The Shunned House Read online

cosmos of substance andenergy. In this case an overwhelming preponderance of evidence fromnumerous authentic sources pointed to the tenacious existence of certainforces of great power and, so far as the human point of view isconcerned, exceptional malignancy. To say that we actually believed invampires or werewolves would be a carelessly inclusive statement. Rathermust it be said that we were not prepared to deny the possibility ofcertain unfamiliar and unclassified modifications of vital force andattenuated matter; existing very infrequently in three-dimensional spacebecause of its more intimate connection with other spatial units, yetclose enough to the boundary of our own to furnish us occasionalmanifestations which we, for lack of a proper vantage-point, may neverhope to understand.

  In short, it seemed to my uncle and me that an incontrovertible arrayof facts pointed to some lingering influence in the shunned house;traceable to one or another of the ill-favored French settlers of twocenturies before, and still operative through rare and unknown laws ofatomic and electronic motion. That the family of Roulet had possessed anabnormal affinity for outer circles of entity--dark spheres which fornormal folk hold only repulsion and terror--their recorded historyseemed to prove. Had not, then, the riots of those bygoneseventeen-thirties set moving certain kinetic patterns in the morbidbrain of one or more of them--notably the sinister Paul Roulet--whichobscurely survived the bodies murdered and buried by the mob, andcontinued to function in some multiple-dimensioned space along theoriginal lines of force determined by a frantic hatred of theencroaching community?

  Such a thing was surely not a physical or biochemical impossibility inthe light of a newer science which includes the theories of relativityand intra-atomic action. One might easily imagine an alien nucleus ofsubstance or energy, formless or otherwise, kept alive by imperceptibleor immaterial subtractions from the life-force or bodily tissue andfluids of other and more palpably living things into which it penetratesand with whose fabric it sometimes completely merges itself. It might beactively hostile, or it might be dictated merely by blind motives ofself-preservation. In any case such a monster must of necessity be inour scheme of things an anomaly and an intruder, whose extirpation formsa primary duty with every man not an enemy to the world's life, health,and sanity.

  What baffled us was our utter ignorance of the aspect in which we mightencounter the thing. No sane person had ever seen it, and few had everfelt it definitely. It might be pure energy--a form ethereal and outsidethe realm of substance--or it might be partly material; some unknown andequivocal mass of plasticity, capable of changing at will to nebulousapproximations of the solid, liquid, gaseous, or tenuously unparticledstates. The anthropomorphic patch of mold on the floor, the form of theyellowish vapor, and the curvature of the tree-roots in some of the oldtales, all argued at least a remote and reminiscent connection with thehuman shape; but how representative or permanent that similarity mightbe, none could say with any kind of certainty.

  * * * * *

  We had devised two weapons to fight it; a large and specially fittedCrookes tube operated by powerful storage batteries and provided withpeculiar screens and reflectors, in case it proved intangible andopposable only by vigorously destructive ether radiations, and a pair ofmilitary flame-throwers of the sort used in the World War, in case itproved partly material and susceptible of mechanical destruction--forlike the superstitious Exeter rustics, we were prepared to burn thething's heart out if heart existed to burn. All this aggressivemechanism we set in the cellar in positions carefully arranged withreference to the cot and chairs, and to the spot before the fireplacewhere the mold had taken strange shapes. That suggestive patch, by theway, was only faintly visible when we placed our furniture andinstruments, and when we returned that evening for the actual vigil. Fora moment I half doubted that I had ever seen it in the more definitelylimned form--but then I thought of the legends.

  Our cellar vigil began at ten p. m., daylight saving time, and as itcontinued we found no promise of pertinent developments. A weak,filtered glow from the rain-harassed street-lamps outside, and a feeblephosphorescence from the detestable fungi within, showed the drippingstone of the walls, from which all traces of whitewash had vanished; thedank, fetid and mildew-tainted hard earth floor with its obscene fungi;the rotting remains of what had been stools, chairs, and tables, andother more shapeless furniture; the heavy planks and massive beams ofthe ground floor overhead; the decrepit plank door leading to bins andchambers beneath other parts of the house; the crumbling stone staircasewith ruined wooden hand-rail; and the crude and cavernous fireplace ofblackened brick where rusted iron fragments revealed the past presenceof hooks, andirons, spit, crane, and a door to the Dutch oven--thesethings, and our austere cot and camp chairs, and the heavy and intricatedestructive machinery we had brought.

  We had, as in my own former explorations, left the door to the streetunlocked; so that a direct and practical path of escape might lie openin case of manifestations beyond our power to deal with. It was our ideathat our continued nocturnal presence would call forth whatever malignentity lurked there; and that being prepared, we could dispose of thething with one or the other of our provided means as soon as we hadrecognized and observed it sufficiently. How long it might require toevoke and extinguish the thing, we had no notion. It occurred to us,too, that our venture was far from safe; for in what strength the thingmight appear no one could tell. But we deemed the game worth the hazard,and embarked on it alone and unhesitatingly; conscious that the seekingof outside aid would only expose us to ridicule and perhaps defeat ourentire purpose. Such was our frame of mind as we talked--far into thenight, till my uncle's growing drowsiness made me remind him to lie downfor his two-hour sleep.

  Something like fear chilled me as I sat there in the small hoursalone--I say alone, for one who sits by a sleeper is indeed alone;perhaps more alone than he can realize. My uncle breathed heavily, hisdeep inhalations and exhalations accompanied by the rain outside, andpunctuated by another nerve-racking sound of distant dripping waterwithin--for the house was repulsively damp even in dry weather, and inthis storm positively swamp-like. I studied the loose, antique masonryof the walls in the fungus-light and the feeble rays which stole in fromthe street through the screened window; and once, when the noisomeatmosphere of the place seemed about to sicken me, I opened the door andlooked up and down the street, feasting my eyes on familiar sights andmy nostrils on wholesome air. Still nothing occurred to reward mywatching; and I yawned repeatedly, fatigue getting the better ofapprehension.

  Then the stirring of my uncle in his sleep attracted my notice. He hadturned restlessly on the cot several times during the latter half of thefirst hour, but now he was breathing with unusual irregularity,occasionally heaving a sigh which held more than a few of the qualitiesof a choking moan.

  I turned my electric flashlight on him and found his face averted; sorising and crossing to the other side of the cot, I again flashed thelight to see if he seemed in any pain. What I saw unnerved me mostsurprisingly, considering its relative triviality. It must have beenmerely the association of any odd circumstance with the sinister natureof our location and mission, for surely the circumstance was not initself frightful or unnatural. It was merely that my uncle's facialexpression, disturbed no doubt by the strange dreams which oursituation prompted, betrayed considerable agitation, and seemed not atall characteristic of him. His habitual expression was one of kindly andwell-bred calm, whereas now a variety of emotions seemed strugglingwithin him. I think, on the whole, that it was this _variety_ whichchiefly disturbed me. My uncle, as he gasped and tossed in increasingperturbation and with eyes that had now started open, seemed not one butmany men, and suggested a curious quality of alienage from himself.

  * * * * *

  All at once he commenced to mutter, and I did not like the look of hismouth and teeth as he spoke. The words were at first indistinguishable,and then--with a tremendous start--I recognized something about themwhich filled me with ic
y fear till I recalled the breadth of my uncle'seducation and the interminable translations he had made fromanthropological and antiquarian articles in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_.For the venerable Elihu Whipple was muttering _in French_, and the fewphrases I could distinguish seemed connected with the darkest myths hehad ever adapted from the famous Paris magazine.

  Suddenly a perspiration broke out on the sleeper's forehead, and heleaped abruptly up, half awake. The jumble of French changed to a cry inEnglish, and the hoarse voice shouted excitedly, "My breath, my breath!"Then the awakening became complete, and with a subsidence of facialexpression to the normal state my uncle seized my hand and began torelate a dream whose nucleus of significance I could only surmise with akind of awe.

  He had, he said, floated off from a very ordinary series ofdream-pictures into a scene whose strangeness was related to nothing hehad ever read. It was of this world, and yet not of it--a shadowygeometrical