I opened my eyes in daylight. My head was roughly bandaged, and the man with the withered arm was watching my face. I looked about me, trying to remember what had happened, and for a space I could not recollect. I rolled my eyes into the corner, and saw the old woman, no longer abstracted, pouring out some drops of medicine from a little blue phial into a glass. “Where am I?” I asked; “I seem to remember you, and yet I cannot remember who you are.”

  They told me then, and I heard of the haunted Red Room as one who hears a tale. “We found you at dawn,” said he, “and there was blood on your forehead and lips.”

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

  “Yes,” said I; “the room is haunted.”

  “And you have seen it. And we, who have lived 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——”

  “Well?” they said.

  “The worst of all the things that haunt poor mortal man,” said I; “and that is, in all its nakedness—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.

  Then the man with the shade sighed and spoke. “That is it,” said he. “I knew that was it. A power of darkness. To put such a curse upon a woman! 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 along the corridor and follows you, so that you dare not turn. There is Fear in that room of hers—black Fear, and there will be—so long as this house of sin endures.”

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  www.feedbooks.com

  Food for the mind

  The Remarkable Case of Davidson’s Eyes

  H. G. Wells

  Published: 1895

  Categorie(s): Fiction, Short Stories

  Source: http://en.wikisource.org

  About Wells:

  Herbert George Wells, better known as H. G. Wells, was an English writer best known for such science fiction novels as The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds, The Invisible Man and The Island of Doctor Moreau. He was a prolific writer of both fiction and non-fiction, and produced works in many different genres, including contemporary novels, history, and social commentary. He was also an outspoken socialist. His later works become increasingly political and didactic, and only his early science fiction novels are widely read today. Wells, along with Hugo Gernsback and Jules Verne, is sometimes referred to as “The Father of Science Fiction”. Source: Wikipedia

  Also available on Feedbooks Wells: The War of the Worlds (1898)

  The Time Machine (1895)

  A Modern Utopia (1905)

  The Invisible Man (1897)

  The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896)

  Tales of Space and Time (1900)

  The Sleeper Awakes (1910)

  The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth (1904)

  The Story of the Inexperienced Ghost (1902)

  The First Men in the Moon (1901)

  Copyright: This work is available for countries where copyright is Life+50 or in the USA (published before 1923).

  Note: This book is brought to you by Feedbooks

  http://www.feedbooks.com

  Strictly for personal use, do not use this file for commercial purposes.

  Chapter 1

  The transitory mental aberration of Sidney Davidson, remarkable enough in itself, is still more remarkable if Wade’s explanation is to be credited. It sets one dreaming of the oddest possibilities of intercommunication in the future, of spending an intercalary five minutes on the other side of the world, or being watched in our most secret operations by unsuspected eyes. It happened that I was the immediate witness of Davidson’s seizure, and so it falls naturally to me to put the story upon paper.

  When I say that I was the immediate witness of his seizure, I mean that I was the first on the scene. The thing happened at the Harlow Technical College, just beyond the Highgate Archway. He was alone in the larger laboratory when the thing happened. I was in a smaller room, where the balances are, writing up some notes. The thunderstorm had completely upset my work, of course. It was just after one of the louder peals that I thought I heard some glass smash in the other room. I stopped writing, and turned round to listen. For a moment I heard nothing; the hail was playing the devil’s tattoo on the corrugated zinc of the roof. Then came another sound, a smash—no doubt of it this time. Something heavy had been knocked off the bench. I jumped up at once and went and opened the door leading into the big laboratory.

  I was surprised to hear a queer sort of laugh, and saw Davidson standing unsteadily in the middle of the room, with a dazzled look on his face. My first impression was that he was drunk. He did not notice me. He was clawing out at something invisible a yard in front of his face. He put out his hand, slowly, rather hesitatingly, and then clutched nothing. “What’s come to it?” he said. He held up his hands to his face, fingers spread out. “Great Scott!” he said. The thing happened three or four years ago, when every one swore by that personage. Then he began raising his feet clumsily, as though he had expected to find them glued to the floor.

  “Davidson!” cried I. “What’s the matter with you?” He turned round in my direction and looked about for me. He looked over me and at me and on either side of me, without the slightest sign of seeing me. “Waves,” he said; “and a remarkably neat schooner. I’d swear that was Bellow’s voice. Hullo!” He shouted suddenly at the top of his voice.

  I thought he was up to some foolery. Then I saw littered about his feet the shattered remains of the best of our electrometers. “What’s up, man?” said I. “You’ve smashed the electrometer!”

  “Bellows again!” said he. “Friends left, if my hands are gone. Something about electrometers. Which way are you, Bellows?” He suddenly came staggering towards me. “The damned stuff cuts like butter,” he said. He walked straight into the bench and recoiled. “None so buttery that!” he said, and stood swaying.

  I felt scared. “Davidson,” said I, “what on earth’s come over you?”

  He looked round him in every direction. “I could swear that was Bellows. Why don’t you show yourself like a man, Bellows?”

  It occurred to me that he must be suddenly struck blind. I walked round the table and laid my hand upon his arm. I never saw a man more startled in my life. He jumped away from me, and came round into an attitude of self-defence, his face fairly distorted with terror. “Good God!” he cried. “What was that?”

  “It’s I—Bellows. Confound it, Davidson!”

  He jumped when I answered him and stared—how can I express it?—right through me. He began talking, not to me, but to himself. “Here in broad daylight on a clear beach. Not a place to hide in.” He looked about him wildly. “Here! I’m off.” He suddenly turned and ran headlong into the big electro-magnet—so violently that, as we found afterwards, he bruised his shoulder and jawbone cruelly. At that he stepped back a pace, and cried out with almost a whimper, “What, in Heaven’s name, has come over me?” He stood, blanched with terror and trembling violently, with his right arm clutching his left, where that had collided with the magnet.

  By that time I was excited and fairly scared. “Davidson,” said I, “don’t be afraid.”

  He was startled at my voice, but not so excessively as before. I repeated my words in as clear and as firm a tone as I could assume. “Bellows,” he said, “is that you?”

  “Can’t you see it’s me?”

  He laughed. “I can’t even see it’s myself. Where the devil are we?”

  “Here,” said I, “in the laboratory.”

  “The laboratory!” he answered in a puzzled tone, and put his hand to his forehead. “I was in the laboratory—till that flash came, but I’m hanged if I’m there now. What ship is that?”

  “There’s no ship,” said I. “Do be sensible, old chap.”

  “No ship!” he repeated, and seemed to forget my denial forthwith. “I suppose,” said he slowly, “we’re both dead. But the rummy part is I feel just as though I still had a body. Don’t get used to it all at once, I suppose. The old shop was struck by lightning, I suppose. Jolly quick thing, Bellows—eigh?”

  “Don’t talk nonsense. You’re very much alive. You are in the laboratory, blundering about. You’ve just smashed a new electrometer. I don’t envy you when Boyce arrives.”

  He stared away from me towards the diagrams of cryohydrates. “I must be deaf,” said he. “They’ve fired a gun, for there goes the puff of smoke, and I never heard a sound.”

  I put my hand on his arm again, and this time he was less alarmed. “We seem to have a sort of invisible bodies,” said he. “By Jove! there’s a boat coming round the headland. It’s very much like the old life after all—in a different climate.”

  I shook his arm. “Davidson,” I cried, “wake up!”

  Chapter 2

  It was just then that Boyce came in. So soon as he spoke Davidson exclaimed: “Old Boyce! Dead too! What a lark!” I hastened to explain that Davidson was in a kind of somnambulistic trance. Boyce was interested at once. We both did all we could to rouse the fellow out of his extraordinary state. He answered our questions, and asked us some of his own, but his attention seemed distracted by his hallucination about a beach and a ship. He kept interpolating observations concerning some boat and the davits, and sails filling with the wind. It made one feel queer, in the dusky laboratory, to hear him saying such things.

  He was blind and helpless. We had to walk him down the passage, one at each elbow, to Boyce’s private room, and while Boyce talked to him there, and humoured him about this ship idea, I went along the corridor and asked old Wade to come and look at him. The voice of our Dean sobered him a little, but not very much. He asked where his hands were, and why he had to walk about up to his waist in the ground. Wade thought over him a long time—you know how he knits his brows—and then made him feel the couch, guiding his hands to it. “That’s a couch,” said Wade. “The couch in the private room of Professor Boyce. Horse-hair stuffing.”

  Davidson felt about, and puzzled over it, and answered presently that he could feel it all right, but he couldn’t see it.

  “What do you see?” asked Wade. Davidson said he could see nothing but a lot of sand and broken-up shells. Wade gave him some other things to feel, telling him what they were, and watching him keenly.

  “The ship is almost hull down,” said Davidson presently, apropos of nothing.

  “Never mind the ship,” said Wade. “Listen to me, Davidson. Do you know what hallucination means?”

  “Rather,” said Davidson.

  “Well, everything you see is hallucinatory.”

  “Bishop Berkeley,” said Davidson.

  “Don’t mistake me,” said Wade. “You are alive and in this room of Boyce’s. But something has happened to your eyes. You cannot see; you can feel and hear, but not see. Do you follow me?”

  “It seems to me that I see too much.” Davidson rubbed his knuckles into his eyes. “Well?” he said.

  “That’s all. Don’t let it perplex you. Bellows here and I will take you home in a cab.”

  “Wait a bit.” Davidson thought. “Help me to sit down,” said he presently; “and now—I’m sorry to trouble you—but will you tell me all that over again?”

  Wade repeated it very patiently. Davidson shut his eyes, and pressed his hands upon his forehead. “Yes,” said he. “It’s quite right. Now my eyes are shut I know you’re right. That’s you, Bellows, sitting by me on the couch. I’m in England again. And we’re in the dark.”

  Then he opened his eyes. “And there,” said he, “is the sun just rising, and the yards of the ship, and a tumbled sea, and a couple of birds flying. I never saw anything so real. And I’m sitting up to my neck in a bank of sand.”

  He bent forward and covered his face with his hands. Then he opened his eyes again. “Dark sea and sunrise! And yet I’m sitting on a sofa in old Boyce’s room!… God help me!”

  Chapter 3

  That was the beginning. For three weeks this strange affection of Davidson’s eyes continued unabated. It was far worse than being blind. He was absolutely helpless, and had to be fed like a newly-hatched bird, and led about and undressed. If he attempted to move, he fell over things or struck himself against walls or doors. After a day or so he got used to hearing our voices without seeing us, and willingly admitted he was at home, and that Wade was right in what he told him. My sister, to whom he was engaged, insisted on coming to see him, and would sit for hours every day while he talked about this beach of his. Holding her hand seemed to comfort him immensely. He explained that when we left the College and drove home—he lived in Hampstead village—it appeared to him as if we drove right through a sandhill—it was perfectly black until he emerged again—and through rocks and trees and solid obstacles, and when he was taken to his own room it made him giddy and almost frantic with the fear of falling, because going upstairs seemed to lift him thirty or forty feet above the rocks of his imaginary island. He kept saying he should smash all the eggs. The end was that he had to be taken down into his father’s consulting room and laid upon a couch that stood there.

  He described the island as being a bleak kind of place on the whole, with very little vegetation, except some peaty stuff, and a lot of bare rock. There were multitudes of penguins, and they made the rocks white and disagreeable to see. The sea was often rough, and once there was a thunderstorm, and he lay and shouted at the silent flashes. Once or twice seals pulled up on the beach, but only on the first two or three days. He said it was very funny the way in which the penguins used to waddle right through him, and how he seemed to lie among them without disturbing them.

  I remember one odd thing, and that was when he wanted very badly to smoke. We put a pipe in his hands—he almost poked his eye out with it—and lit it. But he couldn’t taste anything. I’ve since found it’s the same with me—I don’t know if it’s the usual case—that I cannot enjoy tobacco at all unless I can see the smoke.

  But the queerest part of his vision came when Wade sent him out in a Bath-chair to get fresh air. The Davidsons hired a chair, and got that deaf and obstinate dependant of theirs, Widgery, to attend to it. Widgery’s ideas of healthy expeditions were peculiar. My sister, who had been to the Dogs’ Home, met them in Camden Town, towards King’s Cross, Widgery trotting along complacently, and Davidson, evidently most distressed, trying in his feeble, blind way to attract Widgery’s attention.

  He positively wept when my sister spoke to him. “Oh, get me out of this horrible darkness!” he said, feeling for her hand. “I must get out of it, or I shall die.” He was quite incapable of explaining what was the matter, but my sister decided he must go home, and presently, as they went uphill towards Hampstead, the horror seemed to drop from him. He said it was good to see the stars again, though it was then about noon and a blazing day.

  “It seemed,” he told me afterwards, “as if I was being carried irresistibly towards the water. I was not very much alarmed at first. Of course it was night there—a lovely night.”

  “Of course?” I asked, for that struck me as odd.

  “Of course,” said he. “It’s always night there when it is day here… Well, we went right into the water, which was calm and shining under the moonlight—just a broad swell that seemed to grow broader and flatter as I came down into it. The surface glistened just like a skin—it might have been empty space underneath for all I could tell to the contrary. Very slowly, for I rode slanting into it, the water crept up to my eyes. Then I went under and the skin seemed to break and heal again about my eyes. The moon gave a jump up in the sky and grew green and dim, and fish, faintly glowing, came darting round me—and things that seemed made of luminous glass; and I passed through a tangle of seaweeds that shone with an oily lustre. And so I drove down into the sea, and the stars went out one by one, and the moon grew greener and darker, and the seaweed became a luminous purple-red. It was all very faint and mysterious, and everything seemed to quiver. And all the while I could hear the wheels of the Bath-chair creaking, and the footsteps of people going by, and a man in the distance selling the special Pall Mall.