Shivers for Christmas Read Online Free Page B

holiday, fun, or fair has got so many pleasant faces together? When I last called here—for, now I bethink me, I have seen the place before—you all looked sad. It was on a Sunday, that dismalest of holidays; and it would have been positively melancholy only that your sexton—that saint upon earth—Mr. Crooke, was here.’ He was looking round, over his shoulder, and added: ‘Ha! don’t I see him there?’
    Frightened a good deal were some of the company. All gaped in the direction in which, with a nod, he turned his eyes.
    ‘He’s not thar—he can’t be thar—we see he’s not thar,’ said Turnbull, as dogmatically as old Joe Willet might have delivered himself—for he did not care that the George should earn the reputation of a haunted house. ‘He’s met an accident, sir: he’s dead—he’s elsewhere—and therefore can’t be here.’
    Upon this the company entertained the stranger with the narrative—which they made easy by a division of labour, two or three generally speaking at a time, and no one being permitted to finish a second sentence without finding himself corrected and supplanted.
    ‘The man’s in Heaven, so sure as you’re not,’ said the traveller so soon as the story was ended. ‘What! he was fiddling with the church bell, was he, and damned for that—eh? Landlord, get us some drink. A sexton damned for pulling down a church bell he has been pulling at for ten years!’
    ‘You came, sir, by the Dardale-road, I believe?’ said the doctor (village folk are curious). ‘A dismal moss is Dardale Moss, sir; and a bleak clim’ up the fells on t’other side.’
    ‘I say “Yes” to all—from Dardale Moss, as black as pitch and as rotten as the grave, up that zigzag wall you call a road, that looks like chalk in the moonlight, through Dunner Cleugh, as dark as a coal-pit, and down here to the George and the Dragon, where you have a roaring fire, wise men, good punch—here it is—and a corpse in your coach-house. Where the carcass is, there will the eagles be gathered together. Come, landlord, ladle out the nectar. Drink, gentlemen—drink, all. Brew another bowl at the bar. How divinely it stinks of alcohol! I hope you like it, gentlemen: it smells all over of spices, like a mummy. Drink, friends. Ladle, landlord. Drink all. Serve it out.’
    The guest fumbled in his pocket, and produced three guineas, which he slipped into Turnbull’s fat palm.
    ‘Let punch flow till that’s out. I’m an old friend of the house. I call here, back and forward. I know you well, Turnbull, though you don’t recognise me.’
    ‘You have the advantage of me, sir,’ said Mr. Turnbull, looking hard on that dark and sinister countenance—which, or the like of which, he could have sworn he had never seen before in his life. But he liked the weight and colour of his guineas, as he dropped them into his pocket. ‘I hope you will find yourself comfortable while you stay.’
    ‘You have given me a bedroom?’
    ‘Yes, sir—the cedar chamber.’
    ‘I know it—the very thing. No—no punch for me. By and by, perhaps.’
    The talk went on, but the stranger had grown silent. He had seated himself on an oak bench by the fire, towards which he extended his feet and hands with seeming enjoyment; his cocked hat being, however, a little over his face.
    Gradually the company began to thin. Sir Geoffrey Mardykes was the first to go; then some of the humbler townsfolk. The last bowl of punch was on its last legs. The stranger walked into the passage and said to the drawer:
    ‘Fetch me a lantern. I must see my nag. Light it—hey! That will do. No—you need not come.’
    The gaunt traveller took it from the man’s hand and strode along the passage to the door of the stable-yard, which he opened and passed out.
    Tom Scales, standing on the pavement, was looking through the stable window at the horses when the stranger plucked his shirt-sleeve. With an inward shock the hostler found himself alone in presence of