Virginia Woolf
Whatever hour you woke there was a door shutting. From room to room
they went, hand in hand, lifting here, opening there, making sure--a
ghostly couple.
"Here we left it," she said. And he added, "Oh, but here tool" "It's
upstairs," she murmured. "And in the garden," he whispered. "Quietly,"
they said, "or we shall wake them."
But it wasn't that you woke us. Oh, no. "They're looking for it;
they're drawing the curtain," one might say, and so read on a page or
two. "Now they've found it,' one would be certain, stopping the pencil
on the margin. And then, tired of reading, one might rise and see for
oneself, the house all empty, the doors standing open, only the wood
pigeons bubbling with content and the hum of the threshing machine
sounding from the farm. "What did I come in here for? What did I want to
find?" My hands were empty. "Perhaps its upstairs then?" The apples
were in the loft. And so down again, the garden still as ever, only the
book had slipped into the grass.
But they had found it in the drawing room. Not that one could ever
see them. The windowpanes reflected apples, reflected roses; all the
leaves were green in the glass. If they moved in the drawing room, the
apple only turned its yellow side. Yet, the moment after, if the door
was opened, spread about the floor, hung upon the walls, pendant from
the ceiling--what? My hands were empty. The shadow of a thrush crossed
the carpet; from the deepest wells of silence the wood pigeon drew its
bubble of sound. "Safe, safe, safe" the pulse of the house beat softly.
"The treasure buried; the room . . ." the pulse stopped short. Oh, was
that the buried treasure?
A moment later the light had faded. Out in the garden then? But the
trees spun darkness for a wandering beam of sun. So fine, so rare,
coolly sunk beneath the surface the beam I sought always burned behind
the glass. Death was the glass; death was between us, coming to the
woman first, hundreds of years ago, leaving the house, sealing all the
windows; the rooms were darkened. He left it, left her, went North, went
East, saw the stars turned in the Southern sky; sought the house, found
it dropped beneath the Downs. "Safe, safe, safe," the pulse of the
house beat gladly. 'The Treasure yours."
The wind roars up the avenue. Trees stoop and bend this way and that.
Moonbeams splash and spill wildly in the rain. But the beam of the lamp
falls straight from the window. The candle burns stiff and still.
Wandering through the house, opening the windows, whispering not to wake
us, the ghostly couple seek their joy.
"Here we slept," she says. And he adds, "Kisses without number."
"Waking in the morning--" "Silver between the trees--" "Upstairs--" 'In
the garden--" "When summer came--" 'In winter snowtime--" "The doors go
shutting far in the distance, gently knocking like the pulse of a heart.
Nearer they come, cease at the doorway. The wind falls, the rain
slides silver down the glass. Our eyes darken, we hear no steps beside
us; we see no lady spread her ghostly cloak. His hands shield the
lantern. "Look," he breathes. "Sound asleep. Love upon their lips."
Stooping, holding their silver lamp above us, long they look and
deeply. Long they pause. The wind drives straightly; the flame stoops
slightly. Wild beams of moonlight cross both floor and wall, and,
meeting, stain the faces bent; the faces pondering; the faces that
search the sleepers and seek their hidden joy.
"Safe, safe, safe," the heart of the house beats proudly. "Long
years--" he sighs. "Again you found me."
"Here," she murmurs, "sleeping;
in the garden reading; laughing, rolling apples in the loft. Here we
left our treasure--" Stooping, their light lifts the lids upon my eyes.
"Safe! safe! safe!" the pulse of the house beats wildly. Waking, I cry
"Oh, is this your buried treasure? The light in the heart."
Copyright: this story is in the public domain and not protected by copyright.
Source http://www.englishclub.com/reading/story-haunted-house.htm
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