The 9th Ghost Story MEGAPACK® (eBook)

M.R. James, E. Nesbit, Oliver Onions, C.M. Eddy Jr., B.M. Bower, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Otis Adelbert Kline, A.T. Quiller-Couch, Mary Elizabeth Counselman, Barry Pain (Autoren)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025
325 Seiten
Wildside Press (Verlag)
978-1-6676-6165-0 (ISBN)

Infos

The 9th Ghost Story MEGAPACK® presents 20 classic and modern ghost stories, including many rare and seldon-seen tales. This may be the ninth volume in the series, but the chills and ghostly happenings are as strong as ever. Included in this volume are:

RESURGAM, by Rina Ramsay
FOUR DREAMS OF GRAM PERKINS, by Ruth Sawyer
THE HAUNTED DRAGOON, by A.T. Quiller-Couch
THE OPEN DOOR, by Mrs. Oliphant
THE GHOST THAT FAILED, by Desmond Coke
THE GHOST WHO WAS AFRAID OF BEING BAGGED, by Lal Behari Dey
NIGHT COURT, by Mary Elizabeth Counselman
THE GHOST FARM, by Susan Andrews Rice
A PHANTOM OF THE MINES, by Robert Howard Syms
THE GHOST IN THE RED SHIRT, by B.M. Bower
THE ASH-TREE, by M.R. James
THE GHOST REDIVIVUS, by Matilda Betham-Edwards
THE HAUNTED INHERITANCE, by E. Nesbit
CELIA AND THE GHOST, by Barry Pain
THE GHOST, by Oliver Onions
SAW THE GHOST SHIP, by A Georgia Traveler
THE GHOST-EATER, by C.M. Eddy, Jr.
THE YELLOW CAT, by Michael Joseph
THE GHOST OF DR. HARRIS, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
THE PHANTOM RIDER, by Otis Adelbert Kline

If you enjoy this volume of our best-selling MEGAPACK® series, check out the more than 400 others. Search your favorite ebook store for

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The 9th Ghost Story MEGAPACK(R) presents 20 classic and modern ghost stories, including many rare and seldon-seen tales. This may be the ninth volume in the series, but the chills and ghostly happenings are as strong as ever. Included in this volume are:RESURGAM, by Rina RamsayFOUR DREAMS OF GRAM PERKINS, by Ruth SawyerTHE HAUNTED DRAGOON, by A.T. Quiller-CouchTHE OPEN DOOR, by Mrs. OliphantTHE GHOST THAT FAILED, by Desmond CokeTHE GHOST WHO WAS AFRAID OF BEING BAGGED, by Lal Behari DeyNIGHT COURT, by Mary Elizabeth CounselmanTHE GHOST FARM, by Susan Andrews RiceA PHANTOM OF THE MINES, by Robert Howard SymsTHE GHOST IN THE RED SHIRT, by B.M. BowerTHE ASH-TREE, by M.R. JamesTHE GHOST REDIVIVUS, by Matilda Betham-EdwardsTHE HAUNTED INHERITANCE, by E. NesbitCELIA AND THE GHOST, by Barry PainTHE GHOST, by Oliver OnionsSAW THE GHOST SHIP, by A Georgia TravelerTHE GHOST-EATER, by C.M. Eddy, Jr.THE YELLOW CAT, by Michael JosephTHE GHOST OF DR. HARRIS, by Nathaniel HawthorneTHE PHANTOM RIDER, by Otis Adelbert KlineIf you enjoy this volume of our best-selling MEGAPACK series, check out the more than 400 others. Search your favorite ebook store for

Textauszug

RESURGAM,
by Rina Ramsay

Originally published in The Strand Magazine, August 1915.

CHAPTER I

The London parson had taken a night off to run down and preach for Stackhouse.

He liked the change. It was like dipping into another world to slip out of his own restless parish into the utterly different atmosphere of this quiet country town. It had struck him most in the pulpit, when the lights went up on the sleepy congregation and he gave out a concluding hymn. How alike they were; all one pattern, all known to each other, all leading the same staid, ordinary lives. What a blessed tonic, his brief sojourn in this placid community.

He puffed out his chest, drinking in the soft night air that was so good to swallow. He was a big man and burly, and the narrow pavement would hardly hold the three of them abreast, so he was walking between the other two down the middle of the darkened street. They passed various worshippers in the glimmer—families, friends, and sweethearts—all of them pausing to say good-night. Such a peaceable little town and so friendly! It struck him again as comical that it should have been Stackhouse and not himself who had had a nervous breakdown last summer.

He burst out chuckling, and then, on the point of sharing his amusement at such an anomaly, was discreet. Those highly strung individuals were so touchy. And Stackhouse did not seem in the humour for chaffing. His mouth was set in an odd line of strained endurance and he hardly spoke. His long, lean, ascetic figure had something monkish about it as he stalked along in his cassock. His eyes were staring into the gloom ahead.

Mrs. Stackhouse, on the other side, was making up for her husband’s silence. Robinson had had no idea she was such a chattering woman. It began to annoy him. It seemed to him that there was a suggestion of hysteria in her incessant prattle.

Near the vicarage gate they overtook a woman of the charwoman class, and the vicar’s wife hailed her with the usual salutation and asked why Bessy had missed Sunday-school. The woman unlatched the gate for them. She had a small child with her, and spoke for its benefit in a mincing tone.

“Bessy’s bin a very bad girl, ma’am. She’s been telling lies.”

“Oh, dear!” said Mrs. Stackhouse, properly scandalized.

“Yes, ma’am; the young monkey! She will have it her lady, as used to, sat with her on Sunday night.”

“Oh!” said Mrs. Stackhouse again, but swiftly. “Nonsense, nonsense!”

She whisked through the gate, which clanged after them, leaving the woman outside with the infant, unadmonished, hanging to her skirt with a finger in its mouth. In the light of the hall lamp she glanced furtively at her husband.

“My dear boy!” she said, hurriedly, almost wildly; “a child of four—!”

Stackhouse dropped his eyes from hers, and lifted his hand with a curious gesture as if he were wiping the sweat from his brow.

Inside the house Mrs. Stackhouse fled to the kitchen to hurry that uncomfortable meal called supper, and the two men waited a minute or two by the study fire.

“Awfully good of you to come down, Robinson,” said the vicar. He spoke in a strained voice; there was something in it that sounded like expectation, like some faint hope; but the Londoner, for all his alertness, had not a clue. He noticed, however, that his host’s knuckles gleamed white as he gripped hard on the edge of the chimney-piece. These long, weedy men had no stamina, physical or nervous. It must have been his temperament, certainly not his surroundings, that had made Stackhouse go to pieces.

“Good of you to ask me,” he said, politely. “I love this quiet place. Such a contrast to my parish! You should see us up there, how crowded, quarrelling and fighting. I’m afraid that sea voyage didn’t set you up altogether?”

“I thought it had, though,” said Stackhouse, abruptly. “When I came back—”

He shut his mouth suddenly in the middle of the sentence but looked hard at his fellow-priest. In his look was wistfulness, and an imminent despair.

“I’d like to ask you something,” he said, “but—I dare not.” He let go the chimney-piece and led the way into the dining-room, where Mrs. Stackhouse was calling them. She was too anxiously hospitable for comfort, bouncing up and down behind her coffee-pot, fussing about the food, and rattling on feverishly; but keeping, the visitor could see, a distracted eye on her husband. There was not much coherence in her prattle, and sometimes she lost the thread of it and looked for a minute helpless. Only at such disconcerting moments could the Londoner, coming to the rescue, get a word in.

Why would the woman insist on talking, and what was she afraid of? Some outbreak of nerves on the part of the silent man? Was it pure hysteria on her part, or was she trying to cover some private fear?

He seized the first opportunity to take his share in the conversation, mildly humorous, but conscious all the while of the peculiar strain in the atmosphere. And then, incidentally, he remembered something.

“By the way,” he said, “you lucky people, you know all your congregation. Who is the lady who sat in the side aisle alone in the seat next the pillar? A singularly interesting face—”

Mrs. Stackhouse started violently.

“Wh—what was she like?” she asked.

“Rather eager and sad,” said Robinson, reflecting, “but quite a girl. She had a pointed chin, and dark hair, I think, and large, dark eyes—penetrating eyes; and she wore some kind of glittering jewel hung round her neck. It was her troubled expression that struck me first—”

He broke off astonished. For Stackhouse had stood up and was staring at him, gripping the table, leaning over. His look was half incredulous, half unspeakable relief.

“Then,” he said, in a choked voice, “you, too, saw her. Thank Heaven! I am not mad.”

Mrs. Stackhouse hid her face suddenly in her hands and burst into an uncontrollable fit of crying.

The visitor looked from one to the other in real alarm. He could see nothing in his harmless remark to affect them so deeply, or to relax, as it seemed, an intolerable strain.

“I’m afraid—” he began.

Mrs. Stackhouse sat up and smiled.

“But we are so thankful to you,” she said, still sobbing. “Oh, you can’t imagine what a relief it is! You’re an independent witness—unprejudiced—and you saw her. Oh, you don’t know what it means to us. We were both so terrified that his mind was going—”

“Still,” said the Londoner, puzzled, “I can’t see how my mentioning that young lady—”

She interrupted him. Something like awe hushed her excited voice.

“The girl you saw in church,” she said, “died last year.”

“Impossible!” said Robinson.

Stackhouse—who was with difficulty controlling a nervous tremor that shook him from head to foot, but whose voice was steady—moved to the door.

“Let us go back to the study,” he said, “and talk it over.”

His whole manner was changed as he stood on the hearthrug looking down on his guest and his wife. He had lost the pathetic hesitation that Robinson had noticed in him that night and recovered something of his old bearing of priestly pomp. “Most of us believe in the unseen,” he pronounced; “but to find what belongs to the other world made visible—brought so close—is a dreadful shock. My wife thought it must be an hallucination; she thought I was going mad—and I, too, grew horribly afraid. You see, I had had that nervous breakdown before, and the doctors sent me away for six months. It looked as if the prescription had failed. We thought that my breakdown must have been the warning of a mental collapse. We—I can’t tell you, Robinson, what we suffered. And yet I saw that poor girl, night after night, so plainly—”

“She was such a nice girl!” broke in Mrs. Stackhouse, in her gasping treble; “and such a help in the parish. We liked her so much. And, of course, we were getting no letters—the doctors had forbidden it; we had heard nothing whatever till we came home, and they told us she had committed suicide soon after we went away. I thought the shock of it had been too much for George. No wonder—such a good girl, Mr. Robinson. She—she used to sit in that seat with the schoolchildren to keep them quiet. No one could have dreamt she could do anything so wicked—”

“Do you mean,” said Robinson, bluntly, “that I saw a ghost?”

Stackhouse bent his head. His wife shivered suddenly as if she had not till then fully realized what it meant. Her mind had been so possessed by fear for the sanity of her husband; her relief had been too intense.

“I—suppose so,” she said, in an awe-stricken whisper.

There followed a short pause; no sound but the fire crackling and the night wind sighing a little outside the room. Mrs. Stackhouse drew in nearer the fender as if she were very cold and made a little gasp in her throat. The Londoner, looking from one to the other with his kindly, humorous glance, began to talk common sense.

“Of course it’s a mistake,” he said. “The girl I saw in church tonight was real. It can only be some chance likeness—perhaps a relation—”

Stackhouse shook his head.

“No,” he said. “There’s no one like her. Poor girl, poor girl; her spirit cannot rest. God forgive me, there must have been something deadly wrong in my teaching, since it could not...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 9.9.2025
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Krimi / Thriller / Horror ► Horror
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen
• Schlagworte: Ghost Stories • haunted houses • hauntings • Horror • monsters • Occult • phantom spirits • short reads • Short Stories • Supernatural • Supernatural Fiction • Weird Tales
• ISBN-10: 1-6676-6165-5 / 1667661655
• ISBN-13: 978-1-6676-6165-0 / 9781667661650