Ghosts By Gaslight
“Smoll could never anticipate the moment she would appear, though night after night she came in the same way and performed the same actions in the same order. He fixed his attention on the place, all terrified expectation, but each night her appearance startled him as greatly as it had the first time. She seemed to wait, indeed, before she leapt forth, for approaching sleep to lower his guard by a fraction, to loosen his joints and sinews, to slow his heartbeat to a pace no more urgent than would be expected of an organ going to its rest upon a day’s gainful industry.The corner from which she rushed was not the corner with the door. Or at least not the door Smoll used himself—and Mrs. Gallon used it too, he supposed, for she swept and grumbled everywhere about the house, so it was likely she swept and grumbled here too—and which a casual observer would maintain was the only door to the attic room. No, there had once been a door in the other corner. By day, seams in the wall showed wher...e boards had been used to seal it, and in Pinkney’s room below, short, staggered lines in the wallboards showed where steps so steep as to be almost a ladder had once angled up.MoreLess
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