The Red Room

I wondered that I had ever disliked him. The three of them in the daylight seemed commonplace old folk enough. The man with the green shade had his head bent as one who sleeps.

It was very slowly I recovered the memory of my experience. “You believe now,” said the old man with the withered hand, “that the room is haunted?” He spoke no longer as one who greets an intruder, but as one who condoles with a friend.

“Yes,” said I, “the room is haunted.”

“And you have seen it. And we who have been 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, something impalpable – ”

“Well?” they said.

“The worst of all the things that haunt poor mortal men,” 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. “The candles went out one after another, and I fled – ”

Then the man with the shade lifted his face sideways to see me and spoke.

“That is it,” said he. “I knew that was it. A Power of Darkness. To put such a curse upon a home! It lurks 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 in the corridor and follows you, so that you dare not turn. It is even as you say. Fear itself is in that room. Black Fear… And there it will be… so long as this house of sin endures.”