Chapter 38 caterpillar

A month ago, I read a piece of news from an Italian newspaper: the Cascana Villa where I used to live was demolished, and a large factory was being built on its original site.Then there is no reason why I should not write down what I saw (or imagined I saw) in a certain room and on a certain landing in the above-mentioned villa, and what happened next.What happened next may or may not have anything to do with what I experienced, at the discretion of the reader. The Villa Cascana, of which I speak, may be called one of the most magnificent and well-established buildings, and yet, if it still stands there, then there is nothing in the world, I say absolutely Faith—it can tempt me to step into this house again, because I firmly believe that this is an extremely terrifying and out-and-out haunted house.Although everyone talks about ghosts, most ghosts are not harmful.They may look terrible, but the people they usually visit will be fine after a little fright.On the other hand, these ghosts may be very friendly and will bring benefits to people.But those things in Villa Cascana were no good, and I believe I would have ended up no better than my friend Inglis had I not met them in slightly different circumstances. .

The villa is located on a hill full of holm oak trees, not far from the Italian resort town of Riviera.From the villa, one can see the blue sea, and behind it is a gray-green chestnut grove, which rises up the hill and is replaced by a pine forest, which is much darker in color than the chestnut grove. They are all over the hills.The villa is surrounded by gardens, full of fragrant mid-spring flowers.A salty sea breeze blew, bringing the scent of magnolia and rose, which drifted like streams into the cool rooms of the villa. The lowest floor of the house is surrounded on three sides by a broad colonnade, and on top of the colonnade are the balconies of some rooms on the second floor.A grand staircase of gray marble led from the foyer to a landing outside a second-floor suite of three rooms, two large living rooms and one bedroom.The bedroom is empty and unoccupied, and the two living rooms are in use.From here the grand staircase continues to the second floor, where there are further bedrooms, one of which I live in.On the other side of the landing on the second floor, five or six more stairs lead to another house. The Arthur Inglis I mentioned above lived in that house. He was a painter. Has his bedroom and studio.That's it, my bedroom was on the top floor, and the landing outside it led both to the landing on the second floor and up a few more steps to Inglis' room.I was invited to the cottage by Mr. and Mrs. Jim Stanley, who lived on the other side of the house, where their servants lived.

I arrived at the villa on a sunny noon in mid-May, just in time for lunch.The gardens were colorful and fragrant, and I was delighted to have trekked here from the little pier in the scorching sun.As soon as I stepped into the cold marble villa, I felt that something was wrong.The feeling, I might say, is very vague, yet very strong.I remember, seeing my letter on the table as soon as I entered the hall, I immediately concluded that this was the source of my feeling: I was sure that some bad news was waiting for me.However, when I opened these letters, they did not confirm my foreboding in the slightest, but reported good news to me.My sense of foreboding should have gone away, but I still felt uneasy, and I still felt that something was wrong in this cool and fragrant room.

I take the trouble to say this because it may explain why I slept so restlessly on my first night in Cascana.I have always slept very well. When I go to bed, I just turn off the light, and when I open my eyes again, it must be broad daylight the next day; this incident may also explain why when I do fall asleep I still have vivid dreams like that when I'm still there, a dream I've never had, or even imagined (if what I've seen with my own eyes is really what I've seen in my dreams).But besides the foreboding of the moment, I heard something that afternoon that might have had an effect on what happened to me that night.I can say these things.

After lunch that day, Mrs. Stanley took me around the house and gave me an introduction to the house.Along the way she came to the unoccupied bedroom on the second floor, which adjoined the room where we had lunch. "We'll just leave that room unoccupied," she said, "because you know Jim and I have a lovely bedroom and a dressing room on the other side. If we use this bedroom, we'll have to Turn the room where we ate just now into a dressing room, and go downstairs to eat, but, in fact, we still have a room here, and Arthur Inglis now lives in it. I remember— ——Look, I have a good brain——You once said that the higher you live in a house, the better your mood, so I let you live on the highest floor of this house, so I didn’t let you live in the one just now. bedroom."

After listening to these words, a question did cross my mind, it was as vague as the premonition that made me uncomfortable.Why did Mrs. Stanley explain this to me, since there was no need to explain it?Then it occurred to me for a moment that there was something about this deserted house that needed to be explained. The second thing that may have had an effect on the dreams I had was this. At dinner, we talked about ghosts all at once.Inglis is adamant that anyone who might believe in the existence of the paranormal should not be called a fool.That's the end of this topic.I thought about it, but I couldn't think of what to say next that could be remembered.

After dinner, we went to bed early.I was already yawning as I went upstairs, and I felt so sleepy.My room was very hot, so I opened all the windows, and the bright moonlight came in through the windows, and the beautiful singing of the nightingale also came in.I quickly undressed and got into bed.However, although I felt very drowsy at first, I don't know what happened at this time, and I am very awake.But lying on the bed awake like this is very comfortable: I didn’t move, just listened to the nightingale’s song quietly, looked at the moonlight like water, and was in a great mood. Later, I might finally fall asleep, and what happened next Things might just be a dream.Anyway, after a while, it seemed to me that the nightingale stopped singing, and the moon went down.I also felt, for no reason, that I was going to lose sleep at night and that I might as well get a book and read it.I suddenly remembered that I put a book that I was very interested in in the dining room on the second floor.So I got out of bed, lit a candle, and went downstairs.

I walked into the dining room and saw the book I was looking for was on a nearby table.Just then, I saw that the door of the unoccupied bedroom was open, and a strange gray light shone from it, which was neither morning light nor moonlight.I look around the house.Opposite the door was a bed, a large four-poster bed with a tapestry over the head.Then I saw that the gray light was coming from the bed, or, rather, from something in the bed. It turned out that the bed was covered with big caterpillars. These caterpillars are a foot or more in length, and they crawl across the bed.There was a faint light from their bodies, and it was these lights that illuminated the room.but.Their feet are not the sucker type of ordinary caterpillars, but rows of crab-like claws.They use those claws to catch something, and then slide their bodies forward.Judging by the color, these terrifying insects are gray-yellow and covered with irregular bumps all over their bodies.There were at least a few hundred of these caterpillars, for they formed a wriggling pyramid on the bed.Occasionally a caterpillar would land on the floor with a slight noise.The floor was hard concrete, but it was like putty under the feet of the caterpillars, and then it climbed back into the bed and huddled with its terrible companions.They don't appear to have a face, but one end of the body has a mouth that they open to the side to breathe.

I just looked at them in amazement and fear, and the caterpillars seemed to have suddenly realized my presence, at least their mouths turned to my side.Immediately afterwards, they fell off the bed one after another, twisted their bodies and crawled towards me.I was stunned and stood still, but then I ran back to the bedroom.I still remember the cold feeling of my bare feet on the marble stairs. I slammed the door behind me as soon as I was in the room, and it wasn't until this time—when I was wide awake, of course—that I realized I was standing beside my bed, sweating coldly from terror.The slam of the door closing still echoed in my ears.But this is also very common. If I just had a nightmare and saw those terrible worms crawling around on a large bed, or "cracking" softly on the ground, then the fear caused by all this is not It will stop immediately, and I will still have lingering fears at this time.

If I had been dreaming just now, I was fully awake at this time, however, I could not recover from the fear in the dream.I don't think I was dreaming just now.Until dawn, I was restless, and I dared not go to bed again. If I heard any sound, I would suspect that those worms had crawled over again.To them, with claws that can dig through cement, it's child's play to break through wooden doors—even steel doors and iron doors can't stop them; but, as the beautiful day returned, my fear disappeared.The gentle sound of the wind reassures me again.Whatever those nameless fears were, they had calmed down and no longer frightened me.It was dawn, colorless at first; then dove-gray, and then filled the sky with a fiery glow.

The Stanley family has a good rule that everyone can have breakfast whenever and wherever they like.As a result, I didn't see the other companions until lunch time. I eat breakfast on the balcony, write letters in the morning, and do other things until lunch.In fact, I went downstairs for lunch very late, and by the time I got down, the other three were already eating.There was a thick little cardboard box between my knife and fork, and as soon as I sat down, Inglis spoke: "Please look at the contents of the box," said he, "since you are so interested in natural history. I found this thing crawling on my bedcover last night, and I don't know what it is." I thought , before opening the box, what I expected to see was the same thing I actually saw.Inside the box, there was a small caterpillar, grayish-yellow in color, with strange ring-shaped bumps.It was extremely nimble, zipping from side to side around the box.Its feet were not like any caterpillar I had ever seen, they were like the claws of a crab.After I read it, I put the lid back on. "No, I don't know that kind of thing," I said, "but it looks very disgusting, what are you going to do with it?" "Oh, I'm going to keep it," said Inglis. "It's starting to spin a cocoon. I'm going to see what kind of larvae come out of the cocoon." I opened the lid again, and saw it turning around in such a hurry, it was indeed starting to spin cocoons.Then Inglis spoke again: "Its feet are really queer," he said. "They're like the claws of a crab. What's the Latin name for a crab? Oh, yes, 'cancer' (cancer means cancer in English.) This bug is quite rare, so I'll name it 'Ingliscanth'." At this moment, I suddenly remembered what I saw last night, or what I saw in my dream last night.Something in his words gave me some hint that the terror of last night was connected with all this.I hurriedly picked up the box and threw it out of the window, together with the little caterpillar in the box.Outside the window is a small gravel road, and beyond that is a pool.The box fell into the middle of the pool. Inglis laughed. "So occultists don't like the obvious," he said, "my poor caterpillar." Our conversation immediately turned to other topics.The reason I'm documenting these trivial things in detail is just to document everything that might be related to the mystery problem or caterpillar problem.When I threw the box into the sink, I was a little confused for one reason, and it was very simple: the contents of the box were exactly the same as the ones I saw in the empty house the night before. The beds in the house were huddled together in a pyramid shape, now shrunk.But it's flesh and blood—I don't know if it's real flesh and blood, but it has the structure of an ordinary caterpillar anyway—it might have made people stop thinking that those things are related to ghosts, so they shouldn't feel how horrible the situation last night was. .It didn't, it just made me think that the pyramid wriggling on the bed of the unoccupied bedroom last night was more terrifying and more real. After lunch we walked in the garden or sat by the sea for an hour or two.It must have been about four o'clock when Stanley and I went to bathe together in the sink down the path (that is, the sink into which I threw the box and the caterpillar).The water in the pool was clear and shallow, and at the bottom of the pool, I saw the white cardboard box.The box had been soaked in water and turned into a few sheets of paper.In the center of the pool there is a marble statue of Cupid, the god of love, and the spring water spouts from the wine bag held under the armpit of the god of love.On Cupid's leg crawled the caterpillar, which seemed strange and unbelievable: it must not have been drowned, but escaped from the broken cage and struggled to get up. the shore.It was only an arm's length away from the water, and there it turned and turned, as if spinning a cocoon. I looked at it, and then it occurred to me again that it was exactly like the caterpillars I had seen the night before.It looked at me, and at once broke free from its wrappings, and crawled off the legs of Marble Cupid, fell into the water of the pool, and began to swim straight towards me, twisting and twisting like a snake.It was surprisingly fast (swimming is a new thing for me), and in the blink of an eye it had reached the edge of the pool.Just then, Inglis came over. "Why, isn't this the same 'Inglis Kanser'?" Inglis caught sight of the caterpillar, and he laughed and said, "What is it doing in such a hurry?" He and I were standing side by side on the path by the pool when the caterpillar came ashore, crawled all the way up, stopped about a foot from us, and started turning around again, as if it didn't know what to do. Which direction to go.Finally, as if making up his mind, he climbed into Inglis' shoes. "He likes me best," he said, "but I don't think I like him at all. Now that he's not drowned, I think maybe..." He shook the caterpillar off his shoe onto the pebbles, then stepped on it. The air grew heavier all afternoon with the humid, sultry southerly winds of the Mediterranean.That night I went to bed feeling drowsy again, but in my drowsiness I realized, more than ever, that something was wrong in this house, that a danger was at hand. .But as soon as I went to bed, I fell asleep immediately, and then, I don't know how long, I woke up, or dreamed that I woke up.Then, I felt that I had to get up right away, or it would be too late.At this moment (either in a dream or waking up), I lay there, struggling with this fear, trying to convince myself that it was only due to the hot and humid south wind, and my nerves being too tense, But, at the same time, another part of me knew that every second of delay magnified the danger.In the end, this latter thought prevailed almost irresistibly.I jerked out of bed, put on my jacket and pants, and walked out of my room to the landing outside.As soon as I came out, I realized that I had delayed too long, and it was too late now. By this time, the entire landing on the second floor below was so covered with crawling, wriggling caterpillars that the landing was barely visible.The door to the living room was closed—it was in that living room that I saw the bedroom caterpillar last night.The caterpillars were constantly coming out of the door, one after another, out of the keyhole, and fell to the ground.These caterpillars squeezed so long that they passed through the cracks of doors and keyholes like a thread, but when they came out they returned to their original shape, round and full of pimples.Some of the caterpillars climbed up the stairs that led up to the upper corridor, which ended at Inglis's room, and others climbed up the landing side of the grand staircase that led up to me.All in all, the landing I had to go down was overgrown with caterpillars; I had nowhere to go.When I saw this terrible scene, I was so frightened that I couldn't move. I can't describe the feeling at that time. In the end, all these caterpillars began to act in unison, and on the stairs leading to Inglis' room, they gathered in greater numbers.Then, like waves of weird flesh, they surged down the corridor.By the dim gray light emanating from them, I saw that the vanguard of the wave had reached Inglis' door. Time and time again I wanted to yell out to warn Inglis, but each time I was afraid they would turn and gather on my side of the stairs when they heard the sound, and I couldn't make a sound because of the fright.But at this time, the caterpillars burrowed in through the cracks in the door and the keyholes in Inglis' room in the same way they had burrowed out of the door of the living room on the second floor.And I still stood where I was, making futile efforts to wake him up, to get him to run away before it was too late. In the end, the aisle was completely empty, and the caterpillars were all gone.Only then did I feel for the first time how cold it was to stand barefoot on the marble landing.It was at this time that morning light began to descend in the eastern sky. Six months later I met Mrs. Stanley at a country house in England.We talked about many things, and at last Mrs. Stanley said: "I don't think I've seen you for over a month, that is, since I got the terrible news about Inglis." "I haven't heard anything from him," I said. "Haven't you heard? He's got cancer. The doctor didn't even think it was necessary to operate because there's no cure for his disease. The cancer has spread, so the doctor said." During all six months there was not a single day when I did not think of the things I had dreamed at Villa Cascana, and I could never forget them (or whatever you call them). "It's awful, isn't it?" went on Mrs. Stanley. "I feel, I can't help feeling, that his illness is..." "At the Villa Cascana?" I asked. Mrs. Stanley looked at me, looking very surprised. "Why do you say that?" she asked me. "How do you know?" Then she told me the situation.A year earlier, there had been a fatal cancer-causing incident in that now-unoccupied bedroom.Naturally, she followed the best advice, which was that it was most prudent to leave that bedroom empty and never to be slept in, and she thoroughly disinfected and repainted it.However……