“But the good champion Ethelred, now entering within the door, was sore enraged and amazed to perceive no signal of the maliceful hermit; but, in the stead thereof, a dragon of a scaly and prodigious demeanor, and of a fiery tongue, which sate in guard before a palace of gold, with a floor of silver; and upon the wall there hung a shield of shining brass with this legend enwritten-
Who entereth herein, a conqueror hath bin;
Who slayeth the dragon, the shield he shall win;
“And Ethelred uplifted his mace, and struck upon the head of the dragon, which fell before him, and gave up his pesty breath, with a shriek so horrid and harsh, and withal so piercing, that Ethelred had fain to close his ears with his hands against the dreadful noise of it, the like whereof was never before heard.”
Here again I paused abruptly, and now with a feeling of wild amazement-for there could be no doubt whatever that, in this instance, I did actually hear (although from what direction it proceeded I found it impossible to say) a low and apparently distant, but harsh, protracted, and most unusual screaming or grating sound- the exact counterpart of what my fancy had already conjured up for the dragon’s unnatural shriek as described by the romancer.
Oppressed, as I certainly was, upon the occurrence of this second and most extraordinary coincidence, by a thousand conflicting sensations, in which wonder and extreme terror were predominant, I still retained sufficient presence of mind to avoid exciting, by any observation, the sensitive nervousness of my companion. I was by no means certain that he had noticed the sounds in question; although, assuredly, a strange alteration had, during the last few minutes, taken place in his demeanor. From a position fronting my own, he had gradually brought round his chair, so as to sit with his face to the door of the chamber; and thus I could but partially perceive his features, although I saw that his lips trembled as if he were murmuring inaudibly. His head had dropped upon his breast-yet I knew that he was not asleep, from the wide and rigid opening of the eye as I caught a glance of it in profile. The motion of his body, too, was at variance with this idea-for he rocked from side to side with a gentle yet constant and uniform sway. Having rapidly taken notice of all this, I resumed the narrative of Sir Launcelot, which thus proceeded:
“And now, the champion, having escaped from the terrible fury of the dragon, bethinking himself of the brazen shield, and of the breaking up of the enchantment which was upon it, removed the carcass from out of the way before him, and approached valorously over the silver pavement of the castle to where the shield was upon the wall; which in sooth tarried not for his full coming, but fell down at his feet upon the silver floor, with a mighty great and terrible ringing sound.”
No sooner had these syllables passed my lips, than-as if a shield of brass had indeed, at the moment, fallen heavily upon a floor of silver-I became aware of a distinct, hollow, metallic, and clangorous, yet apparently muffled reverberation. Completely unnerved, I leaped to my feet; but the measured rocking movement of Usher was undisturbed. I rushed to the chair in which he sat. His eyes were bent fixedly before him, and throughout his whole countenance there reigned a stony rigidity. But, as I placed my hand upon his shoulder, there came a strong shudder over his whole person; a sickly smile quivered about his lips; and I saw that he spoke in a low, hurried, and gibbering murmur, as if unconscious of my presence. Bending closely over him, I at length drank in the hideous import of his words.
“Not hear it?-yes, I hear it, and have heard it. Long-long- long-many minutes, many hours, many days, have I heard it-yet I dared not-oh, pity me, miserable wretch that I am!-I dared not-I dared not speak! We have put her living in the tomb! Said I not that my senses were acute? 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! And now-to-night-Ethelred-ha! ha!-the breaking of the hermit’s door, and the death-cry of the dragon, and the clangor of the shield!-say, rather, 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! Oh whither shall I fly? Will she not be here anon? Is she not hurrying to upbraid me for my haste? Have I not heard her footstep on the stair? Do I not distinguish that heavy and horrible beating of her heart? Madman!”-here he sprang furiously to his feet, and shrieked out his syllables, as if in the effort he were giving up his soul-“Madman! I tell you that she now stands without the door!”
As if in the superhuman energy of his utterance there had been found the potency of a spell-the huge antique pannels to which the speaker pointed, threw slowly back, upon the instant, their ponderous and ebony jaws. It was the work of the rushing gust-but then without those doors there did stand the lofty and enshrouded figure of the lady Madeline of Usher. There was blood upon her white robes, and the evidence of some bitter struggle upon every portion of her emaciated frame. For a moment she remained trembling and reeling to and fro upon the threshold-then, with a low moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon the person of her brother, and in her violent and now final death-agonies, bore him to the floor a corpse, and a victim to the terrors he had anticipated.
From that chamber, and from that mansion, I fled aghast. The storm was still abroad in all its wrath as I found myself crossing the old causeway. Suddenly there shot along the path a wild light, and I turned to see whence a gleam so unusual could have issued; for the vast house and its shadows were alone behind me. The radiance was that of the full, setting, and blood-red moon, which now shone vividly through that once barely-discernible fissure, of which I have before spoken as extending from the roof of the building, in a zigzag direction, to the base. While I gazed, this fissure rapidly widened- there came a fierce breath of the whirlwind-the entire orb of the satellite burst at once upon my sight-my brain reeled as I saw the mighty walls rushing asunder-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.”
Once Upon A Midnight Dreary BY MICHAEL CONNELLY
The plan was simple: I would write a book about a cross-country killer who leaves obscure phrases from the work of Edgar Allan Poe as his calling card. I would borrow some of the gloomy menace of the master and infect my own book with it. It would amount to a perfect crime. A clever literary theft disguised as homage. And I would get away with it.
I packed a suitcase for the road trip I would take to research the locations where the killer would strike and made sure to include a two-volume set of Poe’s collected works as well. By day I picked killing scenes for my novel- Phoenix, Denver, Chicago, Sarasota, and Baltimore. By night I sat in hotel rooms and re-immersed myself in the collected works of Edgar Allan Poe. For the most part I had been a short-story man when it came to Poe. I knew the poetry was well regarded and substantial-what high school graduate was unfamiliar with “The Raven”-but I had never been much interested in rhyming. I liked the blood and guts thrills of the stories. But now, on the road, I was reading the poetry because the short, tightly drawn lines, steeped in metaphors for death and loneliness, were what I needed for my book. All these years later I remember one stanza by heart.
I dwelt alone in the land of moan
and my soul was a stagnant tide
Has there ever been a more beautiful and concise summation of an existence at the bottom of the dark abyss? Could there possibly be a better line to self-describe a killer who roams the country in 1997? I didn’t think so. So I decided my killer would use the line.
My research travels took me to Washington, D.C., where I spent a day walking around government buildings and trying to talk my way into a tour of the FBI headquarters. (Access denied.) Late in the day I checked into the Hilton near Dupont Circle. I wanted to stay specifically in the Hilton because the place had its own creep factor-about fifteen years earlier President Ronald Reagan stepped out of a side entrance after giving a speech and was shot by a wouldbe assassin seeking notoriety to feed his fixation
on a movie star. I planned to include a reference to this in my book.
I checked out the spot of the assassination attempt, took some notes, and then went up to my room to order dinner in and spend the rest of the evening reading Poe. After eating and calling home, I stretched out on the bed and cracked open the volume containing the poetry. The work was morose and haunting. Death lurks in almost every stanza that Poe wrote. To say I was spooking myself would be an understatement. I kept all the lights on in the room and double-locked the door.
As the night wore on I became aware of voices out in the hallway. Fellow travelers talking in a muffled cacophony as they headed to or from the elevator. I could hear their footsteps as they trod past my door. It was late and I was somewhere in that gray area between wakefulness and sleep. But I read on and soon came across the poem “The Haunted Palace.” The poem rang eerily familiar to me, yet I knew I was not aware of any of Poe’s poetry outside of “The Raven.” I checked the notes section and learned it was a ballad that had originally been contained in one of Poe’s signature short stories, “The Fall of the House of Usher.”
“Usher” was a story I had read somewhere long before, as a school assignment or during a voluntary immersion in Poe’s work. I now took up the first volume, which contained the short stories, and began to read it once again. The story quickly enveloped me in its claustrophobic dread. I think there is no story of Poe’s, or perhaps from any other writer, that so forcefully and completely ensures the reader’s descent into the unexpected. It is a story steeped in mystery and fear and the unexpected twist. It is a story that rolls inexorably deeper into darkness from the very first word.
Deeply submerged in the story of Roderick Usher and the haunting malady of his head and home, I lost track of where I was until a loud SHOT rang out in the hallway. I leaped up in my bed, book flying to the floor, and stifled a scream. I stood stock-still and waited, my ears waiting for any further report. I then heard a peal of female laughter, a murmur of conversation, and the polite chime of an arriving elevator. I sat back on the bed shaken but realizing I had heard no shot. I had heard the slamming of the door across the hall. I had simply fallen under the spell of Edgar Allan Poe. I’d let him take me to a world of dark imagination, where common things become uncommon, where the routine becomes the ghastly unexpected, where a slamming door becomes a shot in the night.
I called my book The Poet, the name bestowed on my killer by the media when they attribute the lines left behind at the crime scenes to him rather than their true author, Poe. I put the Hilton Hotel scene in the book. I re-created it in as much detail as I could, placing my fictitious alter ego in the bed where I had been. It’s one of my favorite moments in one of my favorite books. I am glad to have made a record of it. But the truth is that it wasn’t necessary. For me there will be no forgetting that midnight dreary when Edgar Allan Poe reached across nearly two centuries to seek justice for what I had thought would be a perfect literary crime.
***
Michael Connelly was born in Philadelphia and has lived in various cities in California and Florida. A reformed journalist, he is a past president of the Mystery Writers of America as well as a recipient of the Edgar Award for Best First Novel by an American Author, bestowed for his 1992 debut, The Black Echo. Eighteen novels later, he has received no further Edgar Awards. With the completion of this collection, he announces his retirement from editing anthologies.
The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar
OF COURSE I shall not pretend to consider it any matter for wonder, that the extraordinary case of M. Valdemar has excited discussion. It would have been a miracle had it not- especially under the circumstances. Through the desire of all parties concerned, to keep the affair from the public, at least for the present, or until we had further opportunities for investigation-through our endeavors to effect this-a garbled or exaggerated account made its way into society, and became the source of many unpleasant misrepresentations; and, very naturally, of a great deal of disbelief.
It is now rendered necessary that I give the facts-as far as I comprehend them myself. They are, succinctly, these:
My attention, for the last three years, had been repeatedly drawn to the subject of Mesmerism; and, about nine months ago, it occurred to me, quite suddenly, that in the series of experiments made hitherto, there had been a very remarkable and most unaccountable omission:-no person had as yet been mesmerized in articulo mortis. It remained to be seen, first, whether, in such condition, there existed in the patient any susceptibility to the magnetic influence; secondly, whether, if any existed, it was impaired or increased by the condition; thirdly, to what extent, or for how long a period, the encroachments of Death might be arrested by the process. There were other points to be ascertained, but these most excited my curiosity-the last in especial, from the immensely important character of its consequences.
In looking around me for some subject by whose means I might test these particulars, I was brought to think of my friend, M. Ernest Valdemar, the well-known compiler of the “Bibliotheca Forensica,” and author (under the nom de plume of Issachar Marx) of the Polish versions of “Wallenstein” and “Gargantua.” M. Valdemar, who has resided principally at Harlem, N.Y., since the year 1839, is (or was) particularly noticeable for the extreme spareness of his person-his lower limbs much resembling those of John Randolph; and, also, for the whiteness of his whiskers, in violent contrast to the blackness of his hair-the latter, in consequence, being very generally mistaken for a wig. His temperament was markedly nervous, and rendered him a good subject for mesmeric experiment. On two or three occasions I had put him to sleep with little difficulty, but was disappointed in other results which his peculiar constitution had naturally led me to anticipate. His will was at no period positively, or thoroughly, under my control, and in regard to clairvoyance, I could accomplish with him nothing to be relied upon. I always attributed my failure at these points to the disordered state of his health. For some months previous to my becoming acquainted with him, his physicians had declared him in a confirmed phthisis. It was his custom, indeed, to speak calmly of his approaching dissolution, as of a matter neither to be avoided nor regretted.
When the ideas to which I have alluded first occurred to me, it was of course very natural that I should think of M. Valdemar. I knew the steady philosophy of the man too well to apprehend any scruples from him; and he had no relatives in America who would be likely to interfere. I spoke to him frankly upon the subject; and, to my surprise, his interest seemed vividly excited. I say to my surprise; for, although he had always yielded his person freely to my experiments, he had never before given me any tokens of sympathy with what I did. His disease was of that character which would admit of exact calculation in respect to the epoch of its termination in death; and 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.
It is now rather more than seven months since I received, from M. Valdemar himself, the subjoined note:
My DEAR P- -
You may as well come now. D- and F- are agreed that I cannot hold out beyond tomorrow midnight; and I think they have hit the time very nearly.
VALDEMAR
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. I had not seen him for ten days, and was appalled by the fearful alteration which the brief interval had wrought in him. His face wore a leaden hue; the eyes were utterly lustreless; and the emaciation was so extreme, that the skin had been broken through by the cheek-bones. His expectoration was excessive. The pulse was barely perceptible. He retained, nevertheless, in a very remarkable manner, both his mental power and a certain degree of physical strength. He spoke with distinctness-took some palliative medicines without aid-and, when I entered the room, was occupied in penciling memoranda in a pocket-book. He was propped up in the bed by pillows. Doctors D- and F- were in attendance.
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After pressing Valdemar’s hand, I took these gentlemen aside, and obtained from them a minute account of the patient’s condition. The left lung had been for eighteen months in a semi-osseous or cartilaginous state, and was, of course, entirely useless for all purposes of vitality. The right, in its upper portion, was also partially, if not thoroughly, ossified, while the lower region was merely a mass of purulent tubercles, running one into another. Several extensive perforations existed; and, at one point, permanent adhesion to the ribs had taken place. These appearances in the right lobe were of comparatively recent date. The ossification had proceeded with very unusual rapidity; no sign of it had been discovered a month before, and the adhesion had only been observed during the three previous days. Independently of the phthisis, the patient was suspected of aneurism of the aorta; but on this point the osseous symptoms rendered an exact diagnosis impossible. It was the opinion of both physicians that M. Valdemar would die about midnight on the morrow (Sunday). It was then seven o’clock on Saturday evening.
On quitting the invalid’s bedside to hold conversation with myself, Doctors D- and F- had bidden him a final farewell. It had not been their intention to return; but, at my request, they agreed to look in upon the patient about ten the next night.
When they had gone, I spoke freely with M. Valdemar on the subject of his approaching dissolution, as well as, more particularly, of the experiment proposed. He still professed himself quite willing and even anxious to have it made, and urged me to commence it at once.
A male and a female nurse were in attendance; but I did not feel myself altogether at liberty to engage in a task of this character with no more reliable witnesses than these people, in case of sudden accident, might prove. I therefore postponed operations until about eight the next night, when the arrival of a medical student, with whom I had some acquaintance (Mr. Theodore L-l,) relieved me from further embarrassment. It had been my design, originally, to wait for the physicians; but I was induced to proceed, first by the urgent entreaties of M. Valdemar, and secondly, by my conviction that I had not a moment to lose, as he was evidently sinking fast.
In The Shadow Of The Master: Classic Tales by Edgar Allan Poe Page 13
