روح زده

CHAPTER TWO

A Haunted

At that moment we heard thunder outside. I went to the window and saw some dark storm clouds in the sky.

‘Where was I?’ Haldane said. ‘Oh yes. I looked at the carpet and there he was - Visger. I can’t explain it: the door was closed, the windows were closed. He wasn’t there before, and he was there now. That’s all.’

‘A hallucination,’ I said.

‘That’s exactly what I thought,’ he answered. ‘But I touched it. It was real; it was heavy and hard, like stone. The arms were rigid like the arms of a statue.’

‘It was a hallucination,’ I repeated.

‘Well, I thought somebody had put him here to frighten me, so I went to the place where I had hidden him, and he was there, just as he was a year before.’

‘My dear Haldane,’ I said, ‘this is very funny.’

‘You might think it’s funny, but when I wake up in the night and think of it, it isn’t funny at all. I don’t want to die in the dark, Winston. That’s why I think I’ll kill myself, so I’m sure that I won’t die in the dark.’

‘Is that all?’

‘No, he came back again. I was asleep on the train one day, and when I woke up, he was on the seat opposite me. He looked the same as before, hard and rigid like a statue. I threw him out of the window in a tunnel. If I see him again, I’ll kill myself. You think I’m mad, but I’m not. You can’t help me, nobody can help me. He knew, you see? He said, “You’ll never get rid of my body,” and I can’t. He always knew things. Winston, I promise you I’m not mad.’

‘I don’t think you’re mad; I think your mind is disturbed. But we’ll stay together; if you can talk to me, you won’t imagine things.’

So we went travelling together, and I was full of hope. Haldane was always a rational man, and I could not believe he was mad. I wanted to help him get better. After a month or two the ‘madness’ passed and we joked and laughed again. I was extremely happy that my old friend was normal. ‘He’s forgotten about Visger,’ I thought, ‘and now he’s fine!’

We arrived in Bruges, where there was a big exhibition and all the hotels were full. We could only find one room with a single bed in a hotel called the Grande Vigne, so I had to sleep in the armchair.

We had dinner and went to a pub, and it was late when we returned to our room. We talked for a while, and then Haldane got into bed. I tried to sleep in the armchair, but it was not very comfortable. I was nearly asleep when Haldane began to talk about his will.

‘I’ve left everything to you, Winston,’ he said. ‘I know I can trust you to take care of everything.’

‘Thank you,’ I said sleepily. ‘Let’s talk about it in the morning.’

But he continued, telling me what a good friend I was. I told him to go to sleep, but he said he was thirsty.

‘Oh, alright,’ I said. ‘Light the candle and go and get some water - and then please let me sleep!’

‘No, you light it. I don’t want to get out of bed in the dark. I might step on something or walk into something that wasn’t there when I got into bed.’

I lit the candle, and he sat up in bed and looked at me. His face was very pale, his hair untidy and his eyes were shining.

‘That’s better,’ he said. ‘Oh, look here! There are two big letters on the sheet in red cotton. GV! George Visger!’

‘No, it’s the symbol of the Hotel Grande Vigne,’ I said. ‘Hurry up and get the water!’

‘Please come with me, Winston.’

‘I’ll go down by myself.’ And I went to the door with the candle in my hand. He jumped off the bed in a second.

‘No I don’t want to stay alone in the dark,’ he said like a frightened child.

I tried to make a joke of it, but I was very disappointed. It was clear to me that all my time spent trying to help him had been wasted, and that he was not better after all. We went down as quietly as we could, and got some water from the dining room. Haldane took the candle from me, and went very slowly back towards our room. He looked around very carefully. I knew what he was looking for, and I became angry and nervous. When we entered the room, I almost expected to see something on the carpet, but of course there was nothing. I put out the candle, pulled the blankets round me, and tried to get comfortable in my chair so I could sleep again.

‘You’ve got all the blankets,’ Haldane said.

‘No, I haven’t. Only the ones I had before.’

‘Well, I can’t find mine. I’m so cold. Light the candle! Quick, light it! There’s something horrible.’

But I could not find the matches.

‘Light the candle, light the candle’ he shouted. ‘If you don’t, he’ll come to me, he’ll come in the dark. I can’t die in the dark; please, Winston, light the candle!’

‘I am lighting it,’ I said angrily. But in the dark I was trying to find the matches with my hands - on the shelf, the table. I could not remember where I had put them. ‘You’re not going to die. It’s alright. I’ll get the matches in a second.’

‘It’s cold. It’s cold. It’s cold.’ he said, like that, three times. And then he screamed loudly, like a child, or like a rabbit attacked by dogs.

‘What is it’ I cried.

There was silence. Then, very slowly, ‘It’s Visger,’ he said, and his voice seemed strange and distant.

‘Of course it isn’t!’ My hand found the matches as I spoke.

‘He’s here’ he screamed. ‘Here, next to me. In the bed.’

I lit the candle. I ran to the bed.

He was lying on the edge of the bed. Next to him was a dead man, white and cold.

Haldane had died in the dark.

There was a simple explanation. Haldane and I were in the wrong room. the dead man’s room. His name was Felix Leblanc, and he had died from a heart attack earlier that day.

I found out more information in England. The police found the body of a man with a bottle of poison in his hand in a railway tunnel. His name was Simmons, and he had drunk poison in Haldane’s carriage because he was depressed. Haldane had thrown his body out of the window.

Haldane left me all his possessions in his will. I asked a police inspector to be with me when I opened the boxes he had left me. Inside one were the bodies of two men. One man was identified later; he was a salesman who had died of epilepsy. The other body was Visger’s.

I leave it to you to explain the events in this story. I cannot find an explanation that satisfies me.