The Valancourt Book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories

by James D. Jenkins

  To-morrow I die, and God knows with what terror I shrink from the thought of that hour. And yet I doubt if the death which I so fear can be more awful than was the return to life and consciousness after that ghastly vision. At first I could recollect nothing, knew nothing, only that a death-cold numbness lay on heart, and brain, and limbs. Slowly I opened my heavy eyelids, to see if it were yet daytime, but everywhere round was an unearthly blackness, that folded me about like an inky cloak. I strove to pierce the gloom, till my strained eyeballs seemed as though they must crack and burst, but there was nothing save endless, impenetrable night. And then it came back to me, bit by bit. I was at Dover, at Calais, at Berlin, at Hartsburg, he was there; he who had been my curse and ruin, my evil spirit all through life. We stood together again, together on that wild, craggy hillside. He spoke of her, showed me the letters that told of her treachery, told me lightly that it was he who had robbed me of her, as he had robbed me of everything else. And then I saw it all again—the quarrel, that mad deed, the cavern, and, O God! that ghastly, hideous vision! And I was alone—alone in that fearful abode of death, alone with my own evil conscience, and the recollection of that awful apparition. My one terror was that it might reappear. The very thought of it made me shrink and shudder like a palsied man. I lay there on the slimy ground, with foul crawling things creeping over face and limbs, not daring to move lest I should see the red light of those ghastly eyes glaring, glaring, glaring down on me from the darkness. How long I remained thus I know not. It may have been hours, it may have been days; to me it was but one long, unchanging, eternal night. I knew that I could not live long so; that even if my brain did not give way under the torture I must soon die of terror. At last I forced myself, by a desperate effort of will, to rise and stand, but I turned sick and giddy at the thought of the awful abyss upon which I might be standing, and into which one single step might at any moment plunge me. I knelt down again, and crawled along on my hands and knees, feeling every inch of the ground as I went, until I came to the edge of the pit, and heard the black torrent of the river roaring and hissing sullenly below. Once the wish to throw myself over, and so end my misery, crossed my mind, but the thought of the unknown horrors which might be waiting for me in that hideous gulf made me shrink back again. And then I recollected that I had a small box of wax matches in my pocket I pulled it out, and with eager, trembling fingers opened it. There was only one left, but I felt that to see a light even for some few seconds would be an inexpressible relief. It would at least assure me that I still retained my sight, for I was haunted by an ever-recurring dread that I had lost it for ever. I struck the match and glanced tremblingly around. Horrible as was the midnight blackness that enshrouded me, the momentary gleam was still more horrible. In the darkness all was hidden, and there were no dim outlines and shadowy figures to terrify the imagination. As I looked around in the dim light of the taper, the limestone rocks and stalactites that hung about me took form and shape hideous beyond all description. Sheeted corpses and fleshless skeletons stretched white bony arms as if to seize me in their ghastly embraces. Strange beasts and reptiles seemed to glare from every side, and I beheld, or thought I beheld, red eyes of flame, which so burnt into my very soul, that I flung the tiny taper away, and buried my hands in my face to shut out the awful vision. And then the wind arose and howled and shrieked in the vast abysses, and below me I heard the hollow rush and roar of the angry waters, leaping against the slimy banks, as though impatient at being balked of their prey, so that I was seized with a sudden terror lest I might slip and fall into that watery hell, and I crawled back again with clammy limbs and parched lips. And ever in my mind there was the dread lest that awful vision should reappear; and ever I was rent and torn by the most terrible remorse that ever racked a human soul. At last I fell into a dream-haunted slumber, but, O God, what an awakening! What aroused me I knew not, but when I opened my eyes I saw a lurid light around, and there, right in front of me, was that hideous vision again—the ghastly red eyes fixed, and glaring down on me; the white teeth glittering like the teeth of a wild beast, and the hand still pointing to the wound in the breast, where the knife—my knife—was buried. And as I shrank back in horror and dread, I saw that it was no dream, no apparition or brain-phantom, which was before me.

  It was the corpse of the man I had murdered, wet with the waters that had bourne it from the crevice where I thrust it to the cave-prison where I lay.

  Yes, it was the corpse of the man I had murdered, come to bear witness against me. And then I heard a cry, “Good God! this is a murder!” And behind me I saw standing, with white, horrified faces, the party of guests from the hotel, whom the guide was taking over the caverns.

  I was too remorse-stricken and broken to deny my crime, nor would it have availed me much had I done so. To-morrow I die, and must face the great Judge of all, to answer before Him for my sins. But no hell torments can be more awful than the agony of those black hours, and shall they not be taken into account?

  W. W. Fenn

  THE STEEL MIRROR

  A Christmas Dream

  One of the more “Christmassy” entries in this volume, “The Steel Mirror” takes place on Christmas and features classic elements of the Victorian ghost story, including spectral images in a mirror and an ancient family legend of the supernatural. The author, William Wilthew Fenn (1827-1906), began his career as a painter but went completely blind at age twenty-five and turned to writing. “The Steel Mirror” first appeared in Routledge’s Christmas Annual in 1867.

  We have most of us, at one time or other, had some experience in curious coincidences, mere matters of accident, which have fallen out so strangely as to wear the appearance of a forelaid scheme—coincidences which have given rise in men’s minds to the idea of destiny, fate, or whatever we may please to call it; coincidences which, be they what they may, have, without doubt, been the basis of all superstition from time immemorial.

  Presentiments, in a measure, are common to everybody, and even the most matter-of-fact individual may occasionally be swayed by them in spite of himself. Now, I flattered myself that I was one of these same individuals; I laid claim to no superfluous imaginations and fancies, I was no believer in ghosts or spirit-rapping, yet I leave it for others to judge whether what I am about to tell is, or is not, to be accounted for by purely natural laws, worked out by a chance combination of time, place, and circumstance.

  Ever since I can remember, it had been our habit to spend Christmas with our old friends the Sequins, generally at their seat called “The Bower,” not far from the principal town of a celebrated hunting county, about a hundred miles from London. It was a picturesque and thorough specimen of a time-honoured manor house, with scarcely a room, corridor, or passage, that had not a legend of some kind attached to it. The family, too, was one of the most ancient in England, and many were the tales connected with the daring deeds performed, and the knightly prowess displayed by its ancestors.

  My father and old Sir George Sequin were contemporaries, and had religiously kept up the custom, which, I believe, had been even handed down to them by their fathers, of always dining together on Christmas-day. From them, Godfrey Sequin and I had again inherited the idea that things would go extremely wrong if the festive season was not spent in each other’s company. He particularly had strong opinions on the point, and his anxiety that nothing should interfere with the custom sometimes bordered upon the superstitious.

  Heirs to the jovial and kindly feelings of our fathers, we had carefully maintained this principle; but, as long ago my circumstances had so far changed as to render it impossible for me to entertain Godfrey and his wife in anything like their own style of living, the hospitality had been all on his side, and it had become a settled plan that we should go down to the Bower for a fortnight every Christmas.

  I had been married some few years, when, just before one of these much-looked-forward-to expeditions, my wife was taken suddenly, but not dangerously ill, and there seemed every
probability of our good old custom being broken through for the first time. The doctors pronounced it madness for her to think of taking a journey in the state of health she then was.

  Letters passed to and fro between the Bower and Bloomsbury Square; devices and suggestions for surmounting the difficulty arose on both sides. I was to go with one of my girls, the other to remain with her mother; Sir Godfrey and Lady Sequin were to come to us; some plan must be adopted, if possible, to prevent our being separated at Christmas.

  I did not myself feel the absolute necessity of this, but the Sequins held strong opinions about it. It would be terribly unlucky, we ought not to break through the rule whilst there was the slightest chance of maintaining it. Godfrey was even more urgent than his wife, and his letters had in them almost an imploring tone, bespeaking, as I fancied, an over anxiety and fear that something dire might happen if I failed to occupy my usual seat at his Christmas table.

  Affairs remained in this uncertain state until within a few days of the 25th December, when my wife, having somewhat recovered, settled the difficulty by deciding, with that combined spirit of self-sacrifice and determination which some women display in emergencies, that, considering Godfrey’s earnest wish, I ought to go down alone for a day or two at least. Her kind heart at once led her to set aside all her own feelings on the matter. She could not bear to think that my friend’s happiness should be interfered with by any dislike she might feel at being left alone at such a time. She said that she should become quite superstitious herself, if she were to cause the breach of this old-established custom.

  “After all,” she continued, “what is it but a few days’ absence; I should think nothing of it at any other season, and it is only imagination which leads one to attribute more importance to it just now; and I, you know, have very little imagination, whilst your friend Godfrey and his wife are made up of it.”

  Reluctantly, then, I settled to go. I say reluctantly, for the moment I had consented, a strange and unusual feeling of depression came upon me. I could not but admit the common sense of my wife’s words, but nevertheless a, to me, ridiculous foreboding of evil, or, at the least, a sense of discomfort rooted itself in my mind. Apart from the joviality of Christmas meetings, I was the last person in the world to attribute any serious importance to their not being kept up, still I failed to get over the disquiet which the present arrangement had created.

  However, I bade my wife and girls good-bye on the twenty-third, determining, that as Christmas-day fell on the Wednesday, to return, at the end of the week, instead of remaining as usual for the customary programme of hunting, shooting, etc. On my way down, everything seemed to combine to lower my spirits, the only other occupants of the railway carriage being a young widow lady, and her two little children. Her grief was very fresh, and it was with the greatest difficulty once or twice that she restrained herself from hysterical paroxysms of tears. The weather, too, was muggy and gloomy; thick mists had settled determinedly over all parts of the flat country through which my journey lay. Do what I would, I could not help contrasting the present state of the atmosphere with the crisp, frosty brightness and invigorating air which I remembered had set my usually elastic disposition bounding like a child’s, when I travelled over the same ground a year ago.

  The hearty welcome at the Bower only temporarily dismissed this demon of disquiet from my elbow, and I so continually relapsed into silence during dinner, that two or three of my old friends assembled at the house, and Godfrey especially, noticed my dejection, but dealt lightly with it, as of course my wife’s absence, being universally regretted, at the same time also accounted for my own unwonted demeanour. The mirth generally, for some reason, was not as great, it struck me, as on previous occasions.

  The following day, which was Christmas-eve, we were still very dull, and my own feelings considerably worse. I had grown horribly anxious, for the morning’s post had brought no letter from my wife, although she had promised to write a line in the afternoon of the day I started. There was really nothing in this circumstance, yet somehow or other I was so unhinged that it had an effect upon me quite inconsistent with its importance. There were no means by which my mind could be speedily set at rest, for these were the early days of electric telegraphy, and the system of communication was very incomplete. Dankborough, the county town, was as yet without wires, and we were forty miles from the nearest telegraph station.

  The arguments of Lady Sequin and her husband all failed to rouse and cheer me up, and in the most unnatural way my dejection rather communicated itself to them, for they began to feel, that perhaps it had been a little selfish on their part to insist on my presence, under the circumstances. It was the most dismal Christmas-eve we could remember; we voted it so by acclamation, vainly endeavouring to extract a joke from our universal opinion. On retiring for the night, my condition of mind, far from improving, became so deplorable that I thought I was losing my senses, or going to have a serious illness.

  The picturesque, old-fashioned room allotted to me, called “The Mirror Chamber,” was, I knew, noted in the annals of the house for several legends attached to it. None of these, however, lived individually in my mind, but highly wrought as it then was, this recollection communicated an uncanny ghostly appearance to the place, which it would not have borne, indeed, which it never had borne to me, on ordinary occasions.

  In my present morbidly unhealthy state, it required a great effort to put out my candle, and turn into bed. After this was accomplished, the flickering light of the fire at times became so distressing that I could not persuade myself that I was alone in the room. I got out of bed, undrew the curtains, drew them back again, shifted the furniture, and generally worked myself into such a state of fever, that I quite lost all self-command, although at the same time feeling perfectly ashamed of the weak, unmanly part I was playing. Back again in bed, I tossed and tumbled from side to side, and when at last, worn out, I did begin to doze, the moaning of the wind at the casement, or the soft lapping sound of the dying embers falling upon the hearth, disturbed me with a start and a shock, which vibrated through my frame, as if there had been an earthquake.

  I don’t know how long I had been asleep, if asleep I really was (and this is the point which will ever remain a mystery in my mind), when a dream of such terrible reality came upon me, that to forget it, or, indeed, to believe that it was a dream, is next to impossible. At any rate, I was conscious of my exact position—conscious of the unnatural state of my mind—conscious of how and where I was, lying flat on my back, staring straight through the aperture, between the curtains, at the foot of my bed—conscious that I saw the bed dimly reflected in that relic of antiquity, a steel mirror, hanging opposite.

  If I was in a dream, I was dreaming that I was awake, and awake in precisely the same place, and under the same circumstances, in which I knew myself to be; the same thoughts, the same feelings, the same surroundings were as vividly reproduced as any events in the most startling dreams ever are. The only difference being, that instead of dreaming of remote affairs and conditions, I was dreaming of the present—the positive, tangible present.

  Here, then, I was lying, asleep or awake, as you please, when I became aware of a dim mist gradually overspreading the mirror, such as might be produced by human breath, increasing now, and then decreasing, just as if the action of the lungs in respiration made it fluctuate. This effect had continued for a minute or more, when I observed the reflected palm of a stealthy hand passed, as it were, straight across the steel, as though to wipe away the obscuring vapour, and then I saw upon the now unclouded metal—a face!—not the face itself, but palpably the reflex of one, as we may see our own in any glass! It appeared to be gazing at its eyes, yet there was no intervening form, no figure visible of which, I felt certain, this vision was but a reproduction.

  Starting upright in bed, convulsively clutching the clothes, whilst cold drops of perspiration broke out upon my forehead, and my tongue clove to the roof of my mouth, I remaine
d horror-stricken, for the face hitherto unrecognizable, now clearly showed itself to be that of a woman! the head and cheeks partially enveloped in something white. Rapidly increasing in distinctness, the white head-covering grew into the similitude of widows’ weeds, as worn a few centuries ago, and the features! great powers! I shudder as I recall my sensations, plainly and unmistakably assumed the form of those of my wife!

  The terrible truth of the likeness was made more manifest for a while, as the shape seemed to draw nearer; a spirt of flame, at the same time, springing brightly from the grate, showed the apparition with startling vividness. It was the last spark of light in the fire, which, burning brightly for one moment, instantly afterwards disappeared, leaving the room in total darkness.

  I fell back in a swoon, from which I only slowly recovered as the dreary morning light was creeping through the shutters. Paralyzed though I was, by a multitude of bewildering sensations, I at last managed to dress myself, and hasten downstairs, firmly resolving, that if the post brought no reassuring news from home, I would go back to town immediately. It would be mere mockery attempting to enter into Christmas festivities under this roof.

  I knew, from her active habits, that I should find Lady Sequin astir before any one else, and I went straight to her morning room, to communicate my intentions. She was unlocking the letter-bag as I entered, and her surprise at my early visit gave way, the moment she looked in my face, to a suppressed ejaculation of fear.

  “What is the matter?” she exclaimed; “you are as pale as a ghost! Are you ill?”

  “Yes, I think I am, dear Lady Sequin,” I replied; “but pray tell me, is there a letter from Maria?”

  We ran over the contents of the bag together; no, there was nothing for me. Then taking her hand, I continued, “I must have the dog-cart round at once, to catch the next train for London.”