Tom Slade in the north woods

by Percy Keese Fitzhugh

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.

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.