Herbert George Wells (1866-1946), the 'Father of Science Fiction' was a celebrated English writer. 'The Time Machine' (1895), 'The War of the World' (1898) and 'The Invisible Man' (1897) of him depict futuristic ideas like time travel, invisibility and alien invasion. His short story 'The Red Room', is a gothic story that explores the themes of fear, superstition and the power of mind. It also stresses the need for developing rational beliefs and scientific temperament.
The protagonist, a confident young man visits an old castle to spend a night in a red room, that is believed to be haunted by the ghost of an Earl and a countess. There are three caretakers in the castle. An old man with a withered arm, an old woman and a more aged and wrinkled one. All the three dissuade the young man and say that his deciding to stay in the red room is his own choosing. When the young man asks them to show the red room, they say he has to take candles that are kept outside the door and go alone. The protagonist walks down the chilly echoing passage with a flared candle that makes shadows behind and before him. Through a spiral staircase he reaches the second landing. Then he opens the door covered with green baize and walks through the long corridor and reaches the haunted red room. On the way the glistening Ganymede and eagle figures make him think about someone crouching there to way lay him. With his hand in the pocket that holds his revolver he enters the red room of Lorraine castle, where the young Duke died.
The protagonist begins to walk round the room after lighting seventeen candles in the room. Unexpectedly the candle in the alcove goes out first and then the two on the table by the fire place are extinguished. When he relights some, the flames of some other candles start to vanish as if the wick has been suddenly nipped between a finger and thumb by an invisible hand. As he leaps from candle to candle, he accidentally bruises himself in the thigh against the table and falls. Before he reaches the fireplace to get his candles lighted, the flames at the fire place too dwindled and vanished. Suddenly he thinks about the moon light in the corridor. So he makes a stumbling run for the door. As he has forgotten the exact position of the door, he gets struck with the corner of the bed in the thick darkness and then with a bulky furnishing and falls unconsciously.
The protagonist opens his eyes the next morning and is asked by the three caretakers whether it was the Earl or the Countess that attacked him the previous night. The protagonist says that there was no ghosts but it was the power of darkness and fear. No doubt, it was the black fear that fought against him in the room. Thus this story delves deep into the psychological dimension of fear and observes how fear and terror can be conjured by the mind even without any supernatural presence.
----V. Thulasidharan
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