Short & Shivery

by Robert D. San Souci

  He sensed instantly that it was no natural thing he was facing. He could not move to either side, because of the water that hemmed in the path; and he had heard that turning one’s back on an evil thing was the worst thing a man could do.

  “The Lord be with me and take care of me,” Thomas whispered to himself. Then, since he was always regarded as brave or foolhardy (depending on the person one talked with), he decided, as the best of two evils, to face whatever was coming toward him. So he walked slowly but steadily forward.

  He quickly discovered to his horror that the gruesome creature approaching him was the dreaded Nuckelavee. Thomas could see quite clearly that the lower part of this terrible monster was indeed like a horse, with flippers extending from his legs. The mouth seemed large as a whale’s mouth, gleaming with sharp teeth in the starlight and giving off breath that poured out like steam from a giant teakettle. The horsehead had a single eye, glowing red as a coal.

  Out of the back grew what seemed to be the upper half of a man, with a head as big as a barrel and arms that reached nearly to the ground. The whole creature looked sculpted from red, raw flesh, in which Thomas saw blood black as tar, running in yellow veins, and great white sinews twisting, stretching, and contracting as the monster moved.

  In mortal terror—his hair standing on end and his body feeling as if it was filmed with ice—Thomas forced himself to keep moving. He knew it would be useless to try to escape and determined to die facing his enemy, rather than with his back to the monster.

  Then, for all his fear, the man remembered what he had heard of Nuckelavee’s dislike of fresh water. So he edged closer to the side of the road near the lake.

  The awful moment came when the lower head of the monster was just inches from him. To the terrified man, the mouth of the creature yawned like a bottomless pit. The red eye seemed to burn into his mind. Slowly the long arms were stretched out to seize Thomas.

  At the last possible instant, the man ducked under one arm and ran forward, splashing through the shallows of the lake. Some of the water sprinkled the foreleg of the monster. The horsehead snorted like thunder, and the monster shied over to the far side of the road.

  Without looking around, Thomas began running with all his might; behind him he heard Nuckelavee turn and gallop after him; the mannish head bellowed with a sound like a typhoon ripping across the sea.

  Ahead of Thomas was a little stream, by which water from the lake overflowed into the sea. The man knew if he could only cross the running water, he was safe; so he strained every muscle to reach safety.

  Behind him he felt the wind of Nuckelavee’s clutches as he narrowly escaped the monster’s grip. Just as he reached the bank of the little stream, the long arms snatched at him again. Thomas made a desperate leap, felt his cap and part of his coat torn away by Nuckelavee, then landed safely on the far side, just out of reach of the monster.

  Nuckelavee gave a deafening, unearthly yell of disappointment and rage, as his victim raced to safety beyond the water.

  Thomas continued to run until he knew for certain that he was safe. When he finally stopped to glance back toward the grotesque Nuckelavee, he could still hear the creature’s terrifying roar, but the sight of the monster would be only a memory from now on.

  The Adventure of the German Student

  (from a tale by Washington Irving)

  Gottfried Wolfgang was a young man of a good family. He had gone to school for a time in his native Germany, but he had become so obsessed with studies about spirits and devils and who knows what that it began to affect his mind and health. He was especially tormented by the idea that a demon was haunting him, trying to catch him and ensure his ruin.

  He became thin and gloomy. His friends, determined to help him, decided that the best cure was a change of scene. So they sent him to finish studies amid the splendors and gayeties of Paris.

  Unhappily Wolfgang arrived just as the French Revolution was breaking out. The terrible scenes of violence that followed shocked his sensitive nature, disgusted him with society and the world, and made him even more solitary in his ways. He kept to himself in a lonely apartment in the old part of Paris where most students who attended the university lived.

  In his loneliness, he would often daydream of the face of a beautiful woman. Her imagined features made so strong an impression on him that he dreamed of her again and again. She began to haunt his thoughts by day and his sleep at night. He fell passionately in love with this shadow of a dream.

  One stormy night young Wolfgang was returning to his lodgings. The hour was late, and a storm had just begun. Loud thunderclaps rolled through the dark narrow streets, filled with driving rain. Lightning danced over the peaked roofs above him and shed flickering gleams over the open space in front of him. This was the square where public executions were performed—a place he dreaded to cross even in the sunlight.

  The rain came down harder, driven by a freezing wind. Wolfgang rushed out into the square, but stumbled and fell to his knees. As he picked himself up, he was horrified to find himself close by the guillotine—the dreadful instrument of death that stood ever ready to claim fresh victims.

  Shuddering, the young man was turning from the horrible engine when he saw a shadowy form cowering at the foot of the steps that led up to the scaffold. Several vivid flashes of lightning revealed the figure more distinctly: it was a woman dressed in black. She was seated on one of the lower steps of the platform, leaning forward, her face hidden in her hands. Her long, tangled hair was streaming with the rain that fell in torrents.

  Wolfgang paused. There was something touching and terrible in this solitary figure of woe. He guessed she was some heartbroken mourner whose relative or lover had been cut away from her by the dreadful blade. His heart went out to her suffering.

  He approached her and said gently, “Mademoiselle, you will catch your death out here.”

  She raised her head and looked wildly at him. He was astonished to see, in the bright glare of the lightning, the very face which had haunted him in his dreams. Her features were pale and grief-stricken, but she was ravishingly beautiful.

  Trembling with unexpected emotion, Wolfgang urged her, “You should not be out here at this hour, exposed to the fury of such a storm. I beg you, permit me to take you to some friends.”

  In answer, she merely pointed to the guillotine, and shook her head. “I have no friend on earth,” she said sadly.

  “But you must have a home,” said Wolfgang.

  “Yes—in the grave!”

  The heart of the student melted at these words.

  “If a stranger can make an offer, without danger of being misunderstood,” said he, “I would offer my humble rooms as shelter, and make myself your devoted friend. I am friendless myself in Paris, and a stranger in the land—but whatever help I can give you, it is yours for the asking.”

  There was such an honest earnestness in the young man’s manner that the homeless stranger nodded her head, as if too wearied by her suffering to do more.

  Sharing his cloak with her, he led her from the square and the sight of the horrible instrument of execution.

  On entering his apartment, the student, for the first time, felt how shabby his rooms were. They were cluttered with books and papers and all the other things a student uses. Hastily he cleared off a chair by the fireplace. Then he lit candles and a small fire to let his visitor warm herself, for her hands were cold as ice.

  In the firelight, he had a better opportunity of studying her; and he found himself even more intoxicated by her beauty. Her pale face had a dazzling fairness that was set off by the clusters of raven hair framing it. Her eyes were large and brilliant, though something like wildness swam in their depths. Her whole appearance was striking, but she was dressed in a simple black dress with only one item of jewelery: a broad black band around her neck, clasped with a diamond pin.

  “I will spend the night with another student, whose apartment is above,” Wolfgang offered. But he was
so fascinated by the woman’s charms, there seemed to be such a spell upon his thoughts and senses that he could not tear himself from her presence. Instead they sat and talked, while the rain continued to beat against the windowpanes, and thunder rattled the shutters.

  She spoke but little and never mentioned the guillotine. Her grief abated, but she would not say what had caused it. For the most part she contented herself, listening to him and staring into the fire.

  Wolfgang, in the infatuation of the moment, confessed his love for her. He told her the story of his mysterious dream and how she had possessed his heart before he had even seen her.

  She seemed strangely affected by his recital and admitted, “From the first, I was drawn to you by a power I cannot account for either.”

  The young man saw that his kindness, which had first won her confidence, had now apparently won her heart. It was a time for wild actions, and Wolfgang suddenly knelt beside her chair, saying, “You have no home or family. Let me be everything to you—or, rather, let us be everything to one another. Marry me—here is my hand,” and he grabbed her delicate hand in his own, distressed to feel how cold it still was. “I pledge myself to you forever!” he said, in the heat of his own passion, “upon my very soul.”

  “Forever? Upon your soul?” said the stranger solemnly.

  “Forever!” repeated Wolfgang. “My heart and soul are yours.”

  The stranger clasped his fingers tightly in her own. “Then I am yours,” she murmured and kissed him. “And you are mine … forever.” Then she whispered, “Now, help me to the bed, for I am growing so tired, so very tired.”

  Alarmed at the weakness in her voice, Wolfgang escorted her to the little bed in the next room. She fell asleep the instant her head touched the pillow. Quietly he withdrew and spent the few hours left of the night dreaming of the life he and the stranger would build for themselves.

  The next morning, while she was still sleeping, the student went out to look for a more spacious apartment suitable for his bride. The storm had passed, and the streets gleamed with sunlight, reflecting brightly off lingering puddles. He quickly found new lodgings, arranged to take possession of them immediately, and returned to his rooms.

  But when he threw open the bedroom door and called to the woman, he found her lying with her head hanging over the bed, with one arm thrown over it. He spoke to her and received no reply. He advanced to awaken her from her uncomfortable position. Lifting her hand, he discovered it was cold, without a trace of pulse. Her fair face was now pallid and ghastly. He knew in an instant that she was a corpse.

  Horrified and frantic, he awoke the house. In the confusion that followed, someone had sense enough to summon the police. As the officer entered the room, he started back the moment he saw the body.

  “Great heaven!” he cried. “How did this woman come here?”

  “Do you know anything about her?” asked Wolfgang through his tears.

  “Of course!” exclaimed the officer. “She was guillotined yesterday.”

  He stepped forward, undid the black collar around the neck of the corpse, and the head rolled on the floor!

  The student began to shriek, “The demon! The demon has gained possession of me! I am lost forever.”

  Vainly they tried to calm him. But he was possessed by the frightful belief that an evil spirit had brought the dead body back to life and tricked him into pledging away his soul forever.

  With a cry he ran out into the street and was never seen in Paris again. Years later the rumor circulated that he had returned to his native Germany, where he died in a madhouse, still believing himself possessed by a demon.

  Billy Mosby’s Night Ride

  (United States—New England)

  In the early 1800s, in a small town in a remote part of New York state, a young boy named Billy Mosby, whose parents had died, was raised by his grandparents, Enoch and Anne Mosby.

  Billy helped out on his grandparents’ farm, getting up early to milk the cows and feed the pigs and gather the eggs. Though he sometimes grumbled when his grandfather rousted him out of bed before sunrise, he liked his new life and found little to complain about.

  He was afraid, however, of his grandparents’ neighbor, Francis Woolcott, who lived a half mile down the road from them. Every afternoon, when the sun was westering and long shadows had begun to creep down the hillsides, Billy would watch from a window as Francis Woolcott, like a tall, dark shadow, strode down the dusty road toward the grove of ash and chestnut trees at the end of the road.

  He lived in a cabin, which he had let fall nearly to ruin. But he never wanted for anything. The farmers whispered that he was a witch—and feared him so much that they gave him pork, flour, meal, cider, or anything that he might need. If they didn’t, neighbors said, he would make a horse come to a dead halt in the middle of plowing, or make a man run around, flapping his folded arms like wings and clucking like a chicken. But even worse, rumor said, was the fact that the old man could conjure up thirteen night riders—demons straight from hell—when the moon was growing old. They would go anywhere he told them to, and do all sorts of mischief. Whenever he heard about the demon riders, Billy felt a thrill of fear—and an eagerness to see these creatures of the night (from a safe distance, of course).

  Woolcott never bothered Billy’s grandparents. They were polite to the man when they met him in the lane, and thought the talk of witchery was so much foolishness. “Good Christian folk should be about their business and not wasting time scaring each other with such nonsense,” declared Anne Mosby.

  But Billy kept an open mind; there was so much talk in the neighborhood, he couldn’t believe everybody was wrong. He kept his thoughts to himself, however: he knew there was no arguing with his grandparents once their minds were made up.

  But Billy’s curiosity about Francis Woolcott grew the more he tried not to think about the strange old man.

  “I’ve got to see for myself,” he decided one evening. So after his grandparents were asleep in their room, he slipped out his bedroom window and ran down the road to Woolcott’s cabin. A three-quarter moon overhead gave plenty of light to see by.

  But when he was near the dark cabin, Billy saw the old man open the front door. The boy ducked behind a bush; but, peeking from behind some leaves, he saw that Woolcott was carrying bundles of oat straw in his arms. With a quick glance up and down the road, the shadowy figure headed toward the grove of ash and chestnut trees at the end of the lane.

  When it seemed safe, Billy followed. Something told him that tonight he would find out the truth about Woolcott’s witchery.

  The man went directly to a clearing in the center of the grove. There he carefully laid out thirteen bundles of oat straw in a circle. Standing inside this ring, Woolcott extended his arms and began to turn, muttering words that Billy, watching around the trunk of a chestnut tree, could not hear.

  As the witch spun faster, the bundles of oat straw began to put off sprouts so they looked as if they were growing into gnarly plants. But the “roots” quickly became horses’ legs, the bundles themselves became the bodies of sleek black horses, and the strange “blossoms” became their heads and tails.

  Then a cloud passed across the moon, and the clearing was suddenly dark. When the moonlight returned, Billy saw that there was now a rider on the back of each horse. They were wrapped in black cloaks and had their broad-brimmed hats drawn down so that the boy could see nothing of their faces.

  Quickly Francis Woolcott began giving instructions to these mysterious horsemen, sending them off in different directions. Sometimes a night rider would go alone; sometimes two would gallop off together. When all but one had been sent away, Billy, leaning closer to try and hear what Woolcott was saying, stepped on a dry, fallen branch that gave a loud SNAP!

  Instantly the man at the center of the clearing came bounding across and grabbed the boy before he could run. Woolcott’s hand was like a claw on Billy’s shoulder as he hauled the boy into the clearing, where the l
ast night rider silently waited.

  “Please don’t hurt me!” begged Billy. “I promise I won’t tell.”

  “Tell whomever you please,” said the man. “It doesn’t matter a jot to me.” Then he fixed Billy with a thoughtful stare and stroked his chin. “It might just be I could use a brave lad like you as an apprentice. You’ve got curiosity enough to kill a cat nine times over. And you seem bright enough.” Now Woolcott was rubbing his hands together eagerly. “Yes, you have all the makings of a fine apprentice. So we’ll begin your lessons tonight: since you were curious about my friend, ride with him awhile—satisfy your curios-ity.”

  Before Billy could even ask what an “apprentice” was, the old man picked him up with surprising strength and swung him onto the saddle, behind the shadowy rider. “Now go!” the old man yelled.

  Without a word, the rider urged his midnight steed to a trot and guided the animal out of the clearing to the road. Billy found he was stuck to the sleek, black horse as though he were a part of it. He glanced once over his shoulder and saw Francis Woolcott standing in the clearing, watching him. The rider in front said nothing; but Billy felt him urging his horse to a gallop, the moment they were free of the trees.

  In uncanny silence they rushed down the lane. The silky black cloak of the man in front of him whipped back around Billy, obscuring his view much of the time. The horses’ hoofs made no sound on the rock-strewn roadway; the only sound was the wind rushing past the boy’s ears. They raced like hurricanes across fields and through woods—leaping bushes, fences, even trees without effort.

  Billy lost all track of time and distance. He began to think they were going to ride forever, when they reached the gates of a farm Billy had never seen before. The house was quiet and dark.