Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

Dreams and Dream Stories by Anna Bonus Kingsford
page 66 of 288 (22%)
no one would thenceforth be sacrificed.

Hearing all this, and being somewhat of the knight-errant order,
C. and I determined to face the danger, and, if possible, deliver
the town from the enchantment. We were assured that the attempt
would be vain, for that it had already been many times made, and
the Devils of the place were always triumphant. They had the power,
we were told, of hallucinating the senses of their victims; we
should be subjected to some illusion, and be fatally deceived.
Nevertheless, we were resolved to try what we could do, and in order
to acquaint ourselves with the scene of the ordeal, we visited the
place in the daytime. It was a gloomy-looking building, consisting
of several vast rooms, filled with lumber of old furniture, worm-eaten
and decaying; scaffoldings, which seemed to have been erected for the
sake of making repairs and then left; the windows were curtainless,
the floors bare, and rats ran hither and thither among the rubbish
accumulated in the corners. Nothing could possibly look more desolate
and gruesome. We saw no pictures; but as we did not explore every
part of the rooms, they may have been there without our seeing them.

We were further informed by the people of the town that in order
to visit the rooms at night it was necessary to wear a special costume,
and that without it we should have no chance whatever of issuing
from them alive. This costume was of black and white, and each
of us was to carry a black stave. So we put on this attire,--which
somewhat resembled the garb of an ecclesiastical order,--and when
the appointed time came, repaired to the haunted house, where,
after toiling up the great staircase in the darkness, we reached
the door of the haunted apartments to find it closed. But light
was plainly visible beneath it, and within was the sound of voices.
DigitalOcean Referral Badge