Curious Warnings - The Great Ghost Stories Of M.R. James (21 page)

“Now we come to the crisis, and, though I hate to think of it, I feel sure, Gregory, that it will be better for me in all ways to recall it just as it happened.

“We started, Brown and I, at about nine with our bag, and attracted no attention; for we managed to slip out at the hinder end of the inn-yard into an alley which brought us quite to the edge of the village. In five minutes we were at the well, and for some little time we sat on the edge of the well-head to make sure that no one was stirring or spying on us. All we heard was some horses cropping grass out of sight farther down the eastern slope. We were perfectly unobserved, and had plenty of light from the gorgeous full moon to allow us to get the rope properly fitted over the wheel.

“Then I secured the band around my body beneath the arms. We attached the end of the rope very securely to a ring in the stonework. Brown took the lighted lantern and followed me. I had a crowbar.

“And so we began to descend cautiously, feeling every step before we set foot on it, and scanning the walls in search of any marked stone.

“Half-aloud I counted the steps as we went down, and we got as far as the thirty-eighth before I noted anything at all irregular in the surface of the masonry. Even here there was no mark, and I began to feel very blank, and to wonder if the Abbot’s cryptogram could possibly be an elaborate hoax. At the forty-ninth step the staircase ceased. It was with a very sinking heart that I began retracing my steps, and when I was back on the thirty-eighth—Brown, with the lantern, being a step or two above me—I scrutinized the little bit of irregularity in the stonework with all my might. But there was no vestige of a mark.

“Then it struck me that the texture of the surface looked just a little smoother than the rest, or, at least, in some way different. It might possibly be cement and not stone. I gave it a good blow with my iron bar. There was
a decidedly hollow sound, though that might be the result of our being in a well. But there was more. A great flake of cement dropped on to my feet, and I saw marks on the stone underneath. I had tracked the Abbot down, my dear Gregory. Even now I think of it with a certain pride.

“It took but a very few more taps to clear the whole of the cement away, and I saw a slab of stone about two feet square, upon which was engraved a cross. Disappointment again, but only for a moment. It was you, Brown, who reassured me by a casual remark. You said, if I remember right:

“‘It’s a funny cross. Looks like a lot of eyes.’

“I snatched the lantern out of your hand, and saw with inexpressible pleasure that the cross was composed of seven eyes, four in a vertical line, three horizontal. The last of the scrolls in the window was explained in the way I had anticipated. Here was my ‘stone with the seven eyes.’

“So far the Abbot’s data had been exact, and, as I thought of this, the anxiety about the ‘guardian’ returned upon me with increased force. Still, I wasn’t going to retreat now.

“Without giving myself time to think, I knocked away the cement all around the marked stone, and then gave it a pry on the right side with my crowbar. It moved at once, and I saw that it was but a thin light slab, such as I could easily lift out myself, and that it stopped the entrance to a cavity. I did lift it out unbroken, and set it on the step, for it might be very important to us to be able to replace it.

“Then I waited for several minutes on the step just above. I don’t know why, but I think to see if any dreadful thing would rush out. Nothing happened.

“Next I lit a candle, and very cautiously I placed it inside the cavity, with some idea of seeing whether there were foul air, and of getting a glimpse of what was inside. There
was
some foulness of air which nearly extinguished the flame, but in no long time it burned quite steadily.

“The hole went some little way back, and also on the right and left of the entrance, and I could see some rounded light-colored objects within which might be bags. There was no use in waiting. I faced the cavity, and looked in. There was nothing immediately in the front of the hole. I put my arm in and felt to the right, very gingerly …

“Just give me a glass of cognac, Brown. I’ll go on in a moment, Gregory …

“Well, I felt to the right, and my fingers touched something curved, that felt—yes—more or less like leather. Dampish it was, and evidently part of a heavy, full thing. There was nothing, I must say, to alarm one. I grew bolder, and putting both hands in as well as I could, I pulled it to me, and it came. It was heavy, but moved more easily than I expected. As I pulled it toward the entrance, my left elbow knocked over and extinguished the candle. I got the thing fairly in front of the mouth and began drawing it out.

“Just then Brown gave a sharp ejaculation and ran quickly up the steps with the lantern. He will tell you why in a moment.

“Startled as I was, I looked around after him, and saw him stand for a minute at the top and then walk away a few yards. Then I heard him call softly, ‘All right, sir,’ and went on pulling out the great bag, in complete darkness. It hung for an instant on the edge of the hole, then slipped forward on to my chest, and
put its arms around my neck
.

“My dear Gregory, I am telling you the exact truth. I believe I am now acquainted with the extremity of terror and repulsion which a man can endure without losing his mind. I can only just manage to tell you now the bare outline of the experience.

“I was conscious of a most horrible smell of mold, and of a cold kind of face pressed against my own, and moving slowly over it, and of several—I don’t know how many—legs or arms or tentacles or something clinging to my body. I screamed out, Brown says, like a beast, and fell away backward from the step on which I stood, and the creature slipped downward, I suppose, on to that same step. Providentially the band around me held firm.

“Brown did not lose his head, and was strong enough to pull me up to the top and get me over the edge quite promptly. How he managed it exactly I don’t know, and I think he would find it hard to tell you. I believe he contrived to hide our implements in the deserted building nearby, and with very great difficulty he got me back to the inn.

“I was in no state to make explanations, and Brown knows no German. But next morning I told the people some tale of having had a bad fall in the abbey ruins, which, I suppose, they believed.

“And now, before I go further, I should just like you to hear what Brown’s experiences during those few minutes were. Tell the Rector, Brown, what you told me.”

“Well, sir,” said Brown, speaking low and nervously, “it was just this way. Master was busy down in front of the ’ole, and I was ’olding the lantern and looking on, when I ’eard somethink drop in the water from the top, as I thought. So I looked up, and I see someone’s ’ead lookin’ over at us.

“I s’pose I must ha’ said somethink, and I ’eld the light up and run up the steps, and my light shone right on the face. That was a bad un, sir, if ever I see one! A holdish man, and the face very much fell in, and larfin, as I thought.

“And I got up the steps as quick pretty nigh as I’m tellin’ you, and when I was out on the ground there warn’t a sign of any person. There ’adn’t been the time for anyone to get away, let alone a hold chap, and I made sure he warn’t crouching down by the well, nor nothink.

“Next thing I hear master cry out somethink ’orrible, and hall I see was him hanging out by the rope, and, as master says, ’owever I got him up I couldn’t tell you.”

“You hear that, Gregory?” said Mr. Somerton. “Now, does any explanation of that incident strike you?”

“The whole thing is so ghastly and abnormal that I must own it puts me quite off my balance. But the thought did occur to me that possibly the—well, the person who set the trap might have come to see the success of his plan.”

“Just so, Gregory, just so. I can think of nothing else so—
likely
, I should say, if such a word had a place anywhere in my story. I think it must have been the Abbot …

“Well, I haven’t much more to tell you. I spent a miserable night, Brown sitting up with me. Next day I was no better: unable to get up; no doctor to be had; and, if one had been available, I doubt if he could have done much for me. I made Brown write off to you, and spent a second terrible night. And, Gregory, of this I am sure, and I think it affected me more than the first shock, for it lasted longer: there was someone or something on the watch outside my door the whole night. I almost fancy there were two.

“It wasn’t only the faint noises I heard from time to time all through the dark hours, but there was the smell—the hideous smell of mold. Every rag I had had on me on that first evening I had stripped off and made Brown take it away. I believe he stuffed the things into the stove in his room. And yet the smell was there, as intense as it had been in the well; and, what is more, it came from outside the door.

“But with the first glimmer of dawn it faded out, and the sounds ceased, too. And that convinced me that the thing or things were creatures of darkness, and could not stand the daylight. And so I was sure that if anyone could put back the stone, it or they would be powerless until someone else took it away again.

“I had to wait until you came to get that done. Of course, I couldn’t send Brown to do it by himself, and still less could I tell anyone who belonged to the place.

“Well, there is my story. And if you don’t believe it, I can’t help it. But I think you do.”

“Indeed,” said Mr. Gregory, “I can find no alternative. I
must
believe it! I saw the well and the stone myself, and had a glimpse, I thought, of the bags or something else in the hole.

“And, to be plain with you, Somerton, I believe my door was watched last night, too.”

“I dare say it was, Gregory. But, thank goodness, that is over. Have you, by the way, anything to tell about your visit to that dreadful place?”

“Very little,” was the answer. “Brown and I managed easily enough to get the slab into its place, and he fixed it very firmly with the irons and wedges you had desired him to get, and we contrived to smear the surface with mud so that it looks just like the rest of the wall.

“One thing I did notice in the carving on the well-head, which I think must have escaped you. It was a horrid, grotesque shape perhaps more like a toad than anything else, and there was a label by it inscribed with the two words,
Depositum custodi
.”
^†

T
HIS MATTER BEGAN
, as far as I am concerned, with the reading of a notice in the obituary section of the
Gentleman’s Magazine
for an early year in the 19th century:

On February 26th, at his residence in the Cathedral Close of Barchester, the Venerable John Benwell Haynes, D.D., age 57, Archdeacon of Sowerbridge and Rector of Pickhill and Candley.

He was of——College, Cambridge, and where, by talent and assiduity, he commanded the esteem of his seniors; when, at the usual time, he took his first degree, his name stood high in the list of
wranglers
. These academic honors procured for him within a short time a Fellowship of his College.

In the year 1783 he received Holy Orders, and was shortly afterward presented to the perpetual Curacy of Ranxton-sub-Ashe by his friend and patron the late truly venerable Bishop of Lichfield … His speedy preferments, first to a Prebend, and subsequently to the dignity of Precentor in the Cathedral of Barchester, form an eloquent testimony to the respect in which he was held and to his eminent qualifications. He succeeded to the Archdeaconry upon the sudden decease of Archdeacon Pulteney in 1810.

His sermons, ever conformable to the principles of the religion and Church which he adorned, displayed in no ordinary degree, without the least trace of enthusiasm, the refinement of the scholar united with the graces of the Christian. Free from sectarian violence, and informed by the spirit of the truest charity, they will long dwell in the memories of his hearers. [Here a further omission.]

The productions of his pen include an able defense of Episcopacy, which, though often perused by the author of this tribute to his memory, afford but one additional instance of the want of liberality and enterprise which is a too common characteristic of the publishers of our generation.

His published works are, indeed, confined to a spirited and elegant version of the
Argonautica
of Valerius Flaccus, a volume of
Discourses Upon the Several Events in the Life of Joshua
, delivered in his Cathedral, and a number of the charges which he pronounced at various visitations, to the clergy of his Archdeaconry. These are distinguished by etc., etc. The urbanity and hospitality of the subject of these lines will not readily be forgotten by those who enjoyed his acquaintance.

His interest in the venerable and awful pile under whose hoary vault he was so punctual an attendant, and particularly in the musical portion of its rites, might be termed filial, and formed a strong and delightful contrast to the polite indifference displayed by too many of our Cathedral dignitaries at the present time

The final paragraph, after informing us that Dr. Haynes died a bachelor, says:

It might have been augured that an existence so placid and benevolent would have been terminated in a ripe old age by a dissolution equally gradual and calm. But how unsearchable are the workings of Providence!

The peaceful and retired seclusion amid which the honored evening of Dr. Haynes’s life was mellowing to its close was destined to be disturbed, nay, shattered, by a tragedy as appalling as it was unexpected. The morning of the 26th of February—