Something was creeping slowly towards him along the floor. It was something dark and serpentine in shape, and it came from the place where the partition bulged. He stooped down to examine it with feelings of intense horror and repugnance, and he discovered that it was moving toward him from the other side of the wall. His eyes were fascinated, and for the moment he was unable to move. Silently, slowly, from side to side like a thick worm, it crawled forward into the room beneath his frightened eyes, until at length he could stand it no longer and stretched out his arm to touch it. But at the instant of contact he withdrew his hand with a suppressed scream. It was sluggish—and it was warm! And he saw that his fingers were stained with living crimson.
A second more, and Shorthouse was out in the passage with his hand on the door of the next room. It was locked. He plunged forward with all his weight against it, and, the lock giving way, he fell headlong into a room that was pitch dark and very cold. In a moment he was on his feet again and trying to penetrate the blackness. Not a sound, not a movement. Not even the sense of a presence. It was empty, miserably empty!
Across the room he could trace the outline of a window with rain streaming down the outside, and the blurred lights of the city beyond. But the room was empty, appallingly empty; and so still. He stood there, cold as ice, staring, shivering listening. Suddenly there was a step behind him and a light flashed into the room, and when he turned quickly with his arm up as if to ward off a terrific blow he found himself face to face with the landlady. Instantly the reaction began to set in.
It was nearly three o’clock in the morning, and he was standing there with bare feet and striped pyjamas in a small room, which in the merciful light he perceived to be absolutely empty, carpetless, and without a stick of furniture, or even a window-blind. There he stood staring at the disagreeable landlady. And there she stood too, staring and silent, in a black wrapper, her head almost bald, her face white as chalk, shading a sputtering candle with one bony hand and peering over it at him with her blinking green eyes. She looked positively hideous.
“Waal?” she drawled at length, “I heard yer right enough. Guess you couldn’t sleep! Or just prowlin’ round a bit—is that it?”
The empty room, the absence of all traces of the recent tragedy, the silence, the hour, his striped pyjamas and bare feet—everything together combined to deprive him momentarily of speech. He stared at her blankly without a word.
“Waal?” clanked the awful voice.
“My dear woman,” he burst out finally, “there’s been something awful—” So far his desperation took him, but no farther. He positively stuck at the substantive.
“Oh! There hasn’t been nothin’,” she said slowly still peering at him. “I reckon you’ve only seen and heard what the others did. I never can keep folks on this floor long. Most of ’em catch on sooner or later—that is, the ones that’s kind of quick and sensitive. Only you being an Englishman I thought you wouldn’t mind. Nothin’ really happens; it’s only thinkin’ like.”
Shorthouse was beside himself. He felt ready to pick her up and drop her over the banisters, candle and all.
“Look there,” he said, pointing at her within an inch of her blinking eyes with the fingers that had touched the oozing blood; “look there, my good woman. Is that only thinking?”
She stared a minute, as if not knowing what he meant.
“I guess so,” she said at length.
He followed her eyes, and to his amazement saw that his fingers were as white as usual, and quite free from the awful stain that had been there ten minutes before. There was no sign of blood. No amount of staring could bring it back. Had he gone out of his mind? Had his eyes and ears played such tricks with him? Had his senses become false and perverted? He dashed past the landlady, out into the passage, and gained his own room in a couple of strides. Whew!…the partition no longer bulged. The paper was not torn. There was no creeping, crawling thing on the faded old carpet.
“It’s all over now,” drawled the metallic voice behind him. “I’m going to bed again.”
He turned and saw the landlady slowly going downstairs again, still shading the candle with her hand and peering up at him from time to time as she moved. A black, ugly, unwholesome object, he thought, as she disappeared into the darkness below, and the last flicker of her candle threw a queer-shaped shadow along the wall and over the ceiling.
Without hesitating a moment, Shorthouse threw himself into his clothes and went out of the house. He preferred the storm to the horrors of that top floor, and he walked the streets till daylight. In the evening he told the landlady he would leave next day, in spite of her assurances that nothing more would happen.
“It never comes back,” she said—“that is, not after he’s killed.”
Shorthouse gasped. “You gave me a lot for my money,” he growled.
“Waal, it aren’t my show,” she drawled. “I’m no spirit medium. You take chances. Some’ll sleep right along and never hear nothin’. Others, like yourself, are different and get the whole thing.”
“Who’s the old gentleman?—does he hear it?” asked Jim.
“There’s no old gentleman at all,” she answered coolly. “I just told you that to make you feel easy like in case you did hear anythin’. You were all alone on the floor.”
“Say now,” she went on, after a pause in which Shorthouse could think of nothing to say but unpublishable things, “say now, do tell, did you feel sort of cold when the show was on, sort of tired and weak, I mean, as if you might be going to die?”
“How can I say?” he answered savagely; “what I felt God only knows.”
“Waal, but He won’t tell,” she drawled out. “Only I was wonderin’ how you really did feel, because the man who had that room last was found one morning in bed—”
“In bed?”
“He was dead. He was the one before you. Oh! You don’t need to get rattled so. You’re all right. And it all really happened, they do say. This house used to be a private residence some twenty-five years ago, and a German family of the name of Steinhardt lived here. They had a big business in Wall Street, and stood ’way up in things.”
“Ah!” said her listener.
“Oh yes, they did, right at the top, till one fine day it all bust and the old man skipped with the boodle—”
“Skipped with the boodle?”
“That’s so,” she said; “got clear away with all the money, and the son was found dead in his house, committed soocide it was thought. Though there was some as said he couldn’t have stabbed himself and fallen in that position. They said he was murdered. The father died in prison. They tried to fasten the murder on him, but there was no motive, or no evidence, or no somethin’. I forget now.”
“Very pretty,” said Shorthouse.
“I’ll show you somethin’ mighty queer anyways,” she drawled, “if you’ll come upstairs a minute. I’ve heard the steps and voices lots of times; they don’t pheaze me any. I’d just as lief hear so many dogs barkin’. You’ll find the whole story in the newspapers if you look it up—not what goes on here, but the story of the Germans. My house would be ruined if they told all, and I’d sue for damages.”
They reached the bedroom, and the woman went in and pulled up the edge of the carpet where Shorthouse had seen the blood soaking in the previous night.
“Look thar, if you feel like it,” said the old hag. Stooping down, he saw a dark, dull stain in the boards that corresponded exactly to the shape and position of the blood as he had seen it.
That night he slept in a hotel, and the following day sought new quarters. In the newspapers on file in his office after a long search he found twenty years back the detailed story, substantially as the woman had said, of Steinhardt & Co.’s failure, the absconding and subsequent arrest of the senior partner, and the suicide, or murder, of his son Otto. The landlady’s room-house had formerly been their private residence.
CLAIRVOYANCE
In the darkest corner, where t
he firelight could not reach him, he sat listening to the stories. His young hostess occupied the corner on the other side; she was also screened by shadows; and between them stretched the horseshoe of eager, frightened faces that seemed all eyes. Behind yawned the blackness of the big room, running as it were without a break into the night.
Some one crossed on tiptoe and drew a blind up with a rattle, and at the sound all started: through the window, opened at the top, came a rustle of the poplar leaves that stirred like footsteps in the wind. “There’s a strange man walking past the shrubberies,” whispered a nervous girl; “I saw him crouch and hide. I saw his eyes!”
“Nonsense!” Came sharply from a male member of the group; “it’s far too dark to see. You heard the wind.” For mist had risen from the river just below the lawn, pressing close against the windows of the old house like a soft grey hand, and through it the stir of leaves was faintly audible.… Then, while several called for lights, others remembered that hop-pickers were still about in the lanes, and the tramps this autumn overbold and insolent. All, perhaps, wished secretly for the sun. Only the elderly man in the corner sat quiet and unmoved, contributing nothing. He had told no fearsome story. He had evaded, indeed, many openings expressly made for him, though fully aware that to his well-known interest in psychical things was partly due his presence in the weekend party. “I never have experiences—that way,” he said shortly when some one asked him point blank for a tale; “I have no unusual powers.” There was perhaps the merest hint of contempt in his tone, but the hostess from her darkened corner quickly and tactfully covered his retreat. And he wondered. For he knew why she invited him. The haunted room, he was well aware, had been specially allotted to him.
And then, most opportunely, the door opened noisily and the host came in. He sniffed at the darkness, rang at once for lamps, puffed at his big curved pipe, and generally, by his mere presence, made the group feel rather foolish. Light streamed past him from the corridor. His white hair shone like silver. And with him came the atmosphere of common sense, of shooting, agriculture, motors, and the rest. Age entered at that door. And his young wife sprang up instantly to greet him, as though his disapproval of this kind of entertainment might need humouring.
It may have been the light—that witchery of half-lights from the fire and the corridor, or it may have been the abrupt entrance of the Practical upon the soft Imaginative that traced the outline with such pitiless, sharp conviction. At any rate, the contrast—for those who had this inner clairvoyant sight all had been prating of so glibly!—was unmistakably revealed. It was poignantly dramatic, pain somewhere in it—naked pain. For, as she paused a moment there beside him in the light, this childless wife of three years’ standing, picture of youth and beauty, there stood upon the threshold of that room the presence of a true ghost story.
And most marevellously she changed—her lineaments, her very figure, her whole presentment. Etched against the gloom, the delicate, unmarked face shone suddenly keen and anguished, and a rich maturity, deeper than any mere age, flushed all her little person with its secret grandeur. Lines started into being upon the pale skin of the girlish face, lines of pleading, pity, and love the daylight did not show, and with them an air of magic tenderness that betrayed, though for a second only, the full soft glory of a motherhood denied, yet somehow mysteriously enjoyed. About her slenderness rose all the deep-bosomed sweetness of maternity, a potential mother of the world, and a mother, though she might know no dear fulfilment, who yet yearned to sweep into her immense embrace all the little helpless things that ever lived.
Light, like emotion, can play strangest tricks. The change pressed almost upon the edge of revelation.… Yet, when a moment later lamps were brought, it is doubtful if any but the silent guest who had told no marvellous tale, knew no psychical experience, and disclaimed the smallest clairvoyant faculty, had received and registered the vivid, poignant picture. For an instant it had flashed there, mercilessly clear for all to see who were not blind to subtle spiritual wonder thick with pain. And it was not so much mere picture of youth and age ill-matched, as of youth that yearned with the oldest craving in the world, and of age that had slipped beyond the power of sympathetically divining it.… It passed, and all was as before.
The husband laughed with genial good-nature, not one whit annoyed. “They’ve been frightening you with stories, child,’ he said in his jolly way, and put a protective arm about her.
“Haven’t they now? Tell me the truth. Much better,” he added, “have joined me instead at billiards, or for a game of Patience, eh?” She looked up shyly into his face, and he kissed her on the forehead. “Perhaps they have—a little, dear,” she said, “but now that you’ve come, I feel all right again.”
“Another night of this,” he added in a graver tone, “and you’d be at your old trick of putting guests to sleep in the haunted room. I was right after all, you see, to make it out of bounds.” He glanced fondly, paternally down upon her. Then he went over and poked the fire into a blaze. Some one struck up a waltz on the piano, and couples danced. All trace of nervousness vanished, and the butler presently brought in the tray with drinks and biscuits. And slowly the group dispersed. Candles were lit. They passed down the passage into the big hail, talking in lowered voices of tomorrow’s plans. The laughter died away as they went up the stairs to bed, the silent guest and the young wife lingering a moment over the embers.
“You have not, after all then, put me in your haunted room?” he asked quietly. “You mentioned, you remember, in your letter—”
“I admit,” she replied at once, her manner gracious beyond her years, her voice quite different, “that I wanted you to sleep there—some one, I mean, who really knows, and is not merely curious. But—forgive my saying so—when I saw you”—she laughed very slowly—“and when you told no marvellous story like the others, I somehow felt—”
“But I never see anything—” he put in hurriedly.
“You feel, though,” she interrupted swiftly, the passionate tenderness in her voice but half suppressed. “I can tell it from your—”
“Others, then,” he interrupted abruptly, almost bluntly, “have slept there—sat up, rather?”
“Not recently. My husband stopped it.” She paused a second, then added, “I had that room—for a year— when first we married.”
The other’s anguished look flew back upon her little face like a shadow and was gone, while at the sight of it there rose in himself a sudden deep rush of wonderful amazement beckoning almost towards worship. He did not speak, for his voice would tremble.
“I had to give it up,” she finished, very low.
“Was it sfo terrible?” after a pause he ventured.
She bowed her head. “I had to change,” she repeated softly.
“And since then—now—you see nothing?” he asked.
Her reply was singular. “Because I will not, not because it’s gone.”
He followed her in silence to the door, and as they passed along the passage, again that curious great pain of emptiness, of loneliness, of yearning rose upon him, as of a sea that never, never can swim beyond the shore to reach the flowers that it loves …
“Hurry up, child, or a ghost will catch you,” cried her husband, leaning over the banisters, as the pair moved slowly up the stairs towards him. There was a moment’s silence when they met.
The guest took his lighted candle and went down the corridor. Good-nights were said again.
They moved away, she to her loneliness, he to his unhaunted room. And at his door he turned. At the far end of the passage, silhouetted against the candlelight, he watched them—the fine old man with his silvered hair and heavy shoulders, and the slim young wife with that amazing air as of some great bountiful mother of the world for whom the years yet passed hungry and unharvested.
They turned the corner, and he went in and closed his door.
Sleep took him very quickly, and while the mist rose up and veiled the countryside, somet
hing else, veiled equally for all other sleepers in that house but two, drew on towards its climax.…
Some hours later he awoke; the world was stills and it seemed the whole house listened; for with that clear vision which some bring out of sleep, he remembered that there had been no direct denial, and of a sudden realised that this big, gaunt chamber where he lay was after all the haunted room. For him, however, the entire world, not merely separate rooms in it, was ever haunted; and he knew no terror to find the space about him charged with thronging life quite other than his own.… He rose and lit the candle, crossed over to the window where the mist shone grey, knowing that no barriers of walls or door or ceiling could keep out this host of Presences that poured so thickly everywhere about him. It was like a wall of being, with peering eyes, small hands stretched out, a thousand pattering wee feet, and tiny voices crying in a chorus very faintly and beseeching.… The haunted room! Was it not, rather, a temple vestibule, prepared and sanctified by yearning rites few men might ever guess, for all the childless women of the world? How could she know that he would understand—this woman he had seen but twice in all his life? And how entrust to him so great a mystery that was her secret? Had she so easily divined in him a similar yearning to which, long years ago, death had denied fulfilment? Was she clairvoyant in the true sense, and did all faces bear on them so legibly this great map that sorrow traced?…
And then, with awful suddenness, mere feelings dipped away, and something concrete happened. The handle of the door had faintly rattled. He turned. The round brass knob was slowly moving. And first, at the sight, something of common fear did grip him, as though his heart had missed a beat, but on the instant he heard the voice of his own mother, now long beyond the stars, calling to him to go softly yet with speed. He watched a moment the feeble efforts to undo the door, yet never afterwards could swear that he saw actual movement, for something in him, tragic as blindness, rose through a mist of tears and darkened vision utterly.…
The Second Algernon Blackwood Megapack Page 56