The House on the Borderland and Other Mysterious Places by William Hope Hodgson

Author:William Hope Hodgson [Hodgson, William Hope]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Tags: Mystery & Detective, Fantasy Fiction, Comics & Graphic Novels, Short Stories (Single Author), General, Science Fiction, English, Fiction, Short Stories, Horror
ISBN: 9781892389404
Publisher: Night Shade Books
Published: 2004-03-28T05:00:00+00:00

The Haunted Jarvee

SEEN ANYTHING OF CARNACKI lately?” I asked Arkright when we met in the City.

“No,” he replied. “He’s probably off on one of his jaunts. We’ll be having a card one of these days inviting us to No. 472, Cheyne Walk, and then we’ll hear all about it. Queer chap that.”

He nodded, and went on his way. It was some months now since we four—Jessop, Arkright, Taylor and myself—had received the usual summons to drop in at No. 472 and hear Carnacki’s story of his latest case. What talks they were! Stories of all kinds and true in every word, yet full of weird and extraordinary incidents that held one silent and awed until he had finished.

Strangely enough, the following morning brought me a curtly worded card telling me to be at No. 472 at seven o’clock promptly. I was the first to arrive, Jessop and Taylor soon followed and just before dinner was announced Arkright came in.

Dinner over, Carnacki as usual passed round his smokes, snuggled himself down luxuriously in his favourite armchair and went straight to the story we knew he had invited us to hear.

“I’ve been on a trip in one of the real old-time sailing ships,” he said without any preliminary remarks. “The Jarvee, owned by my old friend Captain Thompson. I went on the voyage primarily for my health, but I picked on the old Jarvee because Captain Thompson had often told me there was something queer about her. I used to ask him up here whenever he came ashore and try to get him to tell me more about it, you know; but the funny thing was he never could tell me anything definite concerning her queerness. He seemed always to know but when it came to putting his knowledge into words it was as if he found that the reality melted out of it. He would end up usually by saying that you saw things and then he would wave his hands vaguely, but further than that he never seemed able to pass on the knowledge of something strange which he had noticed about the ship, except odd outside details.

“ ‘Can’t keep men in her no-how,’ he often told me. ‘They get frightened and they see things and they feel things. An’ I’ve lost a power o’ men out of her. Fallen from aloft, you know. She’s getting a bad name.’ And then he’d shake his head very solemnly.

“Old Thompson was a brick in every way. When I got aboard I found that he had given me the use of a whole empty cabin opening off my own as my laboratory and workshop. He gave the carpenter orders to fit up the empty cabin with shelves and other conveniences according to my directions and in a couple of days I had all the apparatus, both mechanical and electric with which I had conducted my other ghost-hunts, neatly and safely stowed away, for I took a great deal of gear with me as

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