The Shrieking Skull and other Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories by James Skipp Borlase

Author:James Skipp Borlase
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Valancourt Books
Published: 2022-11-16T00:00:00+00:00

THE FIERY SKULL:

A TALE OF MAGIC AND SPIRITUALISM.

I am an old man now. Not old if you measure the actual years which have passed since my birth; but old if you but know the misery and suffering which have been crowded into those years.

None but God and myself know the misery I have at times lived through. I often wonder that I do live.

This suffering was caused by my own act—the deed done in a moment of frenzy has overloaded my whole life. As I pass, people look pityingly at me and whisper, “There is a man who has suffered.” But how little do they know the weary weight of the untold secret which I carry in my bosom. I feel that life must be near its close, and in anticipation of the time when the world’s look of horror will not affect me, I write this record of a sinner’s life and a sinner’s punishment. Look at me now, my hair is bleached as if by the snows of many winters; my form is bent, and my step uncertain.

I was not always this wreck. Memory carries me back to one winter not many years ago. The happy and light-­hearted student would not be recognized in the bent and prematurely-­aged man before you.

I and my friend Carl Heinemann were the gayest of the students in the University of Hamburg.

No one could know Carl and fail to love him.

His cheerful disposition, and his warm heart won for him friends among all who knew him.

My love for him was more than the love of a brother.

We were inseparable companions. Together we perused old tomes of mystic lore, and together we explored the treasures of antiquity, in which the quaint old city was so rich, and pursued those researches into nature’s mysteries in which our souls delighted.

But while Carl’s disposition was even to a fault, frank and open, I was naturally sullen and taciturn.

Even with this friend of my soul I could not shake off my gloomy reserve. I could not lay bare the foremost feelings of my heart.

His spotless mind was like an open page, every line of which might be clearly read.

Thus happy in each other’s friendship, the first years of our stay at Hamburg passed swiftly, and the horizon of our happiness was bright and cloudless.

About this time there appeared in the town an Italian doctor of celebrity.

His skill brought him many patients, but it was whispered that he was also a master of that more obscure and hidden lore which teaches man to command the powers of Nature and to read the secrets of futurity.

How far he could unveil the secrets that yet lay hidden in the bosom of the future let the sequel show.

The whole city was soon singing with the accounts of his wondrous talent. He had performed a cure which the whole school of doctors pronounced to be no less than a miracle, and as the patient was a great and powerful noble the doctor’s fame was established.

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