The Hill of the Lost Spirits · II

While the young man spoke, an imperceptible smile traced itself upon the lips of Beatriz, who when he had finished exclaimed in an indifferent tone, and while she stirred the hearth fire where the logs leaped and crackled, throwing off sparks of a thousand colors:

“Oh! Not for the world. What madness! To go out to the mountain now for such a trifle! On such a dark night, All Hallows’ Eve, and the path choked with wolves!”

Upon saying this last phrase, she freighted it in such a special way that Alonso could not help but grasp all its bitter irony; moved as if by a spring, he stood up, passed his hand across his forehead as though to tear away the fear that was in his head and not in his heart, and with a firm voice exclaimed, turning toward the beauty who was still leaning over the hearth amusing herself by poking the fire:

“Farewell, Beatriz, farewell. Until... soon.”

“Alonso! Alonso!” she said, turning quickly; but when she wished, or feigned a wish, to stop him, the young man had vanished.

Within a few minutes the sound of a horse galloping away was heard. The beauty, with a radiant expression of satisfied pride that flushed her cheeks, listened attentively to that sound, which grew fainter, which faded, which finally vanished away.

The old women, meanwhile, continued with their tales of risen specters; the wind whistled against the panes of the balcony, and the city bells tolled in the distance.

An hour had passed, two, three; midnight was about to strike, and Beatriz retired to her oratory. Alonso was not returning, was not returning, when in less than an hour he could have done so.

“He must have been afraid!” exclaimed the young man—closing her prayer book and heading toward her bed, after having tried in vain to murmur some of the prayers that the Church consecrates on All Souls’ Day to those who no longer exist.

After having blown out the lamp and crossed the double silk curtains, she fell asleep; she fell asleep with an uneasy, light, nervous sleep.

The clock of El Postigo struck twelve. Beatriz heard in her dreams the vibrations of the bell, slow, dull, profoundly sad, and half-opened her eyes. She thought she had heard along with them the sounding of her name; but far, very far off, and in a muffled, sorrowful voice. The wind moaned against the windowpanes.

“It will be the wind,” she said; and placing her hand upon her heart, she tried to calm herself. But her heart beat harder and harder with every moment. The cedar doors of the oratory had creaked upon their hinges with a sharp, prolonged, and strident screech.

First some, and then others closer by, all the doors that gave passage to her room began to sound in their turn, the latter with a dull and heavy noise, the former with a long and nerve-wracking lament. Afterward silence, a silence full of strange murmurs, the silence of midnight, with a monotonous murmur of distant water, far-off barking of dogs, confused voices, unintelligible words, echoes of footsteps coming and going, the rustle of dragging garments, stifled sighs, labored breathings that could almost be felt, involuntary shudderings that announce the presence of something unseen, whose approach is nonetheless perceived in the darkness.

Beatriz, motionless, trembling, poked her head out from beyond the curtains and listened for a moment. She heard a thousand diverse noises; she passed her hand across her forehead, she listened again: nothing, silence.

She saw, with that phosphorescence of the pupil during nervous crises, shapes that moved in all directions; and when, dilating her eyes, she fixed them on a single point, nothing, darkness, the impenetrable shadows.

“Bah!” she exclaimed, resting her lovely head once more upon the blue satin pillow of the bed; “am I as fearful as these poor people, whose hearts beat with terror beneath armor upon hearing a ghost story?”

And closing her eyes she tried to sleep... but in vain had she made an effort over herself. Soon she sat up again, paler, more uneasy, more terrified. It was no longer an illusion: the brocade hangings of the door had rustled as they parted, and slow footsteps were sounding upon the carpet; the sound of those footsteps was dull, almost imperceptible, but continuous, and to their rhythm was heard the cracking of something like wood or bone. And they came closer, closer, and the prayer stool by the edge of her bed moved. Beatriz let out a sharp cry, and wrapping herself tightly in the bedclothes, she hid her head and held her breath.

The wind lashed the balcony glass; the water of the distant fountain fell and fell with an eternal and monotonous murmur; the barking of the dogs stretched out in the gusts of wind, and the bells of the city of Soria, some close, others distant, tolled sadly for the souls of the departed.

Thus passed an hour, two, the night, a century, because that night seemed eternal to Beatriz. At last the dawn broke: delivered from her fear, she half-opened her eyes to the first rays of light. After a night of insomnia and terrors, how lovely is the clear, white light of day! She parted the silk curtains of the bed, and was already preparing to laugh at her past fears, when suddenly a cold sweat covered her body, her eyes went wide, and a mortal pallor drained her cheeks: upon the prayer stool she had seen, bloody and torn, the blue ribbon she had lost on the mountain, the blue ribbon that Alonso had gone to seek.

When her servants arrived terrified to announce to her the death of the eldest son of Alcudiel, who that morning had appeared devoured by wolves among the thickets of the Mountain of the Souls, they found her motionless, convulsed, clutching with both hands one of the ebony bedposts, eyes staring, mouth half-open, lips white, limbs rigid, dead; dead of horror!

They say that after this event occurred, a stray hunter who spent All Hallows’ Eve unable to escape the Mountain of the Souls, and who the next day, before dying, was able to recount what he had seen, related horrible things. Among others, he asserts that he saw the skeletons of the ancient Templars and the nobles of Soria buried in the chapel atrium rise up at the stroke of prayer with a horrible clatter, and riding upon the bones of steeds, pursuing like a wild beast a beautiful, pale, disheveled woman who, with bare and bloody feet, and uttering cries of horror, circled round and round the tomb of Alonso.