THE ALARM.—THE PISTOL SHOT.—THE PURSUIT AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.
Lights flashed about the building, and various room doors opened;
voices called one to the other. There was an universal stir and
commotion among the inhabitants.
“Did you hear a scream, Harry?” asked a young man, half-dressed, as he
walked into the chamber of another about his own age.
“I did—where was it?”
“God knows. I dressed myself directly.”
“All is still now.”
“Yes; but unless I was dreaming there was a scream.”
“We could not both dream there was. Where did you think it came from?”
“It burst so suddenly upon my ears that I cannot say.”
There was a tap now at the door of the room where these young men were,
and a female voice said,—
“For God’s sake, get up!”
“We are up,” said both the young men, appearing.
“Did you hear anything?”
“Yes, a scream.”
“Oh, search the house—search the house; where did it come from—can you
tell?”
“Indeed we cannot, mother.”
Another person now joined the party. He was a man of middle age, and,
as he came up to them, he said,—
“Good God! what is the matter?”
Scarcely had the words passed his lips, than such a rapid succession
of shrieks came upon their ears, that they felt absolutely stunned by
them. The elderly lady, whom one of the young men had called mother,
fainted, and would have fallen to the floor of the corridor in which
they all stood, had she not been promptly supported by the last comer,
who himself staggered, as those piercing cries came upon the night
air. He, however, was the first to recover, for the young men seemed
paralysed.
“Henry,” he cried, “for God’s sake support your mother. Can you doubt
that these cries come from Flora’s room?”
The young man mechanically supported his mother, and then the man
who had just spoken darted back to his own bed-room, from whence he
returned in a moment with a pair of pistols, and shouting,—
“Follow me, who can!” he bounded across the corridor in the direction
of the antique apartment, from whence the cries proceeded, but which
were now hushed.
That house was built for strength, and the doors were all of oak, and
of considerable thickness. Unhappily, they had fastenings within, so
that when the man reached the chamber of her who so much required help,
he was helpless, for the door was fast.
“Flora! Flora!” he cried; “Flora, speak!”
All was still.
“Good God!” he added; “we must force the door.”
“I hear a strange noise within,” said the young man, who trembled
violently.
“And so do I. What does it sound like?”
“I scarcely know; but it nearest resembles some animal eating, or
sucking some liquid.”
“What on earth can it be? Have you no weapon that will force the door?
I shall go mad if I am kept here.”
“I have,” said the young man. “Wait here a moment.”
He ran down the staircase, and presently returned with a small, but
powerful, iron crow-bar.
“This will do,” he said.
“It will, it will.—Give it to me.”
“Has she not spoken?”
“Not a word. My mind misgives me that something very dreadful must have
happened to her.”
“And that odd noise!”
“Still goes on. Somehow, it curdles the very blood in my veins to hear
it.”
The man took the crow-bar, and with some difficulty succeeded in
introducing it between the door and the side of the wall—still it
required great strength to move it, but it did move, with a harsh,
crackling sound.
“Push it!” cried he who was using the bar, “push the door at the same
time.”
The younger man did so. For a few moments the massive door resisted.
Then, suddenly, something gave way with a loud snap—it was a part of
the lock,—and the door at once swung wide open.
How true it is that we measure time by the events which happen within a
given space of it, rather than by its actual duration.
To those who were engaged in forcing open the door of the antique
chamber, where slept the young girl whom they named Flora, each moment
was swelled into an hour of agony; but, in reality, from the first
moment of the alarm to that when the loud cracking noise heralded the
destruction of the fastenings of the door, there had elapsed but very
few minutes indeed.
“It opens—it opens,” cried the young man.
“Another moment,” said the stranger, as he still plied the
crowbar—“another moment, and we shall have free ingress to the chamber.
Be patient.”
This stranger’s name was Marchdale; and even as he spoke, he succeeded
in throwing the massive door wide open, and clearing the passage to the
chamber.
To rush in with a light in his hand was the work of a moment to the
young man named Henry; but the very rapid progress he made into the
apartment prevented him from observing accurately what it contained,
for the wind that came in from the open window caught the flame of the
candle, and although it did not actually extinguish it, it blew it so
much on one side, that it was comparatively useless as a light.
“Flora—Flora!” he cried.
Then with a sudden bound something dashed from off the bed. The
concussion against him was so sudden and so utterly unexpected, as well
as so tremendously violent, that he was thrown down, and, in his fall,
the light was fairly extinguished.
All was darkness, save a dull, reddish kind of light that now and then,
from the nearly consumed mill in the immediate vicinity, came into the
room. But by that light, dim, uncertain, and flickering as it was, some
one was seen to make for the window.
Henry, although nearly stunned by his fall, saw a figure, gigantic in
height, which nearly reached from the floor to the ceiling. The other
young man, George, saw it, and Mr. Marchdale likewise saw it, as did
the lady who had spoken to the two young men in the corridor when first
the screams of the young girl awakened alarm in the breasts of all the
inhabitants of that house.
The figure was about to pass out at the window which led to a kind of
balcony, from whence there was an easy descent to a garden.
Before it passed out they each and all caught a glance of the
side-face, and they saw that the lower part of it and the lips were
dabbled in blood. They saw, too, one of those fearful-looking, shining,
metallic eyes which presented so terrible an appearance of unearthly
ferocity.
No wonder that for a moment a panic seized them all, which paralysed
any exertions they might otherwise have made to detain that hideous
form.
But Mr. Marchdale was a man of mature years; he had seen much of life,
both in this and in foreign lands; and he, although astonished to the
extent of being frightened, was much more likely to recover sooner
than his younger companions, which, indeed, he did, and acted promptly
enough.
“Don’t rise, Henry,” he cried. “Lie still.”
Almost at the moment he uttered these words, he fired at the figure,
which then occupied the window, as if it were a gigantic figure set in
a frame.
The report was tremendous in that chamber, for the pistol was no toy
weapon, but one made for actual service, and of sufficient length and
bore of barrel to carry destruction along with the bullets that came
from it.
“If that has missed its aim,” said Mr. Marchdale, “I’ll never pull a
trigger again.”
As he spoke he dashed forward, and made a clutch at the figure he felt
convinced he had shot.
The tall form turned upon him, and when he got a full view of the face,
which he did at that moment, from the opportune circumstance of the
lady returning at the instant with a light she had been to her own
chamber to procure, even he, Marchdale, with all his courage, and that
was great, and all his nervous energy, recoiled a step or two, and
uttered the exclamation of, “Great God!”
That face was one never to be forgotten. It was hideously flushed with
colour—the colour of fresh blood; the eyes had a savage and remarkable
lustre; whereas, before, they had looked like polished tin—they now
wore a ten times brighter aspect, and flashes of light seemed to dart
from them. The mouth was open, as if, from the natural formation of the
countenance, the lips receded much from the large canine looking teeth.
A strange howling noise came from the throat of this monstrous figure,
and it seemed upon the point of rushing upon Mr. Marchdale. Suddenly,
then, as if some impulse had seized upon it, it uttered a wild and
terrible shrieking kind of laugh; and then turning, dashed through the
window, and in one instant disappeared from before the eyes of those
who felt nearly annihilated by its fearful presence.
“God help us!” ejaculated Henry.
Mr. Marchdale drew a long breath, and then, giving a stamp on the
floor, as if to recover himself from the state of agitation into which
even he was thrown, he cried,—
“Be it what or who it may, I’ll follow it.”
“No—no—do not,” cried the lady.
“I must, I will. Let who will come with me—I follow that dreadful form.”
As he spoke, he took the road it took, and dashed through the window
into the balcony.
“And we, too, George,” exclaimed Henry; “we will follow Mr. Marchdale.
This dreadful affair concerns us more nearly than it does him.”
The lady who was the mother of these young men, and of the beautiful
girl who had been so awfully visited, screamed aloud, and implored
of them to stay. But the voice of Mr. Marchdale was heard exclaiming
aloud,—
“I see it—I see it; it makes for the wall.”
They hesitated no longer, but at once rushed into the balcony, and from
thence dropped into the garden.
The mother approached the bed-side of the insensible, perhaps the
murdered girl; she saw her, to all appearance, weltering in blood, and,
overcome by her emotions, she fainted on the floor of the room.
When the two young men reached the garden, they found it much lighter
than might have been fairly expected; for not only was the morning
rapidly approaching, but the mill was still burning, and those
mingled lights made almost every object plainly visible, except when
deep shadows were thrown from some gigantic trees that had stood for
centuries in that sweetly wooded spot. They heard the voice of Mr.
Marchdale, as he cried,—
“There—there—towards the wall. There—there—God! how it bounds along.”
The young men hastily dashed through a thicket in the direction from
whence his voice sounded, and then they found him looking wild and
terrified, and with something in his hand which looked like a portion
of clothing.
“Which way, which way?” they both cried in a breath.
He leant heavily on the arm of George, as he pointed along a vista of
trees, and said in a low voice,—
“God help us all. It is not human. Look there—look there—do you not see
it?”
They looked in the direction he indicated. At the end of this vista
was the wall of the garden. At that point it was full twelve feet in
height, and as they looked, they saw the hideous, monstrous form they
had traced from the chamber of their sister, making frantic efforts to
clear the obstacle.
Then they saw it bound from the ground to the top of the wall, which
it very nearly reached, and then each time it fell back again into the
garden with such a dull, heavy sound, that the earth seemed to shake
again with the concussion. They trembled—well indeed they might, and
for some minutes they watched the figure making its fruitless efforts
to leave the place.
“What—what is it?” whispered Henry, in hoarse accents. “God, what can
it possibly be?”
“I know not,” replied Mr. Marchdale. “I did seize it. It was cold and
clammy like a corpse. It cannot be human.”
“Not human?”
“Look at it now. It will surely escape now.”
“No, no—we will not be terrified thus—there is Heaven above us. Come
on, and, for dear Flora’s sake, let us make an effort yet to seize this
bold intruder.”
“Take this pistol,” said Marchdale. “It is the fellow of the one I
fired. Try its efficacy.”
“He will be gone,” exclaimed Henry, as at this moment, after many
repeated attempts and fearful falls, the figure reached the top of
the wall, and then hung by its long arms a moment or two, previous to
dragging itself completely up.
The idea of the appearance, be it what it might, entirely escaping,
seemed to nerve again Mr. Marchdale, and he, as well as the two young
men, ran forward towards the wall. They got so close to the figure
before it sprang down on the outer side of the wall, that to miss
killing it with the bullet from the pistol was a matter of utter
impossibility, unless wilfully.
Henry had the weapon, and he pointed it full at the tall form with a
steady aim. He pulled the trigger—the explosion followed, and that the
bullet did its office there could be no manner of doubt, for the figure
gave a howling shriek, and fell headlong from the wall on the outside.
“I have shot him,” cried Henry, “I have shot him.”