Page:Weird Tales v01n01 (1923-03).djvu/99

 

OLITARY and forbidding, the house stared specterlike through the scraggly trees that seemed to shrink from its touch.

The green moss of decay lay on its dank roofs, and the windows, set in deep cavities, peered blindly at the world as if through eyeless sockets. So forbidding was its aspect that boys, on approaching its cheerless gables, stopped their whistling and passed on the opposite side of the street.

Across the fields, a few huddled cottages gazed through the falling rain, as if wondering what family could be so bold as to take up its abode within the gloomy walls of that old mansion, whose carpetless floors for two years had not felt the tread of human feet.

In an attic room of the house two sisters lay in bed, but not asleep. The younger sister cringed under the dread inspired by the bleak place. The elder laughed at her childish fears, but the younger felt the spell of the old building and was afraid.

"I suppose there is really nothing to frighten me in this dreary old house," she admitted, without conviction in her voice, "but the very feel of the place is horrible. Mother shouldn't have left us alone in this gruesome place."

"Stupid," her sister scolded, "with all the silverware downstairs, somebody has to be here, for fear of burglars."

"Oh, don't talk about burglars!" pleaded the younger girl. "I am afraid. I keep imagining I hear ghostly footsteps."

He sister laughed.

"Go to sleep, Goosie," she said. Haunted' houses are nothing but superstition. They exist only in imagination."

"Why has nobody lived here for two years, then? They tell me that for five years every family moved out after being here just a short time. The whole atmosphere of the house is ghastly. And I can't forget how the older Berkheim girl was found stabbed to death in her bed, and nobody ever knew how it happened. Why, she may have been murdered in this very room!"

"Go to sleep and don't scare yourself with such silly talk. Mother will be with us tomorrow night, and Dad will be back next day. Now go to sleep."

The elder sister soon dropped into slumber, but the younger lay open-eyed, staring into the black room and shuddering at every stifled scream of the wind or distant growl of thunder. She began to count, hoping to hypnotize herself into drawsiness [sic], but at every slight noise she started, and lost her count.

Suddenly she turned and shook her sister by the shoulder.

"Edith, somebody is prowling around downstairs!" she whispered. "Listen! Oh, what shall we do?"

The elder sister struck a match and lit the candle. Then she slipped on her dressing-gown, and drew on her slippers.

"You're not going down there? Edith, tell me you not going downstairs! It might be that murdered Berkheim girl! Edith, don't—"

Edith shot a glance of withering scorn at her sister, who lay on the bed Rh