By John B. Manbeck
a Brooklyn historian
Special to INBrooklyn
My grandfather, John Cahill, lived at 250 Keap Street in Williamsburg. He died in 1909. In his lifetime, he was a reporter for The Brooklyn Times. In my basement, I found a small treasure trove of yellowing stories typed on foolscap paper. Among the news stories were a few creative pieces. Newspapers sometimes ran them as feature stories, such as those written by Mark Twain. “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” comes to mind.
This is my grandfather’s “ghost story” from the 19th century, which he called “The Engineer’s Watch.” What could be better for Halloween?
Once I called on William Blacklock, the chief engineer of the Ramsay Works, and surprised him gazing at a battered old watch, his pipe neglected and the fire in the grate fast dying. He raised his head quickly, put the watch in a wooden box and closed it. On the cover I saw a darkly printed legend beginning “In Memoriam.” With the license of old friendship, I demanded to know what it was. He looked at me gravely, shaking his head.
“If I told you,” he replied, “I’d get a reputation for yarn-spinning. And, as the story isn’t very pleasant, I’d rather not tell you.”
Later in the evening, however, the old fellow changed his mind. I told him I was sorry I had asked, but he had already begun, staring past me through the open window.
This was his story.
I was working for my engineering certificate, and, as an apprentice had been firing in a plant in the outskirts of a small town in western Pennsylvania. The engineer was Joe Perry, an old schoolmate of mine, who had picked me up in Scranton and got me the job. This day we had been kept so late that it was half-past ten before the machinery was trim for the morning, our fire banked, and we were on the way home.
Considering our long walk, we took a path by cutting across fields back of the factory. We jumped a wall beside the road and set off through the high grass. The night was lowering and still as a corpse, with a black, heavy sky. We chatted about the day’s doings for a while, until there seemed nothing more to talk about and we tramped along silently.
Then we both began whistling, each on his own hook, and if mine sounded as dismal as Perry’s, it was almost uncanny. I felt chilled and shaken, starting at every grunt from the frogs in the pond nearby, and once I wheeled around in a way a man will when hurrying late at night in a lonely street. I shook myself in contempt of the folly of imagining there could be any soft, slow footsteps following us in such an unfrequented place and I glanced at Perry to see if he had noticed.
But he was going with his head down, still whistling in a stuttering manner. Presently, he tried humming a tune, but it too finally frazzled out and the dead, dark stillness of the open country took us in.
I began to ache for the wall on the other side of the field, stopping myself more than once from wishing we had kept to the road. As I stepped off a plank laid over a pool, I thought I heard again that soft, dragging footfall, and I jumped aside with my heart banging and waves of real terror running to my brain. I was fairly struck by a freezing, windy fog that passed, leaving me trembling all over with cold. Then Perry almost screamed and fell against me.
The mist and the strange humor I was in had so thoroughly frightened me that he knocked me over. I shook him off and asked what was the matter.
“Oh, it’s all right,” said he, with a long breath, “but he came so sudden I didn’t know what he was.” This brought me almost to a frenzy. “Who?” I said. “Are you crazy, man?” Perry looked at me in astonishment and pointed ahead. “Good heavens!” he said. “Don’t you see that fellow standing near the apple tree? He pulled out his watch and shoved it almost in my eyes. Look, he’s turning now. I can see the time. It’s nine o’clock.”
I followed Perry’s finger and grew dizzy at what I saw. It was not a man, but something horrible and awesome. The mist and the darkness made the tree itself indistinct but what was there was plain as sunshine. As I’m living and believe in the preservation of the soul, a long bar of white light was thrown against the tree trunk and at the end of it shone a human hand. In the fingers was a big bull’s eye watch with the hands at nine o’clock. I gasped for breath and staggered. With my eyes fastened on this ghastly sight, I saw it slowly fade into the fog, the watch the last to go. Perry spoke after a while and though his tone was flippant, it was a relief to hear it.
“He’s gone, isn’t he?” he said. “But for the life of me, I can’t make out where. I had my eyes glued on him one minute and he was gone the next. What the blazes can a man be doing out here at this time of night acting in that fashion? It almost makes me think I’ve got the horrors.”
“Did you see a man — a whole man?” I asked, my senses almost leaving.
Perry looked at me queerly and stepped away. “A whole man? What the devil do you mean? What else could I see?”
I caught his arm, begging him to stay with me. I mumbled that I didn’t know what I was saying and succeeded in pacifying him,
“What a white-faced chap he was,” Perry went on after a few minutes, apparently quite over his shock. “I’m going to ask him what’s the matter. Come along.”
With that he was off. I followed him, full of a greater dread of being left behind. After a hard run, he stopped, his breath nearly gone.
“I’m beginning to think my eyes are going back on me. Well,” he said, “we would have caught him by now if he was anywhere around, wouldn’t we? Still, I could have sworn I saw him. You did, didn't you?”
“N-n-no,” I stuttered, “I didn’t see any man.”
“Well, I’ll be hanged,” said Perry in amazement. “What did you run after him for? What’s the matter with you anyhow? Either you or I is surely cracked!”
I held my head down and began walking back, for the run had taken us something out of our way. Perry followed, saying things. At last we found the cow-path again. The sight of the stone wall relieved me and I had quickened my steps to reach it when once more I was brought to a stop.
First I saw a splotch on the wall, blacker than the night, that I took for a crow or bat. Then came the light and finally the watch, larger and more shiny than before, pointing the same time, nine o’clock. Perry turned and said quietly, “I thought I wasn’t wrong; it’s the same fellow I saw back there. He wants to speak to me about the watch. What the devil does he mean?”
He stepped forward a few paces and began talking to-nothing. The arm had dropped into the ground before my eyes.
“Well,” he asked, “what do you want?” Then he stood stiff, his mouth open. “Great God, Bill!” he cried. “He’s gone. The minute I spoke, he-he….” He caught my arm fiercely. “What did he do? You saw him. Tell me.”
I shook him off savagely, My mind was like a rushing flood with one idea trying to come out on top — that this must not be real. That Perry had both times seen a man while I had seen only the hand, made me think that daylight would explain it all.
“Let’s go,” I said. “You must be drunk to talk about seeing a man when there isn’t one within a mile. Quit this.”
Perhaps if I had owned that I too had seen the thing, we might have taken its meaning. And yet in all probability we would not. With this I tried to console whenever I accuse myself. Perry was a man inclined to ridicule the supernatural and scoffed even at the temerity of the soul. I hated the fun-poking of the boarding-house, and the affectation of it kept me quiet.
Perry eyed me silently and pulled himself together, muttering. When we leaped the wall, he scanned its length uneasily. I didn’t stop and he hurried after, trying to talk about the matter. I answered curtly and he gave up.
He was the most light-hearted fellow you ever saw, so that when we came to the boarding house, he seemed to have forgotten everything and laughed and talked with the boys as if nothing had happened. I went to bed shortly and hardly slept a wink. Whether or not Perry worried I couldn’t say, but to me his laugh did not ring true and his eyes followed me until I went upstairs.
The next morning we left with two of the office hands who had to work a little extra time, and nothing was said about the night before. As we passed the field I noticed Joe glancing at it in the same manner that I was. We both looked the other way.
Things went along much as usual at the factory until about half-past eight, when the manager sent for me to come to the office. This was in a small brick building, some distance from the engine house. I left Joe sitting in his chair, passing a joke about the manager intending to appoint me his successor. It wasn’t an everyday matter for me to be called to the office.
Our boiler was a tubular affair without a safety valve, of an out-of-date pattern even then. We had always been careful not to have a heavy fire under her, and kept a sharp eye on the steam gauge. But neither Joe nor I had been in our usual spirits that day and this may account for the accident that occurred.
The manager had just finished what he had to say to me when the boiler blew up, the shock threw us off our feet. I knew what had happened and ran for the engine house. I found poor Perry lying near it, flat on his back and more terribly hurt than I ever want to see anybody again. As I leaned over him, my old watch slipped from my pocket striking the ground face upward. Perry was not dead and his eyes opened and fell on the white dial and big black hands. Think how a man can look when his time is set before him. So Perry looked.
“Will, Will,” he groaned in his last breath. “Look — nine o’clock, nine o’clock. You can see that the watch is stopped at nine o’clock. It stopped then.”
By J.L. Cahill
© 2009 John B. Manbeck
manbeck@brooklyneagle.net
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