The Terror by Night

Edition and rights: Complete original English text from Project Gutenberg ebook #72421. This edition is identified as public domain in the USA; the original author died in 1940, satisfying the ordinary Pakistan copyright term. This is the original work, not an AI retelling.

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THE TERROR BY NIGHT


The transference of emotion is a phenomenon so common, so constantly
witnessed, that mankind in general have long ceased to be conscious of
its existence, as a thing worth our wonder or consideration, regarding
it as being as natural and commonplace as the transference of things
that act by the ascertained laws of matter. Nobody, for instance, is
surprised, if, when the room is too hot, the opening of a window causes
the cold fresh air of outside to be transferred into the room, and in
the same way no one is surprised when into the same room, perhaps, which
we will imagine as being peopled with dull and gloomy persons, there
enters some one of fresh and sunny mind, who instantly brings into the
stuffy mental atmosphere a change analogous to that of the opened
windows. Exactly how this infection is conveyed we do not know;
considering the wireless wonders (that act by material laws) which are
already beginning to lose their wonder now that we have our newspaper
brought as a matter of course every morning in mid-Atlantic, it would
not perhaps be rash to conjecture that in some subtle and occult way the
transference of emotion is in reality material too. Certainly (to take
another instance) the sight of definitely material things, like writing
on a page, conveys emotion apparently direct to our minds, as when our
pleasure or pity is stirred by a book, and it is therefore possible that
mind may act on mind by means as material as that.

Occasionally, however, we come across phenomena, which, though they may
easily be as material as any of these things, are rarer, and therefore
more astounding. Some people call them ghosts, some conjuring tricks,
and some nonsense. It seems simpler to group them under the head of
transferred emotions, and they may appeal to any of the senses. Some
ghosts are seen, some heard, some felt, and though I know of no instance
of a ghost being tasted, yet it will seem in the following pages that
these occult phenomenon may appeal at any rate to the senses that
perceive heat, cold, or smell. For, to take the analogy of wireless
telegraphy, we are all of us probably ‘receivers’ to some extent, and
catch now and then a message or part of a message that the eternal waves
of emotion are ceaselessly shouting aloud to those who have ears to
hear, and materializing themselves for those who have eyes to see. Not
being, as a rule, perfectly tuned, we grasp but pieces and fragments of
such messages, a few coherent words it may be, or a few words which seem
to have no sense. The following story, however, to my mind, is
interesting, because it shows how different pieces of what no doubt was
one message were received and recorded by several different people
simultaneously. Ten years have elapsed since the events recorded took
place, but they were written down at the time.

       *       *       *       *       *

Jack Lorimer and I were very old friends before he married, and his
marriage to a first cousin of mine did not make, as so often happens, a
slackening in our intimacy. Within a few months after, it was found out
that his wife had consumption, and, without any loss of time, she was
sent off to Davos, with her sister to look after her. The disease had
evidently been detected at a very early stage, and there was excellent
ground for hoping that with proper care and strict regime she would be
cured by the life-giving frosts of that wonderful valley.

The two had gone out in the November of which I am speaking, and Jack
and I joined them for a month at Christmas, and found that week after
week she was steadily and quickly gaining ground. We had to be back in
town by the end of January, but it was settled that Ida should remain
out with her sister for a week or two more. They both, I remember, came
down to the station to see us off, and I am not likely to forget the
last words that passed:

“Oh, don’t look so woebegone Jack,” his wife had said; “you’ll see me
again before long.”

Then the fussy little mountain engine squeaked, as a puppy squeaks when
its toe is trodden on, and we puffed our way up the pass.

London was in its usual desperate February plight, when we got back,
full of fogs and still-born frosts that seemed to produce a cold far
more bitter than the piercing temperature of those sunny altitudes from
which we had come. We both, I think, felt rather lonely, and even before
we had got to our journey’s end we had settled that for the present it
was ridiculous that we should keep open two houses when one would
suffice, and would also be far more cheerful for us both. So, as we both
lived in almost identical houses in the same street in Chelsea, we
decided to “toss,” live in the house which the coin indicated (heads
mine, tails his) share expenses, attempt to let the other house, and, if
successful, share the proceeds. A French five-franc piece of the second
empire told us it was “heads.”

We had been back some ten days, receiving every day the most excellent
accounts from Davos, when, first on him, then on me, there descended
like some tropical storm, a feeling of indefinable fear. Very possibly
this sense of apprehension (for there is nothing in the world so
virulently infectious) reached me through him: on the other hand both
these attacks of vague foreboding may have come from the same source.
But it is true that it did not attack me till he spoke of it, so the
possibility perhaps inclines to my having caught it from him. He spoke
of it first, I remember, one evening when we had met for a good-night
talk, after having come back from separate houses where we had dined.

“I have felt most awfully down all day,” he said; “and just after
receiving this splendid account from Daisy, I can’t think what is the
matter.”

He poured himself out some whisky and soda as he spoke.

“Oh, touch of liver,” I said. “I shouldn’t drink that if I were you.
Give it me instead.”

“I was never better in my life,” he said.

I was opening letters, as we talked, and came across one from the house
agent, which, with trembling eagerness I read.

“Hurrah,” I cried, “offer of five guᵃˢ--why can’t he write it in proper
English--five guineas a week till Easter for number 31. We shall roll in
guineas!”

“Oh, but I can’t stop here till Easter,” he said.

“I don’t see why not. Nor by the way does Daisy. I heard from her this
morning, and she told me to persuade you to stop. That’s to say, if you
like. It really is more cheerful for you here. I forgot, you were
telling me something.”

The glorious news about the weekly guineas did not cheer him up in the
least.

“Thanks awfully. Of course I’ll stop.”

He moved up and down the room once or twice.

“No, it’s not me that is wrong,” he said, “it’s It, whatever It is. The
terror by night.”

“Which you are commanded not to be afraid of,” I remarked.

“I know: it’s easy commanding. I’m frightened: something’s coming.”

“Five guineas a week are coming,” I said. “I shan’t sit up and be
infected by your fears. All that matters, Davos, is going as well as it
can. What was the last report? Incredibly better. Take that to bed with
you.”

The infection--if infection it was--did not take hold of me then, for I
remember going to sleep feeling quite cheerful, but I awoke in some dark
still hour and It, the terror by night, had come while I slept. Fear and
misgiving, blind, unreasonable, and paralysing, had taken and gripped
me. What was it? Just as by an aneroid we can foretell the approach of
storm, so by this sinking of the spirit, unlike anything I had ever felt
before, I felt sure that disaster of some sort was presaged.

Jack saw it at once when we met at breakfast next morning, in the brown
haggard light of a foggy day, not dark enough for candles, but dismal
beyond all telling.

“So it has come to you too,” he said.

And I had not even the fighting-power left to tell him that I was merely
slightly unwell. Besides, never in my life had I felt better.

All next day, all the day after that fear lay like a black cloak over my
mind; I did not know what I dreaded, but it was something very acute,
something that was very near. It was coming nearer every moment,
spreading like a pall of clouds over the sky; but on the third day,
after miserably cowering under it, I suppose some sort of courage came
back to me: either this was pure imagination, some trick of disordered
nerves or what not, in which case we were both “disquieting ourselves in
vain,” or from the immeasurable waves of emotion that beat upon the
minds of men, something within both of us had caught a current, a
pressure. In either case it was infinitely better to try, however
ineffectively, to stand up against it. For these two days I had neither
worked nor played; I had only shrunk and shuddered; I planned for myself
a busy day, with diversion for us both in the evening.

“We will dine early,” I said, “and go to the ‘Man from Blankley’s.’ I
have already asked Philip to come, and he is coming, and I have
telephoned for tickets. Dinner at seven.”

Philip, I may remark, is an old friend of ours, neighbour in this
street, and by profession a much-respected doctor.

Jack laid down his paper.

“Yes, I expect you’re right,” he said. “It’s no use doing nothing, it
doesn’t help things. Did you sleep well?”

“Yes, beautifully,” I said rather snappishly, for I was all on edge
with the added burden of an almost sleepless night.

“I wish I had,” said he.

This would not do at all.

“We have got to play up!” I said. “Here are we two strong and stalwart
persons, with as much cause for satisfaction with life as any you can
mention, letting ourselves behave like worms. Our fear may be over
things imaginary or over things that are real, but it is the fact of
being afraid that is so despicable. There is nothing in the world to
fear except fear. You know that as well as I do. Now let’s read our
papers with interest. Which do you back, Mr Druce, or the Duke of
Portland, or the Times Book Club?”

That day, therefore, passed very busily for me; and there were enough
events moving in front of that black background, which I was conscious
was there all the time, to enable me to keep my eyes away from it, and I
was detained rather late at the office, and had to drive back to
Chelsea, in order to be in time to dress for dinner, instead of walking
back as I had intended.

Then the message, which for these three days, had been twittering in our
minds, the receivers, just making them quiver and rattle came through.

       *       *       *       *       *

I found Jack already dressed, since it was within a minute or two of
seven when I got in, and sitting in the drawing-room. The day had been
warm and muggy, but when I looked in on the way up to my room, it
seemed to me to have grown suddenly and bitterly cold, not with the
dampness of English frost, but with the clear and stinging exhilaration
of such days as we had recently spent in Switzerland. Fire was laid in
the grate but not lit, and I went down on my knees on the hearth-rug to
light it.

“Why, it’s freezing in here,” I said. “What donkeys servants are! It
never occurs to them that you want fires in cold weather, and no fires
in hot weather.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake don’t light the fire,” said he, “it’s the warmest
muggiest evening I ever remember.”

I stared at him in astonishment. My hands were shaking with the cold. He
saw this.

“Why, you are shivering!” he said. “Have you caught a chill? But as to
the room being cold let us look at the thermometer.”

There was one on the writing-table.

“Sixty-five,” he said.

There was no disputing that, nor did I want to, for at that moment, it
suddenly struck us, dimly and distantly that It was “coming through.” I
felt it like some curious internal vibration.

“Hot or cold, I must go and dress,” I said.

Still shivering, but feeling as if I was breathing some rarefied
exhilarating air, I went up to my room. My clothes were already laid
out, but, by an oversight, no hot water had been brought up, and I rang
for my man. He came up almost at once, but he looked scared, or, to my
already-startled senses, he appeared so.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“Nothing, sir,” he said, and he could hardly articulate the words. “I
thought you rang.”

“Yes. Hot water. But what’s the matter?”

He shifted from one foot to the other.

“I thought I saw a lady on the stairs,” he said, “coming up close behind
me. And the front door bell hadn’t rung that I heard.”

“Where did you think you saw her?” I asked.

“On the stairs. Then on the landing outside the drawing-room door, sir,”
he said. “She stood there as if she didn’t know whether to go in or
not.”

“One--one of the servants,” I said. But again I felt that It was coming
through.

“No, sir. It was none of the servants,” he said.

“Who was it then?”

“Couldn’t see distinctly sir, it was dim-like. But I thought it was Mrs
Lorimer.”

“Oh, go and get me some hot water,” I said.

But he lingered; he was quite clearly frightened.

       *       *       *       *       *

At this moment the front-door bell rang. It was just seven, and already
Philip had come with brutal punctuality while I was not yet
half-dressed.

“That’s Dr Enderly,” I said. “Perhaps if he is on the stairs you may be
able to pass the place where you saw the lady.”

Then quite suddenly there rang through the house a scream, so terrible,
so appalling in its agony and supreme terror, that I simply stood still
and shuddered, unable to move. Then by an effort so violent that I felt
as if something must break, I recalled the power of motion, and ran
downstairs, my man at my heels, to meet Philip who was running up from
the ground floor. He had heard it too.

“What’s the matter?” he said. “What was that?”

       *       *       *       *       *

Together we went into the drawing-room, Jack was lying in front of the
fireplace, with the chair in which he had been sitting a few minutes
before overturned. Philip went straight to him and bent over him,
tearing open his white shirt.

“Open all the windows,” he said, “the place reeks.”

We flung open the windows, and there poured in, so it seemed to me, a
stream of hot air into the bitter cold. Eventually Philip got up.

“He is dead,” he said. “Keep the windows open. The place is still thick
with chloroform.”

Gradually to my sense the room got warmer, to Philip’s the drug-laden
atmosphere dispersed. But neither my servant nor I had smelt anything at
all.

A couple of hours later there came a telegram from Davos for me. It was
to tell me to break the news of Daisy’s death to Jack, and was sent by
her sister. She supposed he would come out immediately. But he had been
gone two hours now.

I left for Davos next day, and learned what had happened. Daisy had been
suffering for three days from a little abscess which had to be opened,
and, though the operation was of the slightest, she had been so nervous
about it that the doctor gave her chloroform. She made a good recovery
from the anæsthetic, but an hour later had a sudden attack of syncope,
and had died that night at a few minutes before eight, by central
European time, corresponding to seven in English time. She had insisted
that Jack should be told nothing about this little operation till it was
over, since the matter was quite unconnected with her general health,
and she did not wish to cause him needless anxiety.

And there the story ends. To my servant there came the sight of a woman
outside the drawing-room door, where Jack was, hesitating about her
entrance, at the moment when Daisy’s soul hovered between the two
worlds; to me there came--I do not think it is fanciful to suppose
this--the keen exhilarating cold of Davos; to Philip there came the
fumes of chloroform. And to Jack, I must suppose, came his wife. So he
joined her.