In the glow and satisfaction of at last finishing my article I was
stimulated by wholesome, even humorous thoughts. It was nearly two
o’clock in the morning and I had completed my work amid a solemn
quietude. Laughing at my own expense, I gayly turned the picture about,
saying, “now you can stare at me all you want to.” I was not to have my
mental poise disturbed by an oil-painting. I would not have my friends
return to find that picture turned to the wall. I extinguished my light
and retired with the agreeable consciousness of having completed one of
my tasks and with a drowsiness which assured me peaceful slumber.
I hardly know how to tell you about the events of that night, or indeed
whether I should call them events. When I awoke in the morning, I
thought I had been dreaming. But I cannot even now, and in the light of
subsequent events, fully explain my own harrowing experience. I suppose
it is possible for one to dream that he is awake. Whether it is possible
for one to be awake and fancy he is dreaming, I do not know. All I know
is that in the still, dark hours of that tempestuous night, I saw
vividly the face of Harrison McClintick looking down upon me. It was
different, yet it was his face and bore his expression.
What I did not understand afterward was that the gray, disordered hair
seemed streaming wet. The narrow chin conveyed somewhat a look of
emaciation, the long, stern, resolute mouth to be set as if in death.
This was McClintick’s face, but it was ghastly. The wide forehead and
narrowing cheeks gave the head a triangular look, suggesting a skull.
The features were drawn, the eyes wild. I thought (if one may be said to
think in a dream) that this was the face of Harrison McClintick after he
had been killed.
[Illustration: HE STOOD OVER ME AND DID NOT SPEAK--ONLY STARED.]
He stood over me and did not speak--only stared. I think I did not stir;
I was certainly conscious of a resolve not to stir. I heard wind and
rain. Yet goodness knows there had been enough wind and rain that night
to penetrate into a sleeping vision. Soon the face disappeared. I cannot
say that I was conscious of the figure withdrawing, but the face
withdrew. Still I heard the wind; it seemed to come in steady, surging
gusts--regular, like the surf. I heard the driving rain, the same
driving rain I had heard all through the long, gloomy day. Then it
seemed to be driving around in a circle. Then I knew no more.
When I awoke in the morning, I was certain that I had been dreaming. I
felt quite assured that the gloom and loneliness of the place, and my
idle thoughts and speculations, had naturally enough insinuated
themselves in distorted form into my sleep. There was the portrait
without any suggestion of ghostly associations, the eyes gazing at me.
They did not disturb me in the broad light of day.
Scarcely had I arisen, however, when I noticed something which utterly
staggered me, a rude and clear reality, that struck me like a rifle ball
and left me trembling. Beside my cot was a muddy footprint, less nice in
form and clearness than the one embedded in the hearth below, _but
identical with it_. I blinked my eyes to make sure I was awake. I sat on
the side of the couch quite unnerved, scrutinizing that little muddy
patch showing an irregular diagonal mark across the ball of the foot.
Like the print on the mountain it was the impression of a whole foot.
The print on the hearth showed only the front part of a foot. But there
was not the slightest doubt that these three prints were impressions of
one and the same foot.
When I had regained some degree of composure I looked for other prints,
in the room, on the balcony, on the stair. There were none. Particles of
dried mud there were, to be sure, but I might have tracked those in
myself. I returned and studied the mark, utterly bewildered and greatly
distraught. What was the meaning of this? Had I in truth been dreaming?
Had I seen that ghostly apparition in half sleep? The apparition I had
seen had been that of Harrison McClintick. But Harrison McClintick was
dead and could leave no footprint. Unless one accepts the theory of a
spectral footprint.
I could not now adopt the comfortable theory that I had been dreaming.
Footprints are not left after dreams. I looked at the portrait to make
sure that the face I had seen had been that of Harrison McClintick.
Weird and distorted and troubled as that face had looked, it had been
the face of McClintick. Well, I had no theory. I had always laughed at
the supernatural. If I had seen the face and there had been no
footprint, I would have assumed that I had seen it in a dream. If there
had been a footprint, but no apparition, I would have said that some one
had entered my room. There was still the explanation (and it seemed to
be the only one) that the vision and the footprint were quite two
different things; that while I slept after that harrowing dream some
creature of flesh and blood had indeed entered and stood beside my
couch.
With this thought I felt that I was on firm ground. I emptied my
suitcase and laid it open over the footprint intending to preserve it
intact for Tom to see. I even smiled at the recollection that I had once
confined a boisterous June-bug in the same way. Then I went downstairs
to find out how my nocturnal visitor had entered. The discovery of this
fact would put the whole spooky business in the category of reality. All
of the windows below were locked by the long iron pins that went through
both sashes. The door of the lodge was likewise locked--just as I had
left it. I opened the door and the clear, morning breeze saluted me,
wafting an exhilarating freshness into my very face. How fragrant is the
woods breeze, bearing the pungent odor of the drenched earth and foliage
after an interval of storm. I can smell the wetness now, and see the
grass and trees as they looked that morning bedecked with a myriad of
lingering crystal drops.
I strolled around the lodge where the wounded, rain-laden grass was
already beginning to straighten up in the welcome sunshine. I was right
about the board blowing down; it lay over a sawhorse where it had
fallen, so nicely balanced that it teetered in the morning breeze like a
seesaw with invisible, ghostly children upon it. I could laugh at that
spooky fancy in the cheery light of morning. “When I know how he got in,
whoever he was, I’ll be satisfied,” said I.
But I did not find out how he got in. He did not get in, as far as I
could find out. The door and windows had all been locked, and none had
been tampered with. There was no ladder about and no sign of any attempt
to reach the upper windows by any other means. I even went over to the
smaller lodge where the boys slept. It was locked and our two ladders
were on the floor inside. Tom said that the rungs of a ladder will turn
around with annoying effects if allowed to get wet and then dry out. So
we kept them under cover.
I returned to the lodge utterly bewildered. Considering the footprint as
wholly apart from my harrowing vision, still here was a profound
mystery. If some one had entered, then _how_ had he entered. There was
just not one way he could have done so without breaking either window or
door latch and so leaving the evidence of his way of entry. _The
mysterious footprint had been left by some one already in the lodge and
still concealed in it._ What other explanation was there?
As I entered the lodge resolved to throw open the cupboard, and then to
look into the rooms of my friends, I recalled how I had folded that old
newspaper article into a sort of plug to stop the rattling of the door.
It must have fallen to the ground when I threw the door open. But search
as I would, I could find it nowhere on the adjacent floor of the lodge
nor on the ground outside. I threw open the cupboard, and not without
some trepidation looked for Tom’s pistol before ascending the stair to
the balcony. I could not find it, so in a spirit of fine abandon I
strode up the stairs and threw both doors open.
No one was in either room. The little closed up quarters smelled damp
and stuffy from the penetrating moisture of the recent storm.
I went downstairs again and began a still more thorough search for the
folded bit of newspaper. It was not to be found. It seemed to have been
taken away by some one capable of entering and departing through solid
walls. The supposition that Mr. McClintick’s shade had indeed stood over
me and left a ghostly footprint was the only alternative theory that I
could devise.