THAT HOT DRY summer I was nearly penniless. I roamed the gritty streets simply to get out of the insufferable cage which had been advertised as “an airy furnished room.” Going from my cubicle to the street was like stepping from a furnace into an oven, but at least there was some degree of difference. I wandered restlessly, weak with the heat and yet too fretful to sit still. I had thought I was familiar with New Haven, but I perspired down streets I had never heard of before. I walked endlessly.
That was the way I discovered the blistered house on Hazel Street. It was set back a bit from its teeming, dilapidated neighbors, shuttered, silent, warped, and secret. Its gray paint had cracked and peeled away, leaving it dingy and mottled. The first time I saw it I experienced an eerie feeling that somehow it stood apart in time, that it was simply the ghost of something else, the visible yet deceptive shell of another structure. But I was overheated to the point of collapse, and near delirium produces strange effects.
That evening as I lay on my lumpy cot in Mrs. Fern’s suffocating “airy” room, the house kept appearing in my mind. Wearily I told myself that it was nothing but a simple wooden frame house, tenantless, neglected by its owner, left to decay on a dingy street near a waterfront slum where once—eighty years ago—there may have been a flourishing stand of hazel trees.
But it wouldn’t do. The next day I was back on Hazel Street, squinting at the infernal rattrap. The street shimmered in the heat; even the screeching urchins and the snarling little dogs were inactive for once. I stood surveying the house at leisure, oblivious to the sweat runnelling my seedy clothes.
And then the door opened. I didn’t see it move, but suddenly it was open. There in the dim shadows someone beckoned.
I had no desire to go in—yet I did. I walked up a moss-chinked brick path, past a front yard overgrown with dead rose bushes, and climbed a short flight of creaky wooden stairs. Just inside the door stood a little old man who looked as if he had crawled out from under the eaves after hibernating for half a century. He was so bent and old I wondered that he hung together. His threadbare brown suit looked like so much accumulated rust which had been thrown at him in handfulls. Some had adhered and that was the suit.
But I went in anyway and soon found myself sitting in a dark, cobwebbed parlour filled with huge portraits, big Victorian chairs covered with antimacassars, and all manner of bric-a-brac drowning in dust.
My elfish host hovered in the shadows, bowing, clasping his castanet hands. “I observed you watching the house. I knew you were intrigued. So I have asked you in! Would you care for a drink of sarsaparilla?”
At that moment I could have drunk boiled ditch water. I nodded an affirmative.
While I toyed with a cut-glass cup (I drank the sarsaparilla in a gulp) my host introduced himself. “I am Jonathan Sellerby,” he said. “I have lived in this house for ninety-seven years. I was born here.”
I looked at him in surprise. One rarely meets a ninety-seven year-old who is not confined to bed or a wheel chair.
His colorless eyes held my own. “Ninety-seven years. But what is that? What is time? A pile of years like so many bricks? Little slices of life all stacked together? How silly we are! Time is a dimension. Time is eternal.”
The intensity and earnestness of his speech startled me. But then I reflected that he had probably been living alone for years. Brooding by himself, he had acquired strange ideas. At least he appeared harmless.
“More sarsaparilla?” I handed him my glass. While he tottered out, I inspected the room, but it was so dark inside with the shutters drawn I could make out few details. The furnishings were uniformly Victorian—massive, ornate chairs and “settles,” fringed hangings, an old foot-pump organ, all coated with a deep layer of gray dust.
My host handed me the second cup of sarsaparilla with a courtly bow. “It isn’t what it used to be—what it was when I was a young man. It had taste then. Why that was the big event of the week. On Saturday night we’d go over to Turner’s Emporium and order sarsaparilla! I tell you it was something to drink in those days!”
A peculiar look came into his eyes, and he fairly shook with excitement. “Maybe—maybe tonight we can go over! Just the two of us. It’s right across the street on the corner. We’ll wait till the gas lamps are lit and most of the brewery wagons are off the street, and then we’ll run over there for a real glass. . . .” He stared at me. “What is it, sir? Are you ill?”
I don’t know what it was—his crazy rambling, the heat, the musty air of the room—but suddenly I tried to get up and I felt dizzy and weak as an infant. Sinking back in my chair, I shook my head. “Just a dizzy spell. Be fine in a minute.”
But I wasn’t. Although I didn’t feel sick, I remained weak and giddy. The thought of going back out into the blazing heat of the pavements appalled me.
My host, Jonathan Sellerby, sensed my apprehension. His gnomish wrinkled face showed genuine solicitude. He nodded nimbly. “You are welcome to remain,” he said. “Tonight it will be cooler. You’ll see. And now, if you will excuse me. . . .”
As he left the room, I closed my eyes and settled back in my chair. It was an odd business certainly, but I assured myself that the sensible thing to do was regain my strength before I ventured onto the streets.
As I half dozed, I wondered why I had come into the house in the first place. What had prompted me? It was absurd, now that I thought about it. Old Mr. Sellerby had simply opened the door and beckoned, and I had walked in. How completely ridiculous! But after all, I told myself, the house had fascinated me. Something about it attracted my attention certainly, so it was only natural that I should come in to see Mr. Sellerby, to help Mr. Sellerby go back wherever he was going, where he and I were going, going together tonight. Where were we going? Of course I knew. We were—going—I almost had it then—yes! yes! yes! We were going to Turner’s Emporium for sarsaparilla! The kind of sarsaparilla they didn’t make any more. That old-time flavor.
I sat up suddenly. Where was Mr. Sellerby?
He came softly into the room, his eyes intent upon my own, his finger on his lips. I could hear every syllable he said, and yet it seemed as if his mouth formed words without making any sound.
He smiled encouragingly. “It is just a bit too early, too soon, sir. Time is turning back, but it is slow, slow. Now I’m going out to the carriage shed in back. The old things are strong there, friend! You can smell the horses, the harnesses, sweet hay in the stalls—the very dust. It will all come back soon. You must be patient. It only takes enough will, enough purpose—enough longing! Patience. Patience.”
Fear inched its way along my spine as he hurried out of the room. He was mad, certainly, and I had better get out of there. But when I moved, I felt helpless. Every last reserve of strength seemed to have ebbed out of me.
Then I began thinking about Turner’s Emporium again, and I really didn’t care. It would be fun to go over for a sarsaparilla. We’d sit on those little wire chairs at a marble-topped table and sip the most delicious sarsaparilla that ever was made. We’d be part of Saturday night. Gem Jackson and the boys would be down on the corner singing, and there’d be the rustle of starched skirts along the brick sidewalks. They might even have fireworks somewhere and maybe—
I fell asleep. At least I remembered nothing more until Mr. Sellerby stole quietly into the room and shook my shoulder. I woke up abruptly, forgetting for the moment where I was. And then I gazed around the room in amazement.
The dust was gone. A gas light flickered on one wall; in its soft glow everything looked polished and new. The chairs seemed to have been recently upholstered, and the gilded portraits gleamed. The rug, before nothing but a sort of gray smudge, now revealed a colorful flower pattern of pink and blue. I rubbed my eyes and looked again; the transformation remained.
I stared at Mr. Sellerby. “You’ve—cleaned the room?”
He smiled gently, shaking his head. “Go to the window and look out.”
As I arose, I noticed that his decrepit brown suit had been replaced by a new one which was creased and spotless. He wore a brown bowler hat and jauntily swung a gold-headed walking stick.
Still feeling weak, I walked to the window. The shutters had been opened. Pulling a fringed brocade curtain aside, I looked out.
I gasped. The entire street seemed changed. Gas lamps flared on iron posts. The wide macadam of the roadway was now a narrow strip of cobblestones; the asphalt pavements were red brick. As I watched in disbelief, a big brewery wagon laden with wooden kegs rumbled past on the cobbles.
Mr. Sellerby was at my side, pointing toward the corner. “Look there,” he said.
On the corner, diagonally across the cobblestone street, was a brightly illuminated store. I read the ornate lettering on the plate-glass window: “Turner’s Emporium—Lemon Ice—Sarsaparilla—All Soda Flavors.”
Mr. Sellerby took my arm. “Come. We will go over together!”
I felt helpless, as if I had no will of my own. Turning from the window, I followed him toward the door. We stepped outside into the soft air of early summer. The scent of roses came to me, and as we walked down the brick path toward the street, I saw that the front yard was a mass of blooming rose bushes.
Mr. Sellerby began humming to himself an old melody which I had seen once in a tattered song book. I couldn’t remember the title but one line went: “In the moonlight, darling, you and I will vow.”
Somewhere in the distance I heard mingled voices harmonizing. They were off-key, even harsh, yet for some reason peculiarly nostalgic, strangely evocative. I paused to listen.
Mr. Sellerby smiled up at me. “That will be Gem Jackson and some of the brewery boys. A bit rusty now—out of practice—but wait till later on in the summer. You’ll be willing to stand and listen to them all night long!”
As we reached the brick sidewalk, a wave of dizziness swept over me. Somewhere, deep within my subconscious, in my very marrow, a warning flashed. I knew—without thinking, without reasoning—that once I crossed that cobblestone street and entered Turner’s Emporium, I would never come back. The realization of this filled me with sudden uncontrollable panic, with a terror beyond argument. Shaking off Mr. Sellerby’s arm, I whirled and ran back up the path, up the steps to the door. As I pulled it open, I looked, once, over my shoulder.
Mr. Sellerby had turned and was staring at me with astonishment. Finally he shrugged and shook his head. Then a look of inexpressible happiness, of beatific anticipation, changed his face. Swinging his ebony cane, he turned and started across the cobblestone street toward Turner’s Emporium.
Slamming the door behind me, I rushed inside, collapsed in a chair, and closed my eyes. My brain, or some vital part of my being, seemed to be swimming through a humming sea of space. I think of the word “vertigo” and yet that scarcely expresses what I experienced. I felt disembodied, lost in some nameless dimension over which I had no control. Far, far away, far in infinite distance, I could still hear the faint sound of singing, off-key, yet haunting, compelling. Finally this faded, and at last oblivion swept over me.
It was early morning when I awoke in the same dusty, shuttered room of the afternoon before. Jonathan Sellerby was nowhere in sight. On a nearby table I saw a cut-glass cup and the ring made by its wet base. I got up, giddily, and walked to the door. I called but there was no reply.
As I walked down the brick path, I saw that the front yard was a black tangle of dead rose bushes. The heat had abated somewhat, and I made my way back to my room without incident.
Of course that wasn’t the end of it. In a few days the police arrived. Jonathan Sellerby had disappeared, and I had been seen emerging from his house. What had I done with his body?
I told them, quite truthfully, that he had gone out the evening prior to my departure and never returned. Hours of grilling got nothing more out of me. I was arrested, released, rearrested, and eventually turned loose again with a sullen promise that the case would not be closed.
My own theory is that Jonathan Sellerby sat alone in that shadowy, shuttered house for a half century or more, longing with terrible intensity for the past, for the happy days of his early youth. I think, at the climax, he may have used my own brain, intentionally or perhaps only accidentally, as a sort of battery or charging unit to strengthen the unceasing waves of his desire. And again, perhaps accidentally—it worked. His ever-present memories of the past, his intense visualizations, his precise recollections of sights and sounds and smells, finally resurrected a period which had passed but which still existed somewhere in the flowing dimension of time.
But how could I tell the police they could find him in Turner’s Emporium, sipping sarsaparilla, back around 1890?