A Ghastly Ghost Story |
submitted
by Kath
A
Ghost Story
by Mark Twain
From
"Sketches New and Old",
Copyright 1903, Samuel Clemens.
This text is placed in the Public Domain (May 1993).
I took a large room, far up Broadway, in a huge old building
whose upper stories had been wholly unoccupied for years, until I
came. The place had long been given up to dust and cobwebs, to
solitude and silence. I seemed groping among the tombs and
invading the privacy of the dead, that first night I climbed up
to my quarters.
For the first time in my life a superstitious dread came over me;
and as I turned a dark angle of the stairway and an invisible
cobweb swung its slazy woof in my face and clung there, I
shuddered as one who had encountered a phantom.
I was glad enough when I reached my room and locked out the mould
and the darkness. A cheery fire was burning in the grate, and I
sat down before it with a comforting sense of relief. For two
hours I sat there, thinking of bygone times; recalling old
scenes, and summoning half-forgotten faces out of the mists of
the past; listening, in fancy, to voices that long ago grew
silent for all time, and to once familiar songs that nobody sings
now.
And as my reverie softened down to a sadder and sadder pathos,
the shrieking of the winds outside softened to a wail, the angry
beating of the rain against the panes diminished to a tranquil
patter, and one by one the noises in the street subsided, until
the hurrying foot-steps of the last belated straggler died away
in the distance and left no sound behind.
The fire had burned low. A sense of loneliness crept over me. I
arose and undressed, moving on tiptoe about the room, doing
stealthily what I had to do, as if I were environed by sleeping
enemies whose slumbers it would be fatal to break. I covered up
in bed, and lay listening to the rain and wind and the faint
creaking of distant shutters, till they lulled me to sleep.
I slept profoundly, but how long I do not know. All at once I
found myself awake, and filled with a shuddering expectancy. All
was still. All but my own heart -- I could hear it beat.
Presently the bed-clothes began to slip away slowly toward the
foot of the bed, as if someone were pulling them! I could not
stir; I could not speak. Still the blankets slipped deliberately
away, till my breast was uncovered. Then with a great effort I
seized them and drew them over my head. I waited, listened,
waited.
Once more that steady pull began, and once more I lay torpid a
century of dragging seconds till my breast was naked again. At
last I roused my energies and snatched the covers back to their
place and held them with a strong grip. I waited. By and by I
felt a faint tug, and took a fresh grip.
The tug strengthened to a steady strain -- it grew stronger and
stronger. My hold parted, and for the third time the blankets
slid away. I groaned. An answering groan came from the foot of
the bed! Beaded drops of sweat stood upon my forehead. I was more
dead than alive. Presently I heard a heavy footstep in my room --
the step of an elephant, it seemed to me -- it was not like
anything human.
But it was moving FROM me -- there was relief in that. I heard it
approach the door -- pass out without moving bolt or lock -- and
wander away among the dismal corridors, straining the floors and
joists till they creaked again as it passed -- and then silence
reigned once more.
When my excitement had calmed, I said to myself, "This is a
dream -- simply a hideous dream." And so I lay thinking it
over until I convinced myself that it WAS a dream, and then a
comforting laugh relaxed my lips and I was happy again. I got up
and struck a light; and when I found that the locks and bolts
were just as I had left them, another soothing laugh welled in my
heart and rippled from my lips.
I took my pipe and lit it, and was just sitting down before the
fire, when -- down went the pipe out of my nerveless fingers, the
blood forsook my cheeks, and my placid breathing was cut short
with a gasp! In the ashes on the hearth, side by side with my own
bare footprint, was another, so vast that in comparison mine was
but an infant's! Then I had HAD a visitor, and the elephant tread
was explained.
I put out the light and returned to bed, palsied with fear. I lay
a long time, peering into the darkness, and listening. Then I
heard a grating noise overhead, like the dragging of a heavy body
across the floor; then the throwing down of the body, and the
shaking of my windows in response to the concussion.
In distant parts of the building I heard the muffled slamming of
doors. I heard, at intervals, stealthy footsteps creeping in and
out among the corridors, and up and down the stairs. Sometimes
these noises approached my door, hesitated, and went away again.
I heard the clanking of chains faintly, in remote passages, and
listened while the clanking grew nearer -- while it wearily
climbed the stairways, marking each move by the loose surplus of
chain that fell with an accented rattle upon each succeeding step
as the goblin that bore it advanced.
I heard muttered sentences; half-uttered screams that seemed
smothered violently; and the swish of invisible garments, the
rush of invisible wings. Then I became conscious that my chamber
was invaded -- that I was not alone. I heard sighs and breathings
about my bed, and mysterious whisperings.
Three little spheres of soft phosphorescent light appeared on the
ceiling directly over my head, clung and glowed there a moment,
and then dropped -- two of them upon my face and one upon the
pillow. They spattered, liquidly, and felt warm. Intuition told
me they had turned to gouts of blood as they fell -- I needed no
light to satisfy myself of that.
Then I saw pallid faces, dimly luminous, and white uplifted
hands, floating bodiless in the air -- floating a moment and then
disappearing. The whispering ceased, and the voices and the
sounds, and a solemn stillness followed. I waited and listened. I
felt that I must have light or die. I was weak with fear. I
slowly raised myself toward a sitting posture, and my face came
in contact with a clammy hand! All strength went from me
apparently, and I fell back like a stricken invalid. Then I heard
the rustle of a garment -- it seemed to pass to the door and go
out.
When everything was still once more, I crept out of bed, sick and
feeble, and lit the gas with a hand that trembled as if it were
aged with a hundred years. The light brought some little cheer to
my spirits. I sat down and fell into a dreamy contemplation of
that great footprint in the ashes. By and by its outlines began
to waver and grow dim.
I glanced up and the broad gas flame was slowly wilting away. In
the same moment I heard that elephantine tread again. I noted its
approach, nearer and nearer, along the musty halls, and dimmer
and dimmer the light waned. The tread reached my very door and
paused -- the light had dwindled to a sickly blue, and all things
about me lay in a spectral twilight.
The door did not open, and yet I felt a faint gust of air fan my
cheek, and presently was conscious of a huge, cloudy presence
before me. I watched it with fascinated eyes. A pale glow stole
over the Thing; gradually its cloudy folds took shape -- an arm
appeared, then legs, then a body, and last a great sad face
looked out of the vapor. Stripped of its filmy housings, naked,
muscular and comely, the majestic Cardiff Giant loomed above me!
All my misery vanished -- for a child might know that no harm
could come with that benignant countenance. My cheerful spirits
returned at once, and in sympathy with them the gas flamed up
brightly again. Never a lonely outcast was so glad to welcome
company as I was to greet the friendly giant. I said:
"Why, is it nobody but you? Do you know, I have been scared
to death for the last two or three hours? I am most honestly glad
to see you. I wish I had a chair -- Here, here, don't try to sit
down in that thing!
But it was too late. He was in it before I could stop him, and
down he went -- I never saw a chair shivered so in my life.
"Stop, stop, You'll ruin ev--"
Too late again. There was another crash, and another chair was
resolved into its original elements.
"Confound it, haven't you got any judgment at all? Do you
want to ruin all the furniture on the place? Here, here, you
petrified fool--"
But it was no use. Before I could arrest him he had sat down on
the bed, and it was a melancholy ruin.
"Now what sort of a way is that to do? First you come
lumbering about the place bringing a legion of vagabond goblins
along with you to worry me to death, and then when I overlook an
indelicacy of costume which would not be tolerated anywhere by
cultivated people except in a respectable theater, and not even
there if the nudity were of YOUR sex, you repay me by wrecking
all the furniture you can find to sit down on.
And why will you? You damage yourself as much as you do me. You
have broken off the end of your spinal column, and littered up
the floor with chips of your hams till the place looks like a
marble yard. You ought to be ashamed of yourself -- you are big
enough to know better."
"Well, I will not break any more furniture. But what am I to
do? I have not had a chance to sit down for a century." And
the tears came into his eyes.
"Poor devil," I said, "I should not have been so
harsh with you. And you are an orphan, too, no doubt. But sit
down on the floor here -- nothing else can stand your weight --
and besides, we cannot be sociable with you away up there above
me; I want you down where I can perch on this high counting-house
stool and gossip with you face to face."
So he sat down on the floor, and lit a pipe which I gave him,
threw one of my red blankets over his shoulders, inverted my
sitz-bath on his head, helmet fashion, and made himself
picturesque and comfortable. Then he crossed his ankles, while I
renewed the fire, and exposed the flat, honey-combed bottoms of
his prodigious feet to the grateful warmth.
"What is the matter with the bottom of your feet and the
back of your legs, that they are gouged up so?"
"Infernal chillblains -- I caught them clear up to the back
of my head, roosting out there under Newell's farm. But I love
the place; I love it as one loves his old home.
There is no peace for me like the peace I feel when I am
there."
We talked along for half an hour, and then I noticed that he
looked tired, and spoke of it. "Tired?" he said.
"Well, I should think so. And now I will tell you all about
it, since you have treated me so well. I am the spirit of the
Petrified Man that lies across the street there in the Museum. I
am the ghost of the Cardiff Giant. I can have no rest, no peace,
till they have given that poor body burial again.
Now what was the most natural thing for me to do, to make men
satisfy this wish? Terrify them into it! -- haunt the place where
the body lay! So I haunted the museum night after night. I even
got other spirits to help me. But it did no good, for nobody ever
came to the museum at midnight. Then it occurred to me to come
over the way and haunt this place a little. I felt that if I ever
got a hearing I must succeed, for I had the most efficient
company that perdition could furnish.
Night after night we have shivered around through these mildewed
halls, dragging chains, groaning, whispering, tramping up and
down stairs, till, to tell you the truth, I am almost worn out.
But when I saw a light in your room tonight I roused my energies
again and went at it with a deal of the old freshness. But I am
tired out -- entirely fagged out. Give me, I beseech you, give me
some hope!"
I lit off my perch in a burst of excitement, and exclaimed:
"This transcends everything -- everything that ever did
occur! Why you poor blundering old fossil, you have had all your
trouble for nothing -- you have been haunting a PLASTER CAST of
yourself -- the real Cardiff Giant is in Albany!
[Footnote by Twain: A fact. The original fraud was ingeniously
and fraudfully duplicated, and exhibited in New York as the
"only genuine" Cardiff Giant (to the unspeakable
disgust of the owners of the real colossus) at the very same time
that the latter was drawing crowds at a museum in Albany.]
Confound it, don't you know your own remains?"
I never saw such an eloquent look of shame, of pitiable
humiliation, overspread a countenance before.
The Petrified Man rose slowly to his feet, and said:
"Honestly, IS that true?"
"As true as I am sitting here."
He took the pipe from his mouth and laid it on the mantel, then
stood irresolute a moment (unconsciously, from old habit,
thrusting his hands where his pantaloons pockets should have
been, and meditatively dropping his chin on his breast), and
finally said:
"Well -- I NEVER felt so absurd before. The Petrified Man
has sold everybody else, and now the mean fraud has ended by
selling its own ghost! My son, if there is any charity left in
your heart for a poor friendless phantom like me, don't let this
get out. Think how YOU would feel if you had made such an ass of
yourself."
I heard his stately tramp die away, step by step down the stairs
and out into the deserted street, and felt sorry that he was
gone, poor fellow -- and sorrier still that he had carried off my
red blanket and my bath tub.