here in the West Indies, such matters were an old story to him!
It was fortunate for us that he happened to be passing the house and came in because he saw the lights, and could hear Julie weeping hysterically. He realized that something extraordinary had happened, or was happening, in the rectory, and that he might be needed.
He was on his way home from the residence of Armand Dubois, there in the town. Dubois had been attacked by some obscure tropical fever, just before midnight, and had died at five o’clock that morning, Mr Canevin.
Dr Duchesne told me, later, about Dubois’s case, which interested him very much from his professional viewpoint. Dr Duchesne said that there were still strange fevers, not only in obscure places in the world, but right here in our civilized islands – think of it! He said that he could not tell so much as the name of the fever that had taken Dubois away. But he said the most puzzling of the symptoms was, that just at midnight Dubois had fallen into a state of coma – unconsciousness, you know – which had lasted only a minute or two; quite extraordinary, the doctor said, and that a little later, soon after one o’clock, he had shut his eyes, and quieted down – he had been raving, muttering and tossing about, as fever patients do, you know, and that there had come over his face the most wicked and dreadful grimace, and that he had drummed with his fingers against his own forehead, an irregular kind of drumming, a beat, the doctor said, not unlike the scampering footfalls of some small, four-footed animal . . .
He died, as I told you, at five, quite suddenly, and Dr Duchesne said that just as he was going there came over his face the most horrible, the most malignant expression that he had ever seen. He said it caused him to shudder, although he knew, of course, that it was only the muscles of the man’s face contracting – rigor mortis, it is called, I think, Mr Canevin.
Dr Duchesne said, too, that there was a scientific word which described the situation – that is, the possible connection between Dubois as he lay dying with that queer fever, and the appearances to me. It was not ‘telepathy’, Mr Canevin, of that I am certain. I wish I could remember the word, but I fear it has escaped my poor old memory!
‘Was it “projection”?’ I asked Mrs Du Chaillu.
‘I think that was it, Mr Canevin,’ said Mrs Du Chaillu, and nodded her head at me, wisely.
The Lips
The Saul Taverner, blackbirder, Luke Martin, master, up from Cartagena, came to her anchor in the harbor of St Thomas, capital and chief town of the Danish West Indies, A Martinique barkentine berthed to leeward of her, sent a fully manned boat ashore after the harbor-master with a request for permission to change anchorage. Luke Martin’s shore boat was only a few lengths behind the Frenchman’s. Martin shouted after the officer whom it landed: ‘Tell Lollik I’ll change places with ye, an’ welcome! What ye carryin’ – brandy? I’ll take six cases off’n ye.’
The barkentine’s mate, a French-Island mulatto, nodded over his shoulder, and noted down the order in a leather pocketbook without slackening his pace. It was no joyful experience to lie in a semi-enclosed harbor directly to leeward of a slaver, and haste was indicated despite propitiatory orders for brandy. ‘Very well, Captain,’ said the mate, stiffly.
Martin landed as the Martinique mate rounded a corner to the left and disappeared from view in the direction of the harbor-master’s. Martin scowled after him, muttering to himself.
‘Airs! Talkin’ English – language of the islands; thinkin’ in French, you an’ your airs! An’ yer gran’father came outta a blackbird ship like’s not! You an’ your airs!’
Reaching the corner the mate had turned, Martin glanced after him momentarily, then turned to the right, mounting a slight rise. His business ashore took him to the fort. He intended to land his cargo, or a portion of it, that night. The colony was short of field hands. With the help of troops from Martinique, French troops, and Spaniards from its nearer neighbor, Porto Rico, it had just put down a bloody uprising on its subsidiary island of St Jan. Many of the slaves had been killed in the joint armed reprisal of the year 1833.
Luke Martin got his permission to land his cargo, therefore, without difficulty, and, being a Yankee bucko who let no grass grow under his feet, four bells in the afternoon watch saw the hatches off and the decks of the Saul Taverner swarming with manacled Blacks for the ceremony of washing-down.
Huddled together, blinking in the glaring sun of a July afternoon under parallel 18, north latitude, the mass of swart humanity were soaped, with handfuls of waste out of soft-soap buckets, scrubbed with brushes on the ends of short handles, and rinsed off with other buckets. Boatloads of Negroes surrounded the ship to see the washing-down, and these were kept at a distance by a swearing third mate told off for the purpose.
By seven bells the washing-down was completed, and before sundown a row of lighters, each guarded by a pair of Danish gendarmes with muskets and fixed bayonets,
had ranged alongside for the taking off of the hundred and seventeen Blacks who were to be landed, most of whom would be sent to replenish the laborers on the plantations of St Jan off the other side of the island of St Thomas.
The disembarking process began just after dark, to the light of lanterns. Great care was exercised by all concerned lest any escape by plunging overboard. A tally-clerk from shore checked off the Blacks as they went over the side into the lighters, and these, as they became filled, were rowed to the landing-stage by other slaves, bending over six great sweeps in each of the stub-bowed, heavy wooden boats.
Among the huddled black bodies of the very last batch stood a woman, very tall and thin, with a new-born child, black as a coal, at her breasts. The woman stood a little aloof from the others, farther from the low rail of the Saul Taverner’s forward deck, crooning to her infant. Behind her approached Luke Martin, impatient of his unloading, and cut at her thin ankles with his rhinoceros leather whip. The woman did not wince. Instead, she turned her head and muttered a few syllables in a low tone, in the Eboe dialect. Martin shoved her into the mass of Blacks, cursing roundly as he cut a second time at the spindling shins.
The woman turned, very quietly and softly, as he was passing behind her, let her head fall softly on Martin’s shoulder and whispered into his ear. The motion was so delicate as to simulate a caress, but Martin’s curse died in his throat. He howled in pain as the woman raised her head, and his whip clattered on the deck boarding while the hand which had held it went to the shoulder. The woman, deftly holding her infant, had moved in among the huddling Blacks, a dozen or more of whom intervened between her and Martin, who hopped on one foot and cursed, a vicious, continuous stream of foul epithets; then, still cursing, made his way in haste to his cabin after an antiseptic, any idea of revenge swallowed up in his superstitious dread of what might happen to him if he did not, forthwith, dress the ghastly wound just under his left ear, where the black woman had caused her firm, white and shining teeth to meet the great muscle of his neck between shoulder and jaw.
Voodoo Tales: The Ghost Stories of Henry S Whitehead (Tales of Mystery & The Supernatural) Page 76
