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The Thing in the Upper Room ...........................................................................................................................1

Arthur Morrison .......................................................................................................................................1

A shadow hung ever over the door, which stood black in the depth of its arched recess, like an unfathomable

eye under a frowning brow. The landing was wide and panelled, and a heavy rail, supported by a carved

balustrade, stretched away in alternate slopes and levels down the dark staircase, past other doors, and so to

the courtyard and the street. The other doors were dark also; but it was with a difference. That top landing

was lightest of all, because of the skylight; and perhaps it was largely by reason of contrast that its one

doorway gloomed so black and forbidding The doors below opened and shut, slammed, stood ajar. Men and

women passed in and out, with talk and human soundssometimes even with laughter or a snatch of song;

but the door on the top landing remained shut and silent through weeks and months. For, in truth, the

logement had an ill name, and had been untenanted for years. Long even before the last tenant had occupied

it, the room had been regarded with fear and aversion, and the end of that last tenant had in no way lightened

The house was so old that its weatherwashed face may well have looked down on the bloodshed of St.

Bartholomew's, and the haunted room may even have earned its ill name on that same day of death. But Paris

is a city of cruel history, and since the old mansion rose proud and new, the hôtel of some powerful noble,

almost any year of the centuries might have seen the blot fall on that upper room that had left it a place of

loathing and shadows. The occasion was long forgotten, but the fact remained; whether or not some horror of

the ancien régime or some enormity of the Terror was enacted in that room was no longer to be discovered;

but nobody would live there, nor stay beyond that gloomy door one second longer than he could help. It

might be supposed that the fate of the solitary tenant within living memory had something to do with the

matterand, indeed, his end was sinister enough; but long before his time the room had stood shunned and

empty. He, greatly daring, had taken no more heed of the common terror of the room than to use it to his

advantage in abating the rent; and he had shot himself a little later, while the police were beating at his door

to arrest him on a charge of murder. As I have said, his fate may have added to the general aversion from the

place, though it had no in no way originated it; and now ten years had passed, and more, since his few articles

of furniture had been carried away and sold; and nothing had been carried in to replace them.

When one is twentyfive, healthy, hungry and poor, one is less likely to be frightened from a cheap

lodging by mere headshakings than might be expected in other circumstances. Attwater was twentyfive,

commonly healthy, often hungry, and always poor. He came to live in Paris because, from his remembrance

of his student days, he believed he could live cheaper there than in London; while it was quite certain that he

It was the concierge of a neighbouring house who showed Attwater the room. The house of the room itself

maintained no such functionary, though its main door stood open day and night. The man said little, but his

surprise at Attwater's application was plain to see. Monsieur was English? Yes. The logement was

convenient, though high, and probably now a little dirty, since it had not been occupied recently. Plainly, the

man felt it to be no business of his to enlighten an unsuspecting foreigner as to the reputation of the place;

and if he could let it there would be some small gratification from the landlord, though, at such a rent, of

But Attwater was better informed than the concierge supposed. He had heard the tale of the haunted room,

vaguely and incoherently, it is true, from the little old engraver of watches on the floor below, by whom he

had been directed to the concierge. The old man had been voluble and friendly, and reported that the room

had a good light, facing northeastindeed, a much better light than he, engraver of watches, enjoyed on the

floor below. So much so that, considering this advantage and the much lower rent, he himself would have

taken the room long ago, exceptwell, except for other things. Monsieur was a stranger, and perhaps had no

fear to inhabit a haunted chamber; but that was its reputation, as everybody in the quarter knew; it would be a

misfortune, however, to a stranger to take the room without suspicion, and to undergo unexpected

experiences. Here, however, the old man checked himself, possibly reflecting that too much information to

inquirers after the upper room might offend his landlord. He hinted as much, in fact, hoping that his friendly

warning would not be allowed to travel farther. As to the precise nature of the disagreeable manifestations in

the room, who could say? Perhaps there were really none at all. People said this and that. Certainly, the place

had been untenanted for many years, and he would not like to stay in it himself. But it might be the good

fortune of monsieur to break the spell, and if monsieur was resolved to defy the revenant, he wished

So much for the engraver of watches; and now the concierge of the neighbouring house led the way up the

stately old panelled staircase, swinging his keys in his hand, and halted at last before the dark door in the

frowning recess. He turned the key with some difficulty, pushed open the door, and stood back with an action

A sort of small lobby had been partitioned off at some time, though except for this the logement was of

one large room only. There was something unpleasant in the air of the placenot a smell, when one came to

analyse one's sensations, though at first it might seem so. Attwater walked across to the wide window and

threw it open. The chimneys and roofs of many houses of all ages straggled before him, and out of the welter

Air the room as one might, it was unpleasant; a sickly, even a cowed, feeling, invaded one through all the

sensesor perhaps through none of them. The feeling was there, though it was not easy to say by what

channel it penetrated. Attwater was resolved to admit none but a commonsense explanation, and blamed the

long closing of door and window; and the concierge, standing uneasily near the door, agreed that that must be

it. For a moment Attwater wavered, despite himself. But the rent was very low, and, low as it was, he could

not afford a sou more. The light was good, though it was not a toplight, and the place was big enough for his

simple requirements. Attwater reflected that he should despise himself ever after if he shrank from the

opportunity; it would be one of those secret humiliations that will rise again and again in a man's memory,

and make him blush in solitude. He told the concierge to leave door and window wide open for the rest of the

It was with something of amused bravado that he reported to his few friends in Paris his acquisition of a

haunted room; for, once out of the place, he readily convinced himself that his disgust and dislike while in the

room were the result of imagination and nothing more. Certainly, there was no rational reason to account for

the unpleasantness; consequently, what could it be but a matter of fancy? He resolved to face the matter from

the beginning, and clear his mind from any foolish prejudices that the hints of the old engraver might have

inspired, by forcing himself through whatever adventures he might encounter. In fact, as he walked the streets

about his business, and arranged for the purchase and delivery of the few simple articles of furniture that

would be necessary, his enterprise assumed the guise of a pleasing adventure. He remembered that he had

made an attempt, only a year or two ago, to spend a night in a house reputed haunted in England, but had

failed to find the landlord. Here was the adventure to hand, with promise of a tale to tell in future times; and a

welcome idea struck him that he might look out the ancient history of the room, and work the whole thing

So simple were his needs that by the afternoon of the day following his first examination of the room it

He took his bag from the cheap hotel in a little street of Montparnasse, where he had been lodging, and

carried it to his new home. The key was now in his pocket, and for the first time he entered the place alone.

The window remained wide open; but it was still therethat depressing, choking something that entered the

consciousness he knew not by what gate. Again he accused his fancy. He stamped and whistled, and set about

unpacking a few canvases and a case of old oriental weapons that were part of his professional properties. But

he could give no proper attention to the work, and detected himself more than once yielding to a childish

impulse to look over his shoulder. He laughed at himselfwith some effortand sat determinedly to smoke

a pipe, and grow used to his surroundings. But presently he found himself pushing his chair farther and

farther back, till it touched the wall. He would take the whole room into view, he said to himself in excuse,

and stare it out of countenance. So he sat and smoked, and as he sat his eye fell on a Malay dagger that lay on

the table between him and the window. It was a murderous, twisted thing, and its pommel was fashioned into

the semblance of a bird's head, with curved beak and an eye of some dull red stone. He found himself gazing

on this red eye with an odd, mindless fascination. The dagger in its wicked curves seemed now a creature of

some outlandish fantasya snake with a beaked head, a thing of nightmare, in some new way dominant,

overruling the centre of his perceptions. The rest of the room grew dim, but the red stone glowed with a

fuller light; nothing more was present to his consciousness. Then, with a sudden clang, the heavy bell of St.

There lay the dagger on the table, strange and murderous enough, but merely as he had always known it.

He observed with more surprise, however, that his chair, which had been back against the wall, was now

some six feet forward, close by the table; clearly, he must have drawn it forward in his abstraction, towards

the dagger on which his eyes had been fixed. . . The great bell of St. Sulpice went clanging on, repeating its

He was cold, almost shivering. He flung the dagger into a drawer, and turned to go out. He saw by his

watch that it was later than he had supposed; his fit of abstraction must have lasted some time. Perhaps he had

He went slowly downstairs and out into the streets. As he went he grew more and more ashamed of

himself, for he had to confess that in some inexplicable way he feared that room. He had seen nothing, heard

nothing of the kind that one might have expected, or had heard of in any room reputed haunted; he could not

help thinking that it would have been some sort of relief if he had. But there was an allpervading,

overpowering sense of another Presencesomething abhorrent, not human, something almost physically

nauseous. Withal it was something more than presence; it was power, dominationso he seemed to

remember it. And yet the remembrance grew weaker as he walked in the gathering dusk; he thought of a story

he had once read of a haunted house wherein it was shown that the house actually was hauntedby the spirit

of fear, and nothing else. That, he persuaded himself, was the case with his room; he felt angry at the growing

conviction that he had allowed himself to be overborne by fancyby the spirit of fear.

He returned that night with the resolve to allow himself no foolish indulgence. He had heard nothing and

had seen nothing; when something palpable to the senses occurred, it would be time enough to deal with it.

He took off his clothes and got into bed deliberately, leaving candle and matches at hand in case of need. He

had expected to find some difficulty in sleeping, or at least some delay, but he was scarce well in bed ere he

Dazzling sunlight through the window woke him in the morning, and he sat up, staring sleepily about him.

He must have slept like a log. But he had been dreaming; the dreams were horrible. His head ached beyond

anything he had experienced before, and he was far more tired than when he went to bed. He sank back on

the pillow, but the mere contact made his head ring with pain. He got out of bed, and found himself

staggering; it was all as though he had been drunkunspeakably drunk with bad liquor. His dreamsthey

had been horrid dreams; he could remember that they had been bad, but what they actually were was now

gone from him entirely. He rubbed his eyes and stared amazedly down at the table: where the crooked dagger

lay, with its bird's head and red stone eye. It lay just as it had lain when he sat gazing at it yesterday, and yet

he would have sworn that he had flung that same dagger into a drawer. Perhaps he had dreamed it; at any

rate, he put the thing carefully into the drawer now, and, still with his ringing headache, dressed himself and

As he reached the next landing the old engraver greeted him from his door with an inquiring goodday.

In some doubt, Attwater protested that he had slept quite soundly. "And as yet I have neither seen nor

"Nothing?" replied the old man, with a lift of the eyebrows, "nothing at all? It is fortunate. It seemed to

me, here below, that monsieur was moving about very restlessly in the night; but no doubt I was mistaken.

No doubt, also, I may felicitate monsieur on breaking the evil tradition. We shall hear no more of it; monsieur

He smiled and bowed pleasantly, but it was with something of a puzzled look that his eyes followed

Attwater took his coffee and roll after an hour's walk, and fell asleep in his seat. Not for long, however,

and presently he rose and left the cafÇ. He felt better, though still unaccountably fatigued. He caught sight of

his face in a mirror beside a shop window, and saw an improvement since he had looked in his own glass.

That indeed had brought him a shock. Worn and drawn beyond what might have been expected of so bad a

night, there was even something more. What was it? How should it remind him of that old legendwas it

Japanese?which he had tried to recollect when he had wondered confusedly at the haggard apparition that

confronted him? Some tale of a demonpossessed person who in any mirror, saw never his own face, but the

Work he felt to be impossible, and he spent the day on garden seats, at café tables, and for a while in the

Luxembourg. And in the evening he met an English friend, who took him by the shoulders and looked into

his eyes, shook him, and declared that he had been overworking, and needed, above all things, a good dinner,

which he should have instantly. "You'll dine with me," he said, "at La Perouse, and we'll get a cab to take us

As they stood and looked for a passing cab a man ran shouting with newspapers. "We'll have a cab,"

Attwater's friend repeated, "and we'll take the new murder with us for conversation's sake. Hi! Journal!"

He bought a paper, and followed Attwater into the cab. "I've a strong idea I knew the poor old boy by

"The old man who was murdered in the Rue Broca last night. The description fits exactly. He used to hang

about the cafés and run messages. It isn't easy to read in this cab; but there's probably nothing fresh in this

Attwater took the paper, and struggled to read it in the changing light. A poor old man had been found

dead on the footpath of the Rue Broca, torn with a score of stabs. He had been identifiedan old man not

known to have a friend in the world; also, because he was so old and so poor, probably not an enemy. There

was no robbery; the few sous the old man possessed remained in his pocket. He must have been attacked on

his way home in the early hours of the morning, possibly by a homicidal maniac, and stabbed again and again

Attwater pushed the paper way: "Pah!" he said; "I don't like it. I'm a bit off colour, and I was dreaming

horribly all last night; though why this should remind me of it I can't guess. But it's no cure for the blues,

"No," replied his friend heartily; "we'll get that upstairs, for here we are, on the quay. A bottle of the best

It was a good prescription, indeed. Attwater's friend was cheerful and assiduous, and nothing could have

bettered the dinner. Attwater found himself reflecting that indulgence in the blues was a poor pastime, with

no better excuse than a bad night's rest. And last night's dinner in comparison with this! Well, it was enough

Attwater left La Perouse as gay as his friend. They had sat late, and now there was nothing to do but cross

the water and walk a little in the boulevards. This they did, and finished the evening at a café table with half a

Attwater walked home with a light step, feeling less drowsy than at any time during the day. He was well

enough. He felt he should soon get used to the room. He had been a little too much alone lately, and that had

Again he slept quickly and heavily and dreamed. But he had an awakening of another sort. No bright sun

blazed in at the open window to lift his heavy lids, and no morning bell from St. Sulpice opened his ears to

the cheerful noise of the city. He awoke gasping and staring in the dark, rolling facedownward on the floor,

catching his breath in agonized sobs; while through the window from the streets came a clamour of hoarse

cries: cries of pursuit and the noise of running men: a shouting and clatter wherein here and there a voice was

He dragged himself to his feet in the dark, gasping still. What was thisall this? Again a dream? His legs

trembled under him, and he sweated with fear. He made for the window, panting and feeble; and then, as he

supported himself by the sill, he realized wonderingly that he was fully dressedthat he wore even his hat.

The running crowd straggled through the outer street and away, the shouts growing fainter. What had

wakened him? Why had he dressed? He remembered his matches, and turned to grope for them; but

something was already in his handsomething wet, sticky. He dropped it on the table, and even as he struck

the light, before he saw it, he knew. The match sputtered and flared, and there on the table lay the crooked

Blood was on his handsthe match stuck in his fingers. Caught at the heart by the first grip of an awful

surmise, he looked up and saw in the mirror before him, in the last flare of the match, the face of the Thing in