06 - Sinister House by Leland Hall

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)

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter six of Sinister House by Leland Hall. The LibriVox
recording is in the public domain, read by Ben Tucker.
Almost staggering through the darkness, I made my way back
to the ford. Annette was nervous and shaky. I startled her,
coming up out of the darkness without any light. I
hemmed and hawed for I could not speak, and cranked

(00:21):
the car, making up my mind to get the thing.
The three miles home on a flat tire, but Annette
rebelled at that. Why didn't you get a light from
the house as you started out to do, She asked me,
with unmistakable irritation. You're crazy to think of going home
on a flat tire. I can't stand it. Why didn't
you get the light? What's the matter with you? And
then leaning closer to me in the darkness and almost whispering,

(00:43):
what's the matter in the house? Eric's come home? I replied, Well,
what of that? What's the matter with him? It's Julia,
for Heaven's sake, Say something, what's wrong with Julia? But
I couldn't explain. I hadn't the courage. The engine was
running with a great racket, and the front lights shone

(01:04):
far down the road, making bright whatever they touched upon,
but leaving all else doubly black. By contrast, a fitful
wind was blowing, and I was more depressed in spirits
than I had ever been before. Somehow, though I had
climbed into the seat and had grasped the safety lever,
I could not bring myself to start the car. It
was altogether a horrid couple of minutes. Naturally, Annette was mystified.

(01:27):
But when I swore I would not go back to
that house to night, she almost lost her temper. What nonsense,
she exclaimed, I won't ride home with you on a
flat tire if you can't mind it in the dark.
I'll go and get a light myself. You might be
a little more considerate, Pierre. Here, I am shivering with
the cold. Bobby needs to supper. I'm hungry too, and
yet you won't make a move to get us home. Well,

(01:48):
I'll catch our deaths sitting here in this cold fog.
It did seem foolish after all, And finally I went
up the driveway again, stumbled along to the house and
knocked on the door. I heard a scream, faint and
quickly choked, but none the less, real it was probably
Julia startled out of her self control. To my surprise,
Giles opened the door, prompted by an instinctive feeling that

(02:11):
I must bring cheerfulness into that house. I hailed him
in a hearty voice, then called down anathema on tires
and demanded a light in tones that filled up the
long rose colored, shadowy hallway and must have struck the
ears of Eric and his bride. Pleasantly, Eric came out
from the living room and Julia followed him. He had honest,
cordial words of welcome for me, but it was Julia

(02:31):
who almost hysterically commanded me to stay and sup with them.
I was taken off my guard through the door. Whence
they had both issued I caught a glimpse of the
candle lit living room, of its odd, old fashioned furniture,
its small, deep colored rugs, its dark hangings, and just
a yellow flame or two of the fire burning in
the little grate. But I was ill at ease. My

(02:53):
nerves were shaking. I didn't like the house, warm as
it felt, and picturesque and cozy as it looked to
my eyes. Yet before I knew it, Julia had me
by the arm and was leading me back down the driveway,
pulling me along in a great hurry to get to
the ford out in the blackness, and commandeer Anette and Bobby.
All the way. She kept up a chattering about how
cold it was, how hungry we must be, and how

(03:14):
in celebration of Eric's home coming, we must stay and
help them make merry. Under the run of this somewhat
too urgent hospitality, I felt the strain of despair. I
knew that Julia actually had need of us in that
house to night, for some terrible reason I could not
hope to fathom. I made up my mind that as
much as we should be acting our parts in ignorance,
we would not go back on her. We could at

(03:36):
least stand by. So I was cheerful with Annette and
enthusiastic for a good, warm supper there and then. And
Annette could not but accept this odd turn. We roused
Bobby and went back to the house, Julia keeping up
with my wife the nervous talk that on the way
out she had loosened on me. As we approached the
door left open through which the faint rosy light came

(03:57):
out into the dark, my boy began to twist and
turn in my arms without his supper. He was fretful
and nervous, and he was frightened by the night too. Indeed,
as I carried him up the two steps of the porch,
he began to kick me and to pound my shoulder
with tightly clenched little fists. As yet he made no outcry,
but I felt the wind gathering force in his little chest.
And when we got inside the house and I set

(04:18):
him down in the hall, there was something in the
way he grabbed my legs and hid his face against
them that made me fear for the worst. This was
received in full measure. When Eric, always up to that
time a great favorite with him, tried playfully to catch
him up in his arms. Bobby let out shriek after shriek,
a sound too much of terror for me to think
it an outburst of temper. Papa, Papa, he screamed, take

(04:40):
me away from him, Take me away. Eric was naturally
amazed and hurt, and I was at a loss as
to how to make things more pleasant. Nothing can make
a child courteous of his instinct sets in the other direction.
Bobby had no idea of concealing his sudden aversion to
his beloved uncle Eric. While Eric knelt down beside him
to question the cause of this painful manifestation, Bobby only

(05:03):
screamed alouder to Papa to keep Uncle Eric away, Keep
him away from me, Keep him away. It hurts. Is
something hurting him? Eric asked me quietly. I guess he's
just a tired, hungry boy. I answered, what hurts you,
my son? What hurts you? Eric stood back against the wall,
a tall, somber figure. As soon as he did this,

(05:24):
the tension of Bobby's nerves seemed to be relaxed. Though
he gave me no answer to my question, but with
a little shudder, hugged my knees tighter. When I tried
to take off my coat. We had another scene. Then,
Eric said, in a low, troubled voice, he seems to
be frightened of me. For Heaven's sake, Pierre, is there
anything wrong about me? To night, I frightened Julia terribly.

(05:44):
I can't get over it. No wonder, I said, without
thinking of my words. You came sneaking up to the
window out of the dark, Julia told you. He asked,
suggesting by his manner that Julia and I had a
secret understanding out of which he was left. Julia had, not,
as you know, said a word of it to me.
I am glad. I told him frankly I had seen

(06:04):
him myself, and that I had taken him for a
prowler bent on mischief. On mischief, he cried, on mischief.
To Julia, Oh my god, I heard her singing, and
I wanted to feast my eyes on her without her knowing.
But it wasn't that. For a long time. After she
recognized me. It was worse with her. A blind man
could have felt it. She shuddered in my arms, as

(06:25):
if I were a thing of terror to her. She
tried tried not to push me away. I had, altogether
too vivid an impression of what my own eyes had
seen to enjoy this personal revelation. It was hard to
give my voice an encouraging ring when I tried to
assure him that he imagined too much. That's nonsense, I said,
you're trying to tell me Julia was trying not to

(06:47):
push you away. She must have been fooling, fooling, he groaned.
But I didn't let him go on. And as for
my son, here I added, Annett's just read him that
gruesome story about the Laura Lion has got him plumb scared.
He's heard of the singing you know, Julia's phrase about
the singing house. And when he heard Julia's voice out

(07:08):
there in the dark, he probably thought there was a
spellbinder here that wants to eat him. He does not know, Eric,
old man, that only the ladies do such horrid things.
Eric muttered, and then cleared his throat. There's something about me, Pierre,
I know it. There's something about me. I used to
think that Julia. I can feel it. Look at the

(07:28):
child here and has been trying to push Julia away,
though it laughed loudly at this notion. Later, when we
were all in the warm living room awaiting supper, I
could see that it had got a hold on him.
It must have been his own thought that held us
also strangely aloof from him. He might as well have
stood within a ring of malevolence. His isolation was all
but palpable, and in the midst of those who loved

(07:50):
him too. Everybody in the room but Giles, seemed screwed
up to a high pitch and laughed and talked with
an unnatural animation. Directing question said Eric, as if consciously
trying to pierce whatever it was wringing him off from us.
He habitually, so courteous, tried to send his answers back
to us through the evil thing that set him apart.

(08:11):
He tried it first, too, to walk among us, But
whenever he came into our midst, Bobby's aversion broke out
in frightened whimperings and agitation, so that to smooth things over,
Eric was compelled to stand outside the group. I can
see him now, leaning against the frame of the window
through which he had made his way in from the garden,
his face taking on a serious set look, quite different

(08:33):
from the mobile sadness of his natural expression. The uneven
light from the branch of candles over by that window,
now deepening, now relieving, the shadows round his eyes, and
as his eyes grew hard, glinting back from them. It
was with the expression of a man setting himself to
make a bitter, deadly struggle that he watched Julia playing
like a gentle lunatic, with little Bobby standing between my knees.

(08:57):
Poor Julia, slender and like a girl in her white dress,
flitting through the warm room from one to the other
of us. I could not bear to look at that delicate,
gentle face, or into those clear gray eyes in which
I had so lately seen the shadow of an unspeakable horror.
My heart ached for her, though I hardly knew why.
Bobby's behavior to her husband, must have been like a

(09:17):
knife thrust in her breast, and she set herself to
winning the little fellow from his fear for her husband's sake,
I do not doubt, laughing with unnatural eagerness, trembling and nervous,
always playing bravely to simulate gayety, though she could not
hide her agitation. She threw herself lightly on the floor
beside me and began quizzing him, patting his hands, mocking him,

(09:38):
challenging him until she brought a smile to his little face. Annette,
who I could see was made very uncomfortable by the
rudeness of her only son, stood over the three of
us and laughed and coaxed with us. Well. It may
have been a pretty scene to one looking in from
the outside, but I was anything but happy. Julia's tenseness
was harrowing, and her determination to win Bobby over and

(09:59):
walk him right up to Eric. Somehow threw me into
the state of a too anxious onlooker at a desperately
vital game. I found myself as it were, pressing my
little son away from me to her, and holding my
breath over every inch she drew him from the protection
of my knees. It was a slow and nerve racking business.
She drew him truly, only an inch or two at

(10:19):
a time, and always he would have fallen back against
me had I not kept my hands ready to block
the way of his retreat. Was it cruel to the child?
We did not then know what evil Julia single handed
was fighting. One look at her face would have aroused
your sympathy. We did not mean to offer my boy
as a The thought is too terrible. I happened to
glance towards Eric. God knows he was susceptible, unable to

(10:43):
bear the sight of this wrestle of wills to force
a way to him. He had turned his face from us,
and still by the window, was looking fixedly out upon
the lawn. Suddenly, and I know of no reason why
it should have been so, at that moment it flashed
upon me that he was the goat in all this.
He was the unfortunate object of the malevolence I had
felt about the place. This came to me very clearly.

(11:06):
Whatever the evil was, it was attempting to blockade him,
to shut him from his wife, his friends, from the
tenderness on which alone he could thrive. Here in his
own house, just returned from an absence, he stood isolated,
the beings who loved him, fended from him by a virulent, powerful,
evil spirit. I had seen inflexible and bitter determination on

(11:27):
his face. He could fight for himself, could protect himself.
But this thing was trying to attack us, Julia, Bobby, Me,
even Annette. It was jabbing us, thrusting us back from him,
and he had just begun to know it or to
feel it. I had a fit of almost fury. I
jumped from my chair. Julia lost her balance and fell
on her side, away from me. I strode towards Eric,

(11:49):
grabbing my boy by the arm and dragging him along
with me clear of the floor. I said to him, sharply,
no more of this nonsense. You shall kiss your uncle
Eric and tell him you are sorry for making such
a rumpus. Stop your yelling. Heavens, how he yelled, not
a scene to soothe the mother's heart. Eric turned suddenly
towards us and raised his clenched fists above his head.

(12:10):
His face was distorted, but it was neither his gesture,
which God knows was of desperate rage against some evil thing,
not against Bobby and me, nor the frightful look on
his face which stopped me dead short. I saw, wait
a moment. My blood turns cold as I write. I
wished to set down precisely every detail as I can remember.
I must have been holding Bobby well off the ground,

(12:31):
for as my hand that held him went suddenly powerless,
I heard him fall in a heap on the floor,
heard the thwack of his little boots, his yelling was
hushed to silence, and then I heard no that thing was.
I was standing in the middle of the room, about
seven feet from Eric. He was still over against the
curtains by the window, the kindles at his right casting

(12:53):
a dancing light upon his ashen distorted face and his
wild arms. Mind you, this was all in a second
or two. Bobby lay crumpled at my feet. The two
women were behind me in Giles in an attitude of lounging,
from which my extraordinary behavior was to make him spring
was on a sofa pulled out about three feet from
the wall to my left, leaving a freeway along that wall.

(13:15):
Stepping from in front of Eric, against whom it must
have been invisible, A vague shape passed like a blur
across the candle light, and then transparent, yet visible in
its whole length against the dark hangings of the wall.
It walked along the side of the room behind Giles
and out the door into the dim rose colored hallway.
I say it walked, but really it moved in some

(13:37):
half human, half fiendish gait, slowly yet in springs. It
was the shape of a tall woman. Though its eyes
had no substance. They had form, dreadfully flat, and color
a washed out chalky blue. They were of the kind
that in a living, warm body, never revolve in their sockets,
the gaze of which is directed by a turn of

(13:58):
the whole head. And as this thing passed along the wall,
its insubstantial head was turned at me, so that I
was subjected to a lidless stare of incredibly sinister malice.
I felt frozen. I believe I saw this thing. I
believe that, in a horrible amazement, I watched it every
inch of its way till it turned down the hall

(14:20):
corridor in the direction of the dining room. It made
absolutely no sound in its passage, But what should have
been its feet? I saw movement under its skirt, like
draperies touched the floor in time with the beat of
Julia's hands. I could not see Julia, but I believed
that at that moment she was lying prone on the floor,
slowly beating her hands on the rug each hand Alternately,

(14:44):
I cannot remember more details. Giles sprang up and put
an end to what I am willing you should call
my fit, by roaring at what the devil are you
looking at? There was something in his voice that stilled
every movement in the room. My hand, which I had
raised to rush a dank mist from before my eyes,
was arrested half way my face. I believe the candle

(15:05):
flames burned suddenly straight into the air without a tremor,
But that must have been because the uneasy wind had
ceased for an instant to blow in through the window.
Still ajar behind Eric, there was a complete silence too.
My extraordinary seizure in Giles's sharp cry probably frightened everybody
I know. Bobby made not even a whimper, and Julia's

(15:26):
monotonous drumming ceased. We were all spellbound in diverse, strained attitudes.
There came an answer to giles imperious question. I can't
tell you how or whence it came. Giles had asked
me what I was looking at. In the silence which
followed his sharp question, A name echoed in my brain.
Probably I did not hear it. I dare say whatever

(15:48):
vibration made the impression of that name in my brain
had not rattled the little bones in my inner ear.
And that is the way they tell us we receive
impressions of sound. Maybe it wasn't earthly sound. I didn't rate.
The name was distinct. It was snart, and it was
followed by a disagreeable sound between a chuckle and a whine.
I think my son received the same impression, for through

(16:11):
his body huddled against my feet, I felt a shudder pass.
But I never spoke to him about that night. I've
protected him from any mention of it, and I faithfully
and seriously tried to protect his mind from every hint
of weirdness and horror whatsoever. Call it the rattle of
leaves on the stark bushes outside the window. Call it

(16:31):
the moan of the wind, the grating of a hinge
somewhere in the remoter quarters of the house. Whatever it was,
I was so conscious of its meaning that I asked.
Annette told me afterwards that I spoke like a man
in a dream. But I know I had not been dreaming.
Who said that? Who said what? Giles? Word at me?

(16:51):
Who said that name? Who said what name? Are you crazy? Crazy?
Was I crazy? I was to be assuredly by the
one other person in the room, who was aware of
what I had passed through, that I was not crazy. However,
I should have come out with the name I had heard,
had not? Annette cried passionately, mister Greer, don't look like that.

(17:14):
Then it was I realized that I had been staring
at at the wall, say, and that there were other
human beings in the room beside me. I turned to
look at Eric, and I shall never forget the sight
of his face, whiter than death, and gnarled and twisted.
His pose was inhuman, like that of a savage beast.
One after the other of us. He fixed with his eyes,

(17:35):
if one can call eyes, the deep black holes beneath
his brows, behind which I now know there must at
that moment, when he was so beset, have burned a
feeling too terribly profound to show the faintest glow. I
wonder would it had been better for that unhappy man
had I come out with the ghastly name, as I
had been on the point of doing. Annette touched me

(17:56):
on the arm. Neither she nor I can remember whether
she said it anything to me or not. I stooped
down and picked up my son, Giles was lending a
hand to Julia, and for an instant it struck me
as funny, this restoration, this setting up of what had
been knocked down by some unnatural passer by. Maybe I

(18:17):
should have laughed aloud, But for Eric's face, Annette's cry
had not changed it. For months she had called him
Eric to night, she had called out to mister Greer.
Was he then a stranger to us? All at once?
I never felt closer to him. I never before wished
so ardently to befriend a fellow being. You see, it

(18:38):
was that sudden inspiration I had had, the sudden revelation
that had set me to go up to Eric with
my boy just before the ghost woman had appeared a
flash of understanding that all the evil about the place
was directed at him, while it attacked Julia, Bobby and me,
who were most fond of him, in that mysterious way,
the effect of which was to keep us from him.

(18:59):
I knew that its ultimate victim was Eric himself. I
have since reasoned about what I felt vaguely that night,
that Eric, of all men, was most sensitive to such
a form of persecution. Not only that, but also that
he was impregnable to every other sort of malevolent attack.
That's what Giles meant by tempered and white hot resentment,

(19:20):
I now know. Meanwhile, with my boy held tightly in
my arms, and my anxious wife at my elbow, I
had Eric's face always before me. The uneasy wind came
in through the window again and bent the candle flames.
I could not bear it any longer. I handed my
son to his mother. The little fellow at first would
not let me go, clung tightly to me and hid

(19:41):
his face against my coat. But when I said, mother
wants you, he turned quickly to her, where she stood
close beside me, reached out his arms locked them round
her neck like a trap. And thus the transfer was done.
Then I walked up to Eric and clapped him on
the shoulder automatically, like all healthy, normal beings, I deny
the existence of horror, I said, the thing most natural
for me to say, Eric, my friend, I said, brace up.

(20:06):
You look as if you had seen a ghost. The
impression in my mind of what I had myself seen
and heard was already laid over with my restored habit
of thought. Eric replied to me in a low voice,
I saw nothing, Pierre, not I. But you heard a name.
What was it? As automatically as a swimmer throws out

(20:28):
his arms when he finds himself in deep water, I said, nonsense,
it was my kid's whimpering. Why did I do that?
Why you know, I believe I heard a name. I
could never forget how I heard that name or what
it was. I had already made a scene in the
drawing room about it. Yet to Eric, I denied that
I had heard it, denied there was a name. Said nonsense,

(20:50):
it was my kid's whimpering. Oh no, Eric said, oh no,
What would that name have meant? To Eric? It was
just that I feared, yes, instinctively, feared to know his
jaw was set, and his lips so tightly closed that
all the red had gone out of them. Yet I
could not help feeling that his will was engaged with

(21:11):
some purpose other than self control or self adjustment, because
I never stood by man so rigidly under discipline of himself.
Though my hand was on his shoulder, I was as
remote from him as one is from a lion at
the zoo, whose terrible fixed eyes and stare cannot be
diverted or altered by any human trick to catch attention.

(21:31):
If Eric had seen nothing and had heard nothing, then
he scented something, had a sense of it somehow, and
he had become entirely concentrated, entirely instinct. Giles once said
to me, as we were talking over this affair later,
that hate is the most absorbing passion. He went on
at a great rate about man's reactions to things that

(21:53):
hurt him mortally, that threatened to spoil what is dear
to him, or to take something away from him that
is necessary not only to his body, but to what
Giles called his soul as well. The instinct for self preservation,
he said, is the seat of hatred. But you should
have hurt Giles define self. I myself have never felt

(22:13):
malignant hatred. I suppose I have never been threatened. That
nothing is ever attacked with intent to murder the core
of me, my heart of hearts, or what is dear
and necessary to it. I could not if I would
crank up an essay on hatred, to hate entirely, instinctively
and with perfect concentration. Not even Giles had known what

(22:34):
it was to do that, but Eric had. There's Giles's
white hot resentment for you, in stronger words. That's what
I began to feel in Eric as I stood beside
him that night, a hatred within him, distorting his face
and screwing him up into a state of concentrated attention.
You remember, I have told you that he always had

(22:55):
seemed alert as against an inexorable hostility, making him, to
my imagination, like lifeons. I had clapped my hands at
in the bronx and never made wink an eyelid. Just that,
a terrific and an undying hatred. Well, I went on
saying nonsense with a more and more absurdly nice kitty air.
Twice he started to speak, but he only opened his

(23:15):
lips enough to take in a breath through his teeth.
His jaw remained set when he did speak at last.
I know he did not think of my being near
to hear him, but I heard I begin to suspect
he said. She said she would always it's fiendish, but
she would if she could. Then he darted a look

(23:39):
at me, and I just babbled something, as if I
had not heard him at all. Suddenly the whole expression
of his face changed to one of what the novelists
call infinite longing. I did not need to turn round
to know that Julia was coming up to him. Her
eyes were shining, and I thought she was laughing happily.
It made me feel good, just as if nothing had happened.
She reached one hand up to Eric's shoulder and took

(24:01):
me with the other, and then said, what are you
two men talking about so seriously? Here by yourselves, Supper
is ready you, Pierre must be starved. She looked at
me perfectly. Frankly, I was astounded. In spite of myself,
I began to feel that my mind was queer, that
I had imagined the whole thing. I felt dazed and

(24:22):
also silly. End of Chapter six