Page:Weird Tales Volume 7 Number 4 (1926-04).djvu/82

A Rational Ghost-Story Is

The old Lathrop house stood on the lip of a wooded, swampy ravine that looked dismal even on the sunniest day, and emitted a faint miasma of dead and rotting vegetation. A loosely planked old bridge spanned the brook that crept into the maze of brush on each side, and when an occasional vehicle did pass that way, the hollow rumbling of the timbers echoed grumblingly along the wooded sides of the little steep-sided valley.

It was always damp in the ravine, and at night there was usually mist floating there. Sometimes it was dense, enfolding fog that wrapped one about in dank, stifling folds, and sometimes one could see only faint, ghostly wisps floating here and there.

It was but very little dryer up by the house, and the ancient willows that stood grouped around the house drooped like despondent, hopeless sentries, grown old and gray in thankless service. Their trunks were soft and green with decades of moss; and the damp, dense shadow of the pendulous boughs had so protected the roof of the house from the healthy cleansing of the sun that here also a green patina added to the unwholesome atmosphere of the place.

There was something squat and repulsive about the house itself; its wide-angled gables stared blankly and the absolute lack of eaves, a characteristic of early New England houses, gave the building a bleak, inhospitable look that fitted in perfectly with its background.

The fact that for nearly a decade it had been unoccupied, so that the flags of the crooked, narrow walk had been up-thrust by rank growths and the garden had become a choked and tangled jungle of weeds, was not due to the appearance of the house or its surroundings, however. Your typical New Englander, while often harshly superstitious, is seldom susceptible to such intangible influences.

Briefly and baldly, the old Lathrop house was not occupied because the last Lathrop of the line had committed murder there one night, and was paying the penalty down at Thomaston.

There were idle rumors, spread by no one knows who, that the place was haunted. Belated couples returning from a dance at the Corners had seen ghostly figures moving in the yard, and mysterious lights had flickered behind the staring windows. It was a common dare at parties to challenge some brash young man to go alone to the old house and bring back, as a token that he had actually made the trip, a scrap of the moldering wallpaper.

Usually the dare was declined, but once in a while a young man, eager to prove his bravery in the eyes of some fair damsel, would brave the midnight terrors of the place and return, usually breathless and white of face, with the proof of his courage