Ghosts by Gaslight (32 page)

“Rosina was shortly summoned by the housekeeper, given immediate notice, and sent upstairs to pack. Instead, overcome by grief and horror, she threw herself upon her bed and wept until sleep overtook her. By the time she woke, it was late in the evening. She had gathered together her few things and was venturing out upon the landing when a fearful shriek came echoing up the stairwell. There followed a brief silence, then sounds of shouting and of running feet. Afraid to descend, she waited for what seemed like hours until her friend appeared. The cry had been that of Sir Lewis’s valet, who had found his master dead on the floor of his dressing room, surrounded by the scattered pages of a manuscript. The corpse’s face was frozen into an expression of indescribable terror, and entirely blanched, as if vitriol had been flung across the features.”

Maurice paused, staring into the dwindling glow of the coals. A formless dread that had crept upon me was beginning to assume a more definite shape, as if some sinister presence were materialising in the shadows behind the slumbering bishop.

“There was a kind of fatality about the way in which that manuscript came into my possession. It so happened that Sir Lewis’s valet was entirely unlettered, but most reluctant to admit as much; and it was he who collected up the scattered pages whilst his master’s corpse was being removed under the doctor’s direction, and carried them off to the study nearby, where he placed them in one of the pigeonholes in Sir Lewis’s desk. And since it was later asserted that Sir Lewis had been looking over some legal document at the time of his death—the cause being given as a stroke, with the curious blanching of the face put down as an unusual complication—I believe the valet mistook one set of papers for another, without any idea that he had done so. The executors must have been exceptionally scrupulous, for they returned all of Claire’s personal effects to her mother, including an envelope labelled “manuscript, in the hand of the late Lady Wainwright,” which her mother, in recognition of the literary ambitions Claire and I had once shared, passed on to me.

“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,” he went on, as if I had spoken. “It is only that—well, supposing I did fall asleep? Or failed some sort of test and turned back when I should have gone on? After all, I did not actually see anything plain; perhaps I was, literally, frightened by my own reflection? Might I not be destroying something that ought to have been preserved?”

“Maurice,” I said firmly, “if after twenty years the impression of that experience remains so indelible—and not only the mental impression,” I added, glancing at the mark seared across his cheek, “then it would be most unwise to chance a second encounter with it.” But then I thought he looked at me a little askance, which made me doubt my own motive, and caused me to add impulsively, “but if you wish, I will sit by you while you look at the manuscript again, or even . . .”

There I pulled up, aware that whilst Maurice was as devoid of egotism as it is possible for a man to be, he might not be well pleased by my offering to assume the risk. But he seemed not to catch the last phrase; he took my hand again, and this time I found that mine was the colder.

“Dear Laura, I could not ask so much of you . . . and yet there is no one else on this earth I
would
ask.”

“Then trust me once more. You must not bear this burden any further; at least, not alone.”

“Very well. If you are certain, let it be now—”

“Do you mean you have it here?”

“Yes, for I never feel quite easy unless I know that it is safe. But Laura, it is late, and you are cold, I think, and perhaps we should wait for daylight—”

“No,” I said, striving to conceal my apprehension, for I could see that he wanted no further delay.

“Very well,” he repeated. “You will watch as I read, and unless I was indeed mistaken, you will witness its destruction.”

He rose and quietly made up the fire and went softly from the room. The bishop, whom I had quite forgotten, stirred amidst the flickering shadows, but did not wake. I drew my wrap more closely about me, almost overwhelmed by several contrary emotions. The dark spell of his narrative still clung to me, and yet I felt as if a long chapter in the history of my friendship with Maurice had just reached its close, leaving me eager to know what the next might bring. Warmed by the cheerful glow and crackle of the reviving fire, I wondered how mere words on paper could possibly bring about the effect that Maurice had so vividly described. Yet there was the mark upon his cheek and the death of the malignant husband, which led me to thoughts of poor Claire, whom I still could not picture with any distinctness; and so my mind ran on for an indefinite interval, until I became aware that Maurice had been gone far longer than it could reasonably have taken him to ascend to his room and return with the manuscript.

There were, of course, a dozen reasons why he might have been delayed, but as I sat upright, with my heart beginning to race and cold apprehension rushing upon me, they seemed to shrink to one, at least to the only one I dared entertain: Maurice had been taken suddenly ill. Really I ought to ring, or wake someone—but whom?—at two in the morning? And what if it proved to be a false alarm . . . ? But fear already had me on my feet and moving towards the mantelpiece to secure a candle. With a last glance at the unconscious bishop, I hastened towards the door and out into the chill hallway.

Going up the stairs, I had to look to my candle, for the wind had risen outside. The sky was fortunately bright: through the windows above the landing, I could see wisps of cloud scudding past the face of the moon. Save for the faint moaning of the wind, the house was deathly quiet, and as I turned into the corridor which led to Maurice’s room, even the sound of the wind dwindled and ceased. My candle flame steadied as I stopped at his door, feeling suddenly conspicuous. No light showed underneath. I tapped as loudly as I dared, glancing over my shoulder. There was no response. Too late to turn back now; I tried the handle, found it unlocked, and entered.

Though I caught the odour of a wick recently extinguished, the room was dark, save for a band of moonlight streaming through the French windows opposite, which were, I realised, open. An icy draught caught at my own candle and, before I could shield it, blew out the flame. But the moonlight falling across the floor had already shown me what I most dreaded finding. Maurice lay sprawled upon the carpet, with his head by the open window and the moon shining full upon his face. For a moment I thought he might be safe, for his eyes were closed and his expression perfectly peaceful; he looked, as sleepers often do, far younger than his years, and in that pure white light the seared mark seemed to have been quite erased. But as I knelt beside him I saw all too plainly that he was not asleep. The freezing wind rose and ruffled his hair, but he did not move. Instead, something stirred and rustled in the darkness on my right, rearing up, as it seemed, from behind a table no more than two feet from where I knelt, something that flapped and swooped above me in a serpentine rush and went howling out upon a sudden gust that flung those terrible pages into the moonlit sky, scattering upon the wind and away into the night.

Afterword to
“Face to Face”

“Face to Face” grew out of my fascination with the “fatal book”: the anonymous manuscript, hedged with dire warnings, which destroys anyone (usually an aspiring author) foolhardy enough to read it. The story came almost by inner dictation; I didn’t know how it would end until I arrived at the closing image. It was partly inspired by Flaubert’s remark that when he was composing the final pages of
Madame Bovary,
he could hear the rhythms of the still unwritten sentences approaching like footsteps before he knew what the actual words would be: I realised as “Face to Face” unfolded that the idea could be given a distinctly sinister twist.

—J
OHN
H
ARWOOD

Richard Harland

Richard Harland was born in England but has spent most of his adult life in Australia. He lives in Figtree, south of Sydney, with his wife, Aileen, between golden beaches and green coastal escarpment—and, incongruously, the biggest steelworks in the southern hemisphere.

In 1993, he broke the curse of writer’s block and finished his first gothic fantasy. Published by a small press,
The Vicar of Morbing Vyle
became a cult favorite. Richard took up writing full-time in 1997, and since then has had fifteen novels published, ranging from fantasy to science fiction to horror, and from adult to YA to children’s. He has won five Aurealis Awards, including the Golden Aurealis for Best Novel in any genre of science fiction, fantasy, or horror.

His recent steampunk fantasy,
Worldshaker,
has been published in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, France, Germany, and Brazil. The sequel,
Liberator,
is due to appear in the same countries, starting with Australia and the United Kingdom in May and July 2011. The American edition comes out in April 2012. Richard’s websites are
www.richardharland.net
and
www.worldshaker.info.

R
ICHARD
H
ARLAND
Bad Thoughts and the Mechanism

N
O, YOU MUST
not expect me to describe my nightmares. That I shall never do. As a respected and respectable gentleman of business, I have my regular armchair at White’s, I sit with my cigar and brandy-and-soda—and my fellow club members never suspect that, up until the age of thirteen, I suffered from the most appalling nightmares imaginable. No one knows there was a time when my heart stopped beating, and I almost died in my sleep from pure terror.

It was after I almost died that my parents—you need not know our family name—began to talk about Dr. Kessel. The Harley Street specialist who examined me must have mentioned the new experimental treatment to them—at least, I deduce that connection in retrospect. You should understand that large portions of my life in that period took place as if in a fog. I existed under such oppression of the spirit, such constant weight of fearful anticipation, that many things were confused and ambiguous to me. I remember mainly in flashes—luminous moments of clarity shining out from the general murk.