 |
Best known for his wit-filled compilation of barbed satire "The Devil's Dictionary", Bierce had an illustrious career as a newspaper columnist and editor, as well as an author of Civil War tales** and tall-tales of the West. Our interest here in BossWolf's Den is with his penchant for the creation of some of the world's best horror fiction as displayed in his macabre collection of short stories "Can Such Things Be?"
Bierce often wrote of the bizarre and unexplained events in life and death
. Many of his tales described mysterious vanishings and disappearances***, invisible creatures, ghostly spirits and other affectations that tightrope walk on the fine line that divides our lives from "the realm of the unreal!" Following are excerpts from Bierce's chilling story - "The Damned Thing". Hopefully it will encourage my
guests to read more of this too often overlooked genius' works!.....
THE DAMNED THING
by Ambrose Bierce
....I advanced to Morgan's side, cocking my piece as I
moved.
"The bushes were now quiet and the sounds had ceased,
but Morgan was as attentive to the place as before."
"`What is it? What the devil is it?' I asked.
"`That Damned Thing!' he replied, without turning his
head. His voice was husky and unnatural. He trembled
visibly.
"I was about to speak further, when I observed the wild
oats near the place of the disturbance moving in the most
inexplicable way. I can hardly describe it. It seemed as
if stirred by a streak of wind, which not only bent it,
but pressed it down - crushed it so that it did not rise;
and this movement was slowly prolonging itself directly
toward us.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
"So now the apparently causeless movement of the herbage
and the slow, undeviating approach of the line of
disturbance were distinctly disquieting. My companion
appeared actually frightened, and I could hardly credit my
senses when I saw him suddenly throw his gun to his
shoulder and fire both barrels at the agitated grain! Before
the smoke of the discharge had cleared away I heard a loud
savage cry - a scream like that of a wild animal - and
flinging his gun upon the gound Morgan sprang away and ran
swiftly from the spot. At the same instant I was thrown
violently to the ground by the impact of something unseen
in the smoke - some soft, heavy substance that seemed thrown
against me with great force.
"Before I could get upon my feet and recover my gun, which
seemed to have been struck from my hands, I heard Morgan
crying out as if in mortal agony, and mingling with his cries
were such hoarse, savage sounds as one hears from fighting
dogs. Inexpressibly terrified, I struggled to my feet and
looked in the direction of Morgan's retreat; and may Heaven
in mercy spare me from another sight like that! At a distance
of less that thirty yards was my friend, down on one knee, his
head thrown back at a frightful angle, hatless, his long hair
in disorder and his whole body in violent movement from side
to side, backward and forward. His right arm was lifted and
seemed to lack the hand - at least, I could see none. The
other arm was invisible. At times, as my memory now reports
this extraordinary scene, I could barely discern but a part
of his body; it was as if he had been partly blotted out -
I cannot otherwise express it - then a shifting of his
position would bring it all into view again.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
"For a moment only I stood irresolute, throwing down my gun
I ran forward to my friend's assistance. I had a vague belief
that he was suffering from a fit, or some form of convulsion.
Before I could reach his side he was down and quiet. All sounds
had ceased, but with a feeling of such terror as even these
awful events had not inspired I now saw again the mysterious
movement of the wild oats, prolonging itself from the trampled
area about the prostrate man toward the edge of a wood. It was
only when I had reached the wood that I was able to withdraw
my eyes and look at my companion. He was dead."
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The coroner rose from his feet and stood beside the dead man.
Lifting an edge of the sheet he pulled it away, exposing the
entire body, altogether naked and showing in the candle-light
a claylike yellow. It had, however, broad maculations of bluish
black, obviously caused by extravasated blood from contusions.
The chest and sides looked as if they had been beaten with a
bludgeon. There were dreadful lacerations; the skin was torn in
strips and shreds.
The coroner moved round to the end of the table and undid a
silk handkerchief which had been passed under the chin and
knotted on the top of the head. when the handkerchief was drawn
away it exposed what had been the throat.......
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
"I have the solution of the mystery; it came to me last night-
suddenly, as if by revelation. How simple - how terribly simple!
"There are sounds that we can not hear. At either end of scale
are notes that stir no chord of that imperfect instrument, the
human ear. They are too high or too grave. I have observed a
flock of blackbirds occupying an entire tree-top - the tops of
several trees - and all in full song. Suddenly - in a moment -
at absolutely the same instant - all spring into the air and
fly away. How? They could not all see one another - whole
tree-tops intervened. At no point could a leader have been
visible to all. There must have been a signal of warning or
command, high and shrill above the din, but by me unheard. I
have observed, too, the same simultaneous flight when all were
silent, among not only blackbirds, but other birds - quail, for
example, widely separated by bushes - even on opposite sides of
a hill.
"It is known to seamen that a school of whales basking or
sporting on the surface of the ocean, miles apart, with the
convexity of the earth between, will sometimes dive at the same
instant - all gone out of sight in a moment. The signal has been
sounded - too grave for the ear of the sailor at the masthead
and his comrades on the deck - who nevertheless feel its
vibrations in the ship as the stones of a cathedral are stirred
by the bass of the organ.
"As with sounds, so with colors. At each end of the solar
spectrum the chemist can detect the presence of what are known
as 'actinic' rays. They represent colors - integral colors in
the composition of light - which we are unable to discern. The
human eye is an imperfect instrument; its range is but a few
octaves of the real 'chromatic scale.' I am not mad; there are
colors that we can not see."
"And, God help me! THE DAMNED THING
is of such a color!"
* * *
* No date of death is ever listed for Ambrose Bierce..for as he wrote about in so many of his short stories...he vanished from this earth. His disappearance in Mexico during the Revolution has never been solved. No trace of him was ever found. His demise is expected to have occured sometime in 1913 or 1914 - if it happened at all! Bierce is the subject of a recent motion picture - "Old Gringo" - for what that's worth!
** A Bierce Civil War short story was made into a short film in France in 1962. This award winning bit of cinema was shown in The United States as an episode of 'The Twilight Zone'.
(.midi 4k)
Check out "An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge"!*** Reference "At Old Man Eckert's", "The Difficulty of Crossing a Field", "An Unfinished Race", "Charles Ashmore's Trail" and other short stories involving vanishings...was Bierce foretelling the circumstances of his own ultimate fate? And was that he we all saw departing from the visiting Mother-Ship in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind"? An interesting premise to be sure! What a brilliant mind through which aliens could study our civilization - witness "The Devil's Dictionary"!
|
OTHER BIERCE LINKS ON THE WEB: