The Empty House: And Other Ghost Stories

by Algernon Blackwood

It was as if the whole world—for all experience seemed at that instant concentrated in his own consciousness—were listening to the grating noise of that key.

He heard the blood singing in his veins. It sometimes seemed so loud that he fancied it prevented his hearing properly certain other sounds that were beginning very faintly to make themselves audible in the depths of the house.

My blood surged and sang like the roll of drums in an orchestra;

For the space of a hundred seconds there was silence, such as might have existed before the birth of sound.

Half-measures only damn all concerned."

No word was spoken, and for the space of ten seconds there was a living silence.

He was trying to make up for lost time and money in a way that showed conclusively he did not understand the value of either.

Men who read too hard, and slept too little, he knew were sometimes troubled with very vivid hallucinations.

I soon was aware that there were growing up side by side within me a genuine interest and an equally genuine fear; and something of both these is probably necessary to all real excitement.

"It's a bore, of course, but I must do everything thoroughly—or not at all."

I at once realised with vividness what a difference there is between making plans in the daytime and carrying them out in the dark. One's common-sense—at least in matters of this sort—is reduced to a minimum, and imagination with all her attendant sprites usurps the place of judgment. Two and two no longer make four—they make a mystery, and the mystery loses no time in growing into a menace.

Ordinary sounds remain ordinary only so long as one is not listening to them; under the influence of intense listening they become unusual, portentous, and therefore extraordinary.

For one single second I understood clearly that the past and the future exist actually side by side in one immense Present; that it was I who moved to and fro among shifting, protean appearances.

"I don't think I'm afraid of anything in particular, sir—except women,"

Something moved secretly between his words, a shadow veiling the stars, destroying the peace of our little camp, and touching us all personally with an undefinable sense of horror and distrust.

Of course, he smothered it in words—odd words, too—melodramatic, poetic, out-of-the-way words that lie just on the edge of frenzy.