Rensselaer Journal, Volume 10, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 February 1901 — THE STOLEN BODY. [ARTICLE]

THE STOLEN BODY.

By H. G. WELLS.

I [Copyright, 1889, by EL O. W.lh.] . (COMTDrVKD.) W 1 For that it would seem must be the life of these bodiless things of this world that is the shadow of our world. Ever they wateh, coveting a way into a mortal body in order that they may descend, as furies and frensles, as violent lusts and mad, strange impulses, rejoicing in the body they have won, for Mr. Bessel was not the only human soul in that place. Witness the fact that he met first one and afterward several shadows of men—men like himself, It seemed, who had lost their bodies, even, It may be, as he had lost his, and wandered despairing in that lost world that is neither life nor death. They could not speak because that world is silent, yet he knew them for men because of their dim human bodies and because of the sadness of their faces. But how they had come into that world he could not tell, nor where the bodies they had lost might be, whether they still raved about the earth or whether they were closed forever In death against return. That they were the spirits of the dead neither he nor I believe, but Dr. Wilson Paget thinks they are the rational souls of men who are lost in madness on the earth. At last Mr. Bessel chanced on a place Where a little crowd of such disembodied silent creatures was gathered, and, thrusting through them, he saw below a brightly lit room and four or five quiet gentlemen and a woman, a stoutish woman, dressed in black alpaca and sitting awkwardly in a chair with her head thrown back. He knew her from the portraits to be Mrs. Bullock, the medium, and he perceived that tracts and structures in her brain glowed and stirred as he had seen the pineal eye in the brain of Mr. Vincent glow. The light was very fitful- Sometimes it wps a broad Illumination and sometimes merely a faint twilight spot, and it shifted slowly about her brain. She kept on talking and writing with one hand, and Mr. Bessel saw that the crowding shadows of men about him and a great multitude of the shadow spirits of that shadow land were all striving and thrusting to touch the lighted regions of her brain. As one gained her brain or another was thrust away her voice and the writing of her hand changed, so that what she said was disorderly and confused for the most part, now a fragment of one's soul message and now a fragment of another’s, and now she babbled the Insane fancies of the spirits of vafn desire. Then Mr. Bessel understood that She spoke for the spirit that had touch of her, and he began to struggle very furiously toward her, but he was on the outside of the crowd, and at that time he could not reach her, and at last, growing anxious, he went away to find what had happened meanwhile to his body. For a long time he went to and fro seeking it in vain and fearing that It must have been killed, and then he found it at the bottom of the shaft In Baker street, writhing furiously and cursing with pain. Its leg and an arm and two ribs had been broken by its fall. Moreover, the evil spirit was angry because his time had been so short and because of the pain, making violent movements and casting his body about.

And at that Mr. Bessel returned with redoubled earnestness to the room where the seance was going on, and so soon as he had thrust himself within sight of the place he saw one of the men who stood about the medium looking at his watch as If he meant that the seance should presently end. At that a great number of the shadows who had been striving turned away with gestures of despair. But the thought that the seance was almost over only made Mr. Bessel the more earnest, and he struggled so stoutly with his will against the others that presently he gained the woman’s brain. It chanced that just at that moment It glowed very brightly, and in that Instant she wrote the message that Dr. Wilson Paget preserved. And then the other shadows and the cloud of evil spirits about him had thrust Mr. Bessel away from her, and for all the rest of the seance he could regain her no more. So he went back and watched through the long hours at the bottom of the shaft where the evil spirit lay in the stolen bodv it had maimed

writfciag and hurting and weeping and grodhlng and learning the lewoa of pain. And toward dawn the thing he hfcd waited for happened. His brain glowed brightly, and the erti spirit came out, and Mr. Pees el entered the body he had feared he should never enter again. As he did so the silence, the brooding silence, ended, he heard the tumult of traffic and the voices of people overhead, and that strange world that is the shadow of our world, the dark, silent shadows of desire and the shadows of lost men, vanished clean away. He lay there for the space of about three hours before be wag found. And in spite of the pain and suffering of his wounds and of the v dim, damp place In which he lay, of the tears wrung from him physical distress, his heart was fultJof gladness to know that he was back, once more in the kindly world of men THE END.