Joseph Le Fanu - The Watcher, and other weird stories

As Barton continued, his agitation became so vehement that the divine was shocked and even alarmed. The wild and excited rapidity with which he spoke, and, above all, the indefinable horror which stamped his features, afforded a contrast to his ordinary cool and unimpassioned self-possession, striking and painful in the last degree.

“My dear sir,” said Doctor Macklin, after a brief pause, “I fear you have been suffering much, indeed; but I venture to predict that the depression under which you labour will be found to originate in purely physical causes, and that with a change of air and the aid of a few tonics, your spirits will return, and the tone of your mind be once more cheerful and tranquil as heretofore. There was, after all, more truth than we are quite willing to admit in the classic theories which assigned the undue predominance of any one affection of the mind to the undue action or torpidity of one or other of our bodily organs. Believe me, that a little attention to diet, exercise, and the other essentials of health, under competent direction, will make you as much yourself as you can wish.”

“Doctor Macklin,” said Barton, with something like a shudder, “I cannot delude myself with such a hope. I have no hope to cling to but one, and that is, that by some other spiritual agency more potent than that which tortures me, it may be combated, and I delivered. If this may not be, I am lost – now and for ever lost.”

“But, Mr. Barton, you must remember,” urged his companion, “that others have suffered as you have done, and – ”

“No, no, no,” interrupted he with irritability; “no, sir, I am not a credulous – far from a superstitious man. I have been, perhaps, too much the reverse – too sceptical, too slow of belief; but unless I were one whom no amount of evidence could convince, unless I were to contemn the repeated, the perpetual evidence of my own senses, I am now – now at last constrained to believe I have no escape from the conviction, the overwhelming certainty, that I am haunted and dogged, go where I may, by – by a Demon.”

There was an almost preternatural energy of horror in Barton’s face, as, with its damp and death-like lineaments turned towards his companion, he thus delivered himself.

“God help you, my poor friend!” said Doctor Macklin, much shocked. “God help you; for, indeed, you are a sufferer, however your sufferings may have been caused.”

“Ay, ay, God help me,” echoed Barton sternly; “but will He help me? will He help me?”

“Pray to Him; pray in an humble and trusting spirit,” said he.

“Pray, pray,” echoed he again; “I can’t pray; I could as easily move a mountain by an effort of my will. I have not belief enough to pray; there is something within me that will not pray. You prescribe impossibilities – literal impossibilities.”

“You will not find it so, if you will but try,” said Doctor Macklin.

“Try! I have tried, and the attempt only fills me with confusion and terror. I have tried in vain, and more than in vain. The awful, unutterable idea of eternity and infinity oppresses and maddens my brain, whenever my mind approaches the contemplation of the Creator; I recoil from the effort, scared, confounded, terrified. I tell you, Doctor Macklin, if I am to be saved, it must be by other means. The idea of the Creator is to me intolerable; my mind cannot support it.”

“Say, then, my dear sir,” urged he, “say how you would have me serve you. What you would learn of me. What can I do or say to relieve you?”

“Listen to me first,” replied Captain Barton, with a subdued air, and an evident effort to suppress his excitement; “listen to me while I detail the circumstances of the terrible persecution under which my life has become all but intolerable – a persecution which has made me fear death and the world beyond the grave as much as I have grown to hate existence.”

Barton then proceeded to relate the circumstances which we have already detailed, and then continued, —

“This has now become habitual – an accustomed thing. I do not mean the actual seeing him in the flesh; thank God, that at least is not permitted daily. Thank God, from the unutterable horrors of that visitation I have been mercifully allowed intervals of repose, though none of security; but from the consciousness that a malignant spirit is following and watching me wherever I go, I have never, for a single instant, a temporary respite: I am pursued with blasphemies, cries of despair, and appalling hatred; I hear those dreadful sounds called after me as I turn the corners of streets; they come in the night-time while I sit in my chamber alone; they haunt me everywhere, charging me with hideous crimes, and – great God! – threatening me with coming vengeance and eternal misery! Hush! do you hear that ?” he cried, with a horrible smile of triumph. “There – there, will that convince you?”

The clergyman felt the chillness of horror irresistibly steal over him, while, during the wail of a sudden gust of wind, he heard, or fancied he heard, the half articulate sounds of rage and derision mingling in their sough.

“Well, what do you think of that ?” at length Barton cried, drawing a long breath through his teeth.

“I heard the wind,” said Doctor Macklin; “what should I think of it? What is there remarkable about it?”

“The prince of the powers of the air,” muttered Barton, with a shudder.

“Tut, tut! my dear sir!” said the student, with an effort to reassure himself; for though it was broad daylight, there was nevertheless something disagreeably contagious in the nervous excitement under which his visitor so obviously suffered. “You must not give way to those wild fancies: you must resist those impulses of the imagination.”

“Ay, ay; ‘resist the devil, and he will flee from thee,’” said Barton, in the same tone; “but how resist him? Ay, there it is: there is the rub. What — what am I to do? What can I do?”

“My dear sir, this is fancy,” said the man of folios; “you are your own tormentor.”

“No, no, sir; fancy has no part in it,” answered Barton, somewhat sternly. “Fancy, forsooth! Was it that made you , as well as me, hear, but this moment, those appalling accents of hell? Fancy, indeed! No, no.”

“But you have seen this person frequently,” said the ecclesiastic; “why have you not accosted or secured him? Is it not somewhat precipitate, to say no more, to assume, as you have done, the existence of preternatural agency, when, after all, everything may be easily accountable, if only proper means were taken to sift the matter.”

“There are circumstances connected with this – this appearance ,” said Barton, “which it were needless to disclose, but which to me are proofs of its horrible and unearthly nature. I know that the being who haunts me is not man . I say I know this; I could prove it to your own conviction.” He paused for a minute, and then added, “And as to accosting it, I dare not – I could not! When I see it I am powerless; I stand in the gaze of death, in the triumphant presence of preterhuman power and malignity; my strength, and faculties, and memory all forsake me. Oh, God! I fear, sir, you know not what you speak of. Mercy, mercy! heaven have pity on me!”

He leaned his elbow on the table, and passed his hand across his eyes, as if to exclude some image of horror, muttering the last words of the sentence he had just concluded, again and again.

“Dr. Macklin,” he said, abruptly raising himself, and looking full upon the clergyman with an imploring eye, “I know you will do for me whatever may be done. You know now fully the circumstances and the nature of the mysterious agency of which I am the victim. I tell you I cannot help myself; I cannot hope to escape; I am utterly passive. I conjure you, then, to weigh my case well, and if anything may be done for me by vicarious supplication, by the intercession of the good, or by any aid or influence whatsoever, I implore of you, I adjure you in the name of the Most High, give me the benefit of that influence, deliver me from the body of this death! Strive for me; pity me! I know you will; you cannot refuse this; it is the purpose and object of my visit. Send me away with some hope, however little – some faint hope of ultimate deliverance, and I will nerve myself to endure, from hour to hour, the hideous dream into which my existence is transformed.”