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 towards 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 aspect and ghost-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: larvae 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
nought 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 nought 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 cannot tell. I cannot 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.