Collected Works of Algernon Blackwood

by Algernon Blackwood

  “‘Good God!’ I gasped. ‘If you’re not Carey, the man I arranged with, who are you?’

  “I was really stiff with terror. The man moved slowly towards me across the empty room. I held out my arm to stop him, getting up out of my chair at the same moment, and he came to a halt just opposite to me, a smile on his worn, sad face. - “‘I told you who I am,’ he repeated quietly with a sigh, looking at me with the saddest eyes I have ever seen, ‘and I am frightened still’

  “ — By this time I was convinced that I was entertaining either a rogue or a madman, and I cursed my stupidity in bringing the man in without having seen his face. My mind was quickly made up, and I knew what to do. Ghosts and psychic phenomena flew to the winds. If I angered the creature my life might pay the price. I must humour him till I got to the door, and then race for the street. I stood bolt upright and faced him. We were about of a height, and I was a strong, athletic woman who played hockey in winter and climbed Alps in summer. My hand itched for a stick, but I had none.

  ‘“Now, of course, I remember,’ I said with a sort of stiff smile that was very hard to force. ‘Now I remember your case and the wonderful way you behaved...’

  “The man stared at me stupidly, turning his head to watch me as I backed more and more quickly to the door. But when his face broke into a smile I could control myself no longer. I reached the door in a run, and shot out on to the landing. Like a fool, I turned the wrong way, and stumbled over the stairs leading to the next storey. But it was too late to change. The man was after me, I was sure, though no sound of footsteps came; and I dashed up the next flight, tearing my skirt and banging my ribs in the darkness, and rushed headlong into the first room I came to. Luckily the door stood ajar, and, still more fortunate, there was a key in the lock. In a second I had slammed the door, flung my whole weight against it, and turned the key.

  “I was safe, but my heart was beating like a drum. A second later it seemed to stop altogether, for I saw that there was some one else in the room besides myself. A man’s figure stood between me and the windows, where the street lamps gave just enough light to outline his shape against the glass. I’m a plucky woman, you know, for even then I didn’t give up hope, but I may tell you that I have never felt so vilely frightened in all my born days. I had locked myself in with him!

  “The man leaned against the window, watching me where I lay in a collapsed heap upon the floor. So there were two men in the house with me, I reflected. Perhaps other rooms were occupied too! What could it all mean? But, as I stared something changed in the room, or in me — hard to say which — and I realised my mistake, so that my fear, which had so far been physical, at once altered its character and became psychical. I became afraid in my soul instead of in my heart, and I knew immediately who this man was.

  “‘How in the world did you get up here?’ I stammered to him across the empty room, amazement momentarily stemming my fear.

  “‘Now, let me tell you,’ he began, in that odd far-away voice of his that went down my spine like a knife. “I’m in different space, for one thing, and you’d find me in any room you went into; for according to your way of measuring, I’m all over the house. Space is a bodily condition, but I am out of the body, and am not affected by space. It’s my condition that keeps me here. I want something to change my condition for me, for then I could get away. What I want is sympathy. Or, really, more than sympathy; I want affection — I want love!’

  “While he was speaking I gathered myself slowly upon my feet. I wanted to scream and cry and laugh all at once, but I only succeeded in sighing, for my emotion was exhausted and a numbness was coming over me. I felt for the matches in my pocket and made a movement towards the gas jet.

  “‘I should be much happier if you didn’t light the gas,’ he said at once, ‘for the vibrations of your light hurt me a good deal. You need not be afraid that I shall injure you. I can’t touch your body to begin with, for there’s a great gulf fixed, you know; and really this half-light suits me best. Now, let me continue what I was trying to say before. You know, so many people have come to this house to see me, and most of them have seen me, and one and all have been terrified. If only, oh I if only some one would be not terrified, but kind and loving to me! Then, you see, I might be able to change my condition and get away.’

  “His voice was so sad that I felt tears start somewhere at the back of my eyes; but fear kept all else in check, and I stood shaking and cold as I listened to him.

  “‘Who are you then? Of course Carey didn’t send you, I know now,’ I managed to utter. My thoughts scattered dreadfully and I could think of nothing to say. I was afraid of a stroke.

  “‘I know nothing about Carey, or who he is,’ continued the man quietly, ‘and the name my body had I have forgotten, thank God; but I am the man who was frightened to death in this house ten years ago, and I have been frightened ever since, and am frightened still; for the succession of cruel and curious people who come to this house to see the ghost, and thus keep alive its atmosphere of terror, only helps to render my condition worse. If only some one would be kind to me — laugh, speak gently and rationally with me, cry if they like, pity, comfort, soothe me — anything but come here in curiosity and tremble as you are now doing in that corner. Now, madam, won’t you take pity on me? ‘ His voice rose to a dreadful cry. ‘Won’t you step out into the middle of the room and try to love me a little?’

  “A horrible laughter came gurgling up in my throat as I heard him, but the sense of pity was stronger than the laughter, and I found myself actually leaving the support of the wall and approaching the centre of the floor.

  “‘By God!’ he cried, at once straightening up against the window, ‘you have done a kind act. That’s the first attempt at sympathy that has been shown me since I died, and I feel better already. In life, you know, I was a misanthrope. Everything went wrong with me, and I came to hate my fellow men so much that I couldn’t bear to see them even. Of course, like begets like, and this hate was returned. Finally I suffered from horrible delusions, and my room became haunted with demons that laughed and grimaced, and one night I ran into a whole cluster of them near the bed — and the fright stopped my heart and killed me. It’s hate and remorse, as much as terror, that clogs me so thickly and keeps me here. If only some one could feel pity, and sympathy, and perhaps a little love for me, I could get away and be happy. When you came this afternoon to see over the house I watched you, and a little hope came to me for the first time. I saw you had courage, originality, resource — love. If only I could touch your heart, without frightening you, I knew I could perhaps tap that love you have stored up in your being there, and thus borrow the wings for my escape!’

  “Now I must confess my heart began to ache a little, as fear left me and the man’s words sank their sad meaning into me. Still, the whole affair was so incredible, and so touched with unholy quality, and the story of a woman’s murder I had come to investigate had so obviously nothing to do with this thing, that I felt myself in a kind of wild dream that seemed likely to stop at any moment and leave me somewhere in bed after a nightmare.

  “Moreover, his words possessed me to such an extent that I found it impossible to reflect upon anything else at all, or to consider adequately any ways and means of action or escape.

  “I moved a little nearer to him in the gloom, horribly frightened, of course, but with the beginnings of a strange determination in my heart “‘You women,’ he continued, his voice plainly thrilling at my approach, “you wonderful women, to whom life often bring? no opportunity of spending your great love, oh, if you only could know how many of us simply yearn for it! It would save our souls, if you but knew. Few might find the chance that you now have, but if you only spent your love freely, without definite object, just letting it flow openly for all who need, you would reach hundreds and thousands of souls like me, and release us! Oh, madam, I ask you again to feel, with me, to be kind and gentle — and if you can to love me a little!’


  “My heart did leap within me and this time the tears did come, for I could not restrain them. I laughed too, for the way he called me ‘madam’ sounded so odd, here in this empty room at midnight in a London street, but my laughter stopped dead and merged in a flood of weeping when I saw how my change of feeling affected him. He had left his place by the window and was kneeling on the floor at my feet, his hands stretched out towards me, and the first signs of a kind of glory about his head.

  “‘Put your arms round me and kiss me, for the love of God!’ he cried. ‘Kiss me, oh, kiss me, and I shall be freed! You have done so much already — now do this!’

  “I stuck there, hesitating, shaking, my determination on the verge of action, yet not quite able to compass it. But the terror had almost gone.

  “‘Forget that I’m a man and you’re a woman,’ he continued in the most beseeching voice I ever heard. ‘Forget that I’m a ghost, and come out boldly and press me to you with a great kiss, and let your love flow into me. Forget yourself just for one minute and do a brave thing! Oh, love me, love me, love me! and I shall be free!’

  “The words, or the deep force they somehow released in the centre of my bang, stirred me profoundly, and an emotion infinitely greater than fear surged up over me and carried me with it across the edge of action. Without hesitation I took two steps forward towards him where he knelt, and held out my arms. Pity and love were in my heart at that moment, genuine pity, I swear, and genuine love. I forgot myself and my little tremblings in a great desire to help another soul.

  “‘I love you I poor, aching, unhappy thing! I love you,’ I cried through hot tears; ‘and I am not the least bit afraid in the world.’

  “The man uttered a curious sound, like laughter, yet not laughter, and turned his face up to me. The light from the street below fell on it, but there was another light, too, shining all round it that seemed to come from the eyes and skin. He rose to his feet and met me, and in that second I folded him to my breast and kissed him full on the lips again and again.”

  All our pipes had gone out, and not even a skirt rustled in that dark studio as the story-teller paused a moment to steady her voice, and put a hand softly up to her eyes before going on again.

  “Now, what can I say, and how can I describe to you, all you sceptical men sitting there with pipes in your mouths, the amazing sensation I experienced of holding an intangible, impalpable thing so closely to my heart that it touched my body with equal pressure all the way down, and then melted away somewhere into my very being? For it was like seizing a rush of cool wind and feeling a touch of burning fire the moment it had struck its swift blow and passed on. A series of shocks ran all over and all through me; a momentary ecstasy of flaming sweetness and wonder thrilled down into me; my heart gave another great leap — and then I was alone-

  “The room was empty. I turned on the gas and struck a match to prove it. All fear had left me, and something was singing round me in the air and in my heart like the joy of a spring morning in youth. Not all the devils or shadows or hauntings in the world could then have caused me a single tremor.

  “I unlocked the door and went all over the dark house, even into kitchen and cellar and up among the ghostly attics. But the house was empty. Something had left it. I lingered a short hour, analysing, thinking, wondering — you can guess what and how, perhaps, but I won’t detail, for I promised only essentials, remember — and then went out to sleep the remainder of the night in my own flat, locking the door behind me upon a house no longer haunted.

  “But my uncle, Sir Henry, the owner of the house, required an account of my adventure, and of course I was in duty bound to give him some kind of a true story. Before I could begin, however, he held up his hand to stop me.

  “‘First,’ he said, ‘I wish to tell you a little deception I ventured to practise on you. So many people have been to that house and seen the ghost that I came to think the story acted on their imaginations, and I wished to make a better test. So I invented for their benefit another story, with the idea that if you did see anything I could be sure it was not due merely to an excited imagination.’

  “‘Then what you told me about a woman having been murdered, and all that, was not the true story of the haunting?’

  “‘It was not. The true story is that a cousin of mine went mad in that house, and killed himself in a fit of morbid terror following upon years of miserable hypochondriasis. It is his figure that investigators see.’

  “‘That explains, then,’ I gasped —

  “‘Explains what?’

  “I thought of that poor struggling soul, longing all these years for escape, and determined to keep my story for the present to myself.

  “‘Explains, I mean, why I did not see the ghost of the murdered woman,’ I concluded.

  “‘Precisely, said Sir Henry, ‘and why, if you had seen anything, it would have had value, inasmuch as it could not have been caused by the imagination working upon a story you already knew.’”

  JOHN SILENCE

  Blackwood’s John Silence is a ‘psychic doctor’, who uses his connection with the spirit world to lay troublesome spirits and defeat diabolical dabblers in the black arts. For these stories, first collected in volume form in 1908, Blackwood drew on his own occult knowledge, as well as his experiences of drug abuse and of his time at a boarding school in the Black Forest run by the Moravian Brotherhood. The tales range over a wide variety of supernatural phenomenon, from a town overrun with black cats to a drug that leaves the mind fatally exposed to supernatural forces; from a werewolf attack to a mansion besieged by a fire demon.

  Blackwood wrote a further John Silence story in 1914, ‘A Victim of Higher Space’, which was collected in Day and Night Stories (1917). The final tale is provided at the end of this edition of the John Silence stories.

  The first edition – the Swastika design reflects its original use as a mystical symbol, which was later used by the National Socialist Party for its own ends

  CONTENTS

  CASE I: A PSYCHICAL INVASION

  CASE II: ANCIENT SORCERIES

  CASE III: THE NEMESIS OF FIRE

  CASE IV: SECRET WORSHIP

  CASE V: THE CAMP OF THE DOG

  A VICTIM OF HIGHER SPACE

  Title page of the first U.S. edition

  TO

  M. L. W.

  THE ORIGINAL OF JOHN SILENCE

  AND

  MY COMPANION IN MANY ADVENTURES

  CASE I: A PSYCHICAL INVASION

  I

  “And what is it makes you think I could be of use in this particular case?” asked Dr. John Silence, looking across somewhat sceptically at the Swedish lady in the chair facing him.

  “Your sympathetic heart and your knowledge of occultism—”

  “Oh, please — that dreadful word!” he interrupted, holding up a finger with a gesture of impatience.

  “Well, then,” she laughed, “your wonderful clairvoyant gift and your trained psychic knowledge of the processes by which a personality may be disintegrated and destroyed — these strange studies you’ve been experimenting with all these years—”

  “If it’s only a case of multiple personality I must really cry off,” interrupted the doctor again hastily, a bored expression in his eyes.

  “It’s not that; now, please, be serious, for I want your help,” she said; “and if I choose my words poorly you must be patient with my ignorance. The case I know will interest you, and no one else could deal with it so well. In fact, no ordinary professional man could deal with it at all, for I know of no treatment nor medicine that can restore a lost sense of humour!”

  “You begin to interest me with your ‘case,’” he replied, and made himself comfortable to listen.

  Mrs. Sivendson drew a sigh of contentment as she watched him go to the tube and heard him tell the servant he was not to be disturbed.

  “I believe you have read my thoughts already,” she said; “your intuitive knowledge of what goes on in other people�
��s minds is positively uncanny.”

  Her friend shook his head and smiled as he drew his chair up to a convenient position and prepared to listen attentively to what she had to say. He closed his eyes, as he always did when he wished to absorb the real meaning of a recital that might be inadequately expressed, for by this method he found it easier to set himself in tune with the living thoughts that lay behind the broken words.

  By his friends John Silence was regarded as an eccentric, because he was rich by accident, and by choice — a doctor. That a man of independent means should devote his time to doctoring, chiefly doctoring folk who could not pay, passed their comprehension entirely. The native nobility of a soul whose first desire was to help those who could not help themselves, puzzled them. After that, it irritated them, and, greatly to his own satisfaction, they left him to his own devices.

  Dr. Silence was a free-lance, though, among doctors, having neither consulting-room, bookkeeper, nor professional manner. He took no fees, being at heart a genuine philanthropist, yet at the same time did no harm to his fellow-practitioners, because he only accepted unremunerative cases, and cases that interested him for some very special reason. He argued that the rich could pay, and the very poor could avail themselves of organised charity, but that a very large class of ill-paid, self-respecting workers, often followers of the arts, could not afford the price of a week’s comforts merely to be told to travel. And it was these he desired to help: cases often requiring special and patient study — things no doctor can give for a guinea, and that no one would dream of expecting him to give.

  But there was another side to his personality and practice, and one with which we are now more directly concerned; for the cases that especially appealed to him were of no ordinary kind, but rather of that intangible, elusive, and difficult nature best described as psychical afflictions; and, though he would have been the last person himself to approve of the title, it was beyond question that he was known more or less generally as the “Psychic Doctor.”