go round putting on every light again, see the sparkle and glitter and colour of the Christmas decorations, havethe fire blazing again cheerfully, I wanted to banish the chill that had settled upon me and the sensation of fear in my breast. Yet I could not move, it had, for the moment, paralysed me, just as it had always done, it was a long-forgotten, once too-familiar sensation.
Then, Edmund said, ‘Now come, stepfather, your turn,’ and at once the others took up the cry, the silence was broken by theirurgings, with which even Esmé joined.
‘No, no.’ I tried to speak jocularly. ‘Nothing from me.’
‘Oh, Arthur …’
‘You must know at least one ghost story, stepfather, everyone knows one …’
Ah, yes, yes, indeed. All the time I had been listening to their ghoulish, lurid inventions, and their howling and groans, the one thought that had been in my mind, and the only thing I could have said was,‘No, no, you have none of you any idea. This is all nonsense, fantasy,it is not like this. Nothing so blood-curdling and becreepered and crude – not so … so laughable. The truth is quite other, and altogether more terrible.’
‘Come on , stepfather.’
‘Don’t be an old spoilsport.’
‘Arthur?’
‘Do your stuff, stepfather, surely you’re not going to let us down?’
I stood up, unable to bear it anylonger.
‘I am sorry to disappoint you,’ I said. ‘But I have no story to tell!’ And went quickly from the room, and from the house.
Some fifteen minutes later, I came to my senses and found myself on the scrubland beyond the orchard, my heart pounding, my breathing short. I had walked about in a frenzy of agitation, and now, realizing that I must make an effort to calm myself, I sat down on apiece of old, moss-covered stone, and began to take deliberate, steady breaths in on a count of ten and out again, until I felt the tension within myself begin to slacken and my pulse become a little steadier, my head clearer. After a short while longer, I was able to realize my surroundings once again, to note the clearness of the sky and the brightness of the stars, the air’s coldness and the crispinessof the frost-stiffened grass beneath my feet.
Behind me, in the house, I knew that I must haveleft the family in a state of consternation and bewilderment, for they knew me normally as an even-tempered man of predictable emotions. Why they had aroused my apparent disapproval with the telling of a few silly tales and prompted such curt behaviour, the whole family would be quite at a loss to understand,and very soon I must return to them, make amends and endeavour to brush off the incident, renew some of the air of jollity. What I would not be able to do was explain. No. I would be cheerful and I would be steady again, if only for my dear wife’s sake, but no more.
They had chided me with being a spoilsport, tried to encourage me to tell them the one ghost story I must surely, like any otherman, have it in me to tell. And they were right. Yes, I had a story, a true story, a story of haunting and evil, fear and confusion, horror and tragedy. But it was not a story to be told for casual entertainment, around the fireside upon Christmas Eve.
I had always known in my heart that the experience would never leave me, that it was now woven into my very fibres, an inextricable part of mypast, but I had hoped never to have to recollect it, consciously, and in full, ever again. Like an old wound, it gave off a faint twinge now and again, but less and less often, less and less painfully, as the years went on and myhappiness, sanity and equilibrium were assured. Of late, it had been like the outermost ripple on a pool, merely the faint memory of a memory.
Now, tonight, it againfilled my mind to the exclusion of all else. I knew that I should have no rest from it, that I should lie awake in a chill of sweat, going over that time, those events, those places. So it had been night after night for years.
I got up