“PUT YOUR BACK INTO IT!”
The phantom of Toerning Mill
David Elvar
(An Interludes Book)
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2009 David Elvar
Smashwords Edition License Notes
Thank you for downloading this free e-book. It may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes provided it remains in its complete and original form, and that the author and Smashwords are given full acknowledgement.
Author’s note: Toerning Mill actually exists and this short story is inspired by a long-standing legend associated with the place. You will find it near the village of Hammelev in the South Jutland area of Denmark, between the towns of Vojens and Haderslev. It is well worth a visit, set as it is in a rural tranquillity that can only be described as stunning. Trust me.
~oOo~
Mark well this tale. Let it serve as warning, for such indeed do I intend it.
My name is Hans Henrik Fromm. As any who know me will tell you, I am a wealthy man, my fortune made from honest dealing in corn. On the night of this tale, I was travelling between Christiansfeld and Noerre Hostrup, intending to further my business interests by engaging a new customer of whom I had had good report.
It is a long journey, and though my private carriage is comfortable, it is not swift, and horses and driver would need to be rested at some point along the road. So it was that, as the evening sun hung low in the sky, we clattered into the courtyard of a wayside inn, to find food and lodging for the night.
‘Ho, there!’ my driver shouted as he reined us to a stop, and two boys came running from the stables to begin the unharnessing of the horses before leading them away to their own well-earned rest. My driver, meanwhile, was already leaping down from his perch and opening my door.
‘I know this place, sir,’ he said as I stepped down. ‘The beds are soft and the food, while not the best to be had, will fill the belly to its content.’
‘It is for but one night, Nis,’ I replied, ‘and man and belly can then endure what may be thrown at them. See that the horses are well cared for, there’s a good fellow, then see to your own needs, for I would have all three of you refreshed and rested for the morrow.’
‘That I will, sir,’ he grinned as he slammed and secured the carriage door. ‘And I will bid you a good night.’
I nodded acknowledgement of his good wishes then turned to look upon what was to be my home for the night. If the legend writ large above the door was to be believed, this was the Toerning Inn. It looked a sound enough place, being stoutly built of red brick and slate roof, and looking out over the most pleasant aspect of its own lake. But as I gazed upon it, I felt a slight shudder, as though some unnameable fear had brushed my soul and passed on into the evening air. I took little notice of it, thinking it but a momentary chill, for though it was still high summer, the day was indeed drawing to its close.
So lightly was it dismissed, with such ease did I merely shrug it away and make for the alehouse door.
Nis was right: the meal was plain but wholesome, being a simple plate of mutton and potatoes. But it was filling and was helped down by a large mug of a local ale that was most passable.
So it was that I sat at my ease, my plate pushed back on the table, my hand resting loose round a second mug of an ale that was growing more excellent with each swig.
I had few companions and none, it seemed, willing to engage me in light-hearted discourse. At the next table, an old farmhand staring into his mug, his face weathered, his hands callused, his eyes sleepy and doubtless drifting towards thoughts of bed. Across from me, two younger men quietly playing dice, their expressions switching between expectation and satisfaction with each throw. None were interested in me, a stranger in their midst, one of many who doubtless came and went, passing this way but once with neither thought nor need of return.
So I sat there alone, my own eyelids growing heavy, for the day had been long and the ale strong, and I was perhaps too ready for the room that I knew had been prepared for me. But the night was still young and I had no mind to pass it in solitude just yet. I just sat there. At peace with the world. At one with my contentment. It was an illusion, one that was to be shattered all too soon.
I remember the door of the inn slamming open. Then someone shouting ‘Ho! Landlord!’—and he looking up, startled.
A man lurched in, hauling in his wake another. And attached to this second, a third. And I saw that these first and last were not two parts of a drunken trio but rather the support and succour of the second, as though they were holding him up, so much a wreck of a man did he seem. There was need here, any could see it.
The landlord rushed from his refuge behind the bar. ‘What has happened here?’ he was demanding. Then, as he peered more closely at this poor unfortunate: ‘Why, it’s old man Jensen’s lad. What’s happened to him?’
‘The post,’ the third breathed in hushed terror. ‘He tried rocking the post.’
Suddenly, all in that place were staring at these three in new wonder—my dozing farmhand, my two gambling friends, all were fixed upon them in wide-eyed disbelief. The landlord broke the spell with a single command.
‘Into the back room with him! I’ll bring him something presently!’
They hustled him forward, this wretched figure of a man, half-dragging him through a curtained doorway and out of sight. As for my companions—and I glanced at them in turn—they seemed troubled not one whit by this strange turn of events: with sighing and shaking of heads, they merely turned away again, settled back into ale and dice. But I was not so easily satisfied. I hailed the landlord. He shuffled up to my table, half-expecting to be asked, I was sure, for more than just ale.
‘Is there something I can get you, sir?’ he said uncertainly.
‘Perhaps,’ I replied easily. ‘That man, who was he?’
‘He…’ A hesitation, as though deciding how much to give away. ‘…he is a local farmhand, sir. No one of consequence.’
‘He seemed somewhat in distress,’ I persisted.
‘Too much ale, I think, sir. Nothing more.’
‘And yet you had him taken into your back room where you would “bring him something presently”, as I recall you saying. Do you normally treat your drunken guests with such consideration? And with more ale?’
He didn’t answer. Trapped he was, but more by his own actions than any art of mine.
‘There is a tale to be had here, I think,’ I went on, ‘and I would have it from you, whether willingly or no.’
‘Perhaps you will, sir,’ he said finally. ‘But I would counsel you to leave well alone in this instance, for it is a tale beyond bearing. Here, let me refresh your mug.’
‘I prefer a clear head for the hearing of stories,’ I said, holding up a warning hand, ‘and I will hear this one. Or perhaps you would prefer that the events of this night were broadcast abroad, for my business interests take me far and wide, and it would then perhaps be better for you to give account to one man rather than many.’
He took a moment to reflect upon this prospect then was nodding resignedly. ‘As you will, sir. A moment, if you please, to settle my other customers and I shall be back.’
I accepted this graciously and he left. I settled back in my seat, content with my small victory, and waited.
He returned not in a moment but some minutes later, bearing a jug of ale and another mug. As he sat and refilled my mug and filled his own to his content, he said nothing. He was reluctant to be doing this, I knew, but little choice in the matter did he have. He took a long draught of ale, wiped his sleeve across his mouth and began.
‘The young man you saw being brought in,’ he said, ‘his name is Niels Jensen. As I told you, he works on one of the farms in these parts, and he young and foolish, young and very foolish.’
‘This concerns this…this post his companions spoke of,’ I said.
He nodded slowly. ‘Look out your window and you will see it, jutting up from the lake there.’
I looked: there was indeed such a post, standing perhaps a metre proud of the water. It looked innocent enough. And yet, there was something about it, something almost…I felt again that shudder, and I dragged my gaze away only with some difficulty.
‘So what of it?’ I said. ‘What dreadful meaning attaches to it?’
He looked down, his eyes closed, his face heavy. ‘It is a curse we have lived with, this past century and more, sir,’ he said. ‘That post holds down the ghost of one Peter Christian Holm, one-time administrator of the mill here and the surrounding farms.’
‘Holds down the ghost!’ I repeated, aghast. ‘But how? And why?’
‘Let me tell you the story, sir. Let me take you back into our past...’
What he told me need not be repeated in detail here, save to say that it appeared this peaceful village of Toerning was not always so, and this was due in no small part to this Peter Christian Holm. Indeed, the picture my landlord painted was of a most unpleasant man.
It is said that what sets us above animals is a measure of civilised behaviour, of compassion and consideration for one’s fellow man. But Holm, it seemed, was bereft of these, of even the most basic tenets of the decency that define both us as a species and the society we have contrived to build for ourselves. By such standards, Holm was not human.
If there was profit to be had from selling short, he would sell short. If there was an extra hour’s labour to be had from squeezing a tenant farmer, he would squeeze. If there was a court case to be won by the telling of lies, he would tell lies.
And many were the court cases brought against him, mainly by disgruntled tenant farmers no longer willing to accept his tyranny. One was brought because (and this does not bear believing) he beat farmers for refusing to enclose common land for his own personal use, land that was there for the benefit of all. He won, partly by lying, mainly by bribing many to speak on his behalf. It was to be a familiar pattern in the years to come.
The miller had cause to know this more than most, perhaps. He objected to Holm using mill land to pass from his house to the inn. It came to court, a drawn-out affair during which Holm bribed many to say that a right-of-way existed there, had always existed there. So the miller lost. And if this was not enough, he was ordered to repair and maintain the way, which effectively meant the digging of a new road through the earthworks of the old castle here.
One farmer, tired of the constant harrying and bullying, tried to organise resistance. Many joined him, some did not—those that didn’t being called plate-lickers, I was told. There was the inevitable court case. No fewer than three hundred were called as witnesses, several being in Holm’s camp, having first been suitably bribed, including eight from Gram and four from Ustrup—both many kilometres away and therefore outside his writ. The farmers, though it need not be stated, lost.
He treated the men tied to the land here as slaves, demanding that they work for him for free.
He denied his own daughter’s choice in marriage, demanding she marry instead a man of his choosing, one more profitable to his ends.
He used ungodly words at every opportunity, except when in the company of his superiors, to whom he was fawning and servile in the extreme.
But through it all, his favourite command would echo time and again—“PUT YOUR BACK INTO IT!”—till all who lived here found themselves working harder and harder for fear of merely hearing them.
Such was Peter Christian Holm. He was a rogue in the worst sense of the word. He was a liar, a cheat and a bully. He was selfish, self-centred and self-serving. He was such a man as I had never thought it possible to exist. But he had. And his deeds were slow to fade in the memories of the people of Toerning…
‘Such a man!’ I gasped when my landlord had finished. ‘Was there nothing to be done with him?’
He shrugged. ‘’Twas said that death alone was fit for one such as he. As I say, the Devil himself looked upon him as one of his own, it seemed, and what mortal can stand against such an ally? But there came a time when the justice that so many thought fit was served.’
‘You mean…?’
‘I do, sir. There came a morning when his long-suffering daughter went to wake him and found she could not. It is said that she knocked on his bedroom door and, on getting no reply, pushed it open to be greeted by a scene of the most ghastly horror.’
‘Why? Was he murdered?’
‘Better perhaps for him if he had been, sir. No, what the daughter saw, she later described. He was lying back on his bed, she said, his body arched upwards and rigid with death. But it was his face she marked most. A mask of terror it was, she said, his eyes rolled up in their sockets so that only the whites could be seen, his mouth thrown wide, the lips dragged down at the sides, the whole giving the aspect of one having screamed his very life away.’
‘The Devil had come to claim his own,’ I murmured.
‘So it was said, sir. The Devil had given his friendship and the payment for that friendship was now due. He came. He took. And Peter Christian Holm was no more. No longer would he hold in thrall all those around him, no longer would he make a misery of the lives he touched. Or so it was thought.’
‘You mean there is more?’ I asked. ‘He was not yet finished, even in death?’
‘Did you not guess as much when you heard mention of the post? But no, sir, you have it right: he was not finished. You recall how his daughter found his body? Arched upwards and rigid with death?’
I nodded.
‘Well, that body had to be made fit for its coffin, if you take my meaning, sir. There are ways, as I am sure you will know, and so it was that his reviled frame was made straight so it could be encased in wood. But when they lowered the lid over him, a strange thing happened: his back arched up again, throwing the lid off to land with a thunderous crash on the floor.’
‘This happened?’ I said, incredulous.
‘It happened, sir. It was almost as though Holm was denying his own death, refusing his own burial. Three times only did they try before giving up and calling in help from the Church, and it took three priests reciting prayers while holding down the lid as it was screwed on before Holm was finally fit for burial.’
‘A strange tale you tell, my friend,’ I breathed, ‘for I have never heard its like before. Did they then bury him?’
‘They did, sir, and in haste. But even then it was not over, and this is where this tale takes on a new horror.
‘It was his daughter who discovered what lay in store for Toerning and all that lived here. She was trudging her way back from the funeral, where she had thought to see the last of him being cast into the earth, when she heard behind the sound of a carriage at speed, the horses being whipped along at a full gallop. On instinct and without looking back, she stepped aside and off the road to let it pass. As it did so, she looked up to see who it was who was in such a hurry…and there was nothing there. But the sound, that was there. Infernal it was, filling her ears, piercing her gentle heart with a roar of wild hooves and thundering wheels. Then it was gone, a sudden bitter chill filling the air in its wake.
‘“Oh God,” she murmured. “Oh God, no!”—for she guessed rightly the meaning of this portent. It was, could only be, one of evil. And in her young and innocent life, she had known but one evil.
‘She rushed home and threw open the kitchen door. And there indeed was the ghost of her father, sitting in a corner and laughing aloud. Terror had she endured from him in life and his death had brought no release, and it was too much to bear. She picked up a pan and threw it, only to watch it pass straight through him and clatter off the wall behind.
‘“What are you doing here!” she cried. “You should be lying still and sleeping in the cold earth you have deserved for so long!”
‘At this, his shade laughed even louder. “You think the grave could hold me? I who have held sway over this house for so long?” he said. “Nay, lass, I cheated you of the satisfaction of your life and I will cheat you of the satisfaction of my death. Now get my breakfast and look sharp about it!”
‘But the daughter did not get his breakfast. She turned and ran for help where she knew it could be found, help in the shape of the Hammelev priest of the time. He came running back with her, bible and uncertainty in one hand, holy water and cold terror in the other. Together, they found him as before, sitting in the kitchen and warming his ghostly hands over the fire. He looked up as they entered.
‘“Ha! So you’re back!” he said. “And you have brought company! Well, pull up a stool, preacher man, and warm yourself. ’Tis bitter cold this morning, is it not?”
‘“Cease this impiety!” he snapped. “Go back to the grave! Go back and have the judgement you deserve pronounced upon you!”
‘Holm laughed again, but grimly, as though sneering. “Judgement? By whom? Your judge or mine? I denied one and promised myself to another, yet neither shall have me while I take this unearthly form. I have cheated them both, do you not understand? So do your worst, preacher man! None can touch me now, do you hear me? NONE!”
‘The priest paid no heed to this threat, he took his courage in his hands and stepped forward, unstopping his bottle of holy water as he went.
‘“This is your final warning!” he cried. “Repent this evil and go back to where you belong or have the will of the Lord upon you and go back perforce!”
‘“I have a better idea,” said Holm brightly. “Bid my daughter bring us breakfast both and we shall feast the morning away together.”
‘The priest didn’t trouble to answer, he simply threw his holy water over Holm’s shade. But what happened next was not to be believed. Both priest and daughter marked it well, giving good and terrified account of it later. For the water, instead of passing straight through the wretched shade, seemed to land on it as though it was solid flesh. And as it landed, it began spitting and bubbling and turning to steam, the shade remaining as clear as ever. And all the while, Holm was laughing, taunting them for their pitiful efforts.
‘“Is this the best you can do?” he was crying. “Put your back into it, man! Let us see some work here!”
‘Priest and daughter, both of whom had heard these words too many times in the past, turned and fled, Holm’s laughter ringing anew in their ears. He had won this, the first battle to send him back to his grave. There would be more to come.’
He paused and took more ale. I joined him, for I suddenly felt my mouth curiously dry. It was some moments before either of us spoke.
‘This story is not yet ended, then,’ I ventured.
‘You have it right, sir,’ he said, ‘and in more ways than one. Neither story, mine nor Holm’s, is ended.
‘The news of Holm’s refusal to die travelled swiftly, as bad news will. There were many who lived those early days in mortal terror, casting terrified glances over shoulder during the day, barring door and window at night—though they knew these were no barrier to a phantom set on having its will. And Holm did indeed have his will. For ten years, he had his will.