The Mammoth Book of Haunted House Stories (Mammoth Books) (39 page)

“He fainted, Mr. Phelps, the instant he recognized us. We have known for a long time that his heart is weak, and we had hoped that seeing us would frighten him to death, but he is still alive. Of course while he is unconscious we can do nothing more. Actually, we’re almost impalpable. If you weren’t so convinced that we are real you could pass your hand right through us.

“We decided to wait until Mr. Lyons regained consciousness and then to frighten him again. We even discussed beating him to death with one of those non-existent chairs you think you see. You understand, his body would be unmarked; he would really die of terror. We were still discussing what to do when you came along.

“We realized at once how embarrassing it might prove for you if Mr. Lyons’ body were found in this house tomorrow and the police learned that you were also in the house. That’s why we want you to go.”

“Well,” Marvin said bluntly, “I don’t see how I can get my car away from here. It won’t run, and if I walk to Little Rock Falls and get somebody to come back here with me the damage’ll be done.”

“Yes,” the man admitted thoughtfully. “It’s a problem.”

For several minutes they stood like a tableau, without speaking. Marvin was uneasily wondering: Did these people really have old Lyons tied up in the hallway; were they really planning to murder the man? The big car standing out beside the road belonged to
somebody
. . .

Marvin coughed discreetly.

“Well, it seems to me, my dear shades,” he said, “that unless you are perfectly willing to put me into what might turn out to be a very unpleasant position you’ll have to let your vengeance ride, for tonight, anyway.”

“There’ll never be another opportunity like this,” the man pointed out. “That bridge won’t go again in ten lifetimes.”

“We don’t want the young man to suffer though, John.”

“It seems to me,” Marvin suggested, “as though this revenge idea of yours is overdone, anyway. Murdering Lyons won’t really do you any good, you know.”

“It’s the customary thing when a wrong has been done,” the man protested.

“Well, maybe,” Marvin argued, and all the time he was wondering whether he were really facing a madman who might be dangerous or whether he were at home dreaming in bed; “but I’m not so sure about that. Hauntings are pretty infrequent, you must admit. I’d say that shows that a lot of ghosts really don’t care much about the vengeance angle, despite all you say. I think that if you check on it carefully you’ll find that a great many ghosts realize that revenge isn’t so much. It’s really the thinking about revenge, and the planning it, that’s all the fun. Now, for the sake of argument, what good would it do you to put old Lyons away? Why, you’d hardly have any incentive to be ghosts any more. But if you let him go, why, say, any time you wanted to, you could start to scheme up a good scare for him, and begin to calculate how it would work, and time would fly like everything. And on top of all that, if anything happened to me on account of tonight, it would be just too bad for you.
You’d
be haunted, really. It’s a bad rule that doesn’t work two ways.”

The woman looked at her husband. “He’s right, John,” she said tremulously. “We’d better let Lyons go.”

The man nodded. He looked worried.

He spoke very stiffly to Marvin. “I don’t agree entirely with all you’ve said,” he pointed out, “but I admit that in order to protect you we’ll have to let Lyons go. If you’ll give me a hand we’ll carry him out and put him in his car.”

“Actually, I suppose, I’ll be doing all the work.”

“Yes,” the man agreed, “you will.”

They went into the little hall, and there, to Marvin’s complete astonishment, crumpled on the floor lay old Lyons. Marvin recognized him easily from the newspaper photographs he had seen.

“Hard-looking duffer, isn’t he?” Marvin said, trying to stifle a tremor in his voice.

The man nodded without speaking.

Together, Marvin watching the man narrowly, they carried the lax body out through the rain and put it into the big sedan. When the job was done the man stood silently for a moment, looking up into the black invisible clouds.

“It’s clearing,” he said matter-of-factly. “In an hour it’ll be over.”

“My wife’ll kill me when I get home,” Marvin said.

The man made a little clucking sound. “Maybe if you wiped your ignition now your car’d start. It’s had a chance to dry a little.”

“I’ll try it,” Marvin said. He opened the hood and wiped the distributor cap and points and around the spark plugs with his handkerchief. He got in the car and stepped on the starter, and the motor caught almost immediately.

The man stepped toward the door, and Marvin doubled his right fist, ready for anything. But then the man stopped.

“Well, I suppose you’d better be going along,” he said. “Good night.”

“Good night,” Marvin said. “And thanks. I’ll stop by one of these days and say hello.”

“You wouldn’t find us in,” the man said simply.

By Heaven, he
is
nuts, Marvin thought. “Listen, brother,” he said earnestly, “you aren’t going to do anything funny to old Lyons after I’m gone?”

The other shook his head. “No. Don’t worry.”

Marvin let in the clutch and stepped on the gas. He wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible.

In Little Rock Falls he went into an all-night lunch and telephoned the police that there was an unconscious man sitting in a car three or four miles back on the detour. Then he drove home.

Early the next morning, on his way to work, he drove back over the detour.

He kept watching for the little house, and when it came in sight he recognized it easily from the contour of the rooms and the spacing of the windows and the little overhang above the door.

But as he came closer he saw that it was deserted. The windows were out, the steps had fallen in. The clapboards were gray and weather-beaten, and naked rafters showed through holes in the roof.

Marvin stopped his car and sat there beside the road for a little while, his face oddly pale. Finally he got out of the car and walked over to the house and went inside.

There was not one single stick of furniture in the rooms. Jagged scars showed in the ceilings where the electric fixtures had been torn away. The house had been wrecked years before by vandals, by neglect, by the merciless wearing of the sun and the rain.

In shape alone were the hallway and living-room as Marvin remembered them. “
There
,” he thought, “is where the bookcases were. The table was
there
– the davenport
there
.”

Suddenly he stooped, and stared at the dusty boards and underfoot.

On the naked floor lay the butt of a cigarette. And, a half-dozen feet away, lay another cigarette that had not been smoked – that had not even been lighted!

Marvin turned around blindly, and, like an automaton, walked out of that house.

Three days later he read in the newspapers that Lieutenant-Governor Lyons was dead. The Lieutenant-Governor had collapsed, the item continued, while driving his own car home from the state capital the night the Felders bridge was washed out. The death was attributed to heart disease . . .

After all, Lyons was not a young man.

So Marvin Phelps knew that, even though his considerate ghostly hosts had voluntarily relinquished their vengeance, blind, impartial nature had meted out justice. And, in a strange way, he felt glad that that was so, glad that Grace and John Reed had left to Fate the punishment they had planned to impose with their own ghostly hands . . .

The Grey House

Basil Copper

To Angele, standing in the sunlight of a late summer afternoon, The Grey House, as they came to call it, had an air of chill desolation that was at variance with the brightness and warmth of the day. It was uninhabited and had evidently been so for many years. But Philip was delighted with the place; he clapped his hands like a child of five and then strolled around, his arms folded, lost in silent admiration. He needs and must have it and wouldn’t rest until he had rooted out the local agent and made an offer for the house.

Philip, her husband, was a writer; apart from a series of successful detective stories which brought him the larger part of his income, he was the author of a number of striking tales of mystery and the macabre. The Grey House would give him inspiration, he chuckled: Angele, stifling her doubts, didn’t like to dampen her husband’s enthusiasm and trailed round behind him and the estate agent with growing dislike.

They had spotted the place after a long day’s drive in the older parts of Burgundy. Then in early afternoon, they had stopped for a late lunch in the small mediaeval city which nestled among the blue haze of the surrounding mountains. The view was enchanting and after lunch they spent a pleasant hour on the ramparts, tracing out the path of a small river which wound its way foaming between great boulders and woods of dark pines.

It was Philip who first sighted The Grey House. It was down a narrow lane and the path to it was long choked with nettles. It was the last house, separated from its neighbours by several hundreds of yards of rough cartway and trees, over-grown shrubbery and bushes. It was unquestionably a ruin. The place looked something like a barn or stable.

It was largely constructed of great blocks of grey stone, which decided them on its name, with one round-capped turret hanging at an insane angle over the big front door, large as a church. There was a round tower at one side, immensely old and covered in lichen. The roof, of red crab tiles, sagged ominously and would obviously need a lot of repairs.

The big old wooden door was locked but Philip led the way with enthusiasm, cutting a swathe through breast-high nettles for his wife. They followed the great frowning wall down the lane until the property obviously came to an end. The rest of the lane was an impenetrable mass of brambles. But Philip had seen enough. Through the trees below the bluff he could see the rusted iron railings of a balcony and there were even some out-buildings and what looked like an old water mill.

“We could get this place for a song,” he told his wife gleefully. “It would want a lot of doing up of course, but the terrace would be ideal for my writing and what a view!”

Against such enthusiasm Angele could find no valid argument; so half an hour later found them back in the city square, at the office of M. Gasion, the principal of the main firm of agents in the area.

M. Gasion, a short broad-shouldered man of cheerful aspect and obviously addicted to the grape was shattered at the prospect of such a sale. The property had been on his books for more than forty years, over twenty years before he acquired the firm. Therefore, he was a little hazy about the antecedents of the estate. Yes, it would need a lot of doing up, he agreed; he did not think monsieur need worry about the price.

It would not be heavy and as they would see, though it needed a great deal of renovation, it had possibilities, distinct possibilities. He positively purred with enthusiasm and Angele could not help smiling to herself. A purchaser like Philip would hardly happen more than once in a lifetime; no wonder M. Gasion was pleased.