CHAPTER VI. THE FURNITURE THAT WENT MAD

by H. G. Wells

In the early hours of Whit Monday, before Millie was called for the day, Mr. Hall and Mrs. Hall quietly made their way down to the cellar. Their purpose was private, related to the specific gravity of their beer. As soon as they entered the cellar, Mrs. Hall realized she had forgotten to bring a bottle of sarsaparilla from their shared room. Since she was the expert in this matter, Hall dutifully went back upstairs to fetch it.

On the landing, he was surprised to see the stranger’s door slightly ajar. He continued into his own room and found the bottle as instructed.

However, as he returned with the bottle, he noticed that the front door had been unbolted and was simply latched. Suddenly, he recalled the stranger’s room upstairs and the hints Mr. Teddy Henfrey had dropped. He distinctly remembered holding the candle while Mrs. Hall secured those bolts the night before. Stopping in his tracks, he gaped at the sight, then, still holding the bottle, went back upstairs. He knocked on the stranger’s door. There was no response. He knocked again, then pushed the door open and stepped inside.

Just as he had suspected, the bed and the room were empty. What was even stranger, to his not-so-quick mind, was that the only garments he knew of belonging to their guest were scattered on the bedroom chair and along the bed’s rail. The stranger’s large slouch hat was even perched jauntily on the bedpost.

As Hall stood there, he heard his wife’s voice echoing from the depths of the cellar, her words tumbling out in a rapid-fire manner that signaled her impatience. “George! You got what I wanted?”

He turned and hurried back down to her. “Janny,” he called out from the top of the cellar steps, “it’s true what Henfrey said. He’s not in his room. And the front door’s unbolted.”

At first, Mrs. Hall didn’t grasp the situation, but once she did, she insisted on seeing the empty room for herself. Hall, still clutching the bottle, led the way. “If he’s not there,” he said, “his clothes are. What’s he doing without them? This is a most curious business.”

As they climbed the cellar steps, they both thought they heard the front door open and shut, but when they saw it closed and found nothing amiss, neither mentioned it to the other. Mrs. Hall rushed past her husband in the hallway and dashed upstairs first. Someone sneezed on the staircase. Hall, following a few steps behind, thought he heard her sneeze. She, moving ahead, assumed it was Hall who had sneezed.

She flung open the door and stared into the room. “Of all the curious things!” she exclaimed.

Just then, she heard a sniff right behind her, and turning around, she was surprised to see Hall standing a dozen feet away on the top stair. But in a moment, he was beside her. She leaned forward, placing her hand on the pillow and then under the covers.

“Cold,” she said. “He’s been gone for an hour or more.”

As she spoke, something extraordinary happened. The bedclothes suddenly gathered themselves, leaping into a peak before flying off the bottom rail, as if an unseen hand had thrown them aside. Immediately after, the stranger’s hat flew off the bedpost, spinning through the air in a wide arc before hurtling straight at Mrs. Hall’s face. Then, as if on cue, the sponge from the washstand launched itself at her, followed by the chair, which tossed the stranger’s coat and trousers aside carelessly. In a voice eerily similar to the stranger’s, the chair seemed to laugh, turned itself upside down, and charged at Mrs. Hall. She screamed and turned to flee, but the chair’s legs gently but firmly pushed her and Hall out of the room. The door slammed shut behind them and locked itself. For a moment, the chair and bed appeared to celebrate their triumph with a bizarre dance, then everything fell silent.

Mrs. Hall nearly fainted in Mr. Hall’s arms on the landing. It took a great deal of effort for Mr. Hall and Millie, who had been awakened by her scream, to get her downstairs and apply the usual remedies for such situations.

“It’s spirits,” Mrs. Hall insisted. “I know it’s spirits. I’ve read about them in the papers—tables and chairs leaping and dancing…”

“Have a little more, Janny,” Hall said. “It’ll steady you.”

“Lock him out,” Mrs. Hall said firmly. “Don’t let him back in. I had a feeling—I should have known better. With those bulging eyes and that bandaged head, and never going to church on Sundays. And all those bottles—more than anyone should have. He’s put spirits into the furniture... My poor old furniture! That very chair is where my dear mother used to sit when I was a little girl. Can you believe it’s turning against me now?”

“Just a little more, Janny,” Hall said. “You’re all on edge.”

They sent Millie across the street, bathed in the golden light of the five o’clock sun, to fetch Mr. Sandy Wadgers, the blacksmith. Mr. Hall wanted to extend his compliments and mention that the furniture upstairs was behaving in a most peculiar way. Would Mr. Wadgers mind coming over? He was a clever man, and very resourceful. He took the situation seriously. “I’ll be damned if this isn’t witchcraft,” Mr. Sandy Wadgers declared. “You don’t need horseshoes for someone like him.”

He arrived, looking quite concerned. They wanted him to lead the way upstairs to the room, but he didn’t seem eager to rush. He preferred to talk in the hallway. Across the street, Huxter’s apprentice emerged and began taking down the shutters of the tobacco shop. He was called over to join the discussion, and Mr. Huxter himself followed shortly after. The Anglo-Saxon knack for parliamentary debate kicked in; there was plenty of chatter but no decisive action. “Let’s get the facts straight first,” insisted Mr. Sandy Wadgers. “We need to be sure we’re doing the right thing by breaking that door down. Once you break a door, it’s always open to being broken, but you can’t unbreak it once it’s done.”

Then, quite suddenly and astonishingly, the door to the room upstairs swung open on its own. They looked up in disbelief as the stranger descended the stairs, his expression more ominous and blank than ever, those unnaturally large blue glass eyes fixed ahead. He moved down the stairs slowly and stiffly, still staring, crossed the hallway while maintaining his gaze, and then stopped.

“Look there!” he said, pointing with a gloved finger. They followed his gesture and spotted a bottle of sarsaparilla near the cellar door. Then he stepped into the parlor and, with a swift and vicious motion, slammed the door in their faces.

Silence fell as the echoes of the slam faded away. They exchanged glances. “Well, if that doesn’t beat everything!” Mr. Wadgers exclaimed, leaving the unspoken alternative hanging in the air.

“I’d go in and demand an explanation,” Wadgers suggested to Mr. Hall.

It took some time to get the landlady’s husband to that point. Finally, he knocked, opened the door, and managed to say, “Excuse me—”

“Go to hell!” the stranger bellowed, his voice booming, “And shut that door behind you.” And just like that, their brief encounter came to an abrupt end.