Out of the siesta I used to be most often startled, not by sounds, but by something which I can describe only as a sudden shock of thought. This would follow upon a peculiar internal commotion caused, I believe, by some abnormal effect of heat upon the lungs. A slow suffocating sensation would struggle up into the twilight-region between half-consciousness and real sleep, and there bestir the ghastliest imaginings,—fancies and fears of living burial. These would be accompanied by a voice, or rather the idea of a voice, mocking and reproaching:—“‘Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun.’... Outside it is day,—tropical day,—primeval day! And you sleep!!... ‘Though a man live many years and rejoice in them all, yet—’ ... Sleep on!—all this splendor will be the same when your eyes are dust!... ‘Yet let him remember the days of darkness;—for they shall be MANY!’”
How often, with that phantom crescendo in my ears, have I leaped in terror from the hot couch, to peer through the slatted shutters at the enormous light without—silencing, mesmerizing;—then dashed cold water over my head, and staggered back to the scorching mattress, again to drowse, again to be awakened by the same voice, or by the trickling of my own perspiration—a feeling not always to be distinguished from that caused by the running of a centipede! And how I used to long for the night, with its Cross of the South! Not because the night ever brought coolness to the city, but because it brought relief from the weight of that merciless sunfire. For the feeling of such light is the feeling of a deluge of something ponderable,—something that drowns and dazzles and burns and numbs all at the same time, and suggests the idea of liquified electricity.
There are times, however, when the tropical heat seems only to thicken after sunset. On the mountains the nights are, as a rule, delightful the whole year round. They are even more delightful on the coast facing the trade-winds; and you may sleep there in a seaward chamber, caressed by a warm, strong breeze,—a breeze that plays upon you not by gusts or whiffs, but with a steady ceaseless blowing,—the great fanning wind-current of the world’s whirling. But in the towns of the other coast—nearly all situated at the base of wooded ranges cutting off the trade-breeze,—the humid atmosphere occasionally becomes at night something nameless,—something worse than the air of an overheated conservatory. Sleep in such a medium is apt to be visited by nightmare of the most atrocious kind.
My personal experience was as follows:—
II
I was making a tour of the island with a half-breed guide; and we had to stop for one night in a small leeward-coast settlement, where we found accommodation at a sort of lodging-house kept by an aged widow. There were seven persons only in the house that night,—the old lady, her two daughters, two colored female-servants, myself and my guide. We were given a single-windowed room upstairs, rather small,—otherwise a typical, Creole bedroom, with bare clean floor, some heavy furniture of antique pattern, and a few rocking-chairs. There was in one corner a bracket supporting a sort of household shrine—what the Creoles call a chapelle. The shrine contained a white image of the Virgin before which a tiny light was floating in a cup of oil. By colonial custom your servant, while travelling with you, sleeps either in the same room, or before the threshold; and my man simply lay down on a mat beside the huge four-pillared couch assigned to me, and almost immediately began to snore. Before getting into bed, I satisfied myself that the door was securely fastened.
The night stifled;—the air seemed to be coagulating. The single large window, overlooking a garden, had been left open,—but there was no movement in that atmosphere. Bats—very large bats,—flew soundlessly in and out;—one actually fanning my face with its wings as it circled over the bed. Heavy scents of ripe fruit—nauseously sweet—rose from the garden, where palms and plantains stood still as if made of metal. From the woods above the town stormed the usual night-chorus of tree-frogs, insects, and nocturnal birds,—a tumult not to be accurately described by any simile, but suggesting, through numberless sharp tinkling tones, the fancy of a wide slow cataract of broken glass. I tossed and turned on the hot hard bed, vainly trying to find one spot a little cooler than the rest. Then I rose, drew a rocking-chair to the window and lighted a cigar. The smoke hung motionless; after each puff, I had to blow it away. My man had ceased to snore. The bronze of his naked breast—shining with moisture under the faint light of the shrine-lamp,—showed no movement of respiration. He might have been a corpse. The heavy heat seemed always to become heavier. At last, utterly exhausted, I went back to bed, and slept.
It must have been well after midnight when I felt the first vague uneasiness,—the suspicion,—that precedes a nightmare. I was half-conscious, dream-conscious of the actual,—knew myself in that very room,—wanted to get up. Immediately the uneasiness grew into terror, because I found that I could not move. Something unutterable in the air was mastering will. I tried to cry out, and my utmost effort resulted only in a whisper too low for any one to hear. Simultaneously I became aware of a Step ascending the stair,—a muffled heaviness; and the real nightmare began,—the horror of the ghastly magnetism that held voice and limb,—the hopeless will-struggle against dumbness and impotence. The stealthy Step approached, but with lentor malevolently measured,—slowly, slowly, as if the stairs were miles deep. It gained the threshold,—waited. Gradually then, and without sound, the locked door opened; and the Thing entered, bending as it came,—a thing robed,—feminine,—reaching to the roof,—not to be looked at! A floor-plank creaked as It neared the bed;—and then—with a frantic effort—I woke, bathed in sweat; my heart beating as if it were going to burst. The shrine-light had died: in the blackness I could see nothing; but I thought I heard that Step retreating. I certainly heard the plank creak again. With the panic still upon me, I was actually unable to stir. The wisdom of striking a match occurred to me, but I dared not yet rise. Presently, as I held my breath to listen, a new wave of black fear passed through me; for I heard moanings,—long nightmare moanings,—moanings that seemed to be answering each other from two different rooms below. And then, close to me, my guide began to moan,—hoarsely, hideously. I cried to him:—
“Louis!—Louis!”
We both sat up at once. I heard him panting, and I knew that he was fumbling for his cutlass in the dark. Then, in a voice husky with fear, he asked:—