R. Lafferty - The 7th Ghost Story Megapack

And overhead the dry poplar leaves clashed and rustled, telling out to one another that love was a vain thing, and the thrush cried thrice, “Beware.” But Grace Allen would not have believed had one risen to her from the dead.

So the great wasteful summer days went by, the glory of the passionate nights of July, the crisper blonde luxuriance of August. Every night there was a calling from the green plot across the Black Water; every night Aunt Annie wandered, a withered grey ghost, along the hither side of the inky pool, looking for what she could not see and listening for what she could not hear. Then she would go in to lie gratuitously to Barbara, who told her to her face that she did not believe her.

But in the first chill of mid-September, swift as the dividing of the blue-black thundercloud by the winking flame, fell the sword of God, smiting and shattering. It seemed hard that it should fall on the weaker and the more innocent. But then God has plenty of time.

One gloaming there was no calling at the Rhonefoot. Nevertheless Grace rowed over and waited, imagining that all evil had befallen her lover. Within her aunt Barbara fretted and murmured at her absence, driving her silent sister into involved refuges of lies to shield Grace Allen.

The next day passed, as the night had passed, with an awful constriction about her heart and a numbness over all her body, yet Grace did her work as one who dares not stop.

Two men crossed in the ferry-boat, talking over the country news as men do when they meet.

“Did ye hear aboot young Jeffray?” asked the herd from the Mains.

“Whatna Jeffray?” asked, without much show of interest, the ploughman from Drumglass.

“Wi’, man, the young lad that has been here helpin’ his uncle MacDiarmid the Fiscal.”

“I didna ken he was here,” said the Mains, with a purely perfunctory surprise.

“Ou, ay, he has been a feck ower by at the Barr. They say he’s gaun to get marriet to the youngest dochter: she’s hae a gye fat stockin’-fit, I’se warrant.”

“Ye may say sae, or a lawyer wadna hae her,” returned him from Drumglass as the boat reached the farther side.

“Guide’en to ye, Grace,” said they both as they put their pennies down on the little tin plate in the corner.

“She’s an awesome still lassie, that,” said the Mains as he took the road down to Parton Raw, where he had trysted with a maid of another sort. “Did ye notice she never said a word to us, neyther ‘Thank ye’ nor ‘Guid-day’? Her een were fair stelled i’ her heid.”

“Na, I didna observe,” said Drumglass cotman indifferently.

“Some fowk are like swine: they notice nocht that’s no pitten intil the trough afore them!” said the Mains indignantly.

So they parted, each on his own errand.

Day swayed and swirled into a strange night of shooting stars and intensest darkness. The soul of Grace Allen wandered in blackest night. Sometimes the earth seemed to open and swallow her up; sometimes she seemed to be wandering by the side of the great pool of the Black Water with her hands full of flowers. There were roses blush-red, like what he had said her cheeks were sometimes; there were velvety pansies, and flowers of strange intoxicating perfume, the like of which she had never seen. But at every few yards she must fling them all into the black water, and go forth into the darkness and gather more.

Then from her bed she would start up, hearing the hail of a dear voice calling to her from the Rhonefoot. Once she put on her clothes in haste and would have gone forth, but her aunt Annie, waking and startled, a tall, gaunt apparition, came to her.

“Grace Allen,” she said, “where are you gaun at this time o’ the nicht?”

“There’s somebody at the boat,” she said, “waiting. Let me gang, Aunt Annie: they want me.”

“Lie doon on yer bed like a clever lass,” said her aunt gently. “There’s naebody there.”

“Or gin there be,” said Aunt Barbara from her bed, “e’en let them cry. Is this a time for decent fowk to be gaun play-actin’ aboot?”

So the morning came, and the evening and the morning were the second day. And Grace Allen went about her work with clack of gripper-iron and dip of oar.

Late on in the gloaming of the day following, Aunt Annie went down to the broad flat boat that lay so still at the water’s edge. Something black was knocking against it.

Grace had been gone four hours, and it was weary work watching along the shore or going in out of the chill wind to endure Barbara’s bitter tongue.

The black thing that knocked was the small boat broken loose from her moorings and floating helplessly. Annie Allen took a boathook and pulled it to the shore. Except that the boat was half full of flowers, there was nothing and no one inside.

But the world spun round, and the stars went out when the finder saw the flowers.

When Aunt Annie Allen came to herself, she found the water had risen. It was up to her ankles. She went indoors and asked for Grace.

“Save us, Ann!” said Barbara; “I thocht she was wi’ you. Where hae ye been till this time o’ nicht? An’ yer feet’s dreepin’ wat. Haud aff the clean floor!”

“But Gracie! Poor lassie Gracie! What’s come o’ Gracie?” wailed the elder woman.

At that instant there came so thrilling a cry from over the dark waters out of the night that both the women turned to each other and instinctively caught one another by the hands.

“I maun gang,” said Aunt Annie. “That’s surely Grace.”

Her sister gripped her tight.

“Let me gang—let me gang; she’s my ain lassie, no yours,” Annie said fiercely, endeavoring to thrust off Barbara’s hands as they clutched her like talons from the bed.

“Help me to get up,” said Barbara; “I canna be left here. I’ll come wi’ ye.”

So she that had been sick arose, like a ghost from the tomb, and with her sister went out to seek for the girl they had lost. They found their way to the boat, reeling together like drunken men. Annie almost lifted her sister in, and then fell herself among the drenched and waterlogged flowers.

With the instinct of old habit, they fell to the oars, Barbara rowing the better and the stronger. They felt the oily swirl of the Dee rising beneath them, and knew that there had been a great rain upon the hills.

“The Lord save us!” cried Barbara suddenly. “Look!”

She pointed up the great pool of the Black Water.

What she saw no man knows, for Aunt Annie had fainted, and Barbara was never herself after that hour.

Aunt Annie lay like a log across her thwart. But, with the strength of another world, Barbara detached the oar of her sister, and slipped it upon the thole-pin opposite to her own; then she turned the head of the boat up the great pool of the Black Water. Something white floated dancingly alongside, upborne for a moment on the boiling swirls of the rising water. Barbara dropped her oars, and snatched at it. She held on to some light wet fabric by one hand; with the other she shook her sister.

“Here’s oor wee Grade,” she said: “help me hame wi’ her!”

So they brought her home, and laid her all in dripping white upon her white bed. Barbara sat at the bed-head and crooned, having lost her wits. Aunt Annie moved all in a piece, as though she were about to fall headlong.

“White floo’ers for the angels, where Grade’s ga’en to! Annie, woman, dinna ye see them by her body—fower great angels, at ilka corner yin?”

Barbara’s voice rose and fell, wayward and sharp. There was no other sound in the house but the water sobbing against the edge of the ferry-boat.

“And the first is like a lion,” she went on, in a more even recitative, “and the second is like an ox, and the third has a face like a man, and the fourth is like a flying eagle. An’ they’re sittin’ on ilka bedpost; and they hae sax wings, that meet owrer my Gracie, an’ they cry withoot ceasing, ‘Holy! holy! holy! Woe unto him that causeth one of these little ones to perish! It were better for him that a millstone were hanged aboot his neck, and he were cast into the depths o’ the Black Water!’”