Бретт Холлидей - Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 34, No. 3, February 1974

When other awareness slowly returned, she felt that she was not alone — not physically alone, there in the graveyard. Some other presence had made itself felt through the numbness that had seized her senses.

Since she was not aware of having heard any actual sounds, she felt a sudden rush of hope — or was it fear? — that her husband’s spirit had come back to join her from wherever it now was...

She stood there, still as a statue, holding her breath, waiting for some further evidence of the existence of the other. When none came, she inhaled deeply, carefully, and slowly turned her head in the direction in which her instincts told her the presence lay.

The evidence she sought came swiftly with a rush of soft sounds beyond the barrier of trees that separated the graveyard from the immediate neighborhood of the old house. Whatever this was, Eleanor realized, it was no spirit, and she strode toward it. When she reached the gap in the trees, she was in time to see an orange and furry tail disappear around a corner of the woven wood trellis.

She wondered if the cat had it in for her — and why. And then, in the dew-damp grass just in front of her and to her left, she saw the faint imprint of a human shoe, limned indistinctly by the moonlight’s angle.

Even as she looked, it faded as the moon itself slid behind a growing mass of clouds. Eleanor shivered and hastily retraced her steps back to the house...

In the upstairs hallway outside her room, Mrs. Paton, plump and matronly, was waiting for her. She was no longer smiling as she opened the bedroom door and stood back for Eleanor to enter. She stood on the threshold, apparently unable either to speak or to take her leave.

Wishing to be alone with her own thoughts, Eleanor said, “What is it, Verna? I promise I won’t bite.”

Verna Paton shuffled her feet, a ridiculous jiggle for a woman so butterball round. She gulped nervously, then said rapidly, “I just want you to be careful, Miss Eleanor. If you need help, it’s in the drawer in the bedside table.”

Then she was gone, after peering in both directions along the hall outside to make sure she had not been overheard. Eleanor stood looking after her, seeking an explanation of the absurd performance.

Since the solution, if indeed there was a solution, lay in the drawer of the fine old cherry-wood bedside table, she went to it, pulled the drawer open. There, lying on its side, was a small, snub-nosed revolver with every visible chamber loaded?

Although she had been bone-tired before her encounter with Mrs. Paton, Eleanor discovered, once she lay down, that all trace of sleepiness had vanished. In place of a comfortably filled stomach and the added sleep-inducement of good brandy after dinner, she felt a nausea in the pit of her stomach and an unpleasant metallic taste at the base of her tongue.

For an instant, visions of Borgias danced in her head and she wondered fearfully if she might not have been poisoned. Certainly, she felt all the classic symptoms. By a great effort, she dragged herself out of the covers, across the well rugged floor, through the passage lined with clothes closets with sliding doors, to the old fashioned big bathroom beyond. There, she stuck a finger down her throat and made every effort to eliminate the toxic material she must have swallowed.

But she couldn’t throw up. The food remained stubbornly in her stomach, try as she would to get rid of it. At length, having developed the added symptoms of trembling, weakness and intense cold sweats, she was forced to take the walk back to the bedroom and lie once more between the fine muslin sheets, now drenched with her perspiration.

Somewhere outside, beyond the open window, a loon uttered its jarring call. Eleanor jumped and trembled helplessly at the familiar noise before she recognized it — and, with recognition, devastating realization of what was wrong with her. For the first time in her usually sheltered life Eleanor Worden Herrick was feeling fear.

Apart from the inevitable minor panics of growing up and the nagging frights of adulthood, she had never before made the acquaintance of what Alan called the brass chills.

Having recognized the nature of her malaise, like any basically sensible person, she set about analyzing its origins to determine its proper treatment.

Its roots probably lay years back in the events proceeding Alan’s disappearance from this very house — events alarming enough to have given rise to terror in a person more sensitive than herself.

Undoubtedly, Clara’s behavior at luncheon and the unexpected appearance of the scarecrow “crucifix” had further primed her. Her former father-in-law’s inexplicable cold rage had added its fuel and the final touches had been given by Verna Paton’s curious warning and the revolver in her bedside table drawer.

Thus analyzed, her fear seemed foolish and she waited for it to evaporate so that she could get some much needed sleep. She lay down and composed herself and, in her mind’s eye, retraced a much loved woodland walk, a trick of recall that almost invariably left her in slumberland.

But this time, it didn’t work — not quite. Just as she began to drift off, the loon uttered its cry again, and a hoot owl made a jarring chorus of it. Eleanor came instantly awake but tried again, resolutely determined to shut out all natural noises from her consciousness.

This time, however, it was the noises of the old house that caused her to forfeit slumber. Nor was it merely the usual nocturnal complaints of rheumatic joists and floorboards. Rather, it was a sense of living creatures rustling about, somehow always just out of earshot, or, worse, the rustling of creatures that lived no more. The graveyard ghost stories Alan had told her returned to the forefront of her memory with a rush.

Tired or not, Eleanor realized that she had had it where sleep was concerned, at least for the time being. She decided the only thing to do was to take a hot bath in the hope that a prolonged soak in the tub might relax her sufficiently to make a return to bed worth while. But as the creakings and rustlings continued around her, she wondered if bed were not the safest place for her to remain against the faceless mindless menaces her imagination had conjured up.

No, she decided, she was not going to be deterred. She set her chin and spirit resolutely against the idiocy of panic and, sliding her pajama clad legs over the edge of the big bed, took a deep breath.

Yet, when she walked toward the closet lined passage, the loaded pistol was in her right hand — and, when she reached the passage, all light was suddenly cut off as the door behind her was silently and swiftly closed...

Even in that moment of ultimate terror, a thought of Clara and her lunch table premonitions flashed through Eleanor’s mind. With a grim gallows humor she had never suspected she possessed, she thought, Gerard, you’re back on the beam...

First the “crucifix”, now the “tunnel of darkness” — one, two, button my shoe...

Somebody had turned off the lights and closed the door behind her. Somebody — or something. With that, the revolver in her hand felt as useless as Clara had predicted it would feel.

Strangely, the chill weakness of panic that had gripped her on the bed had faded before an adrenal surge that gave her a grip on herself. She thought, I have this gun, and she sensed that, sooner or later, her assailant, whatever its nature, must show itself.

Then she would shoot — or would she? And, if she shot, would she hit the target?

Eleanor was proficient at skeet shooting, but she had never in her life fired a hand gun. She had been told it was a lot more difficult to hit anything with a pistol, thanks to the shortness of its barrel and its lack of recoil mechanism.