Haunted Places in England

by Elliott O'Donnell

That evening, Sir Eldred and I sat in the smoke-room after dinner and chatted away as usual. We had our coffee brought to us at nine o’clock, and at ten-thirty we retired to bed. Sir Eldred had appeared fidgety and nervous all the evening, and, as we were ascending the stairs, he asked me if I would mind sitting up with him.

“I feel I shan’t sleep to-night,” he said, “as I’ve got one of my restless moods on. If it won’t be tiring you too much, will you come and sit with me?”

I said I would with pleasure, but I did not join him at once, as I wanted the servants to think we had gone to our respective rooms and to bed as usual. I also wanted whatever there might be in the wind to mature.

On entering my room, I opened the window with as little noise as possible, and was on the verge of lowering myself into the garden when I espied someone among the trees. I was going to draw back, when the figure signalled, and I at once knew it was Vane.

Another minute and I had found him. “He’s here,” he whispered, “be on the qui vive, and if you want help call. See, I’m armed.” And he pointed significantly to his breast pocket. He was going to say something else when we heard steps—soft, surreptitious steps that hardly sounded human—coming in our direction. I immediately withdrew to the house and hastened to Sir Eldred. At my suggestion we both sat by the window, which I noticed was shut—Sir Eldred, I knew, was very susceptible to the cold—and I arranged the curtains so that we could not be seen from the outside. Sir Eldred occupied a sofa and I an easy chair. For some time we talked in low voices, and then Sir Eldred grew more and more drowsy till he finally fell asleep.

It was one of the most exquisite nights I had ever seen—the moon, so full and silvery, and everywhere so calm, so gentle, and so still. Not a breath of air, not a leaf stirring, not a sound to be heard; nothing save the occasional burr of a great black bat as it hurled itself past the window and went wheeling and skimming in and out the tall, slender pines. I sat still, my eyes wandering alternately from the window to Sir Eldred. Whence would come the danger my instinct told me threatened him? How calmly he slept! How marked and handsome were his boyish features!

Suddenly from afar off a distant church clock began to strike two, each chime falling with an extraordinary distinctness on the preternatural hush.

Hardly had the last reverberating echoes ceased before there was a loud click from somewhere near the fireplace, and the next moment came a faint smell of burning. Then I confess—remembering all Craddock had told me—I was afraid. Everything in the room—the big, open fireplace, the dark, gleaming wardrobe, the quaintly carved chairs, the rich but fantastically patterned curtains, the sofa, and even Sir Eldred himself—I hardly dared look at him—seemed impregnated with a strange and startling uncanniness. The green light! Was this the prelude to it? Was the terrible Bornean phantasm getting ready to manifest itself?

I struggled hard, and, at last, overcoming the feeling of utter helplessness that had begun to steal over me, rushed to the windows. Frantically throwing them open, I was preparing to do the same to the door, when a low, ominous wail, sounding at first from very far away, and then all of a sudden from quite close at hand, brought me to a standstill, and the whole room suddenly became illuminated with a glow, of a shade and intensity of green I have never seen before. Again there came an awful struggle. I felt eyes glaring at me, eyes that belonged to something of infinite hideousness and hate, to something that was concentrating its very hardest to make—to force—me to look; and it was only by an effort that smothered my chest and forehead in beads of cold sweat I desisted. Groping my way across the room, with my eyes tightly closed, I eventually reached the sofa. Thank God! Sir Eldred was still asleep. Tired with a day’s hard exercise, he had fallen into the soundest of slumbers. Putting one hand over his eyes, and seizing him by the shoulder with the other, I speedily roused him. “Quick, quick!” I shouted. “For the love of God get up quick! Keep your mouth tightly shut and follow me.” Pushing and dragging him along, I made for the direction of the door. The poison fumes now began to take effect; my temples throbbed, my brain was on fire, a tight, agonising feeling of suffocation gripped my chest and throat, and, as I staggered with Sir Eldred across the threshold on to the landing beyond, a sea of blackness suddenly enveloped me, and I knew no more.