Extraordinary Tales (2013)

[bunniefuu]

Well...

if it isn't my good friend,

The Poet.

I can't say I'm surprised

to find you here.

Whose grave are

you visiting today?

Who's there?

Weeping at the same

grave over again?

Why didn't you choose

any of the others?

Ligeia, Annabel?

Or perhaps Berenice?

So sure Virginia

was going to be the pick

for today's tortured journey.

There's no denying

your affection for her.

What was that poem of yours?

"It was many and many a year ago

"That a maiden there lived

whom you may know

"And this maiden she lived

with no other thought...

"Than to love and

be loved by me."

What am I doing?

I recite poetry with a statue!

I must be drunk.

Or mad.

Or both.

I am hallucinating.

Should I answer this one

with another of your stanzas?

"All that we see or seem

"ls but a dream

within a dream..."

Still you have no

clue to who I am.

I am your shadow, your soul.

The object of your obsession.

Are you mad?

My obsession?

Recognize me now, Poe?

Are you feeling lonely?

Longing again for the departed?

Silence!

I came here for solitude.

Not loneliness.

Always obsessed with the dead.

A great subject

for your writings.

It is not obsession

but rather inspiration

which drives my writing.

I wouldn't define it that way.

Remember Roderick Usher?

His compulsive obsession for

his departed sister Madeline

caused such a nervous agitation

that it lead him

to an early demise.

It was brotherly love, not

obsession.

Obsession, superstition,

unrequited love.

Who do you want to convince?

It was a magical place

that filled my childhood

with visions

to stir the imagination.

And now, during the whole

of a dull, dark,

and soundless day

in the autumn of another year,

I was alone, passing through

a singularly dreary

tract of country;

and at length found myself

within reach of the

melancholy House of Usher.

I know not how it was;

but with my first glimpse

of the house after so long,

an unexpected sense

of insufferable gloom

pervaded my spirit.

What was it?

What unnerved me so

in the contemplation

of the House of Usher?

Its proprietor, Roderick Usher,

had been one of my boon

companions in boyhood;

but many years had elapsed

since our last meeting.

His letter, however,

had lately reached me

in a distant part

of the country.

I scanned more narrowly

the real aspect of the building.

Its principal feature

seemed to be that

of an excessive antiquity.

The writer spoke of

acute bodily illness,

of a mental disorder

which oppressed him,

and brought an

earnest desire to see me,

as his best,

and indeed his only

personal friend, in an attempt

to alleviate some of his malady;

and I, accordingly,

obeyed forthwith

what I still considered

a very singular

and haunting summons.

I gazed upon him with a feeling

half of pity, half of awe.

Frederick!

My dear friend,

I have after all this time

been waiting for your arrival!

I at first thought it to be

an overdone cordiality.

It was with difficulty

that I could bring myself

to admit the identity of

the man being before me

with the companion

of my early boyhood.

He entered into what

he conceived to be

the nature of his malady.

The most insipid food

was alone endurable.

The odors of all flowers

proved oppressive;

his eyes were tortured

by even a faint light.

And there were but

peculiar sounds

which inspired him with horror.

I began to question

my worthiness

of being present for my friend,

who now existed in a world

of which I held no key.

I shall perish!

I dread the events

of the future!

I feel that the period

will sooner or later arrive

when I must abandon

life and reason together,

in some struggle

with the grim phantasm...

...fear.

But what do you fear, Roderick?

I must know what

is it that torments

your every moment.

I admit that

much of the peculiar gloom which

afflicts me could be traced

to a severe

and long continued illness.

I speak of my tenderly

beloved sister, Madeline.

My sole companion

for so many long years,

my last

and only relative on earth.

Roderick spoke with

such bitterness,

which made me shudder.

And yet, I could tell

of his complete devotion

towards his sister.

Madeline...

Her decease

will leave me as the last

of the ancient

race of the Ushers.

His voice trembled

as he recounted how even in

her youth, Madeline would fear

the outside world.

Roderick loved his sister

for her purity,

but the foreboding doom

was forever present.

The Usher's life of loneliness

will mean there will be no heir.

But on the closing in

of the evening of my arrival

at the house,

she succumbed

to the prostrating power

of the destroyer.

She is dead!

Madeline has died!

She has left me!

At the request of

Roderick Usher,

I personally aided him

in the arrangements

for the temporary entombment.

And now,

some days of bitter grief

having elapsed,

an observable change

came over the features of the

mental disorder of my friend.

At times, again, I was

obliged to resolve all

into the mere inexplicable

vagaries of madness.

For I beheld him

gazing upon vacancy

for long hours,

in an attitude

of the profoundest attention,

as if listening to some

imaginary sound.

It was no wonder

that his terrifying condition

was creeping upon me,

the wild influence

of his fantastic

yet impressive superstitions.

And you have not seen it?

Then you shall!

You must!

You must behold this!

I hear it, and have heard it.

We have put her

living

in the tomb!

I now tell you

that I heard

her first feeble movements

in the hollow coffin.

I heard them many,

many days ago.

Yet I dared not,

I dared not speak!

The rending of her coffin,

and the grating of the

iron hinges of her prison,

and her struggles

within the coppered

archway of the vault!

Be calm.

It is the storm

that draws breath,

playing tricks on us both!

Is she not hurrying

to upbraid me for my haste?

Have I not heard

her footsteps on the stairs?

Do I not distinguish that heavy

and horrible

beating

of her heart?

Madman!

MADMAN!

I tell you that she now

stands without the door!

The vision before

me will stay burnt

into my very soul and haunt me

to the end of my days.

Where I gazed,

the House once stood.

I saw the mighty walls rushing

as under there was a long

tumultuous shouting sound,

like the voice of

a thousand waters

and the deep and

dank tarn at my feet

closed sullenly and silently

over the fragments

of the House of Usher.

Bravo!

In your own words he became

a victim of the very terrors

he had anticipated.

Much like you.

Don't you wish you were dead?

Why should I? I want to live.

I have more stories to tell.

Your time is up in your world.

You have nothing to lose,

no one to love.

Stop feeling guilty

for other people's death.

Virginia died in spite

of your care or your love.

Your mother succumbed

to my power

leaving you helplessly alone.

I was so young when she died...

I was denied even the

memory of her face.

Guilt never leads to any good.

If anything you are haunted...

Haunted by sorrow,

guilty not of a crime, but of

the inability to stop me...

If anything, I am guilty of

giving my readers

what they want.

A glimpse of redemption,

stories with a moral

where justice always triumphs.

Is this what you mean?

It is impossible to say how

first the idea entered my brain;

but once conceived,

it haunted me day and night.

Object,

there was none,

I loved the old man.

He had never wronged me.

He had never given me insult,

and for his money,

I had no desire.

I think

it was his eye!

Yes, that was it!

One of his eyes resembled

that of a vulture.

I made up my mind

to take the life of the old man,

and thus rid myself

of the eye forever.

You should have seen

how wisely I proceeded,

with what caution and foresight

I went to work.

And every night, about midnight,

I turned the latch of

his door and opened it.

And then, when my

head was well in the room,

I undid the lantern cautiously,

oh, so cautiously.

I undid it just so much

that a single thin ray

fell upon the vulture eye.

But I found the

eye always closed;

and so

it was impossible

to do the work;

for it was not the old man

who vexed me,

but his Evil Eye.

I was never kinder

to the old man than during

the whole week

before I k*lled him.

And this I did for

seven long nights.

Every night, just at midnight.

But I found the

eye always closed.

Upon the eighth night

I was more than usually cautious

in opening the door.

A watch's minute hand moves

more quickly than did mine.

When I was about to

open the lantern,

my thumb slipped

upon the tin fastening.

And the old man sprang up in bed

crying out: Who's there?

He had been trying

to fancy them causeless.

He had been saying to himself:

"It is nothing

but the wind in the chimney.

It is only a mouse

crossing the floor."

But all in vain...

Then, there came to my ears

a low, dull, quick sound

such as the watch makes

when enveloped in cotton.

I knew that sound well.

It was the beating

of the old man's heart.

Meantime the hellish tattoo

of the heart increased.

It grew quicker and quicker,

louder and louder,

every instant.

The old man's hour had come!

He shrieked once, only once.

The old man was dead.

His eye would

trouble me no more.

If still you think me mad,

you will think so no longer

when I describe

the wise precautions I took

for the concealment of the body.

First of all I

dismembered the corpse,

I then took up three planks

from the flooring

and deposited all

between the scantlings.

I then replaced the boards

so cleverly, so cunningly,

that no human eye could have

detected anything wrong.

There entered three men,

who introduced themselves

as officers of the police.

A shriek had been heard by

a neighbor during the night

and they had been deputed

to search the premises.

I bid the gentleman welcome.

The shriek, I said,

was my own in a dream.

The old man, I mentioned,

was absent in the country.

The officers were satisfied,

my manner had convinced them.

But, ere long,

I felt myself getting pale

and wished them gone.

My head ached

and I fancied a

ringing in my ears.

I found that the noise

was not within my ears.

I gasped for breath,

and yet the officers

heard it not.

Why would they not be gone?

Oh God!

What could I do?

Was it possible they heard not?

No!... No!

They heard;

they suspected!

THEY KNEW!

They were making mockery

of my horror.

"Villains!"

I shrieked, "I admit the deed!

"Tear up the planks!

"Here,

"here!

"It is the beating

"of his hideous heart!"

So you presume

everyone is guilty

of some unfathomable crime?

A crime that should

remain unpunished?

I feel flattered.

Your obsession with death is to

my ears like a sweet love song.

What do you mean, obsession?

Come with me,

don't delay for another second.

Being alive in this world

brings you more unbearable pain

and suffering than those

who wish to sleep forever

even as you try to extend life

beyond my sweet embrace.

I remember vaguely,

once I wrote about a doctor.

Someone who challenged you.

My attention, for

the last three years,

had been repeatedly drawn

to the subject of Mesmerism.

In Boston, a 13-year-old

child under hypnosis

could diagnose his own illness,

one which his own doctors

could not determine.

And in India, a paraplegic,

placed in a similar

hypnotic state,

managed to take some steps!

Imagine, Mr. Valdemar,

the progress that Mesmerism

offers to science!

My friend,

I respect your enthusiasm,

but for my part, I can't disavow

my skepticism

about the future of hypnosis.

Our table is waiting for

us at the Black Swan.

In addition, it

seems that no person

has as yet been mesmerized

in articulo mortis.

What a great testimony

will that be,

witnessing the transition

between life and death.

My friend, if you promise

to change the subject,

I am ready to volunteer myself

to this experiment

at the time of my death.

Really?

Yes, but rest assured,

I have no intention

of dying anytime soon!

It is now rather more

than seven months

since last time I talked

with M. Valdemar.

Phthisis has attacked my lungs.

They give me a few

months at most.

M. Valdemar,

do you remember your promise?

I beg your pardon?

Yes, the idea may seem absurd,

but think of all you

have to gain now.

No...

I don't know.

Allow me to consider it.

Valdemar, you are condemned.

You have no family or home.

What have you to lose?

Promise me you will

think about it.

Very well,

lam in your hands.

It was finally arranged between

us that he would send for me

about twenty-four

hours before the period

announced by his physicians

as that of his decease.

I received this note

within half an hour

after it was written,

and in fifteen minutes more,

I was in the dying

man's chamber.

It was about five

minutes to eight when,

taking the patient's hand,

I begged him to state

as distinctly as he could

to Dr. L whether he

was entirely willing

that I should make the

experiment of mesmerizing him

in his then condition.

Yes, I wish to be mesmerized.

I fear you have

deferred it too long.

At five minutes before eleven,

I perceived unequivocal signs

of the mesmeric influence.

When I had accomplished this,

it was fully midnight,

and I requested the

gentlemen present

to examine

M. Valdemar's condition.

The patient's extremities

were of an icy coldness.

Still, the general appearance

was not that of death.

Monsieur Valdemar,

are you asleep?

Yes,

I am asleep now.

Do not wake me!

Let me die so!

It was now the opinion,

or rather the wish,

of the physicians,

that M. Valdemar should be

suffered to remain undisturbed

in his present apparently

tranquil condition,

until death should supervene,

and this,

it was now generally agreed,

must take place

within a few minutes.

I concluded, however,

to speak to him

once more.

Monsieur Valdemar,

do you still sleep?

Yes,

no.

I have been sleeping

and now...

Now...

I am dead.

It was evident that,

so far, death,

or what is usually termed death,

had been arrested

by the mesmeric process.

The experiment is completed.

But... are we sure he's dead?

You've heard it like me, right?

Is your scientific mind

restricted

by that which you can only see

or hear yourself?

From this period

until the close of last week,

an interval of

nearly seven months,

we continued to make daily calls

at M. Valdemar's house.

I managed to convince my

colleagues to leave M. Valdemar

in this state and

to monitor him.

First, we confined ourselves

to simple daily observations.

But soon, we were obliged

to face the facts.

Gentlemen,

we are not advancing our work.

These observations

are too superficial.

You still wish to

dissect the subject

like a laboratory animal.

Without going that far,

we can engage in

some light tests.

You are mistaken! I...

What are you suggesting, Dr. L?

Well, we could always...

let it be.

There is nothing further

to be done.

All of the subject's vital

functions are inert.

He has stopped breathing, his

heart no longer beats, yet...

in seven months, decomposition

has not attacked his body

and no treatment has

cured his illness.

Medically, M. Valdemar is dead.

Let's wake him up.

You're talking nonsense!

These thoughts are sacrilege!

Insanity!

You would not agree

to put him in this state

and now you refuse

to release him from it?

I...

Let it go my friend,

Dr. P is right.

M. Valdemar is legally dead.

All we can do now

is to offer him a decent burial.

It was on Friday last

that we finally resolved

to make the experiment

of awakening,

or attempting to awaken him.

For the purpose of

relieving M. Valdemar

from the mesmeric trance,

I made use of the

customary passes.

These, for a time,

were unsuccessful.

M. Valdemar,

can you explain to us what your

feelings or wishes are now?

For God's sake!

Quick! Quick!

Put me to sleep!

Or Waken me! Quick!

I say to you that I am dead!

Dead!

Dead!!!

For what really

occurred, however,

it is quite impossible

that any living human

could have been prepared.

And as I can see, he lost...

lost to me.

He was so close...

so close to sparing M. Valdemar

from your fatal embrace.

Was that a crime?

A crime against fate.

And your sentence

was a life of endless sorrow.

Stop with your

tortured mind games.

There is nothing worse than

imagining your own death.

Isn't it?

Nothing worse than

to fear eternity.

I wrote a story once.

A tale about someone

who relived the hell

of dying a thousand deaths.

Perhaps a mirror where you

saw yourself reflected,

every image

a different death.

I was sick...

sick to death with

that long agony.

And when they unbound me, I felt

that my senses were leaving me.

The sentence...

the dread sentence of death...

was the last of

distinct accentuation

which reached my ears.

After that,

the sound of the inquisitorial

voices seemed merged

into one dreamy

indeterminate hum.

I heard no more.

Yet, for a while,

I saw the lips of the judges.

I saw them pronouncing

the syllables of my name,

and I shuddered

because I heard no sound.

The tall candles sank

into nothingness;

their flames went out.

The blackness of darkness

supervened.

All sensations appeared

swallowed up in a mad

rushing descent as of the soul

into Hades.

Then silence, and stillness,

night were the universe.

After this I call to mind

flatness and dampness;

and then all the

madness of a memory

which busies itself

among forbidden things.

So far, I had not

opened my eyes.

I dreaded the first glance

at objects around me.

My worst thoughts, then,

were confirmed.

The blackness of eternal night

encompassed me.

I struggled for breath.

The atmosphere was

intolerably close.

But where

and in what state was I?

The condemned to death, I knew,

perished usually

at the autos-da-fe,

and one of

these had been held

on the very night

of the day of my trial.

Had I been remanded

to my dungeon,

to await the next

sacrifice, which

would not take

place for many months?

And now,

there came thronging

upon my recollection

a thousand vague rumors

of the horrors of Toledo.

Of the dungeons

there had been

strange things narrated,

strange, and too

ghastly to repeat.

Was I left to

perish of starvation

in this subterranean

world of darkness;

or what fate,

perhaps even more fearful,

awaited me?

My outstretched hands at length

encountered some solid

obstruction.

It was a wall,

I followed it up.

This process, however,

afforded me no means

of ascertaining

the dimensions of my dungeon.

Another step before my fall,

and the world had

seen me no more.

And the death just avoided,

was of that very character

which I had regarded

as fabulous and frivolous

in the tales regarding

the Inquisition.

To the victims of its tyranny,

there was the choice of death

with its direst physical

agonies,

or death with its most hideous

moral horrors.

I had been reserved

for the latter.

I was consumed with

intolerable thirst.

This thirst it appeared to be

the design of my persecutors

to stimulate:

for the food in

the dish was meat

pungently seasoned.

It must have been drugged;

for scarcely had I drunk,

before I became

irresistibly drowsy.

I could no longer doubt

the doom prepared for me

by monkish ingenuity in t*rture.

My cognizance of the pit

had become known

to the inquisitorial.

Having failed to fall,

it was no part of the demon plan

to hurl me into the abyss,

and thus a different and a

milder destruction awaited me.

I counted the rushing

vibrations of the steel!

Inch by inch...

line by line...

with a descent only appreciable

at intervals that seemed ages.

Down... steadily down it crept.

Down... certainly,

relentlessly down!

It vibrated within three inches

of my bosom!

I prayed for its

more speedy descent.

I grew frantically mad,

and struggled

to force myself upward

against the sweep

of the fearful scimitar.

For the moment, at least,

I was free.

Free! And in the grasp

of the Inquisition!

Free!

I had but escaped death

in one form of agony,

to be delivered unto worse

than death in some other.

For a wild moment,

did my spirit refuse

to comprehend the meaning

of what I saw.

Any horror but this!

Any death but that of the pit!

Might I have not known

that into the pit

it was the object

of the burning iron to urge me?

Could I resist its glow?

There was a discordant hum

of human voices!

There was a loud blast.

The French army

had entered Toledo.

The Inquisition was in

the hands of its enemies.

You have devoted

so many pages to my name,

caressing my face

with your poems,

kissing my lips with your prose.

All veiled love letters

addressed to me.

You fear me

and yet you are

insatiably attracted.

Come with me. It's time.

No, it cannot be.

I don't want to be forgotten.

I was buried in a common grave.

My writings were

forgotten for years.

You are already dead.

How could you remember

your own death...

unless you have succumbed

to my embrace?

Your life is not

worth living anymore.

It is time

to meet your own ghosts,

the people you loved

and lost forever.

Come now, Poe.

You love me!

You've been a corpse

walking amongst the living

for a long time, Edgar.

It must have been

quite a strain.

Maybe you're right.

Sometimes I think the only thing

that kept me from you

was my beating heart.

Look at your final act.

They all succumb to my prowess.

The poor, the weak;

the rich, the powerful.

Everybody bows before me.

I offer you one last chance.

Who dares insult us with

this blasphemous mockery?

I don't want my work

to be lost forever.

My work is eternal.

I want that eternity.

I want to be sure

my words will survive me,

that they will be

never lost in time.

That, my friend,

nevermore.