Mystery in Moon Lane

by A. A. Glynn

  Into the bargain, I was concerned about the condition of this half-empty, creepy mansion. Stark bohemian existence might be acceptable among struggling artists, but my brother was well established and by no means poor. There was no need for him to live like this.

  I tried to broach the subject carefully: “Roger, why are you living in this place? From what I see of it, you haven’t even any electricity here. I’ve noticed only oil lamps.”

  “Because I was attracted to it,” he answered sharply. “There is something here that attracted me from the first time I set eyes on the house.”

  The words made me shudder. I somehow felt that it was this house that was turning my brother into almost a shadow of his old self. It was essential that I got him away from the place, but I knew Roger’s stubborn streak. He was always a hard man to persuade against his wishes, and it was evident that whatever attracted him to Cotstones Manor was likely to hold him hard.

  He slammed down his teacup as if closing our conversation. “I’ll go downstairs and fix something to eat,” he announced. “I have the kitchen down there fitted out to my satisfaction. And the bathroom is just along the corridor if you want to clean up. It’s not luxurious but, again, it’s to my satisfaction.”

  I was left alone, watching the first shades of evening descending behind the high window and wondering how I could persuade him to leave oppressive Cotstones Manor, a place wherein I myself had no desire to spend any more time than I need.

  Bewilderedly, I eventually went along the musty and shadowy corridor to find the bathroom. It proved just about adequate, with fittings at least eighty years old and I washed hastily.

  Then, as I returned along the corridor, I saw her.

  The girl in Roger’s paintings was standing in the gloom close to the door of his studio. She was in a crinoline of sumptuous material, with her hair braided and with ribbons in the style of the 1850s, and her face was every bit as beautiful as my brother had rendered it on canvas—until she fixed me with her large eyes, whereupon her expression changed to one of utter hatred. Her whole countenance was a malevolent mask, telling me I was not wanted here.

  I was frozen on the spot, trying to understand how she came to be there and yet knowing that, while she looked solid, she was not really there at all—at least not in a fully physical sense. Abruptly, she turned her back on me in eloquent disdain and walked away, but it was not so much a walk as a slow, halting stumble. Under her crinoline finery, this girl from another century must have been dreadfully maimed.

  Then, right before my eyes, she faded and was gone.

  Shaking, I returned to the room Roger had given me, and found him there with sandwiches and fresh tea. One of the oil lamps was now lit and its glow emphasized his gaunt and unkempt appearance. I leaned against the doorjamb, trying to regain my composure.

  “I’ve just had a strange experience,” I told him, hearing a cracked note in my own voice. “I’ve seen the girl in your paintings—out there in the corridor!”

  “You’ve seen Rosalind? You can’t have! Only I have seen her!” Roger’s response was almost a snarl.

  I gripped the doorjamb firmly. I was still shivering and a well-remembered sensation was creeping over me—that same perception of evil that I felt when I first walked the path to Cotstones Manor, more intense now. It bid fair to overpower me, an almost physical, thrusting force, aimed at me and calculated to drive me away. I knew it emanated from the apparition I encountered in the corridor.

  “I have seen her, Roger,” I heard myself gasping. “I never thought I’d ever say it, but I’ve seen a ghost. The girl in your portraits is a ghost, and the vile atmosphere of this rotten place issues from her. For God’s sake get out of here, man!”

  Roger was crouching forward, menacing in the uncertain lamplight. “Yes, she’s a ghost,” he breathed. “She’s an unfortunate shade who hung around this place for decade after decade as the place all but crumbled away; a forgotten wraith from another time who had nothing but pain, disappointment, misunderstanding, and bitterness in her own day. I know it was she who drew me here. I felt her presence the first time I laid eyes on the place, and finding her was the greatest thing ever to happen to me. Ghost she might be, but she inspired me to create my best work ever. I’m content here with Rosalind, and if anyone should get out it’s you. We don’t want you here, Rosalind and I. Go on—clear out!”

  The oppressive force of evil was wrapping me like a blanket. I needed air. I needed to get out of this place and be among sane mortals, but I saw something in a diamond bright light.

  “My God—you’re in love with a ghost!” I gasped. “She’s taken you over. You’re besotted by her. No wonder you’re reclusive and are becoming nothing but skin and bone. You’re in the grip of something not of this world.”

  “Clear out!” my brother shouted. “Go on! Get out!”

  I tried to shake off the weight of the sense of malevolence like a drowning man attempting to find air, turned, and somehow forced myself to stagger out to the stairs. As I went, I had a last glimpse of Roger. But he was not alone.

  The ghost-girl was standing behind him, bestowing on me a triumphant parting smile, laden with ill will. She seemed to be fondling his shoulders with hands that I knew were not of flesh and blood.

  And I was sure I heard a soft feminine voice murmur:

  “Soon, Roger! Soon we will be together and free of this wretched world.”

  I staggered out of the Manor and along the gloomy path with its forbidding arch of trees to burst into the deserted lane, shrouded by early evening. Once out of the place, the crushing depression lifted. I leaned against the long garden wall and tried to collect my thoughts. I must get Roger out of Cotstones Manor somehow. I must break the grip of the ghost girl, rid him of his infatuation with her, and return him to where he belonged in the healthy world of sunlight and flesh and blood affairs.

  But how? I needed time to think and to be away from the vicinity of Cotstones Manor. I also needed a steadying drink and the company of ordinary, no-nonsense people. 1 thought of the local pub, The Plough, and made for it.

  I entered a busy bar, with a good number of customers who had the look of incomers, the well-heeled city types who had settled in the village. I slumped against the bar and asked for a neat whisky. Then I spotted the local who had welcomed me to the village, sitting with a crony, well apart from the brash incomers.

  The countrymen were eying me with deep interest, and I supposed my disturbed state was all too obvious. I downed the whisky quickly, feeling some satisfaction from its warmth, and I crossed to the pair and sat beside him.

  “Listen,” I said to the old man of my earlier acquaintance, “That business of the Manor house—what’s the whole story?”

  “Why?” he asked breathlessly. “Has something happened up there?”

  “The story!” I demanded impatiently. “Has it something to do with a young woman?”

  “Aye, it has,” put in his companion eagerly. “All the old folk years ago knew the yarn. It concerned the daughter of the house, belonging to the Courcey family who once owned the land hereabouts.”

  “A beautiful girl, badly crippled in an accident,” said the friend I had made earlier. “Terrible tragic, the old people always said, though others claimed what happened to her was a dreadful form of justice like that in the Bible. For beautiful she might be, but she was a willful girl, a schemer who stole another young woman’s sweetheart and broke her heart. Just as bad as coveting another’s wife—that’s how them who’d pass judgment on her saw it.”

  Between them, they gave me the story, a stark one, laden with severe peasant morality. Rosalind Courcey, who was pampered and believed she could take whatever she fancied, set her cap at a young officer from an equally autocratic family. He was all but betrothed to another girl, but Rosalind’s beauty enticed him away. She flaunted her conquest before all the fashionable society but, only weeks before their marriage, tragedy struck. Returning to the manor House from
a ball one stormy winter night, she was stepping down from her coach when the thunder and lightning frightened the horses. They bolted along the drive but the girl’s shawl had somehow become entangled in a handle on the coach door and she was dragged under the wheels.

  She was almost killed, but she survived with dreadfully mangled legs. Her days of her walking haughtily through country and London society were gone—and so was her gallant young officer, who eventually became a general well known to history. His love, such as it was, did not extend to taking the responsibility of an invalid wife.

  Rosalind became a recluse in Cotstones Manor, growing increasingly embittered until, one day, she took her own life.

  “And you know how country folk thought long ago,” said my first acquaintance. “They believed there was no rest for suicides—though I never considered that a charitable notion. However, long after all the Courceys passed away and the old Manor fell more into ruin, there was a belief that Rosalind haunted the place. And it was no more than she deserved, said the Bible-thumpers, for she was a scheming Jezebel at heart and she’d died by her own hand.”

  “That’s a harsh judgment on the poor girl,” growled his companion, taking a pull of his beer. “She deserved some sympathy. Not that her ghost was ever actually seen. Them who dared to enter the house reckoned her presence was felt more than seen. She might be seen, though, if all the conditions were right—or wrong, so to speak.”

  I had heard enough. My thoughts were whirling and without a word of farewell, I left the two men and rushed into the street. One clear resolution swam to the top of my tangled consciousness: I must get Roger out of that house, even if I had to knock him flat and drag him out. I strode determinedly along the village street.

  “If the conditions were right,” the countryman had said. Perhaps Roger brought such conditions to Cotstones Manor. His artistic studies meant that, mentally, he lived almost constantly in the nineteenth century, so maybe he was so sensitively attuned to the period that he tapped into whatever supernatural circuit made Rosalind Courcey manifest where others never saw her. Possibly, through the natural affinity of twins, I had the same sensitivity and so I, too, was aware of her.

  At all events, she was certainly there for both of us, and a malignant menace to the pair of us—particularly to Roger, whom she had plainly ensnared. From all the signs, he was in love with this wraith from an era long gone. Consumed by a raging desire to free my brother from the ghost-girl, I charged along the now almost black, tree-arched pathway, feeling the aura of evil intensify as I neared the dark bulk of the house.

  Trying to shut out its oppressive pressure, I blundered through the still open front door and stumbled up the stairs to where a chink of lamplight showed at the door of the studio. I crashed in, yelling: “Roger! Listen to me—you must leave this damned place! I don’t know what the motives of your ghost-woman are, but local folklore has her down as an embittered, scheming spirit, and she certainly makes this place hideous. Get loose from her, man.…”

  “I thought I’d seen the last of you, Vic,” cut in Roger at the top of his voice. He was still standing in the middle of the room, looking yet more eerie in the lamp-glow and Rosalind was hovering behind him, appearing even more solid, fixing me with her glare of hatred, and yet with a mocking half-smile. “What the hell do you know about it?” my brother harangued. “I was content here with Rosalind until you turned up. Yes, she’s a ghost, a specter, or whatever you want to call her but, if you can believe it, I was able to show her some of the affection she was robbed of long ago. And she was good for me. She inspired me to do my finest work. I have put the beauty of this broken, scorned, and maligned girl on canvas after canvas for all posterity and.…”

  “And, soon, we will be together for all time, your brother and I,” concluded the hollow, mocking voice of the ghost-girl. “I shall see to that, depend on it.”

  Now, through my tortured fear and anger, I realized something new. Roger was besotted with Rosalind Courcey and physically reduced almost to a shadow by his infatuation. This malignant, man-stealing Jezebel of local peasant legend plainly intended to have a farther effect and take his very life—to enable him to join her on whatever eternal plane she inhabited.

  I wanted to knock Roger senseless and haul him away from her presence, from this room and out of this ghastly house. Hardly knowing what I was doing, I lunged at him with my fists, trying to hit his bearded chin. But he was ready for me and he thumped me heftily in the chest, sending me staggering backwards towards the open door. From the small table near his easel, he snatched up a pallet-knife with its thin, sharp blade and charged forward.

  As he swung it in a wide arc, I jumped back yet further and now I was on the landing, falling against the rickety wooden banister rail, substituting for the elegant antique rails that must once have graced the stairway. And Roger followed up his attack, barging into me while I grabbed his arm and tried to force him to drop the knife.

  Then, with a tortured groan and a crack, the rotten wood gave way and we were pitching back into empty space. We hit the floor of the shadow-invaded hall below and I knew I had fallen on top of my brother. Winded but seemingly unhurt, I staggered up. I realized that Roger was gasping and trying to get to his feet.

  I tried to help him, then realized that Rosalind Courcey was crouching beside him, fondling his head possessively, and looking up at me with her lip curling contemptuously.

  “Go away!” I yelled. “Go away! Leave him alone!”

  Consumed by my desire to drive the ghost away, I snatched up a broken stave of banister rail and lashed out at her hands, delivering blow upon blow, oblivious to the fact that physical force has no effect on specters—or that I was striking through her, onto my brother’s head!

  The policemen, a seasoned sergeant and a hefty young constable, emerged from somewhere beyond my curtain of enraged tears, and it later transpired that they were traveling the lane in their patrol car when they heard me yelling inside the house. The constable wrested the length of wood from my hand and yanked me to my feet. He forced my hands behind my back, growling: “Damn it, man, what’re you trying to do, beat him to death?”

  The sergeant, kneeling beside Roger’s still form, grunted: “Looks like he’s already done that, lad. This chap’s stone dead.”

  From the gloom, the shade of Rosalind Courcey, visible only to myself, taunted me with her smirk of triumph.

  “You don’t expect a learned judge and a jury of sober citizens to swallow yarns about ghosts, do you?” sneered the Crown Court prosecutor into my face. “Isn’t it the simple truth that you had a furious row with your brother and launched a murderous attack on him? The officers caught you in the act, and they saw nothing of this ghost you claim you were trying to drive away.”

  Unlikely though my tale was, it was given some support by Ted Ferris and Jack Kenwood, the villagers from the pub. They volunteered themselves as defense witnesses, saying there was indeed a local legend of the ghost of Cotstones Manor. Old locals, whom the smart-alecky incomers called ‘yokels,’ knew it and gave the house a wide berth. Their intervention had some effect on the judge, who asked me several times whether I really believed I saw the ghost-girl.

  Instructing the jury, he made play of my possible mental state. “You might feel that this story of the defendant trying to drive away a malignant spirit is nonsense, but it is not impossible that he was suffering from some temporary mental aberration, though he has no history of such disturbance,” he pronounced. “lf you feel that to be so, you would be wrong to conclude that Victor Hayles willfully murdered his brother, Roger Hayles, and therefore the statutory prison sentence would be inappropriate.…”

  So, I was shown some leniency, sent to where I write this, a secure hospital rather than a prison. My sentence is indefinite and, every day of it, I am haunted by the last sight to impress itself upon me as the police took me out of that hideous house.

  In the gloom of the hall, the shades of Rosalind Courcey, dead
for more than a century and a half, and my newly dead brother were embracing.

  And I know that Cotstones Manor now has two ghosts.

  LEGEND

  “He shouldn’t be there,” said the Skipper bewilderedly. “He’s appeared from nowhere smack in the middle of our parabola when we are within optimum distance for a landing. And he’s just an old tub—out here on the very edge of God-knows-what, where no one but ourselves have ever been before!”

  “It’s all wrong.” muttered Chandos, the second officer seated beside him in front of the vision-screen, his eyes round with disbelief. “That craft is hopelessly obsolete. Looks like one of the old-time shuttles that ran between Earth and the moon in the very early days. How can it withstand the conditions out here on the fringe of the system?”

  Tallis, the Skipper, considered the image filling the vision-screen: the gray and irregular bulk of the planetoid on which the exploration ship was about to make its fall and, against it like a fly on a window pane, the mysterious, decidedly antiquated spaceship.

  “You’re right,” he agreed. “It’s about as ancient as the old sailing-ships of Earth. It shouldn’t exist anywhere outside a museum. But, dammit, it is there!”

  “It’s all completely wrong!” repeated the second officer. “Here we are, trans-Pluto, having made a Tunnel-trip, and we meet up with a relic from long before Tunnel-travel was possible. How did it get here?”

  His superior frowned yet deeper. Their huge exploration ship was out here on the far fringe of the Solar System after plunging through the Tunnel, the hole in the continuum which telescoped time and space, and permitted spaceships to traverse vast distances in a relatively short time. To withstand the rigors of the passage, the whole crew had to enter a state of suspended animation for its duration. The ancient craft in the vision-screen was of pre-Tunnel vintage, capable of little more than the Earth-Luna trip, and its presence here, beyond Pluto, was a technical impossibility. It was an enigma, astray from the pages of history.