Australian Hauntings: A Second Anthology of Australian Colonial Supernatural Fiction (23 page)

Yet as she walked Christine felt that the loathsomeness about her was but the prelude to greater evil…the nauseous horrors were servant to some directing, malignant force. But she saw nothing ’til she was at the bottom of the steps of the apartment house and facing the great door leading to the courtyard.

Almost immediately this opened noiselessly. At once there was a rush of wings and sounds of scurrying, and crawling sounds and whimperings and moanings ahead of her and about the doorway. The noises ceased abruptly as again the huge shadow loomed upon the wall, for the lobby of the apartments was lit, though there was no one in it. The shadow dwindled and passed through the portals into the courtyard, and she was aware of a tall, cowled figure standing a little beyond the doorway, beckoning imperiously.

None saw her enter the courtyard. But an old man, gaping from the doorway of the apartment house, watched the shadows on the wall with terror in his eyes, his aged lips ashen and. trembling, for he had seen not one, but
two
shadows dwindle and disappear through the closed door. He was a very old man, indeed, and because he was standing on the doorstep of Death, perhaps it was vouchsafed to him to see and understand mysteries.

The cowled figure led the way swiftly and silently toward the stone steps set between the two old stable buildings, and began to descend. The touch of unseen, urging hands was at her shoulders once more, but Christine says no power on earth could have stayed her. When she reached the door at the bottom of the steps she could see a dimly-lit interior; the obscene mutterings and whinnyings, the fluttering and jostlings recommenced, to be quelled by a harsh voice from inside the cellar.

“Cease, little ones!”

Christine paused, framed in the doorway. The cellar was long and narrow, and the ceiling low. The cowled figure stood behind, a rough stone table at the extreme end. He threw back his hood and extended his hands:

“Welcome, bride!”

The compelling fingers at her shoulders forced her forward, and, as she reached him, he took her two hands and held them—and his were as cold as death—while he regarded her silently, his gaze embracing her, his eyes preternaturally bright like those of some zealot who has fought sleep. His eyebrows were heavily tufted; his nose hooked and beak-like; his parchment skin so tight drawn that blue veins stood out like tattoo marks. His lips were thin and colourless; but suddenly his tongue appeared, and it was red like blood.

“Arthesus speaks, bride! Are you a-feared?”

His voice was hard and cruel. From the stone table he lifted a long-bladed knife.

“Do not answer,” he went on. “I can see terror in your eyes. My little ones have done well.”

Again there was that awful whimpering of unseen things. Arthesus held up his hand.

“Cease, evil ones!” he cried imperiously. “Stay silent ’til I command!”

At once all was quiet again. He looked down upon the girl once more.

“You see? Arthesus is master of all evil. He has silenced his little ones, but they are all about us, watching, feasting on your terror.”

With a sudden movement, his free hand seized her gown and ripped it from her shoulder.

“
So!
” he hissed, and his red tongue again caressed his parched lips. Suddenly he turned and made a peremptory sign. Shrouded figures stepped from the shadow. Christine felt herself lifted. Cords passed swiftly about her, and she lay stretched on her back upon the altar-stone. Arthesus raised the knife and brought it down—inch by inch, until the point pressed lightly against the girl’s breast.

“Soon you will die,” he promised. “But not yet…not swiftly.”

Christine uttered a shuddering sigh, and saw the gleam in his eye as her bosom rose against the prick of the knife.

“You bleed!” he cried. “So soon! It is too soon!” His voice rose in anger. “Then, if you must bleed—bleed in full!”

His teeth bared, he lifted the knife to plunge its crimson point into her body, but even as he raised it his eyes filled with dread, widening unbelievably, fixing themselves on her naked breast, upon which some trick of lighting had combined with the upraised dagger to throw the shadow of a cross.

The knife dropped from his hand, clattering on to the stone table. Christine felt the handle within grasp of her fingers and, at the same moment, from somewhere came a thunder of knocking and cries. Something snapped within her. Furiously she cut the bonds at her elbow. In a moment she was almost free, but Arthesus was glaring at her—pointing at her breast.

“The cross! It is gone! It was a trick! I am master!” His bare hands, with their knotted fingers, stretched toward her.

She heard the knocking above, and it nerved her. With a superhuman effort she drove the knife into the man’s body, and, leaping up, raced to the door and up the stone steps.

* * * *

Rick Lamond shook the sleepy porter.

“Miss Madrigal,” he cried. “Ring her flat! Quick!”

The porter rubbed his eyes.

“It’s very late,” he demurred.

“Ring her!” Lamond repeated, and there was that in his voice that brooked no delay.

The porter rang. And rang again.

“She don’t answer,” he announced.

Rick strode quickly to the big door at the rear of the lobby, and began to pound upon it.

“Open this!” he shouted.

“But, sir—”

“Open it, I say!”

“I-I haven’t the key. The manager—”

“Get the manager.”

The porter made feeble resistance, but in a few moments was in excited conversation on the house ’phone. A minute later the manager appeared in his dressing-gown. Rick demanded the opening of the door.

“But, sir, that is absurd—”

“Listen,” Rick told him, “Miss Madrigal is not in her room. I’ve rung her. The porter’s rung her. She ought to be there, but she isn’t. Ten minutes ago I received a telephone message imploring me for the love of God to go to her help. The voice told me to break down this door. Now do you understand? I am Miss Madrigal’s fiancée, and if you don’t open it I’ll break it down myself.”

The manager made a hopeless gesture.

“This door is never used,” he said. “It is something to do with fire regulations. I don’t quite know. I never remember it being opened. It leads nowhere.”

Rick placed his hand wearily across his brow. Suddenly his gaze froze. He pointed to the floor at his feet.

Blood was oozing front under the closed door into the lobby.

The manager galvanised into action. With trembling hand he selected keys from his ring, and tried them one after the other, while Rick fumed and threatened. At last the padlock opened, Rick hooked it from the bolt, slammed the bar down, and flung the door open.

Less than two feet before him was the solid cement wall of the adjoining apartment house, but at his feet lay the blood-covered body of Christine Madrigal.

The manager raced to the telephone booth opposite the porter’s office. He pulled the door open. Inside, kneeling on the floor, his hands clasped as if in prayer, his head resting against a corner of the booth, was a very old man.

He was quite dead, and between his fingers they found a crucifix.

* * * *

I took the little volume which Christine Madrigal purchased in the second-hand shop, and without comment showed it to my friend, Professor Curtis.

He grimaced.

“Nice reading for a wet weekend,” he grinned. “Arthesus, eh? Quite a boy in his day. I daresay there’s a lot of pure legend mixed with fact, but there’s enough evidence to prove that he lived a devil of a long time; and, funnily enough, there’s no record to be found of his death. He had a pleasant little habit of drinking human blood. Just how many unfortunates were sacrificed to his lust nobody knows, but it’s significant that over a period of a few years over a hundred young men and maids disappeared mysteriously in the locality where he was suspected of holding his séances.”

“And,” I asked, “where did he hold these…séances?”

“As a matter of fact,” Professor Curtis said, lighting his pipe, “this city has changed so much architecturally in the last few decades that it’s a little difficult to say.” He looked up from his pipe with a grin. “I don’t want to frighten you, old man, but at a rough guess I should say your monster lived in your own locality—probably did his dirty work in a cellar in the vicinity of the site on which they’ve built that awful new apartment house; you know, the one in which they found the old boy dead in the telephone booth.”

THE HOLLMSDALE HORROR, by A. E. Martin

The Shudder Show
(194?)

I had not seen George Jenner for thirty years. I remembered him vaguely at school—a moody boy, not in the least companionable, and by no means popular with the rest of us. Nevertheless, old school ties are binding, and when in the course of my job I found Jenner established in business at Hollmsdale, which is a long way from the centre of things, it seemed almost obligatory to have a proper reunion, and a talk about old times and the fellows we both knew.

As I met Jenner after he had closed his store and walked with him to his home, where I had been invited to dine, I suddenly recalled that he was one of the few schoolmates with whom I had completely lost touch. However, we had enough in common to keep the conversation going smoothly enough, and I looked forward to a home-cooked dinner with relish after a routine of country hotel meals.

Jenner opened his front door with a latchkey, and, as he stepped aside for me to enter, from somewhere at the rear of the house I heard the voice of a woman raised in altercation. Next moment Mrs. Jenner appeared. Her face was flushed with anger, but almost immediately she assumed her party manners, and came forward to greet me, smiling.

Her husband introduced us, and before long we were seated at dinner. The meal, unhappily, was a disappointment, and twice my host made disparaging remarks about the food that embarrassed me greatly, especially when I saw Mrs Jenner bite her lip in vexation. There were signs of tears, and I hurriedly changed the conversation.

They employed no help, and when his wife left the room for the purpose of bringing in the dessert, Jenner watched her go glumly, then turned to me with a shrug of his shoulders and apologised for the meal. I tried to pass it off, saying something to the effect that if he’d eaten as many hotel and restaurant concoctions as I had he’d cease being fussy. By the look in his eye I could tell he knew I was merely being polite, and when Mrs Jenner returned and began serving the dessert, at which her husband was already frowning, I said, more for something to say than because I believed it:

“Glorious air you have here in the country, Mrs Jenner. Believe me, I envy you! A chap like me, who spends so much time in sleeping-cars knows what he’s talking about. It must be great, Jenner, to close up your business, come home, idle about a bit, and then go to bed, sure of a good night’s rest.”

To my great surprise, Jenner uttered an exclamation, and pushing his plate aside, rose abruptly. Tossing his serviette upon the table, he exclaimed: “Rest! Sleep!”

The next moment he had walked out of the room.

I looked at Mrs Jenner enquiringly, and half-rose from my seat, but her hand was on my arm, restraining me.

“Please,” she said. “I’m sorry.” Her handkerchief was at her eyes, and as she wiped away her tears she added: “I am afraid, Mr. Dent, ours is not a very happy household.”

I made some fatuous reply meant to be consoling, and a moment or two later she rose.

“Maybe you would like to smoke,” she suggested, and indicated the way to the verandah. I glanced at the clock as I left the room. Thank heaven, I thought, my train goes in an hour and I can make an early break. The evening promised to be singularly depressing.

I found Jenner pacing the verandah in the semi-darkness. He made a half-hearted apology for his rudeness, and offered me a cigar. I preferred my pipe. As we seated ourselves, he said: “The trouble, Dent, is that I can’t sleep. At least, not healthily.”

It was an unusual way of putting it, and I suppose he sensed my surprise, for he added immediately: “I dream too much.”

I laughed. “Don’t we all!”

“You don’t understand,” he said seriously. “My wife doesn’t, or won’t, understand. It’s always the
same
dream.”

“That, of course, is curious,” I admitted, “but perhaps not as unusual as you imagine.” I knocked the ash from my pipe against the verandah post, and said offhandedly: “Would it help at all to tell me about it?”

He pondered for a moment.

“Yes,” he
said, at length, “I think it might.” He laughed a little self-consciously. “My wife is sick of hearing about it. She says it’s an obsession. My God! An obsession!”

He was busy with his own secret thoughts for a few moments, but at last he pulled himself together, and continued.

“I dream I am in M—.” He named a distant city. “I cannot tell you how I know this, but when I dream there is no doubt in my mind about it. I am in my pyjamas, and I am shut up in a stifling box. It is a very horrible sensation, and I make every effort to release myself, but I am queerly conscious that, despite my tremendous struggles, my body has not moved an inch. Worse than that, there has not been a single muscle movement nor a flicker of an eyelid, for my eyes are wide open and staring, though they see nothing. I am aware of an awful and disturbing rigidity. But I am also conscious that the box in which I am imprisoned is moving swiftly as if it were being carried swiftly by some vehicle along smooth roads.”

In the half-light of the verandah, I saw Jenner’s handkerchief mop his forehead before he went on:

“After a while the motion ceases, and I hear confused sounds. I am still stifling in the box, but powerless to move. I can only wait, stiff with terror, for what comes next. It is a coarse shout, followed by filthy imprecations. I feel the box falling; there is a crash, and I awake.”

Jenner paused.

“Nightmare,” I said weakly.

“Nightmare!” He spoke the word as if be had heard it before, but did not understand its meaning, and repeated it as something extraneous to the conversation. “Nightmare!” I made no further comment, waiting for him to continue.

“The dream doesn’t end there, Dent,” he said, at length. “I am so filled with horror that I fight against sleep. I walk about the house—but, my God, Dent, a man must have some sleep—and when it comes, Dent,
the dream goes on
.”

I could see him leaning forward, his two hands resting on the knees of his outspread legs, his eyes staring at the floor.

“It will always go on,” he repeated dully.

At that moment Mrs Jenner appeared with coffee. She placed her husband’s cup on the chair beside him, after handing me mine, and seated herself in an armchair a little apart. Jenner looked across at her.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Jenny,” he cried, “go inside and do the washing-up.”

I heard a teaspoon clatter with unnecessary violence, and saw Mrs Jenner rise and move swiftly into the house. I had risen, muttering protest, but Jenner had immediately relaxed into his former position.

“Say, old chap,” I ventured, as he didn’t speak, “you’ll have to take hold of yourself.”

I don’t think he even heard me. With his head thrust forward, his gaze again on the floor, he went on as if there had been no interruption:

“When I fall asleep the dream goes on. I hear a wrenching sound as of nails being ripped from wood. But I still cannot move. I can see, but I cannot move—neither my arms nor legs nor my fingers, nor even my lips. I am to all intents and purposes dead and stiff, but my staring eyes see all, though they cannot move and must gaze endlessly before them.

“I feel myself lifted from the box and carried up a few steps into a brilliantly-painted building. It is like no building I have ever seen, it is so garish. But before I am carried inside I have time to notice that it is two-storied, and is close to the corner of a busy street—no more than ten or twelve yards away—and is sandwiched between two immensely tall buildings.

“I am carried through a hallway and then down a twisting stairway. It is gloomy and frightening in aspect, and I am left there, standing all alone, and yet not alone, for although I cannot turn my eyes, I know that on either side of me there is some unspeakable horror—that I am, indeed, set in the midst of horror unbelievable. This is the most awful part of my dream—to know that I am part of this dreadfulness, and must continue to be so everlastingly. I strain hopelessly trying to move—striving to shriek—but the rigidity continues until some blessed chance awakens me.”

Jenner remained silent apace, then raised his head.

“That is my dream,” he said. “That is what I have dreamed not once, but night after night for months. Always the same dream, except that sometimes countless faces swim before my vision, leering and smirking, with now and then one which mirrors the horror I feel.” He waited a moment and added: “I shall dream it tonight.”

I did not reply all at once. I didn’t know what to say. When words came, they were commonplace. “You need a holiday. The thing’s got you down. In any case, there’s probably quite a reasonable explanation. Have you ever been in M—?”

“I know what you’re driving at,” he said testily. “No, I’ve never been in M—, nor was I ever taken there as a child. This is no infantile recollection resurrected from the subconscious. Psycho-analysis can’t help.”

“Anyway,” I said, jumping up, “there’s one thing I can do for you. I’m going to M— in a week or two, and I’ll have a good look round. A garish, two-storied building, sandwiched between two skyscrapers and near the corner of a busy street, shouldn’t be hard to locate. I’ll bet you five to one no such animal exists.”

He had not touched his coffee, but rose, too, and accompanied me inside, where I bade an embarrassed goodbye to Mrs. Jenner. I could not say “Thank you for a pleasant evening,” or “It was a delightful dinner.” I managed to stammer through some formality, and breathed a sigh of relief when the door shut behind me.

I had gone no more than a few yards on my way when I remembered I had left my tobacco pouch on the arm of the verandah chair on which I had been sitting. I returned at once, intent on retrieving it, and was about to knock upon the door when I heard an angry voice from within:

“You and your damned dream! Do you want me to go mad, too? I’m sick of it, I tell you! Sick of it! Sick of you! Next time you sleep you sleep alone, do you hear? And wake yourself up, d’you hear! When you dream, wake yourself up.”

I couldn’t face that household again.

A few weeks later I was in M—. I was rather busy, and confess that I had at least temporarily forgotten all about Jenner and his wretched dream. And he had evidently forgotten all about me, also. Anyway, he hadn’t forwarded my tobacco pouch.

I had been in the city a couple of days when I received a ’phone message to call on a firm in J—Street, and during the late afternoon set off to keep my appointment. Enquiring my way, I was told that the office was in the big building immediately around the next corner, and upon the opposite side. When I turned into J— Street I glanced across the road, and my conversation with Jenner came to my mind with a rush, for I was staring at a two-storied building dwarfed between huge skyscrapers, one of which occupied the corner block.

The coincidence was a little startling, but that it was no more than a coincidence I was convinced after I had overcome my first shock, for the little building was frightfully dilapidated and looked as if it had been unoccupied for years.

Almost every agent in the city appeared to have “To Let” notices in its grimy windows, some of which were broken, and, my business completed, and consumed with curiosity, I selected the nearest of these, and said I would be interested to look over the premises with a view to rental.

As we walked to the building, I said to the agents’ clerk accompanying me: “I suppose, in the event of a lease, the place would not be sold over my head?”

“There’s no fear of that,” he explained. “The building is part of an estate and is in some legal tangle which is preventing a straight-out sale. You’d be safe for years, I guess.”

He turned the key in the padlock securing the heavy, front doors, and we passed up a few steps into a large, high front room. There were wide stairs immediately before us running up to the first floor, and these diverged left and right from a landing midway to the first floor. But what excited me somewhat was the sight of a row of stone steps descending to the basement, not straightly, but in a curve, so that from the top the door downstairs could not be seen.

“I’d like to look at the basement,” I said, and the clerk led the way.

“I’m afraid it will be pretty dark,” he said. “The light has been disconnected, of course, and it will be awfully grubby.”

He turned the key in the padlock, swung back an iron bar, and opened the door. I remember it creaked on rusty hinges. In the dim light I could see that the place was reasonably big, though low-ceilinged. There was a stone floor, and around the walls at intervals were old-fashioned gas brackets. The place smelt dank, and I was glad to get out of it.

We ascended the curving stairway, and for appearance sake, I inspected the top floor, but gave no more than a perfunctory glance round.

“It certainly isn’t modern,” I commented.

The clerk sensed that I had lost interest in the proposition. He laughed shortly. “Lord knows what the old place could be used for,” he said. “It’s out of date as a Noah’s Ark, and a civic eyesore.”

I thanked him for his trouble, and bade him goodbye. From the opposite side of the road I glanced back at the grimy building looking so ridiculously small between its giant neighbours. It certainly wasn’t garish, and yet, I thought, recalling Jenner and his dream, the coincidence was queer.

A month later—on March 29
th
—George Jenner murdered his wife.

I read of it with consternation and horror. He had killed her in the middle of the night, and had then walked, in his pyjamas, to the police station and given himself up.

I followed the reports of the trial with the greatest interest, but there was nothing unusual in the evidence. Jenner maintained that she had nagged him and he had picked up a razor and deliberately ended her life. He pleaded guilty, asked for no mercy, made no appeal against his sentence, and was executed at S—on May 29
th
, just two months after his wife’s murder.

I had occasion to visit M— several weeks later, and again called on the firm which had its office in the J— Street skyscraper. It was late afternoon and almost midwinter, and already dark, but as I turned the corner a blaze of light illumined the roadway, and, glancing across the street, I saw that the onetime grimy two-storey building had been miraculously transformed. It was now brilliantly lit. Neon signs bordered the facade, which had been painted in gaudy colours. Lights of various hue twinkled above the doorway, and stretching across the whole front there was a huge electric sign:

WAXWORKS

Something impelled me to enter. I paid my money and hurried in, turning immediately to the stairway leading to the basement. I ran quickly down the steps. Over the door there was a sign:

CHAMBER OF HORRORS