Cruise of Shadows: Haunted Stories of Land and Sea

By Jean Ray and Scott Nicolay

Footsteps in an abandoned holiday resort as the cold weather settles in; a knock on the door of a hut in the middle of an isolated bog; a lane in Rotterdam perceptible to only one inhabitant in the city. In Cruise of Shadows, Jean Ray began to fully explore the trappings of the ghost story to produce a new brand of horror tale: one that described the lineaments of a universe adjacent to this one, in which objects sweat hatred and fear, and where the individual must face the unknown in utter isolation. First published in 1931, two years after he served his prison sentence for embezzling funds for his literary magazine, Ray’s second story collection failed to find the success of his first one, Whiskey Tales, but has emerged over the years as a key publication in the Belgian School of the Strange. It has remained unavailable in its integral form even in French until recently, however, though it contains some of Ray’s most anthologized and celebrated stories, including two of his best known, “The Mainz Psalter” and “The Shadowy Alley.” This is the book’s first English translation, and the second of the volumes of Ray’s books to be published by Wakefield Press.

Alternately referred to as the “Belgian Poe” and the “Flemish Jack London,” Jean Ray (1887–1964) delivered tales of horror under the stylistic influence of his most cherished authors, Charles Dickens and Geoffrey Chaucer. A pivotal figure in what has come to be known as the “Belgian School of the Strange,” Ray authored some 6,500 texts in his lifetime.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wakefield Press
• Release date: Mar 23, 2021
• ISBN: 9781939663764

Book preview

CRUISE OF SHADOWS

CRUISE OF SHADOWS

HAUNTED STORIES OF LAND AND SEA

JEAN RAY

TRANSLATED BY SCOTT NICOLAY

WAKEFIELD PRESS

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS

This translation © 2019 Wakefield Press

Wakefield Press, P.O. Box 425645, Cambridge, MA 02142

Originally published as La croisière des ombres: Histoires hantées de terre et de mer in 1931. This English edition is published by special arrangement with Alma éditeur, France, in conjunction with their duly appointed agents L’Autre agence and 2 Seas Literary Agency.

© Héritier Jean Ray, 2016 et Alma éditeur. Paris, 2016

Cover image: Clip # 23279, Le Chien du volontaire (Lux, 1909) from the Turconi collection at the George Eastman Museum.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher.

This book was set in Garamond Premier Pro and Helvetica Neue Pro by Wakefield Press. Printed and bound by McNaughton & Gunn, Inc., in the United States of America.

PRINT ISBN: 978-1-939663-44-3

EBOOK ISBN: 978-1-939663-76-4

Available through D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers

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1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10

to Maurice Renard¹

to Pierre Goemaere²

to Jean des Esnault³

CONTENTS

The Horrifying Presence

The End of the Street

The Last Guest

Dürer, the Idiot

Mondschein-Dampfer

The Gloomy Alley

The Mainz Psalter

Translator’s Notes

Translator’s Afterword

Bibliography

Translator’s Acknowledgments

THE HORRIFYING PRESENCE

Listen to it, out there beyond the puny barrier of the windowpane, black as clotted blood, the absolute apotheosis of the tempest’s wicked roar.

It has come in haste from afar, from the depths of baleful seas.

It has stolen away from some accursed shore where seals rot, ravaged by scabies and reeking of dark sickness and death.

It has howled five hundred agonies in its spiteful assault on our poor tavern, where the whiskey is sour and the rum runs thick.

Like a cruel child who lays waste to a rose garden just to torment a ladybug, it whips our shack with the wings of a gigantic ray.

Why, said Holmer, must a dark night and a frightful storm go around every terrifying story? This is unreal.

No, replied Arne Beer, "it is a reality, and it is nature’s way. You are confusing around and surround, as the French professor from Oslo once said, but he never confused his whiskey with his glass, the clever monkey.

I contend that the storm and the awful night oftentimes provoke the dread event.

Arne Beer is, I believe, either Norwegian or Lapp, but he is a scholar. During the long iron nights of his boreal village, he reads or debates with his local Sunday school teacher, who receives books inscribed by Selma Lagerlöf.¹

As for me, said Piffschnùr, As for me, I say … and Piffschnùr said no more.

My God! I have rarely seen a creature more imbecilic than that bargeman from the Elbe, still stumbling from Baltic seasickness these past several months.

The tempest hurled itself against the door with a wail like some great gutted beast, and we emptied, then refilled our glasses with the triumphant liquor.

Yes, Arne Beer continued, "these unquiet nights create a congenial atmosphere for ghosts, criminal plots, and entities from the realms of the damned.

I would almost say they establish an environment conducive to evil forces, and God only knows whether they aren’t concocting some right now in their infernal kitchen of clamor and tumult.

This sounds like a sermon, growled Holmer. I understand little of it, and I do not want anyone forcing his morals upon me.

Certainly not, interjected that fool Piffschnùr volubly, We understand none of it, and I am sure you are just saying it all to insult us.

The door slammed open with a mighty smack and the stranger entered amidst a raging eddy of wind, rain, and swirling hail.

* * *

Ah! he said. The place is inhabited, God be blessed!

We offered him a glass of rum, which to our outrage he did not touch.

It is not good to run about outside, opined Holmer, as if he were pronouncing some eternal truth.

I was running away, said the stranger.

He tossed his sodden cap into a corner. His head seemed sinister to us, bald as a river cobble, and the lamplight immediately reflected off its highlights in rosy glints.

I was running away.

One learns discretion in these lonely northern dens and maintains a notorious reserve, here among the marshes that border the sea.

We made a gesture of assent and raised a silent toast. So often in this life had we ourselves been hunted animals, that any man on the run was a brother.

I was running from the storm, the bald man continued.

A flash of astonished joy lit Arne Beer’s eyes. Holmer groaned in disappointment, while Piffschnùr appeared more foolish than ever.

But it outran me, and here I am in the middle of it. Perhaps the thing will not dare pursue me all the way here. Your company protects me.

The thing? questioned Piffschnùr.

Arne Beer gestured at him in annoyance: One asks no questions of a man on the run.

It!² cried the man. The evil thing that runs in the middle of the storm, knocking on my door, forcing me to run screaming into terrible night.

He added, growing very calm:

It did not catch me.

Arne Beer handed him a glass of whiskey.

Drink this, he said. Rum clogs your mouth.

The stranger listened another minute to the tumult outside. He seemed to grow more and more reassured.

The things that fly strike with their wings, he said. "They are wicked, but not persistent. They do not hunt you; they scorn you because you are beyond their reach.

But of the things that walk the earth … Oh! Oh! No, I don’t hear any footsteps. It must have fallen into the marsh. Haha! I want to laugh. It sank into the marsh. I shall drink this whiskey.

* * *

I live near the great western bog. Is it Denmark? Is it Germany? No one goes there; no one knows. They all scorn those few square miles for fear of the earth that trembles like the decaying flesh of a dead jellyfish.

That vast bog, interjected Arne Beer. For the love of God, what do you do there?

The stranger smiled mysteriously.

I search for gold, he said.

Ho-ho! Piffschnùr chuckled, Don’t make me laugh. Gold in a bog!

Holmer punched him in the head and Piffschnùr became docile and mute again.

In a bog, the man went on, certainly … It is not always to inaccessible veins that God entrusts the treasures of the Earth. Far from it! It is to muck, to marine sludge, to deadly river deltas that he has consigned them. Haven’t you ever seen scintillations of yellow sparkle from clumps of damp peat?

True, said Arne Beer thoughtfully. Diamonds sleep in the blue marl of Kimberley, and in the Orinoco’s ooze the roots of mangroves are sometimes sheathed in virgin gold.

The putrid mud of Guyana guards gold dust and nuggets, enthused the stranger, and the Ceylon oyster jealously surrounds the fine pearl with living glue.

And what do you find? Do you find gold? questioned Holmer.

All discretion vanished at that magic word. The fever came. The man hunched his shoulders and did not reply right away.

I will not go back, not since it came.

It? We all asked together this time. At that moment came a lull in the storm, a long repose all round our shanty-tavern. Tears of rain and melting hail ticked off the seconds.

The stranger listened, and his ears plumbed the depths of the silence.

We heard the distant lingering wail of a nighthawk in the twilight.

There by the bog, he began, "I built my hut from rough beams, heavy and solid like a little blockhouse. I was afraid of other men.

"What foolishness! What other man imagined treasures in the mud? What man would be crazy enough to venture over the quicksand pits, the marshes, and the quivering earth just to lay siege to my miserable mushroom of a hut?

"One evening, however, at the hour when that last light shines across the sea, I heard footsteps.

"Footsteps on the ground outside, quite clear, like sharp little smacks.

"Yet had any man come to visit me, at the heart of that vast flat moor, I should have seen his profile on the horizon for hours beforehand.

"I had seen no one, yet the noise was nearby.

"‘Impossible,’ I told myself. ‘These footsteps exist only in my foolish mind.’

"They fell silent, and a peaceful night followed.

"In the morning I found no footprints, and I had a moment of pleasure laughing at myself.

"Some days later, they returned, smacking even closer against the soft ground.

"‘You don’t exist,’ I said, ‘not at all. There is no point in returning. You don’t exist!’

"But that night I left my lantern lit and the shadows held hideous councils in the corners of my hut.

"The next day the footsteps halted right outside my door.

"‘One night,’ I said to myself, ‘the thing that walks outside will knock upon my door, and the next night it will come inside, God of Heaven and of Earth!’

"And so it went. One night it knocked. One, two, five little raps, shy but sharp; and I thought it was a hand whose fingers struck each in turn.

"A hand behind the door! A hand that came back every night to knock harder, because the blows became more terrible with each visit, and the air of my hut held the echoes until dawn.

Then—last night …

The stranger gripped Arne Beer by the arm; one could see the veins throbbing in his ivory skull.

"Then, last night, when the five blows struck, my hut seemed to leap five times like a beaten animal; my hut made of heavy timbers sunk deep in the earth.

"I looked at the door … the door a bullet could not pierce. Well! My friends, my brothers, my protectors—on that night, this inert door of oak was like a face. This dead lifeless thing of wood, which showed nary the shadow of a shudder either to the bite of the saw or the brutality of the axe or hammer, was suffering.

"Oh! It is impossible for me to explain to you the hellish vision of inanimate objects expressing pain. Imagine the grisly reawakening of a corpse amidst unimaginable tortures.

"What claw from hell’s abyss came to torment the mysterious souls of objects we believe lifeless?

"And there on the beams, grimacing like cheeks, were the outlines of five round holes from which flowed some unspeakable black ooze. Five bleeding wounds!

All around me inanimate objects were despairing, maddened, hopeless. Do you believe we hear everything? That our ears perceive each sound wave born within their range?

They say we do not, said Arne Beer, happy to speak amidst the mounting terror, thus the mysterious signals of starlings …

No, cried the stranger, who had not heard the calm explanation. No, because all the things around me screamed in abominable fear, their outcry woven from silence, and my mind perceived their screams as a great outpouring of horror.

A swallow of alcohol gave the storyteller a brief repose.

To drink, he whispered, that’s good. Whiskey is a true brother. Tonight, he continued, when I heard from far away the muffled pounding of the northern storm, I realized that the thing was made a thousand times more powerful by its allies in the tempest, that it would not stop outside the door. It would enter—it—the thing of the night.

That is no kind of story to tell, said Piffschnùr discontentedly. It brings us no pleasure. Don’t you know something more entertaining?

The stranger did not answer; his ideas were sailing away in the surrounding silence.

Well, I know something more cheerful, continued Piffschnùr. "Picture this: Frau Holz, the owner of the inn Zùm lùstigen Holländer in Altona,³ had a white parrot that did not speak.

"So me and two other good fellows off the sea lighter Rheinland told her she needed to dye the bird green for it to talk, because all white parrots are born mute, and she gave us a bottle of good schnapps for that prescription. Ha! Ha!"

Don’t you think, asked the stranger, that the storm has passed?

I believe it has, said Holmer.

Really? He heaved a deep sigh and a curious calm slid over his ravaged face. May your words be true! That’s better.

A bit more whiskey.

"Thank you.

"Yes, I am getting a hold of myself.

It’s this hellish weather, you see, that makes me such a demonhunted wretch.

He smiled now, reassured and seeming apologetic for his fear.

The thing, he said. What is it? Does this thing exist? I believe so, but what is it, I wonder? Probably the madness, the obsession that comes with great solitude that beats against one’s skull and seeks to enter.

It is almost a symbol or a poem, Arne replied, smiling.

This was quite a shock you gave us, muttered Holmer. Fear has no value in these parts. It turns our bones to marshmallow creme.

The woman dunked the beast in the green dye, Piffschnùr continued his anecdote thereby, "and the upshot is that after this bath, the bird began to yell awful things like ‘Ach dù Schwein’ and ‘Höllisches weib.’⁴ The next day he croaked, poisoned by the poor quality green coloring; but Frau Holz said that she preferred it that way to having such a poorly bred parrot."

Huh? What’s that? What’s that? gasped the bald man, suddenly rigid from a rush of fear.

A distant wailing approached in a crescendo of rage and menace.

The storm made a little turn and is coming back, said Piffschnùr placidly, happy to have squeezed in his inane story.

It’s coming back, howled the stranger. The evil is upon me!

The roof groaned lugubriously beneath a gust.

Oh! Listen to the footsteps, groaned the unfortunate fellow.

Yes, I hear them, said Holmer, ever so softly.

Suddenly our nerves were strained atrociously.

One, two, five sharp knocks clattered.

Five blows struck mercilessly near. On the door? No …

Five more knocks rang out close, right in our midst. Did we scream in our horror? Will heaven allow us later the infinite consolation of believing in an error of our senses? The five blows struck there … on the man’s skull! And that skull resounded hideously beneath the cadenced summons of its invisible torturer; then before our frantic eyes five wounds, five holes opened in that bald head and blood flowed, black beneath the lamp.

We are damned, moaned Holmer.

The stranger gave his final rattle.

Look, look, said a frenzied Arne Beer, squeezing his temples between his fists. Do not panic! I think this can be explained. Do not shout, Piffschnùr. I swear this may prove natural … the saints … the appearance of heavenly wounds on their bodies … and other things of which I know not.

But Piffschnùr screamed louder yet, his eyes stretched wide, hallucinating the worst visions possible.

One, two, five blows rang out, and we saw the awful wounds open on our companion’s head.

Then we fled like beasts, into the darkness, lashed by showers and squalls, fleeing the thing that would seize us, us too, and batter our burning heads with fever dreams and nightmares.

THE END OF THE STREET

One evening, with the electric fairyland of Manhattan on the horizon, I heard the words for the first time:

And then I’ll have nothing left but Jarvis, and the other end of the street.

The other end of the street! replied another voice in a mournful echo.

These two unfortunates were not disembarking.

They looked toward the forbidden land of Canaan as their final hope,