Transcript

Chapter V · Sinister House

0:00
Chapter five, A Sinister House by Leland Hall. This LibriVox recordings in the
0:06
public domain, read by Ben Tucker, Chapter five. My temper was harrowed.
0:13
The picture I carried in my mind of Julia, pale and exhausted,
0:16
lying on the couch before the open window over the river, away from the
0:20
sunbeams, and with no glittering response in her hair to the blue western light
0:24
of early morning, was one to stir in a man more nervous than I,
0:29
that rising of feeling as against something wrong. Indeed, I was so
0:35
upset that I managed to put one over on my wife, whom I found
0:38
pairing cucumbers in the kitchen, and whom I treated with great firmness, ending
0:42
all resistance with the flat statement that Julia was all in and no fit subject
0:47
to be told that her husband carried nightmares round with him. As for Giles,
0:51
he kept to his room all the morning, but at lunch he fairly
0:55
put us through an inquisition. He wanted to know about Eric, who he
0:59
was, where came from, and what he did. We couldn't tell him
1:02
much. In fact, we didn't know anything about Eric. In that way.
1:06
Eric appeared to have a little money. He had spoken to me of
1:08
real estate in Chicago once, and I always supposed his income came from that,
1:14
and I supposed likewise that he had just been to Chicago to see about
1:17
it. I don't know how it was that Giles put the little we knew
1:19
and the much we did not know about Eric in an unpleasant light. He
1:23
did just that in a rather nasty way. That is, he made Eric
1:27
out a man of mystery. Furthermore, Giles's sympathy for Julia was very intense,
1:34
and that too somehow deepened the shadow on Eric about her. He apparently
1:38
knew far more than we had ever known, though he utterly ignored our questions.
1:42
Anette was pleased to frame up a little mystery round Julia, then it
1:47
was rather in the way of a joke, and chiefly to protect Eric,
1:49
who, after all, if his wife was going to be sickly and nervous,
1:53
had a claim on us for sympathy too. Giles's aspersions on the character
1:59
of Eric seemed to me quite unjustified. I brought to his attention the evidence
2:02
of Julia's own behavior and condition, which still I took to have their main
2:07
cause in her grief at parting from Eric. But Giles scoffed at that,
2:12
and in my own heart I had already begun to feel a restless doubt.
2:15
I was glad that afternoon to make a bluff of having to go over the
2:20
ford again, and to get away from Giles's pestiferous questions about my friend.
2:24
But at the table he had, as it were, struck us with a
2:29
poison point, and the venom made me uncomfortable with the thought that all might
2:32
not be right and natural. In the house where Eric and Julia lived,
2:38
I saw Giles go banging off by himself at night. He told us that
2:42
he had called at missus Greer's late in the afternoon, and had been informed
2:45
by the servant that Missus Greer had gone at once to bed after her ill
2:49
turn of the morning, and that she had fallen into a deep sleep,
2:52
from which she had not then waked. Later in the evening I telephoned,
2:55
even then she had not stirred in her bed. Giles calms the sleep of
3:00
a ghastly exhaustion, hard headed as he remained all through the affair, and
3:06
often as he reprimanded me for imagining things about the house. Strangely enough,
3:09
it was he who first suggested to me that there was something uncanny in this
3:14
business of Julia's ill turns. It was amazing how Julia was herself again the
3:19
very next day. Yet I saw a new look in her face. It
3:22
wasn't only a look, there was a slight drawing of the lips you see
3:25
on the faces of persons who were concentrating all their energies to meet a prolonged
3:30
strain on their nervous force. Her manner changed too. She was not standoffish,
3:36
but a little on her guard. As for Eric, during the next
3:38
six weeks, he became more and more reserved. He grew thinner too,
3:43
and his face, too had a holy, somber expression. I noticed that
3:46
he was reserved even with Julia, and while his attentions to her seemed no
3:51
less actuated by an unusually passionate and devoted love, they were more controlled and
3:54
perhaps more formal. His hair, already touched with gray when I first saw
4:00
him, became almost white at the temples and over the ears. I took
4:04
it he was worrying over Julia's health. There was no doubt that she fell
4:08
off when he was round, and each time he went away, she regained
4:11
a little less before he came back. Whatever was going on between them,
4:15
Annette and I knew it was none of our business. So long as the
4:18
weather stayed fine. We had our own, happy, outdoor lives to lead.
4:23
We had our children before it, and my vacation. It was nothing
4:27
to either of us what Giles did with himself. We thought it very odd
4:30
that he tolerated for his be so long. We more than tolerated him.
4:34
We learned to put up with his tempers, to take him at his best.
4:40
We should have been glad to take Julia with us on our outings now
4:43
and then, but I can't remember that she ever made one with us at
4:45
that time. I wonder why. I know she needed company. Though our
4:49
children are a bit noisy, she loved them and they would have done her
4:53
good. I remember thinking that they would be better company for a woman in
4:57
her state than Giles could be. But though ji Eles was nervous and restless,
5:00
there was something resolute and straightforward about him, which may have been I
5:04
used to think what helped her best to pass the hours of her separation from
5:08
Eric. I let it go at that, failing utterly to realize how at
5:13
that time she needed for a friend. Just such a man as Giles,
5:15
one who would keep her mind busy and bury her thoughts. The house,
5:19
which most of force Bey considered an unwholesome place, fell under a deeper shadow.
5:25
Julia entertained fewer and fewer guests there, and towards the end before she
5:30
and Eric left it for good and all, Giles and my wife and I
5:32
were almost the only neighbors who went there. Nothing could throw Giles into a
5:36
more furious tantrum than Annette's antipathy to the house. He liked the house himself,
5:43
but in his self assumed role of detective in regard to Eric, he
5:46
was always seeking to know what had brought Eric to it. That used to
5:49
irritate me. I thought it unfair to Eric, I said to him again
5:54
and again. He took it because Julia liked it at first sight. Invariably
5:59
he would reply that I didn't explain what had brought Eric to this god forsaken
6:02
part of the world in the first place. On one occasion, Annette,
6:05
stung by his ungracious allusions to foresby, gave him back an unusually vivid account
6:11
of Julia's spooky reception by the house in question, A house which had a
6:15
spirit in it, maybe two or three, that flung open the windows and
6:18
sang to unsuspecting victims to tempt them into it. Tumble down, old haunted
6:24
shanty, she said, fit for an insane asylum, or for the company
6:28
of artists. Of course, dear Giles and artistic people. Eric must have
6:31
been crazy to get it for her. Giles grew very icy. You cannot
6:36
be expected to see the spiritual charm in such places in Nette, Yes,
6:42
said Annette, with a little toss of her head. So Julia once told
6:46
me, And no house ever sang to me either, And if one did,
6:48
I hope I'd have sense enough to stay out of it. Giles pounded
6:53
on the table. We were still at lunch. But what I want to
6:57
know, he roared, in his best style. Why he brought her here
7:00
in the first place? Where does he come from? What brought a man
7:03
like him down to this flat, deadly part of God's earth? Maybe he
7:10
too heard the singing over the long distance wire to New York, I answered,
7:14
trying to smooth things out. Our little Bobby was at the table.
7:16
He adored Eric and Julia, and he seemed to have caught the idea of
7:20
the conversation as children will, and to have taken an interest in it childlike
7:25
too. He began softly at first, but with increasing clamor and violent approaches
7:29
to his mother's face to ask over and over again, Ma, Ma,
7:31
what brought Uncle Eric to the singing house? Ma? Ma? What brought
7:35
Uncle Eric to the singing House? It got fearfully on Giles's nerves. Hush,
7:42
said his mother, Hush, hush, and then unwinding his two arms
7:46
with impatience. If you don't stop your noise this minute, Robert, you
7:49
shall go to bed without any supper tonight. He got down from his mother's
7:54
lap then and crawled under the table. We tried to regain our composure,
7:59
but unobserved that lad of mine got round to Giles and tugging at his coat
8:01
for attention. I wonder how malicious children are, demanded his answer, cousin,
8:07
Giles, what brought Uncle Eric to the singing house? Giles sprang up
8:11
in a fury. Nothing you good, pest, nothing good, he shouted,
8:15
and went raging out of the room. I think that at first singing
8:18
house suggested to Bobby merely his cuckoo clock. He had always been enchanted and
8:22
a bit frightened by the flying open of the little door, the inexplicably sudden
8:28
apparition of the wooden songster, its song, and its equally sudden silence and
8:31
disappearance. Many children tire of this regular self performing miracle, and most boys
8:37
will sooner or later have the thing apart. Bobby, on the contrary,
8:41
would have been aghast at the mere thought of dismembering even a wooden bird.
8:45
He was a sensitive little fellow. He feared the clock at first, and
8:48
his curiosity never got liberated from his fear sufficiently for him to venture a finger
8:54
into the black hole, from out of which the bird sprang to sing.
8:58
As for what went on behind them door after it had closed, the poor
9:01
bird in, I am sure he had lurid imaginings. How deep an impression
9:07
the idea of a whole singing house made on the child, we did not
9:09
suspect. I do not know what his mind peopled it with besides his uncle
9:15
Eric and his aunt Julia. Anyhow, the place began to be somewhat fearful
9:18
for him. Whenever we drove past it in the ford, he drew up
9:22
closer to me. He always sat on the front seat unless we were out
9:24
after dark, and there was I felt something communicative in his sphere. At
9:30
one time, Annette and I too, used to tell the little boy spooky
9:35
stories just to make his eyes grow big and round. It is an unwise
9:37
and a cruel practice with children like him, and we don't do it any
9:41
more. Besides, we know too well ourselves now how much torture lurks in
9:46
a dim and inconceivable thing of terror. But at that time we were both
9:50
capable of adding touches of gruesome horrors to the stories we told him. We
9:54
had no premonition of the lesson we were to learn, and that very soon,
9:58
late one afternoon, we were in a field, the three of us,
10:01
well up the river. It was still warm, though the sun was
10:03
dropping low. It had been hazy all day, and we had been at
10:07
peace, untroubled by worry of any sort. Annette had taken along with her
10:11
a book of myths and folklore, and had read one or two of them
10:15
to Bobby, who would sit and raptured as long as she would read them.
10:18
Just before it was time for us to be starting back home, she
10:22
finished that rather revolting one of the Larelai. It was some Larelli in that
10:26
version of the story, one with a hearty appetite for human flesh. I
10:31
can see the little boy now snuggled very close under his mother's arm. He
10:35
was looking at the pages as she read them, though he hadn't begun to
10:37
learn his letters. Facing the last page of the story, there was a
10:41
crude engraving of the fascinating man eating a lady. Maybe you've seen it.
10:46
She sits alone on the top of a high rock above the river, clothed
10:48
only in her long, bright hair and a very scanty smock, which Bobby
10:52
probably thought was her bib. She had horrid bold eyes, and her mouth
10:56
looks well fed. The narrow plateau on which she sits in cumber all round
11:00
her, with thigh bones presumably human, and skulls undoubtedly so. Bobby just
11:05
stared at that. He had had his finger on every bone, and on
11:09
every one of the five strings in the harp she held in her hand.
11:13
I picked up the rugs and the lunch basket and went up to the car
11:16
to make all ready for the ride home. But when I came back down
11:18
through the tall dry grass of the field to summon a net and a boy
11:22
to the car. I found that they had not moved to prepare themselves for
11:26
the start, that Bobby was really afraid to make a move in the twilight
11:28
that had already fallen. Upon the disappearance of the sun, I had to
11:33
pick him up in my arms and carry him to the car. The night
11:37
air was already cool. I felt then that it was wrong to read the
11:39
little fellow such horrible stuff, and to let him see such pictures. I
11:43
spanked him in a friendly way and promised him he should ride home on the
11:46
front seat, but that didn't work. He wanted to be close to some
11:50
one, and I had scolded him so often forgetting in my way when he
11:54
was riding beside me that he knew well his only hope for snuggling lay in
11:58
the back seat. His mother laughed at him, but she took him under
12:01
her wing, wrapped him warm against the cold breeze, and in the dark
12:05
we started off. We had ten miles to go down along the river,
12:09
from which before long the mists began to rise, spreading eerily over the marshes
12:13
and settling into the hollows of the road. Silly boy, I heard his
12:18
mother say, silly boy, to be afraid did she sing when she was
12:22
hungry? I heard him ask, in his high tense voice, you are
12:26
thinking of little Tommy Tucker, who sang for his supper. I heard her
12:31
answer, but what was the lore Lie's supper, Mamma? Did she eat
12:35
little boys and curls and so on? To Annette, to get the horrid
12:39
idea out of his head, resorted to that reprehensible mixture of terrorism with morality
12:45
which many mothers administer to their children, as for example, her telling Bobby
12:48
that only naughty people heard the lore Li sing at all, and all naughty
12:52
people ought to be eaten if they weren't. How careful we both are now
12:56
to keep the conceptions of horror from taking root in the minds of our children.
13:01
The night settled darker and darker, and colder and colder. Here and
13:05
there we passed through a queer, warm streak in the air. I finally
13:09
told Bobby over my shoulder that there was no such things as Laura lies anyhow,
13:13
But the whole thing was nonsense. But in a few moments I heard
13:16
him again, aren't there any larel lies on the Hudson, Mamma, No,
13:22
dear, there aren't any anywhere, But uncle Eric heard the singing house.
13:26
Was there a Laura lie in the singing house? Was Uncle Eric a
13:30
bad man? And heard her sing? Come? Come, my boy?
13:33
He didn't hear anyone sing? But who did? Aunt Julia just played?
13:39
She did? Then there isn't any Laura lie in the singing house, no
13:43
darling, and there wasn't any singing in it. Then it won't eat Aunt
13:48
Julia. Come on, my son, I broke in. I'm so hungry
13:52
that if you keep on talking this way, I'll eat you. And Papa
13:56
can't sing, said my wife, seizing as she always sees the chance to
13:58
give me a playful gibe, bang a blowout. And we were four miles
14:03
from home in the night, already heavy upon us, a forlorn predicament.
14:07
I got out, and by the light of a miserable candle stub, began
14:11
my repairs. While I was working, Anette heard, faint in the distance,
14:16
the whistle of the seven thirty train from New York doing foresby at eight
14:18
thirty. I wonder if Eric's coming back on that train, she murmured,
14:24
with a yawn. And I wonder where Giles is getting his supper? Supper?
14:28
Is there a more maddening word to distract the mind of a fellow in
14:31
my fix. We stayed by the roadside a good half hour, and by
14:35
the time we started on again, the night was thick. We were savagely
14:39
hungry, and our nerves were on edge. Fortunately, Bobby soon fell asleep.
14:43
We rode on in silence, my mind on the road before me,
14:46
often shrouded in the night mist which took strange shapes before our lamps, and
14:50
my whole body crying out for something warm to eat. But even against Ford's
14:56
fate sometimes sets herself just by the gloomy hemlock that bordered the highway when it
15:01
runs by Eric's house. We suffered another blow out, I swore, and
15:05
stopped the engine immediately. The night was black about us. For a moment
15:09
I thought it was silent, too, But then my ears caught the sound
15:11
of a woman's voice singing. It came from somewhere behind those hemlocks, round
15:16
which the mist was in a strange, in sinuous movement, without any other
15:20
sound to accompany it, without any gleam of light. A voice in the
15:26
blackness so disassociated from human life as to suggest something unearthly, to make matters
15:33
worse Bobby, half wakened by the stopping of the car, began to scream
15:37
in terror. I hear the singing house, I hear the singing house.
15:41
Oh mamma, it is going to eat me. It's going to eat me.
15:43
It got terribly on my nerves, not only the nerve racking yelling,
15:46
but the association of the faint thread of song with the hideous story of sorcery
15:50
and inhuman cruelty. Oh shut up, I shouted at my son in a
15:56
temper, as I got myself stiffly out of the car. Screaming subsided at
16:00
once into a sort of frightened whimpering through which I could still hear, though
16:03
very faintly, a note or two of the song. But he let loose
16:07
again and clutched frantically at his mother when she had to move herself and him
16:11
in order to let me get at the necessary implements in the chest under the
16:15
back seat. By the certain light of matches, I struck one after the
16:18
other. I found my jack, my tire irons, and my amending tissues,
16:22
but no trace of the candle stub. I must have left it at
16:26
the place where we had been held up before. Well, I tried to
16:30
light one of the kerosene lamps. As luck would have it, it was
16:33
empty of oil. I tried all the kerosene lamps. They were all empty,
16:37
even the tail light, which I seldom troubled to light in this remote
16:41
part of the world. My cursing was ardent, but low. There was
16:45
something in the blackness of the night. The stars were all obscured by the
16:48
haze. There was something in the blackness, I repeat, in the damp,
16:52
heavy clinging of the mist, extra chill by those forever sunless trees,
16:57
and in the mysterious and only half audible sound of singing coming to us through
17:03
the fear haunted thicket, which cast a spell over me in mind one.
17:07
I was not venturesome enough to shatter with a loud ringing oath. And there
17:11
was Bobby's incessant and agitating whimpering too, a sort of cold rill of fear.
17:18
It was impossible to do my work in the darkness, and I made
17:22
up my mind to go to the house and ask for a light, rather
17:23
than to burn gasoline for half an hour or more and keep the engine running
17:27
just for the front lamps. Well, hurry, then, Annette said to
17:32
me, half whispering herself, don't leave me alone in this black hole.
17:36
I thought you had some sense, Annette, I growled, crossly, taking
17:41
a long breath, as if I were going to plunge into a cold bath.
17:44
I stumbled down into the dark driveway. I hadn't felt my way more
17:48
than a few steps, however, before, such a heavy feeling, as
17:49
if peril were closing in round us, saddled on me that I turned and
17:53
went back to the car. I meant only to reassure net. As a
17:57
matter of fact, I made her scream. A second time, I braved
18:00
the clammy darkness of the driveway, and this time I came in sight of
18:03
the house. I say in sight, because at last my eyes had definite
18:07
perception through one of the south windows, against which the curtains had not been
18:12
drawn, the uncertain and not very penetrating light from a branch of candles was
18:17
streaming. At first, this was heartening, but almost before I had taken
18:21
another step, I stopped short in my tracks. Against that bar of light,
18:26
I saw distinctly the silhouetted head and shoulders of a man. Had he
18:30
not moved, I certainly should have taken the bulk which revealed him as a
18:33
protuberance from the dark mass of shrubs along that wall of the house, the
18:37
outline of which was only half distinct against the light. He was standing some
18:42
four or five feet from the window, evidently looking in. It was a
18:47
movement nearer that had arrested my attention. One thinks only of wickedness in such
18:52
moments. It never occurred to me that the fellow, whoever he was,
18:56
might have been drawn towards the window by the sound of singing, faint but
18:59
sweet, that came from the house recently. As I had been reminded of
19:03
the drawing power of the hungry and destructive Lorelle, I thought only that Julia
19:07
was in danger of insult, of shock, or even of some bodily harm.
19:11
Instantly, my heart beating faster, I confess, I began to steal
19:15
up on the villain. I stood low over the ground. I myself must
19:18
have become invisible in the darkness, while to my eyes he stood a little
19:22
more clearly outlined against the night, nearer and nearer. I crept over the
19:27
damp grass, with not a sound to betray me. His ears must have
19:32
been filled with the music, however black The thoughts that filled his heart.
19:37
He must have been a careless brute, too, for an edging ever nearer
19:40
to the window, he put himself more and more into the light and into
19:42
full view of any one within the room who might chance to look out through
19:47
the window. He rustled the bushes as well. Several times I heard them
19:51
snap with a sharp, clear sound. As I approached, the feeling that
19:55
there was evil about him in danger for Julia grew so intense in my breast
19:59
that I I made up my mind I would strike him from behind with all
20:02
my strength, without any preliminary questions. He was, I could see a
20:06
taller man than I, and probably much stronger. Since I had only my
20:11
bare fist to fill him with, I must spring upon him and take him
20:14
utterly. By surprise, I knew I must leap when I reached the bushes,
20:18
for I could not hope to creep nearer to him through them without much
20:19
crackling, to which not even the sweet singing could have made the prowler deaf.
20:25
That singing kept smoothly on. I had a feeling that the fellow was
20:27
really listening to it, and I was glad for it served my purpose.
20:33
Just before I decided it was time for me to make the leap. I
20:36
prayed for a more ringing note. My prayer was not granted. Instead,
20:41
I heard the singing shiver to a sort of sob. I jumped nevertheless,
20:45
for even at that moment I heard my prey lurch forward. He was actually
20:48
rattling the window, which was low and made in the French fashion to open
20:52
like a door. What my half blinded eyes saw through that window when I
20:56
leapt up, I shall never forget. First, let me say I recognized
21:00
the man who was rattling it to get in. It was Eric. Then
21:04
within the room I saw Julia, still sitting at the piano, but with
21:07
her face turned towards her husband and on it a look of unspeakable horror.
21:14
I saw Giles, his back to me, half risen from his chair,
21:17
and as if turned to stone by the expression he saw on Julia's face.
21:22
It must have been only for a second or two, this frozen and horrible
21:25
fixedness within the room. As for Julia, it might have been the shock
21:29
of seeing a face peering in at her, even her husband's, so sudden
21:32
and like an apparition in the night. But it wasn't that I saw her
21:37
move or force herself to move and rise from the piano. Slowly, step
21:41
by step, she made her way towards the window, and on her face
21:45
I saw, meanwhile revealed her indomitable spirit, fighting to bring a light of
21:51
recognition to her eyes and outshine lurid horror. There I saw her hands before
21:56
her, not as a blind person's, low and searching, but rid straight
22:00
out before her, hardened and sharpened to beat and tear, a ghastly invisible
22:04
medium, through which it cost of an enormous effort. She slowly forced herself
22:08
to make way, yet they only twitched in small, weak movements, like
22:12
hands locked in a rigor of all but death. How terribly slow her steps
22:17
were, and all the while I heard Eric rattling the window to get in.
22:22
He did get in, but even then she could not propel herself towards
22:26
him. It was he who rushed towards her, and he hid her from
22:30
me in his embrace. I felt almost sick. Just before I hurried away,
22:36
my eyes saw Giles risen to his feet, his face turned into the
22:40
light, amazed and horror struck, even as my own must have been.
22:45
End of Chapter five