The Empty House and Other Ghost Stories
I think we all understood then, but it was only after many years that
anyone dared to confess what he thought.
There was Matt Morris, my guide; Silver Fizz, whose real name was
unknown, and who bore the title of his favourite drink; and huge Hank
Milligan--all ears and kind intention; and there was Rushton, pouring
out his ready-made tale, with ever-shifting eyes, turning from face to
face, seeking confirmation of details none had witnessed but
himself--and _one other_.
Silver Fizz was the first to recover from the shock of the thing, and to
realise, with the natural sense of chivalry common to most genuine
back-woodsmen, that the man was at a terrible disadvantage. At any rate,
he was the first to start putting the matter to rights.
"Never mind telling it just now," he said in a gruff voice, but with
real gentleness; "get a bite t'eat first and then let her go
afterwards. Better have a horn of whisky too. It ain't all packed yet, I
guess."
"Couldn't eat or drink a thing," cried the other. "Good Lord, don't you
see, man, I want to _talk_ to someone first? I want to get it out of me
to someone who can answer--answer. I've had nothing but trees to talk
with for three days, and I can't carry it alone any longer. Those
cursed, silent trees--I've told it 'em a thousand times. Now, just see
here, it was this way. When we started out from camp--"
He looked fearfully about him, and we realised it was useless to stop
him. The story was bound to come, and come it did.
Now, the story itself was nothing out of the way; such tales are told by
the dozen round any camp fire where men who have knocked about in the
woods are in the circle. It was the way he told it that made our flesh
creep. He was near the truth all along, but he was skimming it, and the
skimming took off the cream that might have saved his soul.
Of course, he smothered it in words--odd words, too--melodramatic,
poetic, out-of-the-way words that lie just on the edge of frenzy. Of
course, too, he kept asking us each in turn, scanning our faces with
those restless, frightened eyes of his, "What would _you_ have done?"
"What else could I do?" and "Was that _my_ fault?" But that was nothing,
for he was no milk-and-water fellow who dealt in hints and suggestions;
he told his story boldly, forcing his conclusions upon us as if we had
been so many wax cylinders of a phonograph that would repeat accurately
what had been told us, and these questions I have mentioned he used to
emphasise any special point that he seemed to think required such
emphasis.
The fact was, however, the picture of what had actually happened was so
vivid still in his own mind that it reached ours by a process of
telepathy which he could not control or prevent. All through his
true-false words this picture stood forth in fearful detail against the
shadows behind him. He could not veil, much less obliterate, it. We
knew; and, I always thought, _he knew that we knew_.
The story itself, as I have said, was sufficiently ordinary. Jake and
himself, in a nine-foot canoe, had upset in the middle of a lake, and
had held hands across the upturned craft for several hours, eventually
cutting holes in her ribs to stick their arms through and grasp hands
lest the numbness of the cold water should overcome them. They were
miles from shore, and the wind was drifting them down upon a little
island. But when they got within a few hundred yards of the island,
they realised to their horror that they would after all drift past it.
It was then the quarrel began. Jake was for leaving the canoe and
swimming. Rushton believed in waiting till they actually had passed the
island and were sheltered from the wind. Then they could make the island
easily by swimming, canoe and all. But Jake refused to give in, and
after a short struggle--Rushton admitted there was a struggle--got free
from the canoe--and disappeared _without a single cry_.
Rushton held on and proved the correctness of his theory, and finally
made the island, canoe and all, after being in the water over five
hours. He described to us how he crawled up on to the shore, and fainted
at once, with his feet lying half in the water; how lost and terrified
he felt upon regaining consciousness in the dark; how the canoe had
drifted away and his extraordinary luck in finding it caught again at
the end of the island by a projecting cedar branch. He told us that the
little axe--another bit of real luck--had caught in the thwart when the
canoe turned over, and how the little bottle in his pocket holding the
emergency matches was whole and dry. He made a blazing fire and searched
the island from end to end, calling upon Jake in the darkness, but
getting no answer; till, finally, so many half-drowned men seemed to
come crawling out of the water on to the rocks, and vanish among the
shadows when he came up with them, that he lost his nerve completely and
returned to lie down by the fire till the daylight came.
He then cut a bough to replace the lost paddles, and after one more
useless search for his lost companion, he got into the canoe, fearing
every moment he would upset again, and crossed over to the mainland. He
knew roughly the position of our camping place, and after paddling day
and night, and making many weary portages, without food or covering, he
reached us two days later.
This, more or less, was the story, and we, knowing whereof he spoke,
knew that every word was literally true, and at the same time went to
the building up of a hideous and prodigious lie.
Once the recital was over, he collapsed, and Silver Fizz, after a
general expression of sympathy from the rest of us, came again to the
rescue.
"But now, Mister, you jest _got_ to eat and drink whether you've a mind
to, or no."
And Matt Morris, cook that night, soon had the fried trout and bacon,
and the wheat cakes and hot coffee passing round a rather silent and
oppressed circle. So we ate round the fire, ravenously, as we had eaten
every night for the past six weeks, but with this difference: that
there was one among us who was more than ravenous--and he gorged.
In spite of all our devices he somehow kept himself the centre of
observation. When his tin mug was empty, Morris instantly passed the
tea-pail; when he began to mop up the bacon grease with the dough on his
fork, Hank reached out for the frying pan; and the can of steaming
boiled potatoes was always by his side. And there was another difference
as well: he was sick, terribly sick before the meal was over, and this
sudden nausea after food was more eloquent than words of what the man
had passed through on his dreadful, foodless, ghost-haunted journey of
forty miles to our camp. In the darkness he thought he would go crazy,
he said. There were voices in the trees, and figures were always lifting
themselves out of the water, or from behind boulders, to look at him and
make awful signs. Jake constantly peered at him through the underbrush,
and everywhere the shadows were moving, with eyes, footsteps, and
following shapes.
We tried hard to talk of other things, but it was no use, for he was
bursting with the rehearsal of his story and refused to allow himself
the chances we were so willing and anxious to grant him. After a good
night's rest he might have had more self-control and better judgment,
and would probably have acted differently. But, as it was, we found it
impossible to help him.
Once the pipes were lit, and the dishes cleared away, it was useless to
pretend any longer. The sparks from the burning logs zigzagged upwards
into a sky brilliant with stars. It was all wonderfully still and
peaceful, and the forest odours floated to us on the sharp autumn air.
The cedar fire smelt sweet and we could just hear the gentle wash of
tiny waves along the shore. All was calm, beautiful, and remote from the
world of men and passion. It was, indeed, a night to touch the soul, and
yet, I think, none of us heeded these things. A bull-moose might almost
have thrust his great head over our shoulders and have escaped
unnoticed. The death of Jake the Swede, with its sinister setting, was
the real presence that held the centre of the stage and compelled
attention.
"You won't p'raps care to come along, Mister," said Morris, by way of a
beginning; "but I guess I'll go with one of the boys here and have a
hunt for it."
"Sure," said Hank. "Jake an' I done some biggish trips together in the
old days, and I'll do that much for'm."
"It's deep water, they tell me, round them islands," added Silver Fizz;
"but we'll find it, sure pop,--if it's thar."
They all spoke of the body as "it."
There was a minute or two of heavy silence, and then Rushton again burst
out with his story in almost the identical words he had used before. It
was almost as if he had learned it by heart. He wholly failed to
appreciate the efforts of the others to let him off.
Silver Fizz rushed in, hoping to stop him, Morris and Hank closely
following his lead.
"I once knew another travellin' partner of his," he began quickly; "used
to live down Moosejaw Rapids way--"
"Is that so?" said Hank.
"Kind o' useful sort er feller," chimed in Morris.
All the idea the men had was to stop the tongue wagging before the
discrepancies became so glaring that we should be forced to take notice
of them, and ask questions. But, just as well try to stop an angry
bull-moose on the run, or prevent Beaver Creek freezing in mid-winter by
throwing in pebbles near the shore. Out it came! And, though the
discrepancy this time was insignificant, it somehow brought us all in a
second face to face with the inevitable and dreaded climax.
"And so I tramped all over that little bit of an island, hoping he
might somehow have gotten in without my knowing it, and always thinking
I _heard that awful last cry of his_ in the darkness--and then the night
dropped down impenetrably, like a damn thick blanket out of the sky,
and--"
All eyes fell away from his face. Hank poked up the logs with his boot,
and Morris seized an ember in his bare fingers to light his pipe,
although it was already emitting clouds of smoke. But the professor
caught the ball flying.
"I thought you said he sank without a cry," he remarked quietly, looking
straight up into the frightened face opposite, and then riddling
mercilessly the confused explanation that followed.
The cumulative effect of all these forces, hitherto so rigorously
repressed, now made itself felt, and the circle spontaneously broke up,
everybody moving at once by a common instinct. The professor's wife left
the party abruptly, with excuses about an early start next morning. She
first shook hands with Rushton, mumbling something about his comfort in
the night.
The question of his comfort, however, devolved by force of circumstances
upon myself, and he shared my tent. Just before wrapping up in my double
blankets--for the night was bitterly cold--he turned and began to
explain that he had a habit of talking in his sleep and hoped I would
wake him if he disturbed me by doing so.
Well, he did talk in his sleep--and it disturbed me very much indeed.
The anger and violence of his words remain with me to this day, and it
was clear in a minute that he was living over again some portion of the
scene upon the lake. I listened, horror-struck, for a moment or two, and
then understood that I was face to face with one of two alternatives: I
must continue an unwilling eavesdropper, or I must waken him. The former
was impossible for me, yet I shrank from the latter with the greatest
repugnance; and in my dilemma I saw the only way out of the difficulty
and at once accepted it.
Cold though it was, I crawled stealthily out of my warm sleeping-bag and
left the tent, intending to keep the old fire alight under the stars and