“Absolute crap!” Clive Miller voiced his opinion on the tale that John Freeman had just told. “You don’t honestly expect us to believe such bullshit, do you?” Miller was a well-built man in his mid-thirties with bags under his eyes and sunken jaws. His jet black hair was made to look jet black because it was soaked with brylcream…or “the ol boot polish, as some would put it. His broken nose was a souvenir from his days as an amateur boxer. He was seated at the bar in The Old Log Cabin Inn beside his friend, an Englishman named Mathew Gibbs. Both men were draining pints of ale that had been served up to them by Freeman the innkeeper.
“I don’t care if you believe it or not,” said Freeman, a small balding man in his early fifties with a belly that suggested he liked to sample his own wares. “All I know is, nobody who ever spent a night in that room lived to tell about it.” He pulled two fresh pints for each man and continued: “Now, if those deaths are nothing more than mere coincidence…I don’t know. But nobody is allowed to enter that room anymore”.
John Freeman had told Miller and Gibbs all about Joshua Hagen’s Room. According to Freeman, Joshua Hagen had been a dabbler in witchcraft and devil worship in medieval England. One winter’s night he was holding a black mass, which was interrupted by hordes of villagers armed with pitchforks and scythes. The dark disciples who had been attending the mass were caught and executed but Hagen escaped and made his way to Ireland by stowing away on a ship called The Sweet Susannah.
When Hagen arrived in Ireland he stayed at an inn in a village just outside Wicklow. Freeman supposed it wasn’t called The Old Log Cabin Inn back in those days.
One night the innkeeper entered Hagen’s room and saw the naked form of Joshua Hagen knelt in the centre of a chalked circle. He was mumbling some kind of gibberish at an object that the innkeeper couldn’t clearly see. Oblivious to the fact that someone was standing behind him, Hagan raised the object above his head, and the innkeeper was filled with nausea when he saw that it was the head of a goat. Hagen smeared the blood of the goat all over his face.
It was immediately obvious to the innkeeper that Joshua Hagen was involved with Black Magic. He slowly backed out of the room and returned with his musket, shooting Hagen twice in the back. With his dying breath, Hagen cursed all who should stay in the room.
“Oh, come along, Jack old fellow,” said Gibbs who had an accent like…as the Americans might say… ‘A limey butler’. “I must agree with Clive, it’s a complete load of superstitious balderdash. These fellows always seem to do a lot of cursing with their last breaths.” He shook his head, somewhat exaggeratedly, in disbelief. “And cursing everyone who stays in the room? That’s a bit too farfetched. I mean…fair enough if he’s cursed the innkeeper and his descendents…but not everyone to stay in the room.”
Apart from Freeman, Gibbs and Miller, the Inn was almost empty, save for a few customers scattered about minding their business. It was almost closing time, and not many people booked into the rooms theses days. They usually went to the village B&Bs. Not many drank in the Old Log Cabin, either, most preferring The Cloak and Dagger. The Cabin, however, was ideal for those who simply wanted to enjoy a quiet drink.
As Freeman pulled two more pints of ale, he told his two listeners about the last time someone booked into Joshua Hagen’s Room. “Two brothers, twins, had heard all about the room but they laughed it off as superstitious balderdash.” He glanced at Gibbs and continued:
“Both of them had revolvers, and promised to put a hole in the head of anyone who tried to put a scare into them. So they went into the room, locked the door behind them, and retired for the night.” He paused for a few seconds, looking into the eyes of Miller…then Gibbs…then Miller again, as though he wanted his next sentence to have some kind of impact. “They shot each other dead!”
“Oh, Judas Priest!” shouted Miller. “I knew you were going to come out with something like that.”
Like I said”, Freeman explained with a shrug, “ it’s up to you weather you want to believe it or not, and you obviously don’t. But nobody’s allowed in that room, and that’s that.”
“Well,” said Gibbs, “I must admit I wouldn’t be too keen on staying in the room myself.” Miller looked at his friend with surprised eyes.
“I thought you said you don’t believe in it, either.”
“I did, and I don’t,” said Gibbs, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand after gulping a drink from his pint. “I’d just feel…well… uneasy. I mean, I’d know there’d be nothing there, but I’d be jumping at shadows.”
“I know what you mean,” Freeman said while wiping down the counter with the bar towel. “When I was a kid, I spent a night in a friend’s house. I was to sleep in the spare room and just as I was about to go to bed he said, ‘don’t worry if there’s a dead man in the closet. He’s been there for years.’ He was winding me up, of course, but I didn’t sleep at all that night, and I didn’t come out from under the covers.”
He pulled two more fresh pints. “Almost closing time,” he said. “These are your last drinks for tonight.”
Miller looked around and saw that everyone had left the inn, then leaned over the counter to Freeman and said, “I bet you a hundred quid I can stay the night in Joshua Hagen’s Room and nothing will happen to me”.
The barman shook his head. “If I was to allow anyone to stay in that room, I’d lose my position as innkeeper. I don’t own this joint, you know.”
“Who’s to know?” asked Miller. “I won’t tell a soul, will you, Matthew?”
“Mum’s the word.”
“Listen John,” Miller went on, “I know the rent is thirty quid per night, so I’ll pay you double that, and as you won’t need to sign any receipts, you pocket it all yourself.”
Freeman thought it over and figured it was a handy few quid. If he lost the bet, he would really only be forty quid down, and if he won…
“Wait a minute!” he snapped as a dawning light came on in his head. “If you should die before the night is out, who’s gonna pay my hundred notes?”
Both the customers had to laugh at that.
“Don’t worry,” Matthew Gibbs assured the innkeeper. “I’ll gladly pay up on Clive’s behalf.”
“Freeman smiled in spite of himself. “Fair enough” he said. “Anyway,” he assured Miller, “you don’t have to die. Just leave the room before morning and you’ve lost the bet.”
“Deal,” Miller agreed with a handshake.
Truth be told, John Freeman didn’t really believe any of the Joshua Hagen’s Room tales himself. There had been the occasional death in the room, but nowhere near as much as had been rumoured. Maybe he’d be able to find a way of frightening Clive Miller out of the room. He took a hundred pounds from his wallet and put it into an empty glass, which he put down on the counter. “Put your money in this glass,” he instructed. “The winner will collect in the morning.”
“Well old chap,” said Gibbs to his friend, “come tomorrow, I grant you’ll be richer than you are tonight. You’re bound to win your little wager.”
Miller smiled his agreement as he put his money into the glass. He then allowed John Freeman to lead him to Joshua Hagen’s Room.
The room was dark with a dank musty smell. There was a wooden chair beside a window that was covered by black drapes. The four-post bed looked comfy enough to Clive Miller. He bade goodnight to Freeman and Gibbs and locked the door after them.
*
John Freeman’s hopes of winning the bet were dashed. Three hours had passed since the door of Joshua Hagen’s Room was locked behind him, and he still couldn’t think of a way to scare Clive Miller into leaving the room. Miller certainly wasn’t going to be fooled by any scratching at the door or ‘ghostly noises’. Freeman was dog-tired, anyway. Resigned to the fact that he had poured his money down the drain, he headed up to bed and drifted off to a sleep that was disturbed by a nightmare.
In the nightmare, John Freeman heard a voice. It was a masculine voice whispering hoarsely into his ear. Amongst the gibberish, the words “cold death within the walls of my room…cold, cold death” were clearly heard.
Matthew Gibbs, who was in the room across from Miller, also had a disturbing dream…that of a masculine voice whispering hoarsely into his ear about cold, cold death within the walls of Joshua Hagen’s room.
*
The following morning, Gibbs went down to the bar and saw that John Freeman was already up and about, although opening time was a good three hours away. Neither of them told each other of their nightmares, giving them no way of knowing they had shared the same dream. Freeman poured hot coffee for himself and Gibbs, and looked forlornly at the money in the glass on the bar counter.
A half hour passed until; finally, they heard a door opening and footsteps coming down the stairs. Clive Miller entered the bar with a broad smile on his face. “I slept like a log,” he said as he took the money from the glass and put it in his pocket. He left the inn immediately, claiming he was in a hurry to go to work. His parting words were, “Joshua Hagen sends his regards.”
Freeman and Gibbs just looked at each other and shrugged their shoulders.
When Miller had gone. The two remaining men went up to check out the room, their curiosity having gotten the better of them. The first thing they saw when John Freeman pushed the door open was Clive Miller standing with his back to them, talking some kind of gibberish which made no sense at all to Freeman or Gibbs…although it seemed strangely familiar to both men. They stared at Miller without saying a word. Both pairs of bugling eyes asked the same unspoken question… “If this is Clive Miller, then who…?”
Matthew Gibbs was first to find his tongue. “I must certainly say, this is a jolly good trick, old chum,” he said, trying without success to control his shaky voice. “But don’t keep us in suspense…how did you do it? Where did you come from?”
Miller answered in a voice that made both men tremble with terror, for they recognised it as that from their nightmares. “I have come from roaming in the earth, and moving to and fro in it.”. The sentence made no sense to Matthew Gibbs, but John Freeman felt his legs weaken as he recognised the devil’s quotation from the Book of Job.
Suddenly both men’s nostrils were filled with a foul stench that made them gag indignantly. It was an obscene odour, a sulphuric smell mixed with that of human excrement. A stink, according to legend, which is said to coincide with an appearance of the devil.
Miller gazed at both men and spouted words that just made no sense. They had no idea that he was reciting The Lord’s Prayer backwards.
*
Later that evening, there was a report on the six o’clock news about the Old Log Cabin inn being burned to the ground. The newsreader told viewers that the remains of the two dead men taken from the burnt out building were identified by dental records as those of Matthew Gibbs of Chippenvale Road, and the innkeeper John Freeman.. A third body, that of Clive Miller, was also taken from the burnt out inn.
Even the top medical experts were stumped at just how not a single part of Miller’s body had been touched by the flames, not so much as a singed hair on his head.
THE END.