FOR the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief. Mad indeed would I be to expect it, in a case where my very senses reject their own evidence. Yet, mad am I not --and very surely do I not dream. But to-morrow I die, and to-day I would unburthen my soul. My immediate purpose is to place before the world, plainly, succinctly, and without comment, a series of mere household events. In their consequences, these events have terrified --have tortured --have destroyed me. Yet I will not attempt to expound them. To me, they have presented little but Horror --to many they will seem less terrible than baroques. Hereafter, perhaps, some intellect may be found which will reduce my phantasm to the common-place --some intellect more calm, more logical, and far less excitable than my own, which will perceive, in the circumstances I detail with awe, nothing more than an ordinary succession of very natural causes and effects.
From
my infancy I was noted for the docility and humanity of my
disposition. My tenderness of heart was even so conspicuous as to
make me the jest of my companions. I was especially fond of animals,
and was indulged by my parents with a great variety of pets. With
these I spent most of my time, and never was so happy as when feeding
and caressing them. This peculiar of character grew with my growth,
and in my manhood, I derived from it one of my principal sources of
pleasure. To those who have cherished an affection for a faithful and
sagacious dog, I need hardly be at the trouble of explaining the
nature or the intensity of the gratification thus derivable. There is
something in the unselfish and self-sacrificing love of a brute,
which goes directly to the heart of him who has had frequent occasion
to test the paltry friendship and gossamer fidelity of mere Man.
I
married early, and was happy to find in my wife a disposition not
uncongenial with my own. Observing my partiality for domestic pets,
she lost no opportunity of procuring those of the most agreeable
kind. We had birds, gold fish, a fine dog, rabbits, a small monkey,
and a cat.
This
latter was a remarkably large and beautiful animal, entirely black,
and sagacious to an astonishing degree. In speaking of his
intelligence, my wife, who at heart was not a little tinctured with
superstition, made frequent allusion to the ancient popular notion,
which regarded all black cats as witches in disguise. Not that she
was ever serious upon this point --and I mention the matter at all
for no better reason than that it happens, just now, to be
remembered.
Pluto
--this was the cat's name --was my favorite pet and playmate. I alone
fed him, and he attended me wherever I went about the house. It was
even with difficulty that I could prevent him from following me
through the streets.
Our
friendship lasted, in this manner, for several years, during which my
general temperament and character --through the instrumentality of
the Fiend Intemperance --had (I blush to confess it) experienced a
radical alteration for the worse. I grew, day by day, more moody,
more irritable, more regardless of the feelings of others. I suffered
myself to use intemperate language to my At length, I even offered
her personal violence. My pets, of course, were made to feel the
change in my disposition. I not only neglected, but ill-used them.
For Pluto, however, I still retained sufficient regard to restrain me
from maltreating him, as I made no scruple of maltreating the
rabbits, the monkey, or even the dog, when by accident, or through
affection, they came in my way. But my disease grew upon me --for
what disease is like Alcohol! --and at length even Pluto, who was now
becoming old, and consequently somewhat peevish --even Pluto began to
experience the effects of my ill temper.
One
night, returning home, much intoxicated, from one of my haunts about
town, I fancied that the cat avoided my presence. I seized him; when,
in his fright at my violence, he inflicted a slight wound upon my
hand with his teeth. The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I
knew myself no longer. My original soul seemed, at once, to take its
flight from my body; and a more than fiendish malevolence,
gin-nurtured, thrilled every fibre of my frame. I took from my
waistcoat-pocket a pen-knife, opened it, grasped the poor beast by
the throat, and deliberately cut one of its eyes from the socket! I
blush, I burn, I shudder, while I pen the damnable atrocity.
When
reason returned with the morning --when I had slept off the fumes of
the night's debauch --I experienced a sentiment half of horror, half
of remorse, for the crime of which I had been guilty; but it was, at
best, a feeble and equivocal feeling, and the soul remained
untouched. I again plunged into excess, and soon drowned in wine all
memory of the deed.
In
the meantime the cat slowly recovered. The socket of the lost eye
presented, it is true, a frightful appearance, but he no longer
appeared to suffer any pain. He went about the house as usual, but,
as might be expected, fled in extreme terror at my approach. I had so
much of my old heart left, as to be at first grieved by this evident
dislike on the part of a creature which had once so loved me. But
this feeling soon gave place to irritation. And then came, as if to
my final and irrevocable overthrow, the spirit of PERVERSENESS. Of
this spirit philosophy takes no account. Yet I am not more sure that
my soul lives, than I am that perverseness is one of the primitive
impulses of the human heart --one of the indivisible primary
faculties, or sentiments, which give direction to the character of
Man. Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or
a silly action, for no other reason than because he knows he should
not? Have we not a perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best
judgment, to violate that which is Law, merely because we understand
it to be such? This spirit of perverseness, I say, came to my final
overthrow. It was this unfathomable longing of the soul to vex itself
--to offer violence to its own
nature
--to do wrong for the wrong's sake only --that urged me to continue
and finally to consummate the injury I had inflicted upon the
unoffending brute. One morning, in cool blood, I slipped a noose
about its neck and hung it to the limb of a tree; --hung it with the
tears streaming from my eyes, and with the bitterest remorse at my
heart; --hung it because I knew that it had loved me, and because I
felt it had given me no reason of offence; --hung it because I knew
that in so doing I was committing a sin --a deadly sin that would so
jeopardize my immortal soul as to place it --if such a thing were
possible --even beyond the reach of the infinite mercy of the Most
Merciful and Most Terrible God.
On
the night of the day on which this cruel deed was done, I was aroused
from sleep by the cry of fire. The curtains of my bed were in flames.
The whole house was blazing. It was with great difficulty that my
wife, a servant, and myself, made our escape from the conflagration.
The destruction was complete. My entire worldly wealth was swallowed
up, and I resigned myself thenceforward to despair.
I
am above the weakness of seeking to establish a sequence of cause and
effect, between the disaster and the atrocity. But I am detailing a
chain of facts --and wish not to leave even a possible link
imperfect. On the day succeeding the fire, I visited the ruins. The
walls, with one exception, had fAllan in. This exception was found in
a compartment wall, not very thick, which stood about the middle of
the house, and against which had rested the head of my bed. The
plastering had here, in great measure, resisted the action of the
fire --a fact which I attributed to its having been recently spread.
About this wall a dense crowd were collected, and many persons seemed
to be examining a particular portion of it with every minute and
eager attention. The words "strange!" "singular!"
and other similar expressions, excited my curiosity. I approached and
saw, as if graven in bas relief upon the white surface, the figure of
a gigantic cat. The impression was given with an accuracy truly
marvellous. There was a rope about the animal's neck.
When
I first beheld this apparition --for I could scarcely regard it as
less --my wonder and my terror were extreme. But at length reflection
came to my aid. The cat, I remembered, had been hung in a garden
adjacent to the house. Upon the alarm of fire, this garden had been
immediately filled by the crowd --by some one of whom the animal must
have been cut from the tree and thrown, through an open window, into
my chamber. This had probably been done with the view of arousing me
from sleep. The falling of other walls had compressed the victim of
my cruelty into the substance of the freshly-spread plaster; the lime
of which, had then with the flames, and the ammonia from the carcass,
accomplished the portraiture as I saw it.
Although
I thus readily accounted to my reason, if not altogether to my
conscience, for the startling fact 'just detailed, it did not the
less fall to make a deep impression upon my fancy. For months I could
not rid myself of the phantasm of the cat; and, during this period,
there came back into my spirit a half-sentiment that seemed, but was
not, remorse. I went so far as to regret the loss of the animal, and
to look about me, among the vile haunts which I now habitually
frequented, for another pet of the same species, and of somewhat
similar appearance, with which to supply its place.
One
night as I sat, half stupefied, in a den of more than infamy, my
attention was suddenly drawn to some black object, reposing upon the
head of one of the immense hogsheads of Gin, or of Rum, which
constituted the chief furniture of the apartment. I had been looking
steadily at the top of this hogshead for some minutes, and what now
caused me surprise was the fact that I had not sooner perceived the
object thereupon. I approached it, and touched it with my hand. It
was a black cat --a very large one --fully as large as Pluto, and
closely resembling him in every respect but one. Pluto had not a
white hair upon any portion of his body; but this cat had a large,
although indefinite splotch of white, covering nearly the whole
region of the breast.
Upon
my touching him, he immediately arose, purred loudly, rubbed against
my hand, and appeared delighted with my notice. This, then, was the
very creature of which I was in search. I at once offered to purchase
it of the landlord; but this person made no claim to it --knew
nothing of it --had never seen it before.
I
continued my caresses, and, when I prepared to go home, the animal
evinced a disposition to accompany me. I permitted it to do so;
occasionally stooping and patting it as I proceeded. When it reached
the house it domesticated itself at once, and became immediately a
great favorite with my wife.
For
my own part, I soon found a dislike to it arising within me. This was
just the reverse of what I had anticipated; but I know not how or why
it was --its evident fondness for myself rather disgusted and
annoyed. By slow degrees, these feelings of disgust and annoyance
rose into the bitterness of hatred. I avoided the creature; a certain
sense of shame, and the remembrance of my former deed of cruelty,
preventing me from physically abusing it. I did not, for some weeks,
strike, or otherwise violently ill use it; but gradually --very
gradually --I came to look upon it with unutterable loathing, and to
flee silently from its odious presence, as from the breath of a
pestilence.
What
added, no doubt, to my hatred of the beast, was the discovery, on the
morning after I brought it home, that, like Pluto, it also had been
deprived of one of its eyes. This circumstance, however, only
endeared it to my wife, who, as I have already said, possessed, in a
high degree, that humanity of feeling which had once been my
distinguishing trait, and the source of many of my simplest and
purest pleasures.
With
my aversion to this cat, however, its partiality for myself seemed to
increase. It followed my footsteps with a pertinacity which it would
be difficult to make the reader comprehend. Whenever I sat, it would
crouch beneath my chair, or spring upon my knees, covering me with
its loathsome caresses. If I arose to walk it would get between my
feet and thus nearly throw me down, or, fastening its long and sharp
claws in my dress, clamber, in this manner, to my breast. At such
times, although I longed to destroy it with a blow, I was yet
withheld from so doing, partly it at by a memory of my former crime,
but chiefly --let me confess it at once --by absolute dread of the
beast.
This
dread was not exactly a dread of physical evil-and yet I should be at
a loss how otherwise to define it. I am almost ashamed to own --yes,
even in this felon's cell, I am
almost
ashamed to own --that the terror and horror with which the animal
inspired me, had been heightened by one of the merest chimaeras it
would be possible to conceive. My wife had called my attention, more
than once, to the character of the mark of white hair, of which I
have spoken, and which constituted the sole visible difference
between the strange beast and the one I had y si destroyed. The
reader will remember that this mark, although large, had been
originally very indefinite; but, by slow degrees --degrees nearly
imperceptible, and which for a long time my Reason struggled to
reject as fanciful --it had, at length, assumed a rigorous
distinctness of outline. It was now the representation of an object
that I shudder to name --and for this, above all, I loathed, and
dreaded, and would have rid myself of the monster had I dared --it
was now, I say, the image of a hideous --of a ghastly thing --of the
GALLOWS! --oh, mournful and terrible engine of Horror and of Crime
--of Agony and of Death!
And
now was I indeed wretched beyond the wretchedness of mere Humanity.
And a brute beast --whose fellow I had contemptuously destroyed --a
brute beast to work out for me --for me a man, fashioned in the image
of the High God --so much of insufferable wo! Alas! neither by day
nor by night knew I the blessing of Rest any more! During the former
the creature left me no moment alone; and, in the latter, I started,
hourly, from dreams of unutterable fear, to find the hot breath of
the thing upon my face, and its vast weight --an incarnate Night-Mare
that I had no power to shake off --incumbent eternally upon my heart!
Beneath
the pressure of torments such as these, the feeble remnant of the
good within me succumbed. Evil thoughts became my sole intimates
--the darkest and most evil of thoughts. The moodiness of my usual
temper increased to hatred of all things and of all mankind; while,
from the sudden, frequent, and ungovernable outbursts of a fury to
which I now blindly abandoned myself, my uncomplaining wife, alas!
was the most usual and the most patient of sufferers.
One
day she accompanied me, upon some household errand, into the cellar
of the old building which our poverty compelled us to inhabit. The
cat followed me down the steep stairs, and, nearly throwing me
headlong, exasperated me to madness. Uplifting an axe, and
forgetting, in my wrath, the childish dread which had hitherto stayed
my hand, I aimed a blow at the animal which, of course, would have
proved instantly fatal had it descended as I wished. But this blow
was arrested by the hand of my wife. Goaded, by the interference,
into a rage more than demoniacal, I withdrew my arm from her grasp
and buried the axe in her brain. She fell dead upon the spot, without
a groan.
This
hideous murder accomplished, I set myself forthwith, and with entire
deliberation, to the task of concealing the body. I knew that I could
not remove it from the house, either by day or by night, without the
risk of being observed by the neighbors. Many projects entered my
mind. At one period I thought of cutting the corpse into minute
fragments, and destroying them by fire. At another, I resolved to dig
a grave for it in the floor of the cellar. Again, I deliberated about
casting it in the well in the yard --about packing it in a box, as if
merchandize, with the usual arrangements, and so getting a porter to
take it from the house. Finally I hit upon what I considered a far
better expedient than either of
these.
I determined to wall it up in the cellar --as the monks of the middle
ages are recorded to have walled up their victims.
For
a purpose such as this the cellar was well adapted. Its walls were
loosely constructed, and had lately been plastered throughout with a
rough plaster, which the dampness of the atmosphere had prevented
from hardening. Moreover, in one of the walls was a projection,
caused by a false chimney, or fireplace, that had been filled up, and
made to resemble the rest of the cellar. I made no doubt that I could
readily displace the at this point, insert the corpse, and wall the
whole up as before, so that no eye could detect anything suspicious.
And
in this calculation I was not deceived. By means of a crow-bar I
easily dislodged the bricks, and, having carefully deposited the body
against the inner wall, I propped it in that position, while, with
little trouble, I re-laid the whole structure as it originally stood.
Having procured mortar, sand, and hair, with every possible
precaution, I prepared a plaster could not every poss be
distinguished from the old, and with this I very carefully went over
the new brick-work. When I had finished, I felt satisfied that all
was right. The wall did not present the slightest appearance of
having been disturbed. The rubbish on the floor was picked up with
the minutest care. I looked around triumphantly, and said to myself
--"Here at least, then, my labor has not been in vain."
My
next step was to look for the beast which had been the cause of so
much wretchedness; for I had, at length, firmly resolved to put it to
death. Had I been able to meet with it, at the moment, there could
have been no doubt of its fate; but it appeared that the crafty
animal had been alarmed at the violence of my previous anger, and
forebore to present itself in my present mood. It is impossible to
describe, or to imagine, the deep, the blissful sense of relief which
the absence of the detested creature occasioned in my bosom. It did
not make its appearance during the night --and thus for one night at
least, since its introduction into the house, I soundly and
tranquilly slept; aye, slept even with the burden of murder upon my
soul!
The
second and the third day passed, and still my tormentor came not.
Once again I breathed as a free-man. The monster, in terror, had fled
the premises forever! I should behold it no more! My happiness was
supreme! The guilt of my dark deed disturbed me but little. Some few
inquiries had been made, but these had been readily answered. Even a
search had been instituted --but of course nothing was to be
discovered. I looked upon my future felicity as secured.
Upon
the fourth day of the assassination, a party of the police came, very
unexpectedly, into the house, and proceeded again to make rigorous
investigation of the premises. Secure, however, in the inscrutability
of my place of concealment, I felt no embarrassment whatever. The
officers bade me accompany them in their search. They left no nook or
corner unexplored. At length, for the third or fourth time, they
descended into the cellar. I quivered not in a muscle. My heart beat
calmly as that of one who slumbers in innocence. I walked the cellar
from end to end. I folded my arms upon my bosom, and roamed easily to
and fro. The police were thoroughly satisfied and prepared
to
depart. The glee at my heart was too strong to be restrained. I
burned to say if but one word, by way of triumph, and to render
doubly sure their assurance of my guiltlessness.
"Gentlemen,"
I said at last, as the party ascended the steps, "I delight to
have allayed your suspicions. I wish you all health, and a little
more courtesy. By the bye, gentlemen, this --this is a very well
constructed house." (In the rabid desire to say something
easily, I scarcely knew what I uttered at all.) --"I may say an
excellently well constructed house. These walls --are you going,
gentlemen? --these walls are solidly put together"; and here,
through the mere phrenzy of bravado, I rapped heavily, with a cane
which I held in my hand, upon that very portion of the brick-work
behind which stood the corpse of the wife of my bosom.
But
may God shield and deliver me from the fangs of the Arch-Fiend! No
sooner had the reverberation of my blows sunk into silence than I was
answered by a voice from within the tomb! --by a cry, at first
muffled and broken, like the sobbing of a child, and then quickly
swelling into one long, loud, and continuous scream, utterly
anomalous and inhuman --a howl --a wailing shriek, half of horror and
half of triumph, such as might have arisen only out of hell,
conjointly from the throats of the damned in their agony and of the
demons that exult in the damnation.
Of
my own thoughts it is folly to speak. Swooning, I staggered to the
opposite wall. For one instant the party upon the stairs remained
motionless, through extremity of terror and of awe. In the next, a
dozen stout arms were tolling at the wall. It fell bodily. The
corpse, already greatly decayed and clotted with gore, stood erect
before the eyes of the spectators. Upon its head, with red extended
mouth and solitary eye of fire, sat the hideous beast whose craft had
seduced me into murder, and whose informing voice had consigned me to
the hangman. I had walled the monster up within the tomb!
THE
END
LOVE this story. Edgar Allen Poe is such a sublime writer.
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