 CHAPTER I SEAWEED AND A PURPLE VALE It began because, meeting Nils Berquist in town one August morning, he dragged me off for luncheon at a little restaurant on a side street, where he swore I should meet some of the rising geniuses of the century. What we did meet was the commencement for me of such an extraordinary experience as befalls few men. At the time, however, the whole affair seemed incidental, with a spice of grotesque but harmless absurdity. Many more, and here's Alicia. How could anyone, meeting them as I did, have believed a grimness behind their amusing eccentricity? I was just turned twenty-four that August day. A boy's guileless enthusiasm for the untried was still strong in me, coupled with a tendency to make friends in all quarters, desirable or otherwise. Almost anyone who liked me, I liked. My college years, very recently ended, had seen me sworn comrade to a reckless and on his way to be notorious son of plutocracy, while I was also well received in the room which Nils Berquist chaired with two other embryo socialists a fanatic dye. A certain ingenuous likableness must have been mine even then, I think, to have gained me not only toleration but real friendship in both camps. Berquist, however, was older than I by several years. He had earned his college days before enjoying them, and, college ended, he dropped back into the struggle for existence and out of my sight, till I ran across him in town that August day. To play host, even at a very moderate luncheon, must have been an extravagance for Nils, though I didn't think of that. He was a man with whom one somehow never associated the idea of need. Tall, lean, with a dark, long face, high cheekbones and deep eyes set well apart, he dressed badly and walked the world in a careless air of ownership that mere clothes could not in the least affect. His intimates knew him capable of vast, sudden enthousiasms and equally vast depressions of the spirit. But up or down, he was Nils Berquist, sufficient unto himself, asking no favors and always with an indefinable air of being well able to grant them. I admired and liked him, was very glad to see him again, and cheerfully let him steer me around two corners and in the door of his bragged-of, tristing place for incipient genius. On first entering, my friend cast an eye about the aggregation of more or less shabby individuals present and muttered, not a soul here in a disappointed tone. Then, glimpsing a couple seated at a corner table laid for four, he brightened a trifle and led me over to them. Nils's idea of a formal presentation was always more brief than elaborate. After addressing the fair-haired, light-eye-lashed, palm-beach-suited person on one side of the table as Jimmy, and his vis-a-vis a darkly mysterious lady in a purple veil as Alicia, he referred to me casually as Clay, and considered the introduction complete. I do not mean that the lady's costume was limited to the veil. Only that this article was of such a peculiar, brilliantly, fascinatingly ugly hue that the rest of her might have been clothed in anything from a mermaid's scales to a speckled calico-rapper. I can imagine nothing except a gown of the same color which would have distracted one's attention from that veil. The thing was draped over a small hat and hung all about her head and face in a sort of circular curtain. Behind it I became aware of two dark, bright eyes watching me, like the eyes of some sea-creature layered behind a highly futurist wave. Having met peculiar folk before in Burquist's company, I took a seat opposite the veil without embarrassment. Taking little place this, I lied, glancing about the low-ceilinged, semi-ventilated, architectural container for chairs, tables, and genius which formed a background to the veil. Sorry, I didn't discover it earlier. The dark eyes gleamed immovably from their lair. I essayed a direct question. You lunch here frequently, I presume? No answer. The veil didn't so much as quiver. Even my genial amity began to suffer a chill. Suddenly Jimmy of the Palm Beach suit transferred his attention from Burquist to me. Please, don't try to talk with Alicia, he said. She is in the silence today. If you draw her out it will disturb the vibrations for a week and make the deuce of a hold in my work. Do you mind? With a slight gasp I adjusted myself to the unusual. I said I didn't mind anything. You're the right sort, then. Might have known it, or you wouldn't be traveling with old man Nils, eh? What you going to have? Nothing worth eating except the broiled bluefish, and that's scorched. Always is. What you eating, Nils? Rice, said Burquist briefly. On the one dish at a time, Diadé. Great stuff if you can stick it out. Make an athlete out of a centenarian, if you can stick it out. Bluefish for—one or two, he added, addressing the waiter and myself in the same sentence. Two, I smiled. Palm Beach Jimmy seemed to have usurped my friend's role of host with calm casualism. The man's blonde hair and faintly yellow lashes and eyebrows robbed his face of emphasis, so that the remarkably square chin and high sloping forehead did not impress one at first. His way of assuming direction of even the slightest affairs about him struck me as easygoing and careless rather than domineering. He gave the rest of the order with an occasional kindly reference to my desires. And boiled rice for one, he finished. The waiter cast a curious glance at the purple veil. "'Nothing for the lady,' he queried. "'Seaweed, of course,' retorted Jimmy. "'You're new at this table, aren't you?' Just started working here. "'Seaweed, sir?' "'Certainly. There it is, staring you in the face under salads. Study your menu, man.' "'That,' explained Jimmy, after the waiter's somewhat dazed departure, "'is the only reason we come here. In place I know of that serves Rodominia Serrata. Great stuff. Rich in mineral salts and vitamins.' "'You didn't order any for yourself,' I ventured. "'No. Great stuff, but has a horrid taste. Simply horrid.' "'Alicia eats it as a martyr to the cause. We have to be careful of her diet. Very careful. Neil's old man, what's the new wrong to the human race you're being so silent over?' "'Can't say without becoming personal,' retorted Burquist, calmly. "'What? Oh, by Jove, I forgot you don't approve. Still clinging to the sacred barriers, eh?' "'The barriers exist, and they are sacred.' Neil's long dark face was solemn, but as he was capable of cracking the wildest jokes with just that solemn expression I wasn't sure if the conversation were light or serious. I only knew that as yet I had failed to get a grip on the situation. The man talked about his seaweed-fed alicia as if the lady were not present. What curiosity in human shape did that veil hide? One thing I was uneasily aware of, not once, since the moment of our arrival, had those layered bright eyes strayed from my face. The barriers exist," Burquist repeated. "'I do not believe that you or others like you can tear them down. If I did, I should be justified in taking your life, as though you were any other dangerous criminal. When those barriers go down, chaos will swallow the world, and the race of men will be superseded by the race of madmen.' Jimmy laughed, unstartled by my friend's reference to cold-blooded assassination. "'In the world of science,' he retorted, "'what one can do, one may do. If every investigator of novel fields had stopped his work for fear of scorched fingers, in the material, physical world,' interrupted Burquist, speaking in the same solemn, dogmatic tone, "'what one can do, one may do. There, the worst punishment of a step too far can be only the loss of life or limb. It is man's rightful workshop. Let him learn its tools at the cost of a cut or so. But the field that you would invade is forbidden. By whom? By what?' "'By its nature. A man who risks his life may be a hero, but what is the name for a man who risks his soul?' "'Oh, nils, nils! You anachronism! You, you, inquisitioner! Here, you say the physical world is open ground, don't you?' "'Yes.'" "'And that what is commonly referred to as the supernatural is forbidden?' "'In the sense we speak of, yes. Very well. Now where do you draw the fine dividing line? How do you know that your soul, as you call it, isn't just another finer form of matter? A good medium, Alicia here can do it, stretches out a tenuous arm, a misty, wraithy, semi-formless limb, and lifts a ten pound weight off the table, while her physical hands and feet are bound so they can't stir an inch. Telekinesis, that is called, or levitation, and you talk about it as if it were done by some sort of supernatural willpower. Willpower, yes. But will-actuating matter to move matter. That fluidic arm is just as material, though not so substantial, as your own husky biceps. It's thinner, different. But material, of course it's material. Why, you yourself are a walking case of a miraculous levitation. Will-moving matter. Will, a super-physical force generated on the physical plane. Where's your fine dividing line? You talk about the material plane. I won't any more, broken burqvist hastily. But you know that there are entities and forces dangerous to the human race outside of what we call the natural world, and that your investigations are no better than a sawing at the bars of a cage full of tigers. If I thought you could loose them, I have already told you what I would do. There was a dark gleam in Burqvist's deep-set eyes that suddenly warned me he met exactly what he said, though the meaning of the whole argument was as hazy to me as the face behind that astounding veil. Many himself looked sober. Here comes your rice, he said shortly. Eat it, you old vegetarian, and get off the murder-subject. I'll expect you to be coming around some night with a carving-knife if you say much more. There are police to guard you from the carving-knife. The wild marches between this world and the invisible are patrolled by no police. Yet you fear the knife which can harm only your body, and fearlessly expose your naked soul. Thanks, old man, but my soul is well able to take care of itself. Eat your rice. There, didn't I say the bluefish would be scorched? And it is, behold, a profit among you. The bluefish wasn't worrying me. What I was awaiting was the moment when that miraculously colored veil should be uplifted. Surely, her purple screen removed, the lady would see to stare me out of countenance. Before the veil, a large platter of straggling, saw-edged, brownish-red leaves had been set down. The dish looked as horrid as Jimmy said it tasted. In a quiver of impatience I waited. At last I should see. A hand, white and well-shaped, but slender to emaciation, was raised to the veil's lower edge. The edge was lifted slightly. On the other hand conveyed a modest fork-fold of the uncanny edible upward. It passed behind the veil. The fork came away empty. With a gasping sigh I relinquished hope and turned my attention to the scorched bluefish. Jimmy may have noted my emotion. When Alicia is in the silence, he offered, she has to be guarded. The vibratory rhythm of the violet light-waves is less harmful than the rest of the spectrum, hence the veil, invention of my own. You agree with our wild anarchist here, Mr. Err, Err, Clay? Sacred barrierist and all that? My name's Barber, I said, Clayton S. Barber. As for the barriers, I must admit you've been talking over my head. So don't believe it. Pardon me, but your head doesn't look that sort. Has it Nils told you what I'm doing? Nils, said Burquist, with what would have been cold insolence from anyone else, has something better to do than walk about the world exploiting you to his acquaintances. I'm smashed, crushed flat, laughed Jimmy. He seemed one of the most good-humored individuals I had ever met. Never mind, anarchist, I'll tend to it myself. He turned again to me. Come to think of it, one of Nils's introductions is an efficient disguise. I'm James Barton Moore. I murmured polite gratification. For the life of me I couldn't recall hearing the name before. His perception was as quick as his good humor. That ready laugh broke out again. Never heard of me, eh? That's a fault of mine. Expect the whole world to be thrillingly expecting of results from my work. You hear of the Psychic Research Association? Certainly. I looked as intelligent as possible. Investigate ghosts and haunted houses and all that, don't they? You're right, son. Ghosts and haunted houses about cover the association's metier. Bah! Do you know who I am? A member? I hazarded. Not exactly. I'm the man the association forced off its directing board. And I'm also the man who is going to make the association look like a crowd of children hunting spooks in the nursery. Come around to my place tonight, and I'll show you something. The invitation was so explosively abrupt that I started in my chair. Why, er, I began. Nils broke in again. Don't go, he said coolly. Let him alone, enjoined Moore, but with no sign of irritation. You drop in around seven, here. He scribbled an address on the back of a card and tossed it across the table. And I'll promise you an interesting evening. You are very good, I said, not knowing quite what to do. I already had an engagement for that evening. On the other hand, my ever-ready curiosity had been aroused. Don't go, repeated burqvist tonelessly. Thanks, but I believe I will. Good! You're the right sort. Knew it the minute I said eyes on you. Don't extend these invitations to everyone. Not by any means. Burqvist pushed back his chair. Are you going on with me, Clay? He inquired. I thought he was carrying his peculiar style of rudeness rather beyond the boundaries. But he was really my host, so I acquiesced. I took pains, however, to bid a particularly courteous farewell to the eccentric pair with whom we had lunched. I might or might not keep my appointment with more, but if I did I wish to be sure of a welcome. End of Chapter 1 Chapter 2 of Serapien by Francis Stevens This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Serapien Chapter 2 Warning With me the influence of a personality, however strong, ended where its line of direction crossed the course of my own wishes. Niels' opposition to my further acquaintance with the Moors had struck me as decidedly officious. Once outside the restaurant he turned on me almost savagely. "'Clay,' he said, "'you are not going up there to-night.' "'No,' I asked coldly. And why not?' "'You don't know what you might be led in for. That is why not.' "'You have an odd way of talking about your friends.' "'Oh, Moor knows what I think.' "'All right,' I grinned, not really wishing a quarrel if one could be avoided. But your friends are good enough for me, too, Niels. Who was the lady in the purple veil?' His wife, a physical medium, got helper. Spirit-wrapping, clairvoyant, and all that, eh? I supposed it was something of the sort. Well, if I wish to go out to their place and spend a dollar or so to watch some conjuring tricks, why do you object so strenuously? That's one thing I've never done. Spend a dollar or so," snapped Burquist. "'Those people are not professionals, Clay. Mrs. Moor is one of the few genuine mediums in the country. Oh, calm. Surely you're not a believer in table-tipping and messages from Marcus Aurelius and Shakespeare.' Burquist squinted at me disgustedly. "'Heaven helped me to save this infant,' he muttered, taking no pains, however, that I shouldn't hear him. Clay, you go home and stay among your own people. Jimmy Moor is a moderately good fellow, but in one certain line he's as voracious as a wolf and unscrupulous as a Corsican bandit. He told you that he didn't extend these invitations to everyone. That is strictly true. The fact that he extended one to you is proof sufficient that you should not accept. He saw in you something he's continually on the watch for. He would use you and wreck you without a scruple. How? What do you mean? If I should tell you in what way, you would laugh and call it impossible. But let me say something you can understand. Except casually Moor is not a pleasant man to know. He would like people to believe that he was dropped from the administrative board of the association because his investigations and inferences were too daring for even the extraordinary open types of mind which compose it. The real reason was that he proved so violently, overbearingly quarrelsome that even they couldn't tolerate him. Recalling Moor's impregnable good humor under Nill's own attacks, I began to wonder exactly what was the latter's object in all this. I'm not going there to quarrel with him, I said. No, you're going to be used by him. Look at that unfortunate little wife of his, if you want a horrible example. Do you mean he'd obscure my classic features with a purple veil? There'll be a fight to the finish first, believe me. Oh, that veil-vibration seaweed business, that's all rot. Just freak results of freak theorizing, froth and bubbles. It's the dark brew underneath that's dangerous. Which is seen in Macbeth, I chuckled, fire-burn and cauldron bubble. We now see Mr. Jimmy Moor in his famous personification of Beelzebub, costume, one palm-beat suit, and a cheerful grin. Don't worry, Nills. I'll bolt through the window at the first whiff of Brimstone. "'My child,' said Burquist, very gently and slowly, "'you have the joyous courage of ignorance. But, at least, Mr. Moor is that rare freak, a real materializing medium, a producer of supernormal physical phenomena, as they are called. In other words, she is an open channel for forces which are neither understood nor recognized by the average civilized man. Jimmy Moor is that much more common freak, a fool who doesn't care whose fingers get burnt. The responsibility for having introduced you to those people is mine. As a personal favor, I now ask you to have nothing more to do with either of them." "'Nills, you're back in the Dark Ages, as Moor claimed. I never thought you'd fall for this spiritualistic bunk. Leave that.' "'You are determined to keep the appointment?' "'Come with me, if you think I need a chaperone.' "'No,' he said soberly. "'Why not?' "'He wouldn't have me. Not when a seance is planned, and that is what he met by an interesting evening. I'm persona non grotto on such an occasion, because Alicia says her spirit guides don't like me. Save the mark. If I tried to wedge in to-night, there would be another row, and heaven alone knows where the thing would end. I wish you'd stay away from there, Clay.' "'Do you mean?' I asked slowly, and beginning to see new light on Nills' attitude. That you have quarreled with Moor in the past?' "'My dear fellow, get this through your head if you can. It is impossible to know Moor very long and not quarrel with him, or be subjugated. You keep away.' I was growing a little sick of Nills' persistence. "'Sorry. Fear I haven't your faith in the bodiless powers of evil, and I can't say Moor seemed such an appalling person. I'm going.' Abruptly, without a word of answer or farewell, Berquist turned his back on me and swung off down the street. Several times I had seen him end a conversation in that manner, and I knew why. By rights he should have been the last man to criticize another man's temper. But I knew, too, that Nills' wrath was generally as evanescent as sudden. He would be friendly as ever next time we met, and even if he were not, I couldn't see why his anger or disapproval should afflict me greatly. Friends were too easily acquired for me to miss one. I forgot him properly, and began wondering how my desertion for the evening would be accepted by Roberta Whittingfield. CHAPTER III THE DEAD ALIVE HOUSE That afternoon I reached home to find Roberta herself on the veranda with my sister Catherine. Rather to my consternation, on hearing of the restaurant encounter, Bert properly dumped it, the adventure of the awful veiled one, and announced her intent to solve the mystery in my company. Catherine seconded the motion, calmly including herself in the party, but there I rebelled. Roberta and I were to be married one of these days. She was mine to command me, and besides, she had been very good natured about giving up the concert we had planned attending. But I had the vaguest idea of what Moore's invitation portended, and I knew what would happen if I took both those girls and anything unusual occurred. They would giggle. We kept Roberta with us for dinner, and when she had gone home to dress, Cathy and I had our argument in earnest. My mother was confined to her room with one of her frequent headaches, and for a while Dad hid himself in his paper. Then a grizzled head appeared over the top of it with a flash of indignant spectacles. Cathy, he drawled, I have a notion what this is all about, but wherever Clay is off to I'm sure they don't want you both, not together. Clay, my son, I don't wish to be rude, but if you are going won't you please depart at once? Come upstairs, Catherine, and see if all this loud talking has disturbed your mother. Cathy went. Generally Dad sided with her, but she knew better than to oppose him when he used that tone. It meant stoppage of allowance money. She had been arguing that Roberta's mother, who was from Charleston, South Carolina, and a St. Sicilian, whatever that is, wouldn't allow her daughter to go with me on chaperone, engaged or not engaged. At the concert, didn't I know that Bert had come over expressly to find out if she, Cathy, would consent to accompany us? I had already discovered that St. Sicilians, whatever they are, have rigorous ideas of chaperonage. Consequently, I was relieved when on bringing my card to a stop before the winning-field place Roberta came down the steps alone in response to my honking siren. Mother says, she explained to Murley, that since we have changed our plans and are to call on a nice married couple like the Moors, we may go alone, this once. Isn't that lovely? I grinned. Mother is not omniscient, after all. I told her everything but the purple veil, and—and fortune-reading part. And, of course, she doesn't know you only met them today. Girl—I retorted sternly, you are a deceiver, but I like you. Climb in. Well, after nine o'clock, we arrived at the address written across Moors' card. It turned out to be half of a detached double-dwelling, standing on a corner beyond a block of quiet, respectable red stone fronts, with a deep lawn between it and the street. Ridiculous house—Bert named it on first sight, and ridiculous house it was in a certain sense. It reminded one of that king in the old fairy tale, who laughed with one side of his face and smiled with the other. The half that bore Moors' number was neat, shining, and of unappeachable exterior. Its yellow brick front was clean, with freshly painted white woodwork. Its half of the lawn, close clipped and green, was set with little thriving round flower beds. The other half had the look of a regular old beggar among houses. The paint, weather-beaten, blistered and brown, was no dingier than the dirt-freckled bricks. Two or three windows were boarded up. Not one of the rest, but mourned a broken pain or so. From a dilapidated porch, wooden steps, all askew, led to a weed-grown walk. On that side, the lawn was a straggling waste of weeds. Roberta had hopped out of the car without waiting for assistance. I joined her, and we stood staring at the queer-looking combination. Roberta, I said solemnly, after a moment. There is a grim, grisly secret which I hadn't meant to alarm you with, but perhaps it is better you should be worn now. Clay, what do you mean? That house! My voice was a sinister whisper. Don't you see? Life and death, or chained to the corpse of his victim. More murdered one of twin houses, and now he must live in the other forever as a penance. To my surprise, instead of laughing at my nonsense, she took my arm with a shiver. Don't, she protested. When you speak so, the house isn't funny any more. It's horrid. Ah, a dead alive house. Let's not go in, Clay. We can still attend the concert instead. Arriving in time to exit with the audience. I felt annoyed, for this last moment retreat was not like her. No, thank you. Come along, Bertie, and don't be silly. I suppose one half belongs to more and the other to somebody else, and he can't make the other owner keep his half in repair. After some further discussion we entered the gate at last. I remember that as we went up Moore's Walk I threw back my head and glanced upward. The moonlight was so white on the slanting house-roofs that for just a moment I had an illusion of there being thick with snow. With snow. Yes, I remembered that illusion afterward. Moore had expected me alone, of course, but he'd needn't have made that fact quite so obvious. He met us in his library on the second floor, wither a neat, common place maid had ushered us after a glance at my card. It was a long rather heavily furnished room, lined with books to the ceiling. Our first view of it noted nothing bizarre or out of the ordinary. Moore was seated reading, but as we were announced he rose quickly. That was when he perceived Roberta and realized that I had brought a companion but that I had my first real doubt that Nils had not exaggerated about the man's temper. His good-humored, fold-up mouth seemed to draw inward and straighten to a disagreeably gash-like effect. The skin over his cheekbones tightened. A pronounced narrowness between the eyes forced itself suddenly upon the attention. For one instant we faced a man disagreeably different from the one who had parried all Berquist's thrusts with unshakable good nature. As he rose and came toward us, however, the ominous look melted again to geniality. "'Begin to think old Nils had scared you off in earnest, Barber,' he greeted. Which burnings would still be in order if our wild anarchist had his way, eh? I had quite given up on you. "'I believe you did mention seven o'clock,' I retorted stiffly. A host to whom Roberta's presence, invited or not, was so obviously unwelcome. Rather reluctantly I performed the necessary introduction. "'I had no right to come with him,' she apologised. "'We meant to attend the Russian Symphony, but when Clayton told me of your invitation, I—we thought—' "'That you might find better amusement here?' More finished for her. "'That's all right, Miss Whittingfield, though the work I am engaged in is a bit serious to be amusing, I fear. Hope you're not the nervous screaming sort,' he added, with blunt anxiety. She flushed a trifle, then laughed. "'I'm not, really,' she protested. "'But I'll go away if you wish.' "'That was too much for me. "'We'll both leave,' I said very haughtily. "'Sorry to have put you out, Mr. Moore.' "'To my astonishment, for I was really angry,' he burst out laughing. It was such a genial, inoffensive merriment as caught me unawares. I found myself laughing with him, though at what I hadn't the faintest notion.' "'Why, Barber,' he chuckled, "'you mustn't take offence at a lack of conventional mannerisms on my part. I'm a worker—first, last, and all the time. Miss Whittingfield, you're welcome as the flowers in May, but I can no more forget my work nor what is likely to affect it than I can forget my own name. You aren't angry with me, are you?' "'No,' she began rather hesitatingly, but just then the door opened behind us and we heard someone enter. "'I am here.' The words were uttered in a dry, toneless voice. We both turned, and I realized that the mystery of the awful veiled one was a mystery no more, or at least had been shorn of its purple drapery. Of course I had expected to meet Alicia here, but I think I should have recognized those eyes in any surroundings. They were fully as bright, dark, and almost incredibly large and attentive as they had seemed behind the veil. For the rest, Mrs. Moore's slender figure was draped in filmy, voluminous folds of black, between which an appiled mass of black hair her face gleamed, a peaked white patch, and with those eyes in it. Medium or not, Mrs. Moore herself was more like the creature of another world than any human being I had ever seen. Be seated, Alicia. Without troubling to present Roberta, Moore gestured toward a peculiar-looking chair at one side of the room. The slender creature in black swept toward it immediately. Long and filmy, the train of her somber costume slid past us like a low, twisting trail of dark smoke over the carpet. Having reached the chair, she turned, faced us for a moment, still expressionless, save for those terribly attentive eyes, then sank into the chair's depths. As she did so, the filmy folds circled floating about her. It was as though she sank into the depths of a black smoke cloud. Roberta was frankly staring, and so was I, but my stare had a newly startled quality. Alicia had passed me very closely indeed. My hands still tingled were another hand, a bony, fierce little hand had closed on it in a swift, pinching clasp. Even though I was sure that her colorless lips had not moved, four low words had reached my ears distinctly. Go away, you, go! I glanced at Bertie, but decided that she had missed the rude little message. Moore certainly hadn't heard, for he had gone over to the chair and was standing behind it when Alicia reached there. With a slight shrug I determined that where so much oddity prevailed, this additional eccentricity of Mrs. Moore had better be ignored. To think of her as a real person, my hostess, was made difficult by the atmosphere of utter strangeness which her appearance and Moore's treatment of her had already created. You and Miss Whittingfield sit over there, commanded more briskly. I'll explain what we're about in a minute. You'll be interested. Can't avoid it. A little farther off, Miss Whittingfield, do you mind? Roberta is more easily affected than other sensitives. Moore easily affected. Right. Now, just a moment, and I can talk to you. We had seated ourselves as he directed. I, some half-dozen feet from the enthroned Alicia, Roberta much farther away, well over by the heavily curtain windows. To the savage and to the young, strange is generally synonymous with funny. We exchanged one quick look, then kept our eyes resolutely apart. A wave of incipient mirth had fairly leaped between us. It was well, I thought, that Kathy had been suppressed. Then we saw what Moore was doing at the chair, and forgot laughter in amazement. It must be remembered that Roberta and I were innocent of the least previous experience in this line. Say for some hazy knowledge of spiritualistic fakes and mind-reading of the vaudeville type, we were blankly ignorant, and by consequence, as unconsciously receptive as a couple of innocent young sponges. But at first we were merely shocked by the brutal fact of Moore's preparations. I have said that the chair taken by Alicia was a peculiar one. It stood before a pair of black curtains, which concealed what in spiritualistic circles is called a cabinet. The chair itself was large, heavy, with a high back and uncommonly broad armrests. Moore, it had about it that look of apparatus which one associates with the dentist's and surgeon's fixtures. Alicia leaned back in it, her hands resting limp on the armrests. Then up over each fragile wrist Moore clamped a kind of steel handcuff attached to the chair arm. Another pair of similar fetters, extended on short rods from the back, were clasped around her upper arms, and, as if this were not enough, he locked together the two halves of a wide steel band about her waist. And his wife sat there, inert as a porcelain doll, her enormous eyes wide open and fixed on me in perfectly unswerving contemplation. "'Really great mediums will trick you if they can,' said Moore coolly. "'Don't need any object for fraud, unless you should call the trickery itself an object.' Alicia is a great medium. Very great!' Suddenly every decent impulse I had rose to revolt. That was a woman in the chair, Moore's wife, and he treated her, talked about her as though she were some peculiarly trained and subject animal. I rose sharply. "'Mrs. Moore, is this a fair proceeding with your consent?' "'Don't address the psychic,' snapped her husband over one shoulder. But I wasn't afraid of him. At that moment I could have thrashed the man cheerfully, and with ease, for I carried no superfluous flesh in those days, and had inches the better of him in height and reach. Roberta was suddenly at my side, and I knew by the excited shine of her eyes that she sensed my emotion and approved it. "'Mrs. Moore,' I repeated, "'are you enduring this of your own free will? Moore, attempt to intimidate her, and you'll be sorry.' He straightened and turned on me in earnest, but Alicia herself broke the strain. "'Sit down, boy,' she said in her dry, toneless voice. "'What James says of fraud is true, but he does not mean what you think. I am not conscious of what I do in trance, and the self then in control has no moral standards. Were my earthly limbs not bound, no phenomena could be credited, and my own guides have advised the construction of this chair. The steel bands are padded with felt, and do not hurt me. I did not speak to you when I entered, because at sometimes the guides like me to be silent. This is tiring me. You must not quarrel with James. Violent emotion tires me. "'A great evil will come to you through me, but now you must sit down and be very quiet. I am tired.' For the first time, white lids drooped over those unnatural eyes. The closing of them seemed to rob her face of the last trance of fellow humanity. Barber was grinning again, though rather tensely. "'Please sit down, Barber,' he pleaded in a very low voice. "'I should have explained a few things to you in advance. Alicia will be asleep directly, and then we can talk.' I did sit down, and Roberta retired to her window. That toneless, indifferent voice of Alicia's, that cool exactitude of statement, had not seen the expression of a meek and terrorized soul. But if she were not afraid of more, why had she been so surreptitious in asking, in ordering me to leave? I did not speak to you when I entered, but she had spoken to me. A great evil will come to you through me, and she said it like a remark on the weather. I gave up suddenly. All my curiosity was submerged in a wave of healthy revolt against the obviously abnormal. A vague unhappiness came with it, and the desire above everything to take Roberta and get out. Alicia was breathing regularly now, in long, deep breaths, soft, but audible. Leaving her, Moore drew up a chair between Roberta and me, seated himself, crossed one leg over his knee, and beamed amably. Mr. Moore, I began, but he checked me, finger in air. Sh! Trifle lower, please. I know what you're thinking, Barber, and I don't blame you. Not in the least. My fault entirely. Now let's drop all that and forget it. You are two very intelligent people, but I can never remember that the average man or woman knows as much about sensitives as a baby knows of trigonometry. Now why did I invite you here, Barber? For an interesting evening you said. Exactly, and you shall have it. First of many, I hope. But don't expect any messages from your deceased grandfathers to-night, for you won't get them. Very well, I assented. Burt, did you hear that? Our revered ancestors won't speak to us. And don't imagine this is a matter for joking, either. You're proved more, but still amably. I did not say that purely spiritual forces would not be involved, but a psychic, a medium, has all the complexity of the highest type of nervous human, plus, and it's the plus sign that complicates matters. You might get messages through from almost anyone, eventually. You'll seem to get them to-night, but they won't be real. Alicia has more different selves than the proverbial cat has lives, and all wanting a chance to talk and parade around and pass themselves off as anybody you'd care to name, from Julius Caesar to your mother's deceased aunt's nephew. Very remarkable. I should say so. We glance rather anxiously at Alicia's quiescent figure, but no sudden procession of selves had yet appeared. But however is beside the mark, announced more briskly. In such commonplace manifestations, Alicia dematerializes a percentage of her own fleshy bulk, externalizes and projects it from her in the shape demanded by her subliminal consciousness. Aside from proving the accepted laws of matter to be false, the phenomena are of small importance. He paused again. I should think, ventured Roberta, carefully avoiding my eyes, that disproving the laws of matter would be, might be, almost enough for one evening. The accepted laws, he corrected rather sharply. Crooks, Ashorowitz, Lombroso, Potatsi, Lodge, I could name you over a dozen great scientists who have already disproved them in that way. But they had only Eusepia Palladino and lesser psychics to work with. We have Alicia. A vague memory stirred in me. Palladino, I said. You mean the famous Italian medium? I thought she was exposed as a fraud. He frowned. This was a sore subject with him, though I did not know why till much later. I tell you, he scout, they are all frauds, when they have the chance. The first impulse of hysteria is toward deception. Genuine mediumship and hysteria are practically inseparable. What can you expect? Palladino was as genuine as Alicia, and Alicia will fool you outrageously, given the least opportunity. Quite scandalously unscrupulous. You're very frank about it. I couldn't help saying. Why not? You heard Alicia's own statement in that regard. She works with me to overcome the disadvantage. Mabel and Maudi are manageable enough, but Horace is a born joker. For a long time Horace fought bitterly against the idea of that chair, and only yielded when I threatened to give up the sittings. These people are friends who attend the séances, I inquired, thinking that Moore and Nils' habit of referring to all his acquaintances by their Christian names. Moore appeared mildly surprised. Don't you really know anything at all of spiritistic investigation? Sorry, I'm afraid I never had enough faith in spooks to be interested. Never mind, we'll correct that, assured Moore calmly. Mabel and Maudi and Horace are three of Alicia's spirit guides. She believes them to be real entities of a spirit world, people who have passed beyond you understand, but I doubt it. Doubt it very seriously. In fact, I have reason to be positive that those three, along with several subsidiary spirits, are just so many phases of Alicia's subconscious. On the other hand, Jason Gibbs, her real control, is a spirit to be reckoned with. We will find Jason an amazingly interesting man on acquaintance. And now that I have explained fully, suppose we take a look at the cabinet. Roberta and I rose and followed him, not sure whether to be amused or impressed. His statement that he had explained fully was a joke, so far as we were concerned. What nebulous ideas of a séance we had possessed were far removed from anything we had met to-night, to sit in a circle, holding hands in the dark, to hear mysterious wraps and poundings, to glimpse perhaps the cheesecloth-y forms of highly fictitious ghosts. That had been our previous conception of a sitting, called from general and half-forgotten reading. Moore was so utterly matter-of-fact and unmistakable of manner that he probably impressed us more deeply than if he had attempted to inspire awe. When I reflected, if he were a charlatan, where was his prophet? Nils himself had assured me that Mrs. Moore was not a professional medium. The fact was that I had emerged from college almost wholly ignorant of the modern debate between the physicist and the spiritist, ignorant that science itself had been driven to admission of supernormal powers in certain victims of hysteria, but stood firm on the ground that these powers were a physical and terrestrial origin. James Barton Moore, however, was a born materialist who had accepted this spiritistic theory from an intellectual viewpoint. The result showed in his matter-of-fact way of dealing with the occult. He had, moreover, one characteristic of a certain type of scientist in less weird fields. He would have put a stranger or his best friend on the vivisectionary table, could he by that means have hoped to acquire one small modicum of the knowledge he sought. Figuratively he already had me on the table that night. End of Chapter 3 Chapter 4 of Serapien by Francis Stevens This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Chapter 4 Horus On pushing aside the black curtains, the cabinet proved to be a place like a square closet, with a smooth, solid wooden back built out from the wall. In it there stood a small, rather heavy table, made of polished oak, on which reposed several objects. There was a thing like a small megaphone, to which more referred as the cone. There was an ordinary thin glass tumbler nearly filled with water, a lump of soft putty, a sheet of paper blackened by sooty smoke, a pad of ordinary white paper and several pencils of different colors and sizes. Our preparations to-night, said Moore, are of the simplest sort. I have passed the stage of registering Alicia's externalized motivity by means of instruments of precision. The exact force exerted to lift a weight yards beyond her bodily reach, the regulated rhythm of a metronome's pendulum, the compression of a pneumatic bulb ten feet from her hand. These have all been tested, proved and left behind me. Others have done that with other mediums. But I go the step further, that Pottazzi and many of the others dared not take. Having admitted the phenomena, I admit a cause for them outside the physical and beyond Alicia's individuality. I admit the disembodied spirit. My experiments are no longer based on doubt but certainty. Their culmination will mean a revolution for the thinking world, a reversal of its whole stand toward matter and the forces that affect it. Roberta and I were not particularly interested in revolutions of thought. Like younger children we wish to know what he proposed doing with the things on the table, and after that we wish to see it done. So we stood silent, hoping that he would stop talking soon and let the exhibition of Alicia's mysterious powers begin. Being off on his hobby, Moore probably mistook our silence for interest. At last, however, in the midst of a dissertation on psychic force, telekinesis, and spiritual controls, he was interrupted by a long deep sigh from the chair. The sigh was followed by a strangled gasping, very much as though Alicia was choking to death. We both started toward the chair, but Moore barred the way. Let her alone, he ordered imperatively. She's all right. Come back to your seats. And when we had returned to our former positions, he added, She is going into trance now. Later you may approach closer. Hold her hands if you like. But Alicia can't bear even myself to be very near her in the first stages. It hurts her, you understand. It hurts her physical pain. Judging from poor Alicia's appearance, she was in physical pain anyway. Her peaked white face writhed in the most unpleasant contortions. She choked, gasped, gurgled, and showed every symptom of a woman in dying agonies. Then suddenly, she quieted, her face resumed its lay figure calmness, and the great eyes opened wide. Differs from most psychics, opens her eyes in trance. It frequently. I heard more muttering, but Alicia herself began to speak now, and I forgot him. The queerest, silliest little voice issued from her lips. It was like a child's voice, but an idiot child's. Pretty, pretty, pretty, it gurgled. Oh, such a pretty lady. Did pretty lady come to see Maddie? Followed a pause. When it spoke again, the voice had a petulant tone. Pretty lady, come to see Maddie? Moore looked at Roberta. Why don't you answer her, Miss Whittingfield? Before she could comply, however, another personality had apparently superseded the idiot child. A great laugh that I would have sworn was a man's echoed across the silent library. It seemed to come from Alicia's throat. Ha, ha, ha! Oh, ha, ha! You've got queer taste, Jimmy Moore. Why do you want to drag that pair of freaks in here? Tell them to go home. Go on home, young fellow, do you hear? Go on now, and take your skirt with you." That is Horace, commented more imperturbably. "'You haven't any manners, Horace, have you?' "'Not a manner,' retorted the voice. "'Is that young sport going to leave, or do I have to heave a brick at him? Scat, get out, you!' This was certainly outside my idea of a seance. It occurred to me abruptly that the voice was not proceeding from Alicia. Some confederate was concealed nearby, had entered the cabinet perhaps by a concealed door, or Moore himself was ventriloquizing. Then I realized that Alicia's eyes were again fixed on my face, and their expression was not that of a woman entranced. They were keen, bright, intelligent. Their lips moved. "'Get, get out,' adjured that brutally vulgar voice. Then it changed to a whining, female treble. "'You are young, Clayton Barber, young and soft to the soft, cruel hand that would mold you. You are easy to mold as clay, clay, Clayton, clay. Evil hangs over you, black evil, flee from the damned Clayton Barber. Go home, you!' Moore was frowning uneasily. Subliminal, he said shortly, pay no attention to these voices. They emanate from the subconscious, Alicia's dream self, similar to delirium, you know. Ah! I murmured and settled back in my chair. Not that I agreed with Moore, though I had dismissed the thought of either a confederate or my host's ventriloquism. Her ventriloquist was Alicia herself. I had no doubt that she could have caused the voices to sound from any quarter of the room as easily as from her own throat. As for Trance, her eyes were entirely too wakeful and intelligent. Nearly everything said so far had been mere repetition, in different phrases and voices, of that first, brief, fierce little demand that I leave. But by that time I was more than a trifle annoyed. It was hardly pleasant to sit in Roberta's presence and hear rude puns made on my name. To hear it implied that I was a mere non-entity with no character of my own. I rather plumed myself that Alicia would not find me so pliable. If she really wished me to depart, she had gone the wrong way about it. Ah! I said, settled back and, the vulgarity of horrors may have been contagious, deliberately winked at Alicia. It was a crude enough act, but her methods struck me as crude too. A blaze of fury leaped into those two attentive eyes. Her features writhed in such an abominable convulsion as I had never believed possible to the human countenance. Purple, distorted, terrible, with a flashing of bone-white teeth. And out of it all a voice discordant and different from any we had heard. FOOL! FOOL! FOOL! it graded. Protect! Try! Can't protect FOOL! Slipping! It's got me! I'm Slipp! Oh! Oh! Even more seemed affected this time. We were all on our feet, and he was beside his wife in three long strides. As the last long-drawn moan died away, however, the dreadful purple subsided from Alicia's countenance as quickly as it had risen. She was again the queer white porcelain doll leaning back with closed eyes in her imprisoning chair. More straightened, wiped his forehead, and laughed shakily. "'Did you know,' he said, "'with all the experience I've had, Alicia still gives me an occasional fright, but I never saw her pass into the second stage quite so violently. Won't these horrible convulsions hurt your wife, Mr. Moor?' Roberta was deeply distressed, and no wonder. I felt as if I brought her to watch the seizures of an epilept.' "'She says they don't,' replied Moor, but never mind that. Listen. Alicia's lips writhed whitely. "'Light!' came her barely audible whisper. Properly, more reach for a wall-button. Two of the three lights burning went out. The third was a shaded library lamp on a table not far off. I expected him to extinguish that also, for everything in the room was plainly visible, but he let it be. "'You may hold Alicia's hands if you wish,' he offered generously. We shook our heads. Presently the hushed whisper was heard again. "'Many shadows are here to-night,' it said. Shadows living and dead. Dead alive and living dead. They crowd close. An old, old shadow comes. Blood runs from his lean, gnarled throat. He speaks.' The whisper became a ghastly, bubbling attempt at articulation. There were no words. The result was just an abominable sound. Even with this throat-cut might speak like that, observed more reflectively. She must mean old Jenkins, who was murdered next door. That's the reason we have this house, you know, the other half supposed to be haunted, and is. Now I wanted to get out in earnest. Fraud or epileptic, Alicia was entirely too horrible, and more, with his calmness, almost worse. I tried to draw Roberta toward the door, but she held back. Not yet, Clay, I wish to see what will happen. Now the horrid gurgle had merged into a man's voice. It was loud and distinct as horuses, but otherwise slightly different, as different, say, as tenor from high baritone. "'I am Jason Gibbs,' it asserted. "'Mr. Moore, will you kindly ask your friends to step back a little? We will do what we can for you, but my fellow spirits are a trifle shy of strangers.' Moore motioned us back. At the same time he shook his head smilingly. "'That's not Jason,' he murmured. A very good imitation, but an imitation nonetheless. We shan't get much to-night.' "'And in that,' retorted the tenor, you are exactly mistaken. You will get much. In fact you are likely to get more than one of you ever bargained for.' "'You say I'm not Jason Gibbs? Seeing is believing, isn't it? Shall I show myself?' Moore acquiesced smoothly. Do so, by all means. "'I'll attend to that in a little while. I can read your mind all right, Jimmy Moore. You think I'm Horus talking high. Well, Horus is a very good fellow and fond of his joke, but I'm Jason Gibbs to-night, and all the time, of course. Would you like to see something pretty?' "'Anything at all, Hor—' "'Pardon me, Jason.' "'Then watch the cabinet.' "'We did. For a minute or two nothing happened. Then Roberta cried out, "'It's on fire!' "'No,' said Moore, watch.' A strange tiny flame was running along the edge of the black curtains where they touched the floor. When I say running along, I do not mean that in the usual sense as applied to fire. It was a tiny individual flame, violet in colour, about an inch and a half high, and as it moved it twirled and spun on its own base in the oddest manner. Reaching the centre where the curtains joined, it floated slowly upward, still twirling, left the cabinet, and presently disappeared, apparently through the ceiling. Another flame and another followed it. I assured myself that we were watching a very clever and unusual exhibition of fireworks, but I didn't believe that. I didn't know exactly what I believed, but I did know that those twirling, violet flames were the first really strange thing I had ever seen in my life. When seven of them had appeared and vanished, Moore spoke. "'Isn't that enough—er, Jason? Can't you do better than that for us?' There was a silence while the eighth and last flame twirled upward and vanished. Then that great, rough laugh burst startlingly from Alicia's lips. Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Oh, Jimmy Moore! I should say I can do better! I should say so!" And with that, the curtains parted suddenly, and it is hard to tell, but it was harder to stand the shock of it. A huge, misshapen, grayish-black hand darted out from between them. Late at night I caught a glimpse of wrist. I couldn't see any arm. It just leaped out and into existence, as one might say, and to my unspeakable horror laid its gross, gnarled fingers fairly across Roberta Whittingfield's mouth and chin. I believed it had seized her throat. Half-med with shock I sprang at the hand, gripping it in both of mine. I felt a kind of cold roughness in my grasp, a rough solidity that melted to nothing even as I touched it. My hands were empty. I caught Roberta as she swayed backward, wider than Alicia herself. And Moore was reproving something in the most everyday manner. Really, Horace, that wasn't a nice joke at all, he criticised. Easing Roberta into a chair I sprang savagely at the curtains and swept them aside. Behind there was only the table and what we had seen on it. I had a fleeting impression that the lump of putty was different, but where it had been a formless lump it appeared now as if it had been squeezed between giant fingers. Then Moore was pulling me back. Don't do that, Barber. We shan't get anything more if you interfere like that. DEVIL! It was all I could think of to call him, and it seemed inadequate enough. You devil? To play a trick like that on an unsuspecting girl? Bert, darling, come, I'll take you home. Then I'll come back and settle with these people. Barber, I give you my word of honour that I had nothing to do with what just occurred. You brought Miss Whittingfield here of your own volition, and, pardon me, against my wishes. But she assured me she was not of the nervous type. Nervous! I repeated scornfully. A really nervous woman would have died when that black paw flew out at her. I'm not hurt, Clayton, intervened Roberta. Don't quarrel with him, please. You are sensible, approved Moore. There is no danger from such manifestations as that hand. Why, I've taken a peep into the cabinet when the power was strong, and seen half a dozen human limbs and parts of limbs lying about, fragmentary impulses as one might say of the mediumistic force. I think we will go home, Clay. I have just discovered that I am of the nervous screaming sort. Mr. Moore, will you please say good night for us to Mrs. Moore when she... when she awakens? He sighed disappointedly. It's too bad, really. If Jason Gibbs had actually been in control tonight, there would have been nothing to shock you. Horace is nothing, just a secondary, practical joking phase of Alisha's own personality. Come, Roberta. We started toward the door. And then, without a warning flicker, the library lamp went out, leaving the room in impenetrable darkness. End of Chapter 4 CHAPTER V. OF SARAPIAN by Francis Stevens This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. SARAPIAN. CHAPTER V. THE FIFTH PRESENCE The difference between light and the lack of it is the difference between freedom and captivity, and the real reason that we pity a blind man is because he is a prisoner. This is true under normal conditions. Add to darkness dread of the supernatural, and the inevitable sum is panic. Till that moment I doubt if Roberta or I had believed the black hand which touched her to be of other than natural origin. Engrained thought-habit had accused more of trickery, even while it condemned the trick as unpleasant. That was while the light burned. One instant later we were trapped prisoners of the dark, and instincts century-old flung off thought-habit like a tissue cloak. It had been a quiet, modern room, became in that instant the devil haunted jungle of forebears infinitely remote. And it didn't help matters that just then Horace elected to be heard again. Alisha visible, Horace had seemed a vocal feat on her part. Alisha unseen, Horace became a discarnate fiend. That he was a fiend vulgar in Congress only made his fiendishness more intolerable. How's this for a joke? It inquired sardonically. I never did like that lamp. Let's give it away, Jimmy. Tell your young, fool friend to take the lamp away with him. Soundlessly, without warning, something hard and slightly warm touched my cheek. I struck out wildly. My fist crashed through glass, there was a great smash and clatter from the floor, and mingled it with shout upon shout of fairly maniacal mirth. And Moore's voice, cool but irritated. You'll have to stop these tricks, Horace. I'm ashamed of you. Breaking a valuable lamp like that? Our guests will believe you a common spirit of poltergeist. Moore, if you don't throw on the lights, I'll kill you for this. My own voice shook with mingled rage and dread. Of course it might be he who had brought the lamp and held it against my face, but the very senselessness of the trick made it terrible in a queer, unhuman way. Stand still, he commanded sharply. Barber, Miss Whittingfield, you are not children. Nothing will harm you if you keep quiet. It was your own yielding to anger and fear that brought this crude force into play. Did it really hit you with the lamp, Barber? I hit the lamp, but exactly. Now keep quiet. Horace, may I turn on the lights? If you do, you'll be sorry, Jimmy. Call me poltergeist or plain Dutch. There's somebody worse than me here tonight. What do you mean, Horace? Oh, somebody that came in along with your scared young friends. He's a joker, too, but I don't like him. He wants to get through the gates altogether and stay through. If he does, a lot of people will be sorry. You say I'm rough, but say, Jimmy. This fellow is worse than rough. He's smooth. Get me too smooth. I'm keeping him back, and you know I'm stronger in the dark. Very well, I heard more laugh amusedly. His quiet matter of coarseness should have deleted all terror from the affair. He was carrying on a conversation with a rather silly, rather vulgar man, of whom he was not afraid, but whose vagaries he indulged for reasons of expediency. That was the sound of it. But the sense of it, there in the blackness, was such an indescribable horror to me as I cannot convey by words. There was more to this feeling than fear of Horace. I learned what nerves meant that night. If mine had all been on the outside of my skin, crowling, expectant of shock, I could have suffered no more keenly. Coward, wait to judge that till you learn what the uncomprehended expectancy meant for me. Very well, laughed more. But don't break any more lamps, Horace, please. Have some consideration for my pocket-book. Money! We haven't any pants pockets on my side of the line. Horace chuckled. If I'm to keep the smooth fellow back, you must let me use my strength. Let me have my fun, Jimmy. What's a lamp or so between pals? And just to keep things interesting, suppose we bring out the big fellow in the closet. I heard a thud from the direction of the cabinet, a low chuckle, and then a huge panting sound. It sounded like an enormous animal. We had a sense of something living and enormous that had suddenly come out of nothing into the room. The hand! screamed Roberta sharply, it's the black hand thing! I was hideously afraid that she was right. With her own clutching little hands on my arm I sprang, dragging her with me. I didn't spring for where I thought more was, nor for where I suppose the door might be. There were only two thoughts in my head, one of a monstrous and wholly imaginary black giant, the other a passionate desire for light. By pure chance I brought up against the wall just beside a brass plate inset with two magical blessed buttons. My fingers found them, got the wrong button, the right one. Flash! And we were out of demon land and in a common-place room again. Not quite common-place, though. True, no black, impossible giant inhabited it. The vast panting sound had passed, and though the lamp lay among the splinters of its wrecked shade and my hand was bleeding, a broken lamp and a cut hand are possible incidentals of the ordinary. But that woman in the chair was not. Wrything, shrieking, foaming creatures like that have their place in a hospital, or a sick man's delirium, but not rightfully in an evening's entertainment for two unexpected young people. Burt took one look and buried her face against my vest in an ecstasy of fear. Burt was beside his wife, swiftly unclasping the steel manacles that held her, but finding time for a glaring side-glance at me which expressed white-hot and concentrated rage. I didn't understand. Alicious previous spasms or seizures, though less violent than this, had been bad enough. Why should more eye me like that, when, if anyone had a right to be furious, it was I. The lights, moaned Burt against my vest. You turned on the lights and it hurt her. I've read that somewhere. Oh, Clay, why don't you do something to help her and make her stop that horrible screaming? More heard and turned again, snarling. You get out of here, Barber. You've done harm enough. Shant I—shant we call a doctor? I stammered. He didn't answer. But Alisha had subsided limply, a black heap in the chair, face on knees. The gurgling shrieks had lowered to a series of long, agonizing moans. I thought she was dying, and in a confused way I felt that both Roberta and Moore blamed me. The moans, too, had ceased. Was she dead? Now Moore was trying to lift his wife out of the chair and failing for some reason. Distinctively I pushed Roberta aside and moved to help him. And then, at last, that happened for which all the rest had been a prelude, for which my whole life had been a prelude as I was to learn one day. There came—how can I phrase it? It was not a darkness, for I saw. It was not a vacuum, for most certainly I, every one of us, continued to breathe. It was like—you know what happens sometimes in a thunderstorm? There is a hushed moment, when it is as if a mighty invisible being had drawn in its breath, not breath of air, but of force. If you live in the suburbs and have alternating current, the lights go out, as if the current had been sucked back. Static has the upper hand of kinetic. A moment and kinetic will rebel in a blinding, crashing river of fire from sky to earth. But till then, between earth and clouds, there is a tension so terrific that it gives the awful sense of a void. That happened in the room where we stood, though the force involved was not the physical one of electricity. There was the hushed moment, the sense of awful tension, of void, of strength sucked back like the current. Without knowing how, I became aware that all the life in the room was suddenly, dreadfully centralizing around one of us. That one was Alicia. I saw Moore move back from her. He had gone ghastly pale, and he waved his hands queerly. The straining sense of void, which was also centralization, increased. A numbness crept over me. The invisible had drawn in its breath of pure force, and my life was undoubtedly a part of it. There came a stirring of the black heap in the chair. Inexplicably I felt as well as saw it. As if, standing by the wall, I was also in the chair. Roberta shivered. She was out of my sight, standing slightly behind me, but I felt that too. No two of us there were in physical contact, and yet some strange interfusion of consciousness was linking us more closely than the physical. Again Alicia stirred. She crowed out inarticulately. The centralization was around her, but not by her will. I felt a surge of resentment that was not mine, but Alicia's. Then I knew that there were more than four of us present in the room. A fifth was here, invisible, strong, unifying the strength of us all for its own purpose, for a leap across the intangible barriers and into the living world. Numbness was on me, cold dread, and a sense of some danger peculiarly personal to myself. It was coming. Now, now. With another cry Alicia shot suddenly erect. Her arms went out in a wide sweep that seemed to be struggling in an attempt to push something from her. Serapion, she cried, and—you! Back! Go back! Go back! Go back! Oh, you, Serapion! When kinetic revolts against static, blinding fire results. The tension in that room let go as suddenly as the lightning stroke, though I was the only one to feel it fully. My body reeled against the wall. My spirit, I, the ego, reeled with it, beyond it, down, down, into darkness absolute, and into a nullity deeper than darkness's self. End of Chapter 5 Chapter 6 of Serapion by Francis Stevens This is a Libervox recording. All Libervox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libervox.org. Serapion. Chapter 6 The Power of a Name. Speed. In outer space there is room for it and necessity. Between our sun and the nearest star, where one may grow warm again, there is a space that a light ray needs centuries to cross. The cold is cruel, and a wind blows there more biting than the winds of earth. Little cold stars rush by like far separated lamps on a country road, and double meteors, twin blazing eyes, swing down through the long black reaches. It is hard to avoid these when they sweep so close, and one's hands are numb on the steering wheel. But one can't slow for that, nor can even for a frightened voice at one's elbow, pleading, protesting, begging for the slowness that will let the cold overtake and annihilate us. The cold, I shouted against the wind. Cold! Well, if you're cold, wailed the harassed voice. Why don't you slow down? Clay, Clayton Barber, I'll never ride again in a car with you, Clayton, if you don't slow down! Another pair of twin meteors rushed curving toward us. We avoided them, kept our course by the fraction of a safe margin, and as we did so, the limitless vistas of interstellar space seemed to close in sharply and solidify. Infinite shrank to finite with the jolt of a collision, and it was almost a real one. I swung to the left and barely avoided the tail of a farmer's wagon, ambling sedately along the road ahead of us. Then I not only slowed, but stopped, while the wagon creaked prosaically by. I sat at the wheel of a motor-car, my own car, and that was Roberta Whittingfield beside me. Sixty miles an hour, she was saying indignantly. You haven't touched the siren once, and you were sitting so that I can't get at it. I was very fortunate that Mother didn't come. She would never let me ride with you again. I said nothing. Desperately, I was trying to adjust the unadjustable. This road was real, the numbness and chill were passing, and the air of a summer night blew warm on my cheek. That wild rush of the spirit through space was already fading into place as a dream memory. But there had been some kind of an hiatus in realities. My last definite memory was of Alisha Moore, Alisha, upright, rebellious, crying out a name. Serapion. Clay, a note of concern, had replaced Roberta's indignation. Why do you sit there so still? Answer me. Are you ill? What is the matter? Nothing. It was a lie, of course, but instinctive as self-protection. I must get straight somehow, but I wouldn't confide the need even to Roberta. In the most ordinary tone I apologized for my reckless driving and started the car again. We were on a familiar road outside the city, but one that would take us by roundabout ways to our home in the suburbs. I drove slowly, for it was very necessary that Roberta should talk. By listening I might be able to get straight without betraying myself, and indeed before we reached home I had a fairly clear idea of what had happened in the blank interim. A first wild surmise that the more episode had been a dream in its entirety was banished almost at once, as nearly as I could gather without direct questioning, from the time I reeled back against the wall until my return to self-consciousness some sixty minutes later, I had behaved so normally in outward appearance that not even Roberta had seen a difference. My body had evidently not fallen to the floor, nor showed any signs of fainting or swoon. Alicia seemed to have returned to her senses at the same time that I lost mine, for Roberta spoke of her hostess's quiet air of indifference that amounted almost to scorn for the concern that we, Burt and I, mind you, expressed for her. More, for his part it seemed, had recovered his temper and been rather apologetic and anxious that I, at least, should repeat my visit. I had been noncommittal on the subject, for which Roberta now commended me, and then we had come away together. After that, the hallucination I had suffered, of myself as a disembodied entity, careering from one planetary system to another, had synchronized with an actual career in the car, where road lamps simulated stars and occasional motors traveling in the opposite direction provided the stimuli for my dream meteors. A man hypnotized might have done what I did, and as successfully. To myself then, I said that I had been hypnotized. That in a manner yet to be explained, either Moore or his wife had hypnotized me and allowed me to leave their house under that influence. I tried to determine what reckoning I should have with them later. But it was a failure. I was frankly scared. An hour had been jerked bodily out of my conscious life. If, in the ordinary and orthodox manner, I had lain insensible through that hour, it wouldn't have mattered so much. Instead of that, an eye that was not I appeared to have taken charge of my affairs, and in such a manner that a person very near and dear to me had perceived nothing wrong. It was that which frightened me. As the last traces of days and shock released my mind, the instinct to keep its lapse of secret only grew stronger. Fortunately, I found concealment easy. Speeding was not so far from my occasional habit that Roberta had thought much of that part of the episode. Her vigorous protest had been largely on account of my failure to use the siren. Dropping that subject with her usual quick good nature, she talked of our remarkable first experience with a real medium, and disclosed the fact, not surprising perhaps, that she had been considerably less impressed than I. In retrospect, she blamed her own nerves for most of the excitement. I may be unfair, Clay, she confided, but truly I can't help believing that Mrs. Moore is just a clever, hysterical woman who has deluded poor Mr. Moore into a faith in spirit voices. The black hand, the little flames? Do we really see them? Don't you think the woman may have some kind of hypnotic power, like, oh, like the mango trick that everybody's heard they do in India? You know, a tree grows right up out of the ground while you watch. But it doesn't, really, of course. You're hypnotized, and only think you see it. Couldn't everything we saw and heard tonight have been a kind of hypnotic trick? And now, with all the screaming and fushy it made, Mrs. Moore was so calm and cool when we left. I think it was all put on, and the rest was hypnotism. You're a very clever little girl, Bobby, I commended, and met it. If there was one thing I wished to believe, it was that Alicia Moore had faked. We knew nearly as little about hypnotism as we did of psychic phenomena, real, or so-called. But the word had a good sound to me. I had been hypnotized. Hypnotized. That fifth presence in the room had existed only in my own overborn imagination. The whole affair was... Bertie, I said. We've been through a highly unpleasant experience, and it's my fault. Nils warned me against those people, but I was stubborn mule enough to believe I wished to know more of them. I don't, and we don't, you and I. The truth is, girly, I feel pretty foolish over the whole business. Had no right to take you to such a place. Downright dangerous. Queer, irresponsible people like that. Say, do you mind not telling Kathy, for instance? If you won't tell mother? She giggled. I could picture myself relating that weird and unconventional tale to the stately St. Sicilian. Up went my right hand. Hear me swear. I, Clayton S. Barber, do solemnly vow silence. Full name, or it isn't legal, trill the girl beside me. Oh, very well. I, Clayton Serapian Barber, do... I stopped with a tightening of the throat. As the word Serapian passed my lips, the fifth presence had shut down close about me. Out of space, time, wrapped away in cloudy envelopes of oblivion. Clayton! A clear young voice out of the clouds. They shriveled to nothing, and I was loose to my world again. Why, Clayton! repeated Roberta. How did that woman know your middle name? My right hand dropped to the wheel, and the car leaped forward. Did you tell her? insisted Roberta. No, I answered shortly. Burquess told more, I suppose. How do I know? Someone must have told her. Bert agreed. It isn't as if it were an ordinary name that she might have hit on by guesswork. Oh, it isn't so unusual. There have been men of that name in my mother's family for generations. I was given the name and remembrance of my mother's brother. He died only a few months before I was born, and she had cared a lot for me. But don't let us talk of the name any more. I always hated it. Sounds silly, like a girl's name. I—I—I'll forget the name. Here we are at home, and there's your mother in the window looking for us. We're awfully late. Tell her the Moors were very interesting people. I suggested grimly. That night, though I slept, Alicia Moore and the Fifth Presence, in various unpleasant shapes, haunted me through some exceedingly restless hours. End of Chapter 6 Chapter 7 of Serapien by Francis Stevens This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Serapien Chapter 7 The Coming of the Face That a man may retire to his bed unknown and wake up famous is a truism of long standing. There is a parallel truth, not half so pleasant. A man, a whole family, may retire wealthy and wake up poppers. My father was the practically inactive senior member of his firm, and the reins had so far left his hands that when the blow fell it was hard for him to get a grasp on the situation or even credit it. Rather shockingly, the first word we had of disaster came through the morning paper in a Blair-headed column announcing the suicide of Frederick Hutchinson. Suicide without attempt at concealment. A scrub woman, entering the private offices of Barbara and Hutchinson early that morning, had fairly trotted in the junior partner's scattered brains. There followed a week of torment, of sordid revelations and ever-increasing despair. A week that left dad a shaken, tremulous old man, and the firm of Barbara and Hutchinson, grain brokers, an unpleasant problem to be dealt with by the receivers. Dad had known his partner for a clever man, and no doubt he was formerly a trustable one. But when the disease called speculation takes late root, its run is likely to be more virulent than in a younger victim. All Hutchinson's personal estate had been absorbed. His family were left in worse predicament than ours, or would have been, save that dad's peculiar sense of honor cast every part, independent of the firm, into the pit where that firm's honor had vanished. Unfortunately, he possessed not nearly enough to satisfy the creditors and re-establish the business. As my mother pointed out, the disgrace that had been all Fred Hutchinson's was now dad's for impoverishing his family, when, under the terms of partnership and the law of our state, most of his personal investments and realty could have been held free from liability. And to that dad had only one, and to my mind, somewhat appalling reply. Let Clay go to work in earnest, then. Perhaps some day my son will clear the state of what scores I fail to settle. Well, great God! Can a young fellow carefully train to have everything he wants without trying turn financial genius in a week? If it hadn't been for Roberta, I think I should have thrown up the sponge and fairly run away from it all. Her faith, though, stirred a quart of ambition that those of my own blood failed to touch, and her stately Charlestonian mother emerged from stateliness into surprising sympathy. Then, Dick Vansetart, the unregenerate youngster who had been my dearest pal in college days, got me a job with the Colossus Trust Company, the bank of which his father was president, and where he himself loafed about intermittently. Even I knew that the salary offered was more commensurate with our needs than with what I was worth. Vansetart Sr., a gruff old lion of a man, growled at me through a personal interview which ended in, You won't earn your salt for six months, Barber, but maybe turn can put up with you. Try it anyway. Turn was the second vice president, whose assistants or secretary or general errand boy it was proposed that I become. I reached for my hat. Sorry to have bothered you, Mr. Vansetart. I would hardly care to receive pay except on the basis that it was earned. The lion roared. Sit down. Don't you try Dick's high mannerisms with me. If I can tolerate Dick in this bank, I can tolerate you, but there's going to be one difference. You'll play the man and work till you do earn your wages, or you'll go out. Understand? I merely met, never mind that. The savage countenance before me softened to a Leonine benevolence. Clayton Barber's son wants no charity. But you young fool, don't I know that? Your father has swamped himself to pay debts that weren't his. Now I choose to pay a debt that isn't mine, but Dick's. I must have looked, my bewilderment. I mean, he thundered, that when my son was expelled from the college he disgraced, he nearly took you with him. You cubs believe you carry your shame on your own shoulders. You never think of us. I've crossed the street three times to avoid meeting your father. I earn your wages here so that I can shake hands with him next time. Here, take this note to Mr. Turn. His office is next to cashiers. Go to work. I went, but outside the door found Van waiting for me, smiling ironically. You heard, I muttered. Not being stone deaf, yes. The Governor doesn't mind publicity where I am concerned, eh? Interested passers by in the street might hear for all he cares. Oh, well, truth is mighty and must prevail. Wish you luck, Clay, and there's fatty turn coming now. So long. I was left to present my note to a dignified person who had just emerged from the cashier's office. Fatty was a merciless nickname for him and unfair, besides. The Second Vice President's large figure suggested strength rather than overindulgence. Beneath his dignity he proved a kindly, not domineering man, much overworked himself, but patient with early mistakes from a new helper. He shared one stenographer with another official, and seemed actually grateful when I offered to learn shorthand during spare hours in order to be of more use with correspondence. I was quite infected with the work fever for a while, and saw little of Van, who let me severely alone from the first day I entered the bank. His new standoffishness didn't please me exactly, but I was too busy to think much of him one way or the other. At home, however, things went not so well. Since the house had been sold over our heads, we were forced into painfully small quarters. There was a little place nearby that belonged to my mother. It had stood empty for a year, and though not much better than a cottage, her ownership of it solved the rent problem, and, as she bitterly explained, we no longer needed servants' rooms nor space for the entertainment of guests. Mother and Kathy undertook the housework, while Dad fooled about with paint pots and the like, trying to delude himself into the belief that paint, varnish, and a few new shelves here and there would make a real home for us out of this wretched shack, for that is what Kathy and I called it privately. All the problems of home life had taken on new, ugly, uncomfortable angles, and I spent as little time among them as I decently could. Roberta had no more complaints to make of sixty miles an hour and never touched the siren. My car had gone with the rest. We went on sedate little walks, like a country pair, tried to prefer movies to grand opera, and piled up heartbreaking dream castles for consolation. Two months slid by, and in that while our adventure at the dead alive house, as Roberta had named Moore's place, was hardly mentioned between us. Once or twice indeed she referred to it, but there was for me an oppressive distastefulness in the subject that made me lead our conversations elsewhere. On the very heels of Barbara and Hutchinson's catastrophic passing I had received a brief note from Moore. He expressed concern and sympathy, adding, in the same breath as it were, that he hoped I had been well enough interested in the other evening to wish to walk further along the path of psychical research. I regarded his concern as impertinent and his hope as impudent, considering my unpleasant memories of the first visit. I tore the letter up without answering it. After that I heard no more from him, and it was not until the second month's ending that a thing occurred which forced the whole matter vividly upon my recollection. If dear Serapien had not been taken from us, said my mother, we should be living in a civilized manner, with my children and I not having been driven to actual labor with our hands. Dad kept his eyes on his plate, refraining from answer. He had been guilty of an ill-advised criticism on Kathy's cooking, and from that discussion had run through all the ramifications of domestic misery, until I was tempted to leave dinner unfinished and escape to my usual refuge, the Whittingfields. But the mention of my uncle's name had a peculiar effect on me. A slight swimming sensation behind the eyes, a gripping tightness at the back of the neck. Serapien. The feeling passed, but left me trembling so that I remained in my place, fearing to rise lest I betray myself. As before, some deep seated instinct fought that. The weakness was like a shameful wound, to be at all costs hidden. Had he lived, continued my mother, he would have seen to it that we weren't brought to this. No one near poor Serapien was ever allowed to be uncomfortable. Dad's eyes flashed up with a glint of spirit that he had never before showed in this connection. Is that so? I know he kept remarkably comfortable himself, but I can't recall his feathering anyones nest but his own. Don't slander the dead, came her sharp retort. Why, you owe the very house over your head to him. And if it hadn't been that his thoughtfulness left it in my name, you wouldn't have that. You would have robbed your children and me of even this pitiful shelter. Evelyn, please. It's true, and then you dare cast slurs and innuendos at my dead brother. I gave him the house in the first place, dad muttered. She rose, eyes flashing, and filled with tears. Yes, you did, and this shameful little hole was all he had to live in, and die in. Serapien was a saint, she declared. A saint? He was. He was universally loved. And with that my mother swept from the room. Kathy followed, though with a sneaking glance of sympathy for dad. Tempestuous exits on mother's part had been frequent as far back as I could remember, and as they were invariably followed by hours in which someone must bathe her head with cologne and the house be kept dead silent, we other three had the fellow feeling of victims. Dad eyed me across the table. Son, he said, what is your middle name? Sir... Sir... Samuel, I ended desperately. My heart, for no obvious reason, had begun a furious palpitation. Why couldn't they let me name alone? He looked surprised and then laughed. You are right, son. I was about to give you warning, to forbid your becoming such a saint as your esteemed namesake. But I guess that isn't needed. The Samuels of the world stand on their own feet as you do now, thank God. A Samuel for the Serapien in you then and never forget it. I won't, sir. He could not guess the frantic struggle going on beneath my calm exterior. There is, I believe, a psychopathic condition in which sound waves produce visual sensations. A musical note, for example, being seen as a blob of scarlet or the sustained blast of a bugle as a ribbony orange-colored streak. Some such confusion of the senses seemed to have occurred in me, only, in my case, one single sound produced it, and the result was not color, but a feeling of pressure, dizziness, suffocation. Fighting for control, I knew that another iteration of the sound in question would cost me the battle. Dad's mouth opened, and simultaneously I rose. Opinions on my uncle's character, pro or con, didn't interest me half as much as the problem of excusing myself in a steady voice, walking from table to doorway without a stagger, and finally escaping from that room before the fatal name could be spoken again. These feats accomplished. I managed to get up the stairs and into my own room, where I locked the door and dropped face downward across the bed. Though the evening was cool, my whole body was drenched in sweat, and my brain reeled sickeningly. One may get help from queer sources. Van, in our gay junior year, his last at college, had initiated me into a device for keeping steady when the last drink has been one too many. You mentally recite a poem or speech or the multiplication table, any old thing will do. Fixing the mind in that way seems to soothe the gyrating interior, and enables a fellow at least to fall asleep like a gentleman. In my present distress that came back to me. Still fighting off the unknown with one half of my mind, I scrambled around in the other half for some definite memorization to take hold of. There was none. The very multiplication table swam a jumble of numbers. Then I caught a rhyme beginning in the back of my head, and fixed my attention on it feverishly. Over and over the words said themselves, first halting ly, then with increasing certainty. It was a simple jingling little prayer that every child in the English-speaking world, I suppose, has learned past forgetfulness. Now I lay me down to sleep. Again, again, by the tenth repetition of I pray the Lord my soul to take, I had wrenched my mind away from that other, and had its whole attention on the rhyme. At last, following a paroxysm of trembling, I knew myself the victor. Once more, the fifth presence had released me. Panting and weak from reaction, I sat up. What ailed me? How, in reason and common sense, could the sound of any man's name have this effect on me? Hypnotism? Nearly two months had elapsed since my first trouble of this kind, and without recurrence in the interim. No, and come to think of it, I couldn't recall having heard the name spoken in that while either. Serapian. It was only when uttered aloud that the word had power over me. I could think of it without any evil effect. And that name on a leach's lips had been my last vivid impression before I lost self-consciousness, and walked out of Moore's house an intelligent automaton for sixty minutes after. Scraps of psychology came back to me. Hypnotism. Hypnotic suggestion. Could a man be shocked into hypnotic sleep, awaken, and weeks later be swayed by a sound that had accompanied the first lapse? One way I set myself very firmly. In cool judgment I was no believer in ghosts. Whatever the explanation it had nothing to do with my uncle, Impropria persona. The very thought brought a smile to my lips. He had died before I was born. But though Dad had for some reason disliked him, by all accounts my namesake had been a genial, easygoing, agreeable gentleman, rather characterless perhaps, and inclined to let the other fellow work, but not a man whose spirit could be imagined as a halfway-efficient haunt. Serapian. No, and neither would he probably have flung away his own and his family's comfort for a point of fine-drawn honour. Was Dad in the right? I had tried to reserve criticism there, and in action I had certainly backed him to the limit. Inevitably, though from yet far off, I could see the loss of Roberta grinding down upon me. She couldn't wait my convenience forever, you know. Some other fellow, some free, unburden chap. I buried my head in my hands. Then I dropped them and sprang erect every nerve alert. I had closed my eyes, and in that instant a face had leaped into being behind their shut lids. The face was not Roberta's, though I had been thinking of her. Moreover, it had lacked any dream-like quality. It had come real, real as if the man had entered my bedroom and thrust his face close to mine. As my eyes flicked open, it had vanished, leaving me quivering with a strange resentment, an anger as if some intimate privacy had been invaded. I stood with clenched fists, more angry than amazed at first, but not daring to shut my eyes lest it return. What had there been about the queer vision that was so loathsome? The face of a man around forty years it had seemed, smooth shaven, boyish in a manner, with a little inward twist at the mouth corners, and amused slinas to the clear, light-blue eyes. The face of an easy going, take life's jokes as they come, sort of fellow, amiable, pleasant, and in some indefinite fashion, horrible. I was sure I had never seen the man in real life, though there had been a vague familiarity about him too. About him. A dream. A vision. Clayton Barber, I muttered through shut teeth. If it has reached the point where a word throws you into spasms and you are afraid to close your eyes, you better consult a doctor. And that is exactly what I shall do. End of Chapter 7