Creeps by Night: Chills and Thrills

“Such ignorance! It’s the paradise for dead ships, where every morning the ghost ships waken on the grooves of launching, stout, tight, shining with paint and varnish and polished brass. Every morning the crowds are there, watching fair maidens break bottles of champagne on the ghost ships’ bows. Then everybody cheers while the band plays ‘Life on the Ocean Wave,’ the cameras click, and; the ships slip gracefully into the water!”

“And every morning it happens all over again?”

“Every morning.”

“Why do you moan about dying, then?”

“Death is a sad thing,” the old lady sighed. “For instance, all of you, whom I have learned to love, will probably perish at sea! Alas! You shouldn’t have allowed Mr. Perks to go ashore!”

I shuddered in my sleep as I queried, “Perks ashore?”

“Of course,” she replied. “He’s back on Vostok Island again. He went ashore with Seaside this morning when the captain sent him after birds’ eggs. Why, even the rats were trying to jump into the boat!”

“Then we’re lost!” I cried in my sleep.

The old lady became sarcastic. “Don’t let that trouble you,” she murmured. “Fiddler’s Green is quite as good a paradise for sailors as is Christening Grooves for ships.”

She chuckled to herself.

“One bell! One bell! Ropati tané!” came Seaside’s senile whine, followed by the scratching on the cabin port.

I jumped from my berth and ran on deck. “Seaside, you old fool!” I shouted. “Is it true that Perks went ashore with you?”

The old sinner grinned and nodded his head in affirmation.

Twenty-four hours later we were all in the reef boat, watching the Pirara plunge to Christening Grooves before we started pulling the hundred and twenty miles back to Vostok Island.

The House by André Maurois

Translated by Jacques Chambrun

“Five years ago, when I was so very ill,” she said, “I noticed I had the same dream every night. I would walk in the country and, from afar, would see a house, white, low, and long, surrounded by a grove of lindens. At the left of the house a meadow edged with poplars made a pleasing break in the symmetry of the background, and the tops of these trees, which could be seen from a distance, swayed above the lindens.

“In my dream I was drawn to this house and would walk towards it. At the entrance was a gate, painted white. Then I would follow a gracefully curving path, bordered by trees, under which I would find spring flowers, primroses, periwinkles, and anemones, which faded the moment I picked them. Then the path ended, and I was within a few steps of the house.

“In front of it was a large lawn, clipped like English turf, and almost hare, with only one long bed of violet, red, and white flowers, which produced a delightful effect in this green stretch. The house, of white stone, had a huge roof of blue slate. The door, of light colored oak, with carved panels, was at the head of a short flight of steps. I longed to go inside the house, but no one would answer me. I was greatly disappointed; I rang, I shouted, and at last I would awake.

“Such was my dream, and it was repeated month after month with such precision and fidelity that I ended by thinking I certainly must have seen this park and this château in my childhood. However, in my waking state I could not visualize it, and the quest for it became so strong an obsession that one summer, having learned to drive a small car, I decided to spend my vacation on the highways of France, seeking the house of my dream.

“I shall not tell you my travels in detail. I explored Normandy, Touraine, Poitou; but I found nothing. In October I returned to Paris, and all winter long I went on dreaming about the white house. Last spring I resumed my drives through the country about Paris. One day, while on a hill near Orleans, I suddenly felt an agreeable shock, that curious emotion one feels when recognizing after long absence people or places one has loved. Although I had never been in this region before, I recognized perfectly the country which lay at my right. The tops of poplars crowned a grove of linden trees. Through their foliage, still sparse, one sensed that there was a house.

“Then I knew that I had found the château of my dreams. Quite naturally, I knew that, a hundred yards farther on, a narrow road would cut the highway. I took it. It led me to a white gate, and there was the path I had so often followed. Beneath the trees I admired the soft colored carpet formed by the periwinkles, primroses, and anemones. When I came out from under the arching lindens, I could see the green lawn and the small stoop, at the top of which was the door of light colored oak. I got out of my car, walked rapidly up the steps, and rang the bell. I was very much afraid nobody would answer, but almost immediately a servant appeared. He was a man with a melancholy face, very old, wearing a black coat. Upon seeing me he seemed surprised, and looked at me attentively without speaking.