It is, I confess, with considerable diffidence
that I approach the strange narrative which I am about to relate. The events
which I purpose detailing are of so extraordinary and unheard-of a character
that I am quite prepared to meet with an unusual amount of incredulity and
scorn. I accept all such beforehand. I have, I trust, the literary courage to
face unbelief. I have, after mature consideration, resolved to narrate, in as
simple and straightforward a manner as I can compass, some facts that passed
under my observation in the month of July last, and which, in the annals of the
mysteries of physical science, are wholly unparalleled.
I live at No.— Twenty-sixth Street, in this city.
The house is in some respects a curious one. It has enjoyed for the last two
years the reputation of being haunted. It is a large and stately residence,
surrounded by what was once a garden, but which is now only a green inclosure
used for bleaching clothes. The dry basin of what has been a fountain, and a
few fruit-trees, ragged and unpruned, indicate that this spot, in past days,
was a pleasant, shady retreat, filled with fruits and flowers and the sweet
murmur of waters.
The house is very spacious. A hall of noble size
leads to a vast spiral staircase winding through its center, while the various
apartments are of imposing dimensions. It was built some fifteen or twenty
years since by Mr. A—, the well-known New York merchant, who five years ago
threw the commercial world into convulsions by a stupendous bank fraud. Mr. A—,
as every one knows, escaped to Europe, and died not long after of a broken
heart. Almost immediately after the news of his decease reached this country,
and was verified, the report spread in Twenty-sixth Street that No.— was
haunted. Legal measures had dispossessed the widow of its former owner, and it
was inhabited merely by a care taker and his wife, placed there by the house
agent into whose hands it had passed for purposes of renting or sale. These
people declared that they were troubled with unnatural noises. Doors were
opened without any visible agency. The remnants of furniture scattered through
the various rooms were, during the night, piled one upon the other by unknown
hands. Invisible feet passed up and down the stairs in broad daylight,
accompanied by the rustle of unseen silk dresses, and the gliding of viewless
hands along the massive balusters. The care taker and his wife declared that
they would live there no longer. The house agent laughed, dismissed them, and
put others in their place. The noises and supernatural manifestations
continued. The neighborhood caught up the story, and the house remained
untenanted for three years. Several persons negotiated for it; but somehow,
always before the bargain was closed, they heard the unpleasant rumors, and
declined to treat any further.
It was in this state of things that my
landlady—who at that time kept a boarding-house in Bleecker Street, and who
wished to move farther up town—conceived the bold idea of renting No.—
Twenty-sixth Street. Happening to have in her house rather a plucky and
philosophical set of boarders, she laid down her scheme before us, stating
candidly everything she had heard respecting the ghostly qualities of the
establishment to which she wished to remove us. With the exception of two timid
persons—a sea captain and a returned Californian, who immediately gave notice
that they would leave—all of Mrs. Moffat’s guests declared that they would
accompany her in her chivalric incursion into the abode of spirits.
Our removal was effected in the month of May, and
we were all charmed with our new residence. The portion of Twenty-sixth Street
where our house is situated—between Seventh and Eighth Avenues—is one of the
pleasantest localities in New York. The gardens back of the houses, running
down nearly to the Hudson, form, in the summer time, a perfect avenue of
verdure. The air is pure and invigorating, sweeping, as it does, straight
across the river from the Weehawken heights, and even the ragged garden which
surrounded the house on two sides, although displaying on washing days rather
too much clothesline, still gave us a piece of greensward to look at, and a
cool retreat in the summer evenings, where we smoked our cigars in the dusk,
and watched the fireflies flashing their dark-lanterns in the long grass.
Of course we had no sooner established ourselves
at No.—than we began to expect the ghosts. We absolutely awaited their advent
with eagerness. Our dinner conversation was supernatural. One of the boarders,
who had purchased Mrs. Crowe’s “Night Side of Nature” for his own private
delectation, was regarded as a public enemy by the entire household for not
having bought twenty copies. The man led a life of supreme wretchedness while
he was reading this volume. A system of espionage was established, of which he
was the victim. If he incautiously laid the book down for an instant and left
the room, it was immediately seized and read aloud in secret places to a select
few. I found myself a person of immense importance, it having leaked out that I
was tolerably well versed in the history of supernaturalism, and had once
written a story, entitled “The Pot of Tulips,” for Harper’s Monthly, the foundation
of which was a ghost. If a table or a wainscot panel happened to warp when we
were assembled in the large drawing-room, there was an instant silence, and
every one was prepared for an immediate clanking of chains and a spectral form.
After a month of psychological excitement, it was
with the utmost dissatisfaction that we were forced to acknowledge that nothing
in the remotest degree approaching the supernatural had manifested itself. Once
the black butler asseverated that his candle had been blown out by some
invisible agency while he was undressing himself for the night; but as I had
more than once discovered this colored gentleman in a condition when one candle
must have appeared to him like two, I thought it possible that, by going a step
farther in his potations, he might have reversed his phenomenon, and seen no
candle at all where he ought to have beheld one.
Things were in this state when an incident took
place so awful and inexplicable in its character that my reason fairly reels at
the bare memory of the occurrence. It was the tenth of July. After dinner was
over I repaired with my friend, Dr. Hammond, to the garden to smoke my evening
pipe. The Doctor and myself found ourselves in an unusually metaphysical mood.
We lit our large meerschaums, filled with fine Turkish tobacco; we paced to and
fro, conversing. A strange perversity dominated the currents of our thought.
They would not flow through the sun-lit channels into which we strove to divert
them. For some unaccountable reason they constantly diverged into dark and
lonesome beds, where a continual gloom brooded. It was in vain that, after our
old fashion, we flung ourselves on the shores of the East, and talked of its
gay bazaars, of the splendors of the time of Haroun, of harems and golden palaces.
Black afreets continually arose from the depths of our talk, and expanded, like
the one the fisherman released from the copper vessel, until they blotted
everything bright from our vision. Insensibly, we yielded to the occult force
that swayed us, and indulged in gloomy speculation. We had talked some time
upon the proneness of the human mind to mysticism, and the almost universal
love of the Terrible, when Hammond suddenly said to me, “What do you consider
to be the greatest element of Terror?”
The question, I own, puzzled me. That many things
were terrible, I knew. Stumbling over a corpse in the dark; beholding, as I
once did, a woman floating down a deep and rapid river, with wildly lifted
arms, and awful, upturned face, uttering, as she sank, shrieks that rent one’s
heart, while we, the spectators, stood frozen at a window which overhung the
river at a height of sixty feet, unable to make the slightest effort to save
her, but dumbly watching her last supreme agony and her disappearance. A shattered
wreck, with no life visible, encountered floating listlessly on the ocean, is a
terrible object, for it suggests a huge terror, the proportions of which are
veiled. But it now struck me for the first time that there must be one great
and ruling embodiment of fear, a King of Terrors to which all others must
succumb. What might it be? To what train of circumstances would it owe its
existence?
“I confess, Hammond,” I replied to my friend, “I
never considered the subject before. That there must be one Something more
terrible than any other thing, I feel. I cannot attempt, however, even the most
vague definition.”
“I am somewhat like you, Harry,” he answered. “I
feel my capacity to experience a terror greater than anything yet conceived by
the human mind—something combining in fearful and unnatural amalgamation
hitherto supposed incompatible elements. The calling of the voices in Brockden
Brown’s novel of ‘Wieland’ is awful; so is the picture of the Dweller of the
Threshold, in Bulwer’s ‘Zanoni’; but,” he added, shaking his head gloomily,
“there is something more horrible still than these.”
“Look here, Hammond,” I rejoined, “let us drop
this kind of talk, for Heaven’s sake!”
“I don’t know what’s the matter with me to-night,”
he replied, “but my brain is running upon all sorts of weird and awful
thoughts. I feel as if I could write a story like Hoffman to-night, if I were
only master of a literary style.”
“Well, if we are going to be Hoffmanesque in our
talk, I’m off to bed. How sultry it is! Good night, Hammond.”
“Good night, Harry. Pleasant dreams to you.”
“To you, gloomy wretch, afreets, ghouls, and
enchanters.”
We parted, and each sought his respective chamber.
I undressed quickly and got into bed, taking with me, according to my usual
custom, a book, over which I generally read myself to sleep. I opened the
volume as soon as I had laid my head upon the pillow, and instantly flung it to
the other side of the room. It was Goudon’s “History of Monsters”—a curious
French work, which I had lately imported from Paris, but which, in the state of
mind I had then reached, was anything but an agreeable companion. I resolved to
go to sleep at once; so, turning down my gas until nothing but a little blue
point of light glimmered on the top of the tube, I composed myself to rest.
The room was in total darkness. The atom of gas
that still remained lighted did not illuminate a distance of three inches round
the burner. I desperately drew my arm across my eyes, as if to shut out even
the darkness, and tried to think of nothing. It was in vain. The confounded
themes touched on by Hammond in the garden kept obtruding themselves on my
brain. I battled against them. I erected ramparts of would-be blankness of
intellect to keep them out. They still crowded upon me. While I was lying still
as a corpse, hoping that by a perfect physical inaction I should hasten mental
repose, an awful incident occurred. A Something dropped, as it seemed, from the
ceiling, plumb upon my chest, and the next instant I felt two bony hands
encircling my throat, endeavoring to choke me.
I am no coward, and am possessed of considerable
physical strength. The suddenness of the attack, instead of stunning me, strung
every nerve to its highest tension. My body acted from instinct, before my
brain had time to realize the terrors of my position. In an instant I wound two
muscular arms around the creature, and squeezed it, with all the strength of
despair, against my chest. In a few seconds the bony hands that had fastened on
my throat loosened their hold, and I was free to breathe once more. Then
commenced a struggle of awful intensity. Immersed in the most profound
darkness, totally ignorant of the nature of the Thing by which I was so
suddenly attacked, finding my grasp slipping every moment, by reason, it seemed
to me, of the entire nakedness of my assailant, bitten with sharp teeth in the
shoulder, neck, and chest, having every moment to protect my throat against a
pair of sinewy, agile hands, which my utmost efforts could not confine—these
were a combination of circumstances to combat which required all the strength
and skill and courage that I possessed.
At last, after a silent, deadly, exhausting
struggle, I got my assailant under by a series of incredible efforts of
strength. Once pinned, with my knee on what I made out to be its chest, I knew
that I was victor. I rested for a moment to breathe. I heard the creature
beneath me panting in the darkness, and felt the violent throbbing of a heart.
It was apparently as exhausted as I was; that was one comfort. At this moment I
remembered that I usually placed under my pillow, before going to bed, a large
yellow silk pocket handkerchief, for use during the night. I felt for it instantly;
it was there. In a few seconds more I had, after a fashion, pinioned the
creature’s arms.
I now felt tolerably secure. There was nothing
more to be done but to turn on the gas, and, having first seen what my midnight
assailant was like, arouse the household. I will confess to being actuated by a
certain pride in not giving the alarm before; I wished to make the capture
alone and unaided.
Never losing my hold for an instant, I slipped
from the bed to the floor, dragging my captive with me. I had but a few steps
to make to reach the gas-burner; these I made with the greatest caution,
holding the creature in a grip like a vice. At last I got within arm’s-length
of the tiny speck of blue light which told me where the gas-burner lay. Quick
as lightning I released my grasp with one hand and let on the full flood of
light. Then I turned to look at my captive.
I cannot even attempt to give any definition of my
sensations the instant after I turned on the gas. I suppose I must have
shrieked with terror, for in less than a minute afterward my room was crowded
with the inmates of the house. I shudder now as I think of that awful moment. I
saw nothing! Yes; I had one arm firmly clasped round a breathing, panting,
corporeal shape, my other hand gripped with all its strength a throat as warm,
and apparently fleshly, as my own; and yet, with this living substance in my
grasp, with its body pressed against my own, and all in the bright glare of a
large jet of gas, I absolutely beheld nothing! Not even an outline—a vapor!
I do not, even at this hour, realize the situation
in which I found myself. I cannot recall the astounding incident thoroughly.
Imagination in vain tries to compass the awful paradox.
It breathed. I felt its warm breath upon my cheek.
It struggled fiercely. It had hands. They clutched me. Its skin was smooth,
like my own. There it lay, pressed close up against me, solid as stone—and yet
utterly invisible!
I wonder that I did not faint or go mad on the
instant. Some wonderful instinct must have sustained me; for, absolutely, in
place of loosening my hold on the terrible Enigma, I seemed to gain an
additional strength in my moment of horror, and tightened my grasp with such
wonderful force that I felt the creature shivering with agony.
Just then Hammond entered my room at the head of
the household. As soon as he beheld my face—which, I suppose, must have been an
awful sight to look at—he hastened forward, crying, “Great heaven, Harry! what
has happened?”
“Hammond! Hammond!” I cried, “come here. Oh! this
is awful! I have been attacked in bed by something or other, which I have hold
of; but I can’t see it—I can’t see it!”
Hammond, doubtless struck by the unfeigned horror
expressed in my countenance, made one or two steps forward with an anxious yet
puzzled expression. A very audible titter burst from the remainder of my
visitors. This suppressed laughter made me furious. To laugh at a human being
in my position! It was the worst species of cruelty. Now, I can understand why
the appearance of a man struggling violently, as it would seem, with an airy
nothing, and calling for assistance against a vision, should have appeared
ludicrous. Then, so great was my rage against the mocking crowd that had I the
power I would have stricken them dead where they stood.
“Hammond! Hammond!” I cried again, despairingly,
“for God’s sake come to me. I can hold the—the Thing but a short while longer.
It is overpowering me. Help me! Help me!”
“Harry,” whispered Hammond, approaching me, “you
have been smoking too much.”
“I swear to you, Hammond, that this is no vision,”
I answered, in the same low tone. “Don’t you see how it shakes my whole frame
with its struggles? If you don’t believe me, convince yourself. Feel it—touch
it.”
Hammond advanced and laid his hand on the spot I
indicated. A wild cry of horror burst from him. He had felt it!
In a moment he had discovered somewhere in my room
a long piece of cord, and was the next instant winding it and knotting it about
the body of the unseen being that I clasped in my arms.
“Harry,” he said, in a hoarse, agitated voice,
for, though he preserved his presence of mind, he was deeply moved, “Harry,
it’s all safe now. You may let go, old fellow, if you’re tired. The Thing can’t
move.”
I was utterly exhausted, and I gladly loosed my
hold. Hammond stood holding the ends of the cord that bound the Invisible,
twisted round his hand, while before him, self-supporting as it were, he beheld
a rope laced and interlaced, and stretching tightly round a vacant space. I
never saw a man look so thoroughly stricken with awe. Nevertheless his face
expressed all the courage and determination which I knew him to possess. His
lips, although white, were set firmly, and one could perceive at a glance that,
although stricken with fear, he was not daunted.
The confusion that ensued among the guests of the
house who were witnesses of this extraordinary scene between Hammond and
myself—who beheld the pantomime of binding this struggling Something—who beheld
me almost sinking from physical exhaustion when my task of jailer was over—the
confusion and terror that took possession of the bystanders, when they saw all
this, was beyond description. The weaker ones fled from the apartment. The few
who remained clustered near the door, and could not be induced to approach
Hammond and his Charge. Still incredulity broke out through their terror. They
had not the courage to satisfy themselves, and yet they doubted. It was in vain
that I begged of some of the men to come near and convince themselves by touch
of the existence in that room of a living being which was invisible. They were
incredulous, but did not dare to undeceive themselves. How could a solid,
living, breathing body be invisible, they asked. My reply was this. I gave a
sign to Hammond, and both of us—conquering our fearful repugnance to touch the
invisible creature—lifted it from the ground, manacled as it was, and took it
to my bed. Its weight was about that of a boy of fourteen.
“Now, my friends,” I said, as Hammond and myself
held the creature suspended over the bed, “I can give you self-evident proof
that here is a solid, ponderable body which, nevertheless, you cannot see. Be
good enough to watch the surface of the bed attentively.”
I was astonished at my own courage in treating
this strange event so calmly; but I had recovered from my first terror, and
felt a sort of scientific pride in the affair which dominated every other
feeling.
The eyes of the bystanders were immediately fixed
on my bed. At a given signal Hammond and I let the creature fall. There was the
dull sound of a heavy body alighting on a soft mass. The timbers of the bed
creaked. A deep impression marked itself distinctly on the pillow, and on the
bed itself. The crowd who witnessed this gave a sort of low, universal cry, and
rushed from the room. Hammond and I were left alone with our Mystery.
We remained silent for some time, listening to the
low, irregular breathing of the creature on the bed, and watching the rustle of
the bedclothes as it impotently struggled to free itself from confinement. Then
Hammond spoke.
“Harry, this is awful.”
“Aye, awful.”
“But not unaccountable.”
“Not unaccountable! What do you mean? Such a thing
has never occurred since the birth of the world. I know not what to think,
Hammond. God grant that I am not mad, and that this is not an insane fantasy!”
“Let us reason a little, Harry. Here is a solid body
which we touch, but which we cannot see. The fact is so unusual that it strikes
us with terror. Is there no parallel, though, for such a phenomenon? Take a
piece of pure glass. It is tangible and transparent. A certain chemical
coarseness is all that prevents its being so entirely transparent as to be
totally invisible. It is not theoretically impossible, mind you, to make a
glass which shall not reflect a single ray of light—a glass so pure and
homogeneous in its atoms that the rays from the sun shall pass through it as
they do through the air, refracted but not reflected. We do not see the air,
and yet we feel it.”
“That’s all very well, Hammond, but these are
inanimate substances. Glass does not breathe, air does not breathe. This thing
has a heart that palpitates—a will that moves it—lungs that play, and inspire
and respire.” “You forget the strange phenomena of which we have so often heard
of late,” answered the Doctor, gravely. “At the meetings called ‘spirit
circles,’ invisible hands have been thrust into the hands of those persons
round the table—warm, fleshly hands that seemed to pulsate with mortal life.”
“What? Do you think, then, that this thing is—”
“I don’t know what it is,” was the solemn reply;
“but please the gods I will, with your assistance, thoroughly investigate it.”
We watched together, smoking many pipes, all night
long, by the bedside of the unearthly being that tossed and panted until it was
apparently wearied out. Then we learned by the low, regular breathing that it
slept.
The next morning the house was all astir. The
boarders congregated on the landing outside my room, and Hammond and myself
were lions. We had to answer a thousand questions as to the state of our
extraordinary prisoner, for as yet not one person in the house except ourselves
could be induced to set foot in the apartment.
The creature was awake. This was evidenced by the
convulsive manner in which the bedclothes were moved in its efforts to escape.
There was something truly terrible in beholding, as it were, those second-hand
indications of the terrible writhings and agonized struggles for liberty which
themselves were invisible.
Hammond and myself had racked our brains during
the long night to discover some means by which we might realize the shape and
general appearance of the Enigma. As well as we could make out by passing our
hands over the creature’s form, its outlines and lineaments were human. There
was a mouth; a round, smooth head without hair; a nose, which, however, was
little elevated above the cheeks; and its hands and feet felt like those of a
boy. At first we thought of placing the being on a smooth surface and tracing
its outline with chalk, as shoemakers trace the outline of the foot. This plan
was given up as being of no value. Such an outline would give not the slightest
idea of its conformation.
A happy thought struck me. We would take a cast of
it in plaster of Paris. This would give us the solid figure, and satisfy all
our wishes. But how to do it? The movements of the creature would disturb the
setting of the plastic covering, and distort the mold. Another thought. Why not
give it chloroform? It had respiratory organs—that was evident by its
breathing. Once reduced to a state of insensibility, we could do with it what
we would. Doctor X— was sent for; and after the worthy physician had recovered
from the first shock of amazement, he proceeded to administer the chloroform.
In three minutes afterward we were enabled to remove the fetters from the
creature’s body, and a well-known modeler of this city was busily engaged in
covering the invisible form with the moist clay. In five minutes more we had a
mold, and before evening a rough fac simile of the mystery. It was shaped like
a man—distorted, uncouth, and horrible, but still a man. It was small, not over
four feet and some inches in height, and its limbs revealed a muscular
development that was unparalleled. Its face surpassed in hideousness anything I
had ever seen. Gustave Doré, or Callot, or Tony Johannot, never conceived
anything so horrible. There is a face in one of the latter’s illustrations to
“Un Voyage où il vous plaira,” which somewhat approaches the countenance of
this creature, but does not equal it. It was the physiognomy of what I should
have fancied a ghoul to be. It looked as if it was capable of feeding on human
flesh.
Having satisfied our curiosity, and bound every
one in the house to secrecy, it became a question what was to be done with our
Enigma. It was impossible that we should keep such a horror in our house; it
was equally impossible that such an awful being should be let loose upon the
world. I confess that I would have gladly voted for the creature’s destruction.
But who would shoulder the responsibility? Who would undertake the execution of
this horrible semblance of a human being? Day after day this question was
deliberated gravely. The boarders all left the house. Mrs. Moffat was in
despair, and threatened Hammond and myself with all sorts of legal penalties if
we did not remove the Horror. Our answer was, “We will go if you like, but we
decline taking this creature with us. Remove it yourself if you please. It
appeared in your house. On you the responsibility rests.” To this there was, of
course, no answer. Mrs. Moffat could not obtain for love or money a person who would
even approach the Mystery.
The most singular part of the transaction was that
we were entirely ignorant of what the creature habitually fed on. Everything in
the way of nutriment that we could think of was placed before it, but was never
touched. It was awful to stand by, day after day, and see the clothes toss, and
hear the hard breathing, and know that it was starving.
Ten, twelve days, a fortnight passed, and it still
lived. The pulsations of the heart, however, were daily growing fainter, and
had now nearly ceased altogether. It was evident that the creature was dying
for want of sustenance. While this terrible life struggle was going on, I felt
miserable. I could not sleep of nights. Horrible as the creature was, it was
pitiful to think of the pangs it was suffering.
At last it died. Hammond and I found it cold and
stiff one morning in the bed. The heart had ceased to beat, the lungs to
inspire. We hastened to bury it in the garden. It was a strange funeral, the
dropping of that viewless corpse into the damp hole. The cast of its form I
gave to Dr. X—, who keeps it in his museum in Tenth Street.
As I am on the eve of a long journey from which I
may not return, I have drawn up this narrative of an event the most singular
that has ever come to my knowledge.
NOTE—It was rumored that the proprietors of a well-known museum in
this city had made arrangements with Dr. X— to exhibit to the public the
singular cast which Mr. Escott deposited with him. So extraordinary a history
cannot fail to attract universal attention.