Then I fancied it must be cocoa--I was at that time
a teetotaller--so I took hot milk instead; but I had nightmare all the
same, and my dreams terrified me to such an extent that I did not dare
get out of bed in the morning (it was then winter) till it was broad
daylight. It was now becoming a serious matter with me. As you know,
an actor more than most people needs sleep, and it soon became as much
as I could do to maintain my usual standard of acting. On the fourth
night, determining to get rest at all costs, I took a stiff glass of
hot brandy just before getting into bed. I slept,--I could scarcely
help sleeping,--but not for long, for I was rudely awakened from my
slumbers by a loud crash. I sat up in bed, thinking the whole house
was falling about my ears. The sound was not repeated, and all was
profoundly silent. Wondering what on earth the noise could have been,
and feeling very thirsty, I got out of bed to get a drink of
lime-juice. To my annoyance, however, though I groped about
everywhere, knocking an ash tray off the mantelpiece and smashing the
lid of the soap-dish, I could find neither the lime-juice nor matches. At length, giving it up as a bad job, I decided to get into bed again. With that end in view, I groped my way through the darkness, steering
myself by the furniture, the position of which was, of course, quite
familiar to me--at least I imagined it was. Judge, then, of my
astonishment when I could not find the bed! At first I regarded it as
a huge joke, and laughed--how rich! Ha! ha! ha! Fancy not being able
to find one's way back to bed in a room of this dimension! Good enough
for _Punch_! Too good, perhaps, now. Ha! ha! ha! But it soon grew past
a joke. I had been round the room, completely round the room, twice,
and still no bed! I became seriously alarmed! Could I be ill? Was I
going mad? But no, my forehead was cool, my pulse normal. For some
seconds I stood still, not knowing what else to do; then, to make one
more desperate attempt, I stuck straight in front of me--and--ran
into something--something that recoiled and hit me. Thrilled with
amazement, I put up my hand to feel what it was, and touched a noose." "A noose!" I ejaculated, interrupting Hely Browne for the first time
since he began. "Yes, a noose!" he repeated, "suspended in mid-air. As you can
imagine, I was greatly astonished, for I knew there had been nothing
that I could be now mistaking for a noose in the room overnight. I
stretched out my arms to feel to what it was fastened, but, to add to
my surprise, the cord terminated in thin air. Then I grew frightened,
and, dropping my arms, tried to move away from the spot; I could
not--my feet were glued to the floor. With a gentle, purring sound
the noose commenced fawning--I use that word because the action was
so intensely bestial, so like that of a cat or snake--round my neck
and face. It then rose above me, and, after circling furiously round
and round and creating a miniature maelstrom in the air, descended
gradually over my head. Lower and lower it stole, like some sleek,
caressing slug. Now past the tips of my ears, now my nose, now my
chin, until with a tiny thud it landed on my shoulders, when, with a
fierce snap, it suddenly tightened. I endeavoured to tear it off, but
every time I raised my hands, a strong, magnetic force drew them to
my side again; I opened my mouth to shriek for help, and an icy
current of air froze the breath in my lungs. I was helpless,
O'Donnell, utterly, wholly helpless. Cold, clammy hands tore my feet
from the floor; I was hoisted bodily up, and then let drop. A
frightful pain shot through me. A hundred wires cut into my throat at
once. I gasped, choked, suffocated, and in my mad efforts to find a
foothold kicked out frantically in all directions. But this only
resulted in an increase of my torments, since with every plunge the
noose grew tauter. My agony at last grew unbearable; I could feel the
sides of my raw and palpitating thorax driven into one another, while
every attempt to heave up breath from my bursting lungs was rewarded
with the most excruciating paroxysms of pain--pain more acute than I
thought it possible for any human being to endure. My head became
ten times its natural size; blood--foaming, boiling blood--poured
into it from God knows where, and under its pressure my eyes bulged
in their sockets, and the veins in my nose cracked. Terrific
thunderings echoed and re-echoed in my ears; my tongue, huge as a
mountain, shot against my teeth; a sea of fire raged through my
brain, and then--blackness--blackness inconceivable. When I recovered
consciousness, O'Donnell, I found myself standing, cold and
shivering, but otherwise sound and whole, on the chilly oilcloth. I
had, now, no difficulty in finding my way back to bed, and in about
an hour's time succeeded in falling asleep. I slept till late, and,
on getting up, tried to persuade myself that my horrible experience
was but the result of another nightmare. "As you may guess, after all this, I did not look forward to bedtime,
and counted the minutes as they flew by with the utmost regret. Never
had I been so sorry when my performance at the theatre was over, and
the lights of my hotel once again hove in sight. I entered my bedroom
in fear and trembling, and was so apprehensive lest I should be again
compelled to undergo the sensations of hanging, that I decided to keep
a light burning all night, and, for that reason, had bought half a
pound of wax candles. At last I grew so sleepy that I could keep awake
no longer, and, placing the candlestick on a chair by the bed, I
scrambled in between the sheets. Without as much as a sip of spirits,
I slept like a top. When I awoke the room was in pitch darkness. A
curious smell at once attracted my notice. I thought, at first, it
might be but the passing illusion of a dream. But no--I sniffed
again--it was there--there, close to me--under my very nose--the
strong, pungent odour of drugs; but not being a professor of smells,
nor even a humble student of physics, I was consequently unable to
diagnose it, and could only arrive at the general conclusion that it
was a smell that brought with it very vivid recollections of a
chemist's shop and of my old school laboratory. Wondering whence it
originated, I thrust my face forward with the intention of trying to
locate it, when, to my horror, my lips touched against something cold
and flabby. In an agony of fear I reeled away from it, and, the bed
being narrow, I slipped over the edge and bumped on to the floor. "Now I think it is quite possible that up to this point you may have
attributed my unhappy experience to nothing more nor less than a bad
dream, but your dream theory can no longer hold good, for, on coming
in such sudden contact with the floor, I gave my funny-bone a knock,
which, I can assure you, made me thoroughly awake, and the first thing
I noticed on recovering my scattered senses--was the smell.