This time there
came a rap like that which I had thought during dinner to be the
postman. But whether it was that the room was dark, or that despite
myself I felt rather excited too, it seemed to me now to be far louder
than before. Also it appeared to come neither from here nor there, but
to be diffused through the room. Then the curious revolving of the table ceased, but the intense, violent
throbbing continued. My eyes were fixed on it, though owing to the
darkness I could see nothing, when quite suddenly a little speck of
light moved across it, so that for an instant I saw my own hands. Then
came another and another, like the spark of matches struck in the dark,
or like fire-flies crossing the dusk in southern gardens. Then came
another knock of shattering loudness, and the throbbing of the table
ceased, and the lights vanished. *       *       *       *       *

Such were the phenomena at the first séance at which I was present, but
Fielder, it must be remembered, had been studying, ‘expecting,’ he
called it, for some years. To adopt spiritualistic language (which at
that time I was very far from doing), he was the medium, I merely the
observer, and all the phenomena I had seen that night were habitually
produced or witnessed by him. I make this limitation since he told me
that certain of them now appeared to be outside his own control
altogether. The knockings would come when his mind, as far as he knew,
was entirely occupied in other matters, and sometimes he had even been
awakened out of sleep by them. The lights were also independent of his
volition. Now my theory at the time was that all these things were purely
subjective in him, and that what he expressed by saying that they were
out of his control, meant that they had become fixed and rooted in the
unconscious self, of which we know so little, but which, more and more,
we see to play so enormous a part in the life of a man. In fact, it is
not too much to say that the vast majority of our deeds spring,
apparently without volition, from this unconscious self. All hearing is
the unconscious exercise of the aural nerve, all seeing of the optic,
all walking, all ordinary movement seem to be done without the exercise
of will on our part. Nay more, should we take to some new form of
progression, skating, for instance, the beginner will learn with falls
and difficulty the outside edge, but within a few hours of his having
learned his balance on it, he will give no more thought to what he
learned so short a time ago as an acrobatic feat, than he gives to the
placing of one foot before the other. But to the brain specialist all this was intensely interesting, and to
the student of hypnotism, as I was, even more so, for (such was the
conclusion I came to after this first séance), the fact that I saw and
heard just what Louis saw and heard was an exhibition of
thought-transference which in all my experience in the Charcot-schools I
had never seen surpassed, if indeed rivalled. I knew that I was myself
extremely sensitive to suggestion, and my part in it this evening I
believed to be purely that of the receiver of suggestions so vivid that
I visualised and heard these phenomena which existed only in the brain
of my friend. We talked over what had occurred upstairs. His view was that the Thing
was trying to communicate with us. According to him it was the Thing
that moved the table and tapped, and made us see streaks of light. ‘Yes, but the Thing,’ I interrupted, ‘what do you mean? Is it a
great-uncle--oh, I have seen so many relatives appear at séances, and
heard so many of their dreadful platitudes--or what is it? A spirit? Whose spirit?’

Louis was sitting opposite to me, and on the little table before us
there was an electric light. Looking at him I saw the pupil of his eye
suddenly dilate. To the medical man--provided that some violent change
in the light is not the cause of the dilation--that meant only one
thing, terror. But it quickly resumed its normal proportion again. Then he got up, and stood in front of the fire. ‘No, I don’t think it is great-uncle anybody,’ he said, ‘I don’t know,
as I told you, what the Thing is. But if you ask me what my conjecture
is, it is that the Thing is an Elemental.’

‘And pray explain further. What is an Elemental?’

Once again his eye dilated. ‘It will take two minutes,’ he said. ‘But, listen. There are good things
in this world, are there not, and bad things? Cancer, I take it is bad,
and--and fresh air is good; honesty is good, lying is bad. Impulses of
some sort direct both sides, and some power suggests the impulses. Well,
I went into this spiritualistic business impartially. I learned to
“expect,” to throw open the door into the soul, and I said, “Anyone may
come in.” And I think Something has applied for admission, the Thing
that tapped and turned the table and struck matches, as you saw, across
it. Now the control of the evil principle in the world is in the hands
of a power which entrusts its errands to the things which I call
Elementals. Oh, they have been seen; I doubt not that they will be seen
again. I did not, and do not ask good spirits to come in. I don’t want
“The Church’s one foundation” played on a musical box. Nor do I _want_
an Elemental. I only threw open the door. I believe the Thing has come
into my house, and is establishing communication with me. Oh, I want to
go the whole hog. What is it? In the name of Satan, if necessary, what
is it? I just want to know.’

       *       *       *       *       *

What followed I thought then might easily be an invention of the
imagination, but what I believed to have happened was this. A piano with
music on it was standing at the far end of the room by the door, and a
sudden draught entered the room, so strong that the leaves turned. Next
the draught troubled a vase of daffodils, and the yellow heads nodded. Then it reached the candles that stood close to us, and they fluttered,
burning blue and low. Then it reached me, and the draught was cold, and
stirred my hair. Then it eddied, so to speak, and went across to Louis,
and his hair also moved, as I could see. Then it went downwards towards
the fire, and flames suddenly started up in its path, blown upwards. The
rug by the fireplace flapped also. ‘Funny, wasn’t it?’ he asked. ‘And has the Elementa gone up the chimney?’ said I. ‘Oh, no,’ said he, ‘the Thing only passed us.’

Then suddenly he pointed at the wall just behind my chair, and his voice
cracked as he spoke. ‘Look, what’s that?’ he said. ‘There on the wall.’

Considerably startled I turned in the direction of his shaking finger. The wall was pale grey in tone, and sharp-cut against it was a shadow
that, as I looked, moved. It was like the shadow of some enormous slug,
legless and fat, some two feet high by about four feet long. Only at one
end of it was a head shaped like the head of a seal, with open mouth and
panting tongue.