CHAPTER 5 : Echoes Of Doom
“DID YOU HEAR THAT?” Pete exclaimed.“The
Phantom told us to leave. Come on, some things I
don’t have to be told twice.”
“Wait!” His partner grabbed his wrist.
“Wait!” the ghostly voice said, more loudly.
“As I thought,” Jupiter stated.“Merely an echo.
This hallway is very high, you will notice, and it is
circular. Circular walls make fine reflecting surfaces
for sounds. The original owner, Mr. Terrill, built it
this way on purpose. He called this Echo Hail, or the
Echo Room.”
“Doom!” the echo seemed to whisper in Pete’s ear.
However, Jupe was right. You couldn’t let an echo
scare you.
“I’m just kidding,” Pete said airily.“I knew it was
an echo all along.” And he laughed loudly to prove it.
Instantly weird laughter rang out round them. The
very walls seemed to laugh Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Ho-
ho-ho-ha-ho! The laughter died away into a final eerie
chuckle, and Pete gulped.
“Did I do that?” he whispered.
“You did it,” his companion whispered back.“But
please don’t do it again.”
“Don’t worry,” Pete whispered.“Not in a million
years.”
“Come over here.” Jupiter pulled him to one side.
“Now we can talk,” he said.“The echo only works
when you stand in the exact middle of the hallway. I
wanted to test it as a possible source of the fearsome
manifestations mentioned by various observers in the
past.”
“You could have warned me,” Pete said.
“Echo Hall was clearly mentioned in the research
Bob did for us,” Jupiter stated.“You just didn’t read
it carefully.”
“I was reading that part about the family from the
East who spent one evening here and then were never
seen again,” Pete told him.
“They may have just gone back east,” Jupiter said.
However, it seems to be true that no one has spent an
entire night in this building for at least twenty years.
Our job is to learn what frightened those people. If it
was a genuine phantom or spirit―a supernatural
presence of the former owner, Stephen Terrill―we
will make an important scientific discovery.”
“What else could it be?” Pete asked.
He was flashing his torch round the circular stone
walls of the room. A staircase wound up to the floor
above, but he had no intention whatever of going up
that staircase. There were decaying tapestries on the
wall, with carved wooden benches placed beneath
them. In several shallow niches or alcoves stood suits
of armour.
A number of large pictures hung on the wall. He
let his light flick from one to another. They all seemed
to be portraits of the same man in different costumes.
In one he was an English nobleman. In others, he was
a hunchback, a circus freak, a one-eyed pirate.
Pete decided they were all pictures of the original
owner, Stephen Terrill, in some of his famous movie
roles from the silent-movie days.
“I have been testing my own sensations,” Jupiter
interrupted Pete’s survey of the hall,“and at the
moment I do not feel afraid. Merely a bit keyed up.”
“Me too,” Pete agreed.“Since those crazy echoes
quit, it just seems like an old house.”
“Usually,” his partner said thoughtfully,“it takes a
little time for Terror Castle to have an effect upon
those who enter it. In the beginning they feel only a
vague uneasiness. This is followed by a sense of great
nervousness, which progresses to sheer terror.”
Pete only half heard the remark. He was flashing
his torch over the pictures on the wall again when he
saw something that gave him a sudden sensation of
uneasiness followed immediately by a great
nervousness.
The single eye of the one-eyed pirate in the picture
was staring at him!
The bad eye was covered by a black patch. But the
good one was definitely looking at him. It had a
luminous reddish shine to it, and as Pete stared he saw
it blink.
“Jupe!” The word came from him like a croak.
“That picture. It’s looking at us!”
“What picture?”
“That one.” Pete aimed the beam of his torch at the
pirate picture.“I saw it looking at us.”
“Merely an illusion,” his partner said.“When a
painter paints a subject with his eyes looking straight
ahead, they seem to be looking at you no matter
where you are in the room.”
“But it isn’t a painted eye!” Pete protested.“It’s a
real eye. It’s a painted picture with a real eye!”
“I’m afraid you’re wrong,” Jupiter said.“It’s
definitely a painted eye. But we’ll go closer and see.”
He walked towards the picture, and Pete, after
hesitating, followed. Now they were both shining their
torches on the picture, and Pete could see that Jupiter
was right―it was a painted eye. Very real looking but
it didn’t glisten the way a real eye would.
“I guess I was wrong,” he admitted.“But I
certainly thought I saw it blink ... Hey!” The word
was just a gasp.“Do you feel what I feel?”
“I feel cold,” the other lad said, sounding puzzled.
“We’ve entered a zone of low temperature. Cold spots
are very frequently found in haunted houses.”
“Then this one is haunted,” Pete Crenshaw told
him, his teeth chattering.“I feel a cold draught as if a
whole parade of ghosts were rushing by. I’ve got
goose-flesh. I’m scared! That’s all. I’m just plain
scared!”
He stood there for a moment longer, trying to
control his chattering teeth. From nowhere the icy
draught flowed over him. Then he saw faint, wispy
tendrils of mist begin to form in the air as if a spirit
might be materialising. At the same instant the uneasy
feeling that had become extreme nervousness mounted
to sheer terror.
He turned. He didn’t intend to turn. His feet did it
for him. They took him straight out the main entrance
and down the old drive way, running like a deer.
Right beside him was Jupiter Jones. It was the first
time Pete had ever seen his partner run away from
anything so fast.
“I thought you said your legs took orders from
you,” he called.
“They do,” cried Jupe.“I ordered them to run.”
And run they both did, in great strides. Their
torches made wild bobbing paths of light in front of
them as they left the silent, brooding bulk of Terror
Castle and that awful, uncontrollable feeling of
creeping, crawling fear.
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