Ghost Stories of Henry James by Henry James

Author:Henry James
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781848705395
Publisher: Wordsworth Editions Ltd
Published: 2012-05-01T04:00:00+00:00

The Turn of the Screw

Prologue

The story had held us, round the fire, sufficiently breathless, but except the obvious remark that it was gruesome, as on Christmas Eve in an old house a strange tale should essentially be, I remember no comment uttered till somebody happened to note it as the only case he had met in which such a visitation had fallen on a child. The case, I may mention, was that of an apparition in just such an old house as had gathered us for the occasion – an appearance, of a dreadful kind, to a little boy sleeping in the room with his mother and waking her up in the terror of it; waking her not to dissipate his dread and soothe him to sleep again, but to encounter also herself, before she had succeeded in doing so, the same sight that had shocked him. It was this observation that drew from Douglas – not immediately, but later in the evening – a reply that had the interesting consequence to which I call attention. Someone else told a story not particularly effective, which I saw he was not following. This I took for a sign that he had himself something to produce and that we should only have to wait. We waited in fact till two nights later; but that same evening, before we scattered, he brought out what was in his mind.

‘I quite agree – in regard to Griffin’s ghost, or whatever it was – that its appearing first to the little boy, at so tender an age, adds a particular touch. But it’s not the first occurrence of its charming kind that I know to have been concerned with a child. If the child gives the effect another turn of the screw, what do you say to two children – ?’

‘We say, of course,’ somebody exclaimed, ‘that two children give two turns! Also that we want to hear about them.’

I can see Douglas there before the fire, to which he had got up to present his back, looking down at this converser with his hands in his pockets. ‘Nobody but me, till now, has ever heard. It’s quite too horrible.’ This was naturally declared by several voices to give the thing the utmost price, and our friend, with quiet art, prepared his triumph by turning his eyes over the rest of us and going on: ‘It’s beyond everything. Nothing at all that I know touches it.’

‘For sheer terror?’ I remember asking.

He seemed to say it wasn’t so simple as that; to be really at a loss how to qualify it. He passed his hand over his eyes, made a little wincing grimace. ‘For dreadful – dreadfulness!’

‘Oh, how delicious!’ cried one of the women.

He took no notice of her; he looked at me, but as if, instead of me, he saw what he spoke of. ‘For general uncanny ugliness and horror and pain.’

‘Well, then,’ I said, ‘just sit right down and begin.’

He turned round to the fire, gave a kick to a log, watched it an instant.

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