The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories

After lunch in the officers’ mess, Neils arranged with his friend to bring their provisions up to the chateau before dark and left him in the genial company of the officers. As the rain had ceased he had decided to go for a walk and wandered off, a queer little figure in the misty yellow light of the afternoon.

The woods that almost covered the estate were full of a quiet beauty as the dusty sunlight filtered through their branches on to the sharply scented earth below and their calm, ageless indifference to the travails of men filled Orsen with a delightful sense of being in another world.

The evening passed slowly. Bruce played patience, whilst Orsen paced up and down like a small caged animal. He would never have admitted it, but his nerves were badly on edge, for, although they had lit a fire, the cold was intense, a thing that always made him feel ill. After dinner, having made a final inspection of his cameras, he boiled some water on the primus for a hot-water-bottle, and settled down in his improvised bed. Bruce followed suit.

The black moonless night dragged by on crippled feet, its silence disturbed only by the rats and the faint boom of gun-fire in the distance. Morning found the two men pale and haggard. They fried themselves eggs and bacon, then went along to the bathroom, where the stench was now so appalling that they had to hold their noses.

Once again the camera plates proved negative and the seals were untouched; but on the record of the sound-machine there was a new noise. It came at intervals above the scuffling of the rats and was like that of someone beating with his fingernails irregularly against a pane of glass.

“What do you think it is?” Bruce asked excitedly.

Neils went over to the window and peered out. “It’s possible that it was caused by this branch of creeper,” he said, opening the window and breaking off the branch. “If it was, the noise won’t recur tonight.”

The day passed uneventfully and both men were curiously relieved when darkness fell once more.

Close on midnight Orsen slid out of bed noiselessly and crept along to the bathroom. On reaching it he stood motionless for a second. In the queer half-green light of his torch he resembled a ghost himself.

Not a sound disturbed the silence; even the rats seemed to have disappeared. Putting his ear to the keyhole he listened, but could hear nothing. He hesitated, then, grasping the door-handle, he twisted it sharply and with a vicious kick sent the door flying open, at the same instant flattening himself back against the wall.

Breathlessly, he waited, the unearthly quiet singing in his head. Still nothing happened. Making the sign of the Cross he muttered four words of power and, easing himself forward, peered into the bathroom. Only the horrible stench of decaying life and the heavy tomb-like atmosphere greeted him. He flashed his torch across the ceiling and sent its beams piercing into every corner, but his cameras were all unviolated. With a sigh of disappointment he closed the door softly behind him and retraced his steps.

After breakfast the next morning they developed the plates from those in the bathroom last, having found all the others blank. Those of the one on the window-sill showed the door open and Neils’s head and shoulders. On the other was only the flash of his torch. They tried the sound-machine and a puzzled frown crossed Orsen’s brow as once again they heard the faint noise like fingernails beating against the window.

“This is most peculiar,” he murmured, as the record ceased. “I tore off that branch and I’ll swear there was no sound perceptible to human ears when I was in the room ten hours ago.”

“Perhaps it had started before – or afterwards,” Bruce hazarded.

“No; the sound-machine does not start recording until the cameras operate. On our first night I set them to function automatically at midnight; but last night I fixed them so that they should not operate at all unless someone or something broke the threads across the window or the door. I set them off myself by entering the room, so that noise must have been going on.” He paused. “I shall spend the coming night there myself.”

“Not on your own!” Bruce declared quickly. “Remember, a man died in that room from – well, from unknown causes little more than a fortnight ago.”

A gentle smile illuminated Neils’s face. “I was hoping you would offer to keep me company; but I wouldn’t agree to you doing so unless I felt confident I could protect you. I intend to make a pentacle; one of the oldest forms of protection against evil manifestations, and, fortunately, I brought all the things necessary for it in my luggage. But we must get a change of clothes in the village.”