Stephen Thomas Bedford found himself in
awful place when the weather turned unexpectedly bad. He was walking
along a desolate portion of the Old Baltimore Pike and was still nearly
ten miles from his house. The blue sky above him changed rapidly into
morose darkness and Bedford knew that he was in for a rough time. He picked
up his pace and began scouting the roadside for shelter. Off in the
distance he spied an old farmhouse and his jog turned into a sprint as
he made his way down the pike. His premonition proved true and within
moments the rain began falling and soon it developed into a downpour.
A short while later he arrived at the farmhouse and the place appeared
abandoned—no bother, he thought, he could at least get out of the rain
by standing under the porch roof. As he turned up the narrow lane leading
to the house the rain became relentless. Deafening thunder began ripping
through the air and lightning was now striking the ground all around him.
The wind was so strong that he could barley move against it as he fought
his way through the thickening mud. The sky above him was now completely
black.
As he had suspected the house was completely abandoned. Every
window had been broken and not a strip of paint remained on the weathered
clapboards. The front door was open, swinging back and forth in the
wind. Without hesitation Bedford stepped inside the old house and
pulled the door closed behind him. The house was completely dark
until lightning illuminated the room. During the lightning flashes
Bedford saw that the walls and ceiling were completely void of plaster.
The wind howled through the broken windows and remnants of tattered curtains
flapped in the breeze. Floorboards were missing everywhere and so
Bedford had to carefully navigate his way toward the rear of the house
to get away from the broken windows and rain. Much to his great surprise
he found candles on a fireplace mantle and several matches sitting inside
a jar. He turned his back against the wind and lit the longest of
the candles. Shielding the flame with his hand he then moved through
the house, seeking a spot where water wasn’t dripping from the ceiling.
He noticed as he wandered through the house that it was cluttered with
furnishings. The furniture, although completely covered with cobwebs,
was arranged as if someone were still living there. When he entered
the kitchen he found the dinner table set with plates, cups and flatware,
with everything lying under a thick layer of dust. The skeleton of
a game bird sat upon the table—long since stripped of all its meat by vermin.
A spinning wheel stood idle near the hearth and iron pots and pans lay
neatly by the fireplace. They, too, were covered with cobwebs.
Bedford began to feel very uneasy. He wished dearly that the rain
would stop so that he could leave this eerie place. The rain outside,
however, showed no signs of letting up and so he knew that he was going
to be stuck there for a while.
In the kitchen Bedford found a letter laying on a small desk.
Next to the letter laid a pen and dried-up ink bottle. These objects,
like everything else in the house, were covered with dust. Bedford
brushed away the dust and picked up the letter. Holding it close
to his candle he saw that it had been written and dated nearly fifty years
prior. The letter was never finished; it had been abandoned in mid
sentence. Bedford knew better than to pry into personal matters and so
he did not read the letter. He was, however, very puzzled—what could
have happened in this house fifty years ago that would have caused its
occupants to abandon it in such haste, as it appeared that they had done?
Finally, the rain began to let up; the storm appeared to be passing.
Bedford quickly collected his things and moved to the front of the house
so that he could get out of that place as soon as possible.
“How odd,” he said to himself when he tried to open the front door—it
was locked! He remembered closing the door when he entered the house
but he surely didn't lock it. What was even stranger was that the
lock required a key and there was no key in the keyhole.
“How very odd, indeed,” he thought and began searching the floor for
the key. It was then that he noticed that the floor was dry.
The floor was also intact—had he not side-stepped missing floorboards
earlier? To add more distress to his present situation, Bedford
realized that the walls were bright, clean, plastered and freshly painted. He
distinctly remembered seeing exposed lathe boards earlier.
“This is absurd!” he thought. The room became brighter as the
sun cleared the clouds and then Bedford observed that the windows were all intact—were
they not all broken? He quickly retraced his steps back into the
kitchen; and it now appeared clean and well kept. He tried furiously
to open a kitchen window but it wouldn't budge. He frantically ran
back into the front room and tried to open the front windows—and they, too, wouldn’t budge. Something was terribly wrong!
He looked around the room for anything to break the window and grabbed
a brass candlestick holder. He threw it as hard as he could toward a window and it struck the glass and fell harmlessly to the floor.
He then picked up a large ladder-back chair and attacked the window with
all his might, splintering the muttons and sashes but not even cracking
the glass.
“Dear God in Heaven!” he cried as he threw the chair to the floor.
Bedford was now in a genuine panic. He ran through the house looking
for an exit—any exit, but every window and door in the house was locked.
Then the ceiling begin to creek—someone or something was upstairs.
His heart began to pound. The footsteps above him began walking slowly
across the floor. Bedford grabbed for a poker leaning against the
fireplace but his hands shook so violently that he couldn’t grip the iron
rod and it fell harmlessly to the floor.
The footsteps were now descending the stairs. One-by-one, the
stairs began to creak. Bedford began to sob uncontrollably as he cowered in a corner.
The footsteps kept coming. Bedford covered his face with his hands and shut his eyes. Whoever
or whatever it was had just entered the kitchen where Bedford was hiding.
Then there was silence. A long silence. Bedford slowly opened
his eyes and the room slowly came back into focus. It now appeared
as it did when he first laid eyes upon it—except now pale sunlight was
filtering through the dirty and broken windows, illuminating the dust and
cobwebs that covered everything. He stood up, walked into the front
room and it, too, was decayed by ages of neglect. He stepped across
the missing floorboards and quickly exited the house. He never stopped
running until he arrived at his home.
The friends and family of Stephen Thomas Bedford knew that something
terrible had happened to him on that trip to Baltimore for he returned
a different man. Never to anyone’s knowledge did Stephen Thomas Bedford
ever travel to Baltimore again—nor ever set foot upon the Old Baltimore Pike.
