transparent,supple, agile, chasing each other, devouring each, other; forms likenought ever beheld by the naked eye. As the shapes were withoutsymmetry, so their movements were without order. In their veryvagrancies there was no sport; they came round me and round, thickerand faster and swifter, swarming over my head, crawling over my rightarm, which was outstretched in involuntary command against all evilbeings. Sometimes I felt myself touched, but not by them; invisiblehands touched me. Once I felt the clutch as of cold, soft fingers atmy throat. I was still equally conscious that if I gave way to fear Ishould be in bodily peril; and I concentred all my faculties in thesingle focus of resisting stubborn will. And I turned my sight fromthe Shadow; above all, from those strange serpent eyes,--eyes that hadnow become distinctly visible. For there, though in nought else aroundme, I was aware that there was a WILL, and a will of intense,creative, working evil, which might crush down my own.
The pale atmosphere in the room began now to redden as if in the airof some near conflagration. The larvae grew lurid as things that livein fire. Again the room vibrated; again were heard the three measuredknocks; and again all things were swallowed up in the darkness of thedark Shadow, as if out of that darkness all had come, into thatdarkness all returned.
As the gloom receded, the Shadow was wholly gone. Slowly, as it hadbeen withdrawn, the flame grew again into the candles on the table,again into the fuel in the grate. The whole room came once morecalmly, healthfully into sight.
The two doors were still closed, the door communicating with theservant's room still locked. In the corner of the wall, into which hehad so convulsively niched himself, lay the dog. I called to him,--nomovement; I approached,--the animal was dead: his eyes protruded; histongue out of his mouth; the froth gathered round his jaws. I took himin my arms; I brought him to the fire. I felt acute grief for the lossof my poor favorite,--acute self-reproach; I accused myself of hisdeath; I imagined he had died of fright. But what was my surprise onfinding that his neck was actually broken. Had this been done in thedark? Must it not have been by a hand human as mine; must there nothave been a human agency all the while in that room? Good cause tosuspect it. I cannot tell. I cannot do more than state the factfairly; the reader may draw his own inference.
Another surprising circumstance,--my watch was restored to the tablefrom which it had been so mysteriously withdrawn; but it had stoppedat the very moment it was so withdrawn, nor, despite all the skill ofthe watchmaker, has it ever gone since,--that is, it will go in astrange, erratic way for a few hours, and then come to a dead stop; itis worthless.
Nothing more chanced for the rest of the night. Nor, indeed, had Ilong to wait before the dawn broke. Nor till it was broad daylight didI quit the haunted house. Before I did so, I revisited the littleblind room in which my servant and myself had been for a timeimprisoned. I had a strong impression--for which I could notaccount--that from that room had originated the mechanism of thephenomena, if I may use the term, which had been experienced in mychamber. And though I entered it now in the clear day, with the sunpeering through the filmy window, I still felt, as I stood on itsfloors, the creep of the horror which I had first there experiencedthe night before, and which had been so aggravated by what had passedin my own chamber. I could not, indeed, bear to stay more than half aminute within those walls. I descended the stairs, and again I heardthe footfall before me; and when I opened the street door, I thought Icould distinguish a very low laugh. I gained my own home, expecting tofind my runaway servant there; but he had not presented himself, nordid I hear more of him for three days, when I received a letter fromhim, dated from Liverpool to this effect:--
"HONORED SIR,--I humbly entreat your pardon, though I can scarcelyhope that you will think that I deserve it, unless--which Heavenforbid!--you saw what I did. I feel that it will be years before I canrecover myself; and as to being fit for service, it is out of thequestion. I am therefore going to my brother-in-law at Melbourne. Theship sails to-morrow. Perhaps the long voyage may set me up. I donothing now but start and tremble, and fancy IT is behind me. I humblybeg you, honored sir, to order my clothes, and whatever wages are dueto me, to be sent to my mother's, at Walworth,--John knows heraddress."
The letter ended with additional apologies, somewhat incoherent, andexplanatory details as to effects that had been under the writer'scharge. This flight may perhaps warrant a suspicion that the manwished to go to Australia, and had been somehow or other fraudulentlymixed up with the events of the night. I say nothing in refutation ofthat conjecture; rather, I suggest it as one that would seem to manypersons the most probable solution of improbable occurrences. Mybelief in my own theory remained unshaken. I returned in the eveningto the house, to bring away in a hack cab the things I had left there,with my poor dog's body. In this task I was not disturbed, nor did anyincident worth note befall me, except that still, on ascending anddescending the stairs, I heard the same footfall in advance. Onleaving the house, I went to Mr. J----'s. He was at home. I returnedhim the keys, told him that my curiosity was sufficiently gratified,and was about to relate quickly what had passed, when he stopped me,and said, though with much politeness, that he had no longer anyinterest in a mystery which none had ever solved.
I determined at least to tell him of the two letters I had read, aswell as of the extraordinary manner in which they had disappeared; andI then inquired if he thought they had been addressed to the woman whohad died in the house, and if there were anything in her early historywhich could possibly confirm the dark suspicions to which the lettersgave rise. Mr. J---- seemed startled, and, after musing a few moments,answered, "I am but little acquainted with the woman's earlierhistory, except as I before told you, that her family were known tomine. But you revive some vague reminiscences to her prejudice. I willmake inquiries, and inform you of their result. Still, even if wecould admit the popular superstition that a person who had been eitherthe perpetrator or the victim of dark crimes in life could revisit, asa restless spirit, the scene in which those crimes had been committed,I should observe that the house was infested by strange sights andsounds before the old woman died--you smile--what would you say?"
"I would say this, that I am convinced, if we could get to the bottomof these mysteries, we should find a living human agency."
"What! you believe it is all an imposture? For what object?"
"Not an imposture in the ordinary sense of the word. If suddenly Iwere to sink into a deep sleep, from which you could not awake me, butin that sleep could answer questions with an accuracy which I couldnot pretend to when awake,--tell you what money you had in yourpocket, nay, describe your very thoughts,--it is not necessarily animposture, any more than it is necessarily supernatural. I should be,unconsciously to myself, under a mesmeric influence, conveyed to mefrom a distance by a human being who had acquired power over me byprevious _rapport_."
"But if a mesmerizer could so affect another living being, can yousuppose that a mesmerizer could also affect inanimate objects: movechairs,--open and shut doors?"
"Or impress our senses with the belief in such effects,--we neverhaving been _en rapport_ with the person acting on us? No. What iscommonly called mesmerism could not do this; but there may be a powerakin to mesmerism, and superior to it,--the power that in the old dayswas called Magic. That such a power may extend to all inanimateobjects of matter, I do not say; but if so, it would not be againstNature,--it would be only a rare power in Nature which might be givento constitutions with certain peculiarities, and cultivated bypractice to an extraordinary degree. That such a power might extendover the dead,--that is, over certain thoughts and memories that thedead may still retain,--and compel, not that which ought properly tobe called the SOUL, and which is far beyond human reach, but rather aphantom of what has been most earth-stained on earth, to make itselfapparent to our senses, is a very ancient though obsolete theory uponwhich I will hazard no opinion. But I do not conceive the power wouldbe supernatural. Let me illustrate what I mean from an experimentwhich Paracelsus describes as not d
ifficult, and which the author ofthe 'Curiosities of Literature' cites as credible: A flower perishes;you burn it. Whatever were the elements of that flower while it livedare gone, dispersed, you know not whither; you can never discover norre-collect them. But you can, by chemistry, out of the burned dust ofthat flower, raise a spectrum of the flower, just as it seemed inlife. It may be the same with the human being. The soul has as muchescaped you as the essence or elements of the flower. Still you maymake a spectrum of it. And this phantom, though in the popularsuperstition it is held to be the soul of the departed, must not beconfounded with the true soul; it is but the eidolon of the dead form.Hence, like the best attested stories of ghosts or spirits, the thingthat most strikes us is the absence of what we hold to be soul,--thatis, of superior emancipated intelligence. These apparitions come forlittle or no object,--they seldom speak when they do come;
The Haunted and the Haunters; Or, The House and the Brain Page 5