The Thing from the Lake

MP3 Audio CD. The Thing from the Lake

CHAPTER I

"As well give up the Bible at once, as our belief in
apparitions."--WESLEY.


The house cried out to me for help.

In the after-knowledge I now possess of what was to happen there, that
impression is not more clearly definite than it was at my first sight of
the place. Let me at once set down that this is not the story of a
haunted house. It is, or was, a beleaguered house; strangely besieged as
was Prague in the old legend, when a midnight army of spectres unfurled
pale banners and encamped around the city walls.

Of course, I did not know all this, the day that my real-estate agent
brought his little car to a stop before the dilapidated farm. I believed
the house only appealed to be lived in; for deliverance from the
destroying work of neglect and time. A spring rain was whispering down
from a gray sky, dripping from broken gutters and eaves with a patter
like timid footsteps hurrying by, yet even in the storm the house did
not look dreary.

"There, Mr. Locke, is a bargain," the agent called back to me, where I
sat in my car. "Finest bit in Connecticut for a city man's summer home!
Woodland, farm land, lake and a house that only needs a few repairs to
be up-to-date. Look at that double row of maples, sir. Shade all summer!
Fine old orchard, too; with a trifle of attention."

I nodded, surveying the house with an eagerness of interest that
surprised myself. A box-like, fairly large structure of commonplace New
England ugliness, it coaxed my liking as had no other place I had ever
seen; it wooed me like a determined woman. And as one would long to
clothe beautifully a beloved woman, I looked at the house and foresaw
what an architect could do for it; how creamy stucco; broad wh