Читать книгу The Shadows Around Us: Authentic Tales of the Supernatural - Morrison Arthur - Страница 5

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THERE are many anecdotes extant of practical jokers who, in the attempt to practise upon the superstitious fears of their friends and neighbours, have had the tables very severely turned upon themselves. One of the saddest of these, and one which is fairy well known and said to be perfectly authentic, tells of a wager made between two young lieutenants in an English Line regiment, who were very close friends. They were stationed at a town, the churchyard of which had a ghostly reputation, and the subject of ghosts occurred one day at mess, when one defied the other, by a bet, to remain in a particular part of the churchyard all night. The bet was readily accepted, and, armed with his sword and pistols, the intended victim of a practical joke took up his position at the place agreed upon, and waited. Meanwhile, the bullets had been surreptitiously withdrawn from his pistols, and his friend, enveloped in a sheet, and carrying a bullet in each hand, concealed himself behind a neighbouring tombstone, while sundry members of the mess ensconced themselves in the vicinity to enjoy the fun.

Twelve o'clock having struck from the neighbouring church tower, the sham ghost rose and moved slowly in the direction of the young lieutenant. The latter, nothing daunted, and never suspecting a trick on the part of his friends; promptly fired a pistol at it; whereupon it slowly extended one hand in the moonlight, with a bullet between the finger and thumb, as though the projectile had been arrested in mid-air. Promptly was the other pistol seized and fired, with the same result; whereupon, drawing his sword, the young man rushed forward, and, lunging violently, ran his friend through the body, killing him on the spot. The remorse of the intended victim and of the abettors of the real victim may, perhaps, be imagined.

In the following case, however, the punishment of a somewhat similar practical joke was accomplished by means more strange and terrible. The facts can, no doubt, at the present day, be easily verified upon the spot where they took place.

In the county of Forfar, Scotland, by the mouth of the Tay, near Broughty Ferry, stands the village of Monifieth. Monifieth parish comprises, beside the village which gives it its name, the villages of Banhill and Drumsturdymoor and the larger part of the post town of Broughty Ferry. Monifieth village proper contains some thousand or more inhabitants, but was a smaller place at the time at which the event below recorded took place.

The parish schools now standing at Monifieth were erected in 1822, and took the place of the old building in which, towards the end of the last century, Mr. William Craighead presided as schoolmaster. This was the Mr. William Craighead whose popular handbook of arithmetic was, some time after the occurrence's here set down, in such great request for school purposes. Mr. Craighead was, at the time referred to, a young man, and one of much livelier tendencies than, no doubt, many of the sober bodies of Monifieth considered strictly consistent with the dignity of a parish schoolmaster. Practical jokes of a pronounced character were frequently played at Monifieth, and popular suspicion was not always wrong in ascribing them to Craighead.

The custom of the "lich-wake," corresponding largely with the surviving Irish custom of waking the dead, had not then died out in Scotland, and in Monifieth was frequently practised. Scholars tell us that these ceremonies were of Saxon origin, the name being derived from the Saxon words lic, a corpse, and waeccan, to sit awake.

Now, it chanced that upon the death of a substantial farmer in the neighbourhood, a large number of his late acquaintances were invited to the lich-wake, and among them were Craighead and Andrew Saunders, an intimate companion of his, and his confederate in more than one youthful frolic. The similarity in the personal appearance of this Andrew Saunders and that of the dead farmer had more than once been noticed, and this suggested to Craighead a practical joke of rather a grim nature, which, after consultation between the two friends, was ultimately agreed upon.

A shroud was to be procured, and Saunders was to don it; then, after means had been found to attract the company temporarily into another room, the corpse was to be removed to an outhouse, and Saunders was to take its place. Then, when all had returned and the opportunity seemed fitting, Craighead was to sneeze twice, and, at the signal, the supposed corpse was to rise, and the fun was to consist in the enjoyment by the jokers of the terror which their friends would exhibit.

The evening came, and all the preliminaries to this piece of humour were successfully gone through. A chest was suddenly discovered in another part of the house, standing in its wrong place, in the middle of a room, and apparently so heavy that nobody could move it. The whole company adjourned to the room where this chest was in order to try, one after another, to lift or move it, and the whole company failed; which was not very surprising, considering that it had been carefully screwed to the floor. After a time the lid was burst open and the difficulty discovered, and general opinion at once pointed to the perpetrator of the joke as that daft hempie, Wullie Craighead, without, however, a suspicion that the ruse had any intention beyond its own perpetration.

Everybody returned to the watching room, where, during their absence Andrew Saunders had emerged from another passage, and, after dragging the corpse to his own lurking place, had taken its place on the bed, shrouded.

Craighead made his way round about to where the corpse lay upon the floor of the side passage, and, first carefully reconnoitring to make perfectly sure of not being watched, conveyed it to an outhouse. There was straw in this outhouse, and this Craighead disposed suitably, and stretched the body upon it. Returning, he found the key had been carelessly left in the padlock, so, after locking the door, he pocketed this key in case of inquisitiveness on the part of anybody coming near the spot.

This done, he strolled innocently back into the death-chamber.

There was Saunders in the bed, acting the part of the corpse admirably, and quite unsuspected by the assembly. The assembly, indeed, was devoting itself, with great singleness of purpose, to whisky, and paying small attention to the occasion of the ceremony. Perfect decorum and quietness, however, as was customary, prevailed.

"It's a sad okeeshun, a verra sad okeeshun," said the miller, reaching for the bottle, "and its proper contemplation calls for a speeshal steemulus," and he took it.

"It's no sae sad as't micht be," said another, "wi' neither wife nor bairns to greet."

They forgot the dead man's little sister, who was hidden in her little bedroom, exhausted with weeping.

"Thankee, Mr. Christie; I'll just trouble you for the spiritual stimulus," said Craighead, addressing the miller. "I was reading the other day," he added for the information of the company in general, "a rather singular account of a supposed temporary revivification of a corpse. Corpse got up in bed and reached for whisky."

"It's a sad, a verra sad okeeshun," repeated the miller, gazing sternly at Craighead as he handed him the liquor, "and ill-suited for sic gowk-tales."

"Matter of speecial interest, it seemed to me," replied the schoolmaster; "interesting just now, particularly, and—tichow! tichow!" he sneezed twice with violence.

No sign or movement from the bed.

This was strange. He must have heard. Craighead concluded that the sneezes had sounded too genuine and unintentional. He determined to repeat them presently, less naturally and more expressively.

The guests continued looking at one another.

Presently Craighead sneezed again twice, looking toward the bed as he did so.

No sign, no sound, no movement there.

What could be wrong? Surely, surely, his friend could not have fallen asleep in such a situation as that, in a shroud, lying in the bed from which the corpse he was personating had just been dragged? It was impossible. Yet, there he lay, motionless calm, and pale, like the body itself. Craighead felt indefinably uncomfortable and uneasy as he looked at him. Why didn't he get up?

"Ye've sair fits o' sneezin' the nicht, neebor," remarked the miller, looking at Craighead curiously.

Still gazing at his friend in the bed, Craighead indistinctly murmured something about having a cold.

Then he felt cold, indeed, with a cold perspiration. Surely Andrew was not so pale as that when he last left him in the passage, nor his lips so white? Perhaps he was ill.

Forgetting the plot entirely, be crossed hurriedly to the bed, and laid his hand on his friend's shoulder. Then, suddenly turning paler than the other, he thrust his hand beneath the breast of the shroud.

His companions looked at him and at one another in astonishment. Wullie Craighead, with all his gaiety, had the name of a sober man; but here he was tearing the bed-clothes off a dead body and crying like one demented.

"Bring some water, quick, quick! or whisky, or anything! He's dying, man, I tell ye, or dead! It's Saunders; it's Andy Saunders!"

And there, sure enough, as he tore the shroud away, were seen beneath it the everyday clothes of Andrew Saunders.

"What deil's riggs are ye at noo, Wullie Craighead?" and every man started to his feet and made for the bed.

And there, in his well-known suit of hodden, with the rags of the torn shroud hanging about his neck and shoulders, lay Andrew Saunders, dead!

For some time no word could be got from William Craighead as he sat on the bed dazed and stupid. Then, in response to repeated demands, he explained the ghastly joke in a few words. Meantime the doctor had arrived, and pronounced no doubt of Saunders's death.

Then arose an inquiry as to where the other body had been concealed, and Craighead, whose stupefaction had given way to wild remorse and self-reproach, accompanied the miller to the outhouse to bring it in.

A stable lantern was lit, and the padlock, which worked rather stiffly, was unlocked with difficulty by means of the key which Craighead had retained.

They entered the outhouse, and there found—nothing but straw! The body had gone!

The outhouse had no window and no other outlet whatever beside the door, which they had found securely padlocked. Craighead was certain that this, and no other outhouse, was the one in which the body had been placed; and, indeed, none of the others were provided with a similar lock. And in the corner he recognised the disposition of the straw, which lay just as he had spread it to receive the body.

Entirely overwhelmed, he wandered aimlessly about the premises. The rest of the party made a thorough search, but without discovering a trace of the missing body, and every man most solemnly declared that he knew nothing whatever of the removal.

Presently, in turning into a door of the house, Craighead met the little sister. She had heard vaguely something of what he had done, and fled from him faintly screaming. Crazed and maddened, he rushed from the place.

All that night he wandered over the country side, he knew not where. Rain fell upon his bare head and drenched him through, but he knew it not.

Day broke, the sun rose and declined, and still William Craighead wandered over the adjacent country demented—searching for a corpse, he told them that addressed him; looking for a dead man in his shroud.

Four days and nights he roamed the neighbourhood, an object of pity and fear to the inhabitants, without rest and without sleep. Then a party went after him, and after telling him their news, fetched him with them quietly, and William Craighead returned to his school and his regular duties, and lived ever after a saddened and sober life.

For the body had been found in a field among the brooks of Tealing, six miles or more from Monifieth, lying unruffled and apparently undisturbed in its shroud, just as it had lain upon the bed; and it was carried away and decently buried. But how it came where it was found no man ever knew.