The Skriker

On a fine night, about the middle of December, many years ago, a
sturdy-looking young fellow left Chipping for his cottage, three or
four miles away, upon the banks of the Hodder. The ground was covered
with snow, which in many places had drifted into heaps, and the keen
frost had made the road so slippery that the progress he made was but
slow. Nature looked very beautiful, and the heart of the rustic even
was touched by the sweet peacefulness of the scene. The noble old
Parlick, and the sweeping Longridge, with its fir-crowned Thornley
Height and Kemple End, stood out boldly against the clear sky, and the
moon shed her soft silvery light into the long silent valley,
stretching away until its virgin paleness mingled with the shadows and
the darkness of the distant fells beyond Whitewell.

All was still, save when the sighing wind rustled gently through the
frosted branches of the leafless trees by the roadside, and shook down
upon the wayfarer a miniature shower of snow; for even the tiny
stream, so full of mirth and music in the summer time, had been lulled
to sleep by the genius of winter; and the cottagers, whose little
houses, half-hidden by the rime, seemed hardly large enough for the
dwellings of dwarfs, had been snugly sleeping for hours.

Adam was by no means a timid or nervous being, but there was a
nameless something in the deathly silence which oppressed, if it did
not actually frighten, him; and although he sang aloud a verse of the
last song he had heard before he left the kitchen of the Patten Arms,
his voice had lost its heartiness. He earnestly wished himself safely
across the little bridge over the brook; but he was yet some distance
from the stream when the faint chimes of midnight fell upon the air.
Almost immediately after the last stroke of twelve had broken the
silence a cloud passed over the face of the moon, and comparative
darkness enveloped the scene; the wind, which before had been gentle
and almost noiseless, began to howl amid the boughs and branches of
the waving trees, and the frozen snow from the hedgerows was dashed
against the wayfarer's face.

He had already begun to fancy that he could distinguish in the
soughing of the wind and the creaking of the boughs unearthly cries
and fiendish shouts of glee; but as he approached the dreaded stream
his courage almost entirely failed him, and it required a great effort
to keep from turning his back to it, and running away in the direction
of the little village at the foot of Parlick. It struck him, however,
that he had come a long distance; that if he did go back to the Patten
Arms the company would be dispersed, and the inmates asleep, and, what
was more effective than all, that if he could only cross the bridge he
would be safe, the Greenies, Boggarts, and Feorin not having power
over any one who had passed over the water. Influenced by this
thought, yet with his knees trembling under him, he pushed forward
with assumed boldness, and he had almost reached the bridge when he
heard the noise of passing feet in the crunching snow, and became
conscious of the presence of a ghastly thing he was unable to see.
Suddenly a sepulchral howl brought him to a stop, and, with his heart
throbbing loudly enough to be heard, he stood gazing fixedly into the
darkness. There was nothing to be perceived, however, save the copings
of the bridge, with their coverings of rime; and he might have stood
there until daylight had not another cry, louder and even more
unearthly and horrible than the preceding one, called him from his
trance. No sooner had this second scream died away than, impelled by
an irresistible impulse, he stepped forward in the direction whence
the noise had come. At this moment the moon burst forth from behind
the clouds which had for some time obscured her light, and her rays
fell upon the road, with its half-hidden cart-tracks winding away into
the dim distance; and in the very centre of the bridge he beheld a
hideous figure with black shaggy hide, and huge eyes closely
resembling orbs of fire.

Adam at once knew from the likeness the dread object bore to the
figure he had heard described by those who had seen the Skriker, that
the terrible thing before him was an Ambassador of Death.

Without any consciousness of what he was doing, and acting as though
under the sway of a strange and irresistible mesmeric influence, he
stepped towards the bridge; but no sooner did he stir than the
frightful thing in front of him, with a motion that was not walking,
but rather a sort of heavy gliding, moved also, slowly retreating,
pausing when he paused, and always keeping its fiery eyes fixed upon
his blanched face. Slowly he crossed the stream, but gradually his
steps grew more and more rapid, until he broke into a run. Suddenly a
faint knowledge of the horrible nature of his position dawned upon
him. A little cottage stood by the roadside, and from one of its
chamber-windows, so near to the ground as to be within his reach, a
dim light shone, the room probably being occupied by a sick person, or
by watchers of the dead. Influenced by a sudden feeling of
companionship, Adam tried to cry out, but his tongue clave to his
parched mouth, and ere he could mumble a few inarticulate sounds,
scarcely audible to himself, the dwelling was left far behind, and a
sensation of utter loneliness and helplessness again took possession
of him.

He had thus traversed more than a mile of the road, in some parts of
which, shaded by the high hedgerows and overhanging boughs, the only
light seemed to him to be that from the terrible eyes, when suddenly
he stumbled over a stone and fell. In a second, impressed by a fear
that the ghastly object would seize him, he regained his feet, and, to
his intense relief, the Skriker was no longer visible. With a sigh of
pleasure he sat down upon a heap of broken stones, for his limbs, no
longer forced into mechanical movement by the influence of the
spectre's presence, refused to bear him further. Bitterly cold as was
the night, the perspiration stood in beads upon his whitened face,
and, with the recollection of the Skriker's terrible eyes and horrible
body strong upon him, he shook and shivered, as though in a fit of the
ague. A strong and burly man, in the very prime of life, he felt as
weak as a girl, and, fearing that he was about to sink to the ground
in a swoon, he took handfuls of the crisp snow and rubbed them upon
his forehead. Under this sharp treatment he soon revived a little,
and, after several unsuccessful efforts, he succeeded in regaining his
feet, and resumed his lonely journey.

Starting at the least sough of the breeze, the faintest creak of a
bending branch, or the fall of a piece of frozen rime from a bough, he
slowly trudged along.

He had passed the quaint old house at Chaigely, the sudden yelp of a
chained dog in the court-yard giving him a thrill of horror as he went
by, and he had reached the bend in that part of the road which is
opposite the towering wood-covered Kemple End. A keen and cutting
blast swept through the black firs that crowned the summit, and stood,
like solemn sentinels, upon the declivity. There was a music in the
wind mournful as a croon over the corpse of a beautiful woman, whose
hair still shimmers with the golden light of life; but Adam heard no
melody in the moaning sighs which seemed to fill the air around. To
him, whose soul was yet under the influence of the terror through
which he had so recently passed, the sounds assumed an awful nature;
whilst the firs, standing so clearly defined against the snow, which
lay in virgin heaps upon the beds of withered fern, seemed like so
many weird skeletons shaking their bony arms in menace or in warning.

With a suddenness that was more than startling, there was a lull, and
the breeze ceased even to whisper. The silence was more painful than
were the noises of the blast battling with the branches, for it filled
the breast of the solitary wayfarer with forebodings of coming woe. At
the point he had reached the road sank, and as Adam stepped into the
almost utter darkness, caused by the high banks, to which clung masses
of decayed vegetation, beautified by the genius of winter into white
festoons, again and again the terrible shriek rang out.

There was no mistaking the voice of the Skriker for that of anything
else upon earth, and, with a sickly feeling at his heart, Adam slowly
emerged from the gloom, and, in expectation of the appearance of the
ghastly figure, passed on. He had not to wait long, for as he reached
the old bridge spanning the Hodder, once more he saw, in the centre
of the road, about midway of the stream, the same terrible object he
had followed along the lane from the brook at Thornley.

With a sensation of terror somewhat less intense than that which had
previously influenced him, he again yielded to the power which
impelled him forward, and once more the strange procession commenced,
the Skriker gliding over the snow, not, however, without a peculiar
shuffling of its feet, surrounded, as they were, by masses of long
hair, which clung to them, and deadened the sound, and Adam following
in his mechanical and involuntary trot. The journey this time,
however, was of but short duration, for the poor fellow's cottage was
only a little way from the river. The distance was soon traversed, and
the Skriker, with its face towards the terrified man, took up its
position against the door of the dwelling. Adam could not resist the
attraction which drew him to the ghastly thing, and as he neared it,
in a fit of wild desperation, he struck at it, but his hand banged
against the oak of the door, and, as the spectre splashed away, he
fell forward in a swoon.

Disturbed by the noise of the fall, the goodwife arose and drew him
into the cottage, but for some hours he was unable to tell the story
of his terrible journey. When he had told of his involuntary chase of
the Skriker, a deep gloom fell over the woman's features, for she well
knew what the ghastly visit portended to their little household. The
dread uncertainty did not continue long, however, for on the third day
from that upon which Adam had reached his home the eldest lad was
brought home drowned; and after attending the child's funeral, Adam's
wife sickened of a fever, and within a few weeks she too was carried
to Mytton churchyard. These things, together with the dreadful
experience of the journey from Chipping, so affected Adam that he lost
his reason, and for years afterwards the sound of his pattering
footsteps, as in harmless idiotcy, with wild eyes and outstretched
hands, he trotted along the roads in chase of an imaginary Boggart,
fell with mournful impressiveness upon the ears of groups gathered by
farm-house fires to listen to stories of the Skriker.