TERROR BY NIGHT
Classic Ghost Stories
Ambrose Bierce
with an introduction by
David Stuart Davies
Terror by Night first published by
Wordsworth Editions Limited in 2006
Published as an ePublication 2011
ISBN 978 1 84870 515 9
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For my husband
ANTHONY JOHN RANSON
with love from your wife, the publisher
Eternally grateful for your unconditional love,
not just for me but for our children,
Simon, Andrew and Nichola Trayler
INTRODUCTION
‘Nothing is so improbable as what is true.’
Of all the writers of ghost and horror stories, Ambrose Bierce is perhaps the most colourful. He was a dark, cynical and pessimistic soul who had a grim vision of fate and the unfairness of life which he channelled into his fiction. And in his death, or rather his disappearance, he created a mystery as strange and unresolved as any that he penned himself. But more of that later.
Ambrose Gwinett Bierce was born in a log cabin on 21 June 1842, in Horse Creek, Meigs County, Ohio, USA. He was the tenth of thirteen children, ten of whom survived infancy. His father, an unsuccessful farmer with an unseemly love of literature, had a given all the Bierce children first names beginning with A. There was Abigail, the eldest; then Amelia, Ann, Addison, Aurelius, etc. So oddness was a part of Bierce’s life from the beginning.
Poverty and religion of the extreme variety were the two chief influences on young Ambrose’s childhood. He not only hated this period of his life, he also developed a deep hatred for his family and this is reflected in some of his stories which depict families preying on and murdering one another. For example, the unforgettable opening sentence of ‘An Imperfect Conflagration’ seems to sum up his bitter attitude: ‘Early in 1872 I murdered my father – an act that made a deep impression on me at the time.’ These strong feelings against his family helped to develop his mordant wit and brutal irony – and, some would say, made him a difficult and unpleasant fellow to know.
These aspects of his character were further amplified by his involvement in the American Civil War when brother did in fact kill brother and families were divided against themselves. Bierce served in the war on the Union side. The horrible accidents and cruel twists of fate that he encountered during the conflict stimulated his imagination into creating what was regarded as a new genre – the short story that begins as a war story but then subtly changes into a psychological tale of terror. The most famous of Bierce’s tales, ‘An Occurrence at Owl Creek’, is a fine example. The story concerns a soldier caught by the enemy who is sentenced to be hanged. And then, miraculously, he believes that he has escaped the gallows. Bierce’s ability to play with the notion of time and the reader’s preconceptions is brilliantly handled in this narrative. At least three films have been made of the story. There was a silent version in the 1920s. A French version, called La Rivière du Hibou and directed by Robert Enrico, was made in black and white in 1962, faithfully recounting the original narrative using voice-over. A third version, directed by Brian James Egan, was released in 2005. The 1962 film was used for an episode of the television series ‘The Twilight Zone’. This story typifies most of Bierce’s other work in that it is bleak, with a cruel twist at the end. But that was how this writer saw life. He once observed, ‘Death is not the end. There remains the litigation over the estate.’ For such thoughts one critic gave him the nickname ‘Bitter Bierce’.
He was a good soldier, achieving the rank of major for ‘his distinguished services’, and was given permission to resign his commission shortly before the Civil War ended. Having entered the conflict as a lowly farm lad, he was now a gentleman. He had escaped the shackles of his claustrophobic and impoverished upbringing. He landed in San Francisco in 1867, and there decided on a career in journalism. Self-taught, he eventually attained a regular job on the San Francisco News Letter. Very soon Ambrose Bierce became one of the city’s great literary figures, being numbered with the likes of Mark Twain and Bret Harte.
In 1871, he courted and wed Mary Ellen (‘Mollie’) Day, a San Franciscan socialite from one of the best families of the city. The same year his first published story, ‘The Haunted Valley’, appeared. This strange and engrossing tale has none of the stylistic immaturities of a writer’s early work. It is assured and confident in tone and quite complex. This short story has many of the qualities and structural features found in most of Bierce’s work, including the rather shocking surprise ending which makes you want to read it again in order to reassure yourself that some important detail did not escape your notice. Certainly, the casual reader will miss many of the subtleties, clues if you like, which support and illuminate the dénouement. But Bierce is not for the casual reader.
He remained in San Francisco for many years, eventually becoming famous as a contributor to, and/or editor of, a number of local news-papers and periodicals, including The San Francisco News Letter, the Argonaut, and the Wasp. He continued to write short stories as well as penning controversial columns full of wit and criticism, the most famous of which was called Prattle. He lived and wrote in England from 1872 to 1875. Returning to the United States, he took up residence in San Francisco once more.
It was during this later period that he began work on his most famous book, The Devil’s Dictionary (originally called The Cynic’s Work Book), a collection of definitions editorially tinged with bitterness, scepticism, pessimism and social comment. Above all, they are very funny, demonstating there was a dark vein of humour present in the apparently gloomy and troubled persona of the author. Here are a few examples of entries in this notorious volume:
Cat: a soft, indestructible automaton provided by Nature to be kicked when things go wrong in the domestic circle.
Idiot: member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling.
Justice: a commodity which in a more or less adulterated condition the State sells to the citizen as a reward for his allegiance, taxes and personal service.
Love: a temporary insanity curable by marriage.
Patience: a minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue.
Philosophy: a route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.
Religion: a daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.
Vote: the instrument and symbol of a free man’s power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.
Zeal: a certain nervous disorder afflicting the young and inexperienced.
In 1887, Bierce became one of the first regular columnists and editorialists to be employed on William Randolph Hearst‘s newspaper the San Francisco Examiner, eventually becoming one of the most prominent and influential among the writers an
d journalists of the West Coast. In December 1899 he moved to Washington DC, but continued his association with the Hearst newspapers until 1906.
At the turn of the century, Bierce’s personal life began to crumble. His son Leigh died of pneumonia related to alcoholism. In 1904, his wife Mollie filed for divorce on the grounds of ‘abandonment’, but she died before the proceedings were finalised. Bierce continued writing through this period, but became less and less involved in the world around him.
Ironically, the greatest fame that Ambrose Bierce achieved was by simply vanishing from life. In 1912, after three years of fitful retirement from literary endeavours, he journeyed to Mexico with no apparent object in view. The last word that was ever heard from him came in a letter he posted in Chihuahua, Mexico in 1913: ‘If you hear of my being stood up against a Mexican wall and shot to rags, please know that I think it’s a pretty good way to depart this life. It beats old age, disease, or falling down the cellar stairs. To be a Gringo in Mexico – ah, that is euthanasia.’ He was never heard of again. His death has not been recorded and no body has ever been found. What really happened to Ambrose Bierce is still a mystery and is likely to remain so. In many ways it is fitting for a man who created so many dark and surprising scenarios in his fiction to end his life with a question mark – his own personal, autobiographical twist in the tail.
Ambrose Bierce wrote ninety or so stories during his lifetime, but never turned his hand to writing a novel. In fact, he derided the novels of his time because he believed they were constructed in a manner that became predictable and slavish to the demands of probability. He defined the novel as ‘a short story padded’. His short stories were the polar opposite of such an approach. He was the master of improbability. Stating his philosphy on this matter, he wrote: ‘Nothing is so improbable as what is true. It is the unexpected that occurs; but that is not saying enough; it is also the unlikely – one might almost say the impossible.’ He certainly applied this theory to his own fiction. He believed that the short shory was a superior form of creative expression because it was limited only to truths of the psyche rather than being committed to the realistic creation of social events and interaction. He was more interested in the unexpected, the strange incidents of fate and accident: improbable truths – and, indeed, sometimes apparently impossible truths. But the reader who has read his words will always be prepared to believe in these truths.
His stories invariably turn on these strange and often heart-stopping twists of fate – twists that are calculated to shock and shake the reader out of a comfortable complacency to revealuate the events in the story and indeed in reality itself.
Bierce scholar Professor E. J. Hopkins divided the author’s output into three categories: the Tales of Horror, the World of War and the World of Tall Stories. However, many of the stories seem to fit more than one heading. ‘An Occurrence at Owl Creek’ is a case in point. Because of its American Civil War background, Hopkins places this in the World of War section, but it remains one of Bierce’s most chilling and unnerving tales. Certainly for this collection we have scooped up all of the Tales of Horror but we have also dipped into the other two categories for suitable tales to add to our dark brew.
It would be inappropriate and a rather a demanding task to talk about all the stories in this volume before you, the reader, are let loose on them. However, certain stories are worthy of comment if only to alert you to the kind of experiences which await you when you start to devour them.
One of the most anthologised of Bierce’s tales is ‘The Eyes of the Panther’. The story is created like a jigsaw with four pieces that the reader needs to fit together in order to see the whole picture. However, this is not easy as incidents are presented to us wreathed in the diverting mist of words that Bierce typically uses to entice the reader, while at the same time not quite providing a clear view of events. The story, short though it is, is split into four parts, entitled in a bleakly humorous way: One Does Not Always Marry When Insane; A Room May Be Too Narrow for Three, Though One is Outside; The Theory of Defence; An Appeal to the Conscience of God. On reaching the chilling end, you are still not sure you have quite grasped the truth of the matter or, if you have, it is really too horrible to contemplate. This story exemplifies the format that Bierce returned to time and time again: the factual, objective style; the often puzzling delivery of the narrative; the touches of dark, some might say misplaced humour; and the final surprise twist. The story also demonstrates that Bierce is not an easy read. I hesitate to use the phrase ‘an acquired taste’, but we are certainly in that area. However, those who do not find a natural affinity with his prose but who persevere are richly rewarded.
His classic ‘The Moonlit Road’ tells a ghost story from three perspectives, including that of the dead victim. It slowly unravels a tragedy which even when it is fully exposed is not really fully explained. And this element of uncertainty is what lifts this story to make it a great one. There is also, in the telling, a great sadness which perhaps reflects Bierce’s own miserable view of existence. In the story, the narrators – the son, the murderer, the dead woman – all convey a sense of despair with life. The story opens with a typically bitter, ironical observation from the son:
‘I am the most unfortunate of men. Rich, respected, fairly well educated and of sound health – with many other advantages usually valued by those having them and coveted by those who have them not – I sometimes think that I should be less unhappy if they had been denied me, for then the contrast between my outer and inner life would not be continually demanding a painful attention.’
It is a case of you can’t win. Even with all the advantages he has, fate decrees that the son cannot enjoy them because his inner life has been damaged by events. While we may have some control over our outer life, Bierce observes, we have none over the inner life.
One final example of Bierce’s work is ‘The Middle Toe of the Right Foot’. Again we are challenged to piece together a complex ghost story which is presented to us in three sections. Again comes the surprise ending and the strange sense that we are not being given all the information we need to create a full and comprehensive narrative. There remains, yet again, a shady corner which can only be illuminated by the reader’s individual imagination.
Although Bierce’s stories are short – bite-sized, you might say – they are not quickly or easily digested. To continue the food analogy, they are like rich puddings, thick of texture and laced with some unkown intoxicant. Devour them slowly; savour them and digest at leisure. They are an indulgence well worth giving way to.
DAVID STUART DAVIES
TERROR BY NIGHT
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
1
A man stood upon a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, looking down into the swift water twenty feet below. The man’s hands were behind his back, the wrists bound with a cord. A rope closely encircled his neck. It was attached to a stout cross-timber above his head and the slack fell to the level of his knees. Some loose boards laid upon the ties supporting the rails of the railway supplied a footing for him and his executioners – two private soldiers of the Federal army, directed by a sergeant who in civil life may have been a deputy sheriff. At a short remove upon the same temporary platform was an officer in the uniform of his rank, armed. He was a captain. A sentinel at each end of the bridge stood with his rifle in the position known as ‘support’, that is to say, vertical in front of the left shoulder, the hammer resting on the forearm thrown straight across the chest – a formal and unnatural position, enforcing an erect carriage of the body. It did not appear to be the duty of these two men to know what was occurring at the centre of the bridge; they merely blockaded the two ends of the foot planking that traversed it.
Beyond one of the sentinels nobody was in sight; the railroad ran straight away into a forest for a hundred yards, then, curving, was lost to view. Doubtless there was an outpost farther along. The other bank of the stream was open ground – a gentle slope top
ped with a stockade of vertical tree trunks, loopholed for rifles, with a single embrasure through which protruded the muzzle of a brass cannon commanding the bridge. Midway up the slope between the bridge and fort were the spectators – a single company of infantry in line, at ‘parade rest’, the butts of their rifles on the ground, the barrels inclining slightly backward against the right shoulder, the hands crossed upon the stock. A lieutenant stood at the right of the line, the point of his sword upon the ground, his left hand resting upon his right. Excepting the group of four at the centre of the bridge, not a man moved. The company faced the bridge, staring stonily, motionless. The sentinels, facing the banks of the stream, might have been statues to adorn the bridge. The captain stood with folded arms, silent, observing the work of his subordinates, but making no sign. Death is a dignitary who when he comes announced is to be received with formal manifestations of respect, even by those most familiar with him. In the code of military etiquette silence and fixity are forms of deference.
The man who was engaged in being hanged was apparently about thirty-five years of age. He was a civilian, if one might judge from his habit, which was that of a planter. His features were good – a straight nose, firm mouth, broad forehead, from which his long, dark hair was combed straight back, falling behind his ears to the collar of his well-fitting frock coat. He wore a moustache and pointed beard, but no whiskers; his eyes were large and dark grey, and had a kindly expression which one would hardly have expected in one whose neck was in the hemp. Evidently this was no vulgar assassin. The liberal military code makes provision for hanging many kinds of persons, and gentlemen are not excluded.
The preparations being complete, the two private soldiers stepped aside and each drew away the plank upon which he had been standing. The sergeant turned to the captain, saluted and placed himself immediately behind that officer, who in turn moved apart one pace. These movements left the condemned man and the sergeant standing on the two ends of the same plank, which spanned three of the cross-ties of the bridge. The end upon which the civilian stood almost, but not quite, reached a fourth. This plank had been held in place by the weight of the captain; it was now held by that of the sergeant. At a signal from the former the latter would step aside, the plank would tilt and the condemned man go down between two ties. The arrangement commended itself to his judgement as simple and effective. His face had not been covered nor his eyes bandaged. He looked a moment at his ‘unsteadfast footing’, then let his gaze wander to the swirling water of the stream racing madly beneath his feet. A piece of dancing driftwood caught his attention and his eyes followed it down the current. How slowly it appeared to move! What a sluggish stream!
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