The Alex Catalogue of Electronic Texts is collection

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collection include items from American literature,
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A Ghost Story

Written in 1903 by

Mark Twain

(1835-1910)

This version originally published in

2005

by

Infomotions, Inc.
This particular text was derived from the Internet Wiretap Edition of A Ghost Story
by Mark Twain from "Sketches New and Old", copyright 1903, Samuel Clemens. It
was placed in the Public Domain (May 1993).

This document is distributed under the GNU Public License.

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 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 of the stairway and an invisible cobweb swung its slazy
woof in my face and 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 voices 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 footsteps 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, doing
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 bedclothes
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
slipped deliberately away, till my breast was uncovered. 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 energies 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 elephant, 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 myself, "This is a dream
-- simply a hideous dream." And so I lay thinking it over until I
convinced myself 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 rippled 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 infant's'! 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 darkness, and listening. Then I heard a grating
noise overhead, like the dragging of a heavy body across the floor;
then the throwing down of the body, and the shaking of my windows
in response to the concussion. In distant parts of the building I heard
the muffled slamming of doors. I heard, at intervals, stealthy footsteps
creeping in and out among the corridors, and up and down the stairs.
Sometimes 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 advanced. 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
whisperings. 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 apparently,
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 contemplation 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 wilting away. In the
same moment I heard that elephantine 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, don't 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, You'll ruin ev--"
Too late again. There was another crash, and another chair was
resolved into its original elements.
"Confound it, haven't 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
littered 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, "I 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
one of my red blankets over his shoulders, inverted my sitz-bath on
his head, helmet fashion, and made himself picturesque and
comfortable. Then he crossed his ankles, while I renewed the fire,
and exposed the flat, honey-combed bottoms 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 Newell's 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
tired, 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 haunting a PLASTER CAST of yourself --
the real Cardiff Giant is in Albany!
[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 real
colossus) at the very same time that the latter was drawing crowds at
a museum in Albany.]
Confound it, don't 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
meditatively dropping his chin on his breast), and finally said:
"Well -- I NEVER felt so absurd before. The Petrified Man has sold
everybody 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, don't 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.
Colophon
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