Night Terrors

by E. F. Benson

  It was at this point that I had begun to form a certain intimacy with my new neighbours, and, meeting them one night at the theatre, they took me home for a half-hour of cigarettes and conversation. At present I knew nothing about these curious occurrences, but as we entered the studio I could not help observing that Humphrey cast a suspicious eye round the room, and Julia looked anxiously in the direction of her easel. They both seemed very distrait, and, as we sat down, a silence fell. Then suddenly Humphrey said: ‘Let’s tell him,’ and proceeded to enthral me with such details as I have already recorded. Instantly my own little experience in this room, which startled me into dropping one of my pink vases, flashed into my mind.

  ‘I’m sure there’s a ghost here,’ said Julia as he finished. ‘And I believe it’s a woman, because it’s much nicer to Humphrey than to me. There’s lots you’ve left out, Humphrey. It’s always leaving little nosegays of violets done up in mutton-cutlet frills on your dressing-room table. It – ’

  She gave a little gasp and pointed to the corner where her easel stood.

  ‘Look!’ she said, in a strange whisper.

  I turned quickly, following her finger, and caught a glimpse of a green crinoline, of a low-cut bodice, of a lively but malicious little face with a chaplet of artificial rosebuds round its hair. The features were unmistakable, though fifty years of Thursday evenings had been peeled off them. There was no longer the slightest doubt in my mind that Mrs Wallace, now a Poltergeist of infinite ingenuity, was at the bottom of all these strange happenings.

  ‘That’s Mrs Wallace,’ I said firmly, and even as I spoke Julia’s easel came rattling to the ground for the second time.

  Julia rose.

  ‘Well, it’s very rude of her,’ she said. ‘She has no business here. Humphrey bought the house; it’s his. Why do you suppose she comes and haunts it? Has she done some atrocious crime in this room?’

  Humphrey gave a scornful laugh.

  ‘Julia, how can you be so ridiculous?’ he said. ‘It’s true that decades of atrocious crimes went on in this room, though. They talked Art here, the Art of 1860. They sang “The Lost Chord” here. The room wallows in crime. But ghosts! There aren’t any!’

  There came a sudden crack from his music table; he went rather hurriedly across to it, and took up one of his orchestral instruments.

  ‘And now she’s broken my siren,’ he observed, greatly annoyed.

  Julia, like a good wife, did not call attention to the singular inconsistency of this, but picked up her easel, and grew red with passion.

  ‘She’s spoiled it again,’ she said. ‘But we won’t give in; we’ll fight the odious old woman for all we’re worth. She’s a spiritual blackmailer; she wants to frighten us into some sort of surrender. It’s monstrous that the next world should interfere with ours in this scandalous fashion.’

  Humphrey threw the fragments of the siren into the fireplace.

  ‘Oh, bosh!’ he exclaimed. ‘Bosh!’ he repeated, as if to encourage himself.

  I left them determined to keep the materialistic flag flying. But the next week witnessed a swift development in the power of the haunting presence. It – we may say ‘she’ – began to materialise in the most convincing manner, and it was clear that this earthbound spirit was just as ‘arch’ as she had been fifty years ago. She constantly appeared to Humphrey in simpering Victorian attitudes; she gave him little shy smiles, and seemed to be trying to propitiate him. Her attitude to Julia, on the other hand, had become far more aggressive: not content with casting her easel to the ground whenever she had made a peculiarly inspired cube on it, she visited her with the most atrocious nightmares, she broke her looking glass, she cloyed her palate with lavender. When Julia came into her black bathroom with the purple ceiling and the pink floor, she would hear the whisk of skirts behind the cistern; if she went into her bedroom to dress for dinner she would find the simulacrum of a green crinoline and a wreath of roses laid out on her bed. It was perfectly clear that Mrs Wallace wanted to annoy the woman and wheedle the man into something that suited her ghostly will. And a week afterwards, sitting alone one evening, I received a telephone message that Mrs Lodge would like me ‘to step round’, if I was disengaged, on a matter of some importance.

  They were both sadly changed. Humphrey wore a wild and hunted eye, Julia was full of jerky apprehensive movements. I was given a short and dismal account of these new experiences.

  ‘Can you suggest anything that she would particularly like?’ asked Julia humbly. ‘You say you met her once. What did she particularly value in her life in this house?’

  ‘I should say her Thursday evenings,’ I answered.

  ‘Bunkum!’ said Humphrey, without conviction. ‘Besides, how are we to give her her Thursday evenings? We can’t arrange evenings for the dead.’

  Julia had gone to her bureau by the window, and she took up an engagement-book, which she examined by the light of one of the cauliflower lampshades.

  ‘Tomorrow is Thursday,’ she said. ‘We’re dining out.’

  There was silence. Here, at the top of the square, which is a cul-de-sac, there was no sound of traffic, and the silence began to sing in my ears. It began to sing a tune. Humphrey must have heard it, too, for he gave a loud squeal and clutched his hair.

  ‘There it is again,’ he said. ‘I shall go crazy if this continues! I sat up till three last night, reading Adam Bede. I didn’t want to, but I had to. I shall sit up again tonight, I know. Thank God, there are only fifty pages left.’

  ‘But she’ll make you begin another book,’ said Julia. ‘It may be The Wide, Wide World next time.’

  ‘What do you want to do, then?’ he asked.

  ‘Darling, just to leave the studio empty tomorrow night,’ she said. ‘To lock the door and leave it. Then, if that succeeds, we might do the same thing the next Thursday. It’s worth trying.’

  It was only a few evenings ago that I dined with the Lodges. It was, in fact, on Thursday. We sat rather long round the table, and Julia, looking at the clock, got up hurriedly.

  ‘We won’t sit in the studio tonight,’ she said. ‘It is pleasant upstairs.’

  We went upstairs, and I demanded news. Humphrey interspersed Julia’s narrative with unconvinced expressions such as ‘Pish!’ or ‘Rot!’ She told me in brief how every Thursday afternoon she put bunches of lavender in the studio, and left some suitable pictures and books about. She also took out of the room her easel, and the score on which Humphrey was engaged, for fear of annoying ‘them’. Since they had made these arrangements they hadn’t been ‘bothered’ . . . The clock struck ten, and, remembering that Mrs Wallace’s famous conversaziones always began at half-past nine, my curiosity rose.

  ‘I have left my cigarettes in my coat pocket downstairs,’ I said. ‘I will go and fetch them.’

  Humphrey is not a fool; he did not say ‘There are plenty here.’ As for Julia, her eyes sparkled.

  ‘Dare you?’ she asked.

  For some reason I kicked off my shoes when I got outside the drawing-room, and padded noiselessly down to the floor below.

  A short passage leads from the hall to the studio and dining-room; this was dark, but from below the studio door, at the end of it, there came a thin line of light. As I crept closer I heard the dim sound of many voices coming from it. Closer and closer I crept and my ear focused itself to the murmur.

  ‘A fine book, in spite of its coarseness,’ I heard. ‘But one doesn’t want to talk about it. Ah, Georgiana, here’s Mr Molloy asking if he may lead you to the instrument.’

  I heard the sound of the piano, less tinkly than when I heard it last, and then, unmistakably, the sound of a human voice. It was all thin and remote, as if borne from some great distance on the wind.

  ‘And now,’ I said to myself, ‘I shall open the door and go in.’

  And then
I did nothing of the kind. Poltroon and coward, I retraced my steps, looking fearfully behind me, in order to be sure that the studio door had not opened, and that from it some wraith of days long past was not spying on the impertinent future. I scurried upstairs, and with my shoes in my hand entered the drawing-room.

  ‘Well?’ said Humphrey and Julia, in one breath.

  ‘There was a light under the studio door,’ I said. ‘There were voices, words, music.’

  ‘And you didn’t go in?’ asked Humphrey.

  ‘Certainly not. If it comes to that, why don’t you go in yourself? They are there.’

  He pondered a moment. ‘Bosh!’ he said, with an effort.

  The Psychical Mallards

  Timothy Mallard was gifted from childhood with a variety of supernormal powers, which rendered him utterly different from all other children that his parents had ever come across, and his involuntary exercise of them extended back into his very earliest days. He was, in fact, hardly a month old when he first gave evidence of his peculiar endowments. One day he cried so long and loud (after being as ‘good as gold’ throughout his four weeks of earthly pilgrimage) that his nurse took him out of his cradle and set him on her knee, where she proceeded to adopt the usual soothing process of rocking him violently to and fro and up and down with the pitching and rolling motion of a boat in a storm, in order to reduce him to the requisite state of dizzy quiescence. For some five minutes she persevered in this traditional treatment, but to no effect, and was just about to give it up in despair, and put him to bed again till nature was exhausted, when a large flake of the ceiling fell, crushing his cradle into a pancake of wicker and blanket. And as if a tap had been turned off his crying ceased . . .

  That incident, naturally enough, was put to the credit of coincidence, and it was considered ‘very lucky’ that his nurse had taken Master Tim out of the cradle just then, though it would have, perhaps, been ‘luckier’ if there had been no such fall of lath and plaster. But from that time onwards the young years of Timothy Mallard were enveloped in a net of such curious phenomena, that it became impossible to attribute them all to coincidence, and his parents – healthy, normal people – were forced to the reluctant conclusion that there was something very odd about the child himself.

  It was no use, for instance, making him put out his tongue, and then, with a bright smile, telling him that for a treat he was going to be given a spoonful of the most delicious red-currant jelly, because, without having tasted it, he announced that it was ‘powdery’. But he tempered the obduracy of his refusal to indulge in red-currant jelly with a promise to ‘fink’ his ache away. Tim then closed his eyes, gave a few little twitches, and seemed to relapse into unconsciousness. They had hardly begun to shake him when he came to himself, and it was quite apparent that he had thought away that troublesome ache, while his tongue, on re-examination, was discovered to be of the requisite rose-leaf description. Similarly, when his first visit to the dentist was planned, and he was told that he and nurse were going for a jolly walk in the High Street, he made the astounding announcement that he hadn’t got toothache, and that he would bite any alien finger that intruded itself into his mouth. In this case (so the scientific student may observe) it was conceivable that he might, subconsciously, have overheard a conversation about dentists between his mother and his nurse, but such an explanation does not account for the fact that at the age of six he drew a detailed sketch of his own inside, showing with complete accuracy the position of the liver, pancreas, kidneys, and other interesting organs. The family doctor, to whom this artistic effort was submitted without hint as to authorship, said it was the work of a trained pathologist.

  Dr Farmer was interested in occult phenomena, and, when informed that this accurate and beautiful map was the work of Timothy, he told his disgusted parents that the boy was possessed of some supernormal power of lucidity or clairvoyance, which enabled him to perceive what was hidden from the ordinary vision. Other instances of this gift were shown in the fact that he could announce that his Aunt Anne was putting on her hat and cloak with the intention of calling on her sister-in-law, and that his father, who was up in town for the day, had missed his train at Charing Cross. So, though weird, this gift had its practical advantages, for his mother had time on the one hand to tell her parlour-maid that she was out, and on the other to put off dinner . . . Together with clairvoyance he developed a power of clair-audience, and by day and night heard voices which were quite inaudible to his elders and betters.

  Apart from these little peculiarities Tim was normal enough, and at the age of thirteen presented the similitude of a big, merry boy, with large boots and tousled hair. His father determined to send him to Eton, where he had himself imbibed a love of cricket and a hatred of Greek, in the hopes that a sound classical education would speedily disperse those strange ‘clouds of glory’ that the boy still trailed behind him. Roman history and hexameters and supines were powerful solvents of the unusual.

  Mr Mallard, puzzled though he was by these occult phenomena, still had a lurking feeling that the boy could curb them if he chose, and on the eve of his departure spoke to him kindly, but firmly, about it all.

  ‘Remember, my dear Tim,’ he said, ‘that I am going to all this trouble and expense of sending you to Eton not merely that you should be able to write Latin verses and pass examinations with credit. You are growing up – boyhood passes very soon into manhood – and you must learn to behave as men behave. Those childish tricks, for instance – ’

  Tim, as is the custom of the new generation, treated his father like a child.

  ‘But I’ve told you often and often,’ he said, ‘that I can’t help it. I wish you would try to remember that. I don’t want to see Aunt Anne in her bath, or know you are going to fall off your bicycle.’

  His father thumped the table.

  ‘Now, I beg of you, Tim,’ he said, ‘not to argue like that. You can control those tricks perfectly well if you like. Dr Farmer told me that they were of hysterico-ideo-exteriorizative origin – ’

  ‘What?’ said Tim.

  ‘The same as fidgets,’ said his father. ‘Occupy your mind with something else when you feel them coming on. You won’t find yourself popular either with your teachers or your companions if you behave queerly. Queer! That’s the word I wanted instead of Dr Farmer’s definition. There’s nothing which wholesome English boys dislike so much as queerness. Get over your queerness, my dear, and do credit to the great middle class from which you come. I can let you enjoy an excellent education, and mix on equal terms with your superiors – never mind that – but you’ll have to make your way in the world, and there’s nothing that so goes against a man as queerness – ’

  He broke off suddenly and looked at Tim, who had shut his eyes and was twitching violently. He was naturally very much annoyed that the boy should give so small an attention to the remarks which he had so carefully prepared, and raised his voice.

  ‘Tim, drop it!’ he said. ‘Listen to me, Tim. Tim!’

  Tim’s twitching had ceased, and he lay back in his chair, breathing slowly and heavily. His father, irritated beyond endurance at this untimely exhibition of one of his tricks, was about to shake him violently by the shoulder, when his attention was attracted by a loud rattling noise behind him, and he observed his heavy knee-hole table advancing across the room without visible agency in the direction of the trance-stricken boy. He had barely time to skip out of the way of its ponderous march, when it came to a standstill, and he found himself with shaking knees and a dry throat staring at Tim across it. Dr Farmer had already asked him whether Tim had shown any symptoms of teleo-kinesis, which (the obliging doctor explained) signified the movements of inanimate objects towards or from the boy, occurring without intervention of any visible agency, and, with a sinking of his heart, Mr Mallard realised that here was a teleo-kinetic phenomenon . . . Then, without warning, this heavy table beg
an to creak and groan again, and, retreating from Tim with the same swiftness with which it had advanced, came to rest in its usual position. So, even if Tim had pulled it towards him with a string in some inexplicable manner, he would have had to employ some strong and rigid rod to repel it again. Mr Mallard’s common sense rejected such a theory, and he was forced to suppose that his poor boy had suddenly developed teleo-kinetic power.

  At this moment, while Tim still lay inert in his chair, there came a hurried step on the stair, and Mrs Mallard, who had been sitting below, waddled into the room.

  ‘I heard such a noise overhead,’ she said, ‘as if you were moving all the furniture instead of telling Tim about Eton. Why, what’s the matter with him?’

  ‘Teleo-kinesis,’ muttered Mr Mallard. ‘My kneehole table has been behaving like a three-year-old.’

  Mrs Mallard had the same wholesale dislike of occult phenomena as her husband.

  ‘Oh, how tiresome!’ she said. ‘But, thank goodness, the table has gone back. So upsetting for a housemaid to find all the furniture moved about. Dr Farmer told me that we mustn’t be surprised if something of the sort happened. He is a very naughty boy. He – ’

  Her voice froze in her throat, and she pointed a trembling finger at her only son. Mr Mallard followed its faltering direction.

  Tim was lying with closed eyes and crossed legs in his father’s large armchair, and now began to rise out of it, not on to his feet, but into the air. It was as if some unseen armchair still supported him, for he rose in precisely the same position as that in which he had been lolling when he went into a trance, like a balloon gently leaving the ground. He was apparently without weight, for the draught from the door, which Mrs Mallard had left wide, gently wafted him towards the open window, and, to his parents’ horror, he floated out of it and lay suspended thirty feet above the pavement of the High Street. Then some opposing current took possession of him, and after he had bumped once or twice against the panes of the second window, Mr Mallard had the good sense to open it, and Tim floated in again. He circled round the room as if in a slow eddy, and then came to rest on the top of the knee-hole table.