September 3, 2025 • 22 mins
What is it about that old house down the road that unnerves Pierre and his wife, Annette? The owners, Eric and Julia, appear to be a lovely couple, yet an unsettling aura of malevolence surrounds them. While Eric seems to radiate a supernatural darkness wherever he goes, Julia bears mysterious injuries that hint at a deeper horror. Are Erics sinister vibes the true source of her suffering, or is there something even more terrifying lurking within the walls of their home? (Summary by Ben Tucker)
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter five, A Sinister House by Leland Hall. This LibriVox
recordings in the public domain, read by Ben Tucker, Chapter five.
My temper was harrowed. The picture I carried in my
mind of Julia, pale and exhausted, lying on the couch
before the open window over the river, away from the sunbeams,
(00:21):
and with no glittering response in her hair to the
blue western light of early morning, was one to stir
in a man more nervous than I, that rising of
feeling as against something wrong. Indeed, I was so upset
that I managed to put one over on my wife,
whom I found pairing cucumbers in the kitchen, and whom
I treated with great firmness, ending all resistance with the
(00:43):
flat statement that Julia was all in and no fit
subject to be told that her husband carried nightmares round
with him. As for Giles, he kept to his room
all the morning, but at lunch he fairly put us
through an inquisition. He wanted to know about Eric, who
he was, where came from, and what he did. We
couldn't tell him much. In fact, we didn't know anything
(01:04):
about Eric. In that way. Eric appeared to have a
little money. He had spoken to me of real estate
in Chicago once, and I always supposed his income came
from that, and I supposed likewise that he had just
been to Chicago to see about it. I don't know
how it was that Giles put the little we knew
and the much we did not know about Eric in
an unpleasant light. He did just that in a rather
(01:25):
nasty way. That is, he made Eric out a man
of mystery. Furthermore, Giles's sympathy for Julia was very intense,
and that too somehow deepened the shadow on Eric about her.
He apparently knew far more than we had ever known,
though he utterly ignored our questions. Anette was pleased to
frame up a little mystery round Julia, then it was
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rather in the way of a joke, and chiefly to
protect Eric, who, after all, if his wife was going
to be sickly and nervous, had a claim on us
for sympathy too. Giles's aspersions on the character of Eric
seemed to me quite unjustified. I brought to his attention
the evidence of Julia's own behavior and condition, which still
I took to have their main cause in her grief
(02:08):
at parting from Eric. But Giles scoffed at that, and
in my own heart I had already begun to feel
a restless doubt. I was glad that afternoon to make
a bluff of having to go over the ford again,
and to get away from Giles's pestiferous questions about my friend.
But at the table he had, as it were, struck
us with a poison point, and the venom made me
(02:31):
uncomfortable with the thought that all might not be right
and natural. In the house where Eric and Julia lived,
I saw Giles go banging off by himself at night.
He told us that he had called at missus Greer's
late in the afternoon, and had been informed by the
servant that Missus Greer had gone at once to bed
after her ill turn of the morning, and that she
had fallen into a deep sleep, from which she had
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not then waked. Later in the evening I telephoned, even
then she had not stirred in her bed. Giles calms
the sleep of a ghastly exhaustion, hard headed as he
remained all through the affair, and often as he reprimanded
me for imagining things about the house. Strangely enough, it
was he who first suggested to me that there was
(03:13):
something uncanny in this business of Julia's ill turns. It
was amazing how Julia was herself again the very next day.
Yet I saw a new look in her face. It
wasn't only a look, there was a slight drawing of
the lips you see on the faces of persons who
were concentrating all their energies to meet a prolonged strain
on their nervous force. Her manner changed too. She was
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not standoffish, but a little on her guard. As for Eric,
during the next six weeks, he became more and more reserved.
He grew thinner too, and his face, too had a holy,
somber expression. I noticed that he was reserved even with Julia,
and while his attentions to her seemed no less actuated
by an unusually passionate and devoted love, they were more
(03:55):
controlled and perhaps more formal. His hair, already touched with
gray when I first saw him, became almost white at
the temples and over the ears. I took it he
was worrying over Julia's health. There was no doubt that
she fell off when he was round, and each time
he went away, she regained a little less before he
came back. Whatever was going on between them, Annette and
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I knew it was none of our business. So long
as the weather stayed fine. We had our own, happy,
outdoor lives to lead. We had our children before it,
and my vacation. It was nothing to either of us
what Giles did with himself. We thought it very odd
that he tolerated for his be so long. We more
than tolerated him. We learned to put up with his tempers,
(04:37):
to take him at his best. We should have been
glad to take Julia with us on our outings now
and then, but I can't remember that she ever made
one with us at that time. I wonder why. I
know she needed company. Though our children are a bit noisy,
she loved them and they would have done her good.
I remember thinking that they would be better company for
a woman in her state than Giles could be. But
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though ji Eles was nervous and restless, there was something
resolute and straightforward about him, which may have been I
used to think what helped her best to pass the
hours of her separation from Eric. I let it go
at that, failing utterly to realize how at that time
she needed for a friend. Just such a man as Giles,
one who would keep her mind busy and bury her thoughts.
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The house, which most of force Bey considered an unwholesome place,
fell under a deeper shadow. Julia entertained fewer and fewer
guests there, and towards the end before she and Eric
left it for good and all, Giles and my wife
and I were almost the only neighbors who went there.
Nothing could throw Giles into a more furious tantrum than
Annette's antipathy to the house. He liked the house himself,
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but in his self assumed role of detective in regard
to Eric, he was always seeking to know what had
brought Eric to it. That used to irritate me. I
thought it unfair to Eric, I said to him again
and again. He took it because Julia liked it at
first sight. Invariably he would reply that I didn't explain
what had brought Eric to this god forsaken part of
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the world in the first place. On one occasion, Annette,
stung by his ungracious allusions to foresby, gave him back
an unusually vivid account of Julia's spooky reception by the
house in question, A house which had a spirit in it,
maybe two or three, that flung open the windows and
sang to unsuspecting victims to tempt them into it. Tumble down,
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old haunted shanty, she said, fit for an insane asylum,
or for the company of artists. Of course, dear Giles
and artistic people. Eric must have been crazy to get
it for her. Giles grew very icy. You cannot be
expected to see the spiritual charm in such places in Nette, Yes,
said Annette, with a little toss of her head. So
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Julia once told me, And no house ever sang to
me either, And if one did, I hope I'd have
sense enough to stay out of it. Giles pounded on
the table. We were still at lunch. But what I
want to know, he roared, in his best style. Why
he brought her here in the first place? Where does
he come from? What brought a man like him down
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to this flat, deadly part of God's earth? Maybe he
too heard the singing over the long distance wire to
New York, I answered, trying to smooth things out. Our
little Bobby was at the table. He adored Eric and Julia,
and he seemed to have caught the idea of the
conversation as children will, and to have taken an interest
in it childlike too. He began softly at first, but
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with increasing clamor and violent approaches to his mother's face
to ask over and over again, Ma, Ma, what brought
Uncle Eric to the singing house? Ma? Ma? What brought
Uncle Eric to the singing House? It got fearfully on
Giles's nerves. Hush, said his mother, Hush, hush, and then
unwinding his two arms with impatience. If you don't stop
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your noise this minute, Robert, you shall go to bed
without any supper tonight. He got down from his mother's
lap then and crawled under the table. We tried to
regain our composure, but unobserved that lad of mine got
round to Giles and tugging at his coat for attention.
I wonder how malicious children are, demanded his answer, cousin, Giles,
what brought Uncle Eric to the singing house? Giles sprang
(08:11):
up in a fury. Nothing you good, pest, nothing good,
he shouted, and went raging out of the room. I
think that at first singing house suggested to Bobby merely
his cuckoo clock. He had always been enchanted and a
bit frightened by the flying open of the little door,
the inexplicably sudden apparition of the wooden songster, its song,
and its equally sudden silence and disappearance. Many children tire
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of this regular self performing miracle, and most boys will
sooner or later have the thing apart. Bobby, on the contrary,
would have been aghast at the mere thought of dismembering
even a wooden bird. He was a sensitive little fellow.
He feared the clock at first, and his curiosity never
got liberated from his fear sufficiently for him to venture
a finger into the black hole, from out of which
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the bird sprang to sing. As for what went on
behind them door after it had closed, the poor bird in,
I am sure he had lurid imaginings. How deep an
impression the idea of a whole singing house made on
the child, we did not suspect. I do not know
what his mind peopled it with besides his uncle Eric
and his aunt Julia. Anyhow, the place began to be
(09:18):
somewhat fearful for him. Whenever we drove past it in
the ford, he drew up closer to me. He always
sat on the front seat unless we were out after dark,
and there was I felt something communicative in his sphere.
At one time, Annette and I too, used to tell
the little boy spooky stories just to make his eyes
grow big and round. It is an unwise and a
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cruel practice with children like him, and we don't do
it any more. Besides, we know too well ourselves now
how much torture lurks in a dim and inconceivable thing
of terror. But at that time we were both capable
of adding touches of gruesome horrors to the stories we
told him. We had no premonition of the lesson we
were to learn, and that very soon, late one afternoon,
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we were in a field, the three of us, well
up the river. It was still warm, though the sun
was dropping low. It had been hazy all day, and
we had been at peace, untroubled by worry of any sort.
Annette had taken along with her a book of myths
and folklore, and had read one or two of them
to Bobby, who would sit and raptured as long as
she would read them. Just before it was time for
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us to be starting back home, she finished that rather
revolting one of the Larelai. It was some Larelli in
that version of the story, one with a hearty appetite
for human flesh. I can see the little boy now
snuggled very close under his mother's arm. He was looking
at the pages as she read them, though he hadn't
begun to learn his letters. Facing the last page of
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the story, there was a crude engraving of the fascinating
man eating a lady. Maybe you've seen it. She sits
alone on the top of a high rock above the river,
clothed only in her long, bright hair and a very
scanty smock, which Bobby probably thought was her bib. She
had horrid bold eyes, and her mouth looks well fed.
The narrow plateau on which she sits in cumber all
round her, with thigh bones presumably human, and skulls undoubtedly so.
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Bobby just stared at that. He had had his finger
on every bone, and on every one of the five
strings in the harp she held in her hand. I
picked up the rugs and the lunch basket and went
up to the car to make all ready for the
ride home. But when I came back down through the
tall dry grass of the field to summon a net
and a boy to the car. I found that they
had not moved to prepare themselves for the start, that
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Bobby was really afraid to make a move in the
twilight that had already fallen. Upon the disappearance of the sun,
I had to pick him up in my arms and
carry him to the car. The night air was already cool.
I felt then that it was wrong to read the
little fellow such horrible stuff, and to let him see
such pictures. I spanked him in a friendly way and
promised him he should ride home on the front seat,
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but that didn't work. He wanted to be close to
some one, and I had scolded him so often forgetting
in my way when he was riding beside me that
he knew well his only hope for snuggling lay in
the back seat. His mother laughed at him, but she
took him under her wing, wrapped him warm against the
cold breeze, and in the dark we started off. We
had ten miles to go down along the river, from
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which before long the mists began to rise, spreading eerily
over the marshes and settling into the hollows of the road.
Silly boy, I heard his mother say, silly boy, to
be afraid did she sing when she was hungry? I
heard him ask, in his high tense voice, you are
thinking of little Tommy Tucker, who sang for his supper.
(12:30):
I heard her answer, but what was the lore Lie's supper, Mamma?
Did she eat little boys and curls and so on?
To Annette, to get the horrid idea out of his head,
resorted to that reprehensible mixture of terrorism with morality which
many mothers administer to their children, as for example, her
telling Bobby that only naughty people heard the lore Li
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sing at all, and all naughty people ought to be
eaten if they weren't. How careful we both are now
to keep the conceptions of horror from taking root in
the minds of our children. The night settled darker and darker,
and colder and colder. Here and there we passed through
a queer, warm streak in the air. I finally told
Bobby over my shoulder that there was no such things
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as Laura lies anyhow, But the whole thing was nonsense.
But in a few moments I heard him again, aren't
there any larel lies on the Hudson, Mamma, No, dear,
there aren't any anywhere, But uncle Eric heard the singing house.
Was there a Laura lie in the singing house? Was
Uncle Eric a bad man? And heard her sing? Come? Come,
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my boy? He didn't hear anyone sing? But who did?
Aunt Julia just played? She did? Then there isn't any
Laura lie in the singing house, no darling, and there
wasn't any singing in it. Then it won't eat Aunt Julia.
Come on, my son, I broke in. I'm so hungry
that if you keep on talking this way, I'll eat you.
(13:55):
And Papa can't sing, said my wife, seizing as she
always sees the chance to give me a playful gibe,
bang a blowout. And we were four miles from home
in the night, already heavy upon us, a forlorn predicament.
I got out, and by the light of a miserable
candle stub, began my repairs. While I was working, Anette heard,
faint in the distance, the whistle of the seven thirty
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train from New York doing foresby at eight thirty. I
wonder if Eric's coming back on that train, she murmured,
with a yawn. And I wonder where Giles is getting
his supper? Supper? Is there a more maddening word to
distract the mind of a fellow in my fix. We
stayed by the roadside a good half hour, and by
the time we started on again, the night was thick.
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We were savagely hungry, and our nerves were on edge. Fortunately,
Bobby soon fell asleep. We rode on in silence, my
mind on the road before me, often shrouded in the
night mist which took strange shapes before our lamps, and
my whole body crying out for something warm to eat.
But even against Ford's fate sometimes sets herself just by
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the gloomy hemlock that bordered the highway when it runs
by Eric's house. We suffered another blow out, I swore,
and stopped the engine immediately. The night was black about us.
For a moment I thought it was silent, too, But
then my ears caught the sound of a woman's voice singing.
It came from somewhere behind those hemlocks, round which the
mist was in a strange, in sinuous movement, without any
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other sound to accompany it, without any gleam of light.
A voice in the blackness so disassociated from human life
as to suggest something unearthly, to make matters worse Bobby,
half wakened by the stopping of the car, began to
scream in terror. I hear the singing house, I hear
the singing house. Oh mamma, it is going to eat me.
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It's going to eat me. It got terribly on my nerves,
not only the nerve racking yelling, but the association of
the faint thread of song with the hideous story of
sorcery and inhuman cruelty. Oh shut up, I shouted at
my son in a temper, as I got myself stiffly
out of the car. Screaming subsided at once into a
sort of frightened whimpering through which I could still hear,
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though very faintly, a note or two of the song.
But he let loose again and clutched frantically at his
mother when she had to move herself and him in
order to let me get at the necessary implements in
the chest under the back seat. By the certain light
of matches, I struck one after the other. I found
my jack, my tire irons, and my amending tissues, but
no trace of the candle stub. I must have left
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it at the place where we had been held up before. Well,
I tried to light one of the kerosene lamps. As
luck would have it, it was empty of oil. I
tried all the kerosene lamps. They were all empty, even
the tail light, which I seldom troubled to light in
this remote part of the world. My cursing was ardent,
but low. There was something in the blackness of the night.
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The stars were all obscured by the haze. There was
something in the blackness, I repeat, in the damp, heavy
clinging of the mist, extra chill by those forever sunless trees,
and in the mysterious and only half audible sound of
singing coming to us through the fear haunted thicket, which
cast a spell over me in mind one. I was
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not venturesome enough to shatter with a loud ringing oath.
And there was Bobby's incessant and agitating whimpering too, a
sort of cold rill of fear. It was impossible to
do my work in the darkness, and I made up
my mind to go to the house and ask for
a light, rather than to burn gasoline for half an
hour or more and keep the engine running just for
(17:28):
the front lamps. Well, hurry, then, Annette said to me,
half whispering herself, don't leave me alone in this black hole.
I thought you had some sense, Annette, I growled, crossly,
taking a long breath, as if I were going to
plunge into a cold bath. I stumbled down into the
dark driveway. I hadn't felt my way more than a
few steps, however, before, such a heavy feeling, as if
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peril were closing in round us, saddled on me that
I turned and went back to the car. I meant
only to reassure net. As a matter of fact, I
made her scream. A second time, I braved the clammy
darkness of the driveway, and this time I came in
sight of the house. I say in sight, because at
last my eyes had definite perception through one of the
south windows, against which the curtains had not been drawn,
(18:14):
the uncertain and not very penetrating light from a branch
of candles was streaming. At first, this was heartening, but
almost before I had taken another step, I stopped short
in my tracks. Against that bar of light, I saw
distinctly the silhouetted head and shoulders of a man. Had
he not moved, I certainly should have taken the bulk
which revealed him as a protuberance from the dark mass
(18:36):
of shrubs along that wall of the house, the outline
of which was only half distinct against the light. He
was standing some four or five feet from the window,
evidently looking in. It was a movement nearer that had
arrested my attention. One thinks only of wickedness in such moments.
It never occurred to me that the fellow, whoever he was,
might have been drawn towards the window by the sound
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of singing, faint but sweet, that came from the house recently.
As I had been reminded of the drawing power of
the hungry and destructive Lorelle, I thought only that Julia
was in danger of insult, of shock, or even of
some bodily harm. Instantly, my heart beating faster, I confess,
I began to steal up on the villain. I stood
low over the ground. I myself must have become invisible
(19:20):
in the darkness, while to my eyes he stood a
little more clearly outlined against the night, nearer and nearer.
I crept over the damp grass, with not a sound
to betray me. His ears must have been filled with
the music, however black The thoughts that filled his heart.
He must have been a careless brute, too, for an
edging ever nearer to the window, he put himself more
(19:42):
and more into the light and into full view of
any one within the room who might chance to look
out through the window. He rustled the bushes as well.
Several times I heard them snap with a sharp, clear sound.
As I approached, the feeling that there was evil about
him in danger for Julia grew so intense in my
breast that I I made up my mind I would
strike him from behind with all my strength, without any
(20:03):
preliminary questions. He was, I could see a taller man
than I, and probably much stronger. Since I had only
my bare fist to fill him with, I must spring
upon him and take him utterly. By surprise, I knew
I must leap when I reached the bushes, for I
could not hope to creep nearer to him through them
without much crackling, to which not even the sweet singing
could have made the prowler deaf. That singing kept smoothly on.
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I had a feeling that the fellow was really listening
to it, and I was glad for it served my purpose.
Just before I decided it was time for me to
make the leap. I prayed for a more ringing note.
My prayer was not granted. Instead, I heard the singing
shiver to a sort of sob. I jumped nevertheless, for
even at that moment I heard my prey lurch forward.
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He was actually rattling the window, which was low and
made in the French fashion to open like a door.
What my half blinded eyes saw through that window when
I leapt up, I shall never forget. First, let me
say I recognized the man who was rattling it to
get in. It was Eric. Then within the room I
saw Julia, still sitting at the piano, but with her
face turned towards her husband and on it a look
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of unspeakable horror. I saw Giles, his back to me,
half risen from his chair, and as if turned to
stone by the expression he saw on Julia's face. It
must have been only for a second or two, this
frozen and horrible fixedness within the room. As for Julia,
it might have been the shock of seeing a face
peering in at her, even her husband's, so sudden and
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like an apparition in the night. But it wasn't that
I saw her move or force herself to move and
rise from the piano. Slowly, step by step, she made
her way towards the window, and on her face I saw,
meanwhile revealed her indomitable spirit, fighting to bring a light
of recognition to her eyes and outshine lurid horror. There
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I saw her hands before her, not as a blind person's,
low and searching, but rid straight out before her, hardened
and sharpened to beat and tear, a ghastly invisible medium,
through which it cost of an enormous effort. She slowly
forced herself to make way, yet they only twitched in small,
weak movements, like hands locked in a rigor of all
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but death. How terribly slow her steps were, and all
the while I heard Eric rattling the window to get in.
He did get in, but even then she could not
propel herself towards him. It was he who rushed towards her,
and he hid her from me in his embrace. I
felt almost sick. Just before I hurried away, my eyes
(22:36):
saw Giles risen to his feet, his face turned into
the light, amazed and horror struck, even as my own
must have been. End of Chapter five
Chapter five, A Sinister House by Leland Hall. This LibriVox
recordings in the public domain, read by Ben Tucker, Chapter five.
My temper was harrowed. The picture I carried in my
mind of Julia, pale and exhausted, lying on the couch
before the open window over the river, away from the sunbeams,
(00:21):
and with no glittering response in her hair to the
blue western light of early morning, was one to stir
in a man more nervous than I, that rising of
feeling as against something wrong. Indeed, I was so upset
that I managed to put one over on my wife,
whom I found pairing cucumbers in the kitchen, and whom
I treated with great firmness, ending all resistance with the
(00:43):
flat statement that Julia was all in and no fit
subject to be told that her husband carried nightmares round
with him. As for Giles, he kept to his room
all the morning, but at lunch he fairly put us
through an inquisition. He wanted to know about Eric, who
he was, where came from, and what he did. We
couldn't tell him much. In fact, we didn't know anything
(01:04):
about Eric. In that way. Eric appeared to have a
little money. He had spoken to me of real estate
in Chicago once, and I always supposed his income came
from that, and I supposed likewise that he had just
been to Chicago to see about it. I don't know
how it was that Giles put the little we knew
and the much we did not know about Eric in
an unpleasant light. He did just that in a rather
(01:25):
nasty way. That is, he made Eric out a man
of mystery. Furthermore, Giles's sympathy for Julia was very intense,
and that too somehow deepened the shadow on Eric about her.
He apparently knew far more than we had ever known,
though he utterly ignored our questions. Anette was pleased to
frame up a little mystery round Julia, then it was
(01:47):
rather in the way of a joke, and chiefly to
protect Eric, who, after all, if his wife was going
to be sickly and nervous, had a claim on us
for sympathy too. Giles's aspersions on the character of Eric
seemed to me quite unjustified. I brought to his attention
the evidence of Julia's own behavior and condition, which still
I took to have their main cause in her grief
(02:08):
at parting from Eric. But Giles scoffed at that, and
in my own heart I had already begun to feel
a restless doubt. I was glad that afternoon to make
a bluff of having to go over the ford again,
and to get away from Giles's pestiferous questions about my friend.
But at the table he had, as it were, struck
us with a poison point, and the venom made me
(02:31):
uncomfortable with the thought that all might not be right
and natural. In the house where Eric and Julia lived,
I saw Giles go banging off by himself at night.
He told us that he had called at missus Greer's
late in the afternoon, and had been informed by the
servant that Missus Greer had gone at once to bed
after her ill turn of the morning, and that she
had fallen into a deep sleep, from which she had
(02:53):
not then waked. Later in the evening I telephoned, even
then she had not stirred in her bed. Giles calms
the sleep of a ghastly exhaustion, hard headed as he
remained all through the affair, and often as he reprimanded
me for imagining things about the house. Strangely enough, it
was he who first suggested to me that there was
(03:13):
something uncanny in this business of Julia's ill turns. It
was amazing how Julia was herself again the very next day.
Yet I saw a new look in her face. It
wasn't only a look, there was a slight drawing of
the lips you see on the faces of persons who
were concentrating all their energies to meet a prolonged strain
on their nervous force. Her manner changed too. She was
(03:35):
not standoffish, but a little on her guard. As for Eric,
during the next six weeks, he became more and more reserved.
He grew thinner too, and his face, too had a holy,
somber expression. I noticed that he was reserved even with Julia,
and while his attentions to her seemed no less actuated
by an unusually passionate and devoted love, they were more
(03:55):
controlled and perhaps more formal. His hair, already touched with
gray when I first saw him, became almost white at
the temples and over the ears. I took it he
was worrying over Julia's health. There was no doubt that
she fell off when he was round, and each time
he went away, she regained a little less before he
came back. Whatever was going on between them, Annette and
(04:16):
I knew it was none of our business. So long
as the weather stayed fine. We had our own, happy,
outdoor lives to lead. We had our children before it,
and my vacation. It was nothing to either of us
what Giles did with himself. We thought it very odd
that he tolerated for his be so long. We more
than tolerated him. We learned to put up with his tempers,
(04:37):
to take him at his best. We should have been
glad to take Julia with us on our outings now
and then, but I can't remember that she ever made
one with us at that time. I wonder why. I
know she needed company. Though our children are a bit noisy,
she loved them and they would have done her good.
I remember thinking that they would be better company for
a woman in her state than Giles could be. But
(04:59):
though ji Eles was nervous and restless, there was something
resolute and straightforward about him, which may have been I
used to think what helped her best to pass the
hours of her separation from Eric. I let it go
at that, failing utterly to realize how at that time
she needed for a friend. Just such a man as Giles,
one who would keep her mind busy and bury her thoughts.
(05:19):
The house, which most of force Bey considered an unwholesome place,
fell under a deeper shadow. Julia entertained fewer and fewer
guests there, and towards the end before she and Eric
left it for good and all, Giles and my wife
and I were almost the only neighbors who went there.
Nothing could throw Giles into a more furious tantrum than
Annette's antipathy to the house. He liked the house himself,
(05:43):
but in his self assumed role of detective in regard
to Eric, he was always seeking to know what had
brought Eric to it. That used to irritate me. I
thought it unfair to Eric, I said to him again
and again. He took it because Julia liked it at
first sight. Invariably he would reply that I didn't explain
what had brought Eric to this god forsaken part of
(06:03):
the world in the first place. On one occasion, Annette,
stung by his ungracious allusions to foresby, gave him back
an unusually vivid account of Julia's spooky reception by the
house in question, A house which had a spirit in it,
maybe two or three, that flung open the windows and
sang to unsuspecting victims to tempt them into it. Tumble down,
(06:24):
old haunted shanty, she said, fit for an insane asylum,
or for the company of artists. Of course, dear Giles
and artistic people. Eric must have been crazy to get
it for her. Giles grew very icy. You cannot be
expected to see the spiritual charm in such places in Nette, Yes,
said Annette, with a little toss of her head. So
(06:45):
Julia once told me, And no house ever sang to
me either, And if one did, I hope I'd have
sense enough to stay out of it. Giles pounded on
the table. We were still at lunch. But what I
want to know, he roared, in his best style. Why
he brought her here in the first place? Where does
he come from? What brought a man like him down
(07:05):
to this flat, deadly part of God's earth? Maybe he
too heard the singing over the long distance wire to
New York, I answered, trying to smooth things out. Our
little Bobby was at the table. He adored Eric and Julia,
and he seemed to have caught the idea of the
conversation as children will, and to have taken an interest
in it childlike too. He began softly at first, but
(07:27):
with increasing clamor and violent approaches to his mother's face
to ask over and over again, Ma, Ma, what brought
Uncle Eric to the singing house? Ma? Ma? What brought
Uncle Eric to the singing House? It got fearfully on
Giles's nerves. Hush, said his mother, Hush, hush, and then
unwinding his two arms with impatience. If you don't stop
(07:49):
your noise this minute, Robert, you shall go to bed
without any supper tonight. He got down from his mother's
lap then and crawled under the table. We tried to
regain our composure, but unobserved that lad of mine got
round to Giles and tugging at his coat for attention.
I wonder how malicious children are, demanded his answer, cousin, Giles,
what brought Uncle Eric to the singing house? Giles sprang
(08:11):
up in a fury. Nothing you good, pest, nothing good,
he shouted, and went raging out of the room. I
think that at first singing house suggested to Bobby merely
his cuckoo clock. He had always been enchanted and a
bit frightened by the flying open of the little door,
the inexplicably sudden apparition of the wooden songster, its song,
and its equally sudden silence and disappearance. Many children tire
(08:35):
of this regular self performing miracle, and most boys will
sooner or later have the thing apart. Bobby, on the contrary,
would have been aghast at the mere thought of dismembering
even a wooden bird. He was a sensitive little fellow.
He feared the clock at first, and his curiosity never
got liberated from his fear sufficiently for him to venture
a finger into the black hole, from out of which
(08:56):
the bird sprang to sing. As for what went on
behind them door after it had closed, the poor bird in,
I am sure he had lurid imaginings. How deep an
impression the idea of a whole singing house made on
the child, we did not suspect. I do not know
what his mind peopled it with besides his uncle Eric
and his aunt Julia. Anyhow, the place began to be
(09:18):
somewhat fearful for him. Whenever we drove past it in
the ford, he drew up closer to me. He always
sat on the front seat unless we were out after dark,
and there was I felt something communicative in his sphere.
At one time, Annette and I too, used to tell
the little boy spooky stories just to make his eyes
grow big and round. It is an unwise and a
(09:39):
cruel practice with children like him, and we don't do
it any more. Besides, we know too well ourselves now
how much torture lurks in a dim and inconceivable thing
of terror. But at that time we were both capable
of adding touches of gruesome horrors to the stories we
told him. We had no premonition of the lesson we
were to learn, and that very soon, late one afternoon,
(09:59):
we were in a field, the three of us, well
up the river. It was still warm, though the sun
was dropping low. It had been hazy all day, and
we had been at peace, untroubled by worry of any sort.
Annette had taken along with her a book of myths
and folklore, and had read one or two of them
to Bobby, who would sit and raptured as long as
she would read them. Just before it was time for
(10:20):
us to be starting back home, she finished that rather
revolting one of the Larelai. It was some Larelli in
that version of the story, one with a hearty appetite
for human flesh. I can see the little boy now
snuggled very close under his mother's arm. He was looking
at the pages as she read them, though he hadn't
begun to learn his letters. Facing the last page of
(10:41):
the story, there was a crude engraving of the fascinating
man eating a lady. Maybe you've seen it. She sits
alone on the top of a high rock above the river,
clothed only in her long, bright hair and a very
scanty smock, which Bobby probably thought was her bib. She
had horrid bold eyes, and her mouth looks well fed.
The narrow plateau on which she sits in cumber all
round her, with thigh bones presumably human, and skulls undoubtedly so.
(11:05):
Bobby just stared at that. He had had his finger
on every bone, and on every one of the five
strings in the harp she held in her hand. I
picked up the rugs and the lunch basket and went
up to the car to make all ready for the
ride home. But when I came back down through the
tall dry grass of the field to summon a net
and a boy to the car. I found that they
had not moved to prepare themselves for the start, that
(11:26):
Bobby was really afraid to make a move in the
twilight that had already fallen. Upon the disappearance of the sun,
I had to pick him up in my arms and
carry him to the car. The night air was already cool.
I felt then that it was wrong to read the
little fellow such horrible stuff, and to let him see
such pictures. I spanked him in a friendly way and
promised him he should ride home on the front seat,
(11:48):
but that didn't work. He wanted to be close to
some one, and I had scolded him so often forgetting
in my way when he was riding beside me that
he knew well his only hope for snuggling lay in
the back seat. His mother laughed at him, but she
took him under her wing, wrapped him warm against the
cold breeze, and in the dark we started off. We
had ten miles to go down along the river, from
(12:09):
which before long the mists began to rise, spreading eerily
over the marshes and settling into the hollows of the road.
Silly boy, I heard his mother say, silly boy, to
be afraid did she sing when she was hungry? I
heard him ask, in his high tense voice, you are
thinking of little Tommy Tucker, who sang for his supper.
(12:30):
I heard her answer, but what was the lore Lie's supper, Mamma?
Did she eat little boys and curls and so on?
To Annette, to get the horrid idea out of his head,
resorted to that reprehensible mixture of terrorism with morality which
many mothers administer to their children, as for example, her
telling Bobby that only naughty people heard the lore Li
(12:52):
sing at all, and all naughty people ought to be
eaten if they weren't. How careful we both are now
to keep the conceptions of horror from taking root in
the minds of our children. The night settled darker and darker,
and colder and colder. Here and there we passed through
a queer, warm streak in the air. I finally told
Bobby over my shoulder that there was no such things
(13:12):
as Laura lies anyhow, But the whole thing was nonsense.
But in a few moments I heard him again, aren't
there any larel lies on the Hudson, Mamma, No, dear,
there aren't any anywhere, But uncle Eric heard the singing house.
Was there a Laura lie in the singing house? Was
Uncle Eric a bad man? And heard her sing? Come? Come,
(13:33):
my boy? He didn't hear anyone sing? But who did?
Aunt Julia just played? She did? Then there isn't any
Laura lie in the singing house, no darling, and there
wasn't any singing in it. Then it won't eat Aunt Julia.
Come on, my son, I broke in. I'm so hungry
that if you keep on talking this way, I'll eat you.
(13:55):
And Papa can't sing, said my wife, seizing as she
always sees the chance to give me a playful gibe,
bang a blowout. And we were four miles from home
in the night, already heavy upon us, a forlorn predicament.
I got out, and by the light of a miserable
candle stub, began my repairs. While I was working, Anette heard,
faint in the distance, the whistle of the seven thirty
(14:17):
train from New York doing foresby at eight thirty. I
wonder if Eric's coming back on that train, she murmured,
with a yawn. And I wonder where Giles is getting
his supper? Supper? Is there a more maddening word to
distract the mind of a fellow in my fix. We
stayed by the roadside a good half hour, and by
the time we started on again, the night was thick.
(14:38):
We were savagely hungry, and our nerves were on edge. Fortunately,
Bobby soon fell asleep. We rode on in silence, my
mind on the road before me, often shrouded in the
night mist which took strange shapes before our lamps, and
my whole body crying out for something warm to eat.
But even against Ford's fate sometimes sets herself just by
(14:59):
the gloomy hemlock that bordered the highway when it runs
by Eric's house. We suffered another blow out, I swore,
and stopped the engine immediately. The night was black about us.
For a moment I thought it was silent, too, But
then my ears caught the sound of a woman's voice singing.
It came from somewhere behind those hemlocks, round which the
mist was in a strange, in sinuous movement, without any
(15:21):
other sound to accompany it, without any gleam of light.
A voice in the blackness so disassociated from human life
as to suggest something unearthly, to make matters worse Bobby,
half wakened by the stopping of the car, began to
scream in terror. I hear the singing house, I hear
the singing house. Oh mamma, it is going to eat me.
(15:42):
It's going to eat me. It got terribly on my nerves,
not only the nerve racking yelling, but the association of
the faint thread of song with the hideous story of
sorcery and inhuman cruelty. Oh shut up, I shouted at
my son in a temper, as I got myself stiffly
out of the car. Screaming subsided at once into a
sort of frightened whimpering through which I could still hear,
(16:04):
though very faintly, a note or two of the song.
But he let loose again and clutched frantically at his
mother when she had to move herself and him in
order to let me get at the necessary implements in
the chest under the back seat. By the certain light
of matches, I struck one after the other. I found
my jack, my tire irons, and my amending tissues, but
no trace of the candle stub. I must have left
(16:26):
it at the place where we had been held up before. Well,
I tried to light one of the kerosene lamps. As
luck would have it, it was empty of oil. I
tried all the kerosene lamps. They were all empty, even
the tail light, which I seldom troubled to light in
this remote part of the world. My cursing was ardent,
but low. There was something in the blackness of the night.
(16:47):
The stars were all obscured by the haze. There was
something in the blackness, I repeat, in the damp, heavy
clinging of the mist, extra chill by those forever sunless trees,
and in the mysterious and only half audible sound of
singing coming to us through the fear haunted thicket, which
cast a spell over me in mind one. I was
(17:08):
not venturesome enough to shatter with a loud ringing oath.
And there was Bobby's incessant and agitating whimpering too, a
sort of cold rill of fear. It was impossible to
do my work in the darkness, and I made up
my mind to go to the house and ask for
a light, rather than to burn gasoline for half an
hour or more and keep the engine running just for
(17:28):
the front lamps. Well, hurry, then, Annette said to me,
half whispering herself, don't leave me alone in this black hole.
I thought you had some sense, Annette, I growled, crossly,
taking a long breath, as if I were going to
plunge into a cold bath. I stumbled down into the
dark driveway. I hadn't felt my way more than a
few steps, however, before, such a heavy feeling, as if
(17:51):
peril were closing in round us, saddled on me that
I turned and went back to the car. I meant
only to reassure net. As a matter of fact, I
made her scream. A second time, I braved the clammy
darkness of the driveway, and this time I came in
sight of the house. I say in sight, because at
last my eyes had definite perception through one of the
south windows, against which the curtains had not been drawn,
(18:14):
the uncertain and not very penetrating light from a branch
of candles was streaming. At first, this was heartening, but
almost before I had taken another step, I stopped short
in my tracks. Against that bar of light, I saw
distinctly the silhouetted head and shoulders of a man. Had
he not moved, I certainly should have taken the bulk
which revealed him as a protuberance from the dark mass
(18:36):
of shrubs along that wall of the house, the outline
of which was only half distinct against the light. He
was standing some four or five feet from the window,
evidently looking in. It was a movement nearer that had
arrested my attention. One thinks only of wickedness in such moments.
It never occurred to me that the fellow, whoever he was,
might have been drawn towards the window by the sound
(18:58):
of singing, faint but sweet, that came from the house recently.
As I had been reminded of the drawing power of
the hungry and destructive Lorelle, I thought only that Julia
was in danger of insult, of shock, or even of
some bodily harm. Instantly, my heart beating faster, I confess,
I began to steal up on the villain. I stood
low over the ground. I myself must have become invisible
(19:20):
in the darkness, while to my eyes he stood a
little more clearly outlined against the night, nearer and nearer.
I crept over the damp grass, with not a sound
to betray me. His ears must have been filled with
the music, however black The thoughts that filled his heart.
He must have been a careless brute, too, for an
edging ever nearer to the window, he put himself more
(19:42):
and more into the light and into full view of
any one within the room who might chance to look
out through the window. He rustled the bushes as well.
Several times I heard them snap with a sharp, clear sound.
As I approached, the feeling that there was evil about
him in danger for Julia grew so intense in my
breast that I I made up my mind I would
strike him from behind with all my strength, without any
(20:03):
preliminary questions. He was, I could see a taller man
than I, and probably much stronger. Since I had only
my bare fist to fill him with, I must spring
upon him and take him utterly. By surprise, I knew
I must leap when I reached the bushes, for I
could not hope to creep nearer to him through them
without much crackling, to which not even the sweet singing
could have made the prowler deaf. That singing kept smoothly on.
(20:27):
I had a feeling that the fellow was really listening
to it, and I was glad for it served my purpose.
Just before I decided it was time for me to
make the leap. I prayed for a more ringing note.
My prayer was not granted. Instead, I heard the singing
shiver to a sort of sob. I jumped nevertheless, for
even at that moment I heard my prey lurch forward.
(20:48):
He was actually rattling the window, which was low and
made in the French fashion to open like a door.
What my half blinded eyes saw through that window when
I leapt up, I shall never forget. First, let me
say I recognized the man who was rattling it to
get in. It was Eric. Then within the room I
saw Julia, still sitting at the piano, but with her
face turned towards her husband and on it a look
(21:11):
of unspeakable horror. I saw Giles, his back to me,
half risen from his chair, and as if turned to
stone by the expression he saw on Julia's face. It
must have been only for a second or two, this
frozen and horrible fixedness within the room. As for Julia,
it might have been the shock of seeing a face
peering in at her, even her husband's, so sudden and
(21:33):
like an apparition in the night. But it wasn't that
I saw her move or force herself to move and
rise from the piano. Slowly, step by step, she made
her way towards the window, and on her face I saw,
meanwhile revealed her indomitable spirit, fighting to bring a light
of recognition to her eyes and outshine lurid horror. There
(21:55):
I saw her hands before her, not as a blind person's,
low and searching, but rid straight out before her, hardened
and sharpened to beat and tear, a ghastly invisible medium,
through which it cost of an enormous effort. She slowly
forced herself to make way, yet they only twitched in small,
weak movements, like hands locked in a rigor of all
(22:15):
but death. How terribly slow her steps were, and all
the while I heard Eric rattling the window to get in.
He did get in, but even then she could not
propel herself towards him. It was he who rushed towards her,
and he hid her from me in his embrace. I
felt almost sick. Just before I hurried away, my eyes
(22:36):
saw Giles risen to his feet, his face turned into
the light, amazed and horror struck, even as my own
must have been. End of Chapter five
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