The room in the tower, and other storiesBenson, E. F. (Edward Frederic)
General
The room in the tower, and other stories
Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic)
English fiction -- 20th century; Ghost stories, English; Horror tales, English; Short stories, English
However, as to the details, there were plenty of them. Once I woke up
from strangling nightmare, unable at first to move, but in a panic of
terror, believing that I was sleeping in the other bed. More than once,
too, awaking before I was called, and getting out of bed to look at the
aspect of the morning, I saw with a sense of dreadful misgiving that the
bed-clothes on the other bed were strangely disarranged, as if some one
had slept there, and smoothed them down afterwards, but not so well as
not to give notice of the occupation. So one night I laid a trap, so to
speak, for the intruder, of which the real object was to calm my own
nervousness (for I still told myself that I was frightened of nothing),
and tucked in the sheet very carefully, laying the pillow on the top of
it. But in the morning it seemed as if my interference had not been to
the taste of the occupant, for there was more impatient disorder than
usual in the bed-clothes, and on the pillow was an indentation, round
and rather deep, such as we may see any morning in our own beds. Yet by
day these things did not frighten me, but it was when I went to bed at
night that I quaked at the thought of further developments.
It happened also from time to time that I wanted something brought me,
or wanted my servant. On three or four of these occasions my bell was
answered by the “Sensitive,” as we called him, but the Sensitive, I
noticed, never came into the room. He would open the door a chink to
receive my order, and on returning would again open it a chink to say
that my boots, or whatever it was, were at the door. Once I made him
come in, but I saw him cross himself as, with a face of icy terror, he
stepped into the room, and the sight somehow did not reassure me. Twice
also he came up in the evening, when I had not rung at all, even as he
came up the first night, and opened the door a chink to say that my
bottle of whisky was outside. But the poor fellow was in a state of such
bewilderment when I went out and told him that I had not ordered whisky,
that I did not press for an explanation. He begged my pardon profusely;
he thought a bottle of whisky had been ordered for number twenty-three.
It was his mistake, entirely--I should not be charged for it; it must
have been the other gentleman. Pardon again; he remembered there was no
other gentleman, the other bed was unoccupied.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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