Free The Horla by Guy de Maupassant Page A

this premonition that must be the onset of a sickness still unknown, germinating in the blood and the flesh.
    May 18
. I’ve just gone to consult my doctor, since I could no longer sleep. He found my pulse was rapid, my eyes dilated, my nerves vibrating, but without any alarming symptom. I must submit to taking showers and drinking potassium bromide.
    May 25
. No change. Really, I am in a strange condition. As evening approaches, an incomprehensible anxiety invades me, as if night hid a terrible threat for me. I dine quickly, then I try to read; but I do not understand the words. I can scarcely make out the letters. Then I walk back and forth in my living room, under the oppression of a confused and irresistible fear, the fear of sleep and fear of my bed.
    Around ten o’clock, I climb up to my bedroom. As soon as I’m inside, I turn the key twice and bolt the locks; I am afraid … of what?… I never feared anything till now.… I open my wardrobes, look under my bed, listen … listen … for what? Is it strange that a simple illness, a circulatory disorder perhaps, an irritated nerve ending, a little congestion, a tiny perturbation in the all too imperfect and delicate functioning of our living mechanism, can turn the happiest of men into a melancholic, and the bravest into a coward? Then I go to bed, and I wait for sleep like someone waiting for the executioner. I wait for it, with terror at its arrival; and my heart beats, my legs tremble; and my whole body trembles in the warmth of the bedclothes, till the moment I suddenly fall into repose, the way one drowns oneself, dropping into an abyss of stagnant water. I don’t feel it coming, as I used to, this treacherous sleep, hidden beside me, that lies in wait for me, that is about to seize me by the head, close my eyes, annihilate me.
    I sleep—for a long time—two or three hours—then a dream—no—a nightmare grips me. I am fully aware that I am lying down and sleeping.… I feel it and I know it … and I also feel that someone is approaching me, looking at me, feeling me, is climbing into my bed, kneeling on my chest, taking my neck in his hands and squeezing … squeezing … with all his strength, to strangle me.
    And I struggle with myself, bound by the atrocious powerlessness that paralyzes us in dreams. I want to cry out—I cannot. I want to move—I cannot. I try, with terrible efforts, gasping for breath, to turn over, to throw off this being that is crushing me and suffocating me—I can’t!
    And all of a sudden, I wake up, panic-stricken, covered with sweat. I light a candle. I am alone.
    After this crisis, which is renewed every night, I finally sleep, calmly, until dawn.
    June 2
. My condition has become even worse. What do I have? The bromide does nothing for it; the showers do nothing. This afternoon, in order to tire out my body (which was weary to begin with), I went to the forest of Roumare for a walk. First I thought that the fresh air, gentle and sweet, full of the fragrance of grass and leaves, would imbue my veins with a new blood, my heart with a new energy. I took a broad avenue we use for hunting, then turned towards La Bouille by a narrow path between two armies of unusually tall trees that set a thick, green, almost black roof between the sky and me.
    Suddenly I was seized by a shiver, but not of cold—a strange shiver of anxiety.
    I quickened my step, uneasy at being alone in this wood, frightened for no reason, stupidly, because of the profound solitude. All of a sudden, it seemed tome I was being followed, that someone was walking just behind me, very close, very close, close enough to touch me.
    I turned around suddenly. I was alone. Behind me I saw only the straight, wide lane, empty, high, terribly empty; and in the other direction it also stretched away out of sight, exactly the same, terrifying.
    I closed my eyes. Why? And I began to spin on one heel, very quickly, like a top. I almost fell; I opened my eyes