True Tales of the Weird

CHAPTER XII

THE DEMONS OF THE DARK

True to his promise, Deeming did not reappear, nor was there any subsequent manifestation that seemed referable to him. To what new plane he had "gone on," and whether to one higher or lower, we could only guess; the door that had closed upon his exit had evidently shut in forever (as had been our experience in certain other like cases) a mystery to which, for a moment, we had almost felt we were about to hold the key. Of the problem of the future life we had a hint of the terms of the solution, but the answer vanished before we could set it down below the ordered figures of the sum. Such, I believe, has been, is, and will be the constant fortune of all who venture far into the penetralia of the unseen. Now and then there seems to be an illumination – but it is not the radiance of discovered truth: – it is the lightning flash that warns away the profane intruder, and if defied it blasts him in body or in mind.

It was because of this conviction that my wife and I, although having experience during many years of incomprehensible occurrences whose narration, should I set it down, would fill many books like this, steadfastly refrained from allowing ourselves to assume a mental attitude that might, so to speak, encourage them. Far from finding the influences (whatever they were – and on this point we were careful to make no inquiry, and never formulated any theory) reluctant to invitation to display themselves, we were at times compelled to offer strenuous opposition to their approach: – even a passive receptivity to strange phenomena was not free from peril, and our previous knowledge of the unbalancing of more than one inquiring mind that had pursued the subject of the occult with too great a temerity had convinced us that "that way danger lies" – and a very grave danger, too.

To that danger we ourselves, as I believe, finally came to be exposed in our life in the House on the Hill: – not because we were lured to seek out the origin and nature of the forces about us, and thus gave ourselves up to their influence, but because the more or less constant exercise of that influence could not fail to have that effect, in spite of ourselves: – and it is to show how, as it seemed, and why, this effect – at first unsuspected – grew toward its sinister culmination, that I undertake the writing of this final chapter.

Meantime, I may say that the incidents attending the two spectral appearances that I have recorded, gave us occasion for much curious speculation, in which there was a certain relief in indulging ourselves. The garments from the wardrobe of the hangman; was the murderer doomed to go through all Eternity in this hideous attire? The offered sale of soap; is the occupation of "drummer" or "bagman" practiced beyond the Styx, and for what ghostly manufacturers are orders solicited? Was the soap a sample? Was it for the toilette or the laundry? What was its price per cake, and was there any discount by the box? Then the shade's appeal for "Christian charity," and the acceptance of it in the tangible form of coin of the realm! The money was returned again, but had it meanwhile been entered in some misty ledger to the credit of its temporary bearer? If deposits are made, and balance-sheets issued in the Dark World, then might Deeming's account seem to be heavily overdrawn. Dealing in phantom money, and liquidating of shadowy notes-of-hand! – do we carry with us into the Beyond not only our characters and personalities (as some believe) but also our occupations and ways of doing business? If Deeming's discarnated action was thus to be explained, he must have been in Hell, indeed!

Reflections such as these may strike the reader as flippant, but they were among the natural results of the circumstances. There was something so personal and intimate in these mid-day visits of the apparition, it was itself so seemingly tangible and even human, and in its expressions of thought and manifestations of emotion seemed to have experienced so slight an essential change from the conditions with which the living man had been acquainted, that there was little to excite horror in the event, after all. If the phantom had imparted to us no information, it had at least given us a hint that there was progress in the realms of the hereafter, and had awakened a vague belief that at the end of all there might be pardon. This suggestion was tenuous and elusive; but it was afforded, nevertheless, and I still cling to the hope that it inspired.

In writing this strange chronicle I have not attempted to set down all our experiences in that house of mystery, but only such as have seemed to me unusual, or representative of the manifestations as a whole. There were certain other phenomena so vague and evasive that I am unable to find words whereby to describe their nature or to convey the impression they caused: – all that I can say of them is that they seemed to invite us to an inquiry into some secret which the house contained, and to beckon to the success of such an investigation. We often discussed this apparent suggestion, but never acted upon it: – chiefly because, as I think, we were not at all sure it was not of subjective, rather than objective, origin – the natural result of the mental ferment which such a protracted series of weird happenings might be expected to cause. Moreover, as everything that had so far occurred had been without any conscious encouragement on our part, we felt some fear (as I have intimated above) of what might befall us if we endeavored to place ourselves completely en rapport with the agencies that seemed to be at work about us. Therefore we maintained as well as we could our isolated and non-conductive position, and refrained from all encouragement to the suggestions that were more and more forcibly borne in upon us that we should seek an understanding of the meaning of the things that had so much disturbed us.

Yet I cannot refrain from stating my conviction that the phenomena which I have endeavored to describe in these pages had their origin, not in any disturbed or morbid condition of the mind in any of the three persons who were affected by them, but in some undiscovered cause local and peculiar to the place of their occurrence. If this were not the case, it seems singular that manifestations of a like nature did not present themselves at other times and in other places. Any such persistent and startling incidents as those that were displayed in the House on the Hill were, happily, foreign elsewhere both to my wife's experience and to my own – such other influences as have seemed to come about us having apparently been unaffected by conditions of period and locality, and being almost always of a mild and gentle nature.

Whether our tacit refusal to seek a solution of the mystery that had so long brooded over us had anything to do with the even more serious and startling events that occurred during the final period of our residence, I cannot tell. I have often thought so: – at all events this record would be incomplete without setting them down.

It is not to be denied that the adventures in which we had participated for nearly a year, came finally to have a serious effect upon us, both physically and mentally. Our curiosity and interest had long ago become sated, and of late we had felt the slow but steady growth of something like apprehension: – an apprehension even more acute than that which might be inspired by any definite occasion for fear, since it looked forward to uncertainties for which there seemed to be no definition. But the days passed slowly by until only two weeks remained before the expiration of our lease, and, since the incident of the brooch which I have described, nothing seriously untoward had occurred.

Yet we had lately been conscious that the character of the influence that had so long possessed our habitation seemed to be undergoing a change. I cannot describe this change except to say that it took the form of an ominous quiescence. The elfish entities whose cantrips had served more to amuse and mystify than to annoy us, seemed suddenly to have abandoned the premises as if retiring before some superior approach, and the wraiths of the women and the child were no more seen or heard about the rooms or in the hall: – instead of these, we vaguely recognized the presence of a mighty force, which made itself manifest neither to the eye nor the ear, but was evident through some latent or inner sense whose function was to apprehend it. I cannot explain how the impression was conveyed, but we somehow knew that this presence was malignant and foreboded harm; and a disturbing uneasiness grew upon us rather than diminished as time elapsed, and everything remained upon the surface serene and calm.

While the familiar occurrences to which we had been accustomed never lost their sense of strangeness, the present cessation of them seemed more uncanny still; we had an uneasy and growing sense of something serious being about to happen, and often expressed to each other our common feeling of alarm. The circumstance that disquieted us most was that, whereas nearly all the events in which we had shared hitherto had taken place by day, this new obsession was felt chiefly at night: – it seemed to enwrap the house in an equal degree with the gathering darkness, and each evening at sundown we lighted every gas-jet, and sat or moved about together under the influence of an urgent craving for companionship. We were like spectators sitting in a theatre between two acts of a compelling performance; behind the lowered curtain a situation was preparing whose nature we could not guess; we apprehended rather than perceived that the stage was being reset, the scenery shifted, a new development provided for – and we feared beyond measure to see the curtain lift again, as we felt assured it would.

The climax came at last, and in a sudden and awful manner. Our nameless apprehension had caused us, of late, to spend as many evenings as possible abroad – visiting friends and acquaintances, or attending entertainments in the city. Returning late one night from the theatre, our friend and I went into the dining-room, while my wife retired to her chamber to prepare for bed. We had been chatting a few moments when we heard a piercing shriek from my wife's room; and rushing in we were horrified to see her standing close against the wall, her face white and drawn with terror, apparently striving to free herself from some being that held her firmly in its clutches. Her aspect was so unearthly that we stood for a moment literally frozen on the threshold: – then she seemed to be lifted up bodily and thrown across the bed, where she lay with eyes protruding, and hands frantically tearing at her throat as if trying to free herself from some powerful grip that was choking her. We rushed to her and raised her to a sitting position, but she was torn from us again and again, and from the gasping and throttled sounds that came from her throat we felt that she was dying. We cried out in incoherent frenzy to her unseen tormentors to be gone, and struck wildly at the air as if there were about her palpable objects of our blows. This dreadful struggle lasted for several minutes; at times we apparently prevailed, again we were overwhelmed: – finally the influence seemed to pass, and I laid her back upon the pillows, still panting and trembling but no longer suffocating, as she whispered: "Thank God, they have gone!"

This experience had been so frightful, and so foreign to all others that had befallen us, that I found myself reluctant to refer it to unnatural agencies, and tried to explain it as a fit of some kind by which my wife had been attacked – although I knew that she had never had such a seizure in all her life, and was in perfect physical and mental health. Moreover, when she soon complained of her throat hurting her, I looked more closely, and with amazement saw upon both sides of her neck the marks that no one could have mistaken as other than those left by the fingers of a pair of powerful hands!

At this sight the little courage that remained to me abandoned me entirely, and I could see that our friend was equally unmanned. "We must leave this house!" we exclaimed in the same breath: – and as we spoke my wife cried out: "Oh! they are here again!" and at once the ghastly combat was renewed.

This time our friend and I made no effort to fight against the demons – if such they were; we seized the half-conscious woman in our arms, and partly carried, partly dragged her out of the house. The Possession seemed to leave her at the door, and the fresh air soon revived her. But there was no going back for any of us that night. It was late summer, and the air was warm: – so, bareheaded, and with my wife guarded between her two male protectors, we walked the deserted streets until the rising of the sun gave us courage to return home.

I shall not forget those hours of midnight and early morning: – the serene and amethyst-colored Australian sky strewn with star-dust and set with twinkling constellations, and the dark earth about us – across which, as from time to time we approached the house from which we had been expelled, the light from its windows and from its open door gleamed balefully. All was silent within, but we feared the lurking presence and dared not enter, and after one or two returns remained only within view of it until daybreak was well advanced. Our conversation throughout the vigil need not be recorded, but the reader may guess its import: – the awful experience through which we had passed had brought powerfully to our minds the thought of Deeming in the feature of the throttling hands, since in all his murders there was evidence upon the throats of his victims that strangulation had preceded the operation of the knife. But my wife opposed this grisly suggestion: – it was not the shade of the murderer, she affirmed, that had attacked her, although she could give no description of her assailants – they were dark, formless shapes – resembling neither man nor beast; things more felt than seen, even to her.

Yet in spite of this assurance, when I re-entered the house and saw in its usual place above my writing table the plaster mould which I had carried from the murderer's cell in the Melbourne jail, I recalled with a new appreciation of their appositeness the words of the worthy governor.

Whatever the influence was that had appalled us, we had not sufficient courage to oppose it, and so hastened our preparations for departure that we finally quitted the house a week before our lease expired; and within a month saw the shores of Australia fade behind us as our steamer turned its prow toward Aden, Suez, and Marseilles. There was one recurrence of the phenomenon I have just described during the last few nights of our possession, but we evaded it by taking to the street again, and again passing the night therein.

It was on a sunny morning in early March – the month answering in the inverted seasons of the Antipodes to September of northern latitudes – that we turned the key that locked us out for the last time from that house of shadows. As we reached the street we turned with one accord to look back upon it: – how inviting it appeared in the brilliant sunshine, amid its attractive surroundings of grassy lawn set with shrubs in flower, its smiling orchard and garden! We looked into one another's faces, and each saw therein the reflection of his own thoughts: – there was the relief such as they feel who awake from an oppressive dream; yet the place had been our home!

1

This is in accordance with the terms of the English law in capital cases: – whereby a condemned prisoner is allowed two Sundays to live after the pronouncement of his sentence, and is executed on the morning following the second. Thus Deeming had the longest respite possible under the statute – twenty days. The shortest lease of life (fifteen days) would be allowed to a prisoner who had been sentenced on Saturday.

2

This was the murderer's real name, as disclosed by investigations in England among relatives and acquaintances living there. His execution was, as the warrant for it recited, "upon the body of Albert Williams," this being the alias under which he came to Australia, as described later.

3

This activity in building (which is still seen in concrete form in the palatial Parliament Buildings and other costly structures of Melbourne) was largely inspired by the published calculations of an enthusiastic statistician on the future growth of the Colonies: – which were, in effect, that by 1951 their population would be thirty-two millions, and by 2001, one hundred and eighty-nine millions! – some eighty per cent in excess of that of the United States at present. It speaks loudly for Australian enterprise that these Windsor builders, as well as many others, took such prompt measures to provide for this increase.

4

This woman (née Emily Lydia Mather) was the daughter of John and Dove Mather, respected residents of Rainhill, a small town near Liverpool, England. To this town came Deeming, under his alias of "Williams," representing himself as an officer in the Indian army who had been sent to England to purchase supplies therefor. This claim he strengthened by occasionally appearing in a resplendent uniform – which seems to have been of his own invention – and reciting his many exploits "in the imminent deadly breach;" confirming also his free assertions of the possession of large wealth of his own by liberal expenditures in all directions. No such splendid personage had ever before been seen in quiet Rainhill, and the whole town succumbed to the glamor of it – including Miss Mather and her parents, whose acquaintance the fascinating officer somehow made, and followed up by a respectful but ardent courtship of the daughter. An engagement between the pair was soon announced and a valuable diamond ring, as well as other gifts of jewelry and rich attire, was bestowed by the prospective bridegroom upon the bride-to-be: – and although the celebration of the wedding was announced for so early a date as to cause some unfavorable gossip, the fact was condoned in view of the military necessity of a speedy return to India.

At this point Williams – to use the name by which he was then known – encountered what to any less bold and unscrupulous villain would have been a decided check: – this in the form of a letter from his then living legal wife, whom, with his four children by her, he had some time before deserted, and who – in some manner unknown – had now traced him to Rainhill. This letter, it is believed, announced her intention of descending upon him: – at any rate, with characteristic audacity, he gave out the information that his sister and her children were coming to live in Rainhill, and that he had received a letter asking him to rent a house for them. He secured a house accordingly; but expressed dissatisfaction with the somewhat worn wooden floor of the kitchen – and as the owner demurred to undertake the expense of a cement floor, Williams said he knew about such things, and would do the job himself, and ordered the necessary materials and tools. When, and by what means, the woman and children arrived in Rainhill, seems to be somewhat of a mystery: – that they did arrive is shown by the fact that after the Windsor murder had come to light, and the identity of the victim was discovered by a curious chain of circumstances too long to find place in this narrative, the skilfully-laid cement floor with which the old wooden floor had been replaced was torn up, and the half-decapitated bodies of the five were found embedded in it. Those who are curious in such matters may see this tragedy depicted at Madame Toussaud's, London.

5

This detail – of a murderer carrying about with him a canary as a companion – is effectively employed by the late Frank Norris in his California novel, "McTeague." As that story was published in 1903, eleven years after the execution of Deeming, – he, like McTeague, a wife-murderer, – the source of Norris' idea would seem obvious.

6

I had good personal reasons for discrediting any rumor that Deeming had made confession, for the reason that, with the sanction of the authorities in his case, and assisted by his own counsel, I had made every effort to secure it myself – and had failed. When the matter was suggested to Deeming, and he was assured that the money that was offered to him for his memoirs would be paid to Miss Rounsfell as some slight recognition of the wrong he had done her, he eagerly assented; and being supplied with pens (quill – for not the least article in steel was allowed him) he went to work, and in a few days had turned out a large amount of manuscript. Examination of it, however, was disappointing. It began encouragingly, and there were lucid passages in it; but as a whole it was utterly incoherent – and to those who had dispassionately studied the man, an undoubted proof of his insanity.