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Anbrose Bierce: The Damned Thing (Online Text)

Ambrose Bierce was a journalist, satirist and prolific writer of short stories.

Bierce disappeared in Mexico in 1913 and athough there has been much speculation about what happened to him, it is unlikely that anyone will ever learn the truth and his fate remains a mystery to this day.

Bierce's short story The Damned Thing is split into four parts and is about a group of people gathered together to try and explain a strange death. Only one man in the room knows the truth about what happened and the truth is so extraordinary that it is unlikely that anyone would believe him.



Classic Horror Stories (public domain)
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The Damned Thing

by Ambrose Bierce

Related pages:

The Moonlit Road and Other Stories (audiobook review)

More Stories by Ambrose Bierce

The man with the book was not reading aloud, and no one spoke; all seemed to be waiting for something to occur; the dead man only was without expectation. From the blank darkness outside came in, through the aperture that served for a window, all the ever unfamiliar noises of night in the wilderness--the long, nameless note of a distant coyote; the stilly pulsing thrill of tireless insects in the trees; strange cries of night birds, so different from those of the birds of day; the drone of great blundering beetles and all that mysterious chorus of small sounds that seemed always to have been but half heard when they have suddenly ceased, as if conscious of an indiscretion. But nothing of all this was noted in that company; its members were not overmuch addicted to idle interest in matters of no practical importance; that was obvious in every line of their rugged faces--obvious even in the dim light of the single candle. They were evidently men of the vicinity--farmers and woodmen.



The coroner nodded; no one else greeted him.


The young man smiled. "I am sorry to have kept you," he said, "I went away, not to evade your summons, but to post to my newspaper an account of what I suppose I am called back to relate."

The coroner smiled.

"The account that you posted to your newspaper," he said, "differs probably from that which you will give here under oath."

"That," replied the other, rather hotly and with a visible flush, "is as you choose. I used manifold paper and have a copy of what I sent. It was not written as news, for it is incredible, but as fiction. It may go as a part of my testimony under oath."

"But you say it is incredible."


The coroner was apparently not greatly affected by the young man's manifest resentment. He was silent for some moments, his eyes upon the floor. The men about the sides of the cabin talked in whispers, but seldom withdrew their gaze from the face of the corpse. Presently the coroner lifted his eyes and said: "We will resume the inquest."

The men removed their hats. The witness was sworn.

"What is your name?" the coroner asked.

"William Harker."



"You knew the deceased, Hugh Morgan?"


"You were with him when he died?"

"Near him."



"I sometimes read them."

"Thank you."

"Stories in general--not yours."



The witness understood. Pulling a manuscript from his breast pocket he held it near the candle, and turning the leaves until he found the passage that he wanted, began to read.


"...The sun had hardly risen when we left the house. We were looking for quail, each with a shot-gun, but we had only one dog. Morgan said that our best ground was beyond a certain ridge that he pointed out, and we crossed it by trail through the chaparral. On the other side was comparatively level ground, thickly covered with wild oats. As we emerged from the chaparral, Morgan was but a few yards in advance. Suddenly, we heard, at a little distance to our right, and partly in front, a noise as of some animal thrashing about in the bushes, which we could see were violently agitated.



" 'O, come!' I said. 'You are not going to fill up a deer with quail-shot, are you?"






"Nothing that I had ever seen had affected me so strangely as this unfamiliar and unaccountable phenomenon, yet I am unable to recall any sense of fear. I remember--and tell it here because, singularly enough, I recollected it then--that once, in looking carelessly out of an open window, I momentarily mistook a small tree close at hand for one of a group of larger trees at a little distance away. It looked the same size as the others, but, being more distinctly and sharply defined in mass and details, seemed out of harmony with them. It was a mere falsification of the law of aerial perspective, but it startled, almost terrified me. We so rely upon the orderly operation of familar natural laws that any seeming suspension of them is noted as a menace to our safety, a warning of unthinkable calamity. So now the apparently causeless movement of the herbage, and the slow, undeviating approach of the line of disturbance were distinctly disquieting. My companion appeared actually frightened, and I could hardly credit my senses when I saw him suddenly throw his gun to his shoulders and fire both barrels at the agitated grass! Before the smoke of the discharge had cleared away I heard a loud savage cry--a scream like that of a wild animal--and, flinging his gun upon the ground, Morgan sprang away and ran swiftly from the spot. At the same instant I was thrown violently to the ground by the impact of something unseen in the smoke--some soft, heavy substance that seemed thrown against me with great force.



"For a moment only I stood irresolute, then throwing down my gun, I ran forward to my friend's assistance. I had a vague belief that he was suffering from a fit or some form of convulsion. Before I could reach his side he was down and quiet. All sounds had ceased, but, with a feeling of such terror as even these awful events had not inspired, I now saw the same mysterious movement of the wild oats prolonging itself from the trampled area about the prostrate man toward the edge of a wood. It was only when it had reached the wood that I was able to withdraw my eyes and look at my companion. He was dead."





The foreman rose--a tall, bearded man of sixty, coarsely clad.






Harker started to leave, but paused, with his hand on the door latch. The habit of his profession was strong in him--stronger than his sense of personal dignity. He turned about and said:

"The book that you have there--I recognise it as Morgan's diary. You seemed greatly interested in it; you read in it while I was testifying. May I see it? The public would like--"






"... would run in a half circle, keeping his head turned always toward the centre and again he would stand still, barking furiously. At last he ran away into the brush as fast as he could go. I thought at first that he had gone mad, but on returning to the house found no other alteration in his manner than what was obviously due to fear of punishment.

"Can a dog see with his nose? Do odours impress some olfactory centre with images of the thing emitting them?...



"Sept. 27.--It has been about here again--I find evidences of its presence every day. I watched again all of last night in the same cover, gun in hand, double-charged with buckshot. In the morning the fresh footprints were there, as before. Yet I would have sworn that I did not sleep--indeed, I hardly sleep at all. It is terrible, insupportable! If these amazing experiences are real I shall go mad; if they are fanciful I am mad already.

"Oct. 3.--I shall not go--it shall not drive me away. No, this is my house, my land. God hates a coward....

"Oct. 5.--I can stand it no longer; I have invited Harker to pass a few weeks with me--he has a level head. I can judge from his manner if he thinks me mad.

"Oct. 7.--I have the solution of the problem; it came to me last night--suddenly, as by revelation. How simple--how terribly simple!

"There are sounds that we cannot hear. At either end of the scale are notes that stir no chord of that imperfect instrument, the human ear. They are too high or too grave. I have observed a flock of blackbirds occupying an entire tree-top--the tops of several trees--and all in full song. Suddenly--in a moment--at absolutely the same instant--all spring into the air and fly away. How? They could not all see one another--whole tree-tops intervened. At no point could a leader have been visible to all. There must have been a signal of warning or command, high and shrill above the din, but by me unheard. I have observed, too, the same simultaneous flight when all were silent, among not only blackbirds, but other birds--quail, for example, widely separated by bushes--even on opposite sides of a hill.

"It is known to seamen that a school of whales basking or sporting on the surface of the ocean, miles apart, with the convexity of the earth between them, will sometimes dive at the same instant--all gone out of sight in a moment. The signal has been sounded--too grave for the ear of the sailor at the masthead and his comrades on the deck--who nevertheless feel its vibrations in the ship as the stones of a cathedral are stirred by the bass of the organ.

"As with sounds, so with colours. At each end of the solar spectrum the chemist can detect the presence of what are known as 'actinic' rays. They represent colours--integral colours in the composition of light--which we are unable to discern. The human eye is an imperfect instrument; its range is but a few octaves of the real 'chromatic scale.' I am not mad; there are colours that we cannot see.

More Stories by Ambrose Bierce


Ambrose Bierce (1842 -- 19??)