The Spook House

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The Spook House

The life of Ambrose Bierce is a tissue of facts embroidered with legend. Born in 1842, he joined an Indiana regiment during the American Civil War, becoming a reconnaissance scout. The end of the war found Bierce in San Francisco, and in 1867 he took a job in the Mint, reading and studying in his spare time. A year later a lucky introduction to the editor of a local weekly, the News Letter, brought Bierce a foothold in journalism and his own page ‘The Town Crier’, giving him scope for his acid pen. One week in 1869, when topics for his usual diatribe had dried up, he filled the page with his first entry for a satirical dictionary. In 1872 Bierce took London by storm with his articles for Fun, written under the pseudonym of ‘Dod Grile’. Returning to America in 1875 he disappeared for two years. However, in 1877 ‘Prattle’ was writing a highly successful column for the Argonaut. In 1879 Bierce was mining the Black Hills for gold, but in 1881, none the worse after the mine had failed, he became editor of the run-down Wasp, in which his Devil’s Dictionary entries appeared between 1881 and 1886. In 1887 the redoubtable William Randolph Hearst hired him for his own Examiner, and during their happy association Bierce prepared for publication those of his dictionary entries he could trace.

In 1913 Bierce set off for Mexico, then in the throes of revolution, and was never seen again.

AMBROSE BIERCE

The Spook House

Terrifying tales of the macabre

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Published by the Penguin Group
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Published as a Penguin Red Classic 2008

1

All rights reserved

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject
to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,
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978-0-14-190030-8

Contents

The Damned Thing

The Realm of the Unreal

Chickamauga

A Fruitless Assignment

A Vine on a House

One of Twins

Present at a Hanging

A Wireless Message

One of the Missing

An Arrest

A Jug of Sirup

The Isle of Pines

At Old Man Eckert’s

Three and One are One

The Spook House

The Middle Toe of the Right Foot

The Thing at Nolan

The Difficulty of Crossing a Field

The Affair at Coulter’s Notch

An Unfinished Race

Charles Ashmore’s Trail

Staley Fleming’s Hallucination

The Night-Doings at ‘Deadman’s’

A Baby Tramp

A Psychological Shipwreck

A Cold Greeting

Beyond the Wall

John Bartine’s Watch

The Man out of the Nose

An Adventure at Brownville

The Mocking-Bird

The Suitable Surroundings

The Boarded Window

A Lady from Redhorse

The Famous Gilson Bequest

A Holy Terror

A Diagnosis of Death

The Damned Thing

1
One does not always eat what is on the table

By the light of a tallow candle which had been placed on one end of a rough table a man was reading something written in a book. It was an old account book, greatly worn; and the writing was not, apparently, very legible, for the man sometimes held the page close to the flame of the candle to get a stronger light on it. The shadow of the book would then throw into obscurity a half of the room, darkening a number of faces and figures; for besides the reader, eight other men were present. Seven of them sat against the rough log walls, silent, motionless, and the room being small, not very far from the table. By extending an arm any one of them could have touched the eighth man, who lay on the table, face upward, partly covered by a sheet, his arms at his sides. He was dead.

The man with the book was not reading aloud, and no-one spoke; all seemed to be waiting for something to occur; the dead man only was without expectation. From the blank darkness outside came in, through the aperture that served for a window, all the ever-unfamiliar noises of night in the wilderness – the long nameless note of a distant coyote; the stilly pulsing thrill of tireless insects in trees; strange cries of night birds, so different from those of the birds of day; the drone of great blundering beetles, and all that mysterious chorus of small sounds that seem always to have been but half heard when they have suddenly ceased, as if conscious of an indiscretion. But nothing of all this was noted in that company; its members were not over-much addicted to idle interest in matters of no practical importance; that was obvious in every line of their rugged faces – obvious even in the dim light of the single candle. They were evidently men of the vicinity – farmers and woodsmen.

The person reading was a trifle different; one would have said of him that he was of the world, worldly, albeit there was that in his attire which attested a certain fellowship with the organisms of his environment. His coat would hardly have passed muster in San Francisco; his foot-gear was not of urban origin, and the hat that lay by him on the floor (he was the only one uncovered) was such that if one had considered it as an article of mere personal adornment he would have missed its meaning. In countenance the man was rather prepossessing, with just a hint of sternness; though that he may have assumed or cultivated, as appropriate to one in authority. For he was a coroner. It was by virtue of his office that he had possession of the book in which he was reading; it had been found among the dead man’s effects – in his cabin, where the inquest was now taking place.

When the coroner had finished reading he put the book into his breast pocket. At that moment the door was pushed open and a young man entered. He, clearly, was not of mountain birth and breeding: he was clad as those who dwell in cities. His clothing was dusty, however, as from travel. He had, in fact, been riding hard to attend the inquest.

The coroner nodded; no-one else greeted him.

‘We have waited for you,’ said the coroner. ‘It is necessary to have done with this business tonight.’

The young man smiled. ‘I am sorry to have kept you,’ he said. ‘I went away, not to evade your summons, but to post to my newspaper an account of what I suppose I am called back to relate.’

The coroner smiled.

‘The account that you posted to your newspaper,’ he said, ‘differs, probably, from that which you will give here under oath.’

‘That,’ replied the other, rather hotly and with a visible flush, ‘is as you please. I used manifold paper and have a copy of what I sent.