Creeps by Night: Chills and Thrills

“Yes, darling. Of course you did. Don’t worry about it any more,” and she was on again, how all he needed was a rest. Then he realized he needn’t trouble to guard his tongue. Anything he said she would attribute to his breakdown. Poor little Muriel! She was frightened, badly frightened, and putting a splendidly brave face on it.

He got up and sat beside her on the sofa, putting his arms around her, telling her not to be frightened.

The Witch’s Vengeance by W. B. Seabrook

The quarrel between Mère Tirelou and my young friend Philippe Ardet grew out of the fact that he had fallen in love with Maguelonne, the old woman’s granddaughter.

Although Maguelonne was past nineteen, by far the prettiest girl in the village, she had no suitors among the local youths, for the native peasants of Les Baux, this savage mountain hamlet in the south of France which I had been visiting at intervals for years, were steeped in superstition and believed that old Mère Tirelou was a sorcière, a sort of witch.

Maguelonne, orphaned by the war, lived alone with the old woman in an ancient tumble-down stone mas, somewhat isolated from the village proper, among the ruins of the seigniorial castle close above it, and gossip whispered that Mere Tirelou had involved the girl, willingly or unwillingly, in her dark practices. They were not persecuted or hated — in fact, the peasants and shepherds of Les Baux and the surrounding mountainside sometimes consulted Mere Tirelou in certain emergencies — hut save for such special consultations, paid for usually with a rabbit, a jug of wine or oil, the old beldam and her granddaughter “apprentice,” if such she really was, were generally avoided if not actually disliked and feared.

Philippe, however, who considered himself to be now of the great world — he had been to technical school in Marseilles and was working in an airplane plant at Toulon — regarded all this local superstition as stuff and nonsense. He had come up vacationing from Toulon on his motor cycle. We had known each other at Les Baux the previous summer. He and I were now staying at the same little hotel, the Hotel Rene, perched on the edge of the cliff, run by Philippe’s aunt, Madame Plomb, and her husband Martin. And Philippe, as I have said, had fallen in love with Maguelonne.

This was the situation, briefly outlined, when the strange series of events began which first involved me only as a chance onlooker, but finally as an active participant.

They began one hot mid-afternoon when I lay reading in my room, which was in an angle of the wall with windows overlooking the valley and a side window immediately above the medieval rampart gate from which the road serpentined downward.

Close beneath this window, all at once, I heard and recognized Mere Tirelou’s querulous croaking voice raised angrily, and Philippe’s in reply, half amiable, half derisive.

It was hazard rather than eavesdropping, impossible not to hear them, and then after some muttering the old woman raised her voice again, but this time in such a curious, unnatural tone that I got up to see what was occurring.

They were standing in the sunshine just beneath the window, he tall, blondish, ruddy, tousle-haired, bare-headed, in knickers, and sport shirt; she gray, bent and hawk-like — bat-like, rather, in her Arlèsienne coiffe and cloak, with arms outstretched barring his path. And she was intoning a weird, singsong doggerel, at the same time weaving in the air with her claw-like hands:

“Go down, go down, my pretty youth,
But you will not come up again.
Tangled foot will twist and turn,
And tangled brain will follow.
You will go down, my pretty one,
But you will not come up again.
So tangle, tangle, twist and turn,
Cobwebs and spider webs are woven.”

She was now no longer barring Philippe’s path but standing aside, inviting him to pass, so that her back was turned to me, while Philippe stood so that I could see his face and the expressions which flitted over it — first an interested, incredulous, surprised attention as if he couldn’t believe his own ears, then a good-humored but derisive and defiant grin as the old woman repeated her doggerel.

“No, no, Mere Tirelou,” he said laughing. “You can’t scare me off with stuff like that. Better get a broomstick if you want to drive me away. Save your cobwebs and incantations for Bléo and the shepherds.”

So with a defiant, gay salute and an au revoir he was off down the road whistling, while the old woman screamed after him, “Down, down, down you go, but not up, my pretty boy; not up, not up, not up!”