Animal Ghosts, Elliott O'Donnell [classic literature list txt] 📗

side, and the trees united their fantastically forked branches overhead. I thought I had never seen so dismal-looking a spot, and a sudden lowering of the temperature made me draw my overcoat tighter round me.

"That—oh, a night bird of some sort," Mr. Baldwin replied. "An ugly sound, wasn't it? Beastly things, I can't imagine why they were created. Whoa—steady there, steady."

The horse reared as he spoke, and taking a violent plunge forward, set off at a wild gallop. A moment later, and I uttered an exclamation of astonishment. Keeping pace with us, although apparently not moving at more than an ordinary walking pace, was a man of medium height, dressed in a panama hat and albert coat. He had a thin, aquiline nose, a rather pronounced chin, was clean-shaven, and had a startlingly white complexion. By the side of him trotted two poodles, whose close-cropped skins showed out with remarkable perspicuity.

"Who the deuce is he?" I asked, raising my voice to a shout on account of the loud clatter made by the horse's hoofs and the wheels.

"Who? what?" Mr. Baldwin shouted in return.

"Why, the man walking along with us!"

"Man! I can see no man!" Mr. Baldwin growled.

I looked at him curiously. It may, of course, have been due to the terrific speed we were going, to the difficulty of holding in the horse, but his cheeks were ashy pale, and his teeth chattered.

"Do you mean to say," I cried, "that you can see no figure walking on my side of the horse and actually keeping pace with it?"

"Of course I can't," Mr. Baldwin snapped. "No more can you. It's an hallucination caused by the moonlight through the branches overhead. I've experienced it more than once."

"Then why don't you have it now?" I queried.

"Don't ask so many questions, please," Mr. Baldwin shouted. "Don't you see it is as much as I can do to hold the brute in? Heaven preserve us, we were nearly over that time."

The trap rose high in the air as he spoke, and then dropped with such a jolt that I was nearly thrown off, and only saved myself by the skin of my teeth. A few yards more the spinney ceased, and we were away out in the open country, plunging and galloping as if our very souls depended on it. From all sides queer and fantastic shadows of objects, which certainly had no material counterparts in the moon-kissed sward of the rich, ripe meadows, rose to greet us, and filled the lane with their black-and-white wavering, ethereal forms. The evening was one of wonders for which I had no name—wonders associated with an iciness that was far from agreeable. I was not at all sure which I liked best—the black, Stygian, tree-lined part of the road we had just left, or the wide ocean of brilliant moonbeams and streaked suggestions.

The figures of the man and the dogs were equally vivid in each. Though I could no longer doubt they were nothing mortal, they were altogether unlike what I had imagined ghosts. Like the generality of people who are psychic and who have never had an experience of the superphysical, my conception of a phantasm was a "thing" in white that made ridiculous groanings and still more ridiculous clankings of chains. But here was something different, something that looked—save, perhaps, for the excessive pallor of its cheeks—just like an ordinary man. I knew it was not a man, partly on account of its extraordinary performance—no man, even if running at full speed, could keep up with us like that; partly on account of the unusual nature of the atmosphere—which was altogether indefinable—it brought with it; and also because of my own sensations—my intense horror which could not, I felt certain, have been generated by anything physical.

I cogitated all this in my mind as I gazed at the figure, and in order to make sure it was no hallucination, I shut first one eye and then the other, covering them alternately with the palm of my hand. The figure, however, was still there, still pacing along at our side with the regular swing, swing of the born walker. We kept on in this fashion till we arrived at a rusty iron gate leading, by means of a weed-covered path, to a low, two-storied white house. Here the figures left us, and as it seemed to me vanished at the foot of the garden wall.

"This is the house," Mr. Baldwin panted, pulling up with the greatest difficulty, the horse evincing obvious antipathy to the iron gate. "And these are the keys. I'm afraid you must go in alone, as I dare not leave the animal even for a minute."

"Oh, all right," I said. "I don't mind, now that the ghost, or whatever you like to call it, has gone; I'm myself again."

I jumped down, and threading my way along the bramble-entangled path, reached the front door. On opening it, I hesitated. The big, old-fashioned hall, with the great, frowning staircase leading to the gallery overhead, the many open doors showing nought but bare, deserted boards within, the grim passages, all moonlit and peopled only with queer flickering shadows, suggested much that was terrifying. I fancied I heard noises, noises like stealthy footsteps moving from room to room, and tiptoeing along the passages and down the staircase. Once my heart almost stopped beating as I saw what, at first, I took to be a white face peering at me from a far recess, but which I eventually discovered was only a daub of whitewash; and, once again, my hair all but rose on end, when one of the doors at which I was looking swung open and something came forth. Oh, the horror of that moment, as long as I live I shall never forget it. The something was a cat, just a rather lean but otherwise material, black Tom; yet, in the state my nerves were then, it created almost as much horror as if it had been a ghost. Of course, it was the figure of the walking man that was the cause of all this nervousness; had it not appeared to me I should doubtless have entered the house with the utmost sang-froid, my mind set on nothing but the condition of the walls, drains, etc. As it was, I held back, and it was only after a severe mental struggle I summoned up the courage to leave the doorway and explore. Cautiously, very cautiously, with my heart in my mouth, I moved from room to room, halting every now and then in dreadful suspense as the wind, soughing through across the open land behind the house, blew down the chimneys and set the window-frames jarring. At the commencement of one of the passages I was immeasurably startled to see a dark shape poke forward, and then spring hurriedly back, and was so frightened that I dared not advance to see what it was. Moment after moment sped by, and I still stood there, the cold sweat oozing out all over me, and my eyes fixed in hideous expectation on the blank wall. What was it? What was hiding there? Would it spring out on me if I went to see? At last, urged on by a fascination I found impossible to resist, I crept down the passage, my heart throbbing painfully and my whole being overcome with the most sickly anticipations. As I drew nearer to the spot, it was as much as I could do to breathe, and my respiration came in quick jerks and gasps. Six, five, four, two feet and I was at the dreaded angle. Another step—taken after the most prodigious battle—and—NOTHING sprang out on me. I was confronted only with a large piece of paper that had come loose from the wall, and flapped backwards and forwards each time the breeze from without rustled past it. The reaction after such an agony of suspense was so great, that I leaned against the wall, and laughed till I cried. A noise, from somewhere away in the basement, calling me to myself, I went downstairs and investigated. Again a shock—this time more sudden, more acute. Pressed against the window-pane of one of the front reception-rooms was the face of a man—with corpse-like cheeks and pale, malevolent eyes. I was petrified—every drop of my blood was congealed. My tongue glued to my mouth, my arms hung helpless. I stood in the doorway and stared at it. This went on for what seemed to me an eternity. Then came a revelation. The face was not that of a ghost but of Mr. Baldwin, who, getting alarmed at my long absence, had come to look for me.

We left the premises together. All the way back to the town I thought—should I, or should I not, take the house? Seen as I had seen it, it was a ghoulish-looking place—as weird as a Paris catacomb—but then daylight makes all the difference. Viewed in the sunshine, it would be just like any other house—plain bricks and mortar. I liked the situation; it was just far enough away from a town to enable me to escape all the smoke and traffic, and near enough to make shopping easy. The only obstacles were the shadows—the strange, enigmatical shadows I had seen in the hall and passages, and the figure of the walker. Dare I take a house that knew such visitors? At first I said no, and then yes. Something, I could not tell what, urged me to say yes. I felt that a very grave issue was at stake—that a great wrong connected in some manner with the mysterious figure awaited righting, and that the hand of Fate pointed at me as the one and only person who could do it.

"Are you sure the house isn't haunted?" I demanded, as we slowly rolled away from the iron gate, and I leaned back in my seat to light my pipe.

"Haunted!" Mr. Baldwin scoffed, "why, I thought you didn't believe in ghosts—laughed at them."

"No more I do believe in them," I retorted, "but I have children, and we know how imaginative children are."

"I can't undertake to stop their imaginations."

"No, but you can tell me whether anyone else has imagined anything there. Imagination is sometimes very infectious."

"As far as I know, then, no; leastways, I have not heard tell of it."

"Who was the last tenant?"

"Mr. Jeremiah Dance."

"Why did he leave?"

"How do I know? Got tired of being there, I suppose."

"How long was he there?"

"Nearly three years."

"Where is he now?"

"That's more than I can say. Why do you wish to know?"

"Why!" I repeated. "Because it is more satisfactory to me to hear about the house from someone who has lived in it. Has he left no address?"

"Not that I know of, and it's more than two years since he was here."

"What! The house has been empty all that time?"

"Two years is not very long. Houses—even town houses—are frequently unoccupied for longer than that. I think you'll like it."

I did not speak again till the drive was over, and we drew up outside the landlord's house. I then said, "Let me have an agreement. I've made up my mind to take it. Three years and the option to stay on."

That was just like me. Whatever I did, I did on the spur of the moment, a mode of procedure that often led me into difficulties.

A month later and my wife, children, servants, and I were all ensconced in the Crow's Nest.

That was in the beginning of October. Well, the month passed by, and November was fairly in before anything remarkable happened. It then came about in this fashion.

Jennie, my eldest child, a self-willed and rather bad-tempered girl of about twelve, evading the vigilance of her mother, who had forbidden her to go out as she had a cold, ran to the gate one evening to see if I was anywhere in sight. Though barely five o'clock, the moon was high in the sky,