Then to us: “But really the--well, the nightmare
perhaps, to which I was referring, is of the vaguest and most
unsatisfactory kind. It has no apparatus about it at all. You will
probably all say that it was nothing, and wonder why I was frightened. But I was; it frightened me out of my wits. And I only just saw
something, without being able to swear what it was, and heard something
which might have been a falling stone.”

“Anyhow tell us about the falling stone,” said I. There was a stir of movement about the circle round the fire, and the
movement was not of purely physical order. It was as if--this is only
what I personally felt--it was as if the childish gaiety of the hours
we had passed that day was suddenly withdrawn; we had jested on certain
subjects, we had played hide-and-seek with all the power of earnestness
that was in us. But now--so it seemed to me--there was going to be real
hide-and-seek, real terrors were going to lurk in dark corners, or if
not real terrors, terrors so convincing as to assume the garb of
reality, were going to pounce on us. And Mrs Chandler’s exclamation as
she sat down again, “Oh, Everard, won’t it excite you?” tended in any
case to excite us. The room still remained in dubious darkness except
for the sudden lights disclosed on the walls by the leaping flames on
the hearth, and there was wide field for conjecture as to what might
lurk in the dim corners. Everard, moreover, who had been sitting in
bright light before, was banished by the extinction of some flaming log
into the shadows. A voice alone spoke to us, as he sat back in his low
chair, a voice rather slow but very distinct. “Last year,” he said, “on the twenty-fourth of December, we were down
here, as usual, Amy and I, for Christmas. Several of you who are here
now were here then. Three or four of you at least.”

I was one of these, but like the others kept silence, for the
identification, so it seemed to me, was not asked for. And he went on
again without a pause. “Those of you who were here then,” he said, “and are here now, will
remember how very warm it was this day year. You will remember, too,
that we played croquet that day on the lawn. It was perhaps a little
cold for croquet, and we played it rather in order to be able to
say--with sound evidence to back the statement--that we had done so.”

Then he turned and addressed the whole little circle. “We played ties of half-games,” he said, “just as we have played
billiards to-day, and it was certainly as warm on the lawn then as it
was in the billiard-room this morning directly after breakfast, while
to-day I should not wonder if there was three feet of snow outside. More, probably; listen.”

A sudden draught fluted in the chimney, and the fire flared up as the
current of air caught it. The wind also drove the snow against the
windows, and as he said “Listen,” we heard a soft scurry of the falling
flakes against the panes, like the soft tread of many little people who
stepped lightly, but with the persistence of multitudes who were
flocking to some rendezvous. Hundreds of little feet seemed to be
gathering outside; only the glass kept them out. And of the eight
skeletons present four or five anyhow turned and looked at the windows. These were small-paned, with leaden bars. On the leaden bars little
heaps of snow had accumulated, but there was nothing else to be seen. “Yes, last Christmas Eve was very warm and sunny,” went on Everard. “We
had had no frost that autumn, and a temerarious dahlia was still in
flower. I have always thought that it must have been mad.”

He paused a moment. “And I wonder if I were not mad too,” he added. No one interrupted him; there was something arresting, I must suppose,
in what he was saying; it chimed in anyhow with the hide-and-seek, with
the suggestions of the lonely snow. Mrs Chandler had sat down again, but
I heard her stir in her chair. But never was there a gay party so
reduced as we had been in the last five minutes. Instead of laughing at
ourselves for playing silly games, we were all taking a serious game
seriously. “Anyhow I was sitting out,” he said to me, “while you and my wife played
your half-game of croquet. Then it struck me that it was not so warm as
I had supposed, because quite suddenly I shivered. And shivering I
looked up. But I did not see you and her playing croquet at all. I saw
something which had no relation to you and her--at least I hope not.”

Now the angler lands his fish, the stalker kills his stag, and the
speaker holds his audience. And as the fish is gaffed, and as the stag
is shot, so were we held. There was no getting away till he had finished
with us. “You all know the croquet lawn,” he said, “and how it is bounded all
round by a flower border with a brick wall behind it, through which,
you will remember, there is only one gate. Well, I looked up and saw
that the lawn--I could for one moment see it was still a lawn--was
shrinking, and the walls closing in upon it. As they closed in too, they
grew higher, and simultaneously the light began to fade and be sucked
from the sky, till it grew quite dark overhead and only a glimmer of
light came in through the gate. “There was, as I told you, a dahlia in flower that day, and as this
dreadful darkness and bewilderment came over me, I remember that my eyes
sought it in a kind of despair, holding on, as it were, to any familiar
object. But it was no longer a dahlia, and for the red of its petals I
saw only the red of some feeble firelight. And at that moment the
hallucination was complete. I was no longer sitting on the lawn watching
croquet, but I was in a low-roofed room, something like a cattle-shed,
but round. Close above my head, though I was sitting down, ran rafters
from wall to wall. It was nearly dark, but a little light came in from
the door opposite to me, which seemed to lead into a passage that
communicated with the exterior of the place. Little, however, of the
wholesome air came into this dreadful den; the atmosphere was oppressive
and foul beyond all telling, it was as if for years it had been the
place of some human menagerie, and for those years had been uncleaned
and unsweetened by the winds of heaven. Yet that oppressiveness was
nothing to the awful horror of the place from the view of the spirit. Some dreadful atmosphere of crime and abomination dwelt heavy in it, its
denizens, whoever they were, were scarce human, so it seemed to me, and
though men and women, were akin more to the beasts of the field. And in
addition there was present to me some sense of the weight of years; I
had been taken and thrust down into some epoch of dim antiquity.”

He paused a moment, and the fire on the hearth leaped up for a second
and then died down again. But in that gleam I saw that all faces were
turned to Everard, and that all wore some look of dreadful expectancy. Certainly I felt it myself, and waited in a sort of shrinking horror for
what was coming.