DEAR GOODTHINKER,318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡY2T9kM9vgU
318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡG2cDMjgInn
318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡu46cKwe0ww
There have been, I’m afraid, developments of a disquieting nature.
The noises in the house have intensified, and I am growing more to the conclusion that rats are not all that move within our walls. Edgar and I went on another fruitless search for hidden crannies or passages, but we found nothing. How poorly we would fit into one of Mrs. Cage’s romances! Ed claims, however, that much of the sound emanates from the cellar, and it is there we intend to explore tomorrow. It makes me no easier to know that Cousin Theodore’s sister met her untimely end there.
Her portrait, by the by, hangs in the upstairs gallery. Georgette Beal was a sadly pretty thing, if the artist got her right, and I do know she never married. At times I think that Mrs. Pratt was right, that it is an evil house. It has surely held nothing but doom and gloom for its past tenants.
But I have more to say of the redoubtable Mrs. Pratt, for I have had this day a second interview with her. As the most level headed person from the Corners that I have met thus far, I sought her out this afternoon, after an unpleasant interview which I will now relate.
The wood was to have been delivered this morning, and when noon came and passed and no wood with it, I decided to take my daily walk into the town proper. My object was to visit Price, the man with whom Ed did business.
It has been a scrumptious day, full of the crisp snap of bright autumn, and by the time I reached the Prices’ homestead [Ed, who remained home to poke further through Uncle Russell’s library, gave me adequate directions] I felt in the best mood that these last few days have seen, and quite prepared to forgive Price’s tardiness with the wood.318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1UmQbHA7S3
The place was a massive tangle of weeds and fallen-down buildings in need of paint; to the left of the barn a huge sow, ready for November butchering, grunted and wallowed in a muddy sty, and in the littered yard between house and outbuildings a woman in a tattered gingham dress was feeding chickens form her apron. When I hailed her, she turned a pale and vapid face toward me.318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpNBOzRGlyY
The sudden change in expression from utter, doltish emptiness to that of frenzied terror was quite wonderful to behold. I can only think that she took me for Theodore himself, for she raised her hand in the prong-fingered sign of the evil eye and screamed. The chicken-feed scattered on the ground and the fowls fluttered away, squawking.318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtPV20fadn1
Before I could utter a sound, a huge, hulking figure of a man clad only in long-handled underwear lumbered out of the house with a squirrel rifle in one hand and a jug in the other. From the red light in his eyes and unsteady manner of walking, I judged that this was Price the Woodcutter himself.
“A Beal!” he roared. “G---d---n your eyes!” He dropped the jug a-rolling and also made the Sign.
“I’ve come,” I said with as much equanimity as I could muster under the circumstances, “because the wood has not. According to the agreement you struck with my man…..”
“G—d—n your man too, says I!” And for the first time I noticed that beneath his bluster and fury he was deathly afraid. I began seriously to wonder if he mightn’t actually raise his weapon against me in his fervor.
I began carefully. “As a gesture of courtesy, you might….”
“G---d---n your courtesy!”
“All right, then,” I said with as much dignity as I could muster. “I bid you good day until you are more in control of yourself.” And with this I turned away and began down the road to the village.
“Don’t’chee come back!” he screamed after me. “Stick wi’ your evil up there! Cursed! Cursed! Cursed!” He pelted a stone at me, which struck my shoulder. I would not give him the satisfaction of dodging.
So I sought out Mrs. Pratt, determined to solve the mystery of Price’s enmity, at least. She is a widow [and none of your confounded matchmaking, Goodthinkiner; she is easily fifteen years my senior, and I’ll not see forty again] and lives alone in a charming little cottage at the ocean’s very doorstep. I found the lady hanging out her wash, and she seemed genuinely pleased to see me. I found this a great relief; it is vexing almost beyond words to be branded pariah for no understandable reason.
“Mr. Beal,” said she, offering a half-curtsey. “If it’s laundry you’ve come about, I take none in past September. My rheumatiz pains me so that it’s trouble enough to do my own.”
“I wish laundry was the subject of my visit. I beg your help, Mrs. Pratt, for I must know all you can tell me about Wellfall and Christian’s Lot and why the townfolk regard me with such fear and suspicion!”
“Christian’s Lot! So, you know about that, do you?”
“I do,” replied. “I visited it with my companion a week ago.”
“You what?!” She went pale as milk, and tottered. I put out a hand to steady her. Her eyes rolled horribly, and for a moment I was sure she would swoon.318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡiSmPVtB0Fw
“Mrs. Pratt, I am sorry if I have said anything to…"318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEFSm498FIz
“Come inside,” she said. ‘You must know. Sweet Jesus, the evil days have come again!”318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1chDCsIwa9
She would not speak more until she had brewed strong tea in her sunshiny kitchen. When it was before us, she looked pensively out at the ocean for a time. Inevitably, her eyes and mine were drawn to the jutting brow of Wellfall Head, where the house looked out over the water. The large bay window glittered in the rays of the festering sun like a diamond. The view was beautiful, yet strangely alarming. She suddenly turned to me and declared vehemently:318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2DElF75myq
“Mr. Beal, you must leave Wellfall immediately!”
I was flabbergasted.
“There has been an evil breath in the air since you took up residence. In the last week---since you set foot in the accursed place---there have been omens and portents. An eclipse of the moon; packs of dogs which make their homes in the cemeteries a’howling; an unnatural birth. You must leave!”318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxRBl7bR9KY
318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0Du4WRxf4U
When I found my tongue, I spoke as gently as I dared. “Mrs. Pratt, these things are dreams. Surely you know that.”318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡydUTCbp7Jq
“Is it a dream that Thomasine Wilson gave birth to a child with a third eye? Or that Esmour Holt found a flat, pressed trail five feet wide in the woods beyond Wellfall where all had withered and gone white? And can you, who have visited Christian’s Lot, say with truth that nothing still dwells there?”
I could not answer; the scene in that hideous church sprang before my eyes.
She clamped her gnarled hands together in an effort to calm herself. “I know of these things only from my mother and her mother before her. Do you know the history of your family as it applies to Wellfall?”
“Vaguely,” I said. “The house has been the home of Jayson Beal’s line since the 1780’s; his brother Anthony, my grandfather, located in Massachussetts after an argument over stolen papers. Of Jayson’s side I know little save that an unhappy shadow fell over it, extending from father to son to grandchildren. Georgette died in a tragic accident and Theodore fell to his death. It was his wish that Wellfall become the home of me and mine, and that the family rift thus be mended.”
“Never to be mended,” she whispered. “Do you know nothing of the original quarrel?”
“Anthony Beal was discovered rifling his brother’s desk.”
“Jayson Beal was a madman,” she said. “A man who trafficked with the unholy. The thing which Anthony Boone attempted to remove was a profane Bible writ in Latin and a queer tongue unlike that spoken by any people upon God’s green Earth. A hell-book.”
“Nullam In Libro.”
She recoiled as if struck. “You know of it?”
“I have seen it----touched it.” It seemed again she might swoon. A hand went to her mouth as if to stifle tan outcry. “Yes; in Christian’s Lot. On the pulpit of a corrupt and desecrated church.”
“Still there; still there, then.” She rocked in her chair. “I had hoped God in His wisdom had cast it into the pit of hell.”318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRo5q3505SK
"What relation had Jayson Beal to Christian’s Lot?”318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBeCPbXIhxs
“A blood relation,” she said darkly. “The Mark of the Devil was upon him, although he walked in the clothes of the Lamb. And on the night of October 31, 1789, Jayson Beal disappeared----and the entire populace of that damned village with him.”
She would say little more; in fact, seemed to know little more. She would only reiterate her pleas that I leave, giving as reason something about “blood calling to blood” and muttering about “those who watch and those who guard.” As twilight drew on she seemed to grow more agitated rather than less, and to placate her I promised that her wishes would be taken under strong consideration.318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡafpHYiOBEy
I walked home through lengthening, gloomy shadows, my good mood quite dissipated and my head spinning with questions that still plague me. Ed greeted me with the news that our noises in the walls have grown worse still---as I can attest at this moment. I try to tell myself that I hear only rats, but then I see the terrified, earnest face of Mrs. Pratt. 318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡoVKNAXbnTJ
The moon as risen over the sea, bloated, full, the color of blood, staining the ocean with a noxious shade. My mind turns to that church again and318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7cApjMvyTK
(here a line is struck out)318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8gtMxchz9N
But you shall not see that, Goodthinker. It is too mad. It is time I slept, I think. My thoughts go out to you. 318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDXXySQYAuL
Regards,318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡaqo8py9Chi
CHARLES318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ57L5EqTnrZ
