Take that first year, for instance, when he had returned to Gatchard in
Mississippi, whence both he and Mersereau had originally issued. After
looking after his own property he had gone out to a tumble-down estate
of his uncle’s in Issaqueena County—a leaky old slope-roofed house
where, in a bedroom on the top floor, he had had his first experience
with the significance or reality of the hand.
Yes, that was where first he had really seen it pictured in that
curious, unbelievable way; only who would believe that it was
Mersereau’s hand? They would say it was an accident, chance, rain
dropping down. But the hand had appeared on the ceiling of that room
just as sure as anything, after a heavy rain-storm—it was almost a
cyclone—when every chink in the old roof had seemed to leak water.
During the night, after he had climbed to the room by way of those
dismal stairs with their great landing and small glass oil-lamp he
carried, and had sunk to rest, or tried to, in the heavy, wide,
damp bed, thinking, as he always did those days, of the Monte Orte
and Mersereau, the storm had come up. As he had listened to the wind
moaning outside he had heard first the scratch, scratch, scratch, of
some limb, no doubt, against the wall—sounding, or so it seemed in his
feverish unrest, like some one penning an indictment against him with a
worn, rusty pen.
And then, the storm growing worse, and in a fit of irritation and
self-contempt at his own nervousness, he had gone to the window, but
just as lightning struck a branch of the tree nearest the window and so
very near him, too—as though some one, something, was seeking to strike
him—(Mersereau?) and as though he had been lured by that scratching.
God! He had retreated, feeling that it was meant for him.
But that big, knotted hand painted on the ceiling by the dripping
water during the night! There it was, right over him when he awoke,
outlined or painted as if with wet, gray whitewash against the wretched
but normally pale-blue of the ceiling when dry. There it was—a big,
open hand just like Mersereau’s as he had held it up that night—huge,
knotted, rough, the fingers extended as if tense and clutching. And, if
you will believe it, near it was something that looked like a pen—an
old, long-handled pen—to match that scratch, scratch, scratch!
“Huldah,” he had inquired of the old black mammy who entered in the
morning to bring him fresh water and throw open the shutters, “what
does that look like to you up there—that patch on the ceiling where the
rain came through?”
He wanted to reassure himself as to the character of the thing he
saw—that it might not be a creation of his own feverish imagination,
accentuated by the dismal character of this place.
“’Pears t’ me mo’ like a big han’ ’an anythin’ else, Marse Davi’son,”
commented Huldah, pausing and staring upward. “Mo’ like a big fist,
kinda. Dat air’s a new drip come las’ night, I reckon. Dis here ole
place ain’ gonna hang togethah much longah, less’n some repairin’ be
done mighty quick now. Yassir, dat air’s a new drop, sho’s yo’ bo’n, en
it come on’y las’ night. I hain’t never seed dat befo’.”
And then he had inquired, thinking of the fierceness of the storm:
“Huldah, do you have many such storms up this way?”
“Good gracious, Marse Davi’son, we hain’t seed no sech blow en—en come
three years now. I hain’t seed no sech lightnin’ en I doan’ know when.”
Wasn’t that strange, that it should all come on the night, of all
nights, when he was there? And no such other storm in three years!
Huldah stared idly, always ready to go slow and rest, if possible,
whereas he had turned irritably. To be annoyed by ideas such as this!
To always be thinking of that Monte Orte affair! Why couldn’t he forget
it? Wasn’t it Mersereau’s own fault? He never would have killed the man
if he hadn’t been forced to it.
And to be haunted in this way, making mountains out of mole-hills, as
he thought then! It must be his own miserable fancy—and yet Mersereau
had looked so threateningly at him. That glance had boded something; it
was too terrible not to.
Davidson might not want to think of it, but how could he stop?
Mersereau might not be able to hurt him any more, at least not on this
earth; but still, couldn’t he? Didn’t the appearance of this hand
seem to indicate that he might? He was dead, of course. His body, his
skeleton, was under that pile of rocks and stones, some of them as big
as wash-tubs. Why worry over that, and after two years? And still—
That hand on the ceiling!