"They found Creed hanging, the rope hooked simply around his neck. It was a silent jury that filed from the barn that morning after viewing the body. "Suicide," said they, after Ike, shivering and stammering, had testified, harking back to the untold evidence of that other morning years before. Yes, Creed was dead, with a terrible look on his wizen face, and the dusty old rope ran through its pulley-wheel and was fast to a beam high above.
""He must of climbed to the beam, made the rope fast, and jumped," said the foreman, solemnly. "He must of, he must of," repeated the man, parrot-like, while the sweat stood out on his forehead, "because there wasn"t no other way; but as G.o.d is my judge, the knot in the rope and the dust on the beam ain"t been disturbed for years.""
At this dramatic climax there was an audible sigh from my audience. I sat quietly for a time, content to allow the silence and the atmosphere of the place, which actually seemed surcharged with influences not of my creation, to add to the effect my story had caused. There was scarcely a movement in our circle; of that I felt sure. And yet once more, out of the almost tangible darkness above me, something seemed to reach down and brush against my head. A slight motion of air, sufficient to disturb my rather scanty locks, was additional proof that I was the b.u.t.t of some prank that had just missed its objective. Then, with a fearful suddenness, close to my ear burst a shrill discord of laughter, so uncanny and so unlike the usual sound of student merriment that I started up, half wondering if I had heard it. Almost immediately after it the heavy darkness was torn again by a shriek so terrible in its intensity as completely to differentiate it from the other cries which followed.
"Bring a light!" cried a voice that I recognized as that of my wife, though strangely distorted by emotion. There was a great confusion.
Young women struggled from their places and impeded one another in the darkness; but finally, and it seemed an unbearable delay, someone brought a single lantern.
Its frail light revealed Miss Anstell half upright from her place in the center of our circle, my wife"s arms sustaining her weight. Her face, as well as I could see it, seemed darkened and distorted, and when we forced her clutching hands away from her bared throat we could see, even in that light, the marks of an angry, throttling scar entirely encircling it. Just above her head the old pulley-rope swayed menacingly in the faint breeze.
My recollection is even now confused as to the following moments and our stumbling escape from that gruesome spot. Miss Anstell is now at her home, recovering from what her physician calls mental shock. My wife will not speak of it. The questions I would ask her are checked on my lips by the look of utter terror in her eyes. As I have confessed to you, my own philosophy is hard put to it to withstand not so much the community att.i.tude toward what they are pleased to call my taste in practical joking, but to a.s.semble and adjust the facts of my experience.
A SHADY PLOT
BY ELSIE BROWN
This story was submitted as a cla.s.s exercise in one of my short-story cla.s.ses at Columbia University. At my request the author, Elsie Brown, contributed it to this volume.
A Shady Plot
BY ELSIE BROWN
So I sat down to write a ghost story.
Jenkins was responsible.
"Hallock," he had said to me, "give us another on the supernatural this time. Something to give "em the horrors; that"s what the public wants, and your ghosts are live propositions."
Well, I was in no position to contradict Jenkins, for, as yet, his magazine had been the only one to print my stuff. So I had said, "Precisely!" in the deepest voice I was capable of, and had gone out.
I hadn"t the shade of an idea, but at the time that didn"t worry me in the least. You see, I had often been like that before and in the end things had always come my way--I didn"t in the least know how or why. It had all been rather mysterious. You understand I didn"t specialize in ghost stories, but more or less they seemed to specialize in me. A ghost story had been the first fiction I had written. Curious how that idea for a plot had come to me out of nowhere after I had chased inspiration in vain for months! Even now whenever Jenkins wanted a ghost, he called on me. And I had never found it healthy to contradict Jenkins. Jenkins always seemed to have an uncanny knowledge as to when the landlord or the grocer were pestering me, and he dunned me for a ghost. And somehow I"d always been able to dig one up for him, so I"d begun to get a bit c.o.c.ky as to my ability.
So I went home and sat down before my desk and sucked at the end of my pencil and waited, but nothing happened. Pretty soon my mind began to wander off on other things, decidedly unghostly and material things, such as my wife"s shopping and how on earth I was going to cure her of her alarming tendency to take every new fad that came along and work it to death. But I realized _that_ would never get me any place, so I went back to staring at the ceiling.
"This writing business _is_ delightful, isn"t it?" I said sarcastically at last, out loud, too. You see, I had reached the stage of imbecility when I was talking to myself.
"Yes," said a voice at the other end of the room, "I should say it is!"
I admit I jumped. Then I looked around.
It was twilight by this time and I had forgotten to turn on the lamp.
The other end of the room was full of shadows and furniture. I sat staring at it and presently noticed something just taking shape. It was exactly like watching one of these moving picture cartoons being put together. First an arm came out, then a bit of sleeve of a stiff white shirtwaist, then a leg and a plaid skirt, until at last there she was complete,--whoever she was.
She was long and angular, with enormous fishy eyes behind big bone-rimmed spectacles, and her hair in a tight wad at the back of her head (yes, I seemed able to see right through her head) and a jaw--well, it looked so solid that for the moment I began to doubt my very own senses and believe she was real after all.
She came over and stood in front of me and glared--yes, positively glared down at me, although (to my knowledge) I had never laid eyes on the woman before, to say nothing of giving her cause to look at me like that.
I sat still, feeling pretty helpless I can tell you, and at last she barked:
"What are you gaping at?"
I swallowed, though I hadn"t been chewing anything.
"Nothing," I said. "Absolutely nothing. My dear lady, I was merely waiting for you to tell me why you had come. And excuse me, but do you always come in sections like this? I should think your parts might get mixed up sometimes."
"Didn"t you send for me?" she crisped.
Imagine how I felt at that!
"Why, no. I--I don"t seem to remember----"
"Look here. Haven"t you been calling on heaven and earth all afternoon to help you write a story?"
I nodded, and then a possible explanation occurred to me and my spine got cold. Suppose this was the ghost of a stenographer applying for a job! I had had an advertis.e.m.e.nt in the paper recently. I opened my mouth to explain that the position was filled, and permanently so, but she stopped me.
"And when I got back to the office from my last case and was ready for you, didn"t you switch off to something else and sit there driveling so I couldn"t attract your attention until just now?"
"I--I"m very sorry, really."
"Well, you needn"t be, because I just came to tell you to stop bothering us for a.s.sistance; you ain"t going to get it. We"re going on Strike!"
"What!"
"You don"t have to yell at me."
"I--I didn"t mean to yell," I said humbly. "But I"m afraid I didn"t quite understand you. You said you were----"
"Going on strike. Don"t you know what a strike is? Not another plot do you get from us!"
I stared at her and wet my lips.
"Is--is that where they"ve been coming from?"
"Of course. Where else?"
"But my ghosts aren"t a bit like you----"
"If they were people wouldn"t believe in them." She draped herself on the top of my desk among the pens and ink bottles and leaned towards me.
"In the other life _I_ used to write."
"You did!"