Famous Modern Ghost Stories

sleep and announced that the porridge was cooked and there was just tim

islands out in midstream have disappeared

eft?" I ask

-morrow in a dead heat," he laughed, "b

ent. The water was icy, and the banks flew by like the country from an express train. Bathing under such conditions was an exhilarating operation, and the terror of the night s

leave posthaste, and had changed his mind. "Enough to last till to-morrow"-he assumed we should stay on the island a

ve to find the channel in flood. But the state of his mind interested and impressed me far more than the state of the river or the difficulties of the steamers. He had changed somehow since the evening before. His manner was different-

tted to smoke his pipe. He had the map spread

opening that must bring him indirectly to a partial confession at any r

nts?" I asked quickly, wi

he replied, keeping his eyes on the map. "The gods

rally as I could manage, yet knowing quite well that my face reflected my

e if we get away with

the direct question. It was like agreeing to allow the dentist to extract the

ster! Why, wh

teering paddle's gon

xcited, for this was our rudder, and the Danube i

of the canoe," he added, with a

a freezing atmosphere descending round us. I got up to follow him, for he merely nodded his head gravely and led the way towards the tent a few yards on the other

ooping to pick it up. "And here

oticed two paddles a few hours before, but a second impulse mad

her length, and investigation showed that the hole went through. Had we launched out in her without observing it we must inevitably have foundered. At first the water would have made the wo

" I heard him saying, more to himself than to me, "two victims rat

hen utterly nonplused-and purposely paid no attention

resently, straightening up from his exa

ng, of course," I stopped whistling

et my eye squarely. I knew just as well as he did how imposs

oo," he added quietly, handing me t

s scraped down all over, beautifully scraped, as though someone had sand-papered it with ca

d feebly, "or-or it has been filed by the constant stream

g away, laughing a little, "

k that it fell in with the next lump that crumbled," I called out after him

his head to look at me before di

w impossible it was to suppose, under all the circumstances, that either of us had done it. That my companion, the trusted friend of a dozen similar expeditions, could have knowingly had a hand in it, was

curious alteration had come about in his mind-that he was nervous, timid, suspicious, aware of goings on he did not speak about, watching a series of secret and hith

rs, just as it was for lifting the paddle and tossing it towards the water. The rent in the canoe was the only thing that seemed quite inexplicable; and, after all, it was conceivable that a sharp point had caught it when we landed. The examination I made of the shore did not assist this theory, but all the same I clung to it with that diminishin

ugh under the best conditions in the world the canoe could not be safe for travelin

re all over the island. But yo

tched those little whirlwinds in the street that twist and twirl eve

ring into the bushes, and up into the sky, and out across the water where it was visible through the openings among the willows. Sometimes he even put his hand to his ear and held it there for several minutes. He said nothing to me, however, about it, and I asked no questions. And meanwhile, as he mended

a long pause, h

as though he wanted to say something and get it over

y different that he caught me with

s place is. Otters ar

interrupted. "I mean-do you think-d

the name of Hea

u did, and at first it seemed

d upstream magnified it,

oment, as though his mind we

nary yellow eyes," he

ifle boisterously. "I suppose you'll wo

e expression of his face made me halt. The subject dropped, and we went on with our caulking. Apparently he had not noticed my unfinis

thing in the boat was. I remember thinking at the time it was not a m

e, but this time there was impatience a

ngs! That boat was an ordinary boat, and the man in it was an ordinary man, and they were both going do

rave expression. He was not in the least

hear things, because it only gives me the jumps, and there's no

t as well as I do!" he sneered with scorn in his voice, and a sort of resignation. "The best thing you can do is to keep quiet and try

f it, to be thus proved less psychic, less sensitive than himself to these extraordinary happenings, and half ignorant all the time of what was going on under my very nose. He knew from the very beginning, apparently. But at the moment I who

"and that is that we're wiser not to talk about it, or even to think about it,

our shores sometimes, and we fished for them with long willow branches. The island grew perceptibly smaller as the banks were torn away with great gulps and splashes. The weather kept brilli

booming of the river had everything its own way then: it filled the air with deep murmurs, more musical than the wind noises, but infinitely more monotonous. The wind held many notes, rising, falling, always beating out some sort of great

to convey the suggestion of something sinister, the change of course was all the more unwelcome and noticeable. For me, I know, the darkening outlook became distinctly more alarming, and I foun

n objects in this way become charged with the suggestion of horror, they stimulate the imagination far more than things of unusual appearance; and these bushes, crowding huddled about us, assumed for me in the darkness a bizarre grotesquerie of appearance that lent to them somehow the aspect of purposeful and living creatures. Their very

ore susceptible than before to the obsessing spell of the haunting. I fought against it, laughing at my feelings as absurd and childish, with very obvious physiological

residue from former stews at the bottom of the pot; with black bread broken up into it the result was most excellent, and it was followed by a stew of plums with sugar and a brew of strong tea with dried milk. A good pile of wood lay close at hand, and the absence of wind made my duties easy. My companion sat lazily watching me, dividing his attentions between cleaning his pipe and giving useless advice-

is voice calling to me from the bank, where he

hat you make of it." He held his hand

thing?" he asked, wa

liar sound-something like the humming of a distant gong. It seemed to come across to us in the darkness from the waste of swamps and willows opposite. It was repeated at regular intervals, but it was certainly neither the sound of a bell nor the hooti

er get near enough to see-to localize it correctly. Sometimes it was overhead, and sometimes it seemed under the water. Once or twice, to

of, but without success. It changed in direction, too, coming nearer, and then sinking utterly away into remote distance. I cannot say that it was omi

d, determined to find an explanation, "or the b

It comes from everywhere at once." He ignored my expl

bjected "The willows can hardly mak

se I had dreaded it, and secondly, be

we now hear it. It was drowned befor

le, to avoid the exchanging of views. I dreaded, too, that he would begin again about the gods, or the elemental forces, or something else disquieting, and I wanted to keep myself

igorously stirring the appetizing mixture. That stew-po

tree, fumbling in its mysterious depths, and then empty

I cried; "it

er that startled me. It was forced laught

ere!" he shouted,

d, I

e is no bread. T

rything the sack had contained lay upon

und of my own laughter also made me understand his. The strain of psychical pressure caused it-this explosion of unnatural laughter in bot

an explanation. "I clean forgot to buy a loaf at Pressburg. That chattering woman

less than it was this morni

he draw attention to

orously, "and we can get lots more at Komorn or Gran

the sacrifice," he added with a foolish laugh. He dragged the sack into the tent, for safety's sake, I suppose, a

distressed me far more than if I had been able to ticket and face it squarely. The curious sound I have likened to the note of a gong became now almost incessant, and filled the stillness of the night with a faint, continuous ringing rather than a series of distinct notes. At one time it was behind and at another time in front of us. Sometimes I fancied it came from the bushes on our l

shine, moreover, now came to haunt me with their foolish and wholly unsatisfactory nature, and it was more and more clear to me that some kind of plain talk with my companion was inevitable, whether I liked it or not. After all, we had to spend the night together, and to sleep in the same te

convincing-from a totally different point of view. He composed such curious sentences, and hurled them at me in such an inconsequential sort of way, as though his main line of t

tegration, destruction, our destruction," he said once, while the f

er, ringing much louder than before, and directly ov

he ears at all. The vibrations reach me in another manner altogether, and seem to be within

into the darkness. The clouds were massed all over the sky and no trace of moonlight came throug

mmon experience. It is unknown. Only one thing describes it rea

mirably expressed my own feeling that it was a relief to have the thought out, and to hav

unts of men. I would have given my soul, as the saying is, for the "feel" of those Bavarian villages we had passed through by the score; for the normal, human commonplace

et of conditions where the risks were great, yet unintelligible to us; where the frontiers of some unknown world lay close about us. It was a spot held by the dwellers in some outer space, a sort of peephole whence they could spy upon the earth, themselves unseen, a point where the ve

ting them with the horror of a deliberate and malefic purpose, resentful of our audacious intrusion into their breeding-place; whereas my friend threw it into the unoriginal form at first of a tresp

d aggressive. Never, before or since, have I been so attacked by indescribable suggestions of a "beyond region," of another scheme of life, another evolution no

the otter rolling in the current, the hurrying boatman making signs, the shifting willows, one and all had been robbed of its natural character, and revealed in something of its other aspect-as it existed across the border in that othe

Swede said suddenly, as if he had been actually following my thoughts. "Otherwise

all that once?" I i

nswered dryly; "

tened soul against the knowledge that he was being attacked in a vital part, and that he would be somehow taken or destroyed. The situation called for a courage and calmness of reasoning that neither of u

up very close to our faces. A few feet beyond the circle of firelight it was inky black. Occasionally a stray puff of wind set the billows shivering about us,

hink, the shouting

the point where it was absolutely necessary to find relief in plain speech, or else to betray myself by some hysterical extravagance that must

, and the awful feelings I get. There's something here that beats me utterly. I'm in a blue funk, an

and answered quietly, but his voice betrayed his huge excitement by its unnatural calmness. For

ave disease; "we must sit tight and wait. There are forces close here that could kill a herd of elephants in a second as e

und no words. It was precisely like listening to an accura

on. "They're blundering about like men hunting for a leak of gas. The paddle and canoe and provisions prove that. I think they feel us,

mmered, icy with the ho

ust because the body's gone. But this means a radical alteration, a complete change, a horrible loss of oneself by substitution-far worse than death, and not even annihilation. We happen to have camp

are aware

he humming overhead, everything except that I was waiting f

little over the fire, an indefinable change in his face t

go on unceasingly, where immense and terrible personalities hurry by, intent on vast purposes compared to which earthly affairs, the rise and fall of nations, the destinies of empir

ling as though I was face to face with a madman. But he

would be comprehensible entities, for they have relations with men, depending upon them for worship or sacrifice, whereas these beings who ar

stened to them there in the dark stillness of that lonely island, set me

you propose?"

get away," he went on, "just as the wolves stop to devour the dogs and gi

gleam in his eyes was dread

t, lost utterly." He looked at me with an expression so calm, so determined, so sincere, that I no longer had any doubts as to his sanity. He was

y think a sacr

ver our heads as I spoke, but it was my frien

n help. Do not refer to them by name. To name is to reveal: it is the inevitable

" He was extraord

spirals in their world. We must keep them

verything its own way. I never longed for the sun as I lon

ll last night?" h

vely, trying to follow his instructions, which I kne

ind won't account

u heard

ps I heard," he said, adding, after a mom

the pressing down upon us of s

d signif

ning of a sort of inne

of the atmosphere had been altered-had incre

nting upwards where the gong-like note hummed ceaselessly

thin that it leaks through somehow. But, if you listen carefully, you'll find it's not above so much as around us. It's in the

is than his. It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him at last about my hallucination of the ascending figures and the moving bushes, when he suddenly thrust his face again close into mine acros

bits, go to bed, and so forth; pretend we feel nothing and notice nothing. It is a question wholly of the mind, and

eness of it all; "all right, I'll try, but tell me one thing more first. Tell me

t, put the thought into words. If you have not guessed I am glad. Don't try to. They

im to explain. There was already just about as much horror in me as I could ho

iculty the man had in fitting me, and other details of the uninteresting but practical operation. At once, in its train, followed a wholesome view of the modern skeptical world I was accustomed to move in at home. I thought of roast beef and ale, motor-cars, policemen, brass bands, and a dozen other things that proclaimed the soul of ordinariness or utility. The effect was immediate and astonishi

ng aloud in his face. "You imaginative

y voice as something sacrilegious. The Swede, of course, heard it too-that strange cry ov

n. He stood bolt upright in front of t

c way, "we must go! We can't stay now; we must stri

dictated by abject terror-the terror he had res

on better than he did. "Sheer madness! The river's in flood, and we've only got a single paddle. Besides,

ic changes nature loves, were suddenly reversed, and the control of our forces passed ove

a thing?" he whispered, with the awe o

both his hands in mine, kneeling down beside h

ight. At sunrise we'll be off full speed for Komorn. Now, pull yourself

ursion into the darkness for more wood. We kept close together, almost touching, groping among the bushes and along the bank. Th

ght high among the branches, when my body was seized in a grip that made me half drop upon the sand. It was the Swe

t was to hear tears of terror in a human voice. He was pointing to the fire, some fifty

the dim glow, som

e strange impression of being as large as several animals grouped together, like horses, two or three, moving slowly. The Swede, too, got a similar result, though expressing it differen

sobbed at me. "Look, by God! It's coming this way! Oh,

de on the top of me we fell in a struggling heap upon the sand. I really hardly knew what was happening. I was conscious only of a sort of enveloping sensation of icy fear that plucked the nerves out of their fleshly covering, twisted them this way and t

that the Swede had hold of me in such a way that he hurt

very instant when they were about to find me. It concealed my mind from them at the moment of discovery, yet just in time

he slippery network of willow branches, and saw my companion standing in front of me holding out a hand to assi

o," I heard him say. "That's what saved

id, uttering my only connected thought

managed to set them off on a false tack somewhere. The h

laughter that brought a tremendous sense of relief in their train. We made our way back to the fire and put the wo

e process tripped more than on

tent was up again and the firelight lit up the ground f

aped hollows in the sand, exactly similar to the ones we had already found over the island, only far bigg

ther delay, having first thrown sand on the fire and taken the provision sack and the paddle inside the tent with us. The canoe

again went to bed in our clo