Mary. There was nothing wrong with the house, of course, but I am
a bit psychic, and I always know the mood or character of a house.
One welcomes you with the tail-writhing enthusiasm of a really nice
dog, makes you at home, and at your ease at once. Others are sullen,
watchful, hostile, with things to hide. They make you feel that you
have obtruded yourself into some curious affairs which are none of your
business. I had never encountered so hostile, aloof, and secretive a
living place as the Red Lodge seemed when I first entered it. Well,
it couldn’t be helped, though it was disappointing; and there was Tim
coming back from his walk, and the luncheon gong. My son seemed a
little subdued and thoughtful, though he looked pretty well, and soon
we were all chattering away with those quick changes of key which occur
when the respective ages of the conversationalists are 40, 33 and 6½,
and after half a bottle of Meursault and a glass of port I began to
think I had been a morbid ass. I was still so thinking when I began my
holiday in the best possible way by going to sleep in an exquisitely
comfortable chair under the mulberry tree. But I have slept better. I
dozed off, but I had a silly impression of being watched, so that I
kept waking up in case there might be someone with his eye on me. I was
lying back, and could just see a window on the second floor framed by a
gap in the leaves, and on one occasion, when I woke rather sharply from
one of these dozes, I thought I saw for a moment a face peering down
at me, and this face seemed curiously flattened against the pane--just
a “carry over” from a dream, I concluded. However, I didn’t feel like
sleeping any more, and began to explore the garden. It was completely
walled in, I found, except at the far end, where there was a door
leading through to a path which, running parallel to the right-hand
wall, led to the river a few yards away. I noticed on this door
several of those patches of green slime for which Tim was supposedly
responsible. It was a dark little corner cut off from the rest of the
garden by two rowan trees, a cool, silent little place I thought it.
And then it was time for Tim’s cricket lesson, which was interrupted
by the arrival of some infernal callers. But they were pleasant people,
as a matter of fact, the Local Knuts, I gathered, who owned the Manor
House; Sir William Prowse and his lady and his daughter. I went for a
walk with him after tea.
“Who had this house before us?” I asked.
“People called Hawker,” he replied. “That was two years ago.”
“I wonder the owner doesn’t live in it,” I said. “It isn’t an expensive
place to keep up.”
Sir William paused as if considering his reply.
“I think he dislikes being so near the river. I’m not sorry, for I
detest the fellow. By the way, how long have you taken it for?”
“Three months,” I replied, “till the end of October.”
“Well, if I can do anything for you I shall be delighted. If you are
in any trouble, come straight to me.” He slightly emphasised the last
sentence.
I rather wondered what sort of trouble Sir William envisaged for me.
Probably he shared the general opinion that artists were quite mad at
times, and that when I had one of my lapses I should destroy the peace
in some manner. However, I was duly grateful.
I was sorry to find Tim didn’t seem to like the river; he appeared
nervous of it, and I determined to help him to overcome this, for the
fewer terrors one carries through life with one the better, and they
can often be laid by delicate treatment in childhood. Curiously enough
the year before at Frinton he seemed to have no fear of the sea.
The rest of the day passed uneventfully--at least I think I can say so.
After dinner I strolled down to the end of the garden, meaning to go
through the door and have a look at the river. Just as I got my hand
on the latch there came a very sharp, furtive whistle. I turned round
quickly, but seeing no one, concluded it had come from someone in the
lane outside. However, I didn’t investigate further, but went back to
the house.
I woke up the next morning feeling a shade depressed. My dressing-room
smelled stale and bitter, and I flung its windows open. As I did so I
felt my right foot slip on something. It was one of those small, slimy,
green patches. Now Tim would never come into my dressing-room. An
annoying little puzzle. How on earth had that patch----? Which question
kept forcing its way into my mind as I dressed. How could a patch
of green slime...? How could a patch of green slime...? Dropped from
something? From what? I am very fond of my wife--she slaved for me when
I was poor, and always has kept me happy, comfortable and faithful, and
she gave me my small son Timothy. I must stand between her and patches
of green slime! What in hell’s name was I talking about? And it was a
flamingly fine day. Yet all during breakfast my mind was trying to find
some sufficient reason for these funny little patches of green slime,
and not finding it.
After breakfast I told Tim I would take him out in a boat on the river.
“Must I, Daddy?” he asked, looking anxiously at me.
“No, of course not,” I replied, a trifle irritably, “but I believe
you’ll enjoy it.”
“Should I be a funk if I didn’t come?”
“No, Tim, but I think you should try it once, anyway.”
“All right,” he said.
He’s a plucky little chap, and did his very best to pretend to be
enjoying himself, but I saw it was a failure from the start.
Perplexed and upset, I asked his nurse if she knew of any reason for
this sudden fear of water.
“No, sir,” she said. “The first day he ran down to the river just as he
used to run down to the sea, but all of a sudden he started crying and
ran back to the house. It seemed to me he’d seen something in the water
which frightened him.”
We spent the afternoon motoring round the neighbourhood, and already I
found a faint distaste at the idea of returning to the house, and again
I had the impression that we were intruding, and that something had
been going on during our absence which our return had interrupted.
Mary, pleading a headache, went to bed soon after dinner, and I went to
the study to read.
Directly I had shut the door I had again that very unpleasant
sensation of being watched. It made the reading of Sidgwick’s _The
Use of Words in Reasoning_--an old favourite of mine, which requires
concentration--a difficult business. Time after time I found myself
peeping into dark corners and shifting my position. And there were
little sharp sounds; just the oak-panelling cracking, I supposed. After
a time I became more absorbed in the book, and less fidgety, and then
I heard a very soft cough just behind me. I felt little icy rays pour
down and through me, but I would _not_ look round, and I _would_ go
on reading. I had just reached the following passage: “However many
things may be said about Socrates, or about any fact observed, there
remains still more that might be said if the need arose; the need
is the determining factor. Hence the distinction between complete
and incomplete description, though perfectly sharp and clear in the
abstract, can only have a meaning--can only be applied to actual
cases--if it be taken as equivalent to _sufficient_ description, the
sufficiency being relative to some purpose. Evidently the description
of Socrates as a man, scanty though it is, may be fully sufficient
for the purpose of the modest enquiry whether he is _mortal_ or
not”----when my eye was caught by a green patch which suddenly appeared
on the floor beside me, and then another and another, following a
straight line towards the door. I picked up the nearest one, and it was
a bit of soaking slime. I called on all my will-power, for I feared
something worse to come, and it should _not_ materialise--and then no
more patches appeared. I got up and walked deliberately, slowly, to
the door, turned on the light in the middle of the room, and then came
back and turned out the reading lamp and went to my dressing room.
I sat down and thought things over. There was something very wrong
with this house. I had passed the stage of pretending otherwise, and
my inclination was to take my family away from it the next day. But
that meant sacrificing £168, and we had nowhere else to go. It was
conceivable that these phenomena were perceptible only to me, being
half a Highlander. I might be able to stick it out if I were careful
and kept my tail up, for apparitions of this sort are partially
subjective--one brings something of oneself to their materialisation.
That is a hard saying, but I believe it to be true. If Mary and Tim
and the servants were immune it was up to me to face and fight this
nastiness. As I undressed, I came to the decision that I would decide
nothing then and there, and that I would see what happened. I made this
decision against my better judgment, I think.
In bed I tried to thrust all this away from me by a conscious effort to
“change the subject,” as it were. The easiest subject for me to switch
over to is the myriad-sided, useless, consistently abused business of
creating things, stories out of pens and ink and paper, representations
of things and moods out of paint, brushes and canvas, and our own
miseries, perhaps, out of wine, women and song. With a considerable
effort, therefore, and with the edges of my brain anxious to be busy
with bits of green slime, I recalled an article I had read that day on
a glorious word “Jugendbewegung,” the “Youth Movement,” that pregnant
or merely wind-swollen Teutonism! How ponderously it attempted to
canonise with its polysyllabic sonority that inverted Boy-Scoutishness
of the said youths and maidens. “One bad, mad deed--sonnet--scribble of
some kind--lousy daub--a day.” Bunk without spunk, sauce without force,
Futurism without a past, merely a _Transition_ from one yelping pose
to another. And then I suddenly found myself at the end of the garden,
attempting desperately to hide myself behind a rowan tree, while my
eyes were held relentlessly to face the door. And then it began slowly
to open, and something which was horridly unlike anything I had seen
before began passing through it, and I knew It knew I was there, and
then my head seemed burst and flamed asunder, splintered and destroyed,
and I awoke trembling to feel that something in the darkness was poised
an inch or two above me, and then drip, drip, drip, something began
falling on my face. Mary was in the bed next to mine, and I _would not_
scream, but flung the clothes over my head, my eyes streaming with the
tears of terror. And so I remained cowering till I heard the clock
strike five, and dawn, the ally I longed for, came, and the birds
began to sing, and then I slept.
I awoke a wreck, and after breakfast, feeling the need to be alone, I
pretended I wanted to sketch, and went out into the garden. Suddenly I
recalled Sir William’s remark about coming to see him if there was any
trouble. Not much difficulty in guessing what he had meant. I’d go and
see him about it at once. I wished I knew whether Mary was troubled
too. I hesitated to ask her, for, if she were not, she was certain to
become suspicious and uneasy if I questioned her. And then I discovered
that, while my brain had been busy with its thoughts my hand had also
not been idle, but had been occupied in drawing a very singular design
on the sketching block. I watched it as it went automatically on. Was
it a design or a figure of some sort? When had I seen something like
it before? My God, in my dream last night! I tore it to pieces, and
got up in agitation and made my way to the Manor House along a path
through tall, bowing, stippled grasses hissing lightly in the breeze.
My inclination was to run to the station and take the next train to
anywhere; pure undiluted panic--an insufficiently analysed word--that
which causes men to trample on women and children when Death is making
his choice. Of course, I had Mary and Tim and the servants to keep
me from it, but supposing they had no claim on me, should I desert
them? No, I should not. Why? Such things aren’t done by respectable
inhabitants of Great Britain--a people despised and respected by all
other tribes. Despised as Philistines, but it took the jaw-bone of an
ass to subdue that hardy race! Respected for what? Birkenhead stuff.
No, not the noble Lord, for there were no glittering prizes for those
who went down to the bottom of the sea in ships. My mind deliberately
restricting itself to such highly debatable jingoism, I reached the
Manor House, to be told that Sir William was up in London for the day,
but would return that evening. Would he ring me up on his return? “Yes,
sir.” And then, with lagging steps, back to the Red Lodge.
I took Mary for a drive in the car after lunch. Anything to get out
of the beastly place. Tim didn’t come, as he preferred to play in the
garden. In the light of what happened I suppose I shall be criticised
for leaving him alone with a nurse, but at that time I held the theory
that these appearances were in no way malignant, and that it was
more than possible that even if Tim did see anything he wouldn’t be
frightened, not realising it was out of the ordinary in any way. After
all, nothing that I had seen or heard, at any rate during the daytime,
would strike him as unusual.
Mary was very silent, and I was beginning to feel sure, from a certain
depression and oppression in her manner and appearance, that my trouble
was hers. It was on the tip of my tongue to say something, but I
resolved to wait until I had heard what Sir William had to say. It
was a dark, sombre, and brooding afternoon, and my spirits fell as we
turned for home. What a home!
We got back at six, and I had just stopped the engine and helped Mary
out when I heard a scream from the garden. I rushed round, to see Tim,
his hands to his eyes, staggering across the lawn, the nurse running
behind him. And then he screamed again and fell. I carried him into the
house and laid him down on a sofa in the drawing-room, and Mary went to
him. I took the nurse by the arm and out of the room; she was panting
and crying down a face of chalk.
“What happened? What happened?” I asked.
“I don’t know what it was, sir, but we had been walking in the lane,
and had left the door open. Master Tim was a bit ahead of me, and went
through the door first, and then he screamed like that.”
“Did you see anything that could have frightened him?”
“No, sir, nothing.”
I went back to them. It was no good questioning Tim, and there was
nothing coherent to be learnt from his hysterical sobbing. He grew
calmer presently, and was taken up to bed. Suddenly he turned to Mary,
and looked at her with eyes of terror.
“The green monkey won’t get me, will it, Mummy?”
“No, no, it’s all right now,” said Mary, and soon after he went to
sleep, and then she and I went down to the drawing-room. She was on the
border of hysteria herself.
“Oh, Tom, what is the matter with this awful house? I’m _terrified_.
Ever since I’ve been here I’ve been terrified. Do you see things?”
“Yes,” I replied.
“Oh, I wish I’d known. I didn’t want to worry you if you hadn’t. Let
me tell you what it’s been like. On the day we arrived I saw a man
pass ahead of me into my bedroom. Of course, I only _thought_ I had.
And then I’ve heard beastly whisperings, and every time I pass that
turn in the corridor I _know_ there’s someone just round the corner.
And then the day before you arrived I woke suddenly, and something
seemed to force me to go to the window, and I crawled there on hands
and knees and peeped through the blind. It was just light enough to
see. And suddenly I saw someone running down the lawn, his or her hands
outstretched, and there was something ghastly just beside him, and they
disappeared behind the trees at the end. I’m terrified every minute.”
“What about the servants?”
“Nurse hasn’t seen anything, but the others have, I’m certain. And
then there are those slimy patches, I think they’re the vilest of all.
I don’t think Tim has been troubled till now, but I’m sure he’s been
puzzled and uncertain several times.”
“Well,” I said, “it’s pretty obvious we must clear out. I’m seeing Sir
William about it to-morrow, I hope, and I’m certain enough of what
he’ll advise. Meanwhile we must think over where to go. It is a nasty
jar, though; I don’t mean merely the money, though that’s bad enough,
but the fuss--just when I hoped we were going to be so happy and
settled. However, it’s got to be done. We should be mad after a week of
this filth-drenched hole.”
Just then the telephone bell rang. It was a message to say Sir William
would be pleased to see me at half past ten to-morrow.
With the dusk came that sense of being watched, waited for, followed
about, plotted against, an atmosphere of quiet, hunting malignancy. A
thick mist came up from the river, and as I was changing for dinner
I noticed the lights from the windows seemed to project a series
of swiftly changing pictures on its grey, crawling screen. The one
opposite my window, for example, was unpleasantly suggestive of three
figures staring in and seeming to grow nearer and larger. The effect
must have been slightly hypnotic, for suddenly I started back, for it
was as if they were about to close on me. I pulled down the blind and
hurried downstairs. During dinner we decided that unless Sir William
had something very reassuring to say we would go back to London two
days later and stay at a hotel till we could find somewhere to spend
the next six weeks. Just before going to bed we went up to the night
nursery to see if Tim was all right. This room was at the top of a
short flight of stairs. As these stairs were covered with green slime,
and there was a pool of the muck just outside the door, we took him
down to sleep with us.
The Permanent Occupants of the Red Lodge waited till the light was
out, but then I felt them come thronging, slipping in one by one, their
weapon fear. It seemed to me they were massed for the attack. A yard
away my wife was lying with my son in her arms, so I must fight. I lay
back, gripped the sides of the bed and strove with all my might to
hold my assailants back. As the hours went by I felt myself beginning
to get the upper hand, and a sense of exaltation came to me. But an
hour before dawn they made their greatest effort. I knew that they
were willing me to creep on my hands and knees to the window and peep
through the blind, and that if I did so we were doomed. As I set my
teeth and tightened my grip till I felt racked with agony, the sweat
poured from me. I felt them come crowding round the bed and thrusting
their faces into mine, and a voice in my head kept saying insistently,
“You must crawl to the window and look through the blind.” In my mind’s
eye I could see myself crawling stealthily across the floor and pulling
the blind aside, but who would be staring back at me? Just when I felt
my resistance breaking I heard a sweet, sleepy twitter from a tree
outside, and saw the blind touched by a faint suggestion of light, and
at once those with whom I had been struggling left me and went their
way, and, utterly exhausted, I slept.
In the morning I found, somewhat ironically, that Mary had slept better
than on any night since she came down.
Half past ten found me entering the Manor House, a delightful
nondescript old place, which started wagging its tail as soon as I
entered it. Sir William was awaiting me in the library. “I expected
this would happen,” he said gravely, “and now tell me.”
I gave him a short outline of our experiences.
“Yes,” he said, “it’s always much the same story. Every time
that horrible place has been let I have felt a sense of personal
responsibility, and yet I cannot give a proper warning, for the letting
of haunted houses is not yet a criminal offence--though it ought to
be--and I couldn’t afford a libel action, and, as a matter of fact, one
old couple had the house for fifteen years and were perfectly delighted
with it, being troubled in no way. But now let me tell you what I know
of the Red Lodge. I have studied it for forty years, and I regard it as
my personal enemy.
“The local tradition is that the second owner, early in the eighteenth
century, wished to get rid of his wife, and bribed his servants to
frighten her to death--just the sort of ancestor I can imagine that
blackguard Wilkes being descended from.
“What devilries they perpetrated I don’t know, but she is supposed
to have rushed from the house just before dawn one day and drowned
herself. Whereupon her husband installed a small harem in the house;
but it was a failure, for each of these charmers one by one rushed down
to the river just before dawn, and finally the husband himself did the
same. Of the period between then and forty years ago I have no record,
but the local tradition has it that it was the scene of tragedy after
tragedy, and then was shut up for a long time. When I first began to
study it, it was occupied by two bachelor brothers. One shot himself
in the room which I imagine you use as your bedroom, and the other
drowned himself in the usual way. I may tell you that the worst room in
the house, the one the unfortunate lady is supposed to have occupied,
is locked up, you know, the one on the second floor. I imagine Wilkes
mentioned it to you.”
“Yes, he did,” I replied. “Said he kept important papers there.”
“Yes; well, he was forced in self-defence to do so ten years ago, and
since then the death rate has been lower, but in those forty years
twenty people have taken their lives in the house or in the river, and
six children have been drowned accidentally. The last case was Lord
Passover’s butler in 1924. He was seen to run down to the river and
leap in. He was pulled out, but had died of shock.
“The people who took the house two years ago left in a week, and
threatened to bring an action against Wilkes, but they were warned they
had no legal case. And I strongly advise you, more than that, _implore_
you, to follow their example, though I can imagine the financial loss
and great inconvenience, for that house is a death-trap.”
“I will,” I replied. “I forgot to mention one thing; when my little boy
was so badly frightened he said something about ‘a green monkey.’”
“He did!” said Sir William sharply. “Well then, it is absolutely
imperative that you should leave at once. You remember I mentioned the
death of certain children. Well, in each case they have been found
drowned in the reeds just at the end of that lane, and the people
about here have a firm belief that ‘The Green Thing,’ or ‘The Green
Death’--it is sometimes referred to as the first and sometimes as the
other--is connected with danger to children.”
“Have you ever seen anything yourself?” I asked.
“I go to the infernal place as little as possible,” replied Sir
William, “but when I called on your predecessors I most distinctly saw
someone leave the drawing-room as we entered it, otherwise all I have
noted is a certain dream which recurs with curious regularity. I find
myself standing at the end of the lane and watching the river--always
in a sort of brassy half-light. And presently something comes floating
down the stream. I can see it jerking up and down, and I always feel
passionately anxious to see what it may be. At first I think that it
is a log, but when it gets exactly opposite me it changes its course
and comes towards me, and then I see that it is a dead body, very
decomposed. And when it reaches the bank it begins to climb up towards
me, and then I am thankful to say I always awake. Sometimes I have
thought that one day I shall not wake just then, and that on this
occasion something will happen to me, but that is probably merely the
silly fancy of an old gentleman who has concerned himself with these
singular events rather more than is good for his nerves.”
“That is obviously the explanation,” I said, “and I am extremely
grateful to you. We will leave to-morrow. But don’t you think we should
attempt to devise some means by which other people may be spared this
sort of thing, and this brute Wilkes be prevented from letting the
house again?”
“I certainly do so, and we will discuss it further on some other
occasion. And now go and pack!”
A very great and charming gentleman, Sir William, I reflected, as I
walked back to the Red Lodge.
Tim seemed to have recovered excellently well, but I thought it wise to
keep him out of the house as much as possible, so while Mary and the
maids packed after lunch I went with him for a walk through the fields.
We took our time, and it was only when the sky grew black and there was
a distant rumble of thunder and a menacing little breeze came from the
west that we turned to come back. We had to hurry, and as we reached
the meadow next to the house there came a ripping flash and the storm
broke. We started to run for the door into the garden when I tripped
over my bootlace, which had come undone, and fell. Tim ran on. I had
just tied the lace and was on my feet again when I saw something slip
through the door. It was green, thin, tall. It seemed to glance back
at me, and what should have been its face was a patch of soused slime.
At that moment Tim saw it, screamed, and ran for the river. The figure
turned and followed him, and before I could reach him hovered over
him. Tim screamed again and flung himself in. A moment later I passed
through a green and stenching film and dived after him. I found him
writhing in the reeds and brought him to the bank. I ran with him in my
arms to the house, and I shall not forget Mary’s face as she saw us
from the bedroom window.
By nine o’clock we were all in a hotel in London, and the Red Lodge an
evil, fading memory. I shut the front door when I had packed them all
into the car. As I took hold of the knob I felt a quick and powerful
pressure from the other side, and it shut with a crash. The Permanent
Occupants of the Red Lodge were in sole possession once more.
“AND HE SHALL SING....”
“AND HE SHALL SING....”