Imray Came Back. Part 1

One day Imray was there, in the little town in the north of India where he lived and worked, and the next day he was not. He disappeared. One day he was with his friends, having a drink at the bar, laughing with them, friendly, and then the next morning he was not at his office, his house was quiet, and nobody could find him.

‘Where did he go?’ his friends asked each other at the bar. ‘And why so suddenly? Why did he say nothing to us?’

They looked in the rivers near the town, and along the roads, but they found nothing. They telephoned all the hotels in the nearest big city, but nobody there knew anything about Imray. Days went by and Imray did not come back. His friends in the town slowly stopped talking about him. They sold his old car, his guns and all his other things, and his boss wrote a letter to Imray’s mother, back in England, and told her that her son was dead. Disappeared.

Imray’s house stood unlived-in and quiet for three or four long, hot summer months. The hottest weather was finished when my friend Strickland, a policeman, moved to live in it. People said that Strickland was a very strange man but I always went to see him and have dinner with him when I was in the town working for a day or two. He had one or two other friends too; he liked his guns, he liked fishing and he liked his dog – a very big dog, called Tietjens. Tietjens always went to work with Strickland and often helped him in his police work, so the people of the town were quite afraid of her. Tietjens moved into the house with Strickland and she took the room next to Strickland’s, where she had her food and where she slept.

One day, some weeks after Strickland went to live in Imray’s house, I arrived in the town at about five o’clock one afternoon and found that there were no rooms at the hotel, so I went round to Strickland’s place.

Tietjens met me at the door, showing her teeth, not moving. She knew me quite well by this time but she did not want me to go in. She waited for Strickland to come and say a friendly ‘Hello’ to me before she moved away. Strickland was happy to give me a room for two or three days, and I went to get my bag from my car.

It was a nice house, with a big garden. Inside, there were eight rooms, all white and clean. Strickland gave me a good room and at six o’clock his Indian servant, Bahadur Khan, brought us an early dinner.

‘I must go back to the office station for an hour or two after dinner, I’m afraid. My men are questioning a man down there, and I want to know what answers they’re getting,’ Strickland said.

He left me at the house with a good cigar, and with Tietjens, the dog. It was a very hot, late-summer evening. Soon after the living-room watched the rain and thought about my family and friends back home in England. Tietjens came and sat next to me and put her head on my lag, looking sad. The room was dark behind me and the only noise was the noise of the rain driving down out of the night sky.

Suddenly, without a sound, Strickland’s servant was there, standing next to me. His coat and shirt were wet from the rain. ‘Sorry, sir. There’s man here, sir. He’s asking to see somebody,’ the servant said.

I asked him to bring a light and went to the front door, but when the light came, there was nobody there. When I turned, I thought I saw a face looking in through one of the windows from the garden. It disappeared quickly.

‘Perhaps he went round to the back door,’ I said to the servant, so we went through the living-room and the quiet, dark kitchen to the back door. But there was nobody there. I went back to my chair and my thoughts by the window, not very happy with Strickland’s servant and not very happy about the face at the window, the strange visitor in the rain. I took some sugar with me to give to Tietjens, but she was out in the garden, standing in the rain, and did not want to come inside. She looked frightened, I thought.

Some time later Strickland arrived home, very wet, and the first thing he asked was: ‘Any visitors?’

I told him about the disappearing visitor in the rain. ‘I thought perhaps he had something important to tell you,’ I said, ‘but then he ran away without giving his name.’

At nine o’clock he said he was tired. I was tired too, so we got up to go to bed. Tietjens was outside in the rain, very wet. Strickland called her again and again, but she did not want to come into the house.

‘She does this every evening now,’ he said sadly. ‘I can’t understand it. She’s god a good, warm room in here, but she doesn’t come inside and sleep in it. She started doing this soon after we came to live in this place. Let’s leave her. She can sleep out there if she wants to.’ But I knew he was not happy to leave her outside in the rain.

The rain started and stopped again all night, but Tietjens stayed outside. She slept near my bedroom window and I heard her moving about. I slept very lightly and I had bad dreams. In my half-sleep I dream that somebody was calling to me in the night, asked me to come to them, to help them. Then I woke up, cold with fear, and found there was nobody there. Once in the night I looked out of the window and saw the big dog out there in the rain, with the hair on her neck and back standing up and a frightened, angry look on her face. I slept again but woke up suddenly when somebody tried to open the door of my room. They did not come in but walked on through the house. Later, I thought I heard the sound of something crying. I ran through to Strickland’s room, thinking he was ill or that he wanted my help, but he laughed at my fears and told me to go back to bed. I did not sleep again after that. I listened to the rain and waited for the first light of morning.

I stayed in the house with Strickland and his dog for two more days. Tietjens was quite happy inside the house all day, but as soon as night came she moved out into the garden and stayed there. I understood. I was very happy in the house in daytime, too, but in the evening and at night I did not like it. There was something very strange about the place. I heard the noise of feet on the floor, but there was nobody there. I heard doors open and close, I heard the chairs move and I thought somebody watched me from the darkest corners of the rooms when I walked round the house.

At the dinner on the third evening I talked to Strickland. ‘I’m going to the hotel tomorrow – they’ve got a room there now. I’m very sorry but I can’t stay here. It’s the noises in the house, you see. I’m not getting any sleep at night and I can’t work well in the day because I’m too tired.’

He listened carefully and I knew he understood. Strickland is a very understanding man. ‘Stay with me another day or two, my friend,’ he said. ‘Please don’t go. Wait and see what happens. I know what you’re talking about. I know there’s something very strange about this house, and I want to know what is it. I think Tietjens knows – she doesn’t like coming after dark…’