High up, crowning
the grassy summit of a swelling mount whose sides are wooded near the base
with the gnarled trees of the primeval forest stands the old chateau of
my ancestors. For centuries its lofty battlements have frowned down upon
the wild and rugged countryside about, serving as a home and stronghold
for the proud house whose honored line is older even than the moss-grown
castle walls. These ancient turrets, stained by the storms of generations
and crumbling under the slow yet mighty pressure of time, formed in the
ages of feudalism one of the most dreaded and formidable fortresses in
all France. From its machicolated parapets and mounted battlements Barons,
Counts, and even Kings had been defied, yet never had its spacious halls
resounded to the footsteps of the invader.
But since
those glorious years, all is changed. A poverty but little above the level
of dire want, together with a pride of name that forbids its alleviation
by the pursuits of commercial life, have prevented the scions of our line
from maintaining their estates in pristine splendour; and the falling stones
of the walls, the overgrown vegetation in the parks, the dry and dusty
moat, the ill-paved courtyards, and toppling towers without, as well as
the sagging floors, the worm-eaten wainscots, and the faded tapestries
within, all tell a gloomy tale of fallen grandeur. As the ages passed,
first one, then another of the four great turrets were left to ruin, until
at last but a single tower housed the sadly reduced descendants of the
once mighty lords of the estate.
It was
in one of the vast and gloomy chambers of this remaining tower that I,
Antoine, last of the unhappy and accursed Counts de C-, first saw the light
of day, ninety long years ago. Within these walls and amongst the dark
and shadowy forests, the wild ravines and grottos of the hillside below,
were spent the first years of my troubled life. My parents I never knew.
My father had been killed at the age of thirty-two, a month before I was
born, by the fall of a stone somehow dislodged from one of the deserted
parapets of the castle. And my mother having died at my birth, my care
and education devolved solely upon one remaining servitor, an old and trusted
man of considerable intelligence, whose name I remember as Pierre. I was
an only child and the lack of companionship which this fact entailed upon
me was augmented by the strange care exercised by my aged guardian, in
excluding me from the society of the peasant children whose abodes were
scattered here and there upon the plains that surround the base of the
hill. At that time, Pierre said that this restriction was imposed upon
me because my noble birth placed me above association with such plebeian
company. Now I know that its real object was to keep from my ears the idle
tales of the dread curse upon our line that were nightly told and magnified
by the simple tenantry as they conversed in hushed accents in the glow
of their cottage hearths.
Thus isolated,
and thrown upon my own resources, I spent the hours of my childhood in
poring over the ancient tomes that filled the shadow-haunted library of
the chateau, and in roaming without aim or purpose through the perpetual
dust of the spectral wood that clothes the side of the hill near its foot.
It was perhaps an effect of such surroundings that my mind early acquired
a shade of melancholy. Those studies and pursuits which partake of the
dark and occult in nature most strongly claimed my attention.
Of my own
race I was permitted to learn singularly little, yet what small knowledge
of it I was able to gain seemed to depress me much. Perhaps it was at first
only the manifest reluctance of my old preceptor to discuss with me my
paternal ancestry that gave rise to the terror which I ever felt at the
mention of my great house, yet as I grew out of childhood, I was able to
piece together is connected fragments of discourse, let slip from the unwilling
tongue which had begun to falter in approaching senility, that had
a sort of relation to a certain circumstance which I had always deemed
strange, but which now became dimly terrible. The circumstance to which
I allude is the early age at which all the Counts of my line had met their
end. Whilst I had hitherto considered this but a natural attribute of a
family of short-lived men, I afterward pondered long upon these premature
deaths, and began to connect them with the wanderings of the old man, who
often spoke of a curse which for centuries had prevented the lives of the
holders of my title from much exceeding the span of thirty-two years. Upon
my twenty-first birthday, the aged Pierre gave to me a family document
which he said had for many generations been handed down from father to
son, and continued by each possessor. Its contents were of the most startling
nature, and its perusal confirmed the gravest of my apprehensions. At this
time, my belief in the supernatural was firm and deep-seated, else I should
have dismissed with scorn the incredible narrative unfolded before my eyes.
The paper
carried me back to the days of the thirteenth century, when the old castle
in which I sat had been a feared and impregnable fortress. It told of a
certain ancient man who had once dwelled on our estates, a person of no
small accomplishments, though little above the rank of peasant, by name,
Michel, usually designated by the surname of Mauvais, the Evil, on account
of his sinister reputation. He had studied beyond the custom of his kind,
seeking such things as the Philosopher's Stone or the Elixir of Eternal
Life, and was reputed wise in the terrible secrets of Black Magic and Alchemy.
Michel Mauvais had one son, named Charles, a youth as proficient as himself
in the hidden arts, who had therefore been called Le Sorcier, or the Wizard.
This pair, shunned by all honest folk, were suspected of the most hideous
practices. Old Michel was said to have burnt his wife alive as a sacrifice
to the Devil, and the unaccountable disappearance of many small peasant
children was laid at the dreaded door of these two. Yet through the dark
natures of the father and son ran one redeeming ray of humanity; the evil
old man loved his offspring with fierce intensity, whilst the youth had
for his parent a more than filial affection.
One night
the castle on the hill was thrown into the wildest confusion by the vanishment
of young Godfrey, son to Henri, the Count. A searching party, headed by
the frantic father, invaded the cottage of the sorcerers and there came
upon old Michel Mauvais, busy over a huge and violently boiling cauldron.
Without certain cause, in the ungoverned madness of fury and despair, the
Count laid hands on the aged wizard, and ere he released his murderous
hold, his victim was no more. Meanwhile, joyful servants were proclaiming
the finding of young Godfrey in a distant and unused chamber of the great
edifice, telling too late that poor Michel had been killed in vain. As
the Count and his associates turned away from the lowly abode of the alchemist,
the form of Charles Le Sorcier appeared through the trees. The excited
chatter of the menials standing about told him what had occurred, yet he
seemed at first unmoved at his father's fate. Then, slowly advancing to
meet the Count, he pronounced in dull yet terrible accents the curse that
ever afterward haunted the house of C-.
'May ne'er a noble of thy murd'rous line
Survive to reach a greater age than thine!'
spake he, when, suddenly leaping
backwards into the black woods, he drew from his tunic a phial of colourless
liquid which he threw into the face of his father's slayer as he disappeared
behind the inky curtain of the night. The Count died without utterance,
and was buried the next day, but little more than two and thirty years
from the hour of his birth. No trace of the assassin could be found, though
relentless bands of peasants scoured the neighboring woods and the meadowland
around the hill.
Thus time
and the want of a reminder dulled the memory of the curse in the minds
of the late Count's family, so that when Godfrey, innocent cause of the
whole tragedy and now bearing the title, was killed by an arrow whilst
hunting at the age of thirty-two, there were no thoughts save those of
grief at his demise. But when, years afterward, the next young Count, Robert
by name, was found dead in a nearby field of no apparent cause, the peasants
told in whispers that their seigneur had but lately passed his thirty-second
birthday when surprised by early death. Louis, son to Robert, was found
drowned in the moat at the same fateful age, and thus down through the
centuries ran the ominous chronicle: Henris, Roberts, Antoines, and Armands
snatched from happy and virtuous lives when little below the age of their
unfortunate ancestor at his murder.
That I
had left at most but eleven years of further existence was made certain
to me by the words which I had read. My life, previously held at small
value, now became dearer to me each day, as I delved deeper and deeper
into the mysteries of the hidden world of black magic. Isolated as I was,
modern science had produced no impression upon me, and I laboured as in
the Middle Ages, as wrapt as had been old Michel and young Charles themselves
in the acquisition of demonological and alchemical learning. Yet read as
I might, in no manner could I account for the strange curse upon my line.
In unusually rational moments I would even go so far as to seek a natural
explanation, attributing the early deaths of my ancestors to the sinister
Charles Le Sorcier and his heirs; yet, having found upon careful inquiry
that there were no known descendants of the alchemist, I would fall back
to occult studies, and once more endeavor to find a spell that would release
my house from its terrible burden. Upon one thing I was absolutely resolved.
I should never wed, for, since no other branch of my family was in existence,
I might thus end the curse with myself.
As I drew
near the age of thirty, old Pierre was called to the land beyond. Alone
I buried him beneath the stones of the courtyard about which he had loved
to wander in life. Thus was I left to ponder on myself as the only human
creature within the great fortress, and in my utter solitude my mind began
to cease its vain protest against the impending doom, to become almost
reconciled to the fate which so many of my ancestors had met. Much of my
time was now occupied in the exploration of the ruined and abandoned halls
and towers of the old chateau, which in youth fear had caused me to shun,
and some of which old Pierre had once told me had not been trodden by human
foot for over four centuries. Strange and awesome were many of the objects
I encountered. Furniture, covered by the dust of ages and crumbling with
the rot of long dampness, met my eyes. Cobwebs in a profusion never before
seen by me were spun everywhere, and huge bats flapped their bony and uncanny
wings on all sides of the otherwise untenanted gloom.
Of my exact
age, even down to days and hours, I kept a most careful record, for each
movement of the pendulum of the massive clock in the library told off so
much of my doomed existence. At length I approached that time which I had
so long viewed with apprehension. Since most of my ancestors had been seized
some little while before they reached the exact age of Count Henri at his
end, I was every moment on the watch for the coming of the unknown death.
In what strange form the curse should overtake me, I knew not; but I was
resolved at least that it should not find me a cowardly or a passive victim.
With new vigour I applied myself to my
examination of the old chateau
and its contents.
It was
upon one of the longest of all my excursions of discovery in the deserted
portion of the castle, less than a week before that fatal hour which I
felt must mark the utmost limit of my stay on earth, beyond which I could
have not even the slightest hope of continuing to draw breath, that I came
upon the culminating event of my whole life. I had spent the better part
of the morning in climbing up and down half ruined staircases in one of
the most dilapidated of the ancient turrets. As the afternoon progressed,
I sought the lower levels, descending into what appeared to be either a
mediaeval place of confinement, or a more recently excavated storehouse
for gunpowder. As I slowly traversed the nitre-encrusted passageway at
the foot of the last staircase, the paving became very damp, and soon I
saw by the light of my flickering torch that a blank, water-stained wall
impeded my journey. Turning to retrace my steps, my eye fell upon a small
trapdoor with a ring, which lay directly beneath my foot. Pausing, I succeeded
with difficulty in raising it, whereupon there was revealed a black aperture,
exhaling noxious fumes which caused my torch to sputter, and disclosing
in the unsteady glare the top of a flight of stone steps.
As soon
as the torch which I lowered into the repellent depths burned freely and
steadily, I commenced my descent. The steps were many, and led to a narrow
stone-flagged passage which I knew must be far underground. This passage
proved of great length, and terminated in a massive oaken door, dripping
with the moisture of the place, and stoutly resisting all my attempts to
open it. Ceasing after a time my efforts in this direction, I had proceeded
back some distance toward the steps when there suddenly fell to my experience
one of the most profound and maddening shocks capable of reception by the
human mind. Without warning, I heard the heavy door behind me creak slowly
open upon its rusted hinges. My immediate sensations were incapable of
analysis. To be confronted in a place as thoroughly deserted as I had deemed
the old castle with evidence of the presence of man or spirit produced
in my brain a horror of the most acute description. When at last
I turned and faced the seat of the sound, my eyes must have started from
their orbits at the sight that they beheld.
There in
the ancient Gothic doorway stood a human figure. It was that of a man clad
in a skull-cap and long mediaeval tunic of dark colour. His long hair and
flowing beard were of a terrible and intense black hue, and of incredible
profusion. His forehead, high beyond the usual dimensions; his cheeks,
deep-sunken and heavily lined with wrinkles; and his hands, long, claw-like,
and gnarled, were of such a deadly marble-like whiteness as I have never
elsewhere seen in man. His figure, lean to the proportions of a skeleton,
was strangely bent and almost lost within the voluminous folds of his peculiar
garment. But strangest of all were his eyes, twin caves of abysmal blackness,
profound in expression of understanding, yet inhuman in degree of wickedness.
These were now fixed upon me, piercing my soul with their hatred, and rooting
me to the spot whereon I stood.
At last
the figure spoke in a rumbling voice that chilled me through with its dull
hollowness and latent malevolence. The language in which the discourse
was clothed was that debased form of Latin in use amongst the more learned
men of the Middle Ages, and made familiar to me by my prolonged researches
into the works of the old alchemists and demonologists. The apparition
spoke of the curse which had hovered over my house, told me of my coming
end, dwelt on the wrong perpetrated by my ancestor against old Michel Mauvais,
and gloated over the revenge of Charles Le Sorcier. He told how young Charles
has escaped into the night, returning in after years to kill Godfrey the
heir with an arrow just as he approached the age which had been his father's
at his assassination; how he had secretly returned to the estate and established
himself, unknown, in the even then deserted subterranean chamber whose
doorway now framed the hideous narrator, how he had seized Robert, son
of Godfrey, in a field, forced poison down his throat, and left him to
die at the age of thirty-two, thus maintaining the foul provisions of his
vengeful curse. At this point I was left to imagine the solution
of the greatest mystery of all, how the curse had been fulfilled since
that time when Charles Le Sorcier must in the course of nature have died,
for the man digressed into an account of the deep alchemical studies of
the two wizards, father and son, speaking most particularly of the researches
of Charles Le Sorcier concerning the elixir which should grant to him who
partook of it eternal life and youth.
His enthusiasm
had seemed for the moment to remove from his terrible eyes the black malevolence
that had first so haunted me, but suddenly the fiendish glare returned
and, with a shocking sound like the hissing of a serpent, the stranger
raised a glass phial with the evident intent of ending my life as had Charles
Le Sorcier, six hundred years before, ended that of my ancestor. Prompted
by some preserving instinct of self-defense, I broke through the spell
that had hitherto held me immovable, and flung my now dying torch at the
creature who menaced my existence. I heard the phial break harmlessly against
the stones of the passage as the tunic of the strange man caught fire and
lit the horrid scene with a ghastly radiance. The shriek of fright and
impotent malice emitted by the would-be assassin proved too much for my
already shaken nerves, and I fell prone upon the slimy floor in a total
faint.
When at
last my senses returned, all was frightfully dark, and my mind, remembering
what had occurred, shrank from the idea of beholding any more; yet curiosity
over-mastered all. Who, I asked myself, was this man of evil, and how came
he within the castle walls? Why should he seek to avenge the death of Michel
Mauvais, and how had the curse been carried on through all the long centuries
since the time of Charles Le Sorcier? The dread of years was lifted from
my shoulders, for I knew that he whom I had felled was the source of all
my danger from the curse; and now that I was free, I burned with the desire
to learn more of the sinister thing which had haunted my line for centuries,
and made of my own youth one long-continued nightmare. Determined upon
further exploration, I felt in my pockets for flint and steel, and lit
the unused torch which I had with me.
First of all,
new light revealed the distorted and blackened form of the mysterious stranger.
The hideous eyes were now closed. Disliking the sight, I turned away and
entered the chamber beyond the Gothic door. Here I found what seemed much
like an alchemist's laboratory. In one corner was an immense pile of shining
yellow metal that sparkled gorgeously in the light of the torch. It may
have been gold, but I did not pause to examine it, for I was strangely
affected by that which I had undergone. At the farther end of the apartment
was an opening leading out into one of the many wild ravines of the dark
hillside forest. Filled with wonder, yet now realizing how the man had
obtained access to the chauteau, I proceeded to return. I had intended
to pass by the remains of the stranger with averted face but, as I approached
the body, I seemed to hear emanating from it a faint sound, as though life
were not yet wholly extinct. Aghast, I turned to examine the charred and
shrivelled figure on the floor.
Then all
at once the horrible eyes, blacker even than the seared face in which they
were set, opened wide with an expression which I was unable to interpret.
The cracked lips tried to frame words which I could not well understand.
Once I caught the name of Charles Le Sorcier, and again I fancied that
the words 'years' and 'curse' issued from the twisted mouth. Still I was
at a loss to gather the purport of his disconnected speech. At my evident
ignorance of his meaning, the pitchy eyes once more flashed malevolently
at me, until, helpless as I saw my opponent to be, I trembled as I watched
him.
Suddenly
the wretch, animated with his last burst of strength, raised his piteous
head from the damp and sunken pavement. Then, as I remained, paralyzed
with fear, he found his voice and in his dying breath screamed forth those
words which have ever afterward haunted my days and nights. 'Fool!' he
shrieked, 'Can you not guess my secret? Have you no brain whereby you may
recognize the will which has through six long centuries fulfilled the dreadful
curse upon the house? Have I not told you of the great elixir of eternal
life? Know you not how the secret of Alchemy was solved? I tell you, it
is I! I! I! that have lived for six hundred years to maintain my revenge,
for I am Charles Le Sorcier!'
