King Stakh's Wild Hunt

What could I do? Convince her that it had been auditory hallucinations? But I did not suffer from hallucinations, I had distinctly heard steps and groans. To say that it was some cunning acoustic effect? I do not know whether that would have helped, although half the rumours about ghosts in old houses are based on just such tricks. For example, the famous ghost in the Luxemburg Palace in Dubrowna was finally discovered in the shape of a vessel filled with mercury and gold coins which some unknown joker had bricked up about 100 years earlier in the flue on the sunny side. No sooner did the night's cold make way for the sun's warmth, than a wild howling and rustling arose in all the rooms on the second floor.

However, is it possible to make a foolish little girl change her mind? Therefore I asked her with an air of importance:

“But who is he, what is he like, this Little Man of Marsh Firs?”

“I saw him three times and each time from afar. Once it was just before the death of my father. Twice — not long ago. But I've heard him, perhaps a hundred times. Nor was I ever frightened, except perhaps the last time… just a little, a very little. I went up to him, but he disappeared. It is really a very little man, he reaches up to my chest, skinny, and reminds one of a starved child. His eyes are sad, his hands are very long, and his head is unnaturally long. He is dressed as people dressed 200 years ago, only in the western manner. His clothes are green. He usually hides from me around the corner of the corridor and by the time I run up to him, he disappears, although the corridor ends in a blank wall. There is only one room there. But it is boarded up with long nails.”

I felt sorry for her. An unfortunate creature, she was very likely going mad.

“And that is not all,” she went on. “It's perhaps 300 years since the Lady-in-Blue has been seen in this castle — you see that one there in the portrait. The family tradition is that she has quenched her thirst for revenge, but I do not believe it. She was not that kind of a person. When they dragged her in 1501 to her execution, she shouted to her husband: ‘My bones shall find no peace until the last snake of your race has perished!’ And then for almost 100 years there was no escape from her: it was either a plague or a goblet of poison poured by some unknown person, or death caused by nightmares. She stopped taking revenge only on the great-grandchildren… But now I know that she is keeping her word. Not long ago Bierman saw her on the balcony that is boarded up, and others saw her, too. I alone have not seen her, but that is her habit: in the beginning she appears before others, but to the person she is after, only at the hour of his death… My family will end with me. I know that. Not long to wait for it. They shall be satisfied.”

I took her hand and pressed it hard, desiring to bring the girl back to herself, somehow to divert her thoughts from the horrors she was speaking about as if in her sleep.

“You mustn't worry. As far as that goes, I've also become interested in this. There's no place for apparitions in the Steam Age. I swear that the two weeks left for me to spend here, I shall devote to solving this mystery. The d-devil take it, such nonsense! But one thing, you mustn't be afraid.”

She smiled faintly:

“Oh! Don't mind me… I'm accustomed to it. It goes on here every night.”

And again the same expression on her face that spoiled it so, and that I couldn't understand. It was fright, chronic, horrible fright. Not the fright that makes one's hair stand on end for a moment, but the fright that finally becomes a habitual state impossible to get rid of even in one's sleep. This unfortunate girl would have been good-looking, were it not for this constant, terrible fear.

And notwithstanding the fact that I was beside her, she moved up still closer to me to avoid seeing the darkness behind me.