"I can assure you," said I, "that it will take a very tangible ghost to frighten me." And I stood
up before the fire with my glass in my hand.
"It is your own choosing," said the man with the withered arm, and glanced at me askance.
"Eight-and-twenty years," said I, "I have lived, and never a ghost have I seen as yet."
The old woman sat staring hard into the fire, her pale ayes wide open. "Ay," she broke in; "and
eight-and-twenty years you have lived and never seen the likes of this house, I reckon. There�s a
many things to see, when one�s still but eight-and-twenty." She swayed her head slowly from side
to side. "A many things to see and sorrow for."
I half suspected the old people were trying to enhanve the spiritual terrors of their house by
their droning insistence. I put down my empty glass on the table and looked about the room, and
caught a glimpse of myself, abbreviated and broadened to an impossible sturdiness, in the queer
old mirror at the end of the room. "Well," I said, "if I see anything tonight, I shall be so much the
wiser. For I come to the business with an open mind."
"It�s your own choosing," said the man with the withered arm once more.
I heard the sound of a stick and a shambling step on the flags in the passage outside, and the
door creaked on its hinges as a second old man entered, more bent, more wrinkled, more aged
even than the first. He supported himself by a single crutch, his eyes were covered by a shade,
and his lower lip, half averted, hung pale and pink from his decaying yellow teeth. He made
straight for an arm-chair on the opposite side of the table, sat down clumsily, and began to cough.
The man with the withered arm gave this new-comer a short glance of positive dislike; the old
woman took no notice of his arrival, but remained with her eyes fixed steadily on the fire.
"I said - it�s your own choosing," said the man with the withered arm, when the coughing had
ceased for a while.
"It�s my own choosing," I answered.
The man with the shade became aware of my presence for the first time, and threw his head
back for a moment and sideways, to see me. I caught a momentary glimpse of his eyes, small and
brigth and inflamed. Then he began to cough and splutter again.
"Why don�t you have a drink?" said the man with the withered arm, pushing the beer towards
him. The man with the shade poured out a glassful with a shaky arm that splashed half as much
again on the deal table. A monstrous shadow of him crouched upon the wall and mocked his
action as he poured and drank. I must confess I had scarce expected these grotesque custodians.
There is to my mind something inhuman in senility, something crouching and atavistic; the human
qualitites seem to drop from old people insensibly day by day. The three of them made me feel
uncomfortable, with their gaunt silences, their bent carriage, their evident unfriendliness to me and
to one another.
"If," said I, "you will show me to this haunted room of yours, I will make myself comfortable
there.
The old man with the cough jerked his head back so suddenly that it startled me, and shot
another glance of his red eyes at me from under the shade; but no one answered me. I waited a
minute, glancing from one to the other.
"If," I said a little louder, "if you will show me to this haunted room of yours, I will relieve you
from the task of entertaining me."
"There�s a candle on the slab outside the door," said the man with the withered arm, looking at
my feet as he addressed me. "But if you go to the red room to-night-"
("This night of all nights!" said the old woman.)
"You go alone."
"Very well," I answered. "And which way do I go?"
"You go along the passage for a bit," said he, "until you come to a door, and through that is a
spiral staircase, and half way up that is a landing and another door covered with baize. Go
through that and down the long corridor to the end, and the red room is on your left up the
steps."
"Have I got that right?" I said, and repeated his directions. He corrected me in one particular.
"And are you really going?" said the man with the shade, looking at me again for the third time,
with that queer, unnatural tilting of the face.
("This night of all nights!" said the old woman.)
"It is what I came for," I said, and moved towards the door. As I did so, the old man with the
shade rose and staggered round the table, so as to be closer to the others and to the fire. At the
door I turned and looked at them, and saw they were all close together, dark against the firelight,
staring at me over their shoulders, with an intent expression on their ancient faces.
"Good-night," I said, setting the door open.
"It�s your own choosing," said the man with the withered arm.
I left the door wide open until the candle was well alight, and then I shut them in and walked
down the chilly, echoing passage.
I must confess that the oddness of these three old pensioners in whose charge her ladyship had
left the castle, and the deep-toned, old fashioned furniture of the housekeeper�s room in which
they foregathered, affected me in spite of my efforts to keep myself at a matter-of-fact phase.
They seemed to belong to another age, and older age, and age when things spiritual were different
from this of ours, less certain; an age when omens and witches were credible, and ghosts beyond
denying. Their very existence was spectral; the cut of their clothing, fashions born in dead brains.
The ornaments and conveniences of the room about them were ghostly - the thoughts of vanished
men, which still haunted rather than participated in the world of to-day. But with an effort I sent
such thoughts to the right-about. The long, draughty subterranean passage was chilly and dusty,
and my candle flared and made the shadows cower and quiver. The echoes rang up and down the
spiral staircase, and a shadow came sweeping up after me, and one fled before me into the
darkness overhead. I came to the landing and stopped there for a moment, listening to a rustling
that I fancied I heard; then, satisfied of the absolute silence, I pushed open the baize-covered door
and stood in the corridor.
The effect was scarcely what I expected, for the moonlight, coming in by the great window on
the grand staircase, picked out everything in vivid black shadow or silvery illumination.
Everything was in its place: the house might have been deserted on the yesterday instead of
eighteen months ago. There were candles in the sockets of the sconces, and whatever dust had
gathered on the carpets or upon the polished flooring was distributed so evenly as to be invisible
in the moonlight. I was about to advance, and stopped abruptly. A bronze group stood upon the
landing, hidden from me by the corner of the wall, but its shadow fell with marvellous distinctness
upon the white panelling, and gave me the impression of someone crouching to waylay me. I
stood rigid for half a minute perhaps. Then, with my hand in the pocket that held my revolver, I
advanced, only to discover a Ganymede and Eagle glistening in the moonlight. That incident for
at time restored my nerve, and a procelain Chinaman on a buhl table, whose head rocked silently
as I passed him, scarcely startled me.
The door to the red room and the steps up to it were in a shadowy corner. I moved my candle
from side to side, in order to see clearly the nature of the recess in which I stood before opening
the door. Here it was, thought I, that my predecessor was found, and the memory of that story
gave me a sudden twinge of apprehension. I glanced over my shoulder at the Ganymede in the
moonlight, and opened the door of the red room rather hastily, with my face half turned to the
pallid silence of the landing.
I entered, closed the door behind me at once, turned the key I found in the lock within, and
stood with the candle held aloft, surveying the scene of my vigil, the great red room of Lorraine
Castle, in which the young duke had died. Or, rather, in which he had begun his dying, for he had
opened the door and fallen headlong down the steps I had just ascended. That had been the end
of his vigil, of his gallant attempt to conquer the ghostly tradition of the place; and never, I
thought, had apoplexy better served the ends of superstition. And there were other and older
stories that clung to the room, back to the half-credible beginning of it all, the tale of a timid wife
and the tragic end that came to her husband�s jest of frightening her. And looking around that
large shadowy room, with its shadowy window bays, its recesses and alcoves, one could well
understand the legends that had sprouted in its black corners, its germinating darkness. My
candle was a little tongue of flame in its vastness, that failed to pierce the opposite end of the
room, and left an ocean of mystery and suggestion beyond its island of light.
I resolved to make a systematic examination of the place at once, and dispel the fanciful
suggestions of its obscurity before they obtained a hold upon me. After satisfying myself of the
fastening of the door, I began to walk about the room, peering round each article of furniture,
tucking up the valances of the bed, and opening its curtains wide. I pulled up the blinds and
examined the fastenings of the several windows before closing the shutters, leant forward and
looked up the blackness of the wide chimney, and tapped the dark oak panelling for any secret
opening. There were two big mirrors in the room, each with a pair of sconces bearing candles,
and on the mantelshelf, too, were more candles in china candlesticks. All these I lit one after the
other. The fire was laid, an unexpected consideration from the old housekeeper - and I lit it, to
keep down any disposition to shiver, and when it was burning well, I stood round with my back to
it and regarded the room again. I had pulled up a chintz-covered armchair and a table, to form a
kind of barricade before me, and on this lay my revolver ready to hand. My precise examination
had done me good, but I still found the remoter darkness of the place, and its perfect stillness, too
stimulating for the imagination. The echoing of the stir and crackling of the fire was no sort of
comfort to me. The shadow in the alcove at the end in particular had that undefinable quality of a
presence, that odd suggestion of a lurking, living thing, that comes so easily in silence and
solitude. At last, to reassure myself, I walked with a candle into it, and satisfied myself that there
was nothing tangible there. I stood that candle upon the floor of the alcove, and left it in that
position.
By this time I was in a state of considerable nervous tension, although to my reason there was
no adequate cause for the condition. My mind, however, was perfectly clear. I postulated quite
unreservedly that nothing supernatural could happen, and to pass the time I began to string some
rhymes together, Ingoldsby fashion, of the original legend of the place. A few I spoke aloud, but
the echoes were not pleasant. For the same reason I also abandoned, after a time, a conversation
with myself upon the impossibilty of ghosts and haunting. My mind reverted to the three old and
distorted people downstairs, and I tried to keep it upon that topic. The sombre reds and blacks of
the room troubled me; even with seven candles the place was merely dim. The one in the alcove
flared in a draught, and the fire�s flickering kept the shadows and penumbra perpetually shifting
and stirring. Casting about for a remedy, I recalled the candles I had seen in the passage, and,
with a slight effort, walked out into the moonlight, carrying a candle and leaving the door open,
and presently returned with as many as ten. These I put in various knick-knacks of china with
which the room was sparsely adorned, lit and placed where the shadows had lain deepest, some
on the floor, some in the window recesses, until at last my seventeen candles were so arranged
that not an inch of the room but had the direct light of at least one of them. It occurred to me that
when the ghost came, I could warn him not to trip over them. The room was now quite brightly
illuminated. There was something very cheery and reassuring in these little streaming flames, and
snuffing them gave me an occupation, and afforded a helpful sense of the passage of time.
Even with that, however, the brooding expectation of the vigil weighed heavily upon me. It was
after midnight that the candle in the alcove suddenly went out, and the black shadow sprang back
to its place there. I did not see the candle go out; I simply turned and saw that the darkness was
there, as one might start and see the unexpected presence of a stranger. "By Jove!" said I aloud;
�that draught�s a strong one!� and taking the matches from the table, I walked across the room in
a leisurely manner to relight the corner again. My first match would not strike, and as I
succeeded with the second, something seemed to blink on the wall before me. I turned my head
involuntarily, and saw that the two candles on the little table by the fireplace were extinguished. I
rose at once to my feet.
"Odd!" I said. "Did I do that myself in a flash of absent-mindedness?"
I walked back, relit one, and as I did so, I saw the candle in the right sconce of one of the
mirrors wink and go right out, and almost immediately its companion followed it. There was no
mistake about it. The flame vanished, as if the wicks had been suddenly nipped between a finger
and thumb, leaving the wick neither glowing nor smoking, but black. While I stood gaping, the
candle at the foot of the bed went out, and the shadows seemed to take another step towards me.
"This won�t do!" said I, and first one and then another candle on the mantelshelf followed.
"What�s up?" I cried, with a queer high note getting into my voice somehow. At that the candle
on the wardrobe went out, and the one I had relit in the alcove followed.
"Steady on!" I said. "These candles are wanted," speaking with a half-hysterical facetiousness,
and scratching away at a match the while for the mantel candlesticks. My hands trembled so
much that twice I missed the rough paper of the matchbox. As the mantel emerged from darkness
again, two candles in the remoter end of the window were eclipsed. But with the same match I
also relit the larger mirror candles, and those on the floor near the doorway, so that for the
moment I seemed to gain on the extinctions. But then in a volley there vanished four lights at
once in different corners of the room, and I struck another match in quivering haste, and stood
hesitating whither to take it.
As I stood undecided, an invisible hand seemed to sweep out the two candles on the table. With
a cry of terror, I dashed at the alcove, then into the corner, and then into the window, relighting
three, as two more vanished by the fireplace; then, perceiving a better way, I dropped the matches
on the iron-bound deedbox in the corner, and caught up the bedroom candlestick. With this I
avoided the delay of striking matches; but for all that the steady process of extinction went on,
and the shadows I feared and fought against returned, and crept in upon me, first a step gained on
this side of me and then on that. It was like a ragged storm-cloud sweeping out of the stars.
Now and then one returned for a minute, and was lost again. I was now almost frantic with the
horror of the coming darkness, and my self-possession deserted me. I leaped panting and
dishevelled from candle to candle in a vain struggle against that remorseless advance.
I bruised myself on the thigh against the table, I sent a chair headlong, I stumbled and fell and
whisked the cloth from the table in my fall. My candle rolled away from me, and I snatched
another as I rose. Abruptly this was blown out, as I swung it off the table, by the wind of my
sudden movement, and immediately the two remaining candles followed. But there was light still
in the room, a red light that stayed off the shadows from me. The fire! Of course I could still
thrust my candle between the bars and relight it!
I turned to where the flames were still dancing between the glowing coals, and splashing red
reflections upon the furniture, made two steps towards the grate, and incontinently the flames
dwindled and vanished, and as I thrust the candle between the bars darkness closed upon me like
the shutting of an eye, wrapped about me in a stifling embrace, sealed my vision, and crushed the
last vestiges of reason from my brain. The candle fell from my hand. I flung out my arms in a
vain effort to thrust that ponderous blackness away from me, and, lifting up my voice, screamed
with all my might - once, twice, thrice. Then I think I must have staggered to my feet. I know I
thought suddenly of the moonlit corridor, and, with my head bowed and my arms over my face,
made a run for the door.
But I had forgotten the exact position of the door, and struck myself heavily against the corner
of the bed. I staggered back, turned, and was either struck or struck myself against some other
bulky furniture. I have a vague memory of battering myself thus, to and fro in the darkness, of a
cramped struggle, and of my own wild crying as I darted to and fro, of a heavy blow at last upon
my forehead, a horrible sensation of falling that lasted an age, of my last frantic effort to keep my
footing, and then I remember no more.
I opened my eyes in daylight. My head was roughly bandaged, and the man with the withered
arm was watching my face. I looked about me, trying to remember what had happened, and for a
space I could not recollect. I rolled my eyes into the corner, and saw the old woman, no longer
abstracted, pouring out some drops of medicine from a little blue phial into a glass. "Where am
I?" I asked; "I seem to remember you, and yet I cannot remember who you are."
They told me then, and I heard of the haunted red room as one who hears a tale. "We found
you at dawn," said he, "and there was blood on your forehead and lips."
It was very slowly I recovered my memory of my experience. "You believe now," said the old
man, "that the room is haunted?" He spoke no longer as one who greets an intruder, but as one
who grieves for a broken friend.
"Yes," said I; "the room is haunted."
"And you have seen it. And we, who have lived here all our lives, have never set eyes upon it.
Because we have never dared ... Tell us, is it truly the old earl who - "
"No,� said I; �it is not."
"I told you so," said the old lady, with the glass in her hand. "It is his poor young countess who
was frightened - "
"It is not," I said. "There is neither ghost of earl nor ghost of countess in that room, there is no
ghost there at all; but worse, far worse - "
"Well?" they said.
"The worst of all the things that haunt poor mortal man," said I; "and that is, in all its nakedness
- Fear! Fear that will not have light nor sound, that will not bear with reason, that deafens and
darkens and overwhelms. It followed me through the corridor, it fought against me in the room - "
I stopped abruptly. There was an interval of silence. My hand went up to my bandages.
Then the man with the shade sighed and spoke. "That is it," said he. "I knew that was it. A
power of darkness. To put such a curse upon a woman! It lurkes there always. You can feel it
even in the daytime, even of a bright summer�s day, in the hangings, in the curtains, keeping
behind you however you face about. In the dusk it creeps along the corridor and follows you, so
that you dare not turn. There is Fear in that room of hers - black Fear, and there will be - so long
as this house of sin endures.
