Title Page
Daniil Kharms
E.F. Benson
John Buchan
Jacques Futrelle
Frank Stockton
Kenneth Grahame
A. E. W. Mason
Julian Hawthorne
About the Publisher
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Daniil Kharms (1905-1942) was a Russian writer, poet, and playwright who composed short stories, poems, epigrams, plays, and children’s books. Kharms’ biography may actually seem like one of his stories; rather absurd and filled with terror. In the brief thirty-six years of his life, he was persecuted by the Soviet government and his adult works barely saw publication. His greatness and significance were only discovered in the 1960s, two decades after his death. Kharms was born under the name Daniil Yuvatchov.
He invented the assumed name Kharms while still at school after he toyed with various options: Charms (“charm”); Harm (“harm”); Chardam, etc. Kharms’ father was a revolutionary who was imprisoned by the authorities. Upon his release, he became a devout Christian who dedicated his life to writing his literary memoirs. He didn’t understand his son’s work or consider it to be literature. Kharms developed as a writer and poet through the second decade of the 20th century. He was influenced by Khlebnikov and Truphanov and was among the founders of a group of avant-garde subversive poets called OBERIU (Union of Real Art). In 1930, an article was published in the youth magazine “Smena” naming the group members literary hooligans and accusing them of being enemies of the working class. In 1931, some members of the group were imprisoned, among them Kharms, who was sent to spend a year in Kursk. After his imprisonment, Kharms was no longer able to get his adult works published and was, therefore, forced to focus on children’s magazines only. Nevertheless, he continued writing seven hours a day, although he knew he would never manage to get the works published in his lifetime.
With the discovery of his works, in the 60s and 70s, the voice of the Russian absurd had emerged (Kharms was active at the same time as Beckett and Ionesco) and since then was considered one of the genre’s founders. It seems that this literary genre was perfect for describing the hardships and senseless day-to-day life in Communist Russia; few writers equal Kharms’ ability to describe the chasm in Russian society and its disintegration or possess his talent for depicting the relationships between people as a sequence of follies lacking meaning and context.
Toward the end of the 1930s, Kharms stopped publishing children’s literature almost entirely and he and his wife were on the brink of starvation. In 1941, he was arrested again after supposedly speaking out against the conscription to WWII. To avoid death sentence, Kharms feigned madness and, as a result, died of starvation in a psychiatric asylum in 1942.
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Anton Mikhailovich spat, said "yuck", spat again, said "yuck" again, spat again, said "yuck" again and left. To Hell with him. Instead, let me tell about Ilya Pavlovich.
Ilya Pavlovich was born in 1893 in Constantinople. When he was still a boy, they moved to St. Petersburg, and there he graduated from the German School on Kirchnaya Street. Then he worked in some shop; then he did something else; and when the Revolution began, he emigrated. Well, to Hell with him. Instead, let me tell about Anna Ignatievna.
But it is not so easy to tell about Anna Ignatievna. Firstly, I know almost nothing about her, and secondly, I have just fallen of my chair, and have forgotten what I was about to say. So let me instead tell about myself.
I am tall, fairly intelligent; I dress prudently and tastefully; I don't drink, I don't bet on horses, but I like ladies. And ladies don't mind me. They like when I go out with them. Serafima Izmaylovna have invited me home several times, and Zinaida Yakovlevna also said that she was always glad to see me. But I was involved in a funny incident with Marina Petrovna, which I would like to tell about. A quite ordinary thing, but rather amusing. Because of me, Marina Petrovna lost all her hair - got bald like a baby's bottom. It happened like this: Once I went over to visit Marina Petrovna, and bang! she lost all her hair. And that was that.
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The artist Michelangelo sits down on a heap of bricks and, propping his head in his hands, begins to think. Suddenly a cockerel walks past and looks at the artist Michelangelo with his round, golden eyes. Looks, but doesn't blink. At this point, the artist Michelangelo raises his head and sees the cockerel. The cockerel does not lower his gaze, doesn't blink and doesn't move his tail. The artist Michelangelo looks down and is aware of something in his eye. The artist Michelangelo rubs his eyes with his hands. And the cockerel isn't standing there any more, isn't standing there, but is walking away, walking away behind the shed, behind the shed to the poultry-run, to the poultry-run towards his hens.
And the artist Michelangelo gets up from the heap of bricks, shakes the red brick dust from his trousers, throws aside his belt and goes off to his wife.
The artist Michelangelo's wife, by the way, is extremely long, all of two rooms in length.
On the way, the artist Michelangelo meets Komarov, grasps him by the hand and shouts: - Look! ...
Komarov looks and sees a sphere
- What's that? - whispers Komarov.
And from the sky comes a roar: - It's a sphere.
- What sort of a sphere is it? - whispers Komarov.
And from the sky it roars: - A smooth-surfaced sphere!
Komarov and the artist Michelangelo sit down on the grass and they are seated on the grass like mushrooms. They hold each other's hands and look up at the sky. And in the sky appears the outline of a huge spoon. What on earth is that? No-one knows. People run about and lock themselves in their houses. They lock their doors and their windows. But will that really help? Much good it does them! It will not help.
I remember in 1884 an ordinary comet the size of a steamer appearing in the sky. It was very frightening. But now - a spoon! Some phenomenon for a comet!
Lock your windows and doors!
Can that really help? You can't barricade yourself with planks against a celestial phenomenon.
Nikolay Ivanovich Stupin lives in our house. He has a theory that everything is smoke. But in my view not everything is smoke. Maybe even there's no smoke at all. Maybe there's really nothing. There's one category only. Or maybe there's no category at all. It's hard to say.
It is said that a certain celebrated artist scrutinised a cockerel. He scrutinised it and scrutinised it and came to the conclusion that the cockerel did not exist.
The artist told his friend this, and his friend just laughed. How, he said, doesn't it exist, he said, when it's standing right here and I, he said, am clearly observing it.
And the great artist thereupon hung his head and, retaining the same posture in which he stood, sat down on a pile of bricks.
That's all.
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A mom, a dad, and the maid named Natasha, were sitting at the table, drinking.
The dad was undoubtedly an alcoholic. Furthermore, even the mom looked down on him. But that didn't prevent the dad from being a good man. He was smiling honestly while rocking in a chair. The maid Natasha had a lace apron and was very extremely shy. The dad was playing with his beard, but maid Natasha was lowering her eyes shyly, showing, in that way, that she was ashamed.
The mom, a tall woman with a big hairdo, spoke with a horselike voice. Her voice spread around the dining room and echoed back from the yard and other rooms.
After the first drink, everyone was quiet for a moment while they ate a sausage. A moment later, they all started talking again.
Suddenly, completely unexpected, someone knocked at the front door. Neither the dad, nor the mom, nor the maid, Natasha, could guess who was knocking on the front door.
- How strange? - said the dad. - Who could that be?
The mom looked at him with compassion and, even if it was not her turn, poured another glass, chugged it down and said:
- Strange.
The dad did not swear, but also poured a glass, chugged it down and got up from the table.
The dad was a short man. Completely opposite from the mom. The mom was a tall, plump woman with a voice like a horse, and the dad was simply her husband. And above all that, the dad had freckles.
He approached the door in one step and said:
- Who is it?
- Me - said the voice behind the door.
The door opened immediately, and in the room entered a maid, Natasha, all confused and blushing. Like a flower. Like a flower.
The dad sat down.
The mom had another drink.
The maid Natasha, and the other one, the "flower-like" one, got very shy and blushed. The dad looked at them but he did not swear, instead he had another drink and so did the mom.
The dad opened a can of crab paté to get the bad taste out of his mouth. Everyone was happy and they ate until morning. But the mom was quiet and she did not move from the chair. That was very impolite.
When the dad was about to sing a song, something hit the window. The mom jumped up terrified and yelled that she could clearly see someone looking through the window from the street. The others tried to convince the mom that that was impossible, because they were on the third floor and nobody from the street could possibly look through the window, as he would have to be a giant or Goliath.
But the mom would not change her mind. Nothing in the world could convince her that nobody could have been looking through the window.
In order to calm her down, they gave her another drink. The mom chugged it down. The dad also poured a glass and drank it.
Natasha and the maid, the "flower-like" one, were sitting, looking down in confusion.
- I cannot be happy when someone is looking at us through the window - said the mom.
The dad was desperate; he did not know how to calm the mom down. So he went down in the yard and tried to look through the window on the first floor. Of course, that was impossible. But that did not convince the mom. She did not even see that he couldn't reach the first floor window.
Finally, confused by the situation, the dad ran into the dining room and had two drinks in a row, giving one of them to the mom. The mom had her drink, and said that she was drinking solely because someone was looking at them through the window.
The dad spread his hands.
- Here - he said to the mom, and opened the window.
A man with a dirty coat and a big knife in his hands tried to get in through the window. When the dad noticed him, he closed the window and said:
- There is nobody.
But, the man with a dirty coat was outside looking into the room through the window, and furthermore, he opened the window and got in.
The mom was extremely disturbed by this. She started acting hysterically, and, after she had a drink that the dad gave her and ate a little mushroom, she calmed down.
Soon the dad calmed down, too. Again everybody sat at the table and continued to drink.
The dad took the papers and spent a long time flipping them up and down trying to determine what comes up and what comes down. But no matter how long he tried he couldn't sort it out so he put the papers aside and had a drink.
- Nice - said the dad - but we're out of pickles.
The mom made a sound like a horse, which was pretty inappropriate, and made the maids look at the table cloth and laugh silently.
The dad had another drink and suddenly grabbed the mom and put her on the cupboard.
The mom's gray, big, light hair was shaking, she got red spots all over her face, and, generally speaking, she was pretty upset.
The dad adjusted his trousers and started on a speech.
But at this point a secret hatch opened down on the floor and out from it crawled a monk.
The maids were so confused that one of them started to vomit. Natasha was holding her forehead and tried to hide what was going on.
The monk, the one that got out of the floor, aimed at the dad's ear and hit him so hard that everybody could hear the bells ringing in the dad's head!
The dad just sat down without even finishing his speech.
Then the monk approached the mom and with his hand, or leg, somehow from below, he kicked her.
The mom started to scream and cry for help.
Then the monk grabbed both maids by their aprons and, after swinging them through the air, let them hit the wall.
Then, unnoticed, the monk crawled back into the floor and closed the hatch behind him.
For a long time neither the dad, nor the mom, nor the maid Natasha could get their compoure again. But later, when they got some fresh air, they had another drink while adjusting their appearance, they sat down at the table, and started to eat salad.
After another drink everyone was talking quietly.
Suddenly the dad got red in the face and started to yell:
- What! What! - the dad was yelling. - You think that Iøm anal! You look at me like at a devil! I do not ask for your love! You are the devils!
The mom and the maid Natasha ran out of the room and locked themselves in the kitchen.
- Go away you drunk! Go, you son of a devil! - whispered the mom and the totally confused maid Natasha, behind the door.
And the dad stayed in the dining room until the morning when he took his bag, put on a white hat and quietly went to work.
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Andrey Semyonovich spat into a cup of water. The water immediately turned black. Andrey Semyonovich screwed up his eyes and looked attentively into the cup. The water was very black. Andrey Semyonovich's heart began to throb.
At that moment Andrey Semyonovich's dog woke up. Andrey Semyonovich went over to the window and began ruminating.
Suddenly something big and dark shot past Andrey Semyonovich's face and flew out of the window. This was Andrey Semyonovich's dog flying out and it zoomed like a crow on to the roof of the building opposite. Andrey Semyonovich sat down on his haunches and began to howl.
Into the room ran Comrade Popugayev.
- What's up with you? Are you ill? - asked Comrade Popugayev.
Andrey Semyonovich quieted down and rubbed his eyes with his hands.
Comrade Popugayev took a look into the cup which was standing on the table. - What's this you've poured into here? - he asked Andrey Semyonovich.
- I don't know - said Andrey Semyonovich.
Popugayev instantly disappeared. The dog flew in through the window again, lay down in its former place and went to sleep.
Andrey Semyonovich went over to the table and took a drink from the cup of blackened water. And Andrey Semyonovich's soul turned lucid.
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Once Antonina Alekseyevna struck her husband with her office stamp and imprinted his forehead with stamp-pad ink.
The mortally offended Pyotr Leonidovich, Antonina Alekseyevna's husband, locked himself in the bathroom and wouldn't let anyone in.
However, the residents of the communal flat, having a strong need to get in to where Pyotr Leonidovich was sitting, decided to break down the locked door by force.
Seeing that the game was up, Pyotr Leonidovich came out of the bathroom and, going back into his own flat, lay down on the bed.
But Antonina Alekseyevna decided to persecute her husband to the limit. She tore up little bits of paper and showered them on to Pyotr Leonidovich who was lying on the bed.
The infuriated Pyotr Leonidovich leaped out into the corridor and set about tearing the wallpaper.
At this point all the residents ran out and, seeing what the hapless Pyotr Leonidovich was doing, they threw themselves on to him and ripped the waistcoat that he was wearing.
Pyotr Leonidovich ran off to the porter's office.
During this time, Antonina Alekseyevna had stripped naked and had hidden in a trunk.
Ten minutes later Pyotr Leonidovich returned, followed by the house manager.
Not finding his wife in the room, Pyotr Leonidovich and the house manager decided to take advantage of the empty premises in order to down some vodka. Pyotr Leonidovich undertook to run off to the corner for the said beverage.
When Pyotr Leonidovich had gone out, Antonina Alekseyevna climbed out of the trunk and appeared before the house manager in a state of nakedness.
The shaken house manager leaped from his chair and rushed up to the window, but, seeing the stout build of the young twenty-six-year-old woman, he suddenly gave way to wild rapture.
At this point Pyotr Leonidovich returned with a litre of vodka.
Catching sight of what was afoot in his room, Pyotr Leonidovich knitted his brows.
But his spouse Antonina Alekseyevna showed him her office stamp and Pyotr Leonidovich calmed down.
Antonina Alekseyevna expressed a desire to participate in the drinking session, but strictly on condition that she maintain her naked state and, to boot, that she sit on the table on which it was proposed to set out the snacks to accompany the vodka. The men sat down on chairs, Antonina Alekseyevna sat on the table and the drinking commenced.
It cannot be called hygienic if a naked young woman is sitting on the very table at which people are eating. Moreover, Antonina Alekseyevna was a woman of a rather plump build and not all that particular about her bodily cleanliness, so it was a pretty devilish state of affairs.
Soon, however, they had all drunk themselves into a stupor and fallen asleep: the men on the floor and Antonina Alekseyevna on the table.
And silence was established in the communal flat.
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Once a professor had something to eat, and you could not say a little something, and he began to feel sick. His wife approached him and said: "What's wrong with you?" And the professor said: "Nothing." The wife went back to the kitchen.
The professor lay down on a divan, stayed there for a while, got some rest, and went to work.
And there, a surprise awaited him: They had cut down his salary, instead of 650 rubles now he made only 500. The professor tried everything, but nothing would help. He went to the director, but the director wanted to strangle him. He went to the bookkeeper, and the bookkeeper said: "You should go see the director." The professor got on a train and went to Moscow.
On the train the professor caught the flu. When he got to Moscow, he was so sick he could not get off the train.
He was put on a stretcher and taken to a hospital.
He stayed there no longer than four days and died.
The professor was cremated, and his ashes were put in a little jar and sent off to his wife.
So here is the professor's wife, sitting and drinking coffee. Suddenly the doorbell rings. What's going on? "You got a parcel." The wife is very happy, she is smiling, tipping the mailman with 5 rubles, and quickly opens the parcel.
She looks, and inside the parcel are a little jar with the ashes and a note: "This is all that is left of your husband."
The wife cannot understand what is going on, she shakes the jar, looks at it, she reads the note six times - finally she understands and gets really sad.
The wife gets oh so very sad, she cries for three hours and then decides to bury the jar with the ashes. She wraps the jar in a newspaper and takes it to 1st Petoletka Park, formerly known as Tavrinchesky.
The wife finds a spot, a little out of the way, and then, as she is about to start digging - a park guard appears. "Hey!" shouts the guard. "What are you doing here?" The wife gets scared and says: "Oh nothing, I wanted to catch some frogs in a jar." "Well," says the guard, "that's OK, but be careful, it's forbidden to walk on the grass."
When the guard leaves, the wife buries the jar in the ground, packs the dirt and goes for a walk around the park.
In the park a sailor approaches her. "Let's," he says, "go somewhere and sleep." She says: "Why would we sleep in the middle of the day?" And he is going on: "Sleep, sleep."
And really, the wife got sleepy.
She is walking around and feeling very sleepy. Around her, some blue and green people are running around - and she is getting sleepier and sleepier.
She is walking and sleeping. And she dreams that Leo Tolstoy approaches her with a patty in his hand. She asks him: "What is this?" And he points at the patty and says: "See." He says: "Here I made something, and now I want the whole world to see it. So," he says, "everybody can share it."
The wife looks and sees that this is not Tolstoy anymore, but a shack, and on the shack there is a hen.
The wife starts chasing the hen, but the hen gets under the bed and from there peeks out, but now as a rabbit.
The wife goes under the bed after the rabbit, and wakes up.
She wakes up and sees: Really, she is under the bed.
She gets out from under the bed and sees - her own room. See, here is the table with the unfinished cup of coffee. On the table is the note: "This is all that is left of your husband."
The wife cries again and sits down to finish the coffee.
Suddenly the doorbell rings. What's going on? Some people come in and order her: "Let's go."
"Where?" asks the wife.
"To a loony-bin," answer the people.
The wife starts to scream and resist them, but the people get her and take her to the loony-bin.
And here, a completely normal woman is sitting on a bed in a loony-bin with a note in her hands, and fishing, all over the floor, for some little, invisible fish.
This professor's wife is just one sad example of many unlucky people who in their lives do not take the place which they deserve.
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I used to be a very wise old man.
Now I am not quite right; you may even consider me not to exist at all. But there was a time when any one of you would have come to me and, whatever burden may have oppressed a person, whatever sins may have tormented his thoughts, I would have embraced him and said: - My son, take comfort, for no burden is oppressing you and I see no bodily sins in you - and he would scamper away from me in happiness and joy.
I was great and strong. People who meet me on the street would shy to one side and I would pass through a crowd like a flat iron.
My feet would often be kissed, but I didn't protest: I knew I deserved it. Why deprive people of the pleasure of honouring me? I myself, being extraordinarily lithe of body, even tried to kiss myself on my own foot. I sat on a bench, got hold of my right foot and pulled it up to my face. I managed to kiss the big toe. I was happy. I understood the happiness of others.
Everyone worshipped me! And not only people, but even beasts, and even various insects crawled before me and wagged their tails. And cats! They simply adored me and, somehow gripping each other's paws, would run in front of me whenever I was on the staircase.
At that time I was indeed very wise and understood everything. There was not a thing that would nonplus me. Just a minute's exertion of my colossal mind and the most complicated question would be resolved in the simplest possible manner. I was even taken to the Brain Institute and shown off to the learned professors. They measured my mind by electricity and simply boggled. - We have never seen anything like it - they said.
I was married but rarely saw my wife. She was afraid of me: The enormity of my mind overwhelmed her. She did not so much live, as tremble; and if I as much as looked at her, she would begin to hiccup. We lived together for a long time, but then I think she disappeared somewhere. I don't remember exactly.
Memory - that's a strange thing altogether. How hard remembering is, and how easy forgetting. That's how it often is: You memorise one thing, and then remember something entirely different. Or: you memorise something with some difficulty, but very thoroughly, and then you can't remember anything. That also happens. I would advise everyone to work a bit on their memory.
I always believed in fair play and never beat anyone for no reason, because, when you are beating someone, you always go a bit daft and you might overdo it. Children, for example, should never be beaten with a knife or with anything made of iron, but women - the opposite: They shouldn't be kicked. Animals - they, it is said, have more endurance. But I have carried out experiments in this line and I know that this is not always the case.
Thanks to my litheness, I was able to do things which no one else could do. For example, I managed to retrieve by hand from an extremely sinuous sewage pipe my brother's earring, which had accidently fallen there. And I could, for example, hide in a comparatively small basket and put the lid on myself.
Yes, certainly, I was phenomenal!
My brother was my complete opposite: In the first place, he was taller and, secondly, more stupid.
He and I were never very friendly. Although, however, we were friendly, even very. I've got something wrong here: To be exact, he and I were not friendly and were always on bad terms. And this is how we got crossed: I was standing beside a shop; they were issuing sugar there, and I was standing in the queue, trying not to listen to what was being said around me. I had slight toothache and was not in the greatest of moods. It was very cold outside, and though everyone was wearing quilted fur coats they were still freezing. I was also wearing a quilted fur, but I was not freezing myself, though my hands were freezing because I had to keep taking them out of my pockets to move the suitcase I was holding between my knees, so that it didn't go missing. Suddenly someone struck me on the back. I flew into a state of indescribable indignation and, quick as lightning, began to consider how to punish the offender. During this time, I was struck a second time on the back. I pricked up my ears, but decided against turning my head and pretended that I hadn't noticed. I just, to be on the safe side, took the suitcase in my hand. Seven minutes passed and I was struck on the back a third time. At this I turned round and saw in front of me a tall middle-aged man in a rather shabby, but still quite good, military fur coat.
- What do you want from me? - I asked him in strict and even slightly metallic voice.
- And you, why don't you turn when you're called? - he said.
I had begun to think over the content of his words when he again opened his mouth and said: - What's wrong with you? Don't you recognise me or something? I'm your brother.
I again began to think over his words when he again opened his mouth and said: - Just listen, brother mine. I'm four roubles short for the sugar and it's a nuisance to have to leave the queue. Lend me five and I'll settle up with you later. - I started to ponder why my brother should be four roubles short, but he grabbed hold of my sleeve and said: - Well, so then, are you going to lend your own brother some money? - and with these words he undid my quilted fur for me himself, got into my inside pocket and reached my purse.
- Here we are - he said. - I'm taking a loan of a certain sum, and your purse, look, here it is, I'm putting back in your coat. - And he shoved my purse into the outer pocket of my fur.
I was of course surprised at meeting my brother so unexpectedly. For a while I was silent, and then I asked him: - But where have you been until now?
- There - replied my brother, waving in some direction or other.
I started thinking over where this 'there' might be, but my brother nudged me in the side and said: - Look, they've started letting us in to the shop.
We went together as far as the shop doors, but inside the shop I proved to be on my own, without my brother. Just for a moment, I jumped out of the queue and looked through the door on to the street. But there was no sign of my brother.
When I again wanted to take my place in the queue, they wouldn't let me in and even pushed me gradually out on to the street. Holding back my anger at such bad manners, I went off home. At home I discovered that my brother had taken all the money from my purse. At this stage I got absolutely furious with my brother, and since then he and I have never made it up.
I lived alone and granted admittance only to those who came to me for advice. But there were many of these and it turned out that I knew peace neither by day nor by night. Sometimes I would get so tired that I would lie down on the floor and rest. I would lie on the floor until I got cold; then I would jump up and start running round the room, to warm up. Then I would again sit down on the bench and give advice to all in need of it.
They would come in to me one after the other, sometimes not even opening the doors. I used to enjoy looking at their excruciating faces. I would talk to them, hardly able to stop myself laughing.
Once I couldn't contain myself and burst out laughing. They rushed in horror to escape - some through the door, some through the window, and some straight through the walls.
Left on my own, I drew myself up to my full majestic height, opened my mouth and said: - Prin tim pram.
But at this point something in me cracked and, since then, you might consider that I am no more.
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E.F. Benson, in full Edward Frederic Benson, (born July 24, 1867, Wellington College, Berkshire, Eng.—died Feb. 29, 1940, London), writer of fiction, reminiscences, and biographies, of which the best remembered are his arch, satirical novels and his urbane autobiographical studies of Edwardian and Georgian society.
The son of E.W. Benson, an archbishop of Canterbury (1883–96), the young Benson was educated at Marlborough School and at King’s College, Cambridge. After graduation he worked from 1892 to 1895 in Athens for the British School of Archaeology and later in Egypt for the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies. In 1893 he published Dodo, a novel that attracted wide attention. It was followed by a number of other successful novels—such as Mrs. Ames (1912), Queen Lucia (1920), Miss Mapp (1922), and Lucia in London (1927)—and books on a wide range of subjects, totaling nearly 100. Among them were biographies of Queen Victoria, William Gladstone, and William II of Germany. In 1938 he was made an honorary fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge. Benson’s reminiscences include As We Were (1930), As We Are (1932), and Final Edition (1940).
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It is probable that everybody who is at all a constant dreamer has had at least one experience of an event or a sequence of circumstances which have come to his mind in sleep being subsequently realized in the material world. But, in my opinion, so far from this being a strange thing, it would be far odder if this fulfilment did not occasionally happen, since our dreams are, as a rule, concerned with people whom we know and places with which we are familiar, such as might very naturally occur in the awake and daylit world. True, these dreams are often broken into by some absurd and fantastic incident, which puts them out of court in regard to their subsequent fulfilment, but on the mere calculation of chances, it does not appear in the least unlikely that a dream imagined by anyone who dreams constantly should occasionally come true. Not long ago, for instance, I experienced such a fulfilment of a dream which seems to me in no way remarkable and to have no kind of psychical significance. The manner of it was as follows.
A certain friend of mine, living abroad, is amiable enough to write to me about once in a fortnight. Thus, when fourteen days or thereabouts have elapsed since I last heard from him, my mind, probably, either consciously or subconsciously, is expectant of a letter from him. One night last week I dreamed that as I was going upstairs to dress for dinner I heard, as I often heard, the sound of the postman’s knock on my front door, and diverted my direction downstairs instead. There, among other correspondence, was a letter from him. Thereafter the fantastic entered, for on opening it I found inside the ace of diamonds, and scribbled across it in his well-known handwriting, “I am sending you this for safe custody, as you know it is running an unreasonable risk to keep aces in Italy.” The next evening I was just preparing to go upstairs to dress when I heard the postman’s knock, and did precisely as I had done in my dream. There, among other letters, was one from my friend. Only it did not contain the ace of diamonds. Had it done so, I should have attached more weight to the matter, which, as it stands, seems to me a perfectly ordinary coincidence. No doubt I consciously or subconsciously expected a letter from him, and this suggested to me my dream. Similarly, the fact that my friend had not written to me for a fortnight suggested to him that he should do so. But occasionally it is not so easy to find such an explanation, and for the following story I can find no explanation at all. It came out of the dark, and into the dark it has gone again.
All my life I have been a habitual dreamer: the nights are few, that is to say, when I do not find on awaking in the morning that some mental experience has been mine, and sometimes, all night long, apparently, a series of the most dazzling adventures befall me. Almost without exception these adventures are pleasant, though often merely trivial. It is of an exception that I am going to speak.
It was when I was about sixteen that a certain dream first came to me, and this is how it befell. It opened with my being set down at the door of a big red-brick house, where, I understood, I was going to stay. The servant who opened the door told me that tea was being served in the garden, and led me through a low dark-panelled hall, with a large open fireplace, on to a cheerful green lawn set round with flower beds. There were grouped about the tea-table a small party of people, but they were all strangers to me except one, who was a schoolfellow called Jack Stone, clearly the son of the house, and he introduced me to his mother and father and a couple of sisters. I was, I remember, somewhat astonished to find myself here, for the boy in question was scarcely known to me, and I rather disliked what I knew of him; moreover, he had left school nearly a year before. The afternoon was very hot, and an intolerable oppression reigned. On the far side of the lawn ran a red-brick wall, with an iron gate in its center, outside which stood a walnut tree. We sat in the shadow of the house opposite a row of long windows, inside which I could see a table with cloth laid, glimmering with glass and silver. This garden front of the house was very long, and at one end of it stood a tower of three stories, which looked to me much older than the rest of the building.
Before long, Mrs. Stone, who, like the rest of the party, had sat in absolute silence, said to me, “Jack will show you your room: I have given you the room in the tower.”
Quite inexplicably my heart sank at her words. I felt as if I had known that I should have the room in the tower, and that it contained something dreadful and significant. Jack instantly got up, and I understood that I had to follow him. In silence we passed through the hall, and mounted a great oak staircase with many corners, and arrived at a small landing with two doors set in it. He pushed one of these open for me to enter, and without coming in himself, closed it after me. Then I knew that my conjecture had been right: there was something awful in the room, and with the terror of nightmare growing swiftly and enveloping me, I awoke in a spasm of terror.
Now that dream or variations on it occurred to me intermittently for fifteen years. Most often it came in exactly this form, the arrival, the tea laid out on the lawn, the deadly silence succeeded by that one deadly sentence, the mounting with Jack Stone up to the room in the tower where horror dwelt, and it always came to a close in the nightmare of terror at that which was in the room, though I never saw what it was. At other times I experienced variations on this same theme. Occasionally, for instance, we would be sitting at dinner in the dining-room, into the windows of which I had looked on the first night when the dream of this house visited me, but wherever we were, there was the same silence, the same sense of dreadful oppression and foreboding. And the silence I knew would always be broken by Mrs. Stone saying to me, “Jack will show you your room: I have given you the room in the tower.” Upon which (this was invariable) I had to follow him up the oak staircase with many corners, and enter the place that I dreaded more and more each time that I visited it in sleep. Or, again, I would find myself playing cards still in silence in a drawing-room lit with immense chandeliers, that gave a blinding illumination. What the game was I have no idea; what I remember, with a sense of miserable anticipation, was that soon Mrs. Stone would get up and say to me, “Jack will show you your room: I have given you the room in the tower.” This drawing-room where we played cards was next to the dining-room, and, as I have said, was always brilliantly illuminated, whereas the rest of the house was full of dusk and shadows. And yet, how often, in spite of those bouquets of lights, have I not pored over the cards that were dealt me, scarcely able for some reason to see them. Their designs, too, were strange: there were no red suits, but all were black, and among them there were certain cards which were black all over. I hated and dreaded those.
As this dream continued to recur, I got to know the greater part of the house. There was a smoking-room beyond the drawing-room, at the end of a passage with a green baize door. It was always very dark there, and as often as I went there I passed somebody whom I could not see in the doorway coming out. Curious developments, too, took place in the characters that peopled the dream as might happen to living persons. Mrs. Stone, for instance, who, when I first saw her, had been black-haired, became gray, and instead of rising briskly, as she had done at first when she said, “Jack will show you your room: I have given you the room in the tower,” got up very feebly, as if the strength was leaving her limbs. Jack also grew up, and became a rather ill-looking young man, with a brown moustache, while one of the sisters ceased to appear, and I understood she was married.
Then it so happened that I was not visited by this dream for six months or more, and I began to hope, in such inexplicable dread did I hold it, that it had passed away for good. But one night after this interval I again found myself being shown out onto the lawn for tea, and Mrs. Stone was not there, while the others were all dressed in black. At once I guessed the reason, and my heart leaped at the thought that perhaps this time I should not have to sleep in the room in the tower, and though we usually all sat in silence, on this occasion the sense of relief made me talk and laugh as I had never yet done. But even then matters were not altogether comfortable, for no one else spoke, but they all looked secretly at each other. And soon the foolish stream of my talk ran dry, and gradually an apprehension worse than anything I had previously known gained on me as the light slowly faded.
Suddenly a voice which I knew well broke the stillness, the voice of Mrs. Stone, saying, “Jack will show you your room: I have given you the room in the tower.” It seemed to come from near the gate in the red-brick wall that bounded the lawn, and looking up, I saw that the grass outside was sown thick with gravestones. A curious greyish light shone from them, and I could read the lettering on the grave nearest me, and it was, “In evil memory of Julia Stone.” And as usual Jack got up, and again I followed him through the hall and up the staircase with many corners. On this occasion it was darker than usual, and when I passed into the room in the tower I could only just see the furniture, the position of which was already familiar to me. Also there was a dreadful odor of decay in the room, and I woke screaming.
The dream, with such variations and developments as I have mentioned, went on at intervals for fifteen years. Sometimes I would dream it two or three nights in succession; once, as I have said, there was an intermission of six months, but taking a reasonable average, I should say that I dreamed it quite as often as once in a month. It had, as is plain, something of nightmare about it, since it always ended in the same appalling terror, which so far from getting less, seemed to me to gather fresh fear every time that I experienced it. There was, too, a strange and dreadful consistency about it. The characters in it, as I have mentioned, got regularly older, death and marriage visited this silent family, and I never in the dream, after Mrs. Stone had died, set eyes on her again. But it was always her voice that told me that the room in the tower was prepared for me, and whether we had tea out on the lawn, or the scene was laid in one of the rooms overlooking it, I could always see her gravestone standing just outside the iron gate. It was the same, too, with the married daughter; usually she was not present, but once or twice she returned again, in company with a man, whom I took to be her husband. He, too, like the rest of them, was always silent. But, owing to the constant repetition of the dream, I had ceased to attach, in my waking hours, any significance to it. I never met Jack Stone again during all those years, nor did I ever see a house that resembled this dark house of my dream. And then something happened.
I had been in London in this year, up till the end of the July, and during the first week in August went down to stay with a friend in a house he had taken for the summer months, in the Ashdown Forest district of Sussex. I left London early, for John Clinton was to meet me at Forest Row Station, and we were going to spend the day golfing, and go to his house in the evening. He had his motor with him, and we set off, about five of the afternoon, after a thoroughly delightful day, for the drive, the distance being some ten miles. As it was still so early we did not have tea at the club house, but waited till we should get home. As we drove, the weather, which up till then had been, though hot, deliciously fresh, seemed to me to alter in quality, and become very stagnant and oppressive, and I felt that indefinable sense of ominous apprehension that I am accustomed to before thunder. John, however, did not share my views, attributing my loss of lightness to the fact that I had lost both my matches. Events proved, however, that I was right, though I do not think that the thunderstorm that broke that night was the sole cause of my depression.
Our way lay through deep high-banked lanes, and before we had gone very far I fell asleep, and was only awakened by the stopping of the motor. And with a sudden thrill, partly of fear but chiefly of curiosity, I found myself standing in the doorway of my house of dream. We went, I half wondering whether or not I was dreaming still, through a low oak-panelled hall, and out onto the lawn, where tea was laid in the shadow of the house. It was set in flower beds, a red-brick wall, with a gate in it, bounded one side, and out beyond that was a space of rough grass with a walnut tree. The facade of the house was very long, and at one end stood a three-storied tower, markedly older than the rest.
Here for the moment all resemblance to the repeated dream ceased. There was no silent and somehow terrible family, but a large assembly of exceedingly cheerful persons, all of whom were known to me. And in spite of the horror with which the dream itself had always filled me, I felt nothing of it now that the scene of it was thus reproduced before me. But I felt intensest curiosity as to what was going to happen.
Tea pursued its cheerful course, and before long Mrs. Clinton got up. And at that moment I think I knew what she was going to say. She spoke to me, and what she said was:
“Jack will show you your room: I have given you the room in the tower.”
At that, for half a second, the horror of the dream took hold of me again. But it quickly passed, and again I felt nothing more than the most intense curiosity. It was not very long before it was amply satisfied.
John turned to me.
“Right up at the top of the house,” he said, “but I think you’ll be comfortable. We’re absolutely full up. Would you like to go and see it now? By Jove, I believe that you are right, and that we are going to have a thunderstorm. How dark it has become.”
I got up and followed him. We passed through the hall, and up the perfectly familiar staircase. Then he opened the door, and I went in. And at that moment sheer unreasoning terror again possessed me. I did not know what I feared: I simply feared. Then like a sudden recollection, when one remembers a name which has long escaped the memory, I knew what I feared. I feared Mrs. Stone, whose grave with the sinister inscription, “In evil memory,” I had so often seen in my dream, just beyond the lawn which lay below my window. And then once more the fear passed so completely that I wondered what there was to fear, and I found myself, sober and quiet and sane, in the room in the tower, the name of which I had so often heard in my dream, and the scene of which was so familiar.
I looked around it with a certain sense of proprietorship, and found that nothing had been changed from the dreaming nights in which I knew it so well. Just to the left of the door was the bed, lengthways along the wall, with the head of it in the angle. In a line with it was the fireplace and a small bookcase; opposite the door the outer wall was pierced by two lattice-paned windows, between which stood the dressing-table, while ranged along the fourth wall was the washing-stand and a big cupboard. My luggage had already been unpacked, for the furniture of dressing and undressing lay orderly on the wash-stand and toilet-table, while my dinner clothes were spread out on the coverlet of the bed. And then, with a sudden start of unexplained dismay, I saw that there were two rather conspicuous objects which I had not seen before in my dreams: one a life-sized oil painting of Mrs. Stone, the other a black-and-white sketch of Jack Stone, representing him as he had appeared to me only a week before in the last of the series of these repeated dreams, a rather secret and evil-looking man of about thirty. His picture hung between the windows, looking straight across the room to the other portrait, which hung at the side of the bed. At that I looked next, and as I looked I felt once more the horror of nightmare seize me.
It represented Mrs. Stone as I had seen her last in my dreams: old and withered and white-haired. But in spite of the evident feebleness of body, a dreadful exuberance and vitality shone through the envelope of flesh, an exuberance wholly malign, a vitality that foamed and frothed with unimaginable evil. Evil beamed from the narrow, leering eyes; it laughed in the demon-like mouth. The whole face was instinct with some secret and appalling mirth; the hands, clasped together on the knee, seemed shaking with suppressed and nameless glee. Then I saw also that it was signed in the left-hand bottom corner, and wondering who the artist could be, I looked more closely, and read the inscription, “Julia Stone by Julia Stone.”
There came a tap at the door, and John Clinton entered.
“Got everything you want?” he asked.
“Rather more than I want,” said I, pointing to the picture.
He laughed.
“Hard-featured old lady,” he said. “By herself, too, I remember. Anyhow she can’t have flattered herself much.”
“But don’t you see?” said I. “It’s scarcely a human face at all. It’s the face of some witch, of some devil.”
He looked at it more closely.
“Yes; it isn’t very pleasant,” he said. “Scarcely a bedside manner, eh? Yes; I can imagine getting the nightmare if I went to sleep with that close by my bed. I’ll have it taken down if you like.”
“I really wish you would,” I said. He rang the bell, and with the help of a servant we detached the picture and carried it out onto the landing, and put it with its face to the wall.
“By Jove, the old lady is a weight,” said John, mopping his forehead. “I wonder if she had something on her mind.”
The extraordinary weight of the picture had struck me too. I was about to reply, when I caught sight of my own hand. There was blood on it, in considerable quantities, covering the whole palm.
“I’ve cut myself somehow,” said I.
John gave a little startled exclamation.
“Why, I have too,” he said.
Simultaneously the footman took out his handkerchief and wiped his hand with it. I saw that there was blood also on his handkerchief.
John and I went back into the tower room and washed the blood off; but neither on his hand nor on mine was there the slightest trace of a scratch or cut. It seemed to me that, having ascertained this, we both, by a sort of tacit consent, did not allude to it again. Something in my case had dimly occurred to me that I did not wish to think about. It was but a conjecture, but I fancied that I knew the same thing had occurred to him.