 Berenice, by Edgar Allan Poe. Misery is manifold. The wretchedness of earth is multi-form. Overreaching the wide horizon as the rainbow, its hues are as various as the hues of the arch, as distinct, too, yet as intimately blended. Overreaching the wide horizon as the rainbow. How is it that from beauty I have derived a type of unloveliness, from the covenant of peace a simile of sorrow? But as, in ethics, evil is a consequence of good, so, in fact, out of joy is sorrow born. Either the memory of past bliss is the anguish of today, or the agonies which are have their origin in the ecstasies which might have been. My baptismal name is Aegeus. That of my family I will not mention. Yet there are no towers in the land more time-honoured than my gloomy, grey, hereditary halls. Our line has been called a race of visionaries, and in many striking particulars, in the character of the family mansion, in the frescoes of the chief saloon, in the tapestries of the dormitories, in the chiselling of some buttresses in the armory, but more especially in the gallery of antique paintings, in the fashion of the library chamber, and lastly, in the very peculiar nature of the library's contents, there is more than sufficient evidence to warrant the belief. The recollections of my earliest years are connected with that chamber, and with its volumes, of which latter I will say no more. Here died my mother. Herein was I born. But it is mere idleness to say that I had not lived before, that the soul has no previous existence. You deny it? Let us not argue the matter. Convinced myself, I seek not to convince. There is, however, a remembrance of aerial forms, of spiritual and meaning eyes, of sound's musical yet sad a remembrance which will not be excluded, a memory like shadow, vague, variable, indefinite, unsteady, and like a shadow too in the impossibility of my getting rid of it while the sunlight of my reason shall exist. In that chamber I was born. Thus awakening from the long night of what seemed but was not, non-entity, at once into the very regions of fairyland, into a place of imagination, into the wild dominions of monastic thought and erudition. It is not singular that I gazed around me with a startled and ardent eye, that I loited away my boyhood in books and dissipated my youth in reverie. But it is singular that as the years rolled away, and the noon of manhoods found me still in the mansion of my fathers. It is wonderful what stagnation there fell upon the springs of my life, wonderful how total uninversion took place in the character of my commonest thought. The realities of the world affected me as visions, and as visions only, while the wild ideas of the land of dreams became in turn, not the material of my everyday existence, but in very deed that existence utterly and solely in itself. Peronese and I were cousins, and we grew up together in my paternal halls, yet differently we grew, I ill of health and buried in gloom, she agile, graceful, and overflowing with energy. Hers the ramble on the hillside, mine the studies of the cloister, I living within my own heart an addicted body and soul to the most intense and painful meditation. She, roaming carelessly through life with no thought of the shadows in her path, or the silent flight of the raven-winged hours. Peronese, I call upon her name, Peronese, and from the grey ruins of memory a thousand tumultuous recollections are startled at the sound. Ah, vividly is her image before me now, as in the early days of her light-heartedness and joy. Oh, gorgeous yet fantastic beauty, oh, silph amid the shrubberies of Anheim, oh, nired amongst its fountains, and then, then all is mystery and terror and a tale which should not be told. Disease, a fatal disease, fell like the simum upon her frame, and even while I gazed upon her, the spirit of change swept over her, pervading her mind, her habits, and her character, and in a manner the most subtle and terrible disturbing even the identity of her person. Alas, the destroyer came and went, and the victim, where was she, I knew her not, or knew her no longer as Peronese. Among the numerous train of maladies, super-induced by that fatal and primary one which affected a revolution of so horrible a kind in the moral and physical being of my cousin, may be mentioned as the most distressing and obstinate in its nature, a species of epilepsy not unfrequently terminating in trance itself. Trance very nearly resembling positive dissolution, and from which her manner of recovery was, in most instances, startlingly abrupt. In the meantime, my own disease, for I have been told that I should call it by no other appellation, my own disease then grew rapidly upon me, and assumed finally a monomaniac character of a novel and extraordinary form, hourly and momentally gaining vigor, and at length obtaining over me the most incomprehensible ascendancy. This monomania, if I must so term it, consisted in a morbid irritability of those properties of the mind in metaphysical science termed the attentive. It is more than probable that I am not understood, but I fear indeed that it is in no manner possible to convey to the mind of the merely general reader an adequate idea of that nervous intensity of interest, which in my case, the powers of meditation, not to speak technically, busied and buried themselves in the contemplation of even the most ordinary objects of the universe. To muse for long unwearyed hours with my attention riveted to some frivolous device on the margin, or in the typography of a book, to become absorbed for the better part of a summer's day in a quaint shadow falling aslant upon the tapestry or upon the door, to lose myself for an entire night in watching the steady flame of a lamp, or the embers of a fire, to dream away whole days over the perfume of a flower, to repeat monotonously some common word until the sound by dint of frequent repetition sees to convey any idea whatever to the mind, to lose all sense of motion and physical existence by means of absolute bodily quiescence long and obstinately persevered in, such were a few of the most common and least pernicious vagaries induced by a condition of the mental faculties, not indeed altogether unparalleled, but certainly bidding defiance to anything like analysis or explanation. Yet let me not be misapprehended. The undue, earnest and morbid attention thus excited by objects in their own nature frivolous must not be confounded in character with that ruminating propensity common to all mankind, and more especially indulged in by persons of ardent imagination. It was not even, as might first be supposed, an extreme condition, or exaggeration of such propensity, but primarily and essentially distinct and different. In the one instance, the dreamer or enthusiast, being interested by an object usually not frivolous, imperceptibly loses sight of this object in a wilderness of deductions and suggestions issuing therefore until, at the conclusion of a daydream often replete with luxury, he finds the incitementum or first cause of his musings entirely vanished and forgotten. In my case the primary object was invariably frivolous, though assuming through the medium of my distempered vision a refracted and unreal importance. Few deductions, if any, were made, and those few pertenaciously returning in upon the original object as a centre. The meditations were never pleasurable, and at the termination of the reverie, the first cause, so far from being out of sight, had attained that supernaturally exaggerated interest which was the prevailing feature of the disease. In a word, the powers of mind more particularly exercised were with me, as I have said before, the attentive. And I'll with the daydreamer, the speculative. My books at this epoch, if they did not actually serve to irritate the disorder, partook it will be perceived, largely in their imaginative and inconsequential nature, of the characteristic qualities of the disorder itself. I well remember, among others, the treatise of the noble Italian Cilius Secundus Curial, the amplitudine Beate Regni Dei, St. Austen's great work, The City of God, and Turtullian's Dicharne Christi, in which the paradoxical sentence, Mortuus est Dei Philius, crediboli et quia ineptum est et supportus resurexit, certum est chia impossibili est, occupied by undivided time for many weeks of laborious and fruitless investigation. Thus it will appear that, shaken from its balance only by trivial things, my reason bore resemblance to that ocean crag spoken of by Ptolemy have faced on, which steadily resisting the attacks of human violence and the fierce effury of the waters and the winds, trembled only to the touch of the flower called Asphodel. And although, to a careless thinker, it might appear a matter beyond that, that the alteration produced by her unhappy malady in the moral condition of Berenice would afford me many objects for the exercise of that intense and abnormal meditation whose nature I have been at some trouble in explaining, yet such was not in any degree the case. In the lucid intervals of my infirmity, her calamity indeed gave me pain, and taking deeply to heart that total wreck of her fair and gentle life, I did not fail to ponder frequently and bitterly upon the wonder-working means by which so strange a revolution had been so suddenly brought to pass. But these reflections partook not of the idiosyncrasy of my disease, and were such as would have occurred under similar circumstances to the ordinary mass of mankind. True to its own character, my disorder reveled in the less important but more startling changes wrought in the physical frame of Berenice, in the singular and most appalling distortion of her personal identity. During the brightest days of her unparalleled beauty, most surely I had never loved her. In the strange anomaly of my existence, feelings with me had never been of the heart, and my passions always were of the mind. Through the gray of the early morning among the trellis shadows of the forest at noonday and in the silence of my library at night, she had flitted by my eyes and I had seen her. Not as the living and breathing Berenice, but as the Berenice of a dream, not as a being of the earth, earthly, but as the abstraction of such a being. Not as a thing to admire, but to analyse. Not as an object of love, but as the theme of the most obstuous though desultory speculation. And now, now I shuddered in her presence and grew pale at her approach, yet bitterly lamenting her fallen in desolate condition, I called to mind that she had loved me long, and in an evil moment I spoke to her of marriage. And at length the period of our nuptials was approaching, from an afternoon in the winter of the year, one of those unseasonably warm, calm and misty days which are the nurse of the beautiful Halcyon, I sat and sat as I thought alone, in the inner apartment of the library, but uplifting my eyes I saw that Berenice stood before me. Was it my own excited imagination, or the mystery influence of the atmosphere, or the uncertain twilight of the chamber, or the gray draperies which fell around her figure, that caused in it so vacillating an indistinct and outline? I could not tell. She spoke no word, and I, not for words, could I have uttered a syllable. An icy chill run through my frame, a sense of insufferable anxiety oppressed me. A consuming curiosity pervaded my soul, and sinking back upon the chair, I remained for some time breathless and motionless, with my eyes riveted upon her person. Alas, its emaciation was excessive. And not one vestige of the former being lurked in any single line of the contour. My burning glances at last fell upon the face. The forehead was high and very pale and singularly placid, and the once jetty hair fell partially over it, and overshadowed the hollow temples with innumerable ringlets now of a vivid yellow, enduring discordantly in their fantastic character with the reigning melancholy of the countenance. The eyes were lifeless and lustrous and seemingly pupilless, and I shrank involuntarily from their glasses there to the contemplation of the thin and shrunken lips. They parted, and in a smile of peculiar meaning, the teeth of the challenged baronese disclosed themselves slowly to my view. Would to God I had never beheld them, or that having done so, I had died. The shutting of a door disturbed me, and looking up, I found that my cousin had departed from the chamber. But from the disordered chamber of my brain had I not, alas, departed, and would not be driven away, the white and ghastly spectrum of the teeth. Not a speck on their surface, not a shade on their enamel, not an indenture in their edges, but what that period of her smile had sufficed to brand in upon my memory. I saw them now even more unequivocally than I had beheld them then. The teeth! The teeth! They were here and there and everywhere and visibly and palpably before me, long, narrow, and excessively white, with the pale lips writhing about them, as in the very moment of their first terrible development. Then came the full fury of my monomania, and I struggled in vain against its strange and irresistible influence. In the multiplied objects of the external world I had no thoughts but for the teeth, for these I longed with a frenzied desire. All other matters and all different interests became absorbed in their single contemplation. They, they alone were present to the mental eye, and they, in their sole individuality, became the essence of my mental life. I held them in every light. I turned them in every attitude. I surveyed their characteristics. I dwelt upon their peculiarities. I pondered upon their conformation. I amused upon the alteration in their nature. I shuddered as I assigned to them in imagination a sensitive and sentient power, and even when unassisted by the lips, a capability of moral expression. Of Manzal Sal it has been well said. Kertu se par etayant des sentiments. And of Baranese I more seriously believed. Kertut se don't etayant des idées. Des idées, I here was the idiotic thought that destroyed me. Des idées, are therefore it was that I coveted them so madly. I felt that their possession could alone ever restore me to peace in giving me back to reason. And the evening closed in upon me thus, and then the darkness came, and towered, and went, and the day again dawned, and the mists of a second night were now gathering around. And still I sat motionless in that solitary room, and still I sat buried in meditation, and still the phantasma of the teeth maintained its terrible ascendancy as, with the most vivid and hideous distinctness, it floated about amid the changing lights and shadows of the chamber. At length there broke in upon my dreams as a cry of horror and dismay, and there unto after a pause succeeded the sound of troubled voices, intermingled with many low moanings of sorrow or of pain. I arose from my seat, and, throwing open one of the doors of the library, saw standing out in the antechamber a servant maiden, all in tears who told me that Berenice was no more. She had been seized with epilepsy in the early morning, and now at the closing in of the night the grave was ready for its tenant, and all the preparations for the burial were completed. I found myself sitting in the library, and again sitting there alone. It seemed that I had newly awakened from a confused and exciting dream. I knew that it was now midnight, and I was well aware that since the setting of the sun Berenice had been interred. But of that dreary period which intervened I had no positive, at least no definite comprehension, yet its memory was replete with horror, horror more horrible from being vague, and terror more terrible from ambiguity. It was a fearful page in the record of my existence, written all over with dim and hideous and unintelligible recollections. I strived to decipher them but in vain, while ever under none, like the spirit of a departed sound, the shrill and piercing shriek of a female voice seemed to be ringing in my ears. I had done a deed. What was it? I asked myself the question aloud, and the whispering echoes of the chamber answered me. What was it? On the table beside me burned a lamp, and near it lay a little box. It was of no remarkable character, and I had seen it frequently before, for it was the property of the family physician. But how came it there upon my table, and why did I shudder in regarding it? These things were in no manner to be accounted for, and my eyes at length dropped to the open pages of a book, and to a sentence underscored therein. The words were the singular but simple ones of the poet Eben Zayet. His looks were wild with terror, and he spoke to me in a voice tremulous, husky, and very low. What said he? Some broken sentences I heard. He told of a wild cry disturbing the silence of the night, of the gathering together of the household, of a search in the direction of the sound, and then his tones grew thrillingly distinct as he whispered me of a violated grave, of a disfigured body enshrouded, yet still breathing, still palpitating, still alive. He pointed to my garments. They were muddy and clotted with gore. I spoke not, and he took me gently by the hand. It was indented with the impress of human nails. He directed my attention to some object against the wall. I looked at it for some minutes. It was a spade. With a shriek I bounded to the table and grasped the box that lay upon it, but I could not force it open, and in my tremor it slipped from my hands and fell heavily and burst into pieces, and rolling from it with a rattling sound there rolled out some instruments of dental surgery, intermingled with thirty-two small, white, and ivory-looking substances that were scattered to and fro about the floor. Thus ends Berenice by Edgar Allan Poe. The Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information and to find out how you can volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe. 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 tomorrow I die, and today I would unburden my soul. My immediate purpose is to place before the world, plainly, succinctly, and without comments, a series of mere household events. In the consequences, these events have terrified, have tortured, have destroyed me. Yet I will 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 commonplace. Some intellect more calm, more logical, and far less excitable than my own, which will perceive in the circumstances I detail with all, 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 occasions to test a 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, goldfish, the 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 allusions 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 a 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 favourite pet and playmate. I alone fed him, and he attended me whatever 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 in temperance, had, I blushed 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. Our pets, of course, were made to feel the change in my disposition. I not only neglected it, 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 is 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 horns about town, I fancied that the cat avoided my presence. I seized him. When, in his fright at my violence, 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 to more than finished malevolence, gin nurtured, thrilled every fiber 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 a soul remained untouched. I again plunged into excess, and soon drowned in wine or memory of the deed. In the meantime, the cat slowly recovered. The socket of the lost eye presented, this true, a frightful appearance, but he no longer appeared to suffer any pain. He went about the house as usual, 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 is 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 is 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 judgement 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 sake only, that urged me to continue, and finally to consummate the injury I had afflicted 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 in 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 addressed the head of my bed. The plastering at 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 someone of whom the animal must have been cut from the tree and thrown 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 nonetheless 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 that 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 cheap furniture of the apartment. I had been looking steadily at the top of this hog's head for some minutes, and what now caused me surprise was the fact that I had not soon 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, heard loudly, rubbed against my hand and appeared delighted with my notice. This then was the very creature of which I was in search. I had 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 I reached the house, it domesticated itself at once and became immediately a great favourite with my wife. For my own part, I soon found a dislike to it arising within me. This was just a 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 eluse 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 a discovery on the morning after I brought it home that, like Pluto, it also had been deprived of one of its eyes. The 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 to read or 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 clumber 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 a terror and horror with which the animal inspired me had been heightened by one of the miris caimiras it would be possible to conceive. My wife had caught my attention, more than once, to the character of the mark of white hair, of which I have spoken, and which constituted the so 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 reasons 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 walk out for me, for me, a man, fashioned in the image of the High God, so much of insufferable woe. 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 nightmare that I had no power to shake off, incumbent eternally upon my heart. Beneath the pressure of torment 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 adverse 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, a childish dread which had hath hitherto state my hand, I aimed to 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 rage more than the maniacal. 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 off 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 a risk of being observed by the neighbours. Many projects entered my mind. At one period, I thought of cutting the corpse into my nude 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 into well in the yard, about packing it in a box, as if merchandise, 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 bricks at this point, insert the corpse, and wall the hole up as before so that no eye could detect anything suspicious. And in this calculation, I was not deceived by means of a crowbar I easily dislodged the bricks and, having carefully deposited a body against the inner wall, I propped it in that position while with little trouble I relayed 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 labour 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 a crafty animal had been alarmed at the violence of my previous anger and forbore 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. I slept even with a 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 to premises forever. I should behold it no more. My happiness was supreme. The guilt of my dog deed disturbed me back 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 baited me, accompanied them in their search. They left no look 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. A burned to save but one word a way of triumph and to render doubly sure the assurance of my godlessness. Gentlemen I said at last as the party ascended the steps I delight to have a leisure suspicions. I wish you all health and a little more courtesy. By the by gentlemen this is a very well constructed house and a 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 frenzy of bravado I wrapped heavily with a cane which I held in my hand upon that very portion of the brickwork behind which stood the corpse of the wife of my bosom. But may God shield and deliver me from the fangs of the archfiend. 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 cream utterly anomalous and inhuman a howl a wailing shriek half of horror and half of crime 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 folly to speak swooning I staggered to the opposite wall for one instant the party upon the stairs reigned motionless through extremity of terror and a war in the next a dozen stout arms were toiling at the war it fell bodily the corpse already greatly decayed and cluttered with gore stood erect before the eyes spectators upon its head with red extended mouth and solitary eye of fire sat the hedges beast whose craft had seduced me into murder and whose informing voice had consigned me to the hangman I had warded the monster up within the tomb and of the black cat by Edgar Allan Poe this recording is in the public domain The Monkey's Paw by W.W. Jacobs This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information and to find out how you can volunteer please visit LibriVox.org The Monkey's Paw by W.W. Jacobs Part 1 Without, the night was cold and wet but in the small parlor blinds were drawn and the fire burned brightly Father and son were chess the former who possessed ideas about the game involving radical changes putting his king into such sharp and unnecessary perils that it even provoked comment from the white-haired old lady knitting placidly by the fire Hark at the wind, said Mr. White who, having seen a fatal mistake after it was too late was amiably desirous of preventing his son from seeing it I'm listening, said the latter, grimly surveying the board as he stretched out his hand check I should hardly think that he'd come tonight, said his father, with his hand poised over the board mate replied the son that's the worst of living so far out bald, Mr. White with sudden and unlooked-for violence of all the beastly slushy out-of-the-way places to live in this is the worst, pathway is a bog and the road's a torrent I don't know what people are thinking about the houses in the road are let they think it doesn't matter never mind, dear, said his wife soothingly perhaps you'll win the next one Mr. White looked up sharply just in time to intercept a knowing glance between mother and son the words died away on his lips and he had a guilty grin in his thin grey beard there he is, said Herbert White as the gate banged too loudly and heavy footsteps came toward the door the old man rose with hospitable haste the door was heard condoling with the new arrival the new arrival also condoled with himself so that Mrs. White said toot toot and coughed gently as her husband entered the room followed by a tall burly man beady of eye and rubicooned of visage sergeant major Morris he said introducing him the sergeant major shook hands and taking the preferred seat by the fire watched contentedly while his host got out whiskey and tumblers and stood a small copper kettle on the fire at the third glass his eyes got brighter and he began to talk the little family circle regarding with eager interest this visitor from distant parts as he squared his broad shoulders in the chair and spoke of wild scenes and doubty deeds of wars and plagues and strange people 21 years of it said Mr. White nodding at his wife and son when he went away he was a slip of a youth in the warehouse now look at him I've taken much harm said Mrs. White politely I'd like to go to India myself said the old man just to look round a bit you know better where you are said the sergeant major shaking his head he put down the empty glass and sighing softly shook it again I should like to see those old temples and fake ears and jugglers said the old man what was that you started telling me the other day about a monkey's paw or something Morris nothing said the soldier hastily least ways nothing worth hearing monkey's paw said Mrs. White curiously well it's just a bit of what you might call magic perhaps said the sergeant major offhandedly his three listeners leaned forward eagerly the visitor absentmindedly put his empty glass to his lips and then set it down again his host filled it for him to look at said the sergeant major fumbling in his pocket it's just an ordinary little paw tried to a mummy he took something out of his pocket and profit it Mrs. White drew back with a grimace but her son taking it examined it curiously and what is there special about it inquired Mr. White as he took it from his son and having examined it placed it upon the table it had a spell put on it by an old fake ear said the sergeant major a very holy man he wanted to show that fate ruled people's lives and that those who interfered with it did so to their sorrow he put a spell on it so that three separate men could each have three wishes from it his manner was so impressive that his hearers were conscious that their light laughter jarred somewhat well why don't you have three sir said Herbert White cleverly the soldier regarded him in the way that middle age is want to regard presumptuous you I have he said quietly and his blotchy face whitened and did you really have the three wishes granted asked Mrs. White I did said the sergeant major and his glass tapped against his strong teeth and has anybody else wished persisted the old lady the first man had his three wishes yes was the reply I don't know what the first two were but the third was for death that's how I got the ball the stones were so grave that a hush fell upon the group if you've had your three wishes it's no good to you now then Morris said the old man at last what do you keep it for the soldier shook his head fancy I suppose he said slowly I did have some idea of selling it but I don't think I will it has caused enough mischief already besides people won't buy they think it's a fairytale some of them and those who do think anything of it can pay me afterward if you could have another three wishes said the old man eyeing him keenly would you have them I don't know said the other I don't know he took the paw and dangling it between his forefinger and thumb suddenly threw it upon the fire White with a slight cry stooped down and snatched it off better let it burn said the soldier solemnly if you don't want it Morris said the other give it to me said his friend doggedly I threw it on the fire if you keep it don't blame me for what happens pitch it on the fire again like a sensible man the other shook his head and examined his new possession closely how do you do it he inquired hold it up in your right hand and wish aloud said the sergeant major but I warn you of the consequences sounds like the Arabian knights said Mrs. White as she rose and began to set the supper don't you think you might wish for four pairs of hands for me her husband drew the talisman from pocket and then all three burst into laughter as the sergeant major with a look of alarm on his face caught him by the arm if you must wish he said gruffly wish for something sensible Mr. White dropped it back in his pocket and placing chairs motioned his friend to the table in the business of supper the talisman was partly forgotten and afterward the three sat listening in an enthralled fashion to a second installment of the soldier's adventures in India the tale about the monkey's paw is not more truthful than those he has been telling us said Herbert as the door closed behind their guest just in time for him to catch the last train we shan't make much out of it did you give him anything for it father inquired Mrs. White regarding her husband closely her trifle said he coloring slightly he didn't want it but I made him take it and he pressed me again to throw it away likely said Herbert with pretenditor why we're going to be rich and famous and happy wish to be an emperor father to begin with then you can't be hen pecked he darted round the table pursued by the maligned Mrs. White armed with an anti-massacre Mr. White took the paw from his pocket and eyed it dubiously I don't know what to wish for and that's a fact he said slowly it seems to me I've got all I want if you only cleared the house you'd be quite happy wouldn't you said Herbert with his hand on his shoulder well wish for 200 pounds then that'll just do it his father smiling shame-facedly at his own credulity held up the talisman as his son with a solemn face somewhat marred by a wink at his mother sat down at the piano and struck a few impressive chords I wish for 200 pounds said the old man distinctly a fine crash from the piano greeted the words interrupted by a shuttering cry from the old man his wife and son ran toward him it moved he cried with a glance of disgust at the object as it lay on the floor as I wished it twisted in my hand like a snake well I don't see the money said his son as he picked it up and placed it on the table and I bet I never shall it must have been your fancy father said his wife regarding him anxiously he shook his head nevermind though there's no harm done but it gave me a shock all the same they sat down by the fire again while the two men finished their pipes outside the wind was higher than ever and the old man started nervously at the sound of a door banging upstairs a silence unusual and depressing settled upon Mall 3 which lasted until the old couple rose to retire for the night I expect you'll find the cash tied up in a big bag in the middle of your bed said Herbert as he bade them good night and something horrible squatting up on top of the wardrobe watching you pocket your ill-gotten gains he sat alone in the darkness gazing at the dying fire and seeing faces in it the last face was so horrible and so simian that he gazed at it in amazement it got so vivid that with a little uneasy laugh he felt on the table for a glass containing a little water to throw over it his hand grasped the monkey's paw and with a little shiver he wiped his hand on his coat and went up to bed part 2 of the wintry sun next morning as it streamed over the breakfast table he laughed at his fears there is an ear of prosaic wholesomeness about the room which it had lacked on the previous night and the dirty shriveled little paw was pitched on the sideboard with a carelessness which betokens no great belief in its virtues I suppose all old soldiers are the same said Mrs. White the idea of our listening to such nonsense how could wishes be granted in these days and if they could how could 200 pounds hurt you father my drop on his head from the sky said the frivolous Herbert Morris said the things happened so naturally said his father that you might if you so wished attribute it to coincidence well don't break into the money before I come back said Herbert as he rose from the table I'm afraid it'll turn you into a mean avaricious man and we shall have to disown you his mother laughed and followed him to the door watched him down the road and returning to the breakfast table was very happy at the expense of her husband's credulity all of which did not prevent her from scurrying to the door at the postman's knock nor prevent her from referring so much shortly to retired sergeant majors of biblis habits when she found that the post brought a tailor's bill Herbert will have some more of his funny remarks I expect when he comes home she said as they sat at dinner I dare say said Mr. White pouring himself out some beer but for all that the thing moved in my hand that I'll swear to you thought it did said the old lady soothingly I say it did replied the other there is no thought about it I had just what's the matter his wife made no reply she was watching the mysterious movements of a man outside who, peering in an undecided fashion at the house appeared to be trying to make up his mind to enter in mental connection with the 200 pounds she noticed that the stranger was well dressed and wore a silky hat of glossy newness three times he paused at the gate and then walked on again at the same time he stood with his hand upon it and then with sudden resolution flung it open and walked up the path Mrs. White at the same moment placed her hands behind her and hurriedly unfastening the strings of her apron put that useful article of apparel beneath the cushion of her chair she brought the stranger who seemed ill at ease into the room he gazed at her furtively and listened in a preoccupied fashion as the old lady apologized for the appearance of the room and her husband's coat a garment which he usually reserved for the garden to permit for him to broach his business but he was at first strangely silent I was asked to call he said at last and stooped and picked up a piece of cotton from his trousers I come from Maan Megan's the old lady started is anything the matter, she asked breathlessly has anything happened to Herbert what is it, what is it her husband interposed there there mother, he said hastily sit down and don't jump to conclusions it's not bad news, I'm sure sir and he eyed the other wistfully I'm sorry, began the visitor is he hurt, demanded the mother wildly the visitor bowed in ascent badly hurt, he said quietly but he is not in any pain oh thank God the old woman clasping her hands thank God for that, thank she broke off suddenly as the sinister meaning of the assurance dawned upon her and she saw the awful confirmation of her fears in her inverted face she caught her breath and turning to her slower-witted husband laid her trembling old hand upon his there was a long silence he was caught in the machinery said the visitor at length in a low voice caught in the machinery repeated Mr. White in a dazed fashion yes he sat staring blankly out of the window and taking his wife's hand between his own pressed it as he had been want to do in their old courting days nearly forty years before he was the only one left to us he said turning gently to the visitor it is hard the other coughed and rising walked slowly to the window the firm wished me to convey their sincere sympathy with you and your great loss he said without looking round I beg that you will understand I am only their servant in merely obeying orders there is no reply the woman's old face was white her eyes staring and her breath inaudible on the husband's face was a look such as his friend the sergeant might have carried into his first action I was to say that Ma and Megan's disclaim all responsibility continued the other they admit no liability at all but in consideration of your son's services they wish to present you with a certain sum as compensation Mr. White dropped his wife's hand and rising to his feet gazed with a look of horror at his visitor his dry lips shaped the words two hundred pounds was the answer unconscious of his wife's streak the old man smiled faintly put out his hands like a sightless man and dropped a senseless heap to the floor part three in the huge new cemetery some two miles distant the old people buried their dead and came back to a house steeped in shadow in silence it was all over so quickly that at first they could hardly realize it and remained in a state of expectation as though of something else to happen something else which was to lighten this load too heavy for old hearts to bear but the days passed and expectation gave place to resignation the hopeless resignation of the old sometimes miscalled apathy sometimes they hardly exchanged a word for now they had nothing to talk about and their days were long to weariness it was about a week after that that the old man waking suddenly in the night stretched out his hand and found himself alone the room was in darkness and the sound of subdued weeping came from the window he raised himself in bed and listened come back he said tenderly you will be cold it is colder for my son said the old woman and wept afresh the sound of her sobs died away on his ears the bed was warm and his eyes heavy with sleep he dozed fitfully and then slept until a sudden wild cry from his wife awoke him with a start the paw she cried wildly the monkey's paw and her arm where where is it what's the matter she came stumbling across the room toward him I want it she said quietly you've not destroyed it it's in the parlor on the bracket he replied marveling why she cried and laughed together and bending over kissed his cheek I only just thought of it she said hysterically why didn't I think of it before why didn't you think of it think of what he questioned the other two wishes she replied rapidly no she cried triumphantly we'll have one more go down and get it and wish our boy alive again the man sat up in bed and flung the bed close from his quaking limbs good god you are mad he cried aghast get it she panted get it quickly and wish oh my boy my boy her husband struck a match and lit the candle get back to bed he said unsteadily you don't know what you are saying we had the first wish granted said the old woman feverishly why not the second coincidence stammered the old man go and get it and wish cried his wife quivering with excitement the old man turned and regarded her and his voice shook he has been dead ten days and besides he I would not tell you else but I could only recognize him by his clothing if he was too terrible for you to see then how now bring him back cried the old woman and dragged him toward the door do you think I fear the child I have nursed he went down in darkness he went away to the parlor and then to the mantelpiece the talisman was in its place and a horrible fear that the unspoken wish might bring his mutilated son before him ere he could escape from the room seized upon him and he caught his breath as he found that he had lost the direction of the door his brow cold with sweat he felt his way around the table and groped along the wall until he found himself in the small passage with the unwholesome thing in his hand even his wife's face seemed changed as he entered the room it was white and expectant the tears seemed to have an unnatural look upon it he was afraid of her wish! she cried in a strong voice it is foolish and wicked he faltered wish! repeated his wife he raised his hand I wish my son alive again the talisman fell to the floor and he regarded it fearfully then he sank trembling into a chair as the old woman with burning eyes walked to the window and raised the blind he sat until he was chilled with cold glancing occasionally at the figure of the old woman peering through the window the candle-end which had burned below the rim of the china candlestick was throwing pulsating shadows on the ceiling and walls until with a flicker larger than the rest it expired the old man with an unspeakable sense of relief at the failure of the talisman crept back to his bed and a minute or two afterward the old woman came silently and apathetically beside him neither spoke but lay silently listening to the ticking of the clock a stare creaked and a squeaky mouse scurried noisily through the wall the darkness was oppressive and after lying for some time screwing up his courage he took the box of matches and striking one went downstairs for a candle at the foot of the stairs the match went out and he paused to strike another and at the same moment a knock so quiet and stealthily as to be scarcely audible sounded on the front door the matches fell from his hand and spilled in the passage he stood motionless his breath suspended until the knock was repeated then he turned and fled swiftly back to his room and closed the door behind him a third knock sounded through the house what's that? cried the old woman starting up a rat said the old man in shaking tones a rat it passed me on the stairs his wife sat up in bed listening a loud knock resounded through the house it's Herbert she screamed it's Herbert she ran to the door but her husband was before her and catching her by the arm held her tightly what are you going to do? he whispered hoarsely it's my boy it's Herbert she cried struggling mechanically I forgot it was two miles away what are you holding me for let me go I must open the door for God's sake don't let it in cried the old man trembling you're afraid of your own son she cried struggling let me go I'm coming Herbert I'm coming there was another knock and another the old woman with a sudden wrench broke free and ran from the room her husband followed to the landing and called after her appealingly as she hurried downstairs he heard the chain rattle back on the bottom bolt drawn slowly and stiffly from the socket the old woman's voice strained in panting the bolt she cried loudly come down I can't reach it but her husband was on his hands and knees groping wildly on the floor in search of the paw if he could only find it before the thing outside got in a perfect fuselage of knocks reverberated through the house and he heard the scraping of a chair as his wife put it down in the passage against the door he heard the creaking of the bolt as it came slowly back and at the same moment he found he practically breathed his third and last wish the knocking ceased suddenly although the echoes of it were still in the house he heard the chair drawn back and the door opened a cold wind rushed up the staircase and a long loud wail of disappointment and misery from his wife gave him courage to run down to her side and then to the gate beyond the street lamp flickering opposite shown on a quiet and deserted road End of The Monkey's Paw by W.W. Jacobs The Occupant of the Room by Algernon Blackwood This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information and to find out how you can volunteer please visit LibriVox.org The Occupant of the Room by Algernon Blackwood He arrived late at night by the yellow diligence stiff and cramped after the poilsome ascent of three slow hours The village, a single mass of shadow was already asleep only in front of the little hotel was their noise and light and bustle for a moment The horses with tired slouching gait crossed the road and disappeared into the stable of their own accord their harness trailing in the dust and the lumbering diligence stood for the night where they had dragged it the body of a great yellow-sided beetle with broken legs In spite of his physical weariness the schoolmaster rebelling in the first hours of his ten-getting holiday felt exhilarated for the high alpine valley was marvelously still Stars twinkled over the torn ridges of the dent de medie where spectral snows gleamed against rocks that looked like ebony and the keen air smelt of pine forest dew-soaked pastures and freshly sawn wood He took it all in with a kind of bewildered delight for a few minutes while the other three passengers gave directions about their luggage to the rooms Then he turned and walked over the course matting into the glare of the hall only just able to resist stopping to examine the big mountain map that hung upon the wall by the door With a sudden disagreeable shock he came down from the idea to the actual For at the inn the only inn there was no vacant room even the available sofas were occupied How stupid he had been to write Yet it had been impossible, he remembered, for he had come to decision suddenly that morning in Geneva enticed by the brilliance of the weather after a week of rain They talked endlessly this gold-braided porter and the hard-faced old woman Her face was hard, he noticed gesticulating all the time and pointing all about the village with suggestions that he ill-understood for his French was limited and their patois was fearful that they might find a room or there, but we are but as full more full than we care about Tomorrow, perhaps if so and so give up their rooms and then with much shrugging of shoulders the hard-faced old woman stared at the gold-braided porter and the porter stared sleepily at the schoolmaster At length, however, by some process of hope he did not himself understand and following directions that were utterly unintelligible he went out into the street and walked toward a dark group of houses she had pointed out to him He only knew that he meant to thunder at a door and ask for a room He was too weary to think out details The porter half made to go with him but turned back at the last moment to speak with the old woman The houses sketched themselves dimly in the general blackness The air was cold The whole valley was filled with the rush and thunder of falling water He was thinking vaguely that the dawn could not be very far away and that he might even spend the night wandering in the woods when there was a sharp noise behind him and he turned to see a figure hurrying after him It was the porter running and in the little hall of the inn there began a confused three-cornered conversation with frequently muttered colloquy and whispered a sigh in patois between the woman and the porter the net result of which was that if miss you did not object there was a room after all on the first floor only it was in a sense engaged that is to say but the schoolmaster took the room without inquiring too closely into the puzzle that had somehow provided it so suddenly The ethics of hotel keeping had nothing to do with him If the woman offered him quarters it was not for him to argue with her whether the said quarters were legitimately hers to offer but the porter evidently a little thrilled accompanied the guest up to the room and supplied in a mixture of French and English details admitted by the landlady and then turned the schoolmaster soon shared the thrill with him and found himself in the atmosphere of a possible tragedy All who know the peculiar excitement that belongs to lofty mountain valleys where dangerous climbing is a chief feature of the attractions will understand a certain faint element of high alarm that goes with the picture one looks up at the desolate soaring ridges and thinks involuntarily of the men who find their pleasure for days and nights together scaling perilous summits among the clouds and conquering inch by inch the icy peaks that forever shake their dark terror in the sky The atmosphere of adventure and horror of a very grim order of tragedy is inseparable from any imaginative contemplation of the scene and the idea men turn gleaned from the half frightened porter lost nothing by his ignorance of the language this English woman the real occupant of the room had insisted on going without a guide she had left just before daybreak two days before the porter had seen her start and she had not returned the route was difficult and dangerous yet not impossible for a skilled climber even a solitary one and the English woman was an experienced mountaineer also she was self-willed careless of advice bored by warnings self-confident to a degree where moreover for she kept entirely to herself and sometimes remained in her room with locked doors admitting no one for days together a crank evidently of the first water this much men turned gathered clearly enough from the porter's talk while his baggage was brought in and the room set to rights further too that the search party had gone out and might of course return at any moment in which case thus the room was empty yet still hers if miss you did not object if the risky ran of having to turn out suddenly in the night it was the loquacious porter who furnished the details that made the transaction questionable and men turned dismiss the loquacious porter as soon as possible and prepared to get into the hastily arranged bed and snatched all the hours of sleep he could before he was turned out at first it must be admitted he felt uncomfortable distinctly uncomfortable he was in someone else's room he had really no right to be there it was in the nature of an unwarrantable intrusion and while he unpacked he kept looking over shoulder as though someone were watching him from corners at any moment it seemed he would hear a step in the passage a knock would come at the door the door would open and there he would see this vigorous English woman looking him up and down with anger worse still he would hear her voice asking him what he was doing in her room her bedroom of course he had an adequate explanation but still then reflecting that he was already half undressed the humor of it flashed for a second across his mind and he laughed quietly at once after that laughter under his breath came the sudden sense of tragedy he had felt before perhaps even while he smiled her body lay broken and cold upon those awful heights the wind of snow playing over her hair her gazed eyes staring sightless up to the stars it made him shudder the sense of this woman whom he had never seen whose name even he did not know became extraordinarily real almost he could imagine that she was somewhere in the room with him hidden observing all he did he opened the door softly to put his boots outside and when he closed it again he turned the key then he finished unpacking and distributed a few things around the room it was soon done for in the first place he had only a small glass stone and a knapsack and secondly the only place where he could spread his clothes was the sofa there was no chest of drawers and the cupboard an unusually large and solid one was locked the English woman's things had evidently been hastily put away in it the only sign of her recent presence was a bunch of faded alpine rosin standing in a glass jar upon the handstand this and a certain faint perfume were all that remained in spite however of these very slight evidences the whole room was pervaded with a curious sense of occupancy that he found exceedingly distasteful one moment the atmosphere seemed subtly charged with a just left feeling the next it was a queer awareness of still here that made him turn and look hurriedly behind him altogether the room inspired him with a singular aversion and the strength of this aversion seemed the only excuse for his tossing the faded flowers out of the window and then hanging his Macintosh upon the cupboard door in such a way as to screen it as much as possible from view for the sight of that big ugly cupboard filled with the clothing of a woman who might then be beyond any further need of covering thus his imagination insisted on picturing it touched in him a startled sense of the incongruous that did not stop there but crept through his mind gradually till it merged somehow into a sense of a rather grotesque horror at any rate the sight of that cupboard was offensive and he covered it almost instinctively then turning out the electric light he got into bed but the instant the room was dark he realized that it was more than he could stand for with the blackness there came a sudden rush of cold that he found it hard to explain and the odd thing was that when he let the candle beside his bed he noticed that his hand trembled this of course was too much his imagination was taking liberties and must be called to heal yet the way he called to order was significant and its very deliberateness betrayed a mind that has already admitted fear and fear once in this lodge he lay there upon his elbow in bed and carefully took note of all the objects in the room with the intention as it were of taking an inventory of everything his senses perceived then drawing a line adding them up finally and saying with decision that's all the room contains I've counted every single thing there is nothing more now I may sleep in peace and it was during this absurd process of enumerating the furniture of the room that the dreadful sense of distressing lecissitude came over him that made it difficult even to finish counting it came swiftly yet with an amazing kind of violence that overwhelmed him softly and easily with a sensation of innervating weariness hard to describe and its first effect was to banish fear he no longer possessed enough energy to feel really afraid or nervous the cold remained but the alarm vanished and into every corner of his usually vigorous personality crept the insidious poison of a muscular fatigue at first that in a few seconds it seemed translated itself into spiritual inertia a sudden consciousness of the foolishness the crass futility of life of effort of fighting of all that makes life worth living oozed into every fiber of his being and left him utterly weak a spit of black pessimism that was not even vigorous enough to assert itself invaded the secret chambers of his heart every picture that presented itself to his mind came dressed gray shadows those bored and sweating horses toiling up the ascent to nothing that hard-faced landlady taking so much trouble to let her desire for gain conquer her sense of morality for a few francs that gold-rated porter so talkative, fussy, energetic and so anxious to tell all he knew what was the use of them all and for himself what in the world was the good of all the labor and drudgery he went through in that preparatory school where he was junior master what could it lead to wherein lay the value of so much uncertain toil when the ultimate secrets of life were hidden and no one knew the final goal how foolish was effort, discipline, work how vain was pleasure how trivial the noblest life with a jump that nearly upset the candle men turned challenged this weak mood such vicious thoughts were usually so remote from his normal character that the sudden vile invasion produced a swift reaction yet only for a moment instantly again the depression descended upon him like a wave his work could lead to nothing but the dreary labor of a small head-mastership after all seemed as vain and foolhardy as his holiday in the Alps what an idiot he had been to be sure to come out with a knapsack merely to work himself into a state of exhaustion climbing over toilsome mountains that led to nowhere resulted in nothing a dreariness of the grave possessed him life was a ghastly fraud religion a childish humbug everything was merely a trap a trap of death a colored coy that nature used as a decoy but a decoy for what? for nothing there was no meaning in anything the only real thing was death and the happiest people were those who found it soonest then why wait for it to come he sprang out of bed thoroughly frightened this was horrible surely mere physical fatigue could not produce a world of black and outlooks abysmal a cowardice that struck with rich sudden hopelessness at the very roots of life for normally he was cheerful and strong full of the tides of healthy living and this appalling lecissitude swept the very basis of his personality into nothingness and the desire for death it was like the development of a secondary personality he had read of course how certain persons who suffered shocks developed thereafter entirely different characteristics memory, taste, and so forth it had all rather frightened him though scientific men vouched for it it was hardly to be believed yet here was a similar thing taking place in his own consciousness he was beyond question experiencing all the mental variations of someone else it was immoral it was awful well after all at the same time it was uncommonly interesting and this interest he began to feel was the first sign of his returned normal self but to feel interest is to live and to love life he sprang into the middle of the room then switched on the electric light and the first thing that struck his eye was the big cupboard hello there's that beastly cupboard he exclaimed to himself involuntarily yet aloud it held all the clothes, the ringing skirts and coats and summer blouses of the dead woman for he knew now, somehow or other that she was dead at that moment through the open windows rushed the sound of falling water bringing with it a vivid realization of the best let snow swept heights he saw her positively saw her lying where she had fallen the frost upon her cheeks, the snow dust eddying about her hair and eyes her broken limbs pushing against the lumps of ice for a moment the sense of spiritual lecissitude of the emptiness of life vanished before this picture of broken effort of a small human force battling pluckily yet in vain against the impersonal and pitiless potencies of inanimate nature and he found himself again his normal self then instantly returned again that terrible sense of cold nothingness emptiness and he found himself standing opposite the big cupboard where her clothes were he suddenly wanted to see those clothes things she had used and worn quite close he stood almost touching it the next second he had touched it his knuckle struck upon the wood why he knocked is hard to say it was an instinctive movement probably something in his deepest self dictated it ordered it he knocked at the door and the dull sound upon the wood into the stillness of that room brought horror why should it have done so he founded as hard to explain to himself as why he should have felt impelled to knock the fact remains that when he heard the faint reverberation inside the cupboard it brought with it so vivid a realization of the woman's presence that he stood there shivering upon the floor with a dreadful sense of anticipation he almost expected to hear an answering knock from within the rustling of hanging skirts perhaps were still to see the locked door slowly open toward him and from that moment he declares that in some way or other he must have partially lost control of himself or at least of his better judgment for he became possessed by such an over mastering desire to tear open that cupboard door and see the clothes within that he tried every key on the room in the vain effort to unlock it and then finally before he quite realized what he was doing rang the bell but having rung the bell for no obvious or intelligent reason at two o'clock in the morning he then stood waiting in the middle of the floor for the servant to come conscious for the first time that something outside his ordinary self had pushed him toward the act it was almost like an internal voice that directed him and thus when at last deft came down the passage and he faced the cross and sleepy chambermaid amazed at being summoned at such an hour he found no difficulty in the matter of what he should say for the same power that insisted he should open the cupboard door also impelled him to utter words over which he apparently had no control it's not you I rang for he said with decision and impatience I want the man wake the porter and send him up to me at once hurry! and when the girl had gone frightened at his earnestness men turned realize that the words surprised himself as much as they surprised her until they were out of his mouth he had not known exactly what he was saying but now he understood that some force foreign to his own personality was using his mind and organs the black depression that had possessed him a few moments before was also part of it the powerful mood of this banished woman had somehow momentarily taken possession of him communicated possibly by the atmosphere of things in the room still belonging to her but even now when the porter without coat or collar stood beside him in the room he did not understand why he insisted for the positive fury admitting no denial that the key of that cupboard must be found and the door instantly opened the scene was a curious one after some perplexed whispering with the chamber maid at the end of the passage the porter managed to find to produce the key in question neither he nor the girl knew clearly what this excited Englishman was up to or why he was so passionately intent upon opening the cupboard at two o'clock in the morning they watched him with an air of wondering what was going to happen next but something of his curious earnestness even of his late fear communicated itself to them when the sound of the key grating in the lock made them both jump they held their breath as the creaking door swung slowly open all heard the clatter of that other key as it fell against the wooden floor within the cupboard had been locked from the inside but it was the scared housemaid from her position in the corridor her first saw and with a wild scream crashing against the banisters the porter made no attempt to save her the schoolmaster and himself made a simultaneous rush towards the door now wide open they too had seen there were no clothes skirts or blouses on the pegs but they saw the body of the Englishwoman suspended in midair the head bent forward jarred by the movement of unlocking the body swung slowly round to face them pinned upon the inside of the door was a hotel envelope with the following words penciled in straggling writing tired unhappy hopelessly depressed I cannot face life any longer all is black I must put an end to it I meant to do it on the mountains but was afraid I slipped back to my room I'm observed this way is easiest and best end of the occupant of the room by Algernon Blackwood