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Chapter 1 The Ash-Tree

Visitors to Castringham Hall in Suffolk will find it almost

unchanged from the days when our story took place. They can

still see the beautiful old house with its gardens and lake.

However, the one thing missing is the ash-tree, which used to

stand, proud and tall, in front of the house, its branches almost

touching the walls.

This story begins in 1690 with a strange, lonely old woman,

Mrs Mothersole, who was found guilty of being a witch. Sir

Matthew Fell, the owner of Castringham Hall at that time,

described how she used to climb into the ash-tree outside his

bedroom every time there was a full moon. He said that she

usually carried a strange knife to cut off parts of the tree and that

she talked to herself. Once he followed her home, but she

disappeared and when he knocked on the door of her house, she

came downstairs in her night clothes looking sleepy. He and the

villagers agreed that it was certain she did these things by magic

and so she was hanged. Before she died, she fought and shouted,

and her last strange words were: 'There will be guests at the Hall.'

After the hanging, Sir Matthew felt uncomfortable and guilty,

and he told his friend the vicar about his worries. 'You did the

right thing. Sir Matthew,' were the wise words of the vicar. 'I'm

sure she was a dangerous woman.' Sir Matthew felt happier.

That evening, Sir Matthew and the vicar went for a walk in

the gardens of Castringham Hall. It was the night of the full

moon. As they were returning to the house, Sir Matthew pointed

to the ash-tree in great surprise. 'What kind of animal is that

running down the ash-tree? It looks very strange.'

The vicar only saw the moving animal for a moment, but he

thought that it had more than four legs. He shook his head. 'I'What kind of animal is that running down the ash-tree? It looks

very strange.'

must be tired,' he thought to himself. 'After all, what animal has

more than four legs?' He said nothing to Sir Matthew, but just

wished him good night.

The next morning, Sir Matthew's servants were surprised not

to find him downstairs at his usual time of six o'clock. When

seven o'clock and then eight o'clock passed, they began to suspect

that something was terribly wrong and they went up to his

bedroom. The door was locked. After knocking several times and

still getting no answer from inside, they broke down the door and

entered, to find that their fears were right. Sir Matthew s body lay

on the bed, dead and completely black. There were no wounds or

other marks on him and everything in the room looked as usual,

except that the window was wide open. His servants at first

suspected poison but the doctor who was called found no such thing and could offer no real explanation for Sir Matthews death.

When he heard the news, the vicar rushed to Castringham

Hall, and, while he was waiting to hear the doctor's opinion, he

looked at Sir Matthew's Bible, which was lying on a table by the

dead man's bedside. He opened the book and the first words he

read were from the book of Luke, chapter 8: 'Cut it down' were

the words he read.

♦

The servants locked Sir Matthew's room that day and it stayed

locked up for the next forty years. By that time, Sir Richard Fell,

Sir Matthews grandson, was living at Castringham Hall. He

enjoyed spending money, especially on rebuilding parts of the

Hall. He also decided to make the local church bigger so that his

family could have a fine new seat in the new part of the church.

In order to complete this building work, some of the graves in the

graveyard had to be moved. One of the graves was that of Mrs

Mothersole, the old witch who began this story. The villagers

were excited about the opening of her grave and a crowd came to

watch. However, they and the workmen were amazed to find the

grave completely empty: no body, no bones, no dust.

At about this time, Sir Richard started to sleep very badly. The

wind made his fire smoke and the curtains move and, because his

room faced east, the sun woke him up early in the morning. One

morning he asked his servant to help him choose a better room and

he made a tour of the house, finding something wrong with each

room. Each one was either too cold or too noisy or it faced the

wrong direction. Finally, he found himself outside his grandfather's

old room. His servant tried to persuade him not to go in:

'It's a bad room, sir. They say terrible things happened in there,

and no one has opened the door since the death of your

grandfather. Also, the ash-tree is right outside the window and

that's always unlucky, sir.But Sir Richard was not listening. He unlocked the door and

walked straight in. 'See? Nothing unusual in here, James!' he said

and he opened the window. As he did so, he noticed how tall and

dark the ash-tree was. Its branches seemed to be trying to reach

into the room. But he said nothing.

At that moment, a stranger rang the bell at the front door of the

Hall. The servant brought him up to the bedroom, where Sir

Richard was standing, looking around him at the old paintings and

old books. 'I must apologize for interrupting you, Sir Richard,' said

the stranger, 'but please allow me to introduce myself. My name is

William Crome. My grandfather was the vicar here in your

grandfather's time. I have some papers to deliver to you.'

'Delighted to meet you,' said Sir Richard. 'James, please bring

us some wine in the library and then move my clothes and things

into this room for me. I will sleep here in future.'

While he was drinking a glass of wine with William Crome in

the library, Sir Richard looked at the papers, many of which

belonged to his grandfather. Among them he found the notes made

by the old vicar about the day of Sir Matthew's mysterious death.

'Well, well,' said Sir Richard, laughing quietly. 'How very

interesting! It seems that my grandfather's Bible gave a piece of

advice on the day he died and your grandfather thought it could

be about that old ash-tree outside the bedroom window - "Cut

it down" the Good Book told him. Those were the first words

your grandfather saw when he opened the Bible on the day of

my grandfather's death.'

'Do you still have that old Bible?' asked William Crome, 'I'd

very much like to see it.'

Sir Richard found the old Bible easily. 'Yes, here it is. A bit

dusty, I'm afraid. Let's see what it has to tell me. I'll open it at any

page and read the first words I see, just as your grandfather did.'

He opened the book and his eyes fell on the words, 'You shall

look for me in the morning, and I shall not be here.' Sir Richard was sure that the words were again about the ash-tree - the Bible

was crying to give him some advice! He ordered some of his

servants to cut it down the next day.

♦

But Sir Richard did not live to see them cut the ash-tree down.

That night, at exactly midnight, a strange and terrible animal

jumped from Sir Richard's bed, ran silently to the window and

disappeared into the shadowy branches of the enormous tree. No

one was there to see it but the next morning they found Sir

Richard's body, like his grandfather's, dead and completely black.

When William Crome heard the news of his new friend's

death, the words from the Bible came back to him: 'You shall

look for me in the morning and I shall not be here.' He

immediately hurried to Castringham Hall, where he found the

family and servants crowded round the ash-tree.

'Sir Richard's last orders were that we should cut down this

tree,' explained James and then, in a quieter voice, he went on,

'and there's something very strange about that tree, sir. Very

strange. It's hollow and they say something lives inside it.'

The gardener put his ladder against the tree and climbed up to

look inside. As he held a light over the hole, his face suddenly

looked so terrified that several of the people watching from

below screamed and turned to run. The gardener himself fell off

the ladder, dropping his lamp down into the hollow tree, which

quickly caught fire. As the tree started to burn, the crowd saw an

animal run from the tree. They screamed in horror as they saw its

shape and size. It looked like an enormous spider, about the same

size as a man's head and covered all over with grey hair.

'Look, there's another! And another!' someone shouted. For a

long time the men watched these terrifying animals trying to

escape from the fire one after another, and then they killed them

with sticks. As the tree started to burn, the crowd saw an animal run

from the tree. At last, the fire burned itself out and William Crome, James

the servant and some of the braver people went to look inside

the blackened tree. There they found the bones of a human

being. The doctors who examined it afterwards said that it was

the body of a woman who died around 1690 ... the year that

old Mrs Mothersole was hangedChapter 2 A School Story

Two men, John and Edgar, were having dinner together one

night when a conversation started on the subject of school-days.

One of them, John, told the following strange story:

'When I went to the school in September of 1870, I

immediately became friendly with a Scottish boy called McLeod.

It was a large school and the teachers changed quite often. One

term a new teacher named Sampson came to teach at the school.

He taught us Latin. He was tall and pale with a black beard and

he was popular with the boys because he used to tell us all about

his travels to different countries. He always carried an old gold

coin in is pocket, which he found on a trip to Turkey, and one

day he let us look at this coin closely. On one side of it was the

head of a king - I don't know which one - and on the other side

of it were the letters G.W.S. (for Sampson's name) and the date

24 July 1865.

We enjoyed Sampson's classes because he often asked us to

invent sentences of our own, instead of always doing the boring

exercises in the grammar book. One day, he asked us for

sentences using the word 'remember' in Latin. We all wrote our

sentences in the usual way, and Sampson came round to correct

each of us. My friend McLeod seemed to be having some

difficulty in thinking of a sentence and when the bell went for

break, I saw him write something very quickly, just before

Sampson reached him. So McLeod's sentence was the last one

that Sampson corrected that day; I waited outside the classroom for

what seemed a long time before my friend at last came out. I

guessed that he was in trouble for making a mistake. When he did

come out, he was looking thoughtful.

'What happened? Was old Sampson angry?' I asked. 'No. My sentence was all right. I think. I wrote "Memento

putei inter quattuor taxos",' said McLeod.

'Well, what does all that mean?' I asked.

"That's the funny thing,' he explained.' I don't really know, you

see. I couldn't think of anything to write until just before

Sampson got to me. Then those words just came into my head

from nowhere and — it was very strange — I could see a sort of

picture of it in my head. I think it means "Remember the well

among the four trees". When Sampson read it he went quiet for a

long time, then he started to ask me questions about my family

and where I came from. Then he let me go.'

We soon forgot about the lesson and McLeod's strange sentence

because the next day McLeod became ill with a cold and he didn't

come to school for a week. Nothing happened for about a month,

until one day when we were, again, writing Latin sentences for

Sampson. This time we had to write them on pieces of paper and

give them to him for correction. He started looking through

them, but when he got to one piece of paper he turned white and

cried out. looking very frightened. He got up and hurried out of

the classroom and we sat there for a long time, wondering what to

do. Finally, I got up to have a look at the papers and the first thing

I noticed was that the top one was in red ink. Our school never

allowed us to use red ink; it was against the rules. The sentence on

the paper said 'Si tu non veneris ad me, ego veniam ad te', which

means 'If you don't come to me, I will come to you'. All the boys

looked at it and they all promised that the sentence was not theirs.

To check, I counted the pieces of paper - there were seventeen of

them ... but there were only sixteen boys in the class. Where this

paper came from, no one could say. I put it in my pocket and it

wasn't until that afternoon that I took it out again: it was

completely white, with no sign of the red writing on it anywhere!

I know it was the same piece of paper because I could still see my

fingermarks on it. Anyway, Sampson eventually came back at the of that lesson and told us we could go. He looked at the papers

one by one, and probably thought it was his imagination playing

tricks. He looked pale and worried.

The next day, Sampson was in school again and he seemed

quite normal, but it was that night that the third strange thing

happened. It was about midnight when I suddenly woke up;

somebody was shouting at me. It was McLeod, who shared my

room; he looked terrified, 'Quick,' he said, 'I think a burglar is

trying to get into Sampson's room.' I rushed to the window but

could see nothing. Somehow, though, I felt that something was

wrong out there and the two of us waited, watching closely.

'Tell me exactly what you saw or heard,' I whispered.

'I didn't hear anything but about five minutes before I woke

you I just found myself standing here at the window,' McLeod

whispered back. 'There was a terrible-looking man standing just

outside Sampson's window. He was very tall and very thin ... and

... he didn't really look like a living person at all. More like a

ghost. He seemed to be making a sign to Sampson to go with

him. That's all I saw before I woke you up.'

We waited a long time, watching, but we saw nothing more that

night. Everything was quiet outside. We woke up feeling tired and

strange in the morning. But during the day the news went round

that no one could find Sampson anywhere, and he didn't come for

our Latin class that day. In fact, we never heard of or saw Sampson

again. Somehow, McLeod and I knew that we should keep quiet

about what he had seen that night and we never told anyone.'

'It's a good story, John,' said Edgar, listening to his friend as he

finished his wine, 'a very good one. But now I really must be on

my way home. I hope I don't meet any strange, thin men on the

way.' The two men laughed, shook hands and went their different

ways.

It was about a year later that Edgar, the listener to John's story,

travelled to Ireland to visit another friend who lived in an old 'There was a terrible-looking man standing just outside

Sampson's window.' country house there. One evening his host was looking in a box

full of various old things for a key that he wanted. Suddenly he

pulled a small object out of the box and held it up. 'Have a look

at this, Edgar. What do you think it is?' he asked.

It was an old gold coin with the head of a king on the front.

Edgar looked closely. 'Where did you get it?' he asked quietly.

'Well, it's quite an interesting story,' began his friend. 'A year or

two ago we were working on that area of the garden over there

in the corner, can you see? Among the four trees? Right in the

middle of the trees, we found an old well and at the bottom of it,

you'll never guess what we found.'

'Yes. I will. Was it a body, by any chance?' asked Edgar.

His friend was surprised. 'Yes, it was. In fact, we found two

bodies. One of them had its arms tightly around the other. They

were probably there for thirty years or more. Anyway, we pulled

them out and in the pocket of one of them we found this old

coin ... from Turkey or somewhere, by the look of it. It's