The Mammoth Book of Haunted House Stories (Mammoth Books) (37 page)

He had time to curse the ill-luck that made them sleep so heavily that night of all nights, and to fear lest the servants had heard the noise their master had been deaf to, and would come hurrying to the spot and spoil the sport. But no one came, and as Armitage stood, the objects in the long gallery became clearer every moment, as his sight accommodated itself to the dim light. “I never noticed before that there was a mirror at the end of the gallery! I should not have believed the moonlight was bright enough for me to see my own reflection so far off, only white stands out so in the dark. But is it my own reflection? Confound it all, the thing’s moving and I’m standing still! I know what it is! It’s Musgrave dressed up to try to give me a fright, and Lawley’s helping him. They’ve forestalled me, that’s why they didn’t come out of their rooms when I made a noise fit to wake the dead. Odd we’re both playing the same practical joke at the same moment! Come on, my counterfeit bogie, and we’ll see which of us turns white-livered first!”

But to Armitage’s surprise, that rapidly became terror, the white figure that he believed to be Musgrave disguised, and like himself playing ghost, advanced towards him, slowly gliding over the floor which its feet did not touch. Armitage’s courage was high, and he determined to hold his ground against the something ingeniously contrived by Musgrave and Lawley to terrify him into belief in the supernatural. But a feeling was creeping over the strong young man that he had never known before. He opened his dry mouth as the thing floated towards him, and there issued a hoarse inarticulate cry, that woke Musgrave and Lawley and brought them to their doors in a moment, not knowing by what strange fright they had been startled out of their sleep. Do not think them cowards that they shrank back appalled form the ghostly forms the moonlight revealed to them in the gallery. But as Armitage vehemently repelled the horror that drifted nearer and nearer to him, the cowl slipped from his head, and his friends recognised his white face, distorted by fear, and, springing towards him as he staggered, supported him in their arms. The Cistercian monk passed them like a white mist that sank into the wall, and Musgrave and Lawley were alone with the dead body of their friend, whose masquerading dress had become his shroud.

A Night at a Cottage . . .

Richard Hughes

On the evening that I am considering I passed by some ten or twenty cosy barns and sheds without finding one to my liking; for Worcestershire lanes are devious and muddy, and it was nearly dark when I found an empty cottage set back from the road in a little bedraggled garden. There had been heavy rain earlier in the day, and the straggling fruit-trees still wept over it.

But the roof looked sound, there seemed no reason why it should not be fairly dry inside – as dry, at any rate, as I was likely to find anywhere.

I decided; and with a long look up the road, and a long look down the road, I drew an iron bar from the lining of my coat and forced the door, which was held only by a padlock and two staples. Inside, the darkness was damp and heavy; I struck a match, and with its haloed light I saw the black mouth of a passage somewhere ahead of me; and then it spluttered out. So I closed the door carefully, though I had little reason to fear passers-by at such a dismal hour and in so remote a lane; and lighting another match, I crept down this passage to a little room at the far end, where the air was a bit clearer, for all that the window was boarded across. Moreover, there was a little rusted stove in this room; and thinking it too dark for any to see the smoke, I ripped up part of the wainscot with my knife, and soon was boiling my tea over a bright, small fire, and drying some of the day’s rain out of my steamy clothes. Presently I piled the stove with wood to its top bar, and setting my boots where they would best dry, I stretched my body out to sleep.

I cannot have slept very long, for when I woke the fire was still burning brightly. It is not easy to sleep for long, anyhow, on the level boards of a floor, for the limbs grow numb, and any movement wakes. I turned over, and was about to go again to sleep when I was startled to hear steps in the passage. As I have said, the window was boarded, and there was no other door from the little room – no cupboard even – in which to hide. It occurred to me rather grimly that there was nothing to do but to sit up and face the music, and that would probably mean being hauled back to Worcester Jail, which I had left two bare days before, and where, for various reasons, I had no anxiety to be seen again.

The stranger did not hurry himself, but presently walked slowly down the passage, attracted by the light of the fire; and when he came in he did not seem to notice me where I lay huddled in a corner, but walked straight over to the stove and warmed his hands at it. He was dripping wet – wetter than I should have thought it possible for a man to get, even on such a rainy night, and his clothes were old and worn. The water dripped from him on to the floor; he wore no hat, and the straight hair over his eyes dripped water that sizzled spitefully on the embers.

It occurred to me at once that he was no lawful citizen, but another wanderer like myself: a gentleman of the road; so I gave him some sort of greeting, and we were presently in conversation. He complained much of the cold and the wet, and huddled himself over the fire, his teeth chattering and his face an ill white.

“No,” I said, “it is no decent weather for the road, this. But I wonder this cottage isn’t more frequented, for it’s a tidy little bit of a cottage.”

Outside, the pale dead sunflowers and giant weeds stirred in the rain.

“Time was,” he answered, “there wasn’t a tighter little cot in the co-anty, nor a purtier garden. A regular little parlour, she was. But now no folk’ll live in it, and there’s very few tramps will stop here either.”

There were none of the rags and tins and broken food about that you find in a place where many beggars are used to stay.

“Why’s that?” I asked.

He gave a very troubled sigh before answering.

“Gho-asts,” he said; “gho-asts. Him that lived here. It is a mighty sad tale, and I’ll not tell it to you; but the upshot of it was that he drownded himself, down to the mill-pond. All slimy, he was, and floating, when they pulled him out of it. There are fo-aks have seen un floating on the pond, and fo-aks have seen un set round the corner of the school, waiting for his childer. Seems as if he had forgotten, like how they were all gone dead, and the why he drownded hisself. But there are some say he walks up and down this cottage, up and down; like when the smallpox had ’em, and they couldn’t sleep but if they heard his feet going up and down by their do-ars. Drownded hisself down to the pond, he did; and now he Walks.”

The stranger sighed again, and I could hear the water squelch in his boots as he moved himself.

“But it doesn’t do for the like of us to get superstitious,” I answered. “It wouldn’t do for us to get seeing ghosts, or many’s the wet night we’d be lying in the roadway.”

“No,” he said; “no, it wouldn’t do at all. I never had belief in Walks myself.”

I laughed.

“Nor I that,” I said. “I never see ghosts, whoever may.”

He looked at me again in his queer melancholy fashion.

“No,” he said. “ ’Spect you don’t ever. Some folk do-ant. It’s hard enough for poor fellows to have no money to their lodging, apart from gho-asts sceering them.”

“It’s the coppers, not spooks, make me sleep uneasy,” said I. “What with coppers, and meddlesome-minded folk, it isn’t easy to get a night’s rest nowadays.”

The water was still oozing from his clothes all about the floor, and a dank smell went up from him.

“God, man!” I cried, “can’t you
never
get dry?”

“Dry?” He made a little coughing laughter. “Dry? I shan’t never be dry . . . ’ Tisn’t the likes of us that ever get dry, be it wet
or
fine, winter
or
summer. See that!”

He thrust his muddy hands up to the wrist in the fire, glowering over it fiercely and madly. But I caught up my two boots and ran crying out into the night.

The Considerate Hosts

Thorp McClusky

Midnight.

It was raining, abysmally. Not the kind of rain in which people sometimes fondly say they like to walk, but rain that was heavy and pitiless, like the rain that fell in France during the war. The road, unrolling slowly beneath Marvin’s headlights, glistened like the flank of a great backsnake; almost Marvin expected it to writhe out from beneath the wheels of his car. Marvin’s small coupe was the only man-made thing that moved through the seething night.

Within the car, however, it was like a snug little cave. Marvin might almost have been in a theater, unconcernedly watching some somber drama in which he could revel without really being touched. His sensation was almost one of creepiness; it was incredible that he could be so close to the rain and still so warm and dry. He hoped devoutly that he would not have a flat tire on a night like this!