Voodoo Tales: The Ghost Stories of Henry S Whitehead (Tales of Mystery & The Supernatural) (102 page)

Well, my husband stood there with one note in his hand, and I stood beside him, holding the other. I did a rough sum in mental arithmetic. The notes were ‘demand’ notes, at eight per cent, simple interest, representing, the two together, six hundred dollars. Eighteen years of interest, at eight per cent added on, it seemed to me, would cause these notes to amount to a great deal more than twice six hundred dollars, something around fifteen hundred, in fact. We were far from rich!

‘But, my dear Placide, you should collect these,’ I cried.

‘I have never wished to press them,’ replied my husband.

‘Allow me, if you please, to take them,’ I begged him.

‘Do as you wish, Minerva my dear,’ replied Monsieur Du Chaillu. ‘But, I beg of you, no lawsuits!’

‘Very well,’ said I, and, carrying the two notes, walked out of the office to get Julie her brandy, out of the sideboard in the dining room.

I will admit to you, Mr Canevin, that I was a little put out about my dear husband’s carelessness in connection with those notes. At the same time, I could not avoid seeing very clearly that the notes, if still collectible, constituted a kind of windfall, as you say in the United States – it has to do with a variety of apple, does it not? – and I decided at once to set about a kind of investigation.

As soon as I had supplied Julie with a brandy which Dr Duchesne had prescribed for her, I sent our house-boy after Monsieur Henkes, the notary of our town of Phillipsbourg. Monsieur Henkes came within the hour – he stayed for tea, I remember – and he assured me that the notes, not yet being twenty years old, were still collectible. I placed them in his hands, and paid him, in advance, as the custom is on St Martin, and, I dare say, in Curaçao, and the other Dutch possessions, his fee of fifty dollars for collection, instructing him that it was my husband’s desire that there should be no actual lawsuit.

I will shorten my story as much as possible, by telling you that the note which had been given by the gentleman-planter was paid, in six months, in two equal installments, and, with my husband’s permission, I invested the money in some shares in one of our St Martin Salt-Ponds – salt, you know, is the chief export from St Martin.

The other note, the one which had been given by the colored man, Armand Dubois, did not go through so easily. Here in the West Indies, as you have surely observed, our ‘colored’ people, as distinct from the Black laboring class, are, commonly, estimable persons, who conduct themselves like us Caucasians. Dubois, however, was exceptional. He was only about one-quarter African – a quadroon, or there-abouts. But his leanings, as sometimes happens, were to the Black side of his heredity. Many persons in Phillipsbourg regarded him as a rascal, a person of no character at all. It seems he had heard, far back, in the days when my husband accommodated his friend, the planter, of that transaction, and had come almost at once to ask for a similar accommodation. That is why the two notes were so nearly of the same date, and perhaps it accounts for the fact that the two notes were both for three hundred dollars. Negroes, and those persons of mixed blood whose Black side predominates, are not very inventive. It would be quite characteristic for such a person to ask for the same sum as had been given to the former applicant.

Dubois made a great pother about paying. Of this I heard only rumors, of course. Monsieur Henkes did not trouble us in the matter, once the collection of the notes had been placed in his hands. It was, of course, a perfectly clear case. The note had been signed by Dubois, and it had more than two years to run before it would be outlawed – ‘limited’ is, I believe, the legal term. So Armand Dubois paid, as he was well able to do, but, as I say, with a very bad grace. Presumably he expected never to pay. The impudence of the man!

Shortly after I had placed the notes in the hands of Monsieur Henkes for collection, Julie came to me one afternoon, quite gray in the face, as Negroes look when they are badly frightened. On St Martin, perhaps you know, Mr Canevin, servants have a custom similar to what I have read about in your South. That is to say, they invariably address their mistresses as ‘Miss’, with the Christian name. Why, I can not say. It is their custom. Julie came to me, as I say, very frightened, very much upset – quite terrified, in fact.

She said to me: ‘Miss Minerva, on no account, ma’am, mus’ yo’ go to de door, if yo’ please, ma’am. One Armand Dubois come, ma’am, an’ is even now cloimbing de step of de gol’ry. Hoide yo’self, ma’am, I beg of yo’, in de name of Gahd!’

Julie’s distress and state of fright, which the girl could not conceal, impressed me more than her words. I said: ‘Julie, go to the door yourself. Say, please, to this Dubois, that I have nothing to say to him. For anything whatever, he must address himself to Monsieur Henkes.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ replied Julie, and almost pushed me into my bedroom and shut the door smartly behind me. I stood there, and listened, as Dubois, who had now mounted the gallery steps, knocked, very truculently, it seemed to me – the creature had no manners – on the door. I could hear him ask for me, and the murmur of Julie’s voice as she delivered my message. Dubois was reluctant to leave, it seemed. He stood and parleyed, but forcing his way into a house like the rectory of the English Church was beyond him, and at last he went. Several other persons, black fellows, Julie told me, had accompanied him, for what purpose I can not imagine – it was most unusual that he should come to trouble me at all – and these all walked down the street, as I could see through the slanted jalousies of my bedroom window, Dubois gesticulating and orating to his followers.

Julie told me something else, too – something which quite made my blood run cold. Armand Dubois, said Julie, had, half-concealed in his hand, as he stood talking to her, a small vial. Julie was sure it contained vitriol. I was almost afraid to venture out to the street after that, and it was a long time before I recovered from the shock of it. Vitriol – think of it, Mr Canevin! – if indeed that were what he had in the vial; and what else could he have had?

Of course, I did not dare tell my husband. It would have distressed that dear, kind man most atrociously; and besides, the collection of the notes was, so to speak, a venture of mine, carried out, if not exactly against his will, at least without any enthusiasm on his part. So I kept quiet, and commanded Julie to say nothing whatever about it. I was sure, too, that even a person like Armand Dubois would, in a short time, get over the condition of rage in which Monsieur Henkes’s visit to him must have left him to induce him to come to me at all. That, or something similar, actually proved to be the case. I had no further annoyance from Dubois, and in the course of a few weeks, probably pressed by Monsieur Henkes, he settled the note, paying seven hundred and twenty-four dollars, to be exact, with seventeen years and eight months’ interest at eight per cent.

Of course, Mr Canevin, all that portion of the story, except, perhaps, for Armand Dubois’s unpleasant visit, is merely commonplace – the mere narrative of the collection of two demand-notes. Note, though, what followed!

It was, perhaps, two months after the day when I had gone into my husband’s office and discovered those notes, and about a month after Dubois had paid what he owed Monsieur Du Chaillu, that I had gone to bed, a trifle earlier, perhaps, than usual – about half-past nine, to be exact. My aunt was staying with us in the rectory at the time, and she was far from well, and I had been reading to her and fanning her, and I was somewhat tired. I fell asleep, I suppose, immediately after retiring.

I awakened, and found myself sitting bolt-upright in my bed, and the clock in the town was striking twelve. I counted the strokes. As I finished, and the bell ceased its striking, I
felt
, rather than saw – for I was looking, in an abstracted kind of fashion, straight before me, my elbows on my knees, in a sitting posture, as I have said – something at the left, just outside the mosquito-netting. There was a dim night-light, such as I always kept, in the far corner of the room, on the edge of my bureau, and by its light the objects in the room were faintly visible through the white net.

I turned, suddenly, under the impulse of that feeling, and there, Mr Canevin, just beside the bed, and almost pressing against the net though not quite touching it, was a face. The face was that of a mulatto, and as I looked at it, frozen, speechless, I observed that it was Armand Dubois, and that he was glaring at me, with an expression of the most horrible malignancy that could be imagined. The lips were drawn back – like an animal’s, Mr Canevin – but the most curious, and perhaps the most terrifying, aspect of the situation, was the fact that the face was on a level with the bed, that is, the chin seemed to rest against the edge of the mattress, so that, as it occurred to me, the man must be sitting on the floor, his legs placed under the bed, so as to bring his horrible leering face in that position I have described.

I tried to scream, and my voice was utterly dried up. Then, moved by what impulse I can not describe, I plunged toward the face, tore loose the netting on that side, and looked directly at it.

Mr Canevin, there was nothing there, but, as I moved abruptly toward it, I saw a vague, dim hand and arm swing up from below, and there was the strangest sensation! It was as though, over my face and shoulders and breast, hot and stinging drops had been cast. There was, for just a passing instant, the most dreadful burning, searing sensation, and then it was gone. I half sat, half lay, a handful of the netting in my hands, where I had torn it loose from where it had been tucked under the edge of the mattress, and there was nothing there – nothing whatever; I passed my hand over my face and neck, but there was nothing; no burns – nothing.

I do not know how I managed to do it, but I climbed out of bed, and looked underneath. Mr Canevin, there was nothing, no man, nor anything, there. I walked over and turned up the night-light, and looked all about the room. Nothing. The jalousies were all fastened, as usual. The door was locked. There were no other means of ingress or egress.

I went back to bed, convinced that I must have been dreaming or sleepwalking, or something of the sort, although I had never walked in my sleep, and almost never dreamed or remembered any dream. I could not sleep, and it occurred to me that I would do well to get up again, put on my bathrobe, and go out to the dining room for a drink of water. The water stood, in earthenware ‘gugglets’, just beside a doorway that led out to a small gallery at the side of the house – which stood on the corner – in the wind, so as to keep cool. You’ve seen that, a good many times, even here, of course. On St Martin we had no ice-plant in those days, nor yet, so far as I know, and everybody kept the drinking-water in gugglets and set the gugglets where the wind would blow on them and cool the water.

I took a glass from the sideboard, filled it, and drank the water. Then I opened the door just beside me, and stood looking out for a few minutes. The town was absolutely silent at that hour. There was no moon, and the streets were lighted just as they were here in Frederiksted before we had electricity, with occasional hurricane lanterns at the corners. The one on our corner was burning steadily, and except for the howling of a dog somewhere in the town, everything was absolutely quiet and peaceful, Mr Canevin.

I went back to bed, and fell asleep immediately. At any rate I have no recollection of lying there hoping for sleep.

Then, immediately afterward, it seemed, I was awakened a second time. This time I was not sitting up when I came to my waking senses, but it did not take me very long to sit up, I can assure you! For the most extraordinary thing was happening in my bedroom.

In the exact center of the room there stood a round, mahogany table. Around and around that table, a small goat was running, from right to left – that is, as I looked toward the table, the goat was running away from me around to the right, and coming back at the left. I could hear the clatter of its little, hard hoofs on the pitch-pine floor, occasionally muffled in the queerest way – it sounds like nothing in the telling, of course – when the goat would step on the small rug on which the table stood. I could see its great, shining eyes, like green moons, every time it came around to the left.

I watched the thing, fascinated, and a slow horror began to grow upon me. I think I swooned, for the last thing I remember is my senses leaving me, but it must have been a very light fainting fit, Mr Canevin, for I aroused myself, and the room was absolutely silent.

I was shaking all over as though I had been having an attack of the quartan ague, but I managed once more to slip under the netting, reach for my bathrobe, and go over and turn up the night-light. I observed that the door of my bed-room was standing open, and I went through it and back to the dining room, as I had done the first time. I felt very uncomfortable, shaken and nervous, as you may well imagine, but there in the next room I knew my husband was sleeping, and my poor old aunt on the other side of the hall, and I plucked up my courage. I knew that
he
would never be afraid, of anything, man or – anything else, Mr Canevin!

I found that I must have been more upset than I had supposed, for the door out onto the small gallery from the dining room, where I had stood the other time, was unfastened, and half open, and I realized that I had left it in that condition, and I saw clearly that the young goat had simply wandered in. Goats and dogs and other animals roamed the streets there, even pigs, much as they do here, although all the islands have police regulations, and on St Martin these were not enforced nearly as well as they are here on St Croix. So I laughed at myself and my fears, although I think I had a right at least to be startled by that goat dancing about my bedroom table, and I fastened the door leading outside, and came back into my bedroom, and fastened that door too, and went back to bed once more. My last waking sensation was of that dog, or some other, howling, somewhere in the town.