Gothic Literature
Stage 1 English
History of gothic literature
The gothic novel was invented almost single-handedly by Horace Walpole, whose The
Castle of Otranto (1764) contains essentially all the elements that constitute the
genre. Walpole's novel was imitated not only in the eighteenth century and not only
in the novel form, but it has influenced writing, poetry, and even film making up to the
present day. It introduced the term "gothic romance" to the literary world. Due to its
inherently supernatural, surreal, and sublime elements, it has maintained a dark and
mysterious appeal.
However, the roots of the Gothic‛ precede the Gothic‛ works of Horace Walpole. The
focus on the grotesque in the medieval period (visible especially in the paintings and
architecture of the period) provides a key backdrop against which Gothic must be
read, as do the violent and often grotesque tragedies written for the Elizabethan and
Jacobean theatre, with their detailed, almost surgical exploration of the supernatural,
vice, corruption, imprisonment, brutality and sexuality, all of which were to provide the
very substance of the Gothic authors (particularly ‘Macbeth‛ and ‘Dr Faustus‛).
Gothic literature is devoted primarily to stories of horror, the fantastic, and the “darker”
supernatural forces. These forces often represent the “dark side” of human nature—
irrational or destructive desires.
Gothic literature derives its name from its similarities to the Gothic medieval
cathedrals, which feature a majestic, unrestrained architectural style with often
savage or grotesque ornamentation (the word “Gothic” derives from “Goth,” the
name of one of the barbaric Germanic tribes that invaded the Roman Empire). The
Gothic genre (in both literature and architecture) is therefore associated with
savagery and barbarism.
Generally speaking, gothic literature delves into the macabre nature of humanity in
its quest to satisfy mankind's intrinsic desire to plumb the depths of terror.
The key features of gothic texts are:
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
6)
The appearance of the supernatural,
the psychology of horror and/or terror,
the poetics of the sublime (greatness/grandiose),
a sense of mystery and dread
the appealing hero/villain,
the distressed heroine,
7) strong moral closure (usually).
Conventions of gothic literature
There are many conventions of gothic literature, and it is rare that a single text
will use them all. The idea of conventions is to make a text easily recognisable
as gothic. While this can come across as cliched, it serves to immediately orient
the reader into a mindset where they are prepared to engage in a horror story
with hints of the supernatural. Below are 25 of the conventions of gothic
literature, see the file on SEQTA (week 1 term 3) for a more detailed
breakdown.
1. Setting in a castle or haunted house
2. Misty or stormy weather
3. An atmosphere of mystery or suspense (or a sense of dread)
4. Claustrophobia/Entrapment & imprisonment
5. The Supernatural
6. Dreams, omens, premonitions, and visions
7. Villain-hero dynamic
8. The pursued protagonist
9. Pursuit of the heroine
10. Damsel in distress
11. Women threatened by a powerful, impulsive, tyrannical male
12. The outsider
13. Possession/possessiveness
14. Revenance (return of the dead to torment the living)
15. Revenge
16. Unreliable narrator
17. Multiple narrative/spiral narrative method
18. High, overwrought emotion
19. The sublime
20. Darkness as intrinsic to humanity
21. Necromancy
22. Blood
23. Marriage as resolution
24. Strong moral closure
25. The grotesque
Gothic Stories:
1. The Tell-Tale Heart – Edgar Allen Poe
2. The Raven – Edgar Allen Poe
3. The Lottery – Shirley Jackson
4. The Wife’s Story – Ursula K. Le Guin
5. Strawberry Spring – Stephen King
The Tell-Tale Heart
-Edgar Allen Poe
True! --nervous --very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will
you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses --not destroyed
--not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things
in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I
mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily --how calmly I can tell you the
whole story.
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. Passion there was none.
I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult.
For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye! yes, it was this! He had the eye
of a vulture --a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my
blood ran cold; and so by degrees --very gradually --I made up my mind to
take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever.
Now this is the point. You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing. But you
should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded --with
what caution --with what foresight --with what dissimulation I went to work! I
was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed
him. And every night, about midnight, I turned the latch of his door and
opened it --oh so gently! And then, when I had made an opening sufficient for
my head, I put in a dark lantern, all closed, closed, that no light shone out, and
then I thrust in my head. Oh, you would have laughed to see how cunningly I
thrust it in! I moved it slowly --very, very slowly, so that I might not disturb the old
man's sleep. It took me an hour to place my whole head within the opening so
far that I could see him as he lay upon his bed. Ha! would a madman have
been so wise as this, And then, when my head was well in the room, I undid the
lantern cautiously-oh, so cautiously --cautiously (for the hinges creaked) --I
undid it just so much that a single thin ray fell upon the vulture eye. And this I
did for seven long nights --every night just at midnight --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. And every morning, when the day broke,
I went boldly into the chamber, and spoke courageously to him, calling him by
name in a hearty tone, and inquiring how he has passed the night. So you see
he would have been a very profound old man, indeed, to suspect that every
night, just at twelve, I looked in upon him while he slept.
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. Never before that
night had I felt the extent of my own powers --of my sagacity. I could scarcely
contain my feelings of triumph. To think that there I was, opening the door, little
by little, and he not even to dream of my secret deeds or thoughts. I fairly
chuckled at the idea; and perhaps he heard me; for he moved on the bed
suddenly, as if startled. Now you may think that I drew back --but no. His room
was as black as pitch with the thick darkness, (for the shutters were close
fastened, through fear of robbers,) and so I knew that he could not see the
opening of the door, and I kept pushing it on steadily, steadily. I had my head
in, and was about to open the lantern, when my thumb slipped upon the tin
fastening, and the old man sprang up in bed, crying out --"Who's there?" I kept
quite still and said nothing. For a whole hour I did not move a muscle, and in
the meantime I did not hear him lie down. He was still sitting up in the bed
listening; --just as I have done, night after night, hearkening to the death
watches in the wall.
Presently I heard a slight groan, and I knew it was the groan of mortal terror. It
was not a groan of pain or of grief --oh, no! --it was the low stifled sound that
arises from the bottom of the soul when overcharged with awe. I knew the
sound well. Many a night, just at midnight, when all the world slept, it has welled
up from my own bosom, deepening, with its dreadful echo, the terrors that
distracted me. I say I knew it well. I knew what the old man felt, and pitied him,
although I chuckled at heart. I knew that he had been lying awake ever since
the first slight noise, when he had turned in the bed. His fears had been ever
since growing upon him. He had been trying to fancy them causeless, but
could not. He had been saying to himself --"It is nothing but the wind in the
chimney --it is only a mouse crossing the floor," or "It is merely a cricket which
has made a single chirp." Yes, he had been trying to comfort himself with these
suppositions: but he had found all in vain. All in vain; because Death, in
approaching him had stalked with his black shadow before him, and
enveloped the victim. And it was the mournful influence of the unperceived
shadow that caused him to feel --although he neither saw nor heard --to feel
the presence of my head within the room.
When I had waited a long time, very patiently, without hearing him lie down, I
resolved to open a little --a very, very little crevice in the lantern. So I opened
it --you cannot imagine how stealthily, stealthily --until, at length a simple dim
ray, like the thread of the spider, shot from out the crevice and fell full upon
the vulture eye. It was open --wide, wide open --and I grew furious as I gazed
upon it. I saw it with perfect distinctness --all a dull blue, with a hideous veil over
it that chilled the very marrow in my bones; but I could see nothing else of the
old man's face or person: for I had directed the ray as if by instinct, precisely
upon the damned spot. And have I not told you that what you mistake for
madness is but over-acuteness of the sense? --now, I say, there came to my
ears a low, dull, quick sound, such as a watch makes when enveloped in
cotton. I knew that sound well, too. It was the beating of the old man's heart.
It increased my fury, as the beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into
courage.
But even yet I refrained and kept still. I scarcely breathed. I held the lantern
motionless. I tried how steadily I could maintain the ray upon the eve.
Meantime the hellish tattoo of the heart increased. It grew quicker and
quicker, and louder and louder every instant. The old man's terror must have
been extreme! It grew louder, I say, louder every moment! --do you mark me
well I have told you that I am nervous: so I am. And now at the dead hour of
the night, amid the dreadful silence of that old house, so strange a noise as this
excited me to uncontrollable terror. Yet, for some minutes longer I refrained
and stood still. But the beating grew louder, louder! I thought the heart must
burst. And now a new anxiety seized me --the sound would be heard by a
neighbour! The old man's hour had come! With a loud yell, I threw open the
lantern and leaped into the room. He shrieked once --once only. In an instant
I dragged him to the floor, and pulled the heavy bed over him. I then smiled
gaily, to find the deed so far done. But, for many minutes, the heart beat on
with a muffled sound. This, however, did not vex me; it would not be heard
through the wall. At length it ceased. The old man was dead. I removed the
bed and examined the corpse. Yes, he was stone, stone dead. I placed my
hand upon the heart and held it there many minutes. There was no pulsation.
He was stone 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. The night waned, and I
worked hastily, but in silence. First of all I dismembered the corpse. I cut off the
head and the arms and the legs. I then took up three planks from the flooring
of the chamber, and deposited all between the scantlings. I then replaced the
boards so cleverly, so cunningly, that no human eye --not even his --could have
detected any thing wrong. There was nothing to wash out --no stain of any
kind --no blood-spot whatever. I had been too wary for that. A tub had caught
all --ha! ha! When I had made an end of these labors, it was four o'clock --still
dark as midnight. As the bell sounded the hour, there came a knocking at the
street door. I went down to open it with a light heart, --for what had I now to
fear? There entered three men, who introduced themselves, with perfect
suavity, as officers of the police. A shriek had been heard by a neighbour
during the night; suspicion of foul play had been aroused; information had
been lodged at the police office, and they (the officers) had been deputed
to search the premises. I smiled, --for what had I to fear? I bade the gentlemen
welcome. The shriek, I said, was my own in a dream. The old man, I mentioned,
was absent in the country. I took my visitors all over the house. I bade them
search --search well. I led them, at length, to his chamber. I showed them his
treasures, secure, undisturbed. In the enthusiasm of my confidence, I brought
chairs into the room, and desired them here to rest from their fatigues, while I
myself, in the wild audacity of my perfect triumph, placed my own seat upon
the very spot beneath which reposed the corpse of the victim.
The officers were satisfied. My manner had convinced them. I was singularly at
ease. They sat, and while I answered cheerily, they chatted of familiar things.
But, ere long, I felt myself getting pale and wished them gone. My head ached,
and I fancied a ringing in my ears: but still they sat and still chatted. The ringing
became more distinct: --It continued and became more distinct: I talked more
freely to get rid of the feeling: but it continued and gained definiteness --until,
at length, I found that the noise was not within my ears. No doubt I now grew
very pale; --but I talked more fluently, and with a heightened voice. Yet the
sound increased --and what could I do? It was a low, dull, quick sound --much
such a sound as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I gasped for
breath --and yet the officers heard it not. I talked more quickly --more
vehemently; but the noise steadily increased. I arose and argued about trifles,
in a high key and with violent gesticulations; but the noise steadily increased.
Why would they not be gone? I paced the floor to and fro with heavy strides,
as if excited to fury by the observations of the men --but the noise steadily
increased. Oh God! what could I do? I foamed --I raved --I swore! I swung the
chair upon which I had been sitting, and grated it upon the boards, but the
noise arose over all and continually increased. It grew louder --louder --louder!
And still the men chatted pleasantly, and smiled. Was it possible they heard
not? Almighty God! --no, no! They heard! --they suspected! --they knew! --they
were making a mockery of my horror!-this I thought, and this I think. But
anything was better than this agony! Anything was more tolerable than this
derision! I could bear those hypocritical smiles no longer! I felt that I must
scream or die! and now --again! --hark! louder! louder! louder! louder!
"Villains!" I shrieked, "dissemble no more! I admit the deed! --tear up the planks!
here, here! --It is the beating of his hideous heart!"
The Raven
-Edgar Allen Poe
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“ ’Tis some visiter,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door —
Only this, and nothing more.”
Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; — vainly I had tried to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow — sorrow for the lost Lenore —
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore —
Nameless here for evermore.
And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me — filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
“ ’Tis some visiter entreating entrance at my chamber door —
Some late visiter entreating entrance at my chamber door; —
This it is, and nothing more.”
Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
“Sir,” said I, “or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you” — here I opened wide the door; —
Darkness there, and nothing more.
Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the darkness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, “Lenore!”
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, “Lenore!”
Merely this, and nothing more.
Then into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon I heard again a tapping somewhat louder than before.
“Surely,” said I, “surely that is something at my window lattice;
Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore —
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; —
’Tis the wind, and nothing more.”
Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore;
Not the least obeisance made he; not an instant stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door —
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door —
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.
Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
“Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,” I said, “art sure no craven,
Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the Nightly shore —
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!”
Quoth the raven, “Nevermore!”
Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning — little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door —
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as “Nevermore.”
But the raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing farther then he uttered — not a feather then he fluttered —
Till I scarcely more than muttered, “Other friends have flown before —
On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before.”
Quoth the raven, “Nevermore.”
Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
“Doubtless,” said I, “what it utters is its only stock and store,
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster
Followed fast and followed faster — so, when Hope he would adjure,
Stern Despair returned, instead of the sweet Hope he dared adjure —
That sad answer, “Nevermore!”
But the raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust, and door;
Then upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore —
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore
Meant in croaking “Nevermore.”
This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom’s core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion’s velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o’er,
But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o’er
She shall press, ah, nevermore!
Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by angels whose faint foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.
“Wretch,” I cried, “thy God hath lent thee — by these angels he hath sent thee
Respite — respite and Nepenthe [[nepenthe]] from thy memories of Lenore!
Quaff, oh quaff this kind Nepenthe [[nepenthe]] and forget this lost Lenore!”
Quoth the raven, “Nevermore.”
“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil! — prophet still, if bird or devil! —
Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate, yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted —
On this home by Horror haunted — tell me truly, I implore —
Is there — is there balm in Gilead? — tell me — tell me, I implore!”
Quoth the raven, “Nevermore.”
“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil! — prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us — by that God we both adore —
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore —
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.”
Quoth the raven, “Nevermore.”
“Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!” I shrieked, upstarting —
“Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken! — quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!”
Quoth the raven, “Nevermore.”
And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted — nevermore!
The Lottery
-Shirley Jackson
The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full
summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly
green. The people of the village began to gather in the square, between the
post office and the bank, around ten o'clock; in some towns there were so
many people that the lottery took two days and had to be started on June
26th. But in this village, where there were only about three hundred people,
the whole lottery took less than two hours, so it could begin at ten o'clock in
the morning and still be through in time to allow the villagers to get home for
noon dinner.
The children assembled first, of course. School was recently over for the
summer, and the feeling of liberty sat uneasily on most of them; they tended
to gather together quietly for a while before they broke into boisterous play,
and their talk was still of the classroom and the teacher, of books and
reprimands. Bobby Martin had already stuffed his pockets full of stones, and
the other boys soon followed his example, selecting the smoothest and
roundest stones; Bobby and Harry Jones and Dickie Delacroix - the villagers
pronounced this name "Dellacroy" – eventually made a great pile of stones in
one corner of the square and guarded it against the raids of the other boys.
The girls stood aside, talking among themselves, looking over their shoulders at
the boys, and the very small children rolled in the dust or clung to the hands of
their older brothers or sisters.
Soon the men began to gather, surveying their own children, speaking of
planting and rain, tractors and taxes. They stood together, away from the pile
of stones in the corner, and their jokes were quiet and they smiled rather than
laughed. The women, wearing faded house dresses and sweaters, came
shortly after their menfolk. They greeted one another and exchanged bits of
gossip as they went to join their husbands. Soon the women, standing by their
husbands, began to call to their children, and the children came reluctantly,
having to be called four or five times. Bobby Martin ducked under his mother's
grasping hand and ran, laughing, back to the pile of stones. His father spoke
up sharply, and Bobby came quickly and took his place between his father
and his oldest brother.
The lottery was conducted as were the square dances, the teen club, the
Halloween program by Mr. Summers who had time and energy to devote to
civic activities. He was a round-faced, jovial man and he ran the coal business,
and people were sorry for him because he had no children and his wife was a
scold. When he arrived in the square, carrying the black wooden box, there
was a murmur of conversation among the villagers, and he waved and called,
"Little late today, folks." The postmaster, Mr. Graves, followed him, carrying a
three-legged stool, and the stool was put in the centre of the square and Mr.
Summers set the black box down on it. The villagers kept their distance, leaving
a space between themselves and the stool, and when Mr. Summers said,
"Some of you fellows want to give me a hand?" there was a hesitation before
two men, Mr. Martin and his oldest son, Baxter, came forward to hold the box
steady on the stool while Mr. Summers stirred up the papers inside it.
The original paraphernalia for the lottery had been lost long ago, and the
black box now resting on the stool had been put into use even before Old Man
Warner, the oldest man in town, was born. Mr. Summers spoke frequently to the
villagers about making a new box, but no one liked to upset even as much
tradition as was represented by the black box. There was a story that the
present box had been made with some pieces of the box that had preceded
it, the one that had been constructed when the first people settled down to
make a village here. Every year, after the lottery, Mr. Summers began talking
again about a new box, but every year the subject was allowed to fade off
without anything's being done. The black box grew shabbier each year: by
now it was no longer completely black but splintered badly along one side to
show the original wood colour, and in some places faded or stained.
Mr. Martin and his oldest son, Baxter, held the black box securely on the stool
until Mr. Summers had stirred the papers thoroughly with his hand. Because so
much of the ritual had been forgotten or discarded, Mr. Summers had been
successful in having slips of paper substituted for the chips of wood that had
been used for generations. Chips of wood, Mr. Summers had argued. had
been all very well when the village was tiny, but now that the population was
more than three hundred and likely to keep on growing, it was necessary to
use something that would fit more easily into the black box. The night before
the lottery, Mr. Summers and Mr. Graves made up the slips of paper and put
them in the box, and it was then taken to the safe of Mr. Summers' coal
company and locked up until Mr. Summers was ready to take it to the square
next morning. The rest of the year, the box was put way, sometimes one place,
sometimes another; it had spent one year in Mr. Graves' barn and another year
underfoot in the post office, and sometimes it was set on a shelf in the Martin
grocery and left there.
There was a great deal of fussing to be done before Mr. Summers declared the
lottery open. There were the lists to make up of heads of families, heads of
households in each family, members of each household in each family. There
was the proper swearing in of Mr. Summers by the postmaster, as the official of
the lottery; at one time, some people remembered, there had been a recital
of some sort, performed by the official of the lottery, a perfunctory. tuneless
chant that had been rattled off duly each year; some people believed that
the official of the lottery used to stand just so when he said or sang it, others
believed that he was supposed to walk among the people, but years and
years ago this part of the ritual had been allowed to lapse. There had been,
also, a ritual salute, which the official of the lottery had had to use in addressing
each person who came up to draw from the box, but this also had changed
with time, until now it was felt necessary only for the official to speak to each
person approaching. Mr. Summers was very good at all this; in his clean white
shirt and blue jeans, with one hand resting carelessly on the black box, he
seemed very proper and important as he talked interminably to Mr. Graves
and the Martins.
Just as Mr. Summers finally left off talking and turned to the assembled villagers,
Mrs. Hutchinson came hurriedly along the path to the square, her sweater
thrown over her shoulders, and slid into place in the back of the crowd. "Clean
forgot what day it was," she said to Mrs. Delacroix, who stood next to her, and
they both laughed softly. "Thought my old man was out back stacking wood,"
Mrs. Hutchinson went on. "And then I looked out the window and the kids was
gone, and then I remembered it was the twenty seventh and came a-running."
She dried her hands on her apron, and Mrs. Delacroix said, "You're in time,
though. They're still talking away up there."
Mrs. Hutchinson craned her neck to see through the crowd and found her
husband and children standing near the front. She tapped Mrs. Delacroix on
the arm as a farewell and began to make her way through the crowd. The
people separated good-humouredly to let her through: two or three people
said, in voices just loud enough to be heard across the crowd, "Here comes
your, Missus, Hutchinson," and "Bill, she made it after all." Mrs. Hutchinson
reached her husband, and Mr. Summers, who had been waiting, said
cheerfully, "Thought we were going to have to get on without you, Tessie." Mrs.
Hutchinson said, grinning, "Wouldn't have me leave m'dishes in the sink, now,
would you. Joe?" and soft laughter ran through the crowd as the people stirred
back into position after Mrs. Hutchinson's arrival.
"Well, now." Mr. Summers said soberly, "guess we better get started, get this
over with, so's we can go back to work. Anybody ain't here?"
"Dunbar." several people said. "Dunbar. Dunbar."
Mr. Summers consulted his list. "Clyde Dunbar." he said. "That's right. He's broke
his leg, hasn't he? Who's drawing for him?"
"Me. I guess," a woman said, and Mr. Summers turned to look at her. "Wife draws
for her husband." Mr. Summers said. "Don't you have a grown boy to do it for
you, Janey?"
Although Mr. Summers and everyone else in the village knew the answer
perfectly well, it was the business of the official of the lottery to ask such
questions formally. Mr. Summers waited with an expression of polite interest
while Mrs. Dunbar answered.
"Horace's not but sixteen yet." Mrs. Dunbar said regretfully. "Guess I gotta fill in
for the old man this year."
"Right," Mr. Summers said. He made a note on the list he was holding. Then he
asked, "Watson boy drawing this year?"
A tall boy in the crowd raised his hand. "Here," he said. "I’m drawing for my
mother and me." He blinked his eyes nervously and ducked his head as several
voices in the crowd said things like "Good fellow, Jack." and "Glad to see your
mother's got a man to do it."
"Well," Mr. Summers said, "guess that's everyone. Old Man Warner make it?"
"Here," a voice said, and Mr. Summers nodded.
A sudden hush fell on the crowd as Mr. Summers cleared his throat and looked
at the list. "All ready?" he called. "Now, I'll read the names-heads of families firstand the men come up and take a paper out of the box. Keep the paper
folded in your hand without looking at it until everyone has had a turn.
Everything clear?"
The people had done it so many times that they only half listened to the
directions: most of them were quiet, wetting their lips, not looking around. Then
Mr. Summers raised one hand high and said, "Adams." A man disengaged
himself from the crowd and came forward. "Hi. Steve." Mr. Summers said and
Mr. Adams said, "Hi. Joe." They grinned at one another humourlessly and
nervously. Then Mr. Adams reached into the black box and took out a folded
paper. He held it firmly by one corner as he turned and went hastily back to his
place in the crowd, where he stood a little apart from his family, not looking
down at his hand.
"Allen." Mr. Summers said. "Anderson.... Bentham."
"Seems like there's no time at all between lotteries anymore," Mrs. Delacroix
said to Mrs. Graves in the back row.
"Seems like we got through with the last one only last week."
"Time sure goes fast,” Mrs. Graves said.
"Clark.... Delacroix"
"There goes my old man." Mrs. Delacroix said. She held her breath while her
husband went forward.
"Dunbar," Mr. Summers said, and Mrs. Dunbar went steadily to the box while
one of the women said. "Go on, Janey," and another said, "There she goes."
"We're next." Mrs. Graves said. She watched while Mr. Graves came around
from the side of the box, greeted Mr. Summers gravely and selected a slip of
paper from the box. By now, all through the crowd there were men holding the
small, folded papers in their large hand, turning them over and over nervously
Mrs. Dunbar and her two sons stood together, Mrs. Dunbar holding the slip of
paper.
"Harburt.... Hutchinson."
"Get up there, Bill," Mrs. Hutchinson said, and the people near her laughed.
"Jones."
"They do say," Mr. Adams said to Old Man Warner, who stood next to him, "that
over in the north village they're talking of giving up the lottery."
Old Man Warner snorted. "Pack of crazy fools," he said. "Listening to the young
folks, nothing's good enough for them. Next thing you know, they'll be wanting
to go back to living in caves, nobody work anymore, live that way for a while.
Used to be a saying about 'Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon.' First thing you
know, we'd all be eating stewed chickweed and acorns. There's always been
a lottery," he added petulantly. "Bad enough to see young Joe Summers up
there joking with everybody."
"Some places have already quit lotteries." Mrs. Adams said.
"Nothing but trouble in that," Old Man Warner said stoutly. "Pack of young
fools."
"Martin." And Bobby Martin watched his father go forward. "Overdyke....
Percy."
"I wish they'd hurry," Mrs. Dunbar said to her older son. "I wish they'd hurry."
"They're almost through," her son said.
"You get ready to run tell Dad," Mrs. Dunbar said.
Mr. Summers called his own name and then stepped forward precisely and
selected a slip from the box. Then he called, "Warner."
"Seventy seventh year I been in the lottery," Old Man Warner said as he went
through the crowd. "Seventy seventh time."
"Watson" The tall boy came awkwardly through the crowd. Someone said,
"Don't be nervous, Jack," and Mr. Summers said, "Take your time, son."
"Zanini."
After that, there was a long pause, a breathless pause, until Mr. Summers,
holding his slip of paper in the air, said, "All right, fellows." For a minute, no one
moved, and then all the slips of paper were opened. Suddenly, all the women
began to speak at once, saying. "Who is it?" "Who's got it?" "Is it the Dunbars?"
"Is it the Watsons?" Then the voices began to say, "It's Hutchinson. It's Bill," "Bill
Hutchinson's got it."
"Go tell your father," Mrs. Dunbar said to her older son.
People began to look around to see the Hutchinsons. Bill Hutchinson was
standing quiet, staring down at the paper in his hand. Suddenly, Tessie
Hutchinson shouted to Mr. Summers. "You didn't give him time enough to take
any paper he wanted. I saw you. It wasn't fair!"
"Be a good sport, Tessie," Mrs. Delacroix called, and Mrs. Graves said, "All of us
took the same chance."
"Shut up, Tessie," Bill Hutchinson said.
"Well, everyone," Mr. Summers said, "that was done pretty fast, and now we've
got to be hurrying a little more to get done in time." He consulted his next list.
"Bill," he said, "you draw for the Hutchinson family. You got any other households
in the Hutchinsons?"
"There's Don and Eva," Mrs. Hutchinson yelled. "Make them take their chance!"
"Daughters draw with their husbands' families, Tessie," Mr. Summers said gently.
"You know that as well as anyone else."
"It wasn't fair," Tessie said.
"I guess not, Joe." Bill Hutchinson said regretfully. "My daughter draws with her
husband's family; that's only fair. And I've got no other family except the kids."
"Then, as far as drawing for families is concerned, it's you," Mr. Summers said in
explanation, "and as far as drawing for households is concerned, that's you,
too. Right?"
"Right," Bill Hutchinson said.
"How many kids, Bill?" Mr. Summers asked formally.
"Three," Bill Hutchinson said.
"There's Bill, Jr., and Nancy, and little Dave. And Tessie and me."
"All right, then," Mr. Summers said. "Harry, you got their tickets back?"
Mr. Graves nodded and held up the slips of paper. "Put them in the box, then,"
Mr. Summers directed. "Take Bill's and put it in."
"I think we ought to start over," Mrs. Hutchinson said, as quietly as she could. "I
tell you it wasn't fair. You didn't give him time enough to choose. Everybody
saw that."
Mr. Graves had selected the five slips and put them in the box, and he
dropped all the papers but those onto the ground where the breeze caught
them and lifted them off.
"Listen, everybody," Mrs. Hutchinson was saying to the people around her.
"Ready, Bill?" Mr. Summers asked, and Bill Hutchinson, with one quick glance
around at his wife and children, nodded.
"Remember," Mr. Summers said. "Take the slips and keep them folded until
each person has taken one. Harry, you help little Dave." Mr. Graves took the
hand of the little boy, who came willingly with him up to the box. "Take a paper
out of the box, Davy." Mr. Summers said. Davy put his hand into the box and
laughed. "Take just one paper." Mr. Summers said. "Harry, you hold it for him."
Mr. Graves took the child's hand and removed the folded paper from the tight
fist and held it while little Dave stood next to him and looked up at him
wonderingly.
"Nancy next," Mr. Summers said. Nancy was twelve, and her school friends
breathed heavily as she went forward switching her skirt, and took a slip daintily
from the box. "Bill, Jr.," Mr. Summers said, and Billy, his face red and his feet
overlarge, near knocked the box over as he got a paper out. "Tessie," Mr.
Summers said. She hesitated for a minute, looking around defiantly, and then
set her lips and went up to the box. She snatched a paper out and held it
behind her.
"Bill," Mr. Summers said, and Bill Hutchinson reached into the box and felt
around, bringing his hand out at last with the slip of paper in it.
The crowd was quiet. A girl whispered, "I hope it's not Nancy," and the sound
of the whisper reached the edges of the crowd.
"It's not the way it used to be." Old Man Warner said clearly. "People ain't the
way they used to be."
"All right," Mr. Summers said. "Open the papers. Harry, you open little Dave's."
Mr. Graves opened the slip of paper and there was a general sigh through the
crowd as he held it up and everyone could see that it was blank. Nancy and
Bill Jr. opened theirs at the same time and both beamed and laughed, turning
around to the crowd and holding their slips of paper above their heads.
"Tessie," Mr. Summers said. There was a pause, and then Mr. Summers looked
at Bill Hutchinson, and Bill unfolded his paper and showed it. It was blank.
"It's Tessie," Mr. Summers said, and his voice was hushed. "Show us her paper,
Bill."
Bill Hutchinson went over to his wife and forced the slip of paper out of her
hand. It had a black spot on it, the black spot Mr. Summers had made the night
before with the heavy pencil in the coal company office. Bill Hutchinson held
it up, and there was a stir in the crowd.
"All right, folks." Mr. Summers said. "Let's finish quickly."
Although the villagers had forgotten the ritual and lost the original black box,
they still remembered to use stones. The pile of stones the boys had made
earlier was ready; there were stones on the ground with the blowing scraps of
paper that had come out of the box. Delacroix selected a stone so large she
had to pick it up with both hands and turned to Mrs. Dunbar. "Come on," she
said. "Hurry up."
Mr. Dunbar had small stones in both hands, and she said, gasping for breath, "I
can't run at all. You'll have to go ahead and I'll catch up with you."
The children had stones already. And someone gave little Davy Hutchinson
few pebbles.
Tessie Hutchinson was in the centre of a cleared space by now and she held
her hands out desperately as the villagers moved in on her. "It isn't fair," she
said. A stone hit her on the side of the head. Old Man Warner was saying,
"Come on, come on, everyone." Steve Adams was in the front of the crowd of
villagers, with Mrs. Graves beside him.
"It isn't fair, it isn't right," Mrs. Hutchinson screamed, and then they were upon
her.
The Outsider
-H. P. Lovecraft
That night the Baron dreamt of many a woe;
And all his warrior-guests, with shade and form
Of witch, and demon, and large coffin-worm,
Were long be-nightmared.
—Keats.
Unhappy is he to whom the memories of childhood bring only fear and
sadness. Wretched is he who looks back upon lone hours in vast and dismal
chambers with brown hangings and maddening rows of antique books, or
upon awed watches in twilight groves of grotesque, gigantic, and vineencumbered trees that silently wave twisted branches far aloft. Such a lot the
gods gave to me—to me, the dazed, the disappointed, the barren, the broken.
And yet I am strangely content, and cling desperately to those sere memories,
when my mind momentarily threatens to reach beyond to the other.
I know not where I was born, save that the castle was infinitely old and infinitely
horrible; full of dark passages and having high ceilings where the eye could
find only cobwebs and shadows. The stones in the crumbling corridors seemed
always hideously damp, and there was an accursed smell everywhere, as of
the piled-up corpses of dead generations. It was never light, so that I used
sometimes to light candles and gaze steadily at them for relief; nor was there
any sun outdoors, since the terrible trees grew high above the topmost
accessible tower. There was one black tower which reached above the trees
into the unknown outer sky, but that was partly ruined and could not be
ascended save by a well-nigh impossible climb up the sheer wall, stone by
stone.
I must have lived years in this place, but I cannot measure the time. Beings must
have cared for my needs, yet I cannot recall any person except myself; or
anything alive but the noiseless rats and bats and spiders. I think that whoever
nursed me must have been shockingly aged, since my first conception of a
living person was that of something mockingly like myself, yet distorted,
shrivelled, and decaying like the castle. To me there was nothing grotesque in
the bones and skeletons that strowed some of the stone crypts deep down
among the foundations. I fantastically associated these things with every-day
events and thought them more natural than the coloured pictures of living
beings which I found in many of the mouldy books. From such books I learned
all that I know. No teacher urged or guided me, and I do not recall hearing
any human voice in all those years—not even my own; for although I had read
of speech, I had never thought to try to speak aloud. My aspect was a matter
equally unthought of, for there were no mirrors in the castle, and I merely
regarded myself by instinct as akin to the youthful figures I saw drawn and
painted in the books. I felt conscious of youth because I remembered so little.
Outside, across the putrid moat and under the dark mute trees, I would often
lie and dream for hours about what I read in the books; and would longingly
picture myself amidst gay crowds in the sunny world beyond the endless forest.
Once I tried to escape from the forest, but as I went farther from the castle the
shade grew denser and the air more filled with brooding fear; so that I ran
frantically back lest I lose my way in a labyrinth of nighted silence.
So through endless twilights I dreamed and waited, though I knew not what I
waited for. Then in the shadowy solitude my longing for light grew so frantic
that I could rest no more, and I lifted entreating hands to the single black ruined
tower that reached above the forest into the unknown outer sky. And at last I
resolved to scale that tower, fall though I might; since it were better to glimpse
the sky and perish, than to live without ever beholding day.
In the dank twilight I climbed the worn and aged stone stairs till I reached the
level where they ceased, and thereafter clung perilously to small footholds
leading upward. Ghastly and terrible was that dead, stairless cylinder of rock;
black, ruined, and deserted, and sinister with startled bats whose wings made
no noise. But more ghastly and terrible still was the slowness of my progress; for
climb as I might, the darkness overhead grew no thinner, and a new chill as of
haunted and venerable mould assailed me. I shivered as I wondered why I did
not reach the light, and would have looked down had I dared. I fancied that
night had come suddenly upon me, and vainly groped with one freehand for
a window embrasure, that I might peer out and above, and try to judge the
height I had attained.
All at once, after an infinity of awesome, sightless crawling up that concave
and desperate precipice, I felt my head touch a solid thing, and I knew I must
have gained the roof, or at least some kind of floor. In the darkness I raised my
free hand and tested the barrier, finding it stone and immovable. Then came
a deadly circuit of the tower, clinging to whatever holds the slimy wall could
give; till finally my testing hand found the barrier yielding, and I turned upward
again, pushing the slab or door with my head as I used both hands in my fearful
ascent. There was no light revealed above, and as my hands went higher I
knew that my climb was for the nonce ended; since the slab was the trap-door
of an aperture leading to a level stone surface of greater circumference than
the lower tower, no doubt the floor of some lofty and capacious observation
chamber. I crawled through carefully, and tried to prevent the heavy slab from
falling back into place; but failed in the latter attempt. As I lay exhausted on
the stone floor I heard the eerie echoes of its fall, but hoped when necessary
to pry it open again.
Believing I was now at a prodigious height, far above the accursed branches
of the wood, I dragged myself up from the floor and fumbled about for
windows, that I might look for the first time upon the sky, and the moon and
stars of which I had read. But on every hand I was disappointed; since all that
I found were vast shelves of marble, bearing odious oblong boxes of disturbing
size. More and more I reflected, and wondered what hoary secrets might
abide in this high apartment so many aeons cut off from the castle below. Then
unexpectedly my hands came upon a doorway, where hung a portal of stone,
rough with strange chiselling. Trying it, I found it locked; but with a supreme
burst of strength I overcame all obstacles and dragged it open inward. As I did
so there came to me the purest ecstasy I have ever known; for shining tranquilly
through an ornate grating of iron, and down a short stone passageway of steps
that ascended from the newly found doorway, was the radiant full moon,
which I had never before seen save in dreams and in vague visions I dared not
call memories.
Fancying now that I had attained the very pinnacle of the castle, I
commenced to rush up the few steps beyond the door; but the sudden veiling
of the moon by a cloud caused me to stumble, and I felt my way more slowly
in the dark. It was still very dark when I reached the grating—which I tried
carefully and found unlocked, but which I did not open for fear of falling from
the amazing height to which I had climbed. Then the moon came out.
Most daemoniacal of all shocks is that of the abysmally unexpected and
grotesquely unbelievable. Nothing I had before undergone could compare in
terror with what I now saw; with the bizarre marvels that sight implied. The sight
itself was as simple as it was stupefying, for it was merely this: instead of a
dizzying prospect of treetops seen from a lofty eminence, there stretched
around me on a level through the grating nothing less than the solid ground,
decked and diversified by marble slabs and columns, and overshadowed by
an ancient stone church, whose ruined spire gleamed spectrally in the
moonlight.
Half unconscious, I opened the grating and staggered out upon the white
gravel path that stretched away in two directions. My mind, stunned and
chaotic as it was, still held the frantic craving for light; and not even the
fantastic wonder which had happened could stay my course. I neither knew
nor cared whether my experience was insanity, dreaming, or magic; but was
determined to gaze on brilliance and gaiety at any cost. I knew not who I was
or what I was, or what my surroundings might be; though as I continued to
stumble along I became conscious of a kind of fearsome latent memory that
made my progress not wholly fortuitous. I passed under an arch out of that
region of slabs and columns, and wandered through the open country;
sometimes following the visible road, but sometimes leaving it curiously to tread
across meadows where only occasional ruins bespoke the ancient presence
of a forgotten road. Once I swam across a swift river where crumbling, mossy
masonry told of a bridge long vanished.
Over two hours must have passed before I reached what seemed to be my
goal, a venerable ivied castle in a thickly wooded park; maddeningly familiar,
yet full of perplexing strangeness to me. I saw that the moat was filled in, and
that some of the well-known towers were demolished; whilst new wings existed
to confuse the beholder. But what I observed with chief interest and delight
were the open windows—gorgeously ablaze with light and sending forth sound
of the gayest revelry. Advancing to one of these I looked in and saw an oddly
dressed company, indeed; making merry, and speaking brightly to one
another. I had never, seemingly, heard human speech before; and could
guess only vaguely what was said. Some of the faces seemed to hold
expressions that brought up incredibly remote recollections; others were utterly
alien.
I now stepped through the low window into the brilliantly lighted room,
stepping as I did so from my single bright moment of hope to my blackest
convulsion of despair and realisation. The nightmare was quick to come; for as
I entered, there occurred immediately one of the most terrifying
demonstrations I had ever conceived. Scarcely had I crossed the sill when
there descended upon the whole company a sudden and unheralded fear of
hideous intensity, distorting every face and evoking the most horrible screams
from nearly every throat. Flight was universal, and in the clamour and panic
several fell in a swoon and were dragged away by their madly fleeing
companions. Many covered their eyes with their hands, and plunged blindly
and awkwardly in their race to escape; overturning furniture and stumbling
against the walls before they managed to reach one of the many doors.
The cries were shocking; and as I stood in the brilliant apartment alone and
dazed, listening to their vanishing echoes, I trembled at the thought of what
might be lurking near me unseen. At a casual inspection the room seemed
deserted, but when I moved toward one of the alcoves I thought I detected a
presence there—a hint of motion beyond the golden-arched doorway
leading to another and somewhat similar room. As I approached the arch I
began to perceive the presence more clearly; and then, with the first and last
sound I ever uttered—a ghastly ululation that revolted me almost as poignantly
as its noxious cause—I beheld in full, frightful vividness the inconceivable,
indescribable, and unmentionable monstrosity which had by its simple
appearance changed a merry company to a herd of delirious fugitives.
I cannot even hint what it was like, for it was a compound of all that is unclean,
uncanny, unwelcome, abnormal, and detestable. It was the ghoulish shade of
decay, antiquity, and desolation; the putrid, dripping eidolon of unwholesome
revelation; the awful baring of that which the merciful earth should always
hide. God knows it was not of this world—or no longer of this world—yet to my
horror I saw in its eaten-away and bone-revealing outlines a leering, abhorrent
travesty on the human shape; and in its mouldy, disintegrating apparel an
unspeakable quality that chilled me even more.
I was almost paralysed, but not too much so to make a feeble effort toward
flight; a backward stumble which failed to break the spell in which the
nameless, voiceless monster held me. My eyes, bewitched by the glassy orbs
which stared loathsomely into them, refused to close; though they were
mercifully blurred, and shewed the terrible object but indistinctly after the first
shock. I tried to raise my hand to shut out the sight, yet so stunned were my
nerves that my arm could not fully obey my will. The attempt, however, was
enough to disturb my balance; so that I had to stagger forward several steps
to avoid falling. As I did so I became suddenly and agonisingly aware of the
nearness of the carrion thing, whose hideous hollow breathing I half fancied I
could hear. Nearly mad, I found myself yet able to throw out a hand to ward
off the foetid apparition which pressed so close; when in one cataclysmic
second of cosmic nightmarishness and hellish accident my fingers touched the
rotting outstretched paw of the monster beneath the golden arch.
I did not shriek, but all the fiendish ghouls that ride the night-wind shrieked for
me as in that same second there crashed down upon my mind a single and
fleeting avalanche of soul-annihilating memory. I knew in that second all that
had been; I remembered beyond the frightful castle and the trees, and
recognised the altered edifice in which I now stood; I recognised, most terrible
of all, the unholy abomination that stood leering before me as I withdrew my
sullied fingers from its own.
But in the cosmos there is balm as well as bitterness, and that balm is nepenthe.
In the supreme horror of that second I forgot what had horrified me, and the
burst of black memory vanished in a chaos of echoing images. In a dream I
fled from that haunted and accursed pile, and ran swiftly and silently in the
moonlight. When I returned to the churchyard place of marble and went down
the steps I found the stone trap-door immovable; but I was not sorry, for I had
hated the antique castle and the trees. Now I ride with the mocking and
friendly ghouls on the night-wind, and play by day amongst the catacombs of
Nephren-Ka in the sealed and unknown valley of Hadoth by the Nile. I know
that light is not for me, save that of the moon over the rock tombs of Neb, nor
any gaiety save the unnamed feasts of Nitokris beneath the Great Pyramid;
yet in my new wildness and freedom I almost welcome the bitterness of
alienage.
For although nepenthe has calmed me, I know always that I am an outsider; a
stranger in this century and among those who are still men. This I have known
ever since I stretched out my fingers to the abomination within that great
gilded frame; stretched out my fingers and touched a cold and unyielding
surface of polished glass.
The Wife’s Story
-Ursula K. Le Guin
He was a good husband, a good father. I don’t understand it. I don’t believe
in it. I don’t believe that it happened. I saw it happen but it isn’t true. It can’t
be. He was always gentle. If you’d have seen him playing with the children,
anybody who saw him with the children would have known that there wasn’t
any bad in him, not one mean bone. When I first met him he was still living with
his mother, over near Spring Lake, and I used to see them together, the mother
and the sons, and think that any young fellow that was that nice with his family
must be one worth knowing. Then one time when I was walking in the woods I
met him by himself coming back from a hunting trip. He hadn’t got any game
at all, not so much as a field mouse, but he wasn’t cast down about it. He was
just larking along enjoying the morning air. That’s one of the things I first loved
about him. He didn’t take things hard, he didn’t grouch and whine when things
didn’t go his way. So we got to talking that day. And I guess things moved right
along after that, because pretty soon he was over here pretty near all the time.
And my sister said — see, my parents had moved out the year before and
gone south, leaving us the place — my sister said, kind of teasing but serious,
“Well! If he’s going to be here every day and half the night, I guess there isn’t
room for me!” And she moved out — just down the way. We’ve always been
real close, her and me. That’s the sort of thing doesn’t ever change. I couldn’t
ever have got through this bad time without my sis.
Well, so he come to live here. And all I can say is, it was the happiest year of
my life. He was just purely good to me. A hard worker and never lazy, and so
big and fine‐looking. Everybody looked up to him, you know, young as he was.
Lodge Meeting nights, more and more often they had him to lead the singing.
He had such a beautiful voice, and he’d lead off strong, and the others
following and joining in, high voices and low. It brings the shivers on me now to
think of it, hearing it, nights when I’d stayed home from meeting when the
children was babies — the singing coming up through the trees there, and the
moonlight, summer nights, the full moon shining. I’ll never hear anything so
beautiful. I’ll never know a joy like that again.
It was the moon, that’s what they say. It’s the moon’s fault, and the blood. It
was in his father’s blood. I never knew his father, and now I wonder what
become of him. He was from up Whitewater way, and had no kin around here.
I always thought he went back there, but now I don’t know. There was some
talk about him, tales that come out after what happened to my husband. It’s
something runs in the blood, they say, and it may never come out, but if it does,
it’s the change of the moon that does it. Always it happens in the dark of the
moon, when everybody’s home and asleep. Something comes over the one
that’s got the curse in his blood, they say, and he gets up because he can’t
sleep, and goes out into the glaring sun, and goes off all alone — drawn to find
those like him.
And it may be so, because my husband would do that. I’d half rouse and say,
“Where you going to?” and he’d say, “Oh, hunting, be back this evening,” and
it wasn’t like him, even his voice was different. But I’d be so sleepy, and not
wanting to wake the kids, and he was so good and responsible, it was no call
of mine to go asking “Why?” and “Where?” and all like that.
So it happened that way maybe three times or four. He’d come back late and
worn out, and pretty near cross for one so sweet‐tempered — not wanting to
talk about it. I figured everybody got to bust out now and then, and nagging
never helped anything. But it did begin to worry me. Not so much that he went,
but that he come back so tired and strange. Even, he smelled strange. It made
my hair stand up on end. I could not endure it and I said, “What is that — those
smells on you? All over you!” And he said, “I don’t know,” real short, and made
like he was sleeping. But he went down when he thought I wasn’t noticing, and
washed and washed himself. But those smells stayed in his hair, and in our bed,
for days.
And then the awful thing. I don’t find it easy to tell about this. I want to cry
when I have to bring it to my mind. Our youngest, the little one, my baby, she
turned from her father. Just overnight. He come in and she got scared‐looking,
stiff, with her eyes wide, and then she begun to cry and try to hide behind me.
She didn’t yet talk plain but she was saying over and over, “Make it go away!
Make it go away!”
The look in his eyes; just for one moment, when he heard that. That’s what I
don’t want‐ever to remember. That’s what I can’t forget. The look in his eyes
looking at his own child.
I said to the child, “Shame on you, what’s got into you!” — scolding, but
keeping her right up close to me at the same time, because I was frightened
too. Frightened to shaking.
He looked away then and said something like, “Guess she just waked up
dreaming,” and passed it off that way. Or tried to. And so did I. And I got real
mad with my baby when she kept on acting crazy scared of her own dad. But
she couldn’t help it and I couldn’t change it.
He kept away that whole day. Because he knew, I guess. It was just beginning
dark of the moon.
It was hot and close inside, and dark, and we’d all been asleep some while,
when something woke me up. He wasn’t there beside me. I heard a little stir in
the passage, when I listened. So I got up, because I could bear it no longer. I
went out into the passage, and it was light there, hard sunlight coming in from
the door. And I saw him standing just outside, in the tall grass by the entrance.
His head was hanging.
Presently he sat down, like he felt weary, and looked down at his feet. I held
still, inside, and watched — I didn’t know what for.
And I saw what he saw. I saw the changing. In his feet, it was, first. They got
long, each foot got longer, stretching out, the toes stretching out and the foot
getting long, and fleshy, and white. And no hair on them.
The hair begun to come away all over his body. It was like his hair fried away
in the sunlight and was gone. He was white all over then, like a worm’s skin.
And he turned his face. It was changing while I looked, it got flatter and flatter,
the mouth flat and wide, and the teeth grinning flat and dull, and the nose just
a knob of flesh with nostril holes, and the ears gone, and the eyes gone blue
— blue, with white rims around the blue — staring at me out of that flat, soft,
white face.
He stood up then on two legs.
I saw him, I had to see him. My own dear love, turned in the hateful one.
I couldn’t move, but as I crouched there in the passage staring out into the
day I was trembling and shaking with a growl that burst out into a crazy awful
howling. A grief howl and a terror howl. And the others heard it, even sleeping,
and woke up.
It stared and peered, that thing my husband had turned into, and shoved its
face up to the entrance of our house. I was still bound by mortal fear, but
behind me the children had waked up, and the baby was whimpering. The
mother anger come into me then, and I snarled and crept forward.
The man thing looked around. It had no gun, like the ones from the man places
do. But it picked up a heavy fallen tree branch in its long white foot, and
shoved the end of that down into our house, at me. I snapped the end of it in
my teeth and started to force my way out, because I knew the man would kill
our children if it could. But my sister was already coming. I saw her running at
the man with her head low and her mane high and her eyes yellow as the
winter sun. It turned on her and raised up that branch to hit her. But I come out
of the doorway, mad with the mother anger, and the others all were coming
answering my call, the whole pack gathering, there in that blind glare and
heat of the sun at noon.
The man looked round at us and yelled out loud, and brandished the branch
it held. Then it broke and ran, heading for the cleared fields and plowlands,
down the mountainside. It ran, on two legs, leaping and weaving, and we
followed it.
I was last, because love still bound the anger and the fear in me. I was running
when I saw them pull it down. My sister’s teeth were in its throat. I got there and
it was dead. The others were drawing back from the kill, because of the taste
of the blood, and the smell. The younger ones were cowering and some crying,
and my sister rubbed her mouth against her fore legs over and over to get rid
of the taste. I went up close because I thought if the thing was dead the spell,
the curse must be done, and my husband could come back — alive, or even
dead, if I could only see him, my true love, in his true form, beautiful. But only
the dead man lay there white and bloody. We drew back and back from it,
and turned and ran back up into the hills, back to the woods of the shadows
and the twilight and the blessed dark.
Strawberry Spring
-Stephen King
I saw those two words in the paper this morning and my God, how they take
me back. All that was eight years ago, almost to the day. Once, while it was
going on, I saw myself on nationwide TV - the Walter Cronkite Report. Just a
hurrying face in the general background behind the reporter, but my folks
picked me out right away. They called long-distance. My dad wanted my
analysis of the situation; he was all bluff and hearty and man-to-man. My
mother just wanted me to come home. But I didn't want to come home. I
was enchanted.
Enchanted by that dark and mist-blown strawberry spring, and by the
shadow of violent death that walked through it on those nights eight years
ago. The shadow of Springheel Jack.
In New England they call it a strawberry spring. No one knows why; it's just a
phrase the old-timers use. They say it happens once every eight or ten years.
What happened at New Sharon Teachers' College that particular strawberry
spring. . . there may be a cycle for that, too, but if anyone has figured it out,
they've never said.
At New Sharon, the strawberry spring began on 16 March 1968. The coldest
winter in twenty years broke on that day. It rained and you could smell the
sea twenty miles west of the beaches. The snow, which had been thirty-five
inches deep in places, began to melt and the campus walks ran with slush.
The Winter Carnival snow sculptures, which had been kept sharp and clearcut for two months by the sub-zero temperatures, at last began to sag and
slouch. The caricature of Lyndon Johnson in front of the Tep fraternity house
cried melted tears. The dove in front of Prashner Hall lost its frozen feathers
and its plywood skeleton showed sadly through in places.
And when night came the fog came with it, moving silent and white along
the narrow college avenues and thoroughfares. The pines on the wall poked
through it like counting fingers and it drifted, slow as cigarette smoke, under
the little bridge down by the Civil War cannons. It made things seem out of
joint, strange, magical. The unwary traveller would step out of the jukethumping, brightly lit confusion of the Grinder, expecting the hard clear
starriness of winter to clutch him . . . and instead he would suddenly find
himself in a silent, muffled world of white drifting fog, the only sound his own
footsteps and the soft drip of water from the ancient gutters. You half
expected to see Gollum or Frodo and Sam go hurrying past, or to turn and
see that the Grinder was gone, vanished, replaced by a foggy panorama of
moors and yew trees and perhaps a Druid-circle or a sparkling fairy ring.
The jukebox played 'Love Is Blue' that year. It played 'Hey, Jude' endlessly,
endlessly. It played 'Scarborough Fair.
And at ten minutes after eleven on that night a junior named John Dancey
on his way back to his dormitory began screaming into the fog, dropping
books on and between the sprawled legs of the dead girl lying in a shadowy
corner of the Animal Sciences parking lot, her throat cut from ear to ear but
her eyes open and almost seeming to sparkle as if she had just successfully
pulled off the funniest joke of her young life - Dancey, an education major
and a speech minor, screamed and screamed and screamed.
The next day was overcast and sullen, and we went to classes with questions
eager in our mouths - who? why? when do you think they'll get him? And
always the final thrilled question: Did you know her? Did you know her?
Yes, I had an art class with her.
Yes, one of my room-mate 's friends dated her last term.
Yes, she asked me for a light once in the Grinder. She was at the next table.
Yes, Yes, I
Yes. . . yes. . . oh yes, I
We all knew her. Her name was Gale Cerman (pronounced Kerr-man), and
she was an art major. She wore granny glasses and had a good figure. She
was well liked but her room-mates had hated her. She had never gone out
much even though she was one of the most promiscuous girls on campus.
She was ugly but cute. She had been a vivacious girl who talked little and
smiled seldom. She had been pregnant and she had had leukemia. She was
a lesbian who had been murdered by her boyfriend. It was strawberry spring,
and on the morning of 17 March we all knew Gale Cerman.
Half a dozen State Police cars crawled on to the campus, most of them
parked in front of Judith Franklin Hall, where the Cerman girl had lived. On my
way past there to my ten o’clock class I was asked to show my student ID. I
was clever. I showed him the one without the fangs.
'Do you carry a knife?' the policeman asked cunningly.
'Is it about Gale Cerman?' I asked, after I told him that the most lethal thing
on my person was a rabbit's-foot key chain.
'What makes you ask?' He pounced.
I was five minutes late to class.
It was strawberry spring and no one walked by themselves through the halfacademical, half-fantastical campus that night. The fog had come again,
smelling of the sea, quiet and deep.
Around nine o'clock my room-mate burst into our room, where I had been
busting my brains on a Milton essay since seven. 'They caught him,' he said. 'I
heard it over at the Grinder.'
'From who?'
'I don't know. Some guy. Her boy4riend did it. His name is Carl Amalara.'
I settled back, relieved and disappointed. With a name like that it had to be
true. A lethal and sordid little crime of passion.
'Okay,' I said. 'That's good.'
He left the room to spread the news down the hall. I reread my Milton essay,
couldn't figure out what I had been trying to say, tore it up and started again.
It was in the papers the next day. There was an incongruously neat picture of
Amalara - probably a high-school graduation picture - and it showed a
rather sad-looking boy with an olive complexion and dark eyes and
pockmarks on his nose. The boy had not confessed yet, but the evidence
against him was strong. He and Gale Cerman had argued a great deal in the
last month or so, and had broken up the week before. Amalara's roomie said
he had been 'despondent'. In a footlocker under his bed, police had found a
seven-inch hunting knife from L. L. Bean's and a picture of the girl that had
apparently been cut up with a pair of shears.
Beside Amalara's picture was one of Gale Cerman. It blurrily showed a dog, a
peeling lawn flamingo, and a rather mousy blonde girl wearing spectacles.
An uncomfortable smile had turned her lips up and her eyes were squinted.
One hand was on the dog's head. It was true then. It had to be true.
The fog came again that night, not on little cat's feet but in an improper silent
sprawl. I walked that night. I had a headache and I walked for air, smelling
the wet, misty smell of the spring that was slowly wiping away the reluctant
snow, leaving lifeless patches of last year's grass bare and uncovered, like the
head of a sighing old grandmother.
For me, that was one of the most beautiful nights I can remember. The
people I passed under the haloed streetlights were murmuring shadows, and
all of them seemed to be lovers, walking with hands and eyes linked. The
melting snow dripped and ran, dripped and ran, and from every dark storm
drain the sound of the sea drifted up, a dark winter sea now strongly ebbing.
I walked until nearly midnight, until I was thoroughly mildewed, and I passed
many shadows, heard many footfalls clicking dreamily off down the winding
paths. Who is to say that one of those shadows was not the man or the thing
that came to be known as Springheel Jack? Not I, for I passed many shadows
but in the fog I saw no faces.
The next morning the clamour in the hall woke me. I blundered out to see
who had been drafted, combing my hair with both hands and running the
fuzzy caterpillar that had craftily replaced my tongue across the dry roof of
my mouth.
'He got another one,' someone said to me, his face pallid with excitement.
'They had to let him go.'
'Who go?'
'Amalara!' someone else said gleefully. 'He was sitting in jail when it
happened.
When what happened?' I asked patiently. Sooner or later I would get it. I was
sure of that.
'The guy killed somebody else last night. And now they're hunting all over for
it.'
'For what?'
The pallid face wavered in front of me again. 'Her head. Whoever killed her
took her head with him.'
New Sharon isn't a big school now, and was even smaller then - the kind of
institution the public relations people chummily refer to as a 'community
college'. And it really was like a small community, at least in those days;
between you and your friends, you probably had at least a nodding
acquaintance with everybody else and their friends. Gale
Cerman had been the type of girl you just nodded to, thinking vaguely that
you had seen her around.
We all knew Ann Bray. She had been the first runner-up in the Miss New
England pageant the year before, her talent performance consisting of
twirling a flaming baton to the tune of 'Hey, Look Me Over'. She was brainy,
too; until the time of her death she had been editor of the school newspaper
(a once-weekly rag with a lot of political cartoons and bombastic letters), a
member of the student dramatics society, and president of the National
Service Sorority, New Sharon Branch. In the hot, fierce bubblings of my
freshman youth I had submitted a column idea to the paper and asked for a
date - turned down on both counts.
And now she was dead. . . worse than dead.
I walked to my afternoon classes like everyone else, nodding to people I
knew and saying hi with a little more force than usual, as if that would make
up for the close way I studied their faces. Which was the same way they were
studying mine. There was someone dark among us, as dark as the paths
which twisted across the mall or wound among the hundred-year-old oaks on
the quad in back of the gymnasium. As dark as the hulking Civil War cannons
seen through a drifting membrane of fog. We looked into each other's faces
and tried to read the darkness behind one of them.
This time the police arrested no one. The blue beetles patrolled the campus
ceaselessly on the foggy spring nights of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and
twentieth, and spotlights stabbed into dark nooks and crannies with erratic
eagerness. The administration imposed a mandatory nine o'clock curfew. A
foolhardy couple discovered necking in the landscaped bushes north of the
Tate Alumni Building were taken to the New Sharon police station and grilled
unmercifully for three hours.
There was a hysterical false alarm on the twentieth when a boy was found
unconscious in the same parking lot where the body of Gale Cerman had
been found. A gibbering campus cop loaded him into the back of his cruiser
and put a map of the county over his face without bothering to hunt for a
pulse and started towards the local hospital, siren wailing across the deserted
campus like a seminar of banshees.
Halfway there the corpse in the back seat had risen and asked hollowly,
'Where the hell am I?' The cop shrieked and ran off the road. The corpse
turned out to be an undergrad named Donald Morris who had been in bed
the last two days with a pretty lively case of flu - was it Asian last year? I can't
remember. Anyway, he fainted in the parking lot on his way to the Grinder for
a bowl of soup and some toast.
The days continued warm and overcast. People clustered in small groups
that had a tendency to break up and re-form with surprising speed. Looking
at the same set of faces for too long gave you funny ideas about some of
them. And the speed with which rumours swept from one end of the campus
to the other began to approach the speed of light; a well-liked history
professor had been overheard laughing and weeping down by the small
bridge; Gale Cerman had left a cryptic two-word message written in her own
blood on the blacktop of the Animal Sciences parking lot; both murders were
actually political crimes, ritual murders that had been performed by an
offshoot of the SDS to protest the war. This was really laughable. The New
Sharon SDS had seven members. One fair-sized offshoot would have
bankrupted the whole organization. This fact brought an even more sinister
embellishment from the campus rightwingers: outside agitators. So during
those queer, warm days we all kept our eyes peeled for them.
The press, always fickle, ignored the strong resemblance our murderer bore to
Jack the Ripper and dug further back - all the way to 1819. Ann Bray had
been found on a soggy path of ground some twelve feet from the nearest
sidewalk, and yet there were no footprints, not even her own. An enterprising
New Hampshire newsman with a passion for the arcane christened the killer
Springheel Jack, after the infamous Dr John Hawkins of Bristol, who did five of
his wives to death with odd pharmaceutical knick-knacks. And the name,
probably because of that soggy yet unmarked ground, stuck.
On the twenty-first it rained again, and the mall and quadrangle became
quagmires. The police announced that they were salting plainclothes
detectives, men and women, about, and took half the police cars off duty.
The campus newspaper published a strongly indignant, if slightly incoherent,
editorial protesting this. The upshot of it seemed to be that, with all sorts of
cops masquerading as students, it would be impossible to tell a real outside
agitator from a false one.
Twilight came and the fog with it, drifting up the tree-lined avenues slowly,
almost thoughtfully, blotting out the buildings one by one. It was soft,
insubstantial stuff, but somehow implacable and frightening. Springheel Jack
was a man, no one seemed to doubt that, but the fog was his accomplice
and it was female. . . or so it seemed to me. If was as if our little school was
caught between them, squeezed in some crazy lover's embrace, part of a
marriage that had been consummated in blood. I sat and smoked and
watched the lights come on in the growing darkness and wondered if it was
all over. My room-mate came in and shut the door quietly behind him.
'It's going to snow soon,' he said.
I turned around and looked at him. 'Does the radio say that?'
'No,' he said. 'Who needs a weatherman? Have you ever heard of strawberry
spring?'
'Maybe,' I said. 'A long time ago. Something grandmothers talk about, isn't it?'
He stood beside me, looking out at the creeping dark.
'Strawberry spring is like Indian summer,' he said, 'only much more rare. You
get a good Indian summer in this part of the country once every two or three
years. A spell of weather like we've been having is supposed to come only
every eight or ten. It's a false spring, a lying spring, like Indian summer is a false
summer. My own grandmother used to say strawberry spring means the worst
norther of the winter is still on the way - and the longer this lasts, the harder
the storm.
'Folk tales,' I said. 'Never believe a word.' I looked at him. But I'm nervous. Are
you?'
He smiled benevolently and stole one of my cigarettes from the open pack
on the window ledge. 'I suspect everyone but me. and thee,' he said, and
then the smile faded a little. 'And sometimes I wonder about thee. Want to
go over to the Union and shoot some eight-ball? I'll spot you ten.'
'Trig prelim next week. I'm going to settle down with a magic marker and a
hot pile of notes.'
For a long time after he was gone, I could only look out the window. And
even after I had opened my book and started in, part of me was still out
there, walking in the shadows where something dark was now in charge.
That night Adelle Parkins was killed. Six police cars and seventeen collegiatelooking plain clothes men (eight of them were women imported all the way
from Boston) patrolled the campus. But Springheel Jack killed her just the
same, going unerringly for one of our own. The false spring, the lying spring,
aided and abetted him - he killed her and left her propped behind the wheel
of her 1964 Dodge to be found the next morning and they found part of her
in the back seat and part of her in the trunk. And written in blood on the
windshield - this time fact instead of rumour - were two words: HA! HA!
The campus went slightly mad after that; all of us and none of us had known
Adelle Parkins. She was one of those nameless, harried women who worked
the break-back shift in the Grinder from six to eleven at night, facing hordes
of hamburger-happy students on study break from the library across the way.
She must have had it relatively easy those last three foggy nights of her life;
the curfew was 'being rigidly observed, and after nine the Grinder's only
patrons were hungry cops and happy janitors - the empty buildings had
improved their habitual bad temper considerably.
There is little left to tell. The police, as prone to hysteria as any of us and driven
against the wall, arrested an innocuous homosexual sociology graduate
student named Hanson Gray, who claimed he 'could not remember' where
he had spent several of the lethal evenings. They charged him, arraigned
him, and let him go to scamper hurriedly back to his native New Hampshire
town after the last unspeakable night of strawberry spring when Marsha
Curran was slaughtered on the mall.
Why she had been out and alone is forever beyond knowing - she was a fat,
sadly pretty thing who lived in an apartment in town with three other girls. She
had slipped on campus as silently and as easily as Springheel Jack himself.
What brought her? Perhaps her need was as deep and as ungovernable as
her killer's, and just as far beyond understanding. Maybe a need for one
desperate and passionate romance with the warm night, the warm fog, the
smell of the sea, and the cold knife.
That was on the twenty-third. On the twenty-fourth the president of the
college announced that spring break would be moved up a week, and we
scattered, not joyfully but like frightened sheep before a storm, leaving the
campus empty and haunted by the police and one dark spectre.
I had my own car on campus, and I took six people downstate with me, their
luggage crammed in helter-skelter. It wasn't a pleasant ride. For all any of us
knew, Springheel Jack might have been in the car with us.
That night the thermometer dropped fifteen degrees, and the whole northern
New England area was belted by a shrieking norther that began in sleet and
ended in a foot of snow. The usual number of old duffers had heart attacks
shovelling it away - and then, like magic, it was April. Clean showers and
starry nights.
They called it strawberry spring, God knows why, and it's an evil, lying time
that only comes once every eight or ten years. Springheel Jack left with the
fog, and by early June, campus conversation had turned to a series of draft
protests and a sit-in at the building where a well-known napalm
manufacturer was holding job interviews. By June, the subject of Springheel
Jack was almost unanimously avoided - at least aloud. I suspect there were
many who turned it over and over privately, looking for the one crack in the
seemless egg of madness that would make sense of it all.
That was the year I graduated, and the next year was the year I married. A
good job in a local publishing house. In 1971 we had a child, and now he's
almost school age. A fine and questing boy with my eyes and her mouth.
Then, today's paper.
Of course I knew it was here. I knew it yesterday morning when I got up and
heard the mysterious sound of snowmelt running down the gutters, and
smelled the salt tang of the ocean from our front porch, nine miles from the
nearest beach. I knew strawberry spring had come again when I started
home from work last night and had to turn on my headlights against the mist
that was already beginning to creep out of the fields and hollows, blurring
the lines of the buildings and putting fairy haloes around the street lamps.
This morning's paper says a girl was killed on the New Sharon campus near
the Civil War cannons. She was killed last night and found in a melting
snowbank. She was not she was not all there.
My wife is upset. She wants to know where I was last night. I can't tell her
because I don't remember. I remember starting home from work, and I
remember putting my headlights on to search my way through the lovely
creeping fog, but that's all I remember.
I've been thinking about that foggy night when I had a headache and
walked for air and passed all the lovely shadows without shape or substance.
And I've been thinking about the trunk of my car - such an ugly word, trunk and wondering why in the world I should be afraid to open it.
I can hear my wife as I write this, in the next room, crying. She thinks I was with
another woman last night.
And oh dear God, I think so too.