Seasons greetings to one and all! It's that “most wonderful time of the year” when Andy Williams promises us, among other things, that there will be "scary ghost stories.” Ha! The only ghost story you are likely to encounter this Christmas is that over-roasted chestnut by Charles Dickens, in one of a myriad different adaptations currently streaming and/or running on one of the cable channels. But believe it or not, long before Jim Carey, the Muppets, Mickey Mouse, Mister Magoo, or even Alistair Sim, ghost stories—truly scary ghost stories—were as much a part of Christmas as Hallmark movies are today.
I mean, it makes sense, doesn’t it? It is the darkest time of the year.
I've been trying to revive the Christmas ghost story tradition for almost a decade, having now posted seventeen examples of the genre on this blog. This year I'm happy to report that I'm not the only one who has shown an interest in reviving the tradition. I'm currently reading a brand new collection of contemporary horror stories: Christmas and Other Horrors, edited by Ellen Datlow. It includes a deliciously chilling ghost story by Nadia Bulkin, the climax of which occurs during the traditional “airing of grievances” at a Festivus party.
I wish I could post that story; it's better than the one that follows. This one isn't bad, though, and it has the distinct advantage of being in the public domain. It was written by Hugh Walpole, who had a successful career in the early 20th century as a writer of novels, short stories, and plays. However, soon after his death his writing was considered old-fashioned, and his works have been largely forgotten.
The Snow
by Hugh Walpole (1929)
The second Mrs. Ryder was a young woman not easily frightened, but now she stood in the dusk of the passage leaning back against the wall, her hand on her heart, looking at the grey-faced window beyond which the snow was steadily falling against the lamplight.
The passage where she was led from the study to the dining-room, and the window looked out on to the little paved path that ran at the edge of the Cathedral green. As she stared down the passage she couldn’t be sure whether the woman were there or no. How absurd of her! She knew the woman was not there. But if the woman was not, how was it that she could discern so clearly the old-fashioned grey cloak, the untidy grey hair and the sharp outline of the pale cheek and pointed chin? Yes, and more than that, the long sweep of the grey dress, falling in folds to the ground, the flash of a gold ring on the white hand. No. No. NO. This was madness. There was no one and nothing there. Hallucination …
Very faintly a voice seemed to come to her: ‘I warned you. This is for the last time… .’
The nonsense! How far now was her imagination to carry her? Tiny sounds about the house, the running of a tap somewhere, a faint voice from the kitchen, these and something more had translated themselves into an imagined voice. ‘The last time …’
But her terror was real. She was not normally frightened by anything. She was young and healthy and bold, fond of sport, hunting, shooting, taking any risk. Now she was truly stiffened with terror—she could not move, could not advance down the passage as she wanted to and find light, warmth, safety in the dining-room. All the time the snow fell steadily, stealthily, with its own secret purpose, maliciously, beyond the window in the pale glow of the lamplight.
Then unexpectedly there was noise from the hall, opening of doors, a rush of feet, a pause and then in clear beautiful voices the well-known strains of ‘Good King Wenceslas.’ It was the Cathedral choir boys on their regular Christmas round. This was Christmas Eve. They always came just at this hour on Christmas Eve.
With an intense, almost incredible relief she turned back into the hall. At the same moment her husband came out of the study. They stood together smiling at the little group of mufflered, becoated boys who were singing, heart and soul in the job, so that the old house simply rang with their melody.
Reassured by the warmth and human company, she lost her terror. It had been her imagination. Of late she had been none too well. That was why she had been so irritable. Old Doctor Bernard was no good: he didn’t understand her case at all. After Christmas she would go to London and have the very best advice …
Had she been well she could not, half an hour ago, have shown such miserable temper over nothing. She knew that it was over nothing and yet that knowledge did not make it any easier for her to restrain herself. After every bout of temper she told herself that there should never be another—and then Herbert said something irritating, one of his silly muddle-headed stupidities, and she was off again!
She could see now as she stood beside him at the bottom of the staircase, that he was still feeling it. She had certainly half an hour ago said some abominably rude personal things—things that she had not at all meant—and he had taken them in his meek, quiet way. Were he not so meek and quiet, did he only pay her back in her own coin, she would never lose her temper. Of that she was sure. But who wouldn’t be irritated by that meekness and by the only reproachful thing that he ever said to her: ‘Elinor understood me better, my dear?’ To throw the first wife up against the second! Wasn’t that the most tactless thing that a man could possibly do? And Elinor, that worn elderly woman, the very opposite of her own gay, bright, amusing self? That was why Herbert had loved her, because she was gay and bright and young. It was true that Elinor had been devoted, that she had been so utterly wrapped up in Herbert that she lived only for him. People were always recalling her devotion, which was sufficiently rude and tactless of them.
Well, she could not give anyone that kind of old-fashioned sugary devotion; it wasn’t in her, and Herbert knew it by this time.
Nevertheless she loved Herbert in her own way, as he must know, know it so well that he ought to pay no attention to the bursts of temper. She wasn’t well. She would see a doctor in London …
The little boys finished their carols, were properly rewarded, and tumbled like feathery birds out into the snow again. They went into the study, the two of them, and stood beside the big open log-fire. She put her hand up and stroked his thin beautiful cheek.
‘I’m so sorry to have been cross just now, Bertie. I didn’t mean half I said, you know.’
But he didn’t, as he usually did, kiss her and tell her that it didn’t matter. Looking straight in front of him, he answered:
‘Well, Alice, I do wish you wouldn’t. It hurts, horribly. It upsets me more than you think. And it’s growing on you. You make me miserable. I don’t know what to do about it. And it’s all about nothing.’
Irritated at not receiving the usual commendation for her sweetness in making it up again, she withdrew a little and answered:
‘Oh, all right. I’ve said I’m sorry. I can’t do any more.’
‘But tell me,’ he insisted, ‘I want to know. What makes you so angry, so suddenly?—and about nothing at all.’
She was about to let her anger rise, her anger at his obtuseness, obstinacy, when some fear checked her, a strange unanalysed fear, as though someone had whispered to her, ‘Look out! This is the last time!’
‘It’s not altogether my own fault,’ she answered, and left the room.
She stood in the cold hall, wondering where to go. She could feel the snow falling outside the house and shivered. She hated the snow, she hated the winter, this beastly, cold dark English winter that went on and on, only at last to change into a damp, soggy English spring.
It had been snowing all day. In Polchester it was unusual to have so heavy a snowfall. This was the hardest winter that they had known for many years.
When she urged Herbert to winter abroad—which he could quite easily do—he answered her impatiently; he had the strongest affection for this poky dead-and-alive Cathedral town. The Cathedral seemed to be precious to him; he wasn’t happy if he didn’t go and see it every day! She wouldn’t wonder if he didn’t think more of the Cathedral than he did of herself. Elinor had been the same; she had even written a little book about the Cathedral, about the Black Bishop’s Tomb and the stained glass and the rest …
What was the Cathedral after all? Only a building!
She was standing in the drawing-room looking out over the dusky ghostly snow to the great hulk of the Cathedral that Herbert said was like a flying ship, but to herself was more like a crouching beast licking its lips over the miserable sinners that it was for ever devouring.
As she looked and shivered, feeling that in spite of herself her temper and misery were rising so that they threatened to choke her, it seemed to her that her bright and cheerful fire-lit drawing-room was suddenly open to the snow. It was exactly as though cracks had appeared everywhere, in the ceiling, the walls, the windows, and that through these cracks the snow was filtering, dribbling in little tracks of wet down the walls, already perhaps making pools of water on the carpet.
This was of course imagination, but it was a fact that the room was most dreadfully cold although a great fire was burning and it was the cosiest room in the house.
Then, turning, she saw the figure standing by the door. This time there could be no mistake. It was a grey shadow, and yet a shadow with form and outline—the untidy grey hair, the pale face like a moon-lit leaf, the long grey clothes, and something obstinate, vindictive, terribly menacing in its pose.
She moved and the figure was gone; there was nothing there and the room was warm again, quite hot in fact. But young Mrs. Ryder, who had never feared anything in all her life save the vanishing of her youth, was trembling so that she had to sit down, and even then her trembling did not cease. Her hand shook on the arm of her chair.
She had created this thing out of her imagination of Elinor’s hatred of her and her own hatred of Elinor. It was true that they had never met, but who knew but that the spiritualists were right, and Elinor’s spirit, jealous of Herbert’s love for her, had been there driving them apart, forcing her to lose her temper and then hating her for losing it? Such things might be! But she had not much time for speculation. She was preoccupied with her fear. It was a definite, positive fear, the kind of fear that one has just before one goes under an operation. Someone or something was threatening her. She clung to her chair as though to leave it were to plunge into disaster. She looked around her everywhere; all the familiar things, the pictures, the books, the little tables, the piano were different now, isolated, strange, hostile, as though they had been won over by some enemy power.
She longed for Herbert to come and protect her; she felt most kindly to him. She would never lose her temper with him again—and at that same moment some cold voice seemed to whisper in her ear: ‘You had better not. It will be for the last time.’
At length she found courage to rise, cross the room and go up to dress for dinner. In her bedroom courage came to her once more. It was certainly very cold, and the snow, as she could see when she looked between her curtains, was falling more heavily than ever, but she had a warm bath, sat in front of her fire and was sensible again.
For many months this odd sense that she was watched and accompanied by someone hostile to her had been growing. It was the stronger perhaps because of the things that Herbert told her about Elinor; she was the kind of woman, he said, who, once she loved anyone, would never relinquish her grasp; she was utterly faithful. He implied that her tenacious fidelity had been at times a little difficult.
‘She always said,’ he added once, ‘that she would watch over me until I rejoined her in the next world. Poor Elinor!’ he sighed. ‘She had a fine religious faith, stronger than mine, I fear.’
It was always after one of her tantrums that young Mrs. Ryder had been most conscious of this hallucination, this dreadful discomfort of feeling that someone was near you who hated you—but it was only during the last week that she began to fancy that she actually saw anyone, and with every day her sense of this figure had grown stronger.
It was, of course, only nerves, but it was one of those nervous afflictions that became tiresome indeed if you did not rid yourself of it. Mrs. Ryder, secure now in the warmth and intimacy of her bedroom, determined that henceforth everything should be sweetness and light. No more tempers! Those were the things that did her harm.
Even though Herbert were a little trying, was not that the case with every husband in the world? And was it not Christmas time? Peace and Good Will to men! Peace and Good Will to Herbert!
They sat down opposite to one another in the pretty little dining-room hung with Chinese woodcuts, the table gleaming and the amber curtains richly dark in the firelight.
But Herbert was not himself. He was still brooding, she supposed, over their quarrel of the afternoon. Weren’t men children? Incredible the children that they were!
So when the maid was out of the room she went over to him, bent down and kissed his forehead.
‘Darling … you’re still cross, I can see you are. You mustn’t be. Really you mustn’t. It’s Christmas time and, if I forgive you, you must forgive me.’
‘You forgive me?’ he asked, looking at her in his most aggravating way. ‘What have you to forgive me for?’
Well, that was really too much. When she had taken all the steps, humbled her pride.
She went back to her seat, but for a while could not answer him because the maid was there. When they were alone again she said, summoning all her patience:
‘Bertie dear, do you really think that there’s anything to be gained by sulking like this? It isn’t worthy of you. It isn’t really.’
He answered her quietly.
‘Sulking? No, that’s not the right word. But I’ve got to keep quiet. If I don’t I shall say something I’m sorry for.’ Then, after a pause, in a low voice, as though to himself: ‘These constant rows are awful.’
Her temper was rising again; another self that had nothing to do with her real self, a stranger to her and yet a very old familiar friend.
‘Don’t be so self-righteous,’ she answered, her voice trembling a little. ‘These quarrels are entirely my own fault, aren’t they?’
‘Elinor and I never quarrelled,’ he said, so softly that she scarcely heard him.
‘No! Because Elinor thought you perfect. She adored you. You’ve often told me. I don’t think you perfect. I’m not perfect either. But we’ve both got faults. I’m not the only one to blame.’
‘We’d better separate,’ he said, suddenly looking up. ‘We don’t get on now. We used to. I don’t know what’s changed everything. But, as things are, we’d better separate.’
She looked at him and knew that she loved him more than ever, but because she loved him so much she wanted to hurt him, and because he had said that he thought he could get on without her she was so angry that she forgot all caution. Her love and her anger helped one another. The more angry she became the more she loved him.
‘I know why you want to separate,’ she said. ‘It’s because you’re in love with someone else. (‘How funny,’ something inside her said. ‘You don’t mean a word of this.’) You’ve treated me as you have, and then you leave me.’
‘I’m not in love with anyone else,’ he answered her steadily, ‘and you know it. But we are so unhappy together that it’s silly to go on … silly… . The whole thing has failed.’
There was so much unhappiness, so much bitterness, in his voice that she realised that at last she had truly gone too far. She had lost him.
She had not meant this. She was frightened and her fear made her so angry that she went across to him.
‘Very well then … I’ll tell everyone … what you’ve been. How you’ve treated me.’
‘Not another scene,’ he answered wearily. ‘I can’t stand any more. Let’s wait. Tomorrow is Christmas Day …’
He was so unhappy that her anger with herself maddened her. She couldn’t bear his sad, hopeless disappointment with herself, their life together, everything.
In a fury of blind temper she struck him; it was as though she were striking herself. He got up and without a word left the room. There was a pause, and then she heard the hall door close. He had left the house.
She stood there, slowly coming to her control again. When she lost her temper it was as though she sank under water. When it was all over she came once more to the surface of life, wondering where she’d been and what she had been doing. Now she stood there, bewildered, and then at once she was aware of two things, one that the room was bitterly cold and the other that someone was in the room with her.
This time she did not need to look around her. She did not turn at all, but only stared straight at the curtained windows, seeing them very carefully, as though she were summing them up for some future analysis, with their thick amber folds, gold rod, white lines—and beyond them the snow was falling.
She did not need to turn, but, with a shiver of terror, she was aware that that grey figure who had, all these last weeks, been approaching ever more closely, was almost at her very elbow. She heard quite clearly: ‘I warned you. That was the last time.’
At the same moment Onslow the butler came in. Onslow was broad, fat and rubicund—a good faithful butler with a passion for church music. He was a bachelor and, it was said, disappointed of women. He had an old mother in Liverpool to whom he was greatly attached.
In a flash of consciousness she thought of all these things when he came in. She expected him also to see the grey figure at her side. But he was undisturbed, his ceremonial complacency clothed him securely.
‘Mr. Fairfax has gone out,’ she said firmly. Oh, surely he must see something, feel something.
‘Yes, Madam!’ Then, smiling rather grandly: ‘It’s snowing hard. Never seen it harder here. Shall I build up the fire in the drawing-room, Madam?’
‘No, thank you. But Mr. Fairfax’s study …’
‘Yes, Madam. I only thought that as this room was so warm you might find it chilly in the drawing-room.’
This room warm, when she was shivering from head to foot; but holding herself lest he should see … She longed to keep him there, to implore him to remain; but in a moment he was gone, softly closing the door behind him.
Then a mad longing for flight seized her, and she could not move. She was rooted there to the floor, and even as, wildly trying to cry, to scream, to shriek the house down, she found that only a little whisper would come, she felt the cold touch of a hand on hers.
She did not turn her head: her whole personality, all her past life, her poor little courage, her miserable fortitude were summoned to meet this sense of approaching death which was as unmistakable as a certain smell, or the familiar ringing of a gong. She had dreamt in nightmares of approaching death and it had always been like this, a fearful constriction of the heart, a paralysis of the limbs, a choking sense of disaster like an anaesthetic.
‘You were warned,’ something said to her again.
She knew that if she turned she would see Elinor’s face, set, white, remorseless. The woman had always hated her, been vilely jealous of her, protecting her wretched Herbert.
A certain vindictiveness seemed to release her. She found that she could move, her limbs were free.
She passed to the door, ran down the passage, into the hall. Where would she be safe? She thought of the Cathedral, where to-night there was a carol service. She opened the hall door and just as she was, meeting the thick, involving, muffling snow, she ran out.
She started across the green towards the Cathedral door. Her thin black slippers sank in the snow. Snow was everywhere—in her hair, her eyes, her nostrils, her mouth, on her bare neck, between her breasts.
‘Help! Help! Help!’ she wanted to cry, but the snow choked her. Lights whirled about her. The Cathedral rose like a huge black eagle and flew towards her.
She fell forward, and even as she fell a hand, far colder than the snow, caught her neck. She lay struggling in the snow and as she struggled there two hands of an icy fleshless chill closed about her throat.
Her last knowledge was of the hard outline of a ring pressing into her neck. Then she lay still, her face in the snow, and the flakes eagerly, savagely, covered her.
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| AI Image Generated by Google Gemini |
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