Ghosts and Scholars: Ghost Stories in the Tradition of M. R. James

CELUI-LÀ Eleanor Scott

Eleanor Scott had a brief career as an author between the wars, writing four novels (including War Among Ladies, and Beggars Would Ride) and two bestsellers on Adventurous Women and Heroic Women. She is now chiefly remembered for one collection of uncanny Jamesian tales, Randalls Round (1929), from which the following story is taken. Miss Scott claimed that all the stories in her book had their origin in dreams. ‘I have seen more than Foster or M. Vétier saw on the beach at Kerouac’, she wrote. ‘It may be that simply because these things were so terrifying I have failed to convey the horror I felt. I do not know. But I hope that some readers at least will experience an agreeable shudder or two in the reading of them.’

‘I don’t for a moment expect to you take my advice,’ said Dr Foster, looking shrewdly at his patient, ‘but I’ll give it all the same. It’s this. Pack a bag with a few things and go off tomorrow to some tiny seaside or mountain place, preferably out of England, so that you won’t meet a soul you know. Live there absolutely quietly for three or four weeks, taking a reasonable amount of exercise, and then write and tell me that you’re all night again.’

‘Easier said than done,’ growled Maddox. ‘There aren’t any quiet places left that I know of, and if there were there wouldn’t be any digs to be had at no notice.’

Foster considered.

‘I know the very thing,’ he cried suddenly. ‘There’s a little place on the Breton coast—fishing village, very small and scattered, with a long stretch of beach, heath and moor inland, quiet as can be. I happen to know the curé there quite fairly well, and he’s an extremely decent, homely little chap. Vétier his name is. He’d take you in. I’ll write to him tonight.’

After that, Maddox couldn’t in decency hold out. Old Foster had been very good, really, over the whole thing; besides, it was nearly as much bother to fight him as it was to go. In less than a week Maddox was on his way to Kerouac.

Foster saw him off with relief. He knew Maddox well, and knew that he was suffering from years of overwork and worry; he understood how very repugnant effort of any kind was to him—or thought he did; but in reality no one can quite understand the state of exasperation or depression that illness can produce in someone else. Yet as the absurd little train that Maddox took at Lamballe puffed serenely along between tiny rough orchards, the overwrought passenger began to feel soothed; and then, as the line turned north and west, and the cool wind came in from across the dim stretches of moorland, he grew content and almost serene.

Dusk had fallen when he got out at the shed that marked the station at Kerouac. The curé, a short, plump man, in soutane and broad-brimmed hat, met him with the kind, almost effusive, greeting that Breton peasants give to a guest, and conducted the stumbling steps of his visitor to a rough country lane falling steeply downhill between two high, dark banks that smelt of gorse and heather and damp earth. Maddox could just see the level line of sea lying before him, framed by the steep banks of the moor on either hand. Above, a few pale stars glimmered in the dim sky. It was very peaceful.

Maddox fell into the simple life of the Kerouac presbytery at once. The curé was, as Foster had said, a very homely, friendly little man, always serene and nearly always busy, for he had a large and scattered flock and took a very real interest in the affairs of each member of it. Also, Maddox gathered, money was none too plentiful, for the curé did all the work of the church himself, even down to the trimming of the grass and shrubs that surrounded the little wind-swept building.

The country also appealed very strongly to the visitor. It was at once desolate and friendly, rough and peaceful. He particularly liked the long reaches of the shore, where the tangle of heath and whin gave place to tufts of coarse, whitish grass and then to a belt of shingle and the long level stretches of smooth sand. He liked to walk there when evening had fallen, the moorland on his left rising black to the grey sky, the sea, smooth and calm, stretching out infinitely on his right, a shining ripple lifting here and there. Oddly enough, M. le Curé did not seem to approve of these evening rambles; but that, Maddox told himself, was common among peasants of all races; and he idly wondered whether this were due to a natural liking for the fireside after a day in the open, or whether there were in it some ancient fear of the spirits and demons that country people used to fear in the dim time entre le chien et le loup. Anyhow, he wasn’t going to give up his evening strolls for a superstition of someone else’s!

It was near the end of October, but very calm weather for the time of year; and one evening the air was so mild and the faint shine of the stars so lovely that Maddox extended his walk beyond its usual limits. He had always had the beach to himself at that time of the evening; and he felt a natural, if quite unjustifiable, annoyance when he first noticed that there was someone else on the shore.

The figure was perhaps fifty yards away. At first he thought it was a peasant woman, for it had some sort of hood drawn over the head, and the arms, which it was waving or wringing, were covered by long, hanging sleeves. Then, as he drew nearer, he saw that it was far too tall for a woman, and jumped to the conclusion that it must be a monk or wandering friar of quite exceptional height.

The light was very dim, for the new moon had set, and the stars showed a faint diffused light among thin drifts of cloud; but even so Maddox could not help noticing that the person before him was behaving very oddly. It—he could not determine the sex—moved at an incredible speed up and down a short stretch of beach, waving its draped arms; then suddenly, to his horror, it broke out into a hideous cry, like the howl of a dog. There was something in that cry that turned Maddox cold. Again it rose, and again—an eerie, wailing, hooting sound, dying away over the empty moor. And then the creature dropped on its knees and began scratching at the sand with its hands. A memory, forgotten until now, flashed into Maddox’s mind—a memory of that rather horrible story in Hans Andersen about Anne Lisbeth and the drowned child . . .

The thin cloud obscured the faint light for a moment. When Maddox looked again the figure was still crouching on the shore, scrabbling with its fingers in the loose sand; and this time it gave Maddox the impression of something else—a horrible impression of an enormous toad. He hesitated, and then swallowing down his reluctance with an effort, walked towards the crouching, shrouded figure.

As he approached it suddenly sprang upright, and with a curious, gliding movement, impossible to describe, sped away inland at an incredible speed, its gown flapping as it went. Again Maddox heard the longdrawn mournful howl.

Maddox stood gazing through the thickening dusk.

‘Of course it’s impossible to tell in this light,’ he muttered to himself, ‘but it certainly did look extraordinarily tall—and what an odd look it had of being flat. It looked like a scarecrow, with no thickness . . .’

He wondered at his own relief that the creature had gone. He told himself that it was because he loathed any abnormality, and there could be no doubt that the person he had seen, whether it were woman or monk, was crazed, if not quite insane.

He walked to the place where it had crouched. Yes, there was the patch of disturbed sand, rough among the surrounding smoothness. It occurred to him to look for the footprints made by the flying figure to see if they bore out his impression of abnormal height; but either the light was too bad for him to find them, or the creature had leapt straight on to the belt of shingle. At any rate, there were no footmarks visible.

Maddox knelt beside the patch of disturbed sand and half idly, half in interest, began himself to sift it through his fingers. He felt something hard and smooth—a stone perhaps? He took it up.

It was not a stone, anyhow, though the loose, damp sand clung to it so that he could not clearly distinguish what it was. He got to his feet, cleaning it with his handkerchief; and then he saw that it was a box or case, three or four inches long, covered with some kind of rude carving. It fell open of itself as he turned it about, and he saw that inside was a wrapping of something like, yet unlike, leather; inside again was something that crackled like paper.

He looked round to see whether the figure that had either buried or sought this object—he was not sure which it had done—was returning; but he could see nothing but the bushes of gorse and heath black and stunted against the grey sky. There was no sound but the sigh of the night wind and the gentle lap of the incoming tide. His curiosity proved too strong for him, and he slipped the case into his pocket as he turned homewards.

Supper—a simple meal of soup and cheese and cider—was awaiting him when he got in, and he had not time to do more than change his shoes and wash his hands; but after supper, sitting on one side of the wide hearth while the curé smoked placidly on the other, Maddox felt the little box in his pocket, and began to tell his host of his queer adventure.

The curé’s lack of enthusiasm rather damped him. No, he knew of no woman in the whole of his wide parish who would behave as Maddox described. There was no monastery in the neighbourhood, and if there were it would not be permitted to the brethren to act like that. He seemed mildly incredulous, in fact, until Maddox, quite nettled, took out the little case and slapped it down on the table.

It was a more uncommon object than he had at first supposed. It was, to begin with, extremely heavy and hard—as heavy as lead, but of a far harder metal. The chasing was queer; the figures reminded Maddox of runes; and remembering the prehistoric remains in Brittany, a thrill ran through him. He was no antiquarian, but it occurred to him that this find of his might be an extremely interesting one.

He opened the case. As he had thought, there was a scrap of some leathery substance within, carefully rolled round a piece of parchment. That couldn’t be prehistoric, of course; but Maddox was still interested. He smoothed it out and began stumblingly to read out the crabbed words. The language was Latin of a sort, and he was so occupied in endeavouring to make out the individual words that he made no attempt to construe their meaning until Father Vétier stopped him with a horrified cry and tried to snatch the document out of his hand.

Drawing by Alan Hunter

Maddox looked up, exceedingly startled. The little priest was quite pale, and looked as horrified as if he had been asked to listen to the most shocking blasphemy.

‘Why, mon père, what’s wrong?’ asked Maddox, astonished.

‘You should not read things like that,’ panted the little curé. ‘It is wrong to have that paper. It is a great sin.’

‘Why? What does it mean? I wasn’t translating.’

A little colour crept back to the priest’s cheeks, but he still looked greatly disturbed.

‘It was an invocation,’ he whispered, glancing over his shoulder. ‘It is a terrible paper, that. It calls up—that one.’

Maddox’s eyes grew bright and eager.

‘Not really? Is it, honestly?’ He opened out the sheet again.

The priest sprang to his feet.

‘No, Monsieur, I must beg you! No! You have not understood—’

He looked so agitated that Maddox felt compunction. After all, the little chap had been very decent to him, and if he took it like that—! But he couldn’t help thinking that it was a pity to let these ignorant peasants have jobs as parish priests. Really, there was enough superstition in their church as it was without drafting old forgotten country charms and incantations into it. A little annoyed, he put the paper back into its case and dropped the whole thing into his pocket. He knew quite well that if the curé got his hands on it he would have no scruples whatever about destroying the whole thing.

That evening did not pass as pleasantly as usual. Maddox felt irritated by the crass ignorance of his companion, and Father Vétier was quite unlike his customary placid self. He seemed nervous, timid even; and Maddox noticed that when the presbytery cat sprang on to the back of her master’s chair and rubbed her head silently against his ear the curé almost sprang out of his seat as he hurriedly crossed himself. The time dragged until Maddox could propose retiring to bed; and long after he had been in his room he could hear Father Vétier (for the inner walls of the presbytery were mere lath and plaster) whispering prayers and clicking the beads of his rosary.

When morning came Maddox felt rather ashamed of himself for having alarmed the little priest, as he undoubtedly had done. His compunction increased when he saw Father Vétier as he came in from his early Mass, for the little man looked quite pale and downcast. Maddox mentally cursed himself. He felt like a man who has distressed a child, and he cast about for some small way of making amends. Halfway through déjeuner he had an idea.

‘Father,’ he said, ‘you are making alterations in your church here, are you not?’

The little man brightened visibly. This, Maddox knew, was his pet hobby.

‘But yes, Monsieur,’ he replied quite eagerly. ‘For some time now I have been at work, now that at last I have enough. Monseigneur has given me his blessing. It is, you see, that there is beside our church here the fragment of an old building—oh, but old! One says that perhaps it was also a church or a shrine once, but what do I know?—but it is very well built, very strong, and I conceived the idea that one might join it to the church. Figure to yourself, Monsieur, I should then have a double aisle! It will be magnificent. I shall paint it, naturally, to make all look as it should. The church is already painted of a blue of the most heavenly, for the Holy Virgin, with lilies in white—I had hoped for lilies of gold, but gold paint, it is incredible, the cost!—and the new chapel I will have in crimson for the Sacred Heart, with hearts of yellow as a border. It will be gay, won’t it?’

Maddox shuddered inwardly.

‘Very gay,’ he agreed gloomily. There was something that appealed to him very much in the shabby whitewashed little church. He felt pained at the very thought of Father Vétier’s blue and crimson and yellow. But the little curé noticed nothing.

‘Already I have begun the present church,’ he babbled, ‘and, monsieur, you should see it! It is truly celestial, that colour. Now I shall begin to prepare the old building, so that, as soon as the walls are built to join it to the present church, I can decorate. They will not take long, those little walls, not long at all, and then I shall paint . . .’

He seemed lost in a vision of rapture. Maddox was both amused and touched. Good little chap, it had been a shame to annoy him over that silly incantation business. He felt a renewed impulse to please the friendly little man.

‘Can I help you at all, Father?’ he asked. ‘Could I scrape the walls for you or anything like that? I won’t offer to paint; I’m not expert enough.’

The priest positively beamed. He was a genial soul who loved company, even at his work; but even more he loved putting on thick layers of bright colours according to his long-planned design. To have a companion who did not wish to paint was more than he had ever hoped for. He accepted with delight.

After breakfast, Maddox was taken to see the proposed addition to the church. It stood on the north side of the little church (which, of course, ran east and west), and, as far as Maddox could see, consisted mainly of a piece of masonry running parallel with the wall of the church. Fragments of walls, now crumbled, almost joined it to the east and west ends of the north wall of the church; it might almost have been, at one time, a part of the little church. It certainly, as Father Vétier had said, would not take much alteration to connect it to the church as a north aisle. Maddox set to work to chip the plaster facing from the old wall with a good will.

In the afternoon the curé announced that he had to pay a visit to a sick man some miles away. He accepted with great gratitude his visitor’s proposal that he should continue the preparations for the painting of the new aisle. With such efficient help, he said, he would have the addition to the church ready for the great feast of St Michael, patron saint both of the village and the church. Maddox was delighted to see how completely his plan had worked in restoring the little man’s placid good-humour.

Shortly after two, Maddox went in the churchyard and resumed his labours. He chipped away industriously, and was just beginning to find the work pall when he made a discovery that set him chipping again eagerly at the coat of plaster which later hands had daubed thickly on the original wall. There were undoubtedly mural paintings on the portion he had begun to uncover. Soon he had laid bare quite a large stretch, and could see that the decoration formed a band, six or seven feet deep, about two feet from the ground, nearly the whole length of the wall.

The light was fading, and the colours were dim, but Maddox could see enough to interest him extremely. The paintings seemed to represent a stretch of the seashore, and though the landscape was treated conventionally he thought it looked like part of the beach near Kerouac. There were figures in the painting, too; and these aroused his excitement, for one at least was familiar. It was a tall shape, hooded, with hanging draperies—the figure he had seen the night before on the beach. Perhaps it was due to the archaic treatment of the picture that this figure gave him the same impression of flatness. The other figure—if it was a figure—was even stranger. It crouched on the ground before the hooded shape, and to Maddox it suggested some rather disgusting animal—a toad or a thick, squat fish. The odd thing was that, although it squatted before the tall figure, it gave the impression of domination.

Maddox felt quite thrilled. He peered closely at the painting, endeavouring to make out clearly what it represented; but the short October afternoon was drawing in fast, and beyond his first impression, he could gather very little. He noticed that there was one unexpected feature in the otherwise half-familiar landscape—a hillock or pile of large stones or rocks, on one side of which he could just make out words or fragments of words. ‘Qui peuct venir,’ he read in one place, and, lower down, ‘Celuy qui ecoustera et qui viendra . . . sacri . . . mmes pendus . . .’

There was also some vague object, a pile of seaweed. Maddox thought, lying heaped below the hillock.

Little though he knew either of art or of archaeology, Maddox was keenly interested by this discovery. He felt sure that this queer painting must represent some local legend or superstition. And it was very odd that he should have seen, or thought he had seen, that figure on the beach before he had discovered the mural painting. There could be no doubt that he had seen it; that it was no mere fancy of his tired mind there was the box and the incantation, or whatever it was, in his pocket to prove. And that gave him an idea. It would be extremely interesting if he should find that the old French words on the mural painting and the Latin words on the parchment in any way corresponded. He took the little metal case from his pocket and opened it.

‘“Clamabo et exaudiet me.” “I will call and he will hear.” That might be any prayer. Sounds rather like a psalm. “Quoniam iste qui venire potest”—ah! “qui peuct venir”!—what’s this? sacrificium hominum—Heavens! What’s that?’

Far off across the heath he heard a faint cry—the distant howling of the thing he had seen on the beach . . .

He listened intently. He could hear nothing more.

‘Some dog howling,’ he said to himself. ‘I’m getting jumpy. Where was I?’

He turned back to the manuscript; but even during the few moments of distraction the light had faded, and he had to strain his eyes to see anything of the words.

‘“E paludinis ubi est habitaculum tuum ego te convoco”,’ he read slowly aloud, spelling out the worn writing. ‘I don’t think there’s anything in the painting to correspond with that. How odd it is! “From the marshes where thy dwelling is I call thee.” Why from the marshes, I wonder? “E paludinis ubi est habitaculum tuum ego te convoco—”

He broke off abruptly. Again there came that dreadful howl—and it certainly was not the howl of a dog. It was quite close . . .

Maddox did not stop to consider. He leapt up, ran through the yard into the presbytery, and locked the door behind him. He went to the front door and locked that too; and he bolted every window in the tiny house. Then, and not till then, did he pause to wonder at his own precipitate flight. He was trembling violently, his breath coming in painful gasps. He told himself that he had acted like a hysterical old maid—like a schoolgirl. And yet he could not bring himself to open a window. He went into the little sitting-room and made up the fire to an unwonted size; then he tried to take an interest in Father Vétier’s library of devotional books until the little curé himself should return. He was nervous and uneasy; it seemed to him that he could hear some creature (he told himself that it must be a large dog, or perhaps a goat) snuffling about the walls and under the door . . . He was inexpressibly relieved when at last he heard the short, decided step of the curé coming up the path to the house.

Maddox was restless that night. He had short, heavy snatches of sleep in which he was haunted by dreams of pursuit by that flat, hooded being; and once he woke with a strangled cry and a cold shudder of disgust from a dream that, in his flight, he had stumbled and fallen face downwards on something soft and cold which moved beneath him—a mass of toads . . . He lay awake for a long time after that dream; but he eventually slipped into a drowsy state, half waking and half sleeping, in which he had an uncomfortable impression that he was not alone in the room—that something was breathing close beside him, moving about in a fumbling, stealthy way. And his nerves were so overwrought that he simply had not the courage to put out a hand and feel for the matches lest his fingers should close on—something else. He did not try to imagine what.

Towards dawn he fell into an uneasy doze, and awoke with a start. Some sound had awakened him—a melancholy howling cry rang in his ears; but whether it had actually sounded or whether it was part of his memories and evil dreams he could not tell:

He looked ill and worn at breakfast, and gave his bad night as an excuse for failing to continue his work on the old wall. He spent a wretched, moping day; he could settle to nothing indoors.

At last, tempted by the mellow October sun, he decided to go for a brisk, short walk. He would return before dusk—he was quite firm about that—and he would avoid the lonely reaches of the shore.

The afternoon was delicious. The rich scent of the gorse and heather, warm in the sun, and the cool touch from the sea that just freshened the breeze, soothed and calmed Maddox wonderfully. He had almost forgotten his terrors of the night before—at least, he was able to push them into a back corner of his mind. He turned homewards contentedly—even in his new calm he was not going to be out after sundown—when his eyes happening to fall on the white road where the declining sun threw his shadow, long and thin, before him. As he saw that shadow, his heart gave a sudden heavy thud; for a second shadow walked beside his own.

He spun round. No mortal creature was in sight. The road stretched empty behind him, and on either hand the moorland spread its breast to the wide sky. He ran to the presbytery like a hunted thing.

That evening Father Vétier ventured to speak to him.

‘Monsieur,’ he said, rather timidly, ‘I do not wish to intrude myself into your affairs. That understands itself. But I have promised my very good friend M. Foster that I will take care of you. You are not a Catholic, I know; but—will you wear this?’

As he spoke he took from his own neck a thin silver chain to which was attached a little medal, black with age, and held it out to his guest.

‘Thank you, Father,’ said Maddox simply, slipping the chain about his neck.

‘Ah! That is well,’ said the little curé with satisfaction. ‘And now, monsieur, I venture to ask you—will you let me change your room? I have one, not as good as yours, I admit it, but which has in it a small opening into the church. You will perhaps repose yourself better there. You will permit?’

‘With great pleasure,’ said Maddox fervently. ‘You are very kind to me, Father.’

The little man patted his hand.

‘It is that I like you very much, monsieur,’ he said naively. ‘And—I am not altogether a fool. We of Brittany see much that we do not look at, and hear much to which we do not listen.’

‘Father,’ said Maddox awkwardly, ‘I want to ask you something. When I began to read out that paper—you remember—?’ (The curé nodded uneasily)—‘you said that it was an invocation—that it summoned celui-là. Did you mean—the devil?’

‘No, my son. I—I cannot tell you. It has no name with us of Kerouac. We say, simply, celui-là. You will not, if you please, speak of it again. It is not good to speak of it.’

‘No, I can imagine it isn’t,’ said Maddox; and the conversation dropped.

Maddox certainly slept better that night. In the morning he told himself that this might be for more than one reason. The bed might be more comfortable (but he knew it was not that); or he might have overtired himself the day before; or the little curé’s offering might somehow have given him a kind of impression of safety and protection without really having the least power to guard him. His feeling of security increased when the priest announced:

‘Tomorrow we have another guest, monsieur. M. Foster has done me the honour to accept my invitation for a visit.’

‘Foster? Really? Excellent,’ cried Maddox. He felt that the doctor stood for science and civilization and sanity and all the comfortable reassuring things of life that were so utterly lacking in the desolate wildness of Kerouac.

Sure enough, Foster came next day, and was just as stolid and ugly and completely reassuring as Maddox had hoped he would be and half feared he would not. He seemed to be ignoring his friend’s physical condition at first; but on the day after his arrival he got to business.

‘Maddox, I don’t know how you expect to get fit again,’ he said. ‘You came here for the air as much as anything. I said you were to take moderate exercise. Yet here you stick, moping about this poky little house.’ (Needless to say, Father Vétier was not present when this conversation took place.) ‘What’s wrong with the place, eh? I’d have said it was excellent walking country.’

Maddox flushed a little.

‘It’s a bit boring, walking alone,’ he said evasively, well aware that ‘boring’ was not the right word.

‘Perhaps . . . Yes. But you can get out a bit more now I’m here to come along. You might take me out this afternoon; the curé’s going off to some kind of conference.’

Maddox wondered uneasily how much Foster knew. Had he come by chance, off his own bat? Or had Father Vétier been worried about his first guest and sent for him? If that were so, what exactly had the priest said? He thought he’d soon get that out of Foster.

They walked along the beach, farther than Maddox had yet been. He had avoided the shore of late, and he had not felt up to going so far when he first came to Kerouac; yet, though he knew he had never been on that particular reach of shore, the place seemed familiar. It is, of course, a common thing to feel that one knows a place which one is now seeing for the first time; but the impression was so extremely vivid that Maddox couldn’t help remarking on it to his companion.

‘Rot, my dear man,’ said Foster bluntly. ‘You haven’t been in Brittany before, and you say you’ve never been as far as this. It’s not such uncommon country, you know; it’s like lots of other places.’

‘I know,’ said Maddox; but he was not satisfied.

He was poor company for the rest of the walk, and was very silent on the way home. No amount of chaff from Foster could rouse him, and at last the doctor abandoned the effort. The men reached the presbytery in silence.

The next day was close, threatening rain, though the downpour held off from hour to hour. Neither of the two Englishmen felt inclined to walk under that lowering sky. Father Vétier had a second urgent summons from his sick parishioner at Cap Morel, and set off, wrapped in a curious garment of tarpaulin, soon after the second déjeuner. He remarked that he might take the occasion of being so near to Prénoeuf to pay some visits there, and that he probably would not be in until nightfall.

‘If monsieur should feel disposed,’ he said rather shyly to Maddox before he left, ‘M. Foster might be interested to see the alterations I propose for the church. He has taste, M. Foster. It might amuse him . . .’

He was so clearly keen to display his decorations, and yet a little afraid of appearing vain if he showed them himself, that Maddox smiled.

‘I’m sure he’d like to see them,’ he said gently.

Yet, though he could have given no possible reason for it, he felt strongly disinclined to go near that half-ruined wall with its stretch of painting only half displayed. He knew it was absurd. He had worked there till he was tired; he had been startled by the howling of a dog. That was all. No doubt, when he came to look at it again, he would find that the fresco was the merest clumsy daub, and that his own overwrought nerves, together with the uncanny light of the gloaming and the beastly dog, had exaggerated it into something sinister and horrible. He declared to himself that if he had the courage to go and look again, he would simply laugh at himself and his terrors. But at the back of his mind he knew that he would never have gone alone and it was a mixture of bravado and a kind of hope that Foster’s horse-sense would lay his terror for him that finally induced him to propose a visit to the place.

Foster was interested, mildly, by what Maddox told him of the painting on the ruined wall. He went out first to the rough little churchyard; Maddox, half reluctantly, went to fetch down the little case he had picked up on the beach in order that Foster might with his own eyes compare the two inscriptions; and when he did go out to join his friend he could hardly bring himself to go over to the wall he had worked on. It took quite an effort to force his feet over to it.

The decoration was not quite as he had remembered it. The figures were so indistinct and faint that they were hardly visible. In fact, Maddox could well believe that a stranger would not recognize the daub as representing figures at all. His relief at this discovery was quite absurd. He felt as if an immense and crushing weight had been lifted from his spirit; and, his first anxiety over, he bent to examine the rest of the painting more attentively. That was nearly exactly as he remembered it—the pile of stones with the half-illegible words; the tumbled huddle of seaweed or rags lying before it; the long reach of shore—ah! that was it!

‘Foster! Come and look here,’ he said.

‘Where?’ asked the doctor, strolling over.

‘Look—this fresco or whatever it is. I said that bit of shore we saw yesterday was familiar. This is where I saw it.’

‘Mmmm. Might be . . . All very much alike, though, this part of the beach. I don’t see anything to get worked up about.’

‘Oh! If you’re going to take that line!’ cried Maddox, exasperated. ‘You doctors are all alike—“Keep calm”—“Don’t get excited”—“Nothing to worry about”—!’

He broke off, gulping with sheer rage.

‘My dear Maddox!’ said Foster, startled by his silent friend’s outburst. ‘I’m awfully sorry. I wasn’t trying to snub you in the least. I simply thought—’ He too broke off. Then he decided to risk another annoyance. ‘What have you got on your mind?’ he asked, rather urgently. ‘Tell me, Maddox, there’s a good chap. What is it?’

He paused hopefully; but Maddox had dried up. He could not explain. He knew that his solid, comfortable friend would never, could never understand that his terror was not imaginary; he could not bear to watch him soothing down his friend, to see the thought ‘hysteria’ in his mind . . . Yet it would be a relief to tell . . .

‘Look at this,’ he said at last. He took from his pocket the case he had found on the beach. ‘What do you make of that paper?’ he asked.

Foster moved out of the shadow of the wall so that the pale watery sunlight, struggling through the clouds, fell on the parchment. Maddox, a little relieved by the serious way he took it, turned back to examine the painting again. It was certainly very odd that the figures, which he remembered so clearly and which had seemed so very distinct, should now appear so dim that he doubted their reality. They seemed even fainter now than they had when he had looked at them a few minutes ago. And that heap flung beneath the hillock—what did that represent? He began to wonder whether that, too, were a figure—a drowned man, perhaps. He bent closer, and, as he stooped, he was aware that someone beside him was looking over his shoulder, almost leaning on him.

‘Odd, Foster, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘What do you make of that huddled thing under the stones?’

There was no answer, and Maddox turned. Then he sprang to his feet with a shuddering cry that died in his throat. The thing so close to him was not his friend. It was the hooded creature of the beach . . .

Foster found the parchment so interesting that he was anxious to see it more clearly. He peered at it closely for a minute, and then decided to go into the presbytery for a light. He had some difficulty with the old-fashioned oil lamp; but when he finally got it burning he thought that the document fully repaid his trouble. He became so absorbed that it was not for some minutes that he realized that it was growing very dark and that Maddox had not yet come in. He felt quite disproportionately anxious as he hurried out to the tiny overgrown churchyard.

He was startled into something very like panic when he found no one there. Without reason, he knew that there was something horribly wrong, and blindly obeying the same instinct, he rushed out of the tiny enclosure and ran at his top speed down to the beach. He knew that he would find whatever there was to find on that lonely reach that was pictured on the old wall.

There was a faint glimmer of daylight still—enough to confuse the light until Foster, half distraught with a nameless fear, could hardly tell substance from shadow. But once he thought he saw ahead of him two figures—one a man’s, and the other a tall wavering shape almost indistinguishable in the gloom.

The sand dragged at his feet till they felt like lead. He struggled on, his breath coming in gasps that tore his lungs. Then, at last, the sand gave way to coarse grass and then to a stretch of salt marshland, where the mud oozed up over his shoes and water came lapping about his ankles. Open pools lay here and there, and he saw, as he struggled and tore his feet from the viscous slime, horrible creatures like toads or thick, squat fish, moving heavily in the watery ooze.

The light had almost gone as he reached the line of beach he knew: and for one terrible moment he thought he was too late. There was the pile of stones; beneath them lay a huddled black mass. Something—was it a shadow?—wavered, tall and vague, above the heap, and before it squatted a shape that turned Foster cold—something thick, lumpish, like an enormous toad . . .

He screamed as he dragged his feet from the loathsome mud that clooped and gulped under him—screamed aloud for help . . .

Then suddenly he heard a voice—a human voice.

‘In nomine Dei Omnipotenti . . .’ it cried.

Foster made one stupendous effort, and fell forward on his knees. The blood sang in his ears, but through the hammering of his pulses he heard a sound like the howling of a dog dying away in the distance.

‘It was by the providence of the good God that I was there,’ said Father Vétier afterwards. ‘I do not often come by the shore—we of Kerouac, monsieur, we do not like the shore after it is dusk. But it was late, and the road by the shore is quicker. Indeed I think the good saints led me . . . But if my fear had been stronger so that I had not gone that way—and it was very strong, monsieur—I do not think that your friend would be living now.’

‘Nor do I,’ said Foster soberly. ‘My God, Father, it—it was nearly over. Sacrificium hominum, that beastly paper said . . . I—I saw the loathsome thing waiting . . . he was lying in front of that hellish altar or whatever it was . . . Why, Father? Why did it have that power over him?’

‘I think it was that he read the—the invocation—aloud,’ said the curé slowly. ‘He called it, do you see, monsieur—he said the words. What he saw at first is—is often seen. We are used to it, we of Kerouac. We call it Celui-là. But it is, I believe, only a servant of—that other . . .’

‘Well,’ said Foster soberly, ‘you’re a brave man, Padre. I wouldn’t spend an hour here if I could help it. As soon as poor Maddox can travel I’m going home with him. As to living here alone—!’

‘And you are right to go,’ said Father Vétier, gravely. ‘But for me—no, monsieur. It is my post, do you see. And one prays, monsieur—one prays always.’