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Clara Whitmore pulled her door shut and stood for a moment in the dim corridor. The evening lamps had not yet been lit along this floor, and what remained of the August daylight came through the high window at the far end in a thin amber band. Most of the other guests had gone down to dinner. The corridor held that particular hotel stillness, carpet and closed doors all the way to the landing.

She rang for the lift.

Somewhere below, the machinery stirred and began its slow, heavy work. Clara did not wait at the landing. She walked to the window and looked down at the street. A line of cabs waited at the corner, and the first streetlamps were being lit along the opposite pavement. People crossed between the carriages on their ordinary evening errands. Behind her, the cables in the shaft groaned and settled.

When the machinery gave another low rumble, she turned back. The landing door was open.

In the weak light, the open door could only mean that the car had reached her floor. Clara started forward, and when the machinery gave another heavy shudder, she quickened her pace. She did not want to make the operator hold the car. Her last few steps became a run.

A man stepped into her path.

He was simply there, solid and dark-coated, directly in front of the opening. Clara pulled up so short that her heel caught the carpet. Her first feeling was irritation. She could not make out his face; the light from the window behind her had left him in brown shadow, and the unlit sconces gave nothing. But there was nothing strange about his height or the set of his shoulders. He looked like any other guest, standing exactly where he had no business to stand.

“Let me through,” she said.

He did not move. Clara made a small impatient gesture toward the lift behind him. For a moment she expected him to step aside, an apology already forming on his lips. Then she looked at where his face should have been and saw only the uncertain darkness between his hat brim and collar. Not because there was anything wrong with him, she thought. Because the light was poor and she had no time to study him.

“Sir,” she said again. “The car is waiting.”

The man was gone.

There was no sound of shoes, no rustle of cloth, no door closing. She had not heard the gate of the lift open. One moment he filled the corridor in front of her; the next moment the space was empty, and beyond it the landing door stood wide.

Before Clara could take another step, the lift car rose into view from below.

It came up slowly, filling the doorway with yellow lamplight, polished wood, and the uniformed operator at the controls. He saw her at the same moment Clara saw the shaft. The car was still settling level with the floor, and the open door had been giving onto nothing but the dark of the shaft, the cables, and the far wall. If Clara had kept running, she would have crossed the opening before the car arrived. There would have been no floor to meet her foot.

“Stay where you are, ma’am.” The operator’s voice was sharp. He held up one hand. “Don’t move.”

Clara did not move. She stood with her hands folded at her waist and watched him bring the car the last few inches level with the landing. The lamplight laid a hard square on the corridor carpet. The operator pushed the gate aside, stepped onto the landing, and looked from the opening to Clara’s face. He was a young man with a thin mustache and a high color that deepened as he spoke.

“That door shouldn’t have been open,” he said. “It locks below. It can’t open unless the car’s here.”

“It did open,” Clara said. “I saw it.”

“That’s what I’m telling you.” He closed the landing door and opened it again, testing the catch. “It shouldn’t. Not with the car below.” He looked at her. “You were very close.”

“I hurried. I thought the car had arrived.”

“You’d have gone straight into the shaft.”

Clara said nothing. The thought was beginning to reach her now, and she did not want to look down.

The operator worked the catch a second time. “I’ll hold her level. Wait until I say.” He stepped back inside the car and braced one hand on the lever. “You can step aboard now, ma’am. Mind the gap.”

Clara looked past him into the corridor. “Did you see him?”

The operator frowned. “See who?”

“A man. He was standing in front of the lift when I came up. He wore a dark coat.”

“I saw no one, ma’am.” He leaned out and looked toward the empty corridor. “A porter would have no reason to be on this floor at this hour, and I’d have seen him as I rose.”

“There was no porter,” Clara said. “He looked like a guest.”

“I saw nobody.”

Clara looked back down the corridor. It was dim and empty from the lift to her own door. The last light at the window had turned a deep gray, and the closed doors stood evenly along the wall. There was no doorway near the lift where a man could have gone. The place where he had stood was exactly one step from the open shaft.

She stepped into the car. The operator closed the gate behind her. Before the outer door shut, Clara looked once more at the landing, at that one step of carpet before the shaft. The door closed over it.

This story is based on a true account included in Andrew Lang’s The Book of Dreams and Ghosts. You can read the original account in the free Project Gutenberg edition. And if you are interested in fresh and modern content about dreams that came true, you can find them in my book “Dreams That Wake You Up”, a collection of real dreams and real outcomes, directly from my clients, printed with their consent.

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