What Was it?

== WHAT WAS IT? ==
=== By Fitz-James O'Brien ===
From Untold Stories 1920
It
is, I confess, with considerable diffidence, that I approach the strange
narrative which I am about to relate. The events which I purpose detailing are
of so extraordinary a character that I am quite prepared to meet with an
unusual amount of incredulity and scorn. I accept all such beforehand. I have,
I trust, the literary courage to face unbelief. I have, after mature
consideration resolved to narrate, in as simple and straightforward a manner as
I can compass, some facts that passed under my observation, in the month of
July last, and which, in the annals of the mysteries of physical science, are
wholly unparalleled.
I live at No. ---- Twenty-sixth Street, in . The house is
in some respects a curious one. It has enjoyed for the last two years the reputation
of being haunted. It is a large and stately residence, surrounded by what was
once a garden, but which is now only a green enclosure used for bleaching
clothes. The dry basin of what has been a fountain, and a few fruit trees
ragged and unpruned, indicate that this spot in past days was a pleasant, shady
retreat, filled with fruits and flowers and the sweet murmur of waters.
The house is very spacious. A hall of noble
size leads to a large spiral staircase winding through its center, while the
various apartments are of imposing dimensions. It was built some fifteen or
twenty years since by Mr. A----, the well-known merchant, who five years ago threw the
commercial world into convulsions by a stupendous bank fraud. Mr. A----, as
everyone knows, escaped to , and died
not long after, of a broken heart. Almost immediately after the news of his
decease reached this country and was verified, the report spread in 
that No. ---- was haunted. Legal measures had dispossessed the widow of its
former owner, and it was inhabited merely by a caretaker and his wife, placed
there by the house agent into whose hands it had passed for the purposes of
renting or sale. These people declared that they were troubled with unnatural
noises. Doors were opened without any visible agency. The remnants of furniture
scattered through the various rooms were, during the night, piled one upon the
other by unknown hands. Invisible feet passed up and down the stairs in broad
daylight, accompanied by the rustle of unseen silk dresses, and the gliding of viewless
hands along the massive balusters. The caretaker and his wife declared they
would live there no longer. The house agent laughed, dismissed them, and put
others in their place. The noises and supernatural manifestations continued.
The neighborhood caught up the story, and the house remained untenanted for
three years. Several persons negotiated for it; but, somehow, always before the
bargain was closed they heard the unpleasant rumors and declined to treat any further.
It was in this state of things that my
landlady, who at that time kept a boarding-house in Bleecker Street, and who
wished to move further up town, conceived the bold idea of renting No. ----
Twenty-sixth Street. Happening to have in her house rather a plucky and
philosophical set of boarders, she laid her scheme before us, stating candidly
everything she had heard respecting the ghostly qualities of the establishment
to which she wished to remove us. With the exception of two timid persons,--a sea-captain
and a returned Californian, who immediately gave notice that they would
leave,--all of Mrs. Moffat's guests declared that they would accompany her in
her chivalric incursion into the abode of spirits.
Our removal was effected in the month of
May, and we were charmed with our new residence. The portion of 
where our house is situated, between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, is one of the
pleasantest localities in .
The gardens back of the houses, running down nearly to the , form, in the summer time, a perfect
avenue of verdure. The air is pure and invigorating, sweeping, as it does, straight
across the river from the Weehawken heights, and even the ragged garden which
surrounded the house, although displaying on washing days rather too much
clothesline, still gave us a piece of greensward to look at, and a cool retreat
in the summer evenings, where we smoked our cigars in the dusk, and watched the
fireflies flashing their dark lanterns in the long grass.
Of course we had no sooner established
ourselves at No. ---- than we began to expect ghosts. We absolutely awaited
their advent with eagerness. Our dinner conversation was supernatural. One of the
boarders, who had purchased Mrs. Crowe's Night Side of Nature for his own
private delectation, was regarded as a public enemy by the entire household for
not having bought twenty copies. The man led a life of supreme wretchedness
while he was reading this volume. A system of espionage was established, of
which he was the victim. If he incautiously laid the book down for an instant
and left the room, it was immediately seized and read aloud in secret places to
a select few. I found myself a person of immense importance, it having leaked
out that I was tolerably well versed in the history of supernaturalism, and had
once written a story the foundation of which was a ghost. If a table or a
wainscot panel happened to warp when we were assembled in the large drawing-room,
there was an instant silence, and everyone was prepared for an immediate
clanking of chains and a spectral form.
After a month of psychological excitement,
it was with the utmost dissatisfaction that we were forced to acknowledge that
nothing in the remotest degree approaching the supernatural had manifested
itself. Once the black butler asseverated that his candle had been blown out by
some invisible agency while he was undressing himself for the night; but as I had
more than once discovered this colored gentleman in a condition when one candle
must have appeared to him like two, thought it possible that, by going a step
further in his potations, he might have reversed this phenomenon, and seen no
candle at all where he ought to have beheld one.
Things were in this state when an accident
took place so awful and inexplicable in its character that my reason fairly
reels at the bare memory of the occurrence. It was the tenth of July. After
dinner was over I repaired, with my friend Dr. Hammond, to the garden to smoke
my evening pipe. Independent of certain mental sympathies which existed between
the Doctor and myself, we were linked together by a vice. We both smoked opium.
We knew each other's secret, and respected it. We enjoyed together that wonderful
expansion of thought, that marvelous intensifying of the perceptive faculties,
that boundless feeling of existence when we seem to have points of contact with
the whole universe,--in short, that unimaginable spiritual bliss, which I would
not surrender for a throne, and which I hope you, reader, will never--never
taste.
Those hours of opium happiness which the
Doctor and I spent together in secret were regulated with a scientific
accuracy. We did not blindly smoke the drug of paradise, and leave our dreams
to chance. While smoking, we carefully steered our conversation through the
brightest and calmest channels of thought. We talked of the East, and
endeavored to recall the magical panorama of its glowing scenery. We criticized
the most sensuous poets,--those who painted life ruddy with health, brimming with
passion, happy in the possession of youth and strength and beauty. If we talked
of Shakespeare's Tempest, we lingered over Ariel, and avoided Caliban. Like the
Guebers, we turned our faces to the East, and saw only the sunny side of the
world.
This skillful coloring of our train of
thought produced in our subsequent visions a corresponding tone. The splendors
of Arabian fairyland dyed our dreams. We paced the narrow strip of grass with
the tread and port of kings. The song of the rana arborea, while he clung to
the bark of the ragged plum-tree, sounded like the strains of divine musicians.
Houses, walls, and streets melted like rain clouds, and vistas of unimaginable
glory stretched away before us. It was a rapturous companionship. We enjoyed
the vast delight more perfectly because, even in our most ecstatic moments, we
were conscious of each other's presence. Our pleasures, while individual, were
still twin, vibrating and moving in musical accord.
On the evening in question, the tenth of
July, the Doctor and myself drifted into an unusually metaphysical mood. We lit
our large meerschaums, filled with fine Turkish tobacco, in the core of which burned
a little black nut of opium, that, like the nut in the fairy tale, held within
its narrow limits wonders beyond the reach of kings; we paced to and fro,
conversing. A strange perversity dominated the currents of our thought. They
would not flow through the sun-lit channels into which we strove to divert them.
For some unaccountable reason, they constantly diverged into dark and lonesome
beds, where a continual gloom brooded. It was in vain that, after our old
fashion, we flung ourselves on the shores of the East, and talked of its gay bazaars,
of the splendors of the time of Haroun, of harems and golden palaces. Black
afreets continually arose from the depths of our talk, and expanded, like the
one the fisherman released from the copper vessel, until they blotted
everything bright from our vision. Insensibly, we yielded to the occult force
that swayed us, and indulged in gloomy speculation. We had talked some time
upon the proneness of the human mind to mysticism, and the almost universal
love of the terrible, when 
suddenly said to me. "What do you consider to be the greatest element of
terror?"
The question puzzled me. That many things
were terrible, I knew. Stumbling over a corpse in the dark; beholding, as I
once did, a woman floating down a deep and rapid river, with wildly lifted
arms, and awful, upturned face, uttering, as she drifted, shrieks that rent
one's heart while we, spectators, stood frozen at a window which overhung the river
at a height of sixty feet, unable to make the slightest effort to save her, but
dumbly watching her last supreme agony and her disappearance. A shattered
wreck, with no life visible, encountered floating listlessly on the ocean, is a
terrible object, for it suggests a huge terror, the proportions of which are
veiled. But it now struck me, for the first time, that there must be one great
and ruling embodiment of fear,--a King of Terrors, to which all others must succumb.
What might it be? To what train of circumstances would it owe its existence?
"I confess, ," I replied to my friend,
"I never considered the subject before. That there must be one Something
more terrible than any other thing, I feel. I cannot attempt, however, even the
most vague definition."
"I am somewhat like you, Harry,"
he answered. "I feel my capacity to experience a terror greater than
anything yet conceived by the human mind;--something combining in fearful and
unnatural amalgamation hitherto supposed incompatible elements. The calling of
the voices in Brockden Brown's novel of Wieland is awful; so is the picture of
the Dweller of the Threshold, in Bulwer's Zanoni; but," he added, shaking his
head gloomily, "there is something more horrible still than those."
"Look here, ," I rejoined, "let us drop
this kind of talk, for Heaven's sake! We shall suffer for it, depend on
it."
"I don't know what's the matter with
me to-night," he replied, "but my brain is running upon all sorts of
weird and awful thoughts. I feel as if I could write a story like Hoffman,
to-night, if I were only master of a literary style."
"Well, if we are going to be Hoffmanesque
in our talk, I'm off to bed. Opium and nightmares should never be brought
together. How sultry it is! Good-night, ."
"Good-night, Harry. Pleasant dreams to
you."
"To you, gloomy wretch, afreets,
ghouls, and enchanters."
We parted, and each sought his respective
chamber. I undressed quickly and got into bed, taking with me, according to my
usual custom, a book, over which I generally read myself to sleep. I opened the
volume as soon as I had laid my head upon the pillow, and instantly flung it to
the other side of the room. It was Goudon's History of Monsters,--a curious
French work, which I had lately imported from Paris, but which, in the state of
mind I had then reached, was anything but an agreeable companion. I resolved to
go to sleep at once; so, turning down my gas until nothing but a little blue
point of light glimmered on the top of the tube, I composed myself to rest.
The room was in total darkness. The atom of
gas that still remained alight did not illuminate a distance of three inches
round the burner. I desperately drew my arm across my eyes, as if to shut out
even the darkness, and tried to think of nothing. It was in vain. The
confounded themes touched on by 
in the garden kept obtruding themselves on my brain. I battled against them. I
erected ramparts of would-be blackness of intellect to keep them out. They
still crowded upon me. While I was lying still as a corpse, hoping that by a
perfect physical inaction I should hasten mental repose, an awful incident
occurred. A Something dropped, as it seemed, from the ceiling, plumb upon my
chest, and the next instant I felt two bony hands encircling my throat, endeavoring
to choke me.
I am no coward, and am possessed of
considerable physical strength. The suddenness of the attack, instead of
stunning me, strung every nerve to its highest tension. My body acted from
instinct, before my brain had time to realize the terrors of my position. In an
instant I wound two muscular arms around the creature, and squeezed it, with
all the strength of despair, against my chest. In a few seconds the bony hands that
had fastened on my throat loosened their hold, and I was free to breathe once
more. Then commenced a struggle of awful intensity. Immersed in the most
profound darkness, totally ignorant of the nature of the Thing by which I was
so suddenly attacked, finding my grasp slipping every moment, by reason, it
seemed to me, of the entire nakedness of my assailant, bitten with sharp teeth
in the shoulder, neck, and chest, having every moment to protect my throat
against a pair of sinewy, agile hands, which my utmost efforts could not confine,--these
were a combination of circumstances to combat which required all the strength,
skill, and courage that I possessed.
At last, after a silent, deadly, exhausting
struggle, I got my assailant under by a series of incredible efforts of
strength. Once pinned, with my knee on what I made out to be its chest, I knew
that I was victor. I rested for a moment to breathe. I heard the creature
beneath me panting in the darkness, and felt the violent throbbing of a heart.
It was apparently as exhausted as I was; that was one comfort. At this moment I
remembered that I usually placed under my pillow, before going to bed, a large
yellow silk pocket handkerchief. I felt for it instantly; it was there. In a
few seconds more I had, after a fashion, pinioned the creature's arms.
I now felt tolerably secure. There was
nothing more to be done but to turn on the gas, and, having first seen what my assailant was like, arouse
the household. I will confess to being actuated by a certain pride in not
giving the alarm before; I wished to make the capture alone and unaided.
Never losing my hold for an instant, I
slipped from the bed to the floor, dragging my captive with me. I had but a few
steps to make to reach the gas-burner; these I made with the greatest caution,
holding the creature in a grip like a vice. At last I got within arm's length
of the tiny speck of blue light which told me where the gas-burner lay. Quick
as lightning I released my grasp with one hand and let on the full flood of
light. Then I turned to look at my captive.
I cannot even attempt to give any
definition of my sensations the instant after I turned on the gas. I suppose I
must have shrieked with terror, for in less than a minute afterward my room was
crowded with the inmates of the house. I shudder now as I think of that awful
moment. I saw nothing! Yes; I had one arm firmly clasped round a breathing, panting,
corporeal shape, my other hand gripped with all its strength a throat as warm,
as apparently fleshy, as my own; and yet, with this living substance in my
grasp, with its body pressed against my own, and all in the bright glare of a
large jet of gas, I absolutely beheld nothing! Not even an outline,--a vapor!
I do not, even at this hour, realize the
situation in which I found myself. I cannot recall the astounding incident
thoroughly. Imagination in vain tries to compass the awful paradox.
It breathed. I felt its warm breath upon my
cheek. It struggled fiercely. It had hands. They clutched me. Its skin was
smooth, like my own. There it lay, pressed close up against me, solid as
stone,--and yet utterly invisible!
I wonder that I did not faint or go mad on
the instant. Some wonderful instinct must have sustained me; for, absolutely,
in place of loosening my hold on the terrible Enigma, I seemed to gain an
additional strength in my moment of horror, and tightened my grasp with such
wonderful force that I felt the creature shivering with agony.
Just then entered my room at the head of the
household. As soon as he beheld my face--which, I suppose, must have been an
awful sight to look at--he hastened forward, crying, "Great heaven, Harry!
what has happened?"
"!
!"
I cried, "come here. O, this is awful! I have been attacked in bed by
something or other, which I have hold of; but I can't see it,--I can't see
it!"
, doubtless struck by the unfeigned horror expressed in my countenance,
made one or two steps forward with an anxious yet puzzled expression. A very
audible titter burst from the remainder of my visitors. This suppressed
laughter made me furious. To laugh at a human being in my position! It was the
worst species of cruelty. Now, I can understand why the appearance of a man
struggling violently, as it would seem, with an airy nothing, and calling for
assistance against a vision, should have appeared ludicrous. Then, so great was
my rage against the mocking crowd that had I the power I would have stricken
them dead where they stood.
"!
!"
I cried again, despairingly, "for God's sake come to me. I can hold
the--the thing but a short while longer. It is overpowering me. Help me! Help
me!"
"Harry," whispered , approaching me,
"you have been smoking too much opium."
"I swear to you, Hammond, that this is
no vision," I answered, in the same low tone. "Don't you see how it
shakes my whole frame with its struggles? If you don't believe me, convince
yourself. Feel it,--touch it."
advanced and laid his hand in the spot I indicated. A wild cry of
horror burst from him. He had felt it!
In a moment he had discovered somewhere in
my room a long piece of cord, and was the next instant winding it and knotting
it about the body of the unseen being that I clasped in my arms.
"Harry," he said, in a hoarse,
agitated voice, for, though he preserved his presence of mind, he was deeply
moved, "Harry, it's all safe now. You may let go, old fellow, if you're
tired. The Thing can't move."
I was utterly exhausted, and I gladly
loosed my hold.
stood holding the ends of the cord that bound the Invisible, twisted
round his hand, while before him, self-supporting as it were, he beheld a rope
laced and interlaced, and stretching tightly around a vacant space. I never saw
a man look so thoroughly stricken with awe. Nevertheless his face expressed all
the courage and determination which I knew him to possess. His lips, although
white, were set firmly, and one could perceive at a glance that, although
stricken with fear, he was not daunted.
The confusion that ensued among the guests
of the house who were witnesses of this extraordinary scene between Hammond and
myself,--who beheld the pantomime of binding this struggling Something,--who
beheld me almost sinking from physical exhaustion when my task of jailer was over,--the
confusion and terror that took possession of the bystanders, when they saw all
this, was beyond description. The weaker ones fled from the apartment. The few
who remained clustered near the door and could not be induced to approach and his Charge.
Still incredulity broke out through their terror. They had not the courage to satisfy
themselves, and yet they doubted. It was in vain that I begged of some of the
men to come near and convince themselves by touch of the existence in that room
of a living being which was invisible. They were incredulous, but did not dare
to undeceive themselves. How could a solid, living, breathing body be
invisible, they asked. My reply was this. I gave a sign to , and both of us--conquering our
fearful repugnance to touch the invisible creature--lifted it from the ground, manacled
as it was, and took it to my bed. Its weight was about that of a boy of
fourteen.
"Now my friends," I said, as and myself held
the creature suspended over the bed, "I can give you self-evident proof
that here is a solid, ponderable body, which, nevertheless, you cannot see. Be
good enough to watch the surface of the bed attentively."
I was astonished at my own courage in
treating this strange event so calmly; but I had recovered from my first
terror, and felt a sort of scientific pride in the affair, which dominated
every other feeling.
The eyes of the bystanders were immediately
fixed on my bed. At a given signal 
and I let the creature fall. There was a dull sound of a heavy body alighting
on a soft mass. The timbers of the bed creaked. A deep impression marked itself
distinctly on the pillow, and on the bed itself. The crowd who witnessed this
gave a low cry, and rushed from the room. Hammond and I were left alone with
our Mystery.
We remained silent for some time, listening
to the low, irregular breathing of the creature on the bed, and watching the
rustle of the bedclothes as it impotently struggled to free itself from confinement.
Then 
spoke.
"Harry, this is awful."
"Ay, awful."
"But not unaccountable."
"Not unaccountable! What do you mean?
Such a thing has never occurred since the birth of the world. I know not what
to think, .
God grant that I am not mad, and that this is not an insane fantasy!"
"Let us reason a little, Harry. Here
is a solid body which we touch, but which we cannot see. The fact is so unusual
that it strikes us with terror. Is there no parallel, though, for such a
phenomenon? Take a piece of pure glass. It is tangible and transparent. A
certain chemical coarseness is all that prevents its being so entirely
transparent as to be totally invisible. It is not theoretically impossible,
mind you, to make a glass which shall not reflect a single ray of light,--a
glass so pure and homogeneous in its atoms that the rays from the sun will pass
through it as they do through the air, refracted but not reflected. We do not
see the air, and yet we feel it."
"That's all very well, Hammond, but
these are inanimate substances. Glass does not breathe, air does not breathe.
This thing has a heart that palpitates,--a will that moves it,--lungs that
play, and inspire and respire."
"You forget the phenomena of which we
have so often heard of late," answered the Doctor, gravely. "At the
meetings called 'spirit circles,' invisible hands have been thrust into the
hands of those persons round the table,--warm, fleshly hands that seemed to
pulsate with mortal life."
"What? Do you think, then, that this
thing is----"
"I don't know what it is," was
the solemn reply; "but please the gods I will, with your assistance,
thoroughly investigate it."
We watched together, smoking many pipes,
all night long, by the bedside of the unearthly being that tossed and panted
until it was apparently wearied out. Then we learned by the low, regular
breathing that it slept.
The next morning the house was all astir.
The boarders congregated on the landing outside my room, and Hammond and myself
were lions. We had to answer a thousand questions as to the state of our
extraordinary prisoner, for as yet not one person in the house except ourselves
could be I induced to set foot in the apartment.
The creature was awake. This was evidenced
by the convulsive manner in which the bedclothes were moved in its efforts to
escape. There was something truly terrible in beholding, as it were, those
second-hand indications of the terrible writhings and agonized struggles for
liberty which themselves were invisible.
Hammond and myself had racked our brains
during the long night to discover some means by which we might realize the
shape and general appearance of the Enigma. As well as we could make out by
passing our hands over the creature's form, its outlines and lineaments were
human. There was a mouth; a round, smooth head without hair; a nose, which, however,
was little elevated above the cheeks; and its hands and feet felt like those of
a boy. At first we thought of placing the being on a smooth surface and tracing
its outlines with chalk, as shoemakers trace the outline of the foot. This plan
was given up as being of no value. Such an outline would give not the slightest
idea of its conformation.
A happy thought struck me. We would take a
cast of it in plaster of Paris. This would give us the solid figure, and satisfy
all our wishes. But how to do it? The movements of the creature would disturb
the setting of the plastic covering, and distort the mold. Another thought. Why
not give it chloroform? It had respiratory organs,--that was evident by its
breathing. Once reduced to a state of insensibility, we could do with it what
we would. Doctor X---- was sent for; and after the worthy physician had
recovered from the first shock of amazement, he proceeded to administer the
chloroform. In three minutes afterward we were enabled to remove the fetters
from the creature's body, and a modeler was busily engaged in covering the
invisible form with the moist clay. In five minutes more we had a mold, and
before evening a rough facsimile of the Mystery. It was shaped like a man--distorted,
uncouth, and horrible, but still a man. It was small, not over four feet and
some inches in height, and its limbs revealed a muscular development that was
unparalleled. Its face surpassed in hideousness anything I had ever seen.
Gustav Doré, or Callot, or Tony Johannot, never conceived anything so horrible.
There is a face in one of the latter's illustrations to Un Voyage où il vous plaira,
which somewhat approaches the countenance of this creature, but does not equal
it. It was the physiognomy of what I should fancy a ghoul might be. It looked
as if it was capable of feeding on human flesh.
Having satisfied our curiosity, and bound
every one in the house to secrecy, it became a question what was to be done
with our Enigma? It was impossible that we should keep such a horror in our
house; it was equally impossible that such an awful being should be let loose
upon the world. I confess that I would have gladly voted for the creature's destruction.
But who would shoulder the responsibility? Who would undertake the execution of
this horrible semblance of a human being? Day after day this question was
deliberated gravely. The boarders all left the house. Mrs. Moffat was in
despair, and threatened 
and myself with all sorts of legal penalties if we did not remove the Horror.
Our answer was, "We will go if you like, but we decline taking this
creature with us. Remove it yourself if you please. It appeared in your house.
On you the responsibility rests." To this there was, of course, no answer.
Mrs. Moffat could not obtain for love or money a person who would even approach
the Mystery.
The most singular part of the affair was
that we were entirely ignorant of what the creature habitually fed on.
Everything in the way of nutriment that we could think of was placed before it,
but was never touched. It was awful to stand by, day after day, and see the
clothes toss, and hear the hard breathing, and know that it was starving.
Ten, twelve days, a fortnight passed, and
it still lived. The pulsations of the heart, however, were daily growing
fainter, and had now nearly ceased. It was evident that the creature was dying
for want of sustenance. While this terrible life-struggle was going on, I felt miserable.
I could not sleep. Horrible as the creature was, it was pitiful to think of the
pangs it was suffering.
At last it died. Hammond and I found it
cold and stiff one morning in the bed. The heart had ceased to beat, the lungs
to inspire. We hastened to bury it in the garden. It was a strange funeral, the
dropping of that viewless corpse into the damp hole. The cast of its form I
gave to Doctor X----, who keeps it in his museum in .
As I am on the eve of a long journey from
which I may not return, I have drawn up this narrative of an event the most singular
that has ever come to my knowledge.
==
Category:Untold Stories
Category:O'Brien