Victorian Horror Stories by Mike Stocks

Author:Mike Stocks
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Usborne Publishing Ltd
Published: 2013-09-01T00:00:00+00:00

To Captain Smith

Because I value your death more than my own life, I am going to kill myself. When I die, my avenging spirit will be released. It will stalk your dreams and haunt your mind. Wherever you look, you will see it. Wherever you go, it will follow. Wherever you hide, it will find you. It will never rest until you are dead. It is a pleasure to kill myself.

Charles Gratmar

No one would dispute that Captain Smith was a brave soldier. He had fought well in scores of campaigns, been wounded over a dozen times, and was said to have killed over twenty men. And yet his was merely animal bravery. Just like many bullying, purely physical men, the captain hadn’t confronted the darker terrors lurking in the mind. Now, with the letter clutched in his hand, he swallowed nervously. Not that he was going to let a piece of paper disturb him. And yet…

Anxiety descended on him. It wasn’t like the anxiety that comes before a battle; a soldier is a bad soldier and a fool if he doesn’t feel that. This was something else, and something worse: it was the fear of the unknown.

He heard a faint squeaking noise. Looking up, he saw that the oil lamp was swinging from side to side on its hook. He watched it, and slowly became aware that everything in the room was moving: the table was vibrating, the papers on it were shifting, a paperweight fell off the edge and shattered on the floor. Was this it? The first manifestation of the avenging spirit? After a few seconds the vibrations stopped, leaving an eerie silence in their wake.

Captain Smith forced himself to smile at his foolish superstitions, though he stayed motionless at his desk, quietly bemused by the eerie stillness in the air. After half a minute he heard noises and shouts from outside, and then a corporal came rushing in.

“Explosion sir, big one! They say it was at the artillery range.”

Captain Smith got a grip on himself. It wasn’t the presence of an avenging spirit he had felt – how could it be anything so ludicrous – it had simply been an explosion.

“All right, corporal. Let’s go and investigate.”

It had, indeed, been a very big explosion. The crater was at least five yards wide. Charles Gratmar had stolen a large quantity of dynamite from the garrison’s arsenal, placed it in the middle of the artillery range, and lit a fuse. There was nothing left of the body except tiny fragments of flesh and bone, that were scattered all over the range.

Captain Smith decided to burn the letter from Gratmar, and he threw himself into army life with renewed gusto. He filled his every waking moment with work. But when he finally went to bed at night, his thoughts always drifted to the horrible threats made in the letter.

As he was tossing and turning one night in his narrow bed, phrases from the letter came into his mind… I value

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