‘She is terror incarnate,’ was the whispered answer. ‘Mabel has lost her soul. Her soul is—there!’ She pointed horribly below. ‘She is seeking it...?’
The word ‘soul’ stung me into something of my normal self again.
‘But her terror, poor thing, is not—cannot be—transferable to us!’ I exclaimed more vehemently. ‘It certainly is not convertible into feelings, sights and—even sounds!’
She interrupted me quickly, almost impatiently, speaking with that conviction by which she conquered me so easily that night.
‘It is her terror that has revived “the Others.” It has brought her into touch with them. They are loose and driving after her. Her efforts at resistance have given them also hope—that escape, after all, is possible. Day and night they strive.’
‘Escape! Others!’ The anger fast rising in me dropped of its own accord at the moment of birth. It shrank into a shuddering beyond my control. In that moment, I think, I would have believed in the possibility of anything and everything she might tell me. To argue or contradict seemed equally futile.
‘His strong belief, as also the beliefs of others who have preceded him,’ she replied, so sure of herself that I actually turned to look over my shoulder, ‘have left their shadow like a thick deposit over the house and grounds. To them, poor souls imprisoned by thought, it was hopeless as granite walls—until her resistance, her effort to dissipate it—let in light. Now, in their thousands, they are flocking to this little light, seeking escape. Her own escape, don’t you see, may release them all!’
It took my breath away. Had his predecessors, former occupants of this house, also preached damnation of all the world but their own exclusive sect? Was this the explanation of her obscure talk of ‘layers,’ each striving against the other for domination? And if men are spirits, and these spirits survive, could strong Thought thus determine their condition even afterwards?
So many questions flooded into me that I selected no one of them, but stared in uncomfortable silence, bewildered, out of my depth, and acutely, painfully distressed. There was so odd a mixture of possible truth and incredible, unacceptable explanation in it all; so much confirmed, yet so much left darker than before. What she said did, indeed, offer a quasi-interpretation of my own series of abominable sensations—strife, agony, pity, hate, escape—but so far-fetched that only the deep conviction in her voice and attitude made it tolerable for a second even. I found myself in a curious state of mind. I could neither think clearly nor say a word to refute her amazing statements, whispered there beside me in the shivering hours of the early morning with only a wall between ourselves and—Mabel. Close behind her words I remember this singular thing, however—that an atmosphere as of the Inquisition seemed to rise and stir about the room, beating awful wings of black above my head.
Abruptly, then, a moment’s common-sense returned to me. I faced her.