Terror by Night

by Ambrose Bierce

  ‘Gentlemen,’ the coroner said, ‘we have no more evidence, I think. Your duty has been already explained to you; if there is nothing you wish to ask you may go outside and consider your verdict.’

  The foreman rose – a tall, bearded man of sixty, coarsely clad.

  ‘I should like to ask one question, Mr Coroner,’ he said. ‘What asylum did this yer last witness escape from?’

  ‘Mr Harker,’ said the coroner, gravely and tranquilly, ‘from what asylum did you last escape?’

  Harker flushed crimson again, but said nothing, and the seven jurors rose and solemnly filed out of the cabin.

  ‘If you have done insulting me, sir,’ said Harker, as soon as he and the officer were left alone with the dead man, ‘I suppose I am at liberty to go?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Harker started to leave, but paused, with his hand on the door latch. The habit of his profession was strong in him – stronger than his sense of personal dignity. He turned about and said: ‘The book that you have there – I recognise it as Morgan’s diary. You seemed greatly interested in it; you read in it while I was testifying. May I see it? The public would like – ’

  ‘The book will cut no figure in this matter,’ replied the official, slipping it into his coat pocket; ‘all the entries in it were made before the writer’s death.’

  As Harker passed out of the house the jury re-entered and stood about the table, on which the now covered corpse showed under the sheet with sharp definition. The foreman seated himself near the candle, produced from his breast pocket a pencil and scrap of paper and wrote rather laboriously the following verdict, which with various degrees of effort all signed:

  ‘We, the jury, do find that the remains come to their death at the hands of a mountain lion, but some of us thinks, all the same, they had fits.’

  4

  An explanation from the tomb

  In the diary of the late Hugh Morgan are certain interesting entries having, possibly, a scientific value as suggestions. At the inquest upon his body the book was not put in evidence; possibly the coroner thought it not worth while to confuse the jury. The date of the first of the entries mentioned cannot be ascertained; the upper part of the leaf is torn away; the part of the entry remaining follows:

  ‘ . . . would run in a half-circle, keeping his head turned always toward the centre, and again he would stand still, barking furiously. At last he ran away into the brush as fast as he could go. I thought at first that he had gone mad, but on returning to the house found no other alteration in his manner than what was obviously due to fear of punishment.

  ‘Can a dog see with his nose? Do odours impress some cerebral centre with images of the thing that emitted them? . . .

  ‘Sept. 2 – Looking at the stars last night as they rose above the crest of the ridge east of the house, I observed them successively disappear – from left to right. Each was eclipsed but an instant, and only a few at the same time, but along the entire length of the ridge all that were within a degree or two of the crest were blotted out. It was as if something had passed along between me and them; but I could not see it, and the stars were not thick enough to define its outline. Ugh! I don’t like this . . . ’

  Several weeks’ entries are missing, three leaves being torn from the book.

  ‘Sept. 27 – It has been about here again – I find evidences of its presence every day. I watched again all last night in the same cover, gun in hand, double-charged with buckshot. In the morning the fresh footprints were there, as before. Yet I would have sworn that I did not sleep – indeed, I hardly sleep at all. It is terrible, insupportable! If these amazing experiences are real I shall go mad; if they are fanciful I am mad already.

  ‘Oct. 3 – I shall not go – it shall not drive me away. No, this is my house, my land. God hates a coward . . .

  ‘Oct. 5 – I can stand it no longer; I have invited Harker to pass a few weeks with me – he has a level head. I can judge from his manner if he thinks me mad.

  ‘Oct. 7 – I have the solution of the mystery; it came to me last night – suddenly, as by revelation. How simple – how terribly simple!

  ‘There are sounds that we cannot hear. At either end of the scale are notes that stir no chord of that imperfect instrument, the human ear. They are too high or too grave. I have observed a flock of blackbirds occupying an entire tree-top – the tops of several trees – and all in full song. Suddenly – in a moment – at absolutely the same instant – all spring into the air and fly away. How? They could not all see one another – whole tree-tops intervened. At no point could a leader have been visible to all. There must have been a signal of warning or command, high and shrill above the din, but by me unheard. I have observed, too, the same simultaneous flight when all were silent, among not only blackbirds, but other birds – quail, for example, widely separated by bushes – even on opposite sides of a hill.

  ‘It is known to seamen that a school of whales basking or sporting on the surface of the ocean, miles apart, with the convexity of the earth between, will sometimes dive at the same instant – all gone out of sight in a moment. The signal has been sounded – too grave for the ear of the sailor at the masthead and his comrades on the deck – who nevertheless feel its vibrations in the ship as the stones of a cathedral are stirred by the bass of the organ.

  ‘As with sounds, so with colours. At each end of the solar spectrum the chemist can detect the presence of what are known as “actinic” rays. They represent colours – integral colours in the composition of light – which we are unable to discern. The human eye is an imperfect instrument; its range is but a few octaves of the real “chromatic scale”. I am not mad; there are colours that we cannot see.

  ‘And, God help me! the Damned Thing is of such a colour!’

  The Realm of the Unreal

  1

  For a part of the distance between Auburn and Newcastle the road – first on one side of a creek and then on the other – occupies the whole bottom of the ravine, being partly cut out of the steep hillside, and partly built up with boulders removed from the creek-bed by the miners. The hills are wooded, the course of the ravine is sinuous. In a dark night careful driving is required in order not to go off into the water. The night that I have in memory was dark, the creek a torrent, swollen by a recent storm. I had driven up from Newcastle and was within about a mile of Auburn in the darkest and narrowest part of the ravine, looking intently ahead of my horse for the roadway. Suddenly I saw a man almost under the animal’s nose, and reined in with a jerk that came near setting the creature upon its haunches.

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ I said; ‘I did not see you, sir.’

  ‘You could hardly be expected to see me,’ the man replied, civilly, approaching the side of the vehicle; ‘and the noise of the creek prevented my hearing you.’

  I at once recognised the voice, although five years had passed since I had heard it. I was not particularly well pleased to hear it now.

  ‘You are Dr Dorrimore, I think,’ said I.

  ‘Yes; and you are my good friend Mr Manrich. I am more than glad to see you – the excess,’ he added, with a light laugh, ‘being due to the fact that I am going your way, and naturally expect an invitation to ride with you.’

  ‘Which I extend with all my heart.’

  That was not altogether true.

  Dr Dorrimore thanked me as he seated himself beside me, and I drove cautiously forward, as before. Doubtless it is fancy, but it seems to me now that the remaining distance was made in a chill fog; that I was uncomfortably cold; that the way was longer than ever before, and the town, when we reached it, cheerless, forbidding, and desolate. It must have been early in the evening, yet I do not recollect a light in any of the houses nor a living thing in the streets. Dorrimore explained at some length how he happened to be there, and where he had been during the years that had elapsed since I had seen him. I recall the fact of the narrative, but none of the facts narrated. He had been in foreign countries and had re
turned – this is all that my memory retains, and this I already knew. As to myself I cannot remember that I spoke a word, though doubtless I did. Of one thing I am distinctly conscious: the man’s presence at my side was strangely distasteful and disquieting – so much so that when I at last pulled up under the lights of the Putnam House I experienced a sense of having escaped some spiritual peril of a nature peculiarly forbidding. This sense of relief was somewhat modified by the discovery that Dr Dorrimore was living at the same hotel.

  2

  In partial explanation of my feelings regarding Dr Dorrimore I will relate briefly the circumstances under which I had met him some years before. One evening a half-dozen men of whom I was one were sitting in the library of the Bohemian Club in San Francisco. The conversation had turned to the subject of sleight-of-hand and the feats of the prestidigitateurs, one of whom was then exhibiting at a local theatre.

  ‘These fellows are pretenders in a double sense,’ said one of the party; ‘they can do nothing which it is worth one’s while to be made a dupe by. The humblest wayside juggler in India could mystify them to the verge of lunacy.’

  ‘For example, how?’ asked another, lighting a cigar.

  ‘For example, by all their common and familiar performances – throwing large objects into the air which never come down; causing plants to sprout, grow visibly and blossom, in bare ground chosen by spectators; putting a man into a wicker basket, piercing him through and through with a sword while he shrieks and bleeds, and then – the basket being opened nothing is there; tossing the free end of a silken ladder into the air, mounting it and disappearing.’

  ‘Nonsense!’ I said, rather uncivilly, I fear. ‘You surely do not believe such things?’

  ‘Certainly not: I have seen them too often.’

  ‘But I do,’ said a journalist of considerable local fame as a picturesque reporter. ‘I have so frequently related them that nothing but observation could shake my conviction. Why, gentlemen, I have my own word for it.’

  Nobody laughed – all were looking at something behind me. Turning in my seat I saw a man in evening dress who had just entered the room. He was exceedingly dark, almost swarthy, with a thin face, black-bearded to the lips, an abundance of coarse black hair in some disorder, a high nose and eyes that glittered with as soulless an expression as those of a cobra. One of the group rose and introduced him as Dr Dorrimore, of Calcutta. As each of us was presented in turn he acknowledged the fact with a profound bow in the Oriental manner, but with nothing of Oriental gravity. His smile impressed me as cynical and a trifle contemptuous. His whole demeanour I can describe only as disagreeably engaging.

  His presence led the conversation into other channels. He said little – I do not recall anything of what he did say. I thought his voice singularly rich and melodious, but it affected me in the same way as his eyes and smile. In a few minutes I rose to go. He also rose and put on his overcoat.

  ‘Mr Manrich,’ he said, ‘I am going your way.’

  ‘The devil you are!’ I thought. ‘How do you know which way I am going?’ Then I said, ‘I shall be pleased to have your company.’

  We left the building together. No cabs were in sight, the street-cars had gone to bed, there was a full moon and the cool night air was delightful; we walked up the California street hill. I took that direction thinking he would naturally wish to take another, toward one of the hotels.

  ‘You do not believe what is told of the Hindu jugglers,’ he said abruptly.

  ‘How do you know that?’ I asked.

  Without replying he laid his hand lightly upon my arm and with the other pointed to the stone sidewalk directly in front. There, almost at our feet, lay the dead body of a man, the face upturned and white in the moonlight! A sword whose hilt sparkled with gems stood fixed and upright in the breast; a pool of blood had collected on the stones of the sidewalk.

  I was startled and terrified – not only by what I saw, but by the circumstances under which I saw it. Repeatedly during our ascent of the hill my eyes, I thought, had traversed the whole reach of that sidewalk, from street to street. How could they have been insensible to this dreadful object now so conspicuous in the white moonlight?

  As my dazed faculties cleared I observed that the body was in evening dress; the overcoat thrown wide open revealed the dress-coat, the white tie, the broad expanse of shirt front pierced by the sword. And – horrible revelation! – the face, except for its pallor, was that of my companion! It was to the minutest detail of dress and feature Dr Dorrimore himself. Bewildered and horrified, I turned to look for the living man. He was nowhere visible, and with an added terror I retired from the place, down the hill in the direction whence I had come. I had taken but a few strides when a strong grasp upon my shoulder arrested me. I came near crying out with terror: the dead man, the sword still fixed in his breast, stood beside me! Pulling out the sword with his disengaged hand, he flung it from him, the moonlight glinting upon the jewels of its hilt and the unsullied steel of its blade. It fell with a clang upon the sidewalk ahead and – vanished! The man, swarthy as before, relaxed his grasp upon my shoulder and looked at me with the same cynical regard that I had observed on first meeting him. The dead have not that look – it partly restored me, and turning my head backward, I saw the smooth white expanse of sidewalk, unbroken from street to street.

  ‘What is all this nonsense, you devil?’ I demanded, fiercely enough, though weak and trembling in every limb.

  ‘It is what some are pleased to call jugglery,’ he answered, with a light, hard laugh.

  He turned down Dupont street and I saw him no more until we met in the Auburn ravine.

  3

  On the day after my second meeting with Dr Dorrimore I did not see him: the clerk in the Putnam House explained that a slight illness confined him to his rooms. That afternoon at the railway station I was surprised and made happy by the unexpected arrival of Miss Margaret Corray and her mother, from Oakland.

  This is not a love story. I am no storyteller, and love as it is cannot be portrayed in a literature dominated and enthralled by the debasing tyranny which ‘sentences letters’ in the name of the Young Girl. Under the Young Girl’s blighting reign – or rather under the rule of those false Ministers of the Censure who have appointed themselves to the custody of her welfare –

  love veils her sacred fires,

  And, unaware, Morality expires,

  famished upon the sifted meal and distilled water of a prudish purveyance.

  Let it suffice that Miss Corray and I were engaged in marriage. She and her mother went to the hotel at which I lived, and for two weeks I saw her daily. That I was happy needs hardly be said; the only bar to my perfect enjoyment of those golden days was the presence of Dr Dorrimore, whom I had felt compelled to introduce to the ladies.

  By them he was evidently held in favour. What could I say? I knew absolutely nothing to his discredit. His manners were those of a cultivated and considerate gentleman; and to women a man’s manner is the man. On one or two occasions when I saw Miss Corray walking with him I was furious, and once had the indiscretion to protest. Asked for reasons, I had none to give and fancied I saw in her expression a shade of contempt for the vagaries of a jealous mind. In time I grew morose and consciously disagreeable, and resolved in my madness to return to San Francisco the next day. Of this, however, I said nothing.

  4

  There was at Auburn an old, abandoned cemetery. It was nearly in the heart of the town, yet by night it was as gruesome a place as the most dismal of human moods could crave. The railings about the plots were prostrate, decayed, or altogether gone. Many of the graves were sunken, from others grew sturdy pines, whose roots had committed unspeakable sin. The headstones were fallen and broken across; brambles overran the ground; the fence was mostly gone, and cows and pigs wandered there at will; the place was a dishonour to the living, a calumny on the dead, a blasphemy against God.

  The evening of the day on which I had taken my madman
’s resolution to depart in anger from all that was dear to me found me in that congenial spot. The light of the half moon fell ghostly through the foliage of trees in spots and patches, revealing much that was unsightly, and the black shadows seemed conspiracies withholding to the proper time revelations of darker import. Passing along what had been a gravel path, I saw emerging from shadow the figure of Dr Dorrimore. I was myself in shadow, and stood still with clenched hands and set teeth, trying to control the impulse to leap upon and strangle him. A moment later a second figure joined him and clung to his arm. It was Margaret Corray!

  I cannot rightly relate what occurred. I know that I sprang forward, bent upon murder; I know that I was found in the grey of the morning, bruised and bloody, with finger marks upon my throat. I was taken to the Putnam House, where for days I lay in a delirium. All this I know, for I have been told. And of my own knowledge I know that when consciousness returned with convalescence I sent for the clerk of the hotel.

  ‘Are Mrs Corray and her daughter still here?’ I asked.

  ‘What name did you say?’

  ‘Corray.’

  ‘Nobody of that name has been here.’

  ‘I beg you will not trifle with me,’ I said petulantly. ‘You see that I am all right now; tell me the truth.’

  ‘I give you my word,’ he replied with evident sincerity, ‘we have had no guests of that name.’

  His words stupefied me. I lay for a few moments in silence; then I asked: ‘Where is Dr Dorrimore?’

  ‘He left on the morning of your fight and has not been heard of since. It was a rough deal he gave you.’

  5

  Such are the facts of this case. Margaret Corray is now my wife. She has never seen Auburn, and during the weeks whose history as it shaped itself in my brain I have endeavoured to relate, was living at her home in Oakland, wondering where her lover was and why he did not write. The other day I saw in the Baltimore Sun the following paragraph: