The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1895-06-07
THE SINKING HOUSE.
By LUCY CLEVELAND.
copyright, 1895, by the Author.]
CHAPTER I.


of wings as the wild plover swept the
foam.
The meadow land was fed by the salt
tide; fed also by canals that slowly
slipped their way to sea, green ooze of
mud on the wet banks that were a red
mirror at sunset when the slime took
the shapes of slowly congealing blood
darkening horribly in the night shad'
ows. The old house looked down into
the red ooze.
1t had fascination for me which
could not entirely conquer. / found
myself continually turning to look
back at it when I had passed by and
turning to look at it again.
There was great eye of window
under its roof, window that was red
with strange red at sunrise, and at
sunset drew a veil like stained foam
from some mounting wave over its pal
lid light. 1t was wicked eye of a win
dow.
Along the roof weird fingers of lean
grass were always beckoning and point
ing down into the silent rooms. The
leaves trod with strange footsteps as
they fell and followed along the gables.
The vine that clung around the heavy
doorway, locked, padlocked, rusted and
blackening through time, was like the
tender embrace of woman's arm
around some unrelenting form. What
had been the vicissitudes of life that
came and went and came again under
the gray MOSES? What was the mystery
within? What was the accumulation Of
crime under whose pressure the house
was gradually sinking? 1t had settled
almost to the second story and bleared
with pallid but awful calm toward
the fresh green hill far off that laughed
in summer time with the song of
streams and the full throated thrush,
and in winter stood pure and cleaning
under the eye of the old, old moon, to
whom the white speechless lips of the
canal parted, but spoke not.
No bird ever tilted ON the boughs of
the trees that stood in front of the sink
ing house. Three trees, fir trees, whose
seed had been dropped by some fright
ened, fluttered bird in its haste across
the red light; trees that had long since
forgotten their forest companionship of
green finger tips to finger tips, but
loomed in lonely isolation; frs that had
gathered to themselves the same gray
ooze of lichens that mantled the gable
of the haunted house, drops like the fall
ings of gray death along dying face.
No sweet influences of springtide and
summer ever spread their white blossom
and bounty around the weird shadows.
Of daisies and dandelions and buttercup
curls there were none.
eyes; the house is haunted" said the
distant townspeople, with good Dutch
shudder, and we wouldn't sleep under
it's roof for all that we could see at the
Mechlin fair. "
The fascination of the place grew
upon me. In vain I said: 81 will go to-
morrow. ! have been wheeling time
along slowly enough on this old Dutch
roost. ] have 40 duties awaiting me in
London. Twill go tomorrow. But still
I staid, and still I fingered in my boat
along the gray canal and rested on my
oars in the sunset red when all the
water was witchery of restless lights
and pink reflections, the great grewsome
house CLOSED in the crimson, disordered
depths. I found myself spellbound gaz-
ing into the red ooZe into which the
great house stared, where the vine, like
the woman's clinging arm, trembled;
where the lean fingers of grass some-
times locked fast together in skeleton
dance, as if keping time to some ghostly
band; where the footsteps of the leaves
moved, and where the great eye Of the
window kept looking in.
What was the unaccountable domin-
ion of the place over me? Beyond analy-
sis. But beyond question was within
the horizon of some untraveled force,
call it spirit, demon, the departed, su-
perterrestrial World-I care not for the
nomenclature of the supernatural-the
| Society For Psychical Research had not
| yet been founded. The power was there,
| in subtlest atm oSphere and spell. If
| could have torn through the gray veil
| that blows back and forth in the spirit S
air! God only knows what verities are
| beyond-what we call actual, actually
verified
Why, ! asked myself, why this cold
tremor that seizes upon the soul of man
at the thought of beholding the disem.
bodied spirit? Why that batod breath,
that creep through all the nerves as we
enter the chamber of death? The man
is gone. Alone the tenement of clay re-
mains. But is he gone? What is it that
grows around the room? A misty but
palpable presence? You dare not be
| quite alone beside that clay you call
dead for long. Gradually the presanGe
comes sweeping in. There is something
in the room that lives. dare avow it
| is the strongest proof we have of the
Immortality of what we call soul.
| Shall confess that an unwonted chill
| took possession of me, which l should
not have been ashamed to acknowledge
to the Cricket club of Basingstoke at
our annual dinner, as ! saw q filmy5-
hand was it?-form and fade inside that
dormer window under the roof? ]
brought down my own unflmy hand
against the oak locks till my boat shiv-
cred and the red water smeared the oar
blades. "Iwill get into that house, and
| / will sleep in it for night, and l will
investigate the whole matter. "
For no one had trodden its threshold
for century. The door had been locked
and the keys flung into the canal "ageG
ago." said the townspeople, latter II
all happened, and not one of our chill.
dIen has ever seen the other side OF
| thnSa xpindOws -