The Accursed

by Joyce Carol Oates

  “D’Adalbert—D’Apthorp—Castle Szekeley—Grand Duke of Bystel-Kohler—Baron Eger Frankstone—Castle Gottsreich-Mueller—House of the von Gneists of Szurdokpuspoki, Wallachia. Arms: argent, on a cross flory azure, between four Old World choughs, a serpent passant quadrant. Crest: demi-serpent rampant per pale or and azure, collared per pale counterchanged, armed. So you see, Professor van Dyck, it’s as I suspected,” the Englishman said languidly, turning his pale penetrant eyes on the dazed American. “A disagreeable business indeed but not, thank God, irremediable. The thing in the crib upstairs must be disposed of—at once. If your wife cannot part with it, if she ‘resists’—you must take measures against her, as well. But why do you look at me in such a way, Professor? Is this all so very surprising to you? I can’t think it is,” he said, sucking on his pipe, with a maddening sort of complacency, “since your ingenious ‘Scheme of Clues’ contained the answer all along, though you failed to see it.”

  The Englishman then turned to the stone hearth and took up the poker, and held it for some minutes in the fire, that was now modestly blazing, while he continued to speak in a kindlier voice. “From time to time it is not only permissible, Professor van Dyck, but quite necessary, as your beloved Kant would agree, to ‘transcend’ the merely local law. (As I believe Doyle reports my having done upon several notable occasions, that a greater evil might be prevented.) For ‘evil’ is after all a relative term: there being a minor and pragmatical sort, to be disposed of as one swats a fly, and a vast, all-encompassing, one might say universal sort, that must be halted by any means at hand. None of this, I know, can be foreign to you as a moral philosopher of international reputation; yet it seems you have been dilatory in attending to the situation beneath your own roof. For it somehow slipped past your scrutiny that your wife, whom you wished to believe is ‘faithful’ to you, was nonetheless seduced sometime in the late spring of last year, by an agent of the Fiend; and that an irrefutable syllogism presents itself here within the walls of your ancestral home. Which is to say: evil must be overcome; evil dwells here, in its crib in the nursery; therefore no other remedy is possible except your proceeding, with as much dispatch as possible, in eradicating it.”

  With dilated and slow-blinking eyes Pearce van Dyck regarded the tall, lean-bodied Englishman and for some seconds stood immobile as stone. Then, in a halting motion, he removed his glasses, that he might polish their dampened lenses. Once or twice he seemed about to speak, for his blanched lips quivered; but no word escaped him. It was a respectful gesture on the part of “Sherlock Holmes” to allow the stricken man to ruminate in silence.

  All this while, the poker was being heated, changing by degrees from black to red-hot to white-hot, and giving off an unnatural light.

  When at last it was prepared the Englishman grasped it in a hearty grip, and passed it to Pearce van Dyck, who staggered just perceptibly, as the weight of the iron poker was greater than he seemed to have expected. The Englishman then walked him to the foot of the stairs, in a genial and brotherly way you would not think characteristic of the more aloof fictional Holmes. “I’m sure you are recalling at this moment, Professor,” the Englishman murmured, “how in one of the final books of The Republic the ‘tyrannical ruler’ is reasoned to be three times three squared, and then cubed, more unhappy than Plato’s Philosopher King: which is to say, seven hundred twenty-nine times. Only think! Plato was the most brilliant of philosophers, unless he was frankly mad, like so many of his successors. Yet, the courageous action you are about to take against the thing beneath your own roof, the thing that nurses at your wife’s breast, the thing that dares to identify itself as Pearce van Dyck, Jr., will, at a future time, reward you with three times three squared, and then cubed, more joy, than you would have felt otherwise—as the quasi-father of a Horror, let us say. And so, now—upstairs!—to the nursery, and to the marital bed.”

  So, with incandescent poker brandished aloft like a king’s scepter Pearce van Dyck ascended the dimly lighted staircase, to what awaited him on the second floor.

  3.

  It does not hurt greatly. The pain can be borne. Summon forth your courage, Johanna! And do not resist for that will only make him angrier.

  Hoarse whispered words woke Johanna from sleep rising, it seemed, from shadows close about the sofa on which she slept and confused with a fretful wind rattling at the windowpanes.

  You know I am a sister to you, Johanna. I would not mislead you. I counsel you, do not resist as I did. It angers them the more, that you challenge their wish. Then, you will suffer—as I did.

  Johanna was sleeping in the nursery where, having nursed and cuddled the colicky baby earlier that night, she’d fallen asleep on a cushioned sofa, that left her neck and lower back stiff. At first she thought the whispering must be the baby cooing to himself, then she realized that the whispering was from another source altogether; for the baby slept unperturbed in his crib.

  “Pearce? Is that you?”

  Johanna squinted into the shadows at the opened door, that led to her own bedroom, where ordinarily she slept; the other door, to the corridor, appeared to be shut.

  Down the hall, in the region of the house known as the servants’ quarters, the colored girl who tended to Baby, as she called him, slept; for Johanna could not bear it, that another would intervene between her and her infant son. It seemed crucial to her, that the first face the baby saw upon waking was his mother’s.

  “Is that you? But where are you . . .”

  She was mistaken, it seemed: Pearce was not in the nursery.

  Pearce was, very likely, downstairs in his study. He had encouraged Johanna and Josiah to retire to bed, with the excuse that he had “just a few minutes’ work” to attend to; but Johanna suspected he’d been working for hours on the Scheme of Clues, and may have fallen asleep on the divan in his study.

  Hurriedly, with trembling fingers, Johanna struck a match to light a lamp; now she could see quite clearly, the baby was certainly asleep in his crib; for when the baby slept, he slept deeply; as, when the baby woke, he might wake with a shattering howl.

  It does not hurt greatly. I would not mislead you, my dear sister. You must not resist, that is crucial. For in Eve’s fall we have sinned. We reap our harvest now, at the hands of our masters.

  Johanna heard these strangely calm words issuing from the very shadows of the nursery. Yet she knew herself alone in the room with the baby. Trembling, she adjusted the wick of the kerosene lamp, rose from the sofa and looked worriedly about.

  There were old, silly tales of Quatre Face being haunted. A stop on the Underground Railway through eastern Pennsylvania, or allegedly so; and a confused, ugly tale of Negro slaves beguiled into entering the house, hiding in the dank tunnel behind the chimney, only to be betrayed by the master of the house to slave bounty-hunters, and dragged back to their slave owners in the South, in chains.

  What a terrible story, Pearce! Can that be true?—your great-grandfather would do such a thing to helpless people?

  And Pearce had retorted, stung by Johanna’s remark Yes and why not? Your grandfather may have done so, too.

  Still, Johanna didn’t believe in ghosts. There was no one in the room except her and the baby.

  Since being sent to Quatre Face by her husband, Johanna had lapsed into a pervasive melancholy; it was not her nature to be despondent, and low in energy, but the seclusion of the house was depressing to her, as the condition of the house was depressing; all that riveted her attention was the baby, and what haphazard, often-interrupted reading she’d been able to do, of books she’d brought with her weeks before. It was not like her, she thought, to imagine things; she was not a nervous invalid, like poor Adelaide Burr, and other Princeton women; yet, at Quatre Face, she’d been beset by any number of baseless fears, as by the prevailing fear that there was something gravely wrong with her husband, and in their marriage.

  It was certainly the case that, within the past year, Pearce had changed radically. His old
, droll sense of humor had largely vanished, replaced by an unpredictable irascibility; at times, his eyes glared yellow, as if he hated her. (Johanna could admit this to no one, not even a sister: her husband hated her!) And it was clear he hated, feared and despised their innocent little baby whom he could bring himself only to call—it.

  Johanna looked with tenderness at the sleeping infant. In sleep, he appeared so small! So utterly helpless.

  “You will know nothing of this, I hope. All that surrounds you now—all that has culminated in you—will be unknown to you, as the vast galaxies that surround us are unknown to us.”

  The crib in which the infant lay was a family heirloom—a Strachan family heirloom. White latticework upon a sturdy pine frame, with white satin trim, and white satin ribbons. A beautiful crib and yet when Pearce saw it he recoiled, with a sardonic little laugh—“It looks like an infant coffin. It is unacceptable.”

  But Johanna prevailed. The heirloom crib remained.

  Standing barefoot, in her ankle-length flannel nightgown, her hair loosed upon her shoulders, Johanna glanced about the darkened room, uneasy; seeing then, by chance it seemed, in a farther corner of the nursery, a figure sitting, or reclining, on a chaise longue; and in that instant she heard the low, whispered, urgent words another time—It does not hurt greatly. It is futile to resist. He will be angry if you resist. I would not mislead you, my dear sister Johanna!

  Johanna stared, trying not to scream; for even in her panicked state she did not want to waken and alarm the sleeping baby.

  Could it be?—the shadowy figure was Adelaide Burr.

  The poor woman lifted her hurt, bloodied bare arms to Johanna—her ashen face, bloodied too, was lifted in an anguished appeal; her eyes were wet with tears, and—a mass of bleeding wounds where her small flat breasts had been . . .

  Johanna do not turn away. I am your sister, I am awaiting you. Do not leave me here alone . . .

  Johanna turned, blinded; in terror, she collided with the crib, and wakened the baby; the figure of her old friend Adelaide Burr seemed to shimmer, and fade, as if in disappointment, or repudiation of her; for she was very cowardly, and could not bring herself to speak to Adelaide, who appealed to her with such yearning. For there is the fear—a wise fear, I think: that if we speak just once to the dead, the dead will cleave to us in their desperate loneliness and never leave our sides.

  And then, Johanna drew breath to scream, for she could not prevent herself; and would have screamed for help with all the strength of her lungs, except the apparition had vanished; and she was struggling to sit up in darkness, wakening only now from her nightmare.

  For the lamp had not been lit, after all. She had been sleeping, fitfully, on the cushioned sofa in the nursery, that was too small and cramped for a proper sleep, or even a nap; and left her neck and back aching. She had dreamt the entire episode.

  Now, with badly shaking hands, Johanna did light the lamp, which smelled strongly of kerosene, as if it had been carelessly filled to the brim; and saw to her relief that the nursery was empty—and nothing lay on the chaise longue but a supply of baby’s nappies, a baby blanket and soft white baby-towels, neatly folded.

  There was the source of the nightmare, Johanna thought: a trick of the optical nerve, somehow visible through shut eyes.

  Nor was the baby awake but—this seemed a miracle!—continued peacefully to sleep.

  YET JOHANNA WAS SO agitated still, she supposed it would be futile and frustrating to try to sleep; and so when Pearce entered the nursery a short time later, at about 3 a.m., Johanna was wrapped in a comforter and reclining on the sofa, near the crib; though the lamplight was poor, she was managing to make her way through the thorny prose of Mr. Henry James, a long-ago favorite of the lending libraries with his Daisy Miller and A Portrait of a Lady; but Johanna was reading, or trying to read, the long and demanding The Golden Bowl, in which she had arrived at page two hundred—and scarcely knew what the story was. It did seem to her strange that her husband would enter the nursery, which by day he avoided, yet Johanna was determined to welcome him, however unorthodox the hour—“Pearce? Is it you? Are you coming to bed, at last?” Yet her breath faltered, and her eyes widened, to see her husband advancing grimly upon her, a rod of some kind—a poker?—lifted in his hand; the tip of which glowed with heat, as if it had just been removed from a fire.

  Mild-mannered Pearce van Dyck, transformed into this murderous man, with a contorted face; a misshapen skull, beneath fever-damp strands of dark hair; a prim cruel smile, like the smile of a gargoyle. What was he doing, advancing upon the crib? In which their baby slept? The poker uplifted, to bring down in rage?

  In her husband’s eyes, a tawny-topaz glare.

  “Don’t try to stop me, Johanna. This is an act that is foretold.”

  Johanna leapt at her husband, and tried to wrest the poker from him. Yet, how strong Pearce was, and what fury animated his body! The heat from the poker touched her skin, the very skin of her face, and the lashes of her eyes; and only now did the terrified woman begin to scream.

  4.

  In a bedroom close by, Josiah Slade was already awake; that is, Josiah had scarcely slept since he’d parted with Johanna van Dyck several hours earlier. The uncomfortable mattress, the peculiar acrid odor of the room that seemed to prevail, like a smell of the grave, beneath the intoxicating smell of lilac; the play of splotched moonlight on the ceiling of the room, like reflections in water; a murmur, in the near distance, of a voice, or voices, downstairs, though he knew that the house was darkened and there could be no one there—all kept Josiah from sinking into even his usual uneasy, fitful sleep.

  And then suddenly, there came Johanna’s cries.

  In an instant, Josiah leapt from bed, and rushed to the nursery.

  By instinct knowing that a terrible thing was about to happen, that he must prevent. Hurry! Hurry! Their lives depend upon you only you Josiah—for once, the voice was not a demon’s voice.

  In the nursery, by lamplight, Josiah saw two figures struggling, one with a poker in his hand; with no time to absorb the astonishing sight, Josiah grappled with the madman, and wrenched the poker from his grip, burning his fingers in the act; in a fit of youthful strength, he threw the man to the floor—seeing, only now, that the man was his dear friend and former professor Pearce van Dyck.

  “Why, this is not real. This cannot be happening . . .”

  By this time, Johanna was sobbing to Josiah, a confused explanation of what had happened, or had nearly happened; the baby in his crib had wakened, and was whimpering, as if with the adult knowledge of terror.

  On the floor Pearce van Dyck lay, shuddering. His face, that had been contorted as in simian rage only a moment before, was now slack, and flaccid; a hoarse rattle in his throat, as if there were thorns and thistles there, to prevent his breathing. Josiah knelt over him, tugging his shirt collar open farther, so that the man might breathe; but, the blow to his head against the floor, where Josiah had thrown him with such violence, or the paroxysm of rage that had driven him to such desperation, had occluded his heart, or a great artery in his brain, and within minutes, despite Josiah’s effort, Dr. van Dyck had ceased breathing; and would pass, with no further agitation or alarm, into a comatose state; within a few hours, into Death.

  The poker, its lethal tip now cooling, lay a few feet away from the fallen man, harmless.

  “ANGEL TRUMPET” ELUCIDATED

  Historians have passed over the “psychotic breakdown” and “attempted infanticide” at Quatre Face, as if these had no direct bearing upon the Curse; as if, having occurred in the area of Raven Rock, Pennsylvania, it was too far from Princeton to be considered.

  Yet, a fact crucial to this history emerges from the van Dyck tragedy.

  Josiah Slade was credited with having saved both the infant’s life and the life of its mother, yet, it scarcely needs to be said, the young man was wracked with a sickening guilt, and became more despondent, and more despairing, than before.


  For hadn’t his former professor loved him, to a degree; hadn’t his former professor trusted him, and welcomed him into his house; hadn’t he been, in the main, prior to the bizarre eruption of homicidal madness, correct about the Curse; hadn’t the poor man, heroic beyond measure, perceived a Scheme of Clues connecting disparate events, and diverse persons? Pearce had shared a good deal with Josiah, it seemed; more than with anyone else; for he had trusted Josiah, as a son.

  “And now he’s dead, I’m left entirely alone. Once his admiring pupil, now his executioner.”

  (YET: A SINGLE uplifting memory followed from Josiah’s desperate act. He would recall the intimate voice that had urged him to hurry to the nursery—Their lives depend upon you only you Josiah. Not a demon’s voice but the voice of his dear sister Annabel, that he had not heard since her death.)

  “YOU DID NOT ‘kill’ the man—you were protecting others.”

  And, “It was not a willful act of yours. It was in fact a selfless, courageous, heroic act.”

  And, “Johanna van Dyck’s baby owes his life to you, as Johanna owes her life to you. That, you must acknowledge.”

  So, Josiah was told. But he did not believe.

  Nor was Josiah’s stricken conscience assuaged when Professor van Dyck’s “psychotic breakdown” was explained, shortly after the man’s funeral. This, by way of a fortuitous visit to Quatre Face by Mrs. Margaret Burr, who was helping Johanna’s family in this time of sorrow.