The body lay near the window, where the beast had left it when frightened away by the flash and report of the rifle. The clothing was deranged, the long hair in disorder, the limbs lay anyhow. From the throat, dreadfully lacerated, had issued a pool of blood not yet entirely coagulated. The ribbon with which he had bound the wrists was broken; the hands were tightly clenched. Between the teeth was a fragment of the animal’s ear.
John Bartine’s Watch
A Story by a Physician
Ambrose Bierce
“The exact time? Good God! My friend, why do you insist? One would think – but what does it matter; it is easily bedtime – isn’t that near enough? But, here, if you must set your watch, take mine and see for yourself.”
With that he detached his watch – a tremendously heavy, old-fashioned one – from the chain, and handed it to me; then turned away, and walking across the room to a shelf of books, began an examination of their backs. His agitation and evident distress surprised me; they appeared reasonless. Having set my watch by his, I stepped over to where he stood and said, “Thank you.”
As he took his timepiece and reattached it to the guard I observed that his hands were unsteady. With a tact upon which I greatly prided myself, I sauntered carelessly to the sideboard and took some brandy and water; then, begging his pardon for my thoughtlessness, asked him to have some and went back to my seat by the fire, leaving him to help himself, as was our custom. He did so and presently joined me at the hearth, as tranquil as ever.
This odd little incident occurred in my apartment, where John Bartine was passing an evening. We had dined together at the club, had come home in a cab and – in short, everything had been done in the most prosaic way; and why John Bartine should break in upon the natural and established order of things to make himself spectacular with a display of emotion, apparently for his own entertainment, I could nowise understand. The more I thought of it, while his brilliant conversational gifts were commending themselves to my inattention, the more curious I grew, and of course had no difficulty in persuading myself that my curiosity was friendly solicitude. That is the disguise that curiosity usually assumes to evade resentment. So I ruined one of the finest sentences of his disregarded monologue by cutting it short without ceremony.
“John Bartine,” I said, “you must try to forgive me if I am wrong, but with the light that I have at present I cannot concede your right to go all to pieces when asked the time o’ night. I cannot admit that it is proper to experience a mysterious reluctance to look your own watch in the face and to cherish in my presence, without explanation, painful emotions which are denied to me, and which are none of my business.”
To this ridiculous speech Bartine made no immediate reply, but sat looking gravely into the fire. Fearing that I had offended I was about to apologize and beg him to think no more about the matter, when looking me calmly in the eyes he said:
“My dear fellow, the levity of your manner does not at all disguise the hideous impudence of your demand; but happily I had already decided to tell you what you wish to know, and no manifestation of your unworthiness to hear it shall alter my decision. Be good enough to give me your attention and you shall hear all about the matter.
“This watch,” he said, “had been in my family for three generations before it fell to me. Its original owner, for whom it was made, was my great-grandfather, Bramwell Olcott Bartine, a wealthy planter of Colonial Virginia, and as stanch a Tory as ever lay awake nights contriving new kinds of maledictions for the head of Mr. Washington, and new methods of aiding and abetting good King George. One day this worthy gentleman had the deep misfortune to perform for his cause a service of capital importance which was not recognized as legitimate by those who suffered its disadvantages. It does not matter what it was, but among its minor consequences was my excellent ancestor’s arrest one night in his own house by a party of Mr. Washington’s rebels. He was permitted to say farewell to his weeping family, and was then marched away into the darkness which swallowed him up forever. Not the slenderest clew to his fate was ever found. After the war the most diligent inquiry and the offer of large rewards failed to turn up any of his captors or any fact concerning his disappearance. He had disappeared, and that was all.”
Something in Bartine’s manner that was not in his words – I hardly knew what it was – prompted me to ask:
“What is your view of the matter – of the justice of it?”
“My view of it,” he flamed out, bringing his clenched hand down upon the table as if he had been in a public house dicing with blackguards –”my view of it is that it was a characteristically dastardly assassination by that damned traitor, Washington, and his ragamuffin rebels!”
For some minutes nothing was said: Bartine was recovering his temper, and I waited. Then I said:
“Was that all?”
“No – there was something else. A few weeks after my great-grandfather’s arrest his watch was found lying on the porch at the front door of his dwelling. It was wrapped in a sheet of letter paper bearing the name of Rupert Bartine, his only son, my grandfather. I am wearing that watch.”
Bartine paused. His usually restless black eyes were staring fixedly into the grate, a point of red light in each, reflected from the glowing coals. He seemed to have forgotten me. A sudden threshing of the branches of a tree outside one of the windows, and almost at the same instant a rattle of rain against the glass, recalled him to a sense of his surroundings. A storm had risen, heralded by a single gust of wind, and in a few moments the steady plash of the water on the pavement was distinctly heard. I hardly know why I relate this incident; it seemed somehow to have a certain significance and relevancy which I am unable now to discern. It at least added an element of seriousness, almost solemnity. Bartine resumed:
“I have a singular feeling toward this watch – a kind of affection for it; I like to have it about me, though partly from its weight, and partly for a reason I shall now explain, I seldom carry it. The reason is this: Every evening when I have it with me I feel an unaccountable desire to open and consult it, even if I can think of no reason for wishing to know the time. But if I yield to it, the moment my eyes rest upon the dial I am filled with a mysterious apprehension – a sense of imminent calamity. And this is the more insupportable the nearer it is to eleven o’clock – by this watch, no matter what the actual hour may be. After the hands have registered eleven the desire to look is gone; I am entirely indifferent. Then I can consult the thing as often as I like, with no more emotion than you feel in looking at your own. Naturally I have trained myself not to look at that watch in the evening before eleven; nothing could induce me. Your insistence this evening upset me a trifle. I felt very much as I suppose an opium-eater might feel if his yearning for his special and particular kind of hell were re-enforced by opportunity and advice.
“Now that is my story, and I have told it in the interest of your trumpery science; but if on any evening hereafter you observe me wearing this damnable watch, and you have the thoughtfulness to ask me the hour, I shall beg leave to put you to the inconvenience of being knocked down.”
His humor did not amuse me. I could see that in relating his delusion he was again somewhat disturbed. His concluding smile was positively ghastly, and his eyes had resumed something more than their old restlessness; they shifted hither and thither about the room with apparent aimlessness and I fancied had taken on a wild expression, such as is sometimes observed in cases of dementia. Perhaps this was my own imagination, but at any rate I was now persuaded that my friend was afflicted with a most singular and interesting monomania. Without, I trust, any abatement of my affectionate solicitude for him as a friend, I began to regard him as a patient, rich in possibilities of profitable study. Why not? Had he not described his delusion in the interest of science? Ah, poor fellow, he was doing more for science than he knew: not only his story but himself was in evidence. I should cure him if I could, of
course, but first I should make a little experiment in psychology – nay, the experiment itself might be a step in his restoration.
“That is very frank and friendly of you, Bartine,” I said cordially, “and I’m rather proud of your confidence. It is all very odd, certainly. Do you mind showing me the watch?”
He detached it from his waistcoat, chain and all, and passed it to me without a word. The case was of gold, very thick and strong, and singularly engraved. After closely examining the dial and observing that it was nearly twelve o’clock, I opened it at the back and was interested to observe an inner case of ivory, upon which was painted a miniature portrait in that exquisite and delicate manner which was in vogue during the eighteenth century.
“Why, bless my soul!” I exclaimed, feeling a sharp artistic delight – “how under the sun did you get that done? I thought miniature painting on ivory was a lost art.”
“That,” he replied, gravely smiling, “is not I; it is my excellent great-grandfather, the late Bramwell Olcott Bartine, Esquire, of Virginia. He was younger then than later – about my age, in fact. It is said to resemble me; do you think so?”
“Resemble you? I should say so! Barring the costume, which I supposed you to have assumed out of compliment to the art – or for vraisemblance, so to say – and the no mustache, that portrait is you in every feature, line, and expression.”
No more was said at that time. Bartine took a book from the table and began reading. I heard outside the incessant plash of the rain in the street. There were occasional hurried footfalls on the sidewalks; and once a slower, heavier tread seemed to cease at my door – a policeman, I thought, seeking shelter in the doorway. The boughs of the trees tapped significantly on the window panes, as if asking for admittance. I remember it all through these years and years of a wiser, graver life.
Seeing myself unobserved, I took the old-fashioned key that dangled from the chain and quickly turned back the hands of the watch a full hour; then, closing the case, I handed Bartine his property and saw him replace it on his person.
“I think you said,” I began, with assumed carelessness, “that after eleven the sight of the dial no longer affects you. As it is now nearly twelve”– looking at my own timepiece – “perhaps, if you don’t resent my pursuit of proof, you will look at it now.”
He smiled good-humoredly, pulled out the watch again, opened it, and instantly sprang to his feet with a cry that Heaven has not had the mercy to permit me to forget! His eyes, their blackness strikingly intensified by the pallor of his face, were fixed upon the watch, which he clutched in both hands. For some time he remained in that attitude without uttering another sound; then, in a voice that I should not have recognized as his, he said:
“Damn you! It is two minutes to eleven!”
I was not unprepared for some such outbreak, and without rising replied, calmly enough:
“I beg your pardon; I must have misread your watch in setting my own by it.”
He shut the case with a sharp snap and put the watch in his pocket. He looked at me and made an attempt to smile, but his lower lip quivered and he seemed unable to close his mouth. His hands, also, were shaking, and he thrust them, clenched, into the pockets of his sack-coat. The courageous spirit was manifestly endeavoring to subdue the coward body. The effort was too great; he began to sway from side to side, as from vertigo, and before I could spring from my chair to support him his knees gave way and he pitched awkwardly forward and fell upon his face. I sprang to assist him to rise; but when John Bartine rises we shall all rise.
The post-mortem examination disclosed nothing; every organ was normal and sound. But when the body had been prepared for burial a faint dark circle was seen to have developed around the neck; at least I was so assured by several persons who said they saw it, but of my own knowledge I cannot say if that was true.
Nor can I set limitations to the law of heredity. I do not know that in the spiritual world a sentiment or emotion may not survive the heart that held it, and seek expression in a kindred life, ages removed. Surely, if I were to guess at the fate of Bramwell Olcott Bartine, I should guess that he was hanged at eleven o’clock in the evening, and that he had been allowed several hours in which to prepare for the change.
As to John Bartine, my friend, my patient for five minutes, and – Heaven forgive me! – my victim for eternity, there is no more to say. He is buried, and his watch with him – I saw to that. May God rest his soul in Paradise, and the soul of his Virginian ancestor, if, indeed, they are two souls.
Bones of the Dead
Daniele Bonfanti
“Are they ghosts, Mummy?”
A warm laughter. “No, sweetie,” she says, chewing with a hand raised to cover her mouth. “Wow, these bones of the dead taste so good!”
The voice of another child – slightly older, female – agrees with enthusiasm while spraying crumbles all around, “They’re awesome, Mom!”
The woman swallows. “Thank you, darling.”
The younger child, a little boy maybe four years old, looks with fascination at the dishful of vertebrae-shaped cookies in his small hands; he holds it with utter care. “But, Mummy, you say they’re dead and they come back at night and eat the cookies…”
The woman lays a gentle hand on his wild shock of hair, “There is no such thing as ghosts, sweetie. Come on, now be a good boy and set the dish on the table there, just by the candle so they’ll find it. They get pretty hungry, you know?”
The child slowly, gingerly follows her instructions, placing the dish at the center of the walnut table, near a lit candle for the dead.
“But, I don’t understand, Mummy. If they aren’t ghosts, then…”
“Let’s say they’re…angels, okay?”
A snort from the large fireplace at the end of the long terracotta-tiled kitchen, where an older woman, her hair thick and grey, is sitting on a heavy, carved rocking chair with her eyes on a fat paperback. The flame near her feet is scorching blackened chunks of cherrywood, its sweet scent mixing in the air thick with fresh baking, the lingering aroma of pizzoccheri – the few leftovers still encrust the dishes in the sink – and old furniture. Her eyes do not shift from the pages as everybody’s attention turns to her. Her Italian is much more accented, singsongy with the quick consonants and heavy vowels of the Bergamasque Alps, “They’re not angels. They’re souls.”
The little girl crosses her arms and protests with a reproachful tone, “Souls don’t eat cookies, Granny.”
It is her mother who answers, “They do this night.”
“How can they?” the children respond in chorus.
The door slams in the small hall nearby, and a serpent of cold, damp air slithers in. They turn to the kitchen doorway, filled a second later by a large figure, dark and hooded, gleaming with droplets of water.
“Oh, you’re finally back,” the woman says.
He throws back his hood revealing a bearded, angular face; he rubs his hands and breathes on them, while stomping his feet on the ground. “Brrr. Pretty cold out there. Sorry it took a while: the Roaming Chicken was missing again, but I found her. Did you already steal all of tomorrow’s bones of the dead?”
“Saved a few for you to steal, and some survived for the dead, too. By the way, you’re just in time, Berto. Tell these little beasts how come souls eat cookies this night.” She looks at the kids. “Daddy knows these things, you know?”
The man pulls off his jacket and crouches down to his children’s level, then spreads his arms in a gesture of invitation. They approach him and he puts a hand on each one’s shoulder, gathering them in a conspiratorial circle. The little boy complains, “Granny Teresa says they’re souls, but everybody knows: Souls can’t eat cookies.”
Berto’s voice is plot-like too, “Oh, they can this night. Because this night is special. And these,” he points at the dish on the table, “these are very spec
ial cookies.” Berto takes a theatrical pause, letting them observe the unmoving off-white biscuits. “The ones that come back this night, they’re the souls of family ancestors. And this is the only night when they become partly substantial –”
“What’s a parlysubashal?” the boy asks.
“Partly substantial. It means they sort of have a body, but not really…”, he pinches his son’s belly, getting an amused squeal, “fleshy like ours. So, as they suddenly have a body, they suddenly feel hungry as well, ’cause they never eat where they are. They can stay until sunrise and eat the food of the living. And you know what’s the one thing to eat they miss the most?”
“Cookies!”
“Exactly, and now that I grabbed you…”, he says, and at the same time he stands up, holding the two of them at the waist with one arm each, lifting them up like they were sacks of potatoes. “Bedtime!”
“Nooo!” The kids wriggle and twist, and he pretends to be knocked down as they break free. He springs up and chases them in a carousel around the table, the kids laughing uncontrollably. After the third round, Berto drops on a faded sofa, pretending to be out of breath, and addresses his wife, “I’m too old for this, Angela.”
The children keep running and suddenly they are in a dogfight, their arms spread and machine-gun bursts erupting from their mouths, before becoming Formula One cars with crazily jerking steering wheels, dangerously skirting their grandmother’s rocking chair – her stance and expression do not stir, she just raises her eyes now and again, her eyebrows unmoving, and a hint of a smile colors her face. Their mother laughs while scraping the leftovers from the dishes into the chicken bin and then placing them into the dishwasher.
Supernatural Horror Short Stories Page 3
