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 unburden 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 baroque. 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 peculiarity 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 wife. 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 wore 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 fallen 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 very 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,
with the flames, and the ammonia from the carcass, had then 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 fail 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 stupified, 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 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 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 red of the cellar. I made no doubt that I could
readily displace the bricks at this point, insert the corpse, and wall the
whole up as before, so that no eye could detect any thing 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 which could not be
distinguished from the old, and with this I very carefully went over the new
brickwork. 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
freeman. 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 dammed 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 toiling 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!
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar