Nightmare Farm

by Jack Mann

  She left him, and he opened the “Personal” letter. As he had half anticipated, it was from Perivale.

  DEAR MR. GREEN,

  Norris called to see me this morning, and gave me your address. Otherwise, I should not have had the privilege of expressing my gratitude to you for your wonderful and altogether unexpected gift, though now I try, I find that expression in words is quite beyond me.

  I am, selfish though it may be, acting on your suggestion, and accepting the cheque personally for my family, especially for my eldest daughter, who, poor girl, really needs many things which calls on my stipend have not enabled me to provide. Not that she only will have cause to be grateful to you. My wife, I am glad to say, is able to maintain herself as she has been accustomed to do out of her own means, but all the children, and I their father, gladly and humbly accept your kindness, and if, as we are taught to believe, prayers bring answers, then an eightfold blessing will rest on you. I have less qualms of conscience in thus accepting your gift because Norris insisted on my acceptance of a cheque for a similar amount, which, as unexpected as was yours, will be used for the benefit of the church and parish—the only way in which I would accept it from him.

  I am, as usual, full up with work, for a parish like this monopolises all one man’s time. My daughter Celia, whom you met, is a veritable Martha in her care of me and the children, and my wife is of the greatest assistance in taking from my shoulders a good deal of the work of visiting, especially at the House, where, as probably you do not know, all the staff is imported from other districts, no natives of Denlandham of either sex having been employed there since the time of the present Squire’s grandfather. I might have been inclined to blame their superstitious prejudice until last week, but cannot find it in me to do so now. I wonder if I shall ever have the pleasure of seeing you again?

  Probably in your busied and varied life, you have little time to spare for thought of Denlandham, but you may be assured of the prayers and lasting remembrance of all at the rectory—my daughter Celia especially asks to be remembered to you—and assured, too, that as warm a welcome as we can give will always be yours if you should come this way again. In gratitude and sincere regard, Very truly yours,

  ARTHUR PERIVALE.

  P.S.—You may be interested to know that the “cure,” as it is called in the village, of Miss Norris has made a great difference here. There is a feeling among the villagers that all is well, now, and that, to use a familiar expression, “the ghost is laid,” for good.

  “She would take Denlandham House off his shoulders,” Gees reflected, “and I wonder what Mrs. Hunter thinks of it? Thank you very much, Mr. Perivale, for useful information. But it isn’t laid, sir—it isn’t laid! Heaven send they have cause to keep their complacency till it is, but Stukeley isn’t due out for five more days, yet.”

  He went and leaned in the doorway of Miss Brandon’s room, and assured her, when she paused in her transcribing to look up at him questioningly, that he wanted nothing whatever, but just felt like that. She went on with her work for a little while, and then stopped.

  “Mr. Green, I simply can’t type correctly with you looking at me like that. I’m sorry, but I can’t.”

  “I suppose I am rather a disconcerting sight,” he observed placidly. “The bank chap at Ludlow distrusted my face, and altogether I’m losing confidence in myself. And now you make it worse. Well, I’ll go out and get some lunch, in the absence of anything better to do, and maybe you’ll come and lunch with me as a peace-offering. Yes?”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Green, but I already have a lunch appointment,” she said. “Otherwise I should have loved to come to lunch with you.”

  “Stumped again! I’ll be back about three, Miss Brandon, in case of any inquiries or anything of the sort. Don’t work too hard.”

  He opened the telegram, and glanced at it.

  “No reply, Miss Brandon. Give the boy a push, and let him roll gently down the stairs. It’ll wear them less than if he walks.”

  The message consisted of five words only. “Stukeley left this morning. Norris.” Gees glanced at the desk calendar before him.

  “Five days early. That means, probably, that he’s forfeiting a month’s pay rather than stay till the thirty-first. And after buying a lock for that trapdoor, too!”

  He went to his room, and with a sort of leisurely discrimination packed a suitcase. When he had it locked and ready, he went to Miss Brandon’s doorway again, hatted and ready to go.

  “I won’t trouble to take the script of that interview with me, Miss Brandon. No special instructions that I can think of. I’ll probably ring you from the other end as I did before, and find out how things go at this end. And I’ll be back with the case finished, but I don’t know when. If beyond the end of the week, there’s plenty in petty cash for your salary and overtime. And so to Denlandham.”

  He went straight out to the garage where he kept his car, placed his suitcase in the back, and drove off, with no tarrying at his father’s town residence as on the last setting out for Denlandham. It would be too late to take any action that day after arriving, but he would be ready for what he proposed to himself to do, as early as he chose to set about doing it after the next day’s dawn. Stukeley’s unanticipated departure perturbed him: for the sake of no more than five days the man had sacrificed a month’s pay; possibly he had heard of some other post and had given up this to secure it, but Gees did not think so. Rather did he think that Stukeley and his worried-looking wife had been unable to endure Nightmare any longer, and so had fled.

  If that were so—the miles between Gees and Denlandham grew fewer as he reflected—whatever tenanted Nightmare in addition to its human occupants must have been ominously active. Perivale’s letter had spoken of a reassured village, but it carried only up to a day or thereabouts earlier than Norris’s telegram, and what had happened since Perivale wrote, to drive Stukeley out? The man was not over-imaginative; he had felt the influence of Nightmare, and had warned Gees against the place: also, he had fastened down the trapdoor of the loft and locked the room which Gees himself suspected of being the centre of the trouble that made its home in the house, but he had appeared stolidly determined to stay on to the end of the month, as he had agreed with Hunter. And, it appeared, had not been able to stay on—had been driven out.

  May Norris’s release would make a difference, of course. Given that—as Gees believed—there were two of those presences, both were outside humanity, now, both capable of inflicting whatever harm such beings could compass. And two together would be far stronger than one in one place and one in another; they could aid each other, pool such intelligences as each of them possessed, and so work far more evil. In addition, they could draw more and more power from the evil that was in Denlandham, if Phil Bird had been right when he said that human wickedness was strength to them. For the effect on the character of the wrongdoer, of such evil as Gees now knew existed in two people there, is cumulative: those two who wronged Perivale without compunction and so terribly were dragging themselves down by their own acts, radiating evil which the beings that took their strength from human crime lapped up as a kitten laps milk, gaining more and more vigour as Hunter grew less and less mindful of honour and duty.

  Odd, that only the wrong-doing of a Hunter could waken them to activity. In the period that had elapsed since Robert Hunter brought back these familiars from the East, there must have been men and women as bad as any Hunter in Denlandham, possibly worse, but only when a Hunter ran counter to accepted standards of conduct—more, only when a Hunter outraged such standards—did these beings manifest themselves. Isabella was a mere accessory, Gees felt, as far as they were concerned. Had it not been a Hunter who shared her guilt they might and probably would have remained quiescent, judging by the previous appearances, as Phil Bird had called them. And why had even Robert Hunter, near on devil in human form as he appeared to have been, built the House rather than restore the home of his family? H
ad he feared Nightmare as it was feared now, even by such a one as Stukeley, or—?

  The long car sped north-westward with Gees taking every advantage he could on the way to shorten the time of his journey. He came to a standstill only under the chestnut tree outside the Hunters’ Arms, and entered the bar in time to hear Tom Myers speaking.

  “Gorn, they are. Reckon Squire ain’t goan’ to git noobery else to live theer, neether. What wi’ Mr. Norris, an’ then them—”

  He broke off with dropped jaw at sight of Gees, who advanced to the bar and held out a hand which Nicholas Churchill grasped joyfully.

  “Dang my buttons, mister, but I’m rare glad to see thee agin! Us niver reckoned thee’d coom back like this. What’ll I gi’e thee—a pint while t’ missus gets thy sooper? T’ room’s waitin’ for thee, too.”

  “Good hearing, Churchill,” said Gees. “Aye, make it a pint—and get Tom Myers another, dang his old eyes! One for Jacob, too—and you, Tod, we mustn’t leave you out if you can hold another.”

  “Aye, mister, I got a holler leg,” Tod assured him. “It ain’t nigh filled up, yit, an’ I’m a rare ’un at drinkin’ healths.”

  Churchill paused only to summon his wife through the wicket at the back and inform her of their guest’s return, and then he turned to the business of serving pints, thoughtfully assuming that Gees intended him to have one with the rest. And Gees drew a long sigh of relief: Tom Myers’ words had as good as told him that, beyond the flight of the Stukeleys, nothing abnormal had happened in the village. Had there been anything to transcend the desertion from Nightmare, it would have been a topic for talk here to-night, overshadowing Stukeley’s departure.

  “And how are things going on here?” he inquired of Tom after his health had been duly drunk by the four recipients of his bounty.

  “We eats our grub, mister, an’ we manages to sleep pretty well,”

  Tom assured him, “but it do be tur’ble f’r us when it come to work. Us don’t like that no more’n ever us did, but us gotter live, I reckon.”

  “Us ain’t gotter live, us wanter live,” Jacob Hood amended severely.

  “Happen it’s that way,” Tom admitted. “Mind me, it du, o’ when Fred Butters went to owd Doctor Adams—dead an’ gone, now, Doctor Adams is. Fred wur a tur’ble skulker, an’ owd Doctor Adams knowed it, too. Fred went along t’ him, a groanin’ an’ a grumblin’, pains heer an’ aches theer, an’ the owd doctor knew all he wanted wur to skulk while his wife took in washin’ to arn money to keep him an’ the childern. An’ the owd doctor towd him—‘I know what’d be good f’r yu, Butters.’ An’ Fred, not suspectin’ nuthin’, says—‘An’ what might that be, sir?’ Sorter groanin’ an’ painin’, he ‘peared to be when he ast it. An’ owd Doctor Adams bellered at him—fair bellered at him—‘A good ground ash stick acrost y’r showders, ye lazy varmint!’ An’ they say Fred Butters run outer there like a rabbit, all the way hoam, an’ hid hisself behind the copper. But it dedn’t cure him. Nuthin’ would.”

  A brief consultation by Nicholas at the wicket behind the bar, and then he turned to Gees, just as Tom Myers ended his recital.

  “T’ missus says it’s latish, sir,” he announced, “an’ theer’s nowt but cowd beef an’ pickles f’r thy sooper, wi’ some green stuff t’ make a salad. ’Less happen tha’d wait while she puts a match to t’ fire an’ fries thee some ham an’ eggs.”

  “Cold beef, by all means,” Gees responded hastily, knowing that it was a hundred to one chance that he would face eggs and bacon in the morning. At Nicholas’ request he handed over his suitcase for conveyance to “t’ same room as thee had afore,” and then listened to the talk of the worthies while he waited for the cold beef to be laid ready.

  Talk of crops and weather, of corns and bunions, a sow that had had a litter of nineteen young ’uns, mother and family all doing well, an unusually fine crop of onions on Jacob Hood’s ’lotment, old Martha Evans having the doctor in again, and probably it was only her rheumatic, poor owd soul, though she’d been threatenin’ to die any minute these last ten year, an’ happen her daughter Jinderline (Gees suspected Martha of romantic tendencies in the early days of her married life, and translated Gwendoline as a correct rendering of the name) ’ud not be tu sorry f’r herself when owd Martha did pop off. All normal village talk: apart from Stukeley’s premature departure, evidently, nothing that might evoke comment beyond the normal had transpired in Denlandham during the two days and a half that Gees had been absent from the village.

  “Yu sim to like this plaace, mister,” Tod piped from his corner.

  “Yes, it’s an attractive village,” Gees answered, knowing full well that the little man wanted to draw him as to his object in returning.

  “Happen yu think o’ settlin’ heer,” Tod suggested.

  “Well, I don’t know about that,” Gees said doubtfully. “I’ve not seen enough of it to make up my mind, yet.”

  “Better’n Lunnon an’ plaaces like that,” Tom Myers observed gravely. “I du read in t’ paaper as they do be f’rever gittin’ theirselves run over i’ them parts, an’ it’s all that Horble Isher’s doin’, it seem.”

  Gees was saved from reply to this somewhat unjust aspersion of the activities of the one time Minister of Transport by Nicholas, who announced that t’ cowd beef wur in t’ dinin’ room. With a general good night to the worthies, who responded heartily, Gees went to his meal, and found in addition to cold beef a plate of cold chicken and ham cut and placed before his seat, evidently as an appetiser. There was a fresh and tender lettuce cut into four, and, to follow the solids, a dish of trifle and a rhubarb tart, with a half pint jug of cream.

  “Us niver reckoned thee’d coom so laate,” Nicholas apologised from the doorway. “Else, t’ missus’d a got thee a proper sooper. Happen tha’ll maake do on odds an’ ends f’r once, mister?”

  “If these are odds and ends, never bother about the middle,”

  Gees assured him. “One more good pint, and I’ll count myself in clover.”

  Having finished the pint and done his best with the odds and ends, he remembered the car and went out to move it into the stable. He had opened the door and was about to get in when a voice came to him from the road, and, turning, in the light of a half-grown moon, now near its setting, he recognised the rector.

  “Mr. Green! Well, I am glad to see you here again! How are you?”

  “Quite fit and cheerful, sir.” And, shaking hands, Gees saw real pleasure in Perivale’s expression.

  “Just arrived, eh?” Perivale suggested. “And what a car!”

  “It likes travelling,” Gees admitted. “And how are you, sir?”

  “Busy, as usual. I’ve just been to see old Martha Evans in response to an urgent summons. I don’t know if the old lady really means to die this time, or whether it’s just another false alarm. I’ve had so many of her urgent summonses in the last few years.”

  “In fact,” Gees remarked, “she’s an old nuisance. I’ve heard a few remarks about her in the bar here to-night, among other topics.”

  “There is always one of that sort in a village,” Perivale said, “and Martha has her good points. You’ll look in on us at the rectory to-morrow, Mr. Green? Both I and my daughter will be terribly disappointed if we don’t see something of you now you’re here again.”

  “I’ll hope to have time to make a call—in the afternoon, say.”

  “Admirable. And—did you get my letter before you left London?”

  “Got it with me now,” Gees assured him. “I thought I should see you, so didn’t answer it. You wouldn’t have had the answer yet, if I had. Many thanks for it, and I’m glad you took my advice.”

  “Neither in that letter nor in any other way can I express—”

  “One moment, sir,” Gees interrupted him. “If you say another word, I’ll crawl under this car and not come out again till you’ve gone. If I could have thought of any better way of acknowledging your
kindness, I’d have taken it, but my brain was all woolly—it goes that way at times. Now you want to get home, I know, and I want to put this car away. My regards to Miss Perivale, and salaams to Harold and the Isle of Wight—I’ve still got to meet the rest of the family. Oh, sorry! Remember me to Mrs. Perivale. Inexcusable, that omission.”