 Daegon by HP Lovecraft. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Daegon by HP Lovecraft. I am writing this under an appreciable mental strain since by tonight I shall be no more. Penelous and at the end of my supply of the drug which alone makes life indurable, I can bear the torture no longer and shall cast myself from this garret window into the squalid street below. Do not think from my slavery to morphine that I am a weakling or a degenerate. When you have read these hastily scrawled pages, you may guess, though never fully realize why it is that I must have forgetfulness or death. It was in one of the most open and least frequented parts of the broad Pacific that the packet of which I was supercargo fell a victim to the German sea raider. The Great War was then at its very beginning and the ocean forces of the Hun had not completely sunk to their later degradation. So that our vessel was made a legitimate prize whilst we of her crew were treated with all the fairness and consideration due us as naval prisoners. So liberal indeed was the discipline of our captors that five days after we were taken I managed to escape alone in a small boat with water and provisions for a good length of time. When I finally found myself adrift and free I had but little idea of my surroundings. Never a confident navigator I could only guess vaguely by the sun and stars that I was somewhat south of the equator. Of the longitude I knew nothing and no island or coastline was in sight. The weather kept fair and for uncounted days I drifted aimlessly beneath the scorching sun waiting either for some passing ship or to be cast on the shores of some habitable land. But neither ship nor land appeared and I began to despair in my solitude upon the heaving vastness of unbroken blue. The change that happened whilst I slept. Its details I shall never know for my slumber though troubled and dream infested was continuous. When at last I awaked it was to discover myself half sucked into a slimy expanse of hellish black mire which extended about me in monotonous undulations as far as I could see and in which my boat lay grounded some distance away. Though one might well imagine my first sensation would be of wonder at so prodigious and unexpected a transformation of scenery I was in reality more horrified than astonished. For there was in the air and in the rotting soil a sinister quality which chilled me to the very core. The region was putrid with the carcasses of decaying fish and of other less describable things which I saw protruding from the nasty mud of the unending plain. Perhaps I should not hope to convey in mere word the unutterable hideousness that can dwell in absolute silence and barren immensity. There was nothing within hearing and nothing in sight save a vast reach of black slime. Yet the very completeness of the stillness and the homogeneity of the landscape oppressed me with a nauseating fear. The sun was blazing down from the sky which seemed to me almost black in its cloudless cruelty as though reflecting the inky marsh beneath my feet. As I crawled into the stranded boat I realized that only one theory could explain my position. Through some unprecedented volcanic upheaval a portion of the ocean floor must have been thrown to the surface exposing regions which for innumerable millions of years had lain hidden under unfathomable watery depths. So great was the extent of the new land which had risen beneath me that I could not detect the faintest noise of the surging ocean strain my ears as I might. Nor were there any seafowl to prey upon the dead things. For several hours I sat thinking or brooding in the boat which lay upon its side and afforded a slight shade as the sun moved across the heavens. As the day progressed the ground lost some of its stickiness and it seemed likely to dry sufficiently for traveling purposes in a short time. That night I slept but little and the next day I made for myself a pack containing food and water preparatory to an overland journey in search of the vanished sea and possible rescue. On the third morning I found the soil dry enough to walk upon with ease. The odor of the fish was maddening but I was too much concerned with graver things to mine so slight an evil and set out boldly for an unknown goal. All day I forged steadily westward guided by a far away hummock which rose higher than any other elevation on the rolling desert. That night I encamped and on the following day still traveled toward the hummock. Though that object seemed scarcely nearer than when I had first despised it. Too weary to ascend I slept in the shadow of the hill. I know not why my dreams were so wild that night but ere the waning and fantastically gibbous moon had risen far above the eastern plain I was awake in a cold perspiration determined to sleep no more. Such visions as I had experienced were too much for me to endure again and in the glow of the moon I saw how unwise I had been to travel by day. Without the glare of the parching sun my journey would have cost me less energy. Indeed I now felt quite able to perform the ascent which had deterred me at sunset. Picking up my pack I started for the crest of the eminence. I have said that the unbroken monotony of the rolling plain was a source of vague horror to me. But I think my horror was greater when I gained the summit of the mound and looked down the other side into an immeasurable pit or canyon whose black recesses the moon had not yet soared high enough to illumine. I felt myself on the edge of the world peering over the rim into a fathomless chaos of eternal night. Through my terror ran curious reminiscences of paradise lost and of Satan's hideous climb through the unfashioned realms of darkness. As the moon climbed higher in the sky I began to see that the slopes of the valley were not quite so perpendicular as I had imagined. Ledges and outcroppings of rock afforded fairly easy footholds for a descent whilst after a drop of a few hundred feet the declivity became very gradual. Urged on by an impulse which I cannot definitely analyze I scrambled with difficulty down the rocks and stood on the gentler slope beneath. Gazing into the Stygian depths where no light had yet penetrated. All at once my attention was captured by a vast and singular object on the opposite slope which rose steeply about a hundred yards ahead of me. An object that gleamed whitely in the newly bestowed rays of the ascending moon. That it was merely a gigantic piece of stone I soon assured myself. But I was conscious of a distant impression that its contours and position were not altogether the work of nature. A closer scrutiny filled me with sensations I cannot express. For despite its enormous magnitude and its position in an abyss which had yawned at the bottom of the sea since the world was young I perceived beyond a doubt that the strange object was a well-shaped monolith whose massive bulk had known the workmanship and perhaps the warship of living and thinking creatures. Dazed and frightened yet without a certain thrill of the scientist's or archaeologist's delight I examined my surroundings more closely. The moon, now near the zenith, shone weirdly and vividly above the towering steeps that hemmed in the chasm and revealed the fact that a far-flung body of water flowed at the bottom, winding out of sight in both directions and almost lapping my feet as I stood on the slope. Across the chasm the wavelets washed the base of the Cyclopean monolith on whose surface I could now trace both inscriptions and crude sculptures. The writing was in a system of hieroglyphs unknown to me and unlike anything I had ever seen in books, consisting for the most part of conventionalized aquatic symbols such as fishes, eels, octopi, crustaceans, mussels, whales, and the like. Several characters obviously represented marine things which are unknown to the modern world but whose decomposing forms I had observed on the ocean-ridden plain. It was the pictorial carving, however, that did most to hold me spellbound. Plainly visible across the intervening water on account of their enormous size were an array of bas-reliefs whose subjects would have excited the envy of a dore. I think that these things were supposed to depict men, at least a certain sort of men, though the creatures were shown, disporting like fishes in the waters of some marine grotto, or paying homage at some monolithic shrine which appeared to be under the waves as well. Of their faces and forms I dare not speak in detail, and the mere remembrance makes me grow faint. Grotesque beyond the imagination of a poe or bulwer, they were damnably human in general outline despite webbed hands and feet, shockingly wide and flabby lips, glassy, bulging eyes, and other features less pleasant to recall. Curiously enough, they seemed to have been chiseled badly out of proportion with their scenic background, for one of the creatures was shown in the act of killing a whale represented as but little larger than himself. I remarked as I say their grotesqueness and strange size, but in a moment decided that they were merely imaginary gods of some primitive fish or seafaring tribe. Some tribe whose last descendant had perished eras before the first ancestor of the Piltdown or Neanderthal man was born. Awestruck at this unexpected glimpse into a past beyond the conception of the most daring anthropologist, I stood musing whilst the moon cast queer reflections on the silent channel before me. Then, suddenly, I saw it. With only a slight churning to mask its rise to the surface, a thing slid into view above the dark waters. Vast, polyphemous-like and loathsome, it darted like a stupendous monster of nightmares to the monolith, about which it flung its gigantic scaly arms, the while it bowed its hideous head, and gave vent to certain measured sounds. I think I went mad then. Of my frantic ascent of the slope and cliff, and of my delirious journey back to the stranded boat, I remember little. I believe I sang a great deal and laughed oddly when I was unable to sing. I have indistinct recollections of a great storm sometime after I reached the boat. At any rate, I know that I heard peals of thunder and other tones which nature utters only in her wildest moods. When I came out of the shadows, I was in a San Francisco hospital, brought thither by the captain of the American ship which had picked up my boat in mid-ocean. In my delirium, I had said much, but found that my words had been given scant attention. Of any land upheaval in the Pacific, my rescuers knew nothing, nor did I deem it necessary to insist upon a thing which I knew they could not believe. Once, I sought out a celebrated ethnologist and amused him with peculiar questions regarding the ancient Philistine legend of Dagon, the Fish God. But soon perceiving that he was hopelessly conventional, I did not press my inquiries. It is at night, especially when the moon is gibbous and waning, that I see the thing. I tried morphine, but the drug has given only transient sucrease and has drawn me into its clutches as a hopeless slave. So now I am to end it all, having written a full account for the information or the contemptuous amusement of my fellow men. Often I ask myself if it could not all have been a pure phantasm, a mere freak of fever as I lay sun-stricken and raving in the open boat after my escape from the German Man of War. This I ask myself, but ever does there come before me a hideously vivid vision in reply. I cannot think of the deep sea without shuddering at the nameless things that may at this very moment be crawling and floundering on its slimy bed, worshipping their ancient stone idols and carving their own detestable likenesses on submarine obelisks of water-soaked granite. I dream of a day when they may rise above the billows to drag down in their reeking talons the remnants of puny war-exhausted mankind. Of a day when the land shall sink and the dark ocean shall ascend amidst universal pandemonium. The end is near. I hear a noise at the door, as of some immense slippery body lumbering against it. It shall not find me. God, that hand, the window, the window. End of Dagon A merchant named Inamuria Gensuke. He had a daughter called Osuno. As she was very clever and pretty, he thought it would be a pity to let her grow up with only such teaching as the country teachers could give her, so he sent her, in care of some trusty attendance, to Kyoto, that she might be trained in the polite accomplishments taught to the ladies of the capital. After she had thus been educated, she was married to a friend of her father's family, a merchant named Nagaraya, and she lived happily with him for nearly four years. They had one child, a boy. But Osuno fell ill and died in the fourth year after her marriage. On the night after the funeral of Osuno, her little son said that his mama had come back and was in the room upstairs. She had smiled at him, but would not talk to him, so he became afraid and ran away. Then some of the family went upstairs to the room which had been Osuno's, and they were startled to see, by the light of a small lamp which had been kindled before a shrine in that room, the figure of the dead mother. She appeared as if standing in front of a tansu or chest of drawers that still contained her ornaments and her wearing apparel. Her head and shoulders could very distinctly be seen, but from the waist downwards the figure thinned into invisibility. It was like an imperfect reflection of her, and transparent as a shadow on water. Then the folk were afraid and left the room. Below they consulted together, and the mother of Osuno's husband said, A woman is fond of her small things, and Osuno was much attached to her belongings. Perhaps she has come back to look at them. Many dead persons will do that, unless the things be given to the parish temple. If we present Osuno's robes and girdles to the temple, her spirit will probably find rest. It was agreed that this should be done as soon as possible. On the following morning the drawers were emptied, and all of Osuno's ornaments and dresses were taken to the temple. But she came back the next night and looked at the tansu as before, and she came back also on the night following, and the night after that, and every night, and the house became a house of fear. The mother of Osuno's husband then went to the parish temple and told the chief priest all that had happened, and asked for ghostly counsel. The temple was a zen temple, and the head priest was a learned old man known as Daigen Osho. He said, There must be something about which she is anxious in or near that tansu. But we emptied all the drawers, replied the woman. There is nothing in the tansu. Well, said Daigen Osho, to-night I shall go to your house and keep watch in that room and see what can be done. You must give orders that no person shall enter the room while I am watching, unless I call. After sundown Daigen Osho went to the house and found the room made ready for him. He remained there alone, reading the sutras, and nothing happened until after the hour of the rat. Then the figure of Osono suddenly outlined itself in front of the tansu. Her face had a wistful look, and she kept her eyes fixed upon the tansu. The priest uttered the holy formula prescribed in such cases, and then, addressing the figure by the kaimyou of Osono, said, I have come here in order to help you. Perhaps in that tansu there is something about which you have reason to feel anxious? Shall I try to find it for you? The shadow appeared to give consent by a slight motion of the head, and the priest, rising, opened the top drawer. It was empty. Successively he opened the second, the third, and the fourth drawer. He searched carefully behind them and beneath them. He carefully examined the interior of the chest. He found nothing, but the figure remained gazing as wistfully as before. What can she want? thought the priest. Suddenly it occurred to him that there might be something hidden under the paper with which the drawers were lined. He removed the lining of the first drawer. Nothing. He removed the lining of the second and third drawers. Still nothing, but under the lining of the lowermost drawer he found a letter. Is this the thing about which you have been troubled? he asked. The shadow of the woman turned toward him. Her faint gaze fixed upon the letter. Shall I burn it for you? he asked. She bowed before him. It shall be burned in the temple this very morning, he promised, and no one shall read it except myself. The figure smiled and vanished. Dawn was breaking as the priest descended the stairs to find the family waiting anxiously below. Do not be anxious, he said to them. She will not appear again. And she never did. The letter was burned. It was a love letter written to Osono in the time of her studies at Kyoto, but the priest alone knew what was in it, and the secret died with him. End of A Dead Secret His Dead Wife's Photograph by S. Mukherjee This story created a sensation when it was first told. It appeared in the papers and many big physicists and natural philosophers were, at least so they thought, able to explain the phenomenon. I shall narrate the event and also tell the reader what explanation was given and let him draw his own conclusions. This is what happened. A friend of mine, a clerk in the same office as myself, was an amateur photographer. Let us call him Jones. Jones had a half-plate Sanderson camera with a Ross lens and a Thornton Picard behind lens shutter with pneumatic release. The plate in question was a Ratten's ordinary, developed with Ilford Pyrosoda developer, prepared at home. All these particulars I give for the benefit of the more technical reader. Mr. Smith, another clerk in our office, invited Mr. Jones to take a likeness of his wife and sister-in-law. This sister-in-law was the wife of Mr. Smith's elder brother, who was also a government servant that on leave. The idea of the photograph was of the sister-in-law. Jones was a keen photographer himself. He had photographed everybody in the office, including the peons and sweepers, and had even supplied every sitter of his with copies of his handiwork. So he most willingly consented and anxiously awaited for the Sunday on which the photograph was to be taken. Early on Sunday morning Jones went to the Smiths. The arrangement of light in the veranda was such that a photograph could only be taken after midday, and so he stayed there to breakfast. At about one in the afternoon all arrangements were complete and the two ladies, Mrs. Smiths, were made to sit in two cane chairs and after long and careful focusing and moving the camera about for an hour, Jones was satisfied at last and an exposure was made. Jones was sure that the plate was all right and so a second plate was not exposed, although in the usual course of things this should have been done. He wrapped up his things and went home, promising to develop the plate the same night and bring a copy of the photograph the next day to the office. The next day, which was a Monday, Jones came to the office very early and I was the first person to meet him. Well, Mr. Photographer, I asked, what success? I got the picture all right, said Jones, unwrapping an unmounted picture and handing it over to me. Most funny, don't you think so? No, I don't. I think it is all right. At any rate I did not expect anything better from you, I said. No, said Jones. The funny thing is that only two ladies sat. Quite right, I said. The third stood in the middle. There was no third lady at all there, said Jones. Then you imagined she was there and there we find her. I tell you, there were only two ladies there when I exposed, insisted Jones. He was looking awfully worried. Do you want me to believe that there were only two persons when the plate was exposed and then three when it was developed? I asked. That is exactly what has happened, said Jones. Then it must be the most wonderful developer you used, or was it that this was the second exposure given to the same plate? The developer is the one which I have been using for the last three years, and the plate, the one I charged on Saturday night out of a new box that I purchased only in the afternoon that day. A number of other clerks had come up in the meantime and were taking great interest in the picture and in Jones' assertion. It is only right that a description of the picture be given here for the benefit of the reader. I wish I could reproduce the original picture too, but that for certain reasons is impossible. When the plate was actually exposed, there were only two ladies, both of whom were sitting in cane chairs. When the plate was developed, it was found that there was in the picture a figure, that of a lady, standing in the middle. She wore a broad-edged doti. The reader should not forget that all the characters are Indians. Only the upper half of her body was visible, the lower being concealed from view by the low backs of the cane chairs. She was evidently behind the chairs and consequently slightly out of focus. Still, everything was quite clear. Even her long necklace was visible through the little opening in the doti near the right shoulder. She was resting her hands on the backs of the chairs and the fingers were nearly totally out of focus, but a ring on the right ring finger was distinctly visible. She looked like a handsome young woman of 22, short and thin. One of the ear rings was also clearly discernible, although the face itself was slightly out of focus. One thing, and probably the funniest thing, that we overlooked then but observed afterwards, that immediately behind the three ladies was a barred window. The two ladies, who were one on each side, covered up the bars to a certain height from the bottom with their bodies, but the lady in the middle was partly transparent because the bars of the window were very faintly distinguishable through her. This fact, however, as I have said already, we did not observe them. We only laughed at Jones and tried to assure him that he was either drunk or asleep. At this moment, Smith of our office walked in, removing the trouser clips from his legs. Smith took the unmounted photograph, looked at it for a minute, turned red and blue and green and finally very pale. Of course, we asked him what the matter was, and this is what he said. The third lady in the middle was my first wife, who has been dead these eight years. Before her death, she asked me a number of times to have her photograph taken. She used to say that she had a pre-sentiment that she might die early. I did not believe in her pre-sentiment myself, but I did not object to the photograph. So one day, I ordered a carriage and asked her to dress up. We intended to go to a good professional. She dressed up and the carriage was ready, but as we were going to start, news reached us that her mother was dangerously ill. So we went to see her mother instead. The mother was very ill, and I had to leave her there. Immediately afterwards, I was sent away on duty to another station, and so could not bring her back. It was in fact after full three months and a half that I returned, and then, though her mother was all right, my wife was not. Within fifteen days of my return, she died of purple fever after childbirth, and the child died too. Thus it happened that her photograph was never taken. When she dressed up for the last time on the day that she left my home, she had the necklace and the earrings on, as you see her wearing them in the photograph. My present wife has them now, but she does not generally put them on. This was too big a pill for me to swallow. So I at once took French leave from my office, bagged to the photograph, and rushed out on my bicycle. I went to Mr. Smith's house and looked Mrs. Smith up. Of course, she was much astonished to see a third lady in the picture, but could not guess who she was. This I had expected, as supposing Smith's story to be true. This lady had never seen her husband's first wife. The elder brother's wife, however, recognized the likeness at once, and she virtually repeated this story, which Smith had told us in the morning. She even brought out the necklace and the earrings for my inspection and conviction. They were the same as those in the photograph. All the principal newspapers of that time got hold of the fact, and within a week, there was any number of applications for the ghostly photograph. But Mr. Jones refused to supply copies of it to anybody for various reasons, the principal being that Smith would not allow it. I am, however, the fortunate possessor of a copy, which for obvious reasons I am not allowed to show anybody. One copy of the picture was sent to America and another to England. I do not now remember exactly to whom. My own copy I showed to the Reverend Father Blank, MA, DSC, BD, etc., and asked him to find out a scientific explanation of the phenomenon. The following explanation was given by the gentleman. I am afraid I shall not be able to reproduce the learned father's exact words, but this is what he meant, or at least what I understood him to mean. The girl in question was dressed in this particular way on an occasion, say, ten years ago. Her image was cast on space, and the reflection was projected from one luminous body, one planet, on another till it made a circuit of millions and millions of miles in space, and then came back to earth at the exact moment when your friend Mr. Jones was going to make the exposure. Take, for instance, the case of a man who is taking the photograph of a mirage. He is photographing Place X from Place Y, when X and Y are, say, 200 miles apart, and it may be that his camera is facing east, while Place X is actually towards the west of Place Y. At school I had read a little of science and chemistry and could make a dry analysis of assault, but this was an item too obstruous for my limited comprehension. The fact, however, remains, and I believe it, that Smith's first wife did come back to this terrestrial globe of ours over eight years after her death, to give a sitting for a photograph in a form which, though it did not affect the retina of our eye, did impress a sensitized plate, in a form that did not affect the retina of the eye, I say, because Jones must have been looking at his sitters at the time when he was pressing the bulb of the pneumatic release of his time and instantaneous shutter. The story is most wonderful, but this is exactly what happened. Smith says this is the first time he has ever seen or heard from his dead wife. It is popularly believed in India that a dead wife gives a lot of trouble if she ever revisits this earth, but this is, thank God, not the experience of my friend Mr. Smith. It is now over seven years since the event mentioned above happened, and the dead girl has never appeared again. I would very much like to have a photograph of the two ladies taken once more, but I have never ventured to approach Smith with the proposal. In fact, I learnt photography myself with a view to take the photograph of the two ladies, but as I have said, I have never been able to speak to Smith about my intention and probably never shall. The 10 pounds that I spent on my cheap photographic outfit may be a waste, but I have learnt an art which though rather costly for my limited means is nevertheless worth learning. Being closely allied to the art that can immortalize the art that baffles time's tyrannic claim. End of The Dead Wife's photograph, recording by Colleen McMahon. The Empty House by Algernon Blackwood. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Eli Hines. 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 is 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 hare 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 tales of the horror that was said to reign 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 weekend visit to his Aunt Julia in her little house on the sea front at the other end of town, he found her charged 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 appleskin 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 dust. 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 tonight. The short house was conscious of the slightest possible tremor down his back. He dropped his teasing tone. Something in her voice and manner thrilled him. She wasn't 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, enigmatic 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. Or is anything likely to happen? A great deal has happened, she whispered, though it's been most cleverly hushed up. The 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, Short House became interested. His aunt was so very much an 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 stable man 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 servant's 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 stable man 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 of the story. Short House 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. Can 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. For Short House 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 odds fear as well as his own, and as he glanced down at her sphinx-like 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. There was aunt's occasional remarks, Short House 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. Short House had already begun to notice everything, even the smallest details. Suddenly 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 halfway 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. Shudderless 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 Short House 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. Short House, 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. 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 heard, 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, Short House at once swung his heavy stick in the direction of the sound, but it met nothing more solid than air. He heard his aunt 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 onto 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 impromptu 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 histories. 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 halfway 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 seems 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 part 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 candlelight 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, the house 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 tables, ugly mantelpieces, 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 library 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 Julia stumbled at the top step of the dark descent, ill-lit by the flickering candle, and even the short house felt at least half the decision go out of his legs. Come on, he said preemptorily, 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 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 in jar, 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 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 in 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 candlelight, he said quickly, in a voice that sounded like someone 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, Auntie. 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 a 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 a short house 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, short house 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 close 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 aunts. He nodded acquiescence, taking out his watch to note the time. It was 15 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, stockinged or muffled feet, the apparition of the face 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 herself 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 on 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. Shortenhouse 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, enfeebling 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 at jar 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. Shortenhouse was within two feet of the door onto the landing. His position commanded a good view of the main staircase leading down into the darkness and also of the beginning of the servant's 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 legubrious, 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 allowed 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 candlelight coming through the crack in 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 ceased 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-op. But Shorthouse thought otherwise knowing that in 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 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. In action 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 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 about 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 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 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 servants 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 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 than 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 waitily. 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. Pulsied 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 someone 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 Most mighty Victoria V. R. Reg. Britannicorum. V. I. Kaiser E. Hunt. Please admit bearer to privileges of praising God on the little drum as occasion befitth and your petitioner will ever pray, etc. It was written on a scrap of foreign paper duly stamped as a petition and it did not need the interpolation of imperial titles to prove that this was not by any means this first appearance in court. To be plain it had an ancient and a fish-like smell suggestive of many year's acquaintance with dirty humanity. I looked at the man who had presented it a very ordinary fakier standing with hands folded humbly and was struck by the wistful expectancy in his face. It was at once hopeful yet hopeless Turning to the court-reader for explanation I found a decorous smile flowing round the circle of squatting clerks. It was evidently an old established joke. He is damnably noisful man, sir remarked my Sarishtadar cheerfully and his place of sitting close to Deputy Commissioner's bungalow thus European officers object so it is always na monsoir refused. The sound of the familiar formula drove the hope from the old man's face his thin shoulders seemed to droop but he said nothing. How long has this been going on? I asked. Fourteen years, sir always on transference of officers and it is always na monsoir. He dipped his pen in the ink gave it the premonitory flick. Monsoir. Granted. Said I in a sudden decision. Monsoir during the term of my office. That was but a month. I was only a locum tinens during leave. Only a month and the poor old beggar had waited fourteen years to praise God on the little drum. The pathos and bathos of it hit me hard. But a stare of infinite surprise had replaced the circumambient smile. The fakir himself seemed flabbergasted. I think he felt lost without his petition. For I saw him fumbling in his pocket as the janissaries hustled him out of court as janissaries loved to do east or west. That night, as I was wondering if I had smoked enough and yawned enough to make sleep possible in a hundred degrees of heat and a hundred million mosquitoes, I was suddenly reminded of the proverb charity begins at home. It had, with a vengeance, I had thought my sarishtada's language a trifle to picturesque. Now I recognized its supreme accuracy. The fakir was a damnably noiseful man. It is useless trying to add one iota to this description, especially to those unacquainted with the torture of an Indian drum. By dawn I was in the saddle glad to escape from my own house and the ceaseless rumpa-tum-tum which was driving me crazy. When I returned, the old man was awaiting me in the veranda, his face full of a great content and the desire to murder him which rose up in me with the thought of the twenty-nine nights yet to come, faded before it. Perfect happiness is not the lot of many, but apparently it was his. He salamed down to the ground. Who saw, he said, the great joy in me created a disturbance last night. It will not occur again. The protector of the poor shall sleep in peace even though his slave praises God for him all night long. The Almighty does not require a loud drum. I said I was glad to hear it and my self-complacency grew until I laid my head on the pillow somewhat earlier than usual. Then I became aware of a faint throbbing in the air like that which follows a deep organ note, a throbbing which found its way into the drum of my ear and remained there, so faint that it kept me on the rack to know if it had stopped or was still going on. Rumpa tum tum tum. Rumpa tum tum tum. Rumpa. Even now the impulse to make the hateful rhythm interminable seizes on me. I have to lay aside my pen and take a new one before going on. I draw a veil over the mental struggle which followed. It would have been quite easy to rescind my permission, but the thought of one month versus fourteen years roused my pride. As representative of the Almighty Victoria, Reg, Britannicorum, etc., I had admitted this man to the privileges of praising God on the little drum and there was an end of it. But the effort left my nerves shattered with the strain put on them. It was the middle of the hot weather, that awful fortnight before the rains break. I was young, absolutely alone. Every morning as I rode a perfect wreck past the fake years hovel by the gate, he used to ask me if I had slept well and I lied to him. What was the use of suffering if no one was the happier for it? At last one evening it was the twenty-first I remember for I ticked them off on a calendar like any schoolboy. I sat out among the oleanders knowing that sleep was mine. The rains had broken. A cool wind stirred the dripping trees. The fever of unrest was over. Clouds of winged white ants besieged the lamp. What wonder when the rafters of the old bungalow were riddled almost beyond the limits of safety by their galleries. But what did I care? I was going to sleep and so I did like a child until close on the dawn. And then, by heavens, it was too bad in the veranda surely not faint but loudly imperative rumper tum tum tum. I was out of bed in an instant full of fury. The fiend incarnate must be walking round the house. I was after him in the moonlight. Not a sign. The white oleanders were shining in the dark foliage. A firefly or two. Nothing more. Rumper tum tum tum. Fainter this time round the corner. Not there. Rumper tum tum tum. A mere whisper now but loud enough to be traced. So on the track I was round the house to the veranda once I had started. No sign. No sound. Gracious. What was that? A crash, a thud, a roar, and rattle of earth. The house. The roof. When by the growing light of dawn we inspected the damage we found the biggest rafter of all lying right across the pillow where my head had been two minutes before. The first sunbeams then full of curiosity I strolled over to the fakir's hut. It also was a heap of ruins and when we dug the old man out from among the ant-riddled rafters the doctor said he had been dead for many hours. This story may seem strange to some. Others will agree with my sarishtada who, after spending the morning over Johnson's dictionary and a revenue report, informed me that such catastrophes are but too common in this unhappy land after heavy rain following on long-continued drought. End of The Fakir's Drum by Flora Annie Steele The Ghost of Dr. Harris by Nathaniel Hawthorne This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org The Ghost of Dr. Harris by Nathaniel Hawthorne I'm afraid this ghost story will bear a very faded aspect when transferred to paper. Whatever effect it had on you whatever charm it retains in your memory is perhaps to be attributed to the favorable circumstances under which it was originally told. We were sitting, I remember, late in the evening in your drawing room where the lights of the chandelier were so muffled as to produce a delicious obscurity through which the fire diffused a dim red glow. In this rich twilight the feelings of the party had been properly attuned by some tales of English superstition. And the Lady of Smith Hills Hall had just been describing that bloody footstep which marks the threshold of her old mansion. When your Yankee guest zealous for the honor of his country and desirous of proving that his dead compatriots have the same ghostly privileges as other dead people if they think it worthwhile to use them began a story of something wonderful that long ago happened to himself. Possibly in the verbal narrative he may have assumed a little more license than would be allowed in a written record for the sake of the artistic effect. He may then have thrown in here and there a few slight circumstances which he will not think it proper to retain in what he now puts forth as the sober statement of a veritable fact. A good many years ago it must be as many as 15 perhaps more and while I was still a bachelor I resided at Boston in the United States. In that city there is a large and long established library styled the Athenaeum connected with which is a reading room well supplied with foreign and American periodicals and newspapers. A splendid edifice has since been erected by the priors of the institution but at the period I speak of it was contained within a large old mansion formerly the town residence of an imminent citizen of Boston. The reading room a spacious hall with a group of the Leakaon at one end and the Belvedere Apollo at the other was frequented by not a few elderly merchants retired from business by clergymen and lawyers and by such literary men as we had amongst us. These good people were mostly old leisurely and somnolent and used to nod and doze for hours together with the newspapers before them ever in a non recovering themselves so far as to read a word or two of the politics of the day sitting as it were on the boundary of the land of dreams and having little to do with this world except through the newspapers which they so tenaciously grasped one of these worthies whom I occasionally saw there was the Reverend Dr. Harris a unitarian clergyman with considerable repute and eminence he was very far advanced in life no less than 80 years old and probably more and he resided I think at Dorchester a suburban village in the immediate vicinity of Boston I had never been personally acquainted with the good old clergyman but I'd heard of him all of my life as a noteworthy man so that when he was first pointed out to me I looked at him with a certain specialty of attention I always subsequently eyed him with a degree of interest whenever I happened to see him at the Athenium or elsewhere he was a small withered and firm but brisk old gentleman with snow white hair a somewhat stupid figure but yet a remarkable alacrity of movement I remember it was in the street when I first noticed him the doctor was plodding along with the staff but turned smartly about on being addressed by the gentleman who was with me and responded with a good deal of a vacity who is he I inquired as soon as he had passed the Reverend Dr. Harris of Dorchester replied my companion and from that time I often saw him and never forgot his aspect his a special haunt was the Athenium there I used to see him daily and almost always with a newspaper the Boston Post called the Democratic Party in the Northern States as old Dr. Harris had been a noted Democrat during his more active life it was a very natural thing that he should still like to read the Boston Post there his Reverend figure was accustomed to sit day after day in the self same chair by the fireside and by degrees seeing him there so constantly I began to look towards him as I entered the reading room and felt that a kind of acquaintance was established not that I had any reason as long as this venerable person remained in the body to suppose that he had ever noticed me but by some subtle connection the small white haired infirm yet vivacious figure of an old clergyman became associated with my idea and recollection of the place one day especially about noon as was generally his hour I am perfectly certain that I had seen this figure of old Dr. Harris and taken my customary note of him although I remember nothing in his appearance at all different from what I had seen on many previous occasions but that very evening a friend said to me did you hear that old Dr. Harris is dead no I said very quietly and it cannot be true for I saw him at the Athenaeum today you must be mistaken rejoined my friend he is certainly dead it confirmed the fact with such special circumstance that I could no longer doubt it my friend has often since assured me that I seemed much startled at the intelligence but as well as I can recollect I believe that I was very little disturbed if at all but set down the apparition as a mistake of my own or perhaps the interposition of a familiar idea into the place and amid the circumstances with which I had been accustomed to associated the next day as I ascended the steps of the Athenaeum I remember thinking within myself well I never shall see old Dr. Harris again with this thought in my mind as I open the door of the reading room I glance towards the spot and chair where Dr. Harris usually sat and there to my astonishment sat the gray and firm figure of the deceased doctor reading the newspaper as was his want his own death must have been recorded that very morning in that very newspaper I have no recollection of being greatly discomposed at the moment nor indeed that I felt any extraordinary emotion whatever probably if ghosts were in the habit of coming among us they would coincide with the ordinary train of affairs and melt into them so familiarly that we should not be shocked at their presence at all events so it was in this instance I looked through the newspapers as usual and turned over the periodicals taking about as much interest in their contents as at other times once or twice no doubt I may have lifted my eyes from the page to look again at the venerable doctor who ought then to have been lying in his coffin dressed out for the grave but who felt such interest in the Boston Post as to come back from the other world to read it in the morning after his death one might have supposed that he would have cared more about the novelties and fear to which he had just been introduced than about the politics he had left behind him the apparition took no notice of me nor behaved otherwise in any respect than on any previous day nobody but myself seemed to notice him and yet the old gentleman round about the fire beside his chair were his lifelong acquaintances who were perhaps thinking of his death and who in a day or two would deem it a proper courtesy to attend his funeral I have forgotten how the ghost of Dr. Harris took his departure from the Athenaeum on this occasion or in fact whether the ghost or I went first this equanimity and almost indifference in my part the careless way in which I glanced at so singular a mystery and left it aside this would now surprise me as much as anything else in the affair from that time for a long while thereafter for weeks at least and I know not but for months I used to see the figure of Dr. Harris quite as frequently as before his death it grew to be so common that at length I regarded the venerable defunct no more than any other of the old fogies who basked before the fire and dozed over the newspapers it was but a ghost nothing but thin air not tangible nor appreciable nor demanding any attention from a man of flesh and blood I cannot recollect any cold shudderings any awe any repugnance any emotion whatsoever such as would be suitable and decorous on beholding a visitant from the spiritual world it is very strange but such is the truth it appears excessively odd to me now that I did not adopt such means as I readily might to ascertain whether the appearance had solid substance or was merely gaseous and vapory I might have brushed against him have jostled his chair or have trodden accidentally on his poor old toes I might have snatched the Boston post unless that were an apparition too out of his shadowy hands I might have tested him in a hundred ways but I did nothing of the kind perhaps I was lost to destroy the illusion and to rob myself so good of a ghost story which might probably have been explained in some very commonplace way perhaps after all I had a secret dread of the old phenomenon and therefore kept within my limits with an instinctive caution which I mistook for indifference but this as it may here is the fact I saw the figure day after day for a considerable space of time and took no pains to ascertain whether it was a ghost or no I never to my knowledge saw him come into the reading room and heard from it there sat Dr. Harris in his customary chair and I can say a little else about him after a certain period I really know not how long I began to notice or to fancy a peculiar regard in the old gentleman's aspect towards myself I sometimes found him gazing at me and unless I deceived myself there was a sort of expectancy in his face his spectacles I think were shoved up so that his bleared eyes might meet my own had he been a living man I should have flattered myself that good Dr. Harris was for some reason or other interested in me and desirous of a personal acquaintance being a ghost and amenable to ghostly laws it was natural to conclude that he was waiting to be spoken to before delivering whatever message he wished to impart but if so the ghost had shown the bad judgment common among the spiritual brotherhood both as regarded the place of interview and the person whom he had selected as the recipient of his communications in the reading room of the Athenaeum conversation is strictly forbidden and I could not have addressed the apparition without drawing the instant notice and indignant frowns of the slumberous old gentleman around me I myself too at that time was as shy as any ghost and followed the ghost's rule never to speak first and what an absurd figure should I have made solemnly and awfully addressing what must have appeared in the eyes of all the rest of the company an empty chair besides I had never been introduced to Dr. Harris dead or alive and I am not aware that social regulations are to be abrogated by the accidental fact of one of the parties having crossed the imperceptible line which separates the other party from the spiritual world if ghosts throw off all conventionalism among themselves it does not therefore follow that it can be safely dispensed with by those who are still hampered with flesh and blood for such reasons as these and reflecting moreover that the deceased doctor might burden me with some disagreeable task with which I had no business nor wish to be concerned I stubbornly resolved to have nothing to say to him to this determination I adhered and never passed between the ghost of Dr. Harris and myself to the best of my recollection I never observed the old gentleman either enter the reading room or depart from it or move from his chair or lay down the newspaper or exchange a look with any person in the company unless it were myself he was not by any means invariably in his place in the evening for instance though often at the reading room myself I never saw him he was at the brightest noontide that I used to behold him sitting within the most comfortable focus of the glowing fire as real and lifelike as any object except that he was so very old and of an ashen complexion as any other in the room after a long while of this strange intercourse if such it can be called I remember once at least and I know not but oftener a sad, wistful, disappointed gaze which the ghost fixed upon me from beneath his spectacles a melancholy look of hopelessness which if my heart had not been as hard as a painting stone I could hardly have withstood but I did withstand it and I think I saw him no more after this last appealing look which still dwells in my memory as perfectly as while my own eyes were encountering the dim and bleared eyes of the ghost and whenever I recall this strange passage of my life I see the small, old withered figure of Dr. Harris sitting in his accustomed chair the Boston post in his hand his spectacles shoved upwards and gazing at me as I close the door of the reading room with that wistful, appealing hopeless, helpless look I have only to add that it was not until long after I had ceased to encounter the ghost that I became aware how very odd and strange the whole affair had been and even now I am made sensible of its strangeness, chiefly by the wonder and incredulity of those to whom I tell the story End of The Ghost of Dr. Harris by Nathaniel Hawthorne