A Bottomless Grave Read online

  Not so in the times of which I write. It required a special talent to prophesy with facility and precision on the spontaneous howling of a dog in the dark. Anyone can see a spirit hand nowadays; some have even been privileged to grasp one, and to recognise its smooth and waxy texture: but the seer who, in those days, could sometimes discern a poor formless, impalpable ghost where other men saw nothing, possessed a rare and precious gift.

  Such a gift had Weasel. And nobody respected him much for any other characteristic. He had his faults, like the greatest men. He was very worldly, or, as they say in Cragside, ‘leet gi’en’; he took more whiskey than is good for any man; and his love of practical joking was a thing to be regretted. But the mantle worn long ago by the fearsome Witch of Endor had come down to him in a direct line of apostolic succession. There was not a boggart in all the country side, from the Coach and Six with the headless coachman and postillions to the Lonesome Babby, that wailed in a leafless wood before the first snow fell, with which he was not on nodding terms. And when the spirit of prophecy came upon him, and he spake of the things which he had heard and seen, a bleak and mournful sense of awe—a consciousness of wintry desolation with thirty degrees of frost—stole over the festivities in Molly’s alehouse kitchen.

  He had a pretty gift of descriptive story-telling. His dramatic effects were rapid and staggering, and the sincerity of his own fright was convincing. Nevertheless he always managed to convey, by some unobtrusive fragment of innocent detail, that he had acted more bravely than his listeners knew that they would have done in the same unusual circumstances.

  It even appeared that he had carried irreverent boldness to the rash pitch of airy jocularity. He had spoken flippantly to the sheeted dead about the weather, and lightly reminded certain of them of a tarnished past, or which, being a kind of legendary historian, he knew rather more than was pleasant. Indeed there was one unquiet spirit towards whom he was guilty of a piece of wanton brutality so shocking, that, as I heard of it by his own confession, I shall take the liberty of recording it, injustice to the poor thing’s memory.

  When he got married—which happened to him late in life and after a scandalous bachelorhood—he did so under the persuasion of Binney Driver, who refused to look upon his concubinage with any tolerance, and who overcame his last objection by offering him a house and home rent free. It is true that the house was haunted (by a disagreeable old woman in spectacles and a red shawl, who, though bent on no conceivable errand, carried an eternal marketing basket), that the windows had been stoned out, and that the roof let the weather in through a gap made by the fallen chimney. But Binney Driver was ready to put the place in repair, and Weasel held in derision the doddering, grandmotherly spectre.

  ‘Shoo’ll quit,’ he said, ‘when shoo sees ahr Susannah.’

  So he got in a few sticks of furniture, made himself hilariously drunk before bed-time, and bade the neighbourhood good night several times from the bedroom window, before he tumbled in between the blankets.

  From the statement he made to a gaping crowd next morning, it would appear that his rest was not undisturbed. ‘Owd Betty Rathera’ awoke him on the stroke of midnight by a sly attempt to filch the bed-clothes. She had little green shining eyes, that peered at you viciously, and a shrivelled mouth that was continually in motion, and long fingers with rheumatic knobs on the knuckles. Well, he sprang out of bed and routed her at the first onset; and then he awoke Susannah to tell her of his cheap and glorious victory. However, at Susannah’s urgent entreaty, they pulled the bed-clothes over their heads as if they were afraid, and tucked them well in, so that they would be sure to ‘feel her if shoo melled (interfered) agean’; and no sooner had they done so than they were holding on with all their might against a vivacious and irresistible tugging. But when Weasel made to spring after her again, she slipped away out of the room ‘wi’ a scutter like a rat runnin”.

  ‘Aw’ll fix tha!’ said Weasel, as he leaned a weaver’s heavy beam against the door; and after that they got off to sleep.

  He awoke suddenly, and found himself sitting bolt upright. The bed-clothes were clean gone this time, and there in the doorway stood Owd Betty Rathera, grinning at him with a mocking gleam in her green eyes, and pointing to the beam laid on one side and the bed-clothes trailing from her basket. It was too much: the thing would presently develop into a persecution. Weasel reached the door at a bound, seized the beam, and, in a frenzy of terror, dashed it down the stone stairs in her wake.

  ‘Hit her? Aye, for seur it hit her,’ he added, in reply to a question which his calculated silence had provoked. ‘Wha, ther’ a blue rick (smoke) come up an’ filled t’ cham‘er, an’ Aw hed to oppen t’ window to let aht a strang smell o’ sulphur ‘at ommost choaked ahr Susannah! We saw nowt no moor of Owd Betty efter that, an’ willn’t, Aw‘se wager.’ Then, after a reflective pause, he spoke in a low uneasy voice these fearful words: ‘Bud some way, we niwer gate warm agean all t’ neet. T‘air smelled o’ moulds—clammy-like.’ Nor did they get warm on subsequent nights, as it would seem—till Binney Driver said a prayer in the room, and gave them another pair of blankets.

  Alas, poor ghost! In this way a grievous felony was piously condoned.

  Weasel was more of a hero than ever after that. It is not every man who has killed his ghost. For a while, it may be, there were wiseacres who cast doubts upon the story, on the ground that it was well known that you couldn’t harm a ghost, any more than you could damage your own shadow. Dave Berry, a disrespectful man, went so far as to scoff at it quietly. ‘He’ll be tellin’ next,’ said the humorist, “at he’s puzzened one wi’ henbane.’ But as, according to Susannah’s testimony, the phantom no longer troubled the house, and as Owd Betty Rathera had been known to ‘walk’ any time these ten years, the voice of envy was gradually silenced. Weasel sat in the chimney nook at Molly’s, and drank out of every man’s pot. He was led to discourse so often of the Cornshaw Screamer, of Dick Swash with the halter, of Cheepie and of all the accredited ghosts for miles around, that he began to find it needful, with the view of some day varying the monotony, to darkly hint at the possibility of there being others.

  His prestige was still at its height when, one wild night in autumn, he and a company of stout carousers came roaring home from Glus-burn. They might have kept to the high road, but Dave Berry had ‘dared’ them to walk through the ancient park where the apparition of the Coach and Six was wont to ride; and in spite of the vivid picture of its gruesome terrors which Weasel had offered as if by way of encouragement, they had felt pot-valiant enough to brave the danger. One of them said flatly that there was no such thing: nobody but Weasel had ever seen it.

  ‘Bud tha’s seen it, Weasel,’ said Dave Berry.

  ‘Say nowt,’ responded the seer. ‘Say nowt. Wait till we git by th’ owd mistal wheer t‘—hic!—t’ mooin cannot shine through. Aw knaw. See ‘at it doesn’t—hic!—ride ower ye, that’s all. Them ‘at it rides ower’ll dee afore they’re a—hic! Damn that sour ale!—dee afore they’re a year owder. It rade ower my father t’ week afore he henged hissen—Aw mind him t—tellin’ on ’t.’

  ‘Bud tha’d nut dee, wo’d ta?’ asked Dave Berry.

  Weasel lurched up alongside to dig him in the ribs. ‘Say nowt!’ he hiccoughed again.

  ‘Wha, freeze me if he bean’t flaid!’ cried another, with a great laugh; and they nearly came to blows over that mortal insult—for Weasel, though now past the prime of his strength, was afraid, at all events, of nothing that was made of flesh and blood.

  The night was black, and full of clamour. The sun had set among driving clouds, and the wind had gathered fury as ‘the dead of the night’s high noon’ drew near. Blast upon blast came hurtling down from the hills. The fallen leaves went scurrying by them along the gravel path, or, caught up in eddies, flicked sharply against the strollers’ faces. Somewhere in the deep and gloomy park an iron gate kept clanking. Between the gusts the big trees moaned unceasingly, and they heard the bleating
of frightened sheep, and the swish and rattle of a swollen beck, coursing down its perilous channel close by. Occasionally the harvest lightning gleamed faintly for a moment, and when it flickered out a wall of darkness rose up before them, barring the way. A bat, wheeling blindly at one of these times, struck Weasel’s calumniator pat on the neck, and clinging for an instant, administered a shock to his bravado.

  A sober man, with a cheerful heart in his bosom, might have admired the storm. I have known men, blessed with strong animal spirits and clear consciences, who would shout for sheer joy when they heard the elements brawl so. But upon these tipsy revellers the effect was different. Once within the park, they had not been beaten about for ten minutes before their fiery courage was miraculously tamed. Without being conscious of it, they had ceased to sing, or shout, or blaspheme. Weasel had given himself up to a bitter melancholy, and another man, having fallen over a tree-root, refused to be helped up again, and maintained that it was bed-time. But by the patient efforts of Dave Berry, his slothfulness was at last overcome, and they resumed the expedition arm in arm.

  The tempest rose towards its height. A black squall charged down the valley with a slogan in its throat, and when it burst among the old beech-trees their lustiest branches snapped off. The men could hear it give yell upon yell as it raced away triumphant. ‘By Gow!’ shouted Dave Berry, dragged backwards by the swaying line of his companions, ‘next time one o’ them comes we‘se do better to tak’ it liggin’ !’ Just then a feeble moonbeam shone out from a rift in the clouds, and revealed, within a dozen paces, the mouth of that tortuous and gloomy avenue where the old mistal is, and as they drew back; hesitating, the fiercest blast of all swept them asunder. A giant beech was rent from its roots with a long and strident detonation, and fell crashing behind them.

  While they stood shaking with terror, Weasel uttered something between a scream and a sob, and sank to the ground with one arm across his face. They were sober enough by this time, but perfectly unable to move a step.

  ‘Ho’d thi din,’ cried Dave Berry, thickly. ‘Ther’s noise enew baht they blether.’ But the others were glancing fearfully round, and Weasel, grovelling and fairly whimpering, had seized the nearest round his knees.

  ‘Theer!’ he gasped, with a rapid and tremulous gesture directed towards the gloomy place ahead.

  They gazed with straining eye-balls, but saw nothing more than the waving branches and the blackness. ‘Ther’s nowt theer,’ bawled Dave Berry. ‘It’s behind tha. Ther’s a tree fa’en.’

  ‘Aw tell yo’ Aw seed it,’ whined the exorcist in a shrill and palpitating falsetto. ’Aw’ve seed t’ Coach an’ Six, an’ Aw’m a deead man!’ An inhuman, melancholy cry—that of an owl shaken from her roost, perhaps—made itself heard above their heads, and simultaneously the moonlight vanished.

  They were scared past the shame of confessing it. They huddled together in the dark, clutching one another’s garments and uttering incoherent lamentations. But Weasel’s palsied gibbering rose loudest.

  ‘A gurt yoller coach, an’ men wi’ bleedin’ necks—Oh! dear; Oh! dear. Reight ower t’ bank it drave, an dahn t’ beck-hoil. Their heeads rollin’ abaht inside it—all starin’ an’ laughin’, starin’ an’ laughin’ at me! Eh, Aw’m a deead man. It’s a judgment on me. Oh, dear, oh, dear!’

  A chorus of pious response went up after each phrase.

  ‘Does—does ony on yo’ knaw a prayer-piece?’ asked one man, and his teeth chattered as he spoke.

  ‘Weasel knaws one, likely,’ said Dave Berry.

  ‘Nay, nay—Aw knaw noan, Aw knaw noan. Lewk sharp an’ say one, for God’s mercy sake, some on yo’! It’ll be back agean, Aw knaw it will. It com’ aht o’ t’ mistal.’

  There was an embarrassed silence. This sudden and unexpected examination in religious knowledge was altogether too severe. Then, in a lull of the wind, Weasel’s voice was heard again, fervently muttering, ‘Our Father—Father which art i’ heaven. Our Father which art i’ heaven—i’ heaven——’

  ‘Nay, Weasel,’ laughed Dave Berry; and then they all laughed.

  It did them good. They got up from their knees and made the park echo with peal after peal of hysterical laughter. Weasel, after gazing at them sullenly for a time, took the infection of their merriment.

  ‘Ye—ye’re just as flaid as a pack o’ childer,’ he said when they had done laughing.

  ‘Wha, didn’t ta see nowt, then?’ asked one simpleton, tricked by his sudden change of tone.

  ‘Did tha see nowt?’

  ‘Nay.’

  ‘What browt tha dahn o’ thi knees then?’

  ‘Well, ye said——’

  ‘Aw said ye’d be flaid, an’ ye’re as white as a sheet this minute.’

  Which sundry others felt to be true of themselves also, for the conversation was bringing back a twinge of their banished fear. Only Dave Berry stood a step or two apart, with a queer smile on his big face.

  The storm was already abating. It had satisfied its rage; and by one of those surprising changes that often attend the cessation of high winds, the full moon rode smoothly out from behind the last cloud and lighted them home.

  ‘Aw say, Weasel,’ said Dave Berry, as they came out upon the highway: and he had so much the air of having a discovery to impart that they all stopped to hear it.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Well, tha mud ha’ thrawn that tree at it if we’d nobbud thowt on’t!’

  But the version which survives in Cragside of that awful experience, on which a scoffer could so lightly jest, is not Dave Berry’s.

  The Tomb

  by GUY DE MAUPASSANT

  The brief life and even briefer writing career of Guy de Maupassant (1850—1893) make his eminence in French literature all the more remarkable. The widely acclaimed master of the short story was born near Dieppe, brought up in Normandy and studied law in Paris. After military service in the Franco-Prussian war, he worked as a civil servant until his writing brought him a good income. And a good income it was—Maupassant was a bestseller in his own lifetime, not just in France but on both sides of the Atlantic.

  Maupassant’s life was marred by his discovery, in his early twenties, that he suffered from syphilis, probably hereditary. As the disease increased its hold on him, he suffered from bouts of mental disturbance, and his more powerful works of the macabre stemmed from this period of his life. The most famous is undoubtedly ‘The Horla’, his fevered story of the emergence of an invisible super-being, set to supplant man from his mastery of the earth, which has more than once been noted for its possibly subconscious depiction of paranoia.

  Maupassant’s mental condition deteriorated until, in January 1892, he cut his throat in an unsuccessful attempt at suicide. He was committed to an asylum where he died eighteen months later.

  There is an alarming hint of paranoia in the following grim little tale by Guy de Maupassant, which seems to have escaped the wide circulation of some of his more well known tales of terror. As with many of his other stories, it can be read as the author’s view of his own condition: mental stability and emotion being powerless in the face of physical corruption.

  On the seventeenth of July, eighteen hundred and eighty-three, at half-past two o’clock in the morning, the caretaker of Béziers cemetery, who lived in a little house at the end of the burying-ground, was awakened by the yelping of his dog, which was locked in the kitchen.

  He immediately went downstairs, and saw that the animal was scenting something under the door and barking furiously, as though some tramp had been prowling about the house. Vincent, the caretaker, took up his gun and went out cautiously.

  His dog ran off in the direction of General Bonnet’s Avenue and stopped short in front of Madame Tomoiseau’s monument.

  The caretaker, advancing cautiously, soon noticed a dim light in the direction of Malenvers Avenue. He slipped in amongst the tombstones and witnessed a most horrible deed of desecration.

  A young man had disinterred the c
orpse of a young woman, buried the day before, and he was dragging it out of the grave.

  A small dark lantern, placed on a pile of earth, lit up this hideous scene.

  Vincent, the caretaker, pounced upon the criminal, felled him to the ground, bound his hands and took him to the police station.

  He was a young lawyer from the city, rich and well thought of. His name was Courbataille.

  He was tried. The public prosecutor recalled the monstrous deeds committed by Sergeant Bertrand and aroused the audience.

  The crowd was thrilled with indignation. As soon as the magistrate sat down the cry arose: ‘Put him to death! Put him to death!’ The president had great difficulty in restoring silence.

  Then he said, in a serious tone of voice:

  ‘Accused, what have you to say in your defence?’

  Courbataille, who had refused counsel, arose. He was a handsome youth, large, dark, with an open countenance, strong features, and a fearless eye.

  The crowd began to hiss.

  He was not disconcerted, but commenced speaking with a slightly husky voice, a little low in the beginning, but gradually gaining in strength:

  ‘Your Honour,

  ‘Gentlemen of the Jury,

  ‘I have very little to say. The woman whose tomb I violated was my mistress. I loved her.

  ‘I loved her, not with a sensual love, not simply from kindness of soul and heart, but with an absolute, perfect love, with mad passion.

  ‘Listen to what I have to say:

  ‘When I first met her, I felt a strange sensation on seeing her. It was not astonishment, nor admiration, for it was not what is called love at first sight, but it was a delightful sensation, as though I had been plunged in a tepid bath. Her movements captivated me, her voice enchanted me, it gave me infinite pleasure to watch everything about her. It also seemed to me that I had known her for a long time, that I had seen her before. She seemed to have some of my spirit within her.