The Phantom Fourth

"The Phantom Fourth" is a gothic novella by Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu, known for his mastery of supernatural fiction. The story revolves around themes of mystery and the afterlife, featuring a haunted military regiment and the spectral acknowledgment of a missing comrade. As the narrative unfolds, it explores the psychological and supernatural dimensions of loss and remembrance, steeped in Le Fanu's signature atmospheric prose. The tale blends elements of horror and melancholy, ultimately questioning the boundaries between the living and the dead.

• Horror

								
They were three.

It was in the cheap night-service train from Paris to Calais that I
first met them.

Railways, as a rule, are among the many things which they do not order
better in France, and the French Northern line is one of the worst
managed in the world, barring none, not even the Italian vie ferrate.
I make it a rule, therefore, to punish the directors of, and the
shareholders in, that undertaking to the utmost within my limited
ability, by spending as little money on their line as I can help.

It was, then, in a third-class compartment of the train that I met the
three.

Three as hearty, jolly-looking Saxon faces, with stalwart frames to
match, as one would be likely to meet in an hour's walk from the
Regent's Park to the Mansion House.

One of the three was dark, the other two were fair. The dark one was the
senior of the party. He wore an incipient full beard, evidently in
process of training, with a considerable amount of grizzle in it.

The face of one of his companions was graced with a magnificent flowing
beard. The third of the party, a fair-haired youth of some twenty-three
or four summers, showed a scrupulously smooth-shaven face.

They looked all three much flushed and slightly excited, and, I must
say, they turned out the most boisterous set of fellows I ever met.

They were clearly gentlemen, however, and men of education, with
considerable linguistic acquirements; for they chatted and sang, and
declaimed and "did orations" all the way from Paris to Calais, in a
slightly bewildering variety of tongues.

Their jollity had, perhaps, just a little over-tinge of the slap-bang
jolly-dog style in it; but there was so much heartiness and good-nature
in all they said and in all they did, that it was quite impossible for
any of the other occupants of the carriage to vote them a nuisance; and
even the sourest of the officials, whom they chaffed most unmercifully
and unremittingly at every station on the line, took their punishment
with a shrug and a grin. The only person, indeed, who rose against them
in indignant protestation was the head-waiter at the Calais station
refreshment-room, to whom they would persist in propounding puzzling
problems, such as, for instance, "If you charge two shillings for
one-and-a-half-ounce slice of breast of veal, how many fools will it
take to buy the joint off you?"--and what he got by the attempt to
stop their chaff was a caution to any other sinner who might have felt
similarly inclined.

As for me, I could only give half my sense of hearing to their
utterings, the other half being put under strict sequester at the time
by my friend O'Kweene, the great Irish philosopher, who was delivering
to me, for my own special behoof and benefit, a brilliant, albeit
somewhat abstruse, dissertation on the "visible and palpable outward
manifestations of the inner consciousness of the soul in a trance;"
which occupied all the time from Paris to Calais, full eight hours, and
which, to judge from my feelings at the time, would certainly afford
matter for three heavy volumes of reading in bed, in cases of inveterate
sleeplessness--a hint to enterprising publishers.

My friend O'Kweene, who intended to stay a few days at Calais, took
leave of me on the pier, and I went on board the steamer that was to
carry us and the mail over to Dover.

Here I found our trio of the railway-car, snugly ensconced under an
extemporized awning, artfully constructed with railway-rugs and
greatcoats, supported partly against the luggage, and partly upon
several oars, purloined from the boats, and turned into tent-poles for
the nonce--which made the skipper swear wofully when he found it out
some time after.

The three were even more cheery and boisterous on board than they had
been on shore. From what I could make out in the dark, they were
discussing the contents of divers bottles of liquor; I counted four dead
men dropped quietly overboard by them in the course of the hour and a
half we had to wait for the arrival of the mail-train, which was late,
as usual on this line.

At last we were off, about half-past two o'clock in the morning. It was
a beautiful, clear, moonlit night, so clear, indeed, that we could see
the Dover lights almost from Calais harbor. But we had considerably more
than a capful of wind, and there was a turgent ground-swell on, which
made our boat--double-engined, and as trim and tidy a craft as ever sped
across the span from shore to shore--behave rather lively, with sportive
indulgence in a brisk game of pitch-and-toss that proved anything but
comfortable to most of the passengers.

When we were steaming out of Calais harbor, our three friends, emerging
from beneath their tent, struck up in chorus Campbell's noble song, "Ye
Mariners of England," finishing up with a stave from "Rule, Britannia!"

But, alas for them! however loudly their throats were shouting forth the
sway proverbially held by Albion and her sons over the waves, on this
occasion at least the said waves seemed determined upon ruling these
particular three Britons with a rod of antimony; for barely a few
seconds after the last vibrating echoes of the "Britons never, never,
never shall be slaves!" had died away upon the wind, I beheld the three
leaning lovingly together, in fast friendship linked, over the rail,
conversing in deep ventriguttural accents with the denizens of Neptune's
watery realm.

We had one of the quickest passages on record--ninety-three minutes'
steaming carried us across from shore to shore. When we were just on the
point of landing, I heard the dark senior of the party mutter to his
companions, in a hollow whisper and mysterious manner, "He is gone
again;" to which the others, the bearded and the smooth-shaven,
responded in the same way, with deep sighs of evident relief, "Ay,
marry! so he is at last."

This mysterious communication roused my curiosity. Who was the party
that was said to be gone at last? Where had he come from? where had he
been hiding, that I had not seen him? and where was he gone to now? I
determined to know; if but the opportunity would offer, to screw, by
cunning questioning, the secret out of either of the three.

Fate favored my design.

For some inscrutable reason, known only to the company's officials, we
cheap-trainers were not permitted to proceed on our journey to London
along with the mail, but were left to kick our heels for some two hours
at the Dover station.

I went into the refreshment-room to look for my party; I had a notion I
should find them where the Briton's unswerving and unerring instinct
would be most likely to lead them. It turned out that I was right in my
conjecture. There they were, seated round a table with huge bowls of
steaming tea and monster piles of buttered toast and muffins spread on
the festive board before them. Ay, indeed, there they were; but quantum
mutati ab illis! how strangely changed from the noisy, rollicking set I

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