This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information and to find out how you can volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Read and recorded by Betsy Bush. Marquette, Michigan, October 2006. An Astral Onion by Elia Wilkinson-Peedy. When Tig Braddock came to Nora Finnegan, he was red-headed and freckled, and truth to tell he remained with these features to the end of his life. A life prolonged by a lucky, if somewhat improbable, incident as you shall hear. Tig had shuffled off his parents as Saurians of some sorts do their skins. During the temporary absence from home of his mother, who was at the Bridewell, and the more extended vacation of his father, who, like Villan, loved the open road and the life of it, Tig, who was not a well-domesticated animal, wandered away. The humane society never heard of him. The neighbors did not miss him, and the law took no cognizance of this detached citizen, this lost plied. Tig would have sunk into that melancholy which is attendant upon hunger, the only form of despair which babyhood knows, if he had not wandered across the path of Nora Finnegan. Now Nora shone with steady brightness in her orbit, and no sooner had Tig entered her atmosphere than he was warmed and comforted. Hunger could not live where Nora was.  Nora went out washing for a living, but she was not a poor washerwoman, not at all. She was a washerwoman triumphant. She had perfect health, an enormous frame, an abounding enthusiasm for life, and a rich abundance of professional pride. She believed herself to be the best washer of white clothes she had ever had the pleasure of knowing, and the value placed upon her services and her long connection with certain families with large weekly washings bore out this estimate of herself, an estimate which she never endeavored to conceal. Nora had buried two husbands without being unduly depressed by the fact. The first husband had been a disappointment, and Nora winked at Providence when an accident in a tunnel carried him off, that is to say carried the husband off. The second husband was not so much of a disappointment as a surprise. He developed ability of a literary order, and wrote songs which sold and made him a small fortune. Then he ran away with another woman. The woman spent his fortune, drove him to dissipation, and when he was dying he came back to Nora, who received him cordially, attended him to the end, and cheered his last hours by singing his own songs to him. Then she raised a headstone recounting his virtues, which were quite numerous, and refraining from any reference to those peculiarities which had caused him to be such a surprise. Only one actual chagrin had ever nibbled at the sound heart of Nora Finnegan, a cruel chagrin with long white teeth such as rodents have. She had never held a child to her breast, nor laughed in its eyes, never bathed the pink form of a little son or daughter, never felt a tugging of little hands at her voluminous calico skirts. Nora had burnt many candles before the statue of the Blessed Virgin without remedying this deplorable condition. She had sent up unavailing prayers, and had at times wept hot tears of longing and loneliness. Sometimes in her sleep she dreamed that a wee form, warm and exquisitely soft, had pressed against her firm body and that a hand with tiniest pink nails crept within her bosom.  So Intig came along, accompanied by two currs who had faithfully followed him from his home, and when she learned the details of his story she took him in, currs and all, and having bathed the three of them, made them part and parcel of her home. This was after the demise of the second husband, and at a time when Nora felt that she had done all a woman could be expected to do for Hyman. Tig was a preposterous baby, the currs were preposterous currs. Nora had always been afflicted with a surplus amount of laughter, laughter which had difficulty in attaching itself to anything, owing to the lack of the really comic in the surroundings of the poor. But with a red-headed and freckled baby boy and two trick-dogs in the house, she found a good and sufficient excuse for her hilarity, and would have torn the cave where Echo lives with her mirth, had that cave not been as such an immeasurable distance from the crowded neighborhood where she lived. At the age of four Tig went to free kindergarten. At the age of six he was in school and made three grades the first year and two the next. At fifteen he was graduated from the high school and went to work as errand boy in a newspaper office with a fixed determination to make a journalist of himself. Nora was a trifle worried about his morals when she discovered his intellect, but as time went on and Tig showed no devotion for any woman save herself, and no consciousness that there were such things as bad boys or saloons in the world, she began to have confidence. All of his earnings were brought to her. Every holiday was spent with her. He told her his secrets and his aspirations. He admitted that he expected to become a great man, and though he had not quite decided upon the nature of his career, saving, of course, the makeshift of journalism, it was not unlikely that he would elect to be a novelist like, well, probably like Thackery. Hope, always a charming creature, put on her most alluring smiles for Tig, and he made her his mistress and feasted on the light of her eyes. Moreover he was chaperoned, so to speak, by Nora Finnegan, who listened to every line Tig wrote, and made a mighty applause, and filled him up with good Irish stew, many-colored as the coat of Joseph, and pungent with the inimitable perfume of the Rose of the Cellar. Nora Finnegan understood the onion, and used it lovingly. She perceived the difference between the use and abuse of the pleasant and obvious friend of Hungry Man, and employed it with enthusiasm, but discretion. Thus it came about that whoever ate of her dinners found the meals of other cooks strangely lacking in savor, and remembered with regret the soups and stews, and broiled steaks, and stuffed chickens of the woman who appreciated the onion. When Nora Finnegan came home with a cold one day, she took it in such a jocular fashion that Tig felt not the least concern about her, and when, two days later, she died of pneumonia, he almost thought at first that it must be one of her jokes. She had departed with decision such as such characterized every act of her life, and had made as little trouble for others as possible. When she was dead, the community had the opportunity of discovering the number of her friends. Miserable children with faces which revealed two generations of hunger, homeless boys with vicious countenances, miserable rucks of humanity, women with bloated faces, came to weep over Nora's beer, and to lay a flower there, and to scuttle away, more objectively lonely than even sin could make them. If the cats and the dogs, the sparrows and horses to which she had shown kindness, could also have attended her funeral, the procession would have been, from my point of numbers, one of the most imposing the city had ever known. Tig used up all their savings to bury her, and the next week, by some peculiar fatality, he had a falling out with a night editor of his paper, and was discharged. This sank deep into his sensitive soul, and he swore he would be an underling no longer, which foolish resolution was directly traceable to his hair, the color of which it will be recollected was red. Not being an underling, he was obliged to make himself into something else, and he recurred passionately to his old idea of becoming a novelist. He settled down in Nora's basement rooms, went to work on a battered typewriter, did his own cooking, and occasionally pawned something to keep him in food. The environment was calculated to further impress him with the idea of his genius. A certain magazine offered an alluring prize for a short story, and Tig wrote one, and rewrote it, making alterations, revisions, annotations, and inter-lineations which would have reflected credit upon Honor Acute Balzac himself. Then he wrought altogether with splendid brevity and dramatic force, Tig's own words, and mailed the same. He was convinced he would get the prize. He was just as much convinced of it as Nora Finnegan would have been if she had been with him. So he went about doing more fiction, taking no special care of himself, and wrapped in rosy dreams, which, not being warm enough for the weather, permitted him to come down with rheumatic fever. He lay alone in his room, and suffered such torments as the condemned in rheumatic no, depending on one of Nora's former friends, to come in twice a day and keep up the fire for him. This friend was aged ten, and looked like a sparrow who had been in a cyclone, but somewhere inside his bones was a wit which had spelled out devotion. He found fuel for the cracked stove, somehow or other. He brought it in a dirty sack, which he carried on his back, and he kept warmth in Tig's miserable body. Moreover, he found food of a sort, cold, horrible bits often, and Tig wept when he saw them, remembering the meals Nora had served him. Tig was getting better, though he was conscious of a weak heart and a lamenting stomach when, to his amazement, the sparrow ceased to visit him. Not for a moment did Tig suspect desertion. He knew that only something in the nature of an act of providence, as the insurance companies would designate it, could keep the little bundle of bones away from him. As the days went by, he became convinced of it, for no sparrow came, and no coal lay upon the hearth. The basement window fortunately looked toward the south, and the pale April sunshine was beginning to make itself felt, so that the temperature of the room was not unbearable. But Tig languished, sank, sank, day by day, and was kept alive only by the conviction that the letter announcing the award of the thousand-dollar prize would presently come to him. One night he reached a place where for hunger and dejection his mind wandered, and he seemed to be complaining all night to Nora of his woes.  The window before his sight was but a glittering square. He said to himself that the end must be at hand. Yet it was cruel, cruel, with fame and fortune so near. If only he had some food, he might summon strength to rally, just for a little while. Impossible that he should die, and yet without food there was no choice. Dreaming so of Nora's dinners, thinking how one spoonful of a stew such as she often compounded would now be his salvation, he became conscious of the presence of a strong perfume in the room. It was so familiar that it seemed like a subconsciousness, yet he found no name for this friendly odor for a bewildered minute or two. Little by little, however, it grew upon him that it was the onion, that fragrant and kindly bulb which had attained its apotheosis in the cuisine of Nora Finnegan of sacred memory. He opened his liquid eyes to see if, may have, the plant had not attained some more palpable materialization. Behold, it was so. Before him in a brown earthen dish, a most familiar dish, was an onion, pearly white, in placid seas of gravy, smoking and delectable. With unexpected strength he raised himself and reached for the dish which floated before him in a halo made by its own steam. It moved toward him, offered a spoon to his hand, and as he ate, he heard about the room the rustle of Nora Finnegan's starched skirts. And now and then a faint, faint echo of her old-time laugh, such an echo as one may find of the sea in the heart of a shell. The noble bulb disappeared little by little before his veracity and, in contentment greater than virtue can give, he sank back upon his pillow and slept. Two hours later the postman knocked at the door and, receiving no answer, forced his way in. Tigg, half awake, saw him enter with no surprise. He felt no surprise when he put a letter in his hand bearing the name of the magazine to which he had sent his short story. He was not even surprised when, tearing it open with suddenly alert hands, he found within the check for the first prize, the check he had expected. All that day, as the April sunlight spread itself upon his floor, he felt his strength grow. Late in the afternoon the sparrow came back, paler and more bony than ever, and sank breathing hard upon the floor with his sack of coal. I've been sick, he said, trying to smile. Terrible sick, but I come as soon as I could. Build up the fire, cried Tigg in a voice so strong it made the sparrow start as if a stone had struck him.  End of An Astral Onion by Elia Wilkinson-Peedy This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit LibriVox.org. The Chromatic Ghosts of Thomas by Ellis Parker Butler. Our cat Thomas was very sensitive. I never knew such a sensitive cat as Thomas was. The slightest harsh word seemed to hurt his feelings and put him into a fit of the dumps. And if anybody scolded him, he would sob once or twice, then burst into tears. My wife and I tried to be gentle and kind to Thomas, but when a cat has such abnormally sensitive feelings as that, one is almost every minute doing something inadvertently to wound them, and Thomas seemed to be everlastingly looking for something to take to heart. It got so that he wandered about the house from one week's end to another with a downcast mournful expression, and it began to get on our nerves. Time and again I made up my mind to speak to my wife about it, and then I would remember how kind and loving and faithful Thomas had been when he was a kitten, and I would try to soothe my nerves by playing on my violin. But whether it was the material of which the violin strings were made, or something else, this would hurt Thomas's feelings too, and he would sit and look at me, oh, so sadly, until I would have to weep also, and then my wife would come in and see both her darlings and tears would fall to crying. We were very, very unhappy, and all because Thomas was so ridiculously sensitive. I stood it until one day when he had been more than unusually moody. He had taken offence at some fancy slight early in the morning, and all day he had sat with a frown on his brow, not saying a word to me, or answering me when I spoke to him. I said nothing until evening, and then being sure that Thomas had fallen asleep on our best silk damask chair, I spoke to my wife about it. I told her plainly that I was becoming a nervous wreck on account of that cat's feelings. She said that either I would move out and lead the house to Thomas, or that Thomas must move out and lead the house to me, that his moods were too moody, and that his permanent melancholy was beginning to tinge my writing, and that if I lost any more of the blithe joyousness that was my principal hold on the public, I would lose my popularity. No one would want my writings, and we should all starve. I can see now that I was a little too vehement. My mind was very much wrought up over the matter, and I may have spoken louder than I had intended. At any rate, Thomas suddenly jumped from the chair and walked dejectedly from the room. At the door he stopped and gave me one reproachful glance, and then we heard him push open the screen door and go out onto the kitchen porch. My wife and I sat for a minute in silence. The awful significance of what I had done came upon me. Never before had I outspokenly told my feelings regarding Thomas in his hearing. Edward, said my wife, I fear you have mortally offended Thomas. I pretended I was indifferent about what Thomas thought of what I had said, but at heart I was worried and ashamed. I knew I had said more than I had intended, and the heat of my words I had gone further than I should otherwise have gone. However, I doggedly set my mouth into firm lines and scowled. Edward, said my wife anxiously, a few minutes later, Thomas is very quiet out there.  Hadn't you better go to the door and say a kind word to him? You know how sensitive he is, and she did not say the awful words, but we both understood what she meant. Thomas was in the exact condition of melancholy, in which suicide suggests itself to the hypochondriac mind. I moved uneasily in my chair. I hated to beg the cat's pardon, for I felt that I was right in the quality of what I had said, even if I had made the quantity too large. I hesitated, and then I rose. At that moment my wife screamed, and I, strong man though I be, jumped nervously, for our straining ears caught the sound of a heavy body splashing into our rain barrel. For one terror-stricken moment, Mary and I stood looking at each other aghast. The next moment I was dashing from the room. Wildly, impetuously, I ran to the rain barrel. Our worst fears had been realized. Thomas had committed suicide. My garden rake was standing near, and with it I hastily raked all that remained of poor, misguided Thomas out of the rain barrel, and laid his dank body on the back porch. Poor Thomas. Mary came and stood beside me, and I threw my arms around her, and together we looked down at that gripping, lifeless form. When her first strong paroxysms of grief were over, I took her hand, and then, as we looked, Thomas quivered, staggered to his feet, and tottered into the kitchen. You may be sure that Mary and I were joyful. We got a huckaback towel and rubbed him dry. We dosed him with hot catnip. We stroked him gently and tickled him under the chin, where a cat loves best to be tickled. He revived quickly, and, strange to say, he seemed to bear me no resentment. In fact, he seemed to be a new cat. He had no recollection of what had passed between us, nor of his awful act. He was happy and blithe, as he had been when we first made his acquaintance, and he purred and smiled at us good-naturedly. We left him asleep by the kitchen fire, and Mary and I went into the parlor to talk the matter over. We decided we would be very good to Thomas in the future, for his suicide had been a lesson to us, and we knew that Thomas had only eight lives more. No cat has more than nine lives at the best, and we agreed that we must do all we could to cherish these eight remaining lives. We sat in the parlor planning pleasant little surprises and gifts for Thomas, and devolving new ways of making him contented and happy, for we felt that our little home must be dull for a cat of Thomas's parts, with no children to amuse him, and we saw that we had been wrong to blame him for his melancholy. We should have made his life pleasanter and prider, and should have tried to draw him out of himself more. So interested did we become that we were surprised to hear the clock strike midnight, for time goes so quickly when one is conspiring good deeds. As the last stroke of twelve sounded, Thomas bounded into the parlor. His eyes were glaring wildly. His limbs were trembling. Every hair on his body was standing erect. He backed between my feet and stared with horror at what seemed to us to be but the vacant air. He alternated between pitiful, mewing, and frantic spitting and clawing at the air before him. I suppose that he had awakened suddenly out of a bad dream. But when I bade him go to his usual bed in the kitchen, he pleaded so piteously to be allowed to sleep in our bedroom that Mary begged me to remember how near we had come to losing him, and I agreed to let him come with us. The permission seemed to give him pleasure, but all the way up the stairs he kept close to my feet, now and then looking back with evident terror, and while I was disrobing he did not move an inch away from me. When I turned off the gas and moved toward my bed I stopped short in amazement. In the black darkness of the room I could distinguish Thomas by his two huge, terror-stricken eyes. But that was not what made me pause and tremble. Perched on the foot of my bed was a thin, phosphorescent form. It was a pale, blue, transparent cat, and its face was contorted into a diabolical grin. Through it I could see the frightened face of my wife. In every feature the ghost-cat was identical with Thomas. It was indeed the ghost of Thomas's first life, returned to haunt him. I do not, or did not then, believe very much in ghosts. I have always been willing to admit that there were ghosts, but that a man of any stamina should be afraid of them seemed to me the utmost folly, and I took a hairbrush and tried to brush the blue-cat ghost off the footboard of my bed. But the ghost-cat would not vanish. The brush passed through it as it would have passed through a moon-beam. I blew at the ghost, and it flickered as a flame flickers in a draft. But it remained where it had been. If anything, it glowed with a brighter blue. Thomas had jumped upon the bed and was cowering in my wife's arms. My own hair and my moustache were standing erect, and the hairs of my moustache tickled my nose and made me sneeze repeatedly. I sneezed right through the cat-ghost each time, and this bent him into odd curves, twisting his infernal grin into horrible caricatures of Thomas's sweet face. I tried every antidote for ghosts of which I had ever read, but without the least success. And finally, I lighted the gas again, which dissipated the cat-ghost so far as Mary and I were concerned. I thought I could see a thin blue haze above the footboard, just where the cat-ghost had been. To Thomas, however, the blue ghost remained perfectly visible, as we knew by the manner in which he trembled all night as he lay between Mary and me. I was very thankful that he was a cat, instead of a pig, for his hair remained permanently erect, and if he had been a pig, his bristles would have stuck out like those on a hairbrush and would have made sleep impossible for us. I hoped that the ghost's cat would depart with the rising of the sun, but although to Mary and me it was quite invisible, the actions of Thomas told us plainly as possible that the ghost of himself was still haunting him. All that morning, Thomas walked sideways, spitting and scratching at the thin air, where we knew the ghost cat must be walking beside him, and occasionally he would make wild dashes around the room or seek to climb the smooth side of the hall, hide his head under a hassock. As the day wore on, he became exhausted, and he finally fell into a troubled sleep. He slept several hours until about nine o'clock in the evening, and then he awoke with a blood-curtling scream and dashed madly up the stairs. My wife and I darted after him, but we were too late to save the rash creature from the consequences of his falling. As we panted into the attic, we saw him dash madly through a pane of glass in the window under the eaves, and a moment later we heard him strike on the brick walk below. Poor, poor Thomas! Once more he had been driven to that last resort of unfortunates and had killed himself. I threw my arms around Mary, and when her first strong paroxysms of grief were over, I took her hand and together we winded our way downstairs and opened the door. There was a dogged look as Thomas entered the hall, a look of hopeless, spiritless woe that was only broken when he sprang, striking out viciously at the ghost, now to one side and now to the other. I thought it best then to speak to Thomas as one man should speak to another. I told him that he was not playing the part of a man, that he should bear up and be brave, that man had been haunted by ghosts before and had lived to be happy, and that he should try to conquer his hatred and fear of the blue ghost and bear with it. But Thomas only crept closer to Mary's skirts and refused to be comforted or to have his fears allayed. That night a second ghost of Thomas took its place on my footboard beside the first. There was no question then that Thomas had lost the second of his nine lives and that he had but seven left, and before I got into bed I gave him a good lecture on the necessity of taking good care of the few precious lives he had left. But his attention was not on what I was saying, and that can hardly be wondered at, for the second ghost on my bed was as like the first one as one pin is like another, and both were as like Thomas as could be. But the second ghost was, instead of being blue, a rich, vivid red. The two ghosts prowled back and forth, walking through each other, and if I had not been possessed by a shuddering chill I should have been highly amused for when the two ghosts walked through each other the red and blue combined. They formed a rich purple. I might, with honesty, say that I have never seen a blue cat ghost before, nor even a red cat ghost, but I can take my oath that neither I nor my wife nor Thomas had ever seen a purple cat ghost. It was trying for me and for Mary, but think what it must have been for Thomas considering that these were ghosts of himself. I will not extend this story needlessly. Anyone who wishes to read the complete details will find them in the report I wrote for the Society for Psychical Research. I cannot, I fear, make the story as amusing as it would be if it were the work of fiction. It would be amusing, no doubt, were I to go on to say that each night a new ghost of Thomas was added to the line of ghost cats that prowled on the footboard of my bed until nine ghosts of various hues were gathered there. Mr. John Kendrick Bangs would doubtless have sacrificed the truth in order to create just such a comical situation, for he is a humorist, and if a few very colored cat ghosts had happened to roost on his bed, he would have seen something funny in them and would have exaggerated the facts in order to make a little fun with the subject. But I have a reputation as a family man and as secretary of the Bone Park Improvement Association to maintain, and I cannot bring myself to pander to your love of amusement by any such mendacity. I must stick to the facts. Of course, I cannot deny that poor dear Thomas committed suicide every day for nine consecutive days, for that is the truth. In spite of all our efforts to prevent him, he managed each day to accomplish his fell purpose. I cannot deny that on the third day he ate an abnormally large portion of rat poison driven to desperation by the care that kills cats. Nor that when, after Mary's first strong paroxysms of grief were over, Thomas staggered up our steps with only six lives remaining in him. There was a new ghost on the footboard to greet him. Neither can I deny that when, on the fourth day, Melancholy seized him and he jumped into the oven of our gas stove when the heat there was as great as is obtainable from our suburban gas and perished miserably. My Mary was seized with a paroxysm of grief, for we loved Thomas, and it pained us to see him get into the dying habit. Nor shall I deny that he died by his own act on the fifth day when he allowed our heavy front door to slam shut on his neck, extinguishing himself and causing my wife strong paroxysms of grief. And it would not be the truth if I did not say that on the sixth day Thomas, to the paroxysmal grief of my wife, chewed up and swallowed a lamp chimney and died a wicked death. I trust too that my wife is as tenderhearted as any other woman, but I cannot deny that when, on the seventh day, we found Thomas hanged by the neck in our lovely $3.98 mark down from $5.00 rope, Portiens and dead. Mary's paroxysms of grief were less strong than Thomas had, perhaps, come to expect on such occasions. I claim that no woman can be expected by any reasonable cat to keep up a high standard of paroxysms of grief day after day, without falling off a little in energy from time to time. But Thomas was not a reasonable cat, and what he thought was Mary's indifference so affected him that on the eighth day he gnawed the rubber-coating off an electric light wire and perished miserably. My wife hardly paroxysmed at all, but it was another matter when, on the ninth day, poor dear Thomas snuffed out his last life by crawling under the sofa pillows of our almost oriental cozy corner, and there suffocated. Then we knew that poor Thomas was indeed lost to us. While six or four lives are left, there is still, as the proverb says, hope. But when the ninth life of a cat is gone, it is a dead cat. Our sweet suffering Thomas had left us, and I cannot deny that when Mary had recovered somewhat from her paroxysms of grief, we hoped we had seen the last of Thomas. These things I cannot deny, but at no time was our bedroom full of multicolored cat walking through each other and perching all around the room. We had no such vision of a woe-begone Thomas mournfully moving about the house followed by his eight ghosts of himself in a long prismatic row. What really happened was this. On the third night, a third cat ghost of Thomas appeared of a rich yellow color and perched on my footboard. But the red and blue ghosts of the night before had permanently merged into one ghost of a rich purple. I do not try to account for this. I merely stated it as a fact. And say that anyone who knows anything about color knows that red and blue combined make purple. On the fourth night, the purple ghost and the yellow ghost were joined by a new blue ghost of a rather stronger shade than the first blue ghost had been. But when a red ghost appeared on the fifth night, we found that the yellow and blue ghosts had combined to form one green one. And then this red ghost and the green ghost amalgamated into one brown one. Thus it continued a new yellow cat ghost materializing on the sixth night only to mingle with a new red one on the seventh night making a lovely orange colored one while on the eighth night a most peculiar cat ghost appeared that was what might be called a tortoise shell cat ghost of all hues. We went to our room on the ninth night with considerable anxiety not knowing what the last ghost of Thomas would be like. But we found that all the ghosts had combined to make one single ghost of spotless purity a white iridescent ghost with a white iridescent grin that faded away into the air and disappeared entirely. Perhaps truth is stranger than fiction. Perhaps you may consider this blending of the ghosts stranger than the congregating of nine prismatic cat ghosts would have been. I can only say it is more logical. For several days after Thomas for the last time left us so abruptly cut down for the ninth time in its prime my wife and I discussed the matter but we could make nothing of it and it was at her suggestion that I wrote out the whole story and laid it before the society for psychical research. The conclusion that the society reached was that in this the laws of ghosts was happily illustrated for if every cat was allowed to send nine distinct ghosts into the ghost realm the population there would soon be too catty it was also pointed out that if each ghost of poor dear Thomas had been white each would have been complete in itself but that by being colored they could only reach perfection and harmony by combining to form one white ghost the society also asked us to let it know if we were haunted by Thomas in his new and white form but we have had nothing to report occasionally we awake at night to hear a soft patter of feet or a weird rattle of plaster in the walls or unearthly squeakings but while I am persuaded that these are due to the death of Thomas I do not believe they are ghostly manifestations I know they are rats read by Dennis Sayers in Modesto, California for LibriVox fall 2006 this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to find out how to volunteer please contact LibriVox.org recording by Peter Yersley Glamis Castle by Elliot O'Donnell of all the hauntings in Scotland none has gained such widespread notoriety as the hauntings of Glamis Castle the seat of the Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorn in Forforshire part of the castle that part which is the more frequently haunted is of ancient though uncertain date and if there is any truth in the tradition that Duncan was murdered there by Macbeth must at any rate have been in existence at the commencement of the 11th century of course extra buildings have from time to time been added and renovations made but the original structure remains pretty nearly the same as it always has been and is included in a square tower that occupies a central position and commands a complete view of the entire castle within this tower the walls of which are 15 feet thick there is a room hidden in some unsuspected quarter that contains a secret the keynote to one at least of the hauntings which is known only to the Earl his heir on the attainment of his 21st birthday and the factor of the estate in all probability the mystery attached to this room would challenge but little attention were it not for the fact that unearthly noises which at the time were supposed to proceed from this chamber have been heard by various visitors sleeping in the square tower the following experience is said to have happened to a lady named Bond I appended more or less in her own words it is a good many years since I stayed at Glamis I was in fact but a little more than a child and had only just gone through my first season in town but though young I was neither nervous nor imaginative I was inclined to be what is termed stolid that is to say extremely matter of fact and practical indeed when my friends exclaimed you don't mean to say you're going to stay at Glamis don't you know it's haunted I burst out laughing haunted I said how ridiculous there are no such things as ghosts one might as well believe in fairies of course I did not go to Glamis alone my mother and sister were with me but whereas they slept in the more modern part of the castle I was at my own request apportioned a room in the square tower I cannot say that my choice had anything to do with the secret chamber that and the alleged mystery had been dinned into my ears so often that I had grown thoroughly sick of the whole thing no I wanted to sleep in the square tower for quite a different reason a reason of my own I kept an aviary the tower was old and I naturally hoped its walls would be covered with ivy and teeming with bird's nests some of which I might be able to reach and I'm ashamed to say plunder from my window alas for my expectations although the square tower was so ancient that in some places it was actually crumbling away not the sign of a leaf not the vestige of a bird's nest could I see anywhere the walls were abominably brutally bare however it was not long before my disappointment gave way to delight for the air that blew in through the open window was so sweet so richly scented with heather and honeysuckle and the view of the broad sweeping thickly wooded grounds so indescribably charming that despite my inartistic and unpoetical nature I was entranced entranced as I had never been before and never have been since ghosts I said to myself ghosts how absurd how preposterously absurd such an adorable spot as this can only harbour sunshine and flowers I will remember too for as I have already said I was not poetical how much I enjoyed my first dinner at Glamis the long journey and keen mountaineer had made me hungry and I thought I had never tasted such delicious food such ideal salmon from the esk and such heavenly fruit but I must tell you that although I ate heartily as a healthy girl should by the time I went to bed I had thoroughly digested my meal and was in fact quite ready to partake of a few oatmeal biscuits I found in my dressing-case and remembered having bought at Perth it was about eleven o'clock when my maid left me and I sat for some minutes wrapped in my dressing-gown before the open window the night was very still and save for an occasional rustle of the wind in the distant treetops the hooting of an owl the melancholy cry of a pee-wit and the horse barking of a dog the silence was undisturbed the interior of my room was in nearly every particular modern the furniture was not old there were no grim carvings no grotesquely fashioned tapestries on the walls no dark cupboards no gloomy corners all was cosy and cheerful and when I got into bed no thought of bogel or mystery entered my mind in a few minutes I was asleep and for some time there was nothing but a blank a blank in which all identity was annihilated then suddenly I found myself in an oddly shaped room with a lofty ceiling and a window situated at so great a distance from the black, open floor as to be altogether inaccessible from within feeble gleams of phosphorescent light made their way through the narrow panes and served to render distinct the more prominent objects around but my eyes struggled in vain to reach the remote angles of the wall one of which inspired me with terror such as I had never felt before the walls were covered with heavy draperies that were sufficient in themselves to preclude the possibility of any say the loudest of sounds penetrating without the furniture, if such one could call it puzzled me it seemed more fitted for the sale of a prison or lunatic asylum or even for a kennel than for an ordinary dwelling-room I could see no chair only a coarse deal-table a straw mattress and a kind of trough an air of irredeemable gloom and horror hung over and pervaded everything as I stood there I felt I was waiting for something something that was concealed in the corner of the room I dreaded I tried to reason with myself to reassure myself that there was nothing there that could hurt me nothing that could even terrify me but my efforts were in vain my fears grew had I some definite knowledge as to the cause of my alarm I should not have suffered so much but it was my ignorance of what was there of what I feared that made my terror so poignant each second saw the agony of my suspense increase I dared not move I hardly dare breathe and I dreaded less the violent pulsation of my heart should attract the attention of the unknown presence and precipitate its coming out yet despite the perturbation of my mind I caught myself analysing my feelings it was not danger I poured so much as its absolute effect fright I shuddered at the bare thought of what result the most trivial incident the creaking of a board ticking of a beetle or hooting of an owl might have on the intolerable agitation of my soul in this unnerved and pitiable condition I felt that the period was bound to come sooner or later when I should have to abandon life and reason together in the most desperate of struggles with fear at length something moved an icy chill ran through my frame and the horror of my anticipations immediately reached its culminating point the presence was about to reveal itself the gentle rubbing of a soft body on the floor the crack of a bony joint breathing another crack and then was it my own excited imagination or the disturbing influence of the atmosphere or the uncertain twilight of the chamber that produced before me in the stygian darkness of the recess the vacillating and indistinct outline of something luminous and horrid I would gladly have risked futurity to have looked elsewhere I could not my eyes were fixed I was compelled to gaze steadily in front of me slowly, very slowly the thing whatever it was took shape legs, crooked, misshapen human legs a body, tawny and hunched arms, long watery, with crooked, knotted fingers a head large and bestial and covered with a tangled mass of grey hair that hung around its protruding forehead and pointed ears in ghastly mockery of curls a face and herein was the realisation of all my direst expectations a face white and staring, pig-like in formation, malevolent in expression a hellish combination of all things foul and animal and yet, with all not without a touch of pathos as I stared at it aghast, it reared itself on its haunches after the manner of an ape and leered piteously at me then shuffling forward it rolled over and lay sprawled out like some ungainly turtle and wallowed as for warmth in the cold grey beams of early dawn at this juncture the chamber-door turned someone entered there was a loud cry and I awoke awoke to find the whole tower walls and rafters ringing with the most appalling screams I have ever heard screams of something or of someone for there was in them a strong element of what was human as well as animal in the greatest distress wondering what it meant and more than ever terrified I sat up in bed and listened whilst the conviction the result of intuition suggestion or what you will but a conviction all the same forced me to associate the sounds with the thing in my dream and I associate them still it was I think in the same year in the year that the foregoing account was narrated to me that I heard another story of the hauntings at Glamis a story in connection with a lady whom I will call Miss McGinney I append her experience as nearly as possible as she has stated to have told it I seldom talk about my adventure Miss McGinney announced because so many people ridicule the super-physical and laugh at the mere mention of ghosts I own I did the same myself till I stayed at Glamis but a week there quite cured me of skepticism and I came away a confirmed believer the incident occurred nearly twenty years ago shortly after my return from India where my father was then stationed it was years since I had been to Scotland indeed I had only once crossed the border and that when I was a babe consequently I was delighted to receive an invitation to spend a few weeks in the land of my birth I went to Edinburgh first I was born in Drumshoe Gardens and then to Glamis it was late in the autumn the weather was intensely cold and I arrived at the castle in a blizzard indeed I do not recollect ever having been out in such a frightful storm it was as much as the horses could do to make headway and when we reached the castle we found a crowd of anxious faces eagerly awaiting us in the hall chilled I was chilled to the bone and thought I should never thaw but the huge fires and brightened cosy atmosphere of the rooms for the interior of Glamis was modernised throughout soon set me right and by tea-time I felt nicely warm and comfortable my bedroom was in the oldest part of the castle the square tower but although I had been warned by some of the guests that it might be haunted I can assure you that when I went to bed no subject was farther from my thoughts than the subject of ghosts I returned to my room at about half past eleven the storm was then at its height all was babel and confusion impenetrable darkness mingled with the wildest roaring and shrieking and when I peeped through my casement window I could see nothing the panes were shrouded in snow snow which was incessantly dashed against them with cyclonic fury I fixed a comb in the window frame so as not to be kept awake by the constant jarring and with the caution characteristic of my sex looked into the wardrobe and under the bed for burglars though heaven knows what I should have done had I found one there placed a candlestick and matchbox on the table on my bedside lest the roof or window should be blown in during the night or any other catastrophe happen and after all these precautions got into bed at this period of my life I was a sound sleeper and being somewhat unusually tired after my journey I was soon in a dreamless slumber what awoke me I cannot say but I came to myself with a violent start such as might have been occasioned by a loud noise indeed that was at first my impression and I strained my ears to try and ascertain the cause of it all was however silent the storm had abated and the castle and grounds were wrapped in an almost preternatural hush the sky had cleared and the room was partially illuminated by a broad stream of silvery light that filtered softly in through the white and tightly drawn blinds a feeling that there was something unnatural in the air that the stillness was but the prelude to some strange and startling event gradually came over me I strove to reason with myself to argue that the feeling was wholly due to the novelty of my surroundings but my efforts were fruitless and soon there stole upon me a sensation to which I had been hitherto an utter stranger I became afraid an irrepressible tremor pervaded my frame my teeth chattered my blood froze obeying an impulse an impulse I could not resist I lifted myself up from the pillows and peering fearfully into the shadowy glow that lay directly in front of me listened why I listened I do not know saving that an instinctive spirit prompted me at first I could hear nothing and then from a direction I could not define there came a noise distinct uninterpretative it was repeated in rapid succession and speedily construed itself into the sound of mailed footsteps racing up the long flight of stairs at the end of the corridor leading to my room dreading to think what it might be and seized with a wild sentiment of self-preservation I made frantic endeavours to get out of bed and barricade my door my limbs however refused to move I was paralysed nearer and nearer drew the sounds and I could at length distinguish with a clearness that petrified my very soul the bangy and clangy of sword scabbards and the panting and gasping of men sore-pressed in a wild and desperate race and then the meaning of it all came to me with hideous abruptness it was a case of pursued and pursuing the race was for life outside my door the fugitive halted and from the noise he made in trying to draw his breath he was deadbeat his antagonist however gave him but scant time for recovery bounding at him with prodigious leaps he struck him a blow that sent him reeling with such tremendous force against the door that of the panels although composed of the stoutest oak quivered and strained like flimsy match-board the blow was repeated the cry that rose in the victim's throat was converted into an abortive gurgling groan and I heard the ponderous battle-ax go its way through helmet bone and brain a moment later came the sound of slithering armor and the corpse slipping sideways toppled to the ground with a sonorous clang a silence too awful for words now ensued having finished his hideous handiwork the murderer was quietly deliberating what to do next whilst my dread of attracting his attention was so great that I scarcely dare breathe this intolerable state of things had already lasted for what seemed to me a lifetime when glancing involuntarily at the floor I saw a stream of dark looking fluid lazily lapping its way to me from the direction of the door another moment and it would reach my shoes in my dismay I shrieked aloud there was a sudden stir without a significant clatter of steel and the next moment despite the fact that it was locked the door slowly opened the limits of my endurance had now happily been reached the overtaxed valves of my heart could stand no more I fainted on my awakening to consciousness it was morning and the welcome sun rays revealed no evidences of the distressing drama I own I had a hard tussle before I could make up my mind to spend another night in that room and my feelings as I shut the door and my retreating made and prepared to get into bed were not the most enviable but nothing happened nor did I again experience anything of the sort till the evening before I left I had laid down all the afternoon for I was tired after a long morning's tramp on the moors a thing I dearly love and I was thinking it was about time to get up when a dark shadow suddenly fell across my face I looked up hastily and there standing by my bedside and bending over me was a gigantic figure in bright armour its visor was up and what I saw within the cask is stamped forever on my memory it was the face of the dead the long since dead with the expression the subtly hellish expression of the living as I gazed helplessly at it it bent lower I threw up my hands to ward it off there was a loud rap at the door and as my maid softly entered to tell me tea was ready it vanished the third account of the Glamis Hauntings was told to me as long ago as the summer of 1893 I was travelling by rail from Perth to Glasgow and the only other occupant of my compartment was an elderly gentleman who from his general air and appearance might have been a domineer of a learned profession I can see him in my mind's eye now a tall thin man with a premature stoop he had white hair which was brushed forward on either side of his head in such a manner as suggested a wig bushy eyebrows dark piercing eyes and a stern though somewhat sad mouth his features were fine and scholarly he was clean shaven there was something about him something that marked him from the general horde and I began chatting with him soon after we left Perth in the course of a conversation that was at all events interesting to me I had rightly managed to introduce the subject of ghosts then as ever uppermost in my thoughts well he said I can tell you of something rather extraordinary that my mother used to say happened to a friend of hers at Glamis I have no doubt you are well acquainted with the hackneyed stories in connection at the castle for example Earl Beardy playing cards with the devil and the leaping woman without hands or tongue you can read about them in scores of books and magazines but what befell my mother's friend whom I will call Mrs. Gibbons for I have forgotten her proper name was apparently of a novel nature the affair happened shortly before Mrs. Gibbons died and I always thought that what took place might have been in some way connected with her death she had driven over to the castle one day during the absence of the owner to see her cousin who was in the employer the Earl and Countess never having been at Glamis before but having heard so much about it Mrs. Gibbons was not a little curious to see that part of the building called the square tower that bore the reputation of being haunted tactfully biding an opportunity she sounded her relative on the subject and was laughingly informed that anywhere about the place she pleased saving to one spot namely Bluebeard's Chamber and there she could certainly never succeed in poking her nose as its locality was known to only three people all of whom were pledged never to reveal it at the commencement of her tour of inspection Mrs. Gibbons was disappointed she was disappointed in the tower she had expected to see a gaunt grim place crumbling to pieces with age full of blood curdling spiral staircases and deep dark dungeons whereas everything was the reverse the walls were in an excellent state of preservation absolutely intact the rooms bright and cheerful and equipped in the most modern style there were no dungeons at least none on view and the passages and staircases were suggestive of nothing more alarming than bats she was accompanied for some time by her relative but on the latter being called away Mrs. Gibbons continued her rambles alone she had explored the lower premises and was leisurely examining a handsome furnished apartment on the top floor when in crossing from one side of the room to the other she ran into something she looked down nothing was to be seen amazed beyond description she thrust out her hands on an object which she had little difficulty in identifying it was an enormous cask or barrel lying in a horizontal position she bent down close to where she felt it but she could see nothing nothing but the well polished boards of the floor to make sure again that the barrel was there she gave a little kick and drew back her foot with a cry of pain she was not afraid the sunshine in the room for bad fear only exasperated the barrel was there that it was objective and she was angry with herself for not seeing it she wondered if she was going blind put to the fact that other objects in the room were plainly visible to her discounted such an idea for some minutes she poked and jabbed at the thing and then seized with a sudden and uncontrollable panic she turned round and fled and as she tore out of the room along the passage and down the seemingly interminable flight of stairs the barrel behind her in close pursuit bump, bump, bump at the foot of the staircase Mrs. Gibbons met her cousin and as she clutched the latter for support the barrel shot past her still continuing its descent bump, bump, bump though the steps as far as she could see had ended till the sounds gradually dwindled away in the far distance while the manifestations lasted neither Mrs. Gibbons nor her cousin spoke the latter, as soon as the sounds had ceased dragged Mrs. Gibbons away and in a voice shaking with terror cried, quick, quick don't for heaven's sake look round worse has yet to come and pulling Mrs. Gibbons along in breathless haste she unceremoniously hustled her out of the tower that was no barrel Mrs. Gibbons' cousin subsequently remarked by way of explanation I saw it, I've seen it before don't ask me to describe it I dare not and think of it whenever it appears a certain thing happens shortly afterwards don't, don't on any account say a word about it to anyone here and Mrs. Gibbons, my mother told me came away from Glamis a thousand times more curious than she was when she went the last story I have to relate is one I heard many years ago when I was staying near Balmoral a gentleman named Vance with strong antiquarian tastes was staying at an inn near the Strathmore estate and roaming abroad one afternoon in a fit of absent-mindedness entered the castle grounds it so happened, fortunately for him that the family were away and he encountered no one more formidable than a man he took to be a gardener an uncouth-looking fellow with a huge head covered with a mass of red hair hawk-like features and high cheekbones, high even for a scot struck with the appearance of the individual Mr. Vance spoke and finding him wonderfully civil asked whether, by any chance he ever came across any fossils when digging in the gardens I didn't again the meaning of fossils the man replied Mr. Vance explained and a look of cunning gradually pervaded the fellow's features no, he said I've never found any of those things but if you'll give me your word to say nothing about it I'll dig up over yonder by the square tower do you mean the haunted tower the tower that is supposed to contain the secret room Mr. Vance exclaimed an extraordinary expression an expression such as Mr. Vance found it impossible to analyse came into the man's eyes yes, that's it! he nodded what people call and rightly call the haunted tower I got it from there but don't you say nought about it Mr. Vance, whose curiosity was roused and the man politely requesting him to follow led the way to a cottage that stood nearby in the heart of a gloomy wood to Mr. Vance's astonishment the treasure proved to be the skeleton of a hand a hand with abnormally large knuckles and the first joint of both fingers and thumb much shorter than the others it was the most extraordinarily shaped hand Mr. Vance had ever seen and he did not know in the least how to classify it it repelled yet interested him and he eventually offered the man a good sum to allow him to keep it to his astonishment the money was refused you may have the thing and welcome the fellow said only I advise you not to look at it late at night or just before getting into bed if you do you may have bad dreams I'll take my chance of that Mr. Vance laughed you see being a hard-headed cockney I'm not superstitious you highlanders and your first cousins the Irish you believed nowadays in bogels and omens and such like and packing the hand carefully in his knapsack Mr. Vance bids the strange-looking creature good morning and went on his way for the rest of the day the hand was uppermost in his thoughts nothing had ever fascinated him so much he sat pondering over it the whole evening and bedtime found him still examining it examining it upstairs in his room by candlelight he had a hazy recollection that some clock had struck twelve and he was beginning to feel that it was about time to retire when in the mirror opposite him he caught sight of the door it was open by Joe that's odd he said to himself I could have sworn I shut and bolted it to make sure he turned round the door was closed an optical delusion he murmured I'll try again he looked into the mirror the door reflected in it was open utterly at a loss to know how to explain the phenomenon he leaned forward in his seat to examine the glass more carefully and as he did so he gave a start on the threshold of the doorway was a shadow black and bulbous a cold shiver ran down Mr. Vance's spine and just for a moment he felt afraid terribly afraid but he quickly composed himself it was nothing but an illusion there was no shadow there in reality only to turn round and a thing would be gone it was amusing entertaining he would wait and see what happened the shadow moved it moved slowly through the air like some huge spider or odd shaped bird he would not acknowledge that there was anything sinister about it only something droll excruciatingly droll yet it did not make him laugh when it had drawn a little nearer he tried to diagnose it to discover its material counterpart in one of the objects around him but he was obliged to acknowledge his attempts were failures there was nothing in the room in the least degree like it a vague feeling of uneasiness crept over him was the thing, the shadow of something with which he was familiar but could not just then recall to mind something he feared something that was sinister he struggled against the idea he dismissed it as absurd but it returned to the deeper root as the shadow drew nearer he wished the house was not quite so silent that he could hear some indication of life anything, anything for companionship and to rid him of the oppressive the very oppressive sense of loneliness and isolation again a thrill of terror ran through him look here, exclaimed aloud glad to hear the sound of his own voice look here, if this goes on much longer I shall begin to think I'm going mad I've had enough of magic mirrors for one night it's high time I got into bed he strove to rise from his chair to move, he was unable to do either some strange tyrannical force held him a prisoner a change now took place in the shadow the blur dissipated and the clearly defined outlines of an object an object that made Mr. Vance perfectly sick with apprehension slowly disclosed themselves his suspicions were verified it was the hand no longer skeleton but covered with green, mouldering flesh, feeling its way slyly and stealthily towards him towards the back of his chair he noted the murderous twitching of its short flat fingertips the monstrous muscles of its hideous thumb and the great clumsy hollows of its clammy palm it closed in upon him by me detestable skin touched his coat his shoulder, his neck, his head it pressed him down, squashed suffocated him he saw it all in the glass and then an extraordinary thing happened Mr. Vance suddenly became animated he got up and peeped furtively round chairs, bed, wardrobe had all disappeared so had the bedroom, and he found himself in a small, bare, comfortless, clearly constructed apartment without a door and with only a narrow slit of a window somewhere near the ceiling he had in one of his hands a knife with a long, keen blade and his whole mind was bent on murder creeping stealthily forward he approached a corner of the room where he now saw for the first time a mattress a mattress on which lay a huddled up form what the thing was, whether human or animal Mr. Vance did not know did not care was that it was there for him to kill that he loathed and hated it hated it with a hatred such as nothing else could have produced tiptoeing gently up to it he bent down and lifting his knife high above his head plunged it into the thing's body with all the force he could command he recrossed the room and found himself once more in his apartment at the inn he looked for the skeleton hand it was not where he had left it it had vanished then he glanced at the mirror and on his brightly polished surface saw not his own face but the face of the gardener the man who had given him the hand features colour, hair all were identical wonderfully, hideously identical and as the eyes met his they smiled devilishly early the next day Mr. Vance set out for the spinny and cottage they were not to be found nobody had ever heard of them he continued his travels and some months later at a lone collection of pictures in a gallery in Edinburgh he came to an abrupt a very abrupt halt before the portrait of a gentleman in ancient costume the face seemed strangely familiar the huge head the hair the hawk-like features the thin and tightly compressed lips then in a trice it all came back to him the face he looked at was that of the uncouth gardener the man who had given him the hand and to clinch the matter the eyes leered the end of Glamis Castle by Elliot O'Donnell recording by Peter Yersley is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to find out how to volunteer please contact LibriVox.org recording by Peter Yersley The Haunted Orchard by Richard Legalien Spring was once more in the world as she sang to herself in the far away woodlands her voice reached even the ears of the city weary with the long winter daffodils flowered at the entrances to the subway furniture and moving vans blocked to the side streets children clustered like blossoms on the doorsteps the open cars were running and the cry of the cash-claw man was once more heard in the land Yes, it was the spring and the city dreamed wistfully of lilacs and the dewy piping of birds in gnarled old apple trees of dogwood lighting up with sudden silver the thickening woods of water-plants unfolding their glossy scrolls in pools of morning freshness On Sunday mornings the outbound trains were thronged with eager pilgrims hastening out of the city to behold once more the ancient marvel of the spring and on Sunday evenings the railway termini were a flower with banners of blossom from rifled woodland and orchard carried in the hands of the returning pilgrims whose eyes still shone with the spring magic in whose ears still sang the fairy music and as I beheld these signs of the vernal equinox I knew that I too must follow the music for sake a while the beautiful siren we call the city and in the green silences meet once more my sweetheart solitude as the train drew out of the Grand Central I hummed to myself I have a neater, sweeter maiden in a greener, cleaner land and so I said good-bye to the city and went forth with beating heart to meet the spring I had been told of an almost forgotten corner on the south coast of Connecticut where the spring and I could live in an inviolate loneliness a place uninhabited saved by birds and blossoms woods and thick grass and an occasional silent farmer and pervaded by the breath and shimmer of the sound nor had rumour lied for when the train set me down at my destination I stepped out into the most wonderful green hush a leafy sabbath silence through which the very train as it went farther on its way seemed to steal as noiselessly as possible for fear of breaking the spell after a winter in the town to be dropped thus suddenly into the intense quiet of the countryside makes an almost ghostly impression upon one as of an enchanted silence a silence that listens and watches but never speaks finger on lip there is a spectral quality about everything upon which the eye falls the woods like great green clouds the wayside flowers the still farmhouses half lost in orchard bloom all seem to exist in a dream everything is so still everything so supernaturally green nothing moves or talks except the gentle sassuras of the spring wind swaying the young buds high up in the quiet sky or a bird known again or a little brook singing softly to itself among the crowding rushes though from the houses one notes here and there there are evidently human inhabitants of this green silence none are to be seen I have often wondered where the country folk hide themselves as I have walked hour after hour past farm and croft and lonely door yards and never caught sight of a human face if you should want to ask the way a farmer is as shy as a squirrel and if you knock at a farmhouse door all is as silent as a rabbit warren as I walked along in the enchanted stillness I came at length to acquaint old farmhouse, old colonial in its architecture empowered in white lilacs and surrounded by an orchard of ancient apple trees which cast a rich shade on the deep spring grass the orchard had the impressiveness of those old religious groves dedicated to the strange worship of sylvan gods gods to be found now only in Horace or Catulus and in the hearts of young poets to whom the beautiful antique Latin is still dear the old house seemed already the abode of solitude as I lifted the latch of the white gate and walked across the forgotten grass and up onto the veranda already festooned with wisteria I looked into the window I saw solitude sitting by an old piano on which no composer later than Bach had ever been played in other words the house was empty and going round to the back where old barns and stables leaned together as if falling asleep I found a broken pane and so climbed in and walked through the echoing rooms the house was very lonely evidently no one had lived in it for a long time yet it was all ready for some occupant for whom it seemed to be waiting quaint old four poster bedsteads stood in three rooms dimity curtains and spotless linen old oak chests and mahogany presses and opening drawers in Chippendale sideboards I came upon beautiful frail old silver and exquisite china that set me thinking of a beautiful grandmother of mine made out of old lace and laughing wrinkles and mischievous old blue eyes there was one little room that particularly interested me a tiny bedroom all white and at the window the red roses were already in bud but what caught my eye with peculiar sympathy was a small bookcase in which were some 20 or 30 volumes wearing the same forgotten expression forgotten and yet cared for which lay like a kind of memorial charm upon everything in the old house yes everything seemed forgotten and yet everything curiously even religiously remembered I took out book after book from the shelves pages and I caught sight of a delicate handwriting here and there and frail markings it was evidently the little intimate library of a young girl what surprised me most was to find that quite half the books were in French French poets and French romances a charming very rare edition of Ronsart a beautifully printed edition of Alfred de Musée and a copy of Théophile Gautier's and a Mopin how did these exotic books come to be there alone in a deserted New England farmhouse this question was to be answered later in a strange way meanwhile I had fallen in love with the sad old silent place and as I closed the white gate and was once more on the road I looked about for someone who could tell me whether or not house of ghosts might be rented for the summer by a comparatively living man I was referred to a fine old New England farmhouse shining white through the trees a quarter of a mile away there I met an ancient couple a typical New England farmer and his wife the old man lean, chin bearded with clean grey eyes flickering occasionally with a shrewd humour the old lady with a kindly old face of the wizard apple type and ruddy they were evidently prosperous people but their minds, for some reason I could not at the moment divine seemed to be divided between their New England desire to drive a hard bargain and their disinclination to let the house at all over and over again they spoke of the loneliness of the place they feared I would find it very lonely no one had lived in it for a long time and so on it seemed to me that afterwards I understood their curious hesitation but at the moment only regarded it as a part of the circuitous New England method of bargaining at all events the rent I offered finally overcame their disinclination whatever its cause and so I came into possession for four months of that silent old house with the white lilacs and the drowsy barns and the old piano and the strange orchard and as the summer came on and the year changed its name from May to June I used to lie under the apple trees in the afternoons dreamily reading some old book and through half sleepy eyelids watching the silken shimmer of the sound I had lived in the old house for about a month when one afternoon a strange thing happened to me I remember the date well it was the afternoon of Tuesday, June 13 I was reading or rather dipping here and there in Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy as I read I remember that a little unripe apple with a petal or two of blossoms still clinging to it fell upon the old yellow page then I suppose I must have fallen into a dream though it seems to me that both my eyes were wide open for I suddenly became aware of a beautiful young voice singing very softly somewhere among the leaves the singing was very frail almost imperceptible as though it came out of the air it came and went fitfully like the elusive fragrance of sweet prior as though a girl was walking to and fro dreamily humming to herself in the still afternoon yet there was no one to be seen the orchard had never seemed more lonely and another fact that struck me as strange was that the words that floated to me out of the aerial music were French half sad half gay snatches of some long dead singer of old France I looked about for the origin of the sweet sounds but in vain could it be the birds that were singing in French in this strange orchard presently the voice seemed to come quite close to me so near that it might have been the voice of a dry-ad singing to me out of the tree against which I was leaning and this time I distinctly caught the words of the sad little song but though the voice was at my shoulder I could see no one and then the singing stopped with what sounded like a sob and a moment or two later I seemed to hear a sound of sobbing far down the orchard then there followed silence and I was left to ponder on the strange occurrence naturally I decided it was just a daydream between sleeping and waking over the pages of an old book but when next day and the day after the invisible singer was in the orchard again I could not be satisfied with such a mere matter-of-fact explanation went the voice to and fro through the thick orchard-pows que je me suis bel Louis y a l'entend que je t'aime jamais je n'ai tout plié it was certainly uncanny to hear that voice going to and fro the orchard there somewhere amid the bright sun-dazzle-bows yet not a human creature to be seen not another house even within half a mile the most materialistic mind could hardly but conclude that here was something not dreamed of in our philosophy it seemed to me that the only reasonable explanation was the entirely irrational one that my orchard was haunted haunted by some beautiful young spirit with some sorrow of lost joy that would not let her sleep quietly in her grave and next day I had a curious confirmation of my theory once more I was lying under my favourite apple-tree half reading and half watching the sound lulled into a dream by the whore of insects and the spices cooled up from the earth by the hot sun as I bent over the page I suddenly had the startling impression that someone was leaning over my shoulder and reading with me and that a girl's long hair was falling over me down onto the page the book was the Ronsar I had found in the little bedroom I turned but again there was nothing there yet this time I knew that I had not been dreaming and I cried out poor child tell me of your grief that I may help your sorrowing heart to rest but of course there was no answer yet that night I dreamed a strange dream I thought I was in the orchard again in the afternoon and once again heard the strange singing but this time as I looked up the singer was no longer invisible coming toward me was a young girl with wonderful blue eyes filled with tears and gold hair that fell to her waist she wore a straight white robe that might have been a shroud or a bridal dress she appeared not to see me though she came directly to the tree where I was sitting and there she knelt and buried her face in the grass and sobbed as if her heart would break her long hair fell over her like a mantle and in my dream I stroked it pityingly and murmured words of comfort for a sorrow I did not understand then I woke suddenly as one does from dreams the moon was shining brightly into the room rising from my bed I looked out into the orchard it was almost as bright as day I could plainly see the tree of which I had been dreaming and then a fantastic notion possessed me slipping on my clothes I went out into one of the old barns and found a spade then I went to the tree where I had seen the girl weeping in my dream and dug down at its foot I had dug little more than a foot when my spade struck upon some hard substance and in a few more moments I had uncovered and exhumed a small box which on examination proved to be one of those pretty old-fashioned Chippendale work boxes used by our grandmothers to keep their thimbles and needles in their reels of cotton and skeins of silk after smoothing down the little grave in which I had found it I carried the box into the house and under the lamp light examined its contents then at once I understood why that sad young spirit went to and fro the orchard singing those little French songs for the treasure-trove I had found under the apple-tree the buried treasure of an unquiet, suffering soul proved to be a number of love-letters written mostly in French in a very picturesque hand letters too written about some five or six years before perhaps I should not have read them yet I read them with such reverence for the beautiful impassioned love that animated them and literally made them smell sweet and blossom in the dust that I felt I had the sanction of the dead to make myself the confidant of their story among the letters were little songs two of which I had heard the strange young voice singing in the orchard and of course there were many withered flowers and such-like remembrances of bygone rapture not that night could I make out all the story though it was not difficult to define its essential tragedy and later on a gossip in the neighbourhood and a headstone in the churchyard told me the rest the unquiet young soul that had sung so wistfully to and fro the orchard was my landlord's daughter she was the only child of her parents a beautiful willful girl exotically unlike those from whom she was sprung and among whom she lived with a disdainful air of exile she was as a child a little creature of fairy fancies and as she grew up it was plain to her father and mother that she had come from another world than theirs to them she seemed like a child in an old fairy tale strangely found on his hearth by some shepherd as he returns from the fields at evening a little fairy girl swaddled in fine linen and doured with a mysterious bag of gold soon she developed delicate spiritual needs to which her simple parents were strangers from long truances in the woods she would come home laden with mysterious flowers and soon she came to ask for books and pictures and music of which the poor souls that had given her birth had never heard finally she had her way and went to study at a certain fashionable college and there the brief romance of her life began there she met a romantic young Frenchman who had read Ronsa to her and written her those picturesque letters I had found in the old mahogany work-box and after a while the young Frenchman had gone back to France and the letters had ceased month by month went by and at length one day as she sat whistful at the window looking out at the foolish sunlit road a message came he was dead that headstone in the village churchyard tells the rest she was very young to die scarcely nineteen years and the dead who have died young with all their hopes and dreams still like unfolded buds within their hearts do not rest so quietly in the grave as those who have gone through the long day from morning until evening and are only too glad to sleep next day I took the little box to a quiet corner of the orchard and made a little pyre of fragrant boughs for so I interpreted the wish of that young unquired spirit and the beautiful words are now safe taken up again into the aerial spaces from which they came but since then the birds sing no more little French songs in my old orchard the end of The Haunted Orchard by Richard Legalien this is the LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information and to find out how you can volunteer please visit LibriVox.org read and recorded by Betsy Bush Marquette, Michigan, September 2006 On the Northern Ice by Elia Wilkinson-Pede the winter nights up at Sault Ste. Marie are as white and luminous as the Milky Way the silence which rests upon the solitude appears to be white also even sound has been included in nature's arrestment for indeed save the still white frost all things seem to be obliterated the stars have a poignant brightness but they belong to heaven and not to earth and between their immeasurable height and the still ice rolls the ebb and ether in vast liquid billows in such a place it is difficult to believe that the world is actually peopled it seems as if it might be the dark of the day after Cain killed Abel and as if all of humanity's remainder was huddled in a fright away from the awful spaciousness of creation the night Ralph Haggadorn started out for Echo Bay bent on a pleasant duty he laughed to himself and said that he did not at all object to being the only man in the world so long as the world remained as unspeakably beautiful as it was when he bulked on his skates and shot away into the solitude he was bent on reaching his best friend in time to act as groomsmen and business had delayed him till time was at its briefest so he journeyed by night and journeyed alone and when the tang of the frost got at his blood he felt as a spirited horse feels when it gets free of bit and bridle the ice was its glass his skates were keen his frame fit and his venture to his taste so he laughed and cut through the air as a sharp stone cleaves the water he could hear the whistling of the air as he cleft it as he went on and on in the black stillness he began to have fancies he imagined himself enormously tall a great Viking of the Northland hastening over icy fjords to his love and that reminded him that he had a love though indeed that thought was always present with him as a background for other thoughts to be sure he had not told her that she was his love for he had seen her only a few times and the auspicious occasion had not yet presented itself she lived at Echo Bay also was to be the maid of honor to his friend's bride which was one more reason why he skated almost as swiftly as the wind and why, now and then, he let out a shout of exultation the one cloud that crossed Haggadorn's son of expectancy was the knowledge that Marie Bourgeois's father had money and that Marie lived in a house with two stories to it and wore otterskin about her throat and little satin-lined mink boots on her feet when she went sledding moreover, in the locket in which she treasured a bit of her dead mother's hair there was a black pearl as big as a pea these things made it difficult perhaps impossible for Ralph Haggadorn to say more than I love you but that much he meant to say though he were scourged with chagrin for his temerity this determination grew upon him as he swept along the ice under the starlight Venus made a glowing path toward the west that seemed eager to reassure him he was sorry he could not skim down that avenue of light which flowed from the love-star but he was forced to turn his back upon it and face the black northeast it came to him with a shock that he was not alone his eyelashes were frosted and his eyeballs blurred with the cold so at first he thought it might be an illusion but when he had rubbed his eyes hard he made sure that not very far in front of him was a long white skater in fluttering garments who sped over the ice as fast as ever where Wolf went he called aloud but there was no answer he shaped his hands and trumpeted through them but the silence was as before it was complete so then he gave chase setting his teeth hard and putting a tension on his firm young muscles but go however he would the white skater went faster after a time as he glanced at the cold gleam of the north star he perceived that he was being led from his direct path for a moment he hesitated wondering if he would not better keep to his road but his weird companion seemed to draw him on irresistibly and finding it sweet to follow he followed of course it came to him more than once in that strange pursuit that the white skater was no earthly guide up in those latitudes men see curious things when the whorefrost is on the earth Haggadorn's own father to hark no further than that for an instance who lived up there with the Lake Superior Indians and worked in the copper mines had welcomed a woman at his hut one bitter night who was gone by morning leaving wolf tracks on the snow yes it was so and John Fontanel the half-breed could tell you about it any day if he were alive a lack the snow where the wolf tracks were is melted now well Haggadorn followed the white skater all the night and when the ice flushed pink at dawn and arrows of lovely light shot up into the cold heavens she was gone and Haggadorn was at his destination the sun climbed arrogantly up to his place above all other things and as Haggadorn took off his skates and glanced carelessly Lakeward he beheld a great wind rift in the ice and the waves showing blue and hungry between white fields had he rushed along his intended path watching the stars to guide him his glance turned upward all his body at magnificent momentum he must certainly have gone into that cold grave how wonderful that it had been sweet to follow the white skater and that he followed his heart beat hard as he hurried to his friend's house but he encountered no wedding for horror his friend met him as men meet in houses of mourning is this your wedding face? cried Haggadorn why man starved as I am I look more like a bridegroom than you there's no wedding today no wedding? why, you're not Marie Bourjeau died last night Marie died last night she had been skating in the afternoon and she came home chilled and wandering in her mind as if the frost had got in it somehow she grew worse and worse and all the time she talked of you of me we wondered what it meant no one knew you were lovers I didn't know it myself more's the pity at least I didn't know she said you were on the ice and that you didn't know about the big breaking up and she cried to us that the wind was offshore and the rift widening she cried over and over again that you could come in by the old French creek if you only knew I came in that way but how did you come to do that it's out of the path we thought perhaps but Haggadorn broke in with his story and told him all as it had come to pass that day they watched beside the maiden who lay with tapers at her head and at her feet and in the little church the bride who might have been at her wedding said prayers for her friend they buried Marie Bougeau in her bridesmaid white and Haggadorn was before the altar with her as he had intended from the first then at midnight the lovers who were to be wed whispered their vows in the gloom of the cold church and walked together through the snow to lay their bridal wreaths upon a grave three nights later Haggadorn skated back again to his home they wanted him to go by sunlight but he had his way and went when Venus made her bright path on the ice the truth was he had hoped for the companionship of the white skater but he did not have it his only companion was the wind the only voice he heard was the baying of a wolf on the north shore the world was as empty and as white as if God had just created it and the sun had not yet colored nor man defiled it End of On the Northern Ice by Elia Wilkinson P.D.