PHANTOMS – The short story by Ivan Turgenev

For a long time I could not get to sleep, and kept turning from side to side. ‘Confound this foolishness about table-turning!’ I thought. ‘It simply upsets one’s nerves.’… Drowsiness began to overtake me at last….

Suddenly it seemed to me as though there were the faint and plaintive sound of a harp-string in the room.

I raised my head. The moon was low in the sky, and looked me straight in the face. White as chalk lay its light upon the floor…. The strange sound was distinctly repeated.

I leaned on my elbow. A faint feeling of awe plucked at my heart. A minute passed, another…. Somewhere, far away, a cock crowed; another answered still more remote.

I let my head sink back on the pillow. ‘See what one can work oneself up to,’ I thought again,… ‘there’s a singing in my ears.’

After a little while I fell asleep–or I thought I fell asleep. I had an extraordinary dream. I fancied I was lying in my room, in my bed–and was not asleep, could not even close my eyes. And again I heard the sound…. I turned over…. The moonlight on the floor began softly to lift, to rise up, to round off slightly above…. Before me; impalpable as mist, a white woman was standing motionless.

‘Who are you?’ I asked with an effort.

A voice made answer, like the rustle of leaves: ‘It is I … I … I … I have come for you.’

‘For me? But who are you?’

‘Come by night to the edge of the wood where there stands an old oak-tree. I will be there.’