The Slender Poe Anthology (23 page)

It were an easy matter to multiply such histories as these
—
but I
forbear
—
for, indeed, we have no need of such to establish the fact that
premature interments occur. When we reflect how very rarely, from the
nature of the case, we have it in our power to detect them, we must
admit that they may
frequently
occur without our cognizance. Scarcely,
in truth, is a graveyard ever encroached upon, for any purpose, to any
great extent, that skeletons are not found in postures which suggest the
most fearful of suspicions.

Fearful indeed the suspicion
—
but more fearful the doom! It may be
asserted, without hesitation, that
no
event is so terribly well adapted
to inspire the supremeness of bodily and of mental distress, as is
burial before death. The unendurable oppression of the lungs
—
the
stifling fumes from the damp earth
—
the clinging to the death
garments
—
the rigid embrace of the narrow house
—
the blackness of the
absolute Night
—
the silence like a sea that overwhelms
—
the unseen but
palpable presence of the Conqueror Worm
—
these things, with the thoughts
of the air and grass above, with memory of dear friends who would fly to
save us if but informed of our fate, and with consciousness that of this
fate they can
never
be informed
—
that our hopeless portion is that of
the really dead
—
these considerations, I say, carry into the heart,
which still palpitates, a degree of appalling and intolerable horror
from which the most daring imagination must recoil. We know of nothing
so agonizing upon Earth
—
we can dream of nothing half so hideous in the
realms of the nethermost Hell. And thus all narratives upon this topic
have an interest profound; an interest, nevertheless, which, through
the sacred awe of the topic itself, very properly and very peculiarly
depends upon our conviction of the
truth
of the matter narrated. What I
have now to tell is of my own actual knowledge
—
of my own positive and
personal experience.

For several years I had been subject to attacks of the singular disorder
which physicians have agreed to term catalepsy, in default of a more
definitive title. Although both the immediate and the predisposing
causes, and even the actual diagnosis, of this disease are still
mysterious, its obvious and apparent character is sufficiently well
understood. Its variations seem to be chiefly of degree. Sometimes the
patient lies, for a day only, or even for a shorter period, in a species
of exaggerated lethargy. He is senseless and externally motionless; but
the pulsation of the heart is still faintly perceptible; some traces of
warmth remain; a slight color lingers within the centre of the cheek;
and, upon application of a mirror to the lips, we can detect a torpid,
unequal, and vacillating action of the lungs. Then again the duration
of the trance is for weeks
—
even for months; while the closest scrutiny,
and the most rigorous medical tests, fail to establish any material
distinction between the state of the sufferer and what we conceive of
absolute death. Very usually he is saved from premature interment solely
by the knowledge of his friends that he has been previously subject to
catalepsy, by the consequent suspicion excited, and, above all, by
the non-appearance of decay. The advances of the malady are, luckily,
gradual. The first manifestations, although marked, are unequivocal. The
fits grow successively more and more distinctive, and endure each for a
longer term than the preceding. In this lies the principal security from
inhumation. The unfortunate whose first attack should be of the extreme
character which is occasionally seen, would almost inevitably be
consigned alive to the tomb.

My own case differed in no important particular from those mentioned in
medical books. Sometimes, without any apparent cause, I sank, little by
little, into a condition of hemi-syncope, or half swoon; and, in this
condition, without pain, without ability to stir, or, strictly speaking,
to think, but with a dull lethargic consciousness of life and of the
presence of those who surrounded my bed, I remained, until the crisis of
the disease restored me, suddenly, to perfect sensation. At other
times I was quickly and impetuously smitten. I grew sick, and numb, and
chilly, and dizzy, and so fell prostrate at once. Then, for weeks, all
was void, and black, and silent, and Nothing became the universe.
Total annihilation could be no more. From these latter attacks I awoke,
however, with a gradation slow in proportion to the suddenness of the
seizure. Just as the day dawns to the friendless and houseless beggar
who roams the streets throughout the long desolate winter night
—
just
so tardily
—
just so wearily
—
just so cheerily came back the light of the
Soul to me.

Apart from the tendency to trance, however, my general health appeared
to be good; nor could I perceive that it was at all affected by the one
prevalent malady
—
unless, indeed, an idiosyncrasy in my ordinary
sleep
may be looked upon as superinduced. Upon awaking from slumber, I could
never gain, at once, thorough possession of my senses, and always
remained, for many minutes, in much bewilderment and perplexity;
—
the
mental faculties in general, but the memory in especial, being in a
condition of absolute abeyance.

In all that I endured there was no physical suffering but of moral
distress an infinitude. My fancy grew charnel, I talked “of worms, of
tombs, and epitaphs.” I was lost in reveries of death, and the idea
of premature burial held continual possession of my brain. The ghastly
Danger to which I was subjected haunted me day and night. In the former,
the torture of meditation was excessive
—
in the latter, supreme. When
the grim Darkness overspread the Earth, then, with every horror of
thought, I shook
—
shook as the quivering plumes upon the hearse. When
Nature could endure wakefulness no longer, it was with a struggle that
I consented to sleep
—
for I shuddered to reflect that, upon awaking, I
might find myself the tenant of a grave. And when, finally, I sank into
slumber, it was only to rush at once into a world of phantasms, above
which, with vast, sable, overshadowing wings, hovered, predominant, the
one sepulchral Idea.

From the innumerable images of gloom which thus oppressed me in dreams,
I select for record but a solitary vision. Methought I was immersed in
a cataleptic trance of more than usual duration and profundity. Suddenly
there came an icy hand upon my forehead, and an impatient, gibbering
voice whispered the word “Arise!” within my ear.

I sat erect. The darkness was total. I could not see the figure of him
who had aroused me. I could call to mind neither the period at which I
had fallen into the trance, nor the locality in which I then lay. While
I remained motionless, and busied in endeavors to collect my thought,
the cold hand grasped me fiercely by the wrist, shaking it petulantly,
while the gibbering voice said again:

“Arise! did I not bid thee arise?”

“And who,” I demanded, “art thou?”

“I have no name in the regions which I inhabit,” replied the voice,
mournfully; “I was mortal, but am fiend. I was merciless, but am
pitiful. Thou dost feel that I shudder.
—
My teeth chatter as I speak,
yet it is not with the chilliness of the night
—
of the night without
end. But this hideousness is insufferable. How canst thou tranquilly
sleep? I cannot rest for the cry of these great agonies. These sights
are more than I can bear. Get thee up! Come with me into the outer
Night, and let me unfold to thee the graves. Is not this a spectacle of
woe?
—
Behold!”

I looked; and the unseen figure, which still grasped me by the wrist,
had caused to be thrown open the graves of all mankind, and from each
issued the faint phosphoric radiance of decay, so that I could see into
the innermost recesses, and there view the shrouded bodies in their
sad and solemn slumbers with the worm. But alas! the real sleepers were
fewer, by many millions, than those who slumbered not at all; and there
was a feeble struggling; and there was a general sad unrest; and from
out the depths of the countless pits there came a melancholy rustling
from the garments of the buried. And of those who seemed tranquilly
to repose, I saw that a vast number had changed, in a greater or less
degree, the rigid and uneasy position in which they had originally been
entombed. And the voice again said to me as I gazed:

“Is it not
—
oh! is it not a pitiful sight?”
—
but, before I could find
words to reply, the figure had ceased to grasp my wrist, the phosphoric
lights expired, and the graves were closed with a sudden violence, while
from out them arose a tumult of despairing cries, saying again: “Is it
not
—
O, God, is it
not
a very pitiful sight?”

Phantasies such as these, presenting themselves at night, extended their
terrific influence far into my waking hours. My nerves became thoroughly
unstrung, and I fell a prey to perpetual horror. I hesitated to ride, or
to walk, or to indulge in any exercise that would carry me from home.
In fact, I no longer dared trust myself out of the immediate presence
of those who were aware of my proneness to catalepsy, lest, falling into
one of my usual fits, I should be buried before my real condition could
be ascertained. I doubted the care, the fidelity of my dearest friends.
I dreaded that, in some trance of more than customary duration, they
might be prevailed upon to regard me as irrecoverable. I even went so
far as to fear that, as I occasioned much trouble, they might be glad to
consider any very protracted attack as sufficient excuse for getting rid
of me altogether. It was in vain they endeavored to reassure me by the
most solemn promises. I exacted the most sacred oaths, that under no
circumstances they would bury me until decomposition had so materially
advanced as to render farther preservation impossible. And, even
then, my mortal terrors would listen to no reason
—
would accept no
consolation. I entered into a series of elaborate precautions. Among
other things, I had the family vault so remodelled as to admit of being
readily opened from within. The slightest pressure upon a long lever
that extended far into the tomb would cause the iron portal to fly back.
There were arrangements also for the free admission of air and light,
and convenient receptacles for food and water, within immediate reach of
the coffin intended for my reception. This coffin was warmly and softly
padded, and was provided with a lid, fashioned upon the principle of the
vault-door, with the addition of springs so contrived that the feeblest
movement of the body would be sufficient to set it at liberty. Besides
all this, there was suspended from the roof of the tomb, a large bell,
the rope of which, it was designed, should extend through a hole in the
coffin, and so be fastened to one of the hands of the corpse. But, alas?
what avails the vigilance against the Destiny of man? Not even these
well-contrived securities sufficed to save from the uttermost agonies of
living inhumation, a wretch to these agonies foredoomed!

There arrived an epoch
—
as often before there had arrived
—
in which I
found myself emerging from total unconsciousness into the first
feeble and indefinite sense of existence. Slowly
—
with a tortoise
gradation
—
approached the faint gray dawn of the psychal day. A torpid
uneasiness. An apathetic endurance of dull pain. No care
—
no hope
—
no
effort. Then, after a long interval, a ringing in the ears; then,
after a lapse still longer, a prickling or tingling sensation in the
extremities; then a seemingly eternal period of pleasurable quiescence,
during which the awakening feelings are struggling into thought; then a
brief re-sinking into non-entity; then a sudden recovery. At length the
slight quivering of an eyelid, and immediately thereupon, an electric
shock of a terror, deadly and indefinite, which sends the blood in
torrents from the temples to the heart. And now the first positive
effort to think. And now the first endeavor to remember. And now a
partial and evanescent success. And now the memory has so far regained
its dominion, that, in some measure, I am cognizant of my state. I feel
that I am not awaking from ordinary sleep. I recollect that I have been
subject to catalepsy. And now, at last, as if by the rush of an ocean,
my shuddering spirit is overwhelmed by the one grim Danger
—
by the one
spectral and ever-prevalent idea.

For some minutes after this fancy possessed me, I remained without
motion. And why? I could not summon courage to move. I dared not
make the effort which was to satisfy me of my fate
—
and yet there was
something at my heart which whispered me
it was sure
. Despair
—
such as
no other species of wretchedness ever calls into being
—
despair alone
urged me, after long irresolution, to uplift the heavy lids of my eyes.
I uplifted them. It was dark
—
all dark. I knew that the fit was over. I
knew that the crisis of my disorder had long passed. I knew that I
had now fully recovered the use of my visual faculties
—
and yet it was
dark
—
all dark
—
the intense and utter raylessness of the Night that
endureth for evermore.