Speaker 1: A wireless message by Ambrose Pierce. In the summer of
Speaker 1: eighteen ninety six, mister William Holt, a wealthy manufacturer of Chicago,
Speaker 1: was living temporarily in a little town of central New York,
Speaker 1: the name of which the writer's memory has not retained.
Speaker 1: Mister Holt had had trouble with his wife, from whom
Speaker 1: he had been parted a year before. Whether the trouble
Speaker 1: was anything more serious than incompatibility of temperament, he is
Speaker 1: probably the only living person that knows he is not
Speaker 1: addicted to the vice of confidences. Yet he has related
Speaker 1: the incident herein set down to at least one person
Speaker 1: without exacting a pledge of secrecy. He is now living
Speaker 1: in Europe. One evening he left the house of a
Speaker 1: brother whom he was visiting for a stroll in the country.
Speaker 1: It may be assumed, whatever the value of the assumption
Speaker 1: and connection with what is said, that his mind was
Speaker 1: occupied with reflections on his domestic infelicities and the distressing
Speaker 1: changes that they had wrought in his life. Whatever may
Speaker 1: have been his thoughts, they so possessed him that he
Speaker 1: observed neither the lapse of time, nor whither his feet
Speaker 1: were carrying him. He knew only that he was passing
Speaker 1: far beyond the town limits and was traversing a lonely
Speaker 1: region by a road that bore no resemblance to the
Speaker 1: one by which he had left the village. In brief,
Speaker 1: he was lost. Realizing his mischance, he smiled, Central New
Speaker 1: York is not a region of perils, nor does one
Speaker 1: long remain lost in it. He turned about and went
Speaker 1: back the way he had come. Before he had gone far,
Speaker 1: he observed that the landscape was growing more distinct, was brightening.
Speaker 1: Everything was so fused with a soft red glow in
Speaker 1: which he saw his shadow projected in the road before him.
Speaker 1: The moon is rising, he said to himself. Then he
Speaker 1: remembered that it was about the time of the new moon,
Speaker 1: and if that trixy orb was in one of its
Speaker 1: stages of visibility, it had set long before. He stopped
Speaker 1: and faced about, seeking the source of the rapidly broadening light.
Speaker 1: As he did so, his shadow turned and lay along
Speaker 1: the road in front of him. As before, the light
Speaker 1: still came from behind him. That was surprising, he could
Speaker 1: not understand. Again, he turned and again, facing successively each
Speaker 1: point of the horizon. Always the shadow was before always
Speaker 1: the light behind, and still and awful. Red Holt was astonished.
Speaker 1: Dumbfounded is the word he used in telling it, yet
Speaker 1: seems to have retained a certain intelligent curiosity. To test
Speaker 1: the intensity of the light, whose nature and cause he
Speaker 1: could not determine, he took out his watch to see
Speaker 1: if he could make out the figures on the dial.
Speaker 1: They were plainly visible, and the hands indicated the hour
Speaker 1: of eleven o'clock and twenty five minutes. At that moment,
Speaker 1: the mysterious illumination suddenly flared to an intensity, an almost
Speaker 1: blinding splendor, flushing the entire sky, extinguishing the stars, and
Speaker 1: throwing the monstrous shadow of himself and toward the landscape.
Speaker 1: In that unearthly illumination, he saw near him, but apparently
Speaker 1: in the air, at considerable elevation, the figure of his wife,
Speaker 1: clad in her night clothing and holding to her breast
Speaker 1: the figure of his child. Her eyes were fixed upon
Speaker 1: him with an expression which he afterward professed himself unable
Speaker 1: to aim or describe further than it was not of
Speaker 1: this life. The flare was momentary, followed by black darkness,
Speaker 1: in which, however the apparition still showed white and motionless.
Speaker 1: Then by insensible degrees it faded and vanished like a
Speaker 1: bright image on the retina after the closing of the eyes.
Speaker 1: A peculiarity of the apparition, hardly noted at the time,
Speaker 1: but afterward recalled, was that it showed only the upper
Speaker 1: half of the woman's figure. Nothing was seen below the waist.
Speaker 1: The sudden darkness was comparative, not absolute, for gradually all
Speaker 1: objects of his environment became again visible. In the dawn
Speaker 1: of the morning, Holt found himself entering the village at
Speaker 1: a point opposite to that which he had left it.
Speaker 1: He soon arrived at the house of his brother, who
Speaker 1: hardly knew him. He was wild eyed, haggard, and gray
Speaker 1: as a rat. Almost incoherently, he related his night's experience.
Speaker 1: Go to bed, my poor fellow, said his brother, and
Speaker 1: wait we shall hear more of this. An hour later
Speaker 1: came the predestined telegram. Holt's dwelling in one of the
Speaker 1: suburbs of Chicago had been destroyed by fire. Her escape
Speaker 1: cut off by the flames, his wife had appeared in
Speaker 1: an upper window, her child in her arms. There she
Speaker 1: had stood motionless, apparently dazed, just as the fireman arrived
Speaker 1: at the latter. The floor gave way, and she was
Speaker 1: seen no more. The moment of this culminating horror was
Speaker 1: eleven o'clock and twenty five minutes standard time, the end
Speaker 1: of a wireless message by Ambrose Bierce.