The Angry Ghost and Other Stories Page 4

  I smiled and after providing my friends with another round of brandies, settled down to relate my tale.

  Chapter 2: The Hound in the Mist

  “Several weeks ago,” I started, “I was taking one of my night walks along the coastal track north of Brinkley, some fifteen or so miles east of here. It was after midnight and the weather was cold and crisp; there was a low-lying mist across the moors, but otherwise quite pleasant and the stars were bright in their heavenly void.

  It was after I had stopped to readjust my backpack, that I heard a howling or baying; it echoed over the moorland sounding like a lost soul. Despite the late hour, the moon afforded me the visibility to see… something, that came and went with the undulations of the mist.

  To say it was a large hound is an understatement – it was huge. It had a massive body, broad skull and head of generally square appearance; it was the largest dog I have ever seen. It was as tall as an Irish Wolfhound or Great Dane, but far more solid.

  As I concentrated my visual senses on it I felt that it was tracking a scent for its head was low to the ground and moving from side to side.”

  “And you deduced this from some vague undulations in rolling fog?” said Tremayne.

  “Indeed,” I replied, a little surprised how quickly the scepticism had manifested. “But despite the seemingly spurious form, I did not doubt my eyes, and hearing its baleful howls, I doubted my ears no less.

  Now, I would not in any way mean to imply something unearthly about this animal, other than perhaps its sorrowful calls and its massive size except that as I continued to watch it… it vanished.”

  I raised my hand at the immediate questions. “No, I did not look away for a moment; no, I was not suffering from tiredness and exhaustion and – Adams, before you suggest it – I had not touched a drop all day!”

  The judge leant forward as if to proclaim a ruling. “I don’t suppose anyone else saw or heard it?” he said.

  “No, I was alone. The moving image came and went with the mist. Then, the mist was gone and so too was the hound – and not thirty paces from me. I have since learned that others have seen the beast.”

  “On the way back from the alehouse, I should warrant,” I heard from Tremayne.

  The others nodded and chuckled.

  I smiled, for once I too would have seen the absurdity.

  “Well, I’m certain there is a perfectly rational explanation to the disappearance,” said Adams receiving supportive nods from the others.

  “Indeed, so I thought, but there is more – in fact, I have hardly touched upon my tale.”

  My guests settled back in their chairs and looked up with renewed interest.

  “I remembered seeing a painting somewhere, of a very large dog of – I would say – identical aspect, and it took a while before I remembered seeing it right here in the Archive Room. The painting hangs just over there.”

  Tremayne, Adams and the judge stood up and wandered over in the direction dictated by my pointing finger.

  “Certainly a nice painting,” observed Adams.

  “And that is indeed an exceptionally large hound,” said the judge, “unless the gentleman beside it is a midget.”

  “Who is the gentleman?” said Tremayne.

  “That would be the library’s archivist; he lived a little over a hundred years ago, and within these very walls.”

  “Over a hundred years, you say? So clearly no connection with the creature you thought you saw?”

  I smiled, “I saw it.”

  “Yes, but clearly not the same dog.”

  “The same dog,” I persisted, “down to the same black leather collar.”

  I paused for a moment realising the irony in how my former attitude to not entertain seemingly ludicrous ideas now seemed to give me the strength to give certainty to my voice.

  “The following day,” I continued, “I took the odd notion to find out more about the man in the painting. It turned out that he was buried in a large cemetery here in Morthaven and so I visited the grave.”

  “But why?” asked Adams.

  “The gentleman must have thought much of the dog…” I said, “… to commission a painting of him and it. Not only that, but notice the composition and form of the painting; the man is incidental; the subject and focus is the hound. He thought much of that animal.”

  “If it wasn’t for the fact that I saw the hound disappear before my very eyes, I would not have indulged in this particular avenue of investigation.

  Anyway, I found the grave and discovered nothing at all sinister about it.”

  The judge interrupted, “Why were you pursuing this line when as it’s clear it’s not possible for a dog to disappear, and we all share the same ridicule of the ‘ghost believing’ fraternity – your basis is clearly flawed.”

  “I would normally agree but my investigations actually bore fruit,” I answered smiling.

  “I then looked further afield and – would you believe – there are cemeteries where people are actually buried close to their beloved pets.

  And then I came upon one where strangely there were no gravestones at all. I enquired from an elderly chap tending the grass who told me that the graves and stones had been moved here to the Morthaven Cemetery which happened to be the place I found the archivist.

  I thought nothing of it at the time but its importance became clear later.

  As I conversed with the grass-cutter I gazed around the immaculate grounds and then noticed a rather unkempt and wild area in the corner where a spiky shrub was encroaching onto the lawn; it contrasted strangely with the exceptionally well-manicured grass and trimmed hedges.

  When I asked the man about it he indicated that over the years the bush – Pyracantha I think he called it – had spread, and its inch-long thorns had discouraged him from tending it; especially as no one now visited the graveyard, he had not concerned himself with it.

  On a hunch, I wandered over and attempted to see through the dense, thorny undergrowth. Despite a minimal moving aside of the fronds, I still came away with bleeding scratches along the backs of my hands.

  But before the fronds closed in before me, I would swear that I saw a stone; it was almost invisible as it was small and the same grey as the surrounding earth – but I was certain I saw it.”

  “Come on, Samuel, maybe it was a dog’s grave, maybe it wasn’t; it cannot have anything to do with your disappearing hound. Maybe your dog fell into an unmapped mineshaft or subterranean aperture.”

  I smiled again, “I know how predetermined we are in our beliefs, but I believe we must recognise that there is a limitation in our mental vision to weigh with patience and intelligence those isolated phenomena that are seen and felt by the psychologically sensitive few.”

  “But it’s surely not a case of sensitivity but gullibility in entertaining hearsay and conjecture – truth and fact are not their bedfellows,” said the judge.

  “Samuel, this is disquieting. Are you actually starting to believe in this nonsense?”

  I now felt overwhelmingly committed. “There is more,” I replied, “and as for truth, perhaps there are truths that are simply beyond our blinkered minds to comprehend and so, sadly, we relegate them to lies and denigration.”

  The others looked concerned but propriety allowed the discourse to continue.

  I looked at my pocket watch; the Witching Hour was only ten minutes away.

  I stood up and moved to the windows and closed the curtains. The lightning had ceased but there was still the sound of thunder in the distance. I lit several of the tall candlesticks to supplement the fire’s illumination of the room – I felt they would be needed later – and sat down.

  “From the vicar of the Brinkley Church,” I continued, “I managed to view a ledger pertaining to the previous occupants of that area of the cemetery where the Pyracantha grew
, and then spoke to the father at the Morthaven Cemetery who obliged me in providing information as to how many graves he received from the Brinkley graveyard.

  Gentlemen; there were sixty-six graves in Brinkley and only sixty-five made it to Morthaven.”

  Adams raised his hand. “I fail to see the most tenuous of connections with your disappearing dog tale.”

  I smiled again. “The ledger also revealed to me who was buried beside the Pyracantha bush. It was the archivist – the man in the portrait – before he was interred and moved to Morthaven.”

  “I’m sorry, Samuel, but I’m really not following you,” said Tremayne.

  I looked around realising just how blinkered we and other like-minded individuals were to the world around us; a world that sometimes lies between the lines of reason and perhaps insanity in an uncomfortable and lesser accepted pathway of explanation.

  “But don’t you see?” I said, looking at each of them in turn. “The hound was simply searching for its master.”

  “Samuel,” said the judge with concern. “It was dead – it is dead – its master – if it had one – is also dead.”

  All three looked at me with some unease.

  I took a deep breath. “I mentioned earlier, that there is apparently a ghost that has been rattling his chains in this very room after midnight.

  It started about five years ago. The first sightings of the hound on the moors occurred five years ago, and guess when the graves were moved?”

  I didn’t need to tell them.

  “Oh, Samuel, these are just stories to entertain the tourists or romanticise a tale for a good yarn in front of a warm open fire,” Tremayne said, sighing.

  I smiled again.

  It was midnight – the Witching Hour had begun.

  Showtime.

  Chapter 3: The Witching Hour

  I removed my pocket watch for the third time that evening and smiled to myself.

  “Gentlemen, it is time. I have spent several nights within these walls and on the moors so as to be clear of my own conclusions, and tonight we shall see the consequences of my recent endeavours.”

  I must admit that my smile was a little forced; if I were wrong…

  Each of my colleagues waited patiently and then started to look at each other.

  Then it started.

  The sudden sound of a dragging chain caused our little group to sit up suddenly and look over for the source of the sound. Despite the room’s furnishings, it echoed loudly as if dragged through a large and empty hall.

  As they stared towards the back wall, a shadow appeared and coalesced from the darkness into the corporal form of an old man.

  He moved slowly towards the window on the other side of the room. My colleagues looked between the old gentleman and the painting.

  Hanging from his hand was the source of the sound – a large, heavy chain – which he shook several times.

  I whispered to the others. “I would like to introduce you to Father Bryan James – the archivist.” The others stared at me and then the man. “I think you will agree that he is rather persuasive to my story.”

  The archivist stopped and we all waited expectantly, none more so than myself for the look of expectation and anticipation on the father’s face was curiously mirrored on my own.

  The father was not a midget which meant…

  I jumped slightly – as did the others – for there was a sudden baying howl as if from another plane of existence, and it sounded again, but closer this time, until finally it sounded as if it were coming from within the room itself.

  I looked over at Tremayne and Adams who had both stood up and had moved closer to the fire, their eyes wide and unbelieving as they looked from wall to wall for the origin of the sound. I could see from the white-knuckled hands locked onto the arms of the chair as to the reason for the judge’s immobility.

  I felt like reminding them of the illogicality of the current circumstance; the ridiculous nature of what they were experiencing; the absurdity of what they saw.

  Then I saw them shudder and I looked over and – as I had hoped – an enormous dog was moving slowly across the opposite wall towards the other. I could see it more clearly now than before; it appeared to belong to the breed of Mastiff.

  The ghosts came together.

  The hound raised its paw and the man held it and – smiling – looked at his dog whilst stroking its head for several moments before he reached over and attached the chain he had been carrying to its black leather collar.

  Despite the look of terror on the faces of my friends, I felt a different emotion as my eyes welled up for a moment. I had once owned a dog and had missed him terribly when I had lost him.

  The loving look on the man’s face told me he too had been missing his.

  Then, all of a sudden, the archivist turned his head and stared directly at me and the hairs on my neck stood up suddenly. He smiled and then nodded before turning and following the eager hound towards the steps that would terminate at the back yard and then the moors.

  “What…? What…?” I heard from somewhere. “Did you know that would happen?”

  “Early this morning,” I said, still moved, “I arranged for the grave in the Pyracantha bush to be relocated to Morthaven Cemetery beside the archivist’s. I believe the dog will now be absent from the moors where it took its exercise with its master, and I rather think there will no longer be the rattling of the dog chain, as the father has now found his dog; and the dog – her master.”

  My three guests were quiet; I understood, for it took me a long while myself to accept the truth and break my loyalty from the scientific brigade.

  “In his winter years,” I whispered, “the father became an archivist here in the library and often worked late into the night. To keep him company he took in a puppy and for seventeen years, on the stroke of midnight, he would take her for a walk on the moors.”

  The Ghosts of Kilronan

  Chapter 1: Prologue

  Scene 1: The Note

  In recent years, I have received several requests to investigate cases of a supernatural leaning from some rather respectable – and some not so respectable – quarters. But it was one from a priest in Kilronan, in southern Ireland, that had me urgently packing my cases and leaving the comfort of my adopted town of Clonmel.

  I should say that I’m not religious or some kind of exorcist, and my resolution of perceived unexplainable phenomena through rational explanations has always seen me through.

  I was, however, no stranger to Kilronan; it was there that I was born and where I had suffered a severe and tragic loss. I had determined never to return and had successfully avoided the place ever since, although my contact through infrequent correspondence with the father of the parish – and the man requesting my visit – I had maintained.

  Father Ardal Fitzpatrick was an old friend of my father, but it wasn’t from this fact that I quickly gathered my things and sent for carriage; it was a note, of many years old considering the delicate parchment and the fading words.

  He had included it with his own letter, causing me to sit up and reply with a note of acceptance.

  As I waited for my carriage I once again looked at the appended note and – with a long-lived scepticism – wondered if I could find some closure to that loss; a loss that I had never accepted.

  Today I killed my sister, it began; I did not mean to; it was an accident, but it happened because of me since if I had let her have the doll she would still be alive.

  At this moment, downstairs, a policeman is talking to Mummy about me and Siobhan.

  I’ve already told them many times that I loved her and didn’t mean it to happen.

  Siobhan had climbed onto the churchyard wall and had somehow ripped her doll’s red dress. She was very upset. I told her I could mend it for her and asked her to give me the
doll.

  She wouldn’t so I tried to take it from her but she wouldn’t let it go.

  As we were pulling it, the head came off in my hand suddenly, and Siobhan fell backwards off the wall.

  I climbed down and Siobhan was no longer crying.

  Mairead

  13th November 1869

  I put the note in my pocket and pondered. I was intrigued as I too had killed my sister and resented the apparent reminder.

  Chapter 2: Arrival

  Scene 1: Callahan’s

  I arrived mid-evening in Kilronan and stood before Callahan’s Inn with more than a little feeling of irritation.

  The door was locked.

  It was not something that I or anyone should have considered a serious cause for a feeling of the utmost defeat, but today I had been through utter hell.

  In truth, I had thought for a long time before somewhat apprehensively accepting the father’s invitation to return to Kilronan – the village where I grew up – the village where I killed my sister.

  It was a quaint and perhaps easily missable little village a few miles north-east of the coastal town of Tramore on the south-eastern coast of southern Ireland.

  It had taken nearly eight hours on the coach thanks to ‘Old Jesse’ slipping a shoe and ‘Old Bob’ having to slow down several times to empty his stomach contents over various parts of the otherwise picturesque countryside.

  It should perhaps be noted in case of perceived ambiguity that ‘Old Jesse’ was a horse. He had a bad temper – he tried to nip me earlier – while ‘Old Bob’ was an equally overweight and cantankerous creature who occasionally found time to drive the coach when he wasn’t decorating the roadway with last night’s ale.

  The best that can be said about the earlier part of the journey was that it had been only mildly unpleasant, but then we became stuck in a small ford and things took a dive. It was immediately apparent to me that Old Bob’s concern for his double hernia – he had discussed it in some depth earlier – was greater than his concern for me getting one.