Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine Annual, No. 3, 1973

“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.