The Gothic Terror MEGAPACK™: 17 Classic Tales (10 page)

Hard as these men were, they shuddered, and the cold drops started from their ghastly and bloated faces. It was stunning. The third of their number consigned to this horrible fate—eaten up by the wolves—all within a week! Were they doomed? What shadowy, inscrutable foe was this who always struck when least expected, and with such fearful certainty, yet left no trace behind? Was it, indeed, some supernatural agent of judgment, visited upon their enormities? Awed and panic-stricken beyond all that may be conceived of guilty fear, without any examination of the neighborhood or of the bones, they wheeled and galloped back, carrying the alarm on foaming horses in every direction.

The whole country shared in their consternation. I never witnessed such a tumult of wild excitement. It was the association of ghostly attributes, derived from Henrie’s story, with the probable author of these unaccountable assassinations, which so much roused all classes; and this effect was not a little heightened when the report got out that this man had been shot in the same way as the others—through the back of the head. Hundreds of persons went out to bring in the bones, making, as they said, the strictest search on every side for traces of the murderer, without being able to discover the slightest.

These things struck me as so peculiar and difficult to be reasoned upon, that I felt no little sympathy with the popular sentiment, which assigned to them something of a supernatural origin. But Henrie laughed at the idea, and insisted that it must be a maniac. In confirmation of this opinion, he related many instances, given by half-romancing medical writers, of the remarkable cunning of such patients in avoiding detection and baffling pursuit in the accomplishment of some purpose on which their bewildered energies had strangely been concentrated. This was the opinion most favored among the more intelligent planters; but the popular rumors assigned him the most egregious and fantastic features.

The Bearded Ghost, as he was now generally named from Henrie’s description, had been seen by this, that, and the other person; now striding rapidly, like a tall thin spectre, across some open glade between two thickets, and disappearing before the affrighted observer could summon courage to address it—now standing beneath some old tree by the road side, still as its shadow, the keen, sepulchral eyes shining steadily through the gloom, but melting bodily away if a word was spoken; now he was to be seen mounted, careering like a form of vapor past the dark trunks of the forest aisles, or hurrying swiftly away like a rain-cloud before the wind across the wide prairie, always hair-clad and gaunt, with a streaming beard, and the long heavy rifle on his shoulder.

I soon began to note that it was only men of a particular class who pretended to say that they had actually seen with their own eyes these wonderful sights, and they were those Emigrant Hunters who had particularly suffered from the persecutions of the Regulators. I observed, too, that they always located these mysterious appearances in the close vicinity of some one of the houses of the Regulators.

It at once struck me that it was a profoundly subtle conspiracy of this class—headed by some man of remarkable personalities and skill, with the deliberate and stern purpose of exterminating the Regulators, or driving them from the country.

It seems the cunning mind of Hinch caught at the same conclusion. He observed the peculiar eagerness of these men in circulating wild reports, and exaggerating as highly as possible the popular conception of this mysterious being. His savage nature seized upon it with a thrill of unutterable exultation. Now he could make open war upon the whole hateful class, rid the country of them entirely, and reach this fearful enemy through his coadjutors, even if he still managed to elude vengeance personally.

He denounced them with great clamor; and as the people had become very touch alarmed, and felt universally the necessity of sifting this dangerous secret to the bottom, many of them volunteered to assist—and for a week four or five parties were scouring in every direction. Thus doubly reinforced, Hinch rushed into excesses, in comparison to which, all heretofore committed were mild. Several men were horribly mutilated with the lash—others compelled to take to the thickets, through which they were hunted like wolves. At last Hinch went so far as to hang one poor fellow till he was dead.

During all the time when these active and violent demonstrations were being made, and the whole population astir and on the alert, nothing further was heard of the Bearded Madman. Not even faint glimpses of him were obtained, and Hinch and his party, while returning from the hanging mentioned above, were congratulating themselves upon the result of his sagacity, which, as they boisterously affirmed, had been no less than the routing of this formidable conspiracy and frightening of this crazy phantom from the field. They felt so sure of being rid of him now, that they disbanded at the grocery to return home.

One of their number named Rees, almost as bad and brutal a man as Hinch himself, was going home alone late that evening. As he rode past a thicket in full view of his own door, his wife who was standing in it, watching his approach, saw him suddenly stop his horse and turn his head with a quick movement toward the thicket—in the next moment blue smoke rose up from it, and the ring of a rifle shocked upon her ear. She saw her husband pitch forward out of the saddle upon his face, and thought she could distinguish a tall figure stalking rapidly off through the open wood beyond, with a rifle upon his shoulder. She screamed the alarm, and with the negroes around her, ran to him. They found him entirely dead,
shot through the eye
, the ball passing out at the back of the head.

A perfect blaze of universal frenzy burst out at the first news of this fourth murder; but when the curious circumstances noted above followed after it, very different effects, and great changes in the character of the excitement, were produced.

When Hinch was told that Rees had been shot through the eye, and that from the course of the ball in the other cases, it was probable all the others had been shot in the same way, he turned livid as the dead of yesterday—his knees smote together—and with a horrid blasphemy be roared out, “Jack Long! Jack Long!” then sinking his voice to a mutter—“or his ghost come back for vengeance!”

Other citizens, not connected with the Regulators, felt greatly relieved, now that this impenetrable affair was to some degree explained. They remembered at once the peculiar circumstances of Jack’s noted mark, and the lynching he had received; though many still persisted in the belief that it was Jack’s ghost, for they said—“How could it be anything else, when the Regulators left him for dead?”

But, ghost or no ghost, it was universally believed that Jack Long and his rifle were identified somehow with the actor in these deeds. The disfiguration of the skull, in the other instances, had prevented the discovery until now; but everybody breathed more freely since it had been made. It was the painfully embarrassing uncertainty as to the object of these assassinations—whether any individual in the county might not be the next victim, and the propensity for murder indiscriminate—which had caused such deep excitement, and induced the people to aid the Regulators.

But now that this uncertainty was fixed upon the shoulders of the “bloody band,” and their own freed of the unpleasant burden, they were greatly disposed to enjoy the thing, and, instead of assisting them any further, to wish Jack success from the bottom of their hearts. They felt that every one of these wretches deserved to die a thousand times; at all events, whether it was really Jack, his ghost, or the devil, it was a single issue between him and the Regulators, and no one felt the slightest inclination to interfere.

Those who professed to be very logical in solving the question as to what he really was, reasoned that it must be Jack in the body, beyond a doubt; but that it was equally certain that the injuries he had received must have deranged his mind, and that it was from the fever of insanity he derived the wonderful skill and sternness of purpose which he displayed. They could not understand how a nature so easy and simple as Jack’s was reported to have been, could be roused by any natural energies of slumbering passion to such terrific deeds.

Those of Jack’s own class who had escaped the exterminating violence of Hinch’s hate, now began to look up and come forth from their hiding-places. They laughed at all these versions of opinion about Jack, and insinuated that he was as calm as a May morning, and that his head was as clear as a bell. One testy old fellow broke loose with something more than insinuation, to a crowd of men at the store, who were discussing the matter.

“You’re all a parcel of fools, to talk about his being a ghost or a crazy man. I tell you he’s as alive as a snake’s tongue all over, and a leetle venomouser. As for bein’ cracked in the bore, he talks it out jest as clean as his long rifle whar’s been doin’ all this work. I let you know Jack come of a Tory-hatin, Injun-fighten gineration, and that’s a blood whar’s hard to cool when it gits riz. Them stripes has got his bristles up, and it’ll take
some
blood to slick ’em down agin.”

Hinch heard of this bold talk, and, half maddened between rage and fear, made one more desperate effort to get the remainder of his company together. They were now afraid to ride singly; and those who were nearest neighbors collected the night before, under an escort of their negroes, and started for the rendezvous at the grocery next morning, in groups of two and three.

Two of them, named Davis and Nixon, were riding in together, prying, with great trepidation, behind every tree, and into every clump and thicket they came across, large enough to hide a man. They had to pass a small stream which ran along the bottom of a deep, narrow gulley, the banks of which were fringed along the tops by bushes about six feet high. This was within half a mile of the town; and as they had seen nothing yet to rouse their suspicions they began to think they should get in unmolested.

While they stopped to let their horses drink for a moment, and were leaning over their necks, the animals suddenly raised their heads, snorting, towards the top of the bank. The men were startled, too, and looked up. The dreaded enemy! A grisly head and shoulders, above the bushes, and the heavy rifle laid along their tops, bearing full, with its dark tube, into their faces!

The shudder which thrilled through the frame of Nixon was prolonged into the death. The black muzzle gushed with flame, and the wretched man pitched head-foremost into the stream. Almost immediately the frightened companion heard the heavy tramp of a horse’s feet.

Leaving his companion in the water—one crushed eyeball, and the other glaring glassily at the sky—Davis urged his horse up against the ascent, and saw from the top of the bank, a gaunt outline of a receding figure, just losing itself through the trees, among which the horse was speeding with wonderful rapidity.

Davis galloped into town with the news on his white lips. The Regulators dispersed in inconceivable dismay, and never got together again. They shut themselves up in their houses, and for two weeks not one of them dared to put his eyes outside of his own door.

Jack was now sometimes seen for a time, publicly, and was regarded with great curiosity and awe; for, with all he had already done, it was known that his mission was not yet finished. Everybody watched with intense interest the progress of the work, especially the hunters, who began now to express their satisfaction openly.

At last, one of the Regulators, a poor scamp, named White, who was greatly addicted to drink, grew impatient of abstinence, and determined to risk Jack’s rifle rather than do without liquor any longer. He set off in a covered wagon for the grocery, to get him a barrel, lying on the bottom of the wagon, while one of his negroes drove. The liquor had been obtained, and he had nearly reached the entrance of a lane, which led up to his house, on his return, without even lifting his head so far as to expose it, when the wagon run over a large chunk of wood, which had been placed across the track, just where it ran close to the thicket.

The jolt was so severe as to roll the barrel over on him. He forgot his prudence, and put his head out of the cover to swear at the boy for his carelessness. The negro heard him say, “There he is at last!” cutting short the exclamation with a torrent of oaths, when a rifle-shot whistled from the thicket. His master fell back heavily in the wagon, and he saw a tall, “hairy man,” as he called him, stalking off through the woods with a gun on his shoulder. It was observable that White, also, was
shot through the eye
.

A week after this, another of them, named Garnet, who had kept himself a close prisoner, got up one morning at sunrise, and threw open the door of his house to let in the fresh air. Stepping from behind a large tree in the yard, stood forth the Avenger, with that long rifle leveled, and that cold eye fixed upon his face, waiting for a recognition, as he did in every case, before he fired. The man attempted to step back—too late! The sun was in his eye, but, winged with darkness and oblivion, the quick messenger burst through, shattering nerve and sense, and the seventh miserable victim fell heavily across his own threshold.

But, by an ingenious elaboration of vengeance, the most terrible torture of all had been reserved for Hinch. His imagination became his hell. He died, through it, a thousand deaths. He had been passed by, to see his comrades one by one fall from around him, with the consciousness that the relentless hate and marvelous skill which struck them down was strung with ten-fold sternness against himself. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven! He had counted them all many times. They had all gone down under his eye, and as each one fell, came the question, Shall it be my turn next?

From the certainty that it would come, there was no escaping. He had put forth all the malignant ferocity of cunning and brutal passion in vain; and as successively he missed his minions from his side, the dark circle grew narrower and narrower, closing in terrible gloom about him, till he stood almost singly in the light, the only target for that pitiless aim. Ay! The very spot where the ball should strike him was distinctly marked by seven several instances! And the wretch clasped his hands before his eyes and shivered in every fiber, as he felt the keen shock strike in blackness, through tissues so sensitive, that even a hair touching them now was agony.

Such a consciousness of coming doom was too much to be endured. Within a few weeks, he shrank like a rank weed from above which the sheltering boughs had been cleft, and the strong sun let in upon its bare stems. His bloated face became wrinkled and pallid. He became so nervous, that the tap of a crisp leaf, driven by the winds against the window, made him shudder and glare his eyes around, expecting that dark tube to grow through upon him from some crevice of his log house.