R. Lafferty - The 7th Ghost Story Megapack

Deep in his ghost-laying litany, Gordon didn’t even hear her. His eyes were closed tightly, he muttered the words over and over. Then he opened his eyes. He looked across the table at Esther.

He screamed.

Esther heard, him scream and slammed the refrigerator door shut hastily. Horse radish bottle in hand, she ran up the cellar steps. The door was shut. She turned the handle but it wouldn’t open. It was snap-locked from the other side.

Nellie Fawcett knew all about the honeymooners, and she thought it prudent to wait a couple days before she brought over some of her nice home-made strawberry jam for their breakfast. She poked her head in the open kitchen window when no one answered her knock.

“Woo-woo!” she called.

A thudding sound from the hall was her answer. Nellie Fawcett frowned and cocked her head. It came again. It was like before, like somebody beating on the cellar door. Nellie Fawcett pursed her lips and hiked her bulk over the sill. She waddled down the hill. Funny. Funny how Cousin Aubrey’s buggy had rolled down the hall and pushed the cellar door shut. She shoved it aside and opened the cellar door. Esther Keel fell into her arms, screaming, “Gordon! Gordon!”

They went in the dining room to find him. Why hadn’t he answered? She had screamed and screamed. He must have heard her. Esther’s fingers were torn, and the clotted blood on them matched the red streaks in the cellar door.

Why hadn’t Gordon heard her, and let her out? Why?

He was sitting at the table. After two days, he was still sitting there.

“Gordon!” she cried.

He looked up at her with lackluster eyes, then he looked back down at the plate of beef casserole in front of him. Then he started to babble and drool hopefully. Gordon was hungry.

I don’t know whether you ever tell your children ghost stories or not; some mothers don’t, but our mother, though of German descent, was strong-minded on the ghost subject, and early taught all of her children to be fearless mentally as well as physically, and, though dearly fond of hearing ghost stories, especially if they were real true ghosts, we were sadly skeptical as to their being anything of the kind that could harm. We were quite learned in ghostly lore, knew all about “doppelgangers,” “Will o’ the Wisp,” “blue lights,” etc., and we could not have a greater treat for good behavior than for our mother to draw on her store of supernatural tales for our entertainment. The story I am about to relate she told us one stormy night, when, gathered round her chair in her own cozy sanctum, before a cheerful fire, we ate nuts and apples, and listened while she recited “an o’er true tale,” told her by her grandmother, who herself witnessed the vision:

It was a fearful night, the wind sobbed and wailed round the house like lost spirits mourning their doom; the rain beat upon the casements, and the trees, writhing in the torture of the fierce blast, groaned and swayed until their tops almost swept the earth; bright flashes of lightning pierced even through the closed shutters and heavy curtains, and the thunder had a sullen, threatening roar that made your blood creep. It was a night to make one seek to shut out all sound, draw the curtains close, stir the fire and nestle deep in the arm-chair before it, with feet upon the fender, and have something cheerful to think or talk about. But I was all alone; none in the house with me but the servants, and the servants’ wing was detached from the main part of the building, for I do not care to have menials near me, and I had no loved ones near.

It was just such a night that Nancy Black died. “What a fearful night for the soul to leave its earthly home and go out into the vast, unknown future!” I spoke aloud, as, rousing from a train of thought, I drew my heavy mantle closer round me, wheeled my arm-chair nearer the fire, and cuddled down in it, burying my feet in the foot-cushion to warm them, for I felt strangely cold. I was in the library; it was my usual sitting-room, for I seldom used the parlors. What was the use? My books were my friends, and I loved best to be with them. My children dead, or married and away, the cold, grand parlors always seemed gloomy and sad; the ghosts of departed pleasures haunted them, and I cared not to enter them.

It was a long, wide room across the hall from the parlors, running the whole length of the house, and was lined with shelves from floor to ceiling. My husband’s father had been a bibliomaniac, and my husband had had a leaning that way also, and the shelves held many an old rare work that was worth its weight in gold. The fire, though burning brightly, did not illume one-half the room of which, sitting in the chimney corner, I commanded a full view, and had been looking at the shadows playing on the furniture and shelves, as the flame shot up, and after flickering a moment, would die out, leaving a gloom which would break away into fantastic shadows as the firelight would again shoot up.

While watching the gleams of light and darkling shades, unconsciously the wailing of the storm outside attracted my attention, there seemed to be odd noises of tapping on the windows, and sobs and sighs, as though someone was entreating entrance from the fierce tumult; and as I sat there, again I thought of Nancy Black, the old schoolgirl friend who had loved me so dearly, and the night when she went forth to meet the doom appointed her; resting my head upon my hand, I sat gazing in the fire, thinking over her strange life, and still stranger death, and wondering what could have become of the money and jewels that I knew she had once possessed.

While sitting thus, a queer sensation crept over me; it was not fear, but a feeling as though if I’d look up I’d see something frightful; a shiver, not like that of cold, ran from my head to my feet, and a sensation as though someone was breathing icy cold breath upon my forehead, the same feeling you would cause by holding a piece of ice to your cheek; it fluttered over my face and finally settled round my lips, as though the unseen one was caressing me, thrilling me with horror. But I am not fearful, nervous nor imaginative, and resolutely throwing off the dread that fell upon me, I turned round and looked up, and there, so close by my side that my hand, involuntarily thrown out, passed through her seeming form, stood Nancy Black. It was Nancy Black, and yet not Nancy Black; her whole body had a semi-transparent appearance, just as your hand looks when you hold it between yourself and a strong light; her clothing, apparently the same as worn in life, had a wavy, seething, flickering look, like flames have, and yet did not seem to burn.

“In the name of God, Nancy Black, what brought you here, and whence came you?” I exclaimed.

A hollow whisper followed:

“Thank you, my old friend, for speaking to me, and, oh, how deeply I thank you for thinking of me tonight—I shall have rest.”

Rest! I heard echoed, and a jeering laugh rang through the room that made her quiver at its sound.

“I have been near you often; but always failed to find you in a condition when you would be en rapport before tonight. What I came for I will tell you; whence I come, you need not know; suffice it to say, that were I happy I would not be here on such an errand, nor on such a night—it is only when the elements are in a tumult, and the winds wail and moan, that we come forth. When you hear these sounds it is souls of the lost you hear mourning their doom—’tis then they wander up and down, to and fro, their only release from their fearful home of torture and undying pain.

“I have come to tell you that you must go over to the old house, and in the back room I always kept locked, have the carpet taken up from toward the fireplace. You will see a plank with a knot-hole in it. Remove that, and you will find what caused me to lose my soul—have prayers said for me, for ’tis well to pray for the dead. The money and jewels give in charity; bury in holy ground the others you find, and pray for them and me. Ah! Jeannette, you thought your old friend, though strange and odd, pure and innocent. It is a bitter part of my punishment that I must change your thought of me. Farewell! Do not fail me, and I shall trouble you no more. But whenever you hear that wind howl and sweep round the house as it does tonight, know that the lost are near. It is their swift flight through space—fleeing before the scourge of memory and conscience—that causes that sound.