The Empty House

Willie Nil. 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. And perhaps with houses, the same principle as operative. And it is the aroma of evil deeds committed under a particular roof, long after the evil 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.

of it. 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 the 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 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 the 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 a genuine terror. While the series of innocent tenants who had tried to live in it had been forced to DeCamp at the shortest possible notice, was indeed little less than a scandal of the town.

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 psychical research, had brains as well as willpower, and by hook er 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.

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, and 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 white in the 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 sphinklike 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 confidence in his own will and power to stand against any shock that might be.

them silently as they passed along. To his aunt's occasional remarks, Shorthouse made no reply, realizing that she was simply surrounding herself with the 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.

against them. She needed support. And a few people are picturing Josh and I arm in arm, and Josh wearing a dress. Then you're right on the money.

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 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 nervous snows 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 a 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 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 yawning gulf of darkness beyond.

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 meant nothing more than solid air. He heard his aunt give a little gas beside him. There's someone here, she whispered. I heard him be quiet, he said sternly.

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 unfurnished house, dimly lit, silent and forsaken, and yet tenanted by rumor with the memories of evil and violent histories. They were standing in a wide hallway. On their left was the open door of a spacious dining room, and in front of 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 suite 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 in 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 seems to paint faces on the surrounding gloom, and his short house peered up into the well of darkness and thought of the countless empty rooms and passages in the upper part of the 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.

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. Bare walls, ugly mantlepieces, 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 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 strains on the nerves increased.

Aunt Julius stumbled at the top 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 into which the stairs led along a narrow passage, was large, with the 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 the deal table standing in the 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 glued. Leaving the main kitchen, they went toward the scullery.

The door was standing ajar, and as they pushed it open to its full extent, Aunt Juliet 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 someone had filled it with particles of ice. Facing them directly in their way, between the

doorposts 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, gone utterly, and the door framed nothing but empty darkness.

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, she noticed that a certain odd change had come over her face, a change which somehow evaded his powers of analysis. There's nothing here, Auntie, he replied 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, and 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 front and back drawing rooms, and then came out again to the landing and went 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 a new apprehension.

Across the flickering candleplane from the room they had left hardly ten seconds before, came the sound of doors quietly closing. It was beyond all question. They 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.

would not move without strong pressure. All was silent as the grave. Undeniably, the rooms were utterly empty, and the house utterly still its beginning, whispered a voice at his elbow, which he hardly recognized as his aunts. 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 note book, 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 toward the inner room, where she fancied she had 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 had 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 almost have 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 malignant in a terrible human countenance. There was no movement of the air, nothing but the sound of rushing feet stocking their muffled feet, the apparition of the face, and the almost simultaneous extinguishing of the candle.

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 a 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 that 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 memories of stories he had heard

of physical mediums in 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 his little reflection as possible, he simply ReLit the candle and went up to the next floor. The arm in his trembled, it

is 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 bottom chairs, chest of drawers, cracked mirrors, and decrepit bedsteads. The room 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. Man, are they gonna make it out?

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 out 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 his nerves, tiring

the resolution, enfeebling the will. He was conscious of this result before he had been in the room five minutes, and it was just in the short time that 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, lugubrious near big trouble, undeclarated in Saint Deletrious.

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 the 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 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 it 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 her to 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 over head, in and out among the rooms and pasted the furniture.

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.

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

the occasional creaking of the boards. Someone was moving stille healthily about, stumbling now and then 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 out what all this noise is about. You must come too. It's what

we agreed. See he's gotten a little whiskey in his belly.

was the true source of his inspiration. It held something really great that shamed him and gave him the support without which he would 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 halfway up the stairs, Aunt Julius stumbled, and Shorthouse turned to catch her by the arm, and just at that moment there came a terrific crash in the servant's corridor 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 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 worth a thud. The boards below had received the first one,

then the other. Yet they had seen absolutely nothing, not a hand or an arm, or a face, or even a shred of flying clothing. Then 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 following There was a sound of scuffly gasping and smothered screaming, and then out on the landing came the step of a single person treading.

her companion, began fumbling her way downstairs. She was crying gently to herself, and when Shorthouse put his 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 a 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

someone followed them step by step. When they went back, 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.