A WIRELESS MESSAGE
by Ambrose Bierce
In the summer of 1896 Mr. William Holt, a wealthy
manufacturer of Chicago, was living temporarily in
a little town of central New York, the name of which
the writer's memory has not retained. Mr. Holt had
had "trouble with his wife," from whom he had parted
a year before. Whether the trouble was anything more
serious than "incompatibility of temper," he is
probably the only living person that knows: he is
not addicted to the vice of confidences. Yet he has
related the incident herein set down to at least one
person without exacting a pledge of secrecy. He is
now living in Europe.
One evening he had left the house of a brother whom
he was visiting, for a stroll in the country. It may
be assumed--whatever the value of the assumption in
connection with what is said to have occurred--that
his mind was occupied with reflections on his domestic
infelicities and the distressing changes that they
had wrought in his life. Whatever may have been his
thoughts, they so possessed him that he observed
neither the lapse of time nor whither his feet were
carrying him; he knew only that he had passed far
beyond the town limits and was traversing a lonely
region by a road that bore no resemblance to the
one by which he had left the village. In brief,
he was "lost."
Realizing his mischance, he smiled; central New York
is not a region of perils, nor does one long remain
lost in it. He turned about and went back the way
that he had come. Before he had gone far he observed
that the landscape was growing more distinct--was
brightening. Everything was suffused with a soft,
red glow in which he saw his shadow projected in the
road before him. "The moon is rising," he said to
himself. Then he remembered that it was about the
time of the new moon, and if that tricksy orb was
in one of its stages of visibility it had set long
before. He stopped and faced about, seeking the
source of the rapidly broadening light. As he did
so, his shadow turned and lay along the road in
front of him as before. The light still came from
behind him. That was surprising; he could not
understand. Again he turned, and again, facing
successively to every point of the horizon. Always
the shadow was before--always the light behind,
"a still and awful red."
Holt was astonished--"dumfounded" is the word that
he used in telling it--yet seems to have retained
a certain intelligent curiosity. To test the
intensity of the light whose nature and cause he
could not determine, he took out his watch to see
if he could make out the figures on the dial. They
were plainly visible, and the hands indicated the
hour of eleven o'clock and twenty-five minutes. At
that moment the mysterious illumination suddenly
flared to an intense, an almost blinding splendor,
flushing the entire sky, extinguishing the stars
and throwing the monstrous shadow of himself
athwart the landscape. In that unearthly illumination
he saw near him, but apparently in the air at a
considerable elevation, the figure of his wife,
clad in her night-clothing and holding to her
breast the figure of his child. Her eyes were fixed
upon his with an expression which he afterward
professed himself unable to name or describe,
further than that it was "not of this life."
The flare was momentary, followed by black darkness,
in which, however, the apparition still showed white
and motionless; then by insensible degrees it faded
and vanished, like a bright image on the retina
after the closing of the eyes. A peculiarity of the
apparition, hardly noted at the time, but afterward
recalled, was that it showed only the upper half of
the woman's figure: nothing was seen below the waist.
The sudden darkness was comparative, not absolute,
for gradually all objects of his environment became
again visible.
In the dawn of the morning Holt found himself entering
the village at a point opposite to that at which he
had left it. He soon arrived at the house of his
brother, who hardly knew him. He was wild-eyed,
haggard, and gray as a rat. Almost incoherently, he
related his night's experience.
"Go to bed, my poor fellow," said his brother,
"and--wait. We shall hear more of this."
An hour later came the predestined telegram. Holt's
dwelling in one of the suburbs of Chicago had been
destroyed by fire. Her escape cut off by the flames,
his wife had appeared at an upper window, her child
in her arms. There she had stood, motionless, apparently
dazed. Just as the firemen had arrived with a ladder,
the floor had given way, and she was seen no more.
The moment of this culminating horror was eleven
o'clock and twenty-five minutes, standard time.
~~~~~~~ THE END ~~~~~~~
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