Nightmare Farm

by Jack Mann

  “I hope so too,” Gees answered insincerely, “but I didn’t come to take up a lot of your time to-night, sir. I’ve made up my mind—I’m going back to London either to-morrow or the next day—it depends on what free time you have, to a certain extent. I want to tell Hunter, before I go, how I found his ancestor and what I did with the remains. I’ve no idea what he’ll say or do, but I feel he has a right to know.”

  “You have chosen the right course, I feel sure,” Perivale said. “I would not influence you in either direction, when you came to me last night, but I am sure you—well, you will be happier when you have told the squire what you found at Nightmare and what you did with it. If he is the man I think him, he will approve your action.”

  “And you said you’d come along with me,” Gees reminded him.

  “What about making it any time that suits you to-morrow?”

  The rector frowned as he reflected over the duties of his to-morrow.

  “Well, Mr. Green, it’s rather difficult. I have a number of appointments for to-morrow—and you say you want to get back to London. What about to-night? All we have to do is to walk through my back garden into the grounds of the House—the park, as we always call it, where my children play and amuse themselves by Squire Hunter’s permission,—and we arrive at the House. Would that suit you?”

  “Admirably,” Gees concurred. “Get it over—if he’s in, that is.”

  “Oh, he’ll be in! I saw him only a few hours ago.”

  “Very well, then, if you don’t mind being dragged out into the moonlight—I mean, if you don’t mind turning out at this hour.”

  “Not in the least—it will make a pleasant walk across the park. I think my hat and coat are in the hall.”

  They went down, and the rector donned his hat, but decided to leave the overcoat, since it was such a warm, moonlit night. They went out, passed the back of the rectory and took a path that led through a well-stocked vegetable garden to come to a wide gap in the hedge at the far end of the garden. Grass land, copse-specked, lay before them; there was a light haze over the grass, and the copses looked ghostly in the light of the setting moon. Gees thought of a Rackham water-colour: here it was, unsubstantial-looking, and winged fairies might appear at any moment, he felt. Nearly a mile away, the lights of Denlandham House showed, points of yellow against a background of black.

  “Did you ever see Dear Brutus, Mr. Perivale?” he asked.

  “I did not,” the rector answered. “Why—what is the connection?”

  “This open, and the black background with lights—just like the end of the second act. Margaret—Barrie’s loveliest fancy.”

  “I don’t know the play,” Perivale said as they walked on toward the nearest copse, and the lights of the House vanished beyond it.

  “Margaret was the artist’s dream-daughter—the one he wanted and never had—Barrie’s idea of what life might be if—”

  He broke off abruptly and stopped, gazing ahead at the copse. There was a sound on the air— and he knew that sound! Two misty presences came into sight, guggling, glucking, horrible, and again he felt the deathly chill he had felt when they had appeared at Nightmare and one had spun out to make him and Norris cold. Gluck-gluck-gluck—faint ghosts in the moonlight, vignetting to nothingness at their edges, they swayed and whirled toward him and the rector, receded, drifted through the hawthorn that encircled the copse, and were gone, and still the ghostly clucking noise hung on the air—were they still laughing, or was it the horrible echo of the sound they had made in their appearance.

  “Two!” He had to grip on to himself to prevent a burst of silly laughter. “Two—where’s the other? Three, there should be.”

  “Powers of evil—did you feel the cold of them?” Perivale asked.

  “Impotent, though—the cross my first wife gave me and I always wear—impotent, quite. And vanished—I’d never have believed it—them.”

  “But there should have been three,” Gees said dazedly.

  They went on. The rector paused by the hedge encircling the copse, and looked at it. Then he turned and looked at Gees.

  “Shall we hunt them?” he asked.

  “Might as well chase the shadow of a cloud,” Gees answered.

  “They hang around here—we know that much. But I struck at one of them—they have no substance—they’re no more than fog, materially. We know where they’re haunting, and that’s all. No use going in there.”

  They rounded the bulge of the hedge, to see the lights of Denlandham House in the distance—nearer, but still in the distance. In the foreground, a man dropped on one knee, who held a woman in his arms and gazed down at her face—the moonlight showed her clearly, and him too.

  They heard his voice—

  “Belle! Oh, my darling! Belle—Isabella—speak to me!”

  An infinity of pause, and Hunter looked up and saw the two men facing him with perhaps thirty yards of interval. Then Perivale clutched Gees by the arm—the marks left by his fingers were yellow blotches a fortnight later, but Gees felt no pain from them, then—

  “Take me back! Let us go back, lest I do him some injury!”

  Gees never knew how they reached the front doorway of the rectory. But there, full sense came back to him—there had been only two, and there should have been three!

  “Mr. Perivale—there’s something wrong with her. Don’t you realise? Something wrong—something terribly wrong!”

  “Let him care for her now as he has cared for her when there was nothing wrong. Leave me, man—leave me to myself! I can endure no more, talk no more. Go now. Come and see me to-morrow— you let these things loose! Come and see me to-morrow—not now.”

  Slowly, reluctantly, Gees went away, hearing the terrific slam of the rectory door as he went. He got into his car, and drove off toward the inn. The bar was still open, he saw. He went in at the main entrance and straight upstairs to his room: this was no night for facing the worthies. Up on his dressing table he saw an unstamped letter, and opened it to read—

  MR. GEES,

  Marsh the cowman is taking this for me, to deliver it at the Hunters’ Arms for you. Such a little while since you left me, and all my heart is singing—if you don’t know the song, I won’t tell it. Our day! Such a wonderful day, my dear, and you made it all. If this is what your love is going to mean, I know myself happier than any dreams. And I felt—I must talk to you. Nothing to say that you do not know. I think I told you all of it in the fairyland we entered together to-day—yet may I tell you once more that I love you, dear. I don’t want to burden you with it, don’t want to make you weary of me and my love, but just now it’s new and wonderful. Mr. Gees, help me to keep it new and wonderful always—help me to be worth all you give, and not fail you. I owe you myself, the self that you found a way to help out of darkness, and I do so want that self to be worth all you give. To give to the uttermost in return, yet not to tire you with too much giving. Do you know, my dear—my dearest? I am your May. You know it.

  He looked up. “Come in,” he called, and Nicholas Churchill entered the room and stood there shaking his head gravely.

  “Sitha, tha’ll coom to a bad end, eatin’ nowt,” Nicholas reproved him. “T’ missis got t’ ham an’ eggs all ready, an’ thee’s but to say t’word, an’ she’ll start cookin’. An’ thee’ll have a pint, sir?”

  “I will have a pint,” Gees assented. “Churchill, you’re a damned good sort, and I don’t care who knows it. But—Oh, make it ham and eggs, then, though this seems to me more an occasion for fasting than eating.” He thought of Perivale, a man with his life smashed to ruin.

  “Even if thee’s a Catholic, sir, it ain’t Friday,” Nicholas assured him. “An’ even if ’t’was, fastin’ never done no man no good. An’ t’

  missus got t’ ham an’ eggs all ready to cook, an’ two pair o’ gradely kippers put aside for thy breakfast.”

  “To-morrow’s Thursday, not Friday,” Gees reflecte
d aloud.

  “Nevermind. One pair of kippers, not two, and even then there’ll be one left, if I know anything about it.”

  “Aye, thee’s pernickety about thy food, sir—how thee keeps alive beeats me. T’ air o’ this place doan’t agree wi’ thee, happen, but us means to do our best by thee. I’ll draw t’ pint an’ lay t’ cloth.”

  He went down the stairs again. With May’s letter in his hand, Gees sat on the bed, remembering Perivale’s grey, stricken face.

  “T’ ham an’ eggs is ready, sir,” Nicholas informed him from the foot of the stairs, “an’ I’ve drawed t’ pint.”

  “Coming along,” Gees called back.

  Whatever happened, agony or bliss, life went on.

  CHAPTER XIX

  HUNTER’S APOLOGY

  DAWN WAS JUST BEGINNING when Gees wakened to question if it would be worth while to go out and wring that cockerel’s neck, but decided to refrain, since, with his work in Denlandham done—as nearly as he could tell—the raucous summons from sleep would not be likely to trouble him again. He reached for and lighted a cigarette, and lay waiting for the arrival of Nicholas with early morning tea and hot water: as he waited, he reviewed the events of the past few days.

  They had possessed Isabella—one of them had, just as May Norris had been possessed; of that he felt sure. With that, apart from any sustenance they may have gleaned from their shut chamber at Nightmare as long as the body of Robert Hunter remained intact, went half their strength. Yet, while this present Hunter remained alive and vicious, some power would remain to them. Two vapoury horrors still went questing somewhere: they would cling to Hunter, probably, haunt him...Gees lost himself for awhile in speculation. Could Perivale exorcise and restore Isabella, as he had done in May’s case? Failing him, could anyone drive that thing out from her ? And, if it were possible, would she be warned by her experience, or would she ... ? Where was she now? What had happened to her and Hunter after Perivale had left them together? Gees remembered the insane, murderous light he had seen in May’s eyes before she had been freed: this woman, having yielded to evil before she had come in contact with the demon that would rule her now, would be far more dangerous. So he saw it, as he lay thinking with the dawn growing in the room.

  He took May’s letter from under his pillow and read it again. To-day he would see her, before going back to London. It was her wish, he knew, that he should go back. Before going to her, he must see Perivale again, or at least find out if Perivale still wished to see him. With that reflection he got out of bed, took a pad and fountain pen, and got back to write to May:

  MAY, DARLING,

  I’d be with you instead of this, and will be with you not long after it, but there is something to keep me at this end of Denlandham for awhile. When I left Perivale last night, in deepest trouble (his, not mine) he suggested my coming to see him today, and I feel it is up to me to comply with that request, though I know I can do nothing to lighten the blow that has fallen on him.

  I fear that blow will be disastrous to him. Darling, quite possibly, when you belong entirely to me, I shall tell you the whole story, though I think we shall have so much more and so much happier interest at that time as to make this tragedy—it is that—something to forget rather than to engross ourself. You may think that word a slip in grammar, but it isn’t. It’s what I mean us to be. If I could tell you what your letter meant when I got back last night—well, wait till I’m with you, dear. It needs something other than words for the telling.

  So—don’t think it’s anything but necessity that keeps me from being with you sooner this morning. And—just in case you want a scrap of real news—dearest, I love you.

  MR. GEES.

  Churchill, entering not long after the letter had been finished and addressed, promised to find a boy who would deliver it at Cosham’s farm within an hour, and with that settled Gees made a careful business of shaving and dressing, and went down to kippers. He dawdled over them: ten o’clock would be full early to go to the rectory. Quite possibly Perivale would not wish to see him, but he could not go on to May without making certain that the rector did not want him.

  Thus, at just on ten o’clock, he went out to the car, which he had left standing under the chestnut all night, rather than drive round to the stable. He was busied over taking the hood down when he saw the rector approaching, and ceased the business of strapping to face a very white and shaken Perivale—an old man, he looked now. There was, too, something in his expression which warned Gees, before ever a word was spoken between them, that he had not come because of what he had witnessed the preceding night.

  “I felt it was my duty to see you at once, Mr. Green,” he said. “A terrible thing has happened—one that concerns you.”

  “Yes?” Gees leaned against the side of the car, and gripped the door-handle behind him, for already he knew some, though not all, of what Perivale would tell him. Only in one way could a terrible thing affect him in the way that Perivale evidently meant.

  “Concerns you indirectly, through Miss Norris,” Perivale went on. “I don’t know—remember I myself have something even worse to face—”

  “What is this about Miss Norris?” Gees interrupted, and did not recognise his own voice. He gripped hard on the car door-handle, and for the moment felt incapable of moving.

  “That—it is impossible to tell these things without giving pain,”

  Perivale said. “That—that—you will not see her again.”

  Gees sat down on the running-board of the car. He felt oddly composed, and at the same time afraid lest his legs should not support him. “You mean—that can only mean one thing,” he said,

  “Best say it—get it over. And I think I know. Their revenge, isn’t it?”

  “Their?” For a moment the rector looked at him uncomprehendingly. “Yes, though—I see. But where are you going?” For Gees had got to his feet again, and was opening the car door.

  “Why, to her, of course,” he answered.

  Perivale grasped his arm. “Believe me—no!” he said. “You asked me to say it—she is dead. Keep the memory you have of her. I—it is very terrible for me to have to tell you this. Killed by Isabella, my wife, less than an hour ago. Don’t go—keep the memory you have.”

  Gees shut the car door and faced about again. He had a feeling that somebody was telling someone else of a tragedy that had happened somewhere—it did not concern him or May, but was an altogether extraneous happening, one that did not affect him. Yet he knew that view of it would pass: all his agony was to come, later. This he knew, but for the time could feel nothing: the shock of Perivale’s telling had numbed all feeling, though it had left his mind quite clear.

  “Killed, by Isabella,” he said slowly. “I think—yes, their revenge. Where is Isabella?”

  “At Cosham’s. Held, waiting for the police. Quite mad—quite. Man—” Perivale’s face contorted momentarily—“don’t you realise what this means for me?”

  Gees shook his head. “I can’t realise what it means for myself, even,” he answered. “May—I was coming to see you, first—” again his hand sought the doorhandle—“and you say—don’t see her.”

  “I say, don’t see her,” Perivale echoed. “I think—Norris would not let you see her. In any case, I beg—do not.”

  For a minute or more Gees stood irresolute. Not to see May again—never to see her again! An utter incredibility.

  “Now tell me what happened,” he asked at last. “If—if I am not putting too much on you. Tell me what happened.”

  “I—Norris sent for me, at once,” Perivale tried to explain. “It appears she got a letter—his daughter got a letter this morning. From you, I think. She went—there is an orchard at the back of Gosham’s house—she went there, just after she had got the letter. To the far end of the orchard from the house. It was Cosham who heard her call for help, and he and one of his men went in answer to the call. They managed to get my wife away from he
r, but too late, and by that time another of Gosham’s men had got there, to help—help hold my wife while Cosham himself took May—Miss Norris—back to the house. She was—she was dead then. I—I don’t think I can tell you any more.”