The Most Frightening Story Ever Told (27 page)

“Many years ago, there came to the state of Missouri a woman by the name of Miss Bette C. Onions. Originally, she was from England and a schoolteacher, not to mention a Presbyterian. She settled in Hanover, New Hampshire, where, for a time, she worked in a local Indian school, one of many that had resulted from the Civilization Fund Act of 1819, which provided money for the education of American Indians to European standards.

“In 1840, Miss Onions married Mr. Ward, who was also a teacher, and having obtained a grant of government money, they came west to Kansas City and founded a school for Indians of their own on the site of what is now this hotel. They were both strong in the Lord, which meant that the Indians who were obliged to attend the school—mostly displaced Cherokee from Alabama and Georgia—were forbidden to speak their own native language, denied the right to practice their own native religions and taught Christianity and the English language.

“Mrs. Ward, who had lacked all maternal affection herself, was not a loving or even a caring woman. No more was Mr. Ward the fatherly type, and the Ward Indian Mission School was a brutal place. The hair of the Indian pupils was cut short, their names and clothes were taken away and they were forced to wear uniforms. The children were given new, Christian names and, in addition to book learning, they were assigned hard physical work, which left many of them little better than slaves. The punishments for neglecting work were severe, but none were so severe as the punishments handed out for speaking the Cherokee language or venerating the old gods.

“One day, Mrs. Ward caught a Cherokee boy named Col Lee, the son of a great chief, in possession of a medicine bundle. This was a collection of closely guarded sacred objects believed to contain the magical essence of the spirit that the objects represented—in this case, an evil spirit monster called Nunyunuwi. Now, possession of a medicine bundle was a very serious infringement of the school rules, and Col Lee was brutally whipped by Mr. Ward while Mrs. Ward took the bundle and told him she intended to toss it into the Kansas River.

“Almost hysterical with fear, the Cherokee boy begged her not to throw away the bag, and warned them both of the terrible consequences that might attend anyone who treated it, and by extension what it represented, with disrespect. He explained that the only reason he hadn't thrown away the bundle himself was that he was more afraid of the spirit monster than he was of Mr. and Mrs. Ward. But it was no use. The Wards were not disposed to listen to anyone unless they had a white face. Mrs. Ward threw the bag into the river the very same day. And that was when their troubles began.

“First, I ought to say something about the Cherokee idea of evil. Interestingly, they believe that evil spirits are female and invisible to everyone except a medicine man and the human victims they have offended. In this case, the poor Wards. For however uncaring and neglectful they had been to their Indian pupils, neither of them surely deserved what befell them. No one would.

“Within days, both of them had developed a strange hydrophobia, which is to say they became desperately afraid of water, however it was to be consumed—either as something to drink, something to cook with or something to wash in. In those days, the Kansas River—the very place where Bette Ward had thrown the medicine bundle—was the source of all the city's water.

“But it was not the water itself they feared like some mad, rabid dog, but what came with it. For every time each of them poured a glass of water, or filled a ewer with a jug to wash, or drew a bath, or watered a plant, the figure of a terrible-looking woman would appear somewhere close at hand. In the garden outside the window, at the top of the stairs, or even in the same room.

“Mrs. Ward drew a picture of the woman she saw and showed it to a doctor whom she had consulted for help. The doctor reported that the drawing was most curious, being a skillfully rendered drawing of Mrs. Ward herself, albeit in a state that could best be described as her having been dead for several months.

“The doctor prescribed laudanum, which was a powerful drug that killed pain but also produced powerful hallucinations. Which was probably the last thing they needed.

“Soon after this, the Wards stopped sleeping, they stopped washing, they stopped drinking water and drank only alcohol. The Indian school fell into disrepair and closed. Mr. Ward died first. His body was found floating in the river. His heart had been eaten by eels, it is said, but the Cherokee will tell you that Nunyunuwi always ate the heart of her victims.

“Bette Ward lasted a few months longer than her late husband before throwing herself out of the fifth-floor window of the now-derelict school, although not—the report stated at the time—before running herself a bath, which police officers entering the bathroom in what is now Room 505 found to be still warm. Soon after the autopsy, her heart disappeared and was never found.”

My mother shook her head. “That is the saddest story I ever heard,” she told Houdini.

“Indeed,” said my father. “So it is poor Bette Ward who runs the bath in Room 505.” He shook his head. “But why would she do that if she was going to throw herself out of the window?”

Houdini shook his head gravely. “No,” he said. “It's worse than that.”

“Really, I don't understand; what could be worse than that?” asked my mother. She looked anxiously at me, obviously full of regret that my young ears should have heard the telling of such a terrible story, even if it had been told by the great Houdini himself.

“I sat in the darkness of Room 505 for several hours without anything odd happening,” said Houdini. “I must have fallen asleep for ten or fifteen minutes, I'm not sure, but I suddenly awoke with the strong feeling that there was something in the bathroom. And when I went in there to investigate, the bath was full of hot water, as if it had just been drawn, when I was certain beyond all contradiction that it had been empty before.”

He shook his head.

“It was quite impossible that the water could have ended up in there by itself. For one thing, I had tightened the taps and made sure that the bath plug was hanging on the chain over the side. Either I had drawn the bath in my sleep or something else had done it for me. I say ‘for me' because the temperature was perfect and the level of water in the bath ideal and, thinking that my understanding of the phenomenon in 505 might thereby be enhanced, I took off my clothes and got in.”

My mother let out a gasp. “Oh, Mr. Houdini,” she said. “I don't know how you found the courage to do that. I should have been much too afraid.”

“Me too,” I said. “I'm scared just listening to this.”

“Fear is something I have learned to control,” said Houdini. “With fear comes panic and with panic death. Once, in California, I was buried alive, without a casket, in six feet of earth. The weight of the earth was much more than I had expected and I panicked. It was the panic, not the earth, that almost cost me my life. I had to control the panic first, in order to control my breathing. And only then was I able to force my way out of the grave to the surface.”

“Wow,” I said, impressed.

“I tell you this not to solicit your admiration, merely to illustrate how it was that I was able to witness and tolerate what happened next. For as I lay in the water, frankly enjoying the bath, the water started to run from the taps again. I sat bolt upright and saw the figure of Bette Ward standing beside me—and, it seemed, desperately trying to turn off the taps on the bath—with such a terrible look of fear on her face that I never hope to see on another human being as long as I live. But no matter how hard she tried, she could not turn them off, and suddenly I knew it was not she who had turned them on but something else. At which point I tried to get out, but could not.

“For even as she tried to stop the flow of water into the bath, the water around me turned suddenly brackish and then foul, and something came up from under me, through my legs, and stood up in the bath. It was like no creature I have ever seen. A long-dead thing that seemed only vaguely human and smelled strongly of decay and death. I did not see the face, for which I have to say I am eternally grateful. But Mrs. Ward did, and, seeing it, she let out a silent scream that must have shattered the peace of the next world, only I could not hear it in this one. She ran out of the bathroom, followed by the Cherokee evil spirit. I call it such because there was an aspect to it that seemed vaguely Indian.

“Compelled to witness the end of this horrific visitation, I ran, still naked, out of the bathroom into the bedroom and then out of the door of Room 505, where I caught sight of Mrs. Ward standing at the end of a corridor in front of a window that is no longer there, with the creature advancing upon her, inexorably. Then Mrs. Ward shrieked her silent shriek once again, turned and threw herself out of the window. At which moment the creature disappeared.”

“Do you mean to say that it is not Mrs. Ward who turns on the faucets, but this awful creature?” asked my father. “And that all of this precedes the continuing torment of this poor woman by some dreadful Indian apparition?”

“I do mean that, sir,” said Houdini. “I most sincerely do.”

“But what are we to do?” asked my father.

“My advice, sir,” replied Houdini, “is to do nothing except what you have always done. To keep the door to Room 505 securely locked. And never to allow anyone in there.” He smiled at me. “In particular, the boy here. I hope I didn't scare you, little man?”

“Me? I'm not scared,” I said.

Houdini continued to offer no logical explanation for how he knew any of this and, given his previous instructions on the subject, we did not feel able to press him on the matter; indeed he was gone, returned to New York the same day, the same morning even, and with an alacrity we might have found almost disturbing. Such was his haste to leave, he even carried his own bags downstairs.

As he left the hotel to climb into a large Rolls-Royce that was parked outside the front door, I noticed he seemed to be in a little pain. His hands were trembling and he kept on looking over his shoulder as if he thought death itself had tapped him on the shoulder.

Perhaps it had at that.

My father thanked Houdini for his efforts on our behalf, and he in turn thanked us for allowing him to stay in Room 505.

“You have afforded me a fascinating glimpse of something I felt sure I should never see for myself,” he said. “Really, it was quite, quite fascinating. And I am eternally grateful. Perhaps I shall come back here one day and investigate the matter further.”

But Harry Houdini never, ever returned to Kansas City. Because he died the following month, of acute appendicitis, at the age of just fifty-two.