The Haunting Read Online Free PDF Page B

grinned, and Peter laughed. “Mr. Blevins was a good man,” Bill said. “We don’t expect his ghost to harm us none.”
    “It’s not Grandpa’s ghost!” I insisted. “It’s something else—an evil, horrible presence.”
    Bill chuckled. “This is somethin we gotta see,” he said. “Might be a story worth talkin’ about for years to come.”
    He and Peter walked through the open back door of the house and shut it behind them while the rest of us watched.
    We didn’t have long to wait before they came running out of the house, colliding with each other in the doorway, struggling to escape. Their faces were twisted in fear, and all they could say was, “Amos was right. Stay away from that place.”
    John arrived the following afternoon with Cousin Lydia in her buggy. She looked the house over and declared that it was a fine specimen of Greek Revival and, if enough good help could be obtained, she wouldn’t object at all to moving to Graymoss to live.
    I tried to explain about the evil that crept into the house each evening as daylight ended, but it didn’t do any good. Lydia was horrified at the idea of sleeping in the barn and insisted on sleeping in the house in a proper bed. I warned her again of what to expect, but she sighed, rolling her eyes. “This is what comes of the books you are reading,” she said. “Make-believe tales and stories are not the proper thing for young ladies to put into their impressionable young minds.”
    She took possession of Poe’s book, “for your own good,” as she said, and hid it somewhere within the house.
    I didn’t search for it. In a way I was glad not to have the book near me. It seemed, in some strange way, to be tied into the terror and evil that had taken over Graymoss.
    That night, as darkness crept across the land, I lit every candle and lamp within the house, hoping to keep the evil at bay. Lydia scoffed at my “wastefulness,” snuffing out as many candles as she could reach. She led the way upstairs, insisting that she had had an exhausting day so we would retire early.
    As she reached the third stair from the top, her legs suddenly shot out from under her and she tumbled backward. Bracing myself against the banister, I broke her fall, and we sat on the stairs together, both of us shaking like saplings in a strong wind.
    “The lamp!” she cried.
    “It’s still in your hand,” I reassured her. “The oil didn’t even spill.”
    Lydia looked at me strangely. “The stairs are too highly polished. They’re slippery.”
    I shook my head. “They haven’t been polished for over a year. We don’t have enough help, and I’ve been working in the fields, so I haven’t had time.”
    Lydia took a couple of deep breaths and pulled herself to
her feet. “Be careful,” she said, and led the way to the upstairs hallway, taking one deliberate step at a time. What happened to Lydia to make her fall? I have no idea.
    When I reached my bedroom I didn’t undress. I didn’t even remove my shoes. I sat in the small lady’s slipper chair near the fireplace and waited, ready to flee the house. From the next room I could hear Lydia’s rhythmic snoring.
    Then I began to hear something else. I could hear the whispers curling around the banisters and up the stairway, creeping down the hallway and sliding under the door of my room. The faces in the moldings pinched themselves into shapes that were even more horrifying than before and waggled their split tongues at me. The whispers became words, wrapping around me, but I was too frightened to listen and understand them.
    I jumped to my feet just as a horrible scream shook the house. The whispers quivered in the air and withdrew with tiny chuckles, as Lydia slammed open her bedroom door. Racing to join her in the hallway, we nearly collided. She wrapped me in a stranglehold, her eyes so wide and fearful, they were almost rolled back in her head.
    “Down the stairs!” I shouted at her, struggling to break from her