CHAPTER XLIV
AT MIDNIGHT IN THE HAUNTED CASTLE
A horrid specter rises on my sight
Close to my side, plain and palpable
In all clear seeming and close circumstance.
What form is this? Oh, speak if voice thou hast!
Tell me what sacrifice can soothe thy spirit,
Can still the unquiet sleeper of the grave;
For this most awful visitation is
beyond endurance of the bravest soul
In flesh and blood enrobed.—JOANNA BAILLIE.
Wynnette’s blood curdled. She would have cried out, but her organs of speech seemed paralyzed. She would have struggled to free herself, but the icy hand closed on her wrist like a fetter, and drew her on. She could only pray mutely and hard.
She could see nothing before her, not even the fingers of frost that closed around her wrist, and drew her on and on through the black darkness.
Again she tried to cry out, but the sound of her voice died in her throat. Again she tried to struggle, but the cold hand drew her on and on with irresistible power.
Where was it taking her? Perhaps to the terrible trap opening into the shaft leading down to the dread Dungeon of the Dark Death, under the foundations of the castle.
Oh, if she could only cry out. Oh, if she could only tear herself away from her horrible invisible captor. Oh, if she could but see where she was. But her voice seemed palsied and her limbs paralyzed, while she was drawn on and on through deepest darkness by an icy, invisible, irresistible hand. On and on, now to the right, now to the left, now up a few rugged steps, and now down and down into deeper depths of darkness, if that were possible.
Once more Wynnette tried to cry out, but failed; tried to escape, but failed; strained her eyes to see, but failed utterly in all attempts.
“It is a dream! It is a nightmare! Oh, if I could only scream so they would hear me and come to me. Oh, father! Oh, mother! Oh, Lord, have mercy on me!” her spirit cried, in her agony of terror, but no word came from her frozen lips.
Down—down—down—into profounder abysms of blackness.
Where were they going? Under the foundations of the castle? Under the bed of the sea? To the very center of the earth? Would they never stop descending?
“Oh, what a fool I was to come here at midnight. Shall I ever get out of this alive? Oh, no—never. Oh, what a horrible fate. Will they ever find me or my body? Oh, no—never. How could they? Oh, my dear mother! Oh, my dear father! What ever will you think has become of me—your wilful Wynnette? My whole arm is freezing from the clasp of that icy hand around my wrist. What is it going to do with me? But it is only a dream. I know it is only a dream. A cruel, deadly nightmare. Oh, if I could only scream. If I could only struggle and wake up. But I shall die in my sleep here, and they will find me dead in the morning. Oh, Lord, forgive my sins and save my soul. What was that?”
Suddenly the silence of that utter darkness was broken by a sound that became a noise, a roar, a deafening thunder, and Wynnette, in the anguish of her utter terror and helplessness, heard and knew the thunder of the sea against the rocks. But the air was growing close, fetid, sulphurous, suffocating.
“It is no nightmare. I hear the sea. It is breaking in mighty waves over my head. Ah, my limbs are numb—my breath is gone—my brain is going. Oh, if I could only cry out once. Mother! Mother!”
Then the darkness and the coldness as of death closed in, wrapped around, and settled down upon her with the weight of the grave.
And for the time being Wynnette was dead and buried to all life, sense and consciousness.
When Wynnette breathed again and opened her eyes she could not at once recover her consciousness. The shock and strain upon her nervous system had been too severe and protracted. She heard and saw as one half asleep. She heard the awful reverberations of the thunder of the sea. She saw around her blackness of darkness, relieved just in one spot, a few yards distant from where she lay, by a small fire on the ground, that smoldered in the foul air, and cast a lurid light but a few feet around, and fell upon the face and form of a crouching figure squatted near it.
It was a Rembrandt picture.
Wynnette watched it in weak, dull, stupid despair. Whether it was man, woman, or even human being, she neither knew, nor cared, nor questioned. Nor could any one else, even in the full possession of their senses, have, at sight, classified the strange figure squatted by the low fire in the subterranean abyss.
Wynnette was too stunned, dazed and weakened even to fear it.
And yet it was a dread, a frightful, a terrible form, tall and gaunt as could be well known, even in that crouching attitude, by the length of legs and arms. Its skin was like wrinkled parchment, and clung close to its bones. Its face and features were strong and bony and sharp. The eagle nose and the pointed chin nearly met over the sunken mouth. Burning black eyes flashed and flamed under beetling brows. White hair, parted over the top of the head, rolled in silver waves down over shoulders and back. It wore but one garment, a dark red gown, with sleeves that only reached to the elbow, and a skirt that only reached to the knees. It was squatting, as we said before. Its knees were drawn up; its long, gaunt, dark arms were around them, and the great claw-like fingers were clasped upon them. The head was bent, but the blazing eyes were fixed in a burning gaze upon the face of the recumbent girl.
As memory slowly awoke in the mind of the stupefied girl, she began to recall some of the phases of her night’s adventure. When had it happened? How long ago? An hour ago? A day? A year? A century? How long? And where was she now? She dimly remembered when she died, and how she died—how the faintness of death crept upon her; how her breath went and then her sense, and then—nothingness.
But how long was that ago?
She could not think.
Where was she now?
She could not say.
Only one thing was certain. She had died, and she had come to a bad place for her sins. She was in darkness. She was in—that awful pit of utter despair whose name she could not bear to breathe to her own spirit.
And that thing by the smoldering fire was her demon jailer!
Thus much was certainly true, she thought. And yet so dull and stupid was she still that she did not care very much where she was, or even wonder at her own insensibility.
At last, seeing that the creature by the fire still glared at her, she tried to speak, and at length muttered the question:
“Who are you?”
“Nobody,” was the slow, soft answer, in a tone strangely sad and sweet to come from such dried and withered lips.
“Are you—alive?” breathed Wynnette, in fearsome tones.
“Alive? Nay, babe, nor are you,” replied the same slow, sweet voice.
“I thought so; that is, I knew I was dead. But I thought maybe you and—and—and—the other dev—I mean the other—I mean I thought the natives of this place might be alive,” faltered Wynnette.
“Nay, child, I am dead as well as thou. We are both dead. But I have been dead longer than thou! Ay, ay, many years than thou, I reckon; for thou cannot be older than sixteen or seventeen, and I be ninety-seven. Ay, ay, I ha’ been dead a long time.”
The voice that spoke those words was as tender and plaintive as the notes of an Eolian harp.
“Are—we—are—we—in h—I mean, are we in the woeful place?”
“Yes, babe, we are in the woeful place. You and I and many, many, many millions, and millions and millions of others are dead and buried, and in the woeful place.”
“I feel as if I were alive, though. No, not quite; but almost alive,” said Wynnette, first pinching her own arm and then setting her teeth in it, and biting so hard that she only escaped breaking the skin.
“That’s a delusion, my baby. You are not alive, neither am I. But—they are alive!” she cried, lifting and waving her arm.
“They? Who?” demanded Wynnette.
“They—the victims of hate, power, cruelty and despotism, whose ruined earthly tabernacles lie all around us. All around us, like the broken shells upon the seashore. They are alive! They are the martyrs of love and truth; the martyrs of faith and freedom, of humanity. They are alive, baby. They stand among that ‘great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations and peoples and kindreds and tongues—before the throne—clothed with white robes and palms in their hands.’ Ay, ay! They are alive! But you and I—we are dead.”
“I—I think I understand,” said Wynnette, who was beginning to regain her mental faculties and to recognize in her surroundings some subterranean cave of the cliff, or crypt of the castle, and in her companion some harmless lunatic. “We are in a sense dead and buried, and in a woeful state; but where, in all this woeful state, are we now sitting?”
“Don’t ye ken, bairnie, we are in the place the tyrants called the Dungeon of the Dark Death? And the heaps of gray and white lime that ye see here—or ye might see, gin it were light enough—be the moldering bones of their victims. And the latest victim of all was my lass! my lass! But death could not hold her, nor darkness, nor coldness. She came to life and ascended. She is a fair angel now—one of the fairest of angels. But though she is alive and we are dead, she has not forgotten us; but she comes on this day every year and visits our graves. I always see her when she comes. I can see her through all the clods of the grave that lie so heavy on my heart. Mayhap you may see her, too, baby; but I don’t know, I don’t know,” murmured the plaintive voice, as the old creature slowly shook her head.
“Does she—does she come here?” breathed Wynnette, in an awe-struck tone.
“Ay, she does; and every time she comes she shows me how her body was murdered, and how herself came out of it alive. Look! look!” The woman suddenly started up, crossed to the side of the girl, and clasped her hand and held it fast, saying again: “Look! Listen!” and she pointed up to the upper end of the cavern.
Now by what psychological law this weird old creature impressed her own visions on the imagination of the girl, let the occult scientists explain. I cannot pretend to do so.
But as Wynnette looked and listened, there came a whir-r-r-r through the air, and a thud-d-d upon the distant ground, and the form of a young woman and a child lay there.
Wynnette tried to shriek, but her voice died in her throat.
“You see her?” murmured the old woman.
Wynnette tried to speak, but failed.
“Watch!” said the crone.
Wynnette watched, breathlessly, her senses reeling. The shape presently began to change as clouds change, from form to form, and presently to arise like a pillar of mist, and take the form of a woman, young, fair, angelic, with an infant pressed to her bosom, and with heavenward gaze, slowly ascending in a path of light, which faded as she disappeared.
“There, she has gone! and we will go,” said the crone, as she tightened her grasp on the girl’s hand and drew her away.
No longer terrified, but awed, confused, bewildered, Wynnette allowed herself to be passively drawn away, and they began to toil up from the depths. Wynnette thought of Dante’s return from the Inferno, when he “saw the stars again.”
At length, more dead than alive, she began to realize, that though they were still in darkness, they were creeping over level ground or a stone floor. They were stealing along a dark and narrow passage, as she thought; for once when she stretched out her hand at arm’s length she felt the damp stone wall.
Presently, far off ahead of them, she saw the faint glimmer of a red light. As they drew nearer to this, she saw that it came through the chinks of an ill-fitting door.
When they reached the door the crone opened it, and Wynnette recognized, with feelings of relief, the great hall of the castle, and knew that they were above ground.
A fire of faggots burned on the flagstones, and burned more clearly in the freer air than had that smoldering, smoking heap of rubbish in the subterranean dungeon below.
The beldame drew the girl toward the fire, where there lay near by a pile of rushes.
“Sit ye down here, lass, and rest,” she said, as she herself dropped in a heap upon the rushes.
“I—I want to go home,” whimpered Wynnette, in the tone of a frightened child.
“Nay, bairn, thou wants to hear the story of my lass, and none but I can tell it. Not yon woman up in the new castle, for she but repeats the lies she has been told, and she believes. None but I can tell the true story. Sit ye down, bairn, and hear.”
“But—it is so late—so late—I ought to go home,” said Wynnette, divided between curiosity and uneasiness.
“It is not late. It is not yet one hour past midnight; and thou art a brave bairn, and there be none to harm thee. Besides, I must tell thee the true story.”
Wynnette drew some of the rushes into a heap, and sat down upon them.