What Was It?
By FITZ-JAMES O'BRIEN
It is, I confess, with considerable diffidence, that I approach the strange narrative which
I am about to relate.
The events which I purpose detailing are of so extraordinary a character that I am quite
prepared to meet with an unusual amount of incredulity and scorn.
I accept all such beforehand.
I have, I trust, the literary courage to face unbelief.
I have, after mature consideration resolved to narrate, in as simple and straightforward
a manner as I can compass, some facts that passed under my observation, in the month
of July last, and which, in the annals of the mysteries of physical science, are wholly
unparalleled.
I live at No.
—— Twenty-sixth Street, in New York.
The house is in some respects a curious one.
It has enjoyed for the last two years the reputation of being haunted.
It is a large and stately residence, surrounded by what was once a garden, but which is now
only a green enclosure used for bleaching clothes.
The dry basin of what has been a fountain, and a few fruit trees ragged and unpruned,
indicate that this spot in past days was a pleasant, shady retreat, filled with fruits
and flowers and the sweet murmur of waters.
The house is very spacious.
A hall of noble size leads to a large spiral staircase winding through its center, while
the various apartments are of imposing dimensions.
It was built some fifteen or twenty years since by Mr. A——, the well-known New York
merchant, who five years ago threw the commercial world into convulsions by a stupendous bank
fraud.
Mr. A——, as everyone knows, escaped to Europe, and died not long after, of a broken
heart.
Almost immediately after the news of his decease reached this country and was verified, the
report spread in Twenty-sixth Street that No. —— was haunted.
Legal measures had dispossessed the widow of its former owner, and it was inhabited
merely by a caretaker and his wife, placed there by the house agent into whose hands
it had passed for the purposes of renting or sale.
These people declared that they were troubled with unnatural noises.
Doors were opened without any visible agency.
The remnants of furniture scattered through the various rooms were, during the night,
piled one upon the other by unknown hands.
Invisible feet passed up and down the stairs in broad daylight, accompanied by the rustle
of unseen silk dresses, and the gliding of viewless hands along the massive balusters.
The caretaker and his wife declared they would live there no longer.
The house agent laughed, dismissed them, and put others in their place.
The noises and supernatural manifestations continued.
The neighborhood caught up the story, and the house remained untenanted for three years.
Several persons negotiated for it; but, somehow, always before the bargain was closed they
heard the unpleasant rumors and declined to treat any further.
It was in this state of things that my landlady, who at that time kept a boarding-house in
Bleecker Street, and who wished to move further up town, conceived the bold idea of renting
No.
—— Twenty-sixth Street.
Happening to have in her house rather a plucky and philosophical set of boarders, she laid
her scheme before us, stating candidly everything she had heard respecting the ghostly qualities
of the establishment to which she wished to remove us.
With the exception of two timid persons,—a sea-captain and a returned Californian, who
immediately gave notice that they would leave,—all of Mrs. Moffat's guests declared that they
would accompany her in her chivalric incursion into the abode of spirits.
Our removal was effected in the month of May, and we were charmed with our new residence.
The portion of Twenty-sixth Street where our house is situated, between Seventh and Eighth
Avenues, is one of the pleasantest localities in New York.
The gardens back of the houses, running down nearly to the Hudson, form, in the summer
time, a perfect avenue of verdure.
The air is pure and invigorating, sweeping, as it does, straight across the river from
the Weehawken heights, and even the ragged garden which surrounded the house, although
displaying on washing days rather too much clothesline, still gave us a piece of greensward
to look at, and a cool retreat in the summer evenings, where we smoked our cigars in the
dusk, and watched the fireflies flashing their dark lanterns in the long grass.
Of course we had no sooner established ourselves at No. —— than we began to expect ghosts.
We absolutely awaited their advent with eagerness.
Our dinner conversation was supernatural.
One of the boarders, who had purchased Mrs. Crowe's Night Side of Nature for his own private
delectation, was regarded as a public enemy by the entire household for not having bought
twenty copies.
The man led a life of supreme wretchedness while he was reading this volume.
A system of espionage was established, of which he was the victim.
If he incautiously laid the book down for an instant and left the room, it was immediately
seized and read aloud in secret places to a select few.
I found myself a person of immense importance, it having leaked out that I was tolerably
well versed in the history of supernaturalism, and had once written a story the foundation
of which was a ghost.
If a table or a wainscot panel happened to warp when we were assembled in the large drawing-room,
there was an instant silence, and everyone was prepared for an immediate clanking of
chains and a spectral form.
After a month of psychological excitement, it was with the utmost dissatisfaction that
we were forced to acknowledge that nothing in the remotest degree approaching the supernatural
had manifested itself.
Once the black butler asseverated that his candle had been blown out by some invisible
agency while he was undressing himself for the night; but as I had more than once discovered
this colored gentleman in a condition when one candle must have appeared to him like
two, thought it possible that, by going a step further in his potations, he might have
reversed this phenomenon, and seen no candle at all where he ought to have beheld one.
Things were in this state when an accident took place so awful and inexplicable in its
character that my reason fairly reels at the bare memory of the occurrence.
It was the tenth of July.
After dinner was over I repaired, with my friend Dr. Hammond, to the garden to smoke
my evening pipe.
Independent of certain mental sympathies which existed between the Doctor and myself, we
were linked together by a vice.
We both smoked opium.
We knew each other's secret, and respected it.
We enjoyed together that wonderful expansion of thought, that marvelous intensifying of
the perceptive faculties, that boundless feeling of existence when we seem to have points of
contact with the whole universe,—in short, that unimaginable spiritual bliss, which I
would not surrender for a throne, and which I hope you, reader, will never—never taste.
Those hours of opium happiness which the Doctor and I spent together in secret were regulated
with a scientific accuracy.
We did not blindly smoke the drug of paradise, and leave our dreams to chance.
While smoking, we carefully steered our conversation through the brightest and calmest channels
of thought.
We talked of the East, and endeavored to recall the magical panorama of its glowing scenery.
We criticized the most sensuous poets,—those who painted life ruddy with health, brimming
with passion, happy in the possession of youth and strength and beauty.
If we talked of Shakespeare's Tempest, we lingered over Ariel, and avoided Caliban.
Like the Guebers, we turned our faces to the East, and saw only the sunny side of the world.
This skillful coloring of our train of thought produced in our subsequent visions a corresponding
tone.
The splendors of Arabian fairyland dyed our dreams.
We paced the narrow strip of grass with the tread and port of kings.
The song of the Rana arborea, while he clung to the bark of the ragged plum-tree, sounded
like the strains of divine musicians.
Houses, walls, and streets melted like rain clouds, and vistas of unimaginable glory stretched
away before us.
It was a rapturous companionship.
We enjoyed the vast delight more perfectly because, even in our most ecstatic moments,
we were conscious of each other's presence.
Our pleasures, while individual, were still twin, vibrating and moving in musical accord.
On the evening in question, the tenth of July, the Doctor and myself drifted into an unusually
metaphysical mood.
We lit our large meerschaums, filled with fine Turkish tobacco, in the core of which
burned a little black nut of opium, that, like the nut in the fairy tale, held within
its narrow limits wonders beyond the reach of kings; we paced to and fro, conversing.
A strange perversity dominated the currents of our thought.
They would not flow through the sun-lit channels into which we strove to divert them.
For some unaccountable reason, they constantly diverged into dark and lonesome beds, where
a continual gloom brooded.
It was in vain that, after our old fashion, we flung ourselves on the shores of the East,
and talked of its gay bazaars, of the splendors of the time of Haroun, of harems and golden
palaces.
Black afreets continually arose from the depths of our talk, and expanded, like the one the
fisherman released from the copper vessel, until they blotted everything bright from
our vision.
Insensibly, we yielded to the occult force that swayed us, and indulged in gloomy speculation.
We had talked some time upon the proneness of the human mind to mysticism, and the almost
universal love of the terrible, when Hammond suddenly said to me.
"What do you consider to be the greatest element of terror?"
The question puzzled me.
That many things were terrible, I knew.
Stumbling over a corpse in the dark; beholding, as I once did, a woman floating down a deep
and rapid river, with wildly lifted arms, and awful, upturned face, uttering, as she
drifted, shrieks that rent one's heart while we, spectators, stood frozen at a window which
overhung the river at a height of sixty feet, unable to make the slightest effort to save
her, but dumbly watching her last supreme agony and her disappearance.
A shattered wreck, with no life visible, encountered floating listlessly on the ocean, is a terrible
object, for it suggests a huge terror, the proportions of which are veiled.
But it now struck me, for the first time, that there must be one great and ruling embodiment
of fear,—a King of Terrors, to which all others must succumb.
What might it be?
To what train of circumstances would it owe its existence?
"I confess, Hammond," I replied to my friend, "I never considered the subject before.
That there must be one Something more terrible than any other thing, I feel.
I cannot attempt, however, even the most vague definition."
"I am somewhat like you, Harry," he answered.
"I feel my capacity to experience a terror greater than anything yet conceived by the
human mind;—something combining in fearful and unnatural amalgamation hitherto supposed
incompatible elements.
The calling of the voices in Brockden Brown's novel of Wieland is awful; so is the picture
of the Dweller of the Threshold, in Bulwer's Zanoni; but," he added, shaking his head gloomily,
"there is something more horrible still than those."
"Look here, Hammond," I rejoined, "let us drop this kind of talk, for Heaven's sake!
We shall suffer for it, depend on it."
"I don't know what's the matter with me to-night," he replied, "but my brain is running upon
all sorts of weird and awful thoughts.
I feel as if I could write a story like Hoffman, to-night, if I were only master of a literary
style."
"Well, if we are going to be Hoffmanesque in our talk, I'm off to bed.
Opium and nightmares should never be brought together.
How sultry it is!
Good-night, Hammond."
"Good-night, Harry.
Pleasant dreams to you."
"To you, gloomy wretch, afreets, ghouls, and enchanters."
We parted, and each sought his respective chamber.
I undressed quickly and got into bed, taking with me, according to my usual custom, a book,
over which I generally read myself to sleep.
I opened the volume as soon as I had laid my head upon the pillow, and instantly flung
it to the other side of the room.
It was Goudon's History of Monsters,—a curious French work, which I had lately imported from
Paris, but which, in the state of mind I had then reached, was anything but an agreeable
companion.
I resolved to go to sleep at once; so, turning down my gas until nothing but a little blue
point of light glimmered on the top of the tube, I composed myself to rest.
The room was in total darkness.
The atom of gas that still remained alight did not illuminate a distance of three inches
round the burner.
I desperately drew my arm across my eyes, as if to shut out even the darkness, and tried
to think of nothing.
It was in vain.
The confounded themes touched on by Hammond in the garden kept obtruding themselves on
my brain.
I battled against them.
I erected ramparts of would-be blackness of intellect to keep them out.
They still crowded upon me.
While I was lying still as a corpse, hoping that by a perfect physical inaction I should
hasten mental repose, an awful incident occurred.
A Something dropped, as it seemed, from the ceiling, plumb upon my chest, and the next
instant I felt two bony hands encircling my throat, endeavoring to choke me.
I am no coward, and am possessed of considerable physical strength.
The suddenness of the attack, instead of stunning me, strung every nerve to its highest tension.
My body acted from instinct, before my brain had time to realize the terrors of my position.
In an instant I wound two muscular arms around the creature, and squeezed it, with all the
strength of despair, against my chest.
In a few seconds the bony hands that had fastened on my throat loosened their hold, and I was
free to breathe once more.
Then commenced a struggle of awful intensity.
Immersed in the most profound darkness, totally ignorant of the nature of the Thing by which
I was so suddenly attacked, finding my grasp slipping every moment, by reason, it seemed
to me, of the entire nakedness of my assailant, bitten with sharp teeth in the shoulder, neck,
and chest, having every moment to protect my throat against a pair of sinewy, agile
hands, which my utmost efforts could not confine,—these were a combination of circumstances to combat
which required all the strength, skill, and courage that I possessed.
At last, after a silent, deadly, exhausting struggle, I got my assailant under by a series
of incredible efforts of strength.
Once pinned, with my knee on what I made out to be its chest, I knew that I was victor.
I rested for a moment to breathe.
I heard the creature beneath me panting in the darkness, and felt the violent throbbing
of a heart.
It was apparently as exhausted as I was; that was one comfort.
At this moment I remembered that I usually placed under my pillow, before going to bed,
a large yellow silk pocket handkerchief.
I felt for it instantly; it was there.
In a few seconds more I had, after a fashion, pinioned the creature's arms.
I now felt tolerably secure.
There was nothing more to be done but to turn on the gas, and, having first seen what my
midnight assailant was like, arouse the household.
I will confess to being actuated by a certain pride in not giving the alarm before; I wished
to make the capture alone and unaided.
Never losing my hold for an instant, I slipped from the bed to the floor, dragging my captive
with me.
I had but a few steps to make to reach the gas-burner; these I made with the greatest
caution, holding the creature in a grip like a vice.
At last I got within arm's length of the tiny speck of blue light which told me where the
gas-burner lay.
Quick as lightning I released my grasp with one hand and let on the full flood of light.
Then I turned to look at my captive.
I cannot even attempt to give any definition of my sensations the instant after I turned
on the gas.
I suppose I must have shrieked with terror, for in less than a minute afterward my room
was crowded with the inmates of the house.
I shudder now as I think of that awful moment.
I saw nothing!
Yes; I had one arm firmly clasped round a breathing, panting, corporeal shape, my other
hand gripped with all its strength a throat as warm, as apparently fleshy, as my own;
and yet, with this living substance in my grasp, with its body pressed against my own,
and all in the bright glare of a large jet of gas, I absolutely beheld nothing!
Not even an outline,—a vapor!
I do not, even at this hour, realize the situation in which I found myself.
I cannot recall the astounding incident thoroughly.
Imagination in vain tries to compass the awful paradox.
It breathed.
I felt its warm breath upon my cheek.
It struggled fiercely.
It had hands.
They clutched me.
Its skin was smooth, like my own.
There it lay, pressed close up against me, solid as stone,—and yet utterly invisible!
I wonder that I did not faint or go mad on the instant.
Some wonderful instinct must have sustained me; for, absolutely, in place of loosening
my hold on the terrible Enigma, I seemed to gain an additional strength in my moment of
horror, and tightened my grasp with such wonderful force that I felt the creature shivering with
agony.
Just then Hammond entered my room at the head of the household.
As soon as he beheld my face—which, I suppose, must have been an awful sight to look at—he
hastened forward, crying, "Great heaven, Harry! what has happened?"
"Hammond! Hammond!"
I cried, "come here.
O, this is awful!
I have been attacked in bed by something or other, which I have hold of; but I can't see
it,—I can't see it!"
Hammond, doubtless struck by the unfeigned horror expressed in my countenance, made one
or two steps forward with an anxious yet puzzled expression.
A very audible titter burst from the remainder of my visitors.
This suppressed laughter made me furious.
To laugh at a human being in my position!
It was the worst species of cruelty.
Now, I can understand why the appearance of a man struggling violently, as it would seem,
with an airy nothing, and calling for assistance against a vision, should have appeared ludicrous.
Then, so great was my rage against the mocking crowd that had I the power I would have stricken
them dead where they stood.
"Hammond! Hammond!"
I cried again, despairingly, "for God's sake come to me.
I can hold the—the thing but a short while longer.
It is overpowering me.
Help me!
Help me!"
"Harry," whispered Hammond, approaching me, "you have been smoking too much opium."
"I swear to you, Hammond, that this is no vision," I answered, in the same low tone.
"Don't you see how it shakes my whole frame with its struggles?
If you don't believe me, convince yourself.
Feel it,—touch it."
Hammond advanced and laid his hand in the spot I indicated.
A wild cry of horror burst from him.
He had felt it!
In a moment he had discovered somewhere in my room a long piece of cord, and was the
next instant winding it and knotting it about the body of the unseen being that I clasped
in my arms.
"Harry," he said, in a hoarse, agitated voice, for, though he preserved his presence of mind,
he was deeply moved, "Harry, it's all safe now.
You may let go, old fellow, if you're tired.
The Thing can't move."
I was utterly exhausted, and I gladly loosed my hold.
Hammond stood holding the ends of the cord that bound the Invisible, twisted round his
hand, while before him, self-supporting as it were, he beheld a rope laced and interlaced,
and stretching tightly around a vacant space.
I never saw a man look so thoroughly stricken with awe.
Nevertheless his face expressed all the courage and determination which I knew him to possess.
His lips, although white, were set firmly, and one could perceive at a glance that, although
stricken with fear, he was not daunted.
The confusion that ensued among the guests of the house who were witnesses of this extraordinary
scene between Hammond and myself,—who beheld the pantomime of binding this struggling Something,—who
beheld me almost sinking from physical exhaustion when my task of jailer was over,—the confusion
and terror that took possession of the bystanders, when they saw all this, was beyond description.
The weaker ones fled from the apartment.
The few who remained clustered near the door and could not be induced to approach Hammond
and his Charge.
Still incredulity broke out through their terror.
They had not the courage to satisfy themselves, and yet they doubted.
It was in vain that I begged of some of the men to come near and convince themselves by
touch of the existence in that room of a living being which was invisible.
They were incredulous, but did not dare to undeceive themselves.
How could a solid, living, breathing body be invisible, they asked.
My reply was this.
I gave a sign to Hammond, and both of us—conquering our fearful repugnance to touch the invisible
creature—lifted it from the ground, manacled as it was, and took it to my bed.
Its weight was about that of a boy of fourteen.
"Now my friends," I said, as Hammond and myself held the creature suspended over the bed,
"I can give you self-evident proof that here is a solid, ponderable body, which, nevertheless,
you cannot see.
Be good enough to watch the surface of the bed attentively."
I was astonished at my own courage in treating this strange event so calmly; but I had recovered
from my first terror, and felt a sort of scientific pride in the affair, which dominated every
other feeling.
The eyes of the bystanders were immediately fixed on my bed.
At a given signal Hammond and I let the creature fall.
There was a dull sound of a heavy body alighting on a soft mass.
The timbers of the bed creaked.
A deep impression marked itself distinctly on the pillow, and on the bed itself.
The crowd who witnessed this gave a low cry, and rushed from the room.
Hammond and I were left alone with our Mystery.
We remained silent for some time, listening to the low, irregular breathing of the creature
on the bed, and watching the rustle of the bedclothes as it impotently struggled to free
itself from confinement.
Then Hammond spoke.
"Harry, this is awful."
"Ay, awful."
"But not unaccountable."
"Not unaccountable!
What do you mean?
Such a thing has never occurred since the birth of the world.
I know not what to think, Hammond.
God grant that I am not mad, and that this is not an insane fantasy!"
"Let us reason a little, Harry.
Here is a solid body which we touch, but which we cannot see.
The fact is so unusual that it strikes us with terror.
Is there no parallel, though, for such a phenomenon?
Take a piece of pure glass.
It is tangible and transparent.
A certain chemical coarseness is all that prevents its being so entirely transparent
as to be totally invisible.
It is not theoretically impossible, mind you, to make a glass which shall not reflect a
single ray of light,—a glass so pure and homogeneous in its atoms that the rays from
the sun will pass through it as they do through the air, refracted but not reflected.
We do not see the air, and yet we feel it."
"That's all very well, Hammond, but these are inanimate substances.
Glass does not breathe, air does not breathe.
This thing has a heart that palpitates,—a will that moves it,—lungs that play, and
inspire and respire."
"You forget the phenomena of which we have so often heard of late," answered the Doctor,
gravely.
"At the meetings called 'spirit circles,' invisible hands have been thrust into the
hands of those persons round the table,—warm, fleshly hands that seemed to pulsate with
mortal life."
"What?
Do you think, then, that this thing is——"
"I don't know what it is," was the solemn reply; "but please the gods I will, with your
assistance, thoroughly investigate it."
We watched together, smoking many pipes, all night long, by the bedside of the unearthly
being that tossed and panted until it was apparently wearied out.
Then we learned by the low, regular breathing that it slept.
The next morning the house was all astir.
The boarders congregated on the landing outside my room, and Hammond and myself were lions.
We had to answer a thousand questions as to the state of our extraordinary prisoner, for
as yet not one person in the house except ourselves could be induced to set foot in
the apartment.
The creature was awake.
This was evidenced by the convulsive manner in which the bedclothes were moved in its
efforts to escape.
There was something truly terrible in beholding, as it were, those second-hand indications
of the terrible writhings and agonized struggles for liberty which themselves were invisible.
Hammond and myself had racked our brains during the long night to discover some means by which
we might realize the shape and general appearance of the Enigma.
As well as we could make out by passing our hands over the creature's form, its outlines
and lineaments were human.
There was a mouth; a round, smooth head without hair; a nose, which, however, was little elevated
above the cheeks; and its hands and feet felt like those of a boy.
At first we thought of placing the being on a smooth surface and tracing its outlines
with chalk, as shoemakers trace the outline of the foot.
This plan was given up as being of no value.
Such an outline would give not the slightest idea of its conformation.
A happy thought struck me.
We would take a cast of it in plaster of Paris.
This would give us the solid figure, and satisfy all our wishes.
But how to do it?
The movements of the creature would disturb the setting of the plastic covering, and distort
the mold.
Another thought.
Why not give it chloroform?
It had respiratory organs,—that was evident by its breathing.
Once reduced to a state of insensibility, we could do with it what we would.
Doctor X—— was sent for; and after the worthy physician had recovered from the first
shock of amazement, he proceeded to administer the chloroform.
In three minutes afterward we were enabled to remove the fetters from the creature's
body, and a modeler was busily engaged in covering the invisible form with the moist
clay.
In five minutes more we had a mold, and before evening a rough facsimile of the Mystery.
It was shaped like a man—distorted, uncouth, and horrible, but still a man.
It was small, not over four feet and some inches in height, and its limbs revealed a
muscular development that was unparalleled.
Its face surpassed in hideousness anything I had ever seen.
Gustav Doré, or Callot, or Tony Johannot, never conceived anything so horrible.
There is a face in one of the latter's illustrations to Un Voyage où il vous plaira, which somewhat
approaches the countenance of this creature, but does not equal it.
It was the physiognomy of what I should fancy a ghoul might be.
It looked as if it was capable of feeding on human flesh.
Having satisfied our curiosity, and bound every one in the house to secrecy, it became
a question what was to be done with our Enigma?
It was impossible that we should keep such a horror in our house; it was equally impossible
that such an awful being should be let loose upon the world.
I confess that I would have gladly voted for the creature's destruction.
But who would shoulder the responsibility?
Who would undertake the execution of this horrible semblance of a human being?
Day after day this question was deliberated gravely.
The boarders all left the house.
Mrs. Moffat was in despair, and threatened Hammond and myself with all sorts of legal
penalties if we did not remove the Horror.
Our answer was, "We will go if you like, but we decline taking this creature with us.
Remove it yourself if you please.
It appeared in your house.
On you the responsibility rests."
To this there was, of course, no answer.
Mrs. Moffat could not obtain for love or money a person who would even approach the Mystery.
The most singular part of the affair was that we were entirely ignorant of what the creature
habitually fed on.
Everything in the way of nutriment that we could think of was placed before it, but was
never touched.
It was awful to stand by, day after day, and see the clothes toss, and hear the hard breathing,
and know that it was starving.
Ten, twelve days, a fortnight passed, and it still lived.
The pulsations of the heart, however, were daily growing fainter, and had now nearly
ceased.
It was evident that the creature was dying for want of sustenance.
While this terrible life-struggle was going on, I felt miserable.
I could not sleep.
Horrible as the creature was, it was pitiful to think of the pangs it was suffering.
At last it died.
Hammond and I found it cold and stiff one morning in the bed.
The heart had ceased to beat, the lungs to inspire.
We hastened to bury it in the garden.
It was a strange funeral, the dropping of that viewless corpse into the damp hole.
The cast of its form I gave to Doctor X——, who keeps it in his museum in Tenth Street.
As I am on the eve of a long journey from which I may not return, I have drawn up this
narrative of an event the most singular that has ever come to my knowledge.
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