Wandering ghostsCrawford, F. Marion (Francis Marion)
Science
Wandering ghosts
Crawford, F. Marion (Francis Marion)
American fiction; Ghost stories; Horror tales; Short stories
Yes, I found it here when I came. You see, it was very white and
polished, like a thing meant to be kept under a glass case, and the
people did not know where it came from, nor what to do with it; so they
put it back into the bandbox and set it on the shelf of the cupboard in
the best bedroom, and of course they showed it to me when I took
possession. I was taken down to the beach, too, to be shown the place
where Luke was found, and the old fisherman explained just how he was
lying, and the skull beside him. The only point he could not explain
was why the skull had rolled up the sloping sand toward Luke's head
instead of rolling downhill to his feet. It did not seem odd to me at
the time, but I have often thought of it since, for the place is rather
steep. I'll take you there to-morrow if you like--I made a sort of cairn
of stones there afterward.
When he fell down, or was thrown down--whichever happened--the bandbox
struck the sand, and the lid came off, and the thing came out and ought
to have rolled down. But it didn't. It was close to his head, almost
touching it, and turned with the face toward it. I say it didn't strike
me as odd when the man told me; but I could not help thinking about it
afterward, again and again, till I saw a picture of it all when I closed
my eyes; and then I began to ask myself why the plaguey thing had rolled
up instead of down, and why it had stopped near Luke's head instead of
anywhere else, a yard away, for instance.
You naturally want to know what conclusion I reached, don't you? None
that at all explained the rolling, at all events. But I got something
else into my head, after a time, that made me feel downright
uncomfortable.
Oh, I don't mean as to anything supernatural! There may be ghosts, or
there may not be. If there are, I'm not inclined to believe that they
can hurt living people except by frightening them, and, for my part, I
would rather face any shape of ghost than a fog in the Channel when it's
crowded. No. What bothered me was just a foolish idea, that's all, and I
cannot tell how it began, nor what made it grow till it turned into a
certainty.
I was thinking about Luke and his poor wife one evening over my pipe and
a dull book, when it occurred to me that the skull might possibly be
hers, and I have never got rid of the thought since. You'll tell me
there's no sense in it, no doubt; that Mrs. Pratt was buried like a
Christian and is lying in the churchyard where they put her, and that
it's perfectly monstrous to suppose her husband kept her skull in her
old bandbox in his bedroom. All the same, in the face of reason, and
common sense, and probability, I'm convinced that he did. Doctors do all
sorts of queer things that would make men like you and me feel creepy,
and those are just the things that don't seem probable, nor logical, nor
sensible to us.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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