When the state highway to Rutland is closed, travellers are forced to take the Stillwater road past Swamp Hollow. The scenery is superb in places, yet somehow the route has been unpopular for years. There is something depressing about it, especially near Stillwater itself. Motorists feel subtly uncomfortable about the tightly shuttered farmhouse on the knoll just north of the village, and about the white-bearded half-wit who haunts the old burying-ground on the south, apparently talking to the occupants of some of the graves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Not much is left of Stillwater, now. The soil is played out, and most of the people have drifted to the towns across the distant river or to the city beyond the distant hills. The steeple of the old white church has fallen down, and half of the twenty-odd straggling houses are empty and in various stages of decay. Normal life is found only around Peck\u2019s general store and filling-station, and it is here that the curious stop now and then to ask about the shuttered house and the idiot who mutters to the dead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Most of the questioners come away with a touch of distaste and disquiet. They find the shabby loungers oddly unpleasant and full of unnamed hints in speaking of the long-past events brought up. There is a menacing, portentous quality in the tones which they use to describe very ordinary events\u2014a seemingly unjustified tendency to assume a furtive, suggestive, confidential air, and to fall into awesome whispers at certain points\u2014which insidiously disturbs the listener. Old Yankees often talk like that; but in this case the melancholy aspect of the half-mouldering village, and the dismal nature of the story unfolded, give these gloomy, secretive mannerisms an added significance. One feels profoundly the quintessential horror that lurks behind the isolated Puritan and his strange repressions\u2014feels it, and longs to escape precipitately into clearer air.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The loungers whisper impressively that the shuttered house is that of old Miss Sprague\u2014Sophie Sprague, whose brother Tom was buried on the seventeenth of June, back in \u201986. Sophie was never the same after that funeral\u2014that and the other thing which happened the same day\u2014and in the end she took to staying in all the time. Won\u2019t even be seen now, but leaves notes under the back-door mat and has her things brought from the store by Ned Peck\u2019s boy. Afraid of something\u2014the old Swamp Hollow burying-ground most of all. Never could be dragged near there since her brother\u2014and the other one\u2014were laid away. Not much wonder, though, seeing the way crazy Johnny Dow rants. He hangs around the burying-ground all day and sometimes at night, and claims he talks with Tom\u2014and the other. Then he marches by Sophie\u2019s house and shouts things at her\u2014that\u2019s why she began to keep the shutters closed. He says things are coming from somewhere to get her sometime. Ought to be stopped, but one can\u2019t be too hard on poor Johnny. Besides, Steve Barbour always had his opinions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Johnny does his talking to two of the graves. One of them is Tom Sprague\u2019s. The other, at the opposite end of the graveyard, is that of Henry Thorndike, who was buried on the same day. Henry was the village undertaker\u2014the only one in miles\u2014and never liked around Stillwater. A city fellow from Rutland\u2014been to college and full of book learning. Read queer things nobody else ever heard of, and mixed chemicals for no good purpose. Always trying to invent something new\u2014some new-fangled embalming-fluid or some foolish kind of medicine. Some folks said he had tried to be a doctor but failed in his studies and took to the next best profession. Of course, there wasn\u2019t much undertaking to do in a place like Stillwater, but Henry farmed on the side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mean, morbid disposition\u2014and a secret drinker if you could judge by the empty bottles in his rubbish heap. No wonder Tom Sprague hated him and blackballed him from the Masonic lodge, and warned him off when he tried to make up to Sophie. The way he experimented on animals was against Nature and Scripture. Who could forget the state that collie dog was found in, or what happened to old Mrs. Akeley\u2019s cat? Then there was the matter of Deacon Leavitt\u2019s calf, when Tom had led a band of the village boys to demand an accounting. The curious thing was that the calf came alive after all in the end, though Tom had found it as stiff as a poker. Some said the joke was on Tom, but Thorndike probably thought otherwise, since he had gone down under his enemy\u2019s fist before the mistake was discovered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tom, of course, was half drunk at the time. He was a vicious brute at best, and kept his poor sister half cowed with threats. That\u2019s probably why she is such a fear-racked creature still. There were only the two of them, and Tom would never let her leave because that meant splitting the property. Most of the fellows were too afraid of him to shine up to Sophie\u2014he stood six feet one in his stockings\u2014but Henry Thorndike was a sly cuss who had ways of doing things behind folks\u2019 backs. He wasn\u2019t much to look at, but Sophie never discouraged him any. Mean and ugly as he was, she\u2019d have been glad if anybody could have freed her from her brother. She may not have stopped to wonder how she could get clear of him after he got her clear of Tom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Well, that was the way things stood in June of \u201986. Up to this point, the whispers of the loungers at Peck\u2019s store are not so unbearably portentous; but as they continue, the element of secretiveness and malign tension grows. Tom Sprague, it appears, used to go to Rutland on periodic sprees, his absences being Henry Thorndike\u2019s great opportunities. He was always in bad shape when he got back, and old Dr. Pratt, deaf and half blind though he was, used to warn him about his heart, and about the danger of delirium tremens. Folks could always tell by the shouting and cursing when he was home again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was on the ninth of June\u2014on a Wednesday, the day after young Joshua Goodenough finished building his new-fangled silo\u2014that Tom started out on his last and longest spree. He came back the next Tuesday morning and folks at the store saw him lashing his bay stallion the way he did when whiskey had a hold of him. Then there came shouts and shrieks and oaths from the Sprague house, and the first thing anybody knew Sophie was running over to old Dr. Pratt\u2019s at top speed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The doctor found Thorndike at Sprague\u2019s when he got there, and Tom was on the bed in his room, with eyes staring and foam around his mouth. Old Pratt fumbled around and gave the usual tests, then shook his head solemnly and told Sophie she had suffered a great bereavement\u2014that her nearest and dearest had passed through the pearly gates to a better land, just as everybody knew he would if he didn\u2019t let up on his drinking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sophie kind of sniffled, the loungers whisper, but didn\u2019t seem to take on much. Thorndike didn\u2019t do anything but smile\u2014perhaps at the ironic fact that he, always an enemy, was now the only person who could be of any use to Thomas Sprague. He shouted something in old Dr. Pratt\u2019s half-good ear about the need of having the funeral early on account of Tom\u2019s condition. Drunks like that were always doubtful subjects, and any extra delay\u2014with merely rural facilities\u2014would entail consequences, visual and otherwise, hardly acceptable to the deceased\u2019s loving mourners. The doctor had muttered that Tom\u2019s alcoholic career ought to have embalmed him pretty well in advance, but Thorndike assured him to the contrary, at the same time boasting of his own skill, and of the superior methods he had devised through his experiments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is here that the whispers of the loungers grow acutely disturbing. Up to this point the story is usually told by Ezra Davenport, or Luther Fry, if Ezra is laid up with chilblains, as he is apt to be in winter; but from there on old Calvin Wheeler takes up the thread, and his voice has a damnably insidious way of suggesting hidden horror. If Johnny Dow happens to be passing by there is always a pause, for Stillwater does not like to have Johnny talk too much with strangers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Calvin edges close to the traveller and sometimes seizes a coat-lapel with his gnarled, mottled hand while he half shuts his watery blue eyes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWell, sir,\u201d he whispers, \u201cHenry he went home an\u2019 got his undertaker\u2019s fixin\u2019s\u2014crazy Johnny Dow lugged most of \u2019em, for he was always doin\u2019 chores for Henry\u2014an\u2019 says as Doc Pratt an\u2019 crazy Johnny should help lay out the body. Doc always did say as how he thought Henry talked too much\u2014a-boastin\u2019 what a fine workman he was, an\u2019 how lucky it was that Stillwater had a reg\u2019lar undertaker instead of buryin\u2019 folks jest as they was, like they do over to Whitby.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201c\u2018Suppose,\u2019 says he, \u2018some fellow was to be took with some of them paralysin\u2019 cramps like you read about. How\u2019d a body like it when they lowered him down and begun shovelin\u2019 the dirt back? How\u2019d he like it when he was chokin\u2019 down there under the new headstone, scratchin\u2019 an\u2019 tearin\u2019 if he chanced to get back the power, but all the time knowin\u2019 it wasn\u2019t no use? No, sir, I tell you it\u2019s a blessin\u2019 Stillwater\u2019s got a smart doctor as knows when a man\u2019s dead and when he ain\u2019t, and a trained undertaker who can fix a corpse so he\u2019ll stay put without no trouble.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThat was the way Henry went on talkin\u2019, most like he was talkin\u2019 to poor Tom\u2019s remains; and old Doc Pratt he didn\u2019t like what he was able to catch of it, even though Henry did call him a smart doctor. Crazy Johnny kept watchin\u2019 of the corpse, and it didn\u2019t make it none too pleasant the way he\u2019d slobber about things like, \u2018He ain\u2019t cold, Doc,\u2019 or \u2018I see his eyelids move,\u2019 or \u2018There\u2019s a hole in his arm jest like the ones I git when Henry gives me a syringe full of what makes me feel good.\u2019 Thorndike shut him up on that, though we all knowed he\u2019d been givin\u2019 poor Johnny drugs. It\u2019s a wonder the poor fellow ever got clear of the habit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBut the worst thing, accordin\u2019 to the doctor, was the way the body jerked up when Henry begun to shoot it full of embalmin\u2019-fluid. He\u2019d been boastin\u2019 about what a fine new formula he\u2019d got practicin\u2019 on cats and dogs, when all of a sudden Tom\u2019s corpse began to double up like it was alive and fixin\u2019 to wrassle. Land of Goshen, but Doc says he was scared stiff, though he knowed the way corpses act when the muscles begin to stiffen. Well, sir, the long and short of it is, that the corpse sat up an\u2019 grabbed a holt of Thorndike\u2019s syringe so that it got stuck in Henry hisself, an\u2019 give him as neat a dose of his own embalmin\u2019-fluid as you\u2019d wish to see. That got Henry pretty scared, though he yanked the point out and managed to get the body down again and shot full of the fluid. He kept measurin\u2019 more of the stuff out as though he wanted to be sure there was enough, and kept reassurin\u2019 himself as not much had got into him, but crazy Johnny begun singin\u2019 out, \u2018That\u2019s what you give Lige Hopkins\u2019s dog when it got all dead an\u2019 stiff an\u2019 then waked up agin. Now you\u2019re a-going to get dead an\u2019 stiff like Tom Sprague be! Remember it don\u2019t set to work till after a long spell if you don\u2019t get much.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSophie, she was downstairs with some of the neighbours\u2014my wife Matildy, she that\u2019s dead an\u2019 gone this thirty year, was one of them. They were all tryin\u2019 to find out whether Thorndike was over when Tom came home, and whether findin\u2019 him there was what set poor Tom off. I may as well say as some folks thought it mighty funny that Sophie didn\u2019t carry on more, nor mind the way Thorndike had smiled. Not as anybody was hintin\u2019 that Henry helped Tom off with some of his queer cooked-up fluids and syringes, or that Sophie would keep still if she thought so\u2014but you know how folks will guess behind a body\u2019s back. We all knowed the nigh crazy way Thorndike had hated Tom\u2014not without reason, at that\u2014and Emily Barbour says to my Matildy as how Henry was lucky to have ol\u2019 Doc Pratt right on the spot with a death certificate as didn\u2019t leave no doubt for nobody.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When old Calvin gets to this point he usually begins to mumble indistinguishably in his straggling, dirty white beard. Most listeners try to edge away from him, and he seldom appears to heed the gesture. It is generally Fred Peck, who was a very small boy at the time of the events, who continues the tale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Thomas Sprague\u2019s funeral was held on Thursday, June 17th, only two days after his death. Such haste was thought almost indecent in remote and inaccessible Stillwater, where long distances had to be covered by those who came, but Thorndike had insisted that the peculiar condition of the deceased demanded it. The undertaker had seemed rather nervous since preparing the body, and could be seen frequently feeling his pulse. Old Dr. Pratt thought he must be worrying about the accidental dose of embalming-fluid. Naturally, the story of the \u201claying out\u201d had spread, so that a double zest animated the mourners who assembled to glut their curiosity and morbid interest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Thorndike, though he was obviously upset, seemed intent on doing his professional duty in magnificent style. Sophie and others who saw the body were most startled by its utter lifelikeness, and the mortuary virtuoso made doubly sure of his job by repeating certain injections at stated intervals. He almost wrung a sort of reluctant admiration from the townsfolk and visitors, though he tended to spoil that impression by his boastful and tasteless talk. Whenever he administered to his silent charge he would repeat that eternal rambling about the good luck of having a first-class undertaker. What\u2014he would say as if directly addressing the body\u2014if Tom had had one of those careless fellows who bury their subjects alive? The way he harped on the horrors of premature burial was truly barbarous and sickening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Services were held in the stuffy best room\u2014opened for the first time since Mrs. Sprague died. The tuneless little parlour organ groaned disconsolately, and the coffin, supported on trestles near the hall door, was covered with sickly-smelling flowers. It was obvious that a record-breaking crowd was assembling from far and near, and Sophie endeavoured to look properly grief-stricken for their benefit. At unguarded moments she seemed both puzzled and uneasy, dividing her scrutiny between the feverish-looking undertaker and the life-like body of her brother. A slow disgust at Thorndike seemed to be brewing within her, and neighbours whispered freely that she would soon send him about his business now that Tom was out of the way\u2014that is, if she could, for such a slick customer was sometimes hard to deal with. But with her money and remaining looks she might be able to get another fellow, and he\u2019d probably take care of Henry well enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By H.P. Lovecraft and Hazel Heald When the state highway to Rutland is closed, travellers are forced to take the Stillwater road past Swamp Hollow. The scenery is superb in places, yet somehow the route has been unpopular for years. There is something depressing about it, especially near Stillwater itself. Motorists feel subtly uncomfortable about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1870","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\n
As the organ wheezed into\u00a0Beautiful Isle of Somewhere<\/em>\u00a0the Methodist church choir added their lugubrious voices to the gruesome cacophony, and everyone looked piously at Deacon Leavitt\u2014everyone, that is, except crazy Johnny Dow, who kept his eyes glued to the still form beneath the glass of the coffin. He was muttering softly to himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Stephen Barbour\u2014from the next farm\u2014was the only one who noticed Johnny. He shivered as he saw that the idiot was talking directly to the corpse, and even making foolish signs with his fingers as if to taunt the sleeper beneath the plate glass. Tom, he reflected, had kicked poor Johnny around on more than one occasion, though probably not without provocation. Something about this whole event was getting on Stephen\u2019s nerves. There was a suppressed tension and brooding abnormality in the air for which he could not account. Johnny ought not to have been allowed in the house\u2014and it was curious what an effort Thorndike seemed to be making not to look at the body. Every now and then the undertaker would feel his pulse with an odd air.
The Reverend Silas Atwood droned on in a plaintive monotone about the deceased\u2014about the striking of Death\u2019s sword in the midst of this little family, breaking the earthly tie between this loving brother and sister. Several of the neighbours looked furtively at one another from beneath lowered eyelids, while Sophie actually began to sob nervously. Thorndike moved to her side and tried to reassure her, but she seemed to shrink curiously away from him. His motions were distinctly uneasy, and he seemed to feel acutely the abnormal tension permeating the air. Finally, conscious of his duty as master of ceremonies, he stepped forward and announced in a sepulchral voice that the body might be viewed for the last time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Slowly the friends and neighbours filed past the bier, from which Thorndike roughly dragged crazy Johnny away. Tom seemed to be resting peacefully. That devil had been handsome in his day. A few genuine sobs\u2014and many feigned ones\u2014were heard, though most of the crowd were content to stare curiously and whisper afterward. Steve Barbour lingered long and attentively over the still face, and moved away shaking his head. His wife, Emily, following after him, whispered that Henry Thorndike had better not boast so much about his work, for Tom\u2019s eyes had come open. They had been shut when the services began, for she had been up and looked. But they certainly looked natural\u2014not the way one would expect after two days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Fred Peck gets this far he usually pauses as if he did not like to continue. The listener, too, tends to feel that something unpleasant is ahead. But Peck reassures his audience with the statement that what happened isn\u2019t as bad as folks like to hint. Even Steve never put into words what he may have thought, and crazy Johnny, of course, can\u2019t be counted at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was Luella Morse\u2014the nervous old maid who sang in the choir\u2014who seems to have touched things off. She was filing past the coffin like the rest, but stopped to peer a little closer than anyone else except the Barbours had peered. And then, without warning, she gave a shrill scream and fell in a dead faint.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Naturally, the room was at once a chaos of confusion. Old Dr. Pratt elbowed his way to Luella and called for some water to throw in her face, and others surged up to look at her and at the coffin. Johnny Dow began chanting to himself, \u201cHe knows, he knows, he kin hear all we\u2019re a-sayin\u2019 and see all we\u2019re a-doin\u2019, and they\u2019ll bury him that way\u201d\u2014but no one stopped to decipher his mumbling except Steve Barbour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a very few moments Luella began to come out of her faint, and could not tell exactly what had startled her. All she could whisper was, \u201cThe way he looked\u2014the way he looked.\u201d But to other eyes the body seemed exactly the same. It was a gruesome sight, though, with those open eyes and that high colouring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And then the bewildered crowd noticed something which put both Luella and the body out of their minds for a moment. It was Thorndike\u2014on whom the sudden excitement and jostling crowd seemed to be having a curiously bad effect. He had evidently been knocked down in the general bustle, and was on the floor trying to drag himself to a sitting posture. The expression on his face was terrifying in the extreme, and his eyes were beginning to take on a glazed, fishy expression. He could scarcely speak aloud, but the husky rattle of his throat held an ineffable desperation which was obvious to all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cGet me home, quick, and let me be. That fluid I got in my arm by mistake\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. heart action\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. this damned excitement\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. too much\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. wait\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. wait\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. don\u2019t think I\u2019m dead if I seem to\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. only the fluid\u2014just get me home and wait\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. I\u2019ll come to later, don\u2019t know how long\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. all the time I\u2019ll be conscious and know what\u2019s going on\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. don\u2019t be deceived.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As his words trailed off into nothingness old Dr. Pratt reached him and felt his pulse\u2014watching a long time and finally shaking his head. \u201cNo use doing anything\u2014he\u2019s gone. Heart no good\u2014and that fluid he got in his arm must have been bad stuff. I don\u2019t know what it is.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A kind of numbness seemed to fall on all the company. New death in the chamber of death! Only Steve Barbour thought to bring up Thorndike\u2019s last choking words. Was he surely dead, when he himself had said he might falsely seem so? Wouldn\u2019t it be better to wait a while and see what would happen? And for that matter, what harm would it do if Doc Pratt were to give Tom Sprague another looking over before burial?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Crazy Johnny was moaning, and had flung himself on Thorndike\u2019s body like a faithful dog. \u201cDon\u2019t ye bury him, don\u2019t ye bury him! He ain\u2019t dead no more nor Lige Hopkins\u2019s dog nor Deacon Leavitt\u2019s calf was when he shot \u2019em full. He\u2019s got some stuff he puts into ye to make ye seem like dead when ye ain\u2019t! Ye seem like dead but ye know everything what\u2019s a-goin\u2019 on, and the next day ye come to as good as ever. Don\u2019t ye bury him\u2014he\u2019ll come to under the earth an\u2019 he can\u2019t scratch up! He\u2019s a good man, an\u2019 not like Tom Sprague. Hope to Gawd Tom scratches an\u2019 chokes for hours an\u2019 hours.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But no one save Barbour was paying any attention to poor Johnny. Indeed, what Steve himself had said had evidently fallen on deaf ears. Uncertainty was everywhere. Old Doc Pratt was applying final tests and mumbling about death certificate blanks, and unctuous Elder Atwood was suggesting that something be done about a double interment. With Thorndike dead there was no undertaker this side of Rutland, and it would mean a terrible expense if one were to be brought from there, and if Thorndike were not embalmed in this hot June weather\u2014well, one couldn\u2019t tell. And there were no relatives or friends to be critical unless Sophie chose to be\u2014but Sophie was on the other side of the room, staring silently, fixedly, and almost morbidly into her brother\u2019s coffin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Deacon Leavitt tried to restore a semblance of decorum, and had poor Thorndike carried across the hall to the sitting-room, meanwhile sending Zenas Wells and Walter Perkins over to the undertaker\u2019s house for a coffin of the right size. The key was in Henry\u2019s trousers pocket. Johnny continued to whine and paw at the body, and Elder Atwood busied himself with inquiring about Thorndike\u2019s denomination\u2014for Henry had not attended local services. When it was decided that his folks in Rutland\u2014all dead now\u2014had been Baptists, the Reverend Silas decided that Deacon Leavitt had better offer the brief prayer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was a gala day for the funeral-fanciers of Stillwater and vicinity. Even Luella had recovered enough to stay. Gossip, murmured and whispered, buzzed busily while a few composing touches were given to Thorndike\u2019s cooling, stiffening form. Johnny had been cuffed out of the house, as most agreed he should have been in the first place, but his distant howls were now and then wafted gruesomely in.
When the body was encoffined and laid out beside that of Thomas Sprague, the silent, almost frightening-looking Sophie gazed intently at it as she had gazed at her brother\u2019s. She had not uttered a word for a dangerously long time, and the mixed expression on her face was past all describing or interpreting. As the others withdrew to leave her alone with the dead she managed to find a sort of mechanical speech, but no one could make out the words, and she seemed to be talking first to one body and then the other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And now, with what would seem to an outsider the acme of gruesome unconscious comedy, the whole funeral mummery of the afternoon was listlessly repeated. Again the organ wheezed, again the choir screeched and scraped, again a droning incantation arose, and again the morbidly curious spectators filed past a macabre object\u2014this time a dual array of mortuary repose. Some of the more sensitive people shivered at the whole proceeding, and again Stephen Barbour felt an underlying note of eldritch horror and daemoniac abnormality. God, how life-like both of those corpses were\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. and how in earnest poor Thorndike had been about not wanting to be judged dead\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. and how he hated Tom Sprague\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. but what could one do in the face of common sense\u2014a dead man was a dead man, and there was old Doc Pratt with his years of experience\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. if nobody else bothered, why should one bother oneself?\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. Whatever Tom had got he had probably deserved\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. and if Henry had done anything to him, the score was even now\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. well, Sophie was free at last.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As the peering procession moved at last toward the hall and the outer door, Sophie was alone with the dead once more. Elder Atwood was out in the road talking to the hearse-driver from Lee\u2019s livery stable, and Deacon Leavitt was arranging for a double quota of pall-bearers. Luckily the hearse would hold two coffins. No hurry\u2014Ed Plummer and Ethan Stone were going ahead with shovels to dig the second grave. There would be three livery hacks and any number of private rigs in the cavalcade\u2014no use trying to keep the crowd away from the graves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then came that frantic scream from the parlour where Sophie and the bodies were. Its suddenness almost paralysed the crowd and brought back the same sensation which had surged up when Luella had screamed and fainted. Steve Barbour and Deacon Leavitt started to go in, but before they could enter the house Sophie was bursting forth, sobbing and gasping about \u201cThat face at the window!\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. that face at the window!\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the same time a wild-eyed figure rounded the corner of the house, removing all mystery from Sophie\u2019s dramatic cry. It was, very obviously, the face\u2019s owner\u2014poor crazy Johnny, who began to leap up and down, pointing at Sophie and shrieking, \u201cShe knows! She knows! I seen it in her face when she looked at \u2019em and talked to \u2019em! She knows, and she\u2019s a-lettin\u2019 \u2019em go down in the earth to scratch an\u2019 claw for air.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. But they\u2019ll talk to her so\u2019s she kin hear \u2019em\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. they\u2019ll talk to her, an\u2019 appear to her\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. and some day they\u2019ll come back an\u2019 git her!\u201c<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Zenas Wells dragged the shrieking half-wit to a woodshed behind the house and bolted him in as best he could. His screams and poundings could be heard at a distance, but nobody paid him any further attention. The procession was made up, and with Sophie in the first hack it slowly covered the short distance past the village to the Swamp Hollow burying-ground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Elder Atwood made appropriate remarks as Thomas Sprague was laid to rest, and by the time he was through, Ed and Ethan had finished Thorndike\u2019s grave on the other side of the cemetery\u2014to which the crowd presently shifted. Deacon Leavitt then spoke ornamentally, and the lowering process was repeated. People had begun to drift off in knots, and the clatter of receding buggies and carry-alls was quite universal, when the shovels began to fly again. As the earth thudded down on the coffin-lids, Thorndike\u2019s first, Steve Barbour noticed the queer expressions flitting over Sophie Sprague\u2019s face. He couldn\u2019t keep track of them all, but behind the rest there seemed to lurk a sort of wry, perverse, half-suppressed look of vague triumph. He shook his head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Zenas had run back and let crazy Johnny out of the woodshed before Sophie got home, and the poor fellow at once made frantically for the graveyard. He arrived before the shovelmen were through, and while many of the curious mourners were still lingering about. What he shouted into Tom Sprague\u2019s partly filled grave, and how he clawed at the loose earth of Thorndike\u2019s freshly finished mound across the cemetery, surviving spectators still shudder to recall. Jotham Blake, the constable, had to take him back to the town farm by force, and his screams waked dreadful echoes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is where Fred Peck usually leaves off the story. What more, he asks, is there to tell? It was a gloomy tragedy, and one can scarcely wonder that Sophie grew queer after that. That is all one hears if the hour is so late that old Calvin Wheeler has tottered home, but when he is still around he breaks in again with that damnably suggestive and insidious whisper. Sometimes those who hear him dread to pass either the shuttered house or the graveyard afterward, especially after dark.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHeh, heh\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. Fred was only a little shaver then, and don\u2019t remember no more than half of what was goin\u2019 on! You want to know why Sophie keeps her house shuttered, and why crazy Johnny still keeps a-talkin\u2019 to the dead and a-shoutin\u2019 at Sophie\u2019s windows? Well, sir, I don\u2019t know\u2019s I know all there is to know, but I hear what I hear.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here the old man ejects his cud of tobacco and leans forward to buttonhole the listener.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt was that same night, mind ye\u2014toward mornin\u2019, and just eight hours after them burials\u2014when we heard the first scream from Sophie\u2019s house. Woke us all up\u2014Steve and Emily Barbour and me and Matildy goes over hot-footin\u2019, all in night gear, and finds Sophie all dressed and dead fainted on the settin\u2019-room floor. Lucky she hadn\u2019t locked the door. When we got her to she was shakin\u2019 like a leaf, and wouldn\u2019t let on by so much as a word what was ailin\u2019 her. Matildy and Emily done what they could to quiet her down, but Steve whispered things to me as didn\u2019t make me none too easy. Come about an hour when we allowed we\u2019d be goin\u2019 home soon, that Sophie she begun to tip her head on one side like she was a-listenin\u2019 to somethin\u2019. Then on a sudden she screamed again, and keeled over in another faint.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWell, sir, I\u2019m tellin\u2019 what I\u2019m tellin\u2019, and won\u2019t do no guessin\u2019 like Steve Barbour would a done if he dared. He always was the greatest hand for hintin\u2019 things\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. died ten years ago of pneumony.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhat we heard so faint-like was just poor crazy Johnny, of course. \u2019Taint more than a mile to the buryin\u2019-ground, and he must a got out of the window where they\u2019d locked him up at the town farm\u2014even if Constable Blake says he didn\u2019t get out that night. From that day to this he hangs around them graves a-talkin\u2019 to the both of them\u2014cussin\u2019 and kickin\u2019 at Tom\u2019s mound, and puttin\u2019 posies and things on Henry\u2019s. And when he ain\u2019t a-doin\u2019 that he\u2019s hangin\u2019 around Sophie\u2019s shuttered windows howlin\u2019 about what\u2019s a-comin\u2019 soon to git her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cShe wouldn\u2019t never go near the buryin\u2019-ground, and now she won\u2019t come out of the house at all nor see nobody. Got to sayin\u2019 there was a curse on Stillwater\u2014and I\u2019m dinged if she ain\u2019t half right, the way things is a-goin\u2019 to pieces these days. There certainly was somethin\u2019 queer about Sophie right along. Once when Sally Hopkins was a-callin\u2019 on her\u2014in \u201997 or \u201998, I think it was\u2014there was an awful rattlin\u2019 at her winders\u2014and Johnny was safe locked up at the time\u2014at least, so Constable Dodge swore up and down. But I ain\u2019t takin\u2019 no stock in their stories about noises every seventeenth of June, or about faint shinin\u2019 figures a-tryin\u2019 Sophie\u2019s door and winders every black mornin\u2019 about two o\u2019clock.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou see, it was about two o\u2019clock in the mornin\u2019 that Sophie heard the sounds and keeled over twice that first night after the buryin\u2019. Steve and me, and Matildy and Emily, heard the second lot, faint as it was, just like I told you. And I\u2019m a-tellin\u2019 you again as how it must a been crazy Johnny over to the buryin\u2019-ground, let Jotham Blake claim what he will. There ain\u2019t no tellin\u2019 the sound of a man\u2019s voice so far off, and with our heads full of nonsense it ain\u2019t no wonder we thought there was two voices\u2014and voices that hadn\u2019t ought to be speakin\u2019 at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSteve, he claimed to have heard more than I did. I verily believe he took some stock in ghosts. Matildy and Emily was so scared they didn\u2019t remember what they heard. And curious enough, nobody else in town\u2014if anybody was awake at the ungodly hour\u2014never said nothin\u2019 about hearin\u2019 no sounds at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhatever it was, was so faint it might have been the wind if there hadn\u2019t been words. I made out a few, but don\u2019t want to say as I\u2019d back up all Steve claimed to have caught.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201c\u2018She-devil\u2019\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. \u2018all the time\u2019\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. \u2018Henry\u2019\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. and \u2018alive\u2019 was plain\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. and so was \u2018you know\u2019\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. \u2018said you\u2019d stand by\u2019\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. \u2018get rid of him\u2019 and \u2018bury me\u2019\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. in a kind of changed voice.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. Then there was that awful \u2018comin\u2019 again some day\u2019\u2014in a death-like squawk\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. but you can\u2019t tell me Johnny couldn\u2019t have made those sounds.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHey, you! What\u2019s takin\u2019 you off in such a hurry? Mebbe there\u2019s more I could tell you if I had a mind….”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"