It was at a time when the British were simply obsessed with spiritism, and no party could do without a seance.
Once on Christmas Eve, a friend of mine who firmly believed in a possible connection with the other world invited me to visit him. He promised that I would meet a well-known medium.
“It's a girl,” he said. - Very sweet and extremely gifted. I have no doubt you will like it.
I do not believe in the appearance of spirits, but I decided that I would have some good fun, and gave my consent. I must say that then I had just returned home after a long stay abroad, my health was badly shaken, and any external influence was unsettling, and my nerves were at the limit.
Exactly at the appointed time, I found myself in the house of my friend, who introduced me to other simpletons who wanted to witness an unusual action. Some of them, like me, gathered around the table for the first time, while others, the regulars, immediately took their usual places. The girl-medium was not yet there, in anticipation of her we opened the session with a church hymn.
No sooner had we got to the second verse, when the door flew open and the long-awaited guest floated into the room. She took an empty seat next to me and joined our choir, which finished the psalm to the end. After that we all put our hands on the table and froze in anticipation of the first manifestation of the other world.
I still thought what was happening was rather funny, but in the silence that reigned and in the dim lighting, I gradually began to imagine that vague shadows began to fill the room. From the fragile figure, which, with her head bowed, sat next to me, breathed with horror, and I was suddenly seized by a chilling horror that I had never experienced before.
By nature, I am not very impressionable and not inclined to believe prejudices, but from the time this young girl entered the room, it was as if a hand fell on my heart, a cold iron hand that squeezed it, as if forcing it to stop. My hearing became sharper and more sensitive, so that the sound of the clock in my waistcoat pocket seemed to me like the sound of a rock crusher, and the restrained breathing of those sitting around the table acted on my nerves like the puff of a steam engine.
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Trying to calm down, I looked at the medium, and it seemed to me that a wave of fresh air cooled my head, and the horror receded.
“She went into a trance,” the owner whispered to me. - Wait, now she will speak and tell who has come to us.
As we sat and waited, the table shook several times under our hands, and tapping echoed throughout the room. This magical, blood-curdling and, despite this, funny performance caused mixed feelings in me: I wanted to either run away in panic, or stay and burst into laughter. But, perhaps, horror still prevailed again.
In the end, the girl raised her head and, placing her palm on my hand, spoke in a strange, monotonous, somehow distant voice:
- This is the first time I come back here after I have passed my path in life. But then you called me - and I am in front of you …
I flinched when her palm touched my hand, but I didn't have the heart to free myself from her light and soft grip.
- You would call me a lost soul. And now I'm in the lowest circle. And last week I was in my body and met death on the way to Whitechapel. I was someone who could be considered a failure. Yes, a failure. Can I tell you how it was?..
The medium's eyes were closed. I don’t know if it was my fevered imagination or reality, but it seems that she has aged and began to look unkempt and dissolute, as if a light, vague mask of degradation and drunken vice hid the former softness of her features.
All were silent, and the medium continued:
“All that day I was hanging around the streets, hungry and unhappy. I dragged my mortal body through the mud and wet snow, because the day was slushy and I was soaked to the bone. Yes, I was pitiful, even more wretched than even now, because the earth is a much more terrible hell for people like me than the hell where I now find myself …
Wandering that evening, I tried to talk to passers-by, but everyone just brushed it off. There was little work that winter, and my appearance was, to put it mildly, not very attractive. Only one short man with a dark, poorly distinguishable face, who spoke very quietly and was dressed much better than my usual clients, responded.
He only asked me where I was going, and immediately walked away, leaving the money in my palm, for which I thanked him. The pubs were supposed to close soon, so I quickened my pace, but on the way I opened my hand and saw some kind of strange foreign coin with strange squiggles. No one would have taken her in the pub, so I had to wander in the fog, under the snow and rain again, without getting my throat wet.
Deciding that there was no longer any point in staying on the street, I turned to the house where I rented an apartment to go to bed, because I had no food. And then suddenly someone from behind grabbed me by the cape. I turned to see who it was.
I was alone, no one and nothing was nearby, except for the fog and the dim light of the courtyard lamp. I felt that something was holding me, something was gathering around, as if enveloping me. But what?.. This I could not understand. I tried to scream, but I couldn't, that invisible person squeezed my throat and began to choke me, so I fell to the ground and lost consciousness.
The very next moment I woke up, leaving my poor crippled body, and saw that it was lying on the ground … Yes, you yourself can now see everything …
Yes, when the medium girl fell silent, the room suddenly disappeared, and I saw it all: a mutilated corpse lying on a dirty pavement, a disgusting pockmarked face bending over it, long clawed hands and thick fog instead of real flesh.
“This is what he did, and you should know it,” the medium continued to broadcast. “I came here to ask you to find him.
- He is an Englishman? - I said in shock when the vision disappeared and the room became more clearly visible again.
- This creature is not a man or a woman, but it lives like me, it is not far from me now, but it may appear to you tonight. However, if you want to do your best and help me, I can bring him back to hell …
The session was becoming too intimidating, and by common agreement the owner turned on the full light. It was then that for the first time I could see properly the medium. She had already freed herself from the evil that possessed her and turned out to be a charming girl of about 19 with the most, as I decided, charming brown eyes that I had ever looked into.
- Do you believe what you said? I asked her.
- What did I talk about?
- About the murdered woman.
- I don't know anything about it. I only remember that I was sitting at the table. I never know what my visions are about …
Was she telling the truth? The look in her dark eyes was sincere, I could not help but believe him.
Returning home, I realized that I would hardly be able to fall asleep soon. I was decidedly upset, very nervous, and scolded myself for going to this seance. Hurriedly throwing off my clothes and going to bed, I made an oath to myself that I would never have to go to such disgusting gatherings.
For the first time in my life, I did not dare to turn off the light. It seemed to me that the room was filled with ghosts, that a couple of devilish phantoms, the murderer and his victim, entered here with me and are now vying for my soul. Having covered my head with a blanket, since the night was cold, I still tried to sleep.
12 hours! Another anniversary of the birth of Christ. In a nearby church, I heard the slow tones of a bell, and when they died down I heard the echoes of the chimes of other churches. But even now, in the lighted room, it seemed to me that someone else was here on this Christmas night.
And suddenly, as I lay there and wondered what had awakened me, I fancied a distant desperate cry: "Help me!" At the same moment, the blanket slowly slid off the bed and fell in a crumpled heap to the floor.
- Is that you, Polly? - I exclaimed, remembering that at a spiritualistic seance, the spirit that took possession of the medium and us, called himself by this name.
Three hits on the bedpost rang out clearly in my ears, signaling "Yes!"
- Can you talk to me?
- Yes, - answered me rather an echo than a voice, and I, feeling the chills running down my spine, tried, nevertheless, to maintain my presence of mind.
- Can i see you?
- No!
- And feel?
Immediately I felt a light cold palm touch my forehead and stroked my cheek.
- Oh Lord, what do you want?
“Save that girl whose body I was in tonight. The evil follows her and will kill her if you don't make it in time.
Terrified, I jumped out of bed and immediately put on my clothes, dimly feeling that Polly was helping me to do it. On the table I had a Kandyan dagger, brought from Ceylon, I bought it because of its antiquity and elegant decoration. Leaving the room, I took him with me, and an invisible light hand took me out of the house and dragged me along the snow-covered streets.
I didn't know where the medium lived, I just followed where the invisible hand was guiding me with light jerks. Dodging and cutting corners, I almost ran with my head down through a wild, blinding blizzard, and heavy flakes of snow fell on my shoulders. Finally I found myself in front of the house, which, as some sixth sense suggested to me, I had to enter.
On the other side of the street, I noticed a man watching dimly lit windows. I could not really look at him, and then I did not pay special attention to him. I simply rushed down the steps of the porch into the house where an invisible hand was leading me.
How the door opened, and whether it opened at all, I can't say, I only know that I entered as in a dream, immediately climbed the stairs and suddenly found myself in the bedroom, where the twilight reigned.
This was her bedroom, and there she was just fighting off the demon, who was choking her with its clawed paws, which were only visible, while everything else swirled and blurred.
I looked at everything at once: her half-naked figure, the scattered bed, the shapeless demon clutching her tender throat, and immediately violently attacked him with a Kandyan dagger. I pricked those terrible paws and a vicious face, and blood gushed from the wounds I inflicted, leaving ugly spots everywhere. Finally, the demon stopped fighting and disappeared like a terrible nightmare. The half-strangled girl, freed from her ferocious grip, woke the whole house with her screams, and a strange coin fell out of her hand, a coin from hell that I automatically picked up.
Feeling that my work was done, I left her and went down the stairs just as I had climbed, without hindrance and not even noticed by the other inhabitants of the house, who in their night clothes ran to the bedroom, from where the screams were heard.
Once again on the street with a coin burning my hand in one hand and a dagger in the other, I hurried away, but I remembered the man watching the windows. Is he still here? Yes, here, but already on the ground, defeated and looking like a shapeless dark heap on white snow.
I came closer and examined him. Is he dead? Yes. I turned him over and saw that his throat was cut from ear to ear. Then I was struck by his angry, gloomy, deathly pale, touched by mountain ash face and clawed hands, similar to animal paws. All over his body there were deep wounds from my Kandyan dagger, and the soft white snow around him was stained with blood. And then the chimes struck one in the morning, and from somewhere in the distance the voices of singers praising Christ were heard. And then I turned away and, not making out the road, rushed away into the impenetrable darkness of Christmas night.
Hume Nisbet