When about five years old I was condemned to sleep by myself in a
certain isolated room, thereafter always called the Child's Room. (At
that time I was scarcely ever mentioned by name, but only referred to as
"the Child.") The room was narrow, but very high, and, in spite of one
tall window, very gloomy. It contained a fire-place wherein no fire was
ever kindled; and the Child suspected that the chimney was haunted.
A law was made that no light should be left in the Child's Room at
night,--simply because the Child was afraid of the dark. His fear of the
dark was judged to be a mental disorder requiring severe treatment. But
the treatment aggravated the disorder. Previously I had been accustomed
to sleep in a well-lighted room, with a nurse to take care of me. I
thought that I should die of fright when sentenced to lie alone in the
dark, and--what seemed to me then abominably cruel--actually _locked_
into my room, the most dismal room of the house. Night after night when
I had been warmly tucked into bed, the lamp was removed; the key clicked
in the lock; the protecting light and the footsteps of my guardian
receded together. Then an agony of fear would come upon me. Something in
the black air would seem to gather and grow--(I thought that I could
even _hear_ it grow)--till I had to scream. Screaming regularly brought
punishment; but it also brought back the light, which more than consoled
for the punishment. This fact being at last found out, orders were given
to pay no further heed to the screams of the Child.
* * * * *
Why was I thus insanely afraid? Partly because the dark had always
been peopled for me with shapes of terror. So far back as memory
extended, I had suffered from ugly dreams; and when aroused from them
I could always _see_ the forms dreamed of, lurking in the shadows of
the room. They would soon fade out; but for several moments they would
appear like tangible realities. And they were always the same
figures.... Sometimes, without any preface of dreams, I used to see
them at twilight-time,--following me about from room to room, or
reaching long dim hands after me, from story to story, up through the
interspaces of the deep stairways.
I had complained of these haunters only to be told that I must never
speak of them, and that they did not exist. I had complained to
everybody in the house; and everybody in the house had told me the very
same thing. But there was the evidence of my eyes! The denial of that
evidence I could explain only in two ways:--Either the shapes were
afraid of big people, and showed themselves to me alone, because I was
little and weak; or else the entire household had agreed, for some
ghastly reason, to say what was not true. This latter theory seemed to
me the more probable one, because I had several times perceived the
shapes when I was not unattended;--and the consequent appearance of
secrecy frightened me scarcely less than the visions did. Why was I
forbidden to talk about what I saw, and even heard,--on creaking
stairways,--behind wavering curtains?
"Nothing will hurt you,"--this was the merciless answer to all my
pleadings not to be left alone at night. But the haunters _did_ hurt me.
Only--they would wait until after I had fallen asleep, and so into their
power,--for they possessed occult means of preventing me from rising or
moving or crying out.
Needless to comment upon the policy of locking me up alone with these
fears in a black room. Unutterably was I tormented in that room--for
years! Therefore I felt relatively happy when sent away at last to a
children's boarding-school, where the haunters very seldom ventured to
show themselves.
* * * * *
They were not like any people that I had ever known. They were shadowy
dark-robed figures, capable of atrocious self-distortion,--capable, for
instance, of growing up to the ceiling, and then across it, and then
lengthening themselves, head-downwards, along the opposite wall. Only
their faces were distinct; and I tried not to look at their faces. I
tried also in my dreams--or thought that I tried--to awaken myself from
the sight of them by pulling at my eyelids with my fingers; but the
eyelids would remain closed, as if sealed.... Many years afterwards, the
frightful plates in Orfila's _Traite des Exhumes_, beheld for the first
time, recalled to me with a sickening start the dream-terrors of
childhood. But to understand the Child's experience, you must imagine
Orfila's drawings intensely alive, and continually elongating or
distorting, as in some monstrous anamorphosis.
Nevertheless the mere sight of those nightmare-faces was not the worst
of the experiences in the Child's Room. The dreams always began with a
suspicion, or sensation of something heavy in the air,--slowly quenching
will,--slowly numbing my power to move. At such times I usually found
myself alone in a large unlighted apartment; and, almost simultaneously
with the first sensation of fear, the atmosphere of the room would
become suffused, half-way to the ceiling, with a sombre-yellowish glow,
making objects dimly visible,--though the ceiling itself remained
pitch-black. This was not a true appearance of light: rather it seemed
as if the black air were changing color from beneath.... Certain
terrible aspects of sunset, on the eve of storm, offer like effects of
sinister color.... Forthwith I would try to escape,--(feeling at every
step a sensation _as of wading_),--and would sometimes succeed in
struggling half-way across the room;--but there I would always find
myself brought to a standstill,--paralyzed by some innominable
opposition. Happy voices I could hear in the next room;--I could see
light through the transom over the door that I had vainly endeavored to
reach;--I knew that one loud cry would save me. But not even by the
most frantic effort could I raise my voice above a whisper.... And all
this signified only that the Nameless was coming,--was nearing,--was
mounting the stairs. I could hear the step,--booming like the sound of a
muffled drum,--and I wondered why nobody else heard it. A long, long
time the haunter would take to come,--malevolently pausing after each
ghastly footfall. Then, without a creak, the bolted door would
open,--slowly, slowly,--and the thing would enter, gibbering
soundlessly,--and put out hands,--and clutch me,--and toss me to the
black ceiling,--and catch me descending to toss me up again, and again,
and again.... In those moments the feeling was not fear: fear itself had
been torpified by the first seizure. It was a sensation that has no name
in the language of the living. For every touch brought a shock of
something infinitely worse than pain,--something that thrilled into the
innermost secret being of me,--a sort of abominable electricity,
discovering unimagined capacities of suffering in totally unfamiliar
regions of sentiency.... This was commonly the work of a single
tormentor; but I can also remember having been caught by a group, and
tossed from one to another,--seemingly for a time of many minutes.