Speaker 1: The Empty House by Algernon Blackwood. Certain houses, like certain persons,
manage somehow to proclaim at once their character for evil.
In the case of the latter, no particular feature need
betray them. They may boast an open countenance and an
ingenious smile, and yet a little of their company leaves
the unalterable conviction that there is something radically amiss with
their being, that they are evil. Willy nilly. They seem
to communicate an atmosphere of secret and wicked thoughts, which
makes those in their immediate neighborhood shrink from them, as
from a thing diseased. Perhaps with houses, the same principle
as operative. And it is the aroma of evil deeds
committed under a particular roof, long after the actual doers
have passed away, that makes the goose flesh come and
the hair rise. Something of the original passion of the
evil doer, and of the horror felt by his victim,
enters the heart of the innocent watcher, and he becomes
suddenly conscious of tingling nerves, creeping skin, and a chilling
of the blood. He is terror stricken without apparent cause.
There was manifestly nothing in the external appearance of this house,
to bear out the tails of the horror that was
said to rain within, it was neither lonely nor unkempt.
It stood crowded into a corner of the square and
looked exactly like the houses on either side of it.
It had the same number of windows as its neighbors,
the same balcony overlooking the gardens, the same white steps
leading up to the heavy black front door, and in
the rear there was the same narrow strip of green
with neat box borders running up to the wall that
divided it from the backs of the adjoining houses. Apparently, too,
the number of chimney pots on the roof was the same,
the breadth and angle of the eaves, and even the
height of the dirty area railings. And yet this house
in the square that seemed precisely similar to its fifty
ugly neighbors, was, as a matter of fact, entirely different,
horribly different. Wherein lay this marked, invisible difference is impossible
to say. It cannot be ascribed wholly to the imagination,
Because persons who had spent some time in this house,
knowing nothing of the facts, had declared positively that certain
rooms were so disagreeable they would rather die than enter
them again, and that the atmosphere of the whole house
produced in them symptoms of genuine terror, while the series
of innocent tenants who had tried to live in it
and been forced to DeCamp at the shortest possible notice
was indeed little less than a scandal in the town.
When Shorthouse arrived to pay a week end visit to
his aunt Julia in her little house on the sea
front at the other end of town, he found her
charge to the brim with mystery and excitement. He had
only received her telegram that morning, and he had come
anticipating boredom. But the moment he touched her hand and
kissed her apple skin wrinkled cheek, he caught the first
wave of her electrical condition. The impression deepened when he
had learned that there were to be no other visitors,
and that he had been telegraphed for with a very
special object. Something was in the wind, and the something
would doubtless bear fruit. For this elderly spinster aunt, with
a mania for physical research, had brains as well as willpower,
and by hook or by crook she usually managed to
accomplish her ends. The revelation was made soon after tea,
when she sidled close up to him as they paced
slowly along the sea front in the dusk. I've got
the keys, she announced, in a delighted yet half awesome voice,
got them till Monday, the keys of the bathing machine,
or he asked, innocently, looking from the sea to the town.
Nothing brought her so quickly to the point as feigning stupidity. Neither,
she whispered, I've got the keys of the haunted house
in the square, and I'm going there to night. The
shorthouse was conscious of the slightest possible tremor down his back.
He dropped his teasing tone. Something in her voice and
manner thrilled him. She was in earnest. But you can't
go alone, he began. That's why I wired for you,
she said, with decision. He turned to look at her.
The ugly lined, enigmatical face was alive with excitement. There
was the glow of genuine enthusiasm round it like a halo.
Her eyes shone. He caught another wave of her excitement,
and a second tremor, more marked than the first, accompanied it.
Thanks Aunt Julia, he said, politely, Thanks awfully I should
not dare to go quite alone, she went on, raising
her voice. But with you I should enjoy it immensely.
You're afraid of nothing, I know. Thanks so much, he
said again. Er is anything likely to happen? A great
deal has happened, she whispered, though it's been most cleverly
hushed up. Three tenants have now come and gone in
the last few months, and the house is said to
be empty for good. Now. In spite of himself, Shorthouse
became interested. His aunt was so very much in earnest.
The house is very old, indeed, she went on. And
the story, an unpleasant one, dates a long way back.
It has to do with a murder committed by a
jealous stableman who had some affair with the servant in
the house. One night, he managed to secrete himself in
the cellar, and when everyone was asleep, he crept upstairs
to the servants quarters, chased the girl down to the
next landing, and before anyone could come to the rescue,
threw her bodily over the banisters into the hall below.
And the stableman was caught, I believe, and hanged for murder.
But it all happened a century ago. And I've not
been able to get more details at the story. Shorthouse
now felt his interest thoroughly aroused, but though he was
not particularly nervous for himself, he hesitated a little on
his aunt's account. On one condition, he said, at length,
nothing will prevent my going. She said firmly, but I
may as well hear your condition that you guarantee your
power of self control if anything really horrible happens. I
mean that you are sure you won't get too frightened, Jim,
she said scornfully. I'm not young, I know, nor are
my nerves. But with you I should be afraid of
nothing in the world. This, of course settled it. Her.
Shorthouse had no pretensions to being other than a very
ordinary young man, and an appeal to his vanity was irresistible.
He agreed to go instinctively. By a sort of subconscious preparation,
he kept himself and his forces well in hand the
whole evening, compelling an accumulative reserve of control by that
nameless inward process of gradually putting all the emotions away
and turning the key upon them, a process difficult to
describe but wonderfully effective. As all men who have lived
through severe trials of the inner man well understand later
it stood him in good stead. But it was not
until half past ten, when they stood in the hall well,
in the glare of friendly lamps, still surrounded by comforting
human influences, that he had to make the first call
upon this store of collected strength. For once the door
was closed and he saw the deserted, silent streets stretching
away in the white moonlight before them, it came to
him clearly that the real test that night would be
in dealing with two fears instead of one. He would
have to carry his aunt's fear as well as his own,
And as he glanced down at her sphinxlike countenance and
realized that it might assume no pleasant aspect in a
rush of real terror, he felt satisfied with only one
thing in the whole adventure, that he had the confidence
in his own will and power to stand against any
shock that might come. Slowly, they walked along the empty
streets of the town. A bright autumn moon silvered the roofs,
casting deep shadows. There was no breath of the wind,
and the trees in the formal gardens by the sea
front watched them silently as they passed along. To his
aunt's occasional remarks, Shorthouse made no reply, realizing that she
was simply surrounding herself with mental buffers, saying ordinary things
to prevent herself thinking of extraordinary things. Few windows showed lights,
and from scarcely a single chimney came smoke or sparks.
Shorthouse had already begun to notice everything, even the smallest details. Presently,
they stopped at the street corner and looked up at
the name on the side of the house full in
the moonlight, and with one accord, but without remark, turned
into the square and crossed over to the side of
it that lay in the shadow. The number of the
house is thirteen, whispered a voice at his side, and
neither of them made the obvious reference, but passed across
the broad sheet of moonlight and began to march up
the pavement in silence. It was about half way up
the square that short House felt an arm slipped quietly
but significantly into his own, and knew then that their
adventure had begun in earnest, and that his companion was
already yielding imperceptibly to the influences against them. She needed support.
A few minutes later they stopped before a tall, narrow
house that rose before them into the night, ugly in
shape and painted a dingy white. Shutterless windows without blinds
stared down upon them, shining here and there in the moonlight.
There were weather streaks in the wall and cracks in
the paint, and the balcony bulged out from the first
floor a little unnaturally. But beyond this generally forlorn appearance
of an unoccupied house, there was nothing at first sight
to single out this particular mansion for the evil character
it had most certainly acquired. Taking a look over their
shoulders to make sure they had not been followed, they
went boldly up the steps and stood against the huge
black door that fronted them forbiddingly. But the first wave
of nervousness was now upon them, and Shorthouse fumbled a
long time with the key before he could fit it
into the lock at all. For a moment, if truth
were told, they both hoped it would not open, for
they were prey to various unpleasant emotions. As they stood
there on the threshold of their ghostly adventure, Shorthouse shuffling
with the key, and hampered by the steady weight on
his arm, certainly felt the solemnity of the moment. It
was as if the whole world, for all experience, seemed
at that instant, concentrated in his own consciousness, were listening
to the grating noise of that key. A stray puff
of wind wandering down down the empty street woke a
momentary rustling in the trees behind them, but otherwise this
rattling of the key was the only sound audible, And
at last it turned in the lock, and the heavy
door swung open and revealed a yawing gulf of darkness beyond.
With a last glance at the moonlit square, they passed
quickly in, and the door slammed behind them with a
roar that echoed prodigiously through the empty halls and passages.
But instantly with the echoes, another sound made itself hurt,
and Aunt Julia leaned suddenly so heavily upon him that
he had to take a step backwards to save himself
from falling. A man had coughed so close beside them,
so close that it seemed they must have been actually
by his side in the darkness, with the possibility of
practical jokes in his mind. Shorthouse at once swung his
heavy stick in the direction of the sound, but it
met nothing more solid than air. He heard his eyes
to give a little gasp beside him. There's someone here,
she whispered. I heard him be quiet, he said sternly.
It was nothing but the noise of the front door. Oh,
get a light, quick, she added, as her nephew, fumbling
with a box of matches, opened it upside down and
let them all fall with a rattle, on to the
stone floor. The sound, however, was not repeated, and there
was no evidence of retreating footsteps. In another minute, they
had a candle burning, using an empty end of a
cigar case as a holder, And when the first flare
had died down, he held the improptu lamp aloft and
surveyed the scene. And it was dreary enough in all conscience,
For there is nothing more desolate in all the abodes
of men than an unfinished house, dimly lit, silent and forsaken,
and yet tenanted by rumor with the memories of evil
and violent history. They were standing in a wide hallway.
On their left was the open door of a spacious
dining room, and in front the hall ran ever narrowing
into a long dark passage that led apparently to the
top of the kitchen stairs. The broad uncarpeted staircase rose
in a sweep before them, everywhere draped in shadows, except
for a single spot about half way up, where the
moonlight came in through the window and fell on a
bright patch on the boards. This shaft of light shed
a faint radiance above and below it, lending to the
objects within its reach a misty outline that was infinitely
more suggestive and ghostly than complete darkness. Filtered moonlight always
seemed to paint faces on the surrounding gloom. And a
short house peered up into the well of darkness and
thought of the countless empty rooms and passages in the
upper heart of the old house. He caught himself longing
again for the safety of the moonlit square or the cozy,
bright drawing room they had left an hour before. Then,
realizing that these thoughts were dangerous, he thrust them away
again and summoned all his energy for concentration on the
present aunt Julia. He said aloud severely. We must now
go through the house from top to bottom and make
a thorough search. The echoes of his voice died away
slowly all over the building, and in the intense silence
that followed, he turned to look at her. In the
candle light. He saw that her face was already ghastly pale.
But she dropped his arm for a moment and said
in a whisper, stepping close in front of him, I agree.
We must be sure there's no one hiding. That's the
first thing. She spoke with evident effort, and he looked
at her with admiration. You feel quite sure of yourself.
It's not too late, I think so, she whispered, her
eyes shifting nervously towards the shadows behind. Quite sure. Only
one thing, What's that? You must never leave me alone
for an instant, as long as you understand that any
sound or appearance must be investigated at once, For to
hesitate means to admit fear. That is fatal. Agreed, she said,
a little shakily, after a moment's hesitation, I'll try arm
in arm shorthouse, holding the dripping candle in the stick,
while his aunt carried the cloak over her shoulders. Figures
of utter comedy to all but themselves. They began a
systematic search, stealthily, walking on tiptoe and shading the candle
lest it should betray their presence. Through the shutterless windows.
They went first into the big dining room. There was
not a stick of furniture to be seen. The walls,
ugly mantle pieces, and empty grates stared at them. Everything
they felt resented their intrusion, watching them as it were,
with veiled eyes. Whispers followed them. Shadows flitted noiselessly to
the right and left. Something seemed ever at their back, watching,
waiting an opportunity to do them injury. There was the
inevitable sense that operations which went on when the room
was empty had been temporarily suspended till they were well
out of the way again. The whole dark interior of
the old building seemed to become a malignant presence that
rose up, warning them to desist and mind their own
business every moment the strain on the nerves increased. Out
of the gloomy dining room, they passed through large folding
doors into a sort of librri or smoking room, wrapped
equally in silence, darkness, and dust, And from this they
regained the hall near the top of the back stairs.
Here a pitch black tunnel opened before them into the
lower regions, and it must be confessed. They hesitated, but
only for a minute. With the worst of the night
still to come, it was essential to turn from nothing.
Aunt Julius stumbled at the top step of the dark descent,
ill lit by the flickering candle, and even Shorthouse felt
at least half the decision. Go out of his legs.
Come on, he said, peremptorily, and his voice ran on
and lost itself in the dark empty spaces below. I'm coming,
she faltered, catching his arm with unnecessary violence. They went
a little unsteadily down the stone steps, a cold, damp air,
meeting them in the face, close and malodorous. The kitchen
to which the stairs led, along a narrow passage, was large,
with a lofty ceiling. Several doors opened out of it,
some into cupboards with empty jars still standing on the shelves,
and others into horrible, little, ghostly back offices, each colder
and less inviting than the last. Black beetles scurried over
the floor, and once when they knocked against a deal
table standing in a corner, something about the size of
a cat jumped down with a rush and fled, scampering
across the stone floor into the darkness. Everywhere there was
a sense of recent occupation, an impression of sadness and gloom.
Leaving the main kitchen, they next went towards the scullery.
The door was standing ajar, and as they pushed it
open to its full extent, Aunt Julia uttered a piercing scream,
which she instantly tried to stifle by placing her hand
over her mouth. For a second. Shorthouse stood stock still,
catching his breath. He felt as if his spine had
suddenly become hollow, and some one had filled it with
particles of ice. Facing them directly in their way, between
the door posts stood the figure of a woman. She
had disheveled hair and wildly staring eyes, and her face
was terrified and white as death. She stood there motionless
for the space of a single second. Then the candle
flickered and she was gone, utterly gone, and the door
framed nothing but the empty darkness, only the beastly jumping
candle light. He said quickly, in a voice that sounded
like some one else's and was only half under control.
Come on, Aunt there's nothing there. He dragged her forward,
with a clattering of feet and a great appearance of boldness.
They went on, but over his body the skin moved
as if crawling ants covered it, and he knew by
the weight on his arm that he was supplying the
force of locomotion. For two. The scullery was cold, bare
and empty, more like a large prison cell than anything else.
They went round it, tried the door into the yard
and the windows, but found them all fastened securely. His
aunt moved beside him like a person in a dream.
Her eyes were tightly shut, and she seemed merely to
follow the pressure of his arm. Her courage filled him
with amazement. At the same time he noticed that a
certain odd change had come over her face, a change
which somehow evaded his power of analysis. There's nothing here, aunty,
he repeated aloud. Quickly, let's go upstairs and see the
rest of the house. Then we'll choose a room to
wait up in. She followed him obediently, keeping close to
his side, and they locked the kitchen door behind them.
It was a relief to get up again. In the hall,
there was more light than before, for the moon had
traveled a little further down the stairs. Cautiously, they began
to go up into the dark vault of the upper house,
the boards creaking under their weight. On the first floor
they found the large double drawing rooms, a search of
which revealed nothing. Here also was no sign of furniture
or recent occupancy, nothing but dust and neglect and shadows.
They opened the big folding doors between the front and
back drawing rooms, and then came out again to the
landing and went on upstairs. They had not gone up
more than a dozen steps when they both simultaneously stopped
to listen, looking into each other's eyes with any new apprehension.
Across the flickering candle flame from the room they had left.
Hardly ten seconds before came the sound of doors quietly closing.
It was beyond all question they had heard the booming
noise that accompanies the shutting of heavy doors, followed by
the sharp catching of the latch. We must go back
and see said Shorthouse briefly, in a low tone, and
turning to go downstairs again. Somehow she managed to drag
after him, her feet catching in her dress, her face livid.
When they entered the front drawing room, it was plain
that the folding doors had been closed half a minute before.
Without hesitation, Shorthouse opened them. He almost expected to see
someone facing him in the back room, but only darkness
and cold air met him. They went through both rooms,
finding nothing unusual. They tried in every way to make
the doors closed of themselves, but there was not wind
enough even to set the candle flame flickering. The doors
would not move without strong pressure. All was silent as
the grave. Undeniably, the rooms were utterly empty, and the
house utterly still. It's beginning, whispered a voice at his elbow,
which he hardly recognized as his aunt's. He nodded acquiescence,
taking out his watch to note the time. It was
fifteen minutes before midnight. He made the entry of exactly
what had occurred in his notebook, setting the candle in
its case upon the floor. In order to do so,
it took a moment or two to balance it safely
against the wall. Aunt Julia always declared that at this
moment she was not actually watching him, but had turned
her head towards the inner room, where she fancied she
heard something moving. But at any rate, both positively agreed
that there came a sound of rushing feet, heavy and
very swift, and the next instant the candle was out.
But to Shorthouse himself had come more than this, and
he has always thanked his fortunate stars that it came
to him alone, and not to his aunt too. For
as he rose from the stooping position of balancing the candle,
and before it was actually extinguished, a face thrust itself forward,
so close to his own that he could have almost
touched it with his lips. It was a face working
with passion, a man's face, dark, with thick features and angry,
savage eyes. It belonged to a common man, and it
was evil in its ordinary, normal expression, no doubt. But
as he saw it alive with intense, aggressive emotion, it
was a malignant and terrible human countenance. There was no
movement of the air, nothing but the sound of rushing feet,
stalking or muffled feet, the apparition of the and the
almost simultaneous extinguishing of the candle. In spite of himself,
Shorthouse uttered a little cry, nearly losing his balance, as
his aunt clung to him with her whole weight. In
one moment of real, uncontrollable terror, she made no sound,
but simply seized him bodily. Fortunately, however, she had seen nothing,
but had only heard the rushing feet. For her control
returned almost at once, and he was able to disentangle
himself and strike a match. The shadows ran away on
all sides before the glare, and his aunt stooped down
and groped for the cigar case with the precious candle.
Then they discovered that the candle had not been blown
out at all. It had been crushed out. The wick
was pressed down into the wax, which was flattened, as
if by some smooth, heavy instrument. How his companion so
quickly overcame her terror. Shorthouse never properly understood, but his
admiration for her self control increased tenfold, and at the
same time served to feed his own dying flame, for
which he was undeniably grateful. Equally inexplicable to him was
the evidence of physical force they had just witnessed. He
at once suppressed the memory of stories he had heard
of physical mediums and their dangerous phenomena, For if these
were true, and either his aunt or himself was unwittingly
a physical medium, it meant that they were simply aiding
to focus the forces of a haunted house already charged
to the brim. It was like walking with unprotected lamps
among uncovered stores of gunpowder. So with as little reflection
as possible, he simply ReLit the candle and went up
to the next floor. The arm in his trembled. It's
true and his own tread was often uncertain, But they
went on with thoroughness, and after a search revealing nothing,
they climbed the last flight of stairs to the top floor.
Of all. Here they found a perfect nest of small
servants rooms with broken pieces of furniture, dirty cane bottomed chairs,
chests of drawers, cracked mirrors, and decrepit bedsteads. The rooms
had low sloping ceilings already hung here and there with cobwebs,
small windows, and badly plastered walls, a depressing and dismal
region which they were glad to leave behind. It was
on the stroke of midnight when they entered a small
room on the third floor, close to the top of
the stairs, and arranged to make themselves comfortable for the
remainder of their adventure. It was absolutely bare, and was
said to be the room then used as a clothes
closet into which the infuriated groom had chased his victim
and finally caught her outside. Across the narrow landing began
the stairs leading up to the floor above and the
servants quarters, where they had just searched in spite of
the chilliness of the night. There was something in the
air of this room that cried for an open window.
But there was more than this. Shorthouse could only describe
it by saying that he felt less master of himself
here than in any other part of the house. There
was something that acted directly on the nerves, tiring the resolution,
in feebling the will. He was conscious of this result
before he had been in the room five minutes, and
it was in the short time they stayed there that
he suffered the wholesale depletion of his vital forces, which
was for himself the chief horror of the whole experience.
They put the candle on the floor of the cupboard,
leaving the door a few inches ajar, so that there
was no glare to confuse the eyes and no shadow
to shift about on walls and ceiling. Then they spread
the cloak on the floor and sat down to wait
with their backs against the wall shorthouse was within two
feet of the door on to the landing. His position
commanded a good view of the main staircase leading down
into the darkness, and also of the beginning of the
servants stairs going to the floor above. The heavy stick
lay beside him within easy reach. The moon was now
high above the house. Through the open window, they could
see the comforting stars, like friendly eyes watching in the sky.
One by one, the clocks of the town struck midnight,
and when the sounds died away, the deep silence of
a windless night fell again over everything. Only the boom
of the sea, far away and lugubrious, filled the air
with hollow murmurs. Inside the house, the silence became awful, awful,
he thought, because any minute now it might be broken
by sounds pretending terror. The strain of waiting told more
and more severely on the nerves. They talked in whispers,
when they talked at all. For their voices a loud
sounded queer and unnatural. A chilliness, not altogether due to
the night air, invaded the room and made them cold.
The influences against them, whatever these might be, were slowly
robbing them of self confidence and the power of decisive action.
Their forces were on the wane, and the possibility of
real fear took on a new and terrible meaning. He
began to tremble for the elderly woman by his side,
whose pluck could hardly save her. Beyond a certain extent,
he heard the blood singing in his veins. It sometimes
seemed so loud that he fancied it prevented his hearing
properly certain other sounds that were beginning very faintly to
make themselves audible in the depths of the house. Every
time he fastened his attention on these sounds, they instantly ceased.
They certainly came no nearer. Yet he could not rid
himself of the idea that movement was going on somewhere
in the lower regions of the house. The drawing room floor,
where the doors that had been so strangely closed, seemed
too near. The sounds were further off than that. He
thought of the great kitchen with the scurrying black beetles,
and of the dismal little scullery. But somehow or other,
they did not seem to come from there either. Surely
they were not outside the house. Then suddenly the truth
flashed into his mind, and for the space of a
minute he felt as if his blood had stopped flowing
and turned to ice. The sounds were not downstairs at all.
They were upstairs, upstairs, somewhere among those horrid, gloomy little
servants rooms with their bits of broken furniture, low ceilings
and cramped windows, upstairs where the victim had first been
disturbed and stalked to her death. And the moment he
discovered where the sounds were, he began to hear them
more clearly. It was the sound of feet moving stealthily
along the passage overhead, in and out among the rooms
and past the furniture. He turned quickly to steal a
glance at the motionless figure seated beside him, to note
whether she had shared his discovery. The faint candle light
coming through the crack and the cupboard door threw her
strongly marked face into vivid relief against the white of
the wall. But it was something else that made him
catch his breath and stare again. An extraordinary something had
come into her face and seemed to spread over her
features like a mask. It smoothed out the deep lines
and drew the skin everywhere a little tighter, so that
the wrinkles disappeared. It brought into the face, with the
sole exception of the old eyes, an appearance of youth
and almost of childhood. He stared in speechless amazement, amazement
that was dangerously near to horror. It was his aunt's face, indeed,
but it was her face of forty years ago, the vacant,
innocent face of a girl. He had heard stories of
that strange effect of terror, which could wipe a human
countenance clean of other emotions, obliterating all previous expressions, but
he had never realized that it could be literally true,
or could mean anything so simply horrible as what he
now saw. For the dreadful signature of overmastering fear was
written plainly in that utter vacancy of the girlish face
beside him. And when feeling his intense gaze, she turned
to look at him. He instinctively closed his eyes tightly
to shut out the sight. Yet when he turned a
minute later, his feelings well in hand, he saw, to
his intense relief another expression. His aunt was smiling, and
though the face was deathly white, the awful veil had
lifted and the normal look was returning anything wrong was
all he could think of to say at the moment,
and the answer was eloquent coming from such a woman.
I feel cold and a little frightened, she whispered. He
offered to close the window, but she seized hold of
him and begged him not to leave her side, even
for an instant. It's upstairs, I know, she whispered, with
an odd half laugh. But I can't possibly co up.
But Shorthouse thought otherwise, Knowing that an action lay their
best hope of self control, he took the brandy flask
and poured out a glass of neat spirit, stiff enough
to help anybody over anything. She swallowed it with a
little shiver. His only idea da now was to get
out of the house before her collapse became inevitable. But
this could not safely be done by turning tail and
running from the enemy. Inaction was no longer possible. Every
minute he was growing less master of himself, and desperate
aggressive measures were imperative without further delay. Moreover, the action
must be taken towards the enemy, not away from it.
The climax, if necessary and unavoidable, would have to be
faced boldly. He could do it now, but in ten
minutes he might not have the force left to act
for himself, much less for both. Upstairs, the sounds were
meanwhile becoming louder and closer, accompanied by occasional creaking of
the boards. Someone was moving stealthily about, stumbling now and
thin awkwardly against the furniture, waiting a few moments to
allow the tremendous dose of spirits to produce its effect,
and knowing this would last but a short time under
the circumstances, Shorthouse then quietly got on his feet, saying
in a determined voice, Now, Aunt Julia, we'll go upstairs
and find what all this noise is about. You must
come too, It's what we agreed. He picked up his
stick and went to the cupboard for the candle. A
limp form rose shakily beside him, breathing hard, and he
heard a voice say, very faintly something about being ready
to come. The woman's courage amazed him, it was so
much greater than his own, And as they advanced, holding
aloft the dripping candle, some subtle force exhaled from this trembling,
white faced old woman at his side. That was the
true source of his inspiration. It held something really great
that shamed him and gave him the support without which
held have proved far less equal to the occasion. They
crossed the dark landing, avoiding with their eyes the deep
black space over the banisters. Then they began to mount
the narrow staircase to meet the sounds, which minute by
minute grew louder and nearer. About half way up the stairs,
Aunt Julia stumbled, and Shorthouse turned to catch her by
the arm, and just at that moment there came a
terrific crash in the servant's cortdor overhead. It was instantly
followed by a shrill, agonized scream that was a cry
of terror and a cry for help melted into one.
Before they could move aside or go down a single step,
someone came rushing along the passage overhead, blundering horribly, racing
madly at full speed, three steps at a time down
the very staircase where they stood. The steps were light
and uncertain, but close behind them sounded the heavier tread
of another person, and the staircase seemed to shake. Shorthouse
and his companion just had time to flatten themselves against
the wall when the jumble of flying steps was upon them,
and two persons, with the slightest possible interval between them,
dashed past at full speed. It was a perfect whirlwind
of sound breaking in upon the midnight silence of the
empty building. The two runners, pursuer and pursued, had passed
clean through them where they stood, and already with a thud,
the boards below had received first one then the other.
Yet they had seen absolutely nothing, not a hand or arm,
or face, or even a shred of flying clothing. There
came a second's pause, Then the first one, the lighter
of the two, obviously the pursued one, ran with uncertain
footsteps into the little room which Shorthouse and his aunt
had just left. The heavier one followed. There was a
sound of scuffling, gasping and smothered screaming, and then out
onto the landing came the step of a single person
treading weightily. A dead silence followed for the space of
half a minute, and then was heard a rushing sound
through the air. It was followed by a dull, crashing
thud in the depths of the house below. On the
stone floor of the hall, utter silence reigned after nothing moved.
The flame of the candle was steady. It had been
steady the whole time, and the air had been undisturbed
by any movement whatsoever. Palsied with terror, Aunt Julia, without
waiting for her companion, began fumbling her way downstairs. She
was crying gently to herself, and when Shorthouse put her
arm round her and half carried her, he felt that
she was trembling like a leaf. He went into the
little room and picked up the cloak from the floor,
and arm in arm. Walking very slowly, without speaking word
or looking once behind them, they marched down the three
flights into the hall. In the hall they saw nothing
but the whole way down the stairs, they were conscious
that some one followed them step by step. When they
went faster, it was left behind, and when they went
more slowly, it caught them up. But never once did
they look behind to see, and at each turning of
the staircase they lowered their eyes for fear of the
following horror they might see upon the stairs above. With
trembling hands, Shorthouse opened the front door, and they walked
out into the moonlight and drew a deep breath of
the cool night air. Blowing in from the sea end
of the empty house