Byways of Ghost-Land Part 11

"'Well,' he said, 'I always understood you Corsicans were superst.i.tious, but this beats everything. The regulation stereotype ghost in armour and clanking chains, eh! Do you know what the sounds were, Baroness? Rats!'

and he smiled odiously.

"Then a sudden idea flashed across me. 'Look here, Mr Vercoe,' I exclaimed, 'there is one room in our Castle I defy even you--sceptic as you are--to sleep in. It is the Barceleri Chamber, called after my ancestor, Barceleri Paoli. He visited China in the fifteenth century, bringing back with him a number of Chinese curiosities, and a Buddha which I shrewdly suspect he had stolen from a Canton temple. The room is much the same as when my ancestor occupied it, for no one has slept in it since. Moreover, the servants declare that the noises they so frequently hear come from it. But, of course, you won't mind spending a night in it?'

"Mr Vercoe laughed. 'He, he, he! Only too delighted. Give me a bottle of your most excellent vintage, and I defy any ghost that was ever created!'

"He was as good as his word, Mr O'Donnell, and though he had advised the contrary, we--that is to say, my mother, my husband, our two old servants and I--sat up in one of the rooms close at hand.

"Eleven, twelve, one, two, and three o'clock struck, and we were beginning to wish we had taken his advice and gone to bed, when we heard the most appalling, agonising, soul-rending screams for help. We rushed out, and, as we did so, the door of Mr Vercoe's room flew open and something--something white and glistening--bounded into the candle-light.

"We were so shocked, so absolutely petrified with terror, that it was a second or so before we realised that it was Mr Vercoe--not the Mr Vercoe we knew, but an entirely different Mr Vercoe--a Mr Vercoe without a st.i.tch of clothing, and with a face metamorphosed into a lurid, solid block of horror, overspreading which was a suspicion of something--something too dreadful to name, but which we could have sworn was utterly at variance with his nature. Close at his heels was the blurred outline of something small and unquestionably horrid. I cannot define it. I dare not attempt to diagnose the sensations it produced.

Apart from a deadly, nauseating fear, they were mercifully novel.

"Das.h.i.+ng past us, Mr Vercoe literally hurled himself along the corridor, and with almost superhuman strides, disappeared downstairs. A moment later, and the clas.h.i.+ng of the hall door told us he was in the open air.

A breathless silence fell on us, and for some seconds we were all too frightened to move. My husband was the first to pull himself together.

"'Come along!' he cried, gripping one of the trembling servants by the arm. 'Come along instantly! We must keep him in sight at all costs,'

and, bidding me remain where I was, he raced downstairs.

"After a long search he eventually discovered Mr Vercoe lying at full length on the gra.s.s--insensible.

"For some weeks our friend's condition was critical--on the top of a violent shock to the system, sufficient in itself to endanger life, he had taken a severe chill, which resulted in double pneumonia. However, thanks to a bull-dog const.i.tution, typically English, he recovered, and we then begged him to give us an account of all that had happened.

"'I cannot!' he said. 'My one desire is to forget everything that happened on that awful night.'

"He was obdurate, and our curiosity was, therefore, doomed to remain unsatisfied. Both my husband and I, however, felt quite sure that the image of Buddha was at the bottom of the mischief, and, as there chanced just then to be an English doctor staying at a neighbouring chateau, who was on his way to China, we entrusted the image to him, on the understanding that he would place it in a Buddhist temple. He deceived us, and, returning almost immediately to England, took the image with him. We subsequently learned that within three months this man was divorced, that he murdered a woman in Clapham Rise, and, in order to escape arrest, poisoned himself.

"The image then found its way to a p.a.w.nbroker's establishment in Houndsditch, which shortly afterwards was burned to the ground. Where it is now, I cannot definitely say, but I have been told that an image of Buddha is the sole occupant of an empty house in the Shepherd's Bush Road--a house that is now deemed haunted. These are the experiences I wanted to tell you, Mr O'Donnell. What do you think of them?"

"I think," I said, "they are of absorbing interest. Can you see any a.s.sociation in the two hauntings--any possible connection between what you heard and what Mr Vercoe saw?"

A look of perplexity crossed the Baroness's face. "I hardly know," she said. "What is your opinion on that point?"

"That they are distinct--absolutely distinct. The phenomena you heard are periodical re-enactions, (either by the earth-bound spirits of the actual victim and perpetrators, or by impersonating phantoms), of a crime once committed within the Castle walls. A girl was obviously murdered in the chapel and her coffin dragged into the dungeons, where, no doubt, her remains are to be found. I presume it was her spirit you heard tintinnabulating. Very possibly, if her skeleton were unearthed and re-interred in an orthodox fas.h.i.+on, the hauntings would cease.

"Now, with regard to your friend's experience. The blurred figure you saw pursuing the engineer was not the image of Buddha--it was one of Mr Vercoe's many personalities, extracted from him by the image of Buddha.

We are all, as you are aware, complex creatures, all composed of diverse selves, each self possessing a specific shape and individuality. The more animal of these separate selves, the higher spiritual forces attaching themselves to certain localities and symbols have the power of drawing out of us, and eventually destroying. The higher spiritual forces, however, do not a.s.sociate themselves with all crucifixes and Buddhas, but only with those moulded by true believers. For instance, a Buddha fas.h.i.+oned for mere gain, and by a person who was not a genuine follower of the prophet, would have no power of attraction.

"I have proved all this, experimentally, times without number.

"Mr Vercoe must have had--as indeed many of us have--vices, in all probability, little suspected. The close proximity of the Buddha acted on them, and they began to leave his body and form a shape of their own.

Had he allowed them to do so, all might have gone well; they would have been effectually overcome by the higher spiritual forces attached to the Buddha. But as soon as he saw a figure beginning to form--and no doubt it was very dreadful--he lost his head. His shrieks interrupted the work, the power of the Buddha was, _pro tempus_, at an end, and the extracted personality commenced at once to re-enter Vercoe. Rus.h.i.+ng at him with that end in view, it so terrified him that he fled from the room, and it was at that stage that you appeared upon the scene. What followed is, of course, pure conjecture on my part, but I fear, I greatly fear, that by the time Mr Vercoe became unconscious the mischief was done, and the latter's evil personality had once again united with his other personalities."

"And what would be the after-effect, Mr O'Donnell?" the Baroness inquired anxiously.

"I fear a serious one," I replied evasively. "In the case of the doctor you mentioned, who committed murder, an evil ego had doubtless been expelled, and, receiving a rebuff, had reunited, for after a reunion the evil personality usually receives a new impetus and grows with amazing rapidity. Have you heard from Mr Vercoe lately?"

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 gra.s.s, 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 st.u.r.dy 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 alt.i.tude,--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 Francois, and will persist in wearing hats and heels that outrage alike every sense of decency and good form, I hustled into the station, and, rus.h.i.+ng down the steps, just succeeded in catching the Carnac train. After a journey which, for slowness, most a.s.suredly 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.'