00:00Gates of Imagination presents A Diagnosis of Death by Ambrose Bierce, read by Billy Dixon.
00:11I am not so superstitious as some of your physicians, men of science, as you are pleased
00:17to be called, said Haver, replying to an accusation that had not been made.
00:23Some of you, only a few, I confess, believe in the immortality of the soul, and in apparitions
00:30which you have not the honesty to call ghosts.
00:34I go no further than a conviction that the living are sometimes seen where they are not,
00:39but have been, where they have lived so long, perhaps so intensely, as to have left their
00:46impress on everything about them.
00:48I know indeed that one's environment may be so affected by one's personality as to
00:53yield, long afterward, an image of one's self to the eyes of another.
00:58Doubtless the impressing personality has to be the right kind of personality as the perceiving
01:04eyes have to be the right kind of eyes.
01:07Mine, for example.
01:09Yes, the right kind of eyes conveying sensations to the wrong kind of brain, said Dr. Fraley,
01:16smiling.
01:18One likes to have an expectation gratified.
01:22That is about the reply that I supposed you would have the civility to make.
01:27Pardon me?
01:28But you say that you know.
01:31That is a good deal to say, don't you think?
01:34Perhaps you will not mind the trouble of saying how you learned.
01:38You will call it an hallucination, Haver said, but that does not matter.
01:43And he told the story.
01:44Last summer I went, as you know, to pass the hot weather term in the town of Meridian.
01:53The relative at whose house I had intended to stay was ill.
01:57So I sought other quarters.
01:59After some difficulty, I succeeded in renting a vacant dwelling that had been occupied by an
02:06eccentric doctor of the name of Mannering, who had gone away years before.
02:12No one knew where.
02:13Not even his agent.
02:14He had built the house himself and had lived in it with an old servant for about ten years.
02:20His practice, never very extensive, had after a few years been given up entirely.
02:27Not only so, but he had withdrawn himself almost altogether from social life and become a recluse.
02:34I was told by the village doctor about the only person with whom he held any relations,
02:40that during his retirement he had devoted himself to a single line of study,
02:45the result of which he had expounded in a book that did not commend itself to the approval of his professional brethren,
02:51who, indeed, considered him not entirely sane.
02:54I have not seen the book and cannot now recall the title of it,
02:59but I am told that it expounded a rather startling theory.
03:03He held that it was possible, in the case of many a person in good health,
03:08to forecast his death with precision, several months in advance of the event.
03:13The limit, I think, was eighteen months.
03:16There were local tales of his having exerted his powers of prognosis,
03:21or perhaps you would say diagnosis,
03:23and it was said that in every instance the person whose friends he had warned
03:28had died suddenly at the appointed time, and from no assignable cause.
03:34All this, however, has nothing to do with what I have to tell.
03:38I thought it might amuse a physician.
03:42The house was furnished, just as he had lived in it.
03:46It was a rather gloomy dwelling for one who was neither a recluse nor a student,
03:50and I think it gave something of its character to me.
03:55Perhaps some of its former occupant's character,
03:58for always I felt in it a certain melancholy that was not in my natural disposition,
04:04nor, I think, due to loneliness.
04:07I had no servants that slept in the house,
04:09but I have always been, as you know, rather fond of my own society,
04:14being much addicted to reading, though little to study.
04:19Whatever was the cause, the effect was dejection and a sense of impending evil.
04:26This was especially so in Dr. Mannering's study,
04:29although that room was the lightest and most airy in the house.
04:33The doctor's life-size portrait in oil hung in that room,
04:37and seemed completely to dominate it.
04:39There was nothing unusual in the picture.
04:42The man was evidently rather good-looking,
04:44about fifty years old, with iron-gray hair,
04:48a smooth-shaven face, and dark, serious eyes.
04:52Something in the picture always drew and held my attention.
04:56The man's appearance became familiar to me, and rather haunted me.
05:01One evening I was passing through this room to my bedroom with a lamp.
05:06There is no gas in Meridian.
05:09I stopped as usual before the portrait,
05:11which seemed in the lamplight to have a new expression,
05:15not easily named, but distinctly uncanny.
05:18It interested but did not disturb me.
05:21I moved the lamp from one side to the other,
05:24and observed the effects of the altered light.
05:27While so engaged, I felt an impulse to turn round.
05:31As I did so, I saw a man moving across the room,
05:35directly toward me.
05:36As soon as he came near enough for the lamplight to illuminate the face,
05:41I saw that it was Dr. Mannering himself.
05:44It was as if the portrait were walking.
05:47I beg your pardon, I said somewhat coldly, but if you knocked, I did not hear.
05:55He passed me within an arm's length, lifted his right forefinger as in warning,
06:00and without a word went on out of the room,
06:04though I observed his exit no more than I had observed his entrance.
06:07Of course, I need not tell you that this was what you will call an hallucination,
06:13and I call an apparition.
06:15That room had only two doors, of which one was locked.
06:20The other led into a bedroom, from which there was no exit.
06:24My feeling on realizing this is not an important part of the incident.
06:28Doubtless, this seems to you a very commonplace ghost story.
06:34One constructed on the regular lines laid down by the old masters of the art.
06:40If that were so, I should not have related it, even if it were true.
06:44The man was not dead.
06:46I met him today in Union Street.
06:49He passed me in a crowd.
06:50Hover had finished his story, and both men were silent.
06:56Dr. Fraley absently drummed on the table with his fingers.
07:00Did he say anything today?
07:02He asked.
07:03Anything from which you inferred that he was not dead?
07:08Hover stared and did not reply.
07:11Perhaps, continued Fraley.
07:14He made a sign, a gesture, lifted a finger as in warning.
07:18It's a trick he had, a habit when saying something serious,
07:22announcing the result of a diagnosis, for example.
07:26Yes, he did.
07:28Just as his apparition had done.
07:30But good God!
07:31Did you ever know him?
07:34Hover was apparently growing nervous.
07:36I knew him.
07:38I have read his book, as will every physician someday.
07:42It is one of the most striking and important of the century's contributions to medical science.
07:49Yes, I knew him.
07:50I attended him in an illness three years ago.
07:54He died.
07:55Hover sprang from his chair, manifestly disturbed.
07:59He strode forward and back across the room, then approached his friend,
08:03and in a voice not altogether steady, said,
08:06Doctor, have you anything to say to me as a physician?
08:10No, Hover.
08:13You are the healthiest man I ever knew.
08:16As a friend, I advise you to go to your room.
08:19You play the violin like an angel.
08:22Play it.
08:23Play something light and lively.
08:25Get this cursed bad business off your mind.
08:27The next day, Hover was found dead in his room, the violin at his neck, the bow upon the strings.
08:37His music opened before him at Chopin's funeral march.
08:40Thank you for listening to this audiobook.
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08:57See you in the next audiobook.
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