The Travelling Bag

by Susan Hill

  ‘I have heard that … that you have some remarkable powers. I do not fully understand what they are.’

  ‘I am not a spiritualist medium, Lady Webb, if that is what you have been told. I do not contact the dead, nor ever claim or pretend that I do. But sometimes I am given a view into the past – in a series of scenes that come to my mind. These are scenes of events that have taken place in the past, sometimes recent, sometimes more distant, but which I can see again. It is not easy to explain – indeed, I do not really understand it myself. I do not mean that I am able to conjure up past events in which we have been involved, in memory. We can all do that. What I see is something I have not experienced myself.’

  ‘So – you could somehow see what happened to my husband, see it happening? You …’

  I raised my hand. ‘I can only try. And often I fail. I offer no guarantees.’

  ‘But you will try? Please tell me that you will try. Whatever you require, money, yes, of course, I will pay whatever you ask, now.’

  ‘I do not ask for any payment, Lady Webb. I have the good fortune to be a man of private means. I work because I am sometimes able to help others. I could never be idle. All I need is an object that belonged to your husband and was in some way close to him – a pocket watch, for example. In itself it is unimportant and can do nothing, it simply acts as a focus for my thoughts.’

  She lifted her hands from the bag she was holding on her knee. ‘Take this. I had some idea that you would want an item he was attached to and he used it whenever he went away–he had done so since he got it from his father, as a young man. It was still perfectly serviceable, just well-used, he always said, when I tried to persuade him that he needed a new one. He had it with him at the Tabor Club, it contained his night things and so forth, though when found it was empty.’

  I took the bag and set it on my desk. It was a brown travelling bag, rather like a doctor’s Gladstone bag, the leather a little cracked, the handles worn and repaired. I looked carefully inside but there was nothing.

  ‘Might this be useful to you?’

  ‘It will do perfectly.’

  I asked her to return in two days time, at five o’clock. I might have asked her to come back the following day, as I planned to work on the case that night – I always find it best to make an immediate start, if I find that a case is ‘warm’. One of the reasons I do not take on many is that they so often feel quite ‘cold’ to me.

  But Sir Silas Webb’s travelling bag was not cold. I had felt a heat around it the instant I touched it, and a charge, as if it gave off some mild static electricity. I do not employ any trickery and there would be no point in stagey effects as I always work alone, in the privacy of my study.

  After supper, I placed the travelling bag on the table in front of me and settled back in my chair. The curtains were draw against the night and I had a single lamp switched on in the corner. I silenced the telephone. And then I simply sat still and focused on the bag, not only my gaze but my whole concentration, as if I were directing a beam of light at it. I sometimes wait like this for twenty or thirty minutes without anything happening at all. My energy and concentration are then depleted and I must go away, returning to focus on the object for another session the following day.

  Sometimes, the moment I begin again I will feel an immediate connection, though I have no idea why a delay should have been necessary. If I feel nothing this second time, I do not try again – it would be pointless. Occasionally, I know at once that something is going to happen and this was the case when I sat down in front of the travelling bag. I felt a slight tingling in my fingers which quickly extended up my arms. At the same time, my vision, which is normally perfect, became a little cloudy, as if I were looking at the bag through a veil or a fine mist.

  I waited quietly and soon this cleared, and at once I seemed to be looking, not directly at the bag itself, but at something in the space just before it. It came closer, it became clearer, and then the bag faded into the background. The room itself seemed to recede. It is like watching an old-fashioned magic lantern show, yet it is both more lucid than that and more lifelike. It seems to surround me and then I know that I am watching not a film or any other sort of performance. I am watching real life. The past is being replayed but I am not part of it, I remain firmly in my own world and place and time.

  I was looking into a bedroom in some small hotel – there were no ornaments or any of the other paraphernalia of a lived-in home. It was very neat and tidy and the furniture was simple – a mahogany wardrobe, a table and upright chair, a bed and bedside cabinet. There was a washbasin with mirror above in the far corner, a shelf containing a few of the sort of old books which are often placed in such a room but rarely read – a bible, a London companion, and two or three leather-bound novels by Dickens and Sir Walter Scott. A man’s jacket was hanging up and a pair of shoes was beside the door, waiting to be put out for polishing. The leather travelling bag, the same bag on which my eyes had first focused, was on the bed.

  As I watched, the door opened, and a man wearing evening clothes came in. I recognised him, from occasional newspaper photographs, as Sir Silas Webb. He was not tall but he had a pompous way of carrying himself which made him appear so. His face was smooth, and his nose and mouth had a faintly sneering set. His complexion was flushed, as if he had enjoyed several glasses of good port. I watched as he went to the mirror, undid his black tie and took the studs out of his collar. He then went to the travelling bag and put it down on the table. It was at this exact point that there crept over me a sense of claustrophobia, and an increasing fear, which made me sit back in my chair. My heart was beating too fast and sweat beads were forming on my forehead and across the back of my neck, and all of this increased as I watched the man open the travelling bag by the top clasp.

  As the two sides spread wide, I caught my breath in horror. Moths had begun to emerge from the bag’s interior, at first one or two small, pale moths and then flights of them, becoming larger and darker, with ugly furred heads and queerly patterned wings, streaked and marked as if with small faces and skulls and tiny glaring eyes. They poured out and as they did so, flew around Silas Webb’s head, pattered against his hands and face. Some of them made for the lamp, while others seemed to flutter about like blind things, as they emerged, rising to the ceiling and touching it before falling down again in the dark corners of the room, onto the top of the wardrobe, but always returning, to fly about the head of the stricken man. He beat his arms madly to try to brush them away, and all the time his face was working with terror, and ghastly pale. I heard him moan, then cry out for help, then scream, I saw him spin round and back, shouting hoarsely now, as the great moths and their soft, powdery bodies and endlessly fluttering, batting wings, seemed to be attacking his very person.

  My own throat was dry and the sweat was running down my face. The scene appeared to last for several hours and yet it was over in moments. Webb put his hand up to his breast, his face contorted with pain, and then crashed to the floor. The moths dispersed harmlessly into the folds of the curtains, and now there appeared to be far fewer of them, and they were smaller in size than they had looked when they were pouring out of the travelling bag. Several camouflaged themselves against the wallpaper but then seemed to dissolve into it, until they were all gone and the room was deathly silent and still.

  I came to myself as the picture before me shrivelled to a single dot, before disappearing. I do not fall into any sort of ‘trance’ on these occasions, I am fully conscious and awake, but I have been focusing intently on one thing, and when it is no longer there, I have a moment’s disorientation.

  What I had just seen was horrible. A man had died of shock – heart failure indeed – because of what was surely some prank, such as schoolboys might play. But schoolboys mean no harm and if such harm as this ever came about as a result of their tricks, they would be appalled.

  My concern was that although I now knew what had happened to Sir Silas Webb, I had no i
dea why or who could have played such a vile game. I also knew that I would almost certainly never find out.

  I now had the choice of telling Lady Webb the truth, thereby distressing her beyond measure, to little purpose, or of taking my story to the police. I had friends in the force to whom I could go privately and who knew of my work, but they would be obliged to ask me for evidence and I had none. I could also undertake a wearisome and probably fruitless private investigation.

  I decided quickly that I would do none of these things. I would tell Lady Webb that I had discovered enough to be sure that her husband had indeed died of heart failure – ‘natural causes’. It was the plain truth. For my own interest and satisfaction, I intended to do just one more thing, though I was doubtful that it would yield any result.

  I wondered, when I was going over the events in my mind late into that night, what had happened to the moths. Surely a great many would have been found by the cleaners. But they would probably have brushed and swept the room even more vigorously than usual, in the light of the sudden death that had occurred there. Moths do not live very long and their fragile bodies would have crumbled into dust.

  I half-thought of asking to see into the room that Webb had died in. but what reason could I have given? I had certainly no wish to seem like a ghoul.

  Six

  I had signalled for more brandy for us both. We needed it. I let the fiery liquid slip down my throat before saying, in as relaxed a manner as I could, ‘And there you have it, Tom. Something and nothing, perhaps. But you asked for my most unusual and intriguing story and, perhaps because we are within the four walls of the club again, that was the one which came to mind immediately.’

  ‘Horrible,’ Tom said with a shudder, and drinking deeply. ‘What a dastardly, wicked trick to play. I would hope the man has not slept easily in his bed since he learned of its terrible outcome. What did you say to Lady Webb, as a matter of interest?’

  ‘Exactly as I had decided.’

  ‘And she accepted it?’

  ‘She appeared to do so. I have heard nothing from her since.’

  ‘And what of the travelling bag?’

  ‘She took it away. I might have suggested that she destroy it, except that she had stressed how devoted her husband had been to it. She clasped it to her and I daresay it has become a “sacred relic” – women tend towards the keeping of these memento mori, you know.’

  We left the club to go our separate ways home. Tom thanked me for entertaining him with ‘a most disturbing tale. I wonder how well I shall sleep tonight?’

  ‘You asked for it, my dear fellow, you asked for it.’

  I saw him into a cab but then set off to walk the mile or so to my own house. It was a crisp, starry night and a full moon sailed over the dome of St Paul’s, a thin, sparkling trace of rime around it. The streets were quiet and my mind turned once again to my story.

  From what I had heard since, Sir Silas had not been especially likeable but he deserved no less than any other man and I sent up a heartfelt prayer for the peace and rest of his soul. There was nothing more that I could do.

  Seven

  The Conclusion: Walter Craig’s Story

  It is many years since the death of Silas Webb, which gave me no joy or satisfaction, however much I had come to despise the man for having achieved worldly honours and acclaim via the work of another. He had stolen, cheated, lied and dissembled and I had become more and more embittered and resentful. And, alongside those feelings, dark and hot as boiling tar, the desire for personal revenge had swollen, like a monstrous abscess within me, until I could bear it no longer and felt that I must lance it by some violent action.

  I had meant to terrify the man, to give him a hellish hour, to leave him an ashen-faced, stuttering wreck, with flayed nerves and a terror of what might be to come. But as God is my witness, I had never meant to harm let alone to kill him. It had never occurred to me that he might drop down dead from overwhelming fear. When I heard that he had died suddenly of heart failure, I was shaken out of myself, appalled, and quite sure of my own guilt, certain that it was my actions that had made his heart stop. I could say nothing to anyone. The Coroner’s verdict had been given and the obsequies performed. Only I knew. Only I knew what Webb had done to me. I would have to carry that secret with me, along with my own guilt, until the end of my days.

  I might have prayed that, somehow, I would get my just deserts. I did not, if only because I had no belief in any power to whom I might appeal. My conviction was that I would die, as Webb had died, of a sudden clutching at the heart – but that was a mere superstition. I had no idea how my death would come. And so I carried on my dull and insignificant life, walking in shadow.

  I retired from my academic post. I had long since lost my appetite and flair for scientific research but I managed to obtain a commission to write a student textbook. This did well and I embarked upon others. The work was not arduous, only painstaking, and I discovered that I had a natural ability to explain difficult concepts in clear and simple terms, something which gave me a measure of pride, after years of lacking any. I never forgot Silas Webb or what he and I, in our turn, had done to one another, but his name was certainly no longer at the front of my mind.

  One evening, I came in late from the library, where I had been working on an index. It was October and my rooms were both chilly and dark, so I hastened to switch on the lamps, put a match to the fire and draw the curtains. As I touched the drape, something fluttered lightly against the back of my hand, the touch so gentle that I barely felt it, and a moth flew out and made straight for a lamp. It was bone-coloured and not large, with faint rusty etchings on its wing tips.

  I had never been troubled by fear of moths, or of any other insects. If I was I would never have been able to do what I did to Silas Webb’s travelling bag. I was a man without phobias of any kind. I had never minded small closed spaces, heights, or even my own childhood bedroom, when a small fire glowing in the grate sent monstrous shadows up the walls. I had thought of them as friendly.

  The quick flight of the moth gave me a start but then, and for the first time, I felt a slight revulsion. I did not care for the tiny proboscis which jutted from between the pulsating wings. I recoiled from the sound of its pattering on the parchment lamp shade, as the two somehow camouflaged one another.

  I did not stay reading the evening paper by the lamp’s light because I was unnerved by the proximity of the moth to my head. I made ready for bed but, as I folded the paper, I caught sight of the date. It set up some echo in my memory, though I could not place it, but I woke in the middle of the night to recall clearly that 24 October had been the date of Silas Webb’s death – a death for which I had surely been responsible.

  I reached out to switch on the bedside lamp. I would drink a glass of water before settling back to sleep. All was still. I shrugged off thoughts of the calendar and lay down, but as I did so, something tremulous and feathery settled on my face and rested there.

  After that night, what I thought of as ‘the persecution’, continued. I was haunted and pursued by moths evening and night, and in time they became larger. I never knew when they would appear: silent, soft and purposeful, they always caught me by surprise. Days, sometimes a week or two, would go by, until I relaxed and convinced myself that there was nothing strange or menacing about any of it. Just as there are autumn seasons when wasps are rare and others when they are like a biblical plague, so it was with these moths. There was some explanation in nature, to do with ambient temperature, food supply – who knew?

  Then, just as I was easy, one would shock me, flying suddenly out of a cupboard, or be at rest, splayed motionless on a curtain or playing dead on my coat sleeve. I battled with them, I sprayed them with poison, and, if I could, I stamped or beat them to death; and with all of this, I became more and more afraid. I ceased to visit the old section of the science library, after one had flown out of a book I opened. At night, I drew my curtains slowly and with a pole. I slept
badly, the moths fluttering through my dreams and turning them to nightmares. I felt them settle on my arm or my face in the darkness, and in the end I slept buried beneath the bedclothes, trembling with fear.

  Gradually, I became afraid of more and more creatures and of everything furry: birds, rodents, even cats. I could not work. My heart was always racing, my nerves frayed with the effort of remaining alert and afraid.

  And so it has been. But now, as I write this, cowering at my desk in the half-dark, I see that it is past ten o’clock on a May evening and I have spent some time looking at the gardens and the freshly leafed and blossoming trees from my window – for I cannot go out. I have been struck by a peculiar paralysis, which clamps down upon me towards the end of every afternoon. It creeps over me like ice, freezing my body slowly. I cannot walk. If I take a chair, I am quickly locked where I sit. My arms become helpless, my head will not turn. I can see and hear and breathe but I cannot utter a sound.

  I will be possessed and kept helpless until some point the next morning. I have tried running away from here but the moment I take a step towards the door, the paralysis overcomes me at once. Only if I remain in my rooms am I allowed some remission.

  My landlady brings me food and I am able to spend a few hours of each day working at my desk.

  And even if I were permitted to escape, where would I go? Where could I flee to, without being hunted down and attacked? I am safest here in my comfortable prison. I would even be quite happy, were it not for the gathering dusk, the waning of the light, the approach of night. Then I must endure the torments he endured, the emergence of the moths from every crack and crevice, from behind the curtains and between their folds, from beneath cushions and below chairs, from the pages of books and from the backs of pictures, from carpet and from rug, giving birth to more and more, from out of the very dust of the air. I am assailed by the rising, teeming, fluttering clouds of them, they alight on me, they catch in my hair and leave their powdery traces on my skin. They are silent and menacing and I am their victim and must endure them. They do not hurt me, they only terrify. Sometimes they smell faintly of dust and decay. They are agile, alert, with glittering pin-pricks of eyes, and yet also dead, desiccated. Sometimes, I fancy that I see the cloudy image of Silas Webb’s face within the pattern of their massed wings and bodies, but that must surely be a fantasy conjured up by my feverish mind and the terror, which is out of all control.