The Sand-Man | Page 2

and can't keep your
eyes open, as if somebody had put sand in them." This answer of
mother's did not satisfy me; nay, in my childish mind the thought
clearly unfolded itself that mother denied there was a Sand-man only to
prevent us being afraid,--why, I always heard him come upstairs. Full
of curiosity to learn something more about this Sand-man and what he
had to do with us children, I at length asked the old woman who acted
as my youngest sister's attendant, what sort of a man he was--the
Sand-man? "Why, 'thanael, darling, don't you know?" she replied. "Oh!
he's a wicked man, who comes to little children when they won't go to
bed and throws handfuls of sand in their eyes, so that they jump out of
their heads all bloody; and he puts them into a bag and takes them to
the half-moon as food for his little ones; and they sit there in the nest
and have hooked beaks like owls, and they pick naughty little boys' and
girls' eyes out with them." After this I formed in my own mind a
horrible picture of the cruel Sand-man. When anything came
blundering upstairs at night I trembled with fear and dismay; and all
that my mother could get out of me were the stammered words "The
Sandman! the Sand-man!" whilst the tears coursed down my cheeks.
Then I ran into my bedroom, and the whole night through tormented
myself with the terrible apparition of the Sand-man. I was quite old
enough to perceive that the old woman's tale about the Sand-man and
his little ones' nest in the half-moon couldn't be altogether true;
nevertheless the Sand-man continued to be for me a fearful incubus,
and I was always seized with terror--my blood always ran cold, not
only when I heard anybody come up the stairs, but when I heard
anybody noisily open my father's room door and go in. Often he stayed
away for a long season altogether; then he would come several times in
close succession.
This went on for years, without my being able to accustom myself to
this fearful apparition, without the image of the horrible Sand-man
growing any fainter in my imagination. His intercourse with my father
began to occupy my fancy ever more and more; I was restrained from
asking my father about him by an unconquerable shyness; but as the
years went on the desire waxed stronger and stronger within me to

fathom the mystery myself and to see the fabulous Sand-man. He had
been the means of disclosing to me the path of the wonderful and the
adventurous, which so easily find lodgment in the mind of the child. I
liked nothing better than to hear or read horrible stories of goblins,
witches, Tom Thumbs, and so on; but always at the head of them all
stood the Sand-man, whose picture I scribbled in the most
extraordinary and repulsive forms with both chalk and coal everywhere,
on the tables, and cupboard doors, and walls. When I was ten years old
my mother removed me from the nursery into a little chamber off the
corridor not far from my father's room. We still had to withdraw hastily
whenever, on the stroke of nine, the mysterious unknown was heard in
the house. As I lay in my little chamber I could hear him go into
father's room, and soon afterwards I fancied there was a fine and
peculiar smelling steam spreading itself through the house. As my
curiosity waxed stronger, my resolve to make somehow or other the
Sand-man's acquaintance took deeper root. Often when my mother had
gone past, I slipped quickly out of my room into the corridor, but I
could never see anything, for always before I could reach the place
where I could get sight of him, the Sand-man was well inside the door.
At last, unable to resist the impulse any longer, I determined to conceal
myself in father's room and there wait for the Sand-man.
One evening I perceived from my father's silence and mother's sadness
that the Sand-man would come; accordingly, pleading that I was
excessively tired, I left the room before nine o'clock and concealed
myself in a hiding-place close beside the door. The street door creaked,
and slow, heavy, echoing steps crossed the passage towards the stairs.
Mother hurried past me with my brothers and sisters. Softly--softly--I
opened father's room door. He sat as usual, silent and motionless, with
his back towards it; he did not hear me; and in a moment I was in and
behind a curtain drawn before my father's open wardrobe, which stood
just inside the room. Nearer and nearer and nearer came the echoing
footsteps. There was a strange coughing and shuffling and mumbling
outside. My heart