N DENNETT
The village, which lay in a pocket of the great rolling moorland hills, was approached by a steep, narrow road — a road inclining so deeply that midway the stranger felt he were descending directly upon the spire of the old grey church, which rose like a warning finger from the depth below.
Once down, however, the village spread itself out in the pleasant desultory fashion peculiar to such places. There were the usual high-banked lanes, over which could be glimpsed meadowland of a lush and vivid green, the usual cluster of cool white cottages, with farmhouses at widening distances, the inn, which was also shop and post-office — the ancient and creeper-lined church itself, which seemed to be dreaming gently of things long past and forgotten.
All delightfully rural and peaceful: this, at least, is the impression of the casual visitor, which Mr Melsome received before he knew it to be erroneous. Its peacefulness, he decided, was not so much peace as that strange calm which precedes a storm. There was the same waiting stillness before the first thunder claps break …
Justly annoyed at himself for this fanciful notion, which was so foreign to him, Mr Melsome walked on at a quicker pace.
He had crossed the endless open moorland, where no sound came to his ear but the whispering sibilance of the wind in the dry grasses and the chaffering heather fronds, where no sight met his gaze but the far-off sky-line serrated by faint, mist-crowned tors, or a tall, single-armed finger-post in the near distance, that looked somehow sinister in those boundless solitudes, with the stranger’s usual sensation of fascination and awe. It was with a sigh of relief that he had seen the loneliness yield to signs of habitation; but now that he was arrived in the village, he felt by no means happy in it.
To be sure, it was a wet, lowering evening, growing early dark, and a chilly wind blowing, but that did not altogether account for his sense of depression. The few people he had met appeared subdued, with a certain nervousness about them that he could neither understand nor account for. They walked as though beneath a burden, as a man might who was haunted by either dread or remorse … Mr Melsome stopped suddenly dead.
Yes, that was what it was: it was a haunted village, a village that went in daily fear of something …
Oppressed by the weight of his own imaginings Mr Melsome tried to shake off his vague alarm. Not a soul seemed to be stirring, the village deserted, hidden away behind fast-shut doors. He began to experience a curious expectancy and to dislike turning a corner, as if he feared to meet with some danger. Rain had fallen heavily some hours before, and earth and sky were drained of colour. He began to dislike the sound of his own footsteps on the muddy road, and trod gingerly, almost on tiptoe. A streak of amber in the west washed with a cold, cheerless light the windows of the cottages, and lay reflected in the wind-ruffled pools.
Presently he came in sight of the cemetery, a dim, melancholy place given up to silence, trees black and shining with wet, and sodden earth.
Then, just outside the iron gates, and in the shadow of a great yew-tree, Mr Melsome saw it for the first time — a curious, lichen-grown pillar-stone. There was something so impressive, so suggestive of hidden power about this grey, rough-hewn Menhir, barring, as it were, the entrance to the cemetery, that with a quickening of the pulses Mr Melsome had a sudden impulse to move forward and look more closely at it, noting with some surprise as he did so that bunches of flowers and other small offerings were laid at the foot.
The Menhir, which had evidently been carved into a rude female figure with closed or downcast eyes, was much defaced by time and weather; but, as if to belie this peaceful aspect, the expression was startingly evil. Her gargoyle face, with flat, sloping forehead, pointed ears, and sharp, narrow jaw, was so brutal as to be three-parts animal — the personification of vice incarnate. She stood there sombrely, malevolently, with curling, sneering lips — silent, unmoving, but strangely suggestive of latent power. By some curious accident in the carving she appeared to be leaning forward, as if to clutch anyone unwary enough to venture near enough to her. Mr Melsome was not usually an imaginative man, nor one particularly timid, but a sensation of acute discomfort grew and strengthened the longer he stood looking at the thing.
He averted his eyes; peered about him nervously: already the semi-luminous light of the sunset had dwindled, and a mist was gathering. In faint, tenuous vapours it writhed and crept among the trees and up the narrow lane, shutting off and closing Mr Melsome in from the outside world. As in a narrow circle he stood there facing the evil, vulpine face of the Menhir. At his back, across the road, an old tumbledown cottage stared at him with blind eyes; before him, beyond the low wall, the tombstones in the sad, neglected-looking churchyard glimmered palely. Raindrops fell with an everlasting patter off the bare branches upon the graves, whose stained and fading flowers looked even more melancholy.
Suddenly, with a strange unhuman cry, a figure rushed from the darkness surrounding the gate, and disappeared down the mist-filled lane bordered by its dripping trees.
This, combined with the dampness, the dreamy graveyard and the malevolent-looking Menhir, finished Mr Melsome. His heart beating uncomfortably fast, he turned and hurried away from the spot with a feeling of ridiculous panic.
He had intended to look in at the church, which, as its new curate, he supposed was a serious omission; but now his chief concern was a good rest and a cup of really hot tea.
He reflected that he had perhaps been a little foolish to accept the curacy without coming to see the place first; but the idea of a country church, after one situated in the slum of a busy city — besides having been advised by his doctor to make a complete change for the good of his health — had so appealed to him that he had eagerly seized the chance that a friend had put in his way.
Seated before the peat fire of The Three Chimneys, presently some of its rosy glow stole over his spirit as it rubified his body.
After all, he’d done a pretty good jaunt, and he wasn’t so young as he was, he thought: probably he’d feel differently about it all in the morning, and when he had once settled down and become accustomed to the change. He began to scoff at himself and wondered how he could have been intimidated by really nothing at all but his sense of the dull day, the gloom of the churchyard, and the natural weariness attendant on a long walk over the moors … He commenced to feel quite jovial, and in need of conversation.
The landlord of The Three Chimneys was a fat, stocky man, with a face as round and red as an apple. But his comfortable contour did not agree with his expression, since it was glum and stolid; and when Mr Melsome, in the relief of finding his depression had vanished, inquired almost jocularly about the very peculiar-looking statue-menhir at the entrance of the churchyard, mine host became, if anything, more morose and disinclined to talk than before.
‘I don’t know what tes, sir; tes bin ’ere so long, like,’ he answered at last, unwillingly, when he could no longer ignore Mr Melsome’s questions.
‘Then perhaps you can tell me why fruit and flowers are presented to it; surely that is a very heathenish thing to do?’
Either the mild rebuke in Mr Melsome’s voice, or the slightly scandalized look in the pale-blue eyes behind the large spectacles, stung the man into speech, for he answered quite heatedly:
‘Mebbe tes; but Law’ bless ’ee, if you was so scared o’ the wicked oa’ toad as us be, you would too. They flowers and such don’t do no harm, if en don’t do no gude. The curse o’ the village her be, for certain sure,’ he added, almost under his breath.
Mr Melsome, considerably intrigued, hastened to put more queries, but the man was not to be drawn. Indeed, he appeared to regret that he had said as much as he had, and soon after disappeared through a doorway into an inner room, while Mr Melsome sat sipping his tea slowly and rather thoughtfully.
On the landlord presently re-entering the room, he asked: ‘Has the cottage opposite the main gate of the churchyard been empty for long? I shall be coming to live here shortly; I’m Mr Melsome, the new curate —’
‘Aw, be you, sir?’ said the man, taken by surprise. ‘Well, I be mortal pleased to see ’ee, sir; but don’t ’ee go for to live in thicky cottage, whatever ’ee do. Why, tes jus’ opposite the graveyard, and faces the Grey Gammer!’ His voice expressed the horror he felt.
‘But it looks such a picturesque old place, though certainly rather neglected. Besides, what harm could the Grey Gammer, as you call it, do me?’
The man hesitated.
‘I shouldn’t like to say, sir; but round these yur parts nobody’ll a-live in thicky cottage; and wouldn’t for awl the money in the world. Last one as lived there, her went mad, and one afore that, he killed hisself, sir. So tes bin left empty ever since.’
Really, thought Mr Melsome, this ignorant superstition should be stamped out. It was a disgrace in a civilised country, and above all in the present year of grace 1934.
He accordingly spoke a little sharply: ‘Nonsense, nonsense! Doesn’t Mr Vince, the vicar, tell you so?’
‘Aw, he says so,’ said the landlord heavily, ‘but he don’t sound as if ’ee meant it. Tidden as if ’ee didn’t know, the same as us do.’
‘And does he countenance all this flower and fruit business, these offerings, as if it were an image of worship?’ persisted Mr Melsome.
‘Not worship; tidden worship at awl, sir; jus’ to keep en in gude humour, so en won’t plague us, see? Mr Vince, he tried to stop us when he first comed, but bless ’ee, ’twarn’t no manner o’ use. And now he jus’ lets ’em stay: tes safer, like.’
‘But what does the Grey Gammer do, that you must so placate her?’ asked Mr Melsome, feeling as if he had lost himself in a foreign country.
The man’s face closed, became secretive.
‘Tes best not to say, sir,’ he said; but after some pressing, vouchsafed reluctantly that at every funeral the corpse must be carried round her three times before entering the churchyard, or those who carried it would die within the year.
It had happened that very week, too; for either forgetting, or scorning to follow the procedure, the pall-bearers had taken the coffin straight away in. ‘But,’ said the landlord, sinking his voice to a mere whisper, ‘but the very next day they was all dead — yes, the four ov ’em’ — two, it appeared, from a mysterious accident, when they were found apparently crushed to death; one from the effects of some fright, that left on his face a look of fear and loathing; and the other who, grazing his thumb on the Menhir as he brushed by, developed lockjaw and died in agony.
Nor was that all, went on the landlord, his tongue fairly unlocked now he had once began, like a stream in spate. There was an old rhyme in the district, which ran:
‘From the Shade and the ravening Ghoul,
Save, O Lord, my living soul.’
For the Gammer of the churchyard was reputed to be jealous of the living and sought to draw them into her clutch, as she did the dead in the cemetery.
‘Did ’ee see anywheres about a lad wi’ an awful face? A year ago he was the brightest lad o’ the village, then one night the Ghoul got en; and now he’m for ever hanging about the Grey Gammer as if he’m looking for sommat he can’t find — and never will no more. I tell ’ee, tes more’n your life’s worth to go past en at night.’ And the burly landlord shuddered and crossed his fingers.
Feeling comfortable and warm in the cosy black-raftered parlour, Mr Melsome could afford to smile at the childishness of it all. These country people were astonishing sometimes; he supposed the remoteness from modernizing influences was responsible; and went to bed privately vowing to have a quiet word with the vicar on the subject.
The next morning, getting up to brilliant sunshine, birds singing, and the air full of the promise of spring, Mr Melsome was soon striding happily along in the direction of the vicarage. He stared boldly at the Gammer of the Churchyard, who gazed stonily and malevolently in front of her, and who had somehow lost some of her terror in the bright morning light; then, after wandering into the church, which was very small and old, the air vitiated by damp walls and stale incense, he proceeded to call on Mr Vince. After the preliminaries of welcome and so forth had been finished with, Mr Melsome presently broached the subject of his night’s meditations.
Mr Vince, however, proved less amenable to reason than he had expected.
‘My dear Melsome,’ he said, with a shrug, ‘superstition is bred in their very bones. A good number of years ago the Menhir was an idol, and used to have human sacrifices presented to it. They believe it still hungers for them; hence the flowers and fruit and so on, in the hope of assuaging its terrible appetite. It is hopeless to try to stop it. The only way to root it out would be to rid the village of the monolith, and that, my friend — I frankly admit it — would take a braver man that I. It is a strange, weird thing. Live here a time, and discover it for yourself,’ he added, on perceiving the other’s look of mingled disgust and scepticism; ‘live here a while, and discover it for yourself — as I have.’ And the vicar’s face on a sudden wore, to the further disconcerting of Mr Melsome, a look of plain, unmistakable fear.
A week later found the new curate, with the obstinacy of a man fighting against his own instincts, installed in the old cottage facing the churchyard. He’d show ’em he was made of sterner stuff than to be scared of an old image! Pack of frightened Isaacs, so they were, to believe in such stuff and nonsense.
Tryphena, his sister, heartily supported him in this opinion. She was one of those elderly English virgins whose uprightness of mind corresponds with a back as straight as a ramrod. Not possessing an ounce of imagination or nerves of any sort, the good lady was not unduly troubled by dear Edwin’s choice of abode, and paid less attention to the tales regarding the Grey Gammer than she would have upon hearing that Patch, the dog, had been involved in a dog-fight.
A further week went by, during which Mr Melsome became quite settled down in the village, with nothing untoward happening to cause him to regret his foolhardiness. Then the test came, when he had either to stand by his opinions or own himself as weak as the rest of them. He had proclaimed loudly and widely during this short period that he would stand for none of their heathenish practices; and condemned wholesale their ridiculous fear of the Menhir, so that when he had to take the funeral of a small child who had recently died, he emphatically forbade the thrice-repeated circumambulation of the corpse before entering the graveyard. When at the gate the bearers obstinately refused to enter without so doing, he had perforce been obliged to take the small coffin from them and carry it in himself before the Service could proceed. Even then the men could scarcely be induced to go on, and remained throughout uneasy and apprehensive; and had at length departed, throwing scared looks behind them.
Mr Melsome had forgotten all about the affair when, about nine o’clock that evening, he thought he would go for a short stroll with the dog. No sooner had he shut the front-door behind him, however, and stepped out into the lane, than, with a whine, his hair bristling, Patch bolted madly down the road, his tail between his legs. And at the same instant, as he took a step or two forward, Mr Melsome became aware of a hostile and sinister presence, an aura of evil that gradually enveloped him, radiating from the strange pillar-stone where it stood half lost in the shadow of the great tree. There seemed also a kind of mist or cloud writhing about it, that stretched out and reached towards him with searching tentacles …
All at once real, naked fear seized him as he stood there in the silence and darkness, the yew-trees in the churchyard beyond seeming unusually impenetrable and secret, the monuments unusually white and ghostly. It was due only to his strength of will that he forced himself on towards the gate.
A waning moon, gliding from behind troubled clouds, suddenly spilled a flood of cold and frozen moonlight on the earth below.
He sprang back with a startled exclamation. The expression of the Menhir, always evil, was now malign and unspeakably foul under the influence of night. The eyes were wide open, the lips drawn back in a grinning snarl, the head thrust forward … the face of a fiend, rapacious, terrifying.
Dark, motionless, she yet gave an impression of dormant activity; a brooding and sinister quiet that might at any moment leap forth to destroy and devour … With the shades of night — so different from her peaceful aspect by day — she appeared to be wide awake, so that she looked alive … Almighty powers, she WAS alive! For one horrible, palpitating second Mr Melsome thought she was going to spring upon him … With a hoarse cry, in unconditional panic, he tore across the road and into the house, locking and bolting the door after him.
Considerably ashamed of this exhibition, he attempted to explain it away by deciding it was merely a sudden attack of nerves; and gave himself a severe lecture.
A grey, rough-hewn statue, lichen-coated and scarred by time and weather; and yet, by the power of suggestion and mental association, it had become a thing of superstitious fear, and terrorized a whole village. Puerile, ridiculous nonsense, and he and everyone else ought to be thoroughly ashamed of themselves.
Notwithstanding this sensible attitude, Mr Melsome could not rid himself of his nameless apprehension, for now, to his annoyance, he discovered in himself a decided reluctance to pass the Menhir at night, and took to leaving and entering the house by the back-door. He also used this roundabout way — shamefacedly and with much self-scorn — to go to and from the church, which method was quickly noticed by the villagers with general whispering and nudging.
‘Ha-ha, Melsome! the Grey Gammer getting too much for you already?’ twitted the vicar, with a certain amount of satisfaction, for it is never pleasant to have to own oneself as cowardly as one’s flock.
Mr Melsome denied it indignantly; and to prove how very far from the truth the vicar’s accusation was, the very next night he walked boldly out of the cottage by the front door, but clutching Patch, it must be admitted, by the collar with a grip unconsciously tight.
No sooner was he within ten yards of the thing, however, than again that wave of horror flowed out to him, and with a yelp, Patch burst frantically from the restraining hold, leaving the collar in his master’s hand.
His heart thumping painfully, Mr Melsome’s courage failed him; he fled as ignominiously as upon the first occasion. And now he knew it was no use continuing the unequal struggle. He was afraid, definitely afraid, of the Grey Gammer, and might as well own it. And owning it, he became possessed by a nervous dread that he could not overcome.
Even when he sat warm and comfortable before the fire, the curtains drawn against the windows and the night without, he felt her, saw her there in the darkness by the churchyard gate, obscene and hideous; felt it was useless to turn his back; even through the curtains he was certain she was aware of his regard … was looking at him with evil, watching eyes … He grew pale and strained.
‘Why don’t you say straight out that you’ve allowed the thing to get on your nerves, Edwin?’ said Miss Tryphena acidly, when at last, unable to bear sitting in the front room any longer, he suggested occupying one to the rear of the house.
Pathetically he strove to protect his dignity. ‘Nothing of the sort, Tryphena; nothing of the sort. You know quite well the light is bad here; you’ve complained of it yourself.’
‘Humph! have it your own way, then,’ she retorted, and the change was soon after made, for even she, which she would not have acknowledged for any money in the world, had come to loathe the sight of the evil-looking Menhir across the way.
Here, at least, Mr Melsome thought he was safe. And for a night or two he did find some relief. Then one evening there came a soft, insistent pressure that drove him to his feet … drew him with irresistible force out of the shelter and security of the house into the hostile darkness without. Like a man mesmerized, like a sleep-walker, Mr Melsome stepped out into the lane, went slowly forward …
Dark, motionless, compelling, the Gammer crouched, waiting in the shadow of the great yew … Suddenly, urged forward by a power outside his control, Mr Melsome ran forward and flung himself at her feet … Round his head swirled the malodorous mist; he knew thoughts and desires he had formerly thought of with disgust and loathing; he quailed and blenched beneath an intolerable weight of evil. Helpless, he stared up at the bestial face above him — cruel, lowering, vampire-like, with eyes set slit-wise, her teeth bared … teeth sharp and pointed … a creature hailing only from some Bourg of Night. The foul and evil personality, bound and impotent during the hours of daylight, was now an active, unclean force … He felt his soul being drawn from his body, as if some fearful thing were sucking and pulling it forth … A faintness stole over him; his heart began to beat slower and slower …
Faintly, as from an infinite distance, he heard the sound of a dog’s howling — Patch, who with nose pointed to the evening sky, was pouring out his instinctive defiance and terror of death. Gradually, and with infinite pain, his soul drew back, returned little by little; revitalized his body. Weak, trembling, Patch’s howls sounding like trumps of doom in the still air, Mr Melsome dragged himself away and fell senseless on the doorstep of the cottage …
Like a shadow of himself he went about his daily duties. His changed appearance was commented upon by the villagers with ominous shakes of the head, and the scared view that the Grey Gammer had marked him for her own … A man haunted, his eyes sunk in the greyish pallor of his face, Mr Melsome seemed daily to be slipping out of life — a fact which was duly observed with half-fascinated, half-morbid curiosity and lively fear.
Again that soft, compelling force reached him where he sat before the fire one night, vainly trying to read and forget. And he knew, with fearful certitude, that did he obey this time, he were a dead man …
And now there began a hideous struggle. Impotently, despairingly, Mr Melsome fought; for an overwhelming influence forced him to his feet, drove him out into the passage towards the door … Outside, in saturnine triumph, the Gammer smiled and smiled … Mr Melsome, sobbing, fell on his knees, grasping the handle, fighting desperately not to open the door, to go out to his destruction in the pitchy darkness …
How long this tussle continued he did not know; but presently he felt the devouring clutch of the thing weaken, the insistent demand lessen; and, bathed in sweat, and shivering in every limb as from a fever, he rolled over on the floor, tears of relief running down his face. As strength returned he became filled with a great thankfulness and exultation; he rose to his full height, crying aloud: ‘I’ve conquered, I’ve conquered! Oh, merciful Heaven, I’m saved — saved!’ And went to bed, and slept the first real sleep he had had for weeks. Rising the next morning, the colour had returned to his cheeks, the light to his eyes. He felt, and was, a new man.
Confident, wreathed in smiles, he bustled about like a busy and energetic sparrow. Coming back from the church, where he had been preparing the Sunday’s service, instead of taking the long way round, as he did usually to avoid the Gammer of the Churchyard, he came buoyantly down the long yew-tree-edged path, careless and carefree.
This mood did not desert him even when he stood in front of her, with a new spirit of criticism and a new wonder that it could have been actually himself who had knelt there in subjection, half-crazed with terror; for even upon this Sunday morning the Menhir looked, in the shade of the yew-tree, dark, sinister, monstrous, full of an evil power.
With a sudden spasm of hatred, of contempt, Mr Melsome struck her across the face.
‘Do your damnedest, you fiend! You shan’t get me a third time … do you hear? I defy you utterly and completely!’
He raised his hand to give her a final blow when, out of a clear sky, there came a sudden and solitary growl of thunder.
With a face out of which all colour had been startled, Mr Melsome, with a scared look at the seemingly quiet grey figure, turned and ran, rather than walked, down the sun-splashed lane, seeing, in place of the brightness before him, only a black and noisome pit.
Followed a period of fear worse than any he had previously passed. His days were a series of creeping terror; he waited, sick and shivering, for he knew not what.
And then, down from the hills that towered far above the hamlet, on every side descended a storm that had never before been known; the air became a roar, the wind a devastating fury. It tore and blustered and rioted, rushed upon the houses and tore the roofs away, felled trees and wrought incalculable mischief. Then there came upon the valley as deep a calm; and presently people reported with awe that a mist, like a gigantic spider’s web, was gathering round the Grey Gammer, which with every hour spread, until it became a thick, evil-smelling vapour that never lifted, so that lights had to be kept continually burning, and people groped their way about as best they could.
Soon, terrified whispers went abroad that the Grey Gammer was seeking vengeance … A number of violent deaths occurred, the result of strange and inexplicable accidents. By a stranger coincidence, all those who died suddenly and horribly bore on their features a look of fear and loathing, while their bodies appeared to have been crushed by some heavy weight …
Shudderingly, Mr Melsome knew he was the cause of it; knew that it was through him, and for him, this horror had descended upon the village … He began to be haunted by a dreadful sound as of something that followed him, keeping pace with him like a dog; something that loomed up in the mist huge and dark, and then dropped back again as he leapt aside, but always with him … something, he knew, would get him sooner or later …
He could neither rest nor eat, and reduced Miss Tryphena — who deplored the strange fatalities, and grumbled about the everlasting mist that was so depressing — to as near distraction as that level-headed spinster could go.
‘For mercy’s sake take a tonic, Edwin; you’re getting as nervous as a cat!’ she exclaimed irritably, when, upon accidently dropping a lump of coal, he sprang out of his chair, with his eyes staring out of his head and his hands clutching his hair.
Still this maddening sound followed him, sometimes nearer, sometimes further: a slow, lugubrious dragging, as if something heavy were slurring over the ground … Twice that day it had been almost on his heels, but that he had saved himself in the nick of time; once by rushing into a nearby cottage, and once by climbing a tree. He had now got into such a state that he was afraid to set his foot out of doors at all, and sat huddled over the fire in the back room, starting at every sound and disliking to be left.
Miss Tryphena, who was by now thoroughly alarmed for her brother’s reason — which characteristically she hid under a hard, bright manner — finally hectored him into bestirring himself enough to do a little shopping for her. The walk, she declared, would do him infinitely more good than moping over the fire.
Wearily Mr Melsome obeyed her, more than ashamed of his cowardice; and trying to persuade himself that the whole thing was due simply to imagination. His purchases made, he returned, feeling, in spite of the choking mist, considerably brighter and more hopeful, since not once had he heard that terrible dragging sound behind him.
And then he made a shocking discovery: mistaking his way in the obscurity, he had come through the churchyard, and the Grey Gammer was not there in her usual place.
Stark, unreasoning terror seized him; his heart surged up in his throat, beat suffocatingly. It was, then, no imagination; no product of tired nerves. The Ghoul was after him; and inevitably, sooner or later, she would catch him and crush him to pulp …
He staggered into the house, sat down limply. He was doomed, he knew it; had known it from the beginning.
Miss Tryphena bustled in soon after. Taking in his air of collapse, but appearing not to, she began to talk in a brisk, matter-of-fact voice: ‘Oh, so you’re back, Edwin. I suppose the mist shows no sign of lifting; extraordinary, isn’t it, how it hangs about …’
She clucked her teeth in annoyance upon taking out of the basket a bundle of flowers.
‘Why did you get white ones, Edwin? I distinctly said daffodils,’ she said.
Mr Melsome looked up from his brooding survey of the fire.
‘I did get daffodils. Let me look,’ he said, rousing himself sufficiently to get up from his chair.
He started back, his face blanching.
‘A sign!’ he muttered. ‘A sign; it won’t be long now …’
‘What are you talking about?’ asked Miss Tryphena sharply, alarmed by his white face and wild expression.
‘They are asphodels, Tryphena; asphodels, that grow in the meadows of the dead …’
And with that, he reeled, and fell heavily upon the floor.
But now, as his hope was gone, his courage came back. True, it was the courage of despair; but now he took risks, where formerly he had fled, pale and quaking; took delight in seeing how long and how far he could outwit the devilish thing that sought him. Often through the mist he caught sight of the evil, vulpine face, with its glittering, slanting eyes and cruel jaw, and chuckled to himself with a glee that had more than a hint of hysteria in it.
The death of the burly landlord of The Three Chimneys pulled him up with a jerk. He, too, had been found terribly crushed, with that look of horror frozen on his features … Mr Melsome could not but feel that here was another tragedy that should be laid at his door; for in her merciless, juggernaut-like pursuit of him, the fiend that was the Grey Gammer took everything in her path.
Thinking deeply, he was walking down a steep-banked cart-road, which sloped sharply uphill behind him, the mist completely hiding everything in a thick woolly blanket, when he came to a sudden halt, rooted to the spot by a sense of impending danger. That waiting was more awful than anything that had gone before. He heard Doom approaching him — a heavy, muffled, slurring sound that made his heart stand still. Then, dimly outlined in the murk, there loomed up before him a clutching, malignant Shape, with eyes that pierced … He gave one look, shrieked, and fled into the writhing mist.
Unknown to himself, a strange, high scream came from his lips; he could neither see where he was going, nor run, for a queer sensation about his feet, as if something were clinging around them and impeding his progress.
Stumbling, panting, sobbing for breath, he rushed on; up that interminable hill, wild with fear and the awful expectation of being overtaken at any moment … He could hear the lugubrious, muffle-footed sound close behind him; could visualize the hideous, devilish face, alight with a fearful greed; but dared not turn his head. He knew that if he stumbled his fate was sealed … It was a flight that was the quintessence of nightmare.
Oh, the mist that swirled endlessly about him, blinded his eyes, seemed so heavy he could scarcely breathe! … He thrust frantic hands out in an effort to push it from him, but soundlessly it evaded him, slipped in again, closed over his head like intangible water …
He must run. He must go on, go on … go on! … Quicker, quicker yet, or that thing would clutch him and he would be done for … Uncanny, to go running on like this in the silence and mist — silence, that was, except for that remorseless, dragging sound behind him.
And now the moon appeared above and glimmered through — a pale, tissue-paper moon … the ghost of a moon, to add to the weirdness.
Exhausted — he was almost exhausted; his aching legs refused to hurry, his throat was dry and parched.
Ah-a-h! Ah-h! thank God, he was up the hill, and now he was running along the level road. Round and round curved the lane like a complicated letter ‘S’; then a wall appeared, the vague outline of the church … through the lich-gate, and into the graveyard … He tried to whip his flagging strength into making a final sprint, for home was in sight — just there — beyond the — iron — gates — quite near — now. Safe, he would be safe — there. He could see — the chimneys — almost —
Behind him, close behind him, almost on him now, was the Shape in the Darkness, of which he could see only the piercing eyes … The malinfluence that radiated from it seemed stronger, the tugging sensation overwhelming, so that every step he took forward was a terrible struggle … sometimes he faltered and fell back a pace, then, released, plunged on again, as a mouse caught by a cat is let go, only to be captured and drawn back by the enemy it cannot escape …
He took one quick look behind him, shrieked, and fled onward once more, past the grove-like walks, the silent graves … Then, beside one half-dug, lay a mattock, thrown down by the sexton and forgotten.
He had just time to seize it and run for the gate, when, merciful Heaven, the Gammer was upon him! — a devouring, shadowy form, exuding venom and malevolence.
Crying out wildly, frenziedly, Mr Melsome raised his weapon in a last desperate effort … faced the advancing Terror, seeing vaguely only a dreadful, rapacious face …
There struck him like a wave between the shoulders an engulfing shadow — a blackness, whose suction power was of some overpowering current of air blowing up from an infernal terminus …
The next morning, which dawned clear and sunny, a farm-hand going to work discovered, at the foot of the Grey Gammer, a mattock and a pair of spectacles, but of Mr Melsome himself there was no trace.
Nor was there any found; he appeared to have vanished off the face of the earth. There were many conjectures as to his possible fate; the newspapers holding the view that, while wandering over the moor in the thick mist, the unfortunate man must have either fallen over one of the many precipices or become caught in a bog. The villagers, themselves, however, have a different opinion, which is not spoken of except with bated breath.
The few strangers who come to the isolated village, when told the tale of the curate’s brief stay among them, murmur politely, and pass on. They, too, stop and look with repugnance at the strange Menhir at the churchyard gate, which somehow now has the appearance of licking its lips, as some beast might over the carcase of its victim. A further thing they notice with some perplexity is the curious-looking lump on its head, which could almost be taken for headgear of some kind—and in shape is not unlike a clergyman’s hat …