Chapter III: Part 3

Noon found her sitting at the base of a great mound of ashes and trash. The sea gulls still squawked and the sun glared down. The cattail marsh lay far away. She was tired, confused and fearful. The dump area seemed enormous and she had not met a single human being. She had believed, previously, that the dump was mostly a level plateau; now she found to her dismay that it actually consisted of a great many mounds, gullies, ridges and pits. Unless she climbed to the top of a mound, she could not see very far. And even then she could not see down into distant holes and depressions.

She had called out until her voice broke. Now she sat silently. A huge grey-brown rat scurried into sight. Her hand tightened on the stick which she carried. The rat pretended it was nibbling on a paper shred but she knew it was watching her. It did not dart away.

She had a sudden horrible thought of night closing in, of rats by the dozen, by the hundreds, watching her, waiting....

She arose so abruptly the rat took alarm and disappeared. She would have to get out, she told herself. She would return to the marsh, take the little path and go back to the highway. Once there, she would be relatively safe.

But she soon found that she was hopelessly lost. The cattail marsh had vanished. She trudged on with growing apprehension, encountering bigger mounds and deeper gullies. The blazing sun seemed reflected back from every inch of the scorched sour earth. Her head began to ache; she developed a raging, tormenting thirst.

Rats watched her warily. Once a sea gull swung down, surveyed her with its cruel eyes and flapped off silently.

Finally her legs simply gave out. She collapsed weeping. Ralph had gone; they had all gone. She was now convinced that she was alone in the dump. Surely, by now, someone would have seen her, heard her. They had all left; perhaps the State had driven them out.

Shadows were beginning to slant across the gullies by the time she got up. She was dry-eyed, but her legs ached, her eyes smarted and her throat was so parched she could scarcely swallow. When she tried to call out, her voice was only a whisper. Her first terror had passed. Now she felt a kind of calm despair.

Rounding a huge bank of calcified waste, she stopped, frozen. She was feverish, she concluded, dying maybe, for there scant yards away was a group of people, a shack of some sort, a cleared area which was like a little island of orderliness in an ocean of congealed chaos. She stared, unbelieving.

Someone saw her, exclaimed, and the whole group turned to stare at her.

"_Lucy!_"

It was Ralph. He broke from the group, bolted toward her. "Lucy! Lucy! How did you--What on earth--" She was in his arms then and he was laughing and she was crying. She was too exhausted and too thirsty to talk. She simply fell into his arms and he carried her toward the shack. The others crowded around, murmuring sympathetically.

Ralph settled her into a big broken-down armchair under the tin roof. Someone else held out a dipper of cool water, the sweetest water she had ever tasted in her life. Mrs. Morgee appeared with a wet cloth and began bathing her forehead and face. Someone took off her shoes.

In a few minutes she felt so much better, she sat up and looked around at them. Ralph hovered at her side, grinning idiotically. The rest of them only smiled at her, understanding that she did not yet wish to answer questions.

As darkness closed in, someone lit a fire. In a few minutes the aroma of mulligan stew spiced the air. Lucy's mouth watered; she was ravenous, she now realized.

After she had finished a huge bowl of stew, she could scarcely keep her eyes open. Mrs. Morgee led her inside to a cot, helped her undress and got her into bed. Ralph remained outside with the others, around the fire. Explanations could wait until morning.

She had the sensation of melting without effort into a deep, dreamless sleep. She had made up her mind. She would never return to the plastic prefab, the trugrass lawn, the simulated maple tree and the food capsules. She wouldn't be carried away, all alone some morning, in a plastic bag.

She'd never get used to the rats and she didn't like the smoke and the sea gulls, but now she knew there were worse things.

At least she felt alive.

THE TENANTS

That January Madge and I were in desperate need of a rent. Two days before we were due to be evicted--for owner occupancy--we heard about the house in suburban Clarisville.

We got out there as fast as we could, made inquiries and located the woman who owned the house, a Mrs. Dallis, who agreed to show us the property.

The house was an ordinary-looking, white frame, two-story structure located at the far end of a rather sparsely settled street. It needed paint, new wallpaper and several new window panes. A porch step was dangerously cracked and the entire grounds surrounding the house needed a thorough going-over. Also, we would have to sign a two-year lease.

But of course we took it. It was much better than a tent in somebody's back lot.

When we mentioned the eviction hanging over our heads, Mrs. Dallis permitted us to move in immediately. And so it happened that our furniture was already in the house before we actually signed the lease.

A few days later we drove over to Mrs. Dallis' place in Clarisville Center to affix our signatures. She invited us in and was most cordial, but after some preliminary pleasantries there came a slight pause and Mrs. Dallis said, "There is just one thing--"

Our hearts skipped a beat. All along, while rejoicing at our good luck, we had both wondered if there might be some hidden "catch" to the business.

After mentioning the "one thing", Mrs. Dallis sat rather nervously twiddling her fingers. To Madge and I, already on edge, this was anything but reassuring.

Finally our new landlady found her tongue.

"Well," she said, "I won't conceal anything. Some years ago a certain Mrs. Molleman lived in the house you've taken. She was, ah--eccentric. There were conflicting reports concerning her. Some people said she was merely a harmless old lady grown a little bit queer in solitude. Others pictured her as a vindictive, even a cruel, woman. For instance, she kept as pets over a dozen assorted cats and dogs. There were rumors that she did not treat them well. So far as I know those rumors were founded on hearsay."

Mrs. Dallis inspected us closely to see what effect her revelations were having and went on.

"Well, one night, neighbors living at the other end of the street heard a terrific commotion proceeding from Mrs. Molleman's house. The dogs were barking and howling furiously and the cats were screeching. The neighbors were of a mind to investigate, but finally the racket died down, and so they went to sleep instead.

"Two days later however, after no further sound had emanated from the house, the police broke in and discovered a ghastly spectacle. The dozen or so cats and dogs, their throats cut, were found lying dead in pools of their own blood. There was at least one of them in every room in the house. Mrs. Molleman herself was found hanging in the garret. The entire house was a shambles. It looked as if the remaining cats and dogs had gone berserk with the smell of blood after Mrs. Molleman had cut the throats of one or two of them. Apparently she had had to chase them all over the house. Blood was splattered everywhere."

Mrs. Dallis sighed deeply.

"Mrs. Molleman, it was said, killed herself because she learned that she was in the advanced stages of an incurable disease. Certain of the neighbors said she destroyed her pets out of vindictiveness and an evil heart, but the more charitable view is that she did away with them in order that they would not suffer abuse and neglect after she was gone."

Her gruesome revelations apparently at an end, Mrs. Dallis sat back and surveyed us.

Madge, surprisingly, was the first to speak. "It's certainly a terrible little story," she admitted, frowning, "but I don't quite see what it has to do with signing the lease. Neither Jim nor I are superstitious."

Mrs. Dallis nodded. "Good," she said. "Neither am I. But nevertheless it is pertinent to the lease. There has been some strong evidence that on October 20th of each year--the anniversary of that horrible night--certain, ah, manifestations have been observed. Therefore the lease you will sign specifies that from six p.m. to six a.m. on each October 20th, you will remove yourselves from the premises, lock the house securely and remain away."

Madge and I glanced at each other. It was certainly a bizarre requirement, yet I think we were both relieved to learn the details. To remain away from home one night a year was actually no great inconvenience.

We agreed to obey the weird clause and signed the lease at once. After we left, we made light of the matter. We concluded that the "manifestations" existed only in Mrs. Dallis' mind. October was a long way off--and we did have a rent.

That year was a hectic albeit prosperous and happy one and the months flew past. Madge and I were too busy to worry about ghosts of old ladies. We never encountered any in the house and although we occasionally remembered the October 20th clause and joked about it, we were so occupied with other matters we very nearly forgot about the date when it finally did arrive. Mrs. Dallis, however, had foreseen the possibility of that and made provision for it. At five o'clock on the afternoon of October 20th she telephoned to make sure that we were planning to vacate the house by six. We assured her that we would be out in an hour.

Actually, we just did make it. We had neglected to pack an overnight bag till the last minute and, as always, several minor but essential items had to be searched for. After we had checked the locks on the back door and all the windows, we stepped out onto the front porch. I think it was about one-half minute before six p.m. when I turned the key in the front door and we walked down the porch steps.

We made a lark of the affair. We had dinner at a fine restaurant, attended a play, drank cocktails and finally turned in at the hotel room which we had engaged for the occasion.

The next morning Madge sleepily assured me that she had no qualms whatsoever about returning to our house and that she'd consider me a fussbucket if I insisted on leaving early so that I could stop at the place before I left for the office.

I told her I'd go directly from the hotel to work and leave her to contend with any old ghosts that happened to be nursing a hangover on our premises.

Madge is always vague about time early in the morning however, and I did leave the hotel earlier than was necessary. I started driving toward the office, thinking I'd get a head start on some papers which had piled up. But some obscure impulse persuaded me to turn the car and drive toward the suburbs. I felt a bit foolish, but I couldn't argue myself out of stopping at our house for a quick checkup. I have always been grateful that I heeded the dim prompting which caused me to change directions that morning.

When I unlocked the door and walked into the house, everything seemed in order. The windows and rear door were still securely bolted and nothing was amiss. I searched the house from cellar to garret and found nothing disturbed.

Finally, feeling rather sheepish at this point, I sat down in one of the living room chairs to rest a minute before I drove to work.

As I sat there, I noticed some small object protruding from behind the divan on the opposite side of the room. I couldn't distinguish what it was; mild curiosity prompted me to get up and peer behind the divan.

As I bent down, I froze. Huddled against the back of the divan was a pitiful little heap of fur lying in a pool of blood--our cat, Jinko, with his throat slashed wide open. It was the tip of his tail which I had seen protruding.

In our haste to leave the previous evening, we had forgotten about him. We hadn't noticed him in the house and I think we both subconsciously assumed that he was outside when we locked up.

I cleaned up the blood, buried the little creature in a corner of the backyard, poured myself a stiff drink and went to work. Several times during the day I called up to make sure that Madge was all right. She called me a ninny and said she couldn't even find an old shroud dropped around the house.

Of course she got somewhat suspicious in a day or so when Jinko failed to show up. But he had disappeared for days at a time before, and I finally persuaded her that he must have wandered away or met with an accident.

The following summer I saved some of my vacation time; Madge and I spent the entire week of October 20th in Maine. In December I put a down payment on a new house. We moved into it just before the holidays--and one of Madge's Christmas presents was a cuddly little Persian kitten.

She had been teasing me to buy one for months, but somehow I just hadn't got around to it till then.

THE MAN WHO FEARED MASKS

Mr. Apondee was terrified by masks or false faces of any type. Halloween to him was an idiot's festival of unmitigated horror. He would sooner enter a tiger's lair than attend a masked ball. If he saw a false face harmlessly dangling in the window of a novelty shop, he would shudder and turn away. The memory of it would haunt him all evening long--even intrude in his dreams and torment him until he awoke, limp with nightmare panic.

The detailed circumstances surrounding the inception of Mr. Apondee's mask fear were somewhat hazy, since he was scarcely three years old at the time. But the particular moments of terror he remembered vividly, as if they had transpired within his recent adult life.

He was sitting in a huge circus tent with his father. It was his first circus; he was enormously excited, tense, somewhat fearful. He held tight to his father's hand. Suddenly all the lights went out. There were screams, frightened cries, roars, howls and monstrous bellowings. People began pushing and shoving, trying to force passage toward the entrances of the pitch-black tent.

In the whirlwind commotion he lost his grip on his father's hand. He was swept away in a trampling, cursing tide of sweating humanity. He fell down between the seats, screaming, and suddenly out of the darkness appeared a nightmare face, luminous with a green-silvery shine, huge of nose, gashed by great white rubbery lips which writhed with insane merriment. The face bent over him, with its tiny glittering eyes, its fearful pink mouth and its greasy shine.

His screams of a few moments before turned to delirious shrieks of ultimate terror. He remembered nothing more.

Eventually of course the lights went back on and the masked circus clown returned a screaming and hysterical child to its father.

The child screamed all the way out of the circus tent, screamed all the way home and screamed and sobbed half the night, until exhaustion brought hypnotic sleep.

The distressed parents finally forgot the unfortunate incident, but the child never did. In the recesses of his memory a grotesque and hideous mask wavered always just out of sight, awaiting its chance to loom out of the darkness, awaiting the sudden unexpected moment when it would leap into light and petrify him with pure terror.

The show window of a toy store might bring it lunging out at him. He might be swept with acute panic upon glancing up at a billboard advertising a traveling sideshow. Once he nearly fainted on the street when a weirdly masked "Man from Mars"--advertising a local movie--strode around a corner in front of him.

The fear remained with him through his childhood, through his adolescence and on into full maturity. It seemed impervious to the rationalizing of his adult years. It would not be argued away. Its roots had pierced the psychic marrow of his being and resisted all his efforts to wrench them out.

The obsessive fear haunted him to such an extent that he finally consulted a reputable psychiatrist.

The psychiatrist patiently heard him out and then painstakingly explained in simple layman language that his early childhood experience had made an impact on his impressionable, too-vulnerable young mind all out of proportion to its actual importance. He pointed out that the mask fear was far more than a physical one. True, the child had been buffeted by the circus crowd, had been shoved and pushed down between the seats--painfully and perhaps severely bruised. But the fear went deeper than that. When the lights in the circus tent went out, the child had been holding tight to his father's hand. The father represented security, comfort, protection, home. Suddenly the child was hurled into milling blackness and then out of the darkness appeared a hideous leering face which bore down on him with apparent evil intent. So--the psychiatrist explained--in Mr. Apondee's subconscious mind the mask--or any mask--had come to symbolize the loss of security, of stability and protection. It symbolized all of the inherited and acquired fears which lurked in Mr. Apondee's own psychic depths.

Mr. Apondee listened and he was impressed. He felt better. He believed that he now thoroughly understood the origin of the mask terror, and in understanding, he judged, was exorcism.

But this was only partially true. Although the explanation tended to alleviate Mr. Apondee's mask fear, it by no means entirely dispelled the fixation. The fear remained, buried deep in Mr. Apondee's psychic being, and even though it no longer flickered into furious life at the smallest draft of provocation, still it went on smouldering.

In his early thirties Mr. Apondee got married, and if his marriage had its occasional "ups and downs", it was probably no better and no worse than the average. All considered, it might be termed reasonably successful.

Probably Mr. Apondee believed it far more successful than did his spouse. Mrs. Apondee was frequently exasperated by her husband's lack of enterprise, by his timidity and by his tendency to accept rather than alter his lot.

But after the first few years she seldom complained. It did no good, and in any case Mr. Apondee had plenty of laudable qualities. Although his job was a modest one, he worked steadily at it. He didn't drink, nor stay out at night, nor grumble about the meals.

Mr. Apondee himself was quite satisfied with his circumstances. He had a faithful wife, a small but neat apartment home and a job which was probably his as long as he wanted it, providing he was willing to forego any prospect of raises within the foreseeable future. All in all, he felt that he possessed a measure of security.

He never mentioned his mask fear to his wife. He had an uncomfortable feeling that she would consider it silly, that she might even ridicule him. It was, after all, an awkward thing to explain to anyone and Mr. Apondee could see no point in broaching it.

If Mrs. Apondee had known about it, the chances are the surprise birthday party for Mr. Apondee would have been staged in a far less fanciful manner.

Actually, the introduction of the masks was an afterthought.

The five couples and Mrs. Apondee were crowded into the Apondee's small apartment late one October afternoon. A big birthday cake covered with pink icing and candles rested on a table in the living room. It was Mr. Apondee's birthday and they meant to surprise him when he came home from work at five-thirty.

Suddenly young Mrs. Tyler had an idea. She was giving a Halloween masquerade party later in the month, she said, and that very afternoon she had been out shopping for masks. She had them with her now. Why didn't they each put on a mask before Mr. Apondee came in? It would be great fun; for a minute he wouldn't know who any of them were and that would add to the element of surprise.

They all--including Mrs. Apondee--agreed with enthusiasm. Then a further eerie touch was added when fertile Mr. Fentonby suggested that they put out all the lights in the apartment, except in the vestibule, pull down the shades, and hold lighted birthday candles near their masked faces. When Mr. Apondee first came in, they would remain silent and he would be confronted by nothing but an assemblage of weird glowing masks, hovering, as it were, in mid-air.

Mr. Fentonby's suggestion was adopted with shouts of delight. At five-fifteen they slipped on their grotesque false faces, snapped out all the lights and got their little candles ready. Ten minutes later they drew the shades, lit their candles and waited breathlessly like mischievous children.

The minutes dragged, but presently they heard the click of the self-service elevator down the hall. And then Mr. Apondee's light but steady tread.

He was, as a matter of fact, slightly late. Work had piled up at the office and he was more tired than usual.

Opening the door into the tiny vestibule of his apartment, he sighed with contentment and relief. After hanging up his hat and coat, he strolled into the living room.

In that impossibly black place eleven luminous, nightmare masks floated suddenly out at him. They gleamed and flickered with an unearthly light all their own. The masks were different, but they were all hideous, all malevolent. Some had huge drooping noses; some, great white rubbery lips, grinning with insane merriment; some had tiny glittering eyes and fearful pink mouths.

For one terrible moment Mr. Apondee stood frozen and speechless. Then he began to scream. He screamed and kept on screaming and shouts of "Surprise!" died in eleven throats which were in turn suddenly stricken silent.

Candles were dropped, and some of the masks, but too late. Mr. Apondee plunged like a maddened thing through the darkened room. He headed for the only glimmer of natural light which was visible--a window.

He hurled himself through it, shade and all, and he was still screaming when he struck the cement walk, seven stories below.

THE VISITOR IN THE VAULT

Newling hated the vault. Hated its shadows, its silence, its cold stale air.

But this morning there could be no escape. Preston Haver's books had been sorted and classified, and Mr. Twais, the head librarian, had given instructions that some of the most valuable of the lot were to be stored in the locked basement vault.

Running his hand through his thinning hair, Newling pushed the book truck into the staff elevator. Mrs. Joy, the desk attendant, watched him with an abstracted expression. There was no one else in sight. Mr. Twais was in his private office, reading the morning mail.

The elevator glided to a smooth stop and Newling rolled out the truck. Fretting with irritation, he started down the long, dimly-lighted corridor which led to the locked vault.

Preston Haver always had been a nuisance. Always poking and prying around the library, looking for some outlandish book which no one had ever heard of. He had given Newling many a start as he shuffled suddenly into sight around a book shelf, grinning and nodding like an overgrown gnome.

Some weeks before he had donated and shipped his entire private book collection to the library. Mr. Twais had been ecstatic, but Newling considered the whole business a bother.

Reaching the far end of the corridor, he stopped before the massive locked door of the vault, twirled the shiny dials until he heard the familiar faint click, and then pushed ajar the heavy metal door.

Frowning, he rolled the truck inside. The atmosphere of the vault this morning seemed even more oppressive than usual. It seemed far colder than it ordinarily was. Newling shivered as he brought the truck to a stop and scanned the shelves for a suitable spot for the books.

Most of them were vellum-bound incunabula, written in Latin and embellished with archaic designs. Remembering Preston Haver's yellow-toothed smile and bony hands, Newling lifted the books with distaste.

He began placing them on shelves as rapidly as he could, occasionally glancing behind him into the deeper shadows of the vault. The lighting was far from adequate, and although Mr. Twais had promised that something would be done, somehow nothing ever was.

Newling filled one shelf and started another. He was cold in spite of his hurried movements. He glanced toward the vault door, to make sure that it was still open. More than once he had had nightmares about being shut up in the vault.

The book truck was nearly empty, and he was beginning to feel somewhat relieved, when he suddenly froze with his arm half outstretched toward a shelf.

He had heard nothing and seen nothing, but he knew, even before he turned, that he was no longer alone in the vault.

His heart was hammering and he could feel the cold sweat break out on his forehead. Mustering his last shred of will power, he forced himself to turn around.

Weakly, he leaned back against the book shelves. Preston Haver stood inside the vault door, half in shadow. He looked yellower and bonier than ever and his gaunt mirthless grin seemed more grotesque.

Nodding and still grinning, he shuffled forward. "I see you're shelving my books!" His voice was cracked and thin. It sounded to Newling as if it came from the far end of the corridor.

Newling stammered. "You, you have a fine collection, Mr. Haver. We're putting the--the best ones--here in the vault."

Preston Haver's ghastly grin widened. His long yellow eye-teeth looked like fangs, Newling thought.

He peered at the librarian with his reddish eyes. "There's just one"--his eyes roved the shelves--"one that I sent by mistake. I want it back."

Newling nodded. "Of course. Could you--ah--describe it, sir?"

The visitor stared at him, with a kind of enigmatic smirk. "A small book, with a soft cover. I'm sure you'd have it here. It's rare--oh, very rare!"

He threw back his head and laughed, while Newling listened in horrified fascination. He had never heard Preston Haver laugh before. He hoped he never did again.

Regaining some measure of composure, Newling turned to the shelves and began a systematic scrutiny. He felt thoroughly chilled, chilled to the very marrow. Of course it was imagination, but Preston Haver's presence seemed to have immeasurably intensified the oppressive clammy atmosphere of the vault.

Newling sighed with relief when he spotted the book.

His unwelcome visitor literally snatched it out of his hand, a quick gleam of triumph in his glowing eyes. He chuckled with glee. Newling recoiled from his evil grin.

Preston Haver peered up at him with an air of confidence which he found utterly repellent.

"This cover," he said, stroking it fondly with his bony hand. "Human skin!"

Newling stared at it, horrified. It was a pale, grey-yellow, mottled looking.

"Human skin!" his visitor hissed again.

Newling wiped the perspiration from his face. He felt weak and he suddenly realized that he was actually trembling.

"I'm sure it's--quite a treasure," he managed.

Preston Haver nodded. "Quite a treasure! You see," he went on, again with that odd air of confidence which Newling found revolting, "I'm starting on a trip--a long trip--and I couldn't leave without this book!"

Newling's voice was scarcely a whisper. "I'm glad you, we, found it."

His visitor moved toward the vault door. Just before reaching it, he turned, and his red eyes sought out the librarian's. His face contorted into one last, lingering malignant grin and then he was gone.

Newling leaned against the shelves for a full five minutes before he summoned up enough strength to finish emptying the book truck.

Still shaking, he rolled it out of the vault, slammed the great door, automatically twirled the dials and started back down the corridor.

He was cold and weak. He had scarcely strength enough to slide open the elevator doors.

He stepped out of the elevator into the large open-shelf room of the library with a feeling of indescribable relief. He felt as if he had ascended from a tomb.

Mr. Twais, the head librarian, was coming down the aisle. He stopped when he came abreast of Newling. He was about to say something, but at the sight of Newling's face, his mouth fell open.

"What is it, man?" he exclaimed. "You look positively shaken!"

"Oh--nothing," Newling whispered. "I'll be all right. Just--the air--in the vault. I guess I felt a trifle faint."

Mr. Twais seemed satisfied. He nodded. "You'd better go in the lounge and rest for a few minutes. Oh, by the way, have you heard the news?"

Newling shook his head.

Mr. Twais' expression became properly sober. "Preston Haver, our generous benefactor, died during the night."

IN THE VERY STONES

"It is inconceivable to me," wrote my psychic-investigator friend, Lucius Leffing, "that any person of reasonable perception and sensitivity could pass a long period of his life in a specific habitation without leaving something of himself, impregnated as it were, in the very stones, wood and mortar of the place."

How vividly I recalled this statement later on! But let me start at the beginning.

I had been away from New Haven for many years and I returned in a rather weary mood of reminiscence and regret. My health was not good. The rheumatic fever of my childhood had finally damaged my heart. In addition, I was having eye trouble. The optic nerves were unaccountably inflamed; strong light was painful to me. In dim or subdued light, however, I could see remarkably well, so well in fact that I began to feel that my vision was becoming abnormal.

After engaging a room in one of the few remaining residential areas of the city which had not been engulfed in the spreading contagion of human and social degeneration, I began to take long, rambling walks about the town. I usually waited for a day when the sun was hidden; when the sky was overcast and the light was grey rather than gold, my eyes stopped throbbing and I could stroll in relative peace.

The city had changed remarkably. At times I scarcely knew where I was. Acres of familiar buildings had been swept away. Remembered streets had vanished. Great new structures, efficient but ugly, rose on every side. New highways looped and slashed in every direction. In bewilderment I frequently retreated to the still unseized central Common, or Green as it is called. (I understood, however, that even this last leafy refuge was under siege; various interests were agitating to cover the grass with cement in order to create a gigantic pay-toll parking lot.)

One afternoon in late October when a threat of rain hung in the air, I started out on a walk. The lack of sun rested my eyes; the chill air somehow soothed me. For an hour or so I strolled aimlessly. On a sudden whim I decided to visit a city area which I had so far neglected. I had lived in this section as a very young child--over forty years ago. Although I was scarcely more than three when the family moved, I retained vivid memories of the neighborhood and of the specific house itself.

The house was a two-story, red-brick structure, solidly built, located at 1248 State Street. When I lived there, a big elm tree stood in front of the house. In the rear, a large empty lot which stretched to the adjacent street, Cedar Hill Avenue, made an ideal playground. Subsequently the elm tree was cut down, the lot was nearly filled by a cheap tenement-type building and the entire neighborhood declined.

As I approached the old area, I was appalled at the appearance of things. Some houses had been torn down; others stood vacant, displaying smashed windows, broken doors and collapsed verandas. On one block every house was empty and partially wrecked. I was amazed and disconcerted. I had not seen such desolation since war days.

Under those grey October skies, with a thin mist already starting to fall, it was the bleakest scene imaginable. I experienced an intense oppression of spirits, and as I continued to walk along those strangely deserted streets, my mood of dejection only deepened.

I finally met a pedestrian, muffled already in a winter overcoat. He squinted at me suspiciously when I asked him why so many of the houses stood smashed and empty. "Route 91," he muttered, hurrying away.

Although I had learned there was indeed a rational explanation for the devastation, I felt no better. I was firmly convinced that a slight alteration on the highway blueprints could have carried the new road across empty marsh flats, only a few miles away. The cost of fill would have been a fraction of that expended on extensive condemnation proceedings.

I fully expected that the brick house of my early childhood lay already in ruins. I felt a thin exultation at finding it still standing. I say "thin" because of course I knew it was doomed. Already its windows were broken, its door sagged in and part of its front hedge had been ground away by truck or bulldozer.

As I stood regarding it, remembering clearly episodes of over forty years past, I reflected on the rootlessness which marks the average city denizen. By choice, or more likely necessity, he moves from one house to another. He has no anchor, nothing of continuity. When he visits his old neighborhood, he may find that his former house has vanished. The site of it may be occupied by a city-supported "project" for permanent welfare cases, or by a cinder-block garage, or by a barren parking lot. The house, the trees, the back yard, the very curbstones and sidewalks may be gone.

The returner will experience a haunting sense of loss, a sense of bewilderment, of chaos. He may finally begin to feel that he is even losing his own identity, that, in fact, he has no identity. He will feel lost in time, without either a future or a past. There will be nothing he can go back to and nothing of permanence that he can foresee in an uncertain future.

Isolated, fugacious, essentially a drifter, he will experience a loneliness of spirit which nothing can assuage. Thousands of his kind inhabit the modern city, gnawed by a sense of their own rootlessness, hungering in vain for a home, a habitation which partakes of the flavor of time, a continuing and cherished spot of earth which links their own past with some kind of hopeful future.

With these depressing thoughts in mind, I stood before the lost red brick house of my childhood. I had an impulse to enter, but I supposed it was unsafe and very probably forbidden.

Dusk fell; the mist grew heavier; and still I lingered in that area. Moving away from the doomed house I had known, I wandered along those desolate streets, peering through cracked windows, through sagging doors which never again would open to a friendly hand.

In some windows, frayed, blackened curtains, left hanging in the confusion of forced removal, fluttered in the cold October wind. Odd bits of broken furniture, dishes and ornaments lay scattered about. Entire lifetimes had been passed in some of these houses; now they stood as empty shells, awaiting absolute and final destruction.

The entire area seemed deserted, silent, drained of all life. Even the usual city noises were strangely muffled and distant.

I roamed restlessly, numbed by the desolation which surrounded me, yet perversely unwilling to leave. The mist thickened and full darkness fell and I remained.

In spite of the darkness I could see remarkably well. I linked this abnormal ability with my eyes' unusual sensitivity to strong light; I felt that both conditions stemmed from the inflamed state of the optic nerves, an affliction I have already mentioned.

I passed an alley, glittering strangely with bits of scattered window glass, and stood surveying an adjacent house which leaned crazily with a collapsed roof. It was a small white frame house, inexpensively built, and yet I saw that someone had once tended it carefully. The paint was bright; the little mailbox looked as if it had been scrubbed; and the trampled remains of a once-neat garden surrounded the place.

As, musing, I stared at this wrecked house through the growing mist, I saw a face at one of the two front ground-floor windows. It was the face of an old man, white, mournful, filled with an ineffable desolation.

I gazed at it in astonishment. My first thought was that an elderly vagrant had crept into the wreckage of the white house in order to pass the night. The dampness, probably, made his old bones ache.

The face continued to look out at me; I walked away with some uneasiness. I shivered, blaming it on the cold mist.

I had gone less than a half block when I saw the woman. Enormously fat, she sat in a wicker chair on the half-demolished veranda of a two-story house. She wore very thick-lensed glasses which seemed to reflect light from some hidden source. There was no moon, certainly, and I saw no artificial lights nearby.

I was startled, but I supposed that a few people must still be clinging illegally to old homes in the area, pending final arrangements for the occupancy of a new residence.

Some impulse urged me to hurry past, to move straight ahead without looking aside. Stubbornly, however, and against my own best judgement, I refused.

Instead, I paused, cleared my throat and spoke. "Good evening," I said.

The fat woman did not reply; she did not seem to have heard me. Possibly, I reasoned, in addition to having weak eyes, she was also hard of hearing.

I moved a few steps up the front walk and nodded. "Good evening," I repeated, loudly.

Then I blinked in astonishment. The wicker chair was empty! I stopped dead and stared at it. Momentarily I had glanced down at the walk to make sure that I would not stumble over debris; in those scant seconds the fat woman must have vacated her chair and slipped inside.

I marveled. For one of her bulk, she moved with amazing agility. Turning, I went back to the sidewalk and started on. I supposed that the woman was self-conscious about her continued occupancy in the condemned house and had gone inside to avoid any necessity of discussing it with a stranger.

As I walked away, I glanced back. Once again I saw light glitter on those thick-lensed glasses; the fat woman was back in her wicker chair.

Something more than the swirling mist made me shudder. Frowning, I hurried on. It was late, I told myself, and I had better leave these ruined, mist-shrouded streets and go home to a good cup of hot tea.

I walked rapidly, but I could not resist looking at the vacant houses I passed.

Suddenly I stopped. My heart began pounding. An icy gush of fear made my scalp tingle. Wide-eyed, mouth agape, I gazed through that tenuous wall of mist and felt that reason and sanity were leaving me.

Nearly half of those smashed and deserted houses all at once were occupied. I saw pale sad faces peering from a dozen different windows. Dim, mist-circled figures sat on some of the porches. An old man, twisted with some arthritic malady, worked feebly in a tiny front garden. A middle-aged woman, white as death, but with a kind of hopeless fury stamped on her face, stood glaring near a broken gate.

Worse than these were other sights. I saw a rocker moving to-and-fro on a porch, although there was no one in it. I saw a claw-like hand, tapering to a vague sleeve which in turn raveled away to nothingness, clutching the brick side of a building. In the rear garden of a half-destroyed house I glimpsed what appeared to be the disembodied head of a woman in a big straw hat drifting slowly above the matted tangle of a neglected flower plot.

I felt the clutch of near madness. I no longer had any faint desire to linger and look. Flight, immediate and imperative, became my only object.

I rushed wildly through those forsaken, yet-not-forsaken streets with fear like a hound at my heels. I ran till my heart thumped and dizziness overcame me. At last, away from that accursed area of peering white faces, of clinging mist and strange pregnant silence, I collapsed in a doorway.

Hours afterward I reached home and fell into bed. For days I was ill. My heart had been strained anew and in addition I manifested pleuritic symptoms. As I lay in bed, I brooded over my weird experience on that street of silent houses. I told myself that my eyes, inflamed and super-sensitive, had played tricks on me, that the drifting fog plus my own imagination had been at fault.

But weeks later when I related my adventure to my psychic-investigator friend, Lucius Leffing, he shook his head at my explanations.

"I am firmly convinced," he told me, "that neither your inflamed eyes nor your imagination conjured up the phantoms which you describe.

"As I wrote you recently, it is inconceivable to me that any person of reasonable perception and sensitivity could pass a long period of his life in a specific habitation without leaving something of himself, impregnated as it were, in the very stones, wood and mortar of the place.

"What you saw were the psychic residues of the poor vanished souls who, in the aggregate, had spent hundreds of years in those condemned houses. Their psychic remnants were still clinging to the only earthly anchors that remained, and already, as you relate, some of them had dwindled and faded to mere detached fragments."

He shook his head. "Poor souls!"