文档介绍：THE TURN OF THE SCREW
THE TURN OF THE
SCREW
1
THE TURN OF THE SCREW
PREFACE
The story had held us, round the fire, sufficiently breathless, but
except the obvious remark that it was gruesome, as, on Christmas Eve in
an old house, a strange tale should essentially be, I remember ment
uttered till somebody happened to say that it was the only case he had met
in which such a visitation had fallen on a child. The case, I may mention,
was that of an apparition in just such an old house as had gathered us for
the occasion-- an appearance, of a dreadful kind, to a little boy sleeping in
the room with his mother and waking her up in the terror of it; waking her
not to dissipate his dread and soothe him to sleep again, but to encounter
also, herself, before she had eeded in doing so, the same sight that had
shaken him. It was this observation that drew from Douglas--not
immediately, but later in the evening-- a reply that had the interesting
consequence to which I call attention. Someone else told a story not
particularly effective, which I saw he was not following. This I took for a
sign that he had himself something to produce and that we should only
have to wait. We waited in fact till two nights later; but that same evening,
before we scattered, he brought out what was in his mind.
"I quite agree--in regard to Griffin's ghost, or whatever it was-- that its
appearing first to the little boy, at so tender an age, adds a particular touch.
But it's not the first occurrence of its charming kind that I know to have
involved a child. If the child gives the effect another turn of the screw,
what do you say to TWO children--?"
"We say, of course," somebody exclaimed, "that they give two turns!
Also that we want to hear about them."
I can see Douglas there before the fire, to which he had got up to
present his back, looking down at his interlocutor with his hands in his
pockets. "Nobody but me, till now, has ever heard. It's quite too horribl