Ghost Stories and Mysteries (24 page)

“Yes,” replied Tom, “she is back at the shanty.”

“Wait till I come up,” said the mailman. When his horses had finished he rode the bank to the others.

“Such a queer go,” he said. “About five or six miles from here I met a tilted dray with horses, driven by a man who looked down-right awful. He pulled up, and so did I. Then he said, staring straight before him, and not looking at me, ‘You didn’t meet a woman on foot, mate, did you?’

“I told him no, and asked him where he was going. ‘Oh,’ he said, just in the same queer way, ‘I’m going on until I overtake her.’

“‘You’d best turn back,’ I said. ‘It’s twenty-five miles to the next water; and I tell you I’d have been bound to see her.’ He shook his head and drove on, and you say the woman’s back at the shanty?”

“Yes; it’s about the rummiest start I ever come across. The woman turned up at Britten’s today, about 1 o’clock, on foot, and said that her husband died during the night; that she could not find the horses, and had come in on foot for help.”

“I suppose he wasn’t dead, after all, and when the horses came in for water he harnessed up and went ahead, looking for his wife, in a dazed, stupid sort of a way.”

“I suppose that is it,” said Devlin. “Are you going on to Britten’s tonight?” he asked the mailman.

“Yes.”

“You might tell the woman that her husband has come-to, and started on with the dray. After we have had a spell, we’ll go after him. He can’t be far.”

“No,” replied the mailman, as he prepared to ride off. “He looked like a death’s-head when I saw him. So-long.”

The men turned their horses out and had a meal and a smoke; by this time they were talking about starting when the noise of an approaching dray attracted their attention.

“He’s coming back himself,” said Tom.

The dray crossed the creek and made for the old camp, where the driver pulled-up and got out. The full moon and risen, and it was fairly light.

“Don’t speak,” said Devlin; “let us see what he is going to do.”

The figure unharnessed the horses with much groaning, and hobbled them; then it took its blankets out of the dray and spread them underneath and lay down.

“Let’s see if we can do anything for him,” said Devlin, and they approached.

“Can we help you, mate?” he asked.

There was no answer.

He spoke again. Still silence.

“Strike a match, Bill, “he said; “it’s all shadow under the dray.” Bill did as desired, and Devlin peered in. He started back.

“Hell!” he cried, “the man
did
die when the woman said. He’s been dead forty-eight hours!”

THE UNHOLY EXPERIMENT OF MARTIN SHENWICK, AND WHAT CAME OF IT

(1898)

I knew that Shenwick had been studying the occult for a long time, but being a hardened sceptic, I was not prepared to accept the wonderful progress and results that, he said, had so far rewarded him. All the experiments he essayed for my conversion had turned out failures. Therefore, when he came to me and stated that he had discovered how to resuscitate the dead, provided they were not too long deceased, I frankly told him that I did not believe him.

He was used to my blunt way of speaking, and did not resent it, but proceeded to explain how, after death, the soul hovered about the body for some time, and if you could induce the soul to re-enter the body, the late departed would be given a fresh lease of life.

Several difficulties suggested themselves to me, which Shenwick would not listen to. What, for instance, I said, if a man were blown into fragments by a dynamite explosion, how will you find and unite the pieces? If he were hanged, and his neck dislocated, how would you fix his spine up again? If he had his head chopped off—. Here Shenwick interrupted me to state that he meant only cases of natural death, the decay of the vital forces, not mangling and mutilation. He explained that the emancipation of the spirit for a short period inspired it with fresh vigor, and it came back rejuvenated and strong.

“How are you going to try your experiment?” I asked. “Corpses are not knocking about everywhere.”

“I admit that is a stumbling block,” he said, “but it may be got over. Would you object to putting a temporary end to your existence in the cause of science?”

I told him in language more forcible than polite that I would put an end, final, not temporary, to his existence first.

He accepted this seriously, and informed me that that would not avail, as I would not be competent to conduct the experiments.

We parted for the time, and I believe he spent most of his time searching for a fresh corpse. I know he applied at the hospital, and was ejected with scorn and derision. He also visited the morgue, but as most of the bodies that came there were “demn’d damp, moist, unpleasant bodies,” they were no use to him.

“I’ve got him,” he said, one day, stealing into my room on tiptoe as though he thought that the corpse upon whom he had designs would hear him.

“Got whom?” I asked, “the corpse you have been looking for?”

“No, he’s not a corpse yet; I’m not going to make him one. Don’t stare like that. He’s dying, and I have agreed to keep him in comfort till he dies. He’s got a churchyard cough, and drinks colonial beer by the gallon. Will you come and see him this evening?”

I said I would, and went on with my work, as he closed the door, softly and mysteriously, for what reason I know not. I went to Shenwick’s that evening. He occupied three residential chambers in a large building, and found that he had given up his bedroom to the subject, who was established in comfort and luxury. As a subject, the man was probably as good as any other, but he was by no means prepossessing, and the language he used to Shenwick was painful to listen to.

“It’s unfortunate, you know,” said my poor deluded friend, “but since he has been taken care of and doctored, I am afraid he’s getting better. Now, he would have been dead by this time if he had been left in the Domain. There was a drenching rain last night that would have finished him off out of hand.”

A voice was heard from the next room, demanding beer, adjective beer, in a husky whisper.

“This is my only hope,” said Shenwick, as he filled a pint pot from a keg. “The doctor says he is not to have it, but I take the liberty of differing from the doctor.”

He took the beer in to his subject, and got cursed for his pains.

“He was quite resigned to death when I picked him up,” said Shenwick sadly, when he came back; “but since he has been made comfortable he wants to live.”

“Small wonder,” I returned, laughing.

“It’s no joke; by my agreement for his body I am bound to keep him as long as he lives.”

“Well, we must try to upset that, if he does live. I have not seen your agreement; but, speaking as a lawyer, I should say it was not legal.”

About three weeks after this Shenwick opened my office door, put his head inside, uttered the mysterious words, “Be prepared for a message this evening,” and disappeared. I concluded that the subject had caved in after all, and was on the brink of the grave.

The message duly arrived before I left my office, and after dinner I went to see Shenwick. True enough the subject had departed this life, and his mortal, and very ugly, frame was in the possession of my friend, together with a doctor’s certificate. He was now at liberty to conduct his experiments and prove the truth of his theory. He asked me to remain, and witness the result, to which I consented, and as he informed me that the small hours of the morning were most favourable, I took the opportunity of having a sleep on a sofa in the outer room, while Shenwick watched his beloved subject.

Shenwick woke me at about two o’clock. I got up stiff and cross, as a man generally is after sleeping in his clothes on a sofa.

“Hush!” he said, in that mysterious whisper he had affected of late. “I am now sure of success. I tried some passes just now, and I am confident that a spark of animation followed.”

I muttered a tired swear word, and followed him into the bedroom. Shenwick lowered the light, and commenced his mesmeric or hypnotic hocus pocus over the dead subject. In the dim light it was a most uncanny exhibition, and the more excited Shenwick grew the more antics he cut with his hands, waving and passing and muttering.

Now what happened is almost incredible, had I not seen it myself; but that grim and ghastly corpse on the bed rose up in a sitting position, gasped and choked once or twice, and then broke out into the vigorous cry of a healthy, lusty infant. For an instant the most cowardly terror assailed me, and I confess that I had it in my mind to cut and run for it, when I noticed Shenwick, after swaying to and from, pitched headlong on the floor in a dead faint. That restored me to my proper senses, and I went and picked him up and tried to restore him.

Meanwhile the hideous thing on the bed still kept blubbering and crying. If you shut your eyes you would swear that here was a baby of forty-lung power in the room.

Shenwick at last recovered. “It was a success,” he gasped.

“If you call that row a success, it was,” I answered.

He listened intently, and a pained look came into his face. He was evidently greatly puzzled. “Let me go into him by myself,” he said at last. I cordially agreed, and he went into the bedroom, and I solaced my nerves with a good strong nip of whiskey. Gradually the crying stopped, and Shenwick came tiptoeing out and told me that the subject had fallen into a nice, quiet sleep.

“It’s awkward, very,” he said; “but at any rate the experiment succeeded.”

“What’s awkward?” I asked.

“I left it too long. I told you that the spirit rejuvenated, grow young, after its release from the body. This spirit has grown too young—it’s gone back to infancy.”

“Then you’ll have to rear it as an infant; but you won’t find anyone to look after it in its present state.”

“I’m afraid not; I’ll have to bring it up by hand myself. It’s hungry now, poor thing. Isn’t there a chemist who keeps open all night?” I directed him to one, and he asked me if I would mind looking after it while he went out and bought a feeding-bottle and some food. “If it cries, try and amuse it,” he said, as he left the room; and I heard his footsteps go down the stairs, rousing strange echoes in the great empty building. I called myself all the fools I could think of for having anything to do with Shenwick and his confounded experiments, and settled down to my dreary watch.

Sure enough, the horrid thing woke up, and commenced to cry again. Not being a family man, I had not the remotest idea how infants were to be soothed and beguiled to rest and silence. I had an inane notion that you said, “Goo, goo,” or “Cluck, cluck,” to them, and snapped your fingers and made faces at them. I tried all these in succession, but the more I goo goo-ed and cluck cluck-ed and made faces, each one more hideous than the last, the more that thing cried and sobbed.

At last, when daylight came, there was a loud knocking at the outer door. I went and opened it, and there stood the caretaker and his wife, the last much excited.

“Where’s Mr Shenrock?” she demanded. “What’s he doing of with a baby in the room, and ill-treating it, too?”

“There’s no baby,” I said; “it’s a sick man.”

“No baby, when I can hear it crying its dear little heart out! You’ve been smacking and beating of it.” She pushed past me and went to the bedroom, saying, “Hush now, my pet; mother will be here directly.”

She got as far as the door; then, at the sight of the black-muzzled ruffian sitting up in bed bellowing, she fell down in kicking hysterics. Her husband went to her assistance, but he, too, was struck speechless, with his mouth wide open. In the midst of it, Shenwick came back with a feeding-bottle, patent food, and some milk, having been lucky enough to stick up an early milk-cart. We recovered the woman and Shenwick told her that the patient had just had brain fever, and now imagine himself a baby, and the doctor said he was to be humoured. The woman was only too glad to get away. She had had what she termed a turn, and was not desirous of stopping any longer near this unnatural infant.

It was horribly grotesque to see the man-baby seize hold of the nozzle of the feeding bottle and suck its contents down. When it was satisfied, peace reigned, and the thing slept.

“Shenwick,” I said, “you see what comes of interfering with Nature’s laws. You will now have to adopt and rear that object in the next room. You were thinking of getting married, I know; but will your wife consent to your bringing home a baby 50 years old! No, she will not—you can consider that settled.”

Shenwick groaned, “You needn’t rub it in so,” he answered.

“Perhaps not, for that little innocent darling asleep in the next room will be a constant reminder.”

“Can’t you give me some advice on the subject? Although you cannot deny the success of the experiment; yet between ourselves it is of no avail for any purpose. I thought and hoped that the spirit would come back charged with knowledge of the great hereafter. As it has unfortunately turned out, a baby has come back who will grow up with as little knowledge of the past as any other baby does.” A long hungry wail came from the other room, emphasizing his statement, and proclaiming that the infant desired further nourishment. Shenwick went and filled the bottle up again.