The Satyr's Head: Tales of Terror Read Free Page A

random purchases. Maybe things out of the past simply fascinated him, no matter what they were, the way they do some kids and professional historians.
    By the time I ended up in the keep, it was pitch dark outside.
    I’d noticed as I sauntered along that those musical floorboards sounded twice as loud at night as they did in the daytime, and reflected that this made it virtually impossible for a thief or prowler to escape detection—and also impossible for me to sneak up on any such intruder. The place had two-way, built-in radar.
    I spent maybe half an hour in the keep, flashing my light over a really fascinating array of medieval artifacts, including some of those ingenious torture instruments that seem so to obsess the modern mind. This gallery was arranged a little more logically than most of the displays, and held the interest better.
    As I was starting back across the drawbridge-like corridor, I noticed that my footsteps as magnified by the squeaky flooring seemed to echo back at me from ahead even louder than I had noticed on the way over. Alerted by the narcotic I had taken, my subconscious must have noticed some inconsistency of rhythm or phasing in that echoed sound, for I found myself, for no discernible reason, stopping stock still.
    From far ahead, the rhythmic squeaking continued!
    Sweat popped out on me, though the evening was chilly. An intruder? Or had old Worthington returned? But he surely would have hailed me to avoid being shot at, in case I turned out to be a trigger-happy type. No, it must be a prowler, someone who had either broken in or secreted himself before the museum closed.
    I broke into a trot, heedless of noise, since stealth was impossible anyway. Once across the drawbridge, I stopped again to listen, and thought I had gained on the sound, which seemed to be coming from below. I fumbled my way down the stairs to the first floor and dashed ahead, using my flash discreetly where needed. As I paused outside the pitch-dark Remington gallery, I realized the sound was coming from just inside.
    I plunged into the gallery and swept my flash over the wine-red draperies, over the Indian paintings and bronzes of horses and cowboys. My ears told me the creaking was now at the opposite side of the narrow room and moving toward the arched exit. I ran on, directing the light through the archway; then, once more involuntarily, I halted.
    The squeaking of the floor progressed deliberately past the exit and into the gallery beyond, but my light revealed nothing visible to cause the sound!
    Now the sweat that had broken out on my body turned cold.
    Suddenly, the sound ceased entirely; but even as I moved forward to investigate, I heard it start again upstairs.
    Doggedly, I turned in my tracks, re-crossed the dark gallery, and puffed my way back up the stairs.
    The creaking now seemed diffused, echoing from a dozen ambiguous sources—as fast as I would track one down, it would evaporate and others cut in, some upstairs others again below.
    Finally my uncanny sensation dissolved before the ludicrousness of the situation. Here I was chasing noises all over a haunted house, stirring up more echoes with my clumsy footfalls than I could ever succeed in running down. I leaned against a display case, winded, and laughed out loud. As I did so, the crackling and creaking noises all over the building reached a peak, dwindled, and gradually ceased.
    I began to consider what might have caused this disconcerting visitation. The most logical answer was probably the cooling and shrinkage of the floorboards in the chilly night air. This could occur in random patterns of self-activating sound. Added to this, perhaps, might be the factor of my own weight traversing the floor, depressing certain boards which, as they cooled and shrank, sprang back in sequence, creating the effect of ghostly footsteps.
    Still in a moderate state of euphoria, I convinced myself that this was certainly the case, and began to feel ashamed of my