The Beetle (3 page)

As the creature mounted its eyes began to play the part of two
small lamps; they positively emitted rays of light. By their rays
I began to perceive faint outlines of its body. It seemed larger
than I had supposed. Either the body itself was slightly
phosphorescent, or it was of a peculiar yellow hue. It gleamed in
the darkness. What it was there was still nothing to positively
show, but the impression grew upon me that it was some member of
the spider family, some monstrous member, of the like of which I
had never heard or read. It was heavy, so heavy indeed, that I
wondered how, with so slight a pressure, it managed to retain its
hold,—that it did so by the aid of some adhesive substance at the
end of its legs I was sure,—I could feel it stick. Its weight
increased as it ascended,—and it smelt! I had been for some time
aware that it emitted an unpleasant, foetid odour; as it neared my
face it became so intense as to be unbearable.

It was at my chest. I became more and more conscious of an
uncomfortable wobbling motion, as if each time it breathed its
body heaved. Its forelegs touched the bare skin about the base of
my neck; they stuck to it,—shall I ever forget the feeling? I
have it often in my dreams. While it hung on with those in front
it seemed to draw its other legs up after it. It crawled up my
neck, with hideous slowness, a quarter of an inch at a time, its
weight compelling me to brace the muscles of my back. It reached
my chin, it touched my lips,—and I stood still and bore it all,
while it enveloped my face with its huge, slimy, evil-smelling
body, and embraced me with its myriad legs. The horror of it made
me mad. I shook myself like one stricken by the shaking ague. I
shook the creature off. It squashed upon the floor. Shrieking like
some lost spirit, turning, I dashed towards the window. As I went,
my foot, catching in some obstacle, I fell headlong to the floor.

Picking myself up as quickly as I could I resumed my flight,—rain
or no rain, oh to get out of that room! I already had my hand upon
the sill, in another instant I should have been over it,—then,
despite my hunger, my fatigues, let anyone have stopped me if they
could!—when someone behind me struck a light.

The illumination which instantly followed was unexpected. It
startled me, causing a moment's check, from which I was just
recovering when a voice said,

'Keep still!'

There was a quality in the voice which I cannot describe. Not only
an accent of command, but a something malicious, a something
saturnine. It was a little guttural, though whether it was a man
speaking I could not have positively said; but I had no doubt it
was a foreigner. It was the most disagreeable voice I had ever
heard, and it had on me the most disagreeable effect; for when it
said, 'Keep still!' I kept still. It was as though there was
nothing else for me to do.

'Turn round!'

I turned round, mechanically, like an automaton. Such passivity
was worse than undignified, it was galling; I knew that well. I
resented it with secret rage. But in that room, in that presence,
I was invertebrate.

When I turned I found myself confronting someone who was lying in
bed. At the head of the bed was a shelf. On the shelf was a small
lamp which gave the most brilliant light I had ever seen. It
caught me full in the eyes, having on me such a blinding effect
that for some seconds I could see nothing. Throughout the whole of
that strange interview I cannot affirm that I saw clearly; the
dazzling glare caused dancing specks to obscure my vision. Yet,
after an interval of time, I did see something; and what I did see
I had rather have left unseen.

I saw someone in front of me lying in a bed. I could not at once
decide if it was a man or a woman. Indeed at first I doubted if it
was anything human. But, afterwards, I knew it to be a man,—for
this reason, if for no other, that it was impossible such a
creature could be feminine. The bedclothes were drawn up to his
shoulders; only his head was visible. He lay on his left side, his
head resting on his left hand; motionless, eyeing me as if he
sought to read my inmost soul. And, in very truth, I believe he
read it. His age I could not guess; such a look of age I had never
imagined. Had he asserted that he had been living through the
ages, I should have been forced to admit that, at least, he looked
it. And yet I felt that it was quite within the range of
possibility that he was no older than myself,—there was a
vitality in his eyes which was startling. It might have been that
he had been afflicted by some terrible disease, and it was that
which had made him so supernaturally ugly.

There was not a hair upon his face or head, but, to make up for
it, the skin, which was a saffron yellow, was an amazing mass of
wrinkles. The cranium, and, indeed, the whole skull, was so small
as to be disagreeably suggestive of something animal. The nose, on
the other hand, was abnormally large; so extravagant were its
dimensions, and so peculiar its shape, it resembled the beak of
some bird of prey. A characteristic of the face—and an
uncomfortable one I—was that, practically, it stopped short at
the mouth. The mouth, with its blubber lips, came immediately
underneath the nose, and chin, to all intents and purposes, there
was none. This deformity—for the absence of chin amounted to
that—it was which gave to the face the appearance of something
not human,—that, and the eyes. For so marked a feature of the man
were his eyes, that, ere long, it seemed to me that he was nothing
but eyes.

His eyes ran, literally, across the whole of the upper portion of
his face,—remember, the face was unwontedly small, and the
columna of the nose was razor-edged. They were long, and they
looked out of narrow windows, and they seemed to be lighted by
some internal radiance, for they shone out like lamps in a
lighthouse tower. Escape them I could not, while, as I endeavoured
to meet them, it was as if I shrivelled into nothingness. Never
before had I realised what was meant by the power of the eye. They
held me enchained, helpless, spell-bound. I felt that they could
do with me as they would; and they did. Their gaze was
unfaltering, having the bird-like trick of never blinking; this
man could have glared at me for hours and never moved an eyelid.

It was he who broke the silence. I was speechless.

'Shut the window.' I did as he bade me. 'Pull down the blind.' I
obeyed. 'Turn round again.' I was still obedient. 'What is your
name?'

Then I spoke,—to answer him. There was this odd thing about the
words I uttered, that they came from me, not in response to my
will power, but in response to his. It was not I who willed that I
should speak; it was he. What he willed that I should say, I said.
Just that, and nothing more. For the time I was no longer a man;
my manhood was merged in his. I was, in the extremest sense, an
example of passive obedience.

'Robert Holt.'

'What are you?'

'A clerk.'

'You look as if you were a clerk.' There was a flame of scorn in
his voice which scorched me even then. 'What sort of a clerk are
you?'

'I am out of a situation.'

'You look as if you were out of a situation.' Again the scorn.
'Are you the sort of clerk who is always out of a situation? You
are a thief.'

'I am not a thief.'

'Do clerks come through the window?' I was still,—he putting no
constraint on me to speak. 'Why did you come through the window?'

'Because it was open.'

'So!—Do you always come through a window which is open?'

'No.'

'Then why through this?'

'Because I was wet—and cold—and hungry—and tired.'

The words came from me as if he had dragged them one by one,—
which, in fact, he did.

'Have you no home?'

'No.'

'Money?'

'No.'

'Friends?'

'No.'

'Then what sort of a clerk are you?'

I did not answer him,—I did not know what it was he wished me to
say. I was the victim of bad luck, nothing else,—I swear it.
Misfortune had followed hard upon misfortune. The firm by whom I
had been employed for years suspended payment. I obtained a
situation with one of their creditors, at a lower salary. They
reduced their staff, which entailed my going. After an interval I
obtained a temporary engagement; the occasion which required my
services passed, and I with it. After another, and a longer
interval, I again found temporary employment, the pay for which
was but a pittance. When that was over I could find nothing. That
was nine months ago, and since then I had not earned a penny. It
is so easy to grow shabby, when you are on the everlasting tramp,
and are living on your stock of clothes. I had trudged all over
London in search of work,—work of any kind would have been
welcome, so long as it would have enabled me to keep body and soul
together. And I had trudged in vain. Now I had been refused
admittance as a casual,—how easy is the descent! But I did not
tell the man lying on the bed all this. He did not wish to hear,—
had he wished he would have made me tell him.

It may be that he read my story, unspoken though it was,—it is
conceivable. His eyes had powers of penetration which were
peculiarly their own,—that I know.

'Undress!'

When he spoke again that was what he said, in those guttural tones
of his in which there was a reminiscence of some foreign land. I
obeyed, letting my sodden, shabby clothes fall anyhow upon the
floor. A look came on his face, as I stood naked in front of him,
which, if it was meant for a smile, was a satyr's smile, and which
filled me with a sensation of shuddering repulsion.

'What a white skin you have,—how white! What would I not give for
a skin as white as that,—ah yes!' He paused, devouring me with
his glances; then continued. 'Go to the cupboard; you will find a
cloak; put it on.'

I went to a cupboard which was in a corner of the room, his eyes
following me as I moved. It was full of clothing,—garments which
might have formed the stock-in-trade of a costumier whose
speciality was providing costumes for masquerades. A long dark
cloak hung on a peg. My hand moved towards it, apparently of its
own volition. I put it on, its ample folds falling to my feet.

'In the other cupboard you will find meat, and bread, and wine.
Eat and drink.'

On the opposite side of the room, near the head of his bed, there
was a second cupboard. In this, upon a shelf, I found what looked
like pressed beef, several round cakes of what tasted like rye
bread, and some thin, sour wine, in a straw-covered flask. But I
was in no mood to criticise; I crammed myself, I believe, like
some famished wolf, he watching me, in silence, all the time. When
I had done, which was when I had eaten and drunk as much as I
could hold, there returned to his face that satyr's grin.

'I would that I could eat and drink like that,—ah yes!—Put back
what is left.' I put it back,—which seemed an unnecessary
exertion, there was so little to put. 'Look me in the face.'

I looked him in the face,—and immediately became conscious, as I
did so, that something was going from me,—the capacity, as it
were, to be myself. His eyes grew larger and larger, till they
seemed to fill all space—till I became lost in their immensity.
He moved his hand, doing something to me, I know not what, as it
passed through the air—cutting the solid ground from underneath
my feet, so that I fell headlong to the ground. Where I fell,
there I lay, like a log.

And the light went out.

I knew that the light went out. For not the least singular, nor,
indeed, the least distressing part of my condition was the fact
that, to the best of my knowledge and belief, I never once lost
consciousness during the long hours which followed. I was aware of
the extinction of the lamp, and of the black darkness which
ensued. I heard a rustling sound, as if the man in the bed was
settling himself between the sheets. Then all was still. And
throughout that interminable night I remained, my brain awake, my
body dead, waiting, watching, for the day. What had happened to me
I could not guess. That I probably wore some of the external
evidences of death my instinct told me,—I knew I did. Paradoxical
though it may sound, I felt as a man might feel who had actually
died,—as, in moments of speculation, in the days gone by, I had
imagined it as quite possible that he would feel. It is very far
from certain that feeling necessarily expires with what we call
life. I continually asked myself if I could be dead,—the inquiry
pressed itself on me with awful iteration. Does the body die, and
the brain—the I, the ego—still live on? God only knows. But,
then! the agony of the thought.

The hours passed. By slow degrees, the silence was eclipsed.
Sounds of traffic, of hurrying footsteps,—life!—were ushers of
the morn. Outside the window sparrows twittered,—a cat mewed, a
dog barked—there was the clatter of a milk can. Shafts of light
stole past the blind, increasing in intensity. It still rained,
now and again it pattered against the pane. The wind must have
shifted, because, for the first time, there came, on a sudden, the
clang of a distant clock striking the hour,—seven. Then, with the
interval of a lifetime between each chiming, eight,—nine,—ten.

So far, in the room itself there had not been a sound. When the
clock had struck ten, as it seemed to me, years ago, there came a
rustling noise, from the direction of the bed. Feet stepped upon
the floor,—moving towards where I was lying. It was, of course,
now broad day, and I, presently, perceived that a figure, clad in
some queer coloured garment, was standing at my side, looking down
at me. It stooped, then knelt. My only covering was
unceremoniously thrown from off me, so that I lay there in my
nakedness. Fingers prodded me then and there, as if I had been
some beast ready for the butcher's stall. A face looked into mine,
and, in front of me, were those dreadful eyes. Then, whether I was
dead or living, I said to myself that this could be nothing
human,—nothing fashioned in God's image could wear such a shape
as that. Fingers were pressed into my cheeks, they were thrust
into my mouth, they touched my staring eyes, shut my eyelids, then
opened them again, and—horror of horrors!—the blubber lips were
pressed to mine—the soul of something evil entered into me in the
guise of a kiss.