"'For Heaven's sake,' I shrieked, 'for Heaven's sake.' "But I might as well have appealed to the wind. It had no sense of
mercy. "'He, he!' it screamed. 'What a joke--what a splendid joke. Your wit
never seems to degenerate, Hugesson! I'm wondering if you will be as
funny when you're a ghost. Get ready. I'm coming, coming,' and as the
sky deepened to an awe-inspiring black, and the stars grew larger,
brighter, fiercer; and the great lone deserts appealed to me with a
force unequalled before, it sprang through the air. "A singing in my ears and a great bloody mist rose before my eyes. The
wailing and screeching of a million souls was borne in loud protracted
echoings through the drum of my ears. Men and women with evil faces rose
up from crag and boulder to spit and tear at me. I saw creatures of such
damning ugliness that my soul screamed aloud with terror. And then from
the mountain tops the bolt of heaven was let loose. Every spirit was
swept away like chaff before the burst of wind that, hurling and
shrieking, bore down upon me. I gave myself up for lost. I felt all the
agonies of suffocation, my lungs were torn from my palpitating body; my
legs wrenched round in their sockets; my feet whirled upwards in that
gust of devilish air. All--excruciating, damning pain--and _pro
tempore_--I knew no more." *       *       *       *       *

N.B.--It was subsequently ascertained, by my friend the late Mr. Supton,
that a man named Hugesson, who had been for a short time head keeper at
the Zoological Gardens, had been found dead, in bed, by his landlady,
with a look on his face so awful that she had fled shrieking from the
room. The death was, of course, attributed to syncope, but my
friend--who, by the way, had never heard of Hugesson before he received
the foregoing account through the medium of planchette--told me, and I
agreed with him, that from similar cases that had come within his
experience, it was most probable that Hugesson had in reality projected
himself, and had perished in the manner described. No more improbable than the above story is that sent me by my old school
friend Martin Tristram, who died last year. I style it "The Case of Martin Tristram." It is reproduced from a
magazine published some three years ago. After Martin Tristram once took up spiritualism his visits to me became
most erratic, and I not only never knew when to expect him, but I was
not always sure, when he did come, that it was he. This sounds extraordinary--to see a man is assuredly to recognize him! Not always--by no means always! There are circumstances in which a man loses his identity, when his
"ego" is supplanted by another ego, when he ceases to be himself, and
assumes an individuality which is entirely different from himself. This is undoubtedly the case in madness, imbecility, epilepsy, so-called
total loss of memory through cerebral injury, hypnotism, sometimes in
projection when the astral body gets detained, and also not infrequently
in investigating peculiar instances of psychic phenomena. But if the astral body has been evicted from its carnal home, whither
has it gone? and what is the nature of the thing that has taken its
place? Ah! These are indeed puzzles--puzzles I am devoting a lifetime to solve. There have been moments when unseen hands have gradually begun to pull
aside the obscuring veil, when the identity of the usurping spirit has
seemed on the verge of being disclosed to me, and I have been about to
be initiated into the greatest and most zealously guarded of all
secrets. There have been times, I say, when my occult researches have actually
brought me to this climax; but up to the present I have invariably been
disappointed--the curtain has suddenly fallen, the esoteric ego has
shrunk into its shell, and the mystery surrounding it has remained
impenetrable. This is but one, albeit perhaps the most striking, of the many methods
through which the superphysical endeavours to get in immediate contact
with the physical. I was unpleasantly reminded of it when Martin Tristram's carnal body
came to visit me one night several years ago. I was aware that it was
not Tristram. His mannerisms were the same, his voice had not altered;
but there was an expression in his eyes that told of a very different
spirit from Martin's dwelling within that body. The night being cold, he closed the door carefully, and crossing the
room to where I sat by the fire, threw himself in an easy chair, and
gazed meditatively at me. My rooms in Bloomsbury were not lonely. They had more than their share
of "brawling brats" on either side; there were no gloomy recesses or
ghost-suggestive cupboards, and I never once experienced in them the
slightest apprehension of sudden superphysical manifestations, yet I
cannot help saying that as I met that glance from the pseudo-Tristram's
eyes I felt my flesh begin to creep. He sat for so long in silence that I began to wonder if he ever meant to
speak. "The secret of success in seeing certain classes of apparitions," he
said at length, "to a very great extent lies in sympathy. Sympathy! And
now for my story. I will tell it to you in the 'third person.'" I looked at Tristram's face in dismay. "The third person!" "Yes, the third person," he gravely rejoined, "and under the
circumstances the only person. You see it is now close on midnight." I looked at the clock. Great heavens! What he said was correct. A whole
evening had slipped by without my knowledge. He would, of course, have
to stay the night. I suggested it to him. "My dear fellow," he replied, with an odd smile, "don't worry about me. I am not dependent on any trains. I shall be home by two o'clock." I shivered--a draught of cold air had in all probability stolen through
the cracks of the ill-fitting window-frames. "You have on one of your queer moods, Martin," I expostulated. "To be
home by two o'clock you must fly! But proceed--at all costs, the story." Tristram raised an eyebrow, a true sign that something of special
interest would follow. "You know Bruges?" he began. I nodded. "Very well, then," he went on. "Exactly a week ago Martin Tristram
arrived there from Antwerp. The hour was late, the weather boisterous,
Tristram was tired, and any lodging was better than none. "Hailing a four-wheeler, he asked the Jehu to drive him to some decent
hostel where the sheets were clean and the tariff moderate; and the
fellow, gathering up the reins, took him at a snail's pace to a
mediæval-looking tavern in La Rue Croissante. You remember that street? Perhaps not! It is quite a back street, extremely narrow, very tortuous,
and miserably lighted with a few gas-lamps of the usual antique Belgian
order. "Tristram was too tired, however, to be fastidious; he felt he could lie
down and go to sleep anywhere, and what scruples he might have had were
entirely dissipated by the appearance of the charming girl who answered
the door.