The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce — Volume 2: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians

THE NIGHT

One midsummer night a farmer’s boy living about ten miles from the city of Cincinnati was following a bridle path through a dense and dark forest.  He had lost himself while searching for some missing cows, and near midnight was a long way from home, in a part of the country with which he was unfamiliar.  But he was a stout-hearted lad, and knowing his general direction from his home, he plunged into the forest without hesitation, guided by the stars.  Coming into the bridle path, and observing that it ran in the right direction, he followed it.

The night was clear, but in the woods it was exceedingly dark.  It was more by the sense of touch than by that of sight that the lad kept the path.  He could not, indeed, very easily go astray; the undergrowth on both sides was so thick as to be almost impenetrable.  He had gone into the forest a mile or more when he was surprised to see a feeble gleam of light shining through the foliage skirting the path on his left.  The sight of it startled him and set his heart beating audibly.

“The old Breede house is somewhere about here,” he said to himself.  “This must be the other end of the path which we reach it by from our side.  Ugh! what should a light be doing there?”

Nevertheless, he pushed on.  A moment later he had emerged from the forest into a small, open space, mostly upgrown to brambles.  There were remnants of a rotting fence.  A few yards from the trail, in the middle of the “clearing,” was the house from which the light came, through an unglazed window.  The window had once contained glass, but that and its supporting frame had long ago yielded to missiles flung by hands of venturesome boys to attest alike their courage and their hostility to the supernatural; for the Breede house bore the evil reputation of being haunted.  Possibly it was not, but even the hardiest sceptic could not deny that it was deserted—­which in rural regions is much the same thing.

Looking at the mysterious dim light shining from the ruined window the boy remembered with apprehension that his own hand had assisted at the destruction.  His penitence was of course poignant in proportion to its tardiness and inefficacy.  He half expected to be set upon by all the unworldly and bodiless malevolences whom he had outraged by assisting to break alike their windows and their peace.  Yet this stubborn lad, shaking in every limb, would not retreat.  The blood in his veins was strong and rich with the iron of the frontiersman.  He was but two removes from the generation that had subdued the Indian.  He started to pass the house.

As he was going by he looked in at the blank window space and saw a strange and terrifying sight,—­the figure of a man seated in the centre of the room, at a table upon which lay some loose sheets of paper.  The elbows rested on the table, the hands supporting the head, which was uncovered.  On each side the fingers were pushed into the hair.  The face showed dead-yellow in the light of a single candle a little to one side.  The flame illuminated that side of the face, the other was in deep shadow.  The man’s eyes were fixed upon the blank window space with a stare in which an older and cooler observer might have discerned something of apprehension, but which seemed to the lad altogether soulless.  He believed the man to be dead.

The situation was horrible, but not with out its fascination.  The boy stopped to note it all.  He was weak, faint and trembling; he could feel the blood forsaking his face.  Nevertheless, he set his teeth and resolutely advanced to the house.  He had no conscious intention—­it was the mere courage of terror.  He thrust his white face forward into the illuminated opening.  At that instant a strange, harsh cry, a shriek, broke upon the silence of the night—­the note of a screech-owl.  The man sprang to his feet, overturning the table and extinguishing the candle.  The boy took to his heels.