Tales Of The Uncanny And Supernatural/The Terror of the Twins

by Algernon Blackwood

That the man’s hopes had built upon a son to inherit his name and estates⁠—a single son, that is⁠—was to be expected; but no one could have foreseen the depth and bitterness of his disappointment, the cold, implacable fury, when there arrived instead⁠—twins. For, though the elder legally must inherit, that other ran him so deadly close. A daughter would have been a more reasonable defeat. But twins⁠—! To miss his dream by so feeble a device⁠—!

---

The complete frustration of a hope deeply cherished for years may easily result in strange fevers of the soul, but the violence of the father’s hatred, existing as it did side by side with a love he could not deny, was something to set psychologists thinking. More than unnatural, it was positively uncanny. Being a man of rigid self-control, however, it operated inwardly, and doubtless along some morbid line of weakness little suspected even by those nearest to him, preying upon his thought to such dreadful extent that finally the mind gave way. The suppressed rage and bitterness deprived him, so the family decided, of his reason, and he spent the last years of his life under restraint. He was possessed naturally of immense forces⁠—of will, feeling, desire; his dynamic value truly tremendous, driving through life like a great engine; and the intensity of this concentrated and buried hatred was guessed by few. The twins themselves, however, knew it. They divined it, at least, for it operated ceaselessly against them side by side with the genuine soft love that occasionally sweetened it, to their great perplexity. They spoke of it only to each other, though.

“At twenty-one,” Edward, the elder, would remark sometimes, unhappily, “we shall know more.” “Too much,” Ernest would reply, with a rush of unreasoning terror the thought never failed to evoke⁠—in him. “Things father said always happened⁠—in life.” And they paled perceptibly. For the hatred, thus compressed into a veritable bomb of psychic energy, had found at the last a singular expression in the cry of the father’s distraught mind. On the occasion of their final visit to the asylum, preceding his death by a few hours only, very calmly, but with an intensity that drove the words into their hearts like points of burning metal, he had spoken. In the presence of the attendant, at the door of the dreadful padded cell, he said it: “You are not two, but one. I still regard you as one. And at the coming of age, by h⁠—, you shall find it out!”

The lads perhaps had never fully divined that icy hatred which lay so well concealed against them, but that this final sentence was a curse, backed by all the man’s terrific force, they quite well realised; and accordingly, almost unknown to each other, they had come to dread the day inexpressibly. On the morning of that twenty-first birthday⁠—their father gone these five years into the Unknown, yet still sometimes so strangely close to them⁠—they shared the same biting, inner terror, just as they shared all other emotions of their life⁠—intimately, without speech. During the daytime they managed to keep it at a distance; but when the dusk fell about the old house they knew the stealthy approach of a kind of panic sense. Their self-respect weakened swiftly⁠ ⁠… and they persuaded their old friend, and once tutor, the vicar, to sit up with them till midnight⁠ ⁠… He had humoured them to that extent, willing to forgo his sleep, and at the same time more than a little interested in their singular belief⁠—that before the day was out, before midnight struck, that is, the curse of that terrible man would somehow come into operation against them.

Festivities over and the guests departed, they sat up in the library, the room usually occupied by their father, and little used since. Mr. Curtice, a robust man of fifty-five, and a firm believer in spiritual principalities and powers, dark as well as good, affected (for their own good) to regard the youths’ obsession with a kindly cynicism. “I do not think it likely for one moment,” he said gravely, “that such a thing would be permitted. All spirits are in the hands of God, and the violent ones more especially.” To which Edward made the extraordinary reply: “Even if father does not come himself he will⁠—send!” And Ernest agreed: “All this time he’s been making preparations for this very day. We’ve both known it for a long time⁠—by odd things that have happened, by our dreams, by nasty little dark hints of various kinds, and by these persistent attacks of terror that come from nowhere, especially of late. Haven’t we, Edward?” Edward assenting with a shudder. “Father has been at us of late with renewed violence. Tonight it will be a regular assault upon our lives, or minds, or souls!”

“Strong personalities may possibly leave behind them forces that continue to act,” observed Mr. Curtice with caution, while the brothers replied almost in the same breath: “That’s exactly what we feel so curiously. Though⁠—nothing has actually happened yet, you know, and it’s a good many years now since⁠—”

This was the way the twins spoke of it all. And it was their profound conviction that had touched their old friend’s sense of duty. The experiment should justify itself⁠—and cure them. Meanwhile none of the family knew. Everything was planned secretly.

The library was the quietest room in the house. It had shuttered bow-windows, thick carpets, heavy doors. Books lined the walls, and there was a capacious open fireplace of brick in which the wood logs blazed and roared, for the autumn night was chilly. Round this the three of them were grouped, the clergyman reading aloud from the Book of Job in low tones; Edward and Ernest, in dinner-jackets, occupying deep leather armchairs, listening. They looked exactly what they were⁠—Cambridge “undergrads,” their faces pale against their dark hair, and alike as two peas. A shaded lamp behind the clergyman threw the rest of the room into shadow. The reading voice was steady, even monotonous, but something in it betrayed an underlying anxiety, and although the eyes rarely left the printed page, they took in every movement of the young men opposite, and noted every change upon their faces. It was his aim to produce an unexciting atmosphere, yet to miss nothing; if anything did occur to see it from the very beginning. Not to be taken by surprise was his main idea.⁠ ⁠… And thus, upon this falsely peaceful scene, the minutes passed the hour of eleven and slipped rapidly along towards midnight.

The novel element in his account of this distressing and dreadful occurrence seems to be that what happened⁠—happened without the slightest warning or preparation. There was no gradual presentiment of any horror; no strange blast of cold air; no dwindling of heat or light; no shaking of windows or mysterious tapping upon furniture. Without preliminaries it fell with its black trappings of terror upon the scene.

The clergyman had been reading aloud for some considerable time, one or other of the twins⁠—Ernest usually⁠—making occasional remarks, which proved that his sense of dread was disappearing. As the time grew short and nothing happened they grew more at their ease. Edward, indeed, actually nodded, dozed, and finally fell asleep. It was a few minutes before midnight. Ernest, slightly yawning, was stretching himself in the big chair. “Nothing’s going to happen,” he said aloud, in a pause. “Your good influence has prevented it.” He even laughed now. “What superstitious asses we’ve been, sir; haven’t we⁠—?”

Curtice, then, dropping his Bible, looked hard at him under the lamp. For in that second, even while the words sounded, there had come about a most abrupt and dreadful change; and so swiftly that the clergyman, in spite of himself, was taken utterly by surprise and had no time to think. There had swooped down upon the quiet library⁠—so he puts it⁠—an immense hushing silence, so profound that the peace already reigning there seemed clamour by comparison; and out of this enveloping stillness there rose through the space about them a living and abominable Invasion⁠—soft, motionless, terrific. It was as though vast engines, working at full speed and pressure, yet too swift and delicate to be appreciable to any definite sense, had suddenly dropped down upon them⁠—from nowhere. “It made me think,” the vicar used to say afterwards, “of the Mauretania machinery compressed into a nutshell, yet losing none of its awful power.”

“… haven’t we?” repeated Ernest, still laughing. And Curtice, making no audible reply, heard the true answer in his heart: “Because everything has already happened⁠—even as you feared.”

Yet, to the vicar’s supreme astonishment, Ernest still noticed⁠—nothing!

“Look,” the boy added, “Eddy’s sound asleep⁠—sleeping like a pig. Doesn’t say much for your reading, you know, sir!” And he laughed again⁠—lightly, even foolishly. But that laughter jarred, for the clergyman understood now that the sleep of the elder twin was either feigned⁠—or unnatural.

And while the easy words fell so lightly from his lips, the monstrous engines worked and pulsed against him and against his sleeping brother, all their huge energy concentrated down into points fine as Suggestion, delicate as Thought. The Invasion affected everything. The very objects in the room altered incredibly, revealing suddenly behind their normal exteriors horrid little hearts of darkness. It was truly amazing, this vile metamorphosis. Books, chairs, pictures, all yielded up their pleasant aspect, and betrayed, as with silent mocking laughter, their inner soul of blackness⁠—their decay. This is how Curtice tries to body forth in words what he actually witnessed.⁠ ⁠… And Ernest, yawning, talking lightly, half foolishly⁠—still noticed nothing!

For all this, as described, came about in something like ten seconds; and with it swept into the clergyman’s mind, like a blow, the memory of that sinister phrase used more than once by Edward: “If father doesn’t come, he will certainly⁠—send.” And Curtice understood that he had done both⁠—both sent and come himself.⁠ ⁠… That violent mind, released from its spell of madness in the body, yet still retaining the old implacable hatred, was now directing the terrible, unseen assault. This silent room, so hushed and still, was charged to the brim. The horror of it, as he said later, “seemed to peel the very skin from my back.”⁠ ⁠… And, while Ernest noticed nothing, Edward slept!⁠ ⁠… The soul of the clergyman, strong with the desire to help or save, yet realising that he was alone against a Legion, poured out in wordless prayer to his Deity. The clock just then, whirring before it struck, made itself audible.

“By Jove! It’s all right, you see!” exclaimed Ernest, his voice oddly fainter and lower than before. “There’s midnight⁠—and nothing’s happened. Bally nonsense, all of it!” His voice had dwindled curiously in volume. “I’ll get the whisky and soda from the hall.” His relief was great and his manner showed it. But in him somewhere was a singular change. His voice, manner, gestures, his very tread as he moved over the thick carpet toward the door, all showed it. He seemed less real, less alive, reduced somehow to littleness, the voice without timbre or quality, the appearance of him diminished in some fashion quite ghastly. His presence, if not actually shrivelled, was at least impaired. Ernest had suffered a singular and horrible decrease.⁠ ⁠…

The clock was still whirring before the strike. One heard the chain running up softly. Then the hammer fell upon the first stroke of midnight.

“I’m off,” he laughed faintly from the door; “it’s all been pure funk⁠—on my part, at least⁠ ⁠… !” He passed out of sight into the hall. The Power that throbbed so mightily about the room followed him out. Almost at the same moment Edward woke up. But he woke with a tearing and indescribable cry of pain and anguish on his lips: “Oh, oh, oh! But it hurts! It hurts! I can’t hold you; leave me. It’s breaking me asunder⁠—”

The clergyman had sprung to his feet, but in the same instant everything had become normal once more⁠—the room as it was before, the horror gone. There was nothing he could do or say, for there was no longer anything to put right, to defend, or to attack. Edward was speaking; his voice, deep and full as it never had been before: “By Jove, how that sleep has refreshed me! I feel twice the chap I was before⁠—twice the chap. I feel quite splendid. Your voice, sir, must have hypnotised me to sleep.⁠ ⁠…” He crossed the room with great vigour. “Where’s⁠—er⁠—where’s⁠—Ernie, by the bye?” he asked casually, hesitating⁠—almost searching⁠—for the name. And a shadow as of a vanished memory crossed his face and was gone. The tone conveyed the most complete indifference where once the least word or movement of his twin had wakened solicitude, love. “Gone away, I suppose⁠—gone to bed, I mean, of course.”

Curtice has never been able to describe the dreadful conviction that overwhelmed him as he stood there staring, his heart in his mouth⁠—the conviction, the positive certainty, that Edward had changed interiorly, had suffered an incredible accession to his existing personality. But he knew it as he watched. His mind, spirit, soul had most wonderfully increased. Something that hitherto the lad had known from the outside only, or by the magic of loving sympathy, had now passed, to be incorporated with his own being. And, being himself, it required no expression. Yet this visible increase was somehow terrible. Curtice shrank back from him. The instinct⁠—he has never grasped the profound psychology of that, nor why it turned his soul dizzy with a kind of nausea⁠—the instinct to strike him where he stood, passed, and a plaintive sound from the hall, stealing softly into the room between them, sent all that was left to him of self-possession into his feet. He turned and ran. Edward followed him⁠—very leisurely.

They found Ernest, or what had been Ernest, crouching behind the table in the hail, weeping foolishly to himself. On his face lay blackness. The mouth was open, the jaw dropped; he dribbled hopelessly; and from the face had passed all signs of intelligence⁠—of spirit.

For a few weeks he lingered on, regaining no sign of spiritual or mental life before the poor body, hopelessly disorganised, released what was left of him, from pure inertia⁠—from complete and utter loss of vitality.

And the horrible thing⁠—so the distressed family thought, at least⁠—was that all those weeks Edward showed an indifference that was singularly brutal and complete. He rarely even went to visit him. I believe, too, it is true that he only once spoke of him by name; and that was when he said⁠—

“Ernie? Oh, but Ernie is much better and happier where he is⁠—!”