The Sixth Ghost Story Megapack by A.T. Quiller-Couch

Author:A.T. Quiller-Couch
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: horror;ghost;fantasy;short stories;supernatural
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 2018-03-12T13:51:08+00:00

AN ITINERANT HOUSE, by Emma Frances Dawson

Originally published in An Itinerant House, and Other Stories, 1897.

“Eternal longing with eternal pain,

Want without hope, and memory saddening all,

All congregated failure and despair

Shall wander there through some old maze of wrong.”

“His wife?” cried Felipa.

“Yes,” I answered, unwillingly; for until the steamer brought Mrs. Anson I believed in this Mexican woman’s right to that name. I felt sorry for the bright eyes and kind heart that had cheered Anson’s lodgers through weary months of early days in San Francisco.

She burst into tears. None of us knew how to comfort her. Dering spoke first: “Beauty always wins friends.”

Between her sobs she repeated one of the pithy sayings of her language: “It is as easy to find a lover as to keep a friend, but as hard to find a friend as to keep a lover.”

“Yes,” said Volz, “a new friendship is like a new string to your guitar—you are not sure what its tone may prove, nor how soon it may break.”

“But at least its falsity is learned at once,” she sobbed.

“Is it possible,” I asked, “that you had no suspicion?”

“None. He told me—” She ended in a fresh gust of tears.

“The old story,” muttered Dering. “Marryatt’s skipper was right in thinking everything that once happened would come again somewhere.”

Anson came. He had left the newcomer at the Niantic, on pretense of putting his house in order. Felipa turned on him before we could go.

“Is this true?” she cried.

Without reply he went to the window and stood looking out. She sprang toward him, with rage distorting her face. “Coward!” she screamed, in fierce scorn.

Then she fell senseless. Two doctors were called. One said she was dead. The other, at first doubtful, vainly tried hot sealing-wax and other tests. After thirty-six hours her funeral was planned. Yet Dering, once medical student, had seen an electric current used in such a case in Vienna, and wanted to try it. That night, he, Volz, and I offered to watch. When all was still, Dering, who had smuggled in the simple things needed, began his weird work.

“Is it not too late?” I asked.

“Every corpse,” said he, “can be thus excited soon after death, for a brief time only, and but once. If the body is not lifeless, the electric current has power at any time.”

Volz, too nervous to stay near, stood in the door open to the dark hall. It was a dreadful sight. The dead woman’s breast rose and fell; smiles and frowns flitted across her face.

“The body begins to react finely,” cried Dering, making Volz open the windows, while I wrapped hot blankets round Felipa, and he instilled clear coffee and brandy.

“It seems like sacrilege! Let her alone!” I exclaimed. “Better dead than alive!”

“My God! Say not that!” cried Volz; “the nerve which hears is last to die. She may know all we say.”

“Musical bosh!” I muttered.

“Perhaps not,” said Dering; “in magnetic sleep that nerve can be roused.”

The night seemed endless. The room gained an uncanny look, the macaws on the gaudy, old-fashioned wall-paper seemed fluttering and changing places.

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