The Empty House and Other Ghost Stories, page 50 by Algernon Blackwood
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really happens; it's only thinkin' like."
Shorthouse was beside himself. He felt ready to pick her up and drop her over the banisters, candle and all.
"Look there," he said, pointing at her within an inch of her blinking eyes with the fingers that had touched the oozing blood; "look there, my good woman. Is that only thinking?"
She stared a minute, as if not knowing what he meant.
"I guess so," she said at length.
He followed her eyes, and to his amazement saw that his fingers were as white as usual, and quite free from the awful stain that had been there ten minutes before. There was no sign of blood. No amount of staring could bring it back. Had he gone out of his mind? Had his eyes and ears played such tricks with him? Had his senses become false and perverted? He dashed past the landlady, out into the passage, and gained his own room in a couple of strides. Whew! . . . the partition no longer bulged. The paper was not torn. There was no creeping, crawling thing on the faded old carpet.
"It's all over now," drawled the metallic voice behind him. "I'm going to bed again."
He turned and saw the landlady slowly going downstairs again, still shading the candle with her hand and peering up at him from time to time as she moved. A black, ugly, unwholesome object, he thought, as she disappeared into the darkness below, and the last flicker of her candle threw a queer-shaped shadow along the wall and over the ceiling.
Without hesitating a moment, Shorthouse threw himself into his clothes and went out of the house. He preferred the storm to the horrors of that top floor, and he walked the streets till daylight. In the evening he told the landlady he would leave next day, in spite of her assurances that nothing more would happen.
"It never comes back," she said--"that is, not after he's killed."
Shorthouse gasped.
"You gave me a lot for my money," he growled.
"Waal, it aren't my show," she drawled. "I'm no spirit medium. You take chance