Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai

[Spookie Monster]

Hands vermillion,
Start of five,
Bright cotillion,
Ravens dive,
Nightshade promise,
Spirits thrive,
To the living,
Let now the dead
Come alive!

Sunset leads to sunrise.  Sunrise leads to sunset.  Spring gives way to summer, summer to fall, fall to winter, winter to spring.  A raindrop falls to the earth, clear and cold; from there it journeys to a stream and joins it; this stream joins a river; this river flows into the sea; the sun draws water from the sea up into the sky; in the sky the raindrop is reborn and it falls once more.  Nature is a gyre.  For better or for worse, whatever arrives must depart, and, for better or for worse, whatever departs must return.

Eleven months ago the season of the witch slipped away.  Today, though, it slips back, accompanied by chill rains and rattling leaves and things that go bump in the night.  I'd like to suggest to everyone that in celebration of this fact -- or resignation to it, if you prefer -- we resume our round of hyakumonogatari kaidankai.  To remind the elders and introduce the newcomers, hyakumonogatari kaidankai is a Japanese tradition where people recount spooky stories amid one hundred candles.  When someone finishes a story he or she snuffs out a candle.  Darker and darker it becomes.  Finally, that last candle is snuffed out, compelling a spirit or spirits to visit the storytellers in the gloom.

So they say, anyhow.

I'm starting this new thread instead of invoking last year's thread or the thread from the year before that or the original thread.  In that way our yarns won't get tangled.  If you're a brave soul, however, consider venturing into those older threads -- there's some disconcerting stuff in there.  I do recommend taking with you a cross, some garlic, a hammer and some stakes, a mirror, a shotgun, a PKE meter, some silver bullets, a machete, a motion tracker, and maybe a chainsaw.  Oh, but leave your hope behind: You'll have no use for it.

Do you have a spooky story to tell?  Excellent.  All of us, living and dead, are eager to listen.  Again, the story can be true or perhaps a little less than true; it can have happened to you or to someone else; it can be brief or long.  I encourage you to tell multiple stories, though I do suggest including only one story per post.  Finally, if you tell someone else's story, please give due credit.

Ready?  Good.  We'd just snuffed out the forty-sixth candle when the dawn of November 1 arrived; forty-five candles remain.  Now, you do seem rather tense and -- oh, my -- are your teeth chattering?  Maybe I should start off with something a little more lighthearted.  It's deceptive in a way, because later on we'll be dealing with some terrible deeds indeed, but I wouldn't want you to die of fright right here and now.  But which story?  Hmmm...

Ah!  I know the very one.  At the end of last season I recounted a classic tale about a mujina.  Well, here's one about his brother -- a curious little bugger known as a shirime.  I'm taking this particular version from a great site called -- guess what? -- Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai.


Shirime: Eyeball Butt

Late one night, a samurai was walking down the road toward Kyoto.  All at once a man in a kimono stepped in to block his path.  The man said, "Excuse me... just a moment of your time..."  The samurai readied himself for an attack and snapped back, "What do you want?"

The man suddenly shed his kimono and stood stark naked.  He then bent over and showed his butt, which had a single, huge eye.  When the eye opened, it shone with a bright light.  The samurai screamed with fright and fled from the mysterious monster.


So they say.

I'm snuffing out a candle.  Forty-four candles remain.  Who's next?

Spel

He was the nazo with god-given... ah... so...

[Jag]

The Screaming Skull By F. Marion Crawford (1911)

It is a haunting tale about a skull with a personality.

Going to split this into two posts, cause it's rather large.



I have often heard it scream. No, I am not nervous, I am not imaginative, and I never believed in ghosts, unless that thing is one. Whatever it is, it hates me almost as much as it hated Luke Pratt, and it screams at me. If I were you, I would never tell ugly stories about ingenious ways of killing people, for you never can tell but that some one at the table may be tired of his or her nearest and dearest. I have always blamed myself for Mrs. Pratt's death, and I suppose I was responsible for it in a way, though heaven knows I never wished her anything but long life and happiness. If I had not told that story she might be alive yet. That is why the thing screams at me, I fancy. She was a good little woman, with a sweet temper, all things considered, and a nice gentle voice; but I remember hearing her shriek once when she thought her little boy was killed by a pistol that went off though everyone was sure that it was not loaded. It was the same scream; exactly the same, with a sort of rising quaver at the end; do you know what I mean? Unmistakable.

The truth is, I had not realized that the doctor and his wife were not on good terms. They used to bicker a bit now and then when I was here, and I often noticed that little Mrs. Pratt got very red and bit her lip hard to keep her temper, while Luke grew pale and said the most offensive things. He was that sort when he was in the nursery, I remember, and afterwards at school. He was my cousin, you know; that is how I came by this house; after he died, and his boy Charley was killed in South Africa, there were no relations left. Yes, it's a pretty little property, just the sort of thing for an old sailor like me who has taken to gardening.

One always remembers one's mistakes much more vividly than one's cleverest things, doesn't one? I've often noticed it. I was dining with the Pratts one night, when I told them the story that afterwards made so much difference. It was a wet night in November, and the sea was moaning. Hush!--if you don't speak you will hear it now. . . Do you hear the tide? Gloomy sound, isn't it? Sometimes, about this time of year--hallo!--there it is! Don't be frightened, man--it won't eat you--it's only a noise, after all! But I'm glad you've heard it, because there are always people who think it's the wind, or my imagination, or something. You won't hear it again tonight, I fancy, for it doesn't often come more than once. Yes--that's right. Put another stick on the fire, and a little more stuff into that weak mixture you're so fond of. Do you remember old Blauklot the carpenter, on that German ship that picked us up when the Clontarf went to the bottom? We were hove to in a howling gale one night, as snug as you please, with no land within five hundred miles, and the ship coming up and falling off as regularly as clockwork--"Biddy te boor beebles ashore tis night, poys!" old Blauklot sang out, as he went off to his quarters with the sail-maker. I often think of that, now that I'm ashore for good and all.

Yes, it was on a night like this, when I was at home for a spell, waiting to take the Olympia out on her first trip--it was on the next voyage that she broke the record, you remember--but that dates it. Ninety-two was the year, early in November.

The weather was dirty, Pratt was out of temper, and the dinner was bad, very bad indeed, which didn't improve matters, and cold, which made it worse. The poor little lady was very unhappy about it, and insisted on making a Welsh rarebit on the table to counteract the raw turnips and the half-boiled mutton. Pratt must have had a hard day. Perhaps he had lost a patient. At all events, he was in a nasty temper.

"My wife is trying to poison me, you see!" he said. "She'll succeed some day." I saw that she was hurt, and I made believe to laugh, and said that Mrs. Pratt was much too clever to get rid of her husband in such a simple way; and then I began to tell them about Japanese tricks with spun glass and chopped horsehair and the like.

Pratt was a doctor, and knew a lot more than I did about such things, but that only put me on my mettle, and I told a story about a woman in Ireland who did for three husbands before anyone suspected foul play.

Did you never hear that tale? The fourth husband managed to keep awake and caught her, and she was hanged. How did she do it? She drugged them, and poured melted lead into their ears through a little horn funnel when they were asleep... No--that's the wind whistling. It's backing up to the southward again. I can tell by the sound. Besides, the other thing doesn't often come more than once in an evening even at this time of year--when it happened. Yes, it was in November. Poor Mrs. Pratt died suddenly in her bed not long after I dined here. I can fix the date, because I got the news in New York by the steamer that followed the Olympia when I took her out on her first trip. You had the Leofric the same year? Yes, I remember. What a pair of old buffers we are coming to be, you and I. Nearly fifty years since we were apprentices together on the Clontarf. Shall you ever forget old Blauklot? "Biddy te boor beebles ashore, poys!" Ha, ha! Take a little more, with all that water. It's the old Hulstkamp I found in the cellar when this house came to me, the same I brought Luke from Amsterdam five-and-twenty years ago. He had never touched a drop of it. Perhaps he's sorry now, poor fellow.

Where did I leave off? I told you that Mrs. Pratt died suddenly--yes. Luke must have been lonely here after she was dead, I should think; I came to see him now and then, and he looked worn and nervous, and told me that his practice was growing too heavy for him, though he wouldn't take an assistant on any account. Years went on, and his son was killed in South Africa, and after that he began to be queer. There was something about him not like other people. I believe he kept his senses in his profession to the end; there was no complaint of his having made mad mistakes in cases, or anything of that sort, but he had a look about him----

Luke was a red-headed man with a pale face when he was young, and he was never stout; in middle age he turned a sandy grey, and after his son died he grew thinner and thinner, till his head looked like a skull with parchment stretched over it very tight, and his eyes had a sort of glare in them that was very disagreeable to look at. He had an old dog that poor Mrs. Pratt had been fond of, and that used to follow her everywhere. He was a bulldog, and the sweetest tempered beast you ever saw, though he had a way of hitching his upper lip behind one of his fangs that frightened strangers a good deal. Sometimes, of an evening, Pratt and Bumble--that was the dog's name--used to sit and look at each other a long time, thinking about old times, I suppose, when Luke's wife used to sit in that chair you've got. That was always her place, and this was the doctor's, where I'm sitting. Bumble used to climb up by the footstool--he was old and fat by that time, and could not jump much, and his teeth were getting shaky. He would look steadily at Luke, and Luke looked steadily at the dog, his face growing more and more like a skull with two little coals for eyes; and after about five minutes or so, though it may have been less, old Bumble would suddenly begin to shake all over, and all on a sudden he would set up an awful howl, as if he had been shot, and tumble out of the easy-chair and trot away, and hide himself under the sideboard, and lie there making odd noises.

Considering Pratt's looks in those last months, the thing is not surprising, you know. I'm not nervous or imaginative, but I can quite believe he might have sent a sensitive woman into hysterics--his head looked so much like a skull in parchment.

At last I came down one day before Christmas, when my ship was in dock and I had three weeks off. Bumble was not about, and I said casually that I supposed the old dog was dead. "Yes," Pratt answered, and I thought there was something odd in his tone

even before he went on after a little pause. "I killed him," he said presently. "I could stand it no longer." I asked what it was that Luke could not stand, though I guessed well enough.

"He had a way of sitting in her chair and glaring at me, and then howling," Luke shivered a little. "He didn't suffer at all, poor old Bumble," he went on in a hurry, as if he thought I might imagine he had been cruel. "I put dionine into his drink to make him sleep soundly, and then I chloroformed him gradually, so that he could not have felt suffocated even if he was dreaming. It's been quieter since then."

I wondered what he meant, for the words slipped out as if he could not help saying them. I've understood since. He meant that he did not hear that noise so often after the dog was out of the way. Perhaps he thought at first that it was old Bumble in the yard howling at the moon, though it's not that kind of noise, is it? Besides, I know what it is, if Luke didn't. It's only a noise after all, and a noise never hurt anybody yet. But he was much more imaginative than I am. No doubt there really is something about this place that I don't understand; but when I don't understand a thing, I call it a phenomenon, and I don't take it for granted that it's going to kill me, as he did. I don't understand everything, by long odds, nor do you, nor does any man who has been to sea. We used to talk of tidal waves, for instance, and we could not account for them; now we account for them by calling them submarine earthquakes, and we branch off into fifty theories, any one of which might make earthquakes quite comprehensible if we only knew what they were. I fell in with one of them once, and the inkstand flew straight up from the table against the ceiling of my cabin. The same thing happened to Captain Lecky--I dare say you've read about it in his "Wrinkles". Very good. If that sort of thing took place ashore, in this room for instance, a nervous person would talk about spirits and levitation and fifty things that mean nothing, instead of just quietly setting it down as a "phenomenon" that has not been explained yet. My view of that voice, you see.

Besides, what is there to prove that Luke killed his wife? I would not even suggest such a thing to anyone but you. After all, there was nothing but the coincidence that poor little Mrs. Pratt died suddenly in her bed a few days after I told that story at dinner. She was not the only woman who ever died like that. Luke got the doctor over from the next parish, and they agreed that she had died of something the matter with her heart Why not? It's common enough. Of course, there was the ladle. I never told anybody about that, and, it made me start when I found it in the cupboard in the bedroom. It was new, too--a little tinned iron ladle that had not been in the fire more than once or twice, and there was some lead in it that had been melted, and stuck to the bottom of the bowl, all grey, with hardened dross on it. But that proves nothing. A country doctor is generally a handy man, who does everything for himself, and Luke may have had a dozen reasons for melting a little lead in a ladle. He was fond of sea-fishing, for instance, and he may have cast a sinker for a night-line; perhaps it was a weight for the hall clock, or something like that. All the same, when I found it I had a rather queer sensation, because it looked so much like the thing I had described when I told them the story. Do you understand? It affected me unpleasantly, and I threw it away; it's at the bottom of the sea a mile from the Spit, and it will be jolly well rusted beyond recognizing if it's ever washed up by the tide.

You see, Luke must have bought it in the village, years ago, for the man sells just such ladles still. I suppose they are used in cooking. In any case, there was no reason why an inquisitive housemaid should find such a thing lying about, with lead in it, and wonder what it was, and perhaps talk to the maid who heard me tell the story at dinner--for that girl married the plumber's son in the village, and may remember the whole thing.

You understand me, don't you? Now that Luke Pratt is dead and gone, and lies buried beside his wife, with an honest man's tombstone at his head, I should not care to stir up anything that could hurt his memory. They are both dead, and their son, too. There was trouble enough about Luke's death, as it was.

How? He was found dead on the beach one morning, and there was a coroner's inquest. There were marks on his throat, but he had not been robbed. The verdict was that he had come to his end "By the hands or teeth of some person or animal unknown," for half the jury thought it might have been a big dog that had thrown him down and gripped his windpipe, though the skin of his throat was not broken. No one knew at what time he had gone out, nor where he had been. He was found lying on his back above high-water mark, and an old cardboard bandbox that had belonged to his wife lay under his hand, open. The lid had fallen off. He seemed to have been carrying home a skull in the box--doctors are fond of collecting such things. It had rolled out and lay near his head, and it was a remarkably fine skull, rather small, beautifully shaped and very white, with perfect teeth. That is to say, the upper jaw was perfect, but there was no lower one at all, when I first saw it.

Yes, I found it here when I came. You see, it was very white and polished, like a thing meant to be kept under a glass case, and the people did not know where it came from, nor what to do with it; so they put it back into the bandbox and set it on the shelf of the cupboard in the best bedroom, and of course they showed it to me when I took possession. I was taken down to the beach, too, to be shown the place where Luke was found, and the old fisherman explained just how he was lying, and the skull beside him. The only point he could not explain was why the skull had rolled up the sloping sand towards Luke's head instead of rolling downhill to his feet. It did not seem odd to me at the time, but I have often thought of it since, for the place is rather steep. I'll take you there tomorrow if you like--I made a sort of cairn of stones there afterwards.

When he fell down, or was thrown down--whichever happened--the bandbox struck the sand, and the lid came off, and the thing came out and ought to have rolled down. But it didn't. It was close to his head almost touching it, and turned with the face towards it. I say it didn't strike me as odd when the man told me; but I could not help thinking about It afterwards, again and again, till I saw a picture of it all when I closed my eyes; and then I began to ask myself why the plaguey thing had rolled up instead of down, and why it had stopped near Luke's head instead of anywhere else, a yard away, for instance.

You naturally want to know what conclusion I reached, don't you? None that at all explained the rolling, at all events. But I got something else into my head, after a time, that made me feel downright uncomfortable. Oh, I don't mean as to anything supernatural! There may be ghosts, or there may not be. If there are, I'm not inclined to believe that they can hurt living people except by frightening them, and, for my part, I would rather face any shape of ghost than a fog in the Channel when it's crowded. No. What bothered me was just a foolish idea, that's all, and I cannot tell how it began, nor what made it grow till it turned into a certainty.

I was thinking about Luke and his poor wife one evening over my pipe and a dull book, when it occurred to me that the skull might possibly be hers, and I have never got rid of the thought since. You'll tell me there's no sense in it, no doubt, that Mrs. Pratt was buried like a Christian and is lying in the churchyard where they put her, and that it's perfectly monstrous to suppose her husband kept her skull in her old bandbox in his bedroom. All the same, in the face of reason, and common sense, and probability, I'm convinced that he did. Doctors do all sorts of queer things that would make men like you and me feel creepy, and those are Just the things that don't seem probable, nor logical, nor sensible to us.

Then, don't you see?--if it really was her skull, poor woman, the only way of accounting for his having it is that he really killed her, and did it in that way, as the woman killed her husbands in the story, and that he was afraid there might be an examination some day which would betray him. You see, I told that too, and I believe it had really happened some fifty or sixty years ago. They dug up the three skulls, you know, and there was a small lump of lead rattling about in each one. That was what hanged the woman. Luke remembered that, I'm sure. I don't want to know what he did when he thought of it; my taste never ran in the direction of horrors, and I don't fancy you care for them either, do you? No. If you did, you might supply what is wanting to the story.

It must have been rather grim, eh? I wish I did not see the whole thing so distinctly, just as everything must have happened. He took it the night before she was buried, I'm sure, after the coffin had been shut, and when the servant girl was asleep. I would bet anything, that when he'd got it, he put something under the sheet in its place, to fill up and look like it. What do you suppose he put there, under the sheet?

I don't wonder you take me up on what I'm saying! First I tell you that I don't want to know what happened, and that I hate to think about horrors, and then I describe the whole thing to you as if I had seen it. I'm quite sure that it was her work-bag that he put there. I remember the bag very well, for she always used it of an evening; it was made of brown plush, and when it was stuffed full it was about the size of--you understand. Yes, there I am, at it again! You may laugh at me, but you don't live here alone, where it was done, and you didn't tell Luke the story about the melted lead. I'm not nervous, I tell you, but sometimes I begin to feel that I understand why some people are. I dwell on all this when I'm alone, and I dream of it, and when that thing screams--well, frankly, I don't like the noise any more than you do, though I should be used to it by this time.

I ought not to be nervous. I've sailed in a haunted ship. There was a Man in the Top, and two-thirds of the crew died of the West Coast fever inside of ten days after we anchored; but I was all right, then and afterwards. I have seen some ugly sights, too, just as you have, and all the rest of us. But nothing ever stuck in my head in the way this does. You see, I've tried to get rid of the thing, but it doesn't like that. It wants to be there in its place, in Mrs. Pratt's bandbox in the cupboard in the best bedroom. It's not happy anywhere else. How do I know that? Because I've tried it. You don't suppose that I've not tried, do you? As long as it's there it only screams now and then, generally at this time of year, but if I put it out of the house it goes on all night, and no servant will stay here twenty-four hours. As it is, I've often been left alone and have been obliged to shift for myself for a fortnight at a time. No one from the village would ever pass a night under the roof now, and as for selling the place, or even letting it, that's out of the question. The old women say that if I stay here I shall come to a bad end myself before long.

I'm not afraid of that. You smile at the mere idea that anyone could take such nonsense seriously. Quite right. It's utterly blatant nonsense, I agree with you. Didn't I tell you that it's only a noise after all when you started and looked round as if you expected to see a ghost standing behind your chair?

I may be all wrong about the skull, and I like to think that I am when I can. It may be just a fine specimen which Luke got somewhere long ago, and what rattles about inside when you shake it may be nothing but a pebble, or a bit of hard clay, or anything. Skulls that have lain long in the ground generally have something inside them that rattles don't they? No, I've never tried to get it out, whatever it is; I'm afraid it might be lead, don't you see? And if it is, I don't want to know the fact, for I'd much rather not be sure. If it really is lead, I killed her quite as much as if I had done the deed myself. Anybody must see that, I should think. As long as I don't know for certain, I have the consolation of saying that it's all utterly ridiculous nonsense, that Mrs. Pratt died a natural death and that the beautiful skull belonged to Luke when he was a student in London. But if I were quite sure, I believe I should have to leave the house; indeed I do, most certainly. As it is, I had to give up trying to sleep in the best bedroom where the cupboard is

You ask me why I don't throw it into the pond--yes, but please don't call it a "confounded bugbear"--it doesn't like being called names.

There! Lord, what a shriek! I told you so! You're quite pale, man. Fill up your pipe and draw your chair nearer to the fire, and take some more drink. Old Hollands never hurt anybody yet. I've seen a Dutchman in Java drink half a jug of Hulstkamp in a morning without turning a hair. I don't take much rum myself, because it doesn't agree with my rheumatism, but you are not rheumatic and it won't damage you Besides, it's a very damp night outside. The wind is howling again, and it will soon be in the south-west; do you hear how the windows rattle? The tide must have turned too, by the moaning.

We should not have heard the thing again if you had not said that. I'm pretty sure we should not. Oh yes, if you choose to describe it as a coincidence, you are quite welcome, but I would rather that you should not call the thing names again, if you don't mind. It may be that the poor little woman hears, and perhaps it hurts her, don't you know? Ghosts? No! You don't call anything a ghost that you can take in your hands and look at in broad daylight, and that rattles when you shake it Do you, now? But it's something that hears and understands; there's no doubt about that. I tried sleeping in the best bedroom when I first came to the house just because it was the best and most comfortable, but I had to give it up It was their room, and there's the big bed she died in, and the cupboard is in the thickness of the wall, near the head, on the left. That's where it likes to be kept, in its bandbox. I only used the room for a fortnight after I came, and then I turned out and took the little room downstairs, next to the surgery, where Luke used to sleep when he expected to be called to a patient during the night.

I was always a good sleeper ashore; eight hours is my dose, eleven to seven when I'm alone, twelve to eight when I have a friend with me. But I could not sleep after three o'clock in the morning in that room--a quarter past, to be accurate--as a matter of fact, I timed it with my old pocket chronometer, which still keeps good time, and it was always at exactly seventeen minutes past three. I wonder whether that was the hour when she died?

It was not what you have heard. If it had been that, I could not have stood it two nights. It was just a start and a moan and hard breathing for a few seconds in the cupboard, and it could never have waked me under ordinary circumstances, I'm sure. I suppose you are like me in that, and we are just like other people who have been to sea. No natural sounds disturb us at all, not all the racket of a square-rigger hove to in a heavy gale, or rolling on her beam ends before the wind. But if a lead pencil gets adrift and rattles in the drawer of your cabin table you are awake in a moment. Just so--you always understand. Very well, the noise in the cupboard was no louder than that, but it waked me instantly.

I said it was like a "start". I know what I mean, but it's hard to explain without seeming to talk nonsense. Of course you cannot exactly "hear" a person "start"; at the most, you might hear the quick drawing of the breath between the parted lips and closed teeth, and the almost imperceptible sound of clothing that moved suddenly though very slightly. It was like that.

You know how one feels what a sailing vessel is going to do, two or three seconds before she does it, when one has the wheel. Riders say the same of a horse, but that's less strange, because the horse is a live animal with feelings of its own, and only poets and landsmen talk about a ship being alive, and all that. But I have always felt somehow that besides being a steaming machine or a sailing machine for carrying weights, a vessel at sea is a sensitive instrument, and a means of communication between nature and man, and most particularly the man at the wheel, if she is steered by hand. She takes her impressions directly from wind and sea, tide and stream, and transmits them to the man's hand, just as the wireless telegraphy picks up the interrupted currents aloft and turns them out below in the form of a message.

You see what I am driving at; I felt that something started in the cupboard, and I felt it so vividly that I heard it, though there may have' been nothing to hear, and the sound inside my head waked me suddenly. But I really heard the other noise. It was as if it were muffled inside a box, as far away as if it came through a long-distance telephone; and yet I knew that it was inside the cupboard near the head of my bed. My hair did not bristle and my blood did not run cold that time. I simply resented being waked up by something that had no business to make a noise, any more than a pencil should rattle in the drawer of my cabin table on board ship. For I did not understand; I just supposed that the cupboard had some communication with the outside air, and that the wind had got in and was moaning through it with a sort of very faint screech. I struck a light and looked at my watch, and it was seventeen minutes past three. Then I turned over and went to sleep on my right ear. That's my good one; I'm pretty deaf with the other, for I struck the water with it when I was a lad in diving from the fore-topsail yard. Silly thing to do, it was, but the result is very convenient when I want to go to sleep when there's a noise.

That was the first night, and the same thing happened again and several times afterwards, but not regularly, though it was always at the same time, to a second; perhaps I was sometimes sleeping on my good ear, and sometimes not. I overhauled the cupboard and there was no way by which the wind could get in, or anything else, for the door makes a good fit, having been meant to keep out moths, I suppose; Mrs. Pratt must have kept her winter things in it, for it still smells of camphor and turpentine.

After about a fortnight I had had enough of the noises. So far I had said to myself that it would be silly to yield to it and take the skull out of the room. Things always look differently by daylight, don't they? But the voice grew louder--I suppose one may call it a voice--and it got inside my deaf ear, too, one night. I realized that when I was wide awake, for my good ear was jammed down on the pillow, and I ought not to have heard a foghorn in that position. But I heard that, and it made me lose my temper, unless it scared me, for sometimes the two are not far apart. I struck a light and got up, and I opened the cupboard, grabbed the bandbox and threw it out of the window, as far as I could.

Then my hair stood on end. The thing screamed in the air, like a shell from a twelve-inch gun. It fell on the other side of the road. The night was very dark, and I could not see it fall, but I know it fell beyond the road The window is just over the front door, it's fifteen yards to the fence, more or less, and the road is ten yards wide. There's a thick-set hedge beyond, along the glebe that belongs to the vicarage.

I did not sleep much more than night. It was not more than half an hour after I had thrown the bandbox out when I heard a shriek outside--like what we've had tonight, but worse, more despairing, I should call it; and it may have been my imagination, but I could have sworn that the screams came nearer and nearer each time. I lit a pipe, and walked up and down for a bit, and then took a book and sat up reading, but I'll be hanged if I can remember what I read nor even what the book was, for every now and then a shriek came up that would have made a dead man turn in his coffin.

A little before dawn someone knocked at the front door. There was no mistaking that for anything else, and I opened my window and looked down, for I guessed that someone wanted the doctor, supposing that the new man had taken Luke's house. It was rather a relief to hear a human knock after that awful noise.

You cannot see the door from above, owing to the little porch. The knocking came again, and I called out, asking who was there, but nobody answered, though the knock was repeated. I sang out again, and said that the doctor did not live here any longer. There was no answer, but it occurred to me that it might be some old countryman who was stone deaf. So I took my candle and went down to open the door. Upon my word, I was not thinking of the thing yet, and I had almost forgotten the other noises. I went down convinced that I should find somebody outside, on the doorstep, with a message. I set the candle on the hall table, so that the wind should not blow it out when I opened. While I was drawing the old-fashioned bolt I heard the knocking again. It was not loud, and it had a queer, hollow sound, now that I was close to it, I remember, but I certainly thought it was made by some person who wanted to get in.

It wasn't. There was nobody there, but as I opened the door inward, standing a little on one side, so as to see out at once, something rolled across the threshold and stopped against my foot.

I drew back as I felt it, for I knew what it was before I looked down. I cannot tell you how I knew, and it seemed unreasonable, for I am still quite sure that I had thrown it across the road. It's a French window, that opens wide, and I got a good swing when I flung it out. Besides, when I went out early in the morning, I found the bandbox beyond the thick hedge.

You may think it opened when I threw it, and that the skull dropped out; but that's impossible, for nobody could throw an empty cardboard box so far. It's out of the question; you might as well try to fling a ball of paper twenty-five yards, or a blown bird's egg.

To go back, I shut and bolted the hall door, picked the thing up carefully, and put it on the table beside the candle. I did that mechanically, as one instinctively does the right thing in danger without thinking at all--unless one does the opposite. It may seem odd, but I believe my first thought had been that somebody might come and find me there on the threshold while it was resting against my foot, lying a little on its side, and turning one hollow eye up at my face, as if it meant to accuse me. And the light and shadow from the candle played in the hollows of the eyes as it stood on the table, so that they seemed to open and shut at me. Then the candle went out quite unexpectedly, though the door was fastened and there was not the least draught; and I used up at least half a dozen matches before it would burn again.

I sat down rather suddenly, without quite knowing why. Probably I had been badly frightened, and perhaps you will admit there was no great shame in being scared. The thing had come home, and it wanted to go upstairs, back to its cupboard. I sat still and stared at it for a bit till I began to feel very cold; then I took it and carried it up and set it in its place, and I remember that I spoke to it, and promised that it should have its bandbox again in the morning. You want to know whether I stayed in the room till daybreak? Yes but I kept a light burning, and sat up smoking and reading, most likely out of fright; plain, undeniable fear, and you need not call it cowardice either, for that's not the same thing. I could not have stayed alone with that thing in the cupboard; I should have been scared to death, though I'm not more timid than other people. Confound it all, man, it had crossed the road alone, and had got up the doorstep and had knocked to be let in.

When the dawn came, I put on my boots and went out to find the bandbox. I had to go a good way round, by the gate near the high road, and I found the box open and hanging on the other side of the hedge. It had caught on the twigs by the string, and the lid had fallen off and was lying on the ground below it. That shows that it did not open till it was well over; and if it had not opened as soon as it left my hand, what was inside it must have gone beyond the road too.

That's all. I took the box upstairs to the cupboard, and put the skull back and locked it up. When the girl brought me my breakfast she said she was sorry, but that she must go, and she did not care if she lost her month's wages. I looked at her, and her face was a sort of greenish yellowish white. I pretended to be surprised, and asked what was the matter; but that was of no use, for she just turned on me and wanted to know whether I meant to stay in a haunted house, and how long I expected to live if I did, for though she noticed I was sometimes a little hard of hearing, she did not believe that even I could sleep through those screams again--and if I could, why had I been moving about the house and opening and shutting the front door, between three and four in the morning? There was no answering that, since she had heard me, so off she went, and I was left to myself. I went down to the village during the morning and found a woman who was willing to come and do the little work there is and cook my dinner, on condition that she might go home every night. As for me, I moved downstairs that day, and I have never tried to sleep in the best bedroom since. After a little while I got a brace of middle-aged Scotch servants from London, and things were quiet enough for a long time. I began by telling them that the house was in a very exposed position, and that the wind whistled round it a good deal in the autumn and winter, which had given it a bad name in the village, the Cornish people being inclined to superstition and telling ghost stories. The two hard-faced, sandy-haired sisters almost smiled, and they answered with great contempt that they had no great opinion of any Southern bogey whatever, having been in service in two English haunted houses, where they had never seen so much as the Boy in Grey, whom they reckoned no very particular rarity in Forfarshire.

They stayed with me several months, and while they were in the house we had peace and quiet. One of them is here again now, but she went away with her sister within the year. This one--she was the cook--married the sexton, who works in my garden. That's the way of it. It's a small village and he has not much to do, and he knows enough about flowers to help me nicely, besides doing most of the hard work; for though I'm fond of exercise, I'm getting a little stiff in the hinges. He's a sober, silent sort of fellow, who minds his own business, and he was a widower when I came here--Trehearn is his name, James Trehearn. The Scottish sisters would not admit that there was anything wrong about the house, but when November came they gave me warning that they were going, on the ground that the chapel was such a long walk from here, being in the next parish, and that they could not possibly go to our church. But the younger one came back in the spring, and as soon as the banns could be published she was married to James Trehearn by the vicar, and she seems to have had no scruples about hearing him preach since then. I'm quite satisfied, if she is! The couple live in a small cottage that looks over the churchyard.

I suppose you are wondering what all this has to do with what I was talking about. I'm alone so much that when an old friend comes to see me, I sometimes go on talking just for the sake of hearing my own voice. But in this case there is really a connection of ideas. It was James Trehearn who buried poor Mrs. Pratt, and her husband after her in the same grave, and it's not far from the back of his cottage. That's the connection in my mind, you see. It's plain enough. He knows something; I'm quite sure that he does, though he's such a reticent beggar.

Yes, I'm alone in the house at night now, for Mrs. Trehearn does everything herself, and when I have a friend the sexton's niece comes in to wait on the table. He takes his wife home every evening in winter, but in summer, when there's light, she goes by herself. She's not a nervous woman, but she's less sure than she used to be that there are no bogies in England worth a Scotch-woman's notice. Isn't it amusing, the idea that Scotland has a monopoly of the supernatural? Odd sort of national pride, I call that, don't you?

That's a good fire, isn't it? When driftwood gets started at last there's nothing like it, I think. Yes, we get lots of it, for I'm sorry to say there are still a great many wrecks about here. It's a lonely coast, and you may have all the wood you want for the trouble of bringing it in. Trehearn and I borrow a cart now and then, and load it between here and the Spit. I hate a coal fire when I can get wood of any sort A log is company, even if it's only a piece of a deck beam or timber sawn off, and the salt in it makes pretty sparks. See how they fly, like Japanese hand-fireworks! Upon my word, with an old friend and a good fire and a pipe, one forgets all about that thing upstairs, especially now that the wind has moderated. It's only a lull, though, and it will blow a gale before morning.

You think you would like to see the skull? I've no objection. There's no reason why you shouldn't have a look at it, and you never saw a more perfect one in your life, except that there are two front teeth missing in the lower jaw. Oh yes--I had not told you about the jaw yet. Trehearn found it in the garden last spring when he was digging a pit for a new asparagus bed. You know we make asparagus beds six or eight feet deep here. Yes, yes--I had forgotten to tell you that. He was digging straight down, just as he digs a grave; if you want a good asparagus bed made, I advise you to get a sexton to make it for you. Those fellows have a wonderful knack at that sort of digging. Trehearn had got down about three feet when he cut into a mass of white lime in the side of the trench. He had noticed that the earth was a little looser there, though he says it had not been disturbed for a number of years. I suppose he thought that even old lime might not be good for asparagus, so he broke it out and threw it up. It was pretty hard, he says, in biggish lumps, and out of sheer force of habit he cracked the lumps with his spade as they lay outside the pit beside him; the jaw bone of the skull dropped out of one of the pieces. He thinks he must have knocked out the two front teeth in breaking up the lime, but he did not see them anywhere. He's a very experienced man in such things, as you may imagine, and he said at once that the jaw had probably belonged to a young woman, and that the teeth had been complete when she died. He brought it to me, and asked me if I wanted to keep it; if I did not, he said he would drop it into the next grave he made in the churchyard, as he supposed it was a Christian jaw, and ought to have decent burial, wherever the rest of the body might be. I told him that doctors often put bones into quicklime to whiten them nicely, and that I supposed Dr Pratt had once had a little lime pit in the garden for that purpose, and had forgotten the jaw. Trehearn looked at me quietly.

"Maybe it fitted that skull that used to be in the cupboard upstairs, sir," he said. "Maybe Dr Pratt had put the skull into the lime to clean it, or something, and when he took it out he left the lower jaw behind. There's some human hair sticking in the lime, sir."

[Jag]

The Screaming Skull By F. Marion Crawford (1911) [Cont.]

It is a haunting tale about a skull with a personality.



I saw there was, and that was what Trehearn said. If he did not suspect something, why in the world should he have suggested that the jaw might fit the skull? Besides, it did. That's proof that he knows more than he cares to tell. Do you suppose he looked before she was buried? Or perhaps--when he buried Luke in the same grave---- Well, well, it's of no use to go over that, is it? I said I would keep the jaw with the skull, and I took it upstairs and fitted it into its place. There's not the slightest doubt about the two belonging together, and together they are. Trehearn knows several things. We were talking about plastering the kitchen a while ago, and he happened to remember that it had not been done since the very week when Mrs. Pratt died. He did not say that the mason must have left some lime on the place, but he thought it, and that it was the very same lime he had found in the asparagus pit. He knows a lot. Trehearn is one of your silent beggars who can put two and two together. That grave is very near the back of his cottage, too, and he's one of the quickest men with a spade I ever saw. If he wanted to know the truth, he could, and no one else would ever be the wiser unless he chose to tell. In a quiet village like ours, people don't go and spend the night in the churchyard to see whether the sexton potters about by himself between ten o'clock and daylight.

What is awful to think of, is Luke's deliberation, if he did it; his cool certainty that no one would find him out; above all, his nerve, for that must have been extraordinary. I sometimes think it's bad enough to live in the place where it was done, if it really was done. I always put in the condition, you see, for the sake of his memory, and a little bit for my own sake, too.

I'll go upstairs and fetch the box in a minute. Let me light my pipe; there's no hurry! We had supper early, and it's only half-past nine o'clock. I never let a friend go to bed before twelve, or with less than three glasses--you may have as many more as you like, but you shan't have less, for the sake of old times.

It's breezing up again, do you hear? That was only a lull just now, and we are going to have a bad night. A thing happened that made me start a little when I found that the jaw fitted exactly. I'm not very easily startled in that way myself, but I have seen people make a quick movement, drawing their breath sharply, when they had thought they were alone and suddenly turned and saw someone very near them. Nobody can call that fear. You wouldn't, would you? No. Well, just when I had set the jaw in its place under the skull, the teeth closed sharply on my finger. It felt exactly as if it were biting me hard, and I confess that I jumped before I realized that I had been pressing the jaw and the skull together with my other hand. I assure you I was not at all nervous. It was broad daylight, too, and a fine day, and the sun was streaming into the best bedroom. It would have been absurd to be nervous, and it was only a quick mistaken impression, but it really made me feel queer. Somehow it made me think of the funny verdict of the coroner's jury on Luke's death, "by the hand or teeth of some person or animal unknown". Ever since that I've wished I had seen those marks on his throat, though the lower jaw was missing then.

I have often seen a man do insane things with his hands that he does not realize at all. I once saw a man hanging on by an old awning stop with one hand, leaning backward, outboard, with all his weight on it, and he was just cutting the stop with the knife in his other hand when I got my arms round him. We were in mid-ocean, going twenty knots. He had not the smallest idea what he was doing; neither had I when I managed to pinch my finger between the teeth of that thing. I can feel it now. It was exactly as if it were alive and were trying to bite me. It would if it could, for I know it hates me, poor thing! Do you suppose that what rattles about inside is really a bit of lead? Well, I'll get the box down presently, and if whatever it is happens to drop out into your hands, that's your affair. If it's only a clod of earth or a pebble, the whole matter would be off my mind, and I don't believe I should ever think of the skull again; but somehow I cannot bring myself to shake out the bit of hard stuff myself. The mere idea that it may be lead makes me confoundedly uncomfortable, yet I've got the conviction that I shall know before long. I shall certainly know. I'm sure Trehearn knows, but he's such a silent beggar

I'll go upstairs now and get it. What? You had better go with me? Ha, ha! do you think I'm afraid of a bandbox and a noise? Nonsense!

Bother the candle, it won't light! As if the ridiculous thing understood what it's wanted for! Look at that--the third match. They light fast enough for my pipe. There, do you see? It's a fresh box, just out of the tin safe where I keep the supply on account of the dampness. Oh, you think the wick of the candle may be damp, do you? All right, I'll light the beastly thing in the fire. That won't go out, at all events. Yes, it sputters a bit, but it will keep lighted now. It burns just like any other candle, doesn't it? The fact is, candles are not very good about here. I don't know where they come from, but they have a way of burning low occasionally, with a greenish flame that spits tiny sparks, and I'm often annoyed by their going out of themselves. It cannot be helped, for it will be long before we have electricity in our village. It really is rather a poor light, isn't it?

You think I had better leave you the candle and take the lamp, do you? I don't like to carry lamps about, that's the truth. I never dropped one in my life, but I have always thought I might, and it's so confoundedly dangerous if you do. Besides, I am pretty well used to these rotten candles by this time.

You may as well finish that glass while I'm getting it, for I don't mean to let you off with less than three before you go to bed. You won't have to go upstairs, either, for I've put you in the old study next to the surgery--that's where I live myself. The fact is, I never ask a friend to sleep upstairs now. The last man who did was Crackenthorpe, and he said he was kept awake all night. You remember old Crack, don't you? He stuck to the Service, and they've just made him an admiral. Yes, I'm off now--unless the candle goes out. I couldn't help asking if you remembered Crackenthorpe. If anyone had told us that the skinny little idiot he used to be was to turn out the most successful of the lot of us, we should have laughed at the idea, shouldn't we? You and I did not do badly, it's true--but I'm really going now. I don't mean to let you think that I've been putting it off by talking! As if there were anything to be afraid of! If I were scared, I should tell you so quite frankly, and get you to go upstairs with me.

Here's the box. I brought it down very carefully, so as not to disturb it, poor thing. You see, if it were shaken, the jaw might get separated from it again, and I'm sure it wouldn't like that. Yes, the candle went out as I was coming downstairs, but that was the draught from the leaky window on the landing. Did you hear anything? Yes, there was another scream. Am I pale, do you say? That's nothing. My heart is a little queer sometimes, and I went upstairs too fast. In fact, that's one reason why I really prefer to live altogether on the ground floor.

Wherever the shriek came from, it was not from the skull, for I had the box in my hand when I heard the noise, and here it is now; so we have proved definitely that the screams are produced by something else. I've no doubt I shall find out some day what makes them. Some crevice in the wall, of course, or a crack in a chimney, or a chink in the frame of a window. That's the way all ghost stories end in real life. Do you know, I'm jolly glad I thought of going up and bringing it down for you to see, for that last shriek settles the question. To think that I should have been so weak as to fancy that the poor skull could really cry out like a living thing!

Now I'll open the box, and we'll take it out and look at it under the bright light. It's rather awful to think that the poor lady used to sit there, in your chair, evening after evening, in just the same light, isn't it? But then--I've made up my mind that it's all rubbish from beginning to end, and that it's just an old skull that Luke had when he was a student and perhaps he put it into the lime merely to whiten it, and could not find the jaw.

I made a seal on the string, you see, after I had put the jaw in its place, and I wrote on the cover. There's the old white label on it still, from the milliner's, addressed to Mrs. Pratt when the hat was sent to her, and as there was room I wrote on the edge: "A skull, once the property of the late Luke Pratt, MD." I don't quite know why I wrote that, unless it was with the idea of explaining how the thing happened to be in my possession. I cannot help wondering sometimes what sort of hat it was that came in the bandbox. What colour was it, do you think? Was it a gay spring hat with a bobbing feather and pretty ribands? Strange that the very same box should hold the head that wore the finery--perhaps. No--we made up our minds that it just came from the hospital in London where Luke did his time. It's far better to look at it in that light, isn't it? There's no more connection between that skull and poor Mrs. Pratt than there was between my story about the lead and----

Good Lord! Take the lamp--don't let it go out, if you can help it--I'll have the window fastened again in a second--I say, what a gale! There, it's out! I told you so! Never mind, there's the firelight--I've got the window shut--the bolt was only half down. Was the box blown off the table? Where the deuce is it? There! That won't open again, for I've put up the bar. Good dodge, an old-fashioned bar--there's nothing like it. Now, you find the bandbox while I light the lamp. Confound those wretched matches! Yes, a pipe spill is better--it must light in the fire--hadn't thought of it--thank you--there we are again. Now, where's the box? Yes, put it back on the table, and we'll open it.

That's the first time I have ever known the wind to burst that window open; but it was partly carelessness on my part when I last shut it. Yes, of course I heard the scream. It seemed to go all round the house before it broke in at the window. That proves that it's always been the wind and nothing else, doesn't it? When it was not the wind, it was my imagination I've always been a very imaginative man: I must have been, though I did not know it. As we grow older we understand ourselves better, don't you know?

I'll have a drop of the Hulstkamp neat, by way of an exception, since you are filling up your glass. That damp gust chilled me, and with my rheumatic tendency I'm very much afraid of a chill, for the cold sometimes seems to stick in my joints all winter when it once gets in.

By George, that's good stuff! I'll just light a fresh pipe, now that everything is snug again, and then we'll open the box. I'm so glad we heard that last scream together, with the skull here on the table between us, for a thing cannot possibly be in two places at the same time, and the noise most certainly came from outside, as any noise the wind makes must. You thought you heard it scream through the room after the window was burst open? Oh yes, so did I, but that was natural enough when everything was open. Of course we heard the wind. What could one expect? Look here, please. I want you to see that the seal is intact before we open the box together. Will you take my glasses? No, you have your own. All right. The seal is sound, you see, and you can read the words of the motto easily. "Sweet and low"--that's it--because the poem goes on "Wind of the Western Sea", and says, "blow him again to me", and all that. Here is the seal on my watch chain, where it's hung for more than forty years. My poor little wife gave it to me when I was courting, and I never had any other. It was just like her to think of those words--she was always fond of Tennyson.

It's no use to cut the string, for it's fastened to the box, so I'll just break the wax and untie the knot, and afterwards we'll seal it up again. You see, I like to feel that the thing is safe in its place, and that nobody can take it out. Not that I should suspect Trehearn of meddling with it, but I always feel that he knows a lot more than he tells. You see, I've managed it without breaking the string, though when I fastened it I never expected to open the bandbox again. The lid comes off easily enough. There! Now look!

What! Nothing in it! Empty! It's gone, man, the skull is gone!

No, there's nothing the matter with me. I'm only trying to collect my thoughts. It's so strange. I'm positively certain that it was inside when I put on the seal last spring. I can't have imagined that: it's utterly impossible. If I ever took a stiff glass with a friend now and then, I would admit that I might have made some idiotic mistake when I had taken too much. But I don't, and I never did. A pint of ale at supper and half a go of rum at bedtime was the most I ever took in my good days. I believe it's always we sober fellows who get rheumatism and gout! Yet there was my seal, and there is the empty bandbox. That's plain enough.

I say, I don't half like this. It's not right. There's something wrong about it, in my opinion. You needn't talk to me about supernatural manifestations, for I don't believe in them, not a little bit! Somebody must have tampered with the seal and stolen the skull. Sometimes, when I go out to work in the garden in summer, I leave my watch and chain on the table. Trehearn must have taken the seal then, and used it, for he would be quite sure that I should not come in for at least an hour.

If it was not Trehearn--oh, don't talk to me about the possibility that the thing has got out by itself! If it has, it must be somewhere about the house, in some out-of-the-way corner, waiting. We may come upon it anywhere, waiting for us, don't you know?--just waiting in the dark. Then it will scream at me; it will shriek at me in the dark, for it hates me, I tell you!

The bandbox is quite empty. We are not dreaming, either of us. There, I turn it upside down.

What's that? Something fell out as I turned it over. It's on the floor, it s near your feet. I know it is, and we must find it. Help me to find it, man. Have you got it? For God's sake, give it to me, quickly!

Lead! I knew it when I heard it fall. I knew it couldn't be anything else by the little thud it made on the hearthrug. So it was lead after all and Luke did it.

I feel a little bit shaken up--not exactly nervous, you know, but badly shaken up, that's the fact. Anybody would, I should think. After all, you cannot say that it's fear of the thing, for I went up and brought it down--at least, I believed I was bringing it down, and that's the same thing, and by George, rather than give in to such silly nonsense, I'll take the box upstairs again and put it back in its place. It's not that. It's the certainty that the poor little woman came to her end in that way, by my fault, because I told the story. That's what is so dreadful. Somehow, I had always hoped that I should never be quite sure of it, but there is no doubting it now. Look at that!

Look at it! That little lump of lead with no particular shape. Think of what it did, man! Doesn't it make you shiver? He gave her something to make her sleep, of course, but there must have been one moment of awful agony. Think of having boiling lead poured into your brain. Think of it. She was dead before she could scream, but only think of--oh! there it is again--it's just outside--I know it's just outside--I can't keep it out of my head!--oh!--oh!

You thought I had fainted? No, I wish I had, for it would have stopped sooner. It's all very well to say that it's only a noise, and that a noise never hurt anybody--you're as white as a shroud yourself. There's only one thing to be done, if we hope to close an eye tonight. We must find it and put it back into its bandbox and shut it up in the cupboard, where it likes to be I don't know how it got out, but it wants to get in again. That's why it screams so awfully tonight--it was never so bad as this--never since I first----

Bury it? Yes, if we can find it, we'll bury it, if it takes us all night. We'll bury it six feet deep and ram down the earth over it, so that it shall never get out again, and if it screams, we shall hardly hear it so deep down. Quick, we'll get the lantern and look for it. It cannot be far away; I'm sure it's just outside--it was coming in when I shut the window, I know it.

Yes, you're quite right. I'm losing my senses, and I must get hold of myself. Don't speak to me for a minute or two; I'll sit quite still and keep my eyes shut and repeat something I know. That's the best way.

"Add together the altitude, the latitude, and the polar distance, divide by two and subtract the altitude from the half-sum; then add the logarithm of the secant of the latitude, the cosecant of the polar distance, the cosine of the half-sum and the sine of the half-sum minus the altitude"--there! Don't say that I'm out of my senses, for my memory is all right, isn't it?

Of course, you may say that it's mechanical, and that we never forget the things we learned when we were boys and have used almost every day for a lifetime. But that's the very point. When a man is going crazy, it's the mechanical part of his mind that gets out of order and won't work right; he remembers things that never happened, or he sees things that aren't real, or he hears noises when there is perfect silence. That's not what is the matter with either of us, is it?

Come, we'll get the lantern and go round the house. It's not raining--only blowing like old boots, as we used to say. The lantern is in the cupboard under the stairs in the hall, and I always keep it trimmed in case of a wreck. No use to look for the thing? I don't see how you can say that. It was nonsense to talk of burying it, of course, for it doesn't want to be buried; it wants to go back into its bandbox and be taken upstairs, poor thing! Trehearn took it out, I know, and made the seal over again. Perhaps he took it to the churchyard, and he may have meant well. I dare say he thought that it would not scream any more if it were quietly laid in consecrated ground, near where it belongs. But it has come home. Yes, that's it. He's not half a bad fellow, Trehearn, and rather religiously inclined, I think. Does not that sound natural, and reasonable, and well meant? He supposed it screamed because it was not decently buried--with the rest. But he was wrong. How should he know that it screams at me because it hates me, and because it's my fault that there was that little lump of lead in it?

No use to look for it, anyhow? Nonsense! I tell you it wants to be found--Hark! what's that knocking? Do you hear it? Knock--knock--knock--three times, then a pause, and then again. It has a hollow sound, hasn't it? It has come home. I've heard that knock before. It wants to come in and be taken upstairs in its box. It's at the front door.

Will you come with me? We'll take it in. Yes, I own that I don't like to go alone and open the door. The thing will roll in and stop against my foot, just as it did before, and the light will go out. I'm a good deal shaken by finding that bit of lead, and, besides, my heart isn't quite right--too much strong tobacco, perhaps. Besides, I'm quite willing to own that I'm a bit nervous tonight, if I never was before in my life.

That's right, come along! I'll take the box with me, so as not to come back. Do you hear the knocking? It's not like any other knocking I ever heard. If you will hold this door open, I can find the lantern under the stairs by the light from this room without bringing the lamp into the hall--it would only go out.

The thing knows we are coming--hark! It's impatient to get in. Don't shut the door till the lantern is ready, whatever you do. There will be the usual trouble with the matches, I suppose--no, the first one, by Jove! I tell you it wants to get in, so there's no trouble. All right with that door now; shut it, please. Now come and hold the lantern, for it's blowing so hard outside that I shall have to use both hands. That's it, hold the light low. Do you hear the knocking still? Here goes--I'll open just enough with my foot against the bottom of the door--now!

Catch it! it's only the wind that blows it across the floor, that's all--there s half a hurricane outside, I tell you! Have you got it? The bandbox is on the table. One minute, and I'll have the bar up. There!

Why did you throw it into the box so roughly? It doesn't like that, you know.

What do you say? Bitten your hand? Nonsense, man! You did just what I did. You pressed the jaws together with your other hand and pinched yourself. Let me see. You don't mean to say you have drawn blood? You must have squeezed hard by Jove, for the skin is certainly torn. I'll give you some carbolic solution for it before we go to bed, for they say a scratch from a skull's tooth may go bad and give trouble.

Come inside again and let me see it by the lamp. I'll bring the bandbox--never mind the lantern, it may just as well burn in the hall for I shall need it presently when I go up the stairs. Yes, shut the door if you will; it makes it more cheerful and bright. Is your finger still bleeding? I'll get you the carbolic in an instant; just let me see the thing. Ugh! There's a drop of blood on the upper jaw. It's on the eyetooth. Ghastly, isn't it? When I saw it running along the floor of the hall, the strength almost went out of my hands, and I felt my knees bending, then I understood that it was the gale, driving it over the smooth boards. You don t blame me? No, I should think not! We were boys together, and we've seen a thing or two, and we may just as well own to each other that we were both in a beastly funk when it slid across the floor at you. No wonder you pinched your finger picking it up, after that, if I did the same thing out of sheer nervousness, in broad daylight, with the sun streaming in on me.

Strange that the jaw should stick to it so closely, isn't it? I suppose it's the dampness, for it shuts like a vice--I have wiped off the drop of blood, for it was not nice to look at. I'm not going to try to open the jaws, don't be afraid! I shall not play any tricks with the poor thing, but I'll just seal the box again, and we'll take it upstairs and put it away where it wants to be. The wax is on the writing-table by the window. Thank you. It will be long before I leave my seal lying about again, for Trehearn to use, I can tell you. Explain? I don't explain natural phenomena, but if you choose to think that Trehearn had hidden it somewhere in the bushes, and that the gale blew it to the house against the door, and made it knock, as if it wanted to be let in, you're not thinking the impossible, and I'm quite ready to agree with you.

Do you see that? You can swear that you've actually seen me seal it this time, in case anything of the kind should occur again. The wax fastens the strings to the lid, which cannot possibly be lifted, even enough to get in one finger. You're quite satisfied, aren't you? Yes. Besides, I shall lock the cupboard and keep the key in my pocket hereafter. Now we can take the lantern and go upstairs. Do you know? I'm very much inclined to agree with your theory that the wind blew it against the house. I'll go ahead, for I know the stairs; just hold the lantern near my feet as we go up. How the wind howls and whistles! Did you feel the sand on the floor under your shoes as we crossed the hall? Yes--this is the door of the best bedroom. Hold up the lantern, please. This side, by the head of the bed. I left the cupboard open when I got the box. Isn't it queer how the faint odour of women's dresses will hang about an old closet for years? This is the shelf. You've seen me set the box there, and now you see me turn the key and put it into my pocket. So that's done!

Goodnight. Are you sure you're quite comfortable? It's not much of a room, but I dare say you would as soon sleep here as upstairs tonight. If you want anything, sing out; there's only a lath and plaster partition between us. There's not so much wind on this side by half. There's the Hollands on the table, if you'll have one more nightcap. No? Well, do as you please. Goodnight again, and don't dream about that thing, if you can. The following paragraph appeared in the Penraddon News, 23rd November 1906:



MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF A RETIRED SEA CAPTAIN

The village of Tredcombe is much disturbed by the strange death of Captain Charles Braddock, and all sorts of impossible stories are circulating with regard to the circumstances, which certainly seem difficult of explanation. The retired captain, who had successfully commanded in his time the largest and fastest liners belonging to one of the principal transatlantic steamship companies, was found dead in his bed on Tuesday morning in his own cottage, a quarter of a mile from the village. An examination was made at once by the local practitioner, which revealed the horrible fact that the deceased had been bitten in the throat by a human assailant, with such amazing force as to crush the windpipe and cause death. The marks of the teeth of both jaws were so plainly visible on the skin that they could be counted, but the perpetrator of the deed had evidently lost the two lower middle incisors. It is hoped that this peculiarity may help to identify the murderer, who can only be a dangerous escaped maniac. The deceased, though over sixty-five years of age, is said to have been a hale man of considerable physical strength, and it is remarkable that no signs of any struggle were visible in the room, nor could it be ascertained how the murderer had entered the house. Warning has been sent to all the insane asylums in the United Kingdom, but as yet no information has been received regarding the escape of any dangerous patient.

The coroner's Jury returned the somewhat singular verdict that Captain Braddock came to his death "by the hands or teeth of some person unknown". The local surgeon is said to have expressed privately the opinion that the maniac is a woman, a view he deduces from the small size of the jaws, as shown by the marks of the teeth. The whole affair is shrouded in mystery. Captain Braddock was a widower, and lived alone. He leaves no children.



Forty-Three candles left.

[Valerian]

Don't Turn on the Light: A Spooky Tale from Maryland.

She commandeered the room in the basement of her dorm as soon as she realized she would have to pull an all-nighter in order to prepare for tomorrow’s final exam. Her roommate, Jenna, liked to get to bed early, so she packed up everything she thought she would need and went downstairs to study . . . and study . . . and study some more.

It was two o’clock, when she realized that she’d left one of the textbooks upstairs on her bed. With a dramatic sigh, she rose, and climbed the stairs slowly to her third-floor dorm room.  The lights were dim in the long hallway, and the old boards creaked under her weary tread. She reached her room and turned the handle as softly as she could, pushing the door open just enough to slip inside, so that the hall lights wouldn’t wake her roommate.

The room was filled with a strange, metallic smell. She frowned a bit, her arms breaking out into chills. There was a strange feeling of malice in the room, as if a malevolent gaze were fixed upon her.  It was a mind trick; the all-nighter was catching up with her.

She could hear Jenna breathing on the far side of the room—a heavy sound, almost as if she had been running. Jenna must have picked up a cold during the last tense week before finals.  She crept along the wall until she reached her bed, groping among the covers for the stray history textbook. In the silence, she could hear a steady drip-drip-drip sound. She sighed silently. Facilities would have to come to fix the sink in the bathroom…again.

Her fingers closed on the textbook. She picked it up softly and withdrew from the room as silently as she could.

Relieved to be out of the room, she hurried back downstairs, collapsed into an overstuffed chair and studied until six o’clock.  She finally decided that enough was enough. If she slipped upstairs now, she could get a couple hours’ sleep before her nine o’clock exam.

The first of the sun’s rays were beaming through the windows as she slowly slid the door open, hoping not to awaken Jenna. Her nose was met by an earthy, metallic smell a second before her eyes registered the scene in her dorm room. Jenna was spread-eagled on top of her bed against the far wall, her throat cut from ear to ear and her nightdress stained with blood. Two drops of blood fell from the saturated blanket with a drip-drip noise that sounded like a leaky faucet.

Scream after scream poured from her mouth, but she couldn’t stop herself any more than she could cease wringing her hands. All along the hallway, doors slammed and footsteps came running down the passage.

Within moments other students had gathered in her doorway, and one of her friends gripped her arm with a shaking hand and pointed a trembling finger toward the wall. Her eyes widened in shock at what she saw. Then she fainted into her friend’s arms.

On the wall above her bed, written in her roommate’s blood, were the words: “Aren’t you glad you didn’t turn on the light?”



Forty-two candles left.

[Spookie Monster]

Thank you very much, Michi No Sora and Valerian!  I'm always excited when you two have tales to tell, because I know that I'll be both entertained and chilled.

After all of that blood, though, I almost want to scrub clean.  Hmmm... maybe I need some "Soap"?


Soap

There's a legend in some regions of Appalachia about Soap Sally.  Some people say she's an old woman who wears too much make-up, and others say she's an old man trying to pretend he's an old woman.  According to legend, she stalks the countryside at dusk, looking for children who have run away from home.  She grabs them by the hand with a death-like grip and leads them off.  And nobody ever sees them again.

There's a special kind of soap called "lye soap" which is made from the fat and bones of animals; in fact, this is what soap was usually made of in the past.  Well, people say that Soap Sally uses the fat and bones of children to make her own special brand of soap.  Some even say she makes the soap to resemble children's hands.  When she's done, she sells the soap to the parents of the missing children.  The parents never realize that they are washing themselves with the remains of their own children.

Every time a child goes missing, two or three days later, Soap Sally can be seen, going from town to town, carrying a sack full of hand-made soap, selling it cheap to unsuspecting parents.


So they say.

I'm blowing out a candle.  Forty-one candles remain...

Spel

Shadow love is quick and clean...

[Spookie Monster]

Terrifying but true: No one is ever really safe, not even children.  Soap Sally, or any one of a thousand other murderous bogeys, could be waiting just outside, or in the closet, or beneath the bed.  Consequently, the world is filled with ghosts -- the ghosts of their victims.  Some of them are listening to us right now.  Here's a tale about one of their kind, as related by Jackie C., who in turn heard it from her grandmother.


The Little Barefoot Ghost

This happened to my grandparents back in the 1940s.  At the time they were living in rural Manitoba on a farm.  As was the case in those days, there was no electricity in the old farmhouse, so the long winter nights were quite spooky.

One cold winter night they were surprised by the sound of someone banging on the door of the farmhouse.  Since there were no close neighbors, they were surprised.  They opened the door and no one was there.  They then heard banging on the windows of the house, as though someone was walking around the house, hitting all the windows.  Again, they looked around but couldn't see anything.

The next morning, my grandfather got up early and looked outside.  He was alarmed to see a child's footprints in the fresh snow.  What was even more alarming was the fact that they were barefoot.  So grandpa quickly went out in search of this child, who was walking around barefoot on this cold winter's night, hoping the child hadn't already froze to death.

He followed the set of tracks around the house and then out into the field.  The tracks then just abruptly stopped, as though the child was there one second and gone the next.


So they say.

I'm blowing out a candle.  Forty candles remain.  Do you have a spooky story to share?

Spel

The pain must feel like snow...

[Jag]

The Rats by  Richard Schnelzer (2012)



The sound we choose to ignore... is but grim fate, knocking at our door.

Within mysterious, dark alleys, lies the world of a dying man. Coughing blood onto his sleeve, he extinguishes the last of his salvaged cigarette butts, then lays down on the cold, brick paved alleyway, staring up at heaven... so very far away. And while sounds of an automotive society echoes off the walls, tires screeching, engines roaring, the feeble man in ragged attire, only felt silence… dreadful silence, seeping in with the cold dampness of the concrete, chilling his bones.

With his eyes, such intense pools of sorrow, he bestowed the darkening sky. "The clouds are a deeper gray now," he uttered, short winded, "Soon the shadows will come, and with it…? …the tiny, little teeth of death ripping." Gathering what fleeting strength he still possessed, he leaned over and reach for his last, beloved possession.

Resting it on his belly, he admired the beautiful wood carvings, of his old, antique radio. "Many good times we shared, old friend," he whispered while caressing the ivory dials, "Many good times indeed."

It was the warm glow of dusty vacuum tubes, he cherished the most. And despite no batteries, nor outlets to plug into, the radio always sang to him. Why? He never wondered. No one ever wonders why the sun shines. And also true, no one ever wonders why they feel loved... only when it has gone.

Through desperate and lean times, the radio was there for him. So long, that he couldn’t remember where he had got it. It was there when he was a boy, caring for him through his father’s drunken rages, while he hid beneath the rotting box springs of his sagging bed. And it was that soft warm glow, the beckoning of light in his wilderness of the dark that comforted him, when his wife strayed and fell into the arms of another.

So many times he danced, with booze upon his breath; holding the radio as if it was his best girl; swaying to the soft melody, never-minding the silhouettes of lovers in the windows above the shops. It was these times, when happiness seemed possible... even if the music was only in his head.

And when he fell tired, and needed sleep, it was his angel of circuitry that kept the rats away. Ah, but as the years have gone, his heart grew feeble. And the rats hiding in the looming shadows gathered in greater numbers. First it was but a few. He could have easily swatted them away himself, if they ever dared wander too close. But soon he found, staring off into the shadows too difficult, with the ever multiplying pairs of eyes. "Best to never mind them," he thought, "The music keeps them away, and that’s all that matters right now."

Several times since his descent from a modest life into the filth of skid-row, he tried sleeping in different places. He wandered the streets and alleys, trying to shake the vermin. But, it seemed only a matter of time before the rats would find him. "And everywhere the old man went... the rats were sure to go!" Singing to himself, with a grim chuckle.

As the alley darkened, the man decided it was time for his music. "Soon..." he called out to the assembling rats, screeching and scampering, "Soon... perhaps even tonight, I will finally die. You little bastards can do what you want with me, then... But not while my heart still beats... not while there is music!" Dramatically he flicked the dial. But to his bewildering dismay, the radio did not turn on.

"What’s wrong with you?" He cried, tapping, and shaking the radio. Finally he saw a soft glow and was momentarily relieved. But there was no sound. Horrified, he watched through the back grill of the box, as the glowing tube softly faded away. "That’s a sad goodbye if I ever saw one," he uttered, lifting his head to the black abyss. He could almost feel the hungry rats mocking him. Even their little squeaks felt like laughter.

The man tried to get to his feet, but felt too week... too dizzy. "So be it then... there comes a time when a man can simply love no more." He set the box down beside him, and brushed it lightly. "Goodbye old friend... Guess I’ll see you in my dreams." He then reached into his coat for his flask; thinking he would simply accept his fate, and drink himself unconscious. But after one swig of rotgut, he began coughing up phlegm that burned in the back of his throat, as if it were battery acid.

He spat up what he could, then, tried staring up at the now starlit sky. All seemed calm at first, but he became alarmed by the silhouettes of rodents, racing across the ledge of the buildings. "My God, they’re huge!" He cried. He then looked around, and saw hundreds, if not thousands, of red beady eyes gazing upon him. Suddenly, like vomit pouring down the gutter pipes and flowing over the dumpsters, screaming rats scampered madly towards him.

"I cannot watch!" He thought closing his eyes tightly. But then... as if projected on the inside of his eyelids, he saw his wife’s face... turning and twirling, moaning in ecstasy as strange hands caressed the soft parts of her body... the soft parts that were once, for him alone. The vision seemed just as real and tormenting as the rats themselves.

He finally opened his eyes to the rats which threatened to engulf him. Screaming wildly, he threw his flask, causing them to scurry away. But only momentarily, for soon they regrouped, as even more rats seemed to be trickling out from the walls. With his grime packed nails, he dug out a brick from the ground and flung it, yelling, "Fuck You! You filthy little bastards! Why can’t you just leave me alone? You vile... disgusting rodents!"

But his rage did not deter them. In fact, it only served to weakened him all the more. Wheezing heavily he flopped back down, while the screaming rats seized upon him like an angry swarm of locusts. He closed his eyes once more, and watched the dirty little movie in his head. He saw masculine arms now... holding her, while teeth, like tiny scissors, cut away at the vulnerable parts of his body.

He felt as though what he was seeing was happening right now. As if it were an apparition of some kind. The woman who had once taken his hand in marriage, was being man-handled like some cheap whore, while he was helplessly being torn to shreds by hungry rodents. So much for promises. So much for poetic justice, and the reward for passive humility.

It had become clear to him, as he bit down on the rat that had his tongue; that there was no God, watching over him. There was no right or wrong - nor silver lining in the clouds of deeper gray. No salvation or remorse. Not the slightest show of empathy. There was only suffering... then death. It plays you like a mouse, you see. Then... when you’re too weak to fight anymore, it devours you.

From within the moving, black mass of rats crawling over rats, the man reached out. And with fleeting hope, he caressed the radio dial softly. As if... just wanting to hear the music once more. Defeated, he relaxed his fingers, and surrendered to the rats. For the music he so loved... was only, ever in his head.



Thirty-Nine candles left.

[Jag]

Eyes in the Jar by Richard Schnelzer (2012)



I know they're hiding up there, in the woods. You can almost smell them when the wind blows past the trees. And some nights, you'd swear you could feel their eyes upon you. Maybe peeking out from behind a tree? Or snooping around the wood shed. You see, there used to be a cemetery up on this hill... and though the head stones have cracked, fallen over and sunk into the ground, the graves still remain...

It's not unusual to find dead rabbits, squirrels, or even a stray cat, along these trails. So readily the locals would dismiss them as the acts of wild dogs or a bobcat. Can't say I blame them... whatever helps them sleep at night. But there was something peculiar in the way these carcasses were devoured.

They were not ripped and torn, chewed up from one end to the other. Rather, skinned and picked apart, leaving their innards to the maggots and whatever else creeps along the ground.

These habits seem rather picky for dogs, don't you think?

Ah, but over the years, the population of critters has worn thin in these woods. I have feared for sometime, that they would soon overcome their shyness, and wander closer and closer down the countryside, in search of easy prey. It was only a matter of time...

Do you think I'm just trying to scare you? Or perhaps, I've had too much time in my hands, and decided to let my imagination run laps around my better senses? Let me assure you, what I have to tell is every bit as real as the chair you're sitting in.

I grew up in this cottage with my mother. As a boy, I would sometimes sneak out my bedroom window, with a mason jar to catch the fireflies. That was until one night when I dared to venture farther than I had ever wandered before. So far in fact, that I could no longer see the light from my window. As the fireflies grew thin, I found myself on a trail that ran alongside that cemetery.

The moon was indeed alive with an ominous glow, strange yet wise. It revealed to me, from thin vegetation, the tired, sagging tombstones that sat within a clearing. But there was something even more dreadful waiting at the trail's end. At first, I couldn't tell what it was, only that a foul lingering odor seemed to be coming from it. If only I had the better sense to turn back... I too could sleep peacefully, with casual wonder, of the creatures that lurk in nocturnal hills.

Quietly I crept closer to this shadowy mass. It wasn't long before I realized that it was moving... as if it were not one lump of mass, rather a group of bodies huddled close together. People... huddled around something laying on the cold ground. My hands began to tremble, so much so that the jar had slipped and fell... making a subtle, yet distinct thud in the dirt.

In a snap they turned, and laid piercing eyes that glowed like that of an owl's, in my direction. Their clothes, tattered and worn, hung as if death shrouds over pale, bony frames.

Startled they sprung to their feet, and nearly scattered, but their timid nature was overcome by curiosity. It was then I could clearly see what poor creature laid at their feet. A faun, strayed from its mother's side, laid helpless, still breathing; even though its insides were scattered across the blood soaked ground.

I can't tell you how much I wanted to scream... I tried, but all I pushed through was dry air. Soon my phantoms grew less timid, and cautiously, ever so cautiously, crept closer. With fingers spread wide apart, they extended their arms, reaching for me, with the hunger of despaired lovers.

With such a sight, could a bullet travel any faster, than I running down those winding trails. Never once did I look back, but the sound of cracking limbs and rustling bushes, ruled the canvas of morbid dreams within my head.

For certain, I was convinced they would catch me. Their legs were longer, stretching farther with every stride. And with those golden eyes... glowing like coins beneath murky waters, seeing deeper into the dark abyss than that of the common feline, surely my fate would be that of the stray faun, ripped apart and consumed, under the cover of night.

They did not grow tired, no.... They merely sought refuge in familiar terrain. As I told you before, they were shy creatures. They watched from behind trees and bushes. They dared not venture farther, I leaped back into my window, and locked it! Then I crawled my way, panting, to my bed. Only then, staring at the off balanced ceiling fan, did the absolute terror, wash over me, like a bucket of warm blood. I guess it's like not knowing you're going to fall, until you see the bottom. Funny how that awareness changes your reality.

I can't imagine as to how I fell asleep, only that eventually daylight came. And with it a false sense of jubilee. I was so ready to chalk this off, as one of my more disturbing phantasms, until I noticed my jar sitting on the windows ledge. Flies buzzed frantically, around its inner content... desperate to lay eggs in what's inside.

As I wondered nearer to the window's ledge, what began as vaguely familiar, became dreadfully unmistakable. Resting at the base, the eyes of the deer, staring wide into the vacuum of death... with all its ominous surprise.

I believe it was placed there as a warning. Maybe, never to speak of the things I've seen? Nor venture deep into the depths of the woods again. Ah, but a silent breeze passes through fresh timber. And so... a new treaty must be forged. If I cannot appease the dead, in a world continuously changing, how can I hang on to the memories of the past? You do understand? After all, this cottage is my home.

And so my weary traveler, it is most unfortunate, that you sought refuge here... in my company. The reason for your bondage to this wooden chair, that is placed in my backyard is self-explanatory... Tonight, I fear the dead, restless with famine, will dare cross the threshold into the land of the living. And you... You are to be my first offering. A bond that will tie me to both worlds, living and beyond. Light... to the nocturnal. So subtle it seems... yet profound. Feel free to scream... for only they will hear you.

I must go... for I can smell the wind, passing through the trees. Ah death, its scent never truly leaves you. For once you've smelt it, it always remembers... much like a photograph fading in the sun, it remembers... all that it has touched.



Thirty-Eight candles left.

[Spookie Monster]

Thanks, Michi No Sora!  Very cool contributions.  Also, I love rats!

As some of you might remember, I'm fascinated by spooky phone calls -- THEN WHO WAS PHONE? jokes notwithstanding.  Well, here's a classic by H.P. Lovecraft that concludes with a very spooky phone call indeed...


The Statement of Randolph Carter

Again I say, I do not know what has become of Harley Warren, though I think -- almost hope -- that he is in peaceful oblivion, if there be anywhere so blessed a thing.  It is true that I have for five years been his closest friend, and a partial sharer of his terrible researches into the unknown.  I will not deny, though my memory is uncertain and indistinct, that this witness of yours may have seen us together as he says, on the Gainsville pike, walking toward Big Cypress Swamp, at half past 11 on that awful night.  That we bore electric lanterns, spades, and a curious coil of wire with attached instruments, I will even affirm; for these things all played a part in the single hideous scene which remains burned into my shaken recollection.  But of what followed, and of the reason I was found alone and dazed on the edge of the swamp next morning, I must insist that I know nothing save what I have told you over and over again.  You say to me that there is nothing in the swamp or near it which could form the setting of that frightful episode.  I reply that I knew nothing beyond what I saw.  Vision or nightmare it may have been -- vision or nightmare I fervently hope it was -- yet it is all that my mind retains of what took place in those shocking hours after we left the sight of men.  And why Harley Warren did not return, he or his shade -- or some nameless thing I cannot describe -- alone can tell.

As I have said before, the weird studies of Harley Warren were well known to me, and to some extent shared by me.  Of his vast collection of strange, rare books on forbidden subjects I have read all that are written in the languages of which I am master; but these are few as compared with those in languages I cannot understand.  Most, I believe, are in Arabic; and the fiend-inspired book which brought on the end -- the book which he carried in his pocket out of the world -- was written in characters whose like I never saw elsewhere.  Warren would never tell me just what was in that book.  As to the nature of our studies -- must I say again that I no longer retain full comprehension?  It seems to me rather merciful that I do not, for they were terrible studies, which I pursued more through reluctant fascination than through actual inclination.  Warren always dominated me, and sometimes I feared him.  I remember how I shuddered at his facial expression on the night before the awful happening, when he talked so incessantly of his theory, why certain corpses never decay, but rest firm and fat in their tombs for a thousand years.  But I do not fear him now, for I suspect that he has known horrors beyond my ken.  Now I fear for him.

Once more I say that I have no clear idea of our object on that night.  Certainly, it had much to do with something in the book which Warren carried with him -- that ancient book in undecipherable characters which had come to him from India a month before -- but I swear I do not know what it was that we expected to find.  Your witness says he saw us at half past 11 on the Gainsville pike, headed for Big Cypress Swamp.  This is probably true, but I have no distinct memory of it.  The picture seared into my soul is of one scene only, and the hour must have been long after midnight; for a waning crescent moon was high in the vaporous heavens.

The place was an ancient cemetery; so ancient that I trembled at the manifold signs of immemorial years.  It was in a deep, damp hollow, overgrown with rank grass, moss, and curious creeping weeds, and filled with a vague stench which my idle fancy associated absurdly with rotting stone.  On every hand were the signs of neglect and decrepitude, and I seemed haunted by the notion that Warren and I were the first living creatures to invade a lethal silence of centuries.  Over the valley's rim a wan, waning crescent moon peered through the noisome vapors that seemed to emanate from unheard of catacombs, and by its feeble, wavering beams I could distinguish a repellent array of antique slabs, urns, cenotaphs, and mausoleum facades; all crumbling, moss-grown, and moisture-stained, and partly concealed by the gross luxuriance of the unhealthy vegetation.

My first vivid impression of my own presence in this terrible necropolis concerns the act of pausing with Warren before a certain half-obliterated sepulcher and of throwing down some burdens which we seemed to have been carrying.  I now observed that I had with me an electric lantern and two spades, whilst my companion was supplied with a similar lantern and a portable telephone outfit.  No word was uttered, for the spot and the task seemed known to us; and without delay we seized our spades and commenced to clear away the grass, weeds, and drifted earth from the flat, archaic mortuary.  After uncovering the entire surface, which consisted of three immense granite slabs, we stepped back some distance to survey the charnel scene; and Warren appeared to make some mental calculations.  Then he returned to the sepulcher, and using his spade as a lever, sought to pry up the slab lying nearest to a stony ruin which may have been a monument in its day.  He did not succeed, and motioned to me to come to his assistance.  Finally our combined strength loosened the stone, which we raised and tipped to one side.

The removal of the slab revealed a black aperture, from which rushed an effluence of miasmal gases so nauseous that we started back in horror.  After an interval, however, we approached the pit again, and found the exhalations less unbearable.  Our lanterns disclosed the top of a flight of stone steps, dripping with some detestable ichor of the inner earth, and bordered by moist walls encrusted with niter.  And now for the first time my memory records verbal discourse, Warren addressing me at length in his mellow tenor voice; a voice singularly unperturbed by our awesome surroundings.

"I'm sorry to have to ask you to stay on the surface," he said, "but it would be a crime to let anyone with your frail nerves go down there.  You can't imagine, even from what you have read and from what I've told you, the things I shall have to see and do.  It's fiendish work, Carter, and I doubt if any man without ironclad sensibilities could ever see it through and come up alive and sane.  I don't wish to offend you, and Heaven knows I'd be glad enough to have you with me; but the responsibility is in a certain sense mine, and I couldn't drag a bundle of nerves like you down to probable death or madness.  I tell you, you can't imagine what the thing is really like!  But I promise to keep you informed over the telephone of every move -- you see I've enough wire here to reach to the center of the earth and back!"

I can still hear, in memory, those coolly spoken words; and I can still remember my remonstrances.  I seemed desperately anxious to accompany my friend into those sepulchral depths, yet he proved inflexibly obdurate.  At one time he threatened to abandon the expedition if I remained insistent; a threat which proved effective, since he alone held the key to the thing.  All this I can still remember, though I no longer know what manner of thing we sought.  After he had obtained my reluctant acquiescence in his design, Warren picked up the reel of wire and adjusted the instruments.  At his nod I took one of the latter and seated myself upon an aged, discolored gravestone close by the newly uncovered aperture.  Then he shook my hand, shouldered the coil of wire, and disappeared within that indescribable ossuary.

For a minute I kept sight of the glow of his lantern, and heard the rustle of the wire as he laid it down after him; but the glow soon disappeared abruptly, as if a turn in the stone staircase had been encountered, and the sound died away almost as quickly.  I was alone, yet bound to the unknown depths by those magic strands whose insulated surface lay green beneath the struggling beams of that waning crescent moon.

I constantly consulted my watch by the light of my electric lantern, and listened with feverish anxiety at the receiver of the telephone; but for more than a quarter of an hour heard nothing.  Then a faint clicking came from the instrument, and I called down to my friend in a tense voice.  Apprehensive as I was, I was nevertheless unprepared for the words which came up from that uncanny vault in accents more alarmed and quivering than any I had heard before from Harley Warren.  He who had so calmly left me a little while previously, now called from below in a shaky whisper more portentous than the loudest shriek:

"God!  If you could see what I am seeing!"

I could not answer.  Speechless, I could only wait.  Then came the frenzied tones again:

"Carter, it's terrible -- monstrous -- unbelievable!"

This time my voice did not fail me, and I poured into the transmitter a flood of excited questions.  Terrified, I continued to repeat, "Warren, what is it?  What is it?"

Once more came the voice of my friend, still hoarse with fear, and now apparently tinged with despair:

"I can't tell you, Carter!  It's too utterly beyond thought -- I dare not tell you -- no man could know it and live -- Great God!  I never dreamed of this!"

Stillness again, save for my now incoherent torrent of shuddering inquiry.  Then the voice of Warren in a pitch of wilder consternation:

"Carter! for the love of God, put back the slab and get out of this if you can!  Quick! -- leave everything else and make for the outside -- it's your only chance!  Do as I say, and don't ask me to explain!"

I heard, yet was able only to repeat my frantic questions.  Around me were the tombs and the darkness and the shadows; below me, some peril beyond the radius of the human imagination.  But my friend was in greater danger than I, and through my fear I felt a vague resentment that he should deem me capable of deserting him under such circumstances.  More clicking, and after a pause a piteous cry from Warren:

"Beat it!  For God's sake, put back the slab and beat it, Carter!"

Something in the boyish slang of my evidently stricken companion unleashed my faculties.  I formed and shouted a resolution, "Warren, brace up!  I'm coming down!"  But at this offer the tone of my auditor changed to a scream of utter despair:

"Don't!  You can't understand!  It's too late -- and my own fault.  Put back the slab and run -- there's nothing else you or anyone can do now!"

The tone changed again, this time acquiring a softer quality, as of hopeless resignation.  Yet it remained tense through anxiety for me.

"Quick -- before it's too late!"

I tried not to heed him; tried to break through the paralysis which held me, and to fulfil my vow to rush down to his aid.  But his next whisper found me still held inert in the chains of stark horror.

"Carter -- hurry!  It's no use -- you must go -- better one than two -- the slab -- "

A pause, more clicking, then the faint voice of Warren:

"Nearly over now -- don't make it harder -- cover up those damned steps and run for your life -- you're losing time -- so long, Carter -- won't see you again."

Here Warren's whisper swelled into a cry; a cry that gradually rose to a shriek fraught with all the horror of the ages --

"Curse these hellish things -- legions -- My God!  Beat it!  Beat it!  BEAT IT!"

After that was silence.  I know not how many interminable eons I sat stupefied; whispering, muttering, calling, screaming into that telephone.  Over and over again through those eons I whispered and muttered, called, shouted, and screamed, "Warren!  Warren!  Answer me -- are you there?"

And then there came to me the crowning horror of all -- the unbelievable, unthinkable, almost unmentionable thing.  I have said that eons seemed to elapse after Warren shrieked forth his last despairing warning, and that only my own cries now broke the hideous silence.  But after a while there was a further clicking in the receiver, and I strained my ears to listen.  Again I called down, "Warren, are you there?" and in answer heard the thing which has brought this cloud over my mind.  I do not try, gentlemen, to account for that thing -- that voice -- nor can I venture to describe it in detail, since the first words took away my consciousness and created a mental blank which reaches to the time of my awakening in the hospital.  Shall I say that the voice was deep; hollow; gelatinous; remote; unearthly; inhuman; disembodied?  What shall I say?  It was the end of my experience, and is the end of my story.  I heard it, and knew no more -- heard it as I sat petrified in that unknown cemetery in the hollow, amidst the crumbling stones and the falling tombs, the rank vegetation and the miasmal vapors -- heard it well up from the innermost depths of that damnable open sepulcher as I watched amorphous, necrophagous shadows dance beneath an accursed waning moon.

And this is what it said:

"You fool, Warren is DEAD!"


So they say.

I'm blowing out a candle.  Thirty-seven candles remain...

Spel

I had to phone someone, so I picked on you...

[Spookie Monster]

Otherworldly voices often arise during the season of the witch.  Of course, other voices, such as that heard in the following story from a woman named Rachel, might have a more mundane explanation.  That doesn't necessarily prevent them from being spooky...


An Extra Goodnight

Two or three years ago, I was on the phone late night with my boyfriend.  He had been out of town, so we were catching up on things.  It began as a late call and finally we decided to go to bed around 3 or 4 a.m.  It was like, "Well, I can hardly stay awake.  I think I am gonna go to bed...  What do you think, Larry?"

He agreed, so we said our "I love you"s and said goodnight when at the same time, a creepy voice of a man said, "Okay, goodnight."  There was a funny click sound and then silence.

We both were startled, to say the least.  No one else was home at either of our places, so it wasn't a family member playing a joke or anything.  It could have been something to do with the cordless phones, but I have this feeling that is not the answer.  It is so weird to think that whoever or whatever that was, that they were listening in on the whole conversation.


So they say.

I'm blowing out another candle.  Thirty-six candles remain...

Spel

Hey, that's far out -- so you heard him, too?

[Spookie Monster]

Actually, some of the spookiest stories are also some of the most believable.  After all, anyone who reads the news these days knows that one need not travel to the otherworld to find monsters...

Here's a story called "The Crayons"; I hope that it terrifies you.


The Crayons

A married couple, who had just returned from their honeymoon, decided to buy a house.  The couple were very happy because they managed to get the house at a very cheap price.  It was in a nice neighborhood, close to the city and just a short walk from a shopping center.

One day, the husband was walking down the hall when he spotted a red crayon lying on the floor.  The couple didn't have any children, so the husband wondered where the crayon had come from.  "Perhaps the previous residents left it behind," he said to himself as he casually threw it in the trash.

The next day, the husband came home from work to find another red crayon lying in exactly the same spot.  He was very puzzled and decided to ask his wife about it.  The wife grew pale in the face when he brought it up.  She told him that, every day since they first moved into the house, she had been finding red crayons when she was cleaning.  They were always lying in the same spot, at the end of the hallway.

The husband was standing in the hallway, wondering about this weird phenomenon, when he began to notice something was not quite right.  The hallway was too short.  He tapped on the wall at the end of the hallway and heard a hollow sound.  Curious, he began peeling off the wallpaper, despite the protests of his wife.  Behind the wallpaper, they found a pair of sliding doors; it was as if someone had carefully hidden the entrance to a closet or a small room.  The sliding doors had been nailed shut, so the husband got a hammer from his toolbox and began prying out the nails, one by one.

After pulling out the last nail, the husband slowly opened the sliding door to reveal the small hidden room.  Looking inside, he and his wife saw that the white walls of the little space were covered with words scribbled in red crayon. Over and over again were the words mommy im sorry let me out mommy im sorry let me out mommy im sorry let me out...


So they say.

I'm blowing out another candle.  Thirty-five candles remain.  Who's next?

Spel

I'm a thinker, not a talker... I've no one to talk to, anyway...

[Valerian]

I happened across this tale floating around the internet.



While I was in the Navy, I served on the USS Norfolk DL-1. I had been on the ship several months and was able to become a designated Radarman/Seaman. The ship was undergoing refurbishing at the Portsmouth Naval Yards in Virginia in the early summer of 1963, and it came my time to be assigned to Mess Deck.

I spent a week cleaning tables and then the galley was closed for repairs. I was still on the KP detail in spite of the galley closing. One of the First Class Cooks asked me to accompany him to the battleship, the USS Boston that was in the mothball fleet and help him to obtain a potato peeler from the ship.

At mid morning we departed in a jeep to the mothball fleet. I was quite impressed with the battleship and was surprised to find the decks had oak planks over the steel decking. The cook explained that wood absorbed bombs better than plain steel. The guns, about 10-12 inches, were fantastic.

We went below deck and down a passage. The ship was lit with very small, low-wattage bulbs hung from a pair of wires. We went to a compartment that was circular and it was under one of the big guns. Hanging from the overhead were large hooks, much like fish hooks. I thought the cook said they were ham hooks. I could not imagine why hams were hung here. Finally I realized they were hammock hooks. The Petty Officer said, "You wait here. I want to go and check something out." Then he left.

As I was standing there trying to visualize hammocks hung from the hooks, I was suddenly aware of four or five shadow-like forms emerge from the bulkhead. They approached me. They were somewhat transparent, but I could tell they were dressed in dungarees. I also sensed they were somewhat hostile in their approach, and I sensed they wanted to know why I was there.

I thought, Hey, fellows, I am just a sailor, like you. At this, they stopped advancing and suddenly drifted backward and faded through the bulkhead.

Immediately the Petty Officer came in and said, "I found the potato peeler." We went to the peeler and found it too heavy to move. We then left and he called for some workers to deliver the peeler to the Norfolk.

Later on I wondered why I was taken to this department and left alone... or not quite alone. Was this ship known to be haunted and those in the know would take some unsuspecting person to this compartment to cause him to panic?



Thirty-four candles left.

[Spookie Monster]

Thank you very much, Valerian!  I really enjoy ghost stories, of course, and I really enjoy nautical stories, too.  (And potatoes, too, though that's not particularly scary... or is it?)

Well, 2012's season of the witch decided to send us a dénouemonster, if you will -- a beast named Sandy.  All of the wind and the rain, coupled with Valerian's most recent story, inspires me to recount a stormy tale of the sea...

Ah!  I know just the one.  I'm taking this version from Quahog.org, which, apparently, "isn't your father's clam."


The Legend of the Palatine

The morning after Christmas of 1738 broke calm as the ship Princess Augusta lay at anchor some twelve miles off the New England coast.  Aboard were about 150 passengers, the survivors of the 340 German Palatines who had boarded the ship in Rotterdam seeking a new life of religious freedom in Philadelphia.  By the time the ship got underway, a strong tide and heavy swell had come up.  The Princess Augusta was soon fighting a heavy gale from the north-northwest.  As the ship began to show signs of breaking apart, the mizzenmast was cut away to ease the strain.  To make matters worse, a blinding snowstorm accompanied the gale, limiting visibility to a few hundred feet.  Attempting to steer between Block Island and Long Island Sound, the ship ran aground on Sandy Point, the northern tip of Block Island.

A deposition taken from the ship's crew shortly after the incident (but not rediscovered until 1925), recounts that the mate (and acting captain) refused to allow the passengers to go ashore, presumably because he was more concerned with tackling than people.  During the voyage, "a fever and flux," possibly caused by bad water, had decimated the passengers.  The master and some of the crew had died as well.  At the insistence of the Block Islanders, the captain finally relented and the ship was abandoned.  When her cable was cut, she drifted free and broke up on the rocks.

Within a hundred years, two major versions of this incident had entered oral tradition.  One shows the people of Block Island to be kind-hearted souls who saved the shipwrecked passengers and nursed them back to health in their own homes after the cruel captain and crew deliberately ran the ship ashore to conceal their plunder and mistreatment of the passengers.

But the other legend, told by off-islanders, portrays the Block Islanders as ruthless wreckers who intentionally lured the ship onto the shoals with a false light for the purpose of salvage.  In some variants, the islanders even murder the starving, freezing passengers, then burn the ship and set it adrift to conceal their crime.  As the ship is consumed by the flames, a woman who has refused to part with her possessions wrings her hands and shrieks until she, too, is devoured by fire.

This last version received literary sanction in John Greenleaf Whittier's poem of 1867.  In "The Wreck of the Palatine" (the name by which the Princess Augusta is generally known), Whittier wrote that, after erecting "false lights over the rocky head," the "eager islanders" swooped down "like birds of prey / Tearing the heart of the ship away / And the dead had never a word to say."  Whittier cemented the foul reputation of the islanders with the next two stanzas:

    And then, with ghastly shimmer and shine
    Over the rocks and the seething brine,
    They burned the wreck of the Palatine.

    In their cruel hearts, as they homeward sped,
    "The sea and the rocks are dumb," they said:
    "There'll be no reckoning with the dead."

But where poetry leaves off, legend steps in to give the dead their due.  The legend of the Palatine is kept alive by her reappearance in fiery form on the anniversary of her wreck.  Many claim to have peered out into Block Island Sound on a black night in late December and seen the burning spectral ship.  Benjamin Congdon, born around 1788, offered an explanation: "About the burning Palatine ship... I may say that I have seen her eight or ten times or more.  In those early days nobody doubted her being sent by an Almighty Power to punish those wicked men who murdered her passengers and crew."


So they say.

I'm blowing out a candle.  Thirty-three candles remain.  My, it's really gotten gloomy in here, hasn't it?  That I understand; after all, we've blown out two-thirds of the candles.  But what's the cause of that peculiar chill which now grips the air around us?

Spel

Everyone says, "Hi..."

[Spookie Monster]

Here's another tale of the sea.  Who knows just what it was that Darren F. and his friends saw -- or, rather, didn't see?  Although it seems unlikely that ghosts or an Almighty Power was responsible for their encounter, it is important to remember that in a strange world, strange things are possible...


Invisible Barrier at Sea

North Sea, June, 2008

Four friends and I were going out to sea on a friends' fishing trawler to fish for mackerel.  The trip was about five miles from the coast of South Shields, a small sea town in northern England.  It was a lovely, clear summer's day and the sea was very calm.

We were about one hour into the fishing when one of my friends, Paul, decided to cast his rod on the other side of the boat -- he being the only person to do so.  Me and my other three friends carried on casting on the other side, leading to Paul having a lot of success in catching the fish.  We would cast about 50 to 60 feet then reel in quickly -- a technique known as "mackerel spinning."

Then, something strange happened.  When Paul cast his rod, the weight and lure flew through the air and was abruptly stopped mid-air with a pinging sound, as if it had hit metal about 30 feet away and 20 feet up.

Paul yelled, "Did you see that?!"  All of us spun around to see.  Suddenly, the sea became rough and the boat started to sway for about ten minutes, then it calmed.

I don't know what he hit but I think it was something invisible, made from metal, observing us.  Was it a craft?  A sea vessel?  Who knows?  But one thing's for sure -- something stirred the sea up and frightened the hell out of us.  Needless to say, we returned back to shore quickly, to the pub, to tell our friends.  They still laugh about our story today.


So they say.

I'm blowing out another candle.  Thirty-two candles remain...

Spel

Watching them come and go...

[Spookie Monster]

Goodness!  There's a sudden glow in the east.  The night is preparing to sleep; so too, I suppose, is this year's season of the witch.  Time enough for one more quickie, though...


Baku: The Dream Eater

When a child in Japan wakes shaking from a nightmare, she knows what to do.  Hugging her face into her pillow, she whispers, "Baku-san, come eat my dream.  Baku-san, come eat my dream.  Baku-san, come eat my dream."  If her request is granted, a monstrous baku will come into her room and suck the bad dream away.

A baku cannot be summoned without caution, however.  A too-hungry baku might not be satiated with a single dream and might suck away her hopes and ambitions along with it, leaving her hollow.


So they say.

I'm blowing out a candle.  Thirty-one candles remain.  They'll wait here for us, burning patiently, until the season of the witch returns next year.  I hope that the stories that you heard this season leave you sleeping a little less easily.  Thank you once more, Michi No Sora and Valerian!

Spel

Don't fall apart now...