A Ghost's Tail by Mark Twain. I took a large room far up Broadway,
in a huge old building whose upper stories had been wholly unoccupied for years
until I came. The place had long been given up to dust and cobwebs,
to solitude and silence. I seemed groping among the tombs and invading the
privacy of the dead. That first night, I climbed up to my quarters
for the first time in my life, A superstitious dread came over me,
and as I turned a dark angle of the stairway and an invisible cobweb swung
its lazy woof in my face and clung there. I shuddered as one who
had encountered a phantom. I was glad enough when I reached my room and
locked out the mold and the darkness. A cheery fire was burning and the
great, and I sat down before it with a comforting sense of relief.
For two hours I sat there, thinking of by gone times, recalling old
scenes and summoning half forgotten faces out of the mists of the past, listening
in fancy to voices that long ago grew silent for all time, and to
once familiar songs that nobody sings now, And as my reverie softened down to
a saddern sadder pathos, the shrieking of the winds outside softened to a wail,
The angry beating of the rain against the panes diminished to a tranquil patter,
and one by one the noises in the street subsided, until the hurrying
footsteps of the last belated straggler died away in the distance and left no sound
behind. The fire had burned low, a sense of loneliness crept over me.
I arose and undressed, moving on tiptoe about the room, doing stealthily
what I had to do, as if I were environed by sleeping enemies,
whose slumbers it would be fatal to break. I covered up in bed and
lay listening to the rain and wind and the faint creaking of distant shutters,
till they lulled me to sleep. I slept profoundly, but how long I
do not know. All at once I found myself awake and filled with a
shuddering expectancy. All was still all but my own heart. I could hear
it beat Presently. The bed clothes began to slip away, slowly toward the
foot of the bed, as if someone were pulling them. I could not
stir, I could not speak. Still, the blanket slipped deliberately away till
my breast was uncovered. Then, with a great effort, I seized them
and drew them over my head. I waited, listened, waited. Once
more, that steady pull began, and once more I lay torpid a century
of dragging seconds till my breast was naked again. At last, I roused
my energies and snatched the covers back to their place, and held them with
a strong grip. I waited by and by, I felt a faint hug,
and took a fresh grip. The tug strengthened to a steady strain.
It grew stronger and stronger. My whole parted, and for the third time,
the blanket slid away. I grown, an answering grown came from the
foot of the bed. Beaded drops of sweat stood upon my forehead. I
was more dead than alive. Presently I heard a heavy footstep in my room,
the step of an elephant. It seemed to me it was not like
anything human, but it was moving from me. There was relief in that
I heard it approach the door, pass out without moving bolt or lock,
and wander away among the dismal corridors, straining the floors and joists till they
creaked again as it passed, and then silence rained once more. When my
excitement had calmed, I said to myself, this is a dream, simply
a hideous dream. And so I lay thinking it over until I convinced myself
that it was a dream. And then a comforting laugh relaxed my lips,
and I was happy again. I got up and struck a light, and
when I found that the locks and bolts were just as I had left them,
another soothing laugh welled in my heart and rippled from my lips. I
took my pipe and lit it, and I was just sitting down before the
fire, when down went the pipe out of my nerveless fingers. The blood
forsook my cheeks, and my placid breathing was cut short with a gasp.
In the ashes on the hearth, side by side with my own bare footprint
was another so vast that, in comparison, mind was but an infants.
Then I had had a visitor, and the elephant tread was explained. I
put out the light and returned to bed poles with THEA. I lay a
long time, peering into the darkness and listening. Then I heard a grating
noise overhead, like the dragging of a heavy body across the floor. Then
the thrown down of the body, and the shaking of my windows in response
to the concussion. In distant parts of the building, I heard the muffled
slamming of doors. I heard, at intervals stealthy footsteps creeping in and out
among the corridors, and up and down the stairs. Sometimes these noises approached
my door, hesitated, and went away again. I heard the clanking of
chains. Faintly, and remote passages listened while the clanking grew near, while
it weirdly climbed the stairways, marking each move by the loose surplus of chain
that fell with an accented rattle upon each succeeding step. As the goblin that
bore it advanced, I heard muttered sentences, half uttered screams that seemed smothered
violently, and the swish of invisible garments, the rush of invisible wings.
Then I became conscious that my chamber was invaded, that I was not alone.
I heard sighs and breathings about my bed and mysterious whisperings. Three little
spheres of soft phosphorescent light appeared on the ceiling directly over my head, clung
and glowed there a moment, and then dropped two of them upon my face
and one upon the pillow. They spattered liquidly and felt warm. Intuition told
me that they had turned to gouts of blood as they fell. I needed
no light to satisfy myself of that. Then I saw pallid faces, dimly
luminous and white, uplifted hands floating bodiless in the air, floating a moment,
and then disappeared. The whispering ceased, and the voices and the sounds
and all a solemn stillness followed. I waited and listened. I felt that
I must have light or die. I was weak with fear. I slowly
raised myself toward a sitting posture, and my face came in contact with a
clammy hand. All strength went from me, apparently, and I fell back
like a stricken invalid. Then I heard the rustle of a garment. It
seemed to pass to the door and go out. When everything was still once
more, I crept out of bed, sick, and feeble, and lit
the gas with a hand that trembled as if it were aged with one hundred
years. The light brought some little cheer to my spirits. I sat down
and fell into a dreary contemplation of that great footprint in the ashes. By
and by, its outlines began to waver and grow dim. I glanced up,
and the broad gas flame was slowly wilting away. In the same moment
I heard that elephant teen tread again. I noted its approach, nearer and
nearer along the musty halls, and dimmer and dim The light waned. The
tread reached my very door and paused. The light had dwindled to a sickly
blue, and all things about me lay in a spectral twilight. The door
did not open, and yet I felt a faint gust of air fan my
cheek, and presently was conscious of a huge, cloudy presence before me.
I watched it with fascinated eyes. A pale glow stole over the thing.
Gradually, its cloudy folds took shape. An arm appeared, then legs,
then a body, and last a great sad face looked out of the vapor,
stripped of its filmy housens, naked, muscular and calmly, the majestic
Cardiff giant loomed above me. I said, why is it nobody but you?
Do you know I have been scared to death for the last two or
three hours. Oh, I am most honestly glad to see you. I
wish I had a chair here here. Don't try to sit down in that
thing. But it was too late. He was in it before I could
stop him, and down he went. I never saw a chair shivered,
so in my life, stop, stop, you'll ruin it. Too late
Again there was another crash, and another chair was resolved into its original elements,
confound it. Haven't you got any judgment at all? Do you want
to ruin all the furniture on the place? Here? Here? You petrified
fool? But it was no use. Before I could arrest him, he
had sat down on the bed and it was a melancholy ruin. Now what
sort of a way is that to do? First you come lumbering about the
place, bringing a legion of vegamond goblins along with you to worry me to
death, and then when I overlook an indelicacy of costume which would not be
tolerated anywhere by cultivated people, except in a respectable theater, and not even
there if the nudity were of your sex. You repay me by reckoning all
the furniture you can find to sit down on. And why will you?
You damage yourself as much as you do me. You have broken off the
end of your spinal column and littered up the floor with chips of your arms,
till the place looks like a marble yard. You ought to be ashamed
of yourself. You are big enough to know better. Well, I will
not break anymore furniture. What am I to rule? I have not had
a chunced to sit down for a centurey And the tears came into his eyes,
poor devil, I said, I should not have been so harsh with
you, and you are an orphan too, no doubt. But sit down
on the floor here. Nothing else can stand your weight, And besides,
we cannot be sociable with you away up there above me. I want you
down where I can perch on this high Countain house stool and gossip with you
face to face. So he sat down on the floor and lit a pipe
which I gave him, threw one of my red blankets over his shoulders,
inverted my sitz bath on his head helmet fashion, and made himself picturesque and
comfortable. Then he crossed his ankles while I renewed the fire, and exposed
the flat, honeycombed bottoms of his prodigious feet to the grateful warmth. What
is the matter with the bottom of your feet and the back of your legs
that they are gouged up so infernel shild blades. I caught them clear up
to the back of my head and roosting out there Undernoule's form. But I
love the place. I love it as one loves his old home. Hmm.
There is no peace for me like the piece I feel when I am
there. We talked along for half an hour, and then I noticed that
he looked tired and spoke of it tired, He said, well, I
should think so, and now I will tell you all about it, since
you have treated me so well. I am the spirit of the petrified man
that lies across the street there in the museum. I am the ghost of
the cartiff giant. I can have no rest, no peace, till they
have given that poor body burial again. Now, what was the most natural
thing for me to do to make men satisfy this wish, terrify them into
it, haunt the place where the body lay. So I haunted the museum
night after night. I even got other spirits to help me, but it
did no good, for nobody ever came to the museum at midnight. Then
it occurred to me to come over the way and haunt this place a little.
I felt that if I ever got a hearing, I must succeed,
for I had the most efficient company that perdition could furnish. Night after night,
we have shivered around through these mildewed halls, dragging the chains, groaning,
whispering, tramping up and downstairs till to tell you the truth, I
am almost worn out. But when I saw a light in your room tonight,
I roused my energies again and went at it with a deal of the
old freshness. But I'm tired out, entirely fagged out. Oh give me,
I beseech you give me some hope. I lit off my perch in
a burst of excitement and exclaimed, this transcends everything, everything that ever did
occur. Why, you poor blundering old fossil, you have had all your
trouble for nothing. You have been haunting a plaster cast of yourself. The
real Cardiff Giant is in Albany. A fact, the original fraud was ingeniously
and fraudfully duplicated and exhibited in New York as the only genuine Cardiff Giant,
to the unspeakable disgust of the owners of the real colossus at the very same
time that the latter was drawing crowds at a museum. Is Olbany confounded,
don't you know your own remains? I never saw such an eloquent look of
shame, of pitiable humiliation overspread a countenance before the petrified man rose slowly to
his feet and said, honestly, is that true? As true as I
am sitting here. He took the pot from his mouth and laid it on
the mantle, then stood irresolute a moment unconsciously from old habit, thrust in
his hands where his pantaloon pockets should have been, and meditatively dropping his chin
on his breast, and finally saying, well, I never felt so absurd
before. The petrified man has sold everybody else, and now the mean fraud
has ended by selling its own ghost. My son, if there is any
charity left in your heart for a poor, friendless phantom like me. Don't
let this get out. How you would feel if you had made such an
ass of yourself. I heard his stately tramp die away, step by step,
down the stairs and out into the deserted street, and felt sorry that
he was gone poor fellow, and sorrier still that he had carried off my
red blanket and my bathtub. End of a ghost's tell