The Uncanny Stories Megapack by Roy Vickers & Margaret Strickland & Lewis Lister & Gladys Stern

Author:Roy Vickers & Margaret Strickland & Lewis Lister & Gladys Stern
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: horror, fantasy, ghost, vampire, short stories
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 2015-01-13T16:00:00+00:00

THE MAILED FOOT, by Hermina Black & Edith Blair-Staples

Chapter I

The Room in the East Wing

In spite of my modest success in journalism I am not an imaginative person. I can only manage to tell this story because the events are too vividly impressed upon my mind for me ever to forget them.

In December of ninety-eight I was on my own in London, rather depressed and run down and looking forward to a lonely Christmas, when I unexpectedly ran across Owen Flaxham. We were at Magdalen together, where he was my special pal, but somehow when I came to town and took up scribbling and he came in for the baronetcy, we lost sight of each other—which was more the fault of circumstances than of either of us.

Anyway, he was delighted to meet me again, and, on hearing that I was spending my Christmas alone, insisted that I should accompany him home the following day. I couldn’t do that, but I promised to follow him during the week. Accordingly I left Euston on Friday, arriving at Monorsfield in Cheshire some time after dark.

Owen met me with a dog-cart, and we had a drive of six miles before we reached the house. On the way up I gathered, rather to my discomfort, that the place was packed; my host apologetically asked me if I would mind turning in with him for that night as the man who had my room was leaving in the morning. Of course I had no objection, and told him so.

Flaxham Hall was a big, rambling sort of place, Elizabethan with the exception of the east wing, which was all that remained of what the building had originally been, and dated back to the tenth century. The house possessed some of the finest oak paneling it has been my lot to see, and was the ideal setting for a hundred ghost stories—the idea flashed into my head as I unpacked my bag, while Owen sat on one of the beds in his big, cheerful bedroom, and I turned to him laughingly, inquiring if they possessed a family spook.

He nodded.

“Yes—only for heaven’s sake don’t refer to it before the women! The Mater’s rather nervy just now. I’ll tell you about it later if you’ll remind me.”

And, changing the subject, he proceeded to explain the difficulty they had had in installing electric light throughout the huge place.

“There is only one part of the house without it now,” he finished. “But as there is only a single bedroom in the east wing, which is very seldom used, it really doesn’t matter. As a matter of fact, that room happens to be the one which, after tonight, you are going to occupy—a bit rough on you, old man!”

“I don’t mind,” I retorted cheerfully. “I’ve never cultivated the vice of reading in bed, and when I’m once asleep I doubt if an earthquake would wake me.”

I found Owen’s mother a delightful grande dame of the old school. His sister, Mrs. Dawson, was a member of the party, and I thought at once what an awfully pretty woman she was.

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