An hour or two afterward, when I went to bed, I found Minnie apparently asleep. Never had she seemed more beautiful. Her lips were like a bursting rosebud about to blow under the influence of a perfumed wind, just parted as they were by the gentle breath that came and went. The long, dark lashes that swept over her cheek gave a pensive charm to her countenance, which was heightened by a rich stray of nutty hair that swept loosely across her bosom, tossed in the restlessness of slumber. I printed a light kiss upon her forehead, and, with an unuttered prayer for her welfare, lay down to rest.
I know not how long I had been asleep when I was awakened from a profound slumber by one of those indescribable sensations of mortal peril which seem to sweep over the soul, and with as it were the thrill of its passage call louder than a trumpet, Awake ! arouse ! your life hangs by a hair! That this strange physical warning is in all cases the result of a magnetic phenomenon I have not the slightest doubt. To prove it, steal softly, ever so softly, to the bedside of a sleeper, and, although no noise betrays your presence, the slumberer will almost invariably awaken, aroused by a magnetic perception of your proximity. How much more powerfully must the stealthy approach of one who harbors sinister designs affect the slumbering victim! An antagonistic magnetism hovers near; the whole of the subtile currents that course through the electrical machine known as man are shocked with a powerful repulsion, and the sentinel mind whose guard has just been relieved, and which is slumbering in its quarters, suddenly hears the rappel beaten and leaps to arms.
In the midst of my deep sleep I sprang with a sudden bound upright, with every faculty alert. By one of those unaccountable mysteries of our being, I realized, before my eyes could be by any possibility alive to external objects, the presence of a great horror. Simultaneously with this conviction, or following it so quickly as to be almost twin with it, I beheld the vivid flash of a knife, and felt an acute pain in my shoulder. The next instant all was plain, as if the scene, instead of passing in a half-illuminated bedroom, had occurred in the full sunlight of the orient. My wife was standing by my bedside, her hands firmly pinioned in mine, while on the white coverlet lay a sharp table-knife red with the blood which was pouring from a deep wound in my shoulder. I had escaped death by a miracle. Another instant and the long blade would have been driven through my heart.
I never was so perfectly self-possessed as on that terrible occasion. I forced Minnie to sit on the bed, while I looked calmly into her face. She returned my gaze with a sort of serene defiance.
“Minnie,” I said, “I loved you dearly. Why did you do this?”
“I was weary of you,” she answered, in a cold, even voice—a voice so level that it seemed to be spoken on ruled lines—“that is my reason.”
Great heavens! I was not prepared for this sanguinary calm. I had looked for perhaps sonic indication of somnambulism; I had vaguely hoped even for the incoherence or vehemence of speech which would have betokened a sudden insanity—anything, everything but this awful avowal of a deliberate design to murder a man who loved her better than the life she sought! Still I clung to hope. I could not believe that this gentle, refined creature could deliberately quit my side at midnight, possess herself of the very knife which had been used at the table, across which I lavished a thousand fond attentions, and remorselessly endeavor to stab me to the heart. It must be the act of one insane, or laboring under some momentary hallucination. I determined to test her further. I adopted a tone of vehement reproach, hoping, if insanity was smouldering in her brain, to fan the embers to such a flame as would leave no doubt on my mind. I would rather she should be mad than feel that she hated me.
“Woman!” I thundered fiercely, “you must have the mind of a fiend to repay my love in this manner. Beware of my vengeance. Your punishment shall be terrible.”
“Punish me,” she answered; and oh! how serene and distant her voice sounded!—“punish me how and when you will. It will not matter much.” The tones were calm, assured, and fearless. The manner perfectly coherent. A terrible suspicion shot across my mind.
“Have I a rival?” I asked; “is it a guilty love that has prompted you to plan my death? If so, I am sorry you did not kill me.”
“I do not know any other man whom I love. I cannot tell why it is that I do not love you. You are very kind and considerate, but your presence wearies me. I sometimes see vaguely, as in a dream, my ideal of a husband, but he has no existence save in my soul, and I suppose I shall never meet him.”
“Minnie, you are mad!” I cried, despairingly.
“Am I?” she answered, with a faint, sad smile slowly overspreading her pale face, like the dawn breaking imperceptibly over a cold gray lake. “Well, you can think so if you will. It is all one to me.”
I never beheld such apathy—such stoical indifference. Had she exhibited fierce rage, disappointment at her failure, a mad thirst for my life-blood, I should have preferred it to this awful stagnation of sensibility, this frozen stillness of the heart. I felt all my nature harden suddenly toward her. It seemed to me as if my face became fixed and stern as a bronze head.
“You are an inexplicable monster,” I said, in tones that startled myself, they were so cold and metallic “and I shall not try to decipher you. I will use every endeavor to ascertain, however, whether it is some species of insanity that has this afflicted you, or whether you are ruled by the most vicious soul that ever inhabited a human body. You shall return to my house tomorrow, when I will place you under the charge of Doctor Melony. You will live in the strictest seclusion. I need not tell you that, after what has happened, you must henceforth be a stranger to your daughter. Hands crimsoned with her father’s blood are not those that I would see caressing her.”
“Very well. It is all one to me where I am, or how I live.”
“Go to bed.”
She went, calmly as a well-taught child, coolly turning over the pillow on which was sprinkled the blood from the wound in my shoulder, so as to present the under side for her beautiful, guilty head to repose on; gently removed the murderous knife, which was still lying on the coverlet, and placed it on a little table by the side of the bed, and then without a word calmly composed herself to sleep.
It was inexplicable. I stanched my wound and sat down to think.
What was the meaning of it all? I had visited many lunatic asylums, and had, as one of the various items in my course of study, read much on the phenomena of insanity, which had always been exceedingly interesting to me for this reason: I thought it might be that only through the aberrated intellect can we approach the secrets of the normal mind. The castle, fortified and garrisoned at every angle and loophole, guards its interior mysteries; it is only when the fortress crumbles that we can force our way inside, and detect the secret of its masonry, its form, and the theory of its construction.
But in all my researches I had never met with any symptoms of a diseased mind similar to these my wife exhibited. There was a uniform coherence that completely puzzled me. Her answers to my questions were complete and determinate—that is, they left no room for what is called “cross-examination.” No man ever spent such a night of utter despair as I did, watching in that dimly lit chamber until dawn, while she, my would-be murderess, lay plunged in so profound and calm a slumber that she might have been a wearied angel rather than a self-possessed demon. The mystery of her guilt was maddening; and I sat hour after hour in my easy-chair, seeking in vain for a clew, until the dawn, spectral and gray, arose over the city. Then I packed up all our luggage, and wandered restlessly over the house until the usual hour for rising had struck.
On returning to my room I found my wife just completing her toilet. To my consternation and horror she flung herself into my arms as I entered.
“O Gerald!” she cried, “I have been so frightened. What has brought all this blood on the pillow and the sheets? Where have you been? When I awoke and missed you and discovered these stains, I knew not what to think. Are you hurt? What is the matter?”
I
stared at her. There was not a trace of conscious guilt in her countenance. It was the most consummate acting. Its very perfection made me the more relentless.
“There is no necessity for this hypocrisy,” I said; “it will not alter my resolve. We depart for home to-day. Our luggage is packed, the bills are all paid. Speak to me, I pray you, as little as possible.”
“What is it? Am I dreaming? O Gerald, my darling! what have I done, or what has come over you?” She almost shrieked these queries.
“You know as well as I do, you fair-faced monster. You tried to murder me last night, when I was asleep. There’s your mark on my shoulder. A loving signature, is it not?”
I bared my shoulder as I spoke, and exposed the wound. She gazed wildly in my face for a moment, then tottered and fell. I lifted her up and placed her on the bed. She did not faint, and had strength enough left to ask me to leave her alone for a few moments. I quitted her with a glance of contempt, and went down stairs to make arrangements for our journey. After an absence of about an hour I returned to our apartments. I found her sitting placidly in an easy-chair, looking out of the window. She scarcely noticed my entrance, and the same old, distant look was on her face.
“We start at three o’clock. Are you ready?” I said to her.
“Yes. I need no preparation.” Evenly, calmly uttered, without even turning her head to look at nie.
“You have recovered your memory, it seems,” I said. “You wasted your histrionic talents this morning.”
“Did I?” She smiled with the most perfect serenity, arranged herself more easily in her chair, and leaned back as if in a revery. I was enraged beyond endurance, and left the room abruptly.
That evening saw us on our way home. Throughout the journey she maintained the same apathetic air. We scarcely exchanged a word. The instant we reached our house I assigned apartments to her, strictly forbidding her to move from them, and despatched a messenger for Doctor Melony. Minnie, on her part, took possession of her prison without a word. She did not even ask to see our darling little Pearl, who was a thousand times more beautiful and engaging than ever.
Melony arrived, and I laid the awful facts before him. The poor man was terribly shocked.
“Depend on it, it’s opium,” he said. “Let me see her.”
An hour afterward he came to me.
It’s not opium, and it’s not insanity,” he said; “it must be somnambulism. I find symptoms, however, that puzzle me beyond all calculation. That she is not in her normal condition of mind is evident; but I cannot discover the cause of this unnatural excitement. She is coherent, logical, but perfectly apathetic to all outward influences. At first I was certain that she was a victim of opium. Now I feel convinced that I was entirely wrong. It must be somnambulism. I will reside for a time in the house, and trust me to discover this mystery. Meanwhile she must be carefully watched.”
Melony was as good as his word. He watched her incessantly, and reported to me her condition. The poor man was dreadfully puzzled. The strictest surveillance failed to elicit the slightest evidence of her taking any stimulants, although she remained almost all the time in the apathetic state which was so terrible to behold. The Doctor endeavored to arouse her by reproaches for her attempt on my life. She, in return, only smiled, and replied that it was a matter in which she had no further interest. Not a trace of any somnambulistic habit could be discovered. I was thoroughly wretched. I secluded myself from all society but that of Melony; and had it not been for him and my darling little Pearl I am certain that I should have gone mad. The most of my days I spent wandering in the great woods which lay in the neighborhood of my farm, and my evenings I endeavored to divert with reading or a chat with the good Doctor. Yet, talk of what we might, the conversation would always return to the same melancholy topic. It was a maze of sorrow in which we invariably, no matter in what direction we wandered, brought up at the same spot.
IV
The Doctor and myself were sitting one evening, late, in my library, talking gloomily enough over my domestic tragedy. He was endeavoring to persuade me to look more brightly on the future; to dismiss as far as possible from my mind the accursed horror that dwelt in my home, and to remember that I had still a dear object left on which to centre my affections. This allusion to little Pearl, in such a mood as I was then in, only served to heighten my agony. I began immediately to revolve the chances that, were my wife’s disease really insanity, it would be perpetuated in my dear child. Melony, of course, pooh-poohed the idea; but with the obstinacy of grief I clung to it. Suddenly a pause took place in the argument, and the dreary sounds that fill the air in the last nights of autumn swept around the house. The wind soughed through the treetops, which were now almost bare, as if moaning at being deprived of its leafy playmates. Inexplicable noises passed to and fro without the windows. Dead leaves rustled along the piazza, like the rustle of the garments of ghosts. Chilly draughts came from unseen crevices, blowing on back and cheek till one felt as if some invisible lips were close behind, pouring malignant breaths on face and shoulder. Suddenly the pause in our conversation was filled by a noise that we knew came neither from air nor dry leaf. We heard sounding through the night the muffled tread of footsteps. I knew that, except ourselves, the household had long since retired to bed. By a simultaneous action we both sprang to our feet and rushed to a door which opened into a long corridor leading to the nursery, and which communicated, by a series of rambling passages, with the main body of the house. As we flung back the door a light appeared at the further end advancing slowly toward us. It was borne by a tall, white figure. It was my wife! Calm and stately, and with her wonderful serene step, she approached. My heart was frozen when I saw spots of blood on her hands and night-robe. I gave a wild cry, and rushed past her. In another instant I was in baby’s room. The night light was burning dimly; the colored nurse was sleeping calmly in her bed; while, in a little cot in another part of the room, I saw—Ah! how tell it?—I cannot! well, little Pearl was murdered—murdered! My darling lay—It was I now who was insane. I rushed back into the corridor to slay the fiend who had done this horrible deed. I had no mercy for her then. I would have killed her a thousand times over. Great Heaven! She was leaning against the wall conversing as calmly with the Doctor as if nothing had happened; smoothing her hair with her reddened fingers, nonchalant as if at an evening party. I ran at her to crush her. Melony leaped between us.
“Stop,” he cried. “The secret is out”;—and as he spoke he held up a little silver box containing what seemed to be a greenish paste. “It is hasheesh, and she is confessing!”
Her statement was the most awful thing I ever listened to. It was as deliberate as a lawyer’s brief. She had contracted this habit in the East, she said, long before I knew her, and could not break it off. It wound her nature in chains of steel; by degrees it grew upon her, until it became her very life. Her existence lay as it were in a nut-shell, but that shell was to her a universe. One night, she continued, when she was under the influence of the drug, she went with me to see a play in which the wife abhors her husband and murders her children. It was “Medea.” From that instant murder became glorified in her sight, through the medium of the spell-working drug. Her soul became rapt in the contemplation of the spilling of blood. I was to have been her first victim, Pearl her second. She ended by saying, with an ineffable smile, that the delight of the taking away of life was beyond imagination.
I suppose I must have fainted, for when I awoke from what seemed oblivion I found myself in bed, with Dr. Melony by my side. He laid his finger on his lip, and whispered to me that I had been very ill, and must not talk. But I could not restrain myself.
“Where is she?” I muttered.
“Where she ought to be,” he answered; and then I caught faintly the words, “Private madhouse.”
* * * *
O hasheesh! demon of a new paradise, spiritual whirlwind, I know you now! You blackened my life, you robbed me of all I held dear; but you have sinc
e consoled me. You thought, wicked enchanter, that you had destroyed my peace forever. But I have won, through you yourself, the bliss you once blotted out. Vanish past! Hence present! Out upon actuality! Hand in hand, I walk with the conqueror of time, and space, and suffering. Bend, all who hear me, to his worship!
THE WALKING DEAD, by E. Hoffmann Price
When Walt Connell heard the diffident tapping at the back door, he assumed an expression of judicial sternness. Plato Jones, who spaded Connell’s garden, must be returning with a fantastic story to account for a week’s absence and the six dollars which Connell had given him to buy some orange wine. But it was Plato’s wife who tapped at the door, a plump, comely black woman with a small parcel under her arm.
“Evenin’, Mr. Walt,” she began. “My man Plato ain’t come back yet.”
Tears were streaming down her face. Connell was saddled with a problem. Taking on a servant entailed responsibilities. He’d have to help her somehow.
“That no-good man of yours probably drank my orange wine and now is afraid to come back,” Connell said.
“No sir, no sir!” Amelia protested. “Plato don’t drink nuthin’!”
“Well, maybe I can help,” Connell temporized.
“Yes, sir, Mr. Walt!” Amelia beamed through her tears. “I knew you’d take care of me.”
She thrust into his hands a paper-wrapped parcel.
“I baked y’all a chocolate cake for lunch when you go to get that no-good man! And I fixed up some salted cashew nuts, too.”
Her guile had caught him totally off guard. He had accepted the present. Nothing to do but resign himself to a sixty-mile drive down the Mississippi Delta where the Cajuns convert undersized oranges into fragrant, blasting wine; a no-man’s land, where a century or more ago, Lafitte’s pirates found refuge.
The Horror Megapack Page 5