Message #184612

[Spirits of the Dead]

"Something beside me rustles—rustles angrily, and I know, I can feel, it is the bundle on the branch—the ghastly, groaning, creaking, croaking caricature of Sir Algernon. The horseman comes up to me—our eyes meet—I am looking in those of a dead—of a long since dead man—my blood freezes.

"He flashes past me—thud, thud, thud! A bend in the road, and he vanishes from sight. But I can still hear him, still hear the mad patter of his horse's hoofs as they bear him onward, lifeless, fleshless, weightless, to his ancient home. God pity the souls that know no rest.

"How I got back to the house I hardly know. I believe it was with my eyes shut, and I am certain I ran all the way.

"About four o'clock the following afternoon I received a cablegram from Malta. Intuition warned me to prepare for the worst. Its contents were unpleasantly short and pithy—'Hal drowned at two o'clock this morning.—Dick.'

"Two years passed—again an August night, hot and oppressive as before, and again—though surely against my will, my better judgment, if you like—I visited the wood. Horse's hoofs just the same as before. The same galloping, the same figure, the same eyes! the same mad, panic-stricken flight home, and, early in the succeeding afternoon, a similar cablegram—this time from Sicily. 'Dick died at midnight. Dysentery.—Andrews.'