Byways of Ghost-Land Part 12

"'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 quite recently!'

"It was precisely what I had antic.i.p.ated. 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 a.s.sociated 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 a.s.sociations 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?'

[1] Either a barrowvian or vagrarian. Vide _Haunted Houses of London_ (published by Eveleigh Nash) and _Ghostly Phenomena_ (published by Werner Laurie).

"Minute after minute pa.s.sed, 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 att.i.tudes 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 repet.i.tion 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 s.p.a.ce! s.p.a.ce! a sanctuary from fear, and yet composed of fear itself. It was the s.p.a.ce, 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--hoa.r.s.e, malignant, and b.e.s.t.i.a.l, 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 G.o.d it was like! My antic.i.p.ations 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 coa.r.s.e, 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 ma.s.s 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 h.e.l.lish glee suffused its countenance. Then, crouching down in cat-like fas.h.i.+on 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 b.u.t.ton 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 houses 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-cla.s.s 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 a.s.suredly 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 s.p.a.cious 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 G.o.d'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 j.a.ps, Russians, and Poles; and, in short, with the _elite_ 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.

"Possibly the reason was not far to find--there was little or no formality; we were all old friends; we had one cause in common--love of Ireland; we hadn't met for years, and we knew not if we should ever meet again, for our paths in life were not likely to converge.

"But Christmas is no season for prigs and dullards, and, possibly, this rare enjoyment was, in no small measure, due to the delightful snugness and, at the same time, artistic nature of our surroundings, and to the excellence, the surpa.s.sing excellence of the vintage, which made our hearts mellow and our tongues loose.

"Long did our host, Sir Charles, and I sit over the dessert table, after the ladies had left us, filling and refilling our gla.s.ses; and it was close on ten before we repaired to the drawing-room.

"'Lady Kirlby,' I said, seating myself next her on a divan, 'I want to hear about the ghost. Up to the present I confess I have been so taken up with more material and, may I add'--casting a well-measured glance of admiration at her beautifully moulded features and lovely eyes--lovely, in spite of the cruel hand of time which had streaked her chestnut hair with grey--'infinitely more pleasing subjects, that I have not even thought about the superphysical. William, however, informs me that there is a ghost here--he has, of course, told you.'

"But at this very psychological moment Mrs Achrow interrupted: 'Now, no secrets, you two,' she said laughingly, leaning over the back of the divan and tapping Lady Kirlby playfully on the arm. 'There must be no mention of ghosts till it is close on bedtime, and the lights are low.'

"Lady Kirlby gave me a pitying look, but it was of no avail; the word of our hostess was paramount, and I did not learn what was in store for me until it was too late to retreat. At half-past eleven William Achrow turned out the gas, and when we were all seated round the fire, he suggested we should each relate in turn, the most thrilling ghost tale we had ever heard. The idea, being approved of generally, was carried out, and when we had been thrilled, as a.s.suredly we had never been thrilled before, William coolly proclaimed that he had put me in the haunted room.

"'I am sure,' he said, amid a roar of the most unfeeling laughter, in which all but the tender-hearted Lady Kirlby joined, 'that your nerves are now in the most suitable state for psychical investigation, and that it won't be your fault if you don't see the ghost. And a very horrible one it is, at least so I am told, though I cannot say I have ever seen it myself. No! I won't tell you anything about it now--I want to hear your version of it first.'

"With a few more delicate insinuations, made, as he candidly confessed, in the fervent hope of frightening me still more, on the stroke of midnight my friend conducted me to my quarters. 'You will have it all to yourself,' he said, as we traversed a tremendously long and gloomy corridor that connected the two wings of the house, 'for all the rooms on this side are at present unoccupied, and those immediately next to yours haven't been slept in for years--there is something about them that doesn't appeal to my guests. What it is I can't say--I leave that to you. Here we are!' and, as he spoke, he threw open a door. A current of icy cold air slammed it to and blew out my light, and as I groped for the door-handle, I heard my host's footsteps retreating hurriedly down the corridor, whilst he wished me a rather nervous good-night.

"Relighting my candle and shutting the window--Achrow is one of those open-air fiends who never had a bronchial cold in his life, and expects everyone else to be equally immune--I found myself in a room that was well calculated to strike even the most hardened ghost-hunter with awe.

"It was coffin-shaped, large, narrow, and lofty; and floor, panelling, and furniture were of the blackest oak.

"The bedstead, a four-poster of the most funereal type, stood near the fireplace, from which a couple of thick pine logs sent out a ruddy glare; and directly opposite the foot of the bed, with its back to the wall, stood an ebony chair, which, although in a position that should have necessitated its receiving a generous share of the fire's rays, was nevertheless shrouded in such darkness that I could only discern its front legs--a phenomenon that did not strike me as being peculiar till afterwards.