The Macabre Megapack: 25 Lost Tales from the Golden Age Read online

  Contents

  Dedication

  Copyright Information

  Introduction

  THE SILENT MAN, by Henry Fothergill Chorley

  THE STRANGE ORMONDS, by Leitch Ritchie

  THE MYSTERIOUS WEDDING: A DANISH STORY, by Heinrich Steffans

  THE BURIAL BY FIRE, by Louisa Medina Hamblin

  THE VAMPYRE, by Elizabeth Ellet

  THE SLEEPLESS WOMAN, by William Jerdan

  A PEEP AT DEATH, by Peter von Geist

  KILLCROP THE CHANGELING, by Richard Thompson

  CARL BLUVEN AND THE STRANGE MARINER, by Henry David Inglis

  THE PREDICTION, by George Henry Borrow

  THE STORY OF THE UNFINISHED PICTURE, by Charles Hooten

  EULE: THE EMPEROR’S DWARF, by John Rutter Chorley

  THE GREEN HUNTSMAN, by Joseph Holt Ingraham

  A REVELATION OF A PREVIOUS LIFE, by Nathaniel Parker Willis

  MOODS OF THE MIND: THE OLD PORTRAIT, by Emma Embury

  A NIGHT ON THE ENCHANTED MOUNTAIN, by Charles Fenno Hoffman

  THE LIVING APPARITION, by G.P.R. James

  THE THREE SOULS, by Alexander Chatrian and Emile Erckmann

  THE DEATH WATCH, by Luise Muhlback

  AN EVENING OF LUCY ASHTON’S, by Letitia Elizabeth Landon

  THE HAUNTED HOMESTEAD, by Henry William Herbert

  THE WITHERED MAN, by William Leete Stone

  LA MALROCHE, by Louisa Stuart Costello

  THE THREE VISITS, by Auguste Vitu

  LIEUTENANT CASTENAC, by Erckman-Chatrian

  TORTURE BY HOPE, by Villiers de L’isle-Adams

  THE BLACK CUPID, by Lafcadio Hearn

  THE BUNDLE OF LETTERS, by Moritz Jokai

  NISSA, by Albert Delpit

  THE DREAM, by John Galt

  Dedication

  This book is for Tara, Chloe and Ella.

  Copyright Information

  Copyright © 2012 by Duane Parsons.

  Published in paperback as The Silent Night: Lost Tales from the Golden Age of Macabre.

  Published by Wildside Press LLC.

  www.wildsidebooks.com

  Introduction

  No unseen hand guided me in the preparation of this small collection of stories, for the most part forgotten to literary history; although the spirits of the dead have made many a night full with their eerie tales, I was so shallow as to presume that anything they had to offer was a tale well-known to all, and long since deemed a classic; it was therefore rather a matter of good fortune’s favor that led me to the deserted and generally neglected section of a library cellar where I chanced upon a fine collection of literary annuals from the 1840s. I will be forthright is saying that the greater part of the stories contained therein were indeed justly forgotten, but my attention yet quickly centered on a piece by an author I had never heard of: Henry Fothergill Chorely. It was “The Silent Man.” I was much taken aback to find a story that might have been written by Poe or Hearn buried in such utter obscurity. Poe, in fact, I soon discovered, was an admirer of this now-unknown person and had once favorably reviewed his work. Why then was he so forgotten? The answer to that question was soon provided as a search of other stories by him revealed an author at times brilliant, at other times laughingly bad. He also wrote several novels and they too were of a decidedly uneven quality. Of these I will vouch only for “The Prodigy.”

  This led me not to any ready conclusion but rather to a still larger question: have we erred in considering the author as a hero of sorts? I recollected developing such sentiments regarding Ernest Hemingway during my youth, and expending unwarranted time in reading his complete works, many of which were not worthy of my time: “The Torrents of Spring,” “The Green Hills of Africa,” “Across the River and Into the Trees,” and so on. It had thus become evident to me quite early in life that it is a mistake to assume that everything by a Great Author is indeed great literature. Now I was led to a comparable but somewhat different conjecture, a sort of mirror reflection of the first, one might say: if it may said that not everything by a author deemed great is great, then might the reverse not also hold true, and lead us to let fall into obscurity exceptionally fine writing, simply because the author only rarely—perhaps even only once—touched true greatness? What would happen if I reconfigured my favorite genre of literature—the macabre tales of the early 19th century—in terms of the writing, and not the writer? Was this single masterful tale by an otherwise mediocre writer really all that unique? Macabre had been a thriving genre for more than forty years; most of it consisted of short stories, of which the bulk that survives in our esteem is assigned to a mere handful of authors. What else was there, other than the stories of Poe, Hawthorne and a few others? What writers did they know, work with, and often admire?

  I soon found myself poring through volume after volume of American and British literary journals of the period, and after two fruitful and fascinating years found I had amassed five full boxes of stories I felt worthy of being unearthed from this literary graveyard. The mass of material came to almost five hundred in number. It was indeed like robbing graves, to plunder these rich fields of forgotten genius. What follows is but a small selection of representative works, many by personal friends of Poe, and in a few cases by personal enemies. Some of the best pieces however were by authors for whom the tale included here was their only known foray into the macabre.

  There is therefore a great variety to this selection, and it may be that the variety of style and subject is perhaps at times overwhelming, and that a multi-volume work is more in order than that which follows. And perhaps this is so; but such a consideration is dependent on how well this preliminary piece of literary archeology—grave-robbing, if you must!—is received. I conclude by casting a nocturnal glance about me, sensing in the shrouded corners a multiplicity of persons—a gathering of souls long gone from this particular level of human reality—all of whom now turn to me as their last hope for rescue from literary oblivion. I am honored to be their representative, in both deed and sentiment. If ever I should betroth a ghost it would surely be the elegant Emma Embury; and as to my old friend Mr. Chorely, he is always welcome as a guest in my home. As for the rest, time and space demand that I must bestow on them a collective expression of gratitude for their posthumous participation in this small endeavour of mine. I will simply bid them all a brief rest from these labors; and beg the reader’s indulgence if I must speak for them all and say: enjoy these tales, and remember the hands that wrote them.

  —Duane Parsons

  THE SILENT MAN, by Henry Fothergill Chorley

  (1832)

  There are periods in every man’s life overcast with gloom and difficulty—when the day is full of trouble, and the dreams of the night of disquiet; and when the pilgrim is ready to lie down with his burden and die, because there is no hand to help him. Such a period in mine was comprised in about fifteen months of the years 1793 and 1794, which I spent in a large sea-port town in the north. I was then three and twenty; and the concurrence of many perplexing and calamitous events cast upon me on my entrance into life a load of care, from the pressure of which I then thought it impossible that I should ever rise.

  During the winter of 1793, I inhabited an ancient and deserted house in the quieter part of town; its extensive suites of dim and decaying rooms scantily furnished were not a residence calculated to restore a cheerful tone to my spirits. The property had been suffered to fall to ruin; and the conclusio
n of a long protracted law-suit was alone awaited, to level the stately old mansion with the ground, and to dispose of the land on which it stood for more profitable purposes. Behind it lay a melancholy and weed-grown garden, shaded by large dingy elms and poplars; in the centre of this was a stagnant fish-pond, flanked on one side by a ruinous summer-house, on the other by the glassless frames of a conservatory. Beyond this dismal spectacle was seen the taper spire of a church, and, yet more dimly in the distance, cumbrous piles of warehouses, which stood up in the busier parts of town; silent edifices of wealth and activity, strangely contrasted with the desolation of the foreground.

  I had sat, one night, poring over old papers, until the midnight chime warned me up stairs to rest. I had chosen my sleeping room to the front; it was small, but the better for that in a house where increase of space was also increase of dreariness. The feet of my bed faced the window; and close to my head was a door, which I could open and shut without rising. For the further understanding of my scene, I must say that my room was at the top of the principal staircase, which was lighted by an immense Venetian window in the back of the house, the height of two stories.

  On the night of which I speak, I suppose that I fell asleep soon after I went to bed. I know that my dreams were of agony, for I woke with a start, and found myself sitting upright, my forehead covered with a cold perspiration. As soon, however, as I became fully awake, I was surprised with an unusual appearance upon my glass which stood upon the table in the window. In the centre of its dark, oblong field there burned a small but intense spot of steady and living fire, irregular, but unchanging, in shape, and casting no glimmer on any surrounding object. In my first confusion, I was unable to reason upon what I saw; a second look convinced me that it must arise from the reflection of light through the keyhole of my chamber-door. At once it struck me that someone must be without; and, anxious to ascertain who it could be, and with what intent come thither, I sprang out of bed, and, after waiting an instant for sound or signal without, and hearing none, I threw the door open wide.

  The sight which met my eye was sufficiently awful, though different from what my heated imagination had conjured up; being neither robber nor visitant of a more appalling character (for, be it known, my present residence was haunted). When I opened the door, a flood of light brighter than the blaze of noonday burst into the room, filling every remote corner, and showing every object without—the broken balustrade of the massy oak staircase, and the cobwebs on the large, round-headed window—with wonderful directness. The tops of the trees in the garden had caught the glow; the spire of the church seemed swathed in gold; and behind these, the cause of this illumination, a volume of brilliant, wreathing fire, overtopping the tallest buildings by a height equal to their own, rose silently into the sky, while above huge clouds of crimsoned smoke rolled heavily off in the north quarter of the heavens.

  Every object in the immediate neighborhood of the scene of devastation was traced out with startling vividness: the groups of people on the tops of houses, sweeping to and fro, as small as pygmies; the ships in the river beyond were all clearly visible, and brought close to the eye. But to me the chief awe of this scene was its complete and unbroken silence. I was far too removed from it to hear the tumult in the streets, the hissing of the ascending flames, the cries of the helpless or the alarmed. The wind bore away in another direction the solemn toll of the fire-bell; and the whole scene, at that dead hour, wore the strange and awful guise of some show conjured up by a potent magician, it was so unlike any sight familiar to my previous experience.

  After the silent gaze of a few instants, I dressed myself in haste; and, having called up my servant, and ordered him to sit up for me, I repaired as quickly as I could to that part of town where the conflagration was raging. It was nearly a mile from my house, but I needed no direction as to the precise spot, for crowds of awakened people were streaming thitherward from every quarter. Presently, as I advanced, their numbers became so dense as to make it a matter of some difficulty to proceed; and, long before I came within a stone’s throw of the spot, all further progress was impossible. The building on fire was a huge distillery: and, as the stores of manufactured spirits were reached, one after the other, enormous jets of intense colorless flame burst perpendicularly upward—the night fortunately being still—while every instant the fall of some floor or chimney was succeeded by a flight of sparks; and the sullen roaring of triumphant element was heard in a deep undertone amid the shouts of the firemen and the murmurs of the vast concourse of spectators. To give a yet deeper interest to the scene, the two unhappy watchmen belonging in the premises had been seen to perish in the flames, the spread of which had been so rapid that all that could now be hoped for was to prevent their communicating with the surrounding streets. The fire had already destroyed a court of small houses in the immediate vicinity.

  Anxious to approach as near as I possibly could, it occurred to me that I might perhaps effect my purpose through a quiet, narrow street, terminating only in a warehouse which stood almost immediately opposite to the burning pile. Through this there was a thoroughfare allowed by sufferance, and with all speed I made my way around thither, through a labyrinth of alleys, in my eagerness forgetting that this warehouse was enclosed in a court shut up by strong gates, which were not likely to be open during a time of such confusion. This I found to be the case: the building was an empty one, and seemed to be left to its fate; and I was turning away in disappointment, when my attention was arrested by the scene without, which was to me more impressive than any I had yet witnessed.

  The street in question was one of those anomalies which are found in the densest hearts of large towns, being quiet, clean, and dull; and the houses, of antique fashion, had been obviously built for some class of people better than that by which they were now occupied. On the causeways and in the windows stood the scared inhabitants, looking upwards in silence; and every now and then some strong man appeared reeling under a load of bedding or furniture belonging to the poor families who had lived in the court close to the distillery, and, having been awakened to a sense of their danger only just in time to save their lives, had been able to rescue little of their property. It was a touching sight to examine one face after another and to read one strong prevailing emotion upon every countenance; and it was grievous to hear the wailings of the poor homeless creatures who had been kindly received in the different houses, many of whom had lost all that they were worth in the world, the hardily accumulated earnings of years.

  Apart from these and close in the shadow of the courtyard wall at the end of the street, I presently discovered an old man sitting disconsolately on a pile of stones. He was neatly dressed, but bare-headed; and his white locks were long and few. Beside him was a large chest; and while everyone else seemed to have his counselor and comforter, this sufferer alone was neglected , if not shunned; and he looked as if rooted there in stupid despair, reckless as to what could now befall him, and neither soliciting nor receiving the assistance of anyone. There was a mixture of meekness and agony in his fixed gaze, and a listless indifference in his attitude that arrested my compassion at once; and I asked a respectable woman, who was standing on a step with a child in her arms, if she knew who he was, and why the same good offices that were extended to his neighbors were so pointedly withheld from him.

  “Why, sir,” she answered readily, “I should like to know who would dare to speak with him or offer him anything. He’s unlucky.”

  “You mean that he is not in his right mind,” said I.

  “I do not know that,” she replied, shaking her head oracularly. “He has lived in yonder court for these six and twenty years, and I do not think in that time he has said as many words to any of us—nobody but himself ever entered his house.”

  “What is his name?”

  “He is called Graham, we believe,” she said, “but we are not sure; no letters have ever come to him that we know of. He is well off in the world, for he does no work—and we
are used to call him ‘the Silent Man.’ The children are afraid of him, though his custom was to go little abroad till it was dusk. He neither lends nor borrows, nor, so far as we have seen, goes to church.”

  “And what is to become of him now that his house is burned down? Is he to sit here in the cold all night? I will go—”

  “Lord bless you, sir!” said the good dame, laying her hand upon my arm, “don’t think of such a thing. Take care what you do; he will shift for himself somehow or other, I have no doubt.” And when she saw that I was bent upon accosting this singular being, she turned away from me hastily, as if afraid to share in the peril which, as her speech implied, I should bring upon myself, by offering him any assistance.

  But my resolution was taken. I went up to the subject of our discourse, and touched him lightly on the shoulder. It would seem that he had been in a reverie; for he started, and looked up suddenly, and I was anew struck by the singular cast of his face. “You seem cold, my friend,” said I; “will you not come under shelter?” He made no answer, but shook his head.

  “At least,” persevered I, “you cannot intend to remain where you are—it will be your death. Will you come home with me for the night, if you have no further occasion to stay here? I cannot promise you good accommodation, but, at all events, warmth and shelter—or, do you wait for someone else to join you?”

  He answered in a low voice, but it was the voice and with the accent of a gentleman, “No one.”

  “Well then,” said I, “you had surely better accept my offer—or, can anything more be done for you here? Is this your property—” I hesitated as I spoke, for I imagined him to be stupefied by the extent of his calamity.

  “Beside me,” was his answer, pointing to the large chest.

  “Then I beg you to make up your mind at once. It is far to go, it is true; but anything is better than staying here. Come—let me assist you to rise,” said I, taking hold of his arm.