It was not long before I remarked that I never by any hazard had a dream
of Master B., or of anything belonging to him. But, the instant I awoke
from sleep, at whatever hour of the night, my thoughts took him up, and
roamed away, trying to attach his initial letter to something that would
fit it and keep it quiet.
For six nights, I had been worried thus in Master B.’s room, when I began
to perceive that things were going wrong.
The first appearance that presented itself was early in the morning when
it was but just daylight and no more. I was standing shaving at my
glass, when I suddenly discovered, to my consternation and amazement,
that I was shaving—not myself—I am fifty—but a boy. Apparently Master
B.!
I trembled and looked over my shoulder; nothing there. I looked again in
the glass, and distinctly saw the features and expression of a boy, who
was shaving, not to get rid of a beard, but to get one. Extremely
troubled in my mind, I took a few turns in the room, and went back to the
looking-glass, resolved to steady my hand and complete the operation in
which I had been disturbed. Opening my eyes, which I had shut while
recovering my firmness, I now met in the glass, looking straight at me,
the eyes of a young man of four or five and twenty. Terrified by this
new ghost, I closed my eyes, and made a strong effort to recover myself.
Opening them again, I saw, shaving his cheek in the glass, my father, who
has long been dead. Nay, I even saw my grandfather too, whom I never did
see in my life.
Although naturally much affected by these remarkable visitations, I
determined to keep my secret, until the time agreed upon for the present
general disclosure. Agitated by a multitude of curious thoughts, I
retired to my room, that night, prepared to encounter some new experience
of a spectral character. Nor was my preparation needless, for, waking
from an uneasy sleep at exactly two o’clock in the morning, what were my
feelings to find that I was sharing my bed with the skeleton of Master
B.!
I sprang up, and the skeleton sprang up also. I then heard a plaintive
voice saying, “Where am I? What is become of me?” and, looking hard in
that direction, perceived the ghost of Master B.
The young spectre was dressed in an obsolete fashion: or rather, was not
so much dressed as put into a case of inferior pepper-and-salt cloth,
made horrible by means of shining buttons. I observed that these buttons
went, in a double row, over each shoulder of the young ghost, and
appeared to descend his back. He wore a frill round his neck. His right
hand (which I distinctly noticed to be inky) was laid upon his stomach;
connecting this action with some feeble pimples on his countenance, and
his general air of nausea, I concluded this ghost to be the ghost of a
boy who had habitually taken a great deal too much medicine.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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