Anne’s Little Ghost by H. D. Everett

“Anne’s Little Ghost” is taken from Everett’s anthology The Death-Mask and Other Ghosts, first published by Philip Allan in 1920, and later republished in 1995 by Ghost Story Press.

In 2021, “Anne’s Little Ghost” was included in the mixed-author anthology Minor Hauntings: Chilling Tales of Spectral Youth.

A little-known story that’s rarely republished, “Anne’s Little Ghost” is about a couple who encounter the ghost of a child while staying in holiday accommodation.

 

About H. D. Everett (1851 – 1923)

Henrietta Dorothy Everett (née Huskisson) was a popular author during the late 1800s to early 1900s. However, her work has since fallen into obscurity, and most people are unlikely to be familiar with her name. The daughter of John Huskisson, a Royal Marines Lieutenant, little is known about her life, including her date of birth. However, church records show she was baptized 4 March 1851.

In 1869, she married Isaac Edward Everett, a solicitor; and began writing in 1896, when she was aged 44. Between then and 1920, she published 22 books, with 17 different publishers, using her pen-name Theo Douglas. Although Everett wrote three historical novels, more than half of her books had fantasy or supernatural themes. For instance, her novel Iras: A Mystery (1896) is about an Egyptologist who revives an ancient mummy and falls in love with the beautiful Iras he has unwrapped.

In 1920, when she published The Death-Mask and Other Stories, for reasons unknown, she discarded her pen-name and published the collection as H. D. Everett. However, her identity had already been revealed in 1910, so using a pseudonym probably no longer offered any advantages.

The Death-Mask and Other Stories earned the praise of both M. R. James and H.P. Lovecraft. In his essay “Some Remarks on Ghost Stories” (1929) [paragraph 16], James described Everett’s anthology as having “a rather quieter tone on the whole” and “some excellently conceived stories”. Meanwhile, in his essay essay Supernatural Horror in Literature [Chapter 9, paragraph 9], Lovecraft stated: “Mrs. H. D. Everett, though adhering to very old and conventional models, occasionally reaches singular heights of spiritual terror in her collection of short stories.”

The Death-Mask and Other Stories was Everett’s only story collection. However, in 2006, Wordsworth Editions republished an expanded versions of the collection under the title The Crimson Blind & Other Stories. The expanded version contained all 14 stories from the original collection, along with two additional tales: “The Pipers of Mallory” and “The Whispering Wall”. It’s interesting to note the author published both of these stories in magazines, prior to putting together her anthology, and either she or her publisher must have decided not to include them in original anthology.

 

Anne’s Little Ghost

By H. D. Everett

(Online Text)

We had planned to take a holiday as soon as I was demobilised, and I claim that we had abundantly earned it, Anne and I. She had been a war worker all the time I was serving abroad—(for there were, alas! No children to tie her to the duties of home)—and she needed relief and change as much as I. It was to be a real holiday and in full measure—no wretched scrap measured by days, but lasting several weeks, and at our own option to extend into months if we so pleased. This gave a peculiar feeling of wealth and spaciousness; for once we were to be millionaires in the holiday line. But from the £.s.d. [1] point of view, a quite separate matter, the holiday was bound to be cheap. So Anne decreed, and I left it to her to arrange what it should be, and where.

She was in high spirits the last time she came to see me in hospital, about a week before my discharge. She had heard of the very place for us, if I agreed—and of course I was ready to agree. Her friend Adelaide Sherwood recommended Deepdene, but there was no time to be lost; we must write or wire at once if we wanted to secure the rooms. Farmhouse lodgings in Devonshire; would not that be delightful?—with trout-fishing for me thrown in, and the sea not many miles away. It was really half a house, and the farm-mistress would board and cook for us: we could either bring a servant (we did not possess one) or a day-woman would come in from the village to order the rooms. Some friends of Miss Sherwood’s had stayed there the previous autumn, and were abundantly satisfied with everything, cleanliness included; the charge was, besides, astonishingly low.

“Just think, Godfrey, of getting the farm produce fresh on the spot—eggs and vegetables, to say nothing of dairy luxuries beyond. And in such pretty country as they say it is. I cannot fancy getting tired of the quiet, but perhaps you may feel differently. A large sitting-room with glass doors on to a verandah, and such a view from it; the farm-buildings quite away on the other side. The bedroom is on the same floor: that will be right for your lame leg, will it not? And then upstairs two more bedrooms, roomy attics. We shall not need to use these, but they are part of the half house, and are let with it. What do you say?”

A prompt telegram secured us the tenancy of the half-house, and a week later Anne and I were en route for our new abode. We took the journey leisurely—a fit prelude to a holiday which was to be all leisure—and stayed a couple of nights at Exeter on our way. So the journey of the last morning was a short one. We arrived at our destination soon after noon, to find all gilded with the cheer of mid-day sunshine, and a white-aproned landlady hospitably welcoming us at the door.

The house was neither picturesque nor old, but it promised comfort, and seemed likely to justify the encomiums of Anne’s friend and correspondent. Mrs. Stokes the landlady was openly proud of it, and showed us round expecting appreciation. The kitchen and offices occupied the lower floor, but we had a separate entrance through the garden wicket up steps to the verandah, our private portion of it, which was cut off from the other set of lodgings by a light railing thrown across. This second set was at present vacant, but would be occupied in another fortnight by two ladies, sisters, who came always at this time of year, bringing with them their own maid.

The attic rooms were also shown, though we were not intending to occupy them. My lame leg excused me from a further mounting of stairs, but Anne accompanied Mrs. Stokes aloft. The occupiers of both sets had an equal right to these stairs, and the attic accommodation was impartially divided, two falling to our lot, and two to that of the sisters and their servant.

They were airy rooms, Anne told me, and would make pleasant bedrooms, looking out through smaller windows on the same lovely view that we commanded on the lower floor. This was all that was said at the time, but later, when tea was spread and we were partaking of it, she told me more.

“People must have been here with children,” she said presently in an interval of filling my cup. “The attic over our bedroom has evidently been used as a nursery, for there are coloured pictures pasted on the wall, and a child’s bed is pushed into one corner. Mrs. Stokes said she would take it out if it was in our way.”

There was just the slightest sigh with this communication, and the least possible droop at the corners of Anne’s sensitive mouth, but enough to give me a clue to what was in her mind. I can often read Anne’s mind as plainly as the page of a book—though I do not tell her so; perhaps because of long association, to say nothing of affection. We two are singularly alone in the world, and so are drawn all the closer, each to each. We have been married rather more than eight years, and in our second year together we possessed, for a brief space of only weeks, a baby daughter. So brief a space that one might suppose both joy and grief would be easily forgotten; but those who so think, know little of a mother’s heart—at least, little of Anne’s. From the dear memory of that joy and that grief (the sword piercing her soul, as was foretold of another mother) comes the wistful interest she takes in all children. And I could divine her thought: “If only little Clarice had lived and had been with us here, the pictured attic would have been her nursery, and the little bed in the corner would have been ready made for her.” But of this I said nothing.

“Perhaps Mrs. Stokes’s own children sleep there when they are without lodgers,” I suggested, but Anne shook her head.

“No, for I asked the question. They have only three big boys, all in their teens. The eldest works on the farm, and the other two are away at school. None of the Stokes family sleep under this roof; a stable is converted into quarters for them, so that the house may be set apart as lodgings”; and again there came the slight and smothered sigh.

I should be giving a false impression if it were thought from this that there is anything dreary about Anne. No one is more resolutely cheerful, or more keenly and alertly practical, than this wife of mine. These inner feelings of hers, tender regrets and constant thoughts, have their own secret chamber in her mind, the door of which is shut and barred; a sacred threshold, which even I dare not openly approach. No more was said about the empty cot and the pictures, and that first evening of our stay at Deepdene passed delightfully amid country sights and sounds, and the sweet Devonshire air. Miss Sherwood’s recommendation was, we thought, justifying itself to the full.

And at night, when the veil of dimness, not quite darkness, was drawn over the garden and the hills, what a healing silence prevailed: bird notes stilled, and at last even the plaintive cry of a lamb which had wandered from its mother, satisfied and at rest. I slept profoundly, but presently what was this? Anne’s voice: Anne shaking me awake.

“Godfrey! Godfrey, listen! Do you hear?”

I was for the moment deaf and dazed with sleep.

“No,” I said. “What is it? What is the matter?”

“It is a child sobbing. A little child in trouble. A child that has been shut out. I cannot hear it and do nothing. Can you?” Anne was thrusting her feet into slippers, and was already arrayed in her dressing-gown—blue and white, the colours of the Virgin Mother. “I can’t make out where the sound comes from—whether it is overhead or out of doors. Listen, and you will hear it too. There are no words, only cries and sobs. I heard it again the instant before you awoke.”

I was out of bed by this time and broad awake. I heard no crying, but I did hear footsteps: a child’s pattering run across the floor overhead, once from end to end of the room, and then again in return.

“Now I know,” said Anne, quite composedly, proceeding to light a candle. “It is upstairs in the attic I told you of; the room like a nursery, which is over ours. I wonder what child it can be. Mrs. Stokes should have let us know. I am going up to see.”

That was so entirely Anne-like I was not surprised. She went out carrying the light, and I followed on to the landing in case I should be wanted. As I went, I heard again the pattering feet overhead, and I think Anne heard them too. I waited at the foot of the stairs, not wishing to affright the child by the sight of a grim soldier-man in pyjamas. No child, not even the most nervous, could be frightened at the sight of Anne.

Waiting there, I could be certain that no living soul came down the stairs. I heard Anne pass from room to room, and then she called to me.

“Godfrey, I wish you would come up here.”

I went up in the soft twilight that was not wholly dark, even in that enclosed place, entering where I saw her candle shine. She was in the attic with the pictured walls, sitting on the little bed, and her face was white and awe-stricken.

“I can’t find anything,” she said. “The rooms are all empty, and there is no place in which a child could be shut, I wish you would look too.”

Of course I looked with her, and, equally of course, our search was fruitless. Then I persuaded her to go back to our room and listen there, while I hurried on some clothes and made search round the house outside. I talked some nonsense about the way in which sounds reflect and echo, and the difficulty there is about locating their direction, especially at night; but I do not think she believed me: unconvinced myself, I could hardly expect to convince another. And I was privately certain I had heard the footsteps of a child, not echoed over floors from a distance, but distinctly overhead. There must be some way of getting up to those attics, and down from them, that we did not know.

But in the morning Mrs. Stokes could tell us nothing, and had no explanation to offer. No child could have got in without her knowledge. It must have been one out of the village wandering round outside, scared by the darkness, and afraid to go home because it had been threatened with the stick. That was how the good dame dismissed the matter, and we might have been satisfied about the crying, but not as to those footsteps overhead.

It will be well believed that I was eager to sample the fishing, and the next day saw us on the banks of the stream, Anne sitting near me with a book. But somehow in the week following she managed to catch cold, and after that I had for a while to pursue my sport alone, and she spent solitary hours at the Deepdene farm.

I think it was on the second day of her seclusion that she said to me when I came back in the evening: “I have seen the child.” I had better mention here that in the interval we had heard no more of the sobbing voice at night, nor of the footsteps overhead. Anne looked as if something had moved her profoundly, even to the shedding of tears.

“Did you find out whose child it is, and why it is here?”

“No. She did not speak, and it seems so odd that Mrs. Stokes does not know. I was on the landing when I saw her first, and she was running upstairs. There is no carpet on those stairs, and I heard quite plainly the patter of her feet. A little girl. I went up after her, and she ran straight into that room which was a nursery, the room with the pictures.”

“And you followed?”

“Yes, I followed, but she was not there. I was puzzled—almost frightened, and I went back again to the sitting-room. I think it must have been half an hour later when I saw her again. If you remember, it began to rain. It was so chilly, I was obliged to shut to the glass doors.”

“Yes?” I said. Anne had paused again, with that odd breathlessness which was new.

“She was out there on the verandah, and the rain was slanting in upon her. Such a pretty little girl, and about the age—” (I knew what Anne so nearly said, and why she checked herself and altered the phrase to “about six years old.” Clarice would have been six years old had she lived.) “Not a poor woman’s child. She had a pretty white frock on, worked cambric and lace, and a silk sash of a sort of geranium red. No cottagers’ child would be dressed so. And she had such an appealing little face, as if she was longing to be sheltered and comforted. It was raining, you know, all the time.”

“And what did you do?”

“Why of course I opened the window. I said, ‘Come in my dear, you will get wet.’ I held out my hand and she put hers into it—oh, such a cold little hand, as cold and soft as snow. I can feel the touch of it still. I drew her into the room. ‘We should be warm in here,’ I said. No, I’m not crying, Godfrey; not really crying; but there was something in her face that touched me: a sort of surprise, as if no one had ever welcomed or been kind to her before. I asked her where she lived, but she only made a sign and put a finger to her lips. She heard me—I am sure she heard me, but I cannot help fancying the poor child is dumb.

“She heard me, for when I said, ‘My darling, will you give me a kiss?’ she put up both her little arms, and her face was close to mine. I would have had that kiss, only just then that tiresome Mrs. Stokes knocked at the door; the butcher, it seemed, had called, and she wanted to know if we would take a joint. The instant there came the knock, the child slipped away out of my arms. I had left the window open behind us, and she was gone.”

“Mrs. Stokes did not see her?”

“No. She saw nothing, and could tell nothing; only I thought she looked a little odd when I was putting questions. I couldn’t help wondering if there was any secret about it which she was bound to keep.”

As the days went on, I began also to wonder this, and after a while that wonder shaped itself into action. But I anticipate.

That night we heard again the footsteps overhead, both of us heard them. It was still completely dark, and the rain, driven against our windows, was mixed with hail. The pattering steps crossed the floor above once, twice, and after an interval a third time. I was still awake, holding my breath to listen should they come again, when I heard another sound beside me. Anne was crying, very quietly, her face buried in the pillow so that all sound should be hushed. I put out my hand to touch her.

“What is the matter?”

“Oh Godfrey—oh Godfrey, that poor child,” she sobbed. “It is so sad for her to be up there all alone in the cold and darkness, and only six years old. Six years old! Clarice would have been just that age. Can it be Clarice trying to come back to us? I felt as if she were Clarice when I held her in my arms.”

I was not surprised. It was as if I had seen the thought taking shape, somehow as crystals form. But what could I do but dub it foolishness, born out of the sweet fond folly of a mother’s love?

We heard no more that night. Next morning, without telling Anne of my intention, I went up to examine the attics for the first time by daylight. The rooms over ours were vacant, and in the one with pictured walls the little bed was gaunt and undraped, with its stripped mattress and uncovered pillow. There was no closet or recess in which it was possible for even the smallest child to hide, and as the walls were of thin modern building, secret entrances and passages were out of the question here. I was to hear again later of that little bed. Nothing more passed between us touching that strange fancy of Anne’s, the confession I had surprised from her in the night, until she said in a sort of shamefaced fashion (but again there were tears in her eyes):

“I made a pretence to Mrs. Stokes to-day; I hope it was not untrue enough to be wrong. I said we might be expecting a child visitor: we might expect any visitors you know, and some of our friends have children. And I asked her to have the pictured attic put ready, and the bed made up—in case. She did it this morning, and I did not want you to go up there and be surprised. It does not look nearly so miserable now the furniture is in order, and sheets and blankets are on the little bed. Any one who was up there in the night, and who was cold and tired, could lie down.”

What was I to say to this, but again that it was folly?—but I could not charge Anne with folly when she looked as she did then. And hardly a night passed without the pattering footsteps overhead.

The parish to which Deepdene belonged was a scattered one; the church was a long half-mile away, and a mere cluster of cottages called itself the village. That cluster, however, contained the post-office, and the inevitable general shop, which included among its wares a few toys of the simpler sort. One day Anne returned from a post-office errand the purchaser of a doll, pretty of head and face, but with its nudity barely covered by a scant chemise of waxed muslin. She said nothing of her intention, but for a day or two that doll lay about in our sitting-room, while her skilful fingers were busied shaping for it more befitting garments—pink and frilly, and with a pinafore of lace. Then it disappeared, but I did not remark, nor for a while did she explain, not until I asked her a week later if she had seen the child again.

“She often comes when I am alone, peeping in at me from the verandah, was the answer. “And she was pleased when I gave her the doll. She took it from me and kissed me, but still she does not speak.”

She took the doll! With this the mystery grew. How could an immaterial creature, one we dimly guessed to be spirit and not flesh, accept a material gift, removing it when she withdrew? Yet, Anne had given her the toy in exchange for a kiss, and the doll was certainly gone.

Next day when I came in from the stream, Anne was out, and some impulse urged me to go up again to the attic, the attic prepared for our supposed guests, which no one had arrived to occupy. It was vacant as before, but a couple of small vases held fresh flowers, of Anne’s filling doubtless, and on the white pillow of the little bed there lay the pink-frocked doll.

I was beginning to be anxious about Anne. There was a change in her I did not like to see; a feverish spot on her cheek, and, slight as she was before, she had fallen away in the few weeks of our sojourn to be very thin. She laughed over it herself, and said her gowns must be taken in; but to me it seemed no laughing matter. Was vitality being drawn from her for the shaping of the child apparition in material form; and, if so, what would be the effect upon her health? I am not instructed in such matters, but I vaguely recalled some of the explanations put forward—material forms built up from the medium, and life-substance drawn away. Ought I to make some excuse, and cut short our stay at Deepdene?

That was one question, but another followed it. Now that she fancied the appearance might be that of her dead baby, our little Clarice, would Anne be content to go?

Our little Clarice! Mine as well as hers; the father’s tie as valid surely as the mother’s, if not so close and fond. If to one of us, why not to both? But in the end I could no longer say this. Though only once, she was visible to me too.

Was it a projection from Anne’s mind influencing mine? I have wondered since; but these are questions I can only indicate: they are beyond my power to answer.

We were sitting in the early twilight, the lamp unlit, as Anne had a headache: her head often ached in these days. The glass doors were open, and I dimly saw, first a glimpse of white on the verandah, misty and indefinite, which presently resolved itself into the figure Anne had described to me—the dainty figure of a girl-child in white frock and red silk sash, a cloud of dusky hair hanging about her little head. She was peeping in at me and drawing back; then with more confidence peeping again. Anne took no notice; she was, I think, asleep. I remained motionless, scarcely daring to breathe, lest I should startle this exquisite small creature, as one might fear to affright a bird. Presently she ventured as far into the room as where Anne was sitting, and stood resting her little elbows on her friend’s knee, and looking me straight in the face.

I was able now to understand Anne’s meaning about the child’s pathetic eyes with their wistfulness of appeal, and also to appreciate something more: something that Anne herself had not noticed, was not likely to notice, as people seldom see likenesses to themselves. It was very marked— the eyes, the brow, the hair: here was Anne as she must have been a quarter of a century ago. Could I doubt that it was our child; and did a longing for the earthly parents’ love draw her down to us, away from her safe and happy cradling in the satisfaction of Heaven?

I was still gazing when my wife moved and sighed, waking from her sleep; and the childish figure was gone in a flash, too abrupt for any real withdrawal. In spite of the evidence of those material-sounding footsteps—in spite of the handling of the doll—I never again thought of her as compacted of ordinary mundane flesh and blood.

I had seen her with my own eyes, and I could no longer doubt. But there was a point which I still desired to probe, despite that evidence of the resemblance. I wanted to find out whether the halfhouse we were renting could be haunted, and whether the child-ghost had been seen or heard by other people than ourselves.

It would be a difficult matter to ascertain, for in defence of their property against depreciation, very good people have before now thought it hardly a sin to pervert the truth. But I reflected that the clergyman of the parish had no interest in letting Deepdene. I would go in the first place to him, and then see what I could make of sounding Mrs. Stokes.

My errand to Mr. Fielding bore only negative fruit. He was a man advanced in years, a gentleman and a scholar, and he received me with suave politeness; if he could serve me in any way he would be glad. But when I put my question, I could see that a faint flicker of amusement underlay his grave attention; he, the minister of the Unseen, was wholly sceptical as to its demonstration. I said very little, merely asking did the house where we were lodging bear the reputation of being haunted?

We—I, that is, for I left Anne out of it—had heard sounds that could not be explained, and seen a small figure that appeared to vanish. I should like to know whether it was a matter of common report.

The answer to this was No. There might be some vulgar story of the sort, it was just possible, but it had never reached his ears. Had it done so, he would have discredited it. I would readily see on reflection how easy it was to mistake sounds and their origin; and not only did our ears trick us in such matters, but also our vision. A supposed phantom generally meant that the percipient would do well to resort to an oculist.

I did not argue the point. As I told him, I only wished to ascertain whether there was, or was not, any local tradition. I wished him good morning, and my next resort was to Mrs. Stokes.

Here I was met by indignation, and the good woman was not easy to appease. I was interested, I told her, I was not objecting; rather than otherwise, it increased my interest in Deepdene. I only wished to know if any of the other lodgers—and doubtless in the course of the year she would have many—had mentioned to her any similar sights or sounds.

Her first answer was a flat negative; but there was, I thought, an uneasy consciousness in the eye that did not meet mine as before, and presently modification came. For her own part she knew nothing, as she never slept in the house herself, nor did Stokes pere [2], nor the boys—(was this, it occurred to me to wonder, a suspicious circumstance?). She had never seen or heard anything “worse than herself,” and I might take that as on her Bible oath; but, now she came to think, some of the lodgers had mentioned a running about on those upper floors, happening when they had the rats in at threshing time. They got some virus when they heard of it, and there were no more complaints after that was put down. If I had been disturbed, no doubt the rats were getting in again. But, certain sure, there were no ghosts. I wondered, and I wonder still, whether some houses have a psychical atmosphere which can be variously moulded and used; the child employing it to approach us, and the spiritual environment of others putting it to a quite separate use. I think this is not impossible, but as to the truth of the matter, who can say?

As I have shown, I gained nothing by my inquiries, and this is nearly all I have to tell. The end of our sojourn followed quickly. I remember once discussing psychical matters with a friend. He was a believer, and he said to me: “I always know how to distinguish a true ghost-story from a faked one. The true ghost-story never has any point, and the faked one dare not leave it out.” This ghost-story of mine, though not faked, has a point, but it is one the ordinary reader would overlook, and I do not insist on it. I am abundantly content to be disbelieved, and Anne is content too.

It was Anne’s health which brought our stay at Deepdene to an abrupt close. I think I have said that for some time I had noticed she was looking ill, and wondered vaguely whether her vitality could be drained away to supply material for those manifestations we had witnessed and heard. It was, however, no case of gradually lessened strength, but a threatened crisis which demanded prompt attention—surgeon’s investigation and a nursing-home. So, in figurative language, we struck our tents, seeking another encampment, and Deepdene knew us no more.

H. D. Everett (1851 – 1923)

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1. £.s.d. (or £sd) is the abbreviation for pounds, shillings, and pence. Pre-decimalization, this was the currency system used in Britain. Pounds (£) should require no explanation. A shilling was worth twelve pence, and pence (singular: penny) was the basic unit of currency. The system was quite different from the one presently in use because there were 12 pence in a shilling and 20 shillings (or 240 pence) in a pound.

2. Pere is the French word for father. When Everett wrote “Anne’s Little Ghost”, it was quite fashionable to insert French words into English texts and conversations.