The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories by Algernon Blackwood

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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
spend the remaining hours till daylight in the open.

As soon as I was out I noticed at once another figure moving silently
along the shore. It was Hank Milligan, and it was plain enough what he
was doing: he was examining the holes that had been cut in the upper
ribs of the canoe. He looked half ashamed when I came up with him, and
mumbled something about not being able to sleep for the cold. But,
there, standing together beside the over-turned canoe, we both saw that
the holes were far too small for a man's hand and arm and could not
possibly have been cut by two men hanging on for their lives in deep
water. Those holes had been made afterwards.

Hank said nothing to me and I said nothing to Hank, and presently he
moved off to collect logs for the fire, which needed replenishing, for
it was a piercingly cold night and there were many degrees of frost.

Three days later Hank and Silver Fizz followed with stumbling footsteps
the old Indian trail that leads from Beaver Creek to the southwards. A
hammock was slung between them, and it weighed heavily. Yet neither of
the men complained; and, indeed, speech between them was almost nothing.
Their thoughts, however, were exceedingly busy, and the terrible secret
of the woods which formed their burden weighed far more heavily than the
uncouth, shifting mass that lay in the swinging hammock and tugged so
severely at their shoulders.

They had found "it" in four feet of water not more than a couple of
yards from the lee shore of the island. And in the back of the head was
a long, terrible wound which no man could possibly have inflicted upon
himself.

_Printed by MORRISON & GIBB LIMITED, Edinburgh._

John Silence

by Algernon Blackwood

"Not since the days of Poe have we read anything in his peculiar genre
fit to be compared with this remarkable book. . . . He brings to his work
an extraordinary knowledge of strange and unusual forms of
spiritualistic phenomena, and steeps his pages in an atmosphere of real
terror and expectancy."--_Observer_.

"When one says that Mr. Blackwood's work approaches genius, the phrase
is used in no light connection. This very remarkable book is a
considerable and lasting addition to the literature of our
time."--_Morning Post_.

"These are the most haunting and original ghost stories since 'Uncle
Silas' appeared."--_Morning Leader_.

"In the field which he has chosen, Mr. Blackwood stands without rival
among contemporary writers."--_Manchester Guardian_.

"As original, as powerful, and as artistically written as that little
masterpiece of Lytton's, 'The Haunters and the Haunted.' He bears
favourable comparison with Le Fanu. . . . A volume which has an
extraordinary power of fascination."--_Birmingham Daily Post_.

"The story is absolutely arresting in its imaginative power."--_Daily
Telegraph_.

UNIFORM EDITION

3s. 6d. net

EVELEIGH NASH COMPANY LIMITED

36 King Street, Covent Garden, London, W.C.

The Lost Valley

by Algernon Blackwood

"In one of the stories, 'The Wendigs,' the author gives us, perhaps, one
of the most successful excursions into the grimly weird; quietly but
surely he makes his reader come under the influence of the eerie, until
the pages are half-reluctantly turned under the spell of a fearful
fascination. Mr. Blackwood writes like a real artist."--_Daily
Telegraph_.

"The book of a remarkably gifted writer."--_Daily News_.

"The stories are unforgettable. Through them all, too, runs the charm of
an accomplished style. . . . Mr. Blackwood has indeed done well."--_Pall
Mall Gazette_.

"Whether concerned with beauty or terror, fact or fancy, there is an
individuality in Mr. Blackwood's work which cannot be ignored, and there
is also power which proceeds, we think, not so much from the fertility
of a comprehensive imagination, but from the amazing conviction of the
author's power of expression, and a literary quality rarely met with in
contemporary stories of mystery and imagination."--_Globe_.

"In his method of touching the well-springs of fear, of pity, and of
horror, Mr. Blackwood often exhibits powers which can only properly be
called masterly. In its way his work bids fair to become classical . . .
an art superior to that of Bulwer-Lytton, at least as fine as Le Fanu's,
and hardly, if at all, inferior to that exhibited by the supreme living
masters of the short story, Mr. Kipling and Mr. James."--_Birmingham
Daily Post_.

UNIFORM EDITION

3s. 6d. net

EVELEIGH NASH COMPANY LIMITED

36 King Street, Covent Garden, London, W.C.

The Listener

by Algernon Blackwood

"These stories are literature . . . good stories, well imagined, carefully
modelled, properly proportioned. . . . 'The Insanity of Jones' is perhaps
the most remarkable _tour de force_ in this remarkable book. . . . If Mr.
Blackwood keeps at his present level one or two very celebrated authors
will have to look to their laurels."--_Daily Chronicle_.

"Even Edgar Allan Poe never suggested more skilfully an atmosphere of
horror than does Mr. Blackwood in his titular story, or again in his
description of 'The Willows.'"--F.G. BETTANY in the _Sunday Times_.

"Saying that Mr. Blackwood's latest stories reveal strong dramatic
instinct is a dull way of expressing the series of thrills which their
perusal causes. Without doubt Mr. Blackwood is designed to fill a high
place as an author who is able to arouse the attention of his reader on
the first page, and to hold it until the last has been turned. . . .
A distinctive genius."--_Pall Mall Gazette_.

"Full of imagination, and well told."--_Daily News_.

"Mr. Blackwood is clearly a master of the art of the genuine sensation
story."--_Liverpool Courier_.

UNIFORM EDITION

3s. 6d. net

EVELEIGH NASH COMPANY LIMITED

36 King Street, Covent Garden, London, W.C.

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