Voodoo Tales: The Ghost Stories of Henry S Whitehead (Tales of Mystery & The Supernatural) (70 page)

But the night following, I watched for it at the proper moment in the sequence of Old Morris’s movements as he got into bed, and this time it was distinctly clearer. The shadow, it was, of some monstrous shape, ten feet tall, long, angular, of vaguely human appearance, though even in its merely shadowed form, somehow cruelly, strangely inhuman! I cannot describe the cold horror of its realization. The head-part was, relatively to the proportions of the body, short and broad, like a pumpkin head of a ‘man’ made of sticks by boys, to frighten passers-by on Hallowe’en.

The next evening I was out again to an entertainment at the residence of one of my hospitable friends, and arrived home after midnight. There stood the ghostly furniture, there on the bed was the form of the apparently sleeping Old Morris, and there in the corner stood the shadow, little changed from last night’s appearance.

The next night would be pretty close to the date of Old Morris’s death. It would be that night, or the next at latest, according to Mr Bonesteel’s statement. The next day I could not avoid the sensation of something impending!

I entered my room and turned off the light a little before eleven, seated myself, and waited.

The furniture tonight was, to my vision, absolutely indistinguishable from reality. This statement may sound somewhat strange, for it will be remembered that I was sitting in the dark. Approximating terms again, I may say, however, that the furniture was visible in a light of its own, a kind of ‘phosphorescence’, which apparently emanated from it. Certainly there was no natural source of light. Perhaps I may express the matter thus: that light and darkness were
reversed
in the case of this ghostly bed, bureau, wardrobe, and chairs. When actual light was turned on, they disappeared. In darkness, which, of course, is the absence of physical light, they emerged. That is the nearest I can get to it. At any rate, tonight the furniture was entirely, perfectly, visible to me.

Old Morris came in at the usual time. I could see him with a clarity exactly comparable to what I have said about the furniture. He made his slight pause, his arrested motion of the right hand, and then, as usual, cast from him, according to his expression, the desire for that protective gesture, and reached a hard-looking, gnarled fist out to take hold of the mosquito-netting.

As he did so, a fearful thing leaped upon him, a thing out of the corner by the high doorway – the dreadful, purplish shadow-thing. I had not been looking in that direction, and while I had not forgotten this newest of the strange items in this phantasmagoria which had been repeating itself before my eyes for many nights, I was wholly unprepared for its sudden appearance and malignant activity.

I have said the shadow was purplish against black. Now that it had taken form, as the furniture and Old Morris himself had taken form, I observed that this purplish coloration was actual. It was a glistening, humanlike, almost metallic-appearing thing, certainly ten feet high, completely covered with great, iridescent fish-scales, each perhaps four square inches in area, which shimmered as it leaped across the room. I saw it for only a matter of a second or two. I saw it clutch surely and with a deadly malignity, the hunched body of Old Morris, from behind, just, you will remember, as the old man was about to climb into his bed. The dreadful thing turned him about as a wasp turns a fly, in great, flail-like, glistening arms, and never, to the day of my death, do I ever expect to be free of the look on Old Morris’s face – a look of a lost soul who knows that there is no hope for him in this world or the next – as the great, squat, rounded head, a head precisely like that of Mrs Heidenklang’s little fish-jumbee, descended, revealing to my horrified sight one glimpse of a huge, scythelike parrot-beak which it used, with a nodding motion of the ugly head, to plunge into its writhing victim’s breast, with a tearing motion like the barracuda when it attacks and tears . . .

I fainted then, for that was the last of the fearful picture which I can remember.

I awakened a little after one o’clock, in a dark and empty room, peopled by no ghosts, and with my own, more common-place, mahogany furniture thinly outlined in the faint light of the new moon which was shining cleanly in a starry sky. The fresh night-wind stirred the netting of my bed. I rose, shakily, and went and leaned out of the window, and lit and puffed rapidly at a cigarette, which perhaps did something to settle my jangling nerves.

The next morning, with a feeling of loathing which has gradually worn itself out in the course of the months which have now elapsed since my dreadful experience, I took up my drawing again, and added as well as I could the fearful scene I had witnessed. The completed picture was a horror, crude as is my work in this direction. I wanted to destroy it, but I did not, and I laid it away under some unused clothing in one of the large drawers of my bedroom wardrobe.

Three days later, just after Christmas, I observed Mr Despard’s car driving through the streets, the driver being alone. I stopped the boy and asked him where Mr Despard was at the moment. The driver told me Mr Despard was having breakfast – the West Indian midday meal – with Mr Bonesteel at that gentleman’s house on the Prince’s Cross Street. I thanked him and went home. I took out the drawing, folded it, and placed it in the inside breast pocket of my coat, and started for Bonesteel’s house.

I arrived fifteen minutes or so before the breakfast hour, and was pleasantly received by my old friend and his guest. Mr Bonesteel pressed me to join them at breakfast, but I declined.

Mr Bonesteel brought in a swizzel, compounded of his very old rum, and after partaking of this in ceremonious fashion, I engaged the attention of both gentlemen.

‘Gentlemen,’ said I, ‘I trust that you will not regard me as too much of a bore, but I have, I believe, a legitimate reason for asking you if you will tell me the manner in which the gentleman known as Old Morris, who once occupied my house, met his death.’

I stopped there, and immediately discovered that I had thrown my kind old host into a state of embarrassed confusion. Glancing at Mr Despard, I saw at once that if I had not actually offended him, I had, by my question, at least put him ‘on his dignity’. He was looking at me severely, rather, and I confess that for a moment I felt a bit like a schoolboy. Mr Bonesteel caught something of this atmosphere, and looked helplessly at Despard. Both men shifted uneasily in their chairs; each waited for the other to speak.

Despard, at last, cleared his throat.

‘You will excuse me, Mr Stewart,’ said he, slowly, ‘but you have asked a question which for certain reasons, no one, aware of the circumstances, would desire to answer. The reasons are, briefly, that Mr Morris, in certain respects, was – what shall I say, not to do the matter an injustice? – well, perhaps I might say he was abnormal. I do not mean that he was crazy. He was, though, eccentric. His end was such that stating it would open up a considerable argument, one which agitated this island for a long time after he was found dead. By a kind of general consent, that matter is taboo on the island. That will explain to you why no one wishes to answer your question. I am free to say that Mr Bonesteel here, in considerable distress, told me that you had asked it of him. You also asked me about it not long ago. I can add only that the manner of Mr Morris’s end was such that – ’ Mr Despard hesitated, and looked down, a frown on his brow, at his shoe, which he tapped nervously on the tiled floor of the gallery where we were seated.

‘Old Morris, Mr Stewart,’ he resumed, after a moment’s reflection, in which, I imagined, he was carefully choosing his words, ‘was, to put it plainly, murdered! There was much discussion over the identity of the murderer, but the most of it, the unpleasant part of the discussion, was rather whether he was killed by human agency or not! Perhaps you will see now, sir, the difficulty of the matter. To admit that he was murdered by an ordinary murderer is, to my mind, an impossibility. To assert that some other agency, something abhuman, killed him, opens up the question of one’s belief, one’s credulity. “Magic” and occult agencies are, as you are aware, strongly intrenched in the minds of the ignorant people of these islands. None of us cares to admit a similar belief. Does that satisfy you, Mr Stewart, and will you let the matter rest there, sir?’

I drew out the picture, and, without unfolding it, laid it across my knees. I nodded to Mr Despard, and, turning to our host, asked: ‘As a child, Mr Bonesteel, were you familiar with the arrangement of Mr Morris’s bedroom?’

‘Yes, sir,’ replied Mr Bonesteel, and added: ‘Everybody was! Persons who had never been in the old man’s house, crowded in when – ’ I intercepted a kind of warning look passing from Despard to the speaker. Mr Bonesteel, looking much embarrassed, looked at me in that helpless fashion I have already mentioned, and remarked that it was hot weather these days!

‘Then,’ said I, ‘perhaps you will recognize its arrangement and even some of the details of its furnishing,’ and I unfolded the picture and handed it to Mr Bonesteel.

If I had anticipated its effect upon the old man, I would have been more discreet, but I confess I was nettled by their attitude. By handing it to Mr Bonesteel (I could not give it to both of them at once) I did the natural thing, for he was our host. The old man looked at what I had handed him, and (this is the only way I can describe what happened) became, suddenly, as though petrified. His eyes bulged out of his head, his lower jaw dropped and hung open. The paper slipped from his nerveless grasp and fluttered and zigzagged to the floor, landing at Despard’s feet. Despard stooped and picked it up, ostensibly to restore it to me, but in doing so, he glanced at it, and had
his
reaction. He leaped frantically to his feet, and positively goggled at the picture, then at me. Oh, I was having my little revenge for their reticence, right enough!

‘My God!’ shouted Despard. ‘My God, Mr Stewart, where did you get such a thing?’

Mr Bonesteel drew in a deep breath, the first, it seemed, for sixty seconds, and added his word.

‘Oh my God!’ muttered the old man, shakily, ‘Mr Stewart, Mr Stewart! What is it, what is it? Where – ’

‘It is a Martinique fish-zombi, what is known to professional occult investigators like Elliott O’Donnell and William Hope Hodgson as an “elemental”,’ I explained, calmly. ‘It is a representation of how poor Mr Morris actually met his death; until now, as I understand it, a purely conjectural matter. Christiansted is built on the ruins of French Bassin, you will remember,’ I added. ‘It is a very likely spot for an “elemental”!’

‘But, but,’ almost shouted Mr Despard, ‘Mr Stewart, where did you get this, it’s – ’

‘I made it,’ said I, quietly, folding up the picture and placing it back in my inside pocket.

‘But how – ?’ this from both Despard and Bonesteel, speaking in unison.

‘I saw it happen, you see,’ I replied, taking my hat, bowing formally to both gentlemen, and murmuring my regret at not being able to remain for breakfast, I departed.

And as I reached the bottom of Mr Bonesteel’s gallery steps and turned along the street in the direction of Old Morris’s house, where I live, I could hear their voices speaking together.

‘But how, how – ?’ This was Bonesteel.

‘Why, why – ?’ And that was Despard.

Sweet Grass

A tale, this, of the Black Obayi of Ashantee . . . Nybladh, administrator for the Copenhagen Company of the Rasmussen Centràl, allotted Estate Fairfield to young Cornelis Hansen, just out from Denmark to the Danish West Indies to begin the life of a sugar planter. Cornelis, tall, straight, ruddy-cheeked, twenty-two, fell in love with the island of Santa Cruz and with his pretty little house.

Nybladh had indeed used diplomacy in that allotment. An inexperienced estate manager could do little harm at Fairfield. The house stood, quite near the sea, at the western end of the Centràl’s many properties, among dimpling hills. Hillside cane was a losing venture. Very little was grown at Fairfield, and that on its small proportion of level bottom-land. Then, Cornelis could be promoted as soon as he became accustomed to the practicalities. That would mean a favorable report to Old Strach, Cornelis’ uncle in Copenhagen. Old Strach owned the Centràl.

Cornelis proved to be a social success from the very start. The Santa Crucian gentry drove up to call on him in their family carriages, to the little stone house glistening frostily in the Caribbean sunlight. It had been freshly whitewashed – Crucian wash, held together with molasses, and now baked to the appearance of alabaster by the relentless sun.

At their own houses Cornelis met the resident planters, chiefly Scottish and Irish gentlefolk and their sons and daughters. Also he became acquainted with the officers at the three Danish garrisons – at Christiansted, Frederiksted, and Kingshill. Many visitors, too, came over from St Thomas, the capital, forty-three miles away; others, too, from the English Islands – Antigua, St Kitts, even sometimes from Montserrat or St Lucia. There was never any lack of good company on Santa Cruz. This tropical life was vastly different from Copenhagen. Cornelis was never home-sick. He did not want to go back to cold Copenhagen. There, it seemed now to Cornelis, he had been spending a beginningless eternity, absorbed in his chemistry, his English, and other dull studies. All that had been to fit him to take his place here in this pleasant, short-houred, expensive life of a tropical planter in the sugar-trade. He enjoyed the new life from its very beginning. Yet, in spite of his pleasant housing, his hospitable entertainment, his unaccustomed freedom to come and go, he was, sometimes poignantly, lonesome.