Voodoo Tales: The Ghost Stories of Henry S Whitehead (Tales of Mystery & The Supernatural) (100 page)

The voice trailed out into a whisper. We turned, simultaneously, thus missing the very last thin waning appearance of Simon Legrand as the stream of tenuous, wavering substance poured back from him to the silent, immobile body of Mrs Lorriquer motionless on its great bed, and the Colonel was just in time to support his daughter as she collapsed in a dead faint.

All this happened so rapidly that it is out of the question to set it down so as to give a mental picture of the swift sequence of events.

The Colonel, despite his character and firmness, was an old man, and not physically strong. I therefore lifted Mrs Preston and carried her to a day-bed which stood along the wall of the room and there laid her down. The Colonel rubbed her hands. I fetched water from the mahogany washstand such as is part of the furnishing of all these old West Indian residence bedrooms, and sprinkled a little of the cool water on her face. Within a minute or two her eyelids fluttered, and she awakened. This secondary emergency had naturally diverted our attention from what was toward at Mrs Lorriquer’s beside. But now, leaving Mrs Preston who was nearly herself again, we hastened over to the bed.

Mrs Lorriquer, apparently in a very deep sleep, and breathing heavily, lay there, inert. The Colonel shook her by the shoulder; shook her again. Her head moved to one side, her eyes opened, a baleful glare in her eyes.

‘
Va t’en, sâle bête
!’ said a deep man-like voice from between her clenched teeth. Then, a look of recognition replacing the glare, she sat up abruptly, and, in her natural voice, addressing the Colonel whom she had but now objurgated as a ‘foul beast’, she asked anxiously: ‘Is anything the matter, dearest? Why – Mr Canevin – I hope nothing’s wrong!’

I told her about the fire.

In the meantime Mrs Preston, somewhat shaky, but brave though puzzled over the strange happenings which she had witnessed, came to her mother’s bedside. The Colonel placed an arm about his daughter, steadying her.

‘Then we’d better all get dressed,’ said Mrs Lorriquer, when I had finished my brief account of the fire, and the Colonel and I and Mrs Preston walked out of the bedroom. Mrs Preston slipped into her own room and closed the door behind her.

‘Get yourself dressed, sir,’ I suggested to the old Colonel, ‘and I will wait for you on the front gallery below.’ He nodded, retired to his room, and I slipped downstairs and out to the gallery, where I sank into a cane chair and lit a cigarette with shaking fingers.

The Colonel joined me before the cigarette was smoked through. He went straight to the point.

‘For God’s sake, what is it, Canevin?’ he inquired, helplessly.

I had had time to think during the consumption of that cigarette on the gallery. I had expected some such direct inquiry as this, and had my answer ready.

‘There is no danger – nothing whatever to worry yourself about just now, at any rate,’ said I, with a positive finality which I was far from feeling internally. I was still shaken by what I had seen in that airy bedroom. ‘The ladies will be down shortly. We can not talk before them. Besides, the fire may, possibly, be dangerous. I will tell you everything I know tomorrow morning. Come to my house at nine, if you please, sir.’

The old Colonel showed his army training at this.

‘Very well, Mr Canevin,’ said he, ‘at nine tomorrow, at your house.’

Lieutenant Farnum and his efficient direction proved too much for the fire. Within a half-hour or so, as we sat on the gallery, the ladies wearing shawls because of the cool breeze, my house-boy, Stephen, came to report to me that the fire was totally extinguished. We had seen none of its original glare for the past quarter of an hour. I said goodnight, and the Lorriquer family retired to make up its interrupted sleep, while I walked up the hill and around the corner to my own house and turned in. The only persons among us all who had not been disturbed that eventful night were Mrs Preston’s two small children. As it would be a simple matter to take them to safety in case the fire menaced the house, we had agreed to leave them as they were, and they had slept quietly throughout all our alarms and excursions!

The old Colonel looked his full seventy years the next morning when he arrived at my house and was shown out upon the gallery by Stephen, where I awaited him. His face was strained, lined, and ghastly.

‘I did not sleep at all the rest of the night, Mr Canevin,’ he confessed, ‘and four or five times I went to my wife’s room and looked in, but every time she was sleeping naturally. What do you make of this dreadful happening, sir? I really do not know which way to turn, I admit to you, sir.’ The poor old man was in a truly pathetic state. I did what I could to reassure him.

I set out before him the whole case, as I have already set it out, as the details came before me, throughout the course of this narrative. I went into all the details, sparing nothing, even the delicate matter of Mrs Lorriquer’s conduct over the card-table. Summing up the matter I said: ‘It seems plain, from all this testimony, that Simon Legrand’s haunting of his old house which you occupied for three years was more of an actuality than your residence there indicated to you. His sudden death at the hands of one of his “guests” may very well have left his personality, perhaps fortified by some unfulfilled wish, about the premises which had been his for a number of years previously. There are many recorded cases of similar nature in the annals of scientific occult investigation. Such a “shade”, animated by some compelling motive to persist in its earthly existence, would “pervade” such premises already
en rapport
with his ways and customs.

‘Then, for the first time, the old house was refurbished and occupied when you moved into it. Mrs Lorriquer may be, doubtless is, I should suppose from the evidence we already have, one of those persons who is open to what seems to have happened to her. You mentioned her mother, a well-known medium of years ago. Such qualifications may well be more or less hereditary you see.

‘That Legrand laid hold upon the opportunity to manifest himself
through her
, we already know. Both of us have seen him “manifested”, and in a manner typical of mediumistic productions, in material form, of their “controls”. In this case, the degree of “control” must be very strong, and, besides that, it has, plainly, been growing. The use of French, unconsciously, the very tone of his deep bass voice, also unconscious on her part, and – I will go farther, Colonel; there is another, and a very salient clue for us to use. You spoke of the fact that previous to your occupancy of the Legrand house in the “zone” Mrs Lorriquer never played cards. Obviously, if the rest of my inferences are correct, this desire to play cards came direct from Legrand, who was using her for his own self-expression, having, in some way, got himself
en rapport
with her as her “control”. I would go on, then, and hazard the guess that just as her use of French is plainly subconscious, as is the use of Legrand’s voice, on occasion – you will remember, I spoke to him before you came into the room last night,
and he answered me in that same deep voice
– so her actual playing of cards is an act totally unconscious on her part, or nearly so. It is a wide sweep of the imagination, but, I think, it will be substantiated after we have released her from this obsession, occupation by another personality, or whatever it proves to be.’

The word ‘release’ seemed to electrify the old gentleman. He jumped out of his chair, came toward me, his lined face alight with hope.

‘Is there any remedy, Mr Canevin? Can it be possible? Tell me, for God’s sake, you can not understand how I am suffering – my poor wife! You have had much experience with this sort of thing; I, none whatever. It has always seemed – well, to put it bluntly, a lot of “fake” to me.’

‘Yes,’ said I, slowly, ‘there is a remedy, Colonel – two remedies, in fact. The phenomenon with which we are confronted seems a kind of combination of mediumistic projection of the “control”, and plain, old-fashioned “possession”. The Bible, as you will recall, is full of such cases – the Gadarene Demoniac, for example. So, indeed, is the ecclesiastical history through the Middle Ages. Indeed, as you may be aware, the “order” of exorcist still persists in at least one of the great historic churches. One remedy, then, is exorcism. It is unusual, these days, but I am myself familiar with two cases where it has been successfully performed, in Boston, Massachusetts, within the last decade. A salient point, if we should resort to that, however, is Mrs Lorriquer’s own religion. Exorcism can not, according to the rules, be accorded to everybody. The bare minimum is that the subject should be validly baptized. Otherwise exorcism is inoperative; it does not work as we understand its mystical or spiritual processes.’

‘Mrs Lorriquer’s family were all Friends – Quakers,’ said the Colonel. ‘She is not, to my knowledge, baptized. Her kind of Quakers do not, I believe, practise baptism.’

‘Well, then,’ said I, ‘there is another way, and that, with your permission, Colonel, I will outline to you.’

‘I am prepared to do anything, anything whatever, Mr Canevin, to cure this horrible thing for my poor wife. The matter I leave entirely in your hands, and I will cooperate in every way, precisely as you say.’

‘Well said sir!’ I exclaimed, and forthwith proceeded to outline my plan to the Colonel . . .

Perhaps there are some who would accuse me of being superstitious. As to that I do not know, and, quite frankly, I care little. However, I record that that afternoon I called on the rector of my own church in St Thomas, the English Church, as the native people still call it, although it is no longer, now that St Thomas is American territory, under the control of the Archbishop of the British West Indies as it was before our purchase from Denmark in 1917. I found the rector at home and proffered my request. It was for a vial of holy water. The rector and I walked across the street to the church and there in the sacristy, without comment, the good gentleman, an other-worldly soul much beloved by his congregation, provided my need. I handed him a twenty-franc note, for his poor, and took my departure, the bottle in the pocket of my white drill coat.

That evening, by arrangement with the Colonel, we gathered for an evening of cards at the Lorriquers’. I have never seen Mrs Lorriquer more typically the termagant. She performed all her bag of tricks, such as I have recorded, and, shortly after eleven, when we had finished, Mrs Preston’s face wore a dull flush of annoyance and, when she retired, which she did immediately after we had calculated the final score, she hardly bade the rest of us goodnight.

Toward the end of the play, once more I happened to hold a commanding hand, and played it out to a successful five no-trump, bid and made. All through the process of playing that hand, adverse to Mrs Lorriquer and her partner, I listened carefully to a monotonous, ill-natured kind of undertone chant with which she punctuated her obvious annoyance. What she was saying was: ‘
Nom de nom, de nom, de nom, de nom
– ’ precisely as a testy, old-fashioned, grumbling Frenchman will repeat those nearly meaningless syllables.

Mrs Lorriquer retired not long after her daughter’s departure upstairs, leaving the Colonel and me over a pair of Havana cigars.

We waited, according to our prearranged plan, downstairs there, until one o’clock in the morning.

Then the Colonel, at my request, brought from the small room which he used as an office or den, the longer of a very beautiful pair of Samurai swords, a magnificent weapon, with a blade as keen and smooth as any razor. Upon this, with a clean handkerchief, I rubbed half the contents of my holy water, not only upon the shimmering, inlaid, beautiful blade, but over the hand-grip as well.

Shortly after one, we proceeded, very softly, upstairs, and straight to the door of Mrs Lorriquer’s room, where we took up our stand outside. We listened, and within there was no sound of any kind whatever.

From time to time the Colonel, stooping, would peer in through the large keyhole, designed for an enormous, old-fashioned, complicated key. After quite a long wait, at precisely twenty minutes before two a.m. the Colonel, straightening up again after such an inspection, nodded to me. His face, which had regained some of its wonted color during the day, was a ghastly white, quite suddenly, and his hands shook as he softly turned the handle of the door, opened it, and stood aside for me to enter, which I did, he following me, and closing the door behind him. Behind us, in the upper hallway, and just beside the door-jamb, we had left a large, strong wicker basket, the kind designed to hold a family washing.

Precisely as she had lain the night before, was Mrs Lorriquer, on the huge four-poster. And, beside her, the stream of
plasma
flowing from her to him, stood Simon Legrand, glowering at us evilly.

I advanced straight upon him, the beautiful knightly sword of Old Japan firmly held in my right hand, and as he shrank back, stretching the
plasma
stream to an extreme tenuity – like pulled dough it seemed – I abruptly cut though this softly-flowing material directly above the body of Mrs Lorriquer with a transverse stroke. The sword met no apparent resistance as I did so, and then, without any delay, I turned directly upon Legrand, now muttering in a deep bass snarl, and with an accurately timed swing of the weapon, sheared off his head. At this stroke, the sword met resistance, comparable, perhaps, as nearly as I can express it, to the resistance which might be offered by the neck of a snowman built by children.