Saturday night may be alright for fighting for some folks, but I’ve always been more of a “stay at home, lie on the couch, and read” type of person. If I’m fighting anything at all it’s to stay awake so I can finish the short story or the chapter I happen to be working on.
For those homebodies like me, I have a triple-header of stories in store for you. They all come from the pen of a man who is considered to be the greatest satirist America ever produced. His tales of the American Civil War influenced writers like Stephen Crane and Erenest Hemingway. His short works, especially his tales of terror, are so well-regarded that critics place him alongside other American fantasists such as Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft. He is also a man whose final words could not have been more prescient. Writing to a friend in the United States in 1913 from Chihuahua, Mexico, while accompanying Pancho Villa’s revolutionary army, he closed his letter by saying,
“As to me, I leave here tomorrow for an unknown destination.”
And he did, too. No one ever set eyes on American short story writer, journalist, poet, and Civil War veteran Ambrose Bierce again. Thankfully, his stories didn’t disappear with him.
Our first story is “The Damned Thing.” In it, a group of men are gathered around the corpse of Hugh Morgan. Serving on an inquest jury into his death, the men hear testimony from a witness who was with Morgan when he died, and Morgan’s diary is read. Both sources present evidence that just could not possibly be true. How could the man have been mauled to death, having been shaken back and forth violently in the air, as the witness proclaims, when there was nothing near him as he died? And what of Morgan’s diary entries that describe a creature whose color is no color that the human eye can see?
You can find the written text of “The Damned Thing” here, or, if you prefer, listen to a reading of the story from the good folks at HorrorBabble below.
Next up, we have “The Middle Toe of the Right Foot.” Inspired by a story Bierce read of a knife duel in a dark room, this short story concerns a man named Manton who, ten years before, had killed his wife and two children. After being recognized when he returns to town, Manton gets into an argument and is challenged to a knife fight. The fight takes place at the scene of his old crime, the house in which he murdered his family. His challenger plays a trick on the man and locks him alone in the dark in a room in the house. The next day, the men return to find Manton crouched in the corner of the room, dead from sheer fright. What happened there in the dark of that room? And who left behind three sets of footprints in the dust on the floor, two of which were small, as if made by the feet of children, the third set missing the middle toe of the right foot?
The story is available here thanks to Project Gutenberg. You can also listen to an audio rendition of “The Middle Toe of the Right Foot” below.
Our final tale for this sinister Saturday night is the melancholy “Beyond the Wall.” While in San Francisco, the narrator agrees to have dinner with an old friend at the man’s house. During the meal, a knocking on the wall is heard. Upon inspection, the narrator determines that it could only have come from beyond an outward facing wall of the tower in which the room they are in is situated. The narrator’s friend seems relieved that someone else heard the sound, and he weaves a tale of forbidden love, of playful raps on the wall between himself and a young woman not of his class. What happened to the burgeoning love affair between the man and this woman, and why, after so many years, does he still hear a knock on the wall?
You can find out by reading “Beyond the Wall” here or by listening to a reading of the story via this link.
After the war, Bierce settled in San Francisco and became an editor and writer for many magazines and newspapers. Many of his short stories were written in a frenzy of activity between the years 1888 and 1891, and most were based on his experiences during the Civil War. His most famous short story, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” was one such tale of the horrors of war. Written in 1890, it tells the tale of a soldier who escapes hanging at the eponymous bridge — or does he? The story follows the man as he tries to get back home to his family.
At age seventy-one, Bierce went on a tour of the battlefields he’d fought on during the Civil War. Finding himself in Texas, he decided, seemingly out of the blue, to join Pancho Villa’s revolutionary army as an observer. While in Mexico, he wrote to a friend:
"Good-bye. If you hear of my being stood up against a Mexican stone wall and shot to rags, please know that I think it is a pretty good way to depart this life. It beats old age, disease, or falling down the cellar stairs. To be a Gringo in Mexico—ah, that is euthanasia!"
His last known communication was dated December 26, 1913. After that, Beirce’s whereabouts became unknown. Some feel that Bierce made up the story of following Pancho Villa and had gone to the Grand Canyon to commit suicide. Others claim to have seen Bierce executed by firing squad in a cemetery in Sierra Mojada, Coahuila, Mexico. Whatever the truth is, Ambrose Bierce was ever seen again.
Ah, the desire to get away from it all...it’s something that we all want, is it not? But I think we can all agree that the best escape from life isn't by following an army around. The best escape is via...pleasant dreams? Hmmm? Heh-heh-heh!
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