ghost story Essay Example

ghost story Essay Example ghost story Paper ghost story Paper Essay Topic: Amy Tan Short Stories Blankets ghost story BY sahi12112 Sign In Sell Your Art Top of Form Bottom of Form etchagirl Portfolio Wake Up Call (a ghost story in about 500 words) Wake Up Call (a ghost story in about 500 words) The lake closed over her nose and mouth as Sara sucked in a lung-full of cold, black water. On her next breath, she opened her eyes and saw the red LCD shining: 12:02 AM. Again. Three nights in a row, same dream, same time. Sweat dripped from her hair and drenched her nightgown. Sara stumbled to the bathroom, turning on all of the lights to shake off the aura of the dream that still clung to her. Steam from the shower filled the bathroom and Sara breathed it in deeply. She could still smell the dankness of her dream. She dropped her head and closed her eyes. They snapped back open as a hissing vortex suddenly sucked all of the steam into the drain at her feet. In the same instant, a fish-dead hand slid across her shoulder. She screamed and threw her body against the shower wall, turning the showerhead to the left. The water scalded her neck, shoulder and hand as she battled to stop the flow. Adrenaline, pain and fear drove her stiffly from the shower. : The room was bright. Normal. Her body shook convulsively and she reached for a towel to warm herself. The towel brushed her badly burned shoulder and she hissed in pain. It sobered her and she headed to the kitchen where she kept the emergency burn salve. In the kitchen, the salve was already laid out, with fresh gauze, waiting for her. Normal went away again. The old woman spoke warmly, Here, let me get that for you. It was my fault so sorry but it IS awfully difficult to get your attention! Sara was frozen in shock. The woman placed a cup in her hand. Here drink this. Coffee. You need it. Sara sipped wordlessly, numb to the un-reality. l cant stay long, said the old woman. Manifestation takes sooo much energy. Easier to show up in a dream, but you kept drowning on me! She let out a little chortle. Shock and disbelief turned to annoyance and the very-real pain in her shoulder made her angry. Well, youVe got my attention now what do you WANT? Its not what I want, but what you want, my dear. l want you to go leave me alone. Thats one option. YouVe been given a choice. You are due to die. The old woman let it sink in. Im here to prove that we do go on, after we die. Thats supposed to be reassuring? The hair on Saras arms stood up. For many people it is. Your choice is this: tell people what youVe experienced here tonight give them hope, or die at 12:02 tomorrow. As the last word left her lips, the woman started to fade. Its up to you, dear.. . For the first time in days, Sara felt calm. She placed a terry-cloth robe gingerly on her freshly-bandaged shoulder, took a sip of coffee and dialed the phone. Next Previous Skip to content. EServer ? » Tlctlon nome ? » snort Hctlon ? » Fiction Search Sections Home Contact Us Journals News Novels Short Fiction SiteMap Web Links Navigation Biographies Criticism The Innocence of Father Brown Un Mudo en la Garganta Rex Stout: Short Stories Short Fiction of Ovidiu Bufnila Short Stories of Charles Chesnutt A Ghost Story A GHOST STORY by MARK TWAIN A Gnost story From Sketches New and Old, Copyright 1903, Samuel Clemens. This text is placed in the Public Domain (May 1993). 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 0T tne stalrway ana an InvlslDle cooweD swung Its slazy WOOT In my race ana clung there, I shuddered as one who had encountered a phantom. I was glad enough when I reached my room and locked out the mould and the darkness. A cheery fire was burning in the grate, and I sat down before it with a comforting sense of relief. For two hours I sat there, thinking of bygone times; recalling old scenes, and summoning half-forgotten faces out of the mists of the past; listening, in fancy, to oices 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 sadder and 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 foot- steps 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, oing 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 some one were pulling them! I could not stir; I could not speak. Still the blankets lipped deliberately away, till my breast was un- covered. 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 ener- gies and snatched the covers back to their place and held them with a strong grip. I waited. By and by I felt a faint tug, and took a fresh grip. The tug strengthened to a steady strain it grew stronger and stronger. My hold parted, and for the third time the blankets slid away. I groaned. An answering groan 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 ele- phant, 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 reigned once more. When my excitement had calmed, I said to my- self, This is a dream simply a hideous dream. And so I lay thinking it over until I convinced yself 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 rip- pled from my lips. I took my pipe and lit it, and 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 mine 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, palsied with fear. I lay a long time, peering into the dark- ness, and listening. Then I heard a grating noise overhead, like the dragging of a neavy Doay across tne moor; tnen tne tnrowlng clown 0T tneD y ana tne snaKlng of my windows in response to the con- cussion. In distant parts of the building I heard the muffled slamming of doors. I heard, at inter- vals, stealthy footsteps creeping in and out among the corridors, and up and down the stairs. Some- times these noises approached my door, hesitated, and went away again. I heard the clanking of chains faintly, in remote passages, and listened while the clanking grew nearer while it wearily 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 ad- vanced. 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 whis- perings. 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 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 disappearing. The whispering ceased, and the voices and the sounds, and 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 ap- parently, 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 a hundred years. The light brought some little cheer to my spirits. I sat down and fell into a dreamy contem- plation 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 wilt- ing away. In the same moment I heard that ele- phantine tread again. I noted its approach, nearer and nearer, along the musty halls, and dimmer and dimmer 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 housings, naked, muscular and comely, the majestic Cardiff Giant loomed above me! All my misery vanished for a child might know that no harm could come with that benignant countenance. My cheerful spirits returned at once, and in sympathy with them the gas flamed up brightly again. Never a lonely outcast was so glad to welcome company as I was to greet the friendly giant. I said: Why, is it nobody but you? Do you know, I have been scared to death for the last two or three hours? I am most honestly glad to see you. I wish I had a chair Here, here, dont 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, Youll ruin ev loo late agaln. I nere was anotner crasn, ana anotner cnalr was resolved Into Its original elements. Confound it, havent 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 vagabond 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 wrecking 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 lit- tered up the floor with chips of your hams 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 any more furniture. But what am I to do? I have not had a chance to sit down for a century. And the tears came into his eyes. Poor devil, I said, l 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 counting-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 ne of my red blankets over his shoulders, inverted my sitz-bath on his head, helmet fashion, and made himself picturesque and comfort- able. Then he crossed his ankles, while I renewed the fire, and exposed the flat, honey-combed bot- toms 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? Infernal chillblains I caught them clear up to the back of my head, roosting out there under Newells farm. But I love the place; I love it as one loves his old home. There is no peace for me like the peace I feel when I am there. We talked along for half an hour, and then I noticed that he looked tire d, 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 Cardiff 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 chains, groaning, whispering, tramping up and down stairs, till, to tell you the truth, I am almost worn out. But when I saw a light in your room to-night I roused my energies again and went at it with a deal of the old freshness. But I am tired out entirely fagged out. 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 nauntlng a IER CASI 0T your- selT tne real car01TT Glant Is In AIDany! 1 Footnote by Twain: 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 re al colossus) at the very same time that the latter was drawing rowds at a museum in Albany. Confound it, dont 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 pipe from his mouth and laid it on the mantel, then stood irresolute a moment (uncon sciously, from old habit, thrusting his hands where his pantaloons pockets should have been, and medi- tatively dropping his chin on his breast), and finally said: Well I NEVER felt so absurd before. The Petrified Man has sold verybody 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, dont let this get out. Think 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 bath tub. END. Personal tools You are not logged in Join our Editors Log in Copyright 1994-2013 by the EServer. All rights reserved.