The Accursed

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Precisely how the coup de grâce was administered by the exhausted Rat-boy page none of the onlookers could have said afterward; nor, unfortunately, can this historian replicate the final moves of the game, though I have set up a small checkerboard here on my desk, to follow the game. According to evidence afterward provided by Todd Slade, the end came at dawn, or what passed for dawn in the Bog Kingdom, when a languid and sickly sun penetrated the smoky interior of the hall; and only a few observers, including the ashen-skinned Countess, were witnesses. The Count, nearly as drained of strength as his child-opponent, and somewhat inebriated, was overcome by a sudden rage against one of the snoring bloodhounds at his feet; and, cursing, gave the dog a sound kick in the ribs, which sent the poor creature yelping and whimpering into a corner . . . But when the Count returned his attention to the board, to reach for one of his kings, he saw to his consternation that the king had vanished; and his two remaining kings were now vulnerable to being captured.

  “What! How is it! Rat-boy has—cheated?”

  “He has not cheated, Brother. I saw nothing.”

  “But, my king—”

  “Your king is at your feet, Brother. Where you yourself toppled it.”

  But was this so? The Count did not dare to look, for fear that his wily child-opponent would cause another piece to “vanish.”

  The Count clapped both hands to his forehead. His frog-eyes bulged and quivered. For it was clear to him that the game of draughts was all but over, and Rat-boy had defeated him honestly, following the rules of the Bog Kingdom; and there was no way out.

  Even in this flush of triumph the wily child knew not to glance up at his opponent’s strained face. Do not weaken Annabel seemed to advise him, remain calm and have no pity.

  The Countess was swaying, and clutching at her hair that had come loose in the course of the long night, in an attitude of angry despair. “It is over. The game—our game—the Bog Castle—the Kingdom. The Kingship is now in the hands of a child and our long reign is ended.”

  “The Kingship is in the hands of a child,” the Count echoed, as he continued to stare, and stare, at the lone pieces before him of his black army. Piteously, the protuberant frog’s eyes filled with moisture.

  So it was, pitiless Todd Slade jumped two of his opponent’s vulnerable kings, and the game board was cleared entirely of black.

  “YOU MUST, you know. There is no turning back.”

  The Countess herself had taken up the heavy ax, to force into the boy’s hands.

  “You must. It is the completion of the game of draughts which you began, on the very hour of your arrival among us.”

  In this way we come to the bloody denouement: for when the spindly-limbed Rat-boy, reeling with fatigue, dread, and repugnance for the terrible deed he must commit, at last manages, with some four or five clumsy swings of the ax, to severe the Count’s head from his shoulders, and erase forever the Count’s smirking frog-face, the shadowy hall with its gaping witnesses vanishes—and the Bog Castle vanishes—and the Bog Kingdom vanishes through its vast waste stretches; and Todd Slade wakes, his young heart hammering with life, whether in his old bed at Wheatsheaf, or in another place, he doesn’t know at once.

  He knows only in that wondrous instant that the Curse has lifted, and he is alive—again alive.

  THE DEATH OF WINSLOW SLADE

  In all the annals of medical lore this historian has had occasion to study, including even the most macabre and unlikely “case studies” memorialized at the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia, he has never come across a means of death more shocking, indeed more “unnatural,” than that suffered by poor Winslow Slade, in full view of the congregation of the First Presbyterian Church on the morning of June 4, 1906.

  This Sunday morning, Dr. Slade was prepared to deliver a guest sermon entitled “The ‘Spirit’ and the ‘Letter’ of the Law,” an homily he had delivered several times, in differing versions, in New Jersey and Philadelphia, always with warm and gratifying results; but at the last minute, for reasons never made clear, the retired minister spoke of setting this sermon aside in favor of another, more “personal,” sermon with the mysterious title “The Covenant.”

  Of course, it was noted by most of the congregation, as by Winslow’s family and relatives, that this sermon fell on the anniversary of Annabel’s abduction from this very same church; Winslow’s son Augustus spoke to him gravely on this issue, but was assured that, to Winslow, the “tragic event” would be but an impetus to his sermon; and his example, to the congregation, would be of the fortifying strength of Christianity, in the face of sorrow.

  “The sermon is an opportunity, Augustus! Nathaniel seems to have felt this, in inviting me to speak.”

  In the church, at the pulpit, Winslow Slade was remarked to appear just slightly agitated, or distracted; he had lost weight, and aged over the past twelve months, clearly; yet his manner was nervously alert; and his white hair, smooth-shaven face, and impeccable clothing were very attractive to behold.

  “O dearly beloved in Christ—hear me and have mercy . . .”

  Even as Dr. Slade began to speak his sermon, which he had memorized, he was overcome by a convulsive sort of shivering; an assault upon his person by a shimmering phantasm, a gigantic black snake: which remarkable creature, with a cruel flat head and bronze-glittering eyes, and iridescent black scales that winked like tiny diamonds, appeared out of nowhere; out of the very bowels of the church; and so surprised Dr. Slade, he could not escape before it wound itself about his body, and thrust its head into his mouth, horribly; as if the loathsome creature meant to bury itself inside him.

  All this in full view of the horrified congregation upon whom a kind of mass paralysis had settled: as if, their eyes opened and fixed to the hellish spectacle before them, they could not believe what they were seeing.

  For the black snake was both “real” in its effect upon the stricken man, and yet shimmering and transparent; you could see through its sinewy length, to the wall behind. Yet, though transparent, the thrashing snake threw a dim shadow, as the Theosophists would argue the etheric body throws a shadow that is invisible to the ordinary eye, while visible to the enlightened eye.

  This historian is not capable of suggesting the collective horror in the church, for the terrible creature that measured, according to the testimony of some witnesses, between ten and twelve feet in length, would not relent its assault upon the helpless man; it was as if the creature wished to bury itself inside its victim. Was there ever so violent an assault upon a human being, in such sacrosanct circumstances; and by way of a devilish specimen of the suborder Serpentes?—any death so cruel, and so horrific? The foul thing succeeded in penetrating the mouth and throat of its victim, while the wretched Dr. Slade, now fallen to the floor beside the pulpit, and thrashing wildly, tried to tear the snake from him with his enfeebled hands, that he might not be choked to death.

  But the great black phantasm-snake could not be budged, and Winslow Slade died within minutes.

  (RECALL THAT THIS CHAPTER occurs simultaneously with the preceding chapter in the Bog Kingdom: the assault upon Dr. Slade coinciding with the moment of the Count’s execution by Todd Slade. Whether one event precipitated the other, I am not certain; it would seem unlikely that the simultaneous events are unrelated. And what is the exact relation between these two events, separated as they are in regions of the spirit, and the miraculous restoration to life of Dr. Slade’s four deceased grandchildren? Before such mysteries, the historian must throw up his hands and trust to his material to communicate a tale, and a meaning, beyond his own ability to fathom.)

  SO IT HAPPENED that Winslow Slade died in the very church in which, for years, he had been minister, and greatly beloved; he died at the age of seventy-five, of what would be diagnosed as cardiac arrest ; and the vicious creature that killed him seemed immediately then to have vanished, whether through a rear exit of the building, or somehow through the floorboards and into the cellar beneath. So confused was the
scene, so panicked the spectators, so unspeakably awful the sight of the dying man wrestling with his demon—few persons have ever tried to present a full account of it, still less to explain it.

  The historian is not so puzzled, for this is commonplace in history, that, afterward, witnesses disagreed about what had happened, or what they had believed happened; and that when Dr. Slade’s body was examined, and afterward subjected to the indignity of an autopsy, no actual trace of any physical assault could be detected, by a snake or any other creature. Such members of the congregation as Francis Pyne, Abraham Sparhawk, and Andrew West, seated near the front of the church, surely saw the monstrous snake as, in panic, they rushed for the nearest exit, on the other side of the church altar from the pulpit; yet would afterward deny that they had seen anything at all. Andrew West gave out the account that he had run from the church, panting and affrighted, in order to summon help for the stricken man—as it seemed that Dr. Slade was having a convulsion of some sort.

  And with the passage of days, and then weeks, the majority of the congregation came round to thinking that while they might have witnessed some such nightmare assault, it had been a collective mirage—conjured out of the air, of whirling dust-motes in a wide quivering ray of sunshine falling upon the altar; they had seen nothing monstrous at all. Except the thrashings and convulsions of a dying man.

  So, unconscionably, careless historians of the ilk of Hollinger and Tite have subsequently interpreted the entire fourteen-month siege of the Crosswicks Curse as an exceptional phenomenon of mass hysteria, citing the “snake frenzy” at the Rocky Hill Seminary as a preliminary incident. Murders and atrocities in the Princeton area were committed by deranged but not supernatural individuals, of whom some were apprehended by police authorities, and some were not. And other commentators on the subject, including journalists for Jersey and New York City newspapers, went to the other extreme in assembling lurid “eyewitness” accounts of the great serpent’s attack upon Dr. Slade; some of these accounts were by persons not present in the church that morning, and some were not even members of the congregation; some, not even bona fide residents of Princeton Borough.

  Yet another aspect of the mystery has to do with the fact that, after Dr. Slade’s body was carried away, no trace could be found of any sermon titled “The Covenant”; only just the manuscript titled “The ‘Spirit’ and the ‘Letter’ of the Law”; so that, in the grief and confusion of the hour, it came to be doubted whether this second sermon had ever existed; and this despite the fact that somewhere beyond two hundred persons saw the elderly man clutch the manuscript in his hands, before the attack of the great snake, beginning to read in a high, quavering, yet resolute voice: “O dearly beloved in Christ, hear me and have mercy . . .”

  This “lost” sermon was to be discovered, years later, among the private papers of the heir of Crosswicks Manor, Augustus Slade, who must have spirited it away for safekeeping, even as his father’s body was being carried from the church to an awaiting ambulance; sequestering it in the family safe, as he’d done with his brother Copplestone’s God-dictated document less than a week before. And this priceless manuscript now resides with me, having been acquired for a pittance at an estate auction; kept now under lock and key in my Ebony-Lacquered Box where no one save this historian has access to it.

  (See the Epilogue: “The Covenant,” to follow.)

  “REVOLUTION IS THE HOUR OF LAUGHTER”

  Was it the great Frenchman Voltaire who’d said these provocative words, as Upton Sinclair believed, or, as his new friend and comrade Yaeger Ruggles asserted, the equally great Frenchman Victor Hugo?

  “I will defer to you, Yaeger, as you are far better educated than I! And a year at the Princeton Theological Seminary, and as a preceptor for Woodrow Wilson—those are impressive credentials, indeed.”

  Yaeger Ruggles shifted his shoulders uneasily inside his coat. In a rueful tone he said, “It would be good to think so, Upton.”

  The friends shook hands on Broadway, at Thirty-first Street, with a plan to meet at a Socialist-suffragette rally three days following, at Union Square. (They had first met two weeks before at a rally on the Bowery of the Socialist Labor Party in support of striking mill-workers in New York City, at which, following a tempestuous rousing speech by Mother Jones, Upton Sinclair had given an earnest, fact-filled speech; Ruggles had introduced himself to Upton afterward, as a “fierce admirer” of The Jungle.)

  Upton watched the stiff-backed young man stride away, marveling at his dignity, and unusually well-pressed clothes, for a Socialist comrade; he’d felt a thrill of brotherhood with Ruggles, as soon as they’d met. Though not greatly liking the young man’s Southern accent, that was associated with the particular conservatism of the South, deeply entrenched against the labor movement, as against Socialist reform generally.

  “He is of ‘mixed race’—is he? Poor fellow! The dark-skinned Negroes will not accept him, as one who is descended from race-rape; and his white brethren will shun him. Only we, his Socialist comrades, can value him.”

  On the morning of June 16, 1906, Upton Sinclair was bound for Penn Station, where he planned to take the 2:25 p.m. train to Englewood, New Jersey, for a visit of two nights. In the waiting room, Upton seated himself on a bench and began at once to work, for he was one to never waste time—“As if you could kill time, without injuring Eternity”—this remark of Henry David Thoreau was a favorite of his since boyhood.

  “Revolution Is the Hour of Laughter” was the inspired title of Upton’s new article for Everybody’s Magazine, on the subject of the imminent Socialist transformation of America; an article the young author was sketching out in a virtual fever, for the subject was precious to him. Man is not intrinsically evil Upton scribbled on a sheet of yellow foolscap, but, under Capitalism, immoral behavior is systematically rewarded. By removing Capitalism we therefore remove Evil. This has been most conclusively demonstrated by . . .

  At this moment Upton glanced up startled, having heard, he thought, his name called—UPTON SINCLAIR!—only just audible amid the cacophony of sounds in the bustling train station. In the way of a turtle shrinking into its shell the young author hunched over his work, for he had been so often besieged of late, as a consequence of his newfound fame (in Socialist circles) or notoriety (all elsewhere), upon the publication of The Jungle, he’d come to dread the prospect of being noticed in public places; especially here in Penn Station, where he hoped to work.

  Another time, more faintly—UPTON SINCLAIR!—but the words were muffled by an announcement of a train due to leave within five minutes at track nineteen, for Boston and points between.

  Upton returned to his work, writing with boyish urgency. There was so much to be done!—so much to be done by him. Often he suffered veritable brainstorms of ideas for articles, like this for Everybody’s Magazine, which, he was thinking, should be a series of articles; and he must soon write a strong letter to the New York Times on the subject of an uninformed editorial published there regarding the Meat Inspection Bill passed just last week by Congress; and an equally spirited letter to President Roosevelt, whom he’d visited by invitation, to discuss The Jungle, and who had gravely disappointed, if not betrayed, the idealistic young Socialist. Yet more pressingly he was obliged to compose a clear and coherent statement for the newspapers regarding the philosophy of his Socialist Utopian community, to be called the Helicon Home Colony, one day to be situated in a wooded rural area outside Englewood, in the northeastern part of the state; at the very thought of this colony, Upton’s mind was flooded with ideas and plans, and a hope of whom he might invite to live there with him—among Socialist comrades, his new friend Yaeger Ruggles was primary; though the young man had expressed only a guarded sort of friendly interest in the colony. (“Socialist comrades would live together? And this would be tolerated by the community?”—so Ruggles had inquired, with some doubt; and Upton had assured him, “This is the United States of America, Yaeger! We may live where we wish, if we
can afford it; and we can certainly live with whom we wish.”)

  And wasn’t there something else pressing, that Upton had promised to do? Involving Meta and little David, whom he had not seen in weeks?

  “So much work, and so precious little time,” Upton murmured to himself, searching through his shabby valise for a fresh sheet of foolscap, “but the ‘Socialist King of the Muckrakers’ must be equal to his challenge, as the prophet Zarathustra was equal to his.”

  SINCE THAT NIGHT in MacDougal’s when Jack London and Josiah Slade came to blows, and Upton Sinclair was knocked most unceremoniously to the floor amid much wreckage in the popular Times Square restaurant, numerous events had happened in Upton’s life of an unexpected sort. The romantic isolation of his Princeton farm, where, in his memory, he and Meta had lived as a honeymoon couple, at least at the start, and where Upton had worked so productively, free to write each day as long as his strength allowed, was vanished forever; for UPTON SINCLAIR had taken his place, however bashfully, in the headlines of the era.

  As an editorial in the New York Evening World observed, with a hint of censure: “Not since the youthful poet Lord Byron woke one morning to find himself both famous and notorious, has there been such an example of world-wide celebrity won in a day, and by a book, as has come to Upton Sinclair; and now it remains to be seen, how the young Socialist author will behave.”