The Red Room

“I can assure you,” I said confidently, standing before the fire with a glass in my hand, “it will take a very real ghost to frighten me.”

“It is your own choosing,” replied the man with the withered arm, glancing at me uneasily.

I was twenty-eight and had never seen a ghost. I did not believe in them. The three old caretakers of Lorraine Castle—the man with the withered arm, the old woman staring into the fire, and the bent man with the shaded eyes—watched me in silence. They warned me repeatedly not to spend the night in the Red Room.

“This night of all nights,” muttered the old woman.

But I had come to prove that fear of ghosts was foolish superstition. When I insisted, they finally gave me directions: down the passage, up the spiral staircase, through a baize-covered door, along a long corridor, and up steps to the Red Room.

“You go alone,” they said.

I took a candle and left them, feeling slightly unsettled by their strange manner and their ancient, shadowed faces. The corridor was cold and silent. Moonlight flooded parts of the staircase, casting sharp shadows. At one point, I nearly startled at what I thought was someone crouching in ambush—but it was only a bronze statue.

At last I reached the Red Room.

I entered, locked the door behind me, and held my candle high. The room was large, draped in dark red fabric, heavy with silence. This was where a young duke had once tried to prove his bravery and had died suddenly—falling down the steps in terror. Other tragic stories clung to the place.

The shadows pooled thickly in the corners. My single candle seemed small and helpless in the vast room.

Determined to defeat imagination, I began a careful inspection. I checked the windows, the curtains, the bed, the fireplace, the walls—everything. Finding nothing unusual, I lit all the candles in the room—those in sconces, on the mantel, near the mirrors. I lit the fire as well. Soon seventeen candles burned brightly, pushing the darkness back.

The room felt safer in the light. Still, an uneasy tension remained. I tried reciting poetry and reasoning aloud that ghosts could not exist. My voice echoed unpleasantly. The red walls and shifting shadows troubled me more than I cared to admit.

Then, suddenly, the candle in the alcove went out.

I turned sharply. “That draught is strong,” I muttered, relighting it.

But as I did so, two candles near the fireplace went out—snuffed instantly, without smoke.

I stared. Another candle vanished. Then another.

One by one, in different parts of the room, flames winked out. Not blown. Not flickering. Extinguished as though by invisible fingers.

A chill of fear crept through me.

“This won’t do!” I cried nervously, rushing to relight them. My hands trembled so badly that I fumbled the matches. As soon as I relit one candle, two others died.

The shadows advanced.

It was like fighting a living enemy. I dashed about the room in growing panic, relighting candles as quickly as I could, but darkness gained steadily. Four went out at once. Then more.

The room seemed to breathe blackness.

I stumbled, knocked over a chair, bruised myself against the table. My movements only caused more candles to fail. It was as if some unseen presence hated the light and was determined to swallow it.

At last only the fire remained.

“Yes—the fire!” I gasped, rushing toward it to relight a candle from the flames.

But as I approached, the fire shrank, flickered, and died.

Darkness fell completely.

It was thick, suffocating, absolute. I felt crushed by it. I flung out my arms, screaming. I tried to find the door, but struck against furniture, staggering blindly. I collided with the bed, then something else. Terror overwhelmed reason. I screamed again and again, stumbling wildly in the blackness until I fell and knew nothing more.

When I awoke, it was daylight. My head was bandaged. The three old caretakers stood over me.

They had found me at dawn, bruised and bleeding.

“You believe now that the room is haunted?” asked the man gently.

“Yes,” I said slowly. “It is haunted.”

They leaned forward eagerly. “Was it the ghost of the old earl? Or the frightened countess?”

“No,” I replied. “There is no ghost of earl or countess.”

“Then what?”

I paused.

“The worst thing that haunts mankind,” I said. “Fear.”

Not a spirit. Not a dead nobleman. Not a curse.

Fear itself.

Fear that hates light and sound. Fear that grows in darkness. Fear that deafens reason and overwhelms the mind.

That was the true haunting of the Red Room.

And it would remain there, lurking in shadow, as long as darkness endured.