The Elephant Man and Other Reminiscences

by Frederick Treves

I noticed now a faint odour of musk, and was glad to think that these pattering feet belonged to musk-rats, and that these animals must have entered through the drain hole I had observed in the outer wall of the bathroom. I dislike rats, and especially rats in a bedroom. This prejudice was not made less when I felt that some of them were climbing up on to the bed. I was certain I could hear one crawling over my clothes which lay on the chair by the bedside. I was certain that others were searching about on the dressing-table, and recognized—or thought I did—the clatter of a shoe-horn that lay there. I recalled stories in which men had been attacked by hordes of rats, and I wondered when they would attack me, for, by this time, the whole room seemed to be full of rats, and I could picture legions swarming in from the plain outside in a long snake-like column.

In a while I was sure that a rat was on the pillow close to my head. My hair seemed to be flicked by the whiskers of one of these fœtid brutes. This was more than I could tolerate, so I sprang up in bed and shouted. There was a general scuttle for the far door; but it was some time before I ventured to pass my hand over the pillow to assure myself that a rat was not still there.

I had a mind to get out of bed and light the lamp; but to do this seemed to be like taking a step into a black pit. I lay down again. For a while all was quiet. Then came once more the pattering of feet from the direction of the bathroom, the sickly odour of musk and a conviction that at least a hundred rats were pouring into the room. They crept up to the bed and ran about beneath it with increasing boldness. I was meditating another shout when there came a sound in the room that made every vein in my body tingle. It arose from under the bed, a hollow scraping sound which I felt sure was due to the movement of a human being. I thought it was caused by the scraping of a belt buckle on the cement floor, the belt being worn by a man who was crawling on his stomach. I disliked this sound more than the rats.

At this moment, to add to my discomfort, I felt a rat crawling across my bare foot, a beast with small, cold paws and hot fur. I kicked it off so that it fell with a thud on the floor. I shouted again and, driven to desperation, jumped out of bed. I half expected to tread on a mass of rats, but felt the hard floor instead. I went to the dressing-table and struck a light. The place was empty, but I could not see under the bed. The match went out and in the blackness I expected some fresh surprise to develop. I managed to strike another match and to light the lamp.

I placed it on the floor and looked under the bed. What I saw there I took at first to be a piece of a human skull. I got a stick and touched it. It seemed lighter than a dried bone. I dragged it out into the room. It was a cake of unleavened bread, much used by the natives—dried up into a large curled chip. The rats had been dragging this away and had so produced the scraping sound which I had exaggerated into something sinister.

Having convinced myself that the room was empty I blocked up the drain hole in the outer wall by placing the bath in front of it and, feeling secure from any further disturbance, returned to bed, leaving the lamp alight on the table.

For a long time I kept awake, watching every now and then the bathroom door to satisfy myself that I had succeeded in keeping the beastly animals out. During this vigil I fell asleep and then at once embarked upon a dream, the vividness and reality of which were certainly remarkable.

The most convincing feature was this. The dream, without a break, continued the happenings of the night. The scene was this identical bedroom at this identical moment. The dream, as it were, took up the story from the moment that I lost it. Owing to my close scrutiny every detail of the vile chamber had already become as clearly impressed upon my brain as if it had been fixed by a photographic plate. I had not—in my dream—fallen asleep again, but was still wideawake and still keeping a watch over the bathroom door for the incoming of the rats.

The bathroom door was just ajar, but the very faint glimmer of the lamp did not enable me to penetrate the darkness that filled it. I kept my eye fixed on the entry when, in a moment, to my horror, the door began to open. The sight was terrifying in the extreme. My heart was thumping to such a degree that I thought its beats must be audible. I felt a deadly sinking in my stomach, while the skin of my back and neck seemed to be wrinkling and to be dragged up as might be a shirt a man is drawing over his head. There is no panic like the panic felt in a dream.

A brown hand appeared on the edge of the door. It was almost a relief to see that it was a human hand. The door was then opened to its utmost. Out of the dark there crept a middle-aged man, a native, lean and sinewy, without a vestige of clothing on his body. His skin shone in the uncertain light, and it was evident that his body, from head to foot, was smeared with oil. The most noticeable point about the man was that he was blind. His eyelids were closed, but the sockets of his eyes were sunken as are those of a corpse. With his left hand he felt for the wall, while in his right hand he carried a small stone-mason’s pick. His face was expressionless. This was the most terrible thing about it, for his face was as the face of the dead. He crept into the room as Death himself might creep into the chamber of the dying.