Fearing, however, that the train of thought into which I fell might
unsteady my nerves, I fully determined to keep my mind in a fit state
to cope with whatever of marvelous the advancing night might bring
forth. I roused myself--laid the letters on the table--stirred up
the fire, which was still bright and cheering, and opened my volume
of Macaulay. I read quietly enough till about half-past eleven. I
then threw myself dressed upon the bed, and told my servant he might
retire to his own room, but must keep himself awake. I bade him
leave open the door between the two rooms. Thus alone, I kept two
candles burning on the table by my bed-head. I placed my watch
beside the weapons, and calmly resumed my Macaulay. Opposite to me
the fire burned clear; and on the hearth-rug, seemingly asleep, lay
the dog. In about twenty minutes I felt an exceedingly cold air pass
by my cheek, like a sudden draft. I fancied the door to my right,
communicating with the landing-place, must have got open; but no--it
was closed. I then turned my glance to my left, and saw the flame of
the candles violently swayed as by a wind. At the same moment the
watch beside the revolver softly slid from the table--softly,
softly--no visible hand--it was gone. I sprang up, seizing the
revolver with the one hand, the dagger with the other: I was not
willing that my weapons should share the fate of the watch. Thus
armed, I looked round the floor--no sign of the watch. Three slow,
loud, distinct knocks were now heard at the bed-head; my servant
called out: "Is that you, sir?"
"No; be on your guard."
The dog now roused himself and sat on his haunches, his ears moving
quickly backward and forward. He kept his eyes fixed on me with a
look so strange that he concentred all my attention on himself.
Slowly, he rose up, all his hair bristling, and stood perfectly
rigid, and with the same wild stare. I had no time, however, to
examine the dog. Presently my servant emerged from his room; and if
ever I saw horror in the human face, it was then. I should not have
recognized him had we met in the street, so altered was every
lineament. He passed by me quickly, saying in a whisper that seemed
scarcely to come from his lips: "Run--run! it is after me!" He
gained the door to the landing, pulled it open, and rushed forth. I
followed him into the landing involuntarily, calling him to stop;
but, without heeding me, he bounded down the stairs, clinging to the
balusters, and taking several steps at a time. I heard, where I
stood, the street-door open--heard it again clap to. I was left
alone in the haunted house.
It was but for a moment that I remained undecided whether or not to
follow my servant; pride and curiosity alike forbade so dastardly a
flight. I reentered my room, closing the door after me, and
proceeded cautiously into the interior chamber. I encountered
nothing to justify my servant's terror. I again carefully examined
the walls, to see if there were any concealed door. I could find no
trace of one--not even a seam in the dull-brown paper with which the
room was hung. How, then, had the Thing, whatever it was, which had
so scared him, obtained ingress except through my own chamber?
I returned to my room, shut and locked the door that opened upon the
interior one, and stood on the hearth, expectant and prepared. I now
perceived that the dog had slunk into an angle of the wall, and was
pressing himself close against it, as if literally striving to force
his way into it. I approached the animal and spoke to it; the poor
brute was evidently beside itself with terror. It showed all its
teeth, the slaver dropping from its jaws, and would certainly have
bitten me if I had touched it. It did not seem to recognize me.
Whoever has seen at the Zoological Gardens a rabbit, fascinated by a
serpent, cowering in a corner, may form some idea of the anguish
which the dog exhibited. Finding all efforts to soothe the animal in
vain, and fearing that his bite might be as venomous in that state as
in the madness of hydrophobia, I left him alone, placed my weapons on
the table beside the fire, seated myself, and recommenced my Macaulay.
Perhaps, in order not to appear seeking credit for a courage, or
rather a coolness, which the reader may conceive I exaggerate, I may
be pardoned if I pause to indulge in one or two egotistical remarks.
As I hold presence of mind, or what is called courage, to be
precisely proportioned to familiarity with the circumstances that
lead to it, so I should say that I had been long sufficiently
familiar with all experiments that appertain to the Marvelous. I had
witnessed many very extraordinary phenomena in various parts of the
world--phenomena that would be either totally disbelieved if I stated
them, or ascribed to supernatural agencies. Now, my theory is that
the Supernatural is the Impossible, and that what is called
supernatural is only a something in the laws of nature of which we
have been hitherto ignorant. Therefore, if a ghost rise before me, I
have not the right to say, "So, then, the supernatural is possible,"
but rather, "So, then, the apparition of a ghost is, contrary to
received opinion, within the laws of nature--i.e., not supernatural."
Now, in all that I had hitherto witnessed, and indeed in all the
wonders which the amateurs of mystery in our age record as facts, a
material living agency is always required. On the Continent you will
find still magicians who assert that they can raise spirits. Assume
for the moment that they assert truly, still the living material form
of the magician is present; and he is the material agency by which,
from some constitutional peculiarities, certain strange phenomena are
represented to your natural senses.
Accept, again, as truthful, the tales of Spirit Manifestation in
America--musical or other sounds--writings on paper, produced by no
discernible hand--articles of furniture moved without apparent human
agency--or the actual sight and touch of hands, to which no bodies
seem to belong--still there must be found the Medium, or living being
with constitutional peculiarities capable of obtaining these signs.
In fine, in all such marvels, supposing even that there is no
imposture, there must be a human being like ourselves by whom, or
through whom, the effects presented to human beings are produced. It
is so with the now familiar phenomena of mesmerism or
electro-biology; the mind of the person operated on is affected
through a material living agent. Nor, supposing it true that a
mesmerized patient can respond to the will or passes of a mesmerizer
a hundred miles distant, is the response less occasioned by a
material being; it may be through a material fluid--call it Electric,
call it Odic, call it what you will--which has the power of
traversing space and passing obstacles that the material effect is
communicated from one to the other. Hence all that I had hitherto
witnessed, or expected to witness, in this strange house, I believed
to be occasioned through some agency or medium as mortal as myself;
and this idea necessarily prevented the awe with which those who
regard as supernatural things that are not within the ordinary
operations of nature might have been impressed by the adventures of
that memorable night.
As, then, it was my conjecture that all that was presented, or would
be presented, to my senses must originate in some human being gifted
by constitution with the power so to present them, and having some
motive so to do, I felt an interest in my theory which, in its way,
was rather philosophical than superstitious. And I can sincerely say
that I was in as tranquil a temper for observation as any practical
experimentalist could be in awaiting the effects of some rare, though
perhaps perilous, chemical combination. Of course, the more I kept
my mind detached from fancy, the more the temper fitted for
observation would be obtained; and I therefore riveted eye and
thought on the strong daylight sense in the page of my Macaulay.
I now became aware that something interposed between the page and the
light--the page was overshadowed: I looked up, and I saw what I shall
find it very difficult, perhaps impossible, to describe.
It was a darkness shaping itself forth from the air in very undefined
outline. I can not say it was of a human form, and yet it had more
resemblance to a human form, or rather shadow, than to anything else.
As it stood, wholly apart and distinct from the air and the light
around it, its dimensions seemed gigantic, the summit nearly touching
the ceiling. While I gazed, a feeling of intense cold seized me. An
iceberg before me could not more have chilled me; nor could the cold
of an iceberg have been more purely physical. I feel convinced that
it was not the cold caused by fear. As I continued to gaze, I
thought--but this I can not say with precision--that I distinguished
two eyes looking down on me from the height. One moment I fancied
that I distinguished them clearly, the next they seemed gone; but
still two rays of a pale-blue light frequently shot through the
darkness, as from the height on which I half believed, half doubted,
that I had encountered the eyes.
I strove to speak--my voice utterly failed me; I could only think to
myself: "Is this fear? it is not fear!" I strove to rise--in vain; I
felt as if weighed down by an irresistible force. Indeed, my
impression was that of an immense and overwhelming power opposed to
my volition--that sense of utter inadequacy to cope with a force
beyond man's, which one may feel physically in a storm at sea, in a
conflagration, or when confronting some terrible wild beast, or
rather, perhaps, the shark of the ocean, I felt morally. Opposed to
my will was another will, as far superior to its strength as storm,
fire, and shark are superior in material force to the force of man.
And now, as this impression grew on me--now came, at last,
horror--horror to a degree that no words can convey. Still I
retained pride, if not courage; and in my own mind I said: "This is
horror, but it is not fear; unless I fear I can not be harmed; my
reason rejects this thing; it is an illusion--I do not fear." With a
violent effort I succeeded at last in stretching out my hand toward
the weapon on the table: as I did so, on the arm and shoulder I
received a strange shock, and my arm fell to my side powerless. And
now, to add to my horror, the light began slowly to wane from the
candles--they were not, as it were, extinguished, but their flame
seemed very gradually withdrawn: it was the same with the fire--the
light was extracted from the fuel; in a few minutes the room was in
utter darkness. The dread that came over me, to be thus in the dark
with that dark Thing, whose power was so intensely felt, brought a
reaction of nerve. In fact, terror had reached that climax, that
either my senses must have deserted me, or I must have burst through
the spell. I did burst through it. I found voice, though the voice
was a shriek. I remembered that I broke forth with words like these:
"I do not fear, my soul does not fear;" and at the same time I found
strength to rise. Still in that profound gloom I rushed to one of
the windows--tore aside the curtain--flung open the shutters; my
first thought was--Light. And when I saw the moon high, clear, and
calm, I felt a joy that almost compensated for the previous terror.
There was the moon, there was also the light from the gas-lamps in
the deserted slumberous street. I turned to look back into the room;
the moon penetrated its shadow very palely and partially--but still
there was light. The dark Thing, whatever it might be, was
gone--except that I could yet see a dim shadow, which seemed the
shadow of that shade, against the opposite wall.
My eye now rested on the table, and from under the table (which was
without cloth or cover--an old mahogany round table) there rose a
hand, visible as far as the wrist. It was a hand, seemingly, as much
of flesh and blood as my own, but the hand of an aged person--lean,
wrinkled, small too--a woman's hand. That hand very softly closed on
the two letters that lay on the table: hand and letters both
vanished. There then came the same three loud measured knocks I had
heard at the bed-head before this extraordinary drama had commenced.
As those sounds slowly ceased, I felt the whole room vibrate
sensibly; and at the far end there rose, as from the floor, sparks or
globules like bubbles of light, many colored--green, yellow,
fire-red, azure. Up and down, to and fro, hither, thither, as tiny
Will-o'-the-Wisps, the sparks moved, slow or swift, each at its own
caprice. A chair (as in the drawing-room below) was now advanced
from the wall without apparent agency, and placed at the opposite
side of the table. Suddenly, as forth from the chair, there grew a
shape--a woman's shape. It was distinct as a shape of life--ghastly
as a shape of death. The face was that of youth, with a strange
mournful beauty; the throat and shoulders were bare, the rest of the
form in a loose robe of cloudy white. It began sleeking its long
yellow hair, which fell over its shoulders; its eyes were not turned
toward me, but to the door; it seemed listening, watching, waiting.
The shadow of the shade in the background grew darker; and again I
thought I beheld the eyes gleaming out from the summit of the
shadow--eyes fixed upon that shape.
As if from the door, though it did not open, there grew out another
shape, equally distinct, equally ghastly--a man's shape--a young
man's. It was in the dress of the last century, or rather in a
likeness of such dress (for both the male shape and the female,
though defined, were evidently unsubstantial,
impalpable--simulacra--phantasms); and there was something
incongruous, grotesque, yet fearful, in the contrast between the
elaborate finery, the courtly precision of that old-fashioned garb,
with its ruffles and lace and buckles, and the corpse-like stillness
of the flitting wearer. Just as the male shape approached the
female, the dark Shadow started from the wall, all three for a moment
wrapped in darkness. When the pale light returned, the two phantoms
were as if in the grasp of the Shadow that towered between them; and
there was a blood-stain on the breast of the female; and the phantom
male was leaning on its phantom sword, and blood seemed trickling
fast from the ruffles, from the lace; and the darkness of the
intermediate Shadow swallowed them up--they were gone. And again the
bubbles of light shot, and sailed, and undulated, growing thicker and
thicker and more wildly confused in their movements.
The closet door to the right of the fireplace now opened, and from
the aperture there came the form of an aged woman. In her hand she
held letters--the very letters over which I had seen the Hand close;
and behind her I heard a footstep. She turned round as if to listen,
and then she opened the letters and seemed to read; and over her
shoulder I saw a livid face, the face as of a man long
drowned--bloated, bleached--seaweed tangled in its dripping hair; and
at her feet lay a form as of a corpse, and beside the corpse there
cowered a child, a miserable squalid child, with famine in its cheeks
and fear in its eyes. And as I looked in the old woman's face, the
wrinkles and lines vanished, and it became a face of
youth--hard-eyed, stony, but still youth; and the Shadow darted
forth, and darkened over these phantoms as it had darkened over the
last.
Nothing now was left but the Shadow, and on that my eyes were
intently fixed, till again eyes grew out of the Shadow--malignant,
serpent eyes. And the bubbles of light again rose and fell, and in
their disordered, irregular, turbulent maze, mingled with the wan
moonlight. And now from these globules themselves, as from the shell
of an egg, monstrous things burst out; the air grew filled with them;
larvæ so bloodless and so hideous that I can in no way describe them
except to remind the reader of the swarming life which the solar
microscope brings before his eyes in a drop of water--things
transparent, supple, agile, chasing each other, devouring each
other--forms like naught ever beheld by the naked eye. As the shapes
were without symmetry, so their movements were without order. In
their very vagrancies there was no sport; they came round me and
round, thicker and faster and swifter, swarming over my head,
crawling over my right arm, which was outstretched in involuntary
command against all evil beings. Sometimes I felt myself touched,
but not by them; invisible hands touched me. Once I felt the clutch
as of cold soft fingers at my throat. I was still equally conscious
that if I gave way to fear I should be in bodily peril; and I
concentred all my faculties in the single focus of resisting,
stubborn will. And I turned my sight from the Shadow--above all,
from those strange serpent eyes--eyes that had now become distinctly
visible. For there, though in naught else around me, 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 air
of some near conflagration. The larvæ grew lurid as things that live
in fire. Again the room vibrated; again were heard the three
measured knocks; and again all things were swallowed up in the
darkness of the dark Shadow, as if out of that darkness all had come,
into that darkness all returned.
As the gloom receded, the Shadow was wholly gone. Slowly, as it had
been withdrawn, the flame grew again into the candles on the table,
again into the fuel in the grate. The whole room came once more
calmly, healthfully into sight.
The two doors were still closed, the door communicating with the
servant's room still locked. In the corner of the wall, into which
he had so convulsively niched himself, lay the dog. I called to
him--no movement; I approached--the animal was dead; his eyes
protruded; his tongue out of his mouth; the froth gathered round his
jaws. I took him in my arms; I brought him to the fire; I felt acute
grief for the loss of my poor favorite--acute self-reproach; I
accused myself of his death; I imagined he had died of fright. But
what was my surprise on finding that his neck was actually broken.
Had this been done in the dark?--must it not have been by a hand
human as mine?--must there not have been a human agency all the while
in that room? Good cause to suspect it. I can not tell. I can not
do more than state the fact fairly; the reader may draw his own
inference.
Another surprising circumstance--my watch was restored to the table
from which it had been so mysteriously withdrawn; but it had stopped
at the very moment it was so withdrawn; nor, despite all the skill of
the watchmaker, has it ever gone since--that is, it will go in a
strange erratic way for a few hours, and then come to a dead stop--it
is worthless.
Nothing more chanced for the rest of the night. Nor, indeed, had I
long to wait before the dawn broke. Nor till it was broad daylight
did I quit the haunted house. Before I did so, I revisited the
little blind room in which my servant and myself had been for a time
imprisoned. I had a strong impression--for which I could not
account--that from that room had originated the mechanism of the
phenomena--if I may use the term--which had been experienced in my
chamber. And though I entered it now in the clear day, with the sun
peering through the filmy window, I still felt, as I stood on its
floors, the creep of the horror which I had first there experienced
the night before, and which had been so aggravated by what had passed
in my own chamber. I could not, indeed, bear to stay more than half
a minute within those walls. I descended the stairs, and again I
heard the footfall before me; and when I opened the street door, I
thought I could distinguish a very low laugh. I gained my own house,
expecting to find my runaway servant there. But he had not presented
himself, nor did I hear more of him for three days, when I received a
letter from him, dated from Liverpool to this effect:
"Honored Sir--I humbly entreat your pardon, though I can scarcely
hope that you will think that I deserve it, unless--which Heaven
forbid!--you saw what I did. I feel that it will be years before I
can recover myself; and as to being fit for service, it is out of the
question. I am therefore going to my brother-in-law at Melbourne.
The ship sails to-morrow. Perhaps the long voyage may set me up. I
do nothing now but start and tremble, and fancy It is behind me. I
humbly beg you, honored sir, to order my clothes, and whatever wages
are due to me, to be sent to my mother's, at Walworth--John knows her
address."
The letter ended with additional apologies, somewhat incoherent, and
explanatory details as to effects that had been under the writer's
charge.
This flight may perhaps warrant a suspicion that the man wished to go
to Australia, and had been somehow or other fraudulently mixed up
with the events of the night. I say nothing in refutation of that
conjecture; rather, I suggest it as one that would seem to many
persons the most probable solution of improbable occurrences. My
belief in my own theory remained unshaken. I returned in the evening
to 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 any incident worth note befall me, except that still, on
ascending and descending the stairs, I heard the same footfall in
advance. On leaving the house, I went to Mr. J----'s. He was at
home. I returned him 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 any interest in a mystery which none had ever
solved.
I determined at least to tell him of the two letters I had read, as
well as of the extraordinary manner in which they had disappeared,
and I then inquired if he thought they had been addressed to the
woman who had died in the house, and if there were anything in her
early history which could possibly confirm the dark suspicions to
which the letters gave rise. Mr. J---- seemed startled, and, after
musing a few moments, answered: "I am but little acquainted with the
woman's earlier history, except, as I before told you, that her
family were known to mine. But you revive some vague reminiscences
to her prejudice. I will make inquiries, and inform you of their
result. Still, even if we could admit the popular superstition that
a person who had been either the perpetrator or the victim of dark
crimes in life could revisit, as a restless spirit, the scene in
which those crimes had been committed, I should observe that the
house was infested by strange sights and sounds 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 bottom
of 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 I
were to sink into a deep sleep, from which you could not awake me,
but in that sleep could answer questions with an accuracy which I
could not pretend to when awake--tell you what money you had in your
pocket--nay, describe your very thoughts--it is not necessarily an
imposture, any more than it is necessarily supernatural. I should
be, unconsciously to myself, under a mesmeric influence, conveyed to
me from a distance by a human being who had acquired power over me by
previous rapport."
"But if a mesmerizer could so affect another living being, can you
suppose that a mesmerizer could also affect inanimate objects; move
chairs--open and shut doors?"
"Or impress our senses with the belief in such effects--we never
having been _en rapport_ with the person acting on us? No. What is
commonly called mesmerism could not do this; but there may be a power
akin to mesmerism and superior to it--the power that in the old days
was called Magic. That such a power may extend to all inanimate
objects of matter, I do not say; but if so, it would not be against
nature--it would only be a rare power in nature which might be given
to constitutions with certain peculiarities, and cultivated by
practise to an extraordinary degree. That such a power might extend
over the dead--that is, over certain thoughts and memories that the
dead may still retain--and compel, not that which ought properly to
be called the Soul, and which is far beyond human reach, but rather a
phantom of what has been most earth-stained on earth to make itself
apparent to our senses--is a very ancient though obsolete theory,
upon which I will hazard no opinion. But I do not conceive the power
would be supernatural. Let me illustrate what I mean from an
experiment which Paracelsus describes as not difficult, and which the
author of the 'Curiosities of Literature' cites as credible: A flower
perishes; you burn it. Whatever were the elements of that flower
while it lived are gone, dispersed, you know not whither; you can
never discover nor re-collect them. But you can, by chemistry, out
of the burned dust of that flower, raise a spectrum of the flower,
just as it seemed in life. It may be the same with the human being.
The soul has as much escaped you as the essence or elements of the
flower. Still you may make a spectrum of it. And this phantom,
though in the popular superstition it is held to be the soul of the
departed, must not be confounded with the true soul; it is but the
_eidolon_ of the dead form. Hence, like the best attested stories of
ghosts or spirits, the thing that most strikes us is the absence of
what we hold to be the soul; that is, of superior emancipated
intelligence. These apparitions come for little or no object--they
seldom speak when they do come; if they speak, they utter no ideas
above those of an ordinary person on earth. American spirit-seers
have published volumes of communications, in prose and verse, which
they assert to be given in the names of the most illustrious
dead--Shakespeare, Bacon--heaven knows whom. Those communications,
taking the best, are certainly not a whit of higher order than would
be communications from living persons of fair talent and education;
they are wondrously inferior to what Bacon, Shakespeare, and Plato
said and wrote when on earth. Nor, what is more noticeable, do they
ever contain an idea that was not on the earth before. Wonderful,
therefore, as such phenomena may be (granting them to be truthful), I
see much that philosophy may question, nothing that it is incumbent
on philosophy to deny--viz., nothing supernatural. They are but
ideas conveyed somehow or other (we have not yet discovered the
means) from one mortal brain to another. Whether, in so doing,
tables walk of their own accord, or fiendlike shapes appear in a
magic circle, or bodyless hands rise and remove material objects, or
a Thing of Darkness, such as presented itself to me, freeze our
blood--still am I persuaded that these are but agencies conveyed, as
by electric wires, to my own brain from the brain of another. In
some constitutions there is a natural chemistry, and those
constitutions may produce chemic wonders--in others a natural fluid,
call it electricity, and these may produce electric wonders. But the
wonders differ from Natural Science in this--they are alike
objectless, purposeless, puerile, frivolous. They lead on to no
grand results; and therefore the world does not heed, and true sages
have not cultivated them. But sure I am, that of all I saw or heard,
a man, human as myself, was the remote originator; and I believe
unconsciously to himself as to the exact effects produced, for this
reason: no two persons, you say, have ever told you that they
experienced exactly the same thing. Well, observe, no two persons
ever experience exactly the same dream. If this were an ordinary
imposture, the machinery would be arranged for results that would but
little vary; if it were a supernatural agency permitted by the
Almighty, it would surely be for some definite end. These phenomena
belong to neither class; my persuasion is that they originate in some
brain now far distant; that that brain had no distinct volition in
anything that occurred; that what does occur reflects but its
devious, motley, ever-shifting, half-formed thoughts; in short, that
it has been but the dreams of such a brain put into action and
invested with a semi-substance. That this brain is of immense power,
that it can set matter into movement, that it is malignant and
destructive, I believe; some material force must have killed my dog;
the same force might, for aught I know, have sufficed to kill myself,
had I been as subjugated by terror as the dog--had my intellect or my
spirit given me no countervailing resistance in my will."
"It killed your dog! that is fearful! indeed it is strange that no
animal can be induced to stay in that house; not even a cat. Rats
and mice are never found in it."
"The instincts of the brute creation detect influences deadly to
their existence. Man's reason has a sense less subtle, because it
has a resisting power more supreme. But enough; do you comprehend my
theory?"
"Yes, though imperfectly--and I accept any crotchet (pardon the
word), however odd, rather than embrace at once the notion of ghosts
and hobgoblins we imbibed in our nurseries. Still, to my unfortunate
house the evil is the same. What on earth can I do with the house?"
"I will tell you what I would do. I am convinced from my own
internal feelings that the small unfurnished room at right angles to
the door of the bedroom which I occupied forms a starting-point or
receptacle for the influences which haunt the house; and I strongly
advise you to have the walls opened, the floor removed--nay, the
whole room pulled down. I observe that it is detached from the body
of the house, built over the small back-yard, and could be removed
without injury to the rest of the building."
"And you think, if I did that--"
"You would cut off the telegraph wires. Try it. I am so persuaded
that I am right that I will pay half the expense if you will allow me
to direct the operations."
"Nay, I am well able to afford the cost; for the rest, allow me to
write to you."
About ten days after I received a letter from Mr. J----, telling me
that he had visited the house since I had seen him; that he had found
the two letters I had described, replaced in the drawer from which I
had taken them; that he had read them with misgivings like my own;
that he had instituted a cautious inquiry about the woman to whom I
rightly conjectured they had been written. It seemed that thirty-six
years ago (a year before the date of the letters) she had married,
against the wish of her relations, an American of very suspicious
character; in fact, he was generally believed to have been a pirate.
She herself was the daughter of very respectable tradespeople, and
had served in the capacity of a nursery governess before her
marriage. She had a brother, a widower, who was considered wealthy,
and who had one child of about six years old. A month after the
marriage, the body of this brother was found in the Thames, near
London Bridge; there seemed some marks of violence about his throat,
but they were not deemed sufficient to warrant the inquest in any
other verdict than that of "found drowned."
The American and his wife took charge of the little boy, the deceased
brother having by his will left his sister the guardianship of his
only child--and in event of the child's death, the sister inherited.
The child died about six months afterward--it was supposed to have
been neglected and ill-treated. The neighbors deposed to having
heard it shriek at night. The surgeon who had examined it after
death said that it was emaciated as if from want of nourishment, and
the body was covered with livid bruises. It seemed that one winter
night the child had sought to escape--crept out into the
back-yard--tried to scale the wall--fallen back exhausted, and been
found at morning on the stones in a dying state. But though there
was some evidence of cruelty, there was none of murder; and the aunt
and her husband had sought to palliate cruelty by alleging the
exceeding stubbornness and perversity of the child, who was declared
to be half-witted. Be that as it may, at the orphan's death the aunt
inherited her brother's fortune. Before the first wedded year was
out, the American quitted England abruptly, and never returned to it.
He obtained a cruising vessel, which was lost in the Atlantic two
years afterward. The widow was left in affluence; but reverses of
various kinds had befallen her: a bank broke--an investment
failed--she went into a small business and became insolvent--then she
entered into service, sinking lower and lower, from housekeeper down
to maid-of-all-work--never long retaining a place, though nothing
decided against her character was ever alleged. She was considered
sober, honest, and peculiarly quiet in her ways; still nothing
prospered with her. And so she had dropped into the workhouse, from
which Mr. J---- had taken her, to be placed in charge of the very
house which she had rented as mistress in the first year of her
wedded life.
Mr. J---- added that he had passed an hour alone in the unfurnished
room which I had urged him to destroy, and that his impressions of
dread while there were so great, though he had neither heard nor seen
anything, that he was eager to have the walls bared and the floors
removed as I had suggested. He had engaged persons for the work, and
would commence any day I would name.
The day was accordingly fixed. I repaired to the haunted house--we
went into the blind dreary room, took up the skirting, and then the
floors. Under the rafters, covered with rubbish, was found a
trap-door, quite large enough to admit a man. It was closely nailed
down, with clamps and rivets of iron. On removing these we descended
into a room below, the existence of which had never been suspected.
In this room there had been a window and a flue, but they had been
bricked over, evidently for many years. By the help of candles we
examined this place; it still retained some moldering
furniture--three chairs, an oak settle, a table--all of the fashion
of about eighty years ago. There was a chest of drawers against the
wall, in which we found, half-rotted away, old-fashioned articles of
a man's dress, such as might have been worn eighty or a hundred years
ago by a gentleman of some rank--costly steel buckles and buttons,
like those yet worn in court-dresses, a handsome court sword--in a
waistcoat which had once been rich with gold-lace, but which was now
blackened and foul with damp, we found five guineas, a few silver
coins, and an ivory ticket, probably for some place of entertainment
long since passed away. But our main discovery was in a kind of iron
safe fixed to the wall, the lock of which it cost us much trouble to
get picked.
In this safe were three shelves, and two small drawers. Ranged on
the shelves were several small bottles of crystal, hermetically
stoppered. They contained colorless volatile essences, of the nature
of which I shall only say that they were not poisonous--phosphor and
ammonia entered into some of them. There were also some very curious
glass tubes, and a small pointed rod of iron, with a large lump of
rock-crystal, and another of amber--also a loadstone of great power.
In one of the drawers we found a miniature portrait set in gold, and
retaining the freshness of its colors most remarkably, considering
the length of time it had probably been there. The portrait was that
of a man who might be somewhat advanced in middle life, perhaps
forty-seven or forty-eight.
It was a remarkable face--a most impressive face. If you could fancy
some mighty serpent transformed into man, preserving in the human
lineaments the old serpent type, you would have a better idea of that
countenance than long descriptions can convey: the width and flatness
of frontal--the tapering elegance of contour disguising the strength
of the deadly jaw--the long, large, terrible eye, glittering and
green as the emerald--and withal a certain ruthless calm, as if from
the consciousness of an immense power.
Mechanically I turned round the miniature to examine the back of it,
and on the back was engraved a pentacle; in the middle of the
pentacle a ladder, and the third step of the ladder was formed by the
date 1765. Examining still more minutely, I detected a spring; this,
on being pressed, opened the back of the miniature as a lid.
Withinside the lid was engraved, "Marianna to thee--Be faithful in
life and in death to ----." Here follows a name that I will not
mention, but it was not unfamiliar to me. I had heard it spoken of
by old men in my childhood as the name borne by a dazzling charlatan
who had made a great sensation in London for a year or so, and had
fled the country on the charge of a double murder within his own
house--that of his mistress and his rival. I said nothing of this to
Mr. J----, to whom reluctantly I resigned the miniature.
We had found no difficulty in opening the first drawer within the
iron safe; we found great difficulty in opening the second: it was
not locked, but it resisted all efforts, till we inserted in the
chinks the edge of a chisel. When we had thus drawn it forth, we
found a very singular apparatus in the nicest order. Upon a small
thin book, or rather tablet, was placed a saucer of crystal; this
saucer was filled with a clear liquid--on that liquid floated a kind
of compass, with a needle shifting rapidly round; but instead of the
usual points of a compass were seven strange characters, not very
unlike those used by astrologers to denote the planets. A peculiar
but not strong nor displeasing odor came from this drawer, which was
lined with a wood that we afterward discovered to be hazel. Whatever
the cause of this odor, it produced a material effect on the nerves.
We all felt it, even the two workmen who were in the room--a
creeping, tingling sensation from the tips of the fingers to the
roots of the hair. Impatient to examine the tablet, I removed the
saucer. As I did so the needle of the compass went round and round
with exceeding swiftness, and I felt a shock that ran through my
whole frame, so that I dropped the saucer on the floor. The liquid
was spilled--the saucer was broken--the compass rolled to the end of
the room--and at that instant the walls shook to and fro, as if a
giant had swayed and rocked them.
The two workmen were so frightened that they ran up the ladder by
which we had descended from the trap-door; but seeing that nothing
more happened, they were easily induced to return.
Meanwhile I had opened the tablet: it was bound in plain red leather,
with a silver clasp; it contained but one sheet of thick vellum, and
on that sheet were inscribed, within a double pentacle, words in old
monkish Latin, which are literally to be translated thus: "On all
that it can reach within these walls--sentient or inanimate, living
or dead--as moves the needle, so work my will! Accursed be the
house, and restless be the dwellers therein."
We found no more. Mr. J---- burned the tablet and its anathema. He
razed to the foundations the part of the building containing the
secret room with the chamber over it. He had then the courage to
inhabit the house himself for a month, and a quieter,
better-conditioned house could not be found in all London.
Subsequently he let it to advantage, and his tenant has made no
complaints.