When my father lit the lamp for the second time there was more than one white face; for the story had been told with such a creepy emphasis that we had been lifted away from familiar things to an atmosphere of stealthy influences and subtle spells. For a couple of hours or more we had lived in the grip of a fatal and powerful curse. Something which wasn't of the earth we knew had caught us in its toils. We had moved in the company of men whose lives weren't their own, whose very shadows seemed like avenging spirits stalking in their wake.
To look round once more upon the lighted room, to hear my father say cheerily, "Well, fill up again before you go," was to come back with an almost dizzying rush to common earth. But in a moment the room was once again full of clamour. Exclamations of delight and appeals for more rose spontaneously to the lips of most of us. But my father wouldn't indulge us further; and the glasses were raised and emptied, and my visitors were turned out into the cold night to make the best of their way back to the school.
As for me, I went off to bed. But my mind was in a confused whirl. For to me the story was more than a story. The thing had taken on a colour of reality. I knew it was no mere tale, but a truth; and a truth which was somehow of the utmost moment to my father and myself. For throughout the narrative many pictures had woven themselves into my thoughts. I could see the Mad Captain as my father had envisaged him to me that night in the woods; and I saw the curse not as an abstract thing, but as a concrete reality, embodied in that dreadful hag who had pursued us to the hut. I could see her slipping back the knife into the folds of her dress, waiting to spring. I could see her feeling for me in the straw and behind the cloak. And again the red flames lit up those terrible eye-balls of hers in their black hollow sockets. She became for me not a creature of flesh and blood, but a curse embodied; a thing that couldn't be killed by powder or by fire. And then old words of my father's came back to me: "Shadow-of-Fear can never die." I seemed to understand as I had never understood before the meaning of the destiny which had enmeshed us. For there was no doubt of it now. I knew my father was seeking for that unhallowed gold; perhaps he had even found it, for I remembered of a sudden the words of the host of the Snow Man saying my father had given him a purse in compensation for his loss as though he had been a lord. The curse was certainly upon us; it was that, and no mere earthly enemy, that was hounding us from place to place. And as though in confirmation of my fears, throughout the course of the story, in letters that glowed ever brighter and more menacing, shuddered the words as though written in blood: MALEDICTUS SIT THESAURUS.
White as were the faces of some of my companions, my face must have been whiter still; for I remember how shaken I felt as I crept upstairs to the great dark bedroom, walking slowly so that my candle might throw its light the farther into the blackness ahead; and how entering the room, and passing round to my side of the bed, I came with a shock of horror face to face with my spectral self in the great mirror. I remember how my nerves seemed to freeze into sudden numbness, for my eyes were staring fearfully and my face was drawn and white, so that at first I didn't know myself. And then the blood gushed back to my heart, enough almost to choke me; and setting down the candle I sat on the bed and gazed at myself in the glass, shaking as though in a fever.
But at this moment I remembered the pistol my father had given me in the morning. I had been true to my word, and hadn't taken it out during the day; but now, so unreasoning was I, it brought me extraordinary relief as I drew it from its hiding-place, and carefully loading it slipped it under my pillow; though what protection it could be against the impalpable destiny that overshadowed me I didn't stay to consider. I only know I was very much eased at heart, and was soon out of my clothes and in bed.
My father had at last told me the tale of the mysterious manuscript, as he had promised me he would some day do; and also, as he had said it would, it made me dream. Indeed it would have been strange if such a story with such associations to give it body and shape and presence hadn't made me dream, for my mind was full of vivid pictures, not merely half-formed filmy mists of imagination. There were eyes looking at me, there were hands feeling for me; and the eyes and the hands were those of the old witch, Bite-in-the-Dark. They were very real, for I had seen them. And all the strange terror of the circumstances under which I had seen them stirred my soul to a foreboding uneasiness of imminent things. And even the pistol which I fingered under my pillow recalled that awful moment when my father's pistol had roared out in my hand, and the hut had filled with screams and clamour. What wonder then, that with everything focusing back upon that night, I returned in dreams to the child I had been, and was once again wrapped in the rug before the fire, while my father's voice waned and strengthened through my dozing, and the face of the Mad Captain, horrified by the haunting voices of the murdered men, glared at me insanely from the darkness, distorted by the leaping firelight into a frantic picture of fear and madness and remorse. But I can't say what my dreams were, for they were inextricably entangled; but I know that I awoke more than once in a sweat of terror, trying to shake off some nameless thing which had fastened about my throat. And now I was away with the doomed party seeking for the treasure in the valley of the kings, and now I was on that fever-stricken ship waiting dumbly for my hour to strike, and now I was the priest himself hiding that cursed gold deep under the earth; and turning to flee I came face to face with that hateful hag with the black hollow sockets and the flaming eyes, and the knife cunningly hidden in the folds of her dress. For always my dreams came back to that. Her evil presence haunted me in all my mazed wanderings, either visibly at some unexpected turn, or shadowingly so that I knew she was beside me or behind me though I couldn't see her. And that was the worse evil of the two; for at such times the agony was lingering, and the enemy seemed too powerful for me, fighting with unearthly weapons against which my knife and pistol were useless as thistledown; but when she appeared before me, it might be from behind some black and awful crag, or rising like an emanation from the very earth at my feet, or just suddenly there in front of me coming as it were from nowhere--when she appeared, terrified as I might be, the impalpable horror which had wrapped me about fell away, and with a cry of hate I was at her with my knife, or, drawing my pistol, blazed full into her evil face. And at such moments I awoke, and took comfort in the knowledge that it was merely a dream, and soon the night would pass, though it seemed interminable, for each dream seemed the passage of a lifetime.
But once I awoke from one of these struggles with the image of the old witch so clearly before me that I thought I must still be sleeping. I lay perfectly motionless, gazing into the darkness, and with clearing consciousness came slowly to the realization that I was awake, and yet the creature of my dreams was there before me. I closed my eyes, then looked again. Still there; not to my hand, but clear and unmistakable, the very creature as I had seen her with the firelight on her face, except that now it was the moon that lit up that ghastly countenance white instead of red, and with a steady glow instead of lurchingly like the leaping flames. The night was very quiet; but outside a faint wind was crooning gently, and breathing thin clouds across the sky. And with the waning of the moon the face sank slowly back into the blackness, and with its brightening it grew again, white and luminous against the dark. I couldn't see it move; but once it faded into the night, and when it appeared again it was nearer.
How long I lay and watched I don't know. It seemed an age, but I think it must have been but a moment, though my head swarmed with a confusion of ideas. My father saying, "I haven't seen her ghost," caught at my memory; and I thought how glad he would be when I told him in the morning that her ghost had appeared to me; for somehow it seemed to me that the revelation would bring him ease. I remember wondering too why a ghost should fade and grow with the moonlight; for I had always thought of ghosts as glowing with a radiance of their own. What it was that stirred me to action I can't say. It might have been the realization that the thing was drawing nearer; or, as I believe, the many visionary contests of the night, mingled perhaps with a stirring memory deep in my mind, had unconsciously led my hand beneath the pillow where I suddenly realized that my fingers had closed upon my pistol. Then indeed I knew what I would do. Slowly I drew the weapon out, and with infinite caution levelled it at the creature's face. And now I could see it visibly drawing nearer with a gliding stealth. Its arm was raised, and I caught the glitter of steel. But just then I pulled the trigger.
There was a splintering crash and a cry and the clang as of a door heavily closing; and my father was awake and shouting, "Why, what, Tommy?" I was out of bed and had the candle lit; and there before me was the great mirror with a wide jagged hole smashed in the middle of it, and with cracks like the threads of a spider's web running out in every direction across its face.
I stood looking at it stupidly, and said, "I don't quite know, daddy. I thought it was her ghost."
"Ghost?" he cried.
"Bite-in-the-Dark," I answered. "I saw her ghost."
"Ha!" he exclaimed.
"Yes," I said growing bolder. "She was there. She was coming towards me. She had her hand raised. She came very slowly. I could see her face. I know it was her."
But my father was looking away from the mirror towards his end of the room, where the large old oaken wardrobe filled the recess between the fireplace and the door. His attention seemed absorbed. And then he leapt out of bed and flung the wardrobe open, springing back quickly as though expecting something to jump out at him. But there was nothing unusual there.
"What is it, daddy?" I asked.
But he took no notice of me, still investigating the wardrobe, rummaging among the coats that were hung there, and tapping at the sides. Then he stepped away from it and looked all about it, scrutinizing it as though it held a secret, while I watched him at a loss to understand. And presently he went up to it again, and putting out his full strength tried to shift it; but it wouldn't stir.
"Come and help me, Tommy," he said; and I lent him what strength I had, but to no purpose.
"You see, it's fixed," he said, as though that solved the mystery.
"But ..." I began.
"What, Tommy, can't you see?" he asked with a smile.
And then I saw what I had done. I had fired at a reflection, while the substance had escaped. And evidently my father thought he knew which way; yet there was no clue to the trail.
We didn't go to bed again that night, but went downstairs to the dining-room and rekindled the embers of the fire, and roasted ourselves before it till the morning. And then my father, breaking a long silence, said, "Tommy, I must leave you. The time has come. The game's against me."
"Is it the curse?" I asked.
He nodded.
So before evening I found myself an inmate of Rancey Bridge, feeling inexpressibly disconsolate with my father gone out of my life. And I know I cried bitterly to myself that night; for I pictured him fleeing alone into the darkness, and behind him the shadow of a closing doom.
