The Mammoth Book of Haunted House Stories (Mammoth Books) (21 page)

“That room,” she replied feebly.

“That’s what I thought,” said the librarian with a certain triumph. “I calculated that must be the room she died in, for it’s the best room in the house, and you haven’t put anybody in it before. Somehow the room that anybody has died in lately is generally the last room anybody is put in.”

The young minister looked up from his pudding. He was very spiritual, but he had had poor picking in his previous boarding place, and he could not help a certain abstract enjoyment over Miss Gill’s cooking.

“You certainly, Miss Lippincott,” he remarked with his gentle, almost caressing inflection of tone, “do not for a minute believe that a higher power would allow any manifestation on the part of a disembodied spirit – who we trust is in her heavenly home – to harm one of His servants?”

“Oh, Mr. Dunn, of course not,” replied Eliza Lippincott with a blush. “Of course not. I never meant to imply—”

“Of course dear Miss Harriet Gill was a professing Christian,” remarked the widow, “and I don’t suppose a professing Christian would come back and scare folks if she could. I wouldn’t be a mite afraid to sleep in the room; I’d rather have it than the one I’ve got.” Then she turned to Miss Stark. “Any time you feel timid in that room, I’m ready and willing to change with you,” said she.

“Thank you. I have no desire to change. I am perfectly satisfied with my room,” replied Miss Stark with freezing dignity, which was thrown away upon the widow.

Miss Louisa Stark did not sit down in the parlor with the other boarders after dinner. She went straight to her room. She felt tired after her journey, and meditated a loose wrapper and writing a few letters quietly before she went to bed. When she entered the southwest chamber she saw against the wall paper directly facing the door the waist of her best black satin dress hung over a picture.

“That is very strange,” she said to herself, and a thrill of vague horror came over her. She knew or thought she knew, that she had put that black satin dress waist away nicely folded between towels in her trunk.

She took down the black waist and laid it on the bed preparatory to folding it, but when she attempted to do so she discovered that the two sleeves were firmly sewed together. Louisa Stark stared at the sewed sleeves. “What does this mean?” she asked herself. She examined the sewing carefully; the stitches were small, and even, and firm, of black silk.

She moved toward the door. For a moment she thought that this was something legitimate, about which she might demand information; then she became doubtful. Suppose she herself had done this absurd thing, or suppose that she had not, what was to hinder the others from thinking so – what was to hinder a doubt being cast upon her own memory and reasoning powers?

Louisa Stark had been on the verge of a nervous breakdown in spite of her iron constitution and her great will power. No woman can teach school for forty years with absolute impunity. She was more credulous as to her own possible failings than she had ever been in her whole life. She was cold with horror and terror, and yet not so much horror and terror of the supernatural as of her own self. The weakness of belief in the supernatural was nearly impossible for this strong nature. She could more easily believe in her own failing powers.

She started toward the mirror to unfasten her dress, then she remembered the strange circumstance of the brooch, and stopped short. Then she straightened herself defiantly and marched up to the bureau and looked in the glass. She saw reflected therein, fastening the lace at her throat, the old-fashioned thing of a large oval, a knot of fair and black hair under the glass, set in a rim of twisted gold. She unfastened it with trembling fingers and looked at it. It was her own brooch, the cluster of pearl grapes on black onyx. Louisa Stark placed the trinket in its little box on the nest of pink cotton and put it away in the bureau drawer. Only death could disturb her habit of order.

Her fingers were so cold they felt fairly numb as she unfastened her dress; she staggered when she slipped it over her head. She went to the closet to hang it up and recoiled. A strong smell of lovage came to her nostrils, a purple gown near the door swung softly against her face as if impelled by some wind from within. All the pegs were filled with garments not her own, mostly of somber black.

Suddenly Louisa Stark recovered her nerve. This, she told herself, was something distinctly tangible. Somebody had been taking liberties with her wardrobe. Somebody had been hanging some one else’s clothes in her closet. She hastily slipped on her dress again and marched straight down stairs.

She found Sophia Gill standing by the kitchen table kneading dough with dignity.

“Miss Gill,” said Miss Ctark, with her utmost school-teacher manner, “I wish to inquire why you have had my clothes removed from the closet in my room and others substituted?”

Sophia Gill stood, with her hand fast in the dough, regarding her. Her own face paled slowly and reluctantly, her mouth stiffened.

“I’ll go upstairs with you, Miss Stark,” said she, “and see what the trouble is.” She spoke stiffly, with constrained civility.

Sophia and Louisa Stark went up to the southwest chamber. The closet door was shut. Sophia threw it open, then she looked at Miss Stark. On the pegs hung the school-teacher’s own garments in orderly array.

“I can’t see that there is anything wrong,” remarked Sophia grimly.

Miss Stark sank down on the nearest chair. She saw her own clothes in the closet. She knew there had been no time for any human being to remove those which she thought she had seen and put hers in their places. She knew it was impossible. Again the awful horror of herself overwhelmed her.

She muttered something, she scarcely knew what. Sophia then went out of the room. In the morning Miss Stark did not go down to breakfast, and left before noon.

Directly the widow, Mrs. Elvira Simmons, knew that the school-teacher had gone, and the southwest room was vacant, she begged to have it in exchange for her own. Sophia hesitated a moment.

“I have no objections, Mrs. Simmons,” said she, “if—”

“If what?” asked the widow.

“If you have common sense enough not to keep fussing because the room happens to be the one my aunt died in,” said Sophia bluntly.

“Fiddlesticks!” said the widow.

That very afternoon she moved into the southwest chamber.

The widow was openly triumphant over her new room. She talked a deal about it at the dinner-table.

“You are sure you don’t feel afraid of ghosts?” said the librarian. “I wouldn’t sleep in that room after –” she checked herself with an eye on the minister.

“After what?” asked the widow.

“Nothing,” replied Eliza Lippincott in an embarrassed fashion.

“You did see or hear something – now what was it, I want to know?” said the widow that evening when they were alone in the parlor. The minister had gone to make a call.

“Well,” said Eliza hesitatingly, “if you’ll promise not to tell.”

“Yes, I promise; what was it?”

“Well, one day last week just before the school-teacher came, I went into that room to see if there were any clouds. I wanted to wear my gray dress, and I was afraid it was going to rain, so I wanted to look at the sky at all points, and – You know that chintz over the bed, and the valance? What pattern should you say it was?”

“Why, peacocks on a blue ground. Good land, I shouldn’t think any one who had ever seen that would forget it.”

“Well, when I went in there that afternoon it was not peacocks on a blue ground; it was great red roses on a yellow ground.”

“Did Miss Sophia have it changed?”

“No. I went in there again an hour later and the peacocks were there.”

The widow stared at her a moment, then she began to laugh rather hysterically.

“Well,” said she, “I guess I shan’t give up my nice room for any such tomfoolery as that. I guess I would just as soon have red roses on a yellow ground as peacocks on a blue; but there’s no use talking, you couldn’t have seen straight. How could such a a thing have happened?”

“I don’t know,” said Eliza Lippincott, “but I know I wouldn’t sleep in that room if you’d give me a thousand dollars.”

When Mrs. Simmons went to the southwest chamber that night, she cast a glance at the bed-hanging. There were the peacocks on the blue ground. She gave a contemptuous thought of Eliza Lippincott.

But just before Mrs. Simmons was ready to get into bed she looked again at the hangings, and there were the red roses on the yellow ground instead of the peacocks on blue. She looked long and sharply. Then she crossed the room, turned her back to the bed, and looked out at the night from the east window. It was clear, and the full moon had just risen. She watched it a moment sailing over the dark blue in its nimbus of gold. Then she looked around at the bed hangings. She still saw the red roses on the yellow ground.

Mrs. Simmons was struck in the most vulnerable point. This apparent contradiction of the reasonable as manifested in such a commonplace thing as the chintz of a bed-hanging affected this ordinary, unimaginative woman as no ghostly appearance could have done. Those red roses on the yellow ground were to her much more ghastly than any strange figure clad in the white robes of the grave entering the room.

She took a step toward the door, then she turned with a resolute air. “As for going downstairs and owning up I’m scared and having that Lippincott girl crowing over me, I won’t for any red roses instead of peacocks. I guess they can’t hurt me, and as long as we’ve both of us seen ’em I guess we can’t both be getting loony,” she said.

Mrs. Elvira Simmons blew out her light and got into bed. After a little she fell asleep.

But she was awakened about midnight by a strange sensation in her throat. She had dreamed that some one with long white fingers was strangling her, and she saw bending over her the face of an old woman in a white cap. When she waked there was no old woman, the room was almost as light as day in the full moonlight, and looked very peaceful; but the strangling sensation continued, and besides that, her face and ears felt muffled. She put up her hand and felt that her head was covered with a ruffled nightcap tied under her chin so tightly that it was exceedingly uncomfortable. A great qualm of horror shot over her. She tore the thing off frantically and flung it from her with a convulsive effort as if it had been a spider. She sprang out of bed and was going toward the door when she stopped.

It suddenly occurred to her that Eliza Lippincott might have entered the room and tied on the cap while she was asleep. Then she tried to open the door, but to her astonishment found that it was bolted on the inside. “I must have locked it after all,” she reflected with wonder, for she never locked her door.

She went toward the spot where she had thrown the cap – she had stepped over it on her way to the door – but it was not there. She searched the whole room, lighting the lamp, but she could not find the cap. Finally she gave it up. She extinguished her lamp and went back to bed. She fell asleep again, to be again awakened in the same fashion. That time she tore off the cap as before, but she did not fling it on the floor. Instead, she held to it with a fierce grip. Her blood was up.

Holding fast to the flimsy white thing, she sprang out of bed, ran to the window which was open, slipped the screen, and flung it out; but a sudden gust of wind, though the night was calm, arose and it floated back in her face. She clutched at it. It eluded her clutching fingers. Then she did not see it at all. She examined the floor, she lighted her lamp again and searched, but there was no sign of it.

Mrs. Simmons was then in such a rage that all terror had disappeared for the time. To be baffled like this and resisted by something which was nothing to her straining senses filled her with intensest resentment.

Finally she got back into bed again; she did not go to sleep. She felt strangely drowsy, but she fought against it. She was wide awake, staring at the moonlight, when she suddenly felt the soft white strings of the thing tighten round her throat and realized that her enemy was again upon her. She seized the strings, untied them, twitched off the cap, ran with it to the table where her scissors lay and furiously cut it into small bits. She cut and tore, feeling an insane fury of gratification.

She tossed the bits of muslin into a basket and went back to bed. Almost immediately she felt the soft strings tighten round her throat. Then at last she yielded, vanquished. This new refutal of all the laws of reason by which she had learned, as it were, to spell her theory of life was too much for her equilibrium. She pulled off the clinging strings feebly, drew the thing from her head, slid weakly out of bed, caught up her wrapper and hastened out of the room. She went noiselessly along the hall to her own old room, entered it, got into her familiar bed, and lay there the rest of the night shuddering and listening, and if she dozed, waking with a start at the feeling of the pressure upon her throat – to find that it was not there, yet still unable to shake off entirely the horror.

She went down to breakfast the next morning with an imperturbable face. When asked by Eliza Lippincott how she had slept, she replied with an appearance of calmness which was bewildering that she had not slept very well. She never did sleep very well in a new bed, and she thought she would go back to her old room.

Eliza Lippincott was not deceived, however, neither were the Gill sisters, nor the young girl Flora. Eliza Lippincott spoke out bluntly.