The Strange Experiences of Tina Malone

Ethel C. M. Paige

The Strange Experiences of Tina Malone

Published by Good Press, 2022

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EAN 4064066441999

Table of Contents

PROLOGUE

The Occult School

Naomi

Rooms to Let

The Week in My Flat

Despair and Solitude

Alice Griffiths

The Rosary

The Automatic Writing

The Chain of Voices

Illness and Weariness, Delusions or What?

The Girl at the Gate Who Talked With Her Eyes

The Secret Service and the Hurried Doctor

A Fight for my Individuality.

The Spirits

Wallerawang

The Underground Passages

The Miracle

Question

PROLOGUE

Table of Contents

PROLOGUE.

Table of Contents

Has it been all a dream?

If you want an account of a wonderful unbelievable experience, just listen.

People don't believe in ghosts—will they believe in this? For this has truly happened:

I was lonely—God alone knows how lonely—for we had broken up our home only three months before. I had to earn my own living for the money that was left to me when my father died was not enough to pay for more than my rent. So I lived as so many single women do now—I batched.

It all began with the Woman in the Mask.

She was fascinating in a way, with the fascination one finds in a Sorceress. There was something in the way she let her eyelids droop over her eyes while she looked at you that suggested spells—I don't know why. She gave me that impression anyway.

She was rather beautiful to look at. Her eyes were deep blue and curiously shaped, rather like a Jap's. She wore her hair drawn back from a forehead that was singularly beautiful, few women can wear their hair like that and look beautiful, Her voice was low and sweet. Yet there was something—I don't know what—just something—that puzzled. You felt that she never showed her real self; that she wore a mask and dared not let it fall.

The night I found Chester House I was tired and miserable.

The trip across the Harbour comforted me somewhat. It was already growing dark and the harbour lights twinkled through a misty gleam. It was like a dream of fairyland and I made up my mind that I would find rooms on that side of the harbour even if those in question did not suit just for the sake of the boat trip.

A light drizzle of rain began to fall. I was hungry and tired and longed for a home of some sort, dreading to return to the Metropole where I had been living for the last week.

The narrow street was dark. There were only one or two houses and these were back from the road.

At last, with relief, I found myself outside the queer little building known as Chester House.

Does Miss Perkins live here? I asked a wierd-looking creature who opened the door.

No, two doors down!

​A queer little building was the one she directed me to and when Miss Perkins opened at my knock I felt as if I were in a book.

She was quaintly dressed in white—a small person with sloping shoulders and a vague hesitating manner.

Well, I don't know that I can let you have rooms, she said with a long-drawn emphasis on the rooms, but there's a flat next door that will be empty to-morrow. The people are in now but they might let you look at it.

When I found that it was not very much more than I had been paying for my room in town I admitted that I should like to see it and we went together.

The lower floor is already let, said Miss Perkins, but that is underground. You would not care for it.

She led the way walking lightly—almost on tip-toes as if she were afraid of being heard.

I followed her through the hall and to the small balcony room in front and the view that burst upon me there took my breath away it was so beautiful—the harbour lights twinkling through a mist.

I then and there decided to take it and soon afterwards I moved in.

And Naomi was in the flat below.

The Occult School

Table of Contents

CHAPTER I.

THE OCCULT SCHOOL.

THEY always did attract me—second-hand bookshops. This morning I began at the windows, then at the boxes of books outside, then at those hanging at the doors till, at last, I gave way to temptation and went inside.

It was only the books I noticed and I walked along by the tables, scanning the titles till at last I found The Drama of Love and Death, by Edward Carpenter, and pulled it out.

I opened it at The Return Journey and was just finding out that it was all about me, when I felt someone standing at my elbow.

I had noticed somehow without seeing or caring that there was a girl at the far end of the shop looking up at the books. I knew it was Sybil Armstrong, but I did not want to talk so I hardly noticed that she was there.

But, although I was interested in my new-found treasure, I was conscious that she was moving towards me and, when she stood quietly by my side in that mysterious way I knew it was she and purposely did not at once look up.

When at last I did she smiled at me in a meaning way. What she meant I did not know then, except that she was up to some devilment.

She was a fair little thing. She and I had always been drawn to one another through our love of books. There was a sort of fascination about her that made me like to talk to her and to sit next to her, and though I never courted it she would always move from her seat in trams or boats to come and seek me out.

So I looked down now into her blue eyes and wondered what form the devilment was to take and whether she knew that I was quietly watching and enjoying her tactics.

Well! she said.

Well? said I.

What wonderful treasure have you found? Can you bear to touch those dirty books? Think of the occult influence they carry! You don't know what wicked old man may have hugged and fingered them.

I looked down at my Drama of Love and Death, that was telling me such wonderful things at four and ninepence a copy, and looked back into her eyes.

Don't you know that those books hold thoughts and feelings that may be passed on to you? she went on.

I know they hold thoughts and feelings I want to hear about, I said, and hugged my book with a finger in the ​place. I knew then that four and ninepence or not, the book was going home with me.

Have you read any Eastern books? she said, I've been reading a lot lately.

Eastern? I said, puzzled.

Yes, the philosophy of the East. It would interest you I am sure—I believe you are very psychic.

She lowered her voice to a sort of dramatic mystery, half-bantering as if speaking to a child. She was always conscious of everything she did and she was trying to impress me, I knew.

How do you mean psychic? I asked.

Don't you know what psychic means? You come with me to a lecture at my School of New Thought on Sunday and see what it means. Will you come?

Yes, thank you very much, I said, feeling more interested in the book under my arm than in the School of New Thought. But she looked pretty under her blue hat, with a dancing mischief in her eyes and her half-cynical sideways smile.

Are you going to take that book?

Yes, I said. "Listen to this, and I read the lines beginning:—

"'We all feel that at best much of our real selves remains in life-long defect of expression, and that there are great deeps of the under-self, which, though organically related to our ordinary consciousness, are still, for the most part, hidden and unexplored. All, in fact, points to the existence within us of a very profound self, which, so far, we may justifiably conclude to be much greater than any one known manifestation of it, which requires, for its expression, the forms of a lifetime, and still stretches on and beyond; which perhaps belong to another sphere of being—as the ship in the air and the sunlight, belongs to another sphere than the hull, buried deep in the water. It seems indeed probable that the human soul, at death, does at first pass, with its cloud-vesture of memories and qualities, into some intermediate region, and for a long period, does remain there quiescent, surveying its past, recovering from the shocks and outrages of mortal experience, knitting up and smoothing out the broken and tangled threads, trying hard to understand the pattern. It seems probable that there is a long period of digestion and reconcilement and slow brooding over the new life which has to be formed.

"'When one thinks of the strange contradictions of our mortal life, the hopeless antagonistic elements, the warring of passions, the shattering of ideals, the stupor of monotony, the soul like a bird shut in a cage, or with bright wings dragged in the mire; the horrible sense of sin which torments ​some people, the mad impulses which tyrannise over others; the alternations of one's own personality on different days, or at different depths and planes of consciousness—when one thinks of all this one feels that if there is to be any sanity or sequence in the conclusion, it must mean a long period of brooding and reconciliation and of re-adjustment and even of sleep.

'At first it may well be a troubled period of nightmare—like confusion; but at last there must come a time when harmony is restored. The past lifetime is spread out like a map before one—all its events fall into their places, composed and clear. The genius, rising from the depths, throws a strange light upon them. 'This was necessary—That could not have been otherwise—And that again which seemed so fatal, do you not now see its profound meaning?' The soul, surveying, gradually redeems the past. It comes to understand. Tout comprendre est tout pardonner.'

Yes, well that's what I say—the submerged self—get your book and come. Here, she called back into the shop, Mr. Sefton, this is a friend of mine, Miss Malone—Mr. Sefton and I are old friends.

I turned then and saw Tony.

He was standing at the back of the shop. He was a little man with a shock of fair hair and deep, dark eyes that, at this moment, were fixed on Sybil with a look that I could not understand. It was deep and fierce and his arms were folded as if he were keeping back some deep feeling. I felt somehow that he had been watching us both for some time and was somehow stirred and displeased.

He came forward and took his introduction, but with his eyes still more on her than on mine. She seemed to be conscious of the fact, but to be wickedly rather delighting in it.

He was the assistant in the shop and, having taken my book from me, wrapped it up and handed it to me, keeping silence all the while.

Sybil was conscious of him I know, as she passed along the bookshelves,