THE DEMONS OF THE DARK
True to his promise, Deeming did not reappear, nor was there any
subsequent manifestation that seemed referable to him. To what new
plane he had "gone on," and whether to one higher or lower, we could
only guess; the door that had closed upon his exit had evidently shut
in forever (as had been our experience in certain other like cases)
a mystery to which, for a moment, we had almost felt we were about
to hold the key. Of the problem of the future life we had a hint of
the terms of the solution, but the answer vanished before we could
set it down below the ordered figures of the sum. Such, I believe,
has been, is, and will be the constant fortune of all who venture far
into the _penetralia_ of the unseen. Now and then there seems to be an
illumination--but it is not the radiance of discovered truth:--it is
the lightning flash that warns away the profane intruder, and if defied
it blasts him in body or in mind.
It was because of this conviction that my wife and I, although having
experience during many years of incomprehensible occurrences whose
narration, should I set it down, would fill many books like this,
steadfastly refrained from allowing ourselves to assume a mental
attitude that might, so to speak, encourage them. Far from finding
the influences (whatever they were--and on this point we were careful
to make no inquiry, and never formulated any theory) reluctant to
invitation to display themselves, we were at times compelled to offer
strenuous opposition to their approach:--even a passive receptivity to
strange phenomena was not free from peril, and our previous knowledge
of the unbalancing of more than one inquiring mind that had pursued the
subject of the occult with too great a temerity had convinced us that
"that way danger lies"--and a very grave danger, too.
To that danger we ourselves, as I believe, finally came to be exposed
in our life in the House on the Hill:--not because we were lured to
seek out the origin and nature of the forces about us, and thus gave
ourselves up to their influence, but because the more or less constant
exercise of that influence could not fail to have that effect, in spite
of ourselves:--and it is to show how, as it seemed, and why, this
effect--at first unsuspected--grew toward its sinister culmination,
that I undertake the writing of this final chapter.
* * * * *
Meantime, I may say that the incidents attending the two spectral
appearances that I have recorded, gave us occasion for much curious
speculation, in which there was a certain relief in indulging
ourselves. The garments from the wardrobe of the hangman; was the
murderer doomed to go through all Eternity in this hideous attire?
The offered sale of soap; is the occupation of "drummer" or "bagman"
practiced beyond the Styx, and for what ghostly manufacturers are
orders solicited? Was the soap a sample? Was it for the toilette or
the laundry? What was its price per cake, and was there any discount
by the box? Then the shade's appeal for "Christian charity," and the
acceptance of it in the tangible form of coin of the realm! The money
was returned again, but had it meanwhile been entered in some misty
ledger to the credit of its temporary bearer? If deposits are made, and
balance-sheets issued in the Dark World, then might Deeming's account
seem to be heavily overdrawn. Dealing in phantom money, and liquidating
of shadowy notes-of-hand!--do we carry with us into the Beyond not
only our characters and personalities (as some believe) but also our
occupations and ways of doing business? If Deeming's discarnated action
was thus to be explained, he must have been in Hell, indeed!
Reflections such as these may strike the reader as flippant, but
they were among the natural results of the circumstances. There was
something so personal and intimate in these mid-day visits of the
apparition, it was itself so seemingly tangible and even human, and
in its expressions of thought and manifestations of emotion seemed to
have experienced so slight an essential change from the conditions
with which the living man had been acquainted, that there was little
to excite horror in the event, after all. If the phantom had imparted
to us no information, it had at least given us a hint that there was
progress in the realms of the hereafter, and had awakened a vague
belief that at the end of all there might be pardon. This suggestion
was tenuous and elusive; but it was afforded, nevertheless, and I still
cling to the hope that it inspired.
* * * * *
In writing this strange chronicle I have not attempted to set down all
our experiences in that house of mystery, but only such as have seemed
to me unusual, or representative of the manifestations as a whole.
There were certain other phenomena so vague and evasive that I am
unable to find words whereby to describe their nature or to convey the
impression they caused:--all that I can say of them is that they seemed
to invite us to an inquiry into some secret which the house contained,
and to beckon to the success of such an investigation. We often
discussed this apparent suggestion, but never acted upon it:--chiefly
because, as I think, we were not at all sure it was not of subjective,
rather than objective, origin--the natural result of the mental ferment
which such a protracted series of weird happenings might be expected
to cause. Moreover, as everything that had so far occurred had been
without any conscious encouragement on our part, we felt some fear
(as I have intimated above) of what might befall us if we endeavored
to place ourselves completely _en rapport_ with the agencies that
seemed to be at work about us. Therefore we maintained as well as we
could our isolated and non-conductive position, and refrained from all
encouragement to the suggestions that were more and more forcibly borne
in upon us that we should seek an understanding of the meaning of the
things that had so much disturbed us.
Yet I cannot refrain from stating my conviction that the phenomena
which I have endeavored to describe in these pages had their origin,
not in any disturbed or morbid condition of the mind in any of the
three persons who were affected by them, but in some undiscovered cause
local and peculiar to the place of their occurrence. If this were not
the case, it seems singular that manifestations of a like nature did
not present themselves at other times and in other places. Any such
persistent and startling incidents as those that were displayed in the
House on the Hill were, happily, foreign elsewhere both to my wife's
experience and to my own--such other influences as have seemed to come
about us having apparently been unaffected by conditions of period and
locality, and being almost always of a mild and gentle nature.
Whether our tacit refusal to seek a solution of the mystery that had
so long brooded over us had anything to do with the even more serious
and startling events that occurred during the final period of our
residence, I cannot tell. I have often thought so:--at all events this
record would be incomplete without setting them down.
It is not to be denied that the adventures in which we had participated
for nearly a year, came finally to have a serious effect upon us, both
physically and mentally. Our curiosity and interest had long ago become
sated, and of late we had felt the slow but steady growth of something
like apprehension:--an apprehension even more acute than that which
might be inspired by any definite occasion for fear, since it looked
forward to uncertainties for which there seemed to be no definition.
But the days passed slowly by until only two weeks remained before the
expiration of our lease, and, since the incident of the brooch which I
have described, nothing seriously untoward had occurred.
Yet we had lately been conscious that the character of the influence
that had so long possessed our habitation seemed to be undergoing a
change. I cannot describe this change except to say that it took the
form of an ominous quiescence. The elfish entities whose cantrips had
served more to amuse and mystify than to annoy us, seemed suddenly
to have abandoned the premises as if retiring before some superior
approach, and the wraiths of the women and the child were no more seen
or heard about the rooms or in the hall:--instead of these, we vaguely
recognized the presence of a mighty force, which made itself manifest
neither to the eye nor the ear, but was evident through some latent or
inner sense whose function was to apprehend it. I cannot explain how
the impression was conveyed, but we somehow knew that this presence was
malignant and foreboded harm; and a disturbing uneasiness grew upon us
rather than diminished as time elapsed, and everything remained upon
the surface serene and calm.
While the familiar occurrences to which we had been accustomed never
lost their sense of strangeness, the present cessation of them seemed
more uncanny still; we had an uneasy and growing sense of something
serious being about to happen, and often expressed to each other our
common feeling of alarm. The circumstance that disquieted us most was
that, whereas nearly all the events in which we had shared hitherto had
taken place by day, this new obsession was felt chiefly at night:--it
seemed to enwrap the house in an equal degree with the gathering
darkness, and each evening at sundown we lighted every gas-jet, and sat
or moved about together under the influence of an urgent craving for
companionship. We were like spectators sitting in a theatre between
two acts of a compelling performance; behind the lowered curtain a
situation was preparing whose nature we could not guess; we apprehended
rather than perceived that the stage was being reset, the scenery
shifted, a new development provided for--and we feared beyond measure
to see the curtain lift again, as we felt assured it would.
The climax came at last, and in a sudden and awful manner. Our nameless
apprehension had caused us, of late, to spend as many evenings as
possible abroad--visiting friends and acquaintances, or attending
entertainments in the city. Returning late one night from the theatre,
our friend and I went into the dining-room, while my wife retired to
her chamber to prepare for bed. We had been chatting a few moments when
we heard a piercing shriek from my wife's room; and rushing in we were
horrified to see her standing close against the wall, her face white
and drawn with terror, apparently striving to free herself from some
being that held her firmly in its clutches. Her aspect was so unearthly
that we stood for a moment literally frozen on the threshold:--then
she seemed to be lifted up bodily and thrown across the bed, where she
lay with eyes protruding, and hands frantically tearing at her throat
as if trying to free herself from some powerful grip that was choking
her. We rushed to her and raised her to a sitting position, but she was
torn from us again and again, and from the gasping and throttled sounds
that came from her throat we felt that she was dying. We cried out
in incoherent frenzy to her unseen tormentors to be gone, and struck
wildly at the air as if there were about her palpable objects of our
blows. This dreadful struggle lasted for several minutes; at times we
apparently prevailed, again we were overwhelmed:--finally the influence
seemed to pass, and I laid her back upon the pillows, still panting and
trembling but no longer suffocating, as she whispered: "Thank God, they
have gone!"
This experience had been so frightful, and so foreign to all others
that had befallen us, that I found myself reluctant to refer it to
unnatural agencies, and tried to explain it as a fit of some kind by
which my wife had been attacked--although I knew that she had never had
such a seizure in all her life, and was in perfect physical and mental
health. Moreover, when she soon complained of her throat hurting her, I
looked more closely, and with amazement saw upon both sides of her neck
the marks that no one could have mistaken as other than those left by
the fingers of a pair of powerful hands!
At this sight the little courage that remained to me abandoned me
entirely, and I could see that our friend was equally unmanned. "We
must leave this house!" we exclaimed in the same breath:--and as we
spoke my wife cried out: "Oh! they are here again!" and at once the
ghastly combat was renewed.
This time our friend and I made no effort to fight against the
demons--if such they were; we seized the half-conscious woman in our
arms, and partly carried, partly dragged her out of the house. The
Possession seemed to leave her at the door, and the fresh air soon
revived her. But there was no going back for any of us that night. It
was late summer, and the air was warm:--so, bareheaded, and with my
wife guarded between her two male protectors, we walked the deserted
streets until the rising of the sun gave us courage to return home.
I shall not forget those hours of midnight and early morning:--the
serene and amethyst-colored Australian sky strewn with star-dust
and set with twinkling constellations, and the dark earth about
us--across which, as from time to time we approached the house from
which we had been expelled, the light from its windows and from its
open door gleamed balefully. All was silent within, but we feared the
lurking presence and dared not enter, and after one or two returns
remained only within view of it until daybreak was well advanced.
Our conversation throughout the vigil need not be recorded, but the
reader may guess its import:--the awful experience through which we
had passed had brought powerfully to our minds the thought of Deeming
in the feature of the throttling hands, since in all his murders there
was evidence upon the throats of his victims that strangulation had
preceded the operation of the knife. But my wife opposed this grisly
suggestion:--it was not the shade of the murderer, she affirmed,
that had attacked her, although she could give no description of her
assailants--they were dark, formless shapes--resembling neither man nor
beast; things more felt than seen, even to her.
Yet in spite of this assurance, when I re-entered the house and saw
in its usual place above my writing table the plaster mould which I
had carried from the murderer's cell in the Melbourne jail, I recalled
with a new appreciation of their appositeness the words of the worthy
governor.
Whatever the influence was that had appalled us, we had not sufficient
courage to oppose it, and so hastened our preparations for departure
that we finally quitted the house a week before our lease expired;
and within a month saw the shores of Australia fade behind us as our
steamer turned its prow toward Aden, Suez, and Marseilles. There was
one recurrence of the phenomenon I have just described during the last
few nights of our possession, but we evaded it by taking to the street
again, and again passing the night therein.
It was on a sunny morning in early March--the month answering in
the inverted seasons of the Antipodes to September of northern
latitudes--that we turned the key that locked us out for the last time
from that house of shadows. As we reached the street we turned with
one accord to look back upon it:--how inviting it appeared in the
brilliant sunshine, amid its attractive surroundings of grassy lawn
set with shrubs in flower, its smiling orchard and garden! We looked
into one another's faces, and each saw therein the reflection of his
own thoughts:--there was the relief such as they feel who awake from an
oppressive dream; yet the place had been our home!
THE END
FOOTNOTES:
[1] This is in accordance with the terms of the English law in capital
cases:--whereby a condemned prisoner is allowed two Sundays to live
after the pronouncement of his sentence, and is executed on the morning
following the second. Thus Deeming had the longest respite possible
under the statute--twenty days. The shortest lease of life (fifteen
days) would be allowed to a prisoner who had been sentenced on Saturday.
[2] This was the murderer's real name, as disclosed by investigations
in England among relatives and acquaintances living there. His
execution was, as the warrant for it recited, "upon the body of Albert
Williams," this being the _alias_ under which he came to Australia, as
described later.
[3] This activity in building (which is still seen in concrete form
in the palatial Parliament Buildings and other costly structures of
Melbourne) was largely inspired by the published calculations of an
enthusiastic statistician on the future growth of the Colonies:--which
were, in effect, that by 1951 their population would be thirty-two
millions, and by 2001, one hundred and eighty-nine millions!--some
eighty per cent in excess of that of the United States at present. It
speaks loudly for Australian enterprise that these Windsor builders,
as well as many others, took such prompt measures to provide for this
increase.
[4] This woman (_née_ Emily Lydia Mather) was the daughter of John
and Dove Mather, respected residents of Rainhill, a small town near
Liverpool, England. To this town came Deeming, under his _alias_ of
"Williams," representing himself as an officer in the Indian army who
had been sent to England to purchase supplies therefor. This claim he
strengthened by occasionally appearing in a resplendent uniform--which
seems to have been of his own invention--and reciting his many exploits
"in the imminent deadly breach;" confirming also his free assertions
of the possession of large wealth of his own by liberal expenditures
in all directions. No such splendid personage had ever before been
seen in quiet Rainhill, and the whole town succumbed to the glamor
of it--including Miss Mather and her parents, whose acquaintance the
fascinating officer somehow made, and followed up by a respectful but
ardent courtship of the daughter. An engagement between the pair was
soon announced and a valuable diamond ring, as well as other gifts of
jewelry and rich attire, was bestowed by the prospective bridegroom
upon the bride-to-be:--and although the celebration of the wedding was
announced for so early a date as to cause some unfavorable gossip, the
fact was condoned in view of the military necessity of a speedy return
to India.
At this point Williams--to use the name by which he was then
known--encountered what to any less bold and unscrupulous villain would
have been a decided check:--this in the form of a letter from his then
living legal wife, whom, with his four children by her, he had some
time before deserted, and who--in some manner unknown--had now traced
him to Rainhill. This letter, it is believed, announced her intention
of descending upon him:--at any rate, with characteristic audacity, he
gave out the information that his _sister_ and her children were coming
to live in Rainhill, and that he had received a letter asking him to
rent a house for them. He secured a house accordingly; but expressed
dissatisfaction with the somewhat worn wooden floor of the kitchen--and
as the owner demurred to undertake the expense of a cement floor,
Williams said he knew about such things, and would do the job himself,
and ordered the necessary materials and tools. When, and by what means,
the woman and children arrived in Rainhill, seems to be somewhat of a
mystery:--that they _did_ arrive is shown by the fact that after the
Windsor murder had come to light, and the identity of the victim was
discovered by a curious chain of circumstances too long to find place
in this narrative, the skilfully-laid cement floor with which the old
wooden floor had been replaced was torn up, and the half-decapitated
bodies of the five were found embedded in it. Those who are curious in
such matters may see this tragedy depicted at Madame Toussaud's, London.
[5] This detail--of a murderer carrying about with him a canary as a
companion--is effectively employed by the late Frank Norris in his
California novel, "McTeague." As that story was published in 1903,
eleven years after the execution of Deeming,--he, like McTeague, a
wife-murderer,--the source of Norris' idea would seem obvious.
[6] I had good personal reasons for discrediting any rumor that Deeming
had made confession, for the reason that, with the sanction of the
authorities in his case, and assisted by his own counsel, I had made
every effort to secure it myself--and had failed. When the matter
was suggested to Deeming, and he was assured that the money that was
offered to him for his memoirs would be paid to Miss Rounsfell as some
slight recognition of the wrong he had done her, he eagerly assented;
and being supplied with pens (quill--for not the least article in
steel was allowed him) he went to work, and in a few days had turned
out a large amount of manuscript. Examination of it, however, was
disappointing. It began encouragingly, and there were lucid passages
in it; but as a whole it was utterly incoherent--and to those who had
dispassionately studied the man, an undoubted proof of his insanity.
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:
--Obvious print and punctuation errors were corrected.
End of Project Gutenberg's True Tales of the Weird, by Sidney Dickinson