Ghosts by Gaslight - Jack Dann [107]
“I was, by then, living in rooms off the Strand, in Essex Court, and I was quite alone on the evening when I sat down to open the envelope. It was only a few weeks after Claire’s death, and I was still numb with the shock of it as I began to read, hoping to hear again the voice that . . . no matter. The hand was hers indeed, but the voice was not.
“It was, or seemed at first to be, simply an account of someone waiting alone, in an upstairs room of an empty house at night. The location was not specified but you felt the stillness all around, the extremity of the speaker’s isolation; for it was told in the first person, though you could not tell whether the narrator was male or female, young or old. As I read on, I felt more and more strongly that the consciousness of the narrative was in fact my own, until I lost all awareness of my actual surroundings. In its gradual accumulation of detail it was like the furnishing of a house; item by item, it crept upon you in a slow and insidious fashion. It seemed to reach directly into that part of the soul which believes upon instinct, like a child, but which is normally inaccessible to us except in moments of absolute terror or utter despair. Something, I know not how it was done, caused me to recall with intolerable vividness every mean or contemptible thing I had ever done, from earliest childhood, and worse, every good deed I had left undone; a great black catalogue of sins and omissions opening before my eyes. And yet I did not feel this moral terror to be the principal intent of the narrative upon me, but rather an accompaniment of some still darker, more ominous purpose.
“The very rhythm of the sentences was like a soft drum, a pulse heard more and more loudly, until it became the sound of footsteps, still a long way off, but charged with menace. I was still faintly aware that I was reading, but that awareness only increased my apprehension, for the extraordinary vividness with which the scene had been set seemed now to guarantee that the face of what was fast approaching would not be left unspecified, and yet would awaken more, not less, terror than the worst promptings of my own imagination.
“It was, I think, at that exact moment that I realised that I was hearing the sound of real, actual footfalls in the corridor outside my rooms. I looked up—or thought I looked up—from the page, and found that my familiar surroundings had metamorphosed into those of the narrative. I was alone in a dark and isolated house, far from any other human habitation, with footsteps closing upon me where no footsteps should have been.
“Clutching the manuscript, I rose from my chair and began to back away from the door. The room was lit by a single candelabrum, so placed that I could see the reflection of its flames in the window to which I turned as my one hope of escape. Better to be dashed to pieces on the ground below than endure so much as a glimpse of what was preparing to enter. As I reached for the sash, I saw my own face reflected in the windowpane, caught in the last extremity of terror, its eyes fixed upon a point beyond my shoulder, upon the door opening at my back; upon that visitant whom I saw indeed as in a glass darkly, but whom my reflected self seemed plainly and intolerably to view, in the instant before I covered my eyes with the manuscript and darkness dropped upon me like the hangman’s hood.
“I came to myself upon the floor of my room in Essex Court, the unread portion of the narrative pressed against my cheek; you see its mark upon me still. How or why I was spared I know not, but I woke with the conviction that had I reached the end of the manuscript, I should certainly have died. At any rate, I have never yet dared to look upon it again.”
He fell silent, staring into the dying embers of the fire.
“Maurice,” I said hesitantly, “do you mean to say that this manuscript still exists?”
“Yes; I could not bring myself to destroy it.”
Because it was hers, I thought, but did not like to say so.
“You are right, of course,