Voodoo Tales: The Ghost Stories of Henry S Whitehead (Tales of Mystery & The Supernatural) (84 page)

My very good friend and brother, Rudolf Malling

This will serve as instructions for you in the affair of the conduct of my property, the town residence on the south side of the Sunday Market which I herewith, for purposes of custodial administration, place in your care. It is my purpose, on the twenty-ninth of this month, to take ship for England, thence direct to the City of Edinburgh; where my permanent address is to be No. 19, MacKinstrie’s Lane, off Clarges Street, Edinburgh, Scotland. To this address all communications of every kind and sort whatsoever are to be addressed, both personal and concerning the property if need therefor should arise.

I direct and instruct that the house shall be closed permanently upon my departure, and so maintained permanently, the same being in your charge, and the statement of your outlay for this purpose of closing the house fast remitted to me at Edinburgh.

An explanation is due you, as I clearly perceive, for this apparently abrupt decision. I will proceed to make it herewith.

To do so I bind you to complete secrecy during the term of my natural life on the basis as of *****s’p – which, as a Bro. Freemason you will recognize, of course, even though thus informally given you, and keep my confidence as hereinafter follows strict and close as of the Craft.

I will begin, then, by reminding you of what you already know, to wit, that after the death of my mother, Jane Alicia MacMurtrie Gannett, my father, the late Fergus Gannett, Esq., caused me as well as his kinfolk in Scotland a vast and deep grief by resorting to that which has been the curse of numerous Caucasian gentlefolk as well as of many of the baser sort throughout the length and breadth of the West India Islands. In short, my father entered upon a liaison with one Angelica Kofoed, a mulattress attached to our household and who had been the personal attendant of my late mother. This occurred in the year 1857.

As is also well known to you, a son was born of this union; and also my father, who, according to the law of the Danish West Indies, could have discharged his legal obligation by the payment of the sum of four hundred dollars to the mother, chose, instead, in the infatuation of which he appeared possessed, to acknowledge this son and, by due process of our legal code, to legitimize him.

I was a little past my tenth birthday when the child later known as Otto Andreas Gannett was born, here in our old home where I write this. Thereafter my father ceased all relationship with the woman Angelica Kofoed, pensioned her and, shortly after her child was weaned, caused her, the pension being continued and assured her for the term of her natural life, to emigrate to the Island of St Vincent, of which place she was a native.

My legal half-brother, Otto Andreas Gannett, was retained, with a nurse, in our residence, and grew to young manhood under our roof as a member of the family. I may say here that it is more possible that I should have been able to overcome my loathing and repugnance toward my half-brother had it not been that his character, as he developed from childhood into boyhood and from boyhood into youth, was such as definitely to preclude such an attitude.

I will be explicit to the extent of saying plainly that Otto Andreas ‘took after’ the Negro side of his blood heritage, although his mother was but an octoroon, no more than slightly ‘scorched of the blood’, and appearing, like my half-brother, to be a Caucasian. I would not be misunderstood in this. I am very well aware that many of our worthiest citizens here in the West India Islands are of this mixed blood. It is a vexed and somewhat delicate question at best, at least here in our islands. Suffice it to say that the worst Negro characteristics came out as Otto Andreas grew into young manhood. He bears today and doubtless will continue long to bear, an evil reputation, even among the blacks of this island; a reputation for wicked and lecherous inclination, a bad choice of low companions, a self-centered and egotistical demeanor and, worst of all, an incurable inclination toward the wicked and stupid practises of the blacks, with whom, to the shame of our house, he had consorted much before his death in the Autumn of this year, 1876. I refer to what is known as
obeah
.

It is especially in this last mentioned particular that I found it impossible to countenance him. Fortunately my father departed this life five years ago, before this dreadful inclination toward the powers of the Evil One had sufficiently made themselves manifest in Otto Andreas to draw thereto my father’s failing attention. I thank my God for that He was pleased to take my father away before he had that cross to bear.

I will not particularize further than to say that the cumulation of these bad attributes in my half-brother formed the determining cause for my departure for the United States, May second, in this year, 1876. As you are aware, I left Otto Andreas here, with strict adjurations as to his conduct and, thinking to escape from continuous contact with him, which had grown unbearably hateful to me, went to New York, thence to the city of Philadelphia where I attended the Centennial Exposition in the hope of somewhat distracting my mind and, later, before returning toward the beginning of October, visited various of our kinfolk in the States of Maryland and Virginia.

I arrived on this island, sailing from New York via Porto Rico, on the nineteenth of October, landing at West-End and remaining overnight at the residence of our friend, Herr Mulgrav, the Judge of the Frederiksted Reconciling Court, and, through the courtesy of the Reverend Dr Dubois of the West-End English Church, who very considerately loaned me his carriage and horses, drove the seventeen miles to Christiansted the following morning.

I arrived just before breakfast time, about a quarter before one o’clock p.m.

I will be explicit to inform you, my good friend and brother, that I had not been so futile minded as to anticipate that my long absence in America would have anything like a corrective effect upon my half-brother. Indeed I was not far from anticipating that I should have to face new rascalities, new stupidnesses upon his part, perpetrated in my absence from home. I anticipated, indeed, that my homecoming would be anything but a pleasant experience, for of such presage I had, in truth, ample background on which to base such an opinion. I arrived at my house, therefore, in anything but a cheerful frame of mind. I had gone away to secure some respite. I came home to meet I knew not what.

No man in his senses – I say it deliberately, for the purpose of warning you, my friend, as you proceed to read what I am about to write – however, could have anticipated what I did meet! I had, indeed, something like a warning of untowardness at home, on my way across the island from Frederiksted. You know how our island blacks show plainly on their faces what their inmost thoughts are, in some instances; how inscrutable they can be in other affairs. As I passed black people on the road, or in the estate fields, I observed nothing on the faces of those who recognized me save a certain com-miseration. Murmurs came to my ears, indeed, from their mouths, as one or another murmured – ‘Poor young marster!’ Or such remarks as ‘Ooh, Gahd, him comin’ to trouble an’ calamity!’

This, of course, was the opposite of reassuring; yet I was not surprised. I had, you will remember, anticipated trouble, with Otto Andreas as its cause and root.

I will not dissemble that I expected something, as I have remarked, untoward.

I entered a strangely silent house – the first thing that came to me was a most outrageous smell! You are surprised, doubtless, at such a statement. I record the facts. My nostrils were instantly assailed, so soon as I had myself opened the door and stepped within, leaving Dr Dubois’s coachman, Jens, to bring in my hand luggage, with a foul odor comparable to nothing less wretched than a cattle pen!

I say to you that it fairly took me by the throat. I called to the servants as soon as I was within, leaving the door open behind me to facilitate Jens with my bags, and to let out some of that vile stench. I called Herman, the butler, and Josephine and Marianna, maids in the household. I even called out to Amaranth Niles, the cook. At the sound of my voice – the servants had not known of my arrival the night before – Herman and Marianna came running, their faces blank and stupid, in the fashion well known to you when our blacks have something to conceal.

I ordered them to take my bags to my bedroom, turned to give Jens the coachman a gratuity for his trouble, and turned back again to find Josephine staring at me through a doorway. The other two had disappeared by this time with my hand luggage. The rest, the trunks and so forth, heavier articles, were to be sent over from Frederiksted that afternoon by a carter.

‘What is this frightful smell, Josephine?’ I inquired. ‘The whole house is like a cattle pen, my girl. What has happened? Come now, tell me!’

The black girl stood in the doorway, her face quite inscrutable, and wrung her two hands together.

‘Ooh, Gahd, sar, me cahn’t say,’ she replied with that peculiarly irritating false stupidity which they can assume at will.

I said nothing, I did not wish to inaugurate my homecoming with any fault finding. Besides, the horrible smell might very well not be this girl’s fault. I stepped to the left along the inner gallery and into the hall [
footnote: A West Indian drawing room is commonly called the hall.
] through the entrance door, which was shut. I opened it, and stepped in, I say.

My dear friend Malling, prepare yourself. You will be – well – surprised, to put the matter conservatively.

There, in the center of the hall, its neck turned about so as to look toward whoever had just opened the door from the inner gallery, in this case, myself – stood a young, coal-black bullock!

Beside it, on the floor in the middle of the Bokhara rug which my grandfather had brought with him from his voyage to Turkestan in the year 1837, there was a crate, half filled with fresh grass and carrots; and nearby, and also on the rug, stood a large bucket of water. Wisps of the grass hung from the bullock’s mouth as it stared at me for all the world as though to remark, ‘Who is this who intrudes, forsooth, upon my privacy here!’

Malling, I let myself go then. This – a bullock in my hall, in my town house! – this was too much! I rushed back into the gallery crying out for the servants, for Herman and Josephine and Marianna. They came, looking down at me, fearfully, over the balusters of the stairway, their faces gray with fear. I cursed them roundly, as you may well imagine. I conceive that even the godly Dr Dubois himself would at least feel the desire so to express himself were he to return to his rectory and find a bullock stabled in his choicest room!

But all my words elicited nothing save that look of blank stupidity to which I have already referred; and when, in the midst of my diatribe, old Amaranth Niles, the cook, came hastening upon the scene from her kitchen, a long spoon in her fat old hand, she, who had been with us since my birth twenty-eight years before, likewise went stupid.

Suddenly I ceased reviling them for ingrates, for fools, for rapscallions, for gallows birds. It occurred to me, very shortly, that this rascality was none, could be none, of theirs, poor creatures. It was the latest devilment of my half-brother Otto Andreas. I saw it clearly. I collected myself. I addressed poor Herman in a milder tone.

‘Come Herman, get this beast out of the house immediately!’ I pointed toward the now open door into the hall.

But Herman, despite this definite command of mine, never stirred. His face became an ashen hue and he looked at me imploringly. Then, slowly, his hands raised up above his head as he stood there on the stairway looking fearfully over the baluster, he cried out, tremblingly: ‘I cyan’t, sar, ’fore the good God an’ help me de Lord – I cyan’t dislodge de animal!’

I looked back at Herman with a certain degree of calmness. I addressed the man.

‘Where is Mr Otto Andreas?’ I inquired.

At this simple query both maids on the stairs began to weep aloud, and old Amaranth Niles, the cook, who had been staring, pop-eyed and silent through the doorway, turned with an unexpected agility and fled back to her kitchen. Herman, if possible, became a full shade paler. Unsteadily the man forced himself to come down the stairs, holding rigidly to the baluster. He turned and stepped toward me, his face gray and working and the beads of sweat standing thickly and heavily on his forehead. He dropped upon his knees before me there on the gallery floor and, his hands held up above his head, cried out: ‘Him dead,
sar,
from day before yestiddy, sar – it de troof,
me marster!’

I will confess to you, Malling, that the gallery reeled about me at this wholly unexpected news. Nobody had told me the night before. Just possibly my hosts had not been aware of it. Another question presented itself to my tottering mind, a question the answer to which would clear up that matter of not being told.

‘What time did he die, Herman?’ I managed to articulate. I was holding on to the baluster myself now.

‘Late, sar,’ returned Herman, still on his knees, and swaying backward and forward. ‘P’rops two hour after midnight, sar. Him bury de nex’ day, sar, dat am to say ’twas yestiddy afternoon, two o’clock, me marster. De body ain’ keep good, sar, an’ ’sides, all we ain’ made sensible of your arrival, sar.’

So that was why the Mulgravs had not told me. They simply had not known of my half-brother’s death, would not know until today in the ordinary course of events, at that distance from Christiansted.

My first reaction, I will admit, was one of profound relief.