Curious Warnings - The Great Ghost Stories Of M.R. James by M.R. James Read Free Book Online Page B

and ragged clothing, raised his arms in the air with an appearance of menace and of unappeasable hunger and longing.
    The moon shone upon his almost transparent hands, and Stephen saw that the nails were fearfully long and that the light shone through them.
    As he stood with his arms thus raised, he disclosed a terrifying spectacle.
    On the left side of his chest there opened a black and gaping rent, and there fell upon Stephen’s brain, rather than upon his ear, the impression of one of those hungry and desolate cries that he had heard resounding over the woods of Aswarby all that evening.
    In another moment this dreadful pair had moved swiftly and noiselessly over the dry grass and he saw them no more.
    Inexpressibly frightened as he was, he determined to take his candle and go down to Mr. Abney’s study, for the hour appointed for their meeting was near at hand.
    The study or library opened out of the front hall on one side, and Stephen, urged on by his terrors, did not take long in getting there.
    To effect an entrance was not so easy. The door was not locked, he felt sure, for the key was on the outside of it as usual. His repeated knocks produced no answer. Mr. Abney was engaged: he was speaking. What! Why did he try to cry out? And why was the cry choked in his throat? Had he, too, seen the mysterious children?
    But now everything was quiet, and the door yielded to Stephen’s terrified and frantic pushing.
    On the table in Mr. Abney’s study certain papers were found which explained the situation to Stephen Elliot when he was of an age to understand them.
    The most important sentences were as follows:
    It was a belief very strongly and generally held by the ancients—of whose wisdom in these matters I have had such experience as induces me to place confidence in their assertions—that by enacting certain processes, which to us moderns have something of a barbaric complexion, a very remarkable enlightenment of the spiritual faculties in man may be attained: that, for example, by absorbing the personalities of a certain number of his fellow-creatures, an individual may gain a complete ascendancy over those orders of spiritual beings which control the elemental forces of our universe.
    It is recorded of Simon Magus that he was able to fly in the air, to become invisible, or to assume any form he pleased, by the agency of the soul of a boy whom, to use the libelous phrase employed bythe author of the
Clementine Recognitions,
he had “murdered.” I find it set down, moreover, with considerable detail in the writings of Hermes Trismegistus, that similar happy results may be produced by the absorption of the hearts of not less than three human beings below the age of twenty-one years. To the testing of the truth of this receipt I have devoted the greater part of the last twenty years, selecting as the corpora vilia of my experiment such persons as could conveniently be removed without occasioning a sensible gap in society. The first step I effected by the removal of one Phoebe Stanley, a girl of gypsy extraction, on March 24, 1792. The second, by the removal of a wandering Italian lad, named Giovanni Paoli, on the night of March 23, 1805. The final “victim”—to employ a word repugnant in the highest degree to my feelings—must be my cousin, Stephen Elliott. His day must be this March 24, 1812.
    The best means of effecting the required absorption is to remove the heart from the living subject, to reduce it to ashes, and to mingle them with about a pint of red wine, preferably port. The remains of the first two subjects, at least, it will be well to conceal: a disused bathroom or wine-cellar will be found convenient for such a purpose. Some annoyance may be experienced from the psychic portion of the subjects, which popular language dignifies with the name of ghosts. But the man of philosophic temperament—to whom alone the experiment is appropriate—will be little prone to attach importance to the feeble efforts