Geo. Manville Fenn.
I'm not at all given to parading my troubles—nothing of the kind. I may be getting old, in fact, I am; and I may have had disappointments such as have left me slightly irritable and peevish; but I ask, as a man, who wouldn't be troubled in his nerves if he had suffered from snuffers?
Snuffers? Yes—snuffers—a pair of cheap, black, iron snuffers, that screech when they are opened, and creak when they are shut; a pair that will not stay open, nor yet keep shut; a pair that gape at you incessantly, and point at you a horrid sharp iron beak, as a couple of leering eyes turn the finger and thumb holes into a pair of spectacles, and squint and wink at you maliciously. A word in your ear—this in a whisper—those snuffers are haunted! their insignificant iron frame is the habitation of a demon—an imp of darkness; and I've been troubled till I've got snuffers on the brain, and I shall have them till I'm snuffed out.
It has been going on now for a couple of years, ever since my landlady sent the snuffers up to me first in my shiney crockery-ware candlestick, where those snuffers glide about like a snake in a tin pail. I remember the first night as well as can be. It was in November—a weird, wet, foggy night, when the river-side streets were wrapped in a yellow blanket of fog—and I was going to bed, when, at my first touch of the candlestick, those snuffers glided off with an angry snap, and lay, open-mouthed, glaring at me from the floor.
I was somewhat startled, certainly, but far from alarmed; and I seized the fugitives and replaced them in the candlestick, opened the door, and ascended the stairs.
Mind, I am only recording facts untinged by the pen of romance! Before I had ascended four steps, those hideous snuffers darted off, and plunged, point downwards, on to my left slippered foot, causing me an agonising pang, and the next moment a bead of starting blood stained my stocking.
I will not declare this, but I believe it to be a fact: as I said something oathish, I am nearly certain that I heard a low, fiendish chuckle; and when I stooped to lift the snuffers, there was a bright spark in the open mouth, and a pungent blue smoke breathed out to annoy my nostrils!
I was too bold in those days to take much notice of the incident, and I hurried upstairs—not, however, without seeing that there was a foul, black patch left upon my holland stair-cloth; and then I hurried into bed, and tried to sleep. But I could not, try as I would. In the darkness I could just make out the candlestick against the blind: and from that point incessantly the demon snuffers gradually approached me, till they sat spectacle-wise astride my nose, and a pair of burning eyes gazed through them right into mine.
Need I say that I arose next morning feverish and unrefreshed to go about my daily duties?
"I'll have no more of it to-night," I said to myself, as I rose early to go to bed and make up for the past bad night; and I smiled sardonically as I took up the highly-glazed candlestick and tried to shake the black, straddling reptile out upon the sideboard. I say tried; for, to my horror, the great eyeholes leered at me as they hugged round the upright portion of the stick and refused to be dislodged. I shook them again, and one part went round the extinguisher support, which the reptile dislodged, so that the extinguisher rattled upon the sideboard top. But the snuffers were there still. I tried again, and they, or it, dodged round and thrust a head through the handle, where they stuck fast, grinning at me till I set the candlestick down and stared.