A feeling of intense but wholly unaccountable fear gradually crept over me.
“It is close on the half hour,” she suddenly whispered. “Listen!”
She paused for a moment, and I heard a door from somewhere in the lower part of the house open and shut. Then came the sound of muffled footsteps, stealthily feeling their way upstairs. Up and up they came, till they arrived outside the door of the room we were in. There they stopped, and I instinctively felt that their owner was listening.
Presently the girl recommenced playing, and I saw the door-handle began to turn. Slowly, very slowly, the door then opened, and on the floor of the room there appeared a black shadow—vague, indefinite and grotesque. The girl looked over her shoulder at it, and I caught an expression in her eyes that appalled me. Turning to the piano again, she played frantically, and the faster her fingers flew, the nearer crept that shadow.
Suddenly it seemed to shoot right forward, there was a wild scream of terror, a terrific crash, and all was in absolute darkness.
I groped my way frantically towards the door. Something—I could not define what—came into violent collision with me; I staggered back half stunned; and, when my brain cleared, I found myself standing in the street, weak with exhaustion, and—hatless.
I visited the house the next day, when the sun was shining brightly and there were plenty of people about. It was as I had first seen it, untenanted and unfurnished.
I must then have dreamed the whole thing. And what more likely! I was excessively tired at the time, so tired that I felt I could hardly crawl home—and without a doubt I had dropped off to sleep resting against the verandah.
Just out of curiosity, however, I determined to find out if the interior of the house in any way resembled the interior I had seen in my dream, and, with that object in view, I applied to Mr. C.——, the owner, for permission to look over it, frankly telling him why I was doing so. As he appeared to be interested, I described my dream to him in detail, and he afterwards told me the following story:—