The Empty House and Other Ghost Stories
Then, just when the tension was becoming unbearable, a noise relieved
the gripping silence. It was wood knocking against wood, and it came
from the farther end of the room. The steps had moved over to the
fireplace. A sliding sound almost immediately followed it and then
silence closed again over everything like a pall.
For another five minutes Shorthouse waited, and then the suspense became
too much. He could not stand that open door! The candles were close
beside him and he struck a match and lit them, expecting in the sudden
glare to receive at least a terrific blow. But nothing happened, and he
saw at once that the room was entirely empty. Walking over with the
pistol cocked he peered out into the darkness of the landing and then
closed the door and turned the key. Then he searched the room--bed,
cupboard, table, curtains, everything that could have concealed a man;
but found no trace of the intruder. The owner of the footsteps had
disappeared like a ghost into the shadows of the night. But for one fact
he might have imagined that he had been dreaming: _the bag had
vanished_!
There was no more sleep for Shorthouse that night. His watch pointed to
4 a.m. and there were still three hours before daylight. He sat down at
the table and continued his sketches. With fixed determination he went
on with his drawing and began a new outline of the man's head. There was
something in the expression that continually evaded him. He had no
success with it, and this time it seemed to him that it was the eyes
that brought about his discomfiture. He held up his pencil before his
face to measure the distance between the nose and the eyes, and to his
amazement he saw that a change had come over the features. The eyes were
no longer open. _The lids had closed!_
For a second he stood in a sort of stupefied astonishment. A push would
have toppled him over. Then he sprang to his feet and held a candle
close up to the picture. The eye-lids quivered, the eye-lashes trembled.
Then, right before his gaze, the eyes opened and looked straight into
his own. Two holes were cut in the panel and this pair of eyes, human
eyes, just fitted them.
As by a curious effect of magic, the strong fear that had governed him
ever since his entry into the house disappeared in a second. Anger
rushed into his heart and his chilled blood rose suddenly to boiling
point. Putting the candle down, he took two steps back into the room and
then flung himself forward with all his strength against the painted
panel. Instantly, and before the crash came, the eyes were withdrawn,
and two black spaces showed where they had been. The old huntsman was
eyeless. But the panel cracked and split inwards like a sheet of thin
cardboard; and Shorthouse, pistol in hand, thrust an arm through the
jagged aperture and, seizing a human leg, dragged out into the room--the
Jew!
Words rushed in such a torrent to his lips that they choked him. The old
Hebrew, white as chalk, stood shaking before him, the bright pistol
barrel opposite his eyes, when a volume of cold air rushed into the
room, and with it a sound of hurried steps. Shorthouse felt his arm
knocked up before he had time to turn, and the same second Garvey, who
had somehow managed to burst open the window came between him and the
trembling Marx. His lips were parted and his eyes rolled strangely in
his distorted face.
"Don't shoot him! Shoot in the air!" he shrieked. He seized the Jew by
the shoulders.
"You damned hound," he roared, hissing in his face. "So I've got you at
last. That's where your vacuum is, is it? I know your vile hiding-place
at last." He shook him like a dog. "I've been after him all night," he
cried, turning to Shorthouse, "all night, I tell you, and I've got him
at last."
Garvey lifted his upper lip as he spoke and showed his teeth. They shone
like the fangs of a wolf. The Jew evidently saw them too, for he gave a
horrid yell and struggled furiously.
Before the eyes of the secretary a mist seemed to rise. The hideous
shadow again leaped into Garvey's face. He foresaw a dreadful battle,
and covering the two men with his pistol he retreated slowly to the
door. Whether they were both mad, or both criminal, he did not pause to
inquire. The only thought present in his mind was that the sooner he
made his escape the better.
Garvey was still shaking the Jew when he reached the door and turned the
key, but as he passed out on to the landing both men stopped their
struggling and turned to face him. Garvey's face, bestial, loathsome,
livid with anger; the Jew's white and grey with fear and horror;--both
turned towards him and joined in a wild, horrible yell that woke the
echoes of the night. The next second they were after him at full speed.
Shorthouse slammed the door in their faces and was at the foot of the
stairs, crouching in the shadow, before they were out upon the landing.
They tore shrieking down the stairs and past him, into the hall; and,
wholly unnoticed, Shorthouse whipped up the stairs again, crossed the
bedroom and dropped from the balcony into the soft snow.
As he ran down the drive he heard behind him in the house the yells of
the maniacs; and when he reached home several hours later Mr. Sidebotham
not only raised his salary but also told him to buy a new hat and
overcoat, and send in the bill to him.
SKELETON LAKE: AN EPISODE IN CAMP
The utter loneliness of our moose-camp on Skeleton Lake had impressed us
from the beginning--in the Quebec backwoods, five days by trail and
canoe from civilisation--and perhaps the singular name contributed a
little to the sensation of eeriness that made itself felt in the camp
circle when once the sun was down and the late October mists began
rising from the lake and winding their way in among the tree trunks.
For, in these regions, all names of lakes and hills and islands have
their origin in some actual event, taking either the name of a chief
participant, such as Smith's Ridge, or claiming a place in the map by
perpetuating some special feature of the journey or the scenery, such as
Long Island, Deep Rapids, or Rainy Lake.
All names thus have their meaning and are usually pretty recently
acquired, while the majority are self-explanatory and suggest human and
pioneer relations. Skeleton Lake, therefore, was a name full of
suggestion, and though none of us knew the origin or the story of its
birth, we all were conscious of a certain lugubrious atmosphere that
haunted its shores and islands, and but for the evidences of recent
moose tracks in its neighbourhood we should probably have pitched our
tents elsewhere.
For several hundred miles in any direction we knew of only one other
party of whites. They had journeyed up on the train with us, getting in
at North Bay, and hailing from Boston way. A common goal and object had
served by way of introduction. But the acquaintance had made little
progress. This noisy, aggressive Yankee did not suit our fancy much as a
possible neighbour, and it was only a slight intimacy between his chief
guide, Jake the Swede, and one of our men that kept the thing going at
all. They went into camp on Beaver Creek, fifty miles and more to the
west of us.
But that was six weeks ago, and seemed as many months, for days and
nights pass slowly in these solitudes and the scale of time changes
wonderfully. Our men always seemed to know by instinct pretty well "whar
them other fellows was movin'," but in the interval no one had come
across their trails, or once so much as heard their rifle shots.
Our little camp consisted of the professor, his wife, a splendid shot
and keen woods-woman, and myself. We had a guide apiece, and hunted
daily in pairs from before sunrise till dark.
It was our last evening in the woods, and the professor was lying in my
little wedge tent, discussing the dangers of hunting alone in couples in
this way. The flap of the tent hung back and let in fragrant odours of
cooking over an open wood fire; everywhere there were bustle and
preparation, and one canoe already lay packed with moose horns, her nose
pointing southwards.
"If an accident happened to one of them," he was saying, "the survivor's
story when he returned to camp would be entirely unsupported evidence,
wouldn't it? Because, you see--"
And he went on laying down the law after the manner of professors, until
I became so bored that my attention began to wander to pictures and
memories of the scenes we were just about to leave: Garden Lake, with
its hundred islands; the rapids out of Round Pond; the countless vistas
of forest, crimson and gold in the autumn sunshine; and the starlit
nights we had spent watching in cold, cramped positions for the wary
moose on lonely lakes among the hills. The hum of the professor's voice
in time grew more soothing. A nod or a grunt was all the reply he looked
for. Fortunately, he loathed interruptions. I think I could almost have
gone to sleep under his very nose; perhaps I did sleep for a brief
interval.
Then it all came about so quickly, and the tragedy of it was so
unexpected and painful, throwing our peaceful camp into momentary
confusion, that now it all seems to have happened with the uncanny
swiftness of a dream.
First, there was the abrupt ceasing of the droning voice, and then the
running of quick little steps over the pine needles, and the confusion
of men's voices; and the next instant the professor's wife was at the
tent door, hatless, her face white, her hunting bloomers bagging at the
wrong places, a rifle in her hand, and her words running into one
another anyhow.
"Quick, Harry! It's Rushton. I was asleep and it woke me. Something's
happened. You must deal with it!"
In a second we were outside the tent with our rifles.
"My God!" I heard the professor exclaim, as if he had first made the
discovery. "It _is_ Rushton!"
I saw the guides helping--dragging--a man out of a canoe. A brief space
of deep silence followed in which I heard only the waves from the canoe
washing up on the sand; and then, immediately after, came the voice of
a man talking with amazing rapidity and with odd gaps between his words.
It was Rushton telling his story, and the tones of his voice, now
whispering, now almost shouting, mixed with sobs and solemn oaths and
frequent appeals to the Deity, somehow or other struck the false note at
the very start, and before any of us guessed or knew anything at all.
Something moved secretly between his words, a shadow veiling the stars,
destroying the peace of our little camp, and touching us all personally
with an undefinable sense of horror and distrust.
I can see that group to this day, with all the detail of a good
photograph: standing half-way between the firelight and the darkness, a
slight mist rising from the lake, the frosty stars, and our men, in
silence that was all sympathy, dragging Rushton across the rocks towards
the camp fire. Their moccasins crunched on the sand and slipped several
times on the stones beneath the weight of the limp, exhausted body, and
I can still see every inch of the pared cedar branch he had used for a
paddle on that lonely and dreadful journey.
But what struck me most, as it struck us all, was the limp exhaustion of
his body compared to the strength of his utterance and the tearing rush
of his words. A vigorous driving-power was there at work, forcing out
the tale, red-hot and throbbing, full of discrepancies and the strangest
contradictions; and the nature of this driving-power I first began to
appreciate when they had lifted him into the circle of firelight and I
saw his face, grey under the tan, terror in the eyes, tears too, hair
and beard awry, and listened to the wild stream of words pouring forth
without ceasing.