The Revenant Of The Death Knell

"What terrified me will terrify others; and I need only describe the spectre which had haunted my midnight pillow.”—Mary Shelley

Harrowing tales of ghastly revenants have oft been told before, yet I shall not trouble you with such frivolous anomalies, nor insult your discernment with the allurement of superstition alone. Rather, I endeavor to relate a tale of singular horror—one that festers at the very marrow of the soul. Should you possess the fortitude to continue, you shall find a chronicle both intricate and dreadful, born of some misdeed long buried in shadow and mystery. This tale begins, as such things oft do, upon a chilly October day.

I recollect it now with piercing clarity—that accursed incident of years long past, as though it had transpired but yesterday. Indeed, it was in the year of 1804, and one William Spencer, a gentleman of means and reputable standing in Boston society, had set out upon an eager journey.

The air was bitter with cold, and a tempest loomed upon the horizon. Thus compelled by the elements, Mr. Spencer found himself obliged to interrupt his travel and seek lodging. It was upon a remote country road, beyond a moss-laden berm, that he chanced upon a lofty and curious estate—its visage one of brooding grandeur and mystery. Weary from his hours of horseback and eager for respite, he approached the edifice, a colonial mansion veiled in shadow and ivy.

Leaving his steed and blunderbuss behind, and clutching his coat about him against the creeping chill that pierced even his frock, he made his way to the iron gate. It was secured by rusted chain and heavy lock, the whole of it cloaked in thick verdant moss. From beyond the bowed oak trees, the croaks of ravens echoed, their cries a harbinger of strange company and presence.

There were no other homes visible in that desolate quarter, nor had Mr. Spencer any familiar acquaintance in such a remote province. At the gate he waited, uncertain, until at length an aged man appeared and unlatched the lock, bidding him to enter with neither inquiry nor much word. Mr. Spencer explained his predicament, yet the man answered in scant words as though speech were a burden too great to bear for his pronunciation.

At first, Mr. Spencer did not discern the old man's peculiarity, not until he addressed him directly. Fortunately, the man’s speech, though oddly enunciated, was still intelligible. Upon passing the gate, Mr. Spencer entered the grounds at his own discretion—and, unbeknownst to him then, at his own peril. He followed the man silently along the path.

The colonial mansion loomed tall and broad, yet bore unmistakable signs of neglect and attrition. Its once-proud façade now sagged beneath the heavy weight of time.

The wooden shutters were worn and splintering, perhaps even corroding with damp rot, their frames cloaked in an oppressive gloom. Along the eaves, an unkindness of ravens gathered, their black piercing eyes gleaming in the dim light, as though judging every step taken below. Dense and inspissated bushes bordered the walkway, their thorns protruding like twisted spikes.

The path itself was of marble stone, aged but skillfully laid, its pattern reminiscent of Masonic craftsmanship. Yet the most arresting feature was the soaring cupola that crowned the mansion—a brooding structure, casting its shadow far below like an omen of the unnatural.

Mr. Spencer ascended the steps to the front door and was admitted within, whereupon he was guided to a parlor of bleak elegance. Without word, the silent attendant excused himself, leaving Mr. Spencer alone.

Presently, he was greeted by the enigmatic mistress of the house.

“My name is William Spencer, my lady!” He declared, offering a courteous bow.

“Spencer—it is indeed a fine English name to bear,” she replied, her voice rich and strange, like an echo from another age.

Permit me to describe this singular woman. Her hair was long and ashen, falling like a luminous twilight upon her shoulders. Her brows were thick and shadowed her eyes, lending a solemn intensity to her gaze. Her nose was aquiline, lending nobility to her countenance, and her cheekbones rose high with stately symmetry. Her eyes—blue as turquoise—were at once arresting and inscrutable. She was of slight frame and middling height, neither tall nor diminutive in stature.

What was most uncanny of all was the long Cimmerian gown she wore, reaching the floor, and the faithful ebony bird—silent and unmoving—that perched upon her slender shoulder with peculiar familiarity.

He had presented himself to her at once, and obeisantly she reciprocated his gesture of cordiality and propriety. This simple gesture of hers he had appreciated, since she was gracious enough to take him in for the night. Her mien—her quintessence was imbued with an aura of mystery and lore that he had perceived, after the token formalities and the explication given for his unbidden arrival to her estate.

"Sir, I am Fiona Donovan the proprietor of this estate that you have entered and widow of the late Sir Seamus Donovan, from the city of Dublin, Ireland."

She had her beautiful daughter Shaila escort him to his chamber afterward, "I fear the storm will be approaching at any time and I hope, you do not frighten so easily with Mother Nature, sir. Beware, that the night is full of many strange sounds to be heard."

She had paused for a moment, before she said one last significant thing that he found unusual, "Do not heed the eldritch calling of the knell, for it is only the church bells that ring distinctly."

When he had inquired about the church bells, her response was, "Sir, 'tis the familiar lore around these parts of the country!"

Mr. Spencer was told then to remain in his chamber. If there was something he needed that he could ring the bell inside, and Lady Donovan's generous daughter would arrive afterward. At first, he thought her words to be odd, but he was in an acquiescent mood at that moment to comply with the special request.

Once alone and inside the chamber he felt the cold was becoming predictable, and the staid clouds above had darkened even more, as the ominous storm approached. He had sensed that it was an omen or a precursor to the outcome of this variable night. He did not foresee the storm, neither did he foresee once he had stood in front of the murky mansion, the daunting phantom and the nightmare that would consume him completely, like a blazing fire.

Unbeknownst to him, the phantom that would later assail his acute senses was no mere nightmare conjured by a fevered mind. Nay—it was a presence fastened to the marrow of the mansion itself, woven into its timbers, its stones, and the silence between its sighing halls.

The chamber he was shown to was pulveratricious—thick with dust—as he carefully surveyed it, yet it remained utilitarian in design. Like the rest of the house, it lacked the refinement or majesty expected of an estate belonging to one of reputable aristocracy.

Perhaps, he mused, the death of her husband had reduced the lady to an abstract and melancholic ruin, cast adrift in a miasma of sudden despair. The hollow walls bore thick webs spun by crafty spiders, and the corridors were plagued with the incessant squeaks and hisses of rats, whose furtive movements echoed both above and beneath the floorboards with an eerie presence.

He had the peculiar sensation that the four walls were watching him with a sentient gaze, as though ancient eyes peered through the chinks and recesses hidden within. In those narrow apertures, he imagined spirits, or things worse than spirits, pressing close in silence—curious, observing, waiting. Dread, cold and creeping, began to take root in the depth of his soul.

He dared not speak ill of his accommodations, for he did not wish to appear ungrateful in his comportment. Yet something within his spirit stirred uneasily, as though the atmosphere itself recoiled from uncertainty.

The chamber floor beneath his boots was frayed and splintered, its edges torn and jagged. He could feel the slivers through the soles of his shoes as he paced slowly about in his gait. The hour was growing late, and Mr. Spencer seated himself in a worn armchair near the warm hearth. For a fleeting moment, he pondered the unique misfortune of this stately home—once, no doubt, a place of exuberant wealth and society, now but a sombre shadow of grandeur, cloaked in dust and silence. There was dust as well to be seen, within the furnishings and decorations.

There were paintings, somber and imposing, depicting what seemed to be the distinguishable lineage of a long-established family. Along the parlour wall, he had seen several of these ancestral visages, their eyes seemingly following him with an unsettling gaze. The lingering evening grew ever more tumultuous, and the signs of a brooding storm pressed against the chamber windows like a hand seeking entry.

His nerves began to fray as the portentous knell of the church bells, mingled with an eerie ullagone, reached his ears—an omen, perhaps, of some impending sorrow. To ease the growing tension, he poured himself a draught of sherry, left unopened by some previous guest, its dusty bottle a relic of forgotten company.

The hours slipped swiftly by as he mooted in his mind the events of the day, piecing together strange occurrences with silent apprehension. Seated in an armchair near the hearth, he stared into the fire, lost in uneasy reverie. Then, without warning, a blustery main of levin—lightning’s fury—roared above, shaking the house with a force that seemed drawn from the very ire of the night. In the corridor, a solitary clock struck eleven, heralding the approach of midnight—an hour belonging not to the living, but to the restless dominion of the dead.

Soon after, the tussore silk draperies stirred, ruffled by an unseen draught, disrupting the placid stillness that had previously cloaked the chamber. From the embers of the waning fire, a single sizzling spark leapt beyond the andiron, its path like a serpent’s flicker. The whistling birr of the wind swept through the room’s hollows, stirring within the walls a restless groan, as if the house itself recoiled from what approached.

And then, cast high upon the ceiling by the lucent embers, emerged the shifting silhouette of a figure—infamous and vile. A villain of legend, long whispered about in the village below, now seemed to stir behind the lamplight’s timid glow. Its form moved not with the rhythm of flame, but with the shrewdness of something that lurks, that waits, that remembers.

Mr Spencer had tarried in his reaction, unable to comprehend the reality before him. His eyes widened, and his mouth hung agape in silent disbelief. Was this truly occurring? He thought. The burning ember, now a flash of incandescent energy, swooped across the floor, and with a thunderous thud, the wooden door slammed shut. In that moment, before his very eyes, there loomed a mysterious figure—an embodiment of malediction. Had he borne witness to the phantom of a dirge?

The anonymous spectre emerged from behind the shadows upon the walls, standing bold and unflinching. Mr Spencer's heart quickened, thundering within his breast, as the distant tolling of the bells and the wild moan of the tempest echoed with dreadful clarity throughout the chamber. Before him stood a ghastly, pallid guise—a revenant steeped in hoary legend, wrought, it seemed, from some unholy covenant struck between the Almighty and the Lord of the Underworld.

Its ghostly, vacant eyes shone with a terrible light, set above a sable visage that exuded sheer terror—an image wrought to torment even the strongest of souls. The phantasm was like a relic of medieval doom, conjured from the ancient mind of some primeval maker, risen from the fathomless abyss of a sulphurous inferno, the very idea of which mankind scarcely dared to envision.

Mr Spencer remained frozen, petrified by the potency of the vision that rose tall and still before him. At last, as if his mortal instincts returned with a jolt, he leapt to his feet with a frantic yell, the echo of which was swiftly swallowed by the ravenous howl of the wind.


“Who are you, intruding devil, haunting me now?” he cried out into the tumultuous air.

The tempest surged with greater ferocity, and the shutters flapped violently against the windows. “Begone at once, you unbidden visitor—into the wild winds of this cursed night!”

Was this madness a figment conjured from the recesses of his own mind, brought about by the alabandical effects of the sherry he had so hastily quaffed? Or had he truly beheld the searing embers of a revenant, dwelling in this abominable mansion? The phantom did not flinch nor falter amid the chill and bluster; rather, it stood there, steadfast and still, as Mr Spencer confronted it with what gallantry he could summon.

Then his voice, once resolute, began to falter. He heard eldritch murmurs—whispers not of the living but of spirits echoing in broken syllables. He knew then, with a dreadful certainty, that this reaper, unwavering in its conviction and will, sought him not with mercy, but with the cruel pleasure of an unrelenting master of illusion.

The reverberation of the plangent knell became more distinct, and thunder pounded and pounded still. The lightning clove the night in wild succession, and the rain began to fall in cold torrents upon the ground. Yet the phantasm would not depart; instead, it emboldened—its form illuminated and sharpened as if it shot through with the streaks of the electric bolts.

Could this madness be true? Was this spectre indeed pellucid and real within the bounds of the mortal world?

Mr Spencer, shivering with apprehension, poured another glass of sherry and downed it, though it did little to calm the irrepressible angst that gripped his breast. The bells rang anew, tolling with a dreadful resonance, while the storm outside stirred with ever-louder fury.

“Are you the Lord of the death knell?” He cried, trembling now. “Do you hail from that hideous and calamitous abode, trapped forever in this Ophelian mansion—a place of rakehells and blight, doomed to wander astray?”

He was uncertain of what else to do but raise his voice, hoping it might pierce the spectral veil or summon help from beyond the chamber. His tones grew shrill and desperate, and it seemed his vociferous uproar had indeed been heard—for suddenly, he heard a tapping at the door.

The doorknob rattled.

Then the key turned.

It was Miss Shaila.

She had opened the door cautiously, her pale face barely visible in the storm’s flicker. But the moment her key turned in the lock, the phantasm, with a sudden and surreptitious swiftness, vanished—fled, as though never there at all—leaving behind a chamber heavy with silence, and the acrid sting of scorched air.

When she entered, he sighed in relief, for the ghostly fiend had swiftly disappeared into the hollow walls of the chamber—for the time being. Yet the terror had not left him. He remained startled by the anomalous and riveting occurrence, which had shaken his very core. It was an incident most horrid, conjuring a dreadful alarum as would be expected from such an uncanny visitation. He stood there, wordless—shocked and bemused—stricken by the weight of what had transpired. The air was thick with the unmistakable presence of mystery and horror, and its hold upon him was chillingly convincing.

“Sir, sir—are you all right?” Miss Shaila asked, rushing to his side.

“By Jove!” he cried. “Did you not see the revenant? It stood there, bold within this very room!”

She looked at him with an expression of quiet concern, an unusual guise of both perplexity and pity. “Sir, you are trembling—so violently I can scarce believe it!”

Indeed, he was quivering, his very frame unsteady. Without hesitation, he poured and quaffed another glass of sherry in an attempt to quell the tempest of his nerves.

“Did you not see it?” He asked again, more urgently. “The wretched ghost—it stood here, a phantasm of doom!”

Her response was timid, near a whisper. “A ghost? No, sir... I saw no ghost in this chamber.”

At that moment, Lady Donovan swept into the room, her countenance marked by both curiosity and concern. “What has happened here?” she demanded, her voice firm. “What has stirred such abrupt clamour, sir?”

He turned to her, his face still pale and his breath uneven. “Stirred my clamour, you ask?” he exclaimed, his voice trembling with the residue of dread. “The sight of a ghost, Lady Donovan! That spectre of death stood before me—not a dream, but a vision most real!”

Her expression was inscrutable. “A ghost, you say, sir?”

She hesitated, then asked gently, “Are you quite certain you saw one—and not merely been deceived by the wild fury of the storm?”

“No—what I beheld was real,” he insisted, his voice trembling. “I swear, Lady Donovan, that apparition was older than memory itself!”

“Calm yourself, sir,” she replied. “Perhaps you should set aside the sherry and take some tea to soothe your nerves.”

“Do you mean to suggest,” he shot back, “that this wraith is no more than a figment of my imagination?”

“Far from doubting you, sir,” she said, “but one’s senses can be fooled by thunder, lightning, and the midnight tolling of bells. Such tumult can conjure visions more vivid than truth.”

“Perhaps you are correct, Lady Donovan,” he admitted, swallowing hard. “My nerves have ever been fragile in a storm.”

“I shall ask Miss Shaila to bring tea at once,” Lady Donovan continued, voice measured. “Sit by the hearth and sip it slowly. In time, reason will calm your heart. The tempest will abate, and those bells will grow distant. For now, let gentler comforts restore your peace.”

“I would give much to believe so,” he murmured, clutching his cup as it was set before him.

“I trust the tea aids you, sir,” Lady Donovan observed as Miss Shaila withdrew. “We are well accustomed to storms and knells in these parts—they warn the traveller and summon the poor to shelter.”

Mr Spencer cleared his throat. “If I may ask, my lady, how long have you borne the title of widow?”

She paused, eyes fixed on the intense firelight. “Few have ventured here these latter years, sir, but I will answer. It has been more than ten years since my dear Seamus was taken from me. I beg your pardon if the house seems disshevelled—nothing has felt quite right since his passing.”

“If I may intrude,” he ventured, “what precisely did your dear husband die of?”

Lady Donovan paused, her gaze drifting to the dying embers. When she spoke, her voice was scarcely more than a whisper. “Even the thought of that dreadful day shakes the core of my bosom Mr Spencer.”

“You speak of a fate most terrible, Lady Donovan,” he murmured, leaning forward with concern.

She winced, as though the memory struck her anew. “The mere recollection convulses my very spirit. Perhaps we should defer this sorrowful topic until the morrow—’tis late, and the tempest grows now quite gentle, the lightning spent.”

Mr Spencer inclined his head. “As you wish, my lady. Good night.” He did not want to be inopportune with the matter. Thus, he sought it prudent to adhere to her recommendation.

"Good night, sir!"

They had left the conversation for the morrow—at least, that had been the suggestion. Yet oftentimes, the things we wish for do not effectuate, nor do they eventuate. Soon, Mr. Spencer drank yet another glass of Sherry to appease his inquietude, as the bustling night gave way to the earliest mournful hours of morning. The tumultuous tempest had waned into an uneasy abeyance, yet the indomitable phantom he had seen remained undismissed by any rational means—it had not been born of wind or rain.

He began to question his own faculties. Was he descending into madness? Was the ghost nothing more than a cruel trick of the tempest and the Sherry, mingled in the mind like some fevered dream?

Had he merely succumbed to the sensory phenomena of the storm? The trepidation of the death knell? The fevered imaginings of a disquieted soul in an unfamiliar mansion? Could such dreadful visions have ensnared his mind and woven terror into the distortion of his vision? Had he become a hypochondriac wretch—deluded, distressed and disturbed?

“No,” he whispered aloud to the silent chamber. “No—it was merely the transient lightning… and the deception of a dim room. Yes, yes—it must be so!”

Slowly, as though taming a beast within, he convinced himself that the spectre was nothing more than a creature of unmodulated imagination. “Surely there is a rational explanation for all of this,” he muttered. Then, with a deeper breath, more resolute in tone, he said, “Yes! It was no ghost—but the storm, the Sherry, and my own mind betraying me.”

The flapping shutters were now secured, and he sat once more in the armchair, huddled against the sudden chill. “I shall be fine,” he assured himself. “I will rest here, till the tempest has passed completely.”

But the tempest—ah, the tempest—it continued to beguile him. The lightning still stirred the heavens with perfervid ire. Sleep was a stranger to that night, and so he remained in the armchair, unmoving but restless, like a mariner adrift on a sea of emergent phantoms.

Lady Donovan and Miss Shaila had long departed, leaving the door gently closed—this time by a mortal hand, not a ghostly one.

Gradually, the sound of dew dripping heavily upon the roof began to seep into his keen ears, and the levin thudded against the shutters like spectral fists. The firelight and lamplight cast their flickering images across the walls—his sole companions, for the rest of the chamber was cloaked in a gloom that only deepened his disquiet.

The boisterous din had subsided, yet the tempest endured, and with it, the dreadful anticipation that his attention would again be arrested by some unnatural sound. The mystery—the insoluble mystery—was a brooding presence in the room, personifying all the distress he had not yet dared name.

Half an hour passed, and still the storm knew no surcease. Then came the chime—the clock in the corridor struck with a dreadful deliberation, each note a heavy clangor that reverberated through the marrow of his bones. On and on it tolled, relentless, horrible, like the death knell he had heard before. He could bear it no longer.

With a sudden motion, Mr. Spencer rose from his armchair—his nerves strained to a thread—and set forth to discover the source of that unyielding sound, which seemed bent on drowning what remained of his waning sanity.

He had walked beyond the threshold of his chamber and stepped into the narrow corridor, an unwilling participant now entwined in the dreadful mystery that seemed to animate the dullness of the mansion. Slowly—step after hesitant step—he proceeded forth, for he sensed a presence, uncanny and close, creeping in the proximity to his path. Was the disquietude he heard the shuffling steps of Lady Donovan echoing faintly in the drear shadows? Or was it Miss Shaila, rambling somewhere within the mansion at this ghostly hour, perchance?

His heart palpitated with increasing urgency, thudding within him like the beat of a funeral drum. He stood there in the dim, eerie corridor, and at long last—after a harrowing span of ten minutes—the clock ceased its dreadful chiming. Had it malfunctioned? Or had the storm itself disrupted the consonance of its accustomed rhythm?

Then, a strange inertia overtook him. He felt compelled to remain still—rooted by some unseen force—and so he did not flinch.

As he then wandered through the crumbling corridor, his hand brushed against a half-rotten shelf thick with dust. Upon it lay a brittle tome, its cover etched in faded Latin: De Morte et Existentia Posthumana. The pages crackled like bones as he turned them, revealing sketches of revenants, diagrams of soul transitions and incantations transcribed in crimson ink.

One passage, barely legible, read: "The soul, unloosed from flesh by violent act, becomes unmoored, tethered to the realm of the living by wrath, regret, or unfinished rites. Such spirits do not rest, but linger, until acknowledged by the blood they knew."

His eyes widened. The diagrams mirrored the troubling visions he had seen in his sleep—circles of torment, gnarled silhouettes in the dusk. He dropped the book, suddenly overcome by a dreadful knowing: he had envisioned this before.

The whistling wind echoed through the hallway like the sigh of ancient spirits. Then, came voices—voices!—faint and muffled, as though whispering from within the hollow walls. He strained his ears, overcome with the need to discern their meaning, but they remained abstruse, like echoes from a forgotten world. The sound gripped his senses and gnawed at his composure, until it became an unwanted obsession he could suffer no more.

Suddenly, a creaking door opened—slowly, deliberately. It was enough. He scurried back to his chamber like a man fleeing his own pending doom.

Inside again, the chamber welcomed him with no comfort. The storm still roared on, and the ponderous rain had begun to seep through the window sill, trailing damp across the floorboards. Then—he saw it.

The revenant. Once more.

“Who are you,” he cried, “phantom of my unsettling nightmare? Am I dead, you daunting incubus? Have you come for my soul—to wrench it from this mortal coil and ferry it into the underworld, from whence you rose on wings of brimstone, you craven spectre?”

Had his despair distorted reality—imposed upon his mind this dreadful alterity, this frightful vision he had conjured in his torment?

“Know this,” he proclaimed, trembling but defiant, “I will not implore thee with mortal plea! Then take me forever, if you must! For God or Devil alike, I shall not tarry helpless! Come, wight—take me if you dare! But know, if I am taken, I shall meet you with brazen courage! Get you back—to the baleful glare from which you crept, and fade into the fainting firelight from whence you came!”

The pressing eagerness to solve this enigma became an affliction too compelling to ignore. He could no longer resist the burning necessity to confront the truth with resolute conviction. Each passing minute transformed him into something pale and spectral himself—a living corpse, gaunt and perturbed, stripped of sleep and steadiness.

It was then that the striking image of the revenant gleamed once more before his eyes—unmistakable, blinding in its ghostly glow. He staggered back, startled beyond measure, his senses rattled like the shutters in the storm.

Then came the voices again—countless murmurs, soft and unintelligible, rising from the hollow walls. He harked. Their faint disquietude pleaded for respite, respite—a word that lingered like incense in the cold air. The chamber nearby echoed this clamorous whisper, and then the door swung open once more into the corridor of terrible blackness, beckoning him with quiet urgency.

The wraith—a gleaming apparition—drifted forward in silence, and he, compelled by something primal and unnameable, followed.

“Let this horror that I suffer, ghost, be gone with the seraphim of might!” he cried into the void.

Stealthily, he moved behind the spectral light, the rain of the tempest now drenching his flesh and soul alike. His fear, raw and real, clung to him as tight as the storm-soaked garments upon his back. Unseen, unheard, he passed through the dim corridor and discovered a hidden passage that led him out into the chill of the night.

The storm had not relented. The rain fell without mercy, and thunder stirred like cannon fire across the sky. His heart pounded—fast and furious—as he pressed on, not knowing where the wraith would lead him, nor if he would return.

At last, the revenant stopped—before a small, forgotten burial ground beyond the mansion’s view.

There, under the ominous shadow of a twisted yew tree, lay three aged tombstones. Names inscribed in worn stone met his straining eyes: Seamus Donovan. Fiona Donovan. Shaila Donovan.

Beneath each name, a delicate trinket clung like memory incarnate. A ring. A ribbon. A locket.

The secret was unearthed. The dreadful, long-buried truth struck his soul like levin from the sky.

Lady Donovan was dead. Dead for ten years.

So too her daughter—both of them. Gone.

He was not speaking to the living. He never had been.

There was no word of expression for what now consumed him. His breath caught in his throat as he stumbled back in disbelief. The revenant shimmered beside the stones, its silence louder than thunder.

“Tell me,” he pleaded to the spectral presence, his voice trembling with a thousand broken thoughts, “What will I call you, ghost? Am I to go straightaway with you, into the terrible embers of a burning flame alight? Shall I, too, vanish into oblivion?”

He fretted for a moment, frozen in the presence of the impossible.

Then, a voice behind him broke the stillness.

Soft. Calm. Familiar.

“What are you doing here, my dear? You should have remained in your chamber.”

He turned.

Lady Donovan stood before him, her daughter fervently by her side—unchanged from before, yet impossibly present, impossibly real.

And he realized—he had not left the mansion at all.

Or perhaps... he had never truly entered its domain.

He turned around suddenly and rejoined, "These tombstones speak a hidden truth. You are not of the kindred. If you are not Lady Donovan, then who are you really? Lady Donovan is dead!"

She smiled and replied, "I am Lady Donovan. Do you not recognise me, Seamus? The madness has driven you completely mad."

"What are you talking about, madam? I am William Spencer! Why do you call me Seamus? Is this a macabre jest? Do you not see his name on the tombstone?"

She replied calmly, "Seamus, do you not recall that horrid night, when you shot and killed Mr. Spencer after he came to evict us? Do you not remember the countless debts you had accumulated that caused you to lose everything—this mansion, your mind? Do you not recall how you killed Shaila, your dearest daughter, and me, your beloved wife?"

"Are you mad? What are you saying, madam? I shall be leaving this abode of madness now!" Mr. Spencer exclaimed.

"Go, Seamus. Whither will you go? You have nowhere to go, for your madness haunts you daily. Look closely—look at the tombstone!"

He paused to reflect on her words. "I remember now... I killed you, Fiona... and Mr. Spencer."

He looked at the epitaph, as his madness permitted him, at last, to see the unique truth through a brief interval of sanity. It was the undeniable and compunctious truth that his deranged mind had not allowed him to see before.

The epitaph had read: William Spencer, as was mentioned. He began to realise that he was indeed the infamous Seamus Donovan, and not William Spencer, as he had believed.

Unbridled rage enthralled his passions, and his unstoppable madness was the inception of the manifestation of his catatonic delirium in its cruelest form. He put his hands over his ears, for he had heard the death knell resounding from afar. That sonorous clanging—again!—which he had so abhorrently deplored. Every detail of that atrocious day began to return to him. He yelled aloud:

"Begone, my madness—I admit the heinous deed!"

He had summoned the fearful and powerful revenant to take him—and so it did. Towering above him with dread and intimidation, it came as the gorgonizing and threnetic knell resounded one final time before his doomed departure. From behind the drear tombstone, the revenant rose—like a sinister, sizzling spark—and seized him, dragging him to the horrid world where tormented souls are eternally chastised.

It is said by the wary locals that his absolute dominion of visible murk gleams after the orphic twilight, when his spectral guise of death is forever immortalized in the precarious winds that sweep suddenly across the vast land. To the discernible verge of the damping dew, and through the strange flickering night light that emerges with the burning embers of an unforgettable firelight—quickened amain by the revenant of the death knell—his curse endures.

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