The Dust-Cloud | A Ghost Story by E. F. Benson | A Bitesized Audiobook

[Music] hello and welcome to bite-sized audio on YouTube I'm Simon stanh hope actor audiobook narrator and curator of this channel on the channel you can hear my narrations more than 100 to date and more to come of classic short stories most from the Victorian and Edwardian eras including vintage ghost stories detective stories and other classic Tales of mystery and suspense to accompany the narrations I've put a short profile of the authors in the video description as well as some general background notes on the stories for those who'd like to know more if you enjoy this

content please hit subscribe like share leave a comment if you'd like to and thank you for listening [Music] [Music] the dustcloud by EF Benson read by Simon stanh hope the big French windows were open onto the lawn and dinner being over two or three of the party who were staying for the week at the end of August with the Kum Martins had strolled out onto the teris to look at the sea over which the moon large and low was just rising and tracing a path of pale gold from Horizon to shore While others less lunar

of inclination had gone in search of bridge or Billiards coffeee had come round immediately after dessert and the end of dinner according to The Delectable custom of the house was as informal as the end of breakfast everyone that is to say remained or went away smoked drank port or abstained according to his personal tastes thus on this particular evening it so happened that Harry Martin and I were very soon left alone in the dining room because we were talking unmitigated motor shop and the rest of the party Small Wonder were bought with it and had

left us the shop was home shop so to speak for it was almost entirely concerned with the manifold Perfections of the new six-cylinder napia which my host in a moment of extravagance which he did not in the least regret had just purchased in which too he proposed to take me over to lunch at a friend's house near hunstanton on the following day he observed with legitimate Pride that an early start would not be necessary as the distance was only 80 Mi and there were no police traps queer things these big motors are he said relapsing

into generalities as we Rose to go often I can scarcely believe that my new car is merely a machine it seems to me to possess an independent life of its own it is really much more like a thorad with a wonderfully fine mouth and the moods of Aura bread I asked no it's got an excellent temper I'm glad to say it doesn't mind being checked or even stopped when it's going its best some of these big cars can't stand that they get sulky I assure you it is literally true if they are checked too often

he paused on his way to ring the bell Guy elston's car for instance he said it was a bad-tempered brute a violent vicious Beast of a car what make I asked 25 horsepower amaday they are a fretful strain of car too thin not enough bone and bone is very good for the nerves The Brute liked running over a chicken or a rabbit though perhaps it was less the car's ill temper than gu poor chap well he paid for it he paid to the utmost Farthing did you know him no but surely I have heard the

name ah yes he ran over a child did he not yes said Harry and then smashed up against his own Park Gates killed wasn't he oh yes killed instantly and the car just a heap of splinters there's an odd story about it I'm told in the village rather in your line ghosts I asked yes the ghost of his Motorcar seems almost too up to date doesn't it and what what's the story I demanded why just this his place was outside the village of burum 10 Mi out from Norwich and there's a long straight bit of

Road there that's where he ran over the child and a couple of hundred yards farther on a rather awkward turn into the park Gates well a month or two ago soon after the accident one old gaffer in the village swore he had seen a motor there coming Full Tilt along the road but without a sound and it disappeared Ed at the lodge Gates of the park which were shut soon after another said he had heard a motor well by him at the same place followed by a hideous scream but he saw nothing well the scream

is rather horrible said I yeah yeah I see what you mean I only thought of his siren guy had a siren on his exhaust same as I have his had a dreadful frightened sort of whale and always made me feel creepy Y and is that all the story I asked that one old man thought he saw a noiseless motor and another thought he heard an invisible one Harry flicked the Ash off his cigarette into the grate oh dear no he said half a dozen of them have seen something or heard something it is quite a

heavily authenticated yarn yes and talked over and edited in the public house I said well not a man of them will go there after dark also the lodg keeper gave notice a week or two after the accident he said he was always hearing a motor stop and Hoot outside the lodge and he was kept running out at all hours of the night to see what it was and what was it it wasn't anything simply nothing there he thought it rather uncanny anyhow and threw up a good post besides his wife was always hearing a child's

scream and while her man toddled out to the gate she would go and see whether the kids were all right and the kids themselves ah what of them I asked they kept coming to their mother asking who the little girl was who walked up and down the road and would not speak to them or play with them it's a many sided story I said all the witnesses seem to have heard and seen different things yes that is just what to my mind makes the Arn so good he said personally I don't take much stock in

Spooks at all but given that there are such things as Spooks and given that the death of the child and the death of guy have caused Spooks to play about there it seems to me a very good point that different people should be aware of different phenomena one hears the car another sees it one hears the child scream another sees the child how does that strike you well this I am bound to say was a new view to me and the more I thought of it the more reasonable it appeared for the vast majority of

mankind have all those occult senses by which is perceived the spiritual World which I hold is thick and populous around us sealed up as it were in other words the majority of mankind never hear or see a ghost at all is it not then very probable that of the remainder those in fact to whom occult experiences have happened or can happen few should have every sense unsealed but that some should have the unsealed ear others the unsealed eye that some should be CLA aient others Clairvoyant yes it strikes me as reasonable I said can't you

take me over there certainly if you will stop till Friday I'll take you over on Thursday the the others all go that day so that we can get there after dark I shook my head I can't stop till Friday I'm afraid I said I must leave on Thursday but how about tomorrow can't we take it on the way to or from Hanton no it's 30 Mi out of our way besides to be at buram after dark means that we shouldn't get back here till midnight and as host to my guests ah Things Are heard and

seen after dark are they I asked that makes it so much less interesting it is like a seance where all lights are put out well the accident happened at night he said I don't know the rules but that may have some bearing on it I should think I had one question more in the back of my mind but I did not like to ask it at least I wanted information on this subject without appearing to ask for it neither do I know the rules of Motors I said and I don't understand when you say that

guy elston's machine was an irritable cross- grained brute that liked running over chickens and rabbits but I think you subsequently said that the irritability may have been the irritability of its owner did he mind being checked it made him blind mad if it happened often said Harry I shall never forget a drive I had with him once there were hay cuts and perambulators every hundred yards it was perfectly ghastly it was like being with a madman and when we got inside his gate his dog came running out to meet him he did not go an

inch out of his course it was worse than that he went for it just grinding his teeth with rage I never drove with him again he stopped a moment guessing what might be in my mind I say you mustn't think you mustn't think he began no of course not said I Harry C Martin's house stood close to the weather eaten Sandy Cliffs of suffk shore which are being incessantly gwed Away by the hunger of the insatiable sea fathoms deep below it and now many hundred yards out lies what was once the second Port of England

but now of the ancient town of dich and of its seven Great churches nothing remains but one and that ruinous and already half destroyed by the falling cliff and the encroachments of the sea foot by foot it too is disappearing and of the graveyard which surrounded it more than half is gone so that from the face of the Sandy cliff on which it stands they stick out like straws in glass as Dante says the bones of those who were once committed there to the kindly and stable Earth whether it was the remembrance of this rather

Grim spectacle as I had seen it that afternoon or whether Harry's story had caused some trouble in my brain or whether it was merely that the Keen bracing air of this place to one who had just come from the Sleepy Langer of the Norfolk broads kept me sleepless I do not know but anyhow the moment I put out my light that night and got into bed I felt that all the footl and gas jets in the internal theater of my mind sprang into flame and that I was very vividly and alertly awake it was in

vain that I counted a 100 forwards and 100 backwards that I pictured to myself a flock of visionary sheep coming singly through a gap in an imaginary hedge and tried to number their monotonous and uniform countenances that I played knots and crosses with myself that I marked out scores of double lawn tennis courts for with each repetition of these supposedly soporific exercises I only became more intensely wakeful it was not in remote hope of sleep that I continued to repeat these weary performances long after their inefficacy was proved to the hilt but because I was

strangely unwilling in this Timeless hour of the night to think about those protruding relics of humanity also I quite distinctly did not desire to think about that subject with regard to which I had a few hours ago promised Harry that I would not make it the subject of reflection for these reasons I continued during the black hours to practice these narcotic exercises of the Mind knowing well that if I paused on the tedious treadmill my thoughts like some released spring would fly back to rather gruesome subjects I kept my mind in fact talking loud to

itself so that it should not hear what other voices were saying then by degrees these absurd mental occupations became impossible my mind simply refused to occupy itself with them any longer and next moment I was thinking intently and eagerly not about the bones protruding from the Nord section of sandcliffe but about the subject I had said I would not dwell upon and like a flash It Came Upon me why had bidden me not to think about it surely in order that I should not come to the same conclusion as he had come to now the

whole question of haunt haunted spots haunted houses and so forth has always seemed to me to be utterly unsolved and to be neither proved nor disproved to a satisfactory degree from the earliest times certainly from the earliest known Egyptian records there has been a belief that that the scene of a crime is often Revisited sometimes by the spirit of him who has committed it seeking rest we must suppose and finding none sometimes and more inexplicably by the spirit of his victim crying perhaps like the blood of Abel for vengeance and though the stories of these

Village gossips in the Ale House about noiseless visions and invisible noises were all as yet un sifted and reliable yet I could not help wondering if they such as they were pointed to something authentic and to be clasped under this head of appearances but more striking than the Yarns of the Gaffers seemed to me the questions of the lodg keeper children how should children have imagined the figure of a child that would not speak to them or play with them perhaps it was a real child a sulky child yes perhaps but perhaps not then after

this preliminary Skirmish I found myself settling down to the question that I had said I would not think about in other words the possible origin of these phenomena interested me more than the phenomena themselves for what exactly had guy Elston that Savage driver done had or had not the death of the child been entirely an accident a thing given he drove a motor at all outside his own control or had he irritated Beyond endurance at the checks and delays of the day not pulled up when it was just possible he might have but had run

over the child as he would have run over a rabbit or a hen or even his own dog and what in any case poor wretched brute must have been his thoughts in that terrible instant that intervened between the child's death and his own when a moment later he smashed into the closed Gates of his own Lodge was remorse his bitter despairing Contrition that could hardly have been so or else surely knowing only for certain that he had knocked a child down he would have stopped he would have done his best whatever that might be to

repair the irreparable harm but he had not stopped he had gone on it seemed at full speed for on the Collision the had been smashed into matchwood and steel shavings again with double Force had this Dreadful thing been a complete accident he would have stopped so then most terrible question of all had he after making murder rushed on to what proved to be his own death filled with some hellish Glee at what he had done indeed as in the churchyard on the cliff bones of the B buried stuck starkly out into the night the pale

tired light of earliest morning had turned the window blinds into glimmering squares before I slept and when I woke the servant who called me was already rattling them briskly up on their rollers and letting the calm Serenity of the August day stream into the room through the open Windows poured in sunlight and sea wind the scent of flowers and the song of birds and each and all were wonderfully reassuring banishing the hooded forms that had haunted the night and I thought of the disquietude of the Dark Hours as a traveler may think of the Billows

and tempests of the ocean over which he has safely journeyed unable now that they belong to the limbo of the past to recall his qualms and tossings with any Vivid uneasiness not without a feeling of relief too did I dwell on the knowledge that I was defitely not going to visit this equivocal spot our drive today as Harry had said would not take us within 30 miles of it and tomorrow I but went to the station and away though a thorough paced Seeker after truth might no doubt have regretted that the laws of time and

space did not permit him to visit buram after the Sinister dark had fallen and test whether for him there was visible or audible truth in the tales of the village gossips I was conscious of No Such regret beram and its fables had given me a very bad night and I was perfectly aware that I did not in the least want to go near it though yesterday I had quite truthfully said I should like to do so in this brightness too of sun and sea wind I felt none of the Mala at my waking moments which

a sleepless night usually gives me I felt particularly well particularly pleased to be alive and also as I have said particularly content not to be going to buram I was quite satisfied to leave my curiosity unsatisfied the motor came round about 11: and we started at once Harry and Mrs Morrison a cousin of his sitting behind in the big back seat large enough to hold a comfortable three and I on the left of the driver in a sort of Trance I am not ashamed to confess it of expectancy and Delight for this was in the

early days of Motors when there was still the sense of romance and adventure around them I did not want to drive any more than Harry wanted to for driving so I hold is too absorbing it takes the attention in too firm a grip the Mania of the true motorist is not consciously enjoyed for the passion for Motors is a taste I'd almost said a gift as distinct and as keenly individual as the passion for music or mathematics those who use motors most merely as a means of getting rapidly from one place to another are often

entirely without it while Those whom adverse circumstances over which they have no control compelled to use them least may have it to a supreme degree to those who have it analysis of their passion is perhaps Superfluous to those who have it not explanation is almost unintelligible Pace however and the control of pace and above all the sensuous consciousness of pace is at the root of it and pleasure in Pace is common to most people whether it be in the form of a galloping horse or the pace of the skate hissing over smooth ice or the

pace of a Freewheel Bicycle humming downhill or more impersonally the pace of the smashed ball at lawn tennis The Driven ball at Gulf or the low boundary hit at Cricket but the sensuous consciousness of pace as I have said is needful one might experience it seated in front of the engine of an Express train though not in a waded shut windowed Carriage where the wind of movement is not felt then add to this Rapture of the rush through Riven air the knowledge that huge Relentless force is controlled by a little lever and directed by A

Little Wheel on which the hands of the driver seem to lie so negligently a great Untamed devil has there his Bridal and he answers to it as Harry had said like a horse with a fine mouth he has hunger and thirst too unslakable and greedily he laps of his soup of petrol which turns to fire in his mouth electricity the force that rends clouds asunder and causes Towers to totter is the spoon with which he feeds himself and as he eats he races onward and the road opens like torn Linen in front of him yet

how obedient how amable is he for with a touch on his snaffle his speed is redoubled or melts Into Thin Air so that before you know you have touched the rain he has exchanged his swallow flight for a mere saunter through the lanes but he ever loves to run and knowing this you will bid him lift up his voice and tell those who are in his path that he is coming so that he will not need to touch the checks horse and jovial is his voice hooting to the wayf farer and if his hooting be

not heard he has a great gutural falsetto scream that leaps from octave to octave and Echoes from the hedges that are passing in blur lines of hanging green and as you go the Romantic isolation of divers in deep seas is yours masked and hooded companions may be near you also in their driving dress for this plunge through the Swift tides of air but you like them are alone and isolated conscious only of The Ripped ribbon of Road the two great Lantern eyes of the wonderful monster that look through drooped eyelids by day but gleam with

fire by Night the two earlaps of Splash boards and the long lean Bonnet in front which is the Skull and brain case of that Swift untiring energy that feeds on fire and whrs its two tons of weight up hill and down Dale as if some new law as Everlasting is gravity and like gravity making it go ever swifter was its sole control for the first hour the essence of these Joys any description of which compared to the real thing is but as a stagnant Pond compared to the bright rushing of a mountain stream was mine

a straight Switchback Road lay in front of us and the monster plunged silently downhill and said below his breath aha aha haa as without diminution of speed he breasted the opposing slope in my control were his great vocal cords for in those days Hooter and siren were on the driver's left and lay convenient venient to the hand of him who occupied the box seat and it rejoiced me to let him hoot to a pony cart 300 yard ahead with a hand on his falsetto scream if his ordinary tones of conversation were unheard or disregarded then

came a road crossing ours at right angles and the dear monster seemed to say yes yes see how obedient and careful I am I stroll with my hands in my pockets then again a puppy from a farmhouse staggered warlike into the road and the monster said poor little chap get home to your mother or I'll talk to you in Earnest the poor little chap did not take the hint so the monster slackened speed and just said woof then it chuckled to itself as the puppy scuttled into the Hedge seriously alarmed and next moment our self-made

wind screeched and whistled round us again Napoleon I believe said that the power of an army lay in its feet that is true also of the monster there was a loud bang and in 30 seconds we were at a standstill the monsters of forfoot troubled it and the chauffeur said yes sir burst so the burst boot was taken off and a new one put on a boot that had never been on foot before the foot in question was held up on a Jack jording this operation and the new boot laced up with a pump this

took exactly 25 minutes then the monster got his spoon going again and said let me run oh let me run and for 15 miles on a straight and empty road it ran I timed the miles but shall not produce their chronology for the benefit of a foresworn constabulary but there were no more damic that morning morning we should have reached Hanton in time for lunch instead we waited to repair our fourth puncture at 1:45 p.m. 25 mil short of our destination this fourth puncture was caused by a spicule of Flint 3/4 of an inch long

sharp it is true but weighing perhaps Two Penny weights while we weighed two tons it seemed an impertinence so we lunched at a Wayside in and during lunch the pundits held a consultation of which the upshot was this we had no more boots for our monster for his off forefoot had burst once and punctured once thus necessitating two socks and one boot similarly but more so his off hind foot had burst twice thus necessitating Two Boots and two socks now there was no certain Shoemaker shop at Hanton as far as we knew but there was

a regular Universal store at Kings Lin which was about equidistant and so said the chauffeur there was something wrong with the monster's spoon ignition and he didn't rightly know what and therefore it seemed The Prudent part not to go to hunt Stanton lunch a thing of the preterit having been the object but to the well supplied King's Lyn and we all breathed a Pious hope that we might get there whiz poot purr the last boot held the spoon went busily to the monster's mouth and we just flowed into King's Linn the return Journey so I

vaguely gathered would be made by other roads but personally intoxicated with air and movement I neither asked nor desired to know what those roads would be this one small but rather Salient fact is necessary to record here that as we waited at King's Linn and as we buzzed homewards afterwards no thought of burum entered my head at all the subsequent hallucination if hallucination it was was not as far as I know self- suggested that we had gone out of our way for the sake of the garage I knew and that was all Harry also told

me that he did not know where our road would take us the rest that follows is the boldest possible Narrative of what occurred but it seems to me a humble student of the occult to be curious while we waited we had tea in a hotel looking onto a big empty square of houses and after tea we waited a very long time for our monster to pick us up then the telephone from the garage inquired for the gentleman on the motor and since Harry had strolled out to get a local evening paper with news of the

last test match I applied ear and mouth to that elusive instrument what I heard was not encouraging the ignition had gone very wrong indeed and perhaps in an hour we should be able to start it was then about half 6 and we were just 78 mil from dunich Harry came back soon after this and I told him what the message from the garage had been what he said was this then we Shan get back till long after dinner we might just as well have camped out to see your ghost as I have already said no

notion of beram was in my mind and I mentioned this as evidence that even if it had been Harry's remark would have implied that we were not going through buram the hour lengthened itself into an hour and a half then the monster quite well again came hooting around the corner and we got in whack her up Jack said Harry to the chauffeur the roads will be empty you had better light up at once the monster with its eyes a gleam was whacked up and never in my life have I been carried so cautiously and yet

so swiftly Jack never took a risk or the possibility of a risk but when the road was clear and open he let the Monster Run just as fast as it was able its eyes made day of the Road 50 yards ahead and the romance of night was Fairy Land round us hairs started from the roadside and raced in front of us for 100 yards then just wheeled in time to avoid the air flaps of the great triumphant brute that carried us moths flitted across struck sometimes by the lenses of its eyes and the miles peeled

over our shoulders when it occurred we were going top speed and this was it quite unsensational but to us quite inexplicable unless my midnight imaginings happened to be true as I have said I was in command of the Hooter and of the siren we were flying Along on a straight downgrade as fast as ever we could go for the engines were working though the decline was considerable then quite suddenly I saw in front of us a thick cloud of dust and knew instinctively and on the inst without thought or reasoning what that must mean evidently

something going very fast or else so larger Cloud could not have been raised was in front of us and going in the same direction as ourselves had it been something on the road coming to meet us we should of course have seen the vehicle first and run into the dust cloud afterwards had it again been something of low speed a horse and dog cart for instance no such dust could have been raised but as it was I knew at once that there was a motor traveling swiftly just ahead of us also that it was not

going as fast as we were or we should have run into its dust much more gradually but we went into it as into a suddenly lowered curtain then I shouted to Jack slow down and put on The Brak I shrieked there's something just ahead of us as I spoke I wrought a wild CTO on the Hooter and with my right hand roped for the siren but did not find it simultaneously I heard a wild frightened shriek just as if I had sounded the siren myself Jack had felt for it too and our hands fingered each

other then we entered the dust cloud we slowed down with extraordinary rapidity and still peering ahead we went dead slow through it I had not put on my goggles after leaving King's Linn and the dust stung and smarted in my eyes it was not therefore a belt of fog but real Road dust and at the moment we crept through it I felt Harry's Hands On My Shoulder there's something just ahead he said look don't you see the tail light as a matter of fact I did not and still going very slow we came out of

that dust cloud the broad empty road stretched in front of us a hedge was on each side and there was no turning either to right or left only on the right was a lodge and Gates which were closed the lodge had no lights in any window then we came to a standstill the air was Dead Calm not a leaf in the Hedge R trees was moving not a grain of dust was lifted from the road but behind the dust cloud still hung in the air and stopped dead short at the closed Lodge Gates we had

moved very slowly for the last 100 yards it was difficult to suppose that it was a our making then Jack spoke with a curious crack in his voice it must have been a motor sir he said but where is it I had no reply to this and from behind another voice Harry's voice spoke for the moment I did not recognize it for it was strained and faltering did you open the siren he asked it didn't sound like our siren it sounded like like I didn't open the siren said I then we went on again soon

we came to scattered lights in houses by the wayside what's this place I asked Jack Bertram sir said he [Music] [Music] you've been listening to a bite-sized audio book read by me Simon Stan hope if you enjoy these stories and would like to help me to keep producing new content you can find links in the video description to my patreon page or to buy me a coffee another way to support me is through my Band Camp Page bit-sized audio. bandcamp.com where you can hear my narrations of many more more classic short stories as well as

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