Speaker 1: At Old Man Eckerts by Ambrose Bierce. Philip Eckert lived
for many years in an old, weather stained wooden house
about three miles from the little town of Marion in Vermont.
There must be quite a number of persons living who
remember him, not unkindly, I trust and know something of
the story I am about to tell. Old Man Eckert,
as he was called, was not of a sociable disposition
and lived alone. As he was never known to speak
of his own affairs. Nobody thereabout knew anything of his past,
nor of his relatives, if he had any. Without being
particularly ungracious or repellent in manner of speech, he managed
somehow to be immune to impertinent curiosity, yet exempt from
the evil reputation with which it commonly revenges itself when baffled.
So far as I know, mister Eckerts, renowned as a
reformed assassin or a retired pirate of the Spanish main,
had not reached any ear in Marion. He got his
living cultivating a small, not very fertile farm. One day
he disappeared, and a prolonged search by his neighbors failed
to turn him up or throw any light upon his
whereabouts or whyabouts. Nothing indicated preparation to leave. All was
as he might have left it to go to the
spring for a bucket of water. For a few weeks,
little else was talked of in that region. Then old
man Eckert became a village tale for the ears of strangers.
I do not know what was done regarding his property,
the correct legal thing, doubtless, the house was standing still
vacant and conspicuously unfit when I last heard of it
twenty years afterwards. Of course, it came to be considered haunted,
and the customary tales were told of moving lights, dolorous sounds,
and startling apparitions. At one time, about five years after
the disappearance, these stories of the supernatural became so rife, or,
through some attesting circumstance, seemed so important, that some of
Marion's most serious citizens deemed it well to investigate, and
to that end are arranged for a night's session on
the premises. The parties to this undertaking were John Holcombe,
an apothecary, Wilson Merle, a lawyer, and Andrews C. Palmer,
the teacher of the public school, all men of consequence
and repute. They were to meet at Holcombe's house at
eight o'clock in the evening of the appointed day, and
go together to the scene of their vigil, where certain
arrangements for their comfort a provision of fuel in the
like where the season was winter had been already made.
Palmer did not keep the engagement, and after waiting half
an hour for him, the others went to the Eckert
house without him. They established themselves in the principal room,
before a glowing fire, and without other light than it
gave a waiting events he it had been agreed to
speak as little as possible. They did not even renew
or exchange views regarding the defection of Palmer, which had
occupied their minds on the way. Probably an hour had
passed without incident, when they heard, not without emotion, doubtless,
the sound of an opening door in the rear of
the house, followed by footfalls in the room adjoining that
in which they sat. The watchers rose to their feet,
but stood firm, prepared for whatever might ensue. A long
silence followed. How long neither would afterward undertake to say.
Then the door between the two rooms opened and a
man entered. It was Palmer. He was pale, as if
from excitement, as pale as the others felt themselves to be.
His manner, too, was singularly distraught. He neither responded to
their salutations, nor so much as looked at them, but
walked slowly across the room in the light of the
failing fire, and, opening the front door, passed out into
the darkness. It seems to have been the first thought
of both men that Palmer was suffering from fright, that
something seen or heard or imagined in the back room
had deprived him of his senses. Acting on the same
friendly impulse, both ran after him through the open door.
But neither they nor anyone ever again saw or heard
of Andres Palmer. This much was ascertained the next morning,
during the session of Messrs Holcombe and Merle at the
Haunted House, a new snow had fallen to a depth
of several inches upon the old. In this snow, Palmer's
trail from his lodging in the village to the back
door of the eckered house was conspicuous, But there it ended.
From the front door nothing led away but the tracks
of the two men, who swore that he preceded them
Palmer's disappearance was as complete as that of Old Man
Eckered himself, whom, indeed, the editor of the local paper
somewhat graphically accused of having reached out and pulled him
in the end of at Old Man Eats by Ambrose Bierce,