Tales of terror
case of need. The contractor who carried out the work for me suggested
that the passage should be blocked up, to this I would not give my
consent, but insisted on its being left in its original state, and in
this decision I was supported by my wife and daughters. I ought to add
that running parallel with the dining-room, and communicating by a
doorway, was another room of smaller dimensions, but so conveniently
situated and well lighted that I at once appropriated it as a library,
as I had a valuable collection of books.
By the middle of December we had quite settled down, and all felt
charmed with our new home, then we began to send out invitations very
freely to our friends and relatives for Christmas, as we were desirous
of having a good house-warming.
Of course, during the short time I had been in possession I had heard
much gossip and gathered a good many interesting anecdotes about the
property. The fact of its having at last changed hands aroused a great
deal of interest and curiosity over a very extended area, for the
history of Rislip was pretty well known, and the story of the Chancery
suit and the ruin it had brought about had caused general regret, as it
was regarded as a shame that so good a property should be allowed to
run to waste. I found that there was a very curious belief that Rislip
had its familiar spirit--in other words, that it was haunted. I tried
to find out the foundation for this belief, but, as is usually the
case, I was met with the reply--
‘Oh, I’ve never seen anything myself, but I’ve heard of people who
have.’
When I tried to find out these people who, by common account, had had
occular demonstration of the existence of disturbed spirits, I need
scarcely say I failed. It is always so. Neither my wife nor I attached
the slightest serious importance to the current stories. We were amused
by them, and possibly there was just a tendency on our part to regard
people who expressed belief in the supernatural as being far from what
is generally termed ‘strong-minded,’ to use a mild term.
But now, to come to the strangest part of my narrative. I had been
dining one night with my family, and we had had a neighbouring
gentleman and his wife as guests. They had departed, and my wife and
the girls had retired. I had remained to indulge in a final cigar,
and enjoy the comfort of the brightly burning fire and the warm room.
Outside the weather was murky, cold, and dismal. My butler had been
to inquire if I wished for anything more, and my wants having been
attended to, he bade me good-night and went to his room. After that I
fell into a reverie. Possibly I may have dozed. Anyway, I was aroused
to a sense of things mundane by a cold draught of air blowing upon me,
and glancing round I saw, to my amazement, that the secret door or
panel in the wall to which I have already alluded was wide open. Then I
was still further amazed--I might almost say dumfounded--by _seeing a
hand_, only a hand, slowly draw the panel into its place again.
It is almost impossible for me to describe the extraordinary sensation
that crept over me. There was something so uncanny in the whole
proceeding. Now, I have already said I was not a superstitious man, and
I think I may also assert that I was by no means lacking in courage.
Nevertheless, for the moment I was the prey to a feeling of absolute
funk. Then suddenly I thought that a trick was being tried upon me, and
anger got the better of my funk. I seized the poker from the fireplace,
rushed to the panel, got it open with some little difficulty, and
peered into the darkness, but saw nothing; listened intently, but heard
nothing. Next I snatched a candle from the table and proceeded down
the passage, but found no living thing, and the doors were properly
fastened. Returning to the dining-room, I sat down to think, and came
to the conclusion that I had been the victim of a trick of the brain,
and laughed at my own folly. But when a quarter of an hour later I went
upstairs to my bedroom I experienced an unaccountable and absolutely
unusual feeling of nervousness. The next day my first impulse was
to tell my wife of the remarkable incident of the night previous;
my second to do nothing of the sort, but keep it a locked secret in
my own breast. A week later my daughter Phyllis had been with me in
the library. She was a clever shorthand writer, and had been taking
some important letters down from my dictation. As the clock on the
mantelpiece chimed out midnight I told her to cease work and go to her
bed. She wished me good-night, and trotted off.
A few minutes passed, then the door of the library was flung violently
open, and Phyllis, half fainting, looking ghastly pale, and with a
‘scared-to-death’ appearance of face, rushed in and clung wildly to me.
‘What’s the matter, child; what’s the matter?’ I cried in alarm;
but she remained speechless. Moments, perhaps minutes, slipped by,
during which I kept urging her to speak. She found her voice at last
sufficient to jerk out in a breathless way:
‘Oh, pa, I’ve had such a fright. When I got up to the first landing
such a strange-looking man was standing there. I was about to ask him
what he was doing, when he raised his hand in a sort of warning way and
disappeared.’
I laughed, but it wasn’t a genuine laugh, and I pretended to speak
lightly, as I said:
‘My dear child, I’ve been over-working you and your poor tired brain
has seen visions. Come, let me take you upstairs to your room. You must
try and get a good night’s rest. You will be all right to-morrow.’
She gave me a look that was full of meaning. She said with her eyes
as plainly as possible, ‘Don’t try to turn it off in that way. I have
seen what I have seen.’ She had mastered her feelings by this time,
and though she spoke no words, she went upstairs with me until we
reached the first landing, which was lighted in the daytime by a long
stained-glass window. Edging a little closer to me, she whispered,
‘This was where I saw him.’
‘Nonsense, nonsense,’ I answered, though I was far from believing it
was nonsense, but I wanted to reassure her. I escorted her to her
door, saw that her lamp was burning, then kissed her good-night and
descended, and as I went down the last flight of stairs I turned
suddenly, for I was sure I heard footsteps. And close behind me was
a weird-looking man dressed in the costume of a gentleman of Charles
II.’s reign. He appeared to be about sixty-five years of age. Long,
grey, ringleted hair hung about his shoulders. His face wore an
expression of awful anguish.
For a moment I experienced a shock, but I quickly recovered myself and
tried to grasp him, but he was as unsubstantial as the air, and the
uncanniness of the whole business made me involuntarily shrink back.
Then he raised his hands, and drawing down the large lace collar from
his neck, he bared his throat, showing me a tremendous gash that had
severed the windpipe, and from which the blood seemed to pour in a
stream. It was a fearsome sight, I must confess, and I had never before
in the whole course of my existence experienced such an utterly ‘gone’
and helpless feeling as I did in the presence of that supernatural
visitant, and before I had pulled myself together, as the saying is,
the weird spectre raised his hand, pointed upward with an extended
finger, and in an instant had disappeared.
I returned to my library and flung myself into a chair, and I asked
myself seriously whether the incidents of the last quarter of an hour
were not the result of some morbid condition of my own brain. That is
to say, I was disposed to doubt whether my daughter had really rushed
pale and fainting into the room, as I have described, or whether it
wasn’t a figment of my own imagination. But here let me say that I had
always been regarded as an unimaginative person, with, as I have before
said, a scientific mind, which required hard, stern facts to convince
it. How was it then I had come to see visions?
I asked myself this question, and mentally argued the whole thing
out, trying to explain away the vision; but, firstly, there were the
mysterious hand and the sliding panel, and now here was a man of a
bygone age who had horrified me by showing me his throat gashed, and
rent, and bleeding.
I don’t know really how long I sat revolving the problem in my brain,
but I do know that I crept up to bed at last feeling terribly fagged
mentally and physically.
I slept far beyond my usual hour the following morning. My family had
already breakfasted, but Phyllis came and sat with me, and recounted
her previous night’s experiences. There was an unwonted paleness in her
pretty face and a scared look in her eyes. I felt it wise not to say
anything to her about what I myself had seen; but, moved by a sudden
impulse, I said I was going up to London by the next train and would
take her with me.
It was no unusual thing for me to be called away from home at a
moment’s notice, so that my wife was not surprised. Phyllis expressed
her delight at going, and two hours later we were seated in the up
express. On arriving at our destination, I quartered Phyllis at the
house of my sister, while I went to an hotel where I was in the habit
of staying when in town. The following day I called on an old and
esteemed medical friend--a man not only eminent as a physician, but
famous as an author of several erudite works dealing with all forms
of mental disease. I detailed the experiences of myself and daughter
to him, and he looked very grave and puzzled, but before venturing to
express any opinion he said he would like to see Phyllis. So I drove
off at once to my sister’s, and took Phyllis back with me, and without
entering into any particulars I simply remarked that I wanted the
doctor to see her. She expressed surprise by her face, but remained
silent. On arriving at the doctor’s house I requested her to tell him
what she had seen, which she did in a plain, intelligent way. My friend
appeared more than ever puzzled, and, having sent Phyllis out of the
room, he delivered himself somewhat as follows:
‘Well, now, my dear fellow, the facts of the case are these. Both you
and Phyllis are more impressionable than you imagine, and you have
gone through a great deal of excitement lately in connection with your
new quarters. Last night you overtaxed the girl’s brain, and what she
thought she saw was a pure fancy. Her sudden appearance in your room
in a state of nervous agitation, her story, her manner, made a great
impression on you, and what she told you she had seen suggested the
same thing to you.’
‘But how about the hand and the sliding panel?’ I asked.
‘The result also of a morbid condition of the mind,’ he answered.
‘Fancy, fancy, all fancy, my dear sir. Now you and Phyllis go and make
a little journey somewhere. A trip to the South of France, a month at
Monte Carlo, will do you all the good in the world.’
I left my friend’s house far from satisfied. I knew he was sincere in
his belief, but he was wrong in his diagnosis. Nevertheless, I began to
think of carrying out his suggestion and visiting the Riviera. No doubt
I should have done that if it hadn’t been for the fact that three days
later I received a telegram from home, summoning me back at once, as my
wife had been taken ill.
I began to fear now that Rislip was to prove a curse instead of a
blessing to me; and, depressed by an anxiety I had never known before,
I caught the next train out. Phyllis, of course, accompanied me, and
we reached Rislip about ten o’clock at night. I learnt that my wife
had had a fit. The cause nobody knew, but she told me. She had been
sitting in the dining-room alone, when she felt a draught as I had
done. Then to her horror she saw a deathly-white hand sliding the panel