For a moment after awaking, I could not tell where I was or what was going on. But my senses being quickly roused to their fullest keenness, I soon saw I was in my own room. But the matter of the presence and the weird sound was not so easily solved.
I lay quietly for a time, trying to persuade myself that I had been dreaming and that my waking fancy was merely the hallucination of the dream that had not yet passed away. Have you never done the like? However, I soon realized that the presence and the sound, whoever or whatever they were, were not mere fancy. Still I tried to shake off the feeling that some one had entered my room; for, as is my custom, I had securely barred the front door, also my bed-room door, before retiring. Besides, no one could possibly have climbed in at my windows of the second story without my knowing it; for when I am so nervous as I was this night, the slightest sound will waken me. I turned over and looked out of the window. The moon was still shining, and the trees swayed with a soft murmur in answer to the light breeze that wantoned among the virgin May leaves just lately from the bud. There were the houses, the barns, the road, everything, in fact, just as it really was, and I knew I could not possibly be asleep.
Still, that consciousness of a presence in my room, stronger and stronger grown until it had reached conviction, I could not rid myself of; nor could I shut my ears to the mournful sounds that came from somewhere—everywhere, it seemed.
Suddenly—most wonderful to tell!—I saw the very faintest streak of light creep up the farther wall of my room.
All that I have related did not, perhaps, occupy more than a full minute, though I must confess it seemed much longer.
The thread of light, different from all lights I have ever before seen, moved toward the ceiling rapidly, and held me in breathless attention. What could it be!—A ray of the moon through a slit in the curtain that was gently moved by the breeze blowing through the window? Wait! It reached the ceiling. Then with such a delicate light that it was almost imperceptible, it crept along the ceiling diagonally toward me. When it got immediately above my head, it stopped. What in the world could it be!
I lay almost breathless, wondering. Wouldn’t you, my friend, if you should see such a thing in your room? You may not know what you would do in such case. Possibly you say you would investigate at once. So, too, had I said many a time,—I would investigate whatever was strange, doubtful, or inexplicable. But if your hands would not move, if your feet lay motionless, and if your whole being were thrilled with a thralling rapture and pain all at once, you would probably do just as I did,—lie there fascinated.
Suddenly, like a flash, something struck me on the forehead, and instantly I sat bolt upright in bed. As I rose, whatever it was that struck me bounded off on the bed, then down on the floor, that mysterious filmy thread of light following it, and at the same time clinging to my forehead. I put my hand up to brush it away. But when I touched it (if I really did touch it, which I doubt, for my hand seemed suddenly arrested), my whole body trembled as if shaken by some supernatural power. It was something more than a light,—it was a film, a thread; and at my touch upon it, that sensation of mingled pain and rapture was almost beyond my power to survive. I let my hand drop from it, and unable to resist doing what I did, I rose from my bed and started to follow up that thread of light and film; for somehow it seemed attached to my brain, and I involuntarily obeyed the will of whoever or whatever it was that controlled it. Though fully conscious of all I was doing, I could not resist. Great beads of sweat stood on my body, caused partly, I suppose, by extreme nervous excitement and partly by this influence upon me.
I would have hastened from the room, screamed for help, or cried “murder!” but it was impossible. Even the rapidity of my steps was under control, and I marched slowly, deliberately, and solemnly, as to martial music of the dead.