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The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories by Algernon Blackwood

A >> Algernon Blackwood >> The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories




That same night, much later, she woke to find him lying peacefully by
her side in bed, with one arm stretched out towards her, _dead_. Her
story was half believed, half doubted at the time, but in a very few
years afterwards it evidently came to be accepted by all the
countryside. A funeral service was held to which the people flocked in
great numbers, and everyone approved of the sentiment which led the
widow to add the words, "The Father of the Village," after the usual
texts which appeared upon the stone over his grave.

This, then, was the story I pieced together of the village ghost as the
little inn-keeper's daughter told it to me that afternoon in the
parlour of the inn.

"But you're not the first to say you've seen him," the girl concluded;
"and your description is just what we've always heard, and that window,
they say, was just where he used to sit and think, and think, when he
was alive, and sometimes, they say, to cry for hours together."

"And would you feel afraid if you had seen him?" I asked, for the girl
seemed strangely moved and interested in the whole story.

"I think so," she answered timidly. "Surely, if he spoke to me. He did
speak to _you_, didn't he, sir?" she asked after a slight pause.

"He said he had come for someone."

"Come for someone," she repeated. "Did he say--" she went on
falteringly.

"No, he did not say for whom," I said quickly, noticing the sudden
shadow on her face and the tremulous voice.

"Are you really sure, sir?"

"Oh, quite sure," I answered cheerfully. "I did not even ask him." The
girl looked at me steadily for nearly a whole minute as though there
were many things she wished to tell me or to ask. But she said nothing,
and presently picked up her tray from the table and walked slowly out
of the room.

Instead of keeping to my original purpose and pushing on to the next
village over the hills, I ordered a room to be prepared for me at the
inn, and that afternoon I spent wandering about the fields and lying
under the fruit trees, watching the white clouds sailing out over the
sea. The Wood of the Dead I surveyed from a distance, but in the village
I visited the stone erected to the memory of the "Father of the
Village"--who was thus, evidently, no mythical personage--and saw also
the monuments of his fine unselfish spirit: the schoolhouse he built,
the library, the home for the aged poor, and the tiny hospital.

That night, as the clock in the church tower was striking half-past
eleven, I stealthily left the inn and crept through the dark orchard and
over the hayfield in the direction of the hill whose southern slope was
clothed with the Wood of the Dead. A genuine interest impelled me to the
adventure, but I also was obliged to confess to a certain sinking in my
heart as I stumbled along over the field in the darkness, for I was
approaching what might prove to be the birth-place of a real country
myth, and a spot already lifted by the imaginative thoughts of a
considerable number of people into the region of the haunted and
ill-omened.

The inn lay below me, and all round it the village clustered in a soft
black shadow unrelieved by a single light. The night was moonless, yet
distinctly luminous, for the stars crowded the sky. The silence of deep
slumber was everywhere; so still, indeed, that every time my foot kicked
against a stone I thought the sound must be heard below in the village
and waken the sleepers.

I climbed the hill slowly, thinking chiefly of the strange story of the
noble old man who had seized the opportunity to do good to his fellows
the moment it came his way, and wondering why the causes that operate
ceaselessly behind human life did not always select such admirable
instruments. Once or twice a night-bird circled swiftly over my head,
but the bats had long since gone to rest, and there was no other sign of
life stirring.

Then, suddenly, with a singular thrill of emotion, I saw the first trees
of the Wood of the Dead rise in front of me in a high black wall. Their
crests stood up like giant spears against the starry sky; and though
there was no perceptible movement of the air on my cheek I heard a
faint, rushing sound among their branches as the night breeze passed to
and fro over their countless little needles. A remote, hushed murmur
rose overhead and died away again almost immediately; for in these trees
the wind seems to be never absolutely at rest, and on the calmest day
there is always a sort of whispering music among their branches.

For a moment I hesitated on the edge of this dark wood, and listened
intently. Delicate perfumes of earth and bark stole out to meet me.
Impenetrable darkness faced me. Only the consciousness that I was
obeying an order, strangely given, and including a mighty privilege,
enabled me to find the courage to go forward and step in boldly under
the trees.

Instantly the shadows closed in upon me and "something" came forward to
meet me from the centre of the darkness. It would be easy enough to meet
my imagination half-way with fact, and say that a cold hand grasped my
own and led me by invisible paths into the unknown depths of the grove;
but at any rate, without stumbling, and always with the positive
knowledge that I was going straight towards the desired object, I
pressed on confidently and securely into the wood. So dark was it that,
at first, not a single star-beam pierced the roof of branches overhead;
and, as we moved forward side by side, the trees shifted silently past
us in long lines, row upon row, squadron upon squadron, like the units
of a vast, soundless army.

And, at length, we came to a comparatively open space where the trees
halted upon us for a while, and, looking up, I saw the white river of
the sky beginning to yield to the influence of a new light that now
seemed spreading swiftly across the heavens.

"It is the dawn coming," said the voice at my side that I certainly
recognised, but which seemed almost like a whispering from the trees,
"and we are now in the heart of the Wood of the Dead."

We seated ourselves on a moss-covered boulder and waited the coming of
the sun. With marvellous swiftness, it seemed to me, the light in the
east passed into the radiance of early morning, and when the wind awoke
and began to whisper in the tree tops, the first rays of the risen sun
fell between the trunks and rested in a circle of gold at our feet.

"Now, come with me," whispered my companion in the same deep voice, "for
time has no existence here, and that which I would show you is already
_there_!"

We trod gently and silently over the soft pine needles. Already the sun
was high over our heads, and the shadows of the trees coiled closely
about their feet. The wood became denser again, but occasionally we
passed through little open bits where we could smell the hot sunshine
and the dry, baked pine needles. Then, presently, we came to the edge of
the grove, and I saw a hayfield lying in the blaze of day, and two
horses basking lazily with switching tails in the shafts of a laden
hay-waggon.

So complete and vivid was the sense of reality, that I remember the
grateful realisation of the cool shade where we sat and looked out upon
the hot world beyond.

The last pitchfork had tossed up its fragrant burden, and the great
horses were already straining in the shafts after the driver, as he
walked slowly in front with one hand upon their bridles. He was a
stalwart fellow, with sunburned neck and hands. Then, for the first
time, I noticed, perched aloft upon the trembling throne of hay, the
figure of a slim young girl. I could not see her face, but her brown
hair escaped in disorder from a white sun-bonnet, and her still browner
hands held a well-worn hay rake. She was laughing and talking with the
driver, and he, from time to time, cast up at her ardent glances of
admiration--glances that won instant smiles and soft blushes in
response.

The cart presently turned into the roadway that skirted the edge of the
wood where we were sitting. I watched the scene with intense interest
and became so much absorbed in it that I quite forgot the manifold,
strange steps by which I was permitted to become a spectator.

"Come down and walk with me," cried the young fellow, stopping a moment
in front of the horses and opening wide his arms. "Jump! and I'll catch
you!"

"Oh, oh," she laughed, and her voice sounded to me as the happiest,
merriest laughter I had ever heard from a girl's throat. "Oh, oh! that's
all very well. But remember I'm Queen of the Hay, and I must ride!"

"Then I must come and ride beside you," he cried, and began at once to
climb up by way of the driver's seat. But, with a peal of silvery
laughter, she slipped down easily over the back of the hay to escape
him, and ran a little way along the road. I could see her quite clearly,
and noticed the charming, natural grace of her movements, and the
loving expression in her eyes as she looked over her shoulder to make
sure he was following. Evidently, she did not wish to escape for long,
certainly not for ever.

In two strides the big, brown swain was after her, leaving the horses to
do as they pleased. Another second and his arms would have caught the
slender waist and pressed the little body to his heart. But, just at
that instant, the old man beside me uttered a peculiar cry. It was low
and thrilling, and it went through me like a sharp sword.

HE had called her by her own name--and she had heard.

For a second she halted, glancing back with frightened eyes. Then, with
a brief cry of despair, the girl swerved aside and dived in swiftly
among the shadows of the trees.

But the young man saw the sudden movement and cried out to her
passionately--

"Not that way, my love! Not that way! It's the Wood of the Dead!"

She threw a laughing glance over her shoulder at him, and the wind
caught her hair and drew it out in a brown cloud under the sun. But the
next minute she was close beside me, lying on the breast of my
companion, and I was certain I heard the words repeatedly uttered with
many sighs: "Father, you called, and I have come. And I come willingly,
for I am very, very tired."

At any rate, so the words sounded to me, and mingled with them I seemed
to catch the answer in that deep, thrilling whisper I already knew: "And
you shall sleep, my child, sleep for a long, long time, until it is time
for you to begin the journey again."

In that brief second of time I had recognised the face and voice of the
inn-keeper's daughter, but the next minute a dreadful wail broke from
the lips of the young man, and the sky grew suddenly as dark as night,
the wind rose and began to toss the branches about us, and the whole
scene was swallowed up in a wave of utter blackness.

Again the chill fingers seemed to seize my hand, and I was guided by the
way I had come to the edge of the wood, and crossing the hayfield still
slumbering in the starlight, I crept back to the inn and went to bed.

A year later I happened to be in the same part of the country, and the
memory of the strange summer vision returned to me with the added
softness of distance. I went to the old village and had tea under the
same orchard trees at the same inn.

But the little maid of the inn did not show her face, and I took
occasion to enquire of her father as to her welfare and her whereabouts.

"Married, no doubt," I laughed, but with a strange feeling that clutched
at my heart.

"No, sir," replied the inn-keeper sadly, "not married--though she was
just going to be--but dead. She got a sunstroke in the hayfields, just a
few days after you were here, if I remember rightly, and she was gone
from us in less than a week."




SMITH: AN EPISODE IN A LODGING-HOUSE


"When I was a medical student," began the doctor, half turning towards
his circle of listeners in the firelight, "I came across one or two very
curious human beings; but there was one fellow I remember particularly,
for he caused me the most vivid, and I think the most uncomfortable,
emotions I have ever known.

"For many months I knew Smith only by name as the occupant of the floor
above me. Obviously his name meant nothing to me. Moreover I was busy
with lectures, reading, cliniques and the like, and had little leisure
to devise plans for scraping acquaintance with any of the other lodgers
in the house. Then chance brought us curiously together, and this fellow
Smith left a deep impression upon me as the result of our first meeting.
At the time the strength of this first impression seemed quite
inexplicable to me, but looking back at the episode now from a
stand-point of greater knowledge I judge the fact to have been that he
stirred my curiosity to an unusual degree, and at the same time awakened
my sense of horror--whatever that may be in a medical student--about as
deeply and permanently as these two emotions were capable of being
stirred at all in the particular system and set of nerves called ME.

"How he knew that I was interested in the study of languages was
something I could never explain, but one day, quite unannounced, he came
quietly into my room in the evening and asked me point-blank if I knew
enough Hebrew to help him in the pronunciation of certain words.

"He caught me along the line of least resistance, and I was greatly
flattered to be able to give him the desired information; but it was
only when he had thanked me and was gone that I realised I had been in
the presence of an unusual individuality. For the life of me I could not
quite seize and label the peculiarities of what I felt to be a very
striking personality, but it was borne in upon me that he was a man
apart from his fellows, a mind that followed a line leading away from
ordinary human intercourse and human interests, and into regions that
left in his atmosphere something remote, rarefied, chilling.

"The moment he was gone I became conscious of two things--an intense
curiosity to know more about this man and what his real interests were,
and secondly, the fact that my skin was crawling and that my hair had a
tendency to rise."

The doctor paused a moment here to puff hard at his pipe, which,
however, had gone out beyond recall without the assistance of a match;
and in the deep silence, which testified to the genuine interest of his
listeners, someone poked the fire up into a little blaze, and one or two
others glanced over their shoulders into the dark distances of the big
hall.

"On looking back," he went on, watching the momentary flames in the
grate, "I see a short, thick-set man of perhaps forty-five, with immense
shoulders and small, slender hands. The contrast was noticeable, for I
remember thinking that such a giant frame and such slim finger bones
hardly belonged together. His head, too, was large and very long, the
head of an idealist beyond all question, yet with an unusually strong
development of the jaw and chin. Here again was a singular
contradiction, though I am better able now to appreciate its full
meaning, with a greater experience in judging the values of
physiognomy. For this meant, of course, an enthusiastic idealism
balanced and kept in check by will and judgment--elements usually
deficient in dreamers and visionaries.

"At any rate, here was a being with probably a very wide range of
possibilities, a machine with a pendulum that most likely had an unusual
length of swing.

"The man's hair was exceedingly fine, and the lines about his nose and
mouth were cut as with a delicate steel instrument in wax. His eyes I
have left to the last. They were large and quite changeable, not in
colour only, but in character, size, and shape. Occasionally they seemed
the eyes of someone else, if you can understand what I mean, and at the
same time, in their shifting shades of blue, green, and a nameless sort
of dark grey, there was a sinister light in them that lent to the whole
face an aspect almost alarming. Moreover, they were the most luminous
optics I think I have ever seen in any human being.

"There, then, at the risk of a wearisome description, is Smith as I saw
him for the first time that winter's evening in my shabby student's
rooms in Edinburgh. And yet the real part of him, of course, I have
left untouched, for it is both indescribable and un-get-atable. I have
spoken already of an atmosphere of warning and aloofness he carried
about with him. It is impossible further to analyse the series of little
shocks his presence always communicated to my being; but there was that
about him which made me instantly on the _qui vive_ in his presence,
every nerve alert, every sense strained and on the watch. I do not mean
that he deliberately suggested danger, but rather that he brought forces
in his wake which automatically warned the nervous centres of my system
to be on their guard and alert.

"Since the days of my first acquaintance with this man I have lived
through other experiences and have seen much I cannot pretend to explain
or understand; but, so far in my life, I have only once come across a
human being who suggested a disagreeable familiarity with unholy things,
and who made me feel uncanny and 'creepy' in his presence; and that
unenviable individual was Mr. Smith.

"What his occupation was during the day I never knew. I think he slept
until the sun set. No one ever saw him on the stairs, or heard him move
in his room during the day. He was a creature of the shadows, who
apparently preferred darkness to light. Our landlady either knew
nothing, or would say nothing. At any rate she found no fault, and I
have since wondered often by what magic this fellow was able to convert
a common landlady of a common lodging-house into a discreet and
uncommunicative person. This alone was a sign of genius of some sort.

"'He's been here with me for years--long before you come, an' I don't
interfere or ask no questions of what doesn't concern me, as long as
people pays their rent,' was the only remark on the subject that I ever
succeeded in winning from that quarter, and it certainly told me nothing
nor gave me any encouragement to ask for further information.

"Examinations, however, and the general excitement of a medical
student's life for a time put Mr. Smith completely out of my head. For a
long period he did not call upon me again, and for my part, I felt no
courage to return his unsolicited visit.

"Just then, however, there came a change in the fortunes of those who
controlled my very limited income, and I was obliged to give up my
ground-floor and move aloft to more modest chambers on the top of the
house. Here I was directly over Smith, and had to pass his door to
reach my own.

"It so happened that about this time I was frequently called out at all
hours of the night for the maternity cases which a fourth-year student
takes at a certain period of his studies, and on returning from one of
these visits at about two o'clock in the morning I was surprised to hear
the sound of voices as I passed his door. A peculiar sweet odour, too,
not unlike the smell of incense, penetrated into the passage.

"I went upstairs very quietly, wondering what was going on there at this
hour of the morning. To my knowledge Smith never had visitors. For a
moment I hesitated outside the door with one foot on the stairs. All my
interest in this strange man revived, and my curiosity rose to a point
not far from action. At last I might learn something of the habits of
this lover of the night and the darkness.

"The sound of voices was plainly audible, Smith's predominating so much
that I never could catch more than points of sound from the other,
penetrating now and then the steady stream of his voice. Not a single
word reached me, at least, not a word that I could understand, though
the voice was loud and distinct, and it was only afterwards that I
realised he must have been speaking in a foreign language.

"The sound of footsteps, too, was equally distinct. Two persons were
moving about the room, passing and repassing the door, one of them a
light, agile person, and the other ponderous and somewhat awkward.
Smith's voice went on incessantly with its odd, monotonous droning, now
loud, now soft, as he crossed and re-crossed the floor. The other person
was also on the move, but in a different and less regular fashion, for I
heard rapid steps that seemed to end sometimes in stumbling, and quick
sudden movements that brought up with a violent lurching against the
wall or furniture.

"As I listened to Smith's voice, moreover, I began to feel afraid. There
was something in the sound that made me feel intuitively he was in a
tight place, and an impulse stirred faintly in me--very faintly, I
admit--to knock at the door and inquire if he needed help.

"But long before the impulse could translate itself into an act, or even
before it had been properly weighed and considered by the mind, I heard
a voice close beside me in the air, a sort of hushed whisper which I am
certain was Smith speaking, though the sound did not seem to have come
to me through the door. It was close in my very ear, as though he stood
beside me, and it gave me such a start, that I clutched the banisters to
save myself from stepping backwards and making a clatter on the stairs.

"'There is nothing you can do to help me,'" it said distinctly, 'and you
will be much safer in your own room.'

"I am ashamed to this day of the pace at which I covered the flight of
stairs in the darkness to the top floor, and of the shaking hand with
which I lit my candles and bolted the door. But, there it is, just as it
happened.

"This midnight episode, so odd and yet so trivial in itself, fired me
with more curiosity than ever about my fellow-lodger. It also made me
connect him in my mind with a sense of fear and distrust. I never saw
him, yet I was often, and uncomfortably, aware of his presence in the
upper regions of that gloomy lodging-house. Smith and his secret mode of
life and mysterious pursuits, somehow contrived to awaken in my being a
line of reflection that disturbed my comfortable condition of ignorance.
I never saw him, as I have said, and exchanged no sort of communication
with him, yet it seemed to me that his mind was in contact with mine,
and some of the strange forces of his atmosphere filtered through into
my being and disturbed my equilibrium. Those upper floors became haunted
for me after dark, and, though outwardly our lives never came into
contact, I became unwillingly involved in certain pursuits on which his
mind was centred. I felt that he was somehow making use of me against my
will, and by methods which passed my comprehension.

"I was at that time, moreover, in the heavy, unquestioning state of
materialism which is common to medical students when they begin to
understand something of the human anatomy and nervous system, and jump
at once to the conclusion that they control the universe and hold in
their forceps the last word of life and death. I 'knew it all,' and
regarded a belief in anything beyond matter as the wanderings of weak,
or at best, untrained minds. And this condition of mind, of course,
added to the strength of this upsetting fear which emanated from the
floor below and began slowly to take possession of me.

"Though I kept no notes of the subsequent events in this matter, they
made too deep an impression for me ever to forget the sequence in which
they occurred. Without difficulty I can recall the next step in the
adventure with Smith, for adventure it rapidly grew to be."

The doctor stopped a moment and laid his pipe on the table behind him
before continuing. The fire had burned low, and no one stirred to poke
it. The silence in the great hall was so deep that when the speaker's
pipe touched the table the sound woke audible echoes at the far end
among the shadows.

"One evening, while I was reading, the door of my room opened and Smith
came in. He made no attempt at ceremony. It was after ten o'clock and I
was tired, but the presence of the man immediately galvanised me into
activity. My attempts at ordinary politeness he thrust on one side at
once, and began asking me to vocalise, and then pronounce for him,
certain Hebrew words; and when this was done he abruptly inquired if I
was not the fortunate possessor of a very rare Rabbinical Treatise,
which he named.

"How he knew that I possessed this book puzzled me exceedingly; but I
was still more surprised to see him cross the room and take it out of
my book-shelf almost before I had had time to answer in the affirmative.
Evidently he knew exactly where it was kept. This excited my curiosity
beyond all bounds, and I immediately began asking him questions; and
though, out of sheer respect for the man, I put them very delicately to
him, and almost by way of mere conversation, he had only one reply for
the lot. He would look up at me from the pages of the book with an
expression of complete comprehension on his extraordinary features,
would bow his head a little and say very gravely--

"'That, of course, is a perfectly proper question,'--which was
absolutely all I could ever get out of him.

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