From Edgar; or, The Phantom of the Castle (1798) by Richard Sickelmore
From Volume I:
CHAPTER I
---Strange things,
The neighbours say, have happen'd here;
Wild shrieks have issu'd from the hollow tombs:
Dead men have come again, and walk'd about:
And the great bell has toll'd, unrung, untouch'd.
BLAIR.
THE night was dark, the rain in torrents seemed to threaten the earth with a second deluge, "The lightning flash'd in vivid colours, and the thunder rolled in awful majesty," when Edgar, who almost exhausted, sought shelter from the storm within the mouldering walls of an old decayed priory.
The war of the agitated elements continued with renewed violence; and Edgar, who was not deficient in courage, determined to explore the more interior part of the desolated building, as the place where he then rested scarcely screened him from the rude attack of the hurricane.
He ascended a flight of steps, and with very little exertion forced open a door, which, cracking on its rusty hinges, admitted him into the building. Scarcely was he entered, when the door closed with a ponderous crash, and defied the utmost strength of Edgar again to release it.
The tempest was now over the priory, the lightning flashed through the apertures of the dilapidated walls, while the loud thunder threatened the tottering ruin with instantaneous annihilation.
Edgar, impelled by fear for his own safety, as all retreat by the closing of the door was rendered ineffectual, descended a staircase, which he descried as the lightning illumined at intervals. He passed on as cautiously as the impenetrable darkness would admit, till his passage was obstructed by an iron door, which not being fastened, he with very little difficulty opened, and entered, to his infinite surprize, a large square room: a lamp hung suspended from the ceiling, which emitted a feeble glimmering light, hardly sufficient to pierce the extreme darkness which pervaded this gloomy apartment.
He stood for sometime to survey it. The faint light spread a tremulous gleam, more horrible than darkness itself.
Edgar was amazed at the incongruous appearance of this part of the structure, with the dilapidated walls he had just quitted; every thing here bore the aspect of having been lately occupied; and the lamp confirmed his suspicion beyond a doubt.
He retreated a few paces, undetermined whether he should proceed any further, or trace his way back, which he could easily effect, with the assistance of the light. This he immediately seized; at the same instant recollecting, that should he reach the place by which he entered, unheard, he had no way of escaping, as the closing of the door had rendered it impracticable:-a circumstance he till that moment had totally forgot.
For the first time, he felt himself appalled by fear. It might be the residence of a banditti; but as certainty is less painful than suspense, he determined to push forward and boldly meet his fate.
This room conducted him to a winding passage of considerable extent, and was at length closed by a door, which Edgar, though with extreme labour, burst open, it being fastened on the inside; when the wind gushing from the aperture, extinguished the light.
Edgar was now in a truly deplorable situation. To grope his way back, had he been ever so inclined, was impossible; and to proceed forward, equally, if not more hazardous.
He was alarmed by a violent and uncommon noise, which seemed to resound from the extremity of the place he had just forced open. Now, thought Edgar, the crisis of my adventure is approaching, and stood absorbed in silent terror.
The stillness had for some time remained undisturbed; Edgar, ashamed of his fear, entered the apartment, and was agreeably surprized by the appearance of a ray of light, which streamed through a crevice of a door, exactly opposite to where he then stood.
The fear of robbers was at this critical juncture entirely forgot. But ere he had reached that part of the fabric from whence he descried the glimmering, it rushed with renovated energy into his mind, and with it, all its attendant horrors.
He hesitated, unresolved; hope and fear alternately supported or depressed his spirits. He at last summoned up sufficient resolution to call out, accompanying his voice with a loud rap at the door.
The trembling gleam which had at first renewed his courage, vanished; and all was again concealed in silent darkness.
Edgar now redoubled his shouts; which echoing through the gloomy avenues of the edifice, increased the terrors of his situation.
He now endeavoured to force the door, but in this he was not so successful as he had hitherto been; and though despair had given him treble strength and resolution, it defied his most intense efforts even to make it tremble in its frame.
The sound of footsteps was now distinctly heard; Edgar listened attentively; they seemed approaching toward him; he trembled, and remained fixed in anxious expectation-some one ran against him. Edgar stretched out his arm and endeavoured to seize him; but the person eluded his grasp, and retreated with the greatest precipitancy.
Edgar being a little recovered from his surprize, endeavoured to trace the way by which he entered, as every means of proceeding forward was entirely cut off; when his hand, accidentally, in groping his passage, struck against a key, which projected from a lock; this he with avidity turned, shoved back a door, and found himself at the foot of a staircase, which he in haste began to ascend; when instantly a noise, as of many footsteps, re-echoed from below, and a sudden burst of light discovered to him a kind of recess, a little to the right, which he with more precipitation than prudence, entered: the floor gave way, and he fell with violence through the aperture.
Edgar, quite stunned by the fall, remained for some time insensible; and a considerable space of time had elapsed, after he recovered, before he could summon to his memory the casualty which had thus deprived him of his reason.
The apartment, or rather dungeon, where he then reclined, being on the ground-floor, the chill damps and vapours which curled round him, together with the horrid stench which he inhaled, had nearly again robbed him of his faculties.
It was plain he had fallen through the floor above; but as no fragments of the shattered boards had fallen with him, he conceived it must have been a trap-door through which he had so disagreeably descended.
A faint breeze, which seemed to force its entrance from the opposite extremity of this dreary cell, with a radiant stream of day-light, quickly revived him.
He arose, and hastened with anxious steps (as he imagined) to the grate, that he might more purely enjoy the fresh morning air.
His foot struck against something, he stumbled, and had nearly fallen; he stooped to examine what it was, and his hand rested on the face of a human being, cold, putrid, and clammy!
His blood recoiled with horror; big drops of sweat hung trembling on his brow, and he involuntarily stepped back. During a pause of some moments he regained his equanimity, and quickened his pace till he reached the other part of this solitary abode. What ecstasy filled his mind, when he discovered, that what he at first conceived to be only a grating, proved a large aperture in the wall; occasioned, as he rightly conjectured, by a part of the decayed building falling in the late tempest, and, alighting on this part of the fabric, had pierced it almost to the foundation!
Though the gap was several feet above the level of the ground where Edgar stood, and even with the surface of the earth without, he found very little difficulty in effecting his emancipation, as an immense quantity of the rubbish had fallen inward, and rendered it an easy ascent.
Never did Edgar experience a sensation of greater delight than that moment produced which freed him from his loathsome prison. His joy, however, was transitory; a retrospect of unpleasant events, and what possibly might next occur, to harrass and depress him; in his present unprotected state, curbed the farther progression of his bliss, and raised the baneful traits of sorrow on his manly countenance.
He took one last cursory view of the edifice, and walked silent and disconsolate away.
