Strangles

“ I am asking you, you cursed murderers, crows sitting on carrion, wretched, imbecile animals, before the whole word. For you are animals. What did you kill my brother for? If you had a face, I would give you a blow upon it, but you have no face, you have only the snout of a wild beast. You pretend that you are men, but I see claws under your gloves and the flat skull of an animal under your hat; hidden beneath your clever conversation I hear insanity rattling its rusty chains. ”

“ At the ghost of a sound from behind, the “Kid” whirled. He had left the door closed, but now it was open—and the Strangler stood inside the room, grinning.
“So, that was the game!” he cried. “You’re a slick one, Kid, but you ain’t slick enough. I been watching you all evening. You ain’t yourself, old timer. You’re getting nervous. But I don’t wonder! You grabbed the sparklers, but how you done it I don’t know. ”

“ As they advanced with measured step, the company could see their bloodless cheeks and the writhing serpents that curled—in place of hair—around their brows. Then they began to sing: "Woe, woe to him who has done the deed of secret murder. We, the fearful brood of night, fasten ourselves upon him, flesh and soul. Unwearied we pursue him; no pity checks our course; still on to the end of life, we give no peace, no rest." ”

“ Your body will be hung in chains on the moor—on a gibbet erected on the spot where you murdered the victim of your unhallowed lust, and there will your bones bleach in the sun, and rattle in the wind, after the insects and the birds of the air have devoured your flesh; and in all future times, the spot on which, God-forsaking and God-forsaken, you perpetrated that double crime, at which all humanity shudders, will be looked on from afar by the traveller passing through that lonesome wild with a sacred horror! ”

“ Moreover, when doomed to death I shall have expired, I will attend you as a nocturnal fury; and, a ghost, I will attack your faces with my hooked talons (for such is the power of those divinities, the Manes) , and, brooding upon your restless breasts, I will deprive you of repose by terror. The mob, from village to village, assaulting you on every side with stones, shall demolish you filthy hags. Finally, the wolves and Esquiline vultures shall scatter abroad your unburied limbs. ”

“ No one touched the grey-headed murderer, who knelt down—not to pray, but to look into his son's eyes—and to examine his lips—and to feel his left breast—and to search out all the symptoms of a fainting-fit, or to assure himself—and many a corpse had the plunderer handled on the field after hush of the noise of battle—that this was death. ”

“ And, as he reached trembling hands for the cards, that thing in his soul which he had believed slain sprang to life again, man-high and demon-strong, and through eager lips he heard it calling him—calling him—that old undying devil of the thousand lures that snare man's feet. ”

“ Even the death of the fearless little snake-killer--so fierce, so frightful, as if stained with a ferocity which told of no living force above earth, but only of the devils of the pit--was only an incident. ”

“ Blood-drinking bestiality, voracious appetites, hunger in search of prey, the armed instincts of nails and jaws which have for source and aim the belly, glare and smell out uneasily the impassive spectral forms straying beneath a shroud, erect in its vague and shuddering robe, and which seem to them to live with a dead and terrible life. These brutalities, which are only matter, entertain a confused fear of having to deal with the immense obscurity condensed into an unknown being. ”

“ This scene, which was so beautiful a little before, had now become the abode of sorrow and toil, of death and mourning: the earth groaning with its production of accursed thorns and thistles; man and beast at enmity; the serpent slily creeping away, fearing lest his head should got the deadly bruise; and man startling amid the thorny path, in fear, lest the serpent's fangs should pierce his heel; while the lamb yields his blood upon the smoking altar. Soon man begins to persecute, hate, and murder his fellow; until at length the earth is filled with violence ”

“ In the foreground were the most horrible monsters that could be invented—bears with men’s heads, growling—snakes darting in and out, hissing—here a man lying murdered, with a knife in his heart; there—a suicide, hanging by the neck—skeletons lying about in all directions, and some walking up and down in muslin shrouds. ”

“ To have tamed this monster, now for the better part within blinkers, is no unworthy service, and comes of good blood. In what quarter is she not worsted, though fighting still? The sons of those that perished by her are scattered abroad to their vengeance, choking her back upon her haunches, maiming and lacerating her in a thousand places. ”

“ A corpse, swollen, hideous and frightful beyond all humanity, will be cast upon the pebbled beach, and it may lie there long undiscovered, amid gnats that swarm in the sunshine of noon, and birds that scream in the night—ay, very long, for our glens are desolate now, and for months a human foot may never press the heather there. That corpse will be yours, Mr. Snaggs! ”

“ Paler than the dead who lay so still in their quiet rest in the churchyard; colder than the very touch of death itself; rigid as the body when the breath has gone forever; there he stood, the epitome of awful fear. With eyeballs starting from their sockets, open mouth, dilated nostrils, he seemed the very personification of incredulous horror. ”

“ I started from my sleep with horror; a cold dew covered my forehead, my teeth chattered, and every limb became convulsed; when, by the dim and yellow light of the moon, as it forced its way through the window-shutters, I beheld the wretch—the miserable monster whom I had created. He held up the curtain of the bed; and his eyes, if eyes they may be called, were fixed on me. ”

“ I entered the room where the corpse lay, and was led up to the coffin. How can I describe my sensations on beholding it? I feel yet parched with horror, nor can I reflect on that terrible moment without shuddering and agony, that faintly reminds me of the anguish of the recognition. The trial, the presence of the magistrate and witnesses, passed like a dream from my memory, when I saw the lifeless form of Henry Clerval stretched before me. ”

“ All that was evil in him came to the surface; the fear that anybody might forcibly frustrate his revenge—if he chose to revenge himself—raised a demon in him that blanched his naturally pallid face and started his lip muscles into that curious recession which, in animals, is the first symptom of the snarl. ”

“ Thousands of heads were reared, and tongues were stretched out to sting the intruder to death, but happily for him their bodies were so closely entwined one in the other that they could not disentangle themselves quickly. ”

“ As we entered a sight of horror met our eyes that almost froze our blood and made our hearts stop beating. Before us were skeleton forms that once had been stalwart men, covered with rags and filth and vermin, with hollow cheeks and glowing eyes. ”

“ Now, in the dark fens of that land there dwelt a monster—fierce, noisome, and cruel, a thing that loved evil and hated all that was joyous and good. To its ears came the ring of the laughter and the shouts of King Hrothgar’s revellers, and the sweet song of the gleemen and the melody of harps filled it with fierce hatred. From its wallow in the marshes, where the pestilent grey fog hung round its dwelling, the monster, known to all men as the Grendel, came forth, to kill and to devour. ”

“ The ‘Crow-Killer’ talks big; let him open his ears and the ‘Thunder-Cloud’ will speak words that will make him howl like a dog. The ‘Crow-Killer’ will not die like a chief at the torture-stake; he will die here in the wigwam of the Crow—die by the knife of the ‘Thunder-Cloud’ ”

“ A boy of fourteen years, with the mangled remains of my own parents lying near by, my scalp torn open, my person covered with blood, alone, friendless, in a wild, mountain, dismal, wilderness region, exposed to the ravenous beasts, and more, to the ferocity of more than brutal savages and human-shaped demons! I had no strength to walk, my spirits crushed, my ambition paralyzed, my body mangled. ”

“ Ever alive to the chance of killing a snake, which they were certain it was, father and son rushed up, armed with a whip and some sticks, but when they gained the spot they were startled and horrified to find there the body of a man stretched out to all appearance dead. ”

“ I have got a book at home that I obtained in France, which represents sinners falling into a tremendous fire; and there are dragons, scorpions, serpents, and every kind of reptile searching like fiends for their prey. Naked sinners are depicted falling into devouring flames, and a great dragon with open mouth, forked tongue, and horrid teeth, ready to receive them. If they should miss it, there are scorpions, and serpents, and devils, with three-pronged pitchforks, waiting a little below, that they may get the sinners and give them a good roasting. ”

“ There was a youthful forehead under the brown hair, an almost indignant knitting of the eyebrows, pinched nostrils, closed eyelids, the lashes glued together by the rime, and from the corners of the eyes to the corners of the mouth extended a channel of frozen tears. The snow lighted up the corpse. Winter and death are not unlike; the corpse is a human circle. ”

“ It was a ghastly and a grotesque spectacle, and I behaved as any other nine-year-old would—jumped up and down and screamed, beating my palms together, and calling alternately for "Father!" and "Cousin 'Ratio!"
Since that horrible moment I have believed stories read and heard of people being scared to death, or into insanity. In the great, round world, there was nothing present to me but a cruel expanse of green below, a white-hot sky above, and at my feet a dead woman, killed [Pg 255] by the razor-like blades thick-set under every leaf, and guarding every melon. ”

“ Had they bodies of flesh and blood, those shadows she had seen steal across the cape, or phantom forms as intangible as the morning mist now stealing away in the dawn, with hands that could work evil more real and terrible than mortal rogue. ”

“ A mad horror had forged in him a readiness to commit the crime—and the deep, unconscious image of future murder, dormant in the lower strata of spiritual life, the tormenting itch to murder, a condition of primitive wrath, oppressed his diseased will. ”

“ These dreary wastes, pathless and untrodden, were a kind of fabulous region among the patients for all kind of horrors, peopled, as the fancy of each dictated, by the spirits of departed “Léperos,” by venomous serpents and cobras, or by escaped galley-slaves, who led a life of rapine and murder. The flitting jack-o'-lantern that often skimmed along the surface, the wild cry of the plover, the dreary night wind sighing over miles of plain, aided these superstitions, and convinced many whose stubborn incredulity demanded corroboration from the senses. ”

“ A gaping crowd have gathered around, who regard him wonderingly as his eyes appear to roll in mortal anguish, when he stabs himself with a double-jointed knife or while his flesh creeps and recoils in counterfeit horror from the playful nibblings and twining embraces of his harmless friends the serpents. ”

“ The horrible sight of the mangled, bleeding bodies, the set eyes, and jaws locked from excessive torture, will surely fasten on his eye forever, and blister his sight. Horrid dreams, wherein jibing fiends shall mock at him and the wail of the damned ring forever in his ears, shall surely visit his pillow and haunt him every night. Each voice that he hears amid the carnage shall seem, in after-time, to be the voice of an accusing angel telling him of his guilt. ”

“ On each side of the throat were unmistakable signs of thumb pressure, and a post-mortem examination made it clear that strangulation had caused death. Such a prominent and well-known man could not have died in an ordinary way without his fellow-citizens experiencing a shock and being deeply affected, but when the news spread that he had been murdered it caused a profound sensation. Then there was a universal expression of regret, followed by a cry of indignation and horror, and a demand for vengeance, swift and pitiless, on the slayer of this good man. ”

“ Vainly glide from the fangs of the serpent,—his very breath suffices to destroy! Pure seems the draught and wholesome the viand,—that master of the science of murder needs not the means of the bungler! ”

“ That is ‘Billy the Strangler,’ and I think the ‘Kid’ is with him. Those were my Apaches—my gun men—my killers. They are much alike. Both have cunning of a low order; and persistence—they are like bloodhounds, once they are put on the trail.
“They have been Monte’s most useful tools in his pursuit of me. But both are superstitious, and their native bloodthirstiness has grown on them till they are little better than homicidal maniacs. The Strangler is tall and slim, with high cheek bones and lean arms which seem to be threaded with steel wires. ”

“ The scene that now presented itself was such that many individuals, whose morbid appetite for horror was insatiable, flew from the place of execution, unable to stand and witness the spectacle of a human being falling from one swoon into another, incapable of keeping his feet, and lifted softly, as by the hands of nurses, to receive around his neck the cord that was to strangle him by his own weight. ”