The Horla Read Online Free

garden … in the lane of autumn roses, which are beginning to flower.
    As I was pausing to look at a
Géant des Batailles
, which bore three magnificent flowers, I saw, very distinctly, quite close to me, the stem of one of these roses bend itself, as if an invisible hand were twisting it, then break off, as if this hand had plucked it! Then the flower rose up, following the curve an arm would have described when carrying it toward a mouth, and it remained suspended in the transparent air, all alone, immobile, a terrifying red shape three feet from my eyes.
    Agitated, I threw myself on it, to seize it. I found nothing; it had disappeared. Then I was overcome with a furious rage at myself; for a reasonable, serious man may not permit himself such hallucinations.
    But was this truly a hallucination? I turned back to look for the stem, and I found it immediately on the shrub, freshly broken, between the two other roses that remained on the branch.
    Then I returned to my house, my soul in turmoil; for I am certain, now, certain as I am of the alternation of day and night, that there exists close to me an invisible being, who feeds on milk and water, who can touch things, hold them, and make them change places. He is gifted, consequently, with a material nature, although it is imperceptible to our senses, and he is living, as I am, beneath my roof.…
    August 7
. I slept calmly. It drank the water from my carafe, but did not trouble my sleep at all.
    I wonder if I am crazy. As I was walking just now in the full sunshine, along the river, doubts about my reason came to me, not vague doubts as I have had till now, but precise, absolute doubts. I have seen madmen; I have known some who remained intelligent, lucid, even perceptive about all matters of life, except on one point. They speak of everything with clarity, agility, and profundity, and suddenly, as their thoughts turn to the stumbling-block of their madness, their thought processes shatter, scatter, and sink into that terrifying and furious ocean, full of leaping waves, fogs, and squalls, which we call “dementia”.
    Surely, I would think myself crazy, absolutely crazy, if I weren’t aware of my condition, if I weren’t completely familiar with it, if I didn’t probe it by means of the most complete and lucid analysis. So I am in fact just a rational person suffering from hallucinations. An unknown distress has been produced in my brain, one of those distresses that the physiologists of today try to observe and explain. This distress has established a profound divide in my mind, in the order and logic of my ideas. Similar phenomena occur in dreams, which parade us through the most implausible phantasmagoria without our being surprised, since the verifying apparatus, the sense of control, is asleep, while the imaginative faculty is awake and at work. Isn’t it possible that one of those imperceptible keys on the cerebral keyboard has become paralyzedin me? After an accident, people can lose their memory of proper names or verbs or numbers, or just dates. The localizations of all these fragments of thought have now been proven. So what is so surprising about the fact that my faculty of controlling the unreality of certain hallucinations has been numbed in me for the moment?
    I was thinking about all of that as I followed the water’s edge. The sun was coating the river with brightness, making the land delightful, filling my gaze with love for life, for the swallows, whose agility is a joy to my eyes, for the grasses on shore, whose rustling is a delight to my ears.
    Little by little, however, an inexplicable uneasiness penetrated me. A force, it seemed to me, an occult force was making me go numb, stopping me, preventing me from going further, was calling me back. I felt that painful need to return that oppresses you when you have left an ailing loved one at home, and you suddenly feel a premonition that the sickness has grown worse.
    So I returned, despite myself,