Ghost Stories and Mysteries (33 page)

With lectures like this and some Dundee whisky, I managed to get through the day. In the evening who should come up but a distant neighbour of mine, an elderly Scotchman of the name of M’Phairson. I introduced him to M’Whirter, and mentioned that he was a nephew of the original M’Whirter, which was the only thing I could think of, for it had suddenly occurred to me that M’Phairson must have seen M’Whirter when he was a youngster.

“I remember your uncle weel,” said M’Phairson, with the garrulity of age. “You ha’no the bones o’him, and you’re no so tall, but you’re like—you’re like.”

This was a good beginning, and I wondered how the ghost liked being told that he wasn’t like himself. But that was nothing to what was coming.

“Ah! he was a hard old carle,” went on M’Phairson. “Folks about here said the deil got his own when he died. But I always said, and held, that your uncle was too hard a bargain for the deil to touch with his hoof.”

I hurried the two inside, talking rapidly and incoherently, while I broached another bottle of whisky. M’Phairson drank his, and asked what ailed me that I was blitherin’ at that gate. I couldn’t well tell him that he was talking to the ghost of the original M’Whirter, but I had a certain sort of gloomy satisfaction when M’Phairson, under the influence of Dundee, settled down to a real old tirade against the hapless defunct. He left off when he had satisfactorily proved to the supposed nephew that his uncle had been a confirmed cattle and horse stealer and a more than suspected murderer; and by that time the bottle was three parts empty, and the cook poked his head into the door and said that tea was ready, and a singit sheep’s-head the dish. I had no sheep, and it seems M’Phairson had brought it over with him in the buggy. As he went into tea the ghost whispered to me, “I forgie him, and I’ll go back to Karma content. A singit sheep’s head and Dundee whusky is too guid.”

Tea passed quietly, and we adjourned for a smoke; then trouble ensued. M’Phairson again got reflecting on the character of M’Whirter’s supposed uncle, and I’m afraid he raked up some nasty home truths, which the latter remembered too well. Anyhow it was growing late, and I had nearly dozed in my chair, when I was roused by hot words.

“I will kill you,” said M’Phairson, getting up. M’Whirter laughed, and took the biggest nip of whisky I ever saw a man take at one drink. Then he addressed me. “You will come and see this mon kill me?” he asked.

Seeing that he was dead already, I had no objection. “He’s going to kill me, ye ken. And I wull gie the M’Phairson the biggest freet ever a M’Phairson got, and they ha’gotten plenty o’ freets.”

“It’s a lee!” shouted M’Phairson.

Peace was now impossible, so we adjourned out in the moonlight to settle matters. Probably, if I had not had to keep pace with a ghost at whisky-drinking, my brain would have been clearer, but as it was I was desperate. The men were fortunately all asleep, and we went round to the side of the house opposite to the kitchen. I was convulsed at the idea of M’Phairson fighting the ghost, but he took it very seriously.

“You will kill me?” said M’Whirter, in whom I noticed a curious change. “Well, begin.”

The opponents closed, and then a cry of dismay arose. The M’Phairson’s fist had gone right through the now ghostly M’Whirter. He looked at him for one second of palsied horror, and then took to his heels and fled. M’Whirter took after him, calling on him to stop; but M’Phairson, after one turn round the house, rushed into his room and barricaded the door—a very useless sort of proceeding against a ghost. M’Whirter came to me.

“You ha’ treated me weel,” he said. “You’re a wee bit conceited, but ye will grow out o’ it. I must move for some reforms in Karma—the taste of that singit sheep’s-head and the Dundee whusky will abide by me. Good-bye, laddie, and dinna believe what that cock-sparrow of a M’Phairson tells ye.”

Of course, now that he was going, I was quite sorry to part with him, but we bade each other farewell, and he faded away, and I went to bed.

It took an awful job to get M’Phairson out of his room in the morning. Only that he wanted a drink very bad, he would never have consented to unbarricade his door. But he’s very proud of the adventure now, and tells on every available opportunity how he chased “auld Hornie” twenty-five times round the house.

THE LAND OF THE UNSEEN

(1902-03)

When I first knew George Redman he was an ordinary pleasure seeking man of the world, with an independent income, which afforded him the means and opportunity to indulge in occasional fads.

Photography was one of them for a time, but of course it was neglected when the novelty had worn off, and something else, “biking” probably, took its place.

For a week or two he dropped out of his usual haunts, and he was often seen in familiar intercourse with an aged man, who was reported to be either an anarchist or a lunatic.

Lunatic or not, he was a man with a striking face and wonderful eyes. The eyes of a visionary or an enthusiast, but certainly not of one deficient of reason.

Gradually Redman withdrew himself more and more from his old friends, and not having seen him for some time, I ventured to call at his rooms one night.

He was at home, and did not seem quite pleased at my coming. However, as we had always been close friends, I did not take any notice of it, and accepted his half-hearted invitation to stay.

His old friend was there, and was introduced to me as Mr. Whitleaf. For a time our conversation turned on subjects to which the old man paid little or no attention, but kept me under a steady fire from his eyes, which made me feel most uncomfortable.

His gaze did not seem so much concentrated on me as on something near me, giving me the uncanny feeling that he was looking at something that I could not see. I was relieved when he changed his gaze, and spoke a few words to Redman in a tongue strange to me.

Whatever he said, Redman seemed greatly relieved, and his manner towards me altered at once, he became quite cordial, and like his old self.

“Did I tell you I am going in for photography again?” he asked.

“No; you know I have not seen much of you lately.”

“Well, it is a new phase of photography that I am studying,—or rather, what I hope will prove a new phase.”

“Some further advance on the X-rays business?”

“Quite the opposite. The X-rays have developed a wondrous future, but what I hope to arrive at is something far different and far higher.”

I noticed that Redman was beginning to get excited, and the old man interposed.

“I will tell your friend,” he said, in a clear and singularly fascinating voice, “what is the goal we aim at.

“Listen! I have known for long that the air around us is full of invisible and impalpable beings. Beings I must call them, for want of a better word, but what they are cannot be explained by that word, for they are not—and yet they are.

“They exist—but yet have no existence; they are terrible in their power—and yet they have no power, for they, too, are swayed by an overmastering will. We are their slaves and their masters.

“In this room they are mustering in force, even as we sit here; I cannot see them, but I feel their presence, and know by sure tokens that those that have accompanied you into this room are not inimical to us, therefore I told Redman that we might speak before you.

“Listen again! You may search the universe with the most powerful telescope that the genius of man has invented; you can track down to the uttermost bounds of infinity almost, the last wandering sun; and the plate of the camera when exposed will give others, and still others, in illimitable spheres beyond those the human eyes can see.

“Why is this? Why should the wonderful power of the camera be able to do what the trained eyes of men cannot? Why can it see through the living flesh and record on its surface the bone it sees beneath?

“Because it has power beyond our feeble strength, because it can search out the stars hidden in immeasurable distance, and make them visible to us. And it, too, when we have found the right method to use it, will seize these unseen forms that surround us and reveal them in actual shape.

“They are around us now in countless numbers, but we move through them unknowingly and unwittingly; and yet they, too, are fraught with all the powers of good and evil that sway the human heart.

“That is the work we are engaged in now, and if we succeed, we bridge, at one step, the gulf between the known and the unknown, the seen and the unseen, that has existed since matter was formed from chaos.”

In his excitement the old man had arisen from his chair, and with burning eyes and eager hands emphasised his speech, as though he actually saw the formless beings he spoke of hovering in the seemingly empty air.

“It is true, Cameron,” said Redman, after a pause.

“I have been studying the matter closely, and am now assured of the existence of these invisible companions crowding the space that surrounds us. Why am I assured? Because we have attained a partial success. Dimly and indistinctly; constant experiments with the camera have given us some results.

“I will show you them tomorrow. Why should it not be? The bones of the body are no longer hidden from view. The stars shining in the immensity of space, so distant that a telescope fails to find them, reveal themselves on the plate.

“So will these invisible beings in time, and I tell you I dread the day of our triumph.”

“Why so?”

“Why so? The Gorgon’s head that turned the rash onlooker into stone will be as nothing to what the man is doomed to witness who first solves the dread secret.

“Do not suppose these forms will be human; they will be the embodiment of the good and evil passions of those that have passed before; what awful shape they will take I cannot guess—something so fearful that the first glance may blast the eyesight of the man who looks. But, on the other hand, they may be beneficent and blessed.”

“But surely you are not reviving the old jugglery of ghost photographs?”

“Pshaw! We are searchers for the hidden secret, honest and straightforward, not shuffling charlatans, gulling a foolish public. But come to-morrow and see what we have done. Don’t talk of this outside.”

I rose and took my leave, for it was nearly midnight, and as I walked the almost deserted streets I seemed to be haunted and followed by a ghostly company of phantoms. Horrible, because I could not guess their shape; awful on account of their impalpability.

They thronged around me, and shed their unholy influences on my sleepless pillow for the remainder of the night. I had taken the first rash step into the forbidden, and was suffering the penalty.

The next morning I went to Redman, according to my promise. He took me to his gallery, which had been enlarged and improved since I saw it last, and in it we found old Whitleaf working amongst some chemicals.

“I promised to show you how far we had got,” said Redman, opening a locked drawer. “Look at this.”

It was a large photograph of the interior of an empty room that he had put into my hand, but at first I could see no more than that. He smiled slightly at my openly-shown disappointment, and, taking it from me, placed it on a frame, and bade me look through a splendid magnifying glass fixed above.

Then I saw.

I saw, and I did not see. The room stood out in bold perspective. It was empty, and it was not empty.

Shadows obscured the light from the windows where no shadows should have been. There were eyes, of that I am certain; such eyes—eyes that could kill with a glance if one only saw them plainly and clearly.

The room was full of beings without shape, without form, but stamping their invisible presence by a way that was felt and not seen.

As I looked, entranced, I prayed that I should not see them, for the mere thought of the possibility brought cold terror to my heart and the limpness of death to my limbs.

“Look not on what is forbidden,” was the mandate I seemed to hear, as by an effort I turned away, shuddering, and caught my friend’s arm.

“Oh, they are here!” I gasped, “the awful ones. Seek no further. Man must not see their shape.”

“They are there,” repeated the deep voice of Whitleaf. “Ay, and they are here.”

I covered my eyes with my hands and tried to forget, while every nerve and fibre shrank with dumb terror.

“Look again,” said Redman.

I could not refuse, though my whole being revolted at the ordeal. I looked.

He had changed the photograph, and now I gazed on the sea, calm, motionless, and lifeless. And as I looked there gradually grew on me a monstrous horror.

It was not in sea or sky, but it was there. A momentary resemblance of evil—evil made palpable, such evil as man could not conceive, could not execute.

The maniac homicide would have recoiled, shuddering, from the mere suggestion of it, and died, shrieking with terror at its presence.

And the awful thing was still not there in form and substance, only in its dreadful influence.

I withdrew my eyes and sat down on a chair.

“Can such things be about us?” I asked.

“Do you not know that they are?”

“But why seek to make them visible when the vision would bring madness?”