In the Shadow of the Master (6 page)

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 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 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 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 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 crowbar 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 relaid 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 brick-work. When I had finished, I felt satisfied that all was right. The wall did not present the slightest appearance of having been disturbed. The rubbish on the floor was picked up with the minutest care. I looked around triumphantly, and said to myself: “Here at least, then, my labor has not been in vain.”

My next step was to look for the beast which had been the cause of so much wretchedness; for I had, at length, firmly resolved to put it to death. Had I been able to meet with it at the moment, there could have been no doubt of its fate; but it appeared that the crafty animal had been alarmed at the violence of my previous anger, and 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; 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 for ever! 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 wellconstructed house,” (in the rabid desire to say something easily, I scarcely knew what I uttered at all),-“I may say an
excellently
wellconstructed 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 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 scream, utterly anomalous and inhuman-a howl-a wailing shriek, half of horror and half of triumph, such as might have arisen only out of hell, conjointly from the throats of the damned in their agony and of the demons that exult in the damnation.

Of my own thoughts it is folly to speak. Swooning, I staggered to the opposite wall. For one instant the party upon the stairs remained motionless, through extremity of terror and of awe. In the next a dozen stout arms were 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!

The homeless man cornered us outside the supermarket. “I found this in the Dumpster,” he said, pointing to his dirty plaid shirt.

Poking out of his pocket was a kitten’s head.

“I got no place for it,” he said. “Can you give it a home?” The tiny beast was wet with blood. It was dying.

My husband took it and handed the man a twenty. It was late on a Saturday night, but we drove to the emergency vet. An hour and two hundred dollars later, the vet sent us on our way with the kitten.

It was fine, he said, just starving and missing an eye.

Cleaned up, the kitten didn’t look that bad. It quickly grew fat and found its rank among our eight other cats.

“What should we name it?” my husband asked.

“Pluto,” I said.

Which is, of course, the name of the tortured feline in Edgar

Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat.” Not that I was any expert on Poe then.

Far from it. Like most people, my first guide to Poe was B-director Roger Corman (Ray Milland in
Premature Burial
drinking maggots from a wine goblet!). My next guide was Professor Schneider, whose Introduction to American Literature course had me shoehorning the Poe short stories in between Twain and Hawthorne.

I remember finding “The Black Cat” dense and difficult. I had to look up a lot of words. I couldn’t figure out what was going on. And what was the deal with this guy gouging out his cat’s eye and planting an ax in his wife’s head after claiming he adored them both? Was he a liar, confused, drunk, or just plain nuts?

Like most critics of Poe’s day-Yeats called him “vulgar”-I was underwhelmed.

I didn’t cross paths with “The Black Cat” for decades, writing it-and its creator-off as archaic and lightweight. It was only after I started writing fiction that I gave Poe a second chance. Although I had published a handful of crime novels, I was struggling with my first short story. Pluto was sitting on my lap at the computer one day as I stared at the blank screen. He wasn’t the one who Googled “The Black Cat,” but damn, wouldn’t that have made a great Poe twist? I was floored by the story and went on to read others. Poe hadn’t gotten better; I had just gotten older. The Saturday-matinee Poe who scared the Jujubes out of me as a kid scared me in a completely different way as an adult. Now I could understand the thin line between promise and disappointment. Now I could imagine the terror of a mind unbalanced by demons or drink. Now I could see the rich mix of emotions, the delicate dance between the romantic and the macabre, the real and the supernatural. And as a writer, now I could appreciate the complex construction of Poe’s puzzles and his use of what he called “the vivid effect” to grab the reader’s emotions. What modern storyteller worth her salt doesn’t strive to do that? All writers today-crime, horror, romance, yes, even literary – owe him a debt. My favorite author, Joyce Carol Oates, asks in the afterword of her short-story collection
Haunted:
“Who has not been influenced by Poe?” Oates herself wrote a Poe paean called “The Pluto's Heritage White Cat” in which a husband becomes murderously jealous of his wife’s Persian cat.

Writers can learn much from him still.

As for readers, there is much to savor in this sly little tale.

First, it is a very modern detective story, but one in which you, the reader, must follow the bread-crumb trail of clues. Why did this man kill his wife? You have to peel back the psychological layers of the killer’s behavior-shades of
Silence of the Lambs
!-to find meaning for a brutal murder when none seems to exist.

Second, it is a chilling study of domestic violence, perversity, and guilt. Compare it with its bookend story, “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the other great example in this collection. Both narrators deny that they are insane-but are they?

Third, “The Black Cat” is one of the first stories to use “the unreliable narrator.” (This is when bias, instability, limited knowledge, or deliberate deceit makes the storyteller suspect.) With one line- “I neither expect nor solicit belief”-Poe paved the way for Nick Carraway in Fitzgerald’s
The Great Gatsby,
the governess in Henry James’s
The Turn of the Screw,
Dr. Sheppard in Agatha Christie’s
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd,
the cook in Dean Koontz’s
Odd Thomas,
and Teddy Daniels in Dennis Lehane’s
Shutter Island
.

Fourth, “The Black Cat” is an early example of genre-crossing. Poe is known for horror, but in this story he blurs the line between realism and the supernatural. The paranormal, reincarnation, horror, mystery-it’s all there and more.

And last? Well, it
is
the first cat mystery.

Which brings us back to Pluto. Mine is still hale and hearty at fourteen. The fictional Pluto, of course, dies horribly. Which didn’t really bother me-until I started writing fiction. See, there’s an axiom among mystery writers: kill an animal and your readers will turn on you.

Poe adored cats in real life. His beloved tabby Catarina even inspired him to write a scientific essay, “Instinct vs. Reason-A Black Cat.”

Still, when he put pen to paper, he wasn’t afraid to kill the cat. You have to admire a writer who takes big risks.

P. J. Parrish, a.k.a. Kristy Montee, is the author (with her sister Kelly Nichols) of two series of crime novels featuring biracial private eye Louis Kincaid and female homicide detective Joe Frye. Their books are
New York Times
best-sellers and have won awards from the Private Eye Writers of America and International Thriller Writers. Their short stories have appeared in
Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine,
in Mystery Writers of America ’s anthologies, and in Akashic Books’
Detroit Noir.
Like Poe, Kris has a love of wine and cats, an appreciation of all that is grotesque and depressing, and a distrust of critics (even though she once earned a living as one). Unfortunately, that is the limit of her kinship to Poe-unless one counts the fact that her second book was nominated for an Edgar.

LET ME CALL MYSELF, for the present, William Wilson. The fair page now lying before me need not be sullied with my real appellation. This has been already too much an object for the scorn-for the horror-for the detestation of my race. To the uttermost regions of the globe have not the indignant winds bruited its unparalleled infamy? Oh, outcast of all outcasts most abandoned!-to the earth art thou not for ever dead? to its honors, to its flowers, to its golden aspirations?-and a cloud, dense, dismal, and limitless, does it not hang eternally between thy hopes and heaven?

I would not, if I could, here or to-day, embody a record of my later years of unspeakable misery, and unpardonable crime. This epoch-these later years-took unto themselves a sudden elevation in turpitude, whose origin alone it is my present purpose to assign. Men usually grow base by degrees. From me, in an instant, all virtue dropped bodily as a mantle. From comparatively trivial wickedness I passed, with the stride of a giant, into more than the enormities of an Elah-Gabalus. What chance-what one event brought this evil thing to pass, bear with me while I relate. Death approaches; and the shadow which foreruns him has thrown a softening influence over my spirit. I long, in passing through the dim valley, for the sympathy-I had nearly said for the pity-of my fellow men. I would fain have them believe that I have been, in some measure, the slave of circumstances beyond human control. I would wish them to seek out for me, in the details I am about to give, some little oasis of
fatality
amid a wilderness of error. I would have them allow-what they cannot refrain from allowing-that, although temptation may have erewhile existed as great, man was never
thus,
at least, tempted before-certainly, never
thus
fell. And is it therefore that he has never thus suffered? Have I not indeed been living in a dream? And am I not now dying a victim to the horror and the mystery of the wildest of all sublunary visions?

I am the descendant of a race whose imaginative and easily excitable temperament has at all times rendered them remarkable; and, in my earliest infancy, I gave evidence of having fully inherited the family character. As I advanced in years it was more strongly developed; becoming, for many reasons, a cause of serious disquietude to my friends, and of positive injury to myself. I grew self-willed, addicted to the wildest caprices, and a prey to the most ungovernable passions. Weak-minded, and beset with constitutional infirmities akin to my own, my parents could do but little to check the evil propensities which distinguished me. Some feeble and ill-directed efforts resulted in complete failure on their part, and, of course, in total triumph on mine. Thenceforward my voice was a household law; and at an age when few children have abandoned their leadingstrings, I was left to the guidance of my own will, and became, in all but name, the master of my own actions.

My earliest recollections of a school-life, are connected with a large, rambling, Elizabethan house, in a misty-looking village of England, where were a vast number of gigantic and gnarled trees, and where all the houses were excessively ancient. In truth, it was a dream-like and spirit-soothing place, that venerable old town. At this moment, in fancy, I feel the refreshing chilliness of its deeplyshadowed avenues, inhale the fragrance of its thousand shrubberies, and thrill anew with undefinable delight, at the deep hollow note of the church-bell, breaking, each hour, with sullen and sudden roar, upon the stillness of the dusky atmosphere in which the fretted Gothic steeple lay imbedded and asleep.

It gives me, perhaps, as much of pleasure as I can now in any manner experience, to dwell upon minute recollections of the school and its concerns. Steeped in misery as I am-misery, alas! only too real-I shall be pardoned for seeking relief, however slight and temporary, in the weakness of a few rambling details. These, moreover, utterly trivial, and even ridiculous in themselves, assume, to my fancy, adventitious importance, as connected with a period and a locality when and where I recognize the first ambiguous monitions of the destiny which afterward so fully overshadowed me. Let me then remember.

The house, I have said, was old and irregular. The grounds were extensive, and a high and solid brick wall, topped with a bed of mortar and broken glass, encompassed the whole. This prison-like rampart formed the limit of our domain; beyond it we saw but thrice a week-once every Saturday afternoon, when, attended by two ushers, we were permitted to take brief walks in a body through some of the neighbouring fields-and twice during Sunday, when we were paraded in the same formal manner to the morning and evening service in the one church of the village. Of this church the principal of our school was pastor. With how deep a spirit of wonder and perplexity was I wont to regard him from our remote pew in the gallery, as, with step solemn and slow, he ascended the pulpit! This reverend man, with countenance so demurely benign, with robes so glossy and so clerically flowing, with wig so minutely powdered, so rigid and so vast,-could this be he who, of late, with sour visage, and in snuffy habiliments, administered, ferule in hand, the Draconian Laws of the academy? Oh, gigantic paradox, too utterly monstrous for solution!

At an angle of the ponderous wall frowned a more ponderous gate. It was riveted and studded with iron bolts, and surmounted with jagged iron spikes. What impressions of deep awe did it inspire! It was never opened save for the three periodical egressions and ingressions already mentioned; then, in every creak of its mighty hinges, we found a plenitude of mystery-a world of matter for solemn remark, or for more solemn meditation.

The extensive enclosure was irregular in form, having many capacious recesses. Of these, three or four of the largest constituted the play-ground. It was level, and covered with fine hard gravel. I well remember it had no trees, nor benches, nor any thing similar within it. Of course it was in the rear of the house. In front lay a small parterre, planted with box and other shrubs, but through this sacred division we passed only upon rare occasions indeed-such as a first advent to school or final departure thence, or perhaps, when a parent or friend having called for us, we joyfully took our way home for the Christmas or Midsummer holidays.

But the house!-how quaint an old building was this!-to me how veritably a palace of enchantment! There was really no end to its windings-to its incomprehensible subdivisions. It was difficult, at any given time, to say with certainty upon which of its two stories one happened to be. From each room to every other there were sure to be found three or four steps either in ascent or descent. Then the lateral branches were innumerable-inconceivable-and so returning in upon themselves, that our most exact ideas in regard to the whole mansion were not very far different from those with which we pondered upon infinity. During the five years of my residence here, I was never able to ascertain with precision, in what remote locality lay the little sleeping apartment assigned to myself and some eighteen or twenty other scholars.

The school-room was the largest in the house-I could not help thinking, in the world. It was very long, narrow, and dismally low, with pointed Gothic windows and a ceiling of oak. In a remote and terror-inspiring angle was a square enclosure of eight or ten feet, comprising the
sanctum,
“during hours,” of our principal, the Reverend Dr. Bransby. It was a solid structure, with massy door, sooner than open which in the absence of the “Dominie,” we would all have willingly perished by the
peine forte et dure
. In other angles were two other similar boxes, far less reverenced, indeed, but still greatly matters of awe. One of these was the pulpit of the “classical” usher, one of the “English and mathematical.” Interspersed about the room, crossing and recrossing in endless irregularity, were innumerable benches and desks, black, ancient, and time-worn, piled desperately with much bethumbed books, and so beseamed with initial letters, names at full length, grotesque figures, and other multiplied efforts of the knife, as to have entirely lost what little of original form might have been their portion in days long departed. A huge bucket with water stood at one extremity of the room, and a clock of stupendous dimensions at the other.

Encompassed by the massy walls of this venerable academy, I passed, yet not in tedium or disgust, the years of the third lustrum of my life. The teeming brain of childhood requires no external world of incident to occupy or amuse it; and the apparently dismal monotony of a school was replete with more intense excitement than my riper youth has derived from luxury, or my full manhood from crime. Yet I must believe that my first mental development had in it much of the uncommon-even much of the
outré
. Upon mankind at large the events of very early existence rarely leave in mature age any definite impression. All is gray shadow-a weak and irregular remembrance-an indistinct regathering of feeble pleasures and phantasmagoric pains. With me this is not so. In childhood I must have felt with the energy of a man what I now find stamped upon memory in lines as vivid, as deep, and as durable as the
exergues
of the Carthaginian medals.

Yet in fact-in the fact of the world’s view-how little was there to remember! The morning’s awakening, the nightly summons to bed; the connings, the recitations; the periodical half-holidays, and perambulations; the play-ground, with its broils, its pastimes, its intrigues;-these, by a mental sorcery long forgotten, were made to involve a wilderness of sensation, a world of rich incident, an universe of varied emotion, of excitement the most passionate and spirit-stirring.
“Oh, le bon temps, que ce siècle de fer!”

In truth, the ardor, the enthusiasm, and the imperiousness of my disposition, soon rendered me a marked character among my schoolmates, and by slow, but natural gradations, gave me an ascendancy over all not greatly older than myself;-over all with a single exception. This exception was found in the person of a scholar, who, although no relation, bore the same Christian and surname as myself;-a circumstance, in fact, little remarkable; for, notwithstanding a noble descent, mine was one of those everyday appellations which seem, by prescriptive right, to have been, time out of mind, the common property of the mob. In this narrative I have therefore designated myself as William Wilson,-a fictitious title not very dissimilar to the real. My namesake alone, of those who in school phraseology constituted “our set,” presumed to compete with me in the studies of the class-in the sports and broils of the playground-to refuse implicit belief in my assertions, and submission to my will-indeed, to interfere with my arbitrary dictation in any respect whatsoever. If there is on earth a supreme and unqualified despotism, it is the despotism of a mastermind in boyhood over the less energetic spirits of its companions.

Wilson’s rebellion was to me a source of the greatest embarrassment; the more so as, in spite of the bravado with which in public I made a point of treating him and his pretensions, I secretly felt that I feared him, and could not help thinking the equality which he maintained so easily with myself, a proof of his true superiority; since not to be overcome, cost me a perpetual struggle. Yet this superiority- even this equality-was in truth acknowledged by no one but myself; our associates, by some unaccountable blindness, seemed not even to suspect it. Indeed, his competition, his resistance, and especially his impertinent and dogged interference with my purposes, were not more pointed than private. He appeared to be destitute alike of the ambition which urged, and of the passionate energy of mind which enabled me to excel. In his rivalry he might have been supposed actuated solely by a whimsical desire to thwart, astonish, or mortify myself; although there were times when I could not help observing, with a feeling made up of wonder, abasement, and pique, that he mingled with his injuries, his insults, or his contradictions, a certain most inappropriate, and assuredly most unwelcome
affectionateness
of manner. I could only conceive this singular behavior to arise from a consummate self-conceit assuming the vulgar airs of patronage and protection.

Perhaps it was this latter trait in Wilson’s conduct, conjoined with our identity of name, and the mere accident of our having entered the school upon the same day, which set afloat the notion that we were brothers, among the senior classes in the academy. These do not usually inquire with much strictness into the affairs of their juniors. I have before said, or should have said, that Wilson was not, in a most remote degree, connected with my family. But assuredly if we
had
been brothers we must have been twins; for, after leaving Dr. Bransby’s, I casually learned that my namesake was born on the nineteenth of January, 1813-and this is a somewhat remarkable coincidence; for the day is precisely that of my own nativity.

It may seem strange that in spite of the continual anxiety occasioned me by the rivalry of Wilson, and his intolerable spirit of contradiction, I could not bring myself to hate him altogether. We had, to be sure, nearly every day a quarrel in which, yielding me publicly the palm of victory, he, in some manner, contrived to make me feel that it was he who had deserved it; yet a sense of pride on my part, and a veritable dignity on his own, kept us always upon what are called “speaking terms,” while there were many points of strong congeniality in our tempers, operating to awake me in a sentiment which our position alone, perhaps, prevented from ripening into friendship. It is difficult, indeed, to define, or even to describe, my real feelings towards him. They formed a motley and heterogeneous admixture;-some petulant animosity, which was not yet hatred, some esteem, more respect, much fear, with a world of uneasy curiosity. To the moralist it will be unnecessary to say, in addition, that Wilson and myself were the most inseparable of companions.