An owl on the branch of a decayed tree hooted dismally and was answered by another in the distance. Looking upward, I saw through a sudden rift in the clouds Aldebaran and the Hyades! In all this there was a hint of night — the lynx, the man with the torch, the owl. Yet I saw — I saw even the stars in absence of darkness. I saw, but was apparently not seen nor heard. Under what awful spell did I exist?–Ambrose Bierce
But it’s the eyes of the man I’ll remember to my last days. Wide, fixed in shock, they hide some terrifying secret only the mutilated corpse may know.–JL
The story that inspired Cat People!–JL
A ghostly tale by moonlight!–JL
The aged mariner may proclaim, “And on the first winter breaker…of Grand Isle’s coldest winter, Pierre Santiny plunged into the sea and was seen no more.”
Then, the teller of the tale may pause with haunting eyes as the fires crack in the bonfire, the sea roars, and the wind howls with possibly an ancient chime. With a whispering voice on the third crash of a wave they may even say, “But none on the island will ever say he died.”–JL
For a moment he stood stupefied by the power of the revelation, then ran with stumbling feet, making a half-circuit of the ruin. There, conspicuous in the light of the conflagration, lay the dead body of a woman—the white face turned upward, the hands thrown out and clutched full of grass, the clothing deranged, the long dark hair in tangles and full of clotted blood.
“As with sounds, so with colours. At each end of the solar spectrum the chemist can detect the presence of what are known as ‘actinic’ rays. They represent colours — integral colours in the composition of light — which we are unable to discern. The human eye is an imperfect instrument; its range is but a few octaves of the real ‘chromatic scale.’ I am not mad; there are colours that we cannot see.”
As I wait to freeze, I don’t remember much these days as I’m old. But I do remember the bite of that ice storm in 1866.
And, the blood. How I remember the blood.
Deep sadness is an artist of powers that affects people in different ways. To one it comes like the stroke of an arrow, shocking all the emotions to a sharper life. To another, it comes as the blow of a crushing strike.
“Oh…dear…friend. I see that you’ve had a meltdown. Just remember this final lesson Rodney Hebert. The vilest of you…truly…are divine!”
The man was Halpin Frayser. He lived in St. Helena, but where he lives now is uncertain, for he is dead.–Ambrose Bierce
Jeffrey LeBlanc 