My friends and acquaintances have always told me that I scared easily. I would maintain that this is not the case but rather, that once you know which buttons to push, scaring someone becomes rather a simple matter. So I thought, as anyone with my particular set of friends, the lot of them tricksters, that the strange occurrences after my acquisition of a certain home in Boston, was nothing more than a series of pranks designed to get a rise out of me.
In the summer of 1903 I bought myself a home in Claremont, New Hampshire. It was situated out on the very edge of what was still called the city, an old farmhouse sold by a man who seemed quite anxious to be rid of it. At first I thought that, with the price he offered to let me have it for, the building must be suspect in some way, but after looking through it several times, there seemed to be no flaw in it. I must admit I was still looking for whatever it was that must be wrong with the place even as I moved into it. I never once found anything structurally unsound, nor anything out of place.
My own room was situated on the first floor in the northeastern corner of the house, looking away from the city and into the picturesque landscape of the rolling New Hampshire hills. It wasn’t all that big, and it made moving some of my things in a bit of a cozy fit, but I loved the room. It had ten large picture windows around half the room, a closet that took up most of the northern wall not taken by windows, and the western wall was filled by my writing desk. It was all but perfect for my limited use of the house, and I liked to look out through the windows and into the hills.
A week after owning the house, I assumed my responsibilities as the first director of the newly constructed Fiske Free Library, which was barely a matter of a few miles away. I must say that, on the whole, I was quite happy with the way things had turned out and felt inclined to celebrate. It was in this frame of mind I sent for my few close friends and acquaintances to come and have a small party with me. A few informed me that they could not make it, but the majority turned out. If I had expected anything at all to happen it would have been with that lot around.
Perhaps it was my friends, who had put me in such a light frame of mind, which caused me to explain things away to myself that night. I awoke several times to a light tapping noise in the western wall from the area of my desk. I dismissed the sound at once as some small prank by George Farther, known to do this kind of thing to people who, like myself, were a tad more easily frightened than himself. He thought this kind of thing wonderfully amusing. I thought to myself that it may have been him, as he had drunk a bit too much during the party and had passed out on the living room sofa. Perhaps, I thought to myself, he is on the other side of the wall and having a snicker over his trick. If that was what it was, I decided, I would leave him to it.
My job kept me tied up and moving all day for the next several weeks, and I was exhausted each night and slept more or less soundly most nights. The nights I did not, however, I would wake up with the odd feeling that I was listening for something. After listening intently for several moments, I felt a fool and went back to sleep. After that first few weeks however, when things began to fall into more of an even pace in the library, I would have more and more of these moments. Sometimes I would even fancy that I heard a tapping coming, once again, from the western wall, near my desk. Perhaps, I thought, George’s joke had got the better of me after all.
Soon I was hearing the tapping quite regularly, though for the life of me I could not figure out what was causing it. Maybe, I thought, it was some sort of animal running around in the walls. I thought this likely because instead of being a constant sound, it would start and then cease after a few moments, and then start again, much as I supposed a small rodents movements might do. When I called in a professional to take care of the little nuisances, I expected it to be over and done. Yet the bill for the job was quite small, as the man assured me that my walls and home were completely free of unwanted company. I admit to being a little troubled by this, but more than that, I confess I was getting annoyed. There must be some reason for this sound that was beginning to cost me more and more of my sleep and I needed to find out what it was, or I was going to be absolutely deprived of sleep. I needed to know what that sound was.
To this end, I stayed awake that night, waiting for the noise to begin, as it always did. It never happened. Or maybe it did. There was quite a storm that night and I may have lost the sound of it in the wind. There was however, the rattling of the windows to consider. The damn things must have been ill-fitted because they rattled all through the night in the wind.
The fact that I was losing sleep was not going unnoticed at the library. Often I would be dozing off at my desk and someone would walk in and find me half asleep in front of my paperwork. It was quite embarrassing being in such a state at work. But there really wasn’t much help for it. I had tried sleeping pills and such things, but they never seemed to matter. If the tapping noise was there, I would wake up, no matter how loud or soft the noise might be. So I continued my somnambulant routine at work and collapsed in bed each night, praying for a night of uninterrupted sleep.
The final night I stayed in that godforsaken house, it threw everything it had at me. I don’t know how long exactly it was that it had been watching me. Oh, make no mistake it had been watching me. It may have even been from the very first. It must have been taking a measure of me from the very first sign of the tapping in the walls. I felt an absolute malevolence in the house that night that has driven me away in terror.
That night, as always I came home and threw myself directly into my bed. I was dead tired and all I could hope for by now was a few hours sleep at the very best. Almost as soon my head hit the pillow, there came a slight tapping noise in the western wall behind my desk again. I was getting angry and resolved to find out once and for all what was making the noise. I got up and walked toward the guest room which was situated right beside my own. As I stepped into the hallway, however, the tapping in that wall stopped and began in another wall. This confused me greatly and I walked toward the living room wall which it was now coming from.
From there I proceeded to follow the sound toward the basement. I cannot say why other than a strange fear apart from that which I had of the sound, but I was loath to go down into that dank darkness with the sound. It had grown with each movement and was now no longer a tapping so much as a pounding sound, like the sound of a man beating on a room he cannot get out of, though he tries desperately. I had begun to get really scared by now and had just resolved to pack a few things and move out as soon as I could. I walked hurriedly toward my room to get a proper set of clothes before I set out.
As I walked past the living room I was greeted by the windows starting to rattle. I knew that there was no wind, the windows could not be rattling. I could hear the pounding, getting ever louder and still coming from the basement, the volume increasing by the minute. As soon as my door swung closed the windows in my own room shook violently, as though the winds of a hurricane pushed them back and forth in their panes, making a terrible sound. I turned to my door, now not caring if I had proper clothes on when I left or my night clothes, but when I tried the door it was stuck fast. It was as though the wood had swelled and would not now allow the door to budge. The combination of the door with the windows and the pounding in the basement, combined with what sounded eerily now like a scream, or a cry for help, at this point drove me into a wild terror.
I have no recollection of anything to do with that horrible house afterward. When I came to my senses, I was lying in the street in front of the Fiske Free Library, in my night clothes and covered in shallow cuts. I could do nothing but lie there and shake.
When first I was found and asked what on earth had happened to me, I told them some quickly contrived lies about sleepwalking. Had I told them the truth, they would have locked me away for madness. I hired men to carry my things away from that detestable house in New Hampshire. I moved as far away as ever I could from New England. And now that you have my story you most probably think me mad as well. I am past caring. So long as I shall never again hear the tapping in the walls. |
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That made me smile!