The Red Lodge Read online

  “What about the servants?”

  “Nurse hasn’t seen anything, but the others have, I’m certain. And then there are those slimy patches, I think they’re the vilest of all. I don’t think Tim has been troubled till now, but I’m sure he’s been puzzled and uncertain several times.”

  “Well,” I said, “it’s pretty obvious we must clear out. I’m seeing Sir William about it tomorrow, I hope, and I’m certain enough of what he’ll advise. Meanwhile we must think over where to go. It was a nasty jar, though; I don’t mean merely the money, though that’s bad enough, but the fuss—just when I hoped we were going to be so happy and settled. However, it’s got to be done. We should be mad after a week of this filth-drenched hole.”

  Just then the telephone-bell rang. It was a message to say Sir William would be pleased to see me at half-past ten tomorrow.

  With the dusk came that sense of being watched, waited for, followed about, plotted against, an atmosphere of quiet, hunting malignancy. A thick mist came up from the river, and as I was changing for dinner I noticed the lights from the window seemed to project a series of swiftly changing pictures on its grey, crawling screen. The one opposite my window, for example, was unpleasantly suggestive of three figures staring in and seeming to grow nearer and larger. The effect must have been slightly hypnotic, for suddenly I started back, for it was as if they were about to close on me. I pulled down the blind and hurried downstairs. During dinner we decided that unless Sir William had something very reassuring to say we would go back to London two days later and stay at a hotel till we could find somewhere to spend the next six weeks. Just before going to bed we went up to the night nursery to see if Tim was all right. This room was at the top of a short flight of stairs. As these stairs were covered with green slime, and there was a pool of the muck just outside the door, we took him down to sleep with us.

  The Permanent Occupants of the Red Lodge waited till the light was out but then I felt them come thronging, slipping in one by one, their weapon fear. It seemed to me they were massed for the attack. A yard away my wife was lying with my son in her arms, so I must fight. I lay back, gripped the sides of the bed and strove with all my might to hold my assailants back. As the hours went by I felt myself beginning to get the upper band, and a sense of exaltation came to me. But an hour before dawn they made their greatest effort. I knew that they were willing me to creep on my hands and knees to the window and peep through the blind, and that if I did so we were doomed. As I set my teeth and tightened my grip till I felt racked with agony, the sweat poured from me. I felt them come crowding round the bed and thrusting their faces into mine, and a voice in my head kept saying insistently, “You must crawl to the window and look through the blind.” In my mind’s eyes I could see myself crawling stealthily across the floor and pulling the blind aside, but who would be staring back at me? Just when I felt my resistance breaking I heard a sweet, sleepy twitter from a tree outside, and saw the blind touched by a faint suggestion of light, and at once those with whom I had been struggling left me and went their way, and, utterly exhausted, I slept.

  In the morning I found, somewhat ironically, that Mary had slept better than on any night since she came down.

  Half-past ten found me entering the Manor House, a delightful nondescript old place, which started wagging its tail as soon as I entered it. Sir William was waiting for me in the library. “I expected this would happen,” he said gravely, “and now tell me.”

  I gave him a short outline of our experiences.

  “Yes,” he said, “it’s always much the same story. Every time that horrible place has been let I have felt a sense of personal responsibility, and yet I cannot give a proper warning, for the letting of haunted houses is not yet a criminal offence—though it ought to be—and I couldn’t afford a libel action, and, as a matter of fact, one old couple had the house for fifteen years and were perfectly delighted with it, being troubled in no way. But now let me tell you what I know of the Red Lodge. I have studied it for forty years, and I regard it as my personal enemy.

  “The local tradition is that the second owner, early in the eighteenth century, wished to get rid of his wife, and bribed his servants to frighten her to death—just the sort of ancestor I can imagine that blackguard Wilkes being descended from.

  “What devilries they perpetuated I don’t know, but she is supposed to have rushed from the house just before dawn one day and drowned herself. Whereupon her husband installed a small harem in the house; but it was a failure, for each of these charmers one by one rushed down to the river just before dawn, and finally the husband himself did the same. Of the period between then and forty years ago I have no record, but the local tradition has it that it was the scene of tragedy after tragedy, and then was shut up for a long time. When I first began to study it, it was occupied by two bachelor brothers. One shot himself in the room which I imagine you use as your bedroom, and the other drowned himself in the usual way. I may tell you that the worst room in the house, the one the unfortunate lady is supposed to have occupied, is locked up, you know, the one on the second floor. I imagine Wilkes mentioned it to you.”

  “Yes, he did,” I replied. “Said he kept important papers there.”

  “Yes; well, he was forced in self-defence to do so ten years ago, and since then the death rate has been lower, but in those forty years twenty people have taken their lives in the house or in the river, six children have been drowned accidentally. The last case was Lord Passover’s butler in 1924. He was seen to run down to the river and leap in. He was pulled out, but had died of shock.

  The people who took the house two years ago left in a week, and threatened to bring an action against Wilkes, but they were warned they had no legal case. And I strongly advise you, more than that, implore you, to follow their example, though I can imagine the financial loss and great inconvenience, for that house is a death-trap.”

  “I will,” I replied. “I forgot to mention one thing; when my little boy was so badly frightened he said something about ‘a green monkey.’”

  “He did!” said Sir William sharply. “Well then, it is absolutely imperative that you should leave at once. You remember I mentioned the death of certain children. Well, in each case they had been found drowned in the reeds just at the end of that lane, and the people about here have a firm belief that ‘The Green Thing,’ or ‘The Green Death’—it is sometimes referred to as the first and sometimes as the other—is connected with danger to children.”

  “Have you ever seen anything yourself?” I asked.

  “I go to the infernal place as little as possible,” replied Sir William, “but when I called on your predecessors I most distinctly saw someone leave the drawing-room as we entered it, otherwise all I have noted is a certain dream which recurs with curious regularity. I find myself standing at the end of the land and watching the river—always in a sort of brassy half-light. And presently something comes floating down the stream. I can see it jerking up and down, and I always feel passionately anxious to see what it may be. At first I think that it is a log, but when it gets exactly opposite me it changes its course and comes towards me, and then I see that it is a dead body, very decomposed. And when it reaches the bank it begins to climb up towards me, and then I am thankful to say I always awake. Sometimes I have thought that one day I shall not wake just then, and that on this occasion something will happen to me, but that is probably merely the silly fancy of an old gentleman who has concerned himself with these singular events rather more than is good for his nerves.”

  “That is obviously the explanation,” I said, “and I am extremely grateful to you. We will leave tomorrow. But don’t you think we should attempt to devise some means by which other people may be spared this sort of thing, and this brute Wilkes be prevented from letting the house again?”

  “I certainly do so, and we will discuss it further on some other occasion. And now go and pack!”
r />   A very great and charming gentleman, Sir William, I reflected, as I walked back to the Red Lodge.

  Tim seemed to have recovered excellently well, but I thought it wise to keep him out of the house as much as possible, so while Mary and the maids packed after lunch I went with him for a walk through the fields. We took our time, and it was only when the sky grew black and there was a distant rumble of thunder and a menacing little breeze came from the west that we turned to come back. We had to hurry, and as we reached the meadow next to the house there came a ripping flash and the storm broke. We started to run for the door into the garden when I tripped over my bootlace, which had come undone, and fell. Tim ran on. I had just tied the lace and was on my feet again when I saw something slip through the door. It was green, thin, tall. It seemed to glance back at me, and what should have been its face was a patch of soused slime. At that moment Tim saw it, screamed, and ran for the river. The figure turned and followed him, and before I could reach him hovered over him. Tim screamed again and flung himself in. A moment later I passed through a green and stenching film and dived after him. I found him writhing in the reeds and brought him to the bank. I ran with him in my arms to the house, and I shall not forget Mary’s face as she saw us from the bedroom window.

  By nine o’clock we were all in a hotel in London, and the Red Lodge an evil, fading memory. I shut the front door when I had packed them all into the car. As I took hold of the knob I felt a quick and powerful pressure from the other side, and it shut with a crash. The Permanent Occupants of the Red Lodge were in sole possession once more.

  Herbert Russell Wakefield, an English author and editor, was considered one of the greatest ghost-story writers of all time.

  Seth is the cartoonist behind the semi-annual hardback series of books, Palookaville.

  His comics and drawings have appeared in The New York Times, The Best American Comics, The Walrus, The New Yorker, The Globe and Mail, and countless other publications. His latest graphic novel, Clyde Fans (twenty years in the making), will finally be published in the spring of 2019.

  He is the subject of a documentary from the National Film Board of Canada, Seth’s Dominion.

  Seth lives in Guelph, Ontario, with his wife, Tania, and their two cats in an old house he has named “Inkwell’s End.”

  Publisher’s Note: ‘The Red Lodge’ was first published in 1928 in They Return At Evening.

  Illustrations and design © Seth, 2018

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Wakefield, Herbert Russell, 1888-1964, author

  The red lodge / H.R. Wakefield;

  designed & decorated by Seth.

  (Christmas ghost stories)

  Short story.

  Originally published in the collection entitled They return at evening. London : Philip Allan, 1928.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-77196-255-1 (softcover).

  ISBN 978-1-77196-256-8 (ebook)

  I. Seth, 1962-, illustrator II. Title.

  PR6045.A252R43 2018 823’.912 C2018-901747-3

  C2018-901748-1

  Readied for the press by Daniel Wells

  Illustrated and designed by Seth

  Proofread by Emily Donaldson

  Typeset by Chris Andrechek