The Baroness shook her head. “Not for several months.”
“You will let me know when you do?”
She nodded.
A week later she wrote to me from Rome.
“Isn’t it terrible?” she began, “Mr Vercoe committed suicide on Wednesday—the Birmingham papers—he was a Birmingham man—are full of it!”
The Barrowvian
The description of an adventure Mr Trobas, a friend of mine, had with a barrowvian in Brittany (and which I omitted to relate when referring to barrowvians), I now append as nearly as possible in his own words:—
“Night! A sky partially concealed from view by dark, fantastically shaped clouds, that, crawling along with a slow, stealthy motion, periodically obscure the moon. The crest of a hill covered with short-clipped grass, much worn away in places, and in the centre a Druidical circle broken and incomplete; a few of the stones are erect, the rest either lie at full length on the sward, close to the mystic ring, or at some considerable distance from it. Here and there are distinct evidences of recent digging, and at the base of one of the horizontal stones is an excavation of no little depth.
“A sudden, but only temporary clearance of the sky reveals the surrounding landscape; the rugged mountain side, flecked with gleaming granite boulders and bordered with sturdy hedges (a mixture of mud and bracken), and beyond them the meadows, traversed by sinuous streams whose scintillating surfaces sparkle like diamonds in the silvery moonlight. At rare intervals the scene is variegated, and nature interrupted, by a mill or a cottage,—toy-like when viewed from such an altitude,—and then the sweep of meadowland continues, undulating gently till it finds repose at the foot of some distant ridge of cone-shaped mountains. Over everything there is a hush, awe-inspiring in its intensity. Not the cry of a bird, not the howl of a dog, not the rustle of a leaf; there is nothing, nothing but the silence of the most profound sleep. In these remote rural districts man retires to rest early, the physical world accompanying him; and all nature dreams simultaneously.
“It was shortly after the commencement of this period of universal slumber, one night in April, that I toiled laboriously to the summit of the hill in question, and, spreading a rug on one of the fallen stones, converted it into a seat. Naturally I had not climbed this steep ascent without a purpose. The reason was this—at eight-thirty that morning I received a telegram from a friend at Armennes, near Carnac, which ran thus: ‘Am in great difficulty—Ghosts—Come.—Krantz.’
“Of course Krantz is not the real name of my friend, but it is one that answers the purpose admirably in telegrams and on post-cards; and of course he well knew what he was about when he said ‘Come.’ Not only I but everyone has confidence in Krantz, and I was absolutely certain that when he demanded my presence, the money I should spend on the journey would not be spent in vain.
“Apart from psychical investigation, I study every phase of human nature, and am at present, among other things, engaged on a work of criminology based on impressions derived from face-to-face communication with notorious criminals.
“The morning I received Krantz’s summons was the morning I had set aside for a special study of S—— M——, whose case has recently commanded so much public attention; but the moment I read the wire, I changed my plans, without either hesitation or compunction. Krantz was Krantz, and his dictum could not be disobeyed.
“Tearing down la rue Saint Denis, and narrowly avoiding collision with a lady who lives in la rue Saint François, and will persist in wearing hats and heels that outrage alike every sense of decency and good form, I hustled into the station, and, rushing down the steps, just succeeded in catching the Carnac train. After a journey which, for slowness, most assuredly holds the record, I arrived, boiling over with indignation, at Armennes, where Krantz met me. After luncheon he led the way to his study, and, as soon as the servant who handed us coffee had left the room, began his explanation of the telegram.
“‘As you know, Trobas,’ he observed, ‘it’s not all bliss to be a landlord. Up to the present I have been singularly fortunate, inasmuch as I have never experienced any difficulty in getting tenants for my houses. Now, however, there has been a sudden and most alarming change, and I have just received no less than a dozen notices from tenants desirous of giving up their habitations at once. Here they are!’ And he handed me a bundle of letters, for the most part written in the scrawling hand of the illiterate. ‘If you look,’ he went on, ‘you will see that none of them give any reason for leaving. It is merely—“We cannot possibly stay here any longer,” or “We must give up possession immediately,” which they have done, and in every instance before the quarter was up. Being naturally greatly astonished and perturbed, I made careful inquiries, and, at length—for the North Country rustic is most reticent and difficult to “draw”—succeeded in extracting from three of them the reason for the general exodus. The houses are all haunted! There was nothing amiss with them, they informed me, till about three weeks ago, when they all heard all sorts of alarming noises—crashes as if every atom of crockery they possessed was being broken; bangs on the panels of doors; hideous groans; diabolical laughs; and blood-curdling screams. Nor was that all; some of them vowed they had seen things—horrible hairy hands, with claw-like nails and knotted joints, that came out of dark corners and grabbed at them; naked feet with enormous filthy toes; and faces—horrible faces that peeped at them over the banisters or through the windows; and sooner than stand any more of it—sooner than have their wives and bairns frightened out of their senses, they would sacrifice a quarter’s rent and go. “We are sorry, Mr Krantz,” they said in conclusion, “for you have been a most considerate landlord, but stay we cannot.”’ Here my friend paused.
“‘And have you no explanation of these hauntings?’ I asked.
“Krantz shook his head. ‘No!’ he said, ‘the whole thing is a most profound mystery to me. At first I attributed it to practical jokers, people dressed up; but a couple of nights’ vigil in the haunted district soon dissipated that theory.’
“‘You say district,’ I remarked. ‘Are the houses close together—in the same road or valley?’
“‘In a valley,’ Krantz responded—‘the Valley of Dolmen. It is ten miles from here.’
“‘Dolmen!’ I murmured, ‘why Dolmen?’
“‘Because,’ Krantz explained, ‘in the centre of the valley is a hill, on the top of which is a Druids’ circle.’
“‘How far are the houses off the hill?’ I queried.
“‘Various distances,’ Krantz replied; ‘one or two very close to the base of it, and others further away.’
“‘But within a radius of a few miles?’
“Krantz nodded. ‘Oh yes,’ he answered. ‘The valley itself is small. I intend taking you there to-night. I thought we would watch outside one of the houses.’
“‘If you don’t mind,’ I said, ‘I would rather not. Anyway not to-night. Tell me how to get there and I will go alone.’
“Krantz smiled. ‘You are a strange creature, Trobas,’ he said, ‘the strangest in the world. I sometimes wonder if you are an elemental. At all events, you occupy a category all to yourself. Of course go alone, if you would rather. I shall be far happier here, and if you can find a satisfactory solution to the mystery and put an end to the hauntings, I shall be eternally grateful. When will you start, and what will you take with you?’
“‘If that clock of yours is right, Krantz,’ I exclaimed, pointing to a gun-metal timepiece on the mantelshelf, ‘in half an hour. As the night promises to be cold, let me have some strong brandy-and-water, a dozen oatmeal biscuits, a thick rug, and a lantern. Nothing else!’
“Krantz carried out my instructions to the letter. His motor took me to Dolmen Valley, and at eight o’clock I began the ascent of the hill. On reaching the summit, I uttered an exclamation. ‘Someone has been excavating, and quit
e recently!’
“It was precisely what I had anticipated. Some weeks previously, a member of the Lyons literary club, to which I belong, had informed me that a party of geologist friends of his had been visiting the cromlechs of Brittany, and had committed the most barbarous depredations there. Hence, the moment Krantz mentioned the ‘Druidical circle,’ I associated the spot with the visit of the geologists; and knowing only too well that disturbances of ancient burial grounds almost always lead to occult manifestations, I decided to view the place at once.
“That I had not erred in my associations was now only too apparent. Abominable depredations had been committed,—doubtless, by the people to whom I have alluded—and, unless I was grossly mistaken, herein lay the clue to the hauntings.
“The air being icy, I had to wrap both my rug and my overcoat tightly round me to prevent myself from freezing, and every now and then I got up and stamped my feet violently on the hard ground to restore the circulation.
“So far there had been nothing in the atmosphere to warn me of the presence of the superphysical, but, precisely at eleven o’clock, I detected the sudden amalgamation, with the ether, of that enigmatical, indefinable something, to which I have so frequently alluded in my past adventures. And now began that period of suspense which ‘takes it out of me’ even more than the encounter with the phenomenon itself. Over and over again I asked myself the hackneyed, but none the less thrilling question, ‘What form will it take? Will it be simply a phantasm of a dead Celt, or some peculiarly grotesque and awful elemental[1] attracted to the spot by human remains?’
“Minute after minute passed, and nothing happened. It is curious, how at night, especially when the moon is visible, the landscape seems to undergo a complete metamorphosis. Objects not merely increase in size, but vary in shape, and become possessed of an animation suggestive of all sorts of lurking, secretive possibilities. It was so now. The boulders in front and around me, presented the appearance of grotesque beasts, whose hidden eyes I could feel following my every movement with sly interest. The one solitary fir adorning the plateau was a tree no longer but an ogre, pro tempus, concealing the grim terrors of its spectral body beneath its tightly folded limbs. The stones of the circle opposite were ghoulish, hump-backed things that crouched and squatted in all kinds of fantastic attitudes and tried to read my thoughts. The shadows, too, that, swarming from the silent tarns and meadows, ascended with noiseless footsteps the rugged sides of the hill, and, taking cover of even the smallest obstacles, stalked me with unremitting persistency, were no mere common shadows, but intangible, pulpy things that breathed the spirit of the Great Unknown. Yet nothing specified came to frighten me. The stillness was so emphatic that each time I moved, the creaking of my clothes and limbs created echoes. I yawned, and from on all sides of me came a dozen other yawns. I sighed, and the very earth beneath me swayed with exaggerated sympathy.
“The silence irritated me. I grew angry; I coughed, laughed, whistled; and from afar off, from the distant lees, and streams, and spinneys, came a repetition of the noises.
“Then the blackest of clouds creeping slowly over the moor crushed the sheen out of the valley and smothered everything in sable darkness. The silence of death supervened, and my anger turned to fear. Around me there was now—nothing—only a void. Black ether and space! Space! a sanctuary from fear, and yet composed of fear itself. It was the space, the nameless, bottomless something spreading limitless all around me, that, filling me with vague apprehensions, confused me with its terrors. What was it? Whence came it? I threw out my arms and Something, Something which I intuitively knew to be there, but which I cannot explain, receded. I drew them in again, and the same something instantly oppressed me with its close—its very close proximity.
“I gasped for breath and tried to move my arms again—I could not. A sudden rigor held me spellbound, and fixed my eyes on the darkness directly ahead of me. Then, from somewhere in my rear, came a laugh—hoarse, malignant, and bestial, and I was conscious that the something had materialised and was creeping stealthily towards me. Nearer, nearer and nearer it came, and all the time I wondered what, what in the name of God it was like! My anticipations became unbearable, the pulsations of my heart and the feverish throbbing of my temples warning me that, if the climax were postponed much longer, I should either die where I sat, or go mad. That I did neither, was due to a divine inspiration which made me suddenly think of a device that I had once seen on a Druidical stone in Brittany—the sun, a hand with the index and little fingers pointing downwards, and a sprig of mistletoe. The instant I saw them in my mind’s eye, the cords that held me paralytic slackened.
“I sprang up, and there, within a yard of where I had sat, was a figure—the luminous nude figure of a creature, half man and half ape. Standing some six feet high, it had a clumsy, thick-set body, covered in places with coarse, bristly hair, arms of abnormal length and girth, legs swelling with huge muscles and much bowed, and a very large and long dark head. The face was dreadful!—it was the face of something long since dead; and out of the mass of peeling, yellow skin and mouldering tissues gleamed two lurid and wholly malevolent eyes. Our glances met, and, as they did so, a smile of hellish glee suffused its countenance. Then, crouching down in cat-like fashion on its disgusting hands, it made ready to spring. Again the device of the sun and mistletoe arose before me. My fingers instinctively closed on my pocket flashlight. I pressed the button and, as the brilliant, white ray shot forth, the satanical object before me vanished. Then I turned tail, and never ceased running till I had arrived at the spot on the high-road where Krantz’s motor awaited me.
* * * *
“After breakfast next morning, Krantz listened to my account of the midnight adventure in respectful silence.
“‘Then!’ he said, when I had finished, ‘you attribute the hauntings in the valley to the excavations of the geologist Leblanc and his party, at the cromlech six weeks ago?’
“‘Entirely,’ I replied.
“‘And you think, if Leblanc and Cie were persuaded to restore and re-inter the remains they found and carted away, that the disturbances would cease?’
“‘I am sure of it!’ I said.
“‘Then,’ Krantz exclaimed, banging his clenched fist on the table, ‘I will approach them on the subject at once!’
“He did so, and, after much correspondence, eventually received per goods train, a Tate’s sugar cube-box, containing a number of bones of the missing link pattern, which he at once had taken to the Druids’ circle. As soon as they were buried and the marks of the recent excavations obliterated, the hauntings in the houses ceased.”
Boggle Chairs
“Killington Grange,” near Northampton, was once haunted, so my friend Mr Pope informs me, by a chair, and the following is Mr Pope’s own experience of the hauntings, as nearly as possible as he related it to me:—
“Some years ago, shortly before Christmas, I received an invitation from my old friend, William Achrow.
“‘Killington Grange,
‘Northampton.
“‘Dear Pope’ (he wrote)—
“‘My wife and I are entertaining a few guests here this Christmas, and are most anxious to include you among them.
“‘When I tell you that Sir Charles and Lady Kirlby are coming, and that we can offer you something startling in the way of a ghost, you will, I know, need no further inducement to join our party.—Yours, etc.,
“‘W. Achrow.’
“Achrow was a cunning fellow; he knew I would go a thousand miles to meet the Kirlbys, who had been my greatest friends in Ireland, and that ghosts invariably drew me like magnets. At that time I was a bachelor; I had no one to think about but myself, and as I felt pretty sure of a fresh theatrical engagement in the early spring, I was happily careless with regard to expenditure—and to people of limited incomes like myself, staying in country hou
ses means expenditure, a great deal more expenditure than a week or so at an ordinary hotel.
“However, as I have observed, I felt pretty secure just then; I could afford a couple of ‘fivers,’ and would gladly get rid of them to see once more my dear old friends, Sir Charles and Lady K——. Accordingly, I accepted Achrow’s invitation, and the afternoon of December 23rd saw me snugly ensconced in a first-class compartment en route for Castle Street, Northampton. Now, although I am, not unnaturally, perhaps, prejudiced in favour of Ireland and everything that is Irish, I must say I do not think the Emerald Isle shows her best in winter, when the banks of fair Killarney are shorn of their vivid colouring, and the whole country from north to south, and east to west, is carpeted with mud. No, the palm of wintry beauty must assuredly be given to the English Midlands—the Midlands with their stolid and richly variegated woodlands, and their pretty undulating meadows, clad in fleecy garments of the purest, softest, and most glittering snow. It was a typical Midland Christmas when I got to Northampton and took my place in the luxurious closed carriage Achrow had sent to meet me.
“Killington Grange lies at the extremity of the village. It stands in its own grounds of some hundred or so acres, and is approached by a long avenue that winds its way from the lodge gates through endless rows of giant oaks and elms, and slender, silver birches. On either side, to the rear of the trees, lay broad stretches of undulating pasture land, that in one place terminated in the banks of a large lake, now glittering with ice and wrapped in the silence of death.
“The crunching of the carriage wheels on gravel, the termination of the trees, and a great blaze of light announced the close proximity of the house, and in a few seconds I was standing on the threshold of an imposing entrance.
“A footman took my valise, and before I had crossed the spacious hall, I was met by my host and kind old friends, whose combined and hearty greetings were a happy forecast of what was to come. Indeed, at a merrier dinner party I have never sat down, though in God’s truth I have dined in all kinds of places, and with all sorts of people: with Princesses of the Royal blood, aflame with all the hauteur of their race; with earls and counts; with blood-thirsty anarchists; with bishops and Salvationists, miners and policemen, Dagos and Indians (Red and Brown); with Japs, Russians, and Poles; and, in short, with the élite and the rag-tag and bobtail of all climes. But, as I have already said, I had seldom if ever enjoyed a dinner as I enjoyed this one.
The Elliott O’Donnell Supernatural Megapack Page 39
