Emily Climbs. Lucy M. Montgomery
and song and homely faces of dear friends had become a ghostly, alien place full of haunting terrors. There was no escape. The windows could not be opened. The church was ventilated by transom-like panes near the top of them, which were opened and shut by pulling a wire. She could not get up to them, and she could not have got through them if she had.
She cowered down on the step, shuddering from head to foot. By now the thunder and lightning were almost incessant: rain blew against the windows, not in drops but sheets, and intermittent volleys of hail bombarded them. The wind had risen suddenly with the storm and shrieked around the church. It was not her old dear friend of childhood, the bat-winged, misty “Wind Woman,” but a legion of yelling witches. “The Prince of the Power of the Air rules the wind,” she had heard Mad Mr. Morrison say once. Why should she think of Mad Mr. Morrison now? How the windows rattled as if demon riders of the storm were shaking them! She had heard a wild tale of some one hearing the organ play in the empty church one night several years ago. Suppose it began playing now! No fancy seemed too grotesque or horrible to come true. Didn’t the stairs creak? The blackness between the lightnings was so intense that it looked thick. Emily was frightened of it touching her and buried her face in her lap.
Presently, however, she got a grip on herself and began to reflect that she was not living up to Murray traditions. Murrays were not supposed to go to pieces like this. Murrays were not foolishly panicky in thunder-storms. Those old Murrays sleeping in the private graveyard across the pond would have scorned her as a degenerate descendant. Aunt Elizabeth would have said that it was the Starr coming out in her. She must be brave: after all, she had lived through worse hours than this—the night she had eaten of Lofty John’s poisoned apple{1}—the afternoon she had fallen over the rocks of Malvern Bay. This had come so suddenly on her that she had been in the throes of terror before she could brace herself against it. She must pick up. Nothing dreadful was going to happen to her—nothing worse than staying all night in the church. In the morning she could attract the attention of some one passing. She had been here over an hour now, and nothing had happened to her—unless indeed her hair had turned white, as she understood hair sometimes did. There had been such a funny, crinkly, crawly feeling at the roots of it at times. Emily held out her long braid, ready for the next flash. When it came she saw that her hair was still black. She sighed with relief and began to chirk up. The storm was passing. The thunder-peals were growing fainter and fewer, though the rain continued to fall and the wind to drive and shriek around the church, whining through the big keyhole eerily.
Emily straightened her shoulders and cautiously let down her feet to a lower step. She thought she had better try to get back into the church. If another cloud came up, the steeple might be struck—steeples were always getting struck, she remembered: it might come crashing down on the, porch right over her. She would go in and sit down in the Murray pew: she would be cool and sensible and collected: she was ashamed of her panic—but it had been terrible.
All around her now was a soft, heavy darkness, still with that same eerie sensation of something you could touch, born perhaps of the heat and humidity of the July night. The porch was so small and narrow—she would not feel so smothered and oppressed in the church.
She put out her hand to grasp a stair rail and pull herself to her cramped feet. Her hand touched—not the stair rail—merciful heavens, what was it?—something hairy—Emily’s shriek of horror froze on her lips—padding footsteps passed down the steps beside her; a flash of lightning came and at the bottom of the steps was a huge black dog, which had turned and was looking up at her before he was blotted out in the returning darkness. Even then for a moment she saw his eyes blazing redly at her, like a fiend’s.
Emily’s hair roots began to crawl and crinkle again—a very large, very cold caterpillar began to creep slowly up her spine. She could not have moved a muscle had life depended on it. She could not even cry out. The only thing she could think of at first was the horrible demon hound of the Manx Castle in Peveril of the Peak. For a few minutes her terror was so great that it turned her physically sick. Then, with an effort which was un-child-like in its determination—I think it was at that moment Emily wholly ceased to be a child—she recovered her self-control. She would not yield to fear—she set her teeth and clenched her trembling hands; she would be brave—sensible. That was only a commonplace Blair Water dog which had followed its owner—some rapscallion boy—into the gallery, and got itself left behind. The thing had happened before. A flash of lightning showed her that the porch was empty. Evidently the dog had gone into the church. Emily decided that she would stay where she was. She had recovered from her panic, but she did not want to feel the sudden touch of a cold nose or a hairy flank in the darkness. She could never forget the awfulness of the moment when she had touched the creature.
It must be all of twelve o’clock now—it had been ten when the meeting came out. The noise of the storm had for the most part died away. The drive and shriek of the wind came occasionally, but between its gusts there was a silence, broken only by the diminishing raindrops. Thunder still muttered faintly and lightning came at frequent intervals, but of a paler, gentler flame—not the rending glare that had seemed to wrap the very building in intolerable blue radiance, and scorch her eye. Gradually her heart began to beat normally. The power of rational thought returned. She did not like her predicament, but she began to find dramatic possibilities in it. Oh, what a chapter for her diary—or her Jimmy-book—and, beyond it, for that novel she would write some day! It was a situation expressly shaped for the heroine—who must, of course, be rescued by the hero. Emily began constructing the scene—adding to it—intensifying it—hunting for words to express it. This was rather—interesting—after all. Only she wished she knew just where the dog was. How weirdly the pale lightning gleamed on the gravestones which she could see through the porch window opposite her! How strange the familiar valley beyond looked in the recurrent illuminations! How the wind moaned and sighed and complained—but it was her own Wind Woman again. The Wind Woman was one of her childish fancies that she had carried over into maturity, and it comforted her now, with a sense of ancient companionship. The wild riders of the storm were gone—her fairy friend had come back. Emily gave a sigh that was almost of contentment. The worst was over—and really, hadn’t she behaved pretty well? She began to feel quite self-respecting again.
All at once Emily knew she was not alone!
How she knew it she could not have told. She had heard nothing—seen nothing—felt nothing: and yet she knew, beyond all doubt or dispute, that there was a Presence in the darkness above her on the stairs.
She turned and looked up. It was horrible to look, but it was less horrible to feel that—Something—was in front of you than that it was behind you. She stared with wildly dilated eyes into the darkness, but she could see nothing. Then—she heard a low laugh above her—a laugh that almost made her heart stop beating—the very dreadful, inhuman laughter of the unsound in mind. She did not need the lightning flash that came then to tell her that Mad Mr. Morrison was somewhere on the stairs above her. But it came—she saw him—she felt as if she were sinking in some icy gulf of coldness—she could not even scream.
The picture of him, etched on her brain by the lightning, never left her. He was crouched five steps above her, with his gray head thrust forward. She saw the frenzied gleam of his eyes—the fang-like yellow teeth exposed in a horrible smile—the long, thin, blood-red hand outstretched towards her, almost touching her shoulder.
Sheer panic shattered Emily’s trance. She bounded to her feet with a piercing scream of terror.
“Teddy! Teddy! Save me!” she shrieked madly.
She did not know why she called for Teddy—she did not even realize that she had called him—she only remembered it afterwards, as one might recall the waking shriek in a nightmare—she only knew that she must have help—that she would die if that awful hand touched her. It must not touch her.
She made a mad spring down the steps, rushed into the church, and up the aisle. She must hide before the next flash came—but not in the Murray pew. He might look for her there. She dived into one of the middle pews and crouched down in its corner on the floor. Her body was bathed in an ice-cold perspiration. She was wholly in the