by James Carnac
I possess, to a high degree, the faculty of visual recollection. My memories frequently take the form of actual pictures in which I and my fellow-actors move silently like the performers on a cinema sheet. More especially is this the case when the events have been of an outstanding character; I then seem to have forgotten most of the conversation; the auditory side of the memory seems to have been ousted by the visual. So, on this occasion, I can picture, quite clearly, the Norcotes’ drawing-room; I can recall little of what was said between Julia and myself. The room was papered, I remember, with a kind of silvery buff and much of the wall-space was concealed by oils, water-colours, photos and those little black silhouettes which were once so common; all framed in gilt. There was a certain amount of gilt, also, about the furniture, but no definite style prevailed. There were two fine Jacobean chairs; an ormolu cabinet containing china and silver; an upright piano and a harp (Julia had some skill with the latter instrument); an inlaid satinwood side-table. And on one wall was one of those round, gilt-framed convex mirrors which reflected Julia and me as we sat upon a pale-blue upholstered settee. Our every movement was re-enacted there, our figures diminished to microscopic proportions and slightly distorted by the curvature of the glass. That bright-lit circle of glass was like a miniature marionette show. It fascinated me then, but now I can never see one of those convex mirrors without experiencing a shudder.
I was looking into that little mirror. I could see two doll-like forms, close together. Julia was, in fact, reclining against me, her head upon my shoulder. I could see in the glass the white gleam of her shoulders, for she was in evening dress. Then, as I gazed, the circle of glass suddenly darkened with a swirling movement as though its face had been obscured by a wreath of moving vapour. This smoke-like effect gradually coalesced and from it the wraith of a face appeared; it was like the gradual development of a photographic image on a modern “negative.” In a moment the face had gone; almost before I had had time to analyse the sense of vague familiarity which the face engendered. It had gone, and the glass cleared, though only partially; through the vagueness one surface only gleamed with almost startling distinctness—the white of Julia’s neck and shoulders. Then I felt myself go rigid, for I had perceived that round the white column of that neck ran a line of vivid scarlet, and that drops oozed and dripped from it to the white bosom beneath. And, in an instant, I was not horrified; I felt a wave of excitement, a sudden thirst. I turned from the miniature picture before me; moving my head slowly and almost furtively until my eyes rested upon the real neck beside me.
There was no thread of scarlet there, of course; but in my suddenly awaked imagination I saw it. That softly rounded mass was no longer the neck of my beloved, but a pillar of flesh pulsating with blood, an object of fascinating possibility. My hands trembled; I could feel the sensation of piercing and slitting that smooth surface with the razor-like edge of a scalpel; I could anticipate, with horrible relish, the gush of blood which would ensue.
Something wrenched my eyes from that tempting neck back to the mirror. It was now swirling and twisting again, but this time with a reddish tinge. The image of the neck could still be perceived, but the thread of red had now become a gushing fountain; it flooded the surface of the mirror as though it had been a horizontal object charged to overflowing with blood. Then drops began to creep over the frame and to drip steadily down the wall.
I stiffened and must, I think, have uttered a gasp. I seemed to hear a hoarse guttural sound, and the figure beside me straightened and Julia’s face peered into mine. The lips moved but I do not know what she said. I saw a pair of large, dark eyes gazing into my own; they widened until a circle of white surrounded the irises. That expression of horror fanned my overmastering excitement; I cast a swift look around the room in search of a weapon—anything with a blade, a paper-knife, a curio. And, sub-consciously, one of my hands rose, the fingers crooked and twitching, towards Julia’s throat.
At that moment the spell was broken. A sharp sound penetrated my consciousness; the slam of the street door. With a return to partial sanity I rose abruptly to my feet and took one or two staggering steps backwards, my face towards Julia. She was huddled back on the settee, staring at me, the back of one hand pressed against her mouth.
At the back of the settee was another mirror—a large, flat one; and in this was reflected the round convex glass with its miniature marionette show. I could see in this tiny circle the black-clad back of a standing figure, curiously humped and distorted by the curvature of the glass; as I retreated from the settee, I was conscious, though my eyes were upon Julia’s face, that the little black figure was growing into a bloated, fantastic shape until it filled the entire circle of the mirror.
Then I turned abruptly and rushed from the room. I collided with Dr. Norcote who had just reached the threshold. He gripped me firmly by the shoulders and stared down into my face which, owing to my shorter stature, was considerably lower than his own. Without speaking he held me for some moments and in that brief time I was conscious of a vague surprise that this face which looked into my own was not the face of Dr. Norcote to which I had been accustomed. The rather stupidly pompous expression had given way to one hard and forbidding.
He suddenly relaxed his hold and, as I staggered back against the lintel of the door, I realized that his hands had been almost supporting me. He stepped into the drawing-room and looked fixedly towards where I knew Julia still sat on the settee. Still he said no word, and the only sound to be heard was the grave tick, tick of a grandfather clock which stood near the street door.
Dr. Norcote returned to the hall and closed the door of the drawing-room behind him. He took his stand directly before me, his legs slightly apart and his thumbs resting in the pockets of his waistcoat. “I met an old colleague of your father’s this evening, young man,” he said. He spoke kindly, but his face was still stern and cold. That brief sentence and the manner in which it was uttered told me that he had discovered who my father had been and the whole hideous tragedy of my parents’ deaths. I had no need to hear more, for whatever he was preparing to add to his remark had no significance for me now. Something far more potent than Dr. Norcote’s objections had stepped in to render my marriage to Julia impossible.
I attempted to speak and found, to my surprise, that my mouth and tongue were stiff and dry. I raised a hand and made stabbing motions with my finger towards the drawing-room and Julia. I do not know what, exactly, I was trying to say, but I desisted on seeing the strange expression upon the doctor’s face. It was a look of curiosity, of scientific appraisal, like that of a man who is examining for the first time some strange curiosity of nature in which he is interested. That look filled me with shame, but also with indignation. I stepped backwards until my head bumped against the edge of a heavy picture-frame. The jolt must have imparted a slight motion to the picture, for Dr. Norcote momentarily turned his eyes from my face to the wall behind me. That released a kind of spell and I burst into a croaking laugh. Then, without more ado, I turned to the hat-stand where hung my hat, umbrella and light overcoat and, seizing these articles, unlatched the street door. I turned for a last look, and saw that the doctor still stood in the same position regarding me; I stepped out of the house and slammed the door loudly behind me. I was met by a perfect hurricane of rain.
I can recollect standing on that step fumbling with my coat and swearing at my own clumsiness. I did not stop to button the coat, nor did I raise my umbrella. I just staggered off into the rain, my coat-tails flapping behind me.
It all sounds like a scene from a “Surrey” melodrama, I know.
—
The tiger had been sleeping. The tiger had only been sleeping. I could never marry Julia; never marry any woman. The tiger which lurked within me, setting me apart from my fellows, would not allow it. Fool, to suppose that I was like my fellows. The affair of my uncle, my reaction to knives, many of my thoughts and feelings should have shown me the
difference! “The tiger awakes!” The phrase struck me as absolutely fitting and appropriate. I culled it over and over again, trying to fit it into the rhythm of my splashing footsteps. The—tiger—awakes—splash splash. The—splash—tiger—splash—awakes—splash. No; that was too slow. The tiger—
Plodding through the puddles, I was still only sub-consciously aware of the rain. I knew it was raining, but no glimmer of common-sense prompted me to guard against it by closing my coat or unfurling my umbrella. In a few minutes my trousers were soaked to the knees. A passing hansom spattered my shirt-front with mud; I only cursed. I had no thought of where I was going; what did it matter now? I walked on, with long strides, my head down, my coat flapping like the ragged feathers of some black bird of prey. I passed a policeman in a glistening cape, standing beneath an archway. He stared at me owlishly as I swept by. On I went. Then I gradually became aware of a woman’s voice at my elbow; some painted creature of the night, evidently misinterpreting my condition as one of drunkenness, had fastened upon me considering me an easy prey. I caught a few words: “Come on, dearie—give me something, dearie—come along home with me, dearie—” as she tried to suit her gait to my swinging progress. At last her importunity annoyed me; it did not fit in with my rhythmic phrase; it was discordant. I turned on her with a snarl. “If I come home with you, dearie,” I muttered, “I shall cut your throat. Cut your throat. The tiger awakes; I shall cut your throat.” I thrust my face into hers and saw, in the uncertain light, how the rain had streaked and raddled her paint. Her hat was a sodden mass, and wisps of damp hair hung over her eyebrows. Her sooty-rimmed eyes widened with fear as she caught the gist of my muttering, and she stepped away from me with a gasp. “Cut your throat. Cut your throat.” That phrase fitted in as well as the other. I repeated it to myself as I strode on.
I must have walked miles that night. What route I took I do not know, but after an interval of time which I cannot estimate, something familiar in my surroundings caught my attention. It was in the High Road, Tottenham. There was the old pump at the corner of Philip Lane. And somewhere about here the inquest had been held. The inquest on my parents. I stood on the kerb and looked around me. The rain-swept streets were empty of life except for a black cat which peered at me from beneath a litter of wooden boards stacked beside a gate.
“Philip Lane,” I said to myself. “I used to live somewhere near here.” I tried to recall the name of the road, but could not. I only knew I must pass down Philip Lane to reach it, and a desire arose to see the old house. Did it look the same, I wondered, or had tragedy set some indefinable mark upon it? I turned to my left and set off down the lane.
The cumulative recollections kept me going; each building and trivial landmark leapt to my memory as I encountered it, though my memory could not anticipate it. I found myself, at last, standing in the road immediately opposite my old home.
The windows were in absolute darkness, but the brick-work seemed to glisten, not only with the rain beating upon it but with a kind of inherent phosphorescence, a faint greenish grey just sufficient to render visible the details of its crude and clumsy architecture. As I stood aimlessly in the beating rain my brain began to lose some of the numbness which had, up ’til then, oppressed it; the sight of a once so familiar object as this house stirred all sorts of childish recollections. Trivialities which had seemed long since forgotten now came trooping back from some dusty and cobwebbed attic of my brain where they had been lurking. A wave of melancholy oppressed me. I stood in the wet puddles gently savouring this rather novel sensation; it was quite different to the feeling of blind fury and despair which had, up until then, been my driving power. My resentment of the injustice which Destiny had meted out to me, of the knowledge that I was a pariah, had, so far, been untinged with self-pity; but now I suddenly felt extremely sorry for myself.
I continued staring at the house and I perceived something which, at first, I had not realized. Its aspect differed from the house I had known; in this half light, with its greenish tinge and its glistening sweat of rain, it appeared obscene, indecent. It was like some disease-ridden hag who, usually seen in the tawdry trappings of everyday life, suddenly appears in hideous and eye-offending nakedness. And while I was turning this thought over in my mind I became conscious of a curious phenomenon; how can I describe it? I can best say that it consisted of an entire cessation of those undercurrents of sound which are evident in even the stillest night. Even in what we call the silence of night there is no absolute silence. The faint movements of unseen animals, the distant rumblings of traffic, the hundred tiny and almost imperceptible sounds which serve to indicate that this is a live, though a sleeping, world; even the suggestion of rustling in trees and grass all combine into a muted suggestion of sound which never ceases. But now it had ceased. Nothing, simply nothing, came to my ears but the slight hiss and splash of the rain. I felt as though I and the house stood together in a vast, enclosing cavern which had grown around and enveloped us.
I had barely analysed this sensation when the street door of the house began to open very, very slowly.
For hours, it seemed, that door stealthily moved, a fraction of an inch at a time. The space of dirty-looking blistered wood decreased and beside it grew an ever widening oblong of black. The blackness of the house’s interior; that house where murder had been done. I do not think I was so frightened as fascinated; I knew that something would, at some remote time, emerge, something probably horrible and devastating to the sight. I waited, motionless in the cavernous stillness, for what that something would be. And at last it came. A feeble blotch of grey in the blackness of the open door gradually evolved into the figure of a man.
Once this form had become recognizable as a human semblance, the ordinary standard of time in relation to familiar movement resumed sway. The man stepped briskly over the threshold and stood on the step regarding me. I then saw, but with no feeling of surprise, that he was clothed in a tight-fitting suit of black; round his thin waist was strapped a thick belt from which hung a large knife in a black sheath, and upon his arm dangled a coil of rope. His crown was covered by a curious head-dress the nature of which I could not at the moment discern, and from under this hung straggling locks of long, black hair.
He moved towards me and, for an instant, I had the extraordinary feeling that, in spite of the dark hair, this was my father. I cannot explain this feeling except by saying that his face held a curious, unnameable resemblance; not a resemblance of feature, but one of expression. It suggested that likeness which is sometimes encountered in two people who, although physically unlike, have yet lived together for so long that their thoughts and feelings have merged into the same groove.
The figure came directly up to me and I then saw that his head-dress consisted of a leathern mask which had been raised above his forehead.
Chapter 14
The man grasped me by the elbow and began muttering to me, his face near my own and his mouth twisted into a knowing grin. His expression was neither malevolent nor altogether repulsive; it was strangely suggestive of a man who is telling a dirty story in a tap-room. And, underlying and belying the grin was a sadness; the eyes did not smile; they were sad, weary but yet with a spark of recklessness in their depths. They were the eyes of a man who knows there is no God to lighten the tedium of his days and who, for all his knowledge, does not care.
But what caused me the greatest astonishment was his voice; I recognized it instantly. It was the Voice to which I have previously alluded; the Voice which had broken in upon my thoughts on several occasions, in the snugness of my sitting-room, in the slums of Whitechapel. And with recognition came the speculation: was this my guardian angel or—more likely—my guardian demon?
I cannot say what the figure spoke to me; I do not mean that I cannot remember, but that I must not say. I must not put the substance of his speech into actual words; there are some things which cannot be written. But as I listened I experience
d a thrill beside which all the thrills of my early life were as nothing. New thoughts rushed over me; I tasted them doubtfully and fearfully, but I did not thrust them from me. I listened eagerly and when the figure half turned and commenced to guide me towards the house I made no attempt to resist his pressure upon my arm. I followed him, engrossed with a fascinating curiosity.
The house had increased enormously in size. The tint of the walls had changed to a dark, greenish black and in the interstices of the large stones, which had once been shoddy bricks, fungoid growths sprouted. The blistered paint of the door had gone; the woodwork was black and cracked with age and the massive planks which composed it were bound together with broad ribbons and rivets of rusty iron. I stepped over the slimy threshold, my whispering guide beside me. There was what had been my father’s surgery but was now a well of blackness in which could be heard the stealthy rustling of unseen figures—unseen, that is, except for their eyes, which glowed cat-like in the darkness but without the cat’s yellow brilliance. They were like the phosphorescent eyes of dead and decaying men.
The stillness of the outside world was broken by a furtive whispering as we passed the open door and turned towards the stairs which had—ages ago, it now seemed—led to the cellar. And while I hesitated at the gaping doorway, feeling cautiously with my foot for the first downward-leading step, I caught from the depths a sound which drowned the whispering. It was a low, guttural moaning, almost an animal sound, a sound which some wild beast may be expected to utter as its life slowly ebbs away in pain and solitude.
Obeying the touch upon my arm I began to descend the stairs. They no longer creaked as I remembered they had creaked in the time of my boyhood, for now the cheap wooden boards had given place to stone slabs. They were hard to the tread; I could even feel their hardness though my feet were almost deadened by long walking and standing in the rain. I could sense the hardness, and I knew they were slimy and slippery. Very slowly and cautiously I proceeded, down flight after flight, winding and twisting into a blackness which presently began to give place to a suggestion of redness.