The Watchers Out of Time Read online

  He rambled on in this fashion for such an interminable time that I was able to look around me and make a kind of inventory of the room. In those years the time I did not spend on the road I put in at the warehouse in Boston, and there were few of us who could be counted better at inventory than myself; so it took me no time at all to see that Amos Stark’s living room was filled with all kinds of things that the antique collectors would pay well to get their hands on. There were pieces of furniture that went back close to two hundred years, if I were any judge, and fine bric-a-brac, whatnots, and some wonderful blown glass and Haviland china on the shelves and on the whatnots. And there were many of the old handiwork pieces of the New England farm of decades before—candle-snuffers, wooden-pegged cork inkwells, candle-molds, a book rest, a turkey-call of leather, pitchpine and tree gum, calabashes, samplers—so that it was plain to see that the house had stood there for many years.

  “Do you live alone, Mr. Stark?” I asked, when I could get a word in.

  “Naow I do, yes. Onct thar was Molly an’ Dewey. Abel went off when he war a boy, an’ Ella died with lung fever. I bin alone naow for nigh on ta seven years.”

  Even as he spoke, I observed about him a waiting, watchful air. He seemed constantly to be listening for some sound above the drumming of the rain. But there was none, save one small crepitant sound, where a mouse gnawed away somewhere in the old house—none but this and the ceaseless rune of the rain. Still he listened, his head cocked a little, his eyes narrowed as if against the glow of the lamp, and his head agleam at the bald crown which was ringed round by a thin, straggly tonsure of white hair. He might have been eighty years old, he might have been only sixty with his narrow, reclusive way of life having prematurely aged him.

  “Ye war alaone on the road?” he asked suddenly.

  “Never met a soul this side of Dunwich. Seventeen miles, I figure.”

  “Give or take a half,” he agreed. Then he began to cackle and chuckle, as with an outburst of mirth that could no longer be held within. “This be Wentworth’s day. Nahum Wentworth.” His eyes narrowed again for a moment. “Yew been a salesman in these parts long naow? Yew must a knowed Nahum Wentworth?”

  “No, sir. I never knew him. I sell mostly in the towns. Just once in a while in the country.”

  “Might’ near everybody knowed Nahum,” he went on. “But thar weren’t none knowed him as well as I did. See that thar book?” He pointed to a well thumbed paper-covered book I could just make out in the ill-lit room. “That thar’s the Seventh Book a Moses—it’s got a sight more larnin’ in it than any other book I ever seen. That thar was Nahum’s book.”

  He chuckled at some memory. “Oh, that Nahum was a queer one, all right. But mean—an’ stingy, too. Don’t see as haow ye could miss knowin’ him.”

  I assured him I had never heard of Nahum Wentworth before, though I admitted privately to some curiosity about the object of my host’s preoccupation, insofar as he had been given to reading the Seventh Book of Moses, which was a kind of Bible for the supposed hexes, since it purported to offer all manner of spells, incantations, and charms to those readers who were gullible enough to believe in them. I saw, too, within the circle of lamplight, certain other books I recognized—a Bible, worn as much as the textbook of magic, a compendious edition of Cotton Mather’s works, and a bound volume of the Arkham Advertiser. Perhaps these, too, had once belonged to Nahum Wentworth.

  “I see ye lookin’ at his books,” said my host, as if he had indeed divined my thoughts. “He said as haow I could have ’em; so I took ’em. Good books, too. Only that I need glasses, I’d a read ’em. Yew’re welcome ta look at ’em, though.”

  I thanked him gravely and reminded him that he had been talking of Nahum Wentworth.

  “Oh, that Nahum!” he replied at once, renewing his chuckle. “I don’t reckon he’d a lent me all that money if he a knowed what was ta happen ta him. No, sir, I don’t reckon he would. An’ never ta take a note fer it, neither. Five thousand it was. An’ him tellin’ me he didn’t have no need fer a note or any kind of paper, so thar warn’t no proof I ever had the money off’n him, not a-tall, jest the two of us knowin’ it, and he settin’ a day five years after fer him ta come fer his money an’ his due. Five years, an’ this is the day, this is Wentworth’s day.”

  He paused and favored me with a sly glance out of eyes that were one and the same time dancing with suppressed mirth and dark with withheld fear. “Only he can’t come, because it warn’t no less’n two months after that day that he got shot out huntin’. Shotgun in the back o’ the head. Pure accident. O’ course, thar was them that said as haow I done it a-purpose, but I showed ’em haow ta shet up, ’cause I druv in ta Dunwich an’ went straight ta the bank an’ I made out my will so’s his daughter—that’s Miss Genie—was ta git all I die ownin’. Didn’ make no secret of it, either. Let ’em all know, so’s they could talk their fool heads off.”

  “And the loan?” I could not forebear asking.

  “The time ain’t up till midnight tonight.” He chuckled and cackled with laughter. “An’ it don’t seem like Nahum can keep his ’pointment, naow, does it? I figure, if he don’t come, it’s mine. An’ he can’t come. An’ a good thing he can’t, ’cause I ain’t got it.”

  I did not ask about Wentworth’s daughter, and how she fared. To tell the truth, I was beginning to feel the strain of the day and evening’s drive through the downpour. And this must have been evident to my host, for he ceased talking and sat watching me, speaking again only after what seemed a long time.

  “Yew’re peaked lookin’. Yew tired?”

  “I guess I am. But I’ll be going as soon as the storm abates a little.”

  “Tell yew what. Thar’s no need a yew a-settin’ here listenin’ ta me jaw yew. I’ll get ye another lamp, an’ yew kin lie down on the couch inside the next room. If it stops rainin’, I’ll call ye.”

  “I’m not taking your bed, Mr. Stark?”

  “I set up late nights,” he said.

  But any protest I might have made would have been futile. He was already up and about, lighting another kerosene lamp, and in a few moments he was conducting me into the adjoining room and showing me the couch. On the way in, I picked up the Seventh Book of Moses, impelled by curiosity inspired by decades of hearing talk of the potent wonders between its covers; though he eyed me strangely, my host made no objection, and returned to his wicker rocking chair in the next room again, leaving me to my own devices.

  Outside, the rain still came down in torrential gusts. I made myself comfortable on the couch, which was an old-fashioned leather-overed affair, with a high headrest, moved the lamp over close—for its light was very feeble—and commenced to read in the Seventh Book of Moses, which, I soon found, was a curious rigmarole of chants and incantations to such “princes” of the nether world as Aziel, Mephistopheles, Marbuel, Barbuel, Aniquel, and others. The incantations were of many kinds; some were designed to cure illness, others to grant wishes; some were meant for success in undertakings, others for vengeance upon one’s enemies. The reader was repeatedly warned in the text of how terrible some of the words were, so much so, that perhaps because of these adjurations, I was compelled to copy the worst of the incantations which caught my eye—Aila himel adonaij amara Zebaoth cadas yeseraije haralius—which was nothing less than an incantation for the assemblage of devils or spirits, or the raising of the dead.

  And, having copied it, I was not loath to say it aloud several times, not for a moment expecting anything untoward to take place. Nor did it. So I put the book aside and looked at my watch. Eleven o’clock. It seemed to me that the force of the rain had begun to diminish; it was no longer such a downpour; that lessening which always foretells the end of a rain storm within a reasonably short time had begun. Marking the appointments of the room well, so that I would not stumble over any object of furniture on my way back to the room where my host waited, I put out the light to rest a little while before taking to the road on
ce more.

  But, tired as I was, I found it hard to compose myself.

  It was not alone that the couch on which I lay was hard and cold, but that the very atmosphere of the house seemed oppressive. Like its owner, it had about it a kind of resignation, an air of waiting for the inevitable, as if it, too, knew that sooner rather than later its weatherbeaten siding would buckle outward and its roof fall inward to bring an end to its increasingly precarious existence. But there was something more than this atmosphere of so many old houses which it possessed; it was a resignation tinged with apprehension—that same apprehension which had caused old Amos Stark to hesitate about answering my knock; and soon I caught myself listening, too, as Stark did, for more than the patter of the rain, steadily diminishing now, and the incessant gnawing of mice.

  My host did not sit still. Every little while he rose, and I could hear him shuffle from place to place; now it was the window, now the door; he went to try them, to make sure they were locked; then he came back and sat down again. Sometimes he muttered to himself; perhaps he had lived too long alone and had fallen into that common habit of isolated, reclusive people, of talking to himself. For the most part what he said was indistinguishable, almost inaudible, but on occasion some words came through, and it occurred to me that one of the things which occupied his thoughts was the amount of interest that would be due on the money he owed Nahum Wentworth, were it now collectible. “A hunderd an’ fifty dollars a year,” he kept saying. “Comes to seven-fifty”—said with something akin to awe. There was more of this, and there was something more which troubled me more than I cared to admit.

  Something the old man said was upsetting when pieced together; but he said none of it consecutively. “I fell,” he muttered, and there followed a sentence or two of inanities. “All they was to it.” And again many indistinguishable words. “Went off—quick-like.” Once more a round of meaningless or inaudible words. “Didn’t know ’twas aimed at Nahum.” Followed once again by indistinct mutterings. Perhaps the old man’s conscience troubled him. Certainly, the brooding resignation of the house was enough to stir him to his darkest thoughts. Why had he not followed the other inhabitants of the stony valley to one of the settlements? What was there to prevent his going? He had said he was alone, and presumably he was alone in the world as well as in the house, for had he not willed his earthly possessions to Nahum Wentworth’s daughter?

  His slippers whispered along the floor, his fingers rustled papers.

  Outside the whippoorwills began to call, which was a sign that in some quarters the sky was beginning to clear; and soon there was a chorus of them fit to deafen a man. “Heer them whipperwills,” I heard my host mutter. “Callin’ fer a soul. Clem Whateley’s dyin’.” As the voice of the rain fell slowly away, the voices of the whippoorwills rose in volume, and soon I grew drowsy and dozed off.

  I come now to that part of my story which makes me doubt the evidence of my own senses, which, when I look back upon it now, seems impossible of occurrence. Indeed, many times now, with added years, I wonder whether I did not dream it all—yet I know it was not a dream, and I still have certain corroborating newspaper clippings to adduce in proof that mine was not a dream—clippings about Amos Stark, about his bequest to Genie Wentworth,—and, strangest of all—about a hellish molestation of a grave half forgotten on a hillside in that accursed valley.

  I had not been dozing long when I awoke. The rain had ceased, but the voices of the whippoorwills had moved closer to the house and were now in thunderous chorus. Some of the birds sat immediately under the window of the room in which I lay, and the roof of the shaky verandah must have been covered with the nocturnal creatures. I have no doubt that it was their clamor which had brought me out of the light sleep into which I had fallen. I lay for a few moments to collect myself, and then moved to rise, for, the rain having now come to an end, driving would be less hazardous, and my motor was in far less danger of going out on me.

  But just as I swung my feet to the floor, a knock fell upon the outer door.

  I sat motionless, making no sound—and no sound came from the adjoining room.

  The knock came again, more peremptorily this time.

  “Who be ye?” Stark called out.

  There was no reply.

  I saw the light move, and I heard Stark’s exclamation of triumph. “Past midnight!” He had looked at his clock, and at the same time I looked at my watch. His clock was ten minutes fast.

  He went to answer the door.

  I could tell that he set down the lamp in order to unlock the door. Whether he meant to take it up again, as he had done to peer at me, I could not say. I heard the door open—whether by his hand or by another’s.

  And then a terrible cry rang out, a cry of mingled rage and terror in Amos Stark’s voice. “No! No! Go back. I ain’t got it—ain’t got it, I tell yew. Go back!” He stumbled back and fell, and almost immediately after there came a horrible, choking cry, a sound of labored breathing, a gurgling gasp….

  I came to my feet and lurched through the doorway into that room—and then for one cataclysmic moment I was rooted to that spot, unable to move, to cry out, at the hideousness of what I saw. Amos Stark was spread on the floor on his back, and sitting astride him was a mouldering skeleton, its bony arms bowed above his throat, its fingers at his neck. And in the back of the skull, the shattered bones where a charge of shot had once gone through. This I saw in that one terrible moment—then, mercifully, I fainted.

  When I came to a few moments later, all was quiet in the room. The house was filled with the fresh musk of the rain, which came in through the open front door; outside, the whippoorwills still cried, and a wan moonlight lay on the ground like pale white wine. The lamp still burned in the hall, but my host was not in his chair.

  He lay where I had seen him, spread on the floor. My whole impulse was to escape that horrible scene as quickly as possible, but decency impelled me to pause at Amos Stark’s side, to make sure that he was beyond my help. It was that fateful pause which brought the crowning horror of all, that horror which sent me shrieking into the night to escape that hellish place as were all the demons of the nether regions at my heels. For, as I bent above Amos Stark, ascertaining that he was indeed dead, I saw sticking into the discolored flesh of his neck the whitened finger bones of a human skeleton, and, even as I looked upon them, the individual bones detached themselves, and went bounding away from the corpse, down the hall, and out into the night to rejoin that ghastly visitor who had come from the grave to keep his appointment with Amos Stark!

  THE PEABODY HERITAGE

  I

  I never knew my great-grandfather Asaph Peabody, though I was five years old when he died on his great old estate northeast of the town of Wilbraham, Massachusetts. There is a childhood memory of once visiting there, at a time when the old man was lying ill; my father and mother mounted to his bedroom, but I remained below with my nurse, and never saw him. He was reputed to be wealthy, but time whittles away at wealth as at all things, for even stone is mortal, and surely mere money could not be expected to withstand the ravages of the ever-increasing taxation, dwindling a little with each death. And there were many deaths in our family, following my great-grandfather’s in 1907. Two of my uncles died after—one was killed on the Western front, and another went down on the Lusitania. Since a third uncle had died before them, and none of them had ever married, the estate fell to my father on my grandfather’s death in 1919.

  My father was not a provincial, though most of his forebears had been. He was little inclined to life in the country, and made no effort to take an interest in the estate he had inherited, beyond spending my great-grandfather’s money on various investments in Boston and New York. Nor did my mother share any of my own interest in rural Massachusetts. Yet neither of them would consent to sell it, though on one occasion, when I was home from college, my mother did propose that the property be sold, and my father coldly dismissed the subject; I remember his sudden f
reezing—there is no more fitting word to describe his reaction—and his curious reference to “the Peabody heritage,” as well as his carefully phrased words: “Grandfather predicted that one of his blood would recover the heritage.” My mother had asked scornfully: “What heritage? Didn’t your father just about spend it all?” to which my father made no reply, resting his case in his icy inference that there were certain good reasons why the property could not be sold, as if it were entailed beyond any process of law. Yet he never went near the property; the taxes were paid regularly by one Ahab Hopkins, a lawyer in Wilbraham, who made reports on the property to my parents, though they always ignored them, dismissing any suggestion of “keeping up” the property by saying it would be like “Throwing good money after bad.”

  The property was abandoned, to all intent and purpose; and abandoned it remained. The lawyer had once or twice made a halfhearted attempt to rent it, but even a brief boom in Wilbraham had not brought more than transient renters to the old homestead, and the Peabody place yielded inexorably to time and the weather. It was thus in a sad state of disrepair when I came into the property on the sudden death by automobile accident of both my parents in the autumn of 1929. Nevertheless, what with the decline in property values which took place subsequent to the inauguration of the depression that year, I determined to sell my Boston property and refurbish the house outside of Wilbraham for my own use. I had enough of a competence on my parents’ death so that I could afford to retire from the practice of law, which had always demanded of me greater preciseness and attention than I wished to give to it.

  Such a plan, however, could not be implemented until at least part of the old house had been got ready for occupation once more. The dwelling itself was the product of many generations. It had been built originally in 1787, at first as a simple colonial house, with severe lines, an unfinished second storey, and four impressive pillars at the front. But, in time, this had become the basic part of the house, the heart, as it were. Subsequent generations had altered and added to it—at first by the addition of a floating stairway and a second storey; then by various ells and wings, so that at the time I was preparing to make it my residence, it was a large, rambling structure, which occupied over an acre of land, adding to the house itself the lawn and gardens, which were in as great a state of disuse as the house.