The Empty House and Other Ghost Stories
"This midnight episode, so odd and yet so trivial in itself, fired me
with more curiosity than ever about my fellow-lodger. It also made me
connect him in my mind with a sense of fear and distrust. I never saw
him, yet I was often, and uncomfortably, aware of his presence in the
upper regions of that gloomy lodging-house. Smith and his secret mode of
life and mysterious pursuits, somehow contrived to awaken in my being a
line of reflection that disturbed my comfortable condition of ignorance.
I never saw him, as I have said, and exchanged no sort of communication
with him, yet it seemed to me that his mind was in contact with mine,
and some of the strange forces of his atmosphere filtered through into
my being and disturbed my equilibrium. Those upper floors became haunted
for me after dark, and, though outwardly our lives never came into
contact, I became unwillingly involved in certain pursuits on which his
mind was centred. I felt that he was somehow making use of me against my
will, and by methods which passed my comprehension.
"I was at that time, moreover, in the heavy, unquestioning state of
materialism which is common to medical students when they begin to
understand something of the human anatomy and nervous system, and jump
at once to the conclusion that they control the universe and hold in
their forceps the last word of life and death. I 'knew it all,' and
regarded a belief in anything beyond matter as the wanderings of weak,
or at best, untrained minds. And this condition of mind, of course,
added to the strength of this upsetting fear which emanated from the
floor below and began slowly to take possession of me.
"Though I kept no notes of the subsequent events in this matter, they
made too deep an impression for me ever to forget the sequence in which
they occurred. Without difficulty I can recall the next step in the
adventure with Smith, for adventure it rapidly grew to be."
The doctor stopped a moment and laid his pipe on the table behind him
before continuing. The fire had burned low, and no one stirred to poke
it. The silence in the great hall was so deep that when the speaker's
pipe touched the table the sound woke audible echoes at the far end
among the shadows.
"One evening, while I was reading, the door of my room opened and Smith
came in. He made no attempt at ceremony. It was after ten o'clock and I
was tired, but the presence of the man immediately galvanised me into
activity. My attempts at ordinary politeness he thrust on one side at
once, and began asking me to vocalise, and then pronounce for him,
certain Hebrew words; and when this was done he abruptly inquired if I
was not the fortunate possessor of a very rare Rabbinical Treatise,
which he named.
"How he knew that I possessed this book puzzled me exceedingly; but I
was still more surprised to see him cross the room and take it out of
my book-shelf almost before I had had time to answer in the affirmative.
Evidently he knew exactly where it was kept. This excited my curiosity
beyond all bounds, and I immediately began asking him questions; and
though, out of sheer respect for the man, I put them very delicately to
him, and almost by way of mere conversation, he had only one reply for
the lot. He would look up at me from the pages of the book with an
expression of complete comprehension on his extraordinary features,
would bow his head a little and say very gravely--
"'That, of course, is a perfectly proper question,'--which was
absolutely all I could ever get out of him.
"On this particular occasion he stayed with me perhaps ten or fifteen
minutes. Then he went quickly downstairs to his room with my Hebrew
Treatise in his hand, and I heard him close and bolt his door.
"But a few moments later, before I had time to settle down to my book
again, or to recover from the surprise his visit had caused me, I heard
the door open, and there stood Smith once again beside my chair. He made
no excuse for his second interruption, but bent his head down to the
level of my reading lamp and peered across the flame straight into my
eyes.
"'I hope,' he whispered, 'I hope you are never disturbed at night?'
"'Eh?' I stammered, 'disturbed at night? Oh no, thanks, at least, not
that I know of--'
"'I'm glad,' he replied gravely, appearing not to notice my confusion
and surprise at his question. 'But, remember, should it ever be the
case, please let me know at once.'
"And he was gone down the stairs and into his room again.
"For some minutes I sat reflecting upon his strange behaviour. He was
not mad, I argued, but was the victim of some harmless delusion that had
gradually grown upon him as a result of his solitary mode of life; and
from the books he used, I judged that it had something to do with
mediæval magic, or some system of ancient Hebrew mysticism. The words he
asked me to pronounce for him were probably 'Words of Power,' which,
when uttered with the vehemence of a strong will behind them, were
supposed to produce physical results, or set up vibrations in one's own
inner being that had the effect of a partial lifting of the veil.
"I sat thinking about the man, and his way of living, and the probable
effects in the long-run of his dangerous experiments, and I can recall
perfectly well the sensation of disappointment that crept over me when I
realised that I had labelled his particular form of aberration, and that
my curiosity would therefore no longer be excited.
"For some time I had been sitting alone with these reflections--it may
have been ten minutes or it may have been half an hour--when I was
aroused from my reverie by the knowledge that someone was again in the
room standing close beside my chair. My first thought was that Smith had
come back again in his swift, unaccountable manner, but almost at the
same moment I realised that this could not be the case at all. For the
door faced my position, and it certainly had not been opened again.
"Yet, someone was in the room, moving cautiously to and fro, watching
me, almost touching me. I was as sure of it as I was of myself, and
though at the moment I do not think I was actually afraid, I am bound to
admit that a certain weakness came over me and that I felt that strange
disinclination for action which is probably the beginning of the
horrible paralysis of real terror. I should have been glad to hide
myself, if that had been possible, to cower into a corner, or behind a
door, or anywhere so that I could not be watched and observed.
"But, overcoming my nervousness with an effort of the will, I got up
quickly out of my chair and held the reading lamp aloft so that it shone
into all the corners like a searchlight.
"The room was utterly empty! It was utterly empty, at least, to the
_eye_, but to the nerves, and especially to that combination of sense
perception which is made up by all the senses acting together, and by no
one in particular, there was a person standing there at my very elbow.
"I say 'person,' for I can think of no appropriate word. For, if it
_was_ a human being, I can only affirm that I had the overwhelming
conviction that it was _not_, but that it was some form of life wholly
unknown to me both as to its essence and its nature. A sensation of
gigantic force and power came with it, and I remember vividly to this
day my terror on realising that I was close to an invisible being who
could crush me as easily as I could crush a fly, and who could see my
every movement while itself remaining invisible.
"To this terror was added the certain knowledge that the 'being' kept
in my proximity for a definite purpose. And that this purpose had some
direct bearing upon my well-being, indeed upon my life, I was equally
convinced; for I became aware of a sensation of growing lassitude as
though the vitality were being steadily drained out of my body. My heart
began to beat irregularly at first, then faintly. I was conscious, even
within a few minutes, of a general drooping of the powers of life in the
whole system, an ebbing away of self-control, and a distinct approach of
drowsiness and torpor.
"The power to move, or to think out any mode of resistance, was fast
leaving me, when there rose, in the distance as it were, a tremendous
commotion. A door opened with a clatter, and I heard the peremptory and
commanding tones of a human voice calling aloud in a language I could
not comprehend. It was Smith, my fellow-lodger, calling up the stairs;
and his voice had not sounded for more than a few seconds, when I felt
something withdrawn from my presence, from my person, indeed from my
_very skin_. It seemed as if there was a rushing of air and some large
creature swept by me at about the level of my shoulders. Instantly the
pressure on my heart was relieved, and the atmosphere seemed to resume
its normal condition.
"Smith's door closed quietly downstairs, as I put the lamp down with
trembling hands. What had happened I do not know; only, I was alone
again and my strength was returning as rapidly as it had left me.
"I went across the room and examined myself in the glass. The skin was
very pale, and the eyes dull. My temperature, I found, was a little
below normal and my pulse faint and irregular. But these smaller signs
of disturbance were as nothing compared with the feeling I had--though
no outward signs bore testimony to the fact--that I had narrowly escaped
a real and ghastly catastrophe. I felt shaken, somehow, shaken to the
very roots of my being."
The doctor rose from his chair and crossed over to the dying fire, so
that no one could see the expression on his face as he stood with his
back to the grate, and continued his weird tale.
"It would be wearisome," he went on in a lower voice, looking over our
heads as though he still saw the dingy top floor of that haunted
Edinburgh lodging-house; "it would be tedious for me at this length of
time to analyse my feelings, or attempt to reproduce for you the
thorough examination to which I endeavoured then to subject my whole
being, intellectual, emotional, and physical. I need only mention the
dominant emotion with which this curious episode left me--the indignant
anger against myself that I could ever have lost my self-control enough
to come under the sway of so gross and absurd a delusion. This protest,
however, I remember making with all the emphasis possible. And I also
remember noting that it brought me very little satisfaction, for it was
the protest of my reason only, when all the rest of my being was up in
arms against its conclusions.
"My dealings with the 'delusion,' however, were not yet over for the
night; for very early next morning, somewhere about three o'clock, I was
awakened by a curiously stealthy noise in the room, and the next minute
there followed a crash as if all my books had been swept bodily from
their shelf on to the floor.
"But this time I was not frightened. Cursing the disturbance with all
the resounding and harmless words I could accumulate, I jumped out of
bed and lit the candle in a second, and in the first dazzle of the
flaring match--but before the wick had time to catch--I was certain I
_saw_ a dark grey shadow, of ungainly shape, and with something more or
less like a human head, drive rapidly past the side of the wall farthest
from me and disappear into the gloom by the angle of the door.
"I waited one single second to be sure the candle was alight, and then
dashed after it, but before I had gone two steps, my foot stumbled
against something hard piled up on the carpet and I only just saved
myself from falling headlong. I picked myself up and found that all the
books from what I called my 'language shelf' were strewn across the
floor. The room, meanwhile, as a minute's search revealed, was quite