Maurice Level - Thirty Hours with a Corpse, and Other Tales of the Grand Guignol

Surprised, he asked:

“It is true I am deeply interested in your performance. But who has told you so?”

The man smiled:

“No one. I see you.”

“That is very surprising. At such a height at such a moment… your mind is sufficiently free to pick out the spectators down below?”

“Certainly not. I don’t see the spectators down below. It would be extremely dangerous for me to pay any attention to a crowd that moves and chatters. In all matters connected with my profession, in addition to the turn itself, its theory and practice, there is something else, a kind of trick…”

He started.

“A trick?”

“Don’t misunderstand me. I don’t mean trickery. I mean something of which the public has no suspicion, something that is perhaps the most delicate part of the whole performance. Shall I explain? Well, I accept it as a fact that it is not possible to empty the brain till it contains but one idea, impossible to keep the mind fixed on any one thought. As complete concentration is necessary, I choose in the hall some one object on which I fix my eyes. I see nothing but that object. From the second I have my gaze on it, nothing else exists. I get on the saddle. My hands gripping the bars, I think of nothing; neither of my balance, nor my direction. I am sure of my muscles; they are as firm as steel. There is only one part of me I am afraid of: my eyes. But once I have fixed them on something, I am sure of them as well. Now, the first night I performed here, it happened that my eyes fell on your box. I saw you. I saw nothing but you. Without knowing it, you caught and held my eyes… You became the point, the object of which I have told you. The second day I looked for you at the same place. The following days it was the same. And so it happens that now, as soon as I appear, by instinct my eyes turn to you. You help me; you are the precious aid indispensable to my performance. Now do you understand why I know you?”

Next day the maniac was in his usual seat. In the hall there were the usual movements and murmurs of keen anticipation. Suddenly a dense silence fell; that profound silence when you feel that an audience is holding its breath. The acrobat was on his machine, which was held by two men, waiting for the signal to set off. He was balanced to perfection, his hands grasping the bar, his head up, his gaze fixed straight ahead.

He cried “Hop!” and the men pushed him off.

Just at that moment, in the most natural way possible, the maniac rose, pushed back his seat, and went to one at the other side of the box. Then a terrible thing happened. The cyclist was thrown violently up in the air. His machine rushed forwards, flew up, and lurching out into the midst of the shrieks of terror that filled the hall, fell among the crowd.

With a methodical gesture the maniac put on his overcoat, smoothed his hat on the cuff of his sleeve, and went out.

“THEY SAY you are leaving us today, sir?” the cripple said to me. “I must. I have to be at Marseilles on Monday morning. I shall go by the 10:50 express tonight from the Gare de Lyon. It’s a good train… but you ought to know it—you were employed by the P. L. M. before you fell ill, weren’t you?”

He shut his eyes, and his face became suddenly very pale as he replied:

“Yes… I know it… too well…”

There were tears under his eyelids as, after a moment’s silence, he added:

“No one knows it as well as I do!…”

Thinking he was moved by regret for the work he was no longer able to do, I said:

“It must have been an interesting job. Fine work needing plenty of intelligence.”

He shuddered; his paralyzed body strained violently, and there was a look of horror in his eyes as he protested:

“Don’t say that, sir! Fine work? You mean work of terror and death… of horror and nightmare… Sir, I am nothing to you, but I am going to ask you a favor—don’t go by that train. Take any other train you like, but don’t go by the 10:50…”

“Why?” I queried smiling. “Are you superstitious?”

“I’m not superstitious… but I was the driver in charge of the express the day of the disaster of 24th July, 1894. I will tell you about it and you will understand…

“We left the Gare de Lyon at the usual time, and had been running about two hours. The day had been suffocatingly hot. In spite of the speed we were going at, the breeze that came to me on the platform was stifling, the heavy, sultry air that goes before a storm…

“All at once, as if an electric light had been switched off, everything went out in the sky. Not a star left. The moon gone, and great flashes of lightning cutting the night with a light clear enough to make the darkness that followed black as ink.

“I said to my stoker:

“‘We’re in for it! There’ll be a mighty downpour.’

“‘Not before time. I couldn’t stand this furnace much longer. You’ll have to keep your eyes peeled for the signals.’

“‘No fear. I can see right enough.’

“The thunder was so loud I couldn’t hear the hammering of the wheels, nor the exhaust of the engine. The rain still kept off and the storm came nearer. We were running right into it. It seemed as if we were running after it.

“You needn’t be a coward to feel a bit queer when you find yourself being hurled into a great storm on a monster of steel that rushes on like a madman.

“In front of us, quite close, a flash of lightning pierced the ground, and at the same time a terrible thunderclap sounded, then another, so violent that I shut my eyes and sank on my knees.

“I remained like that for some seconds, all of a heap, stunned, feeling as if I’d had a heavy blow on the back of the neck.

“At last I came to myself. I was still on my knees, my back against the partition of the platform. It seemed as if I had come back from hundreds of miles away. I tried to get up. Impossible. My legs were doubled under me, useless. I thought I must have broken something in my fall, but I felt no pain of any kind. I tried to help myself up with my hands… my arms were hanging powerless by my sides.

“There I was, stupefied, with the extraordinary feeling that my arms and legs didn’t belong to me; that I had no command over them… that they refused to obey me… that they were things with no more life in them than my clothes which the draught was blowing about… Some power I didn’t understand prevented my opening my eyes.

“We were running full speed. The storm was still raging, but not so violently, further away. It began to rain. I heard it hissing on the steel, and I felt the warm drops on my face.

“Suddenly something in me relaxed and I felt all right again, quite well, just a little tired. I remembered where I was and my work, and that brought me back to realities with a jerk, and not yet understanding what had happened, why I felt as if I were paralyzed, I called to my stoker to help me to get up.

“No reply.

“The noise is deafening on an engine going at full speed. I shouted louder:

“‘François! Hullo there, François! Give me a hand.’

“Still no reply. Then an awful fear gripped me. Fear of what? I didn’t know, but the shock of it made me open my eyes and give a yell. It was a yell of terror, and there was every reason for it.

“The platform was empty. My stoker had disappeared.

“In one second I understood exactly what had happened.

“The flash of lightning had struck us; it had killed the stoker and he had fallen out on the line. I—I was paralyzed…

“No, sir, not even if I were a great scholar and searched and searched for words, could I give you an idea of the horror I felt. The mate who ought to have been beside me, able to help me, had disappeared as if by magic, and behind me two hundred passengers were sleeping or chatting peacefully in their carriages with no suspicion that they were being whirled onwards in a mad rush to certain death. For the man in charge of the train, their driver, was a helpless mass, unable to stretch out an arm, paralyzed… a cripple… Me!…