THE APPARITION IN THE CHURCH.—WILL STEPHENS’ SWOON.—THE MORNING.
For some minutes, Will Stephens continued to gaze in the empty coffin,
as if there was something peculiarly fascinating in it, and most
attractive, and yet nothing was in it, no vestige even of the vestments
of the dead. If Clara Crofton had herself risen, and left the vault, it
was quite clear she had taken with her the apparel of the grave.
Will had thought that if he found the coffin empty, all his fears would
vanish, and that he should be able to come at once to the conclusion,
that she had become the prey of resurrectionists. But new ideas, as he
gazed at that abandoned receptacle of the dead, began to creep across
him.
“I—I—don’t know,” he muttered, “but she may in a ghost-like kind of way
be going about. I don’t know whether ghosts is corpses or not. I-I wish
I was out of this.”
The idea of spreading the sawdust in the vault now completely left him;
all he thought of was to get away, and the dread that Clara Crofton
was, perhaps, hiding somewhere, and might come suddenly out upon him
with a yell, got so firm a hold of him, that several times he thought
he should faint with excess of terror.
“That would be too horrible,” he said, “I am sure I should go
mad—mad—mad.”
He retreated backward to the stairs, for the coffin, empty though it
was, held his gaze with a strange kind of fascinating power. He thought
that if he turned round something would be sure to lay hold of him. It
was a most horrifying and distressing idea that, and yet he could not
conquer it.
Of course, he must turn round, it would be an awkward thing to attempt
ascending the staircase short as it was, backward, so he felt the
necessity of turning his back upon the vault.
“I—I will do so,” he thought, “and then make such a rush up the steps,
that I shall be in the church in a moment, I—I can surely do that,
and—and after all it’s nothing really to be afraid of—it’s only a
matter of imagination, after all! oh, yes, that’s all, I—I will do
that.”
He put this notable scheme into execution by turning suddenly round and
making a dash at the stairs, but as people generally do things badly
when they do them in a hurry, he stumbled when about half-way and felt
himself at the mercy of the whole of the supernatural world.
“Have mercy on me,” he cried, “I am going. Have mercy on me.”
He had struck the lantern so hard against the stone stairs that he had
broken it into fragments, and now all was intense darkness around him.
He gave himself up for lost.
He lay, expecting each moment to feel some dead bony fingers clutching
him, and he only groaned, thinking that surely now his last hour was
come; and it is a wonder that his fancy, excited as it was, did not
conjure up to him the very effect he dreaded, but it did not do so,
strange to say, and he lay for full five minutes without anything
occurring to add to his terrors.
Then he began gradually to recover.
“If—if,” he gasped, “I could but reach the church, I—I think I should
be safe. Yes, I should surely be safe in the body of the church. Have
mercy on me, good ghosts; I never harmed any of you, I—I respect you
very much, indeed I do. Let me go, and—I’ll never say a light word of
any of you again, no, never, if I were to live for a thousand years.”
As he uttered these words, he crawled up the remaining stairs, and to
his great satisfaction, made his way fairly into the church.
But then a new surprise, if it was not exactly a new fright, perhaps it
was something of both, awaited him.
The curtain that had been, as he had observed when he was walking down
the aisle, closely drawn across the large south window was now drawn on
one side, so that a large portion of that window was exposed, and the
north wind having chased away by this time entirely the damp clouds,
the moon was sailing in a cloudless sky, and sending into the old
church a glorious flood of light.
“What a change,” said Will Stephens.
It was indeed a change; the church was as light as day, save in some
places where shadows fell, and they, in contrast to the silvery
lightness of the moonbeams, were of a jetty blackness.
But still, let the moon shine ever so brightly, there is not that
distinctness and freshness of outline produced as in the direct
daylight. A strange kind of hazy vapour seems to float between the eye
and all objects—an indistinctness and mysteriousness of aspect, which
belongs not to the sun’s unreflected rays. Thus it was, that although
the church was illuminated by the moon, it had a singular aspect, and
would scarcely have been recognised by any one who had only seen it by
the mild searching light of day.
But of course Will Stephens the sexton knew it well, and as he wiped
the perspiration from his face, he said,—
“What a relief to get out of that vault, and find now that the night
has turned out so fair and beautiful. I—I begin to think I have
frightened myself more than I need have done—but it was that coffin-lid
that did the business; I wasn’t my own man after that. But now that I
have got out of the vault, I feel quite different—oh, quite another
thing.”
Suddenly, then, it occurred to him, that the curtain had been close
on the window, when he came into the church, and following upon that
thought came another, namely, that it could not very well remove itself
from before the casement, and that consequently some hands, mortal or
ghostly, must have done that part of the business.
Here there was ample food again for all his fears, and Will Stephens
almost on the instant relapsed into his former trembling and nerveless
state.
“What shall I do?” he said; “it ain’t all over yet. What will become of
me? There’s something horrid going to happen, I feel certain, and that
curtain has only been drawn aside to let the moonlight come in for me
to see it.”
With a painful expectation of his eyes being blasted by some horrible
sight, he glared round him, but he saw nothing, although the dense
little mass of pews before him might have hidden many a horror.
His next movement was to turn his eyes to the gallery, and all round it
he carried them until he came to the window again, but he saw nothing.
“Who knows,” he muttered, “who knows after all, but that the wind, in
some odd sort of way, may have blown the curtain on one side. I—I wish
I had the courage to go up to the gallery, and see, but I—I don’t think
I should like to do that.”
He hesitated. He knew that it would sound well on the morrow for him to
be able to say that he went up, and yet it was rather a fearful thing.
“A—hem!” he said at length, “is any one here?”
As he made this inquiry, he took care to keep himself ready to make a
dart out at the door into the churchyard, but as there was no response
to it, he was a little encouraged. The gallery staircase was close to
where he stood, and after the not unnatural hesitation of a few moments
more, he approached them, and began slowly to ascend.
Nothing interrupted him, all was profoundly still, and at length he
did reach the south window, and he found that the curtain was most
deliberately drawn on one side, and that the window was fast, so that
no vagary of the wind could have accomplished the purpose.
“Now I’ll go—I’ll go at once,” he said, “I can’t stand this any longer!
I’ll go and alarm the village—I’ll—I’ll make a disturbance of some
sort.”
“Awake!” said a deep, hollow voice.
Will sunk upon his knees with a groan, and mechanically his eyes
wandered to the direction from whence the sound came, and he saw in a
pew just beneath him, and on which the moonlight now fell brightly, a
human form.
It was lying in a strange huddled up position in the pew, and a glance
showed the experienced eyes of the sexton that it was arrayed in the
vestments of the dead.
He tried to speak—he tried to scream—he tried to pray, but all was in
vain. Intense terror froze up every faculty of his body, and he could
only kneel there with his face resting upon the front of the gallery,
and glare with aching eyes, that would not close for a moment, upon the
scene below.
“Awake!” said a deep, strange voice again, “awake.”
It was quite clear that that voice did not come from the figure in the
pew, but from some one close at hand. The sexton soon saw another form.
In the adjoining pew, standing upright as a statue, with one hand
pointing upwards to the window, where came in the moonlight, was a tall
figure, enveloped in a cloak. It was from the lips of that figure, that
the sound came, so deeply, and so solemnly.
“Sister,” it said, “be one of us—let the cold chaste moonbeams endow
thee with your new, and strange, and horrible existence. Be one of us.
Be one of us! Hours must yet elapse, ere the faint flash of morning
will kill the moonbeams. There is time, sister. Awake, be one of us.”
There was a passing cloud that swept for an instant over the face of
the moon obscuring its radiance, and the figure let its arm fall to its
side. But when the silvery beams streamed into the church, it again
pointed to the window.
“’Tis done. She moves,” he said. “I have fulfilled my mission. Ha! ha!
ha!”
The laugh was so terrific and unmirthful that it froze the very blood
in the veins of Will, and he thought he was surely at that moment going
mad.
But still he did not close his eyes, still he moved not from the
position which he had first assumed when the horrible noise met his
ears.
“’Tis done,” said the figure, and the arm that had been outstretched
was let fall to his side.
Will Stephens looked in the pew, where he had seen what appeared to
be a corpse. It had altered its position. He saw it move and waive
its arms about strangely and deep sighs came from its lips. It was a
dreadful sight to see, but at length it rose up in the grave clothes,
and moved to the door of the pew.
[Illustration: Will Stephens watches the resuscitated corpse.]
The figure in the adjoining pew opened the door and stood on one side,
and the revivified corpse passed out.
Slowly and solemnly it passed down the aisle. It reached the door at
which Will Stephens had entered, and then it passed away from his
sight. The tall figure followed closely, and Will Stephens was alone in
the church.
What could he do? How could he give a sufficient alarm? Would the two
horrible personages return or not? Alas! poor Will Stephens, never was
an unhappy mortal sexton in such frightful tribulation before. He knelt
and shook like an aspen. At length a lucky thought entered his head.
“The bell. The bell,” he cried, all at once finding his voice. “To the
bell.”
He sprung to his feet, for what he was now about to do, did not involve
the necessity of going down again into the body of the church. There
was a narrow staircase at the corner of the gallery, leading to the
belfry. It was up that staircase that Will now struggled and tore.