miércoles, 22 de septiembre de 2021

The Night Doings At 'Deadman's' - Ambrose Bierce - Horror

The Night Doings At 'Deadman's'

Recursos Educativos en Inglés - Stories in English

Cuentos clásicos en inglés de miedo, suspense, halloween

The Night Doings At 'Deadman's' - Ambrose Bierce - Horror

It was a singularly sharp night, and clear as the heart of a diamond. Clear nights have a trick of being keen. In darkness you may be cold and not know it; when you see, you suffer. This night was bright enough to bite like a serpent. The moon was moving mysteriously along behind the giant pines crowning the South Mountain, striking a cold sparkle from the crusted snow, and bringing out against the black west and ghostly outlines of the Coast Range, beyond which lay the invisible Pacific. The snow had piled itself, in the open spaces along the bottom of the gulch, into long ridges that seemed to heave, and into hills that appeared to toss and scatter spray. The spray was sunlight, twice reflected: dashed once from the moon, once from the snow.

In this snow many of the shanties of the abandoned mining camp were obliterated (a sailor might have said they had gone down), and at irregular intervals it had overtopped the tall trestles which had once supported a river called a flume; for, of course, 'flume' is flumen. Among the advantages of which the mountains cannot deprive the gold-hunter is the privilege of speaking Latin. He says of his dead neighbour, 'He has gone up the flume.' This is not a bad way to say, 'His life has returned to the Fountain of Life.'

While putting on its armour against the assaults of the wind, this snow had neglected no coign of vantage. Snow pursued by the wind is not wholly unlike a retreating army. In the open field it ranges itself in ranks and battalions; where it can get a foothold it makes a stand; where it can take cover it does so. You may see whole platoons of snow cowering behind a bit of broken wall. The devious old road, hewn out of the mountainside, was full of it. Squadron upon squadron had struggled to escape by this line, when suddenly pursuit had ceased. A more desolate and dreary spot than Deadman's Gulch in a winter midnight it is impossible to imagine. Yet Mr. Hiram Beeson elected to live there, the sole inhabitant.

Away up the side of the North Mountain his little pine-log shanty projected from its single pane of glass a long, thin beam of light, and looked not altogether unlike a black beetle fastened to the hillside with a bright new pin. Within it sat Mr. Beeson himself, before a roaring fire, staring into its hot heart as if he had never before seen such a thing in all his life. He was not a comely man. He was grey; he was ragged and slovenly in his attire; his face was wan and haggard; his eyes were too bright. As to his age, if one had attempted to guess it, one might have said forty-seven, then corrected himself and said seventy-four. He was really twenty-eight. Emaciated he was; as much, perhaps, as he dared be, with a needy undertaker at Bentley's Flat and a new and enterprising coroner at Sonora. Poverty and zeal are an upper and a nether millstone. It is dangerous to make a third in that kind of sandwich.
As Mr. Beeson sat there, with his ragged elbows on his ragged knees, his lean jaws buried in his lean hands, and with no apparent intention of going to bed, he looked as if the slightest movement would tumble him to pieces. Yet during the last hour he had winked no fewer than three times.

There was a sharp rapping at the door. A rap at that time of night and in that weather might have surprised an ordinary mortal who had dwelt two years in the gulch without seeing a human face, and could not fail to know that the country was impassable; but Mr. Beeson did not so much as pull his eyes out of the coals. And even when the door was pushed open he only shrugged a little more closely into himself, as one does who is expecting something that he would rather not see. You may observe this movement in women when, in a mortuary chapel, the coffin is borne up the aisle behind them.

But when a long old man in a blanket overcoat, his head tied up in a handkerchief and nearly his entire face in a muffler, wearing green goggles and with a complexion of glittering whiteness where it could be seen, strode silently into the room, laying a hard, gloved hand on Mr. Beeson's shoulder, the latter so far forgot himself as to look up with an appearance of no small astonishment; whomever he may have been expecting, he had evidently not counted on meeting anyone like this. Nevertheless, the sight of this unexpected guest produced in Mr. Beeson the following sequence: a feeling of astonishment; a sense of gratification; a sentiment of profound good will. Rising from his seat, he took the knotty hand from his shoulder, and shook it up and down with a fervour quite unaccountable; for in the old man's aspect was nothing to attract, much to repel. However, attraction is too general a property for repulsion to be without it. The most attractive object in the world is the face we instinctively cover with a cloth. When it becomes still more attractive -- fascinating -- we put seven feet of earth above it.
'Sir,' said Mr. Beeson, releasing the old man's hand, which fell passively against his thigh with a quiet clack, 'it is an extremely disagreeable night. Pray be seated; I am very glad to see you.'

Mr. Beeson spoke with an easy good breeding that one would hardly have expected, considering all things. Indeed, the contrast between his appearance and his manner was sufficiently surprising to be one of the commonest of social phenomena in the mines. The old man advanced a step toward the fire, glowing cavernously in the green goggles. Mr. Beeson resumed.

'You bet your life I am!'

Mr. Beeson's elegance was not too refined; it had made reasonable concessions to local taste. He paused a moment, letting his eyes drop from the muffled head of his guest, down along the row of mouldy buttons confining the blanket overcoat, to the greenish cowhide boots powdered with snow, which had begun to melt and run along the floor in little rills. He took an inventory of his guest, and appeared satisfied. Who would not have been? Then he continued:

'The cheer I can offer you is, unfortunately, in keeping with my surroundings; but I shall esteem myself highly favoured if it is your pleasure to partake of it, rather than seek better at Bentley's Flat.'

With a singular refinement of hospitable humility Mr. Beeson spoke as if a sojourn in his warm cabin on such a night, as compared with walking fourteen miles up to the throat in snow with a cutting crust, would be an intolerable hardship. By way of reply, his guest unbuttoned the blanket overcoat. The host laid fresh fuel on the fire, swept the hearth with the tail of a wolf, and added:

'But I think you'd better skedaddle.'

The old man took a seat by the fire, spreading his broad soles to the heat without removing his hat. In the mines the hat is seldom removed except when the boots are. Without further remark Mr. Beeson also seated himself in a chair which had been a barrel, and which, retaining much of its original character, seemed to have been designed with a view to preserving his dust if it should please him to crumble. For a moment there was silence; then, from somewhere among the pines, came the snarling yelp of a coyote; and simultaneously the door rattled in its frame. There was no other connection between the two incidents than that the coyote has an aversion to storms, and the wind was rising; yet there seemed somehow a kind of supernatural conspiracy between the two, and Mr. Beeson shuddered with a vague sense of terror. He recovered himself in a moment and again addressed his guest.
'There are strange doings here. I will tell you everything, and then if you decide to go I shall hope to accompany you over the worst of the way; as far as where Baldy Peterson shot Ben Hike -- I dare say you know the place.'

The old man nodded emphatically, as intimating not merely that he did, but that he did indeed.

'Two years ago,' began Mr. Beeson, 'I, with two companions, occupied this house; but when the rush to the Flat occurred we left, along with the rest. In ten hours the gulch was deserted. That evening, however, I discovered I had left behind me a valuable pistol (that is it) and returned for it, passing the night here alone, as I have passed every night since. I must explain that a few days before we left, our Chinese domestic had the misfortune to die while the ground was frozen so hard that it was impossible to dig a grave in the usual way. So, on the day of our hasty departure, we cut through the floor there, and gave him such burial as we could. But before putting him down I had the extremely bad taste to cut off his pigtail and spike it to that beam above his grave, where you may see it at this moment, or, preferably, when warmth has given you leisure for observation.

'I stated, did I not, that the Chinaman came to his death from natural causes? I had, of course, nothing to do with that, and returned through no irresistible attraction, or morbid fascination, but only because I had forgotten a pistol. That is clear to you, is it not, sir?'

The visitor nodded gravely. He appeared to be a man of few words, if any. Mr. Beeson continued:

'According to the Chinese faith, a man is like a kite: he cannot go to heaven without a tail. Well, to shorten this tedious story -- which, however, I thought it my duty to relate -- on that night, while I was here alone and thinking of anything but him, that Chinaman came back for his pigtail.
'He did not get it.'

At this point Mr. Beeson relapsed into blank silence. Perhaps he was fatigued by the unwonted exercise of speaking; perhaps he had conjured up a memory that demanded his undivided attention. The wind was now fairly abroad, and the pines along the mountainside sang with singular distinctness. The narrator continued:

'You say you do not see much in that, and I must confess I do not myself.

'But he keeps coming!'

There was another long silence, during which both stared into the fire without the movement of a limb. Then Mr. Beeson broke out, almost fiercely, fixing his eyes on what he could see of the impassive face of his auditor:

'Give it him? Sir, in this matter I have no intention of troubling anyone for advice. You will pardon me, I am sure' -- here he became singularly persuasive -- 'but I have ventured to nail that pigtail fast, and have assumed that somewhat onerous obligation of guarding it. So it is quite impossible to act on your considerate suggestion.

'Do you play me for a Modoc?'

Nothing could exceed the sudden ferocity with which he thrust this indignant remonstrance into the ear of his guest. It was as if he had struck him on the side of the head with a steel gauntlet. It was a protest, but it was a challenge. To be mistaken for a coward -- to be played for a Modoc: these two expressions are one. Sometimes it is a Chinaman. Do you play me for a Chinaman? is a question frequently addressed to the ear of the suddenly dead.

Mr. Beeson's buffet produced no effect, and after a moment's pause, during which the wind thundered in the chimney like the sound of clods upon a coffin, he resumed:

'But, as you say, it is wearing me out. I feel that the life of the last two years has been a mistake -- a mistake that corrects itself; you see how. The grave! No; there is no one to dig it. The ground is frozen, too. But you are very welcome. You may say at Bentley's -- but that is not important. It was very tough to cut; they braid silk into their pigtails. Kwaagh.'
Mr. Beeson was speaking with his eyes shut, and he wandered. His last word was a snore. A moment later he drew a long breath, opened his eyes with an effort, made a single remark, and fell into a deep sleep. What he said was this:

'They are swiping my dust!'

Then the aged stranger, who had not uttered one word since his arrival, arose from his seat and deliberately laid off his outer clothing, looking as angular in his flannels as the late Signorina Festorazzi, an Irish woman, six feet in height, and weighing fifty-six pounds, who used to exhibit herself in her chemise to the people of San Francisco. He then crept into one of the 'bunks,' having first placed a revolver in easy reach, according to the custom of the country. This revolver he took from a shelf, and it was the one which Mr. Beeson had mentioned as that for which he had returned to the gulch two years before.

In a few moments Mr. Beeson awoke, and seeing that his guest had retired he did likewise. But before doing so he approached the long, plaited wisp of pagan hair and gave it a powerful tug, to assure himself that it was fast and firm. The two beds-mere shelves covered with blankets not overclean-faced each other from opposite sides of the room, the little square trap-door that had given access to the Chinaman's grave being midway between. This, by the way, was crossed by a double row of spikeheads. In his resistance to the supernatural, Mr. Beeson had not disdained the use of material precautions.

The fire was now low, the flames burning bluely and petulantly, with occasional flashes, projecting spectral shadows on the walls -- shadows that moved mysteriously about, now dividing, now uniting. The shadow of the pendent queue, however, kept moodily apart, near the roof at the farther end of the room, looking like a note of admiration. The song of the pines outside had now risen to the dignity of a triumphal hymn. In the pauses the silence was dreadful.
It was during one of these intervals that the trap in the floor began to lift. Slowly and steadily it rose, and slowly and steadily rose the swaddled head of the old man in the bunk to observe it. Then, with a clap that shook the house to its foundation, it was thrown clean back, where it lay with its unsightly spikes pointing threateningly upward. Mr. Beeson awoke, and without rising, pressed his fingers into his eyes. He shuddered; his teeth chattered. His guest was now reclining on one elbow, watching the proceedings with the goggles that glowed like lamps.

Suddenly a howling gust of wind swooped down the chimney, scattering ashes and smoke in all directions, for a moment obscuring everything. When the fire-light again illuminated the room there was seen, sitting gingerly on the edge of a stool by the hearth-side, a swarthy little man of prepossessing appearance and dressed with faultless taste, nodding to the old man with a friendly and engaging smile.

'From San Francisco, evidently,' thought Mr. Beeson, who having somewhat recovered from his fright was groping his way to a solution of the evening's events.

But now another actor appeared upon the scene. Out of the square black hole in the middle of the floor protruded the head of the departed Chinaman, his glassy eyes turned upward in their angular slits and fastened on the dangling queue above with a look of yearning unspeakable. Mr. Beeson groaned, and again spread his hands upon his face. A mild odour of opium pervaded the place. The phantom, clad only in a short blue tunic quilted and silken but covered with grave-mould, rose slowly, as if pushed by a weak spiral spring. Its knees were at the level of the floor, when with a quick upward impulse like the silent leaping of a flame it grasped the queue with both hands, drew up its body and took the tip in its horrible yellow teeth. To this it clung in a seeming frenzy, grimacing ghastly, surging and plunging from side to side in its efforts to disengage its property from the beam, but uttering no sound. It was like a corpse artificially convulsed by means of a galvanic battery. The contrast between its superhuman activity and its silence was no less than hideous!
Mr. Beeson cowered in his bed. The swarthy little gentleman uncrossed his legs, beat an impatient tattoo with the toe of his boot and consulted a heavy gold watch. The old man sat erect and quietly laid hold of the revolver.

Bang!

Like a body cut from the gallows the Chinaman plumped into the black hole below, carrying his tail in his teeth. The trap-door turned over, shutting down with a snap. The swarthy little gentleman from San Francisco sprang nimbly from his perch, caught something in the air with his hat, as a boy catches a butterfly, and vanished into the chimney as if drawn up by suction.

From away somewhere in the outer darkness floated in through the open door a faint, far cry -- a long, sobbing wail, as of a child death-strangled in the desert, or a lost soul borne away by the Adversary. It may have been the coyote.

In the early days of the following spring a party of miners on their way to new diggings passed along the gulch, and straying through the deserted shanties found in one of them the body of Hiram Beeson, stretched upon a bunk, with a bullet hole through the heart. The ball had evidently been fired from the opposite side of the room, for in one of the oaken beams overhead was a shallow blue dint, where it had struck a knot and been deflected downward to the breast of its victim. Strongly attached to the same beam was what appeared to be an end of a rope of braided horsehair, which had been cut by the bullet in its passage to the knot. Nothing else of interest was noted, excepting a suit of mouldy and incongruous clothing, several articles of which were afterward identified by respectable witnesses as those in which certain deceased citizen's of Deadman's had been buried years before. But it is not easy to understand how that could be, unless, indeed, the garments had been worn as a disguise by Death himself -- which is hardly credible.

🔆 Otros cuentos:

Adblock test (Why?)

A Tough Tussle - Ambrose Bierce - Horror

A Tough Tussle

Recursos Educativos en Inglés - Stories in English

Cuentos clásicos en inglés de miedo, suspense, halloween

A Tough Tussle - Ambrose Bierce - Horror

One night in the autumn of 1861 a man sat alone in the heart of a forest in western Virginia. The region was one of the wildest on the continent -- the Cheat Mountain country. There was no lack of people close at hand, however; within a mile of where the man sat was the now silent camp of a whole Federal brigade. Somewhere about -- it might be still nearer -- was a force of the enemy, the numbers unknown. It was this uncertainty as to its numbers and position that accounted for the man's presence in that lonely spot; he was a young officer of a Federal infantry regiment and his business there was to guard his sleeping comrades in the camp against a surprise. He was in command of a detachment of men constituting a picket-guard. These men he had stationed just at nightfall in an irregular line, determined by the nature of the ground, several hundred yards in front of where he now sat. The line ran through the forest, among the rocks and laurel thickets, the men fifteen or twenty paces apart, all in concealment and under injunction of strict silence and unremitting vigilance. In four hours, if nothing occurred, they would be relieved by a fresh detachment from the reserve now resting in care of its captain some distance away to the left and rear. Before stationing his men the young officer of whom we are writing had pointed out to his two sergeants the spot at which he would be found if it should be necessary to consult him, or if his presence at the front line should be required.

It was a quiet enough spot -- the fork of an old wood-road, on the two branches of which, prolonging themselves deviously forward in the dim moonlight, the sergeants were themselves stationed, a few paces in rear of the line. If driven sharply back by a sudden onset of the enemy -- the pickets are not expected to make a stand after firing -- the men would come into the converging roads and naturally following them to their point of intersection could be rallied and 'formed.' In his small way the author of these dispositions was something of a strategist; if Napoleon had planned as intelligently at Waterloo he would have won that memorable battle and been overthrown later.
Second-Lieutenant Brainerd Byring was a brave and efficient officer, young and comparatively inexperienced as he was in the business of killing his fellow-men. He had enlisted in the very first days of the war as a private, with no military knowledge whatever, had been made first-sergeant of his company on account of his education and engaging manner, and had been lucky enough to lose his captain by a Confederate bullet; in the resulting promotions he had gained a commission. He had been in several engagements, such as they were -- at Philippi, Rich Mountain, Carrick's Ford and Greenbrier -- and had borne himself with such gallantry as not to attract the attention of his superior officers. The exhilaration of battle was agreeable to him, but the sight of the dead, with their clay faces, blank eyes and stiff bodies, which when not unnaturally shrunken were unnaturally swollen, had always intolerably affected him. He felt toward them a kind of reasonless antipathy that was something more than the physical and spiritual repugnance common to us all. Doubtless this feeling was due to his unusually acute sensibilities -- his keen sense of the beautiful, which these hideous things outraged. Whatever may have been the cause, he could not look upon a dead body without a loathing which had in it an element of resentment. What others have respected as the dignity of death had to him no existence -- was altogether unthinkable. Death was a thing to be hated. It was not picturesque, it had no tender and solemn side -- a dismal thing, hideous in all its manifestations and suggestions. Lieutenant Byring was a braver man than anybody knew, for nobody knew his horror of that which he was ever ready to incur.

Having posted his men, instructed his sergeants and retired to his station, he seated himself on a log, and with senses all alert began his vigil. For greater ease he loosened his sword-belt and taking his heavy revolver from his holster laid it on the log beside him. He felt very comfortable, though he hardly gave the fact a thought, so intently did he listen for any sound from the front which might have a menacing significance -- a shout, a shot, or the footfall of one of his sergeants coming to apprise him of something worth knowing. From the vast, invisible ocean of moonlight overhead fell, here and there, a slender, broken stream that seemed to plash against the intercepting branches and trickle to earth, forming small white pools among the clumps of laurel. But these leaks were few and served only to accentuate the blackness of his environment, which his imagination found it easy to people with all manner of unfamiliar shapes, menacing, uncanny, or merely grotesque.
He to whom the portentous conspiracy of night and solitude and silence in the heart of a great forest is not an unknown experience needs not to be told what another world it all is -- how even the most commonplace and familiar objects take on another character. The trees group themselves differently; they draw closer together, as if in fear. The very silence has another quality than the silence of the day. And it is full of half-heard whispers -- whispers that startle -- ghosts of sounds long dead. There are living sounds, too, such as are never heard under other conditions: notes of strange night-birds, the cries of small animals in sudden encounters with stealthy foes or in their dreams, a rustling in the dead leaves -- it may be the leap of a wood-rat, it may be the footfall of a panther. What caused the breaking of that twig? -- what the low, alarmed twittering in that bushful of birds? There are sounds without a name, forms without substance, translations in space of objects which have not been seen to move, movements wherein nothing is observed to change its place. Ah, children of the sunlight and the gaslight, how little you know of the world in which you live!

Surrounded at a little distance by armed and watchful friends, Byring felt utterly alone. Yielding himself to the solemn and mysterious spirit of the time and place, he had forgotten the nature of his connection with the visible and audible aspects and phases of the night. The forest was boundless; men and the habitations of men did not exist. The universe was one primeval mystery of darkness, without form and void, himself the sole, dumb questioner of its eternal secret. Absorbed in thoughts born of this mood, he suffered the time to slip away unnoted. Meantime the infrequent patches of white light lying amongst the tree-trunks had undergone changes of size, form and place. In one of them near by, just at the roadside, his eye fell upon an object that he had not previously observed. It was almost before his face as he sat; he could have sworn that it had not before been there. It was partly covered in shadow, but he could see that it was a human figure. Instinctively he adjusted the clasp of his swordbelt and laid hold of his pistol -- again he was in a world of war, by occupation an assassin.
The figure did not move. Rising, pistol in hand, he approached. The figure lay upon its back, its upper part in shadow, but standing above it and looking down upon the face, he saw that it was a dead body. He shuddered and turned from it with a feeling of sickness and disgust, resumed his seat upon the log, and forgetting military prudence struck a match and lit a cigar. In the sudden blackness that followed the extinction of the flame he felt a sense of relief; he could no longer see the object of his aversion. Nevertheless, he kept his eyes in that direction until it appeared again with growing distinctness. It seemed to have moved a trifle nearer.

'Damn the thing!' he muttered. 'What does it want?'

It did not appear to be in need of anything but a soul.

Byring turned away his eyes and began humming a tune, but he broke off in the middle of a bar and looked at the dead body. Its presence annoyed him, though he could hardly have had a quieter neighbour. He was conscious, too, of a vague, indefinable feeling that was new to him. It was not fear, but rather a sense of the supernatural -- in which he did not at all believe.

'I have inherited it,' he said to himself. 'I suppose it will require a thousand ages -- perhaps ten thousand -- for humanity to outgrow this feeling. Where and when did it originate? Away back, probably, in what is called the cradle of the human race -- the plains of Central Asia. What we inherit as a superstition our barbarous ancestors must have held as a reasonable conviction. Doubtless they believed themselves justified by facts whose nature we cannot even conjecture in thinking a dead body a malign thing endowed with some strange power of mischief, with perhaps a will and a purpose to exert it. Possibly they had some awful form of religion of which that was one of the chief doctrines, sedulously taught by their priesthood, as ours teach the immortality of the soul. As the Aryans moved slowly on, to and through the Caucasus passes, and spread over Europe, new conditions of life must have resulted in the formulation of new religions. The old belief in the malevolence of the dead body was lost from the creeds and even perished from tradition but it left its heritage of terror, which is transmitted from generation to generation -- is as much a part of us as are our blood and bones.'
In following out his thought he had forgotten that which suggested it; but now his eye fell again upon the corpse. The shadow had now altogether uncovered it. He saw the sharp profile, the chin in the air, the whole face, ghastly white in the moonlight. The clothing was grey, the uniform of a Confederate soldier. The coat and waistcoat, unbuttoned, had fallen away on each side, exposing the white shirt. The chest seemed unnaturally prominent, but the abdomen had sunk in, leaving a sharp projection at the line of the lower ribs. The arms were extended, the left knee was thrust upward. The whole posture impressed Byring as having been studied with a view to the horrible.

'Bah!' he exclaimed; 'he was an actor -- he knows how to be dead.'

He drew away his eyes, directing them resolutely along one of the roads leading to the front, and resumed his philosophizing where he had left off.

'It may be that our Central Asian ancestors had not the custom of burial. In that case it is easy to understand their fear of the dead, who really were a menace and an evil. They bred pestilences. Children were taught to avoid the places where they lay, and to run away if by inadvertence they came near a corpse. I think, indeed, I'd better go away from this chap.'

He half rose to do so, then remembered that he had told his men in front and the officer in the rear who was to relieve him that he could at any time be found at that spot. It was a matter of pride, too. If he abandoned his post he feared they would think he feared the corpse. He was no coward and he was unwilling to incur anybody's ridicule. So he again seated himself, and to prove his courage looked boldly at the body. The right arm -- the one farthest from him -- was now in shadow. He could hardly see the hand which, he had before observed, lay at the root of a clump of laurel. There had been no change, a fact which gave him a certain comfort, he could not have said why. He did not at once remove his eyes; that which we do not wish to see has a strange fascination, sometimes irresistible. Of the woman who covers her eyes with her hands and looks between the fingers let it be said that the wits have dealt with her not altogether justly.
Byring suddenly became conscious of a pain in his right hand. He withdrew his eyes from his enemy and looked at it. He was grasping the hilt of his drawn sword so tightly that it hurt him. He observed, too, that he was leaning forward in a strained attitude-crouching like a gladiator ready to spring at the throat of an antagonist. His teeth were clenched and he was breathing hard. This matter was soon set right, and as his muscles relaxed and he drew a long breath he felt keenly enough the ludicrousness of the incident. It affected him to laughter. Heavens! what sound was that? what mindless devil was uttering an unholy glee in mockery of human merriment? He sprang to his feet and looked about him, not recognizing his own laugh.

He could no longer conceal from himself the horrible fact of his cowardice; he was thoroughly frightened! He would have run from the spot, but his legs refused their office; they gave way beneath him and he sat again upon the log, violently trembling. His face was wet, his whole body bathed in a chill perspiration. He could not even cry out. Distinctly he heard behind him a stealthy tread, as of some wild animal, and dared not look over his shoulder. Had the soulless living joined forces with the soulless dead? -- was it an animal? Ah, if he could but be assured of that! But by no effort of will could he now unfix his gaze from the face of the dead man.

I repeat that Lieutenant Byring was a brave and intelligent man. But what would you have? Shall a man cope, single-handed, with so monstrous an alliance as that of night and solitude and silence and the dead -- while an incalculable host of his own ancestors shriek into the ear of his spirit their coward counsel, sing their doleful death-songs in his heart, and disarm his very blood of all its iron? The odds are too great -- courage was not made for so rough use as that.

One sole conviction now had the man in possession: that the body had moved. It lay nearer to the edge of its plot of light -- there could be no doubt of it. It had also moved its arms, for, look, they are both in the shadow! A breath of cold air struck Byring full in the face; the boughs of trees above him stirred and moaned. A strongly defined shadow passed across the face of the dead, left it luminous, passed back upon it and left it half obscured. The horrible thing was visibly moving! At that moment a single shot rang out upon the picket-line -- a lonelier and louder, though more distant, shot than ever had been heard by mortal ear! It broke the spell of that enchanted man; it slew the silence and the solitude, dispersed the hindering host from Central Asia and released his modern manhood. With a cry like that of some great bird pouncing upon its prey he sprang forward, hot-hearted for action!
Shot after shot now came from the front. There were shoutings and confusion, hoof-beats and desultory cheers. Away to the rear, in the sleeping camp, were a singing of bugles and grumble of drums. Pushing through the thickets on either side the roads came the Federal pickets, in full retreat, firing backward at random as they ran. A straggling group that had followed back one of the roads, as instructed, suddenly sprang away into the bushes as half a hundred horsemen thundered by them, striking wildly with their sabres as they passed. At headlong speed these mounted madmen shot past the spot where Byring had sat, and vanished round an angle of the road, shouting and firing their pistols. A moment later there was a roar of musketry, followed by dropping shots -- they had encountered the reserve-guard in line; and back they came in dire confusion, with here and there an empty saddle and many a maddened horse, bullet-stung, snorting and plunging with pain. It was all over -- 'an affair of out-posts.'

The line was re-established with fresh men, the roll called, the stragglers were re-formed. The Federal commander, with a part of his staff, imperfectly clad, appeared upon the scene, asked a few questions, looked exceedingly wise and retired. After standing at arms for an hour the brigade in camp 'swore a prayer or two' and went to bed.

Early the next morning a fatigue-party, commanded by a captain and accompanied by a surgeon, searched the ground for dead and wounded. At the fork of the road, a little to one side, they found two bodies lying close together -- that of a Federal officer and that of a Confederate private. The officer had died of a sword-thrust through the heart, but not, apparently, until he had inflicted upon his enemy no fewer than five dreadful wounds. The dead officer lay on his face in a pool of blood, the weapon still in his heart. They turned him on his back and the surgeon removed it.

'Gad!' said the captain -- 'It is Byring!' -- adding, with a glance at the other, 'They had a tough tussle.'
The surgeon was examining the sword. It was that of a line officer of Federal infantry -- exactly like the one worn by the captain. It was, in fact, Byring's own. The only other weapon discovered was an undischarged revolver in the dead officer's belt.

The surgeon laid down the sword and approached the other body. It was frightfully gashed and stabbed, but there was no blood. He took hold of the left foot and tried to straighten the leg. In the effort the body was displaced. The dead do not wish to be moved -- it protested with a faint, sickening odour. Where it had lain were a few maggots, manifesting an imbecile activity.

The surgeon looked at the captain. The captain looked at the surgeon.

🔆 Otros cuentos:

Adblock test (Why?)

lunes, 20 de septiembre de 2021

The Middle Toe of the Right Foot - Ambrose Bierce - Horror

The Middle Toe of the Right Foot

Recursos Educativos en Inglés - Stories in English

Cuentos clásicos en inglés de miedo, suspense, halloween

The Middle Toe of the Right Foot - Ambrose Bierce - Horror

It is well known that the old Manton house is haunted. In all the rural district near about, and even in the town of Marshall, a mile away, not one person of unbiased mind entertains a doubt of it; incredulity is confined to those opinionated persons who will be called 'cranks' as soon as the useful word shall have penetrated the intellectual demesne of the Marshall Advance. The evidence that the house is haunted is of two kinds: the testimony of disinterested witnesses who have had ocular proof, and that of the house itself. The former may be disregarded and ruled out on any of the various grounds of objection which may be urged against it by the ingenious; but facts within the observation of all are material and controlling.

In the first place, the Manton house has been unoccupied by mortals for more than ten years, and with its outbuildings is slowly falling into decay - a circumstance which in itself the judicious will hardly venture to ignore. It stands a little way off the loneliest reach of the Marshall and Harriston road, in an opening which was once a farm and is still disfigured with strips of rotting fence and half covered with brambles overrunning a stony and sterile soil long unacquainted with the plough. The house itself is in tolerably good condition, though badly weather-stained and in dire need of attention from the glazier, the smaller male population of the region having attested in the manner of its kind its disapproval of dwelling without dwellers. It is two stories in height, nearly square, its front pierced by a single doorway flanked on each side by a window boarded up to the very top. Corresponding windows above, not protected, serve to admit light and rain to the rooms of the upper floor. Grass and weeds grow pretty rankly all about, and a few shade trees, somewhat the worse for wind, and leaning all in one direction, seem to be making a concerted effort to run away. In short, as the Marshall town humorist explained in the columns of the Advance, 'the proposition that the Manton house is badly haunted is the only logical conclusion from the premises.' The fact that in this dwelling Mr. Manton thought it expedient one night some ten years ago to rise and cut the throats of his wife and two small children, removing at once to another part of the country, has no doubt done its share in directing public attention to the fitness of the place for supernatural phenomena.
To this house, one summer evening, came four men in a wagon. Three of them promptly alighted, and the one who had been driving hitched the team to the only remaining post of what had been a fence. The fourth remained seated in the wagon. 'Come,' said one of his companions, approaching him, while the others moved away in the direction of the dwelling - 'this is the place.'

The man addressed did not move. 'By God!' he said harshly, 'this is a trick, and it looks to me as if you were in it.'

'Perhaps I am,' the other said, looking him straight in the face and speaking in a tone which had something of contempt in it. 'You will remember, however, that the choice of place was with your own assent left to the other side. Of course if you are afraid of spooks -- '

'I am afraid of nothing,' the man interrupted with another oath, and sprang to the ground. The two then joined the others at the door, which one of them had already opened with some difficulty, caused by rust of lock and hinge. All entered. Inside it was dark, but the man who had unlocked the door produced a candle and matches and made a light. He then unlocked a door on their right as they stood in the passage. This gave them entrance to a large, square room that the candle but dimly lighted. The floor had a thick carpeting of dust, which partly muffled their footfalls. Cobwebs were in the angles of the walls and depended from the ceiling like strips of rotting lace, making undulatory movements in the disturbed air. The room had two windows in adjoining sides, but from neither could anything be seen except the rough inner surfaces of boards a few inches from the glass. There was no fireplace, no furniture; there was nothing: besides the cobwebs and the dust, the four men were the only objects there which were not a part of the structure.

Strange enough they looked in the yellow light of the candle. The one who had so reluctantly alighted was especially spectacular - he might have been called sensational. He was of middle age, heavily built, deep-chested and broad-shouldered. Looking at his figure, one would have said that he had a giant's strength; at his features, that he would use it like a giant. He was clean-shaven, his hair rather closely cropped and grey. His low forehead was seamed with wrinkles above the eyes, and over the nose these became vertical. The heavy black brows followed the same law, saved from meeting only by an upward turn at what would otherwise have been the point of contact. Deeply sunken beneath these glowed in the obscure light a pair of eyes of uncertain colour, but obviously enough too small. There was something forbidding in their expression, which was not bettered by the cruel mouth and wide jaw. The nose was well enough, as noses go; one does not expect much of noses. All that was sinister in the man's face seemed accentuated by an unnatural pallor - he appeared altogether bloodless.
The appearance of the other men was sufficiently commonplace: they were such persons as one meets and forgets that he met. All were younger than the man described, between whom and the eldest of the others, who stood apart, there was apparently no kindly feeling. They avoided looking at each other.

'Gentlemen,' said the man holding the candle and keys,' I believe everything is right. Are you ready, Mr. Rosser?'

The man standing apart from the group bowed and smiled.

'And you, Mr. Grossmith?'

The heavy man bowed and scowled.

'You will be pleased to remove your outer clothing.'

Their hats, coats, waistcoats and neckwear were soon removed and thrown outside the door, in the passage. The man with the candle now nodded, and the fourth man - he who had urged Grossmith to leave the wagon - produced from the pocket of his overcoat two long, murderous-looking bowie-knives, which he drew now from their leather scabbards.

'They are exactly alike,' he said, presenting one to each of the two principals - for by this time the dullest observer would have understood the nature of this meeting. It was to be a duel to the death.

Each combatant took a knife, examined it critically near the candle and tested the strength of blade and handle across his lifted knee. Their persons were then searched in turn, each by the second of the other.

'If it is agreeable to you, Mr. Grossmith,' said the man holding the light,' you will place yourself in that corner.'

He indicated the angle of the room farthest from the door, whither Grossmith retired, his second parting from him with a grasp of the hand which had nothing of cordiality in it. In the angle nearest the door Mr. Rosser stationed himself, and after a whispered consultation his second left him, joining the other near the door. At that moment the candle was suddenly extinguished, leaving all in profound darkness. This may have been done by the draught from the opened door; whatever the cause, the effect was startling.
'Gentlemen,' said a voice which sounded strangely unfamiliar in the altered condition affecting the relations of the senses - 'gentlemen, you will not move until you hear the closing of the outer door.'

A sound of trampling ensued, then the closing of the inner door; and finally the outer one closed with a concussion which shook the entire building.

A few minutes afterward a belated farmer's boy met a light wagon which was being driven furiously toward the town of Marshall. He declared that behind the two figures on the front seat stood a third, with its hands upon the bowed shoulders of the others, who appeared to struggle vainly to free themselves from its grasp. This figure, unlike the others, was clad in white, and had undoubtedly boarded the wagon as it passed the haunted house. As the lad could boast a considerable former experience with the supernatural thereabouts his word had the weight justly due to the testimony of an expert. The story (in connection with the next day's events) eventually appeared in the Advance, with some slight literary embellishments and a concluding intimation that the gentlemen referred to would be allowed the use of the paper's columns for their version of the night's adventure. But the privilege remained without a claimant.

The events that led up to this 'duel in the dark' were simple enough. One evening three young men of the town of Marshall were sitting in a quiet corner of the porch of the village hotel, smoking and discussing such matters as three educated young men of a Southern village would naturally find interesting. Their names were King, Sancher and Rosser. At a little distance, within easy hearing, but taking no part in the conversation, sat a fourth. He was a stranger to the others. They merely knew that on his arrival by the stage-coach that afternoon he had written in the hotel register the name Robert Grossmith. He had not been observed to speak to anyone except the hotel clerk. He seemed, indeed, singularly fond of his own company - or, as the personnel of the Advance expressed it, 'grossly addicted to evil associations.' But then it should be said in justice to the stranger that the personnel was himself of a too convivial disposition fairly to judge one differently gifted, and had, moreover, experienced a slight rebuff in an effort at an 'interview.'
'I hate any kind of deformity in a woman,' said King, 'whether natural or - acquired. I have a theory that any physical defect has its correlative mental and moral defect.'

'I infer, then,' said Rosser gravely, 'that a lady lacking the moral advantage of a nose would find the struggle to become Mrs. King an arduous enterprise.'

'Of course you may put it that way,' was the reply; 'but, seriously, I once threw over a most charming girl on learning quite accidentally that she had suffered amputation of a toe. My conduct was brutal if you like, but if I had married that girl I should have been miserable for life and should have made her so.'

'Whereas,' said Sancher, with a light laugh, 'by marrying a gentleman of more liberal views she escaped with a parted throat.'

'Ah, you know to whom I refer. Yes, she married Manton, but I don't know about his liberality; I'm not sure but he cut her throat because he discovered that she lacked that excellent thing in woman, the middle toe of the right foot.'

'Look at that chap!' said Rosser in a low voice, his eyes fixed upon the stranger.

'That chap' was obviously listening intently to the conversation.

'Damn his impudence!' muttered King - ' what ought we to do?'

'That's an easy one,' Rosser replied, rising. 'Sir,' he continued, addressing the stranger, 'I think it would be better if you would remove your chair to the other end of the veranda. The presence of gentlemen is evidently an unfamiliar situation to you.'

The man sprang to his feet and strode forward with clenched hands, his face white with rage. All were now standing. Sancher stepped between the belligerents.

'You are hasty and unjust,' he said to Rosser; 'this gentleman has done nothing to deserve such language.'
But Rosser would not withdraw a word. By the custom of the country and the time there could be but one outcome to the quarrel.

'I demand the satisfaction due to a gentleman,' said the stranger, who had become more calm. 'I have not an acquaintance in this region. Perhaps you, sir,' bowing to Sancher, 'will be kind enough to represent me in this matter.'

Sancher accepted the trust - somewhat reluctantly it must be confessed, for the man's appearance and manner were not at all to his liking. King, who during the colloquy had hardly removed his eyes from the stranger's face and had not spoken a word, consented with a nod to act for Rosser, and the upshot of it was that, the principals having retired, a meeting was arranged for the next evening. The nature of the arrangements has been already disclosed. The duel with knives in a dark room was once a commoner feature of south-western life than it is likely to be again. How thin a veneering of 'chivalry' covered the essential brutality of the code under which such encounters were possible we shall see.

In the blaze of a midsummer noonday the old Manton house was hardly true to its traditions. It was of the earth, earthy. The sunshine caressed it warmly and affectionately, with evident disregard of its bad reputation. The grass greening all the expanse in its front seemed to grow, not rankly, but with a natural and joyous exuberance, and the weeds blossomed quite like plants. Full of charming lights and shadows and populous with pleasant-voiced birds, the neglected shade trees no longer struggled to run away, but bent reverently beneath their burden of sun and song. Even in the glassless upper windows was an expression of peace and contentment, due to the light within. Over the stony fields the visible heat danced with a lively tremor incompatible with the gravity which is an attribute of the supernatural.

Such was the aspect under which the place presented itself to Sheriff Adams and two other men who had come out from Marshall to look at it. One of these men was Mr. King, the sheriff's deputy; the other, whose name was Brewer, was a brother of the late Mrs. Manton. Under a beneficent law of the State relating to property which had been for a certain period abandoned by an owner whose residence cannot be ascertained, the sheriff was legal custodian of the Manton farm and appurtenances thereunto belonging. His present visit was in mere perfunctory compliance with some order of a court in which Mr. Brewer had an action to get possession of the property as heir to his deceased sister. By a mere coincidence, the visit was made on the day after the night that Deputy King had unlocked the house for another and very different purpose. His presence now was not of his own choosing: he had been ordered to accompany his superior, and at the moment could think of nothing more prudent than simulated alacrity in obedience to the command.
Carelessly opening the front door, which to his surprise was not locked, the sheriff was amazed to see, lying on the floor of the passage into which it opened, a confused heap of men's apparel. Examination showed it to consist of two hats, and the same number of coats, waistcoats and scarves, all in a remarkably good state of preservation, albeit somewhat defiled by the dust in which they lay. Mr. Brewer was equally astonished, but Mr. King's emotion is not on record. With a new and lively interest in his own actions the sheriff now unlatched and pushed open the door on the right, and the three entered. The room was apparently vacant - no; as their eyes became accustomed to the dimmer light something was visible in the farthest angle of the wall. It was a human figure - that of a man crouching close in the corner. Something in the attitude made the intruders halt when they had barely passed the threshold. The figure more and more clearly defined itself. The man was upon one knee, his back in the angle of the wall, his shoulders elevated to the level of his ears, his hands before his face, palms outward, the fingers spread and crooked like claws; the white face turned upward on the retracted neck had an expression of unutterable fright, the mouth half open, the eyes incredibly expanded. He was stone dead. Yet, with the exception of a bowie-knife, which had evidently fallen from his own hand, not another object was in the room.

In thick dust that covered the floor were some confused footprints near the door and along the wall through which it opened. Along one of the adjoining walls, too, past the boarded-up windows, was the trail made by the man himself in reaching his corner. Instinctively in approaching the body the three men followed that trail. The sheriff grasped one of the out-thrown arms; it was as rigid as iron, and the application of a gentle force rocked the entire body without altering the relation of its parts. Brewer, pale with excitement, gazed intently into the distorted face. 'God of mercy!' he suddenly cried, 'it is Manton! '

'You are right,' said King, with an evident attempt at calmness: 'I knew Manton. He then wore a full beard and his hair long, but this is he.'
He might have added: 'I recognized him when he challenged Rosser. I told Rosser and Sancher who he was before we played him this horrible trick. When Rosser left this dark room at our heels, forgetting his outer clothing in the excitement, and driving away with us in his shirt sleeves - all through the discreditable proceedings we knew whom we were dealing with, murderer and coward that he was!'

But nothing of this did Mr. King say. With his better light he was trying to penetrate the mystery of the man's death. That he had not once moved from the corner where he had been stationed; that his posture was that of neither attack nor defence; that he had dropped his weapon; that he had obviously perished of sheer horror of something that he saw - these were circumstances which Mr. King's disturbed intelligence could not rightly comprehend.

Groping in intellectual darkness for a clue to his maze of doubt, his gaze, directed mechanically downward in the way of one who ponders momentous matters, fell upon something which, there, in the light of day and in the presence of living companions, affected him with terror. In the dust of years that lay thick upon the floor - leading from the door by which they had entered, straight across the room to within a yard of Manton's crouching corpse - were three parallel lines of footprints - light but definite impressions of bare feet, the outer ones those of small children, the inner a woman's. From the point at which they ended they did not return; they pointed all one way. Brewer, who had observed them at the same moment, was leaning forward in an attitude of rapt attention, horribly pale.

'Look at that!' he cried, pointing with both hands at the nearest print of the woman's right foot, where she had apparently stopped and stood. 'The middle toe is missing - it was Gertrude!'

Gertrude was the late Mrs. Manton, sister of Mr. Brewer.

🔆 Otros cuentos:

Adblock test (Why?)

The Secret Of Macarger's Gulch - Ambrose Bierce

The Secret Of Macarger's Gulch

Recursos Educativos en Inglés - Stories in English

Cuentos clásicos en inglés de miedo, suspense, halloween

The Secret Of Macarger's Gulch - Ambrose Bierce - Horror

Northwestwardly from Indian Hill, about nine miles as the crow flies, is Macarger's Gulch. It is not much of a gulch -- a mere depression between two wooded ridges of inconsiderable height. From its mouth up to its head -- for gulches, like rivers, have an anatomy of their own -- the distance does not exceed two miles, and the width at bottom is at only one place more than a dozen yards; for most of the distance on either side of the little brook which drains it in winter, and goes dry in the early spring, there is no level ground at all; the steep slopes of the hills, covered with an almost inpenetrable growth of manzanita and chemisal, are parted by nothing but the width of the watercourse. No one but an occasional enterprising hunter of the vicinity ever goes into Macarger's Gulch, and five miles away it is unknown, even by name. Within that distance in any direction are far more conspicuous topographical features without names, and one might try in vain to ascertain by local inquiry the origin of the name of this one.

About midway between the head and the mouth of Macarger's Gulch, the hill on the right as you ascend is cloven by another gulch, a short dry one, and at the junction of the two is a level space of two or three acres, and there a few years ago stood an old board house containing one small room. How the component parts of the house, few and simple as they were, had been assembled at that almost inaccessible point is a problem in the solution of which there would be greater satisfaction than advantage. Possibly the creek bed is a reformed road. It is certain that the gulch was at one time pretty thoroughly prospected by miners, who must have had some means of getting in with at least pack animals carrying tools and supplies; their profits, apparently, were not such as would have justified any considerable outlay to connect Macarger's Gulch with any centre of civilization enjoying the distinction of a sawmill. The house, however, was there, most of it. It lacked a door and a window frame, and the chimney of mud and stones had fallen into an unlovely heap, overgrown with rank weeds. Such humble furniture as there may once have been and much of the lower weather-boarding, had served as fuel in the camp fires of hunters; as had also, probably, the kerbing of an old well, which at the time I write of existed in the form of a rather wide but not very deep depression near by.
One afternoon in the summer of 1874, I passed up Macarger's Gulch from the narrow valley into which it opens, by following the dry bed of the brook. I was quail-shooting and had made a bag of about a dozen birds by the time I had reached the house described, of whose existence I was until then unaware. After rather carelessly inspecting the ruin I resumed my sport, and having fairly good success prolonged it until near sunset, when it occurred to me that I was a long way from any human habitation -- too far to reach one by nightfall. But in my game bag was food, and the old house would afford shelter, if shelter were needed on a warm and dewless night in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, where one may sleep in comfort on the pine needles, without covering. I am fond of solitude and love the night, so my resolution to 'camp out' was soon taken, and by the time that it was dark I had made my bed of boughs and grasses in a corner of the room and was roasting a quail at a fire that I had kindled on the hearth. The smoke escaped out of the ruined chimney, the light illuminated the room with a kindly glow, and as I ate my simple meal of plain bird and drank the remains of a bottle of red wine which had served me all the afternoon in place of the water, which the region did not supply, I experienced a sense of comfort which better fare and accommodations do not always give.

Nevertheless, there was something lacking. I had a sense of comfort, but not of security. I detected myself staring more frequently at the open doorway and blank window than I could find warrant for doing. Outside these apertures all was black, and I was unable to repress a certain feeling of apprehension as my fancy pictured the outer world and filled it with unfriendly entities, natural and supernatural -- chief among which, in their respective classes were the grizzly bear, which I knew was occasionally still seen in that region, and the ghost, which I had reason to think was not. Unfortunately, our feelings do not always respect the law of probabilities, and to me that evening, the possible and the impossible were equally disquieting.
Every one who has had experience in the matter must have observed that one confronts the actual and imaginary perils of the night with far less apprehension in the open air than in a house with an open doorway. I felt this now as I lay on my leafy couch in a corner of the room next to the chimney and permitted my fire to die out. So strong became my sense of the presence of something malign and menacing in the place, that I found myself almost unable to withdraw my eyes from the opening, as in the deepening darkness it became more and more indistinct. And when the last little flame flickered and went out I grasped the shotgun which I had laid at my side and actually turned the muzzle in the direction of the now invisible entrance, my thumb on one of the hammers, ready to cock the piece, my breath suspended, my muscles rigid and tense. But later I laid down the weapon with a sense of shame and mortification. What did I fear, and why? -- I, to whom the night had been

a more familiar face
than that of man --

I, in whom that element of hereditary superstition from which none of us is altogether free had given to solitude and darkness and silence only a more alluring interest and charm! I was unable to comprehend my folly, and losing in the conjecture the thing conjectured of, I fell asleep. And then I dreamed.

I was in a great city in a foreign land -- a city whose people were of my own race, with minor differences of speech and costume; yet precisely what these were I could not say; my sense of them was indistinct. The city was dominated by a great castle upon an overlooking height whose name I knew, but could not speak. I walked through many streets, some broad and straight with high, modern buildings, some narrow, gloomy, and tortuous, between the gables of quaint old houses whose overhanging stories, elaborately ornamented with carvings in wood and stone, almost met above my head.

I sought some one whom I had never seen, yet knew that I should recognize when found. My quest was not aimless and fortuitous; it had a definite method. I turned from one street into another without hesitation and threaded a maze of intricate passages, devoid of the fear of losing my way.
Presently I stopped before a low door in a plain stone house which might have been the dwelling of an artisan of the better sort, and without announcing myself, entered. The room, rather sparely furnished, and lighted by a single window with small diamond-shaped panes, had but two occupants: a man and a woman. They took no notice of my intrusion, a circumstance which, in the manner of dreams, appeared entirely natural. They were not conversing; they sat apart, unoccupied and sullen.

The woman was young and rather stout, with fine large eyes and a certain grave beauty; my memory of her expression is exceedingly vivid, but in dreams one does not observe the details of faces. About her shoulders was a plaid shawl. The man was older, dark, with an evil face made more forbidding by a long scar extending from near the left temple diagonally downward into the black moustache; though in my dreams it seemed rather to haunt the face as a thing apart -- I can express it no otherwise -- than to belong to it. The moment that I found the man and woman I knew them to be husband and wife.

What followed, I remember indistinctly; all was confused and inconsistent -- made so, I think, by gleams of consciousness. It was as if two pictures, the scene of my dream, and my actual surroundings, had been blended, one overlying the other, until the former, gradually fading, disappeared, and I was broad awake in the deserted cabin, entirely and tranquilly conscious of my situation.

My foolish fear was gone, and opening my eyes I saw that my fire, not altogether burned out, had revived by the falling of a stick and was again lighting the room. I had probably slept only a few minutes, but my commonplace dream had somehow so strongly impressed me that I was no longer drowsy; and after a little while I rose, pushed the embers of my fire together, and lighting my pipe proceeded in a rather ludicrously methodical way to meditate upon my vision.

It would have puzzled me then to say in what respect it was worth attention. In the first moment of serious thought that I gave to the matter I recognized the city of my dream as Edinburgh, where I had never been; so if the dream was a memory it was a memory of pictures and description. The recognition somehow deeply impressed me; it was as if something in my mind insisted rebelliously against will and reason on the importance of all this. And that faculty, whatever it was, asserted also a control of my speech. 'Surely,' I said aloud, quite involuntarily, 'the MacGregors must have come here from Edinburgh.'
At the moment, neither the substance of this remark nor the fact of my making it surprised me in the least; it seemed entirely natural that I should know the name of my dreamfolk and something of their history. But the absurdity of it all soon dawned upon me: I laughed aloud, knocked the ashes from my pipe and again stretched myself upon my bed of boughs and grass, where I lay staring absently into my failing fire, with no further thought of either my dream or my surroundings. Suddenly the single remaining flame crouched for a moment, then, springing upward, lifted itself clear of its embers and expired in air. The darkness was absolute.

At that instant -- almost, it seemed, before the gleam of the blaze had faded from my eyes -- there was a dull, dead sound, as of some heavy body falling upon the floor, which shook beneath me as I lay. I sprang to a sitting posture and groped at my side for my gun; my notion was that some wild beast had leaped in through the open window. While the flimsy structure was still shaking from the impact I heard the sound of blows, the scuffling of feet upon the floor, and then -- it seemed to come from almost within reach of my hand, the sharp shrieking of a woman in mortal agony. So horrible a cry I had never heard nor conceived; it utterly unnerved me; I was conscious for a moment of nothing but my own terror! Fortunately my hand now found the weapon of which it was in search, and the familiar touch somewhat restored me. I leaped to my feet, straining my eyes to pierce the darkness. The violent sounds had ceased, but more terrible than these, I heard, at what seemed long intervals, the faint intermittent gasping of some living, dying thing!

As my eyes grew accustomed to the dim light of the coals in the fireplace, I saw first the shapes of the door and window looking blacker than the black of the walls. Next, the distinction between wall and floor became discernible, and at last I was sensible to the form and full expanse of the floor from end to end and side to side. Nothing was visible and the silence was unbroken.
With a hand that shook a little, the other still grasping my gun, I restored my fire and made a critical examination of the place. There was nowhere any sign that the cabin had been entered. My own tracks were visible in the dust covering the floor, but there were no others. I relit my pipe, provided fresh fuel by ripping a thin board or two from the inside of the house -- I did not care to go into the darkness out of doors -- and passed the rest of the night smoking and thinking, and feeding my fire; not for added years of life would I have permitted that little flame to expire again.

Some years afterward I met in Sacramento a man named Morgan, to whom I had a note of introduction from a friend in San Francisco. Dining with him one evening at his home I observed various 'trophies' upon the wall, indicating that he was fond of shooting. It turned out that he was, and in relating some of his feats he mentioned having been in the region of my adventure.

'Mr. Morgan,' I asked abruptly, 'do you know a place up there called Macarger's Gulch? '

'I have good reason to,' he replied; 'it was I who gave to the newspapers, last year, the accounts of the finding of the skeleton there."

I had not heard of it; the accounts had been published, it appeared, while I was absent in the East.

'By the way,' said Morgan, 'the name of the gulch is a corruption; it should have been called "MacGregor's." My dear,' he added, speaking to his wife, 'Mr. Elderson has upset his wine.'

That was hardly accurate -- I had simply dropped it, glass and all.

'There was an old shanty once in the gulch,' Morgan resumed when the ruin wrought by my awkwardness had been repaired, 'but just previously to my visit it had been blown down, or rather blown away, for its debris was scattered all about, the very floor being parted, plank from plank. Between two of the sleepers still in position I and my companion observed the remnant of a plaid shawl, and examining it found that it was wrapped about the shoulders of the body of a woman; of course but little remained besides the bones, partly covered with fragments of clothing, and brown dry skin. But we will spare Mrs. Morgan,' he added with a smile. The lady had indeed exhibited signs of disgust rather than sympathy.
'It is necessary to say, however,' he went on, 'that the skull was fractured in several places, as by blows of some blunt instrument; and that instrument itself -- a pick-handle, still stained with blood -- lay under the boards near by.'

Mr. Morgan turned to his wife. 'Pardon me, my dear,' he said with affected solemnity, 'for mentioning these disagreeable particulars, the natural though regrettable incidents of a conjugal quarrel -- resulting, doubtless, from the luckless wife's insubordination.'

'I ought to be able to overlook it,' the lady replied with composure; 'you have so many times asked me to in those very words.'

I thought he seemed rather glad to go on with his story.

'From these and other circumstances,' he said, 'the coroner's jury found that the deceased, Janet MacGregor, came to her death from blows inflicted by some person to the jury unknown; but it was added that the evidence pointed strongly to her husband, Thomas MacGregor, as the guilty person. But Thomas MacGregor has never been found nor heard of. It was learned that the couple came from Edinburgh, but not -- my dear, do you not observe that Mr. Elderson's bone-plate has water in it?'

I had deposited a chicken bone in my finger bowl.

'In a little cupboard I found a photograph of MacGregor, but it did not lead to his capture.'

'Will you let me see it?' I said.

The picture showed a dark man with an evil face made more forbidding by a long scar extending from near the temple diagonally downward into the black moustache.

'By the way, Mr. Elderson,' said my affable host, 'may I know why you asked about "Macarger's Gulch"?'

'I lost a mule near there once,' I replied, 'and the mischance has -- has quite -- upset me.'
'My dear,' said Mr. Morgan, with the mechanical intonation of an interpreter translating, 'the loss of Mr. Elderson's mule has peppered his coffee.'

🔆 Otros cuentos:

Adblock test (Why?)

domingo, 19 de septiembre de 2021

Los verbos Auxiliares en inglés - Auxiliary Verbs

Cómo usar los verbos auxiliares en inglés: be, have, do

En esta lección aprenderás los fundamentos de los auxiliares en inglés. Son muy útiles y se utilizan mucho, tanto que no se puede prescindir de ellos al hablar en inglés. Si quieres hacer una pregunta, por ejemplo, necesitarás un auxiliar.

Have, Do and Be - Auxiliary Verbs

Los tres auxiliares más comunes en inglés son HAVE, DO y BE.

Ten en cuenta que estas palabras también son verbos: have es el verbo tener, do es el verbo hacer y be es el verbo ser.

Por lo tanto, son palabras que tienen un doble propósito. Por un lado, pueden ser verbos y, por otro, pueden ser auxiliares.

En esta ocasión, sólo nos centraremos en su función auxiliar.

¿Cuál es la finalidad de los auxiliares?

Tienen tres funciones principales. Los dos primeros son para construir:

  • La forma interrogativa
  • La forma negativa

La tercera función, que sólo concierne a HAVE y BE, es la de formar los tiempos compuestos, como la forma progresiva (por ejemplo: I am going; se utiliza el auxiliar be) o el presente y el pasado perfectos (por ejemplo: I have heard to this song; aquí se utiliza el auxiliar have).

En resumen, los auxiliares se utilizan para construir

  • la forma interrogativa (HAVE, DO o BE),
  • la forma negativa (HAVE not, DO not o BE not), y
  • los tiempos compuestos (sólo para HAVE y BE).

¿Qué formas adoptan los auxiliares?

La forma cambia según el tiempo de la frase y el sujeto utilizado. Para resumir todo esto y facilitar el aprendizaje, aquí tiens un resumen:

Presente

Auxiliaire: HAVE - DO - BE

I: HAVE - DO - AM
He She It: HAS - DOES - IS
We: HAVE - DO - ARE
You: HAVE - DO - ARE
They: HAVE - DO - ARE

Pretérito

Auxiliaire: HAVE - DO - BE

I: HAD - DID - WAS
He She It: HAD - DID - WAS
We: HAD - DID - WERE
You: HAD- DID - WERE
They: HAD - DID - WERE

Por ejemplo, la pregunta:

Do you go to the work? - ¿Vas al trabajo?

se convierte en el pretérito:

Did you go to the work? - ¿Fuiste al trabajo?

La forma negativa sería:

No I don’t (do not)

y en el pretérito:

No I didn’t (did not)

Contracciones de la forma negativa

Have se convierte en Have not o haven’t

Has se convierte en has not o hasn’t

Do se convierte en do not o don’t

Does se convierte en does not o doesn’t

I am se convierte en I am not

Is se convierte en is not o isn’t

Are se convierte en are not o aren’t

Had se convierte en had not o hadn’t

Did se convierte en did not o didn’t

Was se convierte en was not o wasn’t

Were se convierte en were not o weren’t

¿Cómo saber qué auxiliar elegir, entre Do, Have y Be?

  • En el presente simple: DO, excepto el verbo TO BE
    En el presente simple, cuando se trata de una pregunta o de una forma negativa, y no se utiliza el verbo to BE, se utiliza DO.

Cuando existe el verbo to BE, utilizamos to BE como auxiliar para formular la pregunta o hacer la negación.

  • Presente continuo: BE
  • En el tiempo pretérito : DID, excepto el verbo TO BE
  • Presente perfecto: HAVE
  • Pretérito continuo: BE

🔆 También te puede interesar:

  • Cómo preguntar y expresar la posesión en inglés
  • Cómo usar May y might - Verbos modales
  • Conditionals in English - El condicional en Inglés
  • Adjetivos y pronombres demostrativos en Inglés
  • Pronombres Posesivos en inglés - Possessive Pronouns
  • Adjetivos Posesivos en Inglés - Possessive adjectives
  • ¿Cómo aprender inglés fácil y desde casa?
  • Plural de los sustantivos en inglés
  • Many more, a lot more y Much more. Usos en inglés
  • ¿Qué son los phrasal verbs en inglés? Los más usados
  • Cómo expresar opiniones en inglés
  • Uso de whose en inglés - Pronombres relativos
  • Who, which y that - Pronombres Relativos en inglés
  • Was going to - El futuro en el pasado
  • DO y MAKE en inglés ¿Cuáles son las diferencias?
  • Cuándo usar Since, For, Ago: ¿Cuáles son las diferencias?
  • The Gerund - El gerundio en inglés
  • El Imperativo en Inglés - Imperative
  • El comparativo y el superlativo en inglés
  • Preguntas con WH-Questions 01 - What, where, why, who
  • Preguntas con WH-Questions 02 - When, Which, Whose, How
  • Cómo expresar cantidades en inglés
  • Adjectives - Los Adjetivos en Inglés
  • Uso de some / any acompañando nombres contables/incontables
  • Modal verbs - Verbos modales en inglés
  • El tiempo futuro en inglés
  • Present Perfect Progressive - Presente perfecto progresivo
  • Present perfect - El presente perfecto inglés
  • Pretérito progresivo o continuo en inglés
  • Simple past - El pretérito o pasado simple en inglés
  • Presente continuo - Forma Afirmativa - English grammar
  • Presente continuo - Forma Negativa
  • Puntuación en inglés - All about punctuation in English
  • Los verbos Auxiliares en inglés - Auxiliary Verbs
  • Verbos irregulares en inglés, la lista que debes conocer
  • Cómo decir la fecha en inglés - How to say the date in English
  • Construir frases simples - To build a simple sentence
  • Nombres contables e incontables en inglés
  • Presente continuo - Forma Interrogativa
  • Cómo Preguntar y decir el precio en inglés

Adblock test (Why?)

Presente simple y presente continuo

¿Cómo saber si es present continuous? ¿Cuándo utilizar Present Continuous? ¿Cuándo se utiliza el present simple?

Diferencia entre Present Simple y Present Continuous

Existen dos tiempos presentes en inglés: el presente simple y el presente continuo (o progresivo).

Y sí, en inglés distinguimos entre el tiempo presente (o presente simple) y el presente inmediato (también llamado presente continuo).

Recuerda:

Si estás hablando de una acción que realizas regularmente, utiliza el hábito presente, o presente simple. (ejemplo: I read...)

Si estás hablando de una acción que estás realizando, utiliza el presente continuo. (ejemplo: I am reading...)

Presente simple

Construcción:

La construcción del presente simple es muy simple. La construcción no cambia nunca, excepto en el caso de la tercera persona del singular, donde hay que poner "S" o "ES" al final del verbo. Tomemos por ejemplo el verbo comer:

  • I eat
  • You eat
  • he/she/it eats (fíjate en la S en la tercera persona del singular)
  • we eat
  • you eat
  • they eat

¿Cómo se utiliza el presente simple?

El presente simple se utiliza como tiempo presente. El presente de hábito es simplemente el tiempo que utilizamos cuando hablamos de un hábito o rutina. Por ejemplo, si vas al trabajo todas las mañanas (hábito) dirías: I go to work every morning.

Por otro lado, si quieres decir que es excepcional, y que vas a trabajar esta mañana, utilizarías el tiempo presente progresivo: I am going to work this morning.

Presente continuo (o presente progresivo)

Construcción:

Para construir el tiempo presente continuo, necesitamos el auxiliar BE. A continuación, añadimos ING al final del verbo que queremos utilizar.

Por ejemplo, para el verbo comer:

  • I am eating
  • You are eating
  • He/she/it is eating
  • We are eating
  • You are eating
  • They are eating

¿Cómo se utiliza el presente continuo?

El presente continuo se utiliza cuando se quiere hablar de una acción que está teniendo lugar mientras se habla.

Ejemplo:

Estás en la cocina cocinando. Dirías: "I am cooking". Estoy cocinando.

Sin embargo, si quieres decir que cocinas todos los días (hábito) dirías "I cook everyday". (presente simple)

🔆 También te puede interesar:

  • Cómo preguntar y expresar la posesión en inglés
  • Cómo usar May y might - Verbos modales
  • Conditionals in English - El condicional en Inglés
  • Adjetivos y pronombres demostrativos en Inglés
  • Pronombres Posesivos en inglés - Possessive Pronouns
  • Adjetivos Posesivos en Inglés - Possessive adjectives
  • ¿Cómo aprender inglés fácil y desde casa?
  • Plural de los sustantivos en inglés
  • Many more, a lot more y Much more. Usos en inglés
  • ¿Qué son los phrasal verbs en inglés? Los más usados
  • Cómo expresar opiniones en inglés
  • Uso de whose en inglés - Pronombres relativos
  • Who, which y that - Pronombres Relativos en inglés
  • Was going to - El futuro en el pasado
  • DO y MAKE en inglés ¿Cuáles son las diferencias?
  • Cuándo usar Since, For, Ago: ¿Cuáles son las diferencias?
  • The Gerund - El gerundio en inglés
  • El Imperativo en Inglés - Imperative
  • El comparativo y el superlativo en inglés
  • Preguntas con WH-Questions 01 - What, where, why, who
  • Preguntas con WH-Questions 02 - When, Which, Whose, How
  • Cómo expresar cantidades en inglés
  • Adjectives - Los Adjetivos en Inglés
  • Uso de some / any acompañando nombres contables/incontables
  • Modal verbs - Verbos modales en inglés
  • El tiempo futuro en inglés
  • Present Perfect Progressive - Presente perfecto progresivo
  • Present perfect - El presente perfecto inglés
  • Pretérito progresivo o continuo en inglés
  • Simple past - El pretérito o pasado simple en inglés
  • Presente continuo - Forma Afirmativa - English grammar
  • Presente continuo - Forma Negativa
  • Puntuación en inglés - All about punctuation in English
  • Los verbos Auxiliares en inglés - Auxiliary Verbs
  • Verbos irregulares en inglés, la lista que debes conocer
  • Cómo decir la fecha en inglés - How to say the date in English
  • Construir frases simples - To build a simple sentence
  • Nombres contables e incontables en inglés
  • Presente continuo - Forma Interrogativa
  • Cómo Preguntar y decir el precio en inglés

Adblock test (Why?)

Todo lo que necesitas saber sobre la coma en inglés

Puntuación en inglés - Uso de la coma

Cuando se trata de aprender un idioma extranjero, es importante expresarse correctamente, respetar la ortografía de las palabras, pero también tener en cuenta los signos de puntuación.

En este artículo de gramática te presentaremos la coma (,) y sus diferentes usos en inglés. Céntrate en nuestros consejos y ejemplos para el uso correcto de este signo de puntuación. Estamos seguros de que aprenderás nuevas reglas. Toma notas.

Cómo usar la coma correctamente en inglés: Algunas reglas generales.

Sobre todo, para saber cuándo poner una coma en los textos ingleses, hay que entender la estructura de la frase. La coma está sujeta a reglas estrictas.

Puede colocarse libremente, dependiendo del significado que se quiera dar a la frase, o puede colocarse en un lugar específico, sin posibilidad de desplazarla.

Ejemplos del uso de la coma en inglés

La coma para separar sustantivos, verbos o adjetivos

La coma en inglés se utilizará para separar los diferentes elementos de una enumeración:

  • En una serie de sustantivos comunes o propios: For breakfast, I had orange juice, coffee, marmelade and French baguette. Para el desayuno, tomé jugo de naranja, café, mermelada y baguette.
  • En una serie de verbos: The little boy ran, fell, hurt, and cried. El niño corrió, se cayó, se lastimó y lloró.
  • En una serie de adjetivos: My neighbour is honest, kind, helpful, and intelligent. Mi vecino es honesto, amable, servicial e inteligente.

Cuando hay al menos tres elementos, la coma que separa los dos últimos se llama "coma de Oxford". Mira el ejemplo a continuación:

  • During our holidays, we have visited France, Italy, and Spain. Durante nuestras vacaciones, hemos visitado Francia, Italia y España.

El lugar de la coma en inglés en las propuestas independientes

En las oraciones en las que dos proposiciones independientes están unidas por una conjunción coordinada, las dos partes están separadas por una coma, colocada como aquí:

  • You can spend your money in new clothes, or you can enjoy a beautiful travel. Puedes gastar tu dinero en ropa nueva, o puedes disfrutar de un hermoso viaje.

La coma entre comillas en inglés

Aquí, hay necesariamente una coma antes de una cita entre comillas. Como en este ejemplo:

  • Nelson Mandela said, ‘‘I never lose. I either win or learn. Nelson Mandela dijo, "Nunca pierdo". O gano o aprendo".

La coma en inglés también se usa en los números

En inglés, se colocará para separar los millares, según el ejemplo siguiente:

En inglés = 15,000

Y lo mismo ocurre con los números más grandes:

En inglés = 8,245,526

Indispensable en las etiquetas de las preguntas

Las etiquetas de preguntas son las preguntas que pondremos al final de la frase, equivalentes a nuestro "¿no es así?".

Excepto que, en inglés, la etiqueta de la pregunta usa el mismo auxiliar. Si la frase es negativa, la etiqueta de la pregunta será afirmativa, y viceversa. Cuando se usa una frase en inglés que contiene una etiqueta de pregunta, la coma es obligatoria, como en los ejemplos de abajo:

  • You are English, aren’t you? - You are French, aren't you? - Usted es inglés, ¿verdad? Usted es francés, ¿no?
  • You won't be able to eat the whole pizza, will you? You won't be able to eat the whole pizza, will you? - No podrás comerte toda la pizza, ¿verdad? No podrás comerte toda la pizza, ¿verdad?

¿Qué hay del punto y coma en inglés?

El punto y coma en inglés, se usará para indicar la separación entre dos partes de una frase. La interrupción es más acentuada que con la coma, pero menos que con el punto. Se usa menos que la coma. Recuerda que la palabra que sigue al punto y coma comienza con una letra minúscula.

🔆 También te puede interesar:

  • Cómo preguntar y expresar la posesión en inglés
  • Cómo usar May y might - Verbos modales
  • Conditionals in English - El condicional en Inglés
  • Adjetivos y pronombres demostrativos en Inglés
  • Pronombres Posesivos en inglés - Possessive Pronouns
  • Adjetivos Posesivos en Inglés - Possessive adjectives
  • ¿Cómo aprender inglés fácil y desde casa?
  • Plural de los sustantivos en inglés
  • Many more, a lot more y Much more. Usos en inglés
  • ¿Qué son los phrasal verbs en inglés? Los más usados
  • Cómo expresar opiniones en inglés
  • Uso de whose en inglés - Pronombres relativos
  • Who, which y that - Pronombres Relativos en inglés
  • Was going to - El futuro en el pasado
  • DO y MAKE en inglés ¿Cuáles son las diferencias?
  • Cuándo usar Since, For, Ago: ¿Cuáles son las diferencias?
  • The Gerund - El gerundio en inglés
  • El Imperativo en Inglés - Imperative
  • El comparativo y el superlativo en inglés
  • Preguntas con WH-Questions 01 - What, where, why, who
  • Preguntas con WH-Questions 02 - When, Which, Whose, How
  • Cómo expresar cantidades en inglés
  • Adjectives - Los Adjetivos en Inglés
  • Uso de some / any acompañando nombres contables/incontables
  • Modal verbs - Verbos modales en inglés
  • El tiempo futuro en inglés
  • Present Perfect Progressive - Presente perfecto progresivo
  • Present perfect - El presente perfecto inglés
  • Pretérito progresivo o continuo en inglés
  • Simple past - El pretérito o pasado simple en inglés
  • Presente continuo - Forma Afirmativa - English grammar
  • Presente continuo - Forma Negativa
  • Puntuación en inglés - All about punctuation in English
  • Los verbos Auxiliares en inglés - Auxiliary Verbs
  • Verbos irregulares en inglés, la lista que debes conocer
  • Cómo decir la fecha en inglés - How to say the date in English
  • Construir frases simples - To build a simple sentence
  • Nombres contables e incontables en inglés
  • Presente continuo - Forma Interrogativa
  • Cómo Preguntar y decir el precio en inglés

Adblock test (Why?)