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A PSYCHICAL INVASION
Written by: Blackwood, Algernon, 1869-1951
Chapters:
Part 3
It was a week later when John Silence called to see
the author in his new house, and found him well on
the way to recovery and already busy again with his
writing. The haunted look had left his eyes, and he
seemed cheerful and confident.
** Humour restored?" laughed the doctor, as soon
as they were comfortably settled in the room over-
looking the Park.
" IVe had no trouble since I left that dreadful
place," returned Pender gratefully; *'and thanks to
you "
The doctor stopped him with a gesture.
''Never mind that," he said, ''we'll discuss your
new plans afterwards, and my scheme for relieving
you of the house and helping you settle elsewhere.
Of course it must be pulled down, for it's not fit for
any sensitive person to live in, and any other tenant
might be afflicted in the same way you were.
Although, personally, I think the evil has exhausted
itself by now."
He told the astonished author something of his
experiences in it with the animals.
"I don't pretend to understand," Fender said,
when the account was finished, " but I and my wife
are intensely relieved to be free of it ail. Only I
must say I should like to know something of the
former history of the house. When we took it six
months ago I heard no word against it"
Dr. Silence drew a typewritten paper from his
pocket.
'* I can satisfy your curiosity to some extent/' he
said, running his eye over the sheets, and then
replacing them in his coat; "for by my secretary's
investigations I have been able to check certain
information obtained in the hypnotic trance by a
^sensitive ' who helps me in such cases. The former
occupant who haunted you appears to have been a
woman of singularly atrocious life and character who
finally suffered death by hanging, after a series of
crimes that appalled the whole of England and only
came to light by the merest chance. She came to
her end in the year 1798, for it was not this particular
house she lived in, but a much larger one that then
stood upon the site it now occupies, and was then,
of course, not in London, but in the country. She
was a person of intellect, possessed of a powerful,
trained will, and of consummate audacity, and I am
convinced availed herself of the resources of the
lower magic to attain her ends. This goes far to
explain the virulence of the attack upon yourself,
and why she is still able to carry on after death the
evil practices that formed her main purpose during
Hfe."
"You think that after death a soul can still con-
sciously direct " gasped the author.
" I think, as I told you before, that the forces of
a powerful personality may still persist after death
in the line of their original momentum,'' replied the
doctor ; " and that strong thou^ts and purposes can
still react upon suitably prepared brains long
their originators have passed away.
" If you knew anything of magic/' he pursued, " you
would know that thought is d}niamic, and that it
may call into existence forms and pictures that may
well exist for hundreds of years. For» not far removed
from the region of our human life, is another region
where floats the waste and drift of all the centuries, the
limbo of the shells of the dead ; a densely populated
region crammed with horror and abomination of all
descriptions, and sometimes galvanised into active
life s^in by the will of a trained manipulator, a
mind versed in the practices of lower magic That
this woman understood its vile commerce, I am per-
suaded, and the forces she set going during her life
have simply been accumulating ever since, and would
have continued to do so had they not been drawn down
upon yourself, and afterwards discharged and satisfied
through me.
'* Anything might have brought down the attack,
for, besides drugs, there are certain violent emotions,
certain moods of the soul, certain spiritual fevers,
if I may so call them, which directly open the inner
being to a cognisance of this astral region I have
mentioned. In your case it happened to be a
peculiarly potent drug that did it.
** But now, tell me," he added, after a pause, hand-
ing to the perplexed author a pencil-drawing he had
made of the dark countenance that had appeared to
him during the night on Putney Hill — " tell me if you
recognise this face ? *
Pender looked at the drawing closely, greatly
astonished. He shuddered a little as he looked.
''Undoubtedly," he said, ''it is the face I kept
trying to draw— dark, with the great mouth and
jaw, and the drooping eye. That is the woman."
Dr. Silence then produced from his pocket-book
an old-fashioned woodcut of the same person which
his secretary had unearthed from the records of the
Newgate Calendar. The woodcut and the pencil
drawing were two different aspects of the same
dreadful visage. The men compared them for some
moments in silence.
''It makes me thank God for the limitations of
our senses,*' said Pender quietly, with a sigh ; " con-
tinuous clairvoyance must be a sore affliction."
" It is indeed," returned John Silence significantly,
"and if all the people nowadays who claim to be
clairvoyant were really so, the statistics of suicide
and lunacy would be considerably higher than they
are. It is little wonder," he added, " that your sense
of humour was clouded, with the mind-forces of that
dead monster trying to use your brain for their dis-
semination. You have had an interesting adventure,
Mr. Felix Pender, and, let me add, a fortunate
escape."
The author was about to renew his thanks when
there came a sound of scratching at the door, and
the doctor sprang up quickly.
"It's time for me to go. I left my dog on the
step, but I suppose "
Before he had time to open the door, it had yielded
to the pressure behind it and flew wide open to
admit a great yellow-haired collie. The dog, wagging
his tail and contorting his whole body with delight,
tore across the floor and tried to leap up upon his
owner's breast And there was laughter and happiness
in the old eyes ; for they were clear again as the day
The End!