Transcript

Chapter VI · Sinister House

0:00
Chapter six of Sinister House by Leland Hall. The LibriVox recording is in the
0:06
public domain, read by Ben Tucker. Almost staggering through the darkness, I
0:11
made my way back to the ford. Annette was nervous and shaky. I
0:15
startled her, coming up out of the darkness without any light. I hemmed
0:19
and hawed for I could not speak, and cranked the car, making up
0:22
my mind to get the thing. The three miles home on a flat tire,
0:25
but Annette rebelled at that. Why didn't you get a light from the
0:29
house as you started out to do, She asked me, with unmistakable irritation.
0:33
You're crazy to think of going home on a flat tire. I can't
0:36
stand it. Why didn't you get the light? What's the matter with you?
0:39
And then leaning closer to me in the darkness and almost whispering, what's
0:43
the matter in the house? Eric's come home? I replied, Well,
0:49
what of that? What's the matter with him? It's Julia, for Heaven's
0:54
sake, Say something, what's wrong with Julia? But I couldn't explain.
0:59
I hadn't the courage. The engine was running with a great racket, and
1:03
the front lights shone far down the road, making bright whatever they touched upon,
1:07
but leaving all else doubly black. By contrast, a fitful wind was
1:11
blowing, and I was more depressed in spirits than I had ever been before.
1:15
Somehow, though I had climbed into the seat and had grasped the safety
1:19
lever, I could not bring myself to start the car. It was altogether
1:23
a horrid couple of minutes. Naturally, Annette was mystified. But when I
1:27
swore I would not go back to that house to night, she almost lost
1:30
her temper. What nonsense, she exclaimed, I won't ride home with you
1:34
on a flat tire if you can't mind it in the dark. I'll go
1:38
and get a light myself. You might be a little more considerate, Pierre.
1:42
Here, I am shivering with the cold. Bobby needs to supper.
1:45
I'm hungry too, and yet you won't make a move to get us home.
1:48
Well, I'll catch our deaths sitting here in this cold fog. It
1:52
did seem foolish after all, And finally I went up the driveway again,
1:56
stumbled along to the house and knocked on the door. I heard a scream,
2:00
faint and quickly choked, but none the less, real it was probably
2:04
Julia startled out of her self control. To my surprise, Giles opened the
2:08
door, prompted by an instinctive feeling that I must bring cheerfulness into that house.
2:13
I hailed him in a hearty voice, then called down anathema on tires
2:16
and demanded a light in tones that filled up the long rose colored, shadowy
2:21
hallway and must have struck the ears of Eric and his bride. Pleasantly,
2:24
Eric came out from the living room and Julia followed him. He had honest,
2:29
cordial words of welcome for me, but it was Julia who almost hysterically
2:32
commanded me to stay and sup with them. I was taken off my guard
2:37
through the door. Whence they had both issued I caught a glimpse of the
2:38
candle lit living room, of its odd, old fashioned furniture, its small,
2:44
deep colored rugs, its dark hangings, and just a yellow flame or
2:47
two of the fire burning in the little grate. But I was ill at
2:52
ease. My nerves were shaking. I didn't like the house, warm as
2:55
it felt, and picturesque and cozy as it looked to my eyes. Yet
3:00
before I knew it, Julia had me by the arm and was leading me
3:02
back down the driveway, pulling me along in a great hurry to get to
3:07
the ford out in the blackness, and commandeer Anette and Bobby. All the
3:09
way. She kept up a chattering about how cold it was, how hungry
3:13
we must be, and how in celebration of Eric's home coming, we must
3:16
stay and help them make merry. Under the run of this somewhat too urgent
3:21
hospitality, I felt the strain of despair. I knew that Julia actually had
3:24
need of us in that house to night, for some terrible reason I could
3:28
not hope to fathom. I made up my mind that as much as we
3:31
should be acting our parts in ignorance, we would not go back on her.
3:35
We could at least stand by. So I was cheerful with Annette and
3:38
enthusiastic for a good, warm supper there and then. And Annette could not
3:43
but accept this odd turn. We roused Bobby and went back to the house,
3:46
Julia keeping up with my wife the nervous talk that on the way out
3:51
she had loosened on me. As we approached the door left open through which
3:55
the faint rosy light came out into the dark, my boy began to twist
3:59
and turn in my arms without his supper. He was fretful and nervous,
4:02
and he was frightened by the night too. Indeed, as I carried him
4:05
up the two steps of the porch, he began to kick me and to
4:09
pound my shoulder with tightly clenched little fists. As yet he made no outcry,
4:13
but I felt the wind gathering force in his little chest. And when
4:16
we got inside the house and I set him down in the hall, there
4:18
was something in the way he grabbed my legs and hid his face against them
4:21
that made me fear for the worst. This was received in full measure.
4:26
When Eric, always up to that time a great favorite with him, tried
4:30
playfully to catch him up in his arms. Bobby let out shriek after shriek,
4:33
a sound too much of terror for me to think it an outburst of
4:36
temper. Papa, Papa, he screamed, take me away from him,
4:41
Take me away. Eric was naturally amazed and hurt, and I was at
4:45
a loss as to how to make things more pleasant. Nothing can make a
4:48
child courteous of his instinct sets in the other direction. Bobby had no idea
4:54
of concealing his sudden aversion to his beloved uncle Eric. While Eric knelt down
4:59
beside him to question the cause of this painful manifestation, Bobby only screamed alouder
5:02
to Papa to keep Uncle Eric away, Keep him away from me, Keep
5:06
him away. It hurts. Is something hurting him? Eric asked me quietly.
5:14
I guess he's just a tired, hungry boy. I answered, what
5:16
hurts you, my son? What hurts you? Eric stood back against the
5:19
wall, a tall, somber figure. As soon as he did this,
5:24
the tension of Bobby's nerves seemed to be relaxed. Though he gave me no
5:27
answer to my question, but with a little shudder, hugged my knees tighter.
5:30
When I tried to take off my coat. We had another scene.
5:33
Then, Eric said, in a low, troubled voice, he seems to
5:36
be frightened of me. For Heaven's sake, Pierre, is there anything wrong
5:41
about me? To night, I frightened Julia terribly. I can't get over
5:44
it. No wonder, I said, without thinking of my words. You
5:48
came sneaking up to the window out of the dark, Julia told you.
5:53
He asked, suggesting by his manner that Julia and I had a secret understanding
5:57
out of which he was left. Julia had, not, as you know,
6:00
said a word of it to me. I am glad. I told
6:02
him frankly I had seen him myself, and that I had taken him for
6:04
a prowler bent on mischief. On mischief, he cried, on mischief.
6:11
To Julia, Oh my god, I heard her singing, and I wanted
6:14
to feast my eyes on her without her knowing. But it wasn't that.
6:17
For a long time. After she recognized me. It was worse with her.
6:21
A blind man could have felt it. She shuddered in my arms,
6:25
as if I were a thing of terror to her. She tried tried not
6:30
to push me away. I had, altogether too vivid an impression of what
6:33
my own eyes had seen to enjoy this personal revelation. It was hard to
6:38
give my voice an encouraging ring when I tried to assure him that he imagined
6:41
too much. That's nonsense, I said, you're trying to tell me Julia
6:46
was trying not to push you away. She must have been fooling, fooling,
6:51
he groaned. But I didn't let him go on. And as for
6:56
my son, here I added, Annett's just read him that gruesome story about
7:00
the Laura Lion has got him plumb scared. He's heard of the singing you
7:03
know, Julia's phrase about the singing house. And when he heard Julia's voice
7:06
out there in the dark, he probably thought there was a spellbinder here that
7:11
wants to eat him. He does not know, Eric, old man,
7:14
that only the ladies do such horrid things. Eric muttered, and then cleared
7:17
his throat. There's something about me, Pierre, I know it. There's
7:23
something about me. I used to think that Julia. I can feel it.
7:28
Look at the child here and has been trying to push Julia away,
7:31
though it laughed loudly at this notion. Later, when we were all in
7:34
the warm living room awaiting supper, I could see that it had got a
7:38
hold on him. It must have been his own thought that held us also
7:42
strangely aloof from him. He might as well have stood within a ring of
7:46
malevolence. His isolation was all but palpable, and in the midst of those
7:49
who loved him too. Everybody in the room but Giles, seemed screwed up
7:54
to a high pitch and laughed and talked with an unnatural animation. Directing question
8:00
said Eric, as if consciously trying to pierce whatever it was wringing him off
8:03
from us. He habitually, so courteous, tried to send his answers back
8:07
to us through the evil thing that set him apart. He tried it first,
8:11
too, to walk among us, But whenever he came into our midst,
8:15
Bobby's aversion broke out in frightened whimperings and agitation, so that to smooth
8:20
things over, Eric was compelled to stand outside the group. I can see
8:24
him now, leaning against the frame of the window through which he had made
8:26
his way in from the garden, his face taking on a serious set look,
8:31
quite different from the mobile sadness of his natural expression. The uneven light
8:37
from the branch of candles over by that window, now deepening, now relieving,
8:41
the shadows round his eyes, and as his eyes grew hard, glinting
8:45
back from them. It was with the expression of a man setting himself to
8:48
make a bitter, deadly struggle that he watched Julia playing like a gentle lunatic,
8:54
with little Bobby standing between my knees. Poor Julia, slender and like
8:58
a girl in her white dress, flitting through the warm room from one to
9:01
the other of us. I could not bear to look at that delicate,
9:05
gentle face, or into those clear gray eyes in which I had so lately
9:09
seen the shadow of an unspeakable horror. My heart ached for her, though
9:13
I hardly knew why. Bobby's behavior to her husband, must have been like
9:16
a knife thrust in her breast, and she set herself to winning the little
9:20
fellow from his fear for her husband's sake, I do not doubt, laughing
9:24
with unnatural eagerness, trembling and nervous, always playing bravely to simulate gayety,
9:30
though she could not hide her agitation. She threw herself lightly on the floor
9:33
beside me and began quizzing him, patting his hands, mocking him, challenging
9:37
him until she brought a smile to his little face. Annette, who I
9:43
could see was made very uncomfortable by the rudeness of her only son, stood
9:46
over the three of us and laughed and coaxed with us. Well. It
9:50
may have been a pretty scene to one looking in from the outside, but
9:52
I was anything but happy. Julia's tenseness was harrowing, and her determination to
9:58
win Bobby over and walk him right up to Eric. Somehow threw me into
10:01
the state of a too anxious onlooker at a desperately vital game. I found
10:05
myself as it were, pressing my little son away from me to her,
10:09
and holding my breath over every inch she drew him from the protection of my
10:13
knees. It was a slow and nerve racking business. She drew him truly,
10:18
only an inch or two at a time, and always he would have
10:20
fallen back against me had I not kept my hands ready to block the way
10:24
of his retreat. Was it cruel to the child? We did not then
10:28
know what evil Julia single handed was fighting. One look at her face would
10:33
have aroused your sympathy. We did not mean to offer my boy as a
10:37
The thought is too terrible. I happened to glance towards Eric. God knows
10:41
he was susceptible, unable to bear the sight of this wrestle of wills to
10:45
force a way to him. He had turned his face from us, and
10:48
still by the window, was looking fixedly out upon the lawn. Suddenly,
10:52
and I know of no reason why it should have been so, at that
10:56
moment it flashed upon me that he was the goat in all this. He
11:00
was the unfortunate object of the malevolence I had felt about the place. This
11:03
came to me very clearly. Whatever the evil was, it was attempting to
11:07
blockade him, to shut him from his wife, his friends, from the
11:11
tenderness on which alone he could thrive. Here in his own house, just
11:16
returned from an absence, he stood isolated, the beings who loved him,
11:20
fended from him by a virulent, powerful, evil spirit. I had seen
11:24
inflexible and bitter determination on his face. He could fight for himself, could
11:28
protect himself. But this thing was trying to attack us, Julia, Bobby,
11:35
Me, even Annette. It was jabbing us, thrusting us back from
11:37
him, and he had just begun to know it or to feel it.
11:41
I had a fit of almost fury. I jumped from my chair. Julia
11:45
lost her balance and fell on her side, away from me. I strode
11:48
towards Eric, grabbing my boy by the arm and dragging him along with me
11:50
clear of the floor. I said to him, sharply, no more of
11:54
this nonsense. You shall kiss your uncle Eric and tell him you are sorry
11:58
for making such a rumpus. Stop your yelling. Heavens, how he yelled,
12:03
not a scene to soothe the mother's heart. Eric turned suddenly towards us
12:07
and raised his clenched fists above his head. His face was distorted, but
12:11
it was neither his gesture, which God knows was of desperate rage against some
12:15
evil thing, not against Bobby and me, nor the frightful look on his
12:18
face which stopped me dead short. I saw, wait a moment. My
12:22
blood turns cold as I write. I wished to set down precisely every detail
12:26
as I can remember. I must have been holding Bobby well off the ground,
12:31
for as my hand that held him went suddenly powerless, I heard him
12:35
fall in a heap on the floor, heard the thwack of his little boots,
12:37
his yelling was hushed to silence, and then I heard no that thing
12:43
was. I was standing in the middle of the room, about seven feet
12:46
from Eric. He was still over against the curtains by the window, the
12:50
kindles at his right casting a dancing light upon his ashen distorted face and his
12:56
wild arms. Mind you, this was all in a second or two.
13:01
Bobby lay crumpled at my feet. The two women were behind me in Giles
13:03
in an attitude of lounging, from which my extraordinary behavior was to make him
13:07
spring was on a sofa pulled out about three feet from the wall to my
13:11
left, leaving a freeway along that wall. Stepping from in front of Eric,
13:16
against whom it must have been invisible, A vague shape passed like a
13:20
blur across the candle light, and then transparent, yet visible in its whole
13:24
length against the dark hangings of the wall. It walked along the side of
13:28
the room behind Giles and out the door into the dim rose colored hallway.
13:33
I say it walked, but really it moved in some half human, half
13:37
fiendish gait, slowly yet in springs. It was the shape of a tall
13:43
woman. Though its eyes had no substance. They had form, dreadfully flat,
13:50
and color a washed out chalky blue. They were of the kind that
13:54
in a living, warm body, never revolve in their sockets, the gaze
13:56
of which is directed by a turn of the whole head. And as this
14:00
thing passed along the wall, its insubstantial head was turned at me, so
14:05
that I was subjected to a lidless stare of incredibly sinister malice. I felt
14:09
frozen. I believe I saw this thing. I believe that, in a
14:15
horrible amazement, I watched it every inch of its way till it turned down
14:18
the hall corridor in the direction of the dining room. It made absolutely no
14:24
sound in its passage, But what should have been its feet? I saw
14:28
movement under its skirt, like draperies touched the floor in time with the beat
14:31
of Julia's hands. I could not see Julia, but I believed that at
14:37
that moment she was lying prone on the floor, slowly beating her hands on
14:41
the rug each hand Alternately, I cannot remember more details. Giles sprang up
14:48
and put an end to what I am willing you should call my fit,
14:50
by roaring at what the devil are you looking at? There was something in
14:56
his voice that stilled every movement in the room. My hand, which I
14:58
had raised to rush a dank mist from before my eyes, was arrested half
15:03
way my face. I believe the candle flames burned suddenly straight into the air
15:07
without a tremor, But that must have been because the uneasy wind had ceased
15:11
for an instant to blow in through the window. Still ajar behind Eric,
15:15
there was a complete silence too. My extraordinary seizure in Giles's sharp cry probably
15:20
frightened everybody I know. Bobby made not even a whimper, and Julia's monotonous
15:26
drumming ceased. We were all spellbound in diverse, strained attitudes. There came
15:31
an answer to giles imperious question. I can't tell you how or whence it
15:37
came. Giles had asked me what I was looking at. In the silence
15:41
which followed his sharp question, A name echoed in my brain. Probably I
15:46
did not hear it. I dare say whatever vibration made the impression of that
15:48
name in my brain had not rattled the little bones in my inner ear.
15:52
And that is the way they tell us we receive impressions of sound. Maybe
15:56
it wasn't earthly sound. I didn't rate. The name was distinct. It
16:02
was snart, and it was followed by a disagreeable sound between a chuckle and
16:06
a whine. I think my son received the same impression, for through his
16:11
body huddled against my feet, I felt a shudder pass. But I never
16:15
spoke to him about that night. I've protected him from any mention of it,
16:18
and I faithfully and seriously tried to protect his mind from every hint of
16:23
weirdness and horror whatsoever. Call it the rattle of leaves on the stark bushes
16:29
outside the window. Call it the moan of the wind, the grating of
16:33
a hinge somewhere in the remoter quarters of the house. Whatever it was,
16:37
I was so conscious of its meaning that I asked. Annette told me afterwards
16:41
that I spoke like a man in a dream. But I know I had
16:44
not been dreaming. Who said that? Who said what? Giles? Word
16:49
at me? Who said that name? Who said what name? Are you
16:55
crazy? Crazy? Was I crazy? I was to be assuredly by the
17:00
one other person in the room, who was aware of what I had passed
17:03
through, that I was not crazy. However, I should have come out
17:07
with the name I had heard, had not? Annette cried passionately, mister
17:11
Greer, don't look like that. Then it was I realized that I had
17:15
been staring at at the wall, say, and that there were other human
17:21
beings in the room beside me. I turned to look at Eric, and
17:23
I shall never forget the sight of his face, whiter than death, and
17:26
gnarled and twisted. His pose was inhuman, like that of a savage beast.
17:32
One after the other of us. He fixed with his eyes, if
17:36
one can call eyes, the deep black holes beneath his brows, behind which
17:40
I now know there must at that moment, when he was so beset,
17:44
have burned a feeling too terribly profound to show the faintest glow. I wonder
17:48
would it had been better for that unhappy man had I come out with the
17:51
ghastly name, as I had been on the point of doing. Annette touched
17:56
me on the arm. Neither she nor I can remember whether she said it
18:00
anything to me or not. I stooped down and picked up my son,
18:03
Giles was lending a hand to Julia, and for an instant it struck me
18:07
as funny, this restoration, this setting up of what had been knocked down
18:12
by some unnatural passer by. Maybe I should have laughed aloud, But for
18:18
Eric's face, Annette's cry had not changed it. For months she had called
18:23
him Eric to night, she had called out to mister Greer. Was he
18:27
then a stranger to us? All at once? I never felt closer to
18:32
him. I never before wished so ardently to befriend a fellow being. You
18:37
see, it was that sudden inspiration I had had, the sudden revelation that
18:41
had set me to go up to Eric with my boy just before the ghost
18:45
woman had appeared a flash of understanding that all the evil about the place was
18:49
directed at him, while it attacked Julia, Bobby and me, who were
18:53
most fond of him, in that mysterious way, the effect of which was
18:56
to keep us from him. I knew that its ultimate victim was Eric himself.
19:02
I have since reasoned about what I felt vaguely that night, that Eric,
19:07
of all men, was most sensitive to such a form of persecution.
19:11
Not only that, but also that he was impregnable to every other sort of
19:15
malevolent attack. That's what Giles meant by tempered and white hot resentment, I
19:19
now know. Meanwhile, with my boy held tightly in my arms, and
19:23
my anxious wife at my elbow, I had Eric's face always before me.
19:29
The uneasy wind came in through the window again and bent the candle flames.
19:33
I could not bear it any longer. I handed my son to his mother.
19:37
The little fellow at first would not let me go, clung tightly to
19:40
me and hid his face against my coat. But when I said, mother
19:44
wants you, he turned quickly to her, where she stood close beside me,
19:48
reached out his arms locked them round her neck like a trap. And
19:51
thus the transfer was done. Then I walked up to Eric and clapped him
19:53
on the shoulder automatically, like all healthy, normal beings, I deny the
19:57
existence of horror, I said, the thing most natural for me to say,
20:03
Eric, my friend, I said, brace up. You look as
20:06
if you had seen a ghost. The impression in my mind of what I
20:10
had myself seen and heard was already laid over with my restored habit of thought.
20:15
Eric replied to me in a low voice, I saw nothing, Pierre,
20:19
not I. But you heard a name. What was it? As
20:26
automatically as a swimmer throws out his arms when he finds himself in deep water,
20:30
I said, nonsense, it was my kid's whimpering. Why did I
20:34
do that? Why you know, I believe I heard a name. I
20:38
could never forget how I heard that name or what it was. I had
20:41
already made a scene in the drawing room about it. Yet to Eric,
20:45
I denied that I had heard it, denied there was a name. Said
20:48
nonsense, it was my kid's whimpering. Oh no, Eric said, oh
20:55
no, What would that name have meant? To Eric? It was just
20:59
that I feared, yes, instinctively, feared to know his jaw was set,
21:03
and his lips so tightly closed that all the red had gone out of
21:07
them. Yet I could not help feeling that his will was engaged with some
21:11
purpose other than self control or self adjustment, because I never stood by man
21:15
so rigidly under discipline of himself. Though my hand was on his shoulder,
21:21
I was as remote from him as one is from a lion at the zoo,
21:23
whose terrible fixed eyes and stare cannot be diverted or altered by any human
21:29
trick to catch attention. If Eric had seen nothing and had heard nothing,
21:33
then he scented something, had a sense of it somehow, and he had
21:38
become entirely concentrated, entirely instinct. Giles once said to me, as we
21:44
were talking over this affair later, that hate is the most absorbing passion.
21:49
He went on at a great rate about man's reactions to things that hurt him
21:52
mortally, that threatened to spoil what is dear to him, or to take
21:57
something away from him that is necessary not only to his body, but to
22:00
what Giles called his soul as well. The instinct for self preservation, he
22:06
said, is the seat of hatred. But you should have hurt Giles define
22:10
self. I myself have never felt malignant hatred. I suppose I have never
22:15
been threatened. That nothing is ever attacked with intent to murder the core of
22:19
me, my heart of hearts, or what is dear and necessary to it.
22:23
I could not if I would crank up an essay on hatred, to
22:27
hate entirely, instinctively and with perfect concentration. Not even Giles had known what
22:33
it was to do that, but Eric had. There's Giles's white hot resentment
22:40
for you, in stronger words. That's what I began to feel in Eric
22:42
as I stood beside him that night, a hatred within him, distorting his
22:47
face and screwing him up into a state of concentrated attention. You remember,
22:52
I have told you that he always had seemed alert as against an inexorable hostility,
22:57
making him, to my imagination, like lifeons. I had clapped my
23:00
hands at in the bronx and never made wink an eyelid. Just that,
23:04
a terrific and an undying hatred. Well, I went on saying nonsense with
23:10
a more and more absurdly nice kitty air. Twice he started to speak,
23:14
but he only opened his lips enough to take in a breath through his teeth.
23:18
His jaw remained set when he did speak at last. I know he
23:21
did not think of my being near to hear him, but I heard I
23:26
begin to suspect he said. She said she would always it's fiendish, but
23:33
she would if she could. Then he darted a look at me, and
23:40
I just babbled something, as if I had not heard him at all.
23:42
Suddenly the whole expression of his face changed to one of what the novelists call
23:47
infinite longing. I did not need to turn round to know that Julia was
23:51
coming up to him. Her eyes were shining, and I thought she was
23:53
laughing happily. It made me feel good, just as if nothing had happened.
23:57
She reached one hand up to Eric's shoulder and took me with the other,
24:00
and then said, what are you two men talking about so seriously?
24:04
Here by yourselves, Supper is ready you, Pierre must be starved. She
24:10
looked at me perfectly. Frankly, I was astounded. In spite of myself,
24:15
I began to feel that my mind was queer, that I had imagined
24:18
the whole thing. I felt dazed and also silly. End of Chapter six