Haunted Short Stories – 23 – ‘The Phantom Coach’ by Amelia B. Edwards (1864)
Courtesy of HauntedBay
The circumstances I am about to relate to you have truth to recommend them. They happened to myself, and my recollection of them is vivid as if they had taken place only yesterday. Twenty years, however, have gone by since that night. During those twenty years I have told the story to but one other person. I tell it now with a reluctance which I find it difficult to overcome. All I entreat, meanwhile, is that you will abstain from forcing your own conclusions upon me. I want nothing explained away. I desire no arguments. My mind on this subject is quite made up, and having the testimony of my own senses to rely upon, I prefer to abide by it.
Well! It was just twenty years ago, and within a day or two of the end of the grouse season. I had been out all day with my gun, and had had no sport to speak of. The wind was due east; the month, December; the place, a bleak wide moor in the far north of England. And I had lost my way. It was not a pleasant place in which to lose one’s way, with the first feathery flakes of a coming snowstorm just fluttering down upon the heather, and the leaden evening closing in all around. I shaded my eyes with my hand, and stared anxiously into the gathering darkness, where the purple moorland melted into a range of low hills, some ten or twelve miles distant. Not the faintest smoke-wreath, not the tiniest cultivated patch, or fence, or sheep-track, met my eyes in any direction. There was nothing for it but to walk on, and take my chance of finding what shelter I could, by the way. So I shouldered my gun again and pushed wearily forward, for I had been on foot since an hour after daybreak and had eaten nothing since breakfast.
Meanwhile, the snow began to come down with ominous steadiness, and the wind fell. After this, the cold became more intense, and the night came rapidly up. As for me, my prospects darkened with the darkening sky, and my heart grew heavy as I thought how my young wife was already watching for me through the window of our little inn parlour, and thought of all the suffering in store for her throughout this weary night. We had been married four months, and, having spent out autumn in the Highlands, were now lodging in a remote little village situated just on the verge of the great English moorlands. We were very much in love, and, of course, very happy. This morning, when we parted, she had implored me to return before dusk, and I had promised her that I would. What would I not have given to have kept my word!
Even now, weary as I was, I felt that with a supper, an hour’s rest, and a guide, I might still get back to her before midnight, if only guide and shelter could be found.
And all this time the snow fell and the night thickened. I stopped and shouted every now and then, but my shouts seemed only to make the silence deeper. Then a vague sense of uneasiness came upon me, and I began to remember stories of travelers who had walked on and on in the falling snow until, wearied out, they were fain to lie down and sleep their lives away. Would it be possible, I asked myself, to keep on thus through all the long dark night? Would there not come a time when my limbs must fail, and my resolution give way? When I, too, must sleep the sleep of death. Death! I shuddered. How hard to die just now, when life lay all so bright before me! How hard for my darling, whose whole loving heart-but that thought was not to be borne! to banish it, I shouted again, and again the echo followed. Then a wavering speck of light came suddenly out of the dark, shifting, disappearing, growing momentarily nearer and brighter. Running towards it at full speed, I found myself, to my great joy, face to face with an old man and a lantern.
“Thank God!” was the exclamation that burst involuntarily from my lips. Blinking and frowning, he lifted his lantern and peered into my face.
“What for?” growled he, sulkily.
“Well- for you. I began to fear I should be lost in the snow.”
“Eh, then, folks do get cast away hereabouts fra’ time to time, an’ what’s to hinder you from bein’ cast away likewise, if the Lord’s so minded?”
“If the Lord is so minded that you and I shall be lost together my friend, we must submit,” I replied; “but I don’t mean to be lost without you. How far am I now from Dwolding?”
“A gude twenty mile, more or less.”
“And the nearest village?”
“The nearest village is Wyke, an’ that’s twelve miles t’other side.”
“Where do you live, then?”
“Out yonder,” said he, with a vague jerk of the lantern.
“You’re going home, I presume?”
“Maybe I am.”
“Then I’m going with you.”
The old man shook his head, and rubbed his nose reflectively with the handle of the lantern.
“It ain’t no use,” growled he. “He ‘ont let you in-not he.”
“We’ll see about that,” I replied, briskly. “Who is he?”
“The master.”
“Who is the master?”
“That’s nowt to you,” was the unceremonious reply.
“Well, well; you lead the way, and I’ll engage that the master shall give me shelter and a supper tonight.”
“Eh, you can try him!” muttered my reluctant guide; and, still shaking his head, he hobbled, gnome-like, away through the falling snow. A large mass loomed up presently out of the darkness, and a huge dog rushed out barking furiously.
“Is this the house?” I asked.
“Ay, it’s the house. Down, Bey!” And he fumbled in his pocket for the key.
I drew up close behind him, prepared to lose no chance of entrance, and saw in the little circle of light shed by the lantern that the door was heavily studded with iron nails, like the door of a prison. In another minute he had turned the key and I had pushed past him into the house.
Once inside, I looked round with curiosity and found myself in a great raftered hall, which served, apparently, a variety of uses. One end was piled to the roof with corn, like a barn. The other was stored with four-sacks, agricultural implements, casks, and all kinds of miscellaneous lumber; while from the beams overhead hung rows of hams, flitches, and bunches of dried herbs for winter use. In the centre of the floor stood some huge object gauntly dressed in a dingy wrapping-doth, and reaching half way to the rafters. Lifting a comer of this cloth, I saw, to my surprise, a telescope of very considerable size, mounted on a rude movable platform, with four small wheels. The tube was made of painted wood bound round with bands of metal rudely fashioned; the speculum, so far as I could estimate its size in the dim light, measured at least fifteen inches in diameter. While I was yet examining the instrument, and asking myself whether it was not the work of some self-taught optician, a bell rang sharply.
“That’s for you,” said my guide, with a malicious grin. “Yonder’s his room.”
He pointed to a low black door at the opposite side of the hall. I crossed over, rapped somewhat loudly, and went in, without waiting for an invitation. A huge, white-haired old man rose from a table covered with books and papers, and confronted me sternly.
“Who are you?” said he. “How came you here? What do you want?”
“James Murray, barrister-at-law. On foot across the moor. Meat, drink, and sleep.”
He bent his bushy brows into a portentous frown.
“Mine is not a house of entertainment.” he said, haughtily. “Jacob, how dare you admit this stranger?”
“I didn’t admit him,” grumbled the old man. “He followed me over the muir, and shouldered his way in before me. I’m no match for six foot two.”
“And pray, sit, by what right have you forced an entrance into my house?”
“The same by which I should have clung to your boat, if I were drowning. The right of self- preservation.”
“Self-preservation?”
“There’s an inch of snow on the ground already,” I replied, briefly; “and it would be deep enough to cover my body before daybreak.”
He strode to the window, pulled aside a heavy black curtain, and looked out.
“It is true,” he said. “You can stay, if you choose, till morning. Jacob, serve the supper.”
With this he waved me to a seat, resumed his own, and became at once absorbed in the studies from which I had disturbed him.
I placed my gun in a comer, drew a chair to the hearth, and examined my quarters at leisure. Smaller and less incongruous in its arrangements than the hall, this room contained, nevertheless, much to awaken my curiosity. The floor was carpetless. The whitewashed walls were in parts scrawled over with strange diagrams, and in others covered with shelves crowded with philosophical instruments, the uses of many of which were unknown to me. On one side of the fireplace stood a bookcase filled with dingy folios; on the other, a small organ, fantastically decorated with painted carvings of medieval saints and devils. Through the half-opened door of a cupboard at the furtherer end of the room I saw a long array of geological specimens, surgical preparations, crucibles, retorts, and jars of chemicals; while on the mantelshelf beside me, amid a number of small objects stood a model of the solar system, a small galvanic battery, and a microscope. Every chair had its burden. Every comer was heaped high with books. The very floor was littered over with maps, casts, papers, tracings, and learned lumber of all conceivable kinds.
I stared about me with an amazement increased by every fresh object upon which my eyes chanced to rest. So strange a room I had never seen; yet seemed it stranger still, to find such a room in a lone farmhouse amid those wild and solitary moors! Over and over again I looked from my host to his surroundings, and from his surroundings back to my host, askdng myself who and what he could be? His head was singularly fine; but it was more the head of a poet than of a philosopher. Broad in the temples, prominent over the eyes, and clothed with a rough profusion of perfectly white hair, it had all the ideality and much of the ruggedness that characterizes the head of Louis von Beethoven. There were the same deep lines about the mouth, and the same stern furrows in the brow. There was the same concentration of expression. While I was yet observing him, the door opened and Jacob brought in the supper. His master then closed his book, rose, and with more courtesy of manner than he had yet shown, invited me to the table.
Story continues after the break:
Haunted Short Stories – 22 – ‘The Body-Snatcher’ by Robert Louis Stevenson (1884)
Courtesy of Gaslight
EVERY night in the year, four of us sat in the small parlour of the George at Debenham–the undertaker, and the landlord, and Fettes, and myself. Sometimes there would be more; but blow high, blow low, come rain or snow or frost, we four would be each planted in his own particular arm-chair. Fettes was an old drunken Scotchman, a man of education obviously, and a man of some property, since he lived in idleness. He had come to Debenham years ago, while still young, and by a mere continuance of living had grown to be an adopted townsman. His blue camlet cloak was a local antiquity, like the church-spire. His place in the parlour at the George, his absence from church, his old, crapulous, disreputable vices, were all things of course in Debenham. He had some vague Radical opinions and some fleeting infidelities, which he would now and again set forth and emphasise with tottering slaps upon the table. He drank rum–five glasses regularly every evening; and for the greater portion of his nightly visit to the George sat, with his glass in his right hand, in a state of melancholy alcoholic saturation. We called him the Doctor, for he was supposed to have some special knowledge of medicine, and had been known, upon a pinch, to set a fracture or reduce a dislocation; but beyond these slight particulars, we had no knowledge of his character and antecedents.
One dark winter night–it had struck nine some time before the landlord joined us–there was a sick man in the George, a great neighbouring proprietor suddenly struck down with apoplexy on his way to Parliament; and the great man’s still greater London doctor had been telegraphed to his bedside. It was the first time that such a thing had happened in Debenham, for the railway was but newly open, and we were all proportionately moved by the occurrence.
“He’s come,” said the landlord, after he had filled and lighted his pipe.
“He?” said I. “Who?–not the doctor?”
“Himself,” replied our host.
“What is his name?”
“Dr. Macfarlane,” said the landlord.
Fettes was far through his third tumblers stupidly fuddled, now nodding over, now staring mazily around him; but at the last word he seemed to awaken, and repeated the name “Macfarlane” twice, quietly enough the first time, but with sudden emotion at the second.
“Yes,” said the landlord, “that’s his name, Doctor Wolfe Macfarlane.”
Fettes became instantly sober; his eyes awoke, his voice became clear, loud, and steady, his language forcible and earnest. We were all startled by the transformation, as if a man had risen from the dead.
“I beg your pardon,” he said. “I am afraid I have not been paying much attention to your talk. Who is this Wolfe Macfarlane?” And then, when he had heard the landlord out, “It cannot be, it cannot be,” he added; “and yet I would like well to see him face to face.”
“Do you know him, Doctor?” asked the undertaker, with a gasp.
“God forbid!” was the reply. “And yet the name is a strange one; it were too much to fancy two. Tell me, landlord, is he old?”
“Well,” said the host, “he’s not a young man, to be sure, and his hair is white; but he looks younger than you.”
“He is older, though; years older. But,” with a slap upon the table, “it’s the rum you see in my face–rum and sin. This man, perhaps, may have an easy conscience and a good digestion. Conscience! Hear me speak. You would think I was some good, old, decent Christian, would you not? But no, not I; I never canted. Voltaire might have canted if he’d stood in my shoes; but the brains”–with a rattling fillip on his bald head–“the brains were clear and active, and I saw and made no deductions.”
“If you know this doctor,” I ventured to remark, after a somewhat awful pause, “I should gather that you do not share the landlord’s good opinion.”
Fettes paid no regard to me.
“Yes,” he said, with sudden decision, “I must see him face to face.”
There was another pause, and then a door was closed rather sharply on the first floor, and a step was heard upon the stair.
“That’s the doctor,” cried the landlord. “Look sharp, and you can catch him.”
It was but two steps from the small parlour to the door of the old George Inn; the wide oak staircase landed almost in the street; there was room for a Turkey rug and nothing more between the threshold and the last round of the descent; but this little space was every evening brilliantly lit up, not only by the light upon the stair and the great signal-lamp below the sign, but by the warm radiance of the barroom window. The George thus brightly advertised itself to passers-by in the cold street. Fettes walked steadily to the spot, and we, who were hanging behind, beheld the two men meet, as one of them had phrased it, face to face. Dr. Macfarlane was alert and vigorous. His white hair set off his pale and placid, although energetic, countenance. He was richly dressed in the finest of broadcloth and the whitest of linen, with a great gold watch-chain, and studs and spectacles of the same precious material. He wore a broad-folded tie, white and speckled with lilac, and he carried on his arm a comfortable driving-coat of fur. There was no doubt but he became his years, breathing, as he did, of wealth and consideration; and it was a surprising contrast to see our parlour sot–bald, dirty, pimpled, and robed in his old camlet cloak–confront him at the bottom of the stairs.
“Macfarlane!” he said somewhat loudly, more like a herald than a friend.
The great doctor pulled up short on the fourth step, as though the familiarity of the address surprised and somewhat shocked his dignity.
“Toddy Macfarlane!” repeated Fettes.
The London man almost staggered. He stared for the swiftest of seconds at the man before him, glanced behind him with a sort of scare, and then in a startled whisper “Fettes!” he said, “you!”
“Ay,” said the other, “me! Did you think I was dead too? We are not so easy shut of our acquaintance.”
“Hush, hush!” exclaimed the doctor. “Hush, hush! this meeting is so unexpected–I can see you are unmanned I hardly knew you, I confess, at first; but I am overjoyed–overjoyed to have this opportunity. For the present it must be how-d’ye-do and good-by in one, for my fly is waiting, and I must not fail the train; but you shall–let me see–yes–you shall give me your address, and you can count on early news of me. We must do something for you, Fettes. I fear you are out at elbows; but we must see to that for auld lang syne, as once we sang at suppers.”
“Money!” cried Fettes; “money from you! The money that I had from you is lying where I cast it in the rain.”
Dr. Macfarlane had talked himself into some measure of superiority and confidence, but the uncommon energy of this refusal cast him back into his first confusion.
A horrible, ugly look came and went across his almost venerable countenance. “My dear fellow,” he said, “be it as you please; my last thought is to offend you. I would intrude on none. I will leave you my address however—-”
“I do not wish it–I do not wish to know the roof that shelters you,” interrupted the other. “I heard your name; I feared it might be you; I wished to know if, after all, there were a God; I know now that there is none. Begone!”
He still stood in the middle of the rug, between the stair and doorway; and the great London physician, in order to escape, would be forced to step to one side. It was plain that he hesitated before the thought of this humiliation. White as he was, there was a dangerous glitter in his spectacles; but while he still paused uncertain, he became aware that the driver of his fly was peering in from the street at this unusual scene, and caught a glimpse at the same time of our little body from the parlour, huddled by the corner of the bar. The presence of so many witnesses decided him at once to flee. He crouched together, brushing on the wainscot, and made a dart like a serpent, striking for the door. But his tribulation was not yet entirely at an end, for even as he was passing Fettes clutched him by the arm and these words came in a whisper, and yet painfully distinct, “Have you seen it again?”
The great rich London doctor cried out aloud with a sharp, throttling cry; he dashed his questioner across the open space, and, with his hands over his head, fled out of the door like a detected thief. Before it had occurred to one of us to make a movement the fly was already rattling toward the station. The scene was over like a dream, but the dream had left proofs and traces of its passage. Next day the servant found the fine gold spectacles broken on the threshold, and that very night we were all standing breathless by the barroom window, and Fettes at our side, sober, pale and resolute in look.
“God protect us, Mr. Fettes!” said the landlord, coming first into possession of his customary senses. “What in the universe is all this? These are strange things you have been saying.”
Fettes turned toward us; he looked us each in succession in the face. “See if you can hold your tongues,” said he. “That man Macfarlane is not safe to cross; those that have done so already have repented it too late.”
And then, without so much as finishing his third glass, far less waiting for the other two, he bade us good-by and went forth, under the lamp of the hotel, into the black night.
We three turned to our places in the parlour, with the big red fire and four clear candles; and as we recapitulated what had passed the first chill of our surprise soon changed into a glow of curiosity. We sat late; it was the latest session I have known in the old George. Each man, before we parted, had his theory that he was bound to prove; and none of us had any nearer business in this world than to track out the past of our condemned companion, and surprise the secret that he shared with the great London doctor. It is no great boast, but I believe I was a better hand at worming out a story than either of my fellows at the George; and perhaps there is now no other man alive who could narrate to you the following foul and unnatural events.
Story continues after the break:
Moderate in the Middle 