The Wood Of The Dead

Scary Books: The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories
:

One summer, in my wanderings with a knapsack, I was at luncheon in the

room of a wayside inn in the western country, when the door opened and

there entered an old rustic, who crossed close to my end of the table

and sat himself down very quietly in the seat by the bow window. We

exchanged glances, or, properly speaking, nods, for at the moment I did

not actually raise my eyes to his face, so concerned was I with the

im ortant business of satisfying an appetite gained by tramping twelve

miles over a difficult country.



The fine warm rain of seven o'clock, which had since risen in a kind of

luminous mist about the tree tops, now floated far overhead in a deep

blue sky, and the day was settling down into a blaze of golden light. It

was one of those days peculiar to Somerset and North Devon, when the

orchards shine and the meadows seem to add a radiance of their own, so

brilliantly soft are the colourings of grass and foliage.



The inn-keeper's daughter, a little maiden with a simple country

loveliness, presently entered with a foaming pewter mug, enquired after

my welfare, and went out again. Apparently she had not noticed the old

man sitting in the settle by the bow window, nor had he, for his part,

so much as once turned his head in our direction.



Under ordinary circumstances I should probably have given no thought to

this other occupant of the room; but the fact that it was supposed to be

reserved for my private use, and the singular thing that he sat looking

aimlessly out of the window, with no attempt to engage me in

conversation, drew my eyes more than once somewhat curiously upon him,

and I soon caught myself wondering why he sat there so silently, and

always with averted head.



He was, I saw, a rather bent old man in rustic dress, and the skin of

his face was wrinkled like that of an apple; corduroy trousers were

caught up with a string below the knee, and he wore a sort of brown

fustian jacket that was very much faded. His thin hand rested upon a

stoutish stick. He wore no hat and carried none, and I noticed that his

head, covered with silvery hair, was finely shaped and gave the

impression of something noble.



Though rather piqued by his studied disregard of my presence, I came to

the conclusion that he probably had something to do with the little

hostel and had a perfect right to use this room with freedom, and I

finished my luncheon without breaking the silence and then took the

settle opposite to smoke a pipe before going on my way.



Through the open window came the scents of the blossoming fruit trees;

the orchard was drenched in sunshine and the branches danced lazily in

the breeze; the grass below fairly shone with white and yellow daisies,

and the red roses climbing in profusion over the casement mingled their

perfume with the sweetly penetrating odour of the sea.



It was a place to dawdle in, to lie and dream away a whole afternoon,

watching the sleepy butterflies and listening to the chorus of birds

which seemed to fill every corner of the sky. Indeed, I was already

debating in my mind whether to linger and enjoy it all instead of taking

the strenuous pathway over the hills, when the old rustic in the settle

opposite suddenly turned his face towards me for the first time and

began to speak.



His voice had a quiet dreamy note in it that was quite in harmony with

the day and the scene, but it sounded far away, I thought, almost as

though it came to me from outside where the shadows were weaving their

eternal tissue of dreams upon the garden floor. Moreover, there was no

trace in it of the rough quality one might naturally have expected, and,

now that I saw the full face of the speaker for the first time, I noted

with something like a start that the deep, gentle eyes seemed far more

in keeping with the timbre of the voice than with the rough and very

countrified appearance of the clothes and manner. His voice set pleasant

waves of sound in motion towards me, and the actual words, if I remember

rightly, were--



"You are a stranger in these parts?" or "Is not this part of the country

strange to you?"



There was no "sir," nor any outward and visible sign of the deference

usually paid by real country folk to the town-bred visitor, but in its

place a gentleness, almost a sweetness, of polite sympathy that was far

more of a compliment than either.



I answered that I was wandering on foot through a part of the country

that was wholly new to me, and that I was surprised not to find a place

of such idyllic loveliness marked upon my map.



"I have lived here all my life," he said, with a sigh, "and am never

tired of coming back to it again."



"Then you no longer live in the immediate neighbourhood?"



"I have moved," he answered briefly, adding after a pause in which his

eyes seemed to wander wistfully to the wealth of blossoms beyond the

window; "but I am almost sorry, for nowhere else have I found the

sunshine lie so warmly, the flowers smell so sweetly, or the winds and

streams make such tender music. . . ."



His voice died away into a thin stream of sound that lost itself in the

rustle of the rose-leaves climbing in at the window, for he turned his

head away from me as he spoke and looked out into the garden. But it was

impossible to conceal my surprise, and I raised my eyes in frank

astonishment on hearing so poetic an utterance from such a figure of a

man, though at the same time realising that it was not in the least

inappropriate, and that, in fact, no other sort of expression could have

properly been expected from him.



"I am sure you are right," I answered at length, when it was clear he

had ceased speaking; "or there is something of enchantment here--of real

fairy-like enchantment--that makes me think of the visions of childhood

days, before one knew anything of--of--"



I had been oddly drawn into his vein of speech, some inner force

compelling me. But here the spell passed and I could not catch the

thoughts that had a moment before opened a long vista before my inner

vision.



"To tell you the truth," I concluded lamely, "the place fascinates me

and I am in two minds about going further--"



Even at this stage I remember thinking it odd that I should be talking

like this with a stranger whom I met in a country inn, for it has always

been one of my failings that to strangers my manner is brief to

surliness. It was as though we were figures meeting in a dream, speaking

without sound, obeying laws not operative in the everyday working world,

and about to play with a new scale of space and time perhaps. But my

astonishment passed quickly into an entirely different feeling when I

became aware that the old man opposite had turned his head from the

window again, and was regarding me with eyes so bright they seemed

almost to shine with an inner flame. His gaze was fixed upon my face

with an intense ardour, and his whole manner had suddenly become alert

and concentrated. There was something about him I now felt for the first

time that made little thrills of excitement run up and down my back. I

met his look squarely, but with an inward tremor.



"Stay, then, a little while longer," he said in a much lower and deeper

voice than before; "stay, and I will teach you something of the purpose

of my coming."



He stopped abruptly. I was conscious of a decided shiver.



"You have a special purpose then--in coming back?" I asked, hardly

knowing what I was saying.



"To call away someone," he went on in the same thrilling voice, "someone

who is not quite ready to come, but who is needed elsewhere for a

worthier purpose." There was a sadness in his manner that mystified me

more than ever.



"You mean--?" I began, with an unaccountable access of trembling.



"I have come for someone who must soon move, even as I have moved."



He looked me through and through with a dreadfully piercing gaze, but I

met his eyes with a full straight stare, trembling though I was, and I

was aware that something stirred within me that had never stirred

before, though for the life of me I could not have put a name to it, or

have analysed its nature. Something lifted and rolled away. For one

single second I understood clearly that the past and the future exist

actually side by side in one immense Present; that it was _I_ who moved

to and fro among shifting, protean appearances.



The old man dropped his eyes from my face, and the momentary glimpse of

a mightier universe passed utterly away. Reason regained its sway over a

dull, limited kingdom.



"Come to-night," I heard the old man say, "come to me to-night into the

Wood of the Dead. Come at midnight--"



Involuntarily I clutched the arm of the settle for support, for I then

felt that I was speaking with someone who knew more of the real things

that are and will be, than I could ever know while in the body, working

through the ordinary channels of sense--and this curious half-promise of

a partial lifting of the veil had its undeniable effect upon me.



The breeze from the sea had died away outside, and the blossoms were

still. A yellow butterfly floated lazily past the window. The song of

the birds hushed--I smelt the sea--I smelt the perfume of heated summer

air rising from fields and flowers, the ineffable scents of June and of

the long days of the year--and with it, from countless green meadows

beyond, came the hum of myriad summer life, children's voices, sweet

pipings, and the sound of water falling.



I knew myself to be on the threshold of a new order of experience--of an

ecstasy. Something drew me forth with a sense of inexpressible yearning

towards the being of this strange old man in the window seat, and for a

moment I knew what it was to taste a mighty and wonderful sensation, and

to touch the highest pinnacle of joy I have ever known. It lasted for

less than a second, and was gone; but in that brief instant of time the

same terrible lucidity came to me that had already shown me how the past

and future exist in the present, and I realised and understood that

pleasure and pain are one and the same force, for the joy I had just

experienced included also all the pain I ever had felt, or ever could

feel. . . .



The sunshine grew to dazzling radiance, faded, passed away. The shadows

paused in their dance upon the grass, deepened a moment, and then melted

into air. The flowers of the fruit trees laughed with their little

silvery laughter as the wind sighed over their radiant eyes the old,

old tale of its personal love. Once or twice a voice called my name. A

wonderful sensation of lightness and power began to steal over me.



Suddenly the door opened and the inn-keeper's daughter came in. By all

ordinary standards, her's was a charming country loveliness, born of the

stars and wild-flowers, of moonlight shining through autumn mists upon

the river and the fields; yet, by contrast with the higher order of

beauty I had just momentarily been in touch with, she seemed almost

ugly. How dull her eyes, how thin her voice, how vapid her smile, and

insipid her whole presentment.



For a moment she stood between me and the occupant of the window seat

while I counted out the small change for my meal and for her services;

but when, an instant later, she moved aside, I saw that the settle was

empty and that there was no longer anyone in the room but our two

selves.



This discovery was no shock to me; indeed, I had almost expected it, and

the man had gone just as a figure goes out of a dream, causing no

surprise and leaving me as part and parcel of the same dream without

breaking of continuity. But, as soon as I had paid my bill and thus

resumed in very practical fashion the thread of my normal consciousness,

I turned to the girl and asked her if she knew the old man who had been

sitting in the window seat, and what he had meant by the Wood of the

Dead.



The maiden started visibly, glancing quickly round the empty room, but

answering simply that she had seen no one. I described him in great

detail, and then, as the description grew clearer, she turned a little

pale under her pretty sunborn and said very gravely that it must have

been the ghost.



"Ghost! What ghost?"



"Oh, the village ghost," she said quietly, coming closer to my chair

with a little nervous movement of genuine alarm, and adding in a lower

voice, "He comes before a death, they say!"



It was not difficult to induce the girl to talk, and the story she told

me, shorn of the superstition that had obviously gathered with the years

round the memory of a strangely picturesque figure, was an interesting

and peculiar one.



The inn, she said, was originally a farmhouse, occupied by a yeoman

farmer, evidently of a superior, if rather eccentric, character, who had

been very poor until he reached old age, when a son died suddenly in

the Colonies and left him an unexpected amount of money, almost a

fortune.



The old man thereupon altered no whit his simple manner of living, but

devoted his income entirely to the improvement of the village and to the

assistance of its inhabitants; he did this quite regardless of his

personal likes and dislikes, as if one and all were absolutely alike to

him, objects of a genuine and impersonal benevolence. People had always

been a little afraid of the man, not understanding his eccentricities,

but the simple force of this love for humanity changed all that in a

very short space of time; and before he died he came to be known as the

Father of the Village and was held in great love and veneration by all.



A short time before his end, however, he began to act queerly. He spent

his money just as usefully and wisely, but the shock of sudden wealth

after a life of poverty, people said, had unsettled his mind. He claimed

to see things that others did not see, to hear voices, and to have

visions. Evidently, he was not of the harmless, foolish, visionary

order, but a man of character and of great personal force, for the

people became divided in their opinions, and the vicar, good man,

regarded and treated him as a "special case." For many, his name and

atmosphere became charged almost with a spiritual influence that was

not of the best. People quoted texts about him; kept when possible out

of his way, and avoided his house after dark. None understood him, but

though the majority loved him, an element of dread and mystery became

associated with his name, chiefly owing to the ignorant gossip of the

few.



A grove of pine trees behind the farm--the girl pointed them out to me

on the slope of the hill--he said was the Wood of the Dead, because just

before anyone died in the village he saw them walk into that wood,

singing. None who went in ever came out again. He often mentioned the

names to his wife, who usually published them to all the inhabitants

within an hour of her husband's confidence; and it was found that the

people he had seen enter the wood--died. On warm summer nights he would

sometimes take an old stick and wander out, hatless, under the pines,

for he loved this wood, and used to say he met all his old friends

there, and would one day walk in there never to return. His wife tried

to break him gently off this habit, but he always had his own way; and

once, when she followed and found him standing under a great pine in the

thickest portion of the grove, talking earnestly to someone she could

not see, he turned and rebuked her very gently, but in such a way that

she never repeated the experiment, saying--



"You should never interrupt me, Mary, when I am talking with the others;

for they teach me, remember, wonderful things, and I must learn all I

can before I go to join them."



This story went like wild-fire through the village, increasing with

every repetition, until at length everyone was able to give an accurate

description of the great veiled figures the woman declared she had seen

moving among the trees where her husband stood. The innocent pine-grove

now became positively haunted, and the title of "Wood of the Dead" clung

naturally as if it had been applied to it in the ordinary course of

events by the compilers of the Ordnance Survey.



On the evening of his ninetieth birthday the old man went up to his wife

and kissed her. His manner was loving, and very gentle, and there was

something about him besides, she declared afterwards, that made her

slightly in awe of him and feel that he was almost more of a spirit than

a man.



He kissed her tenderly on both cheeks, but his eyes seemed to look

right through her as he spoke.



"Dearest wife," he said, "I am saying good-bye to you, for I am now

going into the Wood of the Dead, and I shall not return. Do not follow

me, or send to search, but be ready soon to come upon the same journey

yourself."



The good woman burst into tears and tried to hold him, but he easily

slipped from her hands, and she was afraid to follow him. Slowly she saw

him cross the field in the sunshine, and then enter the cool shadows of

the grove, where he disappeared from her sight.



That same night, much later, she woke to find him lying peacefully by

her side in bed, with one arm stretched out towards her, _dead_. Her

story was half believed, half doubted at the time, but in a very few

years afterwards it evidently came to be accepted by all the

countryside. A funeral service was held to which the people flocked in

great numbers, and everyone approved of the sentiment which led the

widow to add the words, "The Father of the Village," after the usual

texts which appeared upon the stone over his grave.



This, then, was the story I pieced together of the village ghost as the

little inn-keeper's daughter told it to me that afternoon in the

parlour of the inn.



"But you're not the first to say you've seen him," the girl concluded;

"and your description is just what we've always heard, and that window,

they say, was just where he used to sit and think, and think, when he

was alive, and sometimes, they say, to cry for hours together."



"And would you feel afraid if you had seen him?" I asked, for the girl

seemed strangely moved and interested in the whole story.



"I think so," she answered timidly. "Surely, if he spoke to me. He did

speak to _you_, didn't he, sir?" she asked after a slight pause.



"He said he had come for someone."



"Come for someone," she repeated. "Did he say--" she went on

falteringly.



"No, he did not say for whom," I said quickly, noticing the sudden

shadow on her face and the tremulous voice.



"Are you really sure, sir?"



"Oh, quite sure," I answered cheerfully. "I did not even ask him." The

girl looked at me steadily for nearly a whole minute as though there

were many things she wished to tell me or to ask. But she said nothing,

and presently picked up her tray from the table and walked slowly out

of the room.



Instead of keeping to my original purpose and pushing on to the next

village over the hills, I ordered a room to be prepared for me at the

inn, and that afternoon I spent wandering about the fields and lying

under the fruit trees, watching the white clouds sailing out over the

sea. The Wood of the Dead I surveyed from a distance, but in the village

I visited the stone erected to the memory of the "Father of the

Village"--who was thus, evidently, no mythical personage--and saw also

the monuments of his fine unselfish spirit: the schoolhouse he built,

the library, the home for the aged poor, and the tiny hospital.



That night, as the clock in the church tower was striking half-past

eleven, I stealthily left the inn and crept through the dark orchard and

over the hayfield in the direction of the hill whose southern slope was

clothed with the Wood of the Dead. A genuine interest impelled me to the

adventure, but I also was obliged to confess to a certain sinking in my

heart as I stumbled along over the field in the darkness, for I was

approaching what might prove to be the birth-place of a real country

myth, and a spot already lifted by the imaginative thoughts of a

considerable number of people into the region of the haunted and

ill-omened.



The inn lay below me, and all round it the village clustered in a soft

black shadow unrelieved by a single light. The night was moonless, yet

distinctly luminous, for the stars crowded the sky. The silence of deep

slumber was everywhere; so still, indeed, that every time my foot kicked

against a stone I thought the sound must be heard below in the village

and waken the sleepers.



I climbed the hill slowly, thinking chiefly of the strange story of the

noble old man who had seized the opportunity to do good to his fellows

the moment it came his way, and wondering why the causes that operate

ceaselessly behind human life did not always select such admirable

instruments. Once or twice a night-bird circled swiftly over my head,

but the bats had long since gone to rest, and there was no other sign of

life stirring.



Then, suddenly, with a singular thrill of emotion, I saw the first trees

of the Wood of the Dead rise in front of me in a high black wall. Their

crests stood up like giant spears against the starry sky; and though

there was no perceptible movement of the air on my cheek I heard a

faint, rushing sound among their branches as the night breeze passed to

and fro over their countless little needles. A remote, hushed murmur

rose overhead and died away again almost immediately; for in these trees

the wind seems to be never absolutely at rest, and on the calmest day

there is always a sort of whispering music among their branches.



For a moment I hesitated on the edge of this dark wood, and listened

intently. Delicate perfumes of earth and bark stole out to meet me.

Impenetrable darkness faced me. Only the consciousness that I was

obeying an order, strangely given, and including a mighty privilege,

enabled me to find the courage to go forward and step in boldly under

the trees.



Instantly the shadows closed in upon me and "something" came forward to

meet me from the centre of the darkness. It would be easy enough to meet

my imagination half-way with fact, and say that a cold hand grasped my

own and led me by invisible paths into the unknown depths of the grove;

but at any rate, without stumbling, and always with the positive

knowledge that I was going straight towards the desired object, I

pressed on confidently and securely into the wood. So dark was it that,

at first, not a single star-beam pierced the roof of branches overhead;

and, as we moved forward side by side, the trees shifted silently past

us in long lines, row upon row, squadron upon squadron, like the units

of a vast, soundless army.



And, at length, we came to a comparatively open space where the trees

halted upon us for a while, and, looking up, I saw the white river of

the sky beginning to yield to the influence of a new light that now

seemed spreading swiftly across the heavens.



"It is the dawn coming," said the voice at my side that I certainly

recognised, but which seemed almost like a whispering from the trees,

"and we are now in the heart of the Wood of the Dead."



We seated ourselves on a moss-covered boulder and waited the coming of

the sun. With marvellous swiftness, it seemed to me, the light in the

east passed into the radiance of early morning, and when the wind awoke

and began to whisper in the tree tops, the first rays of the risen sun

fell between the trunks and rested in a circle of gold at our feet.



"Now, come with me," whispered my companion in the same deep voice, "for

time has no existence here, and that which I would show you is already

_there_!"



We trod gently and silently over the soft pine needles. Already the sun

was high over our heads, and the shadows of the trees coiled closely

about their feet. The wood became denser again, but occasionally we

passed through little open bits where we could smell the hot sunshine

and the dry, baked pine needles. Then, presently, we came to the edge of

the grove, and I saw a hayfield lying in the blaze of day, and two

horses basking lazily with switching tails in the shafts of a laden

hay-waggon.



So complete and vivid was the sense of reality, that I remember the

grateful realisation of the cool shade where we sat and looked out upon

the hot world beyond.



The last pitchfork had tossed up its fragrant burden, and the great

horses were already straining in the shafts after the driver, as he

walked slowly in front with one hand upon their bridles. He was a

stalwart fellow, with sunburned neck and hands. Then, for the first

time, I noticed, perched aloft upon the trembling throne of hay, the

figure of a slim young girl. I could not see her face, but her brown

hair escaped in disorder from a white sun-bonnet, and her still browner

hands held a well-worn hay rake. She was laughing and talking with the

driver, and he, from time to time, cast up at her ardent glances of

admiration--glances that won instant smiles and soft blushes in

response.



The cart presently turned into the roadway that skirted the edge of the

wood where we were sitting. I watched the scene with intense interest

and became so much absorbed in it that I quite forgot the manifold,

strange steps by which I was permitted to become a spectator.



"Come down and walk with me," cried the young fellow, stopping a moment

in front of the horses and opening wide his arms. "Jump! and I'll catch

you!"



"Oh, oh," she laughed, and her voice sounded to me as the happiest,

merriest laughter I had ever heard from a girl's throat. "Oh, oh! that's

all very well. But remember I'm Queen of the Hay, and I must ride!"



"Then I must come and ride beside you," he cried, and began at once to

climb up by way of the driver's seat. But, with a peal of silvery

laughter, she slipped down easily over the back of the hay to escape

him, and ran a little way along the road. I could see her quite clearly,

and noticed the charming, natural grace of her movements, and the

loving expression in her eyes as she looked over her shoulder to make

sure he was following. Evidently, she did not wish to escape for long,

certainly not for ever.



In two strides the big, brown swain was after her, leaving the horses to

do as they pleased. Another second and his arms would have caught the

slender waist and pressed the little body to his heart. But, just at

that instant, the old man beside me uttered a peculiar cry. It was low

and thrilling, and it went through me like a sharp sword.



HE had called her by her own name--and she had heard.



For a second she halted, glancing back with frightened eyes. Then, with

a brief cry of despair, the girl swerved aside and dived in swiftly

among the shadows of the trees.



But the young man saw the sudden movement and cried out to her

passionately--



"Not that way, my love! Not that way! It's the Wood of the Dead!"



She threw a laughing glance over her shoulder at him, and the wind

caught her hair and drew it out in a brown cloud under the sun. But the

next minute she was close beside me, lying on the breast of my

companion, and I was certain I heard the words repeatedly uttered with

many sighs: "Father, you called, and I have come. And I come willingly,

for I am very, very tired."



At any rate, so the words sounded to me, and mingled with them I seemed

to catch the answer in that deep, thrilling whisper I already knew: "And

you shall sleep, my child, sleep for a long, long time, until it is time

for you to begin the journey again."



In that brief second of time I had recognised the face and voice of the

inn-keeper's daughter, but the next minute a dreadful wail broke from

the lips of the young man, and the sky grew suddenly as dark as night,

the wind rose and began to toss the branches about us, and the whole

scene was swallowed up in a wave of utter blackness.



Again the chill fingers seemed to seize my hand, and I was guided by the

way I had come to the edge of the wood, and crossing the hayfield still

slumbering in the starlight, I crept back to the inn and went to bed.



A year later I happened to be in the same part of the country, and the

memory of the strange summer vision returned to me with the added

softness of distance. I went to the old village and had tea under the

same orchard trees at the same inn.



But the little maid of the inn did not show her face, and I took

occasion to enquire of her father as to her welfare and her whereabouts.



"Married, no doubt," I laughed, but with a strange feeling that clutched

at my heart.



"No, sir," replied the inn-keeper sadly, "not married--though she was

just going to be--but dead. She got a sunstroke in the hayfields, just a

few days after you were here, if I remember rightly, and she was gone

from us in less than a week."