The Horla (6 page)

—February 17, 1885

The eminent Dr. Marrande, most renowned of alienists, had asked three of his colleagues and four

scholars, who worked in the natural sciences, to come spend an hour at his residence, the sanatorium

he directed, to show them one of his patients.

As soon as his friends were assembled, he told them, “I am going to set before you the strangest and most unsettling case I have ever encountered. Moreover, I have nothing to tell you about my client. He will speak for himself.” Then the doctor rang. An orderly ushered in a man. He was very thin, as thin as a corpse, as thin as certain madmen who are eaten away by a thought, for a sick thought can devour the body’s flesh more than fever or consumption.

When he had greeted everyone and sat down, he started.

Gentlemen, I know why you are gathered here today, and I am ready to tell you my story, just as my friend Dr. Marrande has asked me. For a long time he thought I was mad. Today he is not sure. In a little while, you will all know that I have as healthy, as lucid, as perceptive a mind as your own, unfortunately for me, and for you, and for all of humanity.

But I want to begin with the facts themselves, with the simple facts. Here they are:

I am forty-two years old. I am not married; my wealth is enough to live with a certain luxury. I was living on my estate on the shores of the Seine, in Biessard, near Rouen. I love hunting and fishing. Behind me, beyond the great rocks that tower above my house, I had one of the most beautiful forests in France, the forest of Roumare, and in front of me one of the finest rivers in the world.

My house is immense, painted white on the outside, handsome, ancient, in the middle of a large garden planted with magnificent trees that stretches to the forest, climbing the enormous rocks I just mentioned.

My staff consists, or rather consisted, of a coachman, a gardener, a valet, a cook, and a laundress, who was also a kind of housekeeper. All these people had lived in my home anywhere from ten to sixteen years;
they knew me, knew my house, the countryside, all that surrounded me in my life. They were good, contented servants. That is important for what I am about to tell you.

Let me add that the Seine, which runs alongside my garden, is navigable as far as Rouen, as I’m sure you know. Every day I would see great ships pass by, under sail or steam, coming from all the corners of the world.

A year ago, last Fall, I was suddenly overcome with peculiar and inexplicable feelings of uneasiness. At first it was a sort of nervous anxiety that kept me awake for whole nights at a time. I was so hypersensitive that the least sound made me tremble. My mood turned bitter. I had sudden, inexplicable rages. I called a doctor, who prescribed potassium bromide and showers.

So morning and evening I made myself take showers, and I began to take the bromide. Soon, in fact, I did begin to sleep again, but the sleep was more terrifying than the insomnia. As soon as I went to bed, I closed my eyes and was annihilated. Yes, I fell into the void, into an absolute void, into a death of my entire being from which I was suddenly, horribly jolted by the dreadful feeling of a crushing weight on my chest, and of a mouth that was eating up my life, on my mouth. The shock of it—I’ve never known anything more horrible.

Imagine to yourselves a man asleep, who has been murdered, and who wakes up with a knife in his
throat; and who moans covered with blood, who can no longer breathe, who will die, but who doesn’t understand why—that’s what it’s like.

I kept getting steadily, alarmingly thinner. One day I noticed that my coachman, who had been quite fat, was beginning to grow thin like me.

Finally I asked him:

“What is wrong with you, Jean? You are sick.”

He replied:

“I do believe I’ve caught the same illness as Monsieur. My nights are eating up my days.”

I thought at the time that there was a feverish influence in the house because of the proximity of the river, and that I should go away for two or three months, even though we were in the middle of hunting season. But then a small, peculiar fact, observed by chance, brought about such an unlikely, fantastic, and terrifying series of discoveries for me that I stayed home.

I was thirsty one evening, and drank half a glass of water; I noticed that my carafe, standing on the chest of drawers opposite my bed, was full up to the crystal stopper.

During the night, I had one of those dreadful awakenings I’ve just told you about. I lit my candle, prey to terrible anxiety, and when I went to take another drink of water I saw with astonishment that my carafe was empty. I couldn’t believe my eyes.
Either someone had entered my bedroom, or I had become a sleepwalker.

The next evening, I wanted to perform the same test. So I locked my door in order to be sure no one could penetrate my room. I went to sleep and woke up as I did every night.
Someone
had drunk all the water that I had seen two hours before.

Who
had drunk this water? Myself, no doubt, and yet I was certain, absolutely certain, that I hadn’t made a movement in my deep and painful sleep.

So I resorted to tricks to convince myself that I was not performing these acts unconsciously. One evening I placed, next to the carafe, a bottle of old Bordeaux, a glass of milk (which I hate), and some chocolate cakes (which I love).

The wine and cakes remained intact. The milk and water disappeared. Every day, then, I changed the drinks and the food. Never did
someone
touch the solid, thick foods, and, as to liquids,
someone
drank nothing but fresh milk and above all water.

But this heartbreaking doubt remained in my soul. Couldn’t I be the one who was getting up without being aware of it, and who was drinking even the things I disliked, since my senses, numbed by somnambulistic sleep, might be changed, might have lost their ordinary dislikes and acquired different tastes?

So I used a new trick against myself. I wrapped strips of white muslin on all the objects that would
certainly have to be touched, and I covered them all with a cotton napkin.

Then, when it was time for me to go to bed, I smeared my hands, lips, and moustache with graphite.

When I woke up, all the objects remained spotless, although someone had touched them, for the napkin was not placed as I had left it; and, moreover, someone had drunk the water and the milk. Yet my door, which I had shut with a safety lock, and my shutters, padlocked as a precaution, would have kept anyone out of the room.

Then I asked myself the overwhelming question: Who was there, every night, close to me?

I sense, gentlemen, that I am telling you all of this too quickly. You are smiling, your opinion has already been formed: “He is a madman.” I should have described to you at length my emotions, the emotions of a man who, locked up at home, with a healthy mind, sees, through the glass of a carafe, a little water that has vanished while he slept. I should have made you understand this torture renewed every night and every morning, and that invincible sleep, and those even more dreadful awakenings.

But I will go on.

All of a sudden, the miracle stopped.
Someone
no longer touched anything in my room. It was over. I was feeling better. My happiness returned, when I learned that one of my neighbors, Monsieur Legite,
was in just the same condition that I had been in myself. I believed again in a feverish influence in the countryside. My coachman had left me a month ago, very ill.

The winter passed, and spring began. One morning, as I was walking near my rose garden, I saw, I distinctly saw, quite close to me, the stem of one of the most beautiful roses break as if an invisible hand had picked it. Then the flower followed the curve an arm would have described as it carried it to a mouth, where it remained suspended in the transparent air, all alone, motionless, terrifying, three feet from my eyes.

Seized with mad horror, I hurled myself on it to seize it. I found nothing. It had disappeared. Then I was overcome with a furious rage against myself. A reasonable and serious man cannot permit himself such hallucinations!

But was it indeed a hallucination? I looked for the stem. I found it immediately on the bush, freshly broken, between two other roses that had remained on the branch; for there had been three of them, as I had seen perfectly.

I returned home, my soul in turmoil. Gentlemen, listen to me, I am calm; I did not believe in the supernatural, I do not even believe in it today; but, from that moment onward, I was sure, sure as I am of day and night, that there existed near me an invisible being who had haunted me, then left me, and who was returning.

A little later I had proof of this.

Among my servants every day furious arguments broke out for a hundred reasons that seemed trivial at first, but soon were full of meaning for me.

A glass, a beautiful Venetian glass, broke all by itself, on the hutch in my dining room, in the middle of the day.

The valet accused the cook, who accused the laundress, who accused I don’t know who.

Doors that had been closed at night were open in the morning. Someone was stealing the milk every night from the pantry.

What was it? What was its nature? A nervous curiosity, mixed with anger and horror, kept me day and night in a state of constant agitation.

But the house grew calm once again. I was beginning to believe it was all a dream, when the following happened:

It was July 20th, at nine o’clock in the evening. It was very hot out; I had left my window wide open, my lamp lit on my table, illuminating a volume of Musset’s poems opened to his “May Night”; I had stretched out in a big armchair and fallen asleep.

I slept for about forty minutes, then opened my eyes, without making any movement, awakened by some strange, confused emotion. At first I saw nothing, then all of a sudden it seemed to me that a page of the book had just turned all by itself. No breath of
air had come in through the window. I was surprised and I waited. After about four minutes, I saw, I saw, yes, I saw, gentlemen, with my own eyes, another page lift itself and fall back on the preceding one as if a finger had turned it. The chair seemed empty, but I realized that it was there,
it
! I crossed my room in a single bound to seize it, to touch it, to grasp it, if that were possible … But the chair, before I could reach it, toppled over as if someone were fleeing from me; my lamp too fell and went out, the glass broken; and my window was slammed as if an some thief had seized it as he fled, striking at the latch …

I threw myself at the bell-pull and called out. When my valet appeared, I said to him:

“I’ve knocked everything over and broken everything. Give me some light.”

I slept no more that night. But I thought I might once again have been the plaything of an illusion. When one wakes up, one’s senses are still confused. Wasn’t it I who had knocked over my chair and my light, hurrying like a madman?

No, it was not me! I knew it so positively I didn’t doubt it for a second. And yet I wanted to believe it was me.

Wait. The Being. What should I call him? The Invisible. No, that’s not good enough. I baptized him the Horla. Why? I have no idea. The Horla, then, scarcely ever left me. Day and night I had the sensation,
the certainty, of the presence of this elusive neighbor, and I was certain too that he was taking my life, hour by hour, minute by minute.

The impossibility of seeing him exasperated me, so I kept all the lamps lit in my rooms, as if I could reveal him with all this brightness.

I saw him, finally.

You do not believe me. But I did see him. I was sitting in front of some book, not reading, but keeping watch, with all my overexcited senses, keeping watch for the one I felt so close to me. He was definitely there. But where? What was he doing? How could I reach him?

Across from me was my bed, an old oaken four-poster. To my right, the fireplace. To my left, the door, which I had carefully closed. Behind me, a very large wardrobe with a mirror I used every day to shave and get dressed, and in which I had the habit of looking at myself from head to foot every time I passed in front of it.

So I was pretending to read, in order to trick him, for he too was spying on me; and suddenly I felt, I was certain that he was reading over my shoulder, that he was there, grazing my ear.

I stood up, turning around so quickly that I almost fell over. You could see everything in the room as if in full daylight … but I did not see myself in my mirror! It was empty, clear, full of light. My image was not
inside it.… Yet I was facing it.… I saw the large glass, limpid from top to bottom! I watched it with panic-stricken eyes, and I no longer dared to move forward, feeling him between us, him, aware that he would escape me again, but that his imperceptible body had absorbed my reflection.

I was terrified. Then suddenly I began to see myself in a mist in the depths of the mirror, in a mist as if through a sheet of water; and it seemed to me that this water shimmered from left to right, slowly, making my image more precise from second to second. It was just like the end of an eclipse. What was hiding me did not seem to possess clearly defined outlines, but a sort of opaque transparency that little by little grew clearer.

Finally I was able to distinguish myself completely, just as I do every day when I look at myself.

I had seen him. The horror of it has remained with me, and makes me shudder still.

The next day I was here, where I begged them to keep me.

Now, gentlemen, I will conclude.

Dr. Marrande, after doubting me for a long time, finally decided to travel alone to my country.

“Three of my neighbors are currently affected just as I was. Isn’t that true?”

The doctor replied, “It’s true.”

“You advised them to leave out some water and milk every night in their bedroom to see if these liquids would disappear. Did these liquids disappear, as they did at my house?”

The doctor replied with a solemn gravity, “They disappeared.”

So, gentlemen, a Being, a new Being, who no doubt will soon multiply just as we have multiplied, has just appeared on Earth.