“I’m afraid too,” John murmured, his teeth slightly chattering. “I never can get over my initial terror when she first arrives. God! What horror I have known since I lived here.”
The latch of the door gave a click, the sort of click it always gives when the door springs open, and a current of icy air blew across the room and fanned the cheeks of both men. Wilfred attempted to speak, but his voice died away in his throat. He glanced at the window. It was closed with heavy wooden shutters.
“It’s no use,” John sighed, “there’s no escape that way. Make up your mind to face it—face HER. Ah!” He sank back as he spoke and closed his eyes.
I looked at Wilfred. His vertebrae had totally collapsed; he sat all huddled up in his chair, his weak, watery eyes bulging with terror, and the brandy trickling down his chin on to his cravat. All this scene, I must tell you, was to me most vivid, most acutely vivid, although I was but a passive participator in it. The same feeling that had possessed me on my entrance into the house was with me even in a greater measure now. I felt that pressing on the heels of this wind, this icy blast of air, were the things from the halls and landings, the distractingly enigmatical and ever-deliberating things. I felt them come crowding into the room; felt them once again watching. Something now seemed to go wrong with the wicks of all three candles; they burned very low, and the feeble, flickering light they emitted was of a peculiar bluish white. While I was engaged in pondering over this phenomenon my eye caught a sudden movement in the room, and I saw what looked like a cylindrical pillar of mist sweep across the floor and halt behind John. It remained standing at the back of his chair for a second or so, and then, retracing its way across the floor, disappeared through the door, which, opening wide to meet it, closed again with a loud bang. John opened his eyes and reaching forward poured himself out some brandy.
“I told you I didn’t drink spirits,” he said, “but her visit to-night has made a difference. Come, Wilfred, pull yourself together. The ghosts—at least her ghost has gone; and as for the others, well, they don’t count. Even you may get used to them in time. Come, come, be a man. For a sceptic, a confirmed sceptic, I never saw anyone so frightened.”
Appealed to thus, Wilfred slowly straightened himself out, and peeping round furtively at the door, as if to make sure it really was shut, he helped himself to some more brandy. John leaned forward and regarded him earnestly. After some minutes Wilfred spoke.
“Those candles,” he said, “why don’t they burn properly? I have never seen candles behave in that fashion before. John, I don’t like this house.”
John laughed. “Matter of taste and habit,” he said. “I didn’t like it at first, but I like it now.”
Another pause, and then John said suddenly, “More brandy, Wilfred?”