Portent and Other Stories, The | Page 3

of proving. It has likewise,
however, brought me sounds which I could never trace back to their
origin; though they may have arisen from some natural operation which
I had not perseverance or mental acuteness sufficient to discover. From
this, or, it may be, from some deeper cause with which this is
connected, arose a certain kind of fearfulness associated with the sense
of hearing, of which I have never heard a corresponding instance. Full
as my mind was of the wild and sometimes fearful tales of a Highland
nursery, fear never entered my mind by the eyes, nor, when I brooded
over tales of terror, and fancied new and yet more frightful
embodiments of horror, did I shudder at any imaginable spectacle, or
tremble lest the fancy should become fact, and from behind the
whin-bush or the elder-hedge should glide forth the tall swaying form
of the Boneless. When alone in bed, I used to lie awake, and look out
into the room, peopling it with the forms of all the persons who had
died within the scope of my memory and acquaintance. These fancied
forms were vividly present to my imagination. I pictured them pale,
with dark circles around their hollow eyes, visible by a light which
glimmered within them; not the light of life, but a pale, greenish

phosphorescence, generated by the decay of the brain inside. Their
garments were white and trailing, but torn and soiled, as by trying often
in vain to get up out of the buried coffin. But so far from being terrified
by these imaginings, I used to delight in them; and in the long winter
evenings, when I did not happen to have any book that interested me
sufficiently, I used even to look forward with expectation to the hour
when, laying myself straight upon my back, as if my bed were my
coffin, I could call up from underground all who had passed away, and
see how they fared, yea, what progress they had made towards final
dissolution of form--but all the time, with my fingers pushed hard into
my ears, lest the faintest sound should invade the silent citadel of my
soul. If inadvertently I removed one of my fingers, the agony of terror I
instantly experienced is indescribable. I can compare it to nothing but
the rushing in upon my brain of a whole churchyard of spectres. The
very possibility of hearing a sound, in such a mood, and at such a time,
was almost enough to paralyse me. So I could scare myself in broad
daylight, on the open hillside, by imagining unintelligible sounds; and
my imagination was both original and fertile in the invention of such.
But my mind was too active to be often subjected to such influences.
Indeed life would have been hardly endurable had these moods been of
more than occasional occurrence. As I grew older, I almost outgrew
them. Yet sometimes one awful dread would seize me--that, perhaps,
the prophetic power manifest in the gift of second sight, which,
according to the testimony of my old nurse, had belonged to several of
my ancestors, had been in my case transformed in kind without losing
its nature, transferring its abode from the sight to the hearing, whence
resulted its keenness, and my fear and suffering.
Chapter II
The Second Hearing.
One summer evening, I had lingered longer than usual in my rocky
retreat: I had lain half dreaming in the mouth of my cave, till the
shadows of evening had fallen, and the gloaming had deepened
half-way towards the night. But the night had no more terrors for me
than the day. Indeed, in such regions there is a solitariness for which

there seems a peculiar sense, and upon which the shadows of night sink
with a strange relief, hiding from the eye the wide space which yet they
throw more open to the imagination. When I lifted my head, only a star
here and there caught my eye; but, looking intently into the depths of
blue-grey, I saw that they were crowded with twinkles. The mountain
rose before me, a huge mass of gloom; but its several peaks stood out
against the sky with a clear, pure, sharp outline, and looked nearer to
me than the bulk from which they rose heaven-wards. One star
trembled and throbbed upon the very tip of the loftiest, the central peak,
which seemed the spire of a mighty temple where the light was
worshipped--crowned, therefore, in the darkness, with the emblem of
the day. I was lying, as I have said, with this fancy still in my thought,
when suddenly I heard, clear, though faint and far away, the sound as
of the iron-shod hoofs of a horse, in furious gallop along an uneven
rocky surface. It was