The Spookiest Stories of E.F. Benson

[Music] foreign [Music] dies don't they come back isn't that so you tried to get into the lobby today didn't you how do that they'd come back our fear Departed the long Gallery by e f Benson church peverel is a house so beset and Frequented by specters both visible and audible that none of the family which it shelters under its acre and a half of green copper roofs take psychical phenomena with any seriousness but to the peverals the appearance of a ghost is a matter of hardly greatest significance than is the appearance of the post to

those who live in more ordinary houses it arrives that is to say practically every day it knocks or makes other noises it is observed coming Up the drive all in other places by myself when staying there have seen the present Mrs peverell who was rather short-sighted peer into the dusk while we were taking our coffee on the Terrace after dinner and say to her daughter my dear it was not that the blue lady has just gone into the Shrubbery I hope she went frightened Flair whistle for flow dear flow it may be remarked as the

youngest and most precious of many dachshunds Blanche peverel gave a cursory whistle and crunched the sugar left unmelted at the bottom of a coffee cup between her very white teeth oh darling Flo isn't so silliest of mine she said poor blue Aunt Barbara is such a boar whenever I meet as yours looks as if she wanted to speak to me but when I say what is it Aunt Barbara she never utters but only points somewhere towards the house which is so vague I believe there was something she wanted to confess about 200 years ago But

she has forgotten what it is here flow gave two or three short pleased barks and came out of the Shrubbery wagging her tail and capering round would appear to me to be a perfectly empty space on the lawn there flowers made friends with her said Mrs peverell I wonder why she dresses in that very stupid shade of blue from this it may be gathered that even with regard to psychical phenomena there is some truth in the proverb that speaks Of familiarity but the pevels do not exactly treat their ghosts with contempt since most of that

delightful family never despised anybody except such people as a vowdly did not care for hunting or shooting or golf or skating and as all of their ghosts are of their family it seems reasonable to suppose that they all even the poor blue lady excelled at one time in field sports so far then they Harbor no such unkindness or contempt but only pity Of one Pepperell indeed who broke his neck in vainly attempting to ride up the main staircase on a thoroughbred mare after some monstrous and violent deed in the back Garden they are very fond

and Blanche comes downstairs in the morning with an eye unusually bright when she can announce it Master Antony was very loud last night he apart from the fact that he's being so foul or Ruffian was a tremendous fellow across country and they liked these indications of the Continuance of his superb Vitality in fact it is supposed to be a compliment when you go to stay at church beveral to be assigned a bedroom which is frequented by defunct members of the family it means that you are worthy to look on the Auguste and villainous dead and

you will find yourself shown into some vaulted or tapestry chamber without benefit of electric light and told that the great great grandma Bridget occasionally has vague business by the Fireplace but it is better not to talk to her and that you will hear Master Anthony awfully well if he attempts the front staircase at any time before morning there you are left for your night's Repose and having quakingly undressed to begin reluctantly to put out your candles it is drafty in these great Chambers and the solemn tapestry swings and Bellows and subsides and the phylite dances

on the forms of huntsman and Warriors and Stern Pursuits then you Climb into your bed a bed so huge that you feel as if the desert of Sahara was spread for you and pray like the Mariners who sailed as Saint Paul for day and all the time you're aware that Freddy and Harry and Blanche and possibly even Mrs pepper are quite capable of dressing up and making disquieting tappings outside your door so that when you open it some inconjecturable horror Frontier For myself I stick steadily to the assertion that I have an obscure valvular disease

of the heart and so sleep undisturbed in the new wing of the house where Aunt Barbara and great-great-grandma Bridget in master Anthony never penetrate I forget the details of great great grandma Bridget but she certainly cut the throat of some distant relation before she disemboweled herself with the ax that had been used in Asian core Before that she had led a very sultry life crammed with amazing incident but there is one ghost a church pepper at which the family never laughed in which they feel no friendly and amused interest and of which they only speak

just as much as is necessary for the safety of their guests more properly it should be described as two ghosts but the haunting question is that of two very young children who were twins these not without reason the Family take very seriously indeed the story of them has told me by Mrs Pepperell is as follows India 1602 the same being the last Queen Elizabeth's Reign a certain dick pavaril was greatly in favorite Court he was brother to master Joseph peveril then owner of the family house and lands who two years previously at the respectable age

of 74 became father of twin boys first born of his progeny it is known that the Royal and ancient virgin had Said to handsome dick who was nearly 40 years his brother's Junior it is pity that you're not master of church pever ill and these words probably suggested to him a Sinister design be that as it may handsome dick who very adequately sustained the family reputation for wickedness set off to write down to Yorkshire and found that very conveniently his brother Joseph had just been seized with an apoplexy which appeared to be the result of

a continued Spell of hot weather combined with the necessity of quenching his thirst with an augmented amount of sack and had actually died while handsome dick with God knows what thoughts in his mind was journeying northwards thus it came about that he arrived at church peverel just in time for his brother's funeral it was with great propriety that he attended the opposite quiz and returned to spend the sympathetic day or two of Mourning with his widowed sister-in-law who was but a faint-hearted Dame little fit to be mated with such Hawks as these on the second

night of his stay he did that which the people's regret to this day he entered the room where the twins slept with their nurse and quietly strangled the latter as she slept then he took the Twins and put them into the fire which warms the long gallery the weather which up to the day of Joseph's death had been so hot it Changed suddenly to bitter cold and the fire was heaped high with burning logs and was exultant with flame in the core of this conflagration he stuck out a cremation chamber and into that he threw

the two children stamping them down with his riding boots they could just walk but they could not walk out of that Ardent place it is said that he laughed as he added more logs thus he became master of church peveril the crime was never brought home to him But he lived no longer than a year in the enjoyment of his blood-stained inheritance when he lay a dying he made his confession to the priest who attended him but his Spirit struggled forth from its fleshly coil before Absolution could be given him on that very night there

began in church pevril The Haunting to which this day is but seldom spoken of by the family and then only in low tones and with serious Mane for only an hour or two after handsome Dick's death one of the servants passing the door of the long Gallery heard from within peels of the loud laughter so jovial and yet so Sinister which he had thought would never be heard in the house again in a moment of that cold courage which is so nearly akin to Mortal Terror he opened the door and entered expecting to see he

knew not what manifestation of Him who lay dead in the room below instead he saw two little white robed figures toddling towards him hand in hand across the moonlit floor the Watchers in the room below ran upstairs startled by the crash of his Fallen body and found him lying in the grip of some dread convulsion just before morning he regained Consciousness and told his tail then pointing with trembling at Ash Gray finger towards the door he screamed Aloud and so fell back dead during the next 50 years this strange and terrible legend of the twin

babies became fixed and Consolidated their appearance luckily for those who inhabit the house was exceedingly rare and during these years they seemed to have been seen four or five times only on each occasion they appeared at night between sunset and sunrise always in the same long gallery and always is two Totaling children's scarcely able to walk and on each occasion the luckless individual who saw them died either speedily or terribly or with both speed and Terror after the accursor division had appeared to him sometimes we might live for a few months he was lucky if

he died as did the servant who first saw them in a few hours vastly more awful was the fate of a certain Mrs canning who had the illuck To see them in the middle of the next Century or to be quite accurate in the year 1760. by this time the hours and the place of their appearance were well known and as up till a year ago visitors were warned not to go between sunset and sunrise into the long gallery but Mrs canning a brilliantly clever and beautiful woman admirer also and friend of the notorious skeptic

Monsieur Voltaire willfully went and sat night after night in spite of all Protestations in the haunted place before evening she saw nothing on the fifth she had her will for the door in the middle of the gallery opened and there came toddling towards her the ill omend innocent little pair it seemed that even then she was not frightened but she thought it good poor wretch to mock at them telling them that it was time for them to get back into the fire they gave no word in answer but turned away from her crying and sobbing

Immediately after they disappeared from her vision and she rustled downstairs to where the family and guests in the house were waiting for her with the triumphant announcement that she had seen them both and must needs right to miss your Voltaire saying that she had spoken to Spirits made manifest it would make him laugh but when some months later the whole news reached him he did not laugh at all Mrs canning was one of the great Beauties of her day and in the year 1760 she was at the height and Zenith of her blossoming the chief

Beauty if it is possible to single at one point where all was so Exquisite lay in the dazzling color and incomparable Brilliance of her complexion she was now just 30 years of age but in spite of the excesses of her life retained the snow and Roses of girlhood and she courted the bright light of day which other women shunned for it but Showed to Great Advantage the Splendor of her skin in consequence she was very considerably dismayed one morning about a fortnight after her strange experience in the long gallery to observe on her left cheek

an inch or two below her turquoise colored eyes a little grayish patch of skin about as big as a threateny piece it was in vain that she applied her accustomed washes and unguins vain too were the Arts of her fathers and of her medical advisor for a Week she kept herself secluded marching herself with Solitude and unaccustomed physics and for result at the end of the week she had no amelioration to comfort herself with instead this woeful gray patch had doubled itself in size thereafter the nameless disease whatever it was developed in new and terrible

ways from the center of the discolored Place their sprouted forth little lichen-like tendrils of greenish gray and another patch appeared on a lower Lip this too soon vegetated and one morning on opening her eyes to the horror of a new day she found that her vision was strangely blurred she sprang to her Looking Glass and what she saw caused her to shriek aloud with horror from under her upper eyelid a fresh growth had sprung up mushroom-like in the night and its filaments extended downwards screening the pupil of her eye soon after her tongue and throat

were attacked the air passages became Obstructed and death by Suffocation was merciful after such suffering more terrible yet was the case of a certain Colonel Blantyre who fired at the children with his revolver what he went through is not to be recorded here it is dishaunting then that the pevels take quite seriously and every guest on his arrival in the house is told that the long Gallery must not be entered after Nightfall on any pretext whatever by day however it is a delightful room And intrinsically merits description apart from the fact that the due understanding

of its geography is necessary for the account that here follows it is full 80 feet in length and is lit by a row of six tall Windows looking over the Gardens at the back of the house a door communicates with the landing at the top of the main staircase and about halfway down the gallery in the wall facing the windows is another door communicating with the back Staircase and servants quarters and thus the gallery forms a constant place of passage for them in going to the rooms on the first landing it was through this door

the baby figures came when they appeared to Mrs canning and on several other occasions they have been known to make their entry here or the room out of which handsome dick took them lies just beyond at the top of the back stairs further on again in the gallery is the Fireplace into which he thrusts them and at the far end a large bow window looks straight down the Avenue above this fireplace there hangs with grim significance a portrait of handsome dick in the insolent beauty of early manhood attributed to Holbein and a dozen other portraits

of great Merit face the windows during the day this is the most frequented sitting room in the house for its other visitors never appear there then nor does it then ever ReSound with the harsh jovia laugh of handsome dick which sometimes after dark has fallen is heard by passers-by on the landing outside but Blanche does not grow bright-eyed when she hears it she shuts her ears and hastens to put a greater distance between her and the sound of that atrocious Mirth but during the day the long Gallery is frequented by many occupants and the much

laughter in no wise Sinister or Saturnine resounds there when summer lies hot over the land those occupants Lounge in the Deep window seats and when winter spreads his icy fingers and blows shrilly between his Frozen Palms congregate around the fireplace at the far end and to perch in companies of cheerful chatteris upon sofa and chair and chair back and floor often have I sat there on Long August evenings up till dressing time but never have I been there when anyone has seemed Disposed to linger over late without hearing the warning it's close on Sunset but

shall we go later on in the shorter Autumn days they often have tea laid there and sometimes it has happened that even while merriment was most uproarious Mrs pevaril has suddenly looked out of the window and said my dears it is getting so late let us finish our nonsense downstairs in the hall and then for a moment A curious harshow which falls on loquacious family and guests alike and as if some bad news had just been known we all make our silent way out of the place but the spirits of the perforals of the living

ones that is to say are the most Mercurial imaginable and blight which the thought of handsome dick and his doings casts over them passes away again with amazing rapidity Typical party large young and peculi cheerful was staying at church pevers shortly after Christmas last year and as usual on December the 31st Mrs Pepperell was giving her annual New Year's Eve ball the house was quite full and she had commandeered as well the greater part of the peveral arms to provide sleeping quarters for the Overflow from the house for some days past a black and windless

Frost had stopped all hunting but it is An ill windlessness that blows no good it's so mixed a metaphor may be forgiven and the lake below the house had for the last day or two have been covered with an adequate and admirable sheet of ice everyone in the house had been occupied all the morning of that day and Performing Swift and violent Maneuvers on The elusive surface and as soon as lunch was over we all with one exception carried out again this one exception was mad should Dalrymple who had had The Misfortune to fall rather

badly earlier in the day but hoped by resting her injured knee instead of joining the skaters again to be able to dance that evening the hope it is true was the most sanguine sword but she could but hobble in nobly back to the house but with the Breezy optimism which characterizes the peverals she is blanche's first cousin she remarked that it would be but tepid enjoyment that she Could in her present State derive from further skating and thus she sacrificed little but might gain much accordingly after a rapid cup of coffee which was served in

the long Gallery we left a Madge comfortably reclined on the big sofa at right angles to the fireplace with an attractive book to beguile the tedium tilt tea the being of the family she knew all about handsome dick and the babies and the fate of Mrs canning and Colonel Blantyre but as we Went out I heard Blanche say to her don't run it too fine dear the Madge had replied no I'll go away well Before Sunset and so we left her all alone in a long gallery Madge read her attractive book for some minutes but

failing to get absorbed in it put it down and limped across to the window though it was still but a little after two it was but a dim an uncertain light that entered for the crystalline brightness of the morning had given Place to a veiled obscurity produced by flocks of thick clouds which were coming sluggishly up from the Northeast already the whole sky was overcast Rhythm and occasionally a few snowflakes fluttered waveringly down past along windows from the darkness and bitter cold of the afternoon it seemed to her that there was like to be heavy

snowfall before long and these outward signs were echoed inwardly in her by the muffled Drowsiness of the brain to those who are sensitive to the pressures and lightness of weather potent's storm Madge was peculiarly the prey of such external influences to her a Brisk mourning gave an ineffable brightness and briskness of Spirit and correspondingly the approach of heavy weather produced a somnolescence in Sensation that both drowsed and depressed her It was in such a mood as this that she lived back again to the sofa beside the log fire the whole house was comfortably heated by

water pipes and though the fire Vlogs and Pete an adorable mixture had been allowed to burn low the room was very warm ideally she watched the dwindling Flames not opening her book again but lying on the sofa with face towards the fireplace intending drowsily and not immediately To go to her own room and spend the hours until the return of the skaters made gaiety in the house again in writing one or two neglected letters still drowsily she began thinking about what she had to communicate one letter several days of radio should go to her mother

who was immensely interested in the psychical Affairs of the family she would tell her how Master Anthony had been prodigiously active on the staircase a night or two ago and how the Blue lady regardless of the severity of the weather had been seen by Mrs peverell that morning strolling about it was rather interesting the blue lady had gone down the Laurel walk and had been seen by her to enter the Stables where at the moment Freddie pever was inspecting the frostbound hunters identically then a sudden Panic had spread through the stables and the horses had

winnied and kicked and shied and sweated of the Fatal twins nothing had been seen for many years past but as her mother knew the Pebbles never used a long Gallery after dark then for a moment she sat up remembering that she was in the long gallery now but it was still but a little after half past two and if she went to her room in half an hour she would have ample time to ride this and another letter before tea till then she would read her book But she found that she had left it on

the windowsill and it seemed scarcely worthwhile to get it she felt exceedingly drowsy the sofa where Sheila had been lately recovered in a grayish green shade of velvet somewhat the color of lichen it was over very thick soft texture and she luxuriously stretched her arms out on each side of her body and pressed her fingers into the nap how horrible that story of Mrs canning Was the growth on her face was of the color of lichen and then without further transition or blurring of thought match fell asleep she dreamed she dreamed that she awoke and

found herself exactly where she had gone to sleep and in exactly the same attitude the Flames from the logs had burned up again and leaped on the walls fitfully Illuminating the picture of Handsome dick above the fireplace in Her Dream she knew exactly what she had done today and for what reason she was lying here now instead of being out with the rest of the skaters she remembered also still dreaming that she was going to write a letter or two before tea and prepared to get up in order to go to her room as she

half Rose she caught sight of her own arms lying out on each side of her on the gray velvet sofa but she couldn't See where her hands ended and where the green velvet began a finger seemed to have melted into the stuff she could see her wrists quite clearly and a blue Vein on the backs of her hands and here and there a knuckle then in Her Dream she remembered the last thought which had been in her mind before she fell asleep namely the growth of the Lichen colored vegetation on the face and the eyes

and the throat of Mrs canning And at that thought the Strangling Terror of real nightmare began she knew that she was being transformed into this gray stuff and she was absolutely unable to move soon the gray would spread up her arms and over her feet when they came in from the skating they would find her nothing but a huge misshapen cushion of lichen colored velvet and that would be she the horror grew more acute and then by a violent effort she shook herself free of The clutches of this very evil dream and she awoke for

a minute or two she lay there conscious only of the tremendous relief at finding herself awake she felt again with her fingers the pleasant touch of the velvet and Drew them backwards and forwards assuring herself that she was not as a dreamer suggested melting into grayness and softness but she was still in spite of the violence of her Awakening very sleepy and lay there till Looking down she was aware that she could not see her hands at all it was very nearly dark at that moment a sudden flicker of flame came from the dying fire

and a flare of burning gas from the peat flooded the room the portrait of handsome dick looked evilly down on her and her hands were visible again and then a panic worsened the Panic of her dreams seized her daylight had altogether faded And she knew that she was alone in the dark and a terrible gallery this Panic was of the nature of nightmare while she felt unable to move for Terror and it was worse than nightmare because she knew she was awake and then the full cause of this Frozen fear dawned on her she knew

with the certainty of absolute conviction that she was about to see the twin babies She felt a sudden moisture break out on her face and within her mouth her tongue and throat went suddenly dry and she felt her tongue great along the inner surface of her teeth all power of movement had slipped from her limbs leaving them dead and inert and she stared with wide eyes into the blackness the smurt of flame from the peat had burned itself out again and darkness encompassed her then On the wall opposite her facing the windows there grew a

faint light of Dusky crimson for a moment she thought it but Harold did the approach of the awful Vision then hope revived in her heart and she remembered that thick clouds had overcast the sky before she went to sleep and guessed that this light came from the Sun not quite sunk and said this sudden Revival of Hope gave her the Necessary stimulus and she sprang off the sofa where she lay she looked out of the window and saw the dull glow on the horizon but before she could take a step forward it was obscured again

a tiny Sparkle of Light Came From The Hearth which did no more than illuminate the tiles of the fireplace and snow falling heavily tapped at the window panes there was neither light nor sound except these But the courage that had come to her giving her the power of movement had not quite deserted her and she began feeling her way down the gallery and then she found that she was lost she stumbled against the chair and recovering herself stumbled against another then a table barred away and turning swiftly aside she found herself up against the back

of a sofa once more she turned and saw the demon gleam of the firelight on the side Opposite to that on which she expected it in her blind groping she must have reversed her Direction but which way was she to go now she seemed blocked in by furniture and all the time insistent and imminent was the fact that the two innocent terrible ghosts were about to appear to her then she began to pray light in our Darkness O Lord she said to herself but she could not remember how the prayer continued and she had so

need Of it there was something about the Perils of the night for all this time she felt about her with groping fluttering hands the fire glimmer which should have been on her left was on her right again therefore she must turn herself around again a light in our Darkness she whispered and then aloud she repeated light in our Darkness she stumbled up against the screen and could not remember the existence of any Such screen hey silly she felt beside it with blind hands and touched something soft and velvety or was it the sofa on which

she had Laine if so where was the head of it it had a header and back and feet it was like a person all covered with gray lichen then she lost her head completely all that remained to her was to pray she was lost lost in this awful place where no one came in the dark except the Babies that cried and she heard her voice rising from whisper to speech and speech to scream she shrieked out the holy words she yelled them as if blaspheming as she groped among tables and chairs and the pleasant things

of ordinary life which had become so terrible then came a sudden and an awful answer to her screamed prayer once more a pocket of Inflammable gas in the peat on the Hearth was reached by the smoldering Embers and the rooms started into light she saw the evil eyes of handsome dick she saw the little ghostly snowflakes falling thickly outside she saw where she was just opposite the door through which the terrible twins made their entrance then the flame went out again and left her Blackness once more but she had gained something for she had her

geography now the center of the room was Bare of furniture and one swift Dart would take her to the door of the landing above the main staircase and into safety in that gleam she had been able to see the handle of the door bright brassed luminous like a star she would go straight for it it was but a matter of a few seconds now She took a long breath partly of relief partly to satisfy the demands of her Galloping heart but the breath was only half taken when she was stricken once more into the immobility

of nightmare that came a little whisper it was no more than that on the door opposite which she stood and through which the twin babies Entered it was not quite dark outside it but she could see that the door was opening and there stood in the opening two little white figures side by side they came towards her slowly shufflingly she couldn't see face or form at all distinctly but the two little white Figures were advancing she knew them to Be the ghost of Terror innocent of the awful Doom they were bound to bring even as

she was innocent with the inconceivable repetitive thought she made up her mind what to do she had not heard them all laughed at them and they they were but babies when the wicked and bloody deed had sent them to their burning death surely the spirits of these children would not be inaccessible to The Cry of one who was of the same blood as they Who had committed no fault that merited the Doom they brought if she entreated them they might have mercy they might forbear to bring the curse on her they might allow her to

pass out of the place without blight without the sentence of death or the shadow of things worse than death upon her it was but for the space of a moment that she hesitated then she sank down onto her knees and stretched out her hands towards them oh my dear she said I Only fell asleep I have done no more wrong than that she posed a moment and attended girl's heart thought no more of herself but only of them those little innocent spirits on whom so awful a doom was laid the day should bring death where

other children bring laughter and doom for Delight but all those who had seen them before had dreaded and feared them or had mocked at them Then as the enlightenment of pity dawned on her her fear fell from her like the wrinkled sheath that holds a sweet folded buds of spring tears I'm so sorry for you she said it isn't your fault that you must bring me what you must bring but I'm Not Afraid any longer I'm only sorry for you God bless you you poor Darlings she raised her head and looked at them Though it

was so dark she could now see their faces though all was dim and wavering like the light of pale Flames shaken by a draft but the faces were not miserable or fierce they smiled at her with shy little baby smiles and as she looked they grew faint fading slowly away like wreaths of vapor in Frosty air Madge didn't at once move when they had vanished for instead of fear there was Wrapped around her a wonderful sense of Peace so happy and Serene that she wouldn't willingly stir and so perhaps disturb it but before long she

got up and feeling away but without any sense of nightmare pressing her on or frenzy of fear to Spur her she went out of the long gallery to find Blanche just coming upstairs whistling and Swinging her skates how's a leg dear she asked you're not limping anymore Till that moment mad had not thought of it I think it must be all right she said I'd forgotten it anyhow Blanche dear you won't be flying for me will you but but I've seen the twins for a moment blanche's face whitened with Terror what she said in a

whisper yes I saw them just now but they were kind they smiled at me and I was so sorry for them and somehow I'm sure I have nothing to fear It seems that Madge was right but nothing has come to touch her something the attitude to them we must suppose her pity a sympathy touched and dissolved and annihilated the curse indeed I was at church Beverly only last week arriving thereafter dark just as I passed the gallery door Blanche came out ah there you are she said I've just been seeing the twins they look too

sweet and stopped nearly 10 minutes let us have tea at once The outcast by e.f Benson when Mrs Akers bought the Gatehouse at Tartan which had stood so long without a tenant and appeared in that very agreeable and Lively little town as a resident sufficient was already known about her past history to entitle her to friendliness and sympathy hers had been a tragic story and the account of the inquest held on her husband's body when within a month of their marriage he had shot himself Before her eyes was recent enough and offers Fuller report in

the papers as to enable our little community of Tarleton to remember and run over the Salient grimness of the case without need of inventing any further details which otherwise it would have been quite capable of doing briefly then the facts had been as follows Horace Acres appear to have been a heartless Fortune Hunter a handsome plausible wretch 10 years younger than His wife he had made no secret to his friends of not being in love with her but of having a considerable regard for her more than considerable Fortune but hardly had he married her than

his indifference developed into a violent dislike accompanied by some mysterious inexplicable dredifer he hated and feared her and on the morning of the very day when he had put an end to himself he had begged her to divorce him the case he promised would be undefended And he would make it indefensible had refused to Grant this for as corroborated by the evidence of friends and servants she was utterly devoted to him and stated with that quiet dignity which distinguished her throughout this ordeal that she hoped that he was the victim of some miserable but temporary

derangement and would come to his right mind again he had died that night at his Club leaving his month-old bride to pass the Evening alone and had returned between 11 and 12 at night in the state of vile intoxication he had gone up to her bedroom pistol in hand had locked the door and his voice was heard screaming and yelling at her Then followed the sound of one shot on the table in his dressing room was found a half sheet of paper dated that day and this was read out in court the horror of my

position he had written Is beyond description and endurance I can bear it no longer my soul sickens the jury without leaving the court returned the verdict that he had committed suicide while temporarily insane and the coroner at their request expressed their sympathy and his own with the poor lady who was testified on All Hands had treated her husband with the utmost tenderness and affection for six months Bertha Acres had traveled abroad and then in the Autumn she had Bought Gatehouse at Tarleton and settled down to the absorbing Trifles which make life in a small country

town so busy and strenuous our modest little dwelling is within a stone's throw of the Gatehouse and when on the return of my wife and myself from two months in Scotland we found that Mrs Acres was installed as a neighbor Madge lost no time in going to call on her she returned with this series of pleasant Impressions Mrs Acres still on The Sunny Slope that leads up to the table land of Life which begins at 40 years was extremely handsome cordial and Charming in manner witty and agreeable and wonderfully well-dressed before the conclusion of a

court marriage in country fashion that begged her to dispose of formalities and instead of a frigid Return of the call to dine with us quietly next day did she play bridge oh that being so we would just be a party of four but her brothers Charles Allington had proposed himself for a visit I listened to this with sufficient attention to grasp what mad was saying but what I was really thinking about was a chess problem which I was attempting to solve but at this point I became acutely aware that her stream of pleasant Impressions dried

up Suddenly and she became stonely silent she shut speech off as by the turn of a Tab and glowed at the fire rubbing the back of one hand of the fingers of another as is her habit in perplexity and go on I said she got up Suddenly Restless all I have been telling you is literally in soberly true she said I I thought Mrs Acres charming and witty and good looking and friendly what more could you ask from a new acquaintance and then after I had asked the dinner I suddenly found for no earthly reason

that I very Much disliked her I couldn't bear her you said she was wonderfully well-dressed I permitted myself to remark if the queen took the night don't be silly said manager I am wonderfully well-dressed too but behind all her agreeableness and charm and good looks I suddenly felt there was something else which I detested and dreaded it's no use asking me what it was because I haven't The slightest idea if I knew what it was the thing would explain itself but I felt a horror Vivid nothing close you understand but somewhere in the background can

the mind have a turn do you think just as a body can when for a second or two you suddenly feel giddy I think it must have been that oh I'm sure it was that but I'm glad I asked you to dine I mean to like her I shall have a turn again shall I no certainly not I said if the queen refrained from taking the tempting night oh do stop your silly chest problem said Madge bite him fungus fungus so called because he is a son of humor and Gustavus Adolphus Rose from his place

on the half rug and with a horse laugh nuzzled against my leg which is his way of biting those he loves then the most amiable of Bulldogs who has a passion for the human race lay down on My foot and side heavily but Madge evidently wanted to talk and I pushed the chessboard away tell me more about the horror I said it was just horror she said a sort of sickness of the Soul I found my brain puzzling over some vague reminiscence surely connected with Mrs Acres which those words mystery evoked but the next moment

that train of thought was cut short for the old and Sinister legend about the Gatehouse came Into my mind as accounting for the horror of which Madge spoke in the days of Elizabethan religious persecutions it had been newly built been inhabited by two brothers of whom the Elder to whom it belonged had Mass set there every Sunday betrayed by the younger he was arrested and racked to death subsequently the younger and a fit of remorse hanged himself in the paneled parlor Certainly there was a story that the house was haunted by his strangled Apparition dangling

from the beams and the late tenets of the house which had now stood vacant for over three years had quitted it after a month's occupation in consequence so it was commonly said of unaccountable and horrible sights what was more likely then that Madge who from childhood had been intensely sensitive to a Cults and psychic Phenomena should have caught on that strange wireless receiver which is characteristic of sensitives some whispered message but you know the story of the house I said isn't it quite possible that something of that may have reached you where did you sit

for instance in the paneled parlor she brightened that are you wise man she said I never thought of that that may account for it all I hope it does You should be left in peace with your chest for being so brilliant I had occasion a half an hour later to go to the Post Office 100 yards up the High Street on the matter of a registered letter which I wanted to dispatch that evening dusk was gathering but the red glow of sunset still smolded in the west sufficient to enable me to recognize familiar forms and

features of passes by just as I came opposite the post office They're approached from the other direction at all finally built woman whom I felt sure I had never seen before her destination was the same as mine and I hung on my step a moment to let her pass in first simultaneously I felt that I knew in some vague faint manner what man should meant when she talked about the sickness of the Soul it was no nearer realization to me then is the running of a tune in the head to the audible external hearing Of

it and I attributed my sudden recognition of her feeling to the fact that in all probability my mind had subconsciously been dwelling on what she had said and not for a moment did I connect it with any external cause and then it occurred to me who possibly this woman was she finished the transaction of her errand a few seconds before me and when I got out into the street again she was a dozen yards down the pavement walking In the direction of my house and of the Gatehouse opposite my own tour I deliberately lingered and

saw her passed down the steps that led from the road to the entrance of the Gatehouse even as I turned into my own door the unbidden reminiscence which had eluded me before came out into the open and I cast my net over it it was her husband who in the inexplicable communication he had left on his dressing room table just before He shot himself had written my cell sickens it was odd although scarcely more than that for Madge to have used those identical words Charles Ellington my wife's brother who arrived next afternoon is quite the

happiest man whom I've ever come across the material world that perennial spring of thwarted ambition physical desire and Perpetual disappointment is practically unknown to him Envy malice and all Uncharitableness are equally alien because he does not want to obtain what anyone else has got and has no sense of possession which is queer since he is enormously Rich if he is nothing he hopes for nothing he has no abhorrences or affections for all physical and nervous functions are in him the service of an intense inquisitiveness he never passed the moral judgment in his life he only

wants to explore and know knowledge in fact is his entire Preoccupation and since chemists and medical scientists probe and mine in the world of tinctures and microbes far more efficiently than he could do as he has so little care for anything that can be weighed or propagated he devotes himself absorbedly and ecstatically to that world that lies about the confines of conscious experience anything not yet certainly determined appeals to him with a call of a trumpet he ceases to take an interest in the Subject as soon as it shows signs of assuming a practical and

definite status it was intensely concerned for instance in Wireless transmission until Senor Marconi proved that it came within the scope of practical science and then Charles abandoned it as dull I had seen him last two months before when he was in a great perturbation since he was speaking at a meeting of anglo-israelites in the morning to show that the scones Stone which is now in The coronation chair at Westminster was for certain the pillow in which Jacob's head had rested when he saw the vision at Bethel was addressing the cycle of research Society in the

afternoon on the subject of messages received from the dead through automatic script and in the evening was by where a holiday only listening to electron reincarnation none of these things could as yet be definitely proved and that was why he loved them During the intervals when the occult and the Fantastic did not occupy him he is in spite of his 50 years and wizard mean exactly like a Schoolboy of 18 back on his holidays and brimming with Superfluous energy I found Charles already arrived when I got home next afternoon after a round of golf he

was bitwixed in between the serious and the holiday mood for he had evidently been reading to match from a journal concerning reincarnation was Rather severe to me golf he said with insulting scorn what is there to know about golf you hit a ball in the air I was a little sore over the events of the afternoon that's just what I don't do I said I hit it along the ground well it doesn't matter where you hit it said he it's all subject to known laws but the guess the conjecture there's the thrill and the excitement

of Life the charlatan with his new cure for cancer the automatic writer with his messages From the dead the reincarnationist with his positive assertions that he was Napoleon or a Christian slave they are the people who advanced knowledge you have to guess before you know even Darwin saw that when he said you could not investigate without a hypothesis so what's your hypothesis in this minute I asked why that we've all lived before And we're all going to live again here on this same Earth any other conception of a future life is impossible are all the

people who have been born and have died since the world emerged from care is going to become inhabitants of some future world called a squash you know my dear imagine now I know what you're going to ask me if we've all lived before why can't we remember it but that's so simple if you remembered being Cleopatra you would go unbehaving like Cleopatra and what will Tarlton say Judas Iscariot too fancy knowing you had been Judas Iscariot you couldn't get over it you'd commit suicide of course everybody was connected with you to commit suicide from their

horror of you or imagine being a grossest boy who knew he had been Julius Caesar of course sex doesn't matter Souls as far as I understand are sexless just Sparks of Life which are put into physical envelopes some male some female you Might have been King David Madge and poor Tony here one of his wives that would be wonderfully neat said I Charles broke out into a shout of laughter it would indeed he said but I won't talk sense anymore to you scoffers I'm absolutely tired out I will confess with thinking I want to have

a pretty lady to come to dinner and talk to her as if she was just herself and I myself and nobody else I want to win two and six percent Bridge With the expenditure of enormous thought I want to have a large breakfast tomorrow and read the Times afterwards and go to Tenney's club and talk about crops and golf and Irish Affairs and peace conferences and all the things that don't matter one straw you're going to begin your program tonight dear said Madge a very pretty lady is coming to dinner and we're going to play

bridge afterwards Madge and I were ready for Mrs Acres When she arrived but Charles was not yet down fungus who has a wild adoration for Charles quite unaccountable since Charles has no feeling for dogs was helping him to dress and Madge Mrs Akers and I waited for his appearance it was certainly Mrs Acres whom I've met last night at the door of the post office but the dim light of sunset had not enabled to me to see how wonderfully handsome she was there was something slightly Jewish About her profile the high forehead the very full-lipped

mouth the bridge nose The prominent chin all suggested rather than exemplified an Eastern origin but when she spoke she had that rich softness of utterance not quite hoarseness but not quite of the clear distinctness of tone which characterizes Northern Nations something Southern Eastern I'm about to ask one thing she said when after the usual greetings we stood Around the fireplace waiting for Charles but have you got a dog mad move towards the Bell yes but he can't come down if you dislike dogs she said he's wonderfully kind but I know ah it's not that said

Mrs acre I adore dogs but I only wish to spare your dog's feelings though I adore them they hate me and they terribly frightened of me there's something anti-canine about me it was too late to say more Charles's Steps clattered in the hall outside and fungus was hoarse and amused next moment the door opened and the two came in fungus came in first he lolliped in a festive manner into the middle of the room sniffed and snored in greeting and then turned tail he slipped and skidded on the parquet outside and we heard him bundling

down the kitchen stairs Rude Dog said Madge Charles let me introduce you to Mrs Acres my brother Mrs acres to Charles Allington Our little table of four would not permit if separate conversations and general topics spring out black mushrooms wilted and died at their very Inception what mood possessed the others I did not at that time know but for myself I was only conscious of some fundamental distaste of the handsome clever woman who sat on my right and seemed quite unaffected by the withering atmosphere She was Charming to the eye she was witty to the

ear she had Grace and gracefulness and all the time she was something terrible but by degrees as I found my own distaste increasing I saw that my brother-in-law's interest was growing correspondingly Keen the pretty lady whose Presence at dinner he had desired and obtained was in chaining him not so I began to guess for her charm And her prettiness but for some purpose of study and I wondered whether it was her beautiful Jewish profile that was confirming to his mind some anglo-israelitish Theory whether he saw in her fine brown eyes the glance of the Seer

and the clairvy aunt whether he divined in her some Reincarnation of one of the famous or the infamous dead certainly she had for him some Fascination beyond that of the Legitimate charm of a very handsome woman he was studying her with intense curiosity and are you comfortable in the Gatehouse he suddenly wrapped out at her as if asking some question of which the answer was crucial ah but so comfortable she said such a delightful atmosphere I have never known a house that felt so peaceful and home-like or is it merely fanciful to imagine that some

houses Have a sense of Tranquility about them and others are uneasy and even terrible Charles stared at her a moment in silence before he recollected his manners no there may easily be something in it I should say he answered one can imagine long centuries of Tranquility actually investing a home with some sort of psychical Aura perceptible to those who are sensitive she turned to Madge and yet I have heard a ridiculous story that the house is supposed to be haunted He said if it is it is surely haunted by delightful contented spirits dinner was over

Madge Rose come in very soon Tony she said to me and let's get to our Bridge but her eyes said don't leave me long alone with her Charles turned briskly round when the door had shut an extremely interesting woman he said very handsome said I is she I didn't notice her mind her spirit that's what Intrigued me what is she what's behind why did fungus turn tail like that queer too about her finding the atmosphere of the Gatehouse so tranquil the late tenants I remember didn't find that soothing touch about it how do you account

for that I asked yeah maybe several explanations you might say that the late tenants were fanciful imaginative people under the present tenant is a sensible matter of Fact woman certainly she seemed to be or I suggested he laughed well you might say mind I don't say so but you might say that the spiritual tenets of the house find Mrs ache as a congenial companion and want to retain her so they keep quiet and don't upset The Cook's nerves somehow this answer exasperated and Jarred on me what do you mean I said the spiritual tenant of

the house I suppose is the man who betrayed his brother and Hang himself why should he find a Charming woman like Mrs ache as a congenial companion Charles got up briskly usually he's more than ready to discuss such topics but tonight it seems that he had no such inclination didn't manage tell us not to be long he asked you know how I run on if once I get onto that subject Tony so don't give me the opportunity but why did you say that I persisted because I was talking nonsense you know Me well enough to

be aware that I'm a habitual criminal in that respect it was indeed strange to find how completely both the first impression that Madge had formed of Mrs acres and the feeling that followed so quickly on its heels were endorsed by those who during the next week or two it enables duty to the newcomer all were loud in Praise of her charm her Pleasant kindly wit her good looks her beautiful clothes but even while this lob gezang was in Full chorus it would suddenly die away and an uneasy silence descended which somehow was more eloquent than

all the appreciative speech odd unaccountable little incidents that occurred which were whispered from mouth to mouth till they became a common property the same fungus had shown if it was exhibited by another dog a parallel case occurred when she returned the call of our Parsons wife Mrs doublet had a cage of canaries in the window of her drawing Room these birds had manifested symptoms of extreme Terror when Mrs Acres entered the room beating themselves against the wires of their cage and uttering the alarm note she inspired some sort of inexplicable fear over which we as

trained and civilized human beings had control so that we behaved ourselves but animals without that check gave way all together to it even as fungus had done Mrs ache is entertained she gave Charming little dinner parties of eight with a couple of tables at Bridge to follow but over these evenings they hung up blight and the Blackness no doubt the sinister's story of the paneled parlor contributed to this a curious secret dread of her of which as on that first evening at my house she appeared to be completely unconscious differed very widely in degree most

people like myself were conscious Of it but only very remotely so and we found ourselves at the Gatehouse behaving quite as usual though with this unease in the background but with a few and most of all with mad she'd grew into a sort of obsession she made every effort to combat it her will was entirely set against it but her struggle seemed only to establish its power over her the pathetic and pitiful part was that Mrs Acres from the first had taken a tremendous liking to her and Used to drop in continually calling first to

match the window in that Pleasant Serene voice of hers to tell fungus that the hated one was imminent then came a day when imagine I were Biden to a party at the Gatehouse On Christmas evening this was to be the last of Mrs acre's hospitalities for the present since she was leaving immediately afterwards for a couple of months in Egypt so with this remission ahead mad almost Gleefully accepted the bidding but when the evening came she was seized with so violent an attack of sickness and shivering that she was utterly unable to fulfill her engagement

a doctor could find no physical trouble to account for this it seems that the anticipation of her evening alone caused it and here was the culmination of her shrinking from our kindly and pleasant neighbor she could only tell me that her Sensations as she began to dress for the Party or like those of that moment in sleep when Somewhere In The Drowsy brain nightmare is ripening something independent of her will revolted what lay before her spring had begun to stretch herself in the lap of winter when next the curtain rose on this veiled drama of

forces but dimly comprehended and shudderingly conjectured but then indeed nightmare ripens swiftly and Broad noon and this was the way of it Charles Allington had come to stay with us five days before Easter and expressed himself as humorously disappointed to find that the subject of his curiosity was still absent from the Gatehouse on the Saturday morning before Easter he appeared very late for breakfast and Madge had already gone her ways I rang for a fresh teapot and while this was on its way he took up the times I only read the outside page of it

he said the rest is too full of mere Materialistic dullnesses politics Sports money market he stopped and passed the paper over to me there where I'm pointing he said among the deaths the first one what I read was this Acres Bertha died at Sea Thursday night 30th March and by her own request buried at Sea received by Wireless from piano steamer peshawa he held out his hand for the paper again and turned over the leaves Lloyds he said the peshawa arrived at Tilbury Yesterday afternoon the burial must have taken place somewhere in the English Channel

on the afternoon of Easter Sunday Marge and I motored out to the Golf Links three miles away she proposed to walk along the beach just outside the dunes while I had my round and returned to the clubhouse for tea in two hours time the day was one of the most Lucid spring a warm Southwest wind bold white clouds Along the sky and their Shadows jovially scudded over the Sand Hills we had told her of Mrs acre's death and from that moment something dark and vague which had been lying over her mind since the Autumn seemed

to join this Fleet of the Shadows of clouds and leave her in sunlight we parted the door of the clubhouse and she set out on her walk half an hour later as my opponent and I were waiting on the fifth tee where the Road crosses the links for the couple in front of us to move on a servant from the clubhouse scudding along the road caught sight of us and jumping from his bicycle came to where we stood he wanted at the clubhouse sir he said to me Mrs carford was walking along the shore and

she found something left by the tide a body sir it was in a sack of it the sack was torn and she saw it upset her very much sir you thought it best to come for you I took the boy's bicycle and went back to the clubhouse as fast as I could turn the wheel I felt sure I knew what magic found and knowing that realized the shock five minutes later she was telling me her story in gasps and Whispers The Tide was going down she said and I walked along the high Watermark there were

pretty shells I was picking them up and then I saw it in front of me just shapeless Like a sack and then as I came nearer it took shape there were knees and elbows it moved it rolled over and where the head was the sack was torn and I saw her face her eyes were open Tony and I fled all the time I felt it was rolling along after me oh Tony she's dead isn't she she won't come back to her gate house do you promised me something awful I wonder if I guess the sea

gives her up the sea won't suffer her to rest in it the news of the finding had already been telephone to Tarleton and soon a party of four men with a stretcher arrived there was no doubt as to the identity of the body for though it had been in the water for three days no corruption had come to it the weights with which it burial it had been Laden must by some strange chance Of being detached from it and by a chance stranger yet it had drifted to the shore closest to her home that night

it lay in the mortuary and the inquest was held on it next day though it was a bank holiday from there it was taken to the Gatehouse and coffined and it lay in the paneled parlor for the funeral on the morrow Madge after that one hysterical Outburst had completely recovered herself and on the Monday evening she made a little Wreath of the spring flowers which the early warmth had called into blossom in the garden and I went across with it to the Gatehouse though the news of Mrs acre's death and the subsequent finding of the

body had been widely advertised there had been no response from relations or friends and as I lay the solitary wreath on her coffin a sense of the utter loneliness of what lay within seized and encompassed me And then a potent no less took place before my eyes hardly had the freshly gathered flowers being laid on the coffin then they all drooped and wilted the stalks of the daffodils bent and their bright chalices closed the odor of the wall flowers died and they withered as I watched what did it mean that even the Petals of spring

shrank and were moribund I told Madge nothing of this and she as If through some Pang of remorse was determined to be present next day at the funeral no arrival of friends or relations had taken place and from the Gatehouse there came none of the servants they stood in the porches the coffin was brought out of the house and even before it was put into the hearse had gone back again and closed the door so at the cemetery on the hill above Tarleton Marge and her brother and I were the only mourners the afternoon was

densely overcast though we got no rainfall and it was with these thick clouds above and the Sea Mist drifting between the gravestones that we came after the service in the cemetery Chapel to the place of internment and then I can hardly write of it now When it came for the coffin to be lowered into the grave it was founded by some faulty measurement it could not descend for the excavation was not long enough to hold it Marge was standing close to us and at this moment I heard her sob and the kindly Earth will not

receive her she whispered there was an awful delay the diggers must be sent for again and meantime the Rain had begun to fall thick and tepid for some reason perhaps some outlying feel of Magic's Obsession and wound a tentacle around me I felt that I must know that the Earth had gone to Earth but I could not suffer much to wait so in this miserable pause I got Charles to take her home and then returned pick and shovel were busy and soon the resting place was ready the interrupted service continued a handful of wet Earth

splashed on the Coffin lid and when all was over I left the cemetery still feeling I knew not why that all was not over some restlessness and want of certainty possessed me and instead of going home I fed forth into the rolling wooded country Inland with the intention of walking off these bat-like Terrors that flapped around me the rain had ceased and the Blurred sunlight penetrated the Sea Mist which Still blanketed the fields and woods and for half an hour moving briskly I endeavored to fight down some fantastic conviction that had gripped my mind in

its claws I refused to look straight at that conviction telling myself how fantastic how unreasonable it was but as often as I put out a hand to throttle it there came the echo of Maggie's words the sea will not suffer her The kindly Earth will not receive her and if I could shut my eyes to that there came some remembrance of the day she died and of half forgotten fragments of Charles's superstitious belief in reincarnation the whole thing incredible though its component parts were hung together with a terrible tenacity before long the rain began again

and I turned meaning to go by the main road into Tarleton which passes in a Wide-flung curve some half mile outside the cemetery but as I approached the path through the fields which leaving the less direct route passes close to the cemetery and brings you by a steeper and shorter descent into the town I felt myself irresistibly impelled to take it I told myself of course that I wish to make my wet walk as short as possible but at the back of my mind was the half conscious but no less Imperative need to know by

ocular evidence that the Grave by which I had stood that afternoon had been filled in and that the body of Mrs Acres now lay tranquil beneath the soil my path would be even shorter if I pass through the graveyard and so presently I was fumbling in the Gloom for the latch of the gate and closed it again behind me rain was falling now thick and suddenly and in the bleared Twilight I picked my Way among the Mounds and slipped on the dripping grass and there in front of me was the newly turned Earth always finished

the gravediggers had done their work and departed and Earth had gone back again into the keeping of the Earth it brought me some great lightening of the spirit to know that and I was on the point of turning away When a sound of a stir from the heaped soil caught my ear and I saw a little stream of Pebbles mixed with Clay trickle down the side of the mound above the grave The Heavy Rain no doubt had loosened the Earth and then came another and yet another and with Tarik ripping my heart I perceived that

this was no loosening from without but from within For the right and left the piled soil was falling away with the Press of something from Below faster and faster it poured off the grave and ever higher at the head of IT Rose a mound of Earth pushed upwards from beneath Somewhere Out of Sight became the sound as of creaking and breaking wood and then through that mound of Earth they're protruded the end of the coffin the lid was shattered loose pieces of the boards Fell off it and from within the cavity that faced me white

features and wide eyes all this I saw while sheer Terror held me motionless then I suppose came the breaking point and with such Panic a surely man never felt before I was stumbling away among the graves and racing towards the kindly human Lights of the Town below I went to the person who had conducted the service that afternoon with my incredible Tale And an hour later he Charles Allington and two or three men from The Undertakers were on the spot they found the coffin completely disinterred lying on the ground by the grave which was now

three quarters full of the earth which had fallen back into it after what had happened it was decided to make no further attempt to bury it and the next day the body was cremated now It is open to anyone who may read this tale to reject the incident of this emergence of the coffin altogether and account for the other strange happenings by the comfortable theory of coincidence he can certainly satisfy himself that one Bertha Acres did die at sea on this particular Thursday before Easter and was buried at Sea there is nothing extraordinary about that

nor is it the least impossible the Weight should have slipped from the canvas shroud and that the body should have been washed ashore on the coast by Tarleton why not Tarleton as well as any other little town near the coast nor is there anything inherently significant in the fact that the grave as originally dug was not of sufficient Dimensions to receive the coffin that all these incidents should have happened to the body of a single individual is odd But then the nature of coincidence is to be odd they form a starkling series but unless coincidences

are startling they escape observation altogether so if you reject the last incident he recorded or account for it by some local disturbance an earthquake or the breaking of a spring just below the grave you can comfortably recline on the cushion of coincidence for myself I give no explanation of these events though my brother-in-law brought forward one with which he himself is perfectly satisfied only the other day he sent me with considerable Jubilation a copy of some extracts from a medieval Treatise on the subject of reincarnation which sufficiently indicates his theory the original work was in

Latin which mistrusting my scholarship he kindly translated for me I transcribe his Quotations exactly as he sent them to me we have these certain instances of his reincarnation in one his Spirit was incarnated in the body of a man in the other in that of a woman Fair of outward aspect and of a pleasant conversation but held in dread and in Horror by those who came into more than casual intercourse with her she it is said died on the anniversary of the day of which he hanged himself after the Betrayal but of this I have

no Certain information what is sure is that when the time came for her burial the kindly Earth would receive her not but though the grave was dug deep and well it spewed her forth again of the man in whom his cursed Spirit was reincarnated it is said that being on a voyage when he died he was cast overboards with weights to sink him but the sea would not suffer him to rest in her bosom but slip the weights from him And cast him forth again onto the coast how be it when the full time of

his expiation shall have come and his deadly sin forgiven the Corporal body which is the cursed receptacle of his Spirit shall at length be purged with fire and so he shall in the infinite mercy of the almighty have rest and shall Wonder no more the house with the Brick Kiln the Hamlet of Trevor major lies very Lonely and sequestered in a hollow below the north side of the South Downs that stretch Westward from Lewis and run parallel with the coast it is a hamlet of some three or four dozen inconsiderable houses and Cottages much Girt

about with trees but the big Norman church and the manor house which stands a little outside the village are evidence of a more conspicuous post this latter except for a tendency of rather less than three weeks now four Years ago has stood unoccupied since the summer of 1896 and though it could be taken at a rent almost comically small it is highly improbable that either of its last tenants even if times were very bad would think of passing a night in it again for myself I was one of those tenants I would far prefer living

in a workhouse to inhabiting those low pitched Oak paneled rooms and would sooner look from my Garrett Windows onto the squalor and Grime of White Chapel than from the diamond-shaped and leaded Pains of the manner of Trevor major onto the boscarge of its cool thickets and the glimmering of its clear chalk stream where the quick trout glanced among the waving water weeds and over the chalk and gravel of its sliding Rapids it was the news of these trout that led Jack Singleton and myself to take the house for a month between mid-may and mid-june but

as I have mentioned a short Three weeks was all the time we passed there and we had more than a week of our tenancy yet unexpired when we left the place though on the very last afternoon we enjoyed the finest dry fly fishing that has ever fallen to my lot Singleton had originally seen the advertisement of the house in the Sussex paper with the statement that there was good dry fly fishing belonging to it but it was with but faint hopes of the reality of the dry fly fishing that we Went to look at the

place since we had before this so often inspected depopulated ditches which were offered to the unwary under high sounding titles yet after a half hour stroll by the stream we went straight back to the agent and before nightfall had taken it for a month with option of renewal we arrived accordingly from town at about five o'clock on a cloudless afternoon in May and Through The Mists of horror that now stand between me and The remembrance of what occurred later I cannot forget the Exquisite loveliness of the impression then conveyed the Garden it is true appeared

to have been for years untended weeds half choked the gravel paths and the flower beds were a congestion of mingled wild and cultivated vegetations it was set in a wall of mellowed brick in which Snapdragon and stone crop had found and Anchorage to their liking and beyond that there stood Sentinel a ring Of ancient Pines in which the breeze made music as of a distant sea outside that the ground sloped slightly downwards in a bank covered with a jungle of Wild Rose to the stream that ran round three sides of the garden and Then followed

a Meandering course through the two big fields which lay towards the village over all this we had fishing rights above the same rights extended for another quarter of a mile to the arched bridge over which they Crossed the road which led to the house in this field above the house on the fourth side where the ground had been embanked to carry the road stood a Brick Kiln in a ruinous State a shallow pit long overgrown with tall grasses and wild field flowers showed where the clay had been digged the house itself was long and narrow

entering you passed direct into a square paneled Hall on the left of which was the dining room which communicated with The passage leading to the kitchen and offices on the right of the hall were two excellent sitting rooms looking out the one onto the gravel in front of the house the other onto the garden from the first of these you could see through the Gap in the Pines by which the road approached the house The Brick Kiln of which I've already spoken an oak staircase went up from the hall and rounded ran a gallery onto

which The three principal bedrooms opened these Were commensurate with the dining room and the two sitting rooms below from this Gallery there led a long narrow passage shut off from the rest of the house by a red-based door which led to a couple more guest rooms and the servants quarters Jack Singleton and I share the same flat in town and we had sat down in the morning Franklin and his wife two old and valued servants to get things ready at Trevor major and procure help from The village to look after the house and Mrs Franklin

with her Stout comfortable face all wreathed in Smiles opened the door to us she had had some previous experience of the comfortable quarters which go with fishing and had come down prepared for the worst but found it all of the best the kitchen boiler was not furred hot and cold water was laid on in the most convenient fashion and could be obtained from Taps that neither stuck nor leaked Her husband it appeared had gone into the village to buy a few necessaries and she brought up tea for us and then went upstairs to the two

rooms over the dining room and bigger sitting room which we had chosen for our bedrooms to unpack the doors of these were exactly opposite one another to right and left of the gallery and Jack who chose the bedroom above the sitting room had thus a smaller room above the second sitting Room unoccupied next his and opening out from it we had a couple of hours fishing before dinner each of us catching three or four brace of trout and came back in the Dusk to the house Franklin had returned from the village from his errand reported

that he had got a woman to come in to do the housework in the mornings and mentioned that our arrival it seemed to arouse a good deal of Interest The reason for this was obscure he could only tell us that he was questioned a dozen times as to whether we really intended to live in the house and his assurance that we did produced silence and the shaking of heads but the country folk of Sussex are notable for their silence and chronic attitude of disapproval and we put this down to local idiosyncrasy the evening was exquisitely

warm and after dinner we pulled out a couple of Basket chairs onto the gravel by the front door and sat for an hour or so while the night deepened in throbs of gathering Darkness the moon was not risen and the Ring of Pines cut off much of the pale Starlight though that when we went in allured by The Shining of the lamp in the sitting room it was curiously dark for a clear night in May and at that moment of stepping from the darkness into the cheerfulness of the Lighted house I had a sudden sensation

to which during the next fortnight I became almost accustomed of there being something unseen and unheard and Dreadful near me in spite of the warmth I felt myself shiver and concluded instantly that I had sat out of doors long enough and without Mentioning it to Jack followed him into the smaller sitting room in which we had scarcely yet set foot it's like the hall was Oak paneled and in the panels hung some half a dozen of watercolor sketches which We examined idly at first and then with a growing interest for they were executed with the

extraordinary finish and delicacy and each represented some aspect of the house or garden here you looked up the Gap in the fir Trees into a crimson sunset here the garden trim and carefully tended dozed beneath some language summer noon here an angry wreath of storm cloud brooded over the meadow where the trout stream ran gray and leden below a threatening Sky while another the most careful and arresting of all was a study of the Brick Kiln in this alone of them all was there a human figure a man dressed in Gray peered into the open

door from which issued a fierce Red glow the figure was painted with miniature-like elaboration the face was in profile and represented a youngish man clean-shaven with a long aquiline nose and singularly Square chin the sketch was long and narrow in shape and the chimney of the Kiln appeared against the dark sky from it they issued a thin stream of gray smoke Jack looked at this with attention what a horrible picture he said and how beautifully painted I feel as if it meant something as if it was a representation of something that happened not a mere

sketch by Joe he broke off suddenly and went in turn to each of the other pictures that's a queer thing he said see if you notice what I mean with the Brick Kiln rather vividly impressed on my mind it was not difficult to see what he had noticed in each of the pictures appeared The Brick Kiln chimney and all now seen faintly Between trees now in full View and in each the chimney was smoking and the odd part is that from the garden side you can't really see the Kiln at all observe Jack it's hidden

by the house and yet the artist F A as I see by his signature put it in just the same what do you make of that I asked nothing but I suppose he had a fancy for Brick Kilns let's have a game of PK a fortnight of our three weeks passed without incident except that again and Again the Curious feeling of something Dreadful being close at hand was present in my mind in a way as I said I got used to it but on the other hand the feeling itself seemed to gain in poignancy once

just at the end of the Fortnight I mentioned it to Jack oh you should speak of it he said because I felt the same when do you feel it did you feel it now for instance we were again sitting out after dinner And as he spoke I felt it with far greater intensity than ever before and at the same moment the house door which had been closed though probably not latched swung gently open letting out a shaft of light from the hall and as gently swung too again as if something had stealthily entered yes I

said I felt it then I only feel it in the evening it was rather bad that time Jack was silent at the moment Funny thing the door opening and shutting like that he said let's go indoors we got up and I remember seeing at that moment at the windows of my bedroom were lit Mrs Franklin probably was making things ready for the night simultaneously as we cross the gravel they came from just inside the house the sound of a hurried footstep on the stairs and entering we found Mrs Franklin in the hall Looking rather white

and startled anything wrong I asked she took two or three quick breaths before she answered no sir she said at least nothing that I can give an account of I was tidying up in your room and I thought you came in but there was nobody and it gave me a turn I left my candle there I must go up for it I waited in the hall a moment while she again ascended the stairs and passed along the gallery to my room at the door Which I could see was open she paused not entering what is

the matter I asked from below I left a candle in light she said and it's gone out Jack laughed and you left a window and door open said he yes sir but not a breath of wind is stirring said Mrs Franklin rather faintly this was true and yet a few moments ago the heavy Hall door had swung open and Back Again Jack ran upstairs we'll Brave the dark Together Mrs Franklin he said he went into my room and I heard the sound of a match struck then through the open door came the light of the

rekindled candle and simultaneously I heard a bell ring in the servant's quarters in a moment came steps and Franklin appeared what bell was that I asked Mr Jack's bedroom sir he said I felt it was a marked atmosphere of nerves about for which there was really No adequate cause all that had happened of a disturbing nature was that Mrs Franklin had thought I had come into my bedroom and had been startled by finding I had not she had then left a candle in a draft and it had been blown out as for a bell ringing

that even if it had happened was a very innocuous proceeding mouse and a wire I said Mr Jack's in my room this moment lighting Mrs Franklin's candle for her Jack came down at this juncture and we Went into the sitting room but Franklin apparently was not satisfied we heard him in the room above us which was Jack's bedroom moving about with his slow and rather ponderous tread then his steps seemed to pass into the bedroom adjoining and we heard no more I remember feeling hugely sleepy that night and went to bed earlier than usual to

pass rather a broken night with stretches of dreamless sleep interspersed with startled Awakenings in Which I passed very suddenly into complete consciousness sometimes the house was absolutely still and the only sound to be heard was the sighing of the night breeze outside in the Pines but sometimes the place seemed full of muffled movements and once I could have sworn at the handle of my door turned that required verification and I lit my candle but found that my ears must have Played me false yet even as I stood there I thought I had steps just outside

and with a considerable qualm I must confess I opened the door and looked out but the gallery was quite empty and a house quite still then from Jack's room opposite I heard a sound that was somehow comforting the snorts of the snorer and I went back to bed and slept again and when next I woke morning was already Breaking in red lines on the horizon and the sense of trouble that had been with me ever since last evening had gone Heavy Rain setting after lunch next day and as I had a rears of letter writing

to do and the water was soon both muddy and Rising I came home alone about five leaving Jack Still sanguine by the stream and worked for a couple of hours sitting at a writing table in the room overlooking the gravel at the front of the house where it hung the watercolors By seven I had finished and just as I got up to light candles since it was already dusk I saw as I thought Jack's figure emerged from the bushes that bordered the path to the stream on the space in front of the house then instantaneously

and with a sudden queer sinking of the heart quite unaccountable I saw that it was not Jack at all but a stranger he was only some six yards from the Window and after pausing there a moment he came close up to the window so that his face nearly touched the glass looking intently at me in the light from the freshly kindled candles I could distinguish his features with great clearness but though as far as I knew I had never seen him before there was something familiar about both his face and figure he appeared to smile

at me but the smile Was one of inscrutable evil and malevolence and immediately He Walked on straight towards the house door opposite him and out of sight of the sitting room window now little though I like the look of the man he was as I have said familiar to my eye and I went out into the Hall since he was clearly coming to the front door to open it to him and learn his business so without waiting for him to ring I opened it feeling sure I should find him On the step instead I looked

out into the empty gravel sweep the heavy Falling Rain the thick dust and even as I looked I felt something that I could not see Push by me through the half open door and pass into the house then the stairs creaked and a moment after a bell rang Franklin is the quickest Man to answer a bell I've ever seen and next instant he passed me going upstairs he tapped at Jack's door entered and then came down again Mr Jack's still out sir he asked yes is bell ringing again yes sir said Franklin quite imperturbably I

went back into the sitting room and soon Franklin brought a lamp he put it on the table above which hung the careful and curious picture of the Brick Kiln and then with a sudden horror I saw why the stranger on the gravel outside had been so familiar to me in all respects he resembled the figure that peered into the kiln it was more than a resemblance it was an identity and what had happened to this man who had inscrutably and evily smiled at me and what had pushed in through the half closed door at that

moment I saw the face of fear my mouth went dry and I heard my heart Leaping and cracking in my throat that face was only turned on me for a moment and then away again but I knew it to be the genuine thing not apprehension not foreboding not a feeling of being startled but fear cold fear and then though nothing had occurred to assuage the fear it passed and a certain sort of reason usurped for so I must say its place I had certainly seen somebody on the Gravel outside the house I had supposed he

was going to the front door I had opened it and found that he had not come to the front door or and once again the terror resurged had the invisible pushing thing been that which I had seen outside and if so what was it and how came it that the face and figure of the man I had seen were the same as those which were so scrupulously painted In the picture of the Brick Kiln I set myself to argue down the fear for which there was no more Foundation than this this and the repetition of

the ringing Bell and my belief is that I did so I told myself till I believed it that a man a human man had been walking across the gravel outside and that he had not come to the front door but had gone as he might easily have done up the drive into the high road I told myself that it was mere fancy that was the Cause of the belief that something had pushed in by me and asked for the ringing of the bell I said to myself as was true that this had happened before and

I must ask the reader to believe also that I argued these things away and looked no longer on the face of fear itself I was not comfortable but I felt short of being terrified I sat down again by the window looking onto the gravel in front of the house And finding another letter that asked though it did not demand an answer proceeded to occupy myself with it straight in front led the drive through the Gap in the pines and passed through the field where lay The Brick Kiln in a pose of page turning I looked

up and saw something unusual about it at the same moment an unusual smell came to my nostril what I saw was the smoke coming out of the chimney of the Kiln what I smelt was The odor of roasting meat the wind such as there was set from the Kiln to the house but as far as I knew the smell of roast meat probably came from the kitchen where dinner so I supposed was cooking I had to tell myself this I wanted reassurance lest the face of fear should look Whitely on me again then there came

a crisp on the gravel a rattle at the front door and Jack came in good sport he said you gave up too Soon and he went straight to the table above which hung the picture of the man at The Brick Kiln and looked at it then there was silence and eventually I spoke for I wanted to know one thing seen anybody I asked yes what do you ask because I have also the man in that picture Jack came and sat down near me it ate a ghost you know he said he came down to the

river about Dusk and stood near me for an hour at first I thought he was Real and I warned him that he had better stand further off if he didn't want to be hooked and then it struck me he wasn't real and I cast well right through him and about 70 walked up towards the house we frightened no it was so tremendously interesting so you saw him too whereabouts uh just outside I think he's in the house now Jack looked round did you see him come In he asked no but I felt him there's another

queer thing too the chimney of the brick illness smoking Jack looked out of the window it was nearly dark but the reading smoke could just be seen so it is he said fat greasy smoke I think I'll go up and see what's on come to I think not I said He frightened it isn't worthwhile besides it is so tremendously interesting Jack came back from his little Expedition still interested he had found nothing stirring at the Kiln but though it was then nearly dark the interior was faintly luminous and against the black of the sky he

could see a wisp of thick white smoke floating northwards but for the rest of the evening we neither heard nor saw anything of Abnormal import and the next day ran a course of undisturbed hours then suddenly a hellish activity was manifested that night while I was undressing for bed I heard a bell ring furiously and I thought I heard a shout also I guessed where the ring came from since Franklin and his wife had long ago gone to bed and went straight to Jack's room but as I tapped at the door I heard his voice

From inside calling loud to me take care it said he's close to the door a sudden qualm of black fear took hold of me but mastering it as best I could I opened the door to enter and once again something pushed Softly by me though I saw nothing Jack was standing by his bed half undressed I saw him wipe his forehead with the back of his hand he's been here again he said I was standing just here a minute ago when I found him close by me He came out of the Inner Room I think

did you see what he had in his hand I saw nothing it was a knife a great long carving knife do you mind me sleeping on the sofa in your room tonight I got an awful turn then there was another thing too all around the edge of his clothes at his collar and at his wrists there were little flames playing little white Licking flames but next day again we neither heard nor saw anything nor that night did the sense of that Dreadful presence in the house come to us and then came the last day we

had been out till it was dark and as I said had a wonderful day among the fish on reaching home we sat together in a sitting room when suddenly from overhead came a tread of feet a violent peeling Of the Bell and the moment after yell after yell as of someone in Mortal Agony the thought occurred to both of us that this might be Mrs Franklin in Terror of some fearful sight and together we rushed up and sprang into Jack's bedroom the doorway into the room Beyond was open and just inside it we saw the

man bending over some dark huddled object though the room was dark we could see him perfectly for a light stale and impure seemed to come from him He had again a long knife in his hand and as we entered he was wiping it on the Mast that lay at his feet then he took it up and we saw what it was a woman with a head nearly severed but it was not Mrs Franklin and then the whole thing vanished and we were standing looking into a dark and empty room we went downstairs without a word

and it was not until we were both in the sitting room below that Jack spoke And he takes her to The Brick Kiln he said rather unsteadily I say have you had enough of this house I have there is hell in it about a week later Jack put into my hand the guidebook to Sussex opened at the description of Trevor major and I read just outside the village stands a picturesque manor house once home of the artist and notorious murderer Francis Adam it was here he killed his wife in a Fit it is believed of

groundless jealousy cutting her throat and disposing of her Remains by burning them in a Brick Kiln certain charred fragments found six months afterwards led to his arrest and execution so I prefer to leave the house with the Brick Kiln and the pictures signed f a to others between the lights by e f Benson The day had been one of unceasing fall of snow from Sunrise until the gradual withdrawal of the vague white light outside indicated that the sun had set again but as usual at this hospitable and delightful House of everard Chandler where I often

spent Christmas and was spending it now there had been no lack of entertainment and the hours had passed with the rapidity that had surprised us a short billiard tournament had filled Up the time between breakfast and lunch with badminton in the morning papers for those who were temporarily not engaged while afterwards the interval till tea time had been occupied by the majority of the party in a huge game of hide and seek all over the house barring the billiard room which was Sanctuary for any who desired peace but few had done that the Enchantment of

Christmas I must suppose had like some spell made children of us again and it Was with policy Terror and trembling misgivings that we had tiptoed up and down the dim passages from any corner of which some wild screaming form might dart out on us then wearied with exercise and emotion we had assembled again for tea in the hall a room of Shadows and panels on which the light from the wide open fireplace where there burned the Divine mixture of peat and logs flickered and grew bright again on the walls then as Was proper ghost stories

for the narration of which the electric light was put out so that the listeners might conjecture anything they please to be lurking in the corners succeeded and we vied with each other in blood bones skeletons armor and shrieks I had just given my contribution and was reflecting with some complacency that probably the worst was now known when everard who had not yet administered to the horror of his guests spoke He was sitting opposite me in the full blaze of the fire looking after the illness he had gone through during the Autumn still rather pale and

delicate all the same he had been among the boldest and best in the exploration of the Dark Places that afternoon and the look on his face now rather startled me no I don't mind that sort of thing he said the paraphernalia of ghosts has become somewhat rather hackneyed and when I Hear of Screams and skeletons I feel I am on familiar ground and can at least hide my head under the bed clothes ah but the bed clothes were twitched away by my skeleton said I in self-defense I know but I don't even mind that why

there are seven eight skeletons in this room now covered with blood and skin and other Horrors no the nightmares of one's childhood were the really frightening things because they were vague There was the true atmosphere of horror about them because one didn't know what one feared now if one could recapture that Mrs Chandler got quickly out of his seat oh everard she said surely you don't wish to recapture it again I should have thought once was enough this was enchanting A Chorus of invitation asked him to proceed the real true ghost story first hand which

was what seemed to be indicated was too Precious a thing to lose ever I'd loved no dear I don't want to recapture it again at all he said to his wife then to us but the really well the nightmare perhaps to which I was referring is of the vaguest and most unsatisfactory kind it has no apparatus about it at all you will probably all say that it was nothing and I wonder why I was frightened but I was it frightened me out of my wits and I only just saw something without Being able to swear

what it was and heard something which might have been a falling Stone anyhow tell us about the falling Stone said I there was a stir of movement about the circle around the fire and the movement was not of purely physical order it was as if this is only what I personally felt it was as if the childish gaiety of the hours we had passed that day it was suddenly withdrawn We had jested on certain subjects we had played hide and seek with all the power of earnestness that was in us but now so it seemed

to me there was going to be real hide and seek real Terrors were going to lurk in dark corners or if not real Terrors Terror so convincing us to assume the Garber reality we're going to pounce on us and Mrs Chandler's exclamation as she sat down again oh everard won't it excite you tended in any case to excite us The room still remained in dubious Darkness except for the sudden lights disclosed on the Walls by the leaping flames on the Hearth and there was wild field for conjecture as what might look in the dim corners

everard moreover had been sitting in bright light before was banished by the extinction of some flaming log into the Shadows a voice alone spoke to us as he sat back in his low chair a voice rather slow But very distinct last year he said on the 24th of December we were down here as usual Amy and I for Christmas several of you who are here now are here then three or four of you at least I was one of these but like the others kept silence for the identification so it seemed to me it was

not asked for and he went on again without a pause those of you who were here then he said and I here now will remember how very warm it was this day year you will Remember too that we played croquet that day on the lawn it was perhaps a little cold for croquet and we played it rather in order to be able to say with sound evidence to back the statement that we had done so then he turned and addressed the whole little circle we played ties of half games he said just as we've played

Billiards today and it was certainly as warm on the lawn then as it was in the billiard room this Morning directly after breakfast while today I shouldn't wonder if there was three feet of snow outside more probably listen a sudden draft floated in the chimney and the fire flared up as the current of air courted the wind also drove the snow against the windows and as he said listen we heard a soft Scurry of the falling flakes against the pains like the soft tread of many little people who stepped lightly But with the Persistence of

multitudes were flocking to some rendezvous hundreds of Little Feet seem to be gathering outside only the glass kept them out and of the eight skeletons present four or five anyhow turned and looked at the windows these were small panes with lead and bars on the leaden bars little heaps of snow had accumulated but there was nothing else to be seen yes last Christmasy was very warm and Sunny went on everard we had had no Frost at Autumn and a temerarius dahlia was still in flower I have always thought that it must have been mad he

paused a moment and I wonder if I were not mad too he added no one interrupted him there was something arresting I must suppose in what he was saying he chimed in anyhow with the hide and seek with the suggestions of the Lonely snow Mrs Chandler had sat down again but I Heard her stir in her chair but never was there a gay party so reduced as we had been in the last five minutes instead of laughing at ourselves for playing silly games we were all taking a serious game seriously anyhow I was sitting out

he said to me while you and my wife played your half game of croquet then it struck me that it wasn't so warm as I had supposed because quite suddenly I shivered and shivering I looked up but I did not see You in her playing croquet at all I saw something which had no relation to you and her at least I hope not now the angler lands his fish the stalker kills his stag and the speaker holds his audience and as the fish is gaffed and as the Stag is shot so we were held there

was no getting away till he had finished with us you all know the croquet lawn he said and how it's bounded all round by a Flower border with the brick wall behind it through which you'll remember there's only one gate well I looked up and saw that lawn I could for one moment say it was still alone was shrinking and the walls closing in upon it as they closed in two they grew higher and simultaneously the light began to fade and be sucked from the sky till it grew quite dark overhead and only a glimmer

of light came in through the gate there was as I told you a dahlia in Flower that day and as this Dreadful darkness and bewilderment came over me I remember that my eyes sort in it a kind of Despair holding on as it were to any familiar object but it was no longer a dahlia and for the red of its petals I saw only the red of some feeble Fire Light and at that moment the hallucination was complete I was no longer sitting on the lawn watching croquet but I was in a low roofed room

something like a cattle shed But round close above my head though I was sitting down ran Rafters from wall to wall it was nearly dark but a little light came in from the door opposite to me which seemed to lead into a passage that communicated with the exterior of the place little however of the wholesome air came into this Dreadful Den the atmosphere was oppressive and fouled beyond all telling it was as if for years it had Been the place of some human Menagerie and for those years had been uncleaned and unsweetened by The Winds

of Heaven yet that oppressiveness was nothing to the awful horror of the place from the view of the spirit some Dreadful atmosphere of crime and Abomination dwelt heavy in it it's denizens whoever they were was scarce human so it seemed to me and though men and women were Akin more to the beasts of the field and in addition there was Present to me some sense of the weight of yours I had been taken and thrust down into some Epoch of dim antiquity he paused a moment and the fire on the half leaped up for a

second and then died down again but in that gleam I sorted all faces would turn to everard and that all wore some look of dreadful expectancy certainly I felt it myself and waited in a sort of shrinking horror for what was coming as I told you it continued where There had been that unseasonable Dahlia they now burned dim Fire Light and my eyes were drawn there shapes were gathered rounded what they were they couldn't at first see then perhaps my eyes got more accustomed to the dusk or the fire burned better for I perceived that

they were of human form but very small for when one rose with a horrible chattering to his feet his head was still some inches off the low roof he Was dressed in a sort of shirt that came to his knees but his arms were bare and covered with hair then the gesticulation and chattering increased and I knew that they were talking about me for they kept pointing in my direction at that my horror suddenly deepened for I became aware that I was powerless and couldn't move a hand or foot a helpless nightmare impotence of possession

of me I couldn't lift a finger or turn my head and in the Paralysis of that fear I tried to scream but not a sound could I utter all this I suppose took place with the instantaneousness of a dream for at once and without transition the whole thing vanished and I was back on the lawn again while the stroke for which my wife was aiming was still unplayed but my face was Dripping with perspiration and I was trembling all over now you may all say that I had fallen asleep and had a sudden nightmare that

Maybe so but I was conscious of no sense of sleepiness before and I was conscious of none afterwards it was as if someone had held a book before me whisked the pages open for a second and then closed them again somebody I don't know who got up from his chair with a sudden movement that made me start and turned on the electric light I don't mind confessing that I was rather glad of this ever I'd laughed really I feel like hamlet in the play Scene he said and as if there was a guilty Uncle present

shall I go on I don't think anyone replied and he went on well let's say for the moment that it wasn't a dream exactly but hallucination whichever it was in my case it haunted me for months I think it was never quite out of my mind but lingered somewhere in the dusk of Consciousness sometimes sleeping quietly so to speak but Sometimes stirring in its sleep it was no good my telling myself that I was disquieting myself in vain for it was as if something had actually entered into my very Soul as if some seed of

horror had been planted there and as the weeks went on the seed began to sprout so I couldn't even tell myself that the vision had been a moment's disordermont only I can't say that it actually affected my health I didn't as far as I know sleep or eat Insufficiently but morning after morning I used to wake not gradually and through Pleasant dozings into foot Consciousness but with absolute suddenness and found myself plunged in an abyss of despair often too eating or drinking I used to pause and wonder if it was worthwhile eventually I told two

people about my trouble hoping that perhaps there'd be a communication would help matters hoping also but very distantly that though I could not believe at present the Digestion or the obscurities of the nervous system were at fault a Doctor by some simple dose might convince me of it in other words I told my wife who laughed at me and my doctor who laughed also and assured me that my health was quite unnecessarily robust at the same time he suggested the change of air and seem does wonders for the delusions that exist merely in the imagination

he also told me in answer to a direct question that he would stake His reputation on the certainty that I wasn't going mad well we went up to London as usual for the season and though nothing would ever occur to remind me in any way of that single moment on Christmas Eve the reminding was seen to all right the moment itself took care of that for instead of fading as is the way of sleeping or Waking dreams it grew every day more Vivid and eight so to speak like some corrosive acid into my mind Etching

itself there and to London succeeded Scotland I took last year for the very first time a small Forest up in Sutherland called Glenn Callan very remote and wild but affording excellent stalking it wasn't far from the sea and the Gillies he was always to warn me to carry a compass on the hill because Sea Mist were liable to come up with frightful rapidity and there was always a danger of being caught by one and having perhaps to wait Hours till it cleared again this at first I always used to do but as everyone knows any

precaution that one takes which continues to be unjustified gets gradually relaxed and at the end of a few weeks since the weather had been uniformly clear it was natural that as often as not my compass remained at home one day the stock took me on a part of my ground that I'd seldom been on before a very high table land on the limit of my Forest which went down very steeply On one side to a Loch that lay below it and on the other by gentler gradations to the river that came from the loch six

miles below which stood the lodge the wind had necessitated our climbing up or so my stalker had insisted not by the easier way but of the Crags from the lock I had argued the point with him for it seemed to me that it was impossible that the deer could get our scent if we went by the more natural path but he still held to his opinion and therefore Since after all this was part of his job I yielded a dreadful climb we had a bit of a big boulders with deep holes in between masked by

clumps of Heather so that a wary eye and a prodding stick were necessary for each step if one wished to avoid broken bones adders also literally swarmed in the header we must have seen a dozen at least on our way up and adders are a beast for which I have no manner of use but a couple of hours source to the top Only to find that the stalker had been utterly at fault and that the deer must quite infallibly have got a wind of us if they had remained in the place where we last saw

them that when we could spy the ground again we saw it happen in any case they were gone the man insisted the wind had changed a palpably stupid excuse and I wondered at that moment what other reason he had for reason I felt sure there must be for not wishing to take what would clearly now Have been a better route but this piece of bad management didn't spoil our luck for within an hour we had spied more deer and about two o'clock I got a shot killing a heavy stag then sitting on the Heather I

ate lunch and enjoyed a well-earned bask and smoke in the Sun the pony meantime had been saddled with the Stag and was plodding homewoods the morning had been extraordinarily warm with a little wind blowing off the sea which lay a few miles off sparkling Beneath a blue haze and all morning in spite of our abominable climb I had had an extreme sense of Peace so much that several times I had probed my mind so to speak to find if the horror still lingered there but I could scarcely get any response from it never since Christmas

had I been so free of fear and it was with a great sense of repose both physical and spiritual that I lay looking up into the Blue Sky watching my smoke walls curl slowly away Into nothingness but I was not allowed to take my ease long but Sandy came and begged that I would move the weather had changed he said the wind had shifted again and he wanted me to be off this High ground and on the path again as soon as possible because it looked to him as if a sea mist would presently come

up and John's a bad place to get down in the Mist he added nodding towards the Crags we had come up I looked at the man in amazement Footwear right lay a gentle slope down to the river and there was now no possible reason for again tackling those hideous rocks up which we had climbed this morning more than ever I was sure he had some secret reason for not wishing to go the obvious way but about one thing he was certainly right the Mist was coming up from the sea and I felt in my pocket

for the compass and found that I had Forgotten to bring it then there followed a curious scene which lost us time that we could really illiford to waste I insisted on going down by the way that Common Sense directed he imploring me to take his word for it that the Crags were the better way eventually I marched off to the easier descent and told him not to argue anymore but to follow what annoyed me about him was that he would only give the most senseless Reason for preferring the Crags there were Mossy places he said

on the way I wish to go a thing patently false since the summer had been one spell of unbroken weather or it was longer also obviously untrue or there were so many vipers about but saying that none of these arguments produced any effect at last he desisted and came after me in silence we were not yet half down when the Mist was upon us shooting up from the valley Like the broken water of a wave and in three minutes were enveloped in a cloud of fog so thick that we could barely see a dozen yards

in front of us it was therefore another cause for self-congratulation that we were not now as we should otherwise have been precariously clambering on the face of those Crags up which we had come with such difficulty in the morning and as I rather prided myself on my powers of generalship in the matter of Direction I Continued leading feeling sure that before long we should strike the track by the river more than all the absolute freedom from Fear elated me since Christmas I had not known the instinctive Joy of that I felt like a Schoolboy home

for the holidays but the Mist grew thicker and thicker and whether it was that real rain clouds had formed above it or that it was of an extraordinary density itself I got wetter in the next hour than I have ever Been before or since the wet seemed to penetrate the skin and chill the very bones and still there was no sign of the track for which I was making behind me muttering to himself followed the stalker but his arguments and protestations were dumb and it seemed as if he kept close to me as if afraid

now there are many unpleasant companions in this world I would not for instance care to be on the hill with a drunkard or a maniac but worse than either I Think is a frightened man because his trouble is infectious and insensibly I began to be afraid of being frightened too from that it is but a short step to fear other perplexities too beset us at one time we seem to be walking on flat ground at another I felt sure we were climbing again whereas all the time we ought to have been descending unless we had

missed the way very badly indeed also for the month was October it was Beginning to get dark and it was with a sense of relief that I remembered that the full moon would rise soon after sunset but it had grown very much colder and soon instead of rain we found we were walking through a steady full of snow things were pretty bad but then for the moment they seemed to mend for far away to the left I suddenly heard the brawling of the river it should it's true have been straight in front of me and

we were perhaps a mile out of our Way but this was better than the blind wandering of the last hour and turning to the left I walked towards it but before I had gone 100 yards I heard a sudden choked cry behind me and just saw Sandy's form flying as if in Terror of pursuit Into The Mists I called him begotten a reply and heard only the spurned stones of his running what had frightened him I had no idea but certainly with his disappearance the infection of his fear disappeared also And I went on I

may say almost with gaiety on the moment however I saw a sudden well-defined blackness in front of me and before I knew what I was doing I was half stumbling half walking up a very steep grass slope during the last few minutes the wind had got up and the driving snow was peculiarly uncomfortable but there had been a certain consolation in thinking that the wind would soon disperse these Mists and I had nothing more than a Moonlight walk home but as I paused on this slope I became aware of two things one that the blackness

in front of me was very close the other that whatever it was it sheltered me from the snow so I climbed on a dozen yards into its friendly shelter for it seemed to me to be friendly a wall some 12 feet high crowned the slope and exactly where I struck it there was a hole in it oh door rather Through which a little light appeared wondering at this I pushed on bending down for the passage was very low and in a dozen yards came out on the other side just as I did there's a sky

suddenly grew lighter the wind I suppose having dispersed The Mists and the moon though not yet visible to the Flying skirts of cloud made sufficient illumination I was in a circular enclosure and above me they're projected from the walls some four feet above the ground broken Stones Which must have been intended to support a floor then simultaneously two things occurred the whole of my nine months Terror came back to me for I saw that the vision in the garden was fulfilled and at the same moment I saw stealing towards me a little figure as of

a man but only about three foot six in height that my eyes told me my ears told me that he stumbled on a stone my nostrils told me that the air I breathed was of an overpowering foulness and my soul Told me that I was sick unto death I think I tried to scream but I couldn't I know I tried to move and couldn't and it crept closer then I suppose the terror which held me Spellbound so spurred me that I must move for the next moment I heard a cry break from my lips and

was stumbling through the passage I made one Leap of it down the grass slope and ran as I hope never to have to run again what direction I took I didn't Pause to consider so long as I put distance between me and that place luck however favored me before long I struck the track by the river and an hour afterwards reached the lodge next day I developed a chill and as you know pneumonia laid me in my back for six weeks wow that's my story and there are many explanations you may say that I fell

asleep on the lawn and was reminded of that by finding myself under Discouraging circumstances in an old picked castle where a sheep or goat that like myself had taken Shelter From The Storm was moving about yes there are hundreds of ways in which you may explain it but the coincidence was an odd one and those who believe in Second Sight might find an instance of their Hobby in it and that is all I asked yes it was nearly too much for me I think the dressing Bella sounded negotium per ambulance by e f Benson the

Casual tourist in West Cornwall may just possibly have noticed as he bowled along over the bear High Plateau between Penzance and Land's End a dilapidated signpost pointing down a steep Lane and bearing on its battered finger The Faded inscription Poland two miles but probably very few have had the Curiosity to Traverse those two miles in order to see a place to which their guidebooks Awards so cursory a noticed it is described there in a couple of unattractive lines as a small fishing village with a Church of no particular interest except for certain carved and painted

wooden panels originally belonging to an early edifice which form an ultra rail but the church is sent Creed the tourist is reminded has a similar decoration far Superior in point of preservation and interest and thus even the ecclesiastically disposed are not lured to Poland so Migra bait is scarce worth swallowing and a glance at the very steep Lane which in dry weather presents a carpet of sharp pointed stones and after rain a muddy Watercourse will almost certainly decide him not to expose his motor or his bicycle to risks like these and so sparsely populated a

district Hardly a house is Matty's eye since he left Penzance and the possible trundling of a punctured bicycle for half a dozen weary miles seemed a high price to pay for the sight of a few painted panels Poland therefore even in the High Noon of the tourist season is little liable to Invasion and for the rest of the year I do not suppose that a couple of folk a day Traverse those two miles long ones at that of steep and Stony gradient I am Not forgetting the postman in this exiguous estimate for the days are

few when leaving his Pony in cart at the top of the hill it goes as far as the village since but a few hundred yards down the lane there stands a large white box like a sea Trunk by the side of the road with a slit for letters and a locked door should he have in his wallet a registered letter or be the bearer of a parcel too large for insertion in the Square lips of the sea trunk he must needs trudge down the hill and deliver the Troublesome missive leaving it in person on the

owner and receiving some small reward of coin or refreshment for his kindness but such occasions are rare and his General routine is to take out of the box such letters as may have been deposited there and insert in their place such letters as he has brought these will be called for perhaps that Day or perhaps the next by an emissary from the Poland post office as for the fishermen of the place who in their export trade constitute the chief link of movement between Poland and the outside world they would not dream of taking their catch

up the Steep Lane and so with six miles father of travel to the market at Penzance sea route is shorter and easier and they deliver their Wares to the pier head thus though the sole industry of Poland Is sea fishing you will get no fish there unless you have bespoke in your requirements to one of the fishermen back come the trollers as empty as a haunted house while the spoils are in the fish train that is speeding to London such isolation of a little Community continued as it has been for centuries produces isolation in the

individual as well and nowhere will you find greater independence of character than among the People of Poland but they are linked together so it is all seen to me by some mysterious comprehension it is as if they had all been initiated into some ancient Rite inspired and framed by forces visible and invisible the winter storms at Battle the coast the Vernal spell of the spring the hot still Summers the season of Reigns and autumnal Decay have made a spell which line by line has been communicated to Them concerning the powers evil and good and rule

the world and manifest themselves in ways benignant or terrible I came to Poland first at the age of 10 a small boy weak and sickly and threatened with pulmonary trouble my father's business kept him in London while for me the abundance of fresh air and a mild climate were considered essential conditions if I was to grow to manhood his sister had married the vicar of Poland Richard belitho himself native to the place and so it came about that I spent three years as a paying guest with My Relations Richard belifo owned a fine house in

the place which he inhabited in preference to the vicarage which he lets to a young artist John Evans on whom the spell of Poland had fallen four from years beginning to Year's End he never left it there was a solid roof shelter open on One side to the air built for me in the garden and here I lived and slept passing scarcely one hour out of the 24 behind walls and windows I was out on the bay with the Fisher folk or wandering along the gorse-clad cliffs that climbed steeply to the right and left of

the deep comb where the village lay or pottering about on the pier head or Birds nesting in the bushes with the boys of the village except on Sunday and for the few daily Hours of my lessons I might do what I pleased so long as I remained in the open air about the lessons there was nothing formidable my uncle conducted me through flowering bypass among the thickets of arithmetic and made Pleasant excursions into the elements of Latin grammar and above all he made me daily give him an account in clear and grammatical sentences of what

had been occupying my mind or my movements Should I select to tell him about a walk along the cliffs my speech must be orderly not vague slip shot notes of what I had observed in this way too he trained my observation for he would bid me tell him what flowers were In Bloom and what birds hovered fishing over the sea or were building in the bushes for that I owe him a perennial gratitude or to observe and to express my thoughts in the clear spoken word became my life's profession But far more formidable than my

weekday tasks was the prescribed routine for Sunday some dark Embers compounded of Calvinism and mysticism smolded in my uncle's soul and it made it a day of Terror his sermon in the morning scorched us with a foretaste of the Eternal fires reserved for unrepentant sinners and he was hardly less terrifying at the Children's Service in the afternoon well do I remember his exposition of the Doctrine of guardian angels a child he said might think himself secure in such Angelic care but let him beware of committing any of those numerous offenses which would cause his Guardian

to turn his face from him for as sure as there were angels to protect us there were also evil and awful presences which were ready to pounce and on them he dwelt with peculiar gusto well too do I remember in the morning's Sermon is commentary on the carved panels of the altar rails to which I have already eluded there was the angel of the Annunciation there and the angel of the Resurrection but not less was there The Witch of Endor and on the fourth panel a scene that concerned me most of all this fourth panel

he came down from his Pulpit to trace its time worn features represented the Lich gate of the churchyard of Poland itself And indeed the resemblance when thus pointed out was remarkable in the entries to the figure of a robed priest holding up a cross with which he faced a terrible creature like a gigantic slug that reared itself up in front of him that so ran my uncle's interpretation for some evil agency such as he had spoken about to us children of almost infinite malignity and power which could alone Be combated by firm faith and a

pure heart From The 91st Psalm we should find it translated there the pestilence that walketh in darkness which but feebly rendered the Latin it was more deadly to the soul than any pestilence that can only kill the body it was the thing the creature the business that trafficked in the outer Darkness a minister of Gods of Wrath on the unrighteous I could see as he spoke the looks which the congregation exchanged with each other and knew that his words were evoking a surmise a remembrance nods and Whispers passed between them they understood to what he

alluded and with the inquisitiveness of Boyhood I could not rest till I had wormed the story out of my friends among the Fisher boys as next morning we sat basking and naked in the sun after our bathe one knew one bit of it one another but it pieced together Into a truly alarming Legend in bold outline it was as follows a church far more ancient than that in which my uncle terrified us every Sunday and once stood not 300 yards away on the Shelf of level ground below the Quarry from which its Stones were hewn

the owner of the land had pulled this down and erected for himself a house on the same site out of these materials keeping in a very Ecstasy of wickedness the altar and on this he dined and Played dice afterwards but as he grew old some black Melancholy seized him and he would have liked burning there all night before he had a deadly fear of the darkness on one winter evening there sprang up such a gale as was never before known which broke in the windows of the room where he had sucked and extinguished the lamps

yells of Terror brought in his servants who found him lying on the Floor with the blood streaming from his throat as they entered some huge black shadow seemed to move away from him crawled across the floor and up the wall and out of the broken window there he later die and said the last of my informants an aimed that had been a great Burly man was withered to a bag of Skin for the Critter had drained all the blood from him his last breath was a scream and he hollered out the same words as Parson

right off the screen the gotium per ambulance in tenebress I suggested eagerly thereabouts Latin anyhow and after that I asked nobody would go near the place and the old house rotted and fell in Ruins till three years ago when alarm comes Mr duelist from Penzance and built the half of it up again but he don't care much about such Critters nor about Latin neither he takes his bottle of whiskey a day and gets drunk as a lord in the evening I am going home to my dinner whatever the authenticity of the legend I had certainly

heard the truth about Mr duelist from Penzance who from that day became an object of King Curiosity on my part the more so because the Quarry house adjoined my uncle's Garden the Thing that walked in the dark failed to stir my imagination and already I was so used to sleeping alone in my shelter that the night had no Terrace for me but it would be intensely exciting to wake at some Timeless R and hear Mr doolis yelling and conjecture that the thing had got him but by degrees the whole story faded from My Mind overscored

by the more Vivid interests of the day and for the last two years of my outdoor life in the Vicarage garden I seldom a thought about Mr doulas and the possible fate that might await him for his temerity in living in the place where that thing of Darkness had done business occasionally I saw him over the garden fence a great yellow lump of a man with slow and staggering gait but never did I set eyes on him outside his gate either in the Village Street or down on the beach he intervened with none and no

one Interfered with him if he wanted to run the risk of being the prey of the legendary nocturnal monster or quietly drink himself to death it was his affair my uncle so I gathered had made several attempts to see him when he first came to live at Poland but Mr doulas appeared to have no use for Parsons and said he was not at home and he never returned the call after three years of sun Wind and Rain I Had completely outgrown my early symptoms and had become a tough strapping youngster of 13. I was sent

to Eaton and Cambridge and in due course ate my dinners and became a barrister in 20 years from that time I was earning a yearly income of five figures and had already laid by in sound Securities as some that brought me dividends which would for one of my simple tastes and Frugal habits Supply me with all the Material Comforts I needed on this side of the grave the great prizes of my profession were already within my reach but I had no ambition beckoning me on nor did I want a wife and children being I must

suppose a natural celibate in fact there was only one ambition which threw those busy years had held the law of blue and far off Hills to me and that was to get back to Poland and live once more isolated from the world With the sea and the ghost clad Hills for play fellows and the secrets that lurk there for exploration the spell of it had been woven about my heart and I can truly say that there had hardly passed a day in all those years of which the thought of it and the desire for it

had been wholly absent from my mind though I had been in frequent communication with my uncle there during his lifetime and after his death with His widow who still lived there I had never been back to it since I embarked on my profession for I knew that if I went there it would be a wrench beyond my power to tear myself away again but I had made up my mind that when once I had provided for my own independence I would go back there and not to leave it again and yet I did leave it

again and now nothing in the world would Induce me to turn down the lane from the road that leads from Penzance to the Land's End and see the sides of the comb rise steep above the roofs of the village and hear the gulls chiding as they fish in the bay one of the things invisible of the dark Powers leaped into light and I saw it with my eyes the house where I had spent those three years of Boyhood had been left for life To my aunt and when I made known to her my intention of

coming back to Poland she suggested that till I found a suitable house or found her proposal unsuitable I should come to live with her the house is too big for a lone old woman she wrote and I have often thought of quitting and taking a little cottage sufficient for me and my requirements but come and share it my dear and if you find me Troublesome you or I can go you May want Solitude most people in Poland do and will leave me or else I will leave you one of the main reasons of my stopping

here all these years was a feeling that I must not let the old house starve how does this star of you know if they're not lived in they die a lingering death the spirit in them grows weaker and weaker and at last Fades out of them isn't this nonsense your London Notions Naturally I accepted the warmth of this tentative Arrangement and on an evening in June found myself for the head of the lane leading down to Poland and once more I descended into the steep valley between the Hills time it Stood Still apparently for the

comb the dilapidated signpost or its successor pointed a rickety finger down the lane and a few hundred yards farther on was the white box for the exchange of letters Point after remembered Point met my eye and what I saw was not shrunk as is often the case with the Revisited scenes of childhood into a smaller scale there stood the post office and they're the church and close beside it the vicarage and Beyond The Tall shrubberies which separated the house for which I was bound from the road and beyond that again the gray roofs at the

Quarry house damp and Shining with the moist evening wind from the sea All was exactly as I remembered it and above all that sense of seclusion and isolation somewhere above the Treetops climbed the lane which joined the main road to Penzance but all that had become immeasurably distant the years that had passed since last I turned in at the well-known gate faded like a frosty breath and vanished into this warm soft air there were Law Courts somewhere in Memories dull book which if I care to turn the pages would tell me that I had made

a name and a great income there but the dull book was closed now but I was back in Poland and the spell was woven around me again and if Poland was unchanged so too was Aunt Hester who met me at the door dainty and China White she had always been and the years had not aged but only refined her as we sat and talked after dinner she Spoke of all that had happened in Poland in that score of years and yet somehow the changes of which she spoke seemed about to confirm the immutability of it

all as the recollection of the names came back to me I asked her about the Quarry house and Mr doulas and her face gloomed a little as with the shadow of a cloud on a spring day yes Mr doulas she said poor Mr doulas how will I remember him though it must Be 10 years and more since he died I never wrote to you about it but it was all very Dreadful my dear and I didn't want to darken your memories of Poland your uncle always thought that something of the sort might happen if he

went on in these Wicked drunken ways and worse than that and though nobody knew exactly what took place it was the sort of thing that might have been anticipated but what more or less happened Aunt Hester I asked well of course I can't tell you everything for no one knew it but it was a very sinful man and the Scandal about him at Newland was shocking and then he lived two in the Quarry house I wonder if by chance you remember the sermon of your uncles when he got out of the pulpit and explained that

panel in the ultra rails the one I mean with a horrible creature rearing itself up outside the Lich gate Yes I remember perfectly said I I made an impression on you I suppose and so it did on all who heard him and that impression got stamped and branded on us all when the catastrophe occurred somehow Mr doulas got to hear about your uncle's sermon and in some drunken fit he broke into the church and smashed the panel to atoms he seems to have thought that it was some magic in it and that if he destroyed

that he would get rid of the terrible fate that was threatening Him for I must tell you that before he committed that Dreadful sacrilege he had been a haunted man he hated and feared Darkness but he thought that the creature on the panel was on his track but that as long as he kept lights burning it couldn't touch him but the panel to his disordered mind was the root of his Terror and so as I said he broke into the church and attempted you'll see why I said attempted to Destroy it it certainly was found

in splinters next morning when your uncle went into church for matins and knowing Mr doulas's fear of the panel he went across to the Quarry house afterwards and taxed him with its destruction the man never denied it he boasted of what he had done they sat though it was early morning drinking his whiskey I've settled your thing for you he said and your sermon too a fig for such Superstitions your uncle left him without answering his blasphemy meaning to go straight into Penzance and give information to the police about these outrage to the church but

on his way back from the Quarry house he went into the church again and there in the screen was the panel untouched and uninjured and yet he had himself seen it smashed but Mr doulas had confessed the destruction of it was His work but there it was and whether the power of God had mended it or some other power who knows this was Poland indeed and it was a spirit of Poland that made me accept all Aunt Hester was telling me as a tested fact it had happened like that she went on in her quiet

voice your uncle recognized that some power beyond police was at work and he did not go to Penzance or give information about the outrage for the evidence of it had Vanished a sudden Spate of skepticism swept over me there must have been some mistake I said it hadn't been broken she smiled yes my dear but you have been in London so long she said let me anyhow tell you the rest of my story that night for some reason I couldn't sleep it was very hot and airless I dare say you'll think that the sultry conditions

accounted for my wakefulness once and again as I went to the window To see if I couldn't admit more air I could see from it the Quarry house and I noticed the first time that I left my bed it was Blazing with lights but the second time I saw that it was all in darkness and as I wondered at that I had a terrible scream and the moment afterwards the steps of someone coming at full speed down the road outside the gate he yelled as he ran light lied he called out give me light or

it'll catch me It was very terrible to hear that and I went to Rouse my husband who was sleeping in the dressing room across the passage he wasted no time but by now the whole village was aroused by the screams and when he got down to the pier he found that it was all over the tide was low and on the rocks at its foot was lying the body of Mr doulas he must have cut some artery when he fell on those sharp edges of stone poor he had bled to death they thought And though

he was such a Burly man his corpse was butt Skin and Bones yet there was no pool of blood around him such as you would have expected just skin and bones as if every drop of blood in his body had been sucked out of him she leaned forward you and I my dear know what happened she said oh at least can guess God has his instruments of Vengeance on those who bring wickedness into places That have been holy dark and mysterious eyesways now what I should have thought of such a story if it had been

told to me in London I can easily imagine there was such an obvious explanation the man in question had been a drunkard what wonder if the Demons of delirium pursued him but here in Poland it was different and who's in the Quarry house now I Asked years ago the Fisher Boys told me the story of the man who first built it and of his horrible end and now again it has happened surely no one has ventured to inhabit it once more I saw in her face even before I asked that question that somebody had done

so yes it's lived in again said she for there is no end to the blindness I don't know if you remember him he was a tenant of the vicarage many years ago John Evans said I yeah such a nice fellow who was too your uncle was pleased to get so good a tenant and now she wrote Aunt Hester you shouldn't leave your sentence is unfinished I said she shook her head my dear that sentence will finish itself but what a time of night I must go to bed and you too or they think we'll have

to keep lights burning here through the dark hours before getting into bed I drew my curtains wide and opened all the windows To the warm tide of the Sea Air that flowed softly in looking out into the garden I could see in the Moonlight at the roof of the shelter in which for three years I had lived gleaming with Dew that as much as anything brought back the old days to which I had now returned and they seemed of one piece with the present as if no gap of more than 20 years sanded them the

two flowed into one like globules of mercury uniting into a softly shining Globe but Mysterious lights and reflections then raising my eyes a little I saw against the black Hillside the windows of the Quarry house still alight morning as is so often the case brought no shattering of my illusion as I began to regain Consciousness I fancied that I was a boy again waking up in the shelter in the garden and though as I grew more widely awake I smiled at the impression that on which it was based I found to be indeed true it

was Sufficient now as then to be here to wander again on the cliffs and hear the popping of the ripened seed pods on the ghost bushes to stray along the shore to the bathing Cove to float and drift and swim in the warm tide and bask on the sand and watch the gulls fishing to Lounge on the pier head with the Fisher folk to see in their eyes and hear in their quiet speech the evidence of secret things not so much known to them as part of their instincts and Their very being there were powers

and presences about me the white poplars that stood by the stream that babbled down the valley knew of them and showed a glimpse of their knowledge sometimes like The Gleam of their white Under leaves the very cobbles that paved this street were soaked in it all that I wanted was to lie there and grow soaked in it too unconsciously as a boy I had done that but now the process must Be conscious I must know what story forces fruitful and mysterious seethed along the hillside at noon and sparkled at night on the sea they could

be known they could even be controlled by those who were masters of the spell but never could they be spoken of for they were dwellers in the innermost grafted into the eternal life of the world there were Dark Secrets as well in these clear kindly powers And to these no doubt belonged in the gotium per ambulance into nebris which though of deadly malignity might be regarded not only as evil but as the Avenger of the sacrilegious and impious deeds all this was part of the spell of Poland of which the seeds had laid long dormant

in me but now they were sprouting and who knew what strange flower would unfold on their stems it was not long before I came across John Evans one morning as I lay on the beach they came shambling across the sand a man Stout in middle-aged with the face of selenus he paused as he drew near me and regarded me from narrow eyes why you're the little chap that used to live in the Parsons Garden he said don't you recognize me I saw who it was when he spoke his voice I think instructed me and recognizing

it I could see the features Of the strong alert young man in this gross caricature yes you're John Evans I said you used to be very kind to me you used to draw pictures for me so I did and I'll draw you some more been bathing that's a risky performance you never know what lives in the sea nor what lives in the land for that matter not that I heed them I stick to work and whiskey God I've learned to paint since I saw you and drink two for that matter I live in the Quarry

house you know and It's a powerful thirsty place come and have a look at my things if you're passing staying with your aunt are you I could do a wonderful portrait of her interesting face she knows a lot people who live at Poland get to know a lot though I don't take much stock in that sort of knowledge myself I do not know when I've been the one so repelled and interested behind the mere grossness of his face There looked something which while it appalled yet fascinated me is thick lisping speech had the same quality

and his paintings what would they be like I was just going home I said I'll gladly come in if you'll allow me they took me through the untended and overgrown Garden into the house which I had never yet entered a great gray cat was sunning itself in the window and an old woman was laying lunch in the corner Of the cool Hall into which the door opened it was booked of stone and the carved moldings let into the walls the fragments of gargoyles and sculptured images bore testimony to the truth of it having been built

out of the demolished Church in one corner was an oblong and carved wooden table littered with the painter's apparatus and stacks of canvases leaned against the walls he jerked his thumb towards a head of an Angel there was a built into the mantelpiece and giggled quite as Sanctified air he said so we tone it down for the purposes of ordinary life by a different sort of art have a drink no well turn over some of my pictures while I put myself to rights he was justified in his own estimate of his skill he could paint

and apparently he could paint anything but never have I seen pictures so inexplicable Hellish there were Exquisite studies of trees and you knew that something lurked in the flickering Shadows there was a drawing of his cat sunning itself in the window even as I had just now seen it and yet it was no cat but some Beast of awful malignity there was a boy stretched naked on the sands not human but some evil thing which had come out of the sea above all there were pictures of his Garden overgrown and jungle-like and you knew that

in the bushes were presences ready to spring out on you well am I my style he said as he came up glass in hand the tumble of spirits that he held had not been diluted I try to paint the essence of what I say not the mere husk and skin of it it's nature where it comes from and what gave it birth there's much in common between a cat and a fuchsia Bush if you look at them Closely enough everything came out of the Slime of the pit and it's all going back there I should

like to do a picture of you someday I'd hold the mirror up to Nature as that old lunatic said after this first meeting I saw him occasionally throughout the months of that wonderful summer often he kept to his house and he's painting for days together and then perhaps some evening I would find him Lounging on the pier always alone and every time we met thus the repulsion and interest grew for every time he seemed to have gone farther along a path of secret knowledge towards some evil Shrine to a complete initiation awaited him and then

suddenly the end came I had met him thus one evening on the cliffs while the October Sunset still burned in the sky but over it with Amazing rapidity there spread from the West the great Blackness of cloud such as I have never seen for denseness the light was sucked from the sky The Dusk fell in ever thicker layers he suddenly became conscious of this I must get back as quick as I can he said it'll be dark in a few minutes and my servants out the lamps won't be lit they stepped out with extraordinary briskness

for one who shambled and could scarcely lift his feet and soon broke Out into a stumbling run in the Gathering Darkness I could see that his face was moist with the Dew of some unspoken Terror you must come with me he panted for so we shall get the lights burning the sooner I cannot do without light I had to exert myself to the fool to keep up with him but Terror winged him and even so I fell behind so that when I came to the garden gate he was already halfway up the path to the

house I saw Him enter leaving the door wide and found him fumbling with matches but his hands so trembled that he could not transfer the light to the wick of the lamp but what's the hurry about I asked suddenly his eyes focused themselves on the open door behind me and he jumped from his seat beside the table which had once been the altar of God with a gasp and a scream no no keep it off I turned and saw what he had seen The thing had entered and now we're swiftly sliding across the floor towards

him like some gigantic caterpillar a stale phosphorescent light came from it for though the dust had grown to Blackness outside I could see it quite distinctly in the awful light of its own presence from it too there came an odor of corruption and Decay as from slime that Is long laying below water it seemed to have no head but on the front of it was an orifice of Puckett's skin which opened and shut and slathered at the edges it was hairless and slug-like in shape and in texture as it Advanced its four-part reared itself from

the ground like a snake about the strike and it fastened on him at that side and with the yells of his Agony in my ears the Panic which had Struck me relaxed into a hopeless courage and with pulsied impotent hands I tried to lay hold of the thing but I could not though something material was there it was impossible to grasp it my hands sunk in it as in thick mud it was like wrestling with a nightmare I think that but a few seconds elapsed before all was over the screams of The Wretched Man sank

to moans and mutterings as a thing fell on Him he panted once or twice and was still for a moment longer became gurglings and sucking noises and then it slid out even as it had entered I lit the lamp which he had fumbled with and there on the floor relay no more than a rind of skin in loose Folds over projecting bones the room in the tower it is probable that everybody who is at all a constant dreamer has had at least one experience of an event or a sequence of circumstances which have come to

his mind in sleep being subsequently realized in the material world but in my opinion so far from this being a strange thing it would be far odd if this fulfillment did not occasionally happen since our dreams are as a rule Concerned with people whom we know and places with which we are familiar such as might very naturally occur in the awake and Daily World true these dreams are often broken into by some absurd and fantastic incident which puts them out of court in regard to their subsequent fulfillment but on the mere calculation of chances it

does not appear in the least unlikely that a dream imagined by anyone who dreams constantly should occasionally come true Not long ago for instance I experienced such a fulfillment of a dream which seems to me in no way remarkable and have no kind of psychical significance the manner of it was as follows a certain friend of mine a living abroad is amiable enough to write to me about once a fortnight thus when 14 days are thereabouts have elapsed since I last heard from him my mind probably either consciously or subconsciously is expectant of a letter

from him one night Last week I dreamed that as I was going upstairs to dress for dinner I heard as I often heard the sound of the postman's knock on my front door and diverted my direction downstairs instead there among other correspondents was a letter from him thereafter the Fantastic ended for on opening it I found inside the ace of diamonds and scribbled across it in his well-known handwriting I am sending you this for safe custody as you know it is running an unreasonable risk to keep Aces in Italy the next evening I was just

preparing to go upstairs to dress when I heard the postman's knock and did precisely as I had done my dream there among the other letters was one from my friend only it did not contain the ace of diamonds had it done so I should have attached more weight to the matter which as it stands it seems to me a perfectly ordinary coincidence no doubt I consciously or subconsciously Expected a letter from him and this suggested to me my dream similarly the fact that my friend had not written to me for a fortnight suggested to him

that he should do so but occasionally it is not so easy to find such an explanation and for the following story I can find no explanation at all it came out of the dark and into the dark it has gone again All my life I have been a habitual dreamer the knights are few that is to say when I do not find on a waking in the morning that some mental experience has been mine and sometimes all night long apparently a series of the most dazzling Adventures before me almost without exception these Adventures are Pleasant

though often merely trivial it is of an exception that I'm going to speak it was when I was about 16 that a Certain dream first came to me and this is how it befell it opened with my being set down at the door of a big red brick house where I understood I was going to stay the servant who opened the door told me that tea was being served in the garden and led me through a low dark paneled Hall with a large open fireplace onto a cheerful Green Lawn set round with flower beds they

were grouped about the T table the small party of people but they were all strangers to me except One it was a school fellow called Jack Stone clearly the son of the house and he introduced me to his mother and father and a couple of sisters I was I remember somewhat astonished to find myself here but the boy in question was scarcely known to me and I rather disliked what I knew of him moreover he had left school nearly a year before the afternoon was very hot and an intolerable oppression rained on the far side

of the lawn ran a red brick wall With an iron gate in its Center outside which stood a walnut tree we sat in the shadow of the house opposite a row of long windows inside which I could see a table with cloth laid glimmering with glass and silver this Garden front of the house was very long and at one end of it stood a tower of three stories which looked to me much older than the rest of the building before long Mrs Stone who like the rest of the party had sat in absolute silence Said

to me Jack will show you your room I have given you the room in the tower quite inexplicably my heart sank at her words I felt as if I had known that I should have the room in the tower and that it contained something Dreadful and significant Jack instantly got up and I understood that I had to follow him in silence we passed through the hall and mounted a Great Oak staircase with Many corners and arrived at a small Landing with two doors set in it he pushed one of these open for me to enter

and without coming in himself closed it after me then I knew that my conjecture had been right there was something awful in the room and with the terror of nightmare growing swiftly and enveloping me I awoke in the spasm of Terror now that dream or variations on it occurred to me intermittently for 15 Years most often it came in exactly this form of the arrival the tea laid out on the lawn the deadly silence succeeded by that one deadly sentence the mounting with Jack Stone up to the room in the tower where horodwelt and it

always came to a close in the nightmare of Terror at that which was in the room though I never saw what it was at other times I experienced variations on this same theme occasionally for Instance we would be sitting at dinner in the dining room into the windows of which I had looked on the first night when the dream of this house visited me but wherever we were there was always the same silence the same sense of dreadful oppression and foreboding and the silence I knew would always be broken by Mrs Stone saying to me

Jack will show you your room I have given you the room in the tower upon which this was invariable I had to Follow him up the oak staircase with many corners and enter the place that I dreaded more and more each time that I visited it in sleep or again I would find myself playing cards still in silence in a drawing room lit with immense chandeliers that gave a blinding illumination but what the game was I have no idea what I remember with a sense of miserable anticipation was that soon Mrs Stone would get up

and say to me Jack Will show you your room I have given you the room in the tower this drawing room where we played cards was next to the dining room and as I have said was always brilliantly illuminated whereas the rest of the house was full of Dusk and shadows and yet how often in spite of those bouquet of Lights have I not poured over the cards with doubt to me scarcely able for some reason to see them their designs too were strange there Were no red suits but all were black and among them

there were certain cards which were black all over I hated and dreaded those as the stream continued to recur I got to know the greater part of the house there was a smoking room beyond the drawing room at the end of the passage with a Green Bay's door it was always very dark there and as often as I went there I passed somebody whom I could not see in the doorway coming out Curious developments too took place in the characters that people the dreamers might happen to living persons Mrs Stone for instance who when I

first saw her had been black-haired became gray and instead of rising briskly as she had done it first when she said Jack will show you your room I have given you the room in the tower got up very feebly as if the strength was leaving her limbs Jack also grew up and became a rather Ill-looking young man with a brown mustache while one of the sisters ceased to appear and I understood she was married then it so happened that I was not visited by this dream for six months or more and I began to Hope

in such inexplicable dread did I hold it that it had passed away for good but one night after this interval I again found myself being shown out onto the lawn for tea And Mrs Stone was not there while the others were all dressed in black at once I guess the reason and my heart leaped at the thought that perhaps this time I should not have to sleep in the room with the tower and though we usually all sat in silence on this occasion the sense of relief made me talk and laugh as I had never

yet done but even then matters were not altogether comfortable upon no one else spoke but they all looked secretly at Each other and soon the foolish stream of my talk ran dry and gradually an apprehension worse than anything I had previously known gained on me as the light slowly faded suddenly a voice which I knew well broke the Stillness the voice of Mrs Stone saying Jack will show you your room I have given you the room in the tower it seemed to come from near the gate in the red brick wall that bounded the lawn

And looking up I saw that the grass outside was sewn thick with gravestones curious grayish light Shone from them and I could read the lettering on the grave nearest to me and it was an evil memory of Julia Stone and as usual Jack got up and again I followed him through the hall and up the staircase with many corners on this occasion it was darker than usual and when I passed into the room in the tower I could only just see the furniture the Position of which was already familiar to me also there was a

dreadful odor of decay in the room and I woke screaming this stream with such variations and developments as I have mentioned went on at intervals for 15 years sometimes I would dream it two or three nights in succession once as I have said there was an intermission of six months but taking A reasonable average I should say that I dreamed it quite as often as once in a month it had as his plane something of nightmare about it since it always ended in the same appalling Terror which so far from getting less seemed to me

to gather fresh fear every time that I experienced it there was two strange and Dreadful consistency about it the characters in it as I have mentioned got regularly Older death and marriage visited this silent family and I never in the dream after Mrs Stone had died set eyes on her again but it was always her voice that told me that the room in the tower was prepared for me and whether we had tea out on the lawn or the scene was laid in one of the rooms overlooking it I could always see her gravestone standing

just outside the Iron Gate it was the same too with a married Daughter usually she wasn't present but once or twice she returned again in company with a man whom I took to be her husband he too like the rest of them was always silent but owing to the constant repetition of the dream I had ceased to attach in my waking hours any significance to it I never met Jack Stone again during all those years nor did I ever see a house that resembled this dark house of my dream And then something happened I had

been in London in this year up until the end of July and during the first week in August went down to stay with a friend in a house he had taken for the summer months in the Ashdown forest district of Sussex I left London early for John Clinton was to meet me at Forest Rose station and we were going to spend the day golfing and go to his house in the evening he had his motor with him and we set off about five of The afternoon after a thoroughly delightful day for the drive the distance

being some 10 miles as it was still so early we did not have tea at the clubhouse but waited till we should get home as we drove the weather which up till then had been though hot deliciously fresh seemed to me to alter in quality and become very stagnant and oppressive and I felt that undefinable sense of ominous apprehension that I am Accustomed to before Thunder John however did not share my views attributing my loss of lightness to the fact that I had lost both my matches events proved however that I was right though I

do not think that the thunderstorm that broke that night was the sole cause of my depression our way lay through deep High banked lanes and before we had gone very far I fell asleep and was only awakened by the Stopping of the motor and with a sudden thrill partly of fear but chiefly of curiosity I found myself standing in the doorway of my house of dream we went I have wondering whether or not I was dreaming still through a low Oak paneled Hall and out onto the lawn where tea was laid in the shadow of

the house it was set in flower beds a red brick wall with a gate in it bounded one side and out beyond that was a space of rough Grass with a walnut tree the facade of the house was very long and at one end to the three-storied tower markedly older than the rest here for the moment all resemblance to the repeated dreams ceased there was no silent and somehow terrible family but a large assembly of exceedingly cheerful persons all of whom were known to me and in spite of the horror with which the dream itself

had always filled me I felt nothing of it now that the scene of it Was thus reproduced before me but I felt the intensest Curiosity as to what was going to happen T pursued its cheerful cause and before long Mrs Clinton got up and at that moment I think I knew what she was going to say she spoke to me and what she said was Jack will show you to your room I have given you the room in the tower and that for half a second the horror of the dream took hold of me Again

but it quickly passed and again I felt nothing more than the most intense curiosity it was not very long before it was amply satisfied John turned to me right up at the top of the house he said but I think you'll be comfortable but absolutely full up would you like to go and see it now by jove I believe that you're right and that we're going to have a thunderstorm how dark it has become I got up and followed him we passed through the hall and up the perfectly familiar staircase then he opened the door

and I went in and at that moment sheer unreasoning Terror again possessed me I did not know what I feared I simply feared then like a sudden recollection when one remembers a name which has long escaped the memory I knew what I feared I feared Mrs Stone whose grave with the Sinister inscription in evil memory I had so often seen in my dream just beyond the lawn to lay below my window and then once more the fear passed so completely that I wondered what there was to fear and I found myself sober and quiet and

sane in the room in the tower the name of which I had so often heard in my dream and the scene of which was so familiar I looked around it with a certain sense of proprietorship and found that nothing had been changed from the dreaming nights in which I knew it so well just to the left of the door was the bed lengthways along the wall with the head of it in the angle in a line with it was the fireplace in the small bookcase opposite the door the outer wall was pierced by two lattice

paned Windows between which stood The Dressing Table While range along the fourth wall was the washing stand and the big cupboard my luggage had already been unpacked for the furniture of dressing and undressing lay orderly on the wash stand and toilet table while my dinner clothes were spread out on the coverlet of the bed and then with a sudden start of unexplained dismay I saw that there were two rather conspicuous objects which I had not seen before in my dreams 1. a life-sized oil painting of Mrs Stone the Other a black and white sketch of

Jack Stone representing him as he had appeared to me only a week before in the last of the series of these repeated dreams a rather secret and evil looking man of about 30. his picture hung between the windows looking straight across the room to the other portrait which hung at the side of the bed at that I looked next and as I looked I Felt once more the horror of nightmare sees me it represented Mrs Stone as I had seen her last in my dreams old and withered and white haired but in spite of the

evident feebleness of body a dreadful exuberance and vitality Shone through the envelope of Flesh an exuberance holy malign a Vitality that foamed and Frost with unimaginable evil evil beamed from the narrow-learing eyes It laughed in the demon-like mouth the whole face was Instinct with some secret the pulling Mirth the hands clasped together on the knee seemed shaking with suppressed and nameless Glee then I saw also that it was signed in the left-hand bottom corner and wondering who the artist could be I looked more closely and read the inscription Julia Stone by Julia Stone The camera

tap at the door and John Clinton entered got everything you want he asked rather more than I want I said pointing to the picture he laughed hard featured old lady said by yourself too I remember anyway she can't have flattened herself much but don't you see I said it's scarcely a human face at all it's a face of some witch of some devil he looked at it more closely yes it isn't very pleasant he said scarcely a Bedside manner eh yes I can imagine getting the nightmare if I went to sleep with that close by

my bed I'll have it taken down if you like I really wish you would I said he rang the bell and with the help of a servant we detached the picture and carried it out onto the landing and put it with its face to the wall by jove the old lady's await said John mopping his forehead I wonder if she had something on her mind The extraordinary weight of the picture had struck me too I was about to reply when I caught sight of my own hand there was blood on it inconsiderable qualities covering the

whole Palm I've cut myself somehow said I John gave a little startled exclamation why I have two he said simultaneously the footman took out his handkerchief and wiped his hand with it I saw that there was blood also on his handkerchief John and I went back into the towel room and washed the blood off but neither on his hand nor on mine was there the slightest trace of a scratch or cut it seemed to me that having ascertained this we both buy a sort of tacit consent did not allude to it again something in my

case had dimly occurred to me that I did not wish to think about it was but a conjecture but I fancied that I knew the same thing had occurred to him The Heat and oppression of the air for the storm we had expected was still undischarged increased very much after dinner for some time at most of the party among whom were John Clinton and myself sat outside on the path bounding the lawn where we had had tea the night was absolutely dark and no twinkle of star or Moon Ray could penetrate the pool of cloud

that overset the sky By degrees our assembly thinned the women went up to bed man dispersed to the smoking or billiard room and by 11 o'clock my host and I were the only two left all the evening I thought that he had something on his mind and as soon as we were alone he spoke the man who helped us with the picture had blood on his hand too did you notice he said I asked him just now if he had cut himself and he said he supposed he Had but that he could find no Mark

of it now where did that blood come from telling myself that I was not going to think about it I had succeeded in not doing so and I did not want especially just at bedtime to be reminded of it I don't know said I and I don't really care so long as the picture of Mrs Stone is not by my bed he got up but it's odd he said huh now you'll see another odd thing a dogafi is an Irish Terrier by breed That come out of the house as we talked the door behind us

until the hall was open and a bright oblong of light Shone across the lawn to the Iron Gate which led onto the rough grass outside where the walnut tree stood I saw that the dog had all his hackles up bristling with rage and fright his lips were curled back from his teeth as if he was ready to spring at something and he was growling to himself he took not the slightest notice of his master Nor me but stiffly and tensely walked across the grass to the Iron Gate they stood for a moment looking through the

bars and still growling then of a sudden his courage seemed to Desert him he gave one long howl and scuttled back to the house with a curious crouching sort of movement he does that half a dozen times a day said John he sees something which he both hates and fears I walked to the gate and looked over it Something was moving on the grass outside and soon a sound which I could not instantly identify came to my ears then I remembered what it was it was the purring of a cat I lit a match and

saw the Pura a big blue Persian walking round and round in a little circle just outside the gate stepping high and ecstatically with tail carried Aloft like a banner its eyes were bright and shining and every now and then it put its head down and Sniffed at the grass I laughed the end of that mystery I'm afraid he said here's a large cat having a Val pogus night all alone yes that's Darius said John he spends half the day and all night there but that's not the end of the dog mystery for Toby and he

are the best of friends but the beginning of the cat mystery what's the cat doing there and why is Darius pleased while Toby is Terror stricken At that moment I remembered the rather horrible detail of my dreams when I saw through the gate just where the cat was now the white Tombstone the Sinister inscription but before I could answer the rain began as suddenly and heavily as if a tap had been turned on and simultaneously the big cat squeezed through the bars of the gate and came leaping across the lawn to the house for shelter

there it sat in the doorway looking out Eagerly into the dark it spat and struck at John with its paw as he pushed it in in order to close the door somehow with the portrait of Julia Stone in the passage outside the room in the tower had absolutely no alarm for me and as I went to bed feeling very sleepy and heavy I had nothing more than interest for the Curious incident about our bleeding hands and the conduct of the cat and dog the last thing I looked at before I put Out my light was

the square empty space by my bed with the portraited bean here the paper was of its original full tint of dark red over the rest of the walls it had faded then I blew up my candle and fell instantly asleep my awaking was equally instantaneous and I sat both upright in bed under the impression that some bright light had been flashed in my face though it was now absolutely pitch dark I knew exactly where I was in the room which I had dreaded in dreams but no horror that I ever felt when asleep approached the

fear that now invaded and froze my brain immediately after a peel of Thunder crackled just above the house but the probability that it was only a flash of lightning which awoke me gave no reassurance to my Galloping heart something I knew was in the room with me and instinctively I put out my right Hand which was nearest the wall to keep it away and my hand touched the edge of a picture frame hanging close to me I sprang out of the bed upsetting the small table that stood by it and I heard my watch candle

and matches clatter onto the floor but for the moment there was no need of light for a blinding flash leaped out of the clouds and showed me that by my bed again hung the picture of Mrs Stone and instantly the room went into Blackness again but in that flash I saw another thing also namely a figure that leaned over the end of my bed watching me it was dressed in some close clinging white garment spotted and stained with mold and the face was that of the portrait Overhead the Thunder cracked and roared and when it

ceased and the Deathly Stillness succeeded I heard the rustle of movement coming nearer me and more horrible yet perceived an odor of corruption and decay and then a hand was laid on the side of my neck and close beside my ear I heard quick taken eager breathing Yet I knew that this thing though it could be perceived by Touch by smell by I and by ear was still not of this Earth but something that had passed out of the body and had power to make itself manifest then a voice already familiar to me spoke I

knew you would come to the room in the tower it said I have been long waiting for you at last you have come tonight I shall feast before long we will face together and the quick breathing came closer to me I could feel it on my neck at that the terror which I think it paralyzed me for the moment gave way to the wild Instinct of self-preservation I hit wildly with both arms kicking out at the same moment and heard a little animal squeal and something soft dropped with a thud beside me I took a

couple of Steps forward nearly tripping up over whatever it was that lay there and by the merest good luck found the handle of the door in another second I ran out onto the landing and had banged the door behind me almost at the same moment I heard a door open somewhere below and John Clinton candle in hand came running upstairs what is it he said I sleep just below you and heard a noise as if good Heavens there's blood on your shoulder I stood there so he told me afterwards Swaying from side to side white

as a sheet with a mark on my shoulder as if a hand covered with blood had been laid there it's in there I said pointing she you know the portraits in there too hanging up on the place we took it from at that he laughed my dear fellow this is mere nightmare he said pushed by me and opened the door I standing there simply inert with Terror unable to stop him unable to move phew what an awful smell he said Then there was silence he had passed out of my sight behind the open door next

moment he came out again as white as myself and instantly shut it yes the portraits there he said and on the floor is a thing a thing spotted with Earth like what they bury people in Come Away quick Come Away how I got downstairs I hardly know an awful shuddering and nausea of the Spirit rather than of the flesh had seized me and more than once he had to place my feet upon the steps while every now and then he cast glances of Terror and apprehension up the stairs but in time we came to his

dressing room on the floor below and there I told him what I have here described the sequel can be made short indeed some of my readers have perhaps already guessed what it was if they remember that inexplicable Affair of the Churchyard at West Foley some eight years ago where an attempt was made three times to bury the body of a certain woman who had committed suicide on each occasion the coffin was found in the course of a few days again protruding from the ground after the third attempt in order that the thing should not be

talked about the body was buried elsewhere in unconsecrated ground where it was buried was just outside the Iron Gate of the garden belonging to the house where this woman had lived she had committed suicide in the room at the top of the tower in that house her name was Julia Stone subsequently the body was again secretly dug up and the coffin was found to be full of blood