The Thing in the Upper Room

The Thing in the Upper Room
by Arthur Morrison
1934

A shadow hung ever over the door, which stood black in the depth of
its arched recess, like an unfathomable eye under a frowning brow. The
landing was wide and panelled, and a heavy rail, supported by a carved
balustrade, stretched away in alternate slopes and levels down the dark
staircase, past other doors, and so to the courtyard and the street. The
other doors were dark also; but it was with a difference. That top
landing was lightest of all, because of the skylight; and perhaps it was
largely by reason of contrast that its one doorway gloomed so black and
forbidding The doors below opened and shut, slammed, stood ajar.
Men and women passed in and out, with talk and human
sounds--sometimes even with laughter or a snatch of song; but the door
on the top landing remained shut and silent through weeks and months.
For, in truth, the logement had an ill name, and had been untenanted for
years. Long even before the last tenant had occupied it, the room had
been regarded with fear and aversion, and the end of that last tenant had
in no way lightened the gloom that hung about the place.
The house was so old that its weather-washed face may well have
looked down on the bloodshed of St. Bartholomew's, and the haunted
room may even have earned its ill name on that same day of death. But
Paris is a city of cruel history, and since the old mansion rose proud
and new, the hôtel of some powerful noble, almost any year of the
centuries might have seen the blot fall on that upper room that had left
it a place of loathing and shadows. The occasion was long forgotten,
but the fact remained; whether or not some horror of the ancien régime

or some enormity of the Terror was enacted in that room was no longer
to be discovered; but nobody would live there, nor stay beyond that
gloomy door one second longer than he could help. It might be
supposed that the fate of the solitary tenant within living memory had
something to do with the matter--and, indeed, his end was sinister
enough; but long before his time the room had stood shunned and
empty. He, greatly daring, had taken no more heed of the common
terror of the room than to use it to his advantage in abating the rent; and
he had shot himself a little later, while the police were beating at his
door to arrest him on a charge of murder. As I have said, his fate may
have added to the general aversion from the place, though it had no in
no way originated it; and now ten years had passed, and more, since his
few articles of furniture had been carried away and sold; and nothing
had been carried in to replace them.
When one is twenty-five, healthy, hungry and poor, one is less likely to
be frightened from a cheap lodging by mere headshakings than might
be expected in other circumstances. Attwater was twenty-five,
commonly healthy, often hungry, and always poor. He came to live in
Paris because, from his remembrance of his student days, he believed
he could live cheaper there than in London; while it was quite certain
that he would not sell fewer pictures, since he had never yet sold one.
It was the concierge of a neighbouring house who showed Attwater the
room. The house of the room itself maintained no such functionary,
though its main door stood open day and night. The man said little, but
his surprise at Attwater's application was plain to see. Monsieur was
English? Yes. The logement was convenient, though high, and probably
now a little dirty, since it had not been occupied recently. Plainly, the
man felt it to be no business of his to enlighten an unsuspecting
foreigner as to the reputation of the place; and if he could let it there
would be some small gratification from the landlord, though, at such a
rent, of course a very small one indeed.
But Attwater was better informed than the concierge supposed. He had
heard the tale of the haunted room, vaguely and incoherently, it is true,
from the little old engraver of watches on the floor below, by whom he

had been directed to the concierge. The old man had been voluble and
friendly, and reported that the room had a good light, facing
north-east--indeed, a much better light than he, engraver of watches,
enjoyed on the floor below. So much so that, considering this
advantage and the much lower rent, he himself would have taken the
room long ago, except--well, except for other things. Monsieur was a
stranger, and perhaps