I stopped abruptly. There was an interval of silence. My hand went up to my bandages. "The candles went out one after another, and I fled—"
Then the man with the shade lifted his face sideways to see me and spoke.
"That is it," said he. "I knew that was it. A Power of Darkness. To put such a curse upon a home! It lurks there always. You can feel it even in the daytime, even of a bright summer's day, in the hangings, in the curtains, keeping behind you however you face about. In the dusk it creeps in the corridor and follows you, so that you dare not turn. It is even as you say. Fear itself is in that room. Black Fear... And there it will be ... so long as this house of sin endures."
THE PHANTOM 'RICKSHAW
BY RUDYARD KIPLING
Joseph Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay in 1865. The grandson of a clergyman, both on his father's and mother's side, he was educated in England and served his apprenticeship as a writer on the newspapers in India. No man ever tried harder to convey to his reader the sensation and very pulse of life that he himself felt than did Kipling in his early work, of which "The Phantom 'Rickshaw" is a well-known example. Though he is undoubtedly one of the great writers of short stories, we are still too near him to be able to clearly appreciate his great talents.
THE PHANTOM 'RICKSHAW
By RUDYARD KIPLING
My doctor tells me that I need rest and change of air. It is not improbable that I shall get both ere long—rest that neither the red-coated messenger nor the midday gun can break, and change of air far beyond that which any homeward-bound steamer can give me. In the meantime, I am resolved to stay where I am; and, in flat defiance of my doctor's orders, to take all the world into my confidence. You shall learn for yourselves the precise nature of my malady; and shall, too, judge for yourselves whether any man born of woman on this weary earth was ever so tormented as I.