R. Lafferty - The 7th Ghost Story Megapack

“I rolled into a muddy ditch and lay still. My whole body was one great wound. My teeth were knocking together like billiard balls. I heard a brief gasp, and then a torrent of frightened words issued from beneath the embankment. ‘I thought you were a man! For heaven’s sake pity me! I didn’t know—I didn’t, so help me God! Please don’t! I beg you on my knees to pity me!’

“There followed the sounds of a scuffle, terminating in a prolonged scream : ‘Ah-h-h-h!’

“Another moment and Henriquez was picking me up. ‘It’s all right now, lad,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry I had to drop you, but it was the only way!’

“We passed through gray, deserted orchards and along horribly muddy roads. Once a shot rang out behind us. A tremor passed over my friend’s huge form and he whistled through his teeth.

“‘Another guard!’ he muttered. ‘The president was unduly cautious. But I can not blame him. He suspects all rebels, and there are so many attacks upon his life.’

“Henriquez was breathing so heavily that I urged him to rest, but he only grunted and plunged doggedly forward.

“I can assure you that we were welcome on board the American ship. We were toasted and treated like kings, but it took some time to discover that Henriquez had been shot through the chest. He was a sly dog, was Henriquez. And his wound didn’t bleed! Even the captain did not suspect. But he collapsed in the arms of the mate when he attempted to leave the ship.”

“He died?” I asked.

Talbot threw away his cigar and laughed. “Nothing could kill Henriquez—not even a bullet. But I never saw him again. He slipped overboard that night and swam ashore.”

“Did the president forgive him?” I asked.

Talbot grunted. “Henriquez was the president,” he replied.

I stared.

“But that isn’t all of my story,” he continued. “I said nothing could kill him. You can’t kill a ghost. Henriquez was assassinated before I escaped from prison. You may have read about him in the papers.”

“And you mean to say—?” I stammered.

“A rather unusual story, isn’t it?” grinned Talbot. “Of course none of the conventional magazines would take it. They detest the unusual and amazing in fiction. But you can mention my name and perhaps some civilized editor will run it. You know, it’s beastly exhilarating to be carried on the back of a ghost!”

“No, I never believed much in ghosts,” said the doctor. “But I was always rather afraid of them.”

“Have you ever seen one?” asked one of the other men.

The doctor took his cigar out of his mouth and contemplated the ash for a moment or two before replying. “I have had some rather startling experiences,” he said, after a pause, during which the rest of us exchanged glances, for the doctor has seen many things and is not averse to talking about them in congenial company. “Would you care about hearing one of them? It gives me the cold shivers now to speak of it.” We nodded, and the doctor, taking a sip as an antidote to the shivers, began:

“You remember George Carson, who played for the ’Varsity some years ago; big chap, with a light mustache? Well, I saw a good deal of him before he married, while he was reading for the bar in town. It was just after he became engaged to Miss Stonor, who is now Mrs. Carson, that he asked me to go down to a place which his people had taken in the country. Miss Stonor was to be there and he wanted me to meet her. I could not go down for Christmas Day, as I had promised to be with my people. But as I had been working a bit too hard, and wanted a few days’ rest, I decided to run down for a few days about the New Year.

“Woodcote was a pleasant enough place to look at. There were two packs of hounds within easy distance, and it was not far enough from a station to cut you off completely from the morning papers. The Carsons had been lucky, I thought, in coming across such a good house at such a moderate figure. For, as George told me, the owner had been obliged to go abroad for his health, and was anxious not to leave the place empty all the winter. It was an old house, with big gables and preposterous corners all over the place, and you couldn’t walk ten paces along any of the passages without tumbling up or down stairs. But it had been patched from time to time and, among other improvements, a big billiard-room had been built out at the back. A country house in the winter without a billiard-room, when the frost stops hunting, is just—well, not even a gilded prison. The party was a small one; besides George and his father and mother, there were only a couple of Misses Carson, who, being somewhere in the early teens, didn’t count, and Miss Stonor, who, of course, counted a good deal, and, lastly, myself.

“Miss Stonor ought to have been happy, for George Carson, besides being an excellent fellow all around, was by no means a bad match, being an only son with considerable expectations. But, somehow or other, she did not strike me as looking either very well or very happy. She gave me the impression of having something on her mind, which made her alternately nervous and listless. George, I fancied, noticed it, and was puzzled by it, for I caught him several times watching her with an anxious and inquiring look, but, as I was not there as a doctor, of course it was no business of mine, though I discovered the reason before I left Woodcote.

“The second night after my arrival—we had been playing, I remember, a family pool; the rest had gone upstairs to bed—George and I adjourned to a sort of study, which he had arranged upstairs, for a final smoke and a chat before turning in. The study was next to his bedroom, and parted off from it by curtains. As we were settling down I missed my pipe, and remembered that I had laid it down in the billiard-room. On principle I never smoke another man’s pipe, so I lit a candle, the house being in darkness, and started away in search of my own. The house looked awfully weird by the flickering light of a solitary candle, and the stairs creaked in a particularly gruesome way behind me, just for all the world as though someone were following at my heels. I found my pipe where I had expected in the billiard-room, and came back in perhaps a little more hurry than was absolutely necessary. Which, perhaps, explains why I stumbled in the uncertain light over a couple of unforeseen stairs, and dropped my candle. Of course it went out, but after a little groping I found it. Having no matches with me I was obliged to feel my way along the banisters, for it was so dark that I could not see my hand in front of me. And as I slowly advanced, sliding my hand along the broad balustrade at my side, it suddenly slid over something cold and clammy, which was not balustrade at all; for, stopping dead, and closing my fingers round it for an instant, I felt that I was holding another hand, a skinny, bony hand, which writhed itself slowly from my grasp. And though I could hear nothing and see nothing, I was yet conscious that something was brushing past me and going up the stairs.

“‘Hi—what’s that? Who are you?’ I called.

“There was no answer.

“I admit that I was in a regular funk. I must have shown it in my face.

“‘What’s the matter?’ asked George, as I blundered into his study.

“‘Oh, nothing,’ I answered; ‘dropped my candle and lost the way.’

“‘But who were you talking to?’

“‘I was only swearing at the candle,’ I replied.

“‘Oh! I thought perhaps you had seen—somebody,’ replied George.

“Somehow I did not like to tell him the truth, for fear he would laugh at my nervousness. But I determined to keep an eye on my liver, and take a couple of weeks’ complete rest. That night I woke up several times with the feeling of that confounded hand under my own—a clammy hand which writhed as my fingers closed upon it.