Creeps by Night: Chills and Thrills

The Witch’s Vengeance by W. B. Seabrook

The quarrel between Mère Tirelou and my young friend Philippe Ardet grew out of the fact that he had fallen in love with Maguelonne, the old woman’s granddaughter.

Although Maguelonne was past nineteen, by far the prettiest girl in the village, she had no suitors among the local youths, for the native peasants of Les Baux, this savage mountain hamlet in the south of France which I had been visiting at intervals for years, were steeped in superstition and believed that old Mère Tirelou was a sorcière, a sort of witch.

Maguelonne, orphaned by the war, lived alone with the old woman in an ancient tumble-down stone mas, somewhat isolated from the village proper, among the ruins of the seigniorial castle close above it, and gossip whispered that Mere Tirelou had involved the girl, willingly or unwillingly, in her dark practices. They were not persecuted or hated — in fact, the peasants and shepherds of Les Baux and the surrounding mountainside sometimes consulted Mere Tirelou in certain emergencies — hut save for such special consultations, paid for usually with a rabbit, a jug of wine or oil, the old beldam and her granddaughter “apprentice,” if such she really was, were generally avoided if not actually disliked and feared.

Philippe, however, who considered himself to be now of the great world — he had been to technical school in Marseilles and was working in an airplane plant at Toulon — regarded all this local superstition as stuff and nonsense. He had come up vacationing from Toulon on his motor cycle. We had known each other at Les Baux the previous summer. He and I were now staying at the same little hotel, the Hotel Rene, perched on the edge of the cliff, run by Philippe’s aunt, Madame Plomb, and her husband Martin. And Philippe, as I have said, had fallen in love with Maguelonne.

This was the situation, briefly outlined, when the strange series of events began which first involved me only as a chance onlooker, but finally as an active participant.

They began one hot mid-afternoon when I lay reading in my room, which was in an angle of the wall with windows overlooking the valley and a side window immediately above the medieval rampart gate from which the road serpentined downward.

Close beneath this window, all at once, I heard and recognized Mere Tirelou’s querulous croaking voice raised angrily, and Philippe’s in reply, half amiable, half derisive.

It was hazard rather than eavesdropping, impossible not to hear them, and then after some muttering the old woman raised her voice again, but this time in such a curious, unnatural tone that I got up to see what was occurring.

They were standing in the sunshine just beneath the window, he tall, blondish, ruddy, tousle-haired, bare-headed, in knickers, and sport shirt; she gray, bent and hawk-like — bat-like, rather, in her Arlèsienne coiffe and cloak, with arms outstretched barring his path. And she was intoning a weird, singsong doggerel, at the same time weaving in the air with her claw-like hands:

She was now no longer barring Philippe’s path but standing aside, inviting him to pass, so that her back was turned to me, while Philippe stood so that I could see his face and the expressions which flitted over it — first an interested, incredulous, surprised attention as if he couldn’t believe his own ears, then a good-humored but derisive and defiant grin as the old woman repeated her doggerel.

“No, no, Mere Tirelou,” he said laughing. “You can’t scare me off with stuff like that. Better get a broomstick if you want to drive me away. Save your cobwebs and incantations for Bléo and the shepherds.”

So with a defiant, gay salute and an au revoir he was off down the road whistling, while the old woman screamed after him, “Down, down, down you go, but not up, my pretty boy; not up, not up, not up!”

I watched Philippe descending the winding road into the valley while Mere Tirelou, leaning over the parapet, watched him too, until he became tiny far below and disappeared behind the orchard wall which skirts the road by the pavilion of the Reine-Jeanne. Then she picked up her stick, called Bléo her dog, and hobbled in through the gate.

“So,” thought I, “that old woman really believes herself a witch, and probably thinks she has put an effective curse on Philippe!”

But it didn’t occur to me to be in the least disturbed. I knew, or thought I knew, a good deal about witchcraft technically. I believed it all reduced finally to suggestion and auto-suggestion. I had known it to produce tangible results, but only in cases when the victim himself (usually among primitives or savages) was deeply superstitious and consequently amenable to fear. I felt absolutely sure that complete, hard-headed, skeptical disbelief, derision, laughter, constituted a stronger “counter-magic” than any amount of exorcism and holy water, and therefore it did not occur to me for an instant that Philippe could be in the slightest danger.

Holding these convictions, and therefore regarding the safe return of Philippe as a foregone conclusion, I thought little more of the matter that afternoon; finished my reading, dined early, strolled to the top of the cliff to watch the sunset, and went early to bed.

Usually after ten o’clock at night the whole village of Les Baux, including the interior of the Hôtel René, is sound asleep and silent as the grave. It was the noise of hurrying footsteps clattering along the stone floor of the hotel corridor which awoke me late in the night, but at the same time I heard lowered voices in the road beneath my window, saw lights flashing, heard sabots clacking along the cobbled street.

I struck a light, saw that it was shortly past midnight, dressed and went downstairs. Martin Plomb was talking to a group of neighbors. His wife was standing in the doorway, wrapped in a quilted dressing gown.

“What has happened?” I asked her.

“We are worried about Philippe,” she replied. “He went for a walk this afternoon down in the valley, and he hasn’t returned. They are going to search for him. We thought nothing of it that he didn’t come back for dinner, but it is now past midnight and we are afraid he may have had an accident.”

Already the men, in groups of twos and threes, some with old-fashioned farm lanterns, a few with electric flash lights, were starting down the mountainside. I joined Martin Plomb, who was at the gate instructing them to go this way or that and to keep in touch with one another by shouting. He himself was going to search upward on the other slope, toward the Grotte des Fées where Philippe sometimes climbed, fearing that he might have fallen down a ravine. I went along with him...

It was just before dawn, after hours of fruitless search, that we heard a different shouting from the head of the valley. I could not distinguish the words, but Martin immediately said, “They’ve found him.” We worked our way across and climbed toward the road along which we now could see lights flashing, returning toward Les Baux.

They were carrying Philippe on an improvised litter made with two saplings and pine branches interwoven. He was conscious; his eyes were open; but he seemed to be in a stupor and had been unable, they said, to explain what had happened to him. No bones were broken nor had he suffered any other serious physical injury, but his clothes were badly torn, particularly the knees of his knickerbockers, which were ripped and abraded as if he had been dragging himself along on hands and knees.

They all agreed as to what had probably happened: he had been climbing bareheaded among the rocks in the heat of the late afternoon and had suffered an insolation, a prostrating but not fatal sunstroke, had partially recovered and in seeking help, still delirious, had lost his way. He should be all right in a day or two, Martin said. They would have a doctor up from Arles in the morning.

Of course I had thought more than once that night about Mère Tirelou and had considered mentioning the matter to Martin Plomb, but this explanation was so reasonable, adequate, natural, that it seemed to me absurd now to view the episode as anything more than a pure coincidence, so I said nothing.

It was dawn when we reached Les Baux and got Philippe to bed, and when I awoke toward noon the doctor had already come and gone.

“He had a bad stroke,” Martin told me. “His head is clear — but there’s still something the matter that the doctor couldn’t understand. When Philippe tried to get up from the bed, he couldn’t walk. Yet his legs aren’t in jured. It’s queer. We are afraid it may be something like paralysis. He seemed to twist and stumble over his own feet.”

Sharply, as he spoke, the belated certainty came to me that here was an end to all coincidence; that I had been wrong; that something as sinister and darkly evil as I had ever known in the jungle had been happening here in Les Baux under my very eyes.

“Martin,” I said, “something occurred yesterday afternoon which you do not know about. I am not prepared to say yet what it was. But I must see Philippe at once and talk with him. You say his mind is perfectly clear?”

“But assuredly,” said Martin, puzzled; “though I can’t understand what you’re driving at. He will want to see you.”

Philippe was in bed. He looked depressed rather than ill, and was certainly in complete possession of his senses.

I said, “Philippe, Martin tells me there is something wrong with your legs. I think perhaps I can tell you what—”

“Why, were you ever a doctor?” he interrupted eagerly. “If we’d known that! The fellow who came up from Arles didn’t seem to be much good.”

“No, I’m not a doctor. But I’m not sure this is a doctor’s job. I want to tell you something. You know where my room is. I happened to be at the window yesterday and I heard and saw everything that occurred between you and Mere Tirelou. Haven’t you thought that there may be some connection?”

He stared at me in surprise, and also with a sort of angry disappointment.

“Tiens!” he said. “You, an educated modern American, you believe in that fantastic foolishness! Why, I came from these mountains, I was born here, and yet I know that stuff is silly nonsense. I thought about it, of course, but it doesn’t make any sense. How could it?”

“Maybe it doesn’t,” I said, “but just the same will you please tell me as well as you can remember what happened to you yesterday afternoon and last night?”

“Confound it, you know what happened. I had a stroke. And it has left me like this. Lord, I’d rather be dead than crippled or helpless.”

He lapsed into somber silence. But I had heard enough. There are people who have lain paralyzed in bed for life through no organic ailment but only because they believed they couldn’t arise and walk. If I helped him now, it could be only by overwhelming proof. My business was with Mere Tirelou...

Neither the old woman nor her granddaughter had been near the hotel that morning. I climbed the winding cobbled street and tapped at their door. Presently Maguelonne reluctantly opened. I made no effort to enter, but said:

“I’ve come to see Mere Tirelou — about a serious matter.”

She looked at me with worried, guarded eyes, as if uncertain how to answer, and finally said, “She is not here. She went over the mountain last night, beyond Saint-Remy. She will be gone several days.” Sensing my doubt, she added defensively, almost pleadingly, “You can come in and see if you wish. She is not here.”

The girl was obviously in great distress and I realized that she knew or suspected why I had come.

“In that case,” I said, “we must talk. Shall it be like this, or would you prefer to have me come in?”

She motioned me inside.

I said, “Ma’m’selle Maguelonne, I beg you to be honest with me. You know what people say about your grandmother — and there are some who say it also about you. I hope that part isn’t true. But your grandmother has done something which I am determined to have undone. I am so certain of what I know that if necessary I am going to take Martin Plomb into my confidence and go with him to the police at Arles. Ma’m’selle, I feel that you know exactly what I am talking about. It’s Philippe — and I want to ask if you—”

“No, no, no!” the girl cried pitifully, interrupting. “I had nothing to do with it! I tried to stop it! I warned him! I begged him not to see me any more. I told him that something dreadful would happen, but he only laughed at me. He doesn’t believe in such things. I have helped my grandmother in other things — she has forced me to help her — but never in anything so wicked as this — and against Philippe! No, no, Monsieur, never would I help in such a thing, not even if she—” Suddenly the girl began to sob, “Oh, what ought I to do?”

I said, “Do you mean there is something you could do?”

“I am afraid,” she said — “afraid of my grandmother. Oh, if you knew! I don’t dare go in there — and besides, the door is locked — and it may not be in there.”

“Maguelonne,” I said gently, “I think you care for Philippe, and I think he cares for you. Do you know that he has lost the use of his legs?”

“Oh, oh, oh!” she sobbed; then she gathered courage and said, “Yes, I will do it, if my grandmother kills me. But you must find something to force the lock, for she always carries the key with her.”

She led me to the kitchen which was at the rear, built into the side of the cliff almost beneath the walls of the old castle ruins. While she was lighting a lamp I found a small hatchet.

“It is through there,” she said, pointing to a closet whose entrance was covered by a drawn curtain.

At the back of the closet hidden by some old clothes hung on nails was a small door, locked. It was made of heavy wood, but I had little difficulty forcing the lock, opening the door to disclose a narrow flight of steps, winding downward into the darkness.

(There was nothing mysterious in the fact that such a stairway should exist there. The whole side of the cliff beneath the castle was honeycombed with similar passages.)

The girl went first and I followed close, lighting our way with the lamp held at her shoulder. The short stairway curved sharply downward, then emerged directly into an old forgotten rectangular chamber which at one time must have been a wine cellar or storeroom of the castle. But it now housed various strange and unpleasant objects on which the shadows flickered as I set the lamp in a niche and began to look about me. I had known that actual witches, practicing almost in the direct medieval tradition, still existed in certain parts of Europe, yet I was surprised to see the definite material paraphernalia of the craft so literally surviving.

No need to describe all of it minutely — the place was evil and many of the objects were grotesquely evil; against the opposite wall an altar surmounted by a pair of horns, beneath them “I N R I” reversed with the letters distorted into obscene symbols; dangling nearby a black, shriveled Hand of Glory — and there on the floor, cunningly contrived with infinite pains, covering a considerable space, was the thing which we had come to find and which, for all my efforts to rationalize, sent a shiver through me as I examined it.

Four upright wooden pegs had been set in the floor, like miniature posts, making a square field about five feet in diameter, surrounded by cords which ran from peg to peg. Within this area and attached to the surrounding cords was stretched a crisscross, labyrinthine, spider-weblike maze of cotton thread.

Tangled in its center like an insect caught in a web was a figure some eight inches high — a common doll, it had been, with china head sewed on its stuffed sawdust body; a doll such as might be bought for three francs in any toyshop — but whatever baby dress it may have worn when it was purchased had been removed and a costume crudely suggesting a man’s knickerbocker sport garb had been substituted in its place. The eyes of this manikin were bandaged with a narrow strip of black cloth; its feet and legs tangled, fastened, enmeshed in the crisscross maze of thread.

It slumped, sagging there at an ugly angle, neither upright nor fallen, grotesquely sinister, like the body of a wounded man caught in barbed wire. All this may seem perhaps silly, childish in the telling. But it was not childish. It was vicious, wicked.

I disentangled that manikin gently and examined it carefully to see whether the body had been pierced with pins or needles. But there were none. The old woman had at least stopped short of attempted murder.

And then Maguelonne held it to her breast, sobbing, “Ah, Philippe! Philippe!”

I picked up the lamp and we prepared to come away. The place, however, contained one other object which I have not thus far mentioned and which I now examined more closely. Suspended by a heavy chain from the ceiling was a life-sized, open, cage-like contrivance of wood and blackened leather straps and iron — as perversely devilish a device as twisted human ingenuity ever invented, for I knew its name and use from old engravings in books dealing with the obscure sadistic element in medieval sorcery. It was a Witch’s Cradle. And there was something about the straps that made me wonder...

Maguelonne saw me studying it and shuddered.

“Ma’m’selle,” I said, “is it possible—?”

“Yes,” she answered, hanging her head; “since you have been here there is nothing more to conceal. But it has always been on my part unwillingly.”

“But why on earth haven’t you denounced her; why haven’t you left her?”

“Monsieur,” she said. “I have been afraid of what I knew. And where would I go? And besides, she is my grandmother.”

I was alone with Philippe in his bedroom. I had brought the manikin with me, wrapped in a bit of newspaper. If this were fiction, I should have found him magically cured from the moment the threads were disentangled. But magic in reality operates by more devious processes. He was exactly as I had left him, even more depressed. I told him what I had discovered.

He was at the same time skeptical, incredulous and interested, and when I showed him the manikin crudely dressed to represent himself and it became clear to him that Mère. Tirelou had deliberately sought to do him a wicked injury, he grew angry, raised up from his pillows and exclaimed:

“Ah, the old hag! She really meant to harm me!”

I judged that the moment had come.

I stood up. I said, “Philippe, forget all this now! Forget all of it and get up! There is only one thing necessary. Believe that you can walk, and you will walk.”

He stared at me helplessly, sank back and said, “I do not believe it.”

I had failed. His mind lacked, I think, the necessary conscious imagination. But there was one more thing to try.

I said gently: “Philippe, you care for Ma’m’selle Maguelonne, do you not?”

“I love Maguelonne,” he replied.

And then I told him brutally, briefly, almost viciously, of the thing that hung there in that cellar — and of its use.

The effect was as violent, as physical as if I had suddenly struck him in the face. “Ah! Ah! Tonnerre de Dieu! La coquine! La vilaine coquine!” he shouted, leaping from his bed like a crazy man.

The rest was simple. Philippe was too angry and concerned about Maguelonne to have much time for surprise or even gratitude at his sudden complete recovery, but he was sensible enough to realize that for the girl’s sake it was better not to make a public row. So when he went to fetch Maguelonne away he took his aunt with him, and within the hour she was transferred with her belongings to Madame Plomb’s room.

Martin Plomb would deal effectively with old Mère Tirelou. He was to make no accusation concerning the part she had played in Philippe’s misadventure — an issue difficult of legal proof — but to warn her that if she ever tried to interfere with Maguelonne or the impending marriage he would swear out a criminal warrant against her for ill treatment of a minor ward.

There remain two unsolved elements in this case which require an attempted explanation. The belief which I have always held concerning malevolent magic is that it operates by imposed autosuggestion, and that therefore no incantation can work evil unless the intended victim believes it can. In this case, which seemed to contradict that thesis, I can only suppose that while Philippe’s conscious mind reacted with complete skepticism, his unconscious mind (his family came from these same mountains) retained certain atavistic, superstitious fears which rendered him vulnerable.

The second element is, of course, the elaborate mummery of the enmeshed manikin, the doll, own cousin to the waxen images which in the Middle Ages were pierced with needles or slowly melted before a fire. The witch herself, if not a charlatan, implicitly believes that there is a literal, supernatural transference of identities.

My own belief is that the image serves simply as a focus for the concentrated, malevolent will power of the witch. I hold, in short, that sorcery is a real and dangerous force, but that its ultimate explanation lies not in any supernatural realm, but rather in the field of pathological psychology.