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
Right under the rock there appeared a pale subaqueous light, which waved
and quivered in the stream. At first it was very small and dim, but as
we looked it seemed to swim upwards from remote depths and grew larger
till I suppose the space of some square yard was illuminated by it. Then
the surface of the water was broken, and a head, the head of a girl,
dead-white and with long, flowing hair, appeared above the stream. Her
eyes were shut, the corners of her mouth drooped as in sleep, and the
moving water stood in a frill round her neck. Higher and higher rose the
figure out of the tide, till at last it stood, luminous in itself, so it
appeared, up to the middle. The head was bent down over the breast, and
the hands clasped together. As it emerged from the water it seemed to
get nearer, and was by now half-way across the pool, moving quietly and
steadily against the great flood of the hurrying river.
Then I heard a man’s voice crying out in a sort of strangled agony.
“Catrine!” it cried; “Catrine! In God’s name; in God’s name!”
In two strides Sandy had rushed down the steep bank, and hurled himself
out into that mad swirl of waters. For one moment I saw his arms flung
up into the sky, the next he had altogether gone. And on the utterance
of that name the unholy vision had vanished too, while simultaneously
there burst in front of us a light so blinding, followed by a crack of
thunder so appalling to the senses, that I know I just hid my face in my
hands. At once, as if the flood-gates of the sky had been opened, the
deluge was on us, not like rain, but like one sheet of solid water, so
that we cowered under it. Any hope or attempt to rescue Sandy was out of
the question; to dive into that whirlpool of mad water meant instant
death, and even had it been possible for any swimmer to live there, in
the blackness of the night there was absolutely no chance of finding
him. Besides, even if it had been possible to save him, I doubt whether
I was sufficiently master of my flesh and blood as to endure to plunge
where that apparition had risen.
Then, as we lay there, another horror filled and possessed my mind.
Somewhere close to us in the darkness was that woman whose yelling voice
just now had made my blood run ice-cold, while it brought the streaming
sweat to my forehead. At that moment I turned to Hugh.
“I cannot stop here,” I said. “I must run, run right away. Where is
She?”
“Did you not see?” he asked.
“No. What happened?”
“The lightning struck the stone within a few inches of where she was
standing. We--we must go and look for her.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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