Masterpieces of Terror and the Supernatural

by Marvin Kaye (ed. )

  Well, Pa, please come out quick with the sheriff and the coronor Wilks. I will stay here and watch to see that Jim don’t go running out of the house and maybe get lost in the woods. But come as fast as you can because I don’t like sitting here with her up there like that and Jim sneaking around in the dark house.

  LUKE

  DEAR GEORGE:

  We just got back from your sister’s house. We haven’t told the papers yet so I’ll have to be the one to let you know.

  I sent Luke out there with a property tax note and he found your sister murdered. I don’t like to be the one to tell you but somebody has to. The sheriff and his boys are scouring the countryside for the killer. They figure it was a tramp or something. She wasn’t raped though and, far as we can tell, nothing was stolen.

  What I mean more to tell you about is little Jim.

  That boy is fixing to die soon from starvation and just plain scaredness. He won’t eat nothing. Sometimes, he gulps down a piece of bread or a piece of candy, but as soon as he starts to chewing his face gets all twisted and he gets violent sick and throws up. I don’t understand it at all.

  Luke found your sister in her room with her throat cut ear to ear. Coronor Wilks says it was a strong, steady hand that done it because the cut is deep and sure. I am terrible sorry to be the one to tell you all this but I think it is better you know. The funeral will be in a week.

  Luke and I had a long time rounding up the boy. He was like lightning. He ran around in the dark and squealed like a rat. He showed his teeth at us when we’d corner him with a lantern. His skin is all white and the way he rolls his eyes back and foams at his mouth is something awful to see.

  We finally caught him. He bit us and squirmed around like a eel. Then he got all stiff and it was like carrying a two-by-four, Luke said.

  We took him into the kitchen and tried to give him something to eat. He wouldn’t take a bite. He gulped down some milk like he felt guilty about it. Then, in a second, his face twists and he draws back his lips and the milk comes out.

  He kept trying to run away from us. Never a single word out of him. He just squeaks and mutters like a monkey talking to itself.

  We finally carried him upstairs to put him to bed. He froze soon as we touched him and I thought his eyes would fall out he opened them so wide. His jaw fell slack and he stared at us like we was boogie men or trying to slice open his throat like his ma’s.

  He wouldn’t go into his room. He screamed and twisted in our hands like a fish. He braced his feet against the wall and tugged and pulled and scratched. We had to slap his face and then his eyes got big and he got like a board again and we carried him in his room.

  When I took off his clothes, I got a shock like I haven’t had in years,

  George. That boy is all scars and bruises on his back and chest like someone has strung him up and tortured him with pliers or hot iron or God knows what all. I got a downright chill seeing that. I know they said the widow wasn’t the same in her head after her husband died, but I can’t believe she done this. It is the work of a crazy person.

  Jim was sleepy but he wouldn’t shut his eyes. He kept looking around the ceiling and the window and his lips kept moving like he was trying to talk. He was moaning kind of low and shaky when Luke and I went out in the hall.

  No sooner did we leave him than he’s screaming at the top of his voice and thrashing in his bed like someone was strangling him. We rushed in and I held the lantern high but we couldn’t see anything. I thought the boy was sick with fear and seeing things.

  Then, as if it was meant to happen, the lantern ran out of oil and all of a sudden we saw white faces staring at us from the walls and ceiling and the window.

  It was a shaky minute there, George, with the kid screaming out his lungs and twisting on his bed but never getting up. And Luke trying to find the door and me feeling for a match but trying to look at those horrible faces at the same time.

  Finally I found a match and I got it lit and we couldn’t see the faces any more, just part of one on the window.

  I sent Luke down to the car for some oil and when he come back we lit the lantern again and looked at the window and saw that the face was painted on it so’s to light up in the dark. Same thing for the faces on the walls and the ceiling. It was enough to scare a man out of half his wits to think of anybody doing that inside a little boy’s room.

  We took him to another room and put him down to bed. When we left him he was squirming in his sleep and muttering words we couldn’t understand. I left Luke in the hall outside the room to watch. I went and looked around the house some more.

  In the Widow’s room I found a whole shelf of psychology books. They was all marked in different places. I looked in one place and it told about a thing how they can make rats go crazy by making them think there is food in a place when there isn’t. And another one about how they can make a dog lose its appetite and starve to death by hitting big pieces of pipe together at the same time when the dog is trying to eat.

  I guess you know what I think. But it is so terrible I can hardly believe it. I mean that Jim might have got so crazy that he cut her. He is so small I don’t see how he could.

  You are her only living kin, George, and I think you should do something about the boy. We don’t want to put him in a orphan home. He is in no shape for it. That is why I am telling you all about him so you can judge.

  There was another thing. I played a record on a phonograph in the boy’s room. It sounded like wild animals all making terrible noises and even louder than them was a terrible high laughing.

  That is about all, George. We will let you know if the sheriff finds the one who killed your sister because no one really believes that Jim could have done it. I wish you would take the boy and try to fix him up.

  Until I hear,

  SAM DAVIS

  DEAR SAM:

  I got your letter and am more upset than I can say.

  I knew for a long time that my sister was mentally unbalanced after her husband’s death, but I had no idea in the world she was so far gone.

  You see, when she was a girl she fell in love with Phil. There was never anyone else in her life. The sun rose and descended on her love for him. She was so jealous that, once, because he had taken another girl to a party, she crashed her hands through a window and nearly bled to death.

  Finally, Phil married her. There was never a happier couple, it seemed. She did anything and everything for him. He was her whole life.

  When Jim was born I went to see her at the hospital. She told me she wished it had been born dead because she knew that the boy meant so much to Phil and she hated to have Phil want anything but her.

  She never was good to Jim. She always resented him. And, that day, three years ago, when Phil drowned saving Jim’s life, she went out of her mind. I was with her when she heard about it. She ran into the kitchen and got a carving knife and took it running through the streets, trying to find Jim so she could kill him. She finally fainted in the road and we took her home.

  She wouldn’t even look at Jim for a month. Then she packed up and took him to that house in the woods. Since then I never saw her.

  You saw yourself, the boy is terrified of everyone and everything. Except one person. My sister planned that. Step by step she planned it—God help me for never realizing it before. In a whole, monstrous world of horrors she built around that boy she left him trust and need for only one person—her. She was Jim’s only shield against those horrors. She knew that, when she died, Jim would go completely mad because there wouldn’t be anyone in the world he could turn to for comfort.

  I think you see now why I say there isn’t any murderer.

  Just bury her quick and send the boy to me. I’m not coming to the funeral.

  GEORGE BARNES

  “Wake Not the Dead”—also known as “The Bride of the Grave”—is a tempestuous tale of unnatural love that deserves to be compared with Sheridan LeFanu’s “Carmilla” (elsewhere in this v
olume). JOHANN LUDWIG TIECK (1773-1853) spent much of his life in Berlin and Dresden, where he adapted many children’s tales (including “Fuss in Boots”) into theatrical version. A notable Germanic translator and scholar of Shakespeare, Tieck left behind a body of significant dramatic essays and pieces, but also wrote a number of nerve-wrenching tales of terror, of which the following is a prime example. Its melodramatic intensity has the emotional impact of one of the bloodier Italian grand operas.

  Wake Not the Dead

  By Johann Ludwig Tieck

  “Wilt thou for ever sleep? Wilt thou never more awake, my beloved, but henceforth repose for ever from thy short pilgrimage on earth? O yet once again return! and bring back with thee the vivifying dawn of hope to one whose existence hath, since thy departure, been obscured by the dunnest shades. What! dumb? for ever dumb? Thy friend lamenteth, and thou heedest him not? He sheds bitter, scalding tears, and thou reposest unregarding his affliction? He is in despair, and thou no longer openest thy arms to him as an asylum from his grief? Say then, doth the paly shroud become thee better than the bridal veil? Is the chamber of the grave a warmer bed than the couch of love? Is the spectre death more welcome to thy arms than thy enamoured consort? Oh! return, my beloved, return once again to this anxious disconsolate bosom.”

  Such were the lamentations which Walter poured forth for his Brunhilda, the partner of his youthful passionate love: thus did he bewail over her grave at the midnight hour, what time the spirit that presides in the troublous atmosphere, sends his legions of monsters through mid-air; so that their shadows, as they flit beneath the moon and across the earth, dart as wild, agitating thoughts that chase each other o’er the sinner’s bosom:—thus did he lament under the tall linden trees by her grave, while his head reclined on the cold stone.

  Walter was a powerful lord in Burgundy, who, in his earliest youth, had been smitten with the charms of the fair Brunhilda, a beauty far surpassing in loveliness all her rivals; for her tresses, dark as the raven face of night, streaming over her shoulders, set off to the utmost advantage the beaming lustre of her slender form, and the rich dye of a cheek whose tint was deep and brilliant as that of the western heaven: her eyes did not resemble those burning orbs whose pale glow gems the vault of night, and whose immeasurable distance fills the soul with deep thoughts of eternity, but rather as the sober beams which cheer this nether world, and which, while they enlighten, kindle the sons of earth to joy and love. Brunhilda became the wife of Walter, and both being equally enamoured and devoted, they abandoned themselves to the enjoyment of a passion that rendered them reckless of aught besides, while it lulled them in a fascinating dream. Their sole apprehension was lest aught should awaken them from a delirium which they prayed might continue for ever. Yet how vain is the wish that would arrest the decrees of destiny! as well might it seek to divert the circling planets from their eternal course. Short was the duration of this phrenzied passion; not that it gradually decayed and subsided into apathy, but death snatched away his blooming victim, and left Walter to a widowed couch. Impetuous, however, as was his first burst of grief, he was not inconsolable, for ere long another bride became the partner of the youthful nobleman.

  Swanhilda also was beautiful; although nature had formed her charms on a very different model from those of Brunhilda. Her golden locks waved bright as the beams of morn: only when excited by some emotion of her soul did a rosy hue tinge the lily paleness of her cheek: her limbs were proportioned in the nicest symmetry, yet did they not possess that luxuriant fullness of animal life: her eye beamed eloquently, but it was with the milder radiance of a star, tranquillizing to tenderness rather than exciting to warmth. Thus formed, it was not possible that she should steep him in his former delirium, although she rendered happy his waking hours—tranquil and serious, yet cheerful, studying in all things her husband’s pleasure, she restored order and comfort in his family, where her presence shed a general influence all around. Her mild benevolence tended to restrain the fiery, impetuous disposition of Walter: while at the same time her prudence recalled him in some degree from his vain, turbulent wishes, and his aspirings after unattainable enjoyments, to the duties and pleasures of actual life. Swanhilda bore her husband two children, a son and a daughter; the latter was mild and patient as her mother, well contented with her solitary sports, and even in these recreations displayed the serious turn of her character. The boy possessed his father’s fiery, restless disposition, tempered, however, with the solidity of his mother. Attached by his offspring more tenderly towards their mother, Walter now lived for several years very happily: his thoughts would frequently, indeed, recur to Brunhilda, but without their former violence, merely as we dwell upon the memory of a friend of our earlier days, borne from us on the rapid current of time to a region where we know that he is happy.

  But clouds dissolve into air, flowers fade, the sands of the hour-glass run imperceptibly away, and even so, do human feelings dissolve, fade, and pass away, and with them too, human happiness. Walter’s inconstant breast again sighed for the ecstatic dreams of those days which he had spent with his equally romantic, enamoured Brunhilda—again did she present herself to his ardent fancy in all the glow of her bridal charms, and he began to draw a parallel between the past and the present; nor did imagination, as it is wont, fail to array the former in her brightest hues, while it proportionably obscured the latter; so that he pictured to himself, the one much more rich in enjoyment, and the other, much less so than they really were. This change in her husband did not escape Swanhilda; whereupon, redoubling her attentions towards him, and her cares towards their children, she expected, by this means, to re-unite the knot that was slackened; yet the more she endeavoured to regain his affections, the colder did he grow,—the more intolerable did her caresses seem, and the more continually did the image of Brunhilda haunt his thoughts. The children, whose endearments were now become indispensable to him, alone stood between the parents as genii eager to affect a reconciliation; and, beloved by them both, formed a uniting link between them. Yet, as evil can be plucked from the heart of man, only ere its root has yet struck deep, its fangs being afterwards too firm to be eradicated; so was Walter’s diseased fancy too far affected to have its disorder stopped, for, in a short time, it completely tyrannized over him. Frequently of a night, instead of retiring to his consort’s chamber, he repaired to Brunhilda’s grave, where he murmured forth his discontent, saying: “Wilt thou sleep for ever?”

  One night as he was reclining on the turf, indulging in his wonted sorrow, a sorcerer from the neighbouring mountains, entered into this field of death for the purpose of gathering, for his mystic spells, such herbs as grow only from the earth wherein the dead repose, and which, as if the last production of mortality, are ,gifted with a powerful and supernatural influence. The sorcerer perceived the mourner, and approached the spot where he was lying.

  “Wherefore, fond wretch, dost thou grieve thus, for what is now a hideous mass of mortality—mere bones, and nerves, and veins? Nations have fallen unlamented; even worlds themselves, long ere this globe of ours was created, have mouldered into nothing; nor hath any one wept over them; why then should’st thou indulge this vain affliction for a child of the dust —a being as frail as thyself, and like thee the creature but of a moment?”

  Walter raised himself up:—“Let yon worlds that shine in the firmament” replied he, “lament for each other as they perish. It is true, that I who am myself clay, lament for my fellow-clay: yet is this clay impregnated with a fire,—with an essence, that none of the elements of creation possess—with love: and this divine passion, I felt for her who now sleepeth beneath this sod.”

  “Will thy complaints awaken her: or could they do so, would she not soon upbraid thee for having disturbed that repose in which she is now hushed?”

  “Avaunt, cold-hearted being: thou knowest not what is love. Oh! that my tears could wash away the earthy covering that conceals her from these eyes;—that my groan of anguish could rouse
her from her slumber of death!—No, she would not again seek her earthy couch.”

  “Insensate that thou art, and couldst thou endure to gaze without shuddering on one disgorged from the jaws of the grave? Art thou too thyself the same from whom she parted; or hath time passed o’er thy brow and left no traces there? Would not thy love rather be converted into hate and disgust?”

  “Say rather that the stars would leave yon firmament, that the sun will henceforth refuse to shed his beams through the heavens. Oh! that she stood once more before me;—that once again she reposed on this bosom!--how quickly should we then forget that death or time had ever stepped between us.”

  “Delusion! mere delusion of the brain, from heated blood, like to that which arises from the fumes of wine. It is not my wish to tempt thee;—to restore to thee thy dead; else wouldst thou soon feel that I have spoken truth.”

  “How! restore her to me,” exclaimed Walter casting himself at the sorcerer’s feet. “Oh! if thou art indeed able to effect that, grant it to my earnest supplication; if one throb of human feeling vibrates in thy bosom, let my tears prevail with thee: restore to me my beloved; so shalt thou hereafter bless the deed, and see that it was a good work.”

  “A good work! a blessed deed!”—returned the sorcerer with a smile of scorn; “for me there exists nor good nor evil; since my will is always the same. Ye alone know evil, who will that which ye would not. It is indeed in my power to restore her to thee: yet, bethink thee well, whether it will prove thy weal. Consider too, how deep the abyss between life and death; across this, my power can build a bridge, but it can never fill up the frightful chasm.”

  Walter would have spoken, and have sought to prevail on this powerful being by fresh entreaties, but the latter prevented him, saying: “Peace! bethink thee well! and return hither to me tomorrow at midnight. Yet once more do I warn thee, ‘Wake not the dead.’ ”