Creeps by Night: Chills and Thrills

I watched Philippe descending the winding road into the valley while Mere Tirelou, leaning over the parapet, watched him too, until he became tiny far below and disappeared behind the orchard wall which skirts the road by the pavilion of the Reine-Jeanne. Then she picked up her stick, called Bléo her dog, and hobbled in through the gate.

“So,” thought I, “that old woman really believes herself a witch, and probably thinks she has put an effective curse on Philippe!”

But it didn’t occur to me to be in the least disturbed. I knew, or thought I knew, a good deal about witchcraft technically. I believed it all reduced finally to suggestion and auto-suggestion. I had known it to produce tangible results, but only in cases when the victim himself (usually among primitives or savages) was deeply superstitious and consequently amenable to fear. I felt absolutely sure that complete, hard-headed, skeptical disbelief, derision, laughter, constituted a stronger “counter-magic” than any amount of exorcism and holy water, and therefore it did not occur to me for an instant that Philippe could be in the slightest danger.

Holding these convictions, and therefore regarding the safe return of Philippe as a foregone conclusion, I thought little more of the matter that afternoon; finished my reading, dined early, strolled to the top of the cliff to watch the sunset, and went early to bed.

Usually after ten o’clock at night the whole village of Les Baux, including the interior of the Hôtel René, is sound asleep and silent as the grave. It was the noise of hurrying footsteps clattering along the stone floor of the hotel corridor which awoke me late in the night, but at the same time I heard lowered voices in the road beneath my window, saw lights flashing, heard sabots clacking along the cobbled street.

I struck a light, saw that it was shortly past midnight, dressed and went downstairs. Martin Plomb was talking to a group of neighbors. His wife was standing in the doorway, wrapped in a quilted dressing gown.

“What has happened?” I asked her.

“We are worried about Philippe,” she replied. “He went for a walk this afternoon down in the valley, and he hasn’t returned. They are going to search for him. We thought nothing of it that he didn’t come back for dinner, but it is now past midnight and we are afraid he may have had an accident.”

Already the men, in groups of twos and threes, some with old-fashioned farm lanterns, a few with electric flash lights, were starting down the mountainside. I joined Martin Plomb, who was at the gate instructing them to go this way or that and to keep in touch with one another by shouting. He himself was going to search upward on the other slope, toward the Grotte des Fées where Philippe sometimes climbed, fearing that he might have fallen down a ravine. I went along with him...

It was just before dawn, after hours of fruitless search, that we heard a different shouting from the head of the valley. I could not distinguish the words, but Martin immediately said, “They’ve found him.” We worked our way across and climbed toward the road along which we now could see lights flashing, returning toward Les Baux.

They were carrying Philippe on an improvised litter made with two saplings and pine branches interwoven. He was conscious; his eyes were open; but he seemed to be in a stupor and had been unable, they said, to explain what had happened to him. No bones were broken nor had he suffered any other serious physical injury, but his clothes were badly torn, particularly the knees of his knickerbockers, which were ripped and abraded as if he had been dragging himself along on hands and knees.

They all agreed as to what had probably happened: he had been climbing bareheaded among the rocks in the heat of the late afternoon and had suffered an insolation, a prostrating but not fatal sunstroke, had partially recovered and in seeking help, still delirious, had lost his way. He should be all right in a day or two, Martin said. They would have a doctor up from Arles in the morning.

Of course I had thought more than once that night about Mère Tirelou and had considered mentioning the matter to Martin Plomb, but this explanation was so reasonable, adequate, natural, that it seemed to me absurd now to view the episode as anything more than a pure coincidence, so I said nothing.

It was dawn when we reached Les Baux and got Philippe to bed, and when I awoke toward noon the doctor had already come and gone.

“He had a bad stroke,” Martin told me. “His head is clear — but there’s still something the matter that the doctor couldn’t understand. When Philippe tried to get up from the bed, he couldn’t walk. Yet his legs aren’t in jured. It’s queer. We are afraid it may be something like paralysis. He seemed to twist and stumble over his own feet.”