tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-88792826686835804772024-03-13T01:06:24.902+00:00The Vault of Ghastly TalesTo make you fear the dark, and be glad of the light...Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444893451907188044noreply@blogger.comBlogger117125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8879282668683580477.post-13561624117838387702018-02-10T14:03:00.002+00:002018-02-10T14:03:55.142+00:00The Good Die Young | The Mysterious Traveler | Horror Radio<br />
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<br />A classic episode of old time radio restored to its former glory for The Vault of Ghastly Tales.<br /><br />Show: The Mysterious Traveler<br />
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Original Air Date: February 27th, 1944<br /><br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444893451907188044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8879282668683580477.post-88934590708077269182018-02-02T19:42:00.000+00:002018-02-02T19:42:10.482+00:00'The Signal-Man' by Charles Dickens<div style="text-align: center;">
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“Halloa! Below there!”<br />
<br />
When he heard a voice thus calling to him, he was standing at the door of his box, with a flag in his hand, furled round its short pole. One would have thought, considering the nature of the ground, that he could not have doubted from what quarter the voice came; but instead of looking up to where I stood on the top of the steep cutting nearly over his head, he turned himself about, and looked down the Line. There was something remarkable in his manner of doing so, though I could not have said for my life what. But I know it was remarkable enough to attract my notice, even though his figure was foreshortened and shadowed, down in the deep trench, and mine was high above him, so steeped in the glow of an angry sunset, that I had shaded my eyes with my hand before I saw him at all.<br />
<br />
“Halloa! Below!”<br />
<br />
From looking down the Line, he turned himself about again, and, raising his eyes, saw my figure high above him.<br />
<br />
“Is there any path by which I can come down and speak to you?”<br />
<br />
He looked up at me without replying, and I looked down at him without pressing him too soon with a repetition of my idle question. Just then there came a vague vibration in the earth and air, quickly changing into a violent pulsation, and an oncoming rush that caused me to start back, as though it had force to draw me down. When such vapour as rose to my height from this rapid train had passed me, and was skimming away over the landscape, I looked down again, and saw him refurling the flag he had shown while the train went by.<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<br />
I repeated my inquiry. After a pause, during which he seemed to regard me with fixed attention, he motioned with his rolled-up flag towards a point on my level, some two or three hundred yards distant. I called down to him, “All right!” and made for that point. There, by dint of looking closely about me, I found a rough zigzag descending path notched out, which I followed.<br />
<br />
The cutting was extremely deep, and unusually precipitate. It was made through a clammy stone, that became oozier and wetter as I went down. For these reasons, I found the way long enough to give me time to recall a singular air of reluctance or compulsion with which he had pointed out the path.<br />
<br />
When I came down low enough upon the zigzag descent to see him again, I saw that he was standing between the rails on the way by which the train had lately passed, in an attitude as if he were waiting for me to appear. He had his left hand at his chin, and that left elbow rested on his right hand, crossed over his breast. His attitude was one of such expectation and watchfulness that I stopped a moment, wondering at it.<br />
<br />
I resumed my downward way, and stepping out upon the level of the railroad, and drawing nearer to him, saw that he was a dark sallow man, with a dark beard and rather heavy eyebrows. His post was in as solitary and dismal a place as ever I saw. On either side, a dripping-wet wall of jagged stone, excluding all view but a strip of sky; the perspective one way only a crooked prolongation of this great dungeon; the shorter perspective in the other direction terminating in a gloomy red light, and the gloomier entrance to a black tunnel, in whose massive architecture there was a barbarous, depressing, and forbidding air. So little sunlight ever found its way to this spot, that it had an earthy, deadly smell; and so much cold wind rushed through it, that it struck chill to me, as if I had left the natural world.<br />
<br />
Before he stirred, I was near enough to him to have touched him. Not even then removing his eyes from mine, he stepped back one step, and lifted his hand.<br />
<br />
This was a lonesome post to occupy (I said), and it had riveted my attention when I looked down from up yonder. A visitor was a rarity, I should suppose; not an unwelcome rarity, I hoped? In me, he merely saw a man who had been shut up within narrow limits all his life, and who, being at last set free, had a newly-awakened interest in these great works. To such purpose I spoke to him; but I am far from sure of the terms I used; for, besides that I am not happy in opening any conversation, there was something in the man that daunted me.<br />
<br />
He directed a most curious look towards the red light near the tunnel’s mouth, and looked all about it, as if something were missing from it, and then looked it me.<br />
<br />
That light was part of his charge? Was it not?<br />
<br />
He answered in a low voice,—“Don’t you know it is?”<br />
<br />
The monstrous thought came into my mind, as I perused the fixed eyes and the saturnine face, that this was a spirit, not a man. I have speculated since, whether there may have been infection in his mind.<br />
<br />
In my turn, I stepped back. But in making the action, I detected in his eyes some latent fear of me. This put the monstrous thought to flight.<br />
<br />
“You look at me,” I said, forcing a smile, “as if you had a dread of me.”<br />
<br />
“I was doubtful,” he returned, “whether I had seen you before.”<br />
<br />
“Where?”<br />
<br />
He pointed to the red light he had looked at.<br />
<br />
“There?” I said.<br />
<br />
Intently watchful of me, he replied (but without sound), “Yes.”<br />
<br />
“My good fellow, what should I do there? However, be that as it may, I never was there, you may swear.”<br />
<br />
“I think I may,” he rejoined. “Yes; I am sure I may.”<br />
<br />
His manner cleared, like my own. He replied to my remarks with readiness, and in well-chosen words. Had he much to do there? Yes; that was to say, he had enough responsibility to bear; but exactness and watchfulness were what was required of him, and of actual work — manual labour — he had next to none. To change that signal, to trim those lights, and to turn this iron handle now and then, was all he had to do under that head. Regarding those many long and lonely hours of which I seemed to make so much, he could only say that the routine of his life had shaped itself into that form, and he had grown used to it. He had taught himself a language down here,— if only to know it by sight, and to have formed his own crude ideas of its pronunciation, could be called learning it. He had also worked at fractions and decimals, and tried a little algebra; but he was, and had been as a boy, a poor hand at figures. Was it necessary for him when on duty always to remain in that channel of damp air, and could he never rise into the sunshine from between those high stone walls? Why, that depended upon times and circumstances. Under some conditions there would be less upon the Line than under others, and the same held good as to certain hours of the day and night. In bright weather, he did choose occasions for getting a little above these lower shadows; but, being at all times liable to be called by his electric bell, and at such times listening for it with redoubled anxiety, the relief was less than I would suppose.<br />
<br />
He took me into his box, where there was a fire, a desk for an official book in which he had to make certain entries, a telegraphic instrument with its dial, face, and needles, and the little bell of which he had spoken. On my trusting that he would excuse the remark that he had been well educated, and (I hoped I might say without offence) perhaps educated above that station, he observed that instances of slight incongruity in such wise would rarely be found wanting among large bodies of men; that he had heard it was so in workhouses, in the police force, even in that last desperate resource, the army; and that he knew it was so, more or less, in any great railway staff. He had been, when young (if I could believe it, sitting in that hut,— he scarcely could), a student of natural philosophy, and had attended lectures; but he had run wild, misused his opportunities, gone down, and never risen again. He had no complaint to offer about that. He had made his bed, and he lay upon it. It was far too late to make another.<br />
<br />
All that I have here condensed he said in a quiet manner, with his grave dark regards divided between me and the fire. He threw in the word, “Sir,” from time to time, and especially when he referred to his youth,— as though to request me to understand that he claimed to be nothing but what I found him. He was several times interrupted by the little bell, and had to read off messages, and send replies. Once he had to stand without the door, and display a flag as a train passed, and make some verbal communication to the driver. In the discharge of his duties, I observed him to be remarkably exact and vigilant, breaking off his discourse at a syllable, and remaining silent until what he had to do was done.<br />
<br />
In a word, I should have set this man down as one of the safest of men to be employed in that capacity, but for the circumstance that while he was speaking to me he twice broke off with a fallen colour, turned his face towards the little bell when it did NOT ring, opened the door of the hut (which was kept shut to exclude the unhealthy damp), and looked out towards the red light near the mouth of the tunnel. On both of those occasions, he came back to the fire with the inexplicable air upon him which I had remarked, without being able to define, when we were so far asunder.<br />
<br />
Said I, when I rose to leave him, “You almost make me think that I have met with a contented man.”<br />
<br />
(I am afraid I must acknowledge that I said it to lead him on.)<br />
<br />
“I believe I used to be so,” he rejoined, in the low voice in which he had first spoken; “but I am troubled, sir, I am troubled.”<br />
<br />
He would have recalled the words if he could. He had said them, however, and I took them up quickly.<br />
<br />
“With what? What is your trouble?”<br />
<br />
“It is very difficult to impart, sir. It is very, very difficult to speak of. If ever you make me another visit, I will try to tell you.”<br />
<br />
“But I expressly intend to make you another visit. Say, when shall it be?”<br />
<br />
“I go off early in the morning, and I shall be on again at ten to- morrow night, sir.”<br />
<br />
“I will come at eleven.”<br />
<br />
He thanked me, and went out at the door with me. “I’ll show my white light, sir,” he said, in his peculiar low voice, “till you have found the way up. When you have found it, don’t call out! And when you are at the top, don’t call out!”<br />
<br />
His manner seemed to make the place strike colder to me, but I said no more than, “Very well.”<br />
<br />
“And when you come down to-morrow night, don’t call out! Let me ask you a parting question. What made you cry, ‘Halloa! Below there!’ to-night?”<br />
<br />
“Heaven knows,” said I. “I cried something to that effect —”<br />
<br />
“Not to that effect, sir. Those were the very words. I know them well.”<br />
<br />
“Admit those were the very words. I said them, no doubt, because I saw you below.”<br />
<br />
“For no other reason?”<br />
<br />
“What other reason could I possibly have?”<br />
<br />
“You had no feeling that they were conveyed to you in any supernatural way?”<br />
<br />
“No.”<br />
<br />
He wished me good-night, and held up his light. I walked by the side of the down Line of rails (with a very disagreeable sensation of a train coming behind me) until I found the path. It was easier to mount than to descend, and I got back to my inn without any adventure.<br />
<br />
Punctual to my appointment, I placed my foot on the first notch of the zigzag next night, as the distant clocks were striking eleven. He was waiting for me at the bottom, with his white light on. “I have not called out,” I said, when we came close together; “may I speak now?” “By all means, sir.” “Good-night, then, and here’s my hand.” “Good-night, sir, and here’s mine.” With that we walked side by side to his box, entered it, closed the door, and sat down by the fire.<br />
<br />
“I have made up my mind, sir,” he began, bending forward as soon as we were seated, and speaking in a tone but a little above a whisper, “that you shall not have to ask me twice what troubles me. I took you for some one else yesterday evening. That troubles me.”<br />
<br />
“That mistake?”<br />
<br />
“No. That some one else.”<br />
<br />
“Who is it?”<br />
<br />
“I don’t know.”<br />
<br />
“Like me?”<br />
<br />
“I don’t know. I never saw the face. The left arm is across the face, and the right arm is waved,— violently waved. This way.”<br />
<br />
I followed his action with my eyes, and it was the action of an arm gesticulating, with the utmost passion and vehemence, “For God’s sake, clear the way!”<br />
<br />
“One moonlight night,” said the man, “I was sitting here, when I heard a voice cry, ‘Halloa! Below there!’ I started up, looked from that door, and saw this Some one else standing by the red light near the tunnel, waving as I just now showed you. The voice seemed hoarse with shouting, and it cried, ‘Look out! Look out!’ And then attain, ‘Halloa! Below there! Look out!’ I caught up my lamp, turned it on red, and ran towards the figure, calling, ‘What’s wrong? What has happened? Where?’ It stood just outside the blackness of the tunnel. I advanced so close upon it that I wondered at its keeping the sleeve across its eyes. I ran right up at it, and had my hand stretched out to pull the sleeve away, when it was gone.”<br />
<br />
“Into the tunnel?” said I.<br />
<br />
“No. I ran on into the tunnel, five hundred yards. I stopped, and held my lamp above my head, and saw the figures of the measured distance, and saw the wet stains stealing down the walls and trickling through the arch. I ran out again faster than I had run in (for I had a mortal abhorrence of the place upon me), and I looked all round the red light with my own red light, and I went up the iron ladder to the gallery atop of it, and I came down again, and ran back here. I telegraphed both ways, ‘An alarm has been given. Is anything wrong?’ The answer came back, both ways, ‘All well.’”<br />
<br />
Resisting the slow touch of a frozen finger tracing out my spine, I showed him how that this figure must be a deception of his sense of sight; and how that figures, originating in disease of the delicate nerves that minister to the functions of the eye, were known to have often troubled patients, some of whom had become conscious of the nature of their affliction, and had even proved it by experiments upon themselves. “As to an imaginary cry,” said I, “do but listen for a moment to the wind in this unnatural valley while we speak so low, and to the wild harp it makes of the telegraph wires.”<br />
<br />
That was all very well, he returned, after we had sat listening for a while, and he ought to know something of the wind and the wires,— he who so often passed long winter nights there, alone and watching. But he would beg to remark that he had not finished.<br />
<br />
I asked his pardon, and he slowly added these words, touching my arm, —<br />
<br />
“Within six hours after the Appearance, the memorable accident on this Line happened, and within ten hours the dead and wounded were brought along through the tunnel over the spot where the figure had stood.”<br />
<br />
A disagreeable shudder crept over me, but I did my best against it. It was not to be denied, I rejoined, that this was a remarkable coincidence, calculated deeply to impress his mind. But it was unquestionable that remarkable coincidences did continually occur, and they must be taken into account in dealing with such a subject. Though to be sure I must admit, I added (for I thought I saw that he was going to bring the objection to bear upon me), men of common sense did not allow much for coincidences in making the ordinary calculations of life.<br />
<br />
He again begged to remark that he had not finished.<br />
<br />
I again begged his pardon for being betrayed into interruptions.<br />
<br />
“This,” he said, again laying his hand upon my arm, and glancing over his shoulder with hollow eyes, “was just a year ago. Six or seven months passed, and I had recovered from the surprise and shock, when one morning, as the day was breaking, I, standing at the door, looked towards the red light, and saw the spectre again.” He stopped, with a fixed look at me.<br />
<br />
“Did it cry out?”<br />
<br />
“No. It was silent.”<br />
<br />
“Did it wave its arm?”<br />
<br />
“No. It leaned against the shaft of the light, with both hands before the face. Like this.”<br />
<br />
Once more I followed his action with my eyes. It was an action of mourning. I have seen such an attitude in stone figures on tombs.<br />
<br />
“Did you go up to it?”<br />
<br />
“I came in and sat down, partly to collect my thoughts, partly because it had turned me faint. When I went to the door again, daylight was above me, and the ghost was gone.”<br />
<br />
“But nothing followed? Nothing came of this?”<br />
<br />
He touched me on the arm with his forefinger twice or thrice giving a ghastly nod each time:-<br />
<br />
“That very day, as a train came out of the tunnel, I noticed, at a carriage window on my side, what looked like a confusion of hands and heads, and something waved. I saw it just in time to signal the driver, Stop! He shut off, and put his brake on, but the train drifted past here a hundred and fifty yards or more. I ran after it, and, as I went along, heard terrible screams and cries. A beautiful young lady had died instantaneously in one of the compartments, and was brought in here, and laid down on this floor between us.”<br />
<br />
Involuntarily I pushed my chair back, as I looked from the boards at which he pointed to himself.<br />
<br />
“True, sir. True. Precisely as it happened, so I tell it you.”<br />
<br />
I could think of nothing to say, to any purpose, and my mouth was very dry. The wind and the wires took up the story with a long lamenting wail.<br />
<br />
He resumed. “Now, sir, mark this, and judge how my mind is troubled. The spectre came back a week ago. Ever since, it has been there, now and again, by fits and starts.”<br />
<br />
“At the light?”<br />
<br />
“At the Danger-light.”<br />
<br />
“What does it seem to do?”<br />
<br />
He repeated, if possible with increased passion and vehemence, that former gesticulation of, “For God’s sake, clear the way!”<br />
<br />
Then he went on. “I have no peace or rest for it. It calls to me, for many minutes together, in an agonised manner, ‘Below there! Look out! Look out!’ It stands waving to me. It rings my little bell —”<br />
<br />
I caught at that. “Did it ring your bell yesterday evening when I was here, and you went to the door?”<br />
<br />
“Twice.”<br />
<br />
“Why, see,” said I, “how your imagination misleads you. My eyes were on the bell, and my ears were open to the bell, and if I am a living man, it did NOT ring at those times. No, nor at any other time, except when it was rung in the natural course of physical things by the station communicating with you.”<br />
<br />
He shook his head. “I have never made a mistake as to that yet, sir. I have never confused the spectre’s ring with the man’s. The ghost’s ring is a strange vibration in the bell that it derives from nothing else, and I have not asserted that the bell stirs to the eye. I don’t wonder that you failed to hear it. But I heard it.”<br />
<br />
“And did the spectre seem to be there, when you looked out?”<br />
<br />
“It WAS there.”’<br />
<br />
“Both times?”<br />
<br />
He repeated firmly: “Both times.”<br />
<br />
“Will you come to the door with me, and look for it now?”<br />
<br />
He bit his under lip as though he were somewhat unwilling, but arose. I opened the door, and stood on the step, while he stood in the doorway. There was the Danger-light. There was the dismal mouth of the tunnel. There were the high, wet stone walls of the cutting. There were the stars above them.<br />
<br />
“Do you see it?” I asked him, taking particular note of his face. His eyes were prominent and strained, but not very much more so, perhaps, than my own had been when I had directed them earnestly towards the same spot.<br />
<br />
“No,” he answered. “It is not there.”<br />
<br />
“Agreed,” said I.<br />
<br />
We went in again, shut the door, and resumed our seats. I was thinking how best to improve this advantage, if it might be called one, when he took up the conversation in such a matter-of-course way, so assuming that there could be no serious question of fact between us, that I felt myself placed in the weakest of positions.<br />
<br />
“By this time you will fully understand, sir,” he said, “that what troubles me so dreadfully is the question, What does the spectre mean?”<br />
<br />
I was not sure, I told him, that I did fully understand.<br />
<br />
“What is its warning against?” he said, ruminating, with his eyes on the fire, and only by times turning them on me. “What is the danger? Where is the danger? There is danger overhanging somewhere on the Line. Some dreadful calamity will happen. It is not to be doubted this third time, after what has gone before. But surely this is a cruel haunting of me. What can I do?”<br />
<br />
He pulled out his handkerchief, and wiped the drops from his heated forehead.<br />
<br />
“If I telegraph Danger, on either side of me, or on both, I can give no reason for it,” he went on, wiping the palms of his hands. “I should get into trouble, and do no good. They would think I was mad. This is the way it would work,— Message: ‘Danger! Take care!’ Answer: ‘What Danger? Where?’ Message: ‘Don’t know. But, for God’s sake, take care!’ They would displace me. What else could they do?”<br />
<br />
His pain of mind was most pitiable to see. It was the mental torture of a conscientious man, oppressed beyond endurance by an unintelligible responsibility involving life.<br />
<br />
“When it first stood under the Danger-light,” he went on, putting his dark hair back from his head, and drawing his hands outward across and across his temples in an extremity of feverish distress, “why not tell me where that accident was to happen,— if it must happen? Why not tell me how it could be averted,— if it could have been averted? When on its second coming it hid its face, why not tell me, instead, ‘She is going to die. Let them keep her at home’? If it came, on those two occasions, only to show me that its warnings were true, and so to prepare me for the third, why not warn me plainly now? And I, Lord help me! A mere poor signal-man on this solitary station! Why not go to somebody with credit to be believed, and power to act?”<br />
<br />
When I saw him in this state, I saw that for the poor man’s sake, as well as for the public safety, what I had to do for the time was to compose his mind. Therefore, setting aside all question of reality or unreality between us, I represented to him that whoever thoroughly discharged his duty must do well, and that at least it was his comfort that he understood his duty, though he did not understand these confounding Appearances. In this effort I succeeded far better than in the attempt to reason him out of his conviction. He became calm; the occupations incidental to his post as the night advanced began to make larger demands on his attention: and I left him at two in the morning. I had offered to stay through the night, but he would not hear of it.<br />
<br />
That I more than once looked back at the red light as I ascended the pathway, that I did not like the red light, and that I should have slept but poorly if my bed had been under it, I see no reason to conceal. Nor did I like the two sequences of the accident and the dead girl. I see no reason to conceal that either.<br />
<br />
But what ran most in my thoughts was the consideration how ought I to act, having become the recipient of this disclosure? I had proved the man to be intelligent, vigilant, painstaking, and exact; but how long might he remain so, in his state of mind? Though in a subordinate position, still he held a most important trust, and would I (for instance) like to stake my own life on the chances of his continuing to execute it with precision?<br />
<br />
Unable to overcome a feeling that there would be something treacherous in my communicating what he had told me to his superiors in the Company, without first being plain with himself and proposing a middle course to him, I ultimately resolved to offer to accompany him (otherwise keeping his secret for the present) to the wisest medical practitioner we could hear of in those parts, and to take his opinion. A change in his time of duty would come round next night, he had apprised me, and he would be off an hour or two after sunrise, and on again soon after sunset. I had appointed to return accordingly.<br />
<br />
Next evening was a lovely evening, and I walked out early to enjoy it. The sun was not yet quite down when I traversed the field-path near the top of the deep cutting. I would extend my walk for an hour, I said to myself, half an hour on and half an hour back, and it would then be time to go to my signal-man’s box.<br />
<br />
Before pursuing my stroll, I stepped to the brink, and mechanically looked down, from the point from which I had first seen him. I cannot describe the thrill that seized upon me, when, close at the mouth of the tunnel, I saw the appearance of a man, with his left sleeve across his eyes, passionately waving his right arm.<br />
<br />
The nameless horror that oppressed me passed in a moment, for in a moment I saw that this appearance of a man was a man indeed, and that there was a little group of other men, standing at a short distance, to whom he seemed to be rehearsing the gesture he made. The Danger-light was not yet lighted. Against its shaft, a little low hut, entirely new to me, had been made of some wooden supports and tarpaulin. It looked no bigger than a bed.<br />
<br />
With an irresistible sense that something was wrong,— with a flashing self-reproachful fear that fatal mischief had come of my leaving the man there, and causing no one to be sent to overlook or correct what he did,— I descended the notched path with all the speed I could make.<br />
<br />
“What is the matter?” I asked the men.<br />
<br />
“Signal-man killed this morning, sir.”<br />
<br />
“Not the man belonging to that box?”<br />
<br />
“Yes, sir.”<br />
<br />
“Not the man I know?”<br />
<br />
“You will recognise him, sir, if you knew him,” said the man who spoke for the others, solemnly uncovering his own head, and raising an end of the tarpaulin, “for his face is quite composed.”<br />
<br />
“O, how did this happen, how did this happen?” I asked, turning from one to another as the hut closed in again.<br />
<br />
“He was cut down by an engine, sir. No man in England knew his work better. But somehow he was not clear of the outer rail. It was just at broad day. He had struck the light, and had the lamp in his hand. As the engine came out of the tunnel, his back was towards her, and she cut him down. That man drove her, and was showing how it happened. Show the gentleman, Tom.”<br />
<br />
The man, who wore a rough dark dress, stepped back to his former place at the mouth of the tunnel.<br />
<br />
“Coming round the curve in the tunnel, sir,” he said, “I saw him at the end, like as if I saw him down a perspective-glass. There was no time to check speed, and I knew him to be very careful. As he didn’t seem to take heed of the whistle, I shut it off when we were running down upon him, and called to him as loud as I could call.”<br />
<br />
“What did you say?”<br />
<br />
“I said, ‘Below there! Look out! Look out! For God’s sake, clear the way!’”<br />
<br />
I started.<br />
<br />
“Ah! it was a dreadful time, sir. I never left off calling to him. I put this arm before my eyes not to see, and I waved this arm to the last; but it was no use.”<br />
<br />
Without prolonging the narrative to dwell on any one of its curious circumstances more than on any other, I may, in closing it, point out the coincidence that the warning of the Engine-Driver included, not only the words which the unfortunate Signal-man had repeated to me as haunting him, but also the words which I myself — not he — had attached, and that only in my own mind, to the gesticulation he had imitated.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>THE END</b></div>
<br />
<br />
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<strong><span style="color: white;">Written by <a data-mce-href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Dickens" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Dickens" target="_blank">Charles Dickens</a></span></strong></div>
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<strong><span style="color: white;">Published in '<a data-mce-href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Three-Ghost-Stories-ebook/dp/B008479PJS/ref=sr_1_sc_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1362755843&sr=1-1-spell" href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Three-Ghost-Stories-ebook/dp/B008479PJS/ref=sr_1_sc_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1362755843&sr=1-1-spell" target="_blank">Three Ghost Stories</a>'</span></strong></div>
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444893451907188044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8879282668683580477.post-32132564350124790892018-01-20T03:22:00.000+00:002018-01-20T03:22:28.574+00:00'The Frontier Guards' by H. Russell Wakefield<div style="text-align: center;">
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<br />
<br />
"What a charming little house!" said Brinton, as he was walking in from a round of golf at Ellesborough with Lander.<br />
<br />
"Yes, from the outside," replied Lander.<br />
<br />
"What's the matter with the inside–Eozoic plumbing?"<br />
<br />
"No; the 'usual offices' are neat, if not gaudy. Spengler would probably describe them as 'contemporary with the death of Lincoln,' but it's not that–it's haunted."<br />
<br />
"Is it, by Jove!" said Brinton, gazing up at it. "Fancy such a dear little Queen Anne piece having such a nasty reputation. I see it's unoccupied."<br />
<br />
"It usually is," replied Lander.<br />
<br />
"Tell me about it."<br />
<br />
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<br />
"During dinner I will. But you seem to find something of interest about those windows on the second floor."<br />
<br />
Brinton gazed up for a moment or two longer, and then started to walk back in silence beside his host.<br />
<br />
In a few minutes they reached Lander's cottage–it was rather more pretentious than that–an engaging two–storeyed structure added to and modernised from time to time, formerly known as 'The Old Vicarage,' and rechristened 'Laymer's.' Black and white and creeper-lined, with a trim little garden of rose-trees and mellow turf, two fine limes, and a great yew, impenetrable and secret. This little garden melted into an arable expanse, and there was a lovely view over to some high Chiltern spurs. The whole place just suited Lander, who was–or it might be more accurate to say, wanted to be–a novelist; a commonplace and ill–advised ambition, but he had money of his own and could afford to wait.<br />
<br />
James Brinton, his guest for a week and a very old friend, occupied himself with a picture gallery in Mayfair. A very small gallery–one rather small room, to be exact–but he had admirable taste and made it pay.<br />
<br />
Two hours later they sat down to dinner.<br />
<br />
"Now then," said Brinton, as Mrs. Dunkley brought in the soup, "tell me about that house."<br />
<br />
"Well," replied Lander, "I have had, as you know, much more experience of such places than most people, and I consider Pailton the worst or the best specimen I have heard or read of or experienced. For one thing, it is a 'killer.' The majority of haunted houses are harmless, the peculiar energy they have absorbed and radiate forth is not hostile to life. But in others the radiation is malignant and fatal. Pailton has been rented five times in the last twelve years; in each case the tenancy has been marked by a violent death within its walls. For my part, I have no two opinions concerning the morality of letting it at all. It should be razed to the ground."<br />
<br />
"How long do its occupants stick it out as a rule?"<br />
<br />
"Six weeks is the record, and that was made by some people called Pendexter. That was three years ago. I knew Pendexter pére, and he was a courageous and determined person. His daughter was hurled down the stairs one night and killed, and I shall never forget the mingled fury and grief with which he told me about it. Previous to that he had detected eighteen different examples of psychic action–appearances and sounds–several definitely malignant. The family had not enjoyed one single day of freedom from abnormal phenomena."<br />
<br />
"How long since it was last occupied?" asked Brinton. "It has been empty for a year, and I am inclined to think it will remain so. Anyone who comes down to look at it is given a pretty straight tip by one or other of us to keep away."<br />
<br />
"Does it affect you violently?"<br />
<br />
"I have never set foot in it."<br />
<br />
"What? You, of all people!"<br />
<br />
"My dear Jim, just for that very reason. When I first discovered I was psychic I felt flattered and anxious to experience all I could. I soon changed my mind. I found I experienced quite enough without any need for making opportunities. I do to this day. Several times I have had a visitor in the study here after dinner, an uninvited guest. And it has always been so. I have many times heard and seen things which could not be explained in places with perfectly clean bills of psychic health. And one never gets quite used to it. Terror may pass, but some distress of mind is invariable. Any person gifted or afflicted like myself will tell you the same. It seems to me sometimes as if I actually assist in evoking and materialising these appearances, that I help to establish a connection between them and the place I inhabit, that I am a most unpleasant kind of lightning conductor."<br />
<br />
"Is there any possible explanation for that?"<br />
<br />
"Well, I have formed one, but it would take rather a long time to explain, and may be quite fallacious. Anyhow, there has never been any need for me to visit such places as Pailton, and I keep away from them if I can."<br />
<br />
"Would you very much object to going in for a minute or two?"<br />
<br />
"Why?"<br />
<br />
"Well, I have been bothered all my life about this business of ghosts. I have never seen one; in a sense I 'don't believe in them,' yet I am convinced you have known many. It is a maddening dualism of mind. I feel if I could just once come in contact with something of the kind I should feel a sense of enormous relief."<br />
<br />
"And you'd like me to conduct you over Pailton?"<br />
<br />
"Not if it would really upset you. It would be at your own risk," said Lander, smiling.<br />
<br />
"I'll risk it!"<br />
<br />
"You mustn't imagine that you can go into a disturbed spot such as this and expect to see about ten ghosts in as many minutes. Even in the case of such a busy hive as Pailton there are many quiet periods, and some people simply cannot 'see ghosts.' The odds are very much against your desire being granted, though, if you are psychic, the atmosphere of the place would affect you at once."<br />
<br />
"How?"<br />
<br />
"Well, you've often heard of people who know by some obscure but infallible instinct that there's a cat in the room. Just so. However, I'll certainly give you the chance. It won't seriously disturb me. I can get the key in the morning from the woman who looks after it, though I need hardly say she doesn't sleep there. There is no need for a caretaker. It was broken into once, but the burglar was found dead in the dining-room and since then the crooks have given it a wide berth."<br />
<br />
"It really is dangerous, then?"<br />
<br />
"Beginning to feel a bit prudent?"<br />
<br />
"No, I shall feel safe with you."<br />
<br />
"Very well then. After coming back from golf we'll pay it a visit. It will be dark by five, and we'll make the excursion about six. The chances of gratifying your curiosity will be better after dark. I'd better tell you something else. I never quite know how these places are going to affect me. Before now, I have gone off into a kind of trance and been decidedly weird, my dear Jim. My sense of time and space becomes distorted, though for your assurance I may say," he added smiling, "I am never dangerous when in this condition. Furthermore, you must be prepared to make acquaintance with a mode of existence in which the ordinary laws of existence which you have always known abdicate themselves. Bierce called his famous book of ghost stories, Can These Things Be? Assuredly they can. Now I'm sounding pompous and pontifical, but some such warning is necessary. When I touch that front door tomorrow I may become in a sense a stranger to you; once inside we shall cross a frontier into a region with its own laws of time and space, and where the seemingly impossible can happen...Do you understand what I mean and still want to go?"<br />
<br />
"Yes," replied Brinton, "to all your questions."<br />
<br />
"Very well then," said Lander, "I will now get out the chess-men and discover a complete answer to Reti's opening which you sprang on me last night; so you shall have the white pieces."<br />
<br />
November 21st was a lazy, drowsy, cloudless day, starting with a sharp ground frost which, thawing unresistingly as the sun climbed, made the tees at Ellesborough like tiny slides. In consequence, neither Brinton nor Lander played very good golf. This upset Brinton not at all, for he was thinking much more of that which was beginning to impress him as a possible ordeal, the crossing of the threshold of Pailton a few hours later. As they finished their second round a mist, spreading like a gigantic spider's web, was beginning to raise the level of the Buckinghamshire fields. As they walked homewards it climbed with them, keeping pace with them like a dog; sometimes hurrying ahead, then dropping back, but always with them.<br />
<br />
It was exactly five o'clock as they reached Laymer's. Tea was ready.<br />
<br />
"Do you still want to go, Jim?" asked Lander abruptly.<br />
<br />
"Sure, Bo!" replied Brinton lightly.<br />
<br />
"Here's the key," said Lander, smiling, "the Open Sesame to the Chamber of Horrors. The electric light is turned off, so all the light we shall have will be produced by my torch. One last word of advice–if you want to get the best chance of a thrill, try to keep your mind quite empty–don't talk as I personally conduct this tour. Concentrate on not concentrating."<br />
<br />
"I understand what you mean," said Brinton.<br />
<br />
"Well, then, let's get a move on," said Lander.<br />
<br />
An idea suddenly occurred to Brinton. "How will you be able to show me over it if you've never been inside it?"<br />
<br />
"You needn't worry about that," replied Lander.<br />
<br />
The fog was thick by now, and they wavered slightly as they groped their way down the lane, compressed by high hedges, which led to Pailton. When they reached it, Brinton's eyes turned up to observe the windows on the second floor. And then Lander stepped forward and placed the key in the lock.<br />
<br />
As the door swung open the fog, which seemed to have been crouching at his heels, leapt forward and entered with him and inundated the passage down which he moved. The moment he was inside, something advanced to meet him. He opened a door on the left of the passage and flashed his torch round it. The fog was in there, too. Jim, he could feel, was at his elbow.<br />
<br />
"This is where they found the burglar–it's the dining-room."<br />
<br />
His voice was not quite under control. "Quite a pleasant room, smells a bit frowsty." The little beam wandered from chair to desk, settling for a moment here and there. Then he shut the door and stepped along the passage till the little beam revealed a flight of stairs which he began to climb. He still heard Brinton's steps coming up behind him. Up on the first floor he opened another door.<br />
<br />
"This is the drawing-room," he said. "The Proctors' cook was found dead here in 1921."<br />
<br />
Round swung the tiny beam, fastening on chairs, tables, desks, curtains. He shut the door and began to climb another flight of stairs. He could hear Jim's feet pattering up behind him. On the second floor he opened still another door.<br />
<br />
"This, my dear Jim, is the nasty one; it was from here Amy Pendexter fell and broke her neck." His voice had risen slightly, and he was speaking quickly. Once again he flashed his torch over chairs, tables, curtains, and ahead.<br />
<br />
"Well, Jim, do you get any reaction? Do you? You can speak now." As there was no answer, he turned, and swung the beam of his torch on to the person just behind him. But it wasn't Brinton who was standing at his elbow. . . .<br />
<br />
"What's the matter, Willie?" asked Brinton, "can't you find the keyhole?"<br />
<br />
The figure in front of him remained motionless.<br />
<br />
"Can't you find the keyhole?" asked Brinton more urgently.<br />
<br />
As the figure still remained motionless, Jim Brinton lit a match and peered forward. . . .And then he reeled back.<br />
<br />
"Who, in God's name, are you?" he cried.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>THE END</b></div>
<br />
<br />
<div data-mce-style="text-align: left;" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">
<strong><span style="color: white;">Written by <a data-mce-href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._Russell_Wakefield" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._Russell_Wakefield" target="_blank">H. Russell Wakefield</a></span></strong></div>
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<strong><span style="color: white;">Published: <a data-mce-href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/IMAGINE-MAN-IN-BOX-ebook/dp/B006T2ZDAU" href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/IMAGINE-MAN-IN-BOX-ebook/dp/B006T2ZDAU" target="_blank">'Imagine a Man in a Box'</a></span></strong></div>
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444893451907188044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8879282668683580477.post-41663071869715624652017-09-06T12:19:00.000+01:002017-09-06T12:19:13.406+01:00'Man Overboard' by Winston Churchill<div style="text-align: center;">
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<br />
It was a little after half-past nine when the man fell overboard. The mail steamer was hurrying through the Red Sea in the hope of making up the time which the currents of the Indian Ocean had stolen.</div>
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The night was clear, though the moon was hidden behind clouds. The warm air was laden with moisture. The still surface of the waters was only broken by the movement of the great ship, from whose quarter the long, slanting undulations struck out like the feathers from an arrow shaft, and in whose wake the froth and air bubbles churned up by the propeller trailed in a narrowing line to the darkness of the horizon.</div>
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There was a concert on board. All the passengers were glad to break the monotony of the voyage and gathered around the piano in the companion-house. The decks were deserted. The man had been listening to the music and joining in the songs, but the room was hot and he came out to smoke a cigarette and enjoy a breath of the wind which the speedy passage of the liner created. It was the only wind in the Red Sea that night.<br />
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The accommodation-ladder had not been unshipped since leaving Aden and the man walked out on to the platform, as on to a balcony. He leaned his back against the rail and blew a puff of smoke into the air reflectively. The piano struck up a lively tune and a voice began to sing the first verse of "The Rowdy Dowdy Boys." The measured pulsations of the screw were a subdued but additional accompaniment.</div>
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The man knew the song, it had been the rage at all the music halls when he had started for India seven years before. It reminded him of the brilliant and busy streets he had not seen for so long, but was soon to see again. He was just going to join in the chorus when the railing, which had been insecurely fastened, gave way suddenly with a snap and he fell backwards into the warm water of the sea amid a great splash.</div>
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For a moment he was physically too much astonished to think. Then he realized he must shout. He began to do this even before he rose to the surface. He achieved a hoarse, inarticulate, half-choked scream. A startled brain suggested the word, "Help!" and he bawled this out lustily and with frantic effort six or seven times without stopping. Then he listened.</div>
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"Hi! hi! clear the way For the Rowdy Dowdy Boys." The chorus floated back to him across the smooth water for the ship had already completely passed by. And as he heard the music, a long stab of terror drove through his heart. The possibility that he would not be picked up dawned for the first time on his consciousness. The chorus started again:</div>
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"Then--I--say--boys, Who's for a jolly spree? Rum--tum--tiddley--um, Who'll have a drink with me?" "Help! Help! Help!" shrieked the man, now in desperate fear.</div>
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"Fond of a glass now and then, Fond of a row or noise; Hi! hi! clear the way For the Rowdy Dowdy Boys!"</div>
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The last words drawled out fainter and fainter. The vessel was steaming fast. The beginning of the second verse was confused and broken by the ever-growing distance. The dark outline of the great hull was getting blurred. The stern light dwindled.</div>
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Then he set out to swim after it with furious energy, pausing every dozen strokes to shout long wild shouts. The disturbed waters of the sea began to settle again to their rest and widening undulations became ripples. The aerated confusion of the screw fizzed itself upwards and out. The noise of motion and the sounds of life and music died away.</div>
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The liner was but a single fading light on the blackness of the waters and a dark shadow against the paler sky.</div>
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<br />
At length full realization came to the man and he stopped swimming. He was alone -- abandoned. With the understanding the brain reeled. He began again to swim, only now instead of shouting he prayed -- mad, incoherent prayers, the words stumbling into one another.</div>
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Suddenly a distant light seemed to flicker and brighten.</div>
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A surge of joy and hope rushed through his mind. They were going to stop -- to turn the ship and come back. And with the hope came gratitude. His prayer was answered. Broken words of thanksgiving rose to his lips. He stopped and stared after the light -- his soul in his eyes. As he watched it, it grew gradually but steadily smaller. Then the man knew that his fate was certain. Despair succeeded hope; gratitude gave place to curses. Beating the water with his arms, he raved impotently. Foul oaths burst from him, as broken as his prayers -- and as unheeded.</div>
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The fit of passion passed, hurried by increasing fatigue. He became silent -- silent as was the sea, for even the ripples were subsiding into the glassy smoothness of the surface. He swam on mechanically along the track of the ship, sobbing quietly to himself in the misery of fear. And the stern light became a tiny speck, yellower but scarcely bigger than some of the stars, which here and there shone between the clouds.</div>
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Nearly twenty minutes passed and the man's fatigue began to change to exhaustion. The overpowering sense of the inevitable pressed upon him. With the weariness came a strange comfort -- he need not swim all the long way to Suez. There was another course. He would die. He would resign his existence since he was thus abandoned. He threw up his hands impulsively and sank.</div>
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Down, down he went through the warm water. The physical death took hold of him and he began to drown. The pain of that savage grip recalled his anger. He fought with it furiously. Striking out with arms and legs he sought to get back to the air. It was a hard struggle, but he escaped victorious and gasping to the surface. Despair awaited him. Feebly splashing with his hands, he moaned in bitter misery:</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: px; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-top: 0.5em;">
"I can't -- I must. O God! Let me die."</div>
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The moon, then in her third quarter, pushed out from behind the concealing clouds and shed a pale, soft glitter upon the sea. Upright in the water, fifty yards away, was a black triangular object. It was a fin. It approached him slowly.</div>
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His last appeal had been heard.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444893451907188044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8879282668683580477.post-27853692271580510332017-09-06T00:22:00.000+01:002017-09-06T00:22:15.643+01:00'The Empty House' by Algernon Blackwood<br />
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Certain houses, like certain persons, manage somehow to proclaim at once their character for evil. In the case of the latter, no particular feature need betray them; they may boast an open countenance and an ingenuous smile; and yet a little of their company leaves the unalterable conviction that there is something radically amiss with their being: that they are evil. Willy nilly, they seem to communicate an atmosphere of secret and wicked thoughts which makes those in their immediate neighbourhood shrink from them as from a thing diseased.<br />
<br />
And, perhaps, with houses the same principle is operative, and it is the aroma of evil deeds committed under a particular roof, long after the actual doers have passed away, that makes the gooseflesh come and the hair rise. Something of the original passion of the evil-doer, and of the horror felt by his victim, enters the heart of the innocent watcher, and he becomes suddenly conscious of tingling nerves, creeping skin, and a chilling of the blood. He is terror-stricken without apparent cause.<br />
<br />
There was manifestly nothing in the external appearance of this particular house to bear out the tales of the horror that was said to reign within. It was neither lonely nor unkempt. It stood, crowded into a corner of the square, and looked exactly like the houses on either side of it. It had the same number of windows as its neighbours; the same balcony overlooking the gardens; the same white steps leading up to the heavy black front door; and, in the rear, there was the same narrow strip of green, with neat box borders, running up to the wall that divided it from the backs of the adjoining houses. Apparently, too, the number of chimney pots on the roof was the same; the breadth and angle of the eaves; and even the height of the dirty area railings.<br />
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And yet this house in the square, that seemed precisely similar to its fifty ugly neighbours, was as a matter of fact entirely different--horribly different.<br />
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Wherein lay this marked, invisible difference is impossible to say. It cannot be ascribed wholly to the imagination, because persons who had spent some time in the house, knowing nothing of the facts, had declared positively that certain rooms were so disagreeable they would rather die than enter them again, and that the atmosphere of the whole house produced in them symptoms of a genuine terror; while the series of innocent tenants who had tried to live in it and been forced to decamp at the shortest possible notice, was indeed little less than a scandal in the town.<br />
<br />
When Shorthouse arrived to pay a "week-end" visit to his Aunt Julia in her little house on the sea-front at the other end of the town, he found her charged to the brim with mystery and excitement. He had only received her telegram that morning, and he had come anticipating boredom; but the moment he touched her hand and kissed her apple-skin wrinkled cheek, he caught the first wave of her electrical condition. The impression deepened when he learned that there were to be no other visitors, and that he had been telegraphed for with a very special object.<br />
<br />
Something was in the wind, and the "something" would doubtless bear fruit; for this elderly spinster aunt, with a mania for psychical research, had brains as well as will power, and by hook or by crook she usually managed to accomplish her ends. The revelation was made soon after tea, when she sidled close up to him as they paced slowly along the sea-front in the dusk.<br />
<br />
"I've got the keys," she announced in a delighted, yet half awesome voice. "Got them till Monday!"<br />
<br />
"The keys of the bathing-machine, or--?" he asked innocently, looking from the sea to the town. Nothing brought her so quickly to the point as feigning stupidity.<br />
<br />
"Neither," she whispered. "I've got the keys of the haunted house in the square--and I'm going there to-night."<br />
<br />
Shorthouse was conscious of the slightest possible tremor down his back. He dropped his teasing tone. Something in her voice and manner thrilled him. She was in earnest.<br />
<br />
"But you can't go alone--" he began.<br />
<br />
"That's why I wired for you," she said with decision.<br />
<br />
He turned to look at her. The ugly, lined, enigmatical face was alive with excitement. There was the glow of genuine enthusiasm round it like a halo. The eyes shone. He caught another wave of her excitement, and a second tremor, more marked than the first, accompanied it.<br />
<br />
"Thanks, Aunt Julia," he said politely; "thanks awfully."<br />
<br />
"I should not dare to go quite alone," she went on, raising her voice; "but with you I should enjoy it immensely. You're afraid of nothing, I know."<br />
<br />
"Thanks so much," he said again. "Er--is anything likely to happen?"<br />
<br />
"A great deal has happened," she whispered, "though it's been most cleverly hushed up. Three tenants have come and gone in the last few months, and the house is said to be empty for good now."<br />
<br />
In spite of himself Shorthouse became interested. His aunt was so very much in earnest.<br />
<br />
"The house is very old indeed," she went on, "and the story--an unpleasant one--dates a long way back. It has to do with a murder committed by a jealous stableman who had some affair with a servant in the house. One night he managed to secrete himself in the cellar, and when everyone was asleep, he crept upstairs to the servants' quarters, chased the girl down to the next landing, and before anyone could come to the rescue threw her bodily over the banisters into the hall below."<br />
<br />
"And the stableman--?"<br />
<br />
"Was caught, I believe, and hanged for murder; but it all happened a century ago, and I've not been able to get more details of the story."<br />
<br />
Shorthouse now felt his interest thoroughly aroused; but, though he was not particularly nervous for himself, he hesitated a little on his aunt's account.<br />
<br />
"On one condition," he said at length.<br />
<br />
"Nothing will prevent my going," she said firmly; "but I may as well hear your condition."<br />
<br />
"That you guarantee your power of self-control if anything really horrible happens. I mean--that you are sure you won't get too frightened."<br />
<br />
"Jim," she said scornfully, "I'm not young, I know, nor are my nerves; but with you I should be afraid of nothing in the world!"<br />
<br />
This, of course, settled it, for Shorthouse had no pretensions to being other than a very ordinary young man, and an appeal to his vanity was irresistible. He agreed to go.<br />
<br />
Instinctively, by a sort of sub-conscious preparation, he kept himself and his forces well in hand the whole evening, compelling an accumulative reserve of control by that nameless inward process of gradually putting all the emotions away and turning the key upon them--a process difficult to describe, but wonderfully effective, as all men who have lived through severe trials of the inner man well understand. Later, it stood him in good stead.<br />
<br />
But it was not until half-past ten, when they stood in the hall, well in the glare of friendly lamps and still surrounded by comforting human influences, that he had to make the first call upon this store of collected strength. For, once the door was closed, and he saw the deserted silent street stretching away white in the moonlight before them, it came to him clearly that the real test that night would be in dealing with two fears instead of one. He would have to carry his aunt's fear as well as his own. And, as he glanced down at her sphinx-like countenance and realised that it might assume no pleasant aspect in a rush of real terror, he felt satisfied with only one thing in the whole adventure--that he had confidence in his own will and power to stand against any shock that might come.<br />
<br />
Slowly they walked along the empty streets of the town; a bright autumn moon silvered the roofs, casting deep shadows; there was no breath of wind; and the trees in the formal gardens by the sea-front watched them silently as they passed along. To his aunt's occasional remarks Shorthouse made no reply, realising that she was simply surrounding herself with mental buffers--saying ordinary things to prevent herself thinking of extra-ordinary things. Few windows showed lights, and from scarcely a single chimney came smoke or sparks. Shorthouse had already begun to notice everything, even the smallest details. Presently they stopped at the street corner and looked up at the name on the side of the house full in the moonlight, and with one accord, but without remark, turned into the square and crossed over to the side of it that lay in shadow.<br />
<br />
"The number of the house is thirteen," whispered a voice at his side; and neither of them made the obvious reference, but passed across the broad sheet of moonlight and began to march up the pavement in silence.<br />
<br />
It was about half-way up the square that Shorthouse felt an arm slipped quietly but significantly into his own, and knew then that their adventure had begun in earnest, and that his companion was already yielding imperceptibly to the influences against them. She needed support.<br />
<br />
A few minutes later they stopped before a tall, narrow house that rose before them into the night, ugly in shape and painted a dingy white. Shutterless windows, without blinds, stared down upon them, shining here and there in the moonlight. There were weather streaks in the wall and cracks in the paint, and the balcony bulged out from the first floor a little unnaturally. But, beyond this generally forlorn appearance of an unoccupied house, there was nothing at first sight to single out this particular mansion for the evil character it had most certainly acquired.<br />
<br />
Taking a look over their shoulders to make sure they had not been followed, they went boldly up the steps and stood against the huge black door that fronted them forbiddingly. But the first wave of nervousness was now upon them, and Shorthouse fumbled a long time with the key before he could fit it into the lock at all. For a moment, if truth were told, they both hoped it would not open, for they were a prey to various unpleasant emotions as they stood there on the threshold of their ghostly adventure. Shorthouse, shuffling with the key and hampered by the steady weight on his arm, certainly felt the solemnity of the moment. It was as if the whole world--for all experience seemed at that instant concentrated in his own consciousness--were listening to the grating noise of that key. A stray puff of wind wandering down the empty street woke a momentary rustling in the trees behind them, but otherwise this rattling of the key was the only sound audible; and at last it turned in the lock and the heavy door swung open and revealed a yawning gulf of darkness beyond.<br />
<br />
With a last glance at the moonlit square, they passed quickly in, and the door slammed behind them with a roar that echoed prodigiously through empty halls and passages. But, instantly, with the echoes, another sound made itself heard, and Aunt Julia leaned suddenly so heavily upon him that he had to take a step backwards to save himself from falling.<br />
<br />
A man had coughed close beside them--so close that it seemed they must have been actually by his side in the darkness.<br />
<br />
With the possibility of practical jokes in his mind, Shorthouse at once swung his heavy stick in the direction of the sound; but it met nothing more solid than air. He heard his aunt give a little gasp beside him.<br />
<br />
"There's someone here," she whispered; "I heard him."<br />
<br />
"Be quiet!" he said sternly. "It was nothing but the noise of the front door."<br />
<br />
"Oh! get a light--quick!" she added, as her nephew, fumbling with a box of matches, opened it upside down and let them all fall with a rattle on to the stone floor.<br />
<br />
The sound, however, was not repeated; and there was no evidence of retreating footsteps. In another minute they had a candle burning, using an empty end of a cigar case as a holder; and when the first flare had died down he held the impromptu lamp aloft and surveyed the scene. And it was dreary enough in all conscience, for there is nothing more desolate in all the abodes of men than an unfurnished house dimly lit, silent, and forsaken, and yet tenanted by rumour with the memories of evil and violent histories.<br />
<br />
They were standing in a wide hall-way; on their left was the open door of a spacious dining-room, and in front the hall ran, ever narrowing, into a long, dark passage that led apparently to the top of the kitchen stairs. The broad uncarpeted staircase rose in a sweep before them, everywhere draped in shadows, except for a single spot about half-way up where the moonlight came in through the window and fell on a bright patch on the boards. This shaft of light shed a faint radiance above and below it, lending to the objects within its reach a misty outline that was infinitely more suggestive and ghostly than complete darkness. Filtered moonlight always seems to paint faces on the surrounding gloom, and as Shorthouse peered up into the well of darkness and thought of the countless empty rooms and passages in the upper part of the old house, he caught himself longing again for the safety of the moonlit square, or the cosy, bright drawing-room they had left an hour before. Then realising that these thoughts were dangerous, he thrust them away again and summoned all his energy for concentration on the present.<br />
<br />
"Aunt Julia," he said aloud, severely, "we must now go through the house from top to bottom and make a thorough search."<br />
<br />
The echoes of his voice died away slowly all over the building, and in the intense silence that followed he turned to look at her. In the candle-light he saw that her face was already ghastly pale; but she dropped his arm for a moment and said in a whisper, stepping close in front of him--<br />
<br />
"I agree. We must be sure there's no one hiding. That's the first thing."<br />
<br />
She spoke with evident effort, and he looked at her with admiration.<br />
<br />
"You feel quite sure of yourself? It's not too late--"<br />
<br />
"I think so," she whispered, her eyes shifting nervously toward the shadows behind. "Quite sure, only one thing--"<br />
<br />
"What's that?"<br />
<br />
"You must never leave me alone for an instant."<br />
<br />
"As long as you understand that any sound or appearance must be investigated at once, for to hesitate means to admit fear. That is fatal."<br />
<br />
"Agreed," she said, a little shakily, after a moment's hesitation. "I'll try--"<br />
<br />
Arm in arm, Shorthouse holding the dripping candle and the stick, while his aunt carried the cloak over her shoulders, figures of utter comedy to all but themselves, they began a systematic search.<br />
<br />
Stealthily, walking on tip-toe and shading the candle lest it should betray their presence through the shutterless windows, they went first into the big dining-room. There was not a stick of furniture to be seen. Bare walls, ugly mantel-pieces and empty grates stared at them. Everything, they felt, resented their intrusion, watching them, as it were, with veiled eyes; whispers followed them; shadows flitted noiselessly to right and left; something seemed ever at their back, watching, waiting an opportunity to do them injury. There was the inevitable sense that operations which went on when the room was empty had been temporarily suspended till they were well out of the way again. The whole dark interior of the old building seemed to become a malignant Presence that rose up, warning them to desist and mind their own business; every moment the strain on the nerves increased.<br />
<br />
Out of the gloomy dining-room they passed through large folding doors into a sort of library or smoking-room, wrapt equally in silence, darkness, and dust; and from this they regained the hall near the top of the back stairs.<br />
<br />
Here a pitch black tunnel opened before them into the lower regions, and--it must be confessed--they hesitated. But only for a minute. With the worst of the night still to come it was essential to turn from nothing. Aunt Julia stumbled at the top step of the dark descent, ill lit by the flickering candle, and even Shorthouse felt at least half the decision go out of his legs.<br />
<br />
"Come on!" he said peremptorily, and his voice ran on and lost itself in the dark, empty spaces below.<br />
<br />
"I'm coming," she faltered, catching his arm with unnecessary violence.<br />
<br />
They went a little unsteadily down the stone steps, a cold, damp air meeting them in the face, close and mal-odorous. The kitchen, into which the stairs led along a narrow passage, was large, with a lofty ceiling. Several doors opened out of it--some into cupboards with empty jars still standing on the shelves, and others into horrible little ghostly back offices, each colder and less inviting than the last. Black beetles scurried over the floor, and once, when they knocked against a deal table standing in a corner, something about the size of a cat jumped down with a rush and fled, scampering across the stone floor into the darkness. Everywhere there was a sense of recent occupation, an impression of sadness and gloom.<br />
<br />
Leaving the main kitchen, they next went towards the scullery. The door was standing ajar, and as they pushed it open to its full extent Aunt Julia uttered a piercing scream, which she instantly tried to stifle by placing her hand over her mouth. For a second Shorthouse stood stock-still, catching his breath. He felt as if his spine had suddenly become hollow and someone had filled it with particles of ice.<br />
<br />
Facing them, directly in their way between the doorposts, stood the figure of a woman. She had dishevelled hair and wildly staring eyes, and her face was terrified and white as death.<br />
<br />
She stood there motionless for the space of a single second. Then the candle flickered and she was gone--gone utterly--and the door framed nothing but empty darkness.<br />
<br />
"Only the beastly jumping candle-light," he said quickly, in a voice that sounded like someone else's and was only half under control. "Come on, aunt. There's nothing there."<br />
<br />
He dragged her forward. With a clattering of feet and a great appearance of boldness they went on, but over his body the skin moved as if crawling ants covered it, and he knew by the weight on his arm that he was supplying the force of locomotion for two. The scullery was cold, bare, and empty; more like a large prison cell than anything else. They went round it, tried the door into the yard, and the windows, but found them all fastened securely. His aunt moved beside him like a person in a dream. Her eyes were tightly shut, and she seemed merely to follow the pressure of his arm. Her courage filled him with amazement. At the same time he noticed that a certain odd change had come over her face, a change which somehow evaded his power of analysis.<br />
<br />
"There's nothing here, aunty," he repeated aloud quickly. "Let's go upstairs and see the rest of the house. Then we'll choose a room to wait up in."<br />
<br />
She followed him obediently, keeping close to his side, and they locked the kitchen door behind them. It was a relief to get up again. In the hall there was more light than before, for the moon had travelled a little further down the stairs. Cautiously they began to go up into the dark vault of the upper house, the boards creaking under their weight.<br />
<br />
On the first floor they found the large double drawing-rooms, a search of which revealed nothing. Here also was no sign of furniture or recent occupancy; nothing but dust and neglect and shadows. They opened the big folding doors between front and back drawing-rooms and then came out again to the landing and went on upstairs.<br />
<br />
They had not gone up more than a dozen steps when they both simultaneously stopped to listen, looking into each other's eyes with a new apprehension across the flickering candle flame. From the room they had left hardly ten seconds before came the sound of doors quietly closing. It was beyond all question; they heard the booming noise that accompanies the shutting of heavy doors, followed by the sharp catching of the latch.<br />
<br />
"We must go back and see," said Shorthouse briefly, in a low tone, and turning to go downstairs again.<br />
<br />
Somehow she managed to drag after him, her feet catching in her dress, her face livid.<br />
<br />
When they entered the front drawing-room it was plain that the folding doors had been closed--half a minute before. Without hesitation Shorthouse opened them. He almost expected to see someone facing him in the back room; but only darkness and cold air met him. They went through both rooms, finding nothing unusual. They tried in every way to make the doors close of themselves, but there was not wind enough even to set the candle flame flickering. The doors would not move without strong pressure. All was silent as the grave. Undeniably the rooms were utterly empty, and the house utterly still.<br />
<br />
"It's beginning," whispered a voice at his elbow which he hardly recognised as his aunt's.<br />
<br />
He nodded acquiescence, taking out his watch to note the time. It was fifteen minutes before midnight; he made the entry of exactly what had occurred in his notebook, setting the candle in its case upon the floor in order to do so. It took a moment or two to balance it safely against the wall.<br />
<br />
Aunt Julia always declared that at this moment she was not actually watching him, but had turned her head towards the inner room, where she fancied she heard something moving; but, at any rate, both positively agreed that there came a sound of rushing feet, heavy and very swift--and the next instant the candle was out!<br />
<br />
But to Shorthouse himself had come more than this, and he has always thanked his fortunate stars that it came to him alone and not to his aunt too. For, as he rose from the stooping position of balancing the candle, and before it was actually extinguished, a face thrust itself forward so close to his own that he could almost have touched it with his lips. It was a face working with passion; a man's face, dark, with thick features, and angry, savage eyes. It belonged to a common man, and it was evil in its ordinary normal expression, no doubt, but as he saw it, alive with intense, aggressive emotion, it was a malignant and terrible human countenance.<br />
<br />
There was no movement of the air; nothing but the sound of rushing feet--stockinged or muffled feet; the apparition of the face; and the almost simultaneous extinguishing of the candle.<br />
<br />
In spite of himself, Shorthouse uttered a little cry, nearly losing his balance as his aunt clung to him with her whole weight in one moment of real, uncontrollable terror. She made no sound, but simply seized him bodily. Fortunately, however, she had seen nothing, but had only heard the rushing feet, for her control returned almost at once, and he was able to disentangle himself and strike a match.<br />
<br />
The shadows ran away on all sides before the glare, and his aunt stooped down and groped for the cigar case with the precious candle. Then they discovered that the candle had not been blown out at all; it had been crushed out. The wick was pressed down into the wax, which was flattened as if by some smooth, heavy instrument.<br />
<br />
How his companion so quickly overcame her terror, Shorthouse never properly understood; but his admiration for her self-control increased tenfold, and at the same time served to feed his own dying flame--for which he was undeniably grateful. Equally inexplicable to him was the evidence of physical force they had just witnessed. He at once suppressed the memory of stories he had heard of "physical mediums" and their dangerous phenomena; for if these were true, and either his aunt or himself was unwittingly a physical medium, it meant that they were simply aiding to focus the forces of a haunted house already charged to the brim. It was like walking with unprotected lamps among uncovered stores of gun-powder.<br />
<br />
So, with as little reflection as possible, he simply relit the candle and went up to the next floor. The arm in his trembled, it is true, and his own tread was often uncertain, but they went on with thoroughness, and after a search revealing nothing they climbed the last flight of stairs to the top floor of all.<br />
<br />
Here they found a perfect nest of small servants' rooms, with broken pieces of furniture, dirty cane-bottomed chairs, chests of drawers, cracked mirrors, and decrepit bedsteads. The rooms had low sloping ceilings already hung here and there with cobwebs, small windows, and badly plastered walls--a depressing and dismal region which they were glad to leave behind.<br />
<br />
It was on the stroke of midnight when they entered a small room on the third floor, close to the top of the stairs, and arranged to make themselves comfortable for the remainder of their adventure. It was absolutely bare, and was said to be the room--then used as a clothes closet--into which the infuriated groom had chased his victim and finally caught her. Outside, across the narrow landing, began the stairs leading up to the floor above, and the servants' quarters where they had just searched.<br />
<br />
In spite of the chilliness of the night there was something in the air of this room that cried for an open window. But there was more than this. Shorthouse could only describe it by saying that he felt less master of himself here than in any other part of the house. There was something that acted directly on the nerves, tiring the resolution, enfeebling the will. He was conscious of this result before he had been in the room five minutes, and it was in the short time they stayed there that he suffered the wholesale depletion of his vital forces, which was, for himself, the chief horror of the whole experience.<br />
<br />
They put the candle on the floor of the cupboard, leaving the door a few inches ajar, so that there was no glare to confuse the eyes, and no shadow to shift about on walls and ceiling. Then they spread the cloak on the floor and sat down to wait, with their backs against the wall.<br />
<br />
Shorthouse was within two feet of the door on to the landing; his position commanded a good view of the main staircase leading down into the darkness, and also of the beginning of the servants' stairs going to the floor above; the heavy stick lay beside him within easy reach.<br />
<br />
The moon was now high above the house. Through the open window they could see the comforting stars like friendly eyes watching in the sky. One by one the clocks of the town struck midnight, and when the sounds died away the deep silence of a windless night fell again over everything. Only the boom of the sea, far away and lugubrious, filled the air with hollow murmurs.<br />
<br />
Inside the house the silence became awful; awful, he thought, because any minute now it might be broken by sounds portending terror. The strain of waiting told more and more severely on the nerves; they talked in whispers when they talked at all, for their voices aloud sounded queer and unnatural. A chilliness, not altogether due to the night air, invaded the room, and made them cold. The influences against them, whatever these might be, were slowly robbing them of self-confidence, and the power of decisive action; their forces were on the wane, and the possibility of real fear took on a new and terrible meaning. He began to tremble for the elderly woman by his side, whose pluck could hardly save her beyond a certain extent.<br />
<br />
He heard the blood singing in his veins. It sometimes seemed so loud that he fancied it prevented his hearing properly certain other sounds that were beginning very faintly to make themselves audible in the depths of the house. Every time he fastened his attention on these sounds, they instantly ceased. They certainly came no nearer. Yet he could not rid himself of the idea that movement was going on somewhere in the lower regions of the house. The drawing-room floor, where the doors had been so strangely closed, seemed too near; the sounds were further off than that. He thought of the great kitchen, with the scurrying black-beetles, and of the dismal little scullery; but, somehow or other, they did not seem to come from there either. Surely they were not outside the house!<br />
<br />
Then, suddenly, the truth flashed into his mind, and for the space of a minute he felt as if his blood had stopped flowing and turned to ice.<br />
<br />
The sounds were not downstairs at all; they were upstairs--upstairs, somewhere among those horrid gloomy little servants' rooms with their bits of broken furniture, low ceilings, and cramped windows--upstairs where the victim had first been disturbed and stalked to her death.<br />
<br />
And the moment he discovered where the sounds were, he began to hear them more clearly. It was the sound of feet, moving stealthily along the passage overhead, in and out among the rooms, and past the furniture.<br />
<br />
He turned quickly to steal a glance at the motionless figure seated beside him, to note whether she had shared his discovery. The faint candle-light coming through the crack in the cupboard door, threw her strongly-marked face into vivid relief against the white of the wall. But it was something else that made him catch his breath and stare again. An extraordinary something had come into her face and seemed to spread over her features like a mask; it smoothed out the deep lines and drew the skin everywhere a little tighter so that the wrinkles disappeared; it brought into the face--with the sole exception of the old eyes--an appearance of youth and almost of childhood.<br />
<br />
He stared in speechless amazement--amazement that was dangerously near to horror. It was his aunt's face indeed, but it was her face of forty years ago, the vacant innocent face of a girl. He had heard stories of that strange effect of terror which could wipe a human countenance clean of other emotions, obliterating all previous expressions; but he had never realised that it could be literally true, or could mean anything so simply horrible as what he now saw. For the dreadful signature of overmastering fear was written plainly in that utter vacancy of the girlish face beside him; and when, feeling his intense gaze, she turned to look at him, he instinctively closed his eyes tightly to shut out the sight.<br />
<br />
Yet, when he turned a minute later, his feelings well in hand, he saw to his intense relief another expression; his aunt was smiling, and though the face was deathly white, the awful veil had lifted and the normal look was returning.<br />
<br />
"Anything wrong?" was all he could think of to say at the moment. And the answer was eloquent, coming from such a woman.<br />
<br />
"I feel cold--and a little frightened," she whispered.<br />
<br />
He offered to close the window, but she seized hold of him and begged him not to leave her side even for an instant.<br />
<br />
"It's upstairs, I know," she whispered, with an odd half laugh; "but I can't possibly go up."<br />
<br />
But Shorthouse thought otherwise, knowing that in action lay their best hope of self-control.<br />
<br />
He took the brandy flask and poured out a glass of neat spirit, stiff enough to help anybody over anything. She swallowed it with a little shiver. His only idea now was to get out of the house before her collapse became inevitable; but this could not safely be done by turning tail and running from the enemy. Inaction was no longer possible; every minute he was growing less master of himself, and desperate, aggressive measures were imperative without further delay. Moreover, the action must be taken towards the enemy, not away from it; the climax, if necessary and unavoidable, would have to be faced boldly. He could do it now; but in ten minutes he might not have the force left to act for himself, much less for both!<br />
<br />
Upstairs, the sounds were meanwhile becoming louder and closer, accompanied by occasional creaking of the boards. Someone was moving stealthily about, stumbling now and then awkwardly against the furniture.<br />
<br />
Waiting a few moments to allow the tremendous dose of spirits to produce its effect, and knowing this would last but a short time under the circumstances, Shorthouse then quietly got on his feet, saying in a determined voice--<br />
<br />
"Now, Aunt Julia, we'll go upstairs and find out what all this noise is about. You must come too. It's what we agreed."<br />
<br />
He picked up his stick and went to the cupboard for the candle. A limp form rose shakily beside him breathing hard, and he heard a voice say very faintly something about being "ready to come." The woman's courage amazed him; it was so much greater than his own; and, as they advanced, holding aloft the dripping candle, some subtle force exhaled from this trembling, white-faced old woman at his side that was the true source of his inspiration. It held something really great that shamed him and gave him the support without which he would have proved far less equal to the occasion.<br />
<br />
They crossed the dark landing, avoiding with their eyes the deep black space over the banisters. Then they began to mount the narrow staircase to meet the sounds which, minute by minute, grew louder and nearer. About half-way up the stairs Aunt Julia stumbled and Shorthouse turned to catch her by the arm, and just at that moment there came a terrific crash in the servants' corridor overhead. It was instantly followed by a shrill, agonised scream that was a cry of terror and a cry for help melted into one.<br />
<br />
Before they could move aside, or go down a single step, someone came rushing along the passage overhead, blundering horribly, racing madly, at full speed, three steps at a time, down the very staircase where they stood. The steps were light and uncertain; but close behind them sounded the heavier tread of another person, and the staircase seemed to shake.<br />
<br />
Shorthouse and his companion just had time to flatten themselves against the wall when the jumble of flying steps was upon them, and two persons, with the slightest possible interval between them, dashed past at full speed. It was a perfect whirlwind of sound breaking in upon the midnight silence of the empty building.<br />
<br />
The two runners, pursuer and pursued, had passed clean through them where they stood, and already with a thud the boards below had received first one, then the other. Yet they had seen absolutely nothing--not a hand, or arm, or face, or even a shred of flying clothing.<br />
<br />
There came a second's pause. Then the first one, the lighter of the two, obviously the pursued one, ran with uncertain footsteps into the little room which Shorthouse and his aunt had just left. The heavier one followed. There was a sound of scuffling, gasping, and smothered screaming; and then out on to the landing came the step--of a single person treading weightily.<br />
<br />
A dead silence followed for the space of half a minute, and then was heard a rushing sound through the air. It was followed by a dull, crashing thud in the depths of the house below--on the stone floor of the hall.<br />
<br />
Utter silence reigned after. Nothing moved. The flame of the candle was steady. It had been steady the whole time, and the air had been undisturbed by any movement whatsoever. Palsied with terror, Aunt Julia, without waiting for her companion, began fumbling her way downstairs; she was crying gently to herself, and when Shorthouse put his arm round her and half carried her he felt that she was trembling like a leaf. He went into the little room and picked up the cloak from the floor, and, arm in arm, walking very slowly, without speaking a word or looking once behind them, they marched down the three flights into the hall.<br />
<br />
In the hall they saw nothing, but the whole way down the stairs they were conscious that someone followed them; step by step; when they went faster IT was left behind, and when they went more slowly IT caught them up. But never once did they look behind to see; and at each turning of the staircase they lowered their eyes for fear of the following horror they might see upon the stairs above.<br />
<br />
With trembling hands Shorthouse opened the front door, and they walked out into the moonlight and drew a deep breath of the cool night air blowing in from the sea.<br />
<br />
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<b>THE END</b></div>
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<b>Read More Stories From <a href="http://www.vaultofghastlytales.com/p/algernon-blackwood.html">Algernon Blackwood</a> in The Vault</b></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444893451907188044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8879282668683580477.post-73507589168535890482017-07-10T13:11:00.001+01:002017-07-10T13:11:17.501+01:00'A Warning to the Curious' | M. R. James<div style="text-align: center;">
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Watch Above | Read Below | Or<a href="http://ghastlytales.libsyn.com/a-warning-to-the-curious-the-ghost-story-society" target="_blank"> Listen Within...</a></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">The place on the east coast which the reader is asked to consider is Seaburgh. It is not very different now from what I remember it to have been when I was a child. Marshes intersected by dykes to the south, recalling the early chapters of Great Expectations; flat fields to the north, merging into heath; heath, fir woods, and, above all, gorse, inland. A long sea-front and a street: behind that a spacious church of flint, with a broad, solid western tower and a peal of six bells. How well I remember their sound on a hot Sunday in August, as our party went slowly up the white, dusty slope of road towards them, for the church stands at the top of a short, steep incline. They rang with a flat clacking sort of sound on those hot days, but when the air was softer they were mellower too. The railway ran down to its little terminus farther along the same road. There was a gay white windmill just before you came to the station, and another down near the shingle at the south end the town, and yet others on higher ground to the north. There were cottages of bright red brick with slate roofs . . . but why do I encumber you with these commonplace details? The fact is that they come crowding to the point of the pencil when it begins to write of Seaburgh. I should like to be sure that I had allowed the right ones to get on to the paper. But I forgot. I have not quite done with the word-painting business yet.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;">Walk away from the sea and the town, pass the station, and turn up the road on the right. It is a sandy road, parallel with the railway, and if you follow it, it climbs to somewhat higher ground. On your left (you are now going northward) is heath, on your right (the side towards the sea) is a belt of old firs, wind-beaten, thick at the top, with the slope that old seaside trees have; seen on the skyline from the train they would tell you in an instant, if you did not know it, that you were approaching a windy coast. Well, at the top of my little hill, a line of these firs strikes out and runs towards the sea, for there is a ridge that goes that way; and the ridge ends in a rather well-defined mound commanding the level fields of rough grass, and a little knot of fir trees crowns it. And here you may sit on a hot spring day, very well content to look at blue sea, white windmills, red cottages, bright green grass, church tower, and distant martello tower on the south.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">As I have said, I began to know Seaburgh as a child; but a gap of a good many years separates my early knowledge from that which is more recent. Still it keeps its place in my affections, and any tales of it that I pick up have an interest for me. One such tale is this: it came to me in a place very remote from Seaburgh, and quite accidentally, from a man whom I had been able to oblige — enough in his opinion to justify his making me his confidant to this extent.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">I know all that country more or less (he said). I used to go to Scaburgh pretty regularly for golf in the spring. I generally put up at the ‘Bear’, with a friend — Henry Long it was, you knew him perhaps —(‘Slightly,’ I said) and we used to take a sitting-room and be very happy there. Since he died I haven’t cared to go there. And I don’t know that I should anyhow after the particular thing that happened on our last visit.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">It was in April, 19 — we were there, and by some chance we were almost the only people in the hotel. So the ordinary public rooms were practically empty, and we were the more surprised when, after dinner, our sitting-room door opened, and a young man put his head in. We were aware of this young man. He was rather a rabbity anaemic subject — light hair and light eyes — but not unpleasing. So when he said: ‘I beg your pardon, is this a private room?’ we did not growl and say: ‘Yes, it is,’ but Long said, or I did — no matter which: ‘Please come in.’ ‘Oh, may I?’ he said, and seemed relieved. Of course it was obvious that he wanted company; and as he was a reasonable kind of person — not the sort to bestow his whole family history on you — we urged him to make himself at home. ‘I dare say you find the other rooms rather bleak,’ I said. Yes, he did: but it was really too good of us, and so on. That being got over, he made some pretence of reading a book. Long was playing Patience, I was writing. It became plain to me after a few minutes that this visitor of ours was in rather a state of fidgets or nerves, which communicated itself to me, and so I put away my writing and turned to at engaging him in talk.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">After some remarks, which I forget, he became rather confidential. ‘You’ll think it very odd of me’ (this was the sort of way he began), ‘but the fact is I’ve had something of a shock.’ Well, I recommended a drink of some cheering kind, and we had it. The waiter coming in made an interruption (and I thought our young man seemed very jumpy when the door opened), but after a while he got back to his woes again. There was nobody he knew in the place, and he did happen to know who we both were (it turned out there was some common acquaintance in town), and really he did want a word of advice, if we didn’t mind. Of course we both said: ‘By all means,’ or ‘Not at all,’ and Long put away his cards. And we settled down to hear what his difficulty was.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">‘It began,’ he said, ‘more than a week ago, when I bicycled over to Froston, only about five or six miles, to see the church; I’m very much interested in architecture, and it’s got one of those pretty porches with niches and shields. I took a photograph of it, and then an old man who was tidying up in the churchyard came and asked if I’d care to look into the church. I said yes, and he produced a key and let me in. There wasn’t much inside, but I told him it was a nice little church, and he kept it very clean, “But,” I said, “the porch is the best part of it.” We were just outside the porch then, and he said, “Ah, yes, that is a nice porch; and do you know, sir, what’s the meanin’ of that coat of arms there?”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">‘It was the one with the three crowns, and though. I’m not much of a herald, I was able to say yes, I thought it was the old arms of the kingdom of East Anglia.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">“‘That’s right, sir,” he said, “and do you know the meanin’ of them three crowns that’s on it?”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">‘I said I’d no doubt it was known, but I couldn’t recollect to have heard it myself.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">‘“Well, then,” he said, “for all you’re a scholard, I can tell you something you don’t know. Them’s the three ‘oly crowns what was buried in the ground near by the coast to keep the Germans from landing — ah, I can see you don’t believe that. But I tell you, if it hadn’t have been for one of them ‘oly crowns bein’ there still, them Germans would a landed here time and again, they would. Landed with their ships, and killed man, woman and child in their beds. Now then, that’s the truth what I’m telling you, that is; and if you don’t believe me, you ast the rector. There he comes: you ast him, I says.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">‘I looked round, and there was the rector, a nice-looking old man, coming up the path; and before I could begin assuring my old man, who was getting quite excited, that I didn’t disbelieve him, the rector struck in, and said:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">“‘What’s all this about, John? Good day to you, sir. Have you been looking at our little church?”’</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">‘So then there was a little talk which allowed the old man to calm down, and then the rector asked him again what was the matter.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">“‘Oh,” he said, “it warn’t nothink, only I was telling this gentleman he’d ought to ast you about them ‘oly crowns.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">‘“Ah, yes, to be sure,” said the rector, “that’s a very curious matter, isn’t it? But I don’t know whether the gentleman is interested in our old stories, eh?”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">‘“Oh, he’ll be interested fast enough,” says the old man, “he’ll put his confidence in what you tells him, sir; why, you known William Ager yoursell, father and son too.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">‘Then I put in a word to say how much I should like to hear all about it, and before many minutes I was walking up the village street with the rector, who had one or two words to say to parishioners, and then to the rectory, where he took me into his study. He had made out, on the way, that I really was capable of taking an intelligent interest in a piece of folklore, and not quite the ordinary tripper. So he was very willing to talk, and it is rather surprising to me that the particular legend he told me has not made its way into print before. His account of it was this: “There has always been a belief in these parts in the three holy crowns. The old people say they were buried in different places near the coast to keep off the Danes or the French or the Germans. And they say that one of the three was dug up a long time ago, and another has disappeared by the encroaching of the sea, and one’s still left doing its work, keeping off invaders. Well, now, if you have read the ordinary guides and histories of this county, you will remember perhaps that in 1687 a crown, which was said to be the crown of Redwald, King of the East Angles, was dug up at Rendlesham, and alas! alas! melted down before it was even properly described or drawn. Well, Rendlesham isn’t on the coast, but it isn’t so very far inland, and it’s on a very important line of access. And I believe that is the crown which the people mean when they say that one has been dug up. Then on the south you don’t want me to tell you where there was a Saxon royal palace which is now under the sea, eh? Well, there was the second crown, I take it. And up beyond these two, they say, lies the third.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">‘“Do they say where it is?” of course I asked.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">‘He said, “Yes, indeed, they do, but they don’t tell,” and his manner did not encourage me to put the obvious question. Instead of that I waited a moment, and said: “What did the old man mean when he said you knew William Ager, as if that had something to do with the crowns?”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">‘“To be sure,” he said, “now that’s another curious story. These Agers it’s a very old name in these parts, but I can’t find that they were ever people of quality or big owners these Agers say, or said, that their branch of the family were the guardians of the last crown. A certain old Nathaniel Ager was the first one I knew — I was born and brought up quite near here — and he, I believe, camped out at the place during the whole of the war of 1870. William, his son, did the same, I know, during the South African War. And young William, his son, who has only died fairly recently, took lodgings at the cottage nearest the spot; and I’ve no doubt hastened his end, for he was a consumptive, by exposure and night watching. And he was the last of that branch. It was a dreadful grief to him to think that he was the last, but he could do nothing, the only relations at all near to him were in the colonies. I wrote letters for him to them imploring them to come over on business very important to the family, but there has been no answer. So the last of the holy crowns, if it’s there, has no guardian now.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">‘That was what the rector told me, and you can fancy how interesting I found it. The only thing I could think of when I left him was how to hit upon the spot where the crown was supposed to be. I wish I’d left it alone.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">‘But there was a sort of fate in it, for as I bicycled back past the churchyard wall my eye caught a fairly new gravestone, and on it was the name of William Ager. Of course I got off and read it. It said “of this parish, died at Seaburgh, 19 — aged 28.”‘There it was, you see. A little judicious questioning in the right place, and I should at least find the cottage nearest the spot. Only I didn’t quite know what was the right place to begin my questioning at. Again there was fate: it took me to the curiosity-shop down that way — you know — and I turned over some old books, and, if you please, one was a prayer-book of 1740 odd, in a rather handsome binding — I’ll just go and get it, it’s in my room.’</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">He left us in a state of some surprise, but we had hardly time to exchange any remarks when he was back, panting, and handed us the book opened at the fly-leaf, on which was, in a straggly hand:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">‘Nathaniel Ager is my name and England is my nation,</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">Seaburgh is my dwelling-place and Christ is my Salvation,</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">When I am dead and in my Grave, and all my bones are rotton,</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">I hope the Lord will think on me when I am quite forgotton.’</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">This poem was dated 1754, and there were many more entries of Agers, Nathaniel, Frederick, William, and so on, ending with William, 19 —.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">‘You see,’ he said, ‘anybody would call it the greatest bit of luck. I did, but I don’t now. Of course I asked the shopman about William Ager, and of course he happened to remember that he lodged in a cottage in the North Field and died there. This was just chalking the road for me. I knew which the cottage must be: there is only one sizable one about there. The next thing was to scrape some sort of acquaintance with the people, and I took a walk that way at once. A dog did the business for me: he made at me so fiercely that they had to run out and beat him off, and then naturally begged my pardon, and we got into talk. I had only to bring up Ager’s name, and pretend I knew, or thought I knew something of him, and then the woman said how sad it was him dying so young, and she was sure it came of him spending the night out of doors in the cold weather. Then I had to say: “Did he go out on the sea at night?” and she said: “Oh, no, it was on the hillock yonder with the trees on it.” And there I was.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">‘I know something about digging in these barrows: I’ve opened many of them in the down country. But that was with owner’s leave, and in broad daylight and with men to help. I had to prospect very carefully here before I put a spade in: I couldn’t trench across the mound, and with those old firs growing there I knew there would be awkward tree roots. Still the soil was very light and sandy and easy, and there was a rabbit hole or so that might be developed into a sort of tunnel. The going out and coming back at odd hours to the hotel was going to be the awkward part. When I made up my mind about the way to excavate I told the people that I was called away for a night, and I spent it out there. I made my tunnel: I won’t bore you with the details of how I supported it and filled it in when I’d done, but the main thing is that I got the crown.’</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">Naturally we both broke out into exclamations of surprise and interest. I for one had long known about the finding of the crown at Rendlesham and had often lamented its fate. No one has ever seen an Anglo–Saxon crown — at least no one had. But our man gazed at us with a rueful eye. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘and the worst of it is I don’t know how to put it back.’</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">‘Put it back?’ we cried out. ‘Why, my dear sir, you’ve made one of the most exciting finds ever heard of in this country. Of course it ought to go to the Jewel Houise at the Tower. What’s your difficulty? If you’re thinking about the owner of the land, and treasure-trove, and all that, we can certainly help you through. Nobody’s going to make a fuss about technicalities in a case of this kind.’</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">Probably more was said, but all he did was to put his face in his hands, and mutter: ‘I don’t know how to put it back.’</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">At last Long said: ‘You’ll forgive me, I hope, if I seem impertinent, but are you quite sure you’ve got it?’ I was wanting to ask much the same question myself, for of course the story did seem a lunatic’s dream when one thought over it. But I hadn’t quite dared to say what might hurt the poor young man’s feelings. However, he took it quite calmly — really, with the calm of despair, you might say. He sat up and said: ‘Oh, yes, there’s no doubt of that: I have it here, in my room, locked up in my bag. You can come and look at it if you like: I won’t offer to bring it here.’</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">We were not likely to let the chance slip. We went with him; his room was only a few doors off. The boots was just collecting shoes in the passage: or so we thought: afterwards we were not sure. Our visitor — his name was Parton — was in a worse state of shivers than before, and went hurriedly into the room, and beckoned us after him, turned on the light, and shut the door carefully. Then he unlocked his kit-bag, and produced a bundle of clean pocket-handkerchiefs in which something was wrapped, laid it on the bed, and undid it. I can now say I have seen an actual Anglo–Saxon crown. It was of silver — as the Rendlesham one is always said to have been — it was set with some gems, mostly antique intaglios and cameos, and was of rather plain, almost rough workmanship. In fact, it was like those you see on the coins and in the manuscripts. I found no reason to think it was later than the ninth century. I was intensely interested, of course, and I wanted to turn it over in my hands, but Paxton prevented me. ‘Don’t you touch it,’ he said, ‘I’ll do that.’ And with a sigh that was, I declare to you, dreadful to hear, he took it up and turned it about so that we could see every part of it. ‘Seen enough?’ he said at last, and we nodded. He wrapped it up and locked it in his bag, and stood looking at us dumbly. ‘Come back to our room,’ Long said, ‘and tell us what the trouble is.’ He thanked us, and said: ‘Will you go first and see if — if the coast is clear?’ That wasn’t very intelligible, for our proceedings hadn’t been, after all, very suspicious, and the hotel, as I said, was practically empty. However, we were beginning to have inklings of — we didn’t know what, and anyhow nerves are infectious. So we did go, first peering out as we opened the door, and fancying (I found we both had the fancy) that a shadow, or more than a shadow — but it made no sound — passed from before us to one side as we came out into the passage. ‘It’s all right,’ we whispered to Paxton — whispering seemed the proper tone — and we went, with him between us, back to our sitting-room. I was preparing, when we got there, to be ecstatic about the unique interest of what we had seen, but when I looked at Paxton I saw that would be terribly out of place, and I left it to him to begin.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">‘What is to be done?’ was his opening. Long thought it right (as he explained to me afterwards) to be obtuse, and said: ‘Why not find out who the owner of the land is, and inform —’ Oh, no, no!’ Paxton broke in impatiently, ‘I beg your pardon: you’ve been very kind, but don’t you see it’s got to go back, and I daren’t be there at night, and daytime’s impossible. Perhaps, though, you don’t see: well, then, the truth is that I’ve never been alone since I touched it.’ I was beginning some fairly stupid comment, but Long caught my eye, and I stopped. Long said: ‘I think I do see, perhaps: but wouldn’t it be a relief — to tell us a little more clearly what the situation is?’</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">Then it all came out: Paxton looked over his shoulder and beckoned to us to come nearer to him, and began speaking in a low voice: we listened most intently, of course, and compared notes afterwards, and I wrote down our version, so I am confident I have what he told us almost word for word. He said: ‘It began when I was first prospecting, and put me off again and again. There was always somebody — a man — standing by one of the firs. This was in daylight, you know. He was never in front of me. I always saw him with the tail of my eye on the left or the right, and he was never there when I looked straight for him. I would lie down for quite a long time and take careful observations, and make sure there was no one, and then when I got up and began prospecting again, there he was. And he began to give me hints, besides; for wherever I put that prayer-book — short of locking it up, which I did at last — when I came back to my loom it was always out on my table open at the fly-leaf where the names are, and one of my razors across it to keep it open. I’m sure he just can’t open my bag, or something more would have happened. You see, he’s light and weak, but all the same I daren’t face him. Well, then, when I was making the tunnel, of course it was worse, and if I hadn’t been so keen I should have dropped the whole thing and run. It was like someone scraping at my back all the time: I thought for a long time it was only soil dropping on me, but as I got nearer the — the crown, it was unmistakable. And when I actually laid it bare and got my fingers into the ring of it and pulled it out, there came a sort of cry behind me — oh, I can’t tell you how desolate it was! And horribly threatening too. It spoilt all my pleasure in my find — cut it off that moment. And if I hadn’t been the wretched fool I am, I should have put the thing back and left it. But I didn’t. The rest of the time was just awful. I had hours to get through before I could decently come back to the hotel. First I spent time filling up my tunnel and covering my tracks, and all the while he was there trying to thwart me. Sometimes, you know, you see him, and sometimes you don’t, just as he pleases, I think: he’s there, but he has some power over your eyes. Well, I wasn’t off the spot very long before sunrise, and then I had to get to the junction for Seaburgh, and take a train back. And though it was daylight fairly soon, I don’t know if that made it much better. There were always hedges, or gorse-bushes, or park fences along the road — some sort of cover, I mean — and I was never easy for a second. And then when I began to meet people going to work, they always looked behind me very strangely: it might have been that they were surprised at seeing anyone so early; but I didn’t think it was only that, and I don’t now: they didn’t look exactly at me. And the porter at the train was like that too. And the guard held open the door after I’d got into the carriage — just as he would if there was somebody else coming, you know. Oh, you may be very sure it isn’t my fancy,’ he said with a dull sort of laugh. Then he went on: ‘And even if I do get it put back, he won’t forgive me: I can tell that. And I was so happy a fortnight ago.’ He dropped into a chair, and I believe he began to cry.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">We didn’t know what to say, but we felt we must come to the rescue somehow, and so — it really seemed the only thing — we said if he was so set on putting the crown back in its place, we would help him. And I must say that after what we had heard it did seem the right thing. If these horrid consequences had come on this poor man, might there not really be something in the original idea of the crown having some curious power bound up with it, to guard the coast? At least, that was my feeling, and I think it was Long’s too. Our offer was very welcome to Paxton, anyhow. When could we do it? It was nearing half-past ten. Could we contrive to make a late walk plausible to the hotel people that very night? We looked out of the window: there was a brilliant full moon — the Paschal moon. Long undertook to tackle the boots and propitiate him. He was to say that we should not be much over the hour, and if we did find it so pleasant that we stopped out a bit longer we would see that he didn’t lose by sitting up. Well, we were pretty regular customers of the hotel, and did not give much trouble, and were considered by the servants to be not under the mark in the way of tips; and so the boots was propitiated, and let us out on to the sea-front, and remained, as we heard later, looking after us. Paxton had a large coat over his arm, under which was the wrapped-up crown.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">So we were off on this strange errand before we had time to think how very much out of the way it was. I have told this part quite shortly on purpose, for it really does represent the haste with which we settled our plan and took action. ‘The shortest way is up the hill and through the churchyard,’ Paxton said, as we stood a moment before, the hotel looking up and down the front. There was nobody about — nobody at all. Seaburgh out of the season is an early, quiet place. ‘We can’t go along the dyke by the cottage, because of the dog,’ Paxton also said, when I pointed to what I thought a shorter way along the front and across two fields. The reason he gave was good enough. We went up the road to the church, and turned in at the churchyard gate. I confess to having thought that there might be some one lying there who might be conscious of our business: but if it was so, they were also conscious that one who was on their side, so to say, had us under surveillance, and we saw no sign of them. But under observation we felt we were, as I have never felt it at another time. Specially was it so when we passed out of the churchyard into a narrow path with close high hedges, through which we hurried as Christian did through that Valley; and so got out into open fields. Then along hedges, though I world sooner have been in the open, where I could see if anyone was visible behind me; over a gate or two, and then a swerve to the left, taking us up on to the ridge which ended in that mound.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">As we neared it, Henry Long felt, and I felt too, that there were what I can only call dim presences waiting for us, as well as a far more actual one attending us. Of Paxton’s agitation all this time I can give you no adequate picture: he breathed like a hunted beast, and we could not either of us look at his face. How he would manage when we got to the very place we had not troubled to think: he had seemed so sure that that would not be difficult. Nor was it. I never saw anything like the dash with which he flung himself at a particular spot in the side of the mound, and tore at it, so that in a very few minutes the greater part of his body was out of sight. We stood holding the coat and that bundle of handkerchiefs, and looking, very fearfully, I must admit, about us. There was nothing to be seen: a line of dark firs behind us made one skyline, more trees and the church tower half a mile off on the right, cottages and a windmill on the horizon on the left, calm sea dead in front, faint barking of a dog at a cottage on a gleaming dyke between us and it: full moon making that path we know across the sea: the eternal whisper of the Scotch firs just above us, and of the sea in front. Yet, in all this quiet, an acute, an acrid consciousness of a restrained hostility very near us, like a dog on a leash that might be let go at any moment.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">Paxton pulled himself out of the hole, and stretched a hand back to us. ‘Give it to me,’ he whispered, ‘unwrapped.’ We pulled off the handkerchiefs, and he took the crown. The moonlight just fell on it as he snatched it. We had not ourselves touched that bit of metal, and I have thought since that it was just as well. In another moment Paxton was out of the hole again and busy shovelling back the soil with hands that were already bleeding He would have none of our help though It was much the longest part of the job to get the place to look undisturbed yet — I don’t know how — he made a wonderful success of it. At last he was satisfied and we turned back.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">We were a couple of hundred yards from the hill when Long suddenly said to him: ‘I say you’ve left your coat there. That won’t do. See?’ And I certainly did see it — the long dark overcoat lying where the tunnel had been. Paxton had not stopped, however: he only shook his head, and held up the coat on his arm. And when we joined him, he said, without any excitement, but as if nothing mattered any more: ‘That wasn’t my coat.’ And, indeed, when we looked back again, that dark thing was not to be seen.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">Well, we got out on to the road, and came rapidly back that way. It was well before twelve when we got in, trying to put a good face on it, and saying — Long and I— what a lovely night it was for a walk. The boots was on the look-out for us, and we made remarks like that for his edification as we entered the hotel. He gave another look up and down the sea-front before he locked the front door, and said: ‘You didn’t meet many people about, I s’pose, sir?’ ‘No, indeed, not a soul,’ I said; at which I remember Paxton looked oddly at me. ‘Only I thought I see someone turn up the station road after you gentlemen,’ said the boots. ‘Still, you was three together, and I don’t suppose he meant mischief.’ I didn’t know what to say; Long merely said ‘Good night,’ and we went off upstairs, promising to turn out all lights, and to go to bed in a few minutes.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">Back in our room, we did our very best to make Paxton take a cheerful view. There’s the crown safe back,’ we said; ‘very likely you’d have done better not to touch it’ (and he heavily assented to that), ‘but no real harm has been done, and we shall never give this away to anyone who would be so mad as to go near it. Besides, don’t you feel better yourself? I don’t mind confessing,’ I said, ‘that on the way there I was very much inclined to take your view about — well, about being followed; but going back, it wasn’t at all the same thing, was it?’ No, it wouldn’t do: ‘You’ve nothing to trouble yourselves about,’ he said, ‘but I’m not forgiven. I’ve got to pay for that miserable sacrilege still. I know what you are going to say. The Church might help. Yes, but it’s the body that has to suffer. It’s true I’m not feeling that he’s waiting outside for me just now. But —’ Then he stopped. Then he turned to thanking us, and we put him off as soon as we could. And naturally we pressed him to use our sitting-room next day, and said we should be glad to go out with him. Or did he play golf, perhaps? Yes, he did, but he didn’t think he should care about that tomorrow. Well, we recommended him to get up late and sit in our room in the morning while we were playing, and we would have a walk later in the day. He was very submissive and piano about it all: ready to do just what we thought best, but clearly quite certain in his own mind that what was coming could not be averted or palliated. You’ll wonder why we didn’t insist on accompanying him to his home and seeing him safe into the care of brothers or someone. The fact was he had nobody. He had had a flat in town, but lately he had made up his mind to settle for a time in Sweden, and he had dismantled his flat and shipped off his belongings, and was whiling away a fortnight or three weeks before he made a start. Anyhow, we didn’t see what we could do better than sleep on it — or not sleep very much, as was my case and see what we felt like tomorrow morning.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">We felt very different, Long and I, on as beautiful an April morning as you could desire; and Paxton also looked very different when we saw him at breakfast. ‘The first approach to a decent night I seem ever to have had,’ was what he said. But he was going to do as we had settled: stay in probably all the morning, and come out with us later. We went to the links; we met some other men and played with them in the morning, and had lunch there rather early, so as not to be late back. All the same, the snares of death overtook him.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">Whether it could have been prevented, I don’t know. I think he would have been got at somehow, do what we might. Anyhow, this is what happened.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">We went straight up to our room. Paxton was there, reading quite peaceably. ‘Ready to come out shortly?’ said Long, ‘say in half an hour’s time?’ ‘Certainly,’ he said: and I said we would change first, and perhaps have baths, and call for him in half an hour. I had my bath first, and went and lay down on my bed, and slept for about ten minutes. We came out of our rooms at the same time, and went together to the sitting-room. Paxton wasn’t there — only his book. Nor was he in his room, nor in the downstair rooms. We shouted for him. A servant came out and said: ‘Why, I thought you gentlemen was gone out already, and so did the other gentleman. He heard you a-calling from the path there, and run out in a hurry, and I looked out of the coffee-room window, but I didn’t see you. ‘Owever, he run off down the beach that way.’</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">Without a word we ran that way too — it was the opposite direction to that of last night’s expedition. It wasn’t quite four o’clock, and the day was fair, though not so fair as it had been, so that was really no reason, you’d say, for anxiety: with people about, surely a man couldn’t come to much harm.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">But something in our look as we ran out must have struck the servant, for she came out on the steps, and pointed, and said, ‘Yes, that’s the way he went.’ We ran on as far as the top of the shingle bank, and there pulled up. There was a choice of ways: past the houses on the sea-front, or along the sand at the bottom of the beach, which, the tide being now out, was fairly broad. Or of course we might keep along the shingle between these two tracks and have some view of both of them; only that was heavy going. We chose the sand, for that was the loneliest, and someone might come to harm there without being seen from the public path.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">Long said he saw Paxton some distance ahead, running and waving his stick, as if he wanted to signal to people who were on ahead of him. I couldn’t be sure: one of these sea-mists was coming up very quickly from the south. There was someone, that’s all I could say. And there were tracks on the sand as of someone running who wore shoes; and there were other tracks made before those — for the shoes sometimes trod in them and interfered with them — of someone not in shoes. Oh, of course, it’s only my word you’ve got to take for all this: Long’s dead, we’d no time or means to make sketches or take casts, and the next tide washed everything away. All we could do was to notice these marks as we hurried on. But there they were over and over again, and we had no doubt whatever that what we saw was the track of a bare foot, and one that showed more bones than flesh.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">The notion of Paxton running after — after anything like this, and supposing it to be the friends he was looking for, was very dreadful to us. You can guess what we fancied: how the thing he was following might stop suddenly and turn round on him, and what sort of face it would show, half-seen at first in the mist — which all the while was getting thicker and thicker. And as I ran on wondering how the poor wretch could have been lured into mistaking that other thing for us, I remembered his saying, ‘He has some power over your eyes.’ And then I wondered what the end would be, for I had no hope now that the end could be averted, and — well, there is no need to tell all the dismal and horrid thoughts that flitted through my head as we ran on into the mist. It was uncanny, too, that the sun should still be bright in the sky and we could see nothing. We could only tell that we were now past the houses and had reached that gap there is between them and the old martello tower. When you are past the tower, you know, there is nothing but shingle for a long way — not a house, not a human creature; just that spit of land, or rather shingle, with the river on your right and the sea on your left.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">But just before that, just by the martello tower, you remember there is the old battery, close to the sea. I believe there are only a few blocks of concrete left now: the rest has all been washed away, but at this time there was a lot more, though the place was a ruin. Well, when we got there, we clambered to the top as quick as we could to take breath and look over the shingle in front if by chance the mist would let us see anything. But a moment’s rest we must have. We had run a mile at least. Nothing whatever was visible ahead of us, and we were just turning by common consent to get down and run hopelessly on, when we heard what I can only call a laugh: and if you can understand what I mean by a breathless, a lungless laugh, you have it: but I don’t suppose you can. It came from below, and swerved away into the mist. That was enough. We bent over the wall. Paxton was there at the bottom.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">You don’t need to be told that he was dead. His tracks showed that he had run along the side of the battery, had turned sharp round the corner of it, and, small doubt of it, must have dashed straight irito the open arms of someone who was waiting there. His mouth was full of sand and stones, and his teeth and jaws were broken to bits. I only glanced once at his face.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">At the same moment, just as we were scrambling down from the battery to get to the body, we heard a shout, and saw a man running down the bank of the martello tower. He was the caretaker stationed there, and his keen old eyes had managed to descry through the mist that something was wrong. He had seen Paxton fall, and had seen us a moment after, running up — fortunate this, for otherwise we could hardly have escaped suspicion of being concerned in the dreadful business. Had he, we asked, caught sight of anybody attacking our friend? He could not be sure.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">We sent him off for help, and stayed by the dead man till they came with the stretcher. It was then that we traced out how he had come, on the narrow fringe of sand under the battery wall. The rest was shingle, and it was hopelessly impossible to tell whither the other had gone.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">What were we to say at the inquest? It was a duty, we felt, not to give up, there and then, the secret of the crown, to be published in every paper. I don’t know how much you would have told; but what we did agree upon was this: to say that we had only made acquaintance with Paxton the day before, and that he had told us he was under some apprehension of danger at the hands of a man called William Ager. Also that we had seen some other tracks besides Paxton’s when we followed him along the beach. But of course by that time everything was gone from the sands.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">No one had any knowledge, fortunately, of any William Ager living in the district. The evidence of the man at the martello tower freed us from all suspicion. All that could be done was to return a verdict of wilful murder by some person or persons unknowtn.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">Paxton was so totally without connections that all the inquiries that were subsequently made ended in a No Thoroughfare. And I have never been at Seaburgh, or even near it, since.<br /></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444893451907188044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8879282668683580477.post-51302066682822271752017-03-27T17:16:00.000+01:002017-03-27T17:17:36.326+01:00'The Cask of Amontillado' by Edgar Allan Poe | Classic Horror<div style="text-align: center;">
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THE thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult I vowed revenge. You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that gave utterance to a threat. At length I would be avenged; this was a point definitely, settled --but the very definitiveness with which it was resolved precluded the idea of risk. I must not only punish but punish with impunity. A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong.<br />
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It must be understood that neither by word nor deed had I given Fortunato cause to doubt my good will. I continued, as was my in to smile in his face, and he did not perceive that my to smile now was at the thought of his immolation.<br />
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He had a weak point --this Fortunato --although in other regards he was a man to be respected and even feared. He prided himself on his connoisseurship in wine. Few Italians have the true virtuoso spirit. For the most part their enthusiasm is adopted to suit the time and opportunity, to practise imposture upon the British and Austrian millionaires. In painting and gemmary, Fortunato, like his countrymen, was a quack, but in the matter of old wines he was sincere. In this respect I did not differ from him materially; --I was skilful in the Italian vintages myself, and bought largely whenever I could.<br />
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It was about dusk, one evening during the supreme madness of the carnival season, that I encountered my friend. He accosted me with excessive warmth, for he had been drinking much. The man wore motley. He had on a tight-fitting parti-striped dress, and his head was surmounted by the conical cap and bells. I was so pleased to see him that I thought I should never have done wringing his hand.<br />
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I said to him --"My dear Fortunato, you are luckily met. How remarkably well you are looking to-day. But I have received a pipe of what passes for Amontillado, and I have my doubts."<br />
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"How?" said he. "Amontillado, A pipe? Impossible! And in the middle of the carnival!"<br />
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"I have my doubts," I replied; "and I was silly enough to pay the full Amontillado price without consulting you in the matter. You were not to be found, and I was fearful of losing a bargain."<br />
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"Amontillado!"<br />
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"I have my doubts."<br />
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"Amontillado!"<br />
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"And I must satisfy them."<br />
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"Amontillado!"<br />
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"As you are engaged, I am on my way to Luchresi. If any one has a critical turn it is he. He will tell me --"<br />
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"Luchresi cannot tell Amontillado from Sherry."<br />
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"And yet some fools will have it that his taste is a match for your own.<br />
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"Come, let us go."<br />
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"Whither?"<br />
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"To your vaults."<br />
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"My friend, no; I will not impose upon your good nature. I perceive you have an engagement. Luchresi--"<br />
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"I have no engagement; --come."<br />
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"My friend, no. It is not the engagement, but the severe cold with which I perceive you are afflicted. The vaults are insufferably damp. They are encrusted with nitre."<br />
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"Let us go, nevertheless. The cold is merely nothing. Amontillado! You have been imposed upon. And as for Luchresi, he cannot distinguish Sherry from Amontillado."<br />
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Thus speaking, Fortunato possessed himself of my arm; and putting on a mask of black silk and drawing a roquelaire closely about my person, I suffered him to hurry me to my palazzo.<br />
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There were no attendants at home; they had absconded to make merry in honour of the time. I had told them that I should not return until the morning, and had given them explicit orders not to stir from the house. These orders were sufficient, I well knew, to insure their immediate disappearance, one and all, as soon as my back was turned.<br />
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I took from their sconces two flambeaux, and giving one to Fortunato, bowed him through several suites of rooms to the archway that led into the vaults. I passed down a long and winding staircase, requesting him to be cautious as he followed. We came at length to the foot of the descent, and stood together upon the damp ground of the catacombs of the Montresors.<br />
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The gait of my friend was unsteady, and the bells upon his cap jingled as he strode.<br />
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"The pipe," he said.<br />
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"It is farther on," said I; "but observe the white web-work which gleams from these cavern walls."<br />
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He turned towards me, and looked into my eves with two filmy orbs that distilled the rheum of intoxication.<br />
<br />
"Nitre?" he asked, at length.<br />
<br />
"Nitre," I replied. "How long have you had that cough?"<br />
<br />
"Ugh! ugh! ugh! --ugh! ugh! ugh! --ugh! ugh! ugh! --ugh! ugh! ugh! --ugh! ugh! ugh!"<br />
<br />
My poor friend found it impossible to reply for many minutes.<br />
<br />
"It is nothing," he said, at last.<br />
<br />
"Come," I said, with decision, "we will go back; your health is precious. You are rich, respected, admired, beloved; you are happy, as once I was. You are a man to be missed. For me it is no matter. We will go back; you will be ill, and I cannot be responsible. Besides, there is Luchresi --"<br />
<br />
"Enough," he said; "the cough's a mere nothing; it will not kill me. I shall not die of a cough."<br />
<br />
"True --true," I replied; "and, indeed, I had no intention of alarming you unnecessarily --but you should use all proper caution. A draught of this Medoc will defend us from the damps.<br />
<br />
Here I knocked off the neck of a bottle which I drew from a long row of its fellows that lay upon the mould.<br />
<br />
"Drink," I said, presenting him the wine.<br />
<br />
He raised it to his lips with a leer. He paused and nodded to me familiarly, while his bells jingled.<br />
<br />
"I drink," he said, "to the buried that repose around us."<br />
<br />
"And I to your long life."<br />
<br />
He again took my arm, and we proceeded.<br />
<br />
"These vaults," he said, "are extensive."<br />
<br />
"The Montresors," I replied, "were a great and numerous family."<br />
<br />
"I forget your arms."<br />
<br />
"A huge human foot d'or, in a field azure; the foot crushes a serpent rampant whose fangs are imbedded in the heel."<br />
<br />
"And the motto?"<br />
<br />
"Nemo me impune lacessit."<br />
<br />
"Good!" he said.<br />
<br />
The wine sparkled in his eyes and the bells jingled. My own fancy grew warm with the Medoc. We had passed through long walls of piled skeletons, with casks and puncheons intermingling, into the inmost recesses of the catacombs. I paused again, and this time I made bold to seize Fortunato by an arm above the elbow.<br />
<br />
"The nitre!" I said; "see, it increases. It hangs like moss upon the vaults. We are below the river's bed. The drops of moisture trickle among the bones. Come, we will go back ere it is too late. Your cough --"<br />
<br />
"It is nothing," he said; "let us go on. But first, another draught of the Medoc."<br />
<br />
I broke and reached him a flagon of De Grave. He emptied it at a breath. His eyes flashed with a fierce light. He laughed and threw the bottle upwards with a gesticulation I did not understand.<br />
<br />
I looked at him in surprise. He repeated the movement --a grotesque one.<br />
<br />
"You do not comprehend?" he said.<br />
<br />
"Not I," I replied.<br />
<br />
"Then you are not of the brotherhood."<br />
<br />
"How?"<br />
<br />
"You are not of the masons."<br />
<br />
"Yes, yes," I said; "yes, yes."<br />
<br />
"You? Impossible! A mason?"<br />
<br />
"A mason," I replied.<br />
<br />
"A sign," he said, "a sign."<br />
<br />
"It is this," I answered, producing from beneath the folds of my roquelaire a trowel.<br />
<br />
"You jest," he exclaimed, recoiling a few paces. "But let us proceed to the Amontillado."<br />
<br />
"Be it so," I said, replacing the tool beneath the cloak and again offering him my arm. He leaned upon it heavily. We continued our route in search of the Amontillado. We passed through a range of low arches, descended, passed on, and descending again, arrived at a deep crypt, in which the foulness of the air caused our flambeaux rather to glow than flame.<br />
<br />
At the most remote end of the crypt there appeared another less spacious. Its walls had been lined with human remains, piled to the vault overhead, in the fashion of the great catacombs of Paris. Three sides of this interior crypt were still ornamented in this manner. From the fourth side the bones had been thrown down, and lay promiscuously upon the earth, forming at one point a mound of some size. Within the wall thus exposed by the displacing of the bones, we perceived a still interior crypt or recess, in depth about four feet, in width three, in height six or seven. It seemed to have been constructed for no especial use within itself, but formed merely the interval between two of the colossal supports of the roof of the catacombs, and was backed by one of their circumscribing walls of solid granite.<br />
<br />
It was in vain that Fortunato, uplifting his dull torch, endeavoured to pry into the depth of the recess. Its termination the feeble light did not enable us to see.<br />
<br />
"Proceed," I said; "herein is the Amontillado. As for Luchresi --"<br />
<br />
"He is an ignoramus," interrupted my friend, as he stepped unsteadily forward, while I followed immediately at his heels. In niche, and finding an instant he had reached the extremity of the niche, and finding his progress arrested by the rock, stood stupidly bewildered. A moment more and I had fettered him to the granite. In its surface were two iron staples, distant from each other about two feet, horizontally. From one of these depended a short chain, from the other a padlock. Throwing the links about his waist, it was but the work of a few seconds to secure it. He was too much astounded to resist. Withdrawing the key I stepped back from the recess.<br />
<br />
"Pass your hand," I said, "over the wall; you cannot help feeling the nitre. Indeed, it is very damp. Once more let me implore you to return. No? Then I must positively leave you. But I must first render you all the little attentions in my power."<br />
<br />
"The Amontillado!" ejaculated my friend, not yet recovered from his astonishment.<br />
<br />
"True," I replied; "the Amontillado."<br />
<br />
As I said these words I busied myself among the pile of bones of which I have before spoken. Throwing them aside, I soon uncovered a quantity of building stone and mortar. With these materials and with the aid of my trowel, I began vigorously to wall up the entrance of the niche.<br />
<br />
I had scarcely laid the first tier of the masonry when I discovered that the intoxication of Fortunato had in a great measure worn off. The earliest indication I had of this was a low moaning cry from the depth of the recess. It was not the cry of a drunken man. There was then a long and obstinate silence. I laid the second tier, and the third, and the fourth; and then I heard the furious vibrations of the chain. The noise lasted for several minutes, during which, that I might hearken to it with the more satisfaction, I ceased my labours and sat down upon the bones. When at last the clanking subsided, I resumed the trowel, and finished without interruption the fifth, the sixth, and the seventh tier. The wall was now nearly upon a level with my breast. I again paused, and holding the flambeaux over the mason-work, threw a few feeble rays upon the figure within.<br />
<br />
A succession of loud and shrill screams, bursting suddenly from the throat of the chained form, seemed to thrust me violently back. For a brief moment I hesitated, I trembled. Unsheathing my rapier, I began to grope with it about the recess; but the thought of an instant reassured me. I placed my hand upon the solid fabric of the catacombs, and felt satisfied. I reapproached the wall; I replied to the yells of him who clamoured. I re-echoed, I aided, I surpassed them in volume and in strength. I did this, and the clamourer grew still.<br />
<br />
It was now midnight, and my task was drawing to a close. I had completed the eighth, the ninth and the tenth tier. I had finished a portion of the last and the eleventh; there remained but a single stone to be fitted and plastered in. I struggled with its weight; I placed it partially in its destined position. But now there came from out the niche a low laugh that erected the hairs upon my head. It was succeeded by a sad voice, which I had difficulty in recognizing as that of the noble Fortunato. The voice said--<br />
<br />
"Ha! ha! ha! --he! he! he! --a very good joke, indeed --an excellent jest. We will have many a rich laugh about it at the palazzo --he! he! he! --over our wine --he! he! he!"<br />
<br />
"The Amontillado!" I said.<br />
<br />
"He! he! he! --he! he! he! --yes, the Amontillado. But is it not getting late? Will not they be awaiting us at the palazzo, the Lady Fortunato and the rest? Let us be gone."<br />
<br />
"Yes," I said, "let us be gone."<br />
<br />
"For the love of God, Montresor!"<br />
<br />
"Yes," I said, "for the love of God!"<br />
<br />
But to these words I hearkened in vain for a reply. I grew impatient. I called aloud --<br />
<br />
"Fortunato!"<br />
<br />
No answer. I called again --<br />
<br />
"Fortunato!"<br />
<br />
No answer still. I thrust a torch through the remaining aperture and let it fall within. There came forth in return only a jingling of the bells. My heart grew sick; it was the dampness of the catacombs that made it so. I hastened to make an end of my labour. I forced the last stone into its position; I plastered it up. Against the new masonry I re-erected the old rampart of bones. For the half of a century no mortal has disturbed them. In pace requiescat!<br />
<br />
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The End</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444893451907188044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8879282668683580477.post-41565838358680047642017-02-24T23:07:00.001+00:002017-03-07T12:51:12.879+00:00Bits & Pieces | Horror | Michael Whitehouse<div style="text-align: center;">
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<br />
If you are interested in the weird and wonderful, then you might already be familiar with the strange case of the Uist mummies. Discovered in 2001, the mummified remains of two ancient residents of the Scottish island of South Uist have perplexed and puzzled archaeologists ever since they were unearthed.<br />
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Buried deep in the ground of that remote corner of the developed world, the most recent scientific data estimates that both corpses were placed there over 3000 years ago. Their skeletons were found to have been contorted into an unnatural foetal position, and the photos, which appeared in the national newspapers at the time, were enough to make anyone uneasy. It was said that such a deliberately manipulated pose was common in ancient burials, but it was clear during those first few weeks of the excavation that one of the bodies was anything but common.<br />
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The archaeologists exhuming the corpses placed great importance on the burials being the first concrete indication that the ancient peoples of the British Isles did indeed mummify their dead. This has created quite a stir in the academic community ever since. As we speak, the hunt to find the estimated hundreds, if not thousands, of similarly preserved dead ancients dotting the land beneath our feet continues.<br />
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After some preliminary tests were performed on the remains, it became apparent that both bodies had been immersed for at least a year in an acidic material shortly after death. This led to speculation that they had been mummified by being steeped in a nearby peat bog for some time - a blackened, swamp-like piece of wetland formed through centuries of accumulating rotting plants and animals. They were then left above ground, perhaps to be paid tribute to, or to act as a warning to others for hundreds of years for some hideous crime. Both bodies had been remarkably well preserved and it was estimated by the archaeological team on hand that they had probably been stored in a primitive hut or house structure for much of their time above ground. Why this occurred is anyone’s guess, but it has been argued that the bodies were of ceremonial importance. Perhaps a priest class lived alongside the seemingly immortalised bodies for an unknown ritualistic purpose, before finally concealing them in a stone coffin made of uneven slabs beneath the ground; not before removing a tooth from each jaw and placing them in the palms of their rotting clenched fists. A curious practice indeed.<br />
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<br />
The fact that the steeping of the bodies in the peat bog had led to the preservation of both corpses, excited the researchers: they believed that there was every possibility that some DNA might have been protected from thousands of years of rotting beneath the earth. This could be used to trace the ancestry of the individuals. And so, the difficult process of extracting genetic material from the remaining flesh began.<br />
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It was during this process that one of the scientists, a Dr M. Grealy, noticed something amiss with one of the cadavers. How something so obvious could have been initially overlooked was the source of much debate amongst the research team, but there seemed to be no doubt: one of the mummified corpses was not technically a solitary person. It was composed of body parts from a number of once-living individuals.<br />
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At first this was assumed to be pure chance, that perhaps the area had been an ancient cemetery, housing numerous cadavers, and had become a mixed bag of body parts as they rotted, tossed around by the elements above and below ground level. This, however, was vehemently denied by Dr Grealy. She was absolutely convinced that the mummified body was deliberately cobbled together from various corpses, for some unknown reason. Regardless of who was correct, the research team concluded unanimously that the body was ‘mostly’ that of a 40 year old man, comprised of, at the very least, an arm, part of a leg, and a few ribs coming from other sources - with the jaw bone and lower teeth certainly that of an elderly woman. DNA identification of other body parts was, unfortunately, impossible.<br />
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Dr Grealy initially argued that the remains must have been pieced together in a ritual where body parts were offered to the whole skeleton for some reason; perhaps as a way to cement alliances between tribes, or to lay claim to land where the cadaver was buried, much in the same way that marriage was often used to bring two groups together. But as her investigation became more time-consuming, the outlandish nature of her claims increased. After pouring over the data and performing her own tests on the corpse for several months, she petitioned the academic research team involved to publish her conclusions.<br />
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There was much resistance within the group, and it was decided that Dr Grealy had either lost her mind or was not the excellent researcher that they had believed her to be. She was suspended from the research project for an indefinite period and asked to rethink her assertions. But she would not, could not, let them go. Before being escorted from the laboratory where the mummified remains were being stored, she was informed of the proposals to remove her from the project by a sympathetic colleague. With little time to act, Dr Grealy gathered up all of her research notes and pocketed the jaw bone of the mummy, which she had removed carefully for analysis, before the head of the research team entered the laboratory with a security guard and asked her to leave the premises immediately.<br />
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Wracked by guilt at their colleague’s dismissal, two members of the research team maintained contact with Dr Grealy over the following four months, exchanging emails and even some ideas about the origins of the corpse. They all sympathised with her predicament, although they never would back up her conclusions publicly: they just seemed too outrageous. Even though some believed that the evidence did indeed suggest her beliefs were correct, no one was willing to put their name to a paper stating that the corpse - that 3000 year-old cobbled together collection of bones from different bodies - had at one time walked about; had lived as a single functioning human being. No, while Dr Grealy had found preliminary evidence that the bones could have been attached to one another by cartilage, tendons, and muscle, there must have been some bizarre contamination of the results. It just couldn’t have been true. That thing could never have been alive.<br />
And so, she was on her own. And on her own she stayed, but while some amongst her ex-colleagues claimed that Grealy was quite mad, she didn’t seem delusional. She didn’t, for example, run to the press. No, she valued her career as a scientist and made it clear during conversations that she had to make sure that her conclusions were irrefutable, that the research team had not been justified in their reservations. It was for that reason she sank all of her money, time, and resources into finding another burial site on the island of South Uist. If she couldn’t gain access to that bizarre corpse, she would find her own to study, one which would hopefully lead to further evidence for her hypothesis. She was hopeful that an even better preserved body could be found, one which would show conclusively that the bones of different people had somehow been stitched or grafted together thousands of years ago - and walked the earth.<br />
<br />
Dr Grealy hired a team of historians to help her identify locations which potentially contained early Bronze Age settlements. Those areas were then assessed at great cost by a freelance geophysical survey team, probing the ground for possible chambers or stone coffins hidden beneath. Keeping those she was closest to abridged of her progress, it appeared that she had indeed finally found another burial site, and was confident that its construction matched that of the first tomb.<br />
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Having spent all of her savings just to find the site, she did not have enough money left to hire a group of archaeologists to excavate any remains which might have been hidden there. For this reason, Dr Grealy undertook the back-breaking work of digging for proof herself. The phone calls and emails that she had been sending to her colleagues diminished over time, and it did indeed seem that she was slowly succumbing to obsessive behaviour and perhaps even a debilitating mental illness, ranting about ‘bits and pieces walking around at night, disturbing my work.’<br />
<br />
A month later the body of a woman was found washed up on Kilpheder beach, South Uist. The remains were identified as belonging to Dr Grealy, but it was argued that that was impossible. She had been officially missing for just a few weeks, but the forensic investigation suggested that the body had been submerged in a peat bog for at least a year. Furthermore, the nature of Dr Grealy’s injuries caused much shock throughout the academic community, no more so than from those she had worked alongside excavating the original South Uist mummies. Her corpse was found exposed and naked as the tide moved out, curled up rigidly in a foetal position. Her jaw had been removed with measured precision, and in her clenched fist lay a tooth, the origin of which has yet to be identified. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8879282668683580477.post-19450703518110799482017-02-07T13:49:00.000+00:002017-02-07T14:54:57.502+00:00'The Tell-Tale Heart' by Edgar Allan Poe | Classic Horror<div style="text-align: center;">
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<br />
TRUE! --nervous --very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses --not destroyed --not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily --how calmly I can tell you the whole story.<br />
<br />
It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night. Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye! yes, it was this! He had the eye of a vulture --a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees --very gradually --I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever.<br />
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Now this is the point. You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded --with what caution --with what foresight --with what dissimulation I went to work! I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him. And every night, about midnight, I turned the latch of his door and opened it --oh so gently! And then, when I had made an opening sufficient for my head, I put in a dark lantern, all closed, closed, that no light shone out, and then I thrust in my head. Oh, you would have laughed to see how cunningly I thrust it in! I moved it slowly --very, very slowly, so that I might not disturb the old man's sleep. It took me an hour to place my whole head within the opening so far that I could see him as he lay upon his bed. Ha! would a madman have been so wise as this, And then, when my head was well in the room, I undid the lantern cautiously-oh, so cautiously --cautiously (for the hinges creaked) --I undid it just so much that a single thin ray fell upon the vulture eye. And this I did for seven long nights --every night just at midnight --but I found the eye always closed; and so it was impossible to do the work; for it was not the old man who vexed me, but his Evil Eye. And every morning, when the day broke, I went boldly into the chamber, and spoke courageously to him, calling him by name in a hearty tone, and inquiring how he has passed the night. So you see he would have been a very profound old man, indeed, to suspect that every night, just at twelve, I looked in upon him while he slept.<br />
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Upon the eighth night I was more than usually cautious in opening the door. A watch's minute hand moves more quickly than did mine. Never before that night had I felt the extent of my own powers --of my sagacity. I could scarcely contain my feelings of triumph. To think that there I was, opening the door, little by little, and he not even to dream of my secret deeds or thoughts. I fairly chuckled at the idea; and perhaps he heard me; for he moved on the bed suddenly, as if startled. Now you may think that I drew back --but no. His room was as black as pitch with the thick darkness, (for the shutters were close fastened, through fear of robbers,) and so I knew that he could not see the opening of the door, and I kept pushing it on steadily, steadily.<br />
<br />
I had my head in, and was about to open the lantern, when my thumb slipped upon the tin fastening, and the old man sprang up in bed, crying out --"Who's there?"<br />
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I kept quite still and said nothing. For a whole hour I did not move a muscle, and in the meantime I did not hear him lie down. He was still sitting up in the bed listening; --just as I have done, night after night, hearkening to the death watches in the wall.<br />
<br />
Presently I heard a slight groan, and I knew it was the groan of mortal terror. It was not a groan of pain or of grief --oh, no! --it was the low stifled sound that arises from the bottom of the soul when overcharged with awe. I knew the sound well. Many a night, just at midnight, when all the world slept, it has welled up from my own bosom, deepening, with its dreadful echo, the terrors that distracted me. I say I knew it well. I knew what the old man felt, and pitied him, although I chuckled at heart. I knew that he had been lying awake ever since the first slight noise, when he had turned in the bed. His fears had been ever since growing upon him. He had been trying to fancy them causeless, but could not. He had been saying to himself --"It is nothing but the wind in the chimney --it is only a mouse crossing the floor," or "It is merely a cricket which has made a single chirp." Yes, he had been trying to comfort himself with these suppositions: but he had found all in vain. All in vain; because Death, in approaching him had stalked with his black shadow before him, and enveloped the victim. And it was the mournful influence of the unperceived shadow that caused him to feel --although he neither saw nor heard --to feel the presence of my head within the room.<br />
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When I had waited a long time, very patiently, without hearing him lie down, I resolved to open a little --a very, very little crevice in the lantern. So I opened it --you cannot imagine how stealthily, stealthily --until, at length a simple dim ray, like the thread of the spider, shot from out the crevice and fell full upon the vulture eye.<br />
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It was open --wide, wide open --and I grew furious as I gazed upon it. I saw it with perfect distinctness --all a dull blue, with a hideous veil over it that chilled the very marrow in my bones; but I could see nothing else of the old man's face or person: for I had directed the ray as if by instinct, precisely upon the damned spot.<br />
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And have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of the sense? --now, I say, there came to my ears a low, dull, quick sound, such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I knew that sound well, too. It was the beating of the old man's heart. It increased my fury, as the beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage.<br />
<br />
But even yet I refrained and kept still. I scarcely breathed. I held the lantern motionless. I tried how steadily I could maintain the ray upon the eve. Meantime the hellish tattoo of the heart increased. It grew quicker and quicker, and louder and louder every instant. The old man's terror must have been extreme! It grew louder, I say, louder every moment! --do you mark me well I have told you that I am nervous: so I am. And now at the dead hour of the night, amid the dreadful silence of that old house, so strange a noise as this excited me to uncontrollable terror. Yet, for some minutes longer I refrained and stood still. But the beating grew louder, louder! I thought the heart must burst. And now a new anxiety seized me --the sound would be heard by a neighbour! The old man's hour had come! With a loud yell, I threw open the lantern and leaped into the room. He shrieked once --once only. In an instant I dragged him to the floor, and pulled the heavy bed over him. I then smiled gaily, to find the deed so far done. But, for many minutes, the heart beat on with a muffled sound. This, however, did not vex me; it would not be heard through the wall. At length it ceased. The old man was dead. I removed the bed and examined the corpse. Yes, he was stone, stone dead. I placed my hand upon the heart and held it there many minutes. There was no pulsation. He was stone dead. His eve would trouble me no more.<br />
<br />
If still you think me mad, you will think so no longer when I describe the wise precautions I took for the concealment of the body. The night waned, and I worked hastily, but in silence. First of all I dismembered the corpse. I cut off the head and the arms and the legs.<br />
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I then took up three planks from the flooring of the chamber, and deposited all between the scantlings. I then replaced the boards so cleverly, so cunningly, that no human eye --not even his --could have detected any thing wrong. There was nothing to wash out --no stain of any kind --no blood-spot whatever. I had been too wary for that. A tub had caught all --ha! ha!<br />
<br />
When I had made an end of these labors, it was four o'clock --still dark as midnight. As the bell sounded the hour, there came a knocking at the street door. I went down to open it with a light heart, --for what had I now to fear? There entered three men, who introduced themselves, with perfect suavity, as officers of the police. A shriek had been heard by a neighbour during the night; suspicion of foul play had been aroused; information had been lodged at the police office, and they (the officers) had been deputed to search the premises.<br />
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I smiled, --for what had I to fear? I bade the gentlemen welcome. The shriek, I said, was my own in a dream. The old man, I mentioned, was absent in the country. I took my visitors all over the house. I bade them search --search well. I led them, at length, to his chamber. I showed them his treasures, secure, undisturbed. In the enthusiasm of my confidence, I brought chairs into the room, and desired them here to rest from their fatigues, while I myself, in the wild audacity of my perfect triumph, placed my own seat upon the very spot beneath which reposed the corpse of the victim.<br />
<br />
The officers were satisfied. My manner had convinced them. I was singularly at ease. They sat, and while I answered cheerily, they chatted of familiar things. But, ere long, I felt myself getting pale and wished them gone. My head ached, and I fancied a ringing in my ears: but still they sat and still chatted. The ringing became more distinct: --It continued and became more distinct: I talked more freely to get rid of the feeling: but it continued and gained definiteness --until, at length, I found that the noise was not within my ears.<br />
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No doubt I now grew very pale; --but I talked more fluently, and with a heightened voice. Yet the sound increased --and what could I do? It was a low, dull, quick sound --much such a sound as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I gasped for breath --and yet the officers heard it not. I talked more quickly --more vehemently; but the noise steadily increased. I arose and argued about trifles, in a high key and with violent gesticulations; but the noise steadily increased. Why would they not be gone? I paced the floor to and fro with heavy strides, as if excited to fury by the observations of the men --but the noise steadily increased. Oh God! what could I do? I foamed --I raved --I swore! I swung the chair upon which I had been sitting, and grated it upon the boards, but the noise arose over all and continually increased. It grew louder --louder --louder! And still the men chatted pleasantly, and smiled. Was it possible they heard not? Almighty God! --no, no! They heard! --they suspected! --they knew! --they were making a mockery of my horror!-this I thought, and this I think. But anything was better than this agony! Anything was more tolerable than this derision! I could bear those hypocritical smiles no longer! I felt that I must scream or die! and now --again! --hark! louder! louder! louder! louder!<br />
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"Villains!" I shrieked, "dissemble no more! I admit the deed! --tear up the planks! here, here! --It is the beating of his hideous heart!"<br />
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<b>THE END</b><br />
<span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span>
<span style="text-align: left;">Read More Stories from </span><a href="http://www.vaultofghastlytales.com/p/edgar-allan-poe.html" style="text-align: left;">Edgar Allan Poe</a><span style="text-align: left;"> in The Vault</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444893451907188044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8879282668683580477.post-65641710765644801742017-01-31T23:04:00.000+00:002017-01-31T23:05:30.528+00:00'The Premature Burial' by Edgar Allan Poe | Classic Horror<div style="text-align: center;">
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">THERE are certain themes of which the interest is all-absorbing, but which are too entirely horrible for the purposes of legitimate fiction. These the mere romanticist must eschew, if he do not wish to offend or to disgust. They are with propriety handled only when the severity and majesty of Truth sanctify and sustain them. We thrill, for example, with the most intense of "pleasurable pain" over the accounts of the Passage of the Beresina, of the Earthquake at Lisbon, of the Plague at London, of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, or of the stifling of the hundred and twenty-three prisoners in the Black Hole at Calcutta. But in these accounts it is the fact-it is the reality-it is the history which excites. As inventions, we should regard them with simple abhorrence.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">I have mentioned some few of the more prominent and august calamities on record; but in these it is the extent, not less than the character of the calamity, which so vividly impresses the fancy. I need not remind the reader that, from the long and weird catalogue of human miseries, I might have selected many individual instances more replete with essential suffering than any of these vast generalities of disaster. The true wretchedness, indeed-the ultimate woe-is particular, not diffuse. That the ghastly extremes of agony are endured by man the unit, and never by man the mass-for this let us thank a merciful God!</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">To be buried while alive is, beyond question, the most terrific of these extremes which has ever fAllan to the lot of mere mortality. That it has frequently, very frequently, so fAllan will scarcely be denied by those who think. The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins? We know that there are diseases in which occur total cessations of all the apparent functions of vitality, and yet in which these cessations are merely suspensions, properly so called. They are only temporary pauses in the incomprehensible mechanism. A certain period elapses, and some unseen mysterious principle again sets in motion the magic pinions and the wizard wheels. The silver cord was not for ever loosed, nor the golden bowl irreparably broken. But where, meantime, was the soul?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">Apart, however, from the inevitable conclusion, a priori that such causes must produce such effects-that the well-known occurrence of such cases of suspended animation must naturally give rise, now and then, to premature interments-apart from this consideration, we have the direct testimony of medical and ordinary experience to prove that a vast number of such interments have actually taken place. I might refer at once, if necessary to a hundred well authenticated instances. One of very remarkable character, and of which the circumstances may be fresh in the memory of some of my readers, occurred, not very long ago, in the neighboring city of Baltimore, where it occasioned a painful, intense, and widely-extended excitement. The wife of one of the most respectable citizens-a lawyer of eminence and a member of Congress-was seized with a sudden and unaccountable illness, which completely baffled the skill of her physicians. After much suffering she died, or was supposed to die. No one suspected, indeed, or had reason to suspect, that she was not actually dead. She presented all the ordinary appearances of death. The face assumed the usual pinched and sunken outline. The lips were of the usual marble pallor. The eyes were lustreless. There was no warmth. Pulsation had ceased. For three days the body was preserved unburied, during which it had acquired a stony rigidity. The funeral, in short, was hastened, on account of the rapid advance of what was supposed to be decomposition.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">The lady was deposited in her family vault, which, for three subsequent years, was undisturbed. At the expiration of this term it was opened for the reception of a sarcophagus;-but, alas! how fearful a shock awaited the husband, who, personally, threw open the door! As its portals swung outwardly back, some white-apparelled object fell rattling within his arms. It was the skeleton of his wife in her yet unmoulded shroud.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">A careful investigation rendered it evident that she had revived within two days after her entombment; that her struggles within the coffin had caused it to fall from a ledge, or shelf to the floor, where it was so broken as to permit her escape. A lamp which had been accidentally left, full of oil, within the tomb, was found empty; it might have been exhausted, however, by evaporation. On the uttermost of the steps which led down into the dread chamber was a large fragment of the coffin, with which, it seemed, that she had endeavored to arrest attention by striking the iron door. While thus occupied, she probably swooned, or possibly died, through sheer terror; and, in failing, her shroud became entangled in some iron- work which projected interiorly. Thus she remained, and thus she rotted, erect.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">In the year 1810, a case of living inhumation happened in France, attended with circumstances which go far to warrant the assertion that truth is, indeed, stranger than fiction. The heroine of the story was a Mademoiselle Victorine Lafourcade, a young girl of illustrious family, of wealth, and of great personal beauty. Among her numerous suitors was Julien Bossuet, a poor litterateur, or journalist of Paris. His talents and general amiability had recommended him to the notice of the heiress, by whom he seems to have been truly beloved; but her pride of birth decided her, finally, to reject him, and to wed a Monsieur Renelle, a banker and a diplomatist of some eminence. After marriage, however, this gentleman neglected, and, perhaps, even more positively ill-treated her. Having passed with him some wretched years, she died,-at least her condition so closely resembled death as to deceive every one who saw her. She was buried-not in a vault, but in an ordinary grave in the village of her nativity. Filled with despair, and still inflamed by the memory of a profound attachment, the lover journeys from the capital to the remote province in which the village lies, with the romantic purpose of disinterring the corpse, and possessing himself of its luxuriant tresses. He reaches the grave. At midnight he unearths the coffin, opens it, and is in the act of detaching the hair, when he is arrested by the unclosing of the beloved eyes. In fact, the lady had been buried alive. Vitality had not altogether departed, and she was aroused by the caresses of her lover from the lethargy which had been mistaken for death. He bore her frantically to his lodgings in the village. He employed certain powerful restoratives suggested by no little medical learning. In fine, she revived. She recognized her preserver. She remained with him until, by slow degrees, she fully recovered her original health. Her woman's heart was not adamant, and this last lesson of love sufficed to soften it. She bestowed it upon Bossuet. She returned no more to her husband, but, concealing from him her resurrection, fled with her lover to America. Twenty years afterward, the two returned to France, in the persuasion that time had so greatly altered the lady's appearance that her friends would be unable to recognize her. They were mistaken, however, for, at the first meeting, Monsieur Renelle did actually recognize and make claim to his wife. This claim she resisted, and a judicial tribunal sustained her in her resistance, deciding that the peculiar circumstances, with the long lapse of years, had extinguished, not only equitably, but legally, the authority of the husband.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">The "Chirurgical Journal" of Leipsic-a periodical of high authority and merit, which some American bookseller would do well to translate and republish, records in a late number a very distressing event of the character in question.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">An officer of artillery, a man of gigantic stature and of robust health, being thrown from an unmanageable horse, received a very severe contusion upon the head, which rendered him insensible at once; the skull was slightly fractured, but no immediate danger was apprehended. Trepanning was accomplished successfully. He was bled, and many other of the ordinary means of relief were adopted. Gradually, however, he fell into a more and more hopeless state of stupor, and, finally, it was thought that he died.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">The weather was warm, and he was buried with indecent haste in one of the public cemeteries. His funeral took place on Thursday. On the Sunday following, the grounds of the cemetery were, as usual, much thronged with visiters, and about noon an intense excitement was created by the declaration of a peasant that, while sitting upon the grave of the officer, he had distinctly felt a commotion of the earth, as if occasioned by some one struggling beneath. At first little attention was paid to the man's asseveration; but his evident terror, and the dogged obstinacy with which he persisted in his story, had at length their natural effect upon the crowd. Spades were hurriedly procured, and the grave, which was shamefully shallow, was in a few minutes so far thrown open that the head of its occupant appeared. He was then seemingly dead; but he sat nearly erect within his coffin, the lid of which, in his furious struggles, he had partially uplifted.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">He was forthwith conveyed to the nearest hospital, and there pronounced to be still living, although in an asphytic condition. After some hours he revived, recognized individuals of his acquaintance, and, in broken sentences spoke of his agonies in the grave.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">From what he related, it was clear that he must have been conscious of life for more than an hour, while inhumed, before lapsing into insensibility. The grave was carelessly and loosely filled with an exceedingly porous soil; and thus some air was necessarily admitted. He heard the footsteps of the crowd overhead, and endeavored to make himself heard in turn. It was the tumult within the grounds of the cemetery, he said, which appeared to awaken him from a deep sleep, but no sooner was he awake than he became fully aware of the awful horrors of his position.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">This patient, it is recorded, was doing well and seemed to be in a fair way of ultimate recovery, but fell a victim to the quackeries of medical experiment. The galvanic battery was applied, and he suddenly expired in one of those ecstatic paroxysms which, occasionally, it superinduces.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">The mention of the galvanic battery, nevertheless, recalls to my memory a well known and very extraordinary case in point, where its action proved the means of restoring to animation a young attorney of London, who had been interred for two days. This occurred in</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">1831, and created, at the time, a very profound sensation wherever it was made the subject of converse.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">The patient, Mr. Edward Stapleton, had died, apparently of typhus fever, accompanied with some anomalous symptoms which had excited the curiosity of his medical attendants. Upon his seeming decease, his friends were requested to sanction a post-mortem examination, but declined to permit it. As often happens, when such refusals are made, the practitioners resolved to disinter the body and dissect it at leisure, in private. Arrangements were easily effected with some of the numerous corps of body-snatchers, with which London abounds; and, upon the third night after the funeral, the supposed corpse was unearthed from a grave eight feet deep, and deposited in the opening chamber of one of the private hospitals.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">An incision of some extent had been actually made in the abdomen, when the fresh and undecayed appearance of the subject suggested an application of the battery. One experiment succeeded another, and the customary effects supervened, with nothing to characterize them in any respect, except, upon one or two occasions, a more than ordinary degree of life-likeness in the convulsive action.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">It grew late. The day was about to dawn; and it was thought expedient, at length, to proceed at once to the dissection. A student, however, was especially desirous of testing a theory of his own, and insisted upon applying the battery to one of the pectoral muscles. A rough gash was made, and a wire hastily brought in contact, when the patient, with a hurried but quite unconvulsive movement, arose from the table, stepped into the middle of the floor, gazed about him uneasily for a few seconds, and then-spoke. What he said was unintelligible, but words were uttered; the syllabification was distinct. Having spoken, he fell heavily to the floor.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">For some moments all were paralyzed with awe-but the urgency of the case soon restored them their presence of mind. It was seen that Mr. Stapleton was alive, although in a swoon. Upon exhibition of ether he revived and was rapidly restored to health, and to the society of his friends-from whom, however, all knowledge of his resuscitation was withheld, until a relapse was no longer to be apprehended. Their wonder-their rapturous astonishment-may be conceived.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">The most thrilling peculiarity of this incident, nevertheless, is involved in what Mr. S. himself asserts. He declares that at no period was he altogether insensible-that, dully and confusedly, he was aware of everything which happened to him, from the moment in which he was pronounced dead by his physicians, to that in which he fell swooning to the floor of the hospital. "I am alive," were the uncomprehended words which, upon recognizing the locality of the dissecting-room, he had endeavored, in his extremity, to utter.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">It were an easy matter to multiply such histories as these-but I forbear-for, indeed, we have no need of such to establish the fact that premature interments occur. When we reflect how very rarely, from the nature of the case, we have it in our power to detect them, we must admit that they may frequently occur without our cognizance. Scarcely, in truth, is a graveyard ever encroached upon, for any purpose, to any great extent, that skeletons are not found in postures which suggest the most fearful of suspicions.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">Fearful indeed the suspicion-but more fearful the doom! It may be asserted, without hesitation, that no event is so terribly well adapted to inspire the supremeness of bodily and of mental distress, as is burial before death. The unendurable oppression of the lungs- the stifling fumes from the damp earth-the clinging to the death garments-the rigid embrace of the narrow house-the blackness of the absolute Night-the silence like a sea that overwhelms-the unseen but palpable presence of the Conqueror Worm-these things, with the thoughts of the air and grass above, with memory of dear friends who would fly to save us if but informed of our fate, and with consciousness that of this fate they can never be informed-that our hopeless portion is that of the really dead-these considerations, I say, carry into the heart, which still palpitates, a degree of appalling and intolerable horror from which the most daring imagination must recoil. We know of nothing so agonizing upon Earth- we can dream of nothing half so hideous in the realms of the nethermost Hell. And thus all narratives upon this topic have an interest profound; an interest, nevertheless, which, through the sacred awe of the topic itself, very properly and very peculiarly depends upon our conviction of the truth of the matter narrated. What I have now to tell is of my own actual knowledge-of my own positive and personal experience.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">For several years I had been subject to attacks of the singular disorder which physicians have agreed to term catalepsy, in default of a more definitive title. Although both the immediate and the predisposing causes, and even the actual diagnosis, of this disease are still mysterious, its obvious and apparent character is sufficiently well understood. Its variations seem to be chiefly of degree. Sometimes the patient lies, for a day only, or even for a shorter period, in a species of exaggerated lethargy. He is senseless and externally motionless; but the pulsation of the heart is still faintly perceptible; some traces of warmth remain; a slight color lingers within the centre of the cheek; and, upon application of a mirror to the lips, we can detect a torpid, unequal, and vacillating action of the lungs. Then again the duration of the trance is for weeks-even for months; while the closest scrutiny, and the most rigorous medical tests, fail to establish any material distinction between the state of the sufferer and what we conceive of absolute death. Very usually he is saved from premature interment solely by the knowledge of his friends that he has been previously subject to catalepsy, by the consequent suspicion excited, and, above all, by the non-appearance of decay. The advances of the malady are, luckily, gradual. The first manifestations, although marked, are unequivocal. The fits grow successively more and more distinctive, and endure each for a longer term than the preceding. In this lies the principal security from inhumation. The unfortunate whose first attack should be of the extreme character which is occasionally seen, would almost inevitably be consigned alive to the tomb.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">My own case differed in no important particular from those mentioned in medical books. Sometimes, without any apparent cause, I sank, little by little, into a condition of hemi-syncope, or half swoon; and, in this condition, without pain, without ability to stir, or, strictly speaking, to think, but with a dull lethargic consciousness of life and of the presence of those who surrounded my bed, I remained, until the crisis of the disease restored me, suddenly, to perfect sensation. At other times I was quickly and impetuously smitten. I grew sick, and numb, and chilly, and dizzy, and so fell prostrate at once. Then, for weeks, all was void, and black, and silent, and Nothing became the universe. Total annihilation could be no more. From these latter attacks I awoke, however, with a gradation slow in proportion to the suddenness of the seizure. Just as the day dawns to the friendless and houseless beggar who roams the streets throughout the long desolate winter night-just so tardily- just so wearily-just so cheerily came back the light of the Soul to me.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">Apart from the tendency to trance, however, my general health appeared to be good; nor could I perceive that it was at all affected by the one prevalent malady-unless, indeed, an idiosyncrasy in my ordinary sleep may be looked upon as superinduced. Upon awaking from slumber, I could never gain, at once, thorough possession of my senses, and always remained, for many minutes, in much bewilderment and perplexity;-the mental faculties in general, but the memory in especial, being in a condition of absolute abeyance.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">In all that I endured there was no physical suffering but of moral distress an infinitude. My fancy grew charnel, I talked "of worms, of tombs, and epitaphs." I was lost in reveries of death, and the idea of premature burial held continual possession of my brain. The ghastly Danger to which I was subjected haunted me day and night. In the former, the torture of meditation was excessive-in the latter, supreme. When the grim Darkness overspread the Earth, then, with every horror of thought, I shook-shook as the quivering plumes upon the hearse. When Nature could endure wakefulness no longer, it was with a struggle that I consented to sleep-for I shuddered to reflect that, upon awaking, I might find myself the tenant of a grave. And when, finally, I sank into slumber, it was only to rush at once into a world of phantasms, above which, with vast, sable, overshadowing wing, hovered, predominant, the one sepulchral Idea.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">From the innumerable images of gloom which thus oppressed me in dreams, I select for record but a solitary vision. Methought I was immersed in a cataleptic trance of more than usual duration and profundity. Suddenly there came an icy hand upon my forehead, and an impatient, gibbering voice whispered the word "Arise!" within my ear.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">I sat erect. The darkness was total. I could not see the figure of him who had aroused me. I could call to mind neither the period at which I had fAllan into the trance, nor the locality in which I then lay. While I remained motionless, and busied in endeavors to collect my thought, the cold hand grasped me fiercely by the wrist, shaking it petulantly, while the gibbering voice said again:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">"Arise! did I not bid thee arise?"</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">"And who," I demanded, "art thou?"</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">"I have no name in the regions which I inhabit," replied the voice, mournfully; "I was mortal, but am fiend. I was merciless, but am pitiful. Thou dost feel that I shudder.-My teeth chatter as I speak, yet it is not with the chilliness of the night-of the night without end. But this hideousness is insufferable. How canst thou tranquilly sleep? I cannot rest for the cry of these great agonies. These sights are more than I can bear. Get thee up! Come with me into the outer Night, and let me unfold to thee the graves. Is not this a spectacle of woe?-Behold!"</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">I looked; and the unseen figure, which still grasped me by the wrist, had caused to be thrown open the graves of all mankind, and from each issued the faint phosphoric radiance of decay, so that I could see into the innermost recesses, and there view the shrouded bodies in their sad and solemn slumbers with the worm. But alas! the real sleepers were fewer, by many millions, than those who slumbered not at all; and there was a feeble struggling; and there was a general sad unrest; and from out the depths of the countless pits there came a melancholy rustling from the garments of the buried. And of those who seemed tranquilly to repose, I saw that a vast number had changed, in a greater or less degree, the rigid and uneasy position in which they had originally been entombed. And the voice again said to me as I gazed:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">"Is it not-oh! is it not a pitiful sight?"-but, before I could find words to reply, the figure had ceased to grasp my wrist, the phosphoric lights expired, and the graves were closed with a sudden violence, while from out them arose a tumult of despairing cries, saying again: "Is it not-O, God, is it not a very pitiful sight?"</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">Phantasies such as these, presenting themselves at night, extended their terrific influence far into my waking hours. My nerves became thoroughly unstrung, and I fell a prey to perpetual horror. I hesitated to ride, or to walk, or to indulge in any exercise that would carry me from home. In fact, I no longer dared trust myself out of the immediate presence of those who were aware of my proneness to catalepsy, lest, falling into one of my usual fits, I should be buried before my real condition could be ascertained. I doubted the care, the fidelity of my dearest friends. I dreaded that, in some trance of more than customary duration, they might be prevailed upon to regard me as irrecoverable. I even went so far as to fear that, as I occasioned much trouble, they might be glad to consider any very protracted attack as sufficient excuse for getting rid of me altogether. It was in vain they endeavored to reassure me by the most solemn promises. I exacted the most sacred oaths, that under no circumstances they would bury me until decomposition had so materially advanced as to render farther preservation impossible. And, even then, my mortal terrors would listen to no reason-would accept no consolation. I entered into a series of elaborate precautions. Among other things, I had the family vault so remodelled as to admit of being readily opened from within. The slightest pressure upon a long lever that extended far into the tomb would cause the iron portal to fly back. There were arrangements also for the free admission of air and light, and convenient receptacles for food and water, within immediate reach of the coffin intended for my reception. This coffin was warmly and softly padded, and was provided with a lid, fashioned upon the principle of the vault-door, with the addition of springs so contrived that the feeblest movement of the body would be sufficient to set it at liberty. Besides all this, there was suspended from the roof of the tomb, a large bell, the rope of which, it was designed, should extend through a hole in the coffin, and so be fastened to one of the hands of the corpse. But, alas? what avails the vigilance against the Destiny of man? Not even these well-contrived securities sufficed to save from the uttermost agonies of living inhumation, a wretch to these agonies foredoomed!</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">There arrived an epoch-as often before there had arrived-in which I found myself emerging from total unconsciousness into the first feeble and indefinite sense of existence. Slowly-with a tortoise gradation-approached the faint gray dawn of the psychal day. A torpid uneasiness. An apathetic endurance of dull pain. No care- no hope-no effort. Then, after a long interval, a ringing in the ears; then, after a lapse still longer, a prickling or tingling sensation in the extremities; then a seemingly eternal period of pleasurable quiescence, during which the awakening feelings are struggling into thought; then a brief re-sinking into non-entity; then a sudden recovery. At length the slight quivering of an eyelid, and immediately thereupon, an electric shock of a terror, deadly and indefinite, which sends the blood in torrents from the temples to the heart. And now the first positive effort to think. And now the first endeavor to remember. And now a partial and evanescent success. And now the memory has so far regained its dominion, that, in some measure, I am cognizant of my state. I feel that I am not awaking from ordinary sleep. I recollect that I have been subject to catalepsy. And now, at last, as if by the rush of an ocean, my shuddering spirit is overwhelmed by the one grim Danger-by the one spectral and ever-prevalent idea.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">For some minutes after this fancy possessed me, I remained without motion. And why? I could not summon courage to move. I dared not make the effort which was to satisfy me of my fate-and yet there was something at my heart which whispered me it was sure. Despair- such as no other species of wretchedness ever calls into being- despair alone urged me, after long irresolution, to uplift the heavy lids of my eyes. I uplifted them. It was dark-all dark. I knew that the fit was over. I knew that the crisis of my disorder had long passed. I knew that I had now fully recovered the use of my visual faculties-and yet it was dark-all dark-the intense and utter raylessness of the Night that endureth for evermore.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">I endeavored to shriek-, and my lips and my parched tongue moved convulsively together in the attempt-but no voice issued from the cavernous lungs, which oppressed as if by the weight of some incumbent mountain, gasped and palpitated, with the heart, at every elaborate and struggling inspiration.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">The movement of the jaws, in this effort to cry aloud, showed me that they were bound up, as is usual with the dead. I felt, too, that I lay upon some hard substance, and by something similar my sides were, also, closely compressed. So far, I had not ventured to stir any of my limbs-but now I violently threw up my arms, which had been lying at length, with the wrists crossed. They struck a solid wooden substance, which extended above my person at an elevation of not more than six inches from my face. I could no longer doubt that I reposed within a coffin at last.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">And now, amid all my infinite miseries, came sweetly the cherub Hope-for I thought of my precautions. I writhed, and made spasmodic exertions to force open the lid: it would not move. I felt my wrists for the bell-rope: it was not to be found. And now the Comforter fled for ever, and a still sterner Despair reigned triumphant; for I could not help perceiving the absence of the paddings which I had so carefully prepared-and then, too, there came suddenly to my nostrils the strong peculiar odor of moist earth. The conclusion was irresistible. I was not within the vault. I had fAllan into a trance while absent from home-while among strangers-when, or how, I could not remember-and it was they who had buried me as a dog-nailed up in some common coffin-and thrust deep, deep, and for ever, into some ordinary and nameless grave.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">As this awful conviction forced itself, thus, into the innermost chambers of my soul, I once again struggled to cry aloud. And in this second endeavor I succeeded. A long, wild, and continuous shriek, or yell of agony, resounded through the realms of the subterranean Night.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">"Hillo! hillo, there!" said a gruff voice, in reply.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">"What the devil's the matter now!" said a second.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">"Get out o' that!" said a third.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">"What do you mean by yowling in that ere kind of style, like a cattymount?" said a fourth; and hereupon I was seized and shaken without ceremony, for several minutes, by a junto of very rough-looking individuals. They did not arouse me from my slumber-for I was wide awake when I screamed-but they restored me to the full possession of my memory.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">This adventure occurred near Richmond, in Virginia. Accompanied by a friend, I had proceeded, upon a gunning expedition, some miles down the banks of the James River. Night approached, and we were overtaken by a storm. The cabin of a small sloop lying at anchor in the stream, and laden with garden mould, afforded us the only available shelter. We made the best of it, and passed the night on board. I slept in one of the only two berths in the vessel-and the berths of a sloop of sixty or twenty tons need scarcely be described. That which I occupied had no bedding of any kind. Its extreme width was eighteen inches. The distance of its bottom from the deck overhead was precisely the same. I found it a matter of exceeding difficulty to squeeze myself in. Nevertheless, I slept soundly, and the whole of my vision-for it was no dream, and no nightmare-arose naturally from the circumstances of my position-from my ordinary bias of thought-and from the difficulty, to which I have alluded, of collecting my senses, and especially of regaining my memory, for a long time after awaking from slumber. The men who shook me were the crew of the sloop, and some laborers engaged to unload it. From the load itself came the earthly smell. The bandage about the jaws was a silk handkerchief in which I had bound up my head, in default of my customary nightcap.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">The tortures endured, however, were indubitably quite equal for the time, to those of actual sepulture. They were fearfully-they were inconceivably hideous; but out of Evil proceeded Good; for their very excess wrought in my spirit an inevitable revulsion. My soul acquired tone-acquired temper. I went abroad. I took vigorous exercise. I breathed the free air of Heaven. I thought upon other subjects than Death. I discarded my medical books. "Buchan" I burned. I read no "Night Thoughts"-no fustian about churchyards-no bugaboo tales-such as this. In short, I became a new man, and lived a man's life. From that memorable night, I dismissed forever my charnel apprehensions, and with them vanished the cataleptic disorder, of which, perhaps, they had been less the consequence than the cause.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">There are moments when, even to the sober eye of Reason, the world of our sad Humanity may assume the semblance of a Hell-but the imagination of man is no Carathis, to explore with impunity its every cavern. Alas! the grim legion of sepulchral terrors cannot be regarded as altogether fanciful-but, like the Demons in whose company Afrasiab made his voyage down the Oxus, they must sleep, or they will devour us-they must be suffered to slumber, or we perish.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b style="background-color: white;">THE END</b></span></div>
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><br /></b></span><span style="line-height: normal;">Read More Stories from </span><a href="http://www.vaultofghastlytales.com/p/edgar-allan-poe.html" style="line-height: normal;">Edgar Allan Poe</a><span style="line-height: normal;"> in The Vault</span></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444893451907188044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8879282668683580477.post-8065648372743102542017-01-23T17:00:00.000+00:002017-01-23T20:29:30.037+00:00'Man-Size in Marble' by Edith Nesbit | Classic Horror<div style="text-align: center;">
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Although every word of this story is as true as despair, I do not expect people to believe it. Nowadays a "rational explanation" is required before belief is possible. Let me then, at once, offer the "rational explanation" which finds most favour among those who have heard the tale of my life's tragedy. It is held that we were "under a delusion," Laura and I, on that 31st of October; and that this supposition places the whole matter on a satisfactory and believable basis. The reader can judge, when he, too, has heard my story, how far this is an "explanation," and in what sense it is "rational." There were three who took part in this: Laura and I and another man. The other man still lives, and can speak to the truth of the least credible part of my story.<br />
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I never in my life knew what it was to have as much money as I required to supply the most ordinary needs — good colours, books, and cab-fares — and when we were married we knew quite well that we should only be able to live at all by "strict punctuality and attention to business." I used to paint in those days, and Laura used to write, and we felt sure we could keep the pot at least simmering. Living in town was out of the question, so we went to look for a cottage in the country, which should be at once sanitary and picturesque. So rarely do these two qualities meet in one cottage that our search was for some time quite fruitless. We tried advertisements, but most of the desirable rural residences which we did look at proved to be lacking in both essentials, and when a cottage chanced to have drains it always had stucco as well and was shaped like a tea-caddy. And if we found a vine or rose-covered porch, corruption invariably lurked within. Our minds got so befogged by the eloquence of house-agents and the rival disadvantages of the fever-traps and outrages to beauty which we had seen and scorned, that I very much doubt whether either of us, on our wedding morning, knew the difference between a house and a haystack. But when we got away from friends and house-agents, on our honeymoon, our wits grew clear again, and we knew a pretty cottage when at last we saw one. It was at Brenzett — a little village set on a hill over against the southern marshes. We had gone there, from the seaside village where we were staying, to see the church, and two fields from the church we found this cottage. It stood quite by itself, about two miles from the village. It was a long, low building, with rooms sticking out in unexpected places. There was a bit of stone-work — ivy-covered and moss-grown, just two old rooms, all that was left of a big house that had once stood there — and round this stone-work the house had grown up. Stripped of its roses and jasmine it would have been hideous. As it stood it was charming, and after a brief examination we took it. It was absurdly cheap. The rest of our honeymoon we spent in grubbing about in second-hand shops in the county town, picking up bits of old oak and Chippendale chairs for our furnishing. We wound up with a run up to town and a visit to Liberty's, and soon the low oak-beamed lattice-windowed rooms began to be home. There was a jolly old-fashioned garden, with grass paths, and no end of hollyhocks and sunflowers, and big lilies. From the window you could see the marsh-pastures, and beyond them the blue, thin line of the sea. We were as happy as the summer was glorious, and settled down into work sooner than we ourselves expected. I was never tired of sketching the view and the wonderful cloud effects from the open lattice, and Laura would sit at the table and write verses about them, in which I mostly played the part of foreground.<br />
<br />
We got a tall old peasant woman to do for us. Her face and figure were good, though her cooking was of the homeliest; but she understood all about gardening, and told us all the old names of the coppices and cornfields, and the stories of the smugglers and highwaymen, and, better still, of the "things that walked," and of the "sights" which met one in lonely glens of a starlight night. She was a great comfort to us, because Laura hated housekeeping as much as I loved folklore, and we soon came to leave all the domestic business to Mrs. Dorman, and to use her legends in little magazine stories which brought in the jingling guinea.<br />
<br />
We had three months of married happiness, and did not have a single quarrel. One October evening I had been down to smoke a pipe with the doctor — our only neighbour — a pleasant young Irishman. Laura had stayed at home to finish a comic sketch of a village episode for the Monthly Marplot. I left her laughing over her own jokes, and came in to find her a crumpled heap of pale muslin weeping on the window seat.<br />
<br />
"Good heavens, my darling, what's the matter?" I cried, taking her in my arms. She leaned her little dark head against my shoulder and went on crying. I had never seen her cry before — we had always been so happy, you see — and I felt sure some frightful misfortune had happened.<br />
<br />
"What is the matter? Do speak."<br />
<br />
"It's Mrs. Dorman," she sobbed.<br />
<br />
"What has she done?" I inquired, immensely relieved.<br />
<br />
"She says she must go before the end of the month, and she says her niece is ill; she's gone down to see her now, but I don't believe that's the reason, because her niece is always ill. I believe someone has been setting her against us. Her manner was so queer ——"<br />
<br />
"Never mind, Pussy," I said; "whatever you do, don't cry, or I shall have to cry too, to keep you in countenance, and then you'll never respect your man again!"<br />
<br />
She dried her eyes obediently on my handkerchief, and even smiled faintly.<br />
<br />
"But you see," she went on, "it is really serious, because these village people are so sheepy, and if one won't do a thing you may be quite sure none of the others will. And I shall have to cook the dinners, and wash up the hateful greasy plates; and you'll have to carry cans of water about, and clean the boots and knives — and we shall never have any time for work, or earn any money, or anything. We shall have to work all day, and only be able to rest when we are waiting for the kettle to boil!"<br />
<br />
I represented to her that even if we had to perform these duties, the day would still present some margin for other toils and recreations. But she refused to see the matter in any but the greyest light. She was very unreasonable, my Laura, but I could not have loved her any more if she had been as reasonable as Whately.<br />
<br />
"I'll speak to Mrs. Dorman when she comes back, and see if I can't come to terms with her," I said. "Perhaps she wants a rise in her screw. It will be all right. Let's walk up to the church."<br />
<br />
The church was a large and lonely one, and we loved to go there, especially upon bright nights. The path skirted a wood, cut through it once, and ran along the crest of the hill through two meadows, and round the churchyard wall, over which the old yews loomed in black masses of shadow. This path, which was partly paved, was called" the bier-balk," for it had long been the way by which the corpses had been carried to burial. The churchyard was richly treed, and was shaded by great elms which stood just outside and stretched their majestic arms in benediction over the happy dead. A large, low porch let one into the building by a Norman doorway and a heavy oak door studded with iron. Inside, the arches rose into darkness, and between them the reticulated windows, which stood out white in the moonlight. In the chancel, the windows were of rich glass, which showed in faint light their noble colouring, and made the black oak of the choir pews hardly more solid than the shadows. But on each side of the altar lay a grey marble figure of a knight in full plate armour lying upon a low slab, with hands held up in everlasting prayer, and these figures, oddly enough, were always to be seen if there was any glimmer of light in the church. Their names were lost, but the peasants told of them that they had been fierce and wicked men, marauders by land and sea, who had been the scourge of their time, and had been guilty of deeds so foul that the house they had lived in — the big house, by the way, that had stood on the site of our cottage — had been stricken by lightning and the vengeance of Heaven. But for all that, the gold of their heirs had bought them a place in the church. Looking at the bad hard faces reproduced in the marble, this story was easily believed.<br />
<br />
The church looked at its best and weirdest on that night, for the shadows of the yew trees fell through the windows upon the floor of the nave and touched the pillars with tattered shade. We sat down together without speaking, and watched the solemn beauty of the old church, with some of that awe which inspired its early builders. We walked to the chancel and looked at the sleeping warriors. Then we rested some time on the stone seat in the porch, looking out over the stretch of quiet moonlit meadows, feeling in every fibre of our being the peace of the night and of our happy love; and came away at last with a sense that even scrubbing and black-leading were but small troubles at their worst.<br />
<br />
Mrs. Dorman had come back from the village, and I at once invited her to a tête-à-tête.<br />
<br />
"Now, Mrs. Dorman," I said, when I had got her into my painting room, "what's all this about your not staying with us?"<br />
<br />
"I should be glad to get away, sir, before the end of the month," she answered, with her usual placid dignity.<br />
<br />
"Have you any fault to find, Mrs. Dorman?"<br />
<br />
"None at all, sir; you and your lady have always been most kind, I'm sure ——"<br />
<br />
"Well, what is it? Are your wages not high enough?"<br />
<br />
"No, sir, I gets quite enough."<br />
<br />
"Then why not stay?"<br />
<br />
"I'd rather not" — with some hesitation — "my niece is ill."<br />
<br />
"But your niece has been ill ever since we came."<br />
<br />
No answer. There was a long and awkward silence. I broke it.<br />
<br />
"Can't you stay for another month?" I asked.<br />
<br />
"No, sir. I'm bound to go by Thursday."<br />
<br />
And this was Monday!<br />
<br />
"Well, I must say, I think you might have let us know before. There's no time now to get any one else, and your mistress is not fit to do heavy housework. Can't you stay till next week?"<br />
<br />
"I might be able to come back next week."<br />
<br />
I was now convinced that all she wanted was a brief holiday, which we should have been willing enough to let her have, as soon as we could get a substitute.<br />
<br />
"But why must you go this week?" I persisted. "Come, out with it."<br />
<br />
Mrs. Dorman drew the little shawl, which she always wore, tightly across her bosom, as though she were cold. Then she said, with a sort of effort —<br />
<br />
"They say, sir, as this was a big house in Catholic times, and there was a many deeds done here."<br />
<br />
The nature of the "deeds" might be vaguely inferred from the inflection of Mrs. Dorman's voice — which was enough to make one's blood run cold. I was glad that Laura was not in the room. She was always nervous, as highly-strung natures are, and I felt that these tales about our house, told by this old peasant woman, with her impressive manner and contagious credulity, might have made our home less dear to my wife.<br />
<br />
"Tell me all about it, Mrs. Dorman," I said; "you needn't mind about telling me. I'm not like the young people who make fun of such things."<br />
<br />
Which was partly true.<br />
<br />
"Well, sir" — she sank her voice — "you may have seen in the church, beside the altar, two shapes."<br />
<br />
"You mean the effigies of the knights in armour," I said cheerfully.<br />
<br />
"I mean them two bodies, drawed out man-size in marble," she returned, and I had to admit that her description was a thousand times more graphic than mine, to say nothing of a certain weird force and uncanniness about the phrase "drawed out man-size in marble."<br />
<br />
"They do say, as on All Saints' Eve them two bodies sits up on their slabs, and gets off of them, and then walks down the aisle, in their marble" — (another good phrase, Mrs. Dorman) — "and as the church clock strikes eleven they walks out of the church door, and over the graves, and along the bier-balk, and if it's a wet night there's the marks of their feet in the morning."<br />
<br />
"And where do they go?" I asked, rather fascinated.<br />
<br />
"They comes back here to their home, sir, and if any one meets them ——"<br />
<br />
"Well, what then?" I asked.<br />
<br />
But no — not another word could I get from her, save that her niece was ill and she must go. After what I had heard I scorned to discuss the niece, and tried to get from Mrs. Dorman more details of the legend. I could get nothing but warnings.<br />
<br />
"Whatever you do, sir, lock the door early on All Saints' Eve, and make the cross-sign over the doorstep and on the windows."<br />
<br />
"But has any one ever seen these things?" I persisted.<br />
<br />
"That's not for me to say. I know what I know, sir."<br />
<br />
"Well, who was here last year?"<br />
<br />
"No one, sir; the lady as owned the house only stayed here in summer, and she always went to London a full month afore the night. And I'm sorry to inconvenience you and your lady, but my niece is ill and I must go on Thursday."<br />
<br />
I could have shaken her for her absurd reiteration of that obvious fiction, after she had told me her real reasons.<br />
<br />
She was determined to go, nor could our united entreaties move her in the least.<br />
<br />
I did not tell Laura the legend of the shapes that "walked in their marble," partly because a legend concerning our house might perhaps trouble my wife, and partly, I think, from some more occult reason. This was not quite the same to me as any other story, and I did not want to talk about it till the day was over. I had very soon ceased to think of the legend, however. I was painting a portrait of Laura, against the lattice window, and I could not think of much else. I had got a splendid background of yellow and grey sunset, and was working away with enthusiasm at her lace. On Thursday Mrs. Dorman went. She relented, at parting, so far as to say —<br />
<br />
"Don't you put yourself about too much, ma'am, and if there's any little thing I can do next week, I'm sure I shan't mind."<br />
<br />
From which I inferred that she wished to come back to us after Hallowe'en. Up to the last she adhered to the fiction of the niece with touching fidelity.<br />
<br />
Thursday passed off pretty well. Laura showed marked ability in the matter of steak and potatoes, and I confess that my knives, and the plates, which I insisted upon washing, were better done than I had dared to expect.<br />
<br />
Friday came. It is about what happened on that Friday that this is written. I wonder if I should have believed it, if any one had told it to me. I will write the story of it as quickly and plainly as I can. Everything that happened on that day is burnt into my brain. I shall not forget anything, nor leave anything out.<br />
<br />
I got up early, I remember, and lighted the kitchen fire, and had just achieved a smoky success, when my little wife came running down, as sunny and sweet as the clear October morning itself. We prepared breakfast together, and found it very good fun. The housework was soon done, and when brushes and brooms and pails were quiet again, the house was still indeed. It is wonderful what a difference one makes in a house. We really missed Mrs. Dorman, quite apart from considerations concerning pots and pans. We spent the day in dusting our books and putting them straight, and dined gaily on cold steak and coffee. Laura was, if possible, brighter and gayer and sweeter than usual, and I began to think that a little domestic toil was really good for her. We had never been so merry since we were married, and the walk we had that afternoon was, I think, the happiest time of all my life. When we had watched the deep scarlet clouds slowly pale into leaden grey against a pale-green sky, and saw the white mists curl up along the hedgerows in the distant marsh, we came back to the house, silently, hand in hand.<br />
<br />
"You are sad, my darling," I said, half-jestingly, as we sat down together in our little parlour. I expected a disclaimer, for my own silence had been the silence of complete happiness. To my surprise she said —<br />
<br />
"Yes. I think I am sad, or rather I am uneasy. I don't think I'm very well. I have shivered three or four times since we came in, and it is not cold, is it?"<br />
<br />
"No," I said, and hoped it was not a chill caught from the treacherous mists that roll up from the marshes in the dying light. No — she said, she did not think so. Then, after a silence, she spoke suddenly —<br />
<br />
"Do you ever have presentiments of evil?"<br />
<br />
"No," I said, smiling, "and I shouldn't believe in them if I had."<br />
<br />
"I do," she went on; "the night my father died I knew it, though he was right away in the north of Scotland." I did not answer in words.<br />
<br />
She sat looking at the fire for some time in silence, gently stroking my hand. At last she sprang up, came behind me, and, drawing my head back, kissed me.<br />
<br />
"There, it's over now," she said. "What a baby I am! Come, light the candles, and we'll have some of these new Rubinstein duets."<br />
<br />
And we spent a happy hour or two at the piano.<br />
<br />
At about half-past ten I began to long for the good-night pipe, but Laura looked so white that I felt it would be brutal of me to fill our sitting-room with the fumes of strong cavendish.<br />
<br />
"I'll take my pipe outside," I said.<br />
<br />
"Let me come, too."<br />
<br />
"No, sweetheart, not to-night; you're much too tired. I shan't be long. Get to bed, or I shall have an invalid to nurse to-morrow as well as the boots to clean."<br />
<br />
I kissed her and was turning to go, when she flung her arms round my neck, and held me as if she would never let me go again. I stroked her hair.<br />
<br />
"Come, Pussy, you're over-tired. The housework has been too much for you."<br />
<br />
She loosened her clasp a little and drew a deep breath.<br />
<br />
"No. We've been very happy to-day, Jack, haven't we? Don't stay out too long."<br />
<br />
"I won't, my dearie."<br />
<br />
I strolled out of the front door, leaving it unlatched. What a night it was ! The jagged masses of heavy dark cloud were rolling at intervals from horizon to horizon, and thin white wreaths covered the stars. Through all the rush of the cloud river, the moon swam, breasting the waves and disappearing again in the darkness. When now and again her light reached the woodlands they seemed to be slowly and noiselessly waving in time to the swing of the clouds above them. There was a strange grey light over all the earth; the fields had that shadowy bloom over them which only comes from the marriage of dew and moonshine, or frost and starlight.<br />
<br />
I walked up and down, drinking in the beauty of the quiet earth and the changing sky. The night was absolutely silent. Nothing seemed to be abroad. There was no scurrying of rabbits, or twitter of the half-asleep birds. And though the clouds went sailing across the sky, the wind that drove them never came low enough to rustle the dead leaves in the woodland paths. Across the meadows I could see the church tower standing out black and grey against the sky. I walked there thinking over our three months of happiness — and of my wife, her dear eyes, her loving ways. Oh, my little girl! my own little girl; what a vision came then of a long, glad life for you and me together!<br />
<br />
I heard a bell-beat from the church. Eleven already ! I turned to go in, but the night held me. I could not go back into our little warm rooms yet. I would go up to the church. I felt vaguely that it would be good to carry my love and thankfulness to the sanctuary whither so many loads of sorrow and gladness had been borne by the men and women of the dead years.<br />
<br />
I looked in at the low window as I went by. Laura was half lying on her chair in front of the fire. I could not see her face, only her little head showed dark against the pale blue wall. She was quite still. Asleep, no doubt. My heart reached out to her, as I went on. There must be a God, I thought, and a God who was good. How otherwise could anything so sweet and dear as she have ever been imagined?<br />
<br />
I walked slowly along the edge of the wood. A sound broke the stillness of the night, it was a rustling in the wood. I stopped and listened. The sound stopped too. I went on, and now distinctly heard another step than mine answer mine like an echo. It was a poacher or a wood-stealer, most likely, for these were not unknown in our Arcadian neighbourhood. But whoever it was, he was a fool not to step more lightly. I turned into the wood, and now the footstep seemed to come from the path I had just left. It must be an echo, I thought. The wood looked perfect in the moonlight. The large dying ferns and the brushwood showed where through thinning foliage the pale light came down. The tree trunks stood up like Gothic columns all around me. They reminded me of the church, and I turned into the bier-balk, and passed through the corpse-gate between the graves to the low porch. I paused for a moment on the stone seat where Laura and I had watched the fading landscape. Then I noticed that the door of the church was open, and I blamed myself for having left it unlatched the other night. We were the only people who ever cared to come to the church except on Sundays, and I was vexed to think that through our carelessness the damp autumn airs had had a chance of getting in and injuring the old fabric. I went in. It will seem strange, perhaps, that I should have gone half-way up the aisle before I remembered — with a sudden chill, followed by as sudden a rush of self-contempt — that this was the very day and hour when, according to tradition, the "shapes drawed out man-size in marble" began to walk.<br />
<br />
Having thus remembered the legend, and remembered it with a shiver, of which I was ashamed, I could not do otherwise than walk up towards the altar, just to look at the figures — as I said to myself; really what I wanted was to assure myself, first, that I did not believe the legend, and, secondly, that it was not true. I was rather glad that I had come. I thought now I could tell Mrs. Dorman how vain her fancies were, and how peacefully the marble figures slept on through the ghastly hour. With my hands in my pockets I passed up the aisle. In the grey dim light the eastern end of the church looked larger than usual, and the arches above the two tombs looked larger too. The moon came out and showed me the reason. I stopped short, my heart gave a leap that nearly choked me, and then sank sickeningly.<br />
<br />
The "bodies drawed out man-size" were gone, and their marble slabs lay wide and bare in the vague moonlight that slanted through the east window.<br />
<br />
Were they really gone? or was I mad? Clenching my nerves, I stooped and passed my hand over the smooth slabs, and felt their flat unbroken surface. Had some one taken the things away? Was it some vile practical joke? I would make sure, anyway. In an instant I had made a torch of a newspaper, which happened to be in my pocket, and lighting it held it high above my head. Its yellow glare illumined the dark arches and those slabs. The figures were gone. And I was alone in the church; or was I alone?<br />
<br />
And then a horror seized me, a horror indefinable and indescribable — an overwhelming certainty of supreme and accomplished calamity. I flung down the torch and tore along the aisle and out through the porch, biting my lips as I ran to keep myself from shrieking aloud. Oh, was I mad — or what was this that possessed me? I leaped the churchyard wall and took the straight cut across the fields, led by the light from our windows. Just as I got over the first stile, a dark figure seemed to spring out of the ground. Mad still with that certainty of misfortune, I made for the thing that stood in my path, shouting, "Get out of the way, can't you!"<br />
<br />
But my push met with a more vigorous resistance than I had expected. My arms were caught just above the elbow and held as in a vice, and the raw-boned Irish doctor actually shook me.<br />
<br />
"Would ye?" he cried, in his own unmistakable accents — "would ye, then?"<br />
<br />
"Let me go, you fool," I gasped. "The marble figures have gone from the church; I tell you they've gone."<br />
<br />
He broke into a ringing laugh. "I'll have to give ye a draught to-morrow, I see. Ye've bin smoking too much and listening to old wives' tales."<br />
<br />
"I tell you, I've seen the bare slabs."<br />
<br />
"Well, come back with me. I'm going up to old Palmer's — his daughter's ill; we'll look in at the church and let me see the bare slabs."<br />
<br />
"You go, if you like," I said, a little less frantic for his laughter; "I'm going home to my wife."<br />
<br />
"Rubbish, man," said he; "d'ye think I'll permit of that? Are ye to go saying all yer life that ye've seen solid marble endowed with vitality, and me to go all me life saying ye were a coward? No, sir — ye shan't do ut."<br />
<br />
The night air — a human voice — and I think also the physical contact with this six feet of solid common sense, brought me back a little to my ordinary self, and the word "coward" was a mental shower-bath.<br />
<br />
"Come on, then," I said sullenly; "perhaps you're right."<br />
<br />
He still held my arm tightly. We got over the stile and back to the church. All was still as death. The place smelt very damp and earthy. We walked up the aisle. I am not ashamed to confess that I shut my eyes: I knew the figures would not be there. I heard Kelly strike a match.<br />
<br />
"Here they are, ye see, right enough; ye've been dreaming or drinking, asking yer pardon for the imputation."<br />
<br />
I opened my eyes. By Kelly's expiring vesta I saw two shapes lying "in their marble" on their slabs. I drew a deep breath, and caught his hand.<br />
<br />
"I'm awfully indebted to you," I said. "It must have been some trick of light, or I have been working rather hard, perhaps that's it. Do you know, I was quite convinced they were gone."<br />
<br />
"I'm aware of that," he answered rather grimly; "ye'll have to be careful of that brain of yours, my friend, I assure ye."<br />
<br />
He was leaning over and looking at the right-hand figure, whose stony face was the most villainous and deadly in expression.<br />
<br />
"By Jove," he said, "something has been afoot here — this hand is broken."<br />
<br />
And so it was. I was certain that it had been perfect the last time Laura and I had been there.<br />
<br />
"Perhaps some one has tried to remove them," said the young doctor.<br />
<br />
"That won't account for my impression," I objected.<br />
<br />
"Too much painting and tobacco will account for that, well enough."<br />
<br />
"Come along," I said, "or my wife will be getting anxious. You'll come in and have a drop of whisky and drink confusion to ghosts and better sense to me."<br />
<br />
"I ought to go up to Palmer's, but it's so late now I'd best leave it till the morning," he replied. "I was kept late at the Union, and I've had to see a lot of people since. All right, I'll come back with ye."<br />
<br />
I think he fancied I needed him more than did Palmer's girl, so, discussing how such an illusion could have been possible, and deducing from this experience large generalities concerning ghostly apparitions, we walked up to our cottage. We saw, as we walked up the garden-path, that bright light streamed out of the front door, and presently saw that the parlour door was open too. Had she gone out?<br />
<br />
"Come in," I said, and Dr. Kelly followed me into the parlour. It was all ablaze with candles, not only the wax ones, but at least a dozen guttering, glaring tallow dips, stuck in vases and ornaments in unlikely places. Light, I knew, was Laura's remedy for nervousness. Poor child! Why had I left her? Brute that I was.<br />
<br />
We glanced round the room, and at first we did not see her. The window was open, and the draught set all the candles flaring one way. Her chair was empty and her handkerchief and book lay on the floor. I turned to the window. There, in the recess of the window, I saw her. Oh, my child, my love, had she gone to that window to watch for me? And what had come into the room behind her? To what had she turned with that look of frantic fear and horror? Oh, my little one, had she thought that it was I whose step she heard, and turned to meet — what?<br />
<br />
She had fallen back across a table in the window, and her body lay half on it and half on the window-seat, and her head hung down over the table, the brown hair loosened and fallen to the carpet. Her lips were drawn back, and her eyes wide, wide open. They saw nothing now. What had they seen last?<br />
<br />
The doctor moved towards her, but I pushed him aside and sprang to her; caught her in my arms and cried —<br />
<br />
"It's all right, Laura! I've got you safe, wifie."<br />
<br />
She fell into my arms in a heap. I clasped her and kissed her, and called her by all her pet names, but I think I knew all the time that she was dead. Her hands were tightly clenched. In one of them she held something fast. When I was quite sure that she was dead, and that nothing mattered at all any more, I let him open her hand to see what she held.<br />
<br />
It was a grey marble finger.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>The End</b></div>
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444893451907188044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8879282668683580477.post-49412683247155890562017-01-13T21:21:00.000+00:002017-01-31T23:05:58.096+00:00'Dracula's Bride' by John Bhrel & J. Sullivan | New Horror<div style="text-align: center;">
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Watch Above <a href="http://ghastlytales.libsyn.com/draculas-bride-john-brhel-j-sullivan" target="_blank">Listen Here</a> or Read Below...</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129;">Every
neighborhood has a haunted house. When I was a kid, it wasn’t an
actual house, but a wooden chapel set back into a small immigrant
cemetery known as Sunshire Hill. I’d grown up in the Village of
Lestershire, went to school and college nearby, and built a
successful lawn and gardening business. I had mostly forgotten the
old cemetery on the hillside when my family moved across town in my
late teens, that was until I took on a summer’s-long service
contract to cut the grass at Sunshire. It was the first time in my
ten years of business that I didn’t see a contract to its end.</span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">I
went to the cemetery without my work crew for the first few weeks,
usually at the end of the day. It was only an hour or two of labor. I
would breeze through with the mower, wack a few weeds away from the
overgrown markers and monuments, paying little attention to the
memories conjured with each pass by those aged, wooden walls. Yes,
the chapel was still standing. Minus some rotting beams and a few
cracked windows, it didn’t look much different than it had in my
youth -- like the sort of place Vlad Dracul would have stopped to
take Holy Communion on the road to Bucharest. Real Old World. It
loomed over the neighborhood when I was growing up, and was the
center of our lore-filled adventures and dare-based one-upmanship.
The chapel at Sunshire was a throwback to another time; it stood out
like a sore thumb amidst the hillside of tidy, factory-built homes
and manicured lawns.</span></span></div>
<a name='more'></a><br />
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">By
the third week on the job I couldn’t help but think fondly,
nostalgically, of the neighborhood and the cemetery itself. There had
been a part-time caretaker, but even back then the property still
reflected its decades-long neglect. The caretaker’s job description
seemed to be ‘run a mower every couple of weeks in the summer, but
mostly make sure the rusty cemetery gate opened each morning and
closed before dark.’ Easy as hell. It’s not like the gate
mattered all that much anyway; the fence only enclosed half of the
cemetery. </span></span>
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">After
the caretaker had gone, we would ride our bikes up to the fence and
discuss what, and more importantly, who, lay inside the desolate
structure, which neighborhood crone invited the chapel's inhabitant
in each night for a bite to eat. In our neighborhood, it was Mrs.
Ellsic. The old bat was usually the one to chase us off, as her house
was the nearest neighbor to Sunshire. She was well-known among the
local kids, specifically for her oversized broom that she was rarely
seen without. We would spot her tending to graves once in awhile as
we pedalled by, and someone even swore they’d seen her sweeping the
steps of the chapel. Everyone knew her as Dracula’s Bride, either
because she lived the closest in proximity to the chapel and looked
the part, or because when riled up she would scream in her native
tongue and it sounded like some sort of nasty spell. </span></span>
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">But
most nights around twilight, late in the summer, my friends and I
would peer through the fence at the chapel, conspiring how we would
convince a latecomer that we had seen a candle in the window, or
heard an unearthly howl from the wooded area between the chapel and
Mrs. Ellsic’s backyard. Challenges and dares were thrown about, and
sometimes, but not always, the jawing and posturing would lead to one
of us hopping the fence and either standing on the front steps of the
chapel, or bravely knocking on the front door, while everyone else
pedalled off screaming.</span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">I
said I’d never go in that cemetery and the kids gave me hell for it
summer after summer. But one afternoon at the neighborhood pool I let
my bluster get the best of me and told my crush, Jenny Lynn Johnson,
that not only was I going to go up to the chapel, but that my good
friend Ron Oliver and I were going to go </span></span><span style="color: #1d2129;"><i><span style="background: #ffffff;">inside</span></i></span><span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">.
I had her attention all day and it felt good. She usually didn’t
show up because she had strict parents, so I figured I could skate by
on talk alone. But Jenny Lynn did show up, whether or not at Ron’s
request he never did say, as things got a bit dicey that night. </span></span>
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">Being
thirteen, with about eight of my friends and the girl that I liked
watching, and against my better judgment, I followed Ron in. We
walked up the gentle slope that led to the chapel, our friends
wide-eyed behind the iron fence. I did my best to avoid stepping on
any of the graves, somewhat afraid that some bony Hungarian-American
hand would reach up and grab my ankle. When we got to the stone steps
that led up to the porch walkway, Ron had to dig his knuckle in my
back to get me to climb.</span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">I
had faced my fear to a certain extent, and stood before the
double-doors of the chapel, taking comfort in the unlikelihood of us
finding a way inside, as a thick, locked chain tight against the
handles seemed to indicate that the place had been sealed well
against vagrants and curious kids alike. But Ron spotted a loose
window frame just off to the side of the main entranceway and lifted
it wide open while grinning at me. It seemed almost like a secret
door it opened so smoothly, and was easy enough to enter through. </span></span>
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">Ron
was about to slip into the large opening he had made when the
tell-tale screeching of Mrs. Ellsic penetrated the treeline beside
us. She had spotted our friends at the fence and Ron and I watched,
petrified, as her flashlight illuminated their flight. Eight or so
outlines took off down the road as she shuffled into the street with
her broom at the ready. We hid on the chapel porch for nearly twenty
minutes before we saw her head home and her light dim, at which point
we made our way back to the fence to retrieve our bikes.</span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">We
rode away, and had barely left the cemetery property when Ron tumbled
off his bike in front of me, eating dirt before skidding off the curb
and into the street on his chest. My stomach flipped when a broad
flashlight beam illuminated the scene, me included. It was Mrs.
Ellsic! She had been standing behind an oak with her big silver
flashlight turned off, and jammed her broom handle in the spokes of
Ron’s bike. She must have seen our bikes and had successfully
ambushed us. Well, Ron cussed her out and she cussed him out and I
pedalled off, never looking back, assuming my friend wasn’t that
bad off considering the language he was using.</span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">The
next morning I stopped by Ron’s house and he was still cursing that
old witch. He lifted up his sleeve and showed me a nasty, red
skidmark on his arm he got when he hit the cement. The front wheel on
his Mongoose was busted up, too. Mrs. Ellsic had gotten him good and
he was already planning how to get her back. We met up with some of
the other guys later that week and Ron fleshed out his plan. When he
revealed what he had in store for Mrs. Ellsic, I tried to get him to
reconsider. But everyone else was egging him on and, as happens with
guys that age, I had no choice but to go along with the consensus.</span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">A
few nights later we met up and rode our bikes up to Mrs. Ellsic’s,
hoods up, masks on. She still had a few lights on in her house when
she showed up, so we rode up and down the street a few times until
the house went completely dark. We walked with our bikes around the
house and up her back steps slowly, keeping an eye out for any
passing cars that might spot us. The heat was sweltering that night
and Mrs. Ellsic had left her doors and windows open, a screen door
our only barrier to entry. </span></span>
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">Ron
popped the door open easily and everyone rode their bikes inside. We
went nuts, hooting and hollering through the old house, tracking dirt
all over the floor. Knocking over furniture, pictures, anything that
was in our way. Soon enough a beam of light shined from the second
floor down to the living room. We looked up to see the old lady
scurrying down the stairs, screaming and cursing in her native
tongue. It was madness. Caught up in the moment, we chased her out of
her own home and into the woods, circling her on our bikes as she
scrambled away in her blue nightgown, eventually into the neighboring
cemetery. We chased her right through, weaving around gravestones,
and finally up to the chapel steps. She was clutching her big
flashlight tight, waving it around as scared as I’d ever seen
another person. Ron got too close and she coldcocked him with the
light, knocking him to the ground, after which, we fled. As we rode
away and back through the woods, we yelled, “Go home to Dracula”
among other more derogatory ethnic slurs. </span></span>
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">Mrs.
Ellsic never bothered us again after that. We started high school
that fall and eventually lost interest in neighborhood haunts and
vampires. I even ended up dating Jenny Lynn Johnson for a couple
years. </span></span>
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">And
so I found myself decades later staring up at the chapel in that
neglected cemetery week after week, regretting that I never did have
a look inside and conquer that silly childhood fear. Plus, Jenny Lynn
was single again after a nasty divorce and I figured she’d have a
good laugh when I told her I finally found my way inside the chapel
at Sunshire Hill. </span></span>
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">So,
when I’d finished mowing one evening, I headed toward the chapel. I
tried to peer through one of the windows, but they were caked with
grime. I tested the door, but the chain was still tight across it,
barring entry. I then remembered the window frame that Ron had opened
and found that it was still loose with a little jimmying. I lifted it
and climbed inside, but didn’t quite find my footing, tumbling a
few feet and landing awkwardly on my ankle. </span></span>
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">I
swore at the moderate pain and got back to my feet. I had built up
this elaborate, unearthly image of the place and found that it was
nothing but an empty, dirty chapel with a few rotting pews. Still, my
childhood imaginings had a lasting effect on me, and as I walked down
the main aisle, trying to make out anything of interest in the near
dark, I felt an oppressive discomfort.</span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">I
continued forward, unnerved by my own footsteps, which echoed in the
hollow chapel. I only passed a few rows before something caught my
eye. My first thought was that I had spotted some curtains or
draperies in a pew, but then as I drew closer I was taken aback that
I had likely stumbled upon a sleeping vagrant. But as I approached
the figure, I saw that it didn’t have the fullness, the
roundedness, of a living being, and dreaded what horror lay sunken
within that dusty blue cloth. </span></span>
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
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<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">When
I adjusted what I knew to be a nightgown, I saw the partially
mummified husk of an old woman -- her brown, leathery flesh
surrounding a gaping maw. I backed away, stricken, unwilling to
accept the truth of what I had uncovered. It was only then that I
spotted a large, dated, silver flashlight on the ground beside the
bench.</span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="background: #ffffff;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444893451907188044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8879282668683580477.post-43973895249295440702016-04-07T19:00:00.000+01:002017-01-31T23:06:13.563+00:00'The Picture in the House' by H.P. Lovecraft | Classic Horror<div style="text-align: center;">
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Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places. For them are the catacombs of Ptolemais, and the carven mausolea of the nightmare countries. They climb to the moonlit towers of ruined Rhine castles, and falter down black cobwebbed steps beneath the scattered stones of forgotten cities in Asia. The haunted wood and the desolate mountain are their shrines, and they linger around the sinister monoliths on uninhabited islands. But the true epicure in the terrible, to whom a new thrill of unutterable ghastliness is the chief end and justification of existence, esteems most of all the ancient, lonely farmhouses of backwoods New England; for there the dark elements of strength, solitude, grotesqueness, and ignorance combine to form the perfection of the hideous.<br />
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Most horrible of all sights are the little unpainted wooden houses remote from travelled ways, usually squatted upon some damp, grassy slope or leaning against some gigantic outcropping of rock. Two hundred years and more they have leaned or squatted there, while the vines have crawled and the trees have swelled and spread. They are almost hidden now in lawless luxuriances of green and guardian shrouds of shadow; but the small-paned windows still stare shockingly, as if blinking through a lethal stupor which wards off madness by dulling the memory of unutterable things.<br />
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In such houses have dwelt generations of strange people, whose like the world has never seen. Seized with a gloomy and fanatical belief which exiled them from their kind, their ancestors sought the wilderness for freedom. There the scions of a conquering race indeed flourished free from the restrictions of their fellows, but cowered in an appalling slavery to the dismal phantasms of their own minds. Divorced from the enlightenment of civilisation, the strength of these Puritans turned into singular channels; and in their isolation, morbid self-repression, and struggle for life with relentless Nature, there came to them dark furtive traits from the prehistoric depths of their cold Northern heritage. By necessity practical and by philosophy stern, these folk were not beautiful in their sins. Erring as all mortals must, they were forced by their rigid code to seek concealment above all else; so that they came to use less and less taste in what they concealed. Only the silent, sleepy, staring houses in the backwoods can tell all that has lain hidden since the early days; and they are not communicative, being loath to shake off the drowsiness which helps them forget. Sometimes one feels that it would be merciful to tear down these houses, for they must often dream.<br />
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It was to a time-battered edifice of this description that I was driven one afternoon in November, 1896, by a rain of such chilling copiousness that any shelter was preferable to exposure. I had been travelling for some time amongst the people of the Miskatonic Valley in quest of certain genealogical data; and from the remote, devious, and problematical nature of my course, had deemed it convenient to employ a bicycle despite the lateness of the season. Now I found myself upon an apparently abandoned road which I had chosen as the shortest cut to Arkham; overtaken by the storm at a point far from any town, and confronted with no refuge save the antique and repellent wooden building which blinked with bleared windows from between two huge leafless elms near the foot of a rocky hill. Distant though it was from the remnant of a road, the house none the less impressed me unfavourably the very moment I espied it. Honest, wholesome structures do not stare at travellers so slyly and hauntingly, and in my genealogical researches I had encountered legends of a century before which biassed me against places of this kind. Yet the force of the elements was such as to overcome my scruples, and I did not hesitate to wheel my machine up the weedy rise to the closed door which seemed at once so suggestive and secretive.<br />
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I had somehow taken it for granted that the house was abandoned, yet as I approached it I was not so sure; for though the walks were indeed overgrown with weeds, they seemed to retain their nature a little too well to argue complete desertion. Therefore instead of trying the door I knocked, feeling as I did so a trepidation I could scarcely explain. As I waited on the rough, mossy rock which served as a doorstep, I glanced at the neighbouring windows and the panes of the transom above me, and noticed that although old, rattling, and almost opaque with dirt, they were not broken. The building, then, must still be inhabited, despite its isolation and general neglect. However, my rapping evoked no response, so after repeating the summons I tried the rusty latch and found the door unfastened. Inside was a little vestibule with walls from which the plaster was falling, and through the doorway came a faint but peculiarly hateful odour. I entered, carrying my bicycle, and closed the door behind me. Ahead rose a narrow staircase, flanked by a small door probably leading to the cellar, while to the left and right were closed doors leading to rooms on the ground floor.<br />
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Leaning my cycle against the wall I opened the door at the left, and crossed into a small low-ceiled chamber but dimly lighted by its two dusty windows and furnished in the barest and most primitive possible way. It appeared to be a kind of sitting-room, for it had a table and several chairs, and an immense fireplace above which ticked an antique clock on a mantel. Books and papers were very few, and in the prevailing gloom I could not readily discern the titles. What interested me was the uniform air of archaism as displayed in every visible detail. Most of the houses in this region I had found rich in relics of the past, but here the antiquity was curiously complete; for in all the room I could not discover a single article of definitely post-revolutionary date. Had the furnishings been less humble, the place would have been a collector’s paradise.<br />
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As I surveyed this quaint apartment, I felt an increase in that aversion first excited by the bleak exterior of the house. Just what it was that I feared or loathed, I could by no means define; but something in the whole atmosphere seemed redolent of unhallowed age, of unpleasant crudeness, and of secrets which should be forgotten. I felt disinclined to sit down, and wandered about examining the various articles which I had noticed. The first object of my curiosity was a book of medium size lying upon the table and presenting such an antediluvian aspect that I marvelled at beholding it outside a museum or library. It was bound in leather with metal fittings, and was in an excellent state of preservation; being altogether an unusual sort of volume to encounter in an abode so lowly. When I opened it to the title page my wonder grew even greater, for it proved to be nothing less rare than Pigafetta’s account of the Congo region, written in Latin from the notes of the sailor Lopez and printed at Frankfort in 1598. I had often heard of this work, with its curious illustrations by the brothers De Bry, hence for a moment forgot my uneasiness in my desire to turn the pages before me. The engravings were indeed interesting, drawn wholly from imagination and careless descriptions, and represented negroes with white skins and Caucasian features; nor would I soon have closed the book had not an exceedingly trivial circumstance upset my tired nerves and revived my sensation of disquiet. What annoyed me was merely the persistent way in which the volume tended to fall open of itself at Plate XII, which represented in gruesome detail a butcher’s shop of the cannibal Anziques. I experienced some shame at my susceptibility to so slight a thing, but the drawing nevertheless disturbed me, especially in connexion with some adjacent passages descriptive of Anzique gastronomy.<br />
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I had turned to a neighbouring shelf and was examining its meagre literary contents—an eighteenth-century Bible, a Pilgrim’s Progress of like period, illustrated with grotesque woodcuts and printed by the almanack-maker Isaiah Thomas, the rotting bulk of Cotton Mather’s Magnalia Christi Americana, and a few other books of evidently equal age—when my attention was aroused by the unmistakable sound of walking in the room overhead. At first astonished and startled, considering the lack of response to my recent knocking at the door, I immediately afterward concluded that the walker had just awakened from a sound sleep; and listened with less surprise as the footsteps sounded on the creaking stairs. The tread was heavy, yet seemed to contain a curious quality of cautiousness; a quality which I disliked the more because the tread was heavy. When I had entered the room I had shut the door behind me. Now, after a moment of silence during which the walker may have been inspecting my bicycle in the hall, I heard a fumbling at the latch and saw the panelled portal swing open again.<br />
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In the doorway stood a person of such singular appearance that I should have exclaimed aloud but for the restraints of good breeding. Old, white-bearded, and ragged, my host possessed a countenance and physique which inspired equal wonder and respect. His height could not have been less than six feet, and despite a general air of age and poverty he was stout and powerful in proportion. His face, almost hidden by a long beard which grew high on the cheeks, seemed abnormally ruddy and less wrinkled than one might expect; while over a high forehead fell a shock of white hair little thinned by the years. His blue eyes, though a trifle bloodshot, seemed inexplicably keen and burning. But for his horrible unkemptness the man would have been as distinguished-looking as he was impressive. This unkemptness, however, made him offensive despite his face and figure. Of what his clothing consisted I could hardly tell, for it seemed to me no more than a mass of tatters surmounting a pair of high, heavy boots; and his lack of cleanliness surpassed description.<br />
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The appearance of this man, and the instinctive fear he inspired, prepared me for something like enmity; so that I almost shuddered through surprise and a sense of uncanny incongruity when he motioned me to a chair and addressed me in a thin, weak voice full of fawning respect and ingratiating hospitality. His speech was very curious, an extreme form of Yankee dialect I had thought long extinct; and I studied it closely as he sat down opposite me for conversation.<br />
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“Ketched in the rain, be ye?” he greeted. “Glad ye was nigh the haouse en’ hed the sense ta come right in. I calc’late I was asleep, else I’d a heerd ye—I ain’t as young as I uster be, an’ I need a paowerful sight o’ naps naowadays. Trav’lin’ fur? I hain’t seed many folks ’long this rud sence they tuk off the Arkham stage.”<br />
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I replied that I was going to Arkham, and apologised for my rude entry into his domicile, whereupon he continued.<br />
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“Glad ta see ye, young Sir—new faces is scurce arount here, an’ I hain’t got much ta cheer me up these days. Guess yew hail from Bosting, don’t ye? I never ben thar, but I kin tell a taown man when I see ’im—we hed one fer deestrick schoolmaster in ’eighty-four, but he quit suddent an’ no one never heerd on ’im sence—” Here the old man lapsed into a kind of chuckle, and made no explanation when I questioned him. He seemed to be in an aboundingly good humour, yet to possess those eccentricities which one might guess from his grooming. For some time he rambled on with an almost feverish geniality, when it struck me to ask him how he came by so rare a book as Pigafetta’s Regnum Congo. The effect of this volume had not left me, and I felt a certain hesitancy in speaking of it; but curiosity overmastered all the vague fears which had steadily accumulated since my first glimpse of the house. To my relief, the question did not seem an awkward one; for the old man answered freely and volubly.<br />
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“Oh, thet Afriky book? Cap’n Ebenezer Holt traded me thet in ’sixty-eight—him as was kilt in the war.” Something about the name of Ebenezer Holt caused me to look up sharply. I had encountered it in my genealogical work, but not in any record since the Revolution. I wondered if my host could help me in the task at which I was labouring, and resolved to ask him about it later on. He continued.<br />
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“Ebenezer was on a Salem merchantman for years, an’ picked up a sight o’ queer stuff in every port. He got this in London, I guess—he uster like ter buy things at the shops. I was up ta his haouse onct, on the hill, tradin’ hosses, when I see this book. I relished the picters, so he give it in on a swap. ’Tis a queer book—here, leave me git on my spectacles—” The old man fumbled among his rags, producing a pair of dirty and amazingly antique glasses with small octagonal lenses and steel bows. Donning these, he reached for the volume on the table and turned the pages lovingly.<br />
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“Ebenezer cud read a leetle o’ this—’tis Latin—but I can’t. I hed two er three schoolmasters read me a bit, and Passon Clark, him they say got draownded in the pond—kin yew make anything outen it?” I told him that I could, and translated for his benefit a paragraph near the beginning. If I erred, he was not scholar enough to correct me; for he seemed childishly pleased at my English version. His proximity was becoming rather obnoxious, yet I saw no way to escape without offending him. I was amused at the childish fondness of this ignorant old man for the pictures in a book he could not read, and wondered how much better he could read the few books in English which adorned the room. This revelation of simplicity removed much of the ill-defined apprehension I had felt, and I smiled as my host rambled on:<br />
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“Queer haow picters kin set a body thinkin’. Take this un here near the front. Hev yew ever seed trees like thet, with big leaves a-floppin’ over an’ daown? And them men—them can’t be niggers—they dew beat all. Kinder like Injuns, I guess, even ef they be in Afriky. Some o’ these here critters looks like monkeys, or half monkeys an’ half men, but I never heerd o’ nothing like this un.” Here he pointed to a fabulous creature of the artist, which one might describe as a sort of dragon with the head of an alligator.<br />
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“But naow I’ll shew ye the best un—over here nigh the middle—” The old man’s speech grew a trifle thicker and his eyes assumed a brighter glow; but his fumbling hands, though seemingly clumsier than before, were entirely adequate to their mission. The book fell open, almost of its own accord and as if from frequent consultation at this place, to the repellent twelfth plate shewing a butcher’s shop amongst the Anzique cannibals. My sense of restlessness returned, though I did not exhibit it. The especially bizarre thing was that the artist had made his Africans look like white men—the limbs and quarters hanging about the walls of the shop were ghastly, while the butcher with his axe was hideously incongruous. But my host seemed to relish the view as much as I disliked it.<br />
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“What d’ye think o’ this—ain’t never see the like hereabouts, eh? When I see this I telled Eb Holt, ‘That’s suthin’ ta stir ye up an’ make yer blood tickle!’ When I read in Scripter about slayin’—like them Midianites was slew—I kinder think things, but I ain’t got no picter of it. Here a body kin see all they is to it—I s’pose ’tis sinful, but ain’t we all born an’ livin’ in sin?—Thet feller bein’ chopped up gives me a tickle every time I look at ’im—I hev ta keep lookin’ at ’im—see whar the butcher cut off his feet? Thar’s his head on thet bench, with one arm side of it, an’ t’other arm’s on the graound side o’ the meat block.”<br />
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As the man mumbled on in his shocking ecstasy the expression on his hairy, spectacled face became indescribable, but his voice sank rather than mounted. My own sensations can scarcely be recorded. All the terror I had dimly felt before rushed upon me actively and vividly, and I knew that I loathed the ancient and abhorrent creature so near me with an infinite intensity. His madness, or at least his partial perversion, seemed beyond dispute. He was almost whispering now, with a huskiness more terrible than a scream, and I trembled as I listened.<br />
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“As I says, ’tis queer haow picters sets ye thinkin’. D’ye know, young Sir, I’m right sot on this un here. Arter I got the book off Eb I uster look at it a lot, especial when I’d heerd Passon Clark rant o’ Sundays in his big wig. Onct I tried suthin’ funny—here, young Sir, don’t git skeert—all I done was ter look at the picter afore I kilt the sheep for market—killin’ sheep was kinder more fun arter lookin’ at it—” The tone of the old man now sank very low, sometimes becoming so faint that his words were hardly audible. I listened to the rain, and to the rattling of the bleared, small-paned windows, and marked a rumbling of approaching thunder quite unusual for the season. Once a terrific flash and peal shook the frail house to its foundations, but the whisperer seemed not to notice it.<br />
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“Killin’ sheep was kinder more fun—but d’ye know, ’twan’t quite satisfyin’. Queer haow a cravin’ gits a holt on ye— As ye love the Almighty, young man, don’t tell nobody, but I swar ter Gawd thet picter begun ta make me hungry fer victuals I couldn’t raise nor buy—here, set still, what’s ailin’ ye?—I didn’t do nothin’, only I wondered haow ’twud be ef I did— They say meat makes blood an’ flesh, an’ gives ye new life, so I wondered ef ’twudn’t make a man live longer an’ longer ef ’twas more the same—” But the whisperer never continued. The interruption was not produced by my fright, nor by the rapidly increasing storm amidst whose fury I was presently to open my eyes on a smoky solitude of blackened ruins. It was produced by a very simple though somewhat unusual happening.<br />
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The open book lay flat between us, with the picture staring repulsively upward. As the old man whispered the words “more the same” a tiny spattering impact was heard, and something shewed on the yellowed paper of the upturned volume. I thought of the rain and of a leaky roof, but rain is not red. On the butcher’s shop of the Anzique cannibals a small red spattering glistened picturesquely, lending vividness to the horror of the engraving. The old man saw it, and stopped whispering even before my expression of horror made it necessary; saw it and glanced quickly toward the floor of the room he had left an hour before. I followed his glance, and beheld just above us on the loose plaster of the ancient ceiling a large irregular spot of wet crimson which seemed to spread even as I viewed it. I did not shriek or move, but merely shut my eyes. A moment later came the titanic thunderbolt of thunderbolts; blasting that accursed house of unutterable secrets and bringing the oblivion which alone saved my mind.<br />
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<b>The End</b></div>
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<b>Read More Stories by <a href="http://www.vaultofghastlytales.com/p/hp-lovecraft.html">H.P. Lovecraft</a> in The Vault</b></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444893451907188044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8879282668683580477.post-49440630238028640002016-03-03T10:44:00.000+00:002017-01-23T20:30:20.442+00:00'The Great God Pan' by Arthur Machen<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I</h3>
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THE EXPERIMENT</h3>
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"I am glad you came, Clarke; very glad indeed. I was not sure you could spare the time."</div>
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"I was able to make arrangements for a few days; things are not very lively just now. But have you no misgivings, Raymond? Is it absolutely safe?"</div>
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The two men were slowly pacing the terrace in front of Dr. Raymond's house. The sun still hung above the western mountain-line, but it shone with a dull red glow that cast no shadows, and all the air was quiet; a sweet breath came from the great wood on the hillside above, and with it, at intervals, the soft murmuring call of the wild doves. Below, in the long lovely valley, the river wound in and out between the lonely hills, and, as the sun hovered and vanished into the west, a faint mist, pure white, began to rise from the hills. Dr. Raymond turned sharply to his friend.</div>
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"Safe? Of course it is. In itself the operation is a perfectly simple one; any surgeon could do it."</div>
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"And there is no danger at any other stage?"</div>
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"None; absolutely no physical danger whatsoever, I give you my word. You are always timid, Clarke, always; but you know my history. I have devoted myself to transcendental medicine for the last twenty years. I have heard myself called quack and charlatan and impostor, but all the while I knew I was on the right path. Five years ago I reached the goal, and since then every day has been a preparation for what we shall do tonight."</div>
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"I should like to believe it is all true." Clarke knit his brows, and looked doubtfully at Dr. Raymond. "Are you perfectly sure, Raymond, that your theory is not a phantasmagoria—a splendid vision, certainly, but a mere vision after all?"<br />
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Dr. Raymond stopped in his walk and turned sharply. He was a middle-aged man, gaunt and thin, of a pale yellow complexion, but as he answered Clarke and faced him, there was a flush on his cheek.</div>
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"Look about you, Clarke. You see the mountain, and hill following after hill, as wave on wave, you see the woods and orchard, the fields of ripe corn, and the meadows reaching to the reed-beds by the river. You see me standing here beside you, and hear my voice; but I tell you that all these things—yes, from that star that has just shone out in the sky to the solid ground beneath our feet—I say that all these are but dreams and shadows; the shadows that hide the real world from our eyes. There is a real world, but it is beyond this glamour and this vision, beyond these 'chases in Arras, dreams in a career,' beyond them all as beyond a veil. I do not know whether any human being has ever lifted that veil; but I do know, Clarke, that you and I shall see it lifted this very night from before another's eyes. You may think this all strange nonsense; it may be strange, but it is true, and the ancients knew what lifting the veil means. They called it seeing the god Pan."</div>
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Clarke shivered; the white mist gathering over the river was chilly.</div>
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"It is wonderful indeed," he said. "We are standing on the brink of a strange world, Raymond, if what you say is true. I suppose the knife is absolutely necessary?"</div>
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"Yes; a slight lesion in the grey matter, that is all; a trifling rearrangement of certain cells, a microscopical alteration that would escape the attention of ninety-nine brain specialists out of a hundred. I don't want to bother you with 'shop,' Clarke; I might give you a mass of technical detail which would sound very imposing, and would leave you as enlightened as you are now. But I suppose you have read, casually, in out-of-the-way corners of your paper, that immense strides have been made recently in the physiology of the brain. I saw a paragraph the other day about Digby's theory, and Browne Faber's discoveries. Theories and discoveries! Where they are standing now, I stood fifteen years ago, and I need not tell you that I have not been standing still for the last fifteen years. It will be enough if I say that five years ago I made the discovery that I alluded to when I said that ten years ago I reached the goal. After years of labour, after years of toiling and groping in the dark, after days and nights of disappointments and sometimes of despair, in which I used now and then to tremble and grow cold with the thought that perhaps there were others seeking for what I sought, at last, after so long, a pang of sudden joy thrilled my soul, and I knew the long journey was at an end. By what seemed then and still seems a chance, the suggestion of a moment's idle thought followed up upon familiar lines and paths that I had tracked a hundred times already, the great truth burst upon me, and I saw, mapped out in lines of sight, a whole world, a sphere unknown; continents and islands, and great oceans in which no ship has sailed (to my belief) since a Man first lifted up his eyes and beheld the sun, and the stars of heaven, and the quiet earth beneath. You will think this all high-flown language, Clarke, but it is hard to be literal. And yet; I do not know whether what I am hinting at cannot be set forth in plain and lonely terms. For instance, this world of ours is pretty well girded now with the telegraph wires and cables; thought, with something less than the speed of thought, flashes from sunrise to sunset, from north to south, across the floods and the desert places. Suppose that an electrician of today were suddenly to perceive that he and his friends have merely been playing with pebbles and mistaking them for the foundations of the world; suppose that such a man saw uttermost space lie open before the current, and words of men flash forth to the sun and beyond the sun into the systems beyond, and the voice of articulate-speaking men echo in the waste void that bounds our thought. As analogies go, that is a pretty good analogy of what I have done; you can understand now a little of what I felt as I stood here one evening; it was a summer evening, and the valley looked much as it does now; I stood here, and saw before me the unutterable, the unthinkable gulf that yawns profound between two worlds, the world of matter and the world of spirit; I saw the great empty deep stretch dim before me, and in that instant a bridge of light leapt from the earth to the unknown shore, and the abyss was spanned. You may look in Browne Faber's book, if you like, and you will find that to the present day men of science are unable to account for the presence, or to specify the functions of a certain group of nerve-cells in the brain. That group is, as it were, land to let, a mere waste place for fanciful theories. I am not in the position of Browne Faber and the specialists, I am perfectly instructed as to the possible functions of those nerve-centers in the scheme of things. With a touch I can bring them into play, with a touch, I say, I can set free the current, with a touch I can complete the communication between this world of sense and—we shall be able to finish the sentence later on. Yes, the knife is necessary; but think what that knife will effect. It will level utterly the solid wall of sense, and probably, for the first time since man was made, a spirit will gaze on a spirit-world. Clarke, Mary will see the god Pan!"</div>
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"But you remember what you wrote to me? I thought it would be requisite that she—"</div>
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He whispered the rest into the doctor's ear.</div>
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"Not at all, not at all. That is nonsense. I assure you. Indeed, it is better as it is; I am quite certain of that."</div>
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"Consider the matter well, Raymond. It's a great responsibility. Something might go wrong; you would be a miserable man for the rest of your days."</div>
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"No, I think not, even if the worst happened. As you know, I rescued Mary from the gutter, and from almost certain starvation, when she was a child; I think her life is mine, to use as I see fit. Come, it's getting late; we had better go in."</div>
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Dr. Raymond led the way into the house, through the hall, and down a long dark passage. He took a key from his pocket and opened a heavy door, and motioned Clarke into his laboratory. It had once been a billiard-room, and was lighted by a glass dome in the centre of the ceiling, whence there still shone a sad grey light on the figure of the doctor as he lit a lamp with a heavy shade and placed it on a table in the middle of the room.</div>
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Clarke looked about him. Scarcely a foot of wall remained bare; there were shelves all around laden with bottles and phials of all shapes and colours, and at one end stood a little Chippendale book-case. Raymond pointed to this.</div>
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"You see that parchment Oswald Crollius? He was one of the first to show me the way, though I don't think he ever found it himself. That is a strange saying of his: 'In every grain of wheat there lies hidden the soul of a star.'"</div>
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There was not much furniture in the laboratory. The table in the centre, a stone slab with a drain in one corner, the two armchairs on which Raymond and Clarke were sitting; that was all, except an odd-looking chair at the furthest end of the room. Clarke looked at it, and raised his eyebrows.</div>
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"Yes, that is the chair," said Raymond. "We may as well place it in position." He got up and wheeled the chair to the light, and began raising and lowering it, letting down the seat, setting the back at various angles, and adjusting the foot-rest. It looked comfortable enough, and Clarke passed his hand over the soft green velvet, as the doctor manipulated the levers.</div>
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"Now, Clarke, make yourself quite comfortable. I have a couple hours' work before me; I was obliged to leave certain matters to the last."</div>
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Raymond went to the stone slab, and Clarke watched him drearily as he bent over a row of phials and lit the flame under the crucible. The doctor had a small hand-lamp, shaded as the larger one, on a ledge above his apparatus, and Clarke, who sat in the shadows, looked down at the great shadowy room, wondering at the bizarre effects of brilliant light and undefined darkness contrasting with one another. Soon he became conscious of an odd odour, at first the merest suggestion of odour, in the room, and as it grew more decided he felt surprised that he was not reminded of the chemist's shop or the surgery. Clarke found himself idly endeavouring to analyse the sensation, and half conscious, he began to think of a day, fifteen years ago, that he had spent roaming through the woods and meadows near his own home. It was a burning day at the beginning of August, the heat had dimmed the outlines of all things and all distances with a faint mist, and people who observed the thermometer spoke of an abnormal register, of a temperature that was almost tropical. Strangely that wonderful hot day of the fifties rose up again in Clarke's imagination; the sense of dazzling all-pervading sunlight seemed to blot out the shadows and the lights of the laboratory, and he felt again the heated air beating in gusts about his face, saw the shimmer rising from the turf, and heard the myriad murmur of the summer.</div>
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"I hope the smell doesn't annoy you, Clarke; there's nothing unwholesome about it. It may make you a bit sleepy, that's all."</div>
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Clarke heard the words quite distinctly, and knew that Raymond was speaking to him, but for the life of him he could not rouse himself from his lethargy. He could only think of the lonely walk he had taken fifteen years ago; it was his last look at the fields and woods he had known since he was a child, and now it all stood out in brilliant light, as a picture, before him. Above all there came to his nostrils the scent of summer, the smell of flowers mingled, and the odour of the woods, of cool shaded places, deep in the green depths, drawn forth by the sun's heat; and the scent of the good earth, lying as it were with arms stretched forth, and smiling lips, overpowered all. His fancies made him wander, as he had wandered long ago, from the fields into the wood, tracking a little path between the shining undergrowth of beech-trees; and the trickle of water dropping from the limestone rock sounded as a clear melody in the dream. Thoughts began to go astray and to mingle with other thoughts; the beech alley was transformed to a path between ilex-trees, and here and there a vine climbed from bough to bough, and sent up waving tendrils and drooped with purple grapes, and the sparse grey-green leaves of a wild olive-tree stood out against the dark shadows of the ilex. Clarke, in the deep folds of dream, was conscious that the path from his father's house had led him into an undiscovered country, and he was wondering at the strangeness of it all, when suddenly, in place of the hum and murmur of the summer, an infinite silence seemed to fall on all things, and the wood was hushed, and for a moment in time he stood face to face there with a presence, that was neither man nor beast, neither the living nor the dead, but all things mingled, the form of all things but devoid of all form. And in that moment, the sacrament of body and soul was dissolved, and a voice seemed to cry "Let us go hence," and then the darkness of darkness beyond the stars, the darkness of everlasting.</div>
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When Clarke woke up with a start he saw Raymond pouring a few drops of some oily fluid into a green phial, which he stoppered tightly.</div>
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"You have been dozing," he said; "the journey must have tired you out. It is done now. I am going to fetch Mary; I shall be back in ten minutes."</div>
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Clarke lay back in his chair and wondered. It seemed as if he had but passed from one dream into another. He half expected to see the walls of the laboratory melt and disappear, and to awake in London, shuddering at his own sleeping fancies. But at last the door opened, and the doctor returned, and behind him came a girl of about seventeen, dressed all in white. She was so beautiful that Clarke did not wonder at what the doctor had written to him. She was blushing now over face and neck and arms, but Raymond seemed unmoved.</div>
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"Mary," he said, "the time has come. You are quite free. Are you willing to trust yourself to me entirely?"</div>
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"Yes, dear."</div>
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"Do you hear that, Clarke? You are my witness. Here is the chair, Mary. It is quite easy. Just sit in it and lean back. Are you ready?"</div>
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"Yes, dear, quite ready. Give me a kiss before you begin."</div>
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The doctor stooped and kissed her mouth, kindly enough. "Now shut your eyes," he said. The girl closed her eyelids, as if she were tired, and longed for sleep, and Raymond placed the green phial to her nostrils. Her face grew white, whiter than her dress; she struggled faintly, and then with the feeling of submission strong within her, crossed her arms upon her breast as a little child about to say her prayers. The bright light of the lamp fell full upon her, and Clarke watched changes fleeting over her face as the changes of the hills when the summer clouds float across the sun. And then she lay all white and still, and the doctor turned up one of her eyelids. She was quite unconscious. Raymond pressed hard on one of the levers and the chair instantly sank back. Clarke saw him cutting away a circle, like a tonsure, from her hair, and the lamp was moved nearer. Raymond took a small glittering instrument from a little case, and Clarke turned away shudderingly. When he looked again the doctor was binding up the wound he had made.</div>
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"She will awake in five minutes." Raymond was still perfectly cool. "There is nothing more to be done; we can only wait."</div>
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The minutes passed slowly; they could hear a slow, heavy, ticking. There was an old clock in the passage. Clarke felt sick and faint; his knees shook beneath him, he could hardly stand.</div>
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Suddenly, as they watched, they heard a long-drawn sigh, and suddenly did the colour that had vanished return to the girl's cheeks, and suddenly her eyes opened. Clarke quailed before them. They shone with an awful light, looking far away, and a great wonder fell upon her face, and her hands stretched out as if to touch what was invisible; but in an instant the wonder faded, and gave place to the most awful terror. The muscles of her face were hideously convulsed, she shook from head to foot; the soul seemed struggling and shuddering within the house of flesh. It was a horrible sight, and Clarke rushed forward, as she fell shrieking to the floor.</div>
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Three days later Raymond took Clarke to Mary's bedside. She was lying wide-awake, rolling her head from side to side, and grinning vacantly.</div>
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"Yes," said the doctor, still quite cool, "it is a great pity; she is a hopeless idiot. However, it could not be helped; and, after all, she has seen the Great God Pan."</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="chap02" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;"></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; text-align: justify;"></span><br />
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II</h3>
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MR. CLARKE'S MEMOIRS</h3>
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Mr. Clarke, the gentleman chosen by Dr. Raymond to witness the strange experiment of the god Pan, was a person in whose character caution and curiosity were oddly mingled; in his sober moments he thought of the unusual and eccentric with undisguised aversion, and yet, deep in his heart, there was a wide-eyed inquisitiveness with respect to all the more recondite and esoteric elements in the nature of men. The latter tendency had prevailed when he accepted Raymond's invitation, for though his considered judgment had always repudiated the doctor's theories as the wildest nonsense, yet he secretly hugged a belief in fantasy, and would have rejoiced to see that belief confirmed. The horrors that he witnessed in the dreary laboratory were to a certain extent salutary; he was conscious of being involved in an affair not altogether reputable, and for many years afterwards he clung bravely to the commonplace, and rejected all occasions of occult investigation. Indeed, on some homeopathic principle, he for some time attended the seances of distinguished mediums, hoping that the clumsy tricks of these gentlemen would make him altogether disgusted with mysticism of every kind, but the remedy, though caustic, was not efficacious. Clarke knew that he still pined for the unseen, and little by little, the old passion began to reassert itself, as the face of Mary, shuddering and convulsed with an unknown terror, faded slowly from his memory. Occupied all day in pursuits both serious and lucrative, the temptation to relax in the evening was too great, especially in the winter months, when the fire cast a warm glow over his snug bachelor apartment, and a bottle of some choice claret stood ready by his elbow. His dinner digested, he would make a brief pretence of reading the evening paper, but the mere catalogue of news soon palled upon him, and Clarke would find himself casting glances of warm desire in the direction of an old Japanese bureau, which stood at a pleasant distance from the hearth. Like a boy before a jam-closet, for a few minutes he would hover indecisive, but lust always prevailed, and Clarke ended by drawing up his chair, lighting a candle, and sitting down before the bureau. Its pigeon-holes and drawers teemed with documents on the most morbid subjects, and in the well reposed a large manuscript volume, in which he had painfully entered the gems of his collection. Clarke had a fine contempt for published literature; the most ghostly story ceased to interest him if it happened to be printed; his sole pleasure was in the reading, compiling, and rearranging what he called his "Memoirs to prove the Existence of the Devil," and engaged in this pursuit the evening seemed to fly and the night appeared too short.</div>
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On one particular evening, an ugly December night, black with fog, and raw with frost, Clarke hurried over his dinner, and scarcely deigned to observe his customary ritual of taking up the paper and laying it down again. He paced two or three times up and down the room, and opened the bureau, stood still a moment, and sat down. He leant back, absorbed in one of those dreams to which he was subject, and at length drew out his book, and opened it at the last entry. There were three or four pages densely covered with Clarke's round, set penmanship, and at the beginning he had written in a somewhat larger hand:</div>
<pre style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small; text-align: justify;"> Singular Narrative told me by my Friend, Dr. Phillips.
He assures me that all the facts related
therein are strictly and wholly True, but
refuses to give either the Surnames of the
Persons Concerned, or the Place where these
Extraordinary Events occurred.
</pre>
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Mr. Clarke began to read over the account for the tenth time, glancing now and then at the pencil notes he had made when it was told him by his friend. It was one of his humours to pride himself on a certain literary ability; he thought well of his style, and took pains in arranging the circumstances in dramatic order. He read the following story:—</div>
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The persons concerned in this statement are Helen V., who, if she is still alive, must now be a woman of twenty-three, Rachel M., since deceased, who was a year younger than the above, and Trevor W., an imbecile, aged eighteen. These persons were at the period of the story inhabitants of a village on the borders of Wales, a place of some importance in the time of the Roman occupation, but now a scattered hamlet, of not more than five hundred souls. It is situated on rising ground, about six miles from the sea, and is sheltered by a large and picturesque forest.</div>
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Some eleven years ago, Helen V. came to the village under rather peculiar circumstances. It is understood that she, being an orphan, was adopted in her infancy by a distant relative, who brought her up in his own house until she was twelve years old. Thinking, however, that it would be better for the child to have playmates of her own age, he advertised in several local papers for a good home in a comfortable farmhouse for a girl of twelve, and this advertisement was answered by Mr. R., a well-to-do farmer in the above-mentioned village. His references proving satisfactory, the gentleman sent his adopted daughter to Mr. R., with a letter, in which he stipulated that the girl should have a room to herself, and stated that her guardians need be at no trouble in the matter of education, as she was already sufficiently educated for the position in life which she would occupy. In fact, Mr. R. was given to understand that the girl be allowed to find her own occupations and to spend her time almost as she liked. Mr. R. duly met her at the nearest station, a town seven miles away from his house, and seems to have remarked nothing extraordinary about the child except that she was reticent as to her former life and her adopted father. She was, however, of a very different type from the inhabitants of the village; her skin was a pale, clear olive, and her features were strongly marked, and of a somewhat foreign character. She appears to have settled down easily enough into farmhouse life, and became a favourite with the children, who sometimes went with her on her rambles in the forest, for this was her amusement. Mr. R. states that he has known her to go out by herself directly after their early breakfast, and not return till after dusk, and that, feeling uneasy at a young girl being out alone for so many hours, he communicated with her adopted father, who replied in a brief note that Helen must do as she chose. In the winter, when the forest paths are impassable, she spent most of her time in her bedroom, where she slept alone, according to the instructions of her relative. It was on one of these expeditions to the forest that the first of the singular incidents with which this girl is connected occurred, the date being about a year after her arrival at the village. The preceding winter had been remarkably severe, the snow drifting to a great depth, and the frost continuing for an unexampled period, and the summer following was as noteworthy for its extreme heat. On one of the very hottest days in this summer, Helen V. left the farmhouse for one of her long rambles in the forest, taking with her, as usual, some bread and meat for lunch. She was seen by some men in the fields making for the old Roman Road, a green causeway which traverses the highest part of the wood, and they were astonished to observe that the girl had taken off her hat, though the heat of the sun was already tropical. As it happened, a labourer, Joseph W. by name, was working in the forest near the Roman Road, and at twelve o'clock his little son, Trevor, brought the man his dinner of bread and cheese. After the meal, the boy, who was about seven years old at the time, left his father at work, and, as he said, went to look for flowers in the wood, and the man, who could hear him shouting with delight at his discoveries, felt no uneasiness. Suddenly, however, he was horrified at hearing the most dreadful screams, evidently the result of great terror, proceeding from the direction in which his son had gone, and he hastily threw down his tools and ran to see what had happened. Tracing his path by the sound, he met the little boy, who was running headlong, and was evidently terribly frightened, and on questioning him the man elicited that after picking a posy of flowers he felt tired, and lay down on the grass and fell asleep. He was suddenly awakened, as he stated, by a peculiar noise, a sort of singing he called it, and on peeping through the branches he saw Helen V. playing on the grass with a "strange naked man," who he seemed unable to describe more fully. He said he felt dreadfully frightened and ran away crying for his father. Joseph W. proceeded in the direction indicated by his son, and found Helen V. sitting on the grass in the middle of a glade or open space left by charcoal burners. He angrily charged her with frightening his little boy, but she entirely denied the accusation and laughed at the child's story of a "strange man," to which he himself did not attach much credence. Joseph W. came to the conclusion that the boy had woke up with a sudden fright, as children sometimes do, but Trevor persisted in his story, and continued in such evident distress that at last his father took him home, hoping that his mother would be able to soothe him. For many weeks, however, the boy gave his parents much anxiety; he became nervous and strange in his manner, refusing to leave the cottage by himself, and constantly alarming the household by waking in the night with cries of "The man in the wood! father! father!"</div>
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In course of time, however, the impression seemed to have worn off, and about three months later he accompanied his father to the home of a gentleman in the neighborhood, for whom Joseph W. occasionally did work. The man was shown into the study, and the little boy was left sitting in the hall, and a few minutes later, while the gentleman was giving W. his instructions, they were both horrified by a piercing shriek and the sound of a fall, and rushing out they found the child lying senseless on the floor, his face contorted with terror. The doctor was immediately summoned, and after some examination he pronounced the child to be suffering form a kind of fit, apparently produced by a sudden shock. The boy was taken to one of the bedrooms, and after some time recovered consciousness, but only to pass into a condition described by the medical man as one of violent hysteria. The doctor exhibited a strong sedative, and in the course of two hours pronounced him fit to walk home, but in passing through the hall the paroxysms of fright returned and with additional violence. The father perceived that the child was pointing at some object, and heard the old cry, "The man in the wood," and looking in the direction indicated saw a stone head of grotesque appearance, which had been built into the wall above one of the doors. It seems the owner of the house had recently made alterations in his premises, and on digging the foundations for some offices, the men had found a curious head, evidently of the Roman period, which had been placed in the manner described. The head is pronounced by the most experienced archaeologists of the district to be that of a faun or satyr. [Dr. Phillips tells me that he has seen the head in question, and assures me that he has never received such a vivid presentment of intense evil.]</div>
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From whatever cause arising, this second shock seemed too severe for the boy Trevor, and at the present date he suffers from a weakness of intellect, which gives but little promise of amending. The matter caused a good deal of sensation at the time, and the girl Helen was closely questioned by Mr. R., but to no purpose, she steadfastly denying that she had frightened or in any way molested Trevor.</div>
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The second event with which this girl's name is connected took place about six years ago, and is of a still more extraordinary character.</div>
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At the beginning of the summer of 1882, Helen contracted a friendship of a peculiarly intimate character with Rachel M., the daughter of a prosperous farmer in the neighbourhood. This girl, who was a year younger than Helen, was considered by most people to be the prettier of the two, though Helen's features had to a great extent softened as she became older. The two girls, who were together on every available opportunity, presented a singular contrast, the one with her clear, olive skin and almost Italian appearance, and the other of the proverbial red and white of our rural districts. It must be stated that the payments made to Mr. R. for the maintenance of Helen were known in the village for their excessive liberality, and the impression was general that she would one day inherit a large sum of money from her relative. The parents of Rachel were therefore not averse from their daughter's friendship with the girl, and even encouraged the intimacy, though they now bitterly regret having done so. Helen still retained her extraordinary fondness for the forest, and on several occasions Rachel accompanied her, the two friends setting out early in the morning, and remaining in the wood until dusk. Once or twice after these excursions Mrs. M. thought her daughter's manner rather peculiar; she seemed languid and dreamy, and as it has been expressed, "different from herself," but these peculiarities seem to have been thought too trifling for remark. One evening, however, after Rachel had come home, her mother heard a noise which sounded like suppressed weeping in the girl's room, and on going in found her lying, half undressed, upon the bed, evidently in the greatest distress. As soon as she saw her mother, she exclaimed, "Ah, mother, mother, why did you let me go to the forest with Helen?" Mrs. M. was astonished at so strange a question, and proceeded to make inquiries. Rachel told her a wild story. She said—</div>
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Clarke closed the book with a snap, and turned his chair towards the fire. When his friend sat one evening in that very chair, and told his story, Clarke had interrupted him at a point a little subsequent to this, had cut short his words in a paroxysm of horror. "My God!" he had exclaimed, "think, think what you are saying. It is too incredible, too monstrous; such things can never be in this quiet world, where men and women live and die, and struggle, and conquer, or maybe fail, and fall down under sorrow, and grieve and suffer strange fortunes for many a year; but not this, Phillips, not such things as this. There must be some explanation, some way out of the terror. Why, man, if such a case were possible, our earth would be a nightmare."</div>
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But Phillips had told his story to the end, concluding:</div>
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"Her flight remains a mystery to this day; she vanished in broad sunlight; they saw her walking in a meadow, and a few moments later she was not there."</div>
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Clarke tried to conceive the thing again, as he sat by the fire, and again his mind shuddered and shrank back, appalled before the sight of such awful, unspeakable elements enthroned as it were, and triumphant in human flesh. Before him stretched the long dim vista of the green causeway in the forest, as his friend had described it; he saw the swaying leaves and the quivering shadows on the grass, he saw the sunlight and the flowers, and far away, far in the long distance, the two figures moved toward him. One was Rachel, but the other?</div>
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Clarke had tried his best to disbelieve it all, but at the end of the account, as he had written it in his book, he had placed the inscription:</div>
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ET DIABOLUS INCARNATE EST. ET HOMO FACTUS EST.</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="chap03" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;"></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; text-align: justify;"></span><br />
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III</h3>
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THE CITY OF RESURRECTIONS</h3>
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"Herbert! Good God! Is it possible?"</div>
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"Yes, my name's Herbert. I think I know your face, too, but I don't remember your name. My memory is very queer."</div>
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"Don't you recollect Villiers of Wadham?"</div>
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"So it is, so it is. I beg your pardon, Villiers, I didn't think I was begging of an old college friend. Good-night."</div>
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"My dear fellow, this haste is unnecessary. My rooms are close by, but we won't go there just yet. Suppose we walk up Shaftesbury Avenue a little way? But how in heaven's name have you come to this pass, Herbert?"</div>
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"It's a long story, Villiers, and a strange one too, but you can hear it if you like."</div>
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"Come on, then. Take my arm, you don't seem very strong."</div>
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The ill-assorted pair moved slowly up Rupert Street; the one in dirty, evil-looking rags, and the other attired in the regulation uniform of a man about town, trim, glossy, and eminently well-to-do. Villiers had emerged from his restaurant after an excellent dinner of many courses, assisted by an ingratiating little flask of Chianti, and, in that frame of mind which was with him almost chronic, had delayed a moment by the door, peering round in the dimly-lighted street in search of those mysterious incidents and persons with which the streets of London teem in every quarter and every hour. Villiers prided himself as a practised explorer of such obscure mazes and byways of London life, and in this unprofitable pursuit he displayed an assiduity which was worthy of more serious employment. Thus he stood by the lamp-post surveying the passers-by with undisguised curiosity, and with that gravity known only to the systematic diner, had just enunciated in his mind the formula: "London has been called the city of encounters; it is more than that, it is the city of Resurrections," when these reflections were suddenly interrupted by a piteous whine at his elbow, and a deplorable appeal for alms. He looked around in some irritation, and with a sudden shock found himself confronted with the embodied proof of his somewhat stilted fancies. There, close beside him, his face altered and disfigured by poverty and disgrace, his body barely covered by greasy ill-fitting rags, stood his old friend Charles Herbert, who had matriculated on the same day as himself, with whom he had been merry and wise for twelve revolving terms. Different occupations and varying interests had interrupted the friendship, and it was six years since Villiers had seen Herbert; and now he looked upon this wreck of a man with grief and dismay, mingled with a certain inquisitiveness as to what dreary chain of circumstances had dragged him down to such a doleful pass. Villiers felt together with compassion all the relish of the amateur in mysteries, and congratulated himself on his leisurely speculations outside the restaurant.</div>
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They walked on in silence for some time, and more than one passer-by stared in astonishment at the unaccustomed spectacle of a well-dressed man with an unmistakable beggar hanging on to his arm, and, observing this, Villiers led the way to an obscure street in Soho. Here he repeated his question.</div>
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"How on earth has it happened, Herbert? I always understood you would succeed to an excellent position in Dorsetshire. Did your father disinherit you? Surely not?"</div>
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"No, Villiers; I came into all the property at my poor father's death; he died a year after I left Oxford. He was a very good father to me, and I mourned his death sincerely enough. But you know what young men are; a few months later I came up to town and went a good deal into society. Of course I had excellent introductions, and I managed to enjoy myself very much in a harmless sort of way. I played a little, certainly, but never for heavy stakes, and the few bets I made on races brought me in money—only a few pounds, you know, but enough to pay for cigars and such petty pleasures. It was in my second season that the tide turned. Of course you have heard of my marriage?"</div>
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"No, I never heard anything about it."</div>
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"Yes, I married, Villiers. I met a girl, a girl of the most wonderful and most strange beauty, at the house of some people whom I knew. I cannot tell you her age; I never knew it, but, so far as I can guess, I should think she must have been about nineteen when I made her acquaintance. My friends had come to know her at Florence; she told them she was an orphan, the child of an English father and an Italian mother, and she charmed them as she charmed me. The first time I saw her was at an evening party. I was standing by the door talking to a friend, when suddenly above the hum and babble of conversation I heard a voice which seemed to thrill to my heart. She was singing an Italian song. I was introduced to her that evening, and in three months I married Helen. Villiers, that woman, if I can call her woman, corrupted my soul. The night of the wedding I found myself sitting in her bedroom in the hotel, listening to her talk. She was sitting up in bed, and I listened to her as she spoke in her beautiful voice, spoke of things which even now I would not dare whisper in the blackest night, though I stood in the midst of a wilderness. You, Villiers, you may think you know life, and London, and what goes on day and night in this dreadful city; for all I can say you may have heard the talk of the vilest, but I tell you you can have no conception of what I know, not in your most fantastic, hideous dreams can you have imaged forth the faintest shadow of what I have heard—and seen. Yes, seen. I have seen the incredible, such horrors that even I myself sometimes stop in the middle of the street and ask whether it is possible for a man to behold such things and live. In a year, Villiers, I was a ruined man, in body and soul—in body and soul."</div>
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"But your property, Herbert? You had land in Dorset."</div>
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"I sold it all; the fields and woods, the dear old house—everything."</div>
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"And the money?"</div>
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"She took it all from me."</div>
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"And then left you?"</div>
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"Yes; she disappeared one night. I don't know where she went, but I am sure if I saw her again it would kill me. The rest of my story is of no interest; sordid misery, that is all. You may think, Villiers, that I have exaggerated and talked for effect; but I have not told you half. I could tell you certain things which would convince you, but you would never know a happy day again. You would pass the rest of your life, as I pass mine, a haunted man, a man who has seen hell."</div>
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Villiers took the unfortunate man to his rooms, and gave him a meal. Herbert could eat little, and scarcely touched the glass of wine set before him. He sat moody and silent by the fire, and seemed relieved when Villiers sent him away with a small present of money.</div>
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"By the way, Herbert," said Villiers, as they parted at the door, "what was your wife's name? You said Helen, I think? Helen what?"</div>
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"The name she passed under when I met her was Helen Vaughan, but what her real name was I can't say. I don't think she had a name. No, no, not in that sense. Only human beings have names, Villiers; I can't say anymore. Good-bye; yes, I will not fail to call if I see any way in which you can help me. Good-night."</div>
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The man went out into the bitter night, and Villiers returned to his fireside. There was something about Herbert which shocked him inexpressibly; not his poor rags nor the marks which poverty had set upon his face, but rather an indefinite terror which hung about him like a mist. He had acknowledged that he himself was not devoid of blame; the woman, he had avowed, had corrupted him body and soul, and Villiers felt that this man, once his friend, had been an actor in scenes evil beyond the power of words. His story needed no confirmation: he himself was the embodied proof of it. Villiers mused curiously over the story he had heard, and wondered whether he had heard both the first and the last of it. "No," he thought, "certainly not the last, probably only the beginning. A case like this is like a nest of Chinese boxes; you open one after the other and find a quainter workmanship in every box. Most likely poor Herbert is merely one of the outside boxes; there are stranger ones to follow."</div>
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Villiers could not take his mind away from Herbert and his story, which seemed to grow wilder as the night wore on. The fire seemed to burn low, and the chilly air of the morning crept into the room; Villiers got up with a glance over his shoulder, and, shivering slightly, went to bed.</div>
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A few days later he saw at his club a gentleman of his acquaintance, named Austin, who was famous for his intimate knowledge of London life, both in its tenebrous and luminous phases. Villiers, still full of his encounter in Soho and its consequences, thought Austin might possibly be able to shed some light on Herbert's history, and so after some casual talk he suddenly put the question:</div>
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"Do you happen to know anything of a man named Herbert—Charles Herbert?"</div>
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Austin turned round sharply and stared at Villiers with some astonishment.</div>
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"Charles Herbert? Weren't you in town three years ago? No; then you have not heard of the Paul Street case? It caused a good deal of sensation at the time."</div>
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"What was the case?"</div>
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"Well, a gentleman, a man of very good position, was found dead, stark dead, in the area of a certain house in Paul Street, off Tottenham Court Road. Of course the police did not make the discovery; if you happen to be sitting up all night and have a light in your window, the constable will ring the bell, but if you happen to be lying dead in somebody's area, you will be left alone. In this instance, as in many others, the alarm was raised by some kind of vagabond; I don't mean a common tramp, or a public-house loafer, but a gentleman, whose business or pleasure, or both, made him a spectator of the London streets at five o'clock in the morning. This individual was, as he said, 'going home,' it did not appear whence or whither, and had occasion to pass through Paul Street between four and five a.m. Something or other caught his eye at Number 20; he said, absurdly enough, that the house had the most unpleasant physiognomy he had ever observed, but, at any rate, he glanced down the area and was a good deal astonished to see a man lying on the stones, his limbs all huddled together, and his face turned up. Our gentleman thought his face looked peculiarly ghastly, and so set off at a run in search of the nearest policeman. The constable was at first inclined to treat the matter lightly, suspecting common drunkenness; however, he came, and after looking at the man's face, changed his tone, quickly enough. The early bird, who had picked up this fine worm, was sent off for a doctor, and the policeman rang and knocked at the door till a slatternly servant girl came down looking more than half asleep. The constable pointed out the contents of the area to the maid, who screamed loudly enough to wake up the street, but she knew nothing of the man; had never seen him at the house, and so forth. Meanwhile, the original discoverer had come back with a medical man, and the next thing was to get into the area. The gate was open, so the whole quartet stumped down the steps. The doctor hardly needed a moment's examination; he said the poor fellow had been dead for several hours, and it was then the case began to get interesting. The dead man had not been robbed, and in one of his pockets were papers identifying him as—well, as a man of good family and means, a favourite in society, and nobody's enemy, as far as could be known. I don't give his name, Villiers, because it has nothing to do with the story, and because it's no good raking up these affairs about the dead when there are no relations living. The next curious point was that the medical men couldn't agree as to how he met his death. There were some slight bruises on his shoulders, but they were so slight that it looked as if he had been pushed roughly out of the kitchen door, and not thrown over the railings from the street or even dragged down the steps. But there were positively no other marks of violence about him, certainly none that would account for his death; and when they came to the autopsy there wasn't a trace of poison of any kind. Of course the police wanted to know all about the people at Number 20, and here again, so I have heard from private sources, one or two other very curious points came out. It appears that the occupants of the house were a Mr. and Mrs. Charles Herbert; he was said to be a landed proprietor, though it struck most people that Paul Street was not exactly the place to look for country gentry. As for Mrs. Herbert, nobody seemed to know who or what she was, and, between ourselves, I fancy the divers after her history found themselves in rather strange waters. Of course they both denied knowing anything about the deceased, and in default of any evidence against them they were discharged. But some very odd things came out about them. Though it was between five and six in the morning when the dead man was removed, a large crowd had collected, and several of the neighbours ran to see what was going on. They were pretty free with their comments, by all accounts, and from these it appeared that Number 20 was in very bad odour in Paul Street. The detectives tried to trace down these rumours to some solid foundation of fact, but could not get hold of anything. People shook their heads and raised their eyebrows and thought the Herberts rather 'queer,' 'would rather not be seen going into their house,' and so on, but there was nothing tangible. The authorities were morally certain the man met his death in some way or another in the house and was thrown out by the kitchen door, but they couldn't prove it, and the absence of any indications of violence or poisoning left them helpless. An odd case, wasn't it? But curiously enough, there's something more that I haven't told you. I happened to know one of the doctors who was consulted as to the cause of death, and some time after the inquest I met him, and asked him about it. 'Do you really mean to tell me,' I said, 'that you were baffled by the case, that you actually don't know what the man died of?' 'Pardon me,' he replied, 'I know perfectly well what caused death. Blank died of fright, of sheer, awful terror; I never saw features so hideously contorted in the entire course of my practice, and I have seen the faces of a whole host of dead.' The doctor was usually a cool customer enough, and a certain vehemence in his manner struck me, but I couldn't get anything more out of him. I suppose the Treasury didn't see their way to prosecuting the Herberts for frightening a man to death; at any rate, nothing was done, and the case dropped out of men's minds. Do you happen to know anything of Herbert?"</div>
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"Well," replied Villiers, "he was an old college friend of mine."</div>
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"You don't say so? Have you ever seen his wife?"</div>
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"No, I haven't. I have lost sight of Herbert for many years."</div>
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"It's queer, isn't it, parting with a man at the college gate or at Paddington, seeing nothing of him for years, and then finding him pop up his head in such an odd place. But I should like to have seen Mrs. Herbert; people said extraordinary things about her."</div>
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"What sort of things?"</div>
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"Well, I hardly know how to tell you. Everyone who saw her at the police court said she was at once the most beautiful woman and the most repulsive they had ever set eyes on. I have spoken to a man who saw her, and I assure you he positively shuddered as he tried to describe the woman, but he couldn't tell why. She seems to have been a sort of enigma; and I expect if that one dead man could have told tales, he would have told some uncommonly queer ones. And there you are again in another puzzle; what could a respectable country gentleman like Mr. Blank (we'll call him that if you don't mind) want in such a very queer house as Number 20? It's altogether a very odd case, isn't it?"</div>
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"It is indeed, Austin; an extraordinary case. I didn't think, when I asked you about my old friend, I should strike on such strange metal. Well, I must be off; good-day."</div>
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Villiers went away, thinking of his own conceit of the Chinese boxes; here was quaint workmanship indeed.</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="chap04" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;"></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; text-align: justify;"></span><br />
<h3 align="center" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">
IV</h3>
<h3 align="center" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">
THE DISCOVERY IN PAUL STREET</h3>
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A few months after Villiers' meeting with Herbert, Mr. Clarke was sitting, as usual, by his after-dinner hearth, resolutely guarding his fancies from wandering in the direction of the bureau. For more than a week he had succeeded in keeping away from the "Memoirs," and he cherished hopes of a complete self-reformation; but, in spite of his endeavours, he could not hush the wonder and the strange curiosity that the last case he had written down had excited within him. He had put the case, or rather the outline of it, conjecturally to a scientific friend, who shook his head, and thought Clarke getting queer, and on this particular evening Clarke was making an effort to rationalize the story, when a sudden knock at the door roused him from his meditations.</div>
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"Mr. Villiers to see you sir."</div>
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"Dear me, Villiers, it is very kind of you to look me up; I have not seen you for many months; I should think nearly a year. Come in, come in. And how are you, Villiers? Want any advice about investments?"</div>
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"No, thanks, I fancy everything I have in that way is pretty safe. No, Clarke, I have really come to consult you about a rather curious matter that has been brought under my notice of late. I am afraid you will think it all rather absurd when I tell my tale. I sometimes think so myself, and that's just what I made up my mind to come to you, as I know you're a practical man."</div>
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Mr. Villiers was ignorant of the "Memoirs to prove the Existence of the Devil."</div>
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"Well, Villiers, I shall be happy to give you my advice, to the best of my ability. What is the nature of the case?"</div>
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"It's an extraordinary thing altogether. You know my ways; I always keep my eyes open in the streets, and in my time I have chanced upon some queer customers, and queer cases too, but this, I think, beats all. I was coming out of a restaurant one nasty winter night about three months ago; I had had a capital dinner and a good bottle of Chianti, and I stood for a moment on the pavement, thinking what a mystery there is about London streets and the companies that pass along them. A bottle of red wine encourages these fancies, Clarke, and I dare say I should have thought a page of small type, but I was cut short by a beggar who had come behind me, and was making the usual appeals. Of course I looked round, and this beggar turned out to be what was left of an old friend of mine, a man named Herbert. I asked him how he had come to such a wretched pass, and he told me. We walked up and down one of those long and dark Soho streets, and there I listened to his story. He said he had married a beautiful girl, some years younger than himself, and, as he put it, she had corrupted him body and soul. He wouldn't go into details; he said he dare not, that what he had seen and heard haunted him by night and day, and when I looked in his face I knew he was speaking the truth. There was something about the man that made me shiver. I don't know why, but it was there. I gave him a little money and sent him away, and I assure you that when he was gone I gasped for breath. His presence seemed to chill one's blood."</div>
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"Isn't this all just a little fanciful, Villiers? I suppose the poor fellow had made an imprudent marriage, and, in plain English, gone to the bad."</div>
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"Well, listen to this." Villiers told Clarke the story he had heard from Austin.</div>
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"You see," he concluded, "there can be but little doubt that this Mr. Blank, whoever he was, died of sheer terror; he saw something so awful, so terrible, that it cut short his life. And what he saw, he most certainly saw in that house, which, somehow or other, had got a bad name in the neighbourhood. I had the curiosity to go and look at the place for myself. It's a saddening kind of street; the houses are old enough to be mean and dreary, but not old enough to be quaint. As far as I could see most of them are let in lodgings, furnished and unfurnished, and almost every door has three bells to it. Here and there the ground floors have been made into shops of the commonest kind; it's a dismal street in every way. I found Number 20 was to let, and I went to the agent's and got the key. Of course I should have heard nothing of the Herberts in that quarter, but I asked the man, fair and square, how long they had left the house and whether there had been other tenants in the meanwhile. He looked at me queerly for a minute, and told me the Herberts had left immediately after the unpleasantness, as he called it, and since then the house had been empty."</div>
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Mr. Villiers paused for a moment.</div>
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"I have always been rather fond of going over empty houses; there's a sort of fascination about the desolate empty rooms, with the nails sticking in the walls, and the dust thick upon the window-sills. But I didn't enjoy going over Number 20, Paul Street. I had hardly put my foot inside the passage when I noticed a queer, heavy feeling about the air of the house. Of course all empty houses are stuffy, and so forth, but this was something quite different; I can't describe it to you, but it seemed to stop the breath. I went into the front room and the back room, and the kitchens downstairs; they were all dirty and dusty enough, as you would expect, but there was something strange about them all. I couldn't define it to you, I only know I felt queer. It was one of the rooms on the first floor, though, that was the worst. It was a largish room, and once on a time the paper must have been cheerful enough, but when I saw it, paint, paper, and everything were most doleful. But the room was full of horror; I felt my teeth grinding as I put my hand on the door, and when I went in, I thought I should have fallen fainting to the floor. However, I pulled myself together, and stood against the end wall, wondering what on earth there could be about the room to make my limbs tremble, and my heart beat as if I were at the hour of death. In one corner there was a pile of newspapers littered on the floor, and I began looking at them; they were papers of three or four years ago, some of them half torn, and some crumpled as if they had been used for packing. I turned the whole pile over, and amongst them I found a curious drawing; I will show it to you presently. But I couldn't stay in the room; I felt it was overpowering me. I was thankful to come out, safe and sound, into the open air. People stared at me as I walked along the street, and one man said I was drunk. I was staggering about from one side of the pavement to the other, and it was as much as I could do to take the key back to the agent and get home. I was in bed for a week, suffering from what my doctor called nervous shock and exhaustion. One of those days I was reading the evening paper, and happened to notice a paragraph headed: 'Starved to Death.' It was the usual style of thing; a model lodging-house in Marylebone, a door locked for several days, and a dead man in his chair when they broke in. 'The deceased,' said the paragraph, 'was known as Charles Herbert, and is believed to have been once a prosperous country gentleman. His name was familiar to the public three years ago in connection with the mysterious death in Paul Street, Tottenham Court Road, the deceased being the tenant of the house Number 20, in the area of which a gentleman of good position was found dead under circumstances not devoid of suspicion.' A tragic ending, wasn't it? But after all, if what he told me were true, which I am sure it was, the man's life was all a tragedy, and a tragedy of a stranger sort than they put on the boards."</div>
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"And that is the story, is it?" said Clarke musingly.</div>
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"Yes, that is the story."</div>
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"Well, really, Villiers, I scarcely know what to say about it. There are, no doubt, circumstances in the case which seem peculiar, the finding of the dead man in the area of Herbert's house, for instance, and the extraordinary opinion of the physician as to the cause of death; but, after all, it is conceivable that the facts may be explained in a straightforward manner. As to your own sensations, when you went to see the house, I would suggest that they were due to a vivid imagination; you must have been brooding, in a semi-conscious way, over what you had heard. I don't exactly see what more can be said or done in the matter; you evidently think there is a mystery of some kind, but Herbert is dead; where then do you propose to look?"</div>
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"I propose to look for the woman; the woman whom he married. She is the mystery."</div>
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The two men sat silent by the fireside; Clarke secretly congratulating himself on having successfully kept up the character of advocate of the commonplace, and Villiers wrapped in his gloomy fancies.</div>
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"I think I will have a cigarette," he said at last, and put his hand in his pocket to feel for the cigarette-case.</div>
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"Ah!" he said, starting slightly, "I forgot I had something to show you. You remember my saying that I had found a rather curious sketch amongst the pile of old newspapers at the house in Paul Street? Here it is."</div>
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Villiers drew out a small thin parcel from his pocket. It was covered with brown paper, and secured with string, and the knots were troublesome. In spite of himself Clarke felt inquisitive; he bent forward on his chair as Villiers painfully undid the string, and unfolded the outer covering. Inside was a second wrapping of tissue, and Villiers took it off and handed the small piece of paper to Clarke without a word.</div>
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There was dead silence in the room for five minutes or more; the two men sat so still that they could hear the ticking of the tall old-fashioned clock that stood outside in the hall, and in the mind of one of them the slow monotony of sound woke up a far, far memory. He was looking intently at the small pen-and-ink sketch of the woman's head; it had evidently been drawn with great care, and by a true artist, for the woman's soul looked out of the eyes, and the lips were parted with a strange smile. Clarke gazed still at the face; it brought to his memory one summer evening, long ago; he saw again the long lovely valley, the river winding between the hills, the meadows and the cornfields, the dull red sun, and the cold white mist rising from the water. He heard a voice speaking to him across the waves of many years, and saying "Clarke, Mary will see the god Pan!" and then he was standing in the grim room beside the doctor, listening to the heavy ticking of the clock, waiting and watching, watching the figure lying on the green chair beneath the lamplight. Mary rose up, and he looked into her eyes, and his heart grew cold within him.</div>
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"Who is this woman?" he said at last. His voice was dry and hoarse.</div>
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"That is the woman who Herbert married."</div>
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Clarke looked again at the sketch; it was not Mary after all. There certainly was Mary's face, but there was something else, something he had not seen on Mary's features when the white-clad girl entered the laboratory with the doctor, nor at her terrible awakening, nor when she lay grinning on the bed. Whatever it was, the glance that came from those eyes, the smile on the full lips, or the expression of the whole face, Clarke shuddered before it at his inmost soul, and thought, unconsciously, of Dr. Phillip's words, "the most vivid presentment of evil I have ever seen." He turned the paper over mechanically in his hand and glanced at the back.</div>
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"Good God! Clarke, what is the matter? You are as white as death."</div>
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Villiers had started wildly from his chair, as Clarke fell back with a groan, and let the paper drop from his hands.</div>
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"I don't feel very well, Villiers, I am subject to these attacks. Pour me out a little wine; thanks, that will do. I shall feel better in a few minutes."</div>
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Villiers picked up the fallen sketch and turned it over as Clarke had done.</div>
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"You saw that?" he said. "That's how I identified it as being a portrait of Herbert's wife, or I should say his widow. How do you feel now?"</div>
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"Better, thanks, it was only a passing faintness. I don't think I quite catch your meaning. What did you say enabled you to identify the picture?"</div>
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"This word—'Helen'—was written on the back. Didn't I tell you her name was Helen? Yes; Helen Vaughan."</div>
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Clarke groaned; there could be no shadow of doubt.</div>
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"Now, don't you agree with me," said Villiers, "that in the story I have told you to-night, and in the part this woman plays in it, there are some very strange points?"</div>
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"Yes, Villiers," Clarke muttered, "it is a strange story indeed; a strange story indeed. You must give me time to think it over; I may be able to help you or I may not. Must you be going now? Well, good-night, Villiers, good-night. Come and see me in the course of a week."</div>
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<h3 align="center" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">
V</h3>
<h3 align="center" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">
THE LETTER OF ADVICE</h3>
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"Do you know, Austin," said Villiers, as the two friends were pacing sedately along Piccadilly one pleasant morning in May, "do you know I am convinced that what you told me about Paul Street and the Herberts is a mere episode in an extraordinary history? I may as well confess to you that when I asked you about Herbert a few months ago I had just seen him."</div>
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"You had seen him? Where?"</div>
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"He begged of me in the street one night. He was in the most pitiable plight, but I recognized the man, and I got him to tell me his history, or at least the outline of it. In brief, it amounted to this—he had been ruined by his wife."</div>
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"In what manner?"</div>
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"He would not tell me; he would only say that she had destroyed him, body and soul. The man is dead now."</div>
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"And what has become of his wife?"</div>
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"Ah, that's what I should like to know, and I mean to find her sooner or later. I know a man named Clarke, a dry fellow, in fact a man of business, but shrewd enough. You understand my meaning; not shrewd in the mere business sense of the word, but a man who really knows something about men and life. Well, I laid the case before him, and he was evidently impressed. He said it needed consideration, and asked me to come again in the course of a week. A few days later I received this extraordinary letter."</div>
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Austin took the envelope, drew out the letter, and read it curiously. It ran as follows:—</div>
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"MY DEAR VILLIERS,—I have thought over the matter on which you consulted me the other night, and my advice to you is this. Throw the portrait into the fire, blot out the story from your mind. Never give it another thought, Villiers, or you will be sorry. You will think, no doubt, that I am in possession of some secret information, and to a certain extent that is the case. But I only know a little; I am like a traveller who has peered over an abyss, and has drawn back in terror. What I know is strange enough and horrible enough, but beyond my knowledge there are depths and horrors more frightful still, more incredible than any tale told of winter nights about the fire. I have resolved, and nothing shall shake that resolve, to explore no whit farther, and if you value your happiness you will make the same determination.</div>
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"Come and see me by all means; but we will talk on more cheerful topics than this."</div>
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Austin folded the letter methodically, and returned it to Villiers.</div>
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"It is certainly an extraordinary letter," he said, "what does he mean by the portrait?"</div>
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"Ah! I forgot to tell you I have been to Paul Street and have made a discovery."</div>
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Villiers told his story as he had told it to Clarke, and Austin listened in silence. He seemed puzzled.</div>
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"How very curious that you should experience such an unpleasant sensation in that room!" he said at length. "I hardly gather that it was a mere matter of the imagination; a feeling of repulsion, in short."</div>
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"No, it was more physical than mental. It was as if I were inhaling at every breath some deadly fume, which seemed to penetrate to every nerve and bone and sinew of my body. I felt racked from head to foot, my eyes began to grow dim; it was like the entrance of death."</div>
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"Yes, yes, very strange certainly. You see, your friend confesses that there is some very black story connected with this woman. Did you notice any particular emotion in him when you were telling your tale?"</div>
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"Yes, I did. He became very faint, but he assured me that it was a mere passing attack to which he was subject."</div>
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"Did you believe him?"</div>
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"I did at the time, but I don't now. He heard what I had to say with a good deal of indifference, till I showed him the portrait. It was then that he was seized with the attack of which I spoke. He looked ghastly, I assure you."</div>
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"Then he must have seen the woman before. But there might be another explanation; it might have been the name, and not the face, which was familiar to him. What do you think?"</div>
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"I couldn't say. To the best of my belief it was after turning the portrait in his hands that he nearly dropped from the chair. The name, you know, was written on the back."</div>
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"Quite so. After all, it is impossible to come to any resolution in a case like this. I hate melodrama, and nothing strikes me as more commonplace and tedious than the ordinary ghost story of commerce; but really, Villiers, it looks as if there were something very queer at the bottom of all this."</div>
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The two men had, without noticing it, turned up Ashley Street, leading northward from Piccadilly. It was a long street, and rather a gloomy one, but here and there a brighter taste had illuminated the dark houses with flowers, and gay curtains, and a cheerful paint on the doors. Villiers glanced up as Austin stopped speaking, and looked at one of these houses; geraniums, red and white, drooped from every sill, and daffodil-coloured curtains were draped back from each window.</div>
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"It looks cheerful, doesn't it?" he said.</div>
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"Yes, and the inside is still more cheery. One of the pleasantest houses of the season, so I have heard. I haven't been there myself, but I've met several men who have, and they tell me it's uncommonly jovial."</div>
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"Whose house is it?"</div>
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"A Mrs. Beaumont's."</div>
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"And who is she?"</div>
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"I couldn't tell you. I have heard she comes from South America, but after all, who she is is of little consequence. She is a very wealthy woman, there's no doubt of that, and some of the best people have taken her up. I hear she has some wonderful claret, really marvellous wine, which must have cost a fabulous sum. Lord Argentine was telling me about it; he was there last Sunday evening. He assures me he has never tasted such a wine, and Argentine, as you know, is an expert. By the way, that reminds me, she must be an oddish sort of woman, this Mrs. Beaumont. Argentine asked her how old the wine was, and what do you think she said? 'About a thousand years, I believe.' Lord Argentine thought she was chaffing him, you know, but when he laughed she said she was speaking quite seriously and offered to show him the jar. Of course, he couldn't say anything more after that; but it seems rather antiquated for a beverage, doesn't it? Why, here we are at my rooms. Come in, won't you?"</div>
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"Thanks, I think I will. I haven't seen the curiosity-shop for a while."</div>
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It was a room furnished richly, yet oddly, where every jar and bookcase and table, and every rug and jar and ornament seemed to be a thing apart, preserving each its own individuality.</div>
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"Anything fresh lately?" said Villiers after a while.</div>
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"No; I think not; you saw those queer jugs, didn't you? I thought so. I don't think I have come across anything for the last few weeks."</div>
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Austin glanced around the room from cupboard to cupboard, from shelf to shelf, in search of some new oddity. His eyes fell at last on an odd chest, pleasantly and quaintly carved, which stood in a dark corner of the room.</div>
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"Ah," he said, "I was forgetting, I have got something to show you." Austin unlocked the chest, drew out a thick quarto volume, laid it on the table, and resumed the cigar he had put down.</div>
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"Did you know Arthur Meyrick the painter, Villiers?"</div>
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"A little; I met him two or three times at the house of a friend of mine. What has become of him? I haven't heard his name mentioned for some time."</div>
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"He's dead."</div>
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"You don't say so! Quite young, wasn't he?"</div>
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"Yes; only thirty when he died."</div>
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"What did he die of?"</div>
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"I don't know. He was an intimate friend of mine, and a thoroughly good fellow. He used to come here and talk to me for hours, and he was one of the best talkers I have met. He could even talk about painting, and that's more than can be said of most painters. About eighteen months ago he was feeling rather overworked, and partly at my suggestion he went off on a sort of roving expedition, with no very definite end or aim about it. I believe New York was to be his first port, but I never heard from him. Three months ago I got this book, with a very civil letter from an English doctor practising at Buenos Ayres, stating that he had attended the late Mr. Meyrick during his illness, and that the deceased had expressed an earnest wish that the enclosed packet should be sent to me after his death. That was all."</div>
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"And haven't you written for further particulars?"</div>
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"I have been thinking of doing so. You would advise me to write to the doctor?"</div>
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"Certainly. And what about the book?"</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
"It was sealed up when I got it. I don't think the doctor had seen it."</div>
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"It is something very rare? Meyrick was a collector, perhaps?"</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
"No, I think not, hardly a collector. Now, what do you think of these Ainu jugs?"</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
"They are peculiar, but I like them. But aren't you going to show me poor Meyrick's legacy?"</div>
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"Yes, yes, to be sure. The fact is, it's rather a peculiar sort of thing, and I haven't shown it to any one. I wouldn't say anything about it if I were you. There it is."</div>
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Villiers took the book, and opened it at haphazard.</div>
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"It isn't a printed volume, then?" he said.</div>
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"No. It is a collection of drawings in black and white by my poor friend Meyrick."</div>
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Villiers turned to the first page, it was blank; the second bore a brief inscription, which he read:</div>
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Silet per diem universus, nec sine horrore secretus est; lucet nocturnis ignibus, chorus Aegipanum undique personatur: audiuntur et cantus tibiarum, et tinnitus cymbalorum per oram maritimam.</div>
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On the third page was a design which made Villiers start and look up at Austin; he was gazing abstractedly out of the window. Villiers turned page after page, absorbed, in spite of himself, in the frightful Walpurgis Night of evil, strange monstrous evil, that the dead artist had set forth in hard black and white. The figures of Fauns and Satyrs and Aegipans danced before his eyes, the darkness of the thicket, the dance on the mountain-top, the scenes by lonely shores, in green vineyards, by rocks and desert places, passed before him: a world before which the human soul seemed to shrink back and shudder. Villiers whirled over the remaining pages; he had seen enough, but the picture on the last leaf caught his eye, as he almost closed the book.</div>
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"Austin!"</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
"Well, what is it?"</div>
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"Do you know who that is?"</div>
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It was a woman's face, alone on the white page.</div>
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"Know who it is? No, of course not."</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
"I do."</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
"Who is it?"</div>
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"It is Mrs. Herbert."</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
"Are you sure?"</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
"I am perfectly sure of it. Poor Meyrick! He is one more chapter in her history."</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
"But what do you think of the designs?"</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
"They are frightful. Lock the book up again, Austin. If I were you I would burn it; it must be a terrible companion even though it be in a chest."</div>
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"Yes, they are singular drawings. But I wonder what connection there could be between Meyrick and Mrs. Herbert, or what link between her and these designs?"</div>
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"Ah, who can say? It is possible that the matter may end here, and we shall never know, but in my own opinion this Helen Vaughan, or Mrs. Herbert, is only the beginning. She will come back to London, Austin; depend on it, she will come back, and we shall hear more about her then. I doubt it will be very pleasant news."</div>
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<h3 align="center" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">
VI</h3>
<h3 align="center" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">
THE SUICIDES</h3>
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Lord Argentine was a great favourite in London Society. At twenty he had been a poor man, decked with the surname of an illustrious family, but forced to earn a livelihood as best he could, and the most speculative of money-lenders would not have entrusted him with fifty pounds on the chance of his ever changing his name for a title, and his poverty for a great fortune. His father had been near enough to the fountain of good things to secure one of the family livings, but the son, even if he had taken orders, would scarcely have obtained so much as this, and moreover felt no vocation for the ecclesiastical estate. Thus he fronted the world with no better armour than the bachelor's gown and the wits of a younger son's grandson, with which equipment he contrived in some way to make a very tolerable fight of it. At twenty-five Mr. Charles Aubernon saw himself still a man of struggles and of warfare with the world, but out of the seven who stood before him and the high places of his family three only remained. These three, however, were "good lives," but yet not proof against the Zulu assegais and typhoid fever, and so one morning Aubernon woke up and found himself Lord Argentine, a man of thirty who had faced the difficulties of existence, and had conquered. The situation amused him immensely, and he resolved that riches should be as pleasant to him as poverty had always been. Argentine, after some little consideration, came to the conclusion that dining, regarded as a fine art, was perhaps the most amusing pursuit open to fallen humanity, and thus his dinners became famous in London, and an invitation to his table a thing covetously desired. After ten years of lordship and dinners Argentine still declined to be jaded, still persisted in enjoying life, and by a kind of infection had become recognized as the cause of joy in others, in short, as the best of company. His sudden and tragical death therefore caused a wide and deep sensation. People could scarcely believe it, even though the newspaper was before their eyes, and the cry of "Mysterious Death of a Nobleman" came ringing up from the street. But there stood the brief paragraph: "Lord Argentine was found dead this morning by his valet under distressing circumstances. It is stated that there can be no doubt that his lordship committed suicide, though no motive can be assigned for the act. The deceased nobleman was widely known in society, and much liked for his genial manner and sumptuous hospitality. He is succeeded by," etc., etc.</div>
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By slow degrees the details came to light, but the case still remained a mystery. The chief witness at the inquest was the deceased's valet, who said that the night before his death Lord Argentine had dined with a lady of good position, whose name was suppressed in the newspaper reports. At about eleven o'clock Lord Argentine had returned, and informed his man that he should not require his services till the next morning. A little later the valet had occasion to cross the hall and was somewhat astonished to see his master quietly letting himself out at the front door. He had taken off his evening clothes, and was dressed in a Norfolk coat and knickerbockers, and wore a low brown hat. The valet had no reason to suppose that Lord Argentine had seen him, and though his master rarely kept late hours, thought little of the occurrence till the next morning, when he knocked at the bedroom door at a quarter to nine as usual. He received no answer, and, after knocking two or three times, entered the room, and saw Lord Argentine's body leaning forward at an angle from the bottom of the bed. He found that his master had tied a cord securely to one of the short bed-posts, and, after making a running noose and slipping it round his neck, the unfortunate man must have resolutely fallen forward, to die by slow strangulation. He was dressed in the light suit in which the valet had seen him go out, and the doctor who was summoned pronounced that life had been extinct for more than four hours. All papers, letters, and so forth seemed in perfect order, and nothing was discovered which pointed in the most remote way to any scandal either great or small. Here the evidence ended; nothing more could be discovered. Several persons had been present at the dinner-party at which Lord Argentine had assisted, and to all these he seemed in his usual genial spirits. The valet, indeed, said he thought his master appeared a little excited when he came home, but confessed that the alteration in his manner was very slight, hardly noticeable, indeed. It seemed hopeless to seek for any clue, and the suggestion that Lord Argentine had been suddenly attacked by acute suicidal mania was generally accepted.</div>
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It was otherwise, however, when within three weeks, three more gentlemen, one of them a nobleman, and the two others men of good position and ample means, perished miserably in the almost precisely the same manner. Lord Swanleigh was found one morning in his dressing-room, hanging from a peg affixed to the wall, and Mr. Collier-Stuart and Mr. Herries had chosen to die as Lord Argentine. There was no explanation in either case; a few bald facts; a living man in the evening, and a body with a black swollen face in the morning. The police had been forced to confess themselves powerless to arrest or to explain the sordid murders of Whitechapel; but before the horrible suicides of Piccadilly and Mayfair they were dumbfoundered, for not even the mere ferocity which did duty as an explanation of the crimes of the East End, could be of service in the West. Each of these men who had resolved to die a tortured shameful death was rich, prosperous, and to all appearances in love with the world, and not the acutest research should ferret out any shadow of a lurking motive in either case. There was a horror in the air, and men looked at one another's faces when they met, each wondering whether the other was to be the victim of the fifth nameless tragedy. Journalists sought in vain for their scrapbooks for materials whereof to concoct reminiscent articles; and the morning paper was unfolded in many a house with a feeling of awe; no man knew when or where the next blow would light.</div>
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A short while after the last of these terrible events, Austin came to see Mr. Villiers. He was curious to know whether Villiers had succeeded in discovering any fresh traces of Mrs. Herbert, either through Clarke or by other sources, and he asked the question soon after he had sat down.</div>
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"No," said Villiers, "I wrote to Clarke, but he remains obdurate, and I have tried other channels, but without any result. I can't find out what became of Helen Vaughan after she left Paul Street, but I think she must have gone abroad. But to tell the truth, Austin, I haven't paid much attention to the matter for the last few weeks; I knew poor Herries intimately, and his terrible death has been a great shock to me, a great shock."</div>
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"I can well believe it," answered Austin gravely, "you know Argentine was a friend of mine. If I remember rightly, we were speaking of him that day you came to my rooms."</div>
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"Yes; it was in connection with that house in Ashley Street, Mrs. Beaumont's house. You said something about Argentine's dining there."</div>
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"Quite so. Of course you know it was there Argentine dined the night before—before his death."</div>
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"No, I had not heard that."</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
"Oh, yes; the name was kept out of the papers to spare Mrs. Beaumont. Argentine was a great favourite of hers, and it is said she was in a terrible state for sometime after."</div>
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A curious look came over Villiers' face; he seemed undecided whether to speak or not. Austin began again.</div>
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"I never experienced such a feeling of horror as when I read the account of Argentine's death. I didn't understand it at the time, and I don't now. I knew him well, and it completely passes my understanding for what possible cause he—or any of the others for the matter of that—could have resolved in cold blood to die in such an awful manner. You know how men babble away each other's characters in London, you may be sure any buried scandal or hidden skeleton would have been brought to light in such a case as this; but nothing of the sort has taken place. As for the theory of mania, that is very well, of course, for the coroner's jury, but everybody knows that it's all nonsense. Suicidal mania is not small-pox."</div>
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Austin relapsed into gloomy silence. Villiers sat silent, also, watching his friend. The expression of indecision still fleeted across his face; he seemed as if weighing his thoughts in the balance, and the considerations he was resolving left him still silent. Austin tried to shake off the remembrance of tragedies as hopeless and perplexed as the labyrinth of Daedalus, and began to talk in an indifferent voice of the more pleasant incidents and adventures of the season.</div>
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"That Mrs. Beaumont," he said, "of whom we were speaking, is a great success; she has taken London almost by storm. I met her the other night at Fulham's; she is really a remarkable woman."</div>
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"You have met Mrs. Beaumont?"</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
"Yes; she had quite a court around her. She would be called very handsome, I suppose, and yet there is something about her face which I didn't like. The features are exquisite, but the expression is strange. And all the time I was looking at her, and afterwards, when I was going home, I had a curious feeling that very expression was in some way or another familiar to me."</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
"You must have seen her in the Row."</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
"No, I am sure I never set eyes on the woman before; it is that which makes it puzzling. And to the best of my belief I have never seen anyone like her; what I felt was a kind of dim far-off memory, vague but persistent. The only sensation I can compare it to, is that odd feeling one sometimes has in a dream, when fantastic cities and wondrous lands and phantom personages appear familiar and accustomed."</div>
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Villiers nodded and glanced aimlessly round the room, possibly in search of something on which to turn the conversation. His eyes fell on an old chest somewhat like that in which the artist's strange legacy lay hid beneath a Gothic scutcheon.</div>
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"Have you written to the doctor about poor Meyrick?" he asked.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
"Yes; I wrote asking for full particulars as to his illness and death. I don't expect to have an answer for another three weeks or a month. I thought I might as well inquire whether Meyrick knew an Englishwoman named Herbert, and if so, whether the doctor could give me any information about her. But it's very possible that Meyrick fell in with her at New York, or Mexico, or San Francisco; I have no idea as to the extent or direction of his travels."</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
"Yes, and it's very possible that the woman may have more than one name."</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
"Exactly. I wish I had thought of asking you to lend me the portrait of her which you possess. I might have enclosed it in my letter to Dr. Matthews."</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
"So you might; that never occurred to me. We might send it now. Hark! what are those boys calling?"</div>
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While the two men had been talking together a confused noise of shouting had been gradually growing louder. The noise rose from the eastward and swelled down Piccadilly, drawing nearer and nearer, a very torrent of sound; surging up streets usually quiet, and making every window a frame for a face, curious or excited. The cries and voices came echoing up the silent street where Villiers lived, growing more distinct as they advanced, and, as Villiers spoke, an answer rang up from the pavement:</div>
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"The West End Horrors; Another Awful Suicide; Full Details!"</div>
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Austin rushed down the stairs and bought a paper and read out the paragraph to Villiers as the uproar in the street rose and fell. The window was open and the air seemed full of noise and terror.</div>
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"Another gentleman has fallen a victim to the terrible epidemic of suicide which for the last month has prevailed in the West End. Mr. Sidney Crashaw, of Stoke House, Fulham, and King's Pomeroy, Devon, was found, after a prolonged search, hanging dead from the branch of a tree in his garden at one o'clock today. The deceased gentleman dined last night at the Carlton Club and seemed in his usual health and spirits. He left the club at about ten o'clock, and was seen walking leisurely up St. James's Street a little later. Subsequent to this his movements cannot be traced. On the discovery of the body medical aid was at once summoned, but life had evidently been long extinct. So far as is known, Mr. Crashaw had no trouble or anxiety of any kind. This painful suicide, it will be remembered, is the fifth of the kind in the last month. The authorities at Scotland Yard are unable to suggest any explanation of these terrible occurrences."</div>
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Austin put down the paper in mute horror.</div>
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"I shall leave London to-morrow," he said, "it is a city of nightmares. How awful this is, Villiers!"</div>
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Mr. Villiers was sitting by the window quietly looking out into the street. He had listened to the newspaper report attentively, and the hint of indecision was no longer on his face.</div>
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"Wait a moment, Austin," he replied, "I have made up my mind to mention a little matter that occurred last night. It stated, I think, that Crashaw was last seen alive in St. James's Street shortly after ten?"</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
"Yes, I think so. I will look again. Yes, you are quite right."</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
"Quite so. Well, I am in a position to contradict that statement at all events. Crashaw was seen after that; considerably later indeed."</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
"How do you know?"</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
"Because I happened to see Crashaw myself at about two o'clock this morning."</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
"You saw Crashaw? You, Villiers?"</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
"Yes, I saw him quite distinctly; indeed, there were but a few feet between us."</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
"Where, in Heaven's name, did you see him?"</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
"Not far from here. I saw him in Ashley Street. He was just leaving a house."</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
"Did you notice what house it was?"</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
"Yes. It was Mrs. Beaumont's."</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
"Villiers! Think what you are saying; there must be some mistake. How could Crashaw be in Mrs. Beaumont's house at two o'clock in the morning? Surely, surely, you must have been dreaming, Villiers; you were always rather fanciful."</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
"No; I was wide awake enough. Even if I had been dreaming as you say, what I saw would have roused me effectually."</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
"What you saw? What did you see? Was there anything strange about Crashaw? But I can't believe it; it is impossible."</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
"Well, if you like I will tell you what I saw, or if you please, what I think I saw, and you can judge for yourself."</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
"Very good, Villiers."</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
The noise and clamour of the street had died away, though now and then the sound of shouting still came from the distance, and the dull, leaden silence seemed like the quiet after an earthquake or a storm. Villiers turned from the window and began speaking.</div>
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"I was at a house near Regent's Park last night, and when I came away the fancy took me to walk home instead of taking a hansom. It was a clear pleasant night enough, and after a few minutes I had the streets pretty much to myself. It's a curious thing, Austin, to be alone in London at night, the gas-lamps stretching away in perspective, and the dead silence, and then perhaps the rush and clatter of a hansom on the stones, and the fire starting up under the horse's hoofs. I walked along pretty briskly, for I was feeling a little tired of being out in the night, and as the clocks were striking two I turned down Ashley Street, which, you know, is on my way. It was quieter than ever there, and the lamps were fewer; altogether, it looked as dark and gloomy as a forest in winter. I had done about half the length of the street when I heard a door closed very softly, and naturally I looked up to see who was abroad like myself at such an hour. As it happens, there is a street lamp close to the house in question, and I saw a man standing on the step. He had just shut the door and his face was towards me, and I recognized Crashaw directly. I never knew him to speak to, but I had often seen him, and I am positive that I was not mistaken in my man. I looked into his face for a moment, and then—I will confess the truth—I set off at a good run, and kept it up till I was within my own door."</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
"Why?"</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
"Why? Because it made my blood run cold to see that man's face. I could never have supposed that such an infernal medley of passions could have glared out of any human eyes; I almost fainted as I looked. I knew I had looked into the eyes of a lost soul, Austin, the man's outward form remained, but all hell was within it. Furious lust, and hate that was like fire, and the loss of all hope and horror that seemed to shriek aloud to the night, though his teeth were shut; and the utter blackness of despair. I am sure that he did not see me; he saw nothing that you or I can see, but what he saw I hope we never shall. I do not know when he died; I suppose in an hour, or perhaps two, but when I passed down Ashley Street and heard the closing door, that man no longer belonged to this world; it was a devil's face I looked upon."</div>
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There was an interval of silence in the room when Villiers ceased speaking. The light was failing, and all the tumult of an hour ago was quite hushed. Austin had bent his head at the close of the story, and his hand covered his eyes.</div>
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"What can it mean?" he said at length.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
"Who knows, Austin, who knows? It's a black business, but I think we had better keep it to ourselves, for the present at any rate. I will see if I cannot learn anything about that house through private channels of information, and if I do light upon anything I will let you know."</div>
<br style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;" />
<br style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;" />
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="chap07" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;"></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; text-align: justify;"></span><br />
<h3 align="center" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">
VII</h3>
<h3 align="center" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">
THE ENCOUNTER IN SOHO</h3>
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Three weeks later Austin received a note from Villiers, asking him to call either that afternoon or the next. He chose the nearer date, and found Villiers sitting as usual by the window, apparently lost in meditation on the drowsy traffic of the street. There was a bamboo table by his side, a fantastic thing, enriched with gilding and queer painted scenes, and on it lay a little pile of papers arranged and docketed as neatly as anything in Mr. Clarke's office.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
"Well, Villiers, have you made any discoveries in the last three weeks?"</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
"I think so; I have here one or two memoranda which struck me as singular, and there is a statement to which I shall call your attention."</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
"And these documents relate to Mrs. Beaumont? It was really Crashaw whom you saw that night standing on the doorstep of the house in Ashley Street?"</div>
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"As to that matter my belief remains unchanged, but neither my inquiries nor their results have any special relation to Crashaw. But my investigations have had a strange issue. I have found out who Mrs. Beaumont is!"</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
"Who is she? In what way do you mean?"</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
"I mean that you and I know her better under another name."</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
"What name is that?"</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
"Herbert."</div>
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"Herbert!" Austin repeated the word, dazed with astonishment.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
"Yes, Mrs. Herbert of Paul Street, Helen Vaughan of earlier adventures unknown to me. You had reason to recognize the expression of her face; when you go home look at the face in Meyrick's book of horrors, and you will know the sources of your recollection."</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
"And you have proof of this?"</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
"Yes, the best of proof; I have seen Mrs. Beaumont, or shall we say Mrs. Herbert?"</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
"Where did you see her?"</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
"Hardly in a place where you would expect to see a lady who lives in Ashley Street, Piccadilly. I saw her entering a house in one of the meanest and most disreputable streets in Soho. In fact, I had made an appointment, though not with her, and she was precise to both time and place."</div>
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"All this seems very wonderful, but I cannot call it incredible. You must remember, Villiers, that I have seen this woman, in the ordinary adventure of London society, talking and laughing, and sipping her coffee in a commonplace drawing-room with commonplace people. But you know what you are saying."</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
"I do; I have not allowed myself to be led by surmises or fancies. It was with no thought of finding Helen Vaughan that I searched for Mrs. Beaumont in the dark waters of the life of London, but such has been the issue."</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
"You must have been in strange places, Villiers."</div>
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"Yes, I have been in very strange places. It would have been useless, you know, to go to Ashley Street, and ask Mrs. Beaumont to give me a short sketch of her previous history. No; assuming, as I had to assume, that her record was not of the cleanest, it would be pretty certain that at some previous time she must have moved in circles not quite so refined as her present ones. If you see mud at the top of a stream, you may be sure that it was once at the bottom. I went to the bottom. I have always been fond of diving into Queer Street for my amusement, and I found my knowledge of that locality and its inhabitants very useful. It is, perhaps, needless to say that my friends had never heard the name of Beaumont, and as I had never seen the lady, and was quite unable to describe her, I had to set to work in an indirect way. The people there know me; I have been able to do some of them a service now and again, so they made no difficulty about giving their information; they were aware I had no communication direct or indirect with Scotland Yard. I had to cast out a good many lines, though, before I got what I wanted, and when I landed the fish I did not for a moment suppose it was my fish. But I listened to what I was told out of a constitutional liking for useless information, and I found myself in possession of a very curious story, though, as I imagined, not the story I was looking for. It was to this effect. Some five or six years ago, a woman named Raymond suddenly made her appearance in the neighbourhood to which I am referring. She was described to me as being quite young, probably not more than seventeen or eighteen, very handsome, and looking as if she came from the country. I should be wrong in saying that she found her level in going to this particular quarter, or associating with these people, for from what I was told, I should think the worst den in London far too good for her. The person from whom I got my information, as you may suppose, no great Puritan, shuddered and grew sick in telling me of the nameless infamies which were laid to her charge. After living there for a year, or perhaps a little more, she disappeared as suddenly as she came, and they saw nothing of her till about the time of the Paul Street case. At first she came to her old haunts only occasionally, then more frequently, and finally took up her abode there as before, and remained for six or eight months. It's of no use my going into details as to the life that woman led; if you want particulars you can look at Meyrick's legacy. Those designs were not drawn from his imagination. She again disappeared, and the people of the place saw nothing of her till a few months ago. My informant told me that she had taken some rooms in a house which he pointed out, and these rooms she was in the habit of visiting two or three times a week and always at ten in the morning. I was led to expect that one of these visits would be paid on a certain day about a week ago, and I accordingly managed to be on the look-out in company with my cicerone at a quarter to ten, and the hour and the lady came with equal punctuality. My friend and I were standing under an archway, a little way back from the street, but she saw us, and gave me a glance that I shall be long in forgetting. That look was quite enough for me; I knew Miss Raymond to be Mrs. Herbert; as for Mrs. Beaumont she had quite gone out of my head. She went into the house, and I watched it till four o'clock, when she came out, and then I followed her. It was a long chase, and I had to be very careful to keep a long way in the background, and yet not lose sight of the woman. She took me down to the Strand, and then to Westminster, and then up St. James's Street, and along Piccadilly. I felt queerish when I saw her turn up Ashley Street; the thought that Mrs. Herbert was Mrs. Beaumont came into my mind, but it seemed too impossible to be true. I waited at the corner, keeping my eye on her all the time, and I took particular care to note the house at which she stopped. It was the house with the gay curtains, the home of flowers, the house out of which Crashaw came the night he hanged himself in his garden. I was just going away with my discovery, when I saw an empty carriage come round and draw up in front of the house, and I came to the conclusion that Mrs. Herbert was going out for a drive, and I was right. There, as it happened, I met a man I know, and we stood talking together a little distance from the carriage-way, to which I had my back. We had not been there for ten minutes when my friend took off his hat, and I glanced round and saw the lady I had been following all day. 'Who is that?' I said, and his answer was 'Mrs. Beaumont; lives in Ashley Street.' Of course there could be no doubt after that. I don't know whether she saw me, but I don't think she did. I went home at once, and, on consideration, I thought that I had a sufficiently good case with which to go to Clarke."</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
"Why to Clarke?"</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
"Because I am sure that Clarke is in possession of facts about this woman, facts of which I know nothing."</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
"Well, what then?"</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
Mr. Villiers leaned back in his chair and looked reflectively at Austin for a moment before he answered:</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
"My idea was that Clarke and I should call on Mrs. Beaumont."</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
"You would never go into such a house as that? No, no, Villiers, you cannot do it. Besides, consider; what result..."</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
"I will tell you soon. But I was going to say that my information does not end here; it has been completed in an extraordinary manner.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
"Look at this neat little packet of manuscript; it is paginated, you see, and I have indulged in the civil coquetry of a ribbon of red tape. It has almost a legal air, hasn't it? Run your eye over it, Austin. It is an account of the entertainment Mrs. Beaumont provided for her choicer guests. The man who wrote this escaped with his life, but I do not think he will live many years. The doctors tell him he must have sustained some severe shock to the nerves."</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
Austin took the manuscript, but never read it. Opening the neat pages at haphazard his eye was caught by a word and a phrase that followed it; and, sick at heart, with white lips and a cold sweat pouring like water from his temples, he flung the paper down.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
"Take it away, Villiers, never speak of this again. Are you made of stone, man? Why, the dread and horror of death itself, the thoughts of the man who stands in the keen morning air on the black platform, bound, the bell tolling in his ears, and waits for the harsh rattle of the bolt, are as nothing compared to this. I will not read it; I should never sleep again."</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
"Very good. I can fancy what you saw. Yes; it is horrible enough; but after all, it is an old story, an old mystery played in our day, and in dim London streets instead of amidst the vineyards and the olive gardens. We know what happened to those who chanced to meet the Great God Pan, and those who are wise know that all symbols are symbols of something, not of nothing. It was, indeed, an exquisite symbol beneath which men long ago veiled their knowledge of the most awful, most secret forces which lie at the heart of all things; forces before which the souls of men must wither and die and blacken, as their bodies blacken under the electric current. Such forces cannot be named, cannot be spoken, cannot be imagined except under a veil and a symbol, a symbol to the most of us appearing a quaint, poetic fancy, to some a foolish tale. But you and I, at all events, have known something of the terror that may dwell in the secret place of life, manifested under human flesh; that which is without form taking to itself a form. Oh, Austin, how can it be? How is it that the very sunlight does not turn to blackness before this thing, the hard earth melt and boil beneath such a burden?"</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
Villiers was pacing up and down the room, and the beads of sweat stood out on his forehead. Austin sat silent for a while, but Villiers saw him make a sign upon his breast.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
"I say again, Villiers, you will surely never enter such a house as that? You would never pass out alive."</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
"Yes, Austin, I shall go out alive—I, and Clarke with me."</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; text-indent: 4%;">
"What do you mean? You cannot, you would not dare..."</div>
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"Wait a moment. The air was very pleasant and fresh this morning; there was a breeze blowing, even through this dull street, and I thought I would take a walk. Piccadilly stretched before me a clear, bright vista, and the sun flashed on the carriages and on the quivering leaves in the park. It was a joyous morning, and men and women looked at the sky and smiled as they went about their work or their pleasure, and the wind blew as blithely as upon the meadows and the scented gorse. But somehow or other I got out of the bustle and the gaiety, and found myself walking slowly along a quiet, dull street, where there seemed to be no sunshine and no air, and where the few foot-passengers loitered as they walked, and hung indecisively about corners and archways. I walked along, hardly knowing where I was going or what I did there, but feeling impelled, as one sometimes is, to explore still further, with a vague idea of reaching some unknown goal. Thus I forged up the street, noting the small traffic of the milk-shop, and wondering at the incongruous medley of penny pipes, black tobacco, sweets, newspapers, and comic songs which here and there jostled one another in the short compass of a single window. I think it was a cold shudder that suddenly passed through me that first told me that I had found what I wanted. I looked up from the pavement and stopped before a dusty shop, above which the lettering had faded, where the red bricks of two hundred years ago had grimed to black; where the windows had gathered to themselves the dust of winters innumerable. I saw what I required; but I think it was five minutes before I had steadied myself and could walk in and ask for it in a cool voice and with a calm face. I think there must even then have been a tremor in my words, for the old man who came out of the back parlour, and fumbled slowly amongst his goods, looked oddly at me as he tied the parcel. I paid what he asked, and stood leaning by the counter, with a strange reluctance to take up my goods and go. I asked about the business, and learnt that trade was bad and the profits cut down sadly; but then the street was not what it was before traffic had been diverted, but that was done forty years ago, 'just before my father died,' he said. I got away at last, and walked along sharply; it was a dismal street indeed, and I was glad to return to the bustle and the noise. Would you like to see my purchase?"</div>
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Austin said nothing, but nodded his head slightly; he still looked white and sick. Villiers pulled out a drawer in the bamboo table, and showed Austin a long coil of cord, hard and new; and at one end was a running noose.</div>
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"It is the best hempen cord," said Villiers, "just as it used to be made for the old trade, the man told me. Not an inch of jute from end to end."</div>
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Austin set his teeth hard, and stared at Villiers, growing whiter as he looked.</div>
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"You would not do it," he murmured at last. "You would not have blood on your hands. My God!" he exclaimed, with sudden vehemence, "you cannot mean this, Villiers, that you will make yourself a hangman?"</div>
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"No. I shall offer a choice, and leave Helen Vaughan alone with this cord in a locked room for fifteen minutes. If when we go in it is not done, I shall call the nearest policeman. That is all."</div>
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"I must go now. I cannot stay here any longer; I cannot bear this. Good-night."</div>
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"Good-night, Austin."</div>
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The door shut, but in a moment it was open again, and Austin stood, white and ghastly, in the entrance.</div>
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"I was forgetting," he said, "that I too have something to tell. I have received a letter from Dr. Harding of Buenos Ayres. He says that he attended Meyrick for three weeks before his death."</div>
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"And does he say what carried him off in the prime of life? It was not fever?"</div>
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"No, it was not fever. According to the doctor, it was an utter collapse of the whole system, probably caused by some severe shock. But he states that the patient would tell him nothing, and that he was consequently at some disadvantage in treating the case."</div>
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"Is there anything more?"</div>
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"Yes. Dr. Harding ends his letter by saying: 'I think this is all the information I can give you about your poor friend. He had not been long in Buenos Ayres, and knew scarcely any one, with the exception of a person who did not bear the best of characters, and has since left—a Mrs. Vaughan.'"</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="chap08" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;"></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; text-align: justify;"></span><br />
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VIII</h3>
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THE FRAGMENTS</h3>
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[Amongst the papers of the well-known physician, Dr. Robert Matheson, of Ashley Street, Piccadilly, who died suddenly, of apoplectic seizure, at the beginning of 1892, a leaf of manuscript paper was found, covered with pencil jottings. These notes were in Latin, much abbreviated, and had evidently been made in great haste. The MS. was only deciphered with difficulty, and some words have up to the present time evaded all the efforts of the expert employed. The date, "XXV Jul. 1888," is written on the right-hand corner of the MS. The following is a translation of Dr. Matheson's manuscript.]</div>
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"Whether science would benefit by these brief notes if they could be published, I do not know, but rather doubt. But certainly I shall never take the responsibility of publishing or divulging one word of what is here written, not only on account of my oath given freely to those two persons who were present, but also because the details are too abominable. It is probably that, upon mature consideration, and after weighting the good and evil, I shall one day destroy this paper, or at least leave it under seal to my friend D., trusting in his discretion, to use it or to burn it, as he may think fit.</div>
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"As was befitting, I did all that my knowledge suggested to make sure that I was suffering under no delusion. At first astounded, I could hardly think, but in a minute's time I was sure that my pulse was steady and regular, and that I was in my real and true senses. I then fixed my eyes quietly on what was before me.</div>
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"Though horror and revolting nausea rose up within me, and an odour of corruption choked my breath, I remained firm. I was then privileged or accursed, I dare not say which, to see that which was on the bed, lying there black like ink, transformed before my eyes. The skin, and the flesh, and the muscles, and the bones, and the firm structure of the human body that I had thought to be unchangeable, and permanent as adamant, began to melt and dissolve.</div>
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"I know that the body may be separated into its elements by external agencies, but I should have refused to believe what I saw. For here there was some internal force, of which I knew nothing, that caused dissolution and change.</div>
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"Here too was all the work by which man had been made repeated before my eyes. I saw the form waver from sex to sex, dividing itself from itself, and then again reunited. Then I saw the body descend to the beasts whence it ascended, and that which was on the heights go down to the depths, even to the abyss of all being. The principle of life, which makes organism, always remained, while the outward form changed.</div>
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"The light within the room had turned to blackness, not the darkness of night, in which objects are seen dimly, for I could see clearly and without difficulty. But it was the negation of light; objects were presented to my eyes, if I may say so, without any medium, in such a manner that if there had been a prism in the room I should have seen no colours represented in it.</div>
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"I watched, and at last I saw nothing but a substance as jelly. Then the ladder was ascended again... [here the MS. is illegible] ...for one instance I saw a Form, shaped in dimness before me, which I will not farther describe. But the symbol of this form may be seen in ancient sculptures, and in paintings which survived beneath the lava, too foul to be spoken of... as a horrible and unspeakable shape, neither man nor beast, was changed into human form, there came finally death.</div>
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"I who saw all this, not without great horror and loathing of soul, here write my name, declaring all that I have set on this paper to be true.</div>
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"ROBERT MATHESON, Med. Dr."</div>
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...Such, Raymond, is the story of what I know and what I have seen. The burden of it was too heavy for me to bear alone, and yet I could tell it to none but you. Villiers, who was with me at the last, knows nothing of that awful secret of the wood, of how what we both saw die, lay upon the smooth, sweet turf amidst the summer flowers, half in sun and half in shadow, and holding the girl Rachel's hand, called and summoned those companions, and shaped in solid form, upon the earth we tread upon, the horror which we can but hint at, which we can only name under a figure. I would not tell Villiers of this, nor of that resemblance, which struck me as with a blow upon my heart, when I saw the portrait, which filled the cup of terror at the end. What this can mean I dare not guess. I know that what I saw perish was not Mary, and yet in the last agony Mary's eyes looked into mine. Whether there can be any one who can show the last link in this chain of awful mystery, I do not know, but if there be any one who can do this, you, Raymond, are the man. And if you know the secret, it rests with you to tell it or not, as you please.</div>
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I am writing this letter to you immediately on my getting back to town. I have been in the country for the last few days; perhaps you may be able to guess in which part. While the horror and wonder of London was at its height—for "Mrs. Beaumont," as I have told you, was well known in society—I wrote to my friend Dr. Phillips, giving some brief outline, or rather hint, of what happened, and asking him to tell me the name of the village where the events he had related to me occurred. He gave me the name, as he said with the less hesitation, because Rachel's father and mother were dead, and the rest of the family had gone to a relative in the State of Washington six months before. The parents, he said, had undoubtedly died of grief and horror caused by the terrible death of their daughter, and by what had gone before that death. On the evening of the day which I received Phillips' letter I was at Caermaen, and standing beneath the mouldering Roman walls, white with the winters of seventeen hundred years, I looked over the meadow where once had stood the older temple of the "God of the Deeps," and saw a house gleaming in the sunlight. It was the house where Helen had lived. I stayed at Caermaen for several days. The people of the place, I found, knew little and had guessed less. Those whom I spoke to on the matter seemed surprised that an antiquarian (as I professed myself to be) should trouble about a village tragedy, of which they gave a very commonplace version, and, as you may imagine, I told nothing of what I knew. Most of my time was spent in the great wood that rises just above the village and climbs the hillside, and goes down to the river in the valley; such another long lovely valley, Raymond, as that on which we looked one summer night, walking to and fro before your house. For many an hour I strayed through the maze of the forest, turning now to right and now to left, pacing slowly down long alleys of undergrowth, shadowy and chill, even under the midday sun, and halting beneath great oaks; lying on the short turf of a clearing where the faint sweet scent of wild roses came to me on the wind and mixed with the heavy perfume of the elder, whose mingled odour is like the odour of the room of the dead, a vapour of incense and corruption. I stood at the edges of the wood, gazing at all the pomp and procession of the foxgloves towering amidst the bracken and shining red in the broad sunshine, and beyond them into deep thickets of close undergrowth where springs boil up from the rock and nourish the water-weeds, dank and evil. But in all my wanderings I avoided one part of the wood; it was not till yesterday that I climbed to the summit of the hill, and stood upon the ancient Roman road that threads the highest ridge of the wood. Here they had walked, Helen and Rachel, along this quiet causeway, upon the pavement of green turf, shut in on either side by high banks of red earth, and tall hedges of shining beech, and here I followed in their steps, looking out, now and again, through partings in the boughs, and seeing on one side the sweep of the wood stretching far to right and left, and sinking into the broad level, and beyond, the yellow sea, and the land over the sea. On the other side was the valley and the river and hill following hill as wave on wave, and wood and meadow, and cornfield, and white houses gleaming, and a great wall of mountain, and far blue peaks in the north. And so at least I came to the place. The track went up a gentle slope, and widened out into an open space with a wall of thick undergrowth around it, and then, narrowing again, passed on into the distance and the faint blue mist of summer heat. And into this pleasant summer glade Rachel passed a girl, and left it, who shall say what? I did not stay long there.</div>
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In a small town near Caermaen there is a museum, containing for the most part Roman remains which have been found in the neighbourhood at various times. On the day after my arrival in Caermaen I walked over to the town in question, and took the opportunity of inspecting the museum. After I had seen most of the sculptured stones, the coffins, rings, coins, and fragments of tessellated pavement which the place contains, I was shown a small square pillar of white stone, which had been recently discovered in the wood of which I have been speaking, and, as I found on inquiry, in that open space where the Roman road broadens out. On one side of the pillar was an inscription, of which I took a note. Some of the letters have been defaced, but I do not think there can be any doubt as to those which I supply. The inscription is as follows:</div>
<pre style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small; text-align: justify;"> DEVOMNODENT<i>i</i>
FLA<i>v</i>IVSSENILISPOSSV<i>it</i>
PROPTERNVP_tia
<i>qua</i>SVIDITSVBVMB<i>ra</i>
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"To the great god Nodens (the god of the Great Deep or Abyss) Flavius Senilis has erected this pillar on account of the marriage which he saw beneath the shade."</div>
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The custodian of the museum informed me that local antiquaries were much puzzled, not by the inscription, or by any difficulty in translating it, but as to the circumstance or rite to which allusion is made.</div>
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...And now, my dear Clarke, as to what you tell me about Helen Vaughan, whom you say you saw die under circumstances of the utmost and almost incredible horror. I was interested in your account, but a good deal, nay all, of what you told me I knew already. I can understand the strange likeness you remarked in both the portrait and in the actual face; you have seen Helen's mother. You remember that still summer night so many years ago, when I talked to you of the world beyond the shadows, and of the god Pan. You remember Mary. She was the mother of Helen Vaughan, who was born nine months after that night.</div>
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Mary never recovered her reason. She lay, as you saw her, all the while upon her bed, and a few days after the child was born she died. I fancy that just at the last she knew me; I was standing by the bed, and the old look came into her eyes for a second, and then she shuddered and groaned and died. It was an ill work I did that night when you were present; I broke open the door of the house of life, without knowing or caring what might pass forth or enter in. I recollect your telling me at the time, sharply enough, and rightly too, in one sense, that I had ruined the reason of a human being by a foolish experiment, based on an absurd theory. You did well to blame me, but my theory was not all absurdity. What I said Mary would see she saw, but I forgot that no human eyes can look on such a sight with impunity. And I forgot, as I have just said, that when the house of life is thus thrown open, there may enter in that for which we have no name, and human flesh may become the veil of a horror one dare not express. I played with energies which I did not understand, you have seen the ending of it. Helen Vaughan did well to bind the cord about her neck and die, though the death was horrible. The blackened face, the hideous form upon the bed, changing and melting before your eyes from woman to man, from man to beast, and from beast to worse than beast, all the strange horror that you witness, surprises me but little. What you say the doctor whom you sent for saw and shuddered at I noticed long ago; I knew what I had done the moment the child was born, and when it was scarcely five years old I surprised it, not once or twice but several times with a playmate, you may guess of what kind. It was for me a constant, an incarnate horror, and after a few years I felt I could bear it no more, and I sent Helen Vaughan away. You know now what frightened the boy in the wood. The rest of the strange story, and all else that you tell me, as discovered by your friend, I have contrived to learn from time to time, almost to the last chapter. And now Helen is with her companions...</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8879282668683580477.post-83654798465299638942016-02-20T11:24:00.000+00:002016-03-07T19:31:29.498+00:00'King's Drift' by Michael Whitehouse<div style="text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Watch the video above, <a href="http://traffic.libsyn.com/ghastlytales/Kings_Drift.mp3">listen to the free MP3</a> or read the story below...</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">It was an overcast and dull Saturday afternoon when I was attacked. I was twelve years old at the time and despite the threat of rain, we took to the streets as my friends usually did at the weekends. The neighbourhood always seemed safe and, looking back, it was a wonderful place to grow up; living in the vibrant shadow of the city centre (only a 15 minute train journey away) while the parks and quiet streets of our suburb, on the outskirts of that urban madness, provided plenty of places to explore.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">That day, it was my two friends Andy and Stewart who had knocked on my door, asking if I wanted to head out for a while on our bikes. Both lived in the same street as me and for that reason we had been as thick as thieves since we were toddlers. We took to the pavements at first in plain sight of our parents, before turning a corner and showing off to one another on the roads, pulling wheelies and unimpressive bunny hops as most kids that age often do - I say most kids, I was pretty timid at the time, and while I loved hanging out with my friends, I never had the same sense of abandonment or recklessness which they thrived on. They would quite happily bomb down the highest, steepest hills we knew of without a care in the world while I would stutter behind, scuffing my feet on the ground to slow my own descent.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">After buying some sweets, chocolate, and a packet of trading cards complete with cheap and brittle bubble gum from Jackie’s shop, we intended to head to King’s Drift; one of our favourite places to ride about on our bikes. But just as we exited the shop, Stewart noticed someone from his class. His name was Ricky, and he had moved to our school the year previous. We didn’t know him all that well, but we had hung out with him once or twice before. Stewart walked over and struck up a conversation with him for a few minutes before coming back over and picking up his bike. We turned to leave but, there was something that bothered me about that boy Ricky. He seemed, lost somehow. Stewart said that he was waiting on his mum coming out of a shop, but I could see that look in his eyes, something which I’m sure I had worn many times before myself. It simply said: “I want to hang around with you guys”. We all got on our bikes and, just as we left I shouted over to him.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Ricky, do you know King’s Drift?”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Yeah, I do.” He replied.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">“We’ll be up there for the next few hours. Why don’t you get your bike and come meet us after you’ve helped your mum?”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Ricky seemed pleased to be asked and while he wasn’t certain how long he would be, he did say that he’d try and meet up with us at some point.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">We said goodbye carrying our provisions from the shop in stuffed pockets and cycled off towards our destination. King’s Drift was where we were heading, and I couldn’t wait to get there. It was perfect. The street was long and straight, the road surface was uncommonly smooth, and it ended in a small circular cul-de-sac which resulted in little traffic if any to speak of. We could ride up and down all day without being disturbed, except on the few occasions that one of the grown-ups who lived there would get tired of us hanging around or sneaking into their gardens, playing tig or one man hunt.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">But for the most part, that long secluded street was a fantastic place to get away from rules and complaining adults, yet only ten minutes away from our homes. We weren’t a gang or anything close to it, but that place was ours and while many of the other kids in the neighbourhood hung around a park or at the shops, we quite happily clung on to that perfect stretch of quiet tarmac which no one could take away from us.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Tearing up and down the road, cycling as fast as we could, Andy enjoyed showing off, pedalling quickly while putting both hands behind his head as if relaxing on a sun lounger. Stewart was no slouch himself and would dart about off kerbs and back on again, occasionally mimicking a character from an Australian soap opera that we often laughed at. The clouds knitted together tightly above, brooding menacingly, but the afternoon was not over yet as we continued to play and enjoy our patch.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">After receiving an earful from one woman who just hated us sitting on her garden wall - especially when my other friend Stewart pushed Andy over it into her garden as a joke during her red-faced, ranting rage -, we finally traipsed along the street with our bikes by our side, cursing the woman under our breaths. A loud crash bellowed from the clouds above, and the hazed smell of ozone climbed up through the air. When I was a kid thunder storms always held a real fascination for me, and to this day they still do, but no matter how much I understand why it happens, when the sky opens up and a torrid torrential downpour threatens to drown all around, it still seems surreal to me, almost unearthly.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The rain streamed down in thick sheets and within a minute a thin layer of water began to flow along the street into the drains on either side. The complaining woman ran in doors quickly, her anger at us soon replaced by a desire to avoid being drenched. The noise of millions of rain drops smashing on the parked cars and concrete below became deafening as we were instantly soaked to the bone. It was clear that the day was over, and while Andy seemed keen to stay and pull a variety of skidding stunts in the water, Stewart just laughed, challenging us both to a race home. Off he sped at a rate I could never hope to equal, the water spraying out from under his wheels. Andy followed instantly, damned sure that he wouldn’t be beaten.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The crescendo of thumping water was now deafening and as both my friends pulled away into the distance, I clumsily climbed aboard my bike and pedalled as fast as I could. With each panting breath the rain fell harder until it streamed at such a rate down my face that I could barely see ahead. I shivered in the increasing cold and as I continued on I could no longer tell if my friends were near or far.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I cannot explain the feeling I had at that moment, perhaps it is hindsight which has bound it to the memory, but there in that horrid downpour, I felt isolated. Everyone with any sense would have ran for cover and locked themselves away happily inside their houses; and at the speed my friends had darted away at, I was sure by now they must have left the street, or have reached its end at least. An intense feeling of fear drove me on, because for me King’s Drift may have appeared remote, isolated in the blinding rain, but it did not feel empty.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">In my panic my wild pedalling shook the bike from side to side, and just as I lifted one hand from the handlebars to wipe the rain from my eyes, something walked out from between two parked cars right in front of me. I swerved, squeezed the breaks, and as the bike screeched to a halt I was thrown forward, tumbling onto the ground, smashing my face and jaw on to the road surface in the process.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The rain poured in to my mouth carrying with it the metallic taste of my own blood. I let out a cry as I reached up with my tongue to feel nothing but exposed gum and broken shards of teeth that were surely sprayed across the ground. My injuries left me confused and disorientated, but as I screamed for my friends, it became clear that no one could hear me over the immense roar of the rain.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Then, the sky darkened, and that strange alarming sensation that I was not alone, proved correct. Someone was standing over me. A combination of tears, blood, and rain stung my eyes and while I couldn’t make out his face, I could tell it was a man. He was broad and stocky wearing denims and a dark brown coat, and while he wasn’t exceptionally tall his rain battered frame gave the impression of immense strength.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Despite the pain, despite the shock at losing teeth and cracking my head open, every fibre of my being told me to run, to get away. But I couldn’t. With the first movement of my leg, the man pressed his foot down on top of my knee with such force that bursts of excruciating pain shot up through my body; my screams of both agony and terror drowned out by the still-falling torrential rain. Why was he doing this to me? A grown man? He leaned over and grabbed my bleeding head by the hair, yanking forcefully upwards. No one can know the feeling of an adult exerting their full strength upon a child, unless you have been through it. The fear, the utter helplessness, the feeling of resentment and betrayal at a person who should protect but instead harms and hurts. No matter how much I struggled, no matter how much I flailed, my puny twelve year old body could provide no amount of strength to free me from his foul, overpowering grip.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">But a bike thrown as hard as possible by two dear friends square at his face was more than enough to make him stumble backwards, causing him to slip in the rain and batter his back and body against the solid street surface. As the man staggered to his feet once more, Andy and Stewart grabbed me by the arms and forced me to run as fast as I have ever done.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">We dared not look back for fear of our pursuer being close, we panted and heaved, and as the adrenaline surged through my veins, I forgot my injuries for a moment, and fled as quickly as any child ever has. As we reached the end of King’s Drift, Andy and Stewart ran round the corner without looking back. But not me. For curiosity has always been my sin, and perhaps my punishment. The rain calmed at that moment, easing off to nothing but the most subtle of droplets, and as I squinted through blood and tears, I saw at the end of the road the brutal figure of the man who had attacked me, disappearing forever out of sight, with the bloodied motionless body of poor Ricky over his shoulder.</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444893451907188044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8879282668683580477.post-18188479462036731432016-02-09T22:14:00.000+00:002016-02-09T22:14:01.120+00:00'The Tomb' by H. P. Lovecraft<div style="text-align: center;">
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Watch the Video Above | <a href="http://traffic.libsyn.com/ghastlytales/The_Tomb.mp3">Listen to the MP3</a> | Or Read the Story Below</div>
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“Sedibus ut saltem placidis in morte quiescam.”</div>
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—Virgil.</div>
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In relating the circumstances which have led to my confinement within this refuge for the demented, I am aware that my present position will create a natural doubt of the authenticity of my narrative. It is an unfortunate fact that the bulk of humanity is too limited in its mental vision to weigh with patience and intelligence those isolated phenomena, seen and felt only by a psychologically sensitive few, which lie outside its common experience. Men of broader intellect know that there is no sharp distinction betwixt the real and the unreal; that all things appear as they do only by virtue of the delicate individual physical and mental media through which we are made conscious of them; but the prosaic materialism of the majority condemns as madness the flashes of super-sight which penetrate the common veil of obvious empiricism.<br />
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My name is Jervas Dudley, and from earliest childhood I have been a dreamer and a visionary. Wealthy beyond the necessity of a commercial life, and temperamentally unfitted for the formal studies and social recreations of my acquaintances, I have dwelt ever in realms apart from the visible world; spending my youth and adolescence in ancient and little-known books, and in roaming the fields and groves of the region near my ancestral home. I do not think that what I read in these books or saw in these fields and groves was exactly what other boys read and saw there; but of this I must say little, since detailed speech would but confirm those cruel slanders upon my intellect which I sometimes overhear from the whispers of the stealthy attendants around me. It is sufficient for me to relate events without analysing causes.<br />
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I have said that I dwelt apart from the visible world, but I have not said that I dwelt alone. This no human creature may do; for lacking the fellowship of the living, he inevitably draws upon the companionship of things that are not, or are no longer, living. Close by my home there lies a singular wooded hollow, in whose twilight deeps I spent most of my time; reading, thinking, and dreaming. Down its moss-covered slopes my first steps of infancy were taken, and around its grotesquely gnarled oak trees my first fancies of boyhood were woven. Well did I come to know the presiding dryads of those trees, and often have I watched their wild dances in the struggling beams of a waning moon—but of these things I must not now speak. I will tell only of the lone tomb in the darkest of the hillside thickets; the deserted tomb of the Hydes, an old and exalted family whose last direct descendant had been laid within its black recesses many decades before my birth.<br />
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The vault to which I refer is of ancient granite, weathered and discoloured by the mists and dampness of generations. Excavated back into the hillside, the structure is visible only at the entrance. The door, a ponderous and forbidding slab of stone, hangs upon rusted iron hinges, and is fastened ajar in a queerly sinister way by means of heavy iron chains and padlocks, according to a gruesome fashion of half a century ago. The abode of the race whose scions are here inurned had once crowned the declivity which holds the tomb, but had long since fallen victim to the flames which sprang up from a disastrous stroke of lightning. Of the midnight storm which destroyed this gloomy mansion, the older inhabitants of the region sometimes speak in hushed and uneasy voices; alluding to what they call “divine wrath” in a manner that in later years vaguely increased the always strong fascination which I felt for the forest-darkened sepulchre. One man only had perished in the fire. When the last of the Hydes was buried in this place of shade and stillness, the sad urnful of ashes had come from a distant land; to which the family had repaired when the mansion burned down. No one remains to lay flowers before the granite portal, and few care to brave the depressing shadows which seem to linger strangely about the water-worn stones.<br />
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I shall never forget the afternoon when first I stumbled upon the half-hidden house of death. It was in mid-summer, when the alchemy of Nature transmutes the sylvan landscape to one vivid and almost homogeneous mass of green; when the senses are well-nigh intoxicated with the surging seas of moist verdure and the subtly indefinable odours of the soil and the vegetation. In such surroundings the mind loses its perspective; time and space become trivial and unreal, and echoes of a forgotten prehistoric past beat insistently upon the enthralled consciousness. All day I had been wandering through the mystic groves of the hollow; thinking thoughts I need not discuss, and conversing with things I need not name. In years a child of ten, I had seen and heard many wonders unknown to the throng; and was oddly aged in certain respects. When, upon forcing my way between two savage clumps of briers, I suddenly encountered the entrance of the vault, I had no knowledge of what I had discovered. The dark blocks of granite, the door so curiously ajar, and the funereal carvings above the arch, aroused in me no associations of mournful or terrible character. Of graves and tombs I knew and imagined much, but had on account of my peculiar temperament been kept from all personal contact with churchyards and cemeteries. The strange stone house on the woodland slope was to me only a source of interest and speculation; and its cold, damp interior, into which I vainly peered through the aperture so tantalisingly left, contained for me no hint of death or decay. But in that instant of curiosity was born the madly unreasoning desire which has brought me to this hell of confinement. Spurred on by a voice which must have come from the hideous soul of the forest, I resolved to enter the beckoning gloom in spite of the ponderous chains which barred my passage. In the waning light of day I alternately rattled the rusty impediments with a view to throwing wide the stone door, and essayed to squeeze my slight form through the space already provided; but neither plan met with success. At first curious, I was now frantic; and when in the thickening twilight I returned to my home, I had sworn to the hundred gods of the grove that at any cost I would some day force an entrance to the black, chilly depths that seemed calling out to me. The physician with the iron-grey beard who comes each day to my room once told a visitor that this decision marked the beginning of a pitiful monomania; but I will leave final judgment to my readers when they shall have learnt all.<br />
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The months following my discovery were spent in futile attempts to force the complicated padlock of the slightly open vault, and in carefully guarded inquiries regarding the nature and history of the structure. With the traditionally receptive ears of the small boy, I learned much; though an habitual secretiveness caused me to tell no one of my information or my resolve. It is perhaps worth mentioning that I was not at all surprised or terrified on learning of the nature of the vault. My rather original ideas regarding life and death had caused me to associate the cold clay with the breathing body in a vague fashion; and I felt that the great and sinister family of the burned-down mansion was in some way represented within the stone space I sought to explore. Mumbled tales of the weird rites and godless revels of bygone years in the ancient hall gave to me a new and potent interest in the tomb, before whose door I would sit for hours at a time each day. Once I thrust a candle within the nearly closed entrance, but could see nothing save a flight of damp stone steps leading downward. The odour of the place repelled yet bewitched me. I felt I had known it before, in a past remote beyond all recollection; beyond even my tenancy of the body I now possess.<br />
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The year after I first beheld the tomb, I stumbled upon a worm-eaten translation of Plutarch’s Lives in the book-filled attic of my home. Reading the life of Theseus, I was much impressed by that passage telling of the great stone beneath which the boyish hero was to find his tokens of destiny whenever he should become old enough to lift its enormous weight. This legend had the effect of dispelling my keenest impatience to enter the vault, for it made me feel that the time was not yet ripe. Later, I told myself, I should grow to a strength and ingenuity which might enable me to unfasten the heavily chained door with ease; but until then I would do better by conforming to what seemed the will of Fate.<br />
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Accordingly my watches by the dank portal became less persistent, and much of my time was spent in other though equally strange pursuits. I would sometimes rise very quietly in the night, stealing out to walk in those churchyards and places of burial from which I had been kept by my parents. What I did there I may not say, for I am not now sure of the reality of certain things; but I know that on the day after such a nocturnal ramble I would often astonish those about me with my knowledge of topics almost forgotten for many generations. It was after a night like this that I shocked the community with a queer conceit about the burial of the rich and celebrated Squire Brewster, a maker of local history who was interred in 1711, and whose slate headstone, bearing a graven skull and crossbones, was slowly crumbling to powder. In a moment of childish imagination I vowed not only that the undertaker, Goodman Simpson, had stolen the silver-buckled shoes, silken hose, and satin small-clothes of the deceased before burial; but that the Squire himself, not fully inanimate, had turned twice in his mound-covered coffin on the day after interment.<br />
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But the idea of entering the tomb never left my thoughts; being indeed stimulated by the unexpected genealogical discovery that my own maternal ancestry possessed at least a slight link with the supposedly extinct family of the Hydes. Last of my paternal race, I was likewise the last of this older and more mysterious line. I began to feel that the tomb was mine, and to look forward with hot eagerness to the time when I might pass within that stone door and down those slimy stone steps in the dark. I now formed the habit of listening very intently at the slightly open portal, choosing my favourite hours of midnight stillness for the odd vigil. By the time I came of age, I had made a small clearing in the thicket before the mould-stained facade of the hillside, allowing the surrounding vegetation to encircle and overhang the space like the walls and roof of a sylvan bower. This bower was my temple, the fastened door my shrine, and here I would lie outstretched on the mossy ground, thinking strange thoughts and dreaming strange dreams.<br />
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The night of the first revelation was a sultry one. I must have fallen asleep from fatigue, for it was with a distinct sense of awakening that I heard the voices. Of those tones and accents I hesitate to speak; of their quality I will not speak; but I may say that they presented certain uncanny differences in vocabulary, pronunciation, and mode of utterance. Every shade of New England dialect, from the uncouth syllables of the Puritan colonists to the precise rhetoric of fifty years ago, seemed represented in that shadowy colloquy, though it was only later that I noticed the fact. At the time, indeed, my attention was distracted from this matter by another phenomenon; a phenomenon so fleeting that I could not take oath upon its reality. I barely fancied that as I awoke, a light had been hurriedly extinguished within the sunken sepulchre. I do not think I was either astounded or panic-stricken, but I know that I was greatly and permanently changed that night. Upon returning home I went with much directness to a rotting chest in the attic, wherein I found the key which next day unlocked with ease the barrier I had so long stormed in vain.<br />
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It was in the soft glow of late afternoon that I first entered the vault on the abandoned slope. A spell was upon me, and my heart leaped with an exultation I can but ill describe. As I closed the door behind me and descended the dripping steps by the light of my lone candle, I seemed to know the way; and though the candle sputtered with the stifling reek of the place, I felt singularly at home in the musty, charnel-house air. Looking about me, I beheld many marble slabs bearing coffins, or the remains of coffins. Some of these were sealed and intact, but others had nearly vanished, leaving the silver handles and plates isolated amidst certain curious heaps of whitish dust. Upon one plate I read the name of Sir Geoffrey Hyde, who had come from Sussex in 1640 and died here a few years later. In a conspicuous alcove was one fairly well-preserved and untenanted casket, adorned with a single name which brought to me both a smile and a shudder. An odd impulse caused me to climb upon the broad slab, extinguish my candle, and lie down within the vacant box.<br />
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In the grey light of dawn I staggered from the vault and locked the chain of the door behind me. I was no longer a young man, though but twenty-one winters had chilled my bodily frame. Early-rising villagers who observed my homeward progress looked at me strangely, and marvelled at the signs of ribald revelry which they saw in one whose life was known to be sober and solitary. I did not appear before my parents till after a long and refreshing sleep.<br />
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Henceforward I haunted the tomb each night; seeing, hearing, and doing things I must never reveal. My speech, always susceptible to environmental influences, was the first thing to succumb to the change; and my suddenly acquired archaism of diction was soon remarked upon. Later a queer boldness and recklessness came into my demeanour, till I unconsciously grew to possess the bearing of a man of the world despite my lifelong seclusion. My formerly silent tongue waxed voluble with the easy grace of a Chesterfield or the godless cynicism of a Rochester. I displayed a peculiar erudition utterly unlike the fantastic, monkish lore over which I had pored in youth; and covered the flyleaves of my books with facile impromptu epigrams which brought up suggestions of Gay, Prior, and the sprightliest of the Augustan wits and rimesters. One morning at breakfast I came close to disaster by declaiming in palpably liquorish accents an effusion of eighteenth-century Bacchanalian mirth; a bit of Georgian playfulness never recorded in a book, which ran something like this:<br />
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Come hither, my lads, with your tankards of ale,</div>
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And drink to the present before it shall fail;</div>
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Pile each on your platter a mountain of beef,</div>
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For ’tis eating and drinking that bring us relief:</div>
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So fill up your glass,</div>
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For life will soon pass;</div>
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When you’re dead ye’ll ne’er drink to your king or your lass!</div>
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Anacreon had a red nose, so they say;</div>
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But what’s a red nose if ye’re happy and gay?</div>
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Gad split me! I’d rather be red whilst I’m here,</div>
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Than white as a lily—and dead half a year!</div>
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So Betty, my miss,</div>
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Come give me a kiss;</div>
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In hell there’s no innkeeper’s daughter like this!</div>
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Young Harry, propp’d up just as straight as he’s able,</div>
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Will soon lose his wig and slip under the table;</div>
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But fill up your goblets and pass ’em around—</div>
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Better under the table than under the ground!</div>
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So revel and chaff</div>
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As ye thirstily quaff:</div>
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Under six feet of dirt ’tis less easy to laugh!</div>
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The fiend strike me blue! I’m scarce able to walk,</div>
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And damn me if I can stand upright or talk!</div>
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Here, landlord, bid Betty to summon a chair;</div>
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I’ll try home for a while, for my wife is not there!</div>
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So lend me a hand;</div>
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I’m not able to stand,</div>
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But I’m gay whilst I linger on top of the land!</div>
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About this time I conceived my present fear of fire and thunderstorms. Previously indifferent to such things, I had now an unspeakable horror of them; and would retire to the innermost recesses of the house whenever the heavens threatened an electrical display. A favourite haunt of mine during the day was the ruined cellar of the mansion that had burned down, and in fancy I would picture the structure as it had been in its prime. On one occasion I startled a villager by leading him confidently to a shallow sub-cellar, of whose existence I seemed to know in spite of the fact that it had been unseen and forgotten for many generations.<br />
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At last came that which I had long feared. My parents, alarmed at the altered manner and appearance of their only son, commenced to exert over my movements a kindly espionage which threatened to result in disaster. I had told no one of my visits to the tomb, having guarded my secret purpose with religious zeal since childhood; but now I was forced to exercise care in threading the mazes of the wooded hollow, that I might throw off a possible pursuer. My key to the vault I kept suspended from a cord about my neck, its presence known only to me. I never carried out of the sepulchre any of the things I came upon whilst within its walls.<br />
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One morning as I emerged from the damp tomb and fastened the chain of the portal with none too steady hand, I beheld in an adjacent thicket the dreaded face of a watcher. Surely the end was near; for my bower was discovered, and the objective of my nocturnal journeys revealed. The man did not accost me, so I hastened home in an effort to overhear what he might report to my careworn father. Were my sojourns beyond the chained door about to be proclaimed to the world? Imagine my delighted astonishment on hearing the spy inform my parent in a cautious whisper that I had spent the night in the bower outside the tomb; my sleep-filmed eyes fixed upon the crevice where the padlocked portal stood ajar! By what miracle had the watcher been thus deluded? I was now convinced that a supernatural agency protected me. Made bold by this heaven-sent circumstance, I began to resume perfect openness in going to the vault; confident that no one could witness my entrance. For a week I tasted to the full the joys of that charnel conviviality which I must not describe, when the thing happened, and I was borne away to this accursed abode of sorrow and monotony.<br />
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I should not have ventured out that night; for the taint of thunder was in the clouds, and a hellish phosphorescence rose from the rank swamp at the bottom of the hollow. The call of the dead, too, was different. Instead of the hillside tomb, it was the charred cellar on the crest of the slope whose presiding daemon beckoned to me with unseen fingers. As I emerged from an intervening grove upon the plain before the ruin, I beheld in the misty moonlight a thing I had always vaguely expected. The mansion, gone for a century, once more reared its stately height to the raptured vision; every window ablaze with the splendour of many candles. Up the long drive rolled the coaches of the Boston gentry, whilst on foot came a numerous assemblage of powdered exquisites from the neighbouring mansions. With this throng I mingled, though I knew I belonged with the hosts rather than with the guests.<br />
Inside the hall were music, laughter, and wine on every hand. Several faces I recognised; though I should have known them better had they been shrivelled or eaten away by death and decomposition. Amidst a wild and reckless throng I was the wildest and most abandoned. Gay blasphemy poured in torrents from my lips, and in my shocking sallies I heeded no law of God, Man, or Nature. Suddenly a peal of thunder, resonant even above the din of the swinish revelry, clave the very roof and laid a hush of fear upon the boisterous company. Red tongues of flame and searing gusts of heat engulfed the house; and the roysterers, struck with terror at the descent of a calamity which seemed to transcend the bounds of unguided Nature, fled shrieking into the night. I alone remained, riveted to my seat by a grovelling fear which I had never felt before. And then a second horror took possession of my soul. Burnt alive to ashes, my body dispersed by the four winds, I might never lie in the tomb of the Hydes! Was not my coffin prepared for me? Had I not a right to rest till eternity amongst the descendants of Sir Geoffrey Hyde? Aye! I would claim my heritage of death, even though my soul go seeking through the ages for another corporeal tenement to represent it on that vacant slab in the alcove of the vault. Jervas Hyde should never share the sad fate of Palinurus!<br />
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As the phantom of the burning house faded, I found myself screaming and struggling madly in the arms of two men, one of whom was the spy who had followed me to the tomb. Rain was pouring down in torrents, and upon the southern horizon were flashes of the lightning that had so lately passed over our heads. My father, his face lined with sorrow, stood by as I shouted my demands to be laid within the tomb; frequently admonishing my captors to treat me as gently as they could. A blackened circle on the floor of the ruined cellar told of a violent stroke from the heavens; and from this spot a group of curious villagers with lanterns were prying a small box of antique workmanship which the thunderbolt had brought to light. Ceasing my futile and now objectless writhing, I watched the spectators as they viewed the treasure-trove, and was permitted to share in their discoveries. The box, whose fastenings were broken by the stroke which had unearthed it, contained many papers and objects of value; but I had eyes for one thing alone. It was the porcelain miniature of a young man in a smartly curled bag-wig, and bore the initials “J. H.” The face was such that as I gazed, I might well have been studying my mirror.<br />
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On the following day I was brought to this room with the barred windows, but I have been kept informed of certain things through an aged and simple-minded servitor, for whom I bore a fondness in infancy, and who like me loves the churchyard. What I have dared relate of my experiences within the vault has brought me only pitying smiles. My father, who visits me frequently, declares that at no time did I pass the chained portal, and swears that the rusted padlock had not been touched for fifty years when he examined it. He even says that all the village knew of my journeys to the tomb, and that I was often watched as I slept in the bower outside the grim facade, my half-open eyes fixed on the crevice that leads to the interior. Against these assertions I have no tangible proof to offer, since my key to the padlock was lost in the struggle on that night of horrors. The strange things of the past which I learnt during those nocturnal meetings with the dead he dismisses as the fruits of my lifelong and omnivorous browsing amongst the ancient volumes of the family library. Had it not been for my old servant Hiram, I should have by this time become quite convinced of my madness.<br />
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But Hiram, loyal to the last, has held faith in me, and has done that which impels me to make public at least a part of my story. A week ago he burst open the lock which chains the door of the tomb perpetually ajar, and descended with a lantern into the murky depths. On a slab in an alcove he found an old but empty coffin whose tarnished plate bears the single word “Jervas”. In that coffin and in that vault they have promised me I shall be buried.<br />
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<b>The End</b></div>
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<b>Read More Stories by <a href="http://www.vaultofghastlytales.com/p/hp-lovecraft.html">H.P. Lovecraft</a> in The Vault</b></div>
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444893451907188044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8879282668683580477.post-56043571855587659972016-02-02T22:06:00.001+00:002016-02-02T22:08:16.851+00:00'The Willows' by Algernon BlackwoodAfter leaving Vienna, and long before you come to Budapesth, the Danube enters a region of singular loneliness and desolation, where its waters spread away on all sides regardless of a main channel, and the country becomes a swamp for miles upon miles, covered by a vast sea of low willow-bushes. On the big maps this deserted area is painted in a fluffy blue, growing fainter in colour as it leaves the banks, and across it may be seen in large straggling letters the word Sumpfe, meaning marshes.<br />
<br />
In high flood this great acreage of sand, shingle-beds, and willow-grown islands is almost topped by the water, but in normal seasons the bushes bend and rustle in the free winds, showing their silver leaves to the sunshine in an ever-moving plain of bewildering beauty. These willows never attain to the dignity of trees; they have no rigid trunks; they remain humble bushes, with rounded tops and soft outline, swaying on slender stems that answer to the least pressure of the wind; supple as grasses, and so continually shifting that they somehow give the impression that the entire plain is moving and alive. For the wind sends waves rising and falling over the whole surface, waves of leaves instead of waves of water, green swells like the sea, too, until the branches turn and lift, and then silvery white as their under-side turns to the sun.<br />
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Happy to slip beyond the control of the stern banks, the Danube here wanders about at will among the intricate network of channels intersecting the islands everywhere with broad avenues down which the waters pour with a shouting sound; making whirlpools, eddies, and foaming rapids; tearing at the sandy banks; carrying away masses of shore and willow-clumps; and forming new islands innumerably which shift daily in size and shape and possess at best an impermanent life, since the flood-time obliterates their very existence.<br />
<br />
Properly speaking, this fascinating part of the river's life begins soon after leaving Pressburg, and we, in our Canadian canoe, with gipsy tent and frying-pan on board, reached it on the crest of a rising flood about mid-July. That very same morning, when the sky was reddening before sunrise, we had slipped swiftly through still-sleeping Vienna, leaving it a couple of hours later a mere patch of smoke against the blue hills of the Wienerwald on the horizon; we had breakfasted below Fischeramend under a grove of birch trees roaring in the wind; and had then swept on the tearing current past Orth, Hainburg, Petronell (the old Roman Carnuntum of Marcus Aurelius), and so under the frowning heights of Thelsen on a spur of the Carpathians, where the March steals in quietly from the left and the frontier is crossed between Austria and Hungary.<br />
<br />
Racing along at twelve kilometres an hour soon took us well into Hungary, and the muddy waters -- sure sign of flood -- sent us aground on many a shingle-bed, and twisted us like a cork in many a sudden belching whirlpool before the towers of Pressburg (Hungarian, Poszony) showed against the sky; and then the canoe, leaping like a spirited horse, flew at top speed under the grey walls, negotiated safely the sunken chain of the Fliegende Brucke ferry, turned the corner sharply to the left, and plunged on yellow foam into the wilderness of islands, sand-banks, and swamp-land beyond -- the land of the willows.<br />
<br />
The change came suddenly, as when a series of bioscope pictures snaps down on the streets of a town and shifts without warning into the scenery of lake and forest. We entered the land of desolation on wings, and in less than half an hour there was neither boat nor fishing-hut nor red roof, nor any single sign of human habitation and civilisation within sight. The sense of remoteness from the world of human kind, the utter isolation, the fascination of this singular world of willows, winds, and waters, instantly laid its spell upon us both, so that we allowed laughingly to one another that we ought by rights to have held some special kind of passport to admit us, and that we had, somewhat audaciously, come without asking leave into a separate little kingdom of wonder and magic -- a kingdom that was reserved for the use of others who had a right to it, with everywhere unwritten warnings to trespassers for those who had the imagination to discover them.<br />
<br />
Though still early in the afternoon, the ceaseless buffetings of a most tempestuous wind made us feel weary, and we at once began casting about for a suitable camping-ground for the night. But the bewildering character of the islands made landing difficult; the swirling flood carried us in shore and then swept us out again; the willow branches tore our hands as we seized them to stop the canoe, and we pulled many a yard of sandy bank into the water before at length we shot with a great sideways blow from the wind into a backwater and managed to beach the bows in a cloud of spray. Then we lay panting and laughing after our exertions on the hot yellow sand, sheltered from the wind, and in the full blaze of a scorching sun, a cloudless blue sky above, and an immense army of dancing, shouting willow bushes, closing in from all sides, shining with spray and clapping their thousand little hands as though to applaud the success of our efforts.<br />
<br />
"What a river!" I said to my companion, thinking of all the way we had travelled from the source in the Black Forest, and how he had often been obliged to wade and push in the upper shallows at the beginning of June.<br />
<br />
"Won't stand much nonsense now, will it?" he said, pulling the canoe a little farther into safety up the sand, and then composing himself for a nap.<br />
<br />
I lay by his side, happy and peaceful in the bath of the elements -- water, wind, sand, and the great fire of the sun -- thinking of the long journey that lay behind us, and of the great stretch before us to the Black Sea, and how lucky I was to have such a delightful and charming travelling companion as my friend, the Swede.<br />
<br />
We had made many similar journeys together, but the Danube, more than any other river I knew, impressed us from the very beginning with its aliveness. From its tiny bubbling entry into the world among the pinewood gardens of Donaueschingen, until this moment when it began to play the great river-game of losing itself among the deserted swamps, unobserved, unrestrained, it had seemed to us like following the grown of some living creature. Sleepy at first, but later developing violent desires as it became conscious of its deep soul, it rolled, like some huge fluid being, through all the countries we had passed, holding our little craft on its mighty shoulders, playing roughly with us sometimes, yet always friendly and well-meaning, till at length we had come inevitably to regard it as a Great Personage.<br />
<br />
How, indeed, could it be otherwise, since it told us so much of its secret life? At night we heard it singing to the moon as we lay in our tent, uttering that odd sibilant note peculiar to itself and said to be caused by the rapid tearing of the pebbles along its bed, so great is its hurrying speed. We knew, too, the voice of its gurgling whirlpools, suddenly bubbling up on a surface previously quite calm; the roar of its shallows and swift rapids; its constant steady thundering below all mere surface sounds; and that ceaseless tearing of its icy waters at the banks. How it stood up and shouted when the rains fell flat upon its face! And how its laughter roared out when the wind blew upstream and tried to stop its growing speed! We knew all its sounds and voices, its tumblings and foamings, its unnecessary splashing against the bridges; that self-conscious chatter when there were hills to look on; the affected dignity of its speech when it passed through the little towns, far too important to laugh; and all these faint, sweet whisperings when the sun caught it fairly in some slow curve and poured down upon it till the steam rose.<br />
<br />
It was full of tricks, too, in its early life before the great world knew it. There were places in the upper reaches among the Swabian forests, when yet the first whispers of its destiny had not reached it, where it elected to disappear through holes in the ground, to appear again on the other side of the porous limestone hills and start a new river with another name; leaving, too, so little water in its own bed that we had to climb out and wade and push the canoe through miles of shallows.<br />
<br />
And a chief pleasure, in those early days of its irresponsible youth, was to lie low, like Brer Fox, just before the little turbulent tributaries came to join it from the Alps, and to refuse to acknowledge them when in, but to run for miles side by side, the dividing line well marked, the very levels different, the Danube utterly declining to recognize the newcomer. Below Passau, however, it gave up this particular trick, for there the Inn comes in with a thundering power impossible to ignore, and so pushes and incommodes the parent river that there is hardly room for them in the long twisting gorge that follows, and the Danube is shoved this way and that against the cliffs, and forced to hurry itself with great waves and mush dashing to and fro in order to get through in time. And during the fight our canoe slipped down from its shoulder to its breast, and had the time of its life among the struggling waves. But the Inn taught the old river a lesson, and after Passau it no longer pretended to ignore new arrivals.<br />
<br />
This was many days back, of course, and since then we had come to know other aspects of the great creature, and across the Bavarian wheat plain of Straubing she wandered so slowly under the blazing June sun that we could well imagine only the surface inches were water, while below there moved, concealed as by a silken mantle, a whole army of Undines, passing silently and unseen down to the sea, and very leisurely too, lest they be discovered.<br />
<br />
Much, too, we forgave her because of her friendliness to the birds and animals that haunted the shores. Cormorants lined the banks in lonely places in rows like short black palings; grey crows crowded the shingle-beds; storks stood fishing in the vistas of shallower water that opened up between the islands, and hawks, swans, and marsh birds of all sorts filled the air with glinting wings and singing, petulant cries. It was impossible to feel annoyed with the river's vagaries after seeing a deer leap with a splash into the water at sunrise and swim past the bows of the canoe; and often we saw fawns peering at us from the underbrush, or looked straight into the brown eyes of a stag as we charged full tilt round a corner and entered another reach of the river. Foxes, too, everywhere haunted the banks, tripping daintily among the driftwood and disappearing so suddenly that it was<br />
impossible to see how they managed it.<br />
<br />
But now, after leaving Pressburg, everything changed a little, and the Danube became more serious. It ceased trifling. It was half-way to the Black Sea, within seeming distance almost of other, stranger countries where no tricks would be permitted or understood. It became suddenly grown-up, and claimed our respect and even our awe. It broke out into three arms, for one thing, that only met again a hundred kilometres farther down, and for a canoe there were no indications which one was intended to be followed.<br />
<br />
"If you take a side channel," said the Hungarian officer we met in the Pressburg shop while buying provisions, "you may find yourselves, when the flood subsides, forty miles from anywhere, high and dry, and you may easily starve. There are no people, no farms, no fishermen. I warn you not to continue. The river, too, is still rising, and this wind will increase."<br />
<br />
The rising river did not alarm us in the least, but the matter of being left high and dry by a sudden subsidence of the waters might be serious, and we had consequently laid in an extra stock of provisions. For the rest, the officer's prophecy held true, and the wind, blowing down a perfectly clear sky, increased steadily till it reached the dignity of a westerly gale.<br />
<br />
It was earlier than usual when we camped, for the sun was a good hour or two from the horizon, and leaving my friend still asleep on the hot sand, I wandered about in desultory examination of our hotel. The island, I found, was less than an acre in extent, a mere sandy bank standing some two or three feet above the level of the river. The far end, pointing into the sunset, was covered with flying spray which the tremendous wind drove off the crests of the broken waves. It was triangular in shape, with the apex up stream.<br />
<br />
I stood there for several minutes, watching the impetuous crimson flood bearing down with a shouting roar, dashing in waves against the bank as though to sweep it bodily away, and then swirling by in two foaming streams on either side. The ground seemed to shake with the shock and rush, while the furious movement of the willow bushes as the wind poured over them increased the curious illusion that the island itself actually moved. Above, for a mile or two, I could see the great river descending upon me; it was like looking up the slope of a sliding hill, white with foam, and leaping up everywhere to show itself to the sun.<br />
<br />
The rest of the island was too thickly grown with willows to make walking pleasant, but I made the tour, nevertheless. From the lower end the light, of course, changed, and the river looked dark and angry. Only the backs of the flying waves were visible, streaked with foam, and pushed forcibly by the great puffs of wind that fell upon them from behind. For a short mile it was visible, pouring in and out among the islands, and then disappearing with a huge sweep into the willows, which closed about it like a herd of monstrous antediluvian creatures crowding down to drink. They made me think of gigantic sponge-like growths that sucked the river up into themselves. They caused it to vanish from sight. They herded there together in such overpowering numbers.<br />
<br />
Altogether it was an impressive scene, with its utter loneliness, its bizarre suggestion; and as I gazed, long and curiously, a singular emotion began to stir somewhere in the depths of me. Midway in my delight of the wild beauty, there crept, unbidden and unexplained, a curious feeling of disquietude, almost of alarm.<br />
<br />
A rising river, perhaps, always suggests something of the ominous; many of the little islands I saw before me would probably have been swept away by the morning; this resistless, thundering flood of water touched the sense of awe. Yet I was aware that my uneasiness lay deeper far than the emotions of awe and wonder. It was not that I felt. Nor had it directly to do with the power of the driving wind -- this shouting hurricane that might almost carry up a few acres of willows into the air and scatter them like so much chaff over the landscape. The wind was simply enjoying itself, for nothing rose out of the flat landscape to stop it, and I was conscious of sharing its great game with a kind of pleasurable excitement. Yet this novel emotion had nothing to do with the wind. Indeed, so vague was the sense of distress I experienced, that it was impossible to trace it to its source and deal with it accordingly, though I was aware somehow that it had to do with my realisation of our utter insignificance before this unrestrained power of the elements about me. The huge-grown river had something to do with it too -- a vague, unpleasant idea that we had somehow trifled with these great elemental forces in whose power we lay helpless every hour of the day and night. For here, indeed, they were gigantically at play together, and the sight appealed to the imagination.<br />
<br />
But my emotion, so far as I could understand it, seemed to attach itself more particularly to the willow bushes, to these acres and acres of willows, crowding, so thickly growing there, swarming everywhere the eye could reach, pressing upon the river as though to suffocate it, standing in dense array mile after mile beneath the sky, watching, waiting, listening. And, apart quite from the elements, the willows connected themselves subtly with my malaise, attacking the mind insidiously somehow by reason of their vast numbers, and contriving in some way or other to represent to the imagination a new and mighty power, a power, moreover, not altogether friendly to us.<br />
<br />
Great revelations of nature, of course, never fail to impress in one way or another, and I was no stranger to moods of the kind. Mountains overawe and oceans terrify, while the mystery of great forests exercises a spell peculiarly its own. But all these, at one point or another, somewhere link on intimately with human life and human experience. They stir comprehensible, even if alarming, emotions. They tend on the whole to exalt.<br />
<br />
With this multitude of willows, however, it was something far different, I felt. Some essence emanated from them that besieged the heart. A sense of awe awakened, true, but of awe touched somewhere by a vague terror. Their serried ranks, growing everywhere darker about me as the shadows deepened, moving furiously yet softly in the wind, woke in me the curious and unwelcome suggestion that we had trespassed here upon the borders of an alien world, a world where we were intruders, a world where we were not wanted or invited to remain -- where we ran grave risks perhaps!<br />
<br />
The feeling, however, though it refused to yield its meaning entirely to analysis, did not at the time trouble me by passing into menace. Yet it never left me quite, even during the very practical business of putting up the tent in a hurricane of wind and building a fire for the stew-pot. It remained, just enough to bother and perplex, and to rob a most delightful camping-ground of a good portion of its charm. To my companion, however, I said nothing, for he was a man I considered devoid of imagination. In the first place, I could never have explained to him what I meant, and in the second, he would have laughed stupidly at me if I had.<br />
<br />
There was a slight depression in the centre of the island, and here we pitched the tent. The surrounding willows broke the wind a bit.<br />
<br />
"A poor camp," observed the imperturbable Swede when at last the tent stood upright, "no stones and precious little firewood. I'm for moving on early to-morrow -- eh? This sand won't hold anything."<br />
<br />
But the experience of a collapsing tent at midnight had taught us many devices, and we made the cosy gipsy house as safe as possible, and then set about collecting a store of wood to last till bed-time. Willow bushes drop no branches, and driftwood was our only source of supply. We hunted the shores pretty thoroughly. Everywhere the banks were crumbling as the rising flood tore at them and carried away great portions with a splash and a gurgle.<br />
<br />
"The island's much smaller than when we landed," said the accurate Swede. "It won't last long at this rate. We'd better drag the canoe close to the tent, and be ready to start at a moment's notice. I shall sleep in my clothes."<br />
<br />
He was a little distance off, climbing along the bank, and I heard his rather jolly laugh as he spoke.<br />
<br />
"By Jove!" I heard him call, a moment later, and turned to see what had caused his exclamation. But for the moment he was hidden by the willows, and I could not find him.<br />
<br />
"What in the world's this?" I heard him cry again, and this time his voice had become serious.<br />
<br />
I ran up quickly and joined him on the bank. He was looking over the river, pointing at something in the water.<br />
<br />
"Good heavens, it's a man's body!" he cried excitedly. "Look!"<br />
<br />
A black thing, turning over and over in the foaming waves, swept rapidly past. It kept disappearing and coming up to the surface again. It was about twenty feet from the shore, and just as it was opposite to where we stood it lurched round and looked straight at us. We saw its eyes reflecting the sunset, and gleaming an odd yellow as the body turned over. Then it gave a swift, gulping plunge, and dived out of sight in a flash.<br />
<br />
"An otter, by gad!" we exclaimed in the same breath, laughing.<br />
<br />
It was an otter, alive, and out on the hunt; yet it had looked exactly like the body of a drowned man turning helplessly in the current. Far below it came to the surface once again, and we saw its black skin, wet and shining in the sunlight.<br />
<br />
Then, too, just as we turned back, our arms full of driftwood, another thing happened to recall us to the river bank. This time it really was a man, and what was more, a man in a boat. Now a small boat on the Danube was an unusual sight at any time, but here in this deserted region, and at flood time, it was so unexpected as to constitute a real event. We stood and stared.<br />
<br />
Whether it was due to the slanting sunlight, or the refraction from the wonderfully illumined water, I cannot say, but, whatever the cause, I found it difficult to focus my sight properly upon the flying apparition. It seemed, however, to be a man standing upright in a sort of flat-bottomed boat, steering with a long oar, and being carried down the opposite shore at a tremendous pace. He apparently was looking across in our direction, but the distance was too great and the light too uncertain for us to make out very plainly what he was about. It seemed to me that he was gesticulating and making signs at us. His voice came across the water to us shouting something furiously, but the wind drowned it so that no single word was audible. There was something curious about the whole appearance -- man, boat, signs, voice -- that made an impression on me out of all proportion to its cause.<br />
<br />
"He's crossing himself!" I cried. "Look, he's making the sign of the Cross!"<br />
<br />
"I believe you're right," the Swede said, shading his eyes with his hand and watching the man out of sight. He seemed to be gone in a moment, melting away down there into the sea of willows where the sun caught them in the bend of the river and turned them into a great crimson wall of beauty. Mist, too, had begun to ruse, so that the air was hazy.<br />
<br />
"But what in the world is he doing at nightfall on this flooded river?" I said, half to myself. "Where is he going at such a time, and what did he mean by his signs and shouting? D'you think he wished to warn us about something?"<br />
<br />
"He saw our smoke, and thought we were spirits probably," laughed my companion. "These Hungarians believe in all sorts of rubbish; you remember the shopwoman at Pressburg warning us that no one ever landed here because it belonged to some sort of beings outside man's world! I suppose they believe in fairies and elementals, possibly demons, too. That peasant in the boat saw people on the islands for the first time in his life," he added, after a slight pause, "and it scared him, that's all."<br />
<br />
The Swede's tone of voice was not convincing, and his manner lacked something that was usually there. I noted the change instantly while he talked, though without being able to label it precisely.<br />
<br />
"If they had enough imagination," I laughed loudly -- I remember trying to make as much noise as I could -- "they might well people a place like this with the old gods of antiquity. The Romans must have haunted all this region more or less with their shrines and sacred groves and elemental deities."<br />
<br />
The subject dropped and we returned to our stew-pot, for my friend was not given to imaginative conversation as a rule. Moreover, just then I remember feeling distinctly glad that he was not imaginative; his stolid, practical nature suddenly seemed to me welcome and comforting. It was an admirable temperament, I felt; he could steer down rapids like a red Indian, shoot dangerous bridges and whirlpools better than any white man I ever saw in a canoe. He was a grand fellow for an adventurous trip, a tower of strength when<br />
untoward things happened. I looked at his strong face and light curly hair as he staggered along under his pile of driftwood (twice the size of mine!), and I experienced a feeling of relief. Yes, I was distinctly glad just then that the Swede was -- what he was, and that he never made remarks that suggested more than they said.<br />
<br />
"The river's still rising, though," he added, as if following out some thoughts of his own, and dropping his load with a gasp. "This island will be under water in two days if it goes on."<br />
<br />
"I wish the wind would go down," I said. "I don't care a fig for the river."<br />
<br />
The flood, indeed, had no terrors for us; we could get off at ten minute's notice, and the more water the better we liked it. It meant an increasing current and the obliteration of the treacherous shingle-beds that so often threatened to tear the bottom out of our canoe.<br />
<br />
Contrary to our expectations, the wind did not go down with the sun. It seemed to increase with the darkness, howling overhead and shaking the willows round us like straws. Curious sounds accompanied it sometimes, like the explosion of heavy guns, and it fell upon the water and the island in great flat blows of immense power. It made me think of the sounds a planet must make, could we only hear it, driving along through space.<br />
<br />
But the sky kept wholly clear of clouds, and soon after supper the full moon rose up in the east and covered the river and the plain of shouting willows with a light like the day.<br />
<br />
We lay on the sandy patch beside the fire, smoking, listening to the noises of the night round us, and talking happily of the journey we had already made, and of our plans ahead. The map lay spread in the door of the tent, but the high wind made it hard to study, and presently we lowered the curtain and extinguished the lantern. The firelight was enough to smoke and see each other's faces by, and the sparks flew about overhead like fireworks. A few yards beyond, the river gurgled and hissed, and from time to time a heavy splash announced the falling away of further portions of the bank.<br />
<br />
Our talk, I noticed, had to do with the far-away scenes and incidents of our first camps in the Black Forest, or of other subjects altogether remote from the present setting, for neither of us spoke of the actual moment more than was necessary -- almost as though we had agreed tacitly to avoid discussion of the camp and its incidents. Neither the otter nor the boatman, for instance, received the honour of a single mention, though ordinarily these would have furnished discussion for the greater part of the evening. They were, of course, distinct events in such a place.<br />
<br />
The scarcity of wood made it a business to keep the fire going, for the wind, that drove the smoke in our faces wherever we sat, helped at the same time to make a forced draught. We took it in turn to make some foraging expeditions into the darkness, and the quantity the Swede brought back always made me feel that he took an absurdly long time finding it; for the fact was I did not care much about being left alone, and yet it always seemed to be my turn to grub about among the bushes or scramble along the slippery banks in the moonlight. The long day's battle with wind and water -- such wind and such water! -- had tired us both, and an early bed was the obvious programme. Yet neither of us made the move for the tent. We lay there, tending the fire, talking in desultory fashion, peering about us into the dense willow bushes, and listening to the thunder of wind and river. The loneliness of the place had entered our very bones, and silence seemed natural, for after a bit the sound of our voices became a trifle unreal and forced; whispering would have been the fitting mode of communication, I felt, and the human voice, always rather absurd amid the roar of the elements, now carried with it something almost illegitimate. It was like talking out loud in church, or in some place where it was not lawful, perhaps not quite safe, to be overheard.<br />
<br />
The eeriness of this lonely island, set among a million willows, swept by a hurricane, and surrounded by hurrying deep waters, touched us both, I fancy. Untrodden by man, almost unknown to man, it lay there beneath he moon, remote from human influence, on the frontier of another world, an alien world, a world tenanted by willows only and the souls of willows. And we, in our rashness, had dared to invade it, even to make use of it! Something more than the power of its mystery stirred in me as I lay on the sand, feet to fire, and peered up through the leaves at the stars. For the last time I rose to get firewood.<br />
<br />
"When this has burnt up," I said firmly, "I shall turn in," and my companion watched me lazily as I moved off into the surrounding shadows.<br />
<br />
For an unimaginative man I thought he seemed unusually receptive that night, unusually open to suggestion of things other than sensory. He too was touched by the beauty and loneliness of the place. I was not altogether pleased, I remember, to recognise this slight change in him, and instead of immediately collecting sticks, I made my way to the far point of the island where the moonlight on plain and river could be seen to better advantage. The desire to be alone had come suddenly upon me; my former dread returned in force; there was a vague feeling in me I wished to face and probe to the bottom.<br />
<br />
When I reached the point of sand jutting out among the waves, the spell of the place descended upon me with a positive shock. No mere "scenery" could have produced such an effect. There was something more here, something to alarm.<br />
<br />
I gazed across the waste of wild waters; I watched the whispering willows; I heard the ceaseless beating of the tireless wind; and, one and all, each in its own way, stirred in me this sensation of a strange distress. But the willows especially; for ever they went on chattering and talking among themselves, laughing a little, shrilly crying out, sometimes sighing -- but what it was they made so much to-do about belonged to the secret life of the great plain they inhabited. And it was utterly alien to the world I knew, or to that of the wild yet kindly elements. They made me think of a host of beings from another plane of life, another evolution altogether, perhaps, all discussing a mystery known only to themselves. I watched them moving busily together, oddly shaking their big bushy heads, twirling their myriad leaves even when there was no wind. They moved of their own will as though alive, and they touched, by some incalculable method, my own keen sense of the horrible.<br />
<br />
There they stood in the moonlight, like a vast army surrounding our camp, shaking their innumerable silver spears defiantly, formed all ready for an attack.<br />
<br />
The psychology of places, for some imaginations at least, is very vivid; for the wanderer, especially, camps have their "note" either of welcome or rejection. At first it may not always be apparent, because the busy preparations of tent and cooking prevent, but with the first pause -- after supper usually -- it comes and announces itself. And the note of this willow-camp now became unmistakably plain to me; we were interlopers, trespassers; we were not welcomed. The sense of unfamiliarity grew upon me as I stood there watching. We touched the frontier of a region where our presence was resented. For a night's lodging we might perhaps be tolerated; but for a prolonged and inquisitive stay -- No! by all the gods of the trees and wilderness, no! We were the first human influences upon this island, and we were not wanted. The willows were against us.<br />
<br />
Strange thoughts like these, bizarre fancies, borne I know not whence, found lodgment in my mind as I stood listening. What, I thought, if, after all, these crouching willows proved to be alive; if suddenly they should rise up, like a swarm of living creatures, marshalled by the gods whose territory we had invaded, sweep towards us off the vast swamps, booming overhead in the night -- and then settle down! As I looked it was so easy to imagine they actually moved, crept nearer, retreated a little, huddled together in masses, hostile, waiting for the great wind that should finally start them a-running. I could have sworn their aspect changed a little, and their ranks deepened and pressed more closely together.<br />
<br />
The melancholy shrill cry of a night-bird sounded overhead, and suddenly I nearly lost my balance as the piece of bank I stood upon fell with a great splash into the river, undermined by the flood. I stepped back just in time, and went on hunting for firewood again, half laughing at the odd fancies that crowded so thickly into my mind and cast their spell upon me. I recalled the Swede's remark about moving on next day, and I was just thinking that I fully agreed with him, when I turned with a start and saw the subject of my thoughts standing immediately in front of me. He was quite close. The roar of the elements had covered his approach.<br />
<br />
"You've been gone so long," he shouted above the wind, "I thought something must have happened to you."<br />
<br />
But there was that in his tone, and a certain look in his face as well, that conveyed to me more than his usual words, and in a flash I understood the real reason for his coming. It was because the spell of the place had entered his soul too, and he did not like being alone.<br />
<br />
"River still rising," he cried, pointing to the flood in the moonlight, "and the wind's simply awful."<br />
<br />
He always said the same things, but it was the cry for companionship that gave the real importance to his words.<br />
<br />
"Lucky," I cried back, "our tent's in the hollow. I think it'll hold all right." I added something about the difficulty of finding wood, in order to explain my absence, but the wind caught my words and flung them across the river, so that he did not hear, but just looked at me through the branches, nodding his head.<br />
<br />
"Lucky if we get away without disaster!" he shouted, or words to that effect; and I remember feeling half angry with him for putting the thought into words, for it was exactly what I felt myself. There was disaster impending somewhere, and the sense of presentiment lay unpleasantly upon me.<br />
<br />
We went back to the fire and made a final blaze, poking it up with our feet. We took a last look round. But for the wind the heat would have been unpleasant. I put this thought into words, and I remember my friend's reply struck me oddly: that he would rather have the heat, the ordinary July weather, than this "diabolical wind".<br />
<br />
Everything was snug for the night; the canoe lying turned over beside the tent, with both yellow paddles beneath her; the provision sack hanging from a willow-stem, and the washed-up dishes removed to a safe distance from the fire, all ready for the morning meal.<br />
<br />
We smothered the embers of the fire with sand, and then turned in. The flap of the tent door was up, and I saw the branches and the stars and the white moonlight. The shaking willows and the heavy buffetings of the wind against our taut little house were the last things I remembered as sleep came down and covered all with its soft and delicious forgetfulness.<br />
<br />
Suddenly I found myself lying awake, peering from my sandy mattress through the door of the tent. I looked at my watch pinned against the canvas, and saw by the bright moonlight that it was past twelve o'clock -- the threshold of a new day -- and I had therefore slept a couple of hours. The Swede was asleep still beside me; the wind howled as before; something plucked at my heart and made me feel afraid. There was a sense of disturbance in my immediate neighbourhood.<br />
<br />
I sat up quickly and looked out. The trees were swaying violently to and fro as the gusts smote them, but our little bit of green canvas lay snugly safe in the hollow, for the wind passed over it without meeting enough resistance to make it vicious. The feeling of disquietude did not pass, however, and I crawled quietly out of the tent to see if our belongings were safe. I moved carefully so as not to waken my companion. A curious excitement was on me.<br />
<br />
I was half-way out, kneeling on all fours, when my eye first took in that the tops of the bushes opposite, with their moving tracery of leaves, made shapes against the sky. I sat back on my haunches and stared. It was incredible, surely, but there, opposite and slightly above me, were shapes of some indeterminate sort among the willows, and as the branches swayed in the wind they seemed to group themselves about these shapes, forming a series of monstrous outlines that shifted rapidly beneath the moon. Close, about fifty feet in front of me, I saw these things.<br />
<br />
My first instinct was to waken my companion, that he too might see them, but something made me hesitate -- the sudden realisation, probably, that I should not welcome corroboration; and meanwhile I crouched there staring in amazement with smarting eyes. I was wide awake. I remember saying to myself that I was not dreaming.<br />
<br />
They first became properly visible, these huge figures, just within the tops of the bushes -- immense, bronze-coloured, moving, and wholly independent of the swaying of the branches. I saw them plainly and noted, now I came to examine them more calmly, that they were very much larger than human, and indeed that something in their appearance proclaimed them to be not human at all. Certainly they were not merely the moving tracery of the branches against the moonlight. They shifted independently. They rose upwards in a continuous stream from earth to sky, vanishing utterly as soon as they reached the dark of the sky. They were interlaced one with another, making a great column, and I saw their limbs and huge bodies melting in and out of each other, forming this serpentine line that bent and swayed and twisted spirally with the contortions of the wind-tossed trees. They were nude, fluid shapes, passing up the bushes, within the leaves almost -- rising up in a living column into the heavens. Their faces I never could see. Unceasingly they poured upwards, swaying in great bending curves, with a hue of dull bronze upon their skins.<br />
<br />
I stared, trying to force every atom of vision from my eyes. For a long time I thought they must every moment disappear and resolve themselves into the movements of the branches and prove to be an optical illusion. I searched everywhere for a proof of reality, when all the while I understood quite well that the standard of reality had changed. For the longer I looked the more certain I became that these figures were real and living, though perhaps not according to the standards that the camera and the biologist would insist upon.<br />
<br />
Far from feeling fear, I was possessed with a sense of awe and wonder such as I have never known. I seemed to be gazing at the personified elemental forces of this haunted and primeval region. Our intrusion had stirred the powers of the place into activity. It was we who were the cause of the disturbance, and my brain filled to bursting with stories and legends of the spirits and deities of places that have been acknowledged and worshipped by men in all ages of the world's history. But, before I could arrive at any possible explanation, something impelled me to go farther out, and I crept forward on the sand and stood upright. I felt the ground still warm under my bare feet; the wind tore at my hair and face; and the sound of the river burst upon my ears with a sudden roar. These things, I knew, were real, and proved that my senses were acting normally. Yet the figures still rose from earth to heaven, silent, majestically, in a great spiral of grace and strength that overwhelmed me at length with a genuine deep emotion of worship. I felt that I must fall down and worship -- absolutely worship.<br />
<br />
Perhaps in another minute I might have done so, when a gust of wind swept against me with such force that it blew me sideways, and I nearly stumbled and fell. It seemed to shake the dream violently out of me. At least it gave me another point of view somehow. The figures still remained, still ascended into heaven from the heart of the night, but my reason at last began to assert itself. It must be a subjective experience, I argued -- none the less real for that, but still subjective. The moonlight and the branches combined to work out these pictures upon the mirror of my imagination, and for some reason I projected them outwards and made them appear objective. I knew this must be the case, of course. I took courage, and began to move forward across the open patches of sand. By Jove, though, was it all hallucination? Was it merely subjective? Did not my reason argue in the old futile way from the little standard of the known?<br />
<br />
I only know that great column of figures ascended darkly into the sky for what seemed a very long period of time, and with a very complete measure of reality as most men are accustomed to gauge reality. Then suddenly they were gone!<br />
<br />
And, once they were gone and the immediate wonder of their great presence had passed, fear came down upon me with a cold rush. The esoteric meaning of this lonely and haunted region suddenly flamed up within me, and I began to tremble dreadfully. I took a quick look round -- a look of horror that came near to panic -- calculating vainly ways of escape; and then, realising how helpless I was to achieve anything really effective, I crept back silently into the tent and lay down again upon my sandy mattress, first lowering the door-curtain to shut out the sight of the willows in the moonlight, and then burying my head as deeply as possible beneath the blankets to deaden the sound of the terrifying wind.<br />
<br />
As though further to convince me that I had not been dreaming, I remember that it was a long time before I fell again into a troubled and restless sleep; and even then only the upper crust of me slept, and underneath there was something that never quite lost consciousness, but lay alert and on the watch.<br />
<br />
But this second time I jumped up with a genuine start of terror. It was neither the wind nor the river that woke me, but the slow approach of something that caused the sleeping portion of me to grow smaller and smaller till at last it vanished altogether, and I found myself sitting bolt upright -- listening.<br />
<br />
Outside there was a sound of multitudinous little patterings. They had been coming, I was aware, for a long time, and in my sleep they had first become audible. I sat there nervously wide awake as though I had not slept at all. It seemed to me that my breathing came with difficulty, and that there was a great weight upon the surface of my body. In spite of the hot night, I felt clammy with cold and shivered. Something surely was pressing steadily against the sides of the tent and weighing down upon it from above. Was it the body of the wind? Was this the pattering rain, the dripping of the leaves? The spray blown from the river by the wind and gathering in big drops? I thought quickly of a dozen things.<br />
<br />
Then suddenly the explanation leaped into my mind: a bough from the poplar, the only large tree on the island, had fallen with the wind. Still half caught by the other branches, it would fall with the next gust and crush us, and meanwhile its leaves brushed and tapped upon the tight canvas surface of the tent. I raised a loose flap and rushed out, calling to the Swede to follow.<br />
<br />
But when I got out and stood upright I saw that the tent was free. There was no hanging bough; there was no rain or spray; nothing approached.<br />
<br />
A cold, grey light filtered down through the bushes and lay on the faintly gleaming sand. Stars still crowded the sky directly overhead, and the wind howled magnificently, but the fire no longer gave out any glow, and I saw the east reddening in streaks through the trees. Several hours must have passed since I stood there before watching the ascending figures, and the memory of it now came back to me horribly, like an evil dream. Oh, how tired it made me feel, that ceaseless raging wind! Yet, though the deep lassitude of a sleepless night was on me, my nerves were tingling with the activity of an equally tireless apprehension, and all idea of repose was out of the question. The river I saw had risen further. Its thunder filled the air, and a fine spray made itself felt through my thin sleeping shirt.<br />
<br />
Yet nowhere did I discover the slightest evidence of anything to cause alarm. This deep, prolonged disturbance in my heart remained wholly unaccounted for.<br />
<br />
My companion had not stirred when I called him, and there was no need to waken him now. I looked about me carefully, noting everything; the turned-over canoe; the yellow paddles -- two of them, I'm certain; the provision sack and the extra lantern hanging together from the tree; and, crowding everywhere about me, enveloping all, the willows, those endless, shaking willows. A bird uttered its morning cry, and a string of duck passed with whirring flight overhead in the twilight. The sand whirled, dry and stinging, about my bare feet in the wind.<br />
<br />
I walked round the tent and then went out a little way into the bush, so that I could see across the river to the farther landscape, and the same profound yet indefinable emotion of distress seized upon me again as I saw the interminable sea of bushes stretching to the horizon, looking ghostly and unreal in the wan light of dawn. I walked softly here and there, still puzzling over that odd sound of infinite pattering, and of that pressure upon the tent that had wakened me. It must have been the wind, I reflected -- the wind bearing upon the loose, hot sand, driving the dry particles smartly against the taut canvas -- the wind dropping heavily upon our fragile roof.<br />
<br />
Yet all the time my nervousness and malaise increased appreciably.<br />
<br />
I crossed over to the farther shore and noted how the coast-line had altered in the night, and what masses of sand the river had torn away. I dipped my hands and feet into the cool current, and bathed my forehead. Already there was a glow of sunrise in the sky and the exquisite freshness of coming day. On my way back I passed purposely beneath the very bushes where I had seen the column of figures rising into the air, and midway among the clumps I suddenly found myself overtaken by a sense of vast terror. From the shadows a large figure went swiftly by. Someone passed me, as sure as ever man did. . . .<br />
<br />
It was a great staggering blow from the wind that helped me forward again, and once out in the more open space, the sense of terror diminished strangely. The winds were about and walking, I remember saying to myself, for the winds often move like great presences under the trees. And altogether the fear that hovered about me was such an unknown and immense kind of fear, so unlike anything I had ever felt before, that it woke a sense of awe and wonder in me that did much to counteract its worst effects; and when I reached a high point in the middle of the island from which I could see the wide stretch of river, crimson in the sunrise, the whole magical beauty of it all was so overpowering that a sort of wild yearning woke in me and almost brought a cry up into the throat.<br />
<br />
But this cry found no expression, for as my eyes wandered from the plain beyond to the island round me and noted our little tent half hidden among the willows, a dreadful discovery leaped out at me, compared to which my terror of the walking winds seemed as nothing at all.<br />
<br />
For a change, I thought, had somehow come about in the arrangement of the landscape. It was not that my point of vantage gave me a different view, but that an alteration had apparently been effected in the relation of the tent to the willows, and of the willows to the tent. Surely the bushes now crowded much closer -- unnecessarily, unpleasantly close. They had moved nearer.<br />
<br />
Creeping with silent feet over the shifting sands, drawing imperceptibly nearer by soft, unhurried movements, the willows had come closer during the night. But had the wind moved them, or had they moved of themselves? I recalled the sound of infinite small patterings and the pressure upon the tent and upon my own heart that caused me to wake in terror. I swayed for a moment in the wind like a tree, finding it hard to keep my upright position on the sandy hillock. There was a suggestion here of personal agency, of deliberate intention, of aggressive hostility, and it terrified me into a sort of rigidity.<br />
<br />
Then the reaction followed quickly. The idea was so bizarre, so absurd, that I felt inclined to laugh. But the laughter came no more readily than the cry, for the knowledge that my mind was so receptive to such dangerous imaginings brought the additional terror that it was through our minds and not through our physical bodies that the attack would come, and was coming.<br />
<br />
The wind buffeted me about, and, very quickly it seemed, the sun came up over the horizon, for it was after four o'clock, and I must have stood on that little pinnacle of sand longer than I knew, afraid to come down to close quarters with the willows. I returned quietly, creepily, to the tent, first taking another exhaustive look round and -- yes, I confess it -- making a few measurements. I paced out on the warm sand the distances between the willows and the tent, making a note of the shortest distance particularly.<br />
<br />
I crawled stealthily into my blankets. My companion, to all appearances, still slept soundly, and I was glad that this was so. Provided my experiences were not corroborated, I could find strength somehow to deny them, perhaps. With the daylight I could persuade myself that it was all a subjective hallucination, a fantasy of the night, a projection of the excited imagination.<br />
<br />
Nothing further came in to disturb me, and I fell asleep almost at once, utterly exhausted, yet still in dread of hearing again that weird sound of multitudinous pattering, or of feeling the pressure upon my heart that had made it difficult to breathe.<br />
<br />
The sun was high in the heavens when my companion woke me from a heavy sleep and announced that the porridge was cooked and there was just time to bathe. The grateful smell of frizzling bacon entered the tent door.<br />
<br />
"River still rising," he said, "and several islands out in mid-stream have disappeared altogether. Our own island's much smaller."<br />
<br />
"Any wood left?" I asked sleepily.<br />
<br />
"The wood and the island will finish to-morrow in a dead heat," he laughed, "but there's enough to last us till then."<br />
<br />
I plunged in from the point of the island, which had indeed altered a lot in size and shape during the night, and was swept down in a moment to the landing-place opposite the tent. The water was icy, and the banks flew by like the country from an express train. Bathing under such conditions was an exhilarating operation, and the terror of the night seemed cleansed out of me by a process of evaporation in the brain. The sun was blazing hot; not a cloud showed itself anywhere; the wind, however, had not abated one little jot.<br />
<br />
Quite suddenly then the implied meaning of the Swede's words flashed across me, showing that he no longer wished to leave post-haste, and had changed his mind. "Enough to last till to-morrow" -- he assumed we should stay on the island another night. It struck me as odd. The night before he was so positive the other way. How had the change come about?<br />
<br />
Great crumblings of the banks occurred at breakfast, with heavy splashings and clouds of spray which the wind brought into our frying-pan, and my fellow-traveller talked incessantly about the difficulty the Vienna-Pesth steamers must have to find the channel in flood. But the state of his mind interested and impressed me far more than the state of the river or the difficulties of the steamers. He had changed somehow since the evening before. His manner was different -- a trifle excited, a trifle shy, with a sort of suspicion about his voice and gestures. I hardly know how to describe it now in cold blood, but at the time I remember being quite certain of one thing -- that he had become frightened.<br />
<br />
He ate very little breakfast, and for once omitted to smoke his pipe. He had the map spread open beside him, and kept studying its markings.<br />
<br />
"We'd better get off sharp in an hour," I said presently, feeling for an opening that must bring him indirectly to a partial confession at any rate. And his answer puzzled me uncomfortably: "Rather! If they'll let us."<br />
<br />
"Who'll let us? The elements?" I asked quickly, with affected indifference.<br />
<br />
"The powers of this awful place, whoever they are," he replied, keeping his eyes on the map. "The gods are here, if they are anywhere at all in the world."<br />
<br />
"The elements are always the true immortals," I replied, laughing as naturally as I could manage, yet knowing quite well that my face reflected my true feelings when he looked up gravely at me and spoke across the smoke:<br />
<br />
"We shall be fortunate if we get away without further disaster."<br />
<br />
This was exactly what I had dreaded, and I screwed myself up to the point of the direct question. It was like agreeing to allow the dentist to extract the tooth; it had to come anyhow in the long run, and the rest was all pretence.<br />
<br />
"Further disaster! Why, what's happened?"<br />
<br />
"For one thing -- the steering paddle's gone," he said quietly.<br />
<br />
"The steering paddle gone!" I repeated, greatly excited, for this was our rudder, and the Danube in flood without a rudder was suicide. "But what --"<br />
<br />
"And there's a tear in the bottom of the canoe," he added, with a genuine little tremor in his voice.<br />
<br />
I continued staring at him, able only to repeat the words in his face somewhat foolishly. There, in the heat of the sun, and on this burning sand, I was aware of a freezing atmosphere descending round us. I got up to follow him, for he merely nodded his head gravely and led the way towards the tent a few yards on the other side of the fireplace. The canoe still lay there as I had last seen her in the night, ribs uppermost, the paddles, or rather, the paddle, on the sand beside her.<br />
<br />
"There's only one," he said, stooping to pick it up. "And here's the rent in the base-board."<br />
<br />
It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him that I had clearly noticed two paddles a few hours before, but a second impulse made me think better of it, and I said nothing. I approached to see.<br />
<br />
There was a long, finely made tear in the bottom of the canoe where a little slither of wood had been neatly taken clean out; it looked as if the tooth of a sharp rock or snag had eaten down her length, and investigation showed that the hole went through. Had we launched out in her without observing it we must inevitably have foundered. At first the water would have made the wood swell so as to close the hole, but once out in mid-stream the water must have poured in, and the canoe, never more than two inches above the surface, would have filled and sunk very rapidly.<br />
<br />
"There, you see an attempt to prepare a victim for the sacrifice," I heard him saying, more to himself than to me, "two victims rather," he added as he bent over and ran his fingers along the slit.<br />
<br />
I began to whistle -- a thing I always do unconsciously when utterly nonplussed -- and purposely paid no attention to his words. I was determined to consider them foolish.<br />
<br />
"It wasn't there last night," he said presently, straightening up from his examination and looking anywhere but at me.<br />
<br />
"We must have scratched her in landing, of course," I stopped whistling to say. "The stones are very sharp."<br />
<br />
I stopped abruptly, for at that moment he turned round and met my eye squarely. I knew just as well as he did how impossible my explanation was. There were no stones, to begin with.<br />
<br />
"And then there's this to explain too," he added quietly, handing me the paddle and pointing to the blade.<br />
<br />
A new and curious emotion spread freezingly over me as I took and examined it. The blade was scraped down all over, beautifully scraped, as though someone had sand-papered it with care, making it so thin that the first vigorous stroke must have snapped it off at the elbow.<br />
<br />
"One of us walked in his sleep and did this thing," I said feebly, "or -- or it has been filed by the constant stream of sand particles blown against it by the wind, perhaps."<br />
<br />
"Ah," said the Swede, turning away, laughing a little, "you can explain everything."<br />
<br />
"The same wind that caught the steering paddle and flung it so near the bank that it fell in with the next lump that crumbled," I called out after him, absolutely determined to find an explanation for everything he showed me.<br />
<br />
"I see," he shouted back, turning his head to look at me before disappearing among the willow bushes.<br />
<br />
Once alone with these perplexing evidences of personal agency, I think my first thoughts took the form of "One of us must have done this thing, and it certainly was not I." But my second thought decided how impossible it was to suppose, under all the circumstances, that either of us had done it. That my companion, the trusted friend of a dozen similar expeditions, could have knowingly had a hand in it, was a suggestion not to be entertained for a moment. Equally absurd seemed the explanation that this imperturbable and densely practical nature had suddenly become insane and was busied with insane purposes.<br />
<br />
Yet the fact remained that what disturbed me most, and kept my fear actively alive even in this blaze of sunshine and wild beauty, was the clear certainty that some curious alteration had come about in his mind -- that the was nervous, timid, suspicious, aware of goings on he did not speak about, watching a series of secret and hitherto unmentionable events -- waiting, in a word, for a climax that he expected, and, I thought, expected very soon. This grew up in my mind intuitively -- I hardly knew how.<br />
<br />
I made a hurried examination of the tent and its surroundings, but the measurements of the night remained the same. There were deep hollows formed in the sand I now noticed for the first time, basin-shaped and of various depths and sizes, varying from that of a tea-cup to a large bowl. The wind, no doubt, was responsible for these miniature craters, just as it was for lifting the paddle and tossing it towards the water. The rent in the canoe was the only thing that seemed quite inexplicable; and, after all, it was conceivable that a sharp point had caught it when we landed. The examination I made of the shore did not assist this theory, but all the same I clung to it with that diminishing portion of my<br />
intelligence which I called my "reason". An explanation of some kind was an absolute necessity, just as some working explanation of the universe is necessary -- however absurd -- to the happiness of every individual who seeks to do his duty in the world and face the problems of life. The simile seemed to me at the time an exact parallel.<br />
<br />
I at once set the pitch melting, and presently the Swede joined me at the work, though under the best conditions in the world the canoe could not be safe for travelling till the following day. I drew his attention casually to the hollows in the sand.<br />
<br />
"Yes," he said, "I know. They're all over the island. But you can explain them, no doubt!"<br />
<br />
"Wind, of course," I answered without hesitation. "Have you never watched those little whirlwinds in the street that twist and twirl everything into a circle? This sand's loose enough to yield, that's all."<br />
<br />
He made no reply, and we worked on in silence for a bit. I watched him surreptitiously all the time, and I had an idea he was watching me. He seemed, too, to be always listening attentively to something I could not hear, or perhaps for something that he expected to hear, for he kept turning about and staring into the bushes, and up into the sky, and out across the water where it was visible through the openings among the willows. Sometimes he even put his hand to his ear and held it there for several minutes. He said nothing to me, however, about it, and I asked no questions. And meanwhile, as he mended that torn canoe with the skill and address of a red Indian, I was glad to notice his absorption in the work, for there was a vague dread in my heart that he would speak of the changed aspect of the willows. And, if he had noticed that, my imagination could no longer be held a sufficient explanation of it.<br />
<br />
At length, after a long pause, he began to talk.<br />
<br />
"Queer thing," he added in a hurried sort of voice, as though he wanted to say something and get it over. "Queer thing. I mean, about that otter last night."<br />
<br />
I had expected something so totally different that he caught me with surprise, and I looked up sharply.<br />
<br />
"Shows how lonely this place is. Otters are awfully shy things --"<br />
<br />
"I don't mean that, of course," he interrupted. "I mean -- do you think -- did you think it really was an otter?"<br />
<br />
"What else, in the name of Heaven, what else?"<br />
<br />
"You know, I saw it before you did, and at first it seemed -- so much bigger than an otter."<br />
<br />
"The sunset as you looked up-stream magnified it, or something," I replied.<br />
<br />
He looked at me absently a moment, as though his mind were busy with other thoughts.<br />
<br />
"It had such extraordinary yellow eyes," he went on half to himself.<br />
<br />
"That was the sun too," I laughed, a trifle boisterously. "I suppose you'll wonder next if that fellow in the boat --"<br />
<br />
I suddenly decided not to finish the sentence. He was in the act again of listening, turning his head to the wind, and something in the expression of his face made me halt. The subject dropped, and we went on with our caulking. Apparently he had not noticed my unfinished sentence. Five minutes later, however, he looked at me across the canoe, the smoking pitch in his hand, his face exceedingly grave.<br />
<br />
"I did rather wonder, if you want to know," he said slowly, "what that thing in the boat was. I remember thinking at the time it was not a man. The whole business seemed to<br />
rise quite suddenly out of the water." <br />
I laughed again boisterously in his face, but this time there was impatience, and a strain of anger too, in my feeling.<br />
<br />
"Look here now," I cried, "this place is quite queer enough without going out of our way to imagine things! That boat was an ordinary boat, and the man in it was an ordinary man, and they were both going down-stream as fast as they could lick. And that otter was an otter, so don't let's play the fool about it!"<br />
<br />
He looked steadily at me with the same grave expression. He was not in the least annoyed. I took courage from his silence.<br />
<br />
"And, for Heaven's sake," I went on, "don't keep pretending you hear things, because it only gives me the jumps, and there's nothing to hear but the river and this cursed old thundering wind."<br />
<br />
"You fool!" he answered in a low, shocked voice, "you utter fool. That's just the way all victims talk. As if you didn't understand just as well as I do!" he sneered with scorn in his voice, and a sort of resignation. "The best thing you can do is to keep quiet and try to hold your mind as firm as possible. This feeble attempt at self-deception only makes the truth harder when you're forced to meet it."<br />
<br />
My little effort was over, and I found nothing more to say, for I knew quite well his words were true, and that I was the fool, not he. Up to a certain stage in the adventure he kept ahead of me easily, and I think I felt annoyed to be out of it, to be thus proved less psychic, less sensitive than himself to these extraordinary happenings, and half ignorant all the time of what was going on under my very nose. He knew from the very beginning, apparently. But at the moment I wholly missed the point of his words about the necessity of there being a victim, and that we ourselves were destined to satisfy the want. I dropped all pretence thenceforward, but thenceforward likewise my fear increased steadily to the climax.<br />
<br />
"But you're quite right about one thing," he added, before the subject passed, "and that is that we're wiser not to talk about it, or even to think about it, because what one thinks finds expression in words, and what one says, happens."<br />
<br />
That afternoon, while the canoe dried and hardened, we spent trying to fish, testing the leak, collecting wood, and watching the enormous flood of rising water. Masses of driftwood swept near our shores sometimes, and we fished for them with long willow branches. The island grew perceptibly smaller as the banks were torn away with great gulps and splashes. The weather kept brilliantly fine till about four o'clock, and then for the first time for three days the wind showed signs of abating. Clouds began to gather in the south-west, spreading thence slowly over the sky.<br />
<br />
This lessening of the wind came as a great relief, for the incessant roaring, banging, and thundering had irritated our nerves. Yet the silence that came about five o'clock with its sudden cessation was in a manner quite as oppressive. The booming of the river had everything in its own way then; it filled the air with deep murmurs, more musical than the wind noises, but infinitely more monotonous. The wind held many notes, rising, falling always beating out some sort of great elemental tune; whereas the river's song lay between three notes at most -- dull pedal notes, that held a lugubrious quality foreign to the wind, and somehow seemed to me, in my then nervous state, to sound wonderfully well the music of doom.<br />
<br />
It was extraordinary, too, how the withdrawal suddenly of bright sunlight took everything out of the landscape that made for cheerfulness; and since this particular landscape had already managed to convey the suggestion of something sinister, the change of course was all the more unwelcome and noticeable. For me, I know, the darkening outlook became distinctly more alarming, and I found myself more than once calculating how soon after sunset the full moon would get up in the east, and whether the gathering clouds would greatly interfere with her lighting of the little island.<br />
<br />
With this general hush of the wind -- though it still indulged in occasional brief gusts -- the river seemed to me to grow blacker, the willows to stand more densely together. The latter, too, kept up a sort of independent movement of their own, rustling among themselves when no wind stirred, and shaking oddly from the roots upwards. When common objects in this way be come charged with the suggestion of horror, they stimulate the imagination far more than things of unusual appearance; and these bushes, crowding huddled about us, assumed for me in the darkness a bizarre grotesquerie of appearance that lent to them somehow the aspect of purposeful and living creatures. Their very ordinariness, I felt, masked what was malignant and hostile to us. The forces of the region drew nearer with the coming of night. They were focusing upon our island, and more particularly upon ourselves. For thus, somehow, in the terms of the imagination, did my really indescribable sensations in this extraordinary place present themselves.<br />
<br />
I had slept a good deal in the early afternoon, and had thus recovered somewhat from the exhaustion of a disturbed night, but this only served apparently to render me more susceptible than before to the obsessing spell of the haunting. I fought against it, laughing at my feelings as absurd and childish, with very obvious physiological explanations, yet, in spite of every effort, they gained in strength upon me so that I dreaded the night as a child lost in a forest must dread the approach of darkness.<br />
<br />
The canoe we had carefully covered with a waterproof sheet during the day, and the one remaining paddle had been securely tied by the Swede to the base of a tree, lest the wind should rob us of that too. From five o'clock onwards I busied myself with the stew-pot and preparations for dinner, it being my turn to cook that night. We had potatoes, onions, bits of bacon fat to add flavour, and a general thick residue from former stews at the bottom of the pot; with black bread broken up into it the result was most excellent, and it was followed by a stew of plums with sugar and a brew of strong tea with dried milk. A good pile of wood lay close at hand, and the absence of wind made my duties easy. My companion sat lazily watching me, dividing his attentions between cleaning his pipe and giving useless advice -- an admitted privilege of the off-duty man. He had been very quiet all the afternoon, engaged in re-caulking the canoe, strengthening the tent ropes, and fishing for driftwood while I slept. No more talk about undesirable things had passed between us, and I think his only remarks had to do with the gradual destruction of the island, which he declared was not fully a third smaller than when we first landed.<br />
<br />
The pot had just begun to bubble when I heard his voice calling to me from the bank, where he had wandered away without my noticing. I ran up.<br />
<br />
"Come and listen," he said, "and see what you make of it." He held his hand cupwise to his ear, as so often before.<br />
<br />
"Now do you hear anything?" he asked, watching me curiously.<br />
<br />
We stood there, listening attentively together. At first I heard only the deep note of the water and the hissings rising from its turbulent surface. The willows, for once, were motionless and silent. Then a sound began to reach my ears faintly, a peculiar sound -- something like the humming of a distant gong. It seemed to come across to us in the darkness from the waste of swamps and willows opposite. It was repeated at regular intervals, but it was certainly neither the sound of a bell nor the hooting of a distant steamer. I can liken it to nothing so much as to the sound of an immense gong, suspended far up in the sky, repeating incessantly its muffled metallic note, soft and musical, as it was repeatedly struck. My heart quickened as I listened.<br />
<br />
"I've heard it all day," said my companion. "While you slept this afternoon it came all round the island. I hunted it down, but could never get near enough to see -- to localise it correctly. Sometimes it was overhead, and sometimes it seemed under the water. Once or twice, too, I could have sworn it was not outside at all, but within myself -- you know -- the way a sound in the fourth dimension is supposed to come."<br />
<br />
I was too much puzzled to pay much attention to his words. I listened carefully, striving to associate it with any known familiar sound I could think of, but without success. It changed in the direction, too, coming nearer, and then sinking utterly away into remote distance. I cannot say that it was ominous in quality, because to me it seemed distinctly musical, yet I must admit it set going a distressing feeling that made me wish I had never heard it.<br />
<br />
"The wind blowing in those sand-funnels," I said determined to find an explanation, "or the bushes rubbing together after the storm perhaps."<br />
<br />
"It comes off the whole swamp," my friend answered. "It comes from everywhere at once." He ignored my explanations. "It comes from the willow bushes somehow -- "<br />
<br />
"But now the wind has dropped," I objected. "The willows can hardly make a noise by themselves, can they?"<br />
<br />
His answer frightened me, first because I had dreaded it, and secondly, because I knew intuitively it was true.<br />
<br />
"It is because the wind has dropped we now hear it. It was drowned before. It is the cry, I believe, of the -- "<br />
<br />
I dashed back to my fire, warned by the sound of bubbling that the stew was in danger, but determined at the same time to escape further conversation. I was resolute, if possible, to avoid the exchanging of views. I dreaded, too, that he would begin about the gods, or the elemental forces, or something else disquieting, and I wanted to keep myself well in hand for what might happen later. There was another night to be faced before we escaped from this distressing place, and there was no knowing yet what it might bring forth.<br />
<br />
"Come and cut up bread for the pot," I called to him, vigorously stirring the appetising mixture. That stew-pot held sanity for us both, and the thought made me laugh.<br />
<br />
He came over slowly and took the provision sack from the tree, fumbling in its mysterious depths, and then emptying the entire contents upon the ground-sheet at his feet.<br />
<br />
"Hurry up!" I cried; "it's boiling."<br />
<br />
The Swede burst out into a roar of laughter that startled me. It was forced laughter, not artificial exactly, but mirthless.<br />
<br />
"There's nothing here!" he shouted, holding his sides.<br />
<br />
"Bread, I mean."<br />
<br />
"It's gone. There is no bread. They've taken it!"<br />
<br />
I dropped the long spoon and ran up. Everything the sack had contained lay upon the ground-sheet, but there was no loaf.<br />
<br />
The whole dead weight of my growing fear fell upon me and shook me. Then I burst out laughing too. It was the only thing to do: and the sound of my laughter also made me understand his. The stain of psychical pressure caused it -- this explosion of unnatural laughter in both of us; it was an effort of repressed forces to seek relief; it was a temporary safety-valve. And with both of us it ceased quite suddenly.<br />
<br />
"How criminally stupid of me!" I cried, still determined to be consistent and find an explanation. "I clean forgot to buy a loaf at Pressburg. That chattering woman put everything out of my head, and I must have left it lying on the counter or -- "<br />
<br />
"The oatmeal, too, is much less than it was this morning," the Swede interrupted.<br />
<br />
Why in the world need he draw attention to it? I thought angrily.<br />
<br />
"There's enough for to-morrow," I said, stirring vigorously, "and we can get lots more at Komorn or Gran. In twenty-four hours we shall be miles from here."<br />
<br />
"I hope so -- to God," he muttered, putting the things back into the sack, "unless we're claimed first as victims for the sacrifice," he added with a foolish laugh. He dragged the sack into the tent, for safety's sake, I suppose, and I heard him mumbling to himself, but so indistinctly that it seemed quite natural for me to ignore his words.<br />
<br />
Our meal was beyond question a gloomy one, and we ate it almost in silence, avoiding one another's eyes, and keeping the fire bright. Then we washed up and prepared for the night, and, once smoking, our minds unoccupied with any definite duties, the apprehension I had felt all day long became more and more acute. It was not then active fear, I think, but the very vagueness of its origin distressed me far more that if I had been able to ticket and face it squarely. The curious sound I have likened to the note of a gong became now almost incessant, and filled the stillness of the night with a faint, continuous ringing rather than a series of distinct notes. At one time it was behind and at another time in front of us. Sometimes I fancied it came from the bushes on our left, and then again from the clumps on our right. More often it hovered directly overhead like the whirring of wings. It was really everywhere at once, behind, in front, at our sides and over our heads, completely surrounding us. The sound really defies description. But nothing within my knowledge is like that ceaseless muffled humming rising off the deserted world of swamps and willows.<br />
<br />
We sat smoking in comparative silence, the strain growing every minute greater. The worst feature of the situation seemed to me that we did not know what to expect, and could therefore make no sort of preparation by way of defence. We could anticipate nothing. My explanations made in the sunshine, moreover, now came to haunt me with their foolish and wholly unsatisfactory nature, and it was more and more clear to us that some kind of plain talk with my companion was inevitable, whether I liked it or not. After all, we had to spend the night together, and to sleep in the same tent side by side. I saw that I could not get along much longer without the support of his mind, and for that, of course, plain talk was imperative. As long as possible, however, I postponed this little climax, and tried to ignore or laugh at the occasional sentences he flung into the emptiness.<br />
<br />
Some of these sentences, moreover, were confoundedly disquieting to me, coming as they did to corroborate much that I felt myself; corroboration, too -- which made it so much more convincing -- from a totally different point of view. He composed such curious sentences, and hurled them at me in such an inconsequential sort of way, as though his main line of thought was secret to himself, and these fragments were mere bits he found it impossible to digest. He got rid of them by uttering them. Speech relieved him. It was like being sick.<br />
<br />
"There are things about us, I'm sure, that make for disorder, disintegration, destruction, our destruction," he said once, while the fire blazed between us. "We've strayed out of a safe line somewhere."<br />
<br />
And, another time, when the gong sounds had come nearer, ringing much louder than before, and directly over our heads, he said as though talking to himself:<br />
<br />
"I don't think a gramophone would show any record of that. The sound doesn't come to me by the ears at all. The vibrations reach me in another manner altogether, and seem to be within me, which is precisely how a fourth dimensional sound might be supposed to make itself heard."<br />
<br />
I purposely made no reply to this, but I sat up a little closer to the fire and peered about me into the darkness. The clouds were massed all over the sky, and no trace of moonlight came through. Very still, too, everything was, so that the river and the frogs had things all their own way.<br />
<br />
"It has that about it," he went on, "which is utterly out of common experience. It is unknown. Only one thing describes it really; it is a non-human sound; I mean a sound outside humanity."<br />
<br />
Having rid himself of this indigestible morsel, he lay quiet for a time, but he had so admirably expressed my own feeling that it was a relief to have the thought out, and to have confined it by the limitation of words from dangerous wandering to and fro in the mind.<br />
<br />
The solitude of that Danube camping-place, can I ever forget it? The feeling of being utterly alone on an empty planet! My thoughts ran incessantly upon cities and the haunts of men. I would have given my soul, as the saying is, for the "feel" of those Bavarian villages we had passed through by the score; for the normal, human commonplaces; peasants drinking beer, tables beneath the trees, hot sunshine, and a ruined castle on the rocks behind the red-roofed church. Even the tourists would have been welcome.<br />
<br />
Yet what I felt of dread was no ordinary ghostly fear. It was infinitely greater, stranger, and seemed to arise from some dim ancestral sense of terror more profoundly disturbing than anything I had known or dreamed of. We had "strayed", as the Swede put it, into some region or some set of conditions where the risks were great, yet unintelligible to us; where the frontiers of some unknown world lay close about us. It was a spot held by the dwellers in some outer space, a sort of peep-hole whence they could spy upon the earth, themselves unseen, a point where the veil between had worn a little thin. As the final result of too long a sojourn here, we should be carried over the border and deprived of what we called "our lives", yet by mental, not physical, processes. In that sense, as he said, we should be the victims of our adventure -- a sacrifice.<br />
<br />
It took us in different fashion, each according to the measure of his sensitiveness and powers of resistance. I translated it vaguely into a personification of the mightily disturbed elements, investing them with the horror of a deliberate and malefic purpose, resentful of our audacious intrusion into their breeding-place; whereas my friend threw it into the unoriginal form at first of a trespass on some ancient shrine, some place where the old gods still held sway, where the emotional forces of former worshippers still clung, and the ancestral portion of him yielded to the old pagan spell.<br />
<br />
At any rate, here was a place unpolluted by men, kept clean by the winds from coarsening human influences, a place where spiritual agencies were within reach and aggressive. Never, before or since, have I been so attacked by indescribable suggestions of a "beyond region", of another scheme of life, another revolution not parallel to the human. And in the end our minds would succumb under the weight of the awful spell, and we should be drawn across the frontier into their world.<br />
<br />
Small things testified to the amazing influence of the place, and now in the silence round the fire they allowed themselves to be noted by the mind. The very atmosphere had proved itself a magnifying medium to distort every indication: the otter rolling in the current, the hurrying boatman making signs, the shifting willows, one and all had been robbed of its natural character, and revealed in something of its other aspect -- as it existed across the border to that other region. And this changed aspect I felt was now not merely to me, but to the race. The whole experience whose verge we touched was unknown to humanity at all. It was a new order of experience, and in the true sense of the word unearthly.<br />
<br />
"It's the deliberate, calculating purpose that reduces one's courage to zero," the Swede said suddenly, as if he had been actually following my thoughts. "Otherwise imagination might count for much. But the paddle, the canoe, the lessening food -- "<br />
<br />
"Haven't I explained all that once?" I interrupted viciously.<br />
<br />
"You have," he answered dryly; "you have indeed."<br />
<br />
He made other remarks too, as usual, about what he called the "plain determination to provide a victim"; but, having now arranged my thoughts better, I recognised that this was simply the cry of his frightened soul against the knowledge that he was being attacked in a vital part, and that he would be somehow taken or destroyed. The situation called for a courage and calmness of reasoning that neither of us could compass, and I have never before been so clearly conscious of two persons in me -- the one that explained everything, and the other that laughed at such foolish explanations, yet was horribly afraid.<br />
<br />
Meanwhile, in the pitchy night the fire died down and the wood pile grew small. Neither of us moved to replenish the stock, and the darkness consequently came up very close to our faces. A few feet beyond the circle of firelight it was inky black. Occasionally a stray puff of wind set the willows shivering about us, but apart from this not very welcome sound a deep and depressing silence reigned, broken only by the gurgling of the river and the humming in the air overhead.<br />
<br />
We both missed, I think, the shouting company of the winds.<br />
<br />
At length, at a moment when a stray puff prolonged itself as though the wind were about to rise again, I reached the point for me of saturation, the point where it was absolutely necessary to find relief in plain speech, or else to betray myself by some hysterical extravagance that must have been far worse in its effect upon both of us. I kicked the fire into a blaze, and turned to my companion abruptly. He looked up with a start.<br />
<br />
"I can't disguise it any longer," I said; "I don't like this place, and the darkness, and the noises, and the awful feelings I get. There's something here that beats me utterly. I'm in a blue funk, and that's the plain truth. If the other shore was -- different, I swear I'd be inclined to swim for it!"<br />
<br />
The Swede's face turned very white beneath the deep tan of sun and wind. He stared straight at me and answered quietly, but his voice betrayed his huge excitement by its unnatural calmness. For the moment, at any rate, he was the strong man of the two. He was more phlegmatic, for one thing.<br />
<br />
"It's not a physical condition we can escape from by running away," he replied, in the tone of a doctor diagnosing some grave disease; "we must sit tight and wait. There are forces close here that could kill a herd of elephants in a second as easily as you or I could squash a fly. Our only chance is to keep perfectly still. Our insignificance perhaps may save us."<br />
<br />
I put a dozen questions into my expression of face, but found no words. It was precisely like listening to an accurate description of a disease whose symptoms had puzzled me.<br />
<br />
"I mean that so far, although aware of our disturbing presence, they have not found us -- not 'located' us, as the Americans say," he went on. "They're blundering about like men hunting for a leak of gas. The paddle and canoe and provisions prove that. I think they feel us, but cannot actually see us. We must keep our minds quiet -- it's our minds they feel. We must control our thoughts, or it's all up with us."<br />
<br />
"Death, you mean?" I stammered, icy with the horror of his suggestion.<br />
<br />
"Worse -- by far," he said. "Death, according to one's belief, means either annihilation or release from the limitations of the senses, but it involves no change of character. You don't suddenly alter just because the body's gone. But this means a radical alteration, a complete change, a horrible loss of oneself by substitution -- far worse than death, and not even annihilation. We happen to have camped in a spot where their region touches ours, where the veil between has worn thin" -- horrors! he was using my very own phrase, my actual words -- "so that they are aware of our being in their neighbourhood."<br />
<br />
"But who are aware?" I asked.<br />
<br />
I forgot the shaking of the willows in the windless calm, the humming overhead, everything except that I was waiting for an answer that I dreaded more than I can possibly explain.<br />
<br />
He lowered his voice at once to reply, leaning forward a little over the fire, an indefinable change in his face that made me avoid his eyes and look down upon the ground.<br />
<br />
"All my life," he said, "I have been strangely, vividly conscious of another region -- not far removed from our own world in one sense, yet wholly different in kind -- where great things go on unceasingly, where immense and terrible personalities hurry by, intent on vast purposes compared to which earthly affairs, the rise and fall of nations, the destinies of empires, the fate of armies and continents, are all as dust in the balance; vast purposes, I mean, that deal directly with the soul, and not indirectly with more expressions of the soul -- "<br />
<br />
"I suggest just now -- " I began, seeking to stop him, feeling as though I was face to face with a madman. But he instantly overbore me with his torrent that had to come.<br />
<br />
"You think," he said, "it is the spirit of the elements, and I thought perhaps it was the old gods. But I tell you now it is -- neither. These would be comprehensible entities, for they have relations with men, depending upon them for worship or sacrifice, whereas these beings who are now about us have absolutely nothing to do with mankind, and it is mere chance that their space happens just at this spot to touch our own."<br />
<br />
The mere conception, which his words somehow made so convincing, as I listened to them there in the dark stillness of that lonely island, set me shaking a little all over. I found it impossible to control my movements.<br />
<br />
"And what do you propose?" I began again.<br />
<br />
"A sacrifice, a victim, might save us by distracting them until we could get away," he went on, "just as the wolves stop to devour the dogs and give the sleigh another start. But -- I see no chance of any other victim now."<br />
<br />
I stared blankly at him. The gleam in his eye was dreadful. Presently he continued.<br />
<br />
"It's the willows, of course. The willows mask the others, but the others are feeling about for us. If we let our minds betray our fear, we're lost, lost utterly." He looked at me with an expression so calm, so determined, so sincere, that I no longer had any doubts as to his sanity. He was as sane as any man ever was. "If we can hold out through the night," he added, "we may get off in the daylight unnoticed, or rather, undiscovered."<br />
<br />
"But you really think a sacrifice would -- "<br />
<br />
That gong-like humming came down very close over our heads as I spoke, but it was my friend's scared face that really stopped my mouth.<br />
<br />
"Hush!" he whispered, holding up his hand. "Do not mention them more than you can help. Do not refer to them by name. To name is to reveal; it is the inevitable clue, and our only hope lies in ignoring them, in order that they may ignore us."<br />
<br />
"Even in thought?" He was extraordinarily agitated.<br />
<br />
"Especially in thought. Our thoughts make spirals in their world. We must keep them out of our minds at all costs if possible."<br />
<br />
I raked the fire together to prevent the darkness having everything its own way. I never longed for the sun as I longed for it then in the awful blackness of that summer night.<br />
<br />
"Were you awake all last night?" he went on suddenly.<br />
<br />
"I slept badly a little after dawn," I replied evasively, trying to follow his instructions, which I knew instinctively were true, "but the wind, of course -- "<br />
<br />
"I know. But the wind won't account for all the noises."<br />
<br />
"Then you heard it too?"<br />
<br />
"The multiplying countless little footsteps I heard," he said, adding, after a moment's hesitation, "and that other sound -- "<br />
<br />
"You mean above the tent, and the pressing down upon us of something tremendous, gigantic?"<br />
<br />
He nodded significantly.<br />
<br />
"It was like the beginning of a sort of inner suffocation?" I said.<br />
<br />
"Partly, yes. It seemed to me that the weight of the atmosphere had been altered -- had increased enormously, so that we should have been crushed."<br />
<br />
"And that," I went on, determined to have it all out, pointing upwards where the gong-like note hummed ceaselessly, rising and falling like wind. "What do you make of that?"<br />
<br />
"It's their sound," he whispered gravely. "It's the sound of their world, the humming in their region. The division here is so thin that it leaks through somehow. But, if you listen carefully, you'll find it's not above so much as around us. It's in the willows. It's the willows themselves humming, because here the willows have been made symbols of the forces that are against us."<br />
<br />
I could not follow exactly what he meant by this, yet the thought and idea in my mind were beyond question the thought an idea in his. I realised what he realised, only with less power of analysis than his. It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him at last about my hallucination of the ascending figures and the moving bushes, when he suddenly thrust his face again close into mine across the firelight and began to speak in a very earnest whisper. He amazed me by his calmness and pluck, his apparent control of the situation. This man I had for years deemed unimaginative, stolid!<br />
<br />
"Now listen," he said. "The only thing for us to do is to go on as though nothing had happened, follow our usual habits, go to bed, and so forth; pretend we feel nothing and notice nothing. It is a question wholly of the mind, and the less we think about them the better our chance of escape. Above all, don't think, for what you think happens!"<br />
<br />
"All right," I managed to reply, simply breathless with his words and the strangeness of it all; "all right, I'll try, but tell me one more thing first. Tell me what you make of those hollows in the ground all about us, those sand-funnels?"<br />
<br />
"No!" he cried, forgetting to whisper in his excitement. "I dare not, simply dare not, put the thought into words. If you have not guessed I am glad. Don't try to. They have put it into my mind; try your hardest to prevent their putting it into yours."<br />
<br />
He sank his voice again to a whisper before he finished, and I did not press him to explain. There was already just about as much horror in me as I could hold. The conversation came to an end, and we smoked our pipes busily in silence.<br />
<br />
Then something happened, something unimportant apparently, as the way is when the nerves are in a very great state of tension, and this small thing for a brief space gave me an entirely different point of view. I chanced to look down at my sand-shoe -- the sort we used for the canoe -- and something to do with the hole at the toe suddenly recalled to me the London shop where I had bought them, the difficulty the man had in fitting me, and other details of the uninteresting but practical operation. At once, in its train, followed a wholesome view of the modern sceptical world I was accustomed to move in at home. I thought of roast beef, and ale, motor-cars, policemen, brass bands, and a dozen other things that proclaimed the soul of ordinariness or utility. The effect was immediate and astonishing even to myself. Psychologically, I suppose, it was simply a sudden and violent reaction after the strain of living in an atmosphere of things that to the normal consciousness must seem impossible and incredible. But, whatever the cause, it momentarily lifted the spell from my heart, and left me for the short space of a minute feeling free and utterly unafraid. I looked up at my friend opposite.<br />
<br />
"You damned old pagan!" I cried, laughing aloud in his face. "You imaginative idiot! You superstitious idolator! You -- "<br />
<br />
I stopped in the middle, seized anew by the old horror. I tried to smother the sound of my voice as something sacrilegious. The Swede, of course, heard it too -- the strange cry overhead in the darkness -- and that sudden drop in the air as though something had come nearer.<br />
<br />
He had turned ashen white under the tan. He stood bolt upright in front of the fire, stiff as a rod, staring at me.<br />
<br />
"After that," he said in a sort of helpless, frantic way, "we must go! We can't stay now; we must strike camp this very instant and go on -- down the river."<br />
<br />
He was talking, I saw, quite wildly, his words dictated by abject terror -- the terror he had resisted so long, but which had caught him at last.<br />
<br />
"In the dark?" I exclaimed, shaking with fear after my hysterical outburst, but still realising our position better than he did. "Sheer madness! The river's in flood, and we've only got a single paddle. Besides, we only go deeper into their country! There's nothing ahead for fifty miles but willows, willows, willows!"<br />
<br />
He sat down again in a state of semi-collapse. The positions, by one of those kaleidoscopic changes nature loves, were suddenly reversed, and the control of our forces passed over into my hands. His mind at last had reached the point where it was beginning to weaken.<br />
<br />
"What on earth possessed you to do such a thing?" he whispered with the awe of genuine terror in his voice and face.<br />
<br />
I crossed round to his side of the fire. I took both his hands in mine, kneeling down beside him and looking straight into his frightened eyes.<br />
<br />
"We'll make one more blaze," I said firmly, "and then turn in for the night. At sunrise we'll be off full speed for Komorn. Now, pull yourself together a bit, and remember your own advice about not thinking fear!"<br />
<br />
He said no more, and I saw that he would agree and obey. In some measure, too, it was a sort of relief to get up and make an excursion into the darkness for more wood. We kept close together, almost touching, groping among the bushes and along the bank. The humming overhead never ceased, but seemed to me to grow louder as we increased our distance from the fire. It was shivery work!<br />
<br />
We were grubbing away in the middle of a thickish clump of willows where some driftwood from a former flood had caught high among the branches, when my body was seized in a grip that made me half drop upon the sand. It was the Swede. He had fallen against me, and was clutching me for support. I heard his breath coming and going in short gasps.<br />
<br />
"Look! By my soul!" he whispered, and for the first time in my experience I knew what it was to hear tears of terror in a human voice. He was pointing to the fire, some fifty feet away. I followed the direction of his finger, and I swear my heart missed a beat.<br />
<br />
There, in front of the dim glow, something was moving.<br />
<br />
I saw it through a veil that hung before my eyes like the gauze drop-curtain used at the back of a theatre -- hazily a little. It was neither a human figure nor an animal. To me it gave the strange impression of being as large as several animals grouped together, like horses, two or three, moving slowly. The Swede, too, got a similar result, though expressing it differently, for he thought it was shaped and sized like a clump of willow bushes, rounded at the top, and moving all over upon its surface -- "coiling upon itself like smoke," he said afterwards.<br />
<br />
"I watched it settle downwards through the bushes," he sobbed at me. "Look, by God! It's coming this way! Oh, oh!" -- he gave a kind of whistling cry. "They've found us."<br />
<br />
I gave one terrified glance, which just enabled me to see that the shadowy form was swinging towards us through the bushes, and then I collapsed backwards with a crash into the branches. These failed, of course, to support my weight, so that with the Swede on top of me we fell in a struggling heap upon the sand. I really hardly knew what was happening. I was conscious only of a sort of enveloping sensation of icy fear that plucked the nerves out of their fleshly covering, twisted them this way and that, and replaced them quivering. My eyes were tightly shut; something in my throat choked me; a feeling that my consciousness was expanding, extending out into space, swiftly gave way to another feeling that I was losing it altogether, and about to die.<br />
<br />
An acute spasm of pain passed through me, and I was aware that the Swede had hold of me in such a way that he hurt me abominably. It was the way he caught at me in falling.<br />
<br />
But it was the pain, he declared afterwards, that saved me; it caused me to forget them and think of something else at the very instant when they were about to find me. It concealed my mind from them at the moment of discovery, yet just in time to evade their terrible seizing of me. He himself, he says, actually swooned at the same moment, and that was what saved him.<br />
<br />
I only know that at a later date, how long or short is impossible to say, I found myself scrambling up out of the slippery network of willow branches, and saw my companion standing in front of me holding out a hand to assist me. I stared at him in a dazed way, rubbing the arm he had twisted for me. Nothing came to me to say, somehow.<br />
<br />
"I lost consciousness for a moment or two," I heard him say. "That's what saved me. It made me stop thinking about them."<br />
<br />
"You nearly broke my arm in two," I said, uttering my only connected thought at the moment. A numbness came over me.<br />
<br />
"That's what saved you!" he replied. "Between us, we've managed to set them off on a false tack somewhere. The humming has ceased. It's gone -- for the moment at any rate!"<br />
<br />
A wave of hysterical laughter seized me again, and this time spread to my friend too -- great healing gusts of shaking laughter that brought a tremendous sense of relief in their train. We made our way back to the fire and put the wood on so that it blazed at once. Then we saw that the tent had fallen over and lay in a tangled heap upon the ground.<br />
<br />
We picked it up, and during the process tripped more than once and caught our feet in sand.<br />
<br />
"It's those sand-funnels," exclaimed the Swede, when the tent was up again and the firelight lit up the ground for several yards about us. "And look at the size of them!"<br />
<br />
All round the tent and about the fireplace where we had seen the moving shadows there were deep funnel-shaped hollows in the sand, exactly similar to the ones we had already found over the island, only far bigger and deeper, beautifully formed, and wide enough in some instances to admit the whole of my foot and leg.<br />
<br />
Neither of us said a word. We both knew that sleep was the safest thing we could do, and to bed we went accordingly without further delay, having first thrown sand on the fire and taken the provision sack and the paddle inside the tent with us. The canoe, too, we propped in such a way at the end of the tent that our feet touched it, and the least motion would disturb and wake us.<br />
<br />
In case of emergency, too, we again went to bed in our clothes, ready for a sudden start.<br />
<br />
It was my firm intention to lie awake all night and watch, but the exhaustion of nerves and body decreed otherwise, and sleep after a while came over me with a welcome blanket of oblivion. The fact that my companion also slept quickened its approach. At first he fidgeted and constantly sat up, asking me if I "heard this" or "heard that." He tossed about on his cork mattress, and said the tent was moving and the river had risen over the point of the island, but each time I went out to look I returned with the report that all was well, and finally he grew calmer and lay still. Then at length his breathing became regular and I heard unmistakable sounds of snoring -- the first and only time in my life when snoring has been a welcome and calming influence.<br />
<br />
This, I remember, was the last thought in my mind before dozing off.<br />
<br />
A difficulty in breathing woke me, and I found the blanket over my face. But something else besides the blanket was pressing upon me, and my first thought was that my companion had rolled off his mattress on to my own in his sleep. I called to him and sat up, and at the same moment it came to me that the tent was surrounded. That sound of multitudinous soft pattering was again audible outside, filling the night with horror.<br />
<br />
I called again to him, louder than before. He did not answer, but I missed the sound of his snoring, and also noticed that the flap of the tent was down. This was the unpardonable sin. I crawled out in the darkness to hook it back securely, and it was then for the first time I realised positively that the Swede was not here. He had gone.<br />
<br />
I dashed out in a mad run, seized by a dreadful agitation, and the moment I was out I plunged into a sort of torrent of humming that surrounded me completely and came out of every quarter of the heavens at once. It was that same familiar humming -- gone mad! A swarm of great invisible bees might have been about me in the air. The sound seemed to thicken the very atmosphere, and I felt that my lungs worked with difficulty.<br />
<br />
But my friend was in danger, and I could not hesitate.<br />
<br />
The dawn was just about to break, and a faint whitish light spread upwards over the clouds from a thin strip of clear horizon. No wind stirred. I could just make out the bushes and river beyond, and the pale sandy patches. In my excitement I ran frantically to and fro about the island, calling him by name, shouting at the top of my voice the first words that came into my head. But the willows smothered my voice, and the humming muffled it, so that the sound only travelled a few feet round me. I plunged among the bushes, tripping headlong, tumbling over roots, and scraping my face as I tore this way and that among the preventing branches.<br />
<br />
Then, quite unexpectedly, I came out upon the island's point and saw a dark figure outlined between the water and the sky. It was the Swede. And already he had one foot in the river! A moment more and he would have taken the plunge.<br />
<br />
I threw myself upon him, flinging my arms about his waist and dragging him shorewards with all my strength. Of course he struggled furiously, making a noise all the time just like that cursed humming, and using the most outlandish phrases in his anger about "going inside to Them", and "taking the way of the water and the wind", and God only knows what more besides, that I tried in vain to recall afterwards, but which turned me sick with horror and amazement as I listened. But in the end I managed to get him into the comparative safety of the tent, and flung him breathless and cursing upon the mattress where I held him until the fit had passed.<br />
<br />
I think the suddenness with which it all went and he grew calm, coinciding as it did with the equally abrupt cessation of the humming and pattering outside -- I think this was almost the strangest part of the whole business perhaps. For he had just opened his eyes and turned his tired face up to me so that the dawn threw a pale light upon it through the doorway, and said, for all the world just like a frightened child:<br />
<br />
"My life, old man -- it's my life I owe you. But it's all over now anyhow. They've found a victim in our place!"<br />
<br />
Then he dropped back upon his blankets and went to sleep literally under my eyes. He simply collapsed, and began to snore again as healthily as though nothing had happened and he had never tried to offer his own life as a sacrifice by drowning. And when the sunlight woke him three hours later -- hours of ceaseless vigil for me -- it became so clear to me that he remembered absolutely nothing of what he had attempted to do, that I deemed it wise to hold my peace and ask no dangerous questions.<br />
<br />
He woke naturally and easily, as I have said, when the sun was already high in a windless hot sky, and he at once got up and set about the preparation of the fire for breakfast. I followed him anxiously at bathing, but he did not attempt to plunge in, merely dipping his head and making some remark about the extra coldness of the water.<br />
<br />
"River's falling at last," he said, "and I'm glad of it."<br />
<br />
"The humming has stopped too," I said.<br />
<br />
He looked up at me quietly with his normal expression. Evidently he remembered everything except his own attempt at suicide.<br />
<br />
"Everything has stopped," he said, "because -- "<br />
<br />
He hesitated. But I knew some reference to that remark he had made just before he fainted was in his mind, and I was determined to know it.<br />
<br />
"Because 'They've found another victim'?" I said, forcing a little laugh.<br />
<br />
"Exactly," he answered, "exactly! I feel as positive of it as though -- as though -- I feel quite safe again, I mean," he finished.<br />
<br />
He began to look curiously about him. The sunlight lay in hot patches on the sand. There was no wind. The willows were motionless. He slowly rose to feet.<br />
<br />
"Come," he said; "I think if we look, we shall find it."<br />
<br />
He started off on a run, and I followed him. He kept to the banks, poking with a stick among the sandy bays and caves and little back- waters, myself always close on his heels.<br />
<br />
"Ah!" he exclaimed presently, "ah!"<br />
<br />
The tone of his voice somehow brought back to me a vivid sense of the horror of the last twenty-four hours, and I hurried up to join him. He was pointing with his stick at a large black object that lay half in the water and half on the sand. It appeared to be caught by some twisted willow roots so that the river could not sweep it away. A few hours before the spot must have been under water.<br />
<br />
"See," he said quietly, "the victim that made our escape possible!"<br />
<br />
And when I peered across his shoulder I saw that his stick rested on the body of a man. He turned it over. It was the corpse of a peasant, and the face was hidden in the sand. Clearly the man had been drowned, but a few hours before, and his body must have been swept down upon our island somewhere about the hour of the dawn -- at the very time the fit had passed.<br />
<br />
"We must give it a decent burial, you know."<br />
<br />
"I suppose so," I replied. I shuddered a little in spite of myself, for there was something about the appearance of that poor drowned man that turned me cold.<br />
<br />
The Swede glanced up sharply at me, an undecipherable expression on his face, and began clambering down the bank. I followed him more leisurely. The current, I noticed, had torn away much of the clothing from the body, so that the neck and part of the chest lay bare.<br />
<br />
Half-way down the bank my companion suddenly stopped and held up his hand in warning; but either my foot slipped, or I had gained too much momentum to bring myself quickly to a halt, for I bumped into him and sent him forward with a sort of leap to save himself. We tumbled together on to the hard sand so that our feet splashed into the water. And, before anything could be done, we had collided a little heavily against the corpse.<br />
<br />
The Swede uttered a sharp cry. And I sprang back as if I had been shot.<br />
<br />
At the moment we touched the body there rose from its surface the loud sound of humming -- the sound of several hummings -- which passed with a vast commotion as of winged things in the air about us and disappeared upwards into the sky, growing fainter and fainter till they finally ceased in the distance. It was exactly as though we had disturbed some living yet invisible creatures at work.<br />
<br />
My companion clutched me, and I think I clutched him, but before either of us had time properly to recover from the unexpected shock, we saw that a movement of the current was turning the corpse round so that it became released from the grip of the willow roots. A moment later it had turned completely over, the dead face uppermost, staring at the sky. It lay on the edge of the main stream. In another moment it would be swept away.<br />
<br />
The Swede started to save it, shouting again something I did not catch about a "proper burial" -- and then abruptly dropped upon his knees on the sand and covered his eyes with his hands. I was beside him in an instant.<br />
<br />
I saw what he had seen.<br />
<br />
For just as the body swung round to the current the face and the exposed chest turned full towards us, and showed plainly how the skin and flesh were indented with small hollows, beautifully formed, and exactly similar in shape and kind to the sand-funnels that we had found all over the island.<br />
<br />
"Their mark!" I heard my companion mutter under his breath. "Their awful mark!"<br />
<br />
And when I turned my eyes again from his ghastly face to the river, the current had done its work, and the body had been swept away into mid-stream and was already beyond our reach and almost out of sight, turning over and over on the waves like an otter.<br /><br />
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<b>THE END</b></div>
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<b>Read More Stories From <a href="http://www.vaultofghastlytales.com/p/algernon-blackwood.html">Algernon Blackwood</a> in The Vault</b></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444893451907188044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8879282668683580477.post-64877531592755528602016-01-17T13:38:00.002+00:002016-02-02T22:19:12.025+00:00'The Statement of Randolph Carter', by H. P. Lovecraft<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; text-align: justify;">I repeat to you, gentlemen, that your inquisition is fruitless. Detain me here forever if you will; confine or execute me if you must have a victim to propitiate the illusion you call justice; but I can say no more than I have said already. Everything that I can remember, I have told with perfect candour. Nothing has been distorted or concealed, and if anything remains vague, it is only because of the dark cloud which has come over my mind—that cloud and the nebulous nature of the horrors which brought it upon me.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; text-align: justify;">Again I say, I do not know what has become of Harley Warren; though I think—almost hope—that he is in peaceful oblivion, if there be anywhere so blessed a thing. It is true that I have for five years been his closest friend, and a partial sharer of his terrible researches into the unknown. I will not deny, though my memory is uncertain and indistinct, that this witness of yours may have seen us together as he says, on the Gainesville pike, walking toward Big Cypress Swamp, at half past eleven on that awful night. That we bore electric lanterns, spades, and a curious coil of wire with attached instruments, I will even affirm; for these things all played a part in the single hideous scene which remains burned into my shaken recollection. But of what followed, and of the reason I was found alone and dazed on the edge of the swamp next morning, I must insist that I know nothing save what I have told you over and over again. You say to me that there is nothing in the swamp or near it which could form the setting of that frightful episode. I reply that I know nothing beyond what I saw. Vision or nightmare it may have been—vision or nightmare I fervently hope it was—yet it is all that my mind retains of what took place in those shocking hours after we left the sight of men. And why Harley Warren did not return, he or his shade—or some nameless </span><i style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; text-align: justify;">thing</i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; text-align: justify;"> I cannot describe—alone can tell.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; text-align: justify;">As I have said before, the weird studies of Harley Warren were well known to me, and to some extent shared by me. Of his vast collection of strange, rare books on forbidden subjects I have read all that are written in the languages of which I am master; but these are few as compared with those in languages I cannot understand. Most, I believe, are in Arabic; and the fiend-inspired book which brought on the end—the book which he carried in his pocket out of the world—was written in characters whose like I never saw elsewhere. Warren would never tell me just what was in that book. As to the nature of our studies—must I say again that I no longer retain full comprehension? It seems to me rather merciful that I do not, for they were terrible studies, which I pursued more through reluctant fascination than through actual inclination. Warren always dominated me, and sometimes I feared him. I remember how I shuddered at his facial expression on the night before the awful happening, when he talked so incessantly of his theory, </span><i style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; text-align: justify;">why certain corpses never decay, but rest firm and fat in their tombs for a thousand years.</i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; text-align: justify;"> But I do not fear him now, for I suspect that he has known horrors beyond my ken. Now I fear </span><i style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; text-align: justify;">for</i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; text-align: justify;"> him.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; text-align: justify;">Once more I say that I have no clear idea of our object on that night. Certainly, it had much to do with something in the book which Warren carried with him—that ancient book in undecipherable characters which had come to him from India a month before—but I swear I do not know what it was that we expected to find. Your witness says he saw us at half past eleven on the Gainesville pike, headed for Big Cypress Swamp. This is probably true, but I have no distinct memory of it. The picture seared into my soul is of one scene only, and the hour must have been long after midnight; for a waning crescent moon was high in the vaporous heavens.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; text-align: justify;">The place was an ancient cemetery; so ancient that I trembled at the manifold signs of immemorial years. It was in a deep, damp hollow, overgrown with rank grass, moss, and curious creeping weeds, and filled with a vague stench which my idle fancy associated absurdly with rotting stone. On every hand were the signs of neglect and decrepitude, and I seemed haunted by the notion that Warren and I were the first living creatures to invade a lethal silence of centuries. Over the valley’s rim a wan, waning crescent moon peered through the noisome vapours that seemed to emanate from unheard-of catacombs, and by its feeble, wavering beams I could distinguish a repellent array of antique slabs, urns, cenotaphs, and mausolean facades; all crumbling, moss-grown, and moisture-stained, and partly concealed by the gross luxuriance of the unhealthy vegetation. My first vivid impression of my own presence in this terrible necropolis concerns the act of pausing with Warren before a certain half-obliterated sepulchre, and of throwing down some burdens which we seemed to have been carrying. I now observed that I had with me an electric lantern and two spades, whilst my companion was supplied with a similar lantern and a portable telephone outfit. No word was uttered, for the spot and the task seemed known to us; and without delay we seized our spades and commenced to clear away the grass, weeds, and drifted earth from the flat, archaic mortuary. After uncovering the entire surface, which consisted of three immense granite slabs, we stepped back some distance to survey the charnel scene; and Warren appeared to make some mental calculations. Then he returned to the sepulchre, and using his spade as a lever, sought to pry up the slab lying nearest to a stony ruin which may have been a monument in its day. He did not succeed, and motioned to me to come to his assistance. Finally our combined strength loosened the stone, which we raised and tipped to one side.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; text-align: justify;">The removal of the slab revealed a black aperture, from which rushed an effluence of miasmal gases so nauseous that we started back in horror. After an interval, however, we approached the pit again, and found the exhalations less unbearable. Our lanterns disclosed the top of a flight of stone steps, dripping with some detestable ichor of the inner earth, and bordered by moist walls encrusted with nitre. And now for the first time my memory records verbal discourse, Warren addressing me at length in his mellow tenor voice; a voice singularly unperturbed by our awesome surroundings.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; text-align: justify;">“I’m sorry to have to ask you to stay on the surface,” he said, “but it would be a crime to let anyone with your frail nerves go down there. You can’t imagine, even from what you have read and from what I’ve told you, the things I shall have to see and do. It’s fiendish work, Carter, and I doubt if any man without ironclad sensibilities could ever see it through and come up alive and sane. I don’t wish to offend you, and heaven knows I’d be glad enough to have you with me; but the responsibility is in a certain sense mine, and I couldn’t drag a bundle of nerves like you down to probable death or madness. I tell you, you can’t imagine what the thing is really like! But I promise to keep you informed over the telephone of every move—you see I’ve enough wire here to reach to the centre of the earth and back!”</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; text-align: justify;">I can still hear, in memory, those coolly spoken words; and I can still remember my remonstrances. I seemed desperately anxious to accompany my friend into those sepulchral depths, yet he proved inflexibly obdurate. At one time he threatened to abandon the expedition if I remained insistent; a threat which proved effective, since he alone held the key to the </span><i style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; text-align: justify;">thing.</i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; text-align: justify;"> All this I can still remember, though I no longer know what manner of </span><i style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; text-align: justify;">thing</i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; text-align: justify;"> we sought. After he had secured my reluctant acquiescence in his design, Warren picked up the reel of wire and adjusted the instruments. At his nod I took one of the latter and seated myself upon an aged, discoloured gravestone close by the newly uncovered aperture. Then he shook my hand, shouldered the coil of wire, and disappeared within that indescribable ossuary. For a moment I kept sight of the glow of his lantern, and heard the rustle of the wire as he laid it down after him; but the glow soon disappeared abruptly, as if a turn in the stone staircase had been encountered, and the sound died away almost as quickly. I was alone, yet bound to the unknown depths by those magic strands whose insulated surface lay green beneath the struggling beams of that waning crescent moon.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; text-align: justify;">In the lone silence of that hoary and deserted city of the dead, my mind conceived the most ghastly phantasies and illusions; and the grotesque shrines and monoliths seemed to assume a hideous personality—a half-sentience. Amorphous shadows seemed to lurk in the darker recesses of the weed-choked hollow and to flit as in some blasphemous ceremonial procession past the portals of the mouldering tombs in the hillside; shadows which could not have been cast by that pallid, peering crescent moon. I constantly consulted my watch by the light of my electric lantern, and listened with feverish anxiety at the receiver of the telephone; but for more than a quarter of an hour heard nothing. Then a faint clicking came from the instrument, and I called down to my friend in a tense voice. Apprehensive as I was, I was nevertheless unprepared for the words which came up from that uncanny vault in accents more alarmed and quivering than any I had heard before from Harley Warren. He who had so calmly left me a little while previously, now called from below in a shaky whisper more portentous than the loudest shriek:</span><br />
<i style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; text-align: justify;">“God! If you could see what I am seeing!”</i><br />
<i><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; text-align: justify;" /></i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; text-align: justify;">I could not answer. Speechless, I could only wait. Then came the frenzied tones again:</span><br />
<i style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; text-align: justify;">“Carter, it’s terrible—monstrous—unbelievable!”</i><br />
<i><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; text-align: justify;" /></i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; text-align: justify;">This time my voice did not fail me, and I poured into the transmitter a flood of excited questions. Terrified, I continued to repeat, “Warren, what is it? What is it?”</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; text-align: justify;">Once more came the voice of my friend, still hoarse with fear, and now apparently tinged with despair:</span><br />
<i style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; text-align: justify;">“I can’t tell you, Carter! It’s too utterly beyond thought—I dare not tell you—no man could know it and live—Great God! I never dreamed of THIS!”</i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; text-align: justify;"> Stillness again, save for my now incoherent torrent of shuddering inquiry. Then the voice of Warren in a pitch of wilder consternation:</span><br />
<i style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; text-align: justify;">“Carter! for the love of God, put back the slab and get out of this if you can! Quick!—leave everything else and make for the outside—it’s your only chance! Do as I say, and don’t ask me to explain!”</i><br />
<i><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; text-align: justify;" /></i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; text-align: justify;">I heard, yet was able only to repeat my frantic questions. Around me were the tombs and the darkness and the shadows; below me, some peril beyond the radius of the human imagination. But my friend was in greater danger than I, and through my fear I felt a vague resentment that he should deem me capable of deserting him under such circumstances. More clicking, and after a pause a piteous cry from Warren:</span><br />
<i style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; text-align: justify;">“Beat it! For God’s sake, put back the slab and beat it, Carter!”</i><br />
<i><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; text-align: justify;" /></i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; text-align: justify;">Something in the boyish slang of my evidently stricken companion unleashed my faculties. I formed and shouted a resolution, “Warren, brace up! I’m coming down!” But at this offer the tone of my auditor changed to a scream of utter despair:</span><br />
<i style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; text-align: justify;">“Don’t! You can’t understand! It’s too late—and my own fault. Put back the slab and run—there’s nothing else you or anyone can do now!”</i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; text-align: justify;"> The tone changed again, this time acquiring a softer quality, as of hopeless resignation. Yet it remained tense through anxiety for me.</span><br />
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<i style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; text-align: justify;">“Quick—before it’s too late!”</i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; text-align: justify;"> I tried not to heed him; tried to break through the paralysis which held me, and to fulfil my vow to rush down to his aid. But his next whisper found me still held inert in the chains of stark horror.</span><br />
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<i style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; text-align: justify;">“Carter—hurry! It’s no use—you must go—better one than two—the slab—”</i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; text-align: justify;"> A pause, more clicking, then the faint voice of Warren:</span><br />
<i style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; text-align: justify;">“Nearly over now—don’t make it harder—cover up those damned steps and run for your life—you’re losing time— So long, Carter—won’t see you again.”</i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; text-align: justify;"> Here Warren’s whisper swelled into a cry; a cry that gradually rose to a shriek fraught with all the horror of the ages—</span><br />
<img alt=" " src="http://www.hplovecraft.com/pics/PixelClear.gif" height="1" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; text-align: justify;" width="25" /><i style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; text-align: justify;">“Curse these hellish things—legions— My God! Beat it! Beat it! Beat it!”</i><br />
<i><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; text-align: justify;" /></i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; text-align: justify;">After that was silence. I know not how many interminable aeons I sat stupefied; whispering, muttering, calling, screaming into that telephone. Over and over again through those aeons I whispered and muttered, called, shouted, and screamed, “Warren! Warren! Answer me—are you there?”</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; text-align: justify;">And then there came to me the crowning horror of all—the unbelievable, unthinkable, almost unmentionable thing. I have said that aeons seemed to elapse after Warren shrieked forth his last despairing warning, and that only my own cries now broke the hideous silence. But after a while there was a further clicking in the receiver, and I strained my ears to listen. Again I called down, “Warren, are you there?”, and in answer heard the </span><i style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; text-align: justify;">thing</i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; text-align: justify;"> which has brought this cloud over my mind. I do not try, gentlemen, to account for that </span><i style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; text-align: justify;">thing</i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; text-align: justify;">—that voice—nor can I venture to describe it in detail, since the first words took away my consciousness and created a mental blank which reaches to the time of my awakening in the hospital. Shall I say that the voice was deep; hollow; gelatinous; remote; unearthly; inhuman; disembodied? What shall I say? It was the end of my experience, and is the end of my story. I heard it, and knew no more. Heard it as I sat petrified in that unknown cemetery in the hollow, amidst the crumbling stones and the falling tombs, the rank vegetation and the miasmal vapours. Heard it well up from the innermost depths of that damnable open sepulchre as I watched amorphous, necrophagous shadows dance beneath an accursed waning moon. And this is what it said:</span><br />
<img alt=" " src="http://www.hplovecraft.com/pics/PixelClear.gif" height="1" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; text-align: justify;" width="25" /><i style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; text-align: justify;">“YOU FOOL, WARREN IS DEAD!”</i><br />
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<b><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />The End</b></div>
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<b>Read More Stories by <a href="http://www.vaultofghastlytales.com/p/hp-lovecraft.html">H.P. Lovecraft</a> in The Vault</b></div>
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<i style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br /></i>blankhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11639619196101198519noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8879282668683580477.post-40858321092787126222015-12-03T11:08:00.000+00:002016-01-17T13:18:54.156+00:00'A Strange Christmas Game', by J. H. Riddell<div style="text-align: center;">
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Watch the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUaedIBdHSA">video</a>, listen to the <a href="http://traffic.libsyn.com/ghastlytales/A_Strange_Christmas_Game2.mp3">MP3</a>, or read the story below...</div>
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<br />
WHEN, through the death of a distant relative, I, John Lester, succeeded to the Martingdale Estate, there could not have been found in the length and breadth of England a happier pair than myself and my only sister Clare.<br />
<br />
We were not such utter hypocrites as to affect sorrow for the loss of our kinsman, Paul Lester, a man whom we had never seen, of whom we had heard but little, and that little unfavourable, at whose hands we had never received a single benefit - who was, in short, as great a stranger to us as the then Prime Minister, the Emperor of Russia, or any other human being utterly removed from our extremely humble sphere of life.<br />
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His loss was very certainly our gain. His death represented to us, not a dreary parting from one long loved and highly honoured, but the accession of lands, houses, consideration, wealth, to myself - John Lester, artist and second-floor lodger at 32, Great Smith Street, Bloomsbury.<br />
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Not that Martingdale was much of an estate as country properties go. The Lesters who had succeeded to that domain from time to time during the course of a few hundred years, could by no stretch of courtesy have been called prudent men. In regard of their posterity they were, indeed, scarcely honest, for they parted with manors and farms, with common rights and advowsons, in a manner at once so baronial and so unbusiness-like, that Martingdale at length in the hands of Jeremy Lester, the last resident owner, melted to a mere little dot in the map of Bedfordshire.<br />
<br />
Concerning this Jeremy Lester there was a mystery. No man could say what had become of him. He was in the oak parlour at Martingdale one Christmas Eve, and before the next morning he had disappeared - to reappear in the flesh no more.<br />
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Over night, one Mr Wharley, a great friend and boon companion of Jeremy’s, had sat playing cards with him until after twelve o’clock chimes, then he took leave of his host and rode home under the moonlight. After that no person, as far as could be ascertained, ever saw Jeremy Lester alive.<br />
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His ways of life had not been either the most regular, or the most respectable, and it was not until a new year had come in without any tidings of his whereabouts reaching the house, that his servants became seriously alarmed concerning his absence.<br />
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Then enquiries were set on foot concerning him - enquiries which grew more urgent as weeks and months passed by without the slightest clue being obtained as to his whereabouts. Rewards were offered, advertisements inserted, but still Jeremy made no sign; and so in course of time the heir-at-law, Paul Lester, took possession of the house, and went down to spend the summer months at Martingdale with his rich wife, and her four children by a first husband. Paul Lester was a barrister - an over-worked barrister, who everyone supposed would be glad enough to leave the bar and settle at Martingdale, where his wife’s money and the fortune he had accumulated could not have failed to give him a good standing even among the neighbouring country families; and perhaps it was with such intention that he went down into Bedfordshire.<br />
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If this were so, however, he speedily changed his mind, for with the January snows he returned to London, let off the land surrounding the house, shut up the Hall, put in a caretaker, and never troubled himself further about his ancestral seat.<br />
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Time went on, and people began to say the house was haunted, that Paul Lester had ‘seen something’, and so forth - all which stories were duly repeated for our benefit when, forty-one years after the disappearance of Jeremy Lester, Clare and I went down to inspect our inheritance.<br />
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I say ‘our’, because Clare had stuck bravely to me in poverty - grinding poverty, and prosperity was not going to part us now. What was mine was hers, and that she knew, God bless her, without my needing to tell her so.<br />
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The transition from rigid economy to comparative wealth was in our case the more delightful also, because we had not in the least degree anticipated it. We never expected Paul Lester’s shoes to come to us, and accordingly it was not upon our consciences that we had ever in our dreariest moods wished him dead.<br />
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Had he made a will, no doubt we never should have gone to Martingdale, and I, consequently, never written this story; but, luckily for us, he died intestate, and the Bedfordshire property came to me.<br />
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As for the fortune, he had spent it in travelling, and in giving great entertainments at his grand house in Portman Square. Concerning his effects, Mrs Lester and I came to a very amicable arrangement, and she did me the honour of inviting me to call upon her occasionally, and, as I heard, spoke of me as a very worthy and presentable young man ‘for my station’, which, of course, coming from so good an authority, was gratifying. Moreover, she asked me if I intended residing at Martingdale, and on my replying in the affirmative, hoped I should like it.<br />
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It struck me at the time that there was a certain significance in her tone, and when I went down to Martingdale and heard the absurd stories which were afloat concerning the house being haunted, I felt confident that if Mrs Lester had hoped much, she had feared more.<br />
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People said Mr Jeremy ‘walked’ at Martingdale. He had been seen, it was averred, by poachers, by gamekeepers, by children who had come to use the park as a near cut to school, by lovers who kept their tryst under the elms and beeches.<br />
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As for the caretaker and his wife, the third in residence since Jeremy Lester’s disappearance, the man gravely shook his head when questioned, while the woman stated that wild horses, or even wealth untold, should not draw her into the red bedroom, nor into the oak parlour, after dark.<br />
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‘I have heard my mother tell, sir - it was her as followed old Mrs Reynolds, the first caretaker - how there were things went on in these self same rooms as might make any Christian’s hair stand on end. Such stamping, and swearing, and knocking about on furniture; and then tramp, tramp, up the great staircase; and along the corridor and so into the red bedroom, and then bang, and tramp, tramp again. They do say, sir, Mr Paul Lester met him once, and from that time the oak parlour has never been opened. I never was inside it myself.’<br />
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Upon hearing which fact, the first thing I did was to proceed to the oak parlour, open the shutters, and let the August sun stream in upon the haunted chamber. It was an old-fashioned, plainly furnished apartment, with a large table in the centre, a smaller in a recess by the fire-place, chairs ranged against the walls, and a dusty moth-eaten carpet upon the floor. There were dogs on the hearth, broken and rusty; there was a brass fender, tarnished and battered; a picture of some sea-fight over the mantel-piece, while another work of art about equal in merit hung between the windows. Altogether, an utterly prosaic and yet not uncheerful apartment, from out of which the ghosts flitted as soon as daylight was let into it, and which I proposed, as soon as I ‘felt my feet’, to redecorate, refurnish, and convert into a pleasant morning-room. I was still under thirty, but I had learned prudence in that very good school, Necessity; and it was not my intention to spend much money until I had ascertained for certain what were the actual revenues derivable from the lands still belonging to the Martingdale estates, and the charges upon them. In fact, I wanted to know what I was worth before committing myself to any great extravagances, and the place had for so long been neglected, that I experienced some difficulty in arriving at the state of my real income.<br />
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But in the meanwhile, Clare and I found great enjoyment in exploring every nook and corner of our domain, in turning over the contents of old chests and cupboards, in examining the faces of our ancestors looking down on us from the walls, in walking through the neglected gardens, full of weeds, overgrown with shrubs and birdweed, where the boxwood was eighteen feet high, and the shoots of the rosetrees yards long. I have put the place in order since then; there is no grass on the paths, there are no trailing brambles over the ground, the hedges have been cut and trimmed, and the trees pruned and the boxwood clipped. But I often say nowadays that in spite of all my improvements, or rather, in consequence of them, Martingdale does not look one half so pretty as it did in its pristine state of uncivilised picturesqueness.<br />
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Although I determined not to commence repairing and decorating the house till better informed concerning the rental of Martingdale, still the state of my finances was so far satisfactory that Clare and I decided on going abroad to take our long-talked-of holiday before the fine weather was past. We could not tell what a year might bring forth, as Clare sagely remarked; it was wise to take our pleasure while we could; and accordingly, before the end of August arrived we were wandering about the continent, loitering at Rouen, visiting the galleries at Paris, and talking of extending our one month of enjoyment into three. What decided me on this course was the circumstance of our becoming acquainted with an English family who intended wintering in Rome. We met accidentally, but discovering that we were near neighbours in England - in fact that Mr Cronson’s property lay close beside Martingdale - the slight acquaintance soon ripened into intimacy, and ere long we were travelling in company.<br />
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From the first, Clare did not much like this arrangement. There was ‘a little girl’ in England she wanted me to marry, and Mr Cronson had a daughter who certainly was both handsome and attractive. The little girl had not despised John Lester, artist, while Miss Cronson indisputably set her cap at John Lester of Martingdale, and would have turned away her pretty face from a poor man’s admiring glance - all this I can see plainly enough now, but I was blind then and should have proposed for Maybel - that was her name - before the winter was over, had news not suddenly arrived of the illness of Mrs Cronson, senior. In a moment the programme was changed; our pleasant days of foreign travel were at an end. The Cronsons packed up and departed, while Clare and I returned more slowly to England, a little out of humour, it must be confessed, with each other.<br />
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It was the middle of November when we arrived at Martingdale, and we found the place anything but romantic or pleasant. The walks were wet and sodden, the trees were leafless, there were no flowers save a few late pink roses blooming in the garden.<br />
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It had been a wet season, and the place looked miserable. Clare would not ask Alice down to keep her company in the winter months, as she had intended; and for myself, the Cronsons were still absent in Norfolk, where they meant to spend Christmas with old Mrs Cronson, now recovered.<br />
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Altogether, Martingdale seemed dreary enough, and the ghost stories we had laughed at while sunshine flooded the rooms became less unreal when we had nothing but blazing fires and wax candles to dispel the gloom. They became more real also when servant after servant left us to seek situations elsewhere; when ‘noises’ grew frequent in the house; when we ourselves, Clare and I, with our own ears heard the tramp, tramp, the banging and the clattering which had been described to us.<br />
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My dear reader, you are doubtless free from superstitious fancies. You pooh-pooh the existence of ghosts, and only ‘wish you could find a haunted house in which to spend a night’, which is all very brave and praiseworthy, but wait till you are left in a dreary, desolate old country mansion, filled with the most unaccountable sounds, without a servant, with no one save an old caretaker and his wife, who, living at the extremest end of the building, heard nothing of the tramp, tramp, bang, bang, going on at all hours of the night.<br />
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At first I imagine the noises were produced by some evil-disposed persons who wished, for purposes of their own, to keep the house uninhabited; but by degrees Clare and I came to the conclusion the visitation must be supernatural, and Martingdale by consequence untenantable. Still being practical people, and unlike our predecessors, not having money to live where and how we liked, we decided to watch and see whether we could trace any human influence in the matter. If not, it was agreed we were to pull down the right wing of the house and the principal staircase.<br />
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For nights and nights we sat up till two or three o’clock in the morning; but just to test the matter, I determined on Christmas-eve, the anniversary of Mr Jeremy Lester’s disappearance, to keep watch by myself in the red bed-chamber. Even to Clare I never mentioned my intention.<br />
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About ten, tired out with our previous vigils, we each retired to rest. Somewhat ostentatiously, perhaps, I noisily shut the door of my room, and when I opened it half an hour afterwards, no mouse could have pursued its way along the corridor with greater silence and caution than myself.<br />
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Quite in the dark I sat in the red room. For over an hour I might as well have been in my grave for anything I could see in the apartment; but at the end of that time the moon rose and cast strange lights across the floor and upon the wall of the haunted chamber.<br />
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Hitherto I had kept my watch opposite the window; now I changed my place to a corner near the door, where I was shaded from observation by the heavy hangings of the bed, and an antique wardrobe.<br />
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Still I sat on, but still no sound broke the silence. I was weary with many nights’ watching; and tired of my solitary vigil, I dropped at last into a slumber from which I was awakened by hearing the door softly opened.<br />
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‘John,’ said my sister, almost in a whisper; ‘John, are you here?’<br />
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‘Yes, Clare,’ I answered; ‘but what are you doing up at this hour?’<br />
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‘Come downstairs,’ she replied; ‘they are in the oak parlour.’I did not need any explanation as to whom she meant, but crept downstairs, after her, warned by an uplifted hand of the necessity for silence and caution.<br />
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By the door - by the open door of the oak parlour, she paused, and we both looked in.<br />
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There was the room we left in darkness overnight, with a bright wood fire blazing on the hearth, candles on the chimney-piece, the small table pulled out from its accustomed corner, and two men seated beside it, playing at cribbage.<br />
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We could see the face of the younger player; it was that of a man of about five-and-twenty, of a man who had lived hard and wickedly; who had wasted his substance and his health; who had been while in the flesh, Jeremy Lester. It would be difficult for me to say how I knew this, how in a moment I identified the features of the player with those of a man who had been missing for forty-one years - forty-one years that very night. He was dressed in the costume of a bygone period; his hair was powdered, and round his wrists there were ruffles of lace.<br />
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He looked like one who, having come from some great party had sat down after his return home to play at cards with an intimate friend. On his little finger there sparkled a ring, in the front of his shirt there gleamed a valuable diamond. There were diamond buckles in his shoes, and, according to the fashion of his time, he wore knee-breeches and silk stockings, which showed off advantageously the shape of a remarkably good leg and ankle.<br />
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He sat opposite to the door, but never once lifted his eyes to it. His attention seemed concentrated on the cards.<br />
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For a time there was utter silence in the room, broken only by the monotonous counting of the game.<br />
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In the doorway we stood, holding our breath, terrified, and yet fascinated by the scene which was being acted before us.<br />
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The ashes dropped on the hearth softly and like the snow; we could hear the rustle of the cards as they were dealt out and fell upon the table: we listened to the count - fifteen-one, fifteen-two, and so forth - but there was no other word spoken till at length the player whose face we could not see, exclaimed, ‘I win; the game is mine.’<br />
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Then his opponent took up the cards, sorted them over negligently in his hand, put them close together, and flung the whole pack in his guest’s face, exclaiming, ‘Cheat! Liar! Take that!’<br />
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There was a bustle and a confusion - a flinging over of chairs, and fierce gesticulation, and such a noise of passionate voices mingling, that we could not hear a sentence which was uttered.<br />
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All at once, however, Jeremy Lester strode out of the room in so great a hurry that he almost touched us where we stood; out of the room, and tramp, tramp up the staircase, to the red room, whence he descended in a few minutes with a couple of rapiers under his arm.<br />
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When he re-entered the room he gave, as it seemed to us, the other man his choice of the weapons, and then he flung open the window, and after ceremoniously giving place to his opponent to pass out first, he walked forth into the night-air, Clare and I following.<br />
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We went through the garden and down a narrow winding walk to a smooth piece of turf sheltered from the north by a plantation of young fir-trees. It was a bright moonlit night by this time, and we could distinctly see Jeremy Lester measuring off the ground.<br />
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‘When you say “three”,’ he said to the man whose back was still toward us. They had drawn lots for the ground, and the lot had fallen against Mr Lester. He stood thus with the moonbeams falling full upon him, and a handsomer fellow I would never desire to behold.<br />
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‘One,’ began the other; ‘two’, and before our kinsman hd the slightest suspicion of his design, he was upon him, and his rapier through Jeremy Lester’s breast. At the sight of that cowardly treachery, Clare screamed aloud. In a moment the combatants had disappeared, the moon was obscured behind a cloud, and we were standing in the shadow of the fir-plantation, shivering with cold and terror.<br />
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But we knew at last what had become of the late owner of Martingdale: that he had fallen, not in fair fight, but foully murdered by a false friend.<br />
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When, late on Christmas morning, I awoke, it was to see a white world, to behold the ground, and trees, and shrubs all laden and covered with snow. There was snow everywhere, such snow as no person could remember having fallen for forty-one years.<br />
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‘It was on just such a Christmas as this that Mr Jeremy disappeared,’ remarked the old sexton to my sister, who had insisted on dragging me through the snow to church, whereupon Clare fainted away and was carried into the vestry, where I made a full confession to the Vicar of all we had beheld the previous night.<br />
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At first that worthy individual rather inclined to treat the matter lightly, but when a fortnight after, the snow melted away and the fir-plantation came to be examined, he confessed there might be more things in heaven and earth than his limited philosophy had dreamed of.<br />
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In a little clear space just within the plantation, Jeremy Lester’s body was found. We knew it by the ring and the diamond buckles, and the sparkling breast-pin; and Mr Cronson, who in his capacity as magistrate came over to inspect these relics, was visibly perturbed at my narrative.<br />
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‘Pray, Mr Lester, did you in your dream see the face of - of the gentleman - your kinsman’s opponent?’<br />
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‘No,’ I answered, ‘he sat and stood with his back to us all the time.’<br />
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‘There is nothing more, of course, to be done in the matter,’ observed Mr Cronson.<br />
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‘Nothing,’ I replied; and there the affair would doubtless have terminated, but that a few days afterwards when we were dining at Cronson Park, Clare all of a sudden dropped the glass of water she was carrying to her lips, and exclaiming, ‘Look, John, there he is!’ rose from her seat, and with a face as white as the tablecloth, pointed to a portrait hanging on the wall.<br />
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‘I saw him for an instant when he turned his head towards the door as Jeremy Lester left it,’ she exclaimed; ‘that is he.’<br />
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Of what followed after this identification I have only the vaguest recollection. Servants rushed hither and thither; Mrs Cronson dropped off her chair into hysterics; the young ladies gathered round their mamma; Mr Cronson, trembling like one in an ague fit, attempted some kind of explanation, while Clare kept praying to be taken away - only to be taken away.<br />
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I took her away, not merely from Cronson Park, but from Martingdale. Before we left the latter place, however, I had an interview with Mr Cronson, who said the portrait Clare had identified was that of his wife’s father, the last person who saw Jeremy Lester alive.<br />
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‘He is an old man now,’ finished Mr Cronson, ‘a man of over eighty, who has confessed everything to me. You won’t bring further sorrow and disgrace upon us by making this matter public?’<br />
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I promised him I would keep silence, but the story gradually oozed out, and the Cronsons left the country.<br />
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My sister never returned to Martingdale; she married and is living in London. Though I assure her there are no strange noises now in my house, she will not visit Bedfordshire, where the ‘little girl’ she wanted me so long ago to ‘think seriously of’, is now my wife and the mother of my children.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444893451907188044noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8879282668683580477.post-52691827014140175852015-11-04T10:08:00.000+00:002015-11-04T16:15:21.791+00:00'Dentures' by Mik Maes<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They shout at the sky while rain pellets the grey streets. Tracksuit jackets over brown corduroy pants and duct-taped tennis shoes. They sit on corners, vacantly staring at something nobody else sees, a battered cup in front of them to catch the pitiful tributes that people offer them. They roam the parks, pushing carts filled with incomprehensible treasures, muttering seemingly random words, looting trashcans for breakfast, supper or lunch. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But what do they speak of, huddled together around an oil drum filled with burning trash? What tales do they weave while sharing a bottle of cheap liquor wrapped in brown paper? It is easy to forget that the stories we watch on our brightly lit screens from the safe comfort of our homes are all born from stories told ages ago around campfires, stories told to keep the darkness away. To make sense of it all, or even told to be able to laugh in the face of hardship. The same stories these unfortunates tell each other while the alcohol warms their souls, anything to keep the cold and wet at bay. Do they speak of those who made it back to the cold bosom of society? Or those who disappeared between the cracks of society altogether? Perhaps their tales are darker still, coarse and thick tongued whispers about somebody, something, thriving in exile. Giving boons to those who follow his, its, path. A speckle of hope in the gloom, burning even brighter on the fuel of second grade booze or diluted heroin. Something to dream about while rain soaks ragged sleeping bags. A king of rags and rotten teeth, a pope of trash and decay. Sitting on a throne of chicken bones and mangled spectacles, spewing forth prophecies and casting runes made from rusted scrap metal.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">2.</span><br />
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ralph was drunk, horny and angry, not necessarily in that order when he stumbled over the vagrant sleeping on the sidewalk. He’d been spending his Friday night in a not too shabby bar downtown. Slamming down beers and bourbon chasers while looking for somebody to take home that night. He smelled like money, and he knew it. Wearing a gilded armor of suit, tie, Italian brogues, manicure and flashing white dentures. So what if it took him half a dozen tablets of prescription tranquilizers to get him through the work day? He was rich, successful and ready to get down. Getting down, in this case, meaning taking a drunken floozy home who only liked him for his money, not being able to come in her face like he’d like to due to the anti-depressants he needed not to blow his own brains out each time he looked in the mirror and explaining afterwards that no, it wasn’t her, it was just the booze. And yes, of course he’d call her. The world was his oyster. Problem was, it was one of those oysters that makes you really, really sick. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yes, Ralph was drunk, horny and angry. Drunk because he needed to be drunk to keep him from taking a long, hard look at himself. Horny because, well, he was horny. And angry because he’d just spend a hundred dollars on buying drinks for women who had no interest in going home with him to his condo that he had had decorate so stylishly by a ridiculously expensive decorator. ‘The ladies will love this!’ the faggot had told him, giving him a suggestive wink while Ralph signed the check, his hand holding the pen so tightly that his knuckles turned white.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Even though the bar had proven barren hunting grounds, Ralph was determined to get his dick wet, and since he had already blown so many hard earned dollars on getting laid, he decided he might as well spend some more and go for a more certain approach: Salon Lotus. Sure, the girls were expensive and he hated the condescending look Madame Lotus never failed to give him when he entered her lounge through the beaded curtain, but it was a discreet place and no explanations for performance issues were required as long as money changed hands. Walking through the drizzling rain, he was trying to decide between Lilly, who was lithe and playful or Chrysanthemum, that darker beauty with a mouth that would make a sailor blush, when he tripped over that fucking bum. Stumbled and fell to his hands and knees. Mud and filth on his hands and soaking his pants. And while in this rather indignant position all of a sudden years of repressed self-loathing and rage washed over him. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The previously sleeping homeless man had been woken by the jolt of somebody tripping over his outstretched legs and mumbled something that could either be an apology or a curse. ‘You fucking parasite’, Ralph hissed as he ungraciously got back on his feet. ‘You filthy, stinking, nasty piece of SHIT!’ He tried to wipe the mud off of his pants, but only managed to smudge it further. ‘Do you see this suit you pissant?! This cost me more money than you’ll probably see in a lifetime. I worked for this, you fuck, I worked hard for this while you’re laying there on the street like some fucking animal. Like a fucking pig wallowing in the mud!’ The homeless man, much to his credit, had gotten up and tried to help clean up Ralph with a rag produced from somewhere between the many layers of random clothing he was wearing. Ralph, in turn, staggered back in horror. ‘Don’t touch me. Don’t you dare fucking touch me with those filthy claws.’ Rage consumed him, and he allowed it. He allowed it and it felt wonderful. The bum started to speak, and before Ralph knew it he’d punched that wretched subject of his indignity straight in the nose. The bum sat down with a grunt, blood streaming over his cracked lips and staining his ragged beard. ‘Don’t’, Ralph gasped. ‘Don’t say anything. Just get a fucking job.’ </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The homeless man, whose name was Richard and who happened to once have had a job as a plumber before his greedy boss laid him off to hire a cheaper, younger worker after which he struggled to no avail to find a new job while his wife left him and the comfort of alcohol replaced her warm embrace and he drowned in that embrace until he found himself on the streets, all his possessions having been sold off by repo men, used the same rag he tried to clean up the immaculate yuppie with to stop the blood still gushing from his nose. Suddenly, his muddied eyes became full of life. ‘I tried to be nice, mister. I tried to be nice, but you shouldn’t of done that.’ His bloodstained beard opened up in a wicked grin filled with broken teeth. ‘No sir, you shouldn’t of done that.’ Disgust contorted Ralph’s face as he wiped the back of his hand against his pants. ‘Fuck you.’, he hissed and turned away, looking for a cab to take him home. Ralph was done for tonight, Madame Lotus would have to wait to smirk at him until another time. As he walked off, the bum, the homeless man, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Richard</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, spat out a gob of blood on the glinstering concrete, grinned, and smeared it into an intricate symbol that only a few fellow downtrodden would recognise. It glowed momentarily in the moonlight before the rain washed it away.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">3.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ralph entered his apartment, the huge windows letting in beams of moonlight, illuminating with a cold glow his expensive furniture and the immense original </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #020202; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Gregor Hildebrandt</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> that adorned the wall. A painting that might have driven certain connoisseurs nearly to tears by its perfection but got no appreciation from Ralph at all except for the fact that it was expensive and matched the drapes and carpet. Without even giving it a glance he stomped towards his bedroom, threw his clothes into the dry cleaners basket, cleaned his dentures, popped two sleeping pills and laid down on the king-size bed. What a fucking night. Slowly the </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #545454; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Eszopiclone</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> doused the slumbering anger until finally Ralph fell asleep. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Saturday, he fucked Lilly, which at least gave him some satisfaction. Like always when he paid Madame Lotus, her obvious distaste for him irritated him. He was a paying customer, the bitch should be grateful for his patronage. Sunday he went to the gym and later worked on a presentation for the following week, something that if all went well might earn the company a very wealthy new client. As he struggled with his keynote he had to swallow back two Xanax with a glass of Glenlivet to keep the anxiety manageable. He ordered in some Thai food and ate it without joy while staring at his immense television. A couple more glasses of Scotch, the usual meticulous ritual of cleaning his dentures and he was ready for bed. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That night he dreamt of college. That one night in the frat house when Susan’s brother had kicked Ralphs teeth in and threatened to do much worse if he ever so much at glanced at her again. While he lay curled up on the floor holding his dislocated jaw, Susan had spat in his face and kicked him in the ribs for good measure. As if the whore hadn’t wanted it. And if she hadn’t. she should have. He was Ralph Baker, son of Charles Baker. His family had more money than a poor girl like her-one of those pathetic scholarship cases that should not even be allowed in a college as fine as this one-could even imagine. But she told her low life thug of a brother which ended up earning Ralph a new set of teeth and a month of horrible humiliation before the dentures were ready. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In this dream, however, it was the bum from outside of the bar that spat in his face. The brother a creature with a rat-like snout and burning red eyes, the teeth on the floor now maggots that squirmed away while his frat brothers who stood around him laughing turned into swarms of flies buzzing and buzzing and the buzzing of his alarm clock finally woke him drenched in sweat and clutching at his jaw.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">4.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The keynote was done, but Ralph was running late. It had taken him longer than he thought, his concentration ruined by recurring dreams of the night he lost his teeth. Dreams that had been getting more intense and harder to shake the following day. As he was shaving, the face looking back at him was grey and haggard. The bags under his eyes heavy purple potato sacks dragging his lower eyelids down. A usually plump face now made gaunt by a sunken jaw; he had yet to put in his dentures.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A sudden realisation hit him so hard he cut himself with his razor. His dentures. He had never shaved himself before without first putting on his dentures. As the nick on his jawbone slowly turned the white shaving cream to pink, Ralph nearly ran towards his bedroom, panic clutching at his chest. There they were, on the bedside table, sitting in their cleaning solution. He snatched them, almost dropping the red plastic container, opening it with hands that seemed like clay. Then, his fingers did lose their grasp as a cloud of flies flowed out of the container, engulfing his face, blinding him, climbing into his nostrils, entering his mouth, turning his rising scream into a choking cough that gave no release. His throat was filled with fluttering, crawling bodies, his nose plugged. In the midst of the panic Ralph could feel himself fall, slowly, so slowly, until suddenly the world turned black.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When he woke up it was evening. The first thing he saw were his dentures lying shattered on the ground. Unfocused, trying to swim into full clarity but not quite managing. Still, definitely his dentures, ruined beyond repair. Ralph whined, his head was pounding, and as he reached around to check for blood, this simple movement flared up the pain in his head so much that nausea washed over him, he felt a huge bump on the back of his head. There was some blood on his fingers when they came back from their slow journey, and when he finally managed to get himself up from the floor of his bathroom, something that seemed to take hours, he saw a bloody stain on the edge of his bathtub. When he saw himself in the mirror, shaving cream now a soapy crust on his sunken face, the memory of the flies came back in a flash and he stumbled to the toilet and retched, half expecting a swarm of black shapes to come out but only spitting up some strands of white slime. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ralph gathered his ruined dentures, collecting the pearly white shards, not seeing any trace of the flies that had made him drop them. He held his false teeth in his hands, sat down on the bathroom floor and began to cry. In the darkness, the notification light of his cell phone slowly flashed on and off. He had missed his presentation. Tears of pain and fear gradually turned into hot tears of frustration and anger, drawing grooves in the caked shaving soap. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">5.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ralph was drunk, horny and angry. Whenever he tried to look at his phone the strong hand of panic grabbed him by the throat. So he’d stumbled to the living room instead, grabbed a bottle of Scotch and doused his burning nerves with it. Fuelled his rage with it. The panic attacks were one thing, but this was outrageous. Ralph Baker was not insane. Ralph Baker did not suffer from delusions. And then it all became clear. Somebody had it out for him. Somebody must’ve drugged him. Probably that brown nosing Steve Richards from work. He knew that fuck had been after his promotion. Well, he’d have a good, long chat with that piece of shit. But first, Ralph wanted to fuck. But he wasn’t going to go out. Not without his teeth. No way. Ralph would order in tonight. He’d turn off all the lights, fuck his head clear and would get everything else sorted out in the morning. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He almost didn’t call at first, so crippling was the shame of his toothless mouth, until he thought of that night in the alley with Susan. Walking her home after dinner and a movie, a date she had agreed to without much enthusiasm. Susan obviously did not enjoy his company during both, but she’d let him pay for everything anyway. Ralph felt she owed him, and Ralph was used to getting what he wanted. So he pushed her against the wall of the deserted alley, his tongue trying to work itself into her mouth while his hands groped for her breasts. He felt himself growing hard against her struggles and pleas to stop, Susan trying to push him away from her but Ralph wasn’t captain of the lacrosse team for nothing. He was strong and fast. ‘You know you want it, you stuck up bitch, don’t deny it.’ he whispered, taking a step back to unzip his fly. That’s when she kneed him in the balls. Hard. He groaned and dropped to the ground, clasping his junk with both hands, the pain a white hot flare talking up all of his attention, working its way up to his stomach until he felt he had to retch, the rest of the world a grey haze. When the pain faded to a dull pulse and he managed to get up, he saw Susan get in a cab, flipping him off through the window as it drove off. A week later, her brother kicked his teeth in. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But he was not thinking about that now. No, it was the way she had struggled, how her unwillingness had made him hard as a rock and even more determined to have her. The dreams he’d had of Susan breathed new life into that memory, a re-animation of desires he’d tried to keep hidden and buried. Sitting on his enormous </span><span style="background-color: #fafafa; color: #141414; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Le Corbusier couch in the dark, phone in one hand, whisky glass in the other and his erection poking out from between the folds of his bathrobe, he finally pushed the ‘call’ button and made his requests very clear.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">6.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The apartment phone woke him up. He’d fallen asleep while waiting, having quick and messy dreams about people laughing at his shattered mouth: The whores from Lotus, that filthy bum, again Susan and her brother. There had been sounds of squelching, of buzzing, of scuttling and there had been a half-visible being present, emanating the pungent smell of a garbage bag on a hot august day. Groggily he stumbled to the front door and picked up the phone. The lobby doorman informed him that he had a lady calling, Ralph told him to send her up. Soon came a knock on the door, which he opened quickly before turning away again, not wanting his night’s entertainment to see him. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">‘First of all, your name will be Susan for tonight. Second-’ Ralph stopped and sniffed. ‘Oh no, this will not do. First you will be taking a bath. Jesus, I for the money I pay I expected the women to at least arrive washed and not stinking like-’ </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Like garbage. Like trash. Like meat left rotten on the side of the street squirming with-</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> ‘Like they haven’t showered in weeks.’ He walked towards the bar as he heard her close the door behind her, fixing to pour himself a drink to get those unpleasant associations out of his mind. The stench grew stronger. Heavier. It engulfed him as the escort moved up closer to him, still not having said a word. He could now hear squelching sounds. Dripping sounds. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Gagging, Ralph made for the huge French windows, banging his shin on a coffee table in the dark. That stench. That goddamned stench. He fumbled with the locks, finally succeeded and threw open the windows to let in gusts of mercifully fresh autumn air. He breathed deeply and turned around, just as the thing he had invited into his home walked into the strip of pale moonlight streaming in. Face and body a crawling mess of insects. As it opened its mouth to show a set of unnaturally white and shining dentures, Ralph screamed, tried to take a step back from it. But there was no step back. There were only open windows, through which he fell, fifteen stories down. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He was Ralph Baker, son of Charles Baker, and would be found dead splayed on the roof of a car, toothless and naked but for his open bathrobe. After finding the bottles of prescription drugs, it was very easy to rule his death a suicide. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">7.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yes. A speckle of hope in the gloom, burning even brighter on the fuel of second grade booze or diluted heroin. Something to dream about while rain soaks ragged sleeping bags. A king of rags and rotten teeth, a pope of trash and decay. Sitting on a throne of chicken bones and mangled spectacles, now slowly making himself a new necklace out of a set of broken dentures. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="http://www.fictionmagazines.com/shop/u-t-b/under-the-bed-vol-04-no-01/">Previously published in Under the Bed magazine. </a></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8879282668683580477.post-48595228259965055152015-11-02T18:51:00.002+00:002017-01-23T20:31:28.263+00:00The Nightmare Room, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle<div style="text-align: center;">
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Watch the video above, read the story below, or <a href="http://traffic.libsyn.com/ghastlytales/The_Nightmare_Room.mp3">listen to the MP3</a></div>
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The sitting-room of the Masons was a very singular apartment. At one end it was furnished with considerable luxury. The deep sofas, the low, luxurious chairs, the voluptuous statuettes, and the rich curtains hanging from deep and ornamental screens of metal-work made a fitting frame for the lovely woman who was the mistress of the establishment. Mason, a young but wealthy man of affairs, had clearly spared no pains and no expense to meet every want and every whim of his beautiful wife. It was natural that he should do so, for she had given up much for his sake. The most famous dancer in France, the heroine of a dozen extraordinary romances, she had resigned her life of glittering pleasure in order to share the fate of the young American, whose austere ways differed so widely from her own. In all that wealth could buy he tried to make amends for what she had lost. Some might perhaps have thought it in better taste had he not proclaimed this fact — had he not even allowed it to be printed — but save for some personal peculiarities of the sort, his conduct was that of a husband who has never for an instant ceased to be a lover. Even the presence of spectators would not prevent the public exhibition of his overpowering affection.<br />
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But the room was singular. At first it seemed familiar, and yet a longer acquaintance made one realise its sinister peculiarities. It was silent — very silent. No footfall could be heard upon those rich carpets and heavy rugs. A struggle — even the fall of a body — would make no sound. It was strangely colourless also, in a light which seemed always subdued. Nor was it all furnished in equal taste. One would have said that when the young banker had lavished thousands upon this boudoir, this inner jewel-case for his precious possession, he had failed to count the cost and had suddenly been arrested by a threat to his own solvency. It was luxurious where it looked out upon the busy street below. At the farther side it was bare, spartan, and reflected rather the taste of a most ascetic man than of a pleasure-loving woman. Perhaps that was why she only came there for a few hours, sometimes two, sometimes four, in the day, but while she was there she lived intensely, and within this nightmare room Lucille Mason was a very different and a more dangerous woman than elsewhere.<br />
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Dangerous — that was the word. Who could doubt it who saw her delicate figure stretched upon the great bearskin which draped the sofa. She was leaning upon her right elbow, her delicate but determined chin resting upon her hand, while her eyes, large and languishing, adorable but inexorable, stared out in front of her with a fixed intensity which had in it something vaguely terrible. It was a lovely face — a child’s face, and yet Nature had placed there some subtle mark, some indefinable expression, which told that a devil lurked within. It had been noticed that dogs shrank from her, and that children screamed and ran from her caresses. There are instincts which are deeper than reason.<br />
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Upon this particular afternoon something had greatly moved her. A letter was in her hand, which she read and reread with a tightening of those delicate little eyebrows and a grim setting of those delicious lips. Suddenly she started, and a shadow of fear softened the feline menace of her features. She raised herself upon her arm, and her eyes were fixed eagerly upon the door. She was listening intently — listening for something which she dreaded. For a moment a smile of relief played over her expressive face. Then with a look of horror she stuffed her letter into her dress. She had hardly done so before the door opened, and a young man came briskly into the room. It was Archie Mason, her husband — the man whom she had loved, the man for whom she had sacrificed her European fame, the man whom now she regarded as the one obstacle to a new and wonderful experience.<br />
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The American was a man about thirty, clean-shaven, athletic, dressed to perfection in a closely-cut suit, which outlined his perfect figure. He stood at the door with his arms folded, looking intently at his wife, with a face which might have been a handsome, sun-tinted mask save for those vivid eyes. She still leaned upon her elbow, but her eyes were fixed on his. There was something terrible in the silent exchange. Each interrogated the other, and each conveyed the thought that the answer to their question was vital. He might have been asking, “What have you done?” She in her turn seemed to be saying, “What do you know?” Finally, he walked forward, sat down upon the bearskin beside her, and taking her delicate ear gently between his fingers, turned her face towards his.<br />
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“Lucille,” he said, “are you poisoning me?”<br />
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She sprang back from his touch with horror in her face and protests upon her lips. Too moved to speak, her surprise and her anger showed themselves rather in her darting hands and her convulsed features. She tried to rise, but his grasp tightened upon her wrist. Again he asked a question, but this time it had deepened in its terrible significance.<br />
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“Lucille, why are you poisoning me?”<br />
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“You are mad, Archie! Mad!” she gasped.<br />
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His answer froze her blood. With pale parted lips and blanched cheeks she could only stare at him in helpless silence, whilst he drew a small bottle from his pocket and held it before her eyes.<br />
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“It is from your jewel-case!” he cried.<br />
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Twice she tried to speak and failed. At last the words came slowly one by one from her contorted lips:—<br />
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“At least I never used it.”<br />
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Again his hand sought his pocket. From it he drew a sheet of paper, which he unfolded and held before her.<br />
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“It is the certificate of Dr. Angus. It shows the presence of twelve grains of antimony. I have also the evidence of Du Val, the chemist who sold it.”<br />
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Her face was terrible to look at. There was nothing to say. She could only lie with that fixed hopeless stare like some fierce creature in a fatal trap.<br />
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“Well?” he asked.<br />
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There was no answer save a movement of desperation and appeal.<br />
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“Why?” he said. “I want to know why.” As he spoke his eye caught the edge of the letter which she had thrust into her bosom. In an instant he had snatched it. With a cry of despair she tried to regain it, but he held her off with one hand while his eyes raced over it.<br />
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“Campbell!” he gasped. “It was Campbell!”<br />
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She had found her courage again. There was nothing more to conceal. Her face set hard and firm. Her eyes were deadly as daggers.<br />
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“Yes,” she said, “it is Campbell.”<br />
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“My God! Campbell of all men!”<br />
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He rose and walked swiftly about the room. Campbell, the grandest man that he had ever known, a man whose whole life had been one long record of self-denial, of courage, of every quality which marks the chosen man. And yet, he, too, had fallen a victim to this siren, and had been dragged down to such a level that he had betrayed, in intention if not in actual deed, the man whose hand he shook in friendship. It was incredible — and yet here was the passionate, pleading letter imploring his wife to fly and share the fate of a penniless man. Every word of the letter showed that Campbell had at least no thought of Mason’s death, which would have removed all difficulties. That devilish solution was the outcome of the deep and wicked brain which brooded within that perfect habitation.<br />
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Mason was a man in a million, a philosopher, a thinker, with a broad and tender sympathy for others. For an instant his soul had been submerged in his bitterness. He could for that brief period have slain both his wife and Campbell, and gone to his own death with the serene mind of a man who has done his plain duty. But already, as he paced the room, milder thoughts had begun to prevail. How could he blame Campbell? He knew the absolute witchery of this woman. It was not only her wonderful physical beauty. She had a unique power of seeming to take an interest in a man, in writhing into his inmost conscience, in penetrating those parts of his nature which were too sacred for the world, and in seeming to stimulate him towards ambition and even towards virtue. It was just there that the deadly cleverness of her net was shown. He remembered how it had been in his own case. She was free then — or so he thought — and he had been able to marry her. But suppose she had not been free. Suppose she had been married. And suppose she had taken possession of his soul in the same way. Would he have stopped there? Would he have been able to draw off with his unfulfilled longings? He was bound to admit that with all his New England strength he could not have done so. Why, then, should he feel so bitter with his unfortunate friend who was in the same position? It was pity and sympathy which filled his mind as he thought of Campbell.<br />
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And she? There she lay upon the sofa, a poor broken butterfly, her dreams dispersed, her plot detected, her future dark and perilous. Even for her, poisoner as she was, his heart relented. He knew something of her history. He knew her as a spoiled child from birth, untamed, unchecked, sweeping everything easily before her from her cleverness, her beauty, and her charm. She had never known an obstacle. And now one had risen across her path, and she had madly and wickedly tried to remove it. But if she had wished to remove it, was not that in itself a sign that he had been found wanting — that he was not the man who could bring her peace of mind and contentment of heart? He was too stern and self-contained for that sunny volatile nature. He was of the North, and she of the South, drawn strongly together for a time by the law of opposites, but impossible for permanent union. He should have seen to this — he should have understood it. It was on him, with his superior brain, that the responsibility for the situation lay. His heart softened towards her as it would to a little child which was in helpless trouble. For a time he had paced the room in silence, his lips compressed, his hands clenched till his nails had marked his palms. Now with a sudden movement he sat beside her and took her cold and inert hand in his. One thought beat in his brain. “Is it chivalry, or is it weakness?” The question sounded in his ears, it framed itself before his eyes, he could almost fancy that it materialised itself and that he saw it in letters which all the world could read.<br />
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It had been a hard struggle, but he had conquered.<br />
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“You shall choose between us, dear,” he said. “If really you are sure — sure, you understand — that Campbell could make you happy as a husband, I will not be the obstacle.”<br />
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“A divorce!” she gasped.<br />
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His hand closed upon the bottle of poison. “You can call it that,” said he.<br />
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A new strange light shone in her eyes as she looked at him. This was a man who had been unknown to her. The hard, practical American had vanished. In his place she seemed to have a glimpse of a hero, and a saint, a man who could rise to an inhuman height of unselfish virtue. Both her hands were round that which held the fatal phial.<br />
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“Archie,” she cried, “you could forgive me even that!”<br />
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He smiled at her. “You are only a little wayward kiddie after all.”<br />
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Her arms were outstretched to him when there was a tap at the door, and the maid entered in the strange silent fashion in which all things moved in that nightmare room. There was a card on the tray. She glanced at it.<br />
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“Captain Campbell! I will not see him.”<br />
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Mason sprang to his feet.<br />
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“On the contrary, he is most welcome. Show him up this instant.”<br />
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A few minutes later a tall, sun-burned young soldier had been ushered into the room. He came forward with a smile upon his pleasant features, but as the door closed behind him, and the faces before him resumed their natural expressions, he paused irresolutely and glanced from one to the other.<br />
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“Well?” he asked.<br />
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Mason stepped forward and laid his hand upon his shoulder.<br />
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“I bear no ill-will,” he said.<br />
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“Ill-will?”<br />
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“Yes, I know all. But I might have done the same myself had the position been reversed.”<br />
Campbell stepped back and looked a question at the lady. She nodded and shrugged her graceful shoulders. Mason smiled.<br />
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“You need not fear that it is a trap for a confession. We have had a frank talk upon the matter. See, Jack, you were always a sportsman. Here’s a bottle. Never mind how it came here. If one or other of us drink it, it would clear the situation.” His manner was wild, almost delirious. “Lucille, which shall it be?”<br />
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There had been a strange force at work in the nightmare room. A third man was there, though not one of the three who had stood in the crisis of their life’s drama had time or thought for him. How long he had been there — how much he had heard — none could say. In the corner farthest from the little group he lay crouched against the wall, a sinister snake-like figure, silent and scarcely moving save for a nervous twitching of his clenched right hand. He was concealed from view by a square case and by a dark cloth drawn cunningly above it, so as to screen his features. Intent, watching eagerly every new phase of the drama, the moment had almost come for his intervention. But the three thought little of that. Absorbed in the interplay of their own emotions they had lost sight of a force stronger than themselves — a force which might at any moment dominate the scene.<br />
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“Are you game, Jack?” asked Mason.<br />
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The soldier nodded.<br />
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“No! — for God’s sake, no!” cried the woman.<br />
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Mason had uncorked the bottle, and turning to the side table he drew out a pack of cards. Cards and bottle stood together.<br />
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“We can’t put the responsibility on her,” he said. “Come, Jack, the best of three.”<br />
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The soldier approached the table. He fingered the fatal cards. The woman, leaning upon her hand, bent her face forward and stared with fascinated eyes.<br />
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Then and only then the bolt fell.<br />
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The stranger had risen, pale and grave.<br />
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All three were suddenly aware of his presence. They faced him with eager inquiry in their eyes. He looked at them coldly, sadly, with something of the master in his bearing.<br />
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“How is it?” they asked, all together.<br />
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“Rotten!” he answered. “Rotten! We’ll take the whole reel once more tomorrow.”Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444893451907188044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8879282668683580477.post-2721349490847535162015-10-29T09:16:00.002+00:002015-10-29T09:16:51.616+00:00Three Classic Poems For Halloween<h2>
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<b>Theodosia Garrison - A Ballad of Halloween</b><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">All night the wild ivind on the heath</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Whistled its song of vague alarms;</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The poplars tossed their naked arms</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">All night in some mad dance of death.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Mignon Isa hath left her bed</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">And bared her shoulders to the blast;</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The long procession of the dead</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Stared at her as it passed.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">"Oh, there, methinks, my mother smiled,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">And there my father walks forlorn,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">And there the little nameless child</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">That was the parish scorn.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">" And there my olden comrades move,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">And there my sister smiles apart.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">But nowhere is the fair, false love</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">That broke my loving heart.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">" Oh, false in life, oh, false in death,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Wherever thy mad spirit be,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Could it not come this night," she saith,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">" To keep a tryst with me?"</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Mignon Isa hath turned alone;</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Bitter the pain and long the years;</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The moonlight on the cold gravestone</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Was warmer than her tears.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">All night the wild wind on the heath</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Whistled its song of vague alarms;</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The poplars tossed their naked arms</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">All night in some mad dance of death.</span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit;">Edgar Alan Poe - </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: inherit; white-space: nowrap;">To -- -- --. Ulalume: A Ballad</span></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The skies they were ashen and sober;</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> The leaves they were crispéd and sere—<br /> The leaves they were withering and sere;<br />It was night in the lonesome October<br /> Of my most immemorial year;<br />It was hard by the dim lake of Auber,<br /> In the misty mid region of Weir—<br />It was down by the dank tarn of Auber,<br /> In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />Here once, through an alley Titanic,<br /> Of cypress, I roamed with my Soul—<br /> Of cypress, with Psyche, my Soul.<br />These were days when my heart was volcanic<br /> As the scoriac rivers that roll—<br /> As the lavas that restlessly roll<br />Their sulphurous currents down Yaanek<br /> In the ultimate climes of the pole—<br />That groan as they roll down Mount Yaanek<br /> In the realms of the boreal pole.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />Our talk had been serious and sober,<br /> But our thoughts they were palsied and sere—<br /> Our memories were treacherous and sere—<br />For we knew not the month was October,<br /> And we marked not the night of the year—<br /> (Ah, night of all nights in the year!)<br />We noted not the dim lake of Auber—<br /> (Though once we had journeyed down here)—<br />We remembered not the dank tarn of Auber,<br /> Nor the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />And now, as the night was senescent<br /> And star-dials pointed to morn—<br /> As the star-dials hinted of morn—<br />At the end of our path a liquescent<br /> And nebulous lustre was born,<br />Out of which a miraculous crescent<br /> Arose with a duplicate horn—<br />Astarte's bediamonded crescent<br /> Distinct with its duplicate horn.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />And I said—"She is warmer than Dian:<br /> She rolls through an ether of sighs—<br /> She revels in a region of sighs:<br />She has seen that the tears are not dry on<br /> These cheeks, where the worm never dies,<br />And has come past the stars of the Lion<br /> To point us the path to the skies—<br /> To the Lethean peace of the skies—<br />Come up, in despite of the Lion,<br /> To shine on us with her bright eyes—<br />Come up through the lair of the Lion,<br /> With love in her luminous eyes."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />But Psyche, uplifting her finger,<br /> Said—"Sadly this star I mistrust—<br /> Her pallor I strangely mistrust:—<br />Oh, hasten! oh, let us not linger!<br /> Oh, fly!—let us fly!—for we must."<br />In terror she spoke, letting sink her<br /> Wings till they trailed in the dust—<br />In agony sobbed, letting sink her<br /> Plumes till they trailed in the dust—<br /> Till they sorrowfully trailed in the dust.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />I replied—"This is nothing but dreaming:<br /> Let us on by this tremulous light!<br /> Let us bathe in this crystalline light!<br />Its Sybilic splendor is beaming<br /> With Hope and in Beauty to-night:—<br /> See!—it flickers up the sky through the night!<br />Ah, we safely may trust to its gleaming,<br /> And be sure it will lead us aright—<br />We safely may trust to a gleaming<br /> That cannot but guide us aright,<br /> Since it flickers up to Heaven through the night."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />Thus I pacified Psyche and kissed her,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> And tempted her out of her gloom—<br /> And conquered her scruples and gloom:<br />And we passed to the end of the vista,<br /> But were stopped by the door of a tomb—<br /> By the door of a legended tomb;<br />And I said—"What is written, sweet sister,<br /> On the door of this legended tomb?"<br /> She replied—"Ulalume—Ulalume—<br /> 'Tis the vault of thy lost Ulalume!"</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />Then my heart it grew ashen and sober<br /> As the leaves that were crispèd and sere—<br /> As the leaves that were withering and sere,<br />And I cried—"It was surely October<br /> On <em>this</em> very night of last year<br /> That I journeyed—I journeyed down here—<br /> That I brought a dread burden down here—<br /> On this night of all nights in the year,<br /> Oh, what demon has tempted me here?<br />Well I know, now, this dim lake of Auber—<br /> This misty mid region of Weir—<br />Well I know, now, this dank tarn of Auber—<br /> In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />Said <em>we</em>, then—the two, then—"Ah, can it<br /> Have been that the woodlandish ghouls—<br /> The pitiful, the merciful ghouls—<br />To bar up our way and to ban it<br /> From the secret that lies in these wolds—<br /> From the thing that lies hidden in these wolds—<br />Had drawn up the spectre of a planet<br /> From the limbo of lunary souls—<br />This sinfully scintillant planet<br /> From the Hell of the planetary souls?"</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">3</span></h2>
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<b style="font-family: inherit;">Edith Wharton - All Souls </b><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;">I</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;">A thin moon faints in the sky o’erhead,</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;">And dumb in the churchyard lie the dead.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;">Walk we not, Sweet, by garden ways,</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;">Where the late rose hangs and the phlox delays,</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;">But forth of the gate and down the road,</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;">Past the church and the yews, to their dim abode.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;">For it’s turn of the year and </span>All Souls’ night<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;">,</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;">When the dead can hear and the dead have sight.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;" /><b style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;">II</b><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;">Fear not that sound like wind in the trees:</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;">It is only their call that comes on the breeze;</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;">Fear not the shudder that seems to pass:</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;">It is only the tread of their feet on the grass;</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;">Fear not the drip of the bough as you stoop:</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;">It is only the touch of their hands that grope —</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;">For the year’s on the turn, and it’s All Souls’ night,</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;">When the dead can yearn and the dead can smite.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;" /><b style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;">III</b><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;">And where should a man bring his sweet to woo</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;">But here, where such hundreds were lovers too?</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;">Where lie the dead lips that thirst to kiss,</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;">The empty hands that their fellows miss,</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;">Where the maid and her lover, from sere to green,</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;">Sleep bed by bed, with the worm between?</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;">For it’s turn of the year and All Souls’ night,</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;">When the dead can hear and the dead have sight.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;" /><b style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;">IV</b><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;">And now that they rise and walk in the cold,</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;">Let us warm their blood and give youth to the old.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;">Let them see us and hear us, and say: “Ah, thus</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;">In the prime of the year it went with us!”</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;">Till their lips drawn close, and so long unkist,</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;">Forget they are mist that mingles with mist!</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;">For the year’s on the turn, and it’s All Souls’ night,</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;">When the dead can burn and the dead can smite.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;" /><b style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;">V</b><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;">Till they say, as they hear us — poor dead, poor dead! —</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;">“Just an hour of this, and our age-long bed —</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;">Just a thrill of the old remembered pains</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;">To kindle a flame in our frozen veins,</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;">Just a touch, and a sight, and a floating apart,</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;">As the chill of dawn strikes each phantom heart —</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;">For it’s turn of the year and All Souls’ night,</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;">When the dead can hear, and the dead have sight.”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>VI</b><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;">And where should the living feel alive</span><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;">But here in this wan white humming hive,</span><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;">As the moon wastes down, and the dawn turns cold,</span><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;">And one by one they creep back to the fold?</span><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;">And where should a man hold his mate and say:</span><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;">“One more, one more, ere we go their way”?</span><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;">For the year’s on the turn, and it’s All Souls’ night,</span><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;">When the living can learn by the churchyard light.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;" /><b style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;">VII</b><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;">And how should we break faith who have seen</span><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;">Those dead lips plight with the mist between,</span><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;">And how forget, who have seen how soon</span><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;">They lie thus chambered and cold to the moon?</span><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;">How scorn, how hate, how strive, we too,</span><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;">Who must do so soon as those others do?</span><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;">For it’s All Souls’ night, and break of the day,</span><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;">And behold, with the light the dead are away.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;"><br /></span></span>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
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<b style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></b>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 19.5px;" /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br style="background-color: white; color: #505050; line-height: 24px;" /></span>
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<div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8879282668683580477.post-44611560972672085162015-10-27T10:09:00.000+00:002016-01-25T12:20:12.781+00:00John Brhel - A Halloween Miracle <div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
</div>
<h2 style="text-align: center;">
<span style="text-indent: 1.27cm;"><b>A Halloween Miracle</b></span></h2>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">
<span style="text-indent: 1.27cm;">John Brhel</span></h3>
<br />
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">"Trick
or treat!" yelled a witch, an axe murderer, Batman, and a
pint-sized Katniss Everdeen as Pam Cleary opened the front door to
her home, a five-bedroom Victorian on a cul-de-sac in the enviable
neighborhood of Shady Terrace.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">"Oh, what nice
costumes you have," said Pam as she dropped a full-size Snickers
bar into each child's bag. </span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">She was dressed as a
doll, with porcelain-white skin, rosy red cheeks, and a puffy, blue
dress. Coincidentally, her home resembled a dollhouse. It was a
massive white structure with black shutters, imposing rooflines, and
big bay windows. Like the Addams Family's place, only slightly more
inviting.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">She flashed a
well-rehearsed smile at the children's parents -- a doctor, a
preacher, an assemblyman, and the president of the Matheson Central
PTA. These were good people. The very best people.</span><span style="color: #00000a;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Everyone
thanked her and walked next door to the Kelly’s, who had just
returned from a weeklong vacation in Barbados.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Pam closed the door
and went to the kitchen to get more candy. It was a room worthy of a
magazine spread: vaulted ceilings; imported marble countertops;
stainless-steel, smart appliances; and a center island that would
make a realtor squeal with glee. For Pam, who had spent her childhood
in a run-down shoebox in the have-not side of town, it was like a
dream. </span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Her husband, Martin,
sat on a stool next to the island, nursing a glass of scotch. He was
a middle-aged man with a salt-and-pepper beard and honest brown eyes.
</span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">"How's it
going?" Martin asked. "Having fun yet?" A copy of
Washington Irving's </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>The
Legend of Sleepy Hollow</i></span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">
lay open on the counter, next to his glass. He took a swig of scotch
and belched.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">"Well, that
bitch Patty Holden just stopped by with that brat kid of hers,"
said Pam. She picked up a carton of candy from the counter and dumped
its contents into a large, glass bowl. "If I could, I'd tell her
to go..."</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Martin cut her off.
"I don't want to hear any complaining tonight, alright? It's
Halloween, for Christ's sake. Could you lighten up for once, Pamela?"</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">The doorbell rang.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">"Could you shut
your trap for once, Martin?" said Pam. She sneered at him and
rushed down the hallway.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">When she got to the
front door and looked out the peephole at the pack of
trick-or-treaters waiting outside, she didn't recognize a single one.
Shady Terrace was home to 50 upstanding, well-bred families -- and
she knew them all by name. Not this motley crew.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">"Trick or
treat!" yelled the costumed strangers as Pam opened the front
door. She looked with disgust at the riffraff congregating on her
front steps. A clown in an oversized pair of thrift-store pants. A
princess with a tinfoil crown. A bedsheet ghost with two uneven
eye-holes. And a skeleton in a threadbare Lycra outfit and one of
those cheap, plastic masks with the rubber band in the back. The
group smelled like a mix of body odor and Kool-Aid.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">She looked out on
the street, past the group of unwelcome misfits, and saw a rusted
green minivan parked in front of the Wilson’s colonial home. She'd
never seen it before, and it didn't belong to anyone in Shady
Terrace, that was for sure.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Must be from the
other side of Jefferson</i></span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">!</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">
thought Pam.</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>
The nerve of these people. I pay more than my fair share in taxes to
feed and school these miscreants. Now I have to give them free candy,
too?</i></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">The kids giggled and
held out their bags in anticipation (half of the bags were dirty
pillowcases). But Pam kept the candy out of their reach.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">"You should be
ashamed of yourselves," she said to their parents -- a zombie, a
giant M&M, a pirate, a hobo, a black cat, and Elvis. "Halloween
isn't a charity or a social service. This candy is for Shady Terrace
kids. Why don't you go back to your 'hood' and trick-or-treat at your
own damn houses!"</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Before anyone could
object, Pam stepped back in her house and slammed the door in her
visitors' faces.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">She set the candy
bowl on top of her blue, mid-century bookshelf and peeped out the
window. Outside, the children were pouting and stomping their feet on
her walkway. Their parents were doing their best to console them, to
no avail.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">One of the parents
(</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>probably
somebody's "baby daddy</i></span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>,"</i></span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">
thought Pam), the gruff-looking guy in the pirate outfit, turned
toward the house and shook his fist in the air.</span><span style="color: #00000a;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">"You
can go to hell, lady!" yelled the man, a fierce scowl set across
his stubbly face. "You think you live in some little bubble up
here, like your shit don't stink. But you'll get yours! Just you
wait!"</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Pam ducked behind
her handmade peu de soie drapes in fear.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">The black cat,
presumably the pirate's wife, tugged his arm and motioned toward the
kids. He shook his head and followed the group next door to the
Kelly's, but not before flipping the bird back at Pam's house.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Scumbags! I hope
Barb tells them to buzz off!</i></span></span><span style="color: #00000a;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>
</i></span></span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Pam watched as Barb
Kelly opened her front door and handed out candy to the very same
group with a big, stinking smile on her face.</span><span style="color: #00000a;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>
</i></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Are
you kidding me? Damned bleeding heart. </i></span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">She walked back to
the kitchen to complain to Martin about what she'd just endured, but
he beat her to the punch.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">"I heard the
whole thing," said Martin, shaking his head. "I can't
believe you. Denying little kids candy on Halloween. And kids from
the projects, on top of it? C'mon."</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">"Those 'little
kids' and their parents are deceitful," said Pam, fists clenched
tight at her side. "It's so damn obvious that they live in the
ghetto and only came here cause we give out real candy. It's
bullshit, and I'm not going to stand for it."</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Martin stepped up
from the stool, nearly falling over in the process (he liked his
scotch strong). "We make probably 30 times more than these kids'
parents and you're going to give them a hard time about a two-dollar
bar of chocolate?"</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">"It's not my
job or obligation to feed or entertain someone else's kids,"
said Pam, pointing her thumb back at herself like a big to-do. "And
I won't stand for threats from their trashy parents either."</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Martin paused and
tilted his head to the side as if something long-forgotten had just
popped into his head. "Well, you better start being nicer to
those kids," he said, smirking. "Or the Dearg Dulce is
going to get you."</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">"The what?!"
said Pam. Martin, a tenured anthropology professor, was prone to
using weird, archaic words that she didn't understand.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">"The Dearg
Dulce. It's an ancient Celtic demon associated with the feast of
Samhein; that's where we get Halloween. The Dearg Dulce haunted the
homes of those who refused to partake in harvest festivities, which
included giving out treats to village children."</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>This is what I
get for marrying an academic. And a drunk.</i></span></span><span style="color: #00000a;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>
</i></span></span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Pam groaned. "You've
got a colorful imagination, Martin. Why don't you have another drink
and let me handle the trick-or-treaters?"</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Martin chuckled.
"It's ancient mythology, but whatever, Pam. I hope you'll curb
your snobbery just this once and let some poor kids have some fun."</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Pam picked up the
bowl of candy and walked out of the kitchen, her nose pointed firmly
toward the ceiling. </span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">"Don't say I
didn't warn you!" yelled Martin. He picked up his drink and
walked out to the back porch to finish his story.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">The rest of Pam's
evening went by without incident. Groups of decent families rang her
doorbell, and she doled out candy to each child with delight. When
the neighborhood's power couple, Mark and Evelyn Jones, swung by, she
made sure to give their son, Cody, an extra candy bar.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">When more kids from
the “other side of Jefferson” showed up, however (and it was
quite obvious to Pam when they did), she simply shut off her porch
light and refused to answer the door. Nobody home.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">At 8:30 p.m. she
waved goodbye to the last group of legitimate trick-or-treaters and
closed the front door. Exhausted from a long day of Pilates and
reality TV, she poured a glass of wine and lied down on her leather
sofa. She was out cold not twenty minutes later.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Ding-dong! </span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">The doorbell rang
and Pam jolted awake. She rubbed her eyes and looked up at the clock
on her $5,000 entertainment center. It was 11:59 p.m. Way too late
for any trick-or-treaters.</span><span style="color: #00000a;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Who
the hell would be ringing the doorbell at this hour? Did Devon forget
his key again? Teenagers!</i></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">She walked to the
front door and looked out the peephole, but her son wasn't standing
outside. Neither were Rita Sullivan, Ted Donahue, or any of her other
nosy neighbors. Instead, there stood the kid in the skeleton costume
from before, one of the "less fortunate" kids, still
clutching his filthy pillowcase.</span><span style="color: #00000a;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Scumbags
letting their spawn roam the streets at this hour! I'm going to call
security and make sure they never show their faces in this
neighborhood again! </i></span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">She opened the door
and scolded him before he had a chance to yell "trick or treat."</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">"Young man, I
told you this candy is for the children of Shady Terrace," said
Pam, kneeling down to talk to him at eye level. "It's wrong of
you to come into our neighborhood and ask for candy, ya hear? Now go
on home, and tell your parents not to come around here anymore."</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">The skeleton didn't
move or utter a word. He held out his pillowcase with one stiff hand
and waited.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Pam stood up, a
nasty sneer beginning to form on her face. "Where are your
parents? I want to give them a piece of my mind!"</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">She waited for the
skeleton to respond, but he stood there, silent and still. Outside
the wind picked up and Pam could hear the sound of crisp red and
orange leaves rustling on the ground.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">"Are you deaf,
kid? I'm talking to you!" she said, her Botoxed lip curled up
into a sneer.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Dead silence.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">"That's it!
Let's see who's hiding under that mask! And after that I'm calling
the cops!"</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">She stepped forward
and lifted the skeleton's mask off with her free hand in one swift
motion. </span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">When she saw what
was underneath, she screamed, so loud and so violently that she woke
up the Baumgartners, who lived five houses over.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Looking back at her,
like the Devil himself had dropped it off at her doorstep, was a
shriveled, rotting face. Its cheeks were pea-soup green and sunken
in, and it was caked with dust, like some horribly preserved mummy,
unearthed after a millennia. It had no eyeballs, but looked out at
her through two empty sockets, through which she could see the same
green minivan from before, the grungy pirate sitting in the driver's
seat. The creature's teeth, yellow and decayed, extended beyond its
pointed, gnarled chin. Not even the most brilliant mask maker could
have dreamed up such a horribly grotesque face.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">"Trick or
treat!" howled the creature as a bright light emanated from its
body, illuminating the porch and Pam in a weird purple glow. She
stood in the doorway, unable to look away or run. Losing control of
her body, she dropped the candy bowl to the ground. Shards of glass
shattered all over her beautiful pavers as the creature's howl
carried through the picture-perfect streets of Shady Terrace. </span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">"Mom,
I'm home," said Devon Cleary as he shut the back door to his
house. He hung up his jacket, took off the Freddy Krueger hat he'd
worn to the party, and walked into the kitchen, where his mother was
sitting at the island, her back turned to him.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">"Sorry I'm
late," he said. "Rog and I sort of lost track of time."</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">He was surprised
when his mother didn't turn around and scold him on the spot.
Seemingly home-free, he walked to the other side of the island to
grab some chips from the snack drawer. When he saw his mother's face,
he froze. </span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">"Mom?" he
asked, his heart suddenly pounding against his chest like a hammer on
a railroad spike. He grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her.
"Mom?! </span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">"Dad! What's
wrong with mom?!"</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Pam sat on the
stool, her eyes glazed over, face twisted in shock. She kept
muttering something under her breath, but Devon couldn't make out
what the strange words were underneath all of her heavy wheezing.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Dearg Dulce.
Dearg Dulce. Dearg Dulce. Dearg...</i></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Natasha
Ulrich, Ernest Miller, and Racquel Knowles returned to their homes on
the "other side of Jefferson" that night to find their
trick-or-treat bags stuffed full of Snickers bars. No one knew how
they ended up with all of that yummy loot, but it didn't matter.
Times were tough, and nights like these provided some much-needed
respite.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">They tore open the
wrappers and munched on their well-deserved junk. And their smiles
were wider than a mile.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 1.27cm;">
<br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal; text-indent: 0px;" />
<b style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal; text-indent: 0px;">John Brhel<span style="font-size: 12.8px;"> is a horror writer from Binghamton, New York. </span><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">He is currently co-authoring a book of short fiction<i> </i>about a cursed cemetery. </span><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">He blogs at <a href="http://johnbrhel.tumblr.com/" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">http://johnbrhel.tumblr.com</a> </span><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">and can be found on Twitter as @johnbrhel.</span></b></div>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8879282668683580477.post-72199763051726469482015-10-02T17:00:00.000+01:002015-10-02T17:00:02.027+01:00'Caterpillars' by E.F. Benson<div class="dropcap" style="background-color: #fcfff6; font-family: Georgia, serif; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 0.2em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: justify;">
I saw a month or two ago in an Italian paper that the Villa Cascana, in which I once stayed, had been pulled down, and that a manufactory of some sort was in process of erection on its site.</div>
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There is therefore no longer any reason for refraining from writing of those things which I myself saw (or imagined I saw) in a certain room and on a certain landing of the villa in question, nor from mentioning the circumstances which followed, which may or may not (according to the opinion of the reader) throw some light on or be somehow connected with this experience. </div>
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The Villa Cascana was in all ways but one a perfectly delightful house, yet, if it were standing now, nothing in the world — I use the phrase in its literal sense — would induce me to set foot in it again, for I believe it to have been haunted in a very terrible and practical manner.</div>
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Most ghosts, when all is said and done, do not do much harm; they may perhaps terrify, but the person whom they visit usually gets over their visitation. They may on the other hand be entirely friendly and beneficent. But the appearances in the Villa Cascana were not beneficent, and had they made their “visit” in a very slightly different manner, I do not suppose I should have got over it any more than Arthur Inglis did.</div>
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The house stood on an ilex-clad hill not far from Sestri di Levante on the Italian Riviera, looking out over the iridescent blues of that enchanted sea, while behind it rose the pale green chestnut woods that climb up the hillsides till they give place to the pines that, black in contrast with them, crown the slopes. All round it the garden in the luxuriance of mid-spring bloomed and was fragrant, and the scent of magnolia and rose, borne on the salt freshness of the winds from the sea, flowed like a stream through the cool vaulted rooms.</div>
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On the ground floor a broad pillared loggia ran round three sides of the house, the top of which formed a balcony for certain rooms of the first floor. The main staircase, broad and of grey marble steps, led up from the hall to the landing outside these rooms, which were three in number, namely, two big sitting-rooms and a bedroom arranged en suite. The latter was unoccupied, the sitting-rooms were in use. From these the main staircase was continued to the second floor, where were situated certain bedrooms, one of which I occupied, while from the other side of the first-floor landing some half-dozen steps led to another suite of rooms, where, at the time I am speaking of, Arthur Inglis, the artist, had his bedroom and studio. Thus the landing outside my bedroom at the top of the house commanded both the landing of the first floor and also the steps that led to Inglis’ rooms. Jim Stanley and his wife, finally (whose guest I was), occupied rooms in another wing of the house, where also were the servants’ quarters.</div>
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I arrived just in time for lunch on a brilliant noon of mid-May. The garden was shouting with colour and fragrance, and not less delightful after my broiling walk up from the marina, should have been the coming from the reverberating heat and blaze of the day into the marble coolness of the villa. Only (the reader has my bare word for this, and nothing more), the moment I set foot in the house I felt that something was wrong. This feeling, I may say, was quite vague, though very strong, and I remember that when I saw letters waiting for me on the table in the hall I felt certain that the explanation was here: I was convinced that there was bad news of some sort for me. Yet when I opened them I found no such explanation of my premonition: my correspondents all reeked of prosperity. Yet this clear miscarriage of a presentiment did not dissipate my uneasiness. In that cool fragrant house there was something wrong.</div>
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I am at pains to mention this because to the general view it may explain that though I am as a rule so excellent a sleeper that the extinction of my light on getting into bed is apparently contemporaneous with being called on the following morning, I slept very badly on my first night in the Villa Cascana. It may also explain the fact that when I did sleep (if it was indeed in sleep that I saw what I thought I saw) I dreamed in a very vivid and original manner, original, that is to say, in the sense that something that, as far as I knew, had never previously entered into my consciousness, usurped it then. But since, in addition to this evil premonition, certain words and events occurring during the rest of the day might have suggested something of what I thought happened that night, it will be well to relate them.</div>
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After lunch, then, I went round the house with Mrs. Stanley, and during our tour she referred, it is true, to the unoccupied bedroom on the first floor, which opened out of the room where we had lunched.</div>
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“We left that unoccupied,” she said, “because Jim and I have a charming bedroom and dressing-room, as you saw, in the wing, and if we used it ourselves we should have to turn the dining-room into a dressing-room and have our meals downstairs. As it is, however, we have our little flat there, Arthur Inglis has his little flat in the other passage; and I remembered (aren’t I extraordinary?) that you once said that the higher up you were in a house the better you were pleased. So I put you at the top of the house, instead of giving you that room.”</div>
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It is true, that a doubt, vague as my uneasy premonition, crossed my mind at this. I did not see why Mrs. Stanley should have explained all this, if there had not been more to explain. I allow, therefore, that the thought that there was something to explain about the unoccupied bedroom was momentarily present to my mind.</div>
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The second thing that may have borne on my dream was this.</div>
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At dinner the conversation turned for a moment on ghosts. Inglis, with the certainty of conviction, expressed his belief that anybody who could possibly believe in the existence of supernatural phenomena was unworthy of the name of an ass. The subject instantly dropped. As far as I can recollect, nothing else occurred or was said that could bear on what follows.</div>
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We all went to bed rather early, and personally I yawned my way upstairs, feeling hideously sleepy. My room was rather hot, and I threw all the windows wide, and from without poured in the white light of the moon, and the love-song of many nightingales. I undressed quickly, and got into bed, but though I had felt so sleepy before, I now felt extremely wide-awake. But I was quite content to be awake: I did not toss or turn, I felt perfectly happy listening to the song and seeing the light. Then, it is possible, I may have gone to sleep, and what follows may have been a dream. I thought, anyhow, that after a time the nightingales ceased singing and the moon sank. I thought also that if, for some unexplained reason, I was going to lie awake all night, I might as well read, and I remembered that I had left a book in which I was interested in the dining-room on the first floor. So I got out of bed, lit a candle, and went downstairs. I went into the room, saw on a side-table the book I had come to look for, and then, simultaneously, saw that the door into the unoccupied bedroom was open. A curious grey light, not of dawn nor of moonshine, came out of it, and I looked in. The bed stood just opposite the door, a big four-poster, hung with tapestry at the head. Then I saw that the greyish light of the bedroom came from the bed, or rather from what was on the bed. For it was covered with great caterpillars, a foot or more in length, which crawled over it. They were faintly luminous, and it was the light from them that showed me the room. Instead of the sucker-feet of ordinary caterpillars they had rows of pincers like crabs, and they moved by grasping what they lay on with their pincers, and then sliding their bodies forward. In colour these dreadful insects were yellowish-grey, and they were covered with irregular lumps and swellings. There must have been hundreds of them, for they formed a sort of writhing, crawling pyramid on the bed. Occasionally one fell off on to the floor, with a soft fleshy thud, and though the floor was of hard concrete, it yielded to the pincerfeet as if it had been putty, and, crawling back, the caterpillar would mount on to the bed again, to rejoin its fearful companions. They appeared to have no faces, so to speak, but at one end of them there was a mouth that opened sideways in respiration.</div>
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Then, as I looked, it seemed to me as if they all suddenly became conscious of my presence.</div>
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All the mouths, at any rate, were turned in my direction, and next moment they began dropping off the bed with those soft fleshy thuds on to the floor, and wriggling towards me. For one second a paralysis as of a dream was on me, but the next I was running upstairs again to my room, and I remember feeling the cold of the marble steps on my bare feet. I rushed into my bedroom, and slammed the door behind me, and then — I was certainly wide-awake now — I found myself standing by my bed with the sweat of terror pouring from me. The noise of the banged door still rang in my ears. But, as would have been more usual, if this had been mere nightmare, the terror that had been mine when I saw those foul beasts crawling about the bed or dropping softly on to the floor did not cease then. Awake, now, if dreaming before, I did not at all recover from the horror of dream: it did not seem to me that I had dreamed. And until dawn, I sat or stood, not daring to lie down, thinking that every rustle or movement that I heard was the approach of the caterpillars. To them and the claws that bit into the cement the wood of the door was child’s play: steel would not keep them out.</div>
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But with the sweet and noble return of day the horror vanished: the whisper of wind became benignant again: the nameless fear, whatever it was, was smoothed out and terrified me no longer. Dawn broke, hueless at first; then it grew dove-coloured, then the flaming pageant of light spread over the sky.</div>
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The admirable rule of the house was that everybody had breakfast where and when he pleased, and in consequence it was not till lunch-time that I met any of the other members of our party, since I had breakfast on my balcony, and wrote letters and other things till lunch. In fact, I got down to that meal rather late, after the other three had begun. Between my knife and fork there was a small pill-box of cardboard, and as I sat down Inglis spoke.</div>
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“Do look at that,” he said, “since you are interested in natural history. I found it crawling on my counterpane last night, and I don’t know what it is.”</div>
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I think that before I opened the pill-box I expected something of the sort which I found in it.</div>
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Inside it, anyhow, was a small caterpillar, greyish-yellow in colour, with curious bumps and excrescences on its rings. It was extremely active, and hurried round the box, this way and that.</div>
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Its feet were unlike the feet of any caterpillar I ever saw: they were like the pincers of a crab. I looked, and shut the lid down again.</div>
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“No, I don’t know it,” I said, “but it looks rather unwholesome. What are you going to do with it?”</div>
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“Oh, I shall keep it,” said Inglis. “It has begun to spin: I want to see what sort of a moth it turns into.”</div>
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I opened the box again, and saw that these hurrying movements were indeed the beginning of the spinning of the web of its cocoon. Then Inglis spoke again.</div>
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“It has got funny feet, too,” he said. “They are like crabs’ pincers. What’s the Latin for crab?”</div>
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“Oh, yes, Cancer. So in case it is unique, let’s christen it: ‘Cancer Inglisensis.’” Then something happened in my brain, some momentary piecing together of all that I had seen or dreamed. Something in his words seemed to me to throw light on it all, and my own intense horror at the experience of the night before linked itself on to what he had just said. In effect, I took the box and threw it, caterpillar and all, out of the window. There was a gravel path just outside, and beyond it, a fountain playing into a basin. The box fell on to the middle of this.</div>
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Inglis laughed.</div>
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“So the students of the occult don’t like solid facts,” he said. “My poor caterpillar!”</div>
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The talk went off again at once on to other subjects, and I have only given in detail, as they happened, these trivialities in order to be sure myself that I have recorded everything that could have borne on occult subjects or on the subject of caterpillars. But at the moment when I threw the pill-box into the fountain, I lost my head: my only excuse is that, as is probably plain, the tenant of it was, in miniature, exactly what I had seen crowded on to the bed in the unoccupied room. And though this translation of those phantoms into flesh and blood — or whatever it is that caterpillars are made of — ought perhaps to have relieved the horror of the night, as a matter of fact it did nothing of the kind. It only made the crawling pyramid that covered the bed in the unoccupied room more hideously real.</div>
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After lunch we spent a lazy hour or two strolling about the garden or sitting in the loggia, and it must have been about four o’clock when Stanley and I started off to bathe, down the path that led by the fountain into which I had thrown the pill-box. The water was shallow and clear, and at the bottom of it I saw its white remains. The water had disintegrated the cardboard, and it had become no more than a few strips and shreds of sodden paper. The centre of the fountain was a marble Italian Cupid which squirted the water out of a wine-skin held under its arm. And crawling up its leg was the caterpillar. Strange and scarcely credible as it seemed, it must have survived the falling-to-bits of its prison, and made its way to shore, and there it was, out of arm’s reach, weaving and waving this way and that as it evolved its cocoon.</div>
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Then, as I looked at it, it seemed to me again that, like the caterpillar I had seen last night, it saw me, and breaking out of the threads that surrounded it, it crawled down the marble leg of the Cupid and began swimming like a snake across the water of the fountain towards me. It came with extraordinary speed (the fact of a caterpillar being able to swim was new to me), and in another moment was crawling up the marble lip of the basin. Just then Inglis joined us.</div>
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“Why, if it isn’t old ‘Cancer Inglisensis’ again,” he said, catching sight of the beast. “What a tearing hurry it is in!”</div>
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We were standing side by side on the path, and when the caterpillar had advanced to within about a yard of us, it stopped, and began waving again as if in doubt as to the direction in which it should go. Then it appeared to make up its mind, and crawled on to Inglis’ shoe.</div>
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“It likes me best,” he said, “but I don’t really know that I like it. And as it won’t drown I think perhaps —”</div>
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He shook it off his shoe on to the gravel path and trod on it.</div>
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All afternoon the air got heavier and heavier with the Sirocco that was without doubt coming up from the south, and that night again I went up to bed feeling very sleepy; but below my drowsiness, so to speak, there was the consciousness, stronger than before, that there was something wrong in the house, that something dangerous was close at hand. But I fell asleep at once, and — how long after I do not know — either woke or dreamed I awoke, feeling that I must get up at once, or I should be too late. Then (dreaming or awake) I lay and fought this fear, telling myself that I was but the prey of my own nerves disordered by Sirocco or what not, and at the same time quite clearly knowing in another part of my mind, so to speak, that every moment’s delay added to the danger. At last this second feeling became irresistible, and I put on coat and trousers and went out of my room on to the landing. And then I saw that I had already delayed too long, and that I was now too late.</div>
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The whole of the landing of the first floor below was invisible under the swarm of caterpillars that crawled there. The folding doors into the sitting-room from which opened the bedroom where I had seen them last night were shut, but they were squeezing through the cracks of it and dropping one by one through the keyhole, elongating themselves into mere string as they passed, and growing fat and lumpy again on emerging. Some, as if exploring, were nosing about the steps into the passage at the end of which were Inglis’ rooms, others were crawling on the lowest steps of the staircase that led up to where I stood. The landing, however, was completely covered with them: I was cut off. And of the frozen horror that seized me when I saw that I can give no idea in words.</div>
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Then at last a general movement began to take place, and they grew thicker on the steps that led to Inglis’ room. Gradually, like some hideous tide of flesh, they advanced along the passage, and I saw the foremost, visible by the pale grey luminousness that came from them, reach his door. Again and again I tried to shout and warn him, in terror all the time that they would turn at the sound of my voice and mount my stair instead, but for all my efforts I felt that no sound came from my throat. They crawled along the hinge-crack of his door, passing through as they had done before, and still I stood there, making impotent efforts to shout to him, to bid him escape while there was time.</div>
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At last the passage was completely empty: they had all gone, and at that moment I was conscious for the first time of the cold of the marble landing on which I stood barefooted. The dawn was just beginning to break in the Eastern sky.</div>
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Six months after I met Mrs. Stanley in a country house in England. We talked on many subjects and at last she said:</div>
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“I don’t think I have seen you since I got that dreadful news about Arthur Inglis a month ago.”</div>
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“I haven’t heard,” said I.</div>
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“No? He has got cancer. They don’t even advise an operation, for there is no hope of a cure: he is riddled with it, the doctors say.”</div>
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Now during all these six months I do not think a day had passed on which I had not had in my mind the dreams (or whatever you like to call them) which I had seen in the Villa Cascana.</div>
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“It is awful, is it not?” she continued, “and I feel I can’t help feeling, that he may have —”</div>
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“Caught it at the villa?” I asked.</div>
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She looked at me in blank surprise.</div>
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“Why did you say that?” she asked. “How did you know?”</div>
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Then she told me. In the unoccupied bedroom a year before there had been a fatal case of cancer. She had, of course, taken the best advice and had been told that the utmost dictates of prudence would be obeyed so long as she did not put anybody to sleep in the room, which had also been thoroughly disinfected and newly white-washed and painted. But —</div>
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<br /></div>
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<b>The End</b></div>
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<b>For more stories from E.F. Benson, visit his author's page in The Vault.</b></div>
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<br /></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444893451907188044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8879282668683580477.post-24875888779041056082015-09-18T17:00:00.000+01:002015-09-18T17:00:09.993+01:00'The Confession of Charles Linkworth' by E.F. BensonDr. Teesdale had occasion to attend the condemned man once or twice during the week before his execution, and found him, as is often the case, when his last hope of life has vanished, quiet and perfectly resigned to his fate, and not seeming to look forward with any dread to the morning that each hour that passed brought nearer and nearer. The bitterness of death appeared to be over for him: it was done with when he was told that his appeal was refused. But for those days while hope was not yet quite abandoned, the wretched man had drunk of death daily. In all his experience the doctor had never seen a man so wildly and passionately tenacious of life, nor one so strongly knit to this material world by the sheer animal lust of living. Then the news that hope could no longer be entertained was told him, and his spirit passed out of the grip of that agony of torture and suspense, and accepted the inevitable with indifference. Yet the change was so extraordinary that it seemed to the doctor rather that the news had completely stunned his powers of feeling, and he was below the numbed surface, still knit into material things as strongly as ever. He had fainted when the result was told him, and Dr. Teesdale had been called in to attend him. But the fit was but transient, and he came out of it into full consciousness of what had happened.<br />
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<a name='more'></a><br /><br />
The murder had been a deed of peculiar horror, and there was nothing of sympathy in the mind of the public towards the perpetrator. Charles Linkworth, who now lay under capital sentence, was the keeper of a small stationery store in Sheffield, and there lived with him his wife and mother. The latter was the victim of his atrocious crime; the motive of it being to get possession of the sum of five hundred pounds, which was this woman’s property. Linkworth, as came out at the trial, was in debt to the extent of a hundred pounds at the time, and during his wife’s absence from home on a visit to relations, he strangled his mother, and during the night buried the body in the small back-garden of his house. On his wife’s return, he had a sufficiently plausible tale to account for the elder Mrs. Linkworth’s disappearance, for there had been constant jarrings and bickerings between him and his mother for the last year or two, and she had more than once threatened to withdraw herself and the eight shillings a week which she contributed to household expenses, and purchase an annuity with her money. It was true, also, that during the younger Mrs. Linkworth’s absence from home, mother and son had had a violent quarrel arising originally from some trivial point in household management, and that in consequence of this, she had actually drawn her money out of the bank, intending to leave Sheffield next day and settle in London, where she had friends. That evening she told him this, and during the night he killed her.<br />
<br />
His next step, before his wife’s return, was logical and sound. He packed up all his mother’s possessions and took them to the station, from which he saw them despatched to town by passenger train, and in the evening he asked several friends in to supper, and told them of his mother’s departure. He did not (logically also, and in accordance with what they probably already knew) feign regret, but said that he and she had never got on well together, and that the cause of peace and quietness was furthered by her going. He told the same story to his wife on her return, identical in every detail, adding, however, that the quarrel had been a violent one, and that his mother had not even left him her address. This again was wisely thought of: it would prevent his wife from writing to her. She appeared to accept his story completely: indeed there was nothing strange or suspicious about it.<br />
<br />
For a while he behaved with the composure and astuteness which most criminals possess up to a certain point, the lack of which, after that, is generally the cause of their detection. He did not, for instance, immediately pay off his debts, but took into his house a young man as lodger, who occupied his mother’s room, and he dismissed the assistant in his shop, and did the entire serving himself. This gave the impression of economy, and at the same time he openly spoke of the great improvement in his trade, and not till a month had passed did he cash any of the bank-notes which he had found in a locked drawer in his mother’s room. Then he changed two notes of fifty pounds and paid off his creditors.<br />
<br />
At that point his astuteness and composure failed him. He opened a deposit account at a local bank with four more fifty-pound notes, instead of being patient, and increasing his balance at the savings bank pound by pound, and he got uneasy about that which he had buried deep enough for security in the back-garden. Thinking to render himself safer in this regard, he ordered a cartload of slag and stone fragments, and with the help of his lodger employed the summer evenings when work was over in building a sort of rockery over the spot. Then came the chance circumstance which really set match to this dangerous train. There was a fire in the lost luggage office at King’s Cross Station (from which he ought to have claimed his mother’s property) and one of the two boxes was partially burned. The company was liable for compensation, and his mother’s name on her linen, and a letter with the Sheffield address on it, led to the arrival of a purely official and formal notice, stating that the company were prepared to consider claims. It was directed to Mrs. Linkworth’s and Charles Linkworth’s wife received and read it.<br />
<br />
It seemed a sufficiently harmless document, but it was endorsed with his death-warrant. For he could give no explanation at all of the fact of the boxes still lying at King’s Cross Station, beyond suggesting that some accident had happened to his mother. Clearly he had to put the matter in the hands of the police, with a view to tracing her movements, and if it proved that she was dead, claiming her property, which she had already drawn out of the bank. Such at least was the course urged on him by his wife and lodger, in whose presence the communication from the railway officials was read out, and it was impossible to refuse to take it. Then the silent, uncreaking machinery of justice, characteristic of England, began to move forward. Quiet men lounged about Smith Street, visited banks, observed the supposed increase in trade, and from a house near by looked into the garden where ferns were already flourishing on the rockery. Then came the arrest and the trial, which did not last very long, and on a certain Saturday night the verdict. Smart women in large hats had made the court bright with colour, and in all the crowd there was not one who felt any sympathy with the young athletic-looking man who was condemned. Many of the audience were elderly and respectable mothers, and the crime had been an outrage on motherhood, and they listened to the unfolding of the flawless evidence with strong approval. They thrilled a little when the judge put on the awful and ludicrous little black cap, and spoke the sentence appointed by God.<br />
<br />
Linkworth went to pay the penalty for the atrocious deed, which no one who had heard the evidence could possibly doubt that he had done with the same indifference as had marked his entire demeanour since he knew his appeal had failed. The prison chaplain who had attended him had done his utmost to get him to confess, but his efforts had been quite ineffectual, and to the last he asserted, though without protestation, his innocence. On a bright September morning, when the sun shone warm on the terrible little procession that crossed the prison yard to the shed where was erected the apparatus of death, justice was done, and Dr. Teesdale was satisfied that life was immediately extinct. He had been present on the scaffold, had watched the bolt drawn, and the hooded and pinioned figure drop into the pit. He had heard the chunk and creak of the rope as the sudden weight came on to it, and looking down he had seen the queer twitchings of the hanged body. They had lasted but a second for the execution had been perfectly satisfactory.<br />
<br />
An hour later he made the post-mortem examination and found that his view had been correct: the vertebrae of the spine had been broken at the neck, and death must have been absolutely instantaneous. It was hardly necessary even to make that little piece of dissection that proved this, but for the sake of form he did so. And at that moment he had a very curious and vivid mental impression that the spirit of the dead man was close beside him, as if it still dwelt in the broken habitation of its body. But there was no question at all that the body was dead: it had been dead an hour. Then followed another little circumstance that at the first seemed insignificant though curious also. One of the warders entered, and asked if the rope which had been used an hour ago, and was the hangman’s perquisite, had by mistake been brought into the mortuary with the body. But there was no trace of it, and it seemed to have vanished altogether, though it a singular thing to be lost: it was not here; it was not on the scaffold. And though the disappearance was of no particular moment it was quite inexplicable.<br />
<br />
Dr. Teesdale was a bachelor and a man of independent means, and lived in a tall-windowed and commodious house in Bedford Square, where a plain cook of surpassing excellence looked after his food, and her husband his person. There was no need for him to practise a profession at all, and he performed his work at the prison for the sake of the study of the minds of criminals.<br />
Most crime — the transgression, that is, of the rule of conduct which the human race has framed for the sake of its own preservation — he held to be either the result of some abnormality, of the brain or of starvation. Crimes of theft, for instance, he would by no means refer to one head; often it is true they were the result of actual want, but more often dictated by some obscure disease of the brain. In marked cases it was labelled as kleptomania, but he was convinced there were many others which did not fall directly under the dictation of physical need. More especially was this the case where the crime in question involved also some deed of violence, and he mentally placed underneath this heading, as he went home that evening, the criminal at whose last moments he had been present that morning. The crime had been abominable, the need of money not so very pressing, and the very abomination and unnaturalness of the murder inclined him to consider the murderer as lunatic rather than criminal. He had been, as far as was known, a man of quiet and kindly disposition, a good husband, a sociable neighbour. And then he had committed a crime, just one, which put him outside all pales. So monstrous a deed, whether perpetrated by a sane man or a mad one, was intolerable; there was no use for the doer of it on this planet at all. But somehow the doctor felt that he would have been more at one with the execution of justice, if the dead man had confessed. It was morally certain that he was guilty, but he wished that when there was no longer any hope for him he had endorsed the verdict himself.<br />
<br />
He dined alone that evening, and after dinner sat in his study which adjoined the dining-room, and feeling disinclined to read, sat in his great red chair opposite the fireplace, and let his mind graze where it would. At once almost, it went back to the curious sensation he had experienced that morning, of feeling that the spirit of Linkworth was present in the mortuary, though life had been extinct for an hour. It was not the first time, especially in cases of sudden death, that he had felt a similar conviction, though perhaps it had never been quite so unmistakable as it had been today. Yet the feeling, to his mind, was quite probably formed on a natural and psychical truth.<br />
The spirit — it may be remarked that he was a believer in the doctrine of future life, and the non-extinction of the soul with the death of the body — was very likely unable or unwilling to quit at once and altogether the earthly habitation, very likely it lingered there, earth-bound, for a while.<br />
In his leisure hours Dr. Teesdale was a considerable student of the occult, for like most advanced and proficient physicians, he clearly recognised how narrow was the boundary of separation between soul and body, how tremendous the influence of the intangible was over material things, and it presented no difficulty to his mind that a disembodied spirit should be able to communicate directly with those who still were bounded by the finite and material.<br />
<br />
His meditations, which were beginning to group themselves into definite sequence, were interrupted at this moment. On his desk near at hand stood his telephone, and the bell rang, not with its usual metallic insistence, but very faintly, as if the current was weak, or the mechanism impaired. However, it certainly was ringing, and he got up and took the combined ear and mouth-piece off its hook.<br />
<br />
“Yes, yes,” he said, “who is it?”<br />
<br />
There was a whisper in reply almost inaudible, and quite unintelligible.<br />
<br />
“I can’t hear you,” he said.<br />
<br />
Again the whisper sounded, but with no greater distinctness. Then it ceased altogether.<br />
He stood there, for some half minute or so, waiting for it to be renewed, but beyond the usual chuckling and croaking, which showed, however, that he was in communication with some other instrument, there was silence. Then he replaced the receiver, rang up the Exchange, and gave his number.<br />
<br />
“Can you tell me what number rang me up just now?” he asked.<br />
<br />
There was a short pause, then it was given him. It was the number of the prison, where he was doctor.<br />
<br />
“Put me on to it, please,” he said.<br />
<br />
This was done.<br />
<br />
“You rang me up just now,” he said down the tube. “Yes; I am Doctor Teesdale. What is it? I could not hear what you said.”<br />
<br />
The voice came back quite clear and intelligible.<br />
<br />
“Some mistake, sir,” it said. “We haven’t rung you up.”<br />
<br />
“But the Exchange tells me you did, three minutes ago.”<br />
<br />
“Mistake at the Exchange, sir,” said the voice.<br />
<br />
“Very odd. Well, good-night. Warder Draycott, isn’t it?”<br />
<br />
“Yes, sir; good-night, sir.”<br />
<br />
Dr. Teesdale went back to his big arm-chair, still less inclined to read. He let his thoughts wander on for a while, without giving them definite direction, but ever and again his mind kept coming back to that strange little incident of the telephone. Often and often he had been rung up by some mistake, often and often he had been put on to the wrong number by the Exchange, but there was something in this very subdued ringing of the telephone bell, and the unintelligible whisperings at the other end that suggested a very curious train of reflection to his mind, and soon he found himself pacing up and down his room, with his thoughts eagerly feeding on a most unusual pasture.<br />
<br />
“But it’s impossible,” he said, aloud.<br />
<br />
He went down as usual to the prison next morning, and once again he was strangely beset with the feeling that there was some unseen presence there. He had before now had some odd psychical experiences, and knew that he was a “sensitive”— one, that is, who is capable, under certain circumstances, of receiving supernormal impressions, and of having glimpses of the unseen world that lies about us. And this morning the presence of which he was conscious was that of the man who had been executed yesterday morning. It was local, and he felt it most strongly in the little prison yard, and as he passed the door of the condemned cell. So strong was it there that he would not have been surprised if the figure of the man had been visible to him, and as he passed through the door at the end of the passage, he turned round, actually expecting to see it. All the time, too, he was aware of a profound horror at his heart; this unseen presence strangely disturbed him. And the poor soul, he felt, wanted something done for it. Not for a moment did he doubt that this impression of his was objective, it was no imaginative phantom of his own invention that made itself so real. The spirit of Linkworth was there.<br />
<br />
He passed into the infirmary, and for a couple of hours busied himself with his work. But all the time he was aware that the same invisible presence was near him, though its force was manifestly less here than in those places which had been more intimately associated with the man. Finally, before he left, in order to test his theory he looked into the execution shed. But next moment with a face suddenly stricken pale, he came out again, closing the door hastily. At the top of the steps stood a figure hooded and pinioned, but hazy of outline and only faintly visible.<br />
<br />
But it was visible, there was no mistake about it.<br />
<br />
Dr. Teesdale was a man of good nerve, and he recovered himself almost immediately, ashamed of his temporary panic. The terror that had blanched his face was chiefly the effect of startled nerves, not of terrified heart, and yet deeply interested as he was in psychical phenomena, he could not command himself sufficiently to go back there. Or rather he commanded himself, but his muscles refused to act on the message. If this poor earth-bound spirit had any communication to make to him, he certainly much preferred that it should be made at a distance. As far as he could understand, its range was circumscribed. It haunted the prison yard, the condemned cell, the execution shed, it was more faintly felt in the infirmary. Then a further point suggested itself to his mind, and he went back to his room and sent for Warder Draycott, who had answered him on the telephone last night.<br />
<br />
“You are quite sure,” he asked, “that nobody rang me up last night, just before I rang you up?”<br />
<br />
There was a certain hesitation in the man’s manner which the doctor noticed.<br />
<br />
“I don’t see how it could be possible, sir,” he said. “I had been sitting close by the telephone for half an hour before, and again before that. I must have seen him, if anyone had been to the instrument.”<br />
<br />
“And you saw no one?” said the doctor with a slight emphasis.<br />
<br />
The man became more markedly ill at ease.<br />
<br />
“No, sir, I saw no one,” he said, with the same emphasis.<br />
<br />
Dr. Teesdale looked away from him.<br />
<br />
“But you had perhaps the impression that there was some one there?” he asked, carelessly, as if it was a point of no interest.<br />
<br />
Clearly Warder Draycott had something on his mind, which he found it hard to speak of.<br />
“Well, sir, if you put it like that,” he began. “But you would tell me I was half asleep, or had eaten something that disagreed with me at my supper.”<br />
<br />
The doctor dropped his careless manner.<br />
<br />
“I should do nothing of the kind,” he said, “any more than you would tell me that I had dropped asleep last night, when I heard my telephone bell ring. Mind you, Draycott, it did not ring as usual, I could only just hear it ringing, though it was close to me. And I could only hear a whisper when I put my ear to it. But when you spoke I heard you quite distinctly. Now I believe there was something — somebody — at this end of the telephone. You were here, and though you saw no one, you, too, felt there was someone there.”<br />
<br />
The man nodded.<br />
<br />
“I’m not a nervous man, sir,” he said, “and I don’t deal in fancies. But there was something there. It was hovering about the instrument, and it wasn’t the wind, because there wasn’t a breath of wind stirring, and the night was warm. And I shut the window to make certain. But it went about the room, sir, for an hour or more. It rustled the leaves of the telephone book, and it ruffled my hair when it came close to me. And it was bitter cold, sir.”<br />
<br />
The doctor looked him straight in the face.<br />
<br />
“Did it remind you of what had been done yesterday morning?” he asked suddenly.<br />
<br />
Again the man hesitated.<br />
<br />
“Yes, sir,” he said at length. “Convict Charles Linkworth.”<br />
Dr. Teesdale nodded reassuringly.<br />
<br />
“That’s it,” he said. “Now, are you on duty to-night?”<br />
<br />
“Yes, sir, I wish I wasn’t.”<br />
<br />
“I know how you feel, I have felt exactly the same myself. Now whatever this is, it seems to want to communicate with me. By the way, did you have any disturbance in the prison last night?”<br />
<br />
“Yes, sir, there was half a dozen men who had the nightmare. Yelling and screaming they were, and quiet men too, usually. It happens sometimes the night after an execution. I’ve known it before, though nothing like what it was last night.”<br />
<br />
“I see. Now, if this — this thing you can’t see wants to get at the telephone again to-night, give it every chance. It will probably come about the same time. I can’t tell you why, but that usually happens. So unless you must, don’t be in this room where the telephone is, just for an hour to give it plenty of time between half-past nine and half-past ten. I will be ready for it at the other end. Supposing I am rung up, I will, when it has finished, ring you up to make sure that I was not being called in-in the usual way.”<br />
<br />
“And there is nothing to be afraid of, sir!” asked the man.<br />
<br />
Dr. Teesdale remembered his own moment of terror this morning, but he spoke quite sincerely.<br />
“I am sure there is nothing to be afraid of,” he said, reassuringly.<br />
<br />
Dr. Teesdale had a dinner engagement that night, which he broke, and was sitting alone in his study by half past-nine. In the present state of human ignorance as to the law which governs the movements of spirits severed from the body, he could not tell the warder why it was that their visits are so often periodic, timed to punctuality according to our scheme of hours, but in scenes of tabulated instances of the appearance of revenants, especially if the soul was in sore need of help, as might be the case here, he found that they came at the same hour of day or night. As a rule, too, their power of making themselves seen or heard or felt grew greater for some little while after death, subsequently growing weaker as they became less earth-bound, or often after that ceasing altogether, and he was prepared to-night for a less indistinct impression. The spirit apparently for the early hours of its disembodiment is weak, like a moth newly broken out from its chrysalis — and then suddenly the telephone bell rang, not so faintly as the night before, but still not with its ordinary imperative tone.<br />
<br />
Dr. Teesdale instantly got up, put the receiver to his ear. And what he heard was heartbroken sobbing, strong spasms that seemed to tear the weeper.<br />
<br />
He waited for a little before speaking, himself cold with some nameless fear, and yet profoundly moved to help, if he was able.<br />
<br />
“Yes, yes,” he said at length, hearing his own voice tremble. “I am Dr. Teesdale. What can I do for you? And who are you?” he added, though he felt that it was a needless question.<br />
<br />
Slowly the sobbing died down, the whispers took its place, still broken by crying.<br />
<br />
“I want to tell, sir — I want to tell — I must tell.”<br />
<br />
“Yes, tell me, what is it?” said the doctor.<br />
<br />
“No, not you — another gentleman, who used to come to see me. Will you speak to him what I say to you? — I can’t make him hear me or see me.”<br />
<br />
“Who are you?” asked Dr. Teesdale suddenly.<br />
<br />
“Charles Linkworth. I thought you knew. I am very miserable. I can’t leave the prison — and it is cold. Will you send for the other gentleman?”<br />
<br />
“Do you mean the chaplain?” asked Dr. Teesdale.<br />
<br />
“Yes, the chaplain. He read the service when I went across the yard yesterday. I shan’t be so miserable when I have told.”<br />
<br />
The doctor hesitated a moment. This was a strange story that he would have to tell Mr. Dawkins, the prison chaplain, that at the other end of the telephone was the spirit of the man executed yesterday.<br />
And yet he soberly believed that it was so, that this unhappy spirit was in misery and wanted to “tell.” There was no need to ask what he wanted to tell.<br />
<br />
“Yes, I will ask him to come here,” he said at length.<br />
<br />
“Thank you, sir, a thousand times. You will make him come, won’t you?”<br />
<br />
The voice was growing fainter.<br />
<br />
“It must be tomorrow night,” it said. “I can’t speak longer now. I have to go to see — oh, my God, my God.”<br />
<br />
The sobs broke out afresh, sounding fainter and fainter. But it was in a frenzy of terrified interest that Dr. Teesdale spoke.<br />
<br />
“To see what?” he cried. “Tell me what you are doing, what is happening to you?”<br />
<br />
“I can’t tell you; I mayn’t tell you,” said the voice very faint. “That is part —” and it died away altogether.<br />
<br />
Dr. Teesdale waited a little, but there was no further sound of any kind, except the chuckling and croaking of the instrument. He put the receiver on to its hook again, and then became aware for the first time that his forehead was streaming with some cold dew of horror. His ears sang; his heart beat very quick and faint, and he sat down to recover himself. Once or twice he asked himself if it was possible that some terrible joke was being played on him, but he knew that could not be so; he felt perfectly sure that he had been speaking with a soul in torment of contrition for the terrible and irremediable act it had committed. It was no delusion of his senses, either; here in this comfortable room of his in Bedford Square, with London cheerfully roaring round him, he had spoken with the spirit of Charles Linkworth.<br />
<br />
But he had no time (nor indeed inclination, for somehow his soul sat shuddering within him) to indulge in meditation. First of all he rang up the prison.<br />
<br />
“Warder Draycott?” he asked.<br />
<br />
There was a perceptible tremor in the man’s voice as he answered.<br />
<br />
“Yes, sir. Is it Dr. Teesdale?”<br />
<br />
“Yes. Has anything happened here with you?”<br />
<br />
Twice it seemed that the man tried to speak and could not. At the third attempt the words came “Yes, sir. He has been here. I saw him go into the room where the telephone is.”<br />
<br />
“Ah! Did you speak to him?”<br />
<br />
“No, sir: I sweated and prayed. And there’s half a dozen men as have been screaming in their sleep to-night. But it’s quiet again now. I think he has gone into the execution shed.”<br />
<br />
“Yes. Well, I think there will be no more disturbance now. By the way, please give me Mr. Dawkins’s home address.”<br />
<br />
This was given him, and Dr. Teesdale proceeded to write to the chaplain, asking him to dine with him on the following night. But suddenly he found that he could not write at his accustomed desk, with the telephone standing close to him, and he went upstairs to the drawing-room which he seldom used, except when he entertained his friends. There he recaptured the serenity of his nerves, and could control his hand. The note simply asked Mr. Dawkins to dine with him next night, when he wished to tell him a very strange history and ask his help. “Even if you have any other engagement,” he concluded, “I seriously request you to give it up. To-night, I did the same.<br />
<br />
“I should bitterly have regretted it if I had not.”<br />
<br />
Next night accordingly, the two sat at their dinner in the doctor’s dining-room, and when they were left to their cigarettes and coffee the doctor spoke.<br />
<br />
“You must not think me mad, my dear Dawkins,” he said, “when you hear what I have got to tell you.”<br />
<br />
Mr. Dawkins laughed.<br />
<br />
“I will certainly promise not to do that,” he said.<br />
<br />
“Good. Last night and the night before, a little later in the evening than this, I spoke through the telephone with the spirit of the man we saw executed two days ago. Charles Linkworth.”<br />
<br />
The chaplain did not laugh. He pushed back his chair, looking annoyed.<br />
<br />
“Teesdale,” he said, “is it to tell me this — I don’t want to be rude — but this bogey-tale that you have brought me here this evening?”<br />
<br />
“Yes. You have not heard half of it. He asked me last night to get hold of you. He wants to tell you something. We can guess, I think, what it is.”<br />
<br />
Dawkins got up.<br />
<br />
“Please let me hear no more of it,” he said. “The dead do not return. In what state or under what condition they exist has not been revealed to us. But they have done with all material things.”<br />
<br />
“But I must tell you more,” said the doctor. “Two nights ago I was rung up, but very faintly, and could only hear whispers. I instantly inquired where the call came from and was told it came from the prison. I rang up the prison, and Warder Draycott told me that nobody had rung me up. He, too, was conscious of a presence.”<br />
<br />
“I think that man drinks,” said Dawkins, sharply.<br />
<br />
The doctor paused a moment.<br />
<br />
“My dear fellow, you should not say that sort of thing,” he said. “He is one of the steadiest men we have got. And if he drinks, why not I also?”<br />
<br />
The chaplain sat down again.<br />
<br />
“You must forgive me,” he said, “but I can’t go into this. These are dangerous matters to meddle with. Besides, how do you know it is not a hoax?”<br />
<br />
“Played by whom?” asked the doctor. “Hark!”<br />
<br />
The telephone bell suddenly rang. It was clearly audible to the doctor.<br />
<br />
“Don’t you hear it?” he said.<br />
<br />
“Hear what?”<br />
<br />
“The telephone bell ringing.”<br />
<br />
“I hear no bell,” said the chaplain, rather angrily. “There is no bell ringing.”<br />
<br />
The doctor did not answer, but went through into his study, and turned on the lights. Then he took the receiver and mouthpiece off its hook.<br />
<br />
“Yes?” he said, in a voice that trembled. “Who is it? Yes: Mr. Dawkins is here. I will try and get him to speak to you.” He went back into the other room.<br />
<br />
“Dawkins,” he said, “there is a soul in agony. I pray you to listen. For God’s sake come and listen.”<br />
The chaplain hesitated a moment.<br />
<br />
“As you will,” he said.<br />
<br />
He took up the receiver and put it to his ear.<br />
<br />
“I am Mr. Dawkins,” he said.<br />
<br />
He waited.<br />
<br />
“I can hear nothing whatever,” he said at length. “Ah, there was something there. The faintest whisper.”<br />
<br />
“Ah, try to hear, try to hear!” said the doctor.<br />
<br />
Again the chaplain listened. Suddenly he laid the instrument down, frowning.<br />
<br />
“Something — somebody said, ‘I killed her, I confess it. I want to be forgiven.’ It’s a hoax, my dear Teesdale. Somebody knowing your spiritualistic leanings is playing a very grim joke on you. I can’t believe it.”<br />
<br />
Dr. Teesdale took up the receiver.<br />
<br />
“I am Dr. Teesdale,” he said. “Can you give Mr. Dawkins some sign that it is you?”<br />
<br />
Then he laid it down again.<br />
<br />
“He says he thinks he can,” he said. “We must wait.”<br />
<br />
The evening was again very warm, and the window into the paved yard at the back of the house was open. For five minutes or so the two men stood in silence, waiting, and nothing happened. Then the chaplain spoke.<br />
<br />
“I think that is sufficiently conclusive,” he said.<br />
<br />
Even as he spoke a very cold draught of air suddenly blew into the room, making the papers on the desk rustle. Dr. Teesdale went to the window and closed it.<br />
<br />
“Did you feel that?” he asked.<br />
<br />
“Yes, a breath of air. Chilly.”<br />
<br />
Once again in the closed room it stirred again.<br />
<br />
“And did you feel that?” asked the doctor.<br />
<br />
The chaplain nodded. He felt his heart hammering in his throat suddenly.<br />
<br />
“Defend us from all peril and danger of this coming night,” he exclaimed.<br />
<br />
“Something is coming!” said the doctor.<br />
<br />
As he spoke it came. In the centre of the room not three yards away from them stood the figure of a man with his head bent over on to his shoulder, so that the face was not visible. Then he took his head in both his hands and raised it like a weight, and looked them in the face. The eyes and tongue protruded, a livid mark was round the neck. Then there came a sharp rattle on the boards of the floor, and the figure was no longer there. But on the floor there lay a new rope.<br />
<br />
For a long while neither spoke. The sweat poured off the doctor’s face, and the chaplain’s white lips whispered prayers. Then by a huge effort the doctor pulled himself together. He pointed at the rope.<br />
<br />
“It has been missing since the execution,” he said.<br />
<br />
Then again the telephone bell rang. This time the chaplain needed no prompting. He went to it at once and the ringing ceased. For a while he listened in silence.<br />
<br />
“Charles Linkworth,” he said at length, “in the sight of God, in whose presence you stand, are you truly sorry for your sin?”<br />
<br />
Some answer inaudible to the doctor came, and the chaplain closed his eyes. And Dr. Teesdale knelt as he heard the words of the Absolution.<br />
<br />
At the close there was silence again.<br />
<br />
“I can hear nothing more,” said the chaplain, replacing the receiver.<br />
<br />
Presently the doctor’s man-servant came in with the tray of spirits and syphon. Dr. Teesdale pointed without looking to where the apparition had been.<br />
<br />
“Take the rope that is there and burn it, Parker,” he said.<br />
<br />
There was a moment’s silence.<br />
<br />
“There is no rope, sir,” said Parker.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>The End</b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><br /></b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<b>For more terrifying tales by E.F. Benson, visit his profile in our vault.</b></div>
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