The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories

“Oh, nothing much. Bread and water and extra work, I suppose?”

The other laughed. “I’m not so sure,” he said lightly. “Humanity hasn’t advanced very much in that kind of thing.”

A fugitive memory flashed for an instant through the other’s brain as he listened. He had an odd feeling for a second that he had heard this conversation before somewhere. A ghostly sense of familiarity brushed his mind, then vanished. At dinner that night the table in front of him was unoccupied. He did not, however, notice that it was unoccupied.

The Punishment

Lord Dunsany

Location:  Potsdam, Germany.

Time:  October, 1918.

Eyewitness Description:  “Had you been out that night in Germany, and able to see visions, you would have seen an imperious figure passing from place to place looking on many scenes. He looked on them, and families withered away, and happy scenes faded, and the phantom said to him, ‘Come!.’. . .”

Author:  Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron Dunsany, (1878–1957) was a larger-than-life Irish nobleman, big-game hunter and chess champion, who became a major writer of fantasy fiction, often ranked with J. R. R. Tolkien and Mervyn Peake. The military traditions of his ancient family naturally enough saw Dunsany fight in the Boer War, take up arms in the Irish Easter Rising in 1916, when he was hit by a bullet in the head, and then see service in France during the First World War. His outlook on life was, though, deeply soured by what he experienced in the trenches and this is very evident in his subsequent collections of short stories, Tales of War (1918), Unhappy Far-Off Things (1919) and Tales of Three Hemispheres (1919). Among these tales, “The Punishment” is significant for two reasons. Firstly, because it is reminiscent of one of Charles Dickens’ classic stories, A Christmas Carol. Secondly, because it was first published – prophetically – in October 1918 when revolutionary feeling against the war was growing in Germany. Indeed, a month later, on 9 November, the Kaiser abdicated, and two days later, the Armistice was signed between the warring nations.

An exhalation arose, drawn up by the moon, from an old battlefield after the passing of years. It came out of very old craters and gathered from trenches, smoked up from Noman’s Land and the ruins of farms; it rose from the rottenness of dead brigades, and lay for half the night over two armies, but at midnight the moon drew it up all into one phantom, and it rose and trailed away eastwards.

It passed over men in grey that were weary of war, it passed over a land once prosperous, happy and mighty, in which were a people that were gradually starving, it passed by ancient belfries in which there were no bells now, it passed over fear and misery and weeping, and so came to the Palace at Potsdam. It was the dead of the night, between midnight and dawn, and the Palace was very still that the emperor might sleep, and sentries guarded it who made no noise and relieved others in silence. Yet it was not so easy to sleep. Picture yourself a murderer who had killed a man. Would you sleep ? Picture yourself the man who made this war. Yes, you sleep, but nightmares come.

The phantom entered the chamber. “Come,” it said.

The Kaiser leaped up at once as obediently as when he came to attention on parade, years ago, as a subaltern in the Prussian Guard, a man whom no woman or child as yet had ever cursed; he leaped up and followed. They passed the silent sentries, none challenged and none saluted; they were moving swiftly over the town as the felon Gothas go; they came to a cottage in the country. They drifted over a little garden gate, and there in a neat little garden the phantom halted, like a wind that has suddenly ceased. “Look,” it said.