Blackwood - The Empty House and Other Ghost Stories--Ultimate Horror Classics Collection: From one of the most prolific writers of ghost stories, known for The Willows, The Wendigo, Jimbo, The Human Chord, The

Certain houses, like certain persons, manage somehow to proclaim at oncetheir character for evil. In the case of the latter, no particularfeature need betray them; they may boast an open countenance and aningenuous smile; and yet a little of their company leaves theunalterable conviction that there is something radically amiss withtheir being: that they are evil. Willy nilly, they seem to communicatean atmosphere of secret and wicked thoughts which makes those in theirimmediate neighbourhood shrink from them as from a thing diseased.

And, perhaps, with houses the same principle is operative, and it is thearoma of evil deeds committed under a particular roof, long after theactual doers have passed away, that makes the gooseflesh come and thehair rise. Something of the original passion of the evil-doer, and ofthe 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 apparentcause.

There was manifestly nothing in the external appearance of thisparticular house to bear out the tales of the horror that was said toreign within. It was neither lonely nor unkempt. It stood, crowded intoa corner of the square, and looked exactly like the houses on eitherside of it. It had the same number of windows as its neighbours; thesame balcony overlooking the gardens; the same white steps leading up tothe heavy black front door; and, in the rear, there was the same narrowstrip of green, with neat box borders, running up to the wall thatdivided it from the backs of the adjoining houses. Apparently, too, thenumber of chimney pots on the roof was the same; the breadth and angleof the eaves; and even the height of the dirty area railings.

And yet this house in the square, that seemed precisely similar to itsfifty ugly neighbours, was as a matter of fact entirelydifferenthorribly different.

Wherein lay this marked, invisible difference is impossible to say. Itcannot be ascribed wholly to the imagination, because persons who hadspent some time in the house, knowing nothing of the facts, had declaredpositively that certain rooms were so disagreeable they would rather diethan enter them again, and that the atmosphere of the whole houseproduced in them symptoms of a genuine terror; while the series ofinnocent tenants who had tried to live in it and been forced to decampat the shortest possible notice, was indeed little less than a scandalin the town.

When Shorthouse arrived to pay a "week-end" visit to his Aunt Julia inher little house on the sea-front at the other end of the town, he foundher charged to the brim with mystery and excitement. He had onlyreceived her telegram that morning, and he had come anticipatingboredom; but the moment he touched her hand and kissed her apple-skinwrinkled cheek, he caught the first wave of her electrical condition.The impression deepened when he learned that there were to be no othervisitors, and that he had been telegraphed for with a very specialobject.

Something was in the wind, and the "something" would doubtless bearfruit; for this elderly spinster aunt, with a mania for psychicalresearch, had brains as well as will power, and by hook or by crook sheusually managed to accomplish her ends. The revelation was made soonafter tea, when she sidled close up to him as they paced slowly alongthe sea-front in the dusk.

"I've got the keys," she announced in a delighted, yet half awesomevoice. "Got them till Monday!"

"The keys of the bathing-machine, or?" he asked innocently, lookingfrom the sea to the town. Nothing brought her so quickly to the point asfeigning stupidity.

"Neither," she whispered. "I've got the keys of the haunted house in thesquareand I'm going there to-night."

Shorthouse was conscious of the slightest possible tremor down his back.He dropped his teasing tone. Something in her voice and manner thrilledhim. She was in earnest.

"But you can't go alone" he began.

"That's why I wired for you," she said with decision.

He turned to look at her. The ugly, lined, enigmatical face was alivewith excitement. There was the glow of genuine enthusiasm round it likea halo. The eyes shone. He caught another wave of her excitement, and asecond 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, Iknow."

"Thanks so much," he said again. "Eris anything likely to happen?"

"A great deal has happened," she whispered, "though it's been mostcleverly hushed up. Three tenants have come and gone in the last fewmonths, and the house is said to be empty for good now."

In spite of himself Shorthouse became interested. His aunt was so verymuch in earnest.

"The house is very old indeed," she went on, "and the storyanunpleasant onedates a long way back. It has to do with a murdercommitted by a jealous stableman who had some affair with a servant inthe house. One night he managed to secrete himself in the cellar, andwhen everyone was asleep, he crept upstairs to the servants' quarters,chased the girl down to the next landing, and before anyone could cometo the rescue threw her bodily over the banisters into the hall below."

"And the stableman?"

"Was caught, I believe, and hanged for murder; but it all happened acentury ago, and I've not been able to get more details of the story."

Shorthouse now felt his interest thoroughly aroused; but, though he wasnot particularly nervous for himself, he hesitated a little on hisaunt's account.

"On one condition," he said at length.

"Nothing will prevent my going," she said firmly; "but I may as wellhear your condition."

"That you guarantee your power of self-control if anything reallyhorrible happens. I meanthat you are sure you won't get toofrightened."

"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 Shorthouse had no pretensions to beingother than a very ordinary young man, and an appeal to his vanity wasirresistible. He agreed to go.

Instinctively, by a sort of sub-conscious preparation, he kept himselfand his forces well in hand the whole evening, compelling anaccumulative reserve of control by that nameless inward process ofgradually putting all the emotions away and turning the key upon themaprocess difficult to describe, but wonderfully effective, as all men whohave lived through severe trials of the inner man well understand.Later, it stood him in good stead.