Beneath its weight man pauses in his will
And crouches at the dark-robed phantom’s feet :
The Fall of the Angels, To The Deity, John Polidori, 1821
My eyes struggled towards the lazy light from the half-open window. I rolled on the bed delirious, my eyes stared at the wooden floor. I just managed to incline my head to hear the warble of a bird, then see it pass my open window. I couldn’t move my eyes, let alone my body. I lay on the floor, pinned, struggling to make things distinct, trying to break free of what could only be: a rather careless overdose.
Pivoting my eyes slightly leftwards I perceived a shadowy figure. Two qualifications must be made: I thought I saw this figure, but I didn’t necessarily see Him. I say the figure was shadowy, but it did not offset the rays of any sun. It shimmered as if trying to maintain its substance, as if all its energies were concentrated in maintaining its existence…and in making mine very uncomfortable.
But this had been the purpose of my experiment. To make contact with the shadowy figure that intermittently haunted the end of my bed. I attempted to raise my hand to trace the sign of the ward that would push the demon back. But my arm was frozen stiffer than any limb of the dead. In front of me, the shadowy presence leant closer.
Smokey tendrils emanated from its sides like torn angel wings. It slowly raised its arm. I was further pinned, my body a log. A gust ruffled the leaves of Milton’s Paradise Lost which I had been skimming through last night before I slept. I’ve never read it all the way through and probably never will. I barely finish anything I start.
I couldn’t tell you what parts of Paradise Lost I’d read and what I hadn’t. After reading the first two hundred lines I ceased to read it in order. It was my den of false prophecy, a fantasy resource for life’s mythology.
The lace curtains flapped briefly. The shadowy figure drew closer but became no more distinct. Its arm merged to a hand which merged to a finger, pointing accusingly.
I managed to crane my neck. In ten seconds I put all my effort into moving my body an inch. The wind blew a sheet of paper off the desk. It was my final page of revisions for Ximenes, dated 23rd August, 1821. Which was yesterday.
As the page scurried beyond my gaze in an unfelt breeze, the blood drained from my hand. It fell limp beside the bed! I had no time to come to my senses, if I had any left.
Out of the corner of my eye, a tendril of the dark figure extended towards me. It leant inwards, its form bellowing. The tendril wrapped around my heart. A dark, pure form of fear enveloped my chest, intensified around my heart and stabbed my upper back, causing me to arch involuntarily.
reprimanding me for overindulging in my daily medicine: opium.
My usage increased at times of stress and despondency. Recently, I had also taken to gambling. Not for the thrill, but the escape. But the other night I’d lost track of my losses. I’d lost control, and now I was in debt. To momentarily forget about all this, I’d started smoking opium again, rather than simply drinking it with brandy as everyone else did. I had barely touched the pipe since I’d left Lord Byron. Any tolerance had left me, so last night I’d probably consumed too much.
But my immediate worry was the vice-like grip upon my heart and the tendril worming its way down my spine.
It didn’t work. The more I fought against it, the more the Presence enveloped me.
I thought back to all the techniques of self-arousal I had researched while writing my doctoral dissertation on, of all things, sleep walking. Surrender. A sacred object. I could form clear conceptions of none of these.
I couldn’t remember any sacred talismans I was particularly fond of. The earring I picked up off the ground?
Maybe a surprise show of strength was what was needed. Catching It unawares with the full force of desperation. I curled all my energy into a ball and mentally flung it towards my antagonist.
But it would not leave. The entrapment had lasted five minutes. I’d heard of cases longer than half an hour, but most were no more than a minute or two. I must have forgotten to drink the concoction: really only a tincture of brandy to induce a sleep deep enough to calm my restless thoughts. Lately, my sleep paralysis had worsened, and coincided with waking from increasingly horrid dreams.
Next to this glass, I kept a vial of prussic acid. I never intended to use it, but my increasingf depression made me morbidity place it there as a personal dare.But I still wanted to live! I desperately reached for the glass, hoping to splash the demon, but the evil entity would not leave. A gust of wind gathered up my papers, sending one that flew to my bed:
I stopped fighting. Surrendering did not stop the infusion of darkness. I could no longer see the figure’s outline. It had morphed into swirling eddies. My ears rang multiple tones as if I was seeing streaks of light translated into sound.
A blinding pop, a deafening flash, then my neck swung rapidly left and right.
Silence. As pure as an endless day. Broken by my body bouncing on the bed like a rag doll, building up momentum until I was flung across the room. My head hit the floral emblem on the desk corner.
I heaved myself slowly to my feet, fumbling for a pencil to record the duration of the paralysis, the contortions of the body. As my blurry vision cleared I made one final grasp for the glass of water, but no amount of willing would make my body move.
My heart hit my throat as I turned my eyes to the bed. A hand dangled loosely, twitching, grasping the floor. It was my hand! And I was still lying on the bed! Out of my mouth fled ooze. I still hadn’t woken up.
I had not expected this. Sleep paralysis was a known side-effect of opium-induced dreams. But this intense?
Before I had time to process this mentally or physically, the house servant knocked on my door.
My body continued convulsing although I was not inside it.
“Mr Polidori.” Tap tap. “You told me to wake you if-” A head peeped around the door. Her eyes widened when she looked at the bed. She shook her head and gasped. She slipped back into the hall, her feet pattering up the stairs. The pattering then descended and went out onto the street.
The servant returned soon after with a man. I had stopped convulsing. The surgical procedures he applied to me were similar to those I had learnt in medical school. A metal tongue was stuck in my mouth but no reflex action encouraged my stomach to disgorge its contents.
Another medical man arrived with a square suitcase. Yet he had no need of the contents. He walked straight over to me, placed his hands on my stomach and began pumping up and down as if drawing water from a well.
The two surgeons retired upstairs to discuss the recent events with my landlord and the other lodger, Mr Deagostini, a friend of the family.
Another knock, a quiet knock. “I know you’re inside.”
I was still beside the desk, frozen with terror looking at my unclaimed body.
The knocking became firmer. “Mr Polidori, you must pay up.”
Another voice from up the hall intervened: “What on earth is that racket?” Mr R-, the caretaker of my father’s property, came marching down the corridor. I could never tell whether he was genuinely concerned for me, or was simply courteous because I was the landlord’s son.
A paper rustled. The stranger’s voice said measurely: “Mr John Polidori has a debt which must be settled immediately.”
“John Polidori is currently ill disposed. Please come by another day.”
He cleared his throat. “This must be settled now.”
I tried to speak. Nothing came forth. Not even air.
The brass handle shook. The two voices rushed into my room.
Mr R–, of 38 Great Pulteney Street, was followed by a dishevelled man with a ratty brown overcoat and a pointed nose that led him to compulsively sniff in the presence of anything new.
“Mr Polidori! Wake up.” Mr R– prodded the side of my ‘double’, prostrate on the bed. “You see now, he is indisposed.”
I was as pale as a ghost. “I am here!” My lips moved, but the air did not vibrate with the sound of speech.
The ratman stared at me awhile in disbelief – not at me, but at the version of me on the bed. Before turning to the real me.
“Yes I am here!” I heard nothing but my own thoughts, if that can sufficiently describe the sensation of being inexplicably mute. The ratman turned away and looked out the window, pondering his next move.
“You see,” said Mr R–, “how ill-disposed he is?”
The ratman approached. He paused before me and the desk. His eyes darted back to the bed, around the room, at the window, on the floor. His head twitched. “Is he…dead?” He scurried towards the bed.
Mr R– nodded gravely.
The ratman’s eyes widened before resuming their configuration on his narrow face. He sniffed some more, returned to the desk. He shuffled my papers, heedlessly putting out of order the additions to my sacred poem, the Fall of the Angels. His boney hand pulled at the only draw beneath the desk. The handle came loose as expected.
“What are you doing?” Mr R– marched over.
The ratman released his grip on the draw handle. “Whatever this is,” his hand swept the room, close to Mr R–’s face, “I am no part of it. I am only here to settle a debt.”
“May I have your name.”
“There is no need.” He looked at me with both pity and disdain. “The debt is paid. Good day.” The ratman snuck out half closing the door on his coat.
...Continued