A True Horror Tale pt 3

How long I sleep I never knew. I Then awoke at once with that abrupt start which we all know well, and which carries us in a second from utter unconsciouness to the full use of our faculties. The fire was still burning, but was very low, and half the room or more was in deep shadow. I knew, I felt, that some person or thing was in the room, although nothing unusual was to be seen by the feeble light. Yet it was a sense of danger that had aroused me from slumber. I experienced, while yet asleep, the chill and shock of sudden alarm, and I knew, even in the act of throwing off sleep like a mantle, WHY I awoke, and that some intruder was present. Yet, thought I listened intently, no sound was audible, except the faint murmur of the fire - the dropping the cinder from the bars - the loud, irregular beatings of my heart. Notwithstanding this silence, by some intuition I knew that I had not been deceived by a dream, and felt certain that I was not alone. I waited. My heart beat on; quicker, more sudden grew its pulsations, as a bird in a cage might flutter in presence of the hawk. And then I heard a sound, faint, but quite distinct, the clank of iron, the rattling of a chain! I ventured to lift my head from the pillow. Dim and uncertain as the light was, I saw the curtains of my bed shake, and caught a glimpse of something beyond, a darker spot in the darkness. This confirmation of my fears did not suprise me so much as it shocked me. I strove to cry aloud, but could not utter a word. The chain rattled again, and this time the noise was louder and clearer. But though I strained my eyes, they could not penetrate the obscurity that shrouded the other end of the chamber whence came the sullen clanking. In a moment several distant trains of thought, like many-coloured strands of thread twining into one, became palpable to the mental vision. was it a robber? could it be a supernatural visitant? or was I a victim of a cruel trick, such as I heard of, and which some thoughtless persons love to practice on the timid, reckless of its dangerous results? And then a new idea, with some ray of comfort in it, suggested it self. There was a fine young dog of the Newfoundland Breed, a favorite of my father's, which was usually chained by night in an outhouse. Nepture might have broken loose, found his way to my room, and, finding the door imperfectly closed, have pushed it opened and entered. I breathed more freely as this harmless interpretation of the noise forced itself upon me. It was - it must be - the dog, and I was distressing myself uselessly. I resloved to call him; I strove to utter his name - Nepture, Nepture, but a secret apprehension restrained me, and I was mute.

Then the chain clanked nearer and nearer to the bad, and presently I saw a dusky, shapeless mass appear between the curtains on the opposite side to where I was lying. How I longed to hear the whine of the poor animal that I hoped might be the cause of my alarm. But No; I heard no sound save the rustle of the curtains and the clash of the iron chains. Just then the dying flame of the fire leaped up, and with one sweeping, hurried glance I saw that the door was shut, and horror! it is not the dog! it is the semblance of a human form that now throws itself heavily on to the bed, outside the clothes, and lies theres, huge and swart, in the red gleam that treacherously died away after showing so much to affright, and sinks into dull darkness. There was no light left, though the red cinders yet glowed with a ruddy gleam like the eyes of wild beasts. The chain rattled no more. I tried to speak, to scream wildly for help; my mouth was so parched, my tongue refused to obey. I could not utter a cry, and indeed who could have heard me, alone as I was in the solitary chamber, with no living neighbor, and the picture gallery between ma and any aid that even the lodest, most piercing shriek could summon. And the storm that howled without would have drowned my voice, even if help had been at hand. To call aloud - to demand who was there - alas! how useless how perilous! If the intruder was a robber, my outcries would but goad him to fury; but what robber would act thus? As for a trick, that seemed impossible. And yet, what lay by my side, now wholly unseen? I strove to pray aloud as there rushed on my memory a flood of weird legends - the dreaded yet fascinating lore of my childhood. I had heard and read of the spirits of the wicked men forced to revisit the scenes of their earthly crimes - of demons that lurked in certain accursed spots - of the ghoul and vampire of the east; stealing amidst the graves they rifled for their ghostly banquets; and then I shuddered as I gazed on the blank darkness where I knew it lay. It stirred - it moaned hoarsely; and again I heard the chain clank close beside me - so close that it almost have touched me. I drew myself from it, shrinking away in loathing and terror of the evil thing - what, I knew not, but felt that something malignant was near.

And yet, in the extremity of my fear, I dared not speak; I was strangely cautious to be silent, even in moving farther off; for I had a wild hope that it - the phantom, the creature, whichever it was - had not discovered my presence in the room. And then I remember all the events of the night - Lady Speldhurst's ill omened vaticinations, her half-warnings, her singular look as we parted, my sisters persuasions, my terror in the gallery, the remark that, this was the room nurse Sherrard used to talk of. And then memory, stimulated by fear, recalled the long-forgotton past, the ill-repute of this disused chamber, the sins it had witnessed, the blood spilled, the poison administered by unnatural hate within the walls, and the tradition which called it haunted. The green room - I remembered now how fearfully the servants avoided it - how it was mentioned rarely, and in whispers, when we were children, and how we had regarded it as a mysterious region, unfit for motal habitation. was it - the dark form with the chain - a creature of this world, or a specter? And again - more dreadflu still - could it be that the corpses of wicked men were forced to rise and haunt in the body the places where they had wrought their evil deeds? And was such as these my grisly neighbor? The chain faintly rattled. My hair bristled; my eyeballs seemed starting from their sockets; the damps of a great anguish were on my brow. My heart labored as if I were crushed beneath some vast weight. sometimes it appeared to stop its frenzied beating, sometimes its pulsations were fierce and hurried; my breath came short and with extreme difficulty, and I shivered as if with cold; yet I feared to stir. It moved, it moaned, its fetters clanked dismally, the couch creaked and shook. This was no phantom, then - no air-drawn specter. But its very solidity, its palpable presence, were a thousand times more terrible. I felt that I was in the very grasp of what could not only affright but also harm; of something whose contact sickened the soul with deathly fear. I made a desperate resolve: I glided from the bed, I seized a warm wrapper, threw it around me, and tried to grope, with extended hands, my way to the door. My heart beat high at the hope of escape. But I had scarcely taken one step before the moaning was renewed - it changed into a threatening growl that would have suited a wolf's throat, and a hand clutched at my sleeve. I stood motionless. The muttering growl sank to a moan again, the chain sounded no more, but still the hand held its gripe of my garment, and I feared to move. It knew of my presence, then. My brain reeled, the blood boiled in my ears, and my knees lost all strength, while my heart panted like that of a deer in the wolf's jaw's. I sank back, and the benumbing influence of excessive terror reduced to a state of stupor.

when my full consciousness returned I was sitting on the edge of the bed, shivering with cold and barefooted. All was silent, but I felt that my sleeve was still clutched by my unearthly visitant. The silence lasted a long time. Then followed a chuckling laugh that froze my very marrow, and the gnashing of teeth as in demonic frenzy; and then a wailing moan, and this was succeeded by silence. Hours may have passed - nay, though the tumult of my own heart prevented my hearing the clock strike, must have passed - but they seemed ages to me. And how were they passed? Hideous visions passed before the aching eyes that I dared not close, but which gazed ever into the dumb darkness where it lay - my dread companion through the watches of the night. I pictured it in every abhorrent form which an excited fancy could summon up: now as a skeleton: with hollow eye-holes and grinning, fleshness jaws; now as a vampire, with livid face and bloated form, dripping mouth wet with blood. would it never be light? And yet! when day should dawn I should be forced to see it face to face! I had herad that specter and fiend were compelled to fade as morning brightened, but this creature was too real, too foul a thing of earth, to vanish at cock-crow. NO! I should see it - the horror - face to face! And then the cold prevailed, and my teeth chattered, and shiverings ran through me, and yet there was the damp of agony on my bursting brow. some instinct made me snatch at a shawl or cloak that lay on a chair within reach, and wrap it round me. The moan was renewed, and the chain just stirred. Then I sank into apathy, like an Indian at the stake, in the intervals of torture. Hours fled by, and I remained like a statue of ice, rigid and mute. I even slept, for I remember that I started to find the cold grey light of an early winter's day was on my face, and stealing around the room from between the heavy curtains of the window.

Shuddering, but urged by the impulse that rivets the gaze of the bird upon the snake, I truned to see the horror of the night?? Yes, it was no fevered dream, no hallucination of sickness, no airy phantom unable to face the dawn. In the sickly light I saw it lying on the bed, with its grim head on the pillow. A man? or a corpse arisen from its unhallowed grave, and awaiting the demon that animated it? There it lat - a gaunt, gigantic form, wasted to a skeleton, half clad, foul with dust and clotted gore, its huge limbs flung upon the couch as if at random, its shaggy hair streaming over the pillows like a lions mane. His face was towards me. Oh, the wild hideousness of that face, even in sleep! In features it was human, even though its horrid mask of mud and half-dried bloody gouts, but the expression was brutish and savagely fierce; the white teeth were visible between the parted lips, in a malignant grin, the tangled hair and beard were mixed in leonine confusion, and there were scars disfiguring the brow. Round the creatures waist was a ring of iron, to which was attached a heavy but broken chain - the chain I had heard clanking. with a second glance I noted that part of the chain was wrapped in straw to prevent its galling the wearer. The creature - I cannot call it a man - had the marks of fetters on its wrists, the bony arm that protruded through one tattered sleeve was scared and bruised; the feet were bare, and lacerated by pebbles and briers, and one of them was wounded, and wrapped in a morsel of rag. And the lean hands, one of which held my sleeve, were armed with talons like an eagle's. In an instant the hrrid thruth flashed upon me - I was in the grasp of a madman. Better the phantom that scares the sight than the wild beast that rends and tears the quivering flesh - the pitiless human brute that has no heart to be so softened, no reason at whose bar to plead, no compassion, naught of man save the form and the cunning. I gasped in terror. Ah! the mystery of those ensanguined fingers, those gory, wolfish jaws! that face, all besmeared with blackening blood, is revealed!



End of part 3

[Edited on 29-7-2003 by blackwidow666]

[Edited on 29-7-2003 by blackwidow666]