Guided Tour by William Garvin

Somewhere in that house a dead lady waited. Waited impatiently — for the next one to die...

At first sight the house did not look frightening at all. Anyone could see it was just another forlorn old structure of oak and stone, with a central turret, a slate roof and crumbling, moss-streaked terraces. In appearance at least, it seemed to be as prosaic and peaceful as a dozen other uninhabited country houses they’d passed on the drive from London. And seeing this at the very beginning, they were reassured.

When the wheezing relic of a Rolls finally panted to a halt squarely before the front entrance, there were audible sighs of relief from a couple of the passengers, as if both were thinking the same thing: this isn’t going to be so bad after all.

Even Mr. Norton, their driver-guide, contributed to the easing of tension with his first words.

“There she be, folks,” he said cheerfully, holding the limousine door open. “Endrayde House herself, and she never claimed no victims yet from her visitors, so don’t be scared before we even get inside.”

Two of the male passengers smiled dutifully as they stepped out — Randall, the American tire company executive, and the paunchy little professor from Canada named Wilkes — although the latter might have been amused only by Norton’s pronunciation.

The third passenger to emerge did not smile. His name was Mr. Sebastian, and he was a tall, startlingly thin man in his mid-thirties with dark eyes and an odd, elusive accent the others had not been able to identify.

“But it looks so — ordinary,” said Mrs. Randall, getting out last. “Not at all what I expected.”

“And what was that, Madam?” Mr. Sebastian asked.

She gazed at the house. In the deepening twilight it seemed subtly larger than it had only a moment before, with its edges and angles softened and its broad facade bulkier, more substantial.

“Oh, I suppose the conventional haunted house. Bats flying out the windows” — she gestured with a dramatic sweep of her arm — “and creaking shutters; that sort of thing. This place looks almost ordinary.”

Professor Wilkes nodded in agreement. He was conscious of a slight disappointment on his own part. As an occasional student of the occult, he had paid the stiff three-pound fee for this visit and endured an uncomfortable ride in a decrepit automobile in the hope that there would be something rewarding to see — exactly what, he didn’t know, but something. Certainly this simple old mausoleum did not promise much. So far, at any rate.

Shrugging, the professor decided to reserve judgment until they actually went inside, but he couldn’t shake off a wriggling, needling worry that he had been bilked.

“Let’s get this deal started,” Randall said.

“Advisable not to go in just yet,” Norton said with the deference due a paying customer. “We usually take a nice stroll through the garden. Do a little tour first, all around the outside of the place. A grand tour, you might say. Care to, folks?”

After an instant’s hesitation, Randall took his wife’s arm.

Five abreast, the group moved toward the left and the west end of the house. For a moment or two no one spoke, and the sole sound was their footsteps crunching across the terrace. As they walked on, only Mr. Sebastian looked at the house. He kept darting brief speculative glances at the windows, almost as if he expected to see something behind them.

Professor Wilkes cleared his throat. “May I ask why we wait until later to go in?”

“Just until dark, sir.”

“But why?”

“Nothing ever happens until then.” Norton hesitated. “The spirits, if that’s what they really are, just don’t show themselves any sooner.”

A sardonic expression flickered across Mr. Sebastian’s face. “And darkness also provides the appropriate atmosphere.”

“I think you’ve got something there,” Randall muttered.

“Stop being cynical, dear,” his wife said, giggling.

They were on the lawn now, with soil beneath their feet instead of flagstones.

It was a lawn in name only. The grass was wild and patchy, weeds twisted and curled underfoot, and there was not a single flower to be seen anywhere. Obviously the place had received no care for years. At the far end of the rear lawn stood a group of black, brooding trees, indistinguishable as to their kind in the fading light. It was utterly desolate wherever they looked: a gray and morbid square of ground that had had most of its healthy life seep away through long neglect, leaving only repulsive growth and the dregs of decap in its place.

It was easy to believe, walking there, that under the crust of the scrubby earth and hidden behind bark and rock lurked ugly molds and insects and God knew what venomous creatures of the night.

By the time they circled the house and returned to the front terrace, the darkness was almost complete and their mood had altered. They understood now why Norton had taken them around; no one could plunge into these surroundings and retain much gaiety.

“Is it time?” the professor asked in a subdued voice.

Norton detached himself from the group a few paces, then turned to face them. He was a small, compact man of fifty or so with blue eyes that managed to look both bored and quizzical.

“All right. We’re going in,” he said mechanically. “Remember, my employers, Ghostly Tours, do not make any guarantees you’ll see spirits or unusual happenings in this house. Also—”

“Have you ever seen ghosts here?” Mr. Sebastian asked him.

“I’ve seen — ghostlike sights.”

“Yeah?” said Randall. “How many times?”

Norton frowned. “Often. But I’m not representin’ what I saw as ghosts. Not makin’ no claims at all. If you folks see anything, you’ll have to judge for yourselves.”

He began walking toward the front door. They followed. Pulling a key from his pocket, he inserted it into the door and opened it. “No sudden movements, please. Try not to talk loud. And do not attempt under no circumstances to touch or grab whatever you might see.”

Norton’s English, like his pronunciation, was subject to sudden lapses.

They entered the silent darkness. Quickly Norton snapped on a small hooded flashlight, and the five of them eased their way through the bare entrance hall. At the east end of the corridor, double doors, slightly ajar, flanked an opening into more darkness.

Norton paused, then pushed the doors open wider. They went in.

It had been a study or library once, perhaps even a room that had known cheer. Now it was just a void, an unadorned emptiness that smelled of dust. There were no furnishings, no paintings, no carpets, no drapes. Faint, grayish oblongs to the right indicated where the narrow windows were, and the flashlight’s feeble gleam next played over what appeared to be a long-dead fireplace.

In this dismal room they were going to have to wait — the prospect was much more unpleasant than they would have thought possible only a half hour ago — and by an unuttered agreement they all gravitated toward the fireplace, prudently turning around to keep watch on the double doors.

“Hope you won’t mind being on your feet a bit,” Norton said quietly.

“I couldn’t sit anyway,” Mrs. Randall murmured.

Mr. Sebastian, his eyes narrowed in the gloom, seemed intensely interested in the room itself and examined as much of it as was possible in the dim light. The flooring, the ceiling, the blank walls—

“How many rooms are there in this place?” he asked suddenly.

“Eighteen, I believe, sir.”

“And how long has it been unoccupied?”

Norton didn’t answer at once. He aimed his flashlight at the floor across the room, just inside the doorway. It made a pale oval of light in the gloom.

“Some years. I’ve forgotten the exact number. Why do you ask?”

Mr. Sebastian made no reply.

“Could you tell us what happened here, Mr. Norton?” It was Mrs. Randall’s voice, hushed now and nervous.

“Yes, tell us,” the professor added. “Your associates at the Ghostly Tours office mentioned something about a man murdering his wife with a—”

“With poison. He’s supposed to have put it in water she drank. The people who bought this house later from his estate began to see, uh, the apparition of him bringing her the glass. She was said to be waiting in this room, and — well, they’d sometimes see him coming down the corridor.”

“The apparition?” Randall said. “Is that what you’ve seen here?”

“I don’t know what it was,” Norton said defensively.

How careful he is, Mr. Sebastian thought. Never quite comes out with a claim, only implies it. Always stays in the neutral zone between the credible and the bizarre.

Mr. Sebastian’s eyes narrowed. Soon he intended to find out the real truth for himself, no matter what Norton did or said.

“—happened to the murderer?” Mrs. Randall was whispering.

“Oh, I don’t believe he was ever caught, ma’am. They say the bloke escaped to the Continent.”

“Why did he poi—” Her voice choked off in an abrupt gasp.

Somewhere in that night-black house a door had creaked. They all heard it.

“What the hell was that?” Randall said thickly after a moment.

In the dimness Norton shook his head. The group fell into a taut silence, sliced only by their strained breathing.

What, indeed? Mr. Sebastian waited in alert expectancy. Was it a contrived sound effect? Or something else? He glanced sideways at the dark forms of his companions and felt a sharp throb of contempt. He was so far beyond them, so remote, so superior...

The professor with his amateur’s interest and academic sense of shame about that very interest, something to be hidden from his professional colleagues back home. The American couple, she predictably suggestible, and he all swelling fright behind his bluster, although he would never admit it. And Norton. The paid employee, playing his role with just the right amount of innuendo and commercial bonhomie, but still somehow an unknown quantity.

They were such blundering novices, so superficial in their responses, so ridiculously normal. Way out of their depths in these surroundings, of course. Even if there were — other things here, they wouldn’t understand what it meant, what it meant to him. Unless Norton himself...

“Down the hall,” Mrs. Randall whispered.

They stiffened and looked, eyes boring into the blackness.

“What was it?” Professor Wilkes asked. “I can’t see anything.”

She was too near total fright to answer; they could sense her trembling. Randall moved closer and put his arm around her.

“Shine that light down the hall, Mr. Norton,” the professor said somewhat sharply. “What good is it aimed at the floor?”

“Oh, no, sir, I’d rather not.”

“But why?”

“Wouldn’t be advisable. I’ve been here before, sir, you know.”

“Well?”

“Wise not to bother whatever’s there. If there is something.”

The professor looked meaningfully at Mr. Sebastian as if to establish a united front with him against Norton; then, noticing not even a muscle-quiver of sympathetic reaction, he turned away, shaking his head peevishly.

“Not exactly a very scientific approach, is it? What do you expect us to see, standing here like statues gaping into a cave? Three pounds — I didn’t pay three pounds to take eye exercises.”

Although angry, the professor remained in full control of himself: he was careful to keep his voice down.

“I’m sorry, sir,” Norton said calmly. “But I’m not going to lift this torch one bloody bit. In fact, I have a good mind to put it out entirely. Look now, folks,” he went on in the same unhurried tone. “Can you see it?”

Mr. Sebastian tensed. He had caught a glimpse of something, something faintly luminous that danced around the edges of his vision just for an instant before vanishing. A feverish spasm shook him. What if this house really war? What if he had dragged his way through a dozen countries on two continents, to find this?

“Oh, God,” Mrs. Randall quavered.

“Steady, ma’am.” Norton switched off his flashlight.

And now they all saw it distinctly, moving toward them through the long corridor. It had the blurry outline of a human shape without limbs, a grotesque glowing torso. Its motion was odd. The thing did not seem to be either walking or floating, but rather jerking forward in an almost hesitant way, nor did it appear to be touching the floor, although it was so dark they couldn’t be sure of that.

Yet its advance was steady despite the convulsive movements.

“Thorpe, for God’s sake don’t let it come in here,” Mrs. Randall whispered, clinging to her husband. Undoubtedly she would have fled if the thing had not been in the corridor, blocking the only way out.

“Probably won’t,” Norton said, pitching his voice to a normal level in order to calm her.

“What?” her husband asked.

“It probably won’t come in.”

The dark bulk that was the Randalls shuddered a little.

“What if it does?” one of them said.

“Don’t move. Don’t move or talk.”

It was only about twenty feet from the doorway now, and they realized that it was not becoming clearer and more distinct as it neared them; the thing remained a hazy phosphorescence without detail, shape, form. It was bigger, but no more identifiable. It looked like nothing on earth. And it made no sound at all.

“Fascinating.” Staring, the professor was awed and exultant. “But what the devil is it?”

They saw that it was between five and six feet in height. It seemed to have substance. There was a suggestion, a shadow behind its glowing surface, a shadowy aura of something tangible, something that could be grasped. But they still could not be positive; the thing was much too nebulous, as difficult to pin down as quicksilver.

Mrs. Randall whimpered.

“Stop it,” her husband murmured hoarsely.

Mr. Sebastian’s eyes were following its progress like an avid leech, never relaxing their grip. He was leaning forward in his eagerness to study it, lips drawn back against his teeth.

Suddenly he nodded. His lips loosened and formed a kind of smile. Then he straightened.

“Have you received your money’s worth now, Professor Wilkes?” he asked in that oddly accented voice.

Wilkes looked at him, puzzled. “Yes. Yes, I have.”

Mr. Sebastian’s saturnine features shifted into a smirk of amusement. “You are mistaken, sir. You have not had full value for your three pounds. So far. But you shall, you shall.” His teeth glistened in the dark.

“What are you talking about?” Norton asked Sebastian, obviously irritated.

He paid no attention. The thing was fake, he was sure of it now. And a rather amateurish kind of fake at that. The flashlight signals, phosphorous paint, trained employee inside the black cloth sack, scrupulously tied around the ankles and resulting in those jerky forward movements... Relief swept through him. He was free to take over, this virgin territory was his.

He shook with excitement. No one knew better than he how ferociously selfish the spirits were about big old mansions; they’d forced him out of house after house on three continents, houses he had discovered, only because he preferred to operate as a single. But this wonderful place was so remote and so recently available that it might take years before any of the others found out about it.

Mrs. Randall screamed as Mr. Sebastian dematerialized. They all stood frozen in terror, staring at him for an awful moment longer. Then the group fled down the corridor and out of the house, followed by a clumsy, frantic, hobbling figure inside a black bag.

But the creature that had been called Mr. Sebastian didn’t even notice. It was floating from room to room in quiet ecstasy, inspecting its new quarters.