My heart was full of music as I wandered the hours away by the bank of a brook, on my estate, watching the sun on the face of the chuckling water. A bird came to circle me, flew unafraid through the aura of gladness about me. The delicate tip of a wing brushed my wrist with the touch of the first secret kiss from my hands. The singing the filled me was part of the nature of laughing, the running of water, the sound of the wind in the reed by the edge of the stream. And as I spake, into my face there came light, as reflected from a silver flame; my long brown hair swelled ampler, in display full golden; in my eyes a brighter day dawned blue and full of love. This was a World without hatred. As it grew dark, I went home. Then retiring to my rooms, I sat down by the light of one lamp and devoured what I could of my century’s thinking, and at last I lay flat upon the bed, staring at the ceiling, overwhelmed by the vigor of the return to the classical, by the passionate enthusiasm for the old Greek and Roman poets, and by the faith in sensuality which this age seemed to hold. I enjoyed the beauty of the old handwritten codexes. Of course, this is why, even after the printing press was still established, my libraries boasted of handwritten books. While waiting for the servants to return from their hunt, I went to the library to catching up on a little reading. However, when the party failed to return by midnight, I began to fear the worst. I stumbled out of my quarters; my mouth was very dry, and my heart was thumping painfully. I descended the stairs. And while sitting alone at a table, from the corner of my eye, I saw the curtain twitch at an upper window. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
Suddenly, men where shouting, canvas flapping, wheels rumbling, and I could hear horses neighing and pawing frantically. Overjoyed to hear them, I leapt to my feet just as the doors opened and the party entered. And although there was no wind at that hour of the night, one did arise not long afterward, but there was absolutely none then. Even the dry tips of the lingering hedge-mustard, grey and blighted, and the fringe on the roof of the standing democrat-wagon were unstirred. And yet amid that tense, godless clam the high bare boughs of all the trees in the yard were moving. They were twitching morbidly and spasmodically, clawing in convulsive and epileptic madness at the moonlit clouds; scratching impotently in the noxious air as if jerked by some alien and bodiless line of linkage with subterrene horrors writhing and struggling below the black roots. Not a man breathed for several seconds. Then a cloud of darker depth passed over the moon, and the silhouette of clutching branches faded out momentarily. At this there was a general cry; muffled with awe, but husky and almost identical from every throat. For the terror had not faded with the silhouette, and in a fearsome instant of deeper darkness, I saw wriggling at that treetop height a thousand tiny points of faint and unhallowed radiance, tipping each bough like the fire of St. Elmo or the flames that came down on the apostles’ heads at Pentecost. It was a monstrous constellation of unnatural light, like a glutted swarm of corpse-fed fireflies dancing hellish sarabands over an accursed marsh; and its colour was a nameless intrusion. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
All the while the shaft of phosphorescence from the well was getting bright and brighter, brining to my mind a sense of doom and abnormality which far outraced any image my conscious mind could form. It was no longer shining out, it was pouring out; and as the shapeless stream of unplaceable colour left the well it seemed to flow directly into the sky. The shivering men walked to the front door. However, to my consternation they made no sound and passed straight through the furniture and walls. That is when I noticed the growing luminosity of the trees. With the moments the shining of the trees increased, while their restless branches seemed to strain more and more toward verticality. The wood of the well-sweep was shining now. The phosphorescence had begun to pervade the entire mansion. It glowed on the broad-planked floor and the carpet, and shimmered over the sashes of the stained-glass windows. It ran up and down the exposed corner-post, coruscated about the shelf and mantel, and infected the very doors and the furniture. Each minute saw it strengthened. I walked and stumbled as in a dream. All of Llanada Villa was shining with the hideous unknown blend of colour; trees, buildings, and even such grass and herbage as had not been wholly changed to lethal grey brittleness. The boughs were all straining skyward, tipped with tongues of foul light. Then without warning the hideous thing shot vertically up toward the sky like a meteor, leaving behind no trail and disappearing through a round and curiously regular hole in the clouds before I could grasp or cry out. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
I could not forget that sight, as I stared blankly at the stars of Cygnus, Deneb twinkling above the other, where the unknown colour had melted into the Milky Way. However, my gaze was the next moment called swiftly to Earth by the crackling in the valley. It was just that. Only a wooden ripping and crackling, as so many others in the valley vowed. Yet the outcome was the same, for in one feverish, kaleidoscopic instant there burst up from Llanada Villa a gleamingly eruptive cataclysm of unnatural sparks and substance; blurring the glace of the few who saw it, and sending forth to the zenith a bombarding cloudburst of such coloured and fantastic fragments as our Universe must needs disown. Through quickly re-closing vapours, I flowed the great morbidity that had vanished, and in another second they had vanished too. Behind and below was only a darkness to which I dared not return, and all about was a mounting wind which seemed to sweep down in black, frore gusts from interstellar space. It shrieked and howled, and lashed the fields and distorted the fruit orchards in a mad cosmic frenzy. Later I was to learn that the hunting party had been ambushed and killed. Now on the 16th of January, the anniversary of the hunt, the ghostly party can be seen riding toward Llanada Villa. Apart from this, a housemaid’s ghost in a blue dress haunts the mansion, gliding silently along the corridors, while the spirit of Dieter Hulsmann, my butler haunts the Observational Tower where he starved to death, after learning of the death of the housemaid, whom he was fondly in love with. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
A group called the European Mission Society accused me of using the “arts of the Devil” and of being in league with “demonic forces” with which I supposedly intended “to perplex humanity.” With this added shock, I was crushed forever with a brooding fear I dared not even mention for many years to come. And from inside of the mansion, I had seen something feebly rise, only to sink down again upon the place from which the great shapeless horror had shot into the sky. I believe there must be an older race than man, spawned from ancient seed in times before ours, perhaps on planets that have gone to dust, and so horrible to humans that when they are discovered the discoverers keep still about it—forget them again as quickly as they can. And they go back to time immemorial. I saw things—and knew things—horrible, wild things I cannot quite remember—visited unbelievable places, looked backward through my memory of creatures that have manifested in the walls of my home. Sometimes gloominess falls upon me like a material pall. What writhing souls, what terrors, what unrest, what madness roams these halls! If only I would have been spared! Something had cast an immediate spell of depression over me. The air of the room grew heavy and close. The open casement and the out-of-doors seemed to beckon me. I walked to the window, thrust the curtain aside, stood there. I am not addicted to nocturnal strolls or late meanderings before my bed; yet now, curiously enough I wanted to leave my home and walk the darkened fields. I paced the room nervously. The clock on the mantel pushed its ticks slowly through the quiet. It was a brilliant moonlight night. The great chimes of the Observational Tower were sounding midnight. Trying as I could to erase from my memory the queer experience which I just had, but I could see shadows of men lurking on the grounds. How long I sat there in the quiet, I do not know. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
And to my holy sacrifice invite, the power who reigns in deepest hell and night; I call Einodian Hecate, lovely dame, of Earthly, water, and celestial frame, sepulchral, in a saffron veil arrayed, pleased with dark ghosts that wander thru the shade. Have I not reason, beldams as you are, saucy and overbold? How did you dare to trade and traffic with Macbeth in riddles and affairs of death; and I, the mistress of your charms, the close contriver of all harms, was never called to bear my part, or show the glory of our art? And, which is worse, all you have done hath been but for a wayward son, spiteful and wrathful; who, as others do, loves for his own ends, not for you. But make amends now: get you gone, and at the pit of Acheron meet me i’ the morning: thither he will come to know his destiny: your vessels and your spells provide, your charms, and every thing beside. I am for th’ air; this night I’ll spend unto a dismal and a fatal end: great business must be wrought ere noon: upon the corner of the moon, there hangs a vaporous drop profound; I’ll catch it ere it come to ground: and that, distill’d by magic sleights, shall raise such artificial sprites, as, by the strength of their illusion, shall draw him on to his confusion: he shall spurn fate, scorn death, and bear his hopes ‘bove wisdom, grace, and fear; and you all know security is mortals’ chiefest enemy. Hark! I am call’d; my little spirit see, sits in a foggy cloud, and stays for me. Come, let’s make haste; she’ll soon be back again. And we fairies, that do run by the triple Hecate’s team from the presence of the sun, following darkness like a dream. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
Although The Winchester Mystery House is usually closed at 1.00am, police officers and passersby say that someone or something walks around in the mansion at night and often turns on all the lights. Numerous individuals have seen the image of a man hanging from a scaffold on the east side of the mansion. According to legend, 20 years before Mrs. Sarah L. Winchester purchased the home, an outlaw was hanged on the land. The site where the hanging allegedly took place was built over. One of the tour guides was badly shaken by something he had seen on the upper floor, but he refused to discuss it. The ghost of the outlaw haunted the mansion with dreadful shrikes. As such, a priest was brought in to exorcise the ghost, which he did with the help of a large black bible which he left in the mansion. However, years later, after the ghost had been long forgotten, the bible was taken away for repair and immediately the shrieking resumed. The bible was hastily returned, and the fearful shrieking ceased. The outlaw’s ghost still haunts the mansion, his broken neck and limp arm by his side as he stalks the lonely depths of the second floor.
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Randolph Harris II International 