They return at evening A book of ghost stories
fewer terrors one carries through life with one the better, and they
can often be laid by delicate treatment in childhood. Curiously enough
the year before at Frinton he seemed to have no fear of the sea.
The rest of the day passed uneventfully--at least I think I can say so.
After dinner I strolled down to the end of the garden, meaning to go
through the door and have a look at the river. Just as I got my hand
on the latch there came a very sharp, furtive whistle. I turned round
quickly, but seeing no one, concluded it had come from someone in the
lane outside. However, I didn’t investigate further, but went back to
the house.
I woke up the next morning feeling a shade depressed. My dressing-room
smelled stale and bitter, and I flung its windows open. As I did so I
felt my right foot slip on something. It was one of those small, slimy,
green patches. Now Tim would never come into my dressing-room. An
annoying little puzzle. How on earth had that patch----? Which question
kept forcing its way into my mind as I dressed. How could a patch
of green slime...? How could a patch of green slime...? Dropped from
something? From what? I am very fond of my wife--she slaved for me when
I was poor, and always has kept me happy, comfortable and faithful, and
she gave me my small son Timothy. I must stand between her and patches
of green slime! What in hell’s name was I talking about? And it was a
flamingly fine day. Yet all during breakfast my mind was trying to find
some sufficient reason for these funny little patches of green slime,
and not finding it.
After breakfast I told Tim I would take him out in a boat on the river.
“Must I, Daddy?” he asked, looking anxiously at me.
“No, of course not,” I replied, a trifle irritably, “but I believe
you’ll enjoy it.”
“Should I be a funk if I didn’t come?”
“No, Tim, but I think you should try it once, anyway.”
“All right,” he said.
He’s a plucky little chap, and did his very best to pretend to be
enjoying himself, but I saw it was a failure from the start.
Perplexed and upset, I asked his nurse if she knew of any reason for
this sudden fear of water.
“No, sir,” she said. “The first day he ran down to the river just as he
used to run down to the sea, but all of a sudden he started crying and
ran back to the house. It seemed to me he’d seen something in the water
which frightened him.”
We spent the afternoon motoring round the neighbourhood, and already I
found a faint distaste at the idea of returning to the house, and again
I had the impression that we were intruding, and that something had
been going on during our absence which our return had interrupted.
Mary, pleading a headache, went to bed soon after dinner, and I went to
the study to read.
Directly I had shut the door I had again that very unpleasant
sensation of being watched. It made the reading of Sidgwick’s _The
Use of Words in Reasoning_--an old favourite of mine, which requires
concentration--a difficult business. Time after time I found myself
peeping into dark corners and shifting my position. And there were
little sharp sounds; just the oak-panelling cracking, I supposed. After
a time I became more absorbed in the book, and less fidgety, and then
I heard a very soft cough just behind me. I felt little icy rays pour
down and through me, but I would _not_ look round, and I _would_ go
on reading. I had just reached the following passage: “However many
things may be said about Socrates, or about any fact observed, there
remains still more that might be said if the need arose; the need
is the determining factor. Hence the distinction between complete
and incomplete description, though perfectly sharp and clear in the
abstract, can only have a meaning--can only be applied to actual
cases--if it be taken as equivalent to _sufficient_ description, the
sufficiency being relative to some purpose. Evidently the description
of Socrates as a man, scanty though it is, may be fully sufficient
for the purpose of the modest enquiry whether he is _mortal_ or
not”----when my eye was caught by a green patch which suddenly appeared
on the floor beside me, and then another and another, following a
straight line towards the door. I picked up the nearest one, and it was
a bit of soaking slime. I called on all my will-power, for I feared
something worse to come, and it should _not_ materialise--and then no
more patches appeared. I got up and walked deliberately, slowly, to
the door, turned on the light in the middle of the room, and then came
back and turned out the reading lamp and went to my dressing room.
I sat down and thought things over. There was something very wrong
with this house. I had passed the stage of pretending otherwise, and
my inclination was to take my family away from it the next day. But
that meant sacrificing £168, and we had nowhere else to go. It was
conceivable that these phenomena were perceptible only to me, being
half a Highlander. I might be able to stick it out if I were careful
and kept my tail up, for apparitions of this sort are partially
subjective--one brings something of oneself to their materialisation.
That is a hard saying, but I believe it to be true. If Mary and Tim
and the servants were immune it was up to me to face and fight this
nastiness. As I undressed, I came to the decision that I would decide
nothing then and there, and that I would see what happened. I made this
decision against my better judgment, I think.
In bed I tried to thrust all this away from me by a conscious effort to
“change the subject,” as it were. The easiest subject for me to switch
over to is the myriad-sided, useless, consistently abused business of
creating things, stories out of pens and ink and paper, representations
of things and moods out of paint, brushes and canvas, and our own
miseries, perhaps, out of wine, women and song. With a considerable
effort, therefore, and with the edges of my brain anxious to be busy
with bits of green slime, I recalled an article I had read that day on
a glorious word “Jugendbewegung,” the “Youth Movement,” that pregnant
or merely wind-swollen Teutonism! How ponderously it attempted to
canonise with its polysyllabic sonority that inverted Boy-Scoutishness
of the said youths and maidens. “One bad, mad deed--sonnet--scribble of
some kind--lousy daub--a day.” Bunk without spunk, sauce without force,
Futurism without a past, merely a _Transition_ from one yelping pose
to another. And then I suddenly found myself at the end of the garden,
attempting desperately to hide myself behind a rowan tree, while my
eyes were held relentlessly to face the door. And then it began slowly
to open, and something which was horridly unlike anything I had seen
before began passing through it, and I knew It knew I was there, and
then my head seemed burst and flamed asunder, splintered and destroyed,
and I awoke trembling to feel that something in the darkness was poised
an inch or two above me, and then drip, drip, drip, something began
falling on my face. Mary was in the bed next to mine, and I _would not_
scream, but flung the clothes over my head, my eyes streaming with the
tears of terror. And so I remained cowering till I heard the clock
strike five, and dawn, the ally I longed for, came, and the birds
began to sing, and then I slept.
I awoke a wreck, and after breakfast, feeling the need to be alone, I
pretended I wanted to sketch, and went out into the garden. Suddenly I
recalled Sir William’s remark about coming to see him if there was any
trouble. Not much difficulty in guessing what he had meant. I’d go and
see him about it at once. I wished I knew whether Mary was troubled
too. I hesitated to ask her, for, if she were not, she was certain to
become suspicious and uneasy if I questioned her. And then I discovered
that, while my brain had been busy with its thoughts my hand had also
not been idle, but had been occupied in drawing a very singular design
on the sketching block. I watched it as it went automatically on. Was
it a design or a figure of some sort? When had I seen something like
it before? My God, in my dream last night! I tore it to pieces, and
got up in agitation and made my way to the Manor House along a path
through tall, bowing, stippled grasses hissing lightly in the breeze.
My inclination was to run to the station and take the next train to
anywhere; pure undiluted panic--an insufficiently analysed word--that
which causes men to trample on women and children when Death is making
his choice. Of course, I had Mary and Tim and the servants to keep
me from it, but supposing they had no claim on me, should I desert
them? No, I should not. Why? Such things aren’t done by respectable
inhabitants of Great Britain--a people despised and respected by all
other tribes. Despised as Philistines, but it took the jaw-bone of an
ass to subdue that hardy race! Respected for what? Birkenhead stuff.
No, not the noble Lord, for there were no glittering prizes for those
who went down to the bottom of the sea in ships. My mind deliberately
restricting itself to such highly debatable jingoism, I reached the
Manor House, to be told that Sir William was up in London for the day,
but would return that evening. Would he ring me up on his return? “Yes,
sir.” And then, with lagging steps, back to the Red Lodge.
I took Mary for a drive in the car after lunch. Anything to get out
of the beastly place. Tim didn’t come, as he preferred to play in the
garden. In the light of what happened I suppose I shall be criticised
for leaving him alone with a nurse, but at that time I held the theory
that these appearances were in no way malignant, and that it was
more than possible that even if Tim did see anything he wouldn’t be
frightened, not realising it was out of the ordinary in any way. After
all, nothing that I had seen or heard, at any rate during the daytime,
would strike him as unusual.
Mary was very silent, and I was beginning to feel sure, from a certain
depression and oppression in her manner and appearance, that my trouble
was hers. It was on the tip of my tongue to say something, but I
resolved to wait until I had heard what Sir William had to say. It
was a dark, sombre, and brooding afternoon, and my spirits fell as we
turned for home. What a home!
We got back at six, and I had just stopped the engine and helped Mary
out when I heard a scream from the garden. I rushed round, to see Tim,
his hands to his eyes, staggering across the lawn, the nurse running
behind him. And then he screamed again and fell. I carried him into the
house and laid him down on a sofa in the drawing-room, and Mary went to
him. I took the nurse by the arm and out of the room; she was panting
and crying down a face of chalk.
“What happened? What happened?” I asked.
“I don’t know what it was, sir, but we had been walking in the lane,
and had left the door open. Master Tim was a bit ahead of me, and went
through the door first, and then he screamed like that.”
“Did you see anything that could have frightened him?”
“No, sir, nothing.”
I went back to them. It was no good questioning Tim, and there was
nothing coherent to be learnt from his hysterical sobbing. He grew
calmer presently, and was taken up to bed. Suddenly he turned to Mary,
and looked at her with eyes of terror.
“The green monkey won’t get me, will it, Mummy?”
“No, no, it’s all right now,” said Mary, and soon after he went to
sleep, and then she and I went down to the drawing-room. She was on the
border of hysteria herself.
“Oh, Tom, what is the matter with this awful house? I’m _terrified_.
Ever since I’ve been here I’ve been terrified. Do you see things?”
“Yes,” I replied.
“Oh, I wish I’d known. I didn’t want to worry you if you hadn’t. Let