Authors: John Norman
Surely the hoax might have been more cleverly perpetrated.
What a fool I had been!
I looked about, and called out, but no one answered. It seemed likely to me that the lad, or fellow, responsible for this hoax would have enjoyed witnessing my concern.
I clapped my hands, and laughed, saluting whoever might be watching. I had been gullible for a moment.
But no one revealed his presence.
No one stood up, and waved.
A small scuttling thing concealed within its carapace, disturbed, moved backward toward the water. It avoided one of the deep, dark marks. I continued to look about, but saw no one. Sometimes the cat from Hill House, where I had my room, followed me. She was a golden-haired Persian, odd for the area, a stray, come in from somewhere. She had, as cats will, settled in at Hill House, adopting it as her own, apparently recently, a few days before I arrived. I was fond of her. Guilelessly ruthless, affectionate, innocently merciless, loving, agile, graceful, furtive, stealthy, beautiful, watchful, she had all the sinuous charm, the patience and cunning, the moral freedom, of her breed. I sometimes bought fish in the market, putting it in a pan near the house for her. But I did not see her among the rocks, or on the nearest, graveled path, that which I had descended to the beach. A bird flew by, skimming the waters. Some cattle would be grazing, above, I supposed, somewhere. I supposed, too, high above, in its hole in the turf would be one or more waiting, coiled serpents, harmless things, waiting for the heat of the day.
It was a peaceful morning.
I shivered a little, as a cold wind swept by.
I was preparing to go back up the beach, and climb to the house, when I noticed two of the fishermen, nets over their shoulders, coming down to the shore. Two small boats were on the beach, drawn above the tide line.
I waved to them but they did not see me. I then returned to Hill House for breakfast. Later I began work on the article. Interestingly enough I saw the two fishermen returning to the village, carrying the nets. They were hurrying. It seemed, after all, they had not gone out on the waters.
February 2nd.
At the pub last night. Wild stories. New tracks found on the beach. Fifth time now, I think. First time some weeks ago. Villagers fearful. No boats putting out again. Paid for ale. Willing to speak before me. Raining, drenched by the time of getting back to Hill House. Dream recurs.
It seems clear the prankster, whatever might have been his original intent, perhaps to discomfit a visitor, has decided to expand the scope of his hoax. His object, it seems, is to frighten the village. I do wish he would stop, as the men are losing workdays. I think perhaps the culprit here is young Gavin, a bold, outspoken, rather flairful lad, who is rather close to my own age. He seems a cut or two above the local folk, and has more schooling, at least a year at Edinburgh. I once challenged him on this matter outside the pub, but he was very firm in his denials, even when I promised to keep his secret, if he saw fit to share it with me. After all, I, too, could see the sport of this, though I think it had gone too far, and told him so. “It is not my doing,” he said. “But there must be a fooler in the village! Who could it be?” Well I certainly had no idea, if he did not. Most of the younger folk, when they came of age, either left the village, or drove, or, going to the highway, bused to work in one of the nearby towns. A diligent, sober crew they were, none of whom seemed a likely source of a hoax. The older people we rather automatically excluded. To my amusement, Gavin informed me that he suspected the prankster was none other than myself, and he, too, promised to hold the secret, if I should choose to impart it to him. This seemed to me a delightful turnabout.
We concluded our conversation under the eaves of the pub, as it began to pour.
I returned to Hill House, drenched, and shaking with cold, and certainly much the worse for a pint too much at the pub.
The cat was inside, the night so miserable. She came up the stairs, after a few minutes, and made her presence known outside the door. I admitted her, as I would, and she was soon curled at the foot of the bed, asleep.
It seemed I should have fallen asleep almost immediately but I was unable to do so. The night at the pub was still muchly in my mind. There had been much wild talk about the prints, which were attributed, as ignorance and superstition would have it, to no ordinary cause, of course not, but to any number of uncanny, preternatural visitations, presumably all ill-omened, foreboding, and demonic. You know how superstitious simple folk can be. Old Duncan insisted they marked the calpa's return, after almost a generation. That seemed then to be the consensus, at least among the older fellows. How tiresome is superstition!
Gavin and I did our best to soothe these wretched, brittle fears, and bring the light of at least a little rationality into the evening's discourse, but I fear we were largely unsuccessful. “There are the prints!” would say a fellow. “Put there,” we said. “A hoax!” “By who, then?” asked another. “We don't know,” I said. “There are the prints,” would reiterate another, shuddering, and so it went.
Although the calpa takes many forms, or, perhaps, more accurately, is given many forms by those who see it, the most common seems to be that of a gigantic, horselike being, with massive hoofs, a long, flowing mane, and huge, wild, burning eyes. Sometimes it is thought to be seen under the water, abeam, or gliding in the cold darkness beneath the keel, or rising toward the bulwarks, then descending again. Sometimes it is claimed to have broken the surface, only to submerge again. This has led some to speculate that it is some sort of sea creature, reptilian, long thought extinct. Other speculations have supposed a small whale, or other aquatic mammal. Some see it, too, sometimes, it seems, as having arms and a human head. Surely the imposition of some sort of discipline would be appropriate for sailors found drunk on their watch. I have wondered if that form was not, perhaps subconsciously, suggested by the image of a centaur. But that seems an unlikely image for mariners. To be sure, the image of the centaur may have been founded, long ago, not on Scythian horsemen, but on that of the calpa. Many were the galleys which brought tin from England to the Mediterranean. Some think that to see the calpa is itself a sentence of death, a forewarning of doom, but this is inaccurate. There is no reason why seeing the calpa, if one could actually do so, would, in itself, be a sign of impending death. Of what interest or concern are we to the calpa? Is this not vanity on our part? Are we so important that denizens of metaphysical realms would find it incumbent upon themselves to oblige us with such unsolicited, unwelcome notices? Let us dismiss the fanciful, self-regarding vanity of that thought. On the other hand, there would perhaps be dangers in bearing this dreadful witness, perhaps rather as in meeting a dangerous animal unexpectedly, eye to eye, within a critical charging distance. Seeing a lion is not in itself a sign of impending death, but it is quite true that these events are not always unassociated. It is true, however, that the calpa is territorial, and that it will protect itself. One does not enter certain cold, tidal caves, one does not swim in certain waters. As the legends have it, the calpa will kill, usually by drowning. Presumably it does not like to seen. Like the cat, it likes to conceal its presence. That is not uncommon with many forms of life. On the other hand, there are some legends, too, though admittedly rare, that the calpa has carried some to safety.
Who knows the nature of those it might save?
Why would it do so?
But I am speaking now as though there might be such a beast.
As the storm beat on the roof, and the wind whirled about Hill House, and lightning flashed beyond the window, off seaward, my mind, from the ale, wandered as it would.
Suppose, I thought, there might be such a thing as the calpa. If it is so secretive, so withdrawn, so jealous of its privacy, why would it mark a beach with its hoofs? So here, surely, was some sort of inconsistency.
Then I smiled, so silly was the thought, as if there might be such a thing.
I wondered how the prints came there. They would now, in the storm, be muchly washed away. Too, the tide would take most of them. They would be gone by morning.
Suppose there were such a thing, I thought. You can see how drunk I was, how tired, so disordered, lying there, pulling up the blankets, listening to the storm. The cat stirred when I pulled at the blankets, but did not, as far as I could tell, awaken.
Lightning flashed outside the window. The framing of the window, in its partitions, suddenly became a terrible shadow on the wall, one that looked for a moment, in the swiftly following crash of thunder, like the gigantic thrown-back head of a rearing horse.
So distraught was my fancy!
At the same time the cat, startled, awakened with a screech, and stood at the foot of the bed for a tense, wicked instant, ears back, back arched, hair erected like bristling wire, a forepaw lifted, claws exposed, fangs bared, hissing, spitting, toward the window. Then she turned as suddenly and leapt from the bed, and fled out the door, which I had left ajar for her passage.
She had been frightened by the storm, the noise.
There had been the prints on the beach. What if it were not a joke, not a hoax, even a stupid, cruel hoax.
What if the old men, and old Duncan, were right.
But the calpa, I thought, no more than ghosts, or devils, or demons, or angels, or such things, would leave prints, nor stir pebbles, nor mark beaches.
Thus such marks must have some natural, explicable origin.
But there may be diverse natures, of which we are familiar with only one.
And suddenly I wondered, the thought chilling me, if such a beast, if such there were, in its passage, had even needed to leave such prints, now doubtless muchly washed away. Any more than fog, swift and zealous, need leave marks. And I had the odd sensation that it might have chosen to leave them. But, if so, why? Could fog, if it so chose, take on might and form, and weight, and speed, and a hungry ferocity, what might be its tracks? Could even the hoofs of an eager fog, massive, palpitating and alive, luring, blinding mariners, so torment the earth? Might its claws scour beaches, furrow stone? But if it, or, better, some such thing, could take on equine form, donning a foreign coat and metaphysical mask, perhaps one even incongruous to its nature, might it not leave such marks? There had been prints on the beach, dark, deep prints. I had seen them, and so had others, coming down to the beach in the light. This was no fancy private to me. Something had passed there. That seemed clear. Need such marks have been put here? If not, why had they been put here? Could they be curiously annunciatory? Was this a signal, a knell, from a far-off place, betokening something, a visitor, a presence? I thought of a scratch on a sidewalk, a mark on a wall, scrawled in colored chalk. Was this a flag, or cairn?
Or perhaps it was only an exuberance of movement, of a creature of great power, bursting into an unfamiliar reality, testing itself in a new space, excited by a new body, trying it out, exulting like a horse racing its phantom fellow in the midnight darkness, in the cold, between the cliffs and sea, the wind stinging its eyes, whipping in its mane.
I have come home, I thought. But I must soon leave.
Or could this be its announcement, this racing, reflective of its power, its joy? Is this the way it claims its territory, I wondered. Thusly marking it? Against whom? But why would it claim territory? Why does an animal do that? The antelope has all the grass of the plains, I thought. Why does it stop in one place, and put down its horns, and stamp its hoofs?
I am not sure, but I think I then fell asleep.
I had the sense of rising from the bed once, but I do not know if this occurred, or if it was part of a dream.
I went to the window, or seemed to do so, which was cold, and streaked with rain. It felt chilled to my fingertips. In another flash of lightning, I looked down into the yard and, for an instant, it seemed to me that below, looking up at me, was a girl, illuminated, streaming with rain, unclothed save for long, bedraggled, soaked yellow hair clinging about her body like seaweed. She looked up, indifferently, unmindful of the storm, and then turned away. When lightning flashed again, the yard below was empty, save for some debris, a barrel, some puddles into which the fierce rain pelted, the drenched, smitten grass, the glistening stones of the walk. It must have been in a dream, as otherwise the poor thing, naked, and exposed to the elements, would have been half frozen. I had seen her before, I was sure, but only in dreams. In my earlier dreams, perhaps oddly enough, as they were the dreams of a young man, she, unlike the accommodating, sensuous maidens of many other dreams, had always been fully clothed, indeed, decorously, primly so, in Victorian propriety, in a starched, white shirtwaist, with a cameo brooch, with a long, black skirt to her ankles, with her yellow hair bound back behind her head. Her image in these recurring dreams was that of an upper-class scion from another era, one rather removed from ours, one more refined than our own, the image of a self-assured, self-possessed, proudly prudish, deliberately reserved, exquisitely formed, exquisitely feminine, exquisitely beautiful young lady, a lady as if of another time and place, a young lady well-bred, elegant, fashionable, proper, and genteel, very much so, aristocratic, self-satisfied, priggish, frosty and distant. She had always, in these dreams, had a look of smug, sheltered Victorian innocence, almost affectedly so, and of an almost contrivedly demure purity, and chastity, mingled with an expression of coldness and disdain. Sometimes this had excited my fury. How she regarded me. For something told me, in the dream you understand, that she, though this was unknown to her, belonged to me, that she, though at the time quite ignorant of the fact, was mine,
literally
. Sometimes, behind her, I had seen, briefly, the image of a great horse.
I was awakened once later, in the night, by the return of the cat. Her fur was wet, so I conjectured she had left the house through the kitchen, where there was a cat flap. I toweled her down a bit, and soon, again, curled about herself, her tail wrapped neatly, delicately, about her small, golden body, she had purred herself asleep.