Five nights at the Five Pines

by Harriet A. Gaul

Some one moaned. I looked sharply at Mrs. Dove, but she was sleeping. Had I uttered that despairing sigh myself, or was it only a fitful gust in the tops of the five pine-trees?

Again there was wild weeping, and once more, barely distinguishable, “Don’t go! Don’t go!”

But even that thwarted mother-love, defeated in life and restless in death, could not hold back the elusive footsteps. I heard them start, as they always had, to cross the room and try the doors and go up and down the stairs.

Suddenly I remembered that after I had shown the secret way behind the chimney to Mrs. Dove I had not wired or locked the doors again. I had left everything open, thinking she might want to go up there, and afterward we had forgotten. Guilt overwhelmed me. Something urged me to go immediately and lock the downstairs closet. I felt that I had to do this thing as much as if some one were telling me to and urging me not to put it off. There was barely time if I was to turn the key before twelve o’clock. And at the same time I felt that nothing I could do would make any difference, that what was about to happen had happened that way before. Afraid, but drawn on despite myself, I slipped out of bed and down through the kitchen to the captain’s room.

There I stopped. Some one was in the room. I could not see any one in the room, but I knew some one was there. The moonlight flooded every corner of it and the giant pine-trees outside cast great shadows that ran like bars across the floor. The closet door was partly open, and a faint red light shone through. But that there was something alive in the room I felt so sure that I dared not take another step. I was equally unable to go forward or to retreat. Then I heard soft steps descending the chimney, heard them distinctly, as I had heard them that night when I had slept down here in this room, only now I knew them for what they were.

I strained to hear the latch lifted, but did not. This was my fault. I had left the door open and it would slip out. Its mother would not want it to get out!

I tried to call a warning, but it was too late. Something brushed across the red crack of the doorway, something that was no more than an ugly gesture, a hiss, or a black shadow. There was the sound of impact and a blow, a body falling, a moan, a door banging. Then all was still.

The red aura had vanished.

“Murder!” I screamed.

I staggered back to the kitchen companionway, gasping and calling out, “Help! Help! Murder!”