The Spook With the Shattered Skull
A G H O S T STO R Y Founded on the Imagination
C r ^ r ) In the haunts of a deep and sequestered wood lived a girl and her parents in a decayed and mouldy old mansion .
The girl had but recently returned from Crofton House , where she had learned the ways of the world and all that is necessary to a young woman of respectable parents . She was pretty and pleasant and it was a matter of regret to all her beloved friends that she would have to retire to primitive life for the sake of some old family tradition .
One day a stranger , with a hole in his left cheek , called at the forlorn and world-forgotten household , and . without meaning or explanation , demanded that the girl should walk with him through the lonely and overgrown forest paths .
She felt compelled to obey him against all her forboding fears , so she walked beside him in the deepening twilight .
Soon she returned to the gruesome , awful mansion , having been forsaken by her companion at the darkest corner of a cave .
After glancing at the calendar , which read October 13 , and at the black cat , which arched its back and whose emerald orbs glistened in the deep dusk , she passed on to the living room . There she was struck dumb with horror , for on the cold grey hearthstone lay the dead form of her mother , with her basket of herbs beside her , and sitting in the frigid , awful , horrible , ghastly posture of death was her old father , underneath the glistening gaze and gruesome grin of all the old family portraits .
After this a mystic spell enshrouded the haunted home . The only food to be found in the house had been tasted by the ghosts , and fell from the lips of the bereft girl like poison . The furniture and fixtures became crumbling and moulded , while the cloth was mildewed and rotten . The very insects that infested the place were transparent , and ants , spiders , beetles and other pests flew from rotting corner to damp crevice with no assistance whatever .
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