Read The Horla for Free Online Page B

terror. It seemed to me that I kept brushing against the discovery of a secret of the universe.
    I tried to sharpen my organs, to excite them, to make them perceive glimpses of the invisible.
    I told myself, “Everything is a being! The shout that passes into the air is an entity like an animal, since it is born, produces a movement, and is again transformed, in order to die. So the fearful mind that believes in incorporeal beings is not wrong. What are they?”
    How many men feel them, tremble at their approach, shudder at their imperceptible contact. We feel them around us, but we cannot discern them, for we do not have the eyes to see them, or specifically the unknown organ that could discover them.
    Then, more than anyone else, I felt them myself, these supernatural passersby. Beings or mysteries? How can I know? I can’t say what they are, but I can always indicate their presence. And I have seen—I have seen an invisible being—as much as one can see them, these beings.
    I remained motionless for entire nights, seated in front of my table, my head in my hands, thinking of that, thinking of them. Often I thought an intangible hand, or rather an ungraspable body, was lightly grazing my hair. He didn’t touch me, since it wasn’t a carnal essence, but an imponderable, unknowable essence.
    One evening, I heard the floor creak behind me. It creaked in a strange way. I trembled. I turned around. I saw nothing. And I thought no more of it.
    But the next day, at the same time, the same sound occurred. I was so afraid that I got up, certain, certain, certain that I was not alone in my bedroom. I could see nothing. The air was clear, transparent everywhere. My two lamps lit up all corners of the room.
    The sound was not repeated, and little by little I calmed down; I remained uneasy, though, and often looked around.
    The next day I shut myself in early, looking for a way I could contrive to see the invisible being that was visiting me.
    And I saw him. I almost died from the terror of it.
    I had lighted all the candles on my mantelpiece and chandelier. The room was illumined as if for a celebration. Both my lamps were burning on my table.
    Opposite me, my bed, an old oaken four-poster. To my right, my fireplace. To my left, the door, which I had locked shut. Behind me, a very large wardrobe with a mirror. I looked at myself in it. My eyes looked strange, and my pupils quite dilated.
    Then I sat down, as I did every day.
    The sound had occurred, the night before and the night before that, at 9:22. I waited. When the precise moment arrived, I perceived an indescribable sensation, as if a fluid, an irresistible fluid, had penetrated me through all the pores of my skin, drowning my soul in an atrocious, true terror. And the creaking sounded, right next to me.
    I got up, turning around so quickly that I almost fell down. You could see everything there as if in full daylight, but I couldn’t see myself in the mirror! It was empty, clear, full of light. I was not inside it, and yet I was facing it. I looked at it with panic-stricken eyes. I dared not go towards it, since I knew he was between us, he, the invisible one, and he was concealing me.
    I was terrified. And then I began to see myself in a mist far back in the mirror, in a mist as if throughwater; and it seemed to me that this water shimmered left to right, slowly, making me more precise from second to second. It was like the end of an eclipse.
    What was hiding me had no outlines, but a kind of opaque transparency that little by little became clearer.
    And finally I could see myself clearly, just as I do every day when I look at myself.
    I had seen it!
    And I did not see it again.
    But I wait for it ceaselessly, and I feel that my mind is wandering in this waiting.
    I remain for hours, nights, days, weeks, in front of my mirror, waiting for him! He does not come anymore.
    He has understood that I’ve seen him. But I feel that I will wait for him always, until death, that I