On the Night of the Seventh Moon

Franz told me he had made it himself. He looked after himself. He never went to the mainland; his provisions were sent over once a week by the Family, and sometimes he saw no one for weeks on end. The boys visited the island regularly once a month and every now and then when there was a burial the body was brought over by night and laid in its grave.

He was gardener and stonemason. In the old days it had been easier. He had helped his father; his mother had died when he was quite a boy.

Women didn’`t take kindly to Graber Inset. He himself had married a wife. He had gone to the mainland to find her, he said sadly. He brought her back and waited for his son. But there was no son. The island gave her the creeps, she said. She couldn’'t live there; and one night when he was asleep she crept out and rowed herself over to the mainland, and in the morning he awoke to find her gone. She was never heard of since, and he was unable to take another wife-even if he could have found one to share his lonely life on the Island of Graves.

I was glad when we were in the boat again. There was something uncanny about Graber Insel and I couldn’'t stop thinking of the old man as Charon, the ferryman of the dead.

That night I awoke with a start. I had dreamed a great deal in the last eight years but never more vividly than since I had come to Klocksburg except of course in the months directly following my adventures.

This time I had believed I was on the Island of Graves and in that avenue I found an inscription on which was written Maximilian Count Lokenberg, and as I watched the marble slab was lifted and Maximilian stepped out of the tomb. He came to me and took me in his arms and his embrace was a frozen one. I cried out: “You are dead?” and woke up.

I had thrown off all the bedclothes. I was shivering. The window was wide open to the mountain air. I lighted my candle. I knew I shouldn’`t sleep for some time.

It was all coming back so vividly to me, as it always did after dreams, and with it that aching sadness with which I had become familiar. It brought with it a fearful sense of loss from which I believed I should never recover. There could never be anyone in my life to take his place.

Then I heard footsteps on the landing outside my room. I looked at my watch. It was just after one o’clock. Who could be walking about at this time? There were only the children and two maids in the fortress, the rest of the household had their quarters in the Randhausburg.

The steps were stealthy as though someone was carefully picking a way towards my room. They stopped. I saw my door handle slowly turn. I remembered that I had locked the door. Since my adventure in the mist I had made a habit of this and even at home I did it.

“Who is that?” I asked. There was no answer. I listened, then I heard the footsteps going on. They were mounting the stairs, I believed. I felt the goose pimples rising on my skin; if I was right and those footsteps were mounting the stairs they could only be going to one place the room in the turret -the haunted room.

The two maids in the fortress and the children were all afraid of the haunted room. So . who could it be who was now stealthily making for it?

My curiosity was greater than my fear. Since I had come here the conviction had grown up within me that I was going to make some great discovery. I could not help feeling that I was a stranger to myself, and I must be so to a certain extent because I did not know whether I had actually lived through the greatest adventure of my life or dreamed it. I knew that until I could satisfy myself as to what really happened on the night of the Seventh Moon, I could never understand myself and therefore never know real peace of mind.

Why investigating uncanny footsteps on the stairs should help me, I did not know. AU I was aware of was that these pine forests were the scene of my lost six days and somewhere here I would find the secret.

So I must leave nothing unexplored, however remote it might seem to my personal affairs.

I hastily wrapped a dressing-gown about myself and picked up a candle; I unlocked the door; I looked out along the landing to the winding staircase. I could distinctly hear the footsteps on the stairs above.

I sped up there, holding my candle as firmly as my trembling hand would allow. Someone was there. Could it be the ghost of the woman whose lover had deceived her and who had thrown herself down from the turret windows?

The candle light flickered on the spiral stone stairs which were worn in the middle by hundreds of years of use. I was almost at the turret.

There was the door. My heart leapt with fear, the candle tipped sideways and almost went out. A figure was standing at the door of the haunted room.

I saw a hand reach out to turn the knob.

Then I realized who it was.

“Fritzi!” I whispered, using the pet diminutive.

He did not look round.

I went up to him, all fear evaporated.

“Mutti,” he whispered. He had turned to me and seemed to stare without seeing. Then I realized.

Fritz was walking in his sleep.

I took his hand firmly in mine; I led him down the stairs and back to his room. I put him into his bed, tucked him up, and kissed him lightly on the forehead.

I whispered: “Everything is all right, Fritzi. I’m here to look after you.”

He whispered: “Muttit Meine Mutti.

I sat by his bed. He was very quiet and after a while appeared to be sleeping peacefully. I went to my own room. I was very cold so I got into bed and tried to warm myself.

I slept little for the rest of that night; I kept straining my ears for the sound of footsteps. In the morning I decided to talk to Frau Graben.

“He was always a nervous child,” she said, beaming at me. In her sitting-room she kept a fire going most of the time and invariably had a kettle singing on it. She also kept what she called a stockpot and this provided a most appetizing-smelling soup.

She made tea for me. She always did this with a kind of smug delight as though to say, “See how I look after you?”

As we sat sipping the brew I was telling her about last night.

“It’s not the first time he’s walked in his sleep,” she said.

“It’s dangerous, I should think.”

“They say that people who walk in their sleep rarely hurt themselves.

There was one of the maids . so the story goes . who got out of one of the windows and walked along the parapet of the tower without coming to any harm. “

I shivered.

“No, ” Pritzi’s never come to any harm sleepwalking. They| say they step over anything that’s in their way. ” | ” But tie must be in a disturbed state to sleepwalk, don’t| you think? ” ^ ” Poor Fritzi, he’s the sensitive one. He feels things morel than the other two. ” :| ” Yesterday they took me to the Island of Graves. “

“Oh, that upset him. It always does. I don’t like them going there, but don’t like to stop it. After all, it’s right they shoulct| respect their dead mothers.” | “I think it’s a pity there has to be so much talk, about the| haunted room. The fact that it’s kept locked makes then al imagine all sorts of horrors behind those closed doors. Have^ the children ever been in the room?” No. ” ;^ ” It’s do wonder they’re overawed. The fact that Fritz made| his way up there shows that it’s on his mind and he connects! it in some way with his dead mother, because he was at the Island of Graves yesterday. “

He seems to have been better since you came. Learning English agrees with him. Or perhaps it’s you. He seems toj have taken a real fancy to you-and you to him. ” She gave me that rather sly look of hers.

“I reckon he’s your favourite among the children. I’m glad, for Fritzi’s sake. “

“I’m interested in him. He’s a clever boy.”