The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories

We yoked the oxen again and drove the ploughs over the site of the grove. It was rough ploughing, for the place was thick with bits of stone from the tower, but the slow Afrikander oxen plodded on, and sometime in the afternoon the work was finished. Then I sent down to the farm for bags of rock-salt, such as they use for cattle. Jobson and I took a sack apiece, and walked up and down the furrows, sowing them with salt.

The last act was to set fire to the pile of tree-trunks. They burned well, and on the top we flung the bodies of the green doves. The birds of Ashtaroth had an honourable pyre.

Then I dismissed the much-perplexed men, and gravely shook hands with Jobson. Black with dust and smoke I went back to the house, where I bade Travers pack my bags and order the motor. I found Lawson’s servant, and heard from him that his master was sleeping peacefully. I gave some directions, and then went to wash and change.

Before I left I wrote a line to Lawson. I began by transcribing the verses from the 23rd Chapter of 2nd Kings. I told him what I had done, and my reason. “I take the whole responsibility upon myself,” I wrote. “No man in the place had anything to do with it but me. I acted as I did for the sake of our old friendship, and you will believe it was no easy task for me. I hope you will understand. Whenever you are able to see me send me word, and I will come back and settle with you. But I think you will realize that I have saved your soul.”

The afternoon was merging into twilight as I left the house on the road to Taqui. The great fire, where the grove had been, was still blazing fiercely, and the smoke made a cloud over the upper glen, and filled all the air with a soft violet haze. I knew that I had done well for my friend, and that he would come to his senses and be grateful. My mind was at ease on that score, and in something like comfort I faced the future. But as the car reached the ridge I looked back to the vale I had outraged. The moon was rising and silvering the smoke, and through the gaps I could see the tongues of fire. Somehow, I know not why, the lake, the stream, the garden-coverts, even the green slopes of hill, wore an air of loneliness and desecration.

And then my heartache returned, and I knew that I had driven something lovely and adorable from its last refuge on earth.

A Man From Glasgow

Somerset Maugham

Location:  Ecija, near Seville, Spain.

Time:  May, 1925.

Eyewitness Description:  “I jumped out of bed and went to the window. My legs began to tremble. It was horrible to stand there and listen to the shouts of laughter that rang through the night. Then there was a pause, and after that a shriek of pain and that ghastly sobbing. It didn’t sound human . . .”

Author:  William Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) was a multi-talented man as befitted someone born in Paris of Irish origin, read philosophy and literature at Heidelberg and qualified as a surgeon in London. Instead of a medical profession, though, he turned to writing and enjoyed a huge success with his magnificent autobiographical Of Human Bondage published in 1915. The First World War saw him serving as a secret agent in Geneva followed by a time in Russia attempting to prevent the outbreak of the Bolshevik revolution. Travels in France, Spain, the Far East and the South Seas provided the themes for some of Maugham’s greatest books including Moon and Sixpence (1919), Ashenden (1928) and Cakes and Ale (1930). He never discussed his conviction about ghosts, however, but his evident fascination with the supernatural and the occult is evident in The Magician (1908), a thinly disguised portrait of the Black Magician, Aleister Crowley, and three brilliant short stories, “The Taipan”, “The End of the Flight” and, especially, “A Man From Glasgow” which is an exercise in mounting terror and enough to make any reader dread the full moon.

It is not often that anyone entering a great city for the first time has the luck to witness such an incident as engaged the poet Shelley’s attention when he drove into Naples. A youth ran out of a shop pursued by a man armed with a knife. The man overtook him and with one blow in the neck laid him dead on the road. Shelley had a tender heart. He didn’t look upon it as a bit of local colour; he was seized with horror and indignation. But when he expressed his emotions to a Calabrian priest who was travelling with him, a fellow of gigantic strength and stature, the priest laughed heartily and attempted to quiz him. Shelley says he never felt such an inclination to beat anyone.