Collected Stories by R. Chetwynd-Hayes

stretched out a hand and groped wildly for the light switch. He found it, pressed, and the sudden light blasted the darkness, shattered it into splinters, sent the shadows racing for protecting corners, forced imagination to face reality. The landing was empty; the familiar cold linoleum, the white painted doors, the brown banisters, the stairs... William peered down into the hall. The landing light did not extend to more than halfway down the stairs, the hall was still in total darkness. It took great courage to descend the stairs, and a great effort of will to press the hall switch. Light, like truth, is all-revealing; the hall table was in its proper place, the carpet he and Rosemary had chosen with such care covered the floor, two prints still hung on the green-papered walls, and all doors were closed, save the one leading to his study; and standing in the opening was something extra—a bedraggled, nightmare figure with no face. Almost no face, for since William had seen it last, it had acquired a mouth. Two thin lines that opened.
    “Thank you,” the voice came as a harsh, vibrant whisper, “thank you very much.”
    For the first time in his life William fainted.
    ***
    Rosemary was crying. Sitting by his bed sobbing, but when she saw his eyes were open, a smile lit up her face, the sun peeping through the rain clouds.
    “Oh, William, you’re awake. Thank goodness, when I found you down on the hall floor, I thought... Do you feel better now? The doctor said you have a slight concussion. Hit your head when you fell.”
    He felt very weak, and his head hurt, a dull ache. There was also a nagging fear at the back of his mind, trying to remind him of something he wanted to forget.
    “I feel fine,” he said, “great, simply great. What happened?”
    “I don’t know,” Rosemary was wiping her eyes, “I guess you must have walked in your sleep, and fell downstairs. I did not find you until this morning, and you lay so still...”
    She began to cry again and he wanted to comfort her, but the nagging fear was coming out into the open, making him remember, causing him to shiver.
    “You must leave this house,” he tried to sit upright, “He is looking for someone—a woman who has...” he giggled inanely, “. . . who has a lasting quality.”
    “Oh, no,” Rosemary had both hands clutched to her mouth, staring at him with fear-filled eyes, “your poor head.”
    “I’m not mad,” William clutched her arm, “please believe me. He—It, I don’t know, but there is a room behind the door, and He made it—kept it alive and himself by the life essence—soul’s blood, of living people. I know the door is a trap, is only active for a little while at certain periods, and now happens to be one of them. I don’t know why sometimes I can go through, and at others I cannot, but it is so. But the point is, He—Sir Michael—has come through. He is on this side of the door. He wants a woman he can take back—make part of the room—take to pieces, tear soul from body, but you won’t die, you won’t be so lucky.”
    Rosemary ran from the room, raced down the stairs, and he heard the telephone receiver being removed; she was telephoning the doctor, convinced beyond all doubt he was mad.
    Perhaps he was, or at the very best a victim of a walking hallucination. He was suddenly very confused. He had lived off his imagination for years—it could have rebelled, manufactured a sleepwalking nightmare. After all his first “visit” had begun by him mentally building up the room item by item.
    He pretended to be asleep when Rosemary returned.
    The doctor said: “Run-down,” remarked sagely on the effects of overwork, strain, advised rest, wrote out a prescription, and then departed. William felt almost happy after his visit, quite willing to accept the certainty that his experience had been nothing more than a vivid and unpleasant dream. He would rest, stay in bed, then in a few days he and Rosemary would go away for a