Haunted Places in England

by Elliott O'Donnell

Then their language was so bad. They used expressions that shocked everyone in the house, and no one could say where they had picked them up. But worst of all was their cruelty to animals. The nurse came to Mrs. Fitzsimmons one morning to show her a fowl that was limping across the yard in great pain. Bobbie had pelted it with stones and broken its leg.

He was punished; but the very next day he and Jane were caught inflicting the most abominable tortures on a mouse. Jane rivalled the Chinese in the ingenuity of her cruelties. She scalded insects very slowly to death, and scandalised the village children by showing them a rabbit and sundry smaller animals which she had vivisected and skinned alive.

One does occasionally hear of epidemics of cruelty breaking out in certain districts. A year or two ago, cats came in for especially bad treatment in the neighbourhood of Red Lion Square, and the culprits, girls as well as boys, were invariably excused, it being suggested that the war had excited their naturally high spirits. I remember, too, in Cornwall, not so very long ago, children being seized with a mania for torturing birds. They caught them with fish-hooks, and never grew tired of watching them choke and writhe and otherwise distort themselves in their death agonies. In Wales, too, there are periodical outbursts of similar passions. Some years ago a child was prosecuted in South Wales for pulling a live rabbit in half; but the magistrates acquitted the accused on the plea that it was only following the example of nearly all the other children in the district. Well, Robert Fitzsimmons wondered if his children had fallen victims to one of these epidemics, and he suggested to his wife that they should be sent away to a boarding school. To his astonishment, however, Mrs. Fitzsimmons took a more lenient view of their conduct.

“It’s no use being too hard on them,” she said. “I don’t believe for one moment that Bobbie and Jane realise that animals can feel as we do—that human beings have not the monopoly of the nervous system. We must get a governess—someone who can explain things to them with tact and patience, and not get out of temper, like you do, Robert. The children must be treated with kindness and sympathy.”

Fitzsimmons could hardly believe that it was his wife speaking; she had been such a keen champion of animals, and had boxed the ears of more than one London ragamuffin whom she had caught ill-treating a dog or cat. However, he gave way, and agreed that the children should be committed to the care of a benevolent old lady whom Mrs. Fitzsimmons knew, and who might be engaged as governess and domiciled in the house. This matter was barely settled when Mr. Merryweather, an artist friend of Robert Fitzsimmons, came to stay at Shane Garth, and it was on the evening after his arrival that Fitzsimmons first came to realise that the coombe was haunted. He had been out all day fishing, alone, his friend, Merryweather, being engaged painting a portrait of Mrs. Fitzsimmons and Jane; and the evening having well set in, he was now on his way home. Passing the site of the ancient barrow, he could see in the hollow beneath him the welcome lights of Shane Garth. He paused for a moment to refill his pipe, and then commenced to descend into the coombe. It was an exquisite night, the air warm and fragrant with the scent of newly mown hay, the moon full, and the sky one mass of scintillating stars. Fitzsimmons was enchanted. Again and again he threw back his head and drew in the air in great gulps. When halfway down the hill, however, he became aware of a sudden change; the atmosphere was no longer light and exhilarating, but dark, heavy, and oppressive.

He noticed, too, that there were strange lights and that the shadows that flickered to and fro the broad highway continually came and went, and differed, in some strangely subtle fashion, from any shadows he had ever seen before. But what attracted his attention even more was a tree—a tall tree with a trunk of the most peculiar colour. In the quick-changing light of the coombe it looked yellow—a lurid yellow streaked with black after the nature of a tiger’s skin—and Fitzsimmons never remembered seeing it there before. He halted for a moment to look at it more intently, and it seemed to him to change its position. He rubbed his eyes to make sure he was not dreaming and looked again. Yes, without a doubt it was nearer to the roadway, and very gradually it was getting nearer still.

Moreover, although the night was still, so still that hardly a leaf of any of the other trees quivered, its branches were in a state of the most violent agitation.

Fitzsimmons was not normally nervous, and on the subject of the superphysical he was decidedly sceptical; but he could not help admitting that it was queer, and he began to wonder whether there was not some other way of getting home. Ashamed, however, of his cowardice, he at length made up his mind to look closer at the tree, and ascertain if possible the cause of its remarkable behaviour. He advanced towards it, and it moved again. This time the moonlight threw it into such strong relief that it stood out with photographic clearness, every detail in its composition most vividly portrayed.

What exactly he saw, Fitzsimmons has never been prevailed upon to say. All one can get out of him is “that it had the semblance to a tree, but that the semblance was quite superficial. It was in reality something quite different, and that the difference was so marked and unexpected that he was immeasurably shocked.” I asked Fitzsimmons why he was shocked, and he said, “By the obscenity of the thing—by its unparalleled beastliness.” He would not say any more. It took him several minutes to sum up courage to pass it, and all the while it stood close to the roadside waiting for him. Fitzsimmons had been a tolerably good athlete in his youth—he won the open hundred at school—and though well over forty, he was spare and tough, and as sound as a bell with regard to his heart and lungs. Bracing himself up, he made a sudden dash, and had passed it, by some dozen or so yards, when he heard something drop with a soft plumb, and the next minute there came the quick patter of bare feet in hot pursuit. Frightened as he was, Fitzsimmons does not think his terror was quite so great as his feeling of utter loathing and abhorrence. He felt if the thing touched him, however slightly, he would be contaminated body and soul, and would never be able to look a decent person in the face again.