Boycotted, and Other Stories. Talbot Baines Reed
I reached this point a sudden noise made my blood run cold, and froze me to my bed.
It did not seem to be in the dormitory, or on the stairs outside, or in the quadrangle below. None of my companions appeared to have heard it, for they all slept on quietly, and the silence which followed was doubly as intense as that which had gone before. What could it be?
I do not fancy I was a particularly cowardly boy, but somehow that sound terrified me. I could neither move nor call out. All I could do was to lie and listen.
There it was again! this time not so sudden, but far more distinct. There was no mistaking it now. As sure as I lay there, it was something on the roof! It sounded like something crawling slowly and by fits and starts along the gutter just above the dormitory. Sometimes it seemed to spring upwards, as though attempting to reach a higher position, and then sullenly slip down and proceed on its crawling way.
Yes, without doubt Fergus had told the truth!
Suddenly a voice in a loud whisper at the other end of the dormitory exclaimed—
“Listen! I say, listen!”
It was Lamb’s voice. There was at least some comfort in knowing that I was not the only one awake.
With a desperate effort I sat up in my bed and replied—
“Oh, Lamb, what is it?”
His only reply was a gasp, as the noises recommenced. The body, whatever it was, seemed to have dragged itself forward, so as to be now just over our heads. The ceiling above us went right up into the roof, and I could distinctly hear a rustling sound against the tiles, followed by an occasional upward leap, sometimes almost wild in its eagerness. How could I mistake these sounds? The chimney was immediately above us, and it was towards this goal, as I well knew, that the hapless and legless Bubbles was destined fruitlessly to aspire. At last one bound more frantic than the rest, followed by a sudden clatter of displaced tiles, unloosed my tongue, and I fairly cried out—
“Oh!”
Half a dozen fellows were on the alert in an instant.
“Who’s that called out?” cried one. “I’d like to scrag him.”
“What’s the row, whoever it is?” demanded Fergus.
“Hush! Listen!” was all I could reply.
There must have been something in my voice which bespoke my horror, for a dead silence ensued.
But not for long. Once more the dull, dragging sound, interrupted by the spasmodic and fruitless leaps!
A shudder went round the dormitory at the sound. They knew as well as I did what it meant.
“It’s the ghost!” faltered Sparrow’s trembling voice; and no one contradicted him. Fergus himself, like one suddenly confronted with a spirit of his own raising, seemed the most terrified of the lot, and I could hear him gasping as he sat petrified in his bed.
“Can’t some one strike a light?” Lamb said presently.
All very well, but the matches were on the table, and to secure them one would have to get out of bed. No one seemed quite inclined for that.
As we lay endeavouring to screw up our courage to the necessary pitch, the sound once more recommenced, with a violent motion towards the edge of the roof. The moon at the same moment broke out from behind the clouds and shot its pale light in at the big windows. There was a momentary pause above us, and then, casting a sudden shadow across the dormitory floor, a dim white figure, as of a body without limbs, floated down outside the window. The moon once more was obscured, and we were left motionless and horrified in utter silence and darkness! What would come next?
How long we might have remained in suspense I can’t say, had not Lamb and another fellow, by a combined effort of heroism, dashed arm in arm from bed and secured the matches. They were in the act of striking a light (one match had broken, and another had had no head)—they were in the act of striking a light when Lamb, who was close to the window, suddenly exclaimed—“Look!”
There was such terror in his tone that we knew only too well what he had seen. But where!
“Where?” I managed to gasp.
“There, down in the quad,” he replied, pointing out of the window, but looking another way.
Curiosity is sometimes greater than fear, and for all my terror I could not resist the impulse to steal up to the window and look out. And others did the same.
It was as Lamb had said. There in the quadrangle below, moving restlessly to and fro, and swaying itself upward, as if in supplication, was the white form, erect but helpless. For a long time we gazed without a word. At last, one more hardy than the rest said—“What can it be?”
What a question! What could it be but—Bubbles! Still, when the question was once asked, it did occur to one or two of us that possibly we might have jumped to a conclusion too hastily. It’s wonderful how hardy a fellow will get when he’s got twenty fellows clustering round him.
“He’s alive, anyhow,” said one. “Call out to him, some one,” suggested another. “You’re nearest the window, Fraser,” said another. Fraser was vice-captain of the second fifteen, and always touchy whenever his pluck was called in question.
“I’m not afraid,” he said, in a voice which was hardly quite steady. And as he spoke he threw up the window, and called out hurriedly, and in rather deferential tones—“Who are you down there?”
I don’t suppose Fraser ever did a pluckier thing than ask that question. We listened, all ears, for the reply. But none came. Only a faint moan, as the apparition swayed uneasily towards us, and even seemed to try to raise itself in our direction; but never a word we heard, and we closed the window again as much in the dark as to its identity as ever.
What could we do? We couldn’t go to bed with Bubbles’s or anybody’s ghost wandering about in the quadrangle below us, that was evident. But how were we to solve the mystery, unless indeed—
It was a terrible alternative, but the only one. We thought of it a good bit before any one proposed it. At last Fraser himself said—
“Who’s game to come down into the quad?”
Fraser was on his mettle, or he would never have been so mad. At first a dead silence was the only answer to his challenge. Then Lamb said—
“I don’t mind.”
If he didn’t mind, why should he nearly choke saying so? However, he broke the ice, and others followed. I considered myself as good a man as Lamb any day (it was only my own opinion), and I wasn’t going to be outdone by him now. So I volunteered. And one or two others who considered themselves as good as I volunteered too, until the forlorn hope numbered a dozen.
“Come along,” said Fraser, who had armed himself with a lighted candle and led the way.
I think those who stayed behind felt a little dismayed when the last of us glided from the door and left them behind.
Still, as far as happiness of mind was concerned, they would not have gained much had they been of our party. For we descended the staircase in rather depressed spirits, starting at every creak, and—some of us—wishing twenty times we were safe back in the dormitory. But there was no drawing back now.
What a noise the bars of the big door made as we unfastened them, and what an ominous shriek the lock gave as we turned the key! Our one hope was that the ghost would have taken fright and vanished before we reached the quadrangle. But no! As we stepped out into the damp breezy night the first thing that met our eyes was the distant, restless figure of Bubbles!
By one consent we halted, and as we did so a gust of wind extinguished our leader’s candle! What was to be done? I glanced up, and saw the lights twinkling at the far distant dormitory window. Oh, whatever possessed me to come on this wild errand!